Dr. Jason Fung

The level of ultra processed foods in our diet has skyrocketed in the last 50 years.

And that makes a huge difference because you have foods

that have, you know, there's all these chemicals that, you know, you think about how food companies can maximize pleasure.

They talk about, you know, it's not by accident, right?

They have focus groups, they tweak the recipes, they make sure they have the right amount of salt, sugar, and fat.

But more than that, they have artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors, they have texturizers, they have emulsifiers, millions of ways to make that pleasure of eating increase, and by increasing the amount of ultra-processed foods, they've sort of maximized this hedonic hunger.

Then you think about the conditioned hunger, and you think about the 1970s, for example.

It was not acceptable to eat snacks, for example.

So if you wanted an after-school snack, your mom said, no, you're gonna ruin dinner.

If you wanted a bedtime snack, your mom said no.

You should have ate more at dinner, right?

But now it's all changed.

We have food everywhere, right?

You play soccer.

Some parents are running around chasing their kids with sweet drinks, right?

And none of this was acceptable in the 1970s.

So the social conditions made it easy to not eat because you didn't have all this conditioned hunger.

You didn't have all this hedonic hunger, right?

If your problem is that you have all this conditioned hunger, well, you have to find a way around it, right?

You have to redesign your social and physical environment to make it easy to not eat.