Ezra Klein

and to really, really want them.

So we've put people into this hyper stimulating environment, but we didn't change everybody's brain to turn down the level of hunger when you come into something that is very calorie dense or very sugar dense.

And so we've been asking people with these like caveman, all of us, myself, caveman brains now surrounded by the fruits of modern industrialized food production where the Mars company is spending God knows how much on R&D to make my kids want M&Ms.

And it doesn't work for people.

And then we blame them and tell them they've not done a good job exercising their willpower and self-control.

Absolutely.

I was very, very heavy until I was almost an adult.

Like I lost like 60-ish pounds, 50-ish pounds when I was 16.

And then ever since, like I fight my food desires.

Like if we had a bowl of Oreos on this table, 30, 50% of my mental energy the whole time we were talking, we did not eat the Oreos.

I have a family member who I'm not related to by blood.

And one thing that always amazes me is she will order dessert and she loves dessert and she loves chocolate cake.

And she'll like eat half the cake and then take the rest home.

And I always look at that and I think whatever is happening in you is not happening in me or possibly vice versa.

Whatever is happening in me is not happening in you.

And then I feel in other ways elsewhere in my life.

I can have a cigarette or a puff on a vape.

I have no interest in another.

It does not excite any desire in me.

I can have a whiskey and leave half of it or a glass of wine and I don't particularly want to keep going.