The Sunday Magazine section of the New York Times will be featuring an article called The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food. It is a very long article and it will probably make you angry, but it is well worth the time to read.
Having scientists for parents and family members means that unlike virtually every other kid I know from the 1970s I did not grow up on processed food. Our bread went bad, our peanut butter had three ingredients and lunch meat aside from turkey was banned. We ate frozen yogurt back in the day where to get frozen yogurt you needed to take a carton of yogurt and put it in the freezer.
Interestingly as I got to high school I discovered that I could not stand the taste of most true junk food. Sure I liked deep fried chicken, flourless chocolate cake, barbecue sauce, popcorn and plain unflavored potato chips just fine. But the truly processed foods that kept for months I could not stand. I found them overwhelmingly salty, sticky sweet, and creepily unpleasant.
Lest you think me some food saint, I ate plenty of unhealthy food in college but I did not like “fake food”. I remember the first time I ate macaroni and cheese made with margarine and from a box. I literally vomited.
I say this because I think that it is very possible to break an addiction to this processed stuff. I am not going to tell you that if you stop eating it for a while you will never again want a chip. I can tell you if you go clean for a while you will strongly prefer a three ingredient chip served with salsa or guacamole. You will want real fried chicken not the extra crispy kind at the fast food place. You will know lemonade from real lemons from fake lemonade after a single sip.
I find this stuff to be a moral outrage. I have no idea how the product manager for nondairy whipped topping (a combination of GMO High Fructose Corn Syrup and GMO hydrogenated soy oil) sleeps at night. So I encourage you to read the article and then, even if you are not limited by food sensitivities, to think about cutting back on the snacks or at least swapping in the healthier alternatives.
Because really, do you want to be manipulated like this?
You can read the entire article here
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
