For most people, our mental image of drug profiteering includes classic mafia-boss types, along with heavily armed gang members from many parts of the world, who speak a variety of languages and know more ways to torture and kill a victim than your average citizen wants to imagine. In our mind’s eye, drug kingpins are found in fancy brothels, heavily-guarded mansions, luxurious yachts, gambling palaces, and ornate hotels where the amount of money charged for a single night’s stay could, in some places, buy an entire small town.

What does this have to do with anything? An earlier post quoted the very opinionated Dr. Chris van Tulleken on one of the less-discussed aspects of addiction. That post explained why van Tulleken’s multi-faceted career entitles him to form and discuss as many opinions as he wants to, so let’s look at one of his ideas about advertising:

The companies know their food is addictive. We’ve got whole campaigns based around the notion of addiction… We have to stop doctors, scientists, policymakers from having a financial relationship with food companies. We need to get the tiger off the box and put warning labels on.

This expert has stated that poor diet now wins out over tobacco as the leading cause of early death, and considering tobacco’s lousy reputation, that is saying something. But wait, there’s more. In his view, it’s not the food itself causing widespread premature fatality, but the multitude of additives.

One of the telltale characteristics of ultra-processed food is that people cram it into their mouths and down their gullets with remarkable speed. Why? Because it contains weird molecules that hit the brain with an irresistible barrage of instant prizes, fake rewards that are not really benefits at all, but imposters that lure us to our doom.

These tricky liars are chemicals that never bring satisfaction, but instead create an ever-increasing demand that they be followed into the body’s interior by other members of their tribe, until the bright-colored package they came in is empty. Then, the duplicitous alien molecules demand that their helpless human victim open another package of goodies, or else go out and buy some more.

Obviously this is hard to believe, but here in the Land of the Free, thousands of chemical additives are mixed into the alleged nourishment we eat every day: shady substances that have no purpose other than to train our organisms to demand more and more and more of them. If that isn’t addiction, then what is?

In the science of substance dependency creation, van Tulleken’s writings track how the food industry learned from the best possible teacher: the tobacco industry. No professional drug kingpin has ever done a more effective job of creating addicts than the respectable and lavishly rewarded cigarette pushers, and the food industry has devoted itself to copying their methods.

Several years ago, Dr. van Tulleken was the human guinea pig in a BBC documentary film titled “What Are We Feeding Our Kids?” His normal diet had consisted of about 20% ultra-processed, hyper-palatable foods, so for this four-week experiment he boosted that to 80%.

His custom had been to eat when hungry, habitually three times per day, but as food cravings took over, mealtimes increased to five per day or more. This resulted in side effects like headaches, heartburn, anxiety, constipation, and decreased libido, accompanied by ever-increasing food cravings, and he found himself making such remarks as, “You can really taste the potassium sorbate.”

When the month ended, Dr. van Tulleken had gained a little over 14 pounds, about six of them pure fat. The before-and-after photos showed a physique that inspired not pride, but the possibility of needing a bra. A blood test showed that his hunger hormone supply flourished, having increased by 30%, while the fullness hormone had dwindled.

His final summation noted that the month on the special diet had linked up the brain’s reward centers with the areas that rule automatic repetitive behavior:

So eating ultra-processed food has become something my brain simply tells me to do without me even wanting it. Shockingly, this is something you might see in a person with addiction. Children’s brains are still developing, and they’re much more malleable than mine, which means the changes are likely to be even greater.

Such an extreme effect on the inner workings of the body shows potency very similar to that of an opiate or other addictive substance. The ability to fool the body about whether it is actually hungry or satiated is a power of deception similar to that of a psychoactive drug. Case closed.

Written by Pat Hartman. First published August 27, 2026.

Sources:

“Here’s Why You’re Addicted to Ultra-Processed Food: Chris van Tulleken (Transcript),” The SingjuPost.com, January 22, 2024.

“What Are We Feeding Our Kids?,” YouTube.com, June 12, 2021.

“Here’s What Happens When You Eat Mostly Ultra-Processed Foods For A Month,” IFLScience.com, October 5, 2021.

Image Copyright: chandan_ai/Pixabay.