What really drives food cravings

Hi friends,

It’s been a while but I return with lots of news. Since my last email, I had a baby (very cute!), moved to Paris (more fun than expected!), and have been working to finish the nutrition and metabolism book I’m co-authoring with scientist Kevin Hall (due out next year!) In addition to the usual notes about stories published or in progress, I’ll be periodically sharing conversations here with people who have changed how I think about food and obesity.

First up: Mark Schatzker, journalist and the author of, most recently, The End of Craving and The Dorito Effect. (Mark’s also a talking head in the 2023 documentary Food, Inc. 2, and a fellow Torontonian). I read Mark’s books several years ago, and keep returning to them because they were so prescient — ahead of the parallel conversations that are unfolding now about ultra-processed foods and the GLP1-based drugs, like Ozempic and Mounjaro, prescribed for obesity. If these foods and drugs expose the hard-wired, physiological systems that shape our eating behavior, Schatzker was among the first popular writers to dive into what we know about how this all works inside of us, and why higher-level brain processes pull the strings more than we may appreciate.

Here’s Mark on how artificial flavors in ultra-processed foods mess with the body’s nutritional wisdom, why culture is too often missing from the conversation about obesity, and the potential unintended consequences of fortifying and enriching what we eat. The conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity.

Ps. Have suggestions for stories or feedback? I love hearing from you. Send a note!

Julia: An enduring idea in the conversation about obesity is that hyper-palatability is the major driver: junk food or ultra-processed foods have been engineered to be irresistible, we like them too much, and this causes us to overeat and gain weight. Michael Moss popularized the idea in his book Salt Sugar Fat but it’s everywhere. You have a different view. Tell me about it.

Mark: I think the idea that these foods are hitting bliss points is wrong. I’ve spoken to Howard Moskowitz [the researcher who did the pioneering bliss point research for the food industry] and he regrets calling it a bliss point because he said it just got everyone confused. The bliss point for, say, the amount of sugar in