Everybody wants to eat healthy! Eventually! When we, uh, finally get around to it! Come on, how hard can it really be to give up junk food?
About as easy as kicking heroin, it turns out. The garbage we cram into our bodies is every bit as addictive as any controlled substance, and food companies have been playing us as slobbering addicts for as long as we've been alive.
3
Companies Already Think of You as a Junkie
While nobody ever binges on boiled carrots and Brussels sprouts, potato chips are described as the perfect addictive food -- essentially the nutritional equivalent of a speedball. Why? Because they were deliberately designed that way.
When you first pop a chip into your mouth, the coating of salt and fat light up the brain's pleasure centers like a Christmas tree. The starch in the potato causes the same glucose spike as sugar, but is absorbed into the bloodstream much more quickly. That spike then immediately dips, making you want another potato chip. You can just keep eating them, and because there's no real substance to them, your stomach never gets full. The reasoning behind the "you can't eat just one" mantra is pretty much the same reason you can't be a casual meth user.
Brand X Pictures/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images
If you stare at these too long, "Born Slippy" starts playing subliminally in your head.