No, Food Technologists Aren’t Walter White, But the Parallel is Closer Than You Think
I’ve been asked several times lately how much food technologists and manufacturers are really engineering foods to be more addictive. Including during filming of Licence to Kill, by Dr. Chris Van tulleken. (Wouldn’t he like to know)
While I’ve never seen the inner workings of a major corporate operation, I thought I’d settle the score, and share how much Breaking Bad actually goes on behind the scenes.
Our evolutionary wiring tells us to crave salt, fat and sugar, nutrients that were once scarce in nature and key to survival. Fast forward a few million years, and we now have ad lib access to these in ultra concentrated forms overstimulating our now outdated endorphin receptors like nobodies business.
Pair that with our CRAP (Calorie Rich And Processed) fibre depleted diets and that explains the obesity epidemic all by itself, but thats for another post.
Take coca leaves: harmlessly chewed for centuries as a mild stimulant, but when refined into a white powder, you get cocaine, powerful and addictive. The same can be said for sugar, salt and fat. It’s not the ingredients themselves that are the issue; it’s only when you concentrate them into a white powder that it becomes an issue.
For anyone still dismissing food addiction, the science is way caught up. We know now that fatty and sugary foods trigger the same endorphin receptors as opioids, and that the same opioid blockers used to reverse a heroin overdose can even dull cravings.
Yes I get it, but not everyone who eats chocolate or ice cream becomes dependent, just as not everyone who tries cocaine does, but the parallels are hard to ignore.
As chefs, you’re trained to make every component of a dish delicious on its own, then bring it together in the perfect ratio of fat, salt, sugar, acid and heat, creating something irresistible. In food product development, it’s the same principle, only scaled and systemised with mass population as your guinny pigs rather than trill seeking michelin diners.
As such, I too was dragged into development kitchen, having been trained in some Michelin star and fine dining restaurants.
So no, NPD teams don’t operate like meth labs. There are no scientists with neural scanners perfecting formulas for maximum dopamine hits. It’s a Darwinian process: multiple iterations, taste panels, cultural cues, and retailer submissions, the survival of the fittest flavour gets the sign-off. Maybe because it hit the right notes and dopamine receptors within the approval chain, who knows.
What is crystal clear is that once all is said and done, what emerges are hyper-palatable products that light up the brain’s reward system, BING! designed not out of malice but market pressure. Supermarkets become the battleground, brands fight for shelf space, and consumers chase their next fix, until a new dealer walks the aisle promising a better high or a better price.
As for the UPF “health” space, its largely the same playbook. Different costumer, different needs. Its all about supply and demand, really, and you’re lucky we’re dealing your fix anyway. Give or take 20g of waste protein (aka whey), some fart fibres (aka inulin and sugar alcohols) and a good dose of HFSS compliance later, we’re back to the darwinian protocol, as far away from REAL and INTACT foods as possible fighting it out, formulating in the lab, sorry, kitchen.
There may be no Walter Whites in food, but the cook still has to be perfect if you want to keep your customers hooked.
If you’re developing your own formulation and want to find the sweet spot, you know where to find us, we’ll promise we won’t intentionally cross the line any more than anyone else is.