EN
FR
Background
Consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is responsible for an increasing proportion of non-communicable diseases and premature mortality. Recognition of the commercial and social determinants of UPF consumption represents an important advance in public health, with implications for interventions that emphasize regulatory policies rather than individual motivation. However, it is important not to lose sight of the motivational mechanisms through which commercial and social determinants exert their effects on unhealthy behavior.
Objective
This commentary highlights “Big Food’s” exploitation of psychological hedonism—a fundamental human motivational process—as the critical mechanism of UPF consumption, with disproportionate effects on historically marginalized communities. It is not mere availability of UPFs that is the problem. It is the intentional and strategic engineering of UPFs to appeal to the most basic human motivational system that drives our desire and consumption of UPFs. The framing of UPF consumption as the exploitation of natural human motivational tendencies has the potential for increasing the public’s acceptance of food regulation policies.
Conclusion
In bolstering public support for UPF-regulation we should proliferate the following message: Just like Big Tobacco, Big Food strategically engineers UPFs to manipulate fundamental human motivational processes and amass profits at the expense of public health.
Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are “industrial formulations manufactured from substances derived from foods or synthesized from other organic sources. They typically contain little or no whole foods, are ready-to-consume or heat up, and are fatty, salty or sugary and depleted in dietary fibre, protein, various micronutrients and other bioactive compounds. Examples include: sweet, fatty or salty packaged snack products, ice cream, sugar-sweetened beverages, chocolates, confectionery, French fries, burgers and hot dogs, and poultry and fish nuggets” (Monteiro et al., 2018). UPFs account for a significant and increasing proportion of global increases in non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and premature mortality, through their impact on obesity as well as more direct pathophysiological mechanisms (Lane et al., 2024). The role of commercial (Moodie et al., 2021) and social (Barnhill et al., 2022) determinants of UPF consumption is now widely recognized, and represents an important advance in public health, with implications for interventions that emphasize regulatory policies.
It is also important, however, to recognize the motivational mechanisms through which commercial and social determinants exert their effects on UPF consumption. Indeed, it is not mere availability of UPFs that spurs their consumption. Rather, it is the intentional and strategic engineering of UPFs to appeal to the most basic human motivations that drives our desire and consumption of UPFs. I argue herein that the exploitation of psychological hedonism—a fundamental human motivational process—by transnational food corporations (i.e., “Big Food”) is the critical mechanism of UPF consumption, with disproportionate effects on historically marginalized communities.
The principle of psychological hedonism has been discussed and debated for over two thousand years, with numerous versions, critiques, and rebuttals. In essence, psychological hedonism holds that people tend to pursue behaviors that lead to pleasure and avoid behaviors that lead to displeasure (Williams et al., 2018). In the theory of hedonic motivation—a contemporary formulation of psychological hedonism grounded in the incentive salience theory of reward—hedonic motivation is posited as the mechanism through which prior hedonic responses (i.e., immediate pleasures and displeasures resulting from a behavior) influence future behavior (Williams et al., 2018).
Specifically, hedonic motivation is defined as an automatic motivation, wanting, or desire to perform behaviors that previously resulted in pleasure and avoid behaviors that previously resulted in displeasure. Hedonic motivation is triggered by environmental cues that cooccurred with and thus have become associated with previous experiences of pleasure or displeasure. For example, passing a convenience store may automatically—without the need for deliberate reflection—trigger hedonic desire for snack cakes or potato chips because of the association between the immediate availability of these UPFs and the previous pleasure in response to consuming them.
As an evolved trait, psychological hedonism, by definition, increased the likelihood of survival and reproduction among our evolutionary ancestors. For millions of years, our ancestors let their hedonic motivations guide them to eat whatever brought pleasure and to stop only when sated. Those who had the genetic predisposition to respond to hedonistic cues for calorie-dense foods were more likely to survive and reproduce, and thus passed those tendencies on to their offspring. However, in the last 50–100 years, hedonic motivations for sweet, salty, and fatty foods have ceased to be adaptive. From an evolutionary perspective, we now live in a bizarre world where ability to resist hedonic food cues means better chance of survival. This apparent paradox can be explained by evolutionary mismatch: the mismatch between environmental conditions and human traits based on drastic and rapid (on an evolutionary timescale) changes in human environments that have led to conditions that the human body and its biological systems are not evolved to cope with (Gluckman and Hanson, 2006).
Evolutionary mismatch in the context of UPFs has been previously recognized: the UPFs now regularly consumed by humans are mismatched to our evolved capacity to digest and metabolize them, thus leading to increases in NCDs (Lea et al., 2023). However, it is also important to recognize the evolutionary mismatch inherent in our drive to consume UPFs: the motivational mismatch between the immediate pleasures that are triggered by consumption of UPFs and our evolved motivational mechanism of psychological hedonism (Williams, 2019). Despite individual differences and contextual moderators, all humans have an evolved tendency to, in most circumstances, experience pleasure in response to sweet and salty tastes that signal the presence of essential nutrients (Witt, 2019). These intensely pleasurable responses to foods and the corresponding future hedonic desires produced by UPFs didn’t exist in abundance (or at all) for over 99 % of the time during which the hedonic responses to naturally occurring stimuli evolved in humans, and thus are mismatched to the evolved process of psychological hedonism that drives us to consume them.
Biological mismatch, as it relates to UPFs and the resulting increase in NCDs, is an unintended consequence of the production, distribution, and marketing of UPFs by Big Food. After all, the goal of Big Food is not to undermine public health—that is only an inconvenient side-effect. Conversely, the motivational mismatch between the immediate pleasure-producing properties of UPFs and our natural evolved hedonistic tendencies is no unfortunate side-effect—it is the consequence of intentional exploitation of our evolved food-motivation system by Big Food. Big Food is keenly aware of the centrality of psychological hedonism to human motivation and they are eager and willing to exploit our natural human hedonistic tendencies regardless of the public health consequences. The composition, appearance, and taste of UPFs are strategically engineered to deliver immediate pleasure and leave consumers craving more (Lemos et al., 2022).
Due to the intentional exploitation of evolved human motivational processes, we are all susceptible to the lure of UPFs. However, UPFs are disproportionally distributed and marketed to low-income and other historically marginalized groups (Barnhill et al., 2022). While we are all more likely to respond to hedonic food cues when under stress, (Yalçın et al., 2023) people from historically marginalized communities are at increased risk of responding to hedonic food cues and thus UPF-consumption because of the increased stress caused by fundamental causes of poor health, including racism, income and wealth inequality, residential segregation, and other forms of oppression (Brondolo et al., 2023), therefore deepening disparities in UPF consumption (French et al., 2019) and associated NCDs.
Exploitation as an impetus for regulatory policy
As intended by Big Food, most people will, most of the time, experience pleasure in response to the taste of UPFs. Because they are calorie-dense and laden with sugar, salt, and fat, our positive hedonic response to UPFs is a fundamental aspect of human nature. And because of the innate and fundamental motivational mechanism of psychological hedonism, we will be hedonically motivated to consume UPFs in response to their ubiquitous marketing.
While psychological hedonism drives our consumption of UPFs, that does not mean that psychological hedonism, writ large, is maladaptive. That would be like saying that because we eat potato chips and drink soda with our hands, that human hands are maladaptive. Psychological hedonism and our positive hedonic response to UPFs is as fundamental to human nature as our hands. It evolved because it was an adaptive boon for our evolutionary ancestors. The problem is our environment, in which UPFs are not only widely available, but purposefully engineered to hijack our fundamental motivational system.
Attempts to resist consumption of UPFs on an individual basis requires a constant battle with our hardwired hedonic responses and desires. In attempting to resist UPFs, we are not only fighting against our own fundamental motivational instincts, but against well-resourced multi-national food corporations whose very reason for existence is to get us to purchase and consume the pleasure-producing but unhealthy foods we are trying to avoid. While behavior change is not impossible through individual motivational perseverance, it will in most cases be futile when opposing the intentional, dynamic, and resilient corporate exploitation of our evolutionarily engrained hedonistic motivational system.
If we are to have any chance at population-level change in UPF-consumption, we must design and employ structural interventions that do not require individuals to overcome their natural motivational tendencies. Specifically, we must enact policies that regulate the design, production, distribution, and marketing of UPFs (Popkin et al., 2021). The framing of the tobacco industry as exploitative has been an important public message that has impacted public support for tobacco regulation (Phan and Choi, 2023). Similarly, framing UPF production as strategic exploitation of basic human motivational systems by Big Food has the potential to increase public support for UPF regulation. In bolstering public support for UPF-regulation, we should proliferate the following message: Just like Big Tobacco, Big Food strategically engineers ultra-processed foods to manipulate fundamental human motivational processes and amass profits at the expense of public health.
From sciencedirect.com
Your Tax Free Donations Are Appreciated and Help Fund our Volunteer Website
Disclaimer: We at Prepare for Change (PFC) bring you information that is not offered by the mainstream news, and therefore may seem controversial. The opinions, views, statements, and/or information we present are not necessarily promoted, endorsed, espoused, or agreed to by Prepare for Change, its leadership Council, members, those who work with PFC, or those who read its content. However, they are hopefully provocative. Please use discernment! Use logical thinking, your own intuition and your own connection with Source, Spirit and Natural Laws to help you determine what is true and what is not. By sharing information and seeding dialogue, it is our goal to raise consciousness and awareness of higher truths to free us from enslavement of the matrix in this material realm.
