You haven’t aged enough to where it feels like you have a rat trying to chew through your colon from the inside out when you eat it. That will cure you of the addiction right quick.
It’s science, I don’t know the specifics of craving but I know they spent a lot of money to figure out how give you that feeling.
I’d guess sugar and fat, lots of both
I know about a funky thing where if you have equal amounts of sweet, salty, bitter, umami and sour you feel less full after eating it. It might be completely unrelated though.
The same reason people will logically understand that crack is bad for them but crave it like crack
This is actually shockingly remarkably true.
There is very little to differentiate your addiction to junk food and your addiction to sex or your addiction to crack rock.
No no, they’re much different. It’s totally legal to be addicted to McDonald’s and sex.
There is a chemical in your brain called dopamine which is an important part of how we feel pleasure. Use of recreational drugs and alcohol causes a rush of this chemical and that is part of the pleasure we feel from using them. The problem is that regular use of such chemicals causes us to have lower levels of dopamine when we are not using them. We end up feeling a desire for the drug or booze to get our dopamine levels back up.
Diets high in sugar, salt, and carbs also causes a dopamine rush. When you eat that food regularly, it lowers your normal dopamine levels, just like drugs and alcohol do, if not to the same level. That is why you feel that craving. Eating such food occasionally is fine, but if you do it to often, you can literally get an addiction to it.
Edit to add -
You mentioned that fast foods are low quality and bad for you. That is true, but but only in high quantities. Fats and sugars were high value foods to our ancient ancestors. Fats are very high source of energy. You get more than twice the energy from a gram of fat than you get from a gram of carbohydrates or protein. Sugars are easily digested making them a source of quick energy compared to other carbs, fats, or proteins. Eating these kinds of foods gave us a survival advantage over those who didn’t, at least until we learned the agricultural skills to make them easy to acquire. Now, many or most people can get such foods any time they want and though they no longer give us an advantage, and eating a lot of them is actually harmful in the long run, those ancient taste preferences still remain in our evolved programing.
Therefore, the cure for fast food addiction is recreational drugs and alcohol!
RFK, is that you?
We evolved for a life of scarcity, but now we live in a world of plenty.
based middle of the road, analytical, truthful and realistic take.
Came here to post this and found it already +1 to this being one of the main reason it’s causing cravings.
If you want further reading look up information on the pleasure - reward circuitry in the brain.
Grease, sugar, and a lot of chemicals.
Everything is a chemical
Don’t forget loads of salt!
Like-- every step of the way, fast food places have an opportunity to aim for ‘healthier’ or ‘more delicious’ choices, overwhelmingly with profit-making in mind. That’s the main thing to keep in mind.
IIRC, McD’s and various other chains even design venting and such to get the smell of the cooking food (chemically enhanced) in to the surrounding area. You know, so that more people can pay a fortune to get a food rush that doubles as a health disaster.
McDonald’s smells like a dirty deep fryer, it’s fucking disgusting.
I tend to feel the same, but those suckers certainly know their broad audience.
“Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smart arse!”
Is that Mike Myers? I still haven’t seen so I married an ax murderer even though I own it
Yes it is. lol
Why deprive yourself so? It’s easily my favorite Myers film.
I know and I’m a huge fan of Mike Myers but once I watch it I can’t un Watch it so it’s like I’m saving it for a bad day when I need to be cheered up. But you’re right tomorrow is not promised, I should make hay while the sun is out
fast food isn’t bad for you, unless you eat only fast food for years. if you wanna recreate the MCD taste at home, try sprinkling MSG on your food.
Do I look like I know what an MSG is?
You can buy it in a bottle like spices. It looks like salt. I like to replace the regular amount of salt with 50% msg and 50% salt when cooking
Just go to the grocery store and buy some?
MSG king of flawor (or so I hear)
Monosodium glutamat
Now I want a doormat with “monosodium gluta” inscribed on it
Unfortunately they did leave the e off the end, so unless you’re Australian…
In moderation, yes. But, the calories is ridiculous if you follow a 2,000 calorie diet.
Hotcakes and Sausage should not be 770 calories. I’ve bought frozen sausage links that give me 100 calories for just 2 links of sausages. Store-bought food are more sensitivity to calories than any fast food joint is.
Fast Food and even Buffet Restaurants are good for when you’ve eaten nothing for a while and you need something filling. They aren’t good for daily intake. They’re barely okay for once a week. But they’re not meant to be your daily meals.
fun fact, the 2k calorie diet is absolute bullshit and the FDA themselves said it shouldn’t be taken as “anything over this threshold is bad”.
They aren’t good for daily intake
says who? if fast food is the only food you can afford and you don’t own a kitchen, that is the healthier option to take because the alternative is starving.
But they’re not meant to be your daily meals.
Humans also weren’t meant to work 2 jobs and 14 hour days and yet living under capitalism, your diet adapts to your environment in order to help you make it to the next day.
if fast food is the only food you can afford and you don’t own a kitchen, that is the healthier option to take because the alternative is starving.
What do you mean you can’t buy an electric burner? What do you mean you can’t cook even something as basic as a mac and cheese dinner meal? What do you mean you can’t simply just look up how to cook things? I don’t understand! null
Humans also weren’t meant to work 2 jobs and 14 hour days and yet living under capitalism, your diet adapts to your environment in order to help you make it to the next day.
Excuses, excuses.
fun fact, the 2k calorie diet is absolute bullshit and the FDA themselves said it shouldn’t be taken as “anything over this threshold is bad”.
Take the tinfoil hat off, timmy.
What do you mean you can’t buy an electric burner? What do you mean you can’t cook even something as basic as a mac and cheese dinner meal? What do you mean you can’t simply just look up how to cook things? I don’t understand! null
how many homeless people have you given cash to so they can fulfill your fantasy of living a healthy upstanding citizen’s lifestyle? do you give out hot meals to people in need? if not, stfu and stop being sinful by judging people in need
A very large culprit is your gut’s microbiome (the bacteria that live in our gut). The more junk food you eat, the more you will grow your craving for it.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/202303/where-cravings-are-bred
Want to experience the ultimate in shitty comfort food?
Come to the UK, go into town, have a few beers, get drunk and then stop for a massive dirty kebab on the way home.
Fucking bliss
I saw on a fb reel a place that was serving bread with chips now? Like bread and fried potatoes? With salt. With ketchup.
Are you just describing a chip butty?
I love it when someone from outside the UK suddenly discovers for the first time what must be a strange combo but we eat regularly.
Because sugar, fat and salt in those quantities are literally addictive. Our human/monkey brains were wired for survival, not overall health. Eating a large source of those three would’ve been a massive help in surviving winter when our next meal wouldn’t be guaranteed.
Because fat and sugar are drugs. People don’t usually think of them like drugs, because of the widely accepted, but very wrong, attitude that only illegal substances can be drugs. Sugar, fat, caffeine, alcohol or tobacco are all drugs. They all trigger a desirable chemical reaction in your brain, and all have addictive potential. At least 2 or 3 of them are also significantly more harmful to you than several types of actually illegal drugs.
And in general, though perhaps most strongly for drugs, many people suffer from the cognitive bias of “illegal=bad & legal=good. Automatically and by default”
I get the spirit of what you’re saying, they’re all habit forming, but fat and sugar (IE: carbohydrates) are macronutrients our bodies need to survive. Obviously they’re not needed in the quantities that are available to us in modern society, but our biological desire to seek out high calorie foods is a survival mechanism rather than what happens with other habit forming substances like tobacco.
I don’t mean to nitpick here but I feel like that distinction is important because saying “sugar and fat bad” without a little nuance can miss lead folks that aren’t properly educated on nutrition, which in my experience is a large portion of my fellow Americans.
Edit: just wanted to add here that there’s another comment by someone else who more or less states the same thing, but makes that distinction and I have no problem with it.
They has test kitchens and spend a ton of money on R&D to create that craving plus all the cartoon characters and kids toy’s and sponsoring school events gets kids hooked young.
Because we didn’t evolve to live in lands of abundance. We evolved in scarce conditions and are attuned to that.
Food that delicious and high calorie would not be constantly available in the wild, so if we ever found anything close, it would be beneficial to eat as much as possible to store up calories and survive during periods of scarcity.
When I was a kid, I heard two unsubstantiated rumors about McDonald’s food:
- It used kangaroo meat (not sure why this was a claim)
- It mixed in nicotine (to make the food more addictive)
I doubt that either are true, but if the latter were maybe it would answer your question.
Pretty sure you’d have to label nicotine content and age restrict it no matter how it’s consumed.
Agreed, but I don’t think the urban legend was claiming that they were doing this legitimately.
