- Research shows more Americans are becoming clinically addicted to ultraprocessed foods that trigger cravings.
- Food manufacturers manipulate sugar, fat and salt levels to create combinations that Mother Nature never delivers.
- Eating just one extra serving of these foods daily is linked to increased risks for obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
What makes a food irresistible, even addictive?
Is it the amount of fat? (Yum.) Refined carbs and extra sugar? (Double yum.) Salt? Lots of calories packed into a single bite?
My grandma’s chocolate chip-oatmeal cookie recipe has all that and more. But while I love to make and gobble them up, I don’t crave them like someone addicted to cigarettes or booze.
Yet research shows more and more people in the United States are becoming clinically addicted to ultraprocessed foods, or UPFs, that fill up to 70% of grocery store shelves.
In order to be “clinically” addicted, one must meet Yale Food Addiction Scale criteria, as stringent as those for tobacco, drug or alcohol use disorder.
“Grandma doesn’t have access to proprietary sensory scientists that create a burst of flavors that fade, leaving you wanting more,” said food addiction specialist Ashley Gearhardt, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
By manipulating levels of added sugars, refined carbs, salt, fats, flavorings and texturizers, food manufacturers can create the perfect “intense, hedonic, addictive punch” that makes millions of people reach for more, said Gearhardt, who developed the addiction scale.
“Ultraprocessed products have a nutritional signature — based on the neuroscience of food reward — that Mother Nature never delivers to you in a single food,” she said.
To survive, humans need sodium for nerve conduction, fluid balance and working muscles. Sugar and carbohydrates, metabolized into glucose, serve as primary fuel. Essential fatty acids are also critical — the human brain is nearly 60% fat — and storing fat about the body is a priority for times when food is scarce.
For our hunter-gatherer ancestors, getting enough of these critical nutrients was a daily life-and-death struggle. It’s no wonder many people crave carbs, fat and salt — it’s part of our physiological drive to survive. Yet, there is little place for that primal urge in the modern world.
Foods packed with these key nutrients are “easily and instantaneously available in every vending machine, fast-food restaurant and every grocery store — and can even be purchased online and delivered to your door,” said Evan Forman, the Ellen M. & Dale W. Garber Professor of Family & Community Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
“If you look at the phenomenon of GLP-1 medications, this overabundance is what they are treating,” Forman said. “Instead of regulating our food, we’re pathologizing people, calling overeating a disease, and then prescribing them medication.”
In today’s food environment, addiction to UPFs should not be written off as a lack of personal willpower, said Forman, who researches ultraprocessed food addiction.
“Food industry formulations are taking advantage — essentially exploiting a very deep-set and powerful biological response we have to certain substances,” he said.
“Take heroin or fentanyl, for example,” Forman added. “We don’t make the argument, ‘Well, you know, people should just resist heroin.’ It would not make sense to say everyone should rely on their willpower.”
Some 14% of older adults in the United States — and 21% of women ages 50 to 64 — are now clinically addicted to ultraprocessed foods, according to the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Those numbers are growing.
Globally, 12% of children are addicted to ultraprocessed foods, according to Gearhardt, whose research helped define California’s recent law that will remove the most harmful UPFs from billions of the state’s school meals by 2035.
But not all ultraprocessed foods are habit-forming. To determine which ones fall into this category, it would be helpful to know which combination of hyperpalatable ingredients is driving the most addictive response.
“People come in with their favorite villain: ‘I think it’s fat.’ ‘I think it’s sodium.’ ‘I think it’s carbs,’ or whatever,” Gearhardt said. “So, we did a study asking a representative sample of 1,600 American adults to tell us how they rate a food’s characteristics.”
More than 90% of products in the highest tier of perceived addictiveness were ultraprocessed foods that deliver high levels of refined carbs and fats.
Key role of starches and refined grains
Not surprisingly, some of the most addictive foods named in the study were grocery store junk foods — ultraprocessed cookies, cakes, doughnuts, muffins, pies, pizza, chips, candy and other snack foods. Fast-food chicken tenders, breakfast sandwiches, hash browns, chicken wings, garlic bread, store-bought mac and cheese and lasagna with meat sauce were also top contenders.
Those high-fat, high-carb combos also had to be delivered in an energy-dense form to be described as hard to resist, Gearhardt said: “We can’t just say, ‘Is it fat or is it carbs, is it energy density, or calories per gram. It’s all of them working in synergistic packages that create the addictive bite.”
Few minimally processed foods fell into the highest risk of addiction category — although bagels, croissants, Belgian waffles or French toast with syrup, grilled cheese sandwiches, mashed potatoes with store-bought gravy, roasted potatoes with butter, and homemade bread were considered highly habit-forming.
What makes these foods problematic? They use ultraprocessed, refined flours that quickly turn into glucose in the body, spiking blood sugars. The starch in potatoes does the same. That quick high is soon followed by a dramatic drop in blood sugars, leaving an empty feeling in the belly that can lead to overeating.
“Our findings suggest that focusing exclusively on sugar may miss part of the picture,” Gearhardt said. “For example, many potato chips contain little or no added sugar, yet they still deliver rapidly absorbed carbohydrates. So, refined carbohydrates, including starches that are rapidly digested into glucose, appear to be important contributors.”
The International Food & Beverage Alliance, which represents food manufacturers, told CNN in an email that the study does not show that specific foods cause clinical addiction.
“It identifies nutrient patterns associated with higher self-reported ratings, but that is not the same as showing that those foods cause addiction or should be treated like addictive substances,” said IFBA Secretary General Rocco Renaldi.
Overall, American perceptions on what is addictive fit nicely with prior research on ultraprocessed foods.
Two gold-standard clinical trials sequestered dozens of volunteers in a hospital for a month and monitored every bite they ate — as well as their exercise, stool samples and health vitals. The results showed people on an ultraprocessed diet ate an additional 500 to 1,000 calories each day compared with eating home-cooked whole foods.
Which foods spurred people to eat the most calories? Ultraprocessed meals that were both energy-dense (lots of calories per gram) and hyperpalatable. One meal, for example, was ultraprocessed turkey and American cheese white bread sandwiches, potato chips, and peaches canned in heavy syrup.
Prior research has found more than 70% of all ultraprocessed foods fit the definition of hyperpalatable — combinations of sugar, refined carbs, sodium and fat that are not found in nature.
“Hyperpalatable foods exaggerate the eating experience. And because they are everywhere, they are changing our taste buds to expect those levels of sugar, salt and fat in all the foods we eat,” said Tera Fazzino, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and associate director of the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research and Treatment.
Why is an addiction to ultraprocessed foods worrisome? Experts point to the growing litany of health harms: Eating roughly 10% more ultraprocessed foods a day led to a 55% higher risk of obesity, a 50% rise in cardiovascular disease-related death, and a 40% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
A 2024 study also found that adding 10% of ultraprocessed foods to an otherwise healthy diet may also increase the risk of cognitive decline and stroke, while 2023 research determined that including 10% more ultraprocessed foods was linked to a greater chance of developing cancers of the upper digestive tract.
A 10% increase is the equivalent of just one extra serving of ultraprocessed food a day, according to study authors.
The International Food & Beverage Alliance told CNN many foods often labeled ultraprocessed “contribute important nutrients, affordability and food safety, and are recommended in dietary guidelines around the world.
“Enjoyment and palatability are normal parts of eating; they are not unique to foods labeled ‘ultra-processed,’ nor are they evidence of clinical addiction or proof that a food is addictive,” Renaldi said.
Reading labels carefully is a good place to start, experts say, especially on foods with nutrients most likely to be associated with addictive behavior, such as refined carbohydrates and saturated fats.
One popular frozen pizza, for example, has 18 grams of total fat and 9 grams of saturated fat. Saturated fat is the artery-clogging type of fat that leads to high cholesterol, heart disease and heart attacks.
Look at the right side of the label, and you’ll see the daily recommended allowance for that nutrient set by the US Food and Drug Administration. In this case, 9 grams of saturated fat equals 45% of the daily allowance. That’s per serving, which is one-quarter of the medium-size pie.
Of course, eating ultraprocessed foods does not automatically turn you into an addict. Addiction risk is influenced by genetics, stress, mental health, the food environment, and exposure to enticing food product design and marketing, experts say.
“Just as most people who drink alcohol do not develop alcohol use disorder, not everyone who consumes highly processed foods develops clinically significant problems with their eating,” Gearhardt said.
“That said, I think there’s a tendency to frame this as an all-or-nothing issue: Either someone is addicted or they’re not,” she added. “What we see in our research is that many people experience some degree of addictive pull towards these products.”
Eating when you’re not hungry, eating past the point of fullness, hiding a food or eating it alone, and repeatedly failing to cut back on ultraprocessed foods despite lethargy, headaches, mood swings or weight gain are signs that you might be in trouble, addiction experts say.
“I would encourage people to pay attention to their own experience,” Gearhardt said. “If a particular food starts taking up a lot of mental space, triggers intense cravings, repeatedly derails intentions or feels increasingly difficult to control, those may be important warning signs.”
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