Why You Can't Stop Eating Cheetos
Betcha Can't Eat Just One Evan-Amos, via WikimediaA recent article in the New York Times Magazine delves into the science of junk-food craving. In a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, food scientist Steven Witherly describes Cheetos as "one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure." The cheese puffs' greatest quality, Witherly says in the article, is its ability to melt in your mouth. "It's called vanishing caloric density...If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there's no calories in it...you can just keep eating it forever." This deception, writer Michael Moss tells us, isn't accidental: snack food companies do a lot of research in order to design foods that fool your mind and bewitch your taste buds into a constant state of craving--a state industry insiders call "the bliss point." To achieve this "bliss point," Moss writes, food designers pay...