My personal list of most addictive food products:
Cheetos
Planters Peanuts
Snickers
Lays Potato Chips
Butterfingers
Milk non fat
CostCo popcorn
CostCo pizza
Food industry list of best selling food snack products:
Doritos
Oreos
Pringles
Reeses’ Peanut Butter Cups
Goldfish
M and M’s
Cheez it
Snickers
List of most addictive food products:
Pizza
Chocolate
Chips
Coffee
Cookies
Ice Cream
French Fries
Sodas
Donuts
The addictiveness of Cheetos.
Currently Cheetos come in more than 21 different varieties of snack. My favorite is the crunchy version. This was the original product which was the sole type for 23 years until cheese puffs were introduced in 1971.
Ingredients:
Enriched Corn Meal (corn meal plus ferrous sulfate, niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, folic acid), corn oil, cheese seasoning (whey, cheddar cheese (milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), canola oil, maltodextrin (made from corn), natural and artificial flavors, salt, whey (protein concentrate), monosodium glutamate, lactic acid, citric acid, artificial color (yellow G0) and salt. Frito Lay Inc. Plano Texas.
Nothing unusual except the absence of sugar. It appears no addictive chemicals are added to the formulation, though MSG and salt play a part in the addictiveness of Cheetos plus the individual Cheeto is 30% fat another component of the food industry’s understanding of designing products to enhance sales using scientific research and testing methods examining the physics, chemistry, biology and marketing psychology to create products consumers can’t get enough of.
My own examination of the Cheetos experience and why I have a love hate relationship of craving and over consuming a very cleverly designed and constructed edible substance.
Sensations experienced with and from Cheetos. Taste, smell and texture.
Minimal, non intrusive taste of cheese of Cheetos in mouth while chewing (as opposed to a distinct, robust, striking taste that one would eventually become unappealing). Distinct crunch and satisfying initial interaction in mouth
Then comes the melts in the mouth effect, since the extruded Cheeto is mostly air, each individual piece dissolves to virtually nothing with chewing in the mouth.
Visuals
Cheetos are essentially corn meal extruded under pressure into a water bath, forming the basically ugly finger sized crunchy snacks with its characteristic texture and orange color.
They are ugly, their shape is unpredictable and people claim to have pieces that resemble famous people like Jesus and Michael Jackson among others.
Secondary effects: Residue
And most baffling Cheetos are messy. The hands become covered with an orange colored dust. This is the true mark of an addictive substance which causes problems for snackers ( highly visible, the snacker can’t touch anything without leaving an orange residue. Snackers end up with orange tongues, lips, anything contacted.
Psychology of the Cheetos snacker
There’s no doubt the Cheetos formulation triggers a dopamine reaction. This is a completely unconscious effect that eventually is perceived as pleasure, but that perception combines with the memory of the sensation of eating (the taste-salty, sweet, sour, umami), the smell, the feel in the mouth (called the orosensation) of how pleasurable the crunch felt. All aspects combine in a mysterious, magical way to excite the brain and leave a satisfying and pleasurable memory to perpetuate the desire, consumption and craving of Cheetos. These neurochemical processes are completely unconscious cascade reactions designed program behavior to reproduce pleasurable experiences through craving.
This pleasure response is beyond the Cheetos consumer’s awareness and control. Then the negative aspects, the inability to stop eating due to the vanishing caloric density effect (along with the rapid food meltdown effect (melts in your mouth) which fools the brain in believing that you haven’t eaten enough Cheetos to feel full. So you keep eating. Mindlessness makes things worse.
Now your hands are covered with Cheeto dust but you are so awash in pleasure nothing bothers you. You keep eating. You can’t stop. You want to stop. You don’t want to stop. So you continue. There is orange dust everywhere.
The devil in the details
These products use the latest science, technology and mathematics to maximize the addictive properties being developed for companies run by men whose only interest is making money. These men are not interested in understanding the nuances in optimizing the product, the experimental techniques, the regression analysis. It only matters that the science works and that more money can be made. These men don’t care if the foods have unintended consequences as long as the consequences do not cost profits. They care not if eating the food contributes to obesity or if the obesity increases heart disease.
These men have limited focus, are self absorbed, zero sum individuals concerned only with their gain. In a country with a high incidence of obesity and diabetes, where diseases like heart disease, alzheimer’s, and some cancers are correlated with poor nutrition; where the most popular foods contain excessive amounts of sugar, salt and fat, the very substances being manipulated to maximize the addictiveness of snack food products listed above.
A change in attitude is necessary. These men are the archbishops of capitalism, a religion whose sole God is Profit. These so called leaders will take us all to the Apocalypse and Armageddon. We will all be condemned to eternal damnation for not challenging these minions of Satan. The evil of good doing nothing.
I suppose it’s much easier to sell a product that is addictive. That’s capitalism at its finest. Think about the following:
The top five most addictive substances in the world are:
1 Heroin
2. Nicotine
3. Alcohol
4. Cocaine
5. Barbiturates
The order of the top five is a judgment call based on weighing parameters contributing to their degree of addictiveness.
Notice that two of the top five most addictive substances are perfectly legal while the rest are controlled or illegal yet easily obtained and used:
Parameters governing addictiveness:
- Pleasurableness
- Craving
- How easily hooked
- Physical and cognitive harm
- Withdrawal
I personally think Alcohol and Nicotine are more addictive according to the characteristic parameters of addiction. And they are the legal substances.
Alcohol uses delirium as pleasure against stress. Once the dopamine and serotonin processes have been reinforced craving takes over. Alcohol is very destructive physically and cognitively when used repeatedly and excessively. Major organs are affected: Liver, kidneys, Stomach, Esophagus, Mouth, Brain.
Withdrawal can be worse than heroin-delirium tremens. An alcoholic is never completely free of relapse.
Nicotine is also legal. Its delivery system is cigarettes. It takes some effort and repetition to become addicted. Once hooked it is probably the hardest drug to quit, despite the fact that it like alcohol is incredibly destructive physically. The craving is impossible to resist through will power. Cigarettes have been linked to lung cancer, mouth and throat cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, COPD, and more.
Heroin is ranked high because of withdrawal effects which are fairly traumatic similar to alcohol. The amount of heroin to overdose is closer to the normal effective dose than any other drug making it highly dangerous when taken intravenously. The drug is mostly destructive due to poor nutrition and risks taken to pay for an illegal drug.
Cocaine is probably the easiest drug to get hooked on. It begins as a highly pleasurable stimulant. Tolerance builds. Quitting is easier than nicotine but that’s not saying much. Very difficult to permanently quit.
Barbiturates require practice to get addicted tom but once hooked craving is overwhelming. Since it is a depressant an overdose is likely as tolerance requires larger and larger doses. Currently the top drug problem in the US.
In the spirit of capitalism all are easily obtained whether illegal or not. Their status and use in society seems to be to maximize damage physically, socially, economically, personally and spiritually.
No attempt is made to ameliorate or eliminate their negative consequences which would affect profits dramatically. An addicted person is willing to pay whatever to maintain status quo. First one is free.
Since making snack food addictive is a successful strategy to increase profits you will see it being used more and more in a wider range of products and consumables.