“Junk foods” that are sweet, salty, creamy, and/or crunchy (maybe all at once), and full of chemical goodness that spins our pleasure dials… but contain relatively few actual nutrients. This type of diet prevents leptin from doing its job of regulating our energy balance. It can even make our brains inflamed and leptin resistant. We end up feeling less satisfied. We want to eat more. And our bodies even fight to hold on to the weight we gain.

Hyper-palatability. Palatability is more than just taste — it’s our whole experience of pleasure from food. That includes taste as well as aroma, mouthfeel, texture, and the whole experience of eating. Palatability strongly influences how much we eat at meals. That seems obvious: Of course we eat more of the foods we like. And of course, some foods are more pleasurable to eat than others.