The second neuroscience discovery used by the fast-food companies relates to the concepts of impulse control and convenience. Not just the drinks and the ketchup, but even the bread in the hamburger buns, and wait for it, the fries.īut what about the new 'healthy' stuff, like the fruit smoothies? Well, it turns out that they actually have more sugar per drink than a cup of cola. In McDonald's and other fast-food chains, practically everything contains sugar. So in rats, and almost certainly in humans, sugar can be addictive.
They immediately began showing absolutely typical signs of drug withdrawal - tremors in the body, chattering of the teeth, and so on. Suddenly, the rats were getting the sugar, but they weren't getting their beloved high. Then the scientists gave the rats a drug that blocked the pleasurable effects of addictive drugs in the brain. But pretty soon, they were taking twice as much as they needed. The scientists starved the rats for 12 hours, then for a brief time let them have as much sugar and water as they wanted, and then starved them again, and then gave them as much sugar and water as they wanted, and kept on repeating the cycle.Īt first, the rats took only as much sugar and water as their bodies needed. That's right, plain old sugar can give you, or at least some laboratory rats, all the hallmarks of addiction - bingeing, withdrawal and craving. The first neuroscience discovery they use is that under certain circumstances, sugar can be addictive. The article, with the catchy title of 'Seven things McDonald's Knows About Your Brain', lifts the lid on the neuroscience that the fast-food chains use to make us buy unhealthy food, even when we're not hungry. In fact, the article in Psychology Today claims that "many recent neuroscience discoveries about food's effects on our brains, and how we make decisions about food, are actually gold-standard trade secrets from super chains such as McDonald's".
But you would be wrong.Īccording to the Journal Psychology Today, the fast-food industry uses neuroscience. But let's start with that simple assumption.Īnd you might think that neuroscience (the science of the brain) would have hardly any practical uses at all. It sounds kind of stupid and obvious to say that the brain and its workings are very complicated.
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