I could have sworn I heard something once about how fast food chains put addictive chemicals in their food. For me, I don’t have an addictive personality. There’s nothing in my life I feel addicted to other than fast food. It’s weird. I know the food is dogshit and I can make tastier stuff at home. But I also think about getting fast food all the time and have to stop myself from ordering it a lot. It does kind feel like a dopamine hit when I open up a bag of fast food and start digging in.
I washed dishes as part of my main job for a five year stretch and it’s taken me another 5 years to not be completely repulsed at the thought of doing dishes, and I hold a grudge against anyone who uses more dishes than is absolutely necessary.
When I worked doing overnight maintenance at a fucking Cracker Barrel the dishwasher area was the one place I wasn’t supposed to clean but god did I feel sympathy for them. Cleaning bathrooms sucked but at least it’s a one and done deal when you’re working overnight. And dudes shitting up their bathroom isn’t exactly a corruption of a Good Thing like with food mess.
As others have mentioned, the combination of salt, sugar, and fat “hacks” your brain in ways beyond traditional, organic meals ever could, the same way our phones and porn and gambling does.
unless you have a proper deep fryer at home most fast food places scratch that fried food itch
and its so much work geez, not to mention a bit dangerous on normal ranges
Think of it this way. No, it’s unlikely that fast food companies are putting actual drugs in your food. Yes, they do hire teams of scientists to engineer the most satisfying and crave inducing product possible, down to the smell of the french fries and the color of the buns. You’re going up against 100 million dollars of R&D aimed directly at your lonely little monkey brain, so it’s not surprising that people get addicted to the stuff, because that’s what these companies paid to make happen.
Products can be evaluated and optimized using a method known as quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA), in which a focus group defines the sensory attributes for a specific product and establishes numerical scores for these attributes. Establishing the appropriate measurement is of major importance, as it allows sensory results to be quantified. This is the essence of sensory science: converting human perception of a food into quantifiable results.
From some random article on fast food R&D. You shouldn’t underestimate how much effort goes into making fast food as addictive as possible. It’s an entire industry.
Most of the fast food places near me also clearly have fans pushing the smell of the food out their window, you can smell it from 20+ feet away. If you’ve had a long day, you’re tired and hungry and suddenly you smell something super tasty and there’s a nice, pleasant looking fast food restaurant that can satisfy that itch in a matter of minutes, it’s not hard to see how that can be super tempting to a lot of people.
Ill come out and say it, MSG can make a lot of things taste good as fuck 🤤
It’s the secret ingredient in like every chip
Also probably why I’m craving Takis right now
Takes are the most addictive chip I’ve ever encountered, I don’t know why but something about that combination of lime and heat is just top tier
