We often hear people say “I’m addicted to [insert name of favourite junk food]”… But we scoff at the idea of it being an actual addiction. Moreover, the debate often becomes “is any food really a ‘junk’ food? …Calories are calories, right?”, where people insist that it’s about frequency of junk food consumption and other choices, like exercise, that make these foods ‘junky’. Sometimes, it’s easy to defend that argument; pizza, for example, with the right toppings and crust is actually a fairly good meal in itself. Pizza daily, for months on end…. not so much. So, the grey areas abound.

Yet, sometimes we crave the crunch of a chip, or the smooth melt of chocolate…right?

The New York Times ran this fantastic article, The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, in February, 2013. It’s a long read, but a really good one, discussing the ways that the industries that produce junk foods use some quite interesting science to develop their products.