The Word "Hyperpalatable" is an Unscientific Ideological Buzz Words Used to Sell Alternative Foods, Supplements, Recipe and Diet Books

In the nutrition world, you come across the word 'hyperpalatable' to demonize many modern foods of our time. These foods are usually blamed for being too tasty to the point of being addictive and leading to overconsumption. However, this buzzword has very poor to no scientific grounding and is mostly used as a way to scare consumers into purchasing alternative food products, recipes, and various other products and services which cost you in time, invisible labor, and expensive ingredients. Now, let us talk about science.

Human Palate Adapts

If you eat something novel and tasty, disregarding whether it's processed or not, if it tastes good, you will eat a substantial amount of it right away. However, what many nutrition gurus and cherry-picking intellects won't tell you is that the human palate adapts based on exposure and frequency of stimuli. Additionally, we also know that sensory-specific satiety, diminishing pleasure obtained from eating the same food, kicks in and this sensory-specific satiety has been studied to be similar in lean and obese individuals. In other words, the science is unsupportive or non-existent.

It's Addictive, Right?

The problem with maintaining the notion that food is addictive is that this doesn't explain the obesity pandemic completely. This is primarily because not everyone who is obese and overweight is addicted to food. Hence, many such charlatans cherry-pick the notion that because some overweight and obese individuals are addicted to food, they try to exaggerate that claim to paint a bull's eye on all foods. These fearmongers completely ignore the people who may be of healthy weight but may be struggling with food addiction.

Conclusion

Social media and online information are prone to fear and radicalization. People seek self-validation online which may be more of an interpersonal problem as they perform theatrics for those who maintain their leash using junk processed information. We need smart and informed consumerism that can distinguish bad science from good science while not falling prey to such insanity. We have to remember that eating healthy hasn't ever been more difficult than simply finding something tasty to eat. That should be our goal collectively as human beings and we should be wary of those who add more labor and extraneous junk information to our lives.