Office Hours: Breaking Free from Food Addiction

0:12Welcome to Office Hours. This is our dedicated one-on-one space to go deeper, get clear, and explore what truly moves the needle for your health. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and each week, we're going to pull back the curtain and share the insights, the research, the lessons that don't always make it into our conversations with guests. Because at the end of the day, you are the CEO of your own health. And for many of you, your family's health too. And you might not feel it all the time, but you have far more power and agency than you realize. I'm glad you're here. this episode is brought to you by function health empowering you to live 100 healthy years with over 160 lab tests at just 365 a year sign up today at functionhealth.com slash mark and use code mark 2026 to get 50 towards your membership you ever wonder why we can't just see one chip or stop after one cookie it's not a lack of willpower it's the science of food addiction addiction that's engineered into your food.

1:10I mean, no one's going to binge on a bag of avocados, but you'll eat a whole bag of cookies. And that's not an accident. So food addiction, and I don't mean just metaphorically, I mean biologically, is a real measurable thing. In fact, according to the Yale Food Addiction Scale, the global assessment of the population is that 14 % of adults are biologically addicted to food. Not just a little craving here and there, but like seriously addicted like alcohol. And what's even more concerning is that 14 % of kids are addicted. Now, just to put that in context, about 14 % of the adult population is addicted to alcohol.

1:49So it's a big deal. Now, Big Food is very smart. They use neuroscience, including functional MRI imaging and lots of other dirty tricks to design foods that override our normal hunger signals our normal feeling full mechanisms which call satiety they trigger dopamine spikes in the brain and light up the same area in the brain as cocaine heroin or nicotine and that my friends keeps us coming back for more and more and more how does anybody end up getting to be three or four or 500 pounds. It's not because they wake up and they say, I want to be overweight or I want to be fat. They're literally hijacked, addicted.

2:33So I talk a lot about what's wrong with our food, our food system in my book, Food Fix, an updated version, Food Fix Uncensored, out February 26th, is a powerful indictment of the food industry explaining exactly how this works and why we are in such a pickle. I wrote a book called The 10-Day Detox Diet, also talking about the biology of food addiction. And the science has only gotten better since then. So I want you to understand, it's not about willpower. It's not your fault. It's not you. It's your brain and your brain being hijacked. Food addiction is driven by your biology, biochemistry. It's not a moral failing.

3:09It's not a character flaw. It's not there's something wrong with you. It's not that you're on willpower. You're hijacked. And these foods are designed to hijack your biology. In fact, the food industry has and this is all documented in michael moss's book who was actually the first guest on my podcast years ago in his book called sugar salt and fat which explains what he found after interviewing over 300 food industry executives scientists food scientists etc that they actually have something called taste institutes where they hire craving experts to create what they call the bliss point of food to create what they call heavy users just like heavy users of crack or cocaine or heroin or alcohol.

3:53This is what they do. It's not an accident. So ultra processed foods are designed to act on the brain like addictive drugs and they're high in sugar or salt and certain kinds of fats that activate the same reward pathways as nicotine or cocaine or heroin. And it's been proven through fMRI brain scans. In fact, my friend David Ludwig did an amazing study where he called the milkshake study where he took groups of overweight guys and fed them different milkshakes on different days. So the same person would get two different milkshakes, but they would measure their blood and they'd put them in functional MRI imaging and look at what parts of their brain lit up.

4:26And what they found was really remarkable. They were identical in protein, fat, and carbohydrate content and fiber, identical. The only difference, and calories, the only difference was one of the carbohydrates they used in one of the milkshakes was a fast-acting, rapidly absorbed carbohydrate, and the other was a very slow absorbing carbohydrate that didn't spike blood sugar. And what they found was that even though they couldn't tell the difference in the flavor and the taste of the milkshakes, and it was exactly the same protein, fat, carbs, calories, fiber, they found that in the group that had the high and rapidly absorbing carbohydrates, their blood sugar spiked more, their insulin spiked more, they got more inflammation, and they had a brain lit up in the place called the nucleus accumbens, which is the addiction center in the brain.

5:14So that is really profound. So even though they didn't know any difference in what they're eating, they basically had the same biological change while looking at their brain. Now, kids are especially vulnerable because their dopamine systems are developing, and the food industry knows this. They even put two-year-olds in MRI scanners to see what images light them up. And then this creates this horrible cycle where you eat a food that causes these neurochemical changes. You get this dopamine spike, you get a crash, you crave again and you need your hit and you need your fix and so willpower is never gonna work you know you need to use science and willpower to fix your biology when your brain's hijacked you're just not choosing freely your biology is choosing for you and you know what that feels like and you're like i gotta have that thing and you know it's bad for you to eat it anyway that's what's going on so this is not an accident big food is hacking your brain and these scientists know how to create the bliss point of food.

6:07They engineer foods intentionally to do this, and it's a perfect combination of sugar, salt, and fat, mouthfeel, texture, all these things that are irresistible but don't make you feel full. I mean, think about Pringles. These are weird. They're kind of potato chips, but they're not really. You can actually grab them in your hand and crush them into a powder. You wouldn't want to eat it, but it's gross. And they're like a potato chip-like substance. It's not food, but you could eat the whole canister. I've done that before. I don't even eat that for decades, but I kind of like them in the day and they melt in your mouth.

6:39It's just designed to be the perfect thing for you to eat as much as you possibly can. I mean, remember those late potato chip commercials? I bet you can't eat just one. Well, that's true. And they do rapid testing on lots of people, lots of formulations to find the one that literally people can't stop eating it's and guess what folks in the 70s and 80s these companies these food companies were bought up by tobacco companies when tobacco was getting hit with all these lawsuits and going down they started diversify and they basically applied their same technology to food rj and habisco philip morris craft you know these were big food and tobacco conglomerates now they've kind of split off but they really were quite bad and so this is not an accident so let's just sort of break it down so what does sugar do you get this fast dopamine hit it doesn't make you full and it makes you want to binge more salt well it hits the flavor it'll increase cravings it stimulates dopamine receptors and fat it makes kind of creamy hyper palatable foods and it doesn't really make you feel full it's kind of a bummer in in processed foods compared to real food so what are examples well chips packaged snacks sweetened cereals coffee creamers flavored yogurts fast food junk food of all kinds sodas combo meals i mean these foods aren't just delicious they're intentionally addictive they're not it's not an accident it's a business model i mean and i wouldn't say they're delicious honestly because uh they taste like crap if you actually stop to enjoy them you'd realize how just terrible they are a friend of mine was a nutritionist and he had this guy come see him who wanted to lose weight but he said he was very busy and he wasn't he wasn't going to change his habits that much they wanted advice and he's like every day i drive home from work i saw i i go to the drive-thru and i pick up you know a burger king whatever the big whatever burger whopper or whatever they call it see i'm not very fluent in the fast food uh menus but yeah i think he got a big whopper and and he would just drive at home and eat it and that was his dinner and he said well i don't i don't want you to stop eating it what i want you to do is go inside order the food sit down at the table and I want you to breathe and I want you to savor every single bite.

8:49I want you to taste it. I want you to enjoy it. And he did that. He came back to see him and said, it was disgusting. I could not eat it. It was so bad when I actually paid attention to what I was doing and not just eating unconsciously. So you want to kind of just pay attention to the difference between how real food is so much more delicious. All right, let's talk about the bliss point of food and how that overrides your normal satiety or feeling full signals. You know, your gut brain normally tells you when you're full, right? You've got your gut responding to your brain, it goes back and forth.

9:22And when you eat these hyperpalatable foods, they basically disrupt those normal signals. And when you eat processed food, there are certain hormones in your gut that make you stop eating. You know one of them, it's called GLP-1. But when you eat junk food, it doesn't do that. So now we have a Zampic and all these drugs that are higher doses of GLP-1, which is what your body makes, the peptide. But when you eat processed food, you don't naturally make GLP-1. Also CCK, another thing, or PYY. These are the feel-full hormones that are produced in your gut that normally help you stop eating, but they don't get produced when you eat junk food.

9:56Instead, these foods flood the dopamine system, which is basically your pleasure addiction system, and they turn off the brakes on your eating. So one, they make you eat more and they shut off your feeling-full signals. And so what happens? Well, you're craving food constantly, you're overeating without feeling satisfied, you got a bottomless pit, your blood sugar spikes, and then you need to kind of get more sugar because your blood sugar crashes and you're on this roller coaster of blood sugar swings, you'll gain weight, you'll have mood changes, you'll end up with compulsive eating patterns.

10:26Not a good scene. Your body is trying to tell you to stop eating in a normal situation, right? But your brain is being pushed by this junk food to keep going. And that mismatch is the heart of our modern obesity and chronic disease epidemic. Your biology is actually trying to protect you, but the brain is being chemically hijacked by ultra-processed foods that drives cravings, overeating, obesity, and chronic disease. It's not because you're weak. It's not because you don't have willpower. It's not because you have a character flaw or moral failing. It's because the food was engineered to confuse the very wiring that's meant to keep you healthy.

11:05Your body's designed to be healthy. And if you look back at videos or film from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s even, you're going to see most Americans are normal weight. And now most Americans are not normal weight, 75 % overweight. It's because we had this flux of junk food and ultra processed food, industrial food that happened in the 80s, 90s, and beyond. So it's really quite a big problem. Now, once you understand this, it changes everything, right? You stop blaming yourself, you start seeing the real problem, a food system that makes it almost impossible to honor your body's natural signals.

11:40And we have an entire population that's addicted to substances disguised as food. These are not food. These are science projects. These are frankenfoods. These are food-like substances. This is not a personal failure. Don't blame yourself. It's a systemic failure of our food system. So what is the real cost of all this food addiction? Well, ultra-processed, hyper-palatable foods aren't just harming individuals. They're driving a national economic and political crisis. In my book, Food Fixed Uncensored, I describe how food addiction fuels obesity, chronic disease, and all of our skyrocketing healthcare costs.

12:19And it's all being engineered and marketed by a food system designed for profit, not public health. We basically socialize the costs and privatize the profits, meaning the food companies make all the money and the government taxpayers foot the bill for all the chronic health issues. All right, so let's break this down into three levels, personal, societal, and political. On the personal level, there's a huge human cost. You know, food addiction leads to metabolic dysfunction, leads to chronic disease. This is the crisis we're in now, and it affects everybody and everything. There's not a person in America that's not affected by it.

12:5273 % of U.S. adults are overweight or obese. When you're obese, dramatically increase the risk for type 2 diabetes fatty liver disease which is now the number one liver disease in america depression anxiety chronic inflammation heart disease cancer dementia infertility acne depression i mean you just name it it's caused by our junk food diabetes rates have tripled since the 1970s directly tracking with the rise of ultra processed food chronic disease is increasingly uh going up as we get older the number of adults who are over 50 with at least one chronic disease will double from about 71 million in 2020 to about 142 million in 2050.

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14:12You'll know what's working, what needs attention, and how to stay healthy for all the moments that count. because the best relationships deserve more time. Want to show love? Visit functionout.com and gift function. On the societal level, what is the economic and social burden? It's huge. We have an incredible healthcare crisis. Ultra-processed diets are driving disease at a scale the healthcare system just can't handle. I mean, the number one cause of death and disease in the world today is our diet, period. This is from the Global Burden of Disease Study, conservatively they estimate our diet kills over 11 million people a year i think it's way more than that as of 2023 chronic disease and mental health conditions account for about 90 percent of america's 4.9 trillion dollars in annual health care spending this essentially is what's driving most of the burden of disease which is diet related and lifestyle related chronic illnesses Now, two decades ago in 2000, which not that long ago, healthcare costs were only$1.6 trillion, meaning food-driven diseases are the major reason costs have tripled.

15:20And, you know, if nothing changes, chronic disease will cost the U.S. $129 trillion over the next 35 years. That's a lot of dough. And what can we do with all that money? Free education, free healthcare. I mean, think about it. We could fix all of our infrastructure. or we could provide support for all those who can't, you know, support themselves. We could just have so much benefit to society if we didn't spend all that money. Or we could have a raise our national debt, which would be nice too. There's a lot of benefits that come from this. Now, these costs are not inevitable. These are not because of genetic problems.

15:55These are related to the food we're eating, and we can change that. The other thing that happens is just, you know, not just the disease itself, but the lost productivity and economic drag. This is what we call indirect costs of health care. And these are huge. Estimated that globally, it's about$2 trillion lost to productivity because of poor health and most related to our diet. I know when you have a poor diet and you have obesity, it contributes to a lot of problems. More disability, lower workforce participation, higher absenteeism, reduced economic output. We call it presenteeism, which is being at the job, but not on the job.

16:32You're there, but you're kind of not there. The CDC estimates chronic disease leads to hundreds of billions of dollars in lost productivity every single year. The other thing is that, you know, communities around the country are just so severely affected by the food environment. And these food environments are shaped by corporate food systems, right? Food deserts, which is lack of access to healthy food, or food swamps, which is, you know, where you only have fast food restaurants and bodegas. These disproportionately affect black, brown, and low-income communities. and in many areas like this 80 of calories come from ultra processed food healthy food is often less accessible and more expensive than these addictive engineered foods basically it's just bad news what's even worse is marketing these foods are so heavily marketed i remember watching the super bowl last year there were 11 ads for junk food in the first half i had to turn it off i just was so disgusted uh and kids particularly are targeted and this should be illegal no most countries it's illegal like in chile there's no junk food ads between six in the morning and ten at night there's no more tony the tiger they've removed all the cartoon characters from all the kids food i mean they just don't allow any junk in the schools they don't allow formula advertising i mean they've really gone to town on this stuff but in this country you know 90 of food ads are targeting children promoting ultra processed foods these are really bad and they're everywhere they're not just on television they're on all social media they're everywhere they're infiltrating games.

17:54Kids see literally thousands and thousands of these every year. There's no way a parent can compete. And the food industry spends billions of dollars. I think it's about$13 billion here marketing these hyper-palatable foods to kids, which makes them addicted. You want to get these kids early, you get them addicted, and it's just terrible. Also, at the political level, there's a lot of things that are problematic. And I talk about this in the book, Food Fix Uncensored. It's basically the system that's keeping us sick. Food addiction is not accidental. It's the outcome of very deliberate policies that were driven by the food industry.

18:25And they were designed by corporations to maximize profits, but not really be concerned at all about public health. When working with my nonprofit Food Fix, I was working with Tim Ryan, who was a congressman at the time, and he got the congressional watchdog, which is called the GAO, or Government Accountability Office, to do analysis of all of our food policies and whether they support health or not and the economic burden of them. And what he found, and I was sort of shocked when I read the report, was that there are over 200 policies in 21 agencies and departments, most of which were working across purposes and making people sicker, not healthier, and costing enormous amounts of money.

19:00And so it was kind of worse than I even thought. Ultra-processed foods are things that food industry can create, they can market, there's no requirement to disclose how addictive they are, they don't have to prove they're safe, and sugar basically is unregulated despite being as neurologically addictive as cocaine in animal studies. So when you look at the data, and David Kessler, who's the former head of the FDA, created a petition, which I support and I'm helping with in getting through the FDA to show that the science is really clear now that these ultra-processed foods, particularly refined starch and sugars, they're industrially produced, are driving the majority of chronic disease, and they no longer can be considered safe.

19:37And the FDA should rule them as not safe to eat, what we call grass. We did this with trans fats. Crisco was on the markets in 1911. It was thought to be okay, shortening, but it only shortens your life. That's why they call it shortening. And it turned out the science became increasingly clear that these were really harmful. And in 2015, the FDA said these are no longer safe to eat and you have to remove them from the food supply or prove that they're safe. Right now, the burden of proof is on the American population and the government, but it should be on the food industry. So hopefully this will pass and that will make the food industry have to either remove them from our food or show that they're safe, which they can't do.

20:14Now, the other problem is the research that we have and rely on. 80 % of it's funded by the food industry. And these produce findings that are favorable to the sponsor. If Coca-Cola does a study on soda and obesity, they're going to find that it doesn't cause obesity. Or if artificial sweetener companies get together and do a study on the harmful effects of artificial sweeteners, they're going to find that they're fine. And so when you look at the data on this, any study that's funded by industry is eight to 50 times more likely to show a positive outcome for their product. And this influences dietary guidelines, school food, public health messaging, and it's basically corrupt science.

20:46The next big thing that happens is lobbying. And I talk about all this in my book, Food Fixed Uncensored. Big food and big ag spend billions of dollars lobbying Congress every year. They lobby against clear labeling on the front of packages, against school entry form, against soda taxes, against changes to a food stamp program or SNAP, against marketing restrictions to children. All these things have been shown in other countries to be very effective in improving the health of the population, but because we have a government that's captured by industry, we don't pass the right laws and protect the population.

21:15We have a food system that profits when people are sick. We got to flip the incentives. Food addiction is not a personal failure. It's a systemic failure. And the real cost isn't just measured in pounds or cravings, but in trillions of dollars, millions of lives. And a healthcare system is on the brink of collapsing. We're in deep doo-doo, folks, and we got to fix this. And that's really what I outline in my book that I wrote with my wife, Brianna, which outlines a lot of the problem. But also, it's not called food apocalypse. It's called food fix. So I do talk about the apocalyptic issues, but I also talk about the fix.

21:53What do we need to do to really solve this problem at every level? Now, personal level, political level, business level, scientific level, and go through everything. All right, so now that we've really uncovered the real cost of food addiction, it's really time to focus on the solutions. How do you break free and reset your brain and your body? How do you stop this process? And I saw such a big deal in my practice for so many years, and I really worked with patients to try to solve this. And I actually realized that there was a way to do it by basically pushing a button that your body has. It's a natural healing repair system, and you can push that button and put your body back to its natural, original factory settings in like 10 days or even shorter.

22:35And it really amounts to a very simple principle. You take out the bad stuff that you're eating and you put in the good stuff. You restrict all the things that we know can be a problem and you add all the things we know can support your health. So the first principle is the deep program of your brain from food addiction is eating real food. No, basically, if it was industrial food, don't eat it. It's ultra processed food, don't eat it. Just eat real food. We know what that is. It's vegetables, it's fruit, it's nuts and seeds. it's whole grains, it's beans, high quality protein from all sources, eggs, chicken, fish, meat, et cetera.

23:08All these things are fine. And these are the things that will naturally reduce cravings. You're not going to eat a hundred ounce steak, right? But you could easily eat a sheet cake. You're not going to binge on real food. You just can't. Your body naturally will stop eating. Eliminate, or I would say eliminate, but you know, some people are more lenient. I'm not. uh eliminate just for for 10 days and this is why we created the 10-day detox diet i encourage you to try it if you want to do one thing to see how food is affecting you most people don't connect the dots but how they feel and what they're eating 10 days anybody can do anything for 10 days see what happens to your body and your brain and your mood and your energy when you eat in a way that unhooks this biological addiction and that puts your body back to its original factory settings The average person who does this has a 70 % reduction in all symptoms from all diseases in 10 days.

24:00If you go to 10daydetox.com, you'll see all the testimonials. I'm not making it up. It's real. And I've done this for decades with thousands and thousands of people. So when you get rid of all this junk food, chips, packaged snacks, sodas, sugary drinks, fast food, it really helps reset your brain. No artificial sweeteners. I know people are thinking, well, can I have stevia? Well, can I have monk fruit? Can I have, you know, sugar alcohols? Can I have this? can have that? No. The answer is no. Because all these things will mess with your brain, even if they don't have calories. And you want to increase whole food, nutrient-dense food, vegetables, berries, fruit, avocados, nuts and seeds, pasteurase, protein, eggs, chicken, fish, meat.

24:37Whole grains for some people can be helpful, but I would say in the 10-day detox, you want to avoid whole grains and you want to avoid beans and you want to eat lots of fat, lots of fiber, lots of veggies, lots of protein. Basically, protein and fat will stop your cravings. and they're the key protein fat for breakfast lunch and dinner really important those protein fat and fiber is the key to controlling your appetite and then make sure you deal with stress and sleep stress can make you hungry you know the self and i've experienced that for sure poor sleep or sleep deprivation will also make you hungry when i was working in the er i would not sleep i just go to mcdonald's at two in the morning and have those uh apple turnovers they were good like you know i couldn't help myself i just needed something because my body was not sleeping and I needed something to get my energy up.

25:19All right. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, you know, I know these foods have a hold on me, but I don't know what to do. I don't know where to start. That's exactly why I created the 10 day detox diet. It gives you a structured step-by-step way, calm your cravings, reset your brain and reset your brain chemistry and take back control of your health. And it works faster, better, and it's cheaper than any other treatment and it works so quickly, you actually won't believe it. So you might think I'm sounding like a crazy person. Don't listen to me. Please don't listen to me. Just try it 10 days.

25:55Listen to your body. It's the smartest doctor in the room. You can go find out more on drhyman.com and learn about what it is and how to join. All right. Key message here, folks, is it's not your fault. It's not your fault if you're overweight. It's not your fault if you're sick. We have a society and a food system designed to make you sick. You're not weak. you're living in a food environment that's engineered to override your biology period so pay attention to what you're eating pay attention to ingredients don't look at the claims on the label my joke is if it has a health claim on the label don't eat it low sugar low fat high fiber gluten-free whatever it is gluten-free lays potato chips i'm just giving you a bag of potato chips the other day and it said gluten-free on it i'm like that's like well coca-cola is gluten-free.

26:41It doesn't make it healthy. Gluten-free cake and cookies is still cake and cookies. So just be attention to what you're eating and the packaging ingredients. And just move and shift your diet toward more real food. Excited about showing you how to do that soon. We're going to be doing a whole challenge and teach you how to cook well on a budget. Now, if this conversation has opened your eyes to how the food system shapes your cravings, your health, you want to dive deeper. You want to go deeper. I would really encourage you to check out my new book, Food Fix Uncensored. It comes out February 10th, and we're pulling back the curtain on everything Big Food does not want you to know.

27:14And we're going to tell you what you can do to protect yourself and your family. And honestly, folks, I can't wait to share it with you. And I want you to share this episode with some of you know who's still blaming themselves for their struggle with food. It's not your fault. It's not their fault. You're living in a highly toxic food environment that's hijacked your entire biology. This conversation should be the permission that they need to stop biting themselves and start healing. So please share it. Thanks for joining me for Office Hours. I love diving into these topics with you. Remember, you are the CEO of your own health, and every choice you make can move you closer to healing and vitality.

27:54I want to keep these episodes as relevant and useful as possible. So tell me, what do you want to explore next? What questions are you wrestling with? What breakthroughs are you chasing? Share your ideas in the comments on social media or through the link in the show notes. I'm listening. Until next time, keep taking charge, keep asking questions, and keep showing up for your health.