Maybe the problem with highly processed hyper-palatable foods isn't that they give us too much pleasure.

Maybe it's that they block our ability to feel satisfied.

An interesting new study has me rethinking some of our favorite assumptions.

Hello there, I'm Monica Reinagle, and you are listening to the Nutrition Diva

podcast, a show where we take a closer look at nutrition news, research, and trends to help

you make sense of all the information that's out there. I'm glad to have you with us today.

I want to talk about a neuroscience paper that crossed my radar screen this week. It's actually a pretty

technical finding, but it really has me thinking a little differently about a couple of things,

like the relationship between

pleasure, appetite, overeating, and food processing. Are you ready for all that? Well, let's dive in.

Hyperpalability is a term that we throw around a lot these days. This term started gaining traction 10 or 15 years ago,

first in research circles, and then in the more general discourse. It was meant to describe foods

that seem to override our usual satiety signals, and this compels us to overconsume them.

This is stuff that our grandmothers probably would have described as junk food.

Researchers eventually zeroed in on the combination of sugar, fat, and salt as being especially, quote-unquote, addictive.

The usual story is that this combination overstimulates the reward pathways in the brain,

which overwhelms our self-control and drives us to eat more than we need.

And out of this narrative, an explanation for the

obesity epidemic emerged. The spectacular rise in obesity over the last 50 years was caused primarily

by the increasing presence of highly processed hyper-palatable foods in our food supply. So we got fat because

there was just too much irresistible junk food lying around. But this paper that was published in

late 2025 by a couple of neuroscientists named Justin Sung and Dana Small has introduced a really interesting plot twist.

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