Your brain evolved for scarcity, unpredictability, and whole foods. It developed circuits that drive you toward calorie-dense foods and resist weight loss—perfect for survival, catastrophic in modern abundance. Processed foods are engineered to trigger reward responses more intensely than any ancestral food while bypassing satiety signals.
This companion explores the environment that built your brain, the modern mismatch, how the exploitation works (reward, satiety, set point, loss aversion), and what to do about it. (4 min read)