Brendborg places the blame squarely on food manufacturers and supermarkets, who \u2018want to make as much money as possible\u2019, and accomplish this by manipulating our \u2018appetite regulation\u2019.<\/p>\n
Danish scientist Nicklas Brendborg blames rising cases of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases \u2018and general metabolic dysfunction\u2019 squarely on food manufacturers and supermarkets, who manipulate our \u2018appetite regulation\u2019, resulting in us eating more sugary snacks<\/p>\n
Customers\u2019 willpower and a sense of feeling stuffed and replete \u2018are some of the manufacturers\u2019 greatest enemies\u2019, so billions \u2013 much more than is spent on life-saving medicines \u2013 are invested in \u2018designing super stimuli\u2019 in the laboratory. That is to say, emulsifiers, flavour enhancers, artificial sweeteners and colourings, and additives by the bucket.<\/p>\n
The objective is to get us addicted to ultra-processed food \u2013 greasy chips, biscuits, microwave meals, frozen pizza, soda pop, energy drinks, sausages, cereals, packaged snacks, from which natural fibre has been extracted, so we never feel full.<\/p>\n
Big business is intent on \u2018the careful optimisation\u2019 of the precise shade of yellow for crisps.<\/p>\n
Though 60 strawberries contain the same number of calories as a single Mars bar, we are steered by advertising away from fresh fruit, organic meat, vegetables and rice, and made to crave anything containing sugar, \u2018the cheapest source of calories in existence\u2019, and which doesn\u2019t require much digestion. A sugar rush is instant, \u2018and the brain screams for more\u2019.<\/p>\n
![\"Danish](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/100215749-14896383-Danish_scientist_Nicklas_Brendborg_blames_rising_cases_of_diabet-a-33_17522389711.jpeg\")
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Nicklas Brendborg says few will opt for plain vanilla ice cream if the alternative is a bowl of ice cream covered with caramel sauce<\/p>\n
Manufacturers disguise the levels of sugar they feed us by giving it a variety of pseudonyms: dextrose, glucose, sucrose, fructose, or evaporated cane juice.<\/p>\n
As a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, this doesn\u2019t alter the fact that \u2018sugary drinks are one of the most efficient ways to fatten up a human\u2019. The science is cynical: \u2018identify the pleasurable compound, isolate it and add tons of it in concentrated form\u2019.<\/p>\n
The same principle goes for cocaine and heroin. Sugar is added to pizza dough, tomato sauce and burger buns. The tobacco industry adds sugar to cigarettes. Sandwiches at Subway contain so much sugar, legally they don\u2019t qualify as bread in Ireland.<\/p>\n
The other component to which we have become addicted is salt. Westerners now \u2018eat enough salt to make a mermaid feel at home\u2019.<\/p>\n
Salt increases shelf-life and enhances the appearance and texture of food.<\/p>\n
Saline solutions are routinely pumped into frozen meat, for example. Yet though our taste buds do enjoy salty tastes \u2013 try to confine yourself to a single salted peanut \u2013 the upshot is high blood pressure, kidney stones, and \u2018a host of autoimmune diseases\u2019.<\/p>\n
Having discussed how one way or another we \u2018knock out our natural control mechanisms, causing overconsumption,\u2019 Super Stimulated turns to other areas where overindulgence causes problems, e.g. modern dating, sex addiction and pornography. \u2018An abundance of dating options breeds indecisiveness and more unstable relationships.\u2019<\/p>\n
To try to make themselves more attractive (though in my opinion it looks grotesque), everyone wants plastic surgery \u2013 trout pouts, puffy facial fillers, Botox jabs. Brendborg says there were six times more breast-enhancement procedures and 20 times more facelifts in 2022 than there were in 2005.<\/p>\n
But the villain here is social media, Instagram, TikTok and the rest, with people no longer knowing where the real world begins and ends, what\u2019s fantasy, what isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u2018Once social media has got you hooked, it\u2019s dead set on keeping your attention,\u2019 the algorithms, having already decided your likes and dislikes, tailoring content.<\/p>\n
As Brendborg says in his highly readable book, by scrolling on their phones for hours on end, allowing themselves to become completely engrossed, youngsters, in particular, are in the midst of a mental health crisis, everyone dissatisfied, suffused with feelings of inferiority, grief and depression, and with tiny attention spans.<\/p>\n
Smartphones are another form of endless snacking, and there are more people on the planet with a smartphone than there are with access to a functional toilet.<\/p>\n
Maybe the frantic search for stimulation has something to do with an avoidance of boredom. We want \u2018shortcuts to euphoria\u2019. Except they are shortcuts to oblivion.<\/p>\n
There is too much of everything: too many streaming channels, too many action movies, too many angry people, too much ill health and dementia, too many bombs.<\/p>\n
Brendborg points out that nuclear warheads today are 1,600 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not going to end well. Looking for tranquillity \u2013 somewhere, anywhere \u2013 Brendborg is impressed only by innocent jungle tribes and Amazonian hunter-gatherers, who are slim and healthy, with tip-top cholesterol and blood pressure figures. Unfortunately, they die of infections from monkey bites at the age of 34.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, their ways can\u2019t be emulated, though Brendborg admits, \u2018your neighbours might look at you strangely if you start hunting for local squirrels for food\u2019. In Denmark, maybe, but in my beloved South Wales, no one will bat an eyelid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So why do we form bad habits \u2013 and deliberately do so, too, when we are meant to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3444,92,105,1444,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-256528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-dailymail","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-home","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114835367392537969","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}