Cognitive Design

A slogan in an advertisement for potato chips that has burrowed its way into our culture.   A great slogan from a cognitive design standpoint but according to a new book by David Kessler (Harvard trained MD and head of the Food and Drug Administration) there may more powerful forces at work.

His new book,  The End of Overeating, argues that food scientists have learned how to tap into our brain chemistry to stimulate our desire to eat more even when we are not hungry.  If you don’t want to go after the book, check out the review, How the Food Makers Captured our Brains, in the New York Times.   Here is a taste (pun intended):

“When it comes to stimulating our brains, Dr. Kessler noted, individual ingredients aren’t particularly potent. But by combining fats, sugar and salt in innumerable ways, food makers have essentially tapped into the brain’s reward system, creating a feedback loop that stimulates our desire to eat and leaves us wanting more and more even when we’re full.”

This is an important perspective for anyone designing weight management programs.  You will have to design interventions that can overcome visceral effects far more powerful than normal hunger. Yikes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 6:57 am and is filed under Behavior Change, Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.