Humans crave things, thats normal, but is the reason why orchestrated by something bigger?
You bite into a crisp chip. One becomes ten. Ten becomes finishing a can of Pringles without realising, until your hand hits the bottom of the tin. You weren’t even hungry. What if that wasn’t a lack of willpower, but a design?
Across labs and boardrooms, scientists and CEOs may have more influence over your body than you think. The modern experience of craving, be it for food, nicotine, social media, or even shopping, might not be natural at all. Some believe it’s a system built to make you want more. And more. And more. And more…
Welcome to the conspiracy world of engineered craving.
Craving is not the same as hunger. Hunger is survival. Craving is compulsion.
Neurologically, it’s about dopamine, the neurotransmitter that lights up your brain’s reward system. Cravings spike when we anticipate reward, not when we receive it. That’s the key: the promise of pleasure is more powerful than the pleasure itself.
Corporations have taken note, and they may have more influence over your body and what it craves than you think…
In the 1990s, the processed food industry exploded with innovations — not in nutrition, but in neuroscience. ‘Food technologists’ began formulating products to hit the bliss point, a perfect combination of sugar, salt, and fat that maximally stimulates the brain’s reward pathways.
Insiders have admitted to it: In Michael Moss’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting, former executives from major food companies like Nestlé and Kraft revealed that foods were engineered to override satiety signals. The more you eat, the more you want. Not by accident, by design.
It’s no longer just about taste. It’s about addiction.
Critics on a the ‘Food and Nutrition’ Facebook group argue: “we’re living inside a carefully constructed environment of perpetual dissatisfaction… they know what they are doing, were literally pieces to their game”. Here’s the conspiracy theory: what if craving itself has become a business model?
Fast food chains compete to create hyperpalatable meals designed to bypass natural hunger cues. Social media platforms deploy infinite scrolling and intermittent notifications to exploit the brain’s reward system, mirror images of slot machines. Retail algorithms track your behaviour to time offers and ads when your resistance is lowest.
Susan, a spokesperson of the Facebook group said: “it isn’t just capitalism, it’s neurocapitalism. Your desires are being mined, optimized, and sold back to you. And the more you crave, the more you consume. The system depends on it and we need to wake up and stop falling victim to this because that lifestyle is more unhealthy than you can imagine”.
Either this or we just don’t know when to stop eating because God forbid the food is actually too nice to stop.
However, if the architecture of your craving is being built around you, who’s really in charge of your choices? That seems like a job for free will!
Upon research, I found that behavioural scientist Robert Lustig argues that society’s most powerful industries, Big Food, Big Tech, Big Pharma, are incentivised to keep us hooked. He calls it a ‘hedonic treadmill’ in his book. The illusion of choice hides the fact that most of us are running to stand still, consuming more, feeling less, and losing agency over our own brains.
So is it a conspiracy? Or what critics argue as, “what capitalism does best: find a weakness and sells into it”? Or is the population just hungry?
Some researchers believe awareness is the first step. Knowing that craving can be engineered helps reclaim control. Mindful eating, digital detoxes, and dopamine fasting are growing trends attempting to disrupt the loop.
But it raises a deeper question: if we are constantly being nudged, triggered, and manipulated, what does it even mean to want something anymore? That may be a conversation for another time though, it’s getting a bit deep.
Craving used to be a feeling. Now it may be a product. And if that’s true, then perhaps the most radical act is not to give in, but to ask why you’re craving in the first place.
