Corporations sell us hedonic pleasures (tobacco, alcohol, processed “food”) and behavior triggers (guns, cars, energy) by using advanced science about how to hook us to their products (Freundenberg, 2014). They tap into neurobiological functions, like the brain’s reward pathway. As you know the processed food you eat is designed to ‘keep you hooked.’ Sugar does that. Filled with sugar and other excitotoxins, you can’t ‘just eat one’ cookie/chip/snack. The road to brain killing is enticing, like all the temptations Disney’s Pinocchio was lured by. He ended up a donkey. We certainly will end up less human.
It’s been about 20 years since I had a fast food burger. I remember my tongue going numb. I read the book, Excitotoxins, and stopped eating fancy flavored chips. I like my brain.
Corporations have taken over USian lives in oh so many ways, curtailing our health, freedom, and wellbeing. Here are ways you may not think much about.
Robert Lustig wrote the book The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains, to discuss ways corporate foods, subsidized by government, are promoting illness.
He warns about sugar. What’s wrong with sugar? Isn’t a sweet tooth a human trait? Perhaps. Our deep ancestors and our hunter-gatherer cousins love and seek out honey.
In early life, children prefer the sweetness of breast milk (‘it tastes better than ice cream,’ older children say).
Unlike other animals’ breast milk, human milk has more sugar (lactose) than fat or protein (cow milk has more protein, making it hard for babies to digest). So children have a built-in preference for that sweetness. This is because breast milk sweetness has been associated for millions of years with the building blocks of health (breast milk’s thousands of ingredients).
I speculate that if a child doesn’t receive breast milk for long enough (at least two years), they may carry forward the craving for it. Just like not having enough breastfeeding in childhood seems to make some men obsessed with breasts, the lack may also lead many of us to search for that sweet tasting elixir (breast milk) in sugary foods. We get tantalized by illness-inducing sugars.
Doses of sugar start from the beginning in medicalized birthing. Postnatal practices undermine gut health (read immune system) by first separating baby from mom and conducting painful procedures, and then trying to calm the distressed infant with infant formula and sugar water (instead of skin-to-skin contact with mother and suckling). This not only imprints the baby’s receptors with artificial sweeteners, it breaks the protective anti-microbial film in the gut that exclusive breastfeeding otherwise sets up, impairing the gut’s (immune system) healthy microbiome.
In our ancestral context, hunter-gatherer civilization, sugar was/is not ubiquitous like it is for us. Honey was a rare treat. Sweet fruit was seasonal.
Moreover, industrial food production, unlike pre-industrial food production, has refined and purified sugar (and alcohol) to such a degree that they have become harmful to health. A study just came out showing that sugary drinks are associated with hundreds of thousands of deaths across the world (Lara-Castor et al., 2025). When fructose is consumed chronically (as in fast food and sugary drinks), it causes nearly as many health problems as alcohol. Brain health too.
Both alcohol and sugar impair neuronal systems.
Sugar establishes craving pathways in the brain. We feel rewarded by consuming sugar because it activates the brain’ reward system. In rats, sucrose surpasses cocaine in activating the brain’s reward system. It doesn’t take long for sugar to impair general brain function. In fact, sugar consumption is associated with developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Lustig lays out three brain systems that processed foods hack: dopamine, serotonin and the stress response.
The brain’s reward system activates dopamine when we anticipate a reward (e.g., getting the best pizza in town; reaching the top of the mountain; winning the competition). Just going shopping releases dopamine—the anticipatory euphoria feeling (Panksepp, 1998). Attaining the target desired then releases internal (endogenous) opioids—satisfaction (‘got it!’).
But if you self-reward too much for too long, the feeling requires more and more of the stimulus which then actually impairs receptors for dopamine. Chronic exposure also down regulates the opioid receptors that are activated from experiencing the pleasure. You seek it less and get less and less pleasure from the ‘best’ pizza.
Lustig also discusses serotonin, which is found throughout the body, especially in the gut. In the brain this neuropeptide is associated with intelligence (because it enhances brain signaling). Plus, having a healthy serotonin system (transmission and receptors) is associated with not getting depressed. Low serotonin levels are associated with irritability. People with fewer serotonin transporters or serotonin-1a receptors tend to be less happy overall.
Lustig suggests that the brain’s serotonin network is the source of our contentment. He is correct to note that it rises with social connection and relational attunement, but it also rises during free play, dancing, and communal music making.
Low serotonin levels are associated not only with depression but risk taking. Lustig wonders if crime rates are boosted by food deserts and poor nutrition in some areas.
Okay, so guess what builds the serotonin system—receptors and all. Yup, breast milk. Breast milk (especially evening and night milk) provides the precursor to serotonin, tryptophan (what turkey meat has that makes you a little sleepy) and crosses the blood-brain barrier in early life to its brain construction. Serotonin is a contractor that comes in and out activation based on what is maturing when.
Recall that species-typical breastfeeding is infant directed 24/7, and in some traditional communities is offered by multiple people. It lasts on average for four years (yes, a shock to modern ears) but the observed range by ethnographers is 2.5 years to 8 years. These are the years of rapid brain growth. Night nursing (night milk) is critical for providing the tryptophan that grows serotonin receptors in the brain.
The third biological system that Lustig discusses is the stress response. Stress, just like illicit drugs, kills off serotonin receptors. That’s what high levels of cortisol do in the brain.
Perhaps most important to remember for babies and children under six: they are building their brains rapidly so keeping them from imposed distress is important for a growth state instead of a synapse-killer state (brain connections melt away under high levels of cortisol).
Evolved Nest provision keeps the child from feeling distressed or disconnected. Such states increase stress, releasing cortisol. At high levels, cortisol melts neuronal connections and impairs brain function. Thus, imposing stress on babies with painful procedures in the hospital, isolation at home (little touch or carrying), or leaving babies to cry it out will harm the long term capacities of the child’s brain to be stable, happy and intelligent.
Fear sells. Advertisers want to make you afraid or anxious because it sells products (look at traditional women’s magazines). The product, its purchase or use, will stimulate the reward pathway, momentarily. “When you’re under stress, your cortisol is up, your PFC [prefrontal cortex—executive, decision making capacities] is inhibited, your dopamine is firing—all of which will drive you to the chocolate cake or another drug of choice.” (Lustig, p. 68).
Excess stress leads to greater use of technologies to dealt with it—from drugs to sugar—which reduce serotonin transmission. These technologies might increase dopamine, but only temporarily. The more of your ‘drug’ you take in response to stress, the less rewarding it is, the worse you feel, driving more stress. You become tolerant. As tolerance is built up, receptors die.
With chronic use, cocaine and other illicit drugs enact “programmed cell death” (cell suicide). MDMA keeps dopamine and serotonin running at full tilt, heightening excitement, euphoria, and sexuality while postponing fatigue. Long term use leads to programmed cell death in neurons, causing harm to memory, impulse control and decision making. Illicit drugs, like methamphetamine, can damage the nerve terminals of both serotonin and dopamine, leaving the brain with little recourse for positive emotion.
In the USA, we impose toxic early life stress on infants. Stress increases cortisol release, inflaming the body. Inflammation is planted in the child’s body from the toxins and toxic treatment experienced. Inflammation is associated with irritability as it inhibits serotonin release.
Remember, inflammation undergirds disease. Too much stress, like baby undercare, racism, discrimination, can make a person inflamed chronically.
Ongoing toxic stress is characteristic of 80% of families who live paycheck to paycheck with predatory capitalism all around them, including in the health care system. The stress response is easily activated under such situations.
Experiments demonstrate that omega-3 fatty acids decrease inflammation, anxiety and depression in children and adults. Eat your fatty fish (SMASH diet: salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, herring)!
Pleasure is not happiness. Pleasure comes from the reward system but contentment comes from serotonin release. Reward (dopamine hits) are not contentment (serotonin activation).
Yet, the “corporate consumption complex” confuses us by promoting pleasure as happiness.
Corporations sell us hedonic pleasures (tobacco, alcohol, processed “food”) and behavior triggers (guns, cars, energy) by using advanced science about how to hook us to their products (Freundenberg, 2014). They tap into neurobiological functions, like the brain’s reward pathway. As you know the processed food you eat is designed to ‘keep you hooked.’ Sugar does that. Filled with sugar and other excitotoxins, you can’t ‘just eat one’ cookie/chip/snack. The road to brain killing is enticing, like all the temptations Disney’s Pinocchio was lured by. He ended up a donkey. We certainly will end up less human.
“Technology, sleep deprivation, substance abuse, processed food—these are the killers of contentment and the drivers of desire, dependence, and depression.” (p. 280).
Lustig suggests as remedies under the circumstances:
• Cook your own food to avoid the added sugars (and other artificial ingredients).
• Build serotonin and social opioids by connecting to others and contributing to the community. (Jaak Panksepp pointed out that our internal opioids are intended for addicting us to social relationships.)
• Lustig also advocates good sleep, minimal social media, mindfulness training, and exercise.
• In our ancestral context, egalitarian hunter-gatherer civilization, serotonin levels are fully functioning and activated by lifelong nesting practices that include affectionate touch (even sitting shoulder to shoulder in a wide-open savannah), play, and communal dancing.
• Babies should be fed breast milk to build the serotonin system (if needed, from wet nurses, milk banks).
To live, humans need amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins and micronutrients. There is no need for the empty calories of refined sugars.
References
Appleton J. (2018). The gut-brain axis: Influence of microbiota on mood and mental health. Integrative medicine (Encinitas, Calif.), 17(4), 28–32.
Avena, N.M. et al. (2008). Evidence for sugar addiction: Behavioral and neurochemical effects of intermittent, excessive sugar intake. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Review, 32, 20-39.
Blaylock, R. L. (1997). Excitotoxins: The taste that kills. Health Press.
Cisternas, P. (2015). Fructose consumption reduces hipocampal synaptic plasticity underlying cognitive performance. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 1852, 2379-2390.
Davis-Floyd, R.E. (2003). Birth as an American rite of passage. University of California Press.
Freudenberg, N. (2014). Lethal but legal. Oxford University Press.
Hewlett, B.S., & Lamb, M.E. (2005). Hunter-gatherer childhoods: Evolutionary, developmental and cultural perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine.
Hrdy, S. (2009). Mothers and others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Lakhan, S.E. (2013). The emerging role of dietary fructose in obesity and cognitive decline. Nutrition Journal, 12, 114.
Lara-Castor, L., O’Hearn, M., Cudhea, F. et al. (2025). Burdens of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar-sweetened beverages in 184 countries. Nature Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03345-4
Lenoir, M. et al. (2007). Intense sweetness surpasses cocaine reward. PLoS One 2, e698.
Lindqvist, A. et al. (2008). Effects of sucrose, glucose and fructose on peripheral and central appetite signals. Regulation and Peptides, 150, 26-32.
Lustig, R. (2018). The hacking of the American mind: The science behind the corporate takeover of our bodies and brains. Avery.
Lustig, R., Schmidt, L. & Brindis, C. (2012). The toxic truth about sugar. Nature, 482, 27–29. https://doi.org/10.1038/482027a
Meng, Q. et al., (2016). Systems nutrigenomics reveals brain gene networks linking metabolic and brain disorders. E-Biomedicine. online
Muldoon, M. F. et al. (2006). The metabolic syndrome is associated with reduced central serotonergic responsivity in healthy community volunteers. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 91, 718-721.
Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. New York: Norton.
Nemets, H. (2006). Omega-3 treatment of childhood depression: A controlled, double-blind pilot study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 163, 1098-1100.
Nikolaus, S. (2010). Cortical GABA, striatal dopamine and midbrain serotonin as the key players in compulsive and anxiety disorder—results from in Vivo imaging studies. Review of Neuroscience, 21, 119-139.
Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Perfalk, E., Cunha-Bang, S.D., Holst, K.K., Keller, S., Svarer, C., Knudsen, G.M., & Frokjaer, V.G. (2017). Testosterone levels in healthy men correlate negatively with serotonin 4 receptor binding. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 81:22-28.
Power, M.L., & Schulkin, J. (2016). Milk: The biology of lactation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Raine, A. et al. (2016). Nutritional supplementation to reduce child aggression: A randomized, stratified, single-blind, factorial trial. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 57, 1038-1046.
Seneff, S. et al. (2011). Nutrition and Alzheimer’s disease: The detrimental role of a high carbohydrate diet. European Journal of Internal Medicine, 22, 134-140.
Trezza, V., Baarendse, P.J., Vanderschuren, L.J. (2010). The pleasures of play: pharmacological insights into social reward mechanisms. Trends in Pharmacological Science, 31(10), 463-469. doi: 10.1016/j.tips.2010.06.008.
Wölnerhanssen B.K. et al. (2015). Dissociable behavioral, physiological and neural effects of acute glucose and fructose ingestion: A pilot study. PLoS One, 10, e0130280