Hooked, Revisited: What Has Changed About Food, Addiction & the Industry — and What Hasn’t?

 Hooked, Revisited: What Has Changed About Food, Addiction & the Industry — and What Hasn’t?

Date & Time

Sep 23, 2026 11:00 AM in CDT 

Description

Why are some foods so difficult to stop eating? How much of that response is biological—and how much is the result of deliberate product design, sophisticated marketing and a food environment built to keep us consuming? Join the Center for Food as Medicine & Longevity for a virtual fireside conversation with Michael Moss, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Salt Sugar Fat and Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions. Five years after their widely viewed conversation Michael Moss and Dr. Charles Platkin will sit down again to examine what has changed about food, addiction and the industry—and what has not. The conversation will look closely at ultra-processed foods and engineered craving: how companies use combinations of salt, sugar, fat, texture, aroma, convenience and marketing to create products that are exceptionally difficult to resist. How much has the industry’s approach to product development changed since Salt Sugar Fat and Hooked were published? What have companies learned about consumer behavior—and how are they applying it? They will also explore where the science of food addiction has moved. What does the evidence now tell us about the brain’s reward system, compulsive eating and the similarities and differences between certain foods and addictive substances? Is “food addiction” the right term? Where is there meaningful scientific agreement, and where does the debate continue? The rise of GLP-1 medications introduces an entirely new challenge for the food industry. If millions of people experience reduced appetite, fewer cravings and less interest in highly processed foods, how might manufacturers respond? Will companies reformulate products, reduce portions, develop new categories or find new ways to reach consumers? Could these medications fundamentally change the economics of the food business?

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