Recent research found stronger responses in the brain’s reward network when children who eat more ultra-processed foods (UPFs) viewed images of appetizing foods, and linked these heightened brain responses to increases in body fat one year later. Americans have become increasingly aware of the health hazards lurking in their diets, including the risk of food addiction. The new study confirms what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement have long emphasized: UPFs are highly profitable, create dependency, and stimulate overconsumption. Some would argue these outcomes were all intended, though the study’s authors concede cause is not proven.
Ultra-Processed Foods May Trigger Cravings and Weight Gain
Researchers at USC's Keck School of Medicine gathered data on body composition, diet, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans from 46 children aged 7 to 10, as part of a long-term study of obesity and diabetes risk. Previous studies have linked UPFs to cardiovascular disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes, but little is known about how the brain’s reward and motivation network is involved in these risks. The study found that children who ate more UPFs displayed “stronger responses to food images in the dorsal striatum, a brain region involved in reward and motivation. Stronger responses in the dorsal striatum were also associated with increased BMI and body fat percentage one year later.”
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Children are particularly at risk for illnesses caused by unhealthy foods because their bodies are still developing, and because they ingest more food per pound of body weight than adults. But children are also more psychologically vulnerable than mature adults, especially to advertising gimmicks and flashy stimuli. The possibility that UPFs pose physical and mental health risks to American children must be thoroughly evaluated.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently warned that “Nearly 60% of the American diet is made up of ultra-processed foods, and childhood obesity now affects more than one in five American children…. We cannot reverse America’s chronic disease epidemic without transforming our food system.” Kennedy has long fought what he calls “regulatory capture,” in which industrial interests secure control of the government regulatory agencies and laws meant to protect American consumers from harm.
Soylent Greenwashing?
The modern US food system bears little resemblance to what it was a century ago, largely transformed in the name of cost and convenience, and reducing Americans to laboratory-like “consumers” fed from cardboard boxes, cans, or jars, much like those modern consumers in turn feed their household pets. Part of the transformation of that food system from traditional to industrial products included the research and development of numerous food additives to stimulate appetite, suppress satiety, and mimic natural colors or flavors. Extra sugar, fat, and salt further enhance flavor and trigger cravings. These are the building blocks of the UPF industry.
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Investigative journalist Michael Moss documents the insidious influence of highly processed, artificially flavored pseudo-food offerings in his insightful book, Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions. Processed food companies invest substantial research and development resources to develop highly addictive products designed to target human taste buds, enzymes, and hormones. Add to this the impressionable young mind in the grocery aisle with Dad, or that “Trix Are for Kids!” jingle between Saturday cartoons, and American children are easily hooked.
Mr. Moss presaged RFK, Jr. and his MAHA messaging, warning of the ongoing chronic disease crisis in the United States caused by addictive processed foods. Moss documents how food companies deliberately target specific demographics, including children.
A Less Processed Food Future
A 2021 study estimated that American children’s diets consist of approximately 67% ultra-processed foods. Arrayed against this future generation are entire industries: not just the food companies, but the soy, corn, and wheat industries upon which food processors depend for cheap ingredients to “process” into some fascinating food facsimile. Advertising companies use state-of-the-art photography and marketing levers to captivate young minds and make them demand that Mommy buy the latest soda pop, gum, or breakfast cereal. Entire research industries, sprawling lobbying firms, and mammoth plastic packaging industries all feed at the cheap-food trough.
The Keck study found that children who ate more UPFs had higher waist circumference, body mass index (BMI), and body fat percentages after one year. As one researcher, Kathleen A. Page, put it: “[This study] actually gives us insight into the neurobiological underpinnings by which these foods may be linked to body composition over time.”
Further research on the neurological impacts of both UPFs and food advertising on dietary habits and long-term health is essential to better understand what cheap food and regulatory capture have done to American children’s health. Americans must leave the 2026 midterms and intense partisan divisions behind in order to rebuild a healthier food system and avert an ultra-processed future.
