That creamy Reese’s peanut butter cup dissolving on your tongue. The next crunchy Dorito you’re reaching for before you’ve swallowed the last one. The first sip of an ice-cold Coke, with a mix of syrup and carbonation; it hits like relief.

Your brain’s reward center is supposed to keep you alive, but a major new study from the University of Michigan, Harvard, and Duke says the food industry learned how to use it against you — engineering products with the same science as cigarettes.

The playbook is this: optimize the craving, accelerate the reward, and make it nearly impossible to stop.

Ultraprocessed foods now make up roughly 60% of what Americans eat. San Francisco has sued 10 major food manufacturers over the harm.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said these foods are poisoning Americans, but he has stopped short of regulating them.

In Detroit, 69% of households face food insecurity and researchers describe the city as a food swamp, where drive-throughs, party stores and gas-station snack aisles vastly outnumber places to buy fresh produce.

Detroit’s numbers make the question sharper: What happens when engineered food is all that’s there?

Ashley Gearhardt, clinical psychologist, addiction scientist at the University of Michigan, creator of the Yale Food Addiction Scale and lead author of the study, joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss this and more.

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Young people’s brains are changing.

Research shows social media activates the same dopamine-driven reward pathways in the brain as addictive substances. The scroll, the like, the notification — each one is a quick hit of pleasure that keeps you coming back.

The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that teens who use social media for more than three hours a day face double the risk of depression and anxiety, and the vast majority of American teenagers use social media. More than a third say they use it “almost constantly.” 

The platforms keep us sucked in so long that we now have new terms for our interactions with these devices, like “doomscrolling” and “brain rot.”

Now, the courts are getting involved. In Los Angeles, a jury is hearing claims that Meta and YouTube deliberately designed their platforms to get children addicted. In New Mexico, the state attorney general is suing Meta for allegedly failing to protect minors from sexual exploitation. 

In Michigan, legislators are cracking down on phones in schools. This month, Michigan banned smartphones in the classroom, affecting students in the fall. 

State Representative Mark Tisdel, a Republican representing Rochester Hills, sponsored the cell phone ban. He joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss how he believes lawmakers should stand up to Big Tech.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on demand.

Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

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