Predictably, "scientific" studies are surfacing to support the thesis. Rats who got used to sugar, for instance, displayed symptoms of withdrawal when sugar was withheld, according to one study.
Other research suggests that combining certain foods to increase a product's "palatability" creates an "opioid effect," so that people want to eat more. Allow me to translate: By combining sugar, fat and protein in certain ways, food vendors are purposely trying to make their products taste so good that you'll eat them.
Scandalous.
Years ago when tobacco companies first came under assault for selling a legal product to people who might have connected the dots between their breathless hack and the smoke they were drawing into their lungs, nanny-watchers warned of the slippery slope. Today cigarettes, they said; tomorrow burgers and beer.
Welcome to their prophecy.
The idea that restaurants are trying to make food taste better by combining sugar or fat to their protein, also known as "cooking," hardly qualifies as criminal conduct. But what matter. Look for juries to be loaded with overweight people who, out of guilt and their own need for redemptive victimhood, will sympathize and reward obese overeaters for their lack of willpower.
As to the opioid power of the food, so what? The human brain works on a pleasure/reward system. Those things necessary to survival tend to be pleasant. If the original design had been otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
The real genius of the original plan, however, was free will, which includes the option of restraint, personal responsibility and, as Colorado's walkers have learned, putting one foot in front of the other.
Even so, I'm putting my money on the lawyers. In the game of greed, God doesn't stand a chance.