>a handful of foods that seem to promote ongoing consumption
>people are observed consuming huge numbers of calories in kind of a chain-consumption binge
As I said: It has absolutely nothing to do with the foods or how they are processed; it has everything to do with how much people eat of these foods.
Fatty/Salty foods can promote overconsumption, but blaming the foods for a person's lack of self-control is, as I said previously, incredibly foolish.
Sure, food trends may have increased the amount of fatty/salty foods on the market in the past 30 years, and this certainly would contribute to the obesity epidemic. However, the burden ultimately rests on the consumer to ensure that they are not only consuming healthy foods, but that they are consuming healthy portions of these foods compared to the amount of exercise they get daily.
I could easily eat 3 Big Macs for lunch, but I am aware that that would be 1600+ calories, so I don't.
Not everyone has the same self-control/discipline. Exploitation of this fact by food companies is becoming more visible as time goes on. One that immediately springs to mind are the slogans for products such as Pringles: "Once you pop, you can't stop!"
Certain foods cater to, nay exploit, addiction and human behavioral traits. You can't exploit weaknesses in the human psyche and then say "it's their own fault," without assuming any responsibility or blame.
That's like blaming a drug addict entirely for becoming addicted to crack and not apportioning any of the blame to the dealer... not everything is entirely the fault of the... I'm struggling for a better word than victim, but that's not really the word I mean. Most addicts are at first desensitized, then conditioned and then coerced into trying what they become addicted to long before they become addicted.
Food companies have been slated to add chemicals into their food that have been found to correlate with addiction, to keep people coming back for their product. The media desensitizes, conditions and coerces people into trying their product. Portions are decided not based on what is a scientifically proportionate amount of food, but what is most profitable or will make the "client" keep coming back for more - to feed the addiction - in exactly the same way that dealers cut their drugs with chemicals that feed addiction and keep the addict coming back for more - even though many of them want desperately to quit.
What does this even mean? Barring the more obvious "correlation != causation" issue here, this seems... logically fuzzy at best, and also reeks a bit of the "chemicals are bad" fad. Do you happen to have examples of such chemicals that "have been found [by whom?] to correlate [how strongly?] with addiction [to themselves? to something else? to what?]"?
Why and how have people changed to have less self-control in the past 30-40 years?
The most obvious answer is the proliferation of food that is extremely calorically dense and designed to promote fast and heavy consumption.
Or you could wave your hands and say "People these days are just irresponsible!"
Could it not be both? Food may have gotten more unhealthy, but people have also grown more complacent with what and how much they put into their bodies. You can't expect everyone else to coach you on how to eat healthy, you must do it yourself.
c.f. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary...
burden ultimately rests on the consumer
Rests on the overworked, underpaid, isolated in food deserts, raising kids in the same environment, consumers. The average human isn't researching nutrition science, they just want to be happy. They eat what tastes good, have no time to exercise—they drive 3 hours a day—and then they go back to eating what tastes good.
Humans aren't brain-rational actors, they are gut-rational actors, and the gut is extremely short sighted and happy to offload trillions in future medical expenses onto future members of society (not to mention the national security risk of having 80% of your population rolling around in Jazzy Scooters and individually running up over a million dollars in weight-related medical bills in their lifetime).
Care to explain what you mean by this?
http://www.alternet.org/5-unhealthy-foods-engineered-be-addi...
Obviously you will be able to discern which are credible and which are not. That was sarcasm/cynicism, because it's really hard to discern what is credible, to what degree and what the motive of the author was. There is much propaganda on both sides of the fence, so at this point, it's pretty tough, beyond a religious debate to have any objective discussion.
The food industry specifically targets the "bliss point"[1] when figuring out the formula for snack foods.
