It’s no surprise that many of the highly processed foods we consume pack just as much of a dopamine punch as alcohol, drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll. As restaurants and food-product businesses compete for our loyalty, the concentrations of flavor enhancers in what we now know as “hyperpalatable” foods have skyrocketed. But what exactly are flavor enhancers and how do they cause food cravings? Here we talk about these very products and describe how to regain control over our addictive eating habits. We can not only take back our independence from food cravings, but we can also help those we work with do the same!

While you may already know that dopamine, aka the “pleasure chemical,” functions as an important neurotransmitter, or messenger between neurons, you may not know that the release of dopamine in the brain often starts at the tongue.

Our tongue is an oasis of sensory receptors that absorb distinct flavor profiles, textures, and more. Our tongue’s taste buds act as a gateway that receives information from our food and translates it into both pleasurable and non-pleasurable signals. These signals suggest to our body which foods can either enhance or detract from our living experience.

Each of us has a pathway that connects the taste buds on our tongue to dopamine producing cells in our brain. This pathway is known as the gustatory system, and it is where pleasure from eating food starts. When we immerse our tongue in an experience with hyper-concentrated sugar, salt, or carbohydrates (i.e. hyperpalatable foods), dopamine levels surge in the part of our brain known as the nucleus........

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