Ever feel like no matter what you eat, you’re never truly satisfied?
You’re not alone. In today’s world, food companies have mastered the art of engineering products that keep you hooked and coming back for more.
But what if you could break free from this cycle?
In this article, we’ll delve into the inner workings of our Food Addiction-Satiety Algorithm. This powerful tool quantifies the addictive properties of foods vs their ability to satisfy hunger without overeating, all thanks to the power of data science.
Highlights
- Our cravings are not linear. Your appetite works to optimise the balance of nutrients vs energy.
- Big Food companies engineer their products to hit our nutrient bliss points, the concentration of each nutrient that aligns with maximum consumption and profit.
- Getting more than each nutrient’s bliss point (minimum) concentration triggers sensory-specific satiety.
- Using six hundred thousand days of food intake data from free-living people, I cracked the secret code to reveal precisely how ultra-processed foods keep us hooked and how we can escape this trap to quiet the food noise and feel satisfied with our food.
Your Cravings are Not Linear
Central to our algorithm is the revelation of the non-linear relationship between the nutrients in our food and our cravings.
Your appetite constantly works to ensure your body gets the right balance of nutrients and energy to thrive. A little is good, but swinging to extremes is usually not optimal.
Linear thinking — black vs white, good vs evil, wrong vs right — is easy, so it’s our default.
Hence, most nutrition arguments revolve around which nutrient is “good” vs “bad” (e.g. carbs vs fat, saturated fat vs unsaturated fat) or diet (e.g. vegan vs carnivore).
But the reality is that your body is always trying to achieve the “Goldilocks” nutrient balance—not too much, not too little, but just right.
Cravings are Critical to Our Survival
Historically, humans thrived in environments where our fuel sources varied with the seasons and geography, with more fats closer to the poles or in winter and more carbs near the equator or in summer. The nutrients we get from the different foods available in each season also cycle.
As you can see in the chart below, even today, energy sources swing to extremes in winter and summer. Seasonal changes brought periods of feasting, like the harvest festivals that many still celebrate today (e.g., Thanksgiving in autumn and Easter in Spring). In spring and autumn, the energy sources cross over, and we get the perfect blend that puts our dopamine circuits into overdrive.
These were times when foods were abundant, and indulging made sense because resources would soon become scarce again. Overeating during these special times and getting fat was critical to survive the coming winter.
The Manipulation of Our Hunger for Profit
But in the centre aisle of our supermarket, winter never comes. It’s hard to escape the array of tasty and colourful foods precisely engineered to keep us eating more year-round.
Modern food companies have used data science to exploit our instincts. By optimising foods to hit multiple nutrient’ bliss points,’ they’ve created hyper-profitable, addictive products that keep us consuming year-round. These bliss points are specific concentrations of nutrients—like sugar, fat, salt, and carbs—that maximise our desire to eat more.
Our strong attraction to foods that hit our bliss points was a survival superpower when food was scarce, but in our modern food environment, when energy is abundant, it’s our Achilles heel.
For more on the nutrient ‘bliss points’, see The Science of Bliss Points in Food: Unlocking the Secret to Addiction.
But there is hope. Armed with data science, we can fight back against the mega companies that are getting rich from our metabolic misery. We can use the same data to take back control of our hunger and eating choices.
The First Stop is Protein
It’s widely accepted that protein is a crucial factor in the satiety equation. Increasing the percentage of energy from protein is a solid strategy for feeling fuller on fewer calories.
While we have intense cravings for protein when we don’t get enough, we also have a robust sensory-specific satiety response when we get more than we need. Hence, it’s almost impossible to overeat protein over the long term.
The chart below illustrates the relationship between protein (%) and energy intake using a simple linear model (i.e., protein leverage).
However, a linear relationship between protein percentage and energy intake doesn’t explain everything. There are many exceptions, like:
- individuals on very low-protein diets who don’t overeat (e.g. fruitarians or whole food plant-based) or
- those who follow very low-protein, high-fat diets can’t stop eating lean steak and gain weight.
When we model this relationship non-linearly, we capture these “black swan” cases and improve our ability to predict our satiety response to protein in our food. Interestingly, it also highlights the bliss point at 15% protein, typical of ultra-processed food designed to maximise profit.
Modelling our cravings non-linearly also highlights a bliss point of 50% for carbs, 20% for sugar, 34% for fat and 3000 mg/2000 calories for sodium, as shown in the charts below.
Interestingly, when we double-click on fat, we see that a similar blend of each of the fats (in a way that is rare in natural whole foods) aligns with eating a lot more.
With this analysis, we’ve cracked Big Food’s secret code for keeping us hooked—the perfect blend of sugar, fat, salt, and carbohydrates.
Unfortunately, although we’ve identified the problem, simply understanding the bliss points alone doesn’t help us escape the bliss point addiction trap.
So what’s the secret?
The key to escaping food addiction is to move beyond the nutrient bliss points and trigger sensory-specific satiety with nutrient-dense, high-satiety foods and meals that provide more nutrients needed to thrive without excess energy.
The Synergistic Nutrient Avengers
To put it another way, we need a higher concentration of nutrients per calorie.
While all of the essential nutrients are important, through extensive data mining, we’ve identified thirteen nutritional parameters that more accurately predict how much you’ll eat:
- Protein Percentage
- Monounsaturated Fats (MUFA)
- Saturated Fats (SFA)
- Sugar
- Potassium
- Calcium
- Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin)
- Iron
- Fiber
- Vitamin C
- Energy Density
- Sodium
- Total Fat
Using six hundred thousand days of food logging data, we also identified how we can combine these thirteen factors to accurately predict how much we’ll eat based on what we eat.
The table below shows each nutrient’s correlation coefficient (r) with daily energy intake (note the improvement when we use the non-linear model).
| nutrient | r (linear) | r (non-linear) |
| protein (%) | 0.24 | 0.25 |
| sugar | 0.21 | 0.23 |
| potassium | 0.20 | 0.23 |
| calcium | 0.15 | 0.22 |
| fibre | 0.17 | 0.21 |
| vitamin B2 | 0.17 | 0.20 |
| sodium | 0.13 | 0.19 |
| iron | 0.15 | 0.15 |
| MUFA | 0.11 | 0.14 |
| energy density | 0.12 | 0.14 |
| vitamin C | 0.05 | 0.13 |
| fat | 0.04 | 0.13 |
| SFA | 0.00 | 0.05 |
| combined | 0.41 |
Rather than relying on just one nutrient to trigger satiety, we leverage the power of all of them to achieve a correlation coefficient of 0.41—substantially higher than any single nutrient alone.
The Significance of the Findings
While a correlation coefficient of 0.41 might not seem overwhelmingly high, keep in mind that many factors influence how much energy we need, like:
- such as body weight,
- activity level, and
- muscle mass.
Our model explains 41% of the variation in how much you’ll eat without knowing anything about you. Because our model is calibrated using six hundred thousand days of data, the p-value is 0 (i.e., it is not due to chance).
To further understand each nutrient’s relative significance, I ran a t-statistics test. As you can see, we get a high t-stat for all nutrients, indicating that the non-linear relationship is not due to chance.
| nutrient | t-stat |
| protein | 203 |
| MUFA | 183 |
| SFA | 180 |
| Sugar | 171 |
| potassium | 165 |
| calcium | 155 |
| riboflavin (B2) | 147 |
| iron | 117 |
| vitamin C | 110 |
| fibre | 110 |
| energy density | 100 |
| sodium | 98 |
| total fat | 40 |
| combined | 342 |
When combined, the t-statistic reaches an astonishing 342, suggesting a strong and statistically significant relationship between predicted and actual calorie intake. A t-statistic of 4.5 would be an excellent result in a randomised controlled clinical trial. But using big data, we can take our understanding of the synergistic nutritional properties of our food to a whole new level!
After six years of obsessing over refining our data-driven addiction-satiety algorithm, as you can imagine, I was thrilled with this outcome.
Break Free from Food Addiction
While some will want to hold out for a randomised controlled inpatient trial, the massive dataset from people worldwide gives us some compelling insights into the relationship between what we eat and how much we eat.
And I’m not holding my breath for Big Food to fund a study with more than 1643 person-years of data to unveil the secret to their addictive business model.
Armed with these insights, you no longer have to let Big Food control monopolise your health for profit. By understanding the hidden drivers of your cravings, you can take back control, feel more satisfied, and make food choices that align with your long-term health.
Recognising that your appetite seeks a balance of nutrients allows you to choose foods that give you more than the minimum and push you beyond the bliss point—triggering satiety rather than addiction.
Opt for nutrient-dense, high-satiety foods that provide the vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients your body needs without excess energy. These foods help satisfy your body’s nutritional requirements, reducing cravings and the likelihood of overeating.
Conclusion
The insights from our Food Addiction-Satiety Algorithm offer a powerful tool for understanding the complex relationship between nutrients, satiety, and food cravings.
By recognising the non-linear nature of our appetites and how modern foods manipulate bliss points, we can make more informed choices.
Empowering ourselves with this knowledge is critical to breaking free from foods engineered to be addictive, hyper-palatable and hyperprofitable.
Focusing on levelling up the nutrient content of your food and moving beyond the bliss point to a diet packed with the essential nutrients we crave can achieve long-term dietary satisfaction and improve our overall health.
Start by incorporating various nutrient-rich foods into your diet, and pay attention to how they make you feel. Over time, you’ll crave these wholesome foods and feel more satisfied after meals.
Appendix: What Should I Eat?
If you’re not a data nerd (like me) and want to know what to eat, I’ve included the craving-satiety curves for each nutrient that triggers satiety, along with some foods that will help you move beyond the bliss point to satiety nirvana.
If you’re getting less than the bliss point, focus on the high-nutrient infographics. They will give you more of that nutrient per serving. But to get beyond the bliss point and to a higher concentration of these nutrients, focus on nutrient-rich infographics.
As you can see, there is a wide range of food choices that can trigger satiety without subscribing to one particular diet.
Protein
Potassium
Calcium
Iron
Vitamin B2
Vitamin C
Great work Marty. This message on the impact of protein and minerals on energy consumption is a vital one. Thank you for all you do.
Thanks so much! It’s been fun to dig into the data.