Our brains' rewards systems have been captured and conditioned as part of this system
UPF manufacturers use sugar, fat, salt, targeted advertising, and strategic placement to trigger cravings and override natural fullness signals in consumers. New Zealanders consume approximately half their diet as ultra-processed foods, contributing to rising obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates matching other developed nations.
- University of Auckland study reviewed ten years of international research on ultra-processed food design and marketing
- New Zealanders consume approximately half their diet as ultra-processed foods
- Over 120 countries have implemented sugar-sweetened beverage taxes; New Zealand has zero UPF-reduction policies
- Food companies use sugar, fat, salt, targeted advertising, strategic placement, and processing methods that suppress fullness signals
University of Auckland research shows ultra-processed food companies systematically design products and marketing to exploit human biology and psychology, driving overconsumption. The study identifies reinforcing feedback loops that keep populations hooked despite known health risks.
A team of researchers at the University of Auckland has spent the last decade studying how the food industry keeps people eating products they know are bad for them. What they found is unsettling: the system is not accidental. It is engineered.
Dr Joshua Clark led the effort to map out exactly how this works. His team reviewed a decade of international research, then brought together experts in food science, marketing, and systems thinking for a two-day workshop to build detailed diagrams of the machinery. The result, published in Obesity Reviews, reveals something that feels obvious once you see it laid out: ultra-processed food companies have built reinforcing loops that drive consumption and purchasing. "Our biology and our behaviour are at the centre of this system, which goes some way to explaining why, as populations, we are pretty hooked on these foods," Clark says. "These UPF manufacturers are very clever at this, because it makes them money."
The tactics are numerous and interconnected. Companies engineer their products with combinations of sugar, fat, and salt that trigger cravings and suppress the body's natural signals of fullness. They harvest people's online data to target advertising with precision. They deploy cartoons and characters designed to appeal to children. They build loyalty through branding. They place outlets strategically near schools and in neighborhoods where ultra-processed food consumption is already high. Inside stores, they position products in high-traffic zones where shoppers are most likely to grab them. The processing methods themselves are calibrated to override the body's own appetite regulation. It is not one tactic. It is a system.
New Zealanders, like people in other developed nations, now consume roughly half their diet as ultra-processed foods. A recent global report in the Lancet linked this consumption to rising rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses. The question is whether this is the inevitable result of modern life, or something that can be interrupted. Clark and his colleagues argue it is the latter. They point out that the food industry learned crucial lessons from the tobacco industry in the 1980s and 1990s. Tobacco companies bought food and drink businesses and applied their knowledge of flavor science and child-focused marketing to create products engineered to trigger strong reward responses in the brain. Combined with chemical flavorings, these products became what researchers call "hyper palatable"—designed to be over-eaten.
The research highlights how people become trapped. Clark describes it plainly: "Many of these exploit parts of our human biology, psychology, behaviours and social patterns to drive purchasing and consumption of their products. Our social norms, daily routines, cultural practices, taste preferences and even our brains' rewards systems have been captured and conditioned as part of this system to make us crave and overconsume UPFs, meanwhile allowing the health harms as collateral damage."
What makes this moment significant is that solutions exist. More than 120 countries have implemented sugar-sweetened beverage taxes. Brazil limits ultra-processed foods in school programs. Chile prohibits marketing of high-salt, high-fat, or high-sugar products to children. Colombia taxes ultra-processed products and sugary drinks. Front-of-pack nutrition warning labels have been adopted in multiple jurisdictions. The World Health Organization has published recommendations for all of these interventions.
New Zealand has implemented none of them. Professor Boyd Swinburn, a population nutrition researcher and co-author of the study, is direct about this: "Half the world has taxes on sugary drinks but for some reason, political timidity and fear of the UPF industry has meant that we have zero strategies in place to deal with our epidemic of rising obesity."
Clark sees the research as an opportunity. "I think shining a light on this is an opportunity to get people to care about it as an issue and to ask, advocate, and demand for governmental policy action to disrupt this system and rebuild a food environment that serves and nourishes us, not the balance sheets of international corporations." The question now is whether that light will be bright enough to move policy, or whether the system will continue to operate as designed.
Notable Quotes
These UPF manufacturers are very clever at this, because it makes them money.— Dr Joshua Clark, University of Auckland
Half the world has taxes on sugary drinks but for some reason, political timidity and fear of the UPF industry has meant that we have zero strategies in place to deal with our epidemic of rising obesity.— Professor Boyd Swinburn, population nutrition researcher
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
So the study is saying these companies are deliberately making food addictive?
Not in the way a drug dealer does, but yes—they're systematically designing products and marketing to exploit how human brains and bodies actually work. They're using sugar, fat, salt, and processing methods that suppress fullness signals. It's intentional.
But couldn't someone just choose not to eat it?
That's the trap the research identifies. It's not really a fair choice when the system is stacked. The products are everywhere—near schools, in high-traffic store zones. Your data is being used to target ads at you. Kids see cartoon characters. Your taste preferences have been shaped by years of exposure. It's not one thing you can resist; it's a whole environment.
Why hasn't New Zealand done anything about this if other countries have?
That's the frustrating part. Over 120 countries have sugar taxes. Brazil, Chile, Colombia—they've all moved. But New Zealand has zero policies in place. The researchers point to political timidity and fear of the industry's influence. It's not that solutions don't exist; it's that they haven't been implemented here.
What would actually change things?
The study points to what's worked elsewhere: taxes on sugary drinks, restrictions on advertising to children, clear front-of-pack labeling, transparency about industry lobbying. These aren't radical ideas. They're proven. The question is whether enough people will care enough to demand them.
Is this just about willpower then?
No. That's the whole point. The researchers found that our social norms, daily routines, even our brain's reward systems have been captured by this system. Asking people to have more willpower misses the fact that the environment itself has been engineered against them. You can't willpower your way out of a system designed to trap you.