The Foods That Remember You: How Ultra-Processed Cravings Are Written Into the Brain
You walk past the bakery and your mouth waters.
Not because you’re hungry. Not because you need fuel.
Because something in your brain lights up like a childhood birthday candle.
Smell. Color. Crunch. Sugar.
Suddenly, you’re five years old again, holding a cupcake with pink frosting and sprinkles like edible confetti!! Or maybe you’re twenty-three, drunk at 2AM with fries in your lap and grease on your hands (after that club hop you swore wouldn’t happen again!). Maybe it’s after school. Maybe it’s after heartbreak.
But the food?
The food remembers.
And it’s not nostalgia. It’s not willpower. It’s neuroscience.
Ultra-processed food…your chips, your soda, your packaged cookies and drive-thru nuggets…isn’t just designed to taste good.
It’s engineered to write itself into your hippocampus.
It literally encodes memory into your brain to trigger craving, even when you’re full.
Let’s talk about it.
First, Let’s Get Honest About What We’re Eating
Ultra-processed food isn’t just “bad for you.”
It’s not just “junk” or “occasional treats.” It’s the dominant form of caloric intake in the U.S. and much of the world.
If it has a long shelf life, comes in bright plastic, and contains ingredients you can’t pronounce…chances are, it’s ultra-processed.
We’re not talking about bread or granola. We’re talking about foods that are the end-product of industrial formulations: high-fructose corn syrup, emulsifiers, artificial flavors, seed oils, additives made in laboratories.
These foods are built…not cooked.
They are assembled, like puzzles, to hit all the sensory notes your brain loves:
Sweetness (sugar, real or fake)
Salt (to amplify flavor)
Fat (for mouthfeel)
Crunch or softness (for textural satisfaction)
Color (engineered to signal freshness or indulgence, check out how RFK is trying to change this!)
And they don’t just taste good.
They teach your brain to remember them.
The Hippocampus: Where Hunger Meets Memory
Your hippocampus is the part of your brain responsible for memory and learning.
But it's also deeply involved in appetite regulation. It plays a starring role in how we remember food…what it looked like, how it smelled, how it made us feel.
Which is fine...if the food is real.
But ultra-processed food? It hijacks that system.
It tells your hippocampus:
“This food is not only tasty, but emotionally important.”
And the hippocampus, bless its ancient design, listens.
The Encoding Begins
Here’s what happens:
You eat a bag of cheesy snacks after a stressful day.
Your brain records the combination of high salt, high fat, and satisfying crunch.
You feel temporary relief or pleasure. Dopamine surges.
The hippocampus links that food to that feeling.
Later, even when you're not hungry, your brain will cue you to seek that same snack the next time you're stressed.
It’s a loop.
And the more processed the food is, the stronger and faster the loop forms.
This is why cravings often feel emotional. Because they are. They're stored in the same place where your brain files breakups, music, and your grandmother’s perfume.
The processed food industry figured out how to install itself there.
The Loop You Never Signed Up For
Cravings aren't weakness. They’re strategy.
Your brain is trying to solve a puzzle:
You felt something once. The food made it better. Repeat.
And the food? It’s only too happy to comply.
But this loop is not passive. Ultra-processed food is designed to be hyper-palatable…more stimulating than anything nature can offer. More sugar than fruit. More crunch than carrots. More richness than meat.
It’s a simulation.
A memory machine.
And it wants your loyalty.
The Study That Proved It
In a 2023 study, scientists used brain imaging to show that when participants were exposed to images of ultra-processed foods, their hippocampus lit up like a slot machine.
The signal wasn’t hunger. It was memory.
Recognition.
Reward pathways igniting like firecrackers.
Even people who had just eaten felt craving.
Their brains weren’t responding to need…they were responding to familiarity. The body wasn’t hungry. The brain was reminded.
Why Some Foods Never Haunt You
Here’s something odd: ever notice that spinach doesn’t haunt you?
You don’t crave steamed broccoli in the middle of the night.
You don’t remember the kale salad from last Tuesday with a feverish emotional tug.
That’s not because healthy food is boring. It’s because it doesn’t hack your hippocampus.
Real food nourishes you.
Ultra-processed food brands itself onto you.
Like a marketing campaign inside your neurons.
What Sugar Does to Your Immune System
It gets worse. If you’ve read my post on sugar and your immune system, you already know this:
Excess sugar isn’t just linked to metabolic issues. It shuts down immune function for hours. One sugary binge and your white blood cells go sluggish.
Now imagine craving that food constantly…not because you’re hungry, but because your brain stored it like a good memory.
The immune system suffers. And we call it “lack of willpower.”
But it’s not that. It’s architecture.
It’s why doctors recommend limiting sugar the first 1,000 days of life!
So… What Do You Do?
First: forgive yourself.
You didn’t build this system.
You were born into it.
Grew up with it.
Walked past vending machines and fluorescent-lit food courts designed to prime your hippocampus for lifelong customer loyalty.
Second: start with awareness.
Begin noticing what foods linger in your mind long after eating. Ask yourself:
Do I crave this when I’m full?
Do I associate this food with a specific emotion?
Do I feel relief just by thinking about it?
That’s your brain tipping its hand.
That’s the hippocampus humming the old tune.
What to Try Instead (Sugar Alternatives That Don’t Lie to You)
If you want a way out, check out my article on sugar alternatives.
In it, I cover low-glycemic sweeteners like monk fruit and allulose…ingredients that let you enjoy sweetness without crashing your immune function or hijacking your hippocampus.
They don’t trick your body.
They don’t shout in your brain.
They simply taste sweet, and leave you alone afterward.
Which, honestly, is a gift.
A Book That Changed Everything
If you’re a reader (and you probably are), The End of Craving by Mark Schatzker (get it here) changed how I view ultra-processed food entirely.
It explores how we’ve over-engineered food to be more addictive, and why craving isn’t about indulgence, it’s about memory, chemistry, and evolution crashing into marketing.
It’s smart. It’s readable. And it’ll change your grocery cart.
Healing the Hippocampus
The good news? The brain is plastic.
Your hippocampus can be rewired.
Every time you choose a whole food, every time you pause before indulging, every time you notice without judgment…you’re writing a new neural script.
You’re teaching your brain:
“This is what nourishment feels like.”
“This is what calm feels like.”
“This is what being full actually means.”
It won’t erase the old loops.
But it will soften them.
And one day, you’ll walk past the bakery, and your brain won’t sing.
It’ll whisper.
And you’ll keep walking.
You Deserve Better Than Memory-Engineered Cravings
Food should not be a trap.
It should not leave you haunted.
It should not turn your brain into an emotional marionette.
You deserve food that nourishes. That comforts without controlling. That supports your immune system, not sabotages it.
You deserve memory that’s yours…not implanted by ad agencies and flavor chemists in a boardroom.
And maybe the real revolution is not just what we eat, but how we remember.
