By Anupum Pant
Companies which make delicious potato and corn snacks like chips and puffs are huge corporations who have an army of hundreds of psychologists, chemists and other technicians who do science experiments on equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars and spend millions every year to create and improve the snack. To make it taste, smell, sound and feel better. After hundreds of tests and iterations, these companies now probably have been able to construct a marvellous food item which is no less than any other feat of engineering that mankind has endeavoured.
One such food item is cheetos corn puffs. A food scientist, Steven Witherly, after having tested a sample of Cheetos once said:
This is one of the most marvellously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.
And it really is. The corn puffs are designed to go into your mouth, smell and taste amazing and are carefully mastered to give you that satisfying crunch and melt inside. Melt inside, as if making your brain say, that was hardly anything I ate. Before you know, you finish off a whole party pack while watching your favourite movie. And it still doesn’t make you full.
Being full, or not is something your stomach tells your brain (after about 20 minutes it has been full). But the brain is the ultimate master. It can choose to make you feel full, or not.
With Cheetos, you are almost never full. You can keep eating. This ability of this marvellous snack to go in and melt into nothing is seen by your brain as a “vanishing calorie density”. And that is the reason you can keep eating it forever.
More about it [NYTimes]