What we know about the health risks of ultra-processed foods

> Kevin Hall, a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health, where he studies obesity and diabetes

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> Both groups were served twice as many calories as they would need to maintain their body weight, and they were told to eat as much or as little as they wanted. Both diets were nutritionally matched, so each meal contained essentially the same total amount of fat, sugar, salt, fiber, carbohydrates and protein.

> The results took Hall by surprise.

> "I had sort of expected that ... there wouldn't be any difference," says Hall.

Is Hall a bit incompetent? If you serve twice as many calories as necessary of unprocessed food vs food that has been engineered to be yummy, everything else being equal, OF COURSE that people who aren't paying attention are more likely to overeat the yummy food. It's embarassing that this person is a senior investigator in obesity. He doesn't understand the most basic fact about food which is that most people most of the time eat for pleasure, and therefore everything else being equal, people will eat more of the food that is more pleasurable.