> When was the last time you heard somebody (including yourself) say they feel better after eating fast food?

These foods are designed to push the yum button with a carefully chosen mix of fat, salt, carbs, umami components, sugar, protein.

It's not spaced out the way it would be eating the same ingredients slowly as a Greek salad with lamb, pita and feta, but the ingredient lists are not dissimilar, lamb for beef. The point is that ultra processed food inputs mainline all of the positive experience into a remarkably brief period of time.

Fred Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth wrote about this in "the space merchants" in 1952. I don't think they expected it to come true inside their decade, but the seeds were laid by Ray Kroc and others across that time.

I don't deny your reasoning but I kind of say you're arriving at a rejection of the yum impact a long way after you've been hooked in.