Ever feel like your battle with weight loss is a fight you can’t win, no matter the amount of healthy eating? You’re not lazy, and you don’t lack willpower—you’ve been set up to fail by a food system that has hijacked your biology.

In this powerful episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, I sit down with the ultimate insider, Dr. David Kessler—a physician, lawyer, and the former FDA Commissioner who famously took on Big Tobacco and won. Dr. Kessler reveals his own 40-pound weight gain after leading the White House COVID-19 response and how it led him to uncover the truth about our metabolic crisis.

We uncover how the food industry has engineered an alternate universe of ultra-processed foods designed to be addictive, creating a "food carnival" that keeps us coming back for more. Dr. Kessler also unveils his groundbreaking petition to the FDA—a brilliant legal strategy that uses the food industry's own rules against them to potentially transform our food supply forever.

This conversation is a masterclass in the science of food addiction, the failure of public policy, and the practical steps we can all take to finally reclaim our health.

In this episode, we dive into:

Why Dr. Kessler, former head of the FDA, couldn't control his own weight

The science of food addiction and how dopamine circuits in your brain get hijacked

How "toxic" visceral fat is the true cause of heart failure, diabetes, and even dementia

The legal loophole ("GRAS") that allows harmful ingredients in our food

Dr. Kessler’s plan to hold the food industry accountable, just like Big Tobacco

:::spoiler summerizer

“Why We Can’t Lose Weight (and What to Do About It)” — Summary (from the video only)

Speaker

• Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler discusses why weight loss is so difficult and what can help.

Core Thesis

• The modern food environment exploits hard-wired biology (reward, learning, and metabolic responses), making persistent overeating common. Sustainable weight control requires changing that environment and the types of foods we routinely encounter.

How Modern Food Hijacks Biology

• Industrially formulated foods combine sugar, fat, and salt with specific textures and cues (smell, crunch, mouthfeel) to create powerful reward signals.
• These cues trigger anticipatory (cephalic) responses and reinforce habit loops that drive “conditioned hyper-eating.”
• Dopamine and related learning pathways are repeatedly engaged, increasing cue-reactivity and making restraint progressively harder in everyday settings saturated with these foods.

Food Addiction Framework (Yale Food Addiction Scale)

• A “food addiction” phenotype can be measured behaviorally (e.g., loss of control, continued use despite harm).
• Cited figure: a large population study estimates roughly 14% of people globally (including adolescents) meet criteria for food addiction by the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) or its updated version.
• The term is used to describe a behavioral pattern; it’s not a moral failing but a predictable result of exposure to engineered, highly rewarding foods.

Papers referenced in the video

• YFAS (original development): 10.1016/j.appet.2009.09.001
• YFAS 2.0 (updated measure): 10.1037/adb0000098

Ultra-Processed Food (UPF) Classification

• The video references the Brazilian/NOVA framework for classifying foods, noting debates about definitions but emphasizing that the most highly processed products consistently concentrate sugar/fat/salt and sensory engineering.
• The gist: regardless of taxonomy debates, the most ultra-processed items repeatedly elicit strong reward and drive passive overconsumption.

Paper referenced in the video

• NOVA overview (how to identify ultra-processed foods): 10.1017/S1368980018003762

Why Willpower Alone Fails

• Constant exposure to cues (packaging, availability, portion size, placement) overwhelms conscious control.
• Once patterns of cue → craving → consumption are established, everyday environments reliably replay them.

Medications and Biology

• GLP-1–based therapies are discussed as biological tools that can reduce appetite and cravings.
• They can help interrupt compulsive patterns, but environment and food choices still matter; medication alone does not “fix” the food environment that trained the behavior.

Practical Levers Highlighted

• Change the food environment: make highly engineered, ultra-palatable products less available and less salient in daily life.
• Structure defaults toward minimally processed foods to lower cue-reactivity.
• Portion and placement: smaller default portions; keep trigger foods out of immediate reach/sight.
• Routine over willpower: build predictable eating patterns that reduce exposure to provocative cues.

Policy/Regulatory Perspective

• Past successes (e.g., around tobacco) show that policy can reshape environments (labeling, marketing limits, availability, pricing signals).
• Similar population-level measures could reduce exposure to the most problematic formulations without banning foods outright.
• Acknowledges the tension between industry incentives and public health, and the need for evidence-based standards that reflect modern food engineering and its effects on behavior.

Open Questions Noted

• How to operationalize definitions that capture the true drivers of overconsumption (beyond simple nutrient lists).
• Where to draw policy lines that are practical, fair, and actually reduce cue-driven overeating.
• How medical therapies, nutrition strategies, and policy can synergize to deliver durable weight control at scale.

:::

I'm definitely food addictive. I would guess that the only slight healthy food I eat on a regular basis is sushi.

Luckily, I know I'd suffocate if I just buried my face in a big bowl of Tostitos Queso. But, it's my "crack".

Crack indeed!