Take a chicken. Roast it, with vegetables. Include some lightly steamed vegetables. Have some kind of gravy. If you really want it have some kind of honey glazing for the carrots.
That's a reasonably healthy meal.
Take the same chicken. Take as much meat off it as you can, and sell that as chicken breast etc. Mechanically recover other bits of meat from the carcass. Shape it into a tiny mouthsize bite, with salt and spices and fat and filler. Then cover it in a breadcrumb coating. Deep fry it. (That crumb coating soaks up the oils.) Serve it with a sugary-sauce. You now have something which is much cheaper than the roast chicken; it's much easier to eat; it's weirdly tasty; but it's also weirdly not satisfying.
And the reason this is done is not to create the best tasting food possible (the motivation behind Michelin starred chefs) but to cuts costs while getting people to buy more. They don't care about the pleasure you get - they only want your money.
Or take the same chicken, cover it in salt, buttermilk, and highly processed white flour, then fry it in duck fat like the New York Times does in this recipe:
Is it conspiracy that they use some of the same techniques as the processed food industry, or is it just those are some of the basic techniques to make food taste good.
Look at that recipe - you have big bits of meat, with bones, and some salt / fat coating. You take a bite, and you chew it, and then you have to fiddle about getting bits off the bone.
Popcorn chicken is tiny. You pop one in, and you're reaching for the next one as you're chewing the first.
The recipe uses big bits of chicken. Popcorn chicken uses the bits of the carcass that would normally have been used for soup.
There are different ratios of fat to meat content - popcorn chicken has a lot more fat, because it has a lot more coating.
Both of them are tasty, but one has been engineered to be maximally tasty at minimal cost.
Those are good points. The confluence of maximally tasty and minimal cost can leads to very unhealthy food. I just don't like the intent that is implied when the article uses inflammatory phrases like science of addiction or designed to addict.
molecular gastronomy does to some extent end up making junk food sometimes, using the same techniques and ingredients. But not many people can afford to get obese on it.
That's a reasonably healthy meal.
Take the same chicken. Take as much meat off it as you can, and sell that as chicken breast etc. Mechanically recover other bits of meat from the carcass. Shape it into a tiny mouthsize bite, with salt and spices and fat and filler. Then cover it in a breadcrumb coating. Deep fry it. (That crumb coating soaks up the oils.) Serve it with a sugary-sauce. You now have something which is much cheaper than the roast chicken; it's much easier to eat; it's weirdly tasty; but it's also weirdly not satisfying.
And the reason this is done is not to create the best tasting food possible (the motivation behind Michelin starred chefs) but to cuts costs while getting people to buy more. They don't care about the pleasure you get - they only want your money.