Designed Desire: The Driver of Modern Eating (Part II)

Progress And Its Consequences

At night, when the doorbell rings and the bag of food arrives, it feels less like a meal and more like a promise fulfilled.

Processed food, rich in dopamine design, has become the driver of modern eating patterns and a major cause of obesity.
Earlier generations never knew this pull: constant availability of food designed to spark desire.

Once, fast food meant driving to a window. Today, you don’t need to leave your home. Someone else makes the trip and the meal arrives at your door.

The Netherlands stood at the forefront of this change. Just Eat Takeaway, a Dutch company, pioneered the habit. Its international growth was a worldwide sign of humanity’s appetite. Yet progress, as always, carries its own consequences.

Modern times gave us speed and romance with food itself, designed with as much care as the apps that deliver it.

Falling Out of Love with Food

Eating has grown so serious that nourishment has become second place for the West. Hard-earned resources are going towards chasing processed food through clicks on a screen.

It mirrors the feeling of falling in love. Love makes you take steps: getting hair and nails done, saving money, waiting for the WhatsApp message that makes the heart race.
Over time, the ritual itself becomes the desire.

Modern eating works the same way. Ordering food has become its own anticipation. Scrolling through menus, clicking the orange “order” button, counting the minutes until the doorbell rings.

Routines once tied to dating are now mirrored in food, each designed for speed and desire.
As touched in Part I, the same truth holds: desire is conditioned by anticipation. Often we are more in love with the waiting, the build-up, than with the thing itself.

The revelation of dopamine’s design can open into knowledge, not tighten into addiction. Dopamine was designed into these routines to hook attention. Yet the same knowledge can become strength.

Just as falling out of love is letting anticipation fade, so too is falling out of love with food.
Skip the buildup routine. Break the readiness. Without the butterflies, the date feels different. Without the routine, the food does too.

The truth is this: habits do not define us. But consciously chosen habits, recognized, shaped, replaced, can.

Replacing Dopamine Rewards

When anticipation loses its hold, the steps it once claimed can be redirected. Here lies the opportunity.

What if, instead of the rush of delivery, you used the same euros each time for something visible and lasting: that repair waiting, a deluxe mattress for daily good sleep.
Small things, maybe, but they remind you daily of a different choice.

Habits don’t vanish. They are replaced. A bad habit need not define you, but a good one should.
Each repeated step fits the identity of who you are becoming. A good habit is not what you do, but who you are, choice after choice.

Perhaps the identity you want is not the one pulled by delivery apps or by the smell of fries at the station, but the one strengthened by self-control and the pride of visible wins.

Over time, new rewards replace designed desire.
Biology confirms it: the brain can rewire itself at thirty or at forty-seven. New habits, once chosen, become automatic.
Change may not always be easy, but it is always possible.

Replacing anticipation routines is not a trick. It is proof. The moment you choose differently, change has already begun.

Instead of the quick hit of dopamine, you feel the strength of mastery in time, money, and self.
That is the kind of anticipation worthy of joy in daily time.

The Turning Point

Processed food is not the enemy. A life of simple foods, potatoes, vegetables, with the occasional sweet, is very rewarding for some.

For many, the challenge is not elimination, but knowing how much, when, and when not. The task is to return processed food to its rightful place: controlled, fitting the moment, part of life but not its driver.

Then the story has truly turned, and the label of “modern eater” becomes a distant trait, no longer fitting who you are.
Food stops being the commander in chief.