

One of the authors, Prof Ashley Gearhardt of the University of Michigan, a clinical psychologist specialising in addiction, said her patients made the same links: “They would say, ‘I feel addicted to this stuff, I crave it – I used to smoke cigarettes [and] now I have the same habit but it’s with soda and doughnuts. I know it’s killing me; I want to quit, but I can’t.’”
Sometimes I wish there was a devastating famine, and 100 of millions of us would starve to death so we’d have to start using the old definition of “kill” again, and appreciate the futuristic utopian we once had. We need to stop scrutinizing the actuary tables for hidden horrors, look up, look around, eat a cheeseburger, have an after meal cigarette and relish the wonderous paradise in which we all live.






My guess would be evolution. Those horses that let us ride them were fed well and cared for by humans and then mated with similar horses to make more and more of the same. Those that didn’t let us ride them had to fight for their own food and fight for their own mates and didn’t multiply as much. So we essentially happened upon a couple of horses that enjoyed hauling us around, told them to kiss each other, and we got more. Repeat and rinse for tens of thousands of year.