Why do some foods feel difficult to stop eating, while others can be highly enjoyable without prompting the same tendency to overconsume? Answering this requires a clearer understanding of food reward, including the distinction between liking a food, wanting it, and perceiving it as easy to overeat.

In this episode, we examine how nutritional composition, sensory characteristics, learned beliefs and the eating context may shape hedonic overeating. It also considers the limits of using broad food categories to explain complex eating behaviour.

Discussing all this is Professor Graham Finlayson, professor of Psychobiology at the University of Leeds, whose research focuses on human appetite, food reward and the psychological processes involved in eating behaviour and weight control.

• [04:02] Prof. Finlayson's research
• [06:06] Food reward
• [07:13] Liking versus wanting
• [12:43] Measuring wanting in research
• [15:27] Does wanting predict overeating?
• [16:36] Study on hedonic overeating
• [23:19] Perception and context effects
• [26:24] Does ultra processing classification add anything?
• [36:09] Key takeaways and future work
• [40:35] Premium key ideas

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• Study: Finlayson et al., 2025 – Food-level predictors of self-reported liking and hedonic overeating: Putting ultra-processed foods in context