What if the key to understanding your relationship with food isn't willpower — it's neuroscience? In this fascinating episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Dr. Rachel Herz, neuroscientist, leading expert on the psychology of smell, and author of Why You Eat What You Eat and That's Disgusting. From the evolutionary roots of disgust to why ultra-processed foods bypass our natural aversion responses, this conversation will genuinely change how you think about what ends up on your plate — and in your mouth.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• Why disgust is almost entirely learned — and what the one innate exception is
• The neuroanatomy of smell and why scent is so deeply tied to emotion and memory
• How one bad experience with a food can create a lifelong aversion (one-trial learning)
• The difference between disgust and fear — and why that distinction matters for disordered eating
• Why non-tasters may be more prone to overeating than super tasters
• How ultra-processed food is engineered to bypass our natural "this isn't real food" signals
• Whether disgust could be a therapeutic tool in changing our relationship with UPFs
• Why Dr. Herz believes disordered eating is psychological and behavioral — and where she and the Food Junkies team respectfully differ on the addiction model
• Practical, science-backed strategies for becoming more intentional around eating

About Dr. Rachel Herz

Dr. Rachel Herz is a neuroscientist and faculty member at Brown University, widely regarded as the world's leading expert on the psychology of smell. She is a TED 2019 and TEDx 2024 speaker, has published 108 peer-reviewed research articles, and serves as an expert witness in legal cases involving smell. She is the incoming president of the International Society of Neural Gastronomy.

Her books include:

• Sensation and Perception (widely used neuroscience textbook)
• That's Disgusting: Unveiling the Mysteries of Repulsion — a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
• Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food — named among the best food books of 2018 by Smithsonian and The New Yorker

Connect with Dr. Rachel Herz

🌐 rachelherz.com

Connect with Food Junkies

🎙️Food Junkies Podcast — available on all major platforms

🌐 foodjunkiespodcast.com

▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FoodJunkiesPodcast

📘 Sugar-Free For Life: I'm Sweet Enough FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SugarFreeForLife

✨ Back-to-Basics Workshop: https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/back-to-basics

The Food Junkies Podcast is hosted by Dr. Vera Tarman, Molly Painschab, and Clarissa Kennedy. We are dedicated to honest, evidence-informed conversations about food addiction, ultra-processed food use disorder, and recovery.

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.

Are you highly sensitive — and secretly using food to manage a world that feels like too much?

In this episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Esther Kane, MSW, a British Columbia-based psychotherapist with nearly 30 years of experience helping highly sensitive people (HSPs) break free from emotional eating and food addiction. Esther isn't just a clinician — she's an HSP herself who nearly died from an eating disorder and has spent decades figuring out what works.

If you've ever been told you're "too sensitive," struggled to explain why food feels like your only relief, or burned out trying to take care of everyone but yourself — this one's for you.

🕐 In This Episode

What is a Highly Sensitive Person? Based on 40+ years of research by Dr. Elaine Aron, HSPs make up 15–20% of the population. Their nervous systems process everything more deeply — emotions, sensory input, other people's pain. It's not a disorder. It's a biological trait. And it comes with superpowers most people never develop.

Why HSPs are so vulnerable to food addiction The world is chronically overstimulating for HSPs. Food numbs the overwhelm. It turns the volume down. Add in chronic people-pleasing, self-abandonment, absorbing everyone else's emotions, and being told your whole life that you're "too much" and food addiction makes complete sense as a survival strategy.

What recovery looks like for HSPs Esther doesn't start with the food. She starts with the nervous system. You can't take away someone's coping mechanism until they have something else to hold onto. She walks through the somatic tools, boundary work, and root-cause healing that move the needle for highly sensitive people.

🎙️ Connect with Esther Kane

• 🌐 estherkane.com
• 📺 YouTube: Compassionate Conversations

👇 Are YOU a highly sensitive person?

Drop a 🙋 in the comments if this episode described you — or share it with someone who has always been told they feel too much. They need to hear this.

Subscribe so you never miss an episode of Food Junkies — real conversations about food addiction, recovery, and what it takes to heal.

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.

What does it take to turn personal pain into policy change? In this episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Chérie St. Arnauld, Executive Director of Metabolic Revolution and a passionate advocate for metabolic health, to explore the power of grassroots mobilization in the fight against ultra-processed foods.

Chérie grew up in a household shaped by economic constraints and ultra-processed food. It was her sister's cancer diagnosis, and the radical dietary intervention that gave her 10 more years of life, that forever changed how Chérie understood the relationship between food and healing. Today, she's channeling that lived experience into one of the most dynamic grassroots organizations in the metabolic health space.

In this conversation, Vera and Chérie explore what the food addiction and metabolic health communities can learn from each other, and what it actually looks like to build a movement from the ground up.

🎙️ What We Cover:

• Chérie's story: growing up on ultra-processed foods, her sister's illness, and the whole-food dietary shift that changed everything

• How a ketogenic diet transformed Chérie's mental health and clarity

• The founding of Metabolic Revolution and its mission to empower individuals to demand change from their institutions

• The October 2024 Rally for Metabolic Health at the Washington Monument — how it happened, who spoke, and what it sparked

• The petition to ban ultra-processed foods from school meals — and the volunteer-led school lunch committee it inspired

• A halted ketogenic therapy research study at the University of Maryland — and how Metabolic Revolution took action

• The parallel between Big Food and Big Tobacco — and what a master settlement agreement could look like

• Grassroots strategies: rallies, community walks, petitions, state attorney general investigations, and more

• Why individual stories + research + cost data may be the most powerful combination in advocacy

• The intersection of food addiction and metabolic health — and why these movements are stronger together

• What the food addiction world can learn from Metabolic Revolution's bottom-up approach

🔗 Resource(s) Mentioned:

• Metabolic Revolution: metabolicrevolution.org

🙌 If you or someone you love is struggling with ultra-processed food use disorder, please visit us at sweetsobriety.ca and foodjunkiespodcast.com

Connect with Food Junkies:

🎙️ Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts

💻 Website: foodjunkiespodcast.com

▶️ YouTube: Food Junkies Podcast - YouTube

💌 Email: foodjunkiespodcast@gmail.com

👍 Like, subscribe, and leave a review — it helps more people find us.

The Food Junkies Podcast is hosted by Dr. Vera Tarman, Molly Painschab, and Clarissa Kennedy. We explore the science, stories, and solutions behind food addiction and ultra-processed food use disorder.

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.

If you're considering personalized assistance, CJ, a Certified Addiction Professional specializing in Food Addiction, is here for one-on-one coaching. Reach out to CJ at cjnguy@myfoodaddictioncoach.com

Interested in sharing your recovery story on our show? We'd love to hear from you! Please email FJRecoverystories@gmail.com

What's really happening inside your child's body when they eat ultra-processed food? In this episode, Dr. Vera Tarman sits down with Dr. Jacob May — mitochondrial researcher, registered dietitian, and Associate Professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center — to explore the cellular and metabolic consequences of a diet dominated by ultra-processed foods, particularly in children.

Dr. May leads the Mitochondrial Energetics and Nutrient Utilization Laboratory, where his team investigates how dietary patterns shape metabolism at the cellular level. He's a keynote speaker, precision nutrition researcher, and practicing clinician — and his insights here are both science-forward and refreshingly practical.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why mitochondria can't tell the difference between a McDonald's burger and organic beef — and why that still matters
• What phytonutrients and zoonutrients are, and why ultra-processing strips them out
• How ultra-processed foods drive insulin resistance through a damaging feedback loop
• Whether children are more resilient or more vulnerable to the effects of UPFs — and why the answer is complicated
• What the research actually says about saturated fat, ketogenic diets, and insulin sensitivity
• How the gut microbiome is affected by ultra-processed food intake
• Why breath biomarkers may be the future of non-invasive metabolic screening
• What GLP-1 medications mean for the future of nutrition science — and why dietitians aren't obsolete
• Practical, real-world advice for feeding children in an ultra-processed food environment

About Dr. Jacob May:

Dr. Jacob May is an Associate Professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center and head of the Mitochondrial Energetics and Nutrient Utilization Laboratory. His research focuses on how dietary patterns — including ketogenic and ultra-processed food diets — affect cellular metabolism, insulin sensitivity, and metabolic disease. He holds a PhD in nutrition science and is a Registered Dietitian with an active clinical practice. He was a keynote speaker at Pennington's 2025 Childhood Obesity Conference.

Email Dr. May: Jacob.Mey@pbrc.edu

Connect with Food Junkies: 🎙️ Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts 💻 Website: foodjunkiespodcast.com ▶️ YouTube: Food Junkies Podcast - YouTube 💌 Email: foodjunkiespodcast@gmail.com

The Food Junkies Podcast is hosted by Dr. Vera Tarman, Molly Painschab, and Clarissa Kennedy. We explore the science, stories, and solutions behind food addiction and ultra-processed food use disorder.

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.

Are you working hard, caring deeply, and still feeling like it's not enough? You're not alone, and this episode is for you.

This week, Molly and Clarissa sit down with Dr. Ellen Hendriksen, clinical psychologist, core faculty at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University, and author of How to Be Enough and How to Be Yourself. Ellen brings warmth, science, and radical compassion to one of the most common, and most quietly painful, struggles in recovery: perfectionism.

In this conversation, we explore:

🔹 Where perfectionism actually comes from — genetics, family of origin, AND the culture we're swimming in 🔹 Why shame fuels the binge-restrict cycle and how to begin replacing self-punishment with self-kindness 🔹 The crucial difference between rules and values — and how that distinction can transform your recovery 🔹 Why procrastination is never really about time (and what it's actually telling you) 🔹 How to build a stable, grounded sense of self-worth that isn't constantly up for evaluation 🔹 Why comparison is hardwired — and what to do with it instead of fighting it 🔹 The "already enough" practice that rewires how we see ourselves

Whether you're navigating food addiction recovery, disordered eating, or just the exhausting weight of never feeling like you measure up — this episode offers real tools, real grace, and real hope.

ABOUT DR. ELLEN HENDRIKSEN Dr. Ellen Hendriksen is a clinical psychologist specializing in anxiety and perfectionism. She is core faculty at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD) at Boston University and author of two books: How to Be Enough (perfectionism) and How to Be Yourself (social anxiety). Find her newsletter How to Be Good to Yourself When You're Hard on Yourself on Substack.

🔗 Find Ellen's books wherever books are sold 📬 Ellen's Substack: Search "How to Be Good to Yourself When You're Hard on Yourself"

CONNECT WITH US:

Food Junkies Podcast on YouTube: (2) Food Junkies Podcast - YouTube

📧 Email us at: foodjunkiespodcast@gmail.com

If this episode resonated with you, please leave us a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it. 💛

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.

Have you ever left a session feeling smaller than when you walked in? In this episode of Food Junkies: Clinician's Corner, Clarissa and Molly explore one of the most important — and least talked about — dynamics in eating disorder, food addiction, and substance use treatment: what happens when the clinician's model gets in the way of the client's healing.

🔑 What We Cover in This Episode:

⬡ The Rosenhan Experiment — how psychiatric patients were misdiagnosed and then had their normal behavior interpreted as worsening symptoms, and what it reveals about clinical bias today

⬡ Epistemic dismissal — the active or passive rejection of a person's own knowledge and lived experience by the very professionals meant to help them

⬡ How diagnosis can be a flashlight or a floodlight — illuminating patterns vs. erasing the person

⬡ What happens when clients start performing recovery instead of living it

⬡ The role of ego in clinical practice — and why it doesn't always look like arrogance (sometimes it looks like certainty)

⬡ Why ambivalence is not pathology — and why allowing clients to explore moderation can be clinically sound

⬡ The difference between recovery and discovery, and why one may feel more alive than the other

⬡ How behaviors that look like symptoms are often solutions — and why treating the smoke instead of the fire keeps people stuck

⬡ Why autonomy predicts engagement and long-term change — and what that means for how we design treatment

⬡ Whose anxiety is actually driving the treatment plan?

🔗 Connect With Us:

📧 Topic suggestions & questions: foodjunkiespodcast@gmail.com

▶️ Watch on YouTube — subscribe to help us grow and reach more people who need this content!

The content of our show is educational only. It does not supplement or supersede your healthcare provider's professional relationship and direction. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder, or mental health concern.