
The Psychology, Biology and Politics of Food (Lecture 16)
Kelly Brownell's Yale seminar on food examines how psychology, biology, and politics intersect in shaping what and how much people eat. This is the sixteenth session in an open Yale course that moves across disciplines rather than staying in one, tying laboratory findings on appetite and taste to the policy fights over school lunches, marketing to children, and government regulation of the food supply. Brownell draws on his own research into obesity and public health to connect individual eating behavior to the industries and lobbying efforts that shape the food environment. As with the rest of the course, the lecture treats eating not as a simple matter of willpower but as a behavior produced by biology, culture, and deliberate commercial strategy, and it asks what kind of policy response, if any, that combination justifies.