Junk Food of Cognitive Labor

Michael Moss's Salt Sugar Fat documented that the food industry's most addictive products were not those high in any single dimension but those combining sugar, salt, and fat at concentrations the natural food environment never produces. Each component defeats a different satiation mechanism: sugar produces rapid glycemic reward, salt suppresses satiation signals and extends the engagement window, fat provides supernormal caloric density. The combination is the product. The same structural logic applies to AI-augmented work, where feedback speed corresponds to sugar (the fast initial hook), progress continuity corresponds to salt (suppressing termination signals), and execution completeness corresponds to fat (maximum reward per unit of effort). The correspondence is mechanistic: both industries have arrived at stimulus combinations that exploit the same dopaminergic architecture, defeat the same regulatory mechanisms, and produce the same behavioral signature of compulsive consumption.