Food Junkies Podcast

What does recovery look like — and how do we measure it? In this episode, we're joined by Dr. John Kelly, one of the world's leading addiction researchers and founder of the Recovery Research Institute at Harvard Medical School, for a deep dive into the science behind what makes recovery possible, sustainable, and real.
Dr. Kelly breaks down the difference between remission and recovery, shares what decades of research tells us about who gets better (spoiler: most people do) and unpacks the active ingredients that help people build lives they love. We also get into the language we use around addiction, why it matters more than you think, and what the latest science says about stigma, stages of change, and recovery capital.
Whether you are in recovery, supporting someone who is, or working in the field — this episode is packed with hope, science, and practical insight.
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🔑 IN THIS EPISODE
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• What recovery actually means — and how it's different from remission
• Why 75% of people with substance use disorder do recover (and what that means for you)
• The CHIME model: the 5 active ingredients of lasting recovery
  → Community | Hope | Identity | Meaning & Purpose | Empowerment
• Stages of Change (Prochaska & DiClemente) — and why just thinking about change counts
• Recovery Capital: what's in your "recovery bank account"?
• The power of language — why words like "abuser" cause measurable harm
• Stigma, genetics, and why addiction is nobody's fault
• What excites Dr. Kelly most about the future of addiction research
• Psychedelics and addiction treatment: cautious optimism from a Harvard researcher
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👤 ABOUT OUR GUEST
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John Kelly is the Elizabeth R. Spallin Professor of Psychiatry in the Field of Addiction Medicine at Harvard Medical School and founder and director of the Recovery Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is one of the world's leading researchers on addiction recovery, mutual help organizations, and reducing stigma in the addiction field.
🔗 Recovery Research Institute: www.recoveryanswers.org
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🎙️ FOOD JUNKIES PODCAST
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The Food Junkies Podcast explores food addiction and ultra-processed food use disorder through honest conversations with clinicians, researchers, and people in recovery. Hosted by Dr. Vera Tarman, Clarissa Kennedy, and Molly Painschab.
📲 Subscribe so you never miss an episode
▶️ Find us on YouTube
👍 Like this video if it gives you hope
💬 Drop a comment — what resonated most with you?
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 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.

Life doesn't pause for recovery — and right now, life is a lot. In this Clinician's Corner episode, co-hosts Molly Painschab and Clarissa Kennedy sit down for an honest, grounded conversation about what it looks like to stay connected to your recovery when the world feels like it's on fire and your personal life is a lot at the same time.
This isn't a pep talk. These are two clinicians talking real about the neuroscience of stress and cravings, the shame spiral that follows a slip, and what "minimum viable recovery" can look like when you're just trying to make it to tomorrow.
If you've been asking yourself why this is suddenly so hard? This episode is for you.

In This Episode, We Cover:
🧠 Why your brain is working against you right now The neuroscience behind chronic stress and cravings — and why a recovering brain is already running harder than average before you add the weight of the world on top.
🌍 The macro AND the micro From political instability and financial stress to grief, caregiving, and personal loss — we name what's happening and why pretending otherwise is doing you a disservice.
📱 Setting boundaries with the news cycle How to stop the doom scroll from hijacking your nervous system — without swinging to total avoidance. Finding the middle path that keeps you informed without dysregulated.
😔 The shame spiral that turns slips into recurrences It's not always the slip itself that does the damage. Molly breaks down why the judgment after the slip often has far longer-lasting consequences — and how to interrupt that cycle.
🛟 Minimum viable recovery What's the smallest version of recovery you can do today to make it to tomorrow? Clarissa introduces this framework and it will change how you think about hard seasons.
⚓ Recovery anchors and non-negotiables The value of identifying a few tethering behaviors before you're in crisis — and why protecting those anchors can keep you from unraveling.
💙 Co-regulation and connection We are not wired to regulate alone. From turning on your camera in group to body doubling with an emotional support human — why connection isn't optional when things get hard.
🌿 Meaning-making, spiritual practice, and nature Reconnecting with your why — the deep one, not the diet-culture one — and how spiritual practice and time in nature can restore a felt sense of control when everything else feels uncertain.

Resources & Links Mentioned
▶YouTube: Food Junkies Podcast - YouTube
🌐 Sweet Sobriety membership & groups: https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/group-coaching-2025
📧 Email us with topic requests or questions: [email protected]

If this episode resonated with you: → Share it with someone who needs to hear it right now → Come to group — even if you've been avoiding it, just go → If you're a professional, bring this conversation to your next supervision session

The Food Junkies Podcast is hosted by Dr. Vera Tarman, Molly Painschab, and Clarissa Kennedy. New episodes drop weekly.
🎙️ Subscribe, leave a review, and share with someone in recovery who could use a reminder that they're not broken — they're just carrying a lot right now.
BACK-to-BASICS WORKSHOP with Megan Sloan
 What you'll walk away with:

• Simple strategies to improve balance, posture & core stability

• A deeper understanding of your body and how it communicates with you

• Practical tools you can use immediately

• A stronger sense of trust and connection with your body

 

 Saturday, April 25 at 10am EST

 90 minutes

 Live + replay included

 $25 USD

➡️ https://sweetsobriety.newzenler.com/courses/back-to-basics
 
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: [email protected]
👍 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.