Dec. 22, 2025 — Store-bought holiday foods are a lot like cigarettes. The makers of all those festive goodies — peanut butter cups shaped like Christmas trees, crackers that look like snowmen, and even energy drink advent calendars — use the same tactics to snare you as tobacco companies did in their heyday.
“It sounds weird, but by curating the sensory flavors and branding and cues and everything affiliated with certain cigarettes, that's how they would drive brand loyalty. You’d crave your kind of cigarette, the one you had fond memories of,” says Ashley Gearhardt, PhD, director of the Food and Addiction Science & Treatment (FAST) Lab at the University of Michigan.
Food companies are using that same strategy to increase their market share, she says. “You create your branding, your flavors, your cues that have been coupled throughout our lives with holiday memories.”
Think about it: Pumpkin spice season wasn’t a thing until Starbucks invented it.
There’s a lot more to those cravings than simple nostalgia, though. Your urge to eat as many once-a-year-foods as possible is also driven by science-based factors including the weather, brain chemistry, and evolution.
Understanding how all that works together can help you put down that Christmas cookie and eat only the foods you really want.
The Primal Instinct
The human diet has changed tremendously over thousands of years, but some basic elements remain constant. Among them: the tendency to eat more in colder temperatures.
“When we were hunter-gatherers, we weren’t celebrating holidays,” says Nicole Avena, PhD, a research neuroscientist and author of Sugarless: A 7-Step Plan to Uncover Hidden Sugars, Curb Your Cravings, and Conquer Your Addiction. “It was us needing to fatten ourselves up for a long winter. There’s a bit of an evolutionary survival mechanism that kicks in this time of year.”
Even the visual cues that attract us, the bright colors and shiny tinsels, have roots in prehistoric times.
“Our body inherently finds that stuff appealing and rewarding, and that was just to make sure we were getting enough calories to survive,” Gearhardt says. “We are wired to want variety and textures and flavors and colors because that made sure we were getting a diversity of nutrients from a diversity of sources. All of those things are now being used to sell you crap that you don't need.”
The changing of the seasons influences us, too. Cooler weather and shorter days prompt cravings for richer foods like hearty stews and indulgent baked goods, according to Avena. And dry winter air can leave you in a perpetual state of mild dehydration.
“Dehydration is a big motivating factor for eating more,” says Regan Bailey, PhD, who, along with Patrick J. Stover, PhD, directs of the Institute for Connecting Nutrition and Health (ICON-Health) at Florida State University. “When you’re slightly dehydrated it can manifest as hunger, but you’re really thirsty.”
Your Brain on Holidays
While the holiday season is supposed to be a joyful period, it can also add layers of social or financial stress. And when that happens, many of us turn to food. You may not think of it in these terms while you’re stirring extra marshmallows into your cocoa, but holiday indulgences produce soothing changes in your brain.
“These comforting foods activate dopamine pathways in the brain that allow us to, in many cases, self-medicate the holiday stress,” Avena says. “It activates not only dopamine systems, but endogenous opioid systems in the brain that can serve as a way to mitigate those feelings of stress and make people feel better.”
The brain’s role isn’t just about stress relief. It’s more basic than that and also more complicated.
If we only ate when we were hungry, none of us would struggle with having overweight or obesity. But your brain experiences a constant interplay of three decision-making centers battling between need and want. Stover explains:
“The homeostatic part is about ‘What’s going on in my metabolism? What do I need?’” he says. “Then there’s the emotional part of the brain — what I want. And the executive part has to manage all of that.”
As tempting holiday foods trigger the emotional part of your brain, the executive part tries to resist. If you’re already struggling with your weight, it often loses.
“We're finding from MRI studies that the adiposity, or fat mass, talks to the brain and tries to protect itself and reinforce itself, and it does it by blunting the executive function,” he says. “So for some people, the fat is actually inhibiting their ability to make a rational decision around food.”
Exploiting Your Instincts
The food industry spends $8 billion a year on research and development, and that includes digging into consumer behavior. So you’d better believe it understands how your primal instincts and your brain’s responses can lead you to buy.
Those insights go into the development of seasonal food products as well as their packaging.
“They kind of get their claws into our nutritional wisdom and our fond memories by having the novel shape of the Christmas tree, or red and green wrappers. It sparks that part of our brain that was always looking for new sources of fuel and food that felt kind of familiar but new,” Gearhardt says. “Our brain is so wired to associate that with exciting new opportunities to get fuel and positive memories, it makes it even harder to resist.”
The concept of something like pumpkin spice season factors in here, too.
“It's scarcity marketing. It’s a limited-time offer, and it creates this urgency,” Avena says. “It taps into these heightened cravings: I have to get this now because I won’t be able to get it later.”
How to Outsmart Your Brain
Understanding the science behind all these factors can help you avoid falling for triggering flavors and packages. Use these tips to make that science work for you:
- Practice saying no. Whether you’re at a holiday party or just grocery shopping, it helps to have responses ready before the different centers in your brain can argue about whether you need it or want it.
- Limit your choices. Remember that your brain is programmed to seek out a variety of flavors and textures. If you have six types of cookies in front of you, you’re probably going to try all six, says Joan Salge Blake, EdD, a dietitian and nutrition professor at Boston University and the host of the nutrition & health podcast Spot On! Whether you’re hosting or just a guest, pare down your options as much as possible.
- Get enough sleep. “This is a crazy season, and the first thing to go is sleep,” says Salge Blake. “But when you’re chronically tired, you have a release of the hormone ghrelin. That's we call the ‘hungry hormone.’” Ghrelin signals your brain: It’s time to eat.
- Sip before you bite. Your brain can’t necessarily tell the difference between thirst and mild hunger. “I always tell people to drink more water than they think they need this time of year,” Bailey says.
- Go for homemade. If Grandma bakes her holiday specialty, by all means enjoy it — along with the time you spend with her. “That's a safer place to consume than in your car as you're rushing to mail your holiday cards and shoveling red and green M&Ms your mouth,” Gearhardt says.
