Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us Paperback – February 18, 2014

I am the type of person who hates highlighting in books. Even in college, it pained me to take a highlighter and mark up a page, no matter how brilliant the passage. It was a sort of sacrilege, a desecration of the book. So for me to mark up passage after passage of this book (albeit the Kindle version, but still), that has to say something about how shocking I found much of what this book has to say. It always strikes me as sort of pretentious and presumptuous to call a book "important", but this is an important book. It's a stellar example of the true power of excellent investigative journalism, and is great evidence for the argument that we need to be willing to pay for journalism if we want quality and depth.I think it is fair to criticize this book a bit by saying there are some sections that feel a little hasty. There's a bit of sloppiness here and there, and the book is repetitive at times. Still, this didn't detract from the importance of its message.Divided into three sections: salt, sugar, and fat, Moss goes into great detail in analyzing why the processed food industry is so reliant on these three ingredients, even when it knows that these ingredients aren't good for us and may well be contributing to obesity and other diseases, such as diabetes. The bottom line is this book exposes the ugly side of capitalism: when you are so intent on selling a product and providing a high profit margin for the pleasure of Wall Street and your investors, you tend to lose sight of the fact that the product you're producing is meant to nourish people. I felt almost like I was looking at this book from opposite sides of the looking glass. On one hand, I could understand the industry drive to increase profits and lower costs, and to not only meet but beat the competition. From the other side, this is food we're talking about here, food that has become a huge part of the American diet and that may well be killing us. Are profits worth this? If ever there was a reason for government regulation, it is the food industry--this book proves exactly why that intervention is sometimes necessary. The market isn't self-regulating when all that matters is profit, not what the product is doing to the people who are using it.Parts of this book are downright revolting, such as when Moss has the opportunity to taste some products without the added salts, sugars, and fats on which they reply. He describes things like Cheez-Its and canned soup as tasting bitter and metallic, and this was enough to put me off those products for good. Moss argues that the food industry uses inferior ingredients not because those ingredients are acceptable, but because they generate more profit and cost the company less. The ingredients are the very definition of inferior precisely because they taste terrible. In order to mask the horrible taste, the industry, you guessed it, loads the products up with salt, sugar, and fat. Time after time, I couldn't help but wonder why we eat these things when they sound like the sort of nourishment we wouldn't give to our dogs.Ah, but there's an answer for that. It's not enough for food companies to sell us a product, they must hook us on it and instill a sense of brand loyalty. It should go without saying that we can only eat so much food, which means there are only so many food dollars to be won. In a perfect world, we'd eat just enough to sustain us and keep us healthy but, in that world, the food companies wouldn't make the obscene profits they make. So, what they do is scientifically formulate their foods to make them so addictive we eat more than we should--and they do this not only knowingly, but on purpose. Let that sink in for a while: food companies are actively trying to ensure that Americans overeat because the more we eat, the more money they make. They invest a lot of time, effort, and research into figuring out what makes us like the taste of something and using that information to create recipes that we literally find irresistible. It's mind boggling to imagine what we could create if that sort of devotion, time, and money was applied not to making us eat food that wrecks havoc on our health but, say, to something like figuring out a cheap way to provide clean water for all, or to find a cure for cancer.This is one of the most striking elements of the book, the way it exposes how science can be monstrously twisted into a discipline that's used not for good (developing medicines, explaining how the world works), but for bad (tricking us into eating unhealthy quantities of processed foods). It's important for savvy consumers to know that studies and experiments can be structured in such a way as to try to determine their outcome before they even begin, and food companies are notorious for doing just this--sometimes because they've taken a page from the tobacco industry, which has owned some of the largest food companies. Whenever there's an outcry over a particular public health concern, the food companies fund studies that either try to downplay the risks or that help them continue to pump us full of terrible food by swapping out one risk for another. One need look no further than the high sugar content of the foods that were churned out during the fat free craze. The food companies prayed on consumer fears by creating a product that helped us assuage our worries about fat by getting us hooked on sugar.Most pernicious of all, though, is how the food industry has turned to preying on the most vulnerable in our society--children, lower income families, and people in developing nations--in order to continue to pad their profits. Through clever marketing and a concerted effort to ensure that prime shelf space is given to nutrient-deficient, calorically dense foods, the food industry ensures that those most in need of good nutrition are the least likely to get it. What's perhaps even more disturbing is how they've convinced the public that any attempts to level the playing field and make healthier foods more readily available is a violation of our "choice"--as if any of us would choose to be slowly poisoned by what we eat. One need look no further than New York's attempts at banning supersize sugary beverages. Yes, perhaps people should have the choice to ingest as much sugary soda as they want, but at what cost? At what point do we understand that we're being deprived of our choice to live a health lifestyle and to protect our children from the predatory marketing in which companies engage to make sure they make our children customers for life? And what about the costs to public health, don't they count for something?This book was such a wake up call. I'd already begun to look at processed foods with a dubious eye and have worked hard to eliminate them from my home and to prepare fresh meals from scratch using more fruits and vegetables, but this book finally helped tip the scale--pun intended--and made me determined to avoid added sugars wherever possible. I was so disgusting and upset by what I read that I found myself frantically cleaning out both my fridge and my pantry, throwing away things like salad dressing and mayonnaise because they both had added sugars. Why do we need sugar in mayonnaise anyway? That, I think, is the sort of question all Americans need to ask themselves. Maybe then we can end up with some semblance of sanity in our food policies.

"60% of supermarket purchases are unplanned. Anything that enables the shopper to make a faster, easier, better decision will help spur these unplanned purchases.""The new energy drinks have the best chance with the urban upscale shopper; while the rural ethic and urban shoppers remain slightly more loyal to soda. Depending on it's clientele, each store has a unique DNA.""But the real genius of their marketing plan was found in a contrivance that would appeal to both kids and moms. The drinks were made mostly with sugar, artificial flavours and preservatives. In each plastic bottle however, the company would add a splash of real fruit juice. It was barely half a tablespoon, a mere 5% of the total formula; but the Kool-Aid managers already new that even a hint of fruit was worth a zillion times its weight in marketing gold.""The government was buying more cheese than it could ever give away. It accumulated into a stack that weighed 1.9 billion pounds that cost taxpayers $4 billion a year. The mountain grew so large in fact, the government began secreting it away in caverns and a vast, abandoned limestone mine near Kansas City; deep beneath the ground in more bags, barrels and boxes than the mind can imagine.""Indeed, when it comes to the greatest source of fat - meat and cheese - the Department of Agriculture has joined industry as a full partner in the most urgent mission of all : cajoling the people to eat more.""Anyone who designs a product or an advertising appeal based on what people say they want, is an utter fool!""Worried that they were losing their touch, they brought in a budding expert on the cravings that snacks like these were supposed to generate.""I could move that bliss point up or down depending on what other foods or beverages I put in the frame of reference.""Cheetos is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet in terms of pure pleasure, ticking off a dozen attributes that make the brain say more. It's called vanishing caloric density. If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks there's no calories in it, and, like popcorn, you can just keep eating it forever.""Doritos 3D, a puffy spherical version of the flat chip whose added dimension increases the surprise factor when you take a bite. And surprise is a very good thing for increasing consumption.""Thus the strategy for strategy for millennials became snackable entertainment. The company's chips would be promoted through sporting events like the Super Bowl and games like XBox. Already these efforts had brought in double-digit gains in sales.""Many of the executives I spoke to go out of their way to avoid eating their own products."It just goes on and on and on .... A damning, name-and-shame, year-by-year account of how a few food giants have purposefully orchestrated the most broken food system we have ever had on this planet. One cannot help but say "you bastards" on just about every page of this book as it explains how sneaky food science and inescapable marketing funded by billions of Dollars makes for one hooked, obese, ill consumer base. You and me. And all for money.If you cannot lose weight, if you are plagued by allergies, digestive tract problems, cravings, headaches, cholesterol, depression, cannot stop eating, got kids that are out of control or sickly ... you need to look no further than this book to understand where it all came from and how completely innocent you are. Tests done with 6 year olds! Marketing plans targeted at kids that young! Get them early and you'll have them for life type of thing. So called healthy low fat, bran options all pure lies! There is nothing healthy about any of them. They bring down the salt, but then up the fat and sugar. Do you realise you are eating on average 22 spoons of sugar a day if you're eating processed foods? You need to research the term `bliss point`.The guilt you have been feeling every time you eat something, every time you feed your kids junk food because you're just too tired and it's all they will eat ... it's all been carefully orchestrated by an elite few food, beverage and tobacco companies. Then they've got the cheek to say that us as consumers need to eat less and more healthy when their products have been chemically engineered to make us completely addicted to them and completely incapable of stopping eating! Plus bringing out fake healthy alternatives for us that merely drive up their sales. And then topping it all off with misleading and confusing labeling to pull the wool over your eyes about what you're eating. It's nothing short of criminal.It makes me sick! No pun intended! And very very angry. And very very sad.There are about 60 000 products on our shelves designed like this and owned by 10 companies - you still think you have freedom of choice?What you may not realise from reading this book, is the double whammy its content exposes to those who do know this part - the genetically modified food industry that supplies all these companies with the base ingredients that go into their convenience foods, "convenience with a capital C!". Apart from the extremely high levels of salt, sugar and fat that are already killers, the base GM ingredients are affecting our DNA and causing every dreaded disease known to mankind, and then being passed on from mother to child whilst in the womb. Join the global March Against Monsanto on 25 May 2013!There is no escaping this perfect storm, apart from one : Go cold turkey and stop buying every single one of those products right now. It's how all addicts have to stop, and do not be under any illusions here, you are a food addict. They've turned us into them.Stopping is the only power we have.I know you're tired; I know you don't have the time. But staying in the middle of this perfect storm is nothing short of catastrophic for you and your family. The irony is, if you took the time to change to locally produced, organic, chemical free alternatives, you will have more energy you ever had before and thus more time on your hands. The government is not going to take care of you. These corporations do not care about you. You need to learn to take care of yourself!"Are health foods really expensive? It depends on how you measure the price".Please, read this book. It will change your life.