Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, by Michael Moss, probes one of the least heralded and most scandalous truths of modern life. The giant corporations that dominate international food processing and production are addicted to three ingredients that profit their bottom lines but ill-serve the public.
A meticulous researcher and astute observer, Moss is able to get those who created the processed foods that are stuffed, saturated and impregnated with the unholy trinity (salt, sugar and fat) to admit that their own diets often don’t include the very foods— sodas, cereals, chips, cheese products, cookies—that they sell. Many of his findings fascinate as they educate the reader. Food researchers have determined the “bliss point,” the optimal level of sweetness that boosts the appeal and subsequently the sales of bread, ketchup or yogurt. Salt, by contrast, has a “flavor burst” that one experiences in consumption, especially in today’s go-to condiment—kosher salt.
Here’s the issue: Salt addiction can be overcome, but Moss states, “Without salt, processed food companies would cease to exist.” Salt singlehandedly solves the problem dubbed WOF (warmed-over flavor) and is significantly cheaper than herbs.
The book reveals stories that demonstrate how our eating habits have been manipulated and how an unwitting public has been played. Americans now eat three times the amount of cheese, or “cheese product,” than we did in the 1970s (32 pounds per person annually).
Why is it so difficult for Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Kraft, General Mills, Nabisco and Kellogg to accept that salt, sugar and fat contribute to obesity, heart disease and diabetes among other ailments? The answers implicate Wall Street (stock prices), laissez-faire cop-outs (we give consumers what they want/crave) and weak federal regulations.
Moss doesn’t provide a panacea; his book is realistic. He writes, “Most of us can’t simply stop eating processed foods.” That said, he concludes with a call for mindful eating, reminding us that we have “the power to make choices.”
Salt Sugar Fat is a tour de force of investigative journalism that informs, educates, even entertains while pressing readers to examine their assumptions about processed foods and the giant corporations that manufacture, manipulate and market them.
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss
