Hooked
Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
From the #1 bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Salt Sugar Fat, the troubling story of how food companies have exploited our most fundamental evolutionary instincts to get us hooked on processed foods.
Everyone knows how hard it can be to maintain a healthy diet. But what if some of the decisions we make about what to eat are beyond our control? Is it possible that processed food is addictive, like drugs or alcohol? Motivated by these questions, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss began searching for answers, to find the true peril in our food.
In Hooked, Moss explores the science of addiction and uncovers what the scientific and medical communities--as well as food manufacturers--already know, which is that food can, in some cases, be even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs. Our bodies are hard-wired for sweets, so food manufacturers have deployed fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products, creating in us the expectation that everything should be cloying; we've evolved to prefer convenient meals, so three-fourths of the calories we get from groceries come from ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry has not only tried to deny this troubling discovery, but exploit it to its advantage. For instance, in a response to recent dieting trends, food manufacturers have simply turned junk food into junk diets, filling grocery stores with "diet" foods that are hardly distinguishable from the products that got us into trouble in the first place. With more people unable to make dieting work for them, manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive eating habits.
A gripping account of the legal battles, insidious marketing campaigns, and cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis, Hooked lays out all that the food industry is doing to exploit and deepen our addictions, and shows us what we can do so that we can once again seize control.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Food is a drug, and its manufacturers are tempting consumers into addiction, according to this contentious exposé by Pulitzer-winning journalist Moss (Salt Sugar Fat). The author explores the science behind the notion that food is addictive in its effects on the body and mind: MRI scans show the brain lighting up at the thought of a cheeseburger much like it does at a snort of cocaine, while sugar, salt, and fat activate receptors that prompt the brain to generate a rush of pleasure. Moss argues that Kraft Heinz, Coca Cola, Nestlé, and fast food companies exploit weaknesses to stoke gluttony by adding copious amounts of sugar, salt, and fat to their products, and tantalizing consumers with novel artificial flavors. He also shows how advertising can manipulate memory: in one experiment, subjects viewed a Wendy's ad that "played up the restaurant's playgrounds for kids," urging consumers to relive those memories—most subjects didn't catch that Wendy's never had playgrounds. With his usual blend of lucid exposition and sharp-eyed reportage from corporate test kitchens, supermarket aisles, and fast-food counters, Moss provocatively suggests that human will-power is helpless against corporate puppeteers toying with humans' neurochemical and digestive strings. Readers are sure to find much fascinating—and frightening—food for thought in this fast-paced survey.
