Salt Sugar Fat
How the Food Giants Hooked Us
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4.1 • 271 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
“If you had any doubt as to the food industry’s complicity in our obesity epidemic, it will evaporate when you read this book.”—The Washington Post
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER • In this “propulsively written [and] persuasively argued” (The Boston Globe) exposé, a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter uncovers an insidious truth: food companies are deliberately sacrificing our health to raise their own profits.
Thirty-eight million Americans have diabetes. One in three adults and one in five kids is clinically obese. Why?
Every year, the average American eats thirty-three pounds of cheese and seventy pounds of sugar. Every day, we ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt, double the recommended amount, almost none of which comes from the shakers on our table. It comes from processed food, an industry that hauls in $2 trillion in annual sales.
In Salt Sugar Fat, Michael Moss shows how we ended up here. Featuring examples from Kraft, Coca-Cola, Lunchables, Frito-Lay, Nestlé, Oreos, Capri Sun, and many more, Moss’s explosive, empowering narrative is grounded in meticulous, eye-opening research. He takes us into labs where scientists calculate the “bliss point” of sugary beverages or enhance the “mouthfeel” of fat by manipulating its chemical structure, unearths marketing techniques taken straight from tobacco company playbooks, and talks to concerned insiders who make startling confessions.
Just as millions of “heavy users” are addicted to salt, sugar, and fat, so too are the companies that peddle them. You will never look at a nutrition label the same way again.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Atlantic, HuffPost, Men’s Journal, MSN, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
American cuisine is just a delivery system for an addictive trinity of unhealthy ingredients, according to this eye-popping expos of the processed food industry. Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter Moss (Palace Coup) explains the two-faced science of salt, sugar, and fat, which impart tantalizing tastes and luscious mouthfeel that light up the same neural circuits that narcotics do Coca-Cola, he notes, calls favorite customers "heavy users" while causing epidemic obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. But he also crafts an absorbing insiders' view of the food industry, where these ingredients are the main weapons in a brutally competitive war for stomach-share. He takes readers into the laboratories, marketing tests, and boardrooms where the sweet, salty, cheesy "bliss point" of cereals, snacks, sodas, and frozen dinners is obsessively pursued; the scientists and executives he talks to feel torn between health concerns almost to a person, he observes, they avoid eating the food they sell and the market-driven imperative to stoke consumer cravings. Moss's vivid reportage remains alive to the pleasures of junk "the heated fat swims over the tongue to send signals of joy to the brain" while shrewdly analyzing the manipulative profiteering behind them. The result is a mouth-watering, gut-wrenching look at the food we hate to love.
Customer Reviews
Saw author on Dr. Oz...
Can't wait to get into this book! The author talks about "cravability" and how food companies keep you hooked with salt, sugar, and fat. Hopefully when I'm done reading I can break my own addiction to process foods and move to more whole foods. Even if a small portion of this is true, and he claims to have viewed millions of documents from food companies, SHAME ON THEM!
Home Run!
Michael Moss presents an unbiased and extremely informative background to the food industry. Brands we've all heard of and consumed are brought to life in an easy to read and very educational tone!
Reminded me of the Dan Ariley/Malcolm Gladwell style of authorship.
Salt Sugar Fat
An enlightening look inside the processed food industry, well researched and with plenty of anecdotes to keep your interest.
Unfortunately, many chapters end in a repeat of the previous three or so pages so whatever point the author might be trying to make is lost. Please fix this e book formatting problem!