MUST Read of the Year: Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this book, free of charge, from the author,via Bostick Communications, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it

Having viewed the Genetic Roulette movie, I was very interested in this book as well!

Synopsis: From a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at The New York Times comes the explosive story of the rise of the processed food industry and its link to the emerging obesity epidemic. Michael Moss reveals how companies use salt, sugar, and fat to addict us and, more important, how we can fight back.

Every year, the average American eats thirty-three pounds of fat-laden cheese (triple what we ate in 1970) and seventy pounds of sugar (about twenty-two teaspoons a day). We ingest 3,400 milligrams of salt a year, double the recommended amount, and almost none of that comes from the shakers on our table. It comes from processed food. It’s no wonder, then, that one in three adults, and one in five kids, is clinically obese. It’s no wonder that twenty-six million Americans have diabetes, the processed food industry in the U.S. accounts for $1 trillion a year in sales, and the total economic cost of this health crisis is approaching $300 billion a year.

In Salt Sugar Fat, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Michael Moss shows how we got here. Featuring examples from some of the most recognizable (and profitable) companies and brands of the last half century—including Kraft, Coca-Cola, Lunchables, Kellogg, Nestlé, Oreos, Cargill, Capri Sun, and many more—Moss’s explosive, empowering narrative is grounded in meticulous and often eye-opening research.

Moss takes us inside the labs where food scientists use cutting-edge technology to calculate the “bliss point” of a sugary beverage or enhance the “mouthfeel” of fat by manipulating its chemical structure. He unearths marketing campaigns designed—in a technique adapted from tobacco companies—to redirect concerns about the health risks of their products: Dial back on one ingredient, pump up the other two, and tout the new line as “fat-free” or “low-salt.” He talks to concerned executives who confess that they could never produce truly healthy alternatives to their products even if serious regulation became a reality. Simply put: The industry itself would cease to exist without salt, sugar, and fat. Just as millions of “heavy users”—as the companies refer to their most ardent customers—are addicted to this seductive trio, so too are the companies that peddle them. You will never look at a nutrition label the same way again.





Review: If you can read this book and not running screaming to your pantry and clean it our of processed foods, then I will be very very surprised. I went and starting looking at labels and realized we HAD to change what we were eating.Once you truly understand the science and misspeak of labeling of products, you will see how you, the consumer, has been mislead and how products we taken for granted that are HEALTHY for us, in reality are just as bad as the 'bad' stuff. Which is what happened when I reviewed chewable vitamins for adults recently- one look at the label and I realized they were made primarily of sugar. How can that be healthy? But when they come from a 'trusted' name, most consumers will NEVER read the label. The company counts on this, and thus makes more money. And yes, I do support businesses succeeding, but not when the consumer is lied to. As Michael says, when the makers of the processed products don't let their kids eat them, you know there is an issue.

I found it VERY scary that most of the research that pushed this book came out of the case files from the Phillips Morris Tobacco case. The fact that Phillips Morris ALSO owned most of the companies producing America's processed food at the same time was a Pandora's box of information. We as consumers fought to keep them from advertising cigarettes to kids, but all they did was take that advertising and switch it over to a new addiction for kids- sugar. Pure and simple. The company's advertising and processing methods not only insured that kids (and adults) would become addicted to processed food, they altered their advertising as needed, to play on public concerns and to convince the uninformed public that they were doing something great. The reality was more chemicals, sugar and salt in different forms and different names, and a bid to increase America's addiction to process food, to earn the companies MORE money. Pure and simple.

Case in point. Breakfast cereal. The company had research studies done to see how much sugar needed to be added to make the cereals basically addicting to kids. Did you know a child's sweet tooth (actually a spot on the back of the tongue, FYI) is more intense than an adults? Their 'bliss point' on intake of sugar can be as high as 36 percent, double that of an adult. Food companies know this, and exploit it in their processed foods that are aimed at kids- you will find sugar and corn syrup as the primary ingredients! But kids are not born with this high of a bliss point, it is learned and increased as they are given more and more sugar!

Even products that claim to be made with fruit juice are not what they claim.Do you know what fruit juice concentrate is? Basically this is the formula: peel the fruit (taking away essential vitamins and fiber), extract juice from the fruit pulp (loosing more fiber), remove any bitter compounds, adjust the sweetness via sugar or corn syrup, evaporate the water out of the juice. The result is "stripped juice", aka sugar.But technically it was made from fruit, so they can use the term 'juice concentrate". Think the 'kid juices' are better than soda? Some of them have the equivalent of 6 teaspoons of sugar PER pack. And that is what you are giving your kids for lunch, snack and dinner. Even cheese has been altered from 20 years ago to be sweeter and less 'pungent and strong'. So no, your taste buds weren't lying to you that food 20 years ago tasted different. It did. Want to know why there is such an increase in juvenile diabetes? Right here is your answer.

I could talk to you literally ALL day about this book and it's findings. It has made our family really think about what we are giving ourselves, and what we are doing to our bodies with all the chemicals (literally) we are ingesting via food items, that we think are safe for us. Think because the government okayed them their safe? Try again- from public officials who used to run divisions in these big companies, who know are czars for government entitites, to ones who have left and returned to the companies for bigger salaries and profits, the greed scenario reaches up into all the levels that are supposed to protect us, the consumers.Why else could the European Union make greater strides in keeping chemicals and processed food stuffs from their shelves, and have less diseased than we do? You only need to look at the recent discussions over the dye in boxed macaroni and cheese to see where our country is failing.

Want to protect your family? Reading this book, go see the aforementioned movie. Then start reading labels. Stop buying so much processed foods. Change your eating habits before it's too late. If you're kids were addicted to cigarettes, or alcohol, or drugs, you would do everything you could to help them. There is no difference from those 3 addictive substances to processed food- all are meant to be enjoyable and fashioned for the most 'oomph'. Be part of the change for the better- demand better for your kids!

READ this book and let KNOWLEDGE color your choices!



About the Author: Michael Moss was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for exploratory reporting in 2010, and was a finalist for the prize in 2006 and 1999. He is also the recipient of a Loeb Award and an Overseas Press Club citation. Before coming to the Times, he was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, New York Newsday, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has been an adjunct professor at the Columbia School of Journalism and currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two sons.