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.
In the
spring of 1999 the heads of the world’s largest processed
food companies—from Coca-Cola to Nabisco—gathered at
Pillsbury headquarters in Minneapolis for a secret meeting.
On the agenda: the emerging epidemic of obesity, and what to
do about it.
Increasingly, the salt-, sugar-,
and fat-laden foods these companies produced were being
linked to obesity, and a concerned Kraft executive took the
stage to issue a warning: There would be a day of reckoning
unless changes were made. This executive then launched into
a damning PowerPoint presentation—114 slides in all—making
the case that processed food companies could not afford to
sit by, idle, as children grew sick and class-action lawyers
lurked. To deny the problem, he said, is to court
disaster.
When he was done, the most powerful
person in the room—the CEO of General Mills—stood up to
speak, clearly annoyed. And by the time he sat down, the
meeting was over.
Since that day, with the
industry in pursuit of its win-at-all-costs strategy, the
situation has only grown more dire. Every year, the
average American eats thirty-three pounds of cheese (triple
what we ate in 1970) and seventy pounds of sugar (about
twenty-two teaspoons a day). We ingest 8,500 milligrams of
salt a day, 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, often
eye-opening research.
Moss takes us inside
the labs where food scientists use cutting-edge technology
to calculate the “bliss point” of sugary beverages 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.
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