Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

This book is jam packed with real life conspiracies and facts about the biggest market manipulators in history. I have really enjoyed reading this book as the author is eloquent and keeps heaps of information light and quick to read. It doesn't bog you down while reading and it was a real page turner for me.I have become concerned with my health over the past 5 years, since I got married, and my overall diet went from lentils and brown rice day in, day out, to cardboard boxes, plastic packaging, fast food, restaurants, take out, microwaves, lunch meats, cheese galore, cookies, candy bars, etc. etc. After being in and out of over 7 different specialists' offices and surgical suites in the years since this S.A.D. under-haul with various severe ailments from gastrointestinal to gynecological, I have began taking back control of my health. This book has been somewhat of a nail in the coffin in those regards.Basically, I learned to stop feeding myself lies. After reading this book, I can see blatant lies and misleading claims all throughout the grocery store. Meaning advertising on signs and boxes - all bright and colorful to lure you and your children with willynilly health claims based on a minute shred of evidence from a biased Nabisco or General Mills 'investigation.' etc. "Contains real fruit juice" means nothing. "100% natural" is meaningless and any person can put that on ANY product whether it's true or not. Stop giving your kids Capri Sun and sweetened 'fruit juices.' You owe it to them to educate yourself so they have a shot at a long and healthy life without being shot in the foot by their parents during their formative years. Really. Take some responsibility. Don't even get me started on Lunchables! One of the downfalls of our modern day society. "It's like I'm sending my kid to school with a present so he knows I love him! Tee Hee!" Yeah, well enjoy your child having plaque in his arteries by age ten. I digress.Keep this in mind the next time you go shopping: Lead paint tastes sweet, but that doesn't mean you should eat it!!I bet a lot of people would be surprised to know that Betty Crocker is a figment of an ad execs imagination. Not real, not in the least. Don't fall for her lies about Crisco and making life easier by NOT cooking dinner and having more TV time in the evenings. This is how we went off the rails, and the U.S. government was a huge promoter of that. Nearly everyone knows the U.S. is in cahoots with the sugar industry, the beef industry, the dairy industry, and so on and so forth. Essentially, anything that is bad or unnecessary for us is shoved in our faces by the DOA (Eat more beef and cheese!), by the huge conglomerates themselves, and, as another surprising example, by Philip Morris; a tobacco company who actually owns several of the biggest "food" production companies around.Quick - what's the overall biggest contributor of saturated fat in the American diet? Cheese! And then Beef! Whoo hoo! Oh, er...wait....heart disease is our nation's #1 killer.... and the government wants us to eat more.. cheese? Oy.Anyway - Great book. I highly recommend to anyone without a clue. It might clear some things up. I apologize for being snarky. It's just that.. you know. Insurance rates. Crowded hospitals. Less room in your airplane seat when sitting next to someone due to size. Others' actions impact everyone else and no one considers their fellow-person anymore. Sigh.

“Salt, sugar and fat are the foundation of processed food, and the overriding question the companies have in determining the formulations of their products is how much they need of each to achieve the maximum allure.” ‒ from SALT SUGAR FAT“The Corn Flakes tasted like metal filings, the Eggo frozen waffles like straw. Cheez-Its lost their golden yellow hue, turning a sickly yellow, and they went all gummy when chewed. The buttery flavor of the Keebler Town House Light Buttery Crackers … simply disappeared.” ‒ from SALT SUGAR FAT, the effect of no salt in product formulation“People like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch, no more or less.” ‒ from SALT SUGAR FAT“To nutritionists, these (convenience) stores are to obesity what drug dens are to the crack epidemic.” ‒ from SALT SUGAR FAT“Nestlé is a Swiss bank that prints food.” ‒ from SALT SUGAR FAT, a former Nestlé employee commenting on its $100 billion in annual sales with $10 billion in profitsSALT SUGAR FAT is Michael Moss’s explanation (or perhaps exposé) of how the food giants have hooked customers on processed convenience foods by fine tuning for maximum appeal the fat, sugar and salt content in their formulations; the book is divided into three parts, each dedicated to one of the three.SALT SUGAR FAT is no thriller by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, it can be put down for activities more pressing, like frying up an egg and some bacon to add to that double-cheeseburger.SALT SUGAR FAT appears to be extensively researched via the author’s many interviews of former and current executives and scientists in government and food giant employ as well as inspection of a wealth of memos, emails, reports and studies. There is, um, no photo section.After finishing the book, I’ll never observe what’s on supermarket shelves and racks in the same way again. I wish I could go back in time to the markets of my childhood in the 50s to remind myself of what convenience foods were available then in comparison. There may have been some sorry frozen pizzas, but we never ate any. I do recall frozen juice concentrate in cans and, of course, the first TV dinners marketed by Swanson (which, in my young eyes, were the best inventions ever). Chips of various kinds also, but I don’t recall eating large amounts of those either. Perhaps the dental cavities I had filled came from too much candy and soda. Memory fails.It’s now apparent that, except for what’s in the fruit/vegetables section and on the plain water shelves, just about every food item in a supermarket should cause any thinking consumer to take stock of what he or she is buying to ingest, and SALT SUGAR FAT is a must read for such a person.Having finished SALT SUGAR FAT, I’m considering what to have for lunch. Perhaps unflavored oatmeal with non-fat milk, a side of steamed asparagus and water. But that Pepperoni Pizza Hot Pocket, Sara Lee frozen cheesecake and bottle of Pepsi are screaming for my attention.

What to say? Everybody should read this, understand that the problem of overweight and food addiction is not in YOUR head but it is in the head of food engineers that know how to get us addicted...with the perfect combo of salt-fat-sugar. Turn yourself to fresh fruit and vegetables, cook your own, try to get away from salt, sugar, fat as much as possible and watch your body shrink and your health and beauty blossom. Oh and the quality of your thoughts and life......

Recommended by Scott Adams, this book follows the journeys of salt, sugar and fat in the American diets over the last 50-70 years or so and how these simple ingredients have come to dominate everything we eat. There are some startling revelations (like how we ended up eating so much cheese) and some shocking moments (cereal with more than 50% sugar content). It has changed how I will see food forever.

The book is decided into 3 roughly equal sections dressing the salt, sugar, and fat in processed foods. It is very well researched and extensively documented (fully indexed with a bibliography for further reading, hundreds of notes on references, and extensive sources provided). This guy knows what he is talking about and he tells it straight and fair.It is cock full of gems like:Finland reduced it's salt intake by one third and reduced deaths from strokes and heart disease by 80% (p302).The USDA recomends that 7 % of calories come from FAT; the US ave is 12%. (p155)Manufactures of process foods have been creating a desire for salt where none existed before" (p279)But it is even more than just facts; it is interesting and at points fascinating enough to make it an enjoyable read. I read this book in the same time that I spend on a similar sized thriller.Finally: Did you know that: "Every 1.7 box of processed meats consumed per day increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 21% ? See page 230

An exploration of processed foods, in product formulation and marketing terms, and the health implications of reliance on prepackaged convenience eating. This US-centric discussion is r on the ways major companies structure desire (the “bliss points” of food) through chemistry and psychological manipulation. Recommended.

This book should be a lot better than it is. It is insightful in parts and clearly wants to engage with the topic at hand. And whilst I definitely can say that I learnt a lot from it, about the food industry and their underhanded tactics it isn't a well written book. It suffers from a lack of editing, formatting that is hard to read and a generally poor composition. Overall, a book that should be engaging ends up being lacklustre because of its dense, and ironically, unpalatable nature.