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.

This is a great read. If you've read any of Michael Pollan's books and thought "god, this guy can't write and apparently doesn't know how to do research either... I've never been so angry with an author whose premise I generally agree with," then this is the book for you! Moss can write! That should go without saying, but sadly does not. This is seriously interesting and also informative. Everything is well based in research and he lays out the possible conflicts of interest of the researchers, examines their past research and findings and says whether or not they happen to find in line with their funders or not, which is really important. He doesn't fall into vilifying people or companies where it's unlikely they had malicious intentions but he also does not pull punches. I had considered myself relatively well informed about food science, but I still learned a ton, and it was a fun read. It's exactly what I wanted when I read "In Defense of Food" and nearly pulled out all my hair in frustration since the whole book seemed to be hearsay; almot no supporting evidence! Salt Sugar Fat was really interesting, Moss clearly did a lot of research and it doesn't feel like he had a preconceived idea of what he wanted to say or find... but instead just did the research and laid out what it said. Yes, it has left me feeling like processed food sucks and I can't buy most of what's in the grocery store... but I know all the reasons and none of them are the general, fuzzy ideas like "well, it's not NATURAL," or "I can't pronounce half of what's in it," which aren't very compelling on their own... I mean, I can break fruits and vegetable down into components I can't pronounce either. Instead I can say, "well, the salt, sugar and fat in this product were engineered to induce cravings and reduce satisfaction so I am inclined to overeat the product. My brain rewards me for eating these things because it evolved in an environment that had very little of them. So I need to eat them in serious moderation and not trust my instincts." And of course that's only the most basic of the ideas encountered in the book. Anyway. AWESOME BOOK. READ IT.