Have You Been Seduced by Salt, Sugar and Fat?

Learn how the food giants have hooked us.

Back in 1999, a group of men who controlled America’s largest food companies attended a meeting in the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury. In attendance were C.E.O.’s and presidents from Nestle, Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coco-Cola and Mars.  The agenda: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. These men were in constant battle with each other over what they called “stomach share” – the amount of consumers that any one company’s brand could take away from their competition.

Pillsbury’s chief technical officer ran the meeting. His intent was to get these men to agree that they had gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed the greatest health concerns–foods laden with sugar, salt and fat. He and others wanted these food giants to agree to be part of the solution, not the problem, by reformulating their foods to make them healthier. By looking at today’s obesity epidemic it is quite clear that the food giants didn’t agree.

In this article, The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, Michael Moss an investigative reporter for The NY Times, tells the story of  that meeting back in 1999 and gives you insight into how companies use salt, sugar and fat to addict us. You’ll learn why companies spend millions of dollars to find the sensory-specific satiety point, the perfect “mouth feel”, vanishing caloric density, and how to get consumers to consume more.

Once you’ve read this article, ask yourself … Just how far will corporations go to manipulate nutrition at the expense of our health to fatten their bottom line?