Hooked on Salt, Sugar and Fat

I like to listen to books on tape, especially when I'm driving, exercising, knitting or busy about the kitchen or office. I still have a couple of hours left listening to the fourteen and a half hours of Scott Brick narrating Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss. But, before I get caught up with this coming week's schedule of work and projects, I have to tell you about this book, so you can order it or download the audio book for yourself!

Similar to food documentaries such as Food Inc and Forks Over Knives (see the sidebar for a list), the insights you will get from reading the book Salt Sugar Fat will forever change how you think about the foods you are tempted to, craving to eat. What you glean from the author's research may be the information you need to change your eating habits, which in turn may ultimately save your life and the lives of those you love.  

As a Pulitzer Prizing-winning investigative reporter at the New York Times, Moss uses his experience and skill to digs deep to uncover the marketing strategies and chemical formulations that transform real foods into cleverly disguised and packaged food items that lack real substance, nutrition and are harmful to our heath. The ever increasing rise in diabetes, especially among children, directly correlates with diets high in sugar and fats from processed foods. We've been systematically manipulated, hooked if you will, by ramping up our cravings through taste, texture and eye appeal for highly salted, sugary and high fat content food-like products that appeals to convenience and are fast, cheap, easy and fake.

It's far, far worse than we thought friends. The length to which the processed food industry giants go to in their mission to manipulate and change consumer habits to crave the foods they make is astounding.

I encourage you to read the March 8, 2013 msnbc article ‘Salt Sugar Fat’: How food companies put profits ahead of public health. Morgan Whitaker interviews Michael Moss.

Ever heard of the "bliss point"? I hadn't until I read Salt Sugar Fat. The food scientists employed by the big food and beverage manufacturers have dialed in on our "bliss", and proven through taste testing that the myriad of foods engineered do hook us and keep us coming back for more, continuing to pull in billions upon billions of dollars for their employers. Job security as long as we keep craving!

Confession - As a young mother back in the 80's, who mostly cooked healthy foods for our kids, I too fell into the trap of foods that catered to convenience and my kids' cravings - serving our children Kraft Mac & Cheese with hotdogs on date nights,  Jello Jigglers and Instant Pudding as treats, Lucky Charms and other sugary cereals, and Lunchables to take to school. Yuck! My cravings were for the salty "Os" - Fritos, Cheetos, tacos. I still tend to crave salt in the form of gluten-free pretzels and corn chips with salsa.

Although I've been blogging for some time now, sharing healthy gluten-free recipes, I've continued to use some dairy in my recipes, including homemade gluten-free Mac & Cheese - loaded with cheese. After what I've just learned about the dairy and processed food industries, I'm going to be digging deeper  into the foods I tend to crave and eat. I'm also going to take label-reading to the next level, and not just dairy, dairy substitutes and their salt, sugar and fat levels.

Of course, once we realize why we keep craving certain foods and take back the control of what we put into our bodies, in time the level of salt sugar and fat we think we need to be happy and satiated will continue to decrease. Hopefully, you are coming to this understanding early in life rather than later. However, it's never to late to change habits, though old habits die hard. If we think of food as either being medicine or poison, it's easier to choose what we put in our body. In the place of ingesting foods to sustain those high levels of tastes we've come to consider the norm in processed foods, restaurant cuisines and even meals prepared at home, we will find more and more satisfaction in every bite of the healthy foods we eat with less salt, sugar and fat. Now that's true bliss!