How The Food Industry Helps Engineer Our Cravings

Source: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/12/16/459981099/how-the-food-industry-helps-engineer-our-cravings?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=thesalt

The food industry has processed lots of foods to hit that “bliss point” — that perfect amount of sweetness that would send eaters over the moon. In doing so, it’s added sweetness in plenty of unexpected places – like bread and pasta sauce, says investigative reporter Michael Moss.

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It is no secret that the rise in obesity in America has something to do with food. But how much? And what role does the food industry as a whole play?

As part of Here & Now’s series this week on obesity, America on the Scale, host Jeremy Hobson spoke with investigative reporter Michael Moss of The New York Times.

For Moss’s book, Salt Sugar Fat, he went inside the industry and spoke with food inventors and CEOs about how the industry has shaped what people eat and capitalized on how American eating habits have changed — for the worse and, maybe now, for the better. Highlights from their conversation follow, edited for brevity and clarity.

Interview Highlights

On the food industry’s level of responsibility for the obesity epidemic

I was really struck by how many people inside the industry itself hold their industry totally accountable, tot…

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