MICHAEL MOSS documents data obtained from diverse sources, disciplines including historic archives, contemporary interviews and provides compelling psychological, neurological evidence the processed foods made and marketed by BIG FOOD are, can be ADDICTIVE.
APPROACHING
12TH
YOGA ANNIVERSARY
NUTRITION
PROCESSED FOODS MADE ADDICTIVE
BY
BIG FOODS
Last month I wrote about experiencing hyperlipidemia, my diagnosis of a high coronary risk from atherosclerosis based on computerized tomography imaging of calcium within plaque in four heart arteries resulting in a high total calcium score.
This status reflects on my nutrition choices over 70 years - especially on those that became poor habits during my first two decades and extending until my 50th year, less so afterwards.
WHAT IF?
Would different nutrition decisions have been made as an adolescent with knowledge known today?
Our understanding about nutrition, health risk factors from consuming highly processed foods - admittedly still incomplete - are today better that during the 1950's and 1960's.
A significant advance in our understanding about the diverse foods we eat from BIG FOOD is the consequence of two books by Michael Moss: in 2013 (Salt Sugar Fat), in 2021 (HOOKED).
It his 2021 publication on addictive processed foods that I focus on in this post - highlighting the many contributions of individuals from different disciplines that significantly enhanced our understanding connecting processed foods and our biology to the observed addiction that occurs in many.
MICHAEL MOSS
The author was a former employee of the New York Times, recipient of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.
SALT SUGAR FAT
Processed foods prepared by BIG FOOD were intentionally formulated to achieve a "bliss point" in the pleasure centers of the brain.
Moss did not consider these processed foods addictive when he published this book.
"I came to the question of food and addiction inadvertently with the 2013 publication of my book Salt Sugar Fat." (xxii)
MOSS:
- "I argued that grocery manufactures were competing with fast-food chains in a race to the bottom that rewarded profits over health." (p. xxii)
- "Knowing all the companies did to prop up their unwholesome products, I argued, was oddly empowering."
- "We could use that insight to make better choices because, ultimately, we were the ones deciding what to buy and how much to eat."
HOWEVER
Moss acknowledges "My optimism was challenged when reporters asked, "But aren't these products addictive, like drugs.?" (p. xxiii)
HOOKED
FOOD, FREE WILL, AND HOW THE FOOD GIANTS EXPLOIT OUR ADDICTIONS
"If food was addictive like cocaine and heroin, or even like cigarettes and gin, that would certainly inhibit our ability to decide what to buy and how much to eat." (p. xxiii)
WHY BOOK WAS WRITTEN
FROM PROLOGUE
" ... the aim is to lay out all that the companies have done to exploit our addiction to food so that we might reverse engineer our dependence."
Moss writes "... the initial imperative for this book:
(1) to sort out and size up the true peril in food
(2) to see if addiction is the best way to think about our trouble with food and eating, given what we've learned from other substances and habits
(3) And to peer inside the processed food industry to see how it is dealing with what, in its view, would be a monumental threat to the power it holds over us" (p. xxiii)
BOOK ORGANIZATION
Expanding on the narrative established in the PROLOGUE (pp. xi - xxviii), Moss organized his book into two parts:
Inside Addiction (pp. 3 - 99) "examines a wealth of surprising evidence that food, in some ways, can be even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs." - in chapters one to four.
AND
Outside Addiction (pp. 103 -210) considers the processed food industry - "... the industry has moved to deny, delay, and, most recently, turn this concern to its advantage." - in chapters five to eight.
ALSO
With an EPILOGUE (pp. 211 - 214) and ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pp. 215 -218), Moss provides useful NOTES (pp. 219 - 256), a valued BIBLIOGRAPHY (pp. 257 - 260) and an effective INDEX (pp. 261 - 274) - all of which enhanced my appreciation, interest in pursuing further and in more detail the diverse topics discussed.
HIGLY RECOMMEND
BOOK TO OTHERS
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Moss interviewed individuals from many disciplines, with diverse specialties at institutions located domestically and internationally including:
- BIG FOOD: including Executives, Food Science & Research, Marketing, Public Relations, Legal Departments
- PSYCHOLOGY: using human subjects in diverse experiments
- NEUROSCIENCE: using animal models, human volunteers
SELF-CRITICISM
"Where I've failed to restrain myself in drawing inferences from the science of food and addiction, I'd urge you to throw heaps of salt my way."
'What we think is true today may be shown to be bunk tomorrow." (p. 217)
MOSS ACKNOWLEDGES
" ... ideally I would not have included anything in this book that wasn't randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, and replicated to name only some of the gold standards in research trials.
" I certainly intended to avoid studies that investigated only mice, since they may or may not reflect what happens in humans. But who could pass up those white laboratory rats who smiled when they got sugar?" (p. 217)
IDENTIFYING
BIG FOOD
" ... the large food companies and legacy brands on which millions of consumers have relied on for so long." (p. 5)
They are a diverse group of national, international companies with vast financial resources producing the processed foods (solid, liquid) we consume as a nation.
They employ specialists focused on activities including food research, manufacturing and marketing, branding capabilities.
All have well funded legal departments, devoting resources to public relations, lobbying, litigation.
________
The author makes reference to the following companies, listed alphabetically:
Budweiser, Campbell Soup Company, Coca-Cola, D-Zerta, Frito-Lay, General Foods, General Mills, Heinz, Hershey, Kellogg's Company, Kraft (Kraft Heinz), Kroger, MacDonald's, Mars, Nabisco, Nestle, PepsiCo, Philip Morris, Pillsbury, R. J. Reynolds, Unilever
BIG TOBBACO ACQUIRES BIG FOOD
At one time Philip Morris acquired Kraft and General Foods and other companies; R. J. Reynolds owned the cookie and cracker giant Nabisco.
BIG FOOD MERGERS
Kraft with Heinz in 2015
"I Had a Food Affair"
The author notes the term addiction was defined and understood differently from the Romans to the 20th Century; he makes reference to the Oxford English Dictionary entries and how the word was used as a noun and verb over time.
Moss writes: "as with smoking, alcohol for longest time didn't qualify as a addiction" into the early 1800's.
However, " the temperance and anti-opium movements adopted the concept of addiction in describing the evils of drinking and opium smoking."
He cites the catchphrase in an 1891 publication of the temperance league: "Narcotic - Addictive - Opium - Alcohol -Cocaine." (p. 11)
_____
DURING THE PAST 70 YEARS
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
The author notes in 1957 the WHO sought to distinguish between addiction and habit, using word dependency.
SHATTERING STEREOTYPES
Moss mentions young psychiatrist Fred Glaser's tenure, experiences at the U. S. NARCOTICS FARM starting in the 1960's - a facility focused on heroin addiction - functioning as part hospital, prison and research institution.
What Glaser saw was a revelation: his patients "defied the government's one-size-fits all portrayal of drug users."
Glaser noted a wide spectrum of responses to drugs, the lack of painful withdrawals by many individuals incarcerated in this facility - including the poor, undereducated to the 20% who were a "banker, lawyer, minister" as well as "doctors or nurses".
He noted how some began using drugs for pain (physical, emotional) issues, being prescribed by a physician, and how some could moderate their use, recover easily relative to others and avoid "the body-wrenching havoc."
______
SLOWLY CHANGING
PERSPECTIVES ON CIGARETTES, FOOD
"for a substance to be considered addictive it no longer had to wreck the lives of every user. It was enough that only some people got badly hooked." (p. 9)
[1]
Moss shares a 1988 Louis Harris poll of the public - to name the substances or activities they felt were addictive, and to rate them on a 1 to 10 scale, 10 being the maximum loss of control.
The results: "Smoking was given an 8.5, nearly on par with heroin. But overeating, at 7.3, was not far behind, scoring higher than beer, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills." (p.5)
[2]
Moss notes in 1994 "the Food and Drug Administration's drug abuse advisory committee considered adding cigarettes to its list of addictive substances."
However, this was met with resistance by Philip Morris and testimony from a psychiatrist: "Cigarettes lie somewhere between high cholesterol foods such as eggs, on the one hand, and heroin, on the other, and they are much, much closer to steak and eggs."
HOWEVER
"But once the idea took hold that cigarettes could defeat the most dogged efforts to quit smoking, juries began to believe that smoking could also be addictive and this effectively turned them against tobacco manufactures."
"Addiction meant that smokers could not be entirely blamed when they got lung cancer. The companies deserved to be held liable too."
_____
BIG TOBACCO SUED
Moss notes it was "the 1998 settlement that forced the tobacco companies to curtail their marketing practices and pay in excess of $200 billion to the states" - largely due to individuals at the law school at Northeastern University in Boston.
Faculty and students over fourteen years collected the data: "They compiled the research that linked smoking to lung disease ... and cajoled the state attorneys general into bringing the cases that led to the big settlement." (p. 140)
ANOTHER SIGNIFICANT
TURNING POINT ABOUT ADDICTION
"For years (the company) "had fended off hundreds of lawsuits by arguing that smoking, however unhealthy, was an expression of free will." (p.127)
AN ADMISSION
JUNE 13, 2000
MICHAEL SZYMANCZYK
Philip Morris, Chief Executive Officer
The CEO was responding to the nations' first smokers' class action lawsuit to go to trial.
Asked to define addiction in court:" My definition of addiction is a repetitive behavior that some people find difficult to quit."
Parrish had advised the company leader's to acknowledge cigarette smoking is addictive - a strategy adopted to undermine growing number of lawsuits, public concerns - as they had been planning to develop e-cigarettes.
WORLDWIDE EMAIL SENT
OCTOBER 11, 2000
Philip Morris to its 144,000 employees: "We agree with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking is addictive." (p. 7)
"It's a behavior that's often mindless on our part, hidden from our own scrutiny, and guaranteed by its repetitiveness to get us to act again and again."
AND
"It's shaped by an array of influences, within us and without, that determine whether we'll be among those some people who get in trouble."
"It presents itself in varied ways and degrees of arduousness in being difficult to quit." (p. 27)
Moss clearly has food in mind and shares comments by Steve Parrish - the same person denying cigarettes were addictive - that was revealing:
"I'm dangerous around a bag of chips or Doritos or Oreos." "I'd avoid even opening a bag of Oreos because instead of eating one or two I would eat half the bag." (p. 6)
BY 2013
AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION
Their Handbook "avoids the word addiction in favor of substance use disorder."
They list eleven criteria that are used to diagnose someone to "reflect the view that we can be troubled on a very wide spectrum, from mild to severe."
Significantly, the "symptoms that people mostly commonly associate with addiction - painful withdrawal and tolerance - are no longer necessary." (p. 17)
NOTEWORTHY
"... among experts, the appraisal of addiction was changing."
&
"Medical, health and research groups were all moving toward a much more inclusive characterization."
"Addiction is a spectrum." (p. xxix)
______
Considering food as an addiction was gaining support with the public and from research investigations.
EXPLORING
BRAIN AREAS
ASSOCIATED WITH
ADDICTION
[CHAPTER ONE]
Moss changed his views about processed foods being addictive based, in part, on the data obtained from PSYCHOLOGICAL and number of NEUROSCIENCE investigations using real-time brain imaging.
TWO SEMINAL, MAJOR ADVANCES
[1]
PSYCHOLOGY
ASHLEY GEARHARDT
THE YALE FOOD ADDICTION SCALE
" ... its thirty-five questions help us define what it means to struggle with food." (p. 22)
Moss acknowledges the limitations of individuals responding to questions: " ... "- there comes a point when merely asking people questions becomes less fruitful." (p. 22)
[2]
NEUROSCIENCE
NORA VOLKOW
REAL-TIME IMAGING
Moss cites the research done at the Brookhaven National Laboratory led by Volkow, a known authority of drug addiction, and colleague Joanna Fowler using a device nicknamed the Headshrinker: their CT1931 machine used "nuclear traces" and capable of "tracking the brain's ... neurons, as they fired away." - like the MRI scanner (p.23)
IMPORTANT OBSERVATIONS
(1) In some experiments applying foods to tongues, taking images: " ... getting a bit of their taste on the tongue was sufficient to light up a part of the brain that scientists associated with the feeling of pleasure." (p. 25)
(2) "Images produced by food trials: "They were hardly distinguishable from those of the brain on cocaine."
_____
SIGNIFICANCE
[1]
"The ability of a substance to excite the brain and set in motion the behavior that leads us to act compulsively is in large part a matter of how fast the substance reaches the brain. (p. 47)
"The smoke from cigarettes takes ten seconds to stir the brain, but a touch of sugar on the tongue will do so in a little more than half a second, or six hundred milliseconds to be precise."
"Salt and fat clock in at roughly the same speed." (p. 47)
AND
[2]
Moss notes "of all the substances that can get us hooked, nothing is faster than when it comes to certain types of food stirring up the brain." (p. 47)
A CONFIRMATION
Moss found the words of the Philip Morris CEO said in reference to smoking could be applied to processed foods.
"Where Does It Begin"
[CHAPTER TWO]
OUR BRAIN - SENSES - FOOD CONNECTION
QUOTE
" ... nothing in eating makes sense except in the light of evolution."
Moss wrote this above quote - modifying the words of evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky - exchanging biology for food.
The author cites investigations by Ray Wise and Kent Berridge contributing to our understanding of roles of brain in relation to food.
RAY WISE
Observations in from experiments over many years exposing rats to electrical stimulation led him to conclude:
(1) "appetite lived in the brain, not the stomach." (p. 35)
(2) "it occupied a space in the brain very close to another spot that could send forth the complete opposite sensation: that of being full."
(3) The neurotransmitter dopamine was important - describing the state of being that dopamine puts us in using the words 'pleasure, euphoria, yumminess" (p. 38)
KENT BERRIDGE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
His lab rats "wear their emotions on their snouts." His 2000 paper photos showed similar reactions to foods between babies and rats." ... "Rat and baby alike scowled when they got something bitter and beamed when they got sweets." (p. 39)
In experiments blocking dopamine actions on brain - he noticed "the rats stilled smiled when they got sugar."
DISTINGUISHING
BRAIN
LIKING VS. WANTING
Berridge concludes: there are "homemade chemicals making us feel good ... is one or more of the brain opioids."
(1) He notes "liking something is a critical part of motivation" and "before there can be liking, something must cause us to act."
AND
(2) 'The emotion that propels this act is desire", " And the brain chemical behind this emotion? Dopamine."
Moss also cites the three individuals awarded the 2017 Brain Prize noting their research "showed the brain generates dopamine ... in response to the difference between the pleasure we expect to get and the pleasure we actually get."
_____
Moss keeps it basic in mentioning some named brain regions relevant to the foods we consume, addictions from processed foods.
The author notes the responses observed in each to foods: referred to as 'go' and 'stop' areas of brain that "are difficult to map with precision."
OUR BRAIN
[1]
HYPOTHALMUS
This region "is best described as the control room. It acts like a regulator gathering updates on matters like the body's temperature, blood pressure, and calories consumed, and it makes the necessary adjustments to keep the body on a steady keel." (p.37)
"It guides the behaviors that are most essential to our survival: the four F's - fighting, fleeing, fornicating, and feeling."
RAY WISE
Wise figured out neurons " ... pass data between themselves through both electrical and chemical signals, including one called dopamine." (a neurotransmitter)
"The four F's of the hypothalamus are a manifestation of of dopamine; the degree to which they get our attention is a matter of how much dopamine is put into circulation by the brain." (p.38)
[2]
HIPPOCAMPUS
Composed of a seahorse-shaped cluster of neurons, this region is part of the 'stop' brain
Moss notes "slowing down and chewing food slowly allows the hippocampus to absorb the information from that eating experience and to learn." (p. 63)
- "when we eat with purpose and and deliberation, its engaged.
[It helps keep the 'go' brain from getting us into trouble]
[3]
ORBITOFRONTAL CORTEX
These neurons located above our eyes "is part of a larger expanse of the brain known as the frontal lobe" also involved in the 'stop" brain.
Moss recounts the story of Phineas Gage, the injury that eliminated his ability to engage this region of the brain.
[4]
STRIATUM
In this area "we are reacting to inducements ... without applying the kind of oversight that can put the brakes on a bad decision."
"When we file information away in the striatum, "do things by rote, it creates what scientists have dubbed habit memory." (p.64)
ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE
OF
BRAIN ADDICTION
DANA SMALL
'GO' BRAIN TO 'STOP' BRAIN
IMAGING EXPERIMENT
Using real-time documentation, Small found subjects exposed to chocolate underwent a reaction from delicious to awful - obtaining from subject reactions to prolonged stimulus exposure.
SIGNIFICANCE
Moss notes "This was the first glimpse of a human brain throwing its own switch in response to the neurological signals caused by foods." (p. 45) - that is from the go to stop mode.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT FINDING
Small observed "only those snacks that had sugar and fat had enough arousal in them to fire up the striatum. where habit memory lives."
"It's here ... where restraint and free will disappear, indicating that sugar and fat, together, are extremely difficult to exert control over.
" When our behavior gets repetitive, this pair is the hardest to quit."
OUR SENSES
MOSS
"we eat like we do today because of dramatic changes to our nose, our gut, and our body fat that caused them to become full partners with the brain in driving our habits."
TONGUE
[1]
SALT, SUGAR
Our tongue has "ten thousand taste buds" (p. 84); these "taste buds have a mechanism" that detects sugar, salt that are "converted into an electrical signal that then races to the brain." (p. 49) (in milliseconds)
" This is the mechanism that makes food faster than drugs in exciting the brain ..." (p. 205)
ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS
"What if (BIG FOOD) could find a way to trick those taste buds into thinking there was more sugar hitting the tongue than there really was?" (p. 205)
Moss tells us investigators have recently learned that the "cells on our tongue absorb sugar themselves, drawing it right through their cell walls, which raises the specter that they are part of the mechanism that informs the brain of the fuel (calories) in our food." (p. 208)
[2]
FAT
The "signal for fat gets transmitted by the trigeminal nerve that extends from the roof of the mouth to the brain." (p.62)
&
NOTE COMBINATION
FAT & SUGAR
"Foods that has both fat and sugar will activate these two paths, sending two separate alerts, and thus doubling the arousal of a brain that appears to place a high value of information for information's sake. (p.62)
MOSS NOTES
"But fat and sugar are rarely found together in nature. Even breast milk is, on average, just 3.5 percent fat and 7 percent sugar."
YET
"The typical processed snack food has close to 24 percent fat and 57% sugar." (p. 62)
_____________
FOOD SCIENTISTS ALSO DISCOVERED
[1]
DYNAMIC CONTRAST
"We get excited not only by tasting food, but by feeling it, too, and one of the greatest sensations is a mix of textures ..." (p.62)
[Moss provides examples: Peanut M&M's have a brittle exterior, a soft interior, with a crunchy peanut inside that. Oreo cookies have light and dark, sweet and salty (in the cookie), smooth and rough."]
&
[2]
DETECTING SMELL IN FOODS
"WE SMELL WITH OUR MOUTH"
Moss notes a recent discovery by investigators: "we have ten million receptors in our nose for smell ... "these smell receptors can pick up between 340 and 380 basic smells, with combinations that reach into the thousands." (p. 84)
We are informed these "millions of smell receptors are located at the roof of the nasal cavity, in a bump called the olfactory bulb."
Moss notes the pathway these smell molecules (volatiles) follow were investigated by Yale neurobiologist Gordon Shepard and engineers in 2015.
"Through modeling ... they have shown that in the air in this space behind our nose has circular movements, like eddies in a stream, which cycle the small molecules around and around, ... getting us excited about food." (p. 85)
FLAVOR
Moss writes " ... the cells on the tongue also appear to be picking up small molecules - the aroma in our food that the brain converts to flavor, which is another of the huge drivers of our eating habits." (p. 208)
" The brain creates flavor ... by weaving together the sensory inputs and its memory of smells and tastes and feelings past." (p. 87)
ALSO
OUR GUT
Evidence exists "The gut becomes our main way of counting calories."
Moss mentions experiments using the artificial sweetener maltodextrin: "it has the chemical structure of a sugar and yet doesn't taste sweet" but it "has as many calories as any other sugar." (p. 93)
"The stomach is sensing the calories and signaling the brain that this is something good to drink, and the brain in turn is dispatching the feeling of pleasure and reward to get us to drink more." (p. 93)
Moss notes "just how the gut communicates with the brain remains a mystery." - that is, our understanding remains incomplete.
We know:
> The stomach has taste receptors
> There is an extensive microflora (our microbiome)
[this word microbiome was not used by author, not cited in the INDEX]
Our microbiome is comprised of vast numbers of Bacteria , Fungi, Archaea known to have an epigenetic effect on humans: that is, their genomes make products that impact our DNA, that influence our gut, brain in ways currently largely unappreciated.
Google The Human Microbiome Project for an updated status of ongoing research.
PROCESSED FOODS
NEGATIVE
HEALTH CONSEQUENCES
TWO MEDIUM SAGITTAL BODY SECTIONS
CUT ALONG THE LONG AXIS OF SPINAL CHORD
Note excessive distribution of body fat in the right individual compared to the left one - image taken at a BODY WORKS exhibit in Faneuil Hall in Boston.
MOSS
"the hallmarks of processed food - the lowest prices and the greatest convenience" (p. xxiii)
"The past four decades have seen soaring numbers of people put on so much weight that it compromises their health and well-being."
DEFINING
OBESITY
" ... as thirty-five or more excess pounds for a person of average height, obesity began to surge - the late 1970's - climbing from 15 percent to 40 percent." (p. 28)
"The latest figures mean that 96 million American adults are obese today, with nearly as many people classified as merely overweight ... ."
_____
" ... The U. S. Surgeon general has estimated that obesity causes three hundred thousand premature deaths every year, with annual healthcare costs that now top $300 billion."
AND
"Globally, we're at 650 million, not counting the 1.2 billion others who are overweight."
_______
BIOLOGY OF FAT
SYLVIA TARA
A biochemist who considers "The fat in our body is a full-fled organ, like the heart and kidney ..." (p. 97)
When talking about fat "we're often referring to the cells that share fat itself. But together those fat cells form a structure, with connective tissue, nerve tissue, and immune cells that all work as a unit, part of the very sophisticated endocrine system."
'The chemicals produced by fat include the hormone leptin, which can cause you to lose your desire to eat."
"Yet (fat) works just as efficiently to thwart any intentional effort to lose weight."
THE SET POINT
Moss makes reference to this metabolic theory "which posits that the body finds a comfortable weight from which it refuses to budge for very long."
EDWARD MASON
MEDICAL INTERVENTIONS
Moss mentions the first surgeries of Dr. Mason in 1967 were done, "using surgical techniques developed to fix severe ulcers, this procedure sealed the stomach off so much food went straight from the esophagus to the intestines." (p. 29)
&
Liposuction is not a long term solution to remove excess fat.
IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER
Our understanding of how are foods are metabolized still remains incomplete - meaningful data from well designed nutrition science studies like those of Kevin Hall and his colleagues (Chapter 6) are required to obtain answers to many as yet unresolved nutrition, metabolism questions.
"It's All Related To Memories"
[CHAPTER THREE]
FOOD MEMORIES
- Cereals: Big 'N Crusty, Cotton Candy Crunch, Cheerios - of the 200 kinds to choose from
- Cheese: low-fat, macaroni and cheese, processed, Velveeta Light, Kraft Free, Cheese Soup
- Chips of various flavors: BBQ, sour cream and onion, cheddar and sour cream, spicy jalapeno, crab, sea salt and pepper, loaded baked potato, and bacon
- Cookies: Oreos (Big Stuf, Double Stuf, Doy Pak, Mini)
- Fast Foods: Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets, Happy Meal,
- Frozen Foods: Chicken potpies, Healthy Choice
- Ice Cream: Banana Peanut Butter Chip Haagen-Dazs, Brown Butter Bourbon Truffles
- Potatoes: Ore-Ida, Tater Tots, McDonald's French fries
- Snacks: Cheez-IT's, chocolate, Doritos, potato chips, Kit Kat, M&M's
- Sweeteners: aspartame, beet sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, natural vanilla, saccharine, Splenda, sucralose, sugarcane
CORPORATE OVER PUBLIC INTERESTS
QUOTE
Moss cites comments in 1990 by Frito-Lay to the FDA: the company "has a demonstrated record of sensitivity to the needs and concerns of its consumers and has a direct interest in, and responsibility for, the nutritional interests and needs of consumers."
"We support a policy of providing sound nutrition information to the American people."
Unfortunately, this was not reality.
PUBLIC INTERESTS POORLY SERVED
" ... the FDA agreed to stop making food manufactures put the word imitation on the package fronts, which had been a real threat to sales." (p. 121)
(BIG FOOD) "got to leave lots of things out of disclosure:
1 - "... the chemical compounds it uses in flavorings." - Moss citing the example of simulated pumpkin spice including cyclotenes, lactones, sulfurol, pyrazines, and vanillin - as many as "eighty elements".
2 - multitude of substances that are used mainly as aids in the process of making foods and show up in the final product either not at all or in minute quantities." - for example: genetically modified organisms (GMOs) altered corn and soybeans
3 - misleading serving sizes, words used on nutrition labels
Moss cites Gyorgy Scrinis, his writings about nutritionism - critical of those paying too much attention to the nutrition in processed food, "which and how much of their nutrients are deemed "good" or "bad".
Moss ends this chapter by noting the BIG FOOD perspective: "they argue they didn't invent the attributes that make their products so addictive, as much as they simply gave us what we innately want."
Moss writes "The processed food industry's shrewdness in mining our biology and our emotions enabled it to foresee and take charge of our eating habits." (p. 127)
PUBLIC CONCERNS OVER FOOD
Moss notes the admission by BIG TOBACCO that smoking was indeed addictive "cast a new height on the threat facing the rest of the company's products" - "which was processed foods."
The tobacco executives had been warning the food-side managers that they could face as much trouble over obesity as tobacco did with cancer."
STEVEN JOSEPH, TRANS FATS
Moss tells the story of attorney Stephen Joseph suing Kraft over just one ingredient: an additive called trans fat (= trans unsaturated fatty acids) created by a process that infuses oil with hydrogen to solidify it that was unhealthy.
Joseph indicated BIG FOOD was targeting our children - being "Added to cookies, crackers, cakes, biscuits, popcorn, doughnuts, breakfast sandwich, frozen pizza and fried fast food."
He asked to ban sales of Oreos, originally developed by Nabisco, in all its forms and eventually dropped the lawsuit when Kraft agreed to remove trans fats from all its products.
_____
AGGRESSIVE MARKETING
Moss notes that Big Food was 'working to hit optimum bliss point for sweetness, the mouthfeel for fat, and the flavor boost of salt." - they were interested in getting the attention of tweens when they were young.
Marketing was expanding: Moss noted Kraft Senior VP lawyer Michael Mudd, reviewing company design and marketing records, saw in Mini Oreos "so much convenience that they could lead to what psychologists called mindless eating and its loss of control."
Mudd was focused on anything "that could cause trouble for Kraft in the court of public opinion."
SUCH AS
SUPER SIZE ME
Moss mentions Morgan Spurlock's 2004 movie - the filmmaker eating three meals a day for 30 days at McDonalds resulting in negative health outcomes was not the message BIG FOOD wanted to convey to the public. (p. 139)
BIG FOOD took actions to expand its influence.
[1]
CURTAILING LAWSUITS
Moss describes how BIG FOOD, the Law and Obesity Project by Richard Daynard led efforts to lobby Congress to block obesity lawsuits but was not successful.
However, Moss describes The National Restaurant Association attention that was directed to states, lobbying for legislation to prevent lawsuits to protect processed foods and having success in Colorado.
Moss cited 26 states voted versions of the Commonsense Consumption Act into law giving Big Food immunity.
[2]
BIG FOOD CONTROLS RESEARCH
Despite this progress, BIG FOOD remained concerned with providing data from studies it funded to persuade consumers to continue to consume its processed foods.
This BIG FOOD company research literature was evaluated by Marion Nestle and found deficient.
Moss highlights the circumstances leading to one notable Big Bet initiative using PepsiCo money: initially funding Dana Small, an independent investigator, using fMRI brain imaging to investigate sugar but was later suspended.
OUESTION ADDRESSED:
"How many calories could it take out of its products in making them healthier without diminishing their appeal so much that we wouldn't want them?"
SIGNIFICANT OBSERVATIONS
Dana Small unexpectedly found participants exposed to sugar drinks of different calories but similar sweetness:
(1) they liked the 112.5 calorie drink more than the 150 calorie or other drink options (75, 37.5, no calories)
HOWEVER
(2) in giving participants three choices of salads treated with maltodextrin to obtain different calories consumed, they liked the salad with with most calories (150 vs. 112.5 or 37.5).
Small was curious: where the 37.5 calories go? She speculated the body processed solids vs. liquids differently - from an evolutionary perspective, perhaps our bodies are not well prepared to deal with high-calorie liquids. (p. 156)
You would be tricked by soda into thinking you were burning calories you weren't. Calories would be converted to fat and you would gain weight.
Moss writes:
"...the company's own brain scans were showing that we were even more drawn to - and probably addicted by - the new versions of soda being made that had less sugar."
&
"Small's work suggested that their unnatural sweetness (from the added non-calorie sweeteners) was so confusing and mismatched with our biology that they might cause us to put on more body fat or develop conditions like type 2 diabetes."
With these concerns about public reaction to this information, PepsiCo decided to discontinue funding Dana Small.
Small noted:
"It's not so much that people can become addicted to food. It's the food has changed, and its now mismatched to us." - what she called the Mismatch Index. (p. 159)
Moss cites a research paper published in 2019 by Kevin Hall, a metabolism specialist, that "established for the first time that eating highly processed foods causes people to gain weight and isn't a mere correlation." - suggesting Dana Small might be on the "right track."
"Give Your Willpower a Boost"
[CHAPTER SEVEN]
Moss briefly mention the experiences of William Banting in 1864 and comments on the history of dieting including the introduction of the scale and diet fads like the "Master Cleanse or Lemonade Diet, the Fruitarian Diet."
He notes that despite their many incarnations, the nutrition science underlying diets is unknown - they have not been subjected to scientific evaluations.
The author cites Yoni Freedhoff, a physician and author (The Diet Fix) with a weight control clinic in Canada: his experience with patients "has taught me it is just a matter of time before you end up just giving in" acknowledging our evolution "telling you what to do ... "you may be able to beat your urges from time to time, eventually (you and I both know) they're going to win." (p. 164)
ANCEL KEYS, STARVATION EXPERIMENT
Moss reference to the Keys Starvation Experiment highlights the drive for the body to obtain food.
Moss indicates the Minnesota Starvation Experiment led by the physiologist Keys during 1944 - 1945: "Thirty-six healthy young men who were on a regime of 3,200 calories a day were taken down to 1,570 - basically, potatoes, and turnips and macaroni - for six months." (p. 165)
The physical, psychological observations recorded - how they "obsess, dream and fantasize" about food - highlights the evolution of our body's drive to obtain food, calories that Moss comments on about Ardi in various contexts.
[An interesting, alarming chapter of nutrition science history, the individuals selected for the study were all conscientious objectors opposed to fighting in WWII.]
I read the Todd Tucker (2007) University of Minnesota edition "The Great Starvation Ancel Keys and The Men Who Starved For Science" University of Minnesota Press ... the original Tucker edition was published in 2006 with the following title: The Great Starvation Experiment: The Heroic Men Who Starved So That Millions Could Live
NOTE
Keys remains a person of interest in the history of nutrition science - both praised by supporters, denounced by critics - having served in powerful leadership positions that influenced the FDA, national food policies, medical community - notably the public warnings about saturated fats but not about sugar, his promoting the benefits of the "Mediterranean Diets".
[Google Marion Nestle to see writings on Food Politics, reference to Keys and others including organizations at the highest levels impacting the nation for decades.]
ROLE
OF
BIG FOOD, DIETING
Moss: "Junk food morphed into junk diets" ... "the processed food industry has filled the grocery store with diet foods that are hardly distinguishable from the regular products that got us into trouble in the first place." (p. xxvii)
BIG FOODS ACQUIRE DIET COMPANIES
In 1978, Heinz got Weight Watchers ... In 2000, Unilever purchased Slim-Fast ... In 2006, Nestle purchased Jenny Craig ... In 2010, Roark Capital Group AtkinsATTEMPTS TO LOSE WEIGHT
TRACI MANN
PSYCHOLOGIST
"For the vast majority of people, dieting just doesn't work. It fails because:
(1) of our physiology; the body plays a game of sabotage by lowering or otherwise undermining our efforts."
(2) "life intervenes - layoff, or new babies, or sick parents."
(3) "no amount of will power can be sustained forever."
(4) "when that willpower is working for the dieter, the price is really high." (p. 173)
Moss cites studies that reflect "Weight Watchers produced an average loss in body weight of just over 5 percent. The news got even worse over time. At the end of two years, the participants had put on enough weight that the average net loss was barely 3 percent."
"The problem wasn't Weight Watchers. The problem was processed food, and all that the manufactures did to cause us to relinquish control of our eating habits."
"The Blueprint for Your DNA"
[CHAPTER 8]
Moss introduces Denise Morrison, President & CEO of Campbell Soup Company - providing quotations from a 2015 presentation:
"We are seeing an explosion of interest in fresh foods, dramatically increased focus by consumers on the effects of foods on their health and well-being, and mounting demands for transparency from food companies about where and how their products are made, what ingredients are in them, and how these ingredients are produced."
&
"And ... with this ... has come a mounting distrust of Big Food. Increasing numbers of of consumers are seeking authentic, genuine food experiences, and we know that they are skeptical of the ability of large, long-established food companies to deliver them."
---------------
THE DiOGenes PROJECT
Moss describes interaction of academics with BIG FOOD and introduces the DiOGenes Project (=diet, obesity, and genes) - "in exchange for funding, any solution the academics came up with would be turned over to the companies for them to produce and sell."
HOWEVER
And, as Moss writes: "But the products will only be effective if they satisfy other consumer criteria, such as taste, cost and convenience." (p. 189)
"Changing What We Value"
[EPILOGUE]
WHAT BIG FOOD, WE KNOW
ABOUT
PRODUCTION, MARKETING
OF
PROCESSED FOODS
MOSS EPILOGUE OVERVIEW
Moss provides a useful summary of how BIG FOOD has used its resources for decades to continue to develop their unhealthy, processed foods:
[1]
" ... that speed drives the brain crazy with lust."
[2]
" ... we go loopy for salt, sugar, fat and calories."
[3]
" ... we eat what we remember ... they [BIG FOOD] go to great lengths to create our food memories and trigger them with endless cues."
[4]
" to value the cheapness and convenience of their products."
[5]
" to own the cure when our eating spins out control, and their cure is to have us diet."
[6]
" their products, like drugs, affect some of us more than others."
MOSS SUGGESTIONS
He acknowledges "wrestling free of addiction ... it's not so easy." We can:
(1) make our own meals, pay more attention to what we eat
(2) build new memories by changing what we value in food
(3) remember the hidden costs to our health of cheapness and convenience
(4) try to fix one of our bad habits at a time
(5) stop drinking anything with calories
AUTHORS FINAL WORDS
"When we change what we eat, and the companies change what they make to address that, we have to be ready to see through that."
EAT REAL FOOD,
MOSTLY PLANTS,
IN SMALL AMOUNTS
I
EAT
AND
SELECTIONS
AT THE ROSE ROOM IN
WEBSTER, MA
The ROSE ROOM has offered me a unique opportunity to enjoy locally sourced and hand crafted meals that are both delicious and nutritious.
[1]
TOFU BAHN MI
[2]
HONEYNUT FLATBREAD
[3]
TOMATO TOAST
HEIRLOOM TOMATOES, FRESH PEACHES,
TROPEA ONIONS, RICOTTA ON TOAST
