Salt Sugar Fat Read Online Free Page A

Salt Sugar Fat
Book: Salt Sugar Fat Read Online Free
Author: Michael Moss
Pages:
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their use. The confidential industry records that came my way in the course of reporting this book show exactly how deliberate and calculating a matter this is. To make a new soda guaranteed to create a craving requires the high math of regression analysis and intricate charts to plot what industry insiders call the “bliss point,” or the precise amount of sugar or fat or salt that will send consumers over the moon. At a laboratory in White Plains, New York, industry scientists who perform this alchemy walked me, step by step, through the process of engineering a new soda so that I could see the creation of bliss firsthand. To understand how the industry deploys fat in creating allure, I traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, home of Oscar Mayer and of the man who invented the prepackaged whole meals called Lunchables, a colossus among convenience foods that radically changed the eating habits of millions of American kids. He went into his cabinets to pull out the company records that weighed the pros and cons of using real pepperoni versus pepperoni flavor and described the allure of fat-laden meat and cheese in cuddly terms like “product delivery cues.” Both fat and salt are at the heart of Frito-Lay’s operations in Plano, Texas, and some of the company’s favorite methods for manipulating these two ingredients were relayed to me by a former chief scientist there named Robert I-San Lin. These include a remarkable effort by company officials to reduce the ideal snack to a mathematical equation of taste andconvenience—“P = A 1 T + A 2 C + A 3 U – B 1 $ – B 2 H – B 3 Q,” with the
P
standing for Purchase and the allure of fat and salt easily overcoming the
H
, or the public’s health concerns.
    I would find out that one of the most compelling, and unsettling, aspects of the role of salt, sugar, and fat in processed foods is the way the industry, in an effort to boost their power, has sought to alter their physical shape and structure. Scientists at Nestlé are currently fiddling with the distribution and shape of fat globules to affect their absorption rate and, as it’s known in the industry, their “mouthfeel.” At Cargill, the world’s leading supplier of salt, scientists are altering the physical shape of salt, pulverizing it into a fine powder to hit the taste buds faster and harder, improving what the company calls its “flavor burst.” Sugar is being altered in myriad ways as well. The sweetest component of simple sugar, fructose, has been crystallized into an additive that boosts the allure of foods. Scientists have also created enhancers that amplify the sweetness of sugar to two hundred times its natural strength.
    Some of the physical reconfiguration of salt, sugar, and fat is couched as an effort to reduce the consumption of any one ingredient, as in low-fat or low-sugar products; a super salt, for instance, might mean that less salt is needed. But one facet of processed food is held sacrosanct by the industry. Any improvement to the nutritional profile of a product can in no way diminish its allure, and this has led to one of the industry’s most devious moves: lowering one bad boy ingredient like fat while quietly adding more sugar to keep people hooked.
    As powerful as they are, salt, sugar, and fat are just part of the industry’s blueprint for shaping America’s eating habits. Marketing is a full partner to the ingredients. Lunchables, for one, are a marketing powerhouse, specifically designed to exploit the guilt of working moms and the desire of kids for a little empowerment. These ready-to-eat meals typically include pieces of meat, cheese, crackers, and candy, allowing kids to assemble them in whatever combination they desire. Food marketers wield pinpoint psychological targeting, and they didn’t disappoint on the Lunchables ads: The ads stressed that lunch was a time for them, not their parents.
    The marketing side of processed food, it became clear in the research for this book,
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