Michael Moss, author of “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us“, doesn’t believe commercial food can ever be healthy, because corporations must make profits for shareholders, and the way they do that is finding your “bliss point” with just the right amount of salt, sugar, and fat.

He has food executives on record about this — confessions from them they can’t make healthy food even if they were heavily regulated.  They just can’t sell food without adding lots of salt, sugar, and fat to keep customers buying more.  They even call customers “heavy users”.

Corporations also can’t use high-quality, nutritious ingredients because they cost more.  Salt, sugar, oil, and white flour are CHEAP.

Top executives from the world’s largest processed food companies met in 1999 to hear a presentation on the obesity crisis, and told they needed to make healthier food before they were sued like tobacco companies were for cigarettes.  Yet in the last 14 years, food has only gotten worse, as billions are spent in laboratories to make processed food as addictive as possible and marketing them.

Only you can stop this madness!  Stop buying processed food.  You can make the same meals at home with delicious nutritious ingredients.

Moss also points out that they’ve tricked you into thinking you’re so busy you have no choice but to buy their products.  BS!

David Kessler, commissioner at the FDA under two administrations, and a dean of the medical schools at Yale and the University of California, San Francisco, says in his book “The End of Overeating”, says that the processed and restaurant food we eat “adult baby food”, because you can woof it down in 10 bites on average, and food manufacturers know this – they want to sell more by cramming as much as possible down your throat to make more money.  If the food industry could like to fill you up like a car at a gas station, they’d do it. The only thing stopping that is that people don’t want to drink pizza.

Welcome to the world of industrialized food, where chicken is pumped up with 40% water, battered, breaded, and frozen at the manufacturing facility. Then it’s shipped to the restaurant, where it’s deep fried.  The 40% water is replaced with fat.  The customer who ordered chicken breast because it’s healthier than red meat, is impressed  with the  soft and tender piece of chicken breast, more so than could be made at home, and happy with the generous (40% fat) portion as well.  Tiny bits of spinach cling to the surface, assuring the customer of having made a healthy choice.

From day one, even newborns like sweet food.  When you buy processed food or eat out, you’re basically being served fatty, sugary, and salty food infused with sugar, fat, and salt, and topped with fatty, sugary, salty sauces.  If you think I’m kidding, the book is laden with examples in Chapter 4, and throughout the book.  Hopefully it will outrage you enough that you won’t be tempted by many dishes or the restaurant chains he mentions, and will read labels at the grocery store more carefully.

Added fat is how the food industry keeps you coming back for more.

Fat gives food texture, body, crunch, creaminess, merges flavors, releases flavor-enhancing chemicals, lubricates food making it easier to swallow, and lingers as a pleasurable aftertaste.

Chemicals are then added to exaggerate smell, taste, texture, and colors.

Finally, millions of dollars are spent testing this Frankenfood on people to be sure the chemicals, sugar, fat, and salt are balanced correctly.

Much of the above is from my review of this book, the full review is at “Why You Can’t Just Say No”

Why you can’t just say no

Some of the worst junk food is chips and crackers because they have too much salt, sugar, and fat. But the prep time for chips and crackers is 5 minutes to get them into the oven.  That’s a lot faster than going to the store!  And home-made chips are good for you, in moderation of course.  How many years of life are you going to lose eating industrial food, how many years disabled, on dialysis machines.  In the “big picture view”, baking at home will save you time in the long run!

There are millions of free recipes at epicurious.com (and other websites). You can even select them by “quick and easy” if being too busy is why you aren’t cooking at home.

I got so mad at how industrial food was destroying our health and shortening our lives, that I was inspired to write Crunch! to teach people how to add more healthy whole grains, legumes, and nuts/seeds to their diet — a good quarter of the USDA recommended food plate.