Harbinger of Books

The book is broken into three sections each one about sugar, fat and salt. In short Mr. Moss takes us behind the scenes of the food industry where they have exploited the human desire to crave salt and our love affair with sugar and fat. I thought it was interesting how the food companies are not demonized just ignorant of what is happening beyond the making of the ‘perfect product’. Some of the really interesting points are about cheese and how the government bought it the excessive leftover amounts then it became a subsidy so companies marketed it and about a decade later we put cheese on everything, I believe the author said we have tripled individual consumption to like 35 pounds a year since the late 1970’s. It was also interesting how the food industry has calculated the “bliss point” this is the point where a specific concentration of salt, sugar or fat makes the food most palatable (i.e. not salty enough – to little salt, to rich or to greasy – to much fat, just the right amount of sugar – bliss). Likewise I was disgusted at Paula Deen’s recipe for deep fried macaroni balls made from Kraft Mac & Cheese wrapped in bacon.

There is no doubt this book is well researched and I greatly admire his tenacity to follow up on so many leads. However these leads become circular so it takes forever to get to the facts and then once you get to the bottom line you feel a bit left to figure out what come next. For example he talks about how companies have worked to get people hooked and now we have heavy users so what next for them and how could one identify themselves? Any advice outside of go cold turkey? Another example is when he makes this really poignant argument about how a person who is morbidly obese has gastric bi-pass surgery which is successful only to come home and still have the same cravings but a smaller stomach. It would have been great to hear that person’s side of the story. So while it is still a depressing look into the food industry where profit is more important than people sadly the overall topic is nothing new. In the section on salt he starts talking about the different types of salt additives and I thought that was really interesting because it was consumer usable information only to have it end without any significant discussion.

I listened to this book on audio and Scott Brick is awesome as always. The writing is solid but to be honest at times I felt the book got a little repetitive and at times I was challenged to fully focus.

If you are new to the food industry I think this could really open one’s eyes to what is happening behind the scenes. If you have read a few books then it may seem a bit redundant.

3 ½ stars