Salt Sugar Fat How the Food Giants Hooked Us...by Micheal Moss ..review in the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/24/salt-sugar-fat-moss-reviewFrom the Guardian..Feb 24, 2013
Joanna Blythman
The Observer, Saturday 23 February 2013
A damning investigation into the junk food industry is both chilling and contentious
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
New York Times journalist Michael Moss spent three-and-a-half years working out how big food companies get away with churning out products that undermine the health of those who eat them. He interviewed hundreds of current and former food industry insiders – chemists, nutrition scientists, behavioural biologists, food technologists, marketing executives, package designers, chief executives and lobbyists. What he uncovered is chilling: a hard-working industry composed of well-paid, smart, personable professionals, all keenly focused on keeping us hooked on ever more ingenious junk foods; an industry that thinks of us not as customers, or even consumers, but as potential "heavy users".
How do the food giants do it? Moss's central thesis is that junk food is a legalised type of narcotic. By deliberately manipulating three key ingredients – salt, sugar and fat – that act much like drugs, racing along the same pathways and neural circuitry to reach the brain's pleasure zones, the food and drink industry has created an elastic formula for a never-ending procession of lucrative products.
As Moss explains, the exact formulations of addictive junk foods (and drinks) are not accidental but calculated and perfected by scientists "who know very well what they are doing". Their job is to establish the necessary "bliss point", the precise amount of sugar, fat or salt guaranteed to "send consumers over the moon".
Sugar, with its "high-speed, blunt assault on our brains", is the "methamphetamine of processed food ingredients", he believes, while fat is the opiate, "a smooth operator whose effects are less obvious, but no less powerful". Without salt, he observes, "processed food companies cease to exist".
____________________________________________________________________________________________
this book was published Febuary 26, 2013...now 5th on NYT best sellers: non fiction
http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/hardcover-nonfiction/list.html
I got the idea to post this here, from a post in GD by redfairen:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022564508
= new reply since forum marked as read
What Coca Cola execs thought of their consumers....
"Within Coke they referred to their best customers not as you might think — 'consumers' or 'loyal fans' or something like that. They became known as 'heavy users.' And Coke had a formula ... that basically said, '20 percent of the people will use 80 percent of the product.' And, as Coke saw it, it was worth their while more to focus on those 20 percent using 80 percent of the product than to try to generate more consumption by the other 80 percent. So the heavy users of soda became those people who were drinking as many as 1,000 cans of soda a year, sometimes more."
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Reminds me of how I read about drug dealers and their relationship with their users...Coke. one of the most well know brands in the world. 
