How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Salt, Sugar, Fat

Think horse meat is bad? You should try pink slime 
 
An eye-opening and explosive journey into the secretive world of the processed food giants

Michael Moss has brilliantly exposed the systematic venality of Big Food. This book will confirm all your worst suspicions about the lengths big food companies go to to keep us hooked on junk.

Joanna Blythman, bestselling author of Shopped and Bad Food Britain

What happens when one of the country’s great investigative reporters infiltrates the most disastrous cartel of modern times: a processed food industry that’s making a fortune by slowly poisoning an unwitting population? You get this terrific, powerfully written book, jammed with startling disclosures, jaw-dropping confessions and, importantly, the charting of a path to a better, healthier future. This book should be read by anyone who tears a shiny wrapper and opens wide. That’s all of us.

Ron Suskind, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

A mouth-watering, gut-wrenching look at the food we hate to love

A shocking, galvanising manifesto against the corporations manipulating nutrition to fatten their bottom line—one of the most important books of the year

In this meticulously researched book, Michael Moss tells the chilling story of how the food giants have seduced everyone in this country. He understands a vital and terrifying truth: that we are not just eating fast food when we succumb to the siren song of sugar, fat, and salt. We are fundamentally changing our lives—and the world around us.

Salt Sugar Fat is a breathtaking feat of reporting. Michael Moss was able to get executives of the world’s largest food companies to admit that they have only one job—to maximize sales and profits—and to reveal how they deliberately entice customers by stuffing their products with salt, sugar, and fat. This is a truly important book, and anyone reading it will understand why food corporations cannot be trusted to value health over profits and why we all need to recognize and resist food marketing every time we grocery shop or vote.

Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics and What to Eat

The No.1 New York Times Bestseller 
 
In China, for the first time, the people who weigh too much now outnumber those who weigh too little. In Mexico, the obesity rate has tripled in the past three decades. In the UK over 60 per cent of adults and 30 per cent of children are overweight, while the United States remains the most obese country in the world. 
 
We are hooked on salt, sugar and fat. These three simple ingredients are used by the major food companies to achieve the greatest allure for the lowest possible cost. Here, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss exposes the practices of some of the most recognisable (and profitable) companies and brands of the last half century. He takes us inside the labs where food scientists use cutting-edge technology to calculate the ‘bliss point’ of sugary drinks. He unearths marketing campaigns designed – in a technique adapted from the tobacco industry – to redirect concerns about the health risks of their products, and reveals how the makers of processed foods have chosen, time and again, to increase consumption and profits, while gambling with our health. 
 
Are you ready for the truth about what’s in your shopping basket?

Michael Moss

Excellent... blends investigative reporting, science and foodie writing to argue that the processed food industry is no different from tobacco companies

Chilling ... succeed[s] brilliantly in evidencing the systematic venality of corporate junk food and drink interests

Hooked shows how food manufacturers have taken advantage of our habits, our biology, our psychological quirks, and our ignorance to transform foods into addictive substances. He takes us into laboratories and courtrooms, kitchens and legislatures-and shows us how we can win our freedom back

Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit

Michael Moss delivers again with a deep, well-written investigation into food addiction and mass food production. With so many companies competing for our attention, dollars, and stomachs, it's more important than ever to educate ourselves about food and arm ourselves against efforts to get us hooked. This is a very important read for anyone who cares about their health

Sylvia Tara, author of THE SECRET LIFE OF FAT

No one has done more to reveal the intentional and underhanded ways in which food companies manipulate our desires and eating habits than Michael Moss. In Hooked, he shows how these ongoing crimes must be challenged and stopped. A must-read for anyone who cares about food, general well-being, and justice

Mark Bittman, author of ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, JUNK

Hooked is smoothly written, with just the right amount of fascinating scientific detail

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Moss is a powerhouse when it comes to research and analysis, and much like his contemporary Michael Lewis, he possesses the ability to maintain a solid narrative arc ... He explores the often devious and potentially dangerous ways that manufacturers manipulate foods to trigger addictive behavior, spark sense memories of foods from our childhoods, and treat addiction and dependence as a corporate strategy ... Another clear-eyed inquiry into the companies that feed us, hook us, and leave us wanting more

Moss brings the same keen-eyed, lucid reporting to Hooked, illuminating the science of addiction to show that processed food is a drug ... If knowledge is power, then Hooked provides the facts we need to free ourselves from remaining unwitting conspirators in Big Food's ruse

How We Became Addicted to Processed Food

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Salt Sugar Fat comes a "gripping" (The Wall Street Journal) exposé of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts, the emotions we associate with food, and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public health. 
 
"The processed food industry has managed to avoid being lumped in with Big Tobacco-which is why Michael Moss's new book is so important."-Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit 
 
Everyone knows how hard it can be to maintain a healthy diet. But what if some of the decisions we make about what to eat are beyond our control? Is it possible that food is addictive, like drugs or alcohol? And to what extent does the food industry know, or care, about these vulnerabilities? In Hooked, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss sets out to answer these questions and to find the true peril in our food. 
 
Moss uses the latest research on addiction to uncover the shocking ways that food, in some cases, is even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. Our bodies are hardwired for sweets, so food giants have developed fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products and ways to exploit our evolutionary preference for fast, ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry -- including major companies like Nestlé, Mars, and Kellogg's -- has not only tried to hide the addictiveness of food but to actually exploit it. As obesity rates continue to climb, manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive eating habits. 
 
A gripping account of the legal battles, insidious marketing campaigns, and cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis, Hooked lays out all that the food industry is doing to exploit and deepen our addictions, and shows us why what we eat has never mattered more.

Michael Moss

Praise for Hooked

Excellent... blends investigative reporting, science and foodie writing to argue that the processed food industry is no different from tobacco companies

Chilling ... succeed[s] brilliantly in evidencing the systematic venality of corporate junk food and drink interests

Gripping

Excellent... blends investigative reporting, science and foodie writing to argue that the processed food industry is no different from tobacco companies

Chilling ... succeed[s] brilliantly in evidencing the systematic venality of corporate junk food and drink interests

Gripping

Excellent... blends investigative reporting, science and foodie writing to argue that the processed food industry is no different from tobacco companies

Chilling ... succeed[s] brilliantly in evidencing the systematic venality of corporate junk food and drink interests

Gripping

Books by Michael Moss

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