Michael Moss Salt Sugar Fat Summary

Company vs Consumer Food has become such a big complicated mess because of the involvement in sciences and politics in food production and distribution. They have all of the power to say and do whatever they want with food and somehow it has ended in obesity epidemic rates and the rates are drastically increasing as the years go on. Michael Moss in his book titled Salt, Sugar, Fat spends three years finding out how food companies manipulated the system and used their products to worsen the health of the public and rack up the money at the same time. He unfolds this situation and dives deep into the problem while giving his feedback on the issue itself. Throughout his book Michael Moss in a complex way, proves to readers by observing the

Sadly enough is it affecting America and it is affecting America fast. The health of Americans is declining at a rapid pace Moss commented, “More than half of American adults were now considered overweight, with nearly one- quarter of the population- 40 million adults- carrying so many extra pounds that they were clinically defined as obese” (xvi). Children specifically are immensely impacted by the unhealthy epidemic. With commercials/ads, availability, and media in general, eating healthy would be a tough choice as a kid. In fact, “The typical American child in 1979 would watch more than twenty thousand commercials between the ages of two and eleven--and more than half of those ads were pitching sweetened cereals, candies, snacks, and soft drinks”(Moss 80). “When each cereal brand was cross referenced with TV advertising records, the sweetest brands were found to be the ones most heavily marketed to kids during Saturday morning cartoons” (Moss 73-74). All of those factors go into the buying and selling of each product and are well thought out to trick the kids into thinking that the food is something way more than it actually is. The parents of these children are the ones buying the sugary foods and giving into the media advertising. It doesn’t just affect children, adults are addicted to the sweet taste of sugar as well and also fall for

Food companies make up false studies, false commercials, and advertisements to attract and bring in consumers. This is true for all foods, but especially when all of the new brands of cereals were coming out, major food companies such as Kellogg's and Post were not only making cereal upon cereal but adding more and more sugar into the cereal to attract consumers (specifically kids). They would use commercials, ads, bright colors, and characters on their boxes to catch the eyes of consumers. Moss stated while observing these companies, “Instead of having the food technicians toil away in their labs experimenting with tastes and textures, the marketing folks hunted for ideas that suited the advertising needs at Kellogg first and worried about pleasing the palates of consumers second” (Moss 85). It isn’t entirely the company's fault though, the buyers share a role as