I do have mixed feelings about the book and this issue. On the one hand, all the food companies want to do is sell more food. They do have to make a profit, after all. And their mission is to make the tastiest, most appealing food they can, so they can sell more and more of it. They make it, we buy it, we eat it and like it, they make a profit. It's a simple, free-market, mutually beneficial exchange. But there's more to it than that.
The ball got rolling when food manufacturers started making soda, chips, TV dinners, which they "imagined as occasional fare." But as society changed, they found that "snacks and convenience food had become a daily--even hourly--habit, a staple of the American diet." As convenience became more important to Americans, food manufacturers had to make food "easy to buy, store, open, prepare, and eat." In the laboratories (not kitchens, note. These are chemists, not chefs, who are creating food.) of Kraft, General Foods, and other manufacturers, the "drive to achieve the greatest allure for the lowest possible price has drawn them" to salt, sugar, and fat. As one executive said, maybe there is too much salt or sugar in our products, but "that's what the consumer wants, and we're not putting a gun to their head to eat it. That's what they want. If we give them less, they'll buy less, and the competitor will get our market."
Some of the food industry insiders Moss spoke to had second thoughts and reservations about their work, like one former Coca Cola executive, who travelled to Brazil for a market study. "As he walked through one of the prime target areas, an impoverished barrio of Rio de Janeiro, he had an epiphany. 'A voice in my head says, "These people need a lot of things, but they don't need a Coke." I almost threw up.'" He was eventually fired. Virtually all of Moss's subjects stated their own aversion, or at least extreme moderation, when it comes to their own products, pointing out the "class issue at work in processed foods, in which the inventors and company executives don't generally partake in their own creations."
The companies are not alone in their culpability. The federal government has been their hypocritical partner in crime, with its "promotion of some of the industry practices deemed most threatening to consumers." Cheese, with its high fat content and warnings from dietitians to reduce consumption, enjoys huge federal subsidies. The federal government has caves full of it because they promised dairy farmers they would buy their cheese. Even the makers of the food pyramids produced and distributed by the USDA bow to the food industry lobby, putting politics before health. I wish Moss would have addressed the sugar lobby, too. Federal subsidies and import tariffs on sugar keep the cost of sugar unnaturally high and lead to many manufacturers using less healthy sweeteners.
Moss also points out that the drive for profits at the food giants has contributed to the obesity epidemic. "In the early 1980s, investors shifted their money from stodgy blue chip companies to the high-flying technology industry and other sectors that promised quicker returns," pressuring food companies to cut costs and increase marketing to satisfy Wall Streets demands for more and more profits.
Ultimately, the consumer is in control of what he or she eats. Moss doesn't call for government regulation, but he would welcome industry self-policing. The individual consumer "seizing control in order to ward off an unhealthy dependence on processed food seems like the best--and only--recourse we have." Moss's examples abound, his argument is readable and convincing, and I can almost guarantee he will have you reading labels and thinking carefully about what you are putting in your body.
Thanks to Edelwiess and the publisher for the complimentary review copy.
Note: If you don't want to read the whole book, read this article adaptation: New York Times Magazine.
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