Salt Sugar Fat, Michael Moss
Salt Sugar Fat, Michael Moss
16 Rating(s)
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Salt Sugar Fat
How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Author: Michael Moss

Narrator: Scott Brick

Unabridged: 14 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/26/2013

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

“If you had any doubt as to the food industry’s complicity in our obesity epidemic, it will evaporate when you read this book.”—The Washington Post

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER • In this “propulsively written [and] persuasively argued” (The Boston Globe) exposé, a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter uncovers an insidious truth: food companies are deliberately sacrificing our health to raise their own profits.

Thirty-eight million Americans have diabetes. One in three adults and one in five kids is clinically obese. Why?

Every year, the average American eats thirty-three pounds of cheese and seventy pounds of sugar. Every day, we ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt, double the recommended amount, almost none of which comes from the shakers on our table. It comes from processed food, an industry that hauls in $2 trillion in annual sales.

In Salt Sugar Fat, Michael Moss shows how we ended up here. Featuring examples from Kraft, Coca-Cola, Lunchables, Frito-Lay, Nestlé, Oreos, Capri Sun, and many more, Moss’s explosive, empowering narrative is grounded in meticulous, eye-opening research. He takes us into labs where scientists calculate the “bliss point” of sugary beverages or enhance the “mouthfeel” of fat by manipulating its chemical structure, unearths marketing techniques taken straight from tobacco company playbooks, and talks to concerned insiders who make startling confessions.

Just as millions of “heavy users” are addicted to salt, sugar, and fat, so too are the companies that peddle them. You will never look at a nutrition label the same way again.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Atlantic, HuffPost, Men’s Journal, MSN, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly

Includes a bonus PDF with endnotes from the book

About The Author

Michael Moss was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2010, and was a finalist for the prize in 1999 and 2006. He is also the recipient of a Loeb Award and an Overseas Press Club citation. Before coming to The New York Times, he was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two sons.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Stephanie *Eff your feelings* on April 12, 2013

I can honestly say I am one of the first people on the planet to have eaten a Chicken Mc Nugget. This is my dad a few years back He is a mechanical engineer and a total genius. Before I was born my dad had to find a job to support his family (they already had my older sister). My parents wanted to st......more

Goodreads review by Anne on April 26, 2025

"Oh, don't tell me! It will just make me feel bad." This, followed by a self-effacing laugh, was the reaction I got when I tried discussing this book with several of my friends & acquaintances. The overwhelming response was that they already knew I was going to tell them certain foods were bad, and th......more

Goodreads review by Karen on January 19, 2013

Probably like most of you, I thought Michael Moss's Salt, Sugar, Fat would be about how these ingredients are not good for us, how to eliminate them from our diets, and perhaps a few recipes to get us started. I was wrong. This book is far more fascinating than that. It's a well written, in depth lo......more

Goodreads review by Jon on September 07, 2013

I've read a number of books on food and the food industry ( What to Eat, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto); this is one of my favorites. Rather than vilifying the food industry en-masse, the author takes the time to understand the point of view of industry insiders, especially the scientists......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on May 27, 2016

This book has me torn. It does have a lot of in depth research and it makes a lot of interesting points. But, it demonizes some businesses and foods that I don't necessarily feel deserve it. I love food and I know some of it is bad for me (just like when I used to smoke - I knew it was bad for me th......more


Quotes

“As a feat of reporting and a public service, Salt Sugar Fat is a remarkable accomplishment.”The New York Times Book Review

“[Michael] Moss has written a Fast Food Nation for the processed food industry. Burrowing deep inside the big food manufacturers, he discovered how junk food is formulated to make us eat more of it and, he argues persuasively, actually to addict us.”—Michael Pollan

“If you had any doubt as to the food industry’s complicity in our obesity epidemic, it will evaporate when you read this book.”The Washington Post

“Vital reading for the discerning food consumer.”The Wall Street Journal

“Propulsively written [and] persuasively argued . . . an exactingly researched, deeply reported work of advocacy journalism.”The Boston Globe

“[An] eye-popping exposé . . . Moss’s vivid reportage remains alive to the pleasures of junk—‘the heated fat swims over the tongue to send signals of joy to the brain’—while shrewdly analyzing the manipulative profiteering behind them. The result is a mouth-watering, gut-wrenching look at the food we hate to love.”Publishers Weekly

“Revelatory . . . a shocking, galvanizing manifesto against the corporations manipulating nutrition to fatten their bottom line—one of the most important books of the year.”Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“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

“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.”—Alice Waters

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