I decided it was time to post some book reviews.  After all, I have spent the summer reading.  For a few of my favourites, I wrote reviews to share with you.  The first up for review is Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss. [1]

Michael Moss, a Pulitzer Prize recipient for investigative reporting, takes on the food giants of the food-manufacturing world. This informative tome is divided into three parts, one for each pillar of the food industry – sugar, fat and salt. Moss points out that “Whenever health concerns arose over one of their pillar ingredients…Just swap out the problem component for another that wasn’t, at the moment, as high on the list of concerns.” (70) Moss’s exposé of the processed food industry demonstrated the extent that scientists, marketers and CEOs plot, plan and formulate new products with no care about the impact on the consumer’s health, regardless of age, or the impact the potential of disease may have on the healthcare (or should be called disease-care).

The deeper I got into this book, the angrier and more frustrated I became, especially as I realized that I had been sold a lie and I bought it. So truly, I am angry at myself for allowing my children to become brand conscious when making their grocery decisions. When former Coca-Cola executive, Jeffery Dunn, stated, “’Teenagers became the battleground for early brand adoption,’” I knew this personally to be true. Growing up, the fizzy beverage of choice was Coke, until Pepsi sponsored my brother’s ski team. Then our family’s allegiances switched brands. Today, my sons insist on Coke.

Most disturbing to me was discovering how sugar is intentionally used to create the bliss factor or how fat is used to drive people to eat more or how salt is used to mask the chemical additives used. Moss points out that “If sugar is the methamphetamine of processed food ingredients…then fat is the opiate, a smooth operator whose effects are less obvious but no less powerful.” (148) He also links how narcotics and highly processed foods containing the pillar ingredients act similarly in the brain – “Once ingested, they race along the same pathways, using the same neurological circuitry to reach the brain’s pleasure zones…” (276)

The revolution of the food giants’ takeover of the once small local grocery stores to create the mega supermarkets has happened in my lifetime. It is true people want quick, fast and convenience because our movement from the land to the office tower has created busy lives. These industry influencers have marketed to the family providers that they need x, y and/or z to make their lives less stressful.

With that said, as a holistic nutritionist, educator and culinary nutrition expert (my latest credentials), I desire to reveal that wholesome food can be whipped up into delicious meals that are created in the family kitchen and that naturally nourish our bodies producing an abundance of vitality, energy and joy rather than immediate but unsustainable blissful feelings.

I hope you check out this book and educate yourself on feeding your family with the best possible food available.

 If you have read or are reading Salt Sugar Fat, what impacted you most?  Were you motivated to change your thinking about something? Take time to share your thoughts in the comment box below. 

Resource:

Moss, Michael.  Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.  Toronto, ON: Signal, McClelland & Stewart, 2013.