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 what the scientific and medical communities--as well as food manufacturers--already know: 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, creating in us the expectation that everything should be cloying; we've evolved to prefer fast, convenient meals, hence our modern-day preference for ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry--including major companies like Nestl�, Mars, and Kellogg's--has tried not only to evade this troubling discovery about the addictiveness of food but to actually exploit it. For instance, in response to recent dieting trends, food manufacturers have simply turned junk food into junk diets, filling grocery stores with diet foods that are hardly distinguishable from the products that got us into trouble in the first place. 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 is the author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist formerly with the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, a keynote speaker, and a guest on shows like CBS This Morning, CNN The Lead, ATC and the Daily Show.

His work has ranged widely from exposing the corporate interests in nursing homes to the Pentagon's failures in providing soldiers with armor, and now focuses on the food industry in the context of health, safety, nutrition, politics, marketing, and the power of individuals to gain control of what and how they eat. More on Michael here. His next book, Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions, is being published by Random House on March 2, 2021.

Source: www.mossbooks.us