Michael Moss
Michael Moss
Michael Moss was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2010, and was a finalist for the prize in 2006 and 1999. He is also the recipient of a Gerald Loeb Award and an Overseas Press Club citation. Before coming to The New York Times, he was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, New York Newsday, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has been an adjunct professor at the Columbia School of Journalism and currently lives in Brooklyn with...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
CountryUnited States of America
field food goes government grocery highly level parent playing processed pulled toward walk
The playing field is anything but level when you walk into the grocery store. So much government subsidy goes into processed foods. Even when you're well-meaning as a parent or a shopper for yourself, you can't help but be pulled toward the highly processed food.
geared increase perfectly various ways work
There are powdered salts, chunked salts, salts shaped in different ways with various additives to work perfectly with processed foods. All of them are geared to increase allure.
burst flavor foods hooked ingredient itself miracle serves shelves staggering stay totally
When it comes to salt, what was really staggering to me is that the industry itself is totally hooked on salt. It is this miracle ingredient that solves all of their problems. There is the flavor burst to the salt itself, but it also serves as a preservative, so foods can stay on the shelves for months.
keys weight gains
In a key--but commonly overlooked--aspect of obesity, weight gain can be caused by the slightest increases in consumption, if it continues day in and day out.
powerful drawing brain
As I spoke with scientists about the way fat behaves, I couldn't resist drawing an analogy to the realm of narcotics. If sugar is the methamphetamine of processed food ingredients, with its high-speed, blunt assault on our brains, then fat is the opiate, a smooth operator whose effects are less obvious but no less powerful.
thinking oil sunflower
I'm thinking waiters and waitresses are going to be bracing for more customers coming in going, not just kind of where is that beef from, but, like, where is that vanilla from and what's up with that sunflower oil? Is it organic or not and how many pesticides?
years sound use
Each year, food companies use an amount of salt that is every bit as staggering as it sounds: 5 billion pounds.
light brain sugar
Some of the largest companies are now using brain scans to study how we react neurologically to certain foods, especially to sugar. They've discovered that the brain lights up for sugar the same way it does for cocaine.
children character vegetables
Health messages are simply overwhelmed, in volume and in effectiveness, by junk-food ads that often deploy celebrities or cartoon characters to great effect. We may know that eating fruits and vegetables is good for us, but the preponderance of the signals we get - and especially the signals children get - push us in the direction of junk food.
thinking giants realizing
I think the food giants are realizing that one of the big myths of them is that they can innovate.
children taken upset
As a culture, we've become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. And we could make a claim that the toll taken on the public health by a poor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.
years people effort
What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive.
choices sugar salt
They may have salt, sugar, and fat on their side, but we, ultimately, have the power to make choices. After all, we decide what to buy. We decide how much to eat.
address companies health mouths paying scramble touched
The growing attention Americans are paying to what they put into their mouths has touched off a new scramble by the processed-food companies to address health concerns.