num_pages: 304
description: Michael 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. An account of the legal battles insidious marketing campaigns and cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis Moss 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.From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Salt Sugar Fat comes a powerful expos of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts the emotions we associate with food and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public health.
language: English
title: Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions
publisher: Random House