Salt Sugar Fat

Moss visits Cargill. After a mild winter, sales of road salt had dropped. However, sales of food salt did well. Cargill produces numerous varieties of salt:

In the processing plants that Cargill owns, this rock is transformed into a vast array of shapes and designs. Cargill’s salt is smashed, ground, pulverized, flaked, and reshaped in hundreds of ways, all with one goal in mind: to maximize its power in food (302).

Salt costs a small amount, often less than water. Cargill engineers salts for its customers’ needs. Each food type has its own salt.

Moss mentions his taste for Diamond Crystal salt. Cargill produces it, and has hired a celebrity chef to endorse it. The salt has a pyramid shape that contacts more saliva and dissolves faster, improving flavor. Food companies buy pallets of thirty, eight-pound bags.

Salt also makes sugar taste sweeter. It makes snacks crunchier, and extends shelf life. Cargill is the number one salt producer, part of its large portfolio. The private company was founded in 1865 as an Iowa grain warehouse. It now sells diverse agricultural products and services:

With grain silos in far-flung locales like Romania, shipping terminals in big sugar producers like Brazil, 140,000 employees in sixty-five countries, and 350 chartered cargo vessels calling on 6,000 ports, Cargill is the global food chain (304).

Cargill alone produces nearly 5 million pounds of food salt per day. It also supplies large amounts of sugar and fat. Furthermore, it supplies healthy alternatives like stevia sweetener and omega-3 oils.

In 1955, company barges had carried Midwestern grains down to the port of New Orleans, returning empty, so they started carrying Louisiana salt back to sell in the Midwest.

Salt comes from underground mines and the sea. It has started and featured in wars. Salt preserves meat and disinfects wounds. Roman soldiers were paid in salts, providing the etymology of “salary.”

When salt became a public health concern, Cargill switched away from marketing the ingredient’s storied history. Consumer interest groups tracked salt amount in food products, which rose and fell with public concern.

Moss next visits the company’s research kitchen. A bread without salt tastes and looks disgusting. A bread containing potassium chloride as a sodium substitute looks and tastes normal. Moss writes that potassium chloride has the “[s]ame salty taste, but no heart attacks or strokes. Intrigued, I began to question my unscientific efforts to compare the pillars of processed foods to drugs of abuse” (308).

Potassium chloride costs more, and can taste bitter. It also interacts differently with other flavors, sometimes calling for more sugar and fat. And it may have its own health problems.

Britain regulates salt more heavily than other countries. Now Brits who travel abroad complain about how salty the food tastes.

Moss visits Kellogg, and tries unsalted versions of products, which taste and look disgusting.

In 2010, Moss tries low-salt research hams from Kraft. Below a certain salt threshold, they taste disgusting: “There was even a measurable point—like the bliss point for sugar, except in reverse—at which their taste testers would spit out the meat” (311).

New York City followed Britain in proposing limits to salt. Companies voluntarily reduced salt in some of their saltiest products, like bacon. Campbell Soup did not participate, so Moss visits the company.

Campbell had previously encountered government resistance to its low-fat products, because they retained salt. Later, it promoted V8 vegetable juice as healthy, and despite scientific criticism, they gained sales.

Campbell now aims to reduce salt without reducing sales. It uses a low-sodium salt. The company insists that salt makes food appealing.

Moss tries soups without salt. George Dowdie, a senior official, says that salt taste is important and difficult to substitute. A low-sodium tomato soup tastes unappealing, but a version with herbs and spices tastes better. A low-sodium beef soup tastes disgusting.

Campbell prefers to use spices instead of salt substitutes. However, both have cost constraints. Later, Campbell follows the other companies. Amid financial difficulty, Campbell hires a new CEO, who promises to increase salt to increase sales. The stock price rises.

In the 1970s, Finnish people consumed large amounts of salt:

As a result, the country had developed significant issues with high blood pressure, which in turn brought an epidemic of heart attacks and strokes—indeed, men in the eastern part of Finland had the highest rate of cardiovascular disease in the world (318).

The country required salt labeling, and ran an educational campaign: “By 2007, Finland’s per capita consumption of salt had dropped by a third, and this shift was accompanied by an 80 percent decline in the number of deaths from strokes and heart disease” (318).

A Finnish pharmacologist, Heikki Karppanen, meets Frito-Lay chief scientist, Robert I-San Lin. Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, produces salty snacks. Lin worried about the company direction on salty products. The company faced public health concern and possible regulation over salt. Lin expressed his worry to Karppanen.

Moss meets Karpannen, and, separately, Lin. Lin says that salt addicts people. He expresses regret.

Lin came to the United States from Taiwan. He studied DNA and the brain at medical school. He decided to work on nutrition. Lin worked on sugar substitutes, then went to Frito-Lay.

At Frito-Lay, the professional culture shocks Lin, but he likes the science. Lin develops a scientific formula to explain people’s food preferences:

The reputation that snacks had for being bad for one’s health (H) was an issue that worked against the company, along with their cost ($), and failures in quality (Q), like breakage. But other factors worked in the company’s favor, making it more likely consumers would decide to purchase (P). Its chips and other snacks tasted great (T). They were convenient (C) and utilitarian (U), ready to eat out of the hand or with meals. Lin added some mathematical weighting (A, B), and threw it all into an equation he called the ‘Model for Ideal Snack,’ which explained—from a mathematical perspective—why Frito-Lay was making a killing in fatty and salty snacks (323).

In the late 1970s, Lin led the $1.5 million Monkey Project. Frito-Lay fed 130 monkeys three times as much potato chip chow as a human would eat daily, for five years. The monkeys receiving more saturated fats had higher cholesterol, but were healthy.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer-activist group founded in 1971, became sizable:

Since 2005, the organization has forced Kellogg to limit its advertising to young kids, Sara Lee to make it clear that its ‘whole-grain bread’ is only 30 percent whole grain, and PepsiCo to change the labeling of its Tropicana Peach Papaya Juice to reflect the facts that it has neither peaches nor papaya and is not a juice (325).

The group also became interested in salt. High blood pressure was a growing concern. Michael Jacobson, the executive director, realized that salt, sugar, and fat could be far more harmful than any artificial additives. In 1978, he asked the FDA to reclassify salt from an ingredient to a food additive.

Lin agreed that salt was a public health concern. Potato chips had less salt than snacks like pretzels. Regulation could assist Frito-Lay. The company developed a complex “Salt Strategy,” adjusting fat content and even the shape of salt crystals.

Lin says that food that sells makes people feel good, which involves tasting good much more than advertising. Food companies adjusting recipes must ensure that the product remains tasty.

Lin went to the factory floor, noting its inefficiencies. He developed an improved method for salting chips, resulting in less waste and more control over salt quantities. However, salt was so cheap that this did not matter.

Frito-Lay worried about political problems from salt content. Lin tried to limit company defenses, but without effect. Frito-Lay argued to the FDA that salt prevents deaths. Lin became somewhat involved in defending salt.

Amid political turmoil, the FDA limited its response to educating consumers about salt. Lin left Frito-Lay to work on nutritional supplements. He no longer eats significant amounts of processed foods, instead eating plain oatmeal and raw asparagus. He still likes to taste salt, but limits the quantity.

In the 1980s, Frito-Lay struggled with product launches. The company added Dwight Riskey, an expert on cravings. He had previously researched how people can stop liking salt at Monell. He also found that the food one eats affects how other foods taste at that time. Bliss points would adjust according to context: “Bliss points also changed as people aged. This seemed to help explain why Frito-Lay was having so much trouble launching new snacks. America was aging and growing less fond of salty snacks” (332).

Aging baby boomers were predicted to consume less salt. However, snack sales went up. Dwight Riskey analyzed marketing for Frito-Lay. He divided consumers into categories, and found that baby boomers ate more snacks as they aged. Younger consumers also ate more of the salty snacks. Further, people were skipping meals to attend business or personal events, and substituting snacks. Frito-Lay targeted this growth market.

Parent company PepsiCo applied its marketing muscle. They hired Roger Enrico as head of Frito-Lay. Enrico had gained a reputation by leading Pepsi against Coke. The company began distributing snacks to convenience stores along with sodas.

Instead of developing new products, Frito-Lay sold line extensions. Moss discusses flavor with food scientist Steven Witherly, who picks out Cheetos from a bag of snacks, describing it as “one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure” (336).

Researchers at Frito-Lay employ a $40,000 tool that chews chips, to test crunch. Salespeople employ small computers to track inventory.

Salt levels in products by Frito-Lay and other companies dropped slightly during the 1980s and 1990s. However, line extensions added more salt.

PepsiCo continued to market its soda and snacks, adding Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees as a spokesperson. They targeted millennials, a generation with limited funds for snacks and other foods, by adding entertaining line extensions.

Frito-Lay addressed the increasing health concern about salt by developing new forms of salt that required less for the same taste.

Moss recognizes a Frito-Lay phrase about healthy food, “feel good about eating it,” from a 1957 memo by food psychology consultant Ernest Dichter, who had advised the company. Dichter recommended a series of steps to increase sales by reducing the feeling that chips are unhealthy.

Now Frito-Lay markets its chips as ingredients. It adopted the famous tag line, “Betcha Can’t Eat Just One,” in 1963, from a senior copywriter at its ad agency.

A large study of over 100,000 health professionals from 1986 to 2011 revealed that people gradually exercised less, watched more TV, and gained weight. The largest contributors of calories were potato chips.

Chips contain large amounts of salt and fat. They also contain carbohydrates, which act like sugar in the body. The combination makes people crave chips. Moss calls potato chips the poster child of processed foods:

Frito-Lay could take all the salt out of its chips it wanted to create whatever aura of health it wanted. As long as the chips remain alluring—through their fat, their crunch, their salty flavor from salt substitutes—and the marketing campaigns give you psychological permission to eat as many as you like, they will continue to deliver calories. And that, after all, is the ultimate cause of obesity (345).

In 2011, Moss visits Nestle in Geneva, Switzerland. Nestle had recently surpassed Kraft as the largest food manufacturer. From its start in 1866 making infant formula, it had expanded to most food and beverage categories. Selling billions of dollars of food per year, the company’s former food scientist, Steven Witherly, calls Nestle “a Swiss bank that prints food” (346).

Nestle hires hundreds of scientists, who conduct dozens of research studies. Moss visits the emulsions lab, where researchers watch fat through an electron microscope. The company investigates fats that are healthier yet taste appealing. In “encapsulated oil,” coated healthy oils feel appealing yet are healthier than saturated fats. Nestle also develops healthier pet foods, to address pet obesity.

Moss leaves Nestle disappointed:

I came to realize that if Nestlé was going to save the world from obesity or any of the other ill effects of processed foods, it wasn’t going to be in our lifetimes. The food that people bought in the grocery store was so perfectly engineered to compel overconsumption that Nestlé’s scientists, for all their spectacular technology and deep knowledge of food science, were finding it impossible to come up with viable solutions (348).

With a machine that mimics digestion, scientists try to make people feel full by adding fiber. However, the fiber makes the food difficult to eat.

With Coca-Cola, Nestle developed a weight-loss drink. However, the Center for Science in the Public Interest sued the companies for deceptive advertising, sales fell, and the product failed.

Moss accuses Nestle of contradicting itself by producing addictive foods and then producing remedies. It produces foods full of salt, sugar, and fat, like Hot Pockets. Nestle also owns a medical nutrition business.

Moss meets Luis Cantarell, the president of Nestle’s health science division. Cantarell argues that the Swiss have less obesity due to outdoor activity. Cantarell predicts that foods and drugs will merge in the future.

Moss finally admits that larger forces affect food manufacturers:

It had taken me three and a half years of prying into the food industry’s operations to come to terms with the full range of institutional forces that compel even the best companies to churn out foods that undermine a healthy diet. Most critical, of course, is the deep dependence the industry has on salt, sugar, and fat (352).

In the war for “stomach share,” manufacturers add salt, sugar, and fat to make their foods more appealing. They must respond to customers and shareholders, or the companies will fail. Consumer welfare falls by the wayside.

Soda company representatives argue that soda consumption does not cause obesity. Former Coca-Cola president Jeffrey Dunn disagrees.

Moss argues for government intervention. Former Philip Morris CEO Geoffrey Bible tolerates this argument slightly more than most of the food industry.

Moss criticizes proposed regulations, such as preventing food stamps from buying junk food, or imposing a “fat tax” for soda.

The food industry argues that processed food enables feeding growing populations affordably. Moss and other critics would prefer other foods to cost less than processed foods.

Former Pillsbury executive James Behnke says that poor and ignorant people suffer the most: “We’re hooked on inexpensive food, just like we’re hooked on cheap energy” (355).

Moss mentions that many food company employees are also critical of their industry, and do not eat the products of their companies. He argues that most people cannot quit processed food.

Moss visits Overeaters Anonymous with a food-industry marketing executive. Participants describe sugar like heroin: “Their cars would be littered with food wrappers—just on the drive home from the supermarket” (356).

Moss next talks with Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She pioneered comparisons between drug and food abuse. She recommends that people who get addicted to sugar avoid it altogether.

Michael Lowe, a psychology professor, argues that people switched from three meals a day to eating throughout the day when the obesity epidemic began.

Moss concedes that behavioral improvements could be the best response to unhealthy food short of regulation.

In a poor neighborhood in Philadelphia, youth purchase chips, candy, and sugary drinks for small amounts of money. Soda and snack trucks drive the neighborhood.

Moss watches the first day of an effort by concerned parents to combat the food trends. A school principal places posters warning against salt, sugar, and fat, instead of drugs. Moss applauds the program. The principal asks the parents to stop the convenience stores from selling to students in the morning. The store owners, however, depend on these sales:

The parents received tactical training from a local community group that used to teach citizens how to fight crack dens, in the 1980s and 1990s, back when cocaine was ravaging this same neighborhood. It wasn’t a coincidence that the soda and chips these kids were buying had come to be known on the street as ‘crack snacks’ (359).

One parent says to students exiting a store with candy that it’s not food. His wife rushes there with their kids, upset that the “fruit and yogurt” bars she purchased contain unhealthy ingredients.

Moss accuses the food industry of an old trick—marketing a healthy ingredient in an otherwise unhealthy product: “If nothing else, this book is intended as a wake-up call to the issues and tactics at play in the food industry, to the fact that we are not helpless in facing them down” (361).

Moss accuses food vendors of manipulating the shopping experience, and the products. Ingredients and marketing are engineered to make food appealing. He compares the grocery store to a battlefield with landmines. Therefore, salt, sugar, and fat are key ingredients. They are inexpensive, interchangeable, and appealing: “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” (362).