Michael Moss Quotes

Michael Moss — American Journalist

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 his wife and two sons... (wikipedia)

Companies are experimenting with replacing sodium chloride with potassium chloride, because most of the health problems come from sodium. It works for some products, but if you diminish the amount of sodium, people want sugar and fat instead.

That is the one single word that the food industry hates: 'addiction.' They much prefer words like 'crave-ability' and 'allure.'

Every one of our 10,000 taste buds is wired for sugar. But we aren't born liking salt - we develop a taste for it at about 6 months.

Every time the good giants try to cut back on salt, sugar, fat calories, inevitably Wall Street raises its hand and is looking at the sales figures and the revenue and saying, 'Thou shalt not result in any loss of profit.' There's huge continuing pressure on the food companies.

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.

Michael Moss Quotes

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