Salt Sugar Fat

by Michael Moss

  Principal Brown, however, knew she also had to do something about the corner stores that ring her school. At a meeting held in the school auditorium, she told the volunteer parents, “I need you to go to those stores and say, ‘Look, can you not sell to our kids between 8:15 and 8:30? We don’t want them to eat sugary items. There is a breakfast program right here. And if you don’t do this, we’re going to have to boycott for a while.’ ”

  She herself had called on the stores that previous summer, only to realize that her students brought the owners much of the income they needed to pay their bills, including the money they had borrowed to open their stores. So she recruited the parents—not to boycott the stores per se but rather to try to steer her students away. 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.”

  On the first day of the operation, one of the parents, McKinley Harris, positioned himself outside the Oxford Food Shop and tried to dissuade kids from going in. They came by in groups, walking themselves to school. Some complied; many did not. “Candy?” he said, shaking his head and peering into the bag held by one of the kids who came dashing out of the shop. “That’s not food.” He didn’t try to confiscate it. He was trying to get the kid to think about his choices. I met later with shop owner Gladys Tejada, who said she empathized with the parents but didn’t hold out much hope for their success. She certainly couldn’t prevent the kids from buying whatever they want. “They like it sweet,” she said. “And they like it cheap.”

  The real heartbreaking moment, however, came a few minutes later when McKinley’s wife, Jamaica, came rushing down the street with their kids in tow. She and her husband had been working hard to improve their own family’s diet, which required taking taxis to reach supermarkets where they could buy fresh, wholesome food. But this morning had been frenetic, getting the kids ready for school. They still needed breakfast, so she ran into the store to get something for them. The Oxford didn’t sell fresh fruit, not even bananas, so she came out a minute later with a healthy-sounding alternative: “fruit and yogurt” breakfast bars for her kids. Reading the front of the label, she said with a measure of pride, “It has calcium.” But the fine print on the back told a different story. The bars, in truth, compared poorly with the candy her husband was trying to block. The “healthy” bars had more sugar, and less fiber, than Oreos.

  I was overcome by this scene. Here they were, these people of Strawberry Mansion, sick of their kids getting the jitters and stomachaches from the corner-store food, trying to rehabilitate their own eating habits, and getting snookered into buying a “healthy” item that was no healthier than candy. This persistent tactic by food companies to promote one good ingredient, hoping that consumers will overlook the rest, was one of the oldest tricks in the book, going back to the 1920s and 1930s, when companies began adding vitamins to their cereal, touting these healthy additives on the front of the boxes—decades before they had to disclose the sugar content in the fine print on the back. But today, this ploy seems even more pernicious, as more and more people are trying to do the right thing by their eating habits. With all of life’s distractions, reading and understanding the entire food label is as critical as it is hard to pull off.

  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. We have choices, particularly when it comes to grocery shopping, and I saw this book, on its most basic level, as a tool for defending ourselves when we walk through those doors. Some of the tricks being used to seduce us are subtle, and awareness is key: the gentle canned music; the in-store bakery aromas; the soft drink coolers by the checkout lanes; the placement of some of the most profitable but worst-for-you foods at eye level, with healthier staples like whole wheat flour or plain oats on the lowest shelf and the fresh fruits and vegetables way off on one side of the store.

  But there is nothing subtle about the products themselves. They are knowingly designed—engineered is the better word—to maximize their allure. Their packaging is tailored to excite our kids. Their advertising uses every psychological trick to overcome any logical arguments we might have for passing the product by. Their taste is so powerful, we remember it from the last time we walked down the aisle and succumbed, snatching them up. And above all else, their formulas are calculated and perfected by scientists who know very well what they are doing. The most crucial point to know is that there is nothing accidental in the grocery store. All of this is done with a purpose.

  It is, perhaps, not unreasonable in this scenario to think of the grocery store as a battlefield, dotted with landmines itching to go off. And if you accept this, then it becomes all the more apparent why the food industry is so reliant on salt, sugar, and fat. They are cheap. They are interchangeable. They are huge, powerful forces of nature in unnatural food. And yet, for us, knowing all this can be empowering. You can walk through the grocery store and, while the brightly colored packaging and empty promises are still mesmerizing, you can see the products for what they are. You can also see everything that goes on behind the image they project on the shelf: the formulas, the psychology, and the marketing that compels us to toss them into the cart. 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.

  * The nutrition facts on the label divide these numbers in half, defining a serving as one half of the calzone.

  For EVE, AREN, AND WILL,

  my all and everythings

  acknowledgments

  The reporting that led to this book stemmed from three fabulous meals, starting with the crackling hot mess of catfish that Ben Cawthon and I wolfed down at Marilyn’s Deli, a roadhouse on State Route 52 in southern Alabama. Ben is a goodhearted civil-rights brawler in the nearby town of Blakely, Georgia, where a deadly outbreak of salmonella in peanuts first drew my attention to food manufacturers. He showed me that the factories that turn out America’s food—hardly the fortresses I imagined—are staffed with principled workers quite willing to hold their employers accountable at the risk of their own livelihoods. I’m honored to know Ben, and wish him all the best in his ongoing civic pursuits.

  The second meal was lunch at a Washington hotel, where it wasn’t the burger that opened my eyes, but how it was ordered. My guest was Dennis Johnson, a soft-spoken lobbyist for the beef industry who is said, in an obvious stretch of the truth, to own the U.S. Department of Agriculture. What he does have, for sure, is a keen insider’s view of the health risk in eating ground beef that is undercooked. “I’d like mine well done,” Dennis instructed the waiter, which got me started asking food company officials about their own eating habits when it comes to salt, sugar, and fat.

  And for the third meal, a cookout on the shore of Lake Washington, north of Seattle, the mere act of grocery shopping with Mansour Samadpour was enough to send me reaching for the hand sanitizer. One of the smartest scientists I know, Mansour provides pathogen testing and controls for the country’s largest slaughterhouses, not to mention leafy green farms, and he used plastic bags from the produce section to pick up the packaged meat we bought, lest he get any pathogens on his hands. It wasn’t just microbes on the beef that worried Mansour, however. He was the first to suggest that I look at what companies intentionally add to their products, like salt, and I thank him deeply for this guidance. Among the other experts on meat I’m indebted to are Carl Custer, Jeffrey Bender, Gerald Zirnstein, Loren Lange, Craig Wilson, Ken Peterson, Kirk Smith, James Marsden, Felicia Nestor, Dave Theno, Charles Tant, Michael Doyle—and Bill Marler, the country’s dominant and passionate litigator on behalf of people who are sickened by food, and who opened some huge doors for my reportin
g. One of his clients, Stephanie Smith, is the bravest person I know.

  The great meals—and the great company—didn’t stop there. In Philadelphia, Leslie Stein showed me to a Korean hot pot shop as we discussed the Monell Chemical Senses Center, where she and other scientists were hugely generous with their time. I thank, especially, Julie Mennella for the look inside the bliss point of kids, and Marcia Pelchat, Danielle Reed, Karen Teff, Michael Tordoff, Paul Breslin, Robert Margolskee, and Gary Beauchamp, their fearless leader, as well as two center alumni who went on to be stars in the world of food science, Dwight Riskey and Richard Mattes. At other institutions, Anthony Sclafani and Adam Drewnowski were fantastically helpful and patient.

  Nothing quite matched the Cheez-Its that Kellogg cooked up to impress upon me how reliant it is on salt, and I thank its technicians, as well as those at Kraft, Campbell, and Cargill who prepared similar salt-less gems for me to gag on. There were many, many other industry scientists and marketers who were incredibly generous with their time, but I wish to especially thank Al Clausi, Howard Moskowitz, Michele Reisner, Jeffrey Dunn, Bob Drane, Bob Lin, Jim Behnke, Jerry Fingerman, John Ruff, Daryl Brewster, Steven Witherly, Parke Wilde, and Edward Martin. None were more encouraging than Deb Olson Linday, a marketing genius who pioneered some of the earliest efforts to boost the consumption of cheese, but developed deep qualms about that enterprise. “I wish you Godspeed in writing your book,” she wrote in one note after we dined on Pad Thai north of Chicago. “Give ’em hell.”

  I met Andy Ward of Random House over more noodles in midtown Manhattan, and knew right away he was an editor who could inspire writers to walk through walls. But it feels awkward thanking him. From the conception, to the refining, to the untangling of sentences by his amazingly skilled hands, Salt Sugar Fat became his book as much as it is mine, so it’s with great admiration—as a partner—that I hope to be lucky enough someday to embark on another adventure with him. Who I can deeply thank at Random House is Susan Kamil, for her unwavering support, as well as Tom Perry, Gina Centrello, Avideh Bashirrad, Erika Greber, Sally Marvin, Sonya Safro, Amelia Zalcman, Crystal Velasquez, and Kaela Myers—peerless pros, one and all. I also wish to thank Anton Ioukhnovets for the brilliant cover illustration, and Martin Schneider for his first-rate copyediting.

  Scott Moyers, Andrew Wylie, and James Pullen at the Wylie Agency lent their aid and comfort at all the right moments, and I couldn’t have dreamt up a more effective team. When Scott returned to publishing, Andrew was there for me, instantly, whenever I needed, and I’m grateful for that.

  This book would never have materialized without my editors and colleagues at The New York Times, starting with Christine Kay, who first suggested—up in the Times’ cafeteria, of course—that I do some reporting on peanuts, and then, much later, helped me think through the organization of this book and applied her exquisite editing hands to some early and rough copy. As always, I’m deeply indebted to Matt Purdy, the paper’s brilliant investigations editor, for his friendship, encouragement, and giving me unpressured time away from his clutches. I’m also grateful to the paper’s editor, Jill Abramson, who first suggested writing a book about food, and to her predecessor, Bill Keller, who warned me it would take longer than I anticipated, which, of course, it did. I’m humbled and grateful to know Gabe Johnson, one of the finest video journalists in the business who joined me in the early reporting, bringing his talent and passion and eye for good food on the road. I’d also like to thank my hero in food writing, Kim Severson, and Barry Meier, whose work at the paper leaves me in awe. Thanks, too, to colleagues Tim Golden, Walt Bogdanich, Stephanie Saul, Debbie Sontag, Paul Fishleder, David McGraw, Andrew Martin, Andrea Elliott, Jim Rutenberg, Jim Glanz, Louise Story, Ginger Thompson, Mike McIntyre, Michael Luo, Jo Becker, David Barstow, Nancy Weinstock, Tony Cenicola, Jessica Kourkounis, Joel Lovell, Mark Bittman, Tara Parker-Pope, Jason Stallman, Debbie Leiderman, and the fabulous writer Charles Duhigg, my guide on all matters in publishing to whom I am deeply indebted. Beyond the paper, I want to thank David Rohde and Kristen Mulvihill, Kevin and Ruth McCoy for their friendship and meals, Laurie Fitch for her Wall Street introductions, Ellen Pollock for cluing me into the power of Stacy’s Pita Chips, and the chef/writer Tamar Adler for cooking a luscious meal that showed me how salt in the kitchen was a good thing for healthy eating. I also thank the indomitable Laura Dodd and Cynthia Colonna for research and other assistance, Kristen Courtney and Julia Mecke for squaring away the homefront, and my neighbor Gordon Pradl for a meticulous and thoughtful reading of chapters.

  Lee Ellen and Clyde, my parents, taught me to love every food in the world, except liver and stewed okra, and I miss them dearly. This book is for them, and for Oma Bruch, Leah Heyn, Herman Heyn, Phyllis Weber, Frank and Thomas, Kenny and Dominique, Penelope and Emile, Myra and Buzzy Hettleman, Sally and John, Charlotte, Clyde and Gabrielle, Melchior, Bob and Sonya, Andrej, Stella and Robë Felicia and Rafael, and Mal. My wife, Eve Heyn, was there for me from start to the finish, working through reporting puzzles, taking her own fine editing hand to the copy, and granting her unconditional love. I admire and respect and love her dearly. My boy Aren, at thirteen, had my back the whole way, with encouragement and some good ideas, and my other boy Will, though just eight, couldn’t be fooled at the dinner table when I stopped talking about E. coli in one of his (formerly) favorite foods, hamburgers, and started chatting about Oreo cookies: “Dad! You’re not going to write about sugar now!” I did, Will. Sorry.

  September 2012

  a note on sources

  This narrative has been drawn from a multitude of sources, including hundreds of interviews with individuals who have been closely associated with advancing or critiquing the activities of the processed food industry and more than one thousand papers and studies that examine the science of making processed foods as well as the health implications of their consumption. Many of these primary sources are cited in the notes that follow, but there are several that warrant a fuller description, in part to assist those who might wish to pursue their own examinations of the industry.

  One of the most valuable sources of highly confidential records that provide a view of the inner workings of the food industry is entirely a matter of happenstance. This trove of records stems from the legal war waged over tobacco. Lawsuits brought by four states in 1994 to secure reimbursement for health care expenditures related to tobacco-related illnesses resulted in a 1998 settlement that required the largest tobacco manufacturers to release the internal records produced for the case. These records are being archived at the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LT) at the University of California, San Francisco, and number—as of September 2012—81 million pages in 14 million documents. The relevance to this book comes in the corporate affiliations. While the collection’s focus is on tobacco, the archives include the records of Philip Morris relating to its ownership of three of the largest food companies: Kraft, General Foods, and Nabisco. I’m grateful to the library archivists for guiding me through their search mechanism that enabled me to ferret out the food-related documents. The records archived thus far span the years 1985 through 2002—the most critical period for examining the health issues relating to processed food—and include memos, meeting minutes, strategy papers, internal speeches, and sales data relating to the manufacturing, advertising, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities of the food companies. In the course of researching this book, I found only one news report that made use of the archive’s food-related records: a January 29, 2006, report in the Chicago Tribune entitled “Where There’s Smoke, There Might Be Food Research, Too,” which referenced several memos in which scientists from the food and tobacco divisions of Philip Morris discussed potential collaborations on flavorings and other sensory issues. The Legacy Library is currently acquiring more documents produced in a civil lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice against the nation’s top tobacco companies, including Philip Morris, following a 2006 federal judicial decision tha
t the companies violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) by misleading the public about the health hazards of smoking, which the companies have appealed.

  Another little-known archive of food company records is kept by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. One of its units, the National Advertising Division, provides an arbitration service for companies that allows them to settle disputes with each other out of court. These disputes typically involve challenges to the validity of advertising claims but also include cases that stem from the NAD’s own inquiries. I’m indebted to Linda Bean of the Better Business Bureau for sending me copies of dozens of cases involving Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Kraft, General Mills, among others, many of which contain details of the companies’ advertising strategies and marketing analysis—highly insightful information that is typically not made public even by the government’s consumer watchdog on issues relating to advertising, the Federal Trade Commission.