Why We're 'Hooked' on Junk Food

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Research has found that we crave and consume more M&M’s when they’re multi-colored than when they’re just one color. In his new book “Hooked,” Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Michael Moss explains how multinational food companies use illusions of variety and fancy packaging to manipulate our predisposed preferences. Moss argues that we should think and talk about our relationship with processed foods the way we do with tobacco, drugs and other addictions. He joins us to talk about food addiction and the extent “Big Food” is culpable in the 40% rate of obesity among American adults. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQWED Podcasts comes from Landmark College, holding their annual summer
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0:30.1	From KQED.
0:31.2	Thank you. From KQED Public Radio in San Francisco, this is Forum.
0:46.1	I'm Scott Schaefer.
0:47.7	For the past four decades, Americans' food habits have been changing rapidly and not for
0:52.6	the better.
0:53.7	Some 40 percent of Americans are now considered
0:55.9	obese and the author of a new book points to the food industry as largely to blame. In his new
1:02.0	book titled, Hooked, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Moss describes how big food companies
1:07.4	use salt, sugar, and fat, along with slick ads and packaging, to literally
1:12.7	addict us to eating too much of the wrong foods. Michael Moss joins us for the hour on
1:18.0	forum right after this news. Good morning and welcome to forum. I'm Scott Schaefer. Well, in times of stress, like, well, like right now, a lot of us turn to foods that might not be the best for us. You know, a bag of chips, fast food, cookies, or soda, all of them loaded with salt, fat, or sugar.
1:50.0	Well, in his new book titled, Hooked, Food Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploits,
1:56.3	Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Moss describes how big food companies turn our own biology against us,
2:02.4	using ingredients, marketing, and more to get us literally hooked on unhealthy foods. And Michael
	...

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