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This is nothing we don't already know, those of us who kick around the paleo and primal world a lot. :P But this article was a good solid read all the same, and one I wish people I know would read.
[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html"]The Extraordinary Science of Junk Food - NYTimes[/URL]
Thanks for posting this. It is a good read. Nothing surprising, but it certainly hammers home how BigFood isn't about food at all. It's about selling tasty garbage.
Really good read. Will further eliminate any desire to cheat a little with some processed crap.
fta:
[quote]
In Coke’s headquarters in Atlanta, the biggest consumers were referred to as “heavy users.” “The other model we use was called ‘drinks and drinkers,’ ” Dunn said. “How many drinkers do I have? And how many drinks do they drink? If you lost one of those heavy users, if somebody just decided to stop drinking Coke, how many drinkers would you have to get, at low velocity, to make up for that heavy user? The answer is a lot. [B]It’s more efficient to get my existing users to drink more.” [/B]
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cuz screw those poison pushers
Wow, good read. I am only part way through. Thanks for sharing that. I love a good exposé, and on a topic I enjoy, it's even better.
I'm only a couple of pages in, but I want to print the following part and tape it to the refrigerators in my office.
[QUOTE]...General Mills had overtaken not just the cereal aisle but other sections of the grocery store. The company’s Yoplait brand had transformed traditional unsweetened breakfast yogurt into a veritable dessert. It now had twice as much sugar per serving as General Mills’ marshmallow cereal Lucky Charms. And yet, because of yogurt’s well-tended image as a wholesome snack, sales of Yoplait were soaring, with annual revenue topping $500 million. Emboldened by the success, the company’s development wing pushed even harder, inventing a Yoplait variation that came in a squeezable tube — perfect for kids. They called it Go-Gurt and rolled it out nationally in the weeks before the C.E.O. meeting. (By year’s end, it would hit $100 million in sales.)[/QUOTE]
So many of the women I work with have cases of flavored fat-free Yoplait in the fridge and eat 2 or 3 a day, talking about the probiotics and how they're only 90 Calories each. *face-palm*
[QUOTE=MissJecka;1103173]I'm only a couple of pages in, but I want to print the following part and tape it to the refrigerators in my office.
So many of the women I work with have cases of flavored fat-free Yoplait in the fridge and eat 2 or 3 a day, talking about the probiotics and how they're only 90 Calories each. *face-palm*[/QUOTE]
Yep... you just described my MIL to a "T". She's about 70 pounds overweight, too. My husband and I tried to get his parents (and mine) to read PB, but to no avail... gotta have all that fat-free yoplait though!
[QUOTE=sbhikes;1103095]Wow, good read. I am only part way through. Thanks for sharing that. I love a good exposé, and on a topic I enjoy, it's even better.[/QUOTE]
I particularly enjoyed the section where they talk about how the products are specifically formulated NOT to provide satiation.
eg:
[quote]
This contradiction is known as “sensory-specific satiety.” In lay terms, it is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more. Sensory-specific satiety also became a guiding principle for the processed-food industry. [B]The biggest hits — be they Coca-Cola or Doritos — owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.[/B]
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Holy hell, I'm loving this article more and more. I'm actually struggling to stifle my desire to exclaim, "Dear god!!!" at my desk right now.
[QUOTE]When I asked Geoffrey Bible, former C.E.O. of Philip Morris, about this shift toward more salt, sugar and fat in meals for kids, he smiled and noted that even in its earliest incarnation, Lunchables was held up for criticism. “One article said something like,[B] ‘If you take Lunchables apart, the most healthy item in it is the napkin.’ [/B]”[/QUOTE]
These guys are truly evil magicians! What kind of society lets these creeps have access to children? When you see the kind of money and research that goes into developing these products you realize how crucial it is to keep kids away from their products as long as you can. Palette preferences are formed early so if a child develops a taste for a certain manufactured food then they can become life long consumers which is just what the industry wants.
Bizarrely, this all reminds me of the seventh season of Supernatural. Basically, creatures called Leviathan were using a food to turn humans into an apathetic, obedient, obese food source. During that whole storyline, I kept thinking, "how is this different from what's actually happening?"