Salt Sugar Fat

By reading this koob, you will learn how powerful companies have hooked Americans on the three key ingredients that have driven the obesity epidemic: salt, sugar, and fat.

You will also learn:

• That sophisticated marketing techniques are central to the success of processed food products

• Why nothing about a grocery store setup is accidental

• That children are more likely to get hooked on sugary products than adults

• Successful examples of governments that regulated the processed food industry

• Why most processed food corporation executives don’t eat their own products

In the early 1950s, post-war America was ready to look forward. Food corporations began to brainstorm ways to become staples of the American household, which was schooled in self-dependency. Their solution was to offer brand-new products that promised efficiency and easy solutions for women, the caretakers of the home. Betty Crocker, a fictionalized housewife developed by General Mills, became a household name, selling the convenience of the company’s new products.

By the turn of the 21st century, more than half of American adults were overweight. A quarter of the adult population were considered obese. Rates of childhood obesity had doubled since 1980. Primary outcomes of obesity include diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, and rising cancer levels. How did the country get here?