Hooked : food, free will, and how the food giants exploit our addictions / Michael Moss.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780812997293
- ISBN: 0812997298
- ISBN: 9780593243251
- ISBN: 0593243250
- Physical Description: xxviii, 274 pages ; 25 cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York : Random House, [2021]
- Copyright: ©2021
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-260) and index. |
Formatted Contents Note: | Prologue: "I had a food affair" -- Part one: Inside addiction. "What's your definition?" ; "Where does it begin?" ; "It's all related to memory" ; "We by nature are drawn to eating" -- Part two: Outside addiction. "The variety seekers" ; "She is dangerous" ; "Give your willpower a boost" ; "The blueprint for your DNA" -- Epilogue: Changing what we value. |
Summary, etc.: | "Everyone knows how hard it can be to maintain a healthy diet. But what if some of the decisions we make about what to eat are beyond our control? Is it possible that processed food is addictive, like drugs or alcohol? Motivated by these questions, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss began searching for answers, to find the true peril in our food. In Hooked, Moss explores the science of addiction and uncovers what the scientific and medical communities--as well as food manufacturers--already know, which is that food can, in some cases, be even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs. Our bodies are hard-wired for sweets, so food manufacturers have deployed fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products, creating in us the expectation that everything should be cloying; we've evolved to prefer convenient meals, so three-fourths of the calories we get from groceries come from ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry has not only tried to deny this troubling discovery, but exploit it to its advantage. For instance, in a response to recent dieting trends, food manufacturers have simply turned junk food into junk diets, filling grocery stores with "diet" foods that are hardly distinguishable from the products that got us into trouble in the first place. With more people unable to make dieting work for them, manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive eating habits. A gripping account of the legal battles, insidious marketing campaigns, and cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis, Hooked lays out all that the food industry is doing to exploit and deepen our addictions, and shows us what we can do so that we can one again seize control"-- Provided by publisher. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Nutrition. Compulsive eating. Food additives > Health aspects. Convenience foods > Health aspects. Food industry and trade > United States > Marketing. |
Available copies
- 32 of 32 copies available at Bibliomation. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Hotchkiss Library - Sharon.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 32 total copies.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hotchkiss Library - Sharon | 613.2 Mos (Text) | 33660148218698 | Adult Nonfiction | Available | - |
Library Journal Review
Hooked : Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Moss's (Salt, Sugar, Fat) latest is a deeply researched investigation of the processed-food industry and its efforts to turn food into addictive substances. Moss digs deep into the science of food's impacts on human behavior, including the eye-opening results of MRI scans that show the brain lighting up at the thought of a cheeseburger as much as it does from a hit of cocaine. Other research suggests that sugar, salt, and fat activate receptors that prompt the brain to generate a rush of pleasure. The author accuses international food distributors and the fast-food industry of exploiting human preferences. He also describes the bombardment of clever advertising that never lets up. Scott Brick's soothing voice and natural narration nicely guide listeners through Moss's significant contribution to the growing genre of books about the food industry. VERDICT Moss's work nicely supplements Mark Bittman's Animal, Vegetable, Junk; Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation; and Walter Willett and P.âJ. Skerrett's Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy.--Dale Farris, Groves, TX
Publishers Weekly Review
Hooked : Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Food is a drug, and its manufacturers are tempting consumers into addiction, according to this contentious exposé by Pulitzer-winning journalist Moss (Salt Sugar Fat). The author explores the science behind the notion that food is addictive in its effects on the body and mind: MRI scans show the brain lighting up at the thought of a cheeseburger much like it does at a snort of cocaine, while sugar, salt, and fat activate receptors that prompt the brain to generate a rush of pleasure. Moss argues that Kraft Heinz, Coca Cola, Nestlé, and fast food companies exploit weaknesses to stoke gluttony by adding copious amounts of sugar, salt, and fat to their products, and tantalizing consumers with novel artificial flavors. He also shows how advertising can manipulate memory: in one experiment, subjects viewed a Wendy's ad that "played up the restaurant's playgrounds for kids," urging consumers to relive those memories--most subjects didn't catch that Wendy's never had playgrounds. With his usual blend of lucid exposition and sharp-eyed reportage from corporate test kitchens, supermarket aisles, and fast-food counters, Moss provocatively suggests that human will-power is helpless against corporate puppeteers toying with humans' neurochemical and digestive strings. Readers are sure to find much fascinating--and frightening--food for thought in this fast-paced survey. (Mar.)
Kirkus Review
Hooked : Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions
Kirkus Reviews
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
A hard-hitting follow-up to Salt Sugar Fat (2013). Pulitzer Prize--winning investigative journalist Moss is a powerhouse when it comes to research and analysis, and much like his contemporary Michael Lewis, he possesses the ability to maintain a solid narrative arc. Characteristically, the author opens his deep dive back into the processed food industry with a story about a Brooklyn schoolgirl whose craving for McDonald's led to morbid obesity during adolescence. In addition to examining the chemistry of food, appetite, and addiction (highly prevalent), Moss breaks down the complex and contentious arguments at the intersection of the food industry and the law. More disturbingly, he explores the often devious and potentially dangerous ways that manufacturers manipulate foods to trigger addictive behavior, spark sense memories of foods from our childhoods, and treat addiction and dependence as a corporate strategy--much like the tobacco industry. The author covers much of the same ground as his previous book, but readers will be engaged and shocked by the sheer velocity of the process for changing foods to boost consumption. "In a sense, we've become unwitting allies to the processed food industry, and not just by falling for their marketing tricks," he writes. "We've allowed them to tap into and take advantage of all the biology we inherited from our forebears, including our love for variety and the cheapest source of calories, as well as the dramatic shifts in our work and family life that have played right into the companies' hands. When we changed the way we ate, they changed their food to exploit that." From maltodextrin to trans fats to a diet industry largely owned and controlled by the same companies manufacturing unhealthy, processed foods, Moss takes a second shot at corporate villains and once again finds a soulless industry hard at work. Another cleareyed inquiry into the companies that feed us, hook us, and leave us wanting more. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
BookList Review
Hooked : Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions
Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist Moss previously exposed the food industry's manipulation of consumer behavior in Salt Sugar Fat (2013). Here, his "aim is to lay out all that the companies have done to exploit our addiction to food so that we might reverse engineer our independence." To center his addiction query, Moss looks to the tobacco industry's relatively recent admission that their products are addictive, and to understand why we might be primed to rely on fast, cheap, caloric food he goes much further back, to see what we can surmise about our evolving tastes from the four-million-year-old skeleton of our ancestor, Ardi. Along the way, Moss also investigates human biology and genetics, food's ties to memory, and lots of scientific and food-industry studies. Rather than a dieting manual, this is a guide to healthy disillusionment. Moss reminds us that when it comes to these multinational corporations, "a commanding force in our lives going to great lengths to maintain the belief that our disordered eating is on us," our awareness as consumers is priceless.