Hooked: How Processed Food Became Addictive

by Michael Moss

To cite just one example, the sweetener known as high-fructose corn syrup rose to the top of our food concerns in the early 2000s, thanks in part to the competitive marketing by sugarcane growers that suggested their sugar is better for us. Which it isn’t, but we shunned the corn syrup anyway, and the food manufacturers responded with ease. They simply dropped the corn syrup from their formulations—and their labels—and switched to using sugar derived from sugarcane or concentrated fruit juice, or whichever kind of sugar sounded better to us. When we caught on to that, they reduced the amount of sugar they added altogether, but maintained the appeal of the product by bumping up the salt or fat. Until we started worrying about the salt or fat. And so it continues. We fret, they fiddle, and we eat more of their product.