Salt Sugar Fat Summary

Salt Sugar Fat is an critical biography of food and diet in the United States named for the three ingredients most widespread in the packaged treats that have taken over grocery stores and plates. Equipped with studies and interviews from disenfranchised insiders, the author sets out to prove that packaged-food manufacturers conduct refined food science to make their foods tantalizingly attractive, and utilize well-crafted marketing plans the rest of the way. Critical to their research is the search for the “bliss point”—the point or array where test subjects get the most pleasure from sugar or fats added to a product—allowing scientists to tinker with recipes to save money and convert occasional customers into frequent buyers. When they can’t engineer a better taste appeals to customers are cooked up just as carefully as flavors concocted in product development to push back on the demonization of sugar, salt, and fat with carefully crafted claims about “natural flavors” and taste profiles. …show more content…
The author goes extensive as well as deep: A chapter on cheese bounces between the U.S. government’s role in dairy surplus, a Dutch study on the psychology of “invisible fats” (present in food but not detected in taste), and the lament of Cheez Whiz’s creator upon finding out his brainchild no longer contains real cheese. Stuck in the middle: the author’s statement, “There is no nonfat cheese worth