Name: Salt Sugar Fat
ISBN: 9780812982190

Salt Sugar Fat

The author explores his theory that the food industry's used three essential ingredients to control much of the world's diet. Traces the rise of the processed food industry and how addictive salt, sugar, and fat have enabled its dominance in the past half century, revealing deliberate corporate practices behind current trends in obesity, diabetes, and other health challenges. Features examples from some of the most recognizable and profitable companies and brands of the last half century, including Kraft, Coca-Cola, Lunchables, Kellogg, Frito-Lay, Nestlé, Oreos, Cargill, Capri Sun, and many more.

What Hacker News says

wibbilySep 2025

There’s a bunch of books that cover how the food industry exploits your primate brain and tries to make you eat more. Salt Sugar Fat [1] is one.

Not a traditional weight loss guide. But, learning about all the tricks they play made me so angry that I lost eighty pounds… worth a try

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar-fat

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davoneusMar 2025

No, you're the one in denial. Just have a look at the decade old book "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" to see the flaw in your assumptions.

It details many Concrete examples of exactly how the companies are manipulating everything about food for profit.

Kessler, further FDA head has written about this topic extensively as well.

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tourmalinetacoSep 2024

The reason nothing has worked is because food companies, who pay out massively to regulators, rewire our basic desires to make us buy more of their sugary slop. And now, we have medical companies, who also pay out heavily, trying to cash in even more. I highly suggest reading “ Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us“ by Michael Moss, and “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite” by David A. Kessler, former head of the FDA.

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tourmalinetacoSep 2024

If you want it from an industrial perspective, I suggest checking out “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us“ by Michael Moss, and “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite” by David A. Kessler, former head of the FDA.

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femtoOct 2023

The article is basis a precis of the book refereed to at the end of the article: "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" by Michael Moss [1]. It's well worth reading.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Sugar_Fat:_How_the_Food_G...

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tourmalinetacoJun 2023

Alcohol is not “objectively less problematic”. Just because it is less addictive doesn’t suddenly make it less problematic. It affects the brain directly, reducing your ability to think critically both short-term due to its inhibiting effects and long-term due to brain shrinkage. Meaning you are more likely to hurt those around you when you consume alcohol. It enhances the likelihood of giving into your “bad thoughts”, which is exactly why we see crime decrease when it is banned.

Affects of heroin on the brain are more closely related to seeking the drug itself, rather than lowering inhibition across the board. Of course this still leads to negative behavior, such as theft or assault, but it doesn’t lead to domestic/sexual violence like alcohol can.

Sugar literally cannot be compared to either of them. Caffeine has more of a case, frankly. While sugar has an incredible amount of health problems related to it, and is highly addictive (highly recommend “Salt Sugar Fat” by Michael Moss), it is not in the same league as alcohol or heroin. You are not holding up a gas station for sugar money, nor assaulting someone because your drunken brain thought they laughed at you.

While society’s perspective isn’t just marketing, it is just plain wrong. We have normalized alcohol so readily because its been with us for millennia, that even when presented to the mountains of evidence over its damaging effects we just ignore it or, worse, play it off as a “problem for lightweights”.

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