<p>The NYT Sunday magazine has an article called The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food which every parent should read. </p>
<p>It runs through some of the basic ideas and issues behind the development of processed foods and their marketing. I’ll give a few examples:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Using in part information gleaned from soldiers not wanting MRE’s that have a lot of taste, companies realized they could sell more of products that kind of taste but not too much or too good because taste satiates and lack of taste means you keep eating. E.g., soldiers could stuff down lots of bland white bread and the issue with soldiers in the field is getting calories into them. So when people - like me - talk about the lack of flavor in food, this is exactly what is meant: the taste is dumbed down and diminished so you get a hint, just enough so you keep eating and not enough so you feel full or even happy with your eating. The addictiveness, btw, reminds me of studies about why television is addicting - same mechanism of low payback, low investment activity that never satiates.</p></li>
<li><p>Coke realized they sold more product to heavy drinkers, far more than they could sell to light drinkers so they have intentionally targeted low income areas in the US and abroad to increase sales to the heavy drinkers.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It was a fascinating article but so depressing. Yoplait has more sugar than Lucky Charms Cereal. They add sugar to tomato sauce until they get to the optimum which turns out to be some ridiculous amount. Lunchables give kids their entire daily allotment of fat in one meal, and most of the sodium.</p>
<p>I suspect that the food companies welcome the furor over obesity. They just use it as a way of selling fake “healthy” foods. Just look at a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. You’d think with all the claims about whole grains and lowered cholesterol that these babies will have your heart purring on all 8 cylinders in no time flat? Right? I mean, just look at that box. Healthy as a unicorn prancing in a field of clover under a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end.</p>
<p>32% sugar. Couldn’t think of a product, this side of rat poison, that is LESS healthy.</p>
<p>But, give these guys a little obesity hysteria and a couple of “Today Show” nutrition buzzwords like “healthy whole grain” and they are off the races convincing you to pay good money to eat sugar by the spoonful as an effective means of combating obesity and poor health.</p>
<p>Surely you are familiar with the >50% sugar cereals marketed to small children?</p>
<p>But then it does seem to be the case that adults have gotten sweeter taste preferences. Pretty much any new kind of cereal is sweetened; the unsweetened kinds are all “old classics” (the original Cheerios, shredded wheat, etc.) and their store-brand clones.</p>
<p>How do you make a profit? Sell more product. How do you sell more product? Get people addicted to your product. Simple. My child is a Flamin Hot Cheetos addict. Seriously. Begs for them. I try to limit her to once a week.</p>
![http://whatsyourmodotorg.files.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2013/01/honey-nut-cheerios.jpg]Honey](http://whatsyourmodotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/honey-nut-cheerios.jpg%5DHoney){kind=link}
