Bliss. What a delectable term. How could anything that adds to bliss possibly be harmful? Why not seek the consumer’s “bliss point” when it comes to offering packaged foods?
Mouth feel. Now that’s amusing – and also appealing. Who wouldn’t want the sensory pleasure of a variety of textures and experiences that are satisfying on the tongue?
Take Bliss Point and Mouth Feel and stir in a few other tasty ingredients. See the wizards behind the curtain concocting those favorite foods – the ones you can’t seem to get enough of.
These and other terms are explained by a New York Times Magazine piece on “The Extraordinary Science of Junk Food.”
It’s a Must-Read – an in-depth look at aspects of the food industry that create the “products” we consume, the process of their formulation and marketing designed to hook us, and their admitted contribution to the obesity epidemic in this country.
If you doubt obesity has reached epidemic proportions, try these statistics on for size, as cited by the Times:
Today, one in three adults is considered clinically obese, along with one in five kids, and 24 million Americans are afflicted by type 2 diabetes, often caused by poor diet, with another 79 million people having pre-diabetes.
The article is long, and worth every word.
Read. Consider. Is this really what we want for ourselves or our children?
And what about the growing evidence associating poor diet and Alzheimer’s?
More on Obesity, Overweight, and Body Image
- Junk Food, Diet Damage, Activating Awareness
- The FAT Issue
- The FAT Personality
- Are You Fat?
- French Women Fear Fat, Too
- Food, Glorious Food
- Challenging Kids, Knee-Jerk Reactions
- Warped Views, Bad News
- The Body Politic (How Our Bodies Look vs How We Use Them)
I’ve read similar books on this important topic, it is a natural side-effect of misguided profit motives, if you tell your researchers to invent something that will increase sales, you will get incrementally better targeted foods that trigger primitive switches to overeat along with inventive squeezable yogurt tubes. Combined with subsidies for corn and wheat growers, Doritos and yogurt are cheaper than real food which satisfies the other dimension of the supply-demand curve, the consumer. Chef Jamie Oliver’s TED talk on real food is also worth a listen, his demonstration on the stage is eye opening.
All we can do is focus on real food on the demand side, eat less but higher quality food that you cook yourself.
Take the ethical and moral issues out of it, consider the economic realities and one can only shake one’s head.
We subsidize certain agra-businesses (as batticus noted above) for corn which is used to make chips and fructose/sugar, beets for sugar, wheat for breads, chips and other foods. This artificially lowers costs on certain foods that are used for processed and fast foods.
We then in the process use our land extensively causing unnecessary erosion and mineral usage which has an economic cost down the road.
We then sell poor food at a lower price than good food, especially in poorer areas and larger cities.
Obesity and nutrition become issues nationwide. This causes decreased productivity and medical issues, which in turn cost employers and the health care system. This is especially true for poor people who have neither the education, funds or transportation to get healthy foods and often live in areas where unhealthy food are cheaper than the middle class neighbourhoods.
While the government may want cheaper corn for ethanol, perhaps the subsidies could be more tailored. Food supplies for our country are an issue of national security but when we start exporting, especially to the third world, we obviously have overproduced for this need.
Regardless of the moral, ethical and costs to citizens as individuals, it seems the subsidies and the subsequent costs of these actions make little economic sense. At some point there will need to be cuts or increases in taxes given the economic state of the economy. Maybe Congress should look at these industries.
Now, away from economics and shifting to ethics and morals, what about the recent movement to treat overweight people like smokers and give them a different level of health care or none? When the admission by the industry is to target children, there is the self-comparison to the tobacco industry, the governments (and indirectly the citizens) have subsidized these industries, and the industries have acted quite freely without interference is there really a solid footing morally on which to do this?
How about subsidizing broccoli or peppers?
we’ve noticed that when we feel good we make what the industry call “better choices”.
but there are some products that must have scary buy-me-now ingredients because we went to trader joes and almost wept because we couldn’t find the new rosemary, olive oil and salt crackers (crackers!!) – then we realized, it wasn’t about the Crackers it was about the freedom of being here in the warmth and sunshine and citrus-hued california – the crackers were just a visual association of our first month here.
scary how this stuff works.
and there’s no way to break it unless one is rested.
as virginia woolf said: One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
We here at Casa de Enchanted Seashells have always had a “no junk food” policy and I’m even happier about it now, after having read your post and that article. i always felt that I was being duped and manipulated into buying all that crap for my son, and I don’t ever follow the herd if I can help it. No chips, no sodas, no sugary junk foods in our house. I always baked and cooked from scratch. We had tasty food and best of all, I was in control of the ingredients, and since I’m a control freak, that suits me just fine.
Those are doors most of us would recoil from if we took a look.
Like reading Michael Pollan – horror genre.
I couldn’t agree with you more! Big Food plays a huge role in today’s obesity epidemic, and the horrifying thing (to me, at least) is that just like their moral predecessors, Big Tobacco, they are well aware of what they’re doing….and they go ahead and do it anyway. Junk food is not the only problem here. Processed foods of all varieties contain hidden “super-ingredients” that make them more appealing, as well as more fattening and less healthy.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to link this post to my ongoing series on Weight Loss after 50–it’s a must-read for anyone who doubts that obesity is not just a “failure of will” on the part of the individual.
Eating right takes time, a commodity everyone seems to have less and less of, which, ironically, leads to an earlier grave.
It does indeed take time to eat right, Wolf – but less time than we think. Frankly, it can be more time to do the careful shopping (depending on where you live and your budget) than the actual cooking.
I made myself a wonderful Sunday brunch – rare for me – which took all of 15 minutes start to finish. Super healthy, really delicious, and very quick. I come back to education – and our own assumptions.