Sugar Salt Fat

This book may be one of the primary reasons I have been able to walk the line this time around.  I bought it for my ipad Nook app at the same time I started taking the meds, gave up soda, gave up fast food, and started working out more.

It came at the perfect time in my life.  I was ready to receive it if you will.  The book is not a diet book.  It is not a workout book.  Michael Moss isn't selling anything (except his book of course).  He is an investigative food journalist and the book focuses on how the "food giants" have evolved over the years into huge corporations who design food, through scientists and engineers, that's sole purpose is to get us hooked on processed food. 

There are three parts to the book.  Can you guess what they are?  Yes...Salt, Sugar, Fat.  This book spoke it me.  It was so exciting and eye-opening...and I am sure that Heather was tired of me turning to her and interrupting HER book reading time with tidbits like "Did you KNOW that a 1/4 of spaghetti sauce has just as much sugar as 3 oreos?  WELL DID YOU".

The chapters on Soda (pop) were eye opening and alarming.  And seriously, I owe this book for giving me the knowledge to stay away from that pepsi that has been hiding at the back of my fridge.  Our brains, as many of us out here in blogland have long known, are addicted to food.  A snickers or soda lights up and excites the same part of our brain that cocaine does.  Our pleasure sensors go crazy.  And what's more than that...it doesnt just go away after we finish eating it....just like a druggie...we crave more.  we need more. Our brains are telling us more more more!

And I don't know if you can blame these big companies likes Kelloggs, Frito Lay, Coca-Cola...for hiring scientists to run study after study on how to engineer the food or drink just the right way to get us even more addicted.  That's their business after all!

But the evolution of meals and dinners from 1950's to present day has been a fast and scary one.  All the processed food that we eat...bad bad bad.

The things we buy for convenience...bad bad bad.

And while I have always known this on some level, the book really put it in terms and language that I clicked with. 

Do you know the average American eats 30pounds of cheese a year?  And do you know that I probably eat twice that average (well, not NOW).

Do you know that potato chips are tested and tweeked until they have a perfect crunch sound that entice people in just the right way?  Just because of the sound.

And how many of you, many of the people I work with, are still confused about these companies and what they promote as "healthy".  Diet soda is worse off for you than regular.  Know why?  Because to make it taste good in diet form, they have to add so many chemicals...so yes...less calories, but actually worse for you.  Fat free ranch?  NOPE.  It's better to have Regular Ranch (2 tablespoons).  Real butter over margarine. 

There is so much to learn.

And trust me, I pretty much just massacred the description of the book...but you should read it.  It's kinda HUGE.  Thankfully my sister just read it in about 2.3 hours (we DO have the gift of speed reading)...but now I have another human to talk about it with!