Speaker 1: Pushkin, this is solvable. I'm Ronald Young Jr. Is it
Speaker 1: really fair to compare you twinkies and Oreo cookies with
Speaker 1: cigarettes and alcohol and even some drugs. Food is delicious, nutritious,
Speaker 1: and sometimes controversial, whether it's less red meat, more vegetables,
Speaker 1: or dairy alternatives. Dietitians, nutritionists, doctors, trainers, chefs, and foodies
Speaker 1: all have an opinion on what we should and should
Speaker 1: not be putting into our bodies. At times, it could
Speaker 1: feel difficult to know what is the right decision when
Speaker 1: it comes to our eating habits. It's not our fault.
Speaker 1: This is not on us. These products are engineered in
Speaker 1: a way that's designed to get us to lose control.
Speaker 1: We live in an age where what we're consuming has
Speaker 1: changed beyond the necessity of survival, and in most ways
Speaker 1: those changes are intentional. We've grown up to see these
Speaker 1: food products as being full of cartoon characters and joy
Speaker 1: and happiness. So, I mean, can you imagine there being
Speaker 1: like a march through the streets of Brooklyn protesting Oreo cookies.
Speaker 1: Michael Moss is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and
Speaker 1: New York Times best selling author Our overdependence on process food,
Speaker 1: which has this incredible hidden cost, can be solved by
Speaker 1: our reclaiming food for ourselves. I'm excited to talk to
Speaker 1: you because we're going to a place where people are
Speaker 1: trying to lose the quarantine fifteen after, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of eating whatever over the lockdown months, and people's relationship
Speaker 1: with food right now is probably at a very pivotal moment.
Speaker 1: So one thing as someone who like I've struggled both
Speaker 1: with weight probably most of my life, and my relationship
Speaker 1: with food, and I also struggled with the idea of
Speaker 1: food addiction, as it feels impossible to be addicted to
Speaker 1: something that your body needs. And you talk about this
Speaker 1: in your book Hook Yes. So being addicted to food
Speaker 1: was a really good thing for most of our existence,
Speaker 1: or forbears, putting on body fat was a really good
Speaker 1: thing because it enabled our brains to grow and enable
Speaker 1: to stink of your hard times and have more offspring,
Speaker 1: which is kind of what life is all about, right.
Speaker 1: But the problem is the nature of our food was
Speaker 1: changed so dramatically by the food companies in the last
Speaker 1: fifty years that's suddenly what was really good for us
Speaker 1: became really problematic. How would you define addiction and why
Speaker 1: food can be addictive despite us having to eat to live.
Speaker 1: I spent time with evolutionary biologists for this book because
Speaker 1: I was really kind of trying to figure out is
Speaker 1: addiction really kind of the right word, and is it
Speaker 1: really fair to compare you twinkies and or cookies? Was
Speaker 1: cigarettes and alcohol and even some drugs, And so spending
Speaker 1: time though with these biologists, I came full circle and
Speaker 1: now I'm convinced that in any way these food products
Speaker 1: are even more problematic. There is some predecedens to the
Speaker 1: food industry called the tobacco industry. For decades it vehemently
Speaker 1: denied that smoking was addictive, right to put all its
Speaker 1: scientists who work on that, and it's it's lobbyists and
Speaker 1: it stops SEO officials and etc. Well, in two thousands,
Speaker 1: something really fascinating happened, which is that Philip Morris completely
Speaker 1: flipped around and said, Okay, you got us, smoking is
Speaker 1: in fact addictive or throwing in the towel on that.
Speaker 1: What was so interesting about that for me is that
Speaker 1: Philip Morris at the time was also the single largest
Speaker 1: manufacturer of process food through its purchase of the old
Speaker 1: company General Foods, and then Craft and then Nabisco, which
Speaker 1: made Oreo cookies, And that same year, the CEO of
Speaker 1: the company was asked to define addiction in some legal
Speaker 1: proceedings and he says, well, addiction is a repetitive behavior
Speaker 1: that some people find difficult to quit. And I thought
Speaker 1: that was so perfect a because it's in line with
Speaker 1: what scientists and experts think of as addiction these days.
Speaker 1: But I also loved the words some there because addiction
Speaker 1: happens on a spectrum, so it can affect us differently
Speaker 1: as people. It confect us different times of our lives,
Speaker 1: different times of the day. So I thought that definition
Speaker 1: by Philip Morris, arguably one of the biggest experts on
Speaker 1: addiction in the world, was totally apted. So I used
Speaker 1: that throughout the book in terms of talking about addiction
Speaker 1: and looking at these products and what these companies do
Speaker 1: to maximize the seductive power of their product. Why is
Speaker 1: it that our brains and bodies are wired to crave
Speaker 1: certain foods if those foods aren't helpful to us. That's
Speaker 1: kind of one of the biggest mystery. He's still out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some thought the brain looks at sugar
Speaker 1: as calories for young growing bodies. And you know, when
Speaker 1: we were living on the planes and hunter gatherer societies,
Speaker 1: sugar was kind of a rare thing, and so you
Speaker 1: can kind of see how we might have gotten attracted
Speaker 1: to that sugar and how it thus excites the brain
Speaker 1: in a way that maybe even fats and salt and
Speaker 1: proteins certainly doesn't do. One of the powerful aspects of
Speaker 1: these products is memory. We begin developing memories for foods
Speaker 1: at a really young age, possibly even in the womb.
Speaker 1: And that's why the soda companies, for example, know that
Speaker 1: if they can get a soda in the hands of
Speaker 1: a kid when he or she is with her parents
Speaker 1: at a ball game, that will forever more be associated
Speaker 1: with that joyous moment. And when they're older in life
Speaker 1: and they want some joy and comfort in their life,
Speaker 1: what do they turn to soda? Because it's they're kind
Speaker 1: of in their memory. And that's where the companies also
Speaker 1: spent so much money in advertising in a marketing So
Speaker 1: part of what attracts us to food and creates our
Speaker 1: eating habits is in fact the habit, repetitive behavior of
Speaker 1: eating these products again and again deepens those memory channels
Speaker 1: in our brain. When you're talking about food memories, can
Speaker 1: you give me an earliest memory of food for you.
Speaker 1: I grew up in California, Fresno for my early teens,
Speaker 1: in the Central Valley. I was a latchkey kid. My
Speaker 1: mom worked outside of the house, as did my dad.
Speaker 1: I would come home, let myself in the house and
Speaker 1: put a pop Tart in the toast drop. And this
Speaker 1: was after school, elementary school. That's kind of one of
Speaker 1: my earliest food memories. A few years ago, I went
Speaker 1: to the Kellogg's research and development facility way off in
Speaker 1: the distance. In the factory, they had messed up a
Speaker 1: batch of pop Tarts and they were dumping this huge
Speaker 1: amount of raw dough into a dumpster, and the aroma
Speaker 1: came wafting across the factory floor and instantly took me
Speaker 1: back to those days. Because our power of smell is incredible.
Speaker 1: That's another big factor in these products and our love
Speaker 1: for food, but also just the memory those pop tarts
Speaker 1: had never left my brain. They were still in there
Speaker 1: after all that time. So I want to pivot a
Speaker 1: little bit and talk about weight. It's rare to have
Speaker 1: a conversation about food. Food addiction, our relationships with food
Speaker 1: and not have it VERI into talking about weight. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I appreciated about your book is
Speaker 1: that you note that weight is not the only barometer
Speaker 1: for food related trouble in health. What are some of
Speaker 1: the other ones? So, yeah, you can't just look at
Speaker 1: somebody and say because they're they're overweight. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there's even some science that's saying a little bit of
Speaker 1: overweight maybe actually a really good thing for us in
Speaker 1: terms of longevity and what have you. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I'll bec is this really crude measure of health?
Speaker 1: But I have to tell you one of the things
Speaker 1: I was just so struck by, and kind of the
Speaker 1: reporting that I did for this book was how body
Speaker 1: fat is an organ, you know, a thinking, plotting, diabolical
Speaker 1: organ that's doing everything it can to resist your efforts
Speaker 1: to cut back on it, so that if you go
Speaker 1: on a weight loss diet, your own body fat will
Speaker 1: be sending a signal to the brain telling it you're
Speaker 1: hungry eat. It will also slow down your metabolism. You're
Speaker 1: resting metabolism, which is how much energy we burn just
Speaker 1: like sitting around or sort of even sleeping so you're
Speaker 1: burn less energy and what you're less of a threat
Speaker 1: to the fat and again, kind of evolutionarily, that kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense because gaining weight was a really good
Speaker 1: thing to do back in hunters, you know, gathers societies
Speaker 1: when when extra weight was sort of our protection and
Speaker 1: a matter of life and life and death. And so
Speaker 1: it makes sense we would have this resistance then to
Speaker 1: losing that weight as as a protective mechanism. When you
Speaker 1: talk about fat being an organ, are you are you
Speaker 1: being metaphorical or do you? No? No? No, Literally, so
Speaker 1: body fat, the cells of the body, fat communicate with
Speaker 1: each other, they communicate with the rest of the body,
Speaker 1: just like other organs in the body. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's an entity unto itself, and it's really
Speaker 1: really smart diabolically. So, if you're trying to lose weight,
Speaker 1: what do you think is the best way to talk
Speaker 1: about our addiction to food and the problems that are
Speaker 1: having with processed food and with the ways in which
Speaker 1: companies make this food without demonizing people who are overweight
Speaker 1: and have maybe have struggles or maybe some of those
Speaker 1: people who are overweight and are perfectly content with where
Speaker 1: they are. Yeah, I kind of worried about something else
Speaker 1: and using the word addiction, which is that we might
Speaker 1: cause people to feel hopeless. Because the word addiction is
Speaker 1: kind of so strong, it sort of implies that this
Speaker 1: is something that's out of my control. And I absolutely
Speaker 1: don't think that. I'm a journalist, and journalists are kind
Speaker 1: of especially investigative journalists, right, are kind of focused on,
Speaker 1: you know, the problem and pointing out the problem. The
Speaker 1: part of me still believes that knowing all the tricks
Speaker 1: that these companies use when we walk into the grocery
Speaker 1: store or to many restaurants is in itself empowering and
Speaker 1: can you know, can help us regain control of our
Speaker 1: eating habits. But there are also I think some really
Speaker 1: clear solutions here that I've come across. We, by nature
Speaker 1: love convenience, right, We love food that's inexpensive quote unquote,
Speaker 1: that that that cost the least amount of energy to
Speaker 1: get again, going back to a hunter gatherer societies when
Speaker 1: that was a really really good thing to do. So
Speaker 1: what did the food industry do back in the sixties,
Speaker 1: when both women and men were working outside of the
Speaker 1: home and increasing numbers. They came to us and said,
Speaker 1: we'll solve your food problem. We'll make dinner. We'll make
Speaker 1: it convenient for you to come home at seven or
Speaker 1: eight o'clock at night and put dinner on the table
Speaker 1: in thirty minutes. Of course, the hidden price of that
Speaker 1: is what we're now dealing with in terms of our
Speaker 1: health problems. Right. But I think that now knowing that,
Speaker 1: there are ways that we can take back what the
Speaker 1: food industry took from us, even convenience. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I have a spaghetti sauce recipe down now to ninety
Speaker 1: three seconds. I kid you not granted, if it's simmers
Speaker 1: on the stove a little while, right, if my family's
Speaker 1: like more apt to eat it, But the actual working
Speaker 1: part of it, opening up a can of plum tomatoes
Speaker 1: and adding whatever like dried basil or spices might be round.
Speaker 1: And maybe if I you know, I have ten seconds
Speaker 1: sautang a little garlic and olive oil, that's ninety three seconds.
Speaker 1: That is convenience to the max. But that's home cooking, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a really powerful tool that we can use
Speaker 1: to change our eating habits and lessen our dependence on
Speaker 1: these processed food products. One of the interesting parts of
Speaker 1: your book is that you talk about the stomach, and
Speaker 1: you talk about the brain, and you talk about how,
Speaker 1: for the longest time, we thought that our stomachs were
Speaker 1: the driving force of our appetites, and you talk about
Speaker 1: how that is part of the story, but not all
Speaker 1: of the story. Tell us more about the brain. One
Speaker 1: of the hallmarks of addictive substances is speed. Back in
Speaker 1: the nineties, scientists studying addiction realized that the fasterest substance
Speaker 1: hits the brain, the more apt the brain is to
Speaker 1: be seduced by that substance and act compulsively, impulsively by
Speaker 1: overeating or over consuming. Right. So typically smoking, for example,
Speaker 1: will fully engage the brain in ten seconds, and alcohol
Speaker 1: and drugs are kind of be a little bit less
Speaker 1: than that. But it turns out there's nothing faster than
Speaker 1: kind of the essential ingredients in process food and their
Speaker 1: ability to hit the reward center of the brains get
Speaker 1: us excited and get us to act impulsively. There was
Speaker 1: this exquisite study done a few years ago where they
Speaker 1: sat people down and said, we want you to tell
Speaker 1: us how fast you taste sugar, so that they put
Speaker 1: a little sugar in their tongue, and those people were
Speaker 1: pushing the button indicating that they were tasting sweet in
Speaker 1: less than one second. And it was really illuminating to
Speaker 1: me because kind of what these processed food products are
Speaker 1: all about. A speed from the manufacturing process to reduce
Speaker 1: the cost from the packaging that lets us open the
Speaker 1: package and get to the product really fast, to the
Speaker 1: speed with which these products, which are heavily based on salt, sugar,
Speaker 1: and fats, also reached the brave really fast. All about speed,
Speaker 1: all about getting us to act impulsively and mindlessly. Which
Speaker 1: is another kind of characteristic of these processed food products
Speaker 1: is that by not thinking about them, we put ourselves,
Speaker 1: We turn ourselves over, we turn our will power over
Speaker 1: to the companies making these making these products. So I
Speaker 1: don't think we've talked as specifically about how the companies
Speaker 1: are actually doing this, whether it be the speed, whether
Speaker 1: it be nurturing our addiction, if you will, nurturing our
Speaker 1: dependency on food, exploiting our dependency on food. How are
Speaker 1: the companies actually doing this. One of our natural attractions
Speaker 1: to food is cheapness. As I mentioned right, we love
Speaker 1: a box of pop tarts that cost ten cents this
Speaker 1: week less than it did last week. That gets us excited.
Speaker 1: We're much more apt to so to put that in
Speaker 1: the shopping cart. Okay, So the food companies have working
Speaker 1: for them chemical laboratories called flavor houses. They're actually located
Speaker 1: in mostly in New Jersey, up and down the corridor,
Speaker 1: where they're kind of doing what you expect them to do.
Speaker 1: They're using chemicals, mixing and matching to imitate some of
Speaker 1: the natural flavorings and foods, which which processed food companies
Speaker 1: then can use to make their products. They're famous for
Speaker 1: inventing pumpkin pie spice. That's scourge that spreads across the
Speaker 1: grocery store every fall right charge of the planet, all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff from candy, the cookies too, who knows
Speaker 1: what right well, they're using as many as eighty different
Speaker 1: chemical ingredients to create that pumpkin pie spice. But I
Speaker 1: spent some time with one of the flavor houses and
Speaker 1: they explain to me that their even bigger mission for
Speaker 1: the food companies is to constantly search for cheaper, less
Speaker 1: expensive combinations of these chemicals because they know, again going
Speaker 1: back to my favorite, the pop tarts, if they can
Speaker 1: knock ten cents off the price of that box of
Speaker 1: pop Tarts, we're going to be excited by that, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna win in that compare editive marketplace called called
Speaker 1: the grocery store. They also have scientists psychologists who working
Speaker 1: working for them, who understand that many of us eat
Speaker 1: for emotional reasons, not for true hunger pains, right, so
Speaker 1: they spend a lot of time finding ways to push
Speaker 1: those emotional buttons with the pandemic. I remember one Twitter
Speaker 1: ad was for a couple of bags of chips that
Speaker 1: sort of advertised itself by they were foot long doritos.
Speaker 1: As I recall if you had like two stick figures
Speaker 1: staying a safe six feet apart by measuring the distance
Speaker 1: with six bags of doritos. So, whether it's fear or comfort,
Speaker 1: or childhood memories or happiness, the companies know through their
Speaker 1: psychological marketing expertise, how to punch those buttons and get
Speaker 1: us to act. Let's talk about solutions. How do we
Speaker 1: how do we solve this? Like? What are what are
Speaker 1: some steps we could take to actually fix these problems?
Speaker 1: Find anyway you possibly can to do as much cooking
Speaker 1: from scratch as you can, and I think your listeners
Speaker 1: would be amazed at sort of how they can change
Speaker 1: your attitude about about food. Um, there are just like
Speaker 1: so many people out there working on reinventing food, reinventing
Speaker 1: our food environment with our health in mind. Some of
Speaker 1: those people, by the way, have switched sides, having informer
Speaker 1: executives at these big food process food companies, are now
Speaker 1: working on behalf of farmers growing carrots and figuring out
Speaker 1: like what's an exciting way to market carrots to kids? Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's kind of just like sitting back and going, well,
Speaker 1: how can we reclaim what we used to have here?
Speaker 1: And how hard would that be? I have a kitchen,
Speaker 1: I could cook my own food. I have a place
Speaker 1: to go to get fresh produce, to get vegetables. I'm
Speaker 1: not dealing with a food desert. A lot of the
Speaker 1: convenience and the cheapness that comes with the processed foods
Speaker 1: is really affecting the people who have the least amount
Speaker 1: of resources. How can we help them? Oh? Absolutely, So
Speaker 1: there are efforts underway, and they started in Philadelphia working
Speaker 1: with corners stores to help them sell fresh produce, which
Speaker 1: is a lot harder than you might than it might sound,
Speaker 1: because I'm at the coolers that they have are owned
Speaker 1: by the soda companies who don't want a bunch of
Speaker 1: broccoli and their coolers, so figure out sort of how
Speaker 1: to do that. So I love that aspect of it.
Speaker 1: If I was king for a day, I would put
Speaker 1: a garden in every school in this country. Getting the
Speaker 1: kids excited about real food, getting their parents excited. But
Speaker 1: then making that real food available to those parents at
Speaker 1: a price that's affordable is going to mean rethinking the
Speaker 1: entire farm system, because so much of the farm says
Speaker 1: the vast majority of it is about making soybeans and
Speaker 1: field corn cheaper and cheaper as ingredients for processed food.
Speaker 1: And if you could flip that around and help the
Speaker 1: agricultural system find ways to make broccoli less expensive and
Speaker 1: broccoli sweeter and more enticing and succulent to people and fresher,
Speaker 1: that's another essential thing that has to happen. How would
Speaker 1: they do that? The groundwork is already there. I wrote
Speaker 1: a story a few years ago for The Times where
Speaker 1: I wrote about kids who'd left kind of the industrial
Speaker 1: soybean farm, went to the city, got dissolution, came back
Speaker 1: to the farm in the Midwest, but did want to
Speaker 1: continue that and they started growing, you know, produce vegetables
Speaker 1: and fruits and nuts, and one of the biggest things
Speaker 1: they needed was help with marketing because they didn't have
Speaker 1: the farmers markets that they had that they have in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn and Portland and Seattle. So helping with marketing, But
Speaker 1: basically you need a Department of Agriculture that's oriented much
Speaker 1: more to our health and much less to industrial industrial farming.
Speaker 1: Is there an incentive for the Department of Agriculture to
Speaker 1: have us, you know, continue to be unhealthy and to
Speaker 1: eat things that are not nutritious. Is there an incentive
Speaker 1: that stops them from actually putting solutions that like you're
Speaker 1: talking about, which all seem very simple into action. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's just the you know, the corporate farming
Speaker 1: business has lobbyists who are incredibly powerful, and agriculture is
Speaker 1: a powerful economic engine in the country. So I think
Speaker 1: it's just that that synergy that's happened between the farmers
Speaker 1: growing ingredients for processed food and the officials at the
Speaker 1: Department of Agriculture working together on that, and it's just
Speaker 1: it's been really, really difficult to sort of affect some
Speaker 1: real meaningful change there. Are you optimistic about us being
Speaker 1: able to turn this around? To break this type of
Speaker 1: addiction on processed foods. Yeah, there's just so many people
Speaker 1: working on so many different solutions to food and the
Speaker 1: food environment that I can't I can't help it but
Speaker 1: not be optimistic. A lot of people write about food
Speaker 1: as critics, and obviously you have found the lane and
Speaker 1: you stay in it. What made you want to write
Speaker 1: about the food industry in this way? There have been
Speaker 1: an outbreak of salmonella and peanuts being manufactured in the
Speaker 1: southern United States, and I went down and took a look,
Speaker 1: and it opened this incredible window on this processed food
Speaker 1: industry because many of these big companies were using these
Speaker 1: tainted peanuts as ingredients in their food products, and they
Speaker 1: had lost control of the food chain. So weeks and
Speaker 1: weeks were going by, people were falling sickle over the
Speaker 1: country and they couldn't figure out if those peanuts were
Speaker 1: in their products or not. So that's kind of the
Speaker 1: first thing that got me really really interested in this
Speaker 1: industry and what it was doing to us. And then
Speaker 1: one of my best sources, who tests meat for E coal,
Speaker 1: I said to be you know, Michael, as tragic as
Speaker 1: these incidents of contamination or you should really look at
Speaker 1: what my industry is intentionally adding to its products over
Speaker 1: which it has absolute control. He was worried about all
Speaker 1: the salt going into process meat, but that led me
Speaker 1: to look at sugar and fats as well, and then
Speaker 1: more recently on the industry's ability to sort of use
Speaker 1: our own basic instincts against us. What would you recommend
Speaker 1: to our listeners to help solve this problem. So it
Speaker 1: kind of depends where you are on the spectrum of
Speaker 1: losing control to these food products. Obviously, if you're binge eating,
Speaker 1: you're going to be dealing with professional helping. Is that
Speaker 1: they're really really difficult thing to do with. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're somebody who gets like that three pm craving
Speaker 1: for a cookie, one of the lessons that we've learned
Speaker 1: from the world of drug addiction is that that craving
Speaker 1: comes on so strong and wipes out your free will,
Speaker 1: your ability to sort of say no, that you pretty
Speaker 1: much have to find a way to get ahead of
Speaker 1: the craving. So, whether your strategy is to get up
Speaker 1: its stretch or call a friend, or try to eat
Speaker 1: something else that's healthier, like a handful of nuts, you've
Speaker 1: pretty much need to be doing that at two fifty
Speaker 1: five in order to word off that three PM craving
Speaker 1: are losing control. It's not our fault, this is not
Speaker 1: on us. These products are engineered in a way that's
Speaker 1: designed to get us to lose control over our willpower,
Speaker 1: over our ability to say noes. And so that's what
Speaker 1: they're engineered to do. And knowing that, I think is
Speaker 1: a really fundamental point here figuring out how we use
Speaker 1: individuals with strategies we can take to regain control. Do
Speaker 1: we need to take these companies to task, because there's
Speaker 1: one thing with Philip Morris where we did and that
Speaker 1: kind of resulted in kind of a shift in our
Speaker 1: attitudes towards smoking. At what point can we feel empowered
Speaker 1: to say, hey, you guys should stop doing this and
Speaker 1: help us. Yeah. No, that's so interesting, askup because there
Speaker 1: is an attorney who used to work for one of
Speaker 1: the big food companies who came up with this idea
Speaker 1: of going after them the same way that we went
Speaker 1: after big tobacco, because if you remember, the state attorneys
Speaker 1: general sued big tobacco not because smoking was evil, but
Speaker 1: simply to recover the massive healthcare costs that they were encurring.
Speaker 1: Treating people were getting sick cancer from smoking. Right, So
Speaker 1: this attorney came up with the same idea, why don't
Speaker 1: we go after a big food and get them to
Speaker 1: pay for this hidden cost, hidden hit, huge hidden hit
Speaker 1: to the state's healthcare budgets. And so he sent this
Speaker 1: exquisitive proposal out to seventeen I think it was a
Speaker 1: state attorneys general, and he got not a single response.
Speaker 1: And you know, I asked him what he thought the
Speaker 1: problem was, and he said, you know, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of these issues go in cycles, and there's a moment,
Speaker 1: and tobacco in the nineties was just kind of a moment,
Speaker 1: especially when they started acknowledging that smoking was addictive. Food
Speaker 1: may not be in that moment right now, and so
Speaker 1: he was sort of a patient guy, thinking, well, maybe
Speaker 1: in a few years we could try again. I think
Speaker 1: the other fundamental difference here, though, is that we've been
Speaker 1: led and we've grown up to see these food products
Speaker 1: as being full of cartoon characters and joy and happiness. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine there being like a march
Speaker 1: through the streets of Brooklyn protesting Oreo cookies? I can't,
Speaker 1: And I think it's kind of for that reason that
Speaker 1: most of us still think when we walk into the
Speaker 1: grocery store, we're dealing with companies that are kind of
Speaker 1: fundamentally there to help improve our health. And until we
Speaker 1: kind of come to grips with the reality that that
Speaker 1: is not the case with many of these companies and
Speaker 1: so many of these products, then I think that we
Speaker 1: as a society, you know, aren't quite ready yet to
Speaker 1: cause the kind of you know, the kind of momentous
Speaker 1: change that can really cause this industry to turn around
Speaker 1: or change its ways. Well, thanks so much for being
Speaker 1: at our show. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: It's so fantastic. Michael Moss is a Pulitzer Prize winning
Speaker 1: investigative journalist and New York Times best selling author. His
Speaker 1: most recent book is called Hooked Food, Free Will, and
Speaker 1: How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions. To learn more
Speaker 1: about the processed food industry, check out the links in
Speaker 1: our show notes. Next week, on Solvable, I'm talking with
Speaker 1: fashion designer, influencer and writer Gabby greg also known as
Speaker 1: Gabby Fresh, about improving our relationship with our bodies. That
Speaker 1: is a great conversation. Definitely come back to that. Softball
Speaker 1: is produced by Jocelyn Frank, Research by David Jack, Booking
Speaker 1: by Lisa Dunn. Our managing producer is Sasha Matthias, and
Speaker 1: our executive producer is Mio LaBelle. I'm Ronald Young Jr.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.