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Coca-Cola, the worlds largest soda manufacturer, refers to its best customers as heavy users.
Heavy users only represent 20% of soda drinkers. BUT, they consume 80% of all soda each year. On average, heavy users drink as much as

1,000 (or more) cans a year, which equals 140,000 calories.

Food companies engineer products to appeal specically to various ethnic groups.

The most heavily targeted group

is Hispanics.

Frito-Lay, for example, introduced an

entire snack-food lineSabritasto appeal to the Hispanic market.

Sabritas includes potato chips that have

TWICE as much salt as regular chips along with some added sugar.

Pre-made lunches are not much healthier than fast food lunches.
$1 billion a year in revenue.

The most iconic of the pre-made products is

the Lunchables tray, which accounts for nearly

With its slogan All Day You Gotta Do What They

Say, but Lunchtime is All Yours, Lunchables are

marketed to kids as a form of self-empowerment.

With its wholesome imagepackaged to look like

a wrapped presentLunchables is also marketed to assuage the guilt of busy, stressed-out parents.

One recent version of Lunchables, known as Maxed Out,

contained:

1,600 milligrams

of sodium

9 grams of saturated fat 13 teaspoons of sugar

Addiction is NOT too strong a word for our dependency on salt, sugar, and fat.
Using sophisticated brain imaging, scientists

have discovered that the brain responds to reacts to . . . cocaine.

salt, sugar, and fat in much the same way it

What this means: when we eat these things,

our brain sends out signals of joy.

Unilever, the worlds largest manufacturer of

ice cream, parlayed this brain research into a as a way to make ourselves happy.

marketing campaign that sells eating ice cream

Our own government helped turn cheese into an ingredient in a vast array of processed foods.
whole milk, which is high in saturated fat.

In the 80s, people started drinking a lot less

This created an enormous glut of milkfat.

With help from the federal government in the form

of subsidies and incentives, this excess milkfat was turned into cheese.

This cheese was put between crackers, stuffed into

pizza crusts, and added to frozen dinners.

Cheese is now the single largest source of

saturated fat in the American dietthe kind of fat linked to heart disease.

Since 1970, cheese consumption has tripled.

Americans now eat as much as 33 pounds of the stuff a year.

Information provided by

Salt, Sugar, Fat

On Sale 2.26.13

How the Food Giants Hooked Us

A Random House Hardcover and eBook