PULITZER WINNER EXAMINES FAKE FOOD INDUSTRY.
Michael Moss, author of Salt Sugar Fat, walks through the aisles of my grocery store like a bloodhound. A Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative reporter, who spent time in Iraq before looking into processed foods, Moss, 57, seems almost impressed by the sheer chutzpah of food marketing. Journeying beyond the shelves stacked high with granola bars and crackers, Moss stops before an invented category of food that prompts him to stop dead in his tracks, smile and squeal: fruit snacks. He seems to take pleasure from the absurdity of the idea.
“General Mills started this, they use the word ‘fruit’ for its patina of health — they love to put ‘fruit’ on the label — but look at the ingredients! This is a candy bar for people who won’t eat fresh fruit,” says Moss, studying a package of apple Fruit by the Foot, and marvelling at how such a product can list sugar variations as three of its first four ingredients. “This is so fascinating, look at the deception that goes on the front and the understatement on the back — from an investigative reporter standpoint, this is a gold mine.”
In 2010, Moss won the Pulitzer for his examination of the meat industry — twice he’d been nominated before — and he brings the same zeal to his reporting on Fritos, Hungry-Man dinners, Lunchables and Kraft’s Macaroni & Cheese. With secret documents, whistle-blowing sources and cranky old food scientists who feel like their
“I DON’T WANT COMPANIES IN CONTROL OF WHAT MY FAMILY EATS.”
MICHAEL MOSS
original creations are being abused, Moss creates a tension to rival Woodward and Bernstein, and whips up a page-turning secret history on the time bombs we consume.
“It was a little like a threedimensional chess game — I needed product, insider documents and knew that I needed to keep up momentum,” says Moss. “It was a lot of luck that it all came together, and when it came to the ‘salt’ section, I was more interested in how the food companies were more hooked on these three than we are — the story turns there, and the reader needed that.”
The turn that Moss refers to is how, near the end of his reporting, he began to suspect that plenty of decent people in the food industry, even some high-ranking executives, would love to make their foods with less fat, sugar and salt. He visited the Nestle headquarters in Lake Geneva and went to Battle Creek, Mich., to talk with the R&D at the Kellogg Company. There, he tested some popular products that were served without their typical levels of sodium, and discovered that change would not be coming about soon.
“Cheez-Its and Cornflakes, that was the eye-opener,” says Moss, mentioning two of Kellogg’s leading brands that aren’t only flavourless without oodles of salt, but almost impossible to recreate with natural ingredients. “That was one of those moments as a reporter when a bell’s going off in your head — this is big. I realized it’s not just the consumers dependent on salt, but also these companies.”
So how do you feed your family decent food on limited resources, when there’s an entire industry that wants to sell you cheap and tasty products packed with salt, sugar and fat — and you can’t simply recreate your kid’s favourite dinner with better ingredients?
The answer, according to Moss, is to bypass the conglomerates and make this stuff on your own. He admits he’s no saint with a lunch box — he’s not being outed if a photograph emerges of his eight-year-old eating an Oreo and drinking Capri Sun — but even a little bit of planning and from-scratch cooking can help wrestle the power away from companies most concerned with their bottom line.
“It takes a little bit of work going to the grocery store with everything they’re throwing at you, but by knowing what’s in these foods and how they’re marketed, you can take back control,” he says. “I don’t want companies in control of what my family eats.”
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss is published by McClelland & Stewart.