NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Salt Sugar Fat comes a “gripping” ( The Wall
Street Journal ) exposé of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts
the emotions we associate with food and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public
health. “The processed food industry has managed to avoid being lumped in with Big
Tobacco—which is why Michael Moss’s new book is so important.”—Charles Duhigg author of The
Power of Habit Everyone knows how hard it can be to maintain a healthy diet. But what if some
of the decisions we make about what to eat are beyond our control? Is it possible that food is
addictive like drugs or alcohol? And to what extent does the food industry know or care
about these vulnerabilities? In Hooked Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Michael
Moss sets out to answer these questions—and to find the true peril in our food. Moss uses the
latest research on addiction to uncover what the scientific and medical communities—as well as
food manufacturers—already know: that food in some cases is even more addictive than alcohol
cigarettes and drugs. Our bodies are hardwired for sweets so food giants have developed
fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products creating in us the expectation that
everything should be cloying we’ve evolved to prefer fast convenient meals hence our
modern-day preference for ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food
industry—including major companies like Nestlé Mars and Kellogg’s—has tried not only to evade
this troubling discovery about the addictiveness of food but to actually exploit it. For
instance in response to recent dieting trends food manufacturers have simply turned junk food
into junk diets filling grocery stores with “diet” foods that are hardly distinguishable from
the products that got us into trouble in the first place. As obesity rates continue to climb
manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive
eating habits. A gripping account of the legal battles insidious marketing campaigns and
cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis Hooked lays
out all that the food industry is doing to exploit and deepen our addictions and shows us why
what we eat has never mattered more.
