The Extraordinary Science Of Addictive Junk Food Summary

Michael Moss does a wonderful job describing the sciences junk food companies use to get us to buy their products in his article “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”. First Moss uses solid facts to describe how junk food companies make their food sell. Secondly he proves that he is very knowledgable about the topic of his article, and that he conducted intensive research and interviews to gain the knowledge. Lastly Moss does a good job of making the article interesting by doing things such as providing facts, dialogue, and questions to keep your attention. Moss’ use of solid facts help describe and give the reader insight on the extremes of what junk food companies will go through to sell and make their products desirable. During

An example of this is during the research portion of Moss’ article he visited Robert Lin, head food scientist for Frito-Lay from 1974- 1982, at Lin’s home. While there the two sifted through all the documents Lin had from when he still worked at Frito-Lay as well as documents Moss had found through other sources; picking Lin’s head to try and gain more knowledge on the industry. Moss also interviewed Geoffrey Bible, former CEO of Philip Morris, about how while in his control one of their products, Lunchables, increased greatly in levels of salt, sugar, and fat, while still being heavily marketed to kids. This also enabled Moss To give a corporate insider's perspective of the situation. Lastly one other person Moss interviewed was Bob Drane, inventor of the Lunchable, who was able to shed some light on different aspects of the junk food industry for

One occurrence of this is when he was talking about how Frito-Lay spends 30 million dollars a year on studies of mouthfeel and aroma tests for different types of food. Another fact he interesting fact Moss presented was that Frito-Lay bought a $40,000.00 machine that simulates a mouth chewing so they could find the perfect braking pressure for a chip, which is 4 pounds per square inch. Lastly another thing he included in his article which was used above as well that caught my attention was the letter one of Coke’s bottling plant managers sent to Coke’s CEO and board of supervisors about wanting Dunn’s head just for recommending to not advertise in public