Summary: The Extraordinary Science Of Addictive Junk Food

People are constantly manipulated by their environment into making decisions in both daily routine and life-changing decisions. Michael Moss, a journalist, examines how the Junk Food Industry manipulates its users’ stomachs with both marketing and product composition in “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”. [expand]Similarly, writer Andrew Solomon’s “Son” details how people and their views of others can impact other’s emotions and behaviors.[add to solomon] These forms of manipulation constantly hurt a person’s ability to achieve their personal goals. People find themselves passively guided to making destructive decisions as a result of the environment around themselves. A person’s ability to achieve success is dependent on their

Solomon believes, “without [his] struggles, [he] would not be [him]self” (383). His struggles made him a better person, despite spending decades recovering and learning to succeed in self-expression. He should consider himself lucky, as without small doses of positive reinforcement from his family and his teachers kept him from experiencing permanent physical or mental injury. Solomon’s success is an image of taking his environment and learning to thrive by learning to resist the destructive effects of what is around him and learning to embrace the positive things around him. His discovery of openly supportive communities was essential to this achievement. Moss converses with someone able to take a negative environment and extract positive aspects jus the same. Jeffery Dunn, a Coca-Cola executive, told Moss about his ability to transform the malicious junk-food industry to fulfill his goal of a healthier snacking options; “We are pro-junk-food behavior but anti-junk-food establishment.” (275). Dunn’s manipulation of a negative environment to achieve his goals is a rare sight. The use of a malicious practice to achieve positive results demonstrates both creativity and innovative skills. His refusal to accept the snack market as a place to sell junk-food that is unhealthy is a clear example of turning away negative aspects of his environment. Dunn’s use of the negative aspects of the junk-food industry to achieve his goals parallels Solomon’s ability to grow through the discrimination of his own sexual identity. Both find themselves in a negative situation where they turn away the negative aspects and utilize the positive to achieve their