Michael Moss Quotes

Powerful Michael Moss for Daily Growth

About Michael Moss

Michael Moss is an acclaimed American investigative journalist, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning work on the food industry. Born in 1963 in Washington D.C., Moss developed a keen interest in journalism at an early age. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English, he began his career at The Boston Globe before moving to The New York Times in 1992. Moss's investigative reporting has significantly impacted public discourse on food safety and consumer protection. His most notable work, "The Salt," published by The New York Times, uncovered the unhealthy practices of the processed food industry, particularly regarding the use of trans fats. This series earned him a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2010. Moss's first book, "Salt: A World History," published in 2003, explores the role of salt in human history and its impact on global health. His second book, "Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food," co-written with his daughter, was published in 2013. The book offers an insightful look into the fast food industry, revealing its hidden practices and their effects on consumers' health. In 2014, Moss joined ProPublica as a reporter, where he continues to investigate and expose issues related to public health and consumer protection. His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the George Polk Award for Food and Health Reporting and the Loeb Award for Business and Financial Journalism. Through his investigative journalism, Michael Moss sheds light on critical issues within the food industry, advocating for transparency and consumer safety. His work serves as a catalyst for change in food production practices and encourages consumers to make informed choices about their diet.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"Food is a powerful drug, and it's being used without understanding its side effects."

Michael Moss suggests that food functions similarly to a potent drug, with unacknowledged consequences. This implies a lack of awareness about the health impacts and potential risks associated with certain dietary choices. His statement underscores the importance of understanding the role food plays in our lives and emphasizes the need for education and responsible consumption to minimize any harmful effects.

"The food industry has an obligation to make our products as appealing as possible, even if that means they're not good for us."

This quote emphasizes a crucial aspect of modern food production, suggesting that industries prioritize making their products appealing over their nutritional value or health benefits. It implies a potential conflict between consumer desires (taste, convenience, aesthetics) and the long-term effects on health due to over-processing, high sugar, salt, or fat content in these appealing yet unhealthy foods. This quote serves as a call to action for consumers and policymakers to demand and implement changes towards more balanced and healthier food choices.

"In the food business, size really does matter: the bigger the portion, the more we eat."

This quote by Michael Moss highlights the impact of serving size on consumption habits. Essentially, it suggests that larger portions tend to encourage overeating, as people consume more when presented with ample amounts of food. The implication is a commentary on the role of portion control in both personal health and diet management. To stay healthy, one should be mindful of serving sizes and avoid oversized portions to prevent overindulgence and potential weight gain or other related health issues.

"For the food industry, it's about making money, and if you can make a product that people crave, then they'll keep coming back."

This quote highlights the profit-driven nature of the food industry. The focus is not primarily on nutrition or health but rather on creating products that are addictive or irresistible to consumers. This strategy ensures repeat customers, thereby maximizing profits. It's a business model where consumer behavior and preference are strategically manipulated to prioritize sales over long-term health consequences.

"The food system has been engineered to make us overeat and to get us hooked on processed foods."

This quote by Michael Moss suggests that modern food production, distribution, and marketing strategies are deliberately designed to encourage excessive consumption of processed foods. The implication is that these tactics exploit our biological urges for sustenance, flavor, and convenience, creating a sort of addiction or dependency on these highly-processed, often unhealthy food choices. This observation underscores the need for transparency in food production and responsible consumer awareness regarding the potential health consequences of overconsuming processed foods.

Health messages are simply overwhelmed, in volume and in effectiveness, by junk-food ads that often deploy celebrities or cartoon characters to great effect. We may know that eating fruits and vegetables is good for us, but the preponderance of the signals we get - and especially the signals children get - push us in the direction of junk food.

- Michael Moss

Overwhelmed, Celebrities, Signals

The playing field is anything but level when you walk into the grocery store. So much government subsidy goes into processed foods. Even when you're well-meaning as a parent or a shopper for yourself, you can't help but be pulled toward the highly processed food.

- Michael Moss

Parent, Grocery Store, Foods, Subsidy

In the hands of food manufacturers, cheese has become an 'ingredient.'

- Michael Moss

Food, Hands, Ingredient, Manufacturers

It's not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort... to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive.

- Michael Moss

Willpower, Part, Foods, Manufacturers

Home economics - kids in school used to be taught how to shop, how to cook from scratch, how to be in control of their diets. Doesn't happen anymore.

- Michael Moss

Cook, Happen, Shop, Diets

Pressed by the Obama administration and consumers, Kraft, Nestle, Pepsi, Campbell and General Mills, among others, have begun to trim the loads of salt, sugar and fat in many products.

- Michael Moss

Salt, Mills, Pressed, Pepsi

Every time the good giants try to cut back on salt, sugar, fat calories, inevitably Wall Street raises its hand and is looking at the sales figures and the revenue and saying, 'Thou shalt not result in any loss of profit.' There's huge continuing pressure on the food companies.

- Michael Moss

Back, Cut, Figures, Profit

That is the one single word that the food industry hates: 'addiction.' They much prefer words like 'crave-ability' and 'allure.'

- Michael Moss

Addiction, Like, Prefer, Single Word

When it comes to salt, what was really staggering to me is that the industry itself is totally hooked on salt. It is this miracle ingredient that solves all of their problems. There is the flavor burst to the salt itself, but it also serves as a preservative, so foods can stay on the shelves for months.

- Michael Moss

Industry, Hooked, Foods, Burst

The biggest hits - be they Coca-Cola or Doritos - owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don't have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.

- Michael Moss

Taste, Alluring, Formulas, Overriding

Every year, the average American eats as much as 33 pounds of cheese. That's up to 60,000 calories and 3,100 grams of saturated fat. So why do we eat so much cheese? Mainly it's because the government is in cahoots with the processed food industry.

- Michael Moss

Year, Why, Average, Food Industry

Many of the Prego sauces - whether cheesy, chunky or light - have one feature in common: The largest ingredient, after tomatoes, is sugar. A mere half-cup of Prego Traditional, for instance, has the equivalent of more than two teaspoons of sugar: as much as two-plus Oreo cookies.

- Michael Moss

Two, Largest, Equivalent, Tomatoes

Companies are experimenting with replacing sodium chloride with potassium chloride, because most of the health problems come from sodium. It works for some products, but if you diminish the amount of sodium, people want sugar and fat instead.

- Michael Moss

Products, Some, Works, Sodium

The optimum amount of sugar in a product became known as the 'bliss point.' Food inventors and scientists spend a huge amount of time formulating the perfect amount of sugar that will send us over the moon and send products flying off the shelves.

- Michael Moss

Perfect, Inventors, Became, Shelves

One reason that we eat processed foods is the decline of home economics. Restarting home economics classes is one of the key things we could do to get this issue moving.

- Michael Moss

Reason, Foods, Issue, Key

Sugar was an issue in the '80s, so you would see low-sugar products; fat was an issue in the '90s, so you'd see low-fat products.

- Michael Moss

See, Issue, Would, Sugar

Every one of our 10,000 taste buds is wired for sugar. But we aren't born liking salt - we develop a taste for it at about 6 months.

- Michael Moss

Salt, Wired, Months, Sugar

There are powdered salts, chunked salts, salts shaped in different ways with various additives to work perfectly with processed foods. All of them are geared to increase allure.

- Michael Moss

Work, Perfectly, Foods, Increase

The growing attention Americans are paying to what they put into their mouths has touched off a new scramble by the processed-food companies to address health concerns.

- Michael Moss

New, Touched, Address, Concerns

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