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SusannaG

SusannaG - Confessions of a Crazy Cat Lady

Just another GR refugee.  Other than that, I had a stroke in 2004, and read almost anything I can get my hands on, though I have a particular weakness for history, mystery, and historical fiction.

Currently reading

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
Paul Watson
Progress: 6 %
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
Ed Yong
Progress: 40 %
Wizard's First Rule
Terry Goodkind
Progress: 49 %
Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant
Tracy Borman
Progress: 14 %
Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life
Helen Czerski
Progress: 20 %
The Hanover Square Affair
Ashley Gardner
Progress: 10 %
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)
Beth Archer Brombert, Massimo Montanari
Progress: 10 %
Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth
Holger Hoock
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari
Progress: 9 %
Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years
John Guy
Progress: 20/512 pages

Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us - Michael Moss

There are perfectly disgusting ethics on display here, but it is an absolutely fascinating read.

 

Divided into three sections (if you guessed 'salt,' 'sugar,' and 'fat,' you would be right), this account of the packaged food industry, from a New York Times reporter, is horrifying.  The companies do much research on how much sugar (a lot; more for stuff pitched to appeal to children, whose tolerance level is higher than adults), salt (also a lot), and fat (as much as they can stuff in; there is no scientific limit, as humans have no "satiety level" for fat) they can cram into their products so that we will buy more and more, and eat more and more, of what they're selling us.  Because what they're selling isn't palatable if it isn't loaded with salt, sugar, and fat.

 

Some of it is also very amusing.  The account of how one former high-powered Coke executive now peddles vegetables (he came up with prepackaged, peeled, cut-up carrots) so that he can sleep nights had me snorting with laughter while I was reading it.

 

Both the science and the ethics discussions were thought-provoking.  This was one of my better reads this year.