5 Things You Didn't Know About The Processed Food Industry

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  • 7/29/2019 5 Things You Didn't Know About The Processed Food Industry

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    Food companies engineer products to appeal

    specifically to various ethnic groups.

    The most heavily targeted groupis Hispanics.

    Frito-Lay, for example, introduced an

    entire snack-food lineSabritasto appeal

    to the Hispanic market.

    Sabritas includes potato chips that have

    TWICE as much salt as regular chips

    along with some added sugar.

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    Pre-made lunches are not much healthier

    than fast food lunches.

    The most iconic of the pre-made products is

    the Lunchables tray, which accounts for nearly

    $1 billion a year in revenue.

    With its slogan All Day You Gotta Do What They

    Say, but Lunchtime is All Yours, Lunchables are

    marketed to kids as a form of self-empowerment.

    With its wholesome imagepackaged to look like

    a wrapped presentLunchables is also marketed to

    assuage the guilt of busy, stressed-out parents.

    One recent version of Lunchables, known as Maxed Out,

    contained:

    1,600 milligrams

    of sodium

    9 grams of saturated fat

    13 teaspoons of sugar

    Addiction is NOTtoo strong a word for

    our dependency on salt, sugar, and fat.

    Using sophisticated brain imaging, scientists

    have discovered that the brain responds to

    salt, sugar, and fat in much the same way it

    reacts to . . . cocaine.

    What this means: when we eat these things,

    our brain sends out signals of joy.

    Unilever, the worlds largest manufacturer of

    ice cream, parlayed this brain research into a

    marketing campaign that sells eating ice cream

    as a way to make ourselves happy.

    Information provided by

    Salt, Sugar, FatHow the Food Giants Hooked Us

    On Sale 2.26.13

    A Random House Hardcover and eBook

    Coca-Cola, the worlds largest soda

    manufacturer, refers to its best

    customers as heavy users.

    Heavy users only represent 20% of soda drinkers.

    BUT, they consume 80% of all soda each year.

    On average, heavy users drink as much as1,000 (or more) cans a year, which equals

    140,000 calories.

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    Our own government helped turn

    cheese into an ingredient in a vast

    array of processed foods. In the 80s, people started drinking a lot less

    whole milk, which is high in saturated fat.

    This created an enormous glut of milkfat.

    With help from the federal government in the form

    of subsidies and incentives, this excess milkfat

    was turned into cheese.

    This cheese was put between crackers, stuffed into

    pizza crusts, and added to frozen dinners.

    Cheese is now the single largest source of

    saturated fat in the American dietthe kind

    of fat linked to heart disease.

    Since 1970, cheese consumption has tripled.

    Americans now eat as much as 33 pounds

    of the stuff a year.

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