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"  In its latest big-idea, 8,000-word cover story, The New York Times Magazine tackles the addictiveness of junk food, and the attempts by the junk-food industry to get you and your families hooked on the fatty, starchy, sugary, salty, unquestionably delicious crap we know, love, and consume by the truckload. Michael Moss writes: What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort \u2014 taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles \u2014 to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive. I talked to more than 300 people in or formerly employed by the processed-food industry, from scientists to marketers to C.E.O.&amp;#039;s. Some were willing whistle-blowers, while others spoke reluctantly when presented with some of the thousands of pages of secret memos that I obtained from inside the food industry&amp;#039;s operations. A few ways companies are hooking you: With math. In the wake of its Red Fusion failure, Dr Pepper hired a food optimization expert with a PhD in experimental psychology and a mathematical model used to pair ingredients like &amp;quot;Color 23,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Syrup 11,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Packaging 6&amp;quot; in order to craft the most addictive product. Howard Moskowitz is basically the Nate Silver of packaged food. With something called a &amp;quot;bliss point.&amp;quot; For Dr Pepper, Moskowitz tried to reach a something called the &amp;quot;bliss point,&amp;quot; the sweet spot between repeatable drink- or eat-ability and flavor (overpowering flavor can only be consumed so much before you get tired). In order to find it, his &amp;quot;formulas were then subjected to 3,904 tastings organized in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago and Philadelphia.&amp;quot; The data was then collated in a meticulous, 135-page report. The end result: Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper. By preying on your kids&amp;#039; brains. Lunchables had a breakthrough when they realized, as CEO Bob Eckert is quoted, &amp;quot;Lunchables aren&amp;#039;t about lunch. It&amp;#039;s about kids being able to put together what they want to eat, anytime, anywhere.&amp;quot; Once they shifted the focus to kids instead of wearied mothers, Lunchables sales took off and have yet to stop. With technology. Frito-Lay spent up to $30 million a year on research, including &amp;quot;a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.&amp;quot; And without morals. A decade ago, former Coca-Cola COO for North and South America Jeffrey Dunn would make frequent trips to Brazil to try to push Coca-Cola on poor people in the favelas, attempting to &amp;quot;drive more ounces into more bodies more often.&amp;quot; And Nestl\u00E9 did the same with processed foods. That&amp;#039;s just the surface, and the takeaway from this piece seems to be that there&amp;#039;s little hope and fewer scruples in the junk-food industry. We might as well throw up our hands and submit. [The New York Times] "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a19775/junk-food-addictive-15123020/>