The Food Industry's Genius Marketing

at 2:57 PM

The author of 'The End of Overeating', David Kessler did numerous interviews with food industry consultants and one of them told him that one of the reasons that the foods in restaurants are highly processed is that you can wolf it down fast and by eliminating the need to chew, 'modern food processing techniques allow us to eat faster".  Refined food melts in the mouth and before you know it you have had several hundreds of calories.

The other weapon that the food industry uses to get consumers to buy and eat more are chemical flavorings.  For example, cheese flavorings sold by Kraft include blue cheese, American cheese and cream cheese, none of which actually contain much cheese. So adding artificial chemicals to the basic ingredients of sugar, fat and salt gives manufacturers incredible freedom to create novel food products.

Do you know what IQF stands for?  Foods such as shrimp or chicken nuggets are not frozen in huge blocks but frozen individually.  But before this individually quick frozen method the food pieces are partially fried (par-fried).  When the foods arrive at the restaurant and before being served they are fried again.  From shrimp to chicken pieces to french fries many chain restaurants are locations where food is simply assembled and not freshly cooked.

So this culture of overeating is encouraged by the food industry because that is how they make money.  Take the idea of ordering an appetizer for example.  Most appetizers unless they are fruits or raw/steamed vegetables are really a meal in and of themselves.  You order the appetizer and a soda or an alcoholic drink then the meal comes.  Assuming that you don't take half of the food on your plate home, at the end of the dinner you have consumed TWO meals!  Almost doubling your caloric intake.  And let's not kid ourselves, most of us order nachos, cheese sauce, egg rolls and other highly processed foods and not steamed broccoli for appetizers.