The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food Free Essay Example

We are acquainted with the word “Junk Food,” and though it is not good for our health we eat it anyways. Junk food is popular, accessible, it tastes good and it’s reasonably priced. The truth about junk food is that it has no nourishing value, but the industry is still marketing, advertising these unhealthy foods. In “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” Michael Moss uses meetings, studies to make his readers trust in his credibility. These appeals to ethos, mixed with pathos and logos and it establishes an effective argument, that food industry should be held responsible for part of the obesity epidemic.

The Article “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” was printed in The New York Time Magazine on February 20, 2013. Moss is a journalist and he won Pulitzer prize in 2010. He also is a New York Time bestseller of “Salt, Sugar, Fat.” And he is a journalist of the Wall Street Journal.

Moss’s main purpose is to give shoppers awareness about food industry’s role in America’s health disaster and the learning that goes into making the foods we eat every day.

He gives a new perspective of food companies and their ways to attract people to eat more of their products.

Michael Moss starts his article by describing a meeting that was held on April 8, 1999. Individuals who joined the meeting were some of America’s largest food firms. The meeting was to talk about growing obesity and what the manufacturing companies could do to help.

He tells about the discussion and how they plan to do business with this important matter. As they talk, they seem to point the fault on each other, but they do all seem to take blame for no health benefits of their foods. General Mills said, “Don’t talk to me about nutrition…talk to me about taste, and if this stuff tastes better, don’t run around trying to sell stuff that doesn’t taste good.” (723) What does this say about our country, our mindsets about health when companies distributing a portion of food eaten are saying such things, maybe this is the issue with America’s problem with “junk food.”

The article also concentrates on processed food. Moss reveals the truth of how food is made with the information accumulated through widespread research, and interviews with researchers and CEO’s, and our industry’s food businesses. Over four years of research and reporting, talking to more than three hundred people employed by the processed – food industry Moss was able to present thousands of pages of secret memos that was obtained from inside the food industry’s operations. Moss’s purpose is to tell the consumers about the food industry’s role in America’s health disaster and how we as consumers should know the bad outcome of eating it. Companies do not care about the health of customers. All the companies seem to care about is their desire for making more money. Regardless of how harmful these foods are.

Moss’s main objective was to be more aware, and to let individuals know what’s in our food. More companies need to shift focus of providing customers with healthful foods that are also acceptable and exciting for shoppers, and the “pro-junk food behavior but anti-junk food establishment,”(741) as described by Jeffrey Dunn, maybe a good way to start.

Works Cited

1. Moss, Michael “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.” They Say, I Say: Across Disciplines, edited by Gerald Graff, et al., W.W. Norton, 2018, pp. 718-741.

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