Salt Sugar Fat summary

We humans love the taste of sugar. This is because once upon a time, getting quick, concentrated calories like those in sugar increased our likelihood of survival, so our cravings provide an evolutionary advantage. We also love starchy foods like pizza, because starch can be converted into sugar. It’s no surprise then that the processed-food industry uses sugar to make us hunger for their products.

Our desire for sugar isn’t limitless though. At some point, things just get too sweet to be desirable. This means food companies need to identify the bliss point of sweetness for every food item they produce. This is the point at which enjoyability is maximized.

Today, almost everyone knows that eating too much sugar is unhealthy.

One of the first health issues connected to sugar was the radically increasing occurrence of tooth decay in 1970s America. One dentist, Ira Shannon, was so alarmed by the state of his young patients’ teeth that he began testing the sugar content of breakfast cereals, as food companies were not yet required to divulge product ingredients on packaging. To his shock he found that the sweetest cereals were the ones being advertised during children's Saturday morning cartoons.

The second favorite ingredient of the processed-food industry is fat. As with sugar, evolution has sculpted us to crave fat because it is loaded with calories, and gram for gram, fat actually has double the calories of sugar.

Unlike sugar though, there doesn’t seem to be an optimal bliss point for the amount of fat that we’d like our food to contain. It seems that more is always better.

Perhaps the biggest fat-related threat to Americans’ health comes from a seemingly innocuous source: cheese.

But why is this?

Finally, let’s examine the third favorite ingredient of the processed-food industry: salt. Unlike sugar and fat, salt contains no calories, but it does contain a mineral that’s essential for the human body to function: sodium. Unfortunately, when the body gets too much sodium, it increases blood pressure, inducing hypertension.

In the 1980s, this potentially fatal condition was becoming a severe problem in the United States, as one in four Americans suffered from it. High salt intake was one of the culprits identified, as it was found that Americans were ingesting ten to 20 times the amount of sodium their bodies required.

So what can be done about this unhealthy trifecta of salt, sugar and fat?

For a start, in some countries with similar problems to the United States, the government has stepped in to reduce the sodium content of processed foods.

The key message in this book:

The processed-food industry crams its products full of salt, sugar and fat because we consumers are irresistibly drawn to this trifecta. Unfortunately, this has led to severe increases in obesity, diabetes and heart disease in industrialized countries. The only remedy is for consumers to resist the temptation of salt, sugar and fat.