Michael Moss

In the hands of food manufacturers, cheese has become an 'ingredient.'

Health messages are simply overwhelmed, in volume and in effectiveness, by junk-food ads that often deploy celebrities or cartoon characters to great effect. We may know that eating fruits and vegetables is good for us, but the preponderance of the signals we get - and especially the signals children get - push us in the direction of junk food.

It's not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort... to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive.

Each year, food companies use an amount of salt that is every bit as staggering as it sounds: 5 billion pounds.

The selling of food matters as much as the food itself_ if not more.