"When it comes to salt, what was really staggering to me is that the industry itself is totally hooke..." — Michael Moss

Companies are experimenting with replacing sodium chloride with potassium chloride, because most of the health problems come from sodium. It works for some products, but if you diminish the amount of sodium, people want sugar and fat instead.

Every one of our 10,000 taste buds is wired for sugar. But we aren't born liking salt - we develop a taste for it at about 6 months.

Sugar was an issue in the '80s, so you would see low-sugar products; fat was an issue in the '90s, so you'd see low-fat products.

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.