From: NPR
How The Food Industry Helps Engineer Our Cravings
NPR:
It is no secret that the rise in obesity in America has something to do with food. But how much? And what role does the food industry as a whole play?
As part of Here & Now’s series this week on obesity,America on the Scale, host Jeremy Hobson spoke with investigative reporter Michael Moss of The New York Times.
…
They would hire people like Howard Moskowitz, trained in high math at Queens College and experimental psychology at Harvard. Howard was one of the people responsible for some of the biggest icons in the grocery store.
For example, he walked me through his recent creation of a new soda flavor for Dr. Pepper. … He started with no less than 59 variations of sweetness, each one slightly different than the next, subjected those to 3,000 taste tests around the country, did his high math regression analysis thing, put the data in the computer. And out comes this bell-shaped curve where the perfect amount of sweetness — not too little, not too much — is at the very top of the curve.
Read the whole story: NPR
More of our Members in the Media >
APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines.
Please login with your APS account to comment.