Sweet Savage Food Marketing at the New York Times | Cato Institute

Sweet Savage Food Marketing at the New York Times | Cato Institute: "You might want to sit down for this.

All set?

Here it is: Food companies work very, very hard to find out what will give you, the consumer, the most pleasure for your money — and then the diabolical fiends actually give it to you!

Seriously, you are supposed to be absolutely horrified by this. You can tell by the ominous language the author, Michael Moss, employs to describe how “food engineers alter a litany of variables with the sole intent of” — brace yourself — “finding the most perfect version” of a product. The most perfect version, of course, is the one that will “be most attractive to consumers.” (The horror.) The piece even quotes one food-company executive who describes the strategy: “Discover what consumers want to buy and give it to them with both barrels.”"