[Music] well if you've ever found yourself saying I just couldn't help myself when you ate too much of the wrong food you just might be right A lot of people put a lot of work into making sure we keep on eating as our health reporter Kelly Crow discovered it's a highly competitive highly secretive industry with one goal food that is Simply Irresistible they're trying to increase their share of of your stomach and increase the amount of profit they're making off the food you eat I ate the point t
hat it hurt to move and I would just lie in my bed and wish I was dead these companies rely on deep science in pure science to understand how we're attracted to food and how they can make make their Foods attractive to us there's science behind that crunch yogurt feels that way in your mouth for a reason the food industry is even researching the connection between the taste receptors on your tongue and the corresponding chemical reaction in your brain the result carefully engineered combinations
of salt sugar fat and chemicals deliberately designed so you can can't eat just one Michael Moss spent four years investigating the science behind processed food I was totally surprised I spent time with the top scientists at the largest companies in this country and it's amazing how much math and science and regression analysis and energy they put into finding the very perfect amount of salt sugar and fat in their products that'll send us over the moon a search through a database of scientific
papers and food industry patents reveals the extent of the science behind food engineering chemistry physics biology all commandeered into the service of making profitable food here's a process for enhancing the cheese flavor without the cheese where starting materials are proteins and fats which means the amount of expensive cheese can be reduced substantially and if they can replicate that chemical reaction that may happen on your tongue or an aroma uh they can simulate the taste of something
without it being at all real Bruce Bradley knows firsthand what goes on inside the food industry a former executive at several large food companies he's now a writer and Industry critic there were certainly times that I felt uncomfortable or troubled by what I was doing and I think that's ultimately you know one of the reasons why I left the industry and then you see trends like obesity and health issues uh that are increasing mainly driven by the food that we eat it was hard for me not to just
uh take a a more thorough assessment of what I was doing the food industry is extremely secretive competitive and proprietary it took years and hundreds of interviews before Michael Moss could finish his book this was like a detective story for me getting inside the companies with thousands of pages of inside documents and getting their scientists and Executives to reveal to me the secrets of how they go at this what did he find that the food processing industry rests on three pillars salt suga
r and fat these are the Holy Trinity of processed foods and again when they hit the perfect amounts they call it the Bliss point for sugar the mouth feel for fat the flavor burst for salt they know that their products will be irresistible salt sugar and fat in combination nature never intended and increasingly scientists agree there is evidence that these highly palatable foods can be addictive yeah well for me I'll be spooning or reaching or whatever and I'll be thinking I've got to stop I've g
ot to stop I've got to stop and my you know I just I just don't stop her name is Pat and she's a food addict I was desperate when I was was a food addict it was really really uh devastating and I felt powerless and ashamed it was horrible her kitchen is a Battleground every meal a challenge to remember that for her even a taste of sugar can set her back seeing food will trigger it uh advertising for food will trigger it these foods are so so addictive so appealing every cookie is crammed with jo
y there are many food addicts who say that um long after the food stopped causing us joy long after it started causing us Misery we still couldn't stop how about one of those chips just one so it becomes hardwired and it's very hard to overcome bet you can't eat just one and while the industry hates the word Addiction more than any other word the fact of the matter is that their research has shown them that when they hit the very perfect amounts of each of those ingredients they'll send us over
the moon and their products will fly off the shelf we'll eat more we'll buy more and as they are companies they will make more money we're activating those lyic structures Francis mllo is a neuroscientist brainstem as part of a BBC program he put a British chef into a brain Imaging machine and fed him chili every 38 seconds Ashley had a drop of chili oil squirted on his tongue and watched as the heat from the Chili Peppers triggered a release of feel-good chemicals in the brain the consequence o
f that that low level of pain is that it floods the brain with its own natural opian Francis mclone was a Pioneer one of the first neuroscientists to work in the food industry he spent 10 years doing Neuroscience for Unilever one of the world's largest food companies as a basic neuroscientist I was able to look at the mechanisms that basically drove preference for various types of food using Neuroscience Unilever made headlines with this finding ice cream tickles the brain just one spoonful ligh
ts up the happy zones of the brain in clinical trials the company reported this is the other part of the body that fascinates food scientists the mouth the way food breaks between the teeth the pressure of the bite force the sound of the crunch it's partly it's the noise um and the noise of course Amplified by the fact that your Jawbone is connected to your ears um and you really hear that that crunch quite loudly as you bite but there also the physical um requirement to chew on something and to
to Crunch it just distracts you it pulls your mind onto what you're eating Chris lucer is a food industry consultant who helps companies come up with foods that are what he calls Moorish in other words make you want more they want you at the end of each product to reach for the next one and put it in again and they often achieve that by having a very intense taste hit right at the front of the mouth and then it dies off very quickly and so by the time You' finished each mouthful you're looking
to refine that taste which you've lost the shape of the food is also important chocolate should not have sharp Hedges absolutely we're looking for chocolate to be comforting to be a really Pleasant lovely experience in the mouth um melt is a very soft soft experience um and if it's got sharp Corners uh you're really spoiling that and actually setting the consumer on edge slightly before they get them outelt food scientists know what it takes to trigger the brain to stop eating they call it senso
ry specific satiety and that's an expression that says when foods have one overriding flavor if it's attractive it'll be really attractive to us initially but then we'll get tired of it really fast and so these companies make a concerted effort to make their Foods not Bland but really well Blended and why can't you stop at just one it's called Vanishing caloric density Vanishing caloric density applies to those things like Cheetos that melt in your mouth and what happens is then that your brain
gets fooled into thinking the calories have vanished and you're much more apt to keep eating before the brain sends you a signal hey you've had enough have to set welcome to the sensory Sciences Lab at the University of G can one person information come here for a minute this is teaching the students how to set up a sensory test so all the students in this class are learning the basics of conducting sensory evaluation research because it's not as it's not as simple as eating a food they're diffe
rent in an ingredients and what we're looking for is to determine which one is preferred or accepted by people so um in this case it's actually a different sodium level so which one did you like better I like the second one better the salty one the saltier one yeah because these products must be able to sit on the shelves for months many of the ingredients have nothing to do with taste but act as preservatives and chemicals to control the appearance and texture and a series of ingredients known
as flavor enhancers to trick the brain into tasting something that isn't there there's tremendous amounts of money spent behind creating tastes and smells that feel real but in reality are completely artificial because without flavor enhancement no one would eat it it would taste horrible you would just you know you'd want to spit it out one food company made a special batch of crackers for Michael Moss to taste without any salt at all it was a God awful experience tasting those things normally
I can eat cheese its all day long but the cheese its without without the salt I couldn't even swallow them they stuck to the roof of my mouth a tour of the grocery aisle reveals that something is changing suddenly cookies boast Health claims chips have whole grain and fiber if the food industry can find a way to Market it and make money off of it I'm sure they will but if it long term is decreasing the amount of food that they can sell I don't see it as being a an Avenue that they'll go down so
whether lower in salt sugar or fat higher in fiber and Grains containing real fruit or baked with real vegetables you will be back for more the food industry depends on it Kelly Crow CBC News Toronto
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