Navigating the Supermarket Aisles With Michael Pollan and Michael Moss | The New York Times

so here is the massive Himalayans here I mean kind of look at the sweep of this kind of real-estate territory this is a cliff of sugar baby yeah and large right yeah with little passes in between where you can try to sort of navigate yourself to get to the more Whole Foods Americans spend about half as much time cooking as they did in the 1960s relying more than ever on highly processed foods the New York Times brought together noted food journalists Michael Moss and Michael Pollan oh my god we gotta get some of this to talk about home cooking the food industry and navigating a typical supermarket you know this seems like such a tranquil atmosphere here quiet as peaceful music smells okay but behind these shelves is the most fiercely competitive industry there is they are all jockeying for position on the Shelf they're fighting each other for stomach share that they call both authors have recently published books Michael Moss investigates the development and marketing of food products in salt sugar fat and Michael Pollan rediscovers his own kitchen and cooked you know a lot of people when they hear this term processed food assume it's all the same and it's all equally bad right and and it's actually not true there are processed foods that are one or two or maybe three ingredient processed foods and then there are these things we call ultra processed or hyper processed foods right ah Lunchables where yes I think it's not a great product we'd talk about this Oscar Mayer first came up with this idea because back in the eighties they were having trouble selling red meat they put their geniuses together and they were actually marketing people look at way of repackaging their essential ingredients so they started with the red meat and then added cheese when they merged with Kraft they used crackers because they couldn't use bread and then they came up with this great kind of school bus yellow motif for the package by crafts own acknowledgment it's not about the food as much as it is about the empowerment all day you got to do what they say but lunchtime is all yours and look at the number of ingredients this is a hyper processed food how do you feel about frozen vegetables and well that's this again goes to that distinction between processed food and ultra processed food I think frozen vegetables are a are terrific and I always have frozen spinach and this is a really simple product it's basically spinach here's a case where I would buy organic but I don't see it and that's an important point it's more important that you eat vegetables even if they're conventional I'm talking about for your health than it is that you wait till you can afford organic or you can find organic this is a real convenience food that I think genuinely is a boon to mankind okay so we'll get one of those ok Stonyfield low-fat fruit on the bottom this has 21 grams of sugar per 6 ounces so there is this Genesis organic by the way this is what the illustrates the point you were making earlier and this is probiotic gut probiotics it's another magic word yeah but it has 26 grams of sugar this has more sugar in it than coca-cola so I once asked a yogurt manufacturer why you don't have the equivalent of honesty for yogurt like for adults who don't want to be swamped with sugar right or don't want to give their kids sugar right any and explain to me how the pressure the arms race to get more and more sugar in is irresistible if your competitor has more sugar they're going to sell more yogurt so you have to match them there's a company I ran into that put a ticker tape of this showing their stock price in the lobby so there boys could suite every morning when they came to work so they would know what was most important right but they're playing of course with these very deep desires we have that we we don't have that much control over and those are the the levers that they're manipulating cost telling all right we need to go to the fresh area yep all the way across this or hinterlands

Channel: The New York Times

Views: 260,702

Rating: 4.8785543 out of 5

Keywords: michael pollan, michael pollan interview, processed food, processed food dangers, processed food video, processed food industry, salt sugar fat, michael pollan cooked, stomach share, Michael Moss, Supermarket (Industry), Lunchables, Michael, Pollan, Moss, Market, Food, Procesed, Sugar, Yogurt, Frozen, Vegetables

Id: ATAZrRfebiw

Length: 4min 17sec (257 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/dweet]

There are a lot of mentions in the video of the uses of sugars in crappy food that's only goal is to get us to buy more.

[u/dm1tree]

Thanks for posting this - great video.

[u/CultofHappy]

My mom knows I’m a sugar addict and working out (swimming, weights, hiking and biking) to build endurance, strength and health.

She bought me protein bars from Costco. ... ugh. “Mom, that’s a pack of candy bars marketed as healthy. Flip it over and look at the sugar.”