HPR 126 Sugar Section Assignment PDF

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This document is a short essay reacting to an assigned reading in this course....

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Samantha Clay Professor Rodriguez HPR 126 9/18/17 Sugar Section Notes -The sugar addiction started when Christopher Columbus brought sugar cane on his second voyage to the Americas and it became granulated sugar by enslaved Africans. - In 1807, a British naval blockade blocked easy access to sugar cane, entrepreneurs figured out how to extract sugar from beets to meet the rapidly increasing demand for sugar. - In the 1970’s, high fructose corn syrup was invented and became the main ingredient in juices, sodas and a lot of food products. - From the 1970’s to the early 2000’s the consumption of sugar sweetened soda doubled to 40 gallons per person. -A study using rats was done to test the cravings and addiction to sugar sweetened cereals.The study was done by a graduate student named Anthony Sclafani who determined that the rats who ate little pieces of cereal overcame their fear of open spaces and ate the cereal. He eventually added more sugar-filled snacks and determined that they were very much addicted to sugar. - The science and experimentation that went into the discovery of the sugar traveled from the taste buds to the brain to create strong cravings required the use of the MRI (full body scanner). (pg. 33) - A man named Howard Moskowitz was scientist who was the first to recognize the correlation between sugar and our liking to food up to a certain point. (pg. 34) - Moskowitz put his research to work and put his data in the shape of an inverted U and at the top of that U shape is known as our “bliss point”. - Big corporations such as Prego consulted with Moskowitz to find out consumers preferences to tomato sauce finding that the majority of Americans like their sauce to be chunky yet no one was servicing their needs so Prego took this to their advantage and formulated a chunky spaghetti sauce recipe and generated over $600 million over the next decade from that change alone. (Pg 37) - A study conducted in New Jersey for the purpose of finding out what makes people crave food, they gathered consumers opinions on certain desserts and meals that were becoming the norm in the American diet and this serves as a guideline for food manufacturers. (pg. 38) - The research that went into the making of the Cherry flavored Dr. Pepper, both regular and diet resulted in an 135 page report of detailed charts and graphs outlining the reactions the tasters had to certain levels of taste strong vs. weak, aroma and a powerful sensory force which food scientists called the “mouthfeel”. (pg. 42) - A rising star in the marketing division of the company General Foods named Charles Mortimer had come up with the phrase “convenience foods”.

- Before the summer of 1949 the General Foods company stuck firmly to pure ingredients and natural flavoring until a competing brand called National Brands came up with an instant pudding by using a blend of synthetic ingredients. At the point, constraints and the greater good of the human population was thrown out the window completely. (pg. 48) - The company General Foods was originally based in New York City but was moved to White Plains, New York to a very spacious fourteen acre site, this was designed by architect Philip Johnson. (pg. 53) - A brand called Alpha-Bits was the ancestor to the brands Waffle Crisp, Crispy Critters, Honeycomb (pg. 54) - Every year in New York City company giants that sell a variety of goods met together under the Conference Board to conduct the consumer confidence survey. (pg. 60) - In 1955, Charles Mortimer expressed how convenience is ideal for consumers and how they would pay top dollar for products that satisfy them and are convenient for them that would be the new controlling denominator. (pg. 60) - in 1894, Kellogg invented cereal by taking leftover boiled wheat, running it through a machine and turned it into thin sheets of dough. The unsweetened version of this ending up sell 113,400 pounds of this cereal in 1896 alone. (pg. 69) -Cereal sales surged from the millions to the billions range within a little over a decade from $660 million to $4.4 billion. (pg. 72) - A dentist named Ira Shannon found that a third of all the brands of cereal that he had collected and brought back to his lab had sugar levels ranging from ten percent to twenty-five percent. (pg. 73-74). - The Federal Trade Commission staff comprised hard data concerning advertising and in a nine month survey found that there were 3,832 ads for sugary cereals, 1,627 for candy, 841 for cookies and crackers, 582 for fruit drinks, and 184 for cakes, pies and other pastries. (pg. 80) - In 1994, Kellogg faced their rival General Mills who made up for their new low prices by selling more cereal than them. (pg. 82) - Givaudan found one fact of biology that a lot of companies have learned to exploit, we like foods with an identifiable taste but we get tired of them quickly because our bodies need a variety of different nutrients to be healthy. (pg. 105)

Reaction After reading the sugar portion of the book “Salt Sugar Fat”, I became very surprised at the history of sugar for the U.S. and how some of these companies, some of whom I've never

even heard of evolved tactics to create a population of sugar hungry people and a world run on sugar. In the beginning of the book, the author Michael Moss gave us quite a bit of background information on how sugar got to this considering that it was not originally grown on American soil. I was surprised to find out that Christopher Columbus was the explorer who received credit for bringing sugar cane to the America’s, this was the introduction of sugar. Stemming from that period of time, forming corporations and companies in the U.S. that were responsible for providing food for the country began noticing patterns of consumers taste and how they had a particular liking to sugar. Over the decades as these companies started to add more and more natural sugar, it turned to granulated and eventually synthetic sugar like high fructose corn syrup and sugar substitutes that we find in diet soda today. The evolution of putting sugar into not only desserts and snacks but into lunch and dinner food products was particularly shocking to me. On top of high levels of sodium, famous companies like Prego managed to stick high fructose corn syrup in their tomato soup lines with different flavors, food products you wouldn't expect to have any sugar or very little. Another thing I found shocking but realistic was the fact that scientists could pinpoint what is called our taste buds “bliss point”. It is a scary thing that scientists like Moskowitz could conduct such research that could determine how much sugar, salt or fat could be combined and mixed together in a certain to make it irresistible and even addictive to the point where our brain chemicals are altered where we have to have it....