Michael Moss Quotes

Salt is one of the flavors that makes food taste good - salt, sugar and fat. So it's a natural thing for all chefs and cooks to add salt, because it enhances the flavor of the food. If you go out to eat, I guarantee you're going to be eating a lot of salted foods that you are going to have no idea.

Pressed by the Obama administration and consumers, Kraft, Nestle, Pepsi, Campbell and General Mills, among others, have begun to trim the loads of salt, sugar and fat in many products.

Companies are experimenting with replacing sodium chloride with potassium chloride, because most of the health problems come from sodium. It works for some products, but if you diminish the amount of sodium, people want sugar and fat instead.

People under-salt their food, and they think it's bland, but salt brings out flavor.

Each year, food companies use an amount of salt that is every bit as staggering as it sounds: 5 billion pounds.

Sugar was an issue in the '80s, so you would see low-sugar products; fat was an issue in the '90s, so you'd see low-fat products.

The current health crisis, however, is a little more the work of the evil empire. We were told, we were assured, that the more meat and dairy and poultry we ate, the healthier we'd be.

After a year, the aromatics in an olive oil are gone. Sometimes the bottles on the shelf in the supermarket are there a lot longer than you are.

Junk food's not going anywhere. The specifics of what's being snacked on, and what's considered 'junk' and what's 'healthy' will change, of course, depending on what's available.

Protein bars, protein flapjacks, protein granola, protein ice cream and protein coconut water... To look at the health-food aisles, you'd think that protein was a substance no one could overeat. Even bread now comes in protein-enriched form.

The main influence on a child's palate may no longer be a parent but a series of food manufacturers whose products - despite their illusion of infinite choice - deliver a monotonous flavour hit, quite unlike the more varied flavours of traditional cuisine.

I don't know too many parents that want to feed their kids soda, but high-fructose corn syrup is cheap. The price of soda in 20 years has gone down 40 percent while the price of whole foods, fruits and vegetables, has gone up 40 percent and obesity goes up right along that curve.

The artificial is everywhere; everywhere food is adulterated, filled with ingredients that supposedly make it last longer, or look better, or pass as "enriched" or whatever else the industry's admen want us to believe.

You look how much sugar is in a typical supermarket loaf of bread: it's a lot of sugar. It's just become one of those sugar delivery systems in our food economy.

Nothing, not even an avocado pit, keeps guacamole green for too long once it's made.

Manufacturers of food try to get the optimal ratio to tap into your impulsivity. They don't care about your health.

I think cooking is really key because it's the only way you're going to take back control of your diet from the corporations who want to cook for us. The fact is, so far, corporations don't cook that well. They tend to use too much salt, fat, and sugar - much more than you would ever use at home.

It's essential to make sure you have proper kitchen tools for food storage - like cling wrap, bags, and containers - because they help keep food fresher longer.

The astounding variety of foods on offer in the modern supermarket obscures the fact that the actual number of species in the modern diet is shrinking. For reasons of economics, the food industry prefers to tease its myriad processed offerings from a tiny group of plant species, corn and soybeans chief among them.

A lot of what you see in the supermarket I would argue is not really food. It's what I call edible, food-like substances.

Even if you don't think you can cook well, you can cook better than the food industry.

I find that most home cooks don't get vinegars. They're misunderstood, mostly due to the factory-made red wine vinegar that everyone commonly cooks with... that, and the giant gallon of white distilled vinegar that we all use, mostly to clean and disinfect things!

With the Industrial Revolution, the production of food was delegated to big companies in order for women and men to be in the labour force, to come home, stick something in the oven, and eat. It became a big industry that does not have a love affair with food nor is really concerned about nurturing you or giving you the right nutrition.

Too many Americans are getting sick on our over-commercialized food system.

Salt's relationship to flavor is multidimensional: It has its own particular taste, and it both balances and enhances the flavor of other ingredients.