Michael Moss – Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter; author of #1 NY Times Bestseller, Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us 

Look, we know you don’t need a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter to tell you that junk food is bad for you, soda makes you fat, and the Western diet is causing an epidemic of diabetes and obesity.  But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg lettuce.  The fact is, we almost never had a chance to eat healthy once big business got its grubby hands on the food industry.  And what’s worse, is the large food corporations have known for decades that they are cramming harmful food down our throats – and they just kept on doing it!

You might be thinking, “Wait a second, we are all adults here, we CHOOSE what we want to eat.”  But do you? When presented with a head of lettuce or a McDonald’s cheeseburger, is that even a choice? Of course not, you choose that burger 10 out of 10 (ok, maybe 9 out of 10 for those of you with a really strong will).  And this is because, the food industry has applied heavy science and mathematics to figure out how to exploit the human brain and its “pleasure centers” to make us crave unhealthy food to the point of it becoming a certifiable addiction.  So much of an addiction, that the industry refers to it’s most loyal customers as heavy users! Some have posited that sugar is as addictive as heroine!  Hmmm – we might need to investigate this after all.  Lucky for us all, one of the best in the business put all of this on his plate (yes, love puns) to take a huge bite (yessss) out of the problem with our addiction to salt, sugar, and fat, and how we all got here in the first place.

Michael Moss is an investigative reporter with The New York Times, having joined the paper in 2000. In 2010, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his investigation of the dangers of contaminated meat – being the first to bring about the “pink slime” problem. Before coming to The Times, Mr. Moss was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, New York Newsday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colo., and the High Country News in Lander, Wyo. He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his reporting on the lack of protective armor for soldiers in Iraq, and in 1999 for a team effort on Wall Street’s emerging influence in the nursing home industry. His most recent book, Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, is a #1 NY Times bestseller and has been one of the best investigative works written on processed foods.