As an investigative reporter, I'm trained to follow the money—and there's a trillion dollars of money to follow in the processed food industry. And I've found that the language that they use to describe their work and their products and their striving not just to make us like their products but to make us want more and more of them is absolutely revealing. Largely because these are not English majors—they are bioscientists and psychology-trained mathematicians and marketing officials. When they talk about the allure of the food, they hate the word addiction: but they'll use the word "craveability" and "snackability" and one of my favorites, "moreishness." In this context, I think the argument that personal responsibility is main culprit in overeating to be kind of disingenuous.

But when they're on the job food scientists and marketing people are so focused on their work of being successful that they tend not to see anything sinister in what they're doing. I tend not to see the processed food industry as an "evil empire" that sets out to make us intentionally obese or otherwise ill. They can rightfully say that no single one of their products is responsible for the obesity—not even soda, not even potato chips. The problem lies in their collective zeal to do what companies do—which is make as much money as possible by selling as much product as possible. So all of their energy goes into making their product as attractive as possible. They refer to creating products as engineering, and they'll spend all their effort finding the optimum level of sweetness, saltiness, and fatness that will send us over the moon. From their perspective, doing anything short of that would be not fulfilling their obligation as employees.

When they leave the companies, it's then that they can see the bigger picture. It's then that they can think about why it might be so many of us will be drawn to these products—not just liking them, but craving them and wanting more and more and in some cases not being able to stop.

The bottom line, which everyone in the food industry will tell you, is taste. Which leads to sales. They will not do anything that will jeopardize sales, and one of those things is taste. They're convinced that a good number of us will talk a good game on nutrition and health, but when we walk through the grocery store, we'll look for and buy the products that taste the best. And that's the cynical view: They will do nothing to improve the health profile of their products that will jeopardize taste. They're as hooked on profits as they are on salt, sugar, fat.

I'm hoping that the book is a wakeup call to the industry. And I hope it's empowering to people—when you understand the tactics being used, it helps level the playing field. This goes beyond the engineering of food to the marketing used on packaging and its actual placement in the store—they've studied consumer eye movement, for instance, to learn we're drawn immediately to products at middle height in the center of each aisle. (That's where they put their best sellers—the products with the most salt, sugar, and fat. If you want the healthier stuff, look high, look low.)