2023年6月六级 第3套 Passage 1

If you're someone who has turned to snacking on junk food more in the pandemic (大流行病), you're not alone. Investigative reporter Michael Moss says processed food is engineered to hook you, not unlike alcohol, cigarettes, or other harmful substances. His 2013 book, Salt Sugar Fat, explored food companies' aggressive marketing of those products and their impact on our health. In his new book, Hooked, Moss updates the food giants' efforts to keep us eating what they serve, and how they're responding to complaints from consumers and health advocates.

Processed food is inexpensive, it's legal, and it's everywhere. Companies' advertising is cueing us to remember those products and we want those products constantly. So the food environment is one of those key things that makes food even more problematic for so many people. Memory, nostalgia (怀旧) in particular, plays a big role in the foods we crave. Soda companies discovered that if they put a soda in the hands of a child when they're at a ball game with their parents, that soda will forever be associated with that joyous moment. Later in life, when that child wants to experience a joyous moment, they're going to think of soda. Many people seek comfort in the snacks they remember from childhood.

Moss examines the way companies capitalize on our memories, cravings and brain chemistry to keep us snacking.

One of the reasons I came to think that some of these food products are even more powerful, more troublesome than drugs can be is memory. What we eat is all about memory. And we begin forming memories for food at a really early age. And we keep those memories for a lifetime. Knowing this, the food industry spends lots of time trying to shape the memories that we have for their products. One of the features of addiction that scientists studying drug addiction discovered back in the 1990s was that the faster a substance hits the brain, the more apt we are as a result to act impulsively. There's nothing faster than food in its ability to hit the brain. For Moss, this puts the notion of "fast food" in an entirely new light as this isn't limited to fast food chains — almost 90% of food products in grocery stores are processed foods. Everything in the industry is about speed, from manufacturing to packaging.

Overall, Moss outlines the industry's dependence on making their products inexpensive, super delicious, and incredibly convenient for consumers. Now that more and more people care about what they put in their bodies and are wanting to eat healthier, these companies are finding it really difficult to meet that new demand because of their own addiction to making these convenience foods.