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    I’m not much for the whole hippy-dippy holistically “natural” nonsense that some people buy into, but the composition of processed foods does make one wonder what the goals of the food producers are.

A healthy society?   A society based on consuming as much as possible?  Some combination of the two?

The ‘pillars’ involved in the creation of fast food make me think that a healthy society isn’t much of a priority.  This excerpt from the Alter.Net article:

“Processed-food companies increasingly turn to their legions of scientists to produce foods that we can’t resist,” he writes. McFedries notes that he is “indebted” to New York Times reporter Michael Moss, particularly for his fascinating new book Salt Sugar Fat, for many of the following terms:

• Pillar Ingredients—Salt, sugar, and fat are the Pillar Ingredients, and the industry strategically combines the three to keep you hooked.
• Bliss Point—If we crave pillar ingredients so much, why not just crank them up as much as possible? It turns out there is an optimum amount of salt, sugar, or fat the human brain likes best, and it is called the bliss point.
• Mouthfeel—This is literally the way food feels inside a person’s mouth; junk food industry scientists also adjust factors like crunchiness to produce a mouthfeel that consumer most crave.
• Flavor Burst—Technologists alter the size and shape of salt crystals, so that they induce a flavor burst that “can basically assault the taste buds into submission.”
• Vanishing Caloric Density—Underlying all junk-food science is vanishing caloric density, which is the process by which the food melts in your mouth so quickly that the brain is fooled into thinking it is consuming fewer calories than it actually is. The packaged-food scientists want to avoid triggering sensory-specific satiety, the brain mechanism that tells a person to stop eating when it is overwhelmed by flavors. The goals are either passive overeating, which is the excessive eating of foods that are high in fat because the human body is slow to recognize the caloric content of rich foods, or auto-eating: that is, eating without thinking or without even being hungry.