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First of all, the same corporations that sell us food also control virtually all of the information bombarding us every day about food. The top 50 food firms control 90 percent of all food advertising on TV. A typical television-watching child is exposed to between 8,500 and 13,000 food and drink commercials each year.35 Hundreds of times a week Americans hear that nutritionally empty foods will actually make our lives better: Coke “adds life;” Betty Crocker cake mixes help us show our love better; Jell-O helps us “have fun.” In other words, health-risky food is continuously promoted as an antidepressant in a society where depression is epidemic. (Valium was the most widely prescribed drug in America in the last decade.)

TV’s power of persuasion is well demonstrated by the history of presweetened cereals, disclosed in a Senate hearing on TV advertising aimed at children. When the cereal industry first introduced presweetened cereals, before World War II, consumers vetoed them. Yet now they are among the best-selling cereals. Sidney Margolius testified, “I attribute this [change] largely to the development of television as a very powerful selling medium for children, and I think if we had television before World War II, the housewives would not have been able to reject it [presweetened cereal].”36

Almost half of all TV commercials are for cereals, candy, and gum. The sweetest cereals of all—some half sugar—have the highest advertising budgets.37 TV advertising promotes such low-nutrition foods specifically to children. General Foods’ Tang was advertised 24 times on Saturday mornings, but only once each on Sunday and Monday evenings, according to one study. Similarly, Nabisco aired its Cream of Wheat commercial only once—on a Monday evening—but 16 Nabisco commercials for its Chips Ahoy, 12 for its Fig Newtons, and 16 for its Oreo cookies were shown on Saturday mornings during a two-week period.38 The food corporations know what they are doing. Almost half the time children are successful in influencing what their parents buy, according to surveys by psychologist Joanne Paley Galst. Other studies have shown that the more time children spend watching TV, the stronger their desire for advertised foods—and the more they eat of them.39

Needless to say, very few unprocessed foods are advertised.

Does it make sense to say that the risky new American diet is what people want, when their choices are so heavily influenced by the corporations which have the most to gain by these choices?

PepsiCo and Nabisco and General Foods also benefit from the fact that although the sugar and salt in high-risk foods are not biologically addictive, as far as we know, they often seem to be psychologically addictive. From my own experience, from the experience of friends, and from dozens and dozens of letters I have received over the years, I’m convinced that “the more you eat, the more you want.” (On the other hand, the less you eat, the less you want.)

Whose Convenience?

The explosion of processed foods is frequently explained as a response to the needs of working women. “Working wives haven’t the time to cook, and they’ve got the money to pay a bit more for frozen foods,” is how Forbes puts it.40 There is some truth to this, but the presumption is always that cooking with whole foods is more time-consuming than using “convenience” foods. Yet in my own experience this is simply not true, although it takes some extra time and thought to change habits in the beginning. If you know what to have on hand for easy meals, shop in a small whole-foods store (which takes much less time than a supermarket), and lay out your kitchen so that everything, including a few time-saving utensils, is within easy reach, whole-food cooking can be fast and convenient. (I discuss these points in more detail in Book Two.)

Thousands of processed foods and mammoth supermarkets purport to save us time. But do they really? Although the average time spent in preparing food in an urban household fell by half an