Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Moss talks about how the processed food industry manipulates taste buds in his new book.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Moss' new book "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" digs into how the world of processed and packaged foods works and how it works out strategies to manipulate taste buds. Moss began working on this book in 1999 when he attended a meeting of top executives of America's biggest food companies, and where vice president of Kraft, Michael Mudd spoke about the growing public health concerns over the obesity epidemic and the role packaged and processed foods were playing in it.

Moss recalls that the CEO of General Mills was the first to respond to Mudd's case.

"[He] got up and made some very forceful points from his perspective," Moss tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies, "and his points included this: We at General Mills have been responsible not only to consumers but to shareholders. We offer products that are low-fat, low-sugar, have whole grains in them, to people who are concerned about eating those products. Bottom line being, though, that we need to ensure that our products taste good, because our accountability is also to our shareholders. And there's no way we could start down-formulating the usage of salt, sugar, fat if the end result is going to be something that people do not want to eat."

Thereafter, Moss worked around these three ingredients to compile his book, in which he talks about how these three components are the secret behind the success of packaged and processed foods. Moss says these companies employ scientists to tweak these ingredients in such a way that it manipulates a person's taste buds, so much so that customers get hooked on to them in the same way the cigarette industry hooked smokers on nicotine.

"I was surprised to hear from the former CEO of Philip Morris, who is no friend of government, no friend of government regulation," says Moss, "to tell me that, 'Look, Michael, in the case of the processed food industry, what you're looking at is a total inability on their part to collectively decide to do the right thing by consumers on the health profile of their products. In this case, I can see how you might need government regulation if [for] nothing else [than] to give the companies cover from the pressure of Wall Street.'"