TEXT ON SCREEN: HOW DO FOOD COMPANIES MAKE YOU CRAVE THEIR PRODUCTS?

JUST ASK THIS MAN.

HOWARD MOSKOWITZ: I’m Howard Moskowitz, and I’m delighted to be here.  I am a food scientist and a market researcher.

TEXT ON SCREEN: HOWARD MOSKOWITZ HAS HELPED CREATE FOODS INCLUDING PREGO SPAGHETTI SAUCE AND CHERRY VANILLA DR. PEPPER.

HE’S CREDITED WITH DISCOVERING THE “BLISS POINT”

HOWARD MOSKOWITZ: The bliss point is just that sensory profile where you like food the most. I was very interested in sweetness and I started to do research on how much people liked these sugar solutions.

So you have to imagine about eight sugar solutions in different concentrations and you would give two numbers – how much I’d sense the sweet and then how much I liked it. And when you plot out the data, you see a curve. As you increase the amount of sugar, liking goes up, peaks, this bliss point, and goes down.

I started having meetings with product developers, and they told me, if you can do this with a bunch of different ingredients simultaneously, maybe there’s a bliss point that’s really loved. Well, I did it, and by golly there was.

When you follow this approach of varying the ingredients, you find that there is no one bliss point, there are groups of bliss points. And this lead to three or four different Pregos that led to 37 Pregos, umpteen different coffees, teas, cereals and you name it.

TEXT ON SCREEN: MANY HAVE BLAMED THE BLISS POINT FOR HELPING COMPANIES MAKE FOODS MORE ADDICTIVE.

ARCHIVAL (THE COLBERT REPORT, 3-1-13):
STEPHEN COLBERT: The nacho-industrial complex has discovered something called the bliss point.

ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN):
DR. OZ: It’s like crack cocaine for the brain.

TEXT ON SCREEN: MOSKOWITZ DISAGREES.

HOWARD MOSKOWITZ: Does it make you addicted to food? Absolutely not. It just makes it delicious.

(END)