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Comment by cmurf | Hacker News Reader

Studies show that sugar and salt increase consumption. So they add these things to increase sales. People aren't making a decision that's in their best interest, this is a biological hack that favors one party disproportionately compared to the other.

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Sugar and salt make things taste better. Things that taste better also tend to sell better. If you took all salt and sugar out of food, you'd certainly eat and sell less, because it wouldn't taste good.

You can call it biohacking if you want, but it is no more so than when your mom made you dinner.

http://www.popsci.com/high-salt-diets-might-make-you-hungrie...

>The more salt you eat, the thirstier you get. Right? Wrong, according to two studies released today in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. The research found that as salt consumption increased, people actually drank less water. And the high-salt diets seemed to make study subjects hungrier, too.

Apple juice is often used as a surrogate sugar, because it is basically just sugar with a different name.

This is quite subjective. Sugar and salt make things "taste better" if you already have a certain expectation that that's how food "should" taste. That's not the case if you don't have that expectation.

I gave up buying products using refined sugar entirely for an extended period, and baked all my own bread, oatcakes, biscuits etc. Food which I previously found unpalatable without adding sugar or syrup, I could now eat and find perfectly tasty. When I cook porridge in the morning, water and a touch of salt are all it needs. I think it recalibrated my taste significantly--if I now try to eat even a biscuit from a supermarket, all I can taste is the excessive amount of salt in it. Likewise anything with refined sugar--it's too much, and it tastes disgusting. I think with industrially-produced food, we've become so used to the excessive amount of salt and sugar, that it has become normal to expect it even when it's unnecessary and things taste bland when they aren't included--even though it's perfectly fine. You're likely right it sells better. But it's like the music "loudness war" but with ingredients; the end result isn't that enjoyable or good for you even though it seems superficially better.

You substituted salt for sugar in your morning cereal. Try it with neither, and no milk, which is actually quite sweet. If one drops refined sugar and adds fruit (e.g., raisins), it is still sugar (as far as flavor goes). There are very few foods that have no salt or sweetness (refined or natural sugar) that still taste good.

By conventional American palettes. There's great research done on flavor perception by culture, and the US specifically associates sweetness with intensity of flavor, whereas cultures that don't favor sugar so highly more often associate saltiness with heightened flavor.

One example of this is the use of salt or spices on fruit. The generic US palette considers the sweetness of fruit to be its purpose, but many cultures will spice, salt, or cook the same fruits the way vegetables are prepared in the US.

Corn syrup represses the feeling of being full and is also extremely cheap to produce, it might actually make the applesauce cheaper to produce.

>Corn syrup represses the feeling of being full

Small correction, but that study (and I believe there was only one) indicated that fructose metabolism produced less satiation than glucose, not that it actually prevents it. If you add fructose to a food and eat it, you'll still be more full than if you hadn't added fructose, just less full than if you had added glucose.

I think the reasoning was more like this: "Focus groups show that kids like their applesauce sweeter. What's a cheap sugar?"

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