Join Mary Pom Claiborne, Knox County Public Library's own Community Relations Director, for a close look at Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the food giants hooked us by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss, Wednesday, March 19, 12:00-1:00 PM, in the East Tennessee History Center auditorium, 601 South Gay Street.

Every year, the average American eats thirty-three pounds of cheese and seventy pounds of sugar. Every day, we ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt, double the recommended amount, almost none of which comes from the shakers on our table. It comes from processed food, an industry that hauls in $1 trillion in annual sales.

Moss's explosive, empowering narrative is grounded in meticulous, eye-opening research. He takes us into labs where scientists calculate the "bliss point" of sugary beverages, unearths marketing techniques taken straight from tobacco company playbooks, and talks to concerned insiders who make startling confessions. Just as millions of "heavy users" are addicted to salt, sugar, and fat, so too are the companies that peddle them. You will never look at a nutrition label the same way again.

As one of a very few chubby kids in her elementary school before the current obesity crisis, Claiborne landed herself in Weight Watchers camp two different times by the summer of her 6th grade year - decades before the point system was developed. Since then, she's tried quack doctors, protein diets, packaged foods, psychotherapy, extreme exercise, acupuncture, Atkins, Paleo, and more. She knows first hand about the evil calorie conspiracy revealed by Sugar, Salt and Fat.