fat america | Metafilter: "Americans may think they're getting cheap food at the checkout, but what they don't realize is that they've already paid for it in their taxes. The only people who benefit from so-called 'cheap food' are the corporations.

One of my favorite examples is Mrs. Maggie Thatcher herself. Apparently before she got into politics, she was a food scientist at Wall's Ice Cream. Her job was to see how much air they could whip into the ice cream before it collapsed on itself.

I have a friend at Nestle where their current goal is to find a cheap chocolate substitute that they can put into their candy because real chocolate is so expensive. Do you think the price of the candy will go down when they discover it? I don't think so. Will this chocolate substitute be healthier than real cocoa, or even natural at all? I don't think so. Will people continue to buy it? I think so. Why? Because of billions of dollars in marketing to make it look fabulous and appealing."