Obesogenic Foods: It’s Every Single Thing!
The diet industry and most of the U.S. food system are obesogenic
Have you visited a medical clinic or pharmacy lately? You will see many rapidly-aging people with severe mobility issues.
My nutritionist friend reports that she has patients in their 20s with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Children as young as age 10 have been diagnosed with obesity and heart disease.
Ten-year-olds should be running and playing outside with their friends, not visiting nutritionists or receiving expensive monthly prescriptions for diet drugs.
The twin phenomena of deep denial on the part of the majority of the Western medical community, coupled with unfettered, unrestricted capitalism enriching a tiny number of people who own Big Food businesses, Pharma businesses, or stock in them, has created the obesity pandemic.
People were terrified of COVID, which has recently resurged. COVID disproportionately harmed obese, older people.
It should have been a wake-up call.
Instead, I just watched both nights of Wrestlemania and while I love this unique form of sports entertainment, I hated the omnipresent obesogenic sponsors: Snickers, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Pizza Hut, and Wendy’s. If it wasn’t candy or booze hovering over the squared circle or being touted by extremely fit wrestling stars, it was Draft Kings or an exhortation to join the U.S. Army. Or a bright, loud commercial telling us to use DoorDash to get Wendy’s delivered straight to our door.
I thought, “None of these athletes eat this junk — there is no way they can perform every night and be as fit as they are gobbling tons of Wendy’s followed up by Mike’s Harder Whatever, now with even more high-fructose corn syrup and citric acid!”
What a long digression: just to say — although I take it for granted that “everyone knows” that the foods in the grocery store or those served at fast food or fast-casual restaurants are bad, obesogenic foods, the general public does not truly understand how bad the foods really are and how everything about them contributes to obesity, not just “too many calories.”
As people have been getting fatter and fatter over the past 20 years, the recorded amount of calories they typically eat has gone down. Because it’s not “calories in-calories out,” it’s food quality (and appropriate quantity).
If surveyed, I’m sure that more than 95% of Americans would say that “a calorie is a calorie” and that they need to count calories and exercise more to lose weight. This belief is false, yet omnipresent. It seems to be impossible to convince others that these “facts” are untrue.
This is what drives the $192 billion weight loss industry.
The diet industry itself, with most brands like Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine owned by the same people who make ultra-sweetened children’s breakfast cereal, markets “substitute” foods that are of even worse nutritional quality than the “unhealthy” versions they are supposed to replace as “healthy” diet alternatives.
According to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Obesity Prevention Source, “Over the past 30 years in the U.S., the percentage of calories from fat in people’s diets has gone down, but obesity rates have skyrocketed.”
The overwhelming majority of Americans, and WWE fans are a cross-section of America, not a special, “less-informed” group, do not think that Snickers, Wendy’s, and Pizza Hut are harmful.
But the truth is: these foods are as harmful and addictive as cocaine or alcohol.
They are obesogenic foods. They are the primary cause of the obesity and metabolic illness pandemic.
Some websites geared toward the general public like WebMD refer only to chemical food additives, pesticides (glyphosate — aka “Roundup” and hundreds of others), plastics, or manufactured food preservatives as “obesogens.” The reason that these public information sources do not emphasize the single largest category of obesogens — highly-processed industrial food products —is that they are in thrall to Big Food, Big Packaging, and the general nightmare that is our chemical-laden, artificial, insane food system.
This system says it is here to feed us and presents consistently that it is the “only way” anyone will ever get enough food.
It’s the “only way” the billionaire shareholders of all of the related businesses get their ever-increasing returns.
That they can never use in thousands of lifetimes —
The Cost of Obesogenic Food
People not only can’t lose weight while eating obesogenic food, they will persistently, consistently gain weight and develop metabolic illnesses: NASH, NAFLD, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis, skin diseases, and even many forms of cancer. That is what is happening every day, in schools, businesses, and homes across the U.S.
Obesogenic foods are omnipresent, and the system that creates them is everywhere, woven deeply into our lives. We poison our bodies with highly-processed foods, packaged and shipped in containers made from petroleum, laden with chemicals so they “stay fresh longer.”
Even if we eat a simple piece of chicken, chances are it was raised in a way that would horrify the majority of people, injected with an unbelievable amount of hormones to make it grow fast and dosed with an insane amount of antibiotics so it doesn’t die of communicable disease …
This is what we put in our mouths every day and this is what has made so many people fat, sick, and nearly dead. People work themselves to death to make this food, deliver it to stores, prepare it in fast food or similar restaurants, or stock it on store shelves.
We live in an obesogenic world that destroys our quality of life and our very lives, itself!
The way off this train and out of this terrible trouble isn’t a “new drug” or a miracle pill. And it’s not “eating less and exercising more.”
It’s taking as many poisonous foods out of our mouths as possible and replacing them with real food. If it grows on a tree or in the ground, or it is a minimally processed type of protein, then it is nutritious and good to eat.
If it comes in a bright plastic wrapper that says “No fat! Only 100 calories!”
Not so much.
Sources:
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Food and Diet: Beyond Willpower: Diet Quality and Quantity Matter,” 2023, url: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-causes/diet-and-weight/
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Obesity Prevention Source: Healthy Weight Checklist,” 2023, url: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/diet-lifestyle-to-prevent-obesity/
Himanshu, V. and D Roshan. “Weight Loss and Weight Management Diet Market,” Allied Market Research, 21 September 2021, url: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/weight-loss-management-diet-market
Rueter, Sean. “WWE acknowledges Wrestlemania 39 as the most successful of all time,” Cageside Seats, 3 April 2023, url: https://www.cagesideseats.com/wwe/2023/4/3/23668087/wwe-touts-wrestlemania-39-success-record-breaking-gate-viewers-merch-social-sponsors
Sanger-Katz, Margot. “Americans are Finally Eating Less,” New York Times, 24 July 2015, url: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/upshot/americans-are-finally-eating-less.html
WebMD Editorial Contributors. “What to Know About Obesogens,” WebMD, url: https://www.webmd.com/obesity/what-to-know-obesogens
"Krave"? Learn to spell, Kellogg's.