The 1970s marked a shift where major food corporations, driven by market pressure, began systematically replacing natural ingredients with cheaper, ultra-processed substitutes. This move, aimed at boosting earnings per share, created the foundation for today's 'poisonous' food system and rising chronic disease.
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The cultural shift from three to six meals a day was a reaction to 1970s dietary advice. Low-fat, high-carb foods cause blood sugar crashes and frequent hunger, which led to the institutionalization of snacking to manage these new hunger pangs.
Government subsidies for corn, soy, and wheat make these crops artificially cheap. Food manufacturers then overuse them in processed forms like high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil, which have become staples in the American diet and are a root cause of chronic disease.
The US spends more treating chronic diseases from poor nutrition than on all food combined. This unsustainable financial pressure, not agricultural innovation alone, is the most likely external force to disrupt the food system and demand healthier crops.
Our ancestors were healthy by default because their environment promoted it. Today, the default environment—filled with processed foods, sedentary lifestyles, and novel chemicals—systematically produces unhealthy people, making good health an uphill battle of individual effort against the system.
The FDA commissioner argues that nutrition science is one of science's most corrupted fields. This led to a flawed food pyramid that demonized natural fats and promoted refined carbs, directly contributing to the epidemic of prediabetes in 38% of American children.
Beyond lacking nutrients, processed foods contain additives like emulsifiers that are actively harmful. These chemicals, added for shelf stability, are known to disrupt the gut's critical mucus layer. This erosion of the natural barrier between your gut microbes and your body can directly lead to inflammation and contribute to metabolic syndrome.
The agricultural industry's singular focus on yield has created an inverse relationship where crop output rises while nutritional density declines. This incentive structure is a root cause of poor public health outcomes linked to modern diets.
The economic boom after WWII led to widespread adoption of unhealthy habits: sedentary suburban lives, car dependency, and diets high in processed foods. This prosperity paradoxically created the perfect conditions for the rise of heart disease.
Foods manufactured with a "bliss point" of fat, salt, and sugar chemically alter your taste preferences. To appreciate natural flavors, you must undergo a period of retraining your taste buds, as they crave what you consistently feed them, not what is actually nutritious.
Unlike the EU's strict approval process for new chemicals, the U.S. allows companies to self-declare novel compounds as "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS). This has resulted in tens of thousands of chemicals in the U.S. food system that are not permitted in the EU, contributing to the chronic disease crisis.