What if ALL processed foods were made by only one company?
Everyone has heard of the processed food Colossi. They are among the most successful and durable businesses of all time. Their products are considered “recession proof”, meaning that people will buy them regardless of what’s happening in the economy. This has made their usually dividend paying selves a core component of the retirement portfolios of countless millions of people. Below are some of the most prominent examples along with icons representing the brands each controls.
We are not going to demonize these businesses. We don’t demonize Diageo or Anheuser Busch for making much of the world’s alcohol, nor do we demonize Phillip Morris or British American Tobacco. People should be allowed to do whatever they want with their own bodies so long as their actions don’t harm anyone else. But there’s an important difference between the processed food giants above and the “Sin Stock” companies that make cigarettes and booze.
Everyone already knows that cigarettes and booze are bad for you.
What’s more, these companies are appropriately regulated given the well-established negative consequences of overconsuming their products.
On the other hand, almost nobody knows the following:
Processed foods are terrible for you
Processed foods are incredibly addictive, activating the brain’s reward centers in much the same way as narcotics
Long term consumption of processed foods is the number one cause of chronic illness, which in turn is the number one cause of death in the US
Processed foods are likely the number one cause of mental illness
When you purchase a pack of cigarettes it comes with a warning:
“Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.”
Some countries have mandated that cigarette companies not only include warnings in text, but also include graphic images - for example of a mouth rotting from cancer or tooth decay.
Should Coca-Cola be required to have a warning on their label that says: “People living with obesity or diabetes are advised against drinking Coca-Cola because the excessive consumption of sugar can lead to many medical problems including limb amputation”.
We think so…
Chronic illness caused by metabolic dysfunction is spreading at an increasing rate.
The five maps below show the incidence of adults living with obesity going back to 1990:
The maps come from ProCon.org - who created them using data from the CDC.
We couldn’t easily find a map updated to 2022, but it’s plainly obvious that it would be darker still. The speed with which this has taken place is horrifying, and the forecasts even moreso.
Now let us pose the interesting hypothetical which is the basis for the title of this post:
What would happen if all processed foods were created by the same company?
If there was only one processed foods company, then 1 company would be largely (or at least materially) responsible for:
Heart disease
Strokes
Type 2 diabetes
Preventable ocular illnesses
Sleep apnea
High blood pressure
Elevated levels of inflammation
Auto-immune diseases
Weakened immune systems and higher susceptibility to viruses like Covid-19
ADHD
Irritable bowel syndrome
Even oral hygiene suffers from the overconsumption of carbohydrates (leading to cavities) because of how bacteria in the mouth metabolize them.
Further, as Dr. Chris Palmer of Harvard Medical School has illustrated in his ground-breaking book: Brain Energy - metabolic illness is intricately connected to mental health.
Metabolic dysfunction (largely caused by the overconsumption of processed foods) can outright cause or exacerbate mental illnesses such as:
Depression
Anxiety
Eating disorders
Bipolar disorder
Autism
Schizophrenia
And more…
Chris Palmer’s book connects the science to what we experience on a regular basis in our clinical lives. When patients go on low-carb diets and come off of BP and T2DM meds - they often experience improvements in their mental health, sleep quality, and energy levels too!
To summarize:
Chronic illness is the number one cause of suffering and likely the number one cause of death in the United States.
The best (and only known way) to put most chronic illnesses (including mental health illnesses) into remission is to improve metabolic health.
The overconsumption of processed foods destroys metabolic health.
Processed foods are addictive, and to many people as addictive as narcotics
Getting a horde of companies with collectively deca-billion dollar marketing budgets to put warning labels on their food is obviously impossible. These companies not only spend money on marketing their unhealthy products, they also spend money supporting “research” that leads to conclusions like: Cheerios are part of a heart-healthy diet”.
Here’s another gem we ran across recently:
Research like this which puts whole grains and cereals higher up the nutrition priority chain than super foods like eggs and red meat are still the standard, even though these claims have been completely debunked.
Quick aside: if you are wondering whether a food is healthy for you - ask your doctor to prescribe you a CGM. If a food sends your blood glucose through the roof - it isn’t healthy!
You can read the study that came up with the above image here.
It will sound intelligent and logical. Reporters and journalists will take this information and run with it. And people believing it will be unwittingly playing a role in the obesity epidemic currently sweeping across the country.
This was published July 6th, 2021.
Take a wild guess as to who funded this study?
The answer: “Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation”
The below screenshot can be found at the bottom of the study.
THAT’S RIGHT - THE PASTA COMPANY funded this research.
We are unlikely as a society to succeed at forcing processed food producers to put warning labels on their products. There are too many of them, their marketing budgets are too big, their lobbying groups are too powerful.
But it’s hard to imagine that if only ONE company were responsible for producing all processed food - that it would be able to get away with misleading consumers as General Mills and Barilla do.
Food for thought…