Why Are We Sick

We should all be concerned that according to the CDC 74% of us are overweight or obese. 74%, think about that. Very few of us were overweight in the 1940’s, 50’s or 60’s. This is something I’ve been thinking about for several years. If you look at crowds in the past you would have a hard time finding someone overweight. And even now, if you look at Japan or European countries, there are few obese people there. Why is that? 

What happened in America to result in the majority of us being overweight? But not just overweight, six in ten of us have at least one chronic disease. Four in ten have more than two. Heart disease and diabetes are two of the leading causes of death in America.  

Let’s start with this, in the late 80’s as public opinion was turning against smoking due to health risks and evidence that tobacco companies were adding things to cigarettes to make them more addictive Tobacco companies started buying up food companies. Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds bought Kraft and Nabisco. They used the same strategy to make food “hyper-palatable”. They increased high fructose corn syrup, sugar, salt, and preservatives to maximize their addictiveness.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/09/08/did-tobacco-companies-also-get-us-hooked-on-junk-food-new-research-says-yes/

Also, at the same time we all believed the FDA was testing things to make sure they were safe for us. Not so. When a company would take a product to the FDA, they would be told to do testing to make sure the ingredients were safe. The food companies did their own testing and go back to the FDA saying everything was safe. For example, they may say if a child eats one bowl of Froot Loops everyday it is perfectly safe. Froot Loops contain the red food coloring RED 40. RED 40 may not be harmful in small amounts but it also is in Jello, fruit rolls, Gatorade, and many other products that kids may eat.  

Plus, more and more of our food is hyper-processed. It’s convenient and tastes good but there are preservatives and additives that our bodies can’t process. Many of the additives in our foods are banned in other countries. Japanese eat a LOT of rice. The French eat a lot of bread, cheese and heavy sauces but they aren’t obese. Let’s look at a few examples of the ingredients in American products vs European products.  

When I was in school nearly all of us ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I never knew anyone with a peanut allergy. My grandson’s grade school had a peanut free table for lunch. Now airlines seldom offer peanut products. Why is this? Peanut allergies tripled between 1997 and 2008. The main reason is that it was recommended not to introduce peanuts to a child’s diet too early. https://www.preventallergies.org/blog/why-are-peanut-allergies-on-the-rise 

The difference between our food and other countries is the increase in hyper-processed foods. We need to get back to eating natural foods without preservatives and additives. They may have more calories and carbohydrates, but natural foods make us feel full sooner and with less food. There is a big difference between 100 calories of candy and 100 calories of broccoli.  

I am hopeful that Robert Kennedy Jr. bringing attention to this will create the kind of rejection of unhealthy foods that attention to the health risks resulted in the rejection of smoking.