When you say it’s calories, it allows crafty corporations to create low-calorie ultra-processed foods that disrupt our hormones and trigger cravings. When you say it’s fat, well, we’ve already tried that one, and the low-fat, processed-food revolution made everyone even fatter. When you say it’s carbs, this eliminates most of the problematic processed foods, but it also eliminates a lot of great whole foods, and puts some awful, weight-gaining foods with artificial sweeteners on the highest pedestal. But when you say it’s ultra-processed foods, you target all of the stuff that’s made us fat over the last century, while sparing healthy food that we ate before obesity rates became extreme.
Not only is our macronutrient obsession too broad to be useful, but it’s highly restrictive of the wrong foods and it’s difficult to maintain. I have no “healthy granola bar” to sell you, so I have no reason to sugar-coat the truth, which is that there are almost no healthy granola bars.
The Role of Genetics
The reason some people have a diet high in processed foods and remain thin is genetics, just like those who eat a healthy diet and remain overweight. These people are a small portion of the population.
Seventy percent of Americans are overweight, but the American diet suggests that genetics play a small role. A nationally-representative cross-sectional study in the United States published in March 2016 found that “ultra-processed foods comprised 57.9% of the USA’s total energy intake.”59 According to this data, I’d guess that 20% of Americans are actually genetically predisposed to staying thin, and the rest of us who are eating weight-gaining foods are gaining weight as one would expect.
Data like the Swedish analysis, the fact that obesity follows the Western diet around like a puppy, and the constant correlation between processed food consumption and obesity make it hard not to believe that processed food isn’t behind it all. Saying anything other than “it’s processed food” gives food corporations enough wiggle room to design their food to be part of a “healthy diet.” It’s time to stop the madness.
The determining factor of food quality is the degree to which it is processed. Avocados are 82% fat and don’t make you fat. Fruit has sugar and doesn’t make you fat. You can make an avocado more fattening by making it into guacamole with additives like salt and sugar, but don’t blame the avocado. You can order a berry smoothie from a chain restaurant with added sugar or syrup, but don’t blame the berries. You can drench a healthy salad in sugary soybean oil dressing, but don’t blame the lettuce.
The reason we’ve targeted fats and carbs is because there are some terrible ones out there that do make us fat. The ones to be avoided exist exclusively in processed foods.
Follow the Money
Obesity rates are still climbing—60and we have more “healthy options” in processed food. Just look at the shelves. We have organic processed food in rustic, earth-toned packaging. We have naturally sweetened soda. In other words, we can choose “healthier” ways to gain weight. Hooray?
If it’s so obvious that processed foods are hurting so many people, why won’t companies just shift to marketing and selling whole foods? Money. Corporations exist to make a profit, and if they can make food that is attractive, delicious, addictive, cheap to manufacture, and in high demand, why wouldn’t they? The United States is the worldwide capital of processed food because we’re so commerce-driven. As a general rule, the more processed a food is, the more profitable it is.
Subsidized Crops Increase Profitability
The government supplements the income of farmers who grow certain crops. This ramps up the supply of these crops and drives down the price. Farmers have a greater financial incentive to produce a subsidized crop than a non-subsidized one.
In the United States, three of the main subsidized crops are corn, soybeans, and wheat. Not coincidentally, it’s nearly impossible to find processed food that doesn’t contain one of these ingredients. Almost every ultra-processed food contains soy, corn, and/or wheat ingredients. Did you know that hundreds of common ingredients are derived from corn, soy, and wheat? The documentary King Corn explores the role of corn in the United States, and how it is in almost everything we eat. If we just ate corn on the cob, maybe we’d be fine, but corn-derived ingredients affect your body differently than real corn.
Did You Know That Soybean Oil Has Taken Over?
In the 1940s, soybean oil was “considered neither a good industrial paint oil nor a good edible oil,”61 and now it’s everywhere. Of all oils consumed by Americans, 80% is soybean oil—80% of all oil consumed in the United States!
Do you know anyone who cooks at home with soybean oil? Me neither. But if you look at the ingredients of any processed food, you’re sure to find soybean oil. At an organic grocery store, I could not find salad dressing made without soybean oil, so I had to buy olive oil and vinegar separately to use as dressing.
Many other vegetables oils were introduced in the 1900s, but since soybeans are a subsidized crop, soybean oil has become the go-to oil for processed foods.
Added Sugar Is Obesity’s Best Friend, and it’s Here to Stay
There’s another important crop that’s subsidized in the United States. Sugar cane.
Professor Barry Popkin says that added sugar is in 75% of food and drink that you’ll find in today’s grocery store. I shop at a massive organic food store that’s supposed to be full of healthy food, and I am extremely limited if I want to avoid added sweetener products. Sugar and its variants are added to salad dressing, bread, ketchup, frozen meals, granola, cereal, and more. If you want a challenge, try to find cereal or granola without added sweetener. It’s not easy. Better yet, try to find bread without added sweetener. That is surprisingly difficult.
If 75% of food in stores already contains added sugar, much of which is in the form of corn-derived, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), that means many billions of dollars are at stake, and powerful companies have a vested interest in protecting their sugar-based products, even if it means the demise of the health of modern society. No company will ever sacrifice themselves for humanity. That’s not what for-profit companies are built to do.
Many of the world’s societies are now trained to prefer sugary ultra-processed foods, and social dynamics are such that we care more about whether others are eating it than what the food will do to us. We also tend to assume that if everyone else is eating it, it must be fine. Unfortunately, “everyone else” has become overweight and disease prone! To be exact, 1.9 billion adults in 2014—almost one third of the entire world—were overweight. In the United States, almost 70% of people are overweight or obese. This has tipped the social influence scales in the wrong direction, because a society of overweight people will generally act the same way that made them overweight.
Look around you, and you’ll see a general attitude of indulgence and near-worship of processed food. If one of my friends posts a picture of processed comfort food, the reactions are always positive. These foods have retained a remarkable amount of goodwill, considering the amount of damage they’ve caused to the human race.
If you follow the money, it’s no wonder why processed food is so heavily marketed. If you follow the money, it’s no wonder why soy, corn, and wheat are in so many foods. If you follow the money, it’s no wonder why sugar is in 75% of all foods you’ll find in a grocery store.
Business decisions are primarily driven by money. That’s why food has become increasingly unhealthy but profitable. That’s why we grow a disproportionate amount of certain crops. That’s why obesity rates are rising and likely will continue to rise. This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s plainly obvious that companies are loyal to their shareholders rather than the health of modern civilization. And let’s not forget that humans enjoy these foods that harm our health.
We still have the ability to change. We can still choose the food we eat, and our choices will shape the future of food over time. The most important dietary choice you make is likely your consumption of added sweeteners. They’re
terrible for our weight and health, and they’re in most food.
Sweeteners: Pick Your Poison, or Pick None
Refined sugar intake is associated with greater risk for obesity, gout, diabetes, and heart disease (to name a few).62 It’s even been associated with damage to the brain.63 When sugar consumption is reduced, improvements to metabolic health are apparent,64 which is important because obesity is primarily a metabolic problem. This is why reducing sugar intake is the frontline battle of weight loss (and why low-carb diets are generally most effective in the short term).
Half of Americans drink sugary drinks daily. They comprise about 10% of total calorie intake in the United States—65this is a major contributing cause of obesity. Did you know the serving size of sodas has more than tripled since the 1950s?
The Evolution of Soda Container Size (According to Harvard)66
Before the 1950s: 6.5 ounces
1960: 12 ounces
1990s: 20 ounces
Those are just the standard sizes. Movie and fast food cups today can be as large as 64 ounces (for soda, that is 192 grams of sugar). In the early 1980s, most soft drinks went through another unfortunate change—from being sweetened with sugar to high-fructose corn syrup. As bad as added sugar is for our health and weight, this lab creation appears to be even worse, especially when it comes to our weight.
High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)
Princeton researchers ran some experiments on rats with HFCS and sucrose. Here’s what they found:
"When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese—every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don't all gain extra weight."
“The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose.”
"In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. […] High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year."
"In contrast [to high fructose corn syrup], every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized."67
Our body has to work harder to break down natural foods for digestion. Think of it like internal exercise. It burns more calories, while giving our systems time to absorb the nutrients properly. Sugar is more easily absorbed than most food, but it is incrementally more challenging to absorb than high-fructose corn syrup.
Artificial Sweeteners
Artificial sweeteners are not the answer, either. Their impact on health is not fully understood, with some studies seeing no ill effects and others linking them to diseases as serious as cancer. If you only want to believe the ones that say they’re safe, that’s your choice. But you should know that their propensity to wreck our metabolism is more of a known quantity.
A study found that artificially sweetened beverages massively increased people’s risk for type 2 diabetes (even more so than sugar-sweetened beverages).68 The same effect was not seen in 100% fruit juice (mind you, fruit juice is still a weight-gaining drink). Another study found they were associated with an increased risk of metabolic syndrome.69 And the most troubling of all was a study that found artificial sweeteners induced glucose intolerance by altering gut bacteria.70 Yikes!
Why would artificially sweetened products cause metabolic problems? They seem to confuse our internal reward system. Food is rewarding biologically at two levels called sensory and postingestive. First, when pleasant-tasting food hits the tongue, our taste buds tell the brain, “Hey! Sweetness!”, and we get a sensory reward. Then, after we ingest food, the metabolic and nutritive properties of the food provide us with a second reward of biological satisfaction.71 This reward system helps us to regulate our food intake, because our desire for food rewards decreases after consumption (it’s supposed to, anyway). Artificial sweeteners, however, provide a weaker initial reward than sugar at taste and almost completely bypass the postingestive reward system (because they’re not food).
We trick the body when we consume artificial sweeteners, but not in the way we want. There’s no way to trick your secondary reward system, which is based on the energy impact of food.
Drinking zero-calorie sweetened beverages seems too good to be true because it is. It’s trying to get the pleasure from sweetness without the caloric consequences. It’s a brilliant idea, honestly, but our bodies know it’s not sugar when it can’t be digested and used for energy. When we want something (sugar), and we’re teased with the idea of it (zero calorie sweetener), we will only want it more.
In case you were curious, rats are the same way: “When a flavor was arbitrarily associated with high or low caloric content, rats ate more chow following a pre-meal with the flavor predictive of low caloric content.72 These studies pose a hypothesis: Inconsistent coupling between sweet taste and caloric content can lead to compensatory overeating and positive energy balance.”73
No Reward? No Deal
Artificial sweeteners are not rewarding biologically, and that’s a problem. The concept of substitution is valuable for behavior change, but the new behavior needs to offer a similar reward, since rewards powerfully guide our behaviors. Artificial sweeteners work as a taste substitute for sugar and they are calorie free, but their weak activation of only one of the two food reward pathways is actually harmful for someone trying to reduce their intake of sweet foods.
“Lack of complete satisfaction, likely because of the failure to activate the postingestive component, further fuels the food seeking behavior. Reduction in reward response may contribute to obesity.”74
Artificial sweeteners are not just a little bit sweeter than sugar; they are hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. Think about that. If something tastes much sweeter than sugar, it creates an even higher expectation for a significant reward. When it’s finally processed, and provides you with almost no reward, what effect will that have? Disappointment and frustration. Even if you don’t consciously feel that way, rest assured, your body will. When your body feels deprived of a reward, it will subtly (or not so subtly) find a way to get it later with cravings and “just this once” exceptions; it will use any trick it can to get you to indulge later.
By only partially activating the reward pathway (not to satisfaction), artificial sweeteners merely tease us. Teasing increases desire. “Artificial sweeteners, precisely because they are sweet, encourage sugar craving and sugar dependence. Repeated exposure trains flavor preference.”75
That last sentence is crucial to everything in this book. Repeated exposure trains flavor preference.76 Our food habits are not much different from any of our other habits. Those who frequently consume artificially sweetened goods are training themselves to be sugar addicts, and sugar addicts gain weight.
There was a nine-year observational study done on artificially sweetened beverage consumption and rates of overweight and obesity. Based on what we’ve discussed, can you guess what they found? “A significant positive dose-response relationship emerged between baseline ASB (artificially sweetened beverage) consumption and all outcome measures, adjusted for baseline BMI and demographic/behavioral characteristics.”77
The outcome measures they speak of were overweight and obesity, meaning that those who consumed the most artificially sweetened beverages gained the most weight. To most, this result would seem a mystery, but you and I now know that those who consume artificial sweeteners tease themselves until indulgence.
Other Sweeteners
Stevia is probably healthier than artificial sweeteners, since it’s naturally derived. It is very sweet and very low calorie and ap
pears to have fewer long-term health concerns than artificial sweeteners. The problem is that it too fails to activate the full reward pathway in the brain, which will cause the same issues as artificial sweeteners. This is a behavioral issue as much as it is a health issue—consuming sugar substitutes will increase your desire for sugar.
Mini Habits for Weight Loss: Stop Dieting. Form New Habits. Change Your Lifestyle Without Suffering. Page 8