Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall’s essay “It’s Not You. It’s the Food.” explores the way the food industry changes our biology so that we are not at fault, in terms of a failure of moral strength or self-discipline, for our weight gain. Rather, ultraprocessed food is. Even if we try to shun the “toxic food environment,” we will find such a move difficult for several reasons. For one, what is “toxic food”? The government, at best, has given us a vague definition. Do we look to influencers? They’re trying to sell supplements more than health.
To make their point, the authors use this analogy: “If large swatches of the population were being sickened by a poison released from an industrial plant, no one would suggest that the solution is to just offer home filters, wearables, and supplements. The only real path to restoring health would have to include mandating the removal of the poison from the environment.”
The truth is simple, and it’s brutal: You’re on your own: You have to fight like hell to remove ultraprocessed foods from your diet. Kevin Hall’s study shows the more UPFs you eat, the more weight you gain. And the converse is true: The less UPFs you eat, the more weight you lose, especially fat and without effort.
The authors observe that when people move to America, they get fat. The common denominator is leaving a low UPFs country to a highly concentrated one. These immigrants get fat and suffer obesity-related diseases. So much for the American Dream.
Why are UPFs the villain? Because they mess with us–our biology, our hormones, our satiety signals, our gut biome. They turn us into Fat Machines.
In America’s rich UPF environment, 70% of available food calories “are deemed hyperpalatable and are in foods designed for the overconsumption that chronically sickens us. They’re also heavily marketed and cheap. Chronic disease hot spots are the most socioeconomically deprived, with food environments akin to toxic waste sites.”
Knowing the enemy before us, we have to ask ourselves: What do we do? The authors argue that self-discipline doesn’t cut it. We need government regulation. The problem is that we could be dead before anything gets done. Another problem is that the FDA and other institutions don’t seem to have a handle on sound health these days, and even if they did, they’ve lost the trust of the public, many of whom like to cherry-pick their information inside their social media silos.
Nevertheless, the authors are adamant about this point: UPFs that “can drive overconsumption should be treated as recreational substances to which we must apply aggressive tax policies, front-of-pack warning labels, marketing restrictions and more, especially for foods marketed to children.”
Notice the authors didn’t say all UPFs, only the ones designed for overconsumption. Some processed foods such as canned beans, high-protein, flax-seed whole-grain bread, liquid egg whites, and whey protein powder should be spared such government labels.
Should we wait for the government to help us in this regard? Probably not. Researcher Kevin Hill quit the N.I.H. after his UPFs studies were censored by the current administration. Not surprisingly, money is a big factor. The authors point out that the global food industry is worth $8 trillion, more than the oil and gas industry. There’s a lot of skin in the game for lobbyists who fund a plethora of politicians.
But the science is out: We’re not at fault for our fatness. Food Inc., which makes 70% of their food hyperpalatable for overconsumption to line their pockets, bears much of the blame. Also, failure of government leadership.
Brace yourself: Regardless of your economic status, you’re on your own. No one is going to save you. Eating in America is the Wild Wild West.
Cinemorphosis 
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