Cinemorphosis

Tag: food

  • The Confessions of a Non-Vegan Vegan

    The Confessions of a Non-Vegan Vegan

    I am a tormented soul, and the battlefield is my plate. I never feel I’m in the right place, and by “place” I mean my eating domain—the psychic terrain between brisket and beans. I was raised on barbecued beef sandwiches, smoky hamburgers, salami hoagies, and charcuterie boards that looked like Renaissance still lifes of cured flesh. And then, over time, my conscience kicked in like a late-arriving bouncer. I began to hear the muffled cries of suffering animals—and the louder groans of my own arteries. I hated that my pleasure depended on the misery of sentient creatures. I wanted clean eating, a clean heart, moral clarity, and the faint sanctimonious glow of vegan virtue hovering above my head like a halo.

    Then I actually paid attention. Veganism, it turns out, isn’t a moral spa retreat; it’s a maze of tradeoffs. Monocrops. Soy fields bulldozing ecosystems. Mice and birds ground into casualties of industrial “compassion.” I realized that evangelizing vegan purity often slides into cultural arrogance—an Instagram-fed smugness that flattens traditions built over centuries of living close to land and climate. Who was I to wag a lentil at an Inuit and say, Have you tried chickpeas? Moral certainty curdled into embarrassment. The world, annoyingly, refused to sort itself into clean categories.

    And then there was love. My family bonds through food, and their love language is meat. Bring home burgers and barbecued chicken and I’m greeted like a returning war hero. Serve curried lentils and I’m exiled to the doghouse with a Tupperware lid for a pillow. So I live as a Non-Vegan Vegan: my heart leans plant-based, but pragmatism, domestic peace, and the gravitational pull of convenience drag me back to the carnivorous center. This is my life—philosophically compromised, nutritionally conflicted, emotionally negotiated. It’s tormented, yes, though still less tormented than the animals sacrificed for the charcuterie board my family will demolish on New Year’s Eve. That thought doesn’t save me. It just makes me chew slower.

  • Discretionary Use Principle

    Discretionary Use Principle

    The Discretionary Use Principle begins with a simple but demanding claim: tools are not inherently good or bad, but they become harmful when used without judgment, proportion, or purpose. Whether we are talking about food, technology, or media, the decisive factor is not purity but discretion—our ability to choose deliberately rather than reflexively. The principle rejects both absolutism and indulgence. It argues instead for a calibrated life, one that privileges nourishment over stimulation, depth over convenience, while still recognizing that modern life occasionally requires shortcuts. This framework is especially useful when thinking about analog versus digital living, where moralized categories often replace careful thinking.

    It is wise to carve out a large, non-negotiable block of each day in which machines are politely but firmly excluded—no screens glowing like anxious faces, no notifications tugging at your sleeve, no algorithm whispering what to want next. Go hike where the trail refuses to optimize itself. Lift weights in a garage with nothing but an AM radio crackling like a distant campfire. Write dreams and grievances by hand in a clothbound notebook while Bach or Coltrane keeps time. This is the analog world, and it feeds parts of the nervous system that silicon cannot reach. In this sense, analog living resembles whole foods: salmon that still tastes like water and muscle, almonds that require chewing, blueberries that stain your fingers. The more time you spend here, the less bloated your spirit becomes. Digital life, by contrast, often behaves like ultra-processed food: frictionless, hyper-palatable, engineered for compulsive return, and strangely unsatisfying no matter how much you consume.

    That analogy works—until it doesn’t. Not all analog living is virtuous, just as not all “whole foods” are benign when eaten without restraint. A steady diet of eggs, clotted cream, or beef heart can quietly undo you. Likewise, not all digital experience is junk. There are serious conversations on social platforms, lucid Substack essays, and educational YouTube channels that sharpen rather than dull attention. The mistake comes when we moralize categories instead of exercising judgment. Ultra-processed food is not a single moral villain; “processed” names a method, not a fate. Steel-cut oats, frozen berries, tofu, canned beans, and whole-grain bread are processed and still nutritionally intact. Even within the ultra-processed aisle, a minimally sweetened protein bar is not the same organism as a fluorescent snack cake designed to bypass satiety. The real danger is not processing itself but the familiar cartel of refined starches, added sugars, industrial fats, flavor engineering, and low nutritional payoff.

    Seen through the Discretionary Use Principle, the lesson is neither to flee the digital world nor to surrender to it. Eat whole foods most of the time. Live analog for long, uninterrupted stretches. But do not shun all processed foods or digital tools out of misplaced virtue. Use them when discretion, efficiency, and purpose demand it. Health—nutritional or psychological—is not preserved by purity tests. It is preserved by attentiveness, proportion, and the ongoing discipline of choosing nourishment over convenience, again and again, without pretending that the choice will ever be automatic.

  • Breakfast Grains and Other Existential Threats As I Embark Upon a Two-Month Vacation

    Breakfast Grains and Other Existential Threats As I Embark Upon a Two-Month Vacation

    Today is my last day of class before I’m loosed into a two-month intermission—a stretch of time that must be handled like a late-arrival character in a film. This visitor has a history with me, knows my flaws, and demands that I greet him with something better than the usual slouch and shrug.

    Naturally, I’ll rehab the shoulder, write, and play the piano. Exercise will take care of itself; addiction is nothing if not reliable. Food, however, is the saboteur lurking in my blind spot. My emotional attachments to breakfast grains would make a Freudian blush: buckwheat groats, steel-cut oats, rolled oats, vanilla protein powder, cinnamon, berries, nuts. The whole wholesome choir. Trouble is, those virtuous bowls can turn caloric faster than a Hallmark plot twist.

    These cereals, if I’m honest, are less about hunger and more about the psychic umbilical cord. They point back to Mother, the Womb, or—in Phil Stutz’s terms—the Comfort Zone, the Warm Bath. Linger too long in that morning porridge spa, and the scale begins to stage an intervention. Add in my peculiar habit of finding solace in true-crime documentaries—an activity best described as athletic only in its couch commitment—and the trajectory is clear: weight gain, sloth, entropy.

    Fortunately, I do maintain countermeasures. Kettlebells and the Schwinn Airdyne stand ready like loyal foot soldiers. Reading, writing, and piano practice also help stave off the creeping rot. And yes, I’ll continue shaving, if only to avoid becoming the bearded oracle wandering the streets muttering about glycemic index.

    This two-month hiatus is really a dress rehearsal for retirement, which is now only eighteen months and three semesters away. It would be dishonest to pretend the prospect doesn’t rattle me. Maintaining purpose without the scaffolding of a teaching schedule is its own moral test. I’m fortunate to have reached this threshold, but fortune alone won’t keep me from misusing it. All I can do is stay awake, practice discipline, and ask my Maker for the humility to spend the limited time left with intention rather than drift.

  • How to Shut Up a Yacht Critic: Feed Them Into Oblivion

    How to Shut Up a Yacht Critic: Feed Them Into Oblivion


    My wife and I have been watching the current season of Below Deck Mediterranean and have been impressed with the consistent food preparation of the eccentric chef Josh Bingham. He stormed off the boat when one of the charter guests, Carlos, lectured Josh on his inferior vegan fare. Too much starch, not enough creativity, not enough this, not enough that. One of the excruciating pleasures of this show is watching people whose expectations run so high that they become obnoxious. They spent so much money, they feel entitled to push the chef and other crew members to extremes in order to justify the price of a premium yacht adventure. 

    Josh’s food on this charter looked disappointing, a melange of mediocrity. The meals had no identity. He was trying to please too many palates. 

    One thing occurred to me: There are always a few vegans who charter these yachts. Some are more fake than others. They want the vegan halo but not the vegan austerity. In other words, they want rich, decadent meals, just as inviting as steak and lobster. They crave butter-rich sauces, glazed proteins, and seductive textures, only delivered via tofu and oat milk so their consciences remain stainless.

    Therefore, if I were Josh or any chef on one of these luxury yachts, I would have an emergency toolkit of go-to rich and decadent vegan meals. One that immediately comes to mind would be Thai peanut Satay with fried tofu and white rice. Serve it with Sichuan green beans and broccoli lacquered in sesame oil, give them some fresh sesame rolls dipped in olive oil and garlic, and that would surely shut them up and induce them into a long, satisfying nap. 

    If I were a chef on this show, I would want to create food so luxurious, decadent, and soothing, it would induce the charters into a deep sleep and thereby allow me and my fellow crew members to take a well-deserved break. 

  • How Ultra-Processed Foods Turn Us Into Weight-Gain Machines

    How Ultra-Processed Foods Turn Us Into Weight-Gain Machines

    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. 

  • Not All Ultra-Processed Foods Are Alike

    Not All Ultra-Processed Foods Are Alike

    New Yorker writer Dhruv Khullar opens “Why Is the American Diet So Deadly?” with a truth so obvious it ought to be printed on cereal boxes: Americans are eating themselves into an early grave. No other nation can match our national pride in oversized portions, recreational snacking, and ultra-processed food engineered to hit the brain the way a slot machine hits a Vegas tourist. When the rest of the world wants a modest meal, Americans want something that triggers the dopamine cannon.

    Enter Guillaume Raineri, a French transplant who arrived in Maryland when his wife took a job at the National Institutes of Health. In an earnest attempt to understand American nutrition, he enrolled in a paid diet study—essentially voluntarily entering a culinary escape room. For four weeks, he lived in a controlled environment, eating three meals a day totaling about two thousand calories per meal. 

    Weekdays were gentle on the palate: minimal processing, plenty of whole foods. Fridays, however, were an ambush—UPF theme nights featuring chicken nuggets and PB&J sandwiches, the American sacrament. Raineri’s body protested immediately: bloating, sluggishness, the kind of malaise that suggests your bloodstream is pleading for diplomatic immunity.

    When Khullar visited, study designer Kevin Hall explained the challenge: lumping all ultra-processed foods together is like putting canned kidney beans and gummy bears in the same moral category. Food processing yields genuine benefits—less spoilage, wider availability, and the ability to feed millions at scale—but conflating all UPFs blurs important distinctions. Nutrition heavyweight Walter Willett argues that the focus shouldn’t be on UPFs as a monolith but on overall dietary patterns, especially those rooted in plant-forward whole foods and Mediterranean sensibilities. The core question Hall explores is simple but unsettling: why do people, consciously or unconsciously, eat more when given UPFs?

    The findings aren’t comforting. Participants consuming UPFs ate about 500 more calories a day, experienced spikes in glucose and insulin, and gained weight. Whole-food diets did the opposite: reduced intake, increased satiety, healthier hormone profiles. This complicates the simplistic calories-in/calories-out theory that refuses to die, despite evidence showing that food quality shapes metabolism, hunger hormones, and how our bodies store energy. As Tufts nutrition dean Dariush Mozaffarian puts it, “The dirty little secret is that no one really knows what caused the obesity epidemic”—which becomes even more maddening when you realize Americans now consume slightly fewer calories than they did decades ago, yet obesity continues to climb. GLP-1 drugs may soon rewrite this script entirely.

    UPFs introduce another sinister twist: they don’t just fill our stomachs, they remodel our biology. They recalibrate taste receptors, blunt satiety signals, and create a psychological and physiological FOMO for even more snacks, flavors, and novelty. Some studies, like Willett’s more granular approach, show that UPFs behave differently depending on additives—some beneficial, some neutral, some metabolic chaos grenades. 

    And yet, none of this complexity prevents Americans from gorging on the worst offenders. Doritos, the poster child of engineered hedonism, sell more than a billion bags a year. When you calculate how many collective years of life are sacrificed for that neon-orange dust, you realize our species is perfectly capable of choosing pleasure over longevity.

    Meanwhile, Food Inc. behaves exactly like Big Tech: both industries manufacture addictive junk because attention and appetite are profitable. Social media mirrors the food system: endless junk content, engineered outrage, and influencers who peddle easy purity. YouTube is now overrun by self-anointed nutrition gurus who command you to eat only whole foods and flee all processing. With algorithms breathing down their necks, they don’t dare utter anything nuanced—like the fact that UPFs come in subcategories, some nourishing, some harmless, some devastating. Nuance doesn’t get clicks. Absolutism does.

  • Against Becoming a Whole Food Absolutist

    Against Becoming a Whole Food Absolutist

    I admonish my teen daughters for their “high school” diet–80% of which is ultra-processed. I tell them to learn to prepare and enjoy whole foods, and as I speak these words, I can feel a self-righteous halo glowing over my head. My rectitude is rooted in my knowledge that whole foods are more dense, nutritious and fibrous than processed foods, and as a result whole foods help us achieve satiety–the word for feeling full, an important condition to help us avoid overeating. 

    The problem, however, with self-recitude, is that it can encourage us to become absolutists, zealous, and true believers who drink our own Kool-Aid with such relish that we fail to see how blind and rigid we have become. As whole food absolutists, we may find that our worldview and lifestyle doesn’t align with reality.

    This misalignment is discussed in Olga Khazan’s essay “Avoiding Ultra-Processed Foods Is Completely Unrealistic.” The title is followed by the parenthetical “Especially if you have kids.” 

    As a health reporter, Khazan interrogates her own food choices for her son, some of which she understands will be questionable: peanut-butter puffs, grape-jelly Uncrustables sandwich, mixed-berry oat bites–all ultra-processed. 

    She understands that “hyperpalatable” Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs) are linked to obesity, glucose spikes, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and other afflictions so serious that UPFs should be treated like cigarettes and labeled with surgeon general warnings. 

    In light of UPF’s dangers, Khazan observes there is a myriad of health mommy influencers making videos on how to make your own healthy versions of goldfish crackers and chicken nuggets and how to prepare toothsome steamed cauliflower and carrot salad for your toddlers.

    In this aspirational world, preparing whole foods may give us bragging rights, but it doesn’t align with the real world: Getting stuff done. When you consider how busy a working parent is in our ultra-competitive Hunger Games society, you realize that taking the time to prepare whole foods is an opportunity cost: Yes, you made homemade goldfish crackers, but you didn’t have time to go to the dry cleaners, drop off a return package of undersized garments to Temu, and stand in line at the pharmacy to pick up your medications. In other words, when you’re living in the real world, you have to capitulate to some UPFs regardless of the fitness mommies wagging their scolding fingers at you.

    But Khazan points out that all this food shaming is making us fail to see the complexity of the ultra-processed food category, which is “too broad and difficult” for us to understand. Bran flakes and candy bars are both considered UPFs, but are they equal? Tofu is often categorized as a UPF, but is it really? Is soy milk bad for you in the same way sugary soda is? In other words, can we put all UPFs in the same category?

    To complicate UPFs further, some are even good for you, including some yogurts, breads, and breakfast cereals. Additionally, some people have food restrictions, because of special dietary needs and food allergies, and their health benefits from some UPFs in their diet. For example, I use Splenda and liquid stevia for my coffee and tea, and my insulin thanks me for it.

    The Shaming Whole Food Mommies should stop wagging their fingers for another reason: Being a parent entails unexpected crises that create time-management problems, which can only be solved with a quick meal, such as putting chicken nuggets in the toaster-oven. To make whole foods palatable can take several hours of preparation. Unless you’re rich and home all day, the time required for this type of preparation may elude you. 

    We’re not just talking about the time to prepare whole foods. We’re talking about cognitive drain. The amount of mental energy to bake chicken nuggets and a plate of celery stalks smeared with peanut butter is infinitesimal compared to prepping for chicken Tikka masala over basmati rice followed by cleaning ten times more dishes than microwaving a quick meal.  

    If you’re rich and you can spend time shopping in the morning and the rest of the day in the luxury of your spacious, state-of-the art home, you have the money, time, and cognitive energy to make tasty whole food dishes. Congratulations, you’re a member of the one percent. The rest of us have to work for a living. Unlike you, we’ve got chicken nuggets in the freezer for emergencies. 

    Have we even talked about the cost of whole foods vs. UPFs? A jar of organic pasta sauce cost more than double the one larded with high-fructose corn syrup. The same goes for salsa, nut butters, tomato sauce, pesto, bone broth, and the list goes on. 

    The Whole Foods Mommy Influencers shamelessly lard us with toxic positivity to “educate” us on healthy eating, but what they’re really doing is a muscle flex–showing us how great their lives are and wanting us to suffer FOMO because we don’t have their time and resources. They’re rubbing our noses in their glorious lifestyle knowing deep down that we don’t have the time and resources to join their rarified tribe. They’re more toxic than a case of UPFs. 

    A saner approach is simple: choose your battles. Cook whole meals when you can. Use common sense. Avoid the truly catastrophic diet—the frappuccino-and-bear-claw lifestyle that leads straight to endocrinological ruin. And when you inevitably reach for a UPF shortcut, don’t flagellate yourself or watch a Mommy Influencer video for penance. Just eat, breathe, and move on. The real world is hard enough without adding shame to the grocery bill.

  • Essay Prompt: Innovation, Identity, and the Meaning of “Authentic” Food

    Essay Prompt: Innovation, Identity, and the Meaning of “Authentic” Food

    In Chef’s Table: Pizza, Ann Kim rebuilds her life after a failed acting career by reinventing pizza through the lens of her Korean-American identity. Her dishes fold together memory, rebellion, shame, pride, and the complicated love between immigrant parents and their children. Yet the moment she alters traditional recipes or refuses rigid cultural expectations, she steps into a debate that surrounds many immigrant chefs:
    Does innovation honor one’s heritage—or distort it?

    In this 1,700-word argumentative essay, you will explore that tension by comparing Ann Kim’s story with the themes found in Ugly Delicious (Season 1, “Tacos”), selected episodes of The Taco Chronicles, Gustavo Arellano’s “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food,” and Kelley Kwok’s “‘Not Real Chinese’: Why American Chinese Food Deserves Our Respect.” Your goal is to craft an argument that responds to the following question:

    When immigrant chefs remix, adapt, or modernize traditional dishes, are they betraying cultural authenticity—or creating a new form of belonging that honors their past in a more personal way?

    To answer this question, analyze how each show or essay portrays the cultural meaning of food—its connection to heritage, shame, pride, memory, and the immigrant experience. Pay close attention to visual rhetoric (music, tone, pacing, imagery), and consider how these choices shape our sense of what counts as “authentic.”

    Include at least two scholarly secondary sources on food studies, cultural identity, or immigrant narratives to deepen your analysis. These sources should help you place the shows and essays within broader academic conversations about authenticity, assimilation, and innovation.

    Your essay must include a counterargument-rebuttal section. Address the view that innovation leads to “tourist food” or watered-down Americanization, and explain whether these cases justify a purist stance toward food traditions—or whether purity itself is an illusion shaped by nostalgia, nationalism, or fear of cultural loss.

    Ultimately, your task is to show how food becomes a form of storytelling—and to argue whether storytelling requires faithful preservation, bold revision, or something in between.

  • Raising Teens in the Age of Doritos and Doom

    Raising Teens in the Age of Doritos and Doom

    In Food Intelligence, Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall deliver a bleak data point: since 2018, ultra-processed foods—UPFs, the junk with marketing degrees—account for 60 percent of the calories consumed by American adults and nearly two-thirds of what children eat. These edible Frankensteins are now being linked to depression, type 2 diabetes, and early-onset colorectal cancer.

    I have twin daughters in high school who live on donuts, chips, energy drinks, and iced coffees that taste like dessert in a cup. This is their food pyramid of joy. I tread carefully: I don’t want to sound like a puritan in a lab coat or a prophet of intestinal doom. I just want to help without becoming the household killjoy.

    But what is “helpful” when their entire social ecosystem runs on UPFs? If I had to guess, 75 percent of their peer group’s calories come from things that never met a farm or field. Processed food isn’t just addictive—it’s tribal. Sharing snacks is a social contract; refusing one is like rejecting friendship itself.

    Convincing teenagers to stop eating UPFs is about as effective as warning them about “too much screen time.” They’ll nod politely, roll their eyes invisibly, and continue scrolling while demolishing a bag of Flamin’ Hot somethings. Still, I’ll try. I’ll cite the studies, stock the fridge with hummus, guacamole, nut butters, whole-grain crackers, chickpea puffs, trail mix, and protein shakes—an arsenal of virtue they’ll likely ignore.

    Because youth isn’t about balance or moderation. It’s about belonging—through food, fashion, memes, and caffeine. Their need for connection will always outweigh my nutritional sermons. So I’ll do what I can: lay out the facts, offer alternatives, and accept that fighting pop culture is a noble but largely hopeless act of parental theater.

  • Why Willpower Can’t Save You from the Snack Aisle

    Why Willpower Can’t Save You from the Snack Aisle

    After hearing something thoughtful interviews with journalist Julia Belluz and scientist Kevin Hall about their new book Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us and KCRW food expert Evan Kleinman praise the book, I broke down and decided to see if the authors had any new insights into the exploration of what I call humans’ mismanagement of eating. The book begins on a promising note: The authors observe that in the animal kingdom, we are hard-wired with “food intelligence,” a natural-born instinct to regulate the quantity of what we eat and to target foods that our body craves for optimal nutrition. Our instinctive connection with food went haywire in the twentieth century: “Many of us started to eat too much, and the wrong things, even when we didn’t want to. Obesity rates began rising, first in rich, Western, industrialized countries such as the United States, then elsewhere.” Between 1980 and today, the obesity rate has doubled in several countries. Seventy percent of American adults and a third of U.S. children are classified as overweight or obese. Obesity-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes kills over half a million Americans a year. Obesity-related health costs are in the trillions.

    One of the major reasons for this breakdown in our instinctive hardwiring to naturally eat well is our disconnection from food: how it’s grown, produced, and cooked. We are now addicted to factory-produced fat, sugar, and salt. 

    Shaming and the gospel of self-discipline doesn’t help even though, as the authors point out, the wellness industry points an accusatory finger at our own moral shortcomings (lack of willpower, gluttony, and sloth) for our failures at weight management. The diet industries, the authors claim, are asking the wrong questions when they ask what is the best diet and how people can lose weight. For example, there are influencers who say low-carb is the best, but the authors show studies that contradict that claim. Low-carb diets are no better than low-fat ones in the long-term. The authors argue that championing the so-called ultimate diet is not the right question. Instead, the more helpful question is this: “Why do we eat what we eat?” Their obsession with answering this question is what propelled them to write the book. 

    The authors explain the problem of calories-in, calories-out as a surefire model for weight loss. The model is complicated and eventually sabotaged by the way the body reacts when we reduce calories. The metabolism slows down, we burn fewer calories doing the same exercise than we did initially, and our hunger signals rebel and scream “Eat more!” Contrary to the cheery claims of the wellness industry, eating less and exercising more usually fails within a year. 

    A more promising approach to weight management is avoiding ultra-processed foods. The more of these foods we eat, the less we are able to regulate our appetite, resulting in “a calorie glut” and weight-gain hell. But becoming food literature, replacing processed foods with whole foods, and learning to enjoy this exchange requires time and resources, which are lacking in many. Convenience and cost drive many Americans to processed food. Therefore, “the root causes” of obesity are structural. In the words of the authors: “It was never about us as individuals. Our food environment is wrecking us.” Our food environment is rewriting our brains to make us consume a calorie glut. Therefore, the food environment is making us overweight, sick, and unhappy. It is killing us. 

    Don’t consult Food Intelligence for the simple call to eat like your great-grandmother did. Even that sentiment is based on myth, the authors point out. Your great-grandmother may have spent endless hours in the kitchen exhausted while struggling “with hunger and nutrient shortfalls.” 

    One of the book’s objectives is to show how “old, unproven ideas and outdated policies continue to guide our current thinking and approaches to food.” They make it clear early on that they won’t be pushing this or that diet or even promoting “clean eating.”  If you’re looking for food puritanism, then look elsewhere. Kevin Hall admits to eating ultra-processed food and Julia Belluz admits to eating too much sugar. This book is not so much about rigid prescriptions as much as helping you change from a mindless eater to an intelligent one.