Americans Are Addicted to ‘Ultra-Processed’ Foods, and It’s Killing Us

Americans Are Addicted to ‘Ultra-Processed’ Foods, and It’s Killing Us
Image by Igor Ovsyannykov from Pixabay

“Our food, in other words, is literally killing us. Food companies have tricked our brains into making us complicit, and our elected officials are complicit, too. What’s needed is a better understanding of exactly how processed foods make us sick and a public reckoning with Big Food’s role in the nation’s health crisis.”

Adam Piore writes in Newsweek: “Our food, in other words, is literally killing us. Food companies have tricked our brains into making us complicit, and our elected officials are complicit, too. What’s needed is a better understanding of exactly how processed foods make us sick and a public reckoning with Big Food’s role in the nation’s health crisis. So far, policymakers have shown little appetite for scrutinizing the tactics of the powerful food lobby, but the pressure to curb consumption of ultra-processed foods is growing.”

Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, explains:

“We have now the accumulated evidence, particularly in the last five years, that people who eat more ultra-processed foods have higher risk of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, depression, cancer, renal and liver diseases. The studies have been overwhelming. There’ve been hundreds and hundreds of them. There’s no doubt that this is not a good thing. It is a problem.”

Senator Cory Booker, who chaired a farm subcommittee earlier this month that focused on the GAO report, made this point:

“Despite being the wealthiest nation in the world, we have created a food system that relentlessly encourages the overeating of empty calories that are literally making us sick and causing us to spend an ever-increasing amount of taxpayer dollars—literally, trillions of dollars a year—on health care costs to treat diet related diseases.”

Newsweek, 12/8/21

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