Poor will power is NOT necessarily what drives you to
overeat on junk food. An in-depth investigation into the
processed-food industry reveals there’s a conscious effort
on behalf of food manufacturers to get you hooked on foods
that are convenient and inexpensive to make
Sugar, salt and fat are the top three substances making
processed foods so addictive. Sugar alone has been shown to
be more addictive than cocaine, and food manufacturers use
sophisticated taste science to determine the “bliss point”
that makes you crave more
Recent research confirms that processed meat consumption is
strongly associated with premature death. According to the
researchers, reducing daily processed meat consumption to
less than 20 grams a day could reduce mortality rates across
Europe by three percent annually
According to a new report from the American Diabetes
Association, an estimated 22.3 million people were living
with type 1 or type 2 diabetes in 2012, up from 17.5 million
in 2007
To protect your health, I advise spending 90 percent of your
food budget on whole foods, and only 10 percent on processed
foods
By Dr. Mercola
I believe many of our country's chronic health problems would
simply disappear if greater attention was paid to the root
problem — the food you eat.
Americans’ reliance on processed foods is a major factor that
drives the rampant disease increases in the US, such as
diabetes. According to a new report from the American Diabetes
Association,1
an estimated 22.3 million people were living with type 1 or type
2 diabetes in 2012, up from 17.5 million in 2007.
But why do Americans buy so much processed food and junky
snacks? Well, first of all, junk foods are heavily promoted by
the US government via agricultural subsidies for crops like corn
and soy.
Add to that misleading yet highly effective marketing, and —
the focus of this article — the addictive nature of
junk food, which is a science in and of itself.
In order to protect your health, I advise spending 90 percent
of your food budget on whole foods, and only 10 percent on
processed foods. Most Americans currently do the opposite, and
this will undoubtedly have an effect on your health, especially
in the long term.
The Food Industry's Role in America's Health Crisis
In the featured New York Times article,2
investigative reporter Michael Moss writes about the
extraordinary science behind taste and junk food addiction, and
how multinational food companies struggle to maintain their
“stomach shares” in the face of mounting evidence that their
foods are driving the health crisis.
In it, he mentions a 1999 meeting between 11 CEO’s in charge
of America’s largest food companies, including Kraft, Nabisco,
General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and Mars. He writes:
“James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at
Pillsbury... was anxious but also hopeful about the plan
that he and a few other food-company executives had devised
to engage the C.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem.
‘We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was
becoming a major issue... [T]here was a lot of pressure on
food companies.’
...[Behnke] was engaged in conversation with a group
of food-science experts who were painting an increasingly
grim picture of the public’s ability to cope with the
industry’s formulations — from the body’s fragile controls
on overeating to the hidden power of some processed foods to
make people feel hungrier still. It was time, he and a
handful of others felt, to warn the C.E.O.’s that their
companies may have gone too far in creating and marketing
products that posed the greatest health concerns.”
The Parallels Between Cigarettes and Junk Food
On that day in 1999, Michael Mudd, vice president of Kraft,
did “the unthinkable” during his speech — he drew a connection
between processed foods and cigarettes. We no longer condone
cigarette ads for teens, having clearly established the health
hazards associated with smoking, despite decades-long denials
from the industry.
Yet we now blindly accept the same kind of misleading tactics
being applied to junk food, even though the
health ramifications rival, if not surpass, those of
smoking. Mudd presented a plan to address the obesity problem,
which would help defuse the criticism building against the food
industry.
In my view, the criticism was, and still is, justifiable. As
just one example, General Mills created Yoplait that same year
(1999), which “transformed traditional unsweetened breakfast
yogurt into a veritable dessert,” to use Moss’ own words. In
fact, Yoplait yoghurt contained 100 percent more sugar per
serving than the company’s Lucky Charms cereal! Yet everyone
recognized yoghurt as a wholesome food, and sales of Yoplait
soared.
Mudd proposed employing scientists “to gain a deeper
understanding of what was driving Americans to overeat.” Once
they knew that, products could then be reformulated; salt, sugar
and fat use could be reined in, and advertising could be
repositioned. The 1999 meeting didn’t go well. It effectively
ended when Stephen Sanger, head of General Mills, allegedly
stated he would not jeopardize the sanctity of the recipes that
had made his products so successful in order to appease the
critics.
Fast-forward a decade and we now have novel biotech flavor
companies like
Senomyx, which specializes in helping companies do what Mudd
proposed — finding new flavors to reduce sugar and salt content
in processed foods.
These “flavor
enhancers” are created using secret, patented processes, and
they do not need to be listed on the food label. The lack of
labeling requirements is particularly troublesome and will most
likely become an issue in the future. As of now, they simply
fall under the generic category of artificial and/or natural
flavors. What this means is that the product will appear to be
much “healthier” than it might otherwise be, were a flavor
enhancer not used. The question is, are chemical flavor
enhancers safe? Or are food companies simply exchanging one
harmful substance for another? That remains to be seen.
This is a
Flash-based video and may not be viewable on mobile devices.
The Flavorists. Morley
Safer reports on the multibillion dollar flavor industry, whose
scientists create natural and artificial flavorings that make
your mouth water and keep you coming back for more. For
transcript, see CBSNews.com
The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
Canadian and American
obesity statistics are now neck-to-neck, with about
one-quarter to one third of adults in the obese category. A
staggering two-thirds of Americans are overweight. This in turn
drives skyrocketing diabetes rates. According to the latest
report from the American Diabetes Association,3
an estimated 22.3 million people were living with type 1 or type
2 diabetes in 2012, up from 17.5 million in 2007. Last year
246,000 deaths were attributed to diabetes. The UK also recently
released updated statistics, showing a record three million
Britons are now diagnosed with diabetes,4
which equates to 4.6 percent of the British population. Another
850,000 Britons are believed to have undiagnosed Type 2
diabetes.
The total cost of diagnosed diabetes in the US last year was
$245 billion, a whopping 41 percent increase
from the $174 billion spent in 2007.5
Obesity also drives rising rates of heart disease, kidney
failure, gout, and blindness, just to name a few associated
health problems, all of which contribute to soaring health care
costs.
So who or what is to blame? As it turns out, poor will power
is NOT the heart of the matter.
According to Moss’ four-year long investigation, interviewing
more than 300 people in or formerly employed by the
processed-food industry, there’s a conscious effort on behalf of
food manufacturers to get you hooked on foods that are
convenient and inexpensive to make. I recommend reading the
featured article in its entirety, as it offers a series of case
studies that shed light on the extraordinary science and
marketing tactics that make junk food so hard to resist.
Finding Your Bliss Point
Moss’ work also resulted in the book Salt Sugar Fat,
in which he dissects the $1 trillion processed food industry.
Sugar, salt and fat are the top three substances making
processed foods so addictive. In a Time Magazine
interview6
discussing his book, Moss says:
“One of the things that really surprised me was how
concerted and targeted the effort is by food companies to
hit the magical formulation. Take sugar for example. The
optimum amount of sugar in a product became known as the
'bliss point.' Food inventors and scientists spend a huge
amount of time formulating the perfect amount of sugar that
will send us over the moon, and send products flying off the
shelves. It is the process they've engineered that struck me
as really stunning.
When it came to fat, it was the amazing role of what
the industry calls the 'mouth feel.' That's the warm, gooey
taste of cheese, or the bite into a crisp fried chicken that
you get. It rushes right to the same pleasure centers of the
brain that sugar does...
When it comes to salt, what was really staggering to
me is that the industry itself is totally hooked on salt. It
is this miracle ingredient that solves all of their
problems. There is the flavor burst to the salt itself, but
it also serves as a preservative so foods can stay on the
shelves for months. It also masks a lot of the off-notes in
flavors that are inherent to processed foods.”
One of the guiding principles for the processed food industry
is known as “sensory-specific satiety.” Moss describes this as
“the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm your brain,
which responds by depressing your desire to have more.” The
greatest successes, whether beverages or foods, owe their
“craveability” to complex formulas that pique your taste buds
just enough, without overwhelming them, thereby overriding your
brain’s inclination to say “enough.”
“Vanishing calorie density” is another term used to describe
foods that melt in your mouth, which has the effect of making
your brain think it doesn’t contain any calories. End result —
you keep eating. Cheetos is one such example. In all, potato
chips are among the most addictive junk foods on the market,
containing all three bliss-inducing ingredients: sugar (from the
potato), salt and fat. One 2011 study cited by Moss determined
that the top contributors to Americans weight gain included red
meat, processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages, potatoes, and
topping the list: potato chips.
“The coating of salt, the fat content that rewards
the brain with instant feelings of pleasure, the sugar that
exists not as an additive but in the starch of the potato
itself — all of this combines to make it the perfect
addictive food,” Moss writes.
Sugar — One of the Most Addictive Substances Known
While food companies abhor the word “addiction” in reference
to their products, scientists have discovered that sugar, in
particular, is just that. In fact,
sugar is more addictive than cocaine. Research7
published in 2007 showed that 94 percent of rats who were
allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between sugar water and
cocaine, chose sugar. Even rats who were addicted to cocaine
quickly switched their preference to sugar, once it was offered
as a choice. The rats were also more willing to work for sugar
than for cocaine.
The researchers speculate that the sweet receptors (two
protein receptors located on the tongue), which evolved in
ancestral times when the diet was very low in sugar, have not
adapted to modern times’ high-sugar consumption. Therefore, the
abnormally high stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich
diets generates excessive reward signals in your brain, which
have the potential to override normal self-control mechanisms,
and thus lead to addiction.
Even more interesting, their research found that there’s also
a cross-tolerance and a cross-dependence between sugars and
addictive drugs. As an example, animals with a long history of
sugar consumption actually became tolerant (desensitized) to the
analgesic effects of morphine. Today, prescription pain killers
have surpassed illegal drugs as the preferred “high,” and
pharmaceutical
drug overdoses now rank second only to motor vehicle
crashes as the leading cause of accidental death in the US.
Unfortunately, since it’s all legal, no one is really
cracking down on this growing drug problem that is wrecking
lives each day. According to Moss:8
“[T]he food industry defends itself by saying true
narcotic addiction has certain technical thresholds that you
just don't find in food addiction. It's true, but in some
ways getting unhooked on foods is harder than getting
unhooked on narcotics, because you can't go cold turkey. You
can't just stop eating.”
It’s important to realize that added sugar (typically in the
form of high fructose corn syrup) is not confined to junky snack
foods. For example, most of Prego’s spaghetti sauces have one
common feature, and that is sugar — it’s the second largest
ingredient, right after tomatoes. A half-cup of Prego
Traditional contains the equivalent of more than two teaspoons
of sugar.
Two Moms Take on Kraft
In related news, two moms have taken on Kraft. They started
an online petition, calling for the food giant to remove two
artificial food ingredients, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6, from its
Macaroni and Cheese. These artificial dyes have been linked to
hyperactivity in children, and are banned for use in the UK.
More than 220,000 signatures have been collected so far. Kraft’s
response?
“... in the US, we only use colors that are approved
and deemed safe for food use by the Food and Drug
Administration.”
If you, like so many others, aren’t impressed by this
response, feel free to sign the petition, available on
Change.org.
This is a
Flash-based video and may not be viewable on mobile devices.
Troubled Meats Get a Makeover
Another food many don’t automatically view as health-harming
is processed meats. Moss includes the case story of Bob Drane,
vice president of Oscar Meyer, who in 1985 was tasked with
figuring out how to contemporize their processed meat offerings.
Interviews with harried mothers revealed that the most important
issue for them was time, which resulted in the
development of a convenient prepackaged lunch containing the
company’s pre-sliced bologna and ham, better known as
Lunchables. A later line of the lunch trays, called Maxed Out,
contained, two-thirds of the maximum recommended sodium
allowance for kids, and a staggering 13 teaspoons of sugar.
The Atlantic9
recently reported that “consuming processed meat went along with
other unhealthful lifestyle choices, such as eating few fruits
and vegetables, being more likely to smoke and, for men,
consuming large quantities of alcohol.”
The new study, which reconfirms results from previous
studies, found processed meat consumption was strongly
associated with premature death.10
According to the researchers, reducing daily processed meat
consumption to less than 20 grams a day could reduce mortality
rates across Europe by three percent annually. This includes
bacon, sausage of all kinds, sandwich meats (cold cuts), and any
other processed “meat product.”
In 2011, the World Cancer Research Fund came to the sobering
conclusion that no one should eat
processed meats, ever, due to its cancer-causing potential.
Hot dogs, bacon, salami and other processed meats may also
increase your risk of
diabetes by 50 percent, and lower your lung function and
increase your risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
(COPD). A 2007 analysis by WCRF found that eating just one
sausage a day can significantly raise your risk of bowel
cancer. Specifically, 1.8 ounces of processed meat daily --
about one sausage or three pieces of bacon -- raises the
likelihood of the cancer by 20 percent. Other studies have also
found that processed meats increase your risk of:
Another interesting tidbit offered up by Moss is the eating
habits of the food scientists and processed food company
executives themselves, whom he met while researching his book.
Just like many of our American Presidents, they apparently know
more about maintaining their own health than they want you to
know about.
Last year, I wrote about political supporters of genetically
engineered (GE) foods insisting on all organic fare for
themselves and their families while
promoting unlabeled GE foods for everyone else. This
includes President Obama, who vowed to label GMO’s if elected,
but then spent the first four years appointing one Monsanto
shill after another into key federal positions that wield
near-absolute power over agricultural issues, and never took
affirmative action on the labeling issue, even during the height
of the California Prop 37 campaign. In the same vein, Moss
discovered that many of the food executives and scientists he
met avoid their own foods for a variety of health reasons:
“It was everything from a former top scientist at
Kraft saying he used to maintain his weight by jogging, and
then he blew out his knee and couldn't exercise, his
solution was to avoid sugar and all caloric drinks,
including all the Kool-Aid and sugary drinks that Kraft
makes,” Moss says.
“It ranged from him to the former top scientist at
Frito Lay. I spent days at his house going over documents
relating to his efforts at Frito Lay to push the company to
cut back on salt. He served me plain, cooked oatmeal and raw
asparagus for lunch. We toured his kitchen, and he did not
have one single processed food product in his cupboards or
refrigerator.
...One reason they don't eat their own products, is
that they know better. They know about the addictive
properties of sugar, salt and fat. As insiders, they know
too much. I think a lot of them have come to feel badly...”
As Moss says, it’s not that these companies have the demise
of your health as a defined business goal. But they do
want you to buy their product, and the more the better. Taste is
a major, if not overriding factor here, and processed food
without generous amounts of sugar, salt and unhealthy fats (like
trans fat) would simply be too unpalatable to most. So while
some companies, such as Kraft, have tried to alter their
formulas to make them “healthier,” the fact remains that
processed food is inferior to the real thing no matter how you
finagle it. You simply cannot compete with the nutrition found
in whole, unprocessed foods.
“Ultimately, they ran into the problem that the whole
industry faces, which is the huge pressure from Wall Street
and the investment community to increase profits,” Moss
says.
How to Eat Real Food on a Budget
This concerted effort by the industry is further enhanced by
stimulating your metabolism to burn carbs as its primary fuel.
As long as you are in primary carb-burning mode you will
strongly crave these types of foods. But once you start
decreasing your carbs and protein and replace them with high
quality fats, and start to engage in intermittent fasting, your
cravings for these junk foods, no matter how cleverly enhanced,
will dramatically diminish, if not vanish altogether.
In order to protect your health, I believe you should spend
90 percent of your food budget on whole foods, and only 10
percent on processed foods (unfortunately most Americans
currently do the opposite). This requires three strategies,
especially if you're working with a tight budget:
Become resourceful: This is an area
where your grandmother can be a wealth of information, as
how to use up every morsel of food and stretch out a good
meal was common knowledge to generations past. What I mean
is getting back to the basics of cooking -- using the bones
from a roast chicken to make stock for a pot of soup,
extending a Sunday roast to use for weekday dinners,
learning how to make hearty stews from inexpensive cuts of
meat, using up leftovers and so on.
Plan your meals: This is essential, as
you will need to be prepared for mealtimes in advance to be
successful for if you fail to plan, by default you are
planning to fail. Ideally this will involve scouting out
your local farmer's markets for in-season produce that is
priced to sell, and planning your meals accordingly, but you
can also use this same premise with supermarket sales. You
can generally plan a week of meals at a time, make sure you
have all ingredients necessary on hand, and then do any prep
work you can ahead of time so that dinner is easy to prepare
if you're short on time in the evenings.
Avoid food waste: According to a study
published in the journal PloS One,11
Americans waste an estimated 1,400 calories of food per
person, each and every day. The two steps above will help
you to mitigate food waste in your home, You may also have
seen my article from earlier this year titled
14 Ways to Save Money on Groceries. Among those tips are
suggestions for keeping your groceries fresher, longer, and
I suggest
reviewing those tips now.
When choosing real foods to feed your family, remember that
some of the healthiest foods are incredibly affordable, even
under
$1 a serving, such as: