Everyone other than the likes of the Nabisco executive board agrees that processed foods are bad for you. But why exactly are they pinned as the food version of Lucifer by modern popular health gurus?
Do they cause disease?
Do they have mind control chemicals in them?
Or,
Are they simply a misunderstood solution to a problem we no longer have as a society?
Yes MREs are processed… Did I even need to point that out?
(Photo by Airman 1st Class Erick Requadt)
Why are our brains dumb?
We are mentally weak when it comes to unnaturally delicious foods.
Think about it in this context:
In Ye Olde Cave Man Days, food tasted terrible.
Fruit and veggies were fibrous and bitter, and animals were fast and difficult to catch.
Whenever they were caught, they were lean and not that delicious; they were, after all, eating the same fibrous foods as our ancestors.
If a food was delicious, it was a sign that it was calorie-dense, because it was loaded with either lots of fat or sugar. That food was devoured quickly, because it would provide much more energy than the foods on the typical menu.
If you’re gonna eat it, at least get it in your mouth!
(Photo by Luísa Schetinger on Unsplash)
Processed food isn’t the devil. Eating too much is.
Some research suggests that processed foods cause obesity, hypertension, high blood pressure, and cancer. But the poison probably isn’t the food itself. It’s the dose.
Too many processed foods lead to the above issues because it’s so easy to overeat them.
For instance: in order to get the same number of calories as a 16 ounce package of Oreos, you would need to eat roughly 250 ounces of broccoli. That’s over 15 pounds of broccoli! I’m pretty sure that’s physically impossible.
We usually only fill our gas tanks to the amount they can hold. What if instead of stopping there, I popped the hood of my car and sprayed gas all over the engine and other vehicular unmentionables? What if I then opened the driver’s side door and shot some gas into the passenger compartment of the car?
She is not going to have a happy tummy after that meal.
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Do you think that there may be some negative side effects of over-fueling my vehicle in this way? Might my car develop type 2 car diabetes?
This is exactly what we do to our cells when we over-eat consistently. Our mitochondria (cellular engines) can no longer hold all of the energy inputs from the food we eat, just like the gas tank couldn’t hold any more fuel. Our mitochondria overflow and fuel spills out everywhere.
This is how we get fat and sick. This is also how you cause irreparable damage to the interior of your car.
Certain foods may be more prone to this phenomenon, like ultra-processed hyper-palatable foods. It is, in theory, possible with any food though.
There were no trees growing donuts 15,000 years ago…
(Photo by Lidya Nada on Unsplash)
Food doesn’t just taste better now, it’s prettier too
Some reports say up to 60% of national caloric intake is ultra-processed.
It’s a no brainer as to why we are the fattest humans to ever inhabit planet earth.
Most ultra-processed foods are designed to taste amazing so that we want more of them.
Fat + Sugar + Salt + Attractive Colors + The Perfect Shape = Hyper-palatable Impossible To Resist Foods.
That math adds up to constant overeating which has led to the multiple health epidemics we are experiencing today.
In the wake of food industrialization after WWII, we realized that we can make more food, faster, and better tasting than ever before. Who would say no to that?
Don’t do it! You have so much to live for!
(Photo by Ethan Sexton on Unsplash)
Blinded by dollar signs, food companies raced to make the best tasting foods they could, profiting off of its addictiveness. In fact, it has similar effects on our gray matter as opioids.
Here we are more than 60 years after this process started trying to clean up the mess. We easily overeat hyper-palatable foods, and our bodies try to hide the extra energy, but there is nowhere reasonable for it to go in a timely manner. This causes our health to take a dive.
What initially started as a way to ensure people never starve like they did during the Great Depression turned out to be profitable. So profitable that the health of the nation became a secondary concern of food companies. They became slaves to the bottom line.
Food companies became so good at convincing our dumb caveman brains to buy their products that we are now experiencing a great depression of a whole different degree. A great Individual depression when we look at our naked bodies in the mirror.