The new opiate of the masses: ersatz food

One in four Americans is now diabetic or pre-diabetic


Greed has corrupted the noble ideal of a healthy body

The other day I walked into a Taco Bell and was nearly struck dumb by the sight of the patrons. Taking a quick visual inventory, I found only one person over the age of twenty with a healthy-looking physique. Most middle-aged customers were 30, 40, or 50 pounds overweight, and there was one morbidly obese man who cleared the aisles like a slow-moving bus without brakes. It was both a depressing and disturbing sight.

I said to myself: This is not the America I grew up in. I hardly recognize my countrymen. It was like waking up on another planet inhabited by a new and much larger species. I know I shouldn't be surprised—I've read the statistics and have seen the evidence building around me for years, but never in such a concentrated and dramatic form. Here was the corporeal (or should I say corpulent) evidence of an unavoidable and disturbing truth: that our country is eating itself to death.

I'm not writing this to judge people. Staying healthy is a daunting challenge, even for those of us who are naturally thin. A whole host of factors are stacked up against you. If fat isn't in your genes, it's certainly in the environment, and American society makes it almost impossible to avoid becoming saturated with it.

I lay much of the blame on our food companies. As I got into my thirties and forties, I felt, frankly, crappier—tired, groggy, irritable, and the way I felt seemed somehow linked to what I was eating. Consequently, over the last ten years I've undertaken the difficult task of changing my diet. It was much more difficult than I expected; I've been a vegetarian for nearly three years now, except for a little seafood, eggs, and some dairy, but it took me about 10 years to get to this point.

The biggest problems I have now are eating in restaurants and shopping at the supermarket. These days as I wander down the aisles I keep thinking of the line from the Ancient Mariner, "Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink." Nearly everything in a box or a bottle, for example, contains massive amounts of sugar, insidiously disguised as dextrose or fructose or dozens of other misleading names. And most "low fat" products typically replace the fat with sugars, or sugar substitutes, which some people feel are even worse for you than real sugar.

Why is there so much sugar in our food? Because it's low in cost and high in profit—the perfect cash cow for corporate America.

Unfortunately, it's terrible for you. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that 24 million Americans now have diabetes and that 57 million have pre-diabetes—most of whom will develop the full-blown disease. (That adds up to one in four Americans!)

Sugar has become such a threat to public health that I would like to see the FDA require manufacturers to put a new warning label on all sugar-containing products:

WARNING: Contains SUGAR, an addictive substance proven to induce lethargy, impede concentration, destabilize mood, interfere with digestion, increase fat storage, compromise the immune system, and contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes, a leading cause of heart failure, blindness, kidney failure, and death.

Wouldn't that get people's attention?

Well, maybe not, given how much similar warnings deterred smokers.

Aside from sugar, nearly all dry goods in the supermarket contain hydrogenated oils—made by superheating normal oils until they react with a nickel or platinum catalyst, forming a completely new compound (a hydrogenated oil) which the body is unable to digest (but will certainly store).

I could go on, but the list of offenders in supermarket shelves is much too long. Aisle after aisle of food tells the same sad story. Sugar, fat, dye, preservatives, fake sweeteners, MSG, and who can say what else? The more research you do, the more you get the idea they're not selling food there at all, but the product of a chemistry experiment gone bad.

Fast food I won't even talk about. If you want a full version of what fast food can do to your body, watch the movie Super Size Me.

At this point, you might respond that the answer lies in a little old-fashioned discipline and some daily exercise. But the simple fact is that most Americans are working too hard either to cook or to exercise much. Since the sixties, the average work week for Americans has risen from 38 to 47 hours, not including commuting. After time spent with family, friends, and children; housekeeping; and errands, who is actually going to spend those few precious hours remaining to research and shop for healthy foods or go to the gym? Apparently not many.

Even worse, our children are becoming just as fat as we are. At my daughter's middle school, gym has been cut down to every other day, and at my other daughter's high school, it's been limited to half the year only. TV and video games certainly don't help our children's health, but in many communities, we can't let them play outside because it's not safe to. Add this to the sugar and deep-fried dross we're constantly being pedaled and why should anyone be surprised at the results?

The sad truth is that you have to be a highly disciplined, highly informed, fitness-addicted, moderately wealthy person in order to keep from being overweight in America today. Given all the odds stacked against us, it shouldn't surprise anybody that only one in three Americans succeeds in beating the odds.

So what can we do? Well, for starters, realize that the food companies are getting rich by making you sick. They don't give a damn about your health. They put these deleterious ingredients into your food solely because they're cheap and they can make bigger profits from them. And if you get addicted to the sugars, dyes, and fats in their products, so much the better for them. Any well-informed objective person has to view any messages coming from the food industry on the subject of nutrition with the same skepticism he would from the Tobacco Council.

Sometimes it helps to get mad. Understand that you're being forced to live in a toxic environment and then being blamed for breathing in the air. Fight back. Talk to your schools and demand better choices in your children's cafeterias. Demand more gym classes. And start to turn your own life around. Get informed. Start walking, at the very least. Read the boring stuff about nutrition (start here: www.drweil.com). Always read food labels and learn how companies disguise the true contents of their "food items." Once you're better informed, I guarantee you'll be outraged, and that might be just what it takes to make a change in your life.

And change you had better, Grasshopper. You have to win this battle—the battle for your health—because if you lose this one, nothing else in your life will really matter.

The Islander