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Obesogenic Foods: It’s Every Single Thing!
The diet industry and most of the U.S. food system are obesogenic
Have you visited a medical clinic or pharmacy lately? You will see many rapidly-aging people with severe mobility issues.
My nutritionist friend reports that she has patients in their 20s with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Children as young as age 10 have been diagnosed with obesity and heart disease.
Ten-year-olds should be running and playing outside with their friends, not visiting nutritionists or receiving expensive monthly prescriptions for diet drugs.
The twin phenomena of deep denial on the part of the majority of the Western medical community, coupled with unfettered, unrestricted capitalism enriching a tiny number of people who own Big Food businesses, Pharma businesses, or stock in them, has created the obesity pandemic.
People were terrified of COVID, which has recently resurged. COVID disproportionately harmed obese, older people.
It should have been a wake-up call.
Instead, I just watched both nights of Wrestlemania and while I love this unique form of sports entertainment, I hated the omnipresent obesogenic sponsors: Snickers, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Pizza Hut, and Wendy’s. If it wasn’t candy or booze hovering over the squared circle or being touted by extremely fit wrestling stars, it was Draft Kings or an exhortation to join the U.S. Army. Or a bright, loud commercial telling us to use DoorDash to get Wendy’s delivered straight to our door.
I thought, “None of these athletes eat this junk — there is no way they can perform every night and be as fit as they are gobbling tons of Wendy’s followed up by Mike’s Harder Whatever, now with even more high-fructose corn syrup and citric acid!”
What a long digression: just to say — although I take it for granted that “everyone knows” that the foods in the grocery store or those served at fast food or fast-casual restaurants are bad, obesogenic foods, the general public does not truly understand how bad the foods really are and how everything about them contributes to obesity, not just “too many calories.”
