The crisis of modern food

There is certainly a sense of crisis surrounding our food supply. Can you feel it? Intuitively we know that eating food containing chemicals we can’t pronounce or identify is bad, right? Well the science is now clear. Our modern processed food supply is killing us.

In 2017 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration signed an arrangement with the Australian Department of Agriculture and Water Resources recognising systems to determine food safety as comparable to each other. This isn’t the only time that the FDA has recognised a foreign food safety system as comparable, the first being New Zealand in 2012 and Canada in 2016.

This doesn’t fill me with comfort.

The FDA fail to ensure the safety of the food supply countless times. For example: Yellow food dyes no.5 (tartrazine) and no.6 (sunset yellow) have a warning label in Europe ‘may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children’ but these dyes are scattered throughout foods like tomato sauce, cereal, icing, breakfast bars, and many other foods in other countries! BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole no. 320) and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene no.321) are synthetic antioxidants used to prolong freshness and keep fats from going rancid. We will find them in processed foods like bread, wraps, crackers, biscuits. They are banned in Europe but for some reason they are deemed okay for a couple of countries, even though they are ‘reasonably anticipated’ to be carcinogenic.

It seems that due to industry lobbying the FDA has given in and allowed food manufacturers to play Russian roulette with our health. This is unacceptable!

The most effective way of minimising our risk and that of our family is to stop consuming processed foods.

Processed foods

Throughout the history of man, we have experienced hunger and food scarcity. Life was punctuated by hardship with a famine sitting up on the horizon, waiting. We evolved to become energy scavenging and storing machines to ensure we could survive when food was scarce.

This does not serve us well in modern times.

Now we have a surplus of high energy foods we can collect from the local store. If we choose we don’t even have to leave our house – we can just order in. Food is assembled in such a way that would have left our grandparents puzzled; humans that lived a few hundred years ago possibly wouldn’t have known what to do with it.

I want to point out we have always processed our foods. Our ancient ancestors picked up a stone and pounded a tuber until it was edible, browned a slab of meat on a fire, and processed milk into cheese; we evolved with food processing. Slicing, milling, fermenting and other methods to preserve foods are essentially ‘processing.’ But ancient methods of food processing increase the nutritional density of the food making nutrients more available. That’s the difference. Modern food processing decreases nutritional density and involves the addition of industrialised ingredients and additives. Food processing enhanced our health and we physically and mentally evolved thanks to these processes. Now are still being shaped by food processing techniques - thanks to ultra-processed foods we are evolving into obese, insulin resistant, arthritic, mentally unwell humans.

Food manufacturing companies know what we want, and know how to get us hooked. They concoct super palatable foods and beverages filled with artificial flavours, colours and chemicals to change the appearance, flavour and texture. The addiction to processed food is so impactful that we are in the process of assigning ‘processed food addiction’ a diagnosis, similar to other mental health disorders.

It’s all about money and increasing shelf life at the expense of precious nutrients. Modern processed foods are foods you can’t grow in the ground, or sea: foods that our biology does not recognise. Even cereals and energy bars are included in the highly processed category. A recent study published in the British Medical Journal reported that those who consumed heavily processed foods (more than four servings a day) had a 62 percent increased risk for early death, compared to those who indulged in these foods less often. What is alarming is for each additional serving the risk of death is increased by 18 percent.

We know food readily available in the 21st century has an insidious effect on our mind and body, causing poor mental and other diseases such as health autoimmune disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. (5) Processed food, filled with refined sugar has a prominent place in our modern diet and it’s not just our health that these foods are damaging, but also our economy.

 Dr. Robert Lustig, in his article Processed Food- an experiment that failed, (6) explained currently our food industry grosses $1.46 trillion annually, of which $657 billion is gross profit. Alarmingly, health care costs $3.2 trillion annually, of which 75 percent is spent on the diseases of metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is linked to poor diet. Therefore, 75 percent of metabolic syndrome costs would be prevented if we stopped eating processed food. That adds up to $1.8 trillion dollars ‘down the toilet’ so to speak. So, we lose triple of what the food manufacturing industry makes. Consequently, Morgan Stanley predicts that based on the current trend economic growth will be 0.0 percent by 2035, based on the current high sugar model.

As Lustig proclaims; this is quite simply unsustainable!

I can’t stress enough how important it is for you, on your journey to mental health and wellbeing, to stop consuming processed food. These foods have been shown many times to impact the health of our mind. Eating a clean, whole food diet is vital for mental wellbeing.

Next we will explore the role inflammation has on the health of our mind.

1. J Fuhrman (2018). ‘The Hidden Dangers of Fast and Processed Food.’ American journal of lifestyle medicine. Vol 12(5) pp 375–381.

JM Shikany, MM Safford, PK Newby, et al. (2015). ‘Southern dietary pattern is associated with hazard of acute coronary heart disease in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study.’ Circulation. Vol 132 pp 804-814.

 2. N Ito, S Fukushima, H Tsuda (1985). ‘Carcinogenicity and modification of the carcinogenic response by BHA, BHT, and other antioxidants.’ Critical Reviews in Toxicology. Vol15(2) pp109‐150.

 3. JR Ifland, MT Marcus, HG Preuss. (Eds.). (2018). ‘Processed Food Addiction: Foundations, Assessment, and Recovery.’ Florida: CRC Press.

 4. A Rico-Campà, MA Martínez-González, I Alvarez-Alvarez et al. (2019). ‘Association between consumption of ultra-processed foods and all-cause mortality: SUN prospective cohort study’ British Medical Journal. Vol 365 p 1949.

 5. A Manzel, DN Muller, DA Hafler, et al. ‘Role of “Western Diet” in Inflammatory Autoimmune Diseases.’ Current Allergy and Asthma Reports. Vol 14 p 404; CR. Mackay (2020). ‘Diet, the Gut Microbiome, and Autoimmune Diseases.’ Editor(s): Noel R. Rose, Ian R. Mackay. Chapter 19, The Autoimmune Diseases (Sixth Edition), Academic Press. pp 331-342.

 6. B Srour, LK Fezeu , E Kesse-Guyot, et al. (2020). ‘Ultraprocessed Food Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Among Participants of the NutriNet-Santé Prospective Cohort.’ JAMA Internal Medicine. Vol 180(2) pp 283–291.

 7. RH Lustig. (2017) ‘Processed Food—An Experiment That Failed.’ Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics. Vol 171(3) pp 212–214.

8. B Srour, LK Fezeu , E Kesse-Guyot, et al.(2019) ‘Ultra-processed food intake and risk of cardiovascular disease: prospective cohort study (NutriNet-Santé).’ British Medical Journal. Vol 365 p 36.