The Cost of Food. . . Part 3

Well here we are again. Thank you for joining me on this extremely important, over-looked and under-reported topic. (And until recently I could add under-studied topic.)

If you haven’t read parts one and two of this blog series I recommend you do so. And if you have been following along on this journey, thank you and welcome back! In the last post in this series I introduced you to the four major groupings of foods/ingredients in our society today - unprocessed foods, processed culinary foods and ingredients, processed foods and ultra-processed foods. 

Unprocessed foods are those naturally-occurring foods we find in nature - like carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, blueberries and even steaks. Processed culinary foods and ingredients are things like oils, vinegars and butter. Processed foods (some now call this group minimally-processed foods) are the mixes of groups one and two. These are foods you can make at home - like bread, cheese, yogurt and so on. These foods you can easily buy at the store AND ALSO make at home in a more affordable manner and they’ll likely be tastier and more nutritious. And then the last and newest group which was defined in the early 2000s - the ultra-processed foods - are foods you cannot make at home, you don’t find in nature (hello Twinkies!) and contain addictive additives that also extend the shelf life indefinitely. These foods and/or ingredients are made by physically, chemically and/or thermally destroying the natural make-up of foods and/or subsidized products. 

The foods in the fourth, ultra-processed group are designed to be cheap to make, cheap to buy, long to last on the shelf, over consumed by the human and possibly addictive. (I don’t know if they set out to make these foods addictive but they are.) These ultra-processed foods are highly-caloric and low in fiber (most of the foods in this category are sold in a dry or semi-dry state - think of Doritos or cereal here). The foods are meant to eat fast. They’re convenient. They’re also nutritionally low. They cause us to overeat - by definition they are “hyperpalatable”. They mess up our endocrine system’s functioning. They mess up our brain and neurological functioning. They also lead to decreased bone size and bone density (Ultra-Processed People p. 271-272 as well as https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...). I can’t emphasize these statistics enough. And I beg you to reread this and tell your friends:

Ultra-processed foods are making us weak, tired and fat. Ultra-processed foods are also giving us bad skin, weak bones, osteopenia at younger ages and decreased fertility (see above links). I actually just had a conversation with a military mom today who told me about the nutritional bars her son ate in basic training to increase bone density due to the increasing rates of bone fractures in the cadets during PT. Ultra-processed foods and sedentary lifestyles are actually harming our kids! 

And if you remember from the last blog, our kids are eating up to 80% of  their calories from the ultra-processed group. It’s simply too much. And adults eat approximately 60% of their calories from this group so we’re not off the hook.

And don’t give me any of the reformulation argument - that cereals now have “added calcium” or “a good source of 9 vitamins and minerals” (taken from https://www.frootloops.com/en_...). That’s just more processing, it’s not real change. It’s not real nutrition. 

I actually heard Michael Pollan say in an interview that the most nutritious thing about the cereal your kids eat in the morning is the box itself. That it’s actually better for their health to eat the literal BOX versus the “food” in the box. (I do have a banger recipe for homemade granola in our cookbook that we use as cereal all the time here on the farm if you need a recipe.)

So yes, the foods we’re all buying and consuming because they’re “cheaper than the fruits and vegetables” are actually only cheap at the beginning of the cycle. They may be cheap to buy but the cost to your health and body are SO MUCH HIGHER. Osteopenia, which I alluded to earlier, used to only be seen in post-menopausal women. Now it’s seen in children in long bones (tibia, femur and even phalanges) and facial bones (refer to link above in the NIH article as well as Ultra-Processed People p. 217-272 especially or just do your own google search if you really wanna freak yourself out. Go ahead! You’ll be shocked at what you find I think). Our children are increasingly dealing with difficulty concentrating and a slight increase in the intake of ultra-processed foods in adults leads to an increased risk for dementia, stroke and other neurodegenerative diseases (https://www.medicalnewstoday.c...). In our kids we see the neurodegenerative changes coming out in hyperactivity disorders, mental and emotional issues. We’re also damaging our GI systems, causing leaky-gut syndrome and observing astronomical increases in obesity rates. And while we’re at it, we are also damaging the world around us because most, if not all of these ultra-processed foods come in plastic packages that damage the environment. (I have MANY more points I’d like to make on the environment and environmental changes we’re observing through the use of ultra-processed ingredients but that will have to sit for another blog post or podcast episode.) I’m talking today about the sharp and steady increase of ultra-processed foods in our diets and how that is affecting HUMANS. 

And now another question is probably “why?”. Why do we have so many of these foreign ingredients in our food that aren’t even food? That make us unhealthy, overweight, overtired, undernourished and sick? That we can’t pronounce? That are made from the unusable leftover parts of other products?

To answer that question join me on a slight tangent that’s completely related and will take 1-2 minutes to walk through. And let’s visit corn for a moment. Who doesn’t like an ear of corn in the summer? We all love corn! It’s delicious! You can do so many things with it and enjoy it in so many different ways! Roast it, grill it, fry it, boil it, freeze it even. But then what do you do with that dreaded corn COB? You probably trash it, or if you have pigs or friends with pigs you pass them on, but for humans there really isn’t a real market for corn cobs. That’s a bummer, right? Not so much! 

Back in the 1970s scientists at the Clinton Corn Processing Company along with international food science corporations realized they could make a super-sweet syrup from corn cobs that was sweeter than other sugars, had a longer shelf life and used the unusable products from agricultural practices. So now the government subsidizes farmers to grow corn for ultra-processing as well as traditional use. What does that mean, really? Well basically when a government subsidizes something it means that the government is paying the producer to grow something (in our example here - corn) because corn has a use that’s really important in our culture. That brings the price down for consumers in the short - to mid-range and makes growing corn really enticing to farmers. They get paid to grow it, they have a use for all of it and when you can use ALL of the product without any waste it’s just icing on the cake. End the end it means ultra-processing is BIG BUSINESS and makes companies HUGE profits! But at what cost to us? To our families??? 

The cost is your health. Your health and the health of those around you. So yeah, it’s easy to grab the Doritos. But is it wise? Is it healthful? Is it beneficial? Or is it completely detrimental to you, your family and your world? Is it killing us and the world around us slowly?

These are honest questions. What is the cost of your food to you?

Aliceson