
In this world, humans are presented with many risks; some avoidable and some not. As humans that have this gift of life, we need to take care of ourselves as much as possible. So start with something as simple as cleaning out the fridge of everything processed. One might be surprised by how harmful processed foods can be. As many know, almost anything in excess is bad for you. So, the question is proposed, “Why do junk foods taste so good?” The answer to that question is everything that one doesn’t want to hear; extremely high amounts of sugar, sodium, and fat. Yes, all of these things are a requirement for our bodies to function, but these things in the skyrocket amounts that are in our favorite foods are detrimental to our health. Not only do they increase fat production, but they can also slow one’s metabolism and clog their arteries. Obesity and just unhealthy people due to bad diet is an epidemic in this world, especially in the United States. So, what do we do, and how do we even go about changing our diets and making a movement towards healthy eating? Cut out processed foods! Not only are there unnecessary amounts of sugar, sodium, and fat, but also there are added MSGs to preserve the food. Processed foods often also have enhancers that mimic steroids to increase the size and production of completely organic foods such as fruits, vegetables, milk, and meat. Our food industry is mutating even the healthiest of foods. Processed foods are growing more and more popular and cause even more health problems, and it all started with the food industry. 

So, where did it all start? Processed foods have been around for forever, as well as terrible eating habits. In “Eating in America” by Root and Rochemont, a journalist and filmmaker, wrote a book explaining the birth of processed foods. The first chapter is titled “The Dangers of Eating”. They explain, after the war of 1812 when everyone vetoed tea, coffee was the new fad. But this time, they made it even unhealthier than tea. That’s when cream and sugar arose, no more black coffee. The whole country was going crazy and was drinking coffee like it was water. This gives a perfect illustration of how society worked then, and still now. Every time something new, and especially tasty, comes around society obsesses over it and does (or eats a lot of it).  Eating has been a catalyst for America ever since it began. Let’s fast forward to the civil war where housewives were to prepare meals for their soldiers. The housewives had to make a lot of food, and fast, much like the food industry today. This made the definition of processing. They began adding extra things in food to make it taste better, and expand foods volume. Thus, making food unhealthier than ever. Then the matter of storage and transportation arose. They started adding ingredients with long lasting shelf life, and put them in mason jars (the birth of canned food).  Shortly after the civil war, the country went from being completely rural to complete urbanization. All though becoming industrial was one of the best things for our country, it was also the worst. Giant food companies began to arise, thus a federal food industry. Farmers were going out of business to the industries. Pesticides, chemicals, and food enhancers were created to make up for the missing farm work and crops. This is when the country as whole declined in health and nutrition, and we’ve never came back from it (Root, 128). 

The connection between the worldwide food system and the overall quick increment of weight and related ailments is not yet surely known. A reason is that the full effect of industrialized sustenance preparing on dietary examples, including the conditions of eating and drinking, stays disregarded and disparaged. Many types of sustenance handling are valuable. In any case, what is distinguished and characterized here as ultra-preparing, a sort of process that has turned out to be progressively overwhelming, at first in high-pay nations, and now in center pay nations, makes alluring, hyper-satisfactory, modest, prepared to-devour nourishment items that are typically vitality thick, greasy, sugary or salty and by and large obesogenic. In a study done named “Ultra-Processed Products are becoming Dominant in the Global Food System” wrote by Montiero, the scale of change in supply and demand of ultra-processed products is examined and the context and implications are discussed. Results show that ultra-processed products dominate the food supplies of high-income countries, and that their consumption is now rapidly increasing in middle-income countries (Montiero, 1). It can be concluded that the main driving force now shaping the global food system is transnational food manufacturing, retailing and fast food service corporations whose businesses are based on very profitable, heavily promoted ultra-processed products, many in snack form. Fast food and just generally unhealthy food is the highest consumed foods everywhere. The food industry succeeds in the fast food industry especially because they sustain low prices for highly processed food. Also, with the amount of additives the put in your average fast food meal makes it tastier to your taste buds. Thus, wanting you to come back for more.

Ultra-processed foods are produced using handled substances extricated or refined from entire natural foods like oils, hydrogenated oils and fats, flours and starches, variations of sugar, and shabby parts or leftovers of creature nourishments—with practically zero whole foods. Items incorporate burgers, solidified pizza and pasta dishes, pieces and sticks, crisps, bread rolls, candy store, oat bars, carbonated and other sugared beverages, and different nibble items. Most are made, promoted, and sold by substantial or transnational companies and are extremely tough, satisfactory, and prepared to consume, which is a gigantic business advantage over crisp and perishable entire or negligibly handled processed foods. Therefore, their generation and utilization is rising rapidly worldwide. In the worldwide north, ultra-prepared items have to a great extent supplanted food industries and dietary examples in light of crisp and negligibly handled processed foods and culinary fixings that have less fat, sugar, and salt. In the worldwide south ultra-handled items are uprooting set up dietary examples, which are more appropriate socially and ecologically. Ultra-prepared items contain high amounts of energy (carbohydrates), have a high glucose load, are low in dietary fiber, micronutrients, and phytochemicals, and are high in unfortunate sorts of dietary fat, free sugars, and sodium. When devoured in little sums and with other sound wellsprings of calories, ultra processed items are safe; notwithstanding, extraordinary acceptability (accomplished by high substance fat, sugar, salt, and restorative and different added substances), ubiquity, and complex and forceful advertising procedures, (for example, lessened cost for super-estimate servings), all make unobtrusive utilization of ultra-prepared items improbable and uprooting of new or negligibly handled nourishments likely. These components likewise make ultra-handled items at risk to hurt endogenous satiety systems thus advance vitality overconsumption and consequently weight (Moodie). Even alcohol and tobacco companies intrigue their consumers with the same strategies as the food industry, and affect the body in just as many negative ways. Basically deteriorating the body more and more over time and consumption. The total cost of health crisis’s linked to unhealthy eating is approaching three hundred billon dollars per year. These industries are even making their products extremely affordable to attract low-income populations. 

Michael Hobbes, and editor and writer for the Huffington Post, explains how processed foods are completely different from society’s whole foods. He presents the point of “scale, speed, and shelf life.” Let’s say you’re making a new food product but you need to make a lot of it fast, and it has to sustain the same taste in every single batch. So, to optimize time of preparation you substitute normal levels of salt for example for large amounts to make the food cook faster. Also, it turns out to be substantially cheaper because herbs are 10 times more expensive than salt. Next is shelf life, all products have to travel across the country and then sit on a shelf until purchased. So preservatives are added to the product to make it look and taste as fresh as it would be on the first day of preparation; basically quadrupling it’s natural shelf life. Processed food isn’t bad for you because of the products, it’s bad for you because it’s “inherently industrial”. So what makes it okay to the food industry to do this? CAPTITALISM. Like everything our government does to us, it’s powered by money. You have a healthier product on the shelf, but it doesn’t taste as good so you get the unhealthier choice. Through capitalism, the producers can lower the prices of the more unhealthy and tasty product because they are selling more than enough products to accommodate. Processed food accounts for rougly one million dollars a year in sales. While the healthier choice that has a third of the amount of sugar has to sustain higher prices to accommodate for production. In a decision for promoting good health for their citizens, and gaining more profit, profit will always win. Hobbes states “Processed food companies are like drug addicts, promising ‘Next time it’ll be different, I promise.’(Hobbes).” Meaning that when people starting making a rage about specific products being way too unhealthy for the common good, they will change the ingredients temporarily. Then when profits start to decline, they will change back with out saying anything. The food industry is hoax, playing with the most important thing in life, one’s health. 

Michael Moss an investigative reporter for the New York Times wrote a book in 2014 revealing the real statistics of what’s in the food we eat and how the industry is making a mockery of its people. We consume roughly eight thousand five hundred milligrams of sodium per day, that is almost triple times the amount we are supposed to consume. Food manufacturers have altered salt’s physical structure to increase its allure. They now produce it in forty different grades, from powdered to pyramid shaped, each of which is specifically designed to send the strongest signals to the brain. Thus making your brain crave more and more, leading to over eating and addiction. Now, let’s move on to sugar. Concentrated fruit juices and stripped fruit are touted as “natural sweeteners” but have the same health impact as table sugar or high fructose corn syrup. The tip of the tongue isn’t the only spot that registers sweetness. In fact, we have “sugar detectors” in every last of our ten thousand taste buds, as well as our esophagus, all the way down to our stomachs. The receptors are all connected to the part of our brain known as the pressure zone- and the food giants are well aware of this. They manipulate the salts and sugars, to manipulate our taste buds and make us eat and want more. Eleven percent of our total calories come from saturated fat, which is the harmful kind of fat, far more than the recommended seven percent. Cheese is the largest source of saturated fat in the United States. Food manufacturers are fiddling with the structure of fat globules, affecting their absorption rates, and increasing the allure of the products by improving what is known in the industry as “mouth feel.” The food industry is literally mutating our food components to make sure they are happy and rich while we are unhealthy and poor. Each year, two hundred twenty thousand American citizens are desperate are desperate to loose weight and are going to extreme measure by having extremely invasive surgeries like gastric bypass (Moss). 

There are many scientists and nutritionists that don’t believe that processed foods are indeed bad for your health. In “Processed Foods… can be good for you?” Jennifer Huget, a writer for the Washington Post, claims that processed foods are necessary and beneficial for you. She argues that in excess nothing is good for your health, but if you ration how much processed products you consume you wont do detrimental things to your health. She also makes a claim that everything in the food industry is processed, so you just have to choose the choice with lower salt, sugar, and fat. I don’t understand how we have been subjected to choosing the lesser of the two evils for what we put in our bodies. Just saying that everything is processed, so it’s okay is just bowing down to the corrupt food industry. Nothing will ever change if we keep saying that it’s okay for them to abuse our money and times. Huget also claims that we couldn’t have a running food industry if we weren’t able to process our food. If everything is evolving in this world, cars, phones, architecture, people, fashion, etc., why can’t we find better ways to conserve and store our food? The industry won’t make an effort to find healthier options for its consumers because they care more about their profits. 

So, how do we change our eating habits and even know how to identify what is healthy? Look for average levels of sodium, salt, and sugar. Sara Miller, a staff writer and scientist, for Live Science wrote an article defining eleven ways processed foods are different from unprocessed foods. She explains that processed foods lack fiber. Fiber is a great stimulant for absorption and processing food in your gut. With out fiber, your body stores the fat and slows digestion. Look for high amounts of fiber in the nutrition labels. One obvious difference between processed foods and unprocessed is the lack of essential micronutrients, like vitamin C. Think of these micronutrients as little batteries for your body. There are very high amounts of emulsifiers in processed foods. Emulsifiers are chemicals that help keep nutrients and water in food. Your body struggles to digest these foods when there are a strong number of emulsifiers keeping them trapped. They also put people at risk for digestive tract disease, and food allergies. On top of high amounts of emulsifiers, processed goods have extremely high rates of nitrates. Nitrates are found in raw meats, and have been directly linked to colon cancer. The most obvious difference between natural and unnatural foods is the effects of too much salt, sugar, and fat. They greatly raise your risk of getting heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and lymphedema (Miller). You should try to avoid foods that have high amounts of these. Compare your choices to the organic version of what your looking for, and if you don’t want to get the organic version, at least find a healthier choice that has slightly lower amounts. 

In conclusion, processed foods are detrimental to our health, and the food industry is achieving it’s goal of getting more wealthy at the expense of people’s health. The food industry will continue to grow more and more wealthy and we will grow more and more unhealthy. If we do not do anything about this unhealthy living and obesity epidemic, we will literally eat the human race to death. We can link multiple common health risks to the mutated foods we put in our body, even cancer. It is when you decide you won’t give someone the ability to manipulate you and your brain that you will take a stand against the giant corporate bullies, our food industry. Most people don’t trust the federal government, so why trust the federal food industry when there is physical proof that they are doing detrimental things to our bodies and our foods. Processed foods are like a extremely bad drug that nobody seems to care about because it’s pleasuring. 
Root, Waverley, and Richard De Rochemont. Eating in America: a History. New
