I’m going to start with a very bald but to me, obvious, statement – the food industry does not exist to provide you with nutritious food and the pharmaceutical industry does not exist to make you better.
Big Food and Big Pharma exist for one reason and one reason only – to make boat loads of money. It doesn’t make them the devil incarnate and his pitchfork-carrying wife. In fact, your pension fund might well rely on them making boat loads of money. They’re just businesses and that’s what businesses are there for, to make money for shareholders. All it means is that you need to understand what they do and what your relationship is to them.
You can start from a truly cynical and conspiracy theorist perspective if you like. At least that way, you’re more likely to question what needs to be questioned rather than taking their disingenuous health marketing claims at face value. So you could consider that Big Food is there simply to stuff you as full as possible for as long as possible with cheap, ultra processed, addictive food-like substances that make maximum profit and contribute to the development of a wide range of chronic illnesses, which then leads you seamlessly into the welcoming arms of Big Pharma, who can put you on a growing range of lovely profit-making pills for the rest of your life. Bingo, financial objective achieved for both. Anyone would think they’ve had a chat and worked it all out….
I mean, realistically, that’s probably a bit too cynical, even for me. But be under no illusion – Big Food has some of the world’s cleverest scientists coming up with the next super-palatable, super-profit-making, super-addictive food-like substance, that hits all the bliss points of the average Western taste bud. Ping, ping, kerching!
But therein lies the key, the road map out of UPF town. Did you know that the cells of your taste buds replace themselves every 10 days? No, I didn’t either, until the very first lecture of the very first module of my health coaching diploma course some time ago, and it was a bit of a lightbulb moment.
So whatever your poison, be it Doritos, Big Macs, Jaffa Cakes or Pot Noodles (other ultra-processed food-like substances are available), you can actually train your taste buds to find them relatively revolting. And then you won’t want them, and that’s a big win for your health.
If you want healthy longevity – healthspan is the term for it - start with eating real food. Challenge yourself to buy only single ingredient foods for 2 weeks, and cook a bunch of meals; have an apple and a piece of cheese for a snack; eat some nuts; have a steak and salad for dinner; bake a proper potato instead of having oven chips. By the end of it, your taste buds will already literally have been renewed. And then try one of your go-to unhealthy meals or snacks. I can almost guarantee you will be able to taste the artificial rubbish in there and even if you don’t yet find it revolting, the sheen will definitely have worn off it.
And then you’re on your way. Before you know it, you’ve read Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken, which I honestly think should be compulsory reading for any human who feeds themselves, and you’re checking the ingredients in every supermarket food for the stuff that you know is no good for you. You’re swooning at the glorious taste of an organic tomato with a bit of celtic sea salt on or a homemade scone slathered in grass-fed butter, eating 3 delicious nutritious meals a day and not even thinking about snacks in between.
You’re back at your fighting weight and in one fell swoop, your risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and any number of different cancers has dropped like a stone, and Big Pharma is getting twitchy at the loss of a potential new customer.
Imagine how cross it would make the Big Pair if everyone did that. And how happy it would make hard-working farmers when demand for fruit, vegetables, meat and cheese went through the roof. Not going to lie, it would certainly make me smile.
Hey, if you fancy spending an hour or two of your life finding out more about this, and properly angering yourself into action (if that’s the kind of thing that motivates you like it does me!), check out this Tucker Carlson interview with Casey and Calley Means. Casey is a Stanford educated surgeon and functional medicine doctor and her brother Calley is a Harvard educated former food & pharma lobbyist, so they know what they’re talking about.
And if you are looking for help & support to get your own health back on track, you can always book a free discovery call with me to explore whether health coaching might be a productive course of action.
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