We Are Not On A Diet!

Definition of Diet:

Diet: To eat according to prescribed rules; to ear sparingly.

“the doctor says he must diet”
“Anna and Matt won’t eat that, they’re on a diet.”
“I wish I had the discipline that you two have to always be on a diet.”
“I just love food too much, I could never diet like you do.”
We hear these phrases (or similar) all the time, and to be blunt, it drives us nuts. We are not on a diet. As the definition above implies, dieting is a temporary state of deprivation or eating according to rules to eat sparingly. After hearing the same old cliches multiple times in the past couple weeks, we decided to clarify how and why we eat a certain way. We promise we will be frank and very blunt with this article.

SAD: Standard American Diet

Our food system is a joke. Large multibillion dollar corporations make a ridiculous amount of money by processing subsidized agriculture products (corn, wheat, and soy) into hyper-palatable, high calorie, low nutrition junk food. Then they fund “studies” to influence the narrative that their junk food products are “part of a balanced diet.” The conclusions of these dubious studies are then carefully placed in media and social media and given favorable attention due to financial incentives (ie. paying for ad space on your favorite news programs). The result of this influence on society is that we have come to believe somehow that we need to continue eating a diet high in refined carbohydrates, refined fats, low fiber, low nutrition, and low protein. (After all, it’s all part of a ‘balanced diet’). Take a stroll through your local grocery store and ask yourself why there is so much shelf space devoted to ultra processed foods compared to the minuscule amount of shelf space devoted to real food (unprocessed meats and produce).

What Are The Results of This?

For the large food corporations, the results couldn’t be any better! According to their annual reports for 2023 Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca Cola, Tyson Foods, and General Mills generated 95 billion, 89 billion, 43 billion, 53 billion, and 19 billion in revenue respectively.

Contemplate those numbers for a few minutes, and ask how they were able to generate such a huge amount of money in a single year? It’s simple, they take cheap subsidized raw food products (corn, wheat, and soy) and process it into “food” that tastes incredibly good and is (at the risk of sounding alarmist) addictive. Yes, we said addictive. These foods are engineered and tested with focus groups to see not how nutritious they are, but rather whether or not they elicit an addictive response. Don’t believe us? Think about Lays potato chips famous tagline of, “Bet you can’t eat just one.” They know that the product they’re making is addictive and they don’t care.

What are the results for us? Simple. Lifestyle related chronic illness. According to the CDC, 42.4% of Americans are classified as obese and having a body mass index greater than 30. If trends continue in this direction, it is estimated that by 2030 over half of all Americans will be classified as obese.

Once again, according to the CDC, these rising obesity trends are strongly correlated with rises in heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, and other chronic illness.

Don’t Worry Though, Big Pharma’s Got Your Back

Just like our food system, our health care system is also a joke. Our health care system (largely led by insurance and pharmaceutical companies) does little more than “manage” symptoms of chronic disease. The average American changes jobs every 3 to 5 years, which means we are likely switching insurance policies each time we change jobs. Then, when we hit the age of 65, we become medicare’s problem. If we are constantly switching health insurance companies, then ultimately getting passed off to medicare, why would a health insurance organization reimburse doctors based on outcomes such as eliminating and curing chronic disease when it is cheaper and more profitable to treat the symptoms? Have you ever heard of a “PBM” or “spread pricing?” I strongly recommend looking up what those are and doing a deep dive to understand how it is that insurance companies actually make money off of you being on a prescription drug.

A study conducted by researchers at Penn State University and published in the journal “Demography” in October 2023, found that most American men begin taking prescription drugs chronically at the age 40 and most women begin at age 15. On average, a male born in 2019 will spend 48% of their life taking a pharmaceutical drug, while the average woman born in the same year will spend 60% of her lifetime taking them.

The CDC estimates that obesity related illness exceeds costs of $170 billion annually in the U.S. and that the majority of lifestyle related illnesses in this country are preventable and reversible through lifestyle changes.

No, We’re Not On A Diet

Given that our food system profits off of making Americans addicted to food like substances that serve to only wreck our health, then we fall into a health care system that is incentivized by profiting off of lifestyle related chronic illness, we make conscious decisions about how we eat and live our lives to avoid both of these systems.

We eat unprocessed meat, vegetables, fruits, starchy carbs like sweet potatoes and other tubers, and we exercise 2-4 days per week doing combinations of strength training and aerobic exercise like running and walking (lots of walking). We do this because this gives us the best chance (not guarantee) that we will avoid the number one cause of bankruptcy and loss of quality of life as we age; loss of health.

It isn’t a diet, it isn’t a “lose 40 pounds in 12 days” scam, it isn’t a multilevel marketing program that loads us up with tons of unnecessary supplements, it is a simple evidence based approach that puts the control of our health and what we eat in our hands. Not the hands of some nameless, faceless corporation.

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