Getting hooked on unhealthy foods

The more I learn, the more I become scared of the food that I ingest on a daily basis.  If it’s not tainted meat brain disease and GMO rat tumors, it’s the way the food industry manages to get away with so much without having to inform us, the people who eat the food, of what may or may not be healthy.  It doesn't make sense to me that cigarettes, which are consumed by only a small portion of the population, require warnings on the packs while food, which is consumed by everyone, does not.

I recently stumbled across an article on NPR that talks about a book that addresses the way the food industry uses three key ingredients - salt, sugar and fat - to get people hooked on their products via natural response.  In nature, the human body has been traditionally unable to acquire these three foods in regular quantities.  Therefore, the body adopted a policy of cravings when it comes to them.  Of course, now that they are widely abundant all over the country and at any time of the year, we can have what we want and when we want it.  We cannot, unfortunately, shut down our body’s natural desire to consume them en masse.

Since the food industry knows this, they’re more than happy to use it to their advantage.  Their crack teams of food-scientists get together and figure out the best ratio of the three to add in order to make their products more desirable.  If they hit the magic mark, then people devour what they have to offer.  Anyone who’s sat down with a box of Cheez-Its and tried to stop munching them after just a few handfuls knows the truth of this.

What’s more, the way this goes down is incredibly reminiscent of the illegal dealing of drugs.  The body is, in essence, used as a tool to get the person using a certain product over and over.  While soda withdrawals may not be of the same intensity as withdrawals from something like heroine, the very fact that there are no intense effects makes it that much easier for people to consume large quantities of soda without giving it a second thought.  And if you can get a five-year-old drinking Coke, then it’s much more likely that they’ll keep drinking it into their later years, whether it’s going to give them diabetes or not.

It boils down to a case of companies once more looking at profits over people.  As long as you’re willing to turn the other cheek and look away, you can compromise the health of an entire nation and come out rich in the process.  People can and should make their own decisions, of course, but what kind of proper decisions can we make when the information about those decisions is intentionally kept from us in the name of profits?

Sugar and Salt photo courtesy of Paul Goyette via Wikicommons