What Impact Does The Food Industry Have On Our Health? | What We Eat Documentary | Episode 6

If this was the world population, these people would suffer from hunger, these would be affected by obesity, these would be overweight and these would suffer from an eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia. In short, half of the world population today has a relationship with food that increases the risk of developing malnutrition-related diseases. In fact, almost half of the premature deaths in the world are somehow related to what we eat. In addition to hunger, which today causes 150 million more people to suffer than in 2019, the current trend is obesity. In Italy, the latest data report that one in three children is overweight or frankly obese. And since we have programs to monitor and measure obesity, the prevalence of obesity has always been increasing, both in Italy and in Europe. In recent years, it has increased dramatically in all countries of the world, with the exception of some African and South Asian countries. Today, in Europe, more than one in two overweight and almost one in three suffer from obesity. We've probably provided too much food and created obesity, but yet we haven't gotten it distributed in such a way that we've eliminated hunger and malnutrition. In all this, from 2000 to 2018, the incidence of food disorders increased from 3.5 to 7.8% Now, when we talk about a bad relationship with food, we often focus on the responsibilities of individual individuals. But there is an important question to ask ourselves. What impact does the food industry have on our health? In the collective imagination, malnutrition is something that only concerns countries with economic difficulties, but in reality it is not so. Even in the richest ones, especially in the suburbs of a large metropolis, it is easy to find those who have no access to healthy and nutritious food. Even in an economic superpower like the United States, you know, between 10 and 20 percent of the population is food insecure. That seems inexcusable to me. We flew to California to tell the paradox why, a few kilometers away, there are people who suffer from diseases related to their diet for completely different reasons. In the United States, as in other parts of the world, there are places that are called food deserts. It was a term that came out of interviewing people who lived in a neighborhood that lacked fresh, healthy food. A food desert is not necessarily a place where food is lacking, but where healthy food is lacking at reasonable prices. According to the estimates of the US government, about 23 million Americans live in a food desert. Why is it that we see higher rates of obesity and diabetes in certain zip codes than in others? Partially it has to do with the access that people have to food. Three quarters of American adults are overweight or obese, and there's no major public health effort to try to reverse that or to prevent it from getting any greater. Apartheid is what? You have one group of people that control everything, and of course there's another group of people who are the oppressed people. If you blindfolded me right now and told me where I was, I know every little nook and cranny in South Oak Park. And so what ends up happening is that it's divested of resources. There's one grocery store about maybe a mile and a half from here. Anywhere else that you go in the neighborhood, you're going to find a corner store. Yeah, I used to come here when I was young. This used to be called Sam's Market, it's now called Hi and Buy Liquor. So you couldn't tell from the sign that you're going to be getting any fresh fruit and vegetables. Back when I was young, and it was up to me to go to the store and grab something out of the store to eat. Back then, so I'd probably get me a Pepsi Cola. Probably get two of these. I would probably get the bean and cheese. I was more of a bean and cheese type of guy, so I'd get the bean and cheese burritos. I would probably then scoot my behind over here to the grocery store. Find the canned stuff, and it depends, you know. If I knew my mom was coming home, I would probably go ahead and be like, yeah, let me grab these peas and carrots. I would do those, and then that would be it. You know, of course, got to have your Spam. I grew up with Spam. We looked at every corner of the store to see if there were any fresh fruit or vegetables. But nothing. The only fruit that you're going to get is in a can, and it's going to have a bunch of sugar in it. Welcome to my neighborhood. The food industry loves ultra-processed foods because they're enormously profitable. There is now an astonishing amount of research in the last 10 years that relates consumption of diets that are high in ultra-processed foods to poor health outcome. I mean, they have targeted advertising campaigns. They make sure that these products are widely available in low-income areas and make it as easy as possible for people to buy them. But it's not just a problem across the ocean. McDonald's, one of the many fast-food chains, grossed $23 billion in 2022, a much higher figure than the domestic economy of many countries in the world. We've heard about these things all our lives. In fact, we might think we've become immune to these marketing strategies. In reality, these techniques are not limited to the food we perceive as junk, but also to what seems healthy to us. Returning to California and traveling a few kilometers, we arrive in one of the most central neighborhoods in San Francisco. And there we find an offer of fresh fruit and vegetables at every corner. But if we look closely, we also see that there are a lot of ultra-processed products that are sold at a hefty price. Lots of people think that organic means healthy, but an organic junk food is still a junk food. And for those who can afford to spend money on food, there are always new things that, like mirrors for the bones, promise the impossible. The food industry has gotten involved in the attempt to control weight, to change their body, always proposing very simple solutions, proposing, from time to time, the demonization of various nutrients. Thus, diets have become more and more popular, turning into real religions. First, there was the time of Atkins, then of Dukan. Immediately after, there was Paleo. Now we are in the age of keto. But on the shelves of supermarkets, we find everything necessary to be able to undertake this diet without the help of a professional. It all started in the 1800s in England. At that time, with colonialism, came the novelty of exotic foods and with them the idea that they could be miraculous. Anyone who has control of the range of those products sees the possibility of getting rich. All you have to do is convince people that that food, for them, will be the turning point. This is how tips such as chewing tobacco, drinking shilla vinegar, water with fennel, or even eating a soap every night begin to circulate. Shortly after, between the 1800s and the 1900s, the object that will forever change the relationship with our body The scale. A brand calls it Healthometer. Another claims that its scale tells the truth. In the same period, two other things come up. Mass media, which create the iconography of the perfect body, therefore muscular men and slender women. And the concept of calories, introduced by the American Wilbur Atwater, which leads to the demonization of fats because fat is more caloric than carbohydrates and proteins. It is derived by a generation obsessed with weight, shape and fats. Thus, the food industry begins to remove fat from food products, replacing it with sugar, starch and salt. And the first without in history begins. But as John Yudkin, the scientist, already noted, in 1974, the solution ends up making the problem worse, with obesity rates and chronic diseases rising more and more. A war between sugars and fats breaks out, and in the course of the 20th century, but still today, it revolves around the advice of diets that demonize fats and diets that demonize sugars and carbohydrates, piloted by associations of producers who want to defend their products. Well, the food industry is not a social service agency. It's not a public health agency. It pays for its own research to demonstrate that its products are wonderful for health or not bad for health. A striking example was found a few years ago in a series of letters from the 1960s exchanged between the Sugar Research Foundation and some researchers at Harvard. The letters revealed that the Foundation of Sugar Producers had paid the equivalent of about 5 million dollars a day for a study from which the question was designed precisely to minimize the correlation between sugar consumption and heart disease and to shift attention to fats. The declaration of conflicts of interest was not yet mandatory, so researchers did not disclose information about the funding of the study, which many took as legitimate. The sugar industry, then, has funded so many studies on dental caries that focused on the effects of anything but sugar that the carie prevention programs have not mentioned sugar for decades. Using distorted research, the industry has even managed to position sugar as a dietary aid to counteract obesity. Between piloted research and baseless advertising campaigns, consumers are increasingly confused. I think we're overloaded with information and mixed messages coming from different sources and just a limited ability to process it all amidst all of the other information flowing about. What we learn right away is that there are thousands of diets that we have to try and get to know them all. And there will definitely be a better one after the last one we did. It's not like that. But a confused consumer is more comfortable than an informed one. It's easy for us to look at our own lives or those of people near us and say, oh, they could avoid buying that. And that may be true for a lot of people, but if we look at the totality of society and the amount of economic inequality that exists, we have to remind ourselves that there are a lot of people who can't make empowered consumer choices. By the time my parents were in their 30s, 40s, they had both had cancer at some point. Breast cancer, lung cancer, whatever the situation is. And so, of course, the doctor's conversation with me is that you're probably at a risk for cancer. Why? Because you have two parents, genetics. But there's these other things that you have that you pass down to your children, they're called habits. He didn't have the time or the means to change his eating habits, but he knew he had to do it if he wanted to reduce the chances of getting sick. He didn't know where to start or what to do. But with the financial crisis of 2008, he decides to take a step in a new direction. He leaves his job and builds a garden in the garden of his house. So then I said, okay, and I just had a quarter acre, and I was like, okay, I'm going to start growing some food. Together with his wife, he starts growing fruit and vegetables. Today, it's a garden that would envy anyone, with fruit trees, olives, and free-range chickens. Your job, as the farmer, the gardener, whatever, is to cooperate to create the best environment for these things to grow. You take care of the soil, the plants will take care of themselves, and you'll eat abundantly. Today, Kanok produces enough food in his garden to provide his family with a healthy and balanced diet, which he would not have had access to if he hadn't traveled a long way. And over the years, he realized that growing food could also be a way to help the community he lives in. We decided to then start the Israel Family Farm and start this idea of transforming the hood for good. There's got to be a process where you're educating people. That's why it was so important for us to not only just grow food, but then cook it. With people, with families, together, so they can not only see what's going on with cooking food and eating good food, but the whole idea of everybody being in the same room, slicing up vegetables, talking, having a good time, laughing. And this project seems to be working. Now people can look at it and say, I can now see myself potentially doing something like that. Taking back the right to eat healthy food is an important step that requires time and money that not everyone can afford. We don't have time. You know, that's what most people say. We don't have time. We have to work. We have to do all these different things. And as a result, we're not able to cook the things that we need to cook. So it's convenience foods. In the California food deserts, it's not just about trying to change things. Cooperatives have started to appear that take care of the food supply for their neighborhood, like Mandela in West Oakland. The same people that are working in the organization are also members of the organization, and we co-own it together. We make all the decisions about the products that we want to see in the store. So that's a very powerful solution, the cooperative model. But that would require the federal government to then think about preferentially funding cooperative models, which happens in some countries like Italy, but does not yet quite happen in the United States. I think it's important that we recognize our power as citizens as well, because these problems will not get solved entirely through our consumption choices. Large soda companies don't want those taxes to be passed. So a few years ago, they did a deal with the state legislature which banned other cities in California from passing a soda tax. I mean, I think we need an agricultural production system that is focused on public health rather than corporate health. I'm not against corporate profits. I'm against greed. I just don't think they need to be greedy. You really only need about 3% of the population to be willing to stand up and fight for something to make that change, which, on the flip side, lets you know how much apathy is just pervasive. I took responsibility for myself and then started the work on the immediate environment around me. And then, from that point, I was able to then say, OK, this is what we're going to push into the community. We've got a big society out here and I think that we can plant those seeds.