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Industrialization and the Rise in Obesity
Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer…these are the leading causes of death in humans in the 21st century. We live longer than ever before in history, but the question is do we live better? Some would argue, as does Davis in The human story: Our History from the Stone Age to Today that due to industrialization, indeed we do live better. Davis claims, “We live longer and are healthier and probably happier than those who went before us.” (Davis, pp. 247) Others, including myself, contend that while industrialization of our food supply does make our lives easier, it has also made us sicker, thus compromising our quality of life, often making the time gained through a longer lifespan more difficult and eminently more expensive through higher medical costs. Both views hold some truth, but if we are to maximize both quality of life and life expectancy, we need to look to history objectively, sorting out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
Archeology shows us that our ancestors lived difficult lives fraught with danger. In an ‘eat or be eaten’ world, accident or injury was likely. Without knowledge of how to treat infection and without blood replacement capability, death was the likely outcome. Without an understanding of the etiology of disease, and little control over consistency and quality of nutritional content, pathogens also likely had free reign. The absence of things that modern humans take for granted, for instance dental health or adequate shelter, could be fatal for earlier humans. As populations grew sanitation became more important. Little understood pestilence emerged as a significant factor in mortality with the bubonic plague. Life has a 100% mortality rate, but there are historically a multitude of reasons why we often died young.
Eventually we learned to keep animals and save seeds for subsequent planting so that we might harvest a dependable crop…or at least more dependable, more often. The importance of clean water became apparent. Antibiotics were discovered. All of these factors and more would have contributed to a longer lifespan. With our food supply more predictable and our exercise requirements met by the expenditure required to produce said food, our health improved.
The move to an agrarian existence introduced more grains into our diet and because they stored well they would have allowed us to survive in lean times. Yet all the while, a ‘bigger, better, faster’ mindset was driving us toward industrialization where grains would supplant more nutritious foods.
Today, the obesity epidemic has forced us to focus on getting people active and reducing consumption as a solution to the problem. But this is in diametric opposition to industrialization which tries to produce more with less. The grains that would have saved lives in an earlier time may now have become a danger to our health. (Brasco, J., n.d.)
Because industrialization has been so successful in the endeavor to grow more food more cheaply, and we have the capability to store as well as transport goods quickly, we now eat more of foods that our bodies simply do not process well. Everywhere we turn the message is that the obesity problem is a simple matter of calories in/calories out, often with little said about what we eat, other than an admonishment to not eat ‘junk.’ Currently, there is an emphasis on getting kids to eat healthier and become more active. Unfortunately, this advice is not only too little too late, it doesn’t address the very root of the problem: the industrialization of our food has compromised nutrition from before those children are even born. If we trace the biggest health concerns of our day back to their origin, we invariably come back to industrialization in a number of ways.
Beginning at the beginning, maternal nutrition during pregnancy sets the stage for baby’s eventual adult health. A mother who eats a highly processed diet may well predispose her baby to diabetes and obesity. (Martin-Gronert, M., Ozanne, S. (2006).
Following this, we have inferior industrialized infant nutrition. Mammals are meant to consume milk from their own species. Human babies thrive on human milk. Adequate substitutes for mother’s milk were an important invention, no doubt allowing orphaned infants to survive in the absence of another lactating mother to provide the services of a wet nurse. However, industrialization of infant formula allowed widespread use so that formula replaced mother’s milk. Only 43% of babies are breastfeeding at 6 months (CDC, 2010) and only 23% at one year, even though the World Health Organization advises all infants be breastfed for two years and the American Academy of Pediatrics advising exclusively breastfeeding for 6 months, then at least one year or “as mutually desired”. (Merrill, K., 2001)
The result of substituting a perfect food with nutritional content specific to the child for which it was made (including antibodies protective against pathogens in that infant’s environment) with an inferior imposter is that children are sicker. Up to 900 U.S. children each year die from formula (Tanner, 2010)…not because of contamination (which happens) nor lack of access to clean water, as untold numbers of babies do in underdeveloped countries throughout the world. They die from illnesses that are a direct result of the contents of artificial milks.
For instance, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises against the use of cow’s milk until babies are older than one year of age. Not only is cow’s milk inadequate to a baby’s needs, it is made by a mother cow for a baby cow…born with 4 stomachs, weighing roughly 100 lb. at birth. Cow’s milk is actually the NUMBER ONE allergen in children, (More, 2007) and yet it is used in the top selling formulas.
Soy is used as an alternative to cow’s milk, even though a study at Cornell University, found
“…children who were fed soy-based formula had nearly three times the risk of developing autoimmune thyroid disease or other thyroid problems than their own siblings or other children not fed soy-based formula. Some experts believe that long-term exposure of soy formulas in infancy that lead to elevated TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) levels will increase the risk of thyroid cancer in adulthood.”
“Research has also indicated that children who are fed soy-based formulas in infancy will be more likely to develop an allergy to soy products later in adulthood. There is also evidence that the consumption of soy-based formula is linked to early onset of puberty and possible links to infantile leukemia.” (Lane, 2008)
What else is in infant formula? Besides factory-made vitamins and minerals, corn syrup and sugar are usually listed right after the main ingredient of water. (Truth in Labeling Campaign, 2004) This is just stuff to make it taste good, right? Can companies be faulted with trying to make a product that tastes good? I would have to say if it causes harm to babies, yes.
Then there are the unintended ingredients specific to industrial production practices, such as melamine, a contaminant that sickened thousands of babies in China, killing three. In the production of formula, melamine contamination is almost unavoidable because the machines that produce the formula are cleaned with it. Thus The FDA allows trace amounts because, "We think it's safe," Dr. Rauch says. "But the bottom line is that we don't really know, and zero would be best." (CBS News, 2008)
We THINK it’s safe? These are our babies!
From manufactured formula, most children in the U.S. move on to manufactured ‘baby food’, as if babies need an entirely different category of food. Before industrialization, parents just mashed up or chopped up the food they themselves were eating and shared with their babies. Now it comes pre-mashed and pre-chopped, but at a price, literally. A bag of frozen vegetables might cost $3.99 or less per 1 lb. bag. One jar of ‘baby food’ costs about $1.62, or about twice as much at 50 cents per ounce. The price difference doesn’t even consider the nutritional difference in the products. The pureed products have added fillers, salt and sugars. Looking at labels reveals that often it is wheat, soy and corn products that are used for these purposes. Again, these are in the list of top ten allergens. Also, occasionally we encounter contaminants due to the industrialization process, but it is the intentional ingredients and inferior quality of the product that are a bigger concern. Might it be that the reason so many people are allergic to soy, wheat and corn is that humans were not designed to consume them in any significant amount?
By the time children are going off to school, we are seeing the effects of industrialized junk food on their little bodies, but the error is to focus only on the foods they are consuming at that point. This may be the point at which we recognize the manifestation of obesity and what is called type 2 diabetes (instead of ‘adult onset diabetes, because we now see it in younger and younger children), but by this time advising parents to feed their children more wholesome foods and get them moving ignores that damage has already been done. Not that it’s ever too late to mitigate the damage, but prevention is obviously preferable.
The impetus behind the industrial revolution…cheaper, faster production…is a fine goal, providing the product is also better. ‘Better’ might be seen as a subjective term, but when it comes to our food, if the final product is nutritionally inferior to that which we are designed to consume, or actually damaging to our bodies, one would be hard pressed to find a way to justify using the term ‘better’ as a descriptor. As Joel Salatin comments in Food, Inc. (2008), “Everything we’ve done in modern industrial agriculture is to make it faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper. Nobody’s thinking about e-coli and type II diabetes and the ecological health of the whole system.” The emphasis is on the ‘cheaper’ and the ‘faster’ part. Again, according to Food, Inc., we end up with what, “…looks like a tomato [but] is actually a kind of ‘notional’ tomato…the idea of a tomato.”
Without integrity, transparency and accountability in our food processing, we end up with ‘food’ that looks like real food, but doesn’t act like real food. This is leading us into an epidemic of ‘metabolic syndrome’, which is the term that encompasses those leading causes of death mentioned earlier. With only a handful of corporations providing us with our food, there exists a David and Goliath situation that seems hopeless. However, there is much we can do.
On a personal level, I know that a program developed by Dr. A.T.W. Simeons in the 1950s can allay the symptoms of metabolic syndrome and restore balance to the body. Using this protocol, I dropped 80 lb. that had refused to budge for 20 years.
Once excess weight is gone and toxins are cleared from the system, the body seeks homeostasis, or balance. By supporting the body with that which is in line with our genetic predisposition, we can reclaim our health. To do this, we need to rethink everything we know that isn’t so about food.
We need to go back to the beginning once again, but this time way, way back. We go back to those ancestors that died young due to accident or illness…but not due to obesity. Mark Sisson provides a fictional biography for this ancestor in his book, The Primal Blueprint. His name is Grok. He is a hunter/gatherer. His physiology is designed for survival or we, his descendants, wouldn’t be here. He eats nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, roots when he can find them and meat when he can get it. He’s physically active, but he mostly walks, with some climbing, hauling and an occasional sprint if he’s being chased or is doing some chasing.
Sisson contends that it is the insulin response to our industrialized food, particularly the dominance of grains that, leads to our health issues. It’s not likely that anything that would elicit a heavy insulin response would be part of Grok’s life because of the energy investment that would be required to procure them, and then produce something edible from them…an investment all but eliminated with industrialization.
So, we move ahead a few thousand years from Grok’s time…to the industrial revolution. We move right past the advent of farming because it must be stated that becoming an agrarian society did not result in our current health crisis. As we learned to cultivate grains, there was still a lot of effort to grow and use them. Grains were easier to preserve than fresh foods and more consistent than wild game as a source of sustenance during the winter months, for instance. Keeping and breeding animals allowed for more stability for our protein sources, including eggs, milk products and meat. These factors began to help us become healthier, bigger, and more likely to survive. (Dougherty, 1998)
It wasn’t until industrialization, including widespread distribution capability, the scales started to tip (once again in a literal sense). Commodity crops…those that stored well and shipped easily like corn…became the foundation of the U.S. economy. Now, because of large multinational corporate interests, farmers are paid to over-produce corn. As stated in Food, Inc., most processed food consists of, “clever rearrangements of corn” because, “We produced a lot of corn, and they came up with uses for it.” The same situation exists with soy.
One problem with that is that a handful of companies own almost all of the corn and soy, and they are quietly replacing virtually all natural varieties with genetically modified versions. At this point in history, we have no idea what the long-term ramifications of that might be.
Thus, many doctors, Dr. Mercola (www.mercola.com) advise people to avoid ‘white’ (i.e. processed) foods like flour and sugar if they want to lose weight. Sisson goes a step further and puts forth a pretty good argument that even whole grains are not appropriate for our ‘primal blueprint’. In essence, he says that our food pyramid is based not on biology, but politics and wrong thinking and should be turned upside down. With the convergence of many works now exposing the dangers of the industrialization of our food, his work actually dovetails quite nicely.
While researching this work, I was asked if the industrialization of our food was a good thing, or a bad thing. I responded just as I have here: that it has led to horrible health consequences. At that time, it was argued that to say so ignored personal responsibility, but it absolutely does not. Yes, people can choose to eat unhealthy food. We are hardwired to desire fatty and sweet foods for our survival (Halliday, 2008) and the food industry is well aware of that. Are people really making informed decisions? Or are they manipulated by the industries that profit from keeping them ignorant? I would suggest the intentional use of our own biology against us for the profit requires accountability of those profiting.
We have seen that human beings can take a good idea and remove all common sense from the application of said idea. The discovery of antibiotics was good…over-use of antibiotics has led to the deadly consequence of antibiotic resistant bacteria like MRSA. The invention of the computer was good…the fact that computers can be used as a tool for malice is human nature. Yet we do not ignore that these are consequences of these abuses of technological advances. We do not just allow the abuses to become the norm. We educate people and we regulate the industries to the best of our ability. To say that the industries that create toxins that destroy our bodies have no culpability because they are just making products that people want is an argument that didn’t work for the tobacco industry, and it shouldn’t work for the food industry. The food industry uses very deceptive practices to hide what they don’t want us to know, although documentaries like The Future of Food are reaching people with the facts, thanks to the ubiquitous nature of the internet.
Making a profit is why businesspersons go into business, but should it be the bottom line when an epidemic of health consequences…obesity, diabetes and heart disease…are the result? Should they be allowed to make a dangerous product, not label it as such, and sell it to children through aggressive marketing so that by the time they possess the critical thinking skills (perhaps) to make a different decision, they are incapable of physically doing so because their bodies are already broken?
This is where I believe that industrial food production branches off from other industrialize manufacturing. Profit must not trump the health of our children…our future. If we are going to make it faster and cheaper, we must also demand it be made better.
Resources
Brasco, J., (n.d.) Low grain and carbohydrate diets treat hypoglycemia, heart disease, diabetes,
cancer and nearly ALL chronic illness. www.mercola.com
CBS News, (2008). Contaminated Baby Formula Fears Hit U.S.: The FDA Says Baby Formula
Contains A Deadly Chemical, But Swears The Amounts Are Safe. CBS Evening News. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/30/eveningnews/main4639081.shtml
CDC, (2010) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Breastfeeding FAQs.
http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/faq/index.htm
Davis, J., (2004). The human story: Our History from the stone age to today. Harper Perennial.
Dougherty, M. (1998). Why are we getting taller as a species? Scientific American. Retrieved
from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-are-we-getting-taller
Food, Inc., (2008). Retrieved from http://www.foodincmovie.com/
Halliday, J., (2008). Taste is a matter of survival, not just pleasure. Food Navigator. Retrieved
from http://www.foodnavigator.com/Science-Nutrition/Taste-is-a-matter-of-survival-not-just-pleasure
Lane, B., (2008). Should You Stay Away from Soy? The Dangers of Soy's Hormonal Effect on
Adults and Children. Retrieved from Suite101.com http://pregnancychildbirth.suite101.com/article.cfm/should_you_stay_away_from_soy
Martin-Gronert, M., Ozanne, S. (2006). Maternal nutrition during pregnancy and health of the
offspring. Biochemical Society Transactions, Volume 34, part 5. Pp. 779-782 http://www.biochemsoctrans.org/bst/034/0779/0340779.pdf
Merrill, K., (2001). Breastfeeding: How long is best? . Nutrition Bytes, 7(1). Retrieved from:
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fz0c2bp
More, D., (2007). Top 7 food allergies in children. About.com guide. Retrieved from http://allergies.about.com/od/foodallergies/tp/topfoodallergyc.htm
Tanner, L., (2010). Breast-feeding could save lives, money: Cost-analysis study shows profound
health benefits. Associated Press, retrieved from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36175184
Truth in Labeling Campaign, (2004). Infant formula: The Canadian study. Retrieved from
http://www.truthinlabeling.org/formulacopy.html
Sisson, M., (2009). The Primal Blueprint. Primal Nutrition, Inc.
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