An article came out in the New York Times recently titled The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, by Michael Moss. The article is about a book that discusses the systematic addiction to unhealthy “foods” in the past couple of decades.
An interesting part of this is that this technology was originally created for a good purpose; in order to get our troops to eat the food that they were given. Food that had to survive in war zones. Non-perishable food. The same technology, however, has since been applied to testing and developing snack foods for the express purpose of addicting people to these foods.
Junk foods contain elevated amounts of high-temperature heated fats and oils, salt, sugar, and other chemicals that we now know are really bad for our health. It’s most interesting that food industry has, starting with a good purpose, evolved to producing foods that are generally harmful for the population.
Even more interesting is the fact that these companies are operating not only according to the law, but are obligated legally to produce the maximum income for their wealthy shareholders, but with very little legal responsibility to the actual people eating the food, which is marketed especially to children and to people of lower socio-economic status. So, we have created a completely legal monster in society that satisfies our deepest food cravings and also our financial cravings.
Unfortunately, the effects of these foods are leading our entire nation to poor house because we can no longer afford the cost of so much diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other junk food-related illness. Not to mention skin diseases like acne. Because of this, we’ve created an amazingly “free” society, which has essentially set itself up to self-desctruct.
No longer simply a physical disease, this is also a social and cultural disease, and the solution lies in us educating one another as well as finding pleasure in foods that make us feel great and not just taste good for a few moments.
What if this same technology were applied to make healthy foods more appealing?
To your Health,
Dr. Dattner
