How the Food Industry Deceives You
Why processed foods dominate the market while meat is vilified
This may be shocking news to some, but the food industry doesn’t have your health interests in mind. At all.
“People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.”
― Wendell Berry
Big food companies are (you guessed it) businesses. Their business is making money selling consumers edible food-like products. They aren’t doctors or nutritionists, and they certainly did not swear a Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. They are beholden to their shareholders to make profit, and they’re very good at it.
Most people reading these words understand this concept, yet most of the general public does not. My point I’m trying to get across today is that THE PROFIT’S IN THE PROCESSING. If more people understood this, things like the backwards nutrition recommendations propagated by everyone from the USDA to your family doctor would finally make sense. And once you know why there’s such a push for these profitable plant-based foods, you’ll understand why there’s such a large, coordinated effort demonizing meat.
Big Food’s plan:
1) Realize that selling whole foods barely provides a profit
2) Instead, take whole foods and process them by adding sugar, refined grain, and vegetable oils
3) Make 10x profits
4) Use that money to brainwash the masses with billions of dollars of advertising, fast food restaurants on every corner, and processed food in every grocery aisle
5) Fund studies and dietitian schools to continue the misinformation
6) Call meat and real-food, species-appropriate diets harmful, dangerous, and a fad
7) Sell more products and feed the cycle further
Make sense?
The Profit’s in the Processing
I own a business called Nose to Tail where we sell sustainably and ethically raised grass finished meat, so I’m acutely aware of how selling whole foods works. I barely make a profit on this venture. Most of it goes to the long and expensive process of raising the animals, butchering and preparing the meat, and getting it to the consumer. After looking back at my first year of operation I realized why 99% of people start companies that make processed foods. I’m even talking about the keto-approved processed foods. I do agree those are better because they eschew the sugar, refined grains, and seed oils, and I do have them on occasion, but they still follow the same playbook. Get cheap processed ingredients, package it, and sell it for a big markup.
This is really the foundation of the plant-based movement (along with the animal rights angle). The industrially grown cereal crops and other plant foods have the longest shelf life and the most profit margin. They also happen to be extra delicious with the right combination of sugar, fats, salts, and flavorings. Once the ball got rolling with this industry, it was impossible to stop. High profits led to more products, more food scientists to make them irresistible and hit that bliss point, more money to spend on advertising, more money to fund research studies to further their agenda, and more money to pay for lobbyists to perpetuate the industry and favorable regulations.
To fund the big machine that is Big Food, it was very necessary to fund most of the studies that attempt to show their food products are healthy. Some great examples of this are detailed in an article from the Nutrition Coalition. They mention Barilla, one of the largest packaged pasta companies, spending “$400,000 on external research to influence global nutrition policy” in 2016. If you’d like to go down this rabbit hole there’s a long exposé here.
The final piece of the puzzle seems to be demonizing meat. If red meat and saturated fat are bad, then you need to get your calories and protein from other sources. Now there’s a multibillion dollar fake meat industry claiming to save your health and the environment at the same time. There’s been an incessant push towards plant-based foods, whole grains, reducing meat, less fat, etc. for decades. In my opinion, this is all a well-coordinated strategic attack. I really don’t think all these companies and organizations have the planet or health of the soil in mind. If they did, all the money, messaging, and focus would be on regenerative agriculture.
But it’s not. It’s about getting you to fear meat and fat and eat their human kibble. It really just comes back to that giant money-making machine.
Is there a way to fix this?
The short answer is; not really. As a nation (and world) we can vote with our dollars and buy more whole foods. This will help, and should slowly make a difference. However, educating the public en masse on this is a monumental task. There’s really no amount of education that can disrupt this cash machine.
We can try to legislate it, but that brings more problems and is also extremely hard and slow. If we start taxing packaged foods because they’re unhealthy, what happens when the notoriously backwards and scientifically feeble-minded officials try to tax red meat because of false claims it is unhealthy as well? Until the profits and incentives (somehow) move to real foods, we’ll always be screwed. This means something like carbon sequestration incentives where farmers are paid to get carbon back in the soil (although like all regulations, this could turn out to be ineffective and abused). Or better yet, subsidizing regenerative agriculture practices instead of corn, wheat, and soy.
The best thing you can do personally is to move outside of the system. This means taking your health into your own hands, as well as changing your food buying habits. It means buying meat directly from ranchers. It means exercising, getting Vitamin D from safe sun exposure, getting enough sleep, and all the other aspects of a Sapien Lifestyle. It leads to greater health and improving your immune system so much that you likely will barely get sick anymore or need to see a doctor. That’s what I and so many others in the community are experiencing.
Take the profit out of the processing
Once you make these changes, you’ll take the money out of their hands, and put it into your pocket. Many times the packaged foods can be more expensive than whole foods because a lot of the work has been done for you. They are handy and fill up your stomach, but don’t contain nearly the amount of nutrition. Skipping a lot of the restaurant meals will also save you a lot of money. By cooking yourself meals with foods from local farms it might seem like you’re spending more, but this probably isn’t true when you add everything up. You’ll likely also find you don’t have the need to snack and can save on many little things that can add up like expensive coffee.
If you’re dedicated to living this lifestyle, you’ll probably also avoid most of the chronic diseases so many people living the modern Westernized lifestyle suffer from. This adds up to tens of thousands of dollars in savings in the long run, not to mention all the wasted time and suffering. If you add all this in, it’s easy to see the cost benefits of embracing animal foods & whole foods while avoiding all the packaged stuff.
Once you start living like this, you’ll soon enjoy it more and more and wonder how you got by previously. If you also avoid watching mainstream news and seeing all the advertisements, you’ll soon be completely out of the Big Food system (and probably be a lot happier in general). You’ll be living a long & healthy life like a Homo sapien should!
Brian