You May Never Eat Processed Foods Again After Watching This | Dr. Mark Hyman

Ultra-

processed

foods

are the number one cause of death in the world today. This is not my opinion. This comes from the global burden of disease study of 195 countries. The data is very clear. There is too much garbage and not enough real food. This is my opinion. friends, the new smoking, ultra-

processed

foods

are the new cigarettes and we're going to talk about why welcome to Doctor's Pharmacy, I'm Dr. Mark Heyman and that's the pharmacy with a place for conversations that matter and

this

conversation on today's special episode of Health Bites. This will matter to all of you because

this

is one of the most powerful and powerful destructive forces in humanity today and what I'm talking about is ultra-processed foods and we're going to get into what's why it's important.

We should be concerned about the conditions it causes and how to avoid them because these are my friends, the new smoking and processed foods are the new cigarettes and we are going to talk about why the question is what does processed foods alter and what doesn't, So let's talk about what exactly are ultra-processed foods? What are the features? How do we define them well? There is something called Nova classification. I'll get to that in a moment, but essentially it's deconstructed food. Basically, raw materials are taken from things like corn, wheat and soybeans. They are chemically deconstructed in a laboratory, they are all structurally altered so that in reality they do not have the same chemical structure and our body remembers that it receives messages from the external environment and regulates this biology through chemical signals that depend on the structure and shape. of the molecule to create a signal in the body. that does good or bad, this is really important, so these are strange Franken molecules and then they become food-like substances, they come in all colors, sizes and shapes of built chemistry, basically, now they are super energy dense, in general.

They are high in calories, have virtually no nutritional value, usually high in sugar. I mean, they may have added vitamins. You know, you get your cereal or Froot Loops with added vitamins. Well, that's not exactly a healthy food, they're high in sugar. they can come from different sources high fructose corn syrup dextrose malted dextrin cane sugar fructose there are a million different names for sugar, you can google it and you will see, we will link to all the different types of sugar names, but they hide the sugar names on the label, so you get confused, it doesn't just say sugar, it's also high refined grains, so they are highly pulverized grains, mostly wheat, that are chemically altered and don't look like their original form and maybe they are made of corn or wheat. of beans such as soybeans are also high in unhealthy fats, usually trans fats, are still found on the

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et, refined oils, etc., often contain excess salt, are very tasty, it is easy to overeat, They are low in fiber, generally low in protein. low in vitamins and minerals so all the things you need to thrive they don't have, they also tend to raise blood sugar a lot and also don't make you feel full so people who eat ultra-processed foods They eat 500 more calories a day.

Today, this was a controlled study in the nor with Kevin Hall with really impressive data, so basically the people who were allowed to eat whole foods versus ultra-processed foods as much as they wanted, those who ate foods ultra-processed ate 500 more calories a day, 3500 calories a day. week that's one pound per week if you keep doing that all year long that's 52 pounds of weight gain any year so what are examples of ultra-processed foods? Well, it's chips, crackers, pretzels, candy, microwave, popcorn,

never

eat those muffins, donuts, sandwich breads, cookies. flavored yogurts puddings gelatin breakfast cereal granola bars things with added sugar food colorings natural artificial flavors colorants preservatives gums emulsifiers oh, really, it's a lot of things, so don't eat anything other than ready-to-eat foods instant noodles and soups Frozen TV dinners can be ravioli, pasta, packaged meal kits, unpleasant unless made with whole foods, processed meat and dairy,

again

, we eat a lot of these things, hot dogs, deli meats, fish fingers, which we don't even I know what they are, they are often not fish. chicken nuggets most chicken nuggets have like 30 five ingredients, only one of which is chicken, slices of processed cheese, you're not even allowed to call them cheese because it's not really cheese, not even 51% cheese, milks flavored spreads, non-dairy drinks, coffee creamers, various proteins.

The shakes you have have to be careful with isolated soy proteins, deconstructed soy, potentially cancerous, so we're careful with that flavor, so it says soy, a soy shake and that can be very bad for you. Tasting or sweet nut milks can often be problematic. to look at what's in them and of course sugary drinks, sodas, lemonade, iced tea, soft drinks, fruit drinks, punches, energy drinks, flavored coffees, all of this is just disgusting, so you want to stay away from that when it comes to a healthy diet we hear these terms a lot ultra-processed foods processed foods most people have no idea what they are and I think it takes a little education to understand how to navigate this landscape of processed and ultra-processed foods.

Now what does it mean? Let's talk about processed foods. Difference between ultra-processed foods and other types of processed foods, for example Doritos versus sardines, they are both processed but very different in their effect on your biology. I know one is worse than the other. How can we know the difference we are going to get? In short, that part of the problem today is that most people need a PhD to understand nutritional labels and many must fall into the trap of convenience and just get whatever looks good to them or whatever package looks like it will be healthy and there's basically a health claim on the label, you think it's good for us, but that's basically one of my eating rules.

If it has a health claim it's not good for you, in other words gluten free or sugar free chips, this when it says something bad is always added so these are made with great foods to draw you in and leave you engrossed and trapped as a result of that, we have a nation and a world increasingly where more than half of the calories come from this hyper palatable. easy to overeat Ultra processed foods as a substance and if you look at the definition of food, food is something that supports growth and life, the truth is they don't, by definition they are not food, just look it up in the dictionary if you can convince me. that these things are food, good luck because they are not and they do not meet any definition of what food should be and essentially it is a substance that helps support life and growth and Ultra Process Hoots do not, in fact they do not they do it.

On the contrary, I am not making these things up. There is an amazing study. It is an observational study, but it is a very well done study. A news story was recently published in the British medical journal. They analyzed 45 different pooled meta-analyses involving 10 people. million people, the hook here is that these were studies that were not funded by ultra-processed food companies. You know, you may have heard me talk the other day about artificial sweeteners and how there's a big study that showed that artificial sweeteners aren't harmful at all, but when you look at the fun part of the study, it was the American Beverage Association ( (formerly known, my friends, as the American Soft Drink Association), we clearly need to look at data that is not corrupt, and when you look at the studies funded by the food industry, there are eight of them. up to 50 times more likely to show a positive impact for their food product, whether it's dairy or artificial sweeteners or whatever, and when they looked at the data from this big met analysis, I looked at people who were eating higher amounts of ultra-processed foods, There was a 50% increase in the risk of cardiovascular death.

There was a 48 to 53% increase in the risk of anxiety and other mental health disorders such as depression. Now consider that the risk of heart disease, heart attack, and mental illness is the same from eating Ultra. processed foods, we understand that you know these foods can cause obesity, diabetes and heart disease, but the mental health crisis is also driven by these Ultra processors. We did a whole episode about this. I think it's really important that you go back and listen to it. We'll link to it in the show notes, there's also an increased risk of type two diabetes and many other conditions that many conditions go through, autoimmune diseases, inflammatory disorders, evidence also showed that there was a link between ultra-processed foods and a higher risk of death. from any cause and a 40 to 66% increased risk of heart disease-related deaths obesity to diabetes sleep problems and a 22% increased risk of depression we are seeing this mental health crisis obesity crisis diabetes crisis heart disease crisis autoimmune crisis I mean the list goes on, chronic diseases are the number one driver of our healthcare spending, it's the number one driver of death globally, why is this happening?

We

never

had these problems. You know, I saw something on Instagram the other day, there was a video from a movie from the '30s and there wasn't a single overweight person in the entire video of people walking around New York. A big change from then to now and this has led to the epidemic of chronic diseases driven by these ultra-processed foods that we're going to get into. Let's dive deeper into this topic and learn how we begin to determine what ultra-processed foods are, what we should avoid, and hopefully, maybe we'll live in a day when food labels are clear.

I'm working on that in Washington with my Food Fix campaign on clear labeling and kid-friendly labeling. Let's start with an example of what an ultra-processed diet can do to our bodies in just two weeks. You think this takes years and years to develop problems, well not really my friends, now you see the results very quickly. Tim Specter and a scientist at King's College London conducted a short-term study on a group of healthy 24-year-old twin girls. This is a different twin study than the vegan one. twin study now assigned one twin to eat an ultra-processed diet that included a typical breakfast of pancake syrup or cereal with a blueberry muffin, pretty much our average diet, lunch was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on bread white milk with chocolate and chips and dinner.

It was either a cheeseburger and fries or a meatball sandwich with cheese crackers and a Diet Coke. The other twin ate a minimally processed Whole Foods diet. Now every diet, this is really important, every diet was calorie controlled, so they ate exactly the same amount of calories. I will say that

again

they added that they ate exactly the same amount of calories, they also had the same amount of fat, the same amount of sugar and fiber, but the difference was the processing of the food. Now let's get into what this means. means in a minute what's surprising about the study after just two weeks that the twins who ate the ultra-processed diet had higher levels of cholesterol and lipids in their blood, higher levels of blood sugar, they gained more weight now remember they have the same amount of calories, folks, so it's not just about the calories, it's what calories do to your biochemistry, to your hormones, to your immune system, to your inflammation, to your microbiome, it's not just the calories in. , the calories that come out, is more complex than that, in addition, the study showed that they observed their microbiome had a really negative effect on the intestinal microbiome.

Now we know that if in animals you change a healthy microbiome for a microbiome, for example, a obese mouse, the other mouse that eats the same amount of food will gain weight, so we know it's not just about calories. Reprocess how they are metabolized and so on. Now none of these changes, these adverse changes that occurred in the twin who was consuming the ultra-processed diet, are seen in the twin who was consuming the whole food diet. He actually lost weight, so one twin went back to eating the same amount of calories he gained weight with ultra-processed foods the other twin lost weight just recordthat for a minute the results are not yet published, I hope they are again and again.

I see in my practice that this is how ultra-processed foods are used over and over again. They wreak havoc on our health and they do it very quickly. The good news is that you can also reverse it very quickly, so eating real healing foods can reverse these effects. That's what I did with my 10 day detox diet and we saw amazing results in thousands. of patients often talked about this patient I had in three days he was just not getting insulin after 10 years of diabetes on insulin, three days of eating this way completely eliminated his need for insulin now, how did this happen?

How did this become 60% of our diet? The diet of 67% of children worldwide is increasing everywhere. The Industrial Revolution brought about a lot of advances in food processing technologies and mass production of canned goods and refined grains, and it seemed to be a Bo for humanity and helped a lot. We have to preserve food, we have to store it for longer. We got to, you know, being able to feed people who couldn't be fed. We're hungry so it wasn't all bad in World War I and in World War II there was a big catalyst for ultra-processed food production because there was a huge demand for non-perishable food sent to soldiers overseas and so Therefore, it had to be something stable that could be sent to the battlefield and not rot, one of the basic functions of healthy eating. it's just eating food that rots, you didn't see it, it was something I saw once, I didn't make a movie or anything, but some guy had forgotten it like a Big Mac in his pocket for years and it was fine, it hadn't degraded .

It hadn't decomposed, it hadn't gotten moldy, it was fine, now you want to eat food that rots, that's good, that's a good concept, so after World War II, learn about economic growth and lifestyle changes, that happened, women entering the workforce, there was an increased demand for common foods, fast food, TV dinners, there was a meeting of all the fast food and processed food manufacturers at the last minute, as I remember, this was written. on salt, sugar and fat by Michael Moss, he was my first guest on the podcast and at that meeting all these companies said that we have to fight this trend towards eating real food, that there was another type of group of people promoting that They decided to make convenience king and created a culture of convenience, they disintermediated the people in the kitchen, they invited Betty Crocker to bring junk food recipes to the house so you could place your Ritz crackers on top of your broccoli casserole or Vita cheese or your can. of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, all in your recipes, so there was a lot of processed food in the recipes and there were no Betty cookies.

She was a made-up person. She thought she was real. My mom had the cookbook, but anyway, in the '80s and '90s, food companies started designing foods even more and they were designing foods at an accelerated pace, using all of these technologies allowed them to use additives, preservatives, emulsifiers that are terribly harmful to the gut and microbiome. There are about 600,000 of these products on the

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et and they start with refined sugar. Processed grains and oils have become ubiquitous in supermarkets, vending machines, fast food establishments and are basically what we call the sad or sad diet, the standard American diet.

Now, like I said, you know, 60% of the diet here, 67% of the kids' diets, it's more than half. energy in high income countries even like Canada, UK, Australia is nasty. The studies are clear about this and we are linked by the way we link to all the studies. Everything I say is evidence-based and backed by references. You can just go to the show notes, you'll see them all, so studies show that the more ultra-processed foods that make up your diet, the less nutritionist or the quality of the diet tends to be in general and the greater the risk of developing diseases. chronic inflammatory diseases of the heart. disease obesity diabetes cancer high blood pressure stroke dementia autoimmune diseases depression I mean the list goes on and on and according to the CDC More than 70% of deaths or 1.7 million deaths a year in the US are caused by chronic diseases caused mainly by our processed foods diet this is a trick.

I've mentioned it before, but for every 10% of your diet that comes from ultra-processed foods, your risk of death increases by 14%. This is from the global burden of disease study, we'll talk about that in a minute and that's huge, so if you think about 60% correctly, then it's six times 14, it's a big number, it increases the risk of death, not only of contracting a disease, now what's really scary is that the government is funding this U, they're funding the subsidies that go into agriculture that produces the staple crops that are turning ultra-processed foods, you know, into benefiting from the incredible food stamps, which is great, except 75% of SNAP benefits are used for ultra-processed foods and 10% are used for soda.

About 10 billion a year we are working to try to change this in Washington and now we have a bill to prevent ultra-processed foods from being purchased with SNAP dollars if you are a child because we know they are deadly to children. Now it is very clear what is the difference between ultra-processed foods and normal processed foods. I read an article in a nutrition magazine years ago about defending processed foods as something as old as humans have been drying and preserving food. and ferment and cure foods for a long time, so what's the problem with processed foods?

If you look at the funders, if you look at the magazine, it's only funded by the food industry, it's so corrupt, my friends, it's so corrupt what I wrote about. I believe that in my book Food Fix or you know one of my other books, but it's pretty scary stuff unless you just pick an apple off a tree and eat it, or you just eat a raw egg, most foods are processed to some extent when cooking. It's a form of processing, right, it's not really that the processing is bad, it's what the processing is, so minimally processed foods are fine, like we've been doing for thousands of years.

Olive oil is processed food yogurt, but hopefully from A2 cows, goats or sheep. true, generally raised cheese is a processed, canned food, so sardines, canned tomatoes, fermented foods, sauerkraut, miso, frozen foods, jerky, dried foods, basically, those are all processed foods, but they're okay if you can recognize the ingredients if you know where they are. you can see the number of steps it took to get from the farm to your fork. It's okay if you don't have a list of weird Franken ingredients. Alright. Depending on how they are processed, certain foods may appear similar. They're minimally processed, maybe some protein powders that are fine or protein bars with completely different ingredients, canned beans, you know, frozen vegetables, they're all fine, but be very careful about what you eat, even if it comes from Whole Foods or Aroan or some excellent one.

You know, the health food store you're shopping at may still be plagued with all kinds of problems. What does science say about what is an ultra-processed food and what is not? There are many rating systems, the most reliable and the most reliable. The most common and best accepted is something called Nova classification. It's the most complete version and has some flaws, but it's still pretty good, so it gives us a rough idea. There are basically four food classifications with Nova. The first is minimally processed. and unprocessed foods, so they're basically peanuts. Removing the shell from peanuts is processed food.

Any type of hulling, hulling, drying, crushing, grinding, roasting, boiling, pasturizing, refrigerating, freezing, are fine, they can often be placed in containers or packages without having to add sugar, salt, oil. or fatty things like whole grains beans fruits vegetables nuts seeds milk meat everything is fine and when I say milk I'm being, you know, you know I support dairy. I'm being very specific, it should be A2 casein. Dairy, should be regenerated. Ideally it should be from goat or sheep, so you want to make sure you are eating the right dairy products. The second classification is Nova, group two.

It consists of processed culinary ingredients derived from natural oils, fat, sugar, salt, so it could be pressing olive oil. it could be grinding flour Grinding, it could be seasoning U and cooking foods that are in group one, so if you want to put a chicken in the oven and B for 20 minutes, that's processed correctly, so that's group two and things like olive oil. butter, flour, salt, vinegar, these are all Nova Class 2, Nova class 3 is a more processed food, so you add things to it, you add salt, oil and sugar to group one and two foods and it makes them more durable, more resistant.

It's nice that it lasts longer, so it could be canned, smoked, fermented, which extends the shelf life and may include adding other things like salt, sugar, fats, you can add salt and for example sugar to the jerky, well , you may not want to do that. I like South African. Bill Tong, it's just pure beef jerky with some spices. We have been processing food since we have been humans. Cooking as a form of processing. Fermentation is a way of processing such as sauerkraut, yogurt, cheese, canning, shaking vegetables. I used to do. that when I was in college we canned vegetables in the winter fruits vegetables pickles cans of tuna olives cans of chicken salmon cured meats cheeses all of these are processed but often without bad things but sometimes with bad things added salt because one is the better and two three you have to be smart but you can get away with it now class four is what the Boogeyman really is here this is the ultra-processed food category and it is a series of industrial formulations of five or more ingredients it could be less but it's usually more than five this is something that's not really considered food I don't think they should call it food they shouldn't call it ultra-processed food they should call it ultra-processed scientific projects or food-like substances or non-food edible things or something like that I don't know why what, but ultra-processed foods are actually made from whole foods originally, but then they are broken down, mechanically altered, chemically separated and changed into isolated sugars, fats, oils, proteins, starches, fiber extracts to make them Foods look and taste good and look like food, but they are not food and are derived from basic crops financed by our industrial cultural system AG corn, wheat, soybeans, sugar cane, beets, are the basis of these foods , You know?

I mean corn is hundreds of different things that are made from it, they are all highly processed and I think 5% of the corn that is grown in the United States for human consumption is actually corn on the cob or corn things what we eat they have mostly become junk food now they will add a whole variety of bad things they will add uh if they make the manufacturers make really bad things and they will reassemble them into food-like substances they will add high fructose corn syrup different types of multiex sugar lactose dextrose various oils that are hydrogenated soy protein isolates add additional glutin mechanically separated coating Meat flavors emulsifiers gums very thickening agents and basically makes your product look good have a good mouthfeel be hyper palatable create a product highly profitable there a cheap product to manufacture with a long useful life, they increase the price enormously, so the profit margins are enormous.

I mean, if you think about it, this is the most important industry in the country when you combine food and healthcare. I think it's 10 billion dollars. It's a lot of money and a lot of it is simply fueling a sick, sick society. Now there are some limitations to Nova, right? It's qualitative in nature, it basically assigns food products to groups and sometimes it's a little subjective and maybe a little ambiguous and maybe it's inconsistent, but it's still useful as, for example, minimally processed foods can be high in sugar or natural fats, while some ultra-processed or processed foods may be okay, but probably not.

Mally processed foods, for sure, don't really address portion sizes or eating pattern when you have mixed meals, the classification isn't really straightforward, so theseNuances can create real challenges in implementing food policies or regulations due to misunderstanding among consumers, but all processed foods are healthy when some may be fine, such as whole food protein powders or parts of protein from whole ingredients or grass-fed meats or grass-fed turkey sticks. I like venison sticks. Tofu is a proc food. Alternatives to dairy. Canned fish. They are obviously processed, but they are whole foods. They are made with real ingredients. Now machine learning technology may be the future. to predict food processing and this is interesting, in fact, use AI to help solve this in a 2023 article that we will link to in the show notes, the researchers created a machine learning algorithm and take into account nutritional measures to Predicting the degree of food processing and which group Nova food falls into is done in a scalable and reproducible way and, based on this data, he predicted that 73% of the US food supply is processed by the Soldier, so that even more than 60% so almost three qus of what we eat is garbage and not food, no wonder we are all sick and overweight, what does this do to us?

I mentioned some of the things at the beginning, but besides being loaded with sugar, starch, processed carbohydrates, oils, additives, the reason they are often bad is they need to have a long shelf life what they do is put them in plastic packages and different types of packaging that often contain BPA phalates PDA G microplastics nanoplastics that end up in our food, so that's not even in the food when it was originally produced even if it's a highly processed food or an ultra-processed food, it's actually what that is delivered in what is stored in what is sold.

Plastics and packaging that can leach into food, this is now a big problem as a result of this food processing. There are other things that happen, right, toxic compounds can be produced in the very act of these processing, for example, like heterocyclic amines that are highly carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or pac ages or advanced glycation end products that are changing the chemical structure which causes glycation, which is where sugars and proteins bind to various proteins in your body and create a lot of inflammation, includes trans fats which can form acrylamide, which are really bad and cause a lot of health problems.

Many studies in animals and humans. Studies have shown that these compounds cause disease. In humans, animals Studies have shown that foods have a really bad effect on physical and mental health due to their negative impact on gut microbiomes which can lead to inflammation and DNA damage. This is simply a disaster and is often when research is done on various ingredients. They only look at one, for example, they look at one dietary element of processed foods, but they don't look at this whole cocktail of additives in these foods and their combined effect on our health, and that's a problem.

Because these aren't just an ingredient that we get, because we get all kinds of things and our body doesn't know what to do with them, we eat about 3 to 5 pounds of additives a year per person, that's not including all the ultra-processing. of the food from the raw materials, so it's just the additives that we use three to five pounds of these compounds emulsifiers colorants additives AR streeters a lot of these things that are in our food supply in the United States are banned in Europethings like titanium dioxide classified as a 2B carcinogen according to the Committee uh in Europe that determines what is carcinogenic azodicarbonamide is a whitening and antifoaming agent and is a potential carcinogen common in yoga mat ingredients and was in the Subway sandwich brand, for example, what is the impact on Studies of ultra-processed foods on chronic disease risk clearly link Nova class 4 foods with a higher risk of bad cholesterol profiles in children with a higher risk of poor metabolic health, including obesity, type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease and we call all causes. mentality in adults, which means death from any cause, just to recap that new study from a British medical journal which I think is an important study, it's kind of a landmark study again, it's observational data, but there are massive amounts of people who analyze significant trends and I don't.

I think we can ignore this and when they looked at ultra-processed foods they found a 50% increased risk of heart disease related death. 50% increased risk of anxiety and mental health illnesses such as depression. 12% increased risk of diabetes. 21% higher risk of death. from any cause up to 66% higher risk of death from heart attacks and obesity type two diabetes sleep problems and a 22% higher risk of depression now that's a lot and it's a lot to suffer a lot it costs a lot of death and it's totally preventable I'm just going To put it very clearly, unambiguously, alra processed foods are the number one cause of death in the world today.

This is not my opinion. This comes from the global burden of disease study of 195 countries. The data is very clear. Too much junk and not enough real food now, what's really interesting is how these ultra-processed foods affect the brain. When we look at the intake of ultra-processed foods, there is a 44% increased risk of dementia. One or more daily servings of fried food results in a 12% increased risk of anxiety 7% increased risk of depression that's a pretty high mechanism, how would that happen? We don't know exactly, but exposure to kromat, which is common and processed, and fried foods increases free radicals, damages our cell membranes, causes oxidative stress, causes inflammation. and any of these mental problems are related to inflammation in the brain, so what are the biggest consequences of this for society for our economy?

What is this doing to us as humanity? Basically, there are 11 million people suffering from poor diet again. from the global version of the disease study I really think this is an underestimate, it's actually an underestimated estimate, probably 75% of deaths worldwide from chronic diseases, so I think it's more than 70 million deaths, 40 million are due to chronic diseases, so we are talking about probably between 11 and 40 million deaths a year because if the majority of chronic diseases are related to diet and the dietary factor that mainly drives them is ultra-processed foods, then it has to be a little over 11 million, but even then even 11 million makes it the leading cause of death in the world and over two billion people in the world are overweight worldwide and it is due to eat our processed industrialized diet and the study that I mentioned, which was the global burden of disease study, was published in The Lancet looked at dietary risk factors in 195 countries and was the most comprehensive study on diet ever done throughout of 27 years of data and of course there were limitations, so what they found was that it was a diet without enough healthy foods, fruits, vegetables, nuts seeds, whole grains.

You know, healthy proteins, etc., good fats and with two lots of bad foods, right? Ultra-processed foods, refined grains, sugar-sweetened beverages, trans fats, counteract 11 million deaths and 255 million years of disability and years of life lost, making it the number one cause of death worldwide, surpassing smoking. now, so it's not just that it causes death, it causes massive amounts of disability, cost of society's productivity, it's bad news in 2018. The Milin Institute published two major reports, one of them was called the cost of chronic diseases in the United States and the second, that of the United States. obesity crisis, the economic and health costs of excess weight and we will put links to those in the show notes now that chart the staggering impact that food-driven obesity and the diseases caused by our current food system are having in the United States and This is what they found in these reports.

First, 60% of Americans have a chronic illness. 40% have two or more in 10 years. 83 million Americans will have three or more chronic diseases. They are all related. High blood pressure. Cholesterol problems. Diabetes. Heart disease. you name it, these are all chronic diseases. More than 70% of Americans or about 200. 28 million Americans are overweight or obese. The direct cost of healthcare for chronic health conditions was $1.1 trillion in 2016 or 5.8% of our US GDP. The indirect costs include only the loss of income reduced productivity and the impact on caregivers, it was not actually the entire cost and this did not include the impact of the food system on the environment, the climate, all the other secondary damages we are causing to our environment was another $2.6 trillion dollars combined direct and the indirect costs are 3.7 trillion or about $1 in 5 in our US economy, that's just due to obesity, it just amazes me , one of the other important things to note is that these costs do not include and this is important, they do not include pre-diabetes which now affects one or two Americans and also drives healthcare costs and they do not include 93% of Americans who are not metabolically healthy and that also drives costs and reduces productivity, etc., and most of the diseases that drive these costs are related to our poor diet and that drives obesity, inflammation and all diseases later, hypertension, cholesterol problems, type two arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, Alzheimer's, dementia, uh, and kidney failure, so this is a big problem, the other thing What we are seeing and this is Something amazing is the decline in life expectancy in more than 60 countries and the economies now surpass the United States in life expectancy in 60 countries, so we are at the bottom of the list of 60 countries and how long we live despite spending twice as much as everyone else on healthcare and having a robust economy and what the heck, we spend two to four times as much on healthcare as other high-income countries and why is this happening.

We can see it in the United States, it's so clear when you look at the maps of obesity, diabetes and the geographic distribution and the race of life expectancy just maps out clearly 100%, so in the southern United States, mainly In the south, you have declining life expectancy and you have the highest rates of obesity and diabetes, so it's very clear, the pattern is very clear and it's really caused by increasing rates of consumption of processed foods ​In some of these areas, the other big thing is that we need to make sure that we can defend our country and one of the scary things is that we are seeing a decrease in military readiness because recruits are being turned away for poor health 70% are rejected, we'll get into this, so the CDC reports that the Department of Defense spends about $1.5 billion dollars a year.

This is amazing. The Department of Defense spends $1.5 billion a year on obesity-related health care costs. for both current and former service personnel and their families, as well as a cost to replace unfit personnel. Workdays lost due to overweight and obesity for active duty military personnel are 658 thousand days per year, costing the Department of Defense $13 million. a year, this is really a human problem, a social problem, an economic problem, a military problem. One in three adults is too heavy to serve in the military and 70% are rejected for service because they are unfit to fight. Almost 20% of Menders on active duty were obese, not only were they 20% overweight, so one in five people in the military were obese in 2020, which increased by 3% from 2015.

What else is problematic because of our alra processed diet? The Covid pandemic revealed our vulnerabilities. The United States had the worst results of almost any country, it is 4% of the world's population, but it represented 16% of Covid cases and deaths and again all of this is referenced, you can look it up. I'm not making this up, there have been 7 million Covid deaths to date and the US accounted for 1.2 million of them and 6.5 million severe Co hospitalizations. We literally crippled our country, racking up massive amounts of debt that we wouldn't have to do if we were a healthy nation.

It's scary when you look at the effect of chronic illness. disease in our immune system, it is very clear that the strongest risk factor for havingbad results with covid was having one or more chronic diseases. People who had 1 to two had a 70% higher risk of death if they had three or more diseases such as high blood pressure. high cholesterol high blood sugar level you had a 130% higher risk of death from Co well, bad news, let's get into the good news first, how do you defend yourself? How can you tell if a food is ultra-processed or not Alright?

I always use this saying: Pretty silly, but I use it in the faith-based wellness programs I teach, ask yourself a simple question: Did God make this or did man make this? Did God make an avocado? Yes, God made a Twinkie? No, if God made it, eat it if man made it leave it well, it's not always that simple, because you know that man makes, for example, cheese and yogurt, other things, but those are minimal processes, which confuses everyone . The guidelines have changed in the last 30 years and we really don't know what. to eat more we are very confused but we know this, we know that ultra-processed foods are bad, which makes an ultra-processed food has confused people because the big foods are trying to confuse us, right, they are trying to use. their slick food marketing and labeling tactics and all these Halos of Health claims on the labels to make things seem cool, but don't be confused by the fact that food companies are not required to state on the label of foods if they are ultra-processed or not, it is not clear if a food is ultra-processed when you pick up the package correctly it does not say to alter the process I imagine a food label that was clear like the one they have in Europe red is bad for You the yellow eat with caution the green is good for you or maybe they have it like in South America, these big warning labels in the form of a black box shaped like a stop sign that says what you should not eat or what it contains and what that you should be careful.

Labels in America have a lot to be desired, let's get there, let's fix them, but it's still important to understand what you're doing and educate yourself on some releases. Foods can be processed and some can be ultra-processed, so read ingredient labels, for example, freshly baked sourdough. regenerator-grown wheat bread, which has no pesticides or glyphosate, is minimally processed in the mill, and is coarsely ground, very differently than Wonderbread, both are bread, right? Wonderbread is packed with vegetable oils, calcium propionate, monod diglycerides, and high fructose corn syrup. while sour dough bread can be made from non-hybridized ancient grains, which are non-GMO whole wheat flour, the water starter can be 100 years old and salt, very simple, how about oats?

Quaker Instant Oats vs. Regular Oats Usually Raised Steel Cut or Whole Oats, Quaker Oats will be filled with sugar, salt, various types of highly processed flavorings and whole oats or seal cut oats maybe have an ingredient, oats and then you have to cook them for a long time, like an hour. It's supposed to be instant oatmeal, which is basically full of crap and really bad for you and you shouldn't start your day that way. How do you identify if a food is ultra-processed? What is the most practical way? Does the food look good? God made it, man made it well, all that is an apple, an egg, an almond, a sweet potato, a piece of chicken, fish, you recognize it.

Does the food come in a box, bag or package? It could be good, but not necessarily, check the ingredient carefully. list how many ingredients there are there are five more ingredients is the paragraph list or more do you recognize what's there? could you pronounce them all? Would you easily find ingredients sold separately in the supermarket to put in your food like you do? you have betyl hydroxy talin or maltodextrin in your spice cabinet, right, no, you don't eat that stuff, there are long chemical names, there are preservatives, flavor enhancers, artificial flavors, sweeteners, colors, they don't need it.

Natural or artificial flavors, maybe it sounds good if it's a natural flavor but not necessarily good, right, MSG, caramel color, red 40, corn syrup, solid soy, letin, aspartam, just stay away from all those things, it's not so hard, right, if you really don't know what it is, don't eat it. You can tell what the food is just by reading the ingredients list right if you cover the front of the package and look at the ingredients list and can't tell if it's a pop tart or a corn dog. Don't eat it if you turn a label and say it says Tomatoes water and salt you know it's a can of tomatoes or you say sardines olive oil and salt you know it's a can of sardines right you know what that is now to add to the confusion Food labeling is not strictly regulated, so food packaging often features a variety of claims designed to attract consumers by highlighting specific qualities or health benefits.

It's natural. It does not guarantee that it is minerally processed or that it does not contain artificial flavors. Dyes. Preservatives made lightly with real fruit. sweetened even quote healthy all of this stay away from gluten free products organic healthy vegan paleo plant based ketogenic low fat low sodium doesn't mean they're healthy right? smart, you can still have a long list of ingredients, you can still being ultra-processed, there are many ultra-processed vegan foods, fake meats, impossible hamburgers, beyond meat, any of the scientific projects, these are not Whole Foods, right? They have the halo of being plant-based. -based or vegan or good for you, they are made from pulverized soy, deconstructed chemicals from industrial food production, they are not whole foods, they are not healthy foods, so fake meats, fake eggs, Plant-based cheeses may be okay, but they still really are.

Be careful and these have been associated with the same risk of metabolic diseases as cardamom, so the rule of thumb, if it has a health claim on the label, it's probably bad for you. Michael Paulen in his beautiful book. I invite you to read it, it's called In Defense of Food and Diners' Manifesto he talks about this idea of ​​nutritionism, it's the way people approach food and eating in the modern world and basically reduces nutrition to individual ingredients saturated fat is bad salt is bad sugar is bad whatever, you just reduce it and what happens is this breaks down the individual ingredients focuses on scientific analysis, breaks them down into constituent parts, like vitamins, fats, proteins, and it does not analyze the entire complex of ingredients in the food, it does not analyze the food as a complete food.

And so what this does, why this is bad, is it allows food companies to increase and decrease ingredients, so one day sugar is bad, so we increase fat, or one day fat is bad. bad, like we were low fat and ate snacks, well, cookies. They're not good for you, are they? They're kind of like low-fat cookies or low-fat yogurt, that's terrible for you, especially because it has a lot of sugar, which allows food companies to up and down the ingredients that kind of they can make. all day and I process things in different ways, but it's still junk food, it's still ultra-processed food, that's why I love it.

A toxification system that focuses on ultra-processed foods like the boogeyman is the new cigarette, how can they be avoided? I encourage you. To shop at a place like Thrive Market, where you can get whole processed foods, there may be packaged foods there, but they are for minimally processed ingredients. Make Whole Foods the majority of your diet, just shop for groceries, walk down the grocery aisle, get to know meat. fish chicken vegetables nuts seeds fruit some whole grains beans anything fine salt olive oil spices all of that is great, but avoid as much as you can things that have ingredients you don't recognize and can't pronounce or in Latin or science projects avoid Foods that come in colorful packaging with a long list of ingredients, just stay away from that, there are many different food scoring systems that may appear in the future.

We have the UK, Australia and New Zealand that use something called neutral scoring which looks at 7 to 9 ingredients, salt, sugar. some vitamins proteins put them together they give a score on the front of the package so you get ABC D or E. I should be an F too. I think it now helps consumers make decisions easier. You can look at the ingredients list. A number or letter that qualifies the food. We're working on a rating system for kid-friendly labeling in the United States called make the grade, which will force manufacturers to reformulate their foods, hopefully, and allow people to understand what they're eating and have some options.

Hopefully, we will get the industry moving in the right direction in Latin American countries. Avoiding ultra-processed foods is the golden rule of all guidelines that all national dietary guidelines have, so if how to get too many calories, too much salt, too much sugar, wrong types of fat, a warning label appears in a box black, it essentially looks like a stop sign. I was in Chile and Argentina. I saw it. And everything, every package of food pieces had all of this. They are like not like. That's the problem. It's not perfect because it scores poorly on high-fat foods that are healthy, like nuts and seeds, and extra virgin olive oil says there's too much fat, but fat isn't necessarily bad, so you have to have the proper framework to develop them and there are some adjustments that need to be made, but it was a good first step.

The problems are also that people don't have access to food, their food deserts, food swamps. Food insecurity is real. Nutritional security is also an important factor, which is the lack of ability to obtain adequate foods. nutrition, so we have to make Whole Foods accessible and affordable and we are working on a lot of that within our policy efforts in DC there is also another labeling or rating system called Food Compass. I did a podcast with Dr. Dar maaari and tops about This big controversy about it had a lot of negative reactions, but it uses an algorithmic model that analyzes 54 attributes of foods, a little more sophisticated than the Nova classification, it analyzes the proportions of vitamins and minerals, analyzes carbohydrates, fiber, saturated fat, unsaturated fat, Omega. -3s trans fats additives refined starch level of fat processing fiber protein phytochemicals and basically ranks foods from one to 100, with one being the worst and 100 being the best, so foods that have less than 30 should be avoided, foods that are between 30 and 60 are eaten in moderation and over 70 got the nod, the goal of this rating system was to try to achieve a rating system that would not allow the food industry to manipulate foods to make them healthier by going up. and bringing down different ingredients, uh, and that was a good effort, but you know. it had a lot of drawbacks, whole grains may score too high, right whole grains, Cheerios may sound good but again they are highly processed animals.

Foods may have a low score, which may not take into account the glycemic impact or load of the food which is now one of the Big Flaws The Big Flaws on this is difficult because there is no large rating database that can used to analyze Foods were probably the most important criterion of a food and were not included in the system and is called the glycemic load or index of a food, which is the amount of food that raises the blood sugar level, this is the biggest factor of insulin resistance, is the biggest factor of chronic diseases, so leaving this out is not good and was not the fault of the scientists, it is simply that there is not a large database available on the glycemic load of the foods, so it is difficult to do this.

I think we need to think about that too, as overlaying a glycemic framework. Will this increase my blood sugar? now you can use, for example, IND, use glucose monitors, you can monitor your blood sugar level. There are a lot of great ways to do it and that's probably a better way to do it, so we're headed in the right direction. We need a clear classification system. We need clear food labeling. You must be careful because this is the biggest killer there is. If you eliminate these foods from your life and your diet, you will be much healthier and I think the work that we are doing at Congress with Food Fix and the Food Fix campaign, you can learn more at food.org, is trying to boost the policies in the right direction, allow labeling ofchild-friendly foods that address dietary guidelines and, hopefully, the new dietary guidelines will draw attention to ultra-processed products. food as a problem there is a lot of work we are doing we are trying to create a campaign you know in Washington to help senators and congressmen in the White House understand the dangers of ultra-processed foods what is the new smoking like how is it driving Our federal deficit is the biggest driver of our economic burden in terms of the burden that drives the GDP ratio of federal debt, so it's a big problem, we have a long way to go, but I think we're starting to go in the right direction. correct address.

I think this whole concept of ultra-processed foods is in the Zeitgeist now that people are starting to talk about it. Please understand that there is a huge amount of research accumulating around this and it is so critical, so let's encourage everyone to avoid these foods to learn about them and isolate. get away from them and advocate for food companies to do the right thing and start making healthier foods for all of us, so I hope you enjoyed this version of The Doctor's Pharmacy Health Bites. It's a lot of information, but I want to give it to you. goes into really important topics that will help you improve your health, you will understand what is on the market so you can protect yourself and it will also give you guidelines on how to live a long and healthy life, so thank you for joining and I hope you like this bite about health. today and see you next time at Doctor's Pharmacy.

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