How Food Has Changed in the Past 30 Years

I’m reading Michael Pollan’s amazing book “In Defense of Food” and literally every page I’m learning something new about our food system, the history of public policies and why many people are more confused about food and nutrition than ever before. You will continue to see more blog posts related to health and wellness as I feel that I can have a positive impact on others by giving them a glimpse into what I’ve learned through my reading and education on this topic. I don’t profess to know it all – in fact I’ve only barely scratched the surface, but I know I’m onto something when multiple books in totally different genres say the same thing and when a book I’m reading matches conferences I go to.

It’s totally frightening what has been done to our food and the fact that nutritionism has played a major role in our confusion, our obesity and our general lack of information related to the most important act we do every day. That being said, I’d like to share with you an excerpt from his book and I would love to hear your thoughts on it:

Since 1980, American farmers have produced an average of 600 more calories per person per day, the price of food has fallen, portion sizes have ballooned, and, predictably, we’re eating a whole lot more, at least 300 more calories a day than we consumed in 1985. What kind of calories? Nearly a quarter of these additional calories come from added sugars (and most of that in the form of high-fructose corn syrup); roughly another quarter from added fat (most of it in the form of soybean oil); 46 percent of them from grains (mostly refined); and the few calories left (8 percent) from fruits and vegetables. The overwhelming majority of the calories Americans have added to their diets since 1985 – the roughly 92% of them in the form of sugars, fats, and mostly refined grains – supplies lots of energy but very little of anything else.

Now, you might be saying ok, but I live in Canada and these are American stats. Well, that’s not necessarily true. While we’re not as overweight as the US, we’re not that far behind them. And it’s certainly enough that we should be more aware of the food we put in our bodies. Sure, we might not feel it 1 week from now or even 1 month from now but 10, 20, 30 years from now we sure will. It’s about Renu by Dr. Schoenfeld and being healthy for the long term – not trying to make our bodies look at good as possible but putting crap food into them. There are a lot of consequences from not eating health, such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Many women result to plastic surgery because of this so they can have the body they want, many prefer getting breast reconstruction surgery because as a result to eating crappy their breast don´t look as great like before.

The point here is that the food we eat today has drastically changed from food 20+ years ago. We need to start eating more organic food for many reason which I will explore further in subsequent blogs.

How do you approach food? While you don’t have to stress about what you eat, it’s important to know just what has been added to our food and how our food has changed over the years.