A new book titled Food Intelligence looks at the factors behind the rapid rise in obesity rates over recent decades.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
Are you overweight, perhaps veering into the dreaded territory of obesity?
Don’t blame yourself. At least not entirely.
That’s the key message in the new book Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us, by Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall.
They argue that the astronomical rise in obesity rates in recent decades can largely be explained by rapid changes in the food environment, including massive increases in both food production and ultra-processed foods, not simply individual food choices.
Stated another way, obesity rates are a “commercogenic” phenomenon, caused by the ready availability of cheap, easy, tasty, ultra-processed foods.
“Toxic food environments disrupt the symphony of internal signals in ways we aren’t conscious of. Our bodies weren’t designed for a calorie onslaught,” they write.
The authors – a Paris-based Canadian journalist and a Washington-based Canadian scientist – also debunk a number of common beliefs about dieting, with a particular emphasis on clearing up misunderstandings about metabolism.
Since 1980, the prevalence of obesity has doubled in 70 countries. Nowhere is the increase more striking than the U.S., where 70 per cent of Americans are considered overweight or obese, including one-third of children.
It is not a coincidence that, in that 45-year period, food has become more available – and more processed.
“Humans increasingly resemble factory-produced, fat-, sugar-, and salt-filled organisms,” Ms. Belluz and Dr. Hall write.
The book features some fascinating historical context. We are reminded, for example, that in the 1970s, biologist Paul Ehrlich was warning of the potential for mass starvation in America because of population growth.
Policymakers took the Malthusian warnings in his book The Population Bomb seriously. Agricultural output was ramped up dramatically, especially of four core crops: corn, wheat, soy and rice, as well as livestock.
Today, the U.S. produces a “calorie glut”: the equivalent of 15,000 calories a day per capita of food. With such oversupply, much of the food goes to feed animals and to ultra-processed food products, with the rest used for biofuels.
The authors remind us that, in our vast grocery stores, virtually every product is derived from the four core crops, with some salt, sugar, and artificial colours and flavours thrown in for good measure.
While the book focuses on the food environment, and how it makes calorie-dense ultra-processed foods almost irresistible (and more affordable than whole foods) to the point that it’s rewiring our brains, we are reminded that we place all the burden on individuals to find wellness fixes.
The environment we have created makes it easy to eat, and overeat. Yet, at the same time, we have an obsession with fatness (or perhaps thinness) that has spawned trillion-dollar diet and exercise industries, and spurred countless millions to seek surgery, medication and engage in all manner of ritualistic self-abuse.
Ms. Belluz and Dr. Hall make the depressing observation that, while there is an endless array of fad diets, none are particularly effective.
At the end of the day, if you consume more calories than you burn, you will gain weight.
The soundest nutrition advice remains the simplest. In the words of author Michael Pollan: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” You don’t need an endless array of vitamins, supplements and the like.
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Yet, the authors also remind us that the science of body fat is complicated. Fat is not all bad; it’s essential to good health, our principal way of storing energy. But not all fat is created equal; when it surrounds our organs, it gets dangerous.
If you start losing fat, the body will compensate by slowing your metabolism, making it difficult to maintain weight loss.
The solutions offered up by the authors to tackle the obesity epidemic and the toxic food environment at its root are not particularly novel, but worth repeating: taxing and regulating ultra-processed foods, subsidizing healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, and funding more research.
But most of all, they want a change of culture, addressing the “astonishing disconnect” between the foods we need to be eating for health, and the foods we produce and consume.
More “food intelligence” would be helpful to the average consumer; it would be even more so for policymakers and politicians who shape the flawed food environment we have created.
But given the immense challenges, the fix won’t come easily, or quickly.
As the authors write in the book’s dedication: “For our kids and their kids. May you all eat better than we did.”