Modern Life is Making Us Sick. Here’s How to Fight Back
To understand our nation’s obesity crisis, it’s instructive to look at the past. My mother grew up in Connecticut in the 1950s. Life was simpler back then. No iPhones, no microwave ovens. My mother’s family gathered around the dining room table every night for a home-cooked dinner — usually meat, fish, or pasta.
This is how people in 1950s America ate: Home-cooked meals, made with whole foods. And if you look at photos from this era, one thing stands out. Very few people were overweight or obese.
Fast-forward to today. Rates of obesity and chronic illness have skyrocketed. The number of people with diabetes in the Americas has more than tripled in just three decades. Obesity and other diet-related diseases — like cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes — are a leading cause of death in the US.
How did we get here? What caused this modern-day health crisis?
The last 75 years have seen a profound shift in how Americans live. The Big Food industry got us hooked on ultra-processed foods. People started cooking less, moving less, and spending less time in nature. These changes have combined to produce the epidemics of obesity and chronic disease.
In short, modern life is making us sick.
Fast Food Nation
The primary reason we’ve gained weight at a pace unprecedented in human history is that our diets have radically changed.
Eric Schlosser, the journalist and author of Fast Food Nation, has written about the huge corporations that have taken over the US food supply in the last 50 years. The Big Food industry brought us ultra-processed food: Industrially formulated food products designed to be convenient and hyperpalatable, often through preservatives, colorings, and flavorings. Things like Twinkies and Doritos.
These ultra-processed foods are destroying our health. Over 1,000 studies have linked them to obesity, neurological disorders, and early mortality risk.
We can see this when we compare the US with Italy, where the intake of ultra-processed foods is one-third of that in the US.
Italy has the 6th-highest life expectancy in the world. The US is 47th.
“A Hole in My Stomach”
In his new book “The Magic Pill”, journalist Johann Hari explores the rise of Ozempic. How did weight-loss drugs become a multi-billion dollar industry, seemingly overnight?
Hari argues that the obesity crisis is a modern phenomenon, driven by the Big Food industry. Ultra-processed foods hijack our body’s reward circuitry:
“The evidence is clear that the kind of food my father grew up eating quickly makes you feel full. But the kind of food I grew up eating, much of which is made in factories, often with artificial chemicals, left me feeling empty and as if I had a hole in my stomach.”
Consider Diet Coke. Originally promoted as a “healthy” alternative, the reality is that diet sodas are associated with weight gain. Why? By making us hungrier, zero calorie foods and drinks can make us eat more. Artificial sweeteners stimulate our appetites and make us hungrier.
Think about junk foods like Snickers or Pringles (“Once you pop, you can’t stop”). This kind of food doesn’t make you feel full. It makes you want to eat more. It takes a longer time to reach satiety — the sensation of having had enough and not wanting any more. Hence, we consume too much food and gain weight.
From Hunter-Gatherer to Couch Potato
The microwave oven can be seen as a turning point in our country’s weight issues. It was originally meant to be a fast way to reheat meals cooked from scratch. Now it’s a symbol of the shortcuts we take to get things done more quickly and with less personal effort.
Consider the rise of food delivery apps. Not long ago, getting a pizza delivered was a special treat. Now people use apps like Doordash and Uber Eats every day.
Our lives have become far more sedentary in the last 20 years. People now spend the majority of their waking hours looking at a screen. We aren’t getting outside and moving as much as we used to. This contributes to weight gain.
From microwave dinners to food delivery apps, we've prioritized convenience over health.
Sleep, Nature, Sunlight, and Toxins
In the book “Good Energy,” Dr. Casey Means argues that our obesity crisis is rooted in cellular health and mitochondrial dysfunction. Dr. Means describes the many ways modern life is damaging our metabolic health:
Sleep: We’re sleeping less, and our sleep is more fragmented.
Nature: We don’t spend enough time in nature. We’re indoors for 90 percent of the day, and that changes our relationship with light.
Toxins: We have thousands of synthetic toxins in our food, water, air, personal care and home care products. Today’s industrial companies pollute the air, soil, and water with endocrine disruptors. Studies suggest the epidemic of obesity in humans and animals is linked to exposure to artificial light and endocrine disrupting chemicals in soil, water, food, and air.
From the foods we eat, to our sleeping patterns and exposure to nature and sunlight: The environment our cells exist in has changed rapidly over the past 50 years — with devastating consequences to our health.
Ozempic is an Incomplete Solution
Millions of people in the US have turned to weight-loss medications like Ozempic. While the drugs are effective, they don’t solve the underlying problems that are making so many Americans sick and obese.
Michael Lowe, a professor of psychology at Drexel University, has called these drugs “an artificial solution to an artificial problem.”
Ozempic works by mimicking the effects of the hormone GLP-1 and making people feel full more quickly. Unfortunately, the drugs have many drawbacks. They’re expensive, they have side effects, and when people stop taking them, the weight usually comes back.
Dr. Means said:
“What these drugs don’t do is impact the toxic environment we’re living in that’s hurting our mitochondria. They represent the ultimate band-aid for an environment that is not changing.”
How to Change the Narrative
Historically, people struggling with obesity or being overweight have been blamed for a lack of willpower. But the personal responsibility argument doesn’t work when the problem is occurring at such a massive scale. That indicates societal-level issues are at play.
It’s time to stop shaming people for being overweight. These people are the products of a dysfunctional food environment that promotes obesity by advertising cheap and readily available fast food.
More healthcare leaders today believe we should get to the root cause of the obesity epidemic, rather than rely on medications as a quick fix. We should emphasize prevention over prescriptions.
Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, said:
“What we need to do is prevent children from becoming obese. In schools we need to be serving real foods. Today kids are getting 60-70% of their calories from ultra-processed food, and that’s a recipe for disaster.”
Capitalism rewards businesses like Big Food that peddle cheap, addictive products that ruin our health. Unchecked corporate greed causes us to over-consume cheap sources of dopamine — from ultra-processed foods to alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, and online shopping.
As humans, we’re ill-equipped to defend ourselves against powerful industries that not only damage health, but also control the narrative.
It’s time to develop a counter-narrative, one that emphasizes a prevention-focused approach to weight loss.
Food as Medicine
Changing our food culture is an important first step. Healthcare leaders are promoting the idea of “Food as Medicine.” This movement supports improved access to whole, nutritious foods, and educating our communities on how to make informed decisions when it comes to our diet.
Programs like Nourish and Thistle are making healthy meal delivery and grocery services more accessible. A company called Foodsmart has built a vast network in the US of dietitians whose role is providing food-centric telemedicine.
We should look to the example of countries like Japan: Only 4.5% of Japanese people are obese, compared with 42% of Americans. Japan’s food culture begins with schools, which educate children about nutrition and healthy eating.
Some US health experts have suggested that schools offer a “Food 101” course. It could teach kids where food comes from, how it’s made, how it’s packaged and sold, how our bodies make use of its calories, and how food is made less food-like the more it is processed.
Schools could have “kitchen gardens” — places where students learn how to plant, weed and take care of herbs and vegetables. They’d be encouraged to harvest their own crops, and then learn how to make something in the kitchen with what they’ve grown.
We know school meal programs play an important role in preventing obesity. Our schools should be giving children the skills and knowledge they need to make healthy lifestyle choices.
Along with Food as Medicine programs, more people today are using digital solutions to lose weight and develop healthy lifestyle habits. They’re relying on services like Noom, which has helped millions of people lose weight through sustainable behavior change. (Disclosure: I’m an advisor to the company.)
Modern life caused the epidemics of obesity and chronic disease; we need modern-day solutions. Ones that combine education, expanded access to healthy food, and personalized coaching.
Our obesity crisis is complex, but not unsolvable. It's time to reclaim our health from Big Food and build a society that prioritizes wellness over convenience.
Thank you for reading this week’s edition of Vitamin Z.
Until next time,
By Daniel Zahler
Hi there and thanks for reading. I created Vitamin Z to share my research on health and wellness, longevity and healthy aging, and ways to optimize cognitive, physical and emotional health. I serve as an advisor to Noom, a leading digital health company, and work with the world’s top healthcare and life sciences companies to develop innovative new solutions to improve health globally. I was trained as a research scientist at Harvard, and I serve as a GLG council member, where I advise global business leaders on healthcare and technology innovation.
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I agree with this. And its insane how ultra processed food makes up such large parts of the US and the UK diet.. It also baffles me looking at what kids eat these days..