The World Is Hooked On Junk Food: How Big Companies Pull It Off

Research shows that ultra-processed products are becoming dominant in the global food system. Already dominating the food supplies of high-income countries, and rapidly increasing in middle-income countries, the scale and power of the companies producing these products is colossal. Globally, the food and beverage market was valued at $5.6 trillion in 2017.

Even for people who largely avoid ultra-processed foods, it is no longer possible to obtain all the micronutrients we need from our daily diet. Independent studies conducted in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and many other countries show that the nutrient content of our food has fallen substantially over the past few decades. Modern intensive agricultural methods are stripping ever higher levels of nutrients from our soil. If the necessary nutrients aren’t present in the soil when food is grown, they won’t be there when we eat it.

The inescapable conclusion is that the modern-day multinational food industry has essentially become part of the ‘business with disease’. Through its mass production and global promotion of calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods, the multinational food industry is directly fueling the incidence of chronic diseases and the profits of the pharma industry. Logically, therefore, creating a new healthcare system based on natural preventive approaches requires freeing ourselves not just from dependency on the pharma industry, but from the multinational food industry as well.

To read about research showing that ultra-processed foods increase the risk of an early death, see this article on our website.