Yet barely any subsidies are earmarked for fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts, making them relatively expensive in comparison. To make matters worse, the federal government purchases surplus foods that result from these subsidies (like cheese, milk, pork, and beef) for distribution to food assistance programs, including the National School Lunch Program, while veggies and fruits are much more expensive for the schools to acquire. The end result is that low-nutrition surpluses end up on the plates of kids and low income people (who are often feeding families).
The meat and dairy industries, conspicuously absent from overt subsidies, are probably the biggest winners in this economic landscape. Much of that extra corn gets fed to cows, chickens, and pigs (despite the fact that it sickens the animals to digest corn). This cheap feed grain helps keep animal-based foods relatively cheap, which means you can buy a $1 hamburger at McDonald’s.
Given this economic incentive, farmers produce huge amounts of subsidized corn, way more corn than either we or livestock animals can eat. Well, in the 1970s we found a new use for it: High-fructose corn syrup, found in nearly every processed food on the market. Add tariffs plus quota restrictions on imports of foreign sugar, and you can see why high-fructose corn syrup is a much better buy than alternatives. The bottom line? Every $1 in profit on high-fructose corn syrup that manufacturers earn costs taxpayers $10.
197
Plus, as you learned in chapter 4, high-fructose corn syrup doesn’t activate sensors that regulate our setpoint to the degree that other sweeteners do, possibly contributing to our collective weight gain.
Cheap corn also provides the raw material for corn oil—another constituent of many processed foods.
In fact, nearly every menu item on a fast-food menu is derived in some form from cheap corn, from the chicken nuggets (corn-fed poultry and corn-derived binding agents) to the French fries (fried in corn-derived oils) to the sodas (high-fructose corn syrup).
The second most highly subsidized farm product is soybeans. Like corn, soybeans sound wholesome, at least on the face of it. But most soybeans are transformed into soybean oil, which is then hydrogenated, resulting in a surfeit of trans fatty acids in processed foods.
Industry has discovered a way to profit from every part of this (cheap) bean. Most vegetable oils are made from soy; soy lecithin is a common emulsifier; soy flour forms the base of many baked products; and various forms of soy protein (soy protein isolate, texturized vegetable protein, hydrolyzed soy protein) are added to everything from fast-food burgers to protein powders to animal feed and even cardboard.
Many of these same foods bypass your internal weight regulation system (and provide little nutritional benefit), as discussed in the previous chapter.
Bottom line:
By creating a system that maintains a cheap and plentiful supply of corn and soybeans, among other products, government policy has inadvertently favored the production of foods that promote weight gain (and damage health).
Does it make sense that a bag of orange-colored, laboratory-flavored puff balls—lacking in any nutritive value other than energy—is cheaper to produce than a peach? Does it make sense that between 1985 and 2000, there was a 40 percent increase in the price of fruits and vegetables and a 25 percent decrease in the price of soft drinks (adjusted for inflation)?
198
This change in prices is part of the reason why the poor are more likely to be heavier than wealthier people: Processed food is cheaper and more accessible than food that comes more directly from nature, thanks to government subsidies. And an entirely new industry has sprung up to take advantage of these cheap natural resources to create those processed foods and, by the way, make an enormous profit in the process.
How Industry Gets Us to Eat More
Food companies have a vested interest in getting us to ignore our body signals. The more we eat, the more product they sell, and the more money they can make. If we stopped when we were full, it would be bad for business!
One way they do this is by marketing to our desire for value, super sizing everything for pennies a product. They can do this because the cost of the raw materials is so cheap compared to the labor and marketing required to get us to buy it. In other words, giving us more food for nearly the same money doesn’t cost the industry proportionately more money. So they make larger portions “better buys,” enticing us to buy more food and spend more money. A large portion of McDonald’s French fries, for example, costs 40 percent
less
per ounce than a small serving. So even though a small order is probably enough to satisfy our appetite, why order it when we can get the large for just 10 cents more?
This super-sizing wouldn’t be such a problem if we simply ordered the large and only ate half, or bagged half for lunch tomorrow. But studies find that if we get large servings, we eat more. For many of us, if you’re given a medium serving of popcorn, you’ll eat it and declare yourself full; but given a large serving, you’ll also eat all of it, and declare yourself just as full. A study at Pennsylvania State University, for instance, found that diners given 50 percent more of a pasta dish ate 43 percent more than those with a smaller portion.
199
Similar results occurred with bigger portions of potato chips, deli sandwiches, popcorn, and soup.
Many of us eat what’s in front of us because we’ve been taught to take our hunger cues from external cues (what’s on the plate) rather than internal cues like hunger. That’s why it becomes so important to use your internal signals to guide you, rather than relying on the amount served to you. (Remember, restrained eaters are much more vulnerable to external cues. Strengthen your “intuitive eating” skills [chapter 9] and you’re less likely to be duped.) The food industry has done a great job of manipulating this reality to the point that many of us consistently exceed our body’s need for calories. Great for profits, not so good for our health.
Of course, the calorie-conscious among us balk at the high-calorie super-sized meals and may not fall for the super-sizing. So industry instead exploits their fear of calories, getting them to pay a lot more for, you guessed it, a lot less. Take the 100-calorie snack packs, which are often more than twice as expensive per ounce than the products they imitate. Or the Lean Cuisine entrees, which sell for quite a bit more than the Hungry Man dinners, yet may contain half as much food. Yet there’s no research to support that these products actually result in our eating less over the long run, nor in sustained weight loss.
Interesting how industry has found a way to profit, whether they sell us more or less! Don’t be fooled by their claims. Instead, when you stay attentive to what truly satisfies your hunger, you will know what foods best meet your nutritional needs and satisfy your appetite.
How Industry Gets Us to Eat Processed Foods
We have evolved biologically to crave and love the very ingredients that make up the bulk of processed foods: sugar, fat, and salt. When food was more difficult to come by, foods high in fat and sugar (with its associated fiber) kept us full longer and provided more valuable calories; foods high in salt helped us maintain our body’s water balance. A sweet succulent strawberry at the height of ripeness provided great fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals, much more than in its less sweet, less ripe, or its processed form.
Industry has manipulated this biologic imperative, stripping the tastes that trigger our pleasure response from other valuable nutrients. When we eat processed foods, we get the joy without all the associated nutrients intended for us. Our taste buds have adapted to these new foods so that wholesome foods don’t stimulate our appetites to the same degree they used to. Today, foods that aren’t loaded with added fat, sugar, salt, or manufactured flavors taste bland and boring to us.
To understand this, it’s helpful to understand how you perceive flavor. Consider what happens when you eat a piece of chocolate. Your saliva breaks it down so the individual molecules that compose that candy come in contact with your taste buds. This process activates nerves that send a message to your brain, leading to the release of certain chemicals, including opioids (pleasure-stimulating chemicals), into the bloodstream.
The more sugar and fat you consume, the more opioids released. Because the reaction is so pleasurable, you consume more of these foods to continue to receive the pleasurable reaction, creating a powerful, neurochemical drive to overeat those foods.
Meanwhile, these opioids and other pleasure chemicals enter the bloodstream and carry their messages to the hypothalamus, which sends out another set of chemicals to regulate appetite. One of these chemicals is called neuropeptide Y, which promotes feelings of hunger. Essentially neuropeptide Y and the opioids are telling you, “Yeah! Chocolate! Sweet, creamy, yummy. Eat more!”
That chocolate also releases volatile gases, some of which you can smell. As the chocolate melts in your mouth, more of those volatile molecules are released, flowing through your nose or mouth to nerve cells that transmit more messages to your brain. Surprisingly, the aroma of food plays a much larger role in your perception of flavor than the taste receptors in your mouth: perhaps as much as 90 percent! That’s why when you have a cold, food doesn’t taste very good. Your mucus-plugged nose prevents the volatile molecules from reaching nerves in the nose and sending the scent message to your brain.
Like most cells in your body, those involved in taste and odor perception aren’t static. They only live about three weeks, so they’re in a constant state of death and renewal. Similarly, the nervous system is continuously making new connections with these new cells and losing its connections with dying cells, even as the sites in your brain that receive messages from these cells are constantly dying and being regenerated.
While we all have genes that code for receptors specific to certain tastes, such as sweet, those genes work differently in each of us. In some people, for instance, the gene is more active, creating more receptors for sweet tastes than others and thus lending credence to the phrase “sweet tooth.” In others, the gene that codes for “salty” receptors is more active, explaining why some people will choose potato chips over pie any day.
Like all genes, the activity of your taste/odor genes is determined, in part, by the environment. And what is the environment? Why, it is what you eat! The more salty foods you eat, the more active the gene that codes for “salty” receptors; the more sweet foods you eat, the more active the gene that codes for “sweet” receptors.
Not only that, but studies find that diets high in sugar and fat also induce neurochemical changes in areas of the brain involved in appetite and reward.
200
201
202
Thus, you essentially re-wire your brain so it rewards you every time you eat these foods, inducing cravings in much the same way someone hooked on cocaine gets a “reward” every time they use the drug. Before you know it, you’re hooked on high-fat, high-sugar tastes—exactly what the food industry was hoping for.
But change what you eat and you also change the activity of taste/odor genes, the types of receptors on cells, and the signals going to your brain.
This whole process works great when you’re dealing with a strong flavor like chocolate, or coffee, or a fresh strawberry. Remember the last time you ate a just-picked strawberry? Its flavor molecules were at their peak, sending hundreds of powerful messages to your brain about the taste of the berry. In much the same way the flavor of a good wine changes over time in both the bottle and the glass, the messages change in depth and power as you eat, particularly if you eat slowly and mindfully.
The molecules that make up flavors are fragile, however. So the quicker a ripe strawberry gets from the plant to your mouth, the more flavorful it is. That’s one reason why freshly picked produce from your garden or the farmers’ market often tastes so much better than produce from the supermarket, which may be days or even weeks or months old.
When you process food, many flavor compounds are destroyed. As a result, unless processed foods are altered to improve their flavor, they just aren’t going to taste as good as the real thing foods.
Take cherry juice, for instance. Once the cherries are shipped from the orchards to the processing plant, they’ve already lost some of their flavors. Put them through the crusher, bottle the juice, ship it to the stores, and you’d get a pale cousin of the real thing.
To make the juice more appealing, the manufacturer begins manipulating those flavor molecules. Good flavor chemists can work wonders with taste. A little chemical manipulation and they could even make this book taste like a sweet, just-picked cherry.
One problem, however, is that nature doesn’t provide us with perfect consistency, which means that the food processors would have to treat each batch differently to make sure the final product was flavored appropriately. Way too much work. If, on the other hand, they have a blank palette to work with, they can just add the same flavoring each time without having to adjust the recipe. So they use masking agents to minimize the original flavor of the food.