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The ‘Big Food’ that Makes Us Sick
Moneylife Digital Team 13 February 2018
Life
Quick, are these statements true or false?
 
• Oatmeal is a healthy breakfast and prevents heart disease.
• Butter causes heart disease.
• Egg whites are healthier than whole eggs.
• Red meat causes cancer.
• Gluten-free food is healthy.
• Dairy is necessary for kids to grow and to prevent broken bones as we age.
• Yogurt is a healthy breakfast.
• Zero-calorie sweeteners help you lose weight by cutting calories from your diet.
 
Guess what? Every single one of those statements is false! But why do we consider most of them to be true? It’s not our fault. The orthodox healthcare establishment generates and supports such misinformation—all in the name of science. Dr Mark Hyman, medical director at Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine, and a ten-time #1 New York Times’ bestselling author, physician to the likes of Bill Clinton, says that such false information is, by design, the joint work of the food industry, the government and the media. 
 
 “Money is corrupting science, our government’s food policies, and the media,” writes Dr Hyman. “There is a multi-trillion dollar global food industry that is growing, processing, manufacturing, marketing, and serving food like substances that are making us sick and fat. They are cheap to make, and rake in big profits for Big Food.”
 
The food industry is the main source of money for research scientists. “If a food industry company sponsors a study, that study is 8-50 times more likely to show benefit for their product or ingredient,” writes Dr Hyman. So, dairy industry studies find that milk is good for you while American Beverage Association funds studies to show that soda has no link to obesity. Studies from independent researchers prove that soda and sugar sweetened beverages are the number one cause of obesity. The American Beverage Association also funds the public advocacy groups which, not surprisingly, oppose the sugar tax. 
 
The US food industry includes: seed producers, factory farmers, food growers and the processed food and fast-food industries. They spend millions of dollars each year to influence policies, with heavy lobbying, the department of agriculture—the same agency is in charge of dietary guidelines as well as deciding which crops US tax dollars subsidise. 
 
In 2017, the National Academy of Science found that the process for coming up with the dietary guidelines was corrupt and influenced by industry while ignoring many relevant research studies. This is how corn (high-fructose corn syrup), wheat (refined white flour) and soy (refined soybean oil)—all three products that are bad for health—get 99% of the government’s food subsidies. 
 
Meanwhile, only 1% of the subsidy goes for ‘specialty’ crops. Guess what these are? They are fruits and vegetables. Yes, fruits and vegetables, the best thing for us, are ‘specialty crops’ of which the government tells you to eat 5-9 servings a day. “Since the 1970s, the price of soda has gone down 40% while the price of veggies has gone up 40%,” points out Dr Hyman. 
 
To get people to understand what exactly they should be eating, Dr Hyman, the author of the bestseller The Blood Sugar Solution, has come up with a new book Food: What the Heck Should I Eat? which promises to fix your confusion and provide a clear roadmap to eating the right food. The right food is the single biggest thing you can do to prevent heart disease, type-2 diabetes, cancer, dementia, auto-immune disease, allergies and digestive problems, points out Dr Hyman. In the book, he explains what is healthy in each group of foods we eat—meat, poultry and eggs, dairy, beans, grains, veggies, fruit, nuts and seeds and beverages. 
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