Fast Food Genocide

by Dr. Joel Fuhrman

  The diets of mothers powerfully affect their unborn children. The brain is built in a micronutrient-intensive process that requires iron, iodine, zinc, magnesium, DHA, and a variety of vitamins and other micronutrients that are in low supply in many regions. Researchers in rural India evaluated the maternal nutrition of 792 low-birth-weight babies and found no association between size at birth and maternal calorie and protein intake. Instead, intake of micronutrient-dense foods and greens was strongly correlated with fetal growth and normal birth weight. Green leafy vegetables, fruits, and even milk were directly associated with healthy offspring, even after adjusting for potentially confounding variables such as socioeconomic status.12 In other words, the nutritional quality of the mother’s diet is critical.

  Iron deficiency, the most common nutrient disorder in the world, also impairs growing brains. The effects of iron deficiency during infancy last a long time. In one study, children who had been treated for severe chronic iron deficiency in infancy still tested lower in arithmetic and writing achievement and motor function after treatment compared with children who had good iron status in infancy. The ratio of children who had repeated a grade or were referred for special education or tutoring was two to three times higher. The parents and teachers of formerly iron-deficient children rated their behavior as more problematic, with increased anxiety, depression, social problems, and attention deficits.13

  Iodine deficiency is another major global problem. According to the World Health Organization, even mild iodine deficiency causes subtle mental impairment that leads to poor school performance, along with reduced intellectual and work capacity.14 Iodine deficiency results in a global loss of 10 to 15 IQ points at a population level and constitutes the world’s greatest single cause of preventable brain damage and mental retardation.15 In extreme cases, iodine deficiency stunts physical and mental growth in developing fetuses. This condition, called cretinism, is rare in the United States, even though milder iodine deficiencies are not. In fact, they are on the rise; consumption of this vital mineral in the United States has declined by 50 percent since the 1970s. Fast food is low in iodine.16

  Fast food and micronutrient deficiencies don’t just promote infants with low birth weights and suboptimal brain function. The same foods are a major problem affecting all children throughout their developing years. Researchers tested two cohorts of children in Australia and Indonesia. The Australian cohort was well-nourished according to daily recommended allowances, while the Indonesian group was marginally nourished. Each child received either a placebo or multivitamin supplement that included iron, zinc, folic acid and vitamins A, B6, B12, and C, with DHA and EPA. Researchers found that supplements led to significant improvements in both the well-nourished and marginally nourished groups. In both cases, verbal learning and memory were increased in the test group compared with the control group.17

  Though supplements have only a fraction of the micronutrient and phytochemical diversity of real food, this study was a testament to the essential role of nutrients in enabling our children to achieve their maximum potentials. A gradual but full spectrum of intellectual damage from mild to severe is occurring, and this damage inhibits fast food–eating populations from reaching their potential and achieving the American dream of prosperity and happiness.

  “You see healthy food ahead? No way! It must be a mirage!”

  Commercial food makers do not and cannot replicate the wide variety of beneficial ingredients contained in whole foods, with their complex assortment of micronutrients and phytochemicals. The average American consumes a diet that is only marginally better than the diet of residents in Camden. Consequently, the problems in Camden are a bellwether of problems that threaten the health, welfare, and security of all Americans. This abysmal diet affects all areas of the country, but in the inner cities and the Southern states, things are worse.

  NOURISHING BRAINS IN OUR CITIES

  Revitalizing our cities and protecting the health of people in need not only involves building adequate housing, creating jobs, establishing adequate public transportation, and providing affordable access to medical care; it also must involve providing access to healthy food. A healthy population improves the economy, reduces demand for public welfare services, supports the tax base, and reduces crime; it elevates and supports all other initiatives to improve public good. This means that food policy and distribution must change significantly. People in impoverished communities and especially inner cities need produce, and they need public health authorities to encourage the consumption of produce through public health initiatives and messaging.

  New York City is an example where significant improvements in food awareness, accessibility, and eating style have been made, resulting in improved health of the population in a relatively short time. Today, salad bars, chopped salads, vegetable bars, vegetable juice bars, and fruit and vegetable produce vendors can be found on the sidewalks throughout the city. More food markets are selling produce in lower income areas. The political discussions about reducing sugar and soft drink consumption and lowering salt intake initiated by former mayor Michael Bloomberg had a positive effect on the social climate and health of New Yorkers. It is encouraging and even amazing that Bloomberg had such a powerful influence on saving lives in New York City, even when many of his initiatives were unpopular and rejected by the legislature.

  The dialogue that Mayor Bloomberg opened among New Yorkers with his message about food on radio, on TV, and in print positively affected the way New Yorkers eat today. Since he first took office in 2002, Bloomberg unleashed a tsunami of public health initiatives: He attempted to cut sodium in prepared meals; he ordered that menus in chain restaurants include calorie counts; he posted restaurants’ health department grades; and he worked to limit the use of tobacco products throughout the city. His first acts included a ban on smoking in restaurants and workplaces. In 2011, the restriction was extended to public parks and beaches.

  Bloomberg’s proposed restrictions spurred a backlash of criticism. Among other things, he was called Nanny-in-Chief and Big-Brother-in-Charge. Many people thought he went too far and that trying to legislate better health choices infringed on people’s rights. Several of his efforts did not succeed legislatively. For instance, he tried to restrict the serving size of soda and failed. He also failed in his bid to get a soda tax adopted and to ban the use of U.S. government food stamps to buy soda. In their efforts to beat these proposals, soda companies staged rallies and gave millions of dollars to politicians and made other donations to hospitals to enhance their public image. However, the attention brought to these issues could not be silenced, and although the soda-tax efforts were defeated in both New York and Philadelphia, soda consumption still went down in these two cities by about 25 percent and has remained down in subsequent years.18

  There is no question that the discussion raised about soda, sugar, and health in the media and government’s role in encouraging better food choices had a positive result and are two of the primary reasons that New Yorkers started eating healthier. From the time that Bloomberg took office in January 2002, the city’s smoking rate has dropped from 22 percent to just above 14 percent—one of the fastest declines in the country. Today, New York is most likely the healthiest city in the United States and certainly the healthiest large city because of what Bloomberg did and others have done since. A ten-year study by the New York City Health Department showed that New York’s death rate fell 11.1 percent and life spans lengthened by more than 2.5 years, to 81.1 years, during the study period, 2004–2013, which ended with Bloomberg’s third term in office. Premature deaths plummeted by 16 percent during the decade, and the racial gaps in death rates narrowed, according to the study.19

  Mayor Bloomberg also started a program called FRESH (Food Retail Expansion to Support Health). Its mission is to help alleviate the lack of nutritious, affordable, fresh food in low-income New York City neighborhoods. This program offers tax incentives, density bonuses, grants, and loans t
o fresh produce retailers who open or expand in underserved parts of the city. Since launching in 2009, twenty-four FRESH projects have been approved. Thirteen new stores have completed their construction and are open to the public. These supermarkets are expected to provide more than sixteen hundred new jobs and represent a citywide investment of approximately $100 million.20

  Certainly other factors played a role that developed increasing public demand, but in the past five years hundreds of healthy salad-and vegetable-friendly fast food places have opened in New York City. It is common to see a healthy salad takeout restaurant that offers assorted healthy toppings, including beans, seeds, and nuts, throughout the city. For example, in 2017 Just Salad has twenty-one locations in New York, Chop’T has six locations, fresh&co has fourteen locations, and sweet-green has fifteen. Fast food establishments serving healthy options in New York City have exploded. And there are now many more small grocery stores that feature salad bars and offer a large selection of fresh produce.

  New York City uses multiple strategies to improve the food environment, including enhancing access to and education on healthy eating. Green Carts is an important New York City innovation that helps vendors with mobile food carts offer fresh produce in neighborhoods that have limited access to supermarkets. The street vendor carts sell only fresh produce, including local vegetable favorites and tropical fruits. The program was launched in 2008 and since then, nearly five hundred vendors have opened Green Carts. Many of them have electronic benefits transfer (EBT) terminals (distributed for free to these vendors) to accept supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) benefits. These efforts in New York have made a big difference.

  It is interesting to note that Bloomberg’s attempt to limit soda consumption was not welcome in some parts of the country. Mississippi—whose 34.9 percent obesity rate is our nation’s highest, according to the CDC—passed an “anti-Bloomberg” law. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant wrote, “It simply is not the role of the government to micro-regulate citizens’ dietary decisions.” But Bloomberg lashed back. “‘Saturday Night Live’ couldn’t write this stuff,” he said about Mississippi’s move. “How can somebody try to pass a law that deliberately says we can’t improve the lives of our citizens?” he asked. “It’s just farce.”21

  As we improve the nutritional intake of our nation’s inner cities, we will also have long-term positive effects on reducing chronic disease, poverty, violence, and crime.

  WE ALL NEED TO WORK TOGETHER

  One of the goals of the “Let’s Move!” campaign led by former First Lady Michelle Obama was to eradicate food deserts by providing financial incentives to encourage supermarkets to open in these neighborhoods. Objectives of the program are to eradicate food deserts, fight childhood obesity, and encourage the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Of course, what the national government can do is limited because of competing food interest groups and lobbyists (including the processed food industry), which derail the opportunity for dramatic changes and the ability to heavily influence food policies.

  For example, on the Let’s Move! website you can get information about MyPlate, a USDA program whose sample menus include dangerous fast foods, such as puddings, pretzels, tub margarine, and pork tenderloin with egg noodles. You won’t see any raw nuts and seeds, no large salads with healthy dressings (made with real seeds and nuts), no bean chili or vegetable bean stew with greens, onions, cabbages, and mushrooms. It’s just more semi-dangerous SAD recommendations that are a bit better than the typical fast food diets many inner-city children now eat. What a disappointment.

  To significantly improve the nation’s health, we must expose the truth about dangerous, low-nutrient foods such as white bread, pasta, and flour. Most importantly, we must share the latest nutritional science to showcase the necessity of eating greens, beans, nuts, and seeds. Government nutritional programs (if they continue to get funded at all) can be hindered by influential lobbyists. The government won’t take a stand on strong initiatives such as reducing meat consumption, or cutting out added sugars, or eliminating sweetened milk from school lunches. It can’t even support the basics, such as eating more fruit, veggies, and beans. It always purposefully confuses the message so as not to offend the food industry, especially the sugar, egg, meat, and dairy industries.

  Though our national government is unlikely to advocate clear guidelines for excellent nutrition, these three are clear and well-supported by a consensus of nutritional scientists the world over. These three points need to be recognized everywhere, without confusion:

  1.Eat more fruits and vegetables, especially vegetables of differing colors, beans, mushrooms, onions, seeds, and nuts.

  2.Reduce or eliminate the consumption of fried foods, white flour, and sweeteners, including sugar, fructose, honey, and maple syrup.

  3.Reduce all animal products to fewer than 10 percent of total calories, especially processed meats, barbecued chicken, and red meat.

  Not thousands, but millions of people are dying needlessly every year in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, rather than living with good health into their 80s and 90s, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).22 WHO is a global organization that includes more than seven thousand doctors and scientists from more than 150 countries. Its primary goal is to “build a better, healthier future for people all over the world.” The findings and recommendations from this organization should be wake-up calls for the world.

  Diseases linked to lifestyle choices, including diabetes and cancers, kill 16 million people prematurely (younger than the age of 70) each year according to a 2015 WHO report. This “lifestyle disease” epidemic “causes a much greater public health threat than any other epidemic known to man,” said Shanthi Mendis, the lead author of WHO’s Chronic Disease Prevention and Management report.23

  WHO supports banning the advertising of tobacco and alcohol and taxing junk food and high-salt fast food. In Hungary, a heavy tax on unhealthy components of various foods and drinks led to a 27 percent drop in junk food sales.24 Heeding the call of WHO, the United Kingdom announced the introduction of a 20 percent tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in 2017. The U.S. food industry argues that members of the public should be able to take “personal responsibility” for choosing what foods to eat, deflecting the blame to the consumer; but the truth is that the public lacks knowledge and choice.

  This is a critical point. Is it really a choice if the information, let alone the healthy food itself, is not readily available? And while the general population may understand the basic distinction between healthy and unhealthy, I argue that most people don’t truly understand the radical, detrimental life-altering and life-shortening effects of the highly processed, sugar-enhanced foods that they choose daily. This must change.

  The costs of treating people who are sickly for years and then die in the prime of their lives are devastating. WHO has reported that $7 trillion will be sucked out of the global economy over the next decade by such premature deaths.

  The current tactics of the sugar industry mimic how “big tobacco” was able to define its practices and promote tobacco use for years and years. Key in its strategy was paying scientists to plant doubt in the minds of the public, thereby confusing them, and financially supporting political allies.

  WE CAN INITIATE CHANGE THAT SAVES LIVES

  New innovations and initiatives for supporting better food availability are happening across the country. In New York state, a program called the Healthy Food & Healthy Communities Fund has provided $30 million in financing for produce markets since 2011. This program, along with some in New Jersey and Colorado, was modeled after the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative led by the Food Trust, the Reinvestment Fund, and the Urban Affairs Coalition. The goal of all these programs is to make it easier to develop full-service food retailers. This can happen through better loan terms, subsidies, tax incentives, and a host of other financial packages. In Pennsylvania, the financing program approved funding for eighty-eight new
and expanded markets in the six years of the program.

  In New Orleans, a city program called the Fresh Food Retailer Initiative was part of the financing that helped open several stores in target areas during 2013–2015. These included the reopening of Circle Food Store, a local landmark in the Seventh Ward that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. It was and is again a needed mainstay of fresh food. A Tulane University study in 2014 showed that the number of supermarkets in New Orleans in that year had returned to more than thirty, after having been less than half that number in 2007.

  Emerging research suggests that introducing supermarkets into low-income urban communities can improve dietary behaviors. An important 2002 study that followed ten thousand residents in Maryland, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Minnesota found that local food environments affected dietary intake. Researchers reported that African American residents increased their fruit and vegetable intake by 32 percent for each supermarket in their census area.25 A similar study in the United Kingdom measured fruit and vegetable consumption as a marker of healthier eating behavior and found that 75 percent of the population increased their produce consumption after a supermarket was introduced into an area of need, doubling their average intake of fruits and vegetables.26 The evidence shows that if quality food is available at reasonable prices, positive health effects occur for people at high nutritional risk.