Wife: When you go to the grocery store, get me some of that cheese i like. Me: What cheese is that? W: The one i liked that one time! M: There are literally hundreds of cheeses! W: If you loved me, you'd know. M *straining memory banks* Wedge? BellaVitano? Tomato Basil? W: Was that so hard?
Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food
Chris Van Tulleken
Published by WW Norton, 2023
This guy's a doctor, a professor, and holds a PhD in molecular virology, so it is wholly gratifying to read from him ideas that I have been harboring for well over a few years now. Vindication for my observations!
While he admits that more studies must be made and that there has been no coherent, peer-reviewed and tested studies, the results of many doctors and scientists' observations convincingly argues for a link between the obesity epidemic and our food - and not just the sugars, but ALL of our food, which has become not real "food" in the ways that our bodies understand food.
Now, be aware, all you conspiracy theorists, he is NOT saying that there is some sort of global cabal of Illuminati who have decided to kill us all by giving us Type-2 diabetes; however, he is saying that the food industry, growing and evolving over the past 40 years, has been systematically breaking down our normal food staples to their bare essences, then adding chemicals to preserve their shelf-life, make them ready for long-haul transportation, and to make you consume more of them.
All for the sake of selling more, making more money.
He also makes the case that much of our obesity is not a moral failing or a weak will, as is so often intimated in our culture, but that these foods are designed to "hook" our brains. They trigger the pleasure centers of our brains much in the same way that cigarettes and heroin do, and they tell the body to get ready for a heavy dose of nutrition that never comes. So, the brain thinks that you're eating food, your guts then say, "Yo! Where dafuq is the nutrition?!" and then your body, overall, is left wanting more and more ...
It reminded me so much of the Star Trek Episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles" in which an enzyme was added to grain destined for a starving planet that would render the consumers of the grain unable to process any nutrients. The Tribbles got into the grain containers and over ate the grain, and died of starvation. The tag line for the show was, "In a vat full of food, they STARVED to death"
My wife and I, just last night, had a three piece chicken strip meal from Raising Cane's,... complete with fries. This was at least 1100 calories ... and we had had another 600 calories from Chick-Fil-A that morning and home-cooked chicken and rice for lunch (probably around 700 calories)
So, we had had possibly double our caloric intake need for the day, yet! about two hours after the Raising Cane's meal, we were both suddenly ravenous. It was about 10pm at night, and frankly, I could've guzzled down a cheeseburger. But we both just drank water and went to bed.
What I'm telling you with this is that we understand what this book is saying because we live this, daily.
Much of the science contained in this book I don't understand, but I commend the author for doing his level best to make it understandable for a layperson such as I. Also contained in these pages are many stories of his conversations with other doctors and scientists who are interesting characters in their own right.
The closest he comes to calling any specific company out as being particularly evil is Nestlé ... you need to read the chapter describing how they have single-handedly destroying the traditional food infrastructure in Brazil.
One of the most impactful chapters was on GRAS - Generally Regarded as Safe: a classification set by the FDA in the late 50s when Congress was concerned about potentially poisonous additives to food. It seems there is a process by which any company that wants to make an additive to food needs to submit an application to the FDA for GRAS status; however, if they don't like how the FDA questions them, they can simply withdraw the application and put the additive into their product and call it GRAS anyway.
So really, what's the point of the FDA if the "F" in their title is merely symbolic?
One other part of the book that interested me was a study conducted by a Chicago pediatrician in the 1920s named Clara Davis. She did a study on roughly two dozen poor children just after they were weaned: she gave them various choices of foods and let the infants decide what they wanted to eat. Each of them, without any prompting, ate the foods that their bodies needed to grow healthy and strong.
I was reminded of the Book of Daniel, Chapter 1, in which Daniel asked that he and his fellow captive Israelites be allowed to eat their food of vegetables instead of the King's meat, to demonstrate that they would show themselves healthier than other people's on the "regular" diet.
This experiment (while admittedly was with a very small test group) underpins what most of this book is trying to tell us: that our bodies know what is needed to keep us healthy, but for the sake of cheapness and for convenience, we have given up our natural foods for mouthfuls of mush, jam-packed with chemical flavoring and colors and we have TOLD ourselves that this is food.
But it's not.
And it's killing us.
That's of course, my conclusion anyway. The good doctor is a bit more dispassionate and a lot more erudite, but yes, we can only conclude that the food we eat has no nutritional value and it's designed to addict us into eating more and more.
We are the tribbles. And we are in this grain bin, and we are eating and eating and starving ourselves to death.
Notes:
He didn't look like I had expected him to look. Yes, I know he has a passing resemblance to Jackie Earle Haley, and that the actor has already been approached for a biopic loosely based on the killings committed by Arthur James Choake, and I had also reviewed all the recordings of the trial, seen every picture taken of him online, and still, he was a surprise.
He is, in his own way, I suppose you would say, charming. Not the sort of thing you'd expect from a man who is on Oklahoma's Death Row for the brutal murder of 13 people ... and possibly 34 others. He had a smile that didn't seem one meant to impress or disarm, but one that genuinely seemed to be happy to have someone to talk to.
I have talked with others who have interviewed serial killers and other murderers, who tell me that often these people want to talk, but always want to control the conversation. Even though they have been rightfully convicted of their crimes, they always know details that no one else knows, and they hold on to that knowledge because it gives them a sense of power. At the same time, they want you to know that they have this, because they know that the public (you/me/all of us) want to know their hidden secrets, however mundane.
While Choake, who also goes by the nickname Artichokie, definitely has that (I mean, he has only hinted at the additional 34 but has not given any concrete evidence) but he also seemed to genuinely want to talk to me. He said he'd heard my podcast "Deacon" (I don't know how he'd heard it, being on Oklahoma's Death Row, and I don't want to ask any deeper because frankly I don't want him to have that access stopped). Apparently that's why he wanted to do an interview with me.
...
Of course, I'm not going to jump right in to the murders (although I probably could have, because he's already well-known for liking to talk about the ones he's already been found guilty of). Having that as the first round of questions just seemed kind of vulgar, and part of my reason for being here is because we are told by God to visit those in prison, and that's what I was doing here. So, was visiting Artichokie in a way, selfish of me? I suppose it might be. But then, aren't we all selfish in a way? Such as the way that he won't talk about the 34 plus murders that we know he's probably committed?
But I started off with, of all things, current events. The big one for March of 2025.
"So, what do you think of Trump and Musk and Making America Great Again?"
To be honest, the instant it left my lips, I thought it sounded stupid. But it was too late. It was out there.
He said, "Revelation 13 seems like a good possibility."
I quickly thought over that. I didn't have my phone with me. That had been left at the front desk. All I had was a paper and pen. He wouldn't even see me with a recorder, he said, on this meeting.
So I fought back through memory. "The woman and the dragon?"
"Close," he said. "That's Chapter 12. I'm talking about the Beast and the Dragon. They are both now in control of America."
"That's weird. For some reason I wouldn't have thought you'd call Trump the Beast."
"Why wouldn't you think that?"
"Well, I mean ... you're a Christian."
"I don't follow false prophets. And being a true Christian means you know how to spot the AntiChrist."
"So," I said, because I honestly hadn't thought of this before, "are you a Democrat or a Republican?"
"Son," he said, "that's like asking me if I'm a Moabite or an Ammonite. Both are enemies of the People of God and both were born of the sin of incest."
