Food and diets are rarely out of the public eye or the media. Whether we are overeating red meat or consuming unhealthy amounts of sugar through ubiquitous carbonated drinks or morning pastries, there is a regular and indeed increasing discussion on healthy or unhealthy diets. “Make America Healthy Again” is now a central election promise of the Republican party. RFK Jr and former President Trump have now joined forces to fight Big Food and junk/fast food diets.
Bruce McMichael
15 October 2024
Western European and North American diets are characterised by a huge choice of cheap, highly processed foods such as cookies, cake, baked goods, breakfast cereals, and salty snacks. Big Food is dominating the supermarket shelves and putting profits over health. Artificial sweeteners, unhealthy additives and every variety of ultra-processed foods (UPF) have become the norm. This has not only led to a chronic disease crisis in the West, but also has been exported to all corners of the world.
The young are especially impacted by this chronic disease crisis caused by uncontrolled consumption of fast junk food. According to the WSJ, close to 30% of American teens are prediabetic, more than 18% of young adults have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, more than 40% of adults 22 to 44 are obese.
There are not only serious human and social costs to the junk/fast food epidemic, but also extremely large economic costs associated with the negative medical, health, employment and other effects of this unhealthy diet.
This topic has taken center stage in the upcoming US elections, as RFK Jr. together with former President Trump, have joined forces to “Make America Healthy Again”. RFK Jr. wants to hold Big Food accountable by reforming the food, medicines and patenting systems.
But do ‘Western diets’ really make people sick? Or, taken to an extreme, are these foods killing its consumers? And if so, how?
This question was investigated by gastroenterologists Herbert Tilg and Timon Adolph of the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria. Through evaluation of a combination of desk research and clinical nutrition studies the scientists sought to understand whether the so-called Western diet was making people ill and ultimately killing them.
Tilg and Adolph’s results were published in a peer-reviewed article titled “Western diets and chronic diseases” in the journal Nature Medicine on 31 July 2024. They argue that healthcare professionals and societies must react now to the detrimental effects of the Western diet in order to bring about sustainable change and improved future outcomes.
So, what do food industry professionals consider to be part of a Western diet?
The general view of this diet is a reliance on UPF such as pre-packaged foods, refined grains, red meat, processed meat (sausages, salamis, prosciutto), high-sugar drinks (colas, fruit juices), candy, sweets, fried foods, high-fat dairy products and high-fructose products (sweeteners used in beverages and processed foods).
The Western diet is sometimes called the Standard American Diet (SAD). It is also characterised by a low intake of fresh vegetables, fruit and whole grains as well as high alcohol consumption. Poor diets impact the effective workings of the gut and its microbiome. For example, the loss of dietary fibre contained in wholegrain cereals and fruit and vegetables and its replacement by food additives such as emulsifiers and artificial sweeteners has led to microbial breakdown and subsequent illness.
Tilg and Adolph’s research sought to answer how such diets affect metabolism and inflammation within the human body, the impact on the gut microbiome, and its bearing on people’s mental health, cardiovascular health, and cancer rates. The researchers reviewed around 300 academic papers to understand whether there was a link between the so-called Western Diet and chronic diseases, including damaging our cardiovascular systems, driving obesity, type 2 diabetes, and gut and liver diseases.
The conclusions reached by Tilg and Adolph suggest that everyday food high in sugar and fat but low in fibre does increase chronic disease risk by increasing inflammation and promoting poor gut health. They argue that better, targeted education for consumers and public health professionals is needed to raise awareness of healthier diet choices.
The scientists emphasize the urgent need for healthcare and public health professionals to increase public awareness of the detrimental effects of a Western diet, together with global discussions on the affordability and sustainability of healthy diets. They call upon all stakeholders to promote healthy lifestyles using evidence-based educational programs, regulatory policies, and insurance incentives.
National government-enacted regulatory policies and (medical) insurance incentives could induce people to make healthier food choices. In an interview with Austrian media, Adolph noted the increase in the number of people suffering from chronic inflammatory bowel disease, various cardiovascular diseases and metabolic diseases. “The Western diet makes you sick,” he said. “Now, the clinical studies used should prove more precisely which components lead to which diseases and how exactly they make you sick.”
“Not everyone gets sick in the same way from the same diet, and potentially healthy diets are not tolerated by some people,” Adolph noted, stressing that detrimental factors include long-chain fatty acids, sugar, too much meat and the associated increased cholesterol intake. “Western diets, which are high in sugar and fat and low in fibre, increase chronic disease risk by increasing systemic inflammation and gut dysbiosis”. This is now the case worldwide because the Western diet does not only affect Europe and the USA,” but people around the globe owing to the international westernization of nutrition”.
Geographic areas around the globe now referred to as Blue Zones have way above average numbers of octogenarians (people between 80 and 89), nonagenarians (people between 90 and 99) and centenarians (between 100 and 109 years old). These people are also referred to as superagers, which are defined as people whose “brains are aging at a rate much slower than average”. These individuals have the mental and physical faculties of people decades younger.
A 2023 Netflix series “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones” reversed engineered the secrets of longevity in five regions (Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda in California) and discovered some amazing similarities in the way residents in these locations live, including, a plant-based diet, daily activities, stimulating and social hobbies, and putting family and community first.
There are vast, sprawling and complex issues shaping the Western diet. They include the rise of readily available, cheap fast-food outlets; the ubiquity in many countries of a handful of highly competitive supermarket chains; the use of ingredients created by food scientists in laboratories and governments reluctant to get involved in developing effective policies.
Blue Zones have given the world a blueprint on how to make better diet and lifestyle choices. Now politicians are called on to curb the power of Big Food and make healthy food choices more affordable and available. All of which supports the famous sayings “You are what you eat”.
