5 Painful Reasons Why We’re So Unhealthy in the United States & Ways to Change It

It has nothing to do with food, which is the most horrible part of it all. In the United States, pharmaceutical/health product companies are the biggest lobbyists of lawmakers. Let that sink in for a moment and just imagine how far high that goes on the political chain. Companies that make tremendous fortunes from people’s healthy wants and illnesses, contribute the most money to U.S. lawmakers. The game was unfair to begin with and we’re literally fighting for our children’s lives against diseases like Diabetes type 2. A disease that affects children born after 2009 in unthinkable ways like appendages falling off such as fingers and penises. Little to teenage girls’ fingers may fall off or little to teenage boys’ penises may fall off from the severe complications of Diabetes type 2.

I remember the first time I heard that, how it caught me by surprised. Fingers and penises falling off isn’t something you learn about everyday. It was in a Stanford University online course with Dr. Maya Adams about child Nutrition & cooking called "Just Cook for Kids," I learned the severity of this, and realize from that course that we’re literally in a war for our great health as well as our children’s great health. Here are 5 painful reasons why we’re still so unhealthy in the United States.

Processed Foods are Forced Upon Us

I didn’t really understand what processed foods are until my late 20’s. Processed foods are foods that companies alter by taking out the natural healthy ingredients, load the foods with fats, add artificial/natural flavoring (which nowadays the flavoring is mostly HEK293), load the foods up with artificial vitamins and minerals & then exchange the natural healthy ingredients for chemical based substances to cut costs for profit. They do all this to ensure the taste is so great that you get addicted to the brands, in which barely have any real food left in them at all. It’s embedded in the U.S. culture to eat items such as canned foods & sauces, frozen vegetables, white bread, and last but not least, the infamous microwave meals, all in which are processed foods. The unhealthy microwave meals like Hungry Man’s Country Fried Chicken Meal that packs a whopping 960 calories & 2,869 mg of pure unnecessary sodium. I’m not even going to front, it’s so delicious that I remember thinking, “Anything this good can only be so bad for you,” but with those numbers; you’re literally a walking heart attack if you consume 1 per day for 4 weeks straight.

The United States is the World Leader at Branding

This is one of those things one wonders how it came back around to bite us in our asses. The U.S. is a capitalist country first, everything else last, systematic rat race. If you ain’t first, then you’re last as in “Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” All of these processed food brands are putting millions into marketing aimed to get kids addicted young so they make billions of USD from making us ill over a lifetime. Why would they do that you ask? Most of the top 10 food companies that control the world’s food supply, also own pharmaceutical companies. Much like how Nestle acquired CM&D Pharma LTD, a company that specializes in developing foods for medical purposes in treating kidney disease and colon cancer. This is not their first and so begins the vicious cycle of greed and how they intentionally aim to make us sick over time, so we become dependant on their medicines, in turn making profits off citizens in their lifetimes. The U.S. is so good at branding that we actually convince ourselves that the stuff we eat is actually healthy by lying to ourselves about a nutritional facts chart but the more that’s written on the package in fact makes the product unhealthier. Fresh foods are always the best foods, it’s just not always available for the general public in the U.S.

Real Natural Food is Scarce in the U.S.

When I was a teen, I worked at a number of successful restaurants as a server/waiter and realize even the top restaurants use processed foods as ingredients. Even if you go to Denny’s and order something you think is health conscious (I know the example is an oxymoron, Denny’s, healthy etc., but bare with me), in turn the chefs are using processed foods to make parts of the meals.

It’s not we’re not growing enough food but more profit is made off of our addiction to taste so the companies that control most of the food have countless processed food products. It’s great watching the success of Juices for Life juice bar in New York that rappers Jadakiss & Styles P opened for the health of their community. In almost every video promoting their juice bar, they mention that growing up in their borough, there weren't any healthy food options.

Americans are Champions at Over Consuming

Americans are programmed and conditioned to not understand what obesity is really saying. We’ve made matters worse by letting food corporations make obesity fashionable so they can make billions of dollars more with dieting food products. We have a super size type variety of almost every meal or snack and buffet type restaurants are packed with the most delicious processed foods you can imagine. The irony in this all is because of the over-exposure to the cut throat marketing tactics, we actually convince ourselves we’re getting some kind of deal or special award for putting poison into our bodies.

So what is obesity really saying? If you only used logic, obesity is your body’s way of telling us its framework is over packed. It’s a simple mental math type problem telling you you’re putting more calories than your body can take per day. The main reason most diets don’t work is because people don’t really understand this concept. They don’t understand that everything you do is 70% about what you eat and how much of it you’re eating. As simple as this sounds, most people are expecting only exercise, a miraculous dieting pill or cosmetic surgery to help them lose weight. We would all benefit from learning how to listen to our bodies.

We’re Programmed Robots

They don’t call them television ‘programs’ for no reason. The average American watches over 5 hours of live T.V. per day. This is just T.V. We haven’t even added in the hours on smartphones. We haven’t even mentioned video games yet. If you add these up over a short period of time, not even a long period of time, you can imagine the inactivity that plagues our youth and adults. Sure, one can argue how muscular their thumb muscles get from playing all those video games but the reality is, all this inactivity leads to ailing bodies. We all know we should exercise and continue to pursue physical greatness at every age but as a society, it seems like we’ve chosen to become more like the film “Surrogates” starring Bruce Willis. All of this inactivity is the gateway to a number of major & minor health complications.

Conclusion

It seems as Americans, we’ve let food corporations and our government use us in this demonic cycle of greed. The cycle that looks like a flow chart of unhealthy addictive foods leading to health complications on to health insurance & dependency on their medicines on to diet programs that lead you back to the beginning and repeat. The first step is being aware that it’s really happening and consciously make a change for you and your family’s great health. Here are some ideas to get us started in changing the way we feel about our bodies.

1. Take a certified online nutrition course from Udemy or Coursera. The knowledge gained from these types of courses is priceless and the certificate is cool in itself.
2. Grow your own vegetables or fruits. I mean recreationally enjoy at home with whatever space you have. The cool factors to think about are whatever plant you grow, it helps the environment around you and if you’re skilled enough to eat what you sow, that’s a great health accomplishment in itself.

1. Stop eating fast food. I understand how addictive it is but we’re fighting for our children's lives and our habits become their habits. You will literally feel the difference within 5 days and be amazed at how great and alert you feel just without fast food.

We know our unhealthiness has nothing to do with food but all to do with corporate greed so we must help each other change our diets and the way we view the value of our health. It’s literally the most important thing in life. I hope you all join me in trying to reboot the way our mind has been programmed to think about food. Our lives and the lives of the next generation may very well depend on it.