Scientists have been telling people to eat healthy natural food for their own health's sake. But American marketing has infested the entire planet. I see hyper-processed foods in places like Lebanon where there is very little regulation of what poisons and colorants go into locally-made processed foods, where copy-cat imitations of American junk are considered the purview of "high society", where caravans of Pepsi trucks can be seen traveling up and down the country, and where obesity has reached scandalous levels - in a country whose only good reputation comes form its natural Mediterannean diet.
Lebanon produces much of its fruits and vegetables. The country's weather is ideal and allows to grow food year-round along the coast and up the highlands in greenhouses. BUT, there is very little regulation as to what pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers enter the food production chain. Lebanese farmers and villagers have very little education on what is good and what is bad, and they add these noxious chemicals like they're adding spices to their shawarma or falafel sandwiches. Then, they are surprised to learn that international statistics show Lebanon, despite its small size, to have the highest rates of cancers around the world.
The State's provision of services (water, electricity...) is highly deficient, so alternate or compensatory services are provided by politically-affiliated Mafias who do all they can to prevent the State from monopolizing such services as water and electricity. The Lebanese pay two bills every month for every public service. The levels of air pollution are astronomically dangerous, with all the water trucks running around to fill people's house tanks operating on very toxic low-grade gasoil (mazout). Take a drive and you'll see heavy black smoke billowing from these trucks' exhaust pipes.
There is literally a huge generator on every block of every city and in every village to provide electric power, about 20 hours per day, leaving the remaining 4 hours for the State to provide. These generators also run on dirty gasoil, which compounds the air pollution.
With Lebanon scoring the highest rates of cancers around the world, the dumb Lebanese believe that all the deaths of young people (diabetes, obesity, cancer....) are caused by the Covid vaccine, thanks to Russian propaganda that has heightened their suspicions of anything governmental or official. The Lebanese are also seriously scientifically illiterate and equally seriously hyper-religious, believing all the superstitions that religions promote. Their lives are governed by churches and mosques blaring their masses and prayers from loudspeakers all day, with a religious holiday almost every day. If you tell a Lebanese that you have, say, a hiatal hernia, their first advice is to go visit Annaya (Saint Charbel) or Hemlaya (Saint Rafqa) where, they assure you, the saints will strike you with a miracle and heal you. But when they themselves fall sick, they rush to the doctor.
Given this primitiveness in a society that somehow claims to be at the forefront of culture, liberty, enlightenment and progress (بلد الحرية والثقافة والتنور والابداع و و و و و ....) when the reality is that it is sinking up to its eyeballs in backwardness and religious supersititions, the Lebanese have no qualms lapping up all the American-style junk food as if it were an escalator up the social hierarchy. Watch Lebanese TV and you'll notice that some 80% of women have blond hair, while all the men are dark-haired baldies with big bellies. Obviously all this blond hair is fake - Lebanese women want all to be "like the Americans in the movies". Then, all the botox injections and liftings that make their faces look like dead fish. I have no idea who told them that men like the "dead fish" look, because they obviously do this because they want men to notice them. And men do, but with utter revulsion and disgust.
Not only is this invasion of processed foods a danger to health, but its byproducts - cans, plastic bags, chip bags, plastic bottles, wraps.... - literally litter the roads, sidewalks, and sadly deep inside the forests and into the rivers and waterways. The Lebanese throw trash from their car windows as if it's a hobby. They have not one ounce of respect for the country's natural beauty. When it rains, the streets, underpasses and other roads turn into raging rivers and swamps because of all the trash that accumulates along the roadsides and clogs the stormwater drains. The trash that somehow escapes ends up in the forests, down the ravines and into the rivers and brooks that empties all that plastic wealth into the Mediterranean.
There is a village in Lebanon that produced a female saint that was beatified by the Vatican a few decades ago. Naturally, everyone in the village is very proud. The name of the saint in question is Rafqa (with a general meaning of "companion" in Semitic languages), and many newly born girls have been named after her, BUT instead of using their own authentic Phoenician-vintage spelling and pronunciation of the name - Rafqa - the Lebanese's inferiority complex and lack of self-esteem makes them ALL name their newborn daughters Rebecca, because this is what they see in Hollywood movies. Rebecca is the westernized version of Rafqa, and the Lebanese thus demonstrate their shame of their own culture, which they see as inferior to the west and the US in particular. Jews, on the other hand, are proud of their culture and legacy and use the Hebrew version of the same name, Rivka.
I can understand that an emigrant to the US whose daughter is born in the US names her Rebecca. A sign, perhaps, of a desire for integration. But in Lebanon itself, what compels these cultural reptiles to crawl at the feet of anything American-trash vintage is beyond comprehension. Is there anything more shameful than being ashamed of one's own culture?
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More
than 50% of the $2.9 trillion paid to shareholders by food corporations
between 1962 and 2021 “was distributed by UPF manufacturers alone,”
according to research published Tuesday in the leading medical journal
The Lancet.
“We found evidence that UPF consumption is increasing
everywhere around the world, fueled by powerful global corporations,”
said coauthor Carlos Augusto Monteiro, professor emeritus of nutrition
and public health in the School of Public Health at Brazil’s University
of São Paulo.
“To keep this business model, which is highly
profitable, the industry cannot afford to make minimally processed foods
as they did in the past, so they use extensive political lobbying to
stop effective public health policies that support healthy eating,” said
Monteiro, who coined the term “ultraprocessed food” in 2009 when he
developed the NOVA classification system, which categorizes foods into four groups by their level of industrial processing.
Companies
can “double or triple their profits” by turning corn, wheat, beans and
other whole foods “into a colorless and flavorless sawdust which is then
reconstructed with artificial flavorings and additives,” said Barry
Popkin, the W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.
“The
food industry doesn’t want to lose their cash cow, so they’re willing
to put millions into fighting government restrictions on ultraprocessed
food as well as funding nutritionists who’ll say there’s no evidence of
harm,” said Popkin, who coauthored two of the articles.
The series
presents research on the known health harms of ultraprocessed food and
calls for a global effort to regulate the industry, with methods such as
food warning labels, taxation, and laws to restrict marketing and
advertising, especially to children.
However, the International
Food & Beverage Alliance, founded in 2008 by leading food and
nonalcoholic beverage companies, told CNN that health authorities
worldwide have rejected the concept of ultraprocessed food due to its
lack of scientific consensus.
“The
policy and advocacy recommendations of this series go far beyond the
available evidence — proposing new regulatory action based on
‘processing’ or additive ‘markers’ and calling for the exclusion of
industry from policymaking,” said IFBA Secretary-General Rocco Renaldi
in an email.
“If adopted as proposed, these policy recommendations
would risk limiting access to nutrient-dense processed foods and
reducing the availability of safe, affordable, shelf-stable options
globally,” Renaldi said.
A coordinated global effort by industry
Food industry actions to battle regulations and discredit science are coordinated through a global network
of “front groups, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and research
partners,” one of the Lancet articles said. This network could include
advertising firms, fast-food chains, grocery retailers, ingredient
suppliers, lobbyists, plastic producers and research partners, the
authors wrote.
Even dietitian influencers have been hired to
promote anti-stigma messaging, the article said. Social media messaging
by agents in the network may try to blame overeating and obesity on
consumer willpower and lifestyle, or portray opponents of ultraprocessed
food as “elitist, misinformed, or ideologically motivated.” State,
local or federal attempts to restrict manufacturing, marketing or sales
of ultraprocessed foods are portrayed by some influencers as an
overreach of authority, the article stated.
Actions
taken by this network include “direct lobbying, infiltrating government
agencies, and litigation,” the authors wrote, as well as “framing
debates and manufacturing scientific doubt.”
Those efforts also
extend to industry-funded research, the article said. One review
reported in the paper, for example, found studies paid for by the food
industry were five times more likely to show no association between
obesity and consumption of ultraprocessed foods.
Using Big Tobacco’s playbook
To
extend their markets, food and beverage corporations — gobbled up by
major tobacco companies between the 1960s and ’80s — have used the
tobacco industry’s playbook to create products designed to be hyperpalatable
and addictive, said Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor
Emerita of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York
University. She has written numerous books on food industry politics.
“By
the ’80s, ultraprocessed food was everywhere, in large portions,
heavily processed, utterly delicious, irresistible and acceptable to be
eaten all day long, any place, under any circumstances,” said Nestle,
who coauthored two of the articles in the series.
Experts say corporations are using marketing and sales techniques, similar to those that enticed 45% of American adults to smoke by 1954, to create an exploding global market for ultraprocessed foods. Those marketing techniques are often directed at children, an area which needs swift and rigid regulation, Nestle said.
Today,
some 70% of the food on grocery store shelves in the United States are
ultraprocessed, making it difficult to avoid UPFs that are often cheap
and convenient, experts say. A recent report
by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found American
children get an average of 62% of their daily calories from
ultraprocessed foods — and it’s about 53% a day for adults.
With
the US, United Kingdom and European Union markets heavily saturated with
ultraprocessed foods, the food industry has been pushing heavily into
South America, Africia and Eastern Europe, as well as China and India,
said Maria Laura da Costa Louzada, a professor and vice-coordinator of
the Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health at the
University of São Paulo, Brazil.
“Ultraprocessed foods are taking
more and more space in what people eat. Their share has doubled in
countries like Brazil, Canada and Mexico, and tripled in just a few
years in China, South Korea and Spain,” Louzada said in a taped video.
“This means that traditional, freshly prepared meals are losing ground
fast. Without strong public policies, the consumption of ultraprocessed
foods will keep rising.”
That increased consumption will be a disaster for health, according to a new, systematic review
published in the Lancet series. Out of 104 studies, 92 showed an
association between ultraprocessed foods and a higher risk of one or
more chronic diseases, according to the review. An additional
meta-analysis found statistically significant associations between UPFs
and a dozen chronic illnesses, said Montiero, who was first author on
both studies.
“We believe the displacement of traditional diets by
ultraprocessed foods is the most convincing explanation for the global
pandemic of chronic diseases related to diet, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease,” Montiero said.
Recent randomized clinical trials, considered the gold standard of research, have shown ultraprocessed foods lead to eating an additional 500 to 1,000 calories a day
compared with a diet of minimally processed whole foods — even though
both diets contained the same number of total calories, sugars, fiber,
fat, salt and carbohydrates.
And an August study
found that even when ultraprocessed foods are “healthier,” eating
minimally processed foods — such as whole foods cooked at home — doubled
weight loss.
“There’s something about UPFs that cause overeating,
perhaps because they are not foods, they are formulations designed to
hit our ‘bliss point,’” Monteiro said. “When you subject traditional,
modified whole foods to these formulations, the food industry can
manipulate sugar, salt and fat with the use of flavors, textures and
additives until they become irresistible.”
Critics point out that
most studies on ultraprocessed foods are observational and therefore
cannot prove a direct impact on health.
“It seems to me likely that at least some UPFs could cause increases in the risk of some
chronic diseases,” said Kevin McConway, professor emeritus of applied
statistics at The Open University in the UK, in a statement.
But the Lancet series of papers “certainly doesn’t establish that all
UPFs increase disease risk. There’s still room for doubt and for
clarification from further research,” said McConway, who has been an adviser to the BBC and other journalistic organizations.
A global call for action
The second paper
in the Lancet series examines the success of a number of regulatory
actions by US states and international countries to quell the spread of
ultraprocessed foods.
Imposing taxes on sugary sodas, for example,
has successfully reduced consumption of ultraprocessed drinks. State or
government restrictions against the use of trans fats, food dyes and
some additives have changed how industry formulates their products.
“Reducing
specific ingredients to mere markers of ultra-processing is an
overgeneralized response to a far more nuanced issue,” said Carla
Saunders, president of the Calorie Control Council, which represents
manufacturers of foods and beverages with non-nutritive sweeteners.
“Safe,
rigorously tested ingredients, like no- and low-calorie sweeteners, are
scientifically validated by the world’s leading health authorities and
play a critical role in managing chronic conditions such as diabetes and
obesity, which supports better health.”
Countries like Chile, Mexico, Norway, the UK, South Korea and Ireland have implemented laws against the marketing of UPFs, especially to children.
A growing number of countries require front-of-package labels that
alert consumers to problematic ingredients. Such efforts are starting to
improve diets to some extent, experts say.
However, many of the
front-of-package labels have only alerted the public to the health harms
of foods high in fat, sugar and salt, called HFSS foods. Limiting the
message to HFSS foods, however, fails to limit chemical-laden
ultraprocessed foods reformulated by food manufacturers to fall below
sugar, salt and saturated fat levels established by regulators, Montiero
said.
“But, if we add the presence of artificial flavorings,
colorings and non-nutritive sweeteners to the warning labels, we cover
nearly 100% of ultraprocessed foods,” he said. “This also addresses the
criticism that NOVA has received for not addressing the issue of
nutrients such as sugar and salt.”
While all of these efforts have
been partially successful, according to the Lancet series, true change
is going to come from a coordinated global effort. Authors call for a
worldwide network of government leaders, UN agencies, scientists,
academicians and the public, all designed to combat the spread of
ultraprocessed foods, prioritizing children. Two powerful agencies have
already joined the effort, announcing their involvement in statements
published in The Lancet.
The World Health Organization, which in May put out a global call
for scientists to join in its work on ultraprocessed foods, described
the escalating consumption of UPFs as “a systemic threat to public
health, equity, and environmental sustainability.”
The Lancet series, the WHO said, makes “a compelling argument for urgent action on UPFs.”
In its own published statement,
UNICEF offered its full support to the proposed global network in order
to develop an international policy framework to “protect children,
families, and societies from UPFs.”
“Effective protection of
children from UPFs demands confronting the economic and political power
that enables the UPF industry to weaken, delay, or obstruct government
action,” wrote Joan Matji, global director for child nutrition and
development, and Mauro Brero, senior nutrition adviser for food systems
for children at UNICEF.
“Governments must lead a whole-of-society
approach that ensures this generation is the first in which children’s
rights to nutrition, food, and health are prioritised over corporate
profit.”
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Donald Dumb and Roy Cohn, the evil master "architect" who mentored Donald Dumb (The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/apprentice-trump-roy-cohn-jeremy-strong-b2628062.html) 
