What has happened?
The same things that have always happened. Food is cheaper. We can afford more of it. And we increased the number of steps between our food’s source and our bellies so much so that our food doesn’t even look like food anymore.
To start with, calorie-dense foods are now less expensive and more readily available than ever. According to the USDA, we’re now producing 3,800 calories per person per day. That number is an increase of several hundred calories since 1970. And accordingly, 62% of adult Americans are now overweight, according to the National Center for Health statistics—in 1980, that number was 46%.[3]
The Birth of Industrial Agriculture
In the twentieth century, agriculture went through profound changes, both in the United States and globally. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the rural farmer was the largest demographic in the United States. Nearly a century ago, more than 50% of the United States population lived in rural areas, and farming represented 41% of the American workforce.[4]
Then, industrialization happened. The development of the Ford Model-T, the tractor, pesticides, and other agricultural technologies brought a new drive for efficiency into America’s heartland.
It took a century to double food production from 1820 levels to those in 1920. It took just 30 years to double it again, between 1920 and 1950. It took 15 years from 1950 to 1965, and 10 between 1965 and 1975. Food production has continued to grow exponentially as science and the demand for food has caused our agricultural industry to industrialize.[5]
In the words of food activist Michael Pollan:
“In the past century American farmers were given the assignment to produce lots of calories cheaply, and they did. They became the most productive humans on earth. A single farmer in Iowa could feed 150 of his neighbors. That is a true modern miracle.”[6]
This drive and industrialization is necessary, actually. By 2050, the UN estimates, we’ll need to double our food production again to maintain projected population growth.[7]
The miracle of abundance comes with a remarkable set of consequences. Today, America’s heartland is empty; only 17% of Americans live in rural communities. Efficiency also means fewer jobs: if a single farmer can feed 150 neighbors, it means you need fewer farmers. Today, less than 2% of the United States population is directly employed in agriculture.
Another significant consequence of industrialization is a rise in occupational health hazards. Agriculture is now one of the most dangerous professions in America. According to the Centers for Disease Control,[8] agriculture is dominated by giant factory farms with livestock packed at huge scale. It’s what allows just four companies to produce 81% of the cows, 73% of the sheep, 57% of the pigs, and 50% of the chickens in America.[9] But with a relatively homogenized and industrialized production system, toxins travel faster in our food supply and affect more people. Packing animals in makes them more susceptible to disease, which means that more antibiotics and other drugs go into our livestock, decreasing their effectiveness for treating human diseases. And locating these farms near places where produce is grown means an increased risk of food contamination.
While calories have become more affordable, the nutrients in our food have slowly disappeared before our eyes, only to be replaced with corn-based sugar, soy-based fat and protein, and a whole lot of salt. Sugar, corn, and soy are the three crops of America, and they are the crops that make it into our animals and onto our dinner tables. Our grocery stores are full of manufactured foods, made mostly from corn and soy, that aren’t particularly good for us and as Michael Pollan says, not something that your grandmother would recognize as food.
We don’t grow our food anymore; we manufacture it. And in the 1970s, we eliminated requirements for calling artificial food “artificial.” So right on the front of the packages, in really big emotion-grabbing type, companies could create exciting new forms of false food without ever saying so. Add to that the fact that this cheaper, more highly processed food alters our taste sensation so that the organic stuff seems bland, and it’s easy to see why we’ve gotten obese. Figures 2-1 and 2-2 speak for themselves.
A New Set of Consequences
As probability would have it, I am one of the 62% of Americans considered overweight. In fact, according to my Body Mass Index (BMI), I’m one of the 27% of us considered obese. It’s a terrible feeling, compounded by my constant attempts at exercise. I’ve run a marathon and several half marathons; gone through the constant physical, mental, and intellectual abuse of Tony Horton’s P90x; and endured the torture of vinyasa yoga. My house is littered with high-tech gadgetry—from the Wii Fit to the Withings Internet-powered scale (it posts your weight on Twitter) to the FitBit (a little gadget you wear on your belt to tell you how many calories you’ve burned by walking around). I do all of this for two reasons: so that I don’t need to grease the doorframes to get out of the house, and so that I can eat.
If you want to know why Americans are getting fat, ask a fat person. It’s because for most of us, food—especially food that’s bad for us—is delicious.
Let’s be clear: a chocolate-chip cookie, for most people, is superior in every way to a head of lettuce, and if one could make a chocolate-chip cookie as good for you as a pile of spinach, the salad industry would be in danger of being obliterated by Mrs. Fields. It’s a cruel joke that the stuff that tastes the best is often the stuff that’s worst for us. But the reason behind it makes a lot of sense.
From way back during mankind’s foraging days until just a few centuries ago (less than a blink through the eyes of human history), we didn’t have a lot of food to go around. We never knew where our next meal would come from, and thus our bodies became wired for scarcity. Over the millennia, we evolved into energy conservation machines. It’s why we crave that salt-fat-sugar combination—and why, as far as I’m personally concerned, the most dangerous place in America is between me and a chicken wing.
Our bodies are programmed to acquire as many resources as possible, and to take what we don’t need and store it as fat—fat that will keep us warm and supply us with energy during the harsh winter when there’s a lot less out there to eat.
For modern society, neither winter nor famine is the same threat they used to be. Not only can you get “fresh” tomatoes at your grocery store in the middle of winter in the coldest regions of America, the season has all but stopped killing us. In 2010, according to the U.S. Natural Hazard Statistics report, there were only 42 deaths from “winter” in the United States and another 34 from cold. You have about as much chance of dying from the cold as you do from lightning.[10]
The fresh, warm Krispy Kreme donut on a cool fall morning does more than treat (and trick) the tastebuds. That sort of food production allows the planet to sustain ever-larger populations—we’ve now surpassed seven billion human beings—with cheap calories.
9
Testimony by Leland Swenson, president of the U.S. National Farmers’ Union, before the House Judiciary Committee, September 12, 2000.