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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #76: The breakdown in U.S. health and health care

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This week's "food for thought" excerpt comes from Metabolical: The Lure and Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine (2021), by Robert H. Lustig, MD.

"There are two keys to understanding the breakdown of our health and healthcare model. The first key is the one the medical establishment doesn’t want you to know—that their drugs can’t and don’t treat chronic disease; they only treat the symptoms. . . . The second key is the one that the food industry doesn’t want you to know—all food is inherently good; it’s what’s been done to the food that’s bad. The problem is that in the course of food processing, poisons are either added (stuffing the liver) or antidotes have been removed (starving the gut), or both. Minimally processed food (e.g., white rice, fruit juice) interferes with one or the other; while ultra-processed food (e.g., Cheetos) interferes with both. Now our livers are stuffed (from the sugar our bodies turn into fat) and we’ve literally turned ourselves into foie gras."