Processed Food

Medical doctor and broadcaster Chris van Tulleken has spent his career trying to reframe the conversation around eating right, balancing the hard (and sometimes shocking) facts about what we're putting into our bodies with empathy for the natural desire to keep eating what we like, have time for, and can afford. As he argues in this book, we are all participants in an experiment we didn't consent to, one to determine how to get us to buy as much ultra-processed food as possible.

The New York Times best-selling author of Fat Chance explains the eight pathologies that underlie all chronic disease, documents how processed food has impacted them to ruin our health, economy, and environment over the past 50 years, and proposes an urgent manifesto and strategy to cure both us and the planet.

In the late 1970s when the government mandated we get the fat out of our food, the food industry responded by pouring more sugar in. The result has been a perfect storm, disastrously altering our biochemistry and driving our eating habits out of our control. To help us lose weight and recover our health, Robert Lustig presents personal strategies to readjust the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward, and stress; and societal strategies to improve the health of the next generation.

We're eating our way to discomfort, unhappiness, disease, and premature death. Revered nutrition and health expert, PBS personality, and best-selling author of Eat to Live, Super Immunity, and The End of Diabetes, Dr. Joel Fuhrman delivers a hard-hitting, culture-shifting examination of the role fast and processed food plays in our nation's health crisis and offers a program to help us discover a lasting solution, including a two-week meal plan and 80 recipes.

We all know that as a nation our mental health is in crisis. But what most don't know is that a critical ingredient in this debate, and a crucial part of the solution—what we eat—is being ignored. Nutrition has more influence on what we feel, who we become and how we behave than we could ever have imagined. It affects everything from our decision-making to aggression and violence. Yet mental health disorders are overwhelmingly treated as 'mind' problems as if the physical brain—and how we feed it—is irrelevant.

Fat, Stressed, and Sick makes the case that processed food compromises health not just because of added sugar, salt, and fat, but also because these foods contain significant amounts of glutamate—aka MSG. MSG makes food deliciously addicting. What was not well-known until described here is that most of the MSG in processed food is created during food manufacturing. As the authors show, food processing of protein alone adds ten grams or more a day of MSG to the average American diet.

If a piece of individually wrapped cheese retains its shape, color, and texture for years, what does it say about the food we eat and feed our children? Former New York Times reporter and mother Melanie Warner decided to explore that question when she observed the phenomenon of the indestructible cheese. She began an investigative journey that takes her to research labs, food science departments, and factories around the country. What she discovered provides a rare, eye-opening - and sometimes disturbing - account of what we're really eating.

A high-sodium diet is deadly; studies have linked it to high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attacks. It's been estimated that excess sodium in the American diet causes as many as 100,000 deaths per year. And yet salt is everywhere in our diets - in packaged food, fast food, and restaurant meals. Why hasn't salt received the sort of attention and regulatory action that sugar and fat have? In Salt Wars, Michael Jacobson explains how the American food industry has fought government efforts to reduce dangerous levels of sodium in our food.

In Kid Food, nationally recognized writer and food advocate Bettina Elias Siegel explores one of the fundamental challenges of modern parenting: trying to raise healthy eaters in a society intent on pushing children in the opposite direction. Siegel dives deep into the many influences that make feeding children healthfully so difficult - from the prevailing belief that kids will only eat highly processed "kid food" to the near-constant barrage of "special treats".

The story of humankind is usually told as one of technological innovation and economic influence—of arrowheads and atomic bombs, settlers and stock markets. But behind it all, there is an even more fundamental driver: Food. In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, trusted food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of how the frenzy for food has driven human history to some of its most catastrophic moments.

This short book explores why processed foods are the probable cause of our epidemics of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer and explains what we can do to start reversing the effects. After decades of being taught that we need to eat less and move more, this book helps the listener understand what they can do to lose weight and be healthier without starving themselves. 

Men are under daily attack from the preservatives in processed food, the emasculating chemicals found in public tap water, and the female growth hormones in meats, all of which are causing an increase in erectile dysfunction. With the average 25 year-old-male only having half the sperm count he should have, our virility is literally being eroded everyday by the supermarkets and fast food chains in the name of profit.

This book contains proven steps and strategies on how to win the war against poor eating habits. By teaching you ways to eliminate bad stuff from entering your body, you will be able to control your diet and achieve better quality of life. With a few simple steps, some willpower, and discipline, you will be well on your way to living smarter, eating better, and shedding pounds in a matter of days.

For centuries, skeptical foreigners - and even millions of Americans - have believed there was no such thing as American cuisine. In recent decades, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza have been thought to define the nation's palate. Not so, says food historian Paul Freedman, who demonstrates that there is an exuberant and diverse, if not always coherent, American cuisine that reflects the history of the nation itself.