Why is the American diet so deadly?

The food industry is fundamentally flawed, root cause tracing back to ~100 years ago. In 1904, a chemist published misleading information that has had a lasting impact on our understanding of nutrition. These myths, which have been perpetuated for a century, have led to widespread misconceptions about healthy eating.

The sugar industry's manipulation of scientific research has further wrecked the industry, deflecting blame from refined sugar. Legacy of WW1's food rationing and the conscription of farmers has resulted in a food system unable to serve the population #s.

As the joke goes, the British empire dominated the world to obtain spices... not to use any of them. Is British food supposed to be bland? Yes if correctly prepared.

Our food culture has been shaped by a century of disinformation, perpetuated by governments and the education system. The consequences of this disinformation campaign are far-reaching, with many people developing unhealthy relationships with food.

Want to fix this? Gotta start with the governments who are pushing the disinformation.

This comment resonates a lot with me, so thanks for writing it. In order for me to lose weight, I had to completely upend my view of food instilled during childhood which meant no longer eating three meals a day "because that's how it is" and focusing on a few areas like drinks since those are easy to go overboard with.

Excuse my ignorance,but what is wrong with Chipotle? Is it the high sodium. I eat the thing twice a week and do so because I get a high amount of fiber and calories needed for my diet...the only issue it the sodium content.

I tried Cava once and it was expensive for what it was and did not taste as good.

I have family connections into South Korea and this article makes me think of the changes in the Korean diet over the past few decades. When I was first started encountering Korean food over 20 years ago (both in the states and in Korea), everything was either sourced from fresh ingredients, or preserved using some kind of traditional method like pickling, fermenting, or curing. There were very few factory processed ingredients, maybe fish cake, and some condiments. There was a notable absence of sugars and sweetness, even in desserts. I ate more fruit in the first year with my wife than I probably had in the decade prior as it was constantly served as snacks and after meals. I never found Korean portion sizes appreciably smaller than American portions, but I struggled eating through a meal until I fully adapted to mixing banchan in between bites -- which introduced me to the palette cleanser. There were some problems in the diet, mostly lots of instant coffees, tons of alcohol, questionable "medicines", and everybody smoked. But people were generally fit or thin, walked a lot, were tall (a sign of good nutrition), and lived long lives.

In the years since then I was introduced to concepts like the "Bliss Point" [1] and "Taste Satiety" which explained both the taste of Doritos and the use of Kimchi to cleanse the palette so you could eat more.

Over time the Korean diet has changed and I've started to recognize that the food sciences are taking over for the traditional home-made meals and the flavors in Korean food are changing dramatically -- you can feel them targeting the bliss point in flavor. In some ways its getting harder to eat out because it's not hard to cook at home, and make it taste better, and we can keep ingredients fresh. You can still find small restaurants run by old people who make things the home cooked way, but all of the larger restaurants and chains have this new kind of sweetness in the food.

There's a well known TV chef [3] who even advises people on how to make their home cooking taste more like restaurants. The magic ingredient? Add sugar to basically everything. Gone is the delicate sweetness from carrots or pears, now even beef dishes blast you in the face like a candy bar. It used to be unusual to see an obese person at all in Korea (I was usually the largest person anywhere, and I'm not big by American standards). But now it's not at all unusual. Korea is where the mukbang originated [4].

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory-specific_satiety

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paik_Jong-won

4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukbang

Tbf the Bacon McMuffin is a lot better than I thought it would be. The 'healthiest' option other than a pure salad in Irish McDonalds would be the grilled chicken wrap they have - "The BBQ and Bacon Chicken One - Grilled"

Roughly the same calories as the McMuffin but half the fat, twice the fibre, and 50% more protein. https://www.mcdonalds.com/ie/en-ie/good-to-know/nutrition-ca...

As for your 300 calories contention - 300 calories of scrambled eggs or steel cut oats would do me fine to get through a morning. 300 calories of McNuggets would not conversely. I'd imagine most of that has to do with satiating fibre, protein and fat therein.