In school, we were sometimes presented with an example or case study which described all the salient facts and where the people of that time made the (obviously) wrong choice.  The outcome, depending on the subject matter of the class, could have been families suffering, companies losing money, or countries being conquered.  The correct choices seemed to be so hard to discern for the people in the examples, but seem so obvious in hindsight.  During my school years, the general reaction to these examples was to adopt a vague sense of superiority over the “dumb” people who couldn’t see the obvious.

Even though case studies have been presented to generations of students, the lessons don’t prevent new episodes of breakdown that will take their turn as future examples.  (In economics, lessons from the tulip-mania bubble of the 1630’s didn’t prevent the railway bubble of the 1840”s, the Florida land bubble of the 1920’s, or the dot-com bubble of the late 1990’s)  Obviously the participants weren’t “dumb,” but they couldn’t accurately perceive reality until the resulting situation became quite dire.  Because the pattern is so widespread and persistent in human history, perhaps we should quickly check to see if there is anything like that going on in our lives today.

Our Current “Case Study”

A likely candidate involves our current dire epidemic of chronic and degenerative diseases.  A century ago, fewer than one in twenty Americans contracted cancer in their lifetimes; now the figure is about half the men and nearly two-thirds the women.  Diabetes has likewise been on an explosive growth, with the percentage of those inflicted expected to double between the years 2000 and 2030; one third of Americans born after year 2000 are expected to contract diabetes in their lifetime.  Heart disease and strokes have become scourges of the modern developed world.  Even asthma has been growing tremendously since the 1960’s; in the 30 years since 1980 the rate has grown 250%.  The growth of tooth decay and gum disease, noticed by Dr. Weston Price in the 1930’s, has become endemic, giving rise to a booming business today in crowns, root canals and implants.  Obesity has grown from a tiny portion of the population a century ago to over a third; obesity rates have tripled in the last 30 years.  Having so many degenerative chronic diseases increase at the same time is more than a coincidence.

What could be bringing this on?  The worldwide increase in diabetes follows the adoption of a “Western-style” diet.  The prevalence of asthma is growing worldwide, even though it varies from place to place, with some countries having up to 60 times the rate as others; the highest are the developed Western countries whose populations ingest the most antibiotics as children, such as given to food animals by modern agribusiness.  The increase in heart disease and strokes follows precisely the dietary change in fats from those originating from pasture-raised animals to those artificially manufactured from hydrogenated plant oils.  The rise in cancer mirrors the increase in sugar (from 5 lbs. per person per year a century ago to 135 lbs.), which has been found to feed cancer cells and suppress the immune system.  Our diet has changed more in the last 75 years than in all the thousands of years that preceded it.

Objectively, it seems so obvious. Every correlation between dietary changes on the one hand and many degenerative diseases on the other has been documented.  And yet, it’s still hard to accept that the denatured and artificial foods that dominate the American diet can be at the root of so much detriment to our bodies.  What one day will be considered self-evident seems so controversial and hard to accept today.  Why do we respond so much like the people in the case studies we had read about in school?

Why It’s Hard to Discern

Back in school, the historical case studies were presented to us with all their salient facts, but not all the background noise of obfuscation and half-truths that the people of that time also had to contend with.  In hindsight, it’s easy to sort out the germane from the irrelevant.  Not so easy when people with a vested interest pursue a hidden agenda of obfuscation.   When it comes to our food supply, there’s a lot of motivation for confusion and deception: big money.

It used to be that our food supply came from many independent, decentralized farmers, all pursuing organic farm practices, the only kind of farming that existed at the time.  When farmers made up half the population (around 1880), or 30% of the population (in 1920), control of agriculture’s income was diluted.  By 1990, the situation had completely changed.  All but 2% of the population had been driven off their farms, and even among the remaining farms there was tremendous concentration.  Agribusiness applied the industrial manufacturing model to farming, and no longer did farmers raise many different types of crops and animals on the same farm, with the wastes from one operation becoming the inputs for another one.  Monoculture and single species animal-raising allowed for dominance by the few.  Just 3% of the remaining hog farms produce the majority of the hogs; 2% of cattle feed operations produce 40% of the cattle.  Consolidation, uniformity, and cheap chemical inputs allowed a few to take control of our food supply.

The seven biggest agribusiness corporations, which pretty much dictate the food supply by controlling seeds, grains, animal feeds, fertilizers and herbicides, have annual revenues of over $250 billion.  (To give some perspective on how large and influential such an amount is, it exceeds the annual federal budgets for the Departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Energy, Interior, EPA and NASA combined).  That’s the revenue of just seven companies, not of the whole agricultural sector.  The small incomes of the many farmers who work at or close to breakeven are not included, but they are continually squeezed into a smaller share of agriculture revenue, while the giant agribusinesses take an ever larger share.  Because food is not a discretionary purchase, the billions in current annual revenue are the anticipated trillions in future revenue stream.  That’s a lot of motivation for obfuscation.

And obfuscation is necessary because the very agricultural practices that reduce costs and increase profits are the same practices that denature our food to the point of ruining our health.  These practices include: chemical pesticides that are designed to poison living cells; chemical fertilizers that act like amphetamines for plants; CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) that continually expose animals to their own feces; artificial fats that humans were never meant to ingest; pasteurization to make dangerously contaminated milk safe (in the short term) but devoid of critical nutrients; artificial hormones given to milk-bearing and meat-bearing animals; a flood of antibiotics given to CAFO animals; animal feeds comprising waste by-products from other industries instead of the natural food they were designed to eat.  Newer practices that further denature food are continually adopted in the search for lower costs and higher profits, such as irradiation of food and the displacement of natural plants with GMOs (genetically modified organisms).

Obfuscation Tactics

With an ugly truth to hide, and with a strong motivation and plentiful resources, agribusiness has hired some of the brightest minds to figure out how to shape our perceptions of food so that we’ll docilely keep ingesting denatured food that makes us sick, while convincing ourselves that it’s all okay.

First and foremost is to make sure that denatured food looks quite a lot like real natural food.  Everyone is busy with so many demands on time and energy, that agribusiness can expect most of the denaturing practices to slip right past us if it doesn’t change the appearance of the food too much.  Can we really tell if the milk has rBGH in it, or if the corn sweetener that’s in all the convenience foods is GMO?  Especially if the politicians can be convinced (with campaign contributions) that labeling should be dismissed.

Another important requirement is that denatured foods cause only long-term degenerative or chronic diseases that will take years to manifest.  Milk from cows raised in filthy CAFOs is all right as long as the fecal bacteria can be killed by heating the milk; no one will get sick immediately after drinking it, and the destruction of critical enzymes and vitamins from the heating will affect only long-term health.

In obfuscating the attributes of denatured foods, it’s also important for the producers to make the foods as convenient as possible to prepare and use.  People don’t want their lives to be more complicated, so stressing convenience makes people more likely to snap up the immediate benefit while delaying or dismissing the effort it takes to become educated about the long-term implications.

Other tactics include claiming that any denatured foods that can’t be disguised are better than the natural foods they’re replacing.  (Kevin Brown’s book “Liberation Diet” ISBN: 978-1439207390 has a good explanation and examples of this tactic.)  Advertising and PR can really help sell denatured foods by claiming they have health benefits.  Even if people don’t buy the idea of being better than what nature provides, many will buy the idea that it’s just as good—and cheaper to boot.

As the foundation of our food supply falls into the control of fewer and fewer people, the choices available through grocery stores get reduced to only the denatured foods that yield the lowest cost and highest profits.  Retail chains can easily be convinced to dedicate their shelf space to products with the highest profit margins, the longest shelf life (further reducing costs), and the largest advertising budgets.  As one grocery chain after falls in line, almost everyone winds up eating the same things and suffering the same repercussions.

When everyone suffers from the same maladies, it doesn’t take long before they’re accepted as being unavoidable and the new norm.  I live near the Everglades, and I’ve read that the bird population has been reduced by 90% over the past century; but the reduction happened so slowly and steadily that everyone thinks the bird population there is fine.  On the West coast, where 96% of the redwood forests have been cut down and won’t grow back, the majority of what’s left remains outside park protection and available for logging, because few people miss the grandeur of bygone years.  The same phenomenon can be exploited here as well.  “Of course everyone knows someone who has died of cancer,” or “…has diabetes” or “…we all have gum disease.”  There’s comfort in having the same perceptions as the crowd.  It seems to validate what we think, even if those ideas were fed to us by advertising and manipulation.  It’s a rare person who can buck the trend.

Part of obfuscation is hiring “experts” to proclaim alternative explanations for all the degenerative ills that have arisen alongside the rise of denatured foods.  “It’s not our diet; it’s a lack of willpower, …the lack of exercise due to videogames, …” etc, etc.

Seeing Clearly and Acting Wisely

All of these tactics clutter the landscape of our perception, making it hard for us to discern what’s best for us.  There’s a common expression called “blowing smoke,” and we’re the recipients of a lot of it.  Unfortunately it takes some effort to see through the smoke to discern what’s real and what the good choices really are.  This is not an academic exercise like the case studies we saw in school.  Being sick with degenerative diseases can affect every aspect of our lives, as well as those who’d have to become our caretakers.  There are few things more important than learning to avoid or remove the underlying causes of degenerative diseases, and to maintain a solid foundation for health.   Our choices will influence how long we and our loved ones will live and affect the quality of our lives while we live, so it’s an effort worth making.  There is help available, in the form of the Weston A. Price Foundation and the Liberation Wellness programs, such as 30 Days to Wellness.  We don’t have to be so blinded by smoke that we become examples of people acting “dumb.”

John Chisholm is co-owner of a small company that makes Good-Gums, a toothpaste-replacement that supports the body’s ability to heal its gums. When WAPF Chapter Leaders started carrying Good-Gums, John started learning and practicing Weston A. Price dietary principles, as lucidly explained by Kevin Brown’s Liberation Wellness. Already a regular exerciser and feeling pretty healthy, John didn’t anticipate how well his body would further respond to unprocessed, full-fat, pasture-raised foods.