Conventional wisdom tells us that Establishes the UNpacked Diet as anti-establishment, offering the reader exclusive knowledge and membership in a community set apart from the ignorant mainstream. unhealthy eating habits cause the obesity, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes that plague our modern world. Invokes the myth of paradise past, contrasted with a fallen modern world. New research shows that diet can also cause psychological conditions like ADHD, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, and autism.
But which foods are the problem? Scientists and diet gurus “whiplash” us back and forth on the culprits. Do you trust the Paleo crowd? Then red meat is fine and grains are dangerous. Do you trust our government? Then whole grains are a must, and red meat will give you cancer and heart disease. Mainstream nutritionists will tell you it’s all about energy balance—just eat fewer calories than you burn. But if you’re among those who have tried diet and exercise, you know there’s more to the story.
Looking to traditional cultures raises even more questions. Reinforces the myth of paradise past and “noble savages,” making unsubstantiated claims about healthy traditional cultures. There is no consensus about the extent to which diet plays a role in the health of these cultures, and most accounts of healthy traditional cultures are outdated, anecdotal, and unreliable. We know that African Maasai tribes stay disease-free on a diet of raw milk and meat. Yet we attribute the great health of the ancient Chinese to their nearly vegetarian diet. The Yanomamo Indians of Brazil thrive on a salt-free diet, whereas the Japanese (one of the healthiest modern cultures) eat the highest-sodium diet in the world.
Could it be that conventional wisdom is only partially right?
There is something wrong with our diet. Of course there is! Look at the skyrocketing rates of obesity, chronic disease, cancer, and mental illness. Apocalyptic, oversimplified alarmism about health is rarely accurate. Our life spans are longer than ever, and there is considerable scientific debate about supposed increases in conditions like ADHD, autism, and cancer.
But here’s the shocking truth: the type of food we eat isn’t the problem. Let’s ask again: What has really changed?
When I think of my 95-year-old grandmother, Anecdotes about longevity are powerful and common in religious texts, but do not constitute decisive evidence of anything. I always think of a glass jar—her kitchen was filled with them. At the end of the summer, she would stuff jars with fruits and vegetables to preserve and eat all year long.
Today, glass is infrequently used to store food, and for one simple reason: Big Food wants to keep things cheap. Evokes a narrative of good and evil in which anything associated with industry is evil, and reinforces the reader’s ability to align with “good” simply by following a diet. Gone is Grandmother’s pantry. Kitchens are now filled with plastics, metals, and heavily bleached and processed papers. Appeals again to fear of modernity and paradise past. Milk, which once came delivered fresh in glass jugs, sits for days in plastic containers or plastic-lined cartons. Our grandparents brought fresh produce home in crates and cartons. We get our fruits and veggies shrink-wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam.
Our Paleolithic ancestors ate a wide variety of diets depending on where they lived. Their food was wrapped in Nature’s packaging: peels and husks. Contrasts fallen modernity with an idealized, benevolent vision of Nature with a capital N. Wherever it is found, from gas station mini-marts to giant Walmarts, food today almost always comes packaged. And even when it doesn’t, we place it in plastic bags ourselves before taking it home.
If we are willing to ignore old ways of thinking about food, the answer to our dietary problems is obvious. The whiplash goes away when we stop trying to figure which type of food is the dietary villain, or which new fad diet will help us lose weight. Science can’t tell us which diet is right because there isn’t a right diet!
Here’s what all those diet gurus and nutritionists don’t want you know, because they’d be out of a job. The most common supermarket and fast-food materials—plastic, aluminum, tin, even recycled paper—contain dangerous chemicals and heavy metals that fatten us up and destroy our health.
The real villain is in the packaging. Identifies a satisfyingly simple scapegoat to blame for all our health problems.
Plastics Are Not Fantastic
The dangers of plastics are no surprise to scientists, who have been studying their negative health effects for decades. Researchers and health officials have voiced concerns about “nanoplastics” (small plastic particles) Pseudoscientific jargon creates authority. Nanoplastic is a real term, but it does not mean “small plastic particles.” It sure sounds scary, though. that get into our food by “leaching” or “migration.” Although Big Chem and Big Food have done their best to suppress this information, Big Chem and Big Food = Deceptive Satan. numerous studies prove the health risks are enormous.
Unlike low carb vs. low fat, there is no debate about the dangers of these modern food storage materials. False. Just false.
You may have heard about the most notorious of these plastics, BPA. Polycarbonate plastics (containing BPA) are extremely common in US food packaging. In 2004, the CDC found traces of BPA in nearly all the urine samples it collected (93 percent of adults), and scientists predict that today the number would be over 99 percent. The source of this BPA is our diets. Seems alarming, but there are traces of many things in our bodies that are only dangerous at high doses. The dose makes the poison.
The dangers of this poisonous endocrine disrupter are almost too numerous to list. The terrifying associations in the paragraph are based on a few in-vitro and animal studies. Establishing facts about what causes cancer in humans requires much more evidence. BPA mimics estrogen and has been shown to grow breast cancer cells. Exposure to BPA early in life leads to precancerous changes in glands, altered brain development, lower sperm counts and chromosomal abnormalities in eggs. Prenatal exposure to BPA correlates with breast cancer later in life, A single study, conducted in primates, with very tentative conclusions. a fact so alarming that the Breast Cancer Fund urges people Organizations don’t always make recommendations based on sound science. The Breast Cancer Fund is basing its recommendations on the kind of studies mentioned above. to avoid all BPA plastics. They also recommend eliminating canned food, since BPA is commonly used in can lining.
As use of plastic increases, so do rates of mental disorders like ADHD and autism. Incredibly controversial. Many experts have suggested that rates of autism are not, in fact, drastically rising, and better detection and expanded criteria account for much of the perceived “epidemic.” While the two seem intuitively unrelated, scientists see a connection. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, chief of the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health at UC Davis, believes that because plastic packaging interferes with the body’s natural hormonal system, it could “play a role in autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.” It could play a role…or it could not. Other doctors suspect plastic packaging may disrupt thyroid hormone critical for brain development. It may…or it may not. They point out that thyroid dysfunction is particularly common in children with autism.
And those migraines? They aren’t just in your head. According to the Mayo Clinic, plastics may be responsible. The hormones estrogen and progesterone play key roles in regulating menstruation and pregnancy, which affect headache-causing chemicals in the brain. Steady estrogen levels improve headaches, but altered levels make them worse. A University of Kansas study found that hormone-disrupting plastics caused migraine symptoms, …in rats. including light and sound sensitivity. Chemicals in plastic food packaging have also been linked to Lots of citations doesn’t mean good science. Every “link” in this sentence is based on a single study, sometimes with very tenuous conclusions. heart disease, adult onset diabetes, high blood pressure, early puberty, allergies, asthma, anxiety, unattractiveness, erectile dysfunction, depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s.
So plastics make us sick—but do they also make us fat? The answer is clear. Scientists have known for over a decade that plastics cause obesity in rats, and recently found that the link extends to humans. Author Joseph Stromberg in 2012 cited the first large-scale study to find a significant link between BPA and obesity. Correlation is not causation. A 2013 study found that girls with higher levels of BPA were five times more likely to be overweight.
It is no coincidence that when plastic use took off, we started packing on the pounds.