Big Food is a Big Problem

for the Recovering Carboholic

By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org

Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. —Romans 14:20

I would venture to add that if the food we ourselves eat is capable of causing us to stumble, we ought to avoid eating it altogether—or at the very least—not so much of it.

Is America finally beginning to take their health more seriously? Is this new administration also ushering in a new age of healthy living?

If there is one thing we should know, it’s this: America is not healthy, and it’s no accident as we will see.

We hear a lot of hysterical language, yelling, and recriminations lately about the cabinet picks our president has selected for consideration. And that’s just in the Senate hearings. The best by far is Bernie Sanders (I VT) hysterically demanding Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “denounce the onesies.” [https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/01/29/are-you-supportive-of-these-onesies-bernie-sanders-demands-rfk-jr-condemn-baby-outfit/]

The flap with Sanders is the messages these baby outfits, produced by the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) displayed. They are a nonprofit organization founded by RFK Jr. in 2016, which focuses on vaccine safety advocacy and children’s health issues. He was no longer officially presiding over the organization even before President Trump selected him to be his secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services. (DDHS)

People usually pay little attention to the DDHS. But they should. Originally, the cabinet-level Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was created under President Dwight Eisenhower, officially coming into existence April 11, 1953.

DHHS was established in 1979 when the HEW was split into separate departments, with the Department of Education (DOE) also being formed as a separate entity. The official changeover was May 4, 1980, during the Carter administration.

We would do well to consider the power and influence both these departments have exercised over American families, but particularly America’s young people.

It’s no accident that the Trump administration has determined to shake up both departments—even to the point of abolishing the DOE altogether, allowing the states to supervise schools separately and individually. That’s a story for another day.

The DHHS is involved in administrating and influencing vaccine to be sure, but drugs and food are also a part of its huge portfolio. The influence we are talking about has played a huge part in why we have accepted the diktats of Big Pharma, medical, and commercial food production and distribution.

To understand the connection with these industries, we might begin with just this one issue: weight loss—a really big business for decades in this country.

According to the Visual Capitalist, the expose, “Ranked: America’s Most Popular Drugs by Dollars Spent,” listed America’s top selling drugs in 2023. [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-americas-most-popular-drugs-by-dollars-spent/] Topping the list of popular drugs and their generic versions, is Ozempic, (Semaglutide) Trulicity, (Dulaglutide) Jardiance, (Empagliflozin) and Mounjaro. (Tirzepatide) Added up, they totaled a cool $84 billion that year.

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Would it surprise you to know there is a connection between weight-loss drugs, diabetes, and the food pyramid most of us over fifty learned when we were kids? You can believe there is.

Among the world’s most obese countries, America ranks 10^th. We are the leading first-world nation on the list. It doesn’t need to be this way. [https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/]

Jordan Peterson spent time talking with Vani Hari, food industry critic, on Episode 519, “The Day Big Tobacco Co-Opted the Food Industry.” In a clip from this interview, “Parents Need to Know This About the Cereal Industry,” Hari talks about the breakfast cereals that have been a staple of the standard American diet aimed at children for decades. It was the food companies—not science—that invented the food pyramid, using the health care industry to promote it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8VETQ_uBC8]

Vani Hari, food critic/activist

Hari went to the headquarters of The Kellogg Company in Battle Creek, Michigan, where she says, “They wouldn’t let us in.” She went with over “400,000 [signatures] to get artificial food dyes and a preservative called BHT, that’s linked to cancer, out of their cereals, and they wouldn’t let us in. They [wouldn’t] even sit down with us to take the petitions in person.”

Kellogg’s intransigence likely accounts for a 54% drop in Froot Loops sales alone. Their stock price is down. This will be the one way for them to get the message. They likely already have since we know their cereals are being marketed in Europe, Australia, and Canada without these harmful ingredients.

Dr. Eric Berg, DC, the popular YouTube nutrition guru has at least three videos warning of the dangers of the ingredient maltodextrin that appears frequently in products with the claim they are free from “added sugar.” Maltodextrin is actually worse than sugar for the human body. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwpVDXZqq24]

Why only in America does the food industry continue with these practices? The simple answer is sweet food is addicting, and Americans are now fully addicted. We grew up with sugar and highly processed, high carbohydrate foods; with chemical additives to encourage our appetites thrown in for good measure.

If this seems familiar to you, it should. This was how tobacco was marketed for decades until shortly after the mid-twentieth century when it was linked to lung cancer. When the cigarette market shrank in the seventies, there was only one thing for at least two companies to do. Phillip Morris and R J Reynolds bought up all the food companies they could get their hands on.

Today, Phillip Morris owns Kraft, the largest processed food producer, and General Mills, the powerhouse cereal company. [https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-news/faculty-news/many-of-today-s-unhealthy-foods-were-brought-to-you-by-big-tobac.html]

The objective of the advertising game—and it is a game—is to win… converts, acolytes, and legions of proselytes. But the rules of the game show signs of change as millennials are increasingly concerned about their health and the health of their kids. This is the largest generation in the US.

As an epilogue, I will quote Bob Dylan: “The times, they are a changin.”

On the eve of his election, Donald Trump said this, “My message to Americans tonight is simple: we do not have to live this way. We do not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline, and decay… this will be the Golden Age of America.”

When you think about it, being healthy is just as important as the Panama Canal, or closing the border, eliminating wasteful spending, and protecting our children from barbaric medical practices.

We have lived much longer than we needed to by being tolerant, ignorant, brainwashed, and unhealthy.

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” — 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

It’s been some since we could be this hopeful for the future here on earth. Our prayers ought to be that we will see this Golden Age before we see paradise.