Food in America: Medicine to Poison
Ada Lambert | March 28, 2024
In many cultures worldwide, traditional meals are made to provide a source of energy, nutrition and nourishment. Harmful ingredients such as artificial dyes, preservatives, sweeteners and carcinogens are not legalized as easily as in America. In the past few years, Americans have begun to recognize the difficulty of finding food that is safe to eat and healthy.
In America, there are over 10,000 chemicals — many of which are toxic — that are used in commonplace food items, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG). While food additives must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a legal loophole has allowed manufacturers to decide what is considered Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS). This allows companies to make ingredient decisions based on shelf-life, profit and convenience.
As a consumer, it is difficult to know all the information about the food you purchase.
Food labels can be misleading, especially concerning sugars, fats and calories. Some foods deemed “healthy” can often disguise their true nutritional facts through serving sizes. For example, ice cream serving sizes are typically much lower than what people eat.
One serving size for ice cream is less than a single scoop – roughly two or three bites. This can be deceiving, especially if you like to buy a pint of Ben and Jerry’s at the store, curl up on your couch to watch a movie, and have it all in one sitting (I surely have).
Not only that, but deciphering the ingredients list on food products can be quite confusing. With the high amounts of dyes and preservatives, it is hard to distinguish between harmless additives and high-risk ingredients. There is a lot of misinformation on the internet about what is safe to eat, leaving people in a tricky spot of not truly knowing what is in their food.
Another struggle America faces is nutritional insecurities that span across all different socioeconomic statuses, particularly targeting low-income households and neighborhoods.
Higher-end health markets like Whole Foods or Publix are typically only found in generally well-off areas and are often inaccessible to poor communities, leading them to buy their groceries from places like Walmart. In 2023, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) ranked Walmart last in supermarkets, based on a variety of factors including cleanliness, quality and freshness of meat and produce. Many food products at Walmart are highly processed and have little nutritional value.
In terms of intersectionality, wealth disparity affects marginalized populations in America the most and results in many health issues and shorter life expectancies. In an excerpt from Priya Fielding-Singh’s book “How The Other Half Eats,” she writes that “unhealthy eating habits cause more than half a million deaths per year and is linked to multiple chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, several types of cancer, and type 2 diabetes. Today, an unhealthy diet is the leading contributor to mortality in the United States. What we eat has become, quite literally, a matter of life and death.”
While this can easily raise alarm bells, do not fret. There are things you can do to be more cautious, thoughtful and aware of the food you put into your body. One of the largest differences you can make is to make your meals.
Sure, this is not an easy feat—cooking requires a budget for groceries, cookware and other crucial appliances—but at the end of the day, many of us spend a large sum of money on food, and you would be surprised how much money you will save in the long-run if you start cooking instead of putting money towards snacks and convenient meals like frozen or fast-food. This also ensures you know exactly what you are consuming, which can be gratifying.
Another way to approach this problem is by supporting local farmer’s markets and buying non-produce items from stores like Trader Joe’s and Aldi’s that prioritize cleaner eating with low prices.
I encourage using the app “Yuka” when grocery shopping. It allows you to scan the barcode for an item and provides a detailed description of the listed ingredients, noting the risk levels for certain additives, giving an overall rating for the product from 0-100.
This app can also be used on cosmetic and personal care items. This is a real game-changer for people who are interested in finding more ethical products.
While our personal choices are important, they sadly cannot mitigate the continuous, unethical decisions of large companies and corporations. It can be stressful and frustrating to be responsible for monitoring the health implications of certain foods, especially when this information is not presented to us in a truthful and non-discriminatory manner. But, this is not to say that things cannot change.
As individuals, we have the power to educate ourselves, spread awareness and take our health into our own hands. True nutritional foods should satiate you with energy and nourishment. Food is supposed to be nature’s medicine, not poison.