You are what you eat. It’s one of those phrases we’ve all heard said a million times, and yet how often do we really think about what that actually means, especially when reaching for a bag of potato chips or that Ben & Jerry’s hidden deep in your freezer? On a practical, day-to-day level, it can be hard to process the stark reality that the food we’re consuming is directly related to our health and how we feel. Because in the moment, our stomachs typically override our brain.
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And that’s exactly what the food industry is banking on. Because it’s not actually our stomach that’s doing the thinking. It’s the part of our brain that craves the dopamine hit those chips or ice cream provide. But what if I told you that there are even more shocking secrets that the food industry is keeping from us? Secrets that not only make us spend more money, but that have directly created a worldwide epidemic of obesity, insulin resistance, and disease. Frankly it’s a topic they DON’T want us to be talking about, but on this blog we’re not afraid to tackle hard truths. And that’s why, we’re taking a deep dive into the dirtiest secrets the food industry doesn’t want you to know, so you can avoid falling into their trap.
And if you’re new to me and this blog, I am also a 40-something year old woman who knows exactly what it’s like to STRUGGLE with losing weight and getting healthy. It’s a battle I fought for SO many years, constantly trying everything I knew how to do to lose weight and get healthy, one diet after another, sometimes losing a few pounds than always gaining it right back. And if you’re reading this blog because you’re in the midst of that struggle, then you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. How not feeling good about your body and the way that you look and feel starts to impact your confidence and everything else in your life. And on top of that, you just don’t FEEL good. You’re tired all the time. You feel bloated and gassy. You struggle with heartburn and indigestion, or sometimes even chronic pain and headaches and inflammation. Believe me, I GET it. And for me, it wasn’t until I decided to take a totally different approach that things FINALLY turned around. The biggest thing was that I finally stopped looking for a quick fix, another crash diet, and instead decided to do some real research into the science of weight loss, and into why we gain weight in the first place.
And honestly, what I discovered SHOCKED me because it is SO different than everything we’ve ever been told about what’s healthy and not healthy, and what makes us lose weight and what makes us gain. Our whole lives we’ve been told to eat less and exercise more, and that weight loss is just calories in and calories out, but that’s not true. Not even a little bit. Especially for women, and ESPECIALLY for women over 40. Because as it turns out, the thing that regulates our weight ISN’T calories, it’s hormones.
And so, as I started to change the way I eat in a way that restored balance to my hormones and reversed insulin resistance and healed my gut, the weight just started to come off. Without dieting. Without drugs. And without making myself miserable. I lost 40 pounds in six months, and for the first time EVER I didn’t just gain it all right back. I’ve easily maintained that weight loss for years now. And let me tell you friends, after struggling with this for SO LONG, it felt—and still does feel—like FREEDOM. It’s why I’m SO freaking passionate about this work. It’s why I started Thinlicious. Because I can’t help but want to share it, and to help other women find that same freedom. But it has also unlocked a passion inside of me to really get to the TRUTH of what’s actually going on, and exactly WHY so many of us are struggling with this EXACT SAME THING.
And honestly it’s a little bit like going down the rabbit hole, you know? You just start to go deeper and deeper and you start seeing all these connections and you start to realize that it’s not just YOUR experience. There’s actually something much bigger going on.
And one of the BIGGEST things is that we are all victims of a food industry that is literally out to get us.
Because the more I’ve learned about the food industry and how it works, and about how a lot of the “conventional wisdom” we’ve been fed for years and years is actually just a bunch of industry propaganda that’s been carefully crafted to get us to buy and eat more of their unhealthy food products, the more ANGRY I get.
It feels like such a big deception, and one that has had such a huge impact on the health of so many millions of people.
And I don’t know about you, but there’s something about being LIED to and MANIPULATED by some big food corporation that just gets me fired up. It feels personal.
I mean, if I’m going to screw up my health by eating too much and making poor food choices, then I want it to be my choice, right? I don’t want to be manipulated into it.
And that’s why I thought it would be helpful to devote an entire blog post to this topic, to just lay it all out there, and to really help you see what’s going on.
Because like I always say, knowledge is power. Understanding what you’re up against and the forces that are at play is the first step to being able to make better choices for your health.
And so today, I want to talk specifically about the food industry, and all the ways they are trying to manipulate you into buying and eating their products, and some…
of the sneaky tactics they use to get us to consume more and more and more.
And then at the end, we’ll talk a little bit about what you can DO about it—how you can start making better choices for your health, and what changes you can start to make in your own life that will have a big impact on your weight and how you feel.
But first, let’s dive into the nitty gritty, and talk about the food industry.
The Big Food Machine
We live in an age of convenience, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the food we eat. From drive-thru restaurants to microwave dinners to the dozens of aisles at the grocery store filled with pre-packaged, processed food products, it sometimes feels like we can’t escape the reach of the food industry.
And make no mistake—the food industry is BIG business. In fact, in the United States alone, the food industry is a $1.46 trillion dollar business. That’s TRILLION, with a “T.” Big Food controls what gets grown and what gets harvested and what gets processed and what gets packaged and what gets distributed and what gets sold in every single grocery store and market in the world. It controls what you eat, and it’s probably controlling what you THINK about what you eat as well. And it’s important to understand that when I talk about “Big Food,” I’m not talking about thousands of different companies that are just trying to make a living like all of us are. I’m talking about TEN. There are 10 massive food conglomerates that control more than 90% of the food that you see in the grocery store. Most of them you’ve probably heard of, but these big 10 are Nestlé, Pepsico, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Associated British Foods, and Mondelez. That’s it. So just right there, you have to think about the POWER that comes from controlling basically ALL of the world’s food. And what’s the saying? Absolute power corrupts absolutely? Because ultimately, what is every company’s goal? To make more money and higher profits,…