For those of us lucky enough to have three meals a day, we probably don’t give too much thought to why we eat what we eat.
You might pay attention to your macros—how much protein, carbs and fat you consume. You might even read the labels of items to see if the nutritional content or ingredients are “worth it” to you.
You may have recently forgotten to be concerned about gluten because you started to be concerned about seed oils for reasons even you can’t articulate.
But I’m talking about why the food we eat is even available and why our grocery stores look the way they do.
We do know why grocery stores look the way they do: they’re intentionally designed to get you to spend money on stuff you didn’t plan to buy.
That’s why the produce is first and the eggs and dairy are on the opposite side of the store, so you have to walk past everything in between to get your staple items.
But why is that middle, unrefrigerated, shelf-stable section of the store so big? Because it’s full of processed and ultraprocessed foods, of course.
While the processing of foods can be a good thing (it can make them safer, longer lasting, more vitamin-rich, turn them from ingredients to things like bread, and so on and so forth), ultraprocessed foods are frequently a different story.
We know this category of food is often engineered to be more appetizing, easier to eat, and often contain lower nutritional content. They also make up 70% of our food supply.
But how did we get here? It started with the death of the American family farm.
In the early 1970s, farming was good. There were low reserves of grain, which meant the price was higher. Plus, poor weather elsewhere in the world meant that global demand for grains increased—even more money!
This, combined with high land values and new technology that allowed for single farmers to cultivate and harvest more crops, meant that many farms took out loans to expand.
But nothing good lasts forever, and things took a turn.
The cost of gas and oil skyrocketed, making farming more expensive.
The Carter administration put an embargo on grain going to the Soviet Union, which meant there were now fewer exports and more supply.
In an effort to reduce inflation, the Fed made it difficult to borrow money, which hit farmers the hardest.
Suddenly, family farms were underwater, and corporations were waiting to buy up the production as soon as the foreclosure auctions were done.
It was a big deal. The farm crisis of the 80s is what inspired the creation of Farm Aid, the charity concert put on by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neill Young in 1985.
The tractor parades in Washington, D.C. finally compelled the Reagan administration, which is known for a lack of government involvement, to pass a number of bills aimed at helping the American family farm.
Some of these bills started the long-standing trend of subsidies for so-called “commodity crops.”
Commodity crops include corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.
This means that the government will pay farmers a minimum amount in times when crop prices are low in order to stabilize their income and the food supply.
Of course this had been a practice since the 1930s, but Reagan put a lot of money into it.
Now, as then, only a very small fraction of subsidy funding goes to what’s known as “specialty crops,” which include fruits and vegetables, so it simply makes more sense for farms to grow these commodity crops and have a stable income
Plus, growing fruits and vegetables has higher costs associated with it. You need more employees to pick the produce, coolers to store it in, and irrigation systems for consistent watering.
So, what do you do with high quantities of commodity crops?
Some is used for fuel or livestock feed, and some is used for processed foods.
And if the food you are making is cheap to produce, because it contains high amounts of subsidized crops and low amounts of “specialty crops,” then how do you make it profitable?
One way is to make people want to eat more. We know from our ultraprocessed foods episode that a lot of these products are designed to bypass your satiety signals so you eat beyond fullness.
They are easier to absorb so they spike blood glucose that causes you to be hungry again quickly.
They simply taste really good and are easy to eat, setting off dopamine receptors and not making you do all that pesky work of chewing.
Another way to increase profits is to diversify the kinds of products you own and sell.
Looking at grocery store shelves, you might be forgiven for thinking we had a wide variety of companies producing products that gave us lots of choices.
In reality, about 10 major companies own 80% of our grocery brands. Seventy-two percent of breakfast cereals are owned by three companies, and 60% of breads are owned by four companies.
Consolidating this much power into these few companies means they can dictate what’s grown, what we eat, and what we pay for it—something farmers were concerned about in the 1980s as corporations bought their land.
This near monopoly also squashes competition.
Just recently, Poppi, the “prebiotic” drink marketed as a healthy alternative to soda, was acquired by Pepsi-Cola for $2 billion.
The kind of deregulation of the food industry that makes those monopolies possible also gave companies the ability to advertise junk food to children.
That flexibility is, of course, thanks to the Reagan administration.
In the late 1970s the Federal Trade Commission wanted to seriously limit companies’ ability to advertise to children, especially when it came to sugary treats and some breakfast cereal.
It was a several-years-long crusade that ultimately ended as soon as Reagan appointed a new commissioner who had no interest in limiting corporate rights.
Also, none of the economic support for farmers was really enough to save the family farm. In 1935 there were 6.8 million farms. In 2024, that number is 1.8 million. And while the number of farms declined, the average size of farms grew, as a result of small farm consolidation.
And this is also crucial to the rise of ultra processed foods.
As farm communities suffer and fracture, and as farms produce single crops, the neighboring communities lose options for feeding themselves.
Corn farmers can’t eat a diet of 100% corn, and small rural communities can’t always support a full stocked grocery store.
For many, the food they need has to travel long distances to get anywhere near them, and what do you think travels better, ultraprocessed foods or fresh fruits and vegetables?
Even if your rural town is lucky enough to still have a mom-and-pop grocery store, you run the risk of a dollar store forcing it out.
In rural communities, independent grocery stores are three times as likely to close after a dollar store enters the market compared to in urban areas, further limiting a community’s access to fresh produce.
There are more dollar stores than Walmarts, Targets, McDonalds, and Starbucks combined in the U.S.
So it’s no wonder that only 12% of adults seem to be reaching their recommended fruit intake.
Only 10% are eating enough vegetables, and of those vegetables, potatoes and tomatoes make up the majority…in the form of French fries, pizza, and pasta sauce.
Only 5% of men and 9% women get enough daily fiber
We’re also consuming about 50% more sodium than recommended and two to three times more sugar than we should. Sugary beverages make up nearly 50% of those excess sugars.
If you thought it was hard to get whole foods into people’s hands before, it is likely to get worse.
America is increasingly dependent on imported fruits and vegetables.
In 2023, we imported 59% of our fruits and 35% of our vegetables.
The majority of our agricultural imports come from Canada and Mexico.
With the seemingly constant threat of trade wars, we risk seriously increased prices, if not embargos.
Now would be a great time to encourage US farmers to begin producing products we’ve traditionally imported, by offering fruit and vegetable subsidies, to buy coolers and equipment and hire workers to make the crop change quickly…but that’s not happening.
Instead, $10 billion is being made available to continue to support commodity crop farmers.
And this is why it’s particularly frustrating to hear so much focus on food dyes or ingredients like seed oils. There are decades of structures put in place that have created an entire food system that increasingly challenges people’s ability to access nutritious foods.
In 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture replaced the food pyramid with “my plate,” a representation of how much of each of the five food groups a person should be eating each day, customizable based on age, gender, weight, and other health conditions. But these guidelines are difficult to follow.
It’s incredibly hard to have half of your diet be fruits and vegetables when they’re too expensive to buy or completely unavailable in your neighborhood.
One study in Atlanta found that only 38% of SNAP retailers (which are stores that accept federal food assistance) in majority Black neighborhoods carried fresh produce.
This is because carrying fresh produce is not a requirement for a store to be eligible to accept SNAP.
If you ban ultraprocessed foods without increasing access to nutritious foods, then, for some people, you’re just banning foods.
By focusing on these little parts, rather than the whole food system, it gives the impression that our diets are entirely due to individual choice, when they are not.
