“Cooking” in America

The real reason we’re so unhealthy.

I’ve been diving more and more into healthcare spend and food choices as I try to figure out the best approach to helping people get healthy and therefore reduce the prevalence of disease in this country. Today I found an article by Food and Wine discussing the best selling foods of 2020 according to Kroger, America’s largest grocery retailer [link for article here].

In order, the top 5 foods that saw the largest year over year growth in sales are as follows:

  1. Zero calorie soda drinks

  2. Four cheese Mexican-blended cheese

  3. Flavored potato chips

  4. Sauvignon Blanc wine

  5. Heavy whipping cream

Rounding out the top 10 were:

  1. Fresh burger patties (ground meat)

  2. Bread

  3. Coffee pods (understandable as everyone was home)

  4. Chocolate variety pack

  5. Black forest ham

According to Kroger’s chief merchant he said that the year over year increase in these items indicated [emphasis mine] “how our customers not only adapted to the challenges of this unique year but embraced cooking and eating at home as part of their new routine.

Cooking? In what household does this grocery list constitute cooking? The answer… apparently most American households as Kroger own’s and operates 2,800 stores across the country.

When we talk about healthcare in this country we’re so quick to discuss expanding healthcare. Politicians and activists want more healthcare for everyone. More medicines. More vaccines. But never do they want to discuss why we are sick in the first place.

It’s scary to think that with more time on our hands these are the items we chose to consume. When the excuse was “we don’t have time to cook,” “we don’t have time to grocery shop,” it was a hard excuse to combat. Without time it is hard to be thoughtful. But even with time on our hands, we apparently thought a good recipe for cooking was highly processed foods with zero nutritional value. It should be of little question why healthcare costs continue to increase and why disease continues to rise.

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Huberman Lab Podcast w/ Dr. Andy Galpin