Date: September 7th, 2022
Author: Billie Bradshaw
When we wake up in the morning, oftentimes, we reach for our phones; an endless, all-you-can-eat buffet of information and entertainment. As soon as we're done with work, we can swing by a club, a bar, or a liquor store and immediately get a little something to celebrate with. As soon as we get home, we can sit on the couch and watch endlessly streaming movies and tv shows.
Never before in human history have we been surrounded and bombarded by so many options, so much stuff. We can get as much as we want, and yet, we can't get enough. Food is the same way. In fact, food manufacturers pay scientists and researchers to figure out ways to make their products even more attractive, enticing, and addicting.
Many say if we educate the public, they'll stay away from the junk food, but that isn't working. We know what we're eating is bad for us, and yet we eat it anyway. So what's the solution? Watch the video to learn more.
so when you get up in the morning you
probably feel pretty free to choose what
you're going to do my guess is the first
thing you do is reach for one of these
my cell phone
it gives me continuous access to an
online all-you-can-eat buffet I can
enter a virtual gambling casino get
hooked on a little app or a game a shop
till I drop I got to be honest with you
I am one I cannot not look at this thing
when it pings with a new text message
and I am one of the 78% of Americans who
can't get up out of bed in the morning
without checking this thing first
sometimes I don't even notice I'm
reaching for it I just do it now here's
a product you probably don't have in
your pocket this is powdered alcohol I'm
not kidding
palcohol it's going to be out on the
market this year so I can just carry
around this convenient little package
and mix myself up a cocktail whenever
wherever I want maybe I should add it to
my morning coffee at work it might jazz
things up a bit so here's my point at no
time in human history has our species
been so bombarded by stuff designed to
get us hooked companies compete on the
very basis of creating evermore
habit-forming products and it's no
different with our food food
corporations hire scientists to engineer
the most irresistible habit-forming
foods sugar is currently their go-to
ingredient these guys have flipped the
script on
they are using the very brain imaging
technologies that we use to try to find
cures for addiction only they put people
in the MRI machine and feed them Dorito
chips to figure out ways to tweak the
recipe to make it even more
habit-forming than it already is
so here's my question to you when you
live in a world that is surrounding you
on a 24/7 basis with food products
scientifically engineered to be
habit-forming do you really have freedom
of choice now most addictive substances
are actually quite safe in their natural
form heroin comes from poppy seeds
cocaine from the coca plant alcohol from
fruits and grains for centuries farmers
high up in the Andes Mountains have
chewed coca leaves it's a tradition it's
a mild stimulant like drinking a cup of
coffee it helps them work longer hours
and cope with the high altitudes
probably the worst thing that can happen
to you after a lifetime of - and coca
leaves
maybe you'll get bad teeth things do get
really bad when we industrialize the
coca production process when we learned
how to refine the coca plant down into
its most concentrated form a little rock
of white powder that's when the humble
coca leaf becomes the lethally addictive
drug we know as crack now what's
interesting is that up until the 20th
century
cocaine was actually an innocent
domesticated white powder just like
sugar is today people put it in
everything you could go to your
drugstore and and buy it in a soothing
tonic people put it in cough syrup and
gave it to their kids coca-cola
is one of the most successful products
in in modern history it was formulated
in the 1880s and the company's founders
were so proud of their special recipe
that they vowed never to change it but
at one time in history the coca-cola
corporation was forced to change its
recipe that was in 1903 when the
political current the tide was shifting
away from cocaine eventually to make it
an illegal drug
that's when coca-cola took the cocaine
out of the coke of course they just
replaced it with a different addictive
substance namely caffeine so here you
have it a concentrated dose of sugar
combined with a concentrated dose of
caffeine double the pleasure double the
chances we'll get hooked the fact is as
long as food corporations aren't
breaking narcotics laws they can do
pretty much whatever they want to
formulate their products to make them
even more habit-forming my work takes me
into San Francisco's Tenderloin district
every big city has a place like this
right it's a few square blocks of
extreme poverty and urban blight there's
a liquor store on every corner usually
with a bunch of drug dealers hanging out
in front we have a name for places like
this we call them alcohol and drug
saturated environments now the
Tenderloin has a program called safe
passage volunteers go to the school bus
and pick up children to safely walk them
to their homes they have to travel
circuitous routes through the city
streets to avoid all the drug dealers
and liquor stores it's like living in an
obstacle course when it comes to food to
process food and sugar
we're all living in an obstacle course