a few years ago i was watching the doctor's pharmacy and on that episode Mark Harmon was
interviewing Michael Moss and they were discussing how food scientists had created
the perfect ratio of salt to sugar to fat to make a brand of potato chips absolutely hyper palatable
and that was the first time that i heard that word hyper palatable
and basically hyperpalatable is a fancy word for addictive now why would they want to make
food addictive basically so that when we eat the chips we end up eating the whole bag
and of course if we finish the bag because we love the chip we would buy more and so obviously that
makes them more money and it seems like a very simple and straightforward obvious outcome that
a food company would want they would want us to eat their food love it eat as much as we can and
keep buying it but what concerned me was that in that episode we learned that Michael Moss learned
that the employees that worked in the food lab don't actually eat the chips and more importantly
the owners of the company didn't actually eat the chips and that was the first time that it
kind of clicked for me anyways watching that video that there was a sinister undertone
to what was being done it wasn't as simple as make the most delicious chip and everyone
would want to eat it it was more like make this chip equivalent to heroin so that we can sell it
to people who are growing fatter every day and even though they don't want to eat the
chip because they know they're getting fat they're compelled to eat it because they're addicted to it
that opened my eyes to this idea that food companies didn't care about my health
they didn't care about my health as much as they cared about profits
as much as they cared about getting me to spend as much of my money as i possibly can
on their process garbage junk food fast forward to a few weeks ago when i was
doing some research on the word fungible and it kind of hit me how people have become fungible
and initially that seemed like an outrageous idea until i started to look at how the food companies
react to requests that uh you know health organizations and doctors
and scientists make to them improving the quality of the food that they feed us so
first reminder fungible means that the value of something is equivalent when you replace it with
something else so for example one ten dollar bill and two five dollar bills are of equivalent value
they're fungible they're exchangeable doesn't matter which one you have and the idea that violet
eating the food versus Mary or tom or Teresa or Nathan it doesn't matter as long as one of us
eats the food so then we've become fungible to the food company whoever eats the food eats the food
food companies are obviously interested in selling us their food but what bothers me is that they're
more interested in selling us the food than the impact eating that food has on violet's health or
Nathan's health or Mary's health or Sue's health so if a food causes any type of medical problem
or contributes in any way to the production of a medical product problem in a person
food companies would rather hide that information from us than actually change the addictive nature
to their formula that gets us to compulsively eat the food and that that's huge and the question
is well why why wouldn't you want us like wasn't it more valuable for you that violet
lives another 50 years eating your chips then violet lives another five years eating
your chips and then she needs to no longer she's no longer there because she's sick now
so why would it be the case that they would focus more on keeping me eating a poor quality food
and it's because being successful in the world of selling food actually requires
sales and the sales have to be profitable so if i'm selling this product at two bucks a bag and
i'm making a buck profit but in order for it to be healthy i would need to sell it at two bucks
a bag but only make 50 cents profit for the food company that 50 cents double the profit is worth
more than violet staying healthy now let's think about what we actually need to do to sell products
right because we're talking about food it has to taste good the quality of the
ingredients are going to matter to the people buying it and the value
that it brings to the purchaser obviously everyone's tastes are different so
what i find delicious and what you find delicious delicious is gonna vary greatly
if you think about pizza i remember that my grandmother like when presented with pizza
didn't even know how to eat it she hadn't had it and she was near the end of her life and had
never had pizza this open-faced sandwich that we gave her that didn't make any sense to her
and she like wanted another piece to put on top to make the sandwich proper
and i thought that was hilarious but it talks about how everybody
eats different things depending on where they come from and what they find interesting and
healthy to eat and even if i like a certain brand of pizza doesn't mean that Patrick is
gonna like the same brand of pizza doesn't mean that a lot of us are going to enjoy that pizza so
some people are going to love it and some people aren't going to love it now we talk
about the quality of those ingredients that's going gonna matter differently to different
people there are some people who go to high-end restaurants and pay seventy eighteen ninety
dollars for a plate of food where seventy eighty ninety dollars i could fill my pantry at home
so the difference between going to a high-end restaurant where i pay a hundred dollars a plate
versus a fast food restaurant where i can pay five dollars and get a whole meal
for everybody that difference in what we pay for the food that that quality of those ingredients
is going to be different for different people am i willing to pet a hundred dollars on one meal
am i am i cooking at home and then what quality of ingredients i buy to put into my meal again
i could equally buy a hundred dollars worth of ingredients to go into one meal at home
versus pulling a frozen dinner out of the fridge that cost me two bucks put it in the microwave
or the oven and have a meal the quality of the food and the ingredients that go into the food
matter and for every person it's different maybe i'm willing at home to put a hundred dollars in a
meal and know that i cooked it a certain way and what and not willing to do that at a restaurant
or vice versa maybe i'm not willing to put a hundred dollars into a meal at home because
maybe i'm not the greatest chef and if you give me a hundred dollars worth of meat
like two or three pork chops that are 100 worth of meat that i'm scared to mess that up because
i'm not the best cook versus somebody like my dad who's an amazing chef that would know exactly what
to do with that so it might be preferable for me at my house to do something fast from the fridge
because of my cooking skills what we're willing to spend on the food we're eating it depends on
what we consider quality and our cooking ability and how much uh benefit i'm giving to the chef at
the restaurant the high-end restaurant versus the fast food restaurant versus violet cooking at home
it's going to differ depending on my ability to cook and then of course
we have the value to the purchaser you know if if i don't taste the difference
when i go into a high-end restaurant if i don't taste the difference in the food that i'm eating
compared to if i went to a fast food restaurant or if i made it at home myself
so if i see the if i feel like okay between the high end and the fast food i see the difference
clearly the high end tastes better to me but when i make it at home i feel like i do a better job
then i'm going to be hesitant to eat out at a high end restaurant if i know i can do a
better job at home but if i can't do a better job at home that high-end restaurant might look
really interesting to me but what happens if i can't tell the difference when i eat
a high-end meal versus a fast food restaurant meal what if the fast food restaurant meal actually
tastes better to me what if it's what i'm used to what if it's what my palate is used to and
it's just it's just what i expect food to taste like and that high-end stuff just doesn't taste
great to me then i'll lean toward so the value that i'm gonna put on which restaurant i'm willing
to spend my money on if the fast food restaurant seems to taste better to me i'm going to want to
spend my money there and i will scoff at spending a hundred dollars at a high-end restaurant and if
i cook better at home than both these places i'm going to scoff at eating out all together
so the value to the purchaser has a huge impact on whether or not we're willing to go forward and
pay money to eat in a high-end restaurant versus or even eat in a fast food restaurant i feel like
the example for me that was really eye-opening was when i purchased my espresso machine it's
a manual espresso machine every time i had ever taste the special before that i found it
tasted disgusting when i went to buy my espresso machine and i was interacting with the salesperson
and they allowed me to pull a shot it was the first time that i ever tasted espresso that
tasted good now i'm not saying it's because i pulled such an amazing shot
it's because i happened to pull an amazing shot because the machine was set up properly and
the grinder and so all the stars aligned for me to pull an amazing shot but the problem wasn't that
the stars aligned it was that it tasted amazing and opened my eye to the fact that
espresso could taste sweet to me and taste delicious to me and there was no sugar it
was straight beans passed with water made in a special shot that tasted delicious
and it helped me to understand that part of the problem that i had been experiencing previously
was that i was drinking espressos that were pulled poorly and it took me down this rabbit
hole of wanting to learn how to truly make great espresso repeatedly and consistently
going forward so that i could have delicious coffee now what that did though
tasting now at home terrific tasting coffees caused me to throw out my well i didn't really
throw it away but like to stop using my drip machine because now i could tell the
difference between a delicious tasting coffee and what was coming out of my drip machine
it cost me to improve the quality of the beans that i was purchasing because now i understood
that the beans that i was buying in the grocery store most of them were already expired and
stale and not making the best quality coffee it caused me to even invest more in understanding how
different types of coffee brewing makes better tasting coffee and it unfortunately ruined my
ability to go to the local chain coffee shop and buy a coffee because i've done that since having
the machine and guess what doesn't taste great all of a sudden i can tell that that just tastes bad
it just tastes like dirty water to me now and yet people buy it
so what does that tell us if people buy this stuff that to me tastes like dirty water and i
feel like what's important for us to understand is that food companies are not going to go bankrupt
because of people like me because of people who start to understand that things can taste better
that people are always going to want the easy
mouth excitement version of a food because it's what they're used to right so for every one
person like me who wants to taste every note of the coffee that i just passed through my
fancy espresso machine there's going to be the 300 others who want to just pick up their
caffeinated drink that covers the bitterness of the poorly made coffee with sugar because they're
looking for the boost the coffee is giving them and not necessarily a delicious tasting
coffee and i'm saying that knowing that there's a lot of people are going to say but i love
those flavored coffees from the the local shops those chains but you need to understand that
the reason that those coffees are flavored is because the coffee is stale and if you were to
just drink that coffee straight it doesn't taste good but these flavors helps them to hide and mask
the the negatives of the poorly made coffee and i'm not trying to make you feel bad if you like
those coffees i'm pointing out that the same way that there's a market for every person
who wants to improve something that there's a high end a medium and a low end for almost everything
you know the fancy restaurant the fast food restaurant and the frozen section in the grocery
store that there's these different levels because there's always going to be somebody who's willing
to eat that and not only that they're willing to eat that that they find it tastes good to them
and so why would i spend extra money on something that doesn't taste good to me
but the idea that sweet coffee is delicious because it's sweet
like and sweetened with sugar and sweetened with flavorings and sweetened with artificial things
that's the part i'm asking us to question right because it helps us to see that food companies
are leaning on that hype palatability right that the product is so addictive
that as soon as you finish it you want another one by doing that they're getting us to have two
three coffees a day two three fast food meals a day two three packaged products a day we're
having so many packaged products and we don't realize the difficulty is causing to our health
don't just be another number when we allow food companies to use sugar addiction rather than
quality ingredients to keep us hooked on a product we're saying it's okay to see us as a number and
that were replaceable when violet can't eat this crap anymore because of diabetes don't worry
someone else is going to come along and eat it i want every wellness warrior to reject that idea
if there are things in our food that are harming our health whether it be sugar or other chemicals
force the food companies to do the right thing and make the food with quality ingredients and if they
don't make it with quality ingredients vote with your dollars don't buy it buy healthy whole foods
i want to talk about the comment of the day and this one came from Graciela Norris
and if you want to be in the comment of the day at the end of the video all you need to do is
comment on my videos that play on YouTube and i will pick the best one and we will
read it out and this one says hi violet yes your presentation is mind blowing i've also read Dr
mark Hyman's book and one book that i'd like to recommend for me to read which i will be reading
it is the secret history of the war on cancer by Devra Davis she's a professor of epidemiology
and directs the center for environmental oncology at the university of Pittsburgh cancer institute
her YouTube videos are super informative about how the causes of cancer have been known since
the 1900s but they get away with from telling the public by using the excuse of trade secrets
that can't be published to the public which is not true obviously and how we're all just
basically guinea pigs cannon fodder for the greedy green eyed monsters so she goes on to say that
cowardice asks the question is it safe expediency asks the question is it politic
political vanity comes along and asks the question is it popular but consciousness but conscious
but conscience asks the question is it right and there comes a time when one must take a position
that is neither safe nor political nor popular but he must do it because conscience tells him
it's right that's Martin Luther king jr don't be just the number to the food company take your
health seriously prioritize health over taste can't wait to talk to you guys again next time