[80's Cardio Music]
These are the Awesome 80’s.
The decade that brought us the Apple Macintosh computer,
portable cellular phones,
and the Cabbage Patch.
The Doll and the Dance.
The 80's also brought us all things fat- and sugar-free.
Diet Coke, fat-free Entemanns, and TCBY.
Low-fat food tastes terrible,
so food manufacturers
pumped
pumped in “fat-free” sugar.
Sweet sweet sugar.
Calories in equal calories out, right?
Just sweat to the oldies and everything will be fine.
But what if everything you think you know about food is wrong?
The food and beverage industry,
along with outmoded governmental policies
are hijacking our taste buds and our wallets.
Give me four more sets.
Hit me with my theme music!
[Nailed It! Theme Music]
[Nail SFX]
I just watched the new documentary Fed Up,
and here are some cool things I learned.
America is all about that bass,
'bout that bass
No treble.
More than 35% of Americans are obese,
not just overweight,
but obese,
and this generation of kids will be the first
that are not forecasted to outlive their parent.
We are, in fact so fat, that they now have to make
fatter crash test dummies.
Americans consume 130-150 pounds of sugar a year.
But everything's fine in moderation right?
We're suppose to be consuming 6-9 teaspoons of added sugar per day.
The American Heart Association set that limit in 2009.
Our current consumption in America today average is 22 teaspoons per day
And the point is, what does that glut do to you?
And what we have determined is
that it's not about the calories.
You could eat those 450 calories as say, a steak,
or as some other food stuff and it wouldn't matter,
because it's sugar, it causes all the of the diseases downstream called metabolic syndrome.
The food industry as a credibility problem.
Here are the sweet lies they're feeding us.
Sweet Lie Number 1:
Just cut out sweets.
The biggest culprit obviously is sweetened beverages.
Americans guzzle down 45 gallons of soda a year,
but even those who don’t drink soda
may not realize that sugar,
and it’s twin, High Fructose Corn Syrup
is added to a surprisingly large number of products.
[Music]
Sweet Lie Number 2:
You can quit sugar.
So why is sugar so bad?
We’re lead to believe that a calorie is a calorie.
Eating in moderation and incorporating exercise will balance everything out.
The food industry creates hyper palatable foods
that hijack our brain chemistry and our metabolism.
We now know that these foods are biologically addictive.
If you’re an alcoholic, and you get help,
you can stop drinking, but none of us can stop eating.
Listen to what experts have to say about the addiction power of sugar.
Just this week, researchers at Connecticut College said
that the Oreo is just as additive as cocaine.
At least in lab rats.
There's also dependence, which is when you get your body
physiologically used to having cocaine or paletable food on-board
and then, um, it creates a sense of tolerance
so you have to escalate how much cocaine you use to get the same effect
And there's evidence that the same thing happens.
That the more you eat Oreos,
the more you're actually gonna escalate your intake of Oreos
to experience the same degree of pleasure.
Sweet Lie Number 3:
Just sweat it out!
This one time, I snorted pixie sticks off a dude in a rat costume at a Chuck-e-Cheese.
Sugar sweetened drinks make up about 15 percent of our calorie intake every day.
Did you know, though,
you have to walk 4.5 miles just to burn off one 20 ounce soda?
And you would have to run 4 miles a day for a week
to burn off one super size meal.
If you eat out everyday, that’s a marathon a day!
You cannot exercise your way out of a bad diet.
Here’s why sugar is so dangerous to our bodies.
The problem with blood sugar is that if we don't use it relatively quickly,
it becomes toxic.
So the body's developed a very effective way of removing excess
blood sugar from the blood stream.
It has a faithful dog called Insulin to fetch it.
Woof! Woof!
Insulin retrieves the excess unused blood sugar in the blood stream and
then stores a little as Glycogen in our muscles and liver,
but stores most of it as fat in our bodies.
Mostly around our tummies.
Now, as long as we keep eating starch and sugar,
insulin will keep on retrieving unused sugar
and store it as fat as fast as it can.
Woof! Woof!
And we get fatter, and fatter,
and well... fatter.
Sweet Lie Number 4:
Diet soda is good for you.
The beverage lobby is so powerful,
that in the past 2 years,
each of the 24 states and five cities
that has considered taxing soda
has seen their measures dropped or defeated.
Pro-tax supporters are outspent almost 40 to 1.
The Beverage industry voted in 2006 to “self-regulate”
and remove full sugar products from school.
Yay!
Well! We’ll let the banks self-regulate.
We'll let soda self-regulate.
Let your boyfriend self-regulate at his friend's Chad’s bachelor trip.
Anyway, while Coke is making ads showing their huge new range of
“zero cal and low cal” beverages
the childhood obesity rate is soaring.
17.3 percent of children ages 2 to 19 were obese in 2011 and 2012.
Here’s what no one wants you to know.
Diet drinks are just as bad for you.
According to a Purdue University study,
diet soda is not a healthy option
and it is not better than regular soda.
So if you're doing that to lose weight,
you're really wasting your time.
The research has also found that people who drink
artificially sweetened sodas
are more likely to gain weight
than those who drink regular soda.
Sweet Lie Number 5:
Kids can still get a nutritional school lunch.
Let me be clear,
I’m not just vilifying sugar.
Back in the 80’s, Reagan was eager to cut government spending,
so he cut 1.5 billion dollars from child nutrition.
Schools had to close the gap by serving cheaper,
less healthy “heat & eat” food
and they had to partner with fast food companies.
Remember old school lunch ladies who cooked for realsies?
Had the mole with the hair growing out... anyway.
In 2005, 80% of schools were under exclusive soda contracts
and by 2012, 50% of schools offered fast food on campus.
The food lobby is so powerful,
that when the Healthy Kids Act tried to pass Congress in 2010
with healthier school lunch guidelines,
Minnesota-based Schwan Foods and their puppet
Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar
got Congress to declare this.
Look at this picture.
What do you see?
In this week's Washington Rorschach Test,
Congress sees a vegetable.
Pizza alone
particularly pizza with no vegetables on it
just tomato paste...
It's common sense, it's not a vegetable.
What's next? Are Twinkie's gonna be considered a vegetable?
Congress says a slice of pizza qualifies as a vegetable,
because it has 2 tablespoons of tomato paste.
And it will remain a vegetable,
since this week Congress rejected the Department of Agriculture's attempt
to make school lunches healthier.
Sweet Lie Number 6:
Farmers need our help.
It’s easy to demonize the food industry,
but we must also look at our own governmental practices.
In the last 15 years,
taxpayers paid corn farmers more than $77 billion dollars
to turn their yields into processed foods and corn syrup.
The cost of the Agricultural Act of 2014 is $956.4 billion dollars.
It cuts food stamps,
but subsidizes insurance companies.
Payments to growers of corn,
peanuts and other crops may reach $6.5 billion for this year’s harvest alone.
And 10% of America’s farmers collect more than 75% of the subsidies.
Crop insurance subsidies change the way farmers manage risk
and puts taxpayers on the hook for bad policies.
Um, this is a big giveaway to insurance.
The government picks up 62 percent of the premiums,
they guarantee 17 percent of the um...
...lemme get this down, I just wanna get this right...
7.4 billion dollars in deductibles.
Um, and they also guarantee, the USDA has an agreement with insurance company
that guarantees that at a 14 percent rate of return.
[laughs]
Everyone... everyone hearing this...
I wanna say what the basic principle here is right?
You got a business, you face risk, you take you insurance against that risk.
Crops, are... face certain kinds of risk.
and there's a recognition that those risks are different cause of the weather.
What we're doing in this bill
is the government is backstopping that risk.
It is subsidizing the insurance risk
And it is not just subsidizing the farmer.
It is subsidizing the insurance company to provide the insurance.
Sweet Lie Number 7:
So what? I am skinny, bitch.
The insidious nature of sugar,
means that even relatively thin people can still develop metabolic disorders.
It may sound like a drink order, but you can in fact be skinny fat.
Well it turns out, a good chunk of those people who are normal weight
roughly 30 million people in all,
may still be at risk of obesity related diseases.
This is a new body fat analysis test.
WOOHOO!
Look at that blubber fly!
Yes.
Homer Simpson may have been onto something.
Nurse, cancel my 1 o'clock.
Your body fat percentage is a red flag,
pointing to risk factors of obesity.
No matter how much you weigh.
So Americans are getting fatter,
kids are getting sicker
and the food and beverage industry are doubling portions and their profits.
Here’s how to fix everything.
Number 1
The beverage lobby has failed at its self-regulation
and they're taking plays from the Big Tobacco playbook.
In order to fight back, we must inform and educate.
There should be a soda tax.
And with all the information we know about artificial sweeteners
it should include diet soda,
sports drinks and sugar waters.
Consumption of soda and other sugary drinks
has more than doubled since the 80's.
The beverage industry's reach is so deep,
that you can now buy a soda at a Kinkos,
a car wash or a Best Buy.
This tax might help people to break the cycle.
Number 2
Clearer labeling.
There should be a percentage next to sugar on nutrition panels.
There’s a recommended daily allowance for fat, salt, and carbohydrates,
but not for sugar.
The American Heart Association
recommends no more than 6-9 teaspoons of added sugar per day.
The World Health organization
tried to pass a global initiative to limit sugar
to no more than 10% of your daily intake,
but the American government
said they would withhold over $400 million in aid,
so we basically extorted the World Health Organization
to raise guidelines to 25 percent.
USA!
Number 3
Revisions in farm subsidies.
In 2010 $15 billion dollars went to growers of
corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soy,
but only $825 million went to growers of
fruits, vegetables and organics.
We shouldn’t be subsidizing the insurance industry for
“administrative” costs
and encouraging farmers to make risky bets.
Number 4
Increase spending and awareness of food deserts.
The USDA estimates that more than 23 million of us
live in low income urban areas
or rural areas that have no readily available access to healthy food choices.
Mayors and activists are making inroads,
but if the Grocery Manufactures Association
really wants throw some of that lobby money around,
they should donate to mobile food initiatives.
Number 5
Go Green!
Your average American ate 2.6 servings of vegetables a day in the ‘70s.
By 2008, that number had slipped to 1.9 servings,
and that’s counting potatoes as a vegetable.
And one out of every four Americans doesn’t eat ANY vegetables... At all.
Try a 10 day challenge where you reduce
or limit the amount of processed foods that you eat.
No special bars or powders or smoothies to buy,
just go to the store buy some stuff and cook it.
95 percent of all Americans
will be overweight or obese in 2 decades' time.
75 percent of our healthcare dollars are spent on metabolic diseases.
Knee jerk rhetoric about nanny states and individual choices
goes out the window when you learn how absolutely toxic sugar is,
and that unclear labeling
means we are all consuming way more of it than we should.
Better choices as consumers
will eventually lead to changes in the mass production of foods.
Hey! You guys!
We got them to take that yoga mat chemical out of Subway right?
We can’t let corporations dictate public policies
that have literally shortened the life spans of our children.
Contact your local politician and tell them that you don’t want to eat what they’re serving.
Nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels.
Nailed It!
[Theme Music]