An Endless Cycle

An Endless Cycle

Like an abusive relationship, America’s food industry has gone from bad to worse in pursuit of creating a vortex in which dieters cannot pull themselves out from. The idea that counting calories is the most successful way in which to lose weight has been passed down from generation to generation as the golden rule of dieting. The fewer calories you can intake versus your daily expenditure of calories, the better the results one shall see. From this, a great marketing ploy has arisen over time.

Walk into any chain grocery store and you will be bombarded with labels promising little to no calories in products once flooded with them. How do they do this? Science. In a laboratory. With Chemicals. Sound natural, organic, or even healthy? It’s not.

In a recent production, Fed Up, the hidden agenda of the food industry’s use of processed sugars and syrups to make foods zero-calorie is brought to light. The movie came out May 9, 2014, and was actually shown at the Athena Cinema on Court Street. In summary, the main focus of the documentary is to show viewers the harmful and addictive effects of refined sugars, processed foods, and syrup-filled beverages.

The reason this links to discussions we have had in class is due to its aid in the vicious cycle of dieting in America. Going on diets such as Slimfast provide customers with short term results and that makes them happy and in results gives good ratings. HOWEVER, once these diets are cut off and a regular, healthy, balanced diet is back in place, weight will slowly creep back upon the dieter. Unfortunately, many of the dieters will fall under the wrong impression that the post-diet weight gain is due to their own fault and that a regular lifestyle of food is the problem. What the truth actually is, however, that these diets starve the body because they run on approximately 1,200 calories a day; this is an extremely low amount of calories that deprive the body and while definitely providing weight loss results, will not be adequate in supporting a healthy lifestyle. Once the body is in starvation mode and the dieter ceases their diet, any calorie will stick to their body due to simple biology. The body is responding to this starvation mode and will thus store all calories consumed in order to prep for another potential starvation period.

The reason companies can make money off of this is because of the comeback factor. When the dieter gains weight after the diet, typically they freak out and immediately go back on the diet because they know it will cause them to lose weight again. This produces an endless cycle of consumerism that businesses love, at the expense of customers. Studies show that diets such as these lead to the onset of serious eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder, and so on and so forth. Bringing back up the topic spoke of in Fed Up, a majority of these diets and foods promising zero-calories are made up of chemicals that light up the brain and create addictive feelings towards these food products.

Until a truly natural and healthy line of products arise on market or consumers altogether form a ban wagon and boycott these detrimental diets, money-hungry companies with continue to feed off of the starvation of calorie-deprived dieting Americans striving to obtain unattainable socially constructed beauty norms.