BY. Dr J. Renae Norton

The U.S. is the most obese country in the world with the most obese children, most of whom will live shorter lives than their parents. The question is why? There are many myths when it comes to answering this question; in this article, I try to dispel as many myths as possible in order to get to the heart of the issue and solve the problem.

Myth: Americans are fat and unhealthy because they are lazy, unmotivated and they just don’t care.

Fact: Americans are obese and not very healthy, but they are not lazy or unmotivated. We are actually among the hardest working nations in the world and most Americans care deeply about their health, they just do not seem to understand it very well, or what drives the problems that they are experiencing. And no wonder, I still find it hard to believe that our food is knowingly and intentionally polluted and I have been studying this issue for years.

A Cleveland Clinic survey from 2019 found 74 percent of those surveyed in the U.S. are concerned about their weight and 65 percent are worried about getting heart disease due to extra pounds.

Conclusion: We do worry about our weight and what it might mean for our health.

But, the study goes on to say:

“Despite these concerns, less than half (43 percent) of Americans have tried to make dietary changes to lose weight…” You would think that almost everyone would somehow connect what they eat (diet) to how much they weigh, but only 43% did, while 57% did not. This has also been my experience anecdotally.

The really interesting finding though is that “40 percent of those who describe themselves as overweight or obese say they aren’t careful about which foods they eat.” I am guessing that for that group, they pay more attention to the quantity than the quality of the food they eat. Again, this is what I see in my practice. It is not an issue of motivation. It is an example of being misinformed.

Indeed, I have seen this dynamic play out again and again. The obese individual comes in for treatment and wants help but does not want to change anything about the way s/he eats except the number of calories. This tells me that they really have no idea how damaging the foods they are eating are, especially to the parts of the brain that regulate eating behavior and fat storage. This is 100% consistent with the findings above. 

In other words, they are willing to cut back on the number of calories for a while (the study found that people would cut back on calories for a week to a month) Still they were not willing to permanently give up the sugar and sweeteners or the processed foods loaded with GMOs, glyphosate, and damaged fats.  

Instead they want to return to eating the desserts, the pizza, and the soft drinks that they have grown to love when they resume “normal” eating. This is the diet mentality. No wonder 95% of diets fail. The question is, why is it so universally popular despite being spectacularly ineffective? 

Myth: Dieting is an effective weight management strategy.                                                          

Fact: Dieting is a total failure. It is not for lack of trying that Americans are so unhealthy. For example, researchers have found that eighty-four percent of Americans say they have tried at least one weight-loss method in the past. About one-third (30 percent) say they typically stick with it between one week and one month.

Sounds about right. Dieting is hard and the fact that it fails almost 95% of the time doesn’t make it any easier. But a lot of people are trying it in desperation partly because the diet industry has done a great job of making it look so easy but also because they do not know of any other way to frame the problem. 

John Pepper, beloved CEO of Proctor & Gamble, once told me that “A well-defined problem is a problem half solved.” The health crisis in America is not well-defined. Eating less and even exercising more is not solving the problem, because lots of people are doing both. The Cleveland Clinic survey found that Americans cite dislike of exercise (24 percent) and lack of time (22 percent) as their main barriers to maintaining a healthy weight. That leaves 75% who are favorable and/or have the time though, right? So if exercise is the problem then a little over 70% of us should be a healthy weight when in fact only 30% of my age group is a healthy weight and only 50% of the adult population overall is not obese. I am 76. 

My point is that it is a gross oversimplification to think that Americans don’t care or that telling them to eat less and exercise more will solve the problem. It won’t. 

I have plenty of patients who exercised regularly and who were either overweight or a normal weight but were still experiencing the symptoms of vascular disease, diabetes, and cancer until they changed the quality of what they were eating. In other words, when they switched from conventional (read as polluted) foods to clean foods, their health improved dramatically in most cases.

One last interesting finding: According to the survey, most Americans also believe their metabolism is detrimental to weight loss – 60 percent of women and 46 percent of men say their metabolism is working against them. They are probably right. But why? Not because they are lazy. But because the organ responsible for metabolism, the thyroid gland, is under attack from polluted foods, tobacco and alcohol. So, to be clear, even if you do not smoke or drink, your thyroid is under continuous attack from polluted US foods. 

Damage the thyroid and everything suffers, especially your metabolism since the thyroid’s main function is to burn calories. So yes, your metabolism is working against you. In fact, it may not be working at all. But, the reason it isn’t working is something you have control over, stop eating food that damages your thyroid.

Remember, the thyroid is the energy source for every organ in the body, so damaging it can have widespread and often catastrophic consequences. However, the researchers of the study above did not make this connection either. 

One of the first things I do when I get a new patient, especially if they have weight issues, is ask them to have their thyroids tested.  Nearly 40% of all patients I treat who suffer from Anorexia, Bulimia or obesity have undiagnosed thyroid disease.

Myth: Dieting is not that popular these days.

Fact: You can see in the graph below from a survey that I have had running since 2007 how folks report on dieting and for what lengths of time:

According to the survey, nearly 50% of those responding diet 95% or more of the time.  Obviously, if they are dieting 95% of the time, the dieting isn’t working. So why keep doing it? 

For starters, dieters have been sold a bill of goods by the diet industry which has convinced them that they can almost instantaneously lose weight with this diet or that one. Their reasoning based upon this misinformation is something like “I can do anything for a week or two. Then once I achieve my goal weight, it is business as usual.” Of course, that does not work, as most people gain back more than they lost on a diet, making dieting fattening in its own right.

Myth: Americans are savvy about what it takes to eat healthy meals. 

Fact: No! And this is the real showstopper, Americans are convinced that they can eat healthy food without having to shop for, prep, or cook it. Why? Because we have been brain-washed into believing that it takes too much time and energy to go to all that trouble when you can get perfectly good food from a drive-through. Many of us feel like suckers if we do have to make our own food and clean up afterwards. We are, after all, the “Fast Food Nation.”

The reality is that fast food is some of the most dangerous and conventional foods are not much better. Focusing just on heart health, the authors of the survey, speculate that another part of the problem may be that Americans aren’t sure what to eat for a healthy heart. Ya think?

Here is what the survey showed when it comes to how uninformed Americans are about their food: 

• Nearly one-in-five (18 percent) believe their diet has nothing to do with their heart health, and only 14 percent knew that a Mediterranean Diet is good for the heart.

• Another good example of how uninformed or misinformed Americans are is that nearly half of Americans (46 percent) believe using artificial sweeteners is a healthy way to lose weight. This is in spite of the studies showing that sweeteners don’t result in weight loss and further that they have very negative health effects, one of which is weight gain. 

• But even more surprising, is that sweeteners can even raise cholesterol levels. One of the by-products of Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful) is Diketopiperazine (DKP) which is produced by the body when aspartame is eaten. Uterine polyps and increased cholesterol levels have been linked to DKP. Unfortunately, most Americans are clueless about such issues.

Myth: Americans are concerned about the impact obesity has on their health.

Fact: Not according to the survey mentioned above which also revealed that Americans don’t fully understand the impact excess weight has on their heart and overall health. The overwhelming majority of Americans (87%) failed to link obesity to cancer or atrial fibrillation (rapid and irregular heartbeat resulting in a stroke) when in fact obesity is a major driver for both.

Finally, the study found that “More than half of all Americans don’t know that obesity is linked to LDL or the “bad” cholesterol (54 percent) or coronary artery disease (57 percent) and two-thirds (64 percent) don’t know it can lead to a stroke.”

Mind blown!    

 How do we not know these things? Obviously, we are not well informed. But I believe that it goes beyond that. I believe that we are misinformed. The upshot is that we end up being either overwhelmed or so passive when it comes to our health that we cannot protect ourselves from the diseases that are raging currently in our society. This makes us easy prey for those who would exploit us. 

Myth: The FDA provides good oversight. 

Fact: No. In fact, those who should be tasked with keeping us informed: our government, doctors, food producers, and farmers all benefit from our ignorance in one way or another, either by selling us the pollutants, getting paid by the polluters or treating us for food pollution disorders. Ok, I know, I am definitely sounding like a conspiracy theorist here. But seriously, just look at what the authors of this very important survey have to say by way of explanation:

“Most Americans understand abstractly that being overweight or obese is not good for your health, but it seems as a country, we are not grasping that the leading causes of death and disability – stroke, cancer, and coronary artery disease – are all adversely affected by increased weight,” said Steven Nissen, M.D., chairman of Cardiovascular Medicine at Cleveland Clinic. 

I would add that most of that excess weight is the direct result of “food pollution” A term I have created to describe the sad state of U.S. Foods. In addition, I think the authors of this study have not only missed the most important point: namely that Americans do not make the connection between the polluted nature of the food they are eating and the consequences of eating it.  Instead, they blame themselves for the health problems they are having.

But no wonder they blame themselves. Here is the conclusion of the author’s of the study:

“We need to do a better job of educating patients and the public about the major consequences of carrying excess weight and the benefits of losing weight. A patient only needs to lose five percent of their body weight to start seeing important health benefits.” Nissen

So, the solution is to lose weight? That will fix everything? We know that dieting does not work and may even cause weight gain. And what about all the people who are ill but are not overweight? This thinking does not address the cause of the problem, only the symptom, weight gain that is so severe it results in obesity along with the diseases that are correlated with obesity.

What about the problems causing so many people in the US to be overweight? Doesn’t the, “Just get off your (lazy) butt and lose that weight” beg the issue? 

What doctors need to be doing is educating patients on the dangers of U.S. conventional foods. Most doctors either do not understand this themselves or they do not think the effect will be worth the effort when it comes to teaching their patients to eat clean food.

I can tell you from personal experience as well as from treating obese patients who are no longer obese (or ill) that clean eating works. Tune in for my next article about how “Clean eating Changes Everything.”

Citations – Banskota S, Ghia JE, Khan WI. Serotonin in the gut: Blessing or a curse. Biochimie. 2019 Jun;161:56-64. doi: 10.1016/j.biochi.2018.06.008. Epub 2018 Jun 14. PMID: 29909048. pg 10 

OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en. pg.11

New Zealand Infant Mortality – Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births) – New Zealand. The World Bank. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2022, from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?locations=NZ pg. 12

United States Infant Mortality – Ely, D., & Driscoll, A. K. (2021, December 8). National Vital Statistics reports – Infant Mortality in the United States, 2019: Data From the Period Linked Birth/Infant Death File. Retrieved November 23, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/NVSR70-14.pdf  pg.12