What Would Happen If Sydney Sweeney Started Gardening and Baking Bread?

This is a catastrophic decline of health that no one dares calls a catastrophe.

Today's topic: can a culture sleepwalking off a cliff be awakened? If so, how? This is the source of my thought experiment question: what would happen if Sydney Sweeney started gardening and baking bread? I know nothing about Ms. Sweeney's private life and it may well be that she is an avid gardener and bakes bread at home, but the question is less about an individual celebrity and more about how cultural values change: can celebrities awaken a culture from self-destruction, or is something else required?

Let's start with what's obvious: in terms of health, diet and fitness, America has been sleepwalking into an unhealthy lifestyle / diet for 40+ years, a somnambulance uninterrupted by any high-ranking political figure until RFK, Jr. opened the Overton Window of what's politically possible with statements such as this: "Taxpayer dollars shouldn't go to junk food that makes our kids sick. We're fixing that--state by state, step by step--to Make America Healthy Again."

What's striking is that no one in a position of political influence said anything this truthful in the past 40 years, four decades in which taxpayer funds subsidized the destruction of America's health by funding ultra-processed beverages, snacks and other forms of addictive-by-design junk food to the point that 2/3 of children's diets are ultra-processed products--edible but not nutritious.

CDC Reveals Children Have Highest Intake Of Ultra-Processed Foods Americans aged 1+ consumed 55% of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods. Youth (ages 1 - 18): Averaged 61.9%.

That ultra-processed foods--low in fiber and nutrition, high in sweeteners, salt and unhealthy fats--is the source of the collapse of our national health has long been known. I've been writing about this topic for 15+ years, highlighting the core driver: ultra-processed food is highly profitable. Real food, not so much.

Sugar: the Bitter Truth (January 29, 2010)

The Profitable Destruction of Americans' Health (October 23, 2023)

This video was recorded in 2009, and yet nothing has slowed the invasion of ultra-processed foods into the nation's diet, to the point that an estimated 70% of our food is now ultra-processed.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth (video, 1:30 hrs) Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. Fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be the cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin.

Consider this map of obesity by state in 1985, where no state had an obesity rate above 20%, to the recent CDC map, where no state had a rate under 20%:



Since the data shown is self-reported, it's likely the reality is even bleaker than depicted here:



If we combine overweight (i.e. close to obese) and obesity, roughly 3/4 of the nation's adults are at elevated risk of chronic diseases. This is a catastrophic decline of health that no one dares calls a catastrophe.



This is the kind of empty-calorie product being hyped 24/7: edible but not nutritious.



Can an entire culture sleepwalking off a cliff be awakened before recovery is no longer possible? No one knows, of course, but it certainly wouldn't hurt if influencers with audiences in the millions started promoting healthy lifestyles (gardening, preparing real food, going Cold Turkey on ultra-processed goo, a daily walk) by example.


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