I don’t disagree with you, but I’m a doctor, and it wasn’t until recently that I actually understood how we metabolize food, and the result of processed foods in America.
I’ll give you one example. Alkaline water. This is water that has a pH well above 7, closer to 9.5-10.
People in Japan have drank alkaline water for 50 years with remarkable results.
It lowers blood pressure, detoxifies your body, aids in digestion, increases energy, etc.
Tap and most bottle water is slightly acidic.
I don’t think this is a passing fad, and in fact I look for this the next biggest thing.
Look on the shelf at your grocer in the bottled water. You’ll be lucky to find it. Check back in six months and everyone will be selling it.
Alkaline water is easy to make. Add 1/8 tsp of baking soda in 8 oz of water.
But try this. Buy some store tomatoes or packaged vegetable that have been cleaned. Separate them into two batches.
Soak one batch in a bowl of tap water. Soak the other in a bowl of tap water with a couple tsps of baking soda. Wait five minutes and look at the water.
Next, rinse both groups quickly. Then taste and compare, tasting the batch that was in the alkaline water first.
Even if you eat non-processed food, I’m mostly out of the perimeter of the grocery store. But the body is the body.
I think a bigger part of the problem is how we talk to people about it. We tell people they’re fat and they need to fix it, we never bother to check their family history, we just blame them. So now they feel bad about themselves, they’re in a depressive cycle so now their brain is actually releasing chemicals that encourage them to eat (especially those comfort foods) and not exercise. Then of course America being America and worshiping the quick fix we sell them fad diets and other things we already know do not work in the long term. Now they’re on the yo-yo cycle (also known as the Oprah). And of course what do we know about the yo-yo cycle: most folks gain back more than they lose. And now they’re depressed. Lather rinse repeat.
And through all this we push variations of the food pyramid, almost all of which are crap for 80% of the population, and we use a math formula that was designed by eugenicists to “prove” poor people suck on the genetic level declare everybody who doesn’t look like Twiggy overweight. Which just puts more people on the depressive cycle, and then the yo-yo.
Where we need to be is telling people they’re individuals. They have their body, they have their family history, and some of us are just going to be overweight, but you CAN be healthy overweight, and don’t get on the depression cycle just because their genes made certain decisions.
As for alkaline water it’s a fad. It’s a fad that MIGHT have MINOR benefits, but like all the other superfood fads they aren’t nearly as high as the hype.