This post will lay out (what I understand to be) the basic logic behind why consuming a varied diet of whole foods cooked yourself is more desirable than a “conventional” diet of processed, packaged, or prepared foods. In sum, what you eat is a major determinant of your health cost; that is, the financial burden of your medical needs. It is an ironie du sort that taxpayers are the very ones who make the least healthy foods the cheapest to eat, thanks to corporate lobbyists. This is why the discussion of food is political rather than merely personal. The argument consists of an extremely complicated set of issues, and although some points will be more obvious than others, each and every one deserves its own post, researched and cited. As that work is done, I’ll update this post with the appropriate links, and corrections when necessary.

It must be said that there are many variables that affect our health for which we have little to no control, from genetic predisposition to environmental exposure to accidental injury. The one aspect of our health that we can control is our diet, although even here there are factors that restrict our ability to choose, such as budget, tradition, and availability. I hope to have the opportunity to expand my coverage at some point, but the focus of this argument is two-fold: to show why a more natural diet is optimal for our health, and to recognize that the current food system encourages eating habits that are patently detrimental to our health.

1. Good health is intrinsically connected to nutrition (although nutrition is not the only component of good health). Furthermore, diet is responsible for more ailments than we generally acknowledge.
2. We house a vital community of bacteria in our gut, commonly referred to as the intestinal microbiome. I’ve come to refer to these critters endearingly as “gut buggies”. The makeup of this community depends on the nourishment it receives, which is determined by the foods we eat. A more complex diet leads to a more complex community of gut buggies.
3. These gut buggies contribute to the breaking down of food in the process of digestion. A more complex community of gut buggies means a larger variety of nutritive elements made available for use by the body.
4. Without venturing a numerical guess, good nutrition requires more essential elements than we have isolated so far. In much the same way as it is hubris to discount the possible existence of life elsewhere in the universe, or even our own galaxy, it is hubris to think we have mastered the elements of nutrition. A varied diet built upon whole foods is preferable because it exposes us to the still unknown complexities of nature rather than to the limited consistency required of factory mass production.
5. Currently, the subsidies provided by our tax dollars prioritize calories over nutrition.
6. Highly processed foods – primarily, those artificially loaded with salt, sugar, and/or fat in order to create addictive bliss points – tend to have lots of ingredients but are actually less complex in terms of nutrition because many of the ingredients that go into these products start from just two sources: corn and soybean.
7. Highly processed foods are a leading cause of poor nutrition in the developed world. This problem is compounded by the relative low price of these foods compared to whole, raw foods, a phenomenon supported by those government subsidies.
8. Poor nutrition contributes to many long-term health problems, to include heart disease and type 2 diabetes (two of the leading causes of death in the developed world).
9. Eating more whole foods is cheaper in the long run. Changing the way we subsidize our food system will improve our health and will reduce the burdensome costs of health care.
10. I am not advocating for the complete abolition of any particular type of food. Put simply, our food system should encourage foods that are more healthy and discourage foods that are less healthy. Current subsidies in our food system lead to higher long-term health costs than necessary, which is detrimental to our economy, our society, and our culture.