Why Food in US is SO ADDICTIVE

You trundle down the aisle, your eyes wide, and your stomach craving. YEvery glance at

the shelves is a flash of nostalgia, a reminder of commercials that once glued you to the TV.

Your cart fills effortlessly, guided not by choice but by decades of subtle influence.

Surrounded by towering walls of familiar logos, amazed by a cornucopia of colorful packages. It

feels like a shopper’s paradise, but it’s not. What looks like endless freedom is a

cleverly crafted “illusion of choice.” Almost every item you’ll toss into your

cart is owned by just four or five giant corporations. In the United States alone,

these behemoths dictate what’s on your table. And on a global scale, the stranglehold is

even tighter- 10 companies control more than half the world’s food and beverage supply.

How did this happen and does it matter for regular folks like us? That’s what we’ll find

out on this episode of The Infographics Show - The Companies That Secretly Decide What You Eat.

“You are what you eat.” It’s a phrase we’ve all heard. It originates from Anthelme

Brillat-Savarin, a French lawyer and nutritionist, who wrote in his 1826 book, Physiologie du Goût

(The Physiology of Taste): "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."

“The fate of a nation,” he explained, “depends on the way that they eat.” If that’s true for

Americans…well… Houston, we have a major problem. It’s believed that ultra-processed foods, or UPFs,

dominate our diets. These are products loaded with unrecognizable additives-

ingredients that often make the food look and taste nothing like what it started as.

UPFs make up about 60% of the average American adult’s diet- and 70% of what kids consume daily.

It might depend on where you live and how much cash you have at your disposal because if you

tick certain boxes, it could be 90% of your diet. It’s pushed on you daily- like a legal addiction.

Your brain, hardwired for survival, lights up with dopamine blasts from the heavy doses of carbs,

salt, and sugar packed into these foods. It’s not your fault. These ultra-processed foods are

designed to hijack your cravings, keeping you coming back for more, day after day. The food

giants know what they peddle isn’t always good for us, but they still spend about $14

billion each year on advertising in the U.S. alone. About 80% of those stomach-rumbling ads

promote this culinary crack and keep you hooked. A 2017-2018 study revealed that 42% of American

adults are currently obese, a rate projected to go up to 50% by 2030. 6 in 10 US adults according to

a recent study routinely eat foods that increase the risk of chronic conditions like heart disease

and cancer. However, some people don’t have much choice. Around 19 million Americans live in “food

deserts”- low-income, low-access areas where getting to a grocery store is a challenge. And

when they manage to get there, the nutrient-rich, “good stuff” is often scarce or out of reach.

Even if you don’t live in a food desert, your options aren’t always as great as they seem.

It’s not just the US. Europe’s leading UPF consumer, the UK, is home to adults whose diet

is about 60% UPFs - 65% for children, although the stats differ depending on where you look

for them. And like the US, how much cash you have matters…a lot. A recent Food Foundation

report said per calorie, cheap food in the UK is half as expensive. For the poorest 20% of

British households, meeting national healthy diet recommendations would require spending half their

disposable income on food- something that isn’t going to happen. This is one of the reasons why UK

scientists have talked about a “dismal” and “jaw-dropping” low life expectancy in

deprived areas where, like in the US, lower wage earners and the poor get sicker at a younger age,

and clock out of life faster. Processing food in and of itself

isn’t a bad thing. When Henry VIII said he wanted smoked eel with some pickles- he got

processed eel and processed vegetables. It still tasted like, and his veg was tangy,

just how he liked it. But today, if you bought a frozen box of chicken and pasta with sauce,

it would be filled with imposters. Sure, there might be some chicken- or maybe some mechanically

separated chicken or chicken byproducts- but there would also be additives for flavor, preservation,

texture, and color. Much of what you buy in your grocery store contains these added properties.

So, we’ve been processing food for millennia, but it’s the ultra part that is problematic.

When a large portion of your plate is made up of colorings, bulking agents, flavor enhancers,

cheap sweeteners, trans fats, emulsifiers, acidulants, fortified nutrients, gases,

hydrolyzed protein isolates, anti-foaming agents, humectants or moisture retention agents,

and who knows what else the food industry’s alchemists have concocted… it’s not food anymore.

But it’s all in there to make it taste better, last longer, and most importantly, cost less.

Our modern UPF-laden diet is why we’ve seen such huge, and we mean huge, increases in obesity

and obesity-related diseases like diabetes. This modern diet is said to be behind the rise of heart

disease and certain cancers. Heart disease in the US at the start of the 20th wasn’t common at all,

and now it’s the leading cause of death. Why? Well, trans fats haven’t helped,

and neither have sweeteners or many of the questionable additives we encounter daily. A

lot of these ingredients sit uncomfortably on the we-think-it’s-safe-to-eat-but-not-everyone-does

list. Let’s delve deeper into

who controls all these mega-processed items that line the aisles of your local supermarket. Well,

we say local, but things have changed. Up until around the 1980s-90s, many Americans bought their

groceries from small outlets, local grocery stores, butchers and bakers- where mom-and-pop

were the CEOs. Now 65% of the US grocery market is controlled by four companies: Walmart, Costco,

Kroger, and Ahold Delhaize. They can keep costs down by buying in bulk from global companies who

have mechanized, and at times, compromised the integrity of the food-making process.

So, your cart is piled high full of goods and to you, it looks like you’ve been buying food from

lots of different companies. You haven’t, not really. In a study by the Guardian,

researchers bought 61 types of popular groceries from a major supermarket in America. Four or fewer

firms controlled at least 50% of the market for 79% of the items. It’s these companies,

the food monopolies, who dictate what farmers grow and what you eat.

If you’re a breakfast cereal fan, you’re in good company- over 283 million Americans said

they bought cereal, according to 2020 U.S. Census data and the Simmons National Consumer Survey.

But despite all the choices you think you’re getting, there’s a good chance you’re buying

from one of three companies: Kellogg’s (26.8% market share), General Mills (27.9%) or Post

Holdings (18.1%). You might not even have heard of the last company, the guys that make Weetabix,

Alpen, Ready Brek, Raisin Bran, and the classic, Honey Bunches of Oats. And for that last one,

sure, you get oats, you get honey, but you also get lots of Corn Syrup, Artificial Flavors, Oil,

Coloring, and a controversial preservative we’ll talk about later: BHT (Butylated Hydroxytoluene).

Maybe you want bread. Well, despite all the brands you see, over 50% of all of the market

is controlled by two companies: Grupo Bimbo and Flowers Foods. Grupo what we hear you ask… but

it’s behind 100 brands and 13,000 products. Or maybe you want some packaged rice or pasta. If

it’s the latter, you’re likely buying from Barilla (33.2% market share) or Ebro Foods (28.2%). Ebro

is also behind over 22% of the rice you buy, followed by Mars (15.9%) and Unilever (7.9%).

As for soft drinks, we’re sure you’re already aware you’re buying from pretty much three

companies: Coca-Cola (42.4% market share), Pepsi-Co (27.4%), or Keurig Dr. Pepper (23.1%),

each of them experts at marketing. They also control most of the juice market, although

Kraft-Heinz has almost a 10% market share of that. As for beer, Anheuser-Busch- the owners of

Budweiser, Stella Artois and Michelob- has almost a 42% market share and Molson Coors just over 24%.

Ok, what about ready meals, the dry ones with meat? Well, if that’s your food of choice,

Conagra Brands is the biggest supplier. It has almost a 60% market share. You name it,

Conagra does it. From making Bertolli olive oil and Chef Boyardee pasta to Healthy Choice

meals and countless other products, like TV dinners and sauces to whips, dips, snacks,

processed meats, popcorn, and pizzas. If it’s on your plate, there’s a good chance Conagra

had a hand in making it. Kraft-Heinz, General Mills, and the Campbell Soup Company are also

big players in the single-serving meal market. If you want frozen pizza, Nestle is your master

with a 40% market share. It’s also doing well in the baby food business with a 24%

market share but after Abbott Laboratories (31.4%) and Reckitt Benckiser (26.3%).

Dips, that’s over 87% PepsiCo. Unilever has around a 50% market share of Mayo and Kraft Heinz comes

in at 30%. Chocolate: 41.5% Hershey and over 27% Mars. Yogurt, that’s 33% Danone. Sour cream,

almost 52% Daisy. Cheese slices you can guess are around 65% Kraft Heinz and it also does ok

in the bacon business with over 18%. As for the meat masters, Tyson is huge, but behind

Brazil’s JBS on a global scale. The WH Group from China is also doing well in the meat department.

We think you get the picture. The food giants supply most of what you eat. They spent about

$175 million in 2020 on lobbying and keeping politicians sweet, and over the years they’ve

been merging, so getting bigger. In the 1980s, the pork and beef behemoths controlled just

less than 40% of the respective markets, but with mergers, now over 80% beef and

about 70% pork is controlled by the giants. Like processing, in and of itself this isn’t

always a bad thing. You get cheaper products because they’re being made at a scale that

would be mind-boggling to someone 50 years ago. At the start of the 20th century,

malnutrition affected 20-30% of the population in the US’s most impoverished areas. Nowadays you

rarely hear about Americans starving- the problem is they might look like kings of full fridges,

but their calorie-dense diets don’t always provide enough nutrients. Still, the world has come a long

way, most of us can afford to eat something, and that’s thanks in part to the fact the food

on our plates came out of an industrial process. One of the negative consequences is that farmers

are struggling. Livestock farmers in the US will very likely work for the Big Four: Tyson, JBS,

Cargill, or the National Beef Packing Company. They dictate the prices, and it seems the prices

aren’t great, which is why Time magazine in 2019 said, “American Farmers Are Nearing Extinction.”

The article explained, “The nation lost more than 100,000 farms between 2011 and 2018;

12,000 of those between 2017 and 2018 alone.” One of the reasons is globalization- giant

global food firms offering competitive prices. For a farmer to compete, they might have to pay

lower wages. Of the 2.5 million farm laborers in the US anywhere from 50 to 75% are low-paid

and undocumented. Only about 15 cents on every dollar you spend at the grocery store goes to

the farmer. Meanwhile, the food giants are making record-breaking profits. We won’t go

through all the companies’ revenues, but suffice it to say, they are making many billions each

year thanks to their control of the market. Raj Patel, an academic and author, told The

Guardian, “This is at the heart of capitalist food politics – big corporations taking as much as they

can and paying as little as possible for it.” These critics of the food system partly blame

mergers and acquisitions. Companies merge and consolidate, buying out the competition. Take

the seed market, for example. 25 years ago, ten corporations controlled about 40% of this market,

but after a series of acquisitions, just four companies now control over half of it:

Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta, and BASF. They also control over 60% of the

agrochemical market. They tell farmers what to plant, which means less biodiversity and

fewer nutrients for you, the consumer. One of the most controversial corporate

mergers in recent history came when American agrochemical giant Monsanto was acquired by

German pharmaceutical and biotechnology powerhouse Bayer. The US Justice Department said the merger

would “likely result in hundreds of millions of dollars per year in harm, raising costs to farmers

and consumers.” Now one firm controls pretty much the world’s supply of seeds and pesticides.

Monsanto/Bayer controls around 80% of U.S. corn production. This corn is used to sweeten processed

food for humans when it’s turned into corn syrup. It keeps livestock full in the form of high-energy

feed so you can fill up on meat products. Farmers sign contracts to buy genetically modified seeds

that are resistant to herbicides that are also sold by Bayer. The farmers agree not to

save seeds for next year’s planting season- well, they don’t really have much choice but to agree.

These big seed companies aggressively protect their IP rights, which leads to

less innovation and research, further bolstering their monopoly. They launch lawsuits for patent

infringement against any farmers trying to get around this. So, we, the consumers,

get what Bayer wants the farmers to grow and what the Big Food companies can make the most

money from. It’s a bit more complicated, but this is a major reason why we eat what we eat.

You also have the big firms that process the corn, turning it into High-Fructose Corn Syrup,

or HFCS, animal feed, or ethanol. A few companies own that, too. Together, ADM, Bunge, Cargill,

COFCO, and the Louis Dreyfus Company have an 80% market share - and it’s not just for corn,

but for soy, grain, and sugar. Some firms, like Tyson, control the process from start to finish,

what’s called being vertically integrated. This means they sell the seeds that feed the

animals that make their sausages. When food is made by giants,

we get factory farming. In the US, the days of small farmers farming the old way have been

coming to an end. All added up the USA is home to about 1.7 billion factory farm animals – a

50% increase over the last twenty years. A 2019 study revealed the overwhelming

dominance of factory farming in America’s meat supply. An astonishing 99.9% of the

nearly 9 billion chickens, 98% of the 71 million pigs, 70% of the 94 million cows, and 99.8% of

the 216 million turkeys are raised on factory farms. If we add up how much collective pooping

they do – and this is a VERY rough estimate – that’s about 343 million tons of chicken caca,

82.5 million tons of pig poop, 1.1 billion tons of cow crap, and 1.55 million tons of Turkey tots.

That’s about 1.53 billion tons of excrement per year, which can contaminate waterways and could

create dead zones where you wouldn’t want to have a picnic. Not long ago, beaches in Florida

were said to have been covered in green slime thanks in part to our contaminated waterways,

and a “dead zone” in the Gulf of America, formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico, was

partly blamed on Big Food. The smaller farmers, who might be better equipped to turn animal waste

into a natural fertilizer, have mostly been priced out of the game. This is depressingly evident with

the very high rates of American farmers deciding to retire early into that great field in the sky.

Of course, as a consumer, you’d probably prefer to enjoy a bacon double-cheeseburger knowing the pig,

cow, and the chicken that laid the egg for the mayo didn’t endure a life so grim

that it would make Guantanamo Bay seem like a 5-star hotel. Most people make choices based

on cost-effectiveness, even if it comes at a price: poor conditions for animals,

low wages for laborers and farmers, soil erosion from monoculture farming- and more additives in

products you already suspect aren’t good for you. In 2015, a study showed that over the previous 50

years or so, the number of food additives in our food supply has risen from 800 to over 10,000…

and the FDA is still playing catch-up. These additives might have been passed off

as “generally recognized as safe” to humans but it appears that’s sometimes a dubious statement.

When regulations fall short, disasters can happen- like in 2022, when people ate Daily

Harvest’s French Lentil & Leek Crumbles. It contained a compound in an ingredient

called tara flour that put over 100 people in hospital, some with severe symptoms, including

liver injuries. The compound at fault wasn’t even in the FDA’s database. NPR when writing about

this topic said companies “regularly introduce new additives without ever informing the FDA.”

When food is made on such a massive scale, corners are sometimes cut, which is why in the

USA for years there were no warnings on foods that contained partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), a

type of trans fat. They give products such as chips, deep-fried stuff, and baked goods a

better texture and longer shelf life. But they have also been proven to increase the risk of

heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. We also know that high fructose corn syrup

(HFCS) isn’t good for us, yet it’s everywhere- in cereal, candies, soft drinks, condiments,

fast food, canned foods, baked goods, yogurts, and even in products you’d never expect. It’s one of

the many drivers behind the rise in obesity and related diseases. And it’s all over your grocery

store shelves. A quick glance at the small print on the back of most products will reveal just how

widespread it really is. The Food Institute in 2024 said some politicians are fighting back,

stating, “Its detractors claim high-fructose corn syrup is even more pernicious than table

sugar in the battle against the obesity epidemic and related metabolic disorders.”

In 1999, Americans consumed about 63.7 pounds of HSCF per person per year. That went down

to 59 pounds in 2005 and in 2023 it was about 53 pounds per year on average. This is better,

but we still eat too much of it. The fructose from high fructose corn syrup or regular table

sugar is harder to metabolize than glucose. It overwhelms the liver so can cause non-alcoholic