Under The Microscope

Investing in YOU: Why We Must Take Control of Our Health

• Malik Muhammad Jr

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What if your cravings were engineered and your trust in “expert” advice was quietly purchased? We pull back the curtain on the ultra-processed food economy to show how lobbying, front groups, and selective research turned cheap, convenient products into everyday staples—and why that shift tracks with rising obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain cancers.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Under the Microscope podcast, where we use the latest scientific research to present solutions to the various health impediments and problems that break our community today. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Under the Microscope Podcast. I am your host, Malin Mohammed Jr. I appreciate you all for being here with us today. Our talking point for today is going to be taking control of your My Health. Specifically, looking at the business side behind not just health, nutrition, food, and diet, but also, and unfortunately, the science and business behind disease as well. Ultra processed foods, this is something that we've talked about for quite a few podcast episodes now. But ultra-processed foods are not just popular in the United States of America. They're popular all around the globe. So the ultra-processed foods are things like your Doritos, your Takis, your pizza rolls, basically anything that you can purchase in the middle section of a grocery store, your local grocery store, it's probably, unfortunately, more than likely processed or ultra-processed food. So ultra-processed food, when consumed, does a number of harmful things to our body. Ultra processed food can disturb the gut microbial decomposition, which simply means that it alters the gut community, the combinations of bacteria that you have, that I have in our gut, and those changes cause things like IBD, ear to bowel syndrome. You can even have cardiovascular issues stem from that. You have obesity, which is also an effect that comes from the consumption and overconsumption of ultra-processed foods. So you have individuals that have higher obesity rates now than prior to when ultra-processed foods became really popular around 1962 or so. So ultra-processed foods, while they may taste good, while they may uh tickle the tongue, and you know, our taste buds may say, you know, hey, I gotta have me some, you know, gotta have me some some hot chips, gotta have me some this, gotta have me a big red, gotta have a Dr. Pepper. Unfortunately, it's doing more harm to us than good. So taking control of our health is very important for those of us who would like to work on and better improve our ability to live a long, healthy, and abundant life. So, what I want to look at today is actually a research article that was published, and the research was conducted by 43 global experts. And the focal point of that research was taking a look at exactly what we're talking about today, why it's important for us to take care or take control of our health and the business behind promoting these very things that I just mentioned that are actually very harmful to our health. Um, the article was released November 20th of this year, and it has many uh great points. It's actually a three-part research article, but we're not gonna focus on all three parts today. We're just gonna use one part to uh bring together the point that we're trying to get in regards to taking control of our health and the importance behind doing so. So, for many of us who are health conscious, which I honestly believe everyone is health conscious, uh, it just comes in degrees, right? You have some people who are like, hey, it tastes good, you know, and I'm not, you know, just throwing up sick, I'm eating it, right? That's still considered uh being health conscious. And then you have people who are a lot more detailed and thorough in their uh health conscious state, so to speak. Uh, they're looking at the calories, they're looking at the content of what they're purchasing, looking at the nutrition fats, looking at the ingredients. Uh, even the individuals who go out to restaurants, right? They want to know what kind of oil are you using. So we you have different levels of degrees of health, being health conscious, but I honestly believe everyone is health conscious, just comes at different stages or degrees. But whether you're at a minimal stage of being health conscious or you're at the peak stage of being health conscious, nowadays in 2025, we are now having to rely more and more on ourselves and optimizing our health on our own than you know, relying on these doctors and even researchers, which I am, uh, to even help us because as you're gonna see when we go through these points today, there are businesses, corporations, ultra-processed food manufacturers that are paying researchers to say one thing to the public, but knowing that the opposite is actually true in regards to the impact or the uh side effects that come with the consumption of these very popular, very delicious ultra-processed foods. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. So, to get us started, I wanted to focus on the non-communicable diseases that have been correlated or linked to the consumption of ultra-processed foods. So you have cardiovascular disease, which is hypertension, heart attacks, strokes, etc. You have cancers, all right? So right now, the leading uh demographic or race for cancer in the United States are Hispanics at 64.9%, and then you have black or African American individuals at 43.5%. Now, if you look at those demographics and you look at the demographic of individuals who consume ultra-processed food at a very high degree, they match very, very close. Uh, chronic respiratory disease is another one. Uh diabetes is another disease. All of these diseases are uh have been researched and linked to the consumption and overconsumption of ultra-processed foods. So now, you may be wondering, well, if this is the case, you know, why why are there still, you know, I could still go to the store and buy, you know, Doritos that has red 40 in it, buy a Kool-Aid pack that has Red 40 in it, uh, purchase ultra-processed schools, and you know, it's fine. Like if it was this bad as you say or other people say, why are they still on the shelves, right? Why do I have to worry about it if they're experts and they're feeding it to us or they're selling it to us, it can't be all that bad, right? Unfortunately, that's not necessarily the case. So, in that research article that I mentioned to you before, um, I have a quote here from it, and it says, quote, to keep this business model, referring to the promotion, marketing, and purchasing of ultra-processed foods, which is highly profitable, the industry cannot afford to make minimally processed foods as they did in the past. So they use extensive political lobbying to stop effective public health policies that support healthy eating. End quote. So ultra-processed foods actually have backing behind them and finances and money going behind the promotion of these items or these food items that are detrimental to our health. Uh, the article continues companies can double or quote, triple their profits by turning corn, wheat, beans, and other whole foods into a colorless and flavorless sawdust, which is then reconstructed with artificial flavorings and additives, end quote. And that comes from uh Barry Popkin, and he is a professor at the University of North Carolina, he was one of the individuals who was uh a part of the research article that we're pulling from. So, just in those two quotes, hopefully you all can see a little bit just a sneak peek of the business behind the promotion behind the ultra-processed foods and behind the diseases that I listed, they all go together. So, if I'm a food corporation and I want to stay in business, I want to maximize my profit, and I find a way to do that by utilizing this ultra-processed formula, right? Taking those whole foods, as you heard in the article, and basically turning it into something that I can make whatever I want and maximize my profit in order to keep that up. I have to have some kind of backing behind me that will allow for not only for these items to be sold and marketed to the public that you know we know we're actually harming, but I also need them to be competitive and I want it to be popular, I want it to be global, I want to maximize my profit so you have these political moves that are made to promote these things. And what you'll find is even researchers that are a part of this uh this world of health, nutrition, and food and disease. So you have uh individuals where they may do a research for or do research for a particular company, and you get a commercial saying, you know, five out of, no, I won't say five, nine out of every ten doctors actually recommend such and such and such and such. Well, what they don't tell you is that the nine out of the ten doctors that were part of the research work for that company or were paid by that company to conduct the research and make it favorable so that the audience that they're marketing to doesn't necessarily pick up on the red flags. So, with all this being said, it is our job to go behind the scenes, which we can do very easily. Tuning into this podcast is one way. Going and doing your own research is another, right? We have the internet, we have uh AI, we have access to all of these tools and resources where we should not be falling for this continuous uh system trap, system setup of diet and nutrition and what's healthy and what's not, and what's considered healthy living and what's not when we have access to these resources that will tell us and help us create that system for ourselves to live and eat a certain way and promote healthy, long bundled living. Now, if that wasn't enough, we're gonna get a little bit deeper into the business behind the disease and the business behind the ultra-processed foods and the problem that they're causing. So for food industries, uh it says food industry actions to battle regulations and discredit science are coordinated through a global network of quote, front groups, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and research partners, end quote. This network could include advertising firms, fast food chains, grocery retailers, ingredient suppliers, lobbyists, plastic producers, and research partners. So, what this is saying, and again, this article was released November 20th of this year. So this is fairly new, fairly new. What this research article found and the results pulls from this research is that you have so many different layers to the food industry and the promotion and uh popularity behind these unhealthy food items that we're consuming, just to go through that list again, front groups, multi-stakeholder initiatives, research partners, advertising firms, fast food chains, grocery retailers, ingredient suppliers, lobbyists, etc., all of these categories or groups of individuals play a role in the current state of our health and nutrition now. Okay? And you notice out of all of those groups that I named, we're the ones that's left out. We're the individuals that get the version of the research, the version of the information that they want out there so that we're more at ease and we're less likely to kind of question what it is we're consuming or the quality of what we're consuming. It's very sad. Uh, when I was reading this article, I was very disturbed, but I'm not surprised at this. Uh, this is one of the reasons why I personally got into research on my own. Because as I started to get familiar, get comfortable with research, uh, I was conducting my own research while I was an undergrad at the University of North Texas at Dallas. And so I kind of introduced or immersed myself in that world a little bit more during that time. And when I saw that companies are actually able to pay individuals who went to school, know the science, know how to conduct the research, very thorough, very detailed, very much good and excellent at what they do. But a dollar bill can taint or determine the direction that they take with their research. That disturbed me. So I knew then that I wanted to do that and conduct research on my own because the public, the masses, the people deserve to know the truth about what's good for them and what's not. And again, nowadays with the technology and everything that we have, we can do it at the blink of an eye with the phone, with the computer, um, AI, or tuning in to podcasts like mine or like other podcasts out there, you can learn so much more about how to take care of yourself. But the just relying on the doctor you see that pops up on your news channel on the Saturday early Saturday mornings, I'm not sure how what you guys have across the globe, but in Texas, we have like the morning news channels. Uh, Good Morning America is a common one. You kind of tune in to that, and you have these doctors up there that are pretty much just reading off research, but the research that they're reading off of may not necessarily be 100% factual and truthful, um, as we're going to get to here in a second. So, continuing off of that, you have dietitian influencers that are also utilized and paid to promote a certain message about health and about food. So, for my individuals who are on Instagram, on Facebook, on Snapchat, even the dietitian influencers, we have to be careful. Now, this is not me saying that all dietitian influencers are uh like are bought or paid for or don't trust what they say. Uh, even the doctors that I was just mentioning a few minutes ago, I'm not saying that all of them are like that. But unfortunately, a majority of these health professionals, dietary influencers and people we rely on, we have to basically filter what they're saying, is all that I'm saying. Because you do have individuals who are trying their best to give the people, the public, uh actual facts about what to do, like myself, and you have those individuals who are not trying to do that at all. So I want to make sure I put that in there. This is not uh taking a jab at all dietitian influencers or dietary influencers, if that's what you do, or scientists or researchers. This is not a jab at you. If you're doing this and you're doing it the correct way, this is not a jab at you at all. This research article is focused on the researchers, the individuals who are paid to promote a message, even though the message is not necessarily 100% factual. So dietitian, dietary influencers uh play a role in this as well. And also, uh the article continues, and it's it's it's a lot in this article. I highly recommend that you you go and you read it. But these points that they're making in the research article are very, very eye-opening for those who are, again, health conscious on a peak level, and for the individuals who are not um at that level, maybe lower level, minimal, uh uh minimal in your in your journey, is is very eye-opening. So the article continues by saying the efforts, those efforts also extend to industry-funded research. Uh, one review reported in the paper, for example, studies paid for by the food industry, check this out. Studies paid for by the food industry were five times more likely to show no association between obesity, which was one of those non-communicable diseases we talked about, and consumption of ultra-processed foods. So we have obesity correlated to the consumption of ultra-processed foods, but studies paid for by the food industry were five times more likely to say there is no association between obesity and ultra-processed foods. Thereby our talking point for today taking control or taking care of our health, owning up to our health, taking accountability for what it is that we're doing, what we're eating. It's that's I don't know about you, but that's alarming. That's very alarming research to know that there's research articles out there proving scientific, peer-reviewed articles proving that obesity and ultra-processed food consumption are correlated, go together. But if a research article or uh article comes out that's funded by a food corporation or food industry, it's five times more likely to say there's no association at all. It's very sad and alarming for me and for the masses as well. Uh so experts say corporations are using these marketing and sales tactics similar to the ones that we just mentioned, um, to entice 45% of American adults. And this technique has been utilized since 1954. So the article continued to say how the uh when smoking was introduced and the marketing tactic behind getting adults to actually participate in smoking, which, as we all know, is detrimental to our health. They use these same tactics that we're using, describing right now with lobbying, uh, advertising firms, retail stores, everything of that nature to get us to buy in and change our perception of these things that are clearly not good for us and making us consumers of these of these items. I remember watching a documentary, and they were mentioning how when the ads started to first come out for smoking, um, they were they was very it's typically very positive, right? Somebody would have a cigarette, and in the commercial, it made you look very cool, right? It was the guy with the leather jacket and the shades and the everything that they put, the imagery that they used was intentional and tactical to get our perception of something that's negative that's detrimental to our health for us to change our perception of it and actually partake in it. And it's actually very saddening. Uh, today, some 70% of the food on grocery store shelves in the United States are ultra-processed, making it difficult to avoid UPFs that are often cheap and convenient. So, mind you, the reason why these are cheap and convenient is because of their ability to take these products and do whatever they want with them. Add some dye, add some flavoring, add this, add that. And they're able to maximize their profit and charge less for it, which is why it's cheaper. So, a part of our taking control of our health. Is being aware of these aspects or these elements of diet, of nutrition, uh, of just flat out taking care of yourself, how you feed yourself. So just because something is cheap doesn't necessarily mean that it's good quality, right? Now, I know in previous episodes we've talked about, okay, well, you know, I gotta do what I gotta do right now, and that's very true. However, another part of taking control of our health is working towards being able to, in this case with ultra-processed foods, remove them completely out of our diet. But if you can't do that now because of financial reasons, trying to minimize how often we consume these products is important because again, 70% of what we see in the grocery stores are ultra-processed. That leaves 30% of the store for you to purchase from that you can actually get some kind of quality, some kind of nutrition, uh, some kind of nutritional value, right? Because that's another aspect of ultra-processed foods that's detrimental. Ultra-processed foods have very little to no nutritional value. So you have children, as you're gonna see when we get to this point in the article, you have children that are consuming um processed foods, ultra-processed foods as part of their daily diet, but they're getting no nutritional value from them. So, this is a SEPI report that came out August the 7th of this year. This is this year, very new. 62% of daily calories in children come from uh processed foods, ultra-processed foods that have limited nutritional value. I don't think y'all heard what I just said. 62% of the daily calories that our children, our babies are consuming are coming from sources that have very little nutritional value. Now, for those of you that may be thinking, well, I don't believe that, because I have a child that eats hot takis and Cheetos, and they drink their Kool-Aid or they drink their whatever, they eat their ice cream, and they just fine, they're healthy, they're this, they're very alert, they're top of their class, they're this, they're that. Please don't confuse the fact that we may be operating at an okay level with okay behavior. That's not what that means, right? Let me just give you an analogy to kind of help make that a little easier to digest. If I were to purchase a Lamborghini and I went and I put very cheap low-grade fuel in my Lamborghini, the Lamborghini would not fail to start initially from when I put the cheap gas in there, right? It's still gonna turn on. I'll still be able to drive it and operate it. And depending on the type of Lamborghini, depending on the model, depending on the kind of engine that's in it, the time from me putting the low-quality gas to the time that it starts to impact the performance of the vehicle varies. But the point is whether it takes a week for me to notice a change in my performance, my vehicle performance, a month, a year, two years, it doesn't matter. The point is I'm still damaging my vehicle, and eventually the performance will go down. It's the same thing with our babies. So even if your babies are doing well and doing okay, that doesn't negate the fact that we are doing damage to their internal engine. We're doing damage to their performance, and depending on their genetics, depending on how frequent they eat, all of that, that's what determines when you actually see the drop in their performance, the drop in their health, the drop in their neurocognitive ability to solve problems and things of that nature. So again, I'm not trying to bash anyone if that's how you feed your children or if that's how you uh currently have to provide sustenance for them. I'm not bashing you, but I want us to be aware, again, the topic of today is taking control of our health. I need us to be aware that we are doing damage to that vehicle or that child in this case. 62% of daily calories that our children eating have no nutritional value at all. 53% of daily calories for adults come from sources that have limited nutritional value. So, adults, we're in the same category. That those are that's a problem, y'all. That is a problem, and that's something that we have to absolutely resolve. And uh towards the end of this article, because I'm not gonna read everything in here, they have or kind of show the impact that the calorie consumption of ultra-processed food has on our health. So it says here recent randomized clinical trials considered the gold standard of research, have shown ultra-processed foods lead to an additional 500 to 1,000 calories a day compared with the diet of minimally processed whole foods, even though both diets contain the same number of total calories, sugar, fiber, salt, and carbohydrates. And an August study found that even when ultra-processed foods are quote unquote healthier, eating minimally processed foods, such as whole foods cooked at home, doubled weight loss. The reason why is because those whole foods have more nutritional value. The more nutrient-dense the food you eat, the less you actually eat, the more your body is able to take in and distribute those nutrients to function and do what it needs to do, and you have an overall elevated, higher quality of life. That's like getting that Lamborghini and putting the right kind of gas in it. I prolong the longevity of that Lamborghini, the quality of what's that Lamborghini actually holds, the value because of how I treat it. All right. So, like I mentioned, there's a lot more in that article. I'm gonna put the link in the description to this on the YouTube and uh on the uh podcast page on Apple Podcasts. But ladies and gentlemen, we have to do better taking control of our health. And again, this is not knocking anyone. I know it's it's tough. Finances may be a little tight. We have to do what we have to do to just get by. I understand. But we have to do a much better job of taking accountability for what we're doing in regards to our health and what we're consuming, and start making little adjustments. If it's taking, if you eat three meals a day and you say, hey, I'm just gonna take one meal and make that the meal that I eat that's whole food or as whole as possible. I can't do it consistently, but that's where I'm gonna start. Start there. If it's listening to this podcast to get some solutions and ways that you can start to maybe make some changes to your routine, your diet, or your habits and find a way to make it better. That is a great start. But these numbers, these stats, this research that I read from this three-part series that came out this year, November of this year, it should show us that it's if we don't take responsibility for it, if we don't take control of our health and we leave it up to other people, we are actually harming ourselves and we are significantly impacting not just our lives, but we're significantly taking away from our longevity and the quality of life. We do not have to get old and be frail. We do not have to get old and you know, and lose our cognitive functions. All of that is related to what we put in our bodies as far as food and also what we put in our minds as well. Uh, we're gonna talk about um neurology in a few episodes and have a guest on to talk about neurology and how that is also impacted, not just by food, but also what we listen to and what we watch. But we gotta take control of our health, ladies and gentlemen. It's our job. If we don't do it and we rely on those who have been tasked to do it, the overwhelming majority, unfortunately, as you saw or heard in this podcast and this articles, these articles that are coming out, that our health is not the end game for them. It's maximizing profit, and they have done an excellent job at creating that system to ensure that it's promoted, that it's marketed, that it's acceptable, that we don't question it, and that for those who do question it, they are typically the outliers. And you have the other aspects in there, the affordability, making the ultra-processed foods cheaper. It's a whole web of things that uh are going on to get us to participate in behaviors that are not the best for us. So, as you all know, for those of you who are have been with us for since the beginning of the podcast or for quite a while now, you know we always lead with solutions. I'm never just gonna come on this podcast and speak to you all and and um and um during my time with you all, just kind of announce the problem, not gonna happen. We always give solutions. So for today, the way that we can start to take control of our health, the ultimate solution for today is to start investing in our health as best we can. Whether that looks like a small investment, like removing uh ultra-processed foods from your snacks if you have children. Something that small is a start. Um uh substituting a meal with a whole uh a meal with whole foods, that's a start. That's on a small basic level. For those who can do much larger investments, taking out ultra-processed foods is completely if you can. Uh purchasing whole foods, nutrient-dense foods that are gonna actually contribute towards health in our body by providing value, letting the body do what it needs to do, and allowing for that engine to run optimally the way that it was designed to. So whether you are a small investor, large investor, it doesn't matter. Just become an investor. Invest in your health and watch your overall wealth, which is the longevity, increase. It's my job, is your job to do that for ourselves. But if you need help or you're having issues or you're not sure where to start, under the microscope has you covered. All right, I appreciate you guys for spending time with us, and I look forward to seeing you all in the next episode. Y'all have a good one.