How processed the diet is varies according to the quantities of fast foods, junk foods, sweets, sodas, and other “dead” foods consumed. Teenagers can be the worst offenders, eating too much of these foods and very little of anything else. Some refined breads and pastas or occasional sodas, sweets, or fatty meats will not hurt most people, but when they become predominant in the diet, it is very poor nutrition. I believe that it is one of the greatest sins of our health care system that doctors so readily accept and support (often simply by not condemning) the industrial-age American diet. Many of the potential problems of our diet, such as the lack of fiber and excessive fat, sugar, and sodium, have been and will be discussed throughout this book. With awareness of and attention to these areas, we can make our diet a healthier one.

There are also some positive aspects of the American diet. There are many wonderful foods available to nourish us. We grow all types of grains, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and fruits and raise cattle and other animals for milk, eggs, and meats. (The main concern with all of these foods is the chemicals used in growing and raising them.) We can certainly choose most of our foods in their more nourishing untreated and unprocessed state. Another positive aspect is the growth patterns that our children develop from eating the typical protein- and calcium-rich diet. Our race is growing bigger and stronger with each generation. The average height of our population continues to rise. The downside of this is that how we learn to eat as young people affects our eating patterns throughout life. As children are usually much more active than adults, obesity and chronic disease result from eating this rich diet, high in protein and fats, throughout life.

With the change in our taste for foods that has occurred over the last ten decades, there has been a decrease in consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and the complex carbohydrates, with an accompanying decrease in fiber intake, and an increase in consumption of salt, sugars, and fat. This eating pattern, with its overall increase in calories and decrease in nutrition, is associated with many chronic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis, cardiac disease, and a variety of cancers, as well as liver disease and nervous system problems from alcohol abuse.

More specifically, each of these potentially negative dietary choices contributes to specific pathogenic processes. First, the standard American diet provides less nutrition per calorie consumed than does our true cultural diet of natural foods. Our body needs a certain amount of nourishment to function. The high amounts of white sugar and refined flour foods in the current American diet provide useless calories with few nutrients. Therefore we require more food on this diet to obtain all our needed nutrients. This is a crucial aspect underlying one of America’s biggest problems, obesity. and its effect on other diseases, especially cardiovascular disease and many types of cancers.

The decreased consumption of vegetable and complex carbohydrates foods, means a lower intake of vitamins, minerals, and fiber. The lack of fiber has significant adverse effects on digestive function, which may lead to colon diseases such as diverticulitis and cancer. The decrease in nutrient intake resulting from an unbalanced diet with a lot of empty-calorie foods may lead to a wide variety of depletion and deficiency symptoms and diseases. This may occur in the diets of both the poor and the rich of our population.