Concerns for Corruption and Finding Truth in the Details
Let’s take a closer look at corruption, scientific research, and international conglomerates controlling the narrative
Welcome to ZigZag Nutrition.
This is my newsletter that I started almost 3 years ago now (wow) to give us a chance to explore all things health and wellness with the freedom to learn the true fundamentals of health and healing.Substackoffers us that chance in the age of unimaginable censorship across most modern media.
I’ve been writing for over a decade now and have always had an inkling of a call to try to encourage, educate, empower, and inspire others. You can expect all of that here.ZigZag explores complex topics across holistic health, integrative & functional medicine, offering insights about our broken healthcare system, natural & alternative health, health optimization, nutritional psychiatry, and data-driven tools to inform and elicit change behavior like never before. (and more).
Some of my community’s favorite posts are linked above if you want to take a look around.
Today, I’m going to walk us through some somewhat strange and at least mildly disturbing realities of modern-day life that people (like you) are waking up to. Let’s take a closer look at corruption, common government programs, corruption, scientific research, corruption, and international conglomerates controlling the narrative (aka corruption).
Let’s Dive In!
As I’ve written about in the past, it is in fact pretty interesting to know that nearly 1 in 7 studies published articles about nutrition have directly disclosed involvement from the food industry. That means that roughly 14% of published research on nutrition has potential conflicts of interest that were specifically disclosed. That’s not taking into account any of the sketchy research that gets published without explicit ties to the food industry.
Furthermore, one journal in particular, The Journal of Nutrition was found to publish nearly 1 in 3 studies with ties to the food industry.
As published in The Counter,
It might not surprise you to hear that research funded by the food industry flatters the food industry. Examples abound: That study on how cranberry juice can prevent urinary tract infections? Bankrolled by the cranberry growers’ co-op. Those findings about pasta’s link to lower obesity? Financed by the world’s largest pasta producer. And the recent experiment that found eating nuts might significantly increase “orgasmic function and sexual desire”? Big Nut picked up the tab.
This is what I describe to a larger extent as “Corporate Capture.”
This is just one example of corporate capture over the food and nutrition research field. Subsequently to published research, sprouts the rearing head of nutrition education, practice guidelines, educational standards, colloquial terms and technologies built upon the foundations of research that have been published.
Poorly informed research standards lead to poorly informed professionals which leads to poorly informed patients. And likewise, these poor standards within research lead to poorly informed journalists and media writers who further propagate flawed studies, biased opinions, and farcical claims made in research. As truth continues to crumble, confusion at the consumer level only grows.
“Chaos” as we understand it ensues.
Conflicting advice runs rampant in the food and nutrition health world for many reasons, with research being only one of the heads of Cerberus. As the human brain craves to make order out of chaos, it feels stressed and anxious when confused. The sins of corruption within science and censorship lead to a strong narrative skew. And the initial infection only grows. The sub-optimal standards built from that flawed research only snowball downhill.
It’s only 20 years later when we finally look back and realize just how misinformed and misaligned we were from real and authentic truth.
When the original piece was published on the potential corruption in food and nutrition research, they also discovered that when you compare samples of studies without food industry involvement to those with industry ties, those with food industry involvement were more than 5 times more likely to report results that favored food industry interests (55.6% vs. 9.7%).
This is a bit staggering if you ask me… and somewhat speaks for itself.
It’s true, most food research has ties to the food industry, typically a specific company or brand trying to fund research to promote a specific product to increase consumer awareness, trust, likability, and to inform medical professionals and nutritionists like myself.
Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Hershey’s, Post, Kellogg’s, General Mills, you know.. someone’s gotta pay for the research to get done. It’s not going to fund itself. You know, these journals sometimes require thousands of dollars to publish these studies. You think most authentically aligned, honest and just nutrition researchers have pocket-change to be throwing around just to get published? Usually not.
Commonly too, we will see food and nutrition research that seems innocent, such as Big HASS avocado funding research for the benefits of “healthy fats” found in avocados. We see Big Orange JUICE funding research for the health benefits of oranges (which are not the same thing as drinking a glass of orange juice just so we are clear). And most sketchy of all perhaps, we see Big Soda and Big Cereal funding research directly targeting kids and adolescents, leveraging narratives about hunger & poverty, food choice, racism, calories, educational test scores just to sell more products and make more profit.
Sure, people in those companies might share a common belief that these food and beverage products play a role in everyday eating for the average American, but that doesn’t mean that their belief is properly informed, has been sufficiently interrogated, or that they know what is best for the health of the population (that only continues to get worse and worse). As the old saying goes “'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.' — Upton Sinclair
Now let me provide you a little bit of closure on this subject for now. Do I think that all research around food and nutrition if it is connected to the food industry is inherently wrong or evil? No. It depends. As with most things in nutrition and in health (and in science), it depends. Here are some questions for you to consider as you read research yourself and inevitably find yourself thinking “what the heck should I eat?” from time to time thanks to all of the conflicting advice.
Why was this paper published?
Who funded the study?
Who performed the research itself?
What are the outcomes?
What are the implications?
Who benefits from the study?
Who loses (if anyone) with this newly published information?
Who might you be able to speak with that holds some credibility to get their perspective on the subject?
How might you apply this information to your own life?
Does this seem true? Does it make sense? Does it stand the test of time and make sense from an evolutionary perspective or ancestral biology?
Here’s a truth worth talking about more: If you can accomplish the simple lifestyle habits that lead to good health, you will be doing better than the vast majority of American citizens. I’m talking like you will be in the top 5%!
Only 23% of people consistently get the exercise they need. Nearly 90% of Americans have poor metabolic function, and around 8-12% of Americans consume their recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables. It’s estimated that 1 in 3 American children today will develop diabetes in their lifetime, while rates for cancer in young people is sky-rocketing. Our country spends over 4 trillion dollars on healthcare every year, and it’s only getting more expensive. This cost erodes away our earned livelihoods as every dollar we seem to spend only seems to make us more and more sick.
Clearly the system is malfunctioning. Clearly, something is wrong.
Or perhaps this is exactly the system that was encouraged to be built to artificially inseminate our economy and grow our GDP. There is nothing real about this. There is nothing sacred or authentic or quite very honest within the history of our corporate capture healthcare system that masquerades around gallivanting at its wealth and prosperity while the very people it claims to treat, it only seeks to profit from. This is not real health for real people.
I repeat, this is NOT real health for REAL people.
But that’s why you’re here. I mean, clearly… that’s why YOU are HERE.
Because you are searching for something that is BETTER, because you can taste the bitterness on your tongue anytime you get close to standard healthcare. You know it’s poisoned and corrupt, but maybe you don’t know what to do about it.
Well that’s why I’m here, to help point us in the direction of all that is real, all that is true, honest and authentic and genuinely intended to help serve and support people to support themselves.
Sadly, our systems of healthcare in America today are simply not built to provide what Americans so desperately need (and crave). I’ve always been in this to help real people achieve real health. I’ve known this system has been broken for the vast majority of people for almost 15 yrs, but my knowledge and insight only continues to grow and grow.
The health crisis is a healthcare crisis is an economic crisis is a health crisis… and so on it goes. We exist in a raging rapid current thrashing us across the rocks between various industries profiting from our loss.
From Food to Pharma and everywhere in-between. Our opportunity for real health requires not just our participation but our full and earnest ownership over our health. After all, this is our life for the making and our health for the taking.
If we are products of our environment, then we need better systems to support our environment…
ZigZag Nutrition represents the pursuit we share as we strive to live this life as best as we can, learning and growing, flexing and adapting along the way to better align ourselves to the most nutritious life and lifestyle that meets our needs and nourishes our body, mind, and spirit - together.