According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, food is any substance taken into the body that nourishes, stimulates, and supports life—helping us grow, repair tissue, and maintain energy. But a question now hangs over our modern diet: Do today’s foods still nourish, restore, and strengthen us the way they once did?
There was a time when this question could be answered with a confident yes. Today, however, that answer is far from clear. In fact, the opposite may be true.
A Century of Change: Rising Disease in a Changing Food Environment
In 1880, diabetes was extremely rare—about 2.8 cases per 100,000 people. By 1949, that number had jumped to 29.7 per 100,000, an astonishing rise in less than a lifetime. Yet in that same year, statistical definitions were revised, lowering the reported rate to 16.4 cases per 100,000. This change blurred the reality of what had been a dramatic and alarming increase.
At the time, there was no distinction between Type I and Type II diabetes; it was simply called “diabetes.” Today we know that Type II diabetes, strongly influenced by diet and lifestyle, affects 10–20% of the population—an explosion from the tiny fraction recorded in the late 1800s.
What happened?
Many researchers point toward the industrial reengineering of the food supply. As shelf-life became more important than nutrition, foods were altered, refined, stripped, and chemically modified. Key nutrients disappeared. Artificial ingredients and synthetic fats appeared. Over time, the shift in our diet paralleled a shift in our national health—and not for the better.
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The Artificial Food Revolution: When Science Met Profit
Food didn’t become artificial by accident—it happened because it was profitable.
The pursuit of synthetic food alternatives dates back at least to Napoleon’s era. In the mid-19th century, French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès created what we now call margarine, winning a contest set by Napoleon III to produce a cheap butter substitute. Early margarine was hardly edible, containing mixtures such as hog fat, gelatin, bleached fats, mashed potatoes, gypsum, and casein.
By 1874, margarine reached America, and by the early 20th century, more engineered fats followed. In 1899, David Wesson developed a high-heat, vacuum-deodorized cottonseed oil, leading to the birth of “Wesson Oil.” Soon after, the hydrogenation process was patented, allowing liquid oils to be chemically hardened into solid fats that resisted spoilage. This was the foundation of Crisco, launched in 1911 and embraced—even by communities with strict dietary rules—because it was marketed as “clean, pure, and Kosher.”
The introduction of these oils was revolutionary. Unlike natural animal fats or traditional cold-pressed oils, these new industrial fats did not spoil. To manufacturers, that meant longer shelf life and higher profits. But little attention was paid to the long-term consequences for human health.
The Industrial Diet Becomes the American Diet
By World War II, margarine consumption skyrocketed. Earlier legal restrictions were removed, and margarine became a staple in American households. Hydrogenated oils, refined cooking oils, and synthetic shortenings flooded the food market. Housewives embraced them because they were marketed as modern, clean, and economical.
Interestingly, even insects refused to eat some of these refined oils—a warning sign that went largely ignored.
As industrial food science advanced, marketing outpaced nutrition. Consumers were encouraged to abandon the natural fats and unprocessed oils that had sustained humans for generations. Saturated fats were demonized—not only by food companies but also by scientists financially tied to the industry.
A food revolution was underway, and the American public was its test subject.
A Case Study in Dietary Change: The American Eskimo
For generations, the traditional Eskimo diet was extremely high in natural animal fats—around 60% of total calories—with no diabetes, heart disease, or obesity. Their health remained stable and strong.
However, once oil money flowed into their communities, they adopted the typical American diet: refined flour, sugar, processed oils, packaged foods, and shelf-stable products. Within a single generation, their health deteriorated dramatically, mirroring the same chronic diseases seen across the U.S. population.
Diet changed—and disease followed.
The Trans Fat Era and Misleading Science
As the food industry grew more powerful, it funded studies that blurred the truth about the new fats being introduced into the food chain. Companies touted the benefits of “polyunsaturated” and “monounsaturated” oils without disclosing that many of these processed products were, in fact, trans fats—a harmful byproduct of hydrogenation.
A natural polyunsaturated fat (in its cis form) is essential for life.
A polyunsaturated trans fat, however, is a chemical distortion of a real food molecule—and the human body struggles to metabolize it.
For decades, consumers were left in the dark.
A Nation’s Health in Decline
The past century has seen a steady march toward more refined foods, more artificial fats, more chemical additives, and more processed ingredients. This shift has coincided with rising rates of:
– Type II diabetes
– Obesity
– Heart disease
– Chronic inflammation
– Autoimmune disorders
– Metabolic syndrome
Today’s food supply is a far cry from what nourished earlier generations. Without a meaningful shift back toward whole, living, minimally processed foods, the health crisis is likely to intensify.
In Conclusion
The question “Are the foods we eat safe?” can no longer be answered with a simple yes.
Much of our food has been engineered for profit, not nutrition. In stripping foods of their natural integrity, we have paid the price in our national health.
Reclaiming wellness requires returning to foods that are as close to their natural state as possible—foods that truly nourish, restore, and support life. Only then can we reverse the chronic disease trends that began over a century ago.
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