The "wicked problem" of BIG Food—the 10 multinational corporations producing ultra-processed foods (UPFs)—is why we need Ozempic, while our ancestors didn’t. If they had lived in today’s food environment, they would need it too.

For the past three generations, ultra-processed food & beverages have increasingly replaced the unprocessed & minimally processed foods we were meant to consume. Since the 1970s, this shift has brought convenience, long shelf life, and addictive flavors—but at the cost of our health.

Dietitians avoid labeling food as “good” or “bad,” but when UPFs make up more than 20% of our diet, the consequences are undeniably harmful. Junk food is engineered to hook both our bodies (cravings) and minds (identity marketing & tribal belonging), making it nearly impossible to limit consumption. This is by design—UPFs prioritize profit over health, stripping nutrients & fiber, destroying the natural food matrix and replacing them with obscene amounts of salt, cheap industrial fat, refined sugar and 2500 different chemicals foreign to our digestive system. UPF’s have a big carbon foot print, almost 3 times that of red meat.

It’s like a Dr Evil scheme out of Austin Powers—a parody of the James Bond villains, hijacking our appetite control & contributing to global warming while we struggle to resist.

Two underrecognized dangers fuel my concern:

1. The loss of ancestral gut bacteria. Over the last 50 years, UPFs have displaced nutrient-rich foods, eroding the gut microbiome passed down for generations. The extinction of key bacteria may have unknown consequences for future health.

2. Epigenetic changes passed to offspring. Parents shaped by poor diets and inactivity pass on a greater risk of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and fatty liver disease—setting children up for metabolic struggles from birth.

Unhealthy eating isn’t personal failure—it’s a systemic issue. Our food environment has outpaced our evolutionary ability to adapt (which takes at least 22 generations). BIG Food, weak governance, and agricultural policies have turned us into Ultra-processed People.

These harms are happening now, weakening the human genome like “internal global warming”—a preventable crisis if we take action now. I don’t want us to be the handful of generations in human history that dropped the ball.

Stop getting angry at yourself and get even instead by learning to resist the daily temptation to over eat UPF’s and limiting your intake to less then 20% daily energy intake. Start with the CSIRO Junk Food Analyser.