For most of my life I didn’t eat food. I ate products.
Boxes, packets, drinks that never go bad. Snacks with a shelf life longer than some countries. Whole food was the exception; ultra‑processed was the default.
Most people I know live some version of that story. Different kitchen, same packets.
For me that looked like instant noodles, bread, random snacks, and seed-oil junk as the default. Most of what I ate came out of packets instead of a kitchen. Real food showed up occasionally, not daily.
The line that keeps it going is simple:
“Real food is expensive. Processed food is cheap.”
Short term, it feels true. Long term, your body disagrees.
You either pay for real food now, or you pay for drugs, doctors, and lost years later. I had to learn that the hard way. I’d prefer you didn’t.
Products are designed to win against you
Ultra‑processed food isn’t just “more calories.” It’s:
- Seed oils pushed way beyond sane use
- Sugar in everything
- Starches and gums for texture
- Additives no normal kitchen has
- Engineered to be inhaled, not eaten
That combination:
- Wrecks blood sugar control
- Confuses hunger signals (you feel full and starving at the same time)
- Drops food quality while raising calorie density
You end up eating more, feeling worse, and blaming your body instead of the inputs.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not broken. The defaults are.
In large population studies, people who get most of their calories from ultra‑processed foods consistently show higher rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Those studies are observational, not perfect proof of cause, but the pattern repeats across millions of people and different countries.
Eat like that long enough and it looks like “aging”
Eat like this for long enough and the pattern is predictable:
- Blood pressure meds
- Cholesterol drugs
- Blood sugar meds
- Antacids
- Sleep pills
The same system that sold you “cheap” food now sells you what you need to live with the damage.
Older adults who eat a lot of ultra‑processed food are more likely to end up on multiple medications at once. In controlled trials, when researchers swap ultra‑processed meals for minimally processed ones with better protein and fibre, people often:
- Eat fewer calories without trying
- Improve blood sugar and blood pressure
- Need fewer “helps you cope” drugs over time
Change the inputs and the “need” for some of the meds drops.
The food and the pills share owners
This isn’t about one villain brand. It’s about who sits behind the logos.
Big asset managers such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and their peers show up on the cap tables of:
- Global food and beverage companies
- Household and personal care brands
- Pharma and biotech
- “Wellness” and supplement companies
Different labels in the supermarket. Same major shareholders in the background.
So you get:
- Products that quietly wreck hormones and metabolism
- Products to “fix” your skin, house, and mood
- Drugs to manage the chronic conditions that follow
You don’t need a conspiracy thread. Incentives are enough. When the same capital benefits from both the problem and the treatment, your long‑term health is not the priority. Knowing that helped me stop taking the system so personally and start taking my habits seriously.
Your body already has a full plate
Even if you never touched junk food, your body already deals with:
- Air pollution
- Microplastics
- Sitting too long
- Screens and blue light late at night
- Work and money stress
- A news cycle that never shuts up
You can’t control all of that.
So the things you can control matter more:
- What you eat
- When you sleep
- How often you move
- How wound up you let yourself stay
Short sleep on its own, even with zero diet change, makes people more insulin‑resistant and hungrier the next day. Chronic stress tracks with more visceral fat and worse metabolic markers even at similar body weight. Adding regular movement improves blood sugar and blood pressure even when the scale barely moves.
You’re already under load. Food, sleep, and movement decide how heavy it feels.
Most people don’t realise how much noise they’re carrying until they change those three things. That’s when “feels good in my own body” stops being a vague idea and becomes something you can feel again.
Underneath most chronic diseases you see the same pattern: chronic low‑grade inflammation that never really switches off. Food, sleep, stress, and movement all push that flame up or down.
What changed when I stopped eating products
Here’s what happened when I started treating food as a lever instead of background noise.
I stopped living on:
- Instant noodles, bread, and snack foods as default
- Sugary drinks
- Random “treats” all day
And shifted most of my meals to:
- Meat, fish, eggs
- Vegetables, fruit
- Yam, rice, potatoes
- Coconut oil, butter
- Nuts, seeds, beans when they agreed with me
These days I avoid gluten, most dairy, processed sugar, seed oils, and anything in a packet that isn’t clearly real food.
No ingredient list. No mascot. No buzzwords.
At first it felt “boring”. Against engineered hyper‑flavour, real food loses the first week.
After a few weeks, taste came back. Tomatoes were sweet. Good eggs had flavour. Olive oil had bite. Fruit tasted like dessert. My mood stabilised. Energy stopped crashing. Sleep felt deeper. The quiet “something is wrong with me” feeling faded.
Controlled feeding studies that swap ultra‑processed meals for minimally processed ones (same calories and macros) find the same kind of thing: people eat fewer calories when allowed to eat as much as they want, feel more satisfied, and improve risk markers without trying to “diet”.
Most people never get to find out how their body feels when food stops fighting them.
“But real food is expensive”
On paper:
- Soda + instant noodles + processed meat: cheap
- Quality meat + vegetables + fruit: expensive
Zoom out:
- The cheap meal nudges you toward chronic issues you’ll “manage” for decades
- The better meal lowers that risk and keeps you functional
Money you “save” on food leaks out later as:
- Monthly meds
- More sick days, less energy
- Stuff you buy to feel better because you feel awful
Most people don’t overspend on meat and vegetables. They overspend on:
- Constant snacks
- Deliveries and takeout
- Drinks (alcohol, sugary coffee, energy drinks)
Cut that, cook more, and “expensive” food often fits the same income.
This isn’t purity culture
You’re not going “pure”. You’re going to:
- Eat out
- Have cake
- Grab junk at an airport
That’s fine.
The point: Stop eating like that by default.
If most of your meals are:
- Cooked at home
- Built from whole ingredients
- Not drowned in sugar and weird oils
Then the occasional nonsense barely moves the needle.
If you live on ultra‑processed food, no workout plan, supplement stack, or “hack” will bail you out.
The simple version
If you want one rule:
Eat food your great‑grandparents would recognise, most of the time.
Then stack a few boring habits:
- Go to bed earlier than your phone wants you to
- Move daily (walks count)
- Don’t let stress sit in your body all week
- Be suspicious of anything with a marketing budget bigger than its ingredient list
You won’t escape every modern stressor. You can stop making your body fight your food too.