The Profit Margin Diet
How the food industry engineers our addiction and how to reclaim your health.
This article draws on numerous peer-reviewed studies from 2024 and 2025. It includes research from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Massachusetts General Brigham. It also references top medical journals like The BMJ, JAMA Oncology, Nature, and The Lancet.
In the last 30 years, colon cancer cases in adults under 50 have doubled. This makes it the top cause of cancer death for men in this age group. Scientists now highlight a hidden culprit: Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs). A new study suggests eating ultraprocessed foods may significantly raise the odds of developing growths or polyps that can lead to colon cancer.
Big Food isn’t just selling convenience; they are accelerating preventable deaths by flooding our diets with ultra-processed products linked to a significantly higher risk of early death.
A Harvard study published in JAMA Oncology in November 2025 examined nearly 30,000 women under the age of 50. Women who ate 10 servings of ultra-processed foods each day had a 45% higher risk of colon polyps than those who ate just three servings. The risk appears to increase linearly. The more ultra-processed foods you eat, the higher your risk. These polyps can lead to colorectal cancer, which starts early.
At the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, researchers revealed that cancer patients who ate inflammatory foods faced an 87% higher risk of dying from their disease.
Scientists are uncovering the mechanisms.
Metabolic Disruption: A 10% rise in UPF intake was tied to a 64% greater risk of prediabetes in young adults aged 17 to 22.
Microbial Toxins: A study in Nature, April 2025, showed that colibactin-related DNA mutations were 3.3 times more common in colorectal cancer tumors in patients under 40. Increased consumption of processed foods predisposes children to harboring toxin-producing bacteria.
Gut Inflammation: UPF ingredients, including unhealthy fats, refined starches, and artificial sweeteners, can harm the gut microbiota. They weaken the gut’s protective barrier and cause changes in cells that can lead to cancer.
The Full Toll
A 2024 umbrella review found that eating 50 grams of UPF daily increases the risk of all-cause mortality by 2%. Additionally, cardiovascular disease mortality risk rises by 5%.
A 30-year Harvard study followed over 114,000 adults. It found that those who ate the most ultra-processed foods had a 4% higher risk of dying from any cause. They also faced an 8% higher risk of death from neurodegenerative diseases.
A 2024 review of 45 meta-analyses, covering nearly 10 million participants, found that diets high in ultra-processed foods increase the risk of:
Death from cardiovascular disease by 50%
Obesity by 55%
Type 2 diabetes by 40%
Depression by 20%
A 2025 study found that 4% to 14% of early deaths in eight countries are linked to ultra-processed foods. This translates to over 120,000 preventable American deaths annually.
The Scale of Corporate Domination
Approximately 73% of the U.S. food supply consists of ultra-processed foods. These foods make up 60% of the average adult’s calories and nearly 70% of children’s daily calories. This isn’t accidental—it’s systematic corporate engineering of our food environment.
Corporations focus on increasing shareholder value. They aren’t focused on your health. Ultra-processed food is formulated not to satisfy hunger but to encourage more consumption. Food scientists engineer products to reach the “bliss point,” which is the ideal balance of salt, sugar, and fat that maximizes palatability and encourages overconsumption. Companies tap the same brain pathways as opioid addiction.
Here’s the playbook:
1. Make Food Irresistible: Artificial flavors and enhancers make foods super tasty. They trigger cravings, so it’s hard to “eat just one.”
2. Maximize Shelf Stability: Preservatives, emulsifiers, and stabilizers enable mass production and wide distribution.
3. Maximize Profitability: UPFs cost 55 cents for 100 calories, while unprocessed foods cost $1.45. This makes UPFs 52% cheaper on average. They’re the most profitable products in supermarkets.
The cheapest and most accessible foods are often the most harmful, trapping low-income families as captive consumers of products that slowly damage their health. Ultra-processed foods dominate grocery stores, with companies designing addictive products targeting children, while healthy options remain costly and fresh food access in low-income areas is scarce. This is not a matter of choice; it’s a rigged system stacked against vulnerable communities.
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The food industry wields enormous power. Food companies spent $29.6 million on lobbying in 2024. This is a 167% rise since 1998. It’s nearly double what the tobacco and alcohol industries spend together.
The NIH allocates under 5% of its budget to nutrition research. In contrast, it spends billions on diseases mainly caused by diet. This is not accidental but the result of concerted lobbying.
Manufacturing Confusion: The AFIT Front Group
In October 2025, big food companies started Americans for Ingredient Transparency (AFIT). This group is backed by prominent companies, including General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Nestlé, Tyson Foods, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo.
AFIT, despite its name, appears to be designed to circumvent strict state food safety laws. It centralizes decisions under the FDA, which has a history of being influenced by corporate interests. AFIT launched after significant state victories:
California: Banned ultra-processed foods from school lunches
West Virginia: Prohibited certain synthetic dyes in school lunches
Texas: Require warning labels on foods with ingredients banned elsewhere
Industry-funded groups pay for research to create doubt. They stress individual responsibility more than corporate accountability. Additionally, they utilize terms like “choice” and “freedom” to counteract regulation. They question scientists. They say “ultra-processed” isn’t a scientific term. This is despite hundreds of peer-reviewed studies supporting it.
The Path Forward
What Needs to Happen
The evidence is overwhelming; corporations should not be in the business of engineering our food supply. The profit motive is fundamentally incompatible with public health when it comes to nutrition. Here’s what needs to happen:
Regulatory Action: The FDA and USDA must treat ultra-processed foods as the public health threat they are.
Protect State Innovation: Encourage state-level regulations, warning labels, and restrictions on marketing to children.
Restructure Subsidies: Redirect federal subsidies from corn and soy to whole foods, fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains.
Invest in Nutrition Science: Dramatically increase NIH funding for nutrition research.
Taking Back Your Health
To protect your health, it’s imperative to remove ultra-processed foods from your diet. These foods are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and premature death.
Do Your Research: Use the TrueFood dashboard, a free, publicly available tool that scores over 50,000 food items to help you identify ultra-processed products and find healthier alternatives.
Look for the Non UPF Certification. The Non-UPF Program provides the first U.S. certification for non-ultra-processed foods.
Swap Three Foods: Replace your top three UPFs with whole-food alternatives (such as oatmeal instead of sweetened cereal and nuts instead of chips). Small changes add up.
Read Labels First: If ingredients read like a chemistry experiment, not a recipe, leave it on the shelf.
Cook at Home: Use minimally processed ingredients like canned beans, frozen vegetables, and plain yogurt for fast meals.
Add Fiber: Build meals around colorful vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes.
Combine Diet with Exercise: A less inflammatory diet plus regular activity (brisk walks three times weekly) reduced death risk by 63% in one study.
Demand Political Action: Contact representatives, support food system reform organizations, and vote for candidates prioritizing public health over corporate profits.
The Choice Before Us
Corporate control of our food supply kills many Americans each year. The scientific evidence is clear and growing more decisive each month.
The food industry responds by using lobbying, front groups, and creating doubt. We cannot trust corporations to manufacture food. The profit motive fundamentally clashes with our health.
.The answer is simple: stop buying and consuming ultra-processed foods from large corporations. Our lives, and our children’s lives, depend on it.