Fitness and nutrition guru Jillian Michaels gave a speech before Congress about an epidemic of chronic diseases linked to obesity that is impacting multiple generations of Americans.
Her testimony, which earned a standing ovation from spectators and members of Congress, called out companies behind ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) for promoting harmful products that have spawned a tidal wave of long-lasting health effects and has triggered ‘an extinction-level event.’
UPFs have infiltrated every grocery aisle nationwide, including cookies, chips, frozen dinners, salad dressings, bread, and cheese.
They’re often inexpensive and brightly packaged, making them appealing to shoppers on a budget.
But diets rich in UPFs have been linked to a laundry list of chronic illnesses, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, cancer, particularly breast and colorectal, digestive issues, and cognitive decline.
At a roundtable hosted by Republican Sen Ron Johnson, Michaels was among several guests who shared their views on what is driving an increase in chronic diseases across the US.
In 2020, approximately 71.5million Americans aged 50 and older had at least one chronic disease. By 2050, this number is projected to nearly double, increasing by more than 99 percent to reach 143million.
Ms Michaels said: ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve watched my friends jabbing themselves every day with fertility drugs, praying for a pregnancy. My friends getting up at the crack of dawn to get radiated where the lump was found in their breast. My friends swallowing fistfuls of pills to manage their debilitating anxiety and depression.
‘If this current trend is allowed to persist, the stakes will be untenable. We are in the middle of an extinction-level event.’
Obesity, Ms Michaels said, is the ‘default human condition in the 21st century… by design,’ and is behind the tidal wave of chronic illness plaguing Americans.
Currently, more than 42 percent of Americans have obesity.
The epidemic is due to the historic cooperation of big pharma, food manufacturing giants, and industrial agriculture, which uses pesticides, herbicides, preservatives, and additives down the production line.
Together, Ms Michaels argued, the mega-entities have betrayed public trust by pushing products that have fed an epidemic of obesity and chronic diseases as a result.
She said: ‘It seemed unthinkable to question whether a corporation would poison us for profit [and] it was this betrayal of trust that allowed them to insidiously infiltrate every part of our lives.
‘These monster corporations have mastered the art of distorting the research, influencing the policy, buying the narrative, engineering the environment, and manipulating consumer behavior.’
UPFs undergo multiple stages of processing, which adds more synthetic ingredients that have little nutritional benefit and can harm the body.
They also contain more artificial ingredients like colorings and dyes, which have been linked to conditions like hyperactivity and cancer.
There is also evidence to show that eating large amounts of overly processed food can increase one’s risk of developing heart disease by 50 percent, according to a report in the British Medical Journal.
Research also suggests that eating more UPFs raises the risk of obesity by 55 percent, sleep disorders by 41 percent, type 2 diabetes by 40 percent, and depression by 20 percent.
A diet rich in UPFs also raises one’s risk of dying by any cause. A 2024 study, also published in the BMJ found that people who ate a diet of mostly UPFs had a four percent higher risk of death.
Additionally, they were nine percent more likely to die from neurodegenerative diseases like dementia, Parkinson’s, ALS, and Huntington’s disease.
UPFs have also been shown to disrupt the balance of good and bad bacteria living in the gut.
Changes to the microbiome can include the growth of bacteria that promote inflammation, which can spur tumor growth, altering metabolism so that it is less able to clear the gut of carcinogens, and impairing the immune system’s ability to detect and fight cancer cells.
Ms Michaels continued: ‘While I have been fortunate enough to pull many back from the edge, over the course of my 30-year career, I have lost just as many, if not more than I have saved.
‘I have watched them slip through my fingers, mothers that orphaned their children, husbands that widowed their wives. I have even watched parents forced to suffer the unthinkable loss of their adult children.
‘They were literally sacrificed at the alter of unchecked corporate greed.’
