The Birth of Processed Food

and the Damage It Has Done

For years, I blamed myself. If certain foods were harming my body and quietly worsening my mild cognitive dementia, why were they the hardest to give up? That question sent me searching for answers beyond willpower, and what I uncovered was unsettling. The rise of processed food began with good intentions: to feed more people, more cheaply, for longer. But those innovations didn’t just change how food was made and distributed, they reshaped our biology, our brains, and our health. I had never stopped to consider the difference between food engineered for profit and food grown for nourishment. Understanding how that shift happened reveals why so many of us are sick, overweight, and struggling to break habits that no longer serve us. We truly are what we eat.

Humans are born with ability to get nourishment from unaltered plants, animals and minerals. For most of human history, food existed in quiet partnership with human biology. What people ate was shaped by season, soil, and effort, and eating was naturally self-limiting. Hunger and fullness were reliable signals. Sugar, fat, and salt were precious because they were rare, and the brain evolved to notice them quickly and value them deeply. Those instincts once kept humans alive.

The Industrial Revolution changed everything.

As factories replaced farms as the center of food production, nourishment was transformed into an engineered product. Food was no longer made primarily to be eaten soon or close to where it was grown. It was made to travel long distances, sit on shelves, look identical every time, and generate profit at scale. Shelf life replaced seasonality. Consistency replaced craftsmanship. Calories became cheap, abundant, and detached from nutrition.

To make this system work, food had to be rebuilt. Grains were refined to remove fiber and extend storage. Fats were extracted, bleached, deodorized, and reused to withstand repeated heating. Sugar, once a celebratory rarity, became inexpensive and omnipresent. Packaged snacks, sugary beverages, ready-to-eat meals, and ultra-processed foods emerged, not because they nourished the body, but because they fit the economics of mass production and mass distribution.

Food additives became the invisible infrastructure holding this system together. Preservatives slowed spoilage so food could survive months in transit and storage. Emulsifiers created textures that felt rich and satisfying. Flavor enhancers intensified sweetness, saltiness, and mouthfeel. Color stabilizers made products appear fresh long after they were made. Food was no longer simply preserved, it was reconstructed, optimized for reliability, palatability, and sales.

At the same time, the industry discovered something far more powerful than preservation: human biology.

The brain is hardwired to seek sugar for quick energy, fat for dense calories, and salt for survival. In a world of scarcity, this was a gift. In an industrial food system, it became a vulnerability. By combining sugar, fat, and salt in precise ratios, and reinforcing them with additives, processed foods began to override normal satiety signals. Eating became driven less by hunger and more by reward. Willpower was quietly undermined as cravings were engineered, not accidental.

Sugar moved from the margins of the diet to its center, hidden in drinks, breads, sauces, and snacks. Liquid sugars bypassed fullness cues entirely, fueling insulin resistance, fatty liver disease, microbiome disruption, cardiovascular risk, and dental decay. Industrial fats, highly refined and often repeatedly heated, became inflammatory and oxidizing, especially when paired with sugar in evolutionarily novel combinations. Salt, once carefully rationed, was deployed liberally to enhance flavor, extend shelf life, mask low-quality ingredients, and encourage overconsumption.

These changes did not just affect metabolism; they affected digestion and the brain. Emulsifiers weakened the gut’s protective mucus layer. Preservatives suppressed beneficial bacteria. Artificial sweeteners altered glucose regulation through microbiome changes. Over time, many people experienced chronic low-grade inflammation, digestive discomfort, impaired nutrient absorption, and a growing disconnect between eating and nourishment.

The result was a profound dietary shift. Pre-industrial diets were constrained by effort, naturally balanced, and nutrient-dense. Modern processed diets became calorie-dense, nutrient-poor, and engineered for constant consumption. Additives enabled longer shelf life, lower production costs, higher profit margins, and continuous eating, transforming food into a product that rewarded corporations far more reliably than it rewarded human health.

Yet this story does not end in inevitability.

Modern nutritional science has made the system visible. Patterns like the MIND diet, which emphasize leafy greens, vegetables, berries, whole grains, nuts, legumes, fish, and olive oil while limiting processed foods, added sugars, unhealthy fats, and excess salt, demonstrate that it is still possible to eat in alignment with human biology, even within today’s industrial food environment. The MIND diet draws from both historical eating patterns and contemporary research, showing how intentional choices can restore metabolic balance, protect brain health, and re-establish healthy appetite regulation.

The creation of processed food was not a failure of human willpower. It was the result of an industrial system that learned how to profit from human instincts. Understanding that history shifts the conversation, from blame to awareness, from restriction to empowerment. When we recognize how food was engineered to capture our brains and bodies, we regain the ability to choose differently, and to reclaim food as nourishment rather than manipulation.

Part I of 3 Articles

II We Are the Victims of Junk Food Addiction

III Retrain Your Brain to Stop Junk Food Addiction