In 1900, the average life expectancy in the United States was 49 years old. When you went “toes up,” it was likely caused by pneumonia, tuberculosis or diarrhea. Yes, diarrhea. Today, our life expectancy far exceeds age 48. We are more aware than ever of healthy behaviors and are inundated with information on how to lead a healthier life. You know—eat right, exercise, and stay away from lung darts and booze.
To some degree, we are following this advice. Alcohol consumption is at an all-time low. According to Gallup, 39 percent of U.S. adults say they have not had an alcoholic drink in the past seven days. In addition to drinking less, people smoke less. Back in 1954, one out of every two Americans smoked daily. You’d have to have your head examined to pick up a pack of cigarettes in 2026. By 2020, American life expectancy had risen to 78.81 years. But then, a funny thing happened. U.S. life expectancy started dropping for the first time since, well, forever. Sure, some of that decline was COVID-related, but our life expectancy keeps dropping for reasons beyond the pandemic. We’ve lost about 2.7 years of life expectancy in just a few years.
The incidence of early-onset cancers has increased. Americans now have an astonishing 41.6 percent chance of getting cancer in their lifetime. It’s not just cancer that’s rising, though. The number of people living with Parkinson’s disease has doubled in the last 25 years.
Back in the early 1990s, just 3 percent of Americans were morbidly or severely obese. We are now fatter than at any other time in history, even though we have more gyms than any other country. I know a lot of people struggle with their weight through no fault of their own. I’m talking about those with a BMI higher than 40. In 1950, around 25,000 people died from diabetes. The most recent data from the CDC indicates that 94,445 people die each year from diabetes, despite significant enhancements in treatment. We also lead the world in hypertension. A whopping 70 percent of Americans are projected to develop high blood pressure in their lifetime.
No animal on planet Earth suffers from these types of metabolic disorders. According to the CDC, at age 50, life expectancy is six years shorter for people with this disease. That, combined with obesity, has also led to a 55 percent increase in deadly pancreatic cancer in the last 25 years. It’s not just adults. Almost 40 percent of children are overweight today, and an astonishing 28 percent of children are prediabetic.
Look, I love a good hot dog and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos as much as anyone. But we are the only country in the world seeing these kinds of numbers. As Casey Means, MD, points out in her book Good Energy, it’s not entirely our fault. See, greedy American tobacco companies saw the coming assault on big tobacco. In 1986, they responded: R.J. Reynolds Tobacco purchased Nabisco Foods for $4.9 billion. Around the same time, Philip Morris Tobacco purchased General Foods and Kraft. Tobacco scientists and engineers used fat, salt and sugar instead of nicotine to trigger our dopamine receptors. They engineered food that is addictive but doesn’t satisfy your appetite. That’s right—the same scientists and engineers that got us hooked on tobacco found a way to get us hooked on ultra-processed food that is killing us.
The data doesn’t lie. Among peer nations, the U.S. has the highest per-person healthcare spending, reaching an estimated $12,555 per capita in 2022, based on NHE data. (Type II diabetics cost $17,000 per year.) Despite all this money, we have the lowest life expectancy among peer nations. People in Switzerland, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong now live 4 to 6 years longer than we do. We are eating enough ultra-processed foods, loaded with fat, salt and sugar, to destroy our physical and mental health. Those over-engineered foods are bathed in a chemical soup of lab-created toxins that block our satiety signals from firing. Most of these substances are banned in other countries. How do the food companies get away with it? About 45 percent of the FDA’s budget comes from the food industry, meaning their funding is derived from the companies they regulate. It could be a coincidence, I guess.
Yes, cancer, hypertension, obesity and various metabolic disorders, like diabetes, are to blame for our falling life expectancy. You can also add rising rates of depression, anxiety, insomnia, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and many other health conditions. However, the root cause isn’t the disease itself or even bad luck. The root cause is our over-engineered food supply. The data is clear—we are literally eating ourselves to death.
If you have any thoughts on what else might be driving our obesity epidemic, I’d love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected] and I promise you’ll hear back from me.
