Michael Pollan's best advice for eating healthier food

Ultraprocessed Foods and Health Crisis00:02

60 Minutes reports on ultraprocessed foods: plastic-wrapped, ready-to-eat items lining grocery store shelves. The United States has been exposed to something biology was never intended to handle: energy-dense, highly palatable, rapidly absorbable ultraprocessed foods that have altered metabolism, resulting in the greatest increase in chronic disease in history, including type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, hypertension, abnormal lipids, fatty liver, heart attacks, stroke, heart failure.

David Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, in the 1990s helped expose tobacco industry tactics. Now turning attention to ultraprocessed foods with highly processed ingredients like corn syrup and maltodextrin, which make us sick and cause overeating by targeting brain reward circuits, triggering overeating, and depriving sense of fullness.

We have a national eating disorder because it's making us sick.

Michael Pollan on Processed Foods01:30

Michael Pollan, food author, has warned about factory-processed foods for decades. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, even dementia linked to bad diet. 70% of Americans overweight or obese, indicating something wrong with how we eat; all those diseases tied to diet.

Recent study: participants lived in a location for a month. For two weeks, one group had ultraprocessed food (as much as wanted); other group had whole foods. Ultraprocessed group ate 500 more calories a day. Hypothesized due to energy density: every bite has more calories. Many foods stripped of fiber, leading to less fullness and more eating.