You are what you eat
The World Health Organisation estimate at least 2.8 million people die each year as a result of being overweight or obese. Ischaemic heart disease is the number one killer world wide, and is associated with risk factors such as smoking, lack of exercise, obesity, high blood cholesterol, poor diet, depression, and excessive alcohol consumption.
We label food. Every packet in the supermarket tells you what’s inside. Fat content, sugar levels, calories. We spent decades fighting for those labels because we understood that what you eat affects your health.
We consume information for hours every day with no equivalent labeling. No indication of bias; no warning of emotional manipulation; no measure of accuracy. And seemingly no accountability.
The similarity is inevitable when you consider the source of these substances and the incentives behind their producers. we are trying to drive consumption. Junk food is engineered to be irresistible—the perfect ratio of salt, sugar, and fat to override satiation. Digital content is engineered to tap into controversy, novelty, and confirmation bias to keep you scrolling.
A diet of processed food leads to obesity, diabetes, heart disease. One might argue that an intellectual diet such as the one many of us consume, manifests in the disease and ill health we’re witnessing throughout society.
Personal responsibility hasn’t solved the obesity epidemic and it likely won’t solve the intellectual obesity we’re experiencing. Asking individuals to analyze every piece of information they encounter is like asking them to run a chemical analysis on every meal.
The asymmetry is stark: those who produce the content know exactly what they’re doing. Those who consume it are eating blind.