The Boring Truth About Why America Got Fat

The truth about calories, ultra-processed food, and why “myth-busting” media sometimes makes more myths

Photo by Fábio Alves on Unsplash

Americans don’t just want facts about diet and health. They want stories. They want to know who’s wrong, who’s evil, and, best of all, who’s hiding something. They demand the busting of myths, the spilling of secrets, the tasting of forbidden truths.

This desperation for health news that is also a particular kind of darkly delicious entertainment swings open a wide door for media companies and social-media influencers to serve up contrarian takes that are often disconnected from the underlying evidence. The podcast and YouTube space is filled with audacious claims about lying scientists and dubious diets. To add irony to insult, these segments are often sponsored by bullshit supplements with no evidence of efficacy.

The paranoid style of diet science—this obsessive emphasis on myth and conspiracy that confuses basic facts and misleads viewers—is not the exclusive domain of himbo podcasters. Even trustworthy and high-quality news organizations can sometimes fall into the trap of being contrarian rather than clear.

Take, for example, a New York Times article that recently caught my eye while circulating on the website’s Most Popular page: “10 Nutrition Myths Experts Wish Would Die.” One of the purported myths stunned me. I’ll reproduce the section in its entirety, so I can’t be accused of taking anything out of context.

Myth No. 3: ‘Calories in, calories out’ is the most important factor for long-term weight gain.

It’s true that if you consume more calories than you burn, you will probably gain weight. And if you burn more calories than you consume, you will probably lose weight — at least for the short term.

But the research does not suggest that eating more will cause sustained weight gain that results in becoming overweight or obese. “Rather, it’s the types of foods we eat that may be the long-term drivers” of those conditions, said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Tufts University.

Ultraprocessed foods — such as refined starchy snacks, cereals, crackers, energy bars, baked goods, sodas and sweets — can be particularly harmful for weight gain, as they are rapidly digested and flood the bloodstream with glucose, fructose and amino acids, which are converted to fat by the liver. Instead, what’s needed for maintaining a healthy weight is a shift from counting calories to prioritizing healthy eating overall — quality over quantity.

You might wonder: Derek, you were enraged by this mere swell in the sea of words? Yes, I was. I hate this framing. Despite its respectable presentation, this passage perfectly captures the way that myth-busting contrarianism can pull food-science coverage away from reality. To my eye, the section above offers three claims:

1. The “calories in, calories out” model isn’t so important in the long run.

2. The entire category of “ultra-processed foods” is the better enemy.

3. To the extent that ultra-processed foods are bad for us, they’re bad in a way that doesn’t have much to do with calories.

All three claims are wrong. Before we dive into the weeds on an issue I’m passionate about, I want to be clear about what’s true, right here at the top: