Last week, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed that perfectly captures everything wrong with how we think about America's food crisis. Titled "Prosperity Made Us Fat, and Biotech Will Make Us Thin," the essay, by a DePaul University economist, argues that our epidemic of diet-related diseases — obesity, diabetes, heart disease, dementia and certain cancers — is the inevitable price of abundant, cheap, ultra-processed food. The solution, according to this argument, is not better nutrition or industry reform but wonder drugs like Ozempic that chemically undo the damage.

The writer, Anthony Lo Sasso, views our poisonous food environment through the lenses of human history and market forces. The ultra-processed foods that now dominate American diets are a "civilizational triumph," and the chronic diseases they cause are "side effects" of prosperity — best treated with pharmaceutical interventions (for those who can afford them).

Of course, this is the food industry's dream narrative: Keep pumping out poison for profit, reroute some of the money to Congress, which allows Big Food to continue legally hoodwinking its surviving customers, and let pharma clean up the mess.

"We use science to keep the gains of prosperity while softening the unintended consequences," Lo Sasso writes in his op-ed.

I don't agree. Big Food should be accountable for making money on purposely addictive deathfoods. So, I did what any indignant columnist would do: I asked Lo Sasso for an interview, which, I'm happy to report, he graciously granted. Below is my Q&A with him, condensed for brevity and clarity.

Ultra-processed foods now account for 60% of American adults' calorie consumption and a staggering 70% of what our children eat. I see Lo Sasso's prosperity as full of avoidable negative consequences.

Lo Sasso dismisses efforts to improve food labeling as "label skirmishes," a revealing phrase that minimizes the deliberate obfuscation practiced by an industry that has spent $1.15 billion on lobbying over the past two decades — more than the gambling, tobacco and alcohol industries do.

My Q&A with Anthony Lo Sasso, DePaul University professor of economics

Me: Your op-ed argues cheap, abundant food has created a health epidemic that only technology can solve. Aren't you giving the food industry a huge pass?

Lo Sasso: This is civilizational in scope, much bigger than "the food industry." We live in an unprecedented time where food is plentiful with virtually no threat of starvation. You can buy a box of pasta for a dollar that provides a day's calories. In human history, that's extraordinary.

Me: But where's personal agency? Aren't what you call "label skirmishes" important, to educate consumers about the consequences of continuing to depend so heavily on ultra-processed foods?

Lo Sasso: Agency is costly — psychically costly, in the way that economists use costly. Resisting urges to overindulge when food is cheap, plentiful and delicious exerts a psychic cost.

(Here, Lo Sasso is saying people find resisting cheap, engineered foods too psychologically difficult.)

Me: What about public health programs like anti-smoking campaigns?

Lo Sasso: We've known since the 1960s that cigarettes cause cancer, yet 15-20% still smoke. Heavy taxes have been more effective than education. Higher-educated, higher-income people quit smoking; lower-income people still smoke more.

Me: Prosperity doesn't ipso facto require eating like crap. Countries like Japan and Korea haven't seen the same disease rates as the U.S. Why not push our food industry to produce better food?

Lo Sasso: Consumers vote with their scarce dollars and choose cheap ultra-processed food that's delicious and provides calories. It's not the industry doing this to us; we're making choices. People want to spend money on other things.

Me: Isn't this backwards — treating disease after it develops instead of preventing it from starting?

Lo Sasso: Prevention would be best, but waiting for problems to develop is the only scalable solution we have. The forces — prices, nature of work, food abundance — are too civilizational in scope. We're wired from evolution to consume and store fat. You're not going to scold or "label change" people into altering this fundamental aspect of their nature.

Me: Don't GLP-1s create an equity issue for those who can't afford them?

Lo Sasso: Yes, like every innovation in human history. Who could afford automobiles initially? As technology diffuses and competitors enter, prices go down. GLP-1s are just first generation; more is coming.

Me: Why not make healthy food as cheap as that dollar pasta? What about more education, less sugar in sodas, healthier school lunches?

Lo Sasso: I could file that under tweaking around the edges. The pasta example just shows how extraordinary it is that a day's calories costs so little. That wasn't dietary counsel.

The best thing about being a columnist is that you get to have the last word. So here's mine: Lo Sasso, whom I commend for engaging in this dialogue, argues that accepting being poisoned by corporate food manufacturers is the price of civilization, and that only expensive drugs can save us.

But that's not economics. It's capitulation.

To find out more about Paul Von Zielbauer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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