The Most Powerful Group behind What You Eat

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, we're going to talk about the most powerful group in the food industry—the four companies control 90% of the grain trade. This includes products made from corn, soy, wheat, sugar, and rice, which comprise about 68% of the average person’s calories in the United States.

The 4 following companies are the middleman between farmers and food corporations:

1. Archer Daniels Midland

2. Bunge

3. Cargill

4. Louis Dreyfus

There is a lot of corruption in the food industry. Many “junk food brands” also own organic and natural brands, pet food, and vitamin and supplement companies.

Starches, sugars, and seed oils are the main ingredients in almost all ultra-processed foods. The sugar is used to keep you wanting more, seed oils are repurposed waste, and starches are a chain of sugars used as a filler.

Starches cause more of an insulin spike than sugar. Sugar has a glycemic index of 65 compared to 185 for maltodextrin! Fillers and starches can cause major health problems.

The market follows the demand, so what you choose to buy is important! If you stop buying these products, you decrease the demand.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today we're going to discuss the most powerful group behind what you eat, and you might even think that they're like the top brands that you see in the grocery store, but they're not the real big players.
0:10.8	They're actually four companies that control 90% of the grain trade.
0:19.3	And I'm talking about products made from corn, soy, wheat, sugar, rice, you have to realize that these
0:27.3	commodities make up like 68% of the average person's calories at least in the United States and this group is
0:35.4	composed of four companies. They're kind of silent giants because a lot of
0:40.7	people don't even know that they exist. They're the extremely powerful
0:44.4	and influential middleman between the farmers who they heavily control as well as
0:51.0	the other brands that you know about like Nestle and Kelloggs etc and they have huge influence over commodities.
0:57.3	Well commodities are like a stock market for crops. I mean I have a tiny bit of experience with commodities. I had no business going into the commodity market.
1:07.0	There's still skid marks on the turnpike going right into Philadelphia when my wife was driving with all these kids in the backseat,
1:15.5	I thought that was the best time to tell her that,
1:17.6	honey, I lost all of our savings in the commodities market.
1:21.7	Well, she slammed on the brakes and there is a little island of land right next to this
1:28.8	major freeway that she pulled off of.
1:31.2	She gets out of the car, she walks up and down this little piece of land.
1:34.0	Let's just say she was extremely upset and she had to let out some steam and rightfully so.
1:38.7	And the whole thing is very confusing.
1:40.3	But these four companies have a huge influence on what those prices are set at.
1:47.0	And they get themselves into a really good situation because $700 billion a year are spent on subsidies for commodities like
1:57.0	corn, wheat, soybean. Now there's a really interesting study in the American
2:02.4	Journal of Agricultural Economics.
2:04.8	If we're giving them $700 billion a year, that should allow us to buy this food for a lot cheaper.
	...

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