Research able to change our relationship to food in the United States

Food is surprisingly often a controversial topic, especially when it comes to eating habits and the consequences of how much we eat, when eat, and what we eat. It is a necessity for life, thus everyone in the world has a personal connection to it and is affected causing for a variety of opinions on the matter. However, through research we are able to make more well informed decisions regarding both larger issues such as how food is being distributed and what food is made up of by large companies to more personal issues such as what we should eating and buying for our families and ourselves and when we should be eating it.

The United States is often looked at when a discussion of food is happening, as the United States is becoming an increasingly more obese nation, with related health problems on the rise as a result. “New data shows that nearly 40 percent of them were obese in 2015 and 2016, a sharp increase from a decade earlier,” and this increase comes with correlated increases in health risks of “heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers.” There are many reasons for this increase in obesity over the last decade. “Nutritionists and other experts cite lifestyle, genetics, and, most importantly, a poor diet as factors” for this as Americans have increased the amount of processed and trans fat rich food that they eat. Fast food is an example of this kind of diet and “fast food sales in the United States rose 22.7 percent from 2012 to 2017. Grocery stores in the U.S. are also stocked full of packaged and processed food and  “packaged food sales rose 8.8 percent,” from 2012 to 2017. All of this is in spite of attempts to educate the public regarding poor diet and its consequences.

While it may seem that education is not working to help reduce and eliminate this epidemic, I believe that shifts in research that help us understand how this diet actually effects the human body on a cellular level will be the most beneficial, as it is this type of education on the matter that will allow for better medication, push for legislative action, and provide the public a better understanding of how their body is really reacting to this type of diet and help to overcome the media’s detrimental depiction of how simple, easy, effective fast or packaged food can be for a meal.

One of the researchers, doing such research is Jennifer Beshel. In The research article, A Leptin Analog Locally Produced in the Brain Acts via a Conserved Neural Circuit to Modulate Obesity- Linked Behaviors in Drosophila, by Dr. Jennifer Beshel, focuses on this obesity problem that has affected so many. Beshel’s research focuses on Drosophila eating behavior as they resemble the feeding behavior of humans and their system while comparative is much simpler and easier to manage. The research looks at feeding behavior after the deletion of a leptin analog by the name of upd1. This upd1, was responsible for a neuropeptide F that was responsible for regulation of food intake. This knockout upd1 flies,w hen compared to the control group counterparts showed higher levels of fat storage and excess weight when consuming a high fat and high sugar diets. We are able to use such research to understand how leptin might behave in humans, especially their response to high fat and high sugar diet, which is the primary type of diet for many in the U.S. It is through research such as Beschel’s that we may be better understand how are body functions in this new food climate and find ways to change the way we think about food and what we eat from a personal level of what we put on our tables to a national and international level for pushing for labeling of food in a certain way by governmental organizations.