The Rise of Metabolic Disease and What's Really Causing It

That's not coincidence. That's causation.

The timeline of metabolic disease

In 1970, obesity was rare. Type 2 diabetes was genuinely rare. Heart disease was increasing, but metabolic disease as an epidemic hadn't started. Then something shifted. Rapidly.

By 1990, obesity had doubled. By 2010, it had doubled again.¹ Type 2 diabetes followed the same trajectory. Now, in 2026, metabolic disease is so common that having normal metabolic health is becoming unusual. The disease has become the default.

The standard medical explanation is that people got lazy and ate too much. Calories in, calories out. But that explanation doesn't hold up.³ People didn't suddenly become lazier in 1970. Something changed in the food itself. And the change happened fast.

In 1970, seed oils were still a rarity in home cooking. People cooked with butter, lard, and animal fats. They ate food that was prepared at home. Sugar consumption was high, but it was mostly from table sugar added intentionally. Processed food existed, but it wasn't pervasive.

By 1990, seed oils had invaded every corner of food production. Industrial seed oil (soybean, canola, sunflower) became the default in restaurants, in packaged food, in home cooking. Ultra-processed food was everywhere. Sugar went from something you could see (table sugar) to something hidden in almost everything under dozens of different names.

The rise of metabolic disease didn't happen because people got worse. It happened because the food got worse. And it happened fast.

Seed oils and the omega-6 explosion

Your body needs omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. But the balance matters enormously. Your ancestors ate roughly a 1:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3.² That's the ratio your nervous system evolved in.

Your modern diet is somewhere between 15:1 and 25:1 omega-6 to omega-3. The primary driver is seed oils. Soybean oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil. These oils are extremely high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. When you eat them, you skew your fatty acid ratio catastrophically out of balance.

Omega-6 polyunsaturated fats are fragile. They oxidise easily. When they oxidise, they create compounds called oxidised linoleic acid metabolites (OXLAMs) that are deeply inflammatory. An inflammatory state, chronically maintained, is where metabolic disease thrives.

Seed oils were never meant to be food. They're industrial byproducts. Soybean oil comes from the soybean seed as a waste product of soybean meal production.² For decades, it had no use. Then the food industry realised it was cheap, profit-adding fat that could be used everywhere. They promoted it as healthy. They replaced animal fats with it. And they fundamentally changed the inflammatory status of the entire food supply.

Your liver, your arteries, your joints are all paying the price of that decision.

Ultra-processed food and continuous feeding

Your ancestors didn't eat every moment of every day. They ate when food was available, then went through periods of scarcity. Their digestive systems got rest. Their insulin had breaks. Their liver had time to repair.

You eat from the moment you wake up until the moment you sleep. Coffee with milk and sugar. Breakfast snacks. Mid-morning snack. Lunch. Afternoon snack. Dinner. Evening snack. You're processing food constantly. Your digestive system never rests. Your insulin is chronically elevated. Your liver is constantly under stress.

Add to that the fact that the food you're eating is ultra-processed, which means it's rapidly absorbed. No fibre to slow digestion. No fat to support satiety. Just fast carbohydrates that spike your blood sugar and demand an insulin response.

That metabolic state, held chronically, is metabolic disease. You're not overeating. You're eating the wrong food, too frequently, without rest. Your body cannot metabolise properly under those conditions.

Your ancestors ate food that was slow to digest, nutrient-dense, and satiating. You eat food that's fast to digest, nutrient-poor, and unsatiating. That's not willpower. That's physics.

The refined carbohydrate epidemic

Your body runs on glucose and fat. Both are valid fuels. But the carbohydrates you're eating aren't whole carbohydrates. They're refined carbohydrates. Flour (not whole grain). Sugar. Juice. White rice. These are carbohydrates stripped of everything that slowed their absorption: the fibre, the micronutrients, the fat.

A whole grain carbohydrate comes packaged with fibre, minerals, and fat that slow its absorption and protect your metabolic health. A refined carbohydrate is just fast sugar in a different form. Your body doesn't distinguish much. The metabolic stress is the same.

The food industry prefers refined carbohydrates because they're cheap, they're shelf-stable, and they're addictive. Fibre is expensive and bulky. Whole grains don't store as long. So everything got refined. Bread became white bread. Rice became white rice. Oats became instant oats. Everything that slowed carbohydrate absorption was removed.

What remained was essentially sugar. Your body responds by spiking insulin. Your pancreas gets exhausted trying to manage the constant glucose surges. Eventually, your cells become resistant to insulin. You have type 2 diabetes.

It's not an accident. It's a direct result of eating refined carbohydrates chronically.

Where the money flows

Metabolic disease is the most profitable illness in modern medicine. You get diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and suddenly you're on medications. Metformin. GLP-1 agonists. Insulin. You're on blood pressure medication. Cholesterol medication. You're seeing specialists. You're getting screening. The pharmaceutical industry makes hundreds of billions a year managing metabolic disease.

But nobody makes money if you don't get the disease in the first place. There's no profit in preventing metabolic disease. There's enormous profit in treating it.

The same food companies that profit from selling you ultra-processed food also fund the organisations that set nutritional policy. They fund the research that tells you their products are healthy. They fund the doctors and nutritionists who tell you to count calories and not worry about where those calories come from. They fund the gyms and fitness industry that tells you metabolic disease is a function of exercise, not food.

The machine is designed to make you sick and then sell you treatments for the sickness. That's not a conspiracy. It's capitalism meeting biology. And you're the product.

The timeline of dietary change

In the 1970s, seed oils represented perhaps 15 per cent of the fat consumed in Western diets. By 2020, they represented over 80 per cent. That's not coincidence. That's systematic industrial replacement of real fat with cheaper, longer-shelf-life seed oil.

In the same period, sugar consumption increased from roughly 50 kilograms per person per year to over 100. And that's just obvious sugar. When you add the hidden sugars in processed food, the number doubles.

Meanwhile, whole food consumption declined. The percentage of meals eaten at home fell from 90 per cent in 1970 to below 50 per cent in 2020. The percentage of home-cooked meals among those eaten at home fell even further.

This isn't personal failure. This is a system that's been systematically restructured to make you sick. The default has shifted from real food to processed food. The default has shifted from fat to seed oil. The default has shifted from occasional sugary treats to constant sugar throughout the day.

And metabolic disease followed predictably.

What whole food actually prevents

If you stopped eating seed oils and ultra-processed food and returned to eating real food, your metabolic health would transform. Not because you're eating fewer calories. Because you're eating food your body recognises and can actually metabolise.

Real food is slow to digest. It doesn't spike insulin. It's nutrient-dense, so your body gets satisfied and stops asking for more. It's satiating, so you naturally eat less without restriction. It supports healthy liver function, healthy fat storage, healthy inflammation markers.

Type 2 diabetes can be reversed with real food.⁴ Fatty liver disease can be healed. Weight normalises. Energy increases. Metabolic markers improve. Not through medication. Through food.

Your ancestors didn't have metabolic disease because they ate whole food. That's not luck. That's biochemistry. When you return to eating the way your body evolved to eat, your metabolic health returns. It's remarkably reliable.

Metabolic disease isn't inevitable. It's not a function of age or genetics or laziness. It's a direct result of what you're eating. Change the food, and the disease disappears.

The food industry knows this. That's why they're so invested in keeping you eating their products. A healthy population that eats real food isn't profitable. A sick population that needs constant management is infinitely profitable.

Your only rebellion is eating what your ancestors ate. Real food. Whole ingredients. No seed oils. No ultra-processed products. No continuous feeding. Rest, digest, and let your metabolism heal.

References

1. 1. UK Parliament House of Commons Library. Obesity statistics. House of Commons Library SN03336.
2. 2. Blasbalg TL et al. Changes in consumption of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in the United States during the 20th century. Am J Clin Nutr. PubMed PMID: 21367944.
3. 3. Siri-Tarino PW et al. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. PubMed PMID: 20071648.
4. 4. Lean ME et al. Primary care-led weight management for remission of type 2 diabetes (DiRECT): an open-label, cluster-randomised trial. Lancet. PubMed PMID: 29221645.