Best-selling author says Americans getting sicker every year as companies reap profits: 'Devil's bargain'

A doctor and best-selling author sounded the alarm on rising disease rates in the U.S., arguing Americans are getting sicker each year because of their reliance on highly processed foods, while the health care system is profiting off the toxic dependency. 

"Good Energy" co-author Dr. Casey Means joined "The Brian Kilmeade Show" to discuss how the cycle of disease has spiraled through Americans' reliance on "ultra-processed" food and how lifestyle habits have led to a spike in certain cancers and other disorders. 

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"This is the first year in history that we are expected to have over 2 million new cases of cancer in the United States, so we are throwing money at cancer research and cancer rates are going up," Means told host Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday. 

"The reason for this is because we're focusing on the symptoms of cancer. We're focusing on treating cancer after it develops. We spend virtually $0 on cancer prevention."

Means noted that "ultra-processed food" can be blamed for the variety of health issues Americans are facing, including a spike in colon cancer particularly among young people. 

The lack of sleep and "synthetic toxins" that are embedded in everything from food to daily personal care products also have an impact on health and have been linked to disease, she argued. 

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"We know that much cancer, especially colon cancer, is tied to our terrible ultra-processed diets in United States," said Means, whose book has become a New York Times bestseller.

"It's because of the environment that we're living in, and unfortunately, there's trillions and trillions of dollars of incentives between this devil's bargain of the food system and the health care system that both make money when we're addicted to crappy food, and then we're getting treatment."

"I think the thing that people really understand is that the financial incentives of our health care system right now, they make more money when patients are sick and it makes less money when patients are healthy," she continued. "That's why I had to leave the system, because that is the financial reality of the American health care system."

Colorectal cancer is now among the leading causes of cancer deaths for young adults, according to a report from the American Cancer Society (ACS) earlier this year. As of 2024, it ranks as the leading cause of cancer deaths in men and the second leading cause in women.

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Overall, the ACS expects that over 2 million new cancer cases and 611,720 cancer deaths will occur in the U.S. in 2024.

Some primary risk factors include family history, obesity, smoking, heavy alcohol, a diet high in red and processed meats, inflammatory bowel disease and a personal history or family history of polyps, according to Dr. Aparna Parikh, medical director of the Center for Young Adult Colorectal Cancer at the Mass General Cancer Center.

Means argued that food companies manufacturing products that are "ultra-processed" are following an addiction-based business model to maximize their profits, which comes in at around $2 trillion, and keeps sick customers coming back for more. 

"Americans are getting sicker every year," she said. "We're spending $4.3 trillion on health care costs, and Americans are getting sicker every single year. Brian, life expectancy is going down in the United States."

"We have this problem where literally research on the American College of Cardiology says that 93% of Americans have this fundamental problem in how we power our bodies, the most foundational part of health, and that we know now, the science is telling us that leads to cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity, stroke, fatty liver disease, cancer, all of the conditions that are going up all at once," she said. 

Diets high in ultra-processed foods may elevate the risk of developing and dying from various types of cancers, according to a study released last year from Imperial’s School of Public Health in London.

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The study from the U.K. tracked the diets of 200,000 adults between the ages of 40 and 69 over a decade, using the NOVA food classification system to determine the level of food processing. Designed by researchers at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, NOVA groups foods into four groups: unprocessed, processed culinary ingredients, processed and ultra-processed.

The study found that people who ate a higher share of ultra-processed foods were more likely to develop cancers of all types — particularly ovarian and brain cancers. 

Means emphasized that life expectancy decline and heightened sickness have not stemmed from COVID-19, despite what some critics may think. 

"The pandemic is not the reason," she said. "It started having a sustained decline before the pandemic, the longest period of decline of health since the 1860s. We are going down. So we extended our lifespan in the early 1900s due to infectious disease control. Now it's going down because of chronic lifestyle conditions rooted in metabolic dysfunction."

"And 93% of American adults now have metabolic dysfunction tied to food and lifestyle, so that's what's killing us now. It's not the infectious diseases. It's these lifestyle diseases based on our toxic food system, our sedentary lifestyle, our poor habits," she continued. 

Means graduated from Stanford and later served on the university's faculty. After leaving the field of traditional medicine, she co-founded Levels, a health technology company devoted to reversing the world’s metabolic health crisis. 

Fox News' Melissa Rudy contributed to this report. 

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