At United We Eat, we believe that a democracy functions best when its citizens are healthy and informed with the truth about how their food is grown and the consequences their choices have on their health, daily life, and communities. 

Today, the American public is flooded with corporate misinformation about the long-term impacts of food choices on their health and the environment.

While much of the last 70 years geopolitically has been spent worrying about avoiding ‘World Wars’ and now ‘terrorism,’ the single greatest threat to the average American today is not a hostile foreign government but the very food that we feed ourselves every day. Today, the corrupt practices of food companies and the failure of our elected officials harm consumers and rig the system against family farmers, who are the backbone of our food supply and good food.

Somehow, since the end of the Vietnam War, the Western diet, or Standard American Diet (SAD) as it’s now commonly known, has become the single greatest threat to our health and individual liberty. Without good health and access to healthy food, there can be no freedom or legitimate democracy.

But the problem of feeding a growing population is nothing new. In The Jungle, published in 1906, Upton Sinclair chronicled the brutal, dangerous, and unsanitary conditions of the U.S. meatpacking industry and detailed the endemic poverty and economic servitude of the workers in the Chicago meatpacking industry. 

Today, the meat packing industry is so consolidated that only 4 companies control 85% of the beef market, 67% of hogs slaughtered, and 65% of the chickens sold in the U.S. This massive level of market concentration is dangerous for the long-term stability of local economies and our democracy. It has long been a basic economic theory that when 4 companies control 40% of any market, it is considered rigged and no longer fair.

It’s no secret that monopolies are anathema to democracy and competitive markets. Still, monopoly power has a funny way of securing itself in 21st-century America. Its insertion into our lives has led to a chronic health epidemic, with diseases like obesity and diabetes on the rise and massive biodiversity loss, threatening the very existence of our nation and our species.

While much lip service is given to “the Constitution” and “rule of law,” the reality is that Congress and our federal and state governments are where our rights and economic futures are bought and sold to the lowest corporate bidder daily.

In 2023, Open Secrets reported that Agribusiness companies and industry groups spent more than $178.5 million on lobbying to influence members of Congress and the White House to write laws and craft regulations that favor their profits over the health and well-being of the American public, family farmers, and our environment.