When Will Sugar become the New Tobacco

Are investors prepared for a global upgrade to our Food System?

If sugar is the new tobacco, what will happen to Pepsi, Coke and Mars? Will consumer product goods companies pivot or collapse under the pressure of lawsuits? Can they pivot?

It did not take Thanksgiving dessert to convince me of what many of us already know. Sugar is as addictive as Tobacco. A recent study further validates that refined sugar is as addictive as cocaine and tobacco

Is it a surprise that Type 2 diabetes is a pandemic larger than COVID?

But no one talks about it. But they should. Because there is a point not far into the future when large public food companies will face the eventual pressure to change the food they offer. Consumer demands will shift. The cost of healthcare will force the issue. The Tobacco/Round Up/Camp Lejeune lawyers will take aim at food. Add the global pressure of increased population, constraints on farmland growth, and environmental concerns.

We spend more than $1.9T in the US alone each year on healthcare costs related to poor nutrition. We could try to expand Medicare and Medicaid, but the real path to affordable healthcare is nutrition.

We also know that innovation will improve the quality of nutrition, reduce its cost, and provide the services that help us prevent poor health.

When we faced Y2K, two things happened. Team One, the Paul Ehrlich fan club, focused on the doom. The end of the world. They sold news and votes but really did very little to solve the problem. Team Two aligned innovation globally to implement a global reboot. Team Two fixed the firmware, delivered new servers, updated applications, and created new technology that facilitated the infrastructure that fixed Y2K. But also ushered in 64-bit processors, web services, encryption, SAS, AWS, IOT. Y2K was a point of focus that became the fuel that unleashed Amazon, Google, Tesla, and Apple. Even after Y2K. It opened up investment. Firms like Hambrecht & Quist educated capital markets, helping investors understand what Google and Amazon did. Y2K unlocked technology, capital, talent, and customer demand. People expected more. And as we transitioned into January First, 2000, the world continued without missing a beat.

Marc Andreessen @pmarca

The arbitrage returns to merit, determination, hard work, and toughness are rising every day.

Team Two, the entrepreneurs, delivered more for less. Without the melodrama. Innovation reduced the cost of technology, improved productivity, and made life a bit better.

Carter Williams @jcarterwil

As people understand that better nutrition improves health, price elasticity will shift. Innovation will grow. Food as Health will emerge as a key investment sector, not unlike how smart phones changed computing. Delivering new value and productivity making life better.