Food Is More Than Fuel

Buck President and CEO Dr. Eric Verdin joined national leaders on Capitol Hill to discuss how nutrition shapes metabolism, brain health, and healthy aging.

You’ve heard the phrase “you are what you eat.” Buck President and CEO Eric Verdin agrees. Dr. Verdin was a featured speaker at a Capitol Hill luncheon on July 29, focusing on “The Power and Peril of Food: The Latest Science on Your Mood, Memory, Metabolism, and Longevity.” The DC event was held by the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University in partnership with the Baltimore-based Food Tank think tank.

Diet plays a crucial role in our health trajectory with a huge impact on the development of chronic age-related diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 93% of older Americans live with at least one chronic health condition, resulting in health care spending in the trillions each year.

Discussions at the luncheon focused on how eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and avoiding ultra-processed foods may benefit both physical and mental health, pointing to how nutrition can influence memory, metabolism, and cognitive decline.

Dr. Verdin talked about how nutrition is a key influence on multiple systems in the body, serving as a signal to switch metabolic and repair pathways on or off.

“Many of us think about nutrition as a form of energy. Nutrition is actually a lot more than this,” Verdin said. “The choices that you make when you’re eating influence your metabolism and your brain. He also connected diet to chronic inflammation and brain health, noting that “What happens when you have a poor diet is you enter a state of chronic inflammation. This affects your brain.”

“Ultra-processed food represents 50 percent of nutrition for most Americans,” says Verdin. “These foods are not engineered for nutrition; they’re engineered for palatability and to make you eat more.”