ABSTRACT: This feature addresses the concurrent threats posed by processes that increasingly control what we eat, how we think and worsen the health of our environment. The damage to our well-being by the synergy generated by these developments is too obvious and cannot be ignored. It is important to look at the whole picture. Given the geopolitical environment, strongly rooted multinational corporate interests and short-term nature of decision making, it is not clear how human societies can cope with these threats.
The Triple Jeopardy: A brief introduction...
1. Ultra-Processed Food (UPF): Since the middle of the 20th century, we are eating ever greater quantity of industrially processed food. UPF, relatively inexpensive and designed to be addictive, is dense in calories but poor in essential nutrients (minerals and vitamins). UPF also contains harmful additives. UPF has fuelled global rise in metabolic syndrome (MetS) (see Appendix 1) leading to an exponential increase in non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
2. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI): What UPF does to the body, GenAI does to the mind. Digital technology before year 2000 (used in earlier smartphones and social media) was based on simple user prompts; however, GenAI generates entirely new but human-like outputs. We are increasingly outsourcing creative and analytical reasoning to GenAI. The resulting over-reliance on "intelligent machines" will result in social degeneration and GenAI addiction syndrome. Reduced critical thinking and analytical skills can be extremely damaging to the human society. Additionally, GenAI chatbots are fuelling a mental health crisis among vulnerable populations (more on this later).
3. Environmental Degradation (EnvDeg): EnvDeg refers to the worrying changes happening to the environment of our planet - global warming, melting ice, sea-level rise, extreme events (wild fires, droughts, flooding), pollution, microplastics and more. The adverse effects of climate change (CC) already affect millions of people with increased stress, food insecurity, loss of habitats, freshwater bankruptcy, migration etc. CC is expected to get much worse over the next decades and threatens irreversible damage to global systems we rely on - the very foundations of human civilisation. Urban areas are growing rapidly world-wide and cities are where pollution tends to be higher. Air pollution, microplastics, chemicals in water all contribute to poor physical and mental health of people living in cities. It is a moot point as to how long the earth will be able to support the current level of human population.
The three actors have set a scene when our physical, mental and environmental well-being are deeply threatened. Any one threat is bad enough on its own but the synergy generated by the three is a matter of utmost concern.
But first - let us look at the evidence and then discuss what options do we have.
EVIDENCE: Until about year 1800, humans lived on earth without making a serious impact on the environment. Emerging technologies engendered rapid increase in life expectancy and living standards. Medical advances helped to double the life expectancy during the past 200 years. Living in a rich country helped but significant improvements were seen globally.
Another characteristic of NCDs is that the disease takes several decades to set in (before obvious symptoms appear); and the patient normally suffers from a loss of expected good health for a number of years (typically 10 to 12 years) before death. While the longevity might still be 80 years, the person enjoys healthy life for only 65 to 70 years. This is unfortunate and nullifies the spectacular gains made in the past 200 years.
NCDs are the result of a person suffering from metabolic syndrome (MetS) which is described in Appendix 1. The chronic low grade inflammation, a hallmark of MetS, significantly increases the risk of developing cardiovascular heart disease (CVD), strokes, cancers, type 2 diabetes and dementia. The immune system becomes confused too and is likely to start attacking body's own organs - resulting in an increasing number of the so-called autoimmune diseases (AUTD). The next slide shows how the occurrence of autoimmune diseases has increased since 1950.
Mental Health Disorders: In step with physical health, mental health has also seen negative impact over the past 50 years. A study published in May 2026 in Lancet has found that between 1990 and 2023, mental health cases globally have increased by a worrisome amount. They estimate that, in 2023, there were 1.17 billion cases of mental disorder globally; equivalent to 14,210 cases per 100,000 population. This represents a 95.5% increase 33 years! The mental disorders included in the study were anxiety, major depression, log-term depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, conduct disorder, ADHD, anorexia & bulimia nervosa and others.
The 2025 mental health report (U.K.) highlights that 20.2% adults are living with some mental health disorder. The rates for 16 to 24 years old have increased from 17.5% in 2007 to 25.8% in 2023-24 - this is a 47% increase in 16 years!
It is apparent that globally the physical and mental health has significantly deteriorated over the past 50 years. These observations may be linked to some underlying causes that started around 1960s particularly the introduction of ultra-processed foods at industrial scale. Artificial intelligence and environmental degradation are now reaching a stage that their adverse effects are starting to become significant. It might not be too late to control the downward slide, but strong, globally co-ordinated actions are required.
Let us look at the individual stress factors in somewhat more detail:
1. Ultra-Processed Food (UPF): Several recent publications have highlighted the many adverse effects of the transition from naturally prepared food to industrially processed edible stuff (1, 2). More than 50% of our calories now come from UPF - food stuff that has undergone, at an industrial scale, processing that leaves the final product bearing little resemblance to the original ingredients. In UPF, almost all nutrients have been replaced by preservatives, emulsifiers, hydrogenated oils, high fructose syrup, artificial colours and taste & flavour enhancers. These additives have been shown to have adverse health effects. Appendix 2 gives a couple of examples of the loss of nutritional content in UPF.
UPF are industrially manufactured and share the following characteristics:
- UPF typically contain large quantity of sugar, fat, carbohydrates - a combination that is very appealing to human taste.
- UPF are calorie dense
- UPF tend to be very low in fiber content - Fiber is the main food for gut microbiome.
- UPF are designed to be softer, easier to eat and digest. You eat them more quickly than traditional foods - it is easy to overconsume UPF.
- UPF does not provide balanced nutrients - they contain large amounts of carbohydrates that are readily broken down in glucose spiking blood sugar levels.
- UPF are addictive and it is easy to overconsume them leading to weight gain and obesity in people.
- UPF are mass produced and have a long shelf life. This makes them relatively inexpensive. In developing countries, UPF easily replace the healthy traditional foods. The case-study of Muana, Brazil illustrates clearly how Big Food is exploiting the poorer communities by pushing cheap, addictive UPF at a great cost in terms of the health of entire communities.
- Many of the additives in UPF adversely affect human health - some are even carcinogenic.
- Soft drinks and fruit juices are very highly processed with excessive amounts of free sugar that is instantly absorbed in the stomach. This spikes blood sugar levels leading to health issues (MetS).
2. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI): Traditional Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been immensely helpful in almost all field of human activity. It might be fair to call traditional AI a task-oriented intelligence. It could only follow pre-defined rules and instructions (algorithms) in order to find the answer to a specific problem - AI did not have the power of independent thinking. AI has been crucial in improving efficiency, and is embedded in countless systems we interact everyday. I list some examples where traditional AI plays a fundamental role:
Search engines/Virtual Assistants/Fraud Detection/SPAM Filters/Facial Recognition/Customer Service Chatbots/Predictive Text/Medical Imaging and Diagnostics/Autonomous Vehicles/Industrial Robots
Unlike traditional AI, GenAI is capable of independent thinking and generation of original concepts. Recent developments in Generative AI (GenAI) opens up immense scope for innovation and creative use in personal and work space. Even though GenAI opens up great opportunities in innovation and research, there are red-flags pointing to potential damaging influence of GenAI on the way humans think and operate (ref).
A comparison between Traditional AI and GenAI is useful in understanding why GenAI may in fact have negative influence on human creativity and seriously damage those human qualities that have distinguished us from other animals. This I do in appendix 3 (For more details, please see OpenLearning at MIT paper, AI and GenAI). Here, we shall limit our focus to the way GenAI might affect psychological and cognitive health. For a more general discussion please see 1, 2 , 3.
The popularity of GenAI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Character.AI has grown rapidly - these systems are largely unregulated and there is growing concern about their psychological impact on users (see Ref). Instances of users being encouraged to commit suicide, seek divorce etc. are frequently reported.
A recent paper points to the mechanisms through which GenAI chatbots may be increasing psychosis risk. The next slide presents a brief analysis:
The paper "What these bots are saying is worsening delusions, and it's causing enormous harm" describes a number of case studies - not only young adolescents but also grown-ups are equally vulnerable when using GenAI conversational chatbots.
A recent paper highlights several areas of concern including cognition, critical thinking, mental health, social connections, body image, physical activity and sleep.
AI related technologies are advancing rapidly. Clinical research, regulatory framework and ethical oversight are not able to keep up with the consequences of the rapidly growing use of Ai in our societies. Tech companies are driven by the need to enhance share-holder returns and design their AI products to increase the user interaction time with their products. It is important to give proper attention to user health and safety by the government regulators and the wider communities need to be better informed of the dangers of unfettered use of AI.
Cognitive Atrophy: There’s growing concern that an over-reliance on AI could lead to cognitive decline (1, 2). Human creativity and original thinking owes a lot to the struggle and hard work one does in solving problems. 'Use it or lose it' is definitely true when it comes to cognition - one needs to make effort to develop mental faculties. GenAI provides a simple and easy way to find answers and saves us a lot of effort and hard work. One can easily slide into a state when they stop trying to work out solutions themselves (loss of independent problem solving skills) - an overreliance on AI. This creates an addiction syndrome and also atrophies our cognitive abilities.
3. Environmental Degradation (EnvDeg): Humans have put earth's environment under great stress - the possibility of irreversible harmful changes to the environment are now routinely discussed. In simple terms, human population and consumption have been growing exponentially, and earth's capacity to sustain such consumption is already vastly exceeded. This has resulted in environmental degradation that manifests itself in various forms - global warming and pollution are the most talked-about changes. Projecting 50 years in the future, it may be stated with confidence that lives of billions of people will be imperilled by catastrophes like sea-level rise, extreme heat, droughts, flooding, wild fires, increased air pollution, micro-plastics, freshwater availability etc. In the hotter earth, vast areas might become uninhabitable with millions of people forced to migrate. Sea level rise and other climate stresses could result in over 2 billion refugees by the year 2100. Extreme weather events, much stronger tides, wild fires etc. will create massive problems for governments to manage. I give two examples relating to water and food insecurity in a hotter world:
Freshwater Bankruptcy: The world is moving towards a situation when we shall not have enough freshwater to meet all our needs. We would have exhausted most of our freshwater reservoirs over the next few decades - this will affect agriculture, industries and personal water availability. In February 2026, I had published a detailed analysis of freshwater insecurity and refer you to my blog to appreciate the situation. This is a great example of how even the developed countries are being affected now by the overexploitation of earth's resources (See also https://uk.yahoo.com/news/colorado-river-nearing-collapse-trump-093000969.html).
Rice Production: Rice is a staple crop for >50% of the world population and 90% rice is cultivated in Asia's paddy fields. The demand for rice has quadrupled over the past 60 years as shown in the slide and almost 800 million tons of rice is produced annually - mostly in Asia. Over 560 million people in poverty (income less that $1.25 per day) live in rice producing areas (see ref).
In the warming world, serious disruption is likely to be caused to the amount of rice that can be cultivated. There are several effects at play here. Firstly, rice photosynthesis shuts down at 40C - the current rice production is limited to places where the mean annual temperature is below 28C and the maximum temperature in the warm season stays on average below 33C (1, 2).
Not all places on earth warm at the same rate - this results in weather patterns shifting - fertile area may experience drought and vice versa. Rice is a water intensive crop and rice paddies are built over centuries and it will not be possible to just start growing rice elsewhere.
Additionally, sea level rise will likely inundate low-lying rice growing areas, like Bangladesh, with salt water. This will not only destroy the crops but also leach harmful toxic minerals like arsenic into the ground water and soil.
It is not difficult to understand that in a few decades, the life as we know now could be seriously disrupted. The mental and physical stress created will be difficult to manage. Geopolitics will be a nightmare and one can visualise countries going to war on water and territorial disputes.
Unfortunately, most world governments do not see EnvDeg as an immediate threat and are reluctant to take effective measures to address the problems. Also, EnvDeg will affect developing countries much more severely - it is the developed countries that have and continue to cause the problem. However, developed countries will not be immune to the effects of the worsening global environment and many traumatic events are already happening and affecting the lives of people in the rich countries (1, 2, 3).
An additional burden is air, water and land pollution throughout the world. How microplastics affect human health is not at all clear but the first indications are that they are not benign and can cause health problems (see reference).
The main takeaway from the above discussion is that the stress level globally will be significantly raised with billions of people living as refugees and most of the rest coping with unpredictable climate with extreme weather events.
Discussion: The recent developments (UPF and GenAI) are chipping away human faculties of good health, creativity and enterprise against a backdrop of rapid environmental decay. Many studies have highlighted these issues and have emphasized the need of urgent action. Powerful industrial interests (food, drink and energy companies) stand in the way of taking meaningful actions. Big food and energy companies use tactics pioneered by the tobacco industry; for example, in the case of food companies, the strategies might involve (1, 2):
- Lobbying governments to water down and delay public health measures
- Advocating voluntary self-regulation
- Funding research and advisory panels to create confusion regarding the direct link between their products and disease.
- Sponsor sport events, health programs to give the impression of supporting health in the community.
- Emphasize individual responsibilities, framing obesity and ill health as personal failures.
The energy production (fossil fuel) companies use almost exactly the same sheet as the food companies to delay meaningful regulations, and create misinformation & doubt about the impact of their activities on the environment. I refer you to a couple of good references (1, 2).
Regulating AI is more complicated. Artificial Intelligence has driven unprecedented human progress in work and personal domains; however, heavy reliance on GenAI can cause cognitive atrophy and other psychiatric issues. One must be careful in how AI is used and certainly urgent regulations are required for limiting the use of AI. The 30% rule for AI has been suggested as a guiding principle - the rule says that AI should handle 70% of repetitive and preparatory work, while humans retain 30% of oversight, creativity and judgement - a sensible looking compromise. The difficulty is that the capabilities of AI are changing extremely rapidly and it is not always possible to know what is the best way forward.
I welcome any comments about what one can/should do to manage the situation discussed in this article.
Appendix 1:
Appendix 2:
