In June 2026, Sri Lanka's Ministry of Health banned a long list of foods from school canteens across the country: sausages, burgers, pizza, doughnuts, ice cream, biscuits, cakes, pastries, instant noodles, flavoured milk, energy drinks, deep-fried snacks, even bottled sauces. In their place: rice, fruit, vegetables, fish, eggs and unsweetened drinks.
If parts of that list read like ordinary food — the things children simply eat — that is the point worth sitting with. Much of what we have come to accept as everyday food is contributing to how unwell we are. The science explaining why has moved quickly over the past two years, and most of it hasn't reached the dinner table yet.
The problem is bigger than sugar
Sugar gets most of the blame, and deserves some of it. But the larger issue is an entire category of food that researchers call ultra-processed: products assembled industrially from refined ingredients, additives and preservatives, formulated to taste as good as possible and last as long as possible. Packaged biscuits and snacks, soft drinks, instant noodles, sweetened cereals, sausages — most things that come in a bright wrapper.
For years the concern was mainly weight and diabetes. The more recent research points somewhere less expected: the brain.
- A 2024 study in Neurology found that the more ultra-processed food people ate, the higher their risk of memory and thinking problems, and of stroke.
- A 2025 analysis drawing on the long-running Framingham Heart Study reported that each additional daily serving was linked to roughly a 13% higher Alzheimer's risk in middle-aged adults. Those eating ten or more servings a day had close to three times the risk.
- Further 2025 research linked heavy intake to early signs of Parkinson's disease.
These are associations rather than proof of cause, but they point consistently in one direction, and the brains with the most at stake are the ones still developing. In Sri Lanka, sweets, chocolates and crisps are one of the ways parents and grandparents show affection — as treats, as comfort, as convenience. The intent is good. The cost simply arrives later, and quietly: in children who might otherwise have been sharper, calmer and stronger.
Why "eat less, move more" keeps failing
You cannot out-train a poor diet. Exercise matters — strength training especially, since keeping muscle is one of the better predictors of a strong, independent old age — and nobody should give it up. But as a weight-loss tool on its own, it is weak. Food does most of the work in body composition and health; the common estimate is around 80%. The gym alone will not make you lean.
The usual explanation for why diets fail — not enough willpower — is mostly wrong. The problem is biological, not moral.
Part of it is that ultra-processed food is designed to beat you. Manufacturers engineer products to hit a precise "bliss point" of sugar, fat and salt that overrides the body's natural signal that it has had enough. The second packet disappearing without much thought isn't a lapse in character. It is the product doing what it was built to do. (This is the central argument of Chris van Tulleken's Ultra-Processed People.)
Sleep plays a part that almost nobody connects to eating. After a single bad night, insulin sensitivity can fall by around 25%, cravings for sweet, calorie-dense food rise, and people eat more the following day — even after a full meal. Chronic stress pushes in the same direction, specifically toward sugar. Tired, stressed and surrounded by packaged food, your own biology is working against you. Relying on discipline alone is exhausting, which is why most diets are over by February.
The way out isn't more willpower. It's changing what is on the plate and in the cupboard, so the easy choice is also the better one.
What actually works
People want to know which diet wins. The more useful answer is that nearly all the good ones agree on the basics, and the basics are simple.
For living longer and healthier, the evidence consistently favours the Mediterranean pattern: vegetables, beans and lentils, nuts, whole grains, olive oil and fish, with little red or processed meat. It was ranked the world's top diet in 2025 and is associated with lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, several cancers and dementia, as well as slower ageing at the cellular level. Part of the reason it performs so well is that it is enjoyable — real food people can eat for life.
For repairing damage already done — losing fat, ending cravings, correcting blood sugar — cutting carbohydrates, through lower-carb or ketogenic eating, is a powerful tool. Which leads to a fact most people don't know:
Type 2 diabetes can often be put into remission with food. Not just managed, but reversed — blood sugar back in the normal range, medication reduced or stopped, under a doctor's care. Landmark trials have shown it. For a disease that grew from around 200 million cases worldwide in 1990 to 830 million by 2022, that is not a minor detail. It is one of the most underused pieces of good news in medicine.
What the effective approaches share is the whole point: whole foods, very little ultra-processed food, little sugar, plenty of fibre, protein and good fats. The debate over Mediterranean versus keto is a rounding error next to the gap between either of them and how most of us actually eat.
Two assumptions worth retiring:
- Three meals a day isn't a biological requirement. It's a modern habit. For most of human history people went long stretches without eating. Eating within a shorter daily window — finishing dinner earlier, pushing breakfast later — works well for many people, because a lot of hunger turns out to be schedule rather than need.
- Juice is not a health food. Juicing strips out the fibre and leaves a glass of fast sugar. Eat the fruit instead.
The shortcut everyone is asking about
Any discussion of weight in 2026 has to include the injections — Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro. They work, and substantially: the strongest can reduce body weight by around a fifth. For people with serious obesity or diabetes they are a genuine medical advance, and there is nothing to be ashamed of in using them.
The limitation, though, reinforces the argument of this piece. When people stop, the weight usually returns, and most who quit end up restarting. The drugs also tend to take muscle along with fat, and people on them often move less. The medication quiets appetite, but it doesn't change the body's habits or what's in the kitchen. Once it stops, people drift back unless the food underneath has changed. A drug can provide a head start. It can't do the part that lasts.
Feeding the gut
One of the larger shifts in nutrition science is the recognition that we are not only feeding ourselves. We are feeding the trillions of bacteria in the gut, and they in turn influence weight, immunity, mood and even the brain. A diverse gut community is protective; a depleted one is associated with obesity, diabetes and Alzheimer's.
Fibre helps build that diversity, but the more surprising finding concerns fermented food. In a Stanford trial, people who ate more fermented food saw gut diversity rise and inflammation fall — more reliably than those who simply added fibre.
Sri Lankans already have this in their food heritage: curd and buffalo curd, fermented rice and string-hopper batters, pickles and achcharu. Over the years we have been quietly swapping them for packaged snacks. It's worth swapping back.
What most of us were never told
A handful of findings that tend to surprise people:
Milk doesn't suit everyone. Most South Asian adults are lactose intolerant; here it is the genetic norm rather than the exception. There is also some evidence on the thyroid: in one study of people with an underactive thyroid and lactose intolerance, restricting lactose improved thyroid function and how well their medication worked. Milk is not the universal good most of us were taught it was.
"Healthy" labels are marketing. Fruit juice, low-fat flavoured yoghurt (with sugar added to replace the fat), most granola and breakfast cereals, "multigrain" bread that is still mostly refined flour, sports and energy drinks, sweetened plant milks. The front of the pack sells; the ingredients list informs. Nor are "diet" and "zero-sugar" versions a clean escape — the World Health Organization now advises against artificial sweeteners for weight control, and they may affect the gut and blood-sugar regulation.
Sugar can damage the liver without alcohol. Fatty liver disease is now the most common liver condition in the world, and it is driven heavily by sugar, particularly the fructose in sweetened drinks. It is usually silent for years before it becomes serious. Caught early, it is largely reversible by cutting sugar.
Seed oils aren't the poison the internet claims. The scientific consensus is that oils such as sunflower and canola are fine in normal amounts, and better for the heart than butter, lard or coconut oil. Their reputation suffers mostly from the fried and packaged food they tend to appear in. The problem is the chips, not the oil.
Alcohol isn't neutral. The body treats it as a toxin to clear first, pausing fat-burning while it does. The calories go largely to the liver and the waistline.
There is now plastic in us. In 2025, researchers found microplastic particles accumulating in human brain tissue — considerably more than in 2016, and more again in people who had dementia. A separate study found them in the arterial plaque of most patients examined, who went on to have roughly 4.5 times the risk of heart attack or stroke. What this ultimately means isn't yet clear. It is still a reasonable case for drinking from glass or steel rather than the scratched plastic bottle that should have been replaced a year ago.
Living longer, and living well
There is a useful distinction here. Lifespan is how long you live. Healthspan is how long you live well — mobile, clear-headed, independent and free of disease. We have come to accept a long, unwell old age as simply what ageing looks like. Much of it isn't ageing at all. It is accumulated damage, a large share of it from food, and a large share of that avoidable.
The way of eating that extends life also tends to improve it along the way: stronger, sharper and steadier into later years. There is no particular reason most people should decline as early as they do. Eat well, and it is plausible to have both.
Where this is heading
None of this is cause for despair. Younger people are far better informed about nutrition than any generation before them, and governments are beginning to act. The school canteen ban is a serious step, and the current administration has shown more willingness to address food and nutrition than its predecessors.
There is more to do. The food pyramid taught in schools is out of date — built on a carbohydrate-heavy base when the evidence now favours more protein and good fats — which means we are handing children the wrong map at the age it matters most. Food labelling also needs real enforcement; companies shouldn't be free to describe unhealthy products in healthy-sounding terms. A country's strength rests on the health of its people, and that foundation is currently weaker than it should be.
There is a commercial point here too. Sri Lanka does not need another dessert shop. It needs businesses that make the healthy option convenient, affordable and genuinely desirable. That space is still largely open.
That gap is where Keto Queen came from. It started as a home business selling waffles, and it was doing well, until one question stopped us: would we give this, with all its sugar, to our own children? The honest answer was no. So we rebuilt it around a single aim — developing nutritious, low-sugar alternatives to the processed foods Sri Lankans eat every day.
The first is a nut mix of walnuts, almonds, pecans, pistachios and cranberries, balanced for protein and healthy fats so it actually keeps you full rather than spiking and dropping your energy. Almond-milk drinks and more will follow. One small business won't change a country's food culture. Enough of them, pointed in the right direction, can.
Where to start
No crash plan required. Pick a few of these and keep them:
- Cut ultra-processed food first. Not only sugar — the whole wrapper-and-barcode category. It is the single largest gain, for body and brain.
- Eat real food. The fewer steps between a plant or animal and your plate, the better. If your grandmother wouldn't recognise it as food, be sceptical.
- Include protein and good fats in every meal. They keep you full and break the craving cycle.
- Eat fruit rather than drinking it. Keep the fibre.
- Treat sleep and stress as part of your diet. They shape your cravings more than you think.
- Drink from glass or steel, not plastic.
- Aim for permanent, not perfect. A 90% version you keep for life beats a flawless one you abandon in a month.
One honest caveat: nutrition isn't entirely one-size-fits-all. Genetics and individual metabolism mean people respond somewhat differently, and anyone with a medical condition should change their diet with a doctor's guidance. But the direction of the evidence is about as settled as this field gets — away from ultra-processed food, toward whole foods, fibre, protein and good fats.
We spent a long time blaming willpower and relying on the gym. The real leverage was never there. It was always on the plate.