Joy Kong, MDRegenerative Medicine Physician, Educator, and Entrepreneur

Why Food Quality in America Is So Broken

12 Feb 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:11

In this segment of her YouTube video, Dr. Joy Kong recounts her personal approach to eating in the United States since arriving in 1992. She emphasizes a strict avoidance of “junk” foods, limiting fast‑food consumption to three meals in her entire U.S. life. She steers clear of high‑sugar soft drinks, fried foods, and especially industrial seed oils, which she links to inflammation and carcinogenic risk. Instead, she prefers olive oil, prioritizes protein, and restricts carbohydrate intake, opting only for complex carbs sourced from vegetables, sweet potatoes, squash, and occasional quinoa. The narrative underscores her belief that dietary choices are central to health and critiques the American food environment that makes unhealthy options ubiquitous.

Chapters

Don't you guys use olive oil? Don't you like, why? And he said, but you're in America. What is your diet look like? It has always been very important for me not to put junk in my body. Like, even though I came to the US, I think 1992, I remember just hearing about fast food and how horrible they are for you. So I may have eaten hamburger, you know, as far as fast food, no more than three times in my life ever since 1992. Right. So that's. That's how much I tried to stay away from it. Not, number one is to avoid junk. And the soft drinks. High sugar and additive drinks definitely stay away from those. And then there are some other zones that would trap you. One, I think, is the fried food. What the frying process can do to food and how it can be carcinogenic. And it changes a lot of things. Not to mention the oil. The oil itself, the fat people have a lot more awareness about the bad oil seed oils. They're causing a lot of inflammation. I try to eat a little bit more protein and avoid carbs if I can. Of course, from vegetables is fine. If it's complex carb, from maybe sweet potato squash, you know, I may eat a little bit of quinoa, a little bit. But I try to not have so much carb.