I watch television commercials the way an anthropologist studies ritualistic behavior and social custom. I scrutinize jingles, spots and calculated imagery with the sincere intensity of an archaeologist gingerly brushing away fine dust from a buried cache of Bronze Age tools. Unlike those trained and tenured -ologists, however, I realize the human’s truest evolutionary coup isn’t its opposable thumb, jumbo brain, verbal and written language, or predilection for bipedal locomotion. No, the human—that unquestionable apex of beasts, the very offspring of God—is the world’s solitary salesman.

A simple twist of perspective turns the explorer into the entrepreneur, and suddenly human history collapses under basic economics. Trade has long been a purpose for social interaction among cultures and communities across the globe. (Or, in the absence of mutual commerce, conquest, pillage and the search for natural resources fill in as compelling economic motivators.) While neither exploration nor entrepreneurship classify as simple tasks, they establish systems that encourage ease and promote social wealth. If someone in the village specializes in baking bread and someone else in smithing horseshoes, you might build a cart, strap it to your freshly shod horse and deliver bread to outlying neighbors in exchange for vegetables and eggs. This concept succeeds because people crave convenience; biology hardwires us for energy conservation. Innovations, therefore, must address the desire for increased ease or face certain failure in the marketplace.

During my prime-time studies I find that commercial airtime divides itself neatly into three general categories: pharmaceuticals, processed food and other “can’t miss” TV programming. I take a dim view: Ours has become a culture, dare I say, world, dependent on endless buying and selling, and it is impossible to determine whether this is a perversion of historical trade or its inevitable outcome. One gets the sense that the Cola Wars are the spice trade’s direct evolutionary result.

In their rosiest iterations competition and choice are the consumer’s best friends. Combined, they work like a stupefying gas, infiltrating the nooks and crannies of the popular imagination, softening its resolve with caustic determination. Wander the grocery aisles and you risk overstimulation. Eyes bulge at the array of boxes, jars, pouches, bottles, bags, tins and cans. Jaws drop before the 17 varieties of flavored coffee creamer. I even feel a little woozy at the kaleidoscopic market segmentation of orange juice: Grovestand, Hand-Squeezed, Low Pulp, Calcium-Fortified, Original, Heartwise, Light ‘n’ Healthy.

Every ridiculous and rational product represents pinpoint R&D, expensive consumer analyses and experimental rollouts. Reading market research presents the strange feeling that humans are a madding horde of insatiable insects. Individual choices coagulate into lump-sum trends. Our every act is monitored and analyzed by researchers intent on providing the news of that next big-boom window for certain products. Incidentally, the heavy hitters early in 2004 were drinkable yogurt, dietetic chocolate and the low-carb siblings of everything from potato chips to pasta sauce. As a nation of cash-strapped consumers, I doubt we are truly equipped to contend with the sleek campaigns and low-cost guarantees of retailers and manufacturers willing to fabricate our every whim.

Convenience breeds in the American consumer a bizarre hybrid of inactivity and haste. We are in a constant rush to exert as little effort as possible. For all the time-saving gizmos typifying modern America—microwaves, PDAs, Swiffer Wet-Jets—conventional wisdom declaims ours an “on-the-go!” lifestyle. If the commercials are to be believed, we move around so ceaselessly we clamor for meal options only slightly more taxing than an IV drip. How else to describe the ergonomic handling of soup and tortilla chips in plastic bottles? Or the advent of the milk-’n’-cereal bar?

Whether or not any individual’s pace matches the fevered pitch of the stereotypical nine-to-fiver/soccer mom/high-school student, everyone lives a life colored by convenience. We have backed ourselves into a corner. Luckily, everything we need is within easy reach. Survival has largely become a matter of navigating the marketplace. While it may sound easier than spear-hunting or cultivating maize, finding the healthiest way through this sea of choices is increasingly complex. The food industry presents a compelling example of the disjunction between consumers and their best interest.

Throughout 2003, the media started paying a lot of attention to America’s rising obesity and overweight rates. Statistics flew like shuttlecocks at the World Badminton Championship, proving one thing unmistakably: We are fat.

I continually read scientific reports and news articles that detailed “new” risks associated with poor nutrition and inactivity—newbies like heart disease, Type II diabetes and certain cancers—that collectively account for 60 percent of the annual global death toll. Source after source presented the numbers, colored the story with a word like “alarming” or “shocking” and promptly ceased to make an argument against the prevalence of convenience foods in the typical American diet. Not because the relationship doesn’t exist, but because unequivocal data supporting the connection between processed, preservative-pumped, packaged food and obesity doesn’t exist. It seems that while the food industry sugarcoats the problem with a spate of new products for dieters, everyone else looks the other way.

The World Health Organization, however, has taken note—drafting a global strategy on diet, physical activity and health and circulating it to member countries for approval. Poor nutrition and a sedentary lifestyle now affect people everywhere, and the WHO considers them factors in the worldwide prevalence of deadly heart disease, cancers and diabetes. The proposed strategy encourages continued research into the health effects of diets high in refined sugar and saturated fats. Equally reasonable, in my opinion, the WHO recommends restrictions in food marketing geared toward children who lack the perspective to parse fact from fun.

The Health and Human Services department of the U.S. government, on the other hand, resists the logic of prevention. During January’s WHO executive board meeting, the U.S. agency stalled the implementation of this strategy, challenging its scientific efficacy on the grounds that no data yet proves advertising sugary, fatty, salty foods to children causes obesity or that obesity itself is caused by certain foods. Such an incendiary response from the United States is odd and more than a little troubling. Most of the language in the draft simply urges the committed integration between governments, health-care providers, and private sectors—including the food industry—to educate consumers about the risks and reality of obesity. The World Health Assembly convenes in May, when this strategy will be revisited, and maybe the United States will have found some science it likes.

I have my doubts. Undeniable fact has a way of stymieing the creative force of the free-market economy—arguably the linchpin of our democratic success. In a consumer-driven culture, information is subject to multiple interpretations, each one representing a different outcome in choice. Everyone plays at this game, too. The government tells me that there are no good or bad foods, only good or bad choices; the food industry tells me that GMOs are of no concern and that refined sugar makes life more fun; and squabbling consumer-affairs groups square off over my trust, dangling the “truth” before my eyes. The marketplace can be mystifying despite the power we wield over it.

What we purchase today influences our choices tomorrow, but debate over the consumer’s best interest sneakily undermines that control. Food manufacturers brilliantly utilize our spendthrift laziness to their advantage. Any attempt by the government to regulate the food industry—say in the realm of nutritional or country-of-origin labeling—meets with resistance because of the cost such changes pass on to consumers. As long as the big-label food manufacturers keep the prices down, consumers apparently feel like they’re coming out on top. But money saved in the checkout lane has a way of creeping out of the consumer’s wallet eventually.

Obesity-related health problems cost the United States upward of $75 billion in 2003, which might explain the Senate’s December 2003 passing of the Improved Nutrition and Physical Activity (IMPACT) Act. This legislation, which now awaits approval from the House, provides grants for training health professionals and for community programming designed to encourage healthy eating and healthy levels of physical activity. Vague terminology burdens potential grantees rather than offering them any stringent guidelines on how “healthy” a program must be before it’s fundable.

A second bill, introduced to the House late in January, scores a boon for the food industry, which seeks to avoid the big cash payouts currently hammering the tobacco industry. The Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act, if passed, will preempt “frivolous” class-action lawsuits filed by dissatisfied, portly customers. So, while the government addresses health issues facing citizens, it seems less eager to do the same for consumers. (How such distinctions are determined is beyond me.)

The twisted relationship between government, industry and the individual consumer has likely complicated the practice of trade for centuries. At the heart of any “even trade” lies the residue of a hard sell or the gloating concealed in finding a pushover. Why would anyone agree to an exchange if they didn’t perceive the result in their favor? It seems improbable that two people or groups could ever place precisely the same value on any one thing or tangible purchase. What then of health and well-being? Are they commodities to buy and sell like microwave meals and protein bars? Or have we been too busy to think about the fairness of our daily deals?