If you were the devil and your goal was to keep an entire nation physically, mentally, and emotionally unwell, what strategies would you employ? The answer may not be what you expect. The methods wouldn’t be dramatic or obvious. Instead, they’d be quiet, convenient, and convincing. You wouldn’t need to enslave people — you’d just need to influence their choices. Here’s what that might look like.

1. Normalize Poor Nutrition

First, you’d attack the food supply. Make nutrient-poor, highly processed food the easiest, cheapest, and most accessible option. Fill grocery stores with addictive sugar, refined carbs, seed oils, and artificial additives. You’d market these foods as “quick,” “fun,” and “convenient,” while discrediting whole, nourishing foods as “boring,” “time-consuming,” or “expensive.”

You wouldn’t ban healthy eating — you’d just make it inconvenient, confusing, and socially awkward.

2. Undermine Movement

Next, you’d remove physical labor from daily life. Promote cars, screens, and desk jobs. Package movement as optional — something for people with “extra time.” Turn exercise into a chore. Replace outdoor play with digital entertainment. Disconnect people from the joy of movement until walking a few blocks feels like a burden.

The goal: shrink the body’s capacity while selling temporary comfort.

3. Glorify Stress and Busyness

To wear people down mentally and physically, you’d praise overwork. Glorify hustle culture. Make rest feel lazy and guilt-inducing. Push people to fill every minute with obligation, distraction, or stimulation. Keep their minds so overloaded that they never get quiet enough to reflect or reset.

Chronic stress, after all, weakens the immune system, disrupts sleep, and drives emotional eating — the perfect recipe for burnout.

4. Undervalue Sleep

Sleep would be the first thing to go. You’d market the idea that successful people get by on 4 or 5 hours a night. Keep people scrolling until midnight and waking to alarms they dread. Blur the lines between work and rest so thoroughly that people never fully power down.

Sleep is one of the most powerful health tools — which makes it an ideal target.

5. Divide Communities

Disconnection would be a priority. You’d discourage family meals, weaken community bonds, and drive wedges through online conflict. You’d promote individualism while eroding trust. The lonelier people feel, the more vulnerable they become to depression, anxiety, addiction, and poor health choices.

Isolation isn’t just emotional — it’s biological.

6. Medicalize Every Symptom

Finally, you’d treat the symptoms, not the root causes. Convince people that the answer to every issue lies in a pill, procedure, or subscription plan. Make sure that addressing lifestyle, diet, and stress feels overwhelming or naive. If you can shift people’s trust from their own bodies to external authorities, you win long-term.

Final Thoughts

If you wanted to keep a nation sick, you wouldn’t need to poison the water or engineer a virus. You’d just need to create a culture that chooses comfort over vitality, distraction over reflection, and convenience over connection.

The antidote? Awareness, intention, and reclaiming ownership of your health one decision at a time.