435: Is Big Food Poisoning Us? A Dietitian’s Perspective on Chronic Disease in America | Brigid Titgemeier, RD

What up, team? It's episode 435 of the Genius Life. Let's go. The genius life. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the show. I'm your host, Max Lugavere. And today I'm sitting down with the wonderful Brigid Tigemeyer, an incredible force in in functional nutrition with a mission to help people reclaim their health through personalized, data driven approaches. With a master's in Public Health, Nutrition Board, certification in integrative and functional nutrition, and experience as a founding dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic center for Functional Medicine, Brigid's expertise is top notch and her passion is even more inspiring. In this episode, we dig into, among other things, my recent Senate testimony hearing on nutrition and why it's so urgently needed. Did you know that over 60% of adults in the United States have at least one chronic disease and childhood obesity has tripled in the past 50 years? Well, Bridget breaks down how industry influence is steering our dietary guidelines away from true health. And she raises serious concerns about chemicals in our food, chemicals that other countries ban or label with warning labels, but still somehow end up on our shelves. With her background as a dietitian and a mom, Bridget brings a no nonsense look at how we can fight back against this healthcare crisis by taking charge of own nutrition. You're going to want to listen through all the way to the end. You definitely don't want to miss a beat. And as always, share this episode with anyone who might benefit. And don't forget to leave us a review on your podcast app or subscribe.

If you enjoyed it.

And now, without further ado, let's dive in.

Brigid Tiggemeier, welcome to the podcast. How you doing?

Thank you. I'm so great.

Thanks for coming out.

Thanks for having me.

Well, so the big news as of our recording this is that I just got back from a historic Senate hearing in Washington, D.C. where the topic of the day was nutrition, Nutrition in America. But you weren't there. You have an objective take and you are a registered dietitian. So as a registered dietitian, what was your read on what went down in.

D.C. i thought that it was absolutely incredible. Thank you for going and thank you for speaking on behalf of the majority of Americans who are fed up with the way that our food industry is basically setting the agenda for all of the corruption that's going on that's really contributing to an enormous healthcare crisis, not only for us, but particularly for our children, who are the most vulnerable and most susceptible to what's Happening with the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry and the enormous amount of corruption that exists in Washington D.C. so I would say as a dietitian, as a mom, I was just so happy to see you and Dr. Casey Means and Dr. Chris, Chris Palmer and so many incredible voices come together to unite to be like, this is not okay. And we are fed up. At the same time, though, I will say that I did have a feeling of where has everyone been? Like, it's so sad, it's actually devastating that this is the first time that something like this has happened when our health has been plummeting over the last 50 years. Like the health statistics. If you're in public health, you know the statistics. So why has this gone on? Like, why has no one sounded the alarm? Where was the food industry? Where was the healthcare industry? Where was our government to protect us as our health statistics continued to decline over the last 50 years? Like, why was this the first time that something like this was hosted?

Yeah, I don't know, but it's, you're right, it is crazy. I mean, I, I feel like the, the cat's been away. I don't know if that's, if that's the phrase, but it's like the cat's been away for seemingly as long as we've had dietary guidelines and you know, these regulatory bodies and they've, what they' able to get away with is just, it's, it's mind blowing.

It's mind blowing, right?

I mean the, these, these agencies like the fda, the usda, they've been set up to regulate industry. Instead they've become the beneficiaries of the industries which, which with which they were tasked to regulate. And the health of the American people has been the victim in all this completely.

And I think too that Jason said it best when he said we're operating off of a safe until proven guilty model, whereas every operates off of a guilty until proven safe model. So as you know, Vani Hari was pointing to all of the, the ingredients that are banned in other countries, that the same exact product from the same exact company is formulated differently in other countries. It's like, why do their children deserve that and we don't? Why do our children not deserve foods that don't have those food additives and food dyes included in it.

Yeah, she gets so much pushback from the so called evidence based community. But I don't understand why. I mean it's, it's as clear as day. These foods are engineered using cheaper ingredients, cheaper colorants that are Likely less safe. Because the Canadian.

I mean, she.

She showed very clearly at the. At the roundtable hearing a version of Froot Loops that was on set, that's on sale. On sale in Canada compared to the one that we get here in the United States. Here in the United States, they use these cheaper synthetic colorants that make the product colors more vivid, which is, I guess, more appealing to children. So, I mean, it's just all about.

The potentially larger margins for the companies. You have to.

Yeah. And larger margins for the companies because they're cheaper. The Canadian versions, the color, the colorants used were from watermelon and from like, annatto and sweet potato and turmeric and all this stuff. Yeah. Like, stuff that you would otherwise eat as part of a whole foods diet.

Right. I think that the issue is, is that evidence is weaponized and it's used at the expense of common sense. You know, as. This was actually something that happened to me when I was going through my training. I started out with the interest in using food as medicine because my parents sent me to a functional medicine doctor in 2005, and it completely changed the trajectory of my health. And I was like, wow, there has to be a million other people who are just like me who are being told by their doctor that nutrition has nothing to do their condition. And I want to help those people. And I did my senior project in high school on food is medicine. Wow. I got into then studying nutrition and becoming a dietitian. And it's very different than what I imagined. I was very excited about how rigorous of, you know, educational criteria that's required because you really have to, like, try hard because it's only a few courses short of a pre med major. But what people don't realize is the. The corruption and the industry ties to the American Dietetics association or the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that accepts millions, millions of dollars from these food companies that sets the agenda for our training, just like the pharmaceutical industry is setting the agenda for physicians training. So I would go through different, like, culinary classes for diabetes and call my mom after and say, isn't it weird that we took regular Cool Whip and then just substituted artificially sweetened Cool Whip as the diabetes menu? And my mom would be like, yeah, that's weird. And so my mom. My mom and dad have amazing common sense and intuition and they can see things. Like when my doctor said, nutrition has nothing to do with your condition, they were like, well, we're going to push harder because we really believe that this has to be the foundation before jumping to prescriptions. And they don't have a medical background. But it, we had enough common sense to be like, this is really strange.

Yeah, you feel like the American people are being gaslit completely.

Agencies completely gaslit. Every day people are being gaslit by their doctors told, oh, nutrition has nothing to do with your condition. Oh, just eat less, move more. It's just about calories in versus calories out. It couldn't be that hard. Right. Even though the majority of the people that are saying this to you are probably not even a normal weight. And not to, not to place judgment, but it really is. You know, you have to look around. It's like if it were really that easy, then 74% of the population wouldn't be overweight or obese. It's not a genetic problem. This is like an environmental problem.

Right. I mean, if the, if the solution is so much easier said than done, then it's not a solution.

Exactly. So I think people are gaslit every day in their doctor's office. I think moms are gaslit every single day that they're doing anything. If they have concerns about the foods that are in their school lunches, if they have concerns about anything that's going into their kid's body, it's like, oh, don't overreact. It's not that big of a deal. And it's like, no, it actually is the biggest deal that it could possibly be because this is my child's body and my child's health. I think that people are being gaslit left and right everywhere and it's borderline abusive, to be honest.

Yeah. I feel when people raise legitimate concerns today on social media, you know, there's this whole cabal of woke so called experts that will, that, that'll come after you essentially with the, it's like they, they have the same talking points that they push on repeat like everything is a chemical, the dose makes the poison. And I understand where that comes from. But they're just platitudes like they're not actually addressing, they're not actually addressing the concern. It's like they're straw manning the concerns of the American people that are just fed up with being fed junk, essentially foods with untested, unproven chemicals, chemicals that are independently untested, perhaps, let alone how they interact, you know, against the backdrop of all of these other exposures that a modern human is, you know, has to contend with. So it's just crazy to me.

Yeah, it's crazy to me too. I think when you think about like food chemists who are like, oh, it's just the dose that makes the poison. There's nothing wrong with this that make you seem like you're a crazy person for just wanting food dyes out of the food supply for, for kids or for not having a ton of pesticides sprayed all over our food, it's like, oh, it's just the dose that makes the poison. And it's almost like they're too smart to have the common sense. Sometimes I think people who are really smart like lack the common sense to be able to see the full picture. Where, when you're able to get so nitty gritty into the science and, and what you think is the safety, it's like, okay, well maybe there's for some reason this is on the generally recognized the safe list and isn't being mandated or regulated, I should say by the government. But look at what's happening around us. Can you, can you point to any other causes that are leading us down this spiral of absolutely demolished health? Like when you think about just the, the changes that have happened since the 1970s, with 74% of our population being overweight or obese, 50% being having pre diabetes or diabetes, we have, you know, an enormous rise in cancer. And not to mention the factors that go less acknowledged like autoimmune disease that we see in my business all the time, the correlation between nutrition and autoimmune diseases, digestive disorders. Like if you account for all of these factors, you're left with virtually zero percent of the population that doesn't have a nutrition related disease or condition that can be very much improved with improving a person's diet. And then you go even deeper and you look at kids, 40% of kids that are overweight or obese, you have enormous rise in food allergies, 50% increase from 1997, 2011, another 50% increase to 2020, and an enormous rise in anaphylaxis reactions up to 377% greater. It's like there's an, there's an enormous imbalance that's happening within the immune system. And then we think about neurologically, kids brains aren't functioning like they used to. We have double the rates of depression in kids from 2000, 2009, 2019, obesity or depression rates doubled from 8% to 16% in kids. We have 11% of kids that have ADHD. Like when you look at all factors that parents are having to deal with and try to navigate with just being able to have their kid, like Go to school and learn every day. It's like, why was this not a problem 30 years ago? Nothing in our genetics has changed, right?

Yeah, it's wild.

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So what do you think then is the, is the solution? I mean, because I feel for parents, you know, parents, parents are doing their best. Like, it's hard to be a parent. I'm not even a parent, but I, you know, my little brother just became a parent. And I see how difficult it is. And, and you see all of this information coming at people these days left and right on social media, conflicting information, and even from the mainstream media and our, you know, in our own dietary guidelines, you know, one, one iteration of the dietary guidelines will say to avoid eggs and dietary cholesterol and things like that. And then five years later, eggs are exonerated. You know, and that doesn't mean that eggs suddenly are not healthy or are healthy, whereas they weren't in the past. They were never unhealthy.

Right.

And so it's just like it feels like today to arrive at the truth, you have to essentially play a game of whack a mole with regards to.

Misinformation, a game of whack a mole, or trying to stick with the most common sense basic, you know, recommendations that even if someone is saying, oh this is safe, trying to avoid, you know, that's, you know, even though there's recommendations that are like organic doesn't really matter that much. You know, trying to, if you have the ability to, to make the organic choice as often as possible, you know, trying to just ignore those recommendations. That's personally what I do as just thinking about me as a consumer because there are a number of people, I mean if you look at the 164 page document of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the newest released, the word organic isn't mentioned once. The word food dye isn't mentioned once, the word pesticide isn't mentioned once. There's no acknowledgment around the food quality that's in the United States at all. And then you look at diseases that are associated with diet and the only diseases really that are mentioned are overweight and obesity. They mention it 81 times in the 164 page document. Cancer 20 times, diabetes 20 times, heart disease about 20 times. And then 0 times for Alzheimer's disease, 0 times, ADHD 0 times for autism, 0 times for autoimmune diseases, 0 times for gastrointestinal diseases. It's like all of these things, 1000% exist in abundance in the literature. But there's like some weird thing that's happening with the way that the guidelines are set that is largely driven by corruption, that it's going completely unacknowledged.

Well, where do you think the pushback comes from? I mean today if you mention organic, you get pushback from highly credentialed people, dietitians, PhDs in nutrition science who will say that there's like organic is literally just a waste of money.

Money.

Like it's just, it's just a marketing front of package label that has no bearing on, on human health, which, which I mean is, is gaslighting from my vantage point. But you're an expert so like where, where do you think that's coming from?

It's gaslighting from my perspective as well. I think that the hard thing is, is that let's go through a little bit of history with some of the changes that, and how long it takes because I think that that will help give people an appreciation for how much largely tied to the corruption that exists within the food industry and how long it takes for change to happen. So we have Trans fats would be a great example. Trans fats were documented to be producing an increased risk of coronary artery disease for a very long time before they were then banned in California in 2008. They weren't even added to the Nutrition facts label until 2006. They were banned from from California in 2008. Not until 2018 were they banned from the United States food supply. And then they gave the companies a few extra years to take them out of their formulations entirely so that they didn't have too much of an inconvenience. At the time, we knew that just 2 grams of trans fats per day significantly increased risk of coronary artery disease. And what they allowed the companies to do is round down with the amount of trans fats to make a 0 grams claim. So you could have 0.4 grams of trans fats. The label will tell you there's zero grams even though there's partially hydrogenated oils listed in the ingredient list. Front of package can also claim 0 grams of trans fats even though there's 0.4 grams. You'd only have to have four servings of that particular food, which most people eat more than one serving. And then you're at an increased risk of heart disease not even knowing it because the product is marketed as zero grams of trans fats.

Wow.

And 20 years ago people would have said, oh, the trans fats claims are over exaggerated. The same thing happened with added sugar. We had the FDA in 19, let me think the FDA in 1986. There started to be an increase in added sugar consumption after the Harvard researchers were paid to basically point the blame to fat and away from added sugar. That happened in the 60s. So that really set the agenda not only for research to blame total fat on heart disease, but it also then led food companies to add more added sugar and refined grains to our food supply. So by the 80s, added sugar consumption was increasing. And the FDA predicted in 1986 that sugar consumption would just regulate on its own, that they didn't need to do anything. It was in 1999 that the center for Science and the Public Interest and other health groups, they petitioned the FDA to say we need to have added sugar added to the nutrition Facts label so that it separates. It used to just be total sugars, remember?

Yeah.

So then they added the added. They were petitioning to add the added sugar line and to say we need a daily value, because the daily value set how much you can have in one day or how much is recommended to have in one day. So that A person could see if they're getting 100% of the daily value in this particular serving, that, that then. It wasn't until 2016 that the government announced the change the nutrition facts label to add the added sugar line. They were petitioned in 1999. That took 15 years for them to make those changes. It wasn't until 2020, sorry, 2015 to 2020, dietary guidelines for Americans that made a specific reference to having added sugar less than 10% of caloric intake. That was the first time that the national guidelines ever included the amount of added sugar that a person should limit to a specific amount. And it wasn't until 2020-2025, our most recent dietary guidelines, that it was recommended for children under two to not consume added sugar. That's in a very long time when we know that added sugar is the largest driver or one of the largest drivers of heart disease, of diabetes, of cancer, of fatty liver disease. And it took 20 years essentially, to have them come up to speed with what the evidence was showing so long ago and what these health organizations were petitioning so long ago. Like, the government takes a long time because they have so much money coming in from industry, from lobbying groups, from these PACs. So just like maybe most people don't realize that there's lobbying groups like the National Confectioners association that used to be called the American Candy association, they account for $37 billion of retail sales in the United States every single year. Do you know how much power they probably have? $37 billion of sales. They're representing the manufacturers, the farmers. I actually printed from their website. Their core values, happiness, responsibility, leadership, trust and community.

This is from what the National Confectioners association website says.

And then they have a candy pack. So the national association, the National Confectioners association is the lobbying group. And then the NCA candy pack is their pack where they take the money that they have, and then they fund congressmen and congresswomen and people that are in government to educate them on the importance of sugar in moderation for joy and decreasing people's stress and allowing people to have pleasures in life without the government telling them what they can or cannot eat. And when you look at what they.

Stand for, that should be illegal. I mean, people will find their enjoyment from food on their own, like, of their own accord. They'll seek out candy if that's. If they so choose. But the fact that we have, like a government essentially that's apologizing for this nutrient, if you want to call it that, for which there is no biological human need. Yeah. I mean it's just, it drives hyper palatability, it drives over consumption. It provides empty calories. It doesn't, you know, there's no satiety benefit from added sugar.

And then the average consumer is told just have more willpower, just eat less, just eat less, have more willpower, try to do the best for your kids. And it's like you don't realize you are up against billion dollar industries who are pedaling their products and choosing their profits over our health. And then on the back end we're paying $4.3 trillion in health care, 86% of which is going towards chronic disease food related food driven chronic diseases wild. So this is their pack. They show what they stand for. So I just showed like this one example, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. They stand for people who have snap, which is used to be referred to as food stamps. That's now called SNAP. This accounts for 58 billion or sorry, this accounts for $85 billion spent of taxpayer dollars per year that are given to people who can't afford food. 10 of that is spent on soda every year.

That's 10% of SNAP is spent on sugar sweetened beverages. Well, specifically soda. Right. So there are other sugar sweetened beverages on the market. $8.5 million specifically. Wow.

A year.

Wow.

And you can see their pack one what they stand for. One of the priorities that they stand for is snap because of course their companies are making so much. The companies that they represent are making so much money from SNAP. $8.5 billion if you're the soda industry. And so they stand for protecting these people. To have the ability to act like everyone else and be able to use a dollar in any way that they want.

Wow.

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So we're taking money from the government, spending 10 of it on soda, which is driving obesity, driving type 2 diabetes, or at least contributing in a significant way to these kinds of chronic conditions.

Bankrupting the health care system, bankrupting and then gaslighting everyone. So why isn't that nutrition has nothing to do with your condition, like everyone experiences when they walk into their doctor's office and ask could I change my diet and see any results?

Now, do you think this is a partisan issue? Because that's actually some of the claims that were made against our Senate hearing. It was, it was chaired, it was held by Senator Ron Johnson, who is a Republican. But the actual roundtable discussion was nonpartisan. Like it was completely bipartisan. There were no references to, you know, any particular political party. In fact, you know, there were independents, there were liberals, there were conservatives, all on our roundtable discussion. But then, you know, of the tiny handful of mainstream media outlets who decided to cover, you know, what went down, the claims were that it was like a partisan, like MAGA consortium of right wing conspiracy theorists. It was just, it was, it was crazy to me. Why do you think that's happening?

It's crazy. So I do not think that this is a partisan issue. This is 1 million percent a bipartisan issue. And typically it actually tends to be more of a Democrat issue or something that in my experience, at least in working in Washington D.C. that most people that cared, that I worked with at, like, the center for Science in the Public Interest, where I was. They very much leaned very Democrat because they were more. They were more wanting regulations. You know, typically Republicans, Republicans don't want as many regulations. They're like, industry should be able to do what they want, like, those kinds of things. So this tends to actually be more Democrat in nature. Historically, over the last many decades, of. Of people that I know in Washington, D.C. who are trying to fight against the USDA and the FDA to, to add more regulation. And I also know, like, Dr. Hyman, who's been advocating for food changes for the last. A long time, but especially like the last 10 years, that he's been really working with different congressmen and people in Washington. They're. They're not Republicans. Most of the people that I'm aware of, at least, are Democrats. Not to say that they're not. Not that they're not, you know, that there's not a few Republicans, but we have plenty of people that have been speaking out that are Democrats about these issues. I think that it's just the timing of it all with the election coming up and there being probably more stress around the election coming up, and the fact that I. I probably think because of rfk, you know, being part of it and now supporting Trump, that people are just, like, very on edge that don't like Trump, that they're like, oh, you're just, like, using this as an opportunity to. To when really it's like, this has actually been the case for decades. This has been harming people for decades. And I think people don't realize the magnitude, because even I had shared on Instagram a clip from RFK that was talking about Casey Means, and he was citing all the statistics that she had talked about from our disease standpoint. And it was the first time that I've ever seen a presidential candidate talk about the chronic disease epidemic. And I've spent the last 10 years, like, fighting for people to improve their health, to reverse chronic conditions using nutrition and lifestyle interventions. And I got so much pushback from people being like, you're so smart. How could you align yourself with someone? How can you be telling us, as women to vote for Trump? And I'm like, this is so confusing. I shared the chronic disease clip and said, I'm so proud of my friend Casey Means. And if. If there's anything that I know, it's the corruption of Big Pharma, Big Food and. And health. And you should educate yourself on this, because it's affecting everyone. It's not, there's no one that isn't affected by it. And I got so much backlash that it was really confusing. Like, I've never used my platform to be political. And I think because people have so much anxiety and stress over what's happening with the election that they're trying to like, move it in a direction that I never had the intention of. Like, people's perception is one thing, and it's usually different than the intention of the person. So, like, you're going there on behalf of the American people, regardless of how people are voting, regardless of their demographic. It's like, this is essential for everyone, and I am here to fight for you because I know that this is one of the most devastating aspects, one of the most devastating problems in our country, period. And then you're getting backlash, like, oh, you just have a political agenda. It's pretty, pretty sad.

Yeah, it's wild. I mean, I used to associate the Democratic Party with like hippie granola, you know, organic food, co ops and things like that. And, and now it's wild to me that at least with, with Kamala, like, her platform hasn't addressed the chronic disease crisis at all. Like, it's been something that, that RFK has, has been a, a, a champion for. And, and, and I mean, he's being, he's been lambasted by the media. Everybody's, you know, from the left is making him out to seem like a, like a crazy person. But he's been a champion for human health, environmental health for decades, and he's done some incredible work.

They've also made him out to be a crazy person in four decades. I mean, he's been smeared by everyone because of, for standing up against mercury and aluminum, being in our vaccines. You know, immediately he's an anti vaxxer immediately. He's not educated immediately. They completely, like, try to strip any credentials or experience that he has. I mean, it's very interesting when you, when you're able to think more independently and for yourself and you stop watching mainstream media. It's like, then you read articles like this Atlantic article that completely just spun everything that happens that you see. You know, like the clips from Instagram that are like, wow, that is one of the most powerful statements I've ever heard anyone say. Wow, this group of people is the most powerful group that's coming together that's fighting this essential fight. And then the author's like, and then I opened my snack bar because I was so bored and it was horrible. And it's like, how can I. Journalism, the way that it can spin something in the complete opposite direction that it actually is in real life is very scary.

It's, it's super scary. Yeah. And one of the common themes you'll see is that they never address the issues. They never address the issues. They don't address the data, they attack the people. And that I think is like, it's disgusting.

Or the, in the Atlantic article, it's like the, she literally started out saying if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Were president, this kind of cabinet he might appoint the food babe influencer, the biggest loser, the conservative psychologist, the raw meat enthusiast, the self identified citizen scientists.

Like these are all ad hominem appeals to authority. And it's like.

And they didn't mention all the doctors that were there.

And it's like if, if you'd rather sitting there were your experts.

Where have they been?

Been?

Where have they been?

Where have they been?

There was clearly asleep at the wheel. Right.

Profiting in some way.

So the question is if, if not us, who.

Yeah.

If not now, when.

I know, I love that you said that.

Yeah. It's just, it's, it's, it's. Oh my God. It's so frustrating to me. And then of course, mainstream media is just in cahoots because they derive a ton of, they're, they're the beneficiaries. A ton of their revenue comes from advertising from the pharmaceutical industries and the ultra processed food industries as well. I mean, all you got to do for five minutes is tune on is tune into prime time on any of these news news networks and you'll see ads for, you know, wall to wall ads for pharmaceutical drugs and ultra processed foods and things like that. So.

And really like the United States is the only country that allows for food for pharmaceutical drug companies to be marketing their products directly to a consumer and not to a doctor.

Well, you know what's wild is that you're inclined to think that they're buying ad time on these networks to influence consumers, but that's actually probably minor in terms of their intent. They're buying those, they're buying those ad slots to influence the platforms. Right. They're not, but they're like, who really is going to take. Is going to ask their doctor about so and so drug. It's. I mean, I'm sure that happens. But, but the primary reason I think why they spend so much money and they've invested so deeply into these mainstream media platforms is because it allows them to influence the platforms.

Yeah, that's a really good point. 100%.

Yeah. It's crazy. There was that recent Time magazine headline, as a dietitian. What did you make of that? The headline that if I recall correctly, it was something like, what if ultra processed foods aren't as bad as you think think, which they subsequently then rewrote. Something like, why one dietitian is going to bat for. I'm paraphrasing, but it's like something like that, yeah, why one dietitian, you know, has dedicated her life to defending ultra processed foods. What'd you make of that?

I mean, it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing that any dietitian could be like, yeah, I'm going to talk about the importance of ultra processed foods also because that dietitian was talking about, you know, the. But of course it's like not realistic to not say that ultra processed foods aren't okay for every person in America. And you know, I really think that that case for ultra processed foods and unhealthy foods, that we should just say, okay, yeah, that's fine for people of lower income because it's racist or whatever it is to say that it's, that they should be entitled to those foods. It's like, like the most actually unfair thing.

It's not racist at all. Minority groups in this country are at higher risk of diet related diseases and certain demographics which I actually mentioned in my, in my speech at the Senate is that for example, black Americans on average consume 80% of their calories from ultra processed foods. So why we have anybody going to bat and defending these products to me.

But it's also like none of them actually want to be consuming them. And with enough education, like when I was working at the Cleveland Clinic center for Functional Medicine, I, I started the nutrition department there under Dr. Hyman in 2014. And a big thing that we did was volunteer work in the inner city Cleveland churches. So we ran nutrition programs in the inner city churches and we would have the nurses come in and do the biometrics pre and post the nutrition intervention. And then we basically tried to utilize the power of community. We gave them specific nutrition guidelines that were essentially like eat whole unprocessed food. And here like we created a bunch of resources that allowed for them to do that. And the, the results that we saw in people, they never saw a doctor, they never went to a hospital. They in their communities reversed some of their health conditions with decreases in blood pressure, improvements in their blood sugar, decreased waist Circumference. In just 30 days of doing a church, a church based nutrition intervention that wasn't fancy that we weren't saying you have to spend $300 on your groceries every single. We just taught them and then we empowered them and the changes were so significant. And I think then about that experience and all of the times because I loved that program so I would just volunteer as much as possible for every church. So I ended up doing a ton of the churches and it wasn't like I had to. I just really loved it. And having that experience and then seeing other people be like, oh, it's unfair to talk about, you know, the fact these people should be able to eat whatever they want and they deserve to have ultra processed foods. And it's like, don't you want to advocate for them to have good health too? Because it's unequivocal. It's like 100%. There is a correlation between what you put into your mouth and the disease that you are going to get. I think that most people underestimate how much chronic inflammation that's driven by the food choices that they're making impact risk of disease. They're the largest driver of disease that's actually known. It's surpassed cigarettes as far as the impacts that it's having on our society and the chronic disease epidemic. So it's for people to still be in this idea that food is just about calories and weights. It's like this is so much larger than that. And if people were given the opportunity to really see, to fully experience like how good their brain can feel, how much energy they can have, how much less brain fog they can have, how much better their joints can feel like how much more they're able to actually live, they wouldn't want to eat those foods, but no one's giving them a choice, right?

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Enjoy guys. What would you say are the barriers to reducing ultra processed food consumption and consuming a more whole food centric diet.

In regular, in like everyday people or in the government?

I would say for regular people, like cost always comes up. Access, you know, isn't, is an issue. Certainly not for us. We live in major cities, but still in the United States. I mean there is, you know, some people do still live in food deserts.

Of course, but at the same time I would argue that the ultra processed foods are more expensive than people make them out to be. I mean, if you fill a grocery cart with ultra processed foods, it's going to be very expensive compared to like getting, you know, a number of cans of beans and things that are much less expensive that you could easily go in. And I've actually done this, is going in and creating grocery lists that are the same price as an ultra processed food cart. So I think that most of it comes down to education, which unfortunately people aren't getting in many places because again, they're walking into their doctor's office, the doctor they're diagnosed with another diagnosis, their doctors pulling out the prescription pad, throwing another bottle of pills their way. They're told no nutrition has nothing to do with the this. And then they're fed by the food industry that's feeding the chronic disease epidemic that's just like, oh no, it's just about calories in, calories out. Just count your calories, you'll be good. And they don't realize how much the, the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare system is really just working against them.

Well, if you were on a tight budget as many people in this country are, surely what kinds of things would you prioritize and how would that change the way that you approach grocery shopping?

I think that going to a wholesale retailer can be really great if someone's able to afford like buying a larger amount of, you know, even if they're getting organic chicken. And I also think that it's really, if you can't afford to buy organic, just buying real foods is, is the most important when it comes down to it. So sometimes people might not have the incentive to buy fruits and vegetables because they're like, oh, it's not organic, so, so I'm not going to buy them. But eating fruits and vegetables is so important to get those antioxidants, the phytonutrients, the fiber that completely change your gene expression and your microbiome that belong on every single person's plate. So I would say that doing more of the like wholesale retailers that you would be surprised. The prices aren't that different. When it comes down to it, if you're going there compared to like a Kroger to buy something like chicken, like an organic chicken from a wholesale retailer compared to chicken at something like a, a, a Kroger. And then like I said, I would do a lot of canned beans and lentils because it's an amazing source of protein, fiber, micronutrients that is extremely affordable and filling, very satiating. And you can add different like sauces and things like that to make them taste better for kids. I also think that the earlier that you expose your kids to these things, the more open minded that they are to them. In addition to that, frozen vegetables, because frozen vegetables are going to be more affordable than fresh fresh typically they're less expensive and they also have a longer shelf life so you're not going to be wasting food. And then in addition to that, like frozen fruit would be the same category. For that reason, I think even like cottage cheese can be a good option. Yogurt can be a good option. Like all of these foods. It doesn't need to be anything crazy. I think most people argue, oh, it's about affordability when it really comes down to education. And I'll tell you that when I was getting my master's in public health nutrition, I was in North Carolina at the, at the state health department. And my project that I chose for myself was the farmers markets and looking at the redemption rate. So in the Women Infants and Children program, which is one of the government programs that, you know, they pay for food vouchers for the women that are at federal poverty guidelines and, and they give them money towards different foods that they can buy and they would give them extra money for the farmer's market. So it was vouchers that they had on this North Carolina state program where they would get extra vouchers. And when I was looking at all the data, they only had 48% redemption rates at the farmer's market. So that means that 48, 52% of people that can't afford food, we're getting free money for food to go to the farmer's market. And they weren't there.

Interesting. They just weren't using it.

They didn't use it.

Wow.

And you would think like if you couldn't, if it really came down to not being able to afford, then you would utilize the free money that you were being given. That's why I think it's much larger than just money. It's about education, it's about teaching them. We looked into like the bus routes to see could it just be that the bus wasn't routing to the farmers markets, they didn't have transportation, which the bus routes actually did. We looked at whether the, there was enough clarity around whether the farmers, the farmer stands at the farmer's market accepted the vouchers in multiple languages. So that if someone only spoke Spanish that they understood that they weren't intimidated by being able to walk up to the farmer's booth to be able to look at it. All of it was pretty clearly outlined. So it wasn't very, it wasn't fully clear why people, 52% of people weren't utilizing the free money that they were being given for the fruits and vegetables.

Maybe it's just that the fruits and vegetables don't taste as good as hyper palatable ultra processed foods and they aren't as convenient.

You know, it does take extra time. So I think people need to. Because it does take the extra time and the extra attention and people, you know, don't have a lot of that. They have to understand the benefits, you know.

Yeah.

And they're not really being taught the benefits by any. Anyone.

Yeah, even one of the, I think better points made by that Time magazine article was that even within the bucket of ultra processed foods, not all ultra processed foods are created equally. And I think right now we have a really sort of low resolution understanding that ultra processed foods generally are not good for you. But would you agree that even under within that bucket, some are probably more benign than others and that makes it.

More complicated and is the benefit of the Food industry, where they're able to make more of an argument around the fact that you can't just label all of them the same. Of course they, they're going to have a million arguments in their favor, and I do believe that that would be one. And why, you know, they're trying to incorporate a recommendation around ultra processed foods for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans coming up for 2025-2030. It'll be interesting to see whether the committee actually makes any recommendations and then whether they actually listen to them, because I don't know if you remember when the. So the Dietary Advisory Committee is our new country's nutrition experts that are appointed by the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services Services. So the committee reviews all of the research that's come out over the last five years to then make any new cases for changes in the guidelines. So that's why, like we saw the recommendation that was added this past round to say that added sugar should not be consumed for kids under 2. That was like a new one that they added. The committee actually recommended 6% added sugar consumption, 6% of calories. They recommended decreasing it from 10% to 6% percent because.

For children or adults?

For adults.

Adults.

Because they felt that there was enough evidence to make that recommendation, which they have to have a lot of evidence to do that. And the USDA and the Department of Human Services ignored it and they didn't publish that in the guidelines. So they don't have to listen to the committee that they appoint, which most of them obviously have a large bias because a lot of them are receiving money from pharma and food, the food industry. And up until this past time, like really don't have to disclose it. And still it's very, very murky where you don't fully understand the, the depth of their. Their finances, their conflicts of interest and their conflicts of interest. Yeah, yeah. So they just chose to not publish it.

Wow.

Also, I think that. So my experience with the Dietary Guidelines was. Dates back to 2014 when I was in Washington, D.C. at the Dietary Advisory Guidelines meeting prior to the release of the 2015 guidelines. This was like a really big time because it was also the first time the Nutrition Facts label was being changed since the 1980s. So there was a lot being like added and a lot of kickback or pushback from the food industry with what was being suggested. The food industry was very much against the added sugar line being added to the food, to the Nutrition Facts label. So you have all of these huge lobbyists that are Going against being like, no, they don't need that. No, they don't need this. That. Because when I started as a dietitian, I could only tell a person's added sugar intake by using a software analysis to take a person's food intake. It was like a very expensive one that we had. And it took a person's total sugar and then divided it out into the added sugar. And then I'd print a person their report and say, like, here's where you need to really cut back. But then when they went to the grocery store, they couldn't actually implement like they had to just look at the ingredient list. And then based on the how close sugar was to the front of the ingredient list was the only way that they could really know how much added sugar they had in their diet. Because the industry was so against the transparency around how much added sugar was in the food.

Wow.

So when I was there in 2014, right before the 2015 dietary guidelines were being released, they had a public hearing where they invited to the NIH basically like the top people from different industry, from different lobbies. So There was probably 70 people that were there that were giving public oral testimony to the Dietary Advisory Committee. And, and there was of those people representative there from the American Beverage association, from the National Confectioners association, which used to be the American Candy association, the Sugar association, which is separate, the Corn Refiners association, the national association of Margarine Manufacturers, McDonald's Inc. The Dan Company, the United States Potato Board, the American Meat Institute Foundation, a number of different dairy councils and institutions. About 70 people that were given two to three minutes to speak on behalf of the food or beverage that they were there to represent. And why it should be included in the guidelines were not excluded at least. And of all those people, there was one dietitian and one doctor that were independently there testifying about the importance of plant based guidelines. That's what they were there for. Wow. So that's the influence that the Dietary Advisory Committee was receiving as far as like the urgency and the important things to include. And then they formulate their recommendations. And then, then there's a number of days that anyone can provide public comments. So most of the public comments are coming from the lobbyists that know how to work the system and that have paid a ton of people to be like, oh no, we see that you're trying to decrease added sugar to 6%. Here's why you can't do that. There's not enough research around this. They weaponize the research Research to be like, no, no, you can't do that. Because, I mean, I'm assuming that if they don't have enough research, there's going to be lawsuits because it impacts their industry so much. So this was really the moment where I was like, wow, the food industry is setting America's nutrition agenda that's causing us to get sicker, fatter, more depressed, more infertile at an alarming rate, stealing vitality from our kids, causing us to die younger. All for the sake of process, profit. It's like, all for the sake of profit. Millions of Americans are killing themselves every single day with their food choices and they're completely unaware of the fact that they're doing it to themselves when they're loading their carts and their plates with these foods that are exactly like you said, addictive and filled with refined grains, with added sugar, with artificial flavors, with food dyes, with pesticides, with preservatives, with all of these things that don't belong in our food system. And then you have the National Confectioners association at the NIH saying sugar should be eaten in moderation because people are stressed and they deserve joy in their life.

Oh, my God. Wow. It's so incredibly frustrating. It's so incredibly frustrating. I have a. I don't know if you can relate to this, but I have a very complex relationship with nutrition, nutrition science. Because on the one hand, I feel like I love nutrition science. I've dedicated my life to it, to, to reporting on it, to reading it, to trying to push the envelope and call for, you know, better, greater transparency within the nutri, the, the, the nutrition science endeavor. But on the other hand, I feel like we don't really need any more nutrition science. You know, like all. So much of what we have, as you've said, has been weaponized. It's all such, you know, so much of it, not all of it, but a lot of it is incredibly weak data that's been weaponized to influence public behavior in a way that I would say is not productive and actually can be downright harmful.

Agreed. Yeah, I know. I have the same relationship where I love being able to read the science and learn. And I do think that there's a lot of value and importance behind it. But then at the same time, yeah, it's it when there's too much, much dependence on it, that's when it becomes a problem.

Yeah, it's like, do we need another large scale food frequency questionnaire observational study linking a whole food to some negative disease health outcome when Most Americans are under consuming whole foods, regardless of what, you know, which whole food it is that we're talking about. It's like that Harvard study that came out recently linking, you know, unprocessed red meat to type 2 diagnostics diabetes. It's like red meat is not causing type 2 diabetes at the public health scale.

Yes.

I mean, there might be some mechanistic connections. I was actually having this conversation with a friend of mine who's a medical student and PhD named Kevin Bass who was saying, well, you know, heme iron and red meat in vitro. There might be some mechanistic, you know, some mechanism that might potentially explain, you know, how when over consumed and over absorbed iron might actually, you know, cause insulin resistance at the molecular, you know, cell level. But in the practical sense, like in the real world sense, like most people are not developing type 2 diabetes because they're over consuming red meat. In fact, red meat consumption has gone down over the prior decades and, and incidence of type 2 diabetes has skyrocketed completely.

And I think the, the guidelines would want you to think that it is just about the red meat. It's, that's the reason that even in 1990, like, we've had the recommendations for limiting saturated fat to less than 10% of, of fat consumption since the origin of the guidelines, I actually have the outline of all of the recommendations for every single year.

Wow. So cool.

So, yeah, saturated fat has been mentioned in the dietary guidelines since 1980. What changed in 1990 was that the recommendation to eat six to 11 servings of bread, cereals and rice and pasta per. And it specifically says have several servings of whole grain breads and cereals daily, which means that 6 to 11 of those servings, a few of them might be whole and then the rest are refined grains that are being included in our dietary guidelines up until the year 2005.

Wow. I mean, that whole bottom slab of the food pyramid, Right?

The whole bottom slab of the food pyramid, yeah. So it was funny because I saw some people and I think maybe even in this article that they were like, oh, yeah, these influencers are really angry about the food pyramid. And these types of things that they're trying to say are, are so disastrous. And it's like. But it actually is.

Yeah.

Whether they're an influencer or not, they're calling the truths more so than people that have their masters in public health and people that have their MDs and people that have their RDs that are studying all of this and can't see it for themselves.

And the food pyramid is a perfect example of where we've been so wrong in the past. I mean, it's been retired. Like, we're not using the food pyramid. And correct me if I'm wrong, but, like, even dietitian, you know, back in the early 2000s, 90s and, you know, 80s and whatnot. I mean, were they using. Were they. Were they actually using the food pyramid as a nutrition heuristic? Yes. It's crazy.

It's crazy. I mean, they've changed it to my plate. But the dietary guideline, my plate and the food pyramid are based on the Dietary Guidelines. The Dietary Guidelines sets the agenda for everything. Like, that's why it's so important, and that's why there's so many people that are in Washington trying to testify around the time that the Diet Dietary Guidelines are being released. Like, it sets the agenda for the school lunch and breakfast program, which is billions of dollars. It sets the agenda for Women, Infants and children. It sets the agenda for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program, which over 10 years would be about $1 trillion. It's expected to be in the next 10 years. So it's an enormous amount of money and an enormous amount of power that these companies have and these lobbyists have that. Yeah. Then influence the Dietary Guidelines. That then influences the food pyramid that has now changed. Change to my plate.

And myplate is not much better. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a. From my vantage point, it looks like it's a more bespoke paradigm where you can actually, it's. You can cater it to your own individual caloric needs. But still, it still implores people to consume up to 10 to 11 servings of grains a day, up to half of which can potentially be refined. Refined.

So I believe that it's changed to six servings per day.

Interesting.

Up to which half of could be refined because they recommend 50 whole grain.

50 whole grain, yeah.

Which is atrocious. That's what's causing type 2 diabetes, is refined grains. Refined grains and added sugar that they won't reduce in the Dietary Guidelines. I mean, it's very clear. And I think that it's important for people to have context that it's like, just because this is how it is today, and the fact that it's normalized today doesn't mean that this is how it always will be, which is why it's important. The work that you did, going to Senate and to the group that went to Senate, that it's like, we have the power to change. There was A time that doctors and nurses were smoking cigarettes in hospitals and were the actual models for cigarette advertisements. The cigarette industry was actually advertising in the American Journal of. Or the Journal of the American Medical association up until the year 1954. Not just, oh, this doctor smokes Camel or whatever, the brand. Making health claims like, this cigarette speeds up digestion. This cigarette helps to decrease throat irritation. This cigarette helps to. To decrease colds and asthma.

Wow.

Yeah.

Physicians weren't washing their hands until. I forget his name. Was it Semmelweiss or something like.

I don't know who that is.

Yeah, there were, like, doulas were hand washing so as not to spread infection. Well, I don't even know if that this is the reason why they were doing it, because I don't know if that was believed to be a thing at the time. But essentially there was a lot of pushback to the idea that physicians should actually wash their hands.

I know what you're talking about. Yes.

Until it was accepted as obviously the right way to proceed with surgical procedures.

Right, right. So I think that we're in this gray area of it, like, they're not being in enough of. There's a grassroots momentum that's happening, but it's definitely not happening from the top down. And it will probably take a long time for it to happen to really, like, infiltrate fully into the system. Unfortunately. I wish that it was just like an overnight thing and potentially it could be, but there's. It's. It's very deep.

Yeah.

The money, the pockets, the corruption that exists. And so I'm hopeful that it takes. That it will change. But I think that in the meantime, like, the thing. This is why I left the nutrition, the public health nutrition sector. And for as much as I felt like it was so important, I was like, the only way that I can really make the biggest impact is by working with people and helping to wake them up to what's happening. And that's why in the last 10 years, I've worked with so many people to help them take their nutrition and lifestyle interventions, to change their trajectory of different diseases and to improve their outcomes. Because. Because it's, in my opinion, easier to teach people how to become a health advocate, how to ask your own questions, how to become a free thinker, how to question things like the dietary guidelines or industry or your doctor saying that nutrition has nothing to do with your condition than it is to go up against the beast that is the food industry and the healthcare system and the. The pharmaceutical industry.

Well, what. As a dietitian, what changes would you make to the Dietary guidelines?

So there's a lot, I think that, and not even just to the dietary guidelines, but specifically around the. The way that things are done. Because right now the dietary guidelines aren't even fully implemented in specific instances. Like the school lunch and breakfast program has 17% of calories coming from added sugar and breakfast and 11% per day in lunch. So they're not even following the dietary guidelines.

People are not even following them.

They have. There was just something that passed like last week or last month that is now going to require schools moving forward after the year of 2027 to adhere to the recommendations and try to limit it to 10% or less per day. But there were certain exemptions. Like there was a exemption for the pastries that are sold for breakfast. They said that they didn't need to meet the threshold for added sugar because they were worried about sourcing of pastries that meant the added sugar guidelines. So there was an exemption and lobbying, of course, that went against this.

Why do we need pastries for breakfast in school?

For kids.

Yeah, right.

It's crazy. And it's the school lunch and breakfast program. It's taxpayer dollars that are going towards feeding kids pay pastries.

What about eggs?

So milk, whole milk? Oh yeah, there's milk. There's like stipulations now around chocolate milk where they're not able to source the chocolate milk as much, but they do have milk. I just don't think it's whole milk. I don't know for that for sure. But I think that there's an enormous opportunity to just even implement what we have right now that isn't being implemented that so many people probably assume is. And any parent that you talk to will say, walk into one school cafeteria or look at the menu of my school lunch program for my kids and you would be absolutely mortified at what's being served.

Yeah, our school, I mean my friend Nora of Eat Real Food, I think that's the name of our organization, she says that like the, the public schools are like the nation's largest fast food chain is how she describes it. Like they're literally serving fast food to her children. And then we wonder why they can't sit still.

Exactly. And not only not sit still, but then you wonder why every kid, like my kids aren't old enough to be in school, but every person that I talk to is like every kid in my, every child in my kids class has either an allergy, a food allergy, a like learning ADHD or something that's you know, like, preventing them to. From learning, went eczema and skin conditions. Like, there's basically not one kid in these classrooms that doesn't have some kind of issue like that, according to my friends who have their kids in school, since mine aren't old enough. So it's like, well, what's happening? Of course we know what's happening. And how do we change it? I mean, we have to, we have to really teach people. Until the government comes around. I think the fastest way to create change is to make the changes for yourself, to be the change. Like it has to start with us and modeling these behaviors to kids. And I have cared so much about the food supply since being a dietitian and seeing how many people can reverse different conditions through using food as medicine. But once I became a mom, I was like, wow, what we are serving our kids is horrifying. What we are normalizing in this childhood chronic disease epidemic. The increases in asthma, the increases in allergies, the increases in neurobehavioral issues, the increases in the mental health crisis and normalizing. Just feeding our kids these toxic ingredients is so wrong. 70% of kids are eating foods that are filled with these refined grains, added sugars, food dyes, preservatives, pesticides, every single horrible quality ingredient. This is what we're feeding to our kids, who are the most important, who are also the most vulnerable and susceptible from a disease standpoint. And it's like, no wonder the solution is not more drugs. The solution is not more willpower. The solution is changing our food environment so that you kids are able to live a healthy life like they were genetically designed to live, like you and your kids are genetically designed to live a healthy, abundant life. And what, what you need to focus on is the inputs and helping other people around you to care about the inputs. Because these are environmental concerns. The, the chronic disease epidemic is an environmental concern. It's not a lack of willpower. If it were a lack of willpower, so many people would not be struggling 100% percent.

How do you balance instilling healthy habits in your kids while also allowing kids to be kids? Because I know kids can be incredibly picky and they're not always within your sight, your range of vision, you know. So how do you, how do you balance that without driving yourself crazy in the process?

Not only not driving yourself crazy, but the other thing that I think about is not inducing eating disorders, because I think that that's also like you can. It's a very slippery slope if you're overly concerned about food, and you're saying that everything is toxic to your kids, and you're. You're like, telling them they basically can't eat anything at birthday parties and at school and anything. Then you will probably end up with a lot of fear around food that will take a long time for them to correct. You think about kids that. Whose moms brought them into weight watchers at 10 years old, 14 years old, 16 years old. These are women that I now work with today as adults that are trying to overcome the lifelong struggle that they've had around thinking about food as calories, thinking, having so much shame around their bodies, feeling like they're never doing enough, feeling like they just need to start another diet on Monday. Like, it's a really difficult cycle to break, and it's so much harder when it starts young. So I think that it's really important to have the rigidity, but then not to have too much rigidity, that it creates disordered eating. So fortunately for me, my kids are young enough that I haven't had to. To fully, like, experience the. The school lunches and all that. What we have done. McKinley 16 months and. And I actually have a newborn as well. James is four months. Congrats and thank you. This is my first time away from them, so it's been like, very appreciate it. But they. I stick to the. No added sugar. Under 2 years old, so they haven't had any added sugar. And I mean, McKinley specifically because James just doesn't eat food yet. But that's something that I even get a lot of pushback from, like, from my family, from. From friends who are like, oh, just let her live a little. Oh, it's so mean that she can't have any cake. Like, for her birthday, I made pancakes with, you know, banana and eggs and then put just like, did a bunch of mashed raspberries on top and then did a big stack of them for her so that she still felt like, you know, she was able to, like, dig into the pancakes. She loved it. And it was like, oh, it's so sad she's not having birthday cake. And I think that people don't realize how much we normalize something. Like, but truly, before the age of two, our taste buds are highly susceptible and highly impacted. And so the way that you are feeding your kids and sugar that they're exposed to will impact their cravings for the rest of their lives, potentially. So. And not that you can't offset that, because, of course, what you. What you feed yourself is what you crave, but what you feed your taste buds specifically. And that's largely impacted by the gut microbiome, the microbes that are in that, you know, change and morph based on the foods that we're eating. So you can always improve that. But if you want to create a super strong healthy baseline, then, then not having any added sugar before the age of two is something that I am 100% sticking to. Another one is trying to eat as much organic food as possible for her specifically, because I really believe that. Again, it's one of those things where I don't want to be the mom that believes that the government saying pesticides are safe and then in 20 years being the one that's paying the price for blaming the government. Like so many people that were trusting the government for so long. Trans fats are fine. Feed them to your kids. Add it to sugar's fine. Feed it to your kids. Now we know these things, but moms now have to live with the guilt. Like I work with many 60 year old women who, you know, are trying to work through their health issues, going through menopause, and they'll say to me, oh, I'm so envious, like seeing the way that you're raising your kids, because I feel some level of guilt around the fact that I didn't know what I didn't know at the time. And they think that it's important for people to give themselves grace. Like, we're all just doing the best with what we, with the information that we have. Unfortunately, thanks to podcasts like yours and others and social media, there's more transparency around what truly is healthy and not just having to listen to the government, but for an entire generation. All they had was the government. Like, all they had was the guidelines. All they had was what was what was produced in mainstream media and on the front of package labels, which we could talk about too, because that's an enormous problem. It's not only the fact that these food products are so low quality, but then that they are allowed to be marketed as healthy and to trick families into purchasing them and feeling better about those purchasing purchases. It's like greenwashing completely. So, like, do you want to. I guess we're pretty much done with how I feed my family.

No, I like that though. Well, I do want to know what your stance is on non caloric sweeteners.

For children that also we haven't fed my kids.

Because it's still like you're still training the palette to crave sweet foods, right?

I, I believe so. Yes. There isn't anything that says one way or another as far as the guidelines are concerned, but that is something that, that. So if I'm making a smoothie and I have a protein powder that has monk fruit in it, then I make one separate from McKinley that just has collagen in it with no. With no monk fruit. So that's something that, you know, I'm kind of doing separately. At least until she's 2. I haven't really figured out what I'm going to do after that, but. But that's, you know, what we do.

How do you assess labels like front of package labeling?

Front of package labeling. I pretty much ignore you.

Ignore?

Yeah. Why would you listen to it? Yeah. It's food companies trying to manipul. Manipulate you. More like it is truly evil to take an unhealthy food that you know is unhealthy and then market it as some kind of a nutrition advantage. Like, I always think if you took cocaine and you laced it with some B vitamins, does that automatically make it healthier? Does. Does the benefits of the B vitamins outweigh the harms of the cocaine? Of course not. But this is exactly what these companies are doing. They're taking. I don't know if you remember in 2009 when Kelly Kellogg's. During the swine flu outbreak. So imagine the anxiety around Covid. Like, obviously, swine flu was not nearly as big as Covid, but Kellogg's took their cereal and wrote on the front of package supports child. Child immunity.

Wow.

During a public health epidemic. Didn't change the formula. It's a refined grain product that spikes blood sugar levels. It goes against the immune system. It actually. Actually.

So I shared this immune system. I shared this on X recently. So this is like Trip. We've got Trix, Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms and French Toast Crunch all adorning the red American Heart Association Heart Healthy logo. So I mean, that's like. That's a pretty. I mean, to most people, that's a pretty credible organization.

Right. But that is also exactly what I'm talking about. You should never be able to make a claim like that without thinking about the comprehension. So they allow them to make that claim when there's a certain amount of fiber in the product. That's where you get the American Heart association fiber.

Maybe like a lack of, like, dietary cholesterol or saturated fat.

Yes. There's limitations for saturated fat, which is why meat companies can't make health claims. So even though cereal companies can't. So there's not a limit around added sugar. So you could have 10 grams of added sugar. There's actually a specific Quaker cereal right now that has, that's being sold right now, has 10 grams of added sugar and says Heart Healthy on the front of it. And there's a General Mills box too, that it has 9 grams of added sugar that says heart Healthy and also good source of fiber, calcium and vitamin D. So you should never be able to make claims like that on a food that's total nutrition composition is not beneficial. So that's the huge problem with the American Heart association is that they do not account for that when, when they're allowing companies to make those claims. Of course it's not heart healthy when it has that much added sugar and when it's refined grains and filled with food dyes and horrible ingredients. And that's what the American Heart association wants you to believe. How do they sleep at night?

Yeah, it's wild.

Especially like maybe. Okay, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Ten years ago they might not have known. Today, how do you sleep at night? There's so much awareness, like you have to be living under a rock to not know the impact the added sugar and refined grains has on total health. And maybe we could argue, because this is the argument, is that there's not enough research around food dyes and things like that to actually be taken out of the food supply.

I bet if you, if you shopped around the supermarket and you accumulated in your shopping cart all of the items in a modern supermarket that are adorned by the red Heart Healthy, the American Heart association logo and you lived off of those foods, probably make you incredibly sick. No, because it's all these refined grain products, refined bleach and deodorized seed oils. I mean canola oil.

You know, that would actually be a great documentary.

I bet you extra virgin olive oil doesn't even. It doesn't even qualify because extra virgin olive oil is about 14, 15% saturated fat.

It's probably true. I actually don't know that, but it probably is true. Yeah, I know that more than 50% of. Of products that are in grocery stores have some sort of a health claim on the front of package, whether it's high fiber, low sodium. Low sodium is another great one. Good source of calcium and vitamin D. Food companies actually used to do this way more when I was at CSPI in 2014. The center for Science in the Public Interest. They're one of the only nutrition agencies in Washington D.C. that does not accept federal or Funding from industry or federal funding, which is why I wanted to go there. And I, at the time, the nutrition facts, labels and ingredient lists weren't on the Internet. You guys go to the grocery store to be able to see any of the information, because at that time, it wasn't published. And so I would sit in the grocery stores all day taking pictures of the front of package and then all of the ingredient lists. I have like an entire iPad filled with. And so I will say that the claims that they used to make, like, back in 2014, were atrocious when it came to. To manipulating consumers. Good for metabolism and things that even. There's been a lot of lawsuits around the use of real fruits and real vegetables on front of package that then just either don't have the fruit or vegetable that's featured on the front of package, or it's just, you know, vegetable juice or concentrate. But that's also extremely misleading is that they are trying to say that it has real fruits and vegetables and that we know that there's so many benefits to eating fruits and vegetables. And it. And then they have pictures of strawberries and blueberries and other whole fruits and vegetables on the front of these packaging. That should be illegal. When it's not the whole fruit or vegetable. How are you able to include that on the front of package and then have, like, strawberry puree concentrate as the ingredient that's included on the back?

It's wild.

They do it so intentionally. Like, it's a very deliberate choice that they make. That's what I'm saying. How do these companies sleep at night and how do the people working for them sleep at night? Like, I'm not trying to. To be. I guess that is judgmental, but it's. And I really try not to be judgmental when I'm at the grocery store or other things, because you just never know, like, someone's experience, someone's level of education. Like, I just really believe that it's best for my mental health and best for everyone else to give people the benefit of the doubt and be like, they're trying their best. They're doing the best with the information that they have without being judgy. But when it comes to these companies, it's like, I mean, I was just talking to someone who said when I graduated from my MBA program, it was like, the best jobs were at. We're at Pepsi and we're at these big ultra processed food companies because they had the largest budgets and you could do the coolest things. Like, she got her MBA in business and marketing. So she's like, we could do the coolest things but. And all of my friends were like so proud when they would get these jobs because that was you know, like what everyone strived to do. Nestle, you know, Nestle's considered the largest nutrition organization in the United States. United States.

It's crazy.

It's crazy. Nestle Nasty.

How do you suggest people navigate social media when there's so much conflicting information? Information even amongst professionals, experts such as yourself. I mean, you know, you'll see highly credentialed people on social media using really strong language essentially saying that organic is bs. Don't worry about food dyes. You know, like there's a lot of, there's a lot of conflicting information today. Limit your saturated fat. Don't worry about sugar. It's all about calories. Artificial sweeteners are great, they can help reduce weight. You know there's probably a kernel of truth to some of these claims but they usually will very adamantly push back against those who take a more precautionary approach at as. As you clearly do. As I do as well.

Yeah, I think social media is very difficult to, to navigate. I mean it's also difficult because there's so many self proclaimed experts on social media who also sometimes like I watch the videos and kind of cringe because it's like none of that is actually, it's totally exaggerated. There's no factual orientation around it. I wish I could think of a good example but I just can't right now. But I think that also is worrisome. So it's like kind of broad spectrum when it comes to the consumer and probably feeling pretty lost because there's people that are saying that have a lot of credentials that are saying oh this is fine, Ozempic is fine for six year olds. Obesity is just a genetic disorder, all of these things. And then you're like maybe I'm unintelligent for, for not believing this because that's how they want you to think.

Yeah.

You know, they want you to think you're on intelligent and then you have other people who are, are like making, you know, really positioning themselves as experts and they, they don't, they're like making a lot of claims that aren't actually true or that are completely exaggerated and very fear mongering. And so I think that there's a responsibility of influencers and people who, who are talking about these types of things to not overly fear monger because at the end of the day I never want someone to, to walk away from anything that I say and be like, wow, I've poisoned my kids for the last 10 years. Like, your kids are going to be okay. There's ways that you can navigate it moving forward. And like I said, everyone's doing the best with the information that they have in any moment. So I think trying to find people that align with your core beliefs is really important. And always, in my opinion, I think that it's just always safest to gravitate towards a precautionary approach. And then it's like what Jason said that really has stuck out with me when he testified at Congress that we take that safe until proven guilty. Every other country that has greater health outcomes and is spending way less on health care than the United States, since we spend way more than every developed country and have the poorest health outcomes, they take a guilty until proven innocent. And I really think that there's benefit if we even just look at health statistics in other developed countries. Like, there's benefit in taking guilty until proven innocence innocent stance. And I wish that more people that have a lot of education in the United States did or do. And I would also say that, you know, I think that it's easy to, to categorize people into one bucket. Like, oh, all influencers are the same. All influencers, you know, try to be experts and they're actually not. And then people like you that don't necessarily have a background in this, but have devoted your life to studying the science that has a very good grasp of everything that's happening. Like, there's a huge difference between you and then other people who are out there who are fear mongering and, you know, making these claims that are completely unfounded.

Shooting videos in the super shirtless videos in the supermarket.

Exactly the same thing is true with dietitians. Like, dietitians get such a bad rap. I still am proud to be a dietitian because I feel like the impact. I have an entire team of dietitians on my team and we work with people every single day all over the country, helping them change their lives, using food as medicine in a way that's more powerful and more effective a lot of times than their doctors are able to do. Like, in working with them for one year, we're able to make a larger impact sometimes than their doctor who's been working with them for 20 years. So it's like, I think that that's also important. It's also the same for physicians. Just because pharma is setting the agenda for medical School. And just because a number of physicians are very tainted and jump to a prescription first approach that is very, very harmful. And unfortunately the majority. That doesn't mean that all physicians are like that. It doesn't mean that, that, that we shouldn't give many the benefit of the doubt who are being like, very amazing and proactive in the way that they're speaking out against things and the way that they're practicing. So I think there's just like a lot of. You have to do your research within every category to know that you're following people, who you really trust and who, in my opinion, it's important to take a, you know, more conservative approach with things that you're allowing to go into your body.

Yeah, absolutely.

And eating like our ancestors, our ancestors didn't have any of these problems that we have today. And I, I'm constantly saying to people, people like, just eat like your ancestors. Who, who knew, like my, my grandparents knew that when they looked at packages, they're like, this is garbage. Why would we ever eat this? Like, we're gonna go. My grandpa, you know, shopped to the farmer's market every single week because he's like, this is how it should be. So I think that, you know, going back to our roots is definitely something that's super important.

Yeah, I totally, I, I couldn't agree more. I mean, there's, there, there's even pushback to the idea that you should be able to pronounce all the ingredients in a product. No, and I think that's actually a good surrogate, you know, like litmus test for whether or not a product is an ultra processed food or not.

It is, but there's nuance within that because the, the issue is, is that there are things that are fairly benign that are included. Like if you're adding some, some vitamin A or some other like vitamins to a ingredient list, sometimes the, the, the name, like ascorbic acid for vitamin C is going to sound like it's a bad thing. And so I think there is a nuance within that. There's also nuance with the idea of like, never eat a packaged food. Just try to eat mostly whole foods. And it's like, well, unfortunately, most foods are packaged and everyone is eating packaged foods. Like I'm eating packaged foods every single day. And so the important thing is knowing how to, to identify an optimal packaged food versus a nice, not optimal packaged food.

Yeah, yeah. I liken it to like the kind of the BMI where, you know, as a screening tool for obesity, I Mean, it works at the population level, but it's not a, it's, it's a piss poor diagnostic tool. You have to look at the individual patient and assess, you know, how much lean mass they're carrying, how much fat mass. You know, if you were to just, just use the bmi, somebody like the Rock or Joe Rogan or even, maybe even myself might, might be considered obese.

Or at least overweight.

Yeah, or overweight according to the bmi. So similarly with ultra processed foods, it's like, you know, I think it's a good, you know, if a product has innumerable ingredients you don't recognize, you know, more than half of them. That's not to say that the food is unhealthy, but it's like, okay, maybe you should take a beat and look further and like see what it is actually that you're, that you're eating.

Yeah, I completely agree.

I think people should know what ascorbic acid. Acid is. Acetic acid, you know, sounds scary. It's vinegar.

You'd be surprised though, like when we're talking about it on like national level, a lot of people probably don't know.

People are afraid of like citric acid. I'm like your own, you produce citric acid in your own body?

Yeah. I think that it's because of the way that it's produced.

They use mold.

Molds. Yes. Is the concern. I personally don't really like educate on being concerned about citric acid. I think that there's much bigger.

Yeah.

And that's the other thing too is that I think, I think that it's easy to be concerned with certain things without taking, without accounting for the big pillars. Take care of the big pillars first before then you go down like the steeper rabbit hole. And I think that every person has a different starting place. And so owning that as well is important when it comes to making changes to your health and to the health of your family.

Yeah. And if your diet is 90%, even 80% whole foods, I mean you could, you, you have a budget for, for, I mean, you could conceivably 5%, 10% of your diet could conceivably be ultra processed garbage and your health would still be, you know, orders of magnitude greater than, than population average.

Could not agree more.

So, yeah, you don't want to major in the minors, you want to major in the majors.

Exactly.

Yeah. I like that. Well, Bridget, thanks so much for coming. This was so fun.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Where can people learn more about you, connect with you on social media.

My Instagram is being Brigid and my name is spelled B R I G I D. Being Brigid.

Being Brigid. I love it. Well, the last question that gets asked everybody on the show, what does living a genius life mean to you?

Living a genius life, I think looks like having the, the courage to, to do things that work well for you and your family and the ability to again, go back to that idea that we are genetically designed to live a healthy, abundantly life and to have the courage to fight for that. When you are presented with people who are questioning why you put so much time, why you're doing this, the things that you're doing, I think that especially as a mom, I can recognize that there is an uphill battle that, you know, we're continually fighting against when it comes to the food industry and norms in America. And so I'd say just keep fighting because it's an important fight.

Well, damn if that's woo woo. I'm Woo Woo. Af, thanks so much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you guys for listening. Share this episode with friends and loved ones and leave a rating and review on your podcast app of choice. Free way to support the show. It helps us grow. I appreciate you and I'll catch you on the next episode. Peace.

Sam.