Don’t ‘Dye’ - Empowering Kids to Understand Health

My kids, we would go to these parties and I would pack them like a lunch pill with stuff that they would eat. Now, of course, that's really awkward because everybody else has pizza and a sugary drink and there's my child with their lunchbox eating their non sugar based stuff. It puts them in a challenging position and asks them to be okay to be that kid.

So there's the easy and the hard way when it comes to choosing the right foods. I think that this is a challenge every parent has to go through and has to fight with and find, find where they're most comfortable and make the best decision they can for their family. But I'm not sure that we have the right answer.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Brian Johnson Podcast. I'm here with my Blueprint co founder, Kate Tolo and Dr. Mike Mallon, who is an emergency medicine doctor and also my physician. Today we're talking about something near and dear to my heart, which is children health and wellness. And so this has been something on my mind for the past 20 years, two years of my life since I had my first child. I remember going to the store and looking at the ingredients label and saying, what is this? And then I started reading about the ingredients and I thought, this is a bad situation. But they were in our pantry, stocked, and when we went to their friend's house, they were there as well. It was this common thing that all the kids ate these foods with high sugar and ingredients, which didn't sound great. So I have been fighting that battle for 22 years. It has been very challenging because my kids naturally want to eat those things and their friends have those things. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. There's other things as well that are very problematic for our kids, including toxins in food and the environment. And so this one is a sensitive and scary topic because children are helpless. And, you know, it just breaks my heart and all of our hearts to see that when they're growing up and they have everything before them, they can become disadvantaged by the foods they eat, the air they breathe, the water they drink. So we want to acknowledge in entering this topic that typically we've approached this podcast where we speak about the perils and the science of danger and then we go through the protocols. Today we're going to flip it and we're going to do the protocols that you can focus on and we're going to try to make it manageable, like things you can actually do and talk through the nuance of being a parent, bringing these practices Inside your home. So with that, Dr. Mallon, Kate Tolo, let's get started. What can we tell adults of the narrow and focused things they can do to keep their children safe and healthy?

I think the first thing to note here is that the good news is that this is all entirely preventable. These are actually things that are in our environment that oftentimes we're unknowingly opting for. So the biggest thing is education. So there are a couple of things we can start with. One is synthetic dyes. Mike, what are synthetic dyes?

Synthetic dyes are colorings that are additive added to many food products, but, like, disproportionately added to children's products. The ones that we're thinking of typically are the red and yellow dyes, and those have been linked directly to inattention and to hyperactivity disorders. It probably happens with all of the synthetic dyes. So there's actually been a movement to try to reduce all synthetic dye exposure, especially in children's foods across the board. But the research has been predominantly on red 40 and yellow number five.

In typical. I think this is the right stats. Across food, Generally, it's around 19% contain synthetic dyes. Whereas in children's food, again, like, this is companies marketing toward kids, it's a high percentage. It's around 28%. It's a note for us all to not assume when we look at a product that it's healthy for our kids if it's marketed toward our kids. Actually, maybe it's best to have the opposite assumption and turn it over and look at the back of the packaging. Fortunately, oftentimes it'll say loud and clear, red 40, or some sort of other synthetic dye. And so you can know that's not for my kids.

Generally you can look for those foods that are sort of quote, unquote, organic. Those typically don't have the synthetic dyes in them. But really the best thing to do is just look at the actual ingredients themselves and look for those specific dyes. But think about, like, sports drinks, Kool Aid, are big offenders cereals or big offenders. Anytime when you see, like really brilliant and colorful colors in your child, in your child's food, that's probably a synthetic dye.

And these things have been linked to things like behavioral effects in children. So adhd, gut issues, higher risk of cancer, cellular damage. So not to freak you guys out, but it is a serious thing that is worth paying attention to. You both have kids. Have you found that sitting them down and trying to educate them on these topics Actually works.

Yes. So, interestingly, my son does seem to have some behavioral changes with. With the synthetic dyes. And we taught him very young to avoid certain color food. And, like, he actually pays attention to it. It's kind of interesting, like, you know, because he. He learned so young. He's like, oh, no, I don't. I don't eat blue foods.

Like, really, as it relates to the potential harm of ingredients, I think we're still learning the effects of these synthetic dyes and then other ingredients in food. Looking back, though, the removal of lead from Gasoline in the 1980s was correlated with an average IQ increase of 2 to 5 points. And looking at this from an economic perspective, that would be worth $8 trillion, because there's a 1.8 to 2.4% increase of lifelong earning potential per additional IQ point. And so one of the fastest ways to become a thriving nation is to increase the IQ of your population. And these things, you know, bad, you know, harmful ingredients and tox, how it can potentially lessen iq. We are currently having a pretty big and loud debate in the United States about our budget deficit, but never does anyone make the argument that a way to solve the budget is to actually lessen the toxin and bad ingredient load. In the United States. It's mostly about cutting Medicare or Medicaid. The insanity is cutting the services that are trying to deal with the catastrophic harm of our toxin and bad food system. So it's really kind of backwards. You can also use this as a vector. When I was explaining this to my kids, I would explain to them the harm that these ingredients were doing to their body. Like, it would basically, like when they were in soccer. I would explain after the game, when a parent shows up with these caprice sons. So these little packages that have 20, 30 grams, I'm guessing I said, if you drink that, you run slower on the field, and they're like, oh, okay, I see that. Or like, you're not gonna be able to pass as well or shoot your goals as well. So I tried to connect it to very tangible things that mattered to them. Yeah, exactly. And I remember Talmage was, like, really responsive. That when I told him that, he was like, I got it. And, like. Cause he was the fastest kid on his team, and he did not want to lose that edge. So, like, Mike, I. I sat my kids down and I tried to use various tactics to explain how bad ingredients negatively affected the things they cared about. And this is also very similar to the idea of. Of sleep culture in a family. So as we go through These things today and we talked about the synthetic dyes and how Mike spoke to his son about this. You know, the same you could do with sleep and say we are a family of sleep. This is our rule for screen time. You know, we turn screens off 60 minutes before bed. We don't eat, you know, this amount of time before bed. Nobody gets out of their bed during the night unless there's an emergency. Nobody wakes anyone up ever. And you have a star chart where you're giving these assessments. We've talked about this on a previous podcast. So you could actually follow the same protocol that we're going to talk about today in terms of sugars, dyes and other ingredients that you just establish a family culture. Now of course there's secondary challenges that when they go to a friend's birthday party and that party has pizza, cupcakes and sugary drinks, what do they do? And so I remember that with, with my son we would go to these parties and I would pack them like a lunch pill with stuff that they would eat. Now of course that's really awkward because they are in that moment now like doing this really weird thing. Everybody else has pizza and a sugary drink and there's my child with their lunchbox eating their non sugar based stuff. It puts them in a challenging position and asks them to be okay to be that kid. But like these are the kinds of things we should probably talk about of practical things that parents can do to try to counteract these otherwise these damaging things in the kids bodies.

Yeah, and one of the things you were just talking about there, Brian, that the attempt to reduce sugar intake, really we should be trying to limit sugar to 25 grams a day for kids. And I don't think that registers for most people how low that is. When you think about what kids typically eat, the majority of things marketed to children have 25 grams of sugar in them. That one just like one serving of one of those items. The idea of trying to limit to 25 means a complete overhaul of what is typically fed to the children in our, in our society. I mean we're talking about like a Capri sun more than 25 grams. Right. A cupcake more than 25 grams. You know, like any of these things that are like standard typical daily foods that children eat, get you past that threshold of 25 grams of sugar. It's like, it's a, it's a complete switch.

And to jump back you guys on the synthetic dyes. Sorry, I'm going back on this is. I just looked up on GPT. The top 10 foods that have the highest level of synthetic dyes. I'll run through a few Target mini green green cupcakes, 55.3mg. That's yellow five, yellow six, blue one, and red. 40. Kool Aid burst cherry 52mg Sunny D orange strawberry, 45mg Captain Crunch Oops. All berries, 41mg. Can we please make a meme of Captain Crunch Oops. And cross out all berries and put in all synthetic dyes. Pillsbury Funfetti Confetti Frosting, 41mg Trix 36mg Crush Orange Soda. 33. Skittles 33. Fruity Cheerios 31m M's Chocolate Milk. 29. Reading this list, I am chock full of synthetic dyes. I mean, this was my. This is what I ate as a kid, like my entire childhood was. This was this menu of foods.

Same, same, same.

Is this why I'm so messed up?

I'm 12% synthetic dyes? Yeah.

I have the opposite response. Where I. My mom worked so hard. I got on a plane to the US As a uncontaminated being. And then I landed. And, you know, the first thing I ate was in the US I got into New York in my hotel, in my hotel room.

I'm bracing myself.

I'm too scared to go outside and get food because I'm, like, you know, 19, alone in the country, and I got a packet of Skittles, and that's what I have for dinner.

Yeah. So it's interesting to me, Kate, so despite your childhood of, like, being raised on all these healthy things and, like, focusing on, you know, food quality, the first thing you ate with Skittles like that, that is like. That's something that I think is a. A delicate nuance about what we're talking about. Like, do you do more like Kate's mother did, where you, like, just make sure you prevent the access to any of these foods? Or like, Brian. Brian's done with his children. Or do you, like, try to teach them the way, expecting that it's someday they're gonna. They're gonna leave home, they're gonna make decisions for themselves, and if you've completely exclud, they're just going to choose all of those foods? Do you know what I mean? Like, I. I wonder about this all the time. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't know what the right answer would be. I will say that I think. I think if you're Gonna have to choose a path, definitely go on them more extreme because it at least educates them that you're making a decision every time. So, like, I was 19, I was like, I'm like consciously making decisions with that information at least in my arsenal. And so I knew I was rebelling. I knew that I was like, it was, it was a decision I got to make because I was an adult and I could eat whatever I wanted. I think that's still a better starting point than not know.

And Mike, to your. Your point, on the 25 grams of sugar per day for the child in the U.S. the average added sugar is 68 grams per day.

Wild Sounds about right.

Just added sugars as well.

I mean, that's just like a, a Capri sun and some cereal, you know, like, it's not a. That's not even a wild day, you guys.

I also want to mention, like, Brian, you went through all the obvious ones, right? Like skittles. You can see the color. But here are some things that might have unexpected dyes. So plain hot dog buns. Oftentimes that light brown crust has a yellow 5 and 6 blueberry bagels. The berries get extra coloring from red 40 and blue 1. This isn't all, but these are in some wasabi covered peas. So the bright green blue one, yellow five dill pickles, same situation. Berry flavored yogurts. So it's definitely worth noting that these marketing tactics are often hiding in plain sight.

If we go down the front, easy to hard, then we could start with like, we sit the family down and we say, okay, there's some things that are clearly not a good idea, like M and M's and sugar cereals. Like the list we just went down for synthetic dyes. That's a pretty good category. And then we get into more nuanced things where you get like a Capri sun where they frame it as like fruit juice. You're like, it's fruit, it must be good. But then it's got 25 extra grams of sugar. And so those are. Anytime you have high concentrations of sugar, that's also bad. Kate just went through a few of the nuanced ones where a. A hot dog bun or a certain kind of bagel where those are more nuanced, where you're thinking, this is a whole food, it's fine. It's not, you know, quote unquote, ultra processed. Therefore. And so, Mike, how do we think about, as a parent, how do you tackle this complicated problem knowing you can't do it all but you want to try to knock out the biggest ones because you're battling this in your own knowledge, you're battling this in your own time. And also with your kids, like, what would your kids actually do? Because there's like this discussion of what's good for the kids. Then there's the reality of kids are like, I'm not eating that, like, not doing it. So how do you, how would you take this? Because we have quite a few suggested protocols here that we've done research on. But how would you do it as a parent?

So there's two different, Two different categories. There's like, so there's the, the easy and the hard way when it comes to choosing the right foods, right? So the, the easy way is probably just eliminating sugar and looking for, you know, red 40 and yellow 5 on the, on the ingredient labels. The hard way being like, you know, eliminating sugar, eliminating, like, quote, unquote, ultra processed foods, eliminating, you know, like, like buying only organic. And then there's also the behavioral side of things where it's like, I'm just gonna buy these foods for my house and stop there and just expose my child to these food, to the best foods possible at home. And I'm not gonna say you can or cannot eat things when you're out at a birthday party or doing other things. And then the hard way on the behavioral side would be like, I'm going to try to control everything that goes into my child's mouth or everything that they get exposed to. Right? So it just depends on, like, how far you're willing to go on both fronts. Right. I think the easy, easy path is buy the best foods that you can without getting crazy about it for your home. Right? That's the easy, easy path. And then the hard, hard path is like, be meticulous about every single ingredient in your child's food, make sure it's all real food, and then make sure that that's all that they get all of the time. I don't know what the right answer is. I mean, to be honest with you, like, I think, I think that this is a challenge every parent has to go through and has to fight with and to find what, where they're most comfortable in terms of the easy, easy or hard, hard path and make the best decision they can for their family. But I'm not sure that we have the right answer.

So, Kate, your mother was very thoughtful about how you guys, what you consumed. And there's now a lot of research out there. For example, we know that certain foods have certain addictive powers. For example, consumption of biscuits and cookies have a 4.1 times risk of being addicted. Sausages have an times risk of creating addiction. And so some of these foods really are engineered for addiction. Their entire game is, is doing that. If your parents would have framed this to you in terms of, hey, Kate, eating this is going to create some kind of addiction pathway, would you have been responsive to that? Or did. Did the approach that she took, do you think, prepped you to generally now have good intuitions on what you want to put into your body?

Yeah, I think. I don't know what would have worked, but I will say, even though I had that packet of Skittles, I think that the path that my mother took was the right path for educating us. She wasn't super restrictive, Mike, outside of the household in terms of like, she wasn't going to punish us if we, you know, like had some of our friends xyz. She just tried to create an environment where we stepped into the environment and the environment was safe, period. I would say that actually, genuinely worked. There were also all of these just basic axioms that probably were not perfect, but did the job. So if you say, you know, avoid dyes because they're toxic and you look in the back and even if a dye isn't toxic, it's probably going to be alongside other things that aren't so good for you, like added sugars. Like, the companies that are using these tactics are not going to be worrying about other things as well. And so it kind of creates this, like I would avoid these things. So I feel like my mom used the word chemicals a lot. And even though that wasn't necessarily perfectly scientific, it did knock out the majority of the bad things.

Yeah, we try to use eat real food, I think, is one of sort of the axioms that we use in around our house. And I mean, I don't know, is real a good enough descriptor? You can. It's sort of subjective, but like, it's just trying to get at like this concept of the fact that people are trying to sell you fake things and you should be on the lookout for the realness of what you're putting in your body.

The other thing you can do is I remember when we were in India and I gave Talmadge the air measurement device so he could go from room to room and cafe to cafe, indoors, outdoors, in our various cars, and he measured the air quality in every single environment we were in. We got into a car and there he was like, okay, can you Please turn on, you know, the internal air filtration system in this BMW. And can you see what kind of filter this car has for PM2.5 and VOCs? And so if you give children the tools, whether it be an air quality monitor or a wearable and you just say, or even like a cpg. Can kids use a blood glucose monitor?

There's no reason they couldn't. Yeah, they use it in diabetic children do.

Cool. So even helping them build intuition that if you drink this fruit juice or if you eat this sugar cereal, look what happened. What happens to your blood sugar glucose? In fact, last Halloween I wanted to set up a, set up a, a little station in front of my house and have sugar treats there. And then they do a finger prick blood draw to look at blood glucose rise. So like have the kids come down the street, eat the candy and then show them blood glucose rise or something like that. I mean, I guess. How long would you have to wait? You want you. The blood glucose rise would be like 15 to 20 minutes, right?

Yeah, it's around 10, 15 minutes actually.

You know, I could probably just measure their blood gluc as they arrive because presumably they've been snacking on the food they've already gotten.

Oh, true.

It's like a whole new level of vampire Brian.

You know, honestly, I think we're gonna do it right for Halloween. We should definitely do that. Okay. So one way to approach this is we've tried to isolate this into some easy categories where you and children can be educated to know there are certain things that are bad. So artificial dyes we've identified, we've given 10 examples of foods that have them. We've talked about 25 grams of sugar per day is what you want to target, which is extremely low. So that means you really want to avoid anything with added, added sugar outside of that budget. We should also talk about that the environment matters a lot. We've discussed this in other podcasts where the air and the environment matter a lot for a child's exposure to toxins. And so this is a reminder of to have a MERV 13 filter or as high as you can in your H VAC system help generate clean air. That's also the truth. You can have a HEPA filter on your vacuum and vacuum two times per week to lessen the number of toxins. Because kids spend a lot of time on the floor crawling, walking and putting things in their mouth.

Just along the same lines, when you were talking about the lead exposure and increase in iq, there's Actually been some interesting studies with air quality and performance in school. So there was a study in 18 LA schools that got HEPA activated carbon units put into the classrooms. There was a 60 to 100% reduction in particulate matter which was associated to a 0.2 standard deviation improvement in mathematics and English scores. So just like we see toxins altering our ability to perform intellectually, the same is true for air quality. So improving your child's air quality is not only better for their health, but it's also better for their brain.

Yeah. And even things like what allergy they may end up developing. So there's a study that shows that early exposure to air pollution may double the risk of a peanut allergy becoming persistent by age 10. That's, that's absolutely wild. Especially because I think I sourced that peanut allergy treatments cost expected to hit 300 million by 2023, 2030. So while that fifth half of that.

Could be preventable, now we've covered these, these protocols, should we jump quickly into the evidence around the problems, I guess the severity of the challenges for children in this country in case some people are interested in the data of how severe of a situation it is with obesity and toxin exposure and child death? Or do you guys think we did we cover the protocols up until this point?

I think we cover the protocol. So to recap, it would be avoid artificial dyes, limit your total sugar intake to, you said 25 grams per day or less. Yeah, or less. And that's include like, so that's inclusive total sugar. So a lot of, you know, if you're having fruit that has a lot of natural sugars, so it's total. Then you also want to improve air quality, toxins. So measure, get a filter if you need.

I mean I'd probably say like unstructured play and outdoor activity or movement, some sort of physical activity of at least an hour a day is a good rule of thumb. I think that can be missed and forgotten a lot in our society. I mean like it seems like kids now have like 15 minute recess at school. So like it's falling back on the parent to make sure that they're getting their physical activity in. Where traditionally this is just something that just happened, now we actually have to think about it. You have to pull them away from the video games, pull them away from the screens, make sure you kick them outside. Something that's often forgotten.

Yep. And then the other thing we should cover is sleep. We talk about the importance of it, we all know how incredibly important it is. But kids need More sleep for their cognitive development. So if they're between the ages of 3 and 5, it's somewhere between 10 to 13 hours. Around age 6 to 12, you're looking at 9 to 12 hours per night.

Night.

And then 13 to 18 in that teenage range, you're looking at 8 to 10 hours per night. So I think that's definitely something that all of us could have benefited from, like these early life habits around sleep and being taught to have a consistent bedtime and make it sacred in your home.

Do we dare talk about, like, screens and social media and mental health, or is that like a. A whole different podcast?

I mean, let's do it. I mean, these are. We're talking about things that negatively affect health, and we've focused on food inputs and then toxins. Yeah, let's do it. Because it is equally consequential.

There's a lot of different ways to approach mental health in childhood. I think the most obvious things that we've seen recently are the introduction of social media and screens to at least our older children. Well, screens to younger children. But really limiting screen exposure with the younger kids is extremely important. Making sure you're not just plopping them down in front of an iPad and then trying to limit social media exposure, least until later in childhood. There's, you know, some studies that suggest it should be not until eighth grade. Some even 13, 16. Never, you know, I think, like, ideally, yeah, ideally never. There's, you know, it feels, it feels like every year there's a new study that comes out that suggests it should be later and later in life. And this was a big challenge, I think, for everybody around Covid too. Right. Like, all of a sudden all these kids are home and, you know, parents don't know what to do. They're trying to work from home. And ultimately kids just got plunked in front of TVs a lot. And we'll see what the side effects are from that long term. But I think now that we're looking back on this, realizing that, you know, more unstructured play, less screen time in general is better. Talking about emotions is something that I think is also new and important when it comes to mental health. Just so you're educating children about what emotions feel like and what emotions are letting their emotions actually be present and play out as opposed to trying to squash them. Like, you shouldn't cry or don't be angry. Like, no, they gotta feel those feelings. So I feel like this is a much, much bigger and more in depth topic. But just starting to paint the picture, a little bit of focusing on childhood mental health is extremely important and I think will become more and more of a prevalent aspect of parenting in the near future.

Mike, as a doctor, when you look through the data, I mean in reading over this, this was pretty terrifying of the mortality rates in the US of the dangers of being a child, of being born into the U.S. the increase of obesity and of blood glucose challenges and the increases are alarming, between 20 and 80%. What is your assessment? Like what, what's happening our culture specifically.

In the US and more so throughout the rest of the world as like US culture seems to sort of like percolate into, into other developed countries, is making terrible decisions for our children. You know, there are many benefits to a capitalistic society and their, there are many downsides when it comes to advertising to children. And I think a lot of this has to do with poor choices on the side of corporations and parents about what is okay to expose our children to. From everything from toxins to foods to air quality to social media and screens. We're just making lots of bad decisions. And it's scary, but also not super surprising to me when you look at the rates of obesity. So the fact that US infants have had a 78% higher risk of death compared to babies in other wealthy countries, like that is a freaky statistic. I mean, that's scary. But at the same time, when you look at like the levels of obesity in our children, when you look at the amount of screen time exposure, the, the decrease in, in physical activity, that number becomes less and less unrealistic and more and more believable, which is a pretty scary thing to say.

So the, the one thing that we can see also behind the scenes is that in 1977 Congress passed a Toxin Substances Control act, which basically assumed that chemicals are safe until proven harmful. And we've had a 50x increase in the chemicals and plastics now in circulation since the 1950s. And so a US study showed that 201 children age 2 to 4 years old had at least 96 different chemicals in 5% of the urine samples. And 34 were present in nine in over 90%. When we had the LA fires and we saw, you know, 20,000 homes get lit up, we saw those toxins transfer from the fires, like the burning of the homes and cars to my body. And we could go down and list out every chemical and say, yep, that's PVC pipe, pipe. Yep, that's a floor. Yep, that's a car. So you can see these chemicals Transferred in real time. And of course a fire is an acute event, whereas otherwise we have these slow burn events that aren't as dramatic. But you can basically see the parallel of toxins that are manufactured in all of society end up in our bodies, which is no surprise. And then you can take those chemicals, you can say, yep, that one causes disruption of hormones, that one causes disruption of, you know, cognition, et cetera, et cetera. So the chemicals we've produced in the world now, these are not produced as toxins. They're produced as clever chemicals to do various things manufacturing. They're usually well intentioned, you know, non stick pans, for example, like we talked about with pfas also those end up in our bodies and become very complicated. And so again, back on the podcast is hopefully those of you who hang out with us week to week, you see the through line on everything we're doing and what the team has successfully done with me in that we have tried to systematically reduce the exposure of these toxins in the world and then also try to eliminate them from my body. And so I hope that all of you take hope that you can like week to week, you know, day to day, week to week, make very small changes. So whether it be the sleep hygiene to say, hey, family, we're doing this, this, and now you're saying family also, we're not doing this. And then slowly step into these additional patterns where first it's what do we eat inside our home and what kind of, you know, how do we maintain a clean environment? Then it's what do you do when you go to a birthday party? And then it's, you know, what do you do when you become an adult and leave the, leave the family, where you no longer have these kinds of rules in place. If you do this together, you will slowly start changing your habits as well and that will have this cumulative effect. But really it's, you do need to take a very proactive role in all of these because society is not doing it for you. There's no one in society really looking after you. And so hopefully that will turn. But until then, like it really needs to be a ground up swell by all of us that we're going to reject the things that people have done. Now I will say, like the contrast to this of the fact that we had this congressional law passed past the FDA will not let drugs on the market until proven safe. So it's the exact opposite that people trying to do good things with medicines are blocked until they have incredibly high rigor of evidence. To show they actually do things. Whereas in the chemical sphere, you can produce whatever you want and then it has to be proven bad over time. So it's really a twisted backwards approach where the two things should be swapped.

Brian, do you think that you're looking after people? You said nobody's looking after you in society. Is that your role?

Yeah, that's a good point. I suppose that's. Yeah. By default. It's the one I try to step in, maybe, because as a child, I think my parents were basically. They said yes to the system. They just like, you know, what people did, they did, and they didn't scrutinize it very much. And this is not a criticism of them. It's just like. And therefore I was. I'm a product of that. And so I definitely did not want my children to be in a similar situation. I wanted to, To. To find the weaknesses of the system and correct for it and then battle against it. But it's. It's pretty tough and I guess. Yeah. So, yeah, Mike, I think I. I do probably try to put that role in people's lives.

This is a tough one. This is like. I think it's. As a parent thinking about all of these. All these things, it's hard not to feel a little powerless. You know, like, you're in this situation where it feels like the culture and society is working against you and you're. You're battling against everything. You're battling against, like, social media. You're bad at battling against friends. You're battling against the fact that no one else is paying attention to what color dyes and the green cupcakes that they're giving to their children at the birthday party. And I guess, like, I just try to take some solace in the fact that I'm paying attention when I can and doing the best that I can, at least in my home and establishing some sort of understanding and insight into the importance of what my children put into their body, which is not necessarily something that my parents did. I think in a similar way, Brian, my parents just sort of trusted the system and trusted that corporations wouldn't sell bad chemicals to children. And I guess, like, that's pretty awesome that we're. That we've even come that far, you know, that we're even in a place now where we can recognize that, like, hey, we got to pay attention to this stuff, you know, like, and if you just think about it as, like, I'm just doing the best I can with what I got and have a little, like, grace towards ourselves. It doesn't feel quite as big and as ominous, you know? So I guess I just try to think about it that way, you know, act where I can, where it makes sense, in a rational manner.

And like good news, like, companies are through all of our voices forced to reconcile with these realities. Kraft and Heinz have pledged to remove all synthetic dyes by 2027. Ideally, that would happen sooner. I also understand how hard it is to make product changes on a quick time scale. The fact that they're saying all synthetic dyes in two years is exciting because I do think that we will be able to push our environment to actually change.

So, yes, let us know how this went. I mean, hopefully you're walking away with some feeling camaraderie, that you can build systems inside your family and your homes, and that you can make conscientious decisions with your children and teach them the dangers of dyes, of synthetic dyes, of added sugars, even things like air fresheners, which we consider to be nice, or scented cannules or candles or aerosols.

I was just gonna say that. I'm just realizing now that, like, Talmadge is the example of what? Having a parent who cares about this overnight has impact on him. Like, who was Talmage before he was living in your household, not being exposed to these things. Like, he has adopted his environment. Yes, he has, and he seems to be doing that willingly.

I think he now fully sees the. I think this was crystallized in his mind when we went to college and there were all of his friends, not friends, like new classmates, who were eating all sorts of, you know, bad food. And he's like, that is crazy. Why are they doing that? And I was like, oh, man, that felt so good. As a father, he had to, like.

Have it come from him. Yes, that inside.

Yeah. Just that. This is crazy. You guys. Okay. Mike, how do you feel after this conversation?

I feel more empowered than freaked out as a parent, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. Kate, how are you feeling?

It motivates me to treat every molecule that enters my body with the reality that it has an impact on my ability to do what I want in the world, to be healthy in the long term, to be smart, to be capable, to be strong. So it's definitely motivating.

I wish there was a way that we could make children powerful in society because they really are powerless, and then they have to grow up and acquire power and then compete against other, you know, other generations. I wish there was a societal mechanism which inherently made them powerful, like a. A, A voting bloc in society that gave them voice and power that they didn't need to wait until they were mature and adults and with their own resources and capabilities.

What if they were like, we want free Skittles for all kids?

No, I'm saying that not, not, not to ask them what they want because, you know, they're not of course developed in a way where they can make these wise choices, but just like what, what science says is good for them. This is the idea that when I was playing around if, if I were president, you know, I, I was playing around the idea that a third of Congress would be planet Earth, you know, and 2/3 would be human, but Earth, would it be a voting bloc in Congress? And you could say the same with, as AI models improve. It's just a thought experiment of like if you just reimagine who has power and in what ways to do what, and children are powerless. But it'd be cool if there was like some kind of, some way to represent their well being in society where they just get run over right now.

Or even, I mean, I extend that to adults too. Like if our biological data could vote on our behalf.

That's true.

In Congress. If we're seeing that sugar makes us obese and it kills us, probably shouldn't have sugar, probably should have some regulation around it.

That's true. I guess that, that, that's what blueprint is, is Blueprint gave my, my body all the power of decision making and removed my mind from the equation of like, I feel like this. Okay, guys, I think that was very sobering and actually kind of somber. I think. Mike, I think you, I felt you in this, that like you take your role as a father very seriously. You care deeply about your children. And Kate, I think you feel the same. I think you feel very empathetic towards the, the situation that others are in. And I think you appreciate your mother's efforts in your life to give you a very strong start. And so I hope that others that this emotionally resonates that, you know, it really is a powerful thing to stand up for our children's potential in life. That when they become disadvantaged because of the decisions that we adults make in society, it just stinks. And of course all three of us are on the receiving end of that where we have had things in our life where it's not always been the best for our potential. And that's not because the people around us didn't love us. It's because the systems of society just were not smart enough. Hopefully everyone you've walked away with a few good tips to be better members of society and to protect the most vulnerable and the people who will define the future of our existence. All right, let's wrap. Good to see you all and go to bed on time. This is the Brian Johnson Podcast. Special thanks to my co hosts Kate Tolo and Dr. Mike Mallon. For more science breakdowns and protocols, subscribe to my YouTube channel, follow the podcast on your favorite platform or follow me on Instagram or X rianjohnson.