A Blueprint to Overhaul the American Food & Pharma Systems – Calley Means | 1146 | Dave Asprey

This is the existential threat to the country. We've got $4.7 trillion which the health care system's at now incentivized for us to be sick. So we are, we are not going to have a fighting chance until that unrelenting pressure on incentives. So think about a child born as lower income. They are being pushed on to food stamps, which 75% go to ultra processed food. We're the only country in the world that does that. 10% of their food stamps go to sugary drinks. You know, 70, 75% ultra processed, mostly grains covered in glyphosate, seed oils, etc. You're the only country in the world like in Norway, Sweden, other countries, they're not feeding lower income people ultra processed food paid for by government money. That's insane. Because what that's doing is crushing our human capital, causing pre diabetes and causing us trillions of dollars of health incentives. We're literally systematically poisoning our population. Right. And then healthcare only kicks in to manage disease for your life once you're sick, to basically benefit pharma and the medical system.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today is a live interview. I love live interviews. I'm doing more and more of them for you. It's here in Austin, Texas, because it is south by Southwest, where a couple hundred thousand people come in and pretty much destroy all the barbecue capacity in the town for a long time and then they all leave with just devastation and economic success in their wake. So, Kelly, thanks for coming in for a South by.

Oh, thank you. And it's great to be here with some great danger coffee.

Ah, you're very welcome. It also helps that your company is based here, so that might be something else. Guys, Callie Means, MD, is author of a book called Good Energy. And in it he makes the argument that big Pharma and big Food is doing great things for society and if we could just have enough seed oils, sugar and other toxins in our diets, we wouldn't have to worry about our health.

That's right.

Did I summarize your book? Right?

That's about right. That's about right. Yeah.

Okay.

I don't know.

You read the opposite of what I just said. And it's funny because you are related to someone else who's been on the show.

Yeah, my co authors, Dr. Casey means. I play a doctor. I'm actually not an md.

Oh, it's Casey Means. Sorry, you're not an md. I saw the MD upside down. I didn't realize that. Okay, I'm the co author.

But Casey, who's the founder of Levels, has been a deep inspiration for me after 11 years of training. As you know, she left the system after seeing Metabolic Health is tied to almost everything and not really talked about and actually suppressed in the medical system. And that's deeply inspired me. And we're on this war path together to change the incentives of health.

It's cool. So we got a brother and sister team doing that. And guys, Levels. It's Levels link. Dave, we'll put you at the front of the line still. I'm an investor and advisor in Levels. And you see me wearing a little white thing on the back of my arm. That's my continuous glucose monitor. So Levels is that company. But what you're doing, Callie, is something different. You're doing True Med.

That's right.

And you're doing a lot of lobbying and public policy work about just getting bad food out.

Yeah.

So tell me what's up? Where do you want to go? You want to talk about your book first? You want to talk about public policy?

It's all under one umbrella. I'll frame it this way. The seminal moment of my life and Casey's life came in early 2021. And my mom was taking a hike, and she had a pain in her stomach, and she was thought she was perfectly healthy. Went into Stanford Medical School, Stanford Hospital, where Casey studied and got a scan, Stage four pancreatic cancer. And the doctor looked at us across the table, the oncologist at Stanford, and said, this is so unlucky. But knowing from Casey's journey, that's a lie, and it's the biggest lie in medicine. So my mom, over 40 years, when she had me and had Casey, we were almost £12 each. That was a sign of metabolic dysfunction. But she wasn't told that. She got high fives from the doctors. Then she had trouble losing weight, had obesity. Oh, that's no problem. That's normal. High cholesterol, take a statin, high blood sugar, take metformin, high blood pressure, you know, take an ACE inhibitor. So it was this, this treadmill, over 40 years of pill, pill, pill. And if at one point in that journey on that treadmill, a doctor sat her down and said, this is why your high cholesterol represents underlying metabolic dysfunction, which probably will kill you if it's not reversed. This is why, you know, your high blood sugar is problematic and how you can reverse it with exercise, with Healthy eating, with awe and curiosity about the underlying metabolic habits. If they, instead of wrote her that prescription, actually wrote her an exercise intervention and a dietary intervention, these simple things, she'd still be here today. And that's really the mission of levels, to give people more insight into their metabolic health. Still, in many states, you're not even legally allowed to have your medical records. They actually, it looks like there's going to be new guidance from the fda, but until, you know, this year, they've actually been trying to get people not to wear CGMs. They don't want you to have your data. So this, this is the journey we're on.

I'm so confused. Since when did we ask the FDA about CGMs? Like why is it even under their purvey, the data from my body is mine. And if anyone, I don't care if they're a fascist dictator from Antarctica or some kind of corrupt government thing or just a bad person, if they tell me I'm not allowed to know what's going on inside of me, it shouldn't take anything more than about a five year old to say, that person is not your friend and they don't have it. How do they get this corrupt power?

This is my life's work. So Casey was a doctor. I studied economics and political science at Stanford. I was not as smart, but went into politics and actually was a lobbyist at one point early in my career for the food and the pharmaceutical industry. So there's actually an unemotional, non hyperbolic, non conspiratorial, very simple answer to that question, which is that every single institution that impacts our health makes more money when more people are sick, when more people are addicted, when more people are in fear, including the FDA, which does not take taxpayer money. 75% of their money comes from the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry makes more money when we're sicker. Chronic diseases are the greatest profit invention in human history because people stay on them and they continue to rack up comorbidities. So fundamentally, because the FDA and the institutions of the regulatory agencies are actually funded and have, as we know, a revolving door with the pharmaceutical industry, they're actually complicit in the sick care system that fundamentally doesn't want us to be better. And again, let's just look at the raw economic motives. We all know good people probably that work at pharmaceutical companies that are doctors, that, that are medical school professors. But a medical school loses money when more people get healthy. An insurance company loses money when people get healthy. They are incentivized for the system to grow and actually cost to go up, we can get into that. Pharma, obviously, hospitals, obviously they make money on intervention. So this system that's propelling more and more folks to get sick, that profit off more and more kids to become metabolically unhealthy, that's just the raw economic incentives. And when you have the largest industry in the country, healthcare, it's also the fastest growing. Looking around this neighborhood, looking around any neighborhood in the country, the healthcare industry employs more people, pays for more mortgages than any other industry. And in the us, in the US And I want to be really clear, and this is, I think something really important to note. It's acute and specific and uniquely problematic in the US in Japan the childhood obesity rate is 3%. Here it's getting close to 25%. So we have a unique problem of these incentives in the United States.

As someone who grew up obese, hit 300 pounds in my early 20s, I kind of take that personally. I tend to be an early adopter even of childhood obesity. And I realized that there was no reason that it needed to happen that way. It was just bad information because of perverse incentives. I studied in my undergrad computer information systems with a concentration in a branch of artificial intelligence. And my entire tech career in Silicon Valley was around understanding complex systems and troubleshooting them. And the Internet was the primary one. Like how do you design this and how do you. Well, if something's not working over there and I don't know anything about the path between here and there, how do I know what happened? What you find is emergent behaviors. And then a guy named Stephen Wolfram wrote a book, I think it was called A New Kind of Science or New Kind of Math. Very hard to read book. But what he basically said was if you take these tiny simple rules and you just repeat them almost infinite numbers of times, these amazing complex patterns emerge. The drivers are emergent behavior when billions of micro decisions are made by people who are well intentioned. And so we fix the incentives and the system will self regulate. Do you agree with that?

100%. I think it might have been that author. There's a systemic design principle, but don't listen to the stated motivations, look at what the system does to understand what the system is designed to do. The healthcare system is designed to grow and it grows when a child is pre diabetic. Like 33% of kids right now of young adults are pre diabetic. That's beautiful for the system economically because inevitably they're going to get continued comorbidities. They're popping out statins, they're pulling out Metformin, SSRIs, Adderall. Now Ozempic. For 12 year olds, these are popular, tossed out like candy at schools. And all of those drugs, all chronic disease treatments, say you're saviors in this. It's a lifetime institute of management. Okay? You've got at 12 years old, obesity, Ozempic for Life. That's the, that's the guidance. Ozempic for Life. So, so, so we're getting folks on that treadmill. You're exactly right. The beauty of this system, you know, and I'm into business school and think a lot about this stuff, the beauty of the system is because it gives everyone plausible deniability. You know, at Stanford Medical School, when Casey asked in her first couple weeks, you know why people were getting so sick? They said that's not your job to ask why people are getting sick. You're, you're to stand here with a lazy American patient who's going to, you know, eat their Big Macs and drink their sodas and do bad things. We're here to practice medicine with our prescription pad and with our scalpel. That's very convenient. You know, that's very convenient that the medical system, you know, when we have literally a public health emergency where our children and ourselves are being poisoned, that nobody's taking responsibility for the poisoning. Nobody's taking, you know, advance. Nobody's taking responsibility. That we fund ultra processed food with our taxpayer dollars, $100 billion with various subsidies a year. So getting it back to kind of my mission and kind of. There's this big, there's this big issue which I think is the most important issue in the world to change these incentives that are making us sick. Casey and are on that mission. So Casey started levels with True Med. It's more than a company. We're here to evangelize one thing which is that the American people don't want to be sick. It's incentives. You gotta ask where the dollars are flowing. And what our insight was is that a doctor could have written my mom a letter of medical necessity. Just a doctor's note for exercise, for food, for supplement or their nutrient deficiencies. And they took her blood test and with the doctor's note, tying metabolically healthy items, some of your products right. To higher doses out that we're working with them like metabolically healthy products. You can actually use your government tax advantage, tax free dollars, which is 150 billion dollar program so you can actually save, you know, 40%, whatever your tax rate is on food. So we've been evangelizing that. We have a non profit, we have a company, we're helping to enable it. But whether it's from us, Truman, whether it's from your doctor, when your doctor is about to put you on a statin for, and let me be clear, chronic conditions, the 90% of healthcare costs. Acute. Trust your doctor. Chronic, which is really plaguing American life. Heart disease, diabetes, obesity, kidney disease, respiratory illness. Before your doctor writes that script, ask them, can they write you a letter of medical necessity for exercise, for healthy food that unlocks and your money can actually go towards that.

Oh, my gosh. So, for example, Upgrade Labs is a franchise I started. It's the first biohacking facility in the country. It's not medical, but it has really strong effects on your health and biology. And it's AI powered and you set your goal and then we, in vanishingly small amounts of time, you hit these goals. So with a letter of medical necessity, you could make that tax deductible.

I've got one correction for you. It is medical. In many, many cases, it is medical. See your condition, we're all conditioned to say exercise is medical. Food isn't medical. Supplements isn't medical. There's no. Despite pharma's efforts, there's no law that says the only medicine is a synthetic pill developed by Pfizer. Medicine is what a doctor says is useful in preventing or reversing a condition. So if somebody is dealing with metabolic dysfunction, that's causing them a bunch of comorbidities, the doctor. I believe doctors are being negligent not to write a note suggesting root cause interventions like you provide. Your products are medical. You need a prescription for a statin, you need a prescription for Viagra and for metformin, tying it to a condition. You can get a letter of medical assessee for you. That's the big rampage we're on. This food, it's medicine. It's not just a buzzword. Just follow the science. Just follow the science. If somebody's obese, should they be getting a drug in most cases, or should they be getting a detailed dietary philosophy and incentives from their healthcare system? That can happen right now.

Let's go a little bit deeper on that. If exercise is a drug in the current system, the FDA owns exercise. So I will tell you, nothing I do that isn't a pharmaceutical is medical. Nothing. And keep your regulations off my data, off my body, off my rights. And if we say that food is under the purvey of doctors. Given how corrupt that system is, that leads us right into the land of plant based and cricket incentives with one bite of beef every whatever. And I keep trying to explain to these regulators, you as a regulator are made out of meat and I don't eat grains and I'm hungry and it's one of the things I would be £300 again. My brain will go away and I will probably get a very serious life threatening autoimmune condition if you make me eat the standard American diet. I know, I've been there, I lived it and I climbed out of it and I will never go back. And there are millions of people like me. And so in one future they use AI to figure out who all of us are and send robotic dogs in to kill us. And let's hope that that's not the future. But I'm sure big pharma is down for it because they can train the dogs to just wound us so they can make money in hospitals. But here's the deal, like do we want doctors to have more control of our lives or do we want to have our own control of our lives?

This is the existential threat to the country. We've got $4.7 trillion which the healthcare system's at now incentivize for us to be sick. So we are, we are not going to have a fighting chance until that unrelenting pressure on incentives. So think about a child born is lower income. They are being pushed onto food stamps which 75% go to ultra processed food. We're the only country in the world that does that. 10% of their food stamps go to sugary drinks, you know, 70, 75% ultra processed, mostly grains covered in glyphosate, seed oils, et cetera. We're the only country in the world like in, in Norway, Sweden, other countries that not feeding lower income people ultra processed food paid for by government money. That's insane. Because what that's doing is crushing our human capital, causing pre diabetes and causing us trillions of dollars of health incentives. We're literally systematically poisoning our population. Right? And then healthcare only kicks in to manage disease for your life once you're sick, to basically benefit pharma and the medical system. So I hear you, but we, unless we change and that's the battle we're on and we have to call processed food companies out if they try to rig the, you know, increasing food is medicine laws that we're trying to push. They're absolutely trying to get in there. And if there's government money for food, the ultra processed food companies are coming in. But we have to fight to not have this albatross of this $4.7 trillion of sick care with a doctor and a patient. Right. There's millions and millions of visits for metabolic conditions. It's with plaguing American life, we need to demand that the medical system practices medicine and follows the science. In almost every case where an American is dealing with the metabolic condition, the doctors say, oh, oh, they're not going to exercise, just prescrib the pill. They can write a. If the doctor actually tells a patient, if they told my mom, you're going to die early unless you exercise, here's a intervention, here's food you should eat. And by the way, this enables you to use tax free spending on this. There's medical programs going to this. I think there's cynicism about the American people to say that if they're getting that message from Dr. Fauci, if they're getting that message from the medical community. Nine of the 10 largest killers of Americans right now are foodborne illnesses. Covid was a foodborne illness. If you were metabolically healthy, you weren't dying of COVID Right? Covid. Covid. Covid was a metabolic condition. It was. So you have to have that. It's interesting because you mentioned the FDA and the kind of these incentives and why did these agencies tell people they shouldn't have CGMs? Well, our mission has become large. We have personally facilitated 100,000 patients getting letters of medical necessity for food and exercise. We've, we've driven $100 million from these HSA accounts that were waiting for people to get sick going to drugs to food and exercise. And just this week the IRS which oversees HSA FSAs. One employee made a statement to the Washington Post and they said food isn't medicine. Food and supplements and exercise should count for HSA accounts. Rarely an IRS official commenting on medicine, They've never commented about the degree to what other drugs are prescribed. They actually think this is growing so much and Americans are waking up and realizing that they don't need to go on the pharma treadmill, that they can actually work with their doctor, get a food and exercise plan. The irs, no, no, no guidance the laws still that Americans can do this. They're actually trying to freeze it. They actually literally made that statement.

I mean you look at the IRS's job, it's to maximize, to maximize income. And it is their, it is their job. Right. And, like, we hire them to do that. Right. And then it's, you know, our accounting firms and our attorneys and all that, it's their job to say, well, we're going to comply with the law and we're not going to pay more than we have to. And it was this huge, mushy gray zone in there. And, you know, I. I would just like to make sure that the. The guidance from the IRS is based on legal guidance from our government.

Yeah.

And rather than an opinion.

Right.

And. And it seems like you've done some serious work. I mean, you've met with, over the last year, people in Congress.

Right.

You've met with some presidential candidates. I'm actually later tonight going to go see rfk.

Great. I talked to him yesterday.

Okay, cool.

He's amazing.

Yeah. Really amazing. And I. He understands this more than any other politician I've. I've ever come across. In fact, I'm. I am. I didn't study political science. I studied systems.

You didn't miss much.

Yeah, well, I. I'm. I'm actually a. A political skeptic's the wrong word. I'm not skeptical at all. I just. I feel like if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. And so I like fixing government corruption, government problems and things like that. I just don't know that that politics is my way to do that.

I think that's right.

Versus direct information for people and direct learnings. And I see this future where if you're bleeding or you have a broken bone or you have acute trauma, you go to the doctor. Everything else, it's like you could hire someone to come in and hang paintings on your wall because you can't use a hammer and a nail and to do every little thing, and you're going to spend a ton of money and they'll do a crappy job. Or you can say, I learned how to go to Home Depot, and it's a DIY job. It's my job to learn how to feed myself. It's my job to learn how to do basic maintenance on my body. And now I have all these AI tools. I'm about to release one that'll help to do that. And all of a sudden, like, why would I go to the doctor for diabetes? Like, that's weird.

Right?

Right. Like, that's my job. And then at that point, you know, then someone can have a conversation with IRS about which parts of that are deductible or not. You know, I would argue. I think all food should be deductible but you know, that's not my place to do it. So here's a question for you. Given that the US is a massive outlier in this and everyone I know from Europe comes with like, I got sick and I left and I got better, should I just. Well, actually I moved to Canada, come to think of it. So I thought that was going to get better, but it turned into like a poorer, more corrupt version of the US over the last few years. I mean, should I tell my kids it's time to move to France? They sure know how to find who's at fault. They're spraying government buildings with manure right now over farming policy.

That's right.

And I think they won. So, I mean, is it time to, you can afford it to just like let the US sort of smolder in, fester and in bad food and chemicals and all that, just if you want to take care of your kids. It's a serious question and I love the country.

Well, it is a serious question.

I don't know if we're going to fix it, but I'm sure trying, but.

So let's just set the table. I think what you're hitting on is not hyperbolic. I want to be really clear. Our children are being poisoned. I'm just going to state this again. When 50% of teens are overweight or obese, there's nothing more criminal and shameful in America than that statistic. That's not personal choice. And it's an interesting dynamic because I don't think parents are trying to poison kids. Right? I don't think kids are trying to poison themselves. This is against our core evolutionary function. We're literally poisoning kids at scale. So our food is compromised and it is the most important issue in the country. I think it's on scale existentially, as a threat. With Civil war, World War II, I, I, I think we're truly dealing. And RFK talks about this. This is the fundamental challenge of our generation because healthcare is the fastest growing industry as well as being the largest. It's going to be 40% of GDP in 15 years. It's literally just mathematically going to make up the country. And it's destroying our human capital. Most, most alarmingly, we're actually losing the ability to reproduce, infertility and sperm count and PCOS is skyrocketing, which obvious, of course is all linked metabolically. So, so my answer would be, and when we talk about the book, book is there's a, there's obviously a bottoms up and a Top down, by the.

Way, I'm hold up the book here for video. Good Energy is the name of the book, and it's. It's worth a read because there's lots of advice here and from other places to like, tell you. Tell you what to do, what to eat and how to exercise and all that. This is more about how we got here and how we can get out of it.

Yeah. The book, what walks through Casey's journey as the top of her class at Stanford Med School, surgical resident working at the nih and really unpacks these issues. It then, you know, gives, I think, the best set of metabolic health empowerment tips ever put to paper through Casey's genius. But what we're really trying to do is unpack the large picture too. It really helps you understand, you know, how serious this issue is, which I do think that knowledge that true, like knowledge of how the system works is important for empowerment because I think the key from the bottoms up is you shouldn't listen. You should maybe listen to your doctor, but you should not trust them when it comes to chronic conditions. You've hit on this a couple times. When you think of a medical miracle, you're thinking for an acute solve that was generally created before 1960. Antibiotics were really great, helped win World War II. Sanitation procedures, emergency surgical procedures. It used to be very dangerous to give childbirth 100 years ago. These were all great. The problem Post World War II is the pharma industry saw the birth control pill. The birth control pill was the first pill in American history that people took for more than a week or two. They actually saw that you could actually convince people to take a pill for months and years and decades. And that led to a emphasis to create more chronic disease treatment. So by the 70s, 30% of US women were on Valium, which is a highly addictive drug. It's called Valium Nation, Time magazine cover. And now Today, there are 5 billion prescriptions issued annually, mostly for chronic conditions. And the average American is taking, I think, five medications. So. And in 1960, we were close to zero percent of our healthcare budget chronic conditions. Now it's 90%. So that's the issue. And there's no record of accomplishment for chronic conditions. So fundamentally, there is a record, there's no record of accomplishment. And I truly mean this, and this is just a statement of fact. If you took out all chronic disease research funding, which is most of what the NIH does, if you took out all nutritional research, if you pressed a button and had all chronic disease researchers, Alzheimer's Even cancer, quite frankly, diabetes, they were all gone tomorrow. And all nutrition research was eliminated. Tomorrow we'd be a healthier country. The trillions of dollars we pumped into nutrition research and chronic disease management and research and R and D has been a net negative for the country. As Peter Thia pointed out in his book, if you control for, if you take out acute conditions and infectious conditions, life expectancy has not increased in the past 100 years.

It's totally true. And Peter, he's always a problem in his book. He's like, we will not be able to extend human lifespan. I'm like, oh, he's not a longevity doctor. He's a surgeon who says you should work out a lot, which is like 1970s advice. But he says it's not possible to extend human lifespan. And I'm seeing at the very high end of medicine we are learning. So many of the companies I'm working with now, they're actually making us younger. I'm expecting to live longer than I'm supposed to. And so there's this, this sort of old school 1970s and 80s longevity. Like, you know, if you can just do something and exercise a lot, this is where like the, the chronic cardio jogging forever craze came. There are effects from that being healthy and having muscle great for extending health span to extend lifespan. We're going to have to fix this problem with our system. I'm not sure that it's doctors in the US who are even going to be the ones who extend human lifespan because the FDA won't let them say, we're going to go to Singapore. We're going to go. Actually, I'll bet you we go to Abu Dhabi to get that done.

Well, let me, let me, let me get my. Because I am optimistic. So I think, I think this doom and gloom is important for, to make the point, to convince families to convince. I know everyone listening is on the path, but when your pediatrician gives dietary recommendations or when you're about to be prescribed the statin, or when your kid is, you know, getting an intervention for a chronic condition, we need to trust ourselves. You know, listen to you, read the books, make up your own mind. Every animal except humans and animals who've domesticated, right, don't have chronic metabolic issues, don't have chronic diabetes, obesity, we're born with an innate sense. And I think this system, the medical system, by weaponizing the fear of death, has actually taken us out of the awe for what we're putting in our bodies and just basic simple metabolic habits like Sleep, what we're eating, our microbiomes. These are all considered things that the medical system berates us not to ask about, to trust the science. And that's a spiritual crisis. So that's the bottoms up. We've got a lot of tips in the book. From the top down, I actually am optimistic. So right now you've got RFK as the most popular independent politician for president in the past 100 years.

If he wins, I think he knows how to fix it. If he can overcome the weight of just bureaucratic nonsense.

There's bureaucratic nonsense. The IRS is saying food isn't medicine. The FDA is saying you can't have CGMs, as we talked about. But here's what makes me optimistic. So he is the most popular politician in America right now among women and independents. Okay, there's that then. Whatever you think of him, you do have Trump, who does represent. Fundamentally, the rationale for his candidacy is a questioning of our institutions. So my point is, you fundamental, fundamentally, in America, I think at a historical.

Level, two of three candidates have distrust.

For institutions and primarily an RFK case. But also, frankly, what Trump is saying, what is in what are institutions? The biggest one is health, and the one letting us down the most is health. So in America, among an average voter, the most important thing they're caring about is they're demonstrably getting sicker and more depressed. And you walk into a child's, you know, preschool, it is devastation. And there's no parent that doesn't see that. So this is the biggest issue. And what gives me hope is these. Actually, I think these incentives are relatively straightforward to change. Rfk, on our conversation yesterday, said his first act of president would be to declare a state of emergency, to take the entire state of emergency apparatus that we did for Covid for disastrously. The biggest public policy mistake in modern American history, I think, was the COVID response. But that is an executive action. The founders wanted this. It's very clear. When there is a threat to the country, and specifically a public health threat, the president has the ability to declare a state emergency, as we did during COVID What bigger emergency have we faced than the fact that we're almost committing genocide against our children with our compromised food supply? Our institutions have let us down. We do not have a free market in, in food, we do not have a free market in healthcare. We need action.

I don't know, Kelly. It feels like we should outsource that decision making to the WHO and international treaties, don't you think? Well, that's what we've done, well, there's people trying to do that. But in the world that I live in, when politicians try to do things that they don't have a right to do, they simply haven't done it. The fact that they live in some weird reality that they think they can do something that they don't have rights to, that I granted them, they didn't do, actually, they're living in a false reality. I think it's important that, that people, you know, look for a way to save our children. And my God, save the children. Is this a Sally Struthers campaign? No, it's that if your kid's pediatrician is fat. I'm sorry, this is going to sound really terrible. As someone who was obese, get another pediatrician. Because if your pediatrician can't manage his own metabolism or her own metabolism, they'll probably say, what my doctor said to me when I went in in my 20s and was like, all this exercise, all this food, nothing's working. Help me. Maybe you should try to lose weight. And I'm like, you have 40 extra pounds. And then I remember this so clearly. Well, the advice I'm giving you works. I just don't follow my own advice. I'm like, newsflash. It's because no one can follow the advice of don't eat anything and work out forever because it creates stress and breaks your hormones and all the stuff we know now. So if a parent is going into a trusted figure who's unhealthy, telling them to make their kids healthy, what is a parent supposed to do right now?

The fact is, and again, I'm spending a lot of time with, with denizens of the health care industry. They don't understand the problem. They're like fish and water that don't know they're in water. It is literally speaking to the irs, speaking to vanguards of the health industry of various sectors, they don't understand we have a chronic disease crisis. They actually think it's kind of a good thing for the industry because there's more and more patients. They literally, in their head, have convinced themselves that it's just a foregone conclusion, that everyone's getting sick and they have to solve it. And, and, and, and in D.C. on Capitol Hill and these conferences with health executives, it's literally like about page 250 of the Medicare Part D program. They're, they're just, they're just debating little minutiae because that kind of keeps their jobs going. So they don't. They just don't understand. I think they've convinced themselves that we don't have a problem. Like the fundamental problem is that we're incentivized every institution to get sick. Unless you attack that problem, we're not going to do anything. Also just, just maybe stating the obvious, everyone in healthcare, any healthcare conference you go to, these are not healthy people. These are not people with awe for the world. These are not people that understand anything about metabolic habits. But, but I just getting solutions and getting to what you know, RFK is talking about and, and my nonprofit associated with trum, working with RFK and other campaigns to draft executive orders. You can operationalize some of these ideas but you just have to start chipping away at the incentives. Let me give you an example. The usda, as you probably know, recommends. I don't know, we have maybe slight differences nuance on sugar. But I think we can both agree that the FDA shouldn't be. Excuse me, the USDA shouldn't be recommending sugar to 2 year olds. Added sugar.

I'm sorry?

Added sugar.

I didn't hire them to tell me what to eat. They shouldn't be recommending any us. It's not their job.

The USDA is saying 10% added sugar but 2 year olds diet is appropriate and actually can be held.

Let's take away their ability to say that.

Exactly. You can do that in a swipe of a pen.

That's not their job.

President Biden could do that.

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Saying though is we've got to just follow the science. The science on Covid is that our immune systems in this country are in tatters and we are susceptible to these conditions. Right. In a much more prominent way than any people in other countries. The death rates were multiples more and just following the science. And as Joe Rogan said this often, maybe a pharmaceutical solution is a small part of the issue, but it's a small part the fundamental issue is that we're not hardened right now in this country. We have a non competitive situation with our metabolic health. And for you talking out about that for or Joe Rogan on down the list, that was what was cited in emails with Dr. Fauci and the head of the NIH. You know, you guys spreading misinformation with a gall to tell people, you know, maybe hardening our immune systems, being a little bit more healthy, being curious about biohacking, being curious about cold plunging, being curious about saunas, being, you know, that was disruptive information. That was literally. You guys were some of the top enemies during COVID of the public health. Why? Why is that?

It's our job to say it's in the definition of biohacking when I wrote it. So change the environment around you, including pharmaceuticals and food. Right. And the environment inside of you to have control of your own biology. Which means if you want to be fat and weak and tired, you can you get to pick your goal. But saying that you are fundamentally in charge and that no one has the right to disintermediate that, even your doctor. What about your spiritual point there?

Listening to that, Dave. And this is what Casey and I are most passionate about. There's really just a crisis where we've taken autonomy away from people. We've told them that you're not in charge of your body, that you're not in charge of your life. Right. We've taken away again, I just keep going to awe for the universe that kids are born with this exploratory mindset. We sit kids at desks from five years on, being lectured with the weapon of mass destruction for chronic stress in their pocket and a phone, shoving them with ultra processed food, shoving them with, you know, 70 shots, shoving them with a bunch of pharmaceuticals with in a windowless rooms, often in schools, you know, with sedentary environments. We've literally created a environment for children and adults that's like you literally have a science experiment where if you put an animal, you know, in a little cage, in a little box with limited sunlight, limited movement, and have a feeding tube of ultra processed garbage going to their mouth and microbiome, they're gonna be extremely depressed, fat and sick. And like we are doing that at scale because it helps the food company. This is what I talk about, the devil's bargain. You know that that is in the food company's interest.

It is.

But the medical system should be speaking out the problem. And I just again, nobody realizes this in D.C. or leaders. The problem is that the medical system isn't only silent, they're complicit. When I was working for Coke, I gave the, we gave the American Diabetes association millions of dollars. The American Diabetes association is on the payroll of Coke. How can that possibly be? Just think about that for a second. So it's not only silence, it's direct collusion. 80% of pediatric wards in the country have a Coke machine with full sugar Coke, they partner with them, they're sponsor the pediatric ward. So that's where the devil's bargain comes in, which few people understand. We're getting poisoned by our food, but the medical system is complicit universities.

So when I, when I ran Bulletproof and Bulletproof's been bought, they, they removed me from the board three years ago. So I have nothing to do with whatever they're doing now. But I met with the former CEO of Pepsi and she was vegan. And she was vegan because of Dean Ornish from ucla. Now Dean Ornish makes millions of dollars from soft drink companies and he validates seed oils and calories and high sugar diets. It was the Ornish diet that killed Steve Jobs. They did a bunch of investigative work to figure that out. He actually replied to me and said, well, I told him to get surgery. Yeah, you also made him need surgery with your stupid recommendations. So we have corrupt scientists. Maybe they know they're corrupt. Maybe they just believe their own bullshit. And we are wired as humans to be really good at deceiving ourselves. So I can't ascribe motive there because I don't know anyone's internal motive. I only know behaviors. And so I see, oh, you're getting many, many millions of dollars to do research that supports the destruction of humans. And if your research doesn't support that and then you have to make animal protein into your products instead of vegan products and then your margins go down. Well. Oops. So I was really surprised to see how much that Ornish thing was affecting Pepsi's strategy at the highest levels.

Yeah, I, I, I worked within, I knew Indra Nui. Met her a couple times. She's a criminal in my opinion, to be totally honest. She worked whitewashed the efforts saying that she was helping to improve health and is still today. The company is one of the biggest propagators of ultra processed garbage and hasn't made any progress on that. So what I would say just, just from my experience is, is, is the industry is really good at weaponizing institutions of trust. So research is a big one. I was shocked as a Junior employee in one of these public affairs firms working for the American Beverage Council, for Coke and Pepsi. We had lists of doctors, we had lists of Dean Ornish, and we had lists of Harvard doctors, Tufts Nutrition School, Stanford, Oxford. The food industry pays 11 times more for foundational nutritional research than the NIH. Dr. Ornish isn't seen as a non partisan, unbiased researcher. He's seen as a public relations asset. If he is going to be paid millions of dollars in research grants, which is his lifeblood for a doctor, and direct consulting agreements, grants, things like that, it's just direct prize, which are totally fine. There's no conflict of interest laws. And then you're going to say that a company's going to pay him that millions of dollars. It'd be against their fiduciary interests. It'd be almost actually illegal if that donation was for the advancements of unbiased research. Companies actually have to spend money, and these food companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on research. They have to spend money for their interest. There would be lawsuits if it wasn't in their interest.

Here's an interesting perspective. There are laws against bribes, and when companies make bribes, people go to jail.

Right?

Have you or has anyone investigated whether the behavior of collusion between researchers and big food companies actually constitutes bribes?

Absolutely. I mean, we've talked about this on any network. What the medical system does is bribes are legal and they're in plain sight. So you can go on a government website and see that Novo Nordics, the maker of Ozempic, has made. You can't even wrap your head around this, but 420,000 individual payments to doctors in the past year. 420,000 individual payments that are on a government website, including $100,000 last year to Fatima Cody Stanford, the lead obesity research at Harvard, who Then went on 60 Minutes Undisclosed and said that obesity was genetic and a brain disease and not tied to food and lifestyle. That was not disclosed because before and after that segment, 60 Minutes ran a pharma ad. And Novo Nordics itself is one of the largest funders of TV news and 60 Minutes, specifically pharma, actually, you can't even make this up. Pays 60% of all TV news budgets. So you just. Let's back up here, right? You've got the doctors, right? Fatima Cody Stanford is not only a doctor, Harvard, she's on the USDA nutrition panel making the nutrition guidelines that I mentioned. These doctors are on the FDA panels that approve the obesity drugs. It's not bureaucrats, it's outside experts so they're actually, there's no conflict of interest there.

So what I'm hearing is it's not safe to let your kids eat school lunches anymore because people like that are making the guidelines that then they're feeding your kids.

Somebody paid $100,000 biozempic who said obesity isn't tied to food. You know who's deeply, deeply troubled. 95% of the previous USDA panel had received direct grants. Direct bribes from food or pharma. This is happening out of the open. It is legal. There is no conflict of interest rules at the NIH. 80% of NIH grants go to for chronic disease go to doctors at universities who have a direct conflict of interest, who have been paid by the pharmaceutical company who makes a drug for the condition that they're researching on. So NIH is essentially R and D for pharma. They're not researching core issues of why we're getting sick. They're not researching how Alzheimer's is type 3 diabetes and we can completely reverse that with aggressive letters of medical assessment for dietary and exercise interventions. No, they're pummeling hundreds of millions of dollars, at least into drugs, into these marginal BS cures for Alzheimer's that will never be effective. There is a cure for Alzheimer's.

I've had Dale Bredesen on this show. I wrote a book about it myself. The End of Alzheimer's is name of his book. We already know how to fix it.

Yeah, it's here.

Nicotine helps too. Even.

We've got, We've got the, We've got the cure. So, so that's the just thing to understand. It's just like look at every institution, the media, the research itself, it's all being funded. Pharma is the leading funder directly of politicians, of medical research, of the media, of civil rights groups. We paid off the NAACP today. The NAACP is a registered lobbyist for Ozempic. That's not even made up. This is a reported by npr. They are, they are lobby. They are a lobbying organization now, the NAACP and a civil rights group that's done a lot of good work. And they're saying in Congress, they're going to members of Congress, the head of the NAACP and saying it's an example of racism for the government not to fund $50,000 per patient per year of Ozempic because so many lower income folks are obese. And what we need to do is fund Ozempic automatically on Medicaid, which is why that company, Novo Nordics, is like the 11th most valuable company in the world. They make one drug. Basically, they're the most. One of the most valuable companies in the world. The most valuable company in Europe. They passed Louis Vuitton entirely based on profits from the United States. Based on this corruption, based on. Based on Novo Nordics, which is a top 10 spender on US ad funding, which is a top 10 lobbyist spender, which is a huge contributor to civil rights groups and other groups that weaponize our debate in America, that all their profits, 90%, are projected to come from America because Europe isn't using Ozempic as the, as the standard of care. Ozempic is 10 times less expensive in Scandinavia, 10 times less expensive than the U.S. so this is, this is how it's done.

At this point. What's coming to me is that you have politician hair. Thank you. So are you running for office?

No. I agree with you. These folks in Capitol Hill don't seem very happy. And that's not what I want to do. And I am so happy to be fighting this battle with my sister and trying to start a company. That's kind of a political answer, saying no.

But people have asked me. I'm like, I would rather be obese than run for office.

That's a good political answer. That's what you're supposed to say if you do plan to run.

Yeah, but it's real for me. Like, I, I. You change. You change the world by starting a company bigger than Novo Nordisk, I think so that. That creates human flourishing. That's the only way to do it. I don't think you do it by raising your hand and saying, I want to be the one who's the boss. So I can be, you know, either bribed or possibly murdered by special interest groups, because they do that stuff. And it's well documented, 100%. Are you worried about your safety? You're poking some big bears here.

No, I. Honestly, Casey And I, those 13 days between my mom's cancer diagnosis and burying her was transformative for our lives.

Yeah.

And it really solidified the meaning of life for us. Honestly, my mom, just how she dealt with that and, and, and really, from Casey's perspective, having a belief that she still lives within us, actually in a biological way, that she's actually changed ourselves. When you meet somebody, you actually change their, their makeup. And after she died, we said, this is what we're going to do with our lives. We're going to evangelize this idea that we need to slant our health care incentives from the bottoms up and Tops down to metabolic habits. Casey, Graduating from medical school and choosing between 42 specialties. Right? Dividing the body into 42 specialties. That's a lie. Almost everything that tortures, plagues and ends American life is really the same thing. At the end of the day, we can solve it with the same metabolic habits. The things that you're evangelizing, you know, and they're not even, not even exactly one prescribed path, just a path of curiosity. And even if you do die from something, that's a much better life to be on a path of curiosity, of learning about your body as you talk about so much, it's the most rewarding thing you can do is just to be on path of constant growth. It's actually not about, to me living forever. It's just about having more gratitude and appreciation for our health and bodies right now that's being taken away from us. So the answer is, given that experience, given, you know, it's trite, but having a young child who's going into an absolute wood chopper right now in America, you know, they can come after me, that's fine. You know, I'm very lucky to be a foot soldier, you know, working with rfk. I'm working with, you know, as I said, I'll say it, and I'm a one issue person. I mean, President Trump is talking about this too, frankly. The Biden White House has said some good stuff on food is medicine. I mean, this is, this is a, this is a bipartisan. Yeah, well, their IRS is saying literally, food isn't medicine and Ozempic is preferred to a food intervention for obesity and that's going to be corrected. This is a core bipartisan issue. There's for some reason a political virtue in some circles of trusting pharmaceutical and food companies that are poisoning us. But, but we're going to get this right. And that's the fight we're on.

I'm actually not political. I, I pay as much attention to the political races as I do who's going to win the World cup or the Super Bowl. And I used to care. I played soccer for 13 years. I just don't care. Right, that's good. I don't know who played in the super bowl because I would rather read PubMed. It's more interesting to me and I know that I'm a nerd and people are probably going, what the hell, you're probably not even a man. Okay, whatever. Bottom line is, I don't care. And politics are politics. Politicians do what they always do. They'll always try to get more control and more rights. Because all governments of all forms do that over time until they become too heavy and then they fall apart and there's a revolution and we do it again. And if you study history, that's there. Like, so I live in that environment and I'm going to focus on what I do. And the only time I pay any attention at all is when someone tries to restrict my access to control over my biology.

Yeah.

And that's why, for the first time in my life in 50 years, I maxed out or even donated anything to a candidate. And I maxed out my donation rfk and I'm hopefully wins. Because if you can fix this problem of health. Everything I know about biohacking, all the books I've written, show that your mitochondria, which hold your metabolic function, they are the root cause of depression, anxiety, autoimmune conditions, aging, hormonal problems, fertility problems. All we have to do is fix that. And you say it very elegantly towards the end of good energy in your book. Because we fix our food, we fix our environment, get rid of all this crap, including glyphosate, and all of a sudden, everything that feels hard gets easy.

It's so damn simple. This is the point of the book. And I've been so influenced by so many people that have come on this podcast and warriors in this space, but I do think that sometimes it gets overcomplicated. Like, we can cut seed oils. Let's cut ultra processed food. Ultra processed food isn't inherently bad. What does that mean? It means seed oils. It means a bunch of science experiments of toxins in there. It means colorings. Right. It means highly processed grains covered in glyphosate. So. So as a shorthand, right? Japan, I think it's closer to 20%. Here it's like 65%. If we could literally, just as a shorthand metric, fire every nutrition researcher in the country and just have one guide of public policy, which is, let's get ultra processed food consumption down to 30%. It would transform the country. And you talk about, like, the economy and irs, all this stuff that's the big drag on our country is that this human is this disaster. Because when we subsidize ultra processed food and shove that addictive substance, which I don't think it's the free market to have poison served to kids. I don't think it's the free market to have such a rigged system that we're putting neurotoxins into our food. Like, there should Be, I believe, and I'm a libertarian. But, but libertarians, I think, lose their way when the food industry strangleholds, you know, the system, regulatory agencies to put toxins and addictive chemicals in our food that are banned in every other country and then yell that we're not nanny state. I think we've got to clean up our food supply a little bit and get ultra processed food. As a public policy goal. As a public policy goal. That's simple. We have, you know, as you talk about in the book, and we all know this, but we have an assault on sleep. Childs are getting two hours less sleep. We have an assault on circadian rhythm. As you know, school hours, when they start is a complete disaster. We basically take that not into account at all or how important that is. We have chronic stress issues all over the place to a unique degree in America and movement. I mean, we have a completely. Our cities are built for sedentary behavior. There's, there's ways you can chop away at that pretty quickly as RFK is talking about. I'm trying to fight for that. I'm glad you're not, I'm glad you're not involved in politics and, and fighting the fight. But we are trying to build a coalition to, to chip away at that.

Well, thanks for doing the dirty work of building coalitions. I would, I would probably fail at that because I. Oh, you're pretty good at that. It's, you know, I'm gonna tell you why and what and how and I'm going to say, well, look at your own numbers. And if they, if I'm right, your numbers will change and if I'm wrong, they won't. You should listen to someone else. And Now I've got 27 locations of upgrade labs and counting where we're, well, not all open, but they're opening and it's a franchise. And I'm looking at thousands of locations globally and let's get the numbers. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. If it doesn't, we have the data. And one of the things that, that hasn't come up in our conversation other than these pharmaceutical companies buying ads of media.

Yeah.

Free markets and libertarian stuff. And in my teens I was like a staunch libertarian Red Ayn Rand when I was 16 and all that kind of stuff. And I don't identify as a libertarian. I'm trying to, I don't have a party. I'm like, you're in charge of yourself. Be kind to others. Like you don't need a lot of this other stuff. But without a free press, right, you can't have a free market. And we've lost that in a major way. And I don't even hear RFK talking about that as much. And I mean right now using the RICO laws and other anti monopoly laws to break up Big Media would be necessary. But Big Media will spend a lot of money on their own platforms to stop the politicians doing that. So it's a very interesting place to be. And I'm happy to be an American. I'm happy to be in the US I'm happy to be in Texas. I also am happy that I have two passports because I don't know if we're going to win. If you had to place odds, what odds would you bet?

We're going to win.

We're going to win.

We're going to win. There is an aggressive, there is an aggressive assault on the window of speech. And just I personally believe in 100 years there's going to be a very limited amount of Americans that we remember. And I think one of them is Elon Musk. I mean I'm an Elon Musk fanboy. You know, you got this thing out of a movie. The richest person in the world, he's Iron man is just fighting. What's his number one issue right now is free speech. And I agree with it. The greatest invention, the greatest propeller of human prosperity is that we found out how to talk, how to hash out ideas. We realized there's no just set truth. And that has prevented wars, that's prevented an uninterrupted slog of lack of freedom and destitution which has defined human life until the past sliver of time. And there is absolutely a coordinated assault on that. And let me just explain a little bit more how that works. You had the media designed by the founders and for a lot of history as kind of a referee, as kind of an investigator. The media is nothing more than now a referee for the status quo. They're a corporatist, right? They're not examining why 33% of kids have prediabetes. They are calling anyone basically a criminal for questioning pharmaceutical interventions. They are now literally saying it's anti science to say that Ozempic isn't, shouldn't be the right choice for 12 year olds. This is how it works, right? The industries, the elite industries, they fund the research and then the research has the seal of Harvard or the seal of NIH on it. You know, it says for instance, that lucky charms are healthier than beef. The reason they fund those studies. It sounds ridiculous, but, but then, then it's propped up by the media. Oh no. Ultra processed food is fine. That's not scientific. There's confusion on that. We, we, the studies aren't clear. They did this with sugar. What's happened? We've had, I believe, one of the most important shifts truly in American history, which is the shift happening in independent media right now. All the eyeballs are going to your podcast, going to Joe Rogan, going to the others, when people are actually, there's a marketplace. What are the best selling books? What are some of the best selling products? Where are people shifting their money? They're shifting their money to learning about metabolic health. The Joe Rogan program is a metabolic health podcast. He's talking every day about the same things you are. Comedy podcast.

I was on there three times in 2014.

Exactly, exactly. And you spurred a lot of this.

He has done so, so much good. I mean, we've had our differences, whatever, but he's done so much good by just standing up during the pandemic. And you know, I, I, I think he's earned a lot of karma points for that.

And we can all have disagree and I think that's good. But where eyeballs are going is, is independent media. And then what's happening, There's a vicious assault on you, on others who are speaking up. Why is that? Like, why are YouTube videos being censored?

Why are you?

Well, it's because fundamentally pharma is also one of the biggest spinners on tech. You know, Google Ads, on Facebook ads. They try to use that power. Money speaks. And I made this point to Tucker Carlson. He, he, he didn't even fully, he said it was a kind of a new insight even after working at Fox. The reason the 60% number is what it is, the reason pharma spend 60% of all TV news funding isn't influence the consumer, it's to impact the news itself. And so we're unwinding that though. That's why I'm very optimistic. We've expanded the Overton window of what we can talk about in the past one to two years, health. And I think there's a lot of powerful allies in that fight. And then we have, frankly, the political debate right now is, I think the foundational political cultural issue right now is pushing back on this assault on speech. I'd also just say, just very explicitly, social justice issues are weaponized to shut people up. I've talked about Coke, Novo, Nordics, Paying the naacp. I helped pay the Coke have Coke funnel money, the NAACP to call people racist who disagreed with food stamp funding for Coke. You know, right now food companies are, are funding nutritionists to call people anti science who question ultra processed food. Their food companies are funding body inclusive influencers to call people fat phobic who question ultra processed food. You just weaponize these debates. You call people sexist, fat phobic, racist, that's all. Whenever you see that, whenever you see that, you've got to ask who's paying those voices.

And you know, I'm 100% fat phobic. I just want to be really clear because I weighed 300 pounds. I'm not going back. And like I will die to not go back on that. And this is something I don't think politicians understand. When people who've been really unhealthy and been as sick as I have, we're all in on not going back. And there is no law you can pass. There is nothing you can do to force me to be unhealthy again. Like I will literally die before I will go back.

Well, a key thing I would say that I've been thinking about a lot again as a big believer in personal responsibility is I don't blame the American people. I'm fat phobic in that people should not be obese. But the key is, and this is very nuanced, what the industry does is they poison everyone. Everyone's getting obese and then they pay influencers to, to say you're fat phobic. If you comment on that. So that, so we can't talk about everyone getting obese. They've actually played both sides. I'm not blaming individuals, I'm not blaming and, But I don't, but 80% of the country is overweight or obese. 50% of teens overweight or obese. I, I really do believe this. There's a systemic poisoning. We become, I know there's people like you who've been on a journey and talking about and influencing millions of other people. But, and I, and I think, I think things are changing, but this has all happened in the past 40 years. Like this is unwindable. I am up to, like this has happened because we've changed our incentives, we've changed our food supply. We've recommended the wrong things with the food pyramid which was, the food pyramid was just jet fuel for industrial farming, for ultra processed food, for carbs, for grains. We can unwind that.

Yeah, there's, there may be a little silver lining When I was running Bulletproof. So Bulletproof disrupted the way we talk about food. Forbes named Bulletproof one of the 20 most innovative brands in the country. In the third year when I. When I. After I started it. Um, and guys, just one more time. I have nothing to do with Bulletproof. It's been sold to an investment bank. I'm completely out. I've, you know, nothing there. Um, Danger Coffee is my new brand, so. And it's Danger, by the way, because who knows what you might do, you know, in the highest level of freedom and taking care of yourself. But I did get to meet with the chief executives from all of the junk food companies. In fact, I made the mistake of hiring the guy from Twinkies one time because I thought his distribution skills would be helpful in the goals that I had set. And what I found was in private conversations, they would say, dave, tell us what we can do. I met with a whole leadership team of Coke, all of them. And I stood there and I showed them my fat picture. When I weighed 300 pounds, I made fun of myself. And then I said, guys, I drank 10 cans of diet Coke a day. I don't think it works. And half the people laughed and the other half were, like, really uncomfortable. But what they told me was, dave, we want to make healthier processed food, but if we increase our costs by half a cent, our competitors just gain market share. It has to be as cheap as everything. So what I'm seeing is a couple things that make me really hopeful, because processed foods are here to stay. They just don't have to be bad for you. And there's two examples. One of them is Zero Acre Farms. I'm so proud to be an investor and advisor in this company. From their very early round, they're doing fermentation to make any oil you want. And they just happen to notice that polyunsaturated, these seed oils, they're bad for you. So since they can make any oil they want in tiny amounts of space via fermentation. Right. Well, why don't they make something that's half the cost of soy and canola and metabolically healthier for people? So this. Hold on. Fast food companies will make more money and they're going to switch oils and people are going to save money on their food and their metabolism is going to be healthy. This is using technology for human flourishing.

Amazing. Jeff's an investor in Truman and a huge fan. I mean, exactly right? That's an exact great example.

There's more. We just had some genetically engineered by the way I don't like glyphosate, I don't really like genetically engineered crops. I also am not opposed to us improving what we need to do. Right. Like sometimes you have to make trade offs. So I'm not a fan of GMO food but if you're going to feed people brown rice because it's, it's not good for us guys. But if you're going to feed that to them, they just engineered a brown rice that makes beef protein instead of rice protein. Now it's going to take processing to pull the beef protein out. Would I rather eat a beef protein powder derived from rice or would I rather eat rice protein? I will tell you as a biology guy, I'll eat the beef protein wherever it comes from as long as it doesn't have glyphosate and other chemicals and atrazine and all the other crap they're going to try to put in there. But if it's actually that thing, we can use our ability to change the environment around us to improve processed food at the same cost. It doesn't cost more to raise beefy rice versus regular rice. You can do it. So what we have to do there is look at what are the incentives to make healthier food. And this may be, hey, if we're willing to give trillions of dollars to other governments to do whatever we want, maybe we just give some of that to Big. I don't care. Give it to Coke and Pepsi and Frito Lay to make food that's processed and better.

It's a great point. Casey and I talk about this a lot. Change often comes from convincing the inside. It sometimes comes from the outside. But we're not 100% opposed to Coke and Pepsi and our goal eventually is to get to change the playing field. I'd say they're not. Those people around the Converse table aren't fueling fully. Their hands aren't fully clean. They are both creating the rig system and players. If the, if the system changes, they'll play by those rules. But they are dramatically influencing the rules. That's a key thing to understand. I would just say again, I can't, I can't stress this enough because I used to be very hesitant to oh, that's over regulation, you know, anti free market. The system is rigged right now. We don't have a free market. We have a kleptocracy. We have a completely corrupt system right now in food and, and in health care. So I want to get back to a more of a free Market. I want to get rid of the $100 billion of subsidies for ultra processed food. And let's be clear, let's be clear. The laws right now are very good for these ultra processed food companies because they're able to make their food cheap, they're able to make it addictive, they're able to put neurotoxins, you know, Kellogg's, still Froot Loops, which are being advertised on kids television right now, saying you'd have them for dinner, have neurotoxin colorings that are banned in every other country in the world to make the colors pop. They say the kids want that. That's their argument when they've admitted to European regulators that they're toxic. So you've got this environment where these, these, these industries have rigged the system. There's no political ideology about, about reeling that back in. And it can be. So we've got to be strong. I think it's an executive, because Congress can get that off. I think we need that executive order on the public health emergency that we're facing. Get these regulations back in line, Change the playing field. And as you said, I think ultra processed food is a shorthand. I mean, we talk about, you know, the unholy trinity in the book. You know, seed oil, sugar and added sugar and, and highly processed grains, which.

And you're right about those.

I, I think the highly processed grains. Right. You know, then you get down to the whole thing on glyphosate. You know, I think you've made this point. It's not dogmatic about, you know, sugar or certain ingredients. We're fundamentally being poisoned. But if we can take, if we can take those three ingredients, just even start there, you know, get a little bit more biased to whole foods, get a little bit more biased to, you know, understanding how our meat is raised, you know, and, and how that impacts the, it's, it's just like these are simple things. But you're absolutely right. If it, if the, if the, if we can from the outside, this is what we're really working on. Change the incentives, change the playing field. I, I don't want to ban Coke. I don't want to ban the company. I, I don't want to do. I just, we have to change the playing field.

If Coke actually made healthy stuff that tasted good, they would double their market cap 100%. So I'm all over it. And I'm fine with big companies making a ton of money as long as they support human flourishing in an honest way. And right now it's dishonest because our government has made it more profitable to.

Be dishonest based on the rig system.

Yep. I'm hopeful that RFK gets in there and fixes it. And we haven't even talked about farmers. If we took all the money that we're spending on subsidies and we subsidized small farmers with distributed ag and we got rid of the centralized butchering houses that torture small farmers and animals, and we got rid of these meat monopolies, many of which are owned by China. And all of a sudden, oh, we have distributed healthy food being grown. And then we just simply said our government doesn't have a right to regulate your food.

So regenerative small farms, as you know, actually can produce a higher output than. So you actually, per acre, you produce more food. But they're not set up for mechanized production. They're not just rows of soil being depleted where, you know, you can have automation. And in getting the crops, I'm very optimistic about actually robotics.

So I was about to say, if you didn't. Yeah, Elon's little robots will pick the raspberries one at a time.

So we are very close. Right. There's, I think we don't have any compensation of how fast that curve is picking up to where the robots can already identify a blueberry and pick it perfectly. So if you have the labor issue for regenerative, then you actually change the incentives for the industry because a regenerative plot, you know, where we're not poisoning foods with glyphosate because we have natural pesticides built into the diverse ecosystem, you know, you actually change the cost curve for that. So I'm very, you know, it's not anti technology. I think we need to use technology not to necessarily out hack everything. Not to say Ozempic is the cure for obesity, but actually to see what our natural environment is, what our biological needs are. Use technology to get back to there. Frankly, I think this is what I take a lot from what you say. It's like we didn't used to have to do cold plunges because we were out in the cold a lot.

Yeah, you had to go out.

We didn't have to wear these glasses because the sun went down and we didn't have artificial light. All of these, a lot of these biohacks to me are basically trade offs for our modern society, which I wouldn't trade. I didn't think I'd want to go back 300 years ago. But they're necessary trade offs. How do we fill the gaps of what modernity is kind of taken away because we've got to be attuned to our biological needs. So I do think there's real opportunity for it. But we've got to see technology in terms of getting back to our biological needs, not out hacking them.

We are in very short order going to have robots that can handle livestock. And as a guy with, you know, the farm that I built, I guess now it's, if you're a tech bro, it's cool to go build a regenerative farm. I did it about 10 years ago on Vancouver island and we took 32 acres and turned it into a farm. It was not a farm before with three cows, 25 pigs, 25 sheep, sometimes multiple times we do that per year. Lots of chickens, turkeys, and you know, the whole like live with nature thing and the amount of work that it took to do that. It's, it's so much that 90% of small farmers today have a day job and it's a full time job to do that even on 32 acres. So yeah, I'm fortunate. I started bulletproof. So I was able to basically run the farm at a loss and have the most amazing environment for my kids and for food, for food production, eat my own food and have a sacred relationship with animals. If I was a billionaire right now I'd be buying up farmland like no one's business because you're going to be able to make it far more productive with robots and it's going to be really good food. So who's doing that? Well, Chinese just bought 350,000 acres of American farmland and didn't disclose exist through shell companies. Bill Gates, as we all know, is basically like setting up glyphosate cricket factories as far as I can tell. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that, that isn't clear, but centralization of ownership of farmland in the country is another issue that we're gonna have to deal with because that's not how free markets work either.

Control the food, control the people is what they say. And again, I think it's hard to, it's almost uncredible. I think some people listening, it's like, are these people evil? I don't think most people think that they're evil. I think that there's an extremely low estimation of the people. I think there is that view in elite circles.

I think jobless eaters is a word that you'll hear in Davos.

Yeah, I think at Davos and at medical schools there's a Very cynical view of the average person. And I do think there's clearly an effort to control our food supply. And I think unless we disaggregate our farming system, I think potentially the next great crisis is going to be a food crisis. I think, I think we're on track. I think we're on track for that.

You're familiar that someone is going around and burning chickens and eggs and cattle production things. There's been thousands of fires and explosions across the country in the last three years. That's not conspiracy theory. That's, I don't know who's doing it, I don't know why, but I know it's happening and it didn't used to happen. So there's someone trying to make us real hungry now.

And the government with the University of Michigan, a recent study is advising people not to have their own farm. So do you see that? Oh, yeah, because it's six times more harmful for the environment to grow your own food.

It's ridiculous. I would like the carbon problem, which I'm not sure humans are causing. I don't know, but maybe I'd like it to be solved. So the first $50,000 donation that led to Elon Musk's $100 million carbon capture X Prize was my $50,000 through the XPrize Foundation. When I was at Bulletproof, there was two companies that funded the X Prize. There was Bulletproof and Aetna. So we were like a tiny little company comparatively, going, this is important to fix the future. So, guys, I'm all in on the carbon thing, but I went deep on the XPRIZE for carbon soil. Animals pooping on soil fixes the carbon problem. Destroying the soil with glyphosate makes the carbon problem worse. So distributed agriculture fixes soil. And when some dumbass in Davos says that farming is bad for CO2 levels, that person is either ignorant or evil, a hundred percent. The good news is I support free speech. So they're allowed to be ignorant and they're allowed to be evil. But if they try to control what I do, I'm allowed to eat them.

There's a big effort here. There's a big effort here. The thing we need to do to cure our environment and cure health is get to back to natural farming practices. It's how those cows are farmed, you know? You know, these folks are big investors and owners of the industrial monocropping and industrial agriculture system. And yeah, I mean, I think, I think the fears about that are being used like Covid to keep People keep people in control. I feel in our communities that word's getting out. I'm really trying to communicate this on both sides of the aisle. I'm going to on Fox a lot, there's an anchor, Rachel Campbell Stuffy, who's a mom of I think seven, who's like a warrior on this issue. We actually go and talk about regenerative farming on the green issue because that's the key. And it's actually this beautiful, you know, getting back to natural farming processes. It's, it's just a beautiful fix for our, I think our spirit, our health.

Our environment, creates jobs, creates environmental stuff where we want our kids. You have a two year old, I got a couple of teenagers, 100%. The one of the things I'm most blessed for in my entire life has been to be able to raise my kids on a small farm with no pesticides and understanding the cycles and birthing lambs at three in the morning and all this stuff. Yeah, I'm really fortunate to be able to do that. And I work my ass off to be able to do it. It didn't used to be that hard to do it. And this world is easy to build over the next 10 years. We can absolutely do everything we want. I just talked about for most people in the country, if you, you want it and we take some of that $4.7 trillion and do anything useful with it. So thanks for calling it out, man.

Of course. And I, I, my thing is I, people will make the right decision if they have the right incentives.

We're not dumb.

Thank you.

I'll probably see you at one of RFK's things here in Austin.

100%. 100%.

If you like this episode. You know, I've never really been political. I never asked anyone to vote for anyone. I'll just tell you, vote for whoever the heck you like. But if you vote for someone who wants you to be sick, then you're a dumb and you should probably get a therapist. There we go. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. So I'm not a fan of GMO food, but if you're going to feed people brown rice because it's, it's not good for us guys. But if you're going to feed that to them, they just engineered a brown rice that makes beef protein instead of rice protein. Now it's going to take processing to pull the beef protein out. Would I rather eat a beef protein powder derived from rice or would I rather eat rice protein? I will Tell you, as a biology guy, I'll eat the beef protein wherever it comes from, as long as it doesn't have glyphosate and other chemicals and atrazine and all the other crap they're going to try to put in there. But if it's actually that thing, we can use our ability to, to change the environment around us to improve processed food at the same cost. It doesn't cost more to raise beefy rice versus regular rice. You can do it. So what we have to do there is look at what are the incentives to make healthier food. And this may be, hey, if we're willing to give trillions of dollars to other governments to do whatever we want, maybe we just give some of that to Big. I don't care. Give it to Coke and Pepsi and Frito Lay to make food that's process and better.

It's a great point. Casey and I talk about this a lot. Change often comes from convincing the inside. It sometimes comes to the outside. But we're not 100% opposed to Coke and Pepsi. And our goal eventually is to get to change the playing field. I'd say they're not. Those people around the conference table aren't fully, their hands aren't fully clean. They are both creating the rig system and players. If the, if the system changes, they'll play by those rules. But they are dramatically influencing the rules. That's a key thing to understand. I would just say again, I can't stress this enough because I used to be very hesitant to, oh, that's over regulation, you know, anti free market. The system is rigged right now. We don't have a free market. We have a kleptocracy. We have a completely corrupt system right now in food and in health care. So I want to get back to a more of a free market. I want to get rid of the hundred billion dollars of subsidies for Ultra process. And let's be clear, let's be clear. The laws right now are very good for these ultra processed food companies because they're able to make their food cheap, they're able to make it addictive, they're able to put neurotoxins, you know, Kellogg's, still Froot Loops, which are being advertised on kids television right now, saying you'd have them for dinner, have neurotoxin colorings that are banned in every other country in the world to make the colors pop. They say the kids want that. That's, that's their argument when they've admitted to European regulators that they're toxic. So you've got this environment where these, these, these industries have rigged the system. There's no political ideology about, about reeling that back in. And it can be. So we've gotta be strong. I think it's an executive, because Congress can get that off. I think we need that executive order on the public health emergency that we're facing. Get these regulations back in line, change the playing field. And as you said, I think ultra processed food is a shorthand. I mean, we talk about, you know, the unholy trinity in the book. You know, seed oil, sugar and added sugar and, and highly processed grains, which.

And you're right about those.

I, I think of the highly processed grains. Right. You know, then you get down to the.