Encore: America’s Fight for Food Justice | Senator Cory Booker

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

The people that are really losing in this country right now are the people that want to make healthy choices. But then they walk into the store really charged up for looking at and they find packaging and things that literally are designed to confuse them or lie to them.

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Wow.

Thank you all so much for coming. It's great to see y'all. Last time I was here was March 2nd, 2020. That was a great day to be.

Here right before the world shut down.

Exactly. And actually, I was talking about my book, food fix, which is about our food system and the challenges we have with the increasing burden of chronic illness, with the food policies that drive unintended consequences of increasing disease and costs and industrial effects on the environment, climate. And, you know, I've been, you know, very focused on this. I have a nonprofit called the Food Fix Campaign. Senator Booker and I have worked closely together on trying to change food policy. So you're probably wondering why a senator is here. and a cookbook book party basically. And it's because he deeply cares about the health of our country and the state of our food system and the challenges he's seen as a result. And we were just chatting earlier before, I was during COVID was sitting in Maui to escape America, mainland America. And I got this call from this number from New Jersey on a Sunday afternoon. and I picked up my phone. I normally don't answer numbers that I don't know. And it was Senator Booker. And he's like, Mark, I just read your book, Food Fix, and it blew my mind. And I want to work with you on this. Let's go. So it's been an amazing, you know, an amazing opportunity to really rethink how we deal with our health and our nation. So we're gonna do kind of a joint conversation. It's not all me, not all him.

We'Ll be talking about. But can I advertise that Food Fix, this is, we'll talk about the cookbook I hope, But it's one of the most basic primers for anybody that cares about your family, your food, and your country. And you don't pull punches in it by talking about the corruption that has created the American food system. And I love how you talk about, in fact, you changed some of the things with me with civil rights organizations, because when people were coming to me and saying, Here's our agenda for black America. and I would say, how can you have an agenda for black America without talking about the number one killer of African Americans? If black lives matter, we have to talk about food and food systems that people are trapped in. And you laid it out so plain and then give instructions for people. If you really want to fight to change the system, not just your own individual choices, but how do you create a system in this country, a food system that promotes health, wellness, longevity, here are steps to take. So it's a great primer. And then I bought the book for members of the ad committee.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I bought the book for members of the ad committee. And what surprised me is a lot of people didn't know some of the basic things I know we'll talk about momentarily, but really scary things that are being subsidized with our tax dollars that are creating a system that's creating some of the greatest levels of chronic illness in the planet.

Yeah, that's true. And I think it's true, I don't think people in Congress really had a deep understanding of the way in which the burden on our country and our population and our economy is because of the food system and the unintended consequences of it. Yeah.

Well, this is a cookbook. And I think what's inspiring, I told you last night, I've never really read a cookbook. So whenever I interview friends and their books, I want to read them. And I'm not the greatest cook in the world. You've never invited yourself over for one of my meals. But the beginning of it really sets the stage for why you wrote this cookbook and something that you've been this great evangelist of. And maybe you can start talking about what you learned or why you were inspired by the Blue Zones and what they are.

Well, I think I've always been interested in the science of creating health. It's what I do with functional medicine. you know, it became really clear to me that, you know, we're in a crisis where, you know, we're in the moment of science where we know more and more about the root cause of illness and what to do about it. And yet we're seeing increasing rates of chronic disease and we're seeing a decline in life expectancy for the first time in human history. And it's been year over year, COVID made it worse, but it was happening before COVID And so while we have this sort of keys to longevity, to living a healthy 100 years, we haven't really addressed the reasons why we are so sick and overweight as a country. And 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy, which means they have either high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high cholesterol.

Hold on. 93%.

So actually it's 93.2%.

Okay. Or metabolically unhealthy. What exactly does that mean?

They have some level of prediabetes or some degree of insulin resistance. So they basically have poor metabolic health. And that's defined as having high blood pressure, high blood sugar, abnormal cholesterol, they're overweight or they've had a heart attack or stroke. That means only 6.8% of Americans don't have that. And that's why we're seeing a decline in life expectancy. And it's because of our food. And the food we eat is the biggest generator of either longevity or chronic illness. And in my book, Young Forever, which was a precursor to the cookbook, was really mapping out the science we have around what the root causes of this chronic disease epidemic are and how we can actually extend healthy life years. So our health span is how many years we're alive, I mean, you're healthy, and our lifespan is how many years we're alive. But our health span has gone down dramatically. And the last 20% of people's life now is spending poor health. And so your quality of life goes down, but we can have a health span that equals our lifespan. You've all heard stories of, oh, so-and-so was 100 years old and she went to bed and went to sleep and had a nice dinner with her family before, and she was great. Right. And I think we all want that. We all want to kind of just kind of move them through life and have a great, healthy life and then die suddenly as opposed to die slow, long, expensive, painful deaths, which is why we're seeing the, the burden on our health care system and our economy. So, you know, the blue zones really taught me that it's really about the most basic things, right? It's, it's the basic things of eating real food, of not eating all the processed food we're eating now, which is now 60% of our diet is 67% of kids diet. these are new to nature foods. They're deconstructed size projects that have been well proven to cause a whole host of chronic diseases. There was a big report in the last year recently, like 37 different conditions that has been linked to mental health disorders, to fertility issues, to diabetes, heart disease, cancer. I mean, the list goes on. So we have to eat from not the ultra processed food diet. We're not right to a more whole real food diet. They exercise naturally as part of their life. I met a guy, Pietro, who was 95 years old. was a shepherd who would hike five miles up a day with a sheep every day. He was, you know, both upright, clear eyes, bullying voice, sharp as a tack, 95. We still see that in America. And they had a deep sense of community. So they had a sense of belonging connection and they ate together, they celebrated together, they lived together in a beautiful way. Even people I met, a woman named Julia, she was 100, and she said, I'm 103 months. and she didn't have any kids, but she was living with her niece and they were taking care of her and she was still working at 100 years old, making doilies and things for weddings. And so they had a deep sense of connection and belonging. So the elements of longevity are really pretty simple. It's what we eat, it's how we move, it's our connection community, it's how we deal with stress. I think that this guy, Silvio, I met, he was a, Amazing man, his family had this mountaintop kind of farm and they had sheep and goats and they made this beautiful dinner for us. And I said, Sylvia, do you have any stress? He looked at me like, didn't really quite know what I meant. I had no stress when things are hard or difficult. And he's like, oh yeah. I said, what? He said, well, sometimes at night a goat will get out and I'll have to go get it. So we live in a time of chronic stress, both mental stress and and environmental stresses and toxins you were talking about. And they don't have that. And we can't reproduce that exactly here, but we can learn a lot from the blue zones about how to create health.

Well, I don't want to lose the great stories at the beginning of this because eating cheese with worms, you know.

That was a good story. Why don't you tell that before I.

Ask you my next question?

Well, there was a guy, Olin To, who basically had his own farm, and he grew all his own vegetables, had animals, raised pigs and sheep and chickens and rabbits and grew orchards. And he made us this sort of beautiful meal. And at the end, he brought out this kind of big round thing of cheese and basically said, this is special Sardinian cheese that is made with worms. And he said, it's supposedly an aphrodisiac. And he told the story of his grandfather who had this. and said his grandmother could still enjoy him even after he died. I don't know, it was kind of a weird story, but it was amazing. And I ate it and I didn't die. It was kind of weird, but they basically have these traditional food ways that we've lost. And so getting back to food in its most basic form is a pretty simple idea, but it's something we've lost. And as a result of the food industry's efforts to to take control of the American kitchen, to take control of the American farm, and to disenfranchise people from their own health. I think it's a national emergency, Corey, and I think we have to face this head on because we're just heading down a road where, you know, the burden of this is going to affect our children by living shorter, sicker lives than their parents. It's going to affect our ability to be competitive in the world because of a burden of illness. I mean, we're 4% of the world's population, in COVID and we were 16% of the cases and deaths, not because we were, had worse medical care, but because we had a pre-inflamed sick population that was so susceptible to the virus when they got it.

4% of the population, 16% of the cases and deaths, of the cases and deaths. So I want to pull back because there's something we're not trying to do, that you're not trying to do, which is this isn't about shaming people for their food choices. this isn't about shoulding all over people. You should do this, you should do that. Because I think when people read books, they start to feel bad about themselves and the decisions they're trying to make. What I love about you and why you've been such a great ally and inspiration is you understand that if we grew up in indigenous cultures, the African American health versus black people in Africa, depending on it can be very dramatically different if they're still eating indigenous diets. The China study showed that the Chinese were living incredibly healthy until they started shifting towards Western diet. The Western diet. So what we're really trying to say is let's take a step back and look at the broken American food system, or they call the standard American diet, the sad system that has created so much illness because we're not morally more lacking because we're sick and unhealthy. more different than our great grandparents who were incredibly healthy. I was watching, as one does, Soul Train. We're gonna do a little filtering line. Think somebody in here knows what I'm talking about.

That was a long time ago, Greg.

And what stunned me when I watched Soul Train from the 1960s and 70s was how thin and fit everybody was.

I mean, in the 60s, Black Americans were healthier than white Americans. Yes.

And because of the food systems in which Black Americans were stuck in. And so suddenly we've now shifted to this system. And what you're talking about is it is not a moral failing to be obese in America now. You are in a system that is so toxic, that is so designed for your unhealth. and what you are trying to do now, leading a leader in America in, is to tell the truth about this broken system and say that we collectively as a country not only can change it, there is a health emergency going on that we must change it. And just some data that you and I were throwing back, I'm not sure if everybody here knows that one out of every three of your tax dollars that go to us, the federal government, is spent on health care.

And a lot of those- 1.8 trillion dollars.

Yes.

And it is 40% of our total national spend on healthcare.

And one out of every five dollars in our entire economy is going on healthcare. The overwhelming majority of that money is going to chronic diseases, the majority of.

Which are preventable- and are food related.

And are food related. And so now think about this with the rates of Diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and what you call type 3 diabetes, which is Alzheimer's. If you are tracing these expenditures on those, they're going up and up and up. And the pharma industry is designing really expensive drugs. We don't have to change the food system. We don't have to change the inputs. Just pop this pill, not to take this shot. Yes.

So, if you haven't watched the South Park episode on obesity, it's funny and also terrifying.

But they're designing drugs to, we don't know what the side effects of these are. In fact, we know some of the side effects of the Alzheimer's drugs that are really expensive that people are flocking to, not to stop Alzheimer's or slow, just to try and slow Alzheimer's. When we know that access to fresh healthy foods is transformative. We created in Newark when I was mayor, a big, turned an entire city block into an urban farm.

Yeah.

And I went back there with Food Inc. 2, which you saw to film. And while we were filming it, African-American women were coming out and wanted to testify. One woman said that her doctor said she had incurable gut problems, that she had to be on this medication that cost $700. She had $100 copay, so she's paying a lot of money, $100 a month to her. and $600 a month to us as taxpayers. And then she started sourcing all of her food and her doctor said, oh, it's a miracle. You're cured after eating all this food. Another woman came to me, 80-year-old octogenarian who had created an Instagram account called the Octogenarian Vegan because she started eating all of her food and her diabetes, which she had for years and years and years, she suddenly was off. You know this as a doctor, a functional medicine doctor, that these are not incurable problems if we change our inputs. So the point I want to make to you, and I hope that you'll expound upon it, is you have been focusing a lot on individual behavior, yes, you've definitely helped me in my individual journey as a friend, but systemic change, you're saying, has got to be made in our system, and that's where we found alliances. Can you talk about what are the systemic changes that you're trying to make.

At our American- yeah, I mean, I think Our effort with the Food Fix Campaign is really to educate lawmakers about the problem, which they had very low awareness of. You're one of the few who really gets it in Congress. We're working on a number of different initiatives to help change policies that are driving the production of the wrong food and the eating of the wrong food. For example, we were helpful in the $20 billion that was in the Inflation Reduction Act that was to support climate smart agriculture. We've been very aggressive in trying to work with Medicare to cover medically tailored meals. And you've introduced a bill in the Senate and we'll slow down.

Let's take this pieces at a time. Let's go to food production in the United States.

Yeah.

Our great-great-grandparents had a lot more plant and crop diversity, right?

100%, yeah.

And this was before seeds were patented for their, biology to withstand this thing called Roundup. So what is happening to our soil and the foods that we're growing right now? What is this monocropping five crops that we're pouring all over?

Yeah, I mean, basically we have to fix our food system from the field to the fork. And starting at the field is a big problem because commodity-based agriculture, corn, wheat and soy, has been a boon to big agrochemical and agroseed companies and big food producers, but not to the farmers who are suffering both in terms of their health and their economic welfare. And has also been extremely destructive to the ecosystem of the farm, which used to be a multi-crop diverse ecosystem. That now is a monocrop system that is farming ways to destroy the soil, the mycorrhizal fungi, the organic matter. One-third of all the carbon in the atmosphere today is from the soil, so driving climate change. The runoffs from the nitrogen fertilizer into our rivers and lakes is called eutrophication. It's creating dead zones the size of New Jersey, nothing against New Jersey, but creating dead zones the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico. There's 400 of these around the world that feed a half a billion people. The pesticides and herbicides are affecting farmers and us and affecting our health. We're seeing the inadequacy of the food that that we used to grow, which was nutrient dense. And now even if you're growing eating vegetables and fruit, the nutrients aren't in the food because the soil is required to extract the nutrients. When I say soil, I mean not dirt, which is just without life, but I'm talking about a robust soil ecosystem is a symbiotic relation between the soil, the microorganisms in the soil, the microbials fungi, and the plants and humans. And so we're seeing drops in mineral levels and protein levels and vitamin levels in our food, even if we're eating broccoli today, it's not the broccoli we ate 50 years ago.

So let me do your commentary and go into a few things he said, which to me should sober all of us. The first is American farmers are in a system that does not work. We are losing thousands and thousands of American farmers who are going out of business or killing themselves. Or their suicide rates are three times higher than ours. I visited some of these farmers in the Midwest from both parties, and saw people that had their Homestead Act deed up, so five generations of farmers. The economics worked, and now it's to them, and the economics no longer work because you have this monopolization in the food system where now all of the input companies are consolidated, Monsanto now Bayer, jacking up the prices of the inputs. Farmers used to harvest their own seeds and re-put them in. Now they've been patented. They're being sold Roundup resistance, so you have to buy these chemicals. And this way of farming, which we are subsidizing, our Department of Agriculture is built around it, is unsustainable for the farmers' economics. So one farmer said to me, all my costs have gone up. I used to have five people competing for my goods. Now it's one or two companies, 'cause you know, big food is consolidated into a handful of companies, and they're being driven to their share of the consumer dollar. has gone down something like 40% in the last few decades. And so they're shrinking abilities to make it. So the farmers are suffering and going out of business at tough numbers.

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Head to bioptimizers.com/hymen and get 10% off today with promo code HYMEN10. Our soil is a crisis in our country. We are killing our soil. Soil runoff is horrible. As you said, it's killing our ecology, seeping into and poisoning groundwater with all these chemicals, flowing into our rivers and streams, down the Mississippi River into the biggest dead zone that's the size of two Rhode Islands. Why are you picking on New Jersey?

I don't know. I just. Two or not, I'm using one New Jersey.

Two Connecticut. So we are killing our ecology and climate change, which all of these people who are in the climate movement want to talk about oil and gas companies, not enough people are talking about the food system and the way we're doing it. But one thing- It's arguably the biggest.

Contributor to climate change. Yes. In order to deal with fossil fuels and decarbonize, we also have to deal.

With our agricultural system. And that's just for the commodity crops you're talking about, not to mention the perversion of how our grandparents used to raise cattle, used to raise pigs, used to raise chicken, which happened with these small handful of companies, Tyson's, JB, you name it. They've started to do these massive factory farming operations, which are also creating incredibly horrible runoffs in these CAFOs where you go to places like Duplin County, North Carolina, and see lagoons of pig feces.

And the health consequences for the people that live around that are horrible, like.

Asthma and respiratory diseases, and the kids are affected. I've sat with those families in crowded black churches, often they're in low-income minority neighborhoods, so we could have our cheap bacon. I shouldn't even say that, because places like Smithfield just ship it all to China. But the horrific lives of the people that live in these low-income areas that deal with all this runoff, and especially when storms come through, they just pick up all that feces, polluting water. I was in Iowa campaigning for president and the people were telling me I can't fish out of my creek anymore, can't drink the water out of my well. And what most Americans don't realize is we are subsidizing that system as it is to produce those handful of commodity crops. Again, you may be surprised by this data point, but less than 10%, about 7% of our ag subsidies go to the foods that functional medicine doctors tell us the majority of what we should eat.

I mean, 5% of the corn is grown is actually eaten as corn. Most of it's turned into highly deconstructed science ingredients that are reassembled into food-like substances or that are, you know, used.

For oil or, I mean, soybean oil, corn oil, high fructose corn syrup. This is what we're, this is what we're making cheaper. And so you said from farm to fork, what that means for us in our communities is we could go to a DC corner grocery store and find a Twinkie product because all those things we just said are being subsidized in that scientifically engineered product to engineer for addiction. They know how our brains work. You're gonna pay less for a Twinkie, more for an apple than you will for a Twinkie product. So now you're a consumer and you're not paying the true cost. We have decided as a society that we're gonna drive down the cost of the foods that make us most sick and drive up the costs for the foods that we need so you can get a a happy meal or whatever at McDonald's, these dollar meals, all of that is deeply subsidized. Then we pay for it again on the Medicaid, Medicare costs. And you go down the street and try to get a bucket of salad and it costs 15 bucks. And so we have created a system where everyone is losing. The environment is losing, ecology is losing, animals are losing in the horrific ways that they're being raised, farmers are losing, and consumers are losing, and you all.

Are losing by having to pay a third of its tax revenue.

A third of its tax revenue going.

To chronic disease, the consequences of our food system.

The only people are winning is these large multinational corporations that are consolidating and have near monopolistic power. And then what do they do when we walk in for the consumer that has heard, Dr. Hyman teasing him that I listen to so many of his podcasts, I've gone to bed with him, Not in a literal way.

I put him to sleep every night.

I just lie him next to me and he soothes me off. It's very intimate, my friend. It's very intimate. Listen to his podcast. It is, you have amazing guests that are extraordinary. But the people that are really losing in this country right now are the people that want to make healthy choices. But then they walk into the store. really charged up for looking at and they find packaging and things that literally are designed to confuse them or lie to them. First of all, the pictures of the beautiful cows or the beautiful pastoral views don't show what it's like really, CAFOs and all of that. You don't know what chemicals that are banned in Europe that are actually in that food. And the package labeling, as we were talking, maybe you can expand on that, as confusing as hell.

Yeah, I mean, I think all you said is so important, Corey, because really, the whole system, you know, wasn't originally designed to make us sick and ruin the environment, but it's unintended consequences of food policies that were set in place, you know, 50, 70 years ago, and they haven't been reformed and updated. And that's really, you know, what has to happen. And it has to happen because, you know, as you said, we are, we're seeing this, this national emergency and this crisis across the whole spectrum of society and, and government. And to me, it's such an urgency that we have to hit it head on. And I don't think the food companies now that they have what they have are willing and easily let go of it. They need the government to kind of step in. And one of the ways that has been effective in other countries is food labeling. You know, we don't want to be the nanny state. We don't want to tell people what to do, but we want to inform people. We want to give them choices. We want to educate them about what's good and not good for them. Now, there's a lot of debate about what is good or not good, and the food industry will try to confuse you and say we don't have a data. I mean, it's pretty frightening how the food industry gets in the weeds and all this. But we actually now have the ability to label foods with warning labels like they do in South America, like they do in Europe, like they do in Canada, that are clear and understandable. I mean, unless you have a PhD in nutrition, it's hard to understand a nutrition facts label. I mean, if I said there's 39 grams of sugar in a food, I would ask, how many of you know how many teaspoons that is? Well, maybe if you listen to me on the podcast, you might know, but most people have no idea. Clue. Like, someone said, I was on the Today Show this morning, and the woman said, yeah, I was, my daughter was having, like, a sports drink, and I had 50 grams of sugar. I said, yeah, that's, that's, like, more than 12 teaspoons of sugar in a drink. And no idea they're eating that. And so the, the food issue is very very active in trying to block any reform on food labeling. But imagine having front of package labeling saying, this is good for you, this is bad for you. Like they have in other countries, like red is bad for you, yellow, eat with caution, green is good for you. Anybody can understand that. But to look at a food label now or an ingredient list, it's just very confusing. And so we need to make it simple for people to make the right choices. And when they've done that in these countries, they've seen a dramatic change in the health of the population, in what people buy, and they've actually been able to make a dent in the obesity and chronic disease crisis.

Right, and what I love about you, and this is how I feel too, is I don't want to take away anybody's freedom. I know what it feels like to come home from a really hard day, you don't have any of those in.

An easy place to work like the US Senate. Yeah, yes. Where everybody gets along.

Yes, party all the time.

It's harmonious.

I know what it's like to come home tired, stressed, after banging your head against implacable walls of resistance. And all I wanna do is get into this central embrace with my two best friends, Ben and Jerry. I want that freedom. I don't want somebody to take away that freedom from me.

All my friends are Hagen and Das.

Your friends are Hagen and Das. You always like those international types. But I want that freedom. But I don't want the government to subsidize.

Yeah.

My subsidize that, especially when they're not subsidizing fruits and vegetables. And I'll tell you this, how would we feel if we were subsidizing alcohol? Or subsidizing marijuana.

Subsidizing tobacco.

Or subsidizing tobacco. We are. Yes. Still.

Yes.

And so what my point is, is we believe in freedom, but there's two types of freedom. Freedom of choice. I never want to be the person taking the person bacon cheeseburger and milkshake out of your hand. I don't want to be that guy. But I want freedom to know as well. Freedom to know what's in your foods. And their system of food packaging right now is designed to confuse you. For example, I know consumers who look at the ingredients. I do. Let me look at the ingredients. And they're looking for sugar and it's way down. Well, it's not really way down on the list. Regularly, routinely, what companies, food companies do, which they don't do overseas.

They're not allowed.

They don't allow it. They decide, okay, well we're gonna put seven different types of sugar into this product, or five or four different types of sugar in this product. So it doesn't show up as the number one ingredient. So consumers will look at it and say, oh, well the number one ingredient is wheat or what have you. That's not bad for you. They try to intentionally confuse the consumers. And you and I have been saying that the FDA, which does so much drug trials, studies, The FDA, the Federal Food and Drug Administration, does a lot on the D, but we believe they should put the F back in the FDA and start focusing on foods and what they're doing to us because there are chemicals that we put dyes and more chemicals that are banned in other countries that we allow freely into our food system that are having untold-- I listen to your podcast a lot and read your books about how important we're realizing the microbiome is. and some of these things we're pouring into our guts that really have effect on our mental health, our physical health, as well as our longevity.

And 22 pounds a year of additives are consumed by people who eat the average American diet. 22 pounds. So they're not like little micro ingredients we're eating. They're pounds. If you're eating 60% of your diet is ultra processed food, it's 22 pounds. And those have horrible consequences for your gut microbiome, for driving inflammation, for toxicities around cancer. And there's things like butyrate hydroxytoluene, which you wouldn't have in your cupboard and sprinkle on your salad, but it's in your food.

Right. And if we took the blood of anybody in here, would there anybody that.

Would not have glyphosate in their- no. I mean, I try to eat healthy. I mean, I don't always have the capacity to choose everything I'm eating because I travel. But, you know, 80% of Americans have glyphosate in their urine. 80% and I tested mine as well and I have it too and I'm.

Like, you know, we're all- and glyphosate.

Is a known carcinogen, it's a microbiome destroyer, it has generational effects on our epigenome which causes transgenerational changes in kidney issues and cancer.

And consumers don't know, they're not- no, nobody knows.

I mean, we're, I think, the only country other than, I think, Syria that doesn't allow GMO labeling. There was an act in Congress that was designed to allow for GMO labeling. It was euphemistically called the DARK Act, denying Americans the right to know. And the food industry spent $192 million lobbying Congress over this one bill. And Syria and the US are the only countries, and Russia and China, which are not known for their openness, are actually labeling GMOs.

And I'm glad you said that because it's the end before I want to get really quickly and give the good news. because I think we're telling the dark story right now. But again, we in Congress, I always say after perhaps the defense industrial complex, the next most powerful lobby, because it's bigger.

The food lobby is bigger than the defense lobby.

Okay, you've already said it. And it gives to both sides of the political aisle protecting a system that is bankrupt because it's hurting all of the people that we went through from the farmers themselves, to the end users.

We'Re not-- We privatize the profits and socialize the costs. Right. So the taxpayers are left holding the bag and the bill. Right. And that has to change.

Right. The taxpayers are subsidizing the things that make us sick and then paying for the incredible medical costs. And many Americans feel lost because they live in communities where just finding access to healthy, fresh food on Earth, and the very farm system that farmers want. When we were able to make some changes and get climate smart farm practices through Joe Biden and Congress's Inflation Reduction Act, billions of dollars, farmers flocking to that money because they want to raise organic. They want to do cover crops. They want to do no-till farming. They want to take on practices because at the end of the day, farmers are good stewards of the land. But if they feel like they're in the system where it's the only thing they know and the incentives are to do these practices, they're going to continue to do those practices. And the good news, which I want to shift to before we open this up for some questions and other discussion, the good news is we believe that the more, number one, we can educate the public about this, the more pressure we're going to create, because change doesn't come from Washington. It comes to Washington by an informed public that demands suffrage, that demands civil rights, that demands Medicare, that demands organizing rights. All of these things, the changes that we've been able to make, even the EPA and the laws over clean water and clean air happen because of public awareness being raised and demands. And so you believe, and I share this belief, that there are shifts that we can be making in our systems to make them more benefit farmers, to break up these big monopolies that are dominating it by actually enforcing antitrust law, but starting to put the incentives in the right places to produce the outcomes so there is more of a flourish and abundance of healthy foods and more informed consumers about the foods that aren't healthy for us. You're okay to choose them, but you should see clearly on labels should not have deceptivity should have a transparency as well.

Yeah, I mean, ultra-processed food and sugar, they're in tobacco. I mean, when you look at the way the tobacco industry was, they were denying the harmful health effects of it. They were denying the addictiveness of it. And, you know, we know from the Yale food addiction scale that it's been researched across the globe that 14% of the global population is technically addicted to food. And 12% of kids and alcoholism is 14%. So we really are in a situation where We have to hit this head on and we have to learn how to start to incentivize the right behaviors by educating consumers, by providing the right labeling. Food marketing is another thing. I mean, we allow marketing to our children and also targeting African-Americans and Hispanics that is driving their disease rates through the roof. I mean, childhood obesity is now at 40%, over 25% of kids are, I mean, sorry, I thought overweight is 40%, obesity is around 25%. And if we were having a foreign nation due to our kids, what we're doing, we would go to war to protect them. But we're doing it. And we know that, for example, in Chile, where they eliminated all junk food advertising on all medium between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. so the kids wouldn't see it. They eliminated all the cartoon characters. There's no Tony the Tiger anymore or the down in the Froot Loops guy or whatever that is.

Right.

Those don't exist. And on the cereal packaging, and they have the warning labels.

And it's that, that education of consumers and that. So you're telling me that GMO frosted glyphosate full wheat covered in sugar is just not, it's not a healthy.

No. Well, you know, maybe if you're a Martian, I don't know. Definitely not for humans. And it, and it's, you know, it's, it's, it's tragic what's happening to our children. And so at the very least, we.

Should be able to protect our children and have.

Child-friendly labeling.

Because we have the military come into us and tell us that 70% of American youth right now can't qualify for military service. Yeah, I mean, 70% of American youth can't qualify for military.

I mean, the irony is that the School Lunch Program was developed because the recruits in World War II were malnourished and the federal government put in a School Lunch Program. Now that same program is causing our kids to be sick and overweight and 70% don't qualify. What's even scarier is that of the evacuations from Afghanistan and Iraq during those wars, 72% were for obesity-related injuries, not for war injuries. Wow. Like related to obesity-related causes. And this is not my opinion. This is from Military Readiness, a group of retired admirals and generals who made these reports.

And so we're spreading out, you and I are for supporting a lot of things, which I just want to make people aware. Those women that came to me at that incredible urban farm. They were benefiting from the Gus Nip program, which means that if you have taking what used to be called food stamps to a, your stamp benefits to a farmer's market, you can get twice the, everything doubles. And I was blown away what five dollars could buy at this farmer's market. We're supporting the climate smart farming practices and more working in tangent with Farmers, like the Farmers Union and others, trying to transform American farmers, bringing it back to our heritage. We're doing a lot to try to force front-of-label packaging, create targets to lower sugars and salts in our industry. There's just a lot of very good, medically tailored meals.

And medically tailored education for doctors and changes in Medicare reimbursement. Yes. Because, you know, for every dollar we spend on food, we're spending $3 in collateral damage.

Yes.

And what the price we pay at the checkout counter is not the true cost of the food. The Rockefeller Foundation had a great report on this and it was documenting that not only the harmful health effects, but the effects on the land and the ecosystems and climate and the social impacts, all these things are quantifiable and they're bankrupting our country and we're not paying the cost at the true cost at the checkout counter. And maybe a can of Coke should be $100. and an apple should be 10 cents.

Well, I just want to throw a cost. All these people who believe in the free market, stop the government subsidies.

Yeah.

And let's let the free market decide with the market itself. Again, if you believe in Adam Smith, it's about having market information. It's about knowing. If we had that, then companies would be rushing to give consumers what they really want because the demand for healthy, fresh foods, every parent wants what's best. I'll get you were just stuck in Vegas. It's like a movie. you were stuck there for a while, and then he made the best of it by going to see the Grateful Dead. He had a conference in Vegas, and I'm going to use this as an example. I talked to a head of a major casino operation, a really great guy named Jim Murren, and I was complaining to him as mayor because it was a recession and I was cutting the size of my government, finding great ways to create new efficiencies. But the two costs I couldn't cover were pension costs and health care costs. And so I was complaining to him, he goes, Cory, I figured out my health care costs. And I thought, I don't know, did you get a new plan? Did you manage this? This is like us during the presidential debate when I ran for president, all these people on the debate stage arguing over how are we going to provide health care in America? Medicare for all, oh, we should do this, we should do that. Nobody, everybody was talking about how to mop up the floor, nobody was talking about how to turn off the sink, which is a real conversation we should be having in our presidential debates and more. But what was amazing about this, Corporate leader was that he said, Cory, I couldn't figure out this problem. Then I went into my cafeteria that fed thousands of my employees and I see deep fryers and big sugary buns and all of this stuff and I was kind of horrified. And he ripped it all out and he said this union and we're like ready to strike on him because they took away all this great food, but he hired the best chefs, come in and cook healthy, nutritious food.

Recipes from my cookbook.

Yeah, I looked through some of this stuff and I think that he would love this. And it was amazing. Suddenly his employees shifted from ready to protest him to just loving it even more and then asking him, well, this single mother who works two shifts at the blackjack table goes home like every pressure that mothers did, like my family did, and runs through the drive-thru on the way home. So they said, well, maybe I could take some of this food home. So he let them.

Wow.

And he said, my cost curve started to bend.

That's right.

He got the double bottom line.

Yeah.

He got to save money for his company, but his employees were healthier, had better focus, concentration, all of these health benefits that made them happier and better and more effective at their workforce, not to mention at their family. Well, we're America Inc. Right now, and we're supplying all cheap foods that are making us sick and the costs are going up. We should figure out ways to shift. And so the reason why I enjoyed reading your cookbook is two things. One is you tell a beautiful story and you let us as consumers know that these recipes are so easy even a senator can make them. But what's more importantly is it's part of me if I put your books up here of your incredible passion which I love and you've helped my life, is that you believe that Americans are not born to suffer.

No.

That they were born to be healthy and vibrant and thriving. You've seen this from your examinations of you can take guys at major prisons and jails, give them access to fresh and healthy food and instances of violence go down and their success rates go up all the way to our children. who give it fresh, healthy foods, their scores go up. But more importantly, at a time that we're suffering a crisis, not just in physical health, but the anxiety, depression.

It's something people want to talk about, right? I mean, the obesity, diabetes, people get it. People don't realize that this food that we're producing in America is causing a mental health crisis. And when you look at the cost burden of all chronic disease, both in terms of direct healthcare costs and also indirect costs, depression and mental illness is number one. It causes people to be disabled, loss of quality of life years, and the costs are staggering. And we see the disconnect in the brain between the limbic part of the brain and the frontal brain, the old reptile lizard brain, and the adult in the room, which is the frontal lobe. And neuroinflammation is this now well understood phenomena that disconnects the adult in the room from the crazy person and the brain, right? And that neuroinflammation is caused by our ultra-processed food and by our diet. And that's something that we haven't really.

Talked about, is... Just take it around your... Yes.

Is the audio good?

Yep, you're good.

Yeah, I think people haven't realized that the disconnect in the mental health crisis by not talking about food, because food is one of the biggest drivers of depression, anxiety, conflict, aggressiveness, divisiveness, all the things we're seeing there in our society, the polarization, and the food system inadvertently has led to this not only obesity and diabetes crisis, but a crisis of mental health. And it's something that we know can.

Be fixed through fixing the metabolic dysfunctions in the brain. All right, they'll never invite me back to Sixth and I if I don't bust. And so there's two microphones here while you all Whoever questions, maybe you can come up here and ask the question. And what I'm going to do, though, is first, we have a virtual audience watching as well, and I'm going to answer some of these questions. And I think that this first one from Susan B. in Virginia, it doesn't say it here, but I imagine Susan B. in Virginia wishes she lived in New Jersey.

New Jersey, specifically.

Yeah, very specific. I could tell, I can sense it. Do you-- it's the Garden State. You would love-- that must be it. must be Dr. Hyman's favorite. I used to live in New Jersey.

I used to live in New Jersey.

We grow great things in our garden state. The fourth largest producer of eggplant in America. Top that. Do you recommend a chewable probiotic to strengthen your oral microbiome? I didn't know there was an oral biome. I did not know that. If so, what should I look for when choosing a product?

Well, that's a great, very specific question. And the truth is that the microbiome, which is the sum total of all the bugs in us on us, on our skin and our mouth and our respiratory tract and our guts, all plays a huge role in our health. And we know that the oral microbiome is highly influencing our risk of dementia and our risk of heart disease, really, and obesity, yeah. And then having bad teeth and bad gums is a huge risk factor for inflammation throughout the body, which is one of the biggest drivers of all these conditions. So having bad teeth is a real problem. In fact, I was at a conference recently and they were listening from the 1600s, what were the major causes of death? And one of the major causes of death was bad teeth.

Wow. One of my friends used to say death enters through the gums. Yeah.

So keeping your gums healthy and your mouth oral microbiome healthy is important. And oral probiotics can be helpful. So I don't have a specific opinion about a particular one, but taking probiotics.

And sugar probiotics are great. So when I go into the store, like in five years, they're gonna be like choose Wrigleys, the oral probiotic. Probably with a lot of sugar and.

Yeah, a lot of sugar. All right. What did Sarah Palin say? You put a lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.

It's still a pig.

Right.

We're gonna get to her one noble, finally. She was way first. We're gonna get to her, but I'm gonna ask before we go to you, one more of the, I wanna make sure the virtual people know that we read their comments and their questions. This one's a tough one. I face it every day as one of the few, I'm the black sheep of the family, the vegan. amongst us. What advice do you have to navigate differences in food and diet choices within a family? And when some family members see choices as being picky or fancy rather than health driven?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think it should be a choice between healthy eating and delicious eating. I think that's a false dichotomy. Right. To think that you have to suffer and starve and eat like cardboard in order to actually be healthy is a huge myth. And it's unfortunate, Matt, because it's promulgated by the food industry that is encouraging us to indulge and pleasure ourselves. In fact, the food industry was just called out for hiring all these nutritionists and dietitians to go online and talk about why people should just indulge their cravings. They should not restrict their diets and should eat as much as they want and should have all these indulgent foods. And it was at exposé, it was in the Washington Post. and it was frightening, like 40% of the nutritionists on social media are paid by the food industry to give misinformation about what they're eating.

And a lot of these studies that come out that says sugar is the new whatever or are paid for by the food industry.

Yeah. I mean, and all the recommendations, I mean, the American Diabetes Association was just sued by their head nutritionist because they fired her 'cause she wouldn't endorse the foods that they were recommending. and $134 million of their budget is given by the pharma industry and a huge portion by the food industry. And so they're not incentivized to actually do the right thing. And many of these associations have been co-opted. I do tell that in my book. But the truth is, if you have a family, get in the kitchen together, go shopping together, go to the farmer's market, get what people like, and make delicious versions of what you like. A lot of the recipes in the book and the cookbook are indulgent recipes. but they're made with helpful ingredients.

Yes.

And they can taste good and they are good for you. So you can love food that loves you back.

Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay, we're gonna go to the first person. Introduce yourself and tell people what your relationship to New Jersey is. I mean, I'm sorry. Tell people what your question is.

Actually, well first, before I say anything.

I think before I speak for everyone.

Can you get closer to the mic? Yes. I think I speak for everyone here. Thank you for your unwavering support for Israel and your fight against antisemitism. It's really important and off topic, but thank you.

Thank you.

Also, Corey's an honorary Jew. He speaks Hebrew better than I do. My connection to New Jersey is you were the one who helped me decide.

To use a wheelchair because on my.

Amtrak train home in 2008 from New Jersey, I only had a cane and I fell flat in your lap face first. and I was like, it's time. Get a wheelchair. So thank you, New Jersey.

You're the one person that has ever fallen for me. I will fall as many times as.

You would like for you. Thank you very much. My question is that it's hard to get a lot of this information.

I read last week about a study.

That came out that the reason there's double colon cancer in young adults is.

Because of what we eat.

But it's hard to get the information. So thank you, Cleveland Clinic, thank you Mayo, Hopkins. But the reason I'm understanding that a lot of the information isn't public is.

Because all these food studies are funded by Big Pharma. So they want to hide it as much as possible.

And so between Big Pharma and food.

Deserts and the rising price of farmland.

And how people like Bill Gates own it all, How is it that we could even attempt to start this fight because it looks like we're already starting at such a deficit? And my other question is, I can't believe I'm saying this, could we model things after the soda industry?

Now they're saying there's a lot of.

Calories, buy one of our mini ones.

And they clearly label zero calories on.

The front of it.

How much could we learn from Coke and Pepsi?

I don't know, that's a hard one. I know, I feel ridiculous saying that.

No, no, that's good. Go ahead, Dr. Hagan.

I mean, I think the policies that we have to implement are ones that help to really hit this straight on. And one of the big challenges is that there's been a lack of funding for nutrition. At the National Institute of Health, they have all the institutes of diseases. They don't have a National Institute of Health. They're not studying health. So you study diabetes or heart disease or Alzheimer's. They're all downstream. and there's no national institute of nutrition, which we should have, and many other countries have. The food industry spends $12 billion a year, 12 times as much money as the federal government and philanthropy on research on food. So when you look at the data as a result of these studies, they're 8 to 50 times more likely to show a positive benefit for their particular product. So for example, there's a study in, I think, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that artificial sweeteners are fine and they're not harmful for you. And you know who's funded by? American Beverage Association. So, you know, basically science has been bought and paid for. We think we're gearing independent science. And that's why consumers are so confused, 'cause they're hearing all kinds of things that are not making sense and the food industry is attempting to on purpose confound and confuse the American public. And through many channels, right? Through their efforts on co-opting professional associations like the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, 40% of the Academy of Nutrition, Dietetics budget comes from the food industry. You have social groups like Hispanic Federation or the NAACP funded by Coke and Pepsi and the food industry. So they'll not oppose policies like, you know, they'll not support policies like soda tax, for example. They have social, they have some front groups like the American Council on Science and Health that says pesticides, tobacco, and high fructose corn syrup are all good for you, you know, and just one thing after the other and they hijack science and scientific community, they hijack the government through intensive lobbying. So they've got this cupboard and it's not a kind of random bunch of different things that are happening, it's a cohesive strategy. And I think if you had this cover, you'd find out. And the American Diabetes Association was recently sued and they settled with the former nutrition director without going to court because they didn't want discovery. Because if they had discovery, it means all their dealings with the furniture would be exposed. So I think we have as a government have to hold these professional associations to account. We have to hold science to account. We have to fund the right science and we have to be the keepers of the integrity. Right now we have government by the corporations, for the corporations, of the corporations, no longer by the people, for the people, of the people. And then we need to go back to that.

This gentleman here. Thank you all both for being here. Henry Lewis of Richmond, Virginia. I'm a fan of both of you. As someone with a graduate degree in nutrition and I also work in medical education, one of the things that annoys me the most is going to the doctor and hearing bad nutrition advice or bad nutrition advice. Oh yeah. As someone who works in Med Ed.

And has a nutrition degree.

God, you're getting any nutrition advice is a miracle. But anyway. Yeah. So what are we doing to educate the new generation of doctors whether it's Residency, medical school, as well as current practice.

It's one of the things we're working on. So there's $17 billion that the federal government spends for graduate medical education to fund residencies and there's no requirements for how those dollars are used or any, you know, mandate, for example, for nutrition education as part of that. That's changing. So we've been made progress on that front to actually make those residency and fellowship programs include nutrition education. we're also working with the Association of Medical Schools who are now coming along and are going to start including nutrition education. And doctors have to learn about this. The number one killer in the world is food. It kills 11 million people conservatively every year, more than tobacco and more than all the wars and weapons and everything else combined. And yet doctors learn nothing about nutrition, which is the biggest killer and the biggest cause of all the diseases that they're patients are coming in with, that needs to change. My daughter's in medical school now and she's got nothing. I was like, did you learn about nutrition? Yeah, well we learned about amino acids and, you know, fatty acids and carbohydrates.

What are you gonna tell your patient to have for lunch?

You know what? That's off. Thank you, sir. So yes, we're working on nutrition education bills and multiple senators and congressmen are working on reforming medical education as well.

So it's happening. That's part of the initiative we're working.

On with the food fix. I'm gonna go to the gentlemen behind here. I know they came up early, then I'm gonna go to you if you don't mind. Sir. Hi, thank you both for your talk. I'm William, based in Maryland. So I have a good friend who's currently dealing with some obesity issues. And he's like a PhD student, which means he's super busy and doesn't have too much money to buy like healthy meals. And every day he was not every day. Every week he's complaining to me that I wish I can buy more broccoli.

Or salad, but the situation is I'm.

Stuck with a frozen pizza every week.

Because it's cheaper and it's faster to make.

So if you are in my situation, what advice would you give? Yeah, I think this is a really common belief that it's more expensive, it takes too much time, and it's too difficult to eat real food. And I was part of a movie called Fed Up 10 years ago, which talked about childhood obesity and the food industry. And as part of that movie, I went to work with a family in South Carolina. easily South Carolina, which one of the worst food deserts in America. They have something called the retail food environment index. How many fast food and, you know, bodegas are there to healthy grocery stores? It's like 10 to one there. The family was a family of five. We've been trailer on food stamps and disability. The father was 42 already on dialysis from diabetes, from kidney failure. The mother was 100 plus pounds over weight. The son was, you know, 50 body fat at 16, practically diabetic, should be like 10 to 20%. and they lived on $1,000 a month in food stamps and disability payments. And I'd rather give them a lecture. I basically went to their house, went shopping and got simple ingredients, real food that were inexpensive and it was from a guidebook called Good Food on a Tight Budget from the Environmental Working Group. How to eat food that's good for you, good for the planet and good for your wallet. And rather than giving a lecture, I just said, let's cook together. And they'd never cooked a real food in their life. They were trying to eat low-fat this and you know, healthy that with all the basically garbage marketing that's on most of our food that makes it look good, right? Like you said, the nice pictures of the farms and the pastures where all these animals come from cafos. Well, my rule is, if it has a health claim on the label, it's bad for you. If it's gluten-free potato chips, it's bad for you. Right. And if it says health food, you're like, oh, yeah, if it's got a health claim, it's definitely bad for you. Low fat, low high fiber, this, that. It just means they're, they're, they're kind of tweaking the ingredients. to make some kind of health claim, and it's generally highly processed food. So we made the simple meal. I told them how to peel garlic. I showed them how to chop vegetables. I showed them how to stir fry things. We made turkey chili. We made just simple foods. Salad with regular veggie salad and some olive oil and vinegar dressing. Not dressing that was filled with high fructose corn syrup and refined oils and all kinds of thickeners and emulsifiers. They were really bad for them. And I said, look, you can do this. Here's this guidebook. Here's one of my older cookbooks. and I'm like, I don't know if this is gonna work. And, and I, they didn't have cutting boards. They didn't have knives. I said, okay, well, I flew back on the plane. I literally went on Amazon. I ordered them cutting board, the knife, shipped to their house. A week later, the mother texts me. She says, we lost 18 pounds of family. We're doing it. A year later, they lost 200 pounds of family. The father lost 45, got a new kidney. The mother lost 100 pounds. The son lost 50, then went to work at Bojangles, because the only place to work down in the South. gained it all back. He said it was like putting an alcoholic to work in a bar. Eventually he got his act together, called me up and said, I really want to get healthy again. I said, okay, let's do it. And I guided him. He lost 132 pounds. He was the first kid in his college to go to. I mean, his family to go to college. And he asked me for a letter of recommendation for medical school, and now he's a doctor. Wow. So I don't believe the propaganda from the food industry that it. It takes too much time. It's difficult. and it's expensive. Yeah, you're not gonna have a $70 grass-fed ribeye steak, but there are cheaper cuts of meat, cheaper vegetables, cheaper beans and grains, and cheaper nuts and seeds. And there's things you can get through outlets and Costcos and big box stores. Trader Joe's, you can actually eat well for less. And the truth is, the cost to you is such a benefit or the benefit to you is so high. If you look at, we were talking about before, basically the amount of disability and brain fog and feeling like crap, I call it FLC syndrome when you feel like crap, is massive. And presenteeism is a huge problem globally. We lose $2 trillion a year from people being at the job but not on the job. And so we have to understand that our well-being, our energy, our focus, our productivity, our happiness, our joy, all depends on the food we eat. and it's good for us, but it's also good for our families and for our communities and for our nation. And so I feel like I'm a kind of a lone voice in the wilderness, but this is really a national emergency at every level, from national security to our ability to produce the food we need to produce, to our ability to deal with the economic burden of it, the academic crisis in our children. I mean, it's just one thing after the other, and it's all connected by the food.

Powerful. Thank you. Powerful, yes, please.

Yeah, hi.

So I'm actually a physician and nephrologist.

And I now work at NIH. We do have an office of nutrition. It's tiny and needs better fun. Yeah. But that wasn't my question.

I just had to throw that in there.

But I think the only time that in the National Institute of Health strategy that was put out by Francis Collins, the only time food was mentioned was as part of the sentence that included the Food and Drug Administration. So it's not a problem. I will not disagree with you on that. I agree.

Mike, I was curious, you're thinking about these new GLP drugs that are out.

There, the anti-obesity drugs. I didn't hear you mention those.

I was just wondering what your thoughts were. Yeah, I am wondering that too. Thank you for the question. Must be from New Jersey.

What about the new drugs? Listen, we're in a crisis and people are desperate. And if you haven't seen the South Park movie about obesity, you should watch it. And it basically, is it an episode.

Or is it a new movie?

Well, it's like an hour long episode, maybe. I don't know. I don't really watch it that often, but somebody said it to me to watch. And it basically shows these sort of suburban moms who become terrorists because the supply of Ozempic goes down and they literally are robbing pharmacies and they're, you know, like, and Cartman is basically trying to get Ozempic for his dad. self and his friends have a chemistry lab where they're making a kind of a compound inversion and these suburban moms attack them with masks on and guns and their midriffs showing because they all want to look how skinny they are. And it's kind of funny, but it's a problem. I think for some people these drugs can be very helpful and very effective. I think when you look at scaling this up, the entire Medicare Part D, which is our drug benefit program, It's $145 billion. If just the obese, not the overweight, if just the obese Medicare patients got the drug, it would cost $245 billion, which would basically dwarf the expenditures of all drugs for all Medicare right now. So it's not really a sustainable solution. Yes, the prices can come down and maybe that'll happen. And yes, in Canada and in Europe and Germany, they're like, instead of $1,300 a month, it's like $100 or $200. And so these drugs can have a place. but it kind of misses the point, which is why are we obese in the first place? It's not a zopic deficiency. It's our toxic food system and we have to deal with the reality of where people are and some people may benefit from these drugs. We also have to deal with the reality of our food system. So both have to be dealt with. And these can have long-term consequences that we're just learning about. So, you know, there was a great article they did in the journal that came out years ago that said, be sure to use new drugs as soon as they come out on the market before the side effects develop. Right? So just wait a few years, you're gonna see bowel obstruction, pancreatitis, and a bunch of other issues, muscle loss, wasting, regain of the weight. So I think they're not a panacea and they're not risk-free, but I think.

They can be used effectively in some patients. And I think this is gonna be, that was our last question, 'cause I.

Think that's what you're announcing. Oh, I was gonna say yes, we're running short on time, so if the three people standing can please keep their questions super brief and we'll take all.

Three questions and then give you the last 10 minutes. I'll be brief.

I'll be brief.

Thank you. Why don't we get them all out and then we'll answer them all at the end?

Oh, I'm not sure my memory is that good. I have Alzheimer's.

I have a pen and I will take notes as people put the questions. One, two, three.

Hi, my name is Vadim Zhidnikov. I'm from Arlington, Virginia. And right now, Is that a suburb of New Jersey?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And right now I'm getting my NP degree and I was wondering how does.

One become a functional medicine practitioner.

Is there a program that you would recommend or things like that? And then kind of a segue of that question, how does one becomes an activist to raise that awareness in the public that we can change the laws.

And change the system.

Yeah. And make that awareness. Thank you.

It's the gentleman here, sir.

My name's Daniel. So this is for Senator Booker. How do you justify incorporating meat into the diet with the negative health environment and ethical consequences? You're asking me or Dr.

He's asking me.

Oh, him. Me.

Okay, good. Hold on. As a vegan, I'm dying to hear his answer.

Go ahead. Hi, everyone. I'm Anna Irani. I also work at NIH and Human Resources. If there were three things you could get every American to do this week, I'd be curious what those are.

Three things?

This is such a big problem and there's so many things to be done. But I was wondering if you would have us focus as a public, what.

Would those things be?

Yeah, great.

So I'm going to start with the first question, how to become a functional medicine.

I remember the questions actually.

Oh, you do?

Okay, let's see how I do.

Okay, I wish you would ask that question for a guy who couldn't pass organic chemistry.

You wanted to be a doctor? Had to be a senator instead. Yeah. Thank you, by the way, for being in the medical field and caring about these issues and being an advocate for transformation. As a physician, you're well trained in basic science, but we don't learn about the science of health. The Institute for Functional Medicine, where I've been chairman of the board, I've been on the faculty for 20 years, 25 years, is a great organization that trains practitioners in functional medicine. You can go to ifm.org, it's a nonprofit. there's training curriculums that are online and they're great. As far as being an advocate goes, I think we all can do our part where we feel called to do it. And it may be something as simple as composting your food or maybe something as big as being an activist in Washington. Never underestimate, Margaret Mead said this, never underestimate the power of a small group of highly committed people that change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has. so people can make a difference. If you want to learn more, go to foodfix.org, there's a guide on there called the Food Fix Action Guide, or maybe you can go to foodfix.com, or foodfixbook.com, and the action guide is on there. It's basically a 20-30 page guide on what you can do individually, what you can do professionally, what you can do as a philanthropist, as a business, as an advocate, what policymakers can do. So what has to happen across the board to actually drive the changes we need to see?

And then one thing I would add to that just on activism, I've learned that one really important definition of leadership is not how many people you can get to follow you, but how many people you can get to see that they are leaders themselves. So ignite other people. There are a lot of goodwill people that just don't know yet. That's why I gave your book Food Fix to other people I knew because I knew they were innately activists, but once they had the information, they would be out there telling, being truth tellers as well. So share the information, get other people to join this movement as leaders as well.

And the vegan question is an important question. I think about 2% of the American population is vegan.

Mighty 2%, mighty 2%, very loud 2%.

And I'm not opposed to it. I think there's many ways to eat healthfully. I think it's hard to do it to get the nutritional density you need. but you can. And I think you have to do it smartly and you have to not rely on a lot of what I call vegan junk food, which is also highly processed refined carbohydrates and starches, which is kind of often the go-to in terms of the issue of animal and, and plant and humans and the whole ecosystem. A hundred percent how we're raising animals now is, is criminal. It's criminal for the animals, for the earth, the ecosystem, and the climate, and for human health. So there's no argument those. There should be banned and they should be stopped, period. That doesn't mean that animals integrated into a regenerative agriculture system are bad. In fact, they can be extremely effective, even if you don't eat them. And I recently visited a farm, a ranch actually in Texas, which is called Rome Ranch, and basically a young couple bought a thousand acres right next to all the other cattle ranches, and they decided to raise bison. And they did it in a regenerative way with no till, with allowing just the animals to do their thing and not really adding feed or, you know, they had water. And they found that they were able to restore the ecosystem in such a way that they were at six percent organic matter into the soil in just a few years for every one percent organic matter. the soil holds 25,000 gallons of water. The farmers, I mean, the ranch was right next to them. You could see this because they were, you know, the fences were suffering a drought. They had to sell off all their cattle. They couldn't raise animals anymore. And meanwhile, this Bison Ranch was thriving. Wild animals were coming back, bald eagles were coming back. They had multi-species on the farm. The soil matter was increasing organic matter. All these things were happening and they were creating an incredibly helpful source of food. which is very nutrient dense. And, you know, I think, you know, eating a regeneratively raised bison versus a CAFO cow steer is a completely different thing. And we're learning a lot about, you know, how these animals are such an integral part of the ecosystem. And one of the key aspects of regenerative agriculture is to include animals as part of the ecosystem to recycle nutrients and the soil and the earth. I mean, in, I think, in that movie food, inc. That you were in, there was a great scene of this guy who was a regular farmer and he couldn't make it and he had to sell agrochemicals and agricultural seeds from big seed companies. And he kind of got sick of it all and decided to create a model of regenerative farming where he had sheep and pigs and things in this kind of weird thing, I don't know what he called it, but basically moved it through his farm to fertilize the soil and still grow the crops, but do it in a way that restored the ecosystem, had less inputs, saved money and made him more money and created a healthier environment. So I think being an ethical vegan is fine. From a health perspective, I think there's a way to do it well, but there's also a way to not do it well.

Well, let's use me as an example. He's a good friend. I don't mind putting myself back on his table. First of all, he took my blood. I don't know why he had to stab me so hard to get it.

But.

You took my blood and you said, Cory, you're a junk food vegan.

And.

You'Re lacking in B12, I think you told me.

Omega-3s, vitamin D. You don't have to.

Put it all out there, man. I didn't want to give them my whole profile.

Sorry.

Yes, yes.

I just broke my HIPAA violation. Yeah, but.

Yes, B12, iron, omega-3s, which are things that I think vegans have.

To be sure about.

Yeah, but. Not that everybody doesn't need to be smart about their nutrients because I'm sure most Americans are low on things. But as a guy who's very health conscious and tries to eat well, there are certain things that you said to me, Hey, Corey, you've got to figure out how to source this. And even just right now, you were.

Telling me that I'm old and that I needed to get more protein.

Yeah.

So you're going to need to eat sort of like concentrated proteins like pea.

Protein and the ones that are supplemented with amino acids that'll help build muscle as you get older. Yeah. Right. So I think that Choices are fine, the diversities in diets are fine, even though you keep pushing eggs on me if they're blessed by Buddhist monks or can't you eat them and whatever.

Trying.

But the reality is you can make choices, but you should make smart choices. And the truth is, and because I was, as you said, I was in that documentary that you talked about, the more we're returning to the centuries old agricultural practices that human beings thrived on, where there were soil being, regenerative soil practices that often involved animals.

Must do, right? Think about it, there were 168 million ruminants in America. They were grazing all across that created the incredible bread basket that we have in the Midwest with 50 feet of topsoil. It was like, I think with the movie, he called it, what did he called it? Iowa mother lode or something.

Yes, but we're losing that soil now because of our current practices. at a very alarming rate.

Yeah. And so, so it's actually animals are.

Essential for the ecosystem to thrive.

Okay.

So before I give my sort of closing, was there one more question? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You gotta get this last question about they're asking specifics. Three, three things for every American to do. If you could get every American to.

Do three things this week, what would you get them to do? First, I would, I would get them to give up liquid sugar calories. Yes. Which is a huge driver of obesity. the second would be to give up ultra processed food, and the third would be to add a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables to your diet.

That's amazing. Okay, before I go, I try to be the only big black boy that could give a Jewish man Jewish guilt. So my favorite Parsha.

Is a part of a Torah reading for those non-Jews.

In the Yes, my favorite parsha, my.

Favorite-- Like I said, he does more Hebrew than I do.

Is this extraordinary story about the father of three of our great human faiths, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, Abraham. And Abraham was said to be favored by God because he kept his tent open on all four sides and people were welcome. And one day after Abraham had joined the covenant, he had done something you don't recommend, but circumcised himself, We will move quickly past that. He was sitting in pain by his tent, and the Torah says that strangers that were different than him, I've talked to some rabbinical scholars that were different race, very different strangers, were approaching his tent, and he stands up and he runs to them. He doesn't just greet them, Hey, come over, my tent's open. No, he runs with them with joy in his heart. to welcome the stranger. And then what you'll love about this story is he brings them into the tent and he gives them his best food. His best food. And this idea in cultures going back millennia, all across the globe, this idea of food being a place that brings us together, that creates what you said at the very beginning in your blue zone, you talked about community. and this idea of the American family sitting around a dinner table, which is becoming less and less the reality, especially the reality without a TV screen on. The fact that you're re-celebrating the power and the magic of food, I think gets us back to the Abrahamic ideals and the fact that you're trying to create community in this country around activism to reclaim our health. It is a celebration of the song sung during the high holidays, Ki Beit, Ki Beit, the Little Ho-Cho-Me, may my house be a house of prayer for all nations. Thank you, Dr. Hyman, for being someone who is seeking again to bring us all together around one tent, around one metaphorical table, to have great food for everyone.

Thank you. Thank you, Maury. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on all social media channels@drmarkhyman and we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. And now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Mark's Picks newsletter@drhyman.com/markspicks I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays and I'll never share your email address or send anything else besides my recommendations. These are the things that have helped me on my health journey and I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's drhyman.com/markspicks. Thank you again and we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I'm the Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions and neither myself nor the podcast endorse the views or statements of my guests. this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Now, if you're looking for your help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. You can come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Just go to ultrawellnesscenter.com if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner near you, you can at ifm.org and search find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who is trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. Don't forget, there's a way to listen completely ad free. With Hyman Plus on Apple podcasts, you can enjoy every episode without any breaks. Just open Apple podcasts and tap try free to start your seven day free trial.