How Food Subsidies Keep Ultraprocessed Food Prices Low And Chronic Disease Rates High

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

There's no reason for subsidizing food. We are subsidizing all the things that are killing us. And we have since 1933.

Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark.

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Episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, this is Lauren Fein, one of the producers of the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. For decades, the US government has been providing subsidies to farmers growing commodity crops such as wheat, corn, and soy. These crops make up a majority of ingredients in the ultra-processed foods that are driving our chronic disease epidemic. And not only that, but commodity crops or monocropping is harmful to the environment due to its overuse of pesticides and fertilizers. In today's episode, we feature three conversations from the Doctors' Pharmacy looking at the practice of providing farm subsidies and the need for change. Dr. Hyman speaks with Dr. Robert Lustig on subsidizing foods that are killing us, with Ken Cook about how commodity crops harm the environment, and with Paulette Jordan on food sovereignty and the impact commodity crops have had on Indigenous peoples. Let's jump in.

We subsidize corn, wheat, soy sugar. In fact, we've been subsidizing sugar since the inception of the Union in 1790. It is the second oldest piece of legislation on the books in post-constitution. 1790, we have been subsidizing sugar. We've also been taxing it. We do both, which makes even less sense. Point is, the food industry can sell its processed food for cheaper because of subsidized food, because they're basically getting a kickback. They're getting a rebate for using those corn, wheat, soy, sugar. All right, well, all of those are the bad guys. Okay? The corn is the branch chain amino acids. The soy is the Omega-3s. Okay? The wheat.

Omega-6s. Omega-6s.

You mean Omega-6s. My mistake. You're right. Omega-6s. Yeah, I missed it. The wheat is the gluten, which is pro-inflammatory and of course the insulin secretion that we talked about. And then finally sugar, which I've now beaten this dead horse. But it's a horse that needs to be beaten because it keeps rising from the ashes. So bottom line, we are subsidizing all the things that are killing us. and we have all along, and we have since 1933, the original Farm Bill. Now, the very first Farm Bill came out in 1933, and the impetus for that 1933 Farm Bill was the depression and the Dust Bowl of 1932.

Yeah.

And we had a destitute population in the American Southwest that were dying, okay, because there was no food. And the problem was that if you took the food, which was being grown in the Midwest and the Northeast, and you put it on railroad cars and to the Southwest, by the time it got there, it would be rancid. So the way to stop it from being rancid was to defibertize it, to basically strip the fiber off, to process it, to basically pack it into big 10 pound bags of flour, okay? And then ship it on the railroad cars and bake it up, you know, locally. And you know what? That worked. That worked. And we saved an entire destitute population. And then came World War II. and we needed it even more because we needed to feed the soldiers in the field. And so that was okay. And then came 1946. And the war was over, and the depression was over, and the dust bowl was over, and we should have gone back to square one. We should have gone back to previous. But hey, people figured out, hey, I can make money at this. And so instead of taking away a policy that didn't work, anymore, had no need to be anymore, we doubled down.

Okay?

And we doubled down again. And we doubled down again. And then in 1971, okay, Richard Nixon said, you know, food prices are still fluctuating. We need to make food cheap. Okay? And so he told his agriculture secretary, Earl Butz, you know, to basically make food cheap. So he went to the heartland, to Nebraska, to Kansas, to Iowa, and he said three things. Three things. He said, Row to row, furrow to furrow, get bigger, get out.

Yeah, go bigger, go home.

That started monoculture. And that's why all of the corn is in Iowa and all the cattle are in Kansas, okay, is because of Earl Butz. Well, that did lower the price of food, but unfortunately what it also did was it now made the food less nutritious because now instead of the soil being rotated and being able to regenerate the soil microbiome, which is actually the bacteria and the fungi that are actually in the soil that actually feed the plant to make the plant healthy and nutritious, okay, now it's dirt, it's dead. And so what they had to do is they had to spray it with nitrogen fertilizer to grow anything and all of that all the, you know, the, the, the green peppers and the radishes and everything else, they basically don't have any nutrients in them. The tomatoes have nothing in them. All right. So we're eating all of this nutritionally depleted food because we're growing our, our, our, our produce in dirt instead of in soil like it was supposed to be. And all of that was to basically continue to make food cheaper. So now we have the cheapest food in the world. Okay. And we are paying.

Not really.

We pay. Yeah, exactly.

You, you don't pay now. pay later, and medical bills and drugs.

You can pay me now or you can pay me later. But hey, if I'm paying you later, you know what? Then that's some other administration's problem.

Pass the buck, yeah.

Amazing.

So how do we fix this? How do we change those policies? I'm curious, 'cause I'm deep in this policy world, and I'm curious for your perspective.

You got four minutes. Until we get rid of subsidies, nothing.

Good can happen, period.

So crop insurance is what you're talking about.

Yeah, well, that's one thing to do is crop insurance. But the bottom line is there's no reason for subsidizing food. There's no economist on the planet who believes in food subsidies because they distort the market. Let the market work. And the Giannini Foundation at UC Berkeley actually did this exercise several years ago. They said they modeled what would the price of food look like if we got rid of all food subsidies? And guess what? It wouldn't change except for two items, corn and sugar, which is what we need to change. So to me, that's where you start is the food subsidies. Now, after you do that, then all hell breaks loose and, you know, other things are possible. But ultimately we need this thing called regenerative farming and we need it for climate change because if you keep spraying nitrogen fertilizer, all you're doing is making nitrous oxide, which is the worst greenhouse gas of the bunch. Everybody's methane. okay? And the reason is because 300 times more cows, you know, but the bottom line is the nitrous oxide is way worse than the methane. It's more trapping capacity, has longer residence time, and it is higher in terms of the, the amount in the atmosphere. So as long as we keep thinking that we can just grow in dirt, you know, we're going to keep having this problem. Now, can we fix that? Yes, we can fix that. But what we need to do then is we need to be able to access bigger plots of land and have them grow green vegetables. And that can be done very easily. You take a big pole, a 500-foot pole, you stick it in the center of a field, you put a white sheet over the edge, and you tent it on the edges, and you can grow green vegetables underneath it, even in Maine, even in Michigan, even in Minnesota. We can increase the crop yield in this country like that. okay. For almost no money. Okay. But the point is, we have to want to do that. We have to direct the federal government to, you know, support those kinds of programs, but they're not.

Well, I'm optimistic. Yesterday, I just came back from giving a talk. It was a talk at Rodale Institute, which is kind of the original organic farming, regenerative farming research Institute, where they're literally studying the difference in between soil and dirt and organic, organic or conventional farming. And it was a conference of doctors, and it was really inspiring to sort of hear that they're actually, things are changing. They just, part of the work we did with food fix was we got, we got David Scott to come, who's the chairman of the ag committee in the house to Rhode Island Institute. He got awakened to these ideas. They just testified a few weeks ago. They got 25 million dollars as a start to help incentivize BIPOC farmers and, and areas where the soil's bad to actually regenerate soil. It's very, it was very, very exciting. So I think in the IRA bill, you can argue whether that's good or bad, but there was $20 billion that was allocated for some of these changes in farming practices. So I think we're moving along the right direction. It's not fast enough for either of us, obviously, but I think I'm a bit hopeful than I was a few years ago.

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And now let's get back to this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. I think this is a real debate, right? You need to end subsidies or crop insurance, what they call crop insurance. And maybe you can explain that because we talk about subsidies and people get confused between subsidies and crop insurance. But the idea is that we support a system that promotes the growing of commodity crops, wheat, corn, and soy that are turned into processed food that kill people that cost huge amounts in healthcare dollars. And in the process of growing that food creates massive destruction in the environment through nitrogen fertilizers, glyphosate, herbicides, pesticides, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, overuse of water resources. So we're in this vicious cycle that just self-perpetuating. How do you break that cycle? And do this sort of current model, how do you sort of crack the code on that?

Well, that's just it. Government funding is baked into that business model. It's a big part of what drives it. And that's our money. It's not farmers' money. It's taxpayers' money. and we should all have a say. And that includes, you know, having a say over, you know, do we have unlimited basically funding for the largest farms so they can get even bigger and use these mechanical and chemical systems to continue to affect the Midwest? Or do we start putting some limits on that? Do we start investing in farmers who are willing to take conservation practices seriously on their land? I think we can do that, and I think there's actually quite a bit of support in agriculture for that, but it's going to take someone to stand up and make that as a statement. The second thing we need to do is we need to take care of hungry people. We need to, right now especially, we need to invest in healthy food so that everyone has access to it. And that means low-income people, whether or not COVID's happening. We have lots of Americans who don't have access to clean and healthy food. We should have universal school food programs, feeding programs that carry through the summer for low-income kids so that they get healthy fruits and vegetables and a diverse diet. We need to wean them off as much meat as they're eating now and wean them more in the direction of healthier eating habits. We could do all that. We have more than enough money to do it, but we have to make it a political priority and we have to stop demonizing people. who need support to eat well. And the final thing we really need to do is we need to make a very serious investment in how we're going to grow out the food production process in this country. I think it's best to do it on a demand basis as opposed to spending money to grow more pears and apples. But I think we need to have institutions like hospitals being smarter about the investments they make in diet, school systems the same, corporations. That needs to come from the private sector in some ways and the government's role should be, well, let's provide some additional assistance so people can afford these healthy eating habits that we want to instill in them. If we did just that, regenerative agriculture would fit right in. We would begin to start restoring our badly damaged landscape. We'd save on pesticides, we'd save on nitrogen fertilizer, we'd use animal waste more judiciously. All of those things could fall in order, but we have to have the political will at the top to do it. And so far, agriculture is kind of a backwater in most administrations. The Department of Agriculture is not accorded the high priority it should. And as a result, a lot of these tough decisions get punted down the road.

Well, it just seems to me that the problems we're really trying to solve, right? Chronic disease, the pandemic of COVID-19, which affects those who are obese and chronically ill, which is mostly caused by food, the economic impact of that, the climate change issues, the destruction of rural communities, you know, the social injustice and the rest, these are all linked to food. And in one way or another, they're all linked to food. And so the big problems that we're trying to solve, I mean, the four, Policy agenda items of the new administration, addressing COVID, economics, addressing the climate issues and racial justice. These are the four stated goals. They're all linked to food.

Yeah, they all are.

You know, in different ways, right? I mean, COVID is a lot of our deaths. And the reason we're getting so sick and filling up the hospitals compared to other countries is because of the level of vulnerability of our sick and overweight population caused by food, the economy, you know, one third of our federal budget. is for chronic disease, which is caused by food, and soon to be more, including a third of state budgets. The social injustice and unrest in part is created because of some of the health disparities in these communities that don't have access to real food. And the climate issues are arguably the most important factor in addressing climate is addressing the food system, right? And you can argue that it's 30% or 50% of climate change. It's right up there with fossil fuels or bigger. And if we don't, and nobody's talking about these linkages or how to think about these problems as one problem, and the solutions that you laid out in kinds of simple, simple doable things that don't need advanced technology or billions of dollars of investment, they're just facilitating things that we know already work and already how to do. I mean, even things we were talking about in terms of, you know, helping these communities. We're willing to have a mask mandate in many states. It's not something the federal government can do, but they're talking about this mask mandate. What about having a mandate that any federal program or state program that's buying food has to support regeneration of human health and regeneration of environmental and planetary health? That would be a simple guiding principle. And there are programs like the Good food purchasing program which outlined the principles of how do you buy food for institutions like schools or prisons or government buildings or universities or, I mean, there's hospitals, all of which receive federal funding, right? If you're a hospital and you're getting Medicare dollars, well, the Medicare dollars should be tied to optimal nutrition in the hospital. I'm not like, you know, I had back surgery this summer and I made a post was I had in trouble before, but it basically showed my breakfast after I woke up from surgery, which was basically French toast with baked maple syrup with caramel color, which is carcinogenic, plus a high fructose corn syrup in the juice that I got, and a muffin, which is full of sugar, and a creamer, which had trans fat, which has been banned by the FDA, or basically ruled not safe to eat, even though it's still in the food supply. and I was like, wow, this is going to kill me. This is an interesting- you- are on.

Your road to healing with that breakfast, right?

No, no. But why can't we do that? And I think those are some of the issues that you've really struggled with in terms of the environmental working group.

Yeah, tying those things together. And again, it's often economic signals that come from the government that could be righted. There was an attempt in the Obama administration and Congress took some steps to fix school lunch, and there was an uproar about it, you know, fighting back, saying we, you know, how dare you get rid of our, our pizzas and our french fries and all the rest. So that battle is there. But I think over time, you know, the, the, the culture is too slowly moving in the direction where there's a greater health consciousness. And so we don't need to just rely on on USDA and agriculture, we need to have more doctors like you out there and a healthcare system that supports them, right? What about health insurance supporting healthy eating? What are the measures we can take to improve there, to incentivize that? We can't spoon-feed everybody healthy food, but we can certainly change all the signals that are encouraging them now to think that their health is something separate from what they eat when it's not. No, it's not. So all of these things require leadership and vision at the White House and the White House needs to empower an integration of the health insurance system we have in place that certainly needs an overhaul, the agriculture system that we have in place that needs a complete overhaul too. I think if you have that kind of leadership, there'll be a lot of opportunities in the coming years, even if you can't do it With a stalemated Congress, there are a lot of things the administration can do on its own.

Social determinants of health also impact our communities. Because I grew up from an area where we once cultivated the land and cultivated our own medicines, and then being pushed to the reservation and having to live off of government resources that really did our people in in terms of health care, because they were giving us government subsidies. and these foods are the most horrible foods you can imagine.

Yeah.

And they had no nutrients. They were not nutrient dense. And of course, it did impact our community in so many ways to where we have chronic illnesses from left to right that are still plaguing our society today. And it's now become a generational chronic illness, of course, from cancers to diabetes. And that's why, for us and for myself, I want to make sure that You know, we're taking action when it comes down to nutritional health and including this as a supplemental strategy for health care and health care going into the future. So we've got to look into soil quality and the nutrients we put into our foods and make sure our foods are quality. But again, all to sustainable use. We want to make sure that people can afford these foods. And of course, I'm looking at practical solutions when it comes to primary care.

You unpacked so many important things. You talked about social determinants of health. You talked about food sovereignty. You talked about the commodity program on the reservations that has made those populations so sick. And looking historically at what happened, not only were the lands taken away, but food sovereignty, meaning their ability to control and gather and hunt their own foods, their traditional foods, was impacted and in order for them to be fed, they received large amounts of government surplus foods, white flour, white sugar and white fat known as Crisco or shortening. And these became the staple foods. And I had a number of experience with a few Native Americans. Someone was a doctor. I went on a trip in Utah with my daughter. We were repelling down a canyon and we got stuck. It was a flash flood and I got stuck for quite a while. on this platform and there was this obstetrician gynecologist was from Alaska and First Nation people from there and he was telling me the story of how he was very overweight and very diabetic and was eating all the traditional sort of Western foods. And he was a doctor and he sort of thought he knew better and he said that he realized he wanted to not be like that. And he went back to what were his ancestors eating? They were eating salmon, they were eating the wild foods and the wild plants and he literally transformed his diet and went back to being healthy. And a few years later, I went on a rafting trip with the head of the Ute Nation and a Hopi chief on the Green River to bring awareness to the tar sands mining in the Tavaputs Plateau.

And.

The woman, one of the Native women was telling me about how they have a word for people in their community who eat a lot of these commodity foods. They call it Kamad Bod, which is like a word to describe people whose bodies get really big and overweight from eating these foods. And it's become such an incredible issue in these communities that has led to an overwhelming burden of diabetes. For example, certain communities in Native communities in America, 80% get diabetes by the time they're 30. Their life expectancy is 46. And they are, the Pima, for example, the second most obese population in the world. It's not an accident. They weren't like that 100 years ago. Their food environment was changed and their access to their traditional foods was changed. And I think we're seeing the same consequences in these communities with COVID They're having lack of access to care. Their underlying health conditions make them predisposed. and they're not able to get the kind of care that they need. And these social determinants turn into a much bigger factor. So can you talk a little bit about this sort of issue of food sovereignty and what you mean by that and how those issues can be solved for communities? Because it's really a microcosm for what's happened not just to these Native populations, but to all those populations. And I was talking to a rancher the other day who grew up in the '60s and he said, you know, when I grew up on a farm, we had, you know, dozens and dozens of crops. We had dozens of different animals. We ate from our farm. Everything was fresh. And then now, you know, most farms in America have one or two or three crops, and they're big, giant monocrop corn, wheat or soy crops. And farmers don't eat from their land, and they're overweight, and they're sick, and they're unhealthy. And these rural communities, too. So it's not just a select population like the Native Americans, everybody's being affected by the loss of our food sovereignty. So can you talk more about that.

And how do you think about that.

And how might we might solve that problem?

Now one of the, I think it's always, you know, everything starts local. And, you know, in our community it's very rural. It's really on the people to have, you know, the will within themselves to take action. And so for a lot of our people, they are finding swaths of land and they're building community. And everything is about community. You know, health care is only sustainable when you have community invested in. And so there has to be this complete buy-in. But it's nice that people, because it wasn't taught within the school systems, to rely on some folks, gardening or cultivating your land was actually taught in schools when we were younger. that in schools. So children are having to figure out for themselves, you know, how do we garden? And of course, a lot of people are still trying to get back to that. And you and myself, you know, so we all have to relearn how to garden and grow our own foods. But to me, it's the way forward. I look at this as a complete opportunity as people are starting to see that, you know, growing your own foods, you can, you know, trust what's in your resources. You also can have farmers markets. It's a good way for people to share, you know, in this community building, food sovereignty. But I see that there's a rise in, you know, communities growing gardens, whether it's in the urban city centers or it's in rural Idaho. Culture is starting to pick up and people understand that growing your own foods is better because we still don't have a Congress or a legislative body who are going to adhere to people having transparency in the labels and knowing what is in their foods. Monsanto or Bayer, they still have the upper hand and they're still leading the way and having chemicals introduced into our food systems and now it's polluting our water and it's getting into our air and everything is starting to get more and more polluted. So the people have to fight. for complete integrity and the structure of the resources or the nutrients that they're putting into their system.

Yeah, it's such an important point because I think, as I remember, I lived in Idaho for four years. I was a family doctor, worked in a small town. And it was a very conservative community, but people there were really focused on subsistence living. So they all sort of had jobs here and there, But they all hunted. I mean, there was a week, it was hunting season, was a week off of work. It was a holiday. And then they all had big gardens and they all grew their own food. They raised animals, they hunted. And it was just part of the culture there. And you couldn't find a vegetable in the grocery store.

So that was part of the problem.

But I think learning how to reclaim it, whether it's an urban gardens, urban farming, farmers market, community supported agriculture, these are all ways people can start to reclaim our food ways. And I think it helps sort of reclaim food sovereignty. And whether it's in the Bronx with, you know, African-Americans reclaiming their food or us on reservations or the Americans or whether it's just people in their own homes and community gardens in their neighborhood making a difference, it's huge. The next thing I sort of want to get into is this whole idea of social determinants of health, because I think people hear the word, they hear about it, they don't understand it. What does it mean?

How does it relate?

And, you know, from a doctor, perspective, you know, 20% of health happens in the healthcare system. You know, yes, you need treatment. I had recently had back surgery and I needed to go in the hospital and get that done and that was fine. That really helped me. But 80% of health happens outside the clinic, outside the hospital, outside the doctor's office. And it's something that the healthcare system doesn't really address. And when I've heard you talk about healthcare, you have a more nuanced view than just Medicare for all or keeping things as they are or restricting or repealing Obamacare. There's these two polarized views and neither of them really solve the problem of why we're all sick in the first place and why healthcare is so overburdened and why it's so costly in the first place. So can you talk about how you think differently about this? Because I think it's such an important perspective and how it links back to these social determinants issues.

What with the rising of chronic care, I see how the left and the right are getting into these dysfunctional what health patients look like. But for me, I served on my tribal council when I saw the differences that can be made when you invest more in youth activities or when you invest more into community activities that are holistic and all incorporated. And I mean that, you know, there's other therapies that will help sustain an elder's livelihood as long as they're not on some pharmaceutical drug. There's differences that could be made. If my grandparents can live long lives, I know that this can work for everybody. My grandfather was also a mountain goat because, you know, he would be up and down the mountains every day. He ate really well. He normally relied on roots and berries. And people would say, God, this man is strong. He was a workforce, a smart, brilliant man. But the fact that he was able to survive so long and be so strong in mind and body really, I think, proved to me more so what it takes to think about how you take care of your own system, your body, your health. But I do see the adverse effects of childhood events and I think we all have different effects in our lives and I just see that stress and especially with anxiety, you know, my path really helps. So these sorts of therapies are very healing. You know, that's why we reached back into our culture and we really resort to our ceremonies because our ceremonies help us to stay focused on what's important, what matters. and not be distracted by all the elements in the world. And of course, you know, there are other therapies like acupuncture and chiropractic care and physical therapy. We actually utilize all of these different therapies within our community. And we've seen that functional medicine like this has really helped to bring longevity into our community from even cutting costs in healthcare. Primary care and preventative care, that's that is to be the solution to helping really heal this country. A lot of folks don't have access to primary care. A lot of folks don't have access to acupuncture or chiropractic care or, you know, certain therapies, even just things like behavioral health. And we're not investing enough into our youth. But to me, it's about preventive measures. So why are we not, you know, investing in early childhood education and of course youth community programs. Those certain aspects to a person's development to me adheres to the overall health care program. That's why I often will assimilate that early education is so important and is a big part of how a young child will see themselves and take their developmental portion into the physical development. That is a priority. We must start early and not wait until a person's much later into their life.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's so important to get the kids going on it. And I think, you know, the other aspect that's so, I think, unique about what we're learning about these social determinants is that the power of the social connections that we have, the power of groups and community and ceremony, It's been part of traditional native culture for thousands and thousands of years. They call it a tribe. And we're all, our biggest health care risk is loneliness. 40% of the elderly describe themselves as lonely. And I think that this is one of the biggest drivers of disease. People don't realize that it's actually a risk factor for death. It's a risk factor for heart disease. It's a risk factor for cancer. for stroke, diabetes. And I think the traditional cultures often have these embedded community-based structures, whether it's the Okinawans and the Moai, which are their little units that they form at birth with a group of four or five other little kids, and they stay that way for the entire life and are there for everything with each other. And it forms that level of connection community. And that is so powerful. feeling in it.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. One of the best ways you can support this podcast is by leaving us a rating and review below. Until next time, thanks for tuning in.

Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to.

Do and introduce to you all the.

Experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff, from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise.

And all you have to do is.

Go to drhyman.com/picks to sign up. That's drhyman.com/picks, P-I-C-K-S. and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger, longer.

Just a reminder that 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. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's 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.