Why We Need a President Who Cares About Food with Rep. Tim Ryan

Hi everybody, this is Dr. Mark Hyman and welcome to a very special episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Now, many of you know I'm pretty passionate about food and the food system. In fact, I'm writing a new book called Food Fix, how to save our health, our economy, our communities and our environment one bite at a time. Now, many of you know about all these issues, right? Chronic disease affects one in two Americans. Our economic stress from chronic disease is an extraordinary amount of money. In fact, Over the next 35 years, it's going to cost $95 trillion to take care of people with chronic disease and to account for their lost productivity and quality of life. Food also affects our climate. Food is the number one, our food system is the number one cause of climate change and also the number one solution. The way we farm, destroy soils, we're going to run out of soil in 60 years. We're polluting our waterways, our lakes and rivers and oceans. In fact, the fertilizers that we dump into them, go to the Gulf of Mexico and create dead zones the size of New Jersey, and we kill 212,000 tons, metric tons of fish every year from the way we grow food. This is a big problem. And of course, there's all the social justice issues where we see an immense amount of poverty and disease in the poor minorities that are really targeted by the food companies. We need to address this as a country. Now, this platform, the Doctors Pharmacy, is a place for conversations that matter. And this, to me, is one of the most important conversations that we need to have in this country today. And yet, it's not really part of the discourse. What's going on right now in politics is partisan, it's divisive, but food is an issue that affects everybody. Every single one of us eats, every single one of us needs the planet to be healthy to live. And today is gonna be a special episode, 'cause we're gonna talk about some of these issues. And I'm gonna invite a friend of mine, a Congressman Tim Ryan, from Ohio, who cares about these issues, who's written books about these issues, who actually is the guy who's willing to tackle these issues head on. Now, I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, and independent, it doesn't matter. Everybody should care about this issue. Listen to what Tim has to say and learn about some of the solutions that are available for us to fix this broken system. So I want you to pay attention, I want you to listen, I want you to care because it matters to all of us. There are all sorts of ideas that Tim proposes. Regenerative agriculture, for example, which is a way of bringing back the soil, changing the farming system, supporting farmers to grow food that's healthy for everybody. I mean, just think about our support of fruits and vegetables in this country. The government tells us to eat 50% of our plates in fruits and vegetables. Okay, great. but only 2% of our land is used to grow fruits and vegetables. And 1% of our government agricultural supports actually supports fruits and vegetable growing. How does that make any sense? We support foods that get turned into processed food, soy, wheat, corn that are our commodities. And people who eat the most of those are the sickest. 11 million people die around the world every year just from eating bad food and not enough fruits and vegetables. That has to stop and we need to have this to be a national conversation. So this is really why I invited Tim Ryan to be on the podcast. I hope you listen, I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for tuning in. Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. That's F-A-R-M-A-C-Y. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. This is a place for conversations that matter. And today's conversation, I think, matters probably more than any conversation we've had on the Doctor's Pharmacy, 'cause it's about our food system. And our guest today is an extraordinary man, a close friend of mine, and hopefully the next president of the United States, Tim Ryan. He's a congressman from Youngstown, Ohio. He's been a congressman since 2003. That's a long time. He must have been 12 when he started. Pretty young now. And he's been an advocate for the working class. He's been an advocate for the average Americans who are not getting their fair share. And also, he's an advocate in a way for things that nobody's really talking about, which is the health of America, which is our food system, which is a mindful nation where we're all more mindful. These are issues that no one is talking about in the political discourse. And whether you're Republican or Democrat doesn't matter. What matters is that these issues I think you care about, we all care about because they affect every single one of us, whether it's mental health issues, whether it's chronic disease, obesity, diabetes, these issues matter. this gentleman is one of the only people that I know in Congress. There's a couple and he works with them who are actually trying to change this. You know, he, you know, there are people who say stuff and there are people who do stuff. Tim is one of those guys who does stuff. And I just tell you a little vignette. You know, I'm very passionate about sharing with Tim some of these ideas. And he wrote a book called the Real Food Revolution along with his book, A Mindful Nation. And I said, Tim, Nobody is looking at the effect of all our government policies on our health, and whether it's the agricultural policies, whether it's food stamps, whether it's subsidies for corn and soy, whether it's school lunches, whether it's a dietary guidelines, how are these actually affecting the economy and the health of our nation? And Tim's like, you,'re right, and we need to do something about this. So he wrote a letter to the Government Accountability Office, which is the arm of Congress that is independent, it looks at the the impact of our policies. And he, as a congressman, can mandate them to look at this stuff. And it was the first time anybody asked a question, but he's that responsive. We actually started an initiative called the Enrich Act to bring nutrition into medical education, 'cause less than 25% of schools have any education in nutrition. When I got to Cleveland Clinic, there wasn't any nutrition in the curriculum. We put it in there. And he's got a Food is Medicine Caucus in Congress. He's got a mindfulness group in caucus. I think it's only a couple of guys who show up to meditate, but it's unbelievable. So welcome, Tim.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, we're trying to provide functional medicine for the political system is my goal throughout this campaign and really talk about not the symptoms, but what the root causes of the problems are. and obviously you've been a mentor and inspiration for me. And I think, you know, we're really excited about what we can do if someone sitting in the White House actually focuses on correcting some of these problems. And I know you've been highlighting them, but I'm really super excited about it. You said, like, how do we turn doctors into people who are coaching us to be healthy? How do we move from a disease care system today, which is really what it is, we wait till you get a disease and then we'll take care of you and spend a lot of money and the pharmaceutical companies come in and make a lot of money and the healthcare systems make a lot of money. How do we front load that and get the incentives going the other direction? Incentivize doctors, patients, healthcare systems to keep us healthy? And how does food affect this and how does agriculture affect this?

Absolutely. You know, you as a congressman have been advocate for looking at our food system. You wrote a book about it. why does food matter so much as a politician?

Well, it's, again, it's the, it's the cause in so many ways of the problems that we have. You know, when you're, when you're looking at half the country has almost half the country has diabetes or pre-diabetes a lot of that comes from, you know, the food system. I, I actually read some of the emails you sent to me, and I get all geeked out on, like, I'm like, if, if my buddies in high school that I played football with knew I was reading this paper from Dr. Mark Hyman right now.

It might help them.

Yeah, probably would. I mean, that's kind of the deal. But, you know, the idea that, that we're using and spending about 75% of our health care dollars go to chronic diseases that are largely preventable. I mean, I think when you, I mean, when you have that conversation with the American people and say, you want to You want to be upset with the pharmaceutical company, let's stay healthy. And here's how we do it. And then actually have plans and public health initiatives that actually can make that happen.

The big conversation in Congress is entitlements. Should we limit them? Should we keep them? Should we expand them? The Republicans want to reduce payments for Medicare and restrict access and reduce the money we're spending on Medicare because by 2044, 100% of our federal budget will be consumed by Medicare and Medicaid, meaning no money for anything else the government does. And the Democrats want Medicare for all. And you and I, I remember once you invited me to the White House as your date because your wife was having a baby, was pregnant or had a little baby, she couldn't come. And I remember we were having conversations with all these senators and congressmen at the Christmas party. And, you know, we were talking about this idea, which is it's not keeping Medicare as it is or expanding it. It's not about limiting access and entitlements. It's a third path, which was really fascinating for you to hear you talk about because it wasn't something people were talking about. So what is that third way?

Really, the preventative piece. I believe that we should figure out how to have some public option for someone to go get healthcare. And the key is, the preventative aspect. So, you know, not just screenings, but also having a doctor involved in your life, making sure your diet is appropriate. And those are really important things. So just flipping the whole system. So we spend two and a half times more than every other industrialized country on healthcare, get the absolute worst results.

And then you're now pretty like, I think below Cuba in life expectancy.

Yeah, so now you're, you know, now you're, having conversations that don't even make any sense and you wonder why the American public is so freaked out about what's happening in our country because it just doesn't make any sense. And then you look at African American women are 300 to 400% more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than a white woman of the same income and the same educational attainment level. There's these huge racial issues, structural issues that are in our system. But, I think by frontloading everything, starting with the centering pregnancy type programs where you actually have 10 or 12 women sitting around with a doctor or with a nurse talking about the health of your pregnancy, talking about your diet, talking about your stress level, talking whatever, I mean just helping each other through that shows significant results in making the pregnancy safer. So, the key is moving out of the disease care system.

We also- Dr. Really preventing people from having to use it in the first place, right? Who will need as much entitlements if actually we have a healthier nation and focus on the food system and other aspects and mental health that are driving the utilization.

Totally. I mean, that's it. I mean, that's it. How do we become healthier? And having the doctor at the center of that the doctor is the coach. So, by teaching nutrition in the school, this is again functional medicine for the system, right? So, how do we teach the doctor about nutrition? Because it was like last study I saw was like 90% of doctors don't feel comfortable at all talking about nutrition.

And you're like, wait a minute.

Yeah, it's something wrong with this. It's crazy. It's like a scene of Mad Men.

Where the doctor's sitting there smoking a cigarette, you know? It's like, okay. Well, it's true. Food is the biggest cause of the disease we have. And there was a recent study came out in Lancet that 11 million people around the world die every year from not enough fruits and vegetables and too much bad food. And I think it's even more than that when you really look at the whole thing. And we have a nation where we're putting all this money into disease care instead of actually front loading it. I mean, I think we talked about it earlier, but there was a Geisinger program where they gave diabetics food, $2,400 of food they saved 80% of their healthcare costs by giving them a little food and a little social support and teaching them how to use it. We don't pay for that.

Yeah.

I mean, Medicare, Medicaid, they need to pay for these programs so they actually can do the right thing.

So it makes sense in the excuse of, well, we never done it that way before, or we don't do that. Like that is not an acceptable comment when the trajectory of these programs is going bankrupt and the health of the nation is going down. It'd be like, okay, we're wasting two and a half times as much as every other country, but we're the healthiest country in the world. that's one argument, right? It's not a good argument if you're spending two and a half times everyone else and you have the worst outcome. Something's wrong with the system. And I think the American people want somebody to go in with real solutions around this. And it's not just a healthcare system. I talk a lot about putting together a plan to get rid of dilapidated homes primarily in our inner cities, but in some rural areas too, where these cities have gone from 160,000 to 60,000 dilapidated homes. homes overgrowth. It's really unhealthy.

Lead. Yeah, people don't know this, but in Cleveland, the kids in Cleveland have higher lead levels than the kids in Flint, Michigan.

Because of the paint. Because of the, yeah. Even when they play in the dirt outside their home, because the factories for so long put so much waste into the soil, it's still there. So cleaning, cleaning up those communities. It maybe doesn't fit into the healthcare line item, but I think it's something that we need to do. And if we can clean these communities up, if we can get rid of the blight, a lot of lead paint still in some of these old homes that people live in, and it's affecting the kids' cognitive ability in school. And that is a race issue too. That's a structural race issue too. But setting that aside, How do we clean these neighborhoods up and then put in urban agriculture? You know, we're actually helping and we're investing into these cities. We are growing healthy food. We're creating summer job programs for the kids and the families and after school programs and you tie it to the community school. So the community school has a garden and you just start building in the public health system and the food system into the school and into the neighborhood. kind of like my Italian grandmother. You know, the stories I heard of her growing up, it was like they had a big garden, they had a chicken coop in the back, the chickens weren't eaten, you know, weren't filled with hormones or pest or antibiotics or anything like that, you know? And so, like, moving to that system again, I think, is what the American people would like. Yeah.

People didn't realize that, you know, 40 of the food in America during World War II was grown in home gardens.

Called the Victory Gardens.

40%. 40%.

Wow. See, you learn something new when you hang around Mark Hyman every day. I can't be with this guy a half hour and not come away with three good stats that make their way.

In the next issue of the magazine. And, you might not know this, but there were federal extension workers in the 50s who would go around to new families and teach them how to grow gardens, how to cook real food, how to raise a family, basically using food as the vehicle.

Who did that?

The federal extension workers. It was paid by the government. So it was like someone would visit your house, a little federal extension worker, and would teach young families how to do this. That was phased out because of pressure from the food industry because, and, and home ec was phased out of schools because of pressure from the food industry. They invented Betty Crocker because there's a woman named Betty who was a home ec teacher who actually was trying to advocate for people cooking at home and and eating real food and doing all those things. And they invented Betty Crocker, who I thought was real. Remember the Betty Crocker book? Yeah, of course. She was an invention. And actually, when you look at the recipes, my mom still had one. I think I have the cookbook. She died and I inherited it. And it says, you know, add one can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup or sprinkle crumbled Ritz crackers on top of your broccoli or put on Velveeta cheese. It was all this processed food insinuated into the recipes. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so we need to bring back.

Some of these things.

We're really trying to do that in Cleveland. It was heartbreaking. I just went to speak to a group of young African American inner city kids from Cleveland and one of the one of the women was just just broke my heart. She was sharing how, you know, her mom wanted to make healthy food for her. So she would often take a bus, two buses would take about an hour from where she lived in East Cleveland to go get groceries at a grocery store to buy vegetables and then she'd take an hour ride back. That's what you need to do to get vegetables in the inner city.

Wow.

That has to stop.

Yeah. No, that's that's unbelievable.

So, if this is really the problem with food, it's not just about getting people the right food, it's about our agricultural policies. People don't like to talk about the farm bill because it's boring. Who cares about an 800-page farm bill? But it probably is the most important piece of legislation in America. So, can you talk about what's wrong with it and how you might think about fixing it?

Yeah, well, traditionally it goes to subsidize through a variety of measures, but now crop insurance, the big industrial farms.

So it's not helping the poor Joe McDonald on his farm.

Well, I was just in Iowa now campaigning. I was the first caucus state and farmers in Iowa and I think across the country haven't made a profit in five years. Five years. So the highest suicide rate in the country right now, farmers. I mean, talk about heartbreaking. Just because the debt keeps accumulating and most of these subsidies are going to the top big agribusinesses.

Millions of dollars are going to companies that are big ag companies.

And it's the biggest scam I've ever seen in my life, the monopolization of the seed, the monopolization of the pesticides and herbicides and God almighty, the chicken business. I mean, I'm just, you know, bloke from Youngstown, Ohio. Like, what? I mean, I don't know a whole lot about this stuff, but. And. And what I learned was like, I'm like, this is a complete scam. So they go to Tyson or whoever, they go to the farmer, and they give you. They sell you the chickens, and then they tell you the temperature and the time and what you got to put into the chicken and to get it to a certain weight by a certain day, and then they tell you what they're going to pay for the chicken. I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? Like, this is the biggest, I mean, yeah, this is a scam. And, you know, farmers are having, they're getting squeezed. They're just getting squeezed.

And so moving- They're not the enemy, they're the victims. Oh my God, no question. They're stuck in a system that doesn't actually allow them to shift to a better way of growing food or raising animals.

Right. I mean, they're no different than a manufacturing worker who who got passed by by the economy and the system and everything else. It's like, well, we got a whole country full of people now who just gotten bypassed by this whole thing. So anyway, I think moving towards a system where you sit down with the farmers and you begin to carve out some of their land and incentivize them, one to help sequester carbon because I think that's going to be a that's going to be a net positive when it comes to climate, making sure they're making money off of growing real food and paying them to grow real food. I mean, if you just the study you cited about diabetes, right? $2,400 in real food helps reverse diabetes.

So, you save 80% of the cost of medication and everything else.

Health care. Yeah, which is like a huge saving. So, we're going to save the money on the back end. with healthcare costs. So put that money instead into paying farmers to grow real food, build out the supply chain using public demand. So, you know, K through 12 schools, universities, which buy a lot of food. You know, there's universities everywhere. So University of Iowa, Iowa State, Drake, I mean, Ohio State, Bowling Green, Ohio University, Toledo University, Youngstown State, Akron, Cleveland. I mean, there's a million universities. in the bread basket. So if all of those universities were incentivized somehow to say, okay, this year buy 1% fresh local foods, next year 2%, and while we're increasing the demand from the public university, including prisons, right? There's a lot of money we spend on food in prisons. As you're increasing the demand, then you are also helping these farmers transition. So these farmers have spent a lot of money on the old system. have pretty big capital investments into tractors for this or seed for that or whatever. So we've got to smooth that transition over and you can't put stuff in a big silo because it's fresh. So you need refrigerated trucks and you need different ways to transport the food and that gets expensive. So how do we help hold harmless the farmers and even pay them to do this? Because again, you're going to be saving a ton of money and they're not making any now. So let's help them be a part of the solution and sit down with them and say, how can we do this? Help us help you do this. This is where we want to be if we're going to save the country's really health care system and environment and everything else. I think that's like the architecture of how you do it.

It's true. We really do rethink how we support farmers to actually change over to the kind of agriculture that's going to create healthier food. fix the soil, prevent droughts and floods from water depletion that soil can't hold, it's going to prevent nitrogen runoff in the rivers and lakes, it goes into the oceans, it creates dead zones, and we lose hundreds of thousands of tons of fish in just the Gulf of Mexico. I mean, there's so many unintended consequences that could be reversed and fixed by having agricultural policies that actually support us.

To do the right thing. yeah. Say that again about the fish. That's. I mean, that's just stunning.

Yeah.

So.

So i'm writing this new book, food fix, and. And i'm researching about the implications of what happens when you grow corn and soy, for example, in the midwest. And that most of that, by the way, goes to feed feedlots. In fact, 1% of the corn grown in america is eaten by humans. Okay, well, 8% is high fructose corn syrup. and much of the rest of it is for feed for the animals or biofuels, which makes no sense. But anyway, you have to use huge amounts of fertilizer to grow the corn. That fertilizer is nitrogen, goes into the lakes and rivers. That nitrogen makes everything grow like algae, suffocates these lakes and rivers, and then goes to the ocean. In the Gulf of Mexico, there's a dead zone the size of New Jersey. and it kills over 200,000 tons of fish, which is a great source of protein and food and is a natural resource. So there's this concept called the Tragedy of the Commons, which is the idea that you leave an open field and let anybody graze in, they'll overgraze and destroy it. Well, that's sort of what's happening. We're destroying our common public goods, and that is driving these huge costs to society, driving human suffering. I mean, the list goes on and on. this is not a small issue. And again, I don't hear anybody talking about it like you're talking about it, Tim. I don't hear anybody saying, you know, these are the problems we need to focus on. We need to go upstream. We need to deal with the root causes. We need to think about how we help Americans get back on their feet who are struggling like farmers and actually.

Do the right thing. And it's more profitable, it turns out, to do that. Yeah, we met a, we met a farmer just outside of my district. They have a 10 acre farm. And I made him repeat this to me several times, but he has a 10 acre farm. He's got hoop, him and his wife, the hoop houses and they're growing all kinds of, you know, cool vegetables and everything. He is surrounded by Thousand Acre Farms.

Yeah.

Okay. He says he makes more money than all these other Farms. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

He made 10 acres. Absolutely. But he, you know, and they're, it's, it's, they're, their, their yields are high. They're opening up a little shop in the downtown and, you know, doing, like, you know, farm to farm to table kind of stuff and a coffee shop. I mean, just cool stuff. And the rural areas need more jobs. So this is a way that we can actually get investments into rural communities. Rural communities are losing their downtowns. There's an opportunity to use this to stimulate downtown development and create community again in the downtowns. So, you know, there's, there's a win-win-win here if we get, if we get it right.

So really the, the, the colleagues you have in Congress, are they talking about any of this stuff? Are they thinking about it?

Not really. I mean, here, what happens with the farm bill is it ends up, it always ends up being a fight. Like the rural people get their subsidies and the urban people want money for supplemental nutrition. And, you know, the Republicans say we're spending too much on supplemental nutrition and so. Yeah, I mean, yeah. SNAP program, supplemental nutrition assistance program. And so that's always the fight. And the discussion needs to be about like, okay, time out. Let's talk about what we're doing here. Our health is not good. Our kids' health is not good. They can't learn. This is not working. I was just on a radio show this morning, and it's the largest, African American radio show in the country. It's called the Breakfast Club. And, you know, super cool hosts and, and, but the discussion turned to food and social and emotional learning in our schools. And the hosts were like really talking about how we got to get, you know, the food into the inner city, how this is a big problem, the health issues around the kids. the mental health issues around our kids. And what I love about what you're talking about, what I'm talking about, and what we're trying to really push out there is that this is the real solution. Like, real food is the real solution. I just came up with that. How about that? But it really is. And if, you know, when we see our test scores, when we see the diabetes rates, I mean, it is correlated, and we've got to do a better job. And I just think if we get back from the fundamentals. I'm an old, you know, athlete. It's like when you're not performing well, you go back and start practicing the fundamentals, whatever sport you're in, right? It's Tiger Woods. It's whoever. It's like, okay, I go back to the basics. I think we need to go back to the basics. Food, health, mental health, reducing our stress, anxiety levels, getting healthy. And then we'll worry about artificial intelligence. Let's regroup and then go down that road.

Yeah, it's so exciting to hear you talk about this, Tim, because when you start to really look at the problems facing America and the world, this is the central problem. And it's connecting the dots that matters. And you're one of the few guys I've ever really heard about talking about this in an intelligent way that connects the dots, it links together how we grow food. I mean, just, saying that kids don't learn and can't succeed and have developmental issues and tension issues and cognitive delays if they're not eating a healthy diet is a radical idea. And it's not just about school lunches because they were developed for malnutrition back in the 40s during World War II because they couldn't raise enough soldiers to fight in World War II because they were too malnourished and skinny. Now it's the opposite. It's making these kids sick and fat and you know, we're ketchup and pizza or vegetables. Yeah.

It's bad. Yeah. Yeah. And, and who loses with that? And here's, here's the real argument. We all lose. Yeah. We're a less competitive country. And people say, well, what's that have to do with me? Well, you know, I hate to be the guy to break it to you, but, like, China's coming to clean our clock on electric vehicles, on solar panels, wind, artificial intelligence, additive. manufacturing, I mean, they're coming after us economically and they have 1.4 billion people and we have 330 million.

Well, that's true. That's true. But the good news, you could say this is sort of cynical, but the good news is we are exporting our horrible diet to them. So now they're the number one country in the world with diabetics.

Oh my God. Not a good strategy. Yeah.

But maybe that's our secret strategy.

Yeah. Somehow I doubt it. But the point is, you know, we need everybody on the team playing for us, like functioning at a really high level. And it's like you look at LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady and these like really high functioning athletes. And you look at what they eat and how they behave in their meditation practice or centering practice or whatever you call it. Like, there's a reason they're performing at that level. Now, of course, we're not gonna all be Tom Brady, but we all should be the best we can be. And your public school system and your public health system and your community should all be systems that are trying to pull that out of you the best that you can be. You know, the French word for education is defined as to pull out, to draw out.

Yeah.

And so our education system should be drawing out what is best inside of us. And right now with the food and, you know, the lack of social and emotional content isn't doing that. It's time for a transformation. It's true.

And I, you know, we don't really talk about our kids in the way that we should because there's this achievement Gap when kids are sick and overweight and eating bad food. They just don't perform well in school. They don't go to college. I remember hearing a story about this Charter School in Washington, DC. It was in a really poor neighborhood. members on, you know, government assistance and, you know, really tough family situations. And they built this, and these kids were, you know, not graduating high school. They were going to jail, not college. And they basically created this charter school, which fed them three meals a day of whole, healthy, real food. And they had a great curriculum. These kids are going to Harvard, Yale, they're succeeding in all the Rich families want to send their kids to this poor school because the kids are performing on state and national tests that far exceed other schools in the area because of the food. In part, that's a huge factor. I think people understand their role in mental health, the role in violence, behavior issues, keeping poor communities poor and downtrodden. I mean, it's a real issue and we have to address it in this country.

I think it's the modern social justice issue. you know, I do a lot with like yoga and meditation and food. And to me, it's like, yeah, I mean, it's important for all of us, but to really lift the country up and to really close the structural opportunity gap and communities of color, this is a massive first step. You know, and you hear people like Charlamagne on this radio show was talking about it today. Jay Z is talking about these things. I think it's becoming more and more among some certain leaders that I think you and I and others got to throw gasoline on this and just like, we got to go. And if you start getting the compost, throw compost. Not fossil fuels. There you go. We got to compost this problem. That's classic. so, you know, getting, getting, like, seeing these lines of, like, influencers in communities of color to be behind this stuff is really powerful.

No, it's absolutely true. I mean, I went to visit Ebenezer Baptist Church, which is Martin Luther King's Church, and they had a garden. It was like many Acres outside their Church in the heart of inner city Atlanta that was being. tended to by the parishioners and by the local poor communities and they were using that food. It was organic. It was like, it was really inspiring to see that level of change. And I think that there are all these pockets that are happening in spite of everything that's going on. We need to actually throw compass on those initiatives to help them grow. Like the good food purchasing program we just were talking about in LA where they have procurement standards from the government that mandate that the food that's bought is nutritious, healthy, local, sustainable, and has all these requirements that actually mandate the providers to change their practices. Like if Walmart says no packaging that has more than X amount of cardboard, well, everybody who wants to sell at Walmart has to fix that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the way to do it. And you start shifting the market. And if the federal government can provide incentives to the local government, local schools, federal prisons, and everything else, you start to start providing some incentives for those local communities, then you are going to start to shift demand and then you're going to see the environmental incentives line up with financial incentives. And that's where I think when you start, when you start getting the market to move, like this can't be all government, it's got to be, you know, how do you, how do you get, how do you, or how do you get the free market to start moving? How do you start getting people to say, hey, you know, I can make money off of selling this food to X, Y or Z. So now all of a sudden there's some competition. And even the people who are now selling the bad food are going to go, Wait a minute. Kind of like grocery stores today, there's a lot more organic than there was 10 years ago because the market's starting to shift. So how do we stimulate that market? And then you're off and running.

Hey, everybody. If you've been listening to this podcast and you've been enjoying the conversation, I want to ask you a favor. I want you to think about helping Tim Ryan bring these conversations, these ideas about changing our food system and our agriculture system that affect everything that matters to the debate stage for the 2020 presidential election. And it's pretty simple. The rules are he needs 65,000 individual donations. So it can be a dollar, five dollars, ten dollars more, whatever you want to give. I don't care if you want to vote for him or not. I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat, but I know you care about these issues and I care about them more than anything. So I want you to help me get Tim on the stage so he can bring these issues to America and to the population and to his opponents so that everybody has to address these issues. So, it's pretty simple. All you have to do is go to DrHyman.com/Tim. That's DrHyman.com/Tim. And just give whatever you can, help him get on the debate stage. There's millions of people that listen to this podcast. We can do this. You can do this. just give something and you'll see these issues will become part of the national conversation and everybody will be forced to talk about it. Thank you. So you mentioned climate change before, which is something that, you know, is being talked about more and more. You've got AOC and Congress talking about the Green New Deal and Ed Markey. You know, I think most people talk about that from perspective of decreasing use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions from industry. But there's another angle to it related to food. Can you talk about that?

Well, you know this better than anybody, but what happens on the farm, we see enormous amounts of carbon released. We've seen the carbon content. I was surprised at this, but in Iowa, it went from 10% carbon in the soil down to 1%. And so... And carbon by the way.

Is the, I mean, soil is the biggest sink for carbon and it's more than rainforests in terms of good organic matter in the soil. It'll hold more carbon than all the rainforests. Yeah.

So how do you, you know, the key is how do you incentivize farmers to put carbon in the soil? And so farmers aren't making money right now. they need to make money. And when you move them to putting more carbon in the soil, they're going to shift their farming practices, correct? And carbon credits for soil.

Yeah.

Yeah. And they're starting to have this conversation in Iowa, and I, you know, I'm trying to throw compost on this idea. You see how he influences me, everybody. You see how this happens? And, and, yeah. So you, you know, again, win-win-win, right? You win for the farmer. and a win for the environment, win for the soil, and then you're moving towards a more localized sustainable food system.

Yeah, it's so all interconnected and so connected. And the other issue is, in terms of business and making this something the business community takes over, which it has to, and I think this is happening. movements like the former CEO Walter Robb who's on our podcast talks about all these innovations in the food space and food waste management and things that the industry isn't really dealing with but that these innovative startups are trying to solve. But you've got just the farm bill alone, which is three quarters of that is the food stamp program and subsidies and other things that aren't actually making us better, healthier, or protecting the environment of the soil. lobbyists spend half a billion dollars every farm bill. And it's not the Mr. Regenerative Farmer out in California who's having grass-fed cattle or Joel Salatin who's growing Polyface Farm and, you know, being a soil farmer. How do you deal with that? Or you've got, you've got four companies that are creating front groups for food, for, for misinformation about food. spend again half a billion dollars just in five years on confusing the public. How do you fight that?

I think you, not just on this issue, but we've got to get the money out of politics. I mean, I believe we need to move to a more European model where these campaigns are publicly financed so that this dark money, because what's happened since Citizens United, which was a Supreme Court decision which happened a few years ago, it basically allowed for the creation of super PACs.

Political Action Committee.

Political Action Committees with unlimited contribution levels. So if you wanted to give me money as a federal candidate, the limit is $2,800 per individual. If you wanted to put money into a Super PAC, it is unlimited. You could write a check for $30 million and you don't even have to report who it's coming from. I mean, secret. It's dark money. There's a book called Dark Money that totally gets into the entire process of how this happens. And so what you have are these industry groups that put a lot of money into these super PACs that influence the money about obscuring what happens with food. That's just straight money that goes out there. But then they also do the political contributions that obscure the system. And so that needs to be taken care of through publicly financed elections. I think we should do, you start the election two months out like they do in Europe and your country has a two-month conversation every few years about the direction of the country. Not like every single day on TV to the point where you're like, you wanna, you know, like- I know you.

Could be with your family now instead of being sitting here talking to me.

Yeah.

Running for president for two years.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there's ways to do it, but I think it's the same when you look at the contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, you know, the huge banks, like this money is pervasive in the political system, which, you know, we're moving into a better direction now where low dollar contributions are starting to have more and more of an effect. You know, President Trump used the lower dollar model, so did Bernie Sanders, so it's not a left-right competition. But I think getting people into office with the least strings attached, the better you're going to be.

It's a problem. I mean, I was reading that, you know, the Senate Ag Committee and the House Agricultural Committee, I think was like 92% of the Senate Ag Committee was funded by Monsanto. and I think it was like 70 something percent of the house agricultural money received donations from Monsanto. That's just one company.

Yeah.

If you add in all the companies, it's probably a hundred percent of those committees that are influenced by these.

So it's not even a little bit of money that they can give you. Like corporations can give you five thousand dollars instead of 2800. They, they kind of get the money together from their employees and they put it in a pack and they can maybe 5,000. That's a separate idea. But those people vote that way because they know when they're in an election that the Monsanto's of the world can write a really big check to a super PAC and get their back. That's how the system is. They're like, well, I know Mark Hyman's really talking about this. Yeah, it seems to make 200,000 tons of fish. Wow, that's really a big deal. But I am up for reelection next year.

Unless you're from New Orleans, then you care about the gumbo and Well, you.

Imagine what's the effect on the industry down there?

Yeah, it's huge.

Yeah.

No, it's true. The amount of money is just staggering and that, you know, I don't see the Citizens United changing anytime soon. If people are interested in this issue, I would encourage them to listen to Joe Rogan's podcast with Lawrence Lessing, who's a Harvard professor talking about this and how few people actually drive the political process. And the truth is that we can fix that by every one of us. being active in it. Very few percent of the American population actually votes and even fewer donate. And we don't actually need that much money if all of us pitched in. It's pretty amazing.

Yeah, no, the low dollar system is really incredible. So if you get, you look at the food issue and you look at Rogan's podcast, your podcast, all of these other, Chris Carr and all of these people that are really involved in food, Robin O'Brien around allergies and all of this. It's tens of millions of people. Now, if all of those people would send five bucks, or five bucks once a month to candidates, all of a sudden, you know, Monsanto doesn't have enough money to compete with that. They can't compete. All of a sudden, the person talking about shifting the government and it is flattening the political system. And we're not there yet.

So there is an antidote to Citizens United. All of us.

It's you. It's everyone listening.

Yeah, unbelievable. Okay, I want to just take a little left turn here because when I first met you, you were focused on something to do with mental health, which is mindfulness. And that is a strange thing for a congressman to be talking about, which is meditation. Now, when you started, it was kind of weird. Now it's sort of happening. You've got the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl by meditating.

Yeah.

You know, Michael Jordan's team, Chicago Bulls, Phil Jackson had them all meditating. You've got CEOs meditating, everybody's talking about it, there's meditation apps. You wrote a book called the Mindful Nation. So what inspired you to start meditating, to start talking about this issue?

Yeah, so we actually re-released a Mindful Nation under a new title that is called Healing America. I felt like that we were going to do a re-release and I just thought, you know what? I think this is a little bit more appropriate for the time. I hated to change the title because I loved it but Healing America to me seemed appropriate. And, I was getting stressed out. I mean, it's, you know, I mean, I started like flirting with meditation back right after I got out of Catholic school. I had a priest friend of mine teach me centering prayer, which is like an old Catholic monk like, yeah, meditation. And so I started doing that, and I just got fascinated with the whole thing. And so Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer and bought all their CDs and DVDs and read all their books and really just started flirting on and off with it. And I would do it like most people do it for, like, a day and go, oh, my God, this is so great. I mean, I'm really focused and I. My stress levels down and all that, and then I wouldn't do it for six months, you know? And then I'd beat myself up for not doing it.

And you're even more stressed.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, and then, and I got to Congress and I was in Congress for a while. And in 2008, I was just getting to the point, I was 35 and I was kind of burnt out and I could not discipline myself to, to meditate every day.

No, even been elected to Congress.

I've been in Congress now. It got elected in 03. It was in the state Senate in 2001. So, you know, I was six, seven years in. running like crazy. And I just thought, I'm not burnt out yet, but I'm like, I'm feeling like I'm getting burnt out a little bit. And so I wanted to jumpstart a meditation practice. So I found a five-day Power of Mindfulness Retreat by John Kabat-Zinn. And I did it. I was like, screw it, I'm going. And it was right after the election in 2008. And I went and it was no phone, no journaling, no TV, no calling home the mom, you know, like, you know, It was just you and your mind. And it blew the top off my head to really get some separation from my thoughts and to know that there was some separation. I didn't have to own all this.

You didn't have to listen to every stupid thought you had.

No, I mean you had a choice. And your mind quieted down over three or four days. You started to notice all kinds of things in nature. the steam coming out of my coffee cup. It was like, oh my God, does this happen every day? It was like this fascinating little art project that was happening. And I walked out of there convinced that this could transform our education system. This has to be, you know, we were really starting to get vets coming back from the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War at that point. and I thought, this gotta be good for these vets coming back with all this trauma. And I've since done a lot of work with vets trying to help and our Health Care system, like, how much does our stress level make us sick? And, and so that, that was the Genesis of the book, a mindful Nation. And I went up to John Cabot Zen after the, after the retreat, and I was like, this is like really powerful, like, you know, new guy, right? New guy to the program. I'm like, this is really powerful. I mean, whoever came up with this name, Power Mindfulness Retreat, really gave it some thought, because this is really powerful. And so, and he said, well, I said, we got to get this in our schools and da, da, da, da. And he said, I'll introduce you. And so I've started research. I met Richie Davidson up at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who's doing all kinds of research with Tibetan monks. how it helps your brain. Linda Lantieri and Goldie Hawn, who are doing like some version of social and emotional learning and Mind Up. Goldie has a program called Mind Up and, you know, the, the health care system and just how it's woven into, like, integrative Health. Then I kept going. Then I met you, and, you know, and then it just kept rolling along.

It's what you think and what you.

Really, I mean, talk about getting back to the fundamentals, right? What are you thinking about and what are you eating?

Well, it's powerful and we know the research is there. I mean, Richie Davidson and my friend Dan Goleman wrote a book called Altered Traits, which is how to change your thoughts and behavior and your mind and your structural aspects of your mind that influences everything. So, it changes your wellness, your productivity, your happiness, And you're right, it can be used in schools and prisons and the military. Super powerful stuff.

I went to a prison at state prison not far from my district and a couple of the prisoners there had read my book. I mean, talk about a surreal experience. So I go a couple weeks ago, I went to the prison and I'm sitting down and it's called Circle Mountain. and it's a room full of people in tan jumpsuits that are meditating and crying and getting their life back and really starting to understand the trauma that led them to a life of crime, the adverse childhood experiences that led them to a life of crime. And to see that, it's like, people say, well, when you talk about that stuff, because it works. Yeah, it heals, it helps, it transforms. And it's not woo.

It's actually science. Yeah.

Yeah. I think you told me, I said, or I think you, you made that comment about food. I was like, you were talking about reversing diabetes. And I'm like, this is like, this is like magic. And you go, no, it's science. And it's the same thing. It's so straightforward. It's, it's how your mind works. It's about neuroplasticity and growing certain areas of your brain by thinking a certain way and being able to de-escalate and teaching kids how to de-escalate out of fight or flight mode. I mean, what a tool to give a kid. You don't have to be in fight or flight or freeze. You can actually work your way out of that through breathing and meditation and some of these practices.

Yeah, it's not actually a way of retreating from the world like people think. It's actually a way being able to be more engaged and successful in the world.

Totally. I mean, it's okay to be afraid. It's okay to be fearful. It's not okay to let that drive your entire life and let it just eat at you because you keep trying to stuff it down and it's just like let it come up and look at it and see where the fear is coming from. A lot of the times it's made up. Other times it's not like you're living in poverty and you know, something that's really scary and like, okay, we've got to figure out how to do that. And, I hope that we can bring these functional approaches to public life.

But, a lot of- Functional medicine for politics, I like that.

Yeah, that's it. Let's go to the source of the problem.

Okay, so we're sort of wrapping up, but I want to put us together and talk about what people can do at a local level. Because, you know, you mentioned just the sort of small donors for the political system can literally overturn some of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever been made, which is making companies people and being able to donate unlimited amounts. So what could happen that you would inspire people to do on a local level for changing our food system and health system?

Well, get involved in your school. I mean, find out what they're doing in LA and say, how do I do this in Gary, Indiana? How do I do this in Youngstown, Ohio? How do I do in Biloxi, Mississippi. If you're concerned about this, grab something and go do it wherever you're standing and sitting right now. Start where you are, get a friend, listen to the podcast, share it, spread the information, and start. And, what I want to do from the national level is throw compost on all these little programs around the country that are starting and then build in the systemic changes that need to happen. For now, start where you are. I did a Facebook Live on food a couple weeks ago, last week, and I was going through, like, the person who sent it out sent me the response, and it was the Mississippi Food Something Something. I can't remember what it was. I was like, How cool is this? There's a group in Mississippi about fresh, healthy food, and they were all jazzed up. They couldn't believe a congressman was talking about this stuff. and I just thought they're doing it. Like just do it, like wherever, your church, your school, your Rotary Club, just start.

People are, people are starting and that's what's so exciting and you're right, there needs to be support and encouragement for these movements because those are the things that happen. I mean, the thing about anything that really changes, nothing actually starts in Congress or everything ends in Congress, you know, abolition, civil rights, women's rights, you know, gay marriage, whatever it is. Environmental laws, all those didn't start with Congress saying, hey, this is a great idea. No, they were like resisting, fighting, fighting, and then boom, people started to make the changes in their communities, in their lives, and that led to the laws that actually made the world a better place.

Congress is last of the dance. The last ones. Well, any, but you know what Roosevelt said, which I thought was intriguing. I can't remember exactly what the issue was. But people were coming to Roosevelt about doing something, doing something. He said, Make me do it. I want to help you. I don't have the political support. Make me do it. Organize, rally, march, make me do it. And that's the essence of our democracy, right? I mean, you read Howard Zinn's book, you read, you know, you can't stop a runaway train, or I forget the title of his one book, but obviously the People's History of the United States. It's the history of the country is the outside influence pushing the inside game.

So we are more powerful in those big industries that are causing the issues. And the truth is, they don't want to do all the bad things that are happening as unintended consequences. They're just caught in a vicious cycle where the financial incentives are perverse and those can get shifted.

They're starting to change now. General Mills, I mean, they're Patagonia, there's some of these countries that function with this double bottom line where it's the profit, but it's also the social good. So how do we create a system where, which is what I would like to do, is how do we reduce the corporate tax rate for these companies that have- Do the right thing. Do the right thing. Focus on stakeholders, not just shareholders. like the environment, the worker, the community, you know, where I come from, companies pick up and leave and just leave the community devastated. Like that's not a great really way to run the railroad. I mean, that just, you know, it's like inhumane. And so how do you build into the tax code stakeholder-based capitalism, double bottom line capitalism that Ray Dalio wrote a beautiful paper last couple weeks about and moving in that direction, it can be done.

It can. And one of the things that people don't think about is what is the true cost of things? What's the true cost of food? What is the cost of your soda that's grown in a way that depletes the soil? For every pound of corn we produce, we lose a pound of soil to erosion, which then causes climate change. I mean, how do you build all those in? How do you build in the cost of obesity caused by eating high fructose corn syrup? How do you build in the cause of the nitrogen running off and killing all the fish? And how do you build in the cause of the pesticides poison the workers. I mean, how do you build it in the price? Maybe a can of soda would be 100 bucks or 500 bucks. I don't know.

Well, the McDonald's five for five wouldn't be five for five, you know?

Five for 500.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, those, but they'll move.

The corporations will move. They'll start, you know, Ray Allen, basketball player from Celtics. I just heard this, but him and his wife are like start more his wife than him. like fast food chains that are healthy down in somewhere in the South. And it's like the market will move.

Yes.

People are going to make money. It's fine. Good. Hire people, make money, make a profit. God bless you. It's America. All for it. But don't poison people in the process. Don't poison the planet in the process. I mean, that's really the difference when you're looking from the historical movements of in the United States. This is dangerous where we're at now. I mean, it's, we're in a dangerous time because of the environment and maybe not being able to reverse what's happening with the climate and what's happening with our own health. Like, this is dangerous.

It is. We're at a critical moment in terms of the health of our humans and the health of our planet. And, and those are the issues that are absent from the political conversation except for people like you. So Tim, thank you for joining us in the Doctor's Pharmacy, sharing these issues with us and helping people understand that there is actually hope and there are ways through and a path forward. So thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Doc.

You're my man. Thanks for listening to this very special episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Now, up till now, I haven't asked you for anything. I provided free content for you to listen to and learn and be part of conversations that really matter. But I want to ask you a favor. I want you to help me make food policy be an issue in the next presidential election in 2020. And the way to do that is really simple. Doesn't matter if you're Republican, Democrat, independent, doesn't matter what your other beliefs are. If you care about this issue, and again, I'm not asking you to vote for anybody, I'm just asking you to vote for having food policy be part of the national conversation about what matters in the next election because it matters more than anything. And the way to do that is simple. If you donate $1, $5, $10 to Tim Ryan's campaign, you will be one of the 65,000 people that get him on the debate stage. You need 65,000 people to give individual donations of $1, $5, $10. It doesn't have to be a lot. It can be more if you want, okay. But just donate something because by donating something, you're gonna make him stand up on the debate stage with all the other candidates and bring these issues to light in a way that matters. To transform our food system, to transform our health, to transform our environment, our climate. And I really want that to happen because I care so much about this. So I'm asking you this favor. Please, even if you don't vote, please just do this and get this guy on the stage so we can have this real conversation, real conversations that matter. Remember what Martin Luther King said, our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. And this matters. Let's not be silent on this issue. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy. 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.