Why What You Eat Matters l Doctor's Farmacy with Mark Hyman, M.D. EP15

Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. That's F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. This is Dr. Mark Hyman, and I'm here with an extraordinary guest today, Pam Cooke, who is a professor at Columbia, and she's got an extraordinary background. She conducts research about the connections between a just sustainable food system and healthy eating, a very important connection that most people don't make. She translates her research into curricula for school teachers and recommendations for policymakers, which is really important because you don't just stay in your ivory tower, you actually help think through what policies make a difference and get policymakers to do the things you talk about, which is awesome. She speaks about nutrition education, which is critical in schools and also in medical schools and sustainable food systems around the country and internationally. She is the author of many nutrition education curriculum and worked with and evaluated many school-based nutrition education programs that are creating School gardens, which are awesome, conducting cooking sessions. We need to learn how to cook because you can't be healthy and really unless you know how to cook, that's what I say, and cooking is a revolutionary act. And she works toward food justice, which is a concept I'm very passionate about that doesn't get talked about enough. And the idea of food injustice is the other flip side of it, which is pretty much the system we have. Her work contributes to increased access to nutritious, delicious, sustainable food for everybody. She also teaches two courses at Columbia University in New York City, Nutritional Ecology and Community Nutrition, which I want to talk about because that's an area I'm very passionate about. And she's also completed her educational degree in RD from Teachers College at Columbia University. So welcome, Pam.

Thank you, Dr. Hyman.

Mark is fine. I used to work in Idaho in this old hospital this little town where the nurses still wear those little hats. And I was 30 years old. I just came out of medical school. I have residency, and they insisted on calling me Dr. Hyman. They were twice my age. They could have been my mother. And I was like, no, just call me Mark. And I couldn't get them to call me Mark. Whatever I did. So, Pam, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you become interested in food and its effects on so many different things that people don't think about, like the environment, like workers and laborers and farm workers, schools and our overall health? So how did you can get into all of it.

Sure. So I grew up in an, I'm all Italian, even with the last name of Cook. My maiden name was Dinafrio. And so I grew up in an Italian household with lots and lots of good food. And my mom was always into healthy cooking, healthy eating, really thinking about taking care of your body. And I knew I wanted to work with people. So I decided to major in dietetics in college and actually worked, I went to Rutgers University for my undergraduate masters and worked with, for the Department of Health Education doing nutrition education as a peer to my fellow college students all the way through my college career. So I knew I wanted to talk to people about food. And then I ended up coming to Teachers College to do my doctorate and took the nutritional ecology course that I now teach with Dr. Joan Gussow. And she's still actually teaching the course with me. She'll be 90 this fall.

Oh my goodness.

And she started thinking about- She must be eating right. She grows all of her own food in Piermont, New York on the Hudson River. So she's great. She started thinking about actually in the late sixties, early seventies that our food supply was changing. And the way it was changing, people were becoming more disconnected from where their food came from. And so she's often thought of as the mother of the local food movement. And she didn't start it because she thought it would be good for the environment, which it is. She really started it because she said, if people are disconnected from where their food comes from, they won't be able to think critically about the important choices that we have to make in order to actually make really good decisions about food. So she really said we have to keep people connected to food. And unfortunately, a lot of what I think we're gonna end up talking about is really that people became disconnected from food. It became a commodity. It became something you buy, a business transaction opposed to something that you're actually using to nourish your body. So she really started that.

So what is nutritional ecology?

So it's really thinking about the nutritional aspects of our food system and how what we eat ends up affecting our environment and all of the different connections, how food is, food and the food system is connected with everything. She actually started out- I wanna take that class. you- should come, you should come sit in.

It's in Columbia.

Yeah, yeah, you should come sit in. It starts out, it starts out actually with a publication that came out in 1972 called Limits to Growth, which was out of the Club of Rome. And it basically was modeling what was going to happen in the future of, would we be able to sustain the growth of the planet, essentially the growth of the number of people, the growth of the number of resources we were using and everything. And it actually modeled 12 different, computers were new in 1972. It modeled 12 different scenarios of what the future would be. And one they said, called Business as Usual, which they said, if we don't do anything and don't change, this is the course we will follow. And it basically had collapse in somewhere between 2030 and 2050. Whilst in the 40 years since, people have tracked it, we're following that business as usual model so scarily.

So we got 12 years till D-Day, huh? And then what? No food?

I mean, you know, and hopefully we're going to be able to make some changes, but so far we really haven't altered the amount of pollution we're putting into the environment, the population growth, all different kinds of variables. So that's, so that, so taking that course, I got interested in it. At Teachers College, we had a pro, have a program that we're, it's not as active anymore because we're doing not as much direct education called Earth Friends, exploring the whole story of food. That was to teach school children about the food system, how food is grown, how it's transported, processed, a lot of cooking, a lot of eating together, a lot of getting connected with food. So I started working with that. And then, ended up teaching our community nutrition course, which that's the one that brings in structural racism in the food system, food justice, and all those kinds of issues.

It's interesting because I gave a talk recently at the Riverside Church in Harlem on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. assassination about food injustice and food oppression, the food system as a system of oppression. But nobody really talks that much about structural racism, about what do you mean when you say that? Because it's a sort of a hard concept people don't understand. How is food racist?

So, well, if you think about the whole history of our country, our country was essentially founded with slavery, which was about producing enough food and obviously was having some people be superior owning slaves and some people being slaves. And that was basically divided as white people owned slaves and Black people were slaves. And we never recovered from that, is the short way to say it. And so our communities from all of the different you know, what's happened since then, and even with civil rights, the way that our cities were divided when highways were made, left some parts of the cities blocked off and excluded from good schools, excluded from good supermarkets, you know, from everything, access to food. And so now we say, you know, and a lot of what I believe in is the health problems that we are having that's associated with food is a system problem. It's a problem of our food supply. It's not a problem of the, it's a problem for the individuals that have the health problems. But it's not to blame them. It's actually we should be looking at it as a system problem. And so- It's not people's personal responsibility.

As we're taught, right?

It's your fault. Exactly.

Exactly. It's calories in, calories out. If you just have the willpower and exercise more and don't eat as much.

You'Re gonna be fine. It's just not that simple. It's definitely not that simple. And so if we think about it that way and we think about the system that we have set up for Africans Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics who have the highest rates of obesity and all the chronic diseases in our country. It's because of the communities that they have been allowed to live in. And that's essentially how it's happened. So we have to start talking about that.

I mean, the sovereignty of the native food system is an interesting topic, I think.

Exactly.

You've got reservations where they were all basically herded to. and they basically usurp their traditional food systems and then they shipped in government commodities of flour, sugar and Crisco basically, the shortening, which are all deadly and now they're enormously overweight. 80% get diabetes by the time they're 30. So it's a massive problem. It's almost like the second genocide of the Native Americans.

That's exactly right. So we essentially, we as the white people took away their very ecologically sustainable and health, public health wise, sustainable way of producing food, separated it all out, took that away, and then, and brought them in the food that nobody, you know, that was essentially the leftovers. Yeah. That gets people sick to eat it. And now it's like, well, they, they have health problems.

You know, it was a word for, for, I, I hung out with some Native Americans a couple Summers ago, and, and they said they call people who eat the government commodities, Komod Bot.

Oh, wow.

Like they have a commodity body.

Body, yeah, yeah. I was at a conference that happened to be in Madison, Wisconsin, and we had a great meal that was inspired by actually all Native American foods. And a woman who's Native American really has been trying to track down and find all of the different seeds from all of the different regions. Because now we essentially end up planting the same seeds everywhere where that food grows. And that's not the way that it was. It was very individualized. And so she's really trying to help recover that, restore that, bring back that pride, bring back that sense of ownership over the food, ownership over the area. And what, what for thousands of years was actually very well sustained for people and, and for, and for the planet. And interestingly, she said, and I don't remember the name of the person, but that she found A 1920s book by a white man who actually realized what had happened and said, I wanna catalog all of the different seeds that are in the different regions because this has already gotten so lost and is going to get more lost. So I wanna catalog it. So that book has actually been very helpful.

That's extraordinary.

To help to restore this, yeah.

And the African American community too. I mean, slavery was founded on the need to produce sugar. and other commodities. And now it was a form of oppression back then through slavery. And today sugar is keeping Native and African American and other minority populations down. It's sort of an interesting, it's like a new form of biological slavery that happens with these addictive substances.

No, that's exactly right. And a lot of times we think of it as, what we're doing today, okay, we're only whatever, even older people are only 80, 90 years old and most people are younger. So, you know, haven't we figured it out? We're beyond everything. We are not beyond everything, and we need to be looking back at the historical context to understand all the food-related problems and issues we have if we're going to solve them. And if we don't understand it in that context and understand that some people have, for generations, been stuck with having limited access to healthy foods at this point, and we need to really change that, it's going to be really hard to do.

And you've been studying this for decades. So what are the biggest take-home lessons that you've learned about this intersection of all these areas around food, you know, health, environment, social justice, farm workers, school, education, all of it.

So where to start? I mean, I think one is, and I know we wanna talk a lot about the policies, is that policies matter and what the policies are, what our farm bill is, what our dietary guidelines for Americans are, all matter in terms of what people eat. Those aren't just policies that are out there. They actually really matter for what people eat. The other is, is that we all need to take responsibility for having a food supply for everyone that can nourish them. And if we don't take that on as a, as a society, that this is important, this is what we want to happen for everyone, we're not going to be able to move forward. Maybe the third is, is that we have a lot of information about our food in terms of the nutrients that are in that food and the, you know, obviously everything has an ingredient list.

What we have- well, avocado doesn't have an ingredient list.

Oh, right, right. Okay, so basic foods don't have any, so things that are made from different ingredients, but what we have about avocados too, what we have very limited information on is how those foods were produced. So some avocados may be produced in a way that is actually really helpful for the environment. Some avocados may be produced in a way that's not so helpful for the environment or transported a long distance.

Or now there's blood avocados from Mexico where the workers are oppressed by the drug cartels.

And so that's the next thing is we have even less information about how the workers all along the food chain that produces our food are produced. By and large, if you're in a supermarket and you're saying, if somebody just went in and said, my most important thing is, is I want to buy foods that, that everyone who, who was involved in producing this food all along, whatever it is, everyone was treated well. You would have no idea what to buy and what not to buy.

You wouldn't be able to eat almost anything.

You would not be able to eat almost anything. Any, and you wouldn't be able to, you wouldn't be able to discern because we don't provide any information on that. And so it makes it really hard to elevate that as important because my.

Daughter works as a farm worker out in Utah, you know, just you know, as a part-time job, but, you know, she gets paid minimum wage. Yeah. Luckily, you know, she gets other money.

And she has other work.

But, right. In fact, she's helping me with my.

Book on food systems, so.

That's a good. But, you know, it's hard to sustain a life like that. And then farmers are often the most affected by the farm practices in terms of health outcomes, the pesticides, cancer, Parkinson's disease.

It's one of the most dangerous occupations. Yes. Yes. It's a physically dangerous occupation as well as an, and a chemical exposure. Much. One of the most. You're right. one of the most dangerous occupations and they get very little respect. Yet, that's what all of us need to nourish ourselves and becomes part of who we all are. And so the fact that we have disassociated with how it's produced and how the other people that are producing it are actually treated, when you think about it that way, it's really crazy. It's really, really crazy that we have let ourselves get that disassociated.

Yeah, we've done that. across the board, we were, you know, probably using iPhones, including me. And I think you might have an iPhone that may be made in a factory in China that the workers are not treated very well and earn very little in poor conditions and, and, you know, the clothes you're wearing and jeans you're wearing that sneakers you're getting, you know, from Nike, who knows? You know, they're made in ways that aren't actually helping to promote the welfare of the workers and very much the opposite. Yes. All right, so Let's talk about something really important, which is why people don't know how to feed themselves. And I have heard the story. I don't know if it's actually true, but that in the 50s, there was a convening of all the big food companies by General Mills in Minnesota, where they are, and they basically decided they were in trouble because people were pushing back against processed food. And there was a woman named Betty who was a home ec teacher, who was advocating for teaching families and young mothers how to cook, grow gardens. They had federal extension workers that used to travel around the country teaching young families how to grow gardens and cook food. And they said, we have to create a culture of convenience. We have to actually make convenience the value that people aspire to. You deserve a break today. That famous commercial. And then they had created Betty Crocker. And I had Betty Crocker food at my home. My mother had the Betty Crocker cookbook, which I thought was a real person. It was an invention to oppose his other Betty. And they were actively in the 60s trying to subvert home economics education in school. Now, I remember home. I'm old, so I remember it. But, you know, most kids now don't know how to cook. We've raised two generations of Americans who don't know how to cook. and prepare food. And I think it's one of the root problems we have in our society that we just don't know how to cook and we think it's complicated. And we bought the party line of the food industry, which is that it's expensive, that it takes too much time, that it's difficult, and that we should have convenient food ready in two seconds. Now, how are you working to address this? Because I think you've done a lot of work in focusing on nutrition education in schools, on trying to resurrect cooking in schools as a basic life skill, reading, writing arithmetic and cooking, you know? How do you find that we can get back into reenergizing cooking in America?

Well, just to start out with, I think, and I just to almost reiterate what you said and say it a little bit differently is it's really important for us to talk about that it's the perception of cooking that food industry has created. And so it is really something that we have as a society let ourselves be bought into. And so I think just saying that out, and so I'm glad that you said that, 'cause I think that that's really important. And just to tell a little story about that is one of my friends was teaching a nutrition course at a university. And there was someone who worked actually for, I forgot what food company, but a processed food company. And it seemed like my friend, everything, she just couldn't get on the same page as the student. And the student was disagreeing with everything that she was saying. And so she said, you know, can you just tell me how you see the world? Because obviously you see the world really differently than I do. And I'm having a hard time understanding your view of the world. And she said, yeah. And I think this was probably in the early 1990s. You know how in the early 1900s most people made their own clothes and then it became something that was kind of more of a hobby. And then some people did it. And even in the 70s, there were some people making their clothes. And now, Hardly anyone makes their own clothes. That's what we want to do with food. We want it to be that basically cooking is this side little hobby thing that maybe a few people do. We want food to be seen as a commodity that people buy ready to eat. And that's our goal. And so my friend said, Now I understand. So we're going to have to agree to disagree because we see what we want the future of this world to be. really differently. And so, you know, I know that from my own life experience. And I told you before, I grew up in a whole Italian household with a mom who cooked all the time. Fresh food. Is fresh food. Yeah. Maybe canned tomatoes. Canned tomatoes. Yeah, she didn't use canned tomatoes.

But it was tomatoes, water and salt.

That's right. And, yeah, with the, yes, exactly. And she grew up actually with her grandmother, her grandfather, just literally finding little pieces of land and they were, she grew up very, not with a lot of money. So her grandfather would find little pieces of land to grow tomatoes and her mother would can all the, her grandmother would can all the tomatoes all winter and that's what she grew up eating. And you know what, when you cook, you feel that connection to the food that you were eating. And so I think it actually has a respect for the food in a way that we don't have when we are actually buying food that is prepared by, pre-prepared for us and in a restaurant, maybe it's especially a really nice restaurant, maybe it's different because you really have an appreciation that somebody's back there really experiencing it from exactly its experience. And cooking is an experience. So, what we really do is ourselves and work with a lot of programs that are really providing those experiences for children, having them get connected with food, having them, you know, and ideally getting to grow food and then harvest the food, experience the food, get to cook it, get to cook it themselves, and actually then have experiences that they're feeling good about what they're eating and what they're putting in the body. And I think that when kids actually have that, they do see it as different. So I'm gonna just tell two quick stories. One is, and this was actually, my doctoral dissertation ended up being the initial evaluation of a program called Cook Shop that was in the 1990s that was actually trying to introduce more vegetables, whole and whole grains and beans into the school lunch menu, which that was before everybody was talking about school lunch. And so we wanted the kids to cook the foods in the classroom and then experience them in the lunchroom. So I, it was May. And if you've ever been to a farmer's market in New York City in May, you know, there are a little bit of greens and then radishes because radishes grow early and fast. So I'd gone to the farmer's market, brought some radishes, and I went into a first grade classroom and I held up the radish, the whole entire radish, and asked the students if any of them had any idea what it was. And they all looked at me and they guessed every fruit and vegetable that's red that you could think of. Is it a strawberry? Is it a tomato? Is it a tiny apple? You know, everything. And so then I said, it's a radish. Has anybody ever heard of a radish? And they hadn't. And so I gave each of them a quarter of a radish and a plastic knife and a paper plate. and I said, you know, radishes are strong and they should accent our food. And so what I want you to do is cut those radishes as tiny as you can. I turned my, turned around to get some other food, looked back, those first graders had taken those radishes and I swear to you, cut them smaller than any of us could ever cut them with a plastic knife. And we threw them in with the salad with lettuce and whatever else I had. And I said, so the radishes you're gonna taste them because I remembered when I first had radishes, And they're going to accent the salad. They love them because they gave it a kick and they had all touched the radishes. So it shows the power of touching your food.

It's true, you know, my kids were little, we had a garden. I planted the seeds, dug the soil, watched the plants grow, take care of them, weed them. My daughter, when she was young, she got confused. I grew an eggplant, she thought it was an egg, so she pulled it off before it was ready. And then we would cook the food and I would have them in the kitchen with me every day. we lived in the middle of nowhere, so there was no restaurants I had to cook. And I love cooking and they learned to cook and they learned to play with food. We made it fun and made it exciting and interesting and they got to learn about food and taste food and they loved it. And I always joke, you know, here we have kids menus. But in Japan, kids eat raw fish and seaweed. You know, in Indonesia, they eat Indonesian food. They don't have special kids menus. And I think the fact that we should feed our kids French fries, chicken fingers and hot dogs and burgers is frightening to me. And yet, we've kind of lost this tradition of cooking. Michael Pollan wrote a book called Cooked, which is about the fact that cooking is sort of an essentially human activity that brings us together, that connects us to each other, that connects us to community, that connects us to the earth, and that it's an essential part of being human. And we've let the food industry basically subvert that part of ourselves. the consequences are frightening. People are not only sick, but mental illness, I think, has driven a large part by the food we eat and the processed food. So it's really all connected.

No, it definitely is all connected. And I think that there is... so we believe that one of the great experiences of nutrition education is actually getting to cook and experience food, expanding the palate, getting to try it. vegetables like radishes are spicy. And so, those first graders liked it because I happened to introduce it well, but you're not going to like things the first time. And so, it is trying things over and over again and getting those experiences that are really going to help to make the difference.

And you've worked so hard on bringing nutrition education in schools and bringing back cooking and doing these initiatives in an environment which is not necessarily friendly to it. Superintendents have to be on board, the parents have to be on board, the kids, had to be, you know, changed in their habits. And, you know, I'd love to know about that work and what's worked, what hasn't worked. You were talking about legislation that you might be helping with that can help to actually advance that. How do we sort of approach this now that we've sort of gone so far in the last 50 years away from it? How do we come back? Right.

Well, first of all, there are, I think there's a lot of different approaches to it. One is really usually where nutrition education would sit in the curriculum is in health education. And so to make sure when states have their health education standards, that those standards are really good. Actually, I've been working with the state of Texas to help them create a new framework for their health education standards that were written back in 1998. So they were 20 years old. So I've been part of this committee that's been helping to work on them. And so really saying, all right, how would we What do we want students to know about food? How do we want them to know about where food comes from? Really realizing that for kids, you know, when I teach a basic nutrition class, one of the first things I would say is there are six classes of nutrients. Here's what they are: carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, water.

Telling that to a kid is gonna do nothing.

Put them to sleep probably. What? Put them to sleep. That's right, put them to sleep. But are they going to eat differently? Absolutely not. if you give them an experience growing food, getting to cook it, then telling them, you know what, here's a place in your neighborhood that you can actually buy these foods. Here's something you can do. Our government programs have incentives for people that are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which was formerly food stamps, to actually get incentives to buy more fruits and vegetables at farmers markets. You can do this and connecting with community gardens that are close to the schools, having the families get involved in them. are always that we're actually trying to bring back experiences with the food system, positive experiences with the food system as students are actually going through school. And so there's a lot of programs that are... So one is the standards in the formal way. The other is, is that there are a lot of people passionate about this. There's a lot of people that really see the same... What exactly what we're talking about is that Kids are disconnected. So how do we get them connected and starting programs in schools? So we just did a study called A is for Apple, a landscape assessment of nutrition education programs in New York City schools that looked at all of the organizations. So we actually got data from 40 organizations that run 101 programs that are reaching out to the 1840 public schools in New York City. Well, at this point in time, 55% of the schools have one or more of those programs in the schools. Now we count it as having a program of one class, one on a field trip, to the farmers market, which is a great experience for those students. The point is, is there could be a lot more.

And who's driving that? Like, who's driving those initiatives?

So it's a good question.

How do you scale this throughout schools?

Yeah. So it's being driven by a couple of things. One, sometimes it's the parents of the schools that are actually reaching out to these programs and saying, we want the programs in the schools. There's also through SNAP, the formerly food stamps, there's SNAP education. And one of the places that SNAP education can happen is in schools that at least 50% of the kids qualify for.

And that's funded by the government.

It's funded by the government. So there's a lot of the programs. So the Cook Shop program that I talked about that was part of my doctoral dissertation is now run out of the Food Bank of New York. And that's in, I forgot what it is now, but 180 schools in New York City that is having kids actually get experiences cooking in schools. So they will reach out to schools. And actually, schools hear about it and know that it doesn't cost the schools anything. So schools are reaching out to them and then they're also reaching out to schools that have a high percentage of students who would qualify for SNAP to bring it into the school. So some of it's being driven by policies and the funding that is supported by our policies, others being driven by parents actually then wanting the program. Some of the programs, which I think is a great model, have a sliding scale model because the schools in New York City are really, there's a lot of inequity in the schools in New York City. And yeah, it's the, and it's a very, you know, it's the most segregated school district in the, in the country. So, there's a lot of programs that have a sliding scale fee. So depending on how much money the, the parent teacher Association raises, which is where the money would come from to pay for programs like this, if they have a PTA that raises a lot of funding, then the PTA pays for it. If they have a PTA that isn't raising a lot of funding because the parents don't have the means to give to the PTA, then there's actually grants that the programs get that will help to support the programs. So we really want, we're now going to bring together, and the Manhattan Borough, not Manhattan, well, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer is very supportive of all these programs, and so is the Brooklyn Borough President, Adam, Eric Adams. So we're actually bringing together all of these groups in October to really think about how we can form a coalition to actually better support funding from a wide variety of sources to expand these programs, what kind of policies would actually help to get these more into schools, and what kind of possible sharing of resources would help. So as an example, we have students across New York City that speak lots and lots of different languages. Only 25% of these programs actually translate anything into any language, and that's basically only Spanish. Everything else is not at all. So what if we had some great materials for parents about foods and everything that we're talking about that everybody agreed on that were translated into all different languages. So all the programs could use those. So that's just an example. But you know, there's a lot that we could do that could support this.

Have you noticed when you implement these programs, what are the changes in the health outcomes for the kids, the academic performance? Have you tracked any of that?

So it's a good question. The health outcomes, I mean, you know, first of all, these programs are in a sense a drop in the bucket in these kids' lives. even if they get exposed to a lot of them. The health outcomes are hard to track in that, and nobody on my team has a medical background. So we've thought about a lot of what we could do that would actually be some measures that would show a pretty fast outcome in terms of childhood obesity that's measured through what's called the fitness grams. We're going to look at actually and see, do the schools that have more of these programs have a change in obesity? I'm not sure if the intensity of what the students are getting, I think it's great.

Maybe too little, too late or- Too.

Little, too late or just to get the whole entire school to change the obesity rate would be hard to do. And that's the same thing.

We almost have to change the environment. You talk about nutritional ecology. You can teach kids, but if in the cafeteria it's all junk food, Right. It's gonna be a hard battle.

And yeah, no, no, I agree. And basically the school lunch is a whole other huge program and obviously one that has been very much under, very supported by our previous First Lady, Michelle Obama, and very much under fire on a lot of different ways. And, you know, so there's high nutritional standards yet as a country we have not kept the reimbursement rate that we give schools for the lunch. up to what it should be. And also, truthfully, starting from the 1980s with Ronald Reagan, the grants for schools to upgrade their equipment, because of course, equipment breaks just like in our own kitchens, right? You're not going to be able to keep the same equipment you had 40 years ago. You're going to need new ovens and new that. That all of that money has really dried up. And the food industry came in just like it did with the rest of the food supply and said, oh, we'll pre-make things for you. And if you go do a big contract with We'll give you the convection oven to heat it all up. Well, if you have no money for cooking equipment and somebody's telling you they're going to make the food for you that fits the price, that meets the standards, you know, we set up the program for that.

Well, it's interesting. A friend of mine has created a program in Boston. She's a very wealthy woman and decided she was going to not just give money, but actually do something. And she went to the Boston Inner City School. She found a couple and she said, with the government. So I'll pay for half. You pay for half for equipment. Let's get, I mean, they had deep fryers and microwaves, right? So they got real cooking equipment. They found amazing chefs to create amazing recipes that these kids would love. They went in and taught the school cafeteria workers how to do this. They love to do it. The kids love the food, and they did it at a price point that was within the school lunch budget that met all the requirements. And it was amazing. And it changed. also the academic performance, the health consequences that result from eating the processed food. So it's doable.

It's doable.

But you're right, there are gaps like funding for actual cooking equipment. I mean, how do we have healthy kids if all we have is deep fryers and microwaves?

That's exactly right. And so, and you know, why have we as a society allowed that to happen? And also, why have we allowed school lunch, which did start in, you know, people were serving school lunch for as long as there's been schools one way or another. But then the official program started in 1946 because of actually Kids were malnourished. Exactly.

They couldn't go to the war.

Exactly. So that's how it started. But unfortunately, it's what kept with it was it's a program for the poor. And so, you know, there are a lot of kids that can pay for lunch that would say, oh, well, I'm not gonna eat that. That's for the poor kids. I'm gonna bring lunch. And, you know, that also creates a divide in the schools. So New York City is actually starting this fall and it hasn't been fully publicized yet, but is going to start really trying to what they're calling return to scratch cooking. And so they're working with somebody named Dan Gooti who has done it in New London, Connecticut. And so it really is then looking at this and New York City public schools see this as a 25 to 30 year plan because hopefully it will be able to go faster, but realizing it's a very big system and there are a thousand kitchens. But those kitchens that they're going to start this in are getting what's called tilt pan skillets. Oh my gosh, I'm saying it wrong. It's like a tilt fryer, like stir fryer, but you can make big batches of food in it. And they're getting the big mixers so that they can actually make things such as homemade pizza dough. So when they have pizza, it's homemade pizza dough. And that they can make homemade scones that are really good as part of the breakfast because it does have to be quick that the kids can grab. So using fresh whole ingredients, things that are made in the school. So I think that the difference is-.

Well, I'm not sure I would put scones and pizza dough in the category of healthy food.

Right, right. Well, but if you're thinking about what you're serving to kids and if you're making it with whole grains, so if you're making them well and you're using the right ingredients, you can make those.

Foods that are- yeah, so this is great. So what I'm hearing is that there are little pockets of innovation happening all over where people are chipping away at this and trying to address this issue from reinvigorating cooking in schools to changing school kitchens to school lunches to creating education for kids and opportunities. It's really amazing. It's great work. I want to switch subjects a little bit and talk about something that I find fascinating, but most people would fall asleep talking about, which is the farm bill. Now, for those of you don't know, I want to talk about the farm bill is actually the bill that governs not just our farm policy, Right. But also all of our food policies. So it should be called the Food and Farm Bill. You've been very active in looking at the challenges with it and how we could fix it. So it's coming up soon.

Yes.

What are the problems? What are the ways to fix it? And what are the dangers if we don't?

Right. Good questions. So the problems are, is actually over, and the last farm bill was signed by President Obama in February of 2014. So the current one expires September 30th of this year. Probably not sure what's going to happen, and I'll get more to that in a second, but we're not sure if there's actually going to be one that's going to be renewed. Basically, I'm sure that something will be passed to at least continue what we have because we will then revert back to these 1930 laws that will basically be extremely disruptive. And Congress is not going to let that happen when the elections are coming up in November. over the farm bill.

It's going to be status quo, is what you're saying.

It's going to probably be status quo. So over the it's usually renewed every about five years over the last several. Basically, the big agriculture companies and the big food industry have been very influential over what goes into to the farm bill. So just to give you an example.

Yeah, there's 500 Million dollars spent by 600 lobbyists just on the farm bill from the food industry. Exactly. It's frightening.

It's very frightening. And they have a lot of power and they are very, very inside. So just to give you an example.

Is- yeah, get us into the dirt on this.

Well, what ends up, what they're really pushing for is supports for the big commodity crops. And so that's corn and soy and a couple other crops.

And wheat.

And wheat. And so for the current farm bill, $40 billion went into supporting commodity crops, then fruits and vegetables in the farm bill are called specialty crops. Specialty crops, which- and that also includes-.

Only 1% of the funding.

It's, well, yeah, it was $5 million.

Went into- Out of a trillion dollar bill.

Out of a trillion dollar bill. Now, in fairness, about- $5 million, 40 billion.

Yeah, doesn't seem fair.

Yeah, well, yeah, 40, 40. Right, exactly. So, but a lot of it goes to, because what's connected with the farm bill is the supplemental nutrition assistance programs, food stamps. And that ends up- which is three.

Quarters of the trillion dollars. Exactly. 750 billion for food stamps over 10 years.

Exactly. So, you know, if you think of it as a trillion dollar bill, then, you know, and there's been some people who have argued to separate them, I have heard people on all sides of this. There's a lot of arguments. Most people say it makes sense to keep it together because that is supporting people to be able to eat. And as you said, and I totally agree with, we should be calling it the food bill, not the farm bill, because it actually ends up influencing what our whole food supply is. But, you know, it is the farm bill that is supporting a food system that is a food system that has a lot of highly processed foods in it that are basically frankly have too much fat, salt, and sugar that is actually making us sick. So it is the farm bill that ends up dictating that.

And what percent of the food that's bought with food stamps is junk food?

Well, it's a good question. It's about the same percent as the rest of us buy is the way to say it. You know, and so I think- maybe more. I don't know.

I've seen some reports from the USDA and it's just like, massive spike compared to everything else. It's like almost a tenfold difference. And soda and sodas.

Yeah, but I think that that's not quite fair. And, you know, that's where we kind of then get like we should control, we shouldn't control everybody else. I think we need to change our food supply. I think we need to make our food supply better. I think if we're going to look at it that way, we need to look at what are the, what's available in the communities where people are. they may be that there isn't any fresh fruits and vegetables. And so they're not buying it, not because that's what they want, but because that's the only thing that's available to them. And so I think it get a lot of the analysis that I have seen is that we're all buying from this. I mean, you know, there's obviously people that are pulling themselves out of the basic food supply. But if you think of the general American food supply, people that are on SNAP or food stamps versus people who aren't are buying in that same food supply.

And it's yeah, I mean, 60% of the calories we consume in this country are from commodity crops, most wheat, corn, and soy, which has turned into refined foods.

Right. That's turned into all the high ultra processed food products. And that's exactly right, is 60% of overall.

And the studies have shown that people who consume the most of those foods are the sickest.

That's right. And to go back to what we talked about at the beginning is then why are we having some communities where that's basically the only thing, only option that people have? And that's crazy. If we know It makes people sick. If we really were concerned about the environment.

There were people who argue that, namely the food industry.

Right. And there's been a lot of studies that show that it's all the science, just like you could, some people say, like, oh, climate change isn't happening because there's one percent of.

The Earth is flat.

But really, what we know is that eating a diet that is of highly processed food is decreasing people's quality of life today and contributing to illness and.

The quantity of their life.

And the quantity of their life. And so, and very, very much increasing health care costs. And truthfully, there's a lot of businesses that are making a lot of money on all of the diabetes equipment and et cetera, et cetera.

So, you know what the health insurance companies are doing? They're buying big food company stock as a hedge.

Yeah. So, you know, we have a big system that we have to change. But going back to, I think that, you know, I think that we have to really figure out what we can do to get more programs that provide incentives for healthy foods and make more high quality food available everywhere because it's not right now.

So take some of that 40 billion and push it over to supporting the production of healthier foods like specialty crops, right?

Fruits and vegetables. That's right. You know, and creating government programs for farmers that want to transition to growing something different. I mean, my husband grew up on a GMO corn farm that we now own. So, you know, it's gotten very interesting.

That's interesting.

And it's very community-based, but you know, When we were out there last summer, there was somebody who said, I'm trying out doing some land in tomatoes because I'm not sure what the future of corn is. And I think that there's a lot of the big companies say, oh, there's a big future in this. We're going to keep needing it. And the people that are trading the grain say, okay, we need this. I think that the people that are farming it are realizing what is happening and that something is going to have to change. And what we should be doing is having in the farm bill programs that are helping farmers to transition to other foods because they're going to need that support. You know, as another example is...

So what are the other problems? You see, you've got the subsidization of commodity crops and the lack of support for healthy crops. You've got the SNAP or food stamps, it's three quarters of the farm bill that's basically subsidizing selling processed food and junk food. What are the other big things happening in the farm bill we should know about?

Right. Well, I want to say too that the SNAP program, you know, we could think about that. Yes, people are buying processed food on it, but it is helping and it does help people who are food insecure that really don't know where their next meal is coming from have resources to actually purchase, get food and purchase that food. And there is You know, now the, and I'm gonna get the name of it, the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive Program that is called FINI, that is to actually have people, if they are using their SNAP benefits at a farmer's market, be able to get- Double bucks. Double bucks, and in New York City, it's not quite double because they wanna make sure they can have enough for everybody. It's a 40% increase. So for every $5 of their SNAP funding that they buy anything with at the farmer's market, so they could buy eggs or meat or whatever at the farmer's market, they will get an extra $2 to buy foods and vegetables. So I think that it's a program that we actually really want to support. And I think by and large it is doing a lot for a lot of American families that, that are struggling. And there are many people in this country that are both food secure and obese because of that inability to have food throughout the whole month. And so, you know, we want to basically support that.

And, and it's interesting that food insecurity and obesity go hand in hand.

They go hand in hand. And I have my students in my community nutrition class, one of their assignments is to eat on the budget that somebody who was on SNAP would have for a week. Two dollars a week. And it's $40. And so they have to eat everything in that $40 and buy all their food from SNAP eligible locations, which means everything from essentially supermarkets or farmer markets. So, you know, there's no stopping and picking up a salad, nothing. You know, and by the way, that would be $8. That would be a lot of your budget for the week for one thing, you know, so that $40 a week. $40. and it's it's an eye opening experience for them. Yeah. And, you know, they end up realizing.

They'Re like, I mean, if you cooked sort of grains and beans and you cook vegetables that weren't like super expensive veggies, right? And you got them at Costco or Trader Joe's or Walmart, which has a lot of organic, you could do it, but you have to know how to cook. You have to know how to prepare food. You have to know basic skills. You can't buy $40 of processed food. What they do in the food industry is take 10 cents of ingredients and turn it into a $10 product.

Right, right. No, exactly right. You have to know how to cook. And if you have a life like a lot of my students have where they'll leave their apartment at 8:00 in the morning and then they'll have class until 7:00 p.m., they're then having to not only cook all their food, but then they're having to pack all their food and bring it, which they have to do. And they do. But they have to bring it all with them. It's not, it's more than just cooking. It's a lot of planning because we don't have lives where we can go back home, most of us, every few hours. Make lunch, have a snack, and make a sandwich in the afternoon. Yeah, exactly.

Sounds good to me.

It would be great. And it's not the reality that most people have, nor is it the reality that most people on SNAP have. And truthfully, the amount for SNAP is basically based on what's called the thrifty food plan, which is probably unrealistic in a lot of ways, and is basically assuming that people are cooking things from the most basic ingredients. So, you know, we would have to set up our lives in a way that would allow people to be able to do that and to really, you know, what we want is to move towards a future where we have communities where food is respected, cared for. Kids are, you know, as we're doing, kids are learning about food all the way through throughout their lives. And It really becomes not an over focus in people's lives because we all know people who become obsessed with food in a way that actually isn't healthy, but is in a healthy way that we respect food, we enjoy food, we respect meal times, we respect eating together. And that happened, you know, that would be great. And there's a lot of programs and like what you talked about in Boston that are doing that in schools too, like making lunchtime a respected time of the day.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's what brings people together. It's what brings communities together. It's a social event. We sort of lost that. People walk down the street eating a burger from a wrapper while they're between subway stops or something. It's not how we're meant to eat. Let's talk about SNAP for a minute, about the food stamp program, because there's a lot of debate about whether we should restrict access to soda or junk food, whether we should be creating incentives to promote the benefits of healthy eating and actually penalties for buying the wrong stuff. It's going to make you sick. We have a system that commodities are subsidized that makes these foods cheap. Government's paying for that. Then they pay for the food stamp food, which is mostly these commodities. And then we pay for Medicare, Medicare on the back end. And some people say that if, if we restrict access to certain foods, it's regressive, it discriminates against the poor. and a lot of the organizations that say this, like the Food Action Network, are hunger groups that are funded by the food industry. So what is your thinking about how to best attack this? Because from my perspective, we are creating a mess. You can buy a two-liter bottle of soda with food stamps, but you can't buy a rotisserie chicken. How do we solve that problem? There is a debate on both sides.

There is a debate on both sides, and actually we spend a whole session in my community nutrition class on this to be. And I would say in the, in the food, food world, it is probably the, one of the most complicated debates because there are so many different sides of it. And always the example is the two liter bottle of Coke and the rotisserie chicken. And basically, really?

I didn't make that.

Yeah. No, basically, you know, what, what was said is like, okay, it's supposed to be to help people get groceries. And so rotisserie chickens probably weren't a thing when it, that was made up, but it was really nothing that is actually hot that you're buying already ready to eat. So, for example, in, you know, Whole Foods and I live right by Fairway Uptown, you know, they have that big bar that is all the pre-prepared food that's hot that you could essentially, whatever, whatever it is, you could buy it and you would eat it. None of that would actually also work on snap. So it's the rotisserie chicken because it's sold hot. Hot. Yeah. That is the big thing. So, you know, so it is crazy because that's a much more real food product than, say, a chicken nugget, but because those are sold frozen as a grocery item, that's why that worked.

So.

I mean, the, the one pretty well designed study that actually worked on, looked at both the incentives for healthy foods and actually then restricting people from buying foods found that the combination of both worked. I think that the challenges, and it goes back to what, what we have said, is we would first have to really work on changing the whole food supply and making it harder for everybody to get more of those processed foods. Because then it does feel like we're actually taking the people that are down and out and telling them- Punishing them. Yeah, punishing them.

So, you know- We're also promoting disease.

So that's the flip side.

It's not like a benign thing. You're actually not only promoting disease, it's going to hurt them, but it hurts our economy and our healthcare system.

Right. So that's the flip side of it. And we're promoting disease and there are a lot of people that have never been on SNAP of their life that also have type two diabetes and heart disease. And are we telling them because they have that, that we're going to tell them what they can buy and what they can't buy?

No, but we're paying for it. All the taxpayers are paying for it. I mean, it makes me upset to think I'm spending my tax dollars to serve 20 billion servings of soda to the poor every year. And there's nothing I can do about it. Right.

So, so I think I, I hear you. I think that what we can do is actually do, you know, and then even in a more favorable government than what we have right now, it would be really hard to do this because of us, frankly, living in a capitalistic society. But here's a really great example. And you talked about two liter bottles of soda, the 20 ounce bottle of sweetened beverage. That bottle, Coke was the first company to introduce the 20 ounce bottle. It was introduced in 1993. Mm-. So we were already adults at that point in time. My first child was born in 98, so it was after my first child happened to be born. But the point is that that's relatively new in our food supply. The maximum amount of added sugar, the maximum amount of added sugar that somebody could have in a day and probably stay healthy is 12, and we put it into teaspoons, 12 teaspoons of sugar. That's the maximum. One 20 ounce bottle of 15 to 17. Yeah.

12 is a lot. That's higher than that.

Yeah, 12 is the maximum. Other people say six to nine. So 12 is a generous maximum. So even if you take a generous maximum, we have this one food product that we have made in this country, we have allowed to become just what we teach, not us doing nutrition education, but essentially our society teaches teenagers that's what you just grab if you're thirsty. And it's more sugar in that one bottle than is the generous maximum of what we should have in a day.

If you go to Europe, there are six ounce bottles.

Yeah, so that's where it's a problem with the. But that's where it's a problem with the food supply. And we need to work on changing the food supply for everyone in order to actually really make a difference. And I think that that has to be across the board for all all economics. Put a skull and crossbones on the Coke.

It's like they do in Chile where they've literally labeled cereal boxes and other food that's not healthy with warning labels.

Yeah, yeah.

Just like cigarette packages.

Yeah. One of my students, as I'm sure you know, is Mexico, which has the highest obesity rate and the highest rates of all these diseases. And a lot of it is from sweetened beverages has passed in 2014 a soda tax. And one of my doctoral students who just graduated this spring did her research and she was able to add questions to the National Health Survey that's equivalent to, in this country, what's called the National, oh my gosh, and Hanes, and now I'm forgetting what it stands for. But yeah, anyway, it's our national recording of what people are eating. So she was able to put questions in there and then did qualitative studies, which were more interesting with construction workers, moms of young children, and indigenous people in southern Mexico. So, the companies have essentially made it such that the soda is considered such an embedded part of the culture that it is so hard to change.

And, you know, the president of Coke was then the president of Mexico, which is kind of interesting.

Yeah.

For all Latin America, he was the head of Coke for all Latin America, and he became the president of Mexico. Guess what? 20% of the calories consumed are sugary sweetened beverages.

Yeah.

So, and, but that's a food, that's.

Not a, three-year-olds have type two diabetes. Yeah. And, but, but that's not a, that's not a personal responsibility problem. That's a food supply problem. And so what we really need be needing to do is having everybody talking about this.

And I can tell you, you know, when I, how realistic is it that we're going to see these policies change? Because I agree with you. We have to change the food supply. We have to change how we grow food, how we distribute food, how we produce food. And that's not something that the food companies are willing to let go of easily, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's a good question.

I think you said to Coke, I want you only to make six ounce bottles unless they can charge the same.

Right. I mean, really, what, you know, and I think, I think the hope is, I, I think you're right. I think it's, it's unrealistic that we are going to see a lot of change. And I think if we don't fight for that, nobody will. And so we have to keep fighting for it. And I think the hope is, is to just get everybody, and hopefully your book is going to be part of that, is everybody, everybody talking about this and everybody saying we have a major problem as a society. We need to do this. As an example, our food production system and, and, you know, frankly, the food production system that's producing a lot of the commodities are going to the processed food, but is doing a lot of harm to the environment. So there was just a recent study that was, you know, and again, a.

Big connection people don't make. How is our food system driving climate change and environmental degradation?

Right.

I think these are big issues.

So here's one direct connection is the runoff of fertilizers into the Mississippi River is a big cause of the dead zone in Mexico that is basically- The Gulf of Mexico, the size of New Jersey, I think. Yeah, and it's growing, you know, and-.

Which means the fertilizers, the nitrogen, fertilizes the plants, but then it runs off into the rivers that fertilize the algae.

That sucks all the oxygen out.

Right, when the algae dies- Exactly. When it dies, the fish because they have no oxygen to breathe.

Exactly.

Same thing's happening in Lake Erie and Cleveland. Yes.

Yep. So the algae grows a lot, dies, then basically the bacteria feed on it so much that they suck all the oxygen out and that kills the fish. So a study has shown that if the right 10%, so only 10% of acreage of farmland was taken out of production, in the Mississippi Delta area, that would decrease the amount of runoff by 80%, which is huge. So the logical thing to do, in my opinion, is let's have a government program that supports those farmers. So it might be 100% of one farmer's property and little pieces of a lot of other farmers. I don't know how they can grow.

Food in ways that don't cause the runoff.

They could certainly, so transition to other things that are not going to use fertilizer, at least at first, particularly close to waterways. So even if we can't transition everybody tomorrow, where are the places that it would make the biggest impact on the actual pollution that is being caused? And that's one way to do it. So how do we actually get everybody talking about that, make that difference? The problem is, is because we've disconnected people from how food is produced a lot in this country. It's going to be hard to actually get that introduced.

You put a Michael Pollan and say, see the face that feeds you.

That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then, and actually the Japanese started what now is in this country, community supported agriculture, CSA. And the Japanese term, which I don't know it in Japanese, was food with the farmer's face on it. Yeah.

And so we had- I just went to the farmer's market and I'm lucky to be in New York and right around the corner and I got lunch. I got- I went to an organic farm stand, I got some lettuce, I got some tomatoes, some basil, and I brought it home and I made a delicious salad and I met the woman who probably picked it that morning.

That's right. And we are lucky.

And I thanked her.

Yeah, no, we are lucky that we have those opportunities. The other is to put more money into, and this could be done by the farm bill, into research on ways that we can produce food. So the way that, and this is talked about a lot, but the way that we produce meat right now, is very harmful to the environment and is actually overall the food supply is contributing 30% of total greenhouse gases. And a lot of that is from meat. But there, sorry, Michigan State University is doing research on intensive grazing of meat because there's some parts of our country that actually the best use of it is grazing land for me and truthfully meat that is grazed is healthier for us and what they have found is if you have the right mix of plants for the cows to eat and you intensively move them around, basically when cows eat a plant, and this is new to me, when cows eat a plant, they eat off part of it, that kills part of the roots. When the roots die, it actually sends greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. So if you move them around enough, they're only eating off the tops and they're not eating it all the way down that it tricks the plants into not killing any of the roots because they can grow fast enough to recover that. So they have actually found ways to produce cows that are actually end up absorbing more carbon, even though the cows are still belching and still farting and letting off methane, but the plants are actually absorbing more carbon than the cows are letting off because of what kind of plants they have and how intensively they're moving them around.

Yeah, that's called regenerative agriculture.

Exactly.

And we had a show, a whole show on this with Ryan Unglaub. who talked about his book Kiss the Ground that he helped with, which is about how we need to rethink the view of the soil, animal husbandry in the right way, which everybody knows in the wrong way is going to cause climate change. The flip side of it is it actually may be part of the answer.

Exactly right. Yes, I totally, totally agree. The other is, is that, since you mentioned soil, is when people think about organic, if you ask most people on the street, even people well informed about what organic is, they would say it's food without pesticides, as it's food without chemicals. If you ask an organic farmer what organic is, they would say, I farm to grow healthy soil. And I'm caring about the health. They're soil farmers. They're growing other things, by the way, but they're really soil farmers. And they are creating soil that is rich, that actually can absorb carbon from the atmosphere, isn't letting off a lot. And so that ends up being a big part of the solution. There has been a big, and it's.

Actually not- those kinds of programs and agricultural initiatives are not supported by the farm bill. and they could be.

Right. They are a little bit. And there's actually are some programs for new farmers and ranchers, which we need to support as well. By far, not enough. So there is some. You're writing the Farm Bill.

What are the five top things you would shift, change and add?

Right.

What are the five top things I.

Would shift, change and add? I. Now, the other thing is, after six or three, that's fine.

No, that's fine.

No, that's fine, too. I mean, the other is, is I think there's two ways to look at it. So one is where would we want the food system to be? And the other is what is realistic to not be completely disruptive? Because we are where we are now. There are people that have, but I would put a lot of money towards helping farmers to transition away from more chemical-based commodity agriculture to growing other foods that actually, then we would be producing foods that actually people could eat it. Only 5% of American adults eat enough fruits and vegetables because we're not producing enough. so that we were actually producing enough fruits and vegetables so that people could be eating them.

Yeah, I heard we say to Americans, the government says eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day, but if everybody did that, we'd only.

Have enough for 2% of the population. That's right. Because five, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, that's probably about right. It's 5% that are eating it now, so and everybody else is eating a little bit. I think you're about right. So, you know, it's so we need to be producing a lot more fruits and vegetables. So, so I would put in a lot of money towards programs that would help help farmers transition to less intense, more regenerative ways of growing fruits and vegetables, more research into how do we produce animals on our grazing land that are animals that actually are moving around enough that they're healthy for us and are healthy for the planet. I would also then put funding into how do we actually create more small-scale food distribution, which is called food hubs, that can actually get more regional food systems that actually are feeding people. New England has a plan that New England could, and New England obviously doesn't have the best growing weather, right? It's cold.

I live there, yeah.

So, but for New England to be able to by 2060 produce 50% of their own food, which would be a big, huge increase to what they're doing now. So, but that's through having these small distributions. So it would be how we're growing food, how we're distributing food, and what foods we're growing. So more fruits and vegetables, more sustainably grown food. And then a lot of the other small programs, more supports for young farmers getting into farming, more research that is going to say, what are some of the changes that we can make? Like that 10% tax.

Money for home ec.

Money for home ec, that would be great.

Because they also regulate the school lunch program, WIC, all the food programs.

Yeah, that's the child nutrition bill. And that one was stalled. And so, you know, basically it's, it's essentially on hold. So we're still under the one that Obama signed in 2010. I mean, is there hope with the farm bill?

I know Blumenauer, I think his name is. Oh, yeah, Earl Blumenauer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has a great little book. Right, right, right.

All about changing the farm bill. Tim Ryan, Congressman from Ohio, same thing. And they're, you know, are they just, you know, fighting at windmills like Don Quixote? Are they going to make a difference?

Well, I think that depends on what happens in November. And I think if we can have enough people elected that are like them, we could make a huge difference. And so I think it's, it's really for people to find out. And there is, by Tom Kalikow's group, the, the something plea. Oh, my gosh, I should know the name of it, but it basically rates all people in Congress and I think probably people running and what they think about food. If people really cared about getting nourishment for everybody and voted, but, you know, and there's a lot of issues.

I would love to see that. Is that like a public thing?

Yes, yes. I will get the name of it and I can get it to you.

So that you can make sure we put it in the notes for the podcast because it's such an important thing and people can actually look at what their representatives do and think about food and call them out on it, write letters, be active. You know, we think we can't make a difference, you know, and I think everybody's discouraged by politics and frustrated, but there are things that actually can happen. If there's a a friend of mine who single-handedly advocated for Congress to ask the National Academy of Sciences to review the dietary guidelines process. I know you were very involved in speaking out about that and writing a letter about it. She just was a bulldog and wouldn't take no for an answer. And now we have a whole new way of thinking about the dietary guidelines, a new process for it, open comments for the public, or, you know, I actually worked with Tim Ryan, Congressman Tim Ryan, to the General Accountability Office, which is the independent analytic body of Congress, to look at all of our food policies. You're talking about all these policies. They're all at odds with each other from USDA, HHS, from Department of Defense and FDA.

Right. So, I think that that process was good just to share with you is the question, usually it was the scientific committee that came up with the questions to be asked. The questions that were written, which is what we commented on, I'm glad that the public was able to comment and we took the time to comment on them, but we're not in line with what we would want to do. I mean, it was essentially, there was one on really honestly something, and I'm gonna get the wording wrong, but how much sugar can healthy kids have a day? But it was more of just because we shouldn't limit them if they're healthy now. So they weren't quite along the right lines. And unfortunately, as you probably know, is in the last dietary guidelines, we had wanted to have actually how food is produced, so the sustainability of the food system to be part of it, and essentially Congress stopped that. And I think it's because food industry would rather people just know about the nutrients, because even when you're engineering- Easy to manipulate. It's exactly right. It can be manipulated. Whereas how food is produced, that takes the real changes. And so it's- yeah, if you say.

You have to have no-till agriculture, or you have to have regenerative farming.

Exactly.

Or you have to not use various chemicals or you can't use antibiotics in food.

Well, that's going to change things. It's going to change things and it would be really, really costly to have those changes, whereas nutrients are easy, easy as you just said, easy to manipulate.

And so it's easy to kind of keep it focused on that. Amazing. What a conversation. I could talk to you all day, all night. There's topics we didn't even cover. I encourage everybody to check out Pam's work, Pam Cook from Columbia University. And I just want to thank you for shedding light on some really important topics on the Doctor's Pharmacy, a place for conversations that matter. And if you like this conversation, you're listening, please subscribe on iTunes or everywhere you get your podcast, share this with your friends and family, and leave a comment and review because we really love to hear from you. And we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Thank you.