Why Smart People Make Bad Food Choices with Jack Bobo, Episode 13

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Jack Bobo. He is the author of— was it Why Smart People Make Bad Food Choices? I think it was. Um, but I'm really excited to have him here. As you heard on his bio, he has such an interesting background with food and policy and psychology. So, you know, I'm interested in that because that's my background as well. So anyway, welcome Jack. If you could tell us a little bit about your book and how you got into all this. That would be wonderful.

Great. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me on the show. Really excited and delighted to be here. Well, uh, the book really came out of this question that I kept asking myself. How can it be at a moment in time when we know more about health and nutrition than we ever have in the history of the planet, we've never been more obese. You know, as I'm sure you talk about all the time, you know, 42% of Americans are obese, 75% are overweight or obese. The number's going to 50% if we don't change that trajectory. And so the book was sort of my effort to look into how have things changed over time, how, you know, looking at the psychology of food choices, how our brains and environment are driving the choices we have, and really what would it take to reshape our and redesign our food environment to make healthy choices the easy choice? Because I certainly don't feel like we should be struggling as hard as we are to be healthy. I mean, you know, our grandparents, you know, they were cooking with lard for goodness sake, you know, and yet none of them were obese. So clearly lots of things have changed and, you know, how do we get back to that point where we can enjoy the food we eat, not feel so stressed about it?

And when you're doing your deep dive into that for the book, what, what was it that you kind of found? Was there a predominant answer? Did you find it to be a number of cofactors? What was, or what was surprised you the most after looking into this a little bit more?

Well, you know, I think as all of these things, it's complicated. Uh, and it's not one thing, it's a thousand things. And often when we're looking at new diets and other things, we're looking for something to fix the problem. And it isn't one thing, you know, it's each decision we make, how things are packaged, the food environment we're living in. But let me just give you one example. Uh, if we went back to the 1960s, uh, there's a guy named David Wallerstein, who's sort of the guy who invented supersized portions. He was working for a movie theater chain, and his job was to get people to eat more popcorn, you know, things at the concession stand. And he tried everything, 2-for-1 deals, and he just couldn't get people to go back for a second bag. And it finally struck him, well, what if people are embarrassed to go back for a second bag? You know, our friends might think I'm gluttonous, you know, if I go back. And so he thought, well, what if I offer a larger size? And as soon as he did it, not only did popcorn sales take off, but soda and other things. And it was so successful, he went on to work for McDonald's. And he had this conversation with Ray Kroc. He's like, hey, let's just offer larger sizes. And Ray's like, no, if they want more French fries, they'll go back for a second bag. And it took him a long time, but he finally convinced Ray Kroc. And so in 1972, they introduced the large fry. And of course, the rest is history. But, you know, it's, it's surprising that, you know, it took that long for people to realize that, you know, you can unleash that inner desire just by offering larger sizes. And so I tell some of those stories, like the story of how the Big Gulp, you know, got started and, and other things that I think will help people to understand that this isn't how things have always been. If you go back to the 1970s and earlier, uh, obesity rates in America were lower than Europe. Like we think of America as being sort of, you know, it's always been this way, but it hasn't. It's like within a single generation, um, things have changed dramatically.

Yeah, and I can definitely— I've talked about this a little bit in the past, and you might find this interesting. I grew up on a farm in Louisiana, and I'm old enough that I was alive in the early '70s, and I definitely remember that things were not always that way. And especially being in the South, you know, we're about 10 years behind on everything. So, um, and, you know, living on a farm, like, everything— we still ate whole foods. My grandma had the as you mentioned, the lard on the counter that we would save from the bacon, and they would cook with that. And, and really, and everybody also, um, at least in my scope, I had a fair amount of people that did a lot of regular, like, labor on the farm and that stuff, and then people that worked in office jobs. But nobody was really obese. Maybe as we got a little older, maybe there were some family members that, you know, were a little fluffy, but there was nobody that was kind of like the epidemic that we have now. So you're definitely You know, onto that with it, it wasn't always this way. And it's probably like a combination. So that, that was maybe the psychology of it, the marketing of it. What, what else did you find? Are there ingredients that they're using that are causing this kind of epidemic?

Well, you know, I'm less focused on the individual ingredients and more on the system because, you know, most people don't even know what an adult serving of size, adult serving size of food looks like today. And just to give you an example, in 1955, you know, if you had gone to McDonald's, you would have gotten a hamburger, which is about the size of the kids' meal hamburger. Your fry would have been smaller than a small fry. A small fry today is a large fry from 1972. So you don't even know what a fry looks like. And your soda would have been 6 or 7 ounces. Think of it, 50% of a child serving of soda was an adult serving. In 1955. And so, you know, there is no restaurant in America that you could go into and get what would be considered an adult serving of food. So it can't be surprising, you know, if we're eating 20, 30, 40, 50% more food at every sitting, you know, who cares about the ingredients? You know, you eat twice as much of something and you're probably going to gain weight.

Yeah. There's, there's still an energy balance. There's always this argument over calories in, calories out, but at the end of the day, it does still matter, especially like, as you said, if you're eating 50% more than what your body needs, then eventually you probably are going to put on some weight. Yeah.

And a lot changed as well in the sort of end of the '70s and beginning of the '80s with the dietary guidelines, which of course the whole purpose of that was to help Americans be healthier. Um, but you know, you, every story has to have a villain and the villain they chose was dietary fat. And because of that, companies kind of did what you would hope they would do. They started reformulating products and providing low-fat versions of mayonnaise and salad dressing and all sorts of things. But what they didn't count on was human psychology, because as soon as you put low-fat on a cookie or a box of cookies, people think, well, if one low-fat cookie is good for me, the whole box must be great. And so it actually, you know, they allowed them to overindulge And so all of these things that we've been doing in terms of dietary guidance has actually allowed us to eat more because low fat doesn't mean low calorie and low calorie doesn't mean low fat. And, you know, it doesn't mean low sodium and all of these things.

What about it? Since you're talking kind of that same timeframe going into the '70s and the food pyramid, was there anything going on with policy at the time, for example, new subsidies or different things like that, that you feel might've affected the climate as well?

Yeah, I, I'm not convinced that the subsidies had as much of an impact, I think, as many do, you know. So, you know, certainly we subsidize agriculture, and, you know, the, you know, we have about $20 billion in global subsidies, but that's $20 billion on a trillion-dollar industry, which is pretty darn small. And, you know, subsidies may have encouraged more corn production, and maybe that led to more use of high fructose corn syrup, But the reason we use high fructose corn syrup in the United States is because we have very high tariffs on imported sugar. America has the highest sugar prices in the world, not the lowest. And so the reason we're using that is because our prices are high. And so it doesn't necessarily have exactly that impact. The cost of the corn in a box of corn flakes is maybe $0.25 of the $4 box. And so subsidies are maybe impacting a penny at most in the cost of that. So it doesn't really get— it matters to the farmer, it matters to the processor. By the time it gets to the consumer, it doesn't really have that much impact.

That's interesting. I never heard it in that perspective before as far as the cost, because people kind of throw that around occasionally. But you're right. If you look at it in terms of you're probably really paying more for the marketing of the box than you are for the ingredients anyway. Way more.

And, you know, we often, you know, hear that, you know, soda taxes would encourage people to drink less soda, and they certainly might, but soda consumption in America is at a 30-year low. So how could soda be causing a problem when we're at our lowest level of soda consumption ever? Doesn't mean that we don't overconsume soda, and many people do, but, you know, it can't be the problem if it's at a 30-year low.

Yeah. And that, I'm kind of surprised by that too, because some of the statistics I've read and I've, it's one of the government websites, but it's something like people ate 150 years ago, we were eating about 2 pounds of sugar per person a year. And now it's up to 153 pounds a year or something per person. So it might not be the sodas, but maybe it's the culmination of it being just a little bit in every single thing that we eat, you know?

Right. Well, that's certainly true, but we're also eating about 30 pounds less sugar than we did like in 1990s, you know? So, so we're actually still doing less. And so, you know, that's why it's a combination of things. You know, we're not going to find that one thing that's the silver bullet. And, you know, we need to look more at our, our entire lifestyle. You know, we snack a lot more than we ever have. You know, we, we don't leave the house without, you know, our bottle of water or juice or soda or something. Um, you know, we're constantly eating throughout the day. And I think some of it comes down to, you know, we often eat because we're bored. And, you know, I mean, how many times have I gotten up and sort of wandered around the house, ended up in the kitchen and gotten a snack? And it's probably not because I was hungry. It's because I was bored. And I just, I didn't know what was sort of why I was bored or what I should do about it. So instead of reading a book or going for a walk, you know, I grabbed a cookie. And so, you know, those are behaviors that we need to, you know, change our habits. So it's not so much about the food that we chose. It's about the habits that led to that food.

Yeah. And I think you can see some good proof for that because there is much more of a trend now towards both, you know, intermittent fasting and longer fasting and being, you know, eating things in a way that you don't have that, because some people really do have that constant hunger, um, hormonal, or, you know, kind of bored hunger, like you're talking about. Um, But when they switch to this pattern of intermittent fasting, people can do that and they still eat, you know, maybe more carbs or more sugar or those things, but it's more the timing of their eating. And then they're not snacking all day anymore that they can still have a lot of success with that.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, one, it disrupts the normal patterns. And so, so that's good. And two, you know, you, even if you can, are allowed to eat as much as you want, you know, there, we reach a point when we don't want to eat anymore. And so You know, you're not gonna, you know, you're not a bear who's gonna like add an extra 50 pounds so, you know, I can get through this next 12 hours.

Well, I think you mentioned that you are speaking or just spoke to the pork industry because you're talking about some climate change related stuff and other things in the industry that, you know, might be changing or that might be problematic. Can you talk about some of that stuff to the audience?

Yeah, so I was speaking to the National Pork Industry Conference in July, and, you know, I think there's a lot of concern that the livestock industry feels under attack in terms of climate change impacts and things like that. And, you know, part of what I was helping them to understand is that, you know, we need as society, you know, 50 to 60% more food by 2050 to feed a growing planet, not just more people, but more wealthy people. And the first thing people ask for as incomes rise in many parts of the world is more protein, and generally more animal protein. So there's this huge demand, and as much as 100% in terms of protein. And so the concerns that, you know, where the livestock industry is going to go out of business just isn't realistic. You know, the live global livestock industry is a $2 trillion industry, and it will grow to be $3 or $4 trillion by 2050. The thought that the alternative protein industry is going to like grow so much that it actually erodes some of that is just very unrealistic. So they don't really have to worry in that sense. But also, you know, people enjoy these products. And so there's a cultural and social aspect to it. You know, we've, you know, people have been told to eat less meat or to go vegan, you know, for, for decades. And it, you know, it doesn't happen because there's a reason for it. But it is important that we improve the sustainability of our planet. And what I think many consumers miss is that agriculture today is wildly more sustainable than it was in the past, and it will be wildly more sustainable than it is in the future. Just as one example, the resources needed to produce a bushel of corn— and of course, most corn goes to animal feed— it produces 35% fewer greenhouse gases today than would have been produced in 1980. To produce that bushel. You need 50% less water to produce that bushel. You use 40% less land to produce that bushel. And there's 60% less erosion on the land that produced that bushel. So it's like by every measure, things are wildly better. And this is true of soy and cotton and canola and all the other crops. And so for consumers, they feel like things are bad and getting worse. But the reality is they're good and getting better. But not fast enough. And, you know, so that's part of the story that I think that needs to be told. Yes, we need to make sure that whether we're eating pork or beef or anything, that we do it in appropriate portions that are, you know, right for us, that we encourage those sectors to be, you know, more sustainable tomorrow than they were yesterday. And if we can do that, then we will be able to create a more sustainable and nutritious future, and one that's not about giving up the things that make life worth living.

And will you have some— probably more focus in this than others, because number one, again, in your bio, I read that you've been involved with governmental policy in the past, and your company now, Futurity, kind of acts as a consultant for maybe people in the pork industry or whatever it is, all these facets of our food system, to try to figure out how to best move forward, I guess. Is that an accurate statement?

It is, it is.

Yeah, that's great.

Well, I tell people my personal mission is to de-escalate the tension in our food system so that we can all get about our business of saving the planet in our own way.

That's lovely. I love that. Um, in, in some of your work in the research that you've done on all this part of the, the policy thing, um, there is sort of— I guess, you know, being in the health space, I probably hear about this more than your average person because it's not like all we hear in the media is the greenhouse gases and, oh my gosh, all the cow farts are going to kill us all, right? So it's kind of like— it's kind of on an extreme end sometimes in the media. But then there's also this push, at least in our little sector of the health industry, to more sustainable farming, to get away from monocropping, to really do things that bring back the soil, make the food more nutritious again, because there is also this theory of obesity or of overeating because people are trying to get more nutrients and their body is not being satisfied by nutrients because of the lack of the nutrients in our food. Do you think there's anything to that? And have you heard farmers or ranchers talk more about this more sustainable model? And is that realistic even?

Yeah, so certainly I've heard, you know, read a lot about regenerative agriculture, have talked to producers and others, you know, have read about the fact that, you know, some crops today are not as nutrient dense as they were in the past. And, you know, there are a lot a lot of reasons why that, that might be the case. You know, probably the most prominent is simply that we get more yield out of a crop today. And so if your apple is twice the volume of the apple in the past, it's grown more quickly. And so it may have the, the same amount of nutrition or nutrients in the whole apple as that smaller apple did in the past, but it's not as nutrient dense. And so, you know, it's not So part of the problem is that in order to make our fruits and vegetables more nutrient-dense, they have to basically struggle more as they're growing. And that means maybe less fertilizer, less water, but it also just means less production. And so we're— we have this inevitable tension between, you know, quantity of food and quality of food. And For 50 years, we focused on productivity, quantity. And that's probably the right thing to do. We've gone from a third of all the people on the planet going to bed hungry 50 or 60 years ago to less than 10% of the global population going to bed hungry today. So that's a huge benefit. But we're at sort of that one unique moment in all of human history. For 10,000 years, farmers have been asked to produce more. Where they're now being asked for not produce not just more but better. And so we do need that better food, but we just need to recognize there's this tension. So I often describe it this way, that for consumers, we think of sustainability as local sustainability— less water, less fertilizer, less pesticides equals sustainable. But that's true on that farm. But if you do that, you're going to produce less food. And if you produce less food, somebody else needs to make up for it, which generally means more deforestation. And so if somebody does things intensively, well, that might lead to nutrient runoff and depleted soils and all sorts of bad things on the farm, but it also ends up producing more food. So you need less land someplace else. So it's sort of this sustainability is a continuum from global sustainability to local sustainability. And there will always be trade-offs between those two approaches. And so our food system is generally better because we're balancing those two things. You know, if, if we only focused on production, then, you know, we, you know, we would be depleting our soil even faster. If we only focused on regenerative, well, then we wouldn't be able to produce as much food, or we need to deforest even more. And so um, it's hard to sort of keep in mind that those two things are in tension all the time. And so I, I wouldn't stress about it on sort of an individual level. If you can eat, you know, better quality food and fresher food, absolutely go for it. But you shouldn't feel like you're doing harm to your family or to the planet, you know, if you're also eating, you know, the commodity, you know, intensively produced monocrop, you know, because monocropping is higher yielding and more productive. And so those trade-offs just inevitably exist.

And then the thought leaders that you talk with— and I'm really glad that we have smart people like you working on this because it seems like, it just seems like an unanswerable problem, quite honestly, um, because of just what you said. We've, you know, on the one end we have to produce enough food to feed people, and on the other side we want to protect the planet. So are there any insights or trends in that area or any progress being made towards kind of what might be the answer to some of that?

Well, you know, I think that what we need to do is we need to, one, stop talking about, you know, farming is the problem that needs to be solved. You know, it is true that, you know, it has a big impact in terms of land and water and climate, but things are not bad and getting worse. They're good and getting better, but not fast enough. And so that's a very different story. And if you want farmers to work with us to do better, telling them that they're evil and they're destroying the planet is probably not the best way to get them to engage. And so how we talk about these things matters. For people who aren't in farming to tell farmers how they should be farming is— you know, not likely to be very productive. On the other hand, if you tell farmers how they could do a better job, well, I think most of us want to do better. And, you know, they're already doing better than they were 10 years ago. And so, you know, that's a conversation I think most would want to be involved in. And so that's what I think is important. It's how we talk about these issues. But we are trending, you know, in a good direction, you know, that if we were farming today with 1960s technology, we would need 1 billion additional hectares of land to produce the food we do. And that's nearly a quarter of all the forest on the planet. So it's hard to wrap our minds around the fact that agriculture is the single biggest driver of deforestation, but it's also the single biggest savior of forests. And so they're complicated issues, but hopefully people are over the last year have recognized how important these topics are. And so they're willing to spend a little more time to get a little smarter so they can participate in the conversation because the choices we make do have an impact.

Yeah, that's— I think that that is what everybody wants as an individual because I think it was a nice point that you had about, you know, worrying about or fretting about such things on an individual level is quite different than maybe worrying about it from a level of a company or a producer or a farm or a government. It's kind of a whole different way of looking at it, really.

Yeah, and you know, it's— you know, we often want to buy local, but you know, just because something's produced local doesn't mean it has a smaller footprint, because often transportation is not the most expensive part of food production. But there are lots of benefits of buying local. I mean, you're supporting your local economy, you know, there are social aspects of it, there are being closer to the land and learning about food production. So environment sustainability is not just environmental sustainability, it's economic sustainability. It has to be viable to the farmers producing it. And there's social and cultural sustainability. I mean, if people don't like what they're eating, they're, you know, or what you're advocating, they're probably not going to do it. And so, you know, people expect a certain type of food in different places. We need to work within, you know, meet people where they are.

Yeah, that's a great point because that's the, you know, back to the kind of obesity thing. People can't stick to it. It's going to be very hard to make any progress. And I think that's the one thing I really do. It would be sad to me if we— and this is coming from somebody who's vegetarian for 7 years, by the way— but it would be sad to me if we went to a place where we were really highly restricting meat or doing that, because I do think for some people You know, everybody's very individual. Everybody thrives on different kinds of diets and likes different kinds of foods. And so if we start restricting that from a policy level, that would be more concerning to me because I just think it will create less health, not more.

Yeah. You know, nobody has told Americans eat less beef, but we do eat dramatically less beef than we did, you know, back in the 1970s or '90s. And, you know, we eat a lot more poultry. So diets do shift. So it's not, but you know, nobody was telling the consumer to do that, you know, that things change in our environment, the cost of it, you know, people's taste. And so I think, you know, we need to work within that context. And if we were helping people to eat healthier, then we would probably end up with also a more sustainable diet as well.

Well, and yes, and it, because obviously the larger you are too, the more calories you need to eat on a daily basis to maintain that. So if everybody works sort of more— I'm going to put this in air quotes for those of you that aren't watching the video— but normal weight, what, whatever that means. If we had people that were at a healthy, you know, reasonable weight, then maybe everybody would be eating less as well. So maybe there's something there to that part of it.

Yeah. And you know, the, the title of the book, you know, Why Smart People Make Bad Food Choices, it's not about my feeling about whether or not people are making smart decisions. What I really— the point of the book is that we make decisions that we feel are not smart. We know we should be eating, you know, 4 or 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, but 90% of us are not. And we know we shouldn't go back for that extra serving, but we do. You know, it's like we know all of these things. And so the book is about, well, how can I help me to be my better self?

And what kind of conclusions did you come to on that realm? I mean, obviously people should go read the book, but if you had to give one of your best tips, because that is one of the goals of this podcast, is I often talk with people, um, definitely thought leaders and experts in various things such as yourself, but also just kind of people who have struggled with their health or lost weight and, or have maintained it for a long time. And, you know, people kind of giving their own personal tips on the best ways to stay healthy and to make better choices and create better habits? Do you have like a number one or number top three or something like that? Yeah.

Well, you know, the first thing is that, you know, people shouldn't blame themselves. You know, you said it, that, you know, diet shouldn't be that hard to stick with. You know, if you can't stick, if nobody can stick with the diet, then it's not the person's fault. It's the diet's fault. And so, uh, and I wanted to teach my kids about portion sizes. So I took them to the Cheesecake Factory, or they took me for Father's Day, you know, a few years ago.

Ago.

And, and so, you know, I ordered the steak and mashed potatoes and green beans, and, you know, I wanted this huge portion to come out, was like so big that they would understand, you know, portion sizes. But when it arrived, I was a little surprised and almost disappointed that I was like, wow, I can totally eat all of that. And unlike most people though, then I took a 9-inch plate out of my wife's purse and I replated the food. You can imagine how my kids felt about this, right? And when I did, it was clear that it was actually 2 servings of food, it completely filled the 9-inch plate, and there was an equal amount still left on the original plate. So then I took a tape measure out of my wife's purse, and then I'm measuring this plate, and it was 15 inches wide and 12 inches deep.

Wow.

And the point is that 2 adult servings of food looked like it was perfectly feasible to eat. And, you know, we know that it takes a while for you to know, so I could have eaten all of that. And started eating my cheesecake before I even realized that I was just stuffed, you know, like I'd just eaten too. And so part of the challenge is that, you know, we need to be aware. And like, I'm somebody who like knows about this, and I was tricked, you know, by the visual cues of the plate. And so it's really hard. And so one trick is simply to replate your food before you eat. Like or, you know, if a restaurant's in the future, I would love it if they would allow you to buy a half portion, or they would give you the to-go bag before you ever take a bite. Because if you don't see the food, you're not going to think, oh, I only finished half my meal, you know, because that's how the brain works. It's like if you cut your meal in half and you leave half of it aside, 2 hours later, your brain's thinking, hey, you didn't finish eating. And so it actually makes you hungry sooner. So some of the things that, you know, my family does, you know, my wife and my 2 kids, when we go out to eat, we generally just order 3 3 meals. And, you know, somehow I'm always the person who doesn't order a meal. Uh, but in the 4 years we've been doing this, not once have we said, I really regret not having bought a 4th meal. And we generally will get 1 or 2 desserts for the, uh, for the family. And every time we have taken some food home. So it's like, there's never been an occasion in which, you know, we cleaned our plates and we're like, ah, We should, we need more food. It just doesn't happen. And so, you know, if people can find the habits that work for them, then, you know, it just becomes part of what you do. And so, you know, we're all eating a third fewer calories than we would have, and nobody's suffering. You know, we can eat dessert that we might not have even had otherwise. So, or, you know, we might have denied ourselves that luxury, but instead, you know, we get to enjoy it. Even more. And so that's what this is all about, is how can we maximize our enjoyment and end up in a better place.

You know, that's a great one, and that is something that I have heard in the past. And I think some— I mean, it would depend on what restaurant you're going to, but I think some of them will actually do that now if you just request, can you put half of it in a to-go box so I don't even have to look at it, you know, and just bring the other half out. I mean, I think some restaurants are willing to do that now. They, you know, they've gotten so used to a lot of weird dietary requests, I think, between gluten-free and keto and vegetarian and everything else. I do think a lot of places will try to accommodate you if they can, especially right now, I'm sure. Well, yeah, that's a whole different conversation. Um, well, before we move on to anything else, I guess, or is there anything that we haven't talked about yet that you're super passionate about and what you would like to relay to an audience of people that are all interested in what's happening with our food system and, and what the future of food is?

Well, you know, just, I think, focusing on, you know, the food choices that we make do matter, not trying to look for silver bullet solutions. You know, there are different ways of getting to that sustainable, nutritious future. And so instead of spending our time trying to shoot down other people's ideas, I think we should spend our time building up the ideas we think are the ones that are worth supporting.

That's great advice as well. So what's next on your horizon? What are you working on right now?

Well, just all sorts of things going on all the time. I think tomorrow I'm gonna be speaking, uh, moderating a panel on alternative proteins. And it's, uh, you know, important to, to not just focus on one solution. I mean, for me, there are different ways of achieving that sustainable future. Um, but I also think, you know, that some of these alternative proteins, you know, it raises questions about ultra-processed foods and, you know, on one hand it may have a lower environmental environmental impact, but if it makes people less healthy, then that's a problem too. And so, you know, we've got all of these different things that we have to keep balanced at the same time. And so, you know, that I'm always spending my time trying to figure out, you know, how do we achieve that balance?

And that is a tough one. I've heard a lot of people, again, being in a community that's focused very on whole foods and like, you know, one ingredient proteins like beef, that's all that's in there, you know, as opposed to the Impossible Burger that's got about 30 ingredients and most of them you can't even pronounce. Um, so aside from that, cuz I think that that's kind of a separate one. Um, another alternative protein thing that's come up recently is lab-produced protein. Or do you have any thoughts or interesting little insights on that part?

Yeah. You know, um, a few years ago they were calling it clean meat. And so like one of my claims to fame is I'm the guy who killed the term clean meat. So I, I actually worked with all of the companies in the space and over the course of about 10 months got them all to agree not to use that term anymore. And, you know, because it implied if their meat is clean, that the other meat is dirty and unethical and the people who eat it are evil. And, you know, so all sorts of issues with that. You know, I think that, you know, overcoming some of the science is gonna be challenging, you know, because it's not that easy. But, you know, we do need to increase protein production by 60 to 100% in just 30 years. And that's an enormous problem. And so I think we should all be happy that there are new approaches that are coming along. We don't know which of them are going to scale, but we do need as many opportunities. We really don't need twice as many animals on the planet in terms of livestock in 2050. So we need to make our footprint smaller, not bigger. And some of these may turn out to be successful. Just one example, I was working with the Rockefeller Foundation's Food Vision Prize finalist about a year ago, and two of the companies had as one of their objectives to reduce animal production by 30% by 2030. And, you know, what I told them, I said, if you have that as your goal, obviously livestock producers are not going to support your vision because nobody wants to go out of business. But the alternative protein companies that you think will achieve replace them, they don't yet exist, so they can't advocate for your vision. And so wouldn't it be better instead to say that your vision is that we will have a protein sector that has a 30% lower environmental impact? Maybe that will be achieved by the livestock industry, maybe it will be achieved by growth of alternative proteins, but we need to articulate visions for the future in which people can see themselves and not as suffering, but as thriving. And so I think, you know, it's really important when we're thinking about the future that we think about a positive future in which people can belong.

Yeah, we could all use a little more positivity these days, couldn't we?

We could indeed.

Well, Jack, I can't thank you enough for sharing all of your knowledge and being here today with all of us. Can you just, for some final words, can you share with everybody where they can best find you, your website? Are you active on any social channels, anything like that where they can find more from Jacko?

Sure. So they can find my book Why Smart People Make Bad Food Choices on Amazon, Barnes Noble, wherever you buy books. Uh, you can find me on LinkedIn. Feel free to reach out, connect to me. Um, but I'm also very active on Twitter. I'm on, uh, Instagram as well and would love to carry on these conversations with people, you know, in other ways. And, you know, if you want to put my email into the show notes or something like that, feel free to do that as well. I hope people will reach out.

Yeah, awesome. No, I will link all of that for you. And yeah, I hope that people, especially if they have any brilliant ideas on any of this, how they can contribute or make the— make, uh, be part of the solution, not just a bunch of complainers like sometimes happens.

Right, right. Well, thanks so much.

All right, thank you. Have a good day.

All right, bye.