17 Dec 2025 · 0 min
Brian Johnson argues that government subsidies make industrial meat cheaper than healthy produce, effectively subsidizing sickness. Billions support corn and soybean production for factory farms, while agribusiness and pharmaceutical industries profit from the resulting disease and environmental harm.
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson, More Wisdom in Less Time. This is a mini chapter from Brian's book A Philosopher's Notes. You can find it on Amazon.
Subsidizing sickness. You ever wonder why a hamburger at Mickey D's costs less than a head of romaine lettuce? Strange, no. You may not know it, but you're actually subsidizing the production of that hamburger and keeping it nice and cheap. Yep. Every year we all chip in billions of dollars in subsidies that go into the production of corn and soybeans that are fed to the factory farmed animals that get inhumanely slaughtered and served to us through the local drive through. Now if those hamburgers were nourishing us, those subsidies might not be all that bad. But we scientifically know that the over consumption of animal products is one of the primary causes of all the diseases that are crippling our world. It's literally insane. We're subsidizing the creation of sickness. What's most ironic and incredibly annoying is the fact that we're not only subsidizing the destruction of our health, we're also subsidizing the cure of these ailments that could have been avoided in the first place. Well, at least the meat and dairy factory farms and pharmaceutical industries are profiting enormously at our collective expense as they destroy the environment. Huh? Grr. I say it's time for us to pull our heads out of our collective butts and do something about this. Like now. Footnote Here Check out Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey's essay on taxpayers in Moby in Myun Park's great book Gristle From Factory Farms to Food Safety Thinking Twice about the Meat We Eat.
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