In this interview, Maximus Mark talks with Randy Roach, author of Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors, about the long‑standing degradation of soil health, the early adoption of chemical farming, and the role of large agribusinesses such as Monsanto in reshaping global food production through GMOs and herbicides like Roundup. Roach argues that the globalization of food trade has created a carbon‑intensive system that benefits a few powerful interests at the expense of local, sustainable agriculture. He then turns to the modern supplement industry, expressing deep skepticism about the long‑term efficacy of high‑dose vitamins and minerals, noting the lack of rigorous, multigenerational studies. Roach explains how pharmaceutical companies, through ownership of supplement brands and influence over regulatory bodies (FDA, USDA, Health Canada, Codex Alimentarius), seek to limit or eliminate natural supplements that cannot be patented, while simultaneously profiting from prescription drugs. The conversation highlights concerns about regulatory capture, the environmental toll of industrial agriculture, and the need for more transparent, evidence‑based nutrition practices.
Chapters
This podcast has been brought to you by www.maximusmark.com. Hi folks, it's Maximus Mark. I'm like a kid on Christmas Day. I'm interviewing someone very special today, Randy Roach. Randy is the author of the book Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors, which is an absolutely fantastic read. Today will be a little bit like that scene in The Matrix where Morpheus turns to Neo and he says, do you want the blue pill or the red pill? Today you're going to hear things that you may not have heard before, and if you've heard it, you're probably dying to know more information from a really reliable source. Well, today I have that reliable source in Randy. Randy Randy has been studying the world of nutrition for over 30 years. He has studied its origins, its roots, the formation, and ultimately its political corruption. Welcome Randy, and thank you so much for taking your time out for sharing the knowledge that you've been acquiring writing your book, Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors.
No problem, Mark. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.
Most welcome. So it's becoming more common knowledge that our soil is depleted. I've seen people suggest that the soil was on the decline as far back as the 1940s.
"When did the state of the soil really start to decline, and why?" I would say the soil started declining probably several centuries ago when we came over and started farming it like we did. Actually, I was actually surprised too to find out that chemical farming was already well underway 100 years ago. As soon as you start plowing and turning over the soils, then you start the erosion, in terms of just eroding soils. Once the soil has become depleted, we never really advanced ourselves with proper cyclical agriculture in terms of putting back in the land what we take out. We migrated to this, we can put back through chemical means. And like I said, I was surprised to find fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, they were all chemically being put on land, these products, 100 years ago. So we started depleting our land long ago. Farther back from 1940. It's just probably much worse now with companies like Monsanto totally disrupting the whole farming process all around the world in terms of using GMO crops to make them resilient to their Roundup, and in Iraq and many places where they have come in and totally disrupted centuries-long tradition of fairly sustainable agriculture. Like I said, the soils, our soils now are in bad condition.
Okay. So do you think it's just for profit of the farmer, or is there more at play there?
People will debate this issue in terms of whether it's an argument that we have to feed more people, so we have to do it this way, but it's all, Like when you look at this, you find that the industrial entrepreneur always went out. You know, it's always more industry, more industry, more industry. And everything in our Western culture is more and more chemicals. And that seems to be the driving force in terms of like, you can't say, did they purposely ruin our food supply? Or, you know, probably not purposefully, but in terms of So when you look at how they wanted to take control of food, the food supply, when I say they, I'm talking about the shapers, the movers and the shapers of the way the world is going into more and more control in the hands of less and less people. We're being globalized and the food supply is being globalized, internationalized. You can see this going back decades. Decades. Back in the '30s and '40s when countries decided we can't feed ourselves, we have to import. You look at all around the world now, even going down to the islands of St. Lucia where they have all this wonderful indigenous food, but it's all exported out. And if you go to eat down there, it's all food that's been imported in. Every country has been made now to export all their resources and then to import things back, basically creating this crazy carbon footprint that is cost so much the way we do it now in terms of developing and sustaining one's own resources. So again, there are some dubious hands at work in taking— in terms of orchestrating the way the food is produced and stuff today, but it's of course a lot of money is involved. Okay.
Yeah, because—
Much more so than the well-being of the food product. Like the food has been totally compromised and they can't argue that for the sake of the with the dollar.
So, so that the soil has been depleted, would you think there is a need for supplementation to make up that difference?
Again, that's not a debatable question in terms of integrity of supplements. I don't really know. I don't think there's really been great, great long-term studies done on the true benefits of supplements and high-dose supplements. You know, they are food fractions. Our bodies have come along not understanding and not taking food in that manner. Again, we don't know if it is straining us in certain situations or helping us in situations. So I'm leery about supplements. I would like to think that they did work because it would be a great magic fix, but we've been dousing supplements down our throats for 60 years, 70 years. It's done nothing to stop the epidemic of degenerative disease. And we take, we probably take more vitamins and minerals over in North America than anybody in the world, so I can't answer that accurately. I'm leery about the efficacy of supplements. Many out there will say adamantly that I'm wrong, that they do work, but they may appear to work and do things short-term, but on a long-term, I like to see studies done where the subjects are taken through gestation, through pregnancies, and to see what happens when the fetus is developing and in its early growing years, how supplements help or hinder with certain diets. So I really didn't answer your question, but I do still take a few tons of food concentrates, fermented cod liver oil, and low-temperature produced camu camu, which is the camu camu plants. It's not so much food fractionated, they're just more concentrated, concentrates of foods with high amounts of say vitamin C or vitamin A and vitamin D or iodine or EPA and DHA, stuff like that.
So how much control do you think that like pharmaceutical companies have over supplements?
They have control of certain— many pharmaceutical supplement companies are owned by pharmaceuticals, but they don't control all supplement companies, but they are definitely a strong, strong power internationally in getting regulation that's to force supplements out. You know, there have been some through the decades, you know, some successful supplement companies have been bought up by pharmaceuticals and then basically run out of business within a few years, but pharmaceutical companies are also profiting off supplements even though they would like people all to be on drugs because they can't really patent anything that's natural in supplements. So they would eventually like to see them put out, and they are doing this very well there in terms of Codex Alimentarius and being behind the United States FDA, USDA, Canada's Health Canada, and producing regulations that are just strangling the hell out of the supplement companies. Companies. And, you know, putting a lot of BS, like, you know, we're doing it to protect you, and this makes— there's hardly any notable death from supplement as compared to the hundreds of thousands that are— that die each year from the direct result of toxicity of taking pharmaceutical drugs.
Yeah, definitely. Now you mentioned—
So they have their hand in this, sorry. They do— they absolutely have their hand in there, but they don't have total control. They would like total control. They'd like to get rid of them.
Do you think they're living in a Do you think they'll ever get total control?
Oh, they may, but it won't last. I mean, for them to have total control, they would have to be in a global tyranny because they can't lie. They can't put us all and force us all on the drug. Now you're talking about a global dictatorship. I don't know. I don't believe that's going to happen, but they're trying to just like, I mean, in terms of control and greed, but they're having a lot of trouble and then it's a lot of it's falling apart on them as well. But they've been doing this for years, and there's a lot of money behind these global initiatives. It goes back to, like I said, the League of Nations back in 1921 after World War I, and the formation of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. These are all global initiatives put out there, but not by one just particular country. It's like the Federal Reserve thing in the United States. Most people, absolutely, Probably the majority think the Federal Reserve is an American institution. It's not. It's privately owned. It's the way they name things that people think, oh, they're put out by this country, that country, but these are pure global initiatives that are put out by people who I would just call global architects. They have no alliance to any country. They want world government, and they've been working on it for a long time. It used to be conspiracy talk, but it's not conspiracy anymore. It's quite evident that they want international guidelines, international laws, and that's why we have NAFTA, GATT over here, the trade, the World Trade Organization, and you know, you see the European Union. Like 50, 60 years ago, people would have laughed at the notion of all those European countries getting together to share currency and trade and that. And they're working on the North American Union. It's all covertly over here. So there's still people today deny that there's a North American Union behind the scenes and the numeral being on the works. But they are now starting to break the surface of mainstream media.
