Encore: America’s Fight for Food Justice | Senator Cory Booker
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January 27, 2025
TLDR: Discussion with Senator Cory Booker on food politics, focusing on how packaging confuses consumers, link between food system and chronic illness, harmful effects of ultra-processed foods, impact of industrial farming practices, benefits of advocacy/public health initiatives, and improving the food system to reduce healthcare costs.

In this enlightening episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy, Dr. Mark Hyman converses with Senator Cory Booker, addressing pressing issues concerning health, food justice, and America’s broken food system. They explore structural problems that hinder healthy eating choices while delving into potential solutions that can reform policies and consumer engagement with food choices.
The Misleading Food Packaging
- Confusing Labels: Food packaging often misleads consumers, making it challenging to distinguish healthy options from unhealthy ones. Senator Booker illustrates how marketing tactics obscure nutritional information, resulting in consumers making poor food choices in attempts to eat healthily.
The Link Between Food Demographics and Chronic Illness
- Food System and Health Crisis: There's a direct correlation between the current food system and chronic diseases affecting millions in America. Both Dr. Hyman and Senator Booker emphasize that food choices largely dictate health outcomes, linking ultra-processed foods to increased illness and healthcare costs.
- Crisis in Public Health: The episode highlights how the food system contributes to various diseases, exacerbating the national health crisis that sees chronic illnesses skyrocketing, often tied to diet.
The Impact of Ultra-Processed Foods
- Health Dangers: Ultra-processed foods now dominate American diets (over 60% for children). This dietary pattern not only fuels obesity and diabetes but is also tied to mental health disorders and other significant health challenges.
- Environmental Concerns: Industrial farming practices are also scrutinized for their adverse effects on soil health, nutrition quality, and overall environmental degradation.
Importance of Policy Change
- Advocating for Health: Senator Booker shares his commitment to reforming food policies to promote healthier options. Through innovative programs and collaborations, there is a push to integrate healthy food initiatives at the legislative level.
- Public Health Advocacy: Highlighting the necessity of both individual health advocacy and systemic reform, the conversation promotes public initiatives aimed at transforming the food landscape in the U.S.
Insights on Regenerative Agriculture
- Sustainable Practices: The podcast discusses the necessity of moving towards regenerative agriculture which respects environmental balances and improves soil health. These practices, as explored during the episode, are crucial for combating chronic disease and creating a sustainable food system.
Essential Takeaways for a Healthier Future
- Consumer Education: Curbing misinformation on food labeling and promoting transparency is vital for consumer awareness, allowing informed choices that favor healthier options.
- Legislative Action: Advocating for policies that foster the availability of healthy, nutrient-rich foods while re-examining food subsidies that currently favor unhealthy food production.
- Community Engagement: Building a community around food health shares the message that eating well contributes to a better society, reducing healthcare pressures and improving overall life quality.
The Urgency for Change
- A Call to Action: Dr. Hyman and Senator Booker emphasize the urgency of the health crisis caused by unhealthy dietary practices. A collective push for change is necessary, not only for individual wellbeing but for the health of future generations.
- Food Justice: A core aspect of the conversation revolves around food justice—ensuring that all populations have access to healthy food and understanding the socio-economic factors that contribute to food inequality.
Conclusion
This episode underscores a critical narrative: America’s food system is in dire need of reform. The interconnectedness of food choices, public health, environmental sustainability, and social justice highlights the importance of informed advocacy and systemic change. By educating consumers and advocating for better policies, we can collectively pave the way for a healthier future.
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Coming up on this episode of The Doctors' Pharmacy. The people that are really losing in this country right now are the people that want to make healthy choices. But then they walk into the store, really charged up for looking at and they find packaging and things that literally are designed to confuse them or lie to them.
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Welcome to Doctors' Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's a pharmaceutical place for conversations that matter. And oh boy, did I have a conversation that matters with Senator Cory Booker at the 6th night synagogue in Washington, DC talking about our food system, how to be young, how to deal with our chronic disease epidemic, and we got
really deep into the details of health policy, what's wrong with America in terms of its health, what we can actually do about it, what's being done about it, and a lot of the great initiatives. So I think you're gonna love this conversation. The Senator Cory Booker has been a Senator from New Jersey since 2013. He's worked tirelessly to advance economic support for an opportunity for many people and equal justice, including leading efforts to reform our broken food system. So it works for farmers, workers, and consumers alike. He joined the Senate Committee on Agriculture Nutrition and Forestry
To further drive these efforts, from his days as a tenant lawyer, city councilman, mayor, and in the Senate, Cory Booker has spent his life working to bring people together to take on problems we face and deliver real results. I got to tell you a story about this guy. I was sitting during COVID when I was in Hawaii on the porch of my house and it was a Sunday afternoon and I got a call from a New Jersey number and I never answered phone numbers that I don't know.
I decided on better news. I answered the phone and it was Senator Cory Booker who just read my book, Food Fix, and we spoke for over an hour talking about how enthusiastic he was about what I'd written and why he saw this as one of the central issues of our time, which is our broken food system. So I think you're going to love this conversation that we had at six and I. Let's dive right into it. Wow.
Thank you all so much for coming. It's great to see you all. Last time I was here was March 2nd, 2020. That was a great day to be here. Right before the world shut down. Exactly. And actually I was talking about my book, Food Fix, which is
about our food system. And the challenges we have with the increasing burden of chronic illness, with the food policies that drive unintended consequences of increasing disease and costs and that should affect some of the environment and climate. And, you know, I've been, you know, very focused on this. I have a nonprofit called the Food Fix Campaign. Senator Booker and I have worked closely together on trying to change food policy. So you're probably wondering why a center is here in a cookbook party, basically.
And it's because he deeply cares about the health of our country and the state of our food system and the challenges he's seen as a result. And we were just chatting earlier before I was, during COVID, was sitting in a valley to escape America, in the mainland of America. And I got this call from this number from New Jersey on a Sunday afternoon. And I picked up my phone. I normally don't answer numbers that I don't know.
And it was said her booker. And he's like, Mark, I just read your book, Food Fix. And it blew my mind. And I want to work with you on this. Let's go. So it's been an amazing opportunity to really rethink how we deal with our health and our nation. So we're going to do kind of a joint conversation, as I'll mean. And I'll handle talking about food fix. We'll talk about the cookbook, I hope.
But it's one of the most basic primers for anybody that cares about your family, your food, and your country. And you don't pull punches in it by talking about the corruption that has created the American food system. And I love how you talk about, in fact, you changed some of the things with me with civil rights organizations.
Because when people were coming to me and saying, here's our agenda for black America. And I would say, how can you have an agenda for black America without talking about the number one killer of African Americans? If black lives matter, we have to talk about food and food systems that people are trapped in. And you laid it out so plain and then give instructions for people if you really want to fight
to change the system, not just your own individual choices, but how do you create a system in this country, a food system that promotes health, wellness, longevity, here are steps to take. So it's a great primer. And then I bought the book for members of the ad committee. Oh, really? Yeah, I bought the book for members of the ad committee. And what surprised me is a lot of people didn't know some of the basic
things I know we'll talk about momentarily, but really scary things that are being subsidized with our tax dollars that are creating a system that's creating some of the greatest levels of chronic illness in the planet. Yeah, that's true. And I think it's true. I don't think people in Congress really had a deep understanding of the way in which the burden on our country and our population and our economy is because of the food system and the unintended consequences of it.
Yeah. Well, this is a cookbook. Yes. And I think what's inspiring, I told you last night, I've never really read a cookbook. So whenever I interview friends and their books, I want to read them. And I'm not the greatest cook in the world. You've never invited yourself over for one of my meals. But the beginning of it really sets the stage for why you wrote this cookbook.
and something that you've been this great evangelist of, and maybe you can start talking about what you learned or why you were inspired by the Blue Zones and what they are. Well, I think I've always been interested in the science of creating health. That's what I do with functional medicine, and I think
You know, it became really clear to me that, you know, we're in a crisis where, you know, we're in the moment of science where we know more and more about the root cause of illness and what to do about it. And yet we're seeing increasing rates of product disease and we're seeing a decline in life expectancy for the first time in human history. And it's been year over year, COVID made it worse than it was happening before COVID. And so while we have this sort of key, so longevity to living a healthy 100 years,
We haven't really addressed the reasons why we are so sick and overweight as a country. And 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy, which means they have either high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. Hold on, 93%. So actually it's 93.2%. Okay. Or metabolically healthy. What exactly does that mean? I think they have some level of prediabetes or some degree of insulin resistance. So they basically have
poor metabolic health, and that's defined as having high blood pressure, high blood sugar, abnormal cholesterol, they're overweight, or they've had a heart attack for stroke. That means only 6%, 6.8% of Americans don't have that. And that's why we're seeking to climb life expectancy. And it's because of our food. And the food we eat is the biggest generator of either longevity or chronic illness. And in my book, Young Forever, which was a precursor to the cookbook,
was really mapping out the size we have around what the root causes of this chronic disease epidemic are and how we can actually extend healthy life years. So our health span is how many years we're alive, I mean, healthy, and our life span is how many years we're alive. But our health span has gone down dramatically and the last 20% of people's life now is spending poor health.
And so, your quality of life goes down, but we can have a house fan that equals our lifespan. You know, all our stories are, well, someone was 100 years old and she went to bed and went to sleep and had a nice dinner with her family before and she was great. Right. And I think we all want that. We all want to kind of just kind of move through life and have a great, healthy life.
die suddenly as opposed to die slow, long expensive painful deaths, which is why we're seeing the burden on our health care system and our economy. So, you know, the blue zones really taught me that it's really about the most basic things, right? It's the basic things of eating real food, of not eating all the processed food we're eating now, which is now 60% of our diet is 67% of kids diet. And these are new to nature foods. They're deconstructed size projects that have been well proven to cause a host of chronic diseases. It was a big report that last recently, like 37 different conditions.
that it's been linked to mental health disorders, to fertility issues, to diabetes, heart disease, cancer. I mean, the list goes on. So we have to eat from not the ultra-processed food diet, to a more whole real food diet. They exercise naturally as part of their life. I met a guy at Pietro who was 95 years old.
was a shepherd who would take five miles up and they were to sheep every day. He was, you know, both upright, theorized, bullying voice, sharpness attacked 95. We still see that in America. And they had a deep sense of community. So they, as it's a belonging connection and they ate together, they celebrated together, they lived together in a beautiful way. Even if people like that, a woman named Julia, she was 100 and she said, I'm 103 months.
And she didn't have any kids, but she was living with their niece and they were taking air verage. She was still working at 100 years old, making doilies and things for weddings. And so they had a deep sense of connection belonging. So the elements of longevity are really pretty simple. It's what we eat, it's how we move, it's our connection community, it's how we deal with
Stress. I think that, you know, this guy, Silvio, I met. He was an amazing man. His family had this mountaintop kind of farm, and they had sheep and goats. And we made this beautiful dinner for us. And I said, Silvio, do you have any stress? He looked at me like, didn't really quite know what I meant. And you know stress, when things are hard or difficult. And he said, oh, yeah.
I said, what? He said, well, sometimes at night a goat will get out and I'll have to go get it. So we live in a time of chronic stress, both mental stress and environmental stresses and toxins we were talking about. And they don't have that. And we can't reproduce that exactly here, but we can learn a lot from the Blue Zones about how to create help. Well, I don't want to lose the great stories at the beginning of this because
eating cheese with worms
chickens and rabbits and grew orchards, and he made us this sort of beautiful meal. And at the end, he brought out this kind of big round thing of cheese, and basically said, you know, this is special Sardinian cheese that is made with worms. And he said, it's supposedly an aphrodisiac, and he told the story of his grandfather who had this, and said his grandmother could still enjoy him, even after he died.
I don't know. It was kind of a weird story, but it was amazing. And I ate it, and I didn't die. It was kind of weird. But they basically have these traditional food ways that we've lost. And so getting back to food in its most basic form is a pretty simple idea, but it's something we've lost. And as a result of the food industry's efforts to take control of the American kitchen, to take control of the American farm, and to disenfranchise people from their own health,
I think it's a national emergency, Corey, and I think we have to face this head on because we're just heading down a road where the burden of this is going to affect our children by living shorter, sicker lives and their parents. It's going to affect our ability to be competitive in the world because of the burden of illness. We were 4% of the world's population.
in COVID, and we were 16% of the cases in deaths. Not because we were, that had worse medical care, but because we had a pre-inflamed sick population that was so susceptible to the virus when they got it. Four percent of the population, 16% of the cases in deaths, of the cases in deaths. So I want to pull back because there's something we're not trying to do that you're not trying to do, which is
This isn't about shaming people for their food choices. This isn't about shudding all over people. You should do this, you should do that. Because I think when people read books, they start to feel bad about themselves, their decisions they're trying to make. What I love about you and why you've been such a great ally and inspiration is you understand that if we grew up in indigenous cultures, the African-American health versus
Black people in Africa, depending on, it can be very dramatically different if they're still eating indigenous diets. The China study showed that the Chinese were living incredibly healthy until they started shifting towards the Western diet. So what we're really trying to say is, let's take a step back and look at the broken American food system or they call the standard American diet, the sad system that has created so much illness.
because we're not morally more lacking because we're sick and unhealthy, more different than our great grandparents who were incredibly healthy. I was watching as one does Soul Train. We're gonna do a little Soul Train live. Thanks, somebody in here knows what I'm talking about. Yeah, that was a lot of time about Greg. And what stunned me when I watched Soul Train from the 1960s and 70s was how thin
and fit every woman was. I mean, in the 60s, black Americans were healthier than white Americans. Yes. And because the food systems in which black Americans were stuck in, and so suddenly we've now shifted to this system. And what you're talking about
is it is not a moral failing to be obese in America now. You are in a system that is so toxic, that is so designed for your unhealth. And what you are trying to do now leading a leader in America in is to tell the truth about this broken system and say that we collectively as a country, not only can change it,
There is a health emergency going on that we must change it. And just some data that you and I were throwing back. I'm not sure if everybody here knows that one out of every three of your tax dollars that go to the US, the federal government, is spent on healthcare. And a lot of those... 1.8 trillion dollars. Yes. And it's 40% of our total national spent on healthcare. And one out of every five dollars in our entire economy.
is going on healthcare, the overwhelming majority of that money is going to chronic diseases, the majority of which are preventable and are food related and are food related. And so now think about this with the rates of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and what you call type three diabetes, which is Alzheimer's, if you are tracing these expenditures on those, they're going up and up and up. And the pharma industry
is designing really expensive drugs. We don't have to change the food system. We don't have to change the inputs. Just pop this pill, not to secure this shot. I think I haven't watched the South Park episode on obesity. It's funny and also terrifying. But they're designing drugs.
to that we don't know what the side effects of these are. In fact, we know some of the side effects of the Alzheimer's drugs that are really expensive, that people are flocking to, not to stop Alzheimer's or slow, just to try and slow Alzheimer's. When we know that access to fresh, healthy foods
is transformative. I was, we created in Newark when I was mayor, a big, turned her entire city block into an urban farm. And I went back there with Food Inc. too, which you saw to film. And while we were filming it, African-American women were coming out and wanted to testify. One woman said that her doctor said she had incurable gut problems, that she had to be on this medication that cost $700. She had $100 copay.
So she's paying a lot of money, $100 a month to her, and $600 a month to us as taxpayers. And then she started sourcing all of her food, and her doctor said, oh, it's a miracle. You're cured after eating all this food. Another woman came to me, 80-year-old Octogenarian. We had created an Instagram account called the Octogenarian Vegan.
because she started eating all of her food and her diabetes, which she had for years and years and years, she suddenly was off. You know, this is a doctor, a functional medicine doctor, that these are not incurable problems if we change our input. So the point I want to make to you, and I hope that you'll expound upon it, is you have been focusing a lot on
Individual behavior, yes, you've definitely helped me and my individual journey as a friend. But systemic change, you're saying, has got to be made in our system. And that's where we found alliances. Can you talk about one of the systemic changes that you're trying to make at our America? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, our effort with the food fixing, I mean, is really to educate lawmakers about the problem, which they had very low awareness up. I mean, you're one of the few who really gets it in Congress.
And, you know, we're working on a number of different initiatives to help change policies that are driving the production of the wrong food and the eating of the wrong food. So, for example, we were helpful in the $20 billion that was in the Inflation Reduction Act that was to support climate-smart agriculture. We've been very aggressive in trying to work with Medicare.
To cover medically colored meals and you've introduced the bill in in the Senate and we'll slow down Let's take this pieces at a time. Let's go to food production in the United States. Yeah Our great-great-grandparents had a lot more plant and crop diversity, right? 100% Yeah, and and this was before seeds were patented for their biology to withstand this thing called Roundup and
Yeah. So what is happening to our soil and the foods that we're growing right now, this sort of, what is this monocropping, five crops that we're pouring sort of all over. Yeah, I mean, basically we have to fix our food system from the field to the fork. Right. And starting at the field is a big problem because
Commodity-based agriculture, corn wheat and soy, has been a boon to big agrochemical and agro seed companies and big food producers, but not to the farmers who are suffering, both in terms of their health and their economic welfare, and has also been extremely destructive to the ecosystem of the farm, which used to be a multi-crop, diverse
ecosystem, that now is a monocrop system that is far away to destroy the soil, the micro-rizzle fungi, the organic matter, one-third of all the carbon in the atmosphere today is from the soil. So driving climate change, the run-offs from the nitrogen fertilizer into our river rivers and lakes is called usification. It's creating dead zones the size of New Jersey, nothing against New Jersey, but it's creating dead zones the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico. There's 400 of these around the world that feed half a billion people.
the pesticides and herbicides are affecting farmers and us and affecting our health. We're seeing the inadequacy of the food that we used to grow, which was nutrient dense, and now even if you're growing eating vegetables and fruit, the nutrients aren't in the food.
Because the soil is required to extract the nutrients, when I say soil, I mean not dirt, which is just without life, but I'm talking about a robust soil ecosystem, is a symbiotic relationship between the soil, the microorganisms soil, the microisins of fungi, and the plants and humans. And so we're seeing different drops in mineral levels and protein levels and vitamin levels in our food. Even if we're eating broccoli today, it's not the broccoli we ate 50 years ago.
So let me be your co-commentary and go into a few things he said, which to me should sober all of us. The first is American farmers are in a system that does not work. We are losing thousands and thousands of American farmers who are going out of business or killing themselves. Or their suicide rates are three-time higher than ours.
I visited with some of these farmers in the Midwest from both parties, and saw people that had their Homestead Act deed up, so five generations of farmers, the economics worked, and now it's to them, and the economics no longer work. Because you have this monopolization in the food system, where now all of the input companies are consolidated, Monsanto now bear
jacking up the prices of the inputs. Farmers used to harvest their own seeds and re-put them in. Now they've been patented, they're being sold, round up resistance, so you have to buy these chemicals. And this way of farming, which we are subsidizing, our Department of Agriculture was built around it, is unsustainable for the farmers' economics. It's one farmer said to me, oh, my costs have gone up. I used to have five people to sell the competing for my goods. Now it's one or two companies, because you know,
Big food is consolidated into a handful of companies and they're being driven to their share of the consumer dollar has gone down something like 40% in the last few decades. And so they're shrinking abilities to make it. So the farmers are suffering and going out of business at tough numbers.
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Our soil is a crisis in our country. We are killing our soil. Soil runoff is horrible. As you said, it's killing our ecology, seeping into and poisoning groundwater with all these chemicals, falling into our rivers and streams, down the Mississippi River into the biggest dead zone that's the size of two road islands. Why are you picking on New Jersey?
So we are killing our ecology and climate change, which all of these people who are in the climate movement want to talk about oil and gas companies, not enough people are talking about the food system and the way we're doing it. But one thing, arguably the biggest contributor to climate change.
We have to deal with fossil fuels and decarbonize. We also have to deal with our agricultural system. And that's just for the commodity crops you're talking about, not to meant the perversion of how our grandparents used to raise cattle, raised pigs, used to raise chicken, which happened with these small handful of companies, Tyson's, JB,
You name it, they've started to do these massive factory farming operations, which are also creating incredibly horrible run-offs in these CAFOs, where you go to places like Duplin County, North Carolina and see lagoons of pig feces. And the health consequences for the people around that are horrible, like asthma and respiratory diseases and the kids are affected.
I've sat with those families and crowded black churches off their low income minority neighborhoods so we could have our cheap bacon. We actually didn't even say that because these places like Smithfield just ship it all to China. But the horrific lives of the people that live in these low income areas that deal with all this runoff and especially when storms come through, they just pick up all that fees and polluting water.
I was in Iowa when campaigning for president and the people were telling me I can't fish out of my creek anymore, can't drink the water out of my well. And what most Americans don't realize is we are subsidizing that system as it is to produce those handful of commodity crops. Again, you may be surprised by this data point.
but less than 10% about 7% of our ag subsidies. Go to the foods that functional medicine doctors tell us the majority of what we should eat. I mean, 5% of the corn is grown is actually eating this corn. Most of us turn into highly deconstructed science ingredients that are reassembled into food-like substances or that are used for oil or, I mean,
soybean oil, corn oil, high fructose corn syrup. This is what we're making cheaper. And so you said from farm to fork, what that means for us in our communities is we could go to a DC corner grocery store and find a Twinkie product.
Because all of those things we just said are being subsidized in that scientifically engineered product to engineer for addiction. They know how our brains work. You're going to pay less for more for an apple than you will for a Twinkie problem. So now you're a consumer and you're not paying the true cost. We have decided as a society that we're going to drive down the cost of the foods that make us most sick and drive up the costs.
for the foods that we need. So you can get a happy meal or whatever, McDonald's needs a dollar meals. All that is deeply subsidized. Then we pay for it again on the Medicaid Medicare costs. And you go down the street and try to get a bucket of salad and it costs 15 bucks.
And so we have created a system where everyone is losing. Environment is losing, archeology is losing, animals are losing, and the horrific ways that they're being raised. Farmers are losing, and end consumers are losing, and you all are paying.
a third of his tax revenue going with the chronic disease, the consequences of our food system, right? Only people are winning is these large multinational corporations that are consolidating and have near monopolistic power. And then what do they do when we walk in for the consumer that has heard Dr. Hi, I was teasing him that I listened to so many of his podcasts. I've gone to bed with him, not in a literal way.
I put him to sleep every night. I just lie him next to me and he foods me off. It's very intimate, my friend. It's very intimate. Listen to his podcast. You have amazing guests that are extraordinary, but the people that are really losing in this country right now are the people that want to make healthy choices, but then they walk into the store, really charged up for looking at, and they find packaging
and things that literally are designed to confuse them or lie to them. First of all, the pictures of the beautiful cows or the beautiful pastoral views don't show what it's like, really, CAFOs and all of that. You don't know what chemicals that are banned in Europe that are actually in that food. And the package labeling as we were talking maybe can expand on that is confusing as hell.
Yeah, I mean, all you said is so important, because really, the whole system wasn't originally designed to make a sick and run the environment. But it's unintended consequences of food policies that were set in place, you know, 50, 70 years ago, and that haven't been reformed and updated. And that's really, you know, what has to happen. And that's happened because, you know, as you said, we're seeing this natural emergency and this crisis across the whole spectrum of society and government.
And to me, it's such an urgency that we have to hit it head on. And I don't think the food companies now that they have what they have are willing to easily let go of it. They need the government to kind of step in. And one of the ways that has been effective in other countries is food labeling.
You know, we don't want to be the nanny state. We don't want to tell people what to do. But we want to inform people. We want to give them choices. We want to educate them about what's good and not good for them. Now, there's a lot of debate about what is good and not good and the food industry will try to confuse you and say we don't have the data. I mean, it's pretty frightening how the food industry gets in the weeds and all this. But we actually now have the ability to
label foods with warning labels like they do in South America, like they do in Europe, like they do in Canada, that are clear and understandable. Unless you have a PhD in nutrition, it's hard to understand a nutrition facts label. I mean, if I said there's 39 grams of
of sugar in a food. I would ask, how many of you know how many teaspoons that is? Well, maybe if you listen to me on the podcast, you might know, but let's be able to know my clue. Like someone said, I was on the Today Show this morning and the woman said, yeah, my daughter was having like a sports drink and had 50 grams of sugar. I said, yeah, that's like more than
12 teaspoons of sugar in a drink, and no idea they're eating that. And so, the fluency is very active in trying to block any reform on food labeling. But imagine having a front of package labeling, saying, this is good for you, this is bad for you. Like, if they have another country like red is bad for you, yellow, eat with caution, green is good for you. Anybody can understand that.
But to look at a food label now or an ingredient list, it's just very confusing. And so we need to make it simple for people to make the right choices. And when they've done that in these countries, they've seen a dramatic change in the health of the population, in what people buy, and they've actually been able to make a dent in the obesity and chronic disease crisis. And what I love about you, and this is how I feel, too, is I don't want to take away by anybody's freedom.
I know what it feels like to come home from a really hard day. You don't have any of those in an easy place to work like the US Senate. Yeah. Right when it gets along. Yes. Party on the harmonious. I know it is like to come home tired. Rest after banging your head against implacable walls of resistance. And all I want to do is get into this central embrace of my two best friends Ben and Jerry. I want that freedom. I don't want somebody to take away that freedom from me.
I know my friends are hogging in DOS. Your friends are hogging in DOS. You always like those international times. But I want that freedom. But I don't want the government to subsidize. Yeah.
My, my, subsidize that, especially when they're not subsidizing fruits and vegetables. And I'll tell you this, how would we feel if we were subsidizing alcohol? Yeah. Or subsidizing marijuana, subsidizing tobacco. Or subsidizing tobacco. We are. Yes. Still. Yes. And so what my point is, is we believe in freedom, but there's two types of freedom. Freedom of choice. I never want to be the person taking in the person baking cheeseburger and milkshake out of your hand. I don't want to be that guy, but I want freedom to know
as well. Freedom to know what's in your foods. And their system of food packaging right now is designed to confuse you. For example, I know consumers who look at the ingredients. I do. Let me look at the ingredients. And they're looking for sugar and it's way down. Well, it's not really way down on the list.
regularly, routinely, what food companies do, which they don't do overseas. They don't allow it. They take, they decide, okay, well, we're gonna put seven different types of sugar into this product or five or four different types of sugar in this product. So it doesn't show up as the number one ingredient. So consumers will look at it and say, oh, well, the number one ingredient is wheat or what have you. That's not bad for you. They try to intentionally confuse the consumers. And you and I have been saying that the FDA, which does so much,
drug trials, studies, the FDA, the Federal Food and Drug Administration, there's a lot on the D.
But we believe they should put the F back in the FDA and start focusing on foods and what they're doing to us because there are chemicals that we've put, dies and more chemicals that are banned in other countries that we allow freely into our food system that are having untold, I've listened to your podcast a lot and read your books about how important we're realizing the microbiome is and some of these things were pouring into our guts.
They really have effect on our mental health, our physical health, as well as our longevity. And 22 pounds a year of additives are consumed by people who eat the average American diet.
22 pounds. So they're like little micro ingredients we're eating. They're pounds. If you're eating 60% of your diet is ultra-processed food, it's 22 pounds. So those have horrible consequences for your gut microbiome, for driving inflammation, for toxicities around cancer. And there's things like mutilated hydroxyl to tell you, which you wouldn't have in your cupboard and sprinkle on your salad, but it's in your food. And if we took the blood of anybody in here,
Would there anybody that would not have glyphosate in there? No. I mean, I try to eat healthy. I mean, I don't always have the capacity to choose everything I'm eating because I travel. But, you know, 80% of Americans have glyphosate in their urine.
80% and I tested mine as well and I have it too and I'm like, you know, we're all, glyphosate is a known carcinogen, it's a microbiome destroyer, it has generational effects on our epigenome, which causes transgenerational changes in kidney issues and cancer. And tumors don't know, they're not, they don't know, and nobody else, I mean, like,
I mean, we're I think the only country other than I think Syria that doesn't allow GMO labeling. There was an act in Congress that was designed to allow for GMO labeling. It was euphemously called the Dark Act, denying America is the right to know. And the food industry spent 192 million dollars lobbying Congress over this one bill, right?
And Syria and the US are the only countries in Russia and China which are not known for their openness are actually labeling GMOs. And I'm glad you said that because it's the end before I want to get really quickly and give the good news because I think we're telling the dark story right now. But again, we in Congress, I always say after perhaps the defense industrial complex, the next most powerful lobby
Because the food ag lobby is bigger than the defense lobby. And it gives to both sides of the political aisle, protecting a system that is bankrupt because it's hurting all of the people that we went through from the farmers themselves to the end users. We privatized the profits and socialized the costs. So the taxpayers are left holding the bag and the bill. And then it's a change. The taxpayers are subsidizing the things that make us sick.
and then paying for the incredible medical costs. And many Americans feel lost because they live in communities where just finding access to healthy, fresh food. And the very farm system that farmers want when we were able to make some changes and get climate-smart farm practices through Joe Biden and Congress' Inflation Reduction Act, billions of dollars,
farmers flocking to that money because they want to raise organic. They want to do cover crops. They want to do no-till farming. They want to take on practices because at the end of the day, farmers are good stewards of the land. But if they feel like they're in the system, where that's the only thing they know and the incentives are to do these practices, they're going to continue to do those practices. And the good news, which I want to shift to before we open this up for some questions and other discussion, the good news is we believe
that the more number one we can educate the public about this, the more pressure we're going to create, because change doesn't come from Washington. It comes to Washington. By an informed public that demands suffrage, that demands civil rights, that demands Medicare, that demands organizing rights, all of these things that changes that we've been able to make, even the EPA and the laws of our clean water and clean air happen because of public awareness, be raised in demands.
And so you believe that I share this belief that there are shifts that we could be making in our systems to make them more benefit farmers to break up these big monopolies that are dominating it by actually enforcing antitrust law, but start to put the incentives in the right places to produce the outcome. So there is more of a flourish in abundance.
of healthy foods and more informed consumers about the foods that aren't healthy for us. You're okay to choose them, but you should see clearly on labels, should not have deceptivity, should have a transparency as well. Yeah, I mean, ultra-processed food and sugar in your tobacco. I mean, when you look at the way the tobacco industry was, they were denying the harmful health effects of it, they were denying the addictiveness of it. And, you know, we know from the Yale Food Addiction Scale,
that's been researched across the globe, the 14% of the global population is technically addicted to food. And 12% of kids. And alcoholism is 14%. So we really in a situation where we have to hit this head on and we have to learn how to start to incentivize the right behaviors by educating consumers, by providing the right labeling. Food marketing is another thing. I mean, we allow marketing to our children
and also targeting African Americans and Hispanics that is driving their disease rates through the roof. I mean, childhood obesity is now at 40%, over 25% of kids are overweight, it's 40%, obesity is around 25%. And if we were having a foreign nation due to our kids what we're doing, we would go to war to protect them, but we're doing it. And we know that, for example, in Chile, where they eliminated all junk food advertising,
on all medium between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. So the kids wouldn't see it. They eliminated all the cartoon characters. There's no Tony the Tiger anymore, or the down in the Froot Loops guy, whatever that is. Those don't exist, and the serial packaging, and they have the warning labels, and that education of consumers and that. So you're telling me that GMO frosted glyphosate full wheat
Covered in sugar is just not, it's not a healthy, no? Well, you know, maybe if you're a Martian, I don't know. But it's definitely not very humans. And it's, you know, it's tragic what's happening to our children. And so at the very least, we should be able to protect our children and have child friendly labeling. And as we have the military come into us and tell us that 70% of American youth right now can't qualify for military service.
I mean 70% of American youth can't qualify for military. I mean the irony is that the school lunch program was developed because the recruits in World War II were malnourished and the federal government put in the school lunch program. Now that same program is causing our kids to be sick and overweight and 70% don't qualify. What's even scarier is that of the evacuations from Afghanistan and Iraq during those wars,
72% were for obesity-related injuries, not for war injuries. Like, related to obesity-related causes. And this is not my opinion. This is from military readiness as a group of retired adults in general who made these reports. And so we're spreading out, you and I are for supporting a lot of things.
which I just want to make people aware. Those women that came to me at that incredible urban farm, they were benefiting from the Gusnip program, which means that if you are taking what's used to be called food stamps to a, your staff benefits to a farmer's market, you can get twice the, everything doubles. And I was blown away what $5 could buy at this farmer's market. We're supporting the climate smart farming practices and more working in tension with
Farmers like the farmers union and others trying to transform American farmers bringing it back to our heritage. We're doing a lot to try to force front-of-life label packaging create targets to lower sugars and and And salt in our in industry. This is a lot of very good that medically tailored meals medically telling education for doctors and change the Medicare reimbursement. Yes, because you know
For every dollar we spend on food, we're spending $3 in collateral damage. And what the price we pay at the checkout counter is not the true cost of the food. The Rockefeller Foundation had a great report on this. And it was documenting that not only the harmful health effects, but the effects on the land and the ecosystems and climate and the social impacts, all these things are quantifiable and they're bankrupting our country and we're not paying the cost.
from the true cost at the check-out counter. And maybe a can of Coke should be $100 and an apple should be $0.10. Well, I just want the true cost. All these people who believe in the free market stop the government subsidies and let's let the free market decide with the market itself.
Again, if you believe in Adam Smith, it's about having market information. It's about knowing. If we had that, then companies would be rushing to give consumers what they really want because the demand for healthy fresh foods every parent wants what's best. You were just stuck in Vegas. It's like a movie. You were stuck there for a while and then he made the best of it by going to City Grateful Dead.
But he had a conference in Vegas, and I'm going to use this as an example. I talked to a head of a major casino operation, a really great guy named Jim Marin. And I was complaining to him as mayor because it was a recession, and I was cutting the size of my government, finding great ways to create new efficiencies. But the two costs I couldn't cover were pension costs and health care costs. And so I was complaining to him, he goes, Corey.
I figured out my healthcare costs. And I thought, I don't know. Did you get a new plan? Did you manage this? It's like us during the presidential debate when I ran for president, all these people on the debate stage arguing over how are we going to provide healthcare in America? Medicare for all. Oh, we should do this. We should nobody. Everybody's talking about how to mop up the floor. Nobody was talking to have to turn off this thing, which is a real conversation we should be having in our presidential debates and more. But what was amazing about this corporate leader
was that he said, Corey, I couldn't figure out this problem. Then I went into my cafeteria that fed thousands of my employees. And I see deep fryers and big chuggery buns and all of this stuff. And I was kind of horrified. And he ripped it all out. And he said this union and we're like ready to like strike on him because they took away all this great food. But he hired the best chefs, come in and cook healthy, nutritious food and a space for my cookbook.
Yeah, I looked at some of this stuff and I think he would love this. And it was amazing. Suddenly his employees shifted from ready to protest him to just loving it even more and then asking him, well, the single mother who works two shifts at the Blackjack table.
goes home, like every pressure that mothers did, like my family did, and runs through the drive-through on the way home. So they said, well, maybe I could take some of this food home. So he let them. And he said, my cost curve started to bed. That's right. He got the double bottom line. He got to save money for his company. But his employees were healthier, had better focus, concentration, all of these health benefits that made them happier and better and more effective.
If they're workforce not to mention it their family well, we're America Inc right now and we're supplying all cheap Foods that are making us sick and the costs are going up We should figure out ways to shift and so the reason why I enjoyed reading your cookbook is two things one is you tell a beautiful story and you let us as consumers know that These recipes are so easy even a senator can make them
But what's more importantly is it's part me, if I put your books up here, of your incredible passion, which I love and you've helped my life, is that you believe that Americans are not born to suffer, that they were born to be healthy and vibrant and thriving.
You've seen this from your examinations of you can take guys at major prisons and jails. Give them access to fresh and healthy food. And instances of violence go down. And their success rates go up all the way to our children who give it fresh healthy foods. Their scores go up. But more importantly, at a time that we're suffering a crisis, not just in physical health, but the anxiety.
It's something people want to talk about, right? I mean, the obesity, diabetes, people get it. People don't realize that this food that we're producing in America is causing a mental health crisis. And, you know, when you look at the cost burden of all chronic disease,
both the terms of direct Kafka costs and also indirect costs. Depression and mental illness is number one. It causes people to be disabled, the loss of quality of life years, and the costs are staggering. And we see the disconnect in the brain between
the limbic part of the brain and the frontal brain, the old reptile lizard brain and the adult in the room, which is the frontal lobe. And neuro inflammation is now well understood phenomena that disconnects the adult in the room from the crazy person in the brain, right? And, and that neuro inflammation is caused by our ultra processed food and by our diet. And that's, that's something that we haven't really talked about is just take it around your. Yes.
Yeah, I think people haven't realized that the disconnect in the mental health crisis by not talking about food, because food is one of the biggest drivers of depression, anxiety, conflict, aggressiveness, divisiveness, all the things we're seeing there in our society, the polarization, and the food system
inadvertently has led to this not only obesity and diabetes crisis, but a crisis of mental health. And it's something that we know can be fixed through fixing the metabolic dysfunctions in the brain. Oh, right. They'll never invite me back to sixth and I, if I don't. And so there's two microphones here. While you all, whoever questions, maybe you can come up here and ask the question. And what I'm going to do, though, is first is we have a virtual audience watching as well. And I'm going to answer some of these questions
And I think that this first one from Susan B. in Virginia, I doesn't say it here, but I imagine Susan B. in Virginia wishes she lived in New Jersey. Do you work specifically? Yeah, very specific. I could tell I can send. Do you? It's the Garden State. You would love, that must be Dr. Hyman's favorite state. I live in New Jersey. The Garden State. We grow great things in our Garden State.
The fourth largest producer of eggplant in America, top that. Do you recommend a chewable probiotic to strengthen your oral microbiome? I didn't know there was an oral biome. I didn't know that. If so, which do I look for when choosing a product?
Well, that's a great, very specific question. And the truth is that the microbiome, which is there's some total of all the bugs in us and on us, on our skin and our mouth and our respiratory tract and our guts, all has a huge role in our health. And we know that the oral microbiome is highly influencing our risk of dementia.
and our risk of heart disease. Really? And obesity, yeah. And then having bad teeth and bad gums is a huge risk factor for inflammation throughout the body, which is one of the biggest drivers of all these conditions. So having bad teeth is a real problem. In fact, I was at a conference recently and they were listening from the 1600s. What were the major cause of death? And one of the major cause of death was bad teeth. Wow. One of my friends used to say death enters through the gums. Yeah. So keeping your gums healthy in your mouth or microbiome healthy is important.
And oral probiotics can be helpful. So I don't have a big opinion about particular one, but taking probiotics and chewable probiotics are great. So when I go to the store, like five years, they're going to be like, choose Riggles, the oral probiotic... Traveling with a lot of sugar and a lot of sugar.
All right. What did Sarah Pound say? You put a lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. It's still a pig. We're going to get to her one novel finally. She was way first. We're going to get to her, but I'm going to ask before we go to you, one more of the, I want to make sure the virtual people know that we read their comments and their questions. This was a tough one.
I face it every day as one of the few, on the black sheep of the family, the vegan amongst us. What advice do you have to navigate differences, food and diet choices within a family? And when some family members see choices as being picky or fancy rather than health driven.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think it should be a choice between healthy eating and delicious eating. I think that's a false dichotomy. Right. The thing that you have to suffer and starve and eat like cardboard in order to actually be healthy is a huge myth. And it's unfortunate myth because
It's promulgated by the food industry that is encouraging us to indulge and pleasure ourselves. In fact, the food industry was just called out for hiring all these nutritionist and dieticians to go online and talk about why people should just indulge their
their cravings that should not restrict their diets and should eat as much as they want and should have all these indulgent foods. And it was the expose, it was the Washington Post. And it was, it was frightening, like 40% of the nutritionists on social media are paid by the food industry to give misinformation about what they're eating. And a lot of these studies that come out that says sugar is the new, whatever, or
what are paid for by the food industry? Yeah. I mean, in all the recommendations, I mean, the American Diabetes Association was just sued by their head nutritionist because they fired her because she wouldn't endorse the foods that they were recommending. And $134 million of their budget is given by the pharma industry at a huge portion by the food industry. And so they're not incentivized to actually do the right thing. And many of these associations have been caught tonight. I do tell that in my book. But the truth is, if you have a family
Get in the kitchen together. Go shopping together. Go to the forest parkers. Go to people like and make delicious versions of what you like. A lot of the recipes in the book and the cookbook are indulged in recipes, but they're made with helpful ingredients. And they contain good and they are good for you. So you can love food that loves you back. Yes, oh my gosh. Okay, we're going to go to the first person. Introduce yourself and tell people what your relationship to New Jersey is. I mean, I tell people what your question is.
Actually, well first before I say anything I think very speak for everyone. Can you get closer to Mike? Yes
I think I speak for everyone here. Thank you for your unwavering support for Israel and your fight against anti-Semitism It's really important and off topic, but thank you. Thank you Also, Cory's an honorary Jew. Yeah My connection to New Jersey is you were the one who helped me decide to use a wheelchair because I
on my Amtrak train home in 2008 from New Jersey. I only had a cane and I felt flat in your lap face first. And I was like, it's time. So thank you, New Jersey. You're the one person that has ever fallen for me. I will fall as many times as you would like for you. Thank you very much.
Um, my question is is that, um, it's hard to get a lot of this information. I read last week about a study came out that the reason there's double colon cancer in young adults is because of what we eat. Yeah, but it's hard to get the information. So thank you Cleveland Clinic. Thank you Mayo Hopkins.
But the reason I'm understanding that a lot of the information is it public is because all these food studies are funded by Big Pharma. So they want to hide it as much as possible. And so between Big Pharma and food deserts and the rising price of farmland and how people like Bill Gates own it all.
Um, what, how is it that we could even attend to start this fight because it looks like we're already starting at such a deficit? Yeah. And my other question is, I can't believe I'm saying this. Could we model things after the soda industry? Like now they're saying there's a lot of calories by one of our mini ones and they clearly label like zero calories on the front of it. Like how much could we learn from Coke and Pepsi?
I don't know, it's a hard one. I know, I feel ridiculous saying that. No, no, no, that's good. Go ahead. Dr. I mean, I think the policies that we have to implement are ones that help to really hit this straight on. And one of the big challenges is that there's been a lack of funding for nutrition. And the National Institute of Health
You know, they have all the institutes of diseases. They don't have a national institute of health. They're not studying health. And so you study diabetes or heart disease or Alzheimer's. They're all downstream. And there's no national institute of nutrition, which we should have. And many other countries have. The food industry spends $12 billion.
A year, 12 times as much money as the federal government and for land to be on research on food. So when you look at the data as a result of these studies, they're eight to 50 times more likely to show a positive benefit for their particular product. So for example, there's a study in, I think, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that artificial sweeteners are fine and they're not harmful for you. And you know, it was funded by the American Beverage Association.
So, you know, basically science has been bought and paid for, and we think we're gearing independent science, and that's why consumers are so confused, because they're hearing all kinds of things that are not making sense, and the food industry is attempting to, on purpose, confound and confuse the American public. And through many channels, right, through their efforts on co-opting professional associations like the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association, 40% of the Academy Nutrition Dietetics budget come from the food industry.
You have social groups like Hispanic Federation or the NAACP funded by Coke and Pepsi and the food industry. So they all not oppose policies like, you know, they'll not support policies like soda tax, for example. They have social, they have some front groups.
like the American Council on Science and Health, and says pesticides, tobacco, and high fructose corn syrup are all good for you. And just one thing after the other, and they hijacked science in scientific community. They hijacked the government through intensive lobbying. So they've got this covered. And it's not a kind of random, much of different things that are happening. It's a cohesive strategy. And I think if you had discovered, you'd find out. And the American Diabetes Association was recently sued, and they settled with the former nutrition director,
Without going to court because they didn't want discovery because if they had discovery means all their their kind of dealings with the furniture would be exposed So I think I think we have as a government have to hold these professional associations to account We have to hold sites to account. We have to fund the right sites and we have to know be You know the keepers in the integrity right now we have government buy the corporations for the corporations of the corporations no longer Buy the people for the people of the people and then we need to go back to that. It's this gentleman here
Thank you all both for being here. Henry Lewis of Richmond, Virginia. I'm a fan of both of you. As someone with a graduate degree in nutrition, and I also work in medical education, one of the things that annoys me the most is going to the doctor and hearing bad nutrition advice or bad nutrition advice as someone who works in MedEd and has a nutrition. God, you're getting any nutrition advice as a miracle, but anyway. Yeah.
So what are we doing to educate the new generation of doctors, whether it's through residency, medical school, as well as current practice? It's one of the things we're working on. So there's $17 billion that the federal government spends for graduate medical education to fund residency as an internship. There's no requirements for how those dollars are used or any, you know, a mandate, for example, for nutrition education as part of that.
that changing. So we've been made progress on that front to actually make those residency and fellowship programs include nutrition education. We're also working with the Association of Medical Schools who are now coming along and going to start including nutrition education. And doctors have to learn about this. The number one killer in the world is food. It kills 11 million people conservatively every year more than tobacco and more than all the wars and weapons and everything else combined.
And yet, doctors learn nothing about nutrition, which is the biggest killer and the biggest cause of all the diseases that their patients are coming in with. That needs to change. My daughter's in medical school now, and she's got nothing. I was like, did you learn about nutrition? Yeah, well, we learned about amino acids and fatty acids and carbohydrates. What are you going to tell your patient to have for lunch? You know, ass off.
Thank you. So yes, we're working on nutrition education bills and multiple centers and Congressmen are working on on reforming medical education as well. So it's happening. This part of the initiative is working on, but the food fix. I'm going to go to the gentleman behind here. I know they came up early, then I'm going to go to you if you don't mind. Sir.
I thank you both for your talk. I'm William, based in Maryland. So I have a good friend who's currently dealing with some obesity issues. And he's like a PhD student, which means he's super busy and doesn't have too much money to buy like healthy meals. And every day, it was not every day. Every week he's complaining to me that I wish I'd come by more broccoli or salad, but the situation is I'm stuck with a frozen pizza every week.
It's cheaper and it's faster to make. So if you were in my situation, what advice would you give to me? Yeah, I think this is a really common belief that it's more expensive. It takes too much time and it's too difficult to eat real food. And I was part of a movie called set up 10 years ago, which talked about childhood obesity and the food industry.
And as part of that movie, I went to work with a family in South Carolina, easily South Carolina, which is one of the worst food deserts in America. There's something called the retail food environment index. How many fast food and, you know, bodegas are there to a healthy grocery store. So it's like 10 to 1 there.
The family was a family of five, been trailer on food stamps and disability. The father was 42 already on dialysis from diabetes from kidney failure. The mother was 100 plus pounds overweight. The son was, you know, 50% body fat at 16, practically diabetic. Should be like 10 to 20%. And, you know, they lived on $1,000 a month in food stamps and disability payments.
And I'd rather give them a lecture. I basically went to their house, went shopping and got simple ingredients, real food. They were inexpensive, and it was from a guidebook called Good Food on a Tight Budget from the Environmental Working Group. How to eat food that's good for you, good for the planet, and good for your wallet.
Rather than giving a lecture, I just said let's cook together and they've never cooked a real food their life They were trying to eat low-fat this and you know healthy that with all the Basically garbage marketing that's on most of our food that makes it look good, right? Like you said they know nice pictures of the farms and the pastures where all examples come from Kefos Well, my rule is if it has a health cream on the label, it's bad for you. If it's gluten-free potato chips, it's bad for you, right?
And if it says health food, you're like, oh, yeah, if it's got a health claim, it's definitely bad for you. Low fat, low high fiber, this stuff. It just means they're kind of tweaking the ingredients to make some kind of health claim, and it's generally highly processed food. So we made the simple meal. I told him how to pilt garlic. I showed him how to chop vegetables. I showed him how to stir fry.
thing, we made turkey chili, we made just simple foods, salad with regular vegetable salad and some olive oil and vinegar dressing, not dressing, it was filled with high fructose corn syrup and refined oils and all kinds of thickeners and mulsifers that were really bad for them. And I said, look, you know,
You can do this. Here's this guidebook. Here's one of my older cookbooks. And I'm like, I don't know if this is going to work. And they didn't have cutting boards. They didn't have knives. I said, OK, well, I flew back on the plane. I only went on Amazon. I ordered them cutting board to knife, shipped to their house.
The week later, the mother texted me, she says, we lost 18 pounds of family, we're doing it. A year later, they lost 200 pounds of family. The father lost 45, got a new kidney. The mother lost 100 pounds. The son lost 50, then went to work at Bojangles, because there was only place to work down in the south, gained it all back, because it was like putting an alcoholic to work in a bar. Eventually, he got his act together, called me up, and said, I really want to get healthy again.
I said, OK, let's do it. And I guided him. He lost 132 pounds. He was the first kid in his family to go to college. And he asked me for a letter of recommendation for medical school. And now he's a doctor. Wow. So I don't believe the propaganda from the food industry that it takes too much time is difficult and it's expensive.
Yeah, you're not gonna have a $70 grass fed ribeye steak, but there are cheaper cuts of meat cheaper vegetables cheaper you know beans and grains and cheaper nuts and seeds and there's things you can get through outlets and Costco's and big big box stores the trader Joe so you can actually eat well for less and the truth is the cost to you is is Is such a benefit or the benefit it's you is so high if you if you look at we were talking about before you know
Basically, the amount of disability and brain fog and feeling like crap, I call it FLC syndrome when you feel like crap, is massive. And presenteism is a huge problem globally with these two trillion dollars a year from people being at the job, but not on the job.
And so we have to understand that our all-well being, our energy, our focus, our productivity, our happiness, our joy, all depends on the food we eat. And it's good for us, but it's also good for our families and for our communities and for our nation. And so I feel like I'm a kind of a lone voice of the wilderness, but this is really a national emergency at every level, from national security to our ability to produce the food we need to produce, to our ability to deal with the economic burden of it,
the academic crisis in our children. I mean, it's just one thing after the other. It's all connected by the food. Powerful. Thank you. Powerful. Yes, please. Hi. So I'm actually a physician and a neurologist and I now work at NIH. We do have an office of nutrition. It's tiny and needs better fun.
But that wasn't my question. I just had to throw a throw at it in there. But I think the only time that any national incident health strategy that was put out by Francis Collins, the only time food was mentioned was as part of the sentence included the food and drug administration. So it's not a problem. I will not disagree with you on that. I agree. Look, I was curious. You're thinking about these new GLP drugs that are out there, the anti obesity drugs. I hear you mentioned those. I was just wondering what you're
Yeah, I am wondering that too. Thank you for the question. Must be from New Jersey. What about the new drugs? Listen, we're in a crisis and people are desperate. And, you know, if you haven't seen the South Park movie about obesity, you should watch it.
It basically is it an episode or is it a new movie? Well, it's like an hour-long episode, maybe. I don't know. I don't really watch it that often, but somebody said it to me to watch. And it basically shows these sort of suburban moms who become terrorists because the supply of those epic
and they literally are robbing pharmacies, and they're, you know, like, like, and Cartman is basically trying to get ozemic for himself, and his friends have a chemistry lab where they're making a kind of a compounded version, and they, these, since the birth of moms attacked them with, you know, mass sod and guns, and they're, they're midriff showing, because they all want to, like, how skinny they are. And it's kind of funny, but it's a problem. I think, for some people, these drugs can be very helpful and very effective.
I think, you know, when you look at scaling this up, the entire Medicare Part V, which is our drug benefit program, is $145 billion. If just the obese, not the overweight, if just the obese Medicare patients got the drug, it would cost $245 billion, which would basically
dwarf the expenditures of all drugs for all Medicare right now. So it's not really a sustainable solution. You have to price and come down and maybe that'll happen and yes in Canada and in Europe and Germany they're like instead of $1,300 a month, it's like $100 or $200. And so these drugs can have a place, but it kind of misses the point, which is why are we obese in the first place? It's not those epic deficiency, right?
It's our toxic food system and we have to deal with the reality of where people are and some people have made benefit from these drugs. We also have to deal with the reality of our food system. So both have to be dealt with. Emmys can have long-term consequences that we're just learning about. So, you know, there was a great article in the journal that came out years ago that said, be sure to use new drugs as soon as they come out of the market before the side effects develop.
Right? So just wait a few years. You're going to see bowel obstruction, pancreatitis, and a bunch of other issues, muscle loss, wasting, regaining weight. So I think they're not a panacea and they're not risk-free, but I think they can be used effectively in some patients. I think this is going to be, that was our last question, because I think that's what you're announcing. Oh, I was going to say, yes, we're running short on time. So if the three people standing can please keep their questions super brief and we'll take all three questions and then give you the last words. I'll be brief. I'll be brief.
But why don't we get them all out and then we'll answer them all at the end. Oh, I'm not sure my memory is that good. I have Alzheimer's. I have a pen and I will take notes as people put the book. One, two, three. Hi, my name is Vadim Jitinkoff. I'm from Arlington, Virginia. And right now... Is that a suburb of New Jersey? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And right now I'm getting my NP degree and I was wondering how does one become a functional medicine practitioner?
Is there a program that you would recommend or things like that? And then kind of a segue of that question, how does one become an activist to raise that awareness in the public that we can change the laws and change the system and make better awareness? The gentleman here, sir.
My name is Daniel. So this is for Senator Booker. How do you justify incorporating meat into the diet with the negative health environment and ethical consequence? He's asking me or he's asking me. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hold on. As a vegan, I'm dying to hear his answer. Go ahead.
Hi everyone, I'm Anna Irani. I also work at NIH and Human Resources. If there were three things you could get every American to do like this week, I'd be curious what those are. Three things? This is such a big problem and there's so many things to be done, but I was wondering if you would have us focus as a public, what would those things be?
Yeah, so I'm going to start with the first question. How to become a functional medicine physician? Well, I remember the questions, actually. Oh, you do. OK. Let's see how I do. OK. I wish you would ask that question for a guy who couldn't pass organic chemistry. He wanted to be a doctor. He had to be a senator. So thank you, by the way, for being in the medical field and caring about these issues and being an advocate for transformation.
As a physician, you're well trained in basic science, but we don't learn about the science of health. And the Institute for Functional Medicine, where I've been chairman of the board, I've been at the faculty for 20 years, 25 years, is a great organization that trains practitioners in functional medicine. And you can go to ifm.org, it's a nonprofit. There's training curriculum, they're online, they're great. As far as being an advocate goes, I think we all can do our part where we feel called to do it.
And it may be something as simple as, you know, composting your food, or maybe something as big as, you know, being an activist in Washington. You know, never underestimate Margarita. There's never estimate the power of a small group of highly committed people that change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has. So people can make a difference. If you want to learn more, go to foodfix.org.
There's a guide on there called the Food Fix Action Guide, or maybe you can go to foodfix.com, or foodfixbook.com, and the action guide is on there. And it's basically a 23 page guide on what you can do individually, what you can do professionally, what you can do as a philanthropist, as a business, as an advocate, what policymakers can do. So what has to happen across the board to actually drive the changes we need to see? And then the only thing I would add to that is just an activism. I've learned that one of really important definitions of leadership
is not how many people you can get to follow you, but how many people you can get to see that they are leaders themselves. So ignite other people. There are a lot of goodwill people that just don't know yet. That's why I gave your book, Food Fix, to other people I knew, because I knew they were innately activist, but once they had the information, they would be out there telling the being truth tellers as well. So share the information, get other people to join this movement as leaders as well. And the vegan question is an important question.
Yeah, I think about 2% of the American population is being in. Mighty 2%, mighty 2%, very loud 2%. Yeah. And I'm not opposed to it. I think there's many ways to eat healthfully. I think it's hard to do it to get the nutritional density you need. But you can. And I think you have to do it smartly. And you have to not rely on a lot of what I call vegan junk food, which is also a highly processed refined carbohydrates and starches, which is kind of often the go-to.
In terms of the issue of animal and plant and humans in the whole ecosystem, 100% how we're raising animals now is criminal. It's criminal for the animals, for the earth, the ecosystem and the climate, and for human health. So there's no argument those. There should be ban and they should be stopped, period.
That doesn't mean that animals integrated into a regenerative agricultural system are bad. In fact, they can be extremely effective, even if you don't eat them. And I recently visited a farm, a ranch actually in Texas, which is called Rome Ranch, and basically a young couple bought 1,000 acres right next to all the other cattle ranches, and they decided to raise bison.
and they did it in a regenerative way with no tail, with allowing just the animals to do their thing, and not really put adding feed or, you know, they had water. And they found that they were able to restore the ecosystem in such a way that they were at 6% organic matter into the soil in just a few years. For every 1% of the organic matter,
The soil holds 25,000 gallons of water. The farmers, I mean, the ranchers right next to them. You can see this because they were, you know, the fences were suffering a drought. They had to sell off all their cattle. They couldn't raise animals anymore. And meanwhile, this bison ranch was thriving. Wild animals were coming back. Wild animals were coming back. They had.
Multi species on the on the farm the soil matter was increasing organic matter all all these things were happening and they are creating Incredibly helpful source of food, which is very nutrient dense and I'll you know I think you know eating a were generally raised bison versus a kafo cow Steer is a completely different thing and we're learning a lot about you know
All of these animals are such an integral part of the ecosystem. And one of the key aspects of regenerative agriculture is to include animals as part of the ecosystem, to recycle nutrients and the soil and the earth. I think in that movie, Food Inc. that you were in, there was a great scene with this guy who was a regular farmer and he could make it and he had to sell agrochemicals and agricultural
seeds from big seed companies, and he kind of got sick of it all and decided to create a model of regenerative farming where he had sheep and pigs and things in this kind of weird thing. I don't know what he called it, but basically moved it through his farm to fertilize a soil and still grow with crops, but do it in a way that restored the ecosystem, had less inputs, saved money and made him more money and created a healthier environment. So I think being an ethical vegan is fine. From a health perspective, I think
Um, you know, there's, there's, there's a way to do it well, but there's also a way to not do it well. And I, well, let's use me as an example. He's a good friend. I don't mind putting myself back on his table. Um, first of all, he took my blood. I don't know why he had to stab me so hard to get it. Yeah. But, um,
But you took my blood and you said, Corey, you're a junk food vegan. Yeah. And you're lacking in B12, I think you told me. Well, I'm here. Oh, being a three is vitamin D. You don't have to put it all out there, man. I didn't want to give them my whole profile. Sorry. Yes. Yes. I just broke my hip violation. Yeah.
But yes, B12 iron, Omega 3s, which are things that I think begins to have to be short. But not that everybody doesn't need to be smart about their nutrients, because most Americans are low in things. But as a guy who's very health conscious and tries to eat well, there's certain things that you said to me, hey, Corey, you've got to figure out how to source this. And even just right now, you were telling me that I'm old.
And then I needed to get more protein. Yeah, so you're gonna need to eat sort of like, you know, concentrated proteins like pea protein and the ones that are supplemented with amino acids. It'll help build muscle as you get older. Yeah, right. So I think that choices are fine. The diversities and diets are fine.
Even though you keep pushing eggs on me, if they're blessed by Buddhist monks, gory can't you eat them and you know, whatever. Trying. But the reality is you can make choices, but you should make smart choices. And the truth is, and because I was, as you said, I was in that documentary that you talked about,
The more we're returning to the centuries-old agricultural practices that human beings thrived on, where there were soil being regenerative soil practices that often involved animals. That's true, right? Think about it. There were 168 million ruminants in America.
They were grazing all across it, created the incredible bread basket that we have in the Midwest with 50 feet of topsoil. The movie called it Iowa motherload or something. But we're losing that soil now because of our current practices at a very alarming rate. It's actually animals are essential for the ecosystem to thrive. Before I give my closing, was there one more question? That's what I'm saying. You've got to get this last question about they're asking specifics.
three things for every American to do. If you could get every American to do three things this week, what would you get them to do? First, I would get them to give up liquid sugar calories, which is a huge driver of obesity. The second would be to give up ultra processed food. And the third would be to add a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables to your diet.
That's amazing. Okay, before I go, I try to be the only big black boy that could give a Jewish man Jewish guilt. So my favorite, Pasha, is a part of a Torah reading for those non-Jews in there.
Yes, my favorite parts are my favorite parts. Like I said, he knows more Hebrew than I do. Is this extraordinary story about the father of three of our great human faiths, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, Abraham. And Abraham was said to be favored by God.
because he kept his tent open on all four sides and people were welcome. And one day after Abraham had joined the Covenant, he had done something you don't recommend, but circumcised himself. We will move quickly past that. He was sitting in pain by his tent.
And the Torah says that strangers that were different than him, I've talked to some rabbinical scholars that were different race, very different strangers, were approaching his tent and he stands up and he runs to them. He doesn't just greet them, hey come over. By tents open he runs with him with joy in his heart.
to welcome the stranger. And then what you'll love about this story is he brings them into the tent and he gives them his best food, his best food. And this idea in cultures going back a millennium all across the globe, this idea of food being a place that brings us together, that creates what you said at the very beginning in your blue zone. You talked about community.
And this idea, the American family sitting around at dinner table, which is becoming less and less the reality, especially the reality without a TV screen on, the fact that you're re celebrating the power and the magic of food, I think gets us back to the Abrahamic ideals.
And the fact that you're trying to create community in this country around activism, to reclaim our health, it is a celebration of the song sung during the High Holidays. Kibeti Beethithilohohomim, in my house, be a house of prayer for all nations. Thank you, Dr. Hyman, for being someone who is seeking again to bring us all together around one tent, around one metaphorical table, to have great food for everyone. Thank you.
Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And follow me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. And we'll see you next time on The Doctors' Pharmacy.
I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. And now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free marks picks newsletter at drheimen.com forward slash marks picks. I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays and I'll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations. These are the things that have helped me on my health journey. And I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's drheimen.com forward slash marks picks. Thank you again. And we'll see you next time on the doctor's pharmacy.
This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health where I'm the Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest opinions and neither myself nor the podcast endorsed the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.
This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for your help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. You can come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lennox, Massachusetts. Just go to ultrawellnesscenter.com. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner near you, you can visit ifm.org and search, find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who is trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
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