Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - Debunking RFK Jrs Most Dangerous Health Myths (Food Dye, GMOs, Endocrine Disruptors & More) & How to Actually MAHA with Dr Andrea Love
Episode Date: March 4, 2025In today’s episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, I will be chatting with immunologist and microbiologist, Dr. Andrea Love of immunologic.org, a science and health education organization committed t...o debunking health wellness misinformation. Andrea will be going deep into the science on the safety of vaccines, fluoride, endocrine disruptors in tap water, food dyes, pasteurized vs milk, GMOs, glyphosate and more. Andrea will be sharing why RFK Jr.s recommendations may be financially motivated, not science motivated and I’ll be closing off with some of the most evidence based changes and goals (albeit lofty to achieve) that would actually Make America healthy again.Check in with today’s amazing guest Dr Andrea Love:Instagram: @dr.andrealoveX: @dr_andrealoveWebsite: www.immunologic.orgReferences:https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-dozen-test-facebooks-twitters-ability-to-curb-vaccine-hoaxeshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/11/15/rfk-jr-views-conspiracies-false-claims/https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2275444https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/03/health/rfk-jr-fluoride-science/index.htmlhttps://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/politics/robert-kennedy-jr-chemicals-water-children-frogs/index.htmlhttps://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/media/releases/2012/p0221_raw_milk_outbreak.htmlhttps://www.pgpf.org/article/how-does-the-us-healthcare-system-compare-to-other-countries/https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur202305_1.pdfhttps://nchstats.com/million-americans-are-still-uninsured/https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illnesshttps://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statisticshttps://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/may/mental-health-conditions-substance-use-comparing-us-other-countrieshttps://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/27/1-in-8-us-households-struggle-with-hunger-food-insecurity-usda.htmlhttps://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4866586/https://aflcio.org/what-unions-do/social-economic-justice/minimum-wage from this report https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55410https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7144438/https://ergobaby.com/blog/post/paid-family-leave-in-us?srsltid=AfmBOoqrin9Wgq0MX0fQN5uMFCNfH0fEimq0A3eiZeBmsnD8MPRL3vPuhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/27/maternity-paid-leave-women-work-childbirth-ushttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7367791/#:~:text=Using%20an%20event%20study%20design,adoption%20of%20paid%20maternity%20leave. https://publichealthreviews.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40985-017-0067-2https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5137920/#:~:text=Diseases%20whose%20development%20has%20been,as%20depression%20and%20anxiety%20disordershttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8725649/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2732004/Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider.If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com. 🥤 Check out my 2-in-1 Plant Based Probiotic Protein Powder, neue theory at www.neuetheory.com or @neuetheory and use my promo code BITEBACK20 to get 20% off your order! Don’t forget to Please subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review! It really helps us out. ✉️ SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTERS ⤵️Neue Theory newsletterAbbey's Kitchen newsletter 🥞 FREE HUNGER CRUSHING COMBO™ E-BOOK! 💪🏼 FREE PROTEIN 101 E-BOOK! 📱 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchenTikTok: @abbeyskitchenYouTube: @AbbeysKitchen My blog, Abbey’s Kitchen www.abbeyskitchen.comMy book, The Mindful Glow Cookbook affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3NoHtvf If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review with your thoughts and let me know who you want me to discuss next!
Transcript
Discussion (0)
R.F.K. Jr., people don't realize his long history in anti-science profiteering, and
it didn't start with anti-vaccine.
It really started with misinformation about food and farming.
And the end goal is to make a lot of money.
So basically scaring people about things that don't actually pose a risk and often have a benefit so that he, his law firm, his organizations can profit off of those falsehoods.
Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle die culture rules,
call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good.
Today's episode is a very timely one.
Although seeing as RFK Jr. has already been confirmed, it appears maybe it wasn't timely
enough.
But today we're going to be addressing and debunking some of the most dangerous claims made by RFK Jr. and the Maha movement in the lead up to his confirmation and how these
serve as a distraction from initiatives that actually matter.
Joining me today is Dr. Andrea Love, a PhD immunologist and microbiologist and founder
of Immunologic.org, a science and health education organization
committed to debunking health and wellness misinformation.
Andri and I are going to be dismantling some of the most problematic Maha claims related
to vaccines, fluoride, endocrine disruptors, food dyes, raw milk, GMOs, glyphosate, and
so much more.
And I'll be closing off with some harrowing truths about what it would actually take to
make America healthy again.
Spoiler alert, it's not banning seed oils.
Before we get into it, I want to highlight that this is not about politics.
It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat.
Denouncing the claims made by RFK Jr. is simply
what unites us science communicators and evidence-based healthcare professionals because we know the
damage this misinformation does to erode public health and trust in health authority.
So just keep that in the back of your mind as you listen.
Also, I would love if you would give Bite Back a follow wherever you listen to your
podcast and leave me a five star review and comment.
It really, really does help me out and it ultimately just makes my day.
All right friends, let's get into it.
Okay, Andrea, I'm so excited to speak with you.
I'm such a fan of your content and I just learned so much from your post.
So thank you so much for taking the time to chat about this.
I mean, it's a stressful time to be a science communicator.
Yeah, thanks for having me, Abby, and could not agree more.
I feel like we've all expressed similar frustrations about information
outlets really not doing their due diligence when they present information to the public.
So really appreciate you stepping in to help with that.
100%. Yeah, of course. And it's hard to know where to even begin with RFK Jr.'s misinformed
statements, but I do feel like we want
to set the stage with vaccines because it's obviously so important. But R.F.K. Junior is
often known in the science community as one of the disinformation dozen, meaning him and 11 other
people are solely responsible for spreading like 65% of all vaccine misinformation. He's been quoted as like equating the COVID-19 vaccine
mandates to the Holocaust and then of course has been perpetuating the consistently debunked claim
that vaccines cause autism. And yet it is being reported like that RFK Jr. is allegedly vaccinated
himself and is vaccinated as kids. So
if RFK Junior isn't even taking his own advice, can you paint a picture for us on maybe his likely intentions and motives for these public anti-vax statements? Yeah, I mean, it's there is a lot to
unpack and it's it's so fascinating to me and I know we've chatted about this, that people don't
realize his long history in anti-science profiteering.
And it didn't start with anti-vaccines, right?
It really started with misinformation about food and farming, and we'll get into that.
But he really picked up the mantle of the anti-vaccine.
The vaccines are filled with toxins
and the toxins are giving you autism.
Shortly after Andrew Wakefield published
his entirely fraudulent study in The Lancet in 1998.
And so a lot of people in the US,
and I would say globally are like,
oh, well, Jenny McCarthy, she really like amplified this.
And yeah, she definitely did. But she was after RFK Jr. started his rhetoric. And it's shocking
that most people don't actually know this. So RFK Jr. had already started his kind of anti-science rhetoric profiteering, essentially making money off
speaking about misinformation, lawsuits about misinformation, because that's what he is.
He's a lawyer and he makes a lot of money on these civil lawsuits where you can convince
a jury of this emotional story that isn't inherently evidence, right?
But he, you know, heard of these musings after Andrew Wakefield's paper and he starting in 1999
even was like, yeah, this sounds like a good idea.
I'm going to run with this.
And he really leveraged this misinformation about vaccines,
especially that the ingredients in vaccines
caused autism and cause neurodevelopmental issues. And he used that to essentially accumulate
all of his anti-science activism to that point into a cohesive organization which became Children's Health Defense, which was officially founded
in 2016, but the behind the scenes work had been going on
for many, many years before that through other organizations
that RFK Jr. had been working on.
And so he kind of started all of this. He really, he formed his own law firm in 2000
after, you know, this, this kind of Andrew Wakefield thing. So Kennedy and Madonna, the goal of his law
firm was to sue chemical companies under the guise of pollution and toxins. And then of course, that coincided with him publicly adopting the fallacy that vaccines
were also toxic and causing autism and really grew from there.
So he paved the way with a lot of these lawsuits targeting pharmaceutical companies, lawsuits targeting agriculture companies.
And you could make the argument that once upon a time,
maybe in the 80s and the 90s,
he did do some things that did help remediate
individual pollution instances.
But then he took that whole idea of,
oh, I can scare people about chemicals writ large and use it.
And the end goal is to make a lot of money. So basically scaring people about things that
don't actually pose a risk and often have a benefit so that he, his law firm, his organizations,
can profit off of those falsehoods. It's truly so scary.
I mean, here in Ontario where I live,
we are currently having a measles outbreak.
And I am so grateful both my boys are fully vaccinated,
have the MMR vaccine,
but I'm worried sick from my nephews and nieces
who are too young to be vaccinated.
And those are the people we need widespread vaccine update
to really protect. It's just so selfish and terrifying,
really.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I want to talk about the American water supply for a
second because RFK Junior thinks that everything in tap water
is going to cause harm. Again, it comes down to the chemicals,
the toxins. And I want to start with fluor, because we have added fluoride to our water
and developed nations to help prevent dental caries,
and it works.
We have great evidence that it's worked.
It's one of the, you know,
an amazing public health initiative.
But of course, according to RFK Jr.,
the fluoride in our water is, again,
causing neurodivergence, thyroid disease,
bone cancer, arthritis,
making us dumber. Where are these statements coming from? And like, do we need to worry
about our tap water in our toothpaste? Yeah, it's a great question. And it's,
you know, it's very frustrating that these claims are really being given legitimacy by media outlets
now where they're like, Whoa, RFK wants to talk about fluoride
and he wants to explore this.
And it's like, we've actually explored this
for over 75 years, right?
We have really robust evidence that, you know,
fluoride, the levels of fluoride
that are in our public water supply are safe and beneficial.
And I think here's maybe a great opportunity
to remind anybody listening that with everything,
the dose makes the poison.
And that means that anything could be toxic
at a certain exposure,
including things that you need to survive, right?
Water.
Oxygen, yeah, water can be toxic. Essentially,
if you drink five liters at once and you're a human adult, you could die from water intoxication.
Oxygen can be toxic at a certain dose. All of the things that we think nothing about can be toxic
at a certain dose. And the problem is, is that people and media outlets often mischaracterize by
is that people and media outlets often mischaracterize by putting that phrase toxic in front of, you know,
the chemical that they're talking about
and then causing people to essentially stop listening
because now they have this fear that's been evoked
and they don't want to listen to logic.
So first of all, fluoride is a natural substance, right?
And so you actually will find fluoride naturally
in different environmental sources,
including groundwater, the soil, plants,
because they suck up everything in the soil.
And so you're also gonna find it in foods you eat.
The really fascinating thing about fluoride
in this ionic form is that when it interacts
with the structure of your teeth,
the enamel, it replaces a hydrogen with a fluorine.
And what that does is it changes the natural tooth enamel structure from hydroxyapatite
to something called fluoroapatite.
And what that does is it actually improves the durability of the enamel so that
your teeth can withstand a 10 times more acidic environment before they start to demineralize.
And that demineralization is what leads to cavities and tooth decay and so on. And so,
you know, this has been done, this has been tested. We fluoridate public water at 0.7 parts per million, so 0.7 grams of fluoride per
1 million grams of water.
So it's a tiny, tiny amount and that level is perfectly safe and it reduces the
development of cavities,
primarily in children, it reduces complications associated with poor dental health
and it poses no health risks.
The problem is that people mischaracterize high exposures of fluoride
with these low levels that you're going to have in your water.
And again, this is why understanding toxicology
and the fact that the dose matters is really important.
And so people will cherry pick these studies that are like, oh, well, at levels that were
two-fold higher, three-fold higher, four-fold higher, then you saw some adverse effects,
or then you saw some skeletal bone issues, or then you saw something in a mouse.
But the reality is that's not what's actually happening in our fluoridated
water. And ironically, RFK Jr. actually used to sell bottled water as part of his Riverkeeper
organization that had double the level of fluoride that he's now vilifying as supposedly being toxic.
So I guess the dose doesn't matter when he's trying to sell something.
When you're selling it, of course.
Yeah.
Wow.
But for context, right?
So when people are like, oh, fluoride's a neurotoxin.
Well, I mean, I guess theoretically at a high enough dose, maybe, but there isn't really
even evidence of that.
But how much fluoridated water you would have to drink
to actually hit that?
So for kids, typically, well, typically with people,
you might see adverse skeletal effects
at above an acute consumption of four milligrams
per kilogram of fluoride per day.
So hypothetically speaking, if you had a kid that was,
22 pounds, you're talking about 40 to 100 milligrams
of fluoride per day.
At that 0.7 parts per million,
that means that kid has to drink 57 liters of water
in a day to hit that threshold.
Right.
And that's for maybe some skeletal effects.
So think about the plausibility of that actually happening.
The child would die of water intoxication
way before they would hit that threshold.
Way before.
I think when people hear that math, they're like,
oh, but that's not what gets communicated
in the media headlines.
No, absolutely not.
They're often cherry picking, and I've seen like that, well, Japan doesn't fluoridate
or Europe doesn't fluoridate their water, but in Europe, they fluoridate their salt.
So they're getting fluoride from salt, whereas in the US, we don't have fluoridated salt.
Sometimes we have iodized salt, but a lot of salts are not augmented. And so
everyone knows that fluoride offers a benefit for dental health and dental health offers a benefit
for overall health. And we have over 75 years of data that show that these fluoride levels are not
causing any harm. Right. Yeah. I mean, he also suggested that endocrine
disruptors are caused in the waters are causing gender confusion, which is then perpetuated this
conspiracy theory that tap water is making people gay. And it's like, obviously there's zero evidence
that tap water affects or impacts sexual orientation or gender. But of course, like, what is the legitimate
risk of endocrine disruptors in our everyday food supply at this point?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a great question. Endocrine disruptors is really like the hot
buzzword now. And there's a lot of misunderstanding of what that actually means. So the endocrine
system is your hormone system, right? And we have two big classes of hormones. We have steroid hormones and we have peptide hormones. And there's
a lot of things that are technically hormones that people don't think about. Like insulin
is a peptide hormone that is part of your endocrine system. But typically when they're
talking about endocrine disruptors, they're talking about the steroid hormones that are
typically considered your sex hormones.
So your estrogen, your progesterone, your testosterone.
And so essentially what this phrase means
is that there's something out there
that interferes with the normal process
of the hormone itself binding to the receptor
on a cell that it's gonna have an impact on
and it's interfering with that.
So there's two main ways that that could happen.
The first is the substance is bind so strongly
to that hormone receptor that it outcompetes
the actual hormone that you're producing.
So it interferes because it's outcompeting.
Or it doesn't bind as strongly,
but you're exposed to so much of it that your body is
just soaking in this endocrine disruptor and that eventually some of it will bind to this receptor
instead of the hormone and it will exert some effect. The reality is a lot of the content about
endocrine disruptors, whether we're talking about chemicals that might be in the water or components of plastics. There's no actual human data that these are having a measurable impact on
hormone signaling in any capacity. But the problem is, is that the studies that you'll find,
including on government websites that are citing, they're using petri dishes or they're using mice. And in
a petri dish, you have a single cell type that's grown on a piece of plastic. It doesn't have all
of the organ systems you have and all of the guardrails that your body has. And when they
put a lot of that substance on those cells, they're like, hey, the estrogen receptor genes are like, they're messed up. So therefore
there's some theoretic plausibility that it could interfere with hormone signaling. But
in a human, there's no actual evidence that that's happening because first of all, most
of these substances like BPA or parabens, they bind thousands of times more weekly to the hormone receptor than the
actual hormone would.
And on top of that, the amounts of these substances that you're exposed to are so tiny that there's
no theoretical way that they're actually going to outcompete your actual estrogen, your actual
progesterone.
So it's a legitimate term.
It's a legitimate phenomenon, but do you need to be paranoid that everything you're exposed
to is disrupting your hormones?
No, I think that is really kind of displacing where you should be focusing your efforts,
especially because there isn't human evidence to suggest any of those claims.
So helpful.
Okay.
So this is when I've talked about ad nauseam,
but RFK Jr. is on a mission to legalize raw milk,
which is currently not allowed to be sold
in the United States,
but it's still a very important issue
that we're trying to address.
And so I think that's a very important point Okay, so this is when I've talked about ad nauseam, but RFK Jr. is on a mission to
legalize raw milk, which is currently not allowed to be sold for consumption in, I think,
20 different states at this point, and for good reason.
What's the risk here?
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty much all risk, no reward.
And I don't, I still don't fully understand the logic with this,
but it really, I think, just plays into this whole concept
of like- Natural.
Medical freedom means we get to do whatever we want
without consideration of other people in our society.
And then of course, yeah, the appeal to nature fallacy.
But raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized, right?
So I don't know if people who are listening
have ever been to a farm, have ever seen cows
and how they hang out and how much messiness
is around their udders, but-
Poop everywhere.
Yeah, there's poop everywhere.
And cows just shit wherever they want,
whenever they want, all over the place
and it splashes and it splashes, and it splashes,
and the udder is hanging down.
I mean, if you haven't seen a cow in its natural state,
you should go and experience that.
Now, so there's a reason that things are going to end up
in that milk, and that is partly because of, you know,
where the milk is produced, right?
The udder and the proximity to the environment,
which is filled with fecal bacteria
and environmental bacteria.
And also the udders themselves have their own skin microbiome
and the cow has its own microbiome
and those are not necessarily compatible with people, right?
Then you have the added layer of once you milk a cow,
it has to go into all these different vessels
and get transported and it has to be stored
at a right temperature because things can grow,
because milk is filled with nutrients.
And in addition to people needing nutrients
and other animals needing nutrients
and milk being a really rich source of nutrients,
well, bacteria also like those nutrients.
And so sugars and fats and
proteins, those are things that bacteria like to eat too. And so if they get inside, it's really
easy for them to grow. And so milk is a very, very risky source of foodborne contamination. Meaning,
if you consume that, that has not been treated in ways to reduce the presence of these disease-causing pathogens, you can
get sick. And that's actually the case, right? Before we had national ordinances to regulate
the pasteurization of milk, milk-borne food illness accounted for 25% of all food and
waterborne disease outbreaks
in the early 1900s.
And after the pasteurized milk ordinance was passed,
was implemented in 1924,
that level dropped to less than 1%.
So dairy products account for less than 1%
of food and milkborne illnesses nowadays.
Now, the problem is,
is that there's been
a concerted movement in recent decades
to loosen the regulations on raw milk.
And so as you mentioned, there are states
that have essentially passed individual state laws
that relax the sale of raw milk or the distribution, right?
Sharing or, you know, farmstead setting. And so if you look at the last
20 years of foodborne disease outbreaks, raw milk products have been the cause of over 200 of these.
And if you look at where they're occurring, 78% of raw milk outbreaks are occurring in states where it is legal to sell unpasteurized
milk.
And so there's no reason that we should be going 150 years back in time because pasteurization,
it's so simple.
You're essentially heating milk, not even to boiling 161 degrees Fahrenheit.
So it's not even to a boil for 15 seconds.
And then you cool it back down and then you've
inactivated viruses and you've killed bacteria
that could cause disease.
It doesn't deteriorate the milk proteins.
It doesn't impact the nutrition.
It doesn't affect the taste.
But what it does is it makes it safe for consumption
and it allows it to be shelf stable
and it reduces diseases that people would be getting
from milk otherwise.
Yeah, yeah.
And you know, when you look at the data,
it's not better for your gut as a lot of these, you know,
charlatans will suggest.
It's not easier to digest.
It's not less likely, you know, to cause allergy,
not more nutritious, and yet raw dairies are associated
with 84% of all dairy-related foodborne illness hospitalizations.
Exactly.
So it's like, this is not going to make America healthy again.
No, it's going to make us sicker.
And on top of that, a lot of the rhetoric is like, well, if you don't want to drink
it, don't drink it.
And this just demonstrates that people don't understand
like supply chain and how our food is produced
because if a farm is no longer pasteurizing
a portion of their milk product,
that increases the risk of it cross contaminating
their equipment, the other milk.
And then if you're drinking raw milk,
then anything that you've consumed
is gonna be shed in your waste,
which means now it can get into wastewater,
it can get into the environment.
So you're creating more environments
for these pathogens to reproduce, to mutate, to spread.
And there's zero reason to do this,
aside from the fact that some people decided that they want to promote this false claim in order, again, to make money.
Right. Yeah. I want to talk about agricultural disinformation because he's been very vocal against the use of genetic engineering and non-organic farming. And then, of course, has been perpetuating this false claim that glyphosate causes cancer, which, by the way,
we have like 1,500 studies proving that glyphosate does not
cause cancer and that GMOs are not only safe,
but often make food more nutritious and accessible.
Why is this all a farce?
What is his motive here?
You kind of alluded to it earlier on,
but what's his motive specifically with this anti-agriculture, with this disinformation? I'm so glad that we're
talking about this because this is the thing that with a lot of healthcare providers that I talk to
who aren't as immersed in like scientific research, this is like the thing where they're like, well,
he wants to like improve healthy food. And I was like, he actually doesn't he actually wants to do the opposite. And, and, and so I think it's really important for people to understand that RFK Jr. spearheaded the lawsuits against Bayer formerly Monsanto claiming that glyphosate caused cancer. So his motive in spreading that falsehood is because by convincing the jury that this
is real, by making an emotional appeal, by having a plaintiff who's like, I swear I got
cancer after touching glyphosate, which is not proven, he can make a lot of money on
these lawsuits.
And so it is not in his favor to give up those claims.
He's been spreading those longer than he's been spreading
anti-vaccine disinformation.
He started by targeting farming pesticides
and agriculture companies.
He started his anti-science career in this scope.
And his claims, his
lies have been picked up by all of the anti-agriculture activist groups like
the environmental working group, like monsacrossamerica, and they're even
being touted by medical professional organizations. And so first of all,
glyphosate does not cause cancer.
There have been thousands of studies
and every single scientific expert agency
around the world, including Europe, Japan, Australia,
New Zealand, Canada, US, et cetera,
have all reasserted over and over and over again
that there is no evidence that glyphosate,
whether exposure from farm workers
who are gonna be exposed to higher levels
or in consumers who might be exposed to teeny, teeny,
tiny levels as traces in food products
have any relationship to any sort of cancer.
There's not even a mechanism in which it could cause cancer
because glyphosate is a substance that acts specifically
on an enzyme in plants.
Humans don't have that enzyme because this enzyme
is something that plants use to make amino acids
because plants photosynthesize.
Humans don't photosynthesize so we don't have to make these particular amino acids.
And so there isn't even a pathway in our body
that glyphosate acts on.
Wow.
And so there's no evidence,
but by keeping up this story and by saying,
well, I won this lawsuit, therefore it must be true,
he is able to keep up this narrative.
Now where it interacts with genetic engineering is because glyphosate is used in the context
of genetic engineering in very specific instances.
So as I mentioned, glyphosate acts on this enzyme that plants have and all plants have
it.
And that means that glyphosate is broad spectrum. It's used as an herbicide,
meaning it kills plants when you treat plants with it because it interferes with the ability
to make these amino acids. The plants can't make their structural proteins. They wilt,
they die. Right? That's how it works. So in the context of farming, scientists were
like, Hey, we can replace that enzyme with a different version from bacteria
that glyphosate doesn't interfere with.
And therefore, in the presence of glyphosate,
those particular plants with the bacterial enzyme won't die,
but the weeds that are trying to strangle them will die.
So they were able to essentially genetically engineer
by transferring the bacterial version of the enzyme
for the plant version into six different food crops that are now what we consider glyphosate
tolerant. And what that means is that farmers can now control weeds with just
glyphosate instead of having to use combinations of other herbicides to
target the grasses or the broadleaf weeds or the other things because, you know, I hate to break it to you,
but we have to use herbicides to control weeds. Otherwise, we won't have food.
Farmers won't be able to grow food, right? You can't just like pull up the weeds like you do in your backyard garden.
It does not work like that when you're growing thousands of acres of food.
And so glyphosate replaced these other herbicides that are actually way worse for you, for your health, for farmers, and for the environment.
And it has an incredible safety profile
because it's been scrutinized
because of people like RFK Jr.
And we know how safe it actually is,
but because it's used in the context
of this genetic engineering,
now genetic engineering is also considered
to be harmful and evil and so on.
But people also don't realize that homeowners use glyphosate really often, and they actually
use it at higher levels, higher concentrations than farmers use. Farmers are using the equivalent of
two soda cans over an acre, so a football field of land, of glyphosate. It's a really small quantity and they're using it
like before they plant things
or right after things have emerged.
They're not like treating your bananas
with glyphosate at the store.
This isn't happening.
But again, because this genetic engineering
is used in combination with glyphosate,
now genetic engineering is bad because you're makingphosate. Now genetic engineering is bad
because you're making these mutant foods
and these franken foods.
But in reality, genetic engineering
actually allows farmers to grow foods
that can produce more nutrients,
as has been the case with golden rice,
or can resist spoilage, which reduces food waste.
And it allows us to address food deserts
in places where people don't have access to food,
or it can improve yields,
or it can allow them to grow in more hostile environments,
which all allow farmers to grow food more stably,
which means that you have a more stable
and nutritious food supply.
Right.
And the irony is,
this also gets conflated with organic and conventional because organic farming is a marketing certification that prohibits the use of genetically engineered crops.
And that's again playing into this appeal to nature fallacy because people believe because of clever marketing that organic is pesticide free and all natural and super healthy and great for the soil. But in reality organic farming uses a lot of pesticides. They're merely not
synthetically altered, but that doesn't mean that they're safer. In fact, many of
them are worse for the environment. They have broader effects on non-target
species. They don't biodegrade as quickly. They can be more toxic. And because
they're less effective usually,
they have to be used in higher quantities.
And so you're using a lot of pesticides in organic farming
and they're not better and, you know,
natural has nothing to do with it.
But what organic farming is, is more profitable.
It's 32% more profitable than conventional farming.
And so when RFK is, and it's usually about double the price
to the consumer.
So that's, that upcharge is not because of,
it costs more to make, it's pure profit.
And so when RFK Jr. is saying, well,
we need to target pesticides and we need people
to eat organic, well, he's basically saying,
well, we want only people that are affluent
to have access to nutritious foods,
and we want to scare everyone else
about the more affordable, more sustainable,
perfectly safe food production and food sources
that everyone could afford.
And this is why not only do I not buy organic,
but I don't want to,
because it's supporting this anti-science rhetoric that people have been told
that if they're not feeding their kids organic, they're poisoning them.
And that's coming from people like RFK Jr. He's telling people that conventionally grown foods
are covered in toxic pesticides, which is absolutely not true.
Right. Yeah. I often try to remind people that, you know,
at the end of the day, this kind of rhetoric really just harms people who are, you know,
not in a financial place to be able to buy, you know, $1,000 of organic produce every other week.
When I would far rather people eat way more conventional produce than have to kind of like,
you know, purse out their produce budget because they believe that they should only be buying
organic. That is not going to make America healthy again. Absolutely. And on top of that, you know,
when we talk about, you know, these impacts, we talk about environmental impact and these
sorts of things because people also believe that he's an environmentalist. Well, organic farming has lower yields, which
means that you're using more land to grow the same amount of food, which is also contributing
indirectly to an increased carbon footprint. And so there's not ecological benefits either.
And so when we're talking about like chronic health and making people healthy,
well, we should be talking about the fact
that 90% of Americans
aren't eating enough fruits, vegetables and fiber.
It has nothing to do with the parts per billion
or parts per trillion of a trace pesticide
that is well below safety threshold.
And it's definitely not about red dye.
It's about the fact that people are not eating produce
in part because people like RFK Jr. have told them
that if they can't afford organic,
then they're poisoning their family.
So what are they gonna do?
They're gonna opt to not eat produce.
100%. And you just mentioned Red 40, which I think is a good segue here because there have been
a number of attacks on specific ingredients in more highly processed foods, especially
things like seed oils and the food dyes Red 40 with, you know, him and food babe or whatever has just spent so much time lobbying against like, are there not again, it's a distraction, right?
It's a distraction from what matters. online that sows greater overall distrust and health authority is that things like food dyes
are banned in places like the EU but not here. So Americans, you know, America's regulations
must be faulty and therefore, you know, you can't trust anything. Can you speak to why that argument
doesn't hold up and like what are the politics involved and what is banned versus what is not?
What are the politics involved in what is banned versus what is not? Yeah, no, it's great, great question.
And yeah, there's multiple layers.
But the first thing is, is that these food dyes are not banned in those countries.
It's kind of horrifying that like media outlets and politicians like don't even do the bare
minimum of fact checking this, but the names that we know food dies to be,
like red 40, red three, blue one, blue two, and so on, they're called that because the entity that
names them is the FDA. Basically, it's using designations called FDNC, which stands for
food, drug, and cosmetics. So it's an FDNC Red 3, FDNC Red 40.
Now, people don't realize that the FDA is only in the US.
So in other countries,
they have a different food safety agency.
So for example, in Europe,
we have the European Food Safety Authority.
And so they use an entirely different naming system. So they're not calling it Blue 1,
they're calling it E-133. They're not calling it Red 3, they're calling it E-127. They're not calling
it Red 40, they're calling it E-129. And the same is true in Japan and in Canada and Australia.
In Japan, they call Red 40-217. And so if you actually go to the regulatory agency websites
of all these other countries, and I've actually listed them all,
they're not banned.
And on top of that, all of these food safety agencies conduct safety studies.
They conduct toxicology studies.
And based on that, they set what we call an acceptable daily intake.
And acceptable daily intake is the maximum amount that a person could ingest every
single day for their entire life without any sort of health risks.
So this ADI level, because you're assuming that this person is eating this every
single day for their entire life, it's super conservative.
It's usually at least a hundredfold to a thousandfold lower than any level ever seen
in any scientific study to show evidence of harm because we want to account for high risk
populations, right? And so these acceptable daily intake levels are defined by a no observed adverse
effect level and no no AL and then also something called the human equivalent dose. So the no observed adverse effect level and no AL,
and then also something called the human equivalent dose.
So the no observed adverse effect level
is something that's been determined
by toxicological studies in animals
where they do acute toxicity, reproductive toxicity,
developmental toxicity, and then chronic toxicity like cancer.
So they determine this no AL level,
and then they take that and say,
okay, well, this was done in rats,
or this was done in monkeys,
or this was done in mice,
and they convert this to a human equivalent dose
based on the relationship between that species and humans.
And so there's a species conversion factor,
and there's a lot of math that goes into this
and physiology and so on.
But that's how we get this acceptable daily intake level.
So if you actually look at what those ADI levels are
for these food dyes in other countries,
in almost all instances,
they're exactly the same as the ones in the US.
In some instances, they're higher in other countries.
So for example, for yellow five,
the US acceptable daily intake
is five milligrams per kilogram per day.
But in Japan, Europe, Australia, and Canada,
they're seven and a half milligrams per kilogram per day,
or something like yellow six.
It's 3.75 mgs per gig per day in the US,
but everywhere else it's four milligrams
per kilograms per day.
So first of all, they're not banned.
Second of all, the ADI levels
that are based on the actual scientific studies
all show pretty similar.
And red 40, it's the same across the board.
It's seven milligrams per kilogram per day
for all of the countries.
And so you have this legislation coming out
of like California where they're banning all these food dyes
and claiming that they're banned in other countries
and claiming that they have all these health effects.
But in reality, that's not actually the case,
but the sponsor of that bill
is the Environmental Working Group and Consumer Reports.
And they have a long history of spreading fear
about chemicals that don't actually pose a risk
to your health while undermining things
that do impact your health.
And so when these things get put into law
or when they get picked up by media outlets,
it gives these things legitimacy.
But people don't understand that even if you said
something is banned in one country
and it's allowed in the US,
that doesn't go to the scientific safety of it
because whether something is banned in another country
is a direct reflection on their politics. It's why California has Proposition 65 and now these bans on food dyes because it's
influenced by the elected officials that are not scientists, who's lobbying them, what they think
is going to be popular for their voting block, and it doesn't automatically reflect what the scientific data is. Now, if you want
to make that argument, there's actually a lot of things that are permitted in Europe
but are banned in the US, including more food dyes that are allowed in Europe than are allowed
in the US. But you never hear that part of the conversation. So interestingly, because now the FDA was kind of pigeonholed
into banning Red 3 because of anti-science activist groups
and this really antiquated legal loophole
that has nothing to do with safety,
but it's a holdover from when we would blast animals
with 5,000 times doses of things
and maybe you could cause a tumor in one of them,
which, spoiler, you can do that with anything.
You can cause tumors in mice with cinnamon.
But anyway, so they're banning red III.
So now the US will actually be the country
that has banned red III, whereas in other countries,
it isn't banned, the ADI is 0.1 milligrams per kilogram
per day, but it's used in things that you eat.
And so it's really just this conflation and distraction.
It's this risk perception gap, right?
Get people really up in arms and outraged
about this singular food substance
that has no impact to your health. And when they ban it,
they're going to replace it with something else. And that something else might not be safer. It
might not be as inexpensive. It might not be as stable. It's probably going to be something like
Coconil, which actually has allergy risks because it's derived from insects. But aside from that,
it legitimizes this fear of chemicals
when there's no context there and there's no actual evidence
and it's not focusing on the things
like addressing food deserts
and addressing healthcare access
that actually do impact health.
Amen.
Yes, a hundred percent.
Thank you so much, Andrea.
This was a brilliant conversation, albeit kind of depressing considering where
we're at right now. But I really do hope it reaches the people
who you know, may be tempted by all of this persuasive
anti science messaging that is, unfortunately, picking up quite
a lot of steam. So I will of course be leaving links in the
show notes to where people can find your incredible content.
So thank you again.
Thanks so much for having me.
This is such a critical conversation to be having right now.
As a Canadian watching this all unfold from the sidelines, I am admittedly just so scared
for what's to come.
Not just for my friends to the south who will undoubtedly be the most immediately affected
by these recommendations and movements, but to folks across the world
because the virality of these false statements have already done real harm at chipping away
at the public's trust in evidence-based public health initiatives.
So I'm certainly not qualified to be a health secretary of anywhere, I am quite confident that these tactics of RFK Jr.
are not what is required to make America healthy again.
In fact, the vast majority of RFK Jr.'s initiatives
focus on performative non-issues as a distraction
from the real drivers of poor health.
Yes, I'm talking about systemic inequalities.
So here are just a few of the changes
that we know would result in the greatest outcomes
for Americans' health.
Number one, implementing comprehensive healthcare reforms,
including universal coverage and preventative services.
The US spends nearly twice as much as other high-income countries on healthcare, around
$12,500 per person, which is solely a reflection of inflated service costs, not of actual health
outcomes.
In fact, compared to other wealthy countries, the United States performs dead last in critical
outcomes like life expectancy, infant mortality, unmanaged diabetes, and safety during childbirth.
This is compounded by the fact that 1 in 10 Americans lack health insurance, and 50% of
those uninsured adults won't see a doctor even when in need. And studies suggest that this lack of health insurance is associated with 45,000 excess
preventable deaths in the United States per year.
Improved preventative services also needs to extend to mental health.
Since a quarter of American adults are experiencing some form of mental illness, yet only half
of those affected are able to access treatment, largely due to the cost of uninsured services
and lack of providers.
And when compared to countries like the UK that do have far better access, the United
States has twice the suicide rate per capita.
So investing in better mental health care
would absolutely not be in vain.
Number two, addressing the growing rates of food insecurity.
When it comes to diet-related risk factors
for disease specifically,
the top dogs aren't seed oils or red 40 food dye,
as RFK Jr. might make you believe.
It's the fact that 1 in 8 American households are food insecure and reside in low-income
food deserts where they have limited access to adequate amounts of safe, nutritious foods.
Folks living with food insecurity may find themselves only able to afford higher-calorie,
lower-nutrition, ultra-processed
foods.
And I know that reducing ultra-processed foods is one of R.F.K.
Jr.'s mandates, especially when it comes to school lunch programs.
But without a strategy in place to replace those foods with more nutritious alternatives,
it's just going to further the food security divide.
Ditto for his obsession with the so-called dangers of things like glyphosate.
Because without safe crop protection strategies like glyphosate, food prices would be predicted
to rise another 40%, making access to things like fruits and vegetables even more out of
reach.
So maybe instead of spending all those government dollars on regulations that would like force Kellogg's to replace Red 40
with beet juice in their Fruit Loop recipe,
maybe we could focus on the long-term game of getting actual beets into the hands of more Americans
via SNAP benefits, produce subsidies, and improved access to rural communities.
Finally, how about addressing income inequality and workers' benefits?
Economic stability is one of the strongest predictors of health outcomes.
Yet the US has the highest level of income inequality among all wealthy nations. So much so that there is a 15-year life expectancy gap between the poorest Americans and the
wealthiest.
Simply raising the federal minimum wage to keep up with inflation would be expected to
lift over 1.3 million Americans out of poverty.
We're not even talking about making people rich here, we're talking about
just meeting the rate of inflation. Worker protections are also badly needed to support
workers who want to grow a family, which, if you were to ask Elon Musk, is pretty important
to the country's economic growth. Yet, as it stands, the US is the only wealthy nation without a federally mandated paid family
leave, which means that one in four new moms in the US have to return to work within two
weeks of giving birth.
As a Canadian mom, I truly cannot imagine this being my reality.
And when we look at the research, this situation seems all the more misguided as studies have
found that paid parental leave results in lower infant mortality rates, longer life
expectancy and higher productivity.
And it's not just new moms who are affected by lack of government support.
Chronic stress from the necessity of overworking because there's no time off, benefits or
fair wages is linked to increased rates of mental illness, heart disease, type 2 diabetes
and substance abuse just to name a few.
So like, it sounds like a kind of important area of focus if you actually want to make America healthy again.
Now, I'm not blind to the fact that these are big problems that are not going to get solved overnight by signing a simple bill.
I also acknowledge that taking any one of these steps might be met with significant resistance from corporate businesses and individuals with influence
because they would fundamentally shift economic power in ways that are unfavorable to them.
So it's a real shame that America has ended up with a health secretary who has far more financial
incentives to push anti-science mandates than any actual experience in science.
But that might be another rant for another day. science mandates than any actual experience in science.
But that might be another rant for another day.
I obviously could chat with Andrea all day long, so stay tuned because Andrea and I have
another episode coming out about cancer misinformation.
And the learnings from that are truly wild.
But I would love if you're not already to subscribe to Bite Back and
give us a five star review and a little comment because it really does help me
get this critical information to the masses. Signing off with Science and Sass,
I'm Abbey Sharp, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching!