Change Your Brain Every Day - How Public Awareness is Changing the Food Industry, with Dr. Mark Hyman

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

In his new book “Food Fix,” Dr. Mark Hyman illustrates the link between the food industry and a multitude of global crises, ranging from from social issues to climate change. The more of this information that comes to light, the louder the voice of public outcry becomes. But is it really making any difference? In the first episode of a series with Dr. Hyman, he reveals the surprising answer.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Well, Tana and I are so excited to be with our friend, Dr. Mark Hyman. And there are just, my goodness, so many things to say. Mark's a friend. He is the co-author with me and Rick Warren on the Daniel Plan.

He is the founder and director of the Ultra Wellness Center, the head of strategy and innovation of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. He's a 12-time New York Times bestselling author, board president for clinical affairs for the Institute for Functional Medicine. He's Tana's teacher. He's Tana's mentor. I read his book, The Ultra Mind Solution, and actually bought it for all the doctors at Amen Clinics. It's really the seed. At Amen Clinics, we have three big innovations. It's imaging. If you don't look, you don't know. Natural ways to heal the brain in a functional medicine capacity. That really came from Mark's work work and mark has a new book uh food fix that we're going to get into this week with you he also has a new public television special and

so many things so mark we adore you we're glad you're here on the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Always happy to have you. Love you guys too. Keep doing stuff so we can do more together. Yep. How is this book different? Food Fix from your other food books. Well, most of my books are really driven out of my clinical practice, which is using functional medicine to heal all sorts of chronic illnesses,

whether it's brain issues or metabolic issues. And, you know, I'm talking about foods, medicine, whether it's brain issues or metabolic issues. And, you know, talking about food is medicine. All that's really important. But it really is a profoundly different book for me. It's a political book. It's about addressing the food system. Because it occurred to me sitting in my office, seeing patient after patient with chronic illness that was preventable through food

and that was caused by food and that could be treated by food i was like well then i better ask why we got the food we got because if i don't fix that i'm just bailing the boat with a big hole in it forever and it's not going to be very effective so it occurred to me it was the food system and then i thought well what's causing the food system dysfunctional medicine is all about why what causing the food system? Dysfunctional medicine is all about why. What's the food policies? And then what's causing the food policies? It's the food industry and the 187 lobbyists for every member of Congress. So I decided to look down that rabbit hole, and I was shocked at what I found, which is that our food system is the biggest link to so many of our global crises. Clearly chronic disease, 80% of chronic disease is caused by food.

It kills 11 million people a year around the world. Six out of 10 Americans are suffering from it. Our economic crisis, I mean, you have a $22 trillion federal debt. And by 2025, half of all of our federal spending that's mandatory will be for Medicare. In five years, our Medicare trust fund will run out of money. We're not talking decades or next generation. We're talking like around the corner. And it's terrifying. So the economic crisis. And then, of course, I began to look deeper and go, what about all our social issues? Kids can't learn in school.

They have ADD, Daniel. And, Tony, you've written so much about that and talked about it. Why is that happening? Well, these kids' brains are poisoned by the processed food. How can kids learn on Doritos and soda in the morning? We're 31st in reading and math in the world, right? Vietnam's 21st. You know, why is that?

And also social injustice issues, you know, poverty and racism. I mean, there's communities that are targeted by the food industry and are kept down. Even national security we see is really threatened because kids are too overweight or unhealthy to fight. And even violence, we see so much divisiveness and violence and behavior issues. And, you know, it's really clear that our food plays a big role in our mood and our behavior. And studies that shocked me the most were the prison studies and studies on kids in juvenile delinquent centers where you swapped out healthy diets for junk food diets,

and their behavior got better. The violence went down. The aggressiveness, the conflict, the restraints, the suicide. I mean, just from changing your diet. So it really occurred to me that we have to fix the food system. And then, of course, if that's not enough, it's the number one cause of climate change. You know, 50% of our climate change is caused by the food system,

the deforestation, soil erosion, factory farming, food waste, a number of things, and the environmental destruction, the loss of fresh water from irrigation, the destruction of soil. We're going to have 60 harvests number of things. And the environmental destruction, the loss of fresh water from irrigation, the destruction of soil. We're going to have 60 harvests left of soil. The loss of biodiversity. Our pollinator species are dying,

which our agriculture depends on. So I was like, gosh, this is terrible. We got to fix it. And then I started looking further and saying, well, there's a lot of ways to fix it. And people around the world are already innovating. There's a lot of solutions that exist for climate change. The food, fixing the food and agriculture system is the number one way to fix it. Fixing chronic diseases done through food,

fixing economic issues under food. So a lot of this book is really about mapping out the problem, but also what are the solutions on an individual level? What can businesses do? What can policymakers do to really turn this around? And that's what I'm super excited about. Wow. 75% of healthcare spending is spent on chronic preventable illnesses, with most of that being related to our diet. Yeah. And you got to ask yourself, if we know that, you just said, we know what the solutions are, right? We know what they are.

And if we did these things that would make it better, why aren't we doing that? And even the food industry, because it's such a big business and they want to make billions of dollars, I get that. But why aren't they jumping on board with this? Because they could make just as much money doing the right thing. They are actually.

I was sort of very anti-food industry and really negative and sort of saw them as this monolithic bunch of actors who were doing the wrong thing but you know what i've really come to realize is i've got to meet these people you know whether it's car heads of cargill or nestle or benone or pepsi i mean i you know what you know, what I often was very critical of, I'm seeing that their consciousness is changing. They're not bad people. They're just in a legacy of bad things that happened over the history of their companies and need to turn the things around.

And then when you see things like, you know, General Mills committing a million acres to regenerative agriculture, or you see Nestle and Benone and Unilever and Mars pulling out of the Grocery Manufacturer America, which is a food industry trade group, because they don't like what they're doing to stop advances in better food policy. And they create the Sustainable Food Policy Alliance.

Or Kellogg's. I mean, Kellogg's announced, because of consumer demand, announced they were going to get all the glyphosate out of the supply chain. Wow. Meaning Cheerios now have more glyphosate out of the supply chain. Wow. Meaning Cheerios now have more glyphosate, which is an herbicide, Roundup, than vitamin A or vitamin D. So they're like, well, this isn't a good thing.

So they basically are going to get all the glyphosate out of Cheerios and all their food. That's big. So businesses are taking advantage of the trends. The consumer voice matters. What we do matters with our dollars, what we eat, what we buy, and people care about it. And so I think I'm actually very helpful.

I'm in a lot of these meetings around the country of food activists and big companies like at Milk and Global Conference and really seeing how people are thinking differently about this. That's wild. So exciting. How can people get involved individually?

So I often think, and it's a message that came to me from the Daniel Plan, if you don't live the message, you can't give the message. You have to be authentic. So where do people start well i think you know it's it's a little overwhelming right so i get overwhelmed what do i do what can i do how do i change the political system and yes we do need policy change we do need agricultural change and we can't all directly affect that but but our voices matter our choices matter so i just help you start in your kitchen you know by choosing real whole foods by you know trying to be a regentarian for example seek out sources of for example animal products if you eat those that

are regeneratively raised that are from local farmers markets or community supported agriculture start your own community gardens get Get involved in composting. Get your local town and become more active in your community, whether it's in your workplace or school or faith-based communities. You can be a voice for change. I mean, I've seen mothers go into schools and revolutionize school lunches within school budgets, within school lunch guidelines, and do it effectively because they care. Right. You can go to your municipality and say, look, let do it effectively because they care. Right.

The municipality and say, look, let's do mandatory composting in our community. Like San Francisco did, there's mandatory composting. So the more people get active about this, the more they're going to see changes. And I think people can also vote with their vote. I think people are apathetic in this country and feel like their vote doesn't matter. But it does matter. People who do vote, their vote counts. And that's why we have the system we do. But I think most Americans want

a better system. And if we see, you know, 50% of people voting in the last election, which was a huge number, that's terrible in a democracy. We should have 70 or 80% voting like most other democracies. And you can even be active with your local legislators or state legislators or federal legislators. There's a great online resource called foodpolicyaction.org. Food policy action? Yeah, foodpolicyaction.org. And that's a group that basically rates your senators and congressmen on their food voting records and their ag voting records. And they actually use that to mobilize a whole army to oust two congressmen who were in the pocket of big food using social media.

So we have way more power than we think if we use it. I like that. Well, when we come back, we're going to actually talk about some of the specific things people can do. We'll also talk a little bit about the Daniel Plan, which is something near and dear to all three of our hearts. Stay with us. to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.