Change Your Brain Every Day - Why You Need to Read Food Labels, with Dr. Mark Hyman

Episode Date: February 27, 2020

In this fourth and final episode of a series with “Food Fix” author Dr. Mark Hyman, he and the Amens discuss the ways that you can become more aware and educated about how what you eat affects you and the world at large. In order to be part of the solution and not the problem, you must avoid the ingredients that are causing harm (such as ingredients that are hard to pronounce) and take small or large steps towards a global shift of health and wellness.

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. All right, welcome back. We are here with our dear friend, Dr. Mark Hyman, and he's very excited about changing the world. Audacious. Itacious one of the reasons we love him good and let's talk about what people can do

individually to begin to get this country going in the right direction rather than the wrong direction which we're clearly headed in now yeah you know i think awareness is really important in education and i can tell you that even someone like me and i even you guys a lot of this stuff is shocking it was new for me the way in which our food system is broken the way in which is contributing to so many of our issues of health and economic woes climate change and lots more and i i think you know becoming aware of how these are connected is important. So my book is a great resource, Food Fix. But I think there's a lot of other great things you can learn from.

So being educated is really important. And then the second piece is think about what you can do as an individual to change your habits, your diet, your choices, your things. And we talked about this in the last segment, which is, you know, things like learning about regenerative agriculture and how do you buy more foods that are going to be adding to the solution instead of harming the planet and harming health? How do you become more politically active? How do you become active in your local community organizations, churches, schools, workplaces, et cetera? How do you start a compost pile, a community garden? There are all things you can do.

But I also think that people have to understand that this is going to take time, but your voice really matters and you can do something about it. And then, like, you know, we think an individual doesn't really matter, but my friend Bonnie Hari, who's sort of a food activist,

sort of got up in arms about all the chemicals in our food and how Starbucks caramel matcha latte or whatever has toxic caramel carcinogen, and she outed them. And she shames these big companies into changing, and they change. That's so funny. So use your voice. And then we have some tips here.

Avoid anything with ingredients that are difficult to pronounce. Yeah. Anything that didn't exist in your grandmother's day, maybe even your great-grandmother's day, depending on how old you are. Avoid anything containing soybean oil. Americans now get almost 10% of their calories from refined soybean oil, which is one of the most abundant sources of the pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids. Yeah. I mean, you guys focus on the brain, but work by scientists at the NIH showed that, and these are correlation studies

but as this oil consumption went up like a thousand percent of your fine oils and the omega threes went down the ratio got worse that there was increased violence homicide and suicide as a result of these increasing and refined oils that are dying so there's a lot of things you can do as individuals and i and i think it's important for people even to get politically involved a little bit. Vote for the right people. Get out there and talk about these things and learn and educate yourself. You know, and people are at different levels of their education with food and their journey with food. And I mean, for some people, it's going to be cleaning out their pantry and working on themselves.

For some people, maybe the next step is getting your house healthy. For some people, maybe the next step is going to your school and working on the school or your place of work. And I mean, it feels like you could just grow this bigger, but it starts with you. You know, I mean, that's what it seems like to me is it's got to start with you until it feels comfortable to move to that next level. When you understand it well enough. Because it feels overwhelming otherwise. Well, but it starts with you and then all and then it's your circle wherever you go i mean just you know getting your church to do the daniel plan is something that you know

both you and i have had lots of people um you know i actually get recognized more for the daniel plan than public television it's like oh dr amy i. Raymond, I love you. I love Dr. Raymond. Our church did the program. It was so grateful. So start wherever you are. And oh, by the way, when you eat better, your relationships will be better. People will actually like you more.

Your skin will be better. You'll smile more and so on. One of our biggest podcast no blogs recently it just blew up and went viral was on red dye number 40 really it just went pop and for who knows what reason i have a scan on and off red number 40, and it just caused these explosions of inflammation in the brain. Talk a little bit about food additives, food colors, food preservatives. Sure. So, you know, the FDA's job is to sort of regulate the safety of our food. And they developed a certification.

It's called GRAS, which generally recognizes safe. But a lot of things are grandfathered in. And most of those things, there's 10,000 chemicals in our food. Very few of them have been actually tested for safety. And the way the government works is until it's proven to be harmful, it's allowed in the food, whether it was trans fats or glyphosate or whatever. And in many other countries, they're much more rigorous about this. So the FDA allows so many things in our food supply that are banned in other countries,

like azodicarbonamide, which is yoga mat material that Bonnie Hari outed in the subway bread. And so, for example, in Singapore, if you use it as a food bank, you get a $450,000 fine and 15 years in jail for using this food additive. And we allow BHT and BHA and BPA and all these noxious chemicals that have been shown to cause harm in humans and animals. And the government just lets them slide, probably because the food industry is so powerful. I mean, we knew for decades that trans fats were killing people and that they didn't change the law.

So why? Why would the scientists at the FDA not be like the commissions in Europe that ban way more? I mean, it seems like unless you've proven it to be safe you shouldn't have it in the food but it seems like we're backwards unless you prove it's dangerous you don't right we don't follow the cautionary principle right and and you know what's what's fascinating is that the there they there was so much so much lobbying against this that there were so much, so much lobbying against this, that there were a little over a hundred petitions

from there was something called the Ban of Poisonous Additives Act of 2009, which would have ended BPA in children's food and drink containers. It's a synthetic hormone that mimics estrogen, it's been linked to cancer, obesity. And the food in the tree would sort of screw them up if they did this.

But they filed, the American Beverage Association filed 80 different lobbying reports related to 24 bills in Congress. And the one that influenced most was the BPA, or the banned poisonous add as actin. And it failed. I mean, the act didn't get passed and our children and our communities

are not being protected. So when you think about that amount of money, I mean, it's huge. You've got, you know, just in 2015, there were literally probably 100 plus food companies that spent $200 million, about 192 million, almost $200 million, lobbying against the GMO Labeling Act,

which is why we don't have national labeling. In fact, it was so bad that Vermont and a few other states had mandatory labeling. The federal bill overruled those states, and now they don't have to have mandatory labeling. And it's because they spent $200 million in one year i mean how do you fight that you know well you fight it i mean you have to go up against these people otherwise you know i don't know if this is your experience i bet it is i have never in my 40 years of clinical practice seen the low levels of testosterone in young boys in young teenagers

and in adult males and i think it's all the hormone disruptors that are in our food and in the personal products people are putting on their bodies that you have to read the labels and get rid of that stuff or you're not going to have the energy because hormone you know testosterone is not just involved in sex it's involved in memory and mood and motivation and um when it's low people get depressed and almost all of my nfl players we've done 300 NFL players now, have low testosterone. And it's like, well, how is that possible? These giant, you know, virile.

They're belly fat though, right? Yep. It's just crazy. Because after they stop playing, especially. Well, it's that, but I think it's also the toxins in the food. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, we're going to have to stop. But Food Fix is Dr. Mark Hyman's new book.

He has many books that I just love. He also has a new special on public television. Check your local listings. You know, I can't tell you, Mark, how grateful we are to be your friends and the good you're doing in the world. We admire you greatly. Thank you. People can go to foodfixbook.com. They can get a free action guide on there.

They can get a free video on five steps to healthier you and a planet. There's a whole, great bonuses and stuff for the book. So people can go to foodfixbook.com and learn more about it. Oh, wonderful. Excellent. Great. All right. Thank you guys. All right. Take care. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe. So you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free 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.