Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - The Plastic Detox & Behind The Scenes Of Big Food | Jason Karp

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Who is pulling the corruption levers in the food industry? How did it get this bad? Jason Karp, CEO of HumanCo and one of the main investors in multiple clean food brands knows ALL the inside baseball into the dark history of Big Food. As the executive producer of 'The Plastic Detox' on Netflix, Jason also drops bombs on what plastic exposure is doing to our bodies and contributing to the infertility crisis, as well as practical ways to limit plastic in your home.Thank you to our sponsors!TAYLOR DUKES WELLNESS: Use code "ALEXCLARK" for 10% off your purchaseA'DEL NATURAL COSMETICS: Use code "ALEX" for 25% off first time ordersGEVITI: Use code "ALEX" to get 20% off of your first purchaseJOOVV: Get an exclusive discount on your first red light therapy orderPUORI: Use code ALEX to get 32% off Puori Creatine+ when you start a subscriptionVOTE ONLINEOur Guest:Jason KarpJason's Links:InstagramWebsitePodcastThe Plastic DetoxTrue Food KitchenAgainst the GrainAmara Organic Foods FOLLOW ALEX:Instagram |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@cultureapothecary⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @yoalexrapz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @RealAlexClark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcast |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to ‘Culture Apothecary’ on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. New episodes drop 6pm PST/ 9pm EST every Monday and Thursday.DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Always talk to a qualified healthcare professional for any health-related questions or decisions.

Purdue, they've been selling these organic, gluten-free chicken tenders. The ingredient list looked great. There's no seed oils on there. And good on this mom, she was like, they're breaded. What are they frying these in? So she calls up Purdue, and they're like, oh, yeah, we do use seed oils. There's some loophole. They don't have to list it.

This is the stuff that makes moms in America feel defeated. I know. It's really hard. We will all get a lot healthier if we behave in a way that is consistent with the way we used to live in terms of how we treated nature. We have forgotten how to take care of each other. And the grass loophole is an example of that. Is RFK Jr. looking into the grass loophole? That's been part of his platform from the beginning,

is to close that loophole so that conflicted companies who want these new chemicals to exist for their own products can't be the ones that say they're fine. We just have to have some humility that we don't know everything and that when we start playing God and creating molecules and chemicals and genetically modifying things, and we expect that it's all going to turn out okay because we're great at science. God's a lot better than us.

And we have to respect the way that things were created. We have to have humility that there's a lot we don't know. Today on the show, I am taking you behind the scenes of big food. How it works, how we got here, just how corrupt it is, and some of the really sneaky tricks that they're starting to implement. And a lot of the brands and food items that you think are cleaner, better options. It's diabolical stuff, and I have Jason Karp to talk to us all about it. Jason Karp is the founder of Human Co.

And this is such an incredible man in front of mine. We met when we testified at the Senate with RFK Jr. in September of 2024 and testified at Kellogg's together. And then today, at the time that we're filming this, we just protested out in front of the Supreme Court for people versus poison, where we called attention to Bayer and glyphosate and how they're wanting pesticides. liability shield so that the people who are poisoned by their products are not able to sue them. So today in this episode, I really wanted to get into the weeds with Jason just about how all of this works.

And also his fascinating journey from almost going blind to actually healing his eyesight and then how he became one of the largest investors in some of your favorite clean food restaurants and brands. And just exactly how it works when a clean food brand sells to big food. so many fascinating things that we get into in this episode. It's one of my all-time favorites now of the year. So I know this is going to be one of yours. I have an all-star record, by the way, for picking the ones that I know you guys are going to like the best, and this is going to be one, and your husband's going to like this one, too. And just in case I didn't do a good enough job selling, Jason, you need to listen to this really short three-minute speech that he gave at the People

versus Poison protest. We are all brothers and sisters. Before there was a Supreme court, before there was a corporation, before there was ever a lawsuit, there was a covenant, a sacred duty given to every human being. Take care of the land, take care of the food and water, take care of each other. This is the oldest law, older than any court, older than any government. This is the deepest moral instruction humanity has ever received. Every religion and every culture received the same instruction, every prophet, every elder. The land is not ours to ruin. The water is not ours to poison.

And we should never knowingly harm people for the pursuit of progress and profit. We are stewards of this awesome creation, not its owners. And somewhere in the last hundred years, in boardrooms and in this very city, we forgot this sacred duty. To the nine justices in the building behind me, deciding whether the poisoned can still seek justice, the law you serve is not the highest law. The verdict you write will be read by your children and your grandchildren. To the lawmakers listening, those. who will shape the next farm bill. What you sign will outlive your career, your party, and your

lobbyists, but it will not outlive the children who eat the poisoned food. We all know something is deeply wrong, but there is still time for redemption. A court can correct itself, Congress can choose differently. What was broken can be rebuilt by those who are willing to do the work. You do not have to be remembered as a poisoner. You do not have to be remembered as the Congress that sold our children for better crop yields. So today in front of this court, we are not here to beg. We are here to remember our sacred duty. People over poison. Choose to do what is right. This is the oldest law there is, and with God's help, we will all wake up and choose our children over money. Thank you. Watch this episode on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify.

We release new episodes every Monday and Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern. I also have to say thank you so much to the Heritage Foundation for letting us use Heritage Studios here in Washington, D.C. Obviously, I'm not on my normal set, but you're going to love this episode regardless. It's a beautiful set that they have here and we're super thankful for them letting us borrow it. Please welcome. CEO of Human Co. Jason Carp to Culture Apothecary. You're the founder of Human Co.

Also, co-founder of Hugh Chocolate, which before I even met you, was my favorite chocolate brand. Actually, you know what? Charlie Kirk and I live very close to each other. When he was alive, we would always run into each other at Whole Foods. Yeah. And I would always, it was always the chocolate aisle. And he was a fan of Lily's and I was a fan of Hugh.

And we would fight over it. Yeah. And he would try to tell me Lily's was better. And I would say, no, Hugh is better. Yeah. So what is the problem with most of the chocolate brands out there? Yeah, yeah. Well, Lily's, last I checked, has a wreathersol in it.

Ew, what's that? Yeah. So there was sort of two ways to do healthier, cleaner chocolate. So the problem with chocolate for a long time was that chocolate became candy, right? Chocolate became like what you know of is like the Cadbury bar or the Hershey bar, where if you look at most of the conventional chocolates and grocery stores, the first ingredient is sugar. And then over time, just like everything that we're going to talk about later, a bunch of chemicals, preservatives, emulsifiers got added to make the chocolate taste a certain way every time

because they didn't really want to deal with the complexities of making it taste that way using natural methods. And candy chocolate is not healthy, but dark chocolate, and there have been many, many, many, studies that have shown about the polyphenol content, which are antioxidants. It's got thobromine in it, which is really good for your brain and kind of gives you that good mood when you eat chocolate. Chocolate, naturally, cacao, is a health food. This is amazing news for women. Yes. Especially in our ludial phase. Yes. Yes. Chocolate's like a magical food. It really is. And there's actually a lot of studies on this. And I'm not even involved in Hugh anymore. So I'm not even like pitching my own thing. I'm just saying that chocolate's an amazing.

like superfood if you do it right. The story of how my family and I came up with Hugh, Hugh stands for human. Our slogan is get back to human. I was really sick in my early 20s. When I started working, I always thought I was healthy, but I went into like a super work hard, play hard job in finance. And I was a Division I college athlete. I always thought I was like really healthy, but I was healthy in the way that probably people in the 90s thought healthy was. Like I ate low fat, you know, and I tried not to drink soda, but I still did a lot of stuff, and that was definitely not healthy. I developed a series of diseases, one of which was a degenerative eye disease, and I was going blind at the age of 23. They told me I was going to be fully blind

by the age of 30, and there was no cure. And it was a deeply terrifying, depressing moment in my life to be told that you're going to go blind when you're 23 years old for anybody is is terrible and I became like deeply depressed I didn't really talk about it because I was doing so well at my job and I sort of felt like everything else was winning but I was in a really dark place and at the time I actually was an atheist I wasn't spiritual at all But I kind of heard a voice in my head that said, you can cure this with food and lifestyle. And I told my doctors that I was going to try to cure it with food and lifestyle. And they said, you're insane.

That will never work. This is back in the year 2001 when food as medicine wasn't really like a concept. And I went on this path that was based on my own research. And like, I developed a naive hypothesis, which was based on indigenous people. And when I had looked into indigenous people across all over the world, I noticed, and this is now well documented, that they didn't have chronic disease. They had no obesity. They had no heart disease. They had no, like, minimal rates of cancer.

They had no autoimmune stuff. There was, like, no allergies. There was, like, no cases of autism. And I thought, this is really odd because we think of the indigenous peoples like cavemen. Like in some of these cultures, they don't even have running water. And I looked all across the world and I found that indigenous peoples in different regions, you know, they exist here. They exist in the Arctic. They exist in the rainforest.

Some of the areas, they have completely different diets. They have in the Arctic areas, they just live on blubber and meat in the like jungle or rainforest areas. It's fruit nuts and seeds. There's the Maasai tribe in Africa that's now very famous. that lives on meat, cow blood, and some other things. But some were carnivores, some were vegan. All of them had no chronic disease. And the only common thread was they ate as unprocessed as possible,

as close to nature as possible. And everything was very human. There was nothing laboratory made. And so I thought, okay, if I go to a more ancestral diet and I make some lifestyle changes, maybe I could cure my eye disease. And over six months, everything, away, my vision returned. And when I went into the ophthalmologist office, who was a specialist in this

particular disease, he gave the test on my eye and he said, that's impossible. And he said, what did you do? And I told him, and he goes, nah, I must have misdiagnosed you. And I'm now one of the only cases that's ever reversed this disease. So I'm a medical miracle in Western medicine terms. But since that time, which is now 26 years ago, I've met a lot of other miracle people who've cured diseases that were supposed to be incurable through food and lifestyle. Was it only food or were you doing certain supplements too? Nope. There was no supplements. It was I definitely improved my sleep. I made sure I got outside a lot because I was working like 100 hours a week at the time. So I wasn't outside. I wasn't

exercising. I wasn't sleeping much. I was drinking alcohol, drinking lots of caffeine, eating like lots of processed food. And I gave all that up for a period of time, which was very hard as a 23-year-old single white guy in New York City, you know, when I'm like trying to date and, you know, it was just like it was really hard because alcohol culture particularly was really popular back then. And so just like talking about it, people thought like, like, I was like on the wagon, you know. Oh, totally. You know, and it was just like really hard.

And I was like a freak. Like people would make fun of me and I just had to deal with it because none of this stuff was like socialized yet. Like none of it was like accepted. So do you wear glasses now or contacts? I have contacts. Okay. I mean, I've always had like bad regular vision. Right.

But this was an eye disease where I was actually seeing double and going blind. So that was different. And you've maintained this the whole time? Yeah. I've been in remission for 26 years. This whole journey, which just taught me a lot. It taught me to also have a lot of faith in what we don't know. It told me to have a lot of faith that there's something bigger than us.

And it also taught me to question medical Western dogma and to listen to my own intuition. And my wife, Jessica, and her brother, Jordan, and it was really Jordan's idea, wanted to create a restaurant that was the manifestation of these principles. And Hugh Kitchen, before it was a chocolate company, was a restaurant. I didn't know that. Yeah. Where at? It was in New York City in the Union Square area. We had it for almost nine years.

It was like if Amma was a food court. Amma in Washington, D.C. That's the best restaurant in D.C. by the way. genuinely, it has to be one of the cleanest restaurants and you would know in the country as far as the most premier Maha standards. Not even close. Amma is the top of the top. I don't even understand. And this is, I like, I just love the inside baseball of this.

The standards that they have from their water to like, there's no plastic in the entire restaurant. Like, how do they do? How do you afford to do that? The chef, Johanna, is a friend of mine. And I think if you have a single restaurant and you're very clear about what you stand for, it's very expensive to do the way she does it. And it's probably not for the whole country right now. I mean, my dream would be this is where restaurants all go. Totally. And that's why my company is now the largest investor in True Food Kitchen, which is like the cleanest, more mass market restaurant that exists in this country. But you can do it. It's not easy. It's a lot harder than taking shortcuts to do it the way True Food does it and the way Amma does it. But we had a fast casual version of that in Hugh Kitchen. And we had a bakery section where everything was grain-free.

gluten-free, no refined sugar. We were seed oil-free in 2012. And, I mean, people thought we were nuts. How did you know? How did you know seed oils were bad in 2012? We had a general view that anything that was highly industrially processed, we didn't even need to see scientific data. And I think this is really important for your listeners that, and we talked about this when we were on the Senate Roundtable, and this was part of my speech when I spoke, we've become so reliant. on clinical, controlled, peer-reviewed studies to conclusively prove things that we ignore evidence.

And there's a difference between evidence and proof. And because we've become overly reliant on pure science, we ignore a lot of evidence now because we're like, well, it's not proven conclusively that glyphosate causes cancer, right? It's not proven conclusively that cigarettes cause cancer, by the way. But there's enough evidence that we all agree like it's bad. What happens is is the opponents of all these things who are trying to keep this garbage in our toxic environment. They're like, well, where's the conclusive proof? And with the seed oils, for example, if you ever look at how they're made, much of the seed oils in this country are made in like diesel plants.

Like they're made in the same machinery that they make engine. oil. And if you just look at how they're made, you look at how they're processed, you look at how much pesticide residue these various seeds have on them, I don't need to see scientific studies to know that I don't want to put that in my children's body. And I don't have to be the person that waits 10 years. And frankly, I think it's a ridiculous experiment on humanity to wait to say, we need to wait 10 years to see if having plastics in our brain is actually bad. We need to wait 10 years to know that we shouldn't have forever chemicals in umbilical cords and in the placenta and in men's sperm like it's showing up in our bodies and i think we have to have some

common sense that we don't need that stuff inside of our body and so that's the approach we took on seed oils and um we took a very ancestral approach and our belief which is why the slogan is get back to human is that we will all get a lot healthier if we behave in a way that is consistent with the way we used to live in terms of how we treated nature. It doesn't mean we have to give up technology. It doesn't mean we have to give up all the things that we have that are modern. But there's a lot of wisdom in the past. And there's a lot of wisdom that we abandoned because we have been so driven in this pursuit of

quarterly profits and progress that we have forgotten how to take care of each other. And we have taken this approach. And the grass loophole is an example of that that generally recognized the safe loophole that you've probably heard many times how chemicals can be self-affirmed by companies without the FDA approving them to get into our food system. The companies can say it's safe so then therefore, oh, okay, it must be safe.

Yeah, and that's how it works in this country. And there's, you know, Vani always cites the stat of there's 10,000 chemicals that have never been tested that are in our modern environment. Is RFK Jr. looking into the grass loophole? Yes. That's been part of his his platform from the beginning is to close that loophole so that conflicted companies who want these new chemicals to exist for their own products can't be

the ones that say they're fine. And if you look in history, there have been so many times where even when like the FDA has said something safe, you know, this happened with thalidomide, which was which was a medicine that turned out to create horrible birth defects. This happened with asbestos. This happened with DDT. This happened with Alestra. Like, there's a whole list of things that we thought were safe that 10 years later

were like, oh, wait, that causes cancer. That causes birth defects. And so we just have to have some humility that we don't know everything. And that when we start playing God and creating molecules and chemicals and genetically modifying things and we expect that it's all going to turn out okay. hey, because we're great at science, we don't have the humility to realize, like, God's a lot better than us.

And, like, we have to respect the way that, like, things were created. And it doesn't mean we can't, like, do our own things, but we have to have humility that there's a lot we don't know. Like, we don't know how the placebo effect works in people. Every single controlled drug trial incorporates the placebo effect because when people believe they can heal, they heal. We have no idea how that works. To this day, we don't know how it works, but we know it's real.

And that's why it's incorporated in every drug trial. So just to give my audience some color on Jason, Jason has invested in basically every single one of your favorite clean food brands or restaurants. I mean, like, he is the man behind the scenes. Like, he is so powerful in like the anti-big food movement. When you are investing in so many of these different brands that we see at Whole Foods, for example, what's the mission behind that? Why did you start doing that? In the early days of Hugh, Hugh was a small company. I was actually in finance.

I was a professional investor, what's called a hedge fund manager, for about 21 years. Hugh, we created as a passion project. Certainly we wanted it to be a good business, but we never had any idea as a family that it would become what it became. And in the early days of Hugh, so call it like 2012 to 20, 16. There were a bunch of newer, clean, I'd call them ancestral or paleo-inspired food companies that started coming out of the woodwork.

And this was very early days. Like this stuff was super fringe back then. But it was like what we did. And we also served. We had like a third party market section in Hugh where we would sell other people's products that we thought met our specs. And we thought were like good to display. And I, because I was a.

professional investor and I saw how big companies operated and what made like good companies be good, there were a lot of mission driven entrepreneurs who didn't have the experience in business that I did, but they were like amazing with their beliefs of what needs to exist in the world. And so I kind of became like a mentor and an advisor to a bunch of these entrepreneurs just to help them out because I wanted to see these things exist. You know, now there's so much any great things that we can find in sprouts and whole foods online. But back then, like, if you wanted to find, like, clean anything, you know, clean cosmetics, clean personal care, you clean food, you couldn't find this stuff. It was impossible. And I was living super clean

at the time, so it was really hard. So my original intention was just to be, like, helpful at accelerating this movement. And I knew that if you're not savvy with business, it doesn't matter how good your ideas, it might fail. And a lot of these businesses fail, even if you're amazing at it. And I've been part of things that have failed. But I figured I could help. And so a few of them would find me because they knew what I did with Hugh and they wanted me to help. And sometimes they wanted me on their board or they wanted me to be an investor. And so I started helping. I started investing in some of these things. And some of them turned out to be huge. And some of them turned out to be zeros. What were some of the huge ones that people would know? Primal Kitchen was a, was a

pretty big outcome. That was like the first clean condiment company with ketchup. It was a guy named Mark Sisson. We love them. Yeah. I love Mark. I want to interview Mark so bad. Yep. Mark was like one of the OG paleo kind of godfathers. And Mark was part of the inspiration for Hugh. Mark Hyman was one of the inspirations for Hugh. So I've known Mark since like 2011, Mark Hyman. I also knew Mark Sisson, but I was an investor in Primal Kitchen. I was an early investor in the ORA ring. That turned out to be probably the biggest one that I've been involved in. So cool.

Because I believe that sleep was a lot more important than people realized. And I believe that once people started seeing how you could sort of watch your sleep and do it in a way that was not like a big clunky gadget that you had to wear and it was this elegant ring. What do you say to people who are concerned about EMS with the Oro Ring? Oh, it's tiny. I mean, I think you probably have a legitimate concern with like eight sleep, which has like a lot of circuitry in there. I don't know where I sit on the sort of EMF debate. It doesn't seem to affect me. Well, I always tell people, I don't worry about it because with the aura ring, you can put it on airplane mode and it'll collect your data.

Yeah. So I just turn it on Bluetooth very quickly to get my data or whatever when I wake up in the morning and then I go back on airplane mode. So I think it's totally fine. I think it's one of the safest wearables out there. Yeah, I think there's a different issue with aura and whoop and all of these like, let's just call it measured self technologies, which I think is probably really. important for your listeners because I went through this arc myself and realized that there was I was like an early biohacker and I was like doing all the things and I started getting increasingly neurotic about all the things like how did I sleep and I need to wake up at a certain time and I need to like journal and I need to make

sure I get my sauna in and I need to make sure that I like rinse off with cold water and I need to you know and like and it becomes this neurosis and what I found and and I'm I'm I'm sure that I'm certain this is true, is that there's a level of neurosis that overpowers all the good things that you're doing. And so you have to make sure that it doesn't become an obsessive neurosis. And a lot of problems I've observed with aura, and I actually don't wear it anymore, interestingly enough, because there were days I woke up and I felt great. And aura said I slept like shit. And I was like, oh, no, it's going to be a bad day. But I actually, actually woke up and I felt great. And then there were days that were the opposite where like,

I woke up feeling like garbage and Orra's like, yay, you had a great sleep. And I started, similar to the placebo effect, your mindset changes how you feel. I think it's important that we trust how we feel more than just the data. So why is that happening? I mean, do you think the data is not always entirely accurate with Oro Ring? Yes. And I also think there's more variables to it than we know what to measure. Okay. I think mindset's really important. And I think if you become so obsessed, like, there were times where I'd be like, I really need like a sleep score over 90. And I go to bed with like an intention of like, I got to sleep well. And then you don't sleep well because like now you're in your head about it. And so I would say, and I've dealt with a lot of people on this topic,

that moving back to a more relaxed state where you give yourself grace, with all of these things. It doesn't mean you should, like, have poison once in a while. So I, but, but there is some grace in modern life that you have to give yourself. And I know plenty of people who got to their 90s and their even over 100 who had a really peaceful, nice life. And they never did anything we're talking about. They smoked.

They drank Warren Buffer drinks three Coca-Cola's a day. He's 96 right now. There's something and there's, there's a lot of people. It's not just genetics. But, and this has been clinically shown, that stress, happiness, and connection are as powerful of longevity boosters as food and exercise. This is what's going on with President Trump. Because it doesn't make any sense to me how he is able to function on three hours of sleep on average a night and eats garbage. And he's like one of the most high functioning people ever.

Yeah. He's always on it. Yeah. I mean, he was just going like days without sleep, you know, up into the election. even in 2024. It was wild stuff. Truly. And I think that's why when people ask, like, what would I do? What would I recommend? Like, having human connection, having happiness and laughter, having meditation practice is as important as like eating clean food.

Did you guys see that Mr. Rogers got canceled? Huge story. Apparently people started digging through old footage and decided being relentlessly kind was actually toxic positivity. The Cardigans, formative. The soft voice manipulative. Telling kids they matter love bombing. I'm kidding about this, obviously. But honestly, this is where we are now. People are so fried that they probably try to cancel the one man who ever made America feel emotionally safe. You know what actually makes you feel stable? Taylor Duke's wellness protein powder. Travel, crazy work week, spring chaos, your kids complaining all the time about how hungry they are. This is the must have to start your day and not crash out. It's made from 100% grass-fed bone broth protein. So every scoop

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Primal Kitchen sold to big food. Popi sold. Siette sold. If a company says, same great recipe, should consumers believe them? It depends. So it's a great question. And I think it's actually nuanced. And right after we sold Hugh, I got a lot of heat from a bunch of people. You sold out.

You sold to the devil. You sold to big food. Like, I'm never buying your product again. And it's a fair concern because that's happened. There have been plenty of companies that were bought, and within 10 years, the ingredients were cheapened, they totally changed it, and the soul behind the brand got lost. So that's a valid question. And I wrote an op-ed because I was very, very thoughtful, as was my brother-in-law and my wife, when we were in the sales process, because if you look at the package of you, my brother-in-law's face and my wife's face, and their names are on the packaging. Right. So it's literally our family brand. So first, you really have to get to know the buyer. You have to get to know like why they're buying you. Do they care or not? I felt Mondali's actually really cared. And you have to hold this thought at the same time as they have plenty of products that are garbage. They do. But they're trying. Okay. And all the big kind of food companies, they're not all evil, but they have a business. They have shareholders and they're trying to.

to figure out like how they pivot. When we were looking at it, we were, we were thinking we have something that we cannot distribute internationally. We cannot get the price to a level that would make it like affordable for everybody unless we partner with the second largest chocolate company in the world. And we had a unique provision in our contract that they can't change the recipe. they can't change the standards of our product. And very few companies are able to do that, and I think they should try. But that's probably the most important thing, is that if you look now five years later, Hugh is the exact same ingredients as when we sold it. In fact, I think the chocolate's gotten better.

And the chocolate's actually cheaper now. How can it get better? The sourcing of the material. So my brother-in-law still works there, which is really important. but they have an amazing facility. It's kind of like the Tesla gigafactory of chocolate. And when you start getting bigger, you're able to actually source better material at better prices.

You have to hold these companies accountable and you have to look a year later, two years later, three years later and see like, are they changing stuff? Are they not changing stuff? You have to see who from the company is still involved. That's really important.

And in many cases, some brands that I thought would have been cheapened, have not been cheapened, Because the company that bought them knows that the customer cares so much about the quality that if they cheap into it, it would actually be bad for them. Right. So, like, they're, they're not dumb. Like, they'll, they'll only change it if they feel like no one will notice. But there've been a lot of companies where people noticed and the sales fell off a cliff.

Like, this happened with Kashi. The, it was like an OG, like, clean cereal brand. And it got bought and they cheapen the. Oh, yeah, they have animals on the, on the cereal boxes. it and like people stopped buying it. And so like there's case studies of what not to do. And, and I think the most important thing for me is that entrepreneurs who are trying to make the world a better place, if they see something like Poppy, they see something like Hugh, and they see that there's a good outcome, now I'm encouraging more entrepreneurs to start companies that have

healthy products because they can see that it can win. What is the largest amount sold of a, of a clean food brand selling to a big food company that you've heard of? Like dollar amount, like massive. Kind bar. Really? Kind bar's the biggest. How much was that? Like $4 billion.

$4 billion for a little protein bar thing? Yeah, well, kind bar's enormous now. But yeah. Yeah. Poppy was about $2 billion. That was one of the biggest. But Kind is still the biggest for sure. Wow.

I mean, I feel like that's so inspiring and encouraging for people that are, you know, trying to cook up something in their kitchen right now. And there's plenty of them that sell for hundreds of millions. And there's all sorts of different kinds of things. kinds of deals too, where they sell like half of it or they sell three quarters of it and then they're still involved. And everyone knows in like the big food world that everything is going cleaner, but they have this really hard challenge, which is they don't want to confess that the rest of their portfolio is crap. Yeah. Do you have any worries that big food brands are buying up clean brands because they want to control the movement? No. No, I don't. And I deal with a lot of these executives. Like, I think.

Sometimes in like social media, everyone thinks that the big food companies are like super evil. There's a couple people that I've met that are evil for sure. Like why? What made them evil? Like people who knowingly have a product that causes harm and they don't change it and they keep selling it. Like anyone selling glyphosate is evil. Like that to me, like you know it causes cancer. You know it's banned in lots of countries.

Like that to me is like evil. but when it's something that's like how much sugar could be in a product, right? And like there's stuff that's a little more gray. And there's also people who are not quite, it's just their job, right? And they're just not informed. And I've sat down with many of them. And they have families. They have kids.

They've been brainwashed thinking like it's fine. Like they actually go to sleep at night thinking like I'm selling like Kellogg's is fine. And I've met a lot of them. And these are good people. They just, they're just not informed. So for somebody who's just stumbled upon my podcast and they're a new listener and they're not Maha, but they're like, this is kind of interesting, this little movement that's going on here. What is big food? When people say the term big food, what is that?

And then how did we get here with all of this corruption in the food industry in America? Yeah. So big food are primarily large public companies who own tons of brands that you don't realize are all owned by one brand. So, for example, the company Mondalys, which probably most people don't even know by name anymore, is the largest snacking company in the world. It's over a hundred billion dollar company. They own what used to be called Nabisco, which owns Oreos and Triscuits and Wheat Thins. They also own Cadbury, right? And now they own Hugh and they own Perfect Bar and they own Tate's cookies.

And if you go to their website, they own like, I don't even know how many, like 75 brands. and that's one of the big food companies, right? Kellogg's is a big food company. Pepsi's a big food company. Coca-Cola. They have dozens and dozens of brands underneath one family. And the reason they're called big food is because they're run like giant corporations. They have tens of thousands of employees.

They sell in, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of countries around the world. And the last I checked, I think there's 12 companies, 12, that control 80% of our packaged food. And why is that bad? The reason it's bad is because it stifles competition. It's sort of what's called an oligopoly. It's like a monopoly with just a handful of companies. And they make so much money because they control everything. They control all the advertising.

So when people go into a store who are uninformed, they, only see or buy the brands that they're familiar with, the brands that they've been advertised to for decades on TV. What's happened in terms of how we got here is that in the early days of modern U.S. capitalism, which was the 50s and 60s, there were a lot of people that this was the beginning of the sort of shareholder value movement of like, let's grow a lot and let's make all of our investors lots of money, which is great. It sounds like great. But they took the approach that Henry Ford pioneered of making, you know, the now very, very famous like factory line of basically commoditizing and widgetizing the way you have parts of things

so that you can make a car more efficiently, right? It really started with cars. And then that methodology was then applied to all industry of like, this is how we scale, like, manufacturing. and that came to food in like the 50s and 60s. And they had a challenge, which is that when you extract ingredients, animals, plants, whatever, from the earth, it's not homogenous. It's highly variable because this is nature, right?

And so like some blueberries are ripe and some blueberries are mushy and some blueberries don't look good. And they're like, well, how do we make things more consistent because we need to sell a lot more crackers? We need to sell a lot more candy. We need to sell a lot more whatever. McDonald's burgers. McDonald's is the worst offender of all this.

And McDonald's started in the 50s. They actually started in the 40s, but it really got started in the 50s with Ray Kroc. And it was so, McDonald's was an organic burger shack. The fries were fries, tallow and salt. And they didn't even need to use the word organic because we didn't use the pesticides then that we use now. So the beef was grass fed. Like you would love to go to McDonald's in 1950.

And then a bunch of people got around the table and they're like, how do we make 10 of these? How do we make a hundred McDonald's? How do we make sure that the fries taste the same in Paris and in Tokyo as they taste here in Chicago? And they're like, well, we're going to have to basically commodify the plants and we're going to have to have our own farms for potatoes. And we're going to have to figure out some chemicals that preserve it, that make it consistent. And if you, this is Vonny's famous slides now is the McDonald's. McDonald's fries from 1960 versus the McDonald's fries from today, and it went from three ingredients

to 11 ingredients. And the extra eight ingredients are all things you don't want to eat. What I don't understand about McDonald's, and I've heard some theories, and I'd like to hear your opinion, is you've got this massive movement going on with Maha. You know, so many restaurants seeing success, going cleaner, tweaking ingredients, everybody wins, healthy, taste good, etc. Why are they digging their heels in on not switching their fries back to beef tallow? Oh, there's a few reasons. One of them is the vegetarian vegan argument. So there's a lot of restaurants that don't want to switch to tallow because there are a lot of vegetarian and vegan customers who don't want to eat like meat contaminated fries. And tallow is not

consistent with a vegan diet. Talo is harder to deal with than the, these industrialized vegetable oils. Tallow comes as a solid. And then when you heat it, it turns into a liquid. And having a liquid is a lot easier to deal with when you're frying because you just pour it in, then taking a block and putting the block down and then heating it up. One of the chemicals that they add now to the fries prevents foaming. And so when you keep refrying stuff, there's like foam that comes out and the foam can

splatter and can create liability for them because it could splatter on people's faces and burn them. And so they add one of the ingredients that's in yoga mats to the frying oil and it prevents it from bubbling up. And there's basically a whole process that has been created in the last 50 years where they can fry things really fast and really consistently with all these extra chemicals. and the amount of work that would be required to do that with tallow and figure out like all the new methods of using tallow so that we can be more efficient. It's a lot of work. And I don't think anyone wants to do the work because I think at the end of the day, most of America still is uninformed. And they're just fine eating the fries the way they are.

I've also heard that one of the reasons that they're not, you know, interested in changing is they're like, why would we need to change? The president, sure, he's talking about maha, but also he's. He's eating it on TV. Yeah. Yeah. That's totally valid. So what I've heard is that they're like, yeah, we're not doing anything. He's still talking about us.

We are in such a health conscious era right now, cold plunges, red light, high protein sleep trackers, all of it. And listen, I love a wellness habit. I do some of those. But none of that matters if you're missing the actual data on what your body needs. You cannot biohack your way out of blind spots. That's why Jevity is so smart and why I use them to take all the guesswork out of my health optimization.

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One of the biggest health lessons I've learned is that consistency beats complexity every single time. You do not need 100 wellness hacks. You need a few things that actually work and that you'll actually use. So for me, one of those non-negotiables is my juve red light therapy. I love using juve at night because it's become such an easy way to wind down and support recovery. Red and your infrared light are incredible for supporting your body at the cellular level. They can impact muscle recovery, joint pain, inflammation, skin, sleep quality and overall resilience. after a long day, even 10 minutes in front of my juve feels like the reset for my body that I really needed. It's one of those things that helps me feel like I'm really supporting my body instead of just reacting when I feel run down. And what makes juve different is the quality.

Their devices use clinically proven wavelengths, deliver a safe and effective dose of light, and their true medical grade panels that are independently safety tested. That piece of mind matters when it's something that you're using regularly. I also love that they have so many device options depending on your space and your needs and your budget. So it feels realistic, whether you want targeted support or full body benefits or something to travel with. If you've been curious about red light therapy, Juv is the one that I have used for years, way before I was even podcasting doing culture apothecary. Go to juve.com slash Alex. That's J-O-O-V-V-V-com slash Alex. So to tie it back together in terms of how we got here and what's happened with big food, it also applies to big ag and big chemical because it's all the same.

theme, which is we have been myopically focused as a country. And we are uniquely sick in America relative to most of the other Western countries in terms of we have the highest rate of chronic disease. We have the highest rate of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity. We have the worst mental health. They spend half to a third per person on health care as us. And they live five to seven years longer than we do. I mean, we're literally losing. losing like bad. And the more we've been spending, the worst it's actually gotten. So the money has actually made it worse. The more tech we have, the more technology around health care we have, the more medical devices we have, the more pharmaceuticals we have, we keep getting sicker.

It's literally backwards. Like if you were a company and I showed you a chart of how much you kept spending and I showed you the P&L, the profit and loss of the company, I showed that the more you spent, the worse it got, you would say, shut that company down. And so what's happened with big food and big everything is that we have just tried to optimize one variable for the last 40 years, which is quarterly profit, growth, and dividends, which is what all the investors have wanted. But the big companies don't bear the responsibility of what happens to people, because it's later. It's five years later. It's 10 years later. It's 20 years. later. They don't bear what are called the externalities or like the side effects of if they give an

entire generation diabetes. Coca-Cola and Pepsi don't bear that cost. They're just growing and they're doing what they can to grow. And a lot of the growth in the last 20, 30 years has come from food science and food chemistry and using chemicals because it makes the product more homogenous. It makes the margins better. It makes it more shelf stable. It makes it easier to produce. But they don't bear the cost of what it does to us. And they don't bear the cost of what it does to the earth. We're now at this reckoning moment. And this is why RFK is so powerful.

And this is why the Maha movements become so powerful. Because we're at this moment in time where everyone's starting to look at the data of the last 40 years. And they're like, how the hell did we get here? How did we become the sickest ever when we actually have the most money and we have the most stuff and we have the most conveniences? Like, it's great that I can order a pizza on my phone. but not if I'm going to die when I'm 65 or I'm going to live the last 20 years of my life

with diabetes, heart disease, and be on 18 medications. Nobody wants to live like that. And so I think we're at this pivotal moment in time where we have to redefine what progress is, what abundance means. Because progress historically has been an economic measurement. You know, what's your standard of living? What do people have in terms of access to education? But if that kind of progress means we're the sickest and we're the most depressed, the most anxious,

we're the most infertile. Sperm counts down 55% in 40 years. Like if that's what progress is, we need to have a real conversation because there's no way that's what progress is. We should define progress is, are we happy? Are we healthy? Do we love each other? and like are we thriving as a species or not? But if we change things, then we won't be able to feed the world.

Right, right. Is it wrong of me to say, I don't want America responsible for feeding the world? Is that bad to say? I mean, I'm a conservative. So I'm just like, I want to like America first, right? So to me, I'm thinking, why are we worried about feeding everybody else? Let's stick with us and let's fix our problem. What's your take?

We have a cognitive dissonance problem in that there's certain servants. or things that you would never ever want the cheapest version of it, right? If I said you could find the cheapest version of a heart surgeon, right? You could find the absolute cheapest tattoo artist. Like people would be like, I'm not going to the absolute cheapest tattoo artist. I would never go to the cheapest heart surgeon. I would never pick the absolute cheapest, like, defense attorney if you were like thinking about going to jail.

you would never choose the cheapest version of like a of a baby seat for your car, right? You would be like, I want a quality product. I don't want to choose the absolute cheapest version of that because I want my kid to be safe. But for some reason, we've been brainwashed to think that food should be ultra, ultra, ultra, cheap. And we had some crazy thing happened in the last 30 years where the last time I went into McDonald's, true story, a cheeseburger was cheaper than a car. cup of fruit. How is that possible that you could have a bun with meat with vegetables and sauce,

and that would be cheaper than sliced fruit? And that just tells you the heart of the problem, is that we have become obsessed with ultra cheap food, whatever it takes to make it cheaper. And there's other things that people would be caught dead having like the cheapest sneakers. Like somehow people want to buy sneakers that are $80, $140, $140 because they're cool. They want to have a $7 Starbucks instead of a 50 cent cup of coffee, but they'll complain when there's a $9-fid cheeseburger when there could be a $5 cheese. This is a really compelling argument for the husbands who are so annoyed that their wife is listening to this show and their grocery bill somehow is going up. And she's talking about how we got to switch out all of our cleaning products and the makeup she uses and the sheets on the bed. And they're like, what the heck is going on?

You were spending all my money. What do you say to those men? There have been studies on this, and it's important, which is we don't do a good enough job of inspecting where we spend the rest of our money. And the argument about like we need to feed everybody, there's a delineation when you do this kind of like survey work. And the delineation is the poverty line. And one of the ways to define the poverty line in terms of people who legitimately can't afford food. is do you have a smartphone or not? And that's a very important delineation.

If you can afford a smartphone, which is, I believe it's 93, 94% of Americans have a smartphone of some kind. And many of these people, you would think, are sort of near that level where it's really hard to make things work, which is true. But if you double click on where some of the people

in the area where they have a little bit of discretionary income, where they spend their money, they might have a Spotify account. They might have Netflix. They might spend money on cigarettes and beer. They might spend money on like a couple Starbucks a week for seven bucks a piece. And they might, in some cases, they might value having a pair of Nikes, which are 140 bucks. And it only is an extra $2 to $3 a day if you want to dramatically improve your food.

How did you figure that number? It was a study that I saw that came out of one of the universities. but it was it was assuming that you go to grocery stores and that you can you can go to organic with like fruits and vegetables if you buy your own meat you buy your own ground beef to be clear it's not a small amount of money three dollars a day is an extra you know $21 a week right times 52 weeks a year is an extra thousand bucks a year so it's not insignificant but when you think about it in terms of like do you have any streaming service that you pay for Yeah. Like even one, right? And what do you pay for that? And they might say, but I'm not giving up that, you know, and it's okay, but then don't complain. You can't complain if you allow yourself to be audited and someone can go through your bills and you can see some of the things. And by the way, I'm guilty too. Like everybody has things that they're kind of like, yeah, I shouldn't spend that much money on that kind of thing, you know, and like everyone has their like vices. But I just think the conversation needs to be a little bit more balanced that.

there is no price for poison food, period, full stop. Like, we got seduced in having ultra cheap food because we were taught that it was okay. And if you go to Europe, you go to France and you go to Italy in particular, they have disdain for cheap food. Like, they won't even buy it. I don't think it's a coincidence that in America we spend less on food than everybody else and we spend the most on health care. Yeah. It's not a coincidence. It is directly causing you to get sick and then have to spend a lot of money at the doctor's office.

Yeah. You're paying it at some point. And I just think we have to like restore the pride. And again, I'm not saying like go to heroin. Like I'm saying like, like choose organic over an unorganic. The largest organic selection is in Walmart, right? In Walmart and Costco. Yeah.

Those are the two largest organic food sellers in the United States is Walmart and Costco. Yeah. So you can get great stuff at Costco. You can get great stuff at Walmart. Also, there was a huge announcement today or yesterday at the time we're filming this that Aldi is going maha, their own, like, value brand, whatever their in-house Aldi brand is. I mean, their food is already cheap. But then on their own brand, they're getting rid of tons of chemicals that RFK Jr. said, get them out.

And they're like, okay, they're complying. They're going maha. Yeah. And Aldi's, you can get organic things there. They also have grass-fed ground beef. You can find some great things at Aldi. You totally can. Yeah.

Like, you just have to be a little, look, it is inconvenient. It is inconvenient and annoying to reading, greeting labels. Like, it definitely slows down the process. It slows down the process to realize that a lot of the brands that you grew up with that I grew up with. I grew up on junk food. I grew up on, like, everything that's advertised during the Super Bowl. Like, that's what I ate every day. And to realize, like, that stuff is actually not in our best interest is a really hard, like, red pill.

It's really hard to realize like, oh, wait, like when I go down the aisle in a CVS or in an HeB or, you know, Albertsons or whatever, like most of that stuff I can't buy. And that's a really hard thing to face. But it's the truth. And the truth is really inconvenient because the facts of our illness, the facts of our cancer rates are staring us in the face. Like this isn't even debatable what we've done to each other. And now we just have to have the hard conversation of how do we fix it? So let's say you are out of an urban metro area. There's no true food kitchens around.

And you're on a road trip. And you have got to eat. You did not pack your food. Yeah. Where are you eating? I think if you go, I mean, I wouldn't do this. Like, again, don't use me as a model because I would rather fast than eat some of that stuff. but some of our mutual Maha friends like Max Lugavir,

if you go to McDonald's and that's your only choice and you just ask for patties, no bun, no sauce, nothing. It's okay. It's okay. Just ask for the patties, right? You can do that. You can have, you know, the water from the soda machine. Actually, on the soda machines, there's usually a water button.

That's actually filtered water. Like, it's not terrible, right? You can just have that. almost all the package food that you see in an airport is garbage. And what you can choose is they have, you'll find like unroasted nuts. So you can find just nuts that are like just salted, unroasted. You always want to find unroasted. Dry roast is okay.

But the roasted nuts are literally like deep fried in seed oils. Yeah, I was like devastated to find out that the, what is it called planters? Is that the brand? Yeah. planters, honey roasted peanuts. They had all kinds of weird stuff on there. I know. I love, though.

They're so good. By the way, all of these things taste great because they're engineered to taste great. Like if you didn't know, I mean, Doritos has been literally chemically engineered to be addictive. So there's a reason why if you had no idea and the first time you eat Doritos, you're like, these are amazing. Because they're engineered to be amazing. Is obesity a self-control problem? have these people been completely manipulated and they have no idea? It's the latter.

I agree. It's the latter. And 10 years ago, I would have been like, you're insane. This is a self-control problem. And now I really feel for those people because it's terrible. Yeah. I mean, 100 years ago, if you were obese in the 1850s, that was a self-control problem. Well, and then they put you in the circus.

You get a cool job at least. Yeah, yeah. But most of the weight issues today, it's not your fault. Yeah. It's not your fault. Explain that. There's a bunch of variables. And it's not just the food.

So first off, the food is literally engineered to be highly addictive. And they actually have food chemists who, I mean, there's books written about this, about how food chemistry works and how they design it to hit a certain part of your taste buds and how they measure levels of what are called satiety, which is when you feel full. And they want you to not feel full and they want you to keep eating because the more you go back, the more sales that they have. So they're literally engineered to be addictive in terms of how they can't, to tweak the flavors and the chemicals.

The other problem, though, which is actually probably just as big, and there's a lot more research coming out about it, is a lot of the chemicals, the microplastics and the forever chemicals, and we can talk about the plastic detox. Some of the chemicals that are in plastics that leach into the water, that leach into your skin, that leach into your body, they chemically alter and interfere with your hormones. and some of those chemicals are actually referred to as obeseogens. Yes, and fragrance does this too. Fragrance does this also.

Fragrance and plastic are making you fat. Yes. It actually slows down your metabolism, and it actually impairs your metabolism in working the way it's supposed to work. And so if you are covered in these kind of endocrine disrupting chemicals, which are now in everything, and so you think like, oh, it's just in the lotion,

but I helped executive produce a documentary on Netflix. It came out like a month ago. It's called The Plastic Detox. And it's about six couples who are in their late 20s, early 30s, who all have what's called unexplained infertility. So explained infertility is like if... You have endometriosis. Correct.

Unexplained infertility is like if they do a general scan of your anatomy, like you're fine, right? But then they can do tests like, what's your sperm look like? And a lot of unexplained infertility is actually from the men. And these men in this documentary, and it's all documented, it shows that they all have way below fertile levels of sperm in terms of quantity and what's called morphology, which is the shape of them, and the motility, which is how well they swim.

And this is a huge problem right now in the world, but particularly in America is men's sperm. and the quality of their sperm. And so one of the top fertility endocrinology doctors, she's now, I think she's in her early 80s, but she's amazing. Her name is Shauna Swan. She goes to each of their houses. She takes all their blood work,

and then she goes into their houses. And these are all, you know, middle class. Like none of these are not, these are not aeron shoppers, right? These are all regular Americans. And she goes through their house and she does swaps. So, and she. explains like you shouldn't have glade air freshener because that's just spewing out chemicals into your air that are endocrine disrupting all the things you drink out of her plastic so she got rid of all the plastic bottles she got rid of all the plastic like cups and stuff um all the conventional personal care and household products you know the garbage bags the

um wait a minute hold on a minute garbage bags oh yeah wait what are you wait a minute this is something i have never thought of yeah wait wait wait wait a wait wait wait a wait wait wait do you use for a garbage bag? Yeah, so this is why you got to go to Grove Collaborative. So Grove Collaborative is the number one marketplace online for plastic free shopping. What? Yeah. This is so cool. I didn't know this existed. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so she goes in and she swaps out. And by the way, a lot of this stuff is affordable. She took out her plastic toothbrushes. They got bamboo toothbrushes, which kind of suck, but whatever. And like toothpaste that comes in in refillable, like, metal jars. And it all sounds like super hippie.

One shocking thing she switched, which is another thing I never would have thought of that was bad to have, is she took their broom, like a broom with plastic bristles. She's like, you can't have this. Yeah. And I was like, oh, whoa, because, yeah, you're sweeping around microplastic.

Yeah. Well, the worst is the plastic cutting board. That's the worst. The plastic cutting board in your kitchen is the absolute worst because you're literally chopping up plastic and putting it into your food. Ew. She swapped everyone out.

And then monitored. So the sperm cycle of a man is around 70 days. So you can't actually tell if it's working until about 90 days later because that's a full cycle for a whole new batch of sperm. And I don't want to give away the, it's a happy ending. Dude, this documentary, you guys, if you've not watched, which I have told, I have posted on Instagram how good it is and everyone has to watch it. Yeah.

It is so phenomenal. It is so good. It's just, you know, it's not a docu-series. It's just one movie to watch. Yeah, it's only an hour and a half. Watch with your whole family. It is going to be like the most fun radicalization you've ever gone through. Yeah.

And it's and yeah. And it has a happy ending. And we partnered with a so Grope Collaborative is a company that I'm involved in. And there's a website, but you can you can find it if you just type this in. They created something called the unplastic shop. And it's it's affiliated with the film so that if you want to swap out anything in your house in each room and it does it by room. So you can go to the unplastic shop. shop and you can see kitchen. You can see bathroom. You can see laundry room. And it has all the

swaps. And it's all affordable. And you can just swap. And you could go on. Because the problem with once you start learning about all this is it's like, oh my God, where do I even start? What do I buy? I don't even know what to buy. This is genius. So the unplastic shop just makes it really easy for you to go and just swap out some things. Wait, I'm obsessed with this. Okay, I am stuck on this trash bag thing. So, and you know I'm bought in on this, but I, but I do have questions. Why would it matter to switch to a different type of trash bag than plastic if you're picking it up and just, it's going in the trash anyway? The problem that we're figuring out with plastics and we're just in the beginning.

And so we actually don't know everything yet. And there's a term you'll hear called nanoplastics, which are super, super, super, super small particles. And then you'll hear this term microplastics, which are actually not that small. Like you can see microplastics. You can't see nanoplastics. and it's basically just all fragments of plastic that go not only into our water and our food,

but goes into the air. And the nanoplastics can go into the air. And so when you're ruffling up lots of plastic stuff, including garbage bags, it goes into the air. Oh, my word. Good thing I have a Jasper. So, and plastic again was one of these things where when we had the huge plastic like boom,

which was like in the 60s, everyone's like, this is amazing. We can use petrochemicals to make this like new material. And like we didn't know, right? But then we started to know. We started to know not too long after. And then at that point, the industry was too big. And they're like, I'm not switching back to glass after that.

And so now we're in this like entire world is plastic. And the endocrine disruption aspects of plastic is super important. Because we don't know how bad it is, but we know it's bad. And we know that it's affecting fertility. We know that it's affecting metabolism in terms of like the obesity thing. We know that it's affecting all aspects of your physiology. But we don't know which plastics. We don't know how much.

We just know there's a lot and we know there's never been more than today. If your only choice is water in a plastic bottle or tap water, what are you choosing? Depends on the region. We could get super weird on this one. Yeah. This is a hard one. And amongst like my super, like insane friends, we debate this. Some municipal tap waters are cleaner than others.

And it also depends on which plastic water it is. Why? Some of the filtered water that are in certain plastic bottles are actually not clean at all. Like, it turns out, like, DeSani and Aquafina are, like, really bad. in addition to the fact that they're in plastic bottles, but there's a few companies and a few like apps. There's an app called Oasis that just tests all the water. They test every municipality.

They test every tap water, and then they have a report of what's in them. And then they test like all the water bottles, including the glass and including the plastic. And there's a few plastic water bottles that are cleaner, even including the microplastic, than certain glass water bottles brands. And so, like, I would just say, like, don't go down this rabbit hole unless you really into it because it's a deep rabbit hole. But for me, in some of the cities, like, if I have to choose, I'm going to have just like the tap.

And there's other cities where I'll literally just fast. I won't have anything. One thing that was really crazy went really viral in the last week or so. I don't know if you saw it. Purdue, the chicken company, they've been selling these organic gluten-free chicken. tenders. And the ingredient list looked great. I mean, if I was looking at this, Jason, I mean, and I, we do this for a living. This is all we talk about. I would be like, wow, this passes the test. Like, I would buy them. There's no seed oils on there. And then this mom,

and good on this mom, she was like, well, they're breaded. What are they frying these in? So she calls up Purdue or emails Purdue and they're like, oh yeah, we do use seed oils. There's some loophole, they don't have to list it. And I don't know what that is, but I know you would know. How is this possible that some of these foods, we're doing everything right, Jason, like, we're reading the ingredients. It says organic. It says non-GMO, blah, blah, blah. And then we find out, oh, well, somehow they're fried and seedos, but they don't have to list it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't understand that. And this is the stuff that makes moms in America feel defeated. I know. It's really hard. And look, I think that's why I like supporting, like,

smaller local brands where you kind of know who's behind it because I can't even figure out half the stuff. And this is all I do. And when I, when I support or, or, or I identify a local or a smaller brand that has a mission, I know the founders. I know that like, they care. I don't need to have that like, double click moment where I'm like, oh, I got to figure out now what this is. Because like, I know who they are and I know what they stand for. So is there any chicken nugget brand or chicken tender brand that you trust? No. No, not that I know of.

With what I do, we've had a lot of demand for us to create like a clean chicken tender. You do them at true food. Yeah, but the problem is we do them at true food. And those are great, but they're hard to make. They're air fried. No seed oils. Gluten-free crust. But it's really hard to do it.

And they're not cheap. And the problem with chicken tenders, again, in the store is, I don't know how many people would be willing to pay the premium for it to be commercial. And there have been products that I've been involved in that were amazing. And they didn't sell. They didn't sell enough. Because what was the price point? The price point was too high.

Well, I'm saying in other categories. Like it was 30, 40% more, 50% more than the other choice. And there were always like people like you and me that would buy them. But to get to a level where you could actually have a company. and be like sustaining, you need to sell a lot more. And they're just not enough Americans that care. And we're still not at that point in the education cycle where I think enough people are willing to pay that premium.

And by the way, with those companies, when you're selling like a much more expensive product, the consumer thinks that you're like ripping them off. But ironically, the companies that are selling the more expensive, clean stuff make less money. even though the price point is higher. Yeah. Right?

They actually make less money because their ingredients cost so much more. And so the customer doesn't always understand that higher price point doesn't mean that the company who sells it is making more money. I know for a fact, some of the brands that even sponsored the show that I absolutely love, that are really going to the ends of the earth to make a clean product. And I mean, some people will see those prices and complain. Yeah. Why in the world would I pay this much for this thing? and I know that they're not taking profit at all. In fact, some of them are in debt,

but they see this void and this need for something that they're like, I got to get this out there to help people and help families and kids, and I'm just willing to do whatever it takes. And the product is fantastic. But yeah, they are losing money. Yeah. And people will complain about it,

but they don't understand that. That's right. And it's interesting because in other categories that aren't food, consumers are willing to pay a lot more for like better hair products, better cosmetics, like better clothes, like people pay crazy prices for better clothes or better shoes. But with food, they don't. Like it's crazy. Like you go to CVS and on the same shelf, you'll see a shampoo that's $5 and a shampoo that's $20 in CVS.

And people will buy the $20 one and they won't like complain because they know the brand or they think it's better or whatever. but you can't have that kind of disparity in food ever, except in places like Airwine. You go to a regular grocery store, you'll never see that kind of difference between anything. Here's a thought. Maybe the secret to a healthier life is in another self-help book or some guy screaming about cold plunges on Instagram.

My simple hack is just one scoop of creatine every day. Creatine is one of those tasteless, rare things that actually lives up to the hype. Yes, it helps with strength and muscle. Yes, it helps with recovery. But what's wild is the research on brain functional. to mental clarity, cognitive support. This must be why I don't fall into the trap of conspiracy theories and cults. You are going to feel less mentally cooked by 3 p.m., which, let's be honest,

most people are feeling cooked now at 10.30 in the morning. So that's why I've been into Peory-Creatine Plus. The reason Purecreatine plus first caught my attention is the clever combination of 5 grams of creatine, monohydrate, and 400 milligrams of torrine per serving. So why is that important? Well, both ingredients are known for their key roles in energy support during high-intensity workouts, emerging research pointing to their potential in supporting cognitive performance and mental clarity. And it's not just what's in it. It's what's not in Peory Creatine Plus because the supplement industry can feel like a criminal enterprise run out of a strip mall. I'm always cautious with my supplements, which is why I appreciate how Peory publishes all their

third-party test results for each batch of creatine. So you can see them for yourself. Just scan the QR code on the bag. Peory is the only brand I found with a clean label project transparency certificate, it, which means independent third parties test and publish the results batch by batch. Also, Ivanka Trump says she won't go without creatine. So that tells you that this stuff has officially crossed over from Jimbrough culture into hot wellness girl culture. Use code Alex at peory.com. That's p-u-o-ri.com to get 32% off Peory Creatine Plus when you start a subscription. Go to peory.com. P-U-O-R-I-com. Use code Alex at checkout for this exclusive offer. being an adult is basically just finding out that everything important requires follow-up.

You think that you've handled something once and then five years later someone's like, no, that expired, that change, that was never processed, good luck. That's voter registration. People assume that they're fine because they registered once in college or because they voted a few years ago or because they have this touching faith in administrative competence. Meanwhile, all it takes is moving homes, even within the same state, changing your name, not voting in a while, or some random outdated info, and suddenly you've got a problem.

Here's what's wild. Tens of millions of eligible Americans either aren't registered or aren't even sure if they are. So let's not do the thing where we find out too late and then act shocked. Let's just be adults for 30 seconds.

Go to real Alexclarc.com slash vote. I made it really simple. You can check your registration status. That's all it does. Just tells you if you're registered to vote or not and if you're not, register you to vote. Not even telling you who to vote for. Real Alexclerc.com slash vote.

What is natural flavors? What's in that? Natural flavors is a chemically produced flavor where there's loopholes where they could call it natural, but it's basically chemical and fake. And I actually don't even know the extent to how they do it. But I know amongst like the people who go really deep on this, like natural flavors is like one of the big BS things where they, artificial like truly means it's like completely chemically engineered. The natural means that they can use like natural elements in engineering it, but it's still made in a chemical way.

There's like a hierarchy of things to like pay attention to. It's not great, but like I wouldn't lose sleep over natural flavors if you see it in the food. I mean, sometimes the ingredients are totally clean. There's like four things in it and it is organic and it'll say natural flavors though. I usually- You can do an organic version of a natural flavor. Yeah, I usually will say fine, you know. Yeah, me too, me too.

Like, I'll have some natural flavors from time to time, but I won't have artificial food dyes ever. There's conventional ice cream that you can buy at grocery stores now that doesn't melt. They've got it sitting on their kitchen counter for days even, and it's not melting. Yes. What is that? Because it's clearly not ice cream. Yeah, so there's a lot of emulsifiers that all food companies can use.

An emulsifier basically is like something. that gives it that smooth, creamy texture, right? So when you want milk chocolate and you want that like smooth, creamy texture of what real good milk chocolate is, there's usually an emulsifier that gives it that texture. And some of them are natural amulsifiers, like, and some of them aren't all bad, but like one of the ones that they use that's now been removed from like all the almond milks is called Kerriganin. And it's been shown that it's been shown that it.

and disrupt your gut microbiome if you have too much of it. Some of the amulsifiers are called gums. So you'll see like xanthin gum. You'll see acacia gum. And not all of the gums are bad. Some of the gums are actually used as prebiotics for people who have constipation. And they're actually okay. But if you look at like the bad conventional ice creams, you'll see like, like glycerides, it'll be like diglycerides or triglycerides or those kind of things. Those are chemically made emulsifiers that are meant to give the creaminess of ice cream without them using as much dairy. It's a massive margin saver.

And a lot of soft serve and a lot of like frozen yogurt has all of that shit in it. Because to have that kind of like fluff and that mouth feel when you get like a big cone, when you go to like cheap places. I mean, it didn't used to be this way in the 50s, but like now, like all of the cheap, like 16 handles kind of yogurt places, they all have that stuff in it because it makes it taste really creamy and they don't have to use nearly as much dairy. What are the biggest brands that people think are clean but aren't?

David Barr. Oh, yeah, they just got into a big scandal. David Barr is like a perfect example of this debate. So what happened in the last like 10 years is there was like a, there was like a rift between the nutritionists and some of these rifts have been with people that we that we talk about who are anti-maha. The rift was the concept of what are called macros. Macros are like calories, protein, fat, carbs.

Those are the macros, right? So like, what are the macros of that food, right? And those types of nutritionists are of the belief that if sugar is low, protein is high, fibers high, carbs are low, it's healthy. No matter how you make it, right? Those are, that's like a 1980s style of thinking. Then you have, and during like the keto craze, which was about 10 years ago when like everything was keto and like it was like the beginning of like the magic spoon and the Catalina crunch and all of the like high key cookies and all these like keto brands. they were made with a lot of chemicals

because they were basically no sugar, no carb, high protein, high fat. And you can't do that with nature. Like you have to use chemicals to engineer food to get those kind of macros. And there's a belief that if you can deliver like a super high protein thing with no sugar and no carbs

and a little bit of fat and a lot of fiber, like that's awesome. And the other side of like the debate, was I actually care about what the ingredients are. And I don't want you to use all these weird chemicals. Like you remember the ice cream halo top? Yeah. Yeah.

So that was like at the epicenter of the keto craze. It was all chemicals. And the whole pint was like 300 or 400 calories. And it was all fake shit. Right. And then on the other side, you had like A2 grass fed made with honey, like full fat ice cream, right? Which has a lot of calories, has a decent. amount of sugar, but it's like real homemade ice cream. And the first group thinks that that's like

really bad for you because they have good, the halo top people think that the halo top is the way to go. And what we're finding, which again, it's not conclusively proven, but this is where common sense comes in, is that we're not meant to eat all these chemicals. And so the David Bar came out. It was the guy who started our X-Barr, had the, like, the biggest marketing genius campaign of all time. Came out with a huge, like, blockbuster opening. And it's, like, super high in protein, like, no sugar, decent fiber, like, low-carb. Like, it looks like an impossible item.

Like, it looks like, how could this exist? And by the way. And that should be a red flag. Right. And then by the way, it actually tastes really good, right? But it's basically like a better. Quest Bar, right? And they have a chemical in it. I don't even remember the name of it because it's a long starts with E or something. It starts with an E. It's basically a fat that you don't digest. And the last time

this happened, it was called Olestra, right? And it gave people like really bad diarrhea. But this is a different version. So if you look at the macros, protein and carbs have four calories per gram. Fat has nine calories per gram. So fat is more than twice as many calories per gram as protein and carbs. So when you have fat, it always makes a lot of fat, it always makes the thing have high calories because fat is high calorie, but fat tastes great. And fat has that like mouthfeel. They came up with some new molecule that I'm not even sure is like ever been properly tested that apparently you don't digest.

So it functions as fat, but it only has two calories per gram is what they say. And it's in there. And in fact, they were so bullish on this ingredient that there was like one manufacturer who made this new chemical and they bought the company that makes this chemical for David Barr. They bought the whole company. Yikes. Yeah. And then a bunch of other companies that were using this apparently complained that they like cornered the market on this new molecule. And so a bunch of consumers who probably were gaining weight eating too many David's bars had the David's bars tested.

and they sent it to a laboratory and they sent a bunch of them and they discovered that David Barr says that it's 150 calories but it's really 270 calories. Wow. And that the fat that they said was X and it was really like, I don't know, 3X. I don't remember exactly what it said, the lawsuit. But it was like a class action lawsuit that it was like completely misrepresentation about the profile. And by the way, it's also genetically modified.

So it says on the back of the bar this contains genetically modified ingredients. So if you're just going for like high protein and no sugar and you don't care about what's in it, like great, eat it. But a lot of people do care about what's in it. And I think where the conversation is going, thankfully, and Ma has been a big part of this, is it's going towards calories don't matter as much. And this has been shown scientifically that 200 calories of Oreos is very different than 200 calories of eggs. Yes. in terms of how your body metabolizes it. The concept of energy in, energy out is not accurate.

Obviously, if you're only eating 200 calories a day and you're eating Oreos, you're going to lose a ton of weight. The calories matter a lot when you're on the edges. If you eat 8,000 calories of like only whole foods a day, you will put on a lot of weight. So it does matter a lot. But when you're in like the normal range of how people eat, the quality of the calories matter immensely. And I think the conversation is now changing in food around what is in the food. And are the ingredients in the food, are they whole food ingredients or are they synthesized in a laboratory? What do you think of the brand Bloom?

I don't know a lot about Bloom. I know the founders. The founders are great people and they're in Austin. and the company that bought Bloom is run by a friend of mine and he's a great person. The issue I have more broadly, so they created,

they started with powders and then they moved into energy drinks. And the issue I have, and I have a 17-year-old daughter, who loves these drinks, is that in the last 10 years with companies like Celsius and Alana knew

and, you know, some of these other brands. I don't even know all the energy drink brands. They have like two to three, sometimes four shots of espresso, equivalent of caffeine in a single can. Caffeine is addictive. And we are basically dressing up an addictive substance

for teenagers and making it cool. And a lot of kids are getting strung out. And a lot, I mean, I see some of my daughter's friends drinking two, three of these a day. I mean, they're drinking like 12 cups of espresso a day. there's no way that's okay. And so I generally take issue with the companies that are packaging and selling super concentrated amounts of caffeine as a health drink. What letter grade would you give the Trump admin so far on Maha?

If it's only HHS, which is an important distinction. No, all. You have to include it all. Well, hold on, because a lot of listeners and a lot of people who attack me don't realize that HHS is separate. from the USDA, the Department of Agriculture, and that HHS is separate from the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency. These are separate agencies. So if RFK chooses to try to improve the food pyramid and the dietary guidelines, which was a great, great heroic thing that we got done, but then the EPA still allows us to spray paraquot and glyphosate on everything, they cancel each other out. And that's a problem. And so I,

get a lot of flack where people are like, great job on the food dies and the dietary guidelines, but who cares if your food is still poison? And then I have to say, well, I'm not part of the EPA. I had nothing to do with the EPA. So I think on the HHS and what Bobby's doing and what Callie's doing, like, and I've seen, because I come to D.C. all the time and I'm kind of like an informal advisor on certain things, they try really hard. Like they really, really, really, really live this. Like, they're doing this for service. Like, this is a thankless job.

I'd give them an A in terms of effort. In terms of getting things done, it's probably a B, but it's not their fault. It's impossible. I think on some of the other stuff, it's probably like a D. Yeah, that's what I would say. It's probably a D, you know? I'm the same issue. Yeah, it's really sad.

Like, I am shocked that we could have the same conversation in a period of a month where we have the new dietary guidelines. a month ago or two months ago. And then we have the executive order on glyphosate like that we protested today. Like I like I couldn't believe it. I think NIH is doing a great job. And yes.

FDA is doing a great job. FDA is doing a great job so far. So they're they're all, they're all getting A's for me. And they're all under HHS. And they're all under HHS. Exactly. And so USDA, EPA, I would agree that they get a D, which is super unfortunate.

And, and my opinion is that there's still a revolving door of lobbyists in those agencies. Yes. And so that's kind of what the crux of the issue is. If somebody can't overhaul their life when it comes to plastic overnight, what are the top three plastic swaps that matter most? Can I make it broader in terms of chemical exposure? However you want to do it.

Get rid of perfume. That's like the worst. Like perfume, cologne, conventional. They actually make natural oils based perfume and cologne. They're hard to find. But if you Google them now, you can find them. But perfume, anything that's fragrance is a complete catastrophe, like the worst, including Glade, including like plug-in air fresheners, including shit you hang in your car,

like those trees. Those are literal, like, toxic chemical bombs. Like, get rid of those, like, immediately. I would say on the drink side, food side, the absolute worst, could be worse than the fragrance. I don't know, are the Kyrig machines. You're literally putting hot, boiling water through a plastic pod into your cup. Oh, my word.

And the boiling water is going through, like, plastic and, like, rubber piping inside the machine, and the entire machine is made of plastic, and you're pouring boiling water through it. Like, disaster. Like, I think Kourig, single-handedly could be one of the reasons we have this problem today. because Couric became like the most sold source of coffee at home in the United States

like for like almost two decades. Like that was like the main way people got coffee was. This is crazy. I never would have thought about that. So I'm not a coffee drinker. Yeah. So I never would have thought about that, but you are so right. Oh my God.

Currig is a catastrophe. The cutting boards we talked about. The cutting boards is a super easy swap. So what do you switch to? So you can switch to metal or you can switch to wood. The challenge with wood, if you really cook a lot, is you've got to separate the things that grow bacteria like raw chicken. When you cut on wood, you create slices in the wood. You create divvets.

And the divvets can house bacteria unless you clean them really well. So how do you clean it? If it's too big, it's hard to put in the washing machine. So you have to have like some form of really, really good soap that you scrub it because inside the cracks, the bacteria. could grow. Metal works, but metal's like, kind of like gives you that sound when you're like cutting on metal. Yeah. I couldn't do that. There's some stuff on Grove. So I'd say go to the unplastic shop and look at some of the selection. Go into the kitchen and go into the kitchen part of the unplastic shop and you can just browse. I'd say anything that you're regularly putting

in your mouth matters. So I think toothbrush matters a lot. Well, all toothbrush. I mean, the bristles. I know, but the electric toothbrushes. The ones that you can buy will have bristles that are made from, they actually can make them from castor oil. Are you using a non-plastic toothbrush? Yeah. What brand? I have a bamboo toothbrush that has castor oil bristles.

You are so, can I just come over and just like go through your house? Yes. This is so interesting. This is what I want to see a documentary of. Well, all this stuff is in the unplastic shop. That's I'm telling you. Okay, cool. So just go into the unplastic shop and go to click bathroom and just look.

What are some exciting trends that you're seeing in the clean food industry? I'm so excited that fat has come back. Fats actually really good for you if it's if it's like good fat, right? There's bad fats and there's good fats. And our brains are literally made of fat and they're made of like cholesterol, which is why you never want to have like super low cholesterol. Cholesterol is the building blocks of hormones. So if you have, if your cholesterol is too low, you will go and. to a manorrhea as a woman. And if you're too low as a man, you will have very low testosterone.

And so you have to make sure that you get healthy fat. Whole milk, butter. Yeah. So you can get healthy fat from, you know, grass fed meats. You can get healthy fat from wild salmon. You can get healthy fats from nuts, like walnuts have great healthy fats in them. You can get healthy fats from any of the whole dairy. Butter is great. butter is actually really good for you in in low doses like um we cook with butter like we make scrambled eggs with butter like i put butter on toast like butter is really good for you um and we were taught for so long that like butter was evil and like use margarine um that whole thing is broken and all the new science is being restored to say like that's why these that's why these european countries that live off of like

clean dairy are so much healthier than us. They used to call it the French paradox because they ate like cream and butter and they drank red wine and everyone was like, why do they have much lower heart disease in us? It's because our science was wrong. It wasn't a paradox. We were just wrong. When you're saying that this is one of the cool and new exciting trends in clean food, does that mean we're going to start seeing labels on things like we saw low fat that

we're going to see full fat? Yes, definitely. Okay. You're starting to see fat coming back and you're starting to see like whole fat yogurt again. and you're starting to see like whole milk again. Yeah. I'll say one thing as a consumer that's kind of like, okay, is this protein obsession. Yeah.

This is out, I mean, it's like, protein shoelaces. I mean, it's like crazy what they're putting protein and popcorn and all this. It's gotten a little crazy. Yeah, it's a little bit crazy. I'm like, get your protein from real food, not all to processed food. I mean, still. Yeah. People are trying to get their protein.

They're like, oh, great. Like, I do need extra protein. So they're eating all this junk still. It's still junk. It is. Another trend that I love. is macha. Macha is a very fast-growing trend.

Macha is really healthy if it's done right. There's some macha producers that have, like, heavy metals in it and it's probably made in another country. Real matcha is called ceremonial grade. It's from Japan. It's made in a way where there's, like, very little residue on it. Macha has a very different caffeine profile than coffee.

It doesn't give you the jitters. Macha's a very ancient tea that's been in Japan for hundreds and hundreds of years. And the bright, bright green of matcha, it's super high in antioxidants. And it's also really high in thionine. And thionine is an amino acid that gives you this kind of calm setting. Oh, cool. And when you combine thionine with caffeine, you get a much cleaner, like, alertness.

What is your take on the American Beverage Association sponsoring a lot of conservative podcasts and health and wellness podcasts. And their reasoning behind it is because they're saying, well, we want to promote the couple healthy drinks that we have on our repertoire. Huh. I didn't know this. Look on the fine lines of a bunch of the most popular health and wellness podcasts out there right now. Look in the descriptions under the episodes and it'll stay sponsored by ABA. Whoa. Not this podcast. Which beverages are they promoting? Do you know? I haven't heard any specific brands. It's just the American beverage association is just like on here or associated

with podcasts or they're trying to get involved in a lot of conservative podcast too. Interesting. What do you think the conservative angle is? You have to have a theory on this. Oh, I do. Okay. I want to hear it. It's gatekeeping maha. Oh. These conservative audience are swinging so far into health and wellness and very anti-soft drink and all this. And I think they're trying to gain back audience and be like, oh no, we're cool. We're

conservative. Like, you know what I mean? This is, this is my theory because it doesn't make sense otherwise. was the biggest donor to media companies. Yes. Because they were basically controlling the media. The same logic that because Farma were the biggest advertisers for all the media companies,

that they knew that they could effectively control it because they were the biggest donors. So you think it's the same thing happening with Beverage Now for these conservative podcasts. I do. Where can people follow you on social media? I'm not that great on social media. I'm learning to get better.

My handles are human carp. so human k-a-r-p i'm on instagram and i'm on x i'm not on tictock i'm not on uh linkedin much uh my company's called human co true food kitchen we have our own website definitely follow that we're in 18 states we're trying to make it better we're trying to grow it we're trying to make it like a chilis or a houston's or a place that you can go for for dinner for lunch for happy hour you know on date but Like, you know what's in the food and you can trust it. We're trying to make it cooler and you're going to see a lot of new things coming out of true food in the next probably 18 months.

Grove Collaborative we talked about where just Google the unplastic shop on Grove and you can do that. I also should mention we have a, and this is what we use at my house, we have a grain and gluten-free bread and pizza company called Against the Grain. It's actually 18 years old. It's made, it started off as a bakery and Brattlebee. Borough, Vermont. And it's amazing. It's like super delicious. It's all simple ingredients. And you should definitely try anything from against the grain. We used to have a brand called

Snow Days, which were like clean little pizza bites. Yeah, I've seen those. Yeah, they're really good. But we moved them under against the grain. So all of those products are under against the grain. We also have, this is actually for any of your moms, there's a company called Amara Organics. AMARA and it's toddler and kids snacks, no refined sugar, no added sugar. They're like the smoothie melts, but they're made with just fruits and vegetables, super clean. They're actually in their category that are the number one snack for kids. Neat.

Two things I should mention. So there's a men's fertility company that I backed that Human Co, my company, helped incubate with a husband and wife founder, newlyweds. that are trying to get pregnant. And he was helpful in a lot of my like fertility research. And what he saw is that there's all these prenatals for women, but men are 50% of the equation. And there's not much out there for men.

And a lot of the problems with couples trying to conceive are the men. And so this is coming out next week. It's called T-I-E-S. And it's third-party lab tested, highly bioavailable, antioxidant like vitamin stack as a pill for men who want to improve their vitality and their fertility. Oh, cool. And the second one is, you know, the DJ Steve Aoki? Yeah.

So Steve Aoki and his sister, Devin Aoki, who was an actress and a model, their father started Benihana. They have like a deep Japanese heritage and they felt like a lot of the stuff. There's not a lot of like good, high quality Japanese stuff here in America. There's not. And there's so much MSG and stuff. Yeah, there's so much garbage. And we're coming out with a clean macha that we're, Human Co's helping the Aoki's create that'll be like a cool, highly trustworthy

matcha that you can make at home. If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally or spiritually, what would it be? I would institute a technology Sabbath. I would make it from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. You can't use your phones. You know who's a fan of that? Charlie Kirk was a fan of that.

I think we have to reestablish our connection with each other. And we have to reestablish presence. And we have to reestablish hanging out with each other. And the phones can be great for certain things. But I was at the airport. I've been thinking a lot about this. I was at the airport and just take a look whenever any of you listening are walking and you're in a place where there's a lot of people waiting and they're not with other people. Every single person.

And I mean every single person was on their phone. And if you look for it and no one was talking, they were all on their phones. Every single one. And they were talking about hundreds of people. And it's really sad when you watch it because if you just rewind 40 years ago, And you think like, what would those people be doing? And a lot of them are like traveling with other people. They'd be talking to each other, right?

And I think so much of our modern epidemic of illness and particularly mental illness is because we've lost connection to each other. And we've lost connection to the earth. And we've lost connection of just being present and not being distracted. And just think about how many things happen when you're bored in terms of what you think about what you create in your head, what you daydream about. As soon as you go onto that device, all of that's gone. You're immediately dopamine, dopamine, dopamine from like whatever's on the phone. And so I would create a technology Sabbath that would force people to like go out to dinner,

to like talk to other people, to hang out, to hang out with your family. I think that would be remarkable. Jason, this was supposed to be a shorter podcast for me. I was like, oh, let's just knock it out 45 minutes or something. But it was so good. I didn't want to stop. So thank you for coming on Culture Pothcary. This is one of my new favorite episodes of the season. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having did I call it or what. I knew you were going to love that episode. Jason is phenomenal. This felt like, you know, a Rogan-esque episode to me. Like one of those where you could just talk and the guest can talk about basically anything and everything and the entire time you're on the edge of your seat. Thanks again to Heritage Studios at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. for

letting us film here. New episodes come out every Monday and Thursday, 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern, where we're just trying to bring guests on who can share their remedies to heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I'm Alex Clark, and this is Culture Apothecary.