Dhru Purohit Show - Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Bon Charge, and Momentous. Regardless of your political stance, the conversation about changing the food system and removing toxins from our environment took center stage in the last presidential election and continues to be a key issue in today’s political climate. What’s behind the Make America Healthy Again movement, and what are the hopes of those fighting behind the scenes? Today’s guest gives us an inside look and reminds us why these conversations matter—no matter our beliefs. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with food activist and nutritionist Courtney Swan. Courtney shares her journey into food activism, the pivotal moments that shaped her path, and her key takeaways from the Senate confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She also discusses why the Make America Healthy Again movement has gained national attention and offers insights on the current political landscape, and highlights the power of nuanced conversations and advocacy-driven solutions.  Courtney Swan, MS, Integrative Nutritionist, is a passionate food activist working to fix America’s broken food system. As the host of the popular health and wellness podcast Realfoodology, she challenges misconceptions about nutrition, our food sources, sustainability, food policy, healthy living, and more. In this episode, Dhru and Courtney dive into: Courtney's journey as a food activist (1:00) RFK's confirmation hearing and Courtney's thoughts (4:10) How the younger generation views chronic disease and politics (14:31) Why the MAHA movement is getting national attention (19:00) Courtney's Red Pill moment (21:17) The biggest food culprits—ultra-processed foods (26:35) The impact of toxins and plastics on our health (31:54) Solutions through advocacy (40:28) Courtney's comments on the current political stances (44:07) Second Opinion On Nutrition Event (51:04) Banning of Red No. 3 (54:30) The truth about drug development research and peer review (59:34)  Courtney’s latest projects and what’s next (01:07:39) Actionable takeaways (01:15:03) Also mentioned in this episode: Documenting Hope site John Abramson’s book - Sickening Article on Fred Kummerow’s research Air and Water filters  For more on Courtney, follow her on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and her Website. This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Bon Charge, and Momentous. To get 20% off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru today. Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the purest form of creatine made by and used by the best. Go to livemomentous.com and enter promo code DHRU to get 20% off any order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Courtney, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. We're recording this on kind of a pretty important day. Do you want to tell our audience what's happening today? So this morning was a Senate hearing confirmation for RFK Jr. And that was, did you watch it? I watched, I kind of caught a little bit late because I had something in the morning. Yeah.

But I came in at a very contentious moment. It got pretty contentious with the few senators. It was honestly uncomfortable to watch. It was hard, too. I don't know. I felt like he handled himself. extremely well. Oh yeah, just from the way that the senators were going after him, it just, I don't know, it kind of broke my heart because I've been following his work for probably about 10 years.

Yeah, talk about it and talk about yourself in the context of it. If some people know, you've been part of the Maha movement, you've been raising awareness, you went to Capitol Hill. Long before that, you've been a food advocate for a long time, helping people understand what's really in our food, sounding the alarm, why it needs to be a national conversation. But bring us up until this point, what's your role and how have you been involved with this movement and what do you think about everything that's going on? Yeah, I mean, it's wild. I never thought I would find myself here.

I mean, I was in school. So in 2011, I was getting my master's of science and nutrition. And around that time, I was finding the works of people like Vonie Hary, we just brought her up the food babe, Dr. Mark Hyman, Michael Pollan. And they were really trying to sound the alarm back then about what was happening with our food system, but largely it was being ignored, especially by our media and by our politicians. So I got very involved in it back then because I felt like.

the American people needed to know what was happening with their food. You know, we were blindly being poisoned. And even though when you feel like you're maybe making the right choices and making healthy choices, if you don't know how to navigate all this, like chances are you may not be. So I was so passionate about this. And then fast forward, I just ended up in this Maha movement. But I've been doing this for about 15 years now. Like this isn't a trend thing that I've just been jumping on to.

And I said this earlier that I have been following Bobby's work for about 10 years now. I love him. He's an environmental lawyer. He also was on the litigation team against Monsanto. It was a guy that was spraying on a... The janitor. Yes, exactly. The groundskeeper.

And he got non-Hodgkins lymphoma. And Bobby was very famously on that litigation team. And this is something that I'm incredibly passionate about that we can talk more about. The glyphosate thing is a really big issue. So watching that confirmation today and seeing these senators just rip into him and knowing that this man is taking bullets right now for the American people because he genuinely cares. He also said this.

He said, I don't need to be here. I have a happy life. I'm a happy family. I'm not getting anything out of this. He's like it's not like I'm getting like a significant amount of money in this position. Like he's doing this because he cares because he thinks that we need a reform in our health care system. And so seeing this pushback and then you look, I have been going hard on this online today. But if you go and you look at all the senators that are pushing back on him and they're making millions of dollars off of pharmaceutical companies.

And that's the whole reason they're going after him because they're all scared that. it's going to be exposed. You know, if you look at the history of Bobby, it's like for a long time, he was a darling of the left because he was going after all these companies that were polluting the environment, the Hudson River, that were sort of using corporate capture as a way to skirt around regulation. And then, you know, we've gone through this big period where largely, you know, we've had this sort of legacy media as brought to you by Pfizer, brought to you by Merck, brought to you by all the pharmaceuticals and they have completely one-sided the conversation. It's, you know, anybody who's honest about his work or even he himself, sure, there might be

some things that he hasn't gotten right fully, but it was important part of the conversation or starting it. But the idea that we can't even have this conversation about the role of pharmaceutical companies and health and the role of big pharma and how it's shutting down so many things that were labeled as conspiracies later to found out as true is kind of, It's kind of nuts. Yeah. It's really nuts. Okay.

So give me your hot take on what you, what else you felt from today's hearing and what's your gut instinct? Is it going to be confirmed? Is he not going to be confirmed? So I've kind of been going back and forth on this all day. I'm not really entirely sure. I think I have a lot of faith that he is going to get in there because I ultimately believe that the light outshines the dark.

And I think we're dealing with a lot of darkness right now with the pharmaceutical companies that have overpowered the conversation in the media for a very long time. and I think enough people are waking up to it. I've also seen Twitter just absolutely exploding today with people just making all the connections with, oh, this senator was going hard after him because look at all these payments that they've been getting from, you know, X, Y, and Z pharmaceutical companies. So I think people are definitely waking up to it. And I'm hoping that these senators are feeling the pressure.

The last couple days I've been urging everyone that is in my community to call their senators and put pressure on them to vote him in. And I've gotten several messages back from people saying, oh, my God, they just said their phone lines have been ringing off the hook all day and that this is all people are calling in about right now. People really care about this. Same as you mentioned earlier, I went to Capitol Hill to the Senate for a nutrition roundtable that was hosted by Senator Ron Johnson, who was there today back in September. Well, tell us what it was like. And some of the videos from that have gone viral. We'll link to them in the show notes. You put them on your YouTube page and everything.

It's absolutely surreal. What were you talking about? So my specific presentation, my speech, was all about glyphosate. This is something I'm incredibly passionate about about the way that we're farming right now, big ag and these big agrochemical companies that own the majority of our food system right now, specifically Bayer. Bayer bought Monsanto back in 2018 and Monsanto was largely responsible for GMOs that have been put into our food system. And they also own something called Roundup, which is also known as glyphosate, which is an herbicide that is widely being sprayed on our food system right now. Back in 2017, 16. They estimated that we were spraying 287 million pounds of glyphosate a year in our farmland.

And it's projected that it's much higher than that now. So I presented to the Senate, I was incredibly concerned about this. We're seeing rates of cancer go through the roof. And then you look at what's happening in the courts right now with Monsanto Bayer. They're getting destroyed. They've paid over $2 billion to people that have gotten on Hodgkin's lymphoma from using glyphosate from using their products. It's nuts. And then you want to know how in city?

this insidious this is in full circle it is. So these farmers are spraying glyphosate, which is owned by Bayer on their farmlands. And then when they get cancer from it, they're given chemo drugs that are also created by the same company Bayer. Wow. Wow. The janitor, I looked it up for your reference. Duane Lee Johnson. Duane Lee Johnson. Yes. So that was a really famous case because I believe he was the first one that put it on the map. He set the precedence for the rest of it. And Bobby was a part of that litigation team. And so I've been following his work for a long time. And I can see how much he cares about the American people and his whole message and what he's been trying to get out to people is these corporations are poisoning us and our government

and we have policies in place that are allowing these corporations to get away with it. And he's just sitting up here now in front of the American people saying, I want to change this. We need to get these corporations out of the way so that we can actually have a true gold standard for real science, not science that's being paid for by these companies that have vested interest. and also so that we can get their vested interests out and stop poisoning our Americans. Because right now we're more concerned about profit than we are about the health of our human population. And it's crazy. Yeah. And I think, you know, when you look at all these senators that are taking money from pharmaceutical companies,

I would say that that's one piece of it. Another piece of it is just the general group think that you will get ostracized from this group if you go against it. And listen, that happens on the left. That happens on the right. That's the nature of politics that are there. But it's so tough in this moment when I think literally one of the quotes from him from the hearings today was like, this isn't a Republican issue. This isn't a Democrat issue. This is just something that we can, we should all just care about.

And it's made for interesting bedfellows. You know, I have so many of my friends, regardless of their views on politics, especially the younger you get. I think the order you get, it's a little bit different. We'll talk about that in a second. But no matter how they think about so many things, they largely feel very hopeful and excited about the Maha movement and the fact that there are people that are driving awareness because so many of them are dealing with all sorts of stuff. They're dealing with, I can't tell you how many friends I have that are dealing with some

version of infertility. I know. I was going to say the same thing. That's like up there. Number one, yeah. Right? And that's not putting it all on pharmaceutical companies. That's even just environmental toxins, xenoestrogens, microplastics, a whole host of things.

For sure, there is the general movement that we have. to acknowledge that, you know, women and couples are having babies later on. Yeah. Right? That plays a role into that component, too. Yeah. But something else is going on in the background, and we don't fully understand the story. So infertility, autoimmune, right?

I, I myself, I haven't even talked about this on the podcast, it's that much, but last year, I went in for an MRI, just like a standard sort of thing, like a whole body MRI scan. Actually, it was two years ago. And some stuff showed up. and I actually had, it was with Pernuvo. I'm not affiliated with them, but we had the CEO on the podcast to talk about it.

I had two little tiny brain lesions show up for me. And we couldn't tell at the time if they were inflamed or not because the scan was without contrast. You don't see if they're inflamed, if they're not inflamed. So talk to a bunch of functional medicine doctors that I work with, and they were like, hey, pay attention to this, take a look at it, you know, monitor. So I was monitoring it.

And I did some more scans later on and some information came back that I'm working with a great doctor here. you know, knock on wood, I'm healthy, I don't have any symptoms, but I basically found out that I have some background autoimmune activity that's going on that led to some of these lesions. And it took me a whole investigation piece into it. And it's like, I'm healthy, I work out, I do other stuff. It's like we found out there's a major environmental trigger and component that's there. So autoimmune stuff, infertility, a whole host of things that are going on. Like people, young people are like everybody that I know, even healthy people, they're dealing with

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That's bond charge, B-O-N-C-R-G-E.com slash D-H-R-U with a coupon code D-H-R-U to save 15% off today. Yeah, it's interesting. The younger generation, I think, are really feeling pretty pissed off about this because they feel like the boomers have just poisoned all of us and allowed it to happen and then lied to us about it. That's what I think of. That's what I'm picking up on on TikTok. I think that's part of it, but I think another part of it too, and obviously we can't throw an entire generation as the generation that polluted us. Who knows what people will blame us for in our generation?

That's fair. That's fair. Right? They'd be like all those microplastics. Why the hell did you wear the lula lemon? Why did you wear the aloe yoga, right? Yeah. But I think the feeling is, if I would put it on the political landscape,

is that a lot of young people, one of their most important things that they feel like they care about is chronic disease. And I don't want to typecast because every generation has different people that vote differently and view things differently. But I would generally say that I think that the older you are, the more likely you are to listen to traditional media. And if somebody told you that this person's bad, you're more likely to just sort of believe it and not question it. And we saw something this past week because we have a lot of individuals that are sort of afraid of the Maha movement and what Bobby represents.

And obviously this major support that he's gotten from Cali Means and people like yourself and Vani Hari, they're afraid. So you saw this across the landscape sort of attack. You have everything from the Wall Street Journal, which came out hard against him to his own family, Caroline Kennedy and a lot of the liberal sort of media outlets. And then you have people that are paying attention

that are thinking a little bit more independently. even individuals like the billionaire Patrick, I forgot his last name, but he's the owner of the LA Times. Oh, that's right. Patrick Soon, I believe his name is. He's been, yeah. He's been coming out. He's been coming out. And he's a developer of cancer medications.

And he's been coming out. He's like, you know, I met Bobby recently. And our cancer epidemic and our toxins epidemic, it's crazy. And like, we don't know what's going on. We have to be willing to put our differences aside and say that we're willing to study this. And the challenge is if you don't come as an. outsider to look at these things, you sort of just feel that everything is the way that it is because it's the way that it is. You're afraid of upsetting anybody. Everybody has some constituency

that has some major supporters from healthcare or this category or that category. So I kind of feel like we need somebody from the outside to shake it up and ask different questions, which is exactly what he's doing. We do. We need somebody to go against the status quo because right now what we're doing is clearly not working. And the people that are in there for right now, for whatever reason, whether they just don't think that way or they don't feel like they're allowed to. They're just not asking questions anymore. They just have been trained to think, like, okay, we just know it's X, Y, and Z. And there's this thinking, I think, in the medical system that we've figured everything out.

We have it all figured out. We're fine. We can just throw a pill at something. We can have a surgery. But in the medical system, we need a whole uphaul, upheaval, because we need to go back to prevention. And we need to go back to what is the root cause of this? Like, what is causing this in the first place? we shouldn't be thinking, okay, well, now that we have this, let's just like throw this pill

up there or let's put all of our money in our research into, now you have the cancer, what do we do? Why aren't we putting all of our research into, can we prevent this in the first place? If there's chemicals that we're spraying on our food, can we stop doing that so that we don't get the cancer in the first place? And there doesn't seem to be a lot of that happening in our Senate right now and in our health care system. And so there is a lot of pushback from, you're right. I think there's like this old mentality and people are scared.

maybe of what's going to come out of it, of the truth. Maybe they are scared of losing money, losing funding from big pharma companies. I mean, it's interesting. And it'll be really, I'm concerned because I feel like if Bobby doesn't get in there, I'm concerned that we're losing our opportunity to have somebody new in there that's going against the grain

and going to actually bring up these questions. Well, we'll try to get out of this episode, ASAP, and I'm sure by the time this episode gets out, we'll know if he was confirmed or not. So let's see what happens at that time. But I think that there's something that's important along with it is that, you know, this movement's not going to stop of people caring about it, right? And it might have different voices that are at the helm. But whoever that

voice is at the helm, if it doesn't happen with them, it's going to happen with somebody else. Like you cannot put this movement back in the back. That is true. Thank God. Is what I feel. Do you feel that way? Yeah, I do. I just worry that if we have somebody that gets in there, if Bobby doesn't get confirmed, that maybe it's just from the old school thinking and then from the top down, we don't get a lot of change. But look, at the end of the day, I mean, I've been doing this work for publicly for 14 years now. I've been talking about this in my inner circles for like 18 years. I'm so happy because I've never, I've never seen it talked about it on a stage like this before. It's getting national attention. I mean, whether or not it's like good or bad press,

it's still, it's all over the, you know, Washington Post, New York Times. It's on our political stage now. We have our president saying this. I mean, Trump literally said a couple months ago that he wants to get to the root of the epidemic that we're having right now of chronic disease. So I'm grateful that the conversation has at least been started. And more and more people are starting to wake up and ask questions. Because I mean, if we can't, if we can't change from the top up, we can absolutely do it from the bottom. Yeah. I think the other beneficial thing is that when you have an election like we just had, regardless of how people who were listening voted. And if you saw that a big reason that one of the sides won, you know, it seems to be that a big reason that Trump did win is you had the whole

Bobby Kennedy contingency of individuals who were big supporters of him and by, by therefore, a big supporter of, hey, why is the chronic disease epidemic happening? The hope is that everybody pays attention to that. I want to see that as everybody's platform in the future, right? Democrats, independence, Republicans, like let's get everybody making this a standard thing, the same way that everybody talks about the economy and maybe they have different solutions of how to address it. I feel like chronic disease finally had its moment of, hey, figure out what's going on, and especially childhood chronic disease, which just seems to be our biggest issue that we're dealing with right now. So, you know, a big part of this is that people

shifting their minds and kind of weird bedfellows, you know, Bobby Kennedy used to be a Democrat and was running for president as a Democrat and then kind of got into this other side of things so that he can move forward his movement. And people don't even know how to feel about this sometimes. But I like to bring it back to the individual. Let's first start. Before we get into politics again, let's talk about your own story and journey. You've been talking about this for a long time. What were some of the key early moments that led to you asking questions of like what the fuck is going on? So it was a gradual waking up for me until it all just kind of hit me one day, I feel like, because I was very fortunate. Growing up, my mom has always been really healthy. I was the kid that my mom was buying the off-brand

natural cereals. Like we were shopping in a grocery store before we even had Whole Foods, but then Whole Foods came in and bought them out. And it was this really small little natural food store. And I remember I would go to friends houses and just binge on their like dunkeroo's and Doritos and all the stuff feel like I couldn't have. And at the time, I was pretty resentful to my mom about it. My mom still, she loves to give me shit every time I see her now. She's like, remember when he used to have tantrums every night because your friends were getting Burger King for dinner? And I wouldn't let you have it because my mom was making, I mean, I look back and like, it's just, I'm horrified that I was so upset about it because my mom was making these gourmet meals from scratch. I mean, I would literally sit.

on the counter and she would be cranking out homemade pasta and baking her own bread, which is my dream now. I wish I could go move in with her now, honestly. Shout out to your mom. Literally. So she was really on it and very, very early on. I mean, my mom told me in 2006. It's crazy that I remember the date, but I remember the year because she cut out a newspaper article and physically mailed it to me at my college dorm. And it was an article about trans fats. And she said, watch out for hydrogenated oils because trans fats are really bad. Well, then we know now, obviously, the trans fats are really bad for us. And they ultimately were pulled from our food supply in 2007.

When was that? 16, somewhere around there where food companies were finally, they were legally required to take them out. But this is how far back my mom was in on all this. So I had my mom kind of like in my ear showing me stuff here and there. But at the time, I was kind of, you know, I was like 21 like, oh, yeah, whatever, mom kind of mentality, you know. But it was interesting. I was still kind of taking it in. I took a nutrition class.

My last class in my undergrad, and it really sparked an interest for me that I had never experienced before nutrition. I have a very inquisitive mind, and I love to know how things work. And learning about how food affected our bodies and how important nutrition was, and when I really started to make the connections of what I was putting in my body and how food is literally code for our DNA, right? I just was fascinated by all of that. And then fast forward to when I started finding the works of people like,

Michael Pollan and Dr. Mark Hyman, I was really upset to learn that what I was discovering about food and how food can be used as medicine wasn't actually being applied for the general public. In fact, it was quite the opposite. And I started learning about things like, I mean, the FDA has admitted that they don't have the full manpower to man all of the stuff that's coming onto our, into our food supply and going onto our shelves. They just don't have the manpower of the funding. They just admitted this to Bernie Sanders and a hearing.

like two months ago. There's this misconception that if something is on the shelf that it's been safe and vetted for and that it's healthy and that it's considered to be food, I don't consider these old processed, hyper-processed food-like products to be food. So there was a large awakening for me there. I felt a moral obligation to tell people because this was largely not being discussed. I mean, when I was starting to wake up to all of this, I started real foodology in 2011. And there were circles, little circles of people talking about it and, you know, natural food stores popping up and stuff like that, but it wasn't being talked about on a stage like it is now. So I just felt this moral obligation to let people know, like, hey, guys, this is how we navigate a

broken food system and this is how we can change it. When you were digging into things and you had your sort of red pill moment of seeing like, you know, our food is not exactly what they're telling us it is, what were some of the top foods that would come up consistently that it's like, were there things that showed up regularly that this was a problem, that like this is the most adulterated food category or food type. Was there anything like that that was coming up for you? This episode is brought to you by Momentus Creatine. You might have heard me talk about my love for creatine before. It's one of the most well-researched and safest products on the market.

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to get 20% off my favorite creatine today. That's LiveMomenus.com with the... code D-H-R-U, Drew, that's me, to get 20% off my favorite creatine today. I mean, I feel like it's the obvious offenders, like the cereal, just anything that's ultra-processed. That's when I, so I started vigilantly reading food labels. And I was horrified because before then I had never even, I'd never even looked at them. In fact, when I was in college, I'm so embarrassed to admit this now, but I was so uneducated.

So I had gained a bunch of weight when I was in college because I went from eating these amazing meals at home to eating fast food and partying and drinking. And so I gained a bunch of weight. And I was trying to lose the weight. And I was eating lean cuisines and slim fast bars. And at the time, we were being told in magazines I'm opening and ads on the TV that this is what you eat to be healthy. And so when I started reading those ingredient labels, I was horrified by what I was seeing because you look at that. I mean, there's 40 plus ingredients on that. And it shouldn't be that many ingredients and more than half of them you look at it and you're like, I don't even know where I would buy this in the grocery store. Where would I buy B.HT in the grocery store? You don't. You get it from a

factory. And then it's being put in your food so that it can be preserved and so that it can sit on that shelf for a lot longer so those companies can make more money. It's not, it doesn't have to do with your health whatsoever. It's all about the profits for the food companies. So I would say, yeah, the largest offenders are all these ultra-processed, hyper-processed foods that don't resemble food anymore. Yeah. And my sort of fear is that even for us that are generally healthy, right, you, me, the people that are listening to this podcast, it's gotten so bad that the more that we dig into it, it's like even healthy food has gotten really corrupt, right? Now, this isn't being shared to dissuay people, but I don't know if you recently saw this. It kind

of went viral on Twitter a few weeks ago, but there's a former founder, CEO, he's made a bunch of money in tech and through his own money, he put in a half a million dollars to basically take the foods that he was eating on a regular basis and study them for microplastics and plastics exposure. Did you see this? And they made a whole website about this. Is it the plastic list? Yeah, Plasticlist.org.

And one of the crazy things is, is, yeah, some of the top offenders, you'd be like, okay, I can kind of see there was, I think one of the worst offenders was like Bubba tea, Boba tea, Boba tea. Yeah. I guess the kids are all drinking of these days. And you had an entire year and a half's worth of BPA exposure from one serving of boba tea that he found at his local sort of boba shop in San Francisco. But then you go down the list, like the third most concentrated form of microplastics was Whole Foods grass-fed ribby. So I went down a whole rabbit hole on this.

And I'm like, why is it that grass-fed ribby has all these? these plastics that are there. And I was searching on Twitter and Googling. And this one guy, he made this tweet that a bunch of people retweeted. He's like, look, I have a bunch of friends that are farmers. I'll link to it below. I'm paraphrasing. And we'll show an image on here. And a lot of the haystacks, he's like, a lot of the haystacks that are out there for a lot of these larger-scale farms, they're all wrapped in this cellophane, this plastic wrap. And sometimes farmers will literally throw it out there on the field without even taking that plastic wrap off. I suppose is that the, you know, the cows are basically eating the hay and that's there being served

with the cellophane on. Now, is it that? Is it the industrial standards? But it really made me feel because I'm not going to stop eating grass-fed beef or pasture-ray stuff. At the end of the day, you're just trying to make the right choices that are there for you. It made me feel like this problem is so bad. We actually have no clue how bad it is. And every year it's going to get worse. and even healthy companies, they don't know because we don't really even have standards. He even talks about on the website how difficult it was for them to come up with a standardizing methodology for testing for microplastics. Wow.

Because not all labs have the capabilities. It's tough. So the fact that a guy is spending a half a million dollars of his own money to actually figure out what's going on in the foods that he's eating regularly. And there's plenty of other people that were on that list that are generally. brands that are trying to do the right thing. And so I believe that people largely, you know, is everybody that works at big food, a bad person? No, it's just that the system has gotten so out of control and we've gotten so used to the way that things are. We really do need a little bit of,

you know, national support and consumer awareness to kind of get people to actually work together to see what the is actually happening so we can create different standards. It's kind of like, you know, it's our science. Silent Springs moment, right? Is it the name of the book, Silent Springs, the Canary and the Coal Mine? Oh, the Canary and the Coal Mine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Whatever the book was named, I'll look it up in a second. But it's our moment of realizing like this has gotten out of control, especially in a global food supply, and we need to do something about this to figure out what's happening. This is why I don't understand the resistance to all of this, because there is a large resistance to it, and people have made this largely political. And I don't understand how we can't just all agree that we have an antiquity. system happening right now. We didn't, we largely didn't understand the implications of plastic on our bodies 10, 15 years ago, you know, thank God for the work of Dr. Shannon Swan, I'm sure you're

aware of, who wrote the countdown. And she talks all about how phallates are affecting our bodies, how it's affecting our fertility, men's testosterone levels, sperm counts. Like, we largely didn't know that this was really an issue until more recently. And now, now we know, that's the thing is we have the science, we have the data out there, but now we need to understand where we're getting all this exposure from, you know, and there's the obvious low-hanging fruits, like stop buying the plastic water bottles, right? But the meat, I mean, I was at the grocery store the other day. I can't even find meat at my local grocery store that's not wrapped in plastic. And that was the first thing I was thinking, I didn't even think about them physically eating the plastic, although horrifyingly enough,

I've heard in factory farming settings that they will take expired bread from grocery stores still in the plastic wrap and just feed it to them. Candy bars and the wrappers. Now, I don't think that that's allowed in the grass-fed organic realm, but in the factory farming realm, I've seen a lot of reports of that happening. So there's largely a lot of stuff happening right now in our food system that needs to be addressed that for whatever reason, we're not talking about, we're not looking into it.

And there's all this conversation politically right now about how we're wasting so much of our government funding going to these weird, freaking freakish studies that like no one even wants to have studies on anyways. Why are we not putting our money towards this? This is something that sustains our life. We eat three meals a day. This is what we need to live on this planet. And we're largely poisoning ourselves in so many different directions.

So why are we not looking at that? Yeah. You know, the answer a lot for two things I want to share about that. The answer a lot from, you know, representatives of big food is like, look, we're just making what the population wants. Yes. I've heard that, yeah. We were making sodas, and that's what the population wants.

And at the end of the day, our goal is to make profits. If people want to buy other stuff, we'll start making other stuff that's there, but this is what people are buying, right? I've heard different people's answers on that, but what do you say about that when you hear that type of thing? I mean, I can take this two different directions. I feel like, well, first of all, we know these foods are addictive, right? So would we, I mean, there's this weird thing happening right now where we are encouraging

people with needles and stuff. That's a whole different argument. What I was going to say is, why would we want to encourage drug addicts instead of get them the education, let them know that this is actually doing to their body? Because I think largely, I don't think people really understand. I think people are starting to kind of understand like, oh, you know, if I drink a bunch of sodas, it's probably not the best for me. But I don't think they literally understand, like, this is the matter of you between you getting diabetes and like having your leg chopped off, like the difference between that or the difference between getting a ramp and cancer. and dying at a young age. I don't think that we're truly, as a population,

understanding the implications of these food products. I think people think of it kind of in this way of like, oh, I'm being bad today, but it's fine. I also don't think people understand how much they're consuming these products now. You look at the standard American diet, and if people are not reading ingredient labels, they're eating upwards of, I don't even know how many additives and chemicals,

50 plus a day probably. We haven't studied where all those different additives and chemicals are doing in conjunction together in the human body. So to answer your question, I think there's largely an education piece that needs to happen here where people really understand what's happening so they can demand better for themselves. Because I think at the end of the day, everybody wants to be healthy. Nobody wants to feel sick. I think we also have a large problem where part of our population doesn't really feel well.

A large portion of our population is metabolically unwell. And they don't know what it feels like to actually really feel well and healthy. So how can we get that education? out to people that it's not, that it's not hitting yet, because it's very much hit our world, but it's not largely hit the American population. So how can we get that education out there

and then get them to actually be demanding better for the foods? And then also, real food tastes good. There's this weird notion out there that if you're eating healthy, you're eating rice cakes and boiled chicken with no seasoning and broccoli that's bland, I have a rule in my house. If it doesn't taste good, I don't eat it. Like I'm not choking down things just for the health

of it. Eating real fresh food. I think you probably have the joy of knowing what it's like to go to a farmer's market here in California and get really fresh food and make a meal from that at home. Nothing tastes better than that. And there's this notion that if we're going to take away people's ultra-processed foods that we're taking away, you know, delicious, yummy tasting foods, I don't think any of those foods taste good. I tried Reese's pieces last year. They used to be my favorite candy when I was younger. I spit them out. I thought they tasted absolutely disgusting. So I think there needs to be this level of education around all of that and maybe slowly introducing people to healthier foods. Like how can we encourage them to want to do this for themselves and empower them to do that?

Because people are largely addicted is essentially what I'm saying. And they don't know what it's like to eat real food and what it really tastes like. Yeah, it's so tough because the people who actually it's not tough, but some people make it seem tough, the people who are largely impacted by food being ultra-pronger. and also in combination of maybe lack of health care, et cetera, are the individuals on the end of the low economic totem pole? Yeah. And those are the people the most that need solutions.

Could be community-based solutions. Could be hospital, quote-unquote, pharmacies with an F. It could be all sorts of different things. It actually was coming initially from like the Republican side of things. It was like, you're going to tell all these lower-income people in my community, regardless of where that community is, what to eat and what not to eat, that's like a nanny state, right? And I feel like at least now there's this awareness that like, hey, it's not a nanny state to tell

people that smoking is bad for you and that you can't smoke in certain areas, right? In that same way, food has a massive impact on our body. We have to get involved if we want our citizens to actually be healthy. And especially when it comes to kids, you know, I was just in Japan in November with my wife. And, you know, we were talking to so many different people about what's it like to live in this community. What is it like for your kids to go to school? And they were telling us, like, you know, our kids' school has a nutritionist. And the schools are mandated to make food from scratch every day for the kids.

And then some schools, not every school, but some schools, kids even have to participate. Every school almost kids have to participate in like the cleaning process and other stuff. But even some schools, the kids were involved in like the making of the food or the gardens. or, you know, being involved in that process. Like, that's kind of renaissance that we need to this degree. Well, isn't it crazy that we don't teach children this? They should be learning this in kindergarten. I mean, I remember, did you ever watch that show Jamie Oliver when he went into our school

system and he tried to clean up the food system? And he showed the kids avocado and they didn't know what avocado was. They didn't even know what they were. Yeah. I feel like we have our priorities so backwards. Like, this should be the first thing that we're teaching kids. Put a community garden in all of those schools. and have them gardening when they're in kindergarten or, you know, elementary school,

help them make the connection with the foods that they're putting in their bodies. There is literally nothing more important because without your health, you have nothing. You're not going to be here anymore without your health. You also don't, or you're not going to have energy to show up for your life. Your body is not going to be functioning if you don't have your health. So why is this not our first priority in something that we teach kids at a young age? And then, yeah, I mean, I see these photos circulating all over, like Twitter and Instagram, all the schools across the globe, like Italy, Japan, these kids are getting real food, meals.

And then you look at what our kids are getting and it's all white foods. It's like fried chicken tenders and mashed potatoes and like maybe a couple green peas that the kids are probably throwing away anyways. I heard this today on the Senate hearing actually where one of the senators said, if you go and you look at the trash cans of all these schools, they're largely throwing away all this food because it's all ultra-processed garbage that they don't want to eat anyways. and then they're just going and buying snacks, and that's what they're eating for their meals. They're buying the lays and the sodas and that's what they're eating because they don't even want to eat the food that we're giving them. It's like prison food. Yeah.

So what are some of the solutions? What are the things that you talk about? In addition to, you know, supporting the work of people like Bobby Kennedy and the hope that knock on wood, he gets confirmed. What are some of the solutions that you talk about in this space? Well, first and foremost, we have to understand, at least right now, that our government is largely not taking care of this. so we have to be our own advocates. We have to be the CEOs of our own health. We have to be in control of what we can control. There's obviously a lot that we can't control. And if we're eating out, you know, it's fine. Like I still eat out like a normal person and I try not to worry about it.

But in your home, you completely control the groceries that come into your home. So I would say, first and foremost, do your due diligence if you live in a place where you have access to a farmer's market or, I mean, my mom lives in San Antonio and she has a farmer that she drives, She drives like 30 minutes to meet a guy that comes into town to bring all of his meat in, a rancher. And so find things like that. There's so many communities now that have CSA boxes and farmers markets or ways that you can contact your farmers and figure out how you can actually get food from the source. So I would say first and foremost, like, yes, absolutely.

Just take it in your own hands. If you have a kid and you're worried about what your kid is eating in school, start a group with your mom friends and start raising hell because I know there's a lot. I get messages almost every single day from moms in my messages saying, I am horrified by what my kid is being fed in school. How do we fix this? Start creating little coalitions with your mom friends and demand change. I mean, we said this earlier. The senators are saying that if they hear enough about a problem and they realize that this is what people want, they are going to be forced to change or they will be voted out. They do listen to their people. They just don't think.

that people care because nobody's really raising alarm about it until recently. So get involved in the places that you can. If you're a nurse, start a coalition and try to change the food system in the hospital. The hospitals are horrifying. I mean, people go there because they're sick, wounded, healing, and then they're getting these ultra-processed fake foods loaded with sugar, loaded with preservatives. So there's a lot that we can do. And then I would say on a political level, start calling your senator, start emailing them, calling them. They listen to us. And the more that we raise alarm about this, the more they're going to realize that this is something that people actually really care about. You know, you were saying earlier how it's hard for you to imagine that people would be against

any of this, right? When I look at like my friends that are still living very healthy lives, but were against either the Maha movement or Bobby Kennedy or anything in that sort of classification, these were the things that came up. And I wanted to see if you dealt with this at all when you were sort of doing your advocacy work. The first thing is basically just, hey, the association of Trump. At one point in time, Bobby was running his own campaign and he was going for presidency himself. And through a combination of a bunch of different things, there was the awareness that this isn't going to fly because of being suppressed from speaking on the national stage and debates and other stuff like that.

And it was like his campaign was at a crossroads of what do we do. And then there was the whole, you know, meeting and connection and everything that happened. It sounds like Callie Means, maybe Don Jr. And eventually getting into sort of the, is there a coalition of the Trump community and, you know, the Maha movement that Bobby was starting. So the first thing that showed up was how could you go for somebody like Trump with everything that he stands for, the people that were feeling in that lens? And largely I would say that was coming from a community of individuals that largely felt that

this election came down to women's rights and abortion access and that whole conversation that was happening there. Did you find yourself in the midst of that at all? Yes. I was getting it from personal level and then also online. I will say largely my community was actually pretty on board because I, it's funny that I sit here today and I'm I'm considered to be somewhat political now because I've spoken front of the Senate and I've really aligned myself with Bobby. But largely before that, I completely stayed out of the

conversations. I never really wanted to have anything to do with politics. And in fact, I had my own kind of reckoning and come to Jesus moment because, I mean, I lived in L.A. for the last decade. I've been a voting Democrat in my whole adult life. I mean, I voted for Obama. I voted for Biden the last election. So I just, I believe so much. much in this cause. And I also was listening very intently to what Bobby was saying. And I was also finding that to be true. And I'm sorry that I'm not even sorry, but this is going to come across political, but this is what I believe to be true. Bobby very eloquently stated he felt like the party left him. He said, I don't recognize this party anymore. They're aligning themselves with war and

they're aligning themselves with the corporations. And he's like, I, I feel like I haven't changed. And that's, that's exactly my stance. None of my opinions have changed since I was voting for a Democrat. I'm anti-war. I'm anti-big pharma. I'm anti-large corporations meddling with us. And it feels as though the parties have shifted. And I'm not even taking a full stance on the right either, to be quite honest, I really consider myself to be living in the middle. But the way that I see this is that it's so funny because I was literally having a conversation with girlfriends about this today, because they're seeing all these people online right now being like, they agree with everything that Bobby says,

but they're so scared to align themselves. So they'll say, they were saying things online. There's this trend right now, people being like, well, I don't eat seed oils, but not in like the RFK Jr. way. And I was laughing about it because I'm like,

why are we so scared to step outside of party lines? Why can't we just say, hi, I'm a human individual that cares about individual things. I'm pro choice. I care a lot about that. I also care a lot about the state of the health this country right now. And quite frankly, with the infertility rates and the way that they're going

right now, we're not going to have to worry about abortion in 20 years if we don't fix this. In my opinion, this is the largest issue that we're dealing with right now. We're quite literally extincting ourselves. And if we don't figure it out and address it, we're not going to be here anymore to vote anyway. So in my opinion, this is not about politics. And I hate that everybody's making this about politics. And I understand why they are. But you have to zoom out and start asking, why when Bobby Kennedy reached out to Kamala, she completely shut him down, didn't want to have a conversation about it, didn't want to ask any questions about the American health of the people. That to me right there was a full stop and made me think, huh, okay, so the Democratic Party,

at least right now, they don't care about the health of the American people. And that's the way I took it. And again, I'm sitting here as someone who considers myself moderate. I'm not like a Trump sympathizer or saying like I love everything that he does, but I largely love the way that this is going right now. and him saying that he wants to get to the root of the chronic disease epidemic in this country, that is where I want to align myself because whoever is doing that, then I'm paying attention to them. I'm supporting them right now. Yeah.

It's funny how many people feel that way but are sort of afraid to sort of speak up about it. Even what I say, I'm just thinking this out right now. There are, I largely have an incredible family, you know, a ton of amazing women. I have like 18 first cousins, the vast majority are women. And I have two incredible sisters. And I also have the sense of, I'm okay with however anybody else voted. And at the same time, too, you can be okay with however I voted because we all have different things that we care about.

And that doesn't negate where we're coming from. And that doesn't mean that we're trying to put our ideas on you. and I think that largely we were sort of set up in these camps through the media of feeling like we can't be, we can't have multiple parts to ourselves. There's a lot of people that vote for all sorts of different things as their main issue. I could see a lot of other things that could be a lot worse than feeling like you're voting because you care about the chronic disease epidemic, right? I don't know if you know the work at all of like Beth Lambert.

I don't think so. She's been sort of putting herself out there a little bit more. She was on a few podcasts. We flew out to L.A. She's been doing some early studies. They did like a twin study about putting twins who both were on the autism spectrum. One was on one diet. One was on another diet. They have been putting together a lot of case studies. I forgot the organization's name, but we'll put in the show notes. We did a whole podcast interview with her. And I asked her the question. I said, you know, what do you say to people who feel, because this is right before the election, that you're you're being played. This is like lip service. This is a president who now is in office, who's eating McDonald's and loves Coca-Cola and other stuff. And she's like, I don't care whoever's talking about it. And also, too, if they go back on what they promised,

you better believe that the moms that are out there are the first people that are going to speak up. Oh, yeah. Right? Because they're not beholden to just a tribe because they feel like, oh, I'm a Republican or I'm a Democrat. And I'm absolutely only going to vote with this group, regardless of what they do. If they stop making progress on the things that we care about, we're going to be the first group to speak up about it. Exactly. If there was a weird swap and all of a sudden the Democrats are the one that are fighting for

Maha, great. Then I guess I'm a Democrat. Like I have no alliance to any political party. I just have alliance to my core beliefs and what I think are most important. That's it. And I just don't like that we have turned this now because now what you're seeing, like, for example, when we saw in that Senate hearing today, Bobby is sitting there in front of them going, can we please, can we please put aside our political agendas here? This is about our children.

This is about the future of this country. This is about addressing the chronic diseases. This is not about if you're left or you're right. Because look, I'm sorry, if you get cancer, it doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican. So how can we not all come together on this and all decide because we could be so much stronger and smarter and figure out things so much faster if we just stopped infighting about the political, well, you believe in this and we believe in that? It's like, okay, well, can we at least agree on this one thing and address that? For you on a personal level, what was the response like to your testifying at that Senate hearing on Capitol Hill?

Actually, what was the formal title for the event that you spoke at? A second opinion on nutrition. It was a roundtable hosted by Senator Ron Johnson. Got it. What was it like to talk there? And then what was the response like? Publicly, or do you mean like in my circles? Publicly, like what kind of people reached out to you privately?

what kind of people reached out to you? I mean, that was a really surreal experience. It felt like everything I had been working hard for the last like 14 years was finally starting to get recognized. And, you know, let me say, too, the first seven years, I think I was doing real foodology, I didn't, I wasn't making a dime. This was not, it was, in fact, it's, I laugh about it now because it was never my intention to ever become a career.

Like, I just was passionate about it. And then all of a sudden was like, oh, I'm putting a lot of time and effort into this. like how can I actually make this a job? So it was surreal because it felt like all of the work that I've been doing for the last 14 years was finally starting to get recognition. And it's not about me. It's just the message was getting recognition. And actually people were paying attention to it. It was so validating to hear our U.S. Senator sit there on a public stage and say, why are we not asking these questions? Why are we not addressing this? Why? Why does Japan have a 3% obesity rate and then we have a 74% obesity rate in American adults and then 50% in our children.

So it was it was surreal. And then I got out of it and yeah, I mean, the videos went viral, which was amazing because I want people to understand what's happening with Monsanto and glyphosate. My phone was getting blown up. It was funny. I've had so many friends because, you know, I've been doing this for so long that like I said, this wasn't even always my career. I just was in my circles. I was kind of known as the like a little bit like crazy. about nutrition kind of thing. Like people would always make fun of me for it. Would they just be like, oh my God, Courtney's drinking your almond milk and like,

you know, buying organic food and lecturing us about all of it or whatever. And I was getting a lot of text from people being like, wow, you have like stuck with this for a really long time and you're finally getting your message out there and it's really cool to see. So it was awesome. Yeah. Talk about some of other people that were part of that. And, you know, it sounds like you guys have become, you've known some of them and you've

become friends with some of them as well too. I know Food Babe was there, Max Lugavir, Will Cole. Like, are you guys in touch on a regular basis to continue to spread this forward? Yeah, it's awesome. We have a group chat going where we keep each other up to date on everything, which is really fun and cool. We all kind of motivate each other. And it's awesome. Yeah. So Will was a friend of of mine. Max Lugavir was a friend of mine. I met some amazing people. I had the pleasure of meeting Michaela Peterson and Jordan Peterson, which was surreal. I think Jordan is amazing. And I love what Michaela's doing. Yeah, it was, it's cool because now it feels like it's so funny because I feel like this work

I've been doing alone for so long. Like, I've known people in the space, right? Like, I've had a lot of friends in the space just from living in L.A. and doing podcasts and stuff like that. But it largely felt like I was doing this kind of alone for a long time just because a lot of the work we do is like, you know, videos and trying to get the word out and educating people or my podcast. It's largely alone.

So it's cool to feel like you have this kind of tight-knit group now. that we're all, we all have the same goals in mind and we're all helping each other and propping each other up. And it's cool. It's fun. Well, you know, sometimes people look at this and they're like, okay, these things are nice, but what is really the action? And already there's been some action. You know, the Biden administration before they left office felt so much pressure by this focus and movement and everything that's happening that largely Bobby Kennedy put the spotlight on,

but that individuals like you, Vani Hari have been doing for years that actually before he left office red 40 was banned can you talk about that a little bit that one's really funny and it's interesting because we've gotten a little bit of pushback on that even too and i'll explain all the ins and outs of that red three was just the lowest hanging fruit it's been banned was it red three they banned or it was it was red three okay got it red three so there's been a lot of pushback from people saying well red 40 is so much worse it's so much more ubiquitous it's in many more foods yes all of that is true red three was just a very low-hanging fruit. They could immediately be like, okay, we know this.

We've already banned this. They banned this 30 years ago in cosmetics because there's a link to cancer. Why it ever ended up in our food? I don't know. But this is a perfect example of the competence, if you want to say, of what's happening with our food policies right now. And so I think it largely was passed through because Bernie Sanders had a Senate hearing with the FDA.

And they sat down in front of him. I mean, he was grilling them. It was honestly amazing to watch. Yeah, he showed up really strong. He showed up really strong. And it was really awesome. And it made me so happy. And they admitted, they said we, we don't have the funding.

We don't have the manpower. They admitted that we are largely behind in our research compared to other countries like the EU. And what I want to know is, well, why can't we just look at the research the EU is done? I mean, the EU, you have to, there's a warning label on foods that contain red four or any of these dyes if they're in the UK in places like Sweden. So I think there was just a low-hanging fruit. That was an easy one for them to just be like, okay, we're going to, we're going to ban that. But the fact that they did it was a pretty big deal. For an outgoing president, you know, and all that stuff and the awareness that Bernie Sanders created, like that was a huge deal.

And it would have only come, you know, because there was pressure for sure from all the people that were, you know, doing the work that they were doing, including yourself. I mean, it should give everyone listening hope because it showed us that if we put enough pressure on them that we can start getting this stuff recognized and actually addressed. So the hope is that now that they've done red three, that they're going to start looking at the other ones like red 40, yellow five, all these other dyes. I mean, those are also easy anyways. They serve no nutritional value whatsoever. They're simply there to make the foods look more appetizing. And they've admitted that they know that they're more addictive for kids because the kids love the bright colors. So that's an easy one. I think the harder ones are going to be the glyphosate and some of these preservatives and

additives. Yeah, I'm sure you saw it firsthand because you're in it, but inside of the larger health community, which all, people have a lot of different opinions inside of that group and community as they should. Hey, this isn't going to do jack shit for people's health, right? I'm sure you saw that criticism of people that were out there, right? And I'll tell you my thoughts on it and I love to hear your thoughts. It's like, we actually have no idea how all these chemicals combined together. And largely, if you were an individual that's getting a lot of red three in your diet, you probably have other dies. So this is really a momentum conversation. Can you build enough momentum that even the people at the agency start to feel like, hey, look, we're doing something and we should

be taking a look at it. And it's not just complacency because these things have been out there. And we don't want to ruffle any feathers in big food. So we're not going to touch it. We're not even going to address it. So this was largely the way that I see it is like you're building momentum inside of this community, and also, too, the people that are the lowest end of eating the most processed food. Who knows how much of the toxins in their lifestyle are coming from this one particular thing, Red 3, which I misspoke, and I said Red 40 in the beginning. So I understand the criticisms because I'm seeing a lot of people saying, okay, well, even if you take out these dyes, it's still not great food for you.

I totally agree with that. But I see it, I see a couple different angles here. One, I see it as, like you said, I think it's great momentum. I think it also gets the message out there to people, and it starts helping people connect to, wait a second. Our FDA has allowed this die that we know has caused cancer. It's linked to cancer, and it's been banned in cosmetics for the last 30 years, and they've allowed this die in our food. But also, they're allowing it into our food. So it's sparking these questions and people.

And also, look, we're in this problem in the first place because we're not making food anymore. We're making food-like products that have all these additives and have these dyes. If we can start stripping all of that, I'm not inherently, I'm not against buying things in packages, but I buy things that are made with three, four ingredients. They're made with real whole food ingredients. So how can we get to a place where we can strip all of those packaged foods of all the things that we shouldn't even be eating there in the first place? So I just see this as the first step to hopefully many where we start questioning all this

and going, oh, okay, so the dyes are not great. okay well what about the preservatives that are making the food not mold and sit on the shelf for three years without molding maybe you know we should look at that and I think it's just going to I think it's stepping stones right it's baby steps we can't there's no way we're not going to sit there tomorrow and be like okay everything's gone we're going to get rid of all the additives and all the fillers I mean we have to start somewhere right and so I believe that this is starting somewhere you know there's a book that was written a few years ago I don't know if he came across it but it's a guy he's a professor at Harvard and he's also a medical doctor yeah his name is john Abrams, and the book is called Sickening, I believe, is the name of it.

I think I've heard of that. I'm not sure. This guy, kind of like Bobby Kennedy, he's been an expert witness. Obviously, Bobby Kennedy has been on the litigation side and suing, you know, big pharma, big food, et cetera. But this gentleman, he was a researcher who was looking at a lot of the data around drug companies. And it's a fascinating read because he has so many years of this experience.

And what he realized as he started to go in and be called upon as an expert witness for people that were having reactions to mostly pharmaceuticals is that there was a super inconvenient truth in the world of pharmaceutical drug development, which is that anytime you hear the term, hey, that drug is peer reviewed or we had a peer review research on this drug and this pharmaceutical. The thing that most people don't know, even doctors don't know this, is that when those peer reviewers actually get the data for a drug of, hey, does this drug work? What are the side effects? What are the implications?

What is not good about it? They only get a sanitized version of the data. They never get the raw data. So this was something that came up in the beginning of COVID, which was when the vaccines first were being rolled out, you know, one of the important questions that a lot of people that we're in the deep no we're saying is that, hey, all these drug companies are saying 99.9% effective. Yeah. We actually don't know.

Why don't we know? Is because we don't have access to the raw data. The raw data is considered an intellectual property because drug companies are afraid. If other people had access to the raw data, could they come up with other derivatives or other uses of the drugs themselves? So where this showed up is that there was a drug. It was a blockbuster drug called Viox. Viox.

Yeah. And John Abrams was part of the whole trials and the expert witness on that case because once he started to get access to the information, he saw that all these deaths that were associated from taking this drug were being sort of swept under the rug. And it's estimated that 50 to 60,000 people died early because they were taking this drug.

And the reason I bring it up is that there's a lot of things that we actually don't know about that are inherently sort of baked into the system. It could be with food. It could be with regulation of pharmaceuticals. And when you start looking at the actual data, just like your mom was telling you early about trans fats, the story of trans fats is crazy. I wrote a whole newsletter about it.

There was a researcher named Fred Kumero, I'll link to it in the show notes, who for years was sounding the alarm because trans fats are literally the most deadly fat that we have. And he was seeing firsthand that we had so much data that was out there that it was causing clogging of the arteries and immediate death when people had large exposure to it. And he had the data for 10, 20 years. And nobody was paying attention. Like this was from multiple different groups that were out there that were all. that he was sourcing this data from.

And he was talking to anybody who would listen. And it just took years and years and years. And then finally, you know, I don't remember exactly the conclusion because I wrote the story a while ago. Finally, you know, the powers at B were like, okay, we cannot ignore this anymore. Everybody's talking about this situation. So I think we're in kind of one of those moments

where we're realizing how many layers of protection have been built in to protect the companies and to not inconvenience them in pharmaceutical, in food, in all different aspects of life, that we actually need to shine the spotlight on so that people can wake up and say, hey, let's do this differently. In fact, going back to this John Abramson book, when he was talking about this early on, there was some talk of the medical journals, the editor of the medical journals, coming together and saying, let's ban this practice. If we're going to write about this drug and its potential benefits or it's negative stuff and write about it in our journal, we need to have access to the entire amount of data that's

there, the full raw data. I believe they even published a joint letter and then unfortunately, completely obviously unrelated, so nobody calls me a conspiracy theorist. Unfortunately, a few months later, September 11th happened and the entire world was focused on a completely different conversation. So it just kind of got buried under the rug. But these are some of the things that we all have to pay attention to. And if you would go to most doctors and say, hey, when you hear about peer review, what does that mean?

Oh, somebody gets the data, they look at it, they see, is this drug actually good? Is it not good? No, you get a sanitized report from the drug companies. It's largely going to make a drug look good. And you are going to be writing your review based on that data, right? I think anybody who actually knows that that was the case of how it was happening would say, huh, something doesn't sound right about that situation. It's also wild because it sounds conspiratorial.

I woke up to this around during COVID too, where I was learning about if they were doing trials on these vaccines and they would have like an adverse event, then they would just push that person out of the trials. And then they just wouldn't even count it as part of their data is what I was hearing. And largely, that's all pretty much everything that was considered conspiracy during COVID has all largely been proven as fact now. there's also a really interesting to statistic that I think, you know, everyone holds science on this pedestal, right? It's almost become this like cult and this religion.

Well, we forget that on average it takes about 17 years for the science to catch up to what we already logically know to be true. So when everybody's saying, oh, we need the data. We need the science to back it up. Well, sometimes we just don't have it yet because we haven't finished studying it. Or, you know, there's things that we logically know to be true and it takes 17 years for it to catch up to it. So we're not always going to have data right away, but I don't understand how we've gotten so far from this notion of common sense that now we need a study just to prove things that we oftentimes already know intuitively or is common sense. And look, I'm a huge proponent for science. I'm not sitting here bashing science.

We have to understand what the process is. And, you know, when you start learning things and you start diving into really complex things, for example, like how the human body works, you realize that largely we don't really actually know that much. And we're learning things all the time. And that's cool. And that's a beautiful thing. And the beautiful thing about science is you learn one thing. And then maybe 15 years later, you learned, oh, we were actually not entirely correct about that.

And we need to, you know, rewrite that and correct that. And so science is ever changing as we learn new things. And we're constantly learning new things. And I think we forget that. Well, this is a special moment. And I feel like there's an opportunity that's here. And you've been a huge part of that, you know, moment that's there. and you and your friends and even a lot of our listeners who have been paying attention to this topic for years.

And even if you're not vocal about it, you care about this topic. You've been sharing podcast episodes with people. Like, it's crazy how mainstream health has gotten. Everybody is focused on health. And unfortunately, it's a big part of that is because so many people are sick and hurting and have all sorts of childhood diseases that are out there. But it really feels like this is an opportunity to, like, change things around. So I feel really excited. for you, what do you feel like is next with the stuff that you want to talk about? You know,

you've mentioned your podcast and your brand a couple of times, but just explain a little bit your sort of world and what you're involved in right now. Yeah, so I'm the host of the Real Foodology podcast. I've been doing that for in September. It'll be five years. I'm so grateful for that. That's a large portion of my work because it's how I'm actually able to sit down. And I mean, the conversations like this are so important because it's hard to get everything you need to get out in a 60-second video on Instagram, you know. And so I love to sit down and talk about all the ins and outs and the nuances of everything so people can really understand where you're coming from and also understand what you're talking about. Um, Instagram is also a place where I, I mean,

I just have fun. I love to, it's a great place to get information out to people, to get people involved, to get people, um, excited about the movement, get them calling their senators. So it's largely what I'm doing. And I'm also working on a book right now. I'm currently writing my book proposal right now. Amazing. Anything you can kind of share. this high level or you want to keep it close to the chest until you're ready to put it out there? I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this, but I'll say it anyways. It's not really giving anything away. But essentially, I'm largely talking about what I do every day on my Instagram, but telling the full picture. So I want people to understand what happened, how we got to this place, what the

policies look like now versus like how we need to shift. And also just knowing all of this and what we need to change. How can you get involved and actually help be a part of the change and just how you can navigate all this? So a little bit of your story and also like an advocacy guide. Yeah, exactly. And just the actual history of, you know, big tobacco buying big food in 1985 and what happened with Monsanto, just kind of telling the whole, painting the whole picture of how we got to this place with our food system. Yeah. That's awesome. You know, I feel like the more awareness and long format podcasts have been a big part of this conversation, the more awareness, that people have, the more that this thing, we're not waiting for somebody to cover it on like

the nightly news. There's only so much stuff that you can cover on the nightly news. And also, there's only so much stuff you can cover on like a short social media clip. So like shout out to all the people that get their information from podcast or podcasts are part of how they get information because a lot of these conversations wouldn't be happening without, you know, podcasts and these long format opportunities. Yeah. It's exciting. It's an exciting. It's an exciting. time. It's cool. I don't know how this will land for people, but I found this super interesting for the first time the White House press secretary is opening up their doors to podcasters and content creators. I saw that. I thought it was amazing. I saw all these comments of people saying,

oh, great, now they're, I don't know, everybody's saying that it's just going to make the information worse. But in my opinion, I'm like, we've already been, we've been lied to so much by our media companies. I'm shocked that anyone even believes them anymore. And so we're kind of forced to now have other people tell the truth of what actually is happening. So I thought it was cool and I thought it was a big win. Yeah, it's just another perspective. I think anytime any group of people, and this can happen, even in our space of wellness, right, everybody is capable of falling into group think. And you only look at things one way. And anytime you get a different voice, a diversity of thought in there to look at things in a different perspective, there were so many

journalists that said that they wanted to explore the origins of COVID. There's even in sort of NIH funding, I've had many researchers that have been on this podcast. This was during the pandemic that were very honest with me and said, listen, I'm here to talk about this, but don't ask me about these topics because it can jeopardize my funding. If my colleagues see it and it's a very competitive space in academia and you're asking me about this taboo topic, even if I have, you know, nuanced thoughts about it, it could put me in a bind in a situation where all of a sudden I'm not able to do the research that's there, which I'm empathetic towards.

For sure. I'm empathetic towards people in that situation, you know, so anybody can get involved in group think and get into a situation where they feel like they're worried about questioning certain items. And so anytime you bring in a diversity of thought, people from different, you know, backgrounds or experiences, all of a sudden, I think you, you open up. the conversation a little bit further. Yeah, for sure. Well, and you have to think about it, too, like a lot of these people that, I mean, let's just, let's just say CNN for the sake of it.

I'm not pinpointing them because they're all doing this. But, you know, they're all getting their funding from Big Pharma. They're largely getting their funding. All these large media companies are getting a lot of funding from Big Pharma. So, of course, they're not going to be able to tell the full truth. So we need to get other people in there that are unbiased, that are not getting paid by any company to say anything other than just simply what the facts are and what the truth is. I saw this. It was kind of funny. Joe Rogan, I think, tweeted the other day that CNN's,

did you see the CEO of the year? No, I didn't see this. CNN has a CEO of the year, and guess who it was? Who was it? It was a CEO of the year. That's a little ironic, a little funny. And then I'm sure everyone listening has seen this, but the whole compilation of the brought to you by Pfizer,

brought to you by Pfizer. Which also Fox is a part of that too. Oh, yeah, all of them. That's what I'm saying. It's not just CNN. And I just was using them. Yeah, they're all doing it. Yeah.

They're all taking funding. Well, I'm super excited. You know, this podcast will hopefully come out in a couple days. We'll see what's going on with Bobby Kennedy, the Maha movement. Regardless of what happens, I feel so hopeful. But the wish and the hope is that he can actually move forward, which I know there's a lot of people that are listening today in my audience, just like I'm sure you have an audience that view things differently. And they may feel that Bobby in particular. that he's a threat to things.

You know, I will put, you know, one that came up during the hearings that's been circulating a lot on social media as well is people are blaming him for this measles outbreak that happened in, I believe, it was Samoa. Which actually had nothing to do with him, by the way. And nothing to do with him. And a great article that was written on this that walks through the exact timeline in the, and a video to accompany it is Dr. Venné Prasad, who is somebody who is a major vaccine. advocate who's come out largely endorsing Bobby because there are a lot of corruption aspects

to the way that research is conducted. So if that's something that you believed in, you know, I would watch that video and he will walk you through the timeline and help you understand a little bit. But again, I think zooming out large in that, we can learn from each other and we don't have to agree on everything. But if you've made it this far in this conversation, I applaud you because sometimes the most uncomfortable thing is, and I have to done it many times in my own life, is listening, listening to a different perspective and seeing that maybe actually these beliefs that you had about something, you don't actually believe that way anymore. I've had many of those moments. I'm sure you've had many of those moments yourself.

Yes. Oh my gosh. A lot. All sorts of stuff. I've changed my mind on how I approach food. I largely was like super into like plant based and me too, right? Coming from the world of, I was doing like a strict raw food diet for like six years. Oh my God. I don't know how you did that. I was vegetarian for five and I tried to dabble in the raw world. but I could never fully go raw. Yeah. So there's so many things that I tried that I changed my mind on and you evolve and you grow and you get into different aspects. And I would hope that for anybody. I don't want anybody to be including myself stuck to any one perspective. So if you've made it this far in this conversation, I applaud you.

Courtney, let's leave the audience with some actionable takeaways about some things that might be topical and relevant to what we're going on right now. You know, you used to live in L.A. Right now, a big conversation in L.A. where I live is, you know, people talking about air quality, which isn't just an issue because of the fires. Yeah. It's an issue sort of all over. We've had individuals that have come on this podcast like Dr. Ray Dorsey, who is a researcher, one of the top researchers into Parkinson's disease. And he's been sounding the alarm that air quality seems to be a major contributor to Parkinson's disease.

In addition to tetrachlorohydrine, a tetrachora hydrine, which is a common dry cleaning agent as well as pesticides that are there. In fact, Bobby Kennedy was on the Senate hearing today talking about how he was chatting with, I don't know if it was him or Senator, I can't remember who it was. They were talking about how a bunch of farmers have been getting Parkinson's disease. In fact, Terry Wals, do you know Terry Wals? I do, yeah. She grew up on a farm. She's a medical doctor who developed an autoimmune condition, progressive MS, super bad case of MS. And she feels that a huge part of that was literally her exposure to pesticides her entire life. She used to take her hand, roll up her sleeve, and go into a bucket of pesticides and mix it

with her hands on the farm. Oh, that makes me feel sick. Yeah. So, you know, we're waking up to the toxic sort of air crisis that's going on, even if you're not being exposed to wildfires. Any tips that you want to share with the audience that are related to that category? I mean, so there's a couple really easy ones. depending on your budget, but I would say get a really good air filter.

I have an air filter in every room in my house. And if you're lucky to do that, at least just get one really good one. I love Jasper. They're a little bit more expensive. There's also another brand called Air Doctor that I love. There's a lot of great ones out there. Those are just the ones I've looked into. So do your own research.

Find a really good air filter. The EPA is also saying that our indoor air is even more toxic than our outdoor air. And it's a combination of, you know, cooking. You're doing candles. burning candles, the off-gassing of all your furniture. And then on top of that, you think about how many hours a day you spend in your house, right? So get a good air filter. Make sure that it's a good one.

And hopefully you can invest in one that will last you a long time. Air or sorry, water filter is also a really good one. Water quality is a huge one that we need to be worried about. There's so much of pesticides are getting in there, heavy metals, pharmaceutical drugs, everything. Fluoride. Yep, fluoride, which hopefully Bobby's going to address if we get them in there. But yeah, there's a lot of concern with that too. And then also, you know, I tell people like, look, we need to control.

We can control. But don't live in fear because if you're living in fear and anxiety, that's also not going to serve you. And also we're here, we're here to live. We're here to live our lives. So do the things that you can control and then trust that you're doing the best that you can. Our bodies are also really resilient.

And then get a sauna if you can afford it. If you can't afford a sauna, draw a really hot bath. Put up some salts in there. make it to where you're going to get a good sweat and do that a couple times a week. Or honestly, just exercise every day. Because it gets your lymphatic system moving. Your lymphatic system is like the sewage system of your body. It's going to sweat out.

You're going to sweat out all the toxins. Get them out. So just moving your body and sweating as much as you can, just making sure that you can get rid of all that stuff that we're being exposed to. And then try not to worry about it and just trust that you're doing the best that you can. And we're all in this together, you know? Yeah, it is possible to think about health, but not be worrying about it all day.

Exactly. You just set some basic systems up. I mean, you and I, we talk about this stuff, so we're thinking about a lot. You're obviously doing a lot of advocacy, so you're thinking about it all the time. But most of my friends, like my men's group that I'm part of here in Los Angeles, they all live really healthy life, and they just are focused on everything else. But they pay attention to it because when you have health, you have the energy and the focus and the attention and the stamina to give love and attention to everything else that matters in your life.

when you don't pay attention to health, you're constantly thinking about your health because you don't feel good and you don't have the energy to give love and attention to volunteering or helping out with your kids school or building that new business or writing that novel that's there. So it is possible to think about health, but not obsess about health. And that's what we're talking about today. Exactly. Exactly. I think people think that I live in a bubble and I obsess about this. I honestly, like, some of my friends are shocked at how chill I am about it. I think it's just because it's become such a part of my life. Like I filter my water. I eat organic food. Like I have these little habits in place that I've been doing for so long. And then I just try not to worry about it. I mean, I just did a sauna last night and I feel great. Like just I try to do those things to mitigate the exposures because we're all going to be exposed whether we like it or not. And so just try not to stress about it, do the best you can, you know, and then live your life. Great. I think that's a good message to conclude on how can people keep in touch with you? And again, just remind us about your podcast. Yeah, so the Real Foodology podcast. It's on all major podcast platforms. I'm the most active on Instagram, which is also just Real Foodology.

Becoming more active on X, Twitter, whatever you want to call it. And I'm also on TikTok. And I'm also on TikTok. But I wasn't that worried about it being banned because I'm not as active on it. But I'm happy that it wasn't banned. It's great that it's still there. So I'm also on TikTok. And everything across the board is Real Foodology. Amazing. We'll link to all that in the show notes. I'm glad we got a chance to meet in person. Me too. Thanks for all your advocacy and the work that you're doing to keep us all healthy. And I'm going to be following along. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you.