Realfoodology - How One State Is Rewriting Health Policy From the Ground Up | Senator Patrick McMath

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

284: In this episode, I’m joined by Louisiana State Senator Patrick McMath, Chairman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, to break down one of the most ambitious state-led health initiatives we’ve seen yet. We dive deep into Louisiana’s MAHA bill, SB14, which tackles everything from seed oil disclosures and ingredient regulation to nutrition training for doctors. This conversation is about reframing health, challenging political division, and proving that eating real, nutrient dense food doesn’t have to be expensive - it just has to be prioritized. Topics Discussed: → What is Louisiana’s MAHA bill (SB14) and how will it change the food system? → Why is Louisiana requiring seed oil disclosures? → How does nutrition education for doctors impact healthcare outcomes? → Can food-first, root-cause care reduce chronic disease in children? → How is Louisiana prioritizing local food and farmers in school meals? Sponsored By: → Clearstem | Go to https://www.clearstem.com/realfoodology and use code REALFOODOLOGY at checkout for 15% off your first order. → Paleovalley | Save at 15% at https://www.paleovalley.com/realfoodology and use code REALFOODOLOGY. → Manukora | Head to https://www.manukora.com/realfoodology to save up to 31% plus $25 worth of free gifts with the Starter Kit, which comes with an MGO 850+ Manuka Honey jar, 5 honey travel sticks, a wooden spoon, and a guidebook! → Timeline | Don’t let another year go by feeling less than your best. Grab 35% off your one month subscription of Mitopure Gummies at https://www.timeline.com/realfoodology35.  → Cowboy Colostrum | Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code REALFOODOLOGY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/realfoodology. → Vandy | Ready to give Vandy a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to https://www.vandycrisps.com/realfoodology and using code REALFOODOLOGY. Timestamps:  → 00:00:00 - Introduction  → 00:04:48 - Louisiana MAHA Bill  → 00:13:50 - Nutrition Education for Doctors  → 00:19:35 - Food Culture: US vs. Europe  → 00:26:07 - Ingredient Transparency → 00:33:40 - Seed Oils  → 00:39:50 - K-12: Primary Care + Nutrition  → 00:52:06 - MAHA in Other States   → 01:03:59 - Aliens, Healthy Kids & Politics   Show Links: → Louisiana MAHA Bill (SB14)  → The End of Craving | Book  → The Age of Disclosure | Documentary Check Out: → Senator Patrick McMath  → Facebook → X Check Out Courtney:  →  LEAVE US A VOICE MESSAGE →  Check Out My new FREE Grocery Guide! →  @realfoodology →  www.realfoodology.com →  My Immune Supplement by 2x4 →  Air Dr Air Purifier →  AquaTru Water Filter →  EWG Tap Water Database Produced By: Drake Peterson

What's causing us to be sick? Well, we're putting things in our body that didn't exist 120 years ago. People are waking up to this new notion that maybe everything that's available to me is not healthy for me. What is one thing that you wish every parent knew about food? How incredibly important it is to teach your children the importance of healthy eating and nutrition. I'm a true believer in food is medicine. I love to cook. And I've got some kids that enjoy cooking with me.

And mentally, it's healthy as well. And it's time you get to share with them. And yeah, it's something that every family should really be paying attention to it and taking advantage of. What do you think is the most misunderstood issue in American politics right now? Is that where you have to be pitted against each other? That is a myth and it's tearing us apart. I want to know if you ever got the chance to ask aliens a question about human health, what would you ask them? That's a really good question.

You spent a lot of time on that one. Welcome back to the Real Foodology podcast. On today's episode, I had the pleasure of speaking to Chairman of Louisiana Senate Health and Welfare Committee, Senator Patrick, McMath. He is at the forefront of one of the most important health reforms happening in the country. With Louisiana's new Maha-inspired food bill already signed into law, McMath has taken on big food lobbyists, push for mandated nutrition education for physicians, and work to bring transparency to harmful ingredients and seed oils in our food supply. His vision expands into K-12 primary care, teaching children what real food is and rebuilding a farming infrastructure rooted in

local Whole Foods. Today he joins us to break down the legislation, the National momentum and why this moment may finally change what Americans eat. This was such an awesome episode. It was so cool to sit down with the senator that is really pushing for change in the food industry right now. And I'm so excited to see what happens in the next couple of years. So stay tuned. I hope you love the episode. If you want to take a moment to rate and review the podcast, it really helps to get the show out. And if you are loving this episode, tag me at Real Foodology to help get the word out. Thanks so much for listening. If you've been listening to Real Foodology for a while, you know I'm really careful about what I use on my skin and especially skeptical of most acne products.

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slash real foodology. Senator McMath, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. Yeah, thank you for having me, Courtney. Yeah, so you, I just want to dive right into it because you have done some really cool stuff,

and I'm really excited to talk to you about this. So you recently authored and championed the Maha Bill, Senate Bill SB14, and it aims to overhaul nutrition and food ingredient regulations in Louisiana. Can you tell us about it and what does this mean for the future of food, especially in schools for Louisiana? Again, well, thank you for having me and providing us the opportunity to share a huge step that Louisiana took just this past session, and it was Senate Bill 14.

was the known, became known as the Louisiana Maha bill. It did a few different things. There was actually kind of one bill in, or actually five bills in essentially one bill. There was some transparency in ingredients. There's some prohibition on certain types of foods to be served in schools. There is a section requiring restaurants who serve and use. seed oils to notify. I'm so excited about that one.

Yeah. To notify that. That one actually came from a very good friend of mine who we were driving and I was telling about the bill and he said, you know, there's this app that rates restaurants based on the use of seed oils. We were talking about seed oils. Soodle Scout. And the effects, yeah.

Yeah. And I said, well, let's put in the bill and we did. And that one actually was very interesting. I found out that a very large company. that is located in my district manufacturer seat oils, and they weren't very supportive of that portion of the bill. I'm sure. But we had a very frank discussion and reminded them that it's not a warning.

It's just a simple notification, and this is kind of important because there's a lot of emerging science and data out there that are suggesting that, you know, perhaps putting hexane and a neurotoxin in your body is probably not the best thing to do. Yep. Yeah. And so that was another portion. There was a continuing education requirement for physicians when it comes to learning more about nutrition and metabolic health.

Another area that I did not think was going to get a lot of pushback, but some doctors, took exception to the fact that the legislature was trying to tell them what they should and shouldn't know about health. And so had some interesting discussions as to, you know, if it's not a big problem, why does Louisiana have and the country have a massive obesity issue? And so, you know, and it's hard to, it's hard to debate that. But yeah, it's, and what was wonderful about the bill, so give you a little bit of background in Louisiana, we prioritize Mardi Gras over pretty much everything else. So the rest of the country, their legislatures gavel in, usually in January, and they're out, you know, three or four months. In Louisiana, we wait until Mardi Gras is over with. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Which is a unique cultural thing. if you've never experienced money grab. Come on down. It's wonderful. Spent some money in New Orleans. But it kind of gives Louisiana a little bit of an advantage when it comes to legislation because we can watch what's happening in other states and sort of learn from the debate and adjust certain legislation. Because one of the beautiful things about this country is there's 50 different experiments going on right now. So you can kind of compare.

You see which states are doing things right, whether it's education, whether it's health care, whether it's roads, and which states are doing it wrong, and there's results. And so you can mimic the ones that are doing it well. And so I was paying attention to the Maha movement that was kind of going on across the country,

had worked with and been in communication with Callie Means of good energy. Yeah, good friend of mine. He's great. Yeah, he's wonderful. That was just a cool experience to get on the phone with him and chat and come up with a strategy. And there was a number of states, West Virginia, Utah, Nevada, Florida, Texas had a wonderful bill. It was a little bit more comprehensive.

And so... It's similar to this, though, right? It is. Yeah, with the ingredient transparency, and there was a couple of other overlaps that I was going to ask you about. Yeah, they did something, somewhat similar to Louisiana. Actually, we kind of followed their lead to an extent. And so took all the best parts that I liked and threw it in one comprehensive bill. And it was a lot of fun to run the bill because, one, it's absolutely unequivocally the right thing to do.

Yeah. And I really enjoy having the opportunity to debate people that are fighting, you know, an uphill battle when it comes to having the moral high ground. And I think the supporters of that bill, myself and the governor was very supportive of the bill. you know, really dared a lot of folks to come to the table and like, like, some of the big food companies and some of the big soda companies. So I was just going to ask you this. Did you have a lot of lobbyists come in from big food and, you know, big soda and all of them? I'm sure you did.

Absolutely. Yeah. Had more meetings on this bill than I've had on the, you know, hundreds of bills that I've in the past before. Wow. But I like to meet and discuss issues. beforehand and see if there's ways that you can compromise prior to going into a public hearing and setting and having an all-out debate. What was really interesting, though, is after these

series of meetings, there was kind of a general theme of we really can't come to the table and defend what we've been doing. So just please be nice to us. And they wouldn't even, you know, they might have submitted a red card, but they wouldn't come and testify. What does that mean when you submit a red card? Just that means you're against. I mean you're against all of the bill or a portion of the bill. Okay. I think they did see, like in Texas, the American Heart Association came out. And they got hammered. And they got hammered in the media. It was honestly beautiful to see. It was wonderful. In fact, I actually played the clip of that to a company that was threatening to come to the table. I said, you were more than

happy to more than welcome to come and testify and explain to me in the public why you think, you know, putting artificial dyes and ingredients is safe. So please do this, but just this is what you should expect. Yeah. So again, kind of an advantage that Louisiana had that I had in, in running the bill is a lot of this had been, a lot of it had been kind of litigated and debated. And then the end product was really just a wonderful, wonderful bill, wonderful experience of the bill signing. Senator Kennedy came in and celebrated with us. And in his speech, he acknowledged that Louisiana had produced the most

comprehensive Maha bill in the country. And so, yeah, it was great. Was Louisiana the first one to sign the bill in? Because I know Texas has one out, and was it West Virginia that has a similar one out? West Virginia, actually, I believe. was the first state to pass a some sort of they removed their dyes I think that's what it was

that was their big one and then I know that Texas had this one out that we mentioned a minute ago but I'm not sure if the one in Texas has that been signed through yet I don't know if it made it all the way through process okay and yours has officially made it through right it's been signed and when does it go into effect

so that was something that we that I was able to compromise I felt like I needed to compromise on is kind of give some longer runways to these manufacturers, the schools, the doctors, the restaurants to, you know, adjust to the new regulations and laws. I mean, it's a huge ship and it does not turn on a dime. I have a lot of questions about that, actually, because I think it is, I mean, it needs to happen, obviously, and I'm a huge champion for this. I also think it's going to be a huge lift, and I'm curious to know what some of this is going to look like and how long you're going to give them.

So let's say, for example, let's dive into the one with the, so I really love what you're doing as far as with the health care aspect of things and requiring doctors to actually have nutrition education. And then you're also for, let's see, for K through 12 primary care, you're trying to change that as well where they have more school-based providers prioritize nutrition. So the continuing education piece for the physicians, actually that goes into effect. that goes into effect January 1. And does that mean they're going to be required to not take courses? Yes. Yeah. And what I really wanted to do with that is actually I tried, I wanted to start

in the medical schools because I was floored to find out that med students and when they're in residency are not required to take... They get no nutrition training. 96% of med schools don't require a nutritional course. In fact, I tell everyone I know, I say, don't go to a doctor for nutrition and diet advice.

Obviously, you know, you have a broken bone. You need surgery. I mean, they're wonderful at that. But do not go ask them, oh, what should I be eating for my heart? Don't do it. They're not trained on it. No. No.

Acute care is where I think physicians shine and should. We've gotten into this, and this, we can go down this rabbit hole, but how we got to here. But our health care system is really. based on sick care. And unfortunately, the system profits on people being sick and remaining sick and pharmaceutical companies and all of that. Their bottom line relies on selling drugs and you sell drugs to sick people. This time of year, it feels like everyone is trying to stay healthy through the winter months. And I'm always looking for simple, natural and honestly delicious things to add to my routine to just help my immune system stay on track.

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Exactly. Instead of root cause. That was actually going to be my other question. So my assumption would be that the education is also going to be based on more root cause integrative care. Yes, that's my hope. And I think that's the future of medicine. Yes, it should be.

It is. We are talking about treating the symptoms, but what is what is causing? And that's what I love about food, what's the saying, food first medicine, food before medicine, or I actually haven't heard that thing. Oh, food before pharma. I like that. I've actually never heard that the other day. And it resonated.

And it's what's causing us to be sick. Well, it's probably the fact that we, one of the things has got to be that we're eating, we're putting things in our body that didn't exist 120 years ago. Yeah. You know? And as humans have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, we're. used to certain diets and our bodies are built around that and then we just started um you know and ingesting things that aren't natural for us to ingest and the effects that that has on our

metabolic system is is very clear there's a there's actually um a really wonderful book that was sort of started my journey um into this world which is pretty new i i'm you guys have been at it probably for for much, much longer. And so I will admit that I am new to this game. I mean, it's awesome, though. We're so happy to have you here. You're doing amazing things for this movement. So, well done. Yeah. It's also made me healthier, too. So that's good. But the book is called End of Cravings. I don't know if you've ever. It's Mark Shatsker, by the way. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. He's amazing. So my wife, a few years back, was having some health issues and went to a number different doctors and kind of honed in on the fact that there was her diet could be improved and

and so went down that that rabbit hole and this was one of the first books that i i read it compared the united states in italy in the 19 early 1900s and both those countries were dealing with a a dietary-based disease, essentially, almost like a version of scurvy. Yeah. And it was like in northern Italy and the United States, it was in the southeast. This was share cropper days, so people were just eating like biscuits and, you know, lard and weren't getting vital nutrients that they should. And they were, it was a major epidemic in both countries.

And in the, in Italy, they dealt. with this crisis by importing different cheeses, bringing in different types of wines, encouraging communal bread baking. And the curve, it slowly solved it, but it took 15, 20 years, right? In the United States, we enriched our flour. Immediately solved the problem. It went from like 3 million people that suffered from this to 15,000 in a year. But that's where our paths, as two countries diverged. And at the time, the United States and Italy had a similar obesity rate, like 8%, or something like that.

And now the United States is nearly 50% obese, 70 some odd percent are overweight Americans. And Italy is still kind of hovering on those same numbers they were in the 1800s. And the author sort of identified where we diverged. And it definitely kicked off this acceptance. and in government to, that it's okay to modify foods. And we'll just use science to dig out of our issues.

And it has absolutely had the reverse effect. And we're here today because 70% of our diet, I believe, is most average American side is comprised of ultra-processed foods. And that's an issue. So anyway. It's the ultra-processed food issue, which is really a problem.

And it's not just, to say that they don't eat them in Europe, but, you know, for example, in Italy, I just, I always use Italy as an amazing example because they still, to this day, as a, their whole culture is based around, around food and their community around food and making things from scratch. They take a lot of pride in their food, and we just don't have that here in America, you know, like my mom and I actually had a conversation about this recently because my mom lived in Italy for a couple years, and she brought a lot of those practices back home with her when she was raising me,

she was making everything from scratch when I was a kid. And I asked her, I said, where did you get that from? Because I grew up during, I called the Dunkeroo's era. Because we were all eating Dunkeroo's and Pop-Tarts and, you know, all my friends were eating that stuff, right? Yeah, cinnamon toast crunch to start the day.

Exactly. But my mom, I would go home and my mom's literally baking bread from scratch. She was making pasta from scratch. I would sit on the counter with her and catch the pasta that she would, like, crank out of the machine. And she said that she got all of this from Italy because when she went to Italy and she lived there for couple years. She was in awe of just how much their culture has. It's like this pride in creating

their own food and making it from scratch and, you know, growing in a healthy way. And we just don't have it in America. We went this different route where we have pride in our industrial agriculture and our ability to engineer and, you know, bioengineer these crazy food products. And I always bring up this example, too. I used to work with a Swedish woman. And every time a commercial would come on for like Pizza Hut or something where it's like double stuff crust, you know, it's just like, they make like SNL skits about it now where they're like a pile of hamburger on top, you know. And the Swedes would literally look at me and they would go, I cannot believe that this is legally allowed here. They said, our government would not allow this kind of food

in Sweden. And it's similar. It's like that a lot in a lot of Europe where they just don't, they see food in such a different way. Yeah. And there's just desire as Americans to be like, well, that's freedom, right? And we're, and we, you know, we've, we can, we can pile on and we're, we're so, you know, we're, we're so wealthy and successful that our food is bigger, our plates are bigger and everything's bigger. And as we, as we say this from Austin, Texas, you know, everything's bigger in Texas. But, but, but it's a problem. It's a problem. And it's, I don't think it's something that we should really be taking pride in. I think the country is really post-COVID, you know, COVID had an effect on everyone, when it came to,

I think people finally started taking health into their own hands and asking questions of their doctors. And there was some trust issues that were born out of that, that I think is actually evolving into a good thing. And so for the first time, we're reading, ingredients and when you turn a box over and it's it's four paragraphs of things that you can't even you know and you have to google half of what they are you're like what is sodium triphosphate calcium like what is that um which is great and i think americans are finally waking up to that and not and not

being so prideful and in wanting to mimic the european model of you know if it's bread it's it's really it's flour yeast sugar and water or salt yeah and That's great. So speaking of ingredients, I want to know, can you remember some specific food ingredients that are being regulated under SB 14? Oh, gosh. Or even just like a broader. Yeah, two sections of that bill dealt with ingredients lists. One was the requirement to have a basically what we ended up doing is we put a QR code.

if your ingredient contained, if your product contained a certain ingredient that we pulled from, actually we pulled them from European lists. And then also some of the lists that Texas had compiled. I can't think of, nor can I really pronounce a lot of those ingredients. Well, yeah, that's fair. But if it's one of 52, it's going to require a QR code to scan, and then that will take you.

to the FDA's website that they actually have some warning labels for those ingredients. Awesome. And then the school breakfast lunch portion was I think nine different ingredients that were like just the really, really bad ones. Yeah. But what's great, and this is important to highlight that bill, it was a part of a much, broader push across the country, engineered by Cali Means and Secretary Kennedy and President Trump. And the goal was to cause chaos. Go, causes much, go states, go forward, and put together just a patchwork of laws and rules and regulations that these food companies cannot possibly abide by

so that forces them to the table in D.C. So that they make the changes at the federal level, which is really, which is really what should be happening. I've told people, if Senate Bill 14, the law in five years is null and void because we have a federal food safety, comprehensive federal food safety program that's passed by Congress and signed by the president that makes all of this uniform, then mission accomplished. Yeah. You know, and so another thing that was, it's a very unique way to run legislation is most of the time we are trying to kind of conform with and fall in line with what

other states are, being consistent with what other states are doing. This was really unique because it was like, just do whatever you think is right and don't worry about what Texas or Nevada or West Virginia or Florida are doing because we kind of want that. And it's awesome. And it's been great, because it's working. I mean, you have, I feel like, you know, once or twice a month, you've got food companies that are saying, hey, we're no longer going to include this, you know, in our ingredients, or we're pulling this dye, or we're, you know, we're transitioning to, away from seed oils, you know, to other more healthier avocado and olive oil. And you're seeing that, and it's great. It's so cool because what, I mean, the listener probably,

already gets this, but I really want to lay it out, is that what's going to start happening is companies are going to be forced to have to change nationally because they're not going to want to make, they're not going to want to go, okay, we have to make this special one for Texas and this one, you know, for Louisiana, they're just going to have to take it out altogether and eventually it's just going to become standard. Yeah. Which is really cool. And so it's kind of cool to see different states maybe passing, addressing different things because what's going to happen is the companies are going to go, oh my God, now we've addressed that because we can't. So, it's and this stuff to Texas, oh, Louisiana's doing that. And so then it's just going to cause this whole

everyone to stop doing what they're doing right now and clean up the food. Absolutely. And something else that has emerged from not just the bill that we passed in Louisiana, but the discussion that's taking place across the country is people are finally being educated. Yes. That, hey, these food products, you know, that have been on the shelf for six years and are still stable, they're not healthy for you. And, oh, really? But they have, you know, a pretty picture of a granola. And they're on the shelf. They wouldn't possibly sell it if it wasn't healthy for us, right? Yeah. Yeah. And people are waking up to this, you know, this new notion that, hey, maybe, maybe everything that's available to me is not healthy for me. So I'm going to look into it. And so you have

this, I think you're going to have this consumer push, like the, the free market and the consumers, going to dictate what these food companies, the products that they serve and the products that they put on the shelf. And so if the American public demands, you know, fries that are served in beef tallow and not in canola oil, or that's, the restaurants are gonna shift to that. Yeah. So we have a role to play as well.

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at your local sprout supermarket. Stop by and pick up a couple bags before they're gone. And speaking of the restaurants, so it's not a ban or anything, right? Like they're not required to get rid of them. They're just required to label if they use seed oils at the restaurants. That's right.

So we require them to put it on. their menu and we do this it's this is not a new thing in fact when one of the lobbyists was telling me that this is just an undue burden and no one's going to ever do this i sent him a picture of a menu from chick-fil-a where they do this already oh they do they do i didn't actually realize that somebody pointed that out to me and i went into a chick-fil-a and took a sure enough it's their fries are fried in one type of oil and their chicken is fried in peanut oil or something like that and and in louisiana we also require restaurants to put on their menu if their shrimp is not from the Gulf of Mexico.

Oh, I've never heard that. I get confused as what we're calling it now. I know. I actually don't know. I think technically is it officially goals of America now? I don't want to get. It's funny. I don't want to get in trouble by the Trump administration.

But yeah. But yeah. So there's certain requirements that this is consistent with. And man, I don't want to get in the Ced or a little conversation. but there's right ways to do it and there's wrong ways to do it. And unfortunately, the majority of those types of oils are, you know, are derived from, you know, hexane extraction. Yes. And that's, we should be thinking of that.

Like, maybe that's not the best thing to put in our bodies. Exactly. Well, and because it's the standard now for every restaurant to use them, we're at a place now where, you know, if you look back 50 years ago, Americans were getting, I mean, maybe 1% of their diet were from seed oils. Now their diet is coming, it's 20% is consisting just of seed oils. That's really where the issue is. You're right. You're right. It's maybe it's not necessarily the product itself and like you said, one percent of your diet is this. But now seed oils are just about in everything we eat. And I still think the seed oils are a problem, just to be clear. They're inflammatory and there's so many things. But there's so many parts

of the conversation. I'm so sorry to interrupt you, but there's so many other angles of the conversation that people are not talking about because everyone's debating right now in my nutrition world of, oh, are they actually bad for you? Well, the health aspects of it aren't that bad. The nutrition of it is not that bad. Well, I would argue that they are bad in inflammatory, especially if you watch a video of how they're made. They're made with hexane. It's like a 12-step process. They're deodorized. It's a whole thing. But you can also argue that, that Americans are eating too many of them. Yeah, no, a thousand percent.

It's, you know, when you go into a grocery store and if you were to press, I heard this somewhere, if you were to press, you take a watermelon and you press 10 different watermelons individually, you put them in a jar, it's all going to look a little different. The juice, right? When you go into a grocery store and all of the seed oils look exactly the same, like, that's not a natural thing, right? It's true. We try in our house, in our household to limit what we eat to things that existed 100 years ago.

And I think that's like a good, very simple, you know, rule and, you know, seed rules didn't exist 100 years ago. So in fact, I think they were, correctly for wrong, I think they were invented for engine lubricants. Yeah. So. Yeah. So they were actually, so they originally come from, um, like, um, well, they originally come from, um, it's called the rapeseed.

And they were being used a lot in the war as an engine lubricant. And then what happened is they had a surplus of it afterwards. And at the time, if it's just straight rapeseed oil, it's actually really high in something called your syric acid. I mess this up every time. I always forget how to pronounce it exactly. It's not uric acid. It's like your syric acid.

And so what happened was in Canada, I love this story. I find it so fascinating. So in Canada, they actually, they revised it to take. the oil out of there, it made it lower uceric acid, so it was a lower amount. And it's why it's called canola oil. It's Canada low acid oil. Okay. So they took what was an engine lubricant. I thought they just wanted to change the name from rapesee canola just because it sounded better. I mean, that too, honestly. It's not ideal. But yeah, and so that's why they called it at Canada low acid oil because they took that acidic oil in there because it's before it's not,

I mean, it's not even edible at all. So it is. It's still an engine lubricant. they just modified it to be less acidic, essentially, is what it is. So, I mean, that alone to me, I'm like, again, we have so many things already provided to us by God, nature, whatever you want to call it, whatever you subscribe to. Why are we modifying all these things? Because what we keep finding is that every time we modify something, we make it worse for us. Think about margarine. Doctors were pushing margarine. And, you know, when was that, like the 70s, the 80s? And then we come to find out that heart attacks went through the roof because of margarine's not good for us, we should just be eating butter. So we need to be eating the real things that we're getting from

nature, from God already because they're already there and provided for us. And we start modifying things is when we get in trouble. Amen. Amen. And I dabble in the restaurant business and I am seeing a trend to, you know, the restaurants will say beef tallow is too expensive. And we would love to serve everything in beef towel tastes better, but it's too expensive. The price of beef towel is actually started to come down. More people are making it because they're responding to the market's desire for people to use beef towel over canola. So again, I think there's a light at the end of the tunnel here and the pendulum is swinging back towards more whole natural foods. I know. I'm so excited about that. It's great. I want to ask you more.

I brought this up briefly. I was very interested. So I was reading about all the different things that you've been doing. And one of them, your vision for K-2, K-12 primary care. Can we talk more about that? When I was first reading about that, I was like, wait, so are you wanting to put nurses in there?

But it sounds like you're wanting to do a more comprehensive assessment for kids. Yes. So this wasn't in the Mahabill. This is something that I've started educating myself on. a few months ago. So a little background, I'd share the Senate Health and Welfare Committee in Louisiana. And so it's sort of my, I guess, duty to, or my lane, my scope as a legislator, and is that a position as the chair? And is that like public health or, okay.

Yeah, so we're over everything. My committee serves, has oversight over Department of Health, Department of Child and Family Services, and a lot of food safety stuff. So in K through 12, what this was brought to me, this concept, we have a very, very unhealthy population and very poor population in Louisiana. And a huge problem is the vast majority of people don't have a primary care physician. And they use the emergency room as their doctor. office if they're not feeling well. They go to the ER. The problem with that is ER visits are by far and away the most expensive form of health care and it drives up costs for the state. And so if we can

figure out a way to drive people to or encourage people to go to their primary care physician, it is an undisputable fact that if you have a primary care physician that you see it, just even once a year, your health statistics and quality metrics are substantially better than someone who doesn't have a primary care physician. You know, for women, that's typically their OB, right? But most men don't have a primary care physician. So there's this model that exists out there to go to the population. as opposed to having a population to come to you.

Because people don't have cars. People don't have time to get to a doctor, particularly students and children. And so I've been working with a couple of different groups that have introduced this concept to me, as well as the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health, who's a big believer in this model, to expand K-access for primary care physicians to K-12.

of students. So, and you're physically going to the school and it's a nurse and a lot of times it's a follow up by a doctor and it would be my goal to to get to a point where every school in Louisiana has, and every student in Louisiana has a nurse or a doctor that they can go to at their school that can prescribe them medication. that they're allowed to take home. That's another huge thing. I mean, you can go to a doctor and you can figure out what's wrong with you

and be prescribed certain meds, but you don't have the ability to fill it or to go to the pharmacy, right? And so, yeah, that's another little initiative that I think is somewhat of a silver, could potentially have a silver bullet effect in terms of solving access to care in the state. And so, that's awesome. Yeah, something I'll be pushing as well. And I was curious, again, would it be from more of a lens, hopefully of maybe preventative root cause care, where they're looking more into, you know, nutritional deficiencies,

looking at their gut? 100%. Awesome. And that, again, I think is the direction that primary care is starting to go into is more a more holistic approach to medicine and to health care. It has to be. because what's, the system that we have now is just simply not working. Yeah.

I know. I mean, I feel like every system right now we could name every system. There's such a, oh, I just, I love so much the work you're doing because there's so many things that need to be fixed. And there's a lot of cool things that you are doing right now. Another thing is in the bill, is there, I was unclear about this. Is there a, is there something written about nutrition education for schools? Because we know nutrition education is abysmal. I talk about this all the time.

I was so frustrated because, you know, I went, I actually went to a really amazing school. And, you know, I went through K through 12, basically went through all of college. No one ever talked to me about how important food was for my body. And to me, now knowing what I know, I'm like, that is one of the most fundamental things that we need to be teaching kindergarten kids. Just simply making the connection of, hey, what you put in your body is going to affect how you feel. It's going to affect how your cells work. It's going to affect how your energy is. No one ever had a conversation.

I had to learn that on my own. Is there any sort of plan to fix that at all in schools, too? Yes. I think the future of Maha, right, is, particularly in Louisiana, deals with farms and with education, educating the population. And so this portion, obviously, is the education piece. You know, 20 years ago, we mandated schools to start teaching financial literacy. So teach people how to balance a checkbook, which makes a lot of sense.

That provides a everyday skill that people should, people need to, you know, have their finances under control. I wish, by the way, I would have taken that class a little bit more seriously because it's not necessarily the case in our household. But why would we not want to teach our children the benefits of not only eating healthy but what is healthy? And there's some really great programs, and there's some studies out there that prove that if a child is involved in the growing of their food, like lettuce, for example, they are, you know, 90% more likely to want to eat that food and ingest it. And we're working on some things back home. where we're going to partner with some farms. There's this really cool facility in Harvey, Louisiana, which is on the West Bank, right outside New Orleans.

It's a very urban setting. And they have something called the, I always mess this up, the Agra Aquaculture Center. And it's hydroclonic farming. And it's not a very large footprint greenhouse house that the fertilizer comes from channel catfish that they have in these tanks and everything is self-sustaining the water is captured from the rain and it's solar powered it's it's pretty cool operation self-sustaining it can produce 11,000 heads of lettuce if they were to go vertical a month

if they were to go vertical they could produce 44,000 heads of lettuce a month wow and i just have this vision of putting these facilities in or next to schools so that kids can go and they can see and they can work it and they can understand the benefits of eating healthy whole foods that you've touched from, you know, from seed to plate. Yeah. And I think that's the mindset we need to start, you know, having in this country. And by the way, it's it's a way to, it's a way to. to boost economic activity.

I mean, a lot of the lettuce that is served in schools is typically grown in greenhouses in Canada or in Mexico. Yeah. It's harvested, and by the time it makes it to the kids plate, it's five weeks, six weeks after it's been harvested. And this, by the way, is also the lettuce that we mostly buy in our supermarkets. And it has no nutritional value anymore. And it's probably sprayed with pesticides like glyphosate.

Exactly. Yep. And so we can really lean into, to this healthy whole food movement. And I think there's an economic advantage as well. But yes, education should be, nutritional education should be a part of every children's curriculum starting in kindergarten.

I mean, we teach it at our house, our kids, God forbid my kids see me, and I'm not perfect with walking around with like a Doritos bag because it would be like, there's so many chemicals in that dad. I can't believe you're eating that now. It's, I don't do it anymore because I don't want to get caught, right? That's cute.

Yeah, they've bought into it. And I think kids are so impressionable. And we should be teaching them the right things to do. And you don't think about it, right? You don't think, well, you've got to teach your kid how to eat. Well, in this world and in this country where it's really, really hard, it's hard to eat healthy, to find the healthy things. you almost got to go out and scavenge and kind of work at it and go to the farmer's market on the weekend to build up your supply for the week of what you're going to do.

But it is absolutely worth it in the long run. And it's changed our family. And so hopefully that's something that we can do for the rest of the state in the country. That's so exciting. Do you think you'd ever do any kind of like cooking classes for kiddos? And maybe even, I know you mentioned the hydroponics. I do want to say one thing because I didn't know this until very recently. there are some nutrition people speaking out against hydroponics

only in the sense because it doesn't have the soil and when you take out the soil you take out the nutrients of the plants and you put in synthetic fertilizers instead. Now I will say I still think that if you're growing vegetables and that's the way that you can do it, I would rather you do that than not do anything at all. But I do think that there is kind of a importance in keeping the soil in there

and having almost like a little backyard garden for the kids. And I actually brought that up when we took a tour of this facility. And people that seem to be, you know, smarter than me in this world were explaining how the channel catfish and, you know, the waste that they produce acts as a more nutrient, maybe not more, but a nutrient dense version of soil. Oh, for the plants? Oh, that's cool. Yeah, maybe there's no ways to do it now. Yeah, that seemed like some sort of outlier that made them a little bit different than your typical hydroponic operation. Yeah, that's awesome.

I mean, still getting kiddos involved in their food regardless, I think is so, it's so incredibly important. I will never forget. Did you ever watch that show by Jamie Oliver? Do you remember him? He was a British guy, and he came to America, and he did a series of shows when he went to American schools, and he tried to revamp their schools and, you know, the kitchens and how they were. cooking and all that. Oh, yes, yes, yes. And there was one episode where he went into a kindergarten class and he was showing the most basic food. Like, he literally had like a tomato and a cucumber.

And he was like, what is this? And the kids were like, ah, and they didn't know what they were. Yeah. Just very plain vegetables. And that horrified me. And so I just, I really hope that this is something that we do moving forward because, I mean, I think the effect of it and the cascade it can have on our society if we start with kiddos early could make a huge difference. Couldn't agree more. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. And that's what we're going to be focused on.

Yeah, back home. That is so cool. So we kind of talked about this, but I want to hear a little bit more your thoughts on this. So now I feel like Louisiana, there's a couple states now that have done this, Louisiana, Texas. You guys are kind of setting the model for this moving forward. Have you seen any other states? Like maybe have states reached out to you with any sort of interest? And how do you kind of see this moving forward as far as other states, you know, following

in your path? Yeah. Not only have other states reached out, but I've had some companies from France actually want to lend a hand and explain what they do differently over there and how they could perhaps get a foothold and take advantage of this movement in Louisiana. and the rest of the country. That's awesome. There's constant, you know, national conferences now.

I've been invited up to the White House to take part in a, you know, roundtable discussion on all things related to Maha. We've got some really great leadership in D.C. With Secretary Kennedy, I'd absolutely think the world of. I know you and I have talked about that. Yeah, he's awesome. And it's almost like we need to take advantage of the situation now. And there's so much momentum that we're trending in the right direction when it comes to our nutrition and our metabolic health and just the awareness that it's creating.

And a lot of it has to do with the maha moms out there. And that bill, you know, that bill was a controversial bill early on. I mean, there was a lot of powerful... Was it because the pushback? Is that why it was so controversial? Yeah, well, there's a lot of powerful companies out there that have been around for a long time and make a lot of money and donate a lot of money and have a ton of influence

that were absolutely going to kill that bill, save for the Maha Mams coming in and just blowing the doors, you know, off the... Yes. out of the Capitol. Love to hear it. And really making a huge appearance and a huge impact and reaching out to all their legislators.

And that's happening across the country. There's tons of communication. Networks are being established to keep this going in every state. And, yeah, I mean, we've, in fact, I've got a Zoom call with some folks in Mississippi next week to discuss, you know, what they can do. over there. Awesome. I feel like Mississippi really needs it. A lot of those southern states over there really need it. Yeah. It's really ironic. Everyone does, but there's some states. It's ironic that this

was passed. And the most, Secretary Kennedy said the most comprehensive bill, Mahabill and the country was passed in Louisiana because we are not known for our healthy food. I know. But you know what, that's why it's so amazing because I feel like, like I said, everyone needs this in America. But there are some states that are really, really suffering right now. And this is going to have such a huge impact on those people that are really suffering with their health. Yeah, I know, I agree. I agree. That's so cool.

You know what? I can't believe. I didn't even ask you, there is a plan for changing up the food in schools, too, right? Meaning. Just meaning like there's, oh, so I guess we kind of went over this already. But is there any initiative as far as, yeah, I think, because you're very focused on farming, too. And I'm trying to remember, sorry, there's so many different facets of this bill that I'm trying to remember, meaning cleaning up their food and obviously getting ingredients out, but also trying to prioritize more local, like farm-based food. No, exactly. So we're working on partnering with, you know, local farmers in that deal in, whether it's livestock or chicken or pork, that are,

currently, you know, a lot of those foods, they're shipped out to other countries. And I think there's some opportunities that absolutely exist to partner with the schools and the farms to, again, deliver healthy whole foods that are grown or harvested, you know, within a 10-mile radius of the school. That's, you know, Louisiana, we talked about southern states. while we're at a disadvantage and we're not known for our healthy foods, we also have a very rich culture in farming. And if we can, this kind of has to start at the federal level, though, to some extent. Yeah.

You know, 97% I believe of the subsidies in the farm bill go towards corn, soy, and wheat. I know, we need to change that. Yeah, I mean, those are the three primary ingredients in ultra-processed foods. and think about the impact it would have, not just in the foods that we can serve in schools or hospitals or nursing homes, but the foods that make it to our shelves, if the farm bill went to subsidize,

you know, whole organic rotational crops. Yes. We've gotten away from that. And I know I need to be maybe careful with what we say here. I mean, you don't for me, but maybe for food companies or anything. For safety, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. In fact, when we were running the bill, there was one point where I started like a remote starting my vehicle.

Just, just. No, I get it. My husband and I've been talking about the same thing. He's like, you talk a lot about, you go up against some pretty powerful companies. But anyways, yeah. But, you know, it's the righteous thing to do. It's the right thing to do. And yeah.

But, yeah, I think if we can, the fastest way to get. get healthy foods in schools is removing, you know, redirecting these subsidies towards a more, you know, like I said, organic, healthier food and farming infrastructure system. Is there, this might be kind of a naive question, but I've actually never thought about this from a state level. Is there a way that states can start redirecting some of those funds, or is that really just a federal thing? Yeah, no, that's a good question. So one of the things that we actually, the bill as originally filed, did was prohibit the sale of sugary drinks to snap recipients. So the modern day food stamp.

And the thought there being that maybe we shouldn't be subsidizing diabetes in a can and redirect that towards, there. some goofy rules that were in place that, you know, wouldn't allow, say, like a rotisserie chicken or SNAP recipient to buy a rotisserie chicken. And... Which was ridiculous. It's ridiculous. I don't know why to have that. And they say, well, you're you're prohibiting, you're, you know, you're picking on these folks by dictating what they can and can't purchase. Well, we also don't let them buy cigarettes and alcohol. Yeah. With SNAP. So we do that already. Which that would make sense. Yes. But not allowing them to buy cooked chicken is yeah um and so we were going in the bill it was we were going to require um a

request a waiver from the the ag the agriculture department u.s agriculture department for to allow to prohibit the sale of you know candies and and drink and sugary drinks but also allow for rotisserie chickens to be purchased um the governor did not after we had our first hearing did not want to wait until the bill was actually passed. And he decided that he could do this by executive order. And so he did that. That's cool. I was supportive of it.

Yeah. And so, yes, there were, I believe, there's now 10 or 12 states that have requested, it's probably more than that, have requested waivers to move away from the sale of candies and sodas and, but also allow for the common sense, you know, purchases like rotissory chickens. Yeah. There's another, and this brings up an interesting point, too. There's another debate that was part of this bill that's, you know, suggested that it's too

expensive to eat healthy. And the counter to that is, it's actually, that's a false premise. I agree. I talk about this a lot. Yeah. Okay. You know, a Big Mac at McDonald's is, now it's. like $6 or something like that.

But two pounds of red beans back home in Louisiana is like two or three bucks. You know, a rotisserie chicken that can feed you multiple meals is, what is it, like $7 or $8? It's almost the same price as a value meal. So it's not true that eating healthy is more expensive. In fact, it's the opposite. In fact, it has completely become the opposite now, especially when you're not. you look at these ultra-processed foods. And, you know, I talk a lot about nutritional bang for your buck. You know? Right. So it's like if you were to buy a box of cereal, cereal is not cheap anymore,

especially if you get the, you know, the known brands, cheerios or whatever it is. It's not that cheap anymore. Versus if you were to buy a pack of bacon and a pack of eggs, it's going to maybe be one or two dollars more, but you're going to have, you know, five breakfasts out of that versus a bowl of cereal. Nobody ever eats the serving size, first of all. You always go two or three servings over. So you maybe have two or three bowls in that cereal bag. And then you're going to be hungry an hour later. Versus if you eat something like eggs and bacon or get a pound of ground meat or something like that,

it's going to satisfy and keep you full for longer. And you're going to have more meals out of it as well. And it's the same with the fast food thing. I did a thing on my podcast where I went to very popular fast food chains and I would buy a value meal. And then I would go to a grocery store and I would buy every single, organic to make all of that from home. And it was all organic ingredients, by the way, because we really wanted to see if we could, like,

you know, really prove a point here. Every single time, it was cheaper to go to the grocery store and make four burgers, and then you had leftovers to make stuff the next day. Yeah. It's wild. So it's... It's actually not wild.

It's the way that it should be. Yes. And, and again, that's something else that people, when you were educated them on, they were like, oh, you could see the light bulb go off. Oh, okay. Well, that does make sense. Right? Maybe I should be eating 80% of my meals or as many as I possibly can and buy at home through cooking.

And I do understand that there's a convenience aspect there. If people are working multiple jobs, they have kids, I understand. I know it's really tough. But you can, there's workarounds where you can, you know, look up recipes online, do meal preps, do as much as you can on the weekends and freeze it. And there's ways around it. And I know it is a little bit more of a hurdle than just simply driving through the drive-thru. but if you're really in dire straits and money is not abundant, I mean, that's the way to do it. Yeah, set aside the healthy aspect of eating, which will then ultimately lead to a better lifestyle and a healthier lifestyle later on down the road to be not constantly sick. But it saves you money. Exactly. And it saves your health. Yeah. So I know you're super into aliens and aliens are not really my thing. But I have a fun question for you that kind of... I can't believe you actually put this on the list.

All right. Well, my husband last night was like, we need to watch this. There's this documentary that's out. The age of disclosure. Yeah, so we haven't watched it yet. You've got to watch it. Okay. Okay.

I can't believe we're talking about aliens. All right. Well, this isn't a fully alien question. Although, if there's anything you want to say about aliens, I'm here for it. I'm so open for all this. But I thought this was kind of a fun question to blend both of our worlds. So if non-human intelligence has been monitoring Earth for millennia, They've watched us go from virtually zero chronic disease and hunter-gatherer times to 60% of our kids are now pre-diabetic or obese in a single century.

I want to know if you ever got the chance to ask them a question about human health, what would you ask them? That's a really good question. You spent a lot of time on that one. Yeah, we were brainstorming last night over that. Well, some people, and I don't necessarily know if I fall into this category, would suggest that technology that exists. can, and it is documented, can alter space and time. And so maybe if we had the opportunity to go back in time and change the push to enrich our flower,

it would have led us down a more healthier path. And perhaps alien technology could do that. How about that? That's pretty cool. I like that. Okay. I always make a joke that Earth is such a mess right now. I feel like aliens just drive by and they lock their windows.

They're like, oh, God, we don't want to go there. They're a mess. Yeah, Rogan talks about it all the time. He's like, we are, you know, we're primates with nuclear weapons. Literally, though. It's pretty scary. It is pretty scary. And I wonder what they think about that.

If I knew more about aliens, I could probe you more. To be honest, I don't even know what to ask you. Watch the documentary. We were going to try to yesterday. We just ran out of time. I think Dan Farah is a producer of it and age of it. It's crazy because you have the top officials in the country, including the Secretary of State,

who's also the National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, saying some pretty fascinating things. I mean, it's definitely really fascinating. And I always, I love to look under rocks in places where I feel like we're being pushed to not look into things. like that always tells me, oh, there's a thread there that we need to look down. And so I'm definitely very intrigued by it. I just, I've spent so much time nerding out of our nutrition.

I haven't spent a lot of time on aliens. But I definitely think that they're hiding things from us for sure. Definitely, I definitely believe that. Well, they hit it from us on our food. So why would they not hide it for us? Exactly. It's kind of a copy and paste scenario where I'm like, I know they're doing it here. So why would they not be doing it here?

Exactly. Right. Yeah. So we need to watch that. And then maybe after I watch the documentary, we'll reach out and be like, okay, I'm going to have you back on for aliens. I would love to talk to you about aliens. And thank you, Courtney, for working in the alien question.

Yeah. That was good. I was like, we got to slide at least one of those in there. What do you think is the most misunderstood issue in American politics right now? Oh, wow. That's a great question. The most misunderstood issue in American politics is that we have to be pitted against each other. You know, that is a myth.

The system wasn't designed this way, and it's tearing us apart. and we should really reassess how we view one another and our individual, you know, opinions and instances. And quite honestly, I think if we really did that, we would be much more respectful to each other. I agree. I always say your fellow human is not your enemy. That's right. And we have to remember that.

Yeah, I love that. What is one thing that you wish every parent knew about food? One thing that I wish that every parent knew about food would be how incredibly important it is to teach your children the importance of healthy eating and nutrition. And it'll stay with them for the rest of their life. And they can pass that down to their generation as well. Yeah. There have been studies that show that what you introduced to your kids in the first six, seven years of their life essentially creates a blueprint for the rest of their life. And it's not to say that, you know, if you quote unquote messed up when they were kids,

that you can't change that around. That's not what I'm saying. It just really stresses the importance of if you can be present with your kids and really teach them these valuable lessons early on, that it really will have an impact on their overall health for life. I'm a true believer. I totally agree. I'm a true believer in food is medicine.

And I love to cook. And I've got some kids that enjoy cooking with me and partaking in that and cracking the egg or, you know, stir in the bowl. And it's not only healthy eating, mentally it's healthy as well. And it's time you get to share with them. And it's something that every family should really be paying attention to it and taking advantage of.

If someone is really passionate about what's going on right now with the Maha movement and politics and really wanting to change the food landscape, what are some things that they could do to get involved? Great question. Get engaged. Most people don't typically take the time to engage in their, you know, with their elected official, whether it's at the federal level or down near city council. So get to know those people.

And I think people will be really surprised at, you know, the vast majority of the folks that I serve with are very open and willing and want to help. And that's why we're in the position that we're in. That's why I ran for office because I just want to help people. And when you engage with your elected official, you're going to very quickly learn that you have a lot louder voice than you probably think you do. And so it gives you an opportunity to fight for the things that you believe in, like healthy foods or public safety.

And so just be engaged. Decisions are made by those who show up. Yes. I love that. Well, I was joking with you before we recorded that it's so funny that I got thrown into politics because I could have cared less about it when I was younger. And now I'm so passionate about it,

just because I see how much of a difference we really truly can make when we show up and we start paying attention. Amen. Yeah. Amen. Is it political malpractice that we don't teach nutrition or metabolic health in schools? Absolutely.

It's, we teach, you know, we allow for times for recess, which by the way is very important. We teach art, we teach math. All those things are wonderful. they're going to serve a purpose, but every day we eat food. We're surrounded by it. It's what keeps us going. It's what gives us the energy.

We should be professionals and experts in food and nutrition, and that absolutely has to start early on, you know, in kindergarten. Yes, I love it. Thank you for the opportunity to come here and speak with you and send this message and help you deliver the message. I'm not in the position I am. I'm in without the input from folks like yourself. So keep up the fight because it encourages us in elected office

to actually do something about an act. Yeah, thank you. Well, I wanted to say thank you too for what you're doing. I know it's not easy, especially when you have these large corporations that have a lot of vested interests breathing down your throat. And we're definitely all, I mean, we're in a battle right now. And I know you're kind of on the front lines of that right now,

trying to protect us from all of the corporate interests. And I'm so grateful for that and so grateful for all the work that you're doing. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, thank you so much. Please let everyone know where they can find you, maybe join your cause. Anyway, they can get involved. Yeah, so I'm not the best politician. I don't even really keep up my Facebook anymore because that's just a whole nightmare.

But you can find me at or reach out to me at patricemath.com. That's p-at-r-c-m-a-t-c-m-a-t-t-com. Or just, you know, look up the Louisiana legislature. website and you'll find me there too. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you again.

Thank you so much for listening to the Real Foodology podcast. This is a Wellness Loud production produced by Drake Peterson. The theme song is by Georgie. You can watch the full video version of this podcast inside the Spotify app or on YouTube. As always, you can leave us a voicemail by clicking the link in our bio. And if you like this episode, please rate and review on your podcast app. For more shows by my team, go to wellnessloud.com. See you next time.

The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes. only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first. If you struggle with bloating gas, constipation, digestive issues, yeast overgrowth, well, you may already know about digest this. It's the podcast hosted by me, Bethany Cameron, also known as Little Sipper on Instagram. I dive into gut health, nutrition, the food industry, and drawing from my own experience. I break down what's good, what's bad, and what's the best for your gut, your skin, and so much more. I even offer

gut-friendly recipes. New episodes every Monday and Wednesday produced by Wellness Loud.