Realfoodology - The Corporations Corrupting Our Health Pt. II | Calley + Casey Means

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

EP. 197: On this episode of the RealFoodology podcast, we’re back with power siblings Calley and Casey Means to continue our conversation on the healthcare industry and its devastating impact on our metabolic health. Today we’re talking about the hidden impacts of crop subsidization in the United States. From unraveling the true costs of these subsidies to exploring the systems that perpetuate our addiction to sugar, we’re covering it all. Join the conversation as we challenge the status quo, question scientific narratives, and advocate for accessible, nutritious food options. With insights on policy solutions, trusting your intuition, and reevaluating institutional norms, you’ll leave this episode feeling empowered to take control of your metabolic health. Listen to #196: The Corporations Corrupting Our Health Pt. I | Calley + Casey Means Check Out Their New Book Here! Topics Discussed: 04:54 - The true costs of crop subsidization  10:24 - The various systems keeping us addicted to sugar 14:45 - Questioning the science  25:18 - There’s nothing extreme about eating healthy 30:08 - The Importance of Affordable Food  35:01 - Policy Solutions  38:20 - Trusting your intuition  45:14 - Questioning institutions  47:57 - Good Energy by Calley + Casey Means  49:57 - Healthcare nonnegotiables Check Out Calley Means  https://www.truemed.com/ Instagram New Book Check Out Casey Means  https://www.levelshealth.com/ Instagram New Book Sponsored By: ARMRA Colostrum Get 15% off your first order at tryarmra.com/realfoodology Sundays Use REALFOODOLOGY for 40% off first order at sundaysfordogs.com/realfoodology BIOptimizers MagBreakthrough Get 10% off at bioptimizers.com/realfoodology with code REALFOODOLOGY Seed Probiotic Go to https://seed.com/realfoodology and get 25% your first month with code 25REALFOODOLOGY LMNT Get 8 FREE packs with any order at drinkLMNT.com/realfoodology Check Out Courtney: LEAVE US A VOICE MESSAGE Check Out My new FREE Grocery Guide! @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Produced By: Drake Peterson Edited By: Mike Frey

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. We can live the healthiest lives in human history, but that is our choice. It is our choice of whether we are gonna go down that path or we are gonna give away all our power, not trust ourselves, think that, you know, daddy healthcare is gonna take care of us

and unfortunately live shorter, sadder lives than we could have. Thanks for listening to The Real Foodology Podcast. This is part two of my episode with Callie and Casey. If you haven't listened to part one, go back and listen to that first. Is it just me or is colostrum just totally taking the internet by storm? I mean, I'm so happy about it. And it's so interesting how certain things will just become a massive trend. I've been taking colostrum for probably at least 10 years now, or so my mom got me on it. It's an ancient practice used for immune function. It really

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so you'll never have to worry about running out of dog food ever again. For turkey, I get him the chicken recipe or the turkey recipe because I love that they use fish oil and flaxseed oil. So to get 40% off your first order of Sundays, go to sundaysfordogs.com slash realfoodology or use code realfoodology at checkout. That's Sundays, S-U-N-D-A-Y-S, fordogs.com slash realfoodology or use code realfoodology at checkout. That's Sundays, S-U-N-D-A-Y-S, 4dogs.com slash realfoodology. I will say too, another big issue right now is we're still paying subsidies for these really unhealthy crops. Corn, wheat, and soy, I believe, are the top ones that we're paying for. And when you look at the back of a processed packaged food,

it says maintain corn, wheat, and soy. And it's why all these foods are so cheap. But they're actually not that cheap. And this is why I really try to get people to understand is you have to think about what it's costing us in our health, you know? Yeah, I mean, this is a topic that we're so passionate about because, you know, I'll go back to something that Mark Hyman said in his incredible book,

Food Fix, which I think is just such an important message for people to internalize because often cost is invoked as a reason for why we can't eat healthy. And that is such a fallacy because when we are buying an ultra processed food, we as individuals are paying at least four times over. We are paying for the food itself. We are paying hard-earned taxpayer dollars to fund the farm bill subsidies that artificially make that food cheaper. We are paying for the catastrophic environmental damage that is happening from these industrial agriculture raised foods that then go through factory processing. And we are paying for the trillions of dollars of healthcare costs that these ultra processed foods directly contribute for. And it's

not like we're collectively bearing that bill. Each of us as individuals is literally paying real dollars through our taxpayer money and our consumer decision-making for those products. So I think that people really need to realize that there's almost no better investment that you can make than investing in organic, real food, ideally food directly from a farmer's market that undermines this huge political push

towards putting the farm bill subsidies, which is over $30 billion of subsidies to make the foods that are causing the decline of our population cheaper. And what's incredible when you actually read the farm bills is that the subsidies for healthy foods that would actually make Americans thrive and unlock our human potential are less than 5% of the farm bills. They're actually in a separate category called specialty crops, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes. The foods that prevent emergent disease are considered specialty. They're like a niche aspect of the Farm Bill. Obviously, what would make sense for America is to just put the majority of the Farm Bill subsidies towards disease preventing and reversing foods. That would be obvious. It would actually be

good for farmers. It would be good for everyone. So we're decimating the soil of our country with these industrially produced commodity crops that are causing disease. And I think another thing that people need to realize is that the way these foods are being grown and being taxpayer funded is actually physically hurting farmers and farm workers more than almost anyone. Farmers and farm workers

are some of the most depressed people in the country right now. They are dealing with huge financial burden and they are getting cancer at very high rates because of the glyphosate and other chemicals that we're spraying on food. Courtney, to me, it's very simple. We've got to stop recommending bad food and stop subsidizing it. People often ask, you get in these partisan issues, should we tax sugar? Should we ban things? You know, again, I'm a libertarian.

I don't think we should, I think most drugs should be legal. I just don't think it's any principles on any ideology to be recommending drugs and poison to kids and then subsidizing them. As you said, I think you both mentioned, we've rigged the economic terrain where a Coca-Cola is cheaper than water

because it has so many subsidized ingredients. So if you can actually just, the next president, the next Congress, but there's a lot of the president can do, just go down the list and say, how can we stop recommending and stop subsidizing? You can change this very quickly. Again, if you just change the subsidies

and then a couple of quick things, the USDA panel tomorrow could say no sugar, could say let's cut ultra processed food consumption from 65% where it is today to about 20% where it is in Japan. It would transform American health. There's simple recommendations you can do. As Casey said, we do listen to doctors. So that's my thought on the policy.

And I will also mention on that front, like when the new USDA guidelines came up, they come up for review about every five years. And on the most recent one, the Medical Advisory Board, the Scientific and Medical Advisory Board to the USDA food guidelines made a clear and universal recommendation

to lower the recommendation for percent added sugar from 10% to 6% of the American diet. This is a absolute no-brainer. It should be zero, but 6%, that's a win. That represents literally trillions of grams of added sugar that would be decreased per year. The USDA rejected the recommendation of their scientific and medical advisory board, citing that there was not enough evidence to make that change. And the person who released that statement was a lawyer from the USDA saying that there was not enough backing for that recommendation. So when stuff like this happens, what is happening there? How are we allowing this to happen?

I mean, I know there's a bunch of policies in place, but is this literally we're just like, we have these food companies lobbying in Washington? What's happening in that? Yeah, I think there's a number of factors here. So I think one dynamic is that we have the American population normalized and addicted. So working for Coke, a big emphasis was putting soda machines in pediatric wards and putting soda machines in schools and like normalizing in child's events and advertising

on Nickelodeon and advertising on YouTube kids. Like we watch like what children watch, right? It's a wash and processed food advertising so you've basically got kids addicted and i go to daycares now and and talk to other parents and there's candy and there's you know juice and there's sugary stuff everywhere in daycares and i actually think what you have is you have like basically this like like daycares are like centers where you've got like literally like a bunch of meth addicts and in order to control them, you can't like withhold the drugs that they're addicted to. So I've talked to daycare managers. It's like trigger and processed food is almost used to placate the children

and they can't fight the battle because like the zombies have already like converted over. It's like that's literally how they talk. And then you go up the ladder, you know, most Americans are overweight, their kids are overweight, they're kind of this denialism of processed food, it can't be that bad. So I think there's a little bit of that where I kind of see the food crisis right now and our ultra-processed food crisis as I think it should be viewed through the lens of an addiction crisis.

It really follows from a neurochemistry perspective, like the addiction elements elements as Robert Lustig and others have said, it's very similar. Sugar should meet almost all qualifications of an addictive substance. And there's similar like denialism elements and things like that, that I think the American population en masse is.

So that's one thing, they've gotten us addicted, they've gotten us normalized. And then on the medical side, I think this ties my experience to Casey's experience. We've indoctrinated the medical system to only see interventions after people get sick as serious science. So any discussion of why people are getting sick actually doesn't have a place in elite medicine. It's surgeries and the prescription pad is what serious medicine is. And that's never how you would design it. That is designed by corruption and is designed by incentives.

Casey mentioned the Flexner Report written in 1910. That was written by John D. Rockefeller's lawyer once John D. Rockefeller figured out that oil byproducts could create pharmaceutical products and how we actually needed to get away from a holistic view of medicine and more towards a siloed view where it created the whole residency program and siloing of medical specialties.

That report still dictates how we practice medicine today, but that doesn't even make sense. It doesn't make sense that Casey had to choose one of 42 medical specialties when graduating medical school, literally had a neck surgery. If she did a fellowship, she would have been focused

on two square millimeters of the face and not even concerned what other comorbidities the person had. You know, we treat placebo-controlled trials, double blind, where the doctor and the patients and nobody knows what they're being given. That, we hear it. We take it as a given.

That's the gold standard, right? Most people wouldn't even argue with that. That's a joke, right? You can only do double-blind placebo-controlled studies on pharmaceutical products. You can't do that on food because people know what they're getting and what they're eating.

You literally have this like almost conventional wisdom of how like proper medical research is conducted designed by pharmaceutical companies to only study pills. You can't do a double-blind placebo controlled study on anything other than a pill. It literally leads to the only answer being pharmaceuticals. So we actually need to start questioning the foundation of 42 medical specialties. We need to start questioning the foundation of double-blind placebo control. All these things that are just taken as a given that Harvard and Stanford and all the elite institutions are saying, you're an idiot if you question, they're broken. They're not leading to the right answers and they're designed by the system to sell their interventions-based products.

Oh, well, I was going to say too, I think the system has also infantilized people by saying, if you don't trust us, then you can't trust anyone. And we also attack them for questioning anything with the science. And I thought of this when you were talking about the daycare where the managers of the daycare are saying like, oh, well, you know, if we don't do this, we're not going to be able to manage these children. I thought recently of when I had a friend who was in the hospital and they were asking,

they were questioning like, why are you feeding these processed foods? Because it's atrocious what we're feeding people in hospitals. And the nurse's response was, well, they eat like this at home anyway, so we might as well just feed them this now. So there's this messaging of like, well, they do this this at home anyway, so we might as well just feed them this now. So there's this messaging of like,

well, they do this anyways and we're coddling it, but then we're also, we're telling people that they have no power in any of this, that they just need to trust the science and just listen to the doctors and listen to the experts and you can't question it. And then they're also, their messaging on the other end is also like, well, people are gonna do it anyways.

It's like, it's this like trap, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when you were talking, it was just bringing up two things for me. Like I'll never forget, like at the end of medical school, you know, you have to pick what you're going to do your residency and you're like 25 years old and you're picking what you're,

you know, what little piece of the body you're going to, you're going to focus on for the rest of your life. And another, you know, sort of interesting thing to meditate on is the fact that the more specialization that we have in American healthcare, now up to 42 plus medical specialties and growing, the sicker we're getting. The more specialization we have, the sicker we're getting. We have created this framework for the body, which is incredibly reductionist and fragmented. And again, I think this gets to sort of the deeper spiritual crisis

that is interlinked with the healthcare crisis, which is that we've become just sort of divorced from this rational understanding of our body as a connected interdependent ecosystem that all works together. And I think there are some somewhat nefarious forces happening in our culture across lots of different areas that are kind of just making us question like our basic sense of reality. And I think in some ways this hyper-specialization

of the body, and again, we just take it at face value. Well, of course, of course, double-blind placebo-controlled studies. Of course, I need to see this super, super specialist for this issue that I'm having. And if you start to question that, you know, you're kind of like this Luddite. And so I remember in choosing a specialty though, I remember thinking I am at Stanford Medical School. I'm at the top of my class. So obviously, I want to do like the hardest subspecialty and I want to do the most competitive thing and I want to rise the ranks and be a chair of a department and I want to be a hero. And to me, that meant being a surgeon. That's what most medical schools think. I'm going to get a bone saw. I'm going to have a drill. I'm

going to look at brain in the day to day. And that's what I did. That is what ended up happening. And I think what's so wild is that we look at a surgeon, you think about, what do you think of when you think of a heroic doctor? You think of like an old white man in the OR, like doing heart surgery, right? And no shade on doctors, you know, they're working hard. But like, if you think about someone with coronary artery disease, heart blockages, heart disease is the leading cause, the number one cause of death in the United States for both men and women, almost entirely preventable. And their job to crack the chest open, put that patient on bypass during the surgery, hundreds of thousands of dollars for the surgery is to essentially create a rerouting of blood flow through a

blocked artery, doing absolutely nothing, literally nothing to change the underlying physiology that caused that disease. That disease is still in full force when that patient wakes up from that surgery. Then you look at, you know, a well-trained nutritionist, a functional nutritionist. That person is considered essentially like lower in the ranks of the healthcare system, which is devastating. And that person, it's like wimpified. It's like an afterthought. It's literally infantilized.

It's patronizing how we talk about this. Like, oh yeah, I guess you could see a nutritionist. That nutritionist, if doing their job properly, can reverse heart disease, reverse the plaque in that heart, reverse the disease physiology. And we think the guy in the OR is the hero. That is so, so, so, so backwards. And when I really woke up to that, I feel much more proud of what I'm doing now being essentially like a functional medicine writer in the healthcare space than I did being a surgeon,

because I actually think what I'm doing is healing cells. And I think a framework that doctors really need to internalize and individuals and the system is, you know, what are we actually doing in our work? Are we turning the knobs on biomarkers that are downstream of disease physiology? Or are we healing cells? And if we're not actually healing cells, we are not practicing good medicine. So that's just one thing that came up as you were talking. One other little bit of a side point that I want to mention about sort of like, what are the root cause factors here? You're talking about, you know, daycares and the meth addicts in the daycares. But I think there's also something that's happened in the last 30, 40 years where we've somehow become comfortable with

giving up our personal responsibility for preparing our own food. And I think this is a really interesting thing that we need to examine that doesn't get talked about a lot where there have obviously been incredible social movements in the past 50, 100 years, like feminism. It's great, more rights, more equality, more opportunity, but hand in hand, and I think in some way this is intentional. You go back to Rockefeller,

and these people were thinking very deeply about how to get people on processed food, you know, and to really indoctrinate them in a more like putting their power outside of themselves. Well, I grew up in the nineties, genuinely looking down on the idea of like being a mom who would cook for my family. Like I'm going to be the chair of my department at Stanford. That is what I'm going to do. And that is what society told me. I'm going to be wearing my little black suit every single day, my little pantsuit to the hospital,

and I'm going to be the chair and I'm going to publish and I'm going to do all those things. And in my mind, literally, as a young person growing up in the system, I looked down upon the idea of like spending time,, energy, cooking for my family, for my future partner. That's something that I'm going to outsource because I have to rise the ranks that we value in this culture. And I think there's something really dark about that. And I think that we need to be talking about it more because in my mind now where I'm at, there is nothing that I can imagine taking

more pride in in my life than creating food for my future children and my family that helps unlock the potential and thriving in all of us to spread light in the world. And that is done through food and that is a moral responsibility of families to take pride and ownership in that and set the boundaries in your life. Say enough knows that you have time to buy, prepare, and serve food to your family because there's no getting around it. If we're not eating real unprocessed food from good sources, which basically means getting at the farmer's market, we are going to have a family that is not reaching its full potential. Stress is a common factor that affects everyone in today's fast-paced world, leading to various issues. What if the answer to a better stress response

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and get your chest cracked open and have a heart surgery. That's extreme. But we've now created this narrative that it's so extreme to change your diet. Like how could anyone ever do that? But then we normalize, like just get on the table, have another surgery.

Lay on down. We're going to knock you unconscious, get you naked, you know, crush your chest, reroute your heart. But it's no big deal. No big deal. It's crazy. Insurance will pay for it. It's absolutely batshit crazy.

It's crazy. Yeah, and what triggers in my head, Courtney, and we were talking about this off camera, is this idea that it's crazy, that it's extreme, that it's expensive and even elitist to eat healthy. And what I'm trying to unpack is let's just look at the dollars. So that heart surgery is paid for often by taxpayers. The majority of those surgeries are paid for by taxpayers.

We're spending more on Medicare, Medicaid for metabolic conditions than the entire defense budget. Like we're spending trillions of dollars directly going as taxpayers to metabolic conditions. So that heart surgery, that hospital, the drug makers, the doctors, they're getting like $100,000, $200,000 plus, probably more for that surgery. And that's coming from taxpayers, right? So in a functional universe, right, you got to step back and you never would do that, right? You'd fund a couple hundred dollars for better organic food for that person,

right? It would be multiples, multiples cheaper. And the money's coming from the same place. But what the system does is they design it. This is what the lobbying flows to. The lobbying flows to the Flexion Report, the medical standard of care, that the medical system is not responsible for why people get sick. It's responsible for the surgery after. And then you have Coca-Cola processed food companies funding,

as I said, the medical groups that have statutory responsibility for making the standard of care. So the standard of care is not dietary interventions. The standard of care is not lifestyle interventions. If you change that finances around and actually look, okay, we have $4 trillion. How are we going to spend this to, I mean, I think the goal should be to reduce the need to do these heart disease, to reduce diabetes. You could spend that money in much more effective ways. And it's like the fact that we don't even realize that just represents how gaslighted we've been. The other thing I just want to address is this entrenched

cynicism of the American people in the medical system. This idea, oh, people are going to eat their crap. They're going to eat that food anyway. This has all happened in the past two generations. Metabolic conditions have skyrocketed very very recently like because of these loose standards on food the incentives of bad food the sick care incentives that don't incentivize a better food system but but but pay for the the triple bypass surgery that that that's all designed it's all just happened recently so so i just don't think the american people want to be sick i don't think the American people want to be sick. I don't think the American people have given the choice, want to be on that operating table. I think this idea that, you know, that if a doctor in very strong terms told a father that if he doesn't take certain lifestyle

and food steps, that he's not going to walk his daughter down the aisle, or our mom who wanted to live and wanted to meet her grandchildren, but wasn't able to because of metabolic condition. You know, our mom, we talk about this a lot, was on that chronic disease treadmill. When she had her terminal cancer diagnosis, she was on six different medications. And, you know, each time statin, that's normal. Metformin, that's normal.

ACE inhibitor, that's normal. It was the rite of passage every time. No warning sign. She's the typical American patient. She wanted to still be around to meet her grandkids. I think most of the millions of Americans who are dealing with metabolic conditions do. So I just want to say that what's happened, just to unpack it, and the tax we sometimes get for saying healthy eating is elitist, the same industries that are rigging the

system, Coke literally lobbies for low amounts of food stamps spending. They lobby for literally there to be such low food stamp spending that all you can afford is ultra processed food, right? They're lobbying for a broken food system. They're creating this system. And then they use language from the right. They call it a nanny state if you even disagree with that rigged system. And then they use language to the left and say that if you push for people to not poison themselves,

that it's classist and elitist and racist. So you literally just have these lobbyists in DC, these consultants, just literally like pulling strings, just playing what social issues and what arguments they can use from both sides of the political aisle to make the debate toxic,

to prevent questioning of the system that they themselves have rigged. So again, it's waking up from that, but it's important for people to understand that. Oh, yeah. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've been attacked. I've been called racist. I've called elitist, like all these things. And what I really struggle with is that this message that's coming from that side, like calling me racist or whatever, I find it actually incredibly offensive for people that are struggling in lower income because they're coddling them in a way

and they're also fighting to keep them down there. Whereas I'm over here fighting to, I want real food access for every single person. I believe that it is a basic human right that everyone has access to real food, to affordable food. And there's this messaging and it's also being funneled through the RDs right now too, which maybe we can talk about as well.

There's this messaging of almost just coddling them and being like, oh, well, it's okay. This is all they can afford. This is all they have access to. And I find it incredibly offensive because why are we not all working together instead of just being like, oh, well, this is all that they have access to.

Why aren't we all fighting for them to have access to real food? It's offensive and it's evil, I would say. It is evil. A lower income man in the United States dies 10 years earlier than an upper income man. That's almost entirely because of metabolic health and nutrition. And what's very interesting to me

is that these arguments even make their way into science. I was shocked to see that the USDA guidelines, the USDA actually comments in their guidelines on affordability. And they actually have a section of their standards that say, well, we should not diet shame. Some people can't afford good food. Let me make this very clear.

The scientist's job is to state the science. Their job is not to say that it might be too costly for some parents to not poison their kids. That's not their job. Their job is to say we're poisoning kids. Their job is to say that two-year-old shouldn't be eating added sugar. Their job is to say that ultra-processed food has been a disaster for the metabolic health, the budget, and the competitiveness of America. Then policymakers can take that and make decisions, right? but when we wanted to shut down the country make the biggest public policy mistake of our lifetimes for covid and we said that was medically necessary you know of untold societal and economic costs that we will be grappling with the next

generation during the covid lockdowns we did it in one second we have a much much bigger problem right now with metabolic health yeah the scientists need to lead. The scientists need to go and say that this is an absolute cataclysm that is going to destroy American competitiveness and destroy our budget. I mean, healthcare is the largest and fastest growing industry in the country producing worse results for every marginal dollar spent.

Right? We're literally going to be 40% of GDP in 15 years producing fatter, sicker, more depressed, more infertile population where we're literally losing the ability to even procreate because our metabolic health is so dysfunctional. 25% of women have PCOS and is exploding, you know, sperm counts plummeting. I mean, we have a pretty big issue. It's bigger than COVID. So those kind of social justice arguments, I've talked about this before, but the NAACP and these social justice groups accept money from food companies

to literally say things that it's racist to like to take away Coke on food stamps, right? Which is committing violence to their populations they're supposed to be committing. It's very, very sad. And again, I wanna see the head of Harvard Med School, the head of the NIH, you know, the president, the secretary of defense, the key stakeholders stand on the halls of Congress and say,

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and I believe you talk about it in the book too. What are policies that could literally be enacted tomorrow that would help fix all of this? Yeah, I've been really grateful to be having a lot of conversations with folks that are running for president and members of Congress. My message is that it's actually much simpler than we're led to believe. I think in the world of reality, Congress is totally co-opted. So let's take that off the table. I think the president is the person who needs to lead on this because I think for the average American,

this is a very important issue. And I think there's a real political philosophy of metabolic health that would really be resonant that the American president, like the battle against COVID, could marshal people towards. There's things that a president could sign day one to really weaken the incentives of our sick care system. That's the key.

So number one, we're the only country in the world, a little bit New Zealand too, that allows pharma ads. As I said, pharma ads not only influence consumers, but allow the pharmaceutical companies to actually buy off the information sources in our country. It's totally corrupt. It's unacceptable. There could be an executive order signed tomorrow to cut that off. It'd be amazing politically because it actually destroyed the revenue for 60% of the mainstream media and make the media not beholden to, and again, this isn't emotional. This is just a statement of economic fact. The media is now beholden to an industry that profits off the American people being sick, which is a problem. You could stop that tomorrow. You could

change the USDA guidelines tomorrow, say we need non-biased folks in there tomorrow. 80% of NIH grants go to researchers with a conflict of interest on pharma and food research, 80%. The NIH is a revolving door and a grant-making organization that's outsourced R&D for pharmaceutical companies that profit from us being sick and in many ways public relations funders for nutrition research that just helps all to process food. Complete corruption in that. They should be doing basic foundational research, which they don't.

They're not researching the underpinnings of Alzheimer's, which is a metabolic condition, which you have almost 0% chance not researching the underpinnings of Alzheimer's, which is a metabolic condition, which you have almost 0% chance of getting if you're metabolically healthy. They're funding research for ineffective Alzheimer's drugs, right? That only make money as more and more people get Alzheimer's. That's how the NIH works. And tomorrow you could have a simple executive order saying a simple thing. NIH grants should not go to academics with a direct conflict of interest into the topic that they're studying. That would cause pandemonium among researchers. It would be an attack on science, but I think you should increase the NIH budget, but have it not go to conflicts,

conflicted scientists who are studying sick care remedies, not foundational, foundationally why people are getting sick. Yeah. So there's a number of policies like that, but simple policies that attack the incentives of our sick care system. If you stop subsidizing and stop recommending, you can make people healthier. And, you know, on the last one, I just say is, you know, overnight you can change agriculture subsidies and school lunch subsidies and food stamp subsidies. When you add it all up, we subsidize all to processed food, about a hundred billion dollars plus per year. And you can change that overnight. Yeah. Oh, that was so well put. And just to add on to something. So I got this from your Instagram,

actually, and I had seen this quote, but I think it's pertinent to read it for the listeners. I don't know why I just had a hard time saying that. So this is from the former editor in chief of New England Journal of Medicine. And they said, it is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that's published or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

I mean, that is, it's horrifying. And people need to know. It's why I wanted to do this podcast episode with both of you because, again, like I said in the very beginning, you guys are both in very unique positions because you really got to see what was happening under the hood.

And you're able to speak to this from a different lens than a lot of people are getting right now, because everyone's getting their information from their doctors who were never really given a nutrition class. And they're getting their information from the internet and people are dropping all these research, you know, scientific studies, but then who's funding the studies and no one's really talking about that. And so it's just so incredibly important that

people understand that that whole industry has been co-opted and we now need to learn how to learn how to trust ourselves really. And this is a lot of my message. Anytime people write me and they're so confused, they're like, I don't know what to eat. I don't know what to trust. I tell them, you have this innate intuition in yourself. We all have it. It's primal. How have we lived on this planet for thousands of years as humans knowing exactly what to eat? It is designed and it's built in us. The problem is, is that right now our palates and our brains have been hijacked by these hyper-processed foods that are influencing everything with our body. This metabolic dysfunction, it's influencing our hormones, it's influencing our mental health. And as a result,

we're not able to think clearly enough. We're not able to tap into that intuition because it's all been overridden and hijacked. So my advice is get rid of all the hyper-processed foods, start prioritizing eating whole real foods in their natural state as much as possible so you can tap back into your innate knowing and power. You are powerful and you know, but you have been told that you don't know. Absolutely.

It makes me think about the Ozempic and the GLP-1 agonist conversation because I think what a lot of people forget is that GLP-1, it's naturally secreted by the body and there are many foods that cause you to secrete GLP-1. You yourself are a GLP-1 agonist. You can actually do that.

You can be your own Ozempic. You can be your own Ozempic. And statins decrease it. The study just came out. The drugs are actually... And then And statins decrease it. Yeah. A study just came out. It's fascinating. The drugs are actually, and then SSRIs increase. So statins decrease GLP-1 and then SSRIs increase weight. So they're prescribing GLP-1s to counteract the SSRIs.

But then the GLP-1s, now there's a warning that it increases suicidal adhesion and depression. So they need to take more SSRIs, but then the GLP-1s, now there's a warning that it increases suicidal adhesion and depression, so they need to take more SSRIs. It's actually, yeah. You can't make this stuff up. You really can't. And you're not telling them to change their diet at all, so they're either going to be stuck on this for life and then they're going to start having other issues

because of the chronic inflammation. It's insane. Eating 20% less poison is still eating poison. It's still eating poison. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's amazing, again, basic science research that talks about how the cells in our body, in our gut,

that secrete GLP-1 are nutrient-sensing cells. So just like we talked about with the matching problem, if you give your body the right nutrients, you are going to secrete your own GLP-1. You could be your own ozempic. And some of the key things that do this are like, for instance, short-chain fatty acid chemicals. Short-chain fatty acids are the byproduct

of the microbes in our gut taking fiber and converting it into short-chain fatty acids. And then the GLP-1 cells, they sense that because they're nutrient sensing cells and they secrete it. Similarly, almost all amino acids that make up protein help us secrete GLP-1. So getting at what you said, I think we really need to really prioritize getting back to a state of being as humans,

where we are able to hear the signals of the body and what the body is trying to tell us through symptoms, through intuition. And, you know, we're in the, we're in the busyness industrial complex of modern American life, just the hyper focus on always doing and productivity and not really like resting and just being still and hearing our bodies. The average American family eats fewer than three meals per week together. We're not even sitting to eat. So because of ultra processed foods and our just ultra busyness culture, we have lost the ability to really hear what our bodies are trying to tell us. And so what I get excited about is that like, this is actually such an exciting time to be alive

because at this moment in time, right now, we have the opportunity to live the healthiest and the happiest lives in all of human history. Why? Because one, we have access to bio-wearables and direct-to-consumer lab testing where we can actually interpret our own labs. We don't even need a doctor to order these tests for us. We tomorrow can go online and order testing that can give us a full picture of our metabolic health and have access to the entire internet that can help us figure full picture of our metabolic health and have access to the entire

internet that can help us figure out how to improve it. We also have access online to essentially all the best of global and traditional cultures of other ways of thinking about medicine, Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, indigenous wisdom about healing. We have access to all of that. And we have the ability, if we want to, to slow down and actually hear our body's wisdom and intuition. And with those things, with the bio-wearables, the direct consumer lab testing, the incredible revolution of technology that we can use ourselves to understand our bodies, plus the access to incredible information about both basic science and traditional indigenous wisdom, and our ability to tune in with ourselves and our body awareness, we can live the healthiest lives in human history. But that is our choice. It is our choice of whether we are going to go down that path or we are going to give away

all our power, not trust ourselves, think that, you know, daddy healthcare is going to take care of us and unfortunately live shorter, sadder lives than we could have. So that was so well put. Thank you. So I, we went through all of the questions that I had for you guys and really hit the main talking points, but is there anything else that you feel is really important for people to hear that maybe we didn't touch on? I would say that I just think we all feel it in the air. This 2024 is going to be a very important year. And I think you have so many people that come on that have impacted me on this podcast and talk about health tips. In our book, most of it is, I think,

the best metabolic health tips put to paper, thanks to Casey. But something we really are trying to bring to this discussion is we are in an era and a year where there has to be empowerment on questioning these institutions that are completely letting us down in our country. It's the defining, I think, trend of our time right now is that the institutions that we trust are letting us down to a historic degree. It is also in many ways the best time to

be alive, but I think we have existential risks, you know, with these industrial complexes that have been totally co-opted. You know, the education is a whole nother thing, I think, with our kids and people talk about the military industrial complex and the healthcare industrial complex, I think is the biggest and the most important. And it's making us sick. It's making us more depressed and fertile and fatter, quite frankly.

And that's not a good thing. So we're really trying to give people a license to do, which is a journey that we've been on and a lot of ups and downs. We used to be huge defenders of the system from various sides. It's just like really having that confidence to question your pediatrician's guidance on chronic conditions. And just this will change with a healthcare empowerment revolution. This will

change with people saying, you know, we're the only animals that are systematically obese and metabolic dysfunctional, that we're listening to experts. And that's just something I think is happening. And we just really want to say is okay, you know, to question your doctor a little bit and take matters into your hands. And I think, again, that's like a spiritual awakening too. It's been, I think it's been the most impactful trend

of our lives personally, of being on that journey. You know, it's far from, I'm far from perfect, but just like being more curious about what I'm putting into my body, how movement impacts my mental health, you know, what I'm feeding my child, the habits for my child, circadian rhythm. It's just like, it opens up, I think, everything. So that's something we're really passionate about. You know, we've written this book, Good Energy, that tells Casey's story and gives these tips and just really want to do whatever we can to be part of this bottoms up revolution happening in health. I love that. Well, I just want to express my gratitude for both of you, what both

of you are doing right now with your messaging, how outspoken you are with levels, helping so many people with the CGM, which is also like an amazing tool that we have now. And you really spreading this message and waking people up. I'm just, I'm so full of gratitude for you guys because you really are. You're doing the Lord's work right now. You know, like there's a lot of people that are sick and confused and looking for answers

and just want to live healthy lives. You know, they want their kids to be thriving. They want to be healthy and thriving. And they don't even understand that they have been co-opted into this system that's rigged against them. And the first step is understanding that you're in the system and waking up. And then that's where you find your power

and you learn how to claw your way out of it. And this is really going to take a revolution of all of us waking up and realizing, oh, we can't have this happen anymore. You know, like as the listener right now, I hope that you're feeling empowered and fired up and we'll talk to your friends and your family about this and maybe share this podcast with people

so they really understand what's happening because we have the power to change this and we will. We will. Absolutely. Thank you, Courtney. Yeah, thank you so much. So when does the book come out? The book comes out May 14th.

It's available wherever books are sold. It's called Good Energy, The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Dr. Casey's Kitchen. Callie is at Callie Means on Instagram and Twitter. We both have websites, caseymeans.com, calliemeans.com. And as Callie mentioned, this book is the culmination of our life's work. And I really do believe that anyone who reads this book can be put on a profoundly more positive journey during this precious, precious time we have on this planet. And it's dedicated to our mother who we lost from metabolic disease. And we really want to give people the tools to

not have to go through the preventable suffering that so many people are facing today. Yeah. I'm so sorry about your mom. So I want to ask you both a personal question. I've asked you this before, but I'm going to ask you again. What are your health non-negotiables? These are things no matter how crazy busy you are that you prioritize for your own health? I cook 95% of my food for me and my partner. I get almost all of my food at the farmer's market. I am horrified by ultra processed food and I think it's a weapon and I don't want any of it in my body and it is not difficult to make that decision. I eat real food and I will make many, many difficult choices in my life to make sure I have the time and energy to do that, like saying no to social events, like not making myself overly busy, like even shaping my entire work life so that I have

the time to be near a kitchen to cook my food. I love that. What about you? I think the world would be a better place if we just focus on the unholy trinity, added sugar, highly processed grains and seed oils. I think there's so much attacks and research saying, oh, maybe seed oils is good, this industrial byproducts. It's obviously not something we should be eating, highly inflammatory, highly processed grains is just total frankenfood, hidden sugars, and then obviously we're eating 100 times more sugar than we did 100 years ago. I'm really proud.

I mean, I know he's going to go out in the world soon and you can't control everything at all times. But our two-year-old, I mean, I'll just be blunt. I think there's no excuse for parents to give their young infants those ingredients, particularly when you can control what they're eating. These are manufactured toxic ingredients really only created in the past 100 years that are now the foundation of our diet. And I just think a big message we have is that this stuff is simple

and there's a lot of incentives to make it complicated. But if you can start by trying to rid those three ingredients from your diet and your kid's diet as much as possible and really help your child with frameworks on how to think about those ingredients, how those ingredients can be merged together, create very addictive products, and how we really need to fight against that. And society's wrong on saying those are okay, which I hope to do.

I think that gets us a lot of the way there. There's obviously other very important metabolic health habits, but that's a key thing I really try to think about. Yeah. On the kid piece, I will say this. Parents have all of the control. The kids don't have a wallet. They're not going to the grocery store. If your kid is under 10, you have all the control in what is going in the house. Obviously, if they're going to birthday parties or whatever, you can't control that. But a two-year-old should not be eating processed foods and drinking sodas. And it's controversial.

These are tough waters to get into on parenting advice. And I am not giving advice for anyone over two. I think each phase is different, but I do think we need to be blunt on that. It's like, as you're fully controlling what that infant is eating, the fact that it's so omnipresent doesn't mean that it's not wrong that we're poisoning kids. You should not give your child added sugar, highly processed grains, or seed oils. Ever. Ever, period. And the cost thing and the time thing are often invoked. But one pound of grass-fed regenerative organic beef is $8.99. Three huge heads of organic broccoli is about $4.

Cut those two things up, put them in a pan. It takes eight minutes. It will feed that child for five meals. On the infantilizing point too, we've got, and I am fighting and I'm lobbying for SNAP and food stamp reform. And we've got to look out for the lowest income Americans. But this is a bullshit argument

for the vast majority of the American people. Like you're poisoning your child if you're giving them those ingredients. And we should just be blunt about that. And doctors should be blunt about that. If they were, we'd have different behaviors. So I think that's just something we need to do. 100%.

Thank you guys for your honesty and speaking truth into everything that's going on right now. It's really needed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked the episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song

is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much. See you next week. 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.