The Dr. Hyman Show - Former White House Chef Sam Kass: How to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Our food system is reaching a breaking point—and the warning signs are already on our plates. From disappearing crops to rising health costs, it’s clear that the way we grow and eat food can’t continue as it has. Today on The Dr. Hyman Show, I sit down with Sam Kass, former White House chef and senior policy advisor, to explore his new book The Last Supper: The Politics of the End of Food. We talk about what’s driving the crisis, what’s already being done to repair it, and how each of us can help build a food system that supports both people and the planet. Join us for the full conversation on YouTube, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. We discuss: • What if the foods you eat every day are quietly shaping both your health and the planet’s? • Learn how a healthier food system could mean cleaner air, better soil, and stronger communities. • See why so many farmers want to do better—and what keeps them stuck. • How everyday food choices shape the culture that businesses and policymakers follow. • Simple actions you can take now to help build a food system that serves all of us. If this really is our “last supper” with the food system as we know it, we have the power to decide what comes next. Let’s make it a meal that feeds both people and the planet. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman https://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal https://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Join the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Health https://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Join the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Results https://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by PerfectAmino, Big Bold Health, Function Health and AirDoctor. Go to bodyhealth.com and use code HYMAN20 for 20% off your first order. Get 20% off HTB Immune Energy Chews at bigboldhealth.com and use code DRMARK20. Join today at FunctionHealth.com/Mark and use code HYMAN100 to get $100 toward your membership. Get cleaner air. Right now, you can get up to $300 off at airdoctorpro.com/drhyman.

The things we love to eat, we won't be able to be eating soon. What's really at stake is our way of life. Our ability to pass down to the next generation, the delicious lives we have, and try to improve on that. Obviously, there's a ton of problems in our system that we must improve. But even our ability to make any kind of change is under real threat because of the climate. And nobody's really talking about those connections to the extent that I think matches the challenges that we face. It's not about our kids and grandkids. This is happening right now.

Sam Cass served as a senior policy advisor for nutrition in the Obama White House, and he was the executive director of Michelle Obama's Let's Move initiative. He's a University of Chicago graduate. He's trained under the Austrian chef Christian Domitschitz. He now invested in food technology startups and is the author of The Last Supper, How to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis. I don't think most people realize the degree to which the agricultural system is contributing to climate change. And particularly the loss of soil, it's estimated that our food systems contribute to 34% of

anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. We have not done anywhere near what is needed to prepare our system from an adaptation of resilience standpoint to ensure we're going to be able to produce food in this very volatile climate. For people listening who are saying, well, what the heck am I going to do? What can they do to actually change this system from the outside of? As the year winds down, your body's under more stress, travel, family gatherings, long work days. That's why now is the time to keep your immune system strong.

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perfect for your bag or desk drawer. If you want a simple way to support resilience, energy, and focus this season, try H-TB immune energy choose. Go to big boldhealth.com and use code DRMark 20 to save 20% on your first order. Sam, welcome back to the podcast. So good to have you back. I think last time we did this, I was in New York City, and it was before COVID, and life was so different.

And since then, you've been doing a lot of things. I was thinking about how you came to understand the world of food and agriculture from the perspective of a chef is very similar to how I began to understand how I couldn't really treat patients and cured disease in my office, that it was really started all the way back on the farm. And that how our food system is currently is so vulnerable and is so at risk and is also contributing to a whole set of secondary consequences that is affecting all of it. We have a system that's primarily driven through the growing of commodity crops, corn, soy,

and wheat, and those are used for industrial food, ultra-processed food primarily, as well as animal feed. And the way we do it has enormous consequences in damaging the soil and loss of biodiversity of pollinators in the destruction of our waterways through the runoff of nitrogen of fertilizer and eutrophication through the depletion of our ancient aquifers, like the aglala aquifer that's being drained trillions of gallons more than it's been replenished every year from rainfall.

And then the food we grow cause the consequences of harming people's health and causing metabolic chaos, which is why America's such a sick country. And we have a chronic disease epidemic. And then the government's paying the cost of that through all the health care costs, almost $2 trillion a year.

We call these externalities. I don't like that term. You know, we call things we don't like side effects on medication, but they're not side effects. They're just effects we don't like. And I think that the price of the food is, we pay at the checkout counter is not the true cost of the food we're eating. It has so many harmful consequences. So you really, you know, you really laid a lot of this out in your new book, The Last

Supper, which I think is tremendous. And it sort of lays out a roadmap for how we can get out of this flagmire that we're in and rethink our food and food systems and how it affects everything from personal health to national security to climate change and everything in between. So I'm really glad you kind of put that together. Let's start out by kind of,

I think people will know your background. I'm going to say your bio, you worked in the White House, you were for Obama, you help with food policy, the let's move effort, you know, rethinking a lot of things around school lunches and the healthy, hunger-free kids act

and all the things that were great that happened, which is kind of weird now that it's, being co-opted by the Republicans. It was a Democrat issue. The Democrats don't want anything to do with it. Now it's Maha, not, you know, Michelle Obama. It's all a mess. But at least the thing that I'm excited about is that finally someone is saying,

hey, everybody, we've got a natural emergency here. We've got a chronic disease epidemic, and we've got to dig into it. So maybe you can take us into your thinking about why you wrote this new book, The Last Supper, and what your central thesis is and what you're trying to achieved by getting this book out there in the world? You know, this book, I first did one of the, it's based on this dinner that I do, called The Last Supper. And I first, I first did this dinner at COP21 in Paris when, you know, the world was coming

together to try to set aggressive climate standards and goals. And COP is like an annual climate conference, right? Which had largely, you know, been a failure until COP 21, and we finally got the world to come together to set targets to try to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees. But at the time, literally nobody was ever talking about food and food systems and agriculture in the conversation. So I went there to try to get food more on the agenda. And it's basically a dinner that's put together. And at the time, I really thought about it around the ingredients that our kids and grandkids would not have access to because of climate.

And for a couple reasons, I thought that was effective way to start to do it. One is that, you know, everybody relates to food where people don't really understand what 1.5 degrees means. Everybody understands their love and joy that they get from the foods they're eating every day. And to try to use food as a tool to help the environmental community make the case more effectively around why we need to make real progress here. Because the foods we're talking about are things like coffee, wine, chocolate, shellfish and crustaceans, stone fruits like

peaches, nuts, the list goes on and on. And then regionally, these dramatic shifts and impacts are playing out all over the world. The thing that I got wrong back then, or that has changed since, is that it's not about our kids and grandkids. This is happening right now. Um, and so as I started going around the country and detailing, you know, what's how these foods that we love and, and take for granted, honestly, every day are being severely impacted. And, you know, it's so it's, it's, it's like for us, um, you know, that I can give a number of examples. We lost 90% in the Georgia peach crop a couple years ago because of extreme. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we could go on and on and what's happening with chocolate prices were up 200% last year because of drought. Um, coffee. The things we love to eat, we won't be able to be eating soon or we already aren't be able to eat because of what's happening with climate change. Yeah, it's starting to happen right now. And, you know, what's really at stake is our way of life, you know, our ability to pass down to the next generation, the delicious lives we have and try to improve on that. Obviously,

there's a ton of problems in our system that we must improve. But even our ability to make any kind of changes under real threat because of climate. And nobody's really talking about those connections to the extent that I think matches the challenges that we face. So that's the point of the book, is trying to dig into what's happening really already. How does food and agriculture drive that problem in and of itself? And also where the solutions that it holds to solve, I think, is the most essential threats to humanity we face, which is climate and our health.

I mean, it's true. I mean, most people think of, you know, coal plants and the use of energy and greenhouse gas emissions from, you know, the burning of fossil fuels. But I don't think most people realize the degree to which the agricultural system is contributing to climate change. And particularly the loss of soil, I think, you know, it's estimated that our food systems really contribute to probably a third, 34%, by some estimates, of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

from from the destruction of the soil from the use of nitrogen fertilizers and the methane produced by gows and all the combination from end to end is kind of staggering maybe you could kind of help us understand this because everybody's focused on windmills and solar and rainforests and all this stuff that seems like it's the the target for innovation or or correcting the system but it may be that that the way we grow food and we'll talk about regenerative agriculture and why it's important. The way we grow food and the food system itself

is a much easier and faster and better target to actually fix the problem. I mean, one-third of all the soil carbon has been lost, which is counting for, you know, a large portion of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And, you know, that's something we have control over. When you get into the numbers,

they're pretty staggering. I mean, you noted that over a third of emissions, come from the food and agricultural system. But unlike energy or transportation, where we can see a future where that curve is starting to bend, food and agriculture emissions are going straight up with absolutely no end in sight. And as developing nations consume more animal protein,

we actually are on track for an explosion of the footprint of the system globally, not actually a flattening or a reduction. I think the other side that we don't talk about, it's a number one driver of deforestation and land use change. I actually just came back from the rainforest in Brazil to witness the chopping down of forests to dry it out and the burning it for cattle production. It is devastating driver of biodiversity loss. It is the main driver of biodiversity loss on the

planet. And the number one use of the world's fresh water. Over 70% of water goes into the way we are producing food. And that's just truly unsustainable. By 2030, we will outstrip our water supply. Yeah, I mean, I think there's over 2 billion people have water scare city already now in the world. And this hasn't even really started yet. Like the grips of the impact of climate hasn't even really started.

And, you know, so we're really, the system is driving this incredible amount of degradation. But it's also on the front lines of the challenge, right? It is being decimated already on every front. And I think we have not done anywhere near what is needed to prepare our system from an adaptation of resilience standpoint to ensure we're going to be able to produce food in this very volatile climate. We have a food system that was built in the most stable climate on the historical record for the last thousand years. We've just gotten really lucky.

It's been temperate. The climate has been moderate. We've had abundant natural resources, namely soil, water, and cheap energy. And we've built a system based in that abundance. And now we are moving from that abundance to scarcity in terms of those soil and water resources and into extreme volatility. As you mentioned, we are basic 60 to 70 percent of all calories on planet Earth come from 12 plants and five animals. The majority of them, corn, soy, wheat, and rice. Don't forget rice. So it's 3.5 billion people. In America, it's not so much, but the rest the world. The rest of the world, it's huge. And when it starts to get quite scary, is actually when those big commodities get impacted by climate.

You know, like wheat with every degree in North America of warming, we'll see about a 7.5% decline of wheat. It also has to take into account that right now, about 15% of wheat is grown in sort of persistent drought conditions. By about 2040 will be about 60% of wheat in persistent drought conditions. And so you're going to see more major disruptions and collapses regionally of these crops. And that's where the national security questions start to come into play. When you look at the declines and yields on rice and how many people who are living on the edge

depend on these crops, it gets really serious really quickly. And so we have to start readying the system for the volatility. Right now, we basically have all our eggs in just a couple baskets. And that is extremely dangerous when dealing with volatility. It'd be like hedge fund traders just betting on a couple stocks and hoping it works. They would never do that. But that's sort of what we're doing in our food system. And I'm deeply concerned that we're simply unprepared to manage this going forward. I will just say, and we can maybe segue into this later, but food and what you mentioned

around soil and regenerative agriculture and the capacity for soil to sequester carbon, for me, and this is what I spend most of my time every day trying to try to work on and unlock, it is the only system on the planet that has the capacity, not just to reduce their negative impact on the planet, but also sequester enough carbon in the time horizon the science says we have to make it different. That's right. It's the biggest carbon sink on the planet is the soil. That's right. And we turn soil into dirt, meaning won't breakily dust, like the dust pull in the 30s, and that can't hold carbon. And, you know, it's amazing when you look at a resilient system, it's complex. It's not simple. When you have a commodity, monocrop culture, and by the way,

you mentioned animals, I think the meat production is a huge problem. It's not the cows themselves, which are essential for sequestering carbon in the soil. It's how we grow them in feed lots and how much energy and monocrops that are used to corn and soy to kind of cultivate to feed them. That's the big problem. And, you know, the amount of... you know, carbon that can be sequestered in the soil is huge, but not the way we're doing it. We're also seeing probably 40% of the soybeans sitting rotting in silos now because China won't buy them. So the whole geopolitical environment is actually driving even more food challenges and challenges to the food system and uncovering the vulnerabilities of it. When your book's subtitle is how to

overcome the coming food crisis, right? So like you're kind of, you're looking in the headlights and the car is coming at you and nobody else is sort of paying attention really as far as I can tell such is i i've said the same thing i wrote a book about a food fix it's like it's so obvious when you start to look at the data and the science around it but it's not something that's being um talked about focused on and in honestly it's a it's a it's a national security issue it's a it's the stability of our our whole country so having a resilient food system is really the key so how do you think how do you think about shifting it i mean how to overcome the coming food crisis is the subtitle of your book what are the things that that that have

have to do we have to do to actually deal with the instability of our food system. When it comes to the hardcore national securities, I mean, there's a long list of things that I think we have to do. Fundamentally, we have to become more resilient. We have to embed a lot more diversity into what we grow and how we grow it. Both the genetics inside any given crop, even for wheat, you know, we're going to continue to eat a bunch of wheat. And, but we're only growing a couple of varieties. And some varieties will be resistant to some pest of disease, some will be more drop-tolerant. We need to, even in the commodities that we're growing, and, you know, start bringing back a lot more genetic diversity into these crops.

Secondly, we just got to start eating a lot more different kinds of more climate resilient foods and start diversifying our diet, which I think from a health standpoint is also, you know, very important. We also can't miss just the broader climate policy and aggressive investment in reducing emissions globally and preparing a more decarbonized economy, not just here in the United States, but around the world and helping developing nations as well reach those targets. There's only so much you can do within the food system if we go, if we blow past 1.5, which we're already at, we go to 2 and to 3, there's only so much we're going to be able to control. And part of what's very concerning about what's happening right now is this widespread pullback around climate policy and climate investment, both in the public and private sectors. That is an existential threat to our health and to our well-being. And that has to change. And I'm not optimistic the next few years at will.

But when we have the next chance to change, that is absolutely foundational to our ability to feed ourselves. And however much progress we've made will all be undone if people, if prices are skyrocketing, people don't have enough money to afford the basic necessities, they're going to end up defaulting to the cheapest, most unhealthy food because it's going to be the only thing they can afford. So we have to embed much greater diversity. And I think part of what's going to be needed is we have to start finding ways to pay farmers to do the right thing and start practicing different more regenerative practices in their systems. And as they do that and start solving

some of our biggest challenges we face, they should be rewarded for that. And there's different ways to go about that. But that seems critical. Farmers aren't making those kind of decisions because they're just not incentivized. So right now the upside is not big enough to justify the risk that they'd have to take to make those changes. Because, you know, it's risky. Every day you're dealing with so much risk as a grower. What the weather, the water, the pest, disease, the input prices, the markets to sell,

all everything is very, very sensitive to any kind of change. So to add any kind of, I'm going to change my whole system of growing is really risky. And unless they can be guaranteed, I'm going to get paid for this and it's going to work out for me on the back end. They're just not, it just makes no sense for them to make those changes. So I do think we need much stronger ag policy on that regard, as well as commercial polls. And there's lots of what we can get into the weeds of different ways to do that.

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and they met with a lot of the Iowa farmers, and they said many of them really are wanting to shift over to more regenerative, sustainable practices, but they are stuck in a system that prevents them from doing that. And most people don't realize that the farmers are, the not the problem it's our agricultural policies and they're stuck between you know having to get crop insurance from the government so they're they don't have the threat of losing their crops if they do and they have to get the seeds and the chemicals and the crop insurance in order to get

bank loans so the between the banks and the seed and the chem companies and the crop insurance is it's a vicious cycle that they're stuck in and what I've been seeing on the marketplace and I'm curious to hear where you're seeing Sam is there are private equity companies and other investors actually taking the risk and either buying up conventional farmland and converting it to regenerative land like farmland and LP are groups like perennial that are going in private equity companies and actually helping create a bridge for the farmers and covering the cost of them converting over to regenerative agriculture and where they're making more money they're producing more food better food more nutrient dense food they're sequestering carbon

and they're increasing by diversity. They're using less water. They're using less chemicals. I mean, it's a win, win for everybody. And there are models out there. You know, and you talk about Gabe Brown in your book. I know him very well. And I think, you know, this is something that we actually have the science to do

and that farmers actually are more and more open to, but we have an agricultural system from the policy level that is almost prohibiting this. And if farmers want to have a diverse set of crops that they grow, they get penalized and they can't get crop insurance. So if a guy's a corn farmer also, so wants to integrate vegetables or integrate animals or do other things, they can't do it. And so I think it's a fundamental issue.

So I wonder if you could sort of unpack, you know, the, we sort of highlighted a lot of the problems with our conventional system, the vulnerabilities of it, threats from monocrops, the increasing loss of soil, biodiversity, and water, and all the things we talked about. What is regenerative agriculture? Why is it important, and how do we define it, and how could we actually incentivize it from both a business innovation perspective and also from a government policy perspective. I think the simplest way to put it is we're investing in not just what we extract, but what we're building in the soil. And so it's generally a set of practices designed. And they different

by region, they different by crop or animal. And so it's hard to say, here's the five things it is that makes it regenerative. For me, the outcomes are what's important. Are you building oil health? Are you building the biology of the soil? Is there increased carbon held in the soil? Does it have better water retention? Is the diversity of plants and animals and bugs around and pollinators around that ecosystem growing or are we wiping it all out? And those systems tend to be more productive ultimately. The problem is there's a, to often a dip in productivity as you start to change and not rely on synthetic fertilizers to sort of boost yield. But really, it's about building soil health.

And that is a really powerful tool that we have to sequester carbon and build resilience. There's countless examples around the world where, you know, one part, there's a great tomato example in Spain, where there's a part of the production there that got transitioned to regenerative. they had a drought, the people who were supplying from that farm had this many tomatoes that they needed. The people who were not supplying from that farm had no tomatoes because they couldn't harvest any tomatoes because the drought was so tough and those didn't retain the water. So there's lots of examples about how this improved resiliency. I think where we're getting stuck is, and there's definitely policies that can dramatically improve this, but it's not just a policy

problem. The question is, there's a cost to this transition, and the question is who's going to pay for. And right now, we can't ask farmers to pay another done because they've been pulled away. They're going bankrupt and killing, they have the highest rates of suicide of any population in the U.S., and there are many going bankrupt, and they basically scratch by a living, and it's basically a really tough life for them. That's exactly right. And this year is going to be very difficult, particularly for soybean farmers.

And I'm very worried about what it's going to do. Because of China? Yeah, because they lost their biggest market. 25% of our soybeans go to China. And because of the, really, it's the terrorists that are driving this short-term issue, but they're not buying, they're not buying our soybean. So I think rural America is going to get hit really hard in these coming years. So that's, that's, so we have to fight.

So anyways, I digress. We have to figure out who's going to pay for this. And the question's going to be, is it going to be taxpayers? Because right now, or is it going to be big emitters or consumers? Like, and depending on, you know, you can debate why it should be one or the other. Right now in a high, you know, people have been struggling with inflation. Consumers don't seem to have any willingness to pay another penny for anything that they're buying. And frankly, the part of the harsh.

truth is, is that consumers right now don't know what a regenerative agriculture is, don't care about it, aren't asking for it, aren't demanding it. So then we ask like the CPG companies like, we need you to buy more, you know, regent, whatever. And they're like, that's great, but I can't sell it. So you're asking me to take on a big cost in this transition, but I can't, you know, nobody's, nobody wants to buy it. So they're like, I can't, so the people, there's people in these bigger companies who are advocating for, you know, supply, you procuring much more regenerative ingredients, it's dying at the CMO office because the CMO is like, you want to spend how much money, $100 million or whatever maybe to help transition

these set of ingredients, but nobody cares about it. So internally there are these fights where it's just not going anywhere. You know, I think one of the things that it's come up is how do we price things? And what's the true cost of food? A Rockefeller Foundation produced a report a few years ago talking about the true cost of food, and it's basically $3 for every dollar we spent on food in collateral damage. And we talked about externalities, but I think the speech called the future of food that was given by then Prince Charles, now King Charles, in 2011 talking about this concept of the true cost accounting. How do you build in the true cost of what we're doing, and who's accountable for that? Like Bobby Kennedy, when he was an environmental lawyer, got GE,

to pay over a billion dollars to clean up the Hudson River from the PCBs because he held them accountable for the harm they're causing. How do we do that in the food system? I think the true cost of accounting is absolutely right. But essentially what we're saying is we need to embed the cost of that food to society, which is going to mean just a dramatic increase in the cost of food to people. And I don't think that's a winner. I don't see companies, politicians, sort of advocating for that.

So for me, I think there's different mechanisms to go about reembedding that cost. One is like a robust carbon market system. Essentially what you're saying is, I think the only way this really works is just to get to my brass tax. After exploring every option I could think of, there's certain set of companies out in the world who have driven most of our missions. and they have the most responsibility of our current situation and the most money to pay for it, whereas the food and agricultural system is a really low margin system. So there's just not a lot of extra cash floating around to pay for all this stuff. I think we need a robust market that starts to pay for farmers initially to sequester carbon

and then to get into much broader ecosystem services like around water and biodiversity city and have the big emitters pay. Big emitters should be paying our growers to solve these problems and incentivizing the proper practices and ultimately improving the nutritional quality of our food, but through the lens of climate. I think that's the only way you have enough resources coming into the system to really pay farmers to make it worth their while to take on the risk associated with this transition. I think there's government policy around insurance especially to help ensure that transition very specifically, which right now we don't really do. So there's government policies at play, but we just need to make the numbers work, and right

now the numbers don't work. Aren't the farmers, aren't these big companies who are causing the problems, the big ag and food companies, the seed companies, aren't they going to resist this? They're not going to want to pay for ecosystem services. And I want you to explain what are ecosystem services, because there are countries that are literally paying farmers for the good they're doing to restore biodiversity and soil and water resources. So kind of unpack that a little bit and explain why would they be insented to do this? Because I agree with you. They should be paying for it. But how do we make them pay for it?

It seems like the government's going to have to put some type of policy or regulation a place that forces them to do that. I'm actually, when I refer to the big emitters, I'm actually talking about like oil and gas, big tech companies. They're the ones who have probably, profited and driven most of the climate footprint. It's growing in food and ag, but historically, it is oil and gas. It is definitely on the hook for the vast majority of emissions globally. And so if you set up a different mechanism, then carbon is established. It's not exploding right now like we all hoped it would.

But if you have a robust system of carbon markets, basically a farmer starts to do regenerative practices, they measure their soil and see, okay, I've built, you know, one ton per acre of additional carbon per year. That gets measured and underwritten by a third party to say, yes, we verify this. And then that farmer can sell that credit for, you know, $30, $40, $50 to Exxon, say. And, you know, if you think about there's 95 million acres of soy, you know, 93 million acres of corn, we can debate all the, we can talk about all the negative issues there. But those are huge, just those two crops alone. you're talking about massive amounts of sequestration

and then the money in there to help those farmers transition. That's what I think is going to have to happen because so far, we've been talking about this for a long time and farmers aren't transitioning at scale. It's happening little by little. We have to ask ourselves the honest question. Farmers are super smart.

They're managing all this complexity and they're not making this leap broadly. And I think it's basically because the numbers aren't working right now for them. And that's the kind of thing that has to happen to make them work. I think you can set up similar markets around water use, like how do we reduce our water? And then how do we measure and improve biodiversity? Those are also things that could be turned into credits that people are then funding farmers to do. But that's what I think is needed. And we were making a lot of progress on that. The current administration has unwound all of that and sort of gone in the

decidedly opposite direction on doing all the ag climate policy work that had been done in the previous administration, I find that to be unconscionable and very scary given, you know, how much worse things are getting. But it's going to take action like that if we're going to be able to, at scale, start making real progress here. Yeah, I know, it's true. I mean, I live in Austin, Texas now, and there's a farm nearby ranch where I went to visit called Rome Ranch. And it's, it was, you know, kind of a cattle, a cattle grazing area. And then basically had been, been completely denuded and damaged. And this young couple bought

1,000 acres, and they reintroduced bison, which was the keystone species in this area of the world. I'm going to call across America. And they rotate them around 1,000 acres, different fields. They don't let them stay on any one spot long time. And then they basically don't till the soil.

They plant a whole diversity of wild plants and nitrogen-fixing plants so they don't need fertilizer. And it was amazing, Because you could see the next ranch over, it was a drought when I was there. And it was just, there were no cattle because the farmers had to get rid of them because they couldn't sustain them on the land.

And yet here they had this thriving ecosystem where the soil had increased carbon by 6%, which may not sound like a lot. But for every percent of carbon that you put in the soil, you sequester and, I mean, carbon, and you also retain 25,000 gallons per acre of water. And so these creeks that had been the navigational creeks for the settlers coming across America that had dried up in Texas were now coming back. Bald eagles were coming back to land. Wild animals were coming back. Wild turkeys were coming back. And there were plants that had been not germinated for 150 years that had, maybe there's some special properties of manure

from bison. I don't know. But there were these plants that germinated that hadn't germinated 150 years. It was really amazing to see this kind of life come back just by following nature. And I think the best way I think about regenerative practices, it's mimicking nature and complex ecosystems, which are far more resilient. You know, if one plant dies in a rainforest, big deal. If one plant dies on a monocrop corner of soy, and if it's cornered soy, it's a disaster.

And I think from a national security perspective, from an economic perspective, from a climate perspective, from an environmental degradation perspective, it just makes so much sense. And I think, you know, one of the things that I noticed you mentioned in your book was that we should be eating less meat.

And I agree that the current way of growing animals or raising animals is a disaster through the confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs, which are basically factory farms. They're a disaster for many reasons, and we can unpack that. But I love your perspective on using a regenerative practices that integrate animals

and actually be able to scale up animal production. Alan Williams talks about how we could actually produce more cows than we now slaughter in America, through conventional methods by actually using Bureau of Land Management land, by taking the corn and soy fields, turning them back into grazing land, and actually rejiggering the whole system that actually will produce even more animal protein while restoring ecosystems and creating what you call ecosystem services. So can you speak to that?

Because I think, you know, we've got the Lancet Commission, which has basically said we should all be mostly vegan. And there's a whole narrative out there that you want to save the planet be a vegan. But I think, you know, Bill Niam's wife talked about how it's not the cow, it's the how, or maybe it was somebody else, I forget who it was, but it's basically, it's like not the cow that's a problem, it's how we raise the cows. Can you speak to that? Yeah, so I think there's a, this is obviously a raging debate, and we're in a, we're in a, we're in a protein explosion right now in terms of, you know, narrative around how much protein

we should be eating. And, you know, so I think this is, obviously, and I think there's inherent contradictions here that we have to sort of grapple with. All the life cycle assessments I've seen comparing grass fed to conventional, I just hate that that's our word for it, current state of how we produce beef. From an actual pure admission standpoint, they're actually not that much different because the grass fed animal tends to live longer for them to get to a slaughter weight. is way healthier for the overall environment, but not from an omission standpoint. So I think we just have to try to call this how I see it. I'm a grass fed. First of all, let me just

be very clear. I am definitely not a vegan. I love a good steak. I had some delicious for dinner, pork for dinner last night. So I am far from a vegan. You know, it's a crozier pork? Was it kosher pork? Are you getting ready for Yom Kippur? That pig lived a better life than me. Well, you have something to ask for forgiveness for tomorrow on Yom Kippur. Exactly right. We're recording us, by the way, on the eve of Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. So I'm just teasing Sam.

I think there's real benefit to the grass-fed systems or regenerative beef systems to the broader environment. From a pure admission standpoint, I think it's not that clear that is how much better or worse it is, one system or another. But from an overall degradation standpoint, I think it is quite clear. And look, I think the question comes down to what are, from an environmental standpoint, what's the most efficient ways to get us the most nutrient density? The problem with the cows, it's just not that good at converting energy from the sun into animal protein. Like a chicken is a far more efficient animal in converting feed into animal protein.

So I think if you just look at the data and take all the agendas out of it, my advice to the world is to, yes, put everything we can on pasture. But I think ultimately that means the price is largely going to go up. We're going to have to eat less of the larger animals. Something like chicken should take on a much greater role in our diets from a climate standpoint. When you're trying to balance both the impact to our climate and the benefits of human health, the smaller animals tend to be much more efficient from a feed conversion ratio, which means they take less resources to get us a pound of animal protein.

And the cow is just not that good. As delicious as it is, it's just not that great at it. So I think we must transition to a quality versus quantity system where these animals are much more integrated into these biological systems. and help build soil because they are very important in building soil. All of our soil comes from animal grazing, you know, migratory pathways

over tens and tens and millions of years, tens of thousands, not millions of years. But our overall amount of consumption, I think, at least right now, does not help us mitigate the worst of climate. And that's just what the data says. I can imagine it. But it's interesting,

they were like 160 million ruminants roaming around before, the white guys got here and they were building soil like crazy and they were eight to 50 feet of top soil in the Midwest and they weren't contributing to climate change. They were actually Well, you had a much, I think the difference is you had a much more balanced system where most of the country was covered by forests and most of the world was covered by forests. The oceans were not over inundated with carbon that it absorbed. Like the natural, the biosphere had the ability to sequester a lot more carbon because we've cut down most of those forests.

would turn over most of that sort of, you know, that balance has been thrown way off. And I think that's what we're grappling with. So the question for us is like, what can we do in our daily lives to try to make an impact? So I don't advocate for reading less, you know, no meat at all. It's like when you are going to try to find pasture-raised sources and eat smaller animals, I think is the best balance. But there's no perfect answer here. I mean, I think the debate will rage on, and, you know, we're going to all have to navigate this one.

I mean, we're talking about solutions coming from industry that's the culprit oil and gas to actually helping fund carbon credits that can be used to incentivize farmers to convert from the sort of extractive agricultural system to a regenerative system, which seems to make sense. I don't know how you're going to force them to do it unless you have policy. then there's policy change that has to happen. And then there's what people can do. And what it seems to me is that when we look at any big change, whether it's ending slavery and abolition or civil rights or women's rights or gay marriage or whatever, even the reversing of Roe v. Wade, all that came not from Congress.

It came from cultural movements that were consumer-driven or driven by individuals who had certain, belief systems that then drove the policy change in state and federal legislatures. And so I'm very curious from your perspective for people listening who are saying, well, what the heck am I going to do? Like, how do I help this problem? I don't want to be having my children or grandchildren not being able to eat peaches or nuts or chocolate or whatever or worse, not even having food to eat or being at risk

for having massive migration from the global south to the north because of climate change. You know, what do you say to people that empowers them around this issue? What can they do who are listening to actually change this system from the outside in?

Yeah. So after spending six years, like in the White House, trying to drive all these policy changes, and we should talk policy at some point. We should talk a little more about government policy. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. I'm in with you.

I will say that, you know, we're often given this narrative, you know, there's like the government, including with these big companies, and they're destroying everything. And there's definitely some truth to that. But what I learned my time in the White House is that policy is actually pretty constrained in its ability to change what ultimately actually ends up on people's plates. And the reality is that fundamentally our culture underpins all of these decisions, both from the private sector, like a business is what they're making, how they're making it,

as well as our politicians, what they care about or what they don't care about, how they act or don't act. And then the choices we're making in our daily lives is so deeply rooted in our cultural values and our cultural norms. You know, food is one of those things very different than a lot of things that's, you know, we analyze it to, we analyze it to like smoking. It's like it's not really smoking because, you know, that was just one thing that nobody really needed that was, clearly bad and easy to demonize. Food is our identity. It's who we are. It's how we show love. It's how we decide who we're not. And we're all experts in it because we all eat at three, four, sometimes five times a day, depending, maybe more, depending who you are. And our culture really underpins the decisions that we are as a society making. And I think if we don't

do the hard, messy, slow, difficult work of shifting our culture, policy is always going to let us down. Businesses are going to continue to act as they do. And we're not going to see anywhere near the amount of change that we need. And cultural work is hard because you don't get much credit for it. It's hard to kind of track exactly. But I think how you led into this question is exactly right. These big breakthroughs and big transitions are really fundamentally cultural shifts that then get, you know, the manifestation in a policy form or in a business start to follow with their policies. that's what has to happen and I think we've seen

a real evolution over the last 30 years in culture around food here but it's still nascent and we haven't turned it into a true movement now Maha has definitely made some real progress in some ways there

but it hasn't really translated into like this is the norms of what dinner looks like in America these are what we expect from our community our state our local leader and our federal leaders. And I think it really does start with us at home and what we think of as normal.

I told this little story in the book. I didn't think I would even mention this today, but could you bring it up? The last time I drank a soda, I was like 19 trying to be professional baseball player. And my good friend, Karan Walker, who was a couple years older to me and just had gotten drafted,

I got a mountain dew late one night on a Saturday. Like we were out, hanging out, going out. And we stopped at a gas station. I got him on due. And he was like, why would you drink that garbage? It is pure poison for you. And he's like, look at the ingredients. And I looked at it.

And he was like, you're right. And I never touched a soda since then. It was because he set a new cultural norm. Like, if you're an athlete and this is how, you know, you want to be like, you want to make it, you don't drink garbage. And I think for all of us, how we impact each other matters. So just in our home saying, you know what, we're going to, we care about what we put in our body.

We're going to start paying attention. That sets a new norm for. your family. And then when you go into your work to say, hey, this food environment is making it hard for me to make a good choice and it's impacting me. Like, can we try to improve the offerings here? That all of a sudden starts to change the culture of wherever you is you work. I don't care where it is. Could be a daycare center. It could be a big corporate job or anything in between. That starts to impact the culture of that place. Wherever you are, your church, your synagogue, your temple, it doesn't matter. Just raising the question,

advocating, organizing some people around it, saying we expect the food that we're eating here to improve our health and to be done in a way that preserves our farmer's ability to continue to produce food for generations to come. Those values can start to really shift and underpin all kinds of things that are even hard to imagine from now. And all of us have that voice. And it may feel small, but that is the change. Like, that is fundamentally what underpins our ability to make change. Like when we were in the White House, and this is now by a long time ago, 15 years ago,

like we were doing that work not because people were demanding it of us. We were doing that work because, you know, the first lady cared about it as a mom and experienced it as a mom and decided to just take on this set of issues in a way that it hadn't been taken on before. But what needed to be, what needs to happen is whoever comes to the White House next, is so overwhelmed by people saying this matters to us,

we expect you to have aggressive policies, both on the sustainability and climate regenerative side, as well as on the health side, and we will hold you accountable. And if you don't do it, you're out. Like, that's how policy is going to start to really change. And if you don't have that, you're only going to get so far. So culture is so overlooked because it's hard,

but it is fundamental to everything. I agree. And I think, you know, I spend the last five years in Washington in and out, meeting with over 100 plus 50 congressman, senators, people in the administrations, both the Biden and the Trump administration. And what was really striking to me is that they said what people say matters. If our constituents are calling our office asking for X, Y, Z, we're listening. It's probably more impactful than anything else.

And it can override what's happening from industry. You see that now with the Maha movement. there are I actually become friends with Roger Marshall who's the head of the Maha Caucus in the Senate and I wrote about him in my book Food Fix and how he basically in a hearing in the Congress when he was a congressman was belittling the testimony of somebody who was saying that the food we're eating

is a contributor to our chronic disease epidemic and obesity and he's a doctor himself, he's an OBGYN. And he completely dismissed it and he said it's all about exercise. And when you looked at who he was funded by, It was, you know, the corn lobby and the sugar lobby. And I'm like, and I kind of gave, I came a hard time about it. He says, don't worry. Where does this happen to me?

But now he's kind of flipped because he sees what's happening in the culture. When we think about healthy aging, we often think about our external appearance. But beneath the surface, proteins like collagen, elastin, and keratin play a big role in keeping tissue strong and resilient. All of these proteins are built from amino acids, especially the essential ones our body's can't make on their own. Getting enough of these building blocks help support not just muscle, but also the structural proteins that support skin elasticity, thicker hair, and stronger nails. Perfect Amino provides those essential amino acids in carefully balanced ratios to support protein

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absorb in order to maintain life and growth. so what we're eating ultra processed food by definition is not food we don't actually need it it's not necessary for survival and it's actually making us sick and killing us so i think you know one of the initiatives and i'd be curious to hear what you think about this that we're working on in washington now is with david kessler who is the former refugee commission under uh bush and then i think Clinton also he's a lawyer and a doctor and he's on the podcast he just recently i think a couple of weeks ago. And he was sharing about this petition he did to the FDA when they were requesting how do we define ultra-processed food as a way of creating some framework for regulation. And as a lawyer,

he went back to the Food Act in the 50s and looked at the laws that govern what we call grass generally recognizes safe. And if you're using baking soda and it was used for 100 years, it just kind of had grandfathered in as a safe food ingredient. But all these other things that food industry has started putting in our foods, he's deconstructed industrial food ingredients from soy and corn primarily in wheat that are not molecular the same as food. They have different properties.

They do different things in the body. They were beginning to understand, and the science is overwhelming now that they're harmful. He's saying, well, technically, the starches and sugars and the forms of them in, not sugar that you put in your coffee, but actually these things are definitionally a problem, and they no longer meet the standard

for generally recognized as safe. And he says, we can put the onus back on the food industry to prove they're safe. And that's sort of an interesting way to kind of go around this issue because to try to kind of force the industry to change or do something as hard.

But I thought it was kind of a brilliant sleight of hand. And I'd love to hear what you think about that. Yeah, well, first of all, just, I think the only difference, just to go back on the cigarette for real briefly, is the only difference is everybody eats, everybody eats unlike smoking, where it's still a relatively small percentage of the population.

Yeah, fair enough. And everybody who eats tends to like the food that they're eating. Even if it's like a double cheeseburger, and they probably shouldn't be eating that every day, people who eat that tend to love their cheeseburger. And so taking that away or trying to change that in any fundamental way is much more fraught and difficult. That's, I think, the main point.

So from a strategy standpoint, there's parts, there's some to learn about tobacco. Obviously, it's a huge win. And it was a cultural shift that led to it. major policy changes. But it's not as simple and straightforward as that. I guess that's where I caution. First of all, let me just say, I love David Kessler. I've known him for a long time. He was one of the first people to reach out when I got to the White House. It's brilliant and thoughtful and, you know, I just couldn't say more positive things about the man. I think his petition is

creative and smart i think it's you know would theoretically be transformational of course i don't see any path where legally that could work um because you have to show harm like the problem is like a piece of bread uh or a cupcake on an individual basis is not harmful uh like there's no there's no evidence to show that if that's all you're eating you know that somehow it's not safe. It's the aggregate dosage among the sort of, you know, population that is leading to these big decline. And regulating that, I think, would not stand up in court. It's my, is my read on it. And from what, you know, some folks that are harder on the law side of this, their read on it, I think it's like a, because it's hard to prove harm on any one of these products. It's very

hard to prove like wheat is killing us right like um and so i don't see it going anywhere but theoretically i think it's really smart and i do think cuts to the heart of the challenges we face which i like i do have concerns that we're paying attention to the wrong things right now that is the core of it like those empty calories are driving the metabolic disease that we're facing and it is a policy proposal that gets to the thing that would make a big difference. Now, whether it's in that form or we should try to figure out other ways to curtail the amount of empty calories, particularly of sugar that are being pumped into our diets, I'm all for and here to go to war over that. And I, you know, support it theoretically. I just don't think it will go anywhere. And I also think,

by the way, it's not going to fly. I also think that what hasn't happened yet, there's been no policy changes that are threatening really like how people are eating. and there's been no backlash like because of it and I don't like but just wait till the country freaks out because you're going to make sodas more expensive or you're going to we haven't seen any of that yet that's where it starts to get politically way more dicey than anything that we've seen recently and you also have to have policy that are smart enough to withstand that because that well do you like it or not that's just the reality you got to bet that the industry is going to pay a lot of money to fight back and I got plenty of scars to prove how hard.

or play, and you've got to be ready to fight that with a strategy that can overcome that. And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I think if your policy is, so overreaching is maybe the wrong word, but so expansive in your reach, you're going to take on so much that I don't see how that could move forward, even if it legally had a path. But we're to try. I mean, it's bad, the situation is bad, so we've got to try everything we can. Well, it's sort of interesting how pernicious and deliberate the industry is.

and I was involved testifying for Senate Bill 25 in the Texas legislature, and it was basically to really improve the health. And what they were doing was food labeling and ingredient warnings about specific ingredients, their additives. They were talking about how we changed things in school and have funding for nutrition education and medical school, including a nutrition advisory committee and, you know, empowering the committee

to look at scientific studies on ultra-processed food, and colors and additives. And it passed, but at the 11th hour, the food industry got involved, and they put in an amendment that basically decapitated the fundamental provision of the bill, which was to properly label the foods that were harmful.

We're not talking about taking the ingredients out. We're just talking about, like, highlighting the harm that we know of these ingredients on the label. And I was so excited, this bill kind of finally got passed, but it was it was the deliberate and sneaky kind of legal maneuvering in lobbying that happened behind the scenes. And I saw this happen with Governor Morrissey where he was trying to do the same thing in West Virginia. And I know him personally and his wife.

And they said, yeah, the food industry came in and said, oh, you're going to get rid of the, you know, these dyes and some of these chemicals. But that means, you know, grandma puts a red dye and a cupcake and sells it at a bake sale at school. she's going to go to jail. I'm like, you don't want that. And so they're doing all these crazy messaging, you know, and, you know, we had to combat that and say, no, it's actually not what it's going on. And I think it's kind of, it's so, it's so, they're so well-organized, and they're so deliberate. And I laid out how they do that in my book Food Fix, and it's coming out with a new version of Food Fix Uncensored in February. But it's, it's really about

this sort of ways in which any progress is met with massive resistance from the food industry. And I wonder how you think that we can work around this. Is it through business innovation? Is it through changing culture? Like, where are the levers? And how do you see Maha as an overall movement as a as a as a as a as a as a as a wedge in through to the right path? There's problems with it for sure and I agree. But how do we how do we create a wedge for that? I think to answer the first part of your question. And I ask three questions at once usually. And they're all big ones, man.

They're all the ones I'm super eager to answer. I think we often talk about the food industry as this monolith. And what I experience in D.C. is that they're not. Like, there are some companies that are just horrible. Like, fight against everything. Fight to make, you know, when we were there, they made pizza count as a vegetable because of the tomato sauce when we were trying to limit the amount of pizza or made french fries count as a vegetable so we had to change like how we regulate

lunch to make sure there was an additional like green vegetables as a part of it some company that's like the you know kind of agros of the world like they are horrible right as you would see them but there's others that are much more progressive and willing to do either what's right or feel like you know they're positioning themselves for a healthier kind of of consumer and seed advantage there, and so they're willing to play. I think they're dividable, I guess is my main point. So one thing is to find out we're just going to fight you, and then can you get some industry support?

And there's probably a bunch of industry who would have no problem with the label on the front of their pack because there got mostly decent stuff in there, and they would love the advantage of having their competitors look terrible with like big asses or stop signs on the front of their pack. And I tried to do front of pack too. So we have a lot of war stories there. But it's the thing that moves the needle the most, like in South America, the black warning stop signs on the front of packages that a food that's harmful

are the biggest lever that was seen in South America to create behavior change and stop people buying less foods. Well, I think the evidence that I've seen even more so, it drives a lot of reformulation because companies don't want to have to put it. Right, reformulated, right. They start pulling out the excess sugar and fat because they're like, you know, Oh, man, that looks terrible. And so let me get out in front of that.

So it's actually an incredible driver reformulation to the better. You know, I think the thing that we don't focus on in terms of dealing with companies is Wall Street. Right now, you know, I've experienced a bunch of CEOs who were not, you know, you'd probably put them as sort of the enemy per se. But we're trying to move their companies in a better direction and almost got fired for it, right? because their, you know, sales may have taken a little dip or they seem like they're not focused on the most profitable products, and, you know, Wall Street doesn't like that. And I don't focus on the role of finance

that dictates the actions of these companies anywhere well enough. You know, I think you got to remember, they're also highly competitive with each other. They're fighting for pennies. Like, one extra pack a week and, you know, makes a big difference, and they're fighting against each other. So they're not just like friends. They're sometimes where there's a threat

that brings them together. But otherwise, they're competitors and they're fighting tooth and nail for every dollar in our wallet. So I think there's opportunity to use that to our advantage in a way that we haven't always. But ultimately, the biggest thing we can do, ultimately.

So we have to put policy pressure on them. There needs to be stronger regulation. And even the threat of regulation gets a lot of movement. we need to start dealing with finance and getting them to start supporting companies that are doing the right thing here and helping give those companies some space

and CEOs some space to maneuver. But we need... Not just the next quarterly earnings report, which is the opposite of what China does, which is the next thousand years, not the next quarter. I had to blame all of this, all of our challenges on one thing,

it's short-termism. Like in the end, only thinking quarter by quarter as a society or election to election, is why we're in this situation. If we started thinking about longer-term horizons, the next generation, and how we're making our decisions, we'd be making very different decisions,

both on our health and on our planet. But you're not able to make long-term investments on these transitions or these changes if you're being accounted for every four months or every three months of your progress. Their hands are tied in some ways in ways that I don't think a lot of advocates and I speak to some of my friends really get that dynamic.

I think there's a sense of like they're intentionally trying to kill us. They know what's right. They're just deciding not to do it to reap more profit. That's actually not their experience. Some of them, yes, but that's generally not how they're, how they experienced it. They just have a very narrow path to walk to keep their jobs and to keep the business on track. And they try to make changes and they're not good enough. And a lot of them fail because consumers ultimately are,

aren't buying the foods that we would hope they would. And they are responsible for that because they're marketing this junk. But like, right, so it's a negative feedback loop in that regard. So ultimately, we have to start supporting companies that are doing a better job. We have to show them that the products that are going to win in the marketplace are ones that are better for us and better for the planet. And if we can start to do that, you will see those companies race to those kind of products because they don't want to lose market share.

Everybody's just trying to keep their share. It's interesting, though, it's tough. You know, I think, you know, the government has a convening power. And I've spoken to CEOs of many of these big companies like Nestle's, and Mark Snyder, when he was a CEO, and he was very progressive. They wanted to convert 70% of their supply chain

to regenerative agriculture. They wanted to reformulate. But he said, look, you know, if I do it independently, I'm going to lose market share to my competitors. And we all have to do it together. And so you can't do it. collectively collude as an industry because there's anti-trust laws. But the government could convene the CEOs and say, hey, guys, gigs up, let's rethink

our food system, let's get creative, let's reformulate. And it's happening globally. And I think, you know, one of the problems is you mentioned the quarterly earnings report pressure, there's a number of CEOs that have tried this, like Denise Morrison from Campbell's tried to improve the supply chain and improve the quality of the products and removing certain ingredients. Indira New Year from Pepsi did the same thing. They both got canned.

And their boards fired them because they were doing this. And that's very discouraging to me because you have CEOs from these big companies that are trying to do something right. And the financial earnings reports and the short-termism, as you describe it, really inhibits any progress. How do we kind of navigate around that? Yeah, I mean, I think we need to, and this is probably regulatory, is start accounting for other fiduciary responsibilities

besides only return to shareholder value. Because right now, that's Wall Street's sole responsibility is to maximize shareholder value. And they should be responsible for other implications of those investments on society. And if they had it in their legal mandate to also take into account the impact of their investments on the health, well-being, or the planet, as an example,

they would then have to start measuring that. And there's examples of that in Europe. And that changes how investors have to operate legally. And that changes how then CEOs and their boards have to manage these companies. That's the kind of thing that has to happen. I think culturally from a finance standpoint, we're very far away from that. But I think these companies are only going to get so far unless we make that kind of change, where they have an actual legal responsibility to take into account.

the impact of whatever product or service they're putting into the market. If we had that, then we'd have a framework and opportunity to start moving these folks in a fundamentally different direction. But right now, they can say, listen, on Wall Street, I'm just looking at, do I think this company is going to make more or less money in the short term or midterm? And that's all that they're calculating. And if they think it's going to go down, they think they're not going to have a good next couple quarters and they pull their money out and stock goes down yeah i do both those women and they

were amazing and trying to do better you know flawed in many ways as is as it was but really genuinely trying to make a difference and yeah they they were they did not last that effort um i agree i in fact i write a little bit about injuring the book as that example it's a it was a tough lesson for me to understand that it's not they're not sole actors in this well sam you know you you you have a of insight, not just as a chef, not someone who's just, you know, help with the let's move efforts and not just as an investor who's looking at companies that are creating innovation in the sector, trying to solve these problems through tech solutions, which I think is amazing. But you were, you were the senior policy advisor for healthy food initiatives in the

White House. And if you were now in the White House or at HHS or USDA, or maybe you were the foods are if there was one. I was labeled that. How would you be, how would you be kind of harnessing the, at least the cultural awareness around Make America Healthy again and help the centers and congressmen and the people of the USDA and the FDA and HHS who want to do the right thing? And I know these people. They want to do the right thing. They're trying to figure it out. You know, they're trying to navigate how to change the thinking and change the policies. but it's kind of messy. So how would you kind of coalesce

this and harness this incredible movement that's now sort of emerged? And there's parts of it that I think are really problematic, as I said, we can leave those alone for now. But there's a lot of good stuff around food and around a chronic disease that it's being spoken about for the first time. What would you be advising Congress

and the White House and the agencies to do? And how would you create a roadmaper starting to change some of the things that need to get changed. Yeah. Big question. You said you want to talk about maha. It's a big question.

I think it is important to talk about what I think is really positive in this moment and then some of the concerns. I do think some of the concerns are undermining our ability to move things in the right direction. You know, I think I give RFK a lot of credit

for, you know, bringing these issues back on the national stage. A lot in that world say it's for the first time. I, obviously, since we were saying many of the same things, I fundamentally disagree with that, but that's okay. It's not about that. And I think as critique, as harsh as it is, I think it holds a lot of truth.

And I think it's for all of us who've been working on these issues for a very long time, a breath of fresh air and invocative to hear some. somebody who now leads HHS, the biggest department of the federal government, you know, saying those things in a very forceful way. And doing it with backing in the broad public that I could only have dreamed of having when we were in there. And I think the one thing that is starting, and I got to say, let me just take a moment to credit you because what's happening now, and you've played a real role in this,

is this is becoming a bipartisan issue, at least for now, in a way that, like, leaves me feeling like I'm living in the upside down because all many of these people I could just play you clip after clip nailed against us as the nanny stayed and fought us tooth and nail on everything. Yeah. And if I had any support in Congress at all. I don't like the Twilight Zone.

I feel like I'm living in the Twilight Zone. I mean, it's good, but it's like, and if this be, this should be a pipe partner's an issue. We worked really hard to make it not a threatening in its face so we could try to bring as many people into the tent as we could. It was much more aggressive in terms of our strategy, but like what we tried to show to the outside world was like, let's all join hands, we'll work all together, and let's see what we can do. So it should be like that, and that's right.

I do fear that the bipartisanship won't last after this administration, but I'm hopeful that some parts of it can last. I think the problem right now, and this maybe can lead us into what we should be doing, is like a lot of the narrative then around like what is actually the problem and what are the solutions I just find to be totally off base. you know, and we're not focusing on the things that matter. And it's leading to confusion and concern, and I can't, you know, and, you know, we can just take the two ones that are the loudest so far,

at least from what I can, you know, ascertain. You know, I am not a fan of food dyes. I'm happy to see them go. The fruit loops with food dye is, without food die is still fruit loops. and nobody should be eating that, is not good for you. And the reason why these are things have lined up- Coke with sugar or hypergose currency, right? Yeah. It's still a hyper-processed terrible food.

The reason why the food companies lined up is because it actually doesn't really matter that much. And there's really very little evidence, there's really no real evidence that the food diet itself is causing any of this metabolic problems. It can cause other things, right? It can cause, you know, ADD and allergy. There are problems with them, but it's not, you're right.

They're not causing you to gain weight, right? And if the science was there to prove that they were harmful, then this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, would ban it. The problem is, the, you have to, to revoke an approval, you have to prove harm. Uh, and that evidence just really isn't there, which is why I think he's gone the voluntary route, even though that was not sort of the initial framing of that announcement. I also, you and I, you and I were. probably disagree a little bit on this. I think the seed oil piece is just so off base. I agree with you, Sam. Oh, you do? Okay, okay. I did a whole podcast. I think it's a distraction. I was ready to like go back and forth. No, no, no. It is sugar and it's sugar and

starch. That's like it's right. It is wrong. But here's the problem. And the reason why we have to talk about this is like there's a bit of a, there's a conspiracy, a approach to this policymaking right now that actually isn't rooted in the evidence and it adds to confusion. And we have the Secretary of AJJS at a fast food restaurant promoting horrible food for people because it's fried in beef tallow, which the evidence shows is definitely not healthier for you. And it's still a cheeseburger and french fries. Well, it's probably healthier than doing a trans fat, which is what they used to do. Yes, of course. That's true. And look, We worked a band trans fat, so I agree with you on that.

That was a big fight, and we won that one. So, like, I agree with you on that. But when we start to focus on this, what we're doing is distracting from the issues that matter most and creating a ton of confusion. And, you know, we can leave vaccines out of it, but vaccines play a huge role in this, and it's extremely concerning to me about what's happening there. And the, you know, the Cidometiphon announcement last, whenever this wasn't recently. It's so bad, Mark.

it's like so bad and it and it's and it needs to be called out because i can't tell you how many text messages i'm getting from friends like should i have accidentally my kids like can i take Tylenol is it going to kill me and my kids when you look at the evidence there is no evidence for any of this well there's correlation but not causation yeah you can't draw conclusions about causality from these studies and yeah but this is the danger here but they when you at the at the press conference, they said it was causal, and it just is not. You know, organic, we've seen a 3x increase in autism since 2000.

We've seen a 5x increase in organic food consumption since 2000. Is it organic food that's driving our autism spike? It's not. My joke is, if you did a study of 55-year-old woman had sex, you would conclude that pregnancy never results from having sex. But that doesn't mean, it's true. It's not true. And so these things really matter, and they are undermining the public confidence and creating confusion, which then impedes our ability to make progress on the things that do matter.

You're saying keep your eye on the ball. We have to keep around the ball. This is just alarming. So I actually am now very worried that this movement is going to actually undermine the public health in a way that we've never really seen in modern times. And, you know, with vaccine rates falling, outbreaks increasing, this is like life or death stuff. This is not stuff that we're around with. And we are. And so now, like, if we even have, you know.

Although just to be fair, Sam, the amount of people dying from vaccine-related illnesses is like a, in minuscule fraction of the amount of people dying from metabolic disease that's caused by the food reading. It's just, it's like a rounding error. And not that we should not vaccinate. should. I'm a pro-vaccine, but I'm just saying that when you look at the numbers, I agree that we're focusing, yeah, we're focusing on the wrong thing. And I think it'd be a missed opportunity if, if this administration and the people within it didn't actually double

down on the food issues. And I think that that is something that is sort of happening under the scenes. Like, there's a lot of work being done that isn't catching headlines. And I think the press, unfortunately, likes to grab these headlines around Tylenol, around vaccines, around the measles outbreaks. But what's happening, happening. And I'm on the inside of some of these conversations. So I know there's a revision of dietary guidelines that I think are more attuned to what the science is saying. There's also efforts from, you know, the FDA to define ultra-process food to create a proper regulatory path. The NIH and the FDA have created a regulatory science initiative that actually

will fund the understanding of how these things should be regulated. The NIH is wanting to fund more nutrition research. We're looking at actually revisions of licensing exams and in medical schools to include nutrition that will mandate the curriculums to change. We're looking in front of package labeling change. We're looking at ending food marketing to kids. I mean, there's a whole bunch of things happening that aren't getting the headlines that are people are working on with the administration that I think really are meaningful that you and I both, I think, agree, are essential to sort of move this tankership in a different direction. So I don't deny that there are some good things starting to happen or bubbling under the surface. I just encourage all of us to be calling this how it is.

I think we've had a lot, my world, my friends, have had a lot of hope here. But when you step back, at least so far, and you look at kicking tens of millions of people off of health care, dramatically gutting SNAP benefits and WIC benefits for fruits and vegetables, nutrition education, decimating the agency itself, cutting 20,000 jobs out of the agency that you need to regulate these industries, harder and forget about climate which is like now we're promoting coal which is going to make

our ability forget about all the progress we could make you know so right now when i step back and look at the whole of the administration of which rfk is legitimizing uh and saying like look we're doing this good stuff like let's not pay attention to that it's not even close right now in terms of undermining the public health versus the benefits that have happened i deeply hope that that balance shifts dramatically. I'm skeptical, but I'm hopeful and we'll, you know, stand ready to be help in any way to try to get those things done. But nothing is going to, you know, overcome that kind of cuts to the people who are most vulnerable and need the help around just getting enough basic nutrition, you know, on their plate. So I think we've got to

call this how it is. Where would you double down? Like where, if you were, if you had Bobby Kenny's ear, you had Trump's ear or Brown's ear, where would you double down? These are one, two, three, four things that we've got to focus on that are going to move the needle. Yeah, on the health side, like from an HHS, strictly in HHS lens. I think the re-looking at grass is one of the top priorities. There's a lot of work that could be accomplished by redoing how we decide what's safe and what's not. I think the labeling is definitely a good thing, like, if they could get that done. I'm not opposed to that.

you know i think the i think snap is a big lever uh having fought all those battles of snap food stamps yeah sorry food stamps yeah for that's okay so for those who don't know what snap is yeah it's it's a joke and the joke is it's called the supplemental nutrition assistance program but there's no end in it there's no nutrition it's 75% junk food so i think we have to be very careful because if you actually look how the the dollars are calculated it's basically like people have to eat mostly beans to make the numbers work to meet the dietary standards of nutrition on the amount of money offer. So right now what's operating under the guise of nutrition is just cutting these benefits dramatically for people who are not anywhere close to making it. What needs

that and what I would support strongly is real nutrition restrictions not dissimilar to WIC, which is I would say one of the governments, the women infants and children's program, which is one of the most effective programs that the moment has for on a nutrition basis. is probably the most effective, but you have to meaningfully increase the snap benefit so that people have enough money in their pockets to buy the more nutritious food. Anything that doesn't do both

is just a cover for cutting benefits to poor people, which has obviously been a priority for one party in Washington for as long as time. So, like, that, we had to be very careful not to get caught in that trap. I agree, and I fought this fight. I started working on the first waiver 15 years ago. Yeah, that's incredible.

I'm in it. And now isn't it weird that the Republican states are all submitting these waivers for SNAP so their populations are restricted from buying soda or junk food on SNAP benefits, which is kind of crazy. It is crazy. But we got to make sure that they're also advocating for those families that have enough money to buy nutritious foods. And that's what's missing right now.

Yeah. And if we don't, you're going to see people just finding other ways to make those dollars stretch, and it's not going to be any healthier. year. So that that's a big lever and an important one. I think school nutrition has a big opportunity to, you know, to take another pass and level up those standards. I mean, when we got in there, there was no standards basically on anything being sold in schools. We got a lot done, but, you know, that was quite a long time. I don't know now. The biggest fast food outlet in the country these days is schools. Yeah, I write about this in the book. The first time I went into

the School Nutrition Association conference, I walked into this hall and all you could, can see as far as you can see, just giant, was just, you know, every hyper-processed food being pushed on our kids, you know, through this thing. And I literally just started weeping. Like, I just started, though. It was really hard, hard to see. It's come quite a, quite a long way, but nowhere near what it should be. And I think there's some real intractable problems there that are very hard to solve, but a big opportunity. Look, I think in the end, this comes down to sugar, mainly as the first big culprit. I think there's very tough, but possibilities around how you use taxes around sugar.

I think soda tax doesn't really make much sense to me, but sugar tax could be a very powerful tool, but political fraud, like, you know. The corn thing. Yeah, well, it's also just like people like their Coke and they don't want it to go up, you know. and like if you're going to make somebody's Coca-Cola be more expensive, people don't like that. And I think that's the thing that we have to really internalize that like it's not just the companies,

it's the people who eat these products, like they like those products and they don't want to pay more for them. And so your levers to either force a regulatory change on the formulation, like try to figure out a way to limit the amount of sugar per serving of something, that's a hard, hard one to do. So those obvious giant levers are, are hard to find, which is why I think, you know, policy has a role to play. But really shaping what is on our tables is we may not be as powerful as we think from a

policy standpoint. I think the biggest thing needs to happen, though, is on the act side where the government is much better positioned to have a huge impact is on the agricultural side. And we need to be derisking these transitions, so we should cover from an insurance standpoint the transition. We should be helping with massive amounts of technical assistance about how to actually do it because farmers, a lot of farmers don't really actually know these new

problems. They've been farming that way their whole lives. They need support. They need probably some premiums for those sort of outputs or new markets that'll pay for it. The government can play a huge role in enabling that transition. And that has been

completely wiped out. I think that has to get reinstated and triple quadruple down on. in a way that's not happening right now. But that's where I would spend a ton of time because I really do worry as much as you and I know that the current status quo is completely unacceptable. It is unconscionable that this is how we're eating

and all of the health consequence of that. But I actually really worried that it's going to get a lot worse, that these health problems are going to actually be exacerbated by climate. And we would be wishing for where we are today in five or 10 years. And that really scares me. So I would push very hard on that and to make a lot of progress there. I agree.

We got to start at the source, you know, as a functional medicine doctor, it's always about root cause and it starts on the field and with the seeds and with the soil and what we're growing and how we're growing in. I 100% agree. And I think your book, The Last Supper, How to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis, is hopeful. And we've talked a lot about a little thing in our picture. depressing today. But I think there is a hopeful message in here. There is a way out. This is a solvable problem. I mean, Middle East peace is a hard, freaking problem. This is not a hard problem.

We have the technology. We have the science. We know what to do. We know how to do it. It's really about driving consumer and citizen action to drive from the outside to the center to push the government, but to push industry because they will respond. They will respond. And I think that's kind of the hopeful message in your book. Everybody should definitely get a copy of The Last Supper, How to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis, is available now, everywhere you can get books. Thank you for writing and Sam.

It's an important contribution to the whole mess we're in right now to help us find our way out. And hopefully one day soon I get to come to one of your last suppers. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, let's do it. And I just want to say again, thank you for all the work you've been doing. You've been tireless in your effort to bring people together around this issue, to make it bipartisan.

And, you know, I got to tell you, I will never forget sitting down with you many years ago pre-COVID with you and some of your team and thinking that, like, I love that he's trying, but there's some naivete here. I just can't imagine anybody really taking this up, given my experience. And then what a difference you have made and what a different place we were in. And it does give us a chance to make a lot of progress that I could have only dreamed of. So thank you. On behalf of my kids and all of us, like, thank you.

trying you work on what it really mean that what um what thank you sam that means a lot what did margamesish is uh never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world in fact this the only thing that ever has and you know i've known bobby kennedy for a couple of decades and when i met him he was you know eating hot dogs and drinking coke and i started talking about this so i planted those seeds and uh he listened and um you know there's definitely things that i don't agree with him about but i think there's there's such uh good intent behind it all, and I think there's a lot of obstacles he's facing. So everybody listening, you know, don't feel like you can't do anything, you can.

I've written about how your book is about how, and whether you're in business, whether you're in philanthropy, whether you're in policy, whether you're just someone who eats food, there's something, little things you can do every day that make a difference. And, you know, I had a vision once for something called an Eden, you know, like we had to have sit-ins in the 60s. Imagine for one day, if the entire country, 330 million Americans, did not eat anything older processed and cooked only fresh real food at home and didn't go to out to eat. I mean, it would be a catastrophic for the food industry and it would be hopefully a catalyst have changed. So maybe we can kind of get and eat it somehow.

I'm in. Let's figure that out. I'm in. All right. You can cook. I'll do the cooking. I'll do the cooking. All right. Thanks, Sam. Great to see again and I'll do this again soon. All right. Sounds good. Thanks for having me. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts.

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