The Dr. Hyman Show - How Our Food System Acts as an Invisible Form of Oppression

Episode Date: May 24, 2019

We know all too well the visible forms of racism in our society. Less visible, however, is how our food system acts as the deadliest weapon used against the poor and minorities— keeping them poor, sick and fat, hijacking their brains and biology. The science is clear—our processed, sugary, starchy diet is the single biggest cause of disease and death—type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, cancer, and even dementia.  And your zip code is more important than your genetic code in determining your risk of disease and death. If you are African American you are 80% more likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, over 4 times as likely to have kidney failure, and 3.5 times as likely to suffer amputations as whites. I’ve explored these topics with a number of my guests on this podcast. This mini-episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy includes portions of my past conversations on this podcast with president of Black Lives Matter for the area of Greater New York, Hawk Newsome, Columbia University and Teachers College researcher Pam Koch and award winning NIH funded investigator and practicing family physician, Dr. Sean Lucan.

Coming up on The Doctor's Pharmacy. This is more targeted than keeping people out of jobs, keeping people out of schools, because no one really knows about it. Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. You know, today we're seeing an increasing burden of chronic disease, primarily caused by our food and our food system. Our current food policies promote the consumption of sugar

and unhealthy processed food. It allows unregulated marketing to kids. I mean, this is unprecedented in the world. It targets poor and minorities. Something else you might not know is that your zip code is more important than your genetic code in terminating your risk of health and disease. I've explored a lot of these topics with many of my guests on this podcast. And in this mini episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy, we're going to revisit portions of those past conversations that examine our food system and how it acts as this invisible form of oppression in our society. So let's dive right in, starting with my conversation with the civil rights activist

and president of Black Lives Matter for the area of greater New York, Hawk Newsome. So you grew up in the Bronx? In the 80s. Oh yeah, I'm old. Yeah. It was the height of the crack epidemic, right? So in the environment you lived in, it was violent, it was rough, it was poor. I want to talk a little bit about the whole food injustice issue for a minute. And what it was like growing up in that community, what kind of food there was or wasn't, you know, what your family ate. You have to look at it from the perspective of people who are living in these conditions. You have $20. It's one or two days before payday. It's a family of four.

McDonald's has this dollar menu. That means you could get about eight burgers, four orders of fries for $12. Yeah. You know, it makes sense economically. We didn't know what clean eating was. I think that people don't realize that there are massive health disparities.

It's like the third world in America. I mean, infant mortality in African-American communities is twice that of white communities. If you look at diabetes, we're 80% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes if you're African-American. You are four times likely to have kidney failure, three and a half times more likely to get your legs amputated because of diabetes. My dad had kidney failure. He was on dialysis for like seven years. Right, and so this is massive.

And in some ways, there's a sense in the general culture of sort of blaming the victim. But the whole system of food is set up in a way that actually is driving these behaviors. And what I've been sort of struck by is a lack of understanding that this is just another form of oppression, that big food and the targeted food marketing and the lack of access to food and the way in which even food stamps

are used primarily for junk food and soda. I which even food stamps, you know, are used primarily for junk food and soda. I would call it a silent killer, right? This would be, in my opinion, this is, this is more targeted than keeping people out of jobs, keeping people out of schools, uh, because no one really knows about it because we've been trained to believe that it is our choice. So when you told me, like, these food companies are intentionally getting people addicted to these foods, it kind of changed my life's path. Yeah. You know? It's like an invisible form of racism.

Exactly. So how did we get here? In my conversation with Columbia University Teachers College researcher Pam Koch, we discussed the structural racism embedded in our food system. Let's listen in. Nobody really talks that much about structural racism. What do you mean when you say that? Because it's a sort of a hard concept for people to understand. How is food racist? So, well, if you think about the whole history of our country, our country was essentially founded with slavery, which was about producing enough food and obviously was having some people be superior, owning slaves and some people being slaves. And that was basically divided as white people owned slaves and black people were slaves. And we never recovered from that. Health problems that we are having that's associated with food is a system problem. It's a problem of our food supply. It's

not a problem of the, it's a problem for the individuals that have the health problems, but it's not to blame them. It's actually, we should be looking at it as a system problem. And so- It's not people's personal responsibility as we're taught, right? It's your fault. Exactly. It's just calories in, calories out. If you just have the willpower and exercise more and don't eat as much, you're going to be fine. It's just not that simple. It's definitely not that simple. And so if we think about it that way and we think about the system that we have set up for Africans, Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics who have the highest rates of obesity and all the chronic diseases in our country, it's because of the communities that they have been allowed to

live in. And that's essentially how it's happened. So we have to start talking about that. Yeah, I mean, the sovereignty of the native food system is an interesting topic. Exactly. You've got reservations where they were all basically herded to, and they basically usurped their traditional food systems, and then they shipped in government commodities of flour, sugar, and Crisco, basically, shortening, which are all deadly. And now they're enormously overweight. 80% get diabetes by the time they're 30. So it's a massive problem. It's almost like the second genocide of the Native Americans and the African-American community too. I mean,

slavery was founded on the need to produce sugar and other commodities. And now it was a form of oppression back then through slavery. And today sugar is keeping Native and African-American and other minority populations down. It's sort of an interesting, it's like a new form of biological slavery that happens with these addictive substances. And we need to be looking back at the historical context to understand all the food related problems and issues we have if we're going to solve them. And if we don't understand it in that context and understand that some people have for generations been stuck with having limited access to healthy foods at this point. And we need to really change that. We are told that what we eat is a personal choice that's rooted in our cultural heritage and family customs. We're told that being fat and sick

results from eating too much and not exercising enough. This blames the victim when we know that the food industry designs our food to be addictive. Dr. Sean Lucan, a practicing family physician in the Bronx and an award-winning NIH-funded investigator, studies these issues. You've written a lot about how do we start to change these toxic food environments? What are the levers that we can pull? What are the strategies that we can use to help shift that? Because at the end of the day, it's the food system and the food environment that is the bigger determinant by far of health, obesity, diabetes, chronic disease, than personal choice and responsibility. That's really clear. In my patients, I'm struck by how motivated people are, how much they want to get better,

and yet being stifled at every turn by an environment that's just not supportive of those efforts. So what's the takeaway here? Well, let's jump back into my conversation with Pam Koch. What the policies are, what our farm bill is, what our dietary guidelines for Americans are, all matter in terms of what people eat. The other is, is that we all need to take responsibility for having a food supply for everyone that can nourish them. And if we don't take that on as a society that this is important, this is what we want to happen for everyone, we're not going to be able to move forward. Martin Luther King once said, our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. We can no longer be silent about this. It's time we say no to big

food and institutionalized food injustice that's causing this slow motion genocide. There are things we can't change as individuals. We can't stop natural disasters. We can't end wars, but we all eat. We vote three times a day with our fork. We can end this epidemic of chronic disease and obesity. The single biggest political act and the single biggest act of self-love, of rebuilding our communities, is to choose real food. We need to educate our kids and ourselves and our communities. We have to do this together. In fact, we can only do this together because getting healthy is a team sport. So thanks for tuning in. If you like this mini edition of The Doctor's Pharmacy, please share it with your friends and family. And until next time,

I wish you health and happiness.