The Dr. Hyman Show - Obesity Isn’t Your Fault: Biology, Addiction & Solutions with Dr. David Kessler

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

Obesity is often seen as a matter of willpower, but science tells a different story. My guest today, Dr. David Kessler—former FDA commissioner, lawyer, physician, and the man who took on Big Tobacco—explains why biology, not blame, drives our struggles with weight. On this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, we talk about why weight struggles are so common today, what new drugs can and can’t do, and how his new FDA petition targets one of the biggest culprits: processed refined carbs. Catch the full conversation on YouTube, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. [YOUTUBE THUMBNAIL] You’ll learn: • How food companies use ingredients like processed refined carbs to make products irresistible • Why GLP-1 drugs help many lose weight—but can’t fix the food environment driving the crisis • How belly fat fuels heart disease, diabetes, and cancer—and why ultraprocessed foods are a big part of the problem • Simple ways to break free from foods engineered to make you overeat • What Dr. Kessler’s FDA petition could mean for limiting processed carbs in our food supply and improving our collective health Plus, here’s a bonus: We’ve adapted Dr. Kelsser’s petition into a free PDF guide—The Hard Truth About Processed Carbs—so you can see exactly how these ingredients affect your health…and why his FDA petition REALLY matters. Tune in, download the guide, and find out how you can be part of the solution. 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 Seed, Paleovalley, Function Health, Timeline and AirDoctor. Visit seed.com/hyman and use code 25HYMAN for 25% off your first month of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic. Get nutrient-dense, whole foods. Head to paleovalley.com/hyman for 15% off your first purchase. Join today at FunctionHealth.com/Mark and use code HYMAN100 to get $100 toward your membership. Support essential mitochondrial health and save 20% on Mitopure. Visit timeline.com/drhyman to get 20% off today. Get cleaner air. Right now, you can get up to $300 off at airdoctorpro.com/drhyman.

I ran the FDA, and here I can't control my weight. So I ended up after COVID, 40 pounds heavier. And I didn't like myself. I said, look, I got to understand why do I keep on gaining this path? And what is it the root of this problem? 25% of us are going to develop heart failure. Half of us are pre-diabetic. 25% of us are going to have stroke.

We're going to talk about why we're in a metabolic crisis in America, why our food system is so messed up. And what we can do about it both from the personal and the policy perspective. David Kessler is a physician, an author, a public health leader. who has served as chief science officer of the White House COVID-19 response team and previously as the commissioner of the FDA. He's a pediatrician by training.

He also served as the dean of the medical schools at Yale and the University of California, San Francisco. It's not your fault, your fact, because the food industry wants to blame you. And that is as far from the biological truth as you could possibly get. I think it's important to change our paradigm of how we think about addiction.

I filed this petition with HHS. I think FDA has no choice. It's gonna have to get it, it's act together and say, how do we change this? food environment. They're going to throw hundreds of millions of dollars of legal arguments against this. So how strong do you think this would hold up in court? As you know, I'm always talking about how central the gut is to living a long healthy life. A high-quality probiotic is one of the most important things you can do for your gut,

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We did a show before, which everybody should listen to about one of your previous books. But we're going to talk about diet, drugs, and dopamine, the new science of achieving a healthy weight. But it's really way more we're going to talk about, which is why we're in a metabolic crisis in America, why our food system is so messed up, and what we can do about it, both from the personal and the policy perspective, because you, for those of that you don't know you, have a very storied career. You were the FDA commissioner a Democrat and a Republican president, Clinton and Bush, and you have also got a law degree from the University of Chicago. So you've got

this really interesting kind of juxtaposition of medicine and law. It's allowed you to take on some really big issues. And you were the commissioner of the FDA that really took on tobacco. Thankfully have saved untold lives because of that work. It taught you a lot about the science of addiction. It taught you a lot about the nefarious ways in which the tobacco industry was behaving what they knew and when they knew it and what they did to lie about it and cover it up that led to millions of deaths. And you took them a task and that's a big deal because tobacco is a big industry. And you've refocused your targets on the other addiction in America, which is food addiction and particularly sugar and starch, which are the things that are driving so much of

our metabolic crisis, our chronic disease epidemic. diabetes, obesity, everybody who listens to this podcast knows this back and forth because I talk about it all the time. But we're in this interesting moment where I think we've reached a crisis that we can't ignore. And whether it's good or bad or whether people like it or not, whether like Bobby Kennedy or not, the idea that America has woken up to the idea that we have a chronic disease crisis is a good thing. Now, what we do about it and how the policies roll out, that's another question we're going to talk about. But I think there's this really incredible moment we're in. And I kind of want to have you start by sharing your own personal story with your own

struggles with weight. Again, you've written an untold number of books on this issue. And still, it was hard for you to navigate your own weight struggles. And I wrote a book in 2005 where I basically said, it's not your fault, you're fat. Because the food industry wants to blame you. Eat calories in, calories out. All calories are equal. It's all about moderation. Eat less, exercise more. Essentially, the subliminal message in there, it's your fault. You don't have willpower, you're lazy, get your act together. And that is as far from the biological truth as you could possibly get. You've unpacked all this in many books, including this current book,

including Fast Carb, Slow Carves, including your book Capture, Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering, which has to do with mood stuff, but also related to issues of addiction, hijacked, how your brain is fooled by food, your food is fooling you, how your brain is hijacked by salt, sugar, and fat, the end of overeating, which I loved and was one of my favorite books, taking control of the insatiable North American appetite, also your book about your struggle with the tobacco industry and your battle that you won.

You come at this with a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience, both on the medical front as a doctor, on the legal front as a lawyer, and as a leader in public policy in America. So take us to your own journey. What's sort of got you focused on this idea that was so antithetical to the medical establishment's paradigm,

which is kind of your fault, just eat less and exercise more, eat a healthy diet, get more exercise, and you lose weight. And if it's not the case, then it's you. So how did you break that? And how did you come to what you understand now through your own story? So, you know, the most recent iteration

was, you know, I had the opportunity to co-lead Operation Warps Speedy. Yeah. Right? So a very intense period of time, COVID, for all of us. I was working 18-hour days. Yeah. Didn't leave, you know, my desk, literally seven days a week, you know, 676 million vaccines free, right?

We got to the other side and I found myself some 40 pounds heavier at the end of it. And you're working in a government building in Washington? No, I was working remotely. I mean, I would go in when I needed to for a secure facility for certain. meetings, but, you know, I was able to work remotely. The reason I ask is because the food is so crappy in the Senate and the Congress and all the agency building. But, but, you know, it was also crappy, you know, just at home.

At home. You know, my sense is if just I watched myself eat, right, and how I used food, you know, throughout the day, you know, I mean, for all of us, I think, there are these momentary, just these little ups and downs. And I would use food, you know, to regulate how I felt. So 10 o'clock at night, you know, if I have three, four more hours of work, you know, and I'm tired and I'm fatigued and all of a sudden that those thoughts, you know, well, do I go down to the refrigerator?

Do I get something to eat? No, it's not good for me. Yeah, but I got to get through the next two, three. Saving the country from COVID. Just trying to get through the day, right? These momentary, these blips. I mean, I was using food to, you know, regulate how I fell. Energy, mood.

I mean, exactly. I mean, you know, my guess is if I were born two, you know, two decades earlier, my parents or grandparents' generation, I would have probably been a smoker. I mean, so I grazed, right? But I clearly, I wasn't eating. for fuel, right? I mean, and I'd been here before, right? I would, you know, whether it was in med school,

you know, made exams, papers, you know, a young faculty member on the ER shift. I mean, I have to get through the next couple hours. I mean, how am I going to power myself through that? Caffeine and sugar. I mean, and I was just, I mean, I used food to do that. I would always be able to lose the weight, right? I mean, I dropped the weight, right?

I thought I was done. You know, I went on with my life, and I was getting it back. So I was dean of two med schools. I ran the FDA, right? I did warp speed, and here I can't control my weight. So I ended up, you know, after COVID, some 40 pounds heavier. And I didn't like myself. I mean, I just, you know, I just, I wasn't healthy.

I mean, it was, it's not about that. weight that's about that toxic fat right right i mean that's what belly fat the visceral fat it's that it's that fat that gets into our liver that gets into our pancreas that gets into our heart right that's that's that atopic fat that's not you know it's not where fat is supposed to be it's metabolically active right i mean and it i think there is a convergence i mean i i am sensing this you know i mean if just you know attended to the European, you know, heart meetings. I mean, if you talk to cardiologists or diabetologists and the nephrologist, I think there is a convergence that this toxic fat is metabolically active, you know,

this sick fat, is it the root of much of cardiac renal and metabolic disease? And I think medicine, including cancer, including high blood pressure. I mean, dementia, all of it. I think medicine is just waking up to that, right? I'm laughing because I wrote books about this 20 years ago. No, I mean, oh, everybody. I mean, take a bath, right? I don't care about that.

I'm like, you know, I mean, but seriously, you know, I am because, but we all knew weight wasn't good for us, but we didn't understand it was causal. We were doing dexas scans and when I worked at Canyon Ranch, when we're looking at visceral fat and we were looking at insulin levels and we're looking at particle size and lipids and we're doing glucose tolerance tests on everybody and we were like just seeing this happening in real time

and it kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse so I finished warp speed and I said look I got to understand why do I keep on gaining this back and what is it the root of this problem and that's why you know I said out to write the last book the diet drugs and dopamine And there is, you know, there is no doubt in my mind. I mean, the diet is the primary culprit.

I mean, there is no question about that. Now, you know, it's that diet, the food in our environment that interacts with our brains and the way our brains are wired. You know, we tended to, you know, we talk about addiction. We used to think addiction was for, you know, the weak, the downtrodden. I mean, it was about other people. It was a lot of stigma about it. I mean, absolutely.

But the fact is. And there's a lot of stigma about obesity, which is unfortunate. About both, right? But if you just look at addiction, you know, addiction is not about, I mean, it's those circuits are in all. of us. I mean, I am convinced. I mean, we were as a species, right? I mean, we evolved to be able to gate our attention, you know, I mean, on the, that energy dense food. That was responsible for survival. I mean, in an environment of scarcity, right? We evolved. I mean, those, those, you know, organisms survived if they could gate attention and focus on energy.

dense food. I mean, bitter foods are sometimes harmful, but sometimes not sweet foods or universally safe. But you have two circuits at work here, right? You have these reward addictive circuits in our brain. Dopamine.

Right. That cue-induced wanting, right? It could be the time of day. It could be a sight. It could be a smell. You know, I pass, you know, a location that I had been at, you know, I mean,

and gone in and got something to eat. And, you know, my brain, you know, that cue, right, triggers those thoughts of wanting, that, that, that urge, right? I mean, it gates my attention. I mean, and, you know, I don't, I can't get rid of that, that urge until I, I mean, actually consume. And then it's gone. Then it's gone.

But that cue induced wanting, I mean, is part of, um, uh, of, of all of us. So I think it's important to change our paradigm of how we think about addiction. But certainly that energy-dense food I mean, in that environment, right? I mean, it is, you know, and I saw this, you know, with tobacco,

the most powerful reinforces are the reinforces that can change how we feel. Well, I want you to break it down a little bit because, you know, people say food addiction and I talk about it. And I think most people think about it as a metaphor, you know, but it's not. It's actually a fact of biology.

And according to a large population study globally, 14% of the global population, including 14% of kids, are addicted to food by the Yale food addiction scale. And so what is this addiction? But there's a spectrum, right? Right, right. It's not, I'm sorry, the 14% is the worst.

And I think that that's the mistake here. I agree. It's not about 14%. it's about the 60, 70%, 80% of us. I agree, I agree. For whom food is that salient stimuli, that fat, sugar and salt, that perfect trifecter of energy-dense food

that capture our attention. I mean, if anything, I think the majority of us are wired to focus, I mean, on those cues. I mean, and, I mean, it's that maybe 15% of the population for whom food, you know, is not a rewarding stimulus. Those are probably the most interesting people. I mean, it's, it's, I'm not surprised that 67, the 80% of us, you know,

find food, you know, highly rewarding and attract our attention and have that call for it. It's what I'm interested in is, is that part of the population for whom food is not the salient stimuli, and what is it about them? But it can be. Like, like, for example, I don't have, I don't have. don't think an addicted personality. I don't have the dopamine receptor genes that require me to get more dopamine stimulation to feel good. But if I go on a rant of sugar, I'm just going to want more of it. Like, even if I don't have that predilection, and most of it doesn't bother me, but like occasionally,

like, if I'm in a stressful situation or whatever, I'll go, oh, God, I'm really like. But that past learning, that past experience, that exposure, right? I mean, begets, you know, more of that. I mean, It's all that cue-induced wanting. So what is going on biologically? Like, is it the same as heroin or cocaine or nicotine? Like, what's actually happening? So we've got to be careful at no doubt there are differences pharmacologically. So if you look at the dopamine hit, I mean, heroin and amphetamine is clearly in a different

ballpark as far as the extent of that hit. Nicotine, on the other hand, is probably much closer to food. And how hard is it to quit cigarettes? And again, it's this. gating of attention, right? You get, I mean, next time you get hungry, just try to figure out what the cue was. There's always a cue. It could be the time of day.

It could be a smell. Something triggered that thought, and that thought created this, you know, that sense of wanting. Yeah. Right. I mean, and, you know, that cue induced wanting, right? I mean, is what really I think that's part of all. all of us. And in, you know, and in the extreme form made it's food addiction. And many people,

you can just call it sort of disordered eating. But, but, you know, you know, and at the heart of that, I mean, what, you know, we took fat sugar and salt, put it on every corner, made it available 24-7, made it socially acceptable to eat anytime. And cheap, right? And cheap. And, you know, we created this food circus. What did we expect to have? It's a, it's a food carnival out there. It's, yeah, it's a toxic nutritional landscape that we're all exposed to. And causing this toxic fat. So that visceral adiposity

that you've been studying, right? I mean, is it the heart of much cardio, renal, metabolic disease? It starts early in life. I mean, we are seeing it in the liver of our kids, right? I mean, it gets into the heart. 25% of us are going to develop, develop heart failure.

Yeah. Right? I mean, what? 30, 40 percent, you know, diabetic. Half of us are pre-diabetic. 25 percent of us are going to have stroke. And at the course of that, I mean, there is this, I think finally, this convergence in medicine, I mean, and in public health.

We know what the, we know what the problem is. But you know, David, what's really striking to me is I co-founded a new company called Function Health that allows people access to their personal health data and lab testing. And I ask Quest labs, who's our lab. testing partner, I said, how many labs that get submitted test for insulin? And they're like, oh, less than 1%, less than 1%. And insulin is the first thing to go awry when you actually have this visceral fat. It starts to go up, and nobody's checking it. Well, not only that, I mean, if you look on a population basis, there has been a doubling in the last 20 years of insulin levels,

right? I mean, there is an epidemic of hyperinsulinia. And it's not. being tested. It's crazy to me. Now, you can argue, you know, that assay is not the easiest necessarily, right? These things happen so fast, you know, I mean, there's this cycle. I mean, does the visceral adiposity, this toxic fat, does that cause the hyperinsulinemia, or does the hyperinsulinemia cause the toxic fat? I mean, you get caught in this vicious cycle. Now, I've seen far too many patients over the years who felt completely overwhelmed by menopause. For decades, this transition has been treated like a mystery. It's been understudied and underexplained.

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mitopure. Visit timeline.com slash D.R. Hyman to get 20% off today. Well, David Liddick talks about, does overeating make you gain weight? Does it gain weight make you overeat? And it's this paradox. So you have these central, you have these central circuits, right, that focus our attention and our wanting on this, you know, this energy dense, highly palatable, high glycemic index food. And then you have these peripheral, the peripheral biology, me, in our gut. I mean the microbiome? I'm just talking about the hyperinsulinemia. Yeah. Right. I mean, the absorption, the belly fat, the biochemistry, what's going on in our liver. And, I mean,

the absorption of this rapidly absorbable glucose in a increasingly insulin resistant body. The American body is not well. I mean, only 12.2% of us are metabolically healthy. Well, actually, that was the last study. Then the new updated version, it's only 6.8% from Tufts, the same kind of data was like, that's frightening. I mean, that means the 93.2% of Americans have some degree of insulin resistance. They might not have prediabetes yet, but they're somewhere in that continuum.

And in some people, they hear that number and go, that just can't be right, right? I mean, it was very interesting. They go, I mean, only 12% or 9% or 6% of us are metabolically healthy. But the fact is, right, that, I mean, those are the numbers. It's true. I mean, we've tested over 300,000 members in our company, and it's shocking. The demographics of what the, like, the population level data on insulin, on glucose, on the metabolic effects on cholesterol of this visceral fat are just, So here I am, 40 pounds heavier, right?

And the question is, what does it take to reclaim our health? I mean, and I think finally, finally, right? I mean, I think we have the tools, right, to do this. I mean, look, I mean, you know, in the, it's pretty, in some ways, it's very complicated, but it's also very simple. I mean, you have one industry that makes billions of dollars, right, that's causing the problem. And then you have another industry now that, you know, is making equal profits to reverse what the former industry is. It's actually trillion. It's doing, right?

The focus, the increasing focus on, you know, we call it, you know, highly processed food or, you know, rapidly absorbable, you know, carbohydrates, ultra-process foods. I think the fact is that that food is engineered in such a way, right, that it goes down in a wash, it deprives us of satiety, right? It is rapidly absorbed. It's causing that metabolic chaos, right? And so you have this food on the one hand that's depriving us of this satiety, this ultra-processed food. And now for $1,000 a month, you can go buy a drug to reverse what that food is causing, right?

I mean, and it's just, if you came from another planet and you saw what was going on, you'd say something's wrong with that picture, fix the root cause. And just to unpack what you're saying is the change in the American food supply, or the last 50 years, has increased the consumption dramatically of sugar and starch and refined carbohydrates in ways that have activated this ancient survival system, which is to store fat at all costs when we've come across something sweet because we don't know when we're going to get our next meal.

But now we're in a food carnival, and it's everywhere. And it's hijacked our brains. It's hijacked our brain chemistry, our metabolism, our immune system, our microbiome, and it's created a cascade of effects that cause every almost single chronic disease of aging. Sure, if you go back, you know,

And I went back in, over the last, you know, a few months, did the book, and then I filed this petition with HHS, but, you know, went back and looked at the history. And the food industry back in the 50s, 40s, 50s, 60s, learned how to take corn, learned how to take starch, right, and was able through chemical processing, chemical and physical processing to create, you know, a whole slew of other, what they call at the time nutritive sweeteners, right, these starch conversion products. The, the, they have names called malto dextran or dextrose or amino zylos, or maltose, corn syrup, and corn solids. I mean, and that gave birth to an alternate universe.

I mean, you know, it's really not food. It's not technically food. Actually, if you look up the definition of food in the Webster's Dictionary, it doesn't actually meet the definition of food, which is something roughly that promotes the growth in health and organism. They took out the structure of food, right? They extracted these chemical components, and then they reassemble them in a way without the structure of that food, without the fiber, right? All that slowed down eating, right?

And they took the – I look at this ultra-processed foods, and I say, they're basically, they're four components of this stuff, right? Just when you look at how it's made, there's these refined sweeteners. There are these refined starches made in flash. there's these added fats in oils and there's salt right and what the the industry did from after it generated all these you know chemical ingredients right was to reassemble them I mean find some other chemicals that added to to mouthfield or texture because they were able to dial in right that palatibility this wasn't an accident Certainly wasn't an accident.

Like the tobacco companies were like, oops, we didn't know it was addictive, but baloney. The tobacco industry did the science. They did exquisite pharmacology. They did all the EEG work, the imaging work. They knew everything about nicotine. Secretly hiding the data. Correct.

And we went inside, you know, to do really the big investigation into the tobacco industry. And when I did that, my friends at night I had to teach me everything about addiction, and one of the tests on addiction was whether animal, laboratory animals self-administered nicotine. Correct. And they pressed a lever for nicting,

whether it was rewarding, whether it set off those reward circuits, right? I mean, of the brain. And they always had a positive control there of sucrose. And I said, well, what about sucrose? Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Why are you using that as a positive client?

And they never paid attention to me, right? And that's what got me interesting. What the industry did was it generated this whole new generation of industrial sweeteners, these starch conversion products. And we're able to take those ingredients, right? Again, not in the context of food or food structure, that food matrix, right? which is so key to that that absorption and reassemble that and make it highly palatable and energy dense and accessible and it was cheap no one went to study it no one asked what was the

effect of destroying that food matrix leaving that aside and just isolating these energy dense I mean in chemical ingredients that you see on that ingredient panel that you know you you'll look at it and you go, I don't know what half of those mean. Right. And to reassemble it, and no one asked, what was the biological effect? So if you take starch and you subject it to these, you know, number of processing techniques once called extrusion. I mean, and, I mean, it basically molds that starch and that, I mean, into any kind of form.

Side shape, color. Well, it gives you the thousands of products that are in the middle of that grocery. But to do that, you have to take that search and exert these sheer forces and these temperatures that change the molecular structure. And no one asked what happened in the body. No one asked what was going to be the metabolic consequences of that. Well, they may not have asked that, but they certainly knew the brain biology and they would do functional MRI imaging about what lights up what. And so they actually, like the tobacco companies, design these foods to be addictive.

Absolutely. And we will see, okay, my guess is some in the food industry may have done that a bit, but my guess is they had their head in the sands deliberately. They didn't want to know. Yeah, right? They went ahead and they created this alternate universe of, you know, this food system,

this ultra-processed food, I mean, of which these, refined carbohydrates, these processed carbohydrates, these added sweeteners, were a key component. Again, I mean, they had these, you know, added fats and oils, too. They had this salt, right? And it all ended up being very rapidly absorbed, causing this hyperinsulinemia, causing this visceral fat. And certainly, in anyone who is along that, that path, I mean, already, I mean, having, you know, challenges, you know, with their weight, that insulin resistance, if you add these energy dense, high glycemic foods, I mean, to somebody

who's, you know, insulin resistant. I mean, it's adding, that's where you're, that's where the real, you're adding that, that fire, exactly. And that's where, and that's what's going on. Yeah. And that's why, And again, it's not just staying, it's not just a hyperinsulinemia. It's not just the fat. I mean, it's that liver, the liver consequences, the consequences in the pancreas, the consequences, that actopic fat in our heart. Yeah. I mean, that's, I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's causing some of this atrial fibrillation.

That's right. The fat's, that's not where fat's supposed to be. No. And it's, that fat is metabolically active. And it's neurochemically active. And it's immunologically active. It's hormonologically active. It, you know, go back.

I mean, what's the cause of this? You know, what you're, I just want to double click on what you're saying because it was so important. The way in which food companies have taken commodity crops, soy, wheat, and corn primarily, and deconstructed them. Correct. Broken them part chemically, altered their chemical structure and composition in ways that are completely new to nature.

Correct. They're frankin molecules. Correct. And then they reassemble them into things that look like food, but actually aren't food. Bingo. And they were cheap, right? And they dialed in palatibility. They dialed in, you know, that sugar, that fat, that sweetness, that trigger our reward circuits in many of us, right?

And that caused that metabolic harm because when you eat this, it goes down in a wash, it's rapidly absorbed. There's no satiety. There's no feelings of fullness. I mean, it gets to just get so rapidly absorbed. It causes this hyperinsulinemia. And it's the reason why, you know, we're seeing the chronic disease that we're seeing in this country. I mean, we now understand this is the primary cold. A hundred percent. Amen. Hallelujah. I've been saying this for decades. Thank God. You and others are figuring this out.

I think what I want to now do is kind of dive it on a rabbit hole because in America in this moment, there seems to be a rare and unique opening to have a conversation about this, that ultra-processed foods has been part of a national conversation now. It wasn't even a, a thing 20 years ago wasn't even defined. It was just junk food or processed food or fast food. Now we have a term for it. It started out of, you know... Not a perfect definition.

No, I was going to say that. I mean, we got to be careful, right? I'm going to get to that. I'm going to get to that. There was a Brazilian scientist who came up to the... Carlos Montereo. Montero came up with the Nova classification, which was an attempt to try to figure it out. There were a number of other classifications, right?

But what's happening right now is that the FDA, where you're a commissioner, has requested an RFI request for information from scientists and experts around the world, what is ultra-processed food and what should we do about it? How do we think about it? How do we do it? It's asking for the definition. It's asking for the definition because unless you want to know what the definition is, you can't actually start to regulate or legislate around it.

Yes and no. So certainly if you want to label something ultra-processed food, you have to come up with a definition, but the industry will challenge, that that definition will always include certain things that you can argue, well, is this healthy and it's healthy and it's health for process? I mean, there's always going to be those debates, I mean, at the extreme. But we certainly know what's in the components of this food. It is refined sweeteners. It's refined flowers and starches.

It's these added fats and oils, right? I mean, it's soft. I mean, and it's these other chemicals that give it texture and mouth feel, right? And this drives in the palatibility. So we really do know. what these foods are, and we know these foods don't exist in nature. Yeah. And just to be clear for everybody listening, you've submitted a petition to the FDA that was based on their request for information for ultra-posed. No, I mean, I actually wasn't

for the request. It wasn't because of the request for information. Oh, I thought it was. No, the petition went in separately, right? I mean, it certainly is consistent with that, right? And looks at this food system, looks at this, this system that got developed in the 40s and 50s of developing these cheap ingredients out of food and reassembling them, right? And creating this food circuit. Because it recognizes that. It recognizes ultra processed food, right? I mean, and highly processed food. I mean, we can, you know, choose how you want to refer.

to this, but it's certainly not food, I mean, as we know it, right, as occurs in nature or stuff that we make at home. The petition was very specific, right? And let me just, let me back up for one second, give you a sense of the nation's food law so you understand that. I mean, anything, I mean, in fact, the nation's food laws are pretty comprehensive and strict if we were enforcing them. Well, right? So if you want to add something to food, it's a food additive, and you have to meet the definition of reasonable certainty of no harm. Reasonable certainty of no, you can't add anything to food for which there's not reasonable certainty of no harm. Now, in a drug, you know, safety, no harm, you balance risks and benefits. Yeah. Not in food.

The law requires you to be reasonable certainty of no harm, right? But Congress enacted that in 1958, but there was this exception. It was a definite, there was a term called grass, generally recognized as safe. If you were generally recognized as safe, if you were grass, you didn't have to come in and prove that you were reasonable certainty of no harm. You can just go onto the market. And the industry was able to self-determine whether it was grass. So in, and I went back and I found the,

document, 1988, that it actually had its predecessor documents in the 1970s. And it was a, the grass evaluation for corn syrup, corn solids, dextrose, right? Malto dextran, all those starch starch conversion products. Most of those are gerrots of corn.

And gave rise to the modern, highly processed food. I mean, go look in the middle aisles, right? Those corn syrup, corn solids, malto dextrants, right, were the essential items that gave rise to this industrial revolution of all this highly processed food. And back, there's an 88 document where the FDA says that it looked at corn syrup and corn solids and the malto dextran, dextrose, et cetera, and said there is no link between those substances and obesity, no link with diabetes, no link with cardiovascular disease, and therefore that stuff is grass. But they hadn't studied the link.

Let me just, so understand grass. FDA, right, FDA doesn't have to show that something is unsafe, right? In order to be grass, there has to be a consensus among experts, trained in the the field, right, out there, that there's a general consensus that the substance is reasonable certainty of no harm, right? And these substances were granted grass status. So if I ask you today, and I lump these, these ingredients into this term called process refined carbohydrates, right? You know it well. You've written about it, right? Before the term ultra-processed foods, we understood processed refined carbohydrates. Process refined carbohydrates are.

are an essential part of ultra-processed foods. We can agree. You can't have these ultra-processed foods without these process-refined carbohydrates. The machinery, the corn syrup, the corn solids, you couldn't use, in fact, sucrose would gunk up the machines. You needed, you know, for that viscosity, for that lubricity, et cetera,

for these machines to work, to give rise to that moisture in all this processed food. You had all these starch conversion products of the industry learned to use. So I ask you, is there a general recognition of safety among experts that corn syrup, corn solids, multidextrin, are safe? Today, the answer is no. Then I think they didn't know. The thing about grass, just because something is grass, let me give you two other pieces, and then we put it together.

Just because something is grass back in the 70s doesn't get you home free forever. Just because you were grass back then, you have to continue to be grass, right? And the burden is not on FDA. The burden is on industry. So why isn't the FDA held them to account? Bingo. So that's why the petition goes. So the petition basically looks at these corn syrup, corn solas,

these refined, what I call these refined process carbohydrates. Now, I don't deal. I exclude, you know, anything that's made in home, sugar, flour, stark. You want to make cookies with flour and sugar. I don't deal with that. But what would you deal with? See, the Food and Drug Act deals in ingredients.

It doesn't deal in processing, except, so you have to focus on what the ingredients are. So if you just say FDA, go deal with ultra-processing, right? So you have to come with what's the ingredient. But the law says, you know, if you have an ingredient, right, you have to generally recognize, say, under the conditions of use. So if you take that carbohydrate or that rapidly absorbable carbonate and you subject it to extrusion or certain kind of processing, then you consider that processing. And so when you took the refined wheat and the refined starches and subjected it to extrusion technology, is a general recognition of safety. No one studied that, right?

So I have these categories of refined processed carbohydrates in the petition, right? It also includes sucrose, refined flowers, and starches, when used with these eumectins, dough conditioners, these stabilizers, I mean, these other chemicals. If they come along with the package, it's bad. These other processing aids, right, I say there's not a general, not general recognized as same. And it's a matter of science and law, these substances can't be grass today. You know, it just reminds me of when T.H. Huxley heard of the theory of evolution. He said, how stupid not to have thought of that. Right. I mean, so in order to put this together, I mean, I had to go to law school.

I had to do tobacco. I had to be FDA commission. I'd write these books. And then all of a sudden, I mean, it couldn't be more simple. Yeah. Right. We have this huge chronic disease problem. We know the culprit, right? We understand the metabolic harm. We understand that. toxic fat, I mean, in our liver, our heart and peckers. We know that our diet is the primary culprit. We know that it's these rapidly absorbable carbohydrates. The FDA said, the industry said it was safe, generally recognized as safe back in the 70s and 80s. If you look at the dietary

guidance advisory committee in 2015 and 2020, you don't have to go look any further. They did the systematic reviews. They have shown that these refined carbohydrates, I mean, they've shown all the adverse events associated with that, that they are linked with obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. So those statements back in the 70s, there was no link between these. Just go look at the dietary advisory, the scientific report. And the evidence is there. And this does not require a new law. It doesn't require an interpretation of statute. It just requires enforcement of existing statute. Yeah. And the fact that there's one other thing. The end is very elegant. It's like, it's like, wow.

What a brilliant idea, because you're putting the onus of proof back on the food industry. Where it should belong. Yeah. Right. And now the industry will come and say, well, what about one can of this or, you know, one teaspoon or that? That is safe. But there was something else about the law that is key. The law requires an evaluation of safety based on the cumulative effect, the cumulative dose.

So, I mean, if you go look around, right, you see what the cumulative effect of process refined carbureates, and the doses were currently consuming them, they are not safe, right? So they got on this market, on the market, because they were grass. You can't be grass anymore, right? So in some ways, it's self-executing. The industry does not have a legal basis to be selling these process, refined carbon hydrates, if they are not grass. And they are not grass.

They're going to throw hundreds of millions of dollars of legal arguments against this. So how strong do you think this would hold up in court? I think that it's easier than tobacco. Easier than tobacco. I think it's much, tobacco, certainly I don't want to get oldly legal, you know, in a post-chevron world. I mean, for the lawyers, you know,

in interpreting the statute. This is, the existing law, right, requires that these substances be generally recognized the state. There has to be an expert consensus, a consensus among experts. The FDA does not have the burden. The industry has the burden. All you have to do is show that there is not,

there are these questions about the safety, right? Any doubt in your mind, the process refined carbohydrates? I mean, there's questions about the safety? That's all FDA, that's all, I don't think anyone. I mean, what was striking about, so I submitted this petition, right? Fair to say that the nutrition community is,

has divergent views within the nutrition community. Of course. Right? I mean, there are all these, you know, I mean, very strong views, very strong. I mean, in some ways, we eat our own, I mean, in the nutrition community, right? I mean, you've lived it. You see the effect. The one thing that was striking is when everybody said, I said, process refined carbohydrates are not grass.

Everybody looked at that and go, oh, we could agree on that. Yeah. So, again, does this deal with all processed foods, all ultra-processed foods? I mean, could I have gone after added fats and oils? Could I gone after salt? Right? I mean, could I have done those. But if you look at that, what's driving this metabolic harm, I think 80, 90 percent, I mean, of the culprit has these processed refined carburettes.

Maybe it doesn't deal with everything. So how do you thread the needle on the dose question? Because if you have like, you know, a cookie or two once in a while, it's not a big deal. But it's the cumulative dose. The law requires you to evaluate under the conditions of use as it's being used. You need look no longer than just look around us. So would you say like if it's more than five grams of sugar refined carbiderine or how do you do that on the... But that is going to be, look, I think FDA has no choice.

I mean, I think the secretary and the FDA, you know, I mean, I don't think these things are grass, right? And once these are not grass, figuring that out on what can be safe shifts to the industry and the industry is going to have to come in and it's going to have to get its act together and say, how do we change this food environment? The ability to remake our food system. So the FDA enforces and says this is not longer grass. We missed the boat. We kind of had a blind spot here.

Now we get it. And as of tomorrow, all they have to say is not grass, it's not grass. And then what happens? Then you have to give the, you probably give the industry a certain time. And then they can come in and they have to figure out how they're going to remake and reformulate food, right, so that Americans can thrive. Basically, the minute the government says it's not grass and gives them a deadline. I'm not even sure it's whether the government, the government doing that would certainly be very important. But I actually think it's self-executing.

I think under the law, the food lawyers I've talked to, I mean, I don't think you can credibly say it's generally recognized as safe. Certainly if the government does that. But someone's going to enforce it, right? Well, so you're exactly right. I mean, and the FDA did issue this document in 88 that said these things are grass. So I think FDA has to say that it is not. People say it will take FDA a long time to study this and to figure out all the answers

to these questions. They got it wrong. The burden is on the industry to show that it's safe. I mean, the FDA simply says, hey, just look at the dietary guidance advisory committee scientific reports. These refined process carbohydrates, I mean, there is a link with obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Maybe we didn't see that link back four or five decades ago. Maybe that was an error that we didn't foresee. But what about the dose question to be back to that?

Because I think that's challenging because it's like the dose makes the poison according to paracelsis. Exactly. But look at our food environment and then go to the European food environment where there's much less ultra-processed food. Yeah, much healthier. And so the question is we're going to have to remake our food environment. And remaking our food environment is going to mean that the dose is going to have to come very substantially down, right? Because no question at current doses, at current consumption levels, current cumulative consumption levels, right, we see the harm. I mean, and the harm is demonstrable.

Just look at the American body. We see that effect. According to recent USDA data a few years ago, it was like 152 pounds of sugar and 133 pounds of flour per person in America per year. That's almost three quarters of a pound a day. That's a pharmacologic dose. We are consuming, right,

about 500 calories a day more. Now, maybe calories aren't, everything when it comes to toxic fact, but it's certainly part of that. It's the toxic fact plus the refined rapidly absorbable, you know, glucose. I mean, it is contributing to the sepatic fat. But certainly those calories plus the refined processed carbohydrates are the toxic. Well, the calories are usually the refined carbohydrates. That's where they're coming.

I mean, exactly. It's not like we're eating 500 calories more of meat or chicken or fish. So if you look at what it is, it's about 200, 300 calories of these refined, grains, right? It's these starches and flowers, right? It's more sweeteners, although increasingly the sweeteners, you know, are these artificial sweeteners, right? I mean, it's not the corn syrup syrups they've been replaced by these newer chemicals. I mean, the sweetened foods. So you have these added fats in oils, you have these refined starches, and you have these added sweetness, and that's what makes up the additional 500 calories. And you were going to have to rethink the

formulation, I mean, of these foods. Look, once you open the door, what the petition does, I think is just, that's the question. It opens the door. Yeah. And once you open the door and say, hey, it's no longer grass, there's no turning it back. Most of us think about the food we eat or the water we drink, but rarely the air we breathe. The truth is, indoor air can be filled with invisible pollutants, things like mold spores, allergens, smoke, VOCs, and even bacteria, and viruses, and we're breathing that in all day long. That's why I use Air Doctor at home and in my office. Unlike standard air purifiers, Air Doctor uses Ultra Hepha filtration to capture extremely small particles that down to 0.003 microns. It also has a built-in smart sensor that

continuously monitors air quality and automatically adjusts the filtration, so I know it's working, even when I don't think about it. Whether you're struggling with seasonal allergies, wildfire smoke, or just want to create a healthier home, Air Doctor is one of the most effective steps you can take. Just go to air doctorpro.com slash D.R. Hyman. That's Air Doctorpr.pRO.com slash D.R. Heimann. Take charge of your environment, breathe cleaner, healthier air with air dock. So, so, David, you're in a room with Secretary Kennedy, FDA commissioner, McCarrie, you, maybe a couple other scientists, maybe me, I don't know, and we're sitting there a month from now. What are the steps that you're going to tell them to take to actually

make this a reality. Because it seems to be like a loophole that you found that nobody's been thought about before that actually could solve the problem. It certainly gets the ball rolling and reframes the debate. It gives us the tool.

So what did we do? Understand when tobacco started, actually tobacco started with a citizen's petition, 1988. Right? The American Lung Association, American Cancer Society,

Association submitted a petition to FDA. It was sitting there when I got there that said FDA should regulate low tar, low nicotine cigarettes as a drug. Huh, why low tar, low nicotine cigarettes as a drug? It didn't quite make sense, but it gave the regulatory hook, right? It gave the authority, I mean, to ask those questions. And we reframe the question, not as is low, tar cigarette low nicotine cigarettes a drug, we reframe the question, is nicotine a drug? And once we asked that tobacco, that question, we did the investigation into the industry. We found out what the industry knew, right? We got those hearings.

Remember those, the CEOs testifying? They believe nicotine is. Right? And then there was all this legislation took two, three decades. But once you, what the petition does by saying, There's no longer grass. It gives HHS, the regulatory and legal hook to be able to reframe the food. But it's going to take decades.

I mean, you're sitting with the people who are making decisions in Washington and you say, okay, you guys have to go back to industry and say these subs are a longer grass. But that's the easy part. That just gets it started. Then the question is how you're going to fix it? The great public health success of our lifetime, tobacco fair yeah right what in what in the end worked litigation go ahead labeling labeling labeling right advertising taxation so focus on our kids all I mean all that work but what really

worked what what what did what those things what those were all tools right if you go back and you look at certainly in my parents generation or my great great my grandparents generation Right? How'd they view tobacco, right? Tobacco was sexy. It was adventuresome, right? It was positively valence. The industry in the early 1900s, they had that Marchdown Fifth Avenue. It was associated with emancipation. It was, they hired the psychoanalyst A.A. Brill, to come up with the phrase tortures of liberty, symbols of freedom. That was something you wanted. That's something you desired, right? It was cool, right? They made a child. Cool to kids. What did we do? What did we do? What did it take a 75 years? You made it a pariah.

Right. So we took something, an addictive substance, a reinforcing substance, a powerful substance, biologically active that affected our brains, affected our metabolism, right? Affected our bodies. And we changed the valence. The industry made it positively valence. What do you do if something's positively valence you want it, right? You need it.

I mean, I can't live without it. What did we do? We made it negatively veinsed. We had this critical perceptual shift as a society. I don't want that. So are we going to have to label these? Are we going to have to show people, right, that these chemically engineered,

these foods that have these refined starches and grains, refined sweetness, these added fats and all, these are not foods, right? Sure, they make, you know, in the moment, may it get me past the next 20 minutes, right, it may give me energy for two hours, but how is it going to make me feel, over the long term. Is it cheap? No question it's cheap.

Short term. But the long term, look at the devastating cost. So we're going to have to change. We're going to have to have this critical perceptual shift. We understand what the problem is, right? Now there needs to be the coming together, and we just have to execute this. So do you think it's like a public health education like we did with cigarettes? It's everything, right? It's everything you name. HHS has to act. Congress has to, I mean, whole, Hold that hearing, right? Who should be the first, you know, the first witness? Secretary has to go in, right, and explain that this stuff is no longer grass and there's no longer a legal basis.

Next panel is going to be the next panel is going to be the industry CEOs and how are they going to fix this, right? And the question is, is the industry going to just take the position defend, defend, defend? Or is the industry going to understand? I mean, when tobacco, you know, when we started, the industry was defend, defend, defend. This is great. This is great. I love this idea.

I'm actually good friends with the chair of the subcommittee on health in the Ways and Means Committee who wants to have hearings on these things. So I think since Medicare is overseeing the health of America in many ways, it would be an interesting place to have these hearings. FDA has to do, HHS has to do its part. We have these hearings. The food industry has to come in with its solutions, and it's going to take, is it just going to be the revocation aggress that's going to solve this? No. But it's going to have to put

together that comprehensive package. But I love the idea of having, like, you know, industry experts and CEOs held their account. I love the idea of scientists and people in the government actually testifying. And government doing what it can do. And FDA now has, in this petition, it has the regulatory hook. I mean, I have shown this to the, the best food lawyers I mean in the country and this is straightforward I mean I read it my jaw was on the floor and I we're going to link to it in the show notes so if anybody wants to read it I encourage you or you can just read the near times about it article that you were featured in which is also quite good it or just throw it in chat you pete and ask you to summarize it's a summarize and if you go back to the book

you go back to the book there's a chapter yeah I think it's chapter 23 that said you could not have designed a better weapon to blow up the American body? Meaning the petition, or you mean the food? The food industry. If you look at what we did, okay? I think it's like lead in the pipes in Rome. It's like the end of the Roman Empire. You know, it's the end of the American Empire,

and it's something we bring on ourselves by the permissive nature of how we allow the food industry to run rush out over American people, how we don't properly regulate it, how we allow things like advertising of junk food to kids that are banned in most countries, how we don't have clear warning labels on food that's harmful for you.

Up until now, the industry has been able to, you know, do this with impunity, put this out, right? And say, it's not my food. I mean, it's the dietary patterns, right? But it's these industrial foods that created the current dietary power. matter, right? So there is, there is, and we need, just to just complete full picture here, right? So the question is, what do you do if you're the individual?

Yeah. How do you protect yourself from this environment? Because clearly, we've been talking a lot about the public health interventions, which have to happen, but also, but it's absolutely kid. Yeah. So again, I left whoop speed 40 pounds heavier, right? And metabolically, my body It was not good. I actually, I started losing weight, you know, and I went on, you know, my typical, you know, low-carp kind of diet. I lost a couple of pounds, right? It wasn't going as quickly, I mean, as I wanted, I mean, interestingly, and I threw a, I had a kidney stone. You know, losing weight.

I mean, you know, I was at risk for kidney stones. I found myself in, in the ER. I was just, you know, dehydrated and, you know, had the kidney stone. They drew blood, and I had this elevated calcium level. Why didn't have an elevated calcium level? And this didn't make sense. So I went to an endocrinologist, right? Parathired hormone was that?

It was a spurious result. It was a spurious result. But the endocrinologist happened to be doing some of the clinical trials on the GOP-1 drugs, right? And I said I was losing weight. And he said, do you want to try to go? on the GOP-1 drugs, you qualify. My BMI was greater than 27 with a curmorbidity, and I'm writing this book, and I said, hey,

and I wanted to experience it, right? Diet, drugs, and dopamine, right? I mean, the dopamine I had, right, those, you know, and there is, when you look at the biology, and I think that this is key, I think, first of all, the one thing the drugs show, right, is they're highly effective. No question you lose weight on the GLP ones for the vast majority of people, 95% of people lose weight. They are not the be-all and end-all.

They're not the whole story. They are only one tool. They have real adverse events, right? But if you look at those drugs, certainly those drugs work through biology. so it's proof that it's not willpower. We can agree on that, right? But what the pharmaceutical, how are these drugs really working?

Why are they so effective? You know, we talked about the, the sedonic, this reward, this addictive circuit in our brains, this dopamine circuits in our brain, the reward circuits, right? There's another set of circuits, right, in our biology.

You mentioned it when you talked about it. There are these aversive circuits, right? And so what do these drugs do, right? I mean, these drugs delay gastric emptying, right? They slow down the movement. Highly processed foods increase the speed of that as a food. It slows your gut down. And we've all experienced it. We've had the flu. Our gut slows down. You're not hungry. But how do you also fear? When you have the flu and you don't want to put anything else in your stomach, right? They're nauseous. So what these drugs do is they delay gastric emptying

and they push you to that edge of nausea, right? What's strong enough to overcome the addictive circuits? Wanting to puke. No, so you laugh. Now, the great thing about these drugs is they titrate the dose. I'm not kidding, I'm just... No, no, no,

but that's exactly how this is work. So, so what happens? The way these drugs work is they have this spectrum of, you know, there's a spectrum of satiety. there is fullness, right? There's, you know, I'm satiated.

And then there's Thanksgiving Eve fullness, right? I mean, where you push it up. And then there's the, you know, I push you over to the avert GI, you know, effects of that nausea, right? I mean, the acute effects, if I push you over the edge. So what these drugs do is they stimulate that circuit, right? The gut and the brain, I mean, it's working on the area per stream of the hindrate and the gut. you delay gastric dent and you push people to that edge of nausea.

Now, everybody feels this differently. And what do you do? If you know you're going to put food in your stomach and it's going to make you feel ill, what do you learn to do? Not eat. Or eat less. So that's, I mean, my guess is that's the primary.

It's like a gastric bypass without the bypass. Now, how long are people on these drugs? Well, often after a year, 50% stop. Even more. Okay. The vast majority are off these drugs, eight, nine. And then they gain back 65%

on the weight or more. So what's going to happen? In three, four years, we're going to go back and look, and the average person's on this drugs for eight to nine months, they gain back the weight. And what are we going to say? There's one big, these are highly effective drugs while you're on them, but if you go off them, right? And if you go off them, you know, understandably, they don't work when you're off them. But while they're on them, they delightly, this gastric empty. And you need this, this seesaw, there's these reward circuits, this. going to make me feel better, and this is going to, you know, increase satiety and make me feel full. I don't want this, right? Just because I was born without the genes to have this satiety

and I need this drug, there should be no shame associated with using these drugs, right? But we got to figure out how to use these drugs wisely, right? They are an important tool, but they are not the only tool in the toolkit, right? So can you use these drugs to change, you know, your relationship with food? To condition yourself to eat less? Sure. To give you this as high to want to eat real food, to eat, not eat, I mean, people change. It's very interesting how these drugs change taste. They change what people want to eat for the first time people say they want to eat healthy. They don't want this, you know, highly, high glycemic fat and sugar. Because if that's just going to sit there in their stomach, how is it going to make them feel? Right. Right. But these, but, but, but,

but we have very powerful tools that can, that are highly effective, but we don't know how to use that in the long term, right? What's your sense of these drugs long term? Because, you know, we're talking about covering the Medicare. I mean, people should have that. I mean, imagine struggling with your weight for your whole life, right? And you have real, this real, I mean, that be your belly, right?

I mean, let's, right, that be your belly, I mean, the average male in this, country who's 50, 60, 70 pounds overweight, and where is that fat? Belly fat. And what do we use, we've actually, you know, that dad bought or whatever people refer to it. I mean, but we made it cool in this country, right? But, but in fact, what's going on with that, that beer belly? I mean, we got to help. I mean, that, that be a belly translates into heart failure, into a for, uh,

these judge are a tool to get us there. But if people, more than 50% of people are often. But we got to give people care. You mean, you got to marry with nutrition. and exercise and coaching and support. And you can't and and it's not your fault. Right. Okay.

But the one thing you can decide to do is to do something about it. But you have to be, but then we have to give people help. I mean, personally, I think it's malpractice to prescribe these drugs without an nutrition consultation without higher protein intake without exercise training and building muscle. And if we're just going to put people back into an environment, right, with all this ultra-processed foods,

what's going to happen when they're off the drugs? Yeah. So we've got to change the food environment, but we got to give people the tools and give people the care. I mean, this is what you've always stood for. Fair?

Yeah. This is what you've cared about. Yeah. I mean, people talk about longevity. What's longevity? Let's really talk. What's longevity? I mean, if I could prevent heart failure,

if I can prevent atrial fibrillation, if we can prevent certain forms of these cancers. I mean, we are at the point. Yeah. Right? If we can reduce this visceral adiposity, this toxic fat, right? That's longevity, fair? I mean, that's what's killing us.

That's what's in our senior years, how many years of chronic disease, of that health span is going to be taken up by disability because of this heart, this cardiac, I mean, it may be cardiac disease and may be renal disease and maybe metabolic disease, but it's going to manifest itself that toxic fat and we could do something about that we know how to change the we know we have to change the environment

right we have these tools we just now have to put it together this is incredible I think between the in the public health focus and the clinical focus and the structural changes that have to happen in our society to allow people to make better choices where the default choices the healthy choices

and most of the bad choice is going to have it's going to take a I don't know if it's hopefully. Tobacco? Yeah. How long did it take us? 30 years. All right.

This is as big as tobacco. I think it's bigger, but the question is everybody eats. No, not everybody has to smoke. But you don't have to eat. Alter-process food. You don't have to eat in this alternate food universe. Yeah. It's true.

It just requires a whole restructuring of everything from field of fork. And that is really important because it's not just a policy issue. It's not just a personal choice issue. it's like how we grow our food and it goes back to right but it's how we're making this food soil and how we're processing it but look at how this ultra-processed food is coming together it's not food no right i mean they're taking right these supercharged ingredients and putting that together in some kind of mixture and then they're adding back that palatibility that's not food yeah i agree i mean i think there was one sweeping policy that the u.s government could make

that would change everything, would be like, if you're eating something, does it promote or detract from your health? And if it's something that detracts from your health, it shouldn't be covered by any government policy. You can make your own choice to drink soda. We certainly shouldn't give it a pass and say it's generally recognized. No, it's sort of like, imagine with SNAP, with the food stamp program, imagine we were paying for $125 billion of cigarettes for America.

That's essentially what we're doing. So an incredible opportunity to get this done? There's an incredible opportunity. Yeah, right? We understand what we need to do medically. There's finally a convergence. So what's going to tip this point? Like, you wrote this petition, it was brilliant.

It was like this insight that I was like, oh, my God, why did I think of that? It's so good. And it makes sense. And it seems straightforward. So how do we get this over the finish line? Because you and I and a few of others. There's not one finish line. In tobacco, there wasn't just one finish line.

It was a series of chapters. We got to get HHS to act on the petition and simply say, get the ball rolling. I'm on it. Okay. I'm on it. All right. I mean, if you do that, right, then you open up the, you have the hearings, right?

I'm on that too. Okay. And you bring in the food industry. I can help that. And they got to be able to part of the solution. We're going to have to give people care. We can't just wait to change our food environment. People need care today, right?

These drugs are one, they're powerful. They're not the whole answer. Okay. but we have to give people access to real food. We have to give people access to care. I mean, and finally, finally, what you've always wanted to do, I think we can reclaim our health.

I love this. This is beautiful, and what a wonderful place to end. We can reclaim our health. And, you know, you've been a pioneer in this space for a long time. I have huge respect for you. I followed your work from the days back when you were the FDA commissioner under Clinton and Bush. And the fact that you took on to back,

Paco and one, I think, you know, it would be a beautiful bookmark to your life to take on the ultra-processed food industry and create a win for America. And I'm going to do whatever I can to help you because I have little levers I can pull. I know people. You know people. We can, we can pull this together. And I have elevated this petition to a bunch of people in administration. I'm also, you know, wanting my community listeners to, also talk about this to their congressman, their senators, to start to socialize this idea because it is a powerful idea. There's sometimes these ideas that happen once in a while that catalyze some shift, and I think this is one of those ideas. It's simple, it's clear, it's

irrefutable, this time has come, like, let's go. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for being here, David. 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 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. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more.

Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest's opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests.

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