The Dr. Hyman Show - Speaking Up About The Things That Matter: Hidden Forms of Racism

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

Like most of you, I’m feeling the heaviness of our national news. The injustice we continue to be reminded of through violent, devastating acts needs to stop. We cannot tolerate a system that ignores equality and deems it acceptable to ignore a human plea for air, for life. On April 4, 2018, on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, I was honored to be asked to speak at Riverside Church in Harlem.  The day was focused on MLK Jr.’s fight for civil rights and social justice for minorities and the poor. Today, in lieu of airing our previously planned episode, I am instead sharing that talk I gave at Riverside Church just over two years ago, as an acknowledgment of the targeting of Black lives in our society and the need for systemic change to protect Black health and Black lives. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” We can no longer be silent about this.

On April 4th, 2018, on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, I was honored to be asked to speak at the Riverside Church in Harlem. That day was focused on MLK Jr.'s fight for civil rights and social justice for minorities and the poor. Today, in lieu of airing our previously planned episode, I'm instead sharing that talk that I gave at Riverside Church just over two years ago. I'm doing it as an acknowledgement of the targeting of black lives in our society and the need for systemic change to protect black health and black lives.

As a doctor, I took an oath to do no harm. And today I stand here because there is harm being done to millions. I stand here because I must speak out. We know all too well the visible forms of racism in our society. We know the inequities in income and opportunity. We know the brutal violence and discrimination of the police. We know the shooting of black children. We know the name of Tamir Rice. We know the name of unarmed black men shot in the back. We know the name of Stephon Clark. But what we don't know, we may not know, are the names of millions of African Americans

killed by an invisible form of racism, a silent and insidious injustice. This is an often internalized force of racism and oppression that disproportionately affects the poor and African American communities. We do know that 1.3 percent of all deaths are caused by gun violence, and it is real, and it is tragic, and it must end. But we may not know that 70% of deaths are killed by food than by anything else. The science is clear. Our processed, sugary, starchy diet is the single biggest cause of death and disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, cancer, and even dementia. Our food system is the deadliest weapon used against the poor and minorities,

keeping them poor and fat and sick, hijacking their brains and their biology. We are told that it is our personal choice that being fat results from eating too much and not exercising enough. That blames the victim. The subliminal message is it's your fault you're fat and sick. We may think what we eat is a personal choice that is rooted in our cultural heritage and our family customs, but we know that the food industry designs our food to be addictive, that they hire craving experts that work in taste institutes to create what they call the bliss point of food, all with the purpose of creating heavy users. These are their own internal corporate terms. What if I told you that the food industry specifically targets the poor and minorities,

that it's easier to get someone drinking a 20-ounce soda to start drinking a two-liter bottle of soda. Research shows that African-American kids drink twice as much as white kids. What if I told you that sugar and processed foods were more addictive than cocaine? And that the food industry has hijacked our brain chemistry, our taste buds, our metabolism, our bodies, and our minds. When our foods are biologically addictive, the notion of personal choice is a fiction. It blames the victims for their choices. How can we take care of 20 of our communities when 23 million Americans live in food deserts, where the only food available is processed junk from convenience stores, from fast food outlets, and the closest grocery store is more than a mile away, where it's hard to find fresh fruits and vegetables or healthy food.

And the problem isn't only food deserts. It's food swamps, communities filled with fast food chains and bodegas playing highly processed addictive foods. They sell gallon cups of soda and other sugar loaded beverages. There are fast food chains planning burgers, fries, and fried chicken on almost every street corner. We know that your zip code is more important than your genetic code in determining your risk of death and disease. And we also know that our food system is the number one cause of climate change. And what about our kids? 40% of them are overweight.

We now see 3-year-olds with type 2 diabetes, what we used to call adult onset diabetes. We're told that our kids' behavior problems are from bad parenting. Well, the research shows that African-American kids are far less likely to graduate from high school or go to college, but if our children go to school with a breakfast of Coke or colored sugar water or Doritos or flaming hot chips, how can we expect them to focus and pay attention? These are not foods. These are food-like substances with no nutritional benefit.

This diet creates an achievement gap because kids are too sick to learn and it affects far more kids of color than any other group. These kids are less likely to go to college, to earn good incomes, and more likely to get sick and die young. One in ten of our kids are on ADD medication, and the science shows that the junk our kids eat is a big part of that cause. The food industry spends $10 billion a year marketing junk food to our kids. The average kid sees 6,000 ads for junk food on soda on TV and even more on social media. These companies are junk food pushers. Do you really think it was a coincidence that Paula Abdul and all her judges on the American Idol

had 24-ounce containers of Coca-Cola in front of them every show? The top sports stars received tens of millions of dollars from soda and fast food giants to promote their products to our children who idolize them. Yet it doesn't have to be that way. Charter schools in the poorest, most disadvantaged communities of color who feed kids two to three healthy meals a day find that the kids are more likely to go to college than go to jail. We incarcerate African Americans at five times the rate of white Americans, and much of that is a result of racial profiling and targeting by police and the judicial system.

But it could be that much of that violent crime is a result of our diet that robs our minds, affects our thinking and judgment, and our ability to make good choices. Now, you may think that sounds too far-fetched. But studies have shown that by feeding violent prisoners in prison healthy diets, that violent crime goes down by 56%, and that when you add a multivitamin, because they're all nutritionally deficient, it goes down by 80%. Violent crime in prison goes down by 80%. Violent crime in prison goes down by 80%. We know that the task of ending mass incarceration and the new Jim Crow is complex and urgent. We know that the task of building a just food system

is also complex and urgent. We have to build a new food system together. A part of this task is listening to the voices of those directly affected by our toxic food system. I once received a letter from prison from a murderer who changed his diet in prison and realized that his whole life of eating junk had made him violent and from eating real food in the prison transformed him into a totally different person. The food industry employs nefarious tactics to prevent change. They buy friends, they silence critics, and they sweeten their profits. I was part of a documentary called Fed Up, a movie about how the food system makes us sick and fat with addictive, sugary,

starchy products. And I met with Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter about this. And she explained to me that nonviolence also includes nonviolence to ourselves and our own bodies. She was excited about showing the movie Fed Up at the King Center. A few days later, I got a call saying they couldn't show the film. Why, I asked. The answer? Coca-Cola funds the King Center. The dean of Spelman College in Atlanta told me that 50% of the entering class of African American women has a chronic disease.

50% type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity. I asked her why there are Coke machines in fountains all over campus. Coca-Cola is one of the biggest donors to the college. The NAACP received $2.1 million from Coca-Cola alone since 1996. Coca-Cola also funded the Hispanic Federation. Is it any surprise that the NAACP and Hispanic groups oppose a soda tax? We cannot stand for this. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. We can no longer be silent about this. If you're African American, you are 80% more likely to have type 2 diabetes, or four times as likely to have kidney failure from it, and three and a half times more likely

to suffer amputations as whites. Yet we remain silent about the role of the food system killing millions of Americans. They tell us it's a personal choice. Nonsense. And Big Food also corrupts public health and advocacy groups. They fund hunger groups like the Food Research and Action Center and Feeding America. These hunger groups strongly oppose limiting the use of food stamps or SNAP to buy soda, despite the fact that the single biggest line item on our food stamp bill, $7 billion a year, is soda. That's 20 billion servings a year of soda to the poor. Soda and sugar-sweetened beverages are the single biggest cause of obesity and type 2 diabetes. There is no scientific argument against that.

Our bodies, our health, our children, our communities have been taken from us, and it's time we take them back. It's time we say no to big food and institutionalized food injustice that's causing this slow motion genocide. It's time to free ourselves from corporate interests that privatize profits and socialize the cost of their products. Taking back our food and our food system is a revolutionary act. There are things we can't change as individuals, but we all eat. We vote three times a day with our fork. The single biggest political act and the single biggest act of self-love, of rebuilding our communities, is to choose real food.

So what is real food? Well, it's pretty simple. Next time you pick up something to eat, ask yourself this question. Did God make this? Or did man make this? Did God make Doritos and a Coke? No. Did God make an egg or broccoli? Yes. And think about it. If Jesus came to dinner, what would you feed him? A Big Mac fries and a Coke? Or would you give him some real food? We can teach our kids and we can teach ourselves how to choose

any food that brings life and not death. Big food would have you believe that it's expensive, that it's difficult, that it takes too much time. Don't believe them. It's not true. We need to educate our kids, ourselves, and our communities. We have to do this together. We can only do this together. Black lives matter, yes, and black health matters too.