The Dr. Hyman Show - The Dark Side of The Food Industry: How The Standard Diet Is Making Us Sick & Fat

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

View the Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal Food has become a more complex part of our lives than ever before. Much of what we think is food is actually many ingredients disguised as food, with entirely different, often negative impacts on the human body. Sadly, this is a greater problem here in the US than in other parts of the world, thanks to the food industry, corrupt intentions, and broken policies. Today, I talk about all this and more with my guest Jason Karp, whose personal experience of nearly going blind due to a toxic lifestyle led him to discover a different way; he made it his mission to get “back to human.” In this episode, we discuss: Jason’s personal health journey and why that has prompted him to take on the campaign against Kellogg’s (7:53) The unhealthy state of America’s food industry (22:42) How Kellogg’s has one cereal formulation for Canada and another for the US that is full of chemicals (26:07) The correlation between food dyes and ADHD, and the failure of Kellogg's pledge (29:04) The political aspect of food regulation and dangers of unregulated food additives (32:55) Why we are in a state of metacrisis and what that means for our future (37:18) The bidirectional relationship between food and mental health (46:04) The financial burden of healthcare on the US government due to unhealthy diets (53:52) Supporting the Kellogg's Initiative: Sign the Petition (1:06:03) We have a lot to do to shift our food system and eliminate harmful ingredients in the US, but there are ways to enact positive change starting today. We can all support a cleaner food industry and better health by voting with our dollar, purchasing real food, and getting involved in policy policy changes. I hope you’ll listen to this episode to learn more.  This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, Cozy Earth, BIOptimizers, and Wonderfeel.  Streamline your lab orders with Rupa Health. Access more than 3,000 specialty lab tests and register for a FREE live demo at RupaHealth.com. Right now, you can save 40% when you upgrade to Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to CozyEarth.com and use code DRHYMAN. Tackle an overlooked root cause of stress with Magnesium Breakthrough. Visit Bioptimizers.com/Hyman and use code HYMAN10 to save 10% + free gifts with purchase. Wonderfeel Youngr™ NMN works by increasing your levels of NAD, a critical molecule our bodies produce that we literally need to survive. Feel the wonder of innovation at GetWonderfeel.com.

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. They make a Canadian version of Froot Loops that they undoubtedly produce in this country, in the US. They already make it and they already have the formulation for it here and they ship it up to Canada. And yet the one that they sell here has red 40, yellow five, yellow six, blue one, and BHT.

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free at rupahealth.com and take control of your lab ordering process today. That's rupahealth.com. Sleep is foundational for health. It's really that simple. That means getting good quality sleep is a non-negotiable for me. The problem is I have a terrible time getting comfortable in bed. Regardless of the time of year, I simply get too hot to fall asleep. Thankfully, I found an incredible solution and I want to share it with you today. Cozy Earth Sheets. Let me tell you, they're simply amazing. They feel like heaven to the touch and their premium fabric regulates your body temperature no matter the season, making them perfect for any time of year. Cozy Earth offers a variety of luxury pillows, sheets, and blankets, and more, backed by a lengthy warranty. Plus, all their products are made from responsibly sourced

viscose from bamboo so you can feel good about your purchase knowing you're supporting a truly ethical company. Right now, Cozy Earth is providing an exclusive offer for my listeners. You can get 40% off site-wide when you use the code Dr. Hyman. Just go to CozyEarth.com and use the code Dr. Hyman. Welcome to Doctors Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy with an F a place for conversations that matter. Today's conversation is highly consequential for you because it's going to determine whether or not we live in a society that is causing us to be sick because of the food we're eating or whether we can create a food system that actually creates health. And we had this incredible conversation with Jason Karp, who was a dear friend who's been

an inspiration for me. And I don't even know how even describe him. He's a force of nature. He's driven by the belief that improving health is the pathway to increasing global prosperity. In 2019, he started Human Co., which is a company that has a mission to inspire humans to demand better by showing that products can be both healthy and epic and taste good. And his health journey started in his 20s after being diagnosed with multiple autoimmune diseases and a degenerative eye disease, which would have left him blind by the age of 30. And doctors told him he could never be cured. He had a commitment to making changes in his own diet, which changed his whole health, cured himself through a cleaner diet and

cleaner living. And then he founded this incredible company called Hugh Products, which you probably eat their chocolate, Hugh chocolate, which is amazing, and Hugh Kitchen in 2011, which I think I was the first customer in that restaurant. Today, Hugh is one of the fastest growing snack companies in the United States, emphasizing transparent, simple ingredients to help everyone get back to human. He was the founder and CEO of Turbion Capital Partners, a $4 billion investment fund. He's taken all of his genius and intelligence to make better products and change the world. We're so grateful to have him on the pharmacy, sorry. And we're so grateful to have him on the doctor's pharmacy today. And in our conversation, we cross a spectrum from his own story of how he came to understand the role of food, his own health, cured multiple

autoimmune diseases. The doctor said were incurable and took that passion and turned it into a food business that has been highly successful and is doing good and doing well at the same time. He also talks about something called the meta crisis, this incredible intersection of the planetary health destruction, human health destruction, and our mental health destruction and how all that's linked in part or in large part to food and how we need to change that. We also get deep into a recent campaign that he's initiated with Kellogg to try to change the food system by holding big companies accountable. And we talk about the dyes that are in American cereals like Froot Loops that are not allowed in other countries like Europe. So we're only asking companies to be held accountable to

the best versions of the products they make. Why should we in America have the worst products they make? We need to stand up and do something about it. And this podcast gets deep into how this happened, what we can do about it and how to make change. So I know you're going to love this podcast. Let's dive right in. Well, Jason, it's so great to have you on the Dr. Stronger Seed podcast. We've been friends for years, have an interesting history together. And you are a kind of remarkable man because you came from a world of high-powered finance. Yeah. You got very sick.

You had to reset yourself and learn about what food does to the body and what it doesn't do if you don't eat the right stuff. Yeah. And you created a company called Q, which was an incredible company that everybody probably knows from the chocolate. There was a Q Kitchen back in New York City that was in actually an old Himalayan East West bookstore. East West bookstore. I used to go in the 80s and do yoga on the top of where that was. Wow.

And so it was like the only yoga class in New York. And we didn't have Lululemon or yoga mats. We had like towels and sweatpants. And that was a very kind of symbolic thing for me to go back in there and see how you created this incredible model for eating that really represented your insights into what was wrong with our food system, how you got sick from it, and how you were able to kind of wake up America to the, in a sense, the evils that the food industry is perpetrating on American kids and on American adults by putting all sorts of toxins in the food that are not allowed in other countries. And you took a very brave step recently that was calling these companies out. You published an article in the New York Post, a letter that went

to Kellogg's as your shareholder, calling them out for their behavior and their failure to meet their own commitment to get rid of chemicals and dyes that we know are damaging to humans in their products. Yep. And it's kind of created a bit of a buzz. It was a big article in your post, and it's kind of everywhere. It's been on Twitter or X or whatever we're calling it now.

Yeah, yeah. And I wanted to give you a chance to sort of talk about your own journey and how you got started on this and how passionate you are and how you really created a whole new effort to really rethink our food system and to reformulate our food products so we can actually eat stuff that tastes good and is also good for us. Yes, yes, yes. Well, look, thanks for having me, Mark. Yeah. And as a little background, you were one of my early inspirations, which I'll get to in my life story. It's kind of a crazy story. And the whole East-West books thing and the spirituality of that store is so- It was Swami Rama, the guy who could put needles through his arms. I mean, we'll come back to how crazy that is.

By the way, I just want to interrupt you. One of the disciples of this guy, Swami Rama, from the East-West and the Himalayan Institute was this guy named Rudolph Ballantyne who wrote a book called Diet and Health or Diet Nutrition. It was in the 70s. And I got that book when I was in college and I read it. And it was all about bringing nutrition into healing chronic disease. So I don't know if you knew that, but-

I didn't know that. So literally the book that was a disciple of the guy who actually created that Himalayan Insu where Hugh Kitchen first started- That's crazy. Really wrote a book that kind of launched me on this journey too. So it's kind of this karmic shared- It really is karmic. I mean, I have the chills because I totally forgot about the East West bookstore and the spiritual connection. Fifth Avenue, 14th Street.

Yeah. We'll come back to that. My background and my kind of personal story, I think is a cautionary tale and it's also a metaphor for what's happened to modern society. I had a pretty meteoric ascent starting in college where I was sort of your classic overachiever. I went to Wharton undergrad business school. I was one of the top students. I was a division one academic all-American athlete. And I did everything that I thought you're supposed to do as sort of a overachieving American. And all I wanted to do was be very accomplished. And when I got out do was be very accomplished. And when I got out of college, I had this really coveted job. I went straight to a hedge fund

in 1998, which was sort of a fledgling industry. I got so focused on just winning and accomplishing and did extremely well in my first couple of years there, financially speaking. And I got every accolade and every achievement you could get. I was made the youngest partner in history of my firm. And so on the surface, everything looked like life was going great. And a couple of years into my working, I started getting sick. And at the time, I kind of ignored it. And I was so focused on achievement, achievement, achievement, more, more, more, more in terms of, I taught myself how to speed read. I taught myself how to micro nap. I started- Micro nap, I love that how to speed read. I taught myself how to micro nap. I started-

Micro nap, I love that. Really, I was reading- You gotta teach me that trick. Yeah, I was reading obscure stuff from the military on how to be even more productive. Like this was really early biohacking stuff. But while I was doing it, I started viewing the things

that I think make humans thrive. I started viewing those things as unnecessary. So I started giving up friends and connection and I started giving up exercise. And I started optimizing my day in terms of hour blocks. And I was getting more and more done and I was reading more and I was doing more of my job. And everyone around me thought I was like the superhuman.

And meanwhile, quietly I was getting more and more sick. And eventually I started to really notice it. My hair started falling out in clumps. I had psoriasis all over my arms and my body. I was having massive amounts of brain fog and then I was still ignoring it. And then my vision started to go and I started seeing double and I went to multiple ophthalmologists and eventually was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease for which there's no cure.

And it was so progressed by the time I went in. I was 23 at the time. They said I would be fully blind by the age of 30. Wow. And there was no hope or cure other than potentially a corneal transplant, which was pretty risky at the time. I fell into a deep, dark depression. I was very ashamed of my health because on the surface, I look like this pinnacle of success. And on the inside, I was falling apart. And I decided to try to take matters in

my own hands because the Western medicine doctor said, here's a pill for this. Here's a pill for this. Here's a pill for this. Oh, and by the way, your eye disease, there's no cure for it. And you're just going to go blind and deal with it. I decided, and it was kind of this almost divine inspiration to start looking in alternative channels for maybe there's other ways I could heal myself. And I started doing a lot of research on indigenous people on ancestral diets. And I stumbled upon a couple like OG functional medicine people in some of the really early books like yours and Dr. Andrew Weil. And those were kind of some of the people that I found. And I had this sort of naive hypothesis, which was based on some stuff

that I found that connected atopic skin diseases like psoriasis to my eye disease. Yeah. Well, it's autoimmune. It's all autoimmune. Yeah. And of course, every doctor I saw said, oh, this disease is unrelated to this disease is unrelated to this disease. Yeah. No, no, it's all. And back, but back in, you know, this is the year 2001, they didn't really talk about food as medicine. They certainly didn't talk about functional medicine. And so I decided to go on this path of seeing if I could reverse my skin disease, which was clearly inflammation through diet and lifestyle. And I told my ophthalmologist, I said, hey, maybe if I can make my skin disease go away, maybe my eye disease will go away. And of course, as sort of an arrogant Park Avenue

ophthalmologist, he said, that'll never work. There's no cure. Do whatever you want. I decided- Don't confuse me with the facts. My mind's been- Yeah, don't confuse me with facts. So I went on an extremely restricted diet. As a 23-year-old single guy in New York City, I gave up alcohol. I gave up caffeine, which ironically were the two hardest things for me to give up as someone back then when it was sort of work hard, play hard. Yeah. I just tried to experiment.

I gave up processed food. I gave up refined sugar. I gave up gluten. I gave up dairy. But most importantly- Grains and beans too, right? Grains. Most importantly, I gave up the hyper-processed garbage and I was eating terribly at the time. And I wasn't exercising and I wasn't socializing and I wasn't sleeping well

and I was very isolated. And I noticed after a few weeks of this, my psoriasis started going away and my hair stopped falling out. I noticed anecdotally, my vision was getting better. And I went in for a checkup with my doctor, you know, maybe six weeks in. And I told him about this and he again said, that's impossible. It's not working. Don't, you know, don't even try. But I was like, look, I feel better. I'm going to keep going. And thankfully. It's a spontaneous remission. It has nothing to do with your diet. Yeah. And then, uh, I did this for this for months and everything went away and I noticed I could see clearly again. And thankfully, there was an objective test for my eye disease that didn't require subjectivity where they actually measure the surface area of your cornea and they could see if you have the disease or not, objectively speaking. And I went in and I said, I can see clearly. And he said, well, we'll give you the test. And he gave have the disease or not, objectively speaking. And I went in and I

said, I can see clearly. And he said, well, we'll give you the test. And he gave me the test and my disease was gone. Unbelievable. Well, not really, very believable. Well, the look on his face was shock and he actually called his colleague in. I'll never forget this day. It's one of the most important days of my life. He called in his colleague and they're whispering, but I could hear them whispering. And he's like, you got to look at this. He goes, I must've misdiagnosed him. This is impossible. It must've been a mistake. Yeah. And then he came over to me and he goes, I must've misdiagnosed you. There's no cure for this disease. This is the first time we've ever seen this disease reversed. And I remember walking out of the doctor's office and I remember thinking my life is going to be forever changed. Yeah. And I'm no longer going to respect the

Western medicine dogma. Yeah. And I'm going to go with my gut and my heart when things feel wrong. And I kind of knew instinctively that my four or five diseases that I was diagnosed with were all related and doctors didn't think that. And from that moment on, I decided that I was going to spend a significant portion of my time and resources and philanthropy to waking up the American public because I viewed myself as a canary in the coal mine of what was happening to me is probably happening to other people. And obviously since then, it's gotten the last in the last 22 years so true i mean i remember being doing this since the 80s 90s and and it was bad then and now it's like unbelievably worse yeah and you know what happened was is like a lot of my research and a lot of what i believe cured me was respecting human evolution yeah and respecting kind of the way that people in the blue zones live and respecting the way that indigenous people live, because I remember reading studies back then.

They're not eating fruit loops. Yeah, they're not eating fruit loops. But I remember seeing the studies how when when people would go to these various indigenous communities, they had no allergies, they had no autism, they had no ADHD. And I remember because back then there was still, and still now, there was still this perception of, oh, it has to be just fruits and vegetables, or it has to be just this. And what was so intriguing to me was these different indigenous peoples all over the world. Some were in Arctic areas and they were eating whale blubber and pure meat. Some were like the Maasai where they're drinking cow blood. Some were tribes that were eating fruits and vegetables and nuts. And the only common theme across all of these indigenous peoples was that they were eating unprocessed whole things that were as close to the earth as possible.

Not too complicated. Not too complicated. And that led many, many years later where I was living a much more kind of clean lifestyle where my brother-in-law, Jordan Brown, my wife's brother, he started reading some of the same books that I was reading. He was not sick, thankfully, like I was. But one of the first books he read was The Ultra Mind Solution, one of your early books. Yeah. And he started trying these kind of methods. Yeah.

And he noticed how much better he looked and how much better he felt. And how much better he operated and how much better he slept. Yeah. And he came to me one day and at this point I was, you know, higher up in my field, but I was still in the hedge fund business. Yeah. And he said, there's no place that we can eat that has these kind of guardrails that you have done and that I'm now doing.

And wouldn't it be great if there was this oasis, this place in New York City where people could come in and everything in here was the manifestation of these principles. It's true. It's true. And most of the time when you go to a restaurant or you go shopping or somewhere to eat, you have to navigate what not to eat and try to find the few things

that you can't eat. And I remember going to Hugh Kitchen back when it started and going, man, I can eat everything in here. Right. And it's good. Yeah. And it tastes good. You know, it started off as a preposterous idea because I was a professional investor. Restaurants typically are not good investments. Most people fail at them. They have one of the highest failure rates. And I said to Jordan, I said, Jordan, we don't know anything about restaurants. I remember going there before you opened

and it was just like, it was massive operation. It was massive. It was massive. And anyway, long story short, I said to him, I said, look, we can do this. We'll do it as initially kind of a passion project. He said he was going to quit his job in real estate. My wife was going to help. I was going to stay in the finance business to finance this whole thing. Because for-

Eat beans and rice, you could pay for it. Right. For the first few years, for the first many years, we didn't have outside investors. And so it was just a family operation. And, you know, we hired consultants that showed us how to do kind of typical restaurant stuff. But what we knew was what to include and we knew what not to include. And we came up with the name Hugh because our slogan based on all of the research that I had done that cured me was get back to human. Because I believe that part of the reason or most of the reason we're all so sick is that we don't live in a way that is consistent with how we evolved. Yeah. And how we thrived.

Yeah. And I believe today we are in a true slow motion apocalypse. And I'll get to some stats in a second. I'm with you. And we are in what I call a metacrisis, a crisis of physical health, mental health, and planetary health. Yeah. And it's the worst, and planetary health. Yeah. And it's the worst it's ever been in human history. It almost feels, though, like it's sort of invisible.

It's not necessarily in the news. People aren't really talking about it at scale. It's just sort of this slow-motion disaster that's coming at us, and we're almost oblivious. We are. When you look at the scale of the illness in America, when you look at globally how it's reaching every corner of the world, I mean, you mentioned the Maasai.

Yeah, they were healthy and fit and they had perfect teeth and they were thin and they're tall, skinny Maasai. And I went to visit them last October and I was kind of shocked, actually. They had horrible teeth and they had, you know, all misshapen mouths. Right. They were overweight. They had all teeth and they had, you know, all misshapen mouths. They were overweight. They had all these chronic illnesses. Every day the Coca-Cola truck would come in, they'd empty it out, literally a giant truck.

And they would just all light up and empty out all the Fanta and Coke in one hour. And they were eating all kinds of snack foods from the town that they were able to get. They still didn't have electricity, running water, sanitation. And they were getting all these processed foods. And the chief said to me, I said, Jim, did you know that this Coca-Cola is probably not good for you guys because of diabetes? And he said, really? I said, yeah. He said, well, so many of our people are dying from diabetes. We have no idea why. And I said, it's because of, it's shocking. So I think you really are onto something. Get back to human is a beautiful concept.

And the meta crisis is something that we really need to take head on and face and actually bring it into the public conversation. And so let's talk about, let's get into the weeds a little bit, because I think at a meta level, we understand we have to address this global crisis that's driven by the food we create and make and eat. And yet in America, we are probably the worst in the world at this. We allow food marketing to kids. I think the only other country that does that is Syria. We have pharmaceutical advertising. The only other country that does that is New Zealand.

We allow all these chemicals in food that are banned in most countries. And you recently were outraged when you found out that Kellogg's is making tons of cereal, which is extremely harmful to people in general because of the amount of sugar itself and the refined carbohydrates. So, and the processing. Yep. But that aside, there are known compounds like BHT or butylate, hydroxy toluene, red dye, number 40, yellow dye, number five. And these are things that are known to cause human health hazards and are yet banned in other countries and are allowed in this country.

And you found out that they're making the same products in Canada or Europe without these compounds. Yes. What prompted the letter originally was when Kellogg came out and recommended cereal for dinner. And I don't know. What a great idea. Yeah. I don't know if you saw this. I did.

I did. The CEO. That guy is so tone deaf. Yeah, I don't know if you saw this, but basically- I did, I did. The CEO, that guy is so tone deaf. Yeah, so tone deaf. Cereal in this country is in secular decline. And Kellogg was originally a conglomerate and they split about a year and a half ago into two companies.

One's called Kellanova, which is mostly international and snacks. And then they isolated the US North American cereal business, just cereal. And it's just North America. And that business still does $2.7 billion a year, which is millions and millions and millions of customers. And definitely over hundreds of millions of boxes of cereal.

Definitely, hopefully not any of my patients listening are eating cereal for breakfast. Correct. It's one of the worst things you could possibly do. Yeah, cereal period. For breakfast or dinner or lunch, it's probably one of the worst foods you can eat because it's basically pure sugar. Yes. And they made a television commercial, which I would urge you guys to Google and watch it because it looks like a Saturday Night Live sketch. And Tony the Tiger comes into a family who are about to sit down for dinner and there's two kids and he comes and he starts

going cereal for dinner, cereal for dinner. And it says like, let's give chicken the night off. Yeah. And this was an actual television commercial. Not a parody. Yeah. Not a parody. And it, it got, thankfully it got, he got skewered in the, in social media. And this was sort of, you know, all over the internet and people started talking about boycotting. And he made it about food cost. He basically said, inflation has gone up a lot. So if you are cost conscious, you should eat cereal for dinner. What he didn't say is that the big food companies have taken anywhere between 40 and 70% price increases over the last three years. Oh, it's inflation. We get our prices. They have done the most inflation of almost anybody. And so when I saw that, I thought,

this is enough. This is enough. I need to take a stand as a father and as a concerned citizen, and I need to let people know that this is really happening about the food dyes. Marie Antoinette moment, let them eat cake, let them eat cornflakes. And of course, I would never advocate eating cereal. And some of the comments that we got back were, well, people shouldn't eat cereal, period. Right. And part of my activism and part of what we're doing with Human Co., my business, is to recognize that we're at a certain moment in time and we have to meet people where they're at. And so instead of coming out and saying, nobody should eat cereal, which of

course they shouldn't. No. I'm acknowledging that there's $2.7 billion of Kellogg cereal sold in this country right now. That's a big number. So acknowledging that, I said, well, let's go after the easiest, most ridiculous part of what they do wrong, which is they make a superior, safer version of the same exact cereal. So let's just take Froot Loops as an example. They make a Canadian version of Froot Loops that they undoubtedly produce in this country, in the US. They already make it and they already have the formulation for it here and they ship it up to Canada. And yet the one that they sell here has red 40, yellow five, yellow six, blue one, and BHT.

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Younger formula. So get ready to feel the wonder of innovation at getwonderfield.com. That's G-E-T-W-O-N-D-E-R-F-E-E-L.com. It's more than wonderful. It's Wonderfeel. When people say like, okay, so they know how to make the better version. They're already making it. They're already selling the better version. Why do they sell Americans the shittier, less safe version here there's two reasons the first reason which is which is obvious is it's a little more expensive to use natural food colorings than it is to use artificial food

dyes that are derived from petroleum blueberry juice watermelon juice yeah you know yeah they actually use fruit coloring they actually put a little stevia in it to lower the sugar content yeah and so maybe it's you know maybe it's a few pennies per box is what they would have to spend. The second reason, which there was like a fiasco that happened with Trix cereal, where they've acknowledged that natural food colorings are less bright. And when they're less bright, they're less attractive to children. And it doesn't affect the taste, by the way. The colorings have nothing to do with the taste. So they have come out and they have tried to say

when they've been kind of publicly shamed for this, is that Americans want the brighter cereal. That's what they say. And that's- They're giving our customers what they want. That's what the food industry says. And it makes me nuts. Like, well, if people were selling cocaine on the corner street at McDonald's for $2, everybody would be buying. We're just giving our customers what they want. Right. And here's the worst part, Mark.

The worst part is in 2015, they came out, there have been these moments where people start really caring about the artificial food dyes because as you've noted, with some ingredients like BHT and others, they're literally banned in many countries. In some of the food dyes cases, they're not banned in many countries. In some of the food dice cases, they're not fully banned, but they require a warning label similar to the warning label you would have on cigarettes. Yeah, absolutely. And the warning label says, ingredients in this food product may impair your children's learning ability and may cause behavioral disorders in your children. Right. Huh. And so, yeah. I'm making that shit up.

Yeah. There's actually data on this. Yeah, there's a lot of data. If you go to the National Library of Medicine, PubMed, you can search for the scientific articles that validate this point. This is real. It's not just crazy shit. This is not crazy sensationalist like we want to regulate everything.

And then personally, both of my children are very affected by Red 40 in particular, where my son will come back from a birthday party party and he'll be acting like a lunatic. He'll be jumping off the walls. He won't be able to sit still. And my wife and I will literally say to him, Tyson, what did you eat? And he'll say, oh, I had some Skittles or, oh, I ate some Charms Blow Pops or, oh, I had some Fruit Loops or whatever it is. And when we remove the food diet from their diets, it is a noticeable behavioral change. And there are countless parents that I have met that notice the same thing. And so the biggest issue that I had with Kellogg was- Yeah, there's over 90, I was thinking there's over 92 papers documenting the role of food colorings on autism, on behavior, on ADD, mood on i mean you know it's a behavior disorders across the spectrum it's quite fascinating so but they made this pledge mark they made a pledge that said in 2015 we will remove all artificial food dyes from our foods by 2018 and quietly and this is where where vani comes in quietly vaniani Hari, who's the food bank, a friend of ours, who's basically been a crusader for

waking up America about the role of these compounds in our food. And when they came out with this pledge, it was national news. And it was in every newspaper and there were headlines, Kellogg's vows to remove. And they got, it was media acclaim. They got credit for it and people loved it. And then they put it on their website. Yeah. And then quietly, they removed it from their website

and they didn't tell anybody. And they keep making new cereals. And the one that Vonnie really went crazy about, they came out with a baby shark cereal targeted at toddlers that had new, it was a new product with all the food dyes. So they quietly removed from their website. They ignored the pledge that they publicly made that they got credit for. And they're just hoping that we don't notice because it's more money for them.

Yeah. And by the way, I'm not sure you know this, Jason, but 14% of kids are on ADD medication. Yeah. So yeah. It's really, it's, and both of my children have ADHD by the way, and I do too. And we don't need to exacerbate because we already know how to do it without it. And so I wrote a public legal activist letter with a very prominent lawyer named Alex Spiro, who's Elon Musk's lawyer, who is also concerned about American society and his own children. Yeah. And when I was telling him this, we were talking about it a month ago or so,

he was outraged. And he said, you should do something about this. And Vonnie had made attempts with petitions to get this removed. Kellogg kind of engaged with her. They wrote her a letter. Nothing happened. And I'm at this point where I said, you know what? We need more firepower at this. We need more American citizens to get behind this. And we need this to be loud and public because most people don't know this. And so we filed the letter and simultaneously we released it on social media. We put it on all the platforms, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. And I would encourage you guys, my handle is human carp, K A R P. But I shared it on my social media. I would encourage you to look at the posts. We're going to put it, we're going to put by the way, we're going to put the letter in the show

notes. We're going to put the article in your post in the show notes. We're going to, we're going to let you actually see what's going on and look into it a little more. And the comments have been extraordinary. So many people didn't know that they were selling a superior version up in Canada or in the UK or in the EU. deaths from COVID. Not because we didn't have good healthcare or vaccine access, but because we were all pre-inflamed because of the food we're eating. That's right. That's right. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of the kind of insanity that's happening in this country because America allows it. And then the question is, why do we allow it? The first reason is, and I know you've talked about this in the past,

is the difference in kind of burden of proof that we use in this country. Yeah. You know, we use the term called GRAS, the Generally Recognized and Safe. Which for some of your listeners is basically like, in this country, when they introduce a new compound or a new food, it's innocent until proven guilty.

That's right. So let's just unleash Olestra on the American public or trans fats, and then we'll figure out in 10 years if there's a problem. Or 100. Right, right, right. And this is why things like asbestos happened and things like thalidomide happened, and you could go on and on. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of examples. Glyphosate. There's lots of examples where we thought like,

what could go wrong? Just like the Great Sparrow Campaign. Whereas in places like Europe, they have the opposite approach with things that you put inside human bodies, which is guilty until proven innocent. Yeah. They have a whole legislation around this called the REACH legislation in Europe, which prevents them from putting all this crap in the food. Yeah. And they want to have very long-term data before they bring it into the food. And so we have much looser regulations here. And when you talk to politicians or people at the FDA about it, the explanation they give is it encourages faster innovation. So they make it about business. Yeah. Less regulation, more innovation.

Which factually is true, right? Like you can create more things faster if you don't have regulation, but not when you're poisoning people. And this is what I talked to Callie Means about. Poisoning people is not a left or a right issue. No. It's not. I'm against like stupid frivolous regulation myself. I moved to Texas because of it from New York because I think Texas is more business friendly

and more rational. But when it comes to poisoning our own people, this is idiotic. Like this should not be an issue about politics. This should be about if something is known to be harmful to humans and we have an alternative that works don't let it happen wake the fuck up and because this we are kind of like the frog in the boiling pot and when i talk about it you know at cocktail parties or or whatever people like oh jason you're being sensationalist

and i wanted to i gave we're all in the tr Show. We don't know it. Right, right, right. And I gave a story that was, I think, also kind of a cautionary tale of what I think we've been doing wrong and how we got here. And the story was, it was about Mao Zedong in 1958. And he was trying to make China a powerhouse at the time. And it was a very farming, heavy country. And he wanted to industrialize and kind of make farming less private and more kind of state-owned and one of the leap forward the great leap forward right and one of the things that he observed the green seeds the seeds were being eaten by sparrows and so he thought let's kill all the sparrows so So he created a campaign called the Smash Sparrow Campaign where he told everybody, kill as many sparrows as you possibly can.

And this is 1958. And, you know, typically when you hear these things, you always ask like, oh, what could go wrong? He wasn't clearly an ecologist. Yes, yes. And he didn't understand complex adaptive systems or the wonder of Mother Nature. And so over two years,

this only happened in two years, this is crazy. In over two years, they killed happened in two years. This is crazy. Yeah. In over two years, they killed hundreds of millions of sparrows. But what they did not take into account is that sparrows also eat insects, particularly locusts. And they had the greatest locust problem

in human history, which created the largest man-made famine ever recorded. Somewhere between 45 and 75 million people died of famine. It's unbelievable. It got so bad. Isn't that more than people that died in World War II? Yeah. It's one of the greatest human tragedies of all time. In fact, it was so bad that there were books written about it that were banned in China because he didn't want people knowing about it because it was so embarrassing. But it got so bad that people

became cannibals and there were accounts of people eating their own children. There were accounts of people eating other people because the famine was so bad. Myopia of him thinking like, oh, we could tweak one variable and it seems like it's based on science and just hope that everything turns out okay. And it didn't. And I feel like today, I just want to remind people of how bad the meta crisis is because I think some people- Can you define that? Because I think most people don't know what meta crisis means. Yeah. So meta is just sort of a word that describes a bunch of high level things. But the meta crisis to me is that we have four or five epidemics slash

crises all happening at the exact same time. And it's very similar to what happened with my diseases where I had five diseases manifest. They were seemingly disconnected to most people, but they were all connected. This is so core functional medicine. It's like, look at the roots, everything is connected at the roots. There are a few common causes. This is functional medicine for the planet. Yeah, exactly. There are a few common causes for all the things that are happening. Yeah. And I believe, and just to give your viewers some stats, because it's not just human health. So I wrote down some stats. And this is all in the last 50 years. And the one thing that I'll say that's also really remarkable is that when I did my research, Homo sapiens have been around as far as I know-

200,000. At least 200, 250,000 years. And all of these things that I'm about to tell you that you talk about, they've all happened in just the last 50 years. Yeah. And 50 years as a percentage of 200,000 means that we went 99.99% of humanity with no problems. None of these problems. We had other problems. We had different problems.

Killing each other. Yeah, but like these kind of problems. Killing all the big animals. All in the last 50 years, which on an evolutionary timescale is like a blink. It's a second. But it's a blink that could wipe us out. I actually think we're extincting ourselves.

And so here's just some stats in the last 50 years. So populations of vertebrates of all animals that have bones have seen a 69% drop in total population in 50 years. The number of severe weather-related disasters have tripled in, actually, this is even shorter than that, since 1980, causing $2.5 trillion of economic damage in just, and that number is just the last 20 years. 25% of young adults, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic or full-fledged type 2 diabetes. As you know, this used to be called, type 2 used to be called adult

onset diabetes because it was only adults that used to get it. Not children. Not only would kids get it, as young as two, yeah. Eight of the 10 leading causes of death are related to lifestyle diseases. The cancer rates are at all-time highs today. Yeah. All-time highs today. This is going to be the first year that there's over 2 million cases of cancer. And the New York Times- And the younger people are getting it too. And so the younger people, the under 35 has gone exponential. I mean, so Kate Middleton just diagnosed with cancer. And there's all these articles where they talk about it being mysterious and

it's mostly gastrointestinal. So it's mostly colorectal. And the microbiome plays such a huge role in preventing that. Yep. The way we eat and ultra processed food, which is the way the fiber destroys our microbiome. Yeah. And I know- And also the additives is the void of fiber, destroys our microbiome. Yeah. And also the additives destroy microbiome, causing inflammation, which also causes cancer. So the science is there about how the mechanistic systems work to drive the cancer rates and all these diseases.

It's not a mystery anymore. We know how this works. And yet we're still doing it. And then the part that really terrifies me, which Callie Means has been talking about and has become a dear friend, is on the fertility stuff. Oh, yeah counts are down 50 percent um yeah you said a podcast on that yeah so the whole fertility thing is terrifying i mean dropping fertility rates

dropping sperm calves difference in sex birth rates for between men and women because of that an animal we're seeing you know hermaphrodites and you know really strange things going on because of the industrial chemicals and really strange and then the final part which i don't want to gloss over suicide rates are at all-time highs and obviously we know about the mental health epidemic but what i think a lot of of people don't know and this has been scientifically shown loneliness is the greatest predictor of early death yeah in fact they there was a study that came out out of Yale. Like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. 15 cigarettes a day.

Oh, 15. I thought it was two packs. Yeah. But that's still crazy. I mean, 15 cigarettes a day is the comparable mortality risk of being lonely. And this is the first time in recorded human history where lifespans are falling. Yeah. Children are going to live sicker, shorter lives than their parents, for sure. And yet, and this is the part that's crazy. and this is why I say we have to wake up. And yet, we are the most- Wake the F up, you mean. Yes, wake the F up. We are the most technologically advanced we've ever been in human history,

right? We technically know more, and I put in quotes, know. We know more than we ever have- More information, but not necessarily knowledge. We exercise more than we ever have. And we. More information, but not necessarily knowledge. We exercise more than we ever have. And we spend more now on healthcare per person than we do on food. And so the amount we're spending and the amount of, quote, technological progress we're doing is going up and up and up. And the objective metrics of all these things are getting worse. Yeah. They're not only not staying the same, they're getting worse.

Yeah. are getting worse. They're not only not staying the same, they're getting worse. And if you said to anybody, the more you spend on something, the worse it gets, they would say, stop it. Like, what are you doing? And Einstein has this famous quote, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And here we are as supposedly the greatest scientific civilization in history, and we're the sickest we've ever been. We have paleolithic brains and godlike technology. That's right. And then so we're kind of still trapped in these almost Neanderthal kind of behaviors

and thoughts and actions, which kind of don't comport with a level of technology we have. And so we're really heading for this slow motion disaster, you said, which is either the annihilation of the human species or maybe even worse. Yeah. Well, the example I also give to some people, and then I'll get to kind of how I think we got here. But the example I give to people is if you had an ant farm, right? And, you know, in my class, in one of my elementary school classes, we had one of those ant farms where you could see with the glass, you could see the ants and they're making all their holes and they're making little things, you know, for the average human lifespan, which feels like a lot to us. But if you were watching an ant farm and in two weeks time, which is half of their lifespan, you saw a bunch of them dying, you saw massive destruction of what's happening inside there,

you would quickly look at that ant farm and go, oh my God, what the hell's going on? We got to change this. And because it's a little bit slower for us and because it's, I think this is the, Al Gore talked about the inconvenient truth of global warming. This meta crisis, which includes planetary health, is so inconvenient to deal with because it means we have to look in the mirror. We have to wake up. We have to get off of our hamster wheel. And look, everybody has regular life. You have families, you have jobs, you have distractions like TV and Netflix and social media. And to look at this in the mirror and say, wait a minute, every day that goes by,

we're getting worse. Yeah. It's so true, Jason. I wrote a lot about this in my book, Food Fix. I don't know if you had it. Yeah, I did. Essentially, it maps out how food is the nexus or the root cause of most of our global problems, from obviously chronic disease, which you mentioned, the economic impact of that, which is staggering. It's about 30% of our entire economy is that, or maybe even more. We have the destruction of our mental health through the food. And I did a podcast recently on the role of ultra processed food and mental health. There's obviously many other reasons like social media, but food is a big driver. The academic performance of our children and the destruction of the American mind started from kindergarten or even before up with like,

now they have this shark thing for these kids full of chemical dyes. And it's also destroying our communities, driving increased racism through food marketing towards black and Hispanic communities. And it's also radically impacting the planet by the environmental destruction because of the way we overuse our water resources, the way we destroy our waterways through nitrogen runoff and eutrophication,

the waterways that destroy huge, vast coastal areas that 500 million people depend on for food. Yep. The incredible destruction of the ecosystem. You mentioned the sparrows, but we've lost 50% of all the birds in America because of the chemicals we spray on farming. And we've lost biodiversity on farms. We've lost our soil organic matter. We've driven huge climate change because of how we farm and not just the cows, but everything we're doing. And so it's all one big problem.

And we have to sort of talk about it as one interconnected thing. And I think your story of your own healing through dealing with the root cause, which was food, is kind of a metaphor for what we need to do for both our individual health, our collective societal health and planetary health. Yeah, I think it's not just food.

I mean, I really want to make sure I also emphasize the mental health component because it goes both ways, right? Bad food leads to poor mental health, but then poor mental health also leads to bad physical health. Yeah. It's bi-directional. Yeah. It's the cycle. And I do believe there's a happy ending to this. Yeah. I mean, this is very depressing. This is very depressing. So don't worry. We're going to get to the happy ending of how I think we can fix this. When I was immersed in public companies and I was immersed in studying these companies and I was in, you know, I had the good fortune of being inside of boardrooms and the good fortune of being in some DC policy meetings with public companies and politicians to sort of see how these decisions get made. And I think most of it came with good intentions. I don't think everybody is malicious. I think there's some malicious people out there and there's some people, and we can get to some of the big food companies that I think are still knowingly poisoning people. But I want to use

like McDonald's as an interesting kind of example of how something can start off with good intentions and then we don't consider the downstream externalities. McDonald's started close to 80 years ago. It was a burger shack. It was in the 40s. And back in the 40s, they got their beef from a farm. It was undoubtedly grass-fed, finished beef because that's the only way they did cows back then. The potatoes were definitely organic. They had no pesticides or chemicals or synthetic burden like we have today. They were deep frying it in tallow, in beef tallow. And it probably wasn't that bad for you in the grand scheme of things. And I often point to, when people don't believe this, watch some movies from the 1970s. And if you watch movies from the 70s, you'll notice, and I'm not talking about the main actors, I'm And if you watch movies from the 70s, you'll notice, and I'm not talking

about the main actors. I'm talking about all the people in the background of all these movies. You'll notice that very few people were overweight. People think like, well, the only way you can look fit and healthy right now is you have to just eat salads. But I would point out that in the 70s, and you know this, and you're older than I am, but people ate burgers and people ate fries and people ate pizza and people ate ice cream and people drank milkshakes. Yeah. And yet they were still looking like that. Yeah. So it's not just that it was junk food, right?

It's what was in the food. I mean, things that would look like food now are really approximations of food and they're not actually food by definition. And so what happened with McDonald's is they had this mousetrap and they created a product that everyone wanted. And America in particular, but I'd say all of developing countries are based on consumption. And McDonald's had something that people wanted more of. And so capital came into it and people were saying, hey, let's grow this.

How do we turn McDonald's from a $100,000 company to what today is a $200 billion company? Unbelievable. And the only way to do that, and the capital markets, and particularly the public markets, have historically revolved around one variable, which is profit. Profit, right. Which is how do we maximize profit? And so what happened with McDonald's over time, and if you follow the trajectory, is they had to figure out how do we make our burger the same in New York City as it is in Paris, as it is in London, as it is in Tokyo, and how do we make our fries the same, and how do we make everything the same in New York City as it is in Paris, as it is in London, as it is in Tokyo? And how do we make our fries the same? And how do we make everything the same? And we took this sort of Henry Ford approach of assembly line. Now with technology and things like semiconductors,

it's much easier to do that in software. But with food, which is naturally an organic, not homogenous concept and it has natural variability, you have to, to do it, you have to homogenize the food and you have to widgetize the food. You literally have to say, how do we turn things like animals and plants into widgets? And the only way that we have figured out how to do it, and we did it, was with pure science, and how do we make more things synthetic, and how do we take out the variability that naturally exists in food? Yeah. Isn't what's in a burger now, in a McDonald's burger, not a lot of beef or some beef, but it's a lot of other weird stuff. If you look at the ingredient label of American french fries at McDonald's, there's 19 ingredients in it. And we'll come back to this with the Kellogg letter, but in Europe, it's four ingredients.

Yeah. But here it's 19. If you sort of take that and you just see like, okay, more money keeps coming in, it's working, it's working, more profits, more profits, more homogenization, more widgetizing, you can understand how we decided like, okay, to make the land more predictable, to make the animals more predictable, to make the animals more predictable, to make the output more predictable, we have to basically make everything more and more chemical, synthetic, and use the science that we developed for things like technology, we have to apply it to food. And if you go industry by industry and you take the same lens, there are a lot of companies that started with a much more, I'd say ethical and moral approach to creating that thing. You know,

early days of Lululemon, for example, and you take clothing, you take things like Starbucks, you take things like the cocoa industry and every single industry has the same trajectory, which is it started off with a natural organic approach. And then to grow and grow and grow and grow, we had to widgetize and synthesize and commodify everything. And you didn't consider, or they didn't consider because they weren't paid to consider the externalities. And they maybe didn't know at that time. They definitely didn't know it at the time. We invented Crisco. We didn't know it was bad for us until it was 1911. It was invented because. We didn't know it was bad for us. Correct. Until it was 1911.

It was invented because of butter shortage. And it wasn't until 2015 that it was declared not safe to eat. 104 years later. That's right. The challenge has been is that as we got later, call it 90s and the 2000s, when it started to become clear. And these public companies started to say, hey, because there have been a handful of CEOs that said, they raised their hand and said, this stuff is poisoning people. Yeah.

Like we have to buy healthier products. We have to create healthier products. The problem though, is that when they started introducing or creating healthier products, they were inherently lower margin. And they were inherently less predictable because it was again, more natural. Yeah. And this was all good when things were good. But when things started to, when companies started to have challenges or they started to

miss their corporate earnings, they would always go back to the golden goose and say, oh, let's stop this healthier stuff because that's lower margin. We don't make as much money on it. And let's keep leaning into the stuff that we know works and people are buying. And it got to the point where there were certain executives that would get fired because they were trying to do the right thing. Well, Indra Nooyi, Pepsi wanted to do the right thing and she got canned. She was the CEO of Pepsi. Indra Nooyi, greatest female CEO of all time, is on my human co-board. And she talks about how she tried to move the Titanic. Yeah.

You know, and you hear the stories of, because of the way capitalism works, there's always people along the way who may just try to make a living. They get fired if they don't maximize profits. So do you think there's any world in which we're going to move from a shareholder optimization to a stakeholder optimization economy?

Yes. In other words, where it's not just about maximizing profit for the shareholder of the stock, but all the stakeholders and who actually are involved in that product in some way as users, the society, the earth, everything, right? It's starting to happen. It's starting to happen. And I think it has to happen from both a top-down approach, which is regulatory, where the government says things like, you can't sell trans fats or you can't sell artificial food diets. So

you don't even give them the option. Unfortunately, that is slow. That is corrupt. And you would think that's happened faster. And it has happened faster in other countries where the medical system is more socialized. Yeah. Because the governments in those- Because it's paying. The governments in those places bear the brunt of sick citizens. What most people don't realize is the US government actually does pay for most of the healthcare in this country.

It pays for 30% of its entire federal budget is for healthcare and 44% of the entire healthcare costs in a country, which are 4.3 and now $4.5 trillion are paid for by the government across all government health programs from Medicare, Medicaid, Indian health service, private defense, and other programs like children's health program. So we are literally doing the same thing, but we don't realize it. So the government actually isn't acting in their best interest by doing the kind of policies they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Because we're spending so much money on just keeping people from dying, but they're still very sick.

Yeah. Instead of all the preventative stuff that we've talked about. Let's back up a little bit, Kij, because I think this is a really important point. We know we're in this situation. We know we're poisoning ourselves. We know our food system is screwed.

We know food industry is not being their own police and checking themselves. You know, I'm thinking about tobacco. Tobacco got to where it is now with dramatic changes in our laws and and huge penalties to the tobacco industry because of litigation yeah it was a class action lawsuit yep and it was easy to do because it was one thing it's cigarettes it's tobacco food is so many things you know are we going to litigate against red dye number 40 are we going to litigate against trans fats are we going to litigate against red dye number 40? Are we going to litigate against trans fats? Are we going to litigate against proletariat processed food, against

sugar? And I've talked to some people who actually were involved in the class action lawsuits lawyers for tobacco. And they're like, it's really tough because it's so amorphous. And I'm wondering if you see a path for class action lawsuits and litigation, because basically what you did was you wrote a really nasty lawyer letter from a top lawyer who could scare the shit out of people to Kellogg's and say, get your act together or else. And we reserve our rights and we're going to go after you legally if you don't fix this now. So that was really compelling. But do you think there's room for kind of a massive litigation approach to this? Because that's what's happened across all the

changes that we've seen in society, whether it's civil rights, women's rights, whether it's gay rights, things that really worked were these massive attempts to change the law, not by going to lobbying Congress, but by actually going to the courts. Do you think that's the right way, or is there another path that we can get out of this? Because I think about this day and night and I'm struggling with figuring out how do we drive this? And I'm working on food policy in Washington. It's incremental. Yes. Right? But how do we actually make a quantum jump in this? I guess- Because it is existential for us.

It is existential. As you've been talking about this meta crisis. It is existential. whether they're actually tuned into or not, whether they're narcotized by social media or streaming TV or the food that they're eating is dumbing their brain down, which is really true. It literally inflames the brain and disconnects your adult self from your reptile self. How do we actually come to terms with this and what can we do? I think the bad news is there's no silver bullet, but the good news is I think it's a lot of lead bullets. Shotgun. It's a lot of things. And I think there'll be some that are much more effective than others.

As I said before, I think there's the top down that you mentioned, which would be regulatory, which would be things like either taxes or banning of things like artificial food dyes. In South America, you can't get Tony the Tiger on the cereal box. They took it off, Fruit Loops.

Correct. And I think the reason that we chose as our first shot across the bow, the reason we chose artificial food dyes is it's so black and white. Yeah. There's nobody that's gonna say, I would proactively feed my children

a bunch of petroleum-derived chemicals over natural food colorings, if given the choice. Whereas I think things like sugar, which have been around colorings, if given the choice. Whereas I think things like sugar, which have been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years- Maybe you shouldn't be eating petroleum products, Jason. Yes. I think things like sugar and sugar load and all of those issues are much more nuanced in terms of like, what's the amount? Can you do GMO, non-GMO? And so I wanted to pick something that was so objectively absurd that

anybody who wasn't being paid to say it would be like, yes, I would rather feed natural food colorings to my children than synthetic petroleum derived artificial food. Not a hard sell. So we have top down. Bottom up is the part where I think it can be the most effective, the fastest. And bottom up is the consumer. And that is them voting with their wallet. That is them boycotting. That is them signing our petition, which will be in your show notes. The point is the consumer can create rapid change if they vote with their wallet. Or their fork. Or their fork. And if consumers basically said, we are not going to buy this crap because we know

there's a better version that you're already selling. And until you give us a better version, if Kellogg's sales drop 5%, just 5, it doesn't need to be 20. If it just drops 5% over the country take like 5, 10, 15 years. There's just so much red tape and there's so much money that's going to be lost to lawyers on both sides that I think the class action stuff can work, but I think we don't have time. We have time for that. The only things that we have time for are both top down, and that's why we're in touch with several attorney generals. We're in touch with many members of Congress about this. Anyone who is patriotic and likes living in this country should understand that we as Americans should get the best version of a product you already make. That's right.

Like that should be the line. Yeah. We should get the best version of a product you already make in another country. Period. Full stop. Yeah. And I think- It's not a hard sell.

And so I think- Not saying cereal is good or we should be promoting it, but if you're going to eat cereal, it shouldn't be poison. Right. So, and by the way, I think the other reason that Kellogg and the other food companies rapidly, I mean, and I mean rapidly changed their formulation in those other countries was because they didn't want to have the warning labels on the box of cereal. That's right. They didn't want to have a cigarette warning label on their cereal. So if we required a warning label in this country on the boxes of cereal, it would happen overnight.

That's what we're doing, Jason. I don't know if you know, but my Food Fix campaign, we're working with the FDA and Robert Califf, who's very in favor of this, to change food labeling, to create warning labels and clear labeling on the front of packages. Yeah. So it's not like you have to read the ingredient list or read the nutrition facts, which are intentionally designed to confuse and confound us, unless you're a PhD in nutrition, and

then even then, good luck. It's like, how do you make it simple so a little kid can understand, okay? Yeah. Maybe you have to make the grade A to F. If you don't make it A, that's not good. But if you're B, probably okay, but don't need a D or an F, right? But the fastest way is through the consumer. The fastest way because these companies will adapt overnight. So Kellogg agreed. They sent us a letter back. Really?

Yeah. They sent us a letter back. We published this yesterday. So this is new news. Hot news. Okay. This is hot news. They agreed to meet with us. I don't know what's going to happen in the meeting. I don't want to make any promises. I used to be a shareholder activist. I've done this many times. And what I will say, and I hope Kellogg is listening to this, I am not out for blood. I am out for change. And so I'm not looking to publicly humiliate them. What my hope is, is that there's a bunch of parents in this room who recognize that they wouldn't voluntarily feed their kids all these artificial food dyes. And then they make the change and they come out and

they say, and I'll help them do it. I will help them change their ways and be an ally, ironically. And my hope is that if they do this, that the public gives them credit. And the best thing that could happen is that sales go up. The best thing that could happen is that the stock goes up on them making this change. Because if the stock goes up, revenue, meaning the sales go up, then it will give a pass to all of the other companies who are petrified of harming their margins. And they'll say, wow. We can change too. The public actually is rewarding us for being responsible because I think the fundamental

problem, Mark, and this is what I'm trying to do with Humanco and True Food Kitchen and all of our related businesses under the Humanco umbrella, is I think the fundamental problem is up until now, companies have been rewarded for taking shortcuts, financially speaking. They have been rewarded for making more money at the expense of people. And if we can show, whether it's through my businesses or other businesses, if we can show- There's another way.

If we can show the world that you can have a successful business that heals people- You can do good and do well. If you can show that you can actually have a successful company that employs people, that can pay their bills and feed their families by making the world better and healing people, we will start seeing a lot of companies that are starting to do it right. That's right. Because they're getting rewarded for doing it. That's right.

I think that's the argument that the food companies make. And I've talked to many CEOs of big food companies and they say, look, we can't change because our competitors aren't changing it. That's right. I think that's the argument that the food companies make. And I've talked to many CEOs of big food companies and they say, look, we can't change because our competitors aren't changing. And if we do the right thing, our margins are going to drop and they're going to win and we can't have that. So we're stuck, even though we know it's the wrong thing to do. Prisoner's dilemma. It's prisoner's dilemma. I would also say if Kellogg is listening that they should also take out the hydrogenated fats that are in both the European and the American versions. So that shouldn't even be there. And just to point out, we said that trans fats were banned.

They really weren't. In 2015, the government said they're no longer grass, meaning they're not generally recognized as safe. It doesn't mean they're banned. It means that food companies should not put them in, and they're not recognized as safe to eat, but it's still allowed. So we can still buy margarine. We can still buy all these hydrogenated products. A lot of companies have taken it out, thank God, but Fruit Loops

has hydrogenated fat. So that's really bad. I think, Jason, you're such a great visionary and a clear seer of what's going on in society around this meta crisis that's affecting our physical health, our mental health, our planetary health. You're doing incredible work to change that. You have a beautiful voice that's clear and not dogmatic. And you're trying to help companies that are doing the wrong thing do the right thing by applying pressure in the right acupuncture point. And I'm really grateful to you. I'm grateful for everything you've done. I'm grateful for you, Kitchen. I'm grateful for you, Chocolate, which thank God I love and everybody should eat. It's great. I mean, if you're going to eat chocolate, that's the one to eat. And it's a fantastic chocolate. You have Human Co, which is a meta brand for many, many products that you

have and companies that you have that really are trying to elevate the food system and show that there is a way to do good and do well at the same time. And I'm just so thrilled that you're meeting with Kellogg and pushing this forward. And it takes people like you to activate people who care, but maybe don't think their voice matters because it does. So thanks so much, Jason, for being on the podcast and being on The Doctor's Pharmacy. And we'll continue this conversation and find out what happens next. So I'm on the edge of my seat. And thank you, Mark.

And I just want to leave your listeners with one final point about up until now, as companies have tried to scale, particularly in food, more scale has meant more problems for the world, for people and mental health in general. And I believe it's possible to scale where things get better as you scale instead of things get worse as you scale. And that is the fundamental problem we all need to help with. And the more people support companies that are doing it right and are willing to pay a little bit more for better practices, better ingredients, and better integrity, the more that those companies succeed, the more this is going to move. That's right. And in a sense, we think we're paying more, but we're actually paying less

because we're paying less in our medical bills, our healthcare bills, our disability, our lack of productivity, our lack of enjoyment of of life or lack of vitality. I mean, the human cost, it's not measured in actual dollars, is high. And also the human cost is measured on the back end. Healthcare cost is huge. That's right. I think it's important that maybe we... It's interesting. I don't know if you know this fact, but I think in America,

the Americans spend 9% of their income on food and Europe is 20%. That's right. Yeah. It used to be the same. 40 years ago, it was the same. So I think, you know, eating cheap food has become inconvenience food has become somehow a value instead of having good food. And I think we may want to shift over to thinking a little bit more about where we spend our money on and shifting over our values and priorities. But thank you, Jason, for having me. And, uh, please, please support the Kellogg's

initiative. Sign the petition. Sign the petition and boycott their food until they make their changes. Amen. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Jason. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And follow me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. And now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Mark's Picks newsletter at

drhyman.com forward slash Mark's Picks. I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays and I'll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations. These are the things that have helped me on my health journey and I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's drhyman.com forward slash MarksPix. Thank you again and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Altru Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health where I'm the Chief Medical Officer. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I'm the chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only.

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