The Rich Roll Podcast - Inside Nutrition Misinformation: Nutrition Scientist Jessica Knurick Exposes What's Really Happening to Public Health in America

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

This conversation explores the war on science, the misdirection of the MAHA movement, and what's happening to public health while everyone argues about food dyes. We discuss how a $1.1 trillion healthcare cut happened under the radar, why "seed oils" didn't exist until TikTok invented them, and Jessica's systemic solutions for actually making America healthy. Additionally, she explains how health misinformation has become a profitable fear machine. Jessica brings compassionate clarity to the current health policy landscape. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up   Today’s Sponsors:  Go Brewing: Use the code Rich Roll for 15% OFF 👉https://www.gobrewing.com Squarespace: Use code RichRoll to save 10% off your first order of a website or domain 👉https://www.squarespace.com/RichRoll     Lincoln Financial: Check out the NEW 4-part series "The Action Plan"👉https://www.lincolnfinancial.com/richroll                                                             AG1: Get a FREE bottle of D3K2, Welcome Kit, and 5 travel packs with your first order 👉https://www.drinkAG1.com/richroll                                             Roka: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL 👉https://www.ROKA.com/RICHROLL            On: High-performance shoes & apparel crafted for comfort and style 👉https://www.on.com/richroll              WHOOP: The all-new WHOOP 5.0 is here! Get your first month FREE👉https://www.join.whoop.com/Roll                        Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 https://www.richroll.com/sponsors   Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media  and follow us@voicingchange

We're brought to you today by the wonderful folks at Go Brewing. Let me tell you a story. A few years ago, this guy, Joe Chura, rings me up out of the blue, and he asks if I'll fly out to Illinois and speak at this event that he was hosting called Go, which ended up being this really incredible weekend oriented around taking inspired action. It off, but, you know, that was kind of that, and it wasn't until I ran into him a couple years ago at Jesse Itzler's running man event that I realized that he had taken inspired. action himself by creating this new enterprise that was also called Go. Go Brewing, in fact, which from Go Go has grown into what it is today, one of the most exciting in craft brewing.

One of the many things that makes Go Brewing extraordinary is that they don't outsource like most companies. They handcraft everything from scratch and small batches. In fact, this commitment to quality has fueled their growth into one of America's fastest growing breweries, now in over 5,000 locations across 20 states online. The salty a.F. Chilada earned the untapped number one non-alcoholic logger in the United States, and they're constantly creating bold new flavors almost every month that push the boundaries of what non-alcoholic beer can be. Double IPAs, mouth-watering sours, all with zero added sugars and...

Hear that? Incredible stuff. The non-alcoholic revolution is here. people. I am proud to help champion it alongside Joe. So get on board by getting with Go by going to gobrewing.com where you're going to use the code rich roll for your first purchase. Go. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. I cannot tell you how frequently I meet people who have incredible ideas, valuable skills, things the world desperately needs, but they get stuck on the tech side of sharing it. Either they aren't conversant in technology, they're allergic

to it, or I think they just don't need it. But there are a couple things these people are missing, which is that no matter how good your idea or offering may be, you still need to make people aware of it if you want anybody to care about it. And second, the tech side of it all is just no longer complex, thanks to Squarespace, which has created this incredibly easy to use all-in-one frictionless solution to take that idea, that offering, and present it to the world. Squarespace handles everything, website building, domains, payments, the whole deal. So you can focus on what you're actually good at. And now they've got this thing called Blueprint AI.

And tell it what you do, what you're about, your vibe, and it builds you a custom website that actually reflects who you are. Not some cookie cutter template that screams, I used a template, but the real. real deal. And here's the game changer. They've made it stupidly simple to turn your expertise into income. In sessions, online courses, consultations, whatever, you can showcase it, schedule it, invoice for it, get paid for it, all through one platform. Because here's the truth, your ideas, sitting in your head, help nobody. But when you make it easy for people to find you and work with you, that changes

everything. So head on over to Squarespace for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use code rich roll to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. The MAHA movement, they largely get the problem right. That's why it's so effective. They really have tapped into something in a very bipartisan way across the board that we all feel, because you know, maybe we can talk a little bit about how this left-to-right change in wellness has happened. But many of us in public health have been talking about these same problems that MAHA is talking about, right? We do have a lifestyle-related chronic disease issue. That's why I got into this field and started studying chronic disease prevention,

you know, a decade and a half ago. We do have a food environment that is nearly, by best estimate, 70% ultra-processed food. And there's a reason for that. And we do have, you know, systems that are not built for us to be healthier. They're really built for corporate profit and for the profitability of them. And so those truths are there and they really latched on to those. The issue is that they got the causes of those issues largely wrong. you get the causes wrong, you're going to get the solutions wrong and you're going to miss

the bark on the solutions. And your solutions either will be kind of benign and not make any impact or they'll be harmful in some cases. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. So I've been doing this thing a long time. And I think I have done a pretty good job. I've really tried my best to decode. the best minds that I can find to cajole and join me here, people with the best and most helpful wisdom to help us make the best decisions in the interest, in the pursuit of living our best lives,

our most actualized and authentic lives in body, mind, and spirit so that we can live, you know, more fulfilled, more purposeful, more grounded, more directed, and more healthy. which brings me to today's reckoning with our increasingly strange and deranged, fractured and friction-fueled information landscape and a desire that I have to speak up and speak out about it a little bit. Because it's kind of crazy out there right now across the media fields that we scroll our thumbs across, whether it's cable news pundits or late-night talk show hosts,

the quasi-journalistic pieces that we consume in our digital newspapers, what we listen to in podcastlandia and read in substakistan. It's a lot, this avalanche of stuff that's being dumped on us every day to sift through. And it's all on us to make sense of it amidst this social media world that we're living in. And the new time that we find ourselves in, a time I don't think any of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes or are really all that well equipped to mentally handle. Where institutional trust is in decline, news is almost by default defined by the predisposition or biases of the organizations that publish it, such that it's now never been harder to decode what's real from what's not, what's true from what's fiction or opinion, what's in good

faith and what's bad faith misinformation exaggeration versus disinformation versus politically fueled tribalism versus deep fake propaganda appearing real motivated by agendas and incentives designed to advance profit and power and I guess what I'm saying is that if there is a skill that we would all benefit from doubling down on right now it's discernment discernment is what we decide to let into our brains and what to keep out. Discernment when it comes to the sources of our information, discernment as to the incentives that drive what gets said by whom, the discernment to identify our own biases and to test them instead of indulging them. So we prevent ourselves from being ruled by them. And the health and wellness landscape is, of course, not immune to any of these

forces. In fact, in many ways, it's really at the very heart at the center of politics right now. And it is being used, weaponized, to not only divide us, but really to distract us from paying attention to what's actually happening, which is what we look away power is doing, what power is up to behind the curtain, which is working pretty hard to dismantle the very foundation of the things we actually need if we want or care about public health. And I say this as someone who, look, if you're a long time listener, you already know as somebody who's been in this health and wellness space for a very long time. And I'm into it. I love it. I believe in it. I live it. And I believe that the choices that we make every single day are vital to our personal

health span to sidestepping chronic lifestyle ailments like heart disease and type 2 diabetes and obesity that are more responsible for the early death and disability of Americans than anything else. I believe in exercise. I believe in fitness. I believe in responsible strategic supplementation. I love my green juice and my adaptogens, my sauna and my coal plunge routine. And I'm familiar with the ways in which the medical establishment has led us astray. But I think there are a lot of people, people like me in my world who have been and are being induced or cajoled, if not outright manipulated into believing

that the Make America Healthy Again movement, maha is the movement that we've all been waiting for, that it's all about what we're all about because it's speaking a language that we're familiar with because it seems to be talking about what we talk about a lot here on the podcast, like the proliferation of poisonous ultra-processed foods that are driving deleterious health,

the depletion of our soils due to monocropping, and the toxicity that finds its way into our soil, our water, our air, and the foods that we eat by way of the chemical pesticides and toxins that are to regur in factory farming and manufacturing. I'm also sympathetic to those of us who have suffered at the hands of a health care system that is failing us, costing too much,

letting us down, us to search for alternatives because it is true that big pharma has big incentives to medicate us big time and sometimes if not often unnecessarily all of this i get but the real big thing is how all of these very real and legitimate and understandable concerns and misgivings are being used as a smokescreen a distraction a trojan horse a lever to lift and engender a groundswell of support for an administration that behind closed doors is using that support to see through a completely different kind of agenda. And as someone, again, rooted in well-being in this movement around health and wellness, I feel a responsibility to call out what I see, and what I see isn't great.

And what I mean by this is that many are out there cheering success because a fast food chain decided to voluntarily swap out seed oils in favor of beef tallow, which, look, you know, it's a bad idea if you believe in evidence-based science. And then there's a few candy companies that have volunteered to retire their use of red dye 40 and a soda company announced it will pivot from high fructose corn syrup to cane sugar. But all of these, and there are many, many similar examples, are really far from the big public health wins they are being promoted to be. First, because anyone who is concerned about health shouldn't be eating any of this stuff

in the first place. Second, because it seems to send a message that these terrible foods are somehow now healthy, which very well may lead to an increase in their consumption. And third, most importantly, because monopolizing everyone's attention on press releases like this means that less people are paying attention to what is actually happening right before our eyes, which is actually pretty sinister

and completely at odds with anything resembling. the promotion of public health. To name a few, right now, there are over 30 environmental regulations that are being rolled back, which means, among other things, that there will be more leeway for corporations to pollute our waterways

with mercury and arsenic and lead. The administration is revoking Phaas limits on our drinking water. They're blocking warning labels on pesticides, including glyphosate, unknown carcinogen, and GMO crops are being, deregulated. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been cut from SNAP programs, which will obviously increase food insecurity, along with other program cuts that previously allowed farmers

to provide fresh food to schools and food banks, while also gutting environmental regulations at the EPA and ending research into farmland contamination, all of which just means less healthy food for those who need it, and more contaminants in that food. in our soil and in our water, all while the FDA is being given wider latitude to get drugs to market without the annoying and expensive hurdles to ensure their safety. At the same time, we're seeing cuts to health care, Medicaid, and nutritional safety net protections that will only lead to declining health for millions of Americans, and an immigration policy that makes it no longer possible for farmers, for meatpackers, to employ seasonal migrant farm workers, which will

inevitably lead to food shortages, higher food prices for healthy food, and likely both. The iceberg is huge. This is just the very tip. The list is long. But one thing that is pretty clear is that there does not seem to be any concern for what matters most in the context of public health, which is the collective well-being of all of us, which weakens us as a nation. will continue to lead to skyrocketing health care costs that threaten to bankrupt the economy and even poses a threat to our national security. Look, I want America to be healthy.

The again part is debatable, but the point is that there is a right way to do it, and this isn't it. Because if we don't have clean air, clean water, clean food, or even medications for those who need them that can be trusted as safe, It's simply impossible to achieve this, let alone make America healthy again.

So today we're going to get into it and we're going to do it with one of the most powerful voices out there on these subjects, Dr. Jessica Nurek, a registered dietitian and public health expert who has been making a pretty big impact on this discourse by way of many short but very powerful videos that you can find on her Instagram at Dr. Jessica Nurek. D.R. Jessica Nurek, that debunk false claims that reveal the ways in which public attention is being misdirected from the true systemic causes of chronic disease. And she's basically just somebody who is setting matters to rights on how all of this fear-based pseudoscientific rhetoric that we're being exposed to not only undermines trust in well-established, evidence-based science, it's serving a purpose that is at cross purposes with our common goal, which is a shared ambition for a healthier, more robust, vital, and resilient America. So, discernment. I would like to think that I'm pretty discerning, but, you know, look, don't we all? Because we all have biases. We all

have blind spots as much as we all think that we're the ones who don't. And I can hardly ask all of you to uplevel your discernment if I don't commit to doing the same. So I'm working on it. I'm working on being more discerning, not just in what I read and what I scroll and what I watch and the people that I elect to associate with, but also in the guests that I decide to invite onto this show going forward and the kind of conversations that I bring to you, which From this point on, I am really committing doubling down to up-leveling, including what I think is a pretty discerning and honest conversation you're now about to hear with Jessica Nurek, which I hope you will listen to with a discerning ear. Jessica, thanks for coming. Thanks so much for having me on.

I'm excited to talk to you. I think the place where I would like to start is by giving you an opportunity. to provide your sort of top-level synopsis based on your perspective on the current state of public health, the dissonance between policy and public perception, and the discourse that is swirling around these important issues, both online and in mainstream media. Like, can you cap that with something concise to say

that can launch us into this conversation? Yeah, I think it's important to realize what public health is. And I think what's happened over the course of the last, you know, year or so, especially the last six months, is a lot of people who may have never thought about the system surrounding public health are getting interested in public health. And so, you know, we can talk about that a little bit, but I think that's an opportunity to help people kind of connect some dots. But public health essentially is looking at the systems in our country that essentially enable us to live healthy lives, right? So things that we don't necessarily even think

about having clean water, having clean air and soil and, you know, having safe food so that, you know, there's not toxins in our food and there's not foodborne illness being spread and those types of things. And so it's all of the systems that surround those different things. And I think right now in a lot of the public health discourse, there's been kind of this co-opting of what public health should be. And a lot of that, we need to take some blame for that in the public health sphere and the science sphere for not really explaining to people what public health is in terms of it's not necessarily what's happening on an individual level, but it's more on kind of a universal level for everybody.

I think what stands out in your advocacy goes beyond this very straightforward approach that you have to tackling health misinformation online and this acute skill that you have to communicate complex issues in a very clear way where the public can really understand what you're trying to convey to them. But the differentiating thing about you is that you have a basic compassion for the well-meaningness of people who seem to be either ill-informed or confused on these issues. Like you're not attacking people, you're sort of taking what they're saying and correcting the record, but doing it with a sort of empathy or an understanding for how maybe they

arrived at their misinformed conclusion. Thank you for noticing that. I think that that comes from the fact that I used to be in a place where I didn't really understand these issues. I mean, it took me years and years of studying these systems and these issues to really start connecting these dots. And for a long time, I mean, I really started in the personal wellness space and being really like a big advocate of that. And so I kind of, I understand the idea that, you know, what's working for us should be working for everybody. And that's why I really try to not necessarily, um, put down people who don't really connect the dots of like how policy is impacting it. Or if someone says, says, like, we should leave politics out of health, for example. I understand where that comes from. I think it comes from a misunderstanding of how policies directly impact, kind of our health and our health environment and our food environments and all of those things. One of the things I've heard you say is that there's a difference between wellness,

which basically is about our personal responsibility to ourselves and health, or at least public health. These are two different things that often get confounded in the dialogue around issues that impact us from our food environments and everything that we're exposed to. Yeah, I mean, a good example of that

is just with nutrition, right? I mean, you can think about, I'm a registered dietitian. And so if I'm working with you one-on-one and we're talking about how to improve your personal health, I'm going to take like a health history and we're going to talk about

all of the different aspects that can improve your health. But there's systems behind all of those accessibility to food and what your food environment looks like and policies that impact those systems. And so when we're thinking about individual health, you're able to make individual choices within those systems. And so that's really where we focus in public health is on the systems that are making those choices accessible to the most people in the country. I think that's the really big difference. That's the less sort of sexy side of this. It's a lot of fun to talk about

your adaptogens or your morning routine. But when it comes to making the biggest difference in terms of health outcomes writ large, particularly with respect to the chronic ailments that are basically, you know, befalling too many people and are really driving our poor health outcomes. The solutions to these, yes, we all should make better personal choices around our nutrition and our fitness, et cetera. But ultimately, what drives this are these public programs and policies that impact wealth inequality, access to healthy foods,

provide a safety net of programs to educate people around nutrition and infrastructure that is conducive to healthy lifestyle decisions. And these are things that over which, like us as individuals don't have any control, but the people who are, who are seated in power do.

And it seems to me that this should be the focus of their agenda and their policy directives rather than what we're seeing right now, which appears to me to be a lot of fanfare that is nothing more than misdirection. Like there's no real there there. Yeah, so we call those the social determinants of health and public health. And there are really these non-medical factors that directly impact somebody's health. So things like income inequality and the built environment, which is, you know, do you live in an area that has sidewalks and safe parks for your kids to play in and things like food accessibility and education and all of these things have a direct impact on people's health? And so when you look at the population as a whole, and this is kind of a public health lens, right, if you look at the population as a whole and you're thinking, how can I improve the health of America?

How can I make America healthy, right? You have to look at the population and you have to look at who's most impacted by chronic disease. Who's most impacted by these negative health impacts? And there's immense health disparities in our country. So, you know, a lot of the rhetoric right now on social media and other places is let's compare the United States to European countries. Let's compare us to Japan. Let's compare us to other countries. But we actually don't have to do that.

You can compare states in the United States to other states. You can compare even zip codes to other zip codes. and you see massive health disparities. You know, if you look at, there's evidence to show that if you look at the highest income bracket versus the lowest income bracket, there's a 15-year age gap for men and a 10-year age gap for women between those brackets. People who are in that lowest-income bracket report five times worse health outcomes than people in the highest income bracket, two times higher diabetes rates.

I mean, you just see disparities in every marker with lifestyle-related chronic disease and life expectancy. And so when you're trying to devise a system that helps, people to get healthier that helps improve the health of America. You have to look at who's most impacted. And that's really what public health does. And so, you know, how can we improve the built environment? How can we increase food accessibility for people? How can we improve the food system so that we can lift people up who are struggling most, which is going to lift everybody up in the country, right? We're all going to benefit from a more nutritious

food system overall. So those are the types of things that we're really looking at. And when there's a kind of movement around making America healthy that doesn't talk about those disparities. It's just not rooted in reality. Well, the solutions to those problems require institutions. And we're in a moment in which distrust in institutions has never been higher. So I'm curious around your thoughts when it comes to how we got to this place where we've got no time for experts and we don't trust anybody in a position of expertise or authority over these matters. I've done a lot of thinking about this and kind of like figuring out where it comes from. I think it's a confluence of a lot of different factors.

I think, well, I'll start with the fact that I think we as scientists and public health experts deserve some of that blame because for a very long time and maybe even still today, you know, scientists in particular, we write in a language that's not accessible to people. We publish our work behind paywalls that is not accessible to people unless you have some sort of ability to get into it or you pay $80 to read a single research article. And the communication that we have done has been largely on like websites that no one goes to. It's often been like frowned upon for academics and scientists to go on social media, to go where people are going for information. So back in 2016, I was a new tenure track professor and there was a new

app out that my brother, my younger brother was like, you should get on and teach nutrition on there because I was like teaching nutrition courses. And I was like, that'd be a good idea. So I started making basic nutrition, like intro to nutrition contents on this app. And, you know, I got a pretty good following, like 20,000 people initially. And I got a lot of pushback from colleagues and like former colleagues. I got made fun of. And people were like, how's your vlogging doing? And as a brand new tenure track professor, I mean, I stopped doing it because I didn't want to put

myself in a position where, you know, I was being made fun of or I was thought less of because I was on social media, like quote unquote vlogging. And I think that was for a very long time. That was the popular opinion in those spaces. Like, don't go on social media. That's not where we go as, like, evidence-based people or academics. And we lost a lot of ground for a lot of years because of that. And we allowed kind of, like, narratives to be manipulated.

And, you know, when people don't put a face to scientists, when they don't put a face to, like, these public health experts, it's very easy to write them off. And so I think now that's changing a bit. And we're seeing more, like, science communication coming online. but, you know, there's a lot of issues with that too and barriers we have to overcome with that. But I think that was one of the things. I think that COVID was definitely exacerbated a lot of things that were already probably kind of there and with, you know, just being locked in and all of the misinformation coming out. And some of the, like, bad communication from our public health experts at that time, I think that

had a major role as well. And so, you know, then when a movement comes in that's built off mistrust of these institutions, it was very easy for people to just latch on to that. Yeah, I got spinal fusion surgery recently. And in the lead up to that, I discovered that the resident doctor, the resident neurosurgeon happened to be, I didn't know this when I had my appointment with him,

I only found out later that he is like a science influencer, like a video of his popped up on my feet. And I was like, oh my God, that's like one of my guys. And he's got a big following and he talks about like, you know, into all this stuff about the brain in a really smart and engaging way. But the senior surgeon who performed my surgery

is like not crazy about it. You know what I mean? Like he represents like, you know, that perspective that I think is still very much fully entrenched. And you know, I think like shout out to Dr. Z's performing a public service for good in the world. But I can see where you're coming from with that.

And there's no question that the pandemic was an inciting incident, like a flashpoint for all of this. And I think there were a lot of unforced errors around the scientific community's communication to the public about what was going on that bred a lot of this distrust. And you can't talk about health misinformation or disinformation without understanding

how this institutional distrust came about in the first place and what it's now giving rise to. because I think it created a perfect set of conditions for Maha to come along and speak to that, which I can understand. Like, you know, I think a lot of people have had not so great experiences with healthcare. Traditional medicine.

Yeah, and with just engaging with their own food environments and having to deal with their own personal health problems. So I, like yourself, have a lot of empathy for the energy, you know, that got activated around that initially. But what's happened, really, is what you describe as a Trojan horse. So can you kind of elaborate on that? Yeah.

So I think, you know, a lot of people will ask me, well, what do you think the Maha movement is getting right? And what I always say is the Maha movement, they largely get the problem right, right? And that's why it's so effective. They really have tapped into something in a very bipartisan way across the board that we all feel. because, you know, maybe we can talk a little bit about how this, like, this left to right change in wellness has happened. But many of us in public health have been talking about these same problems that Maha is talking about, right? We do have a lifestyle-related chronic disease issue. That's why I got into this field and started studying chronic disease prevention,

you know, a decade and a half ago. We do have a food environment that is nearly, by best estimate, 70% ultra-processed food, right? And there's a reason for that. And we do have, you know, systems that are not built for us to be healthier. They're really built for corporate profit and for the profitability of them. And so those truths are there and they really latched on to those. The issue is that they got the causes of those issues largely wrong. And when you get the causes wrong, you're going to get the solutions wrong and you're going to miss the mark on the solutions. And your solutions either will be kind of benign and not make any impact or they'll be harmful in some cases. So right now we see things like, you know, fluoride bands.

in certain states. We see mostly, I think, Maha's solutions are really largely around, like, getting food dyes out of food and getting these, like, ingredients out of foods. While we're focused very much on that, and we can all agree, like, maybe we won't all agree, but I would say that the vast majority of us would be completely fine with getting synthetic food dyes out of our food. Like, no one's really advocating for synthetic food dyes, right? They're largely a marketing tool for these food corporations to sell more foods, particularly to children. So there may actually be some place there where, you know, you remove these synthetic food dyes, the food is not as bright and kids eat less of it. We don't have data to suggest that's the case, but I could see a scenario where that could happen.

Like, I'd love to see that happen. But the problem is, is that let's be honest about why we're removing the food dies. It's not because, for example, the United States regulatory system is allowing them in our food and all of the other regulatory systems are banning them around the world because that's just not accurate. And it's not done for safety reasons. And that might be surprising to some people who are listening that those food dyes aren't banned in places like the EU or Canada or Australia, like they're completely allowed there. Where I say the Trojan horse aspect of it is because we're very focused on this issue, right? There's food dyes or the seed oils and french fries and fast food restaurants.

Meanwhile, you know, the foundation of our public health institutions are being gutted and we're rolling back environmental protections and we're cutting billions of dollars from health care access and food. nutrition and access and all of these things that are the foundation of ensuring a healthy public in the United States are really being eroded because we're so focused on some things that really there's not a lot of evidence to suggest are going to make a measurable impact on our health. Yeah, there's a dissonance between rhetoric and reality. Like all of the energy is going towards the discussion around food dyes and, you know, beef tallow at, you know, shake or whatever, shaking steak and steak. And what's interesting, or we're curious about that to me, beyond the obvious,

is the fact that, I mean, first of all, like, to your point, like, no one's in favor of these dyes. Like, I'm fine, yeah, get rid of them or whatever. But it's a distraction because ultimately, whether that die is in the food or not, it's still a bad food that you shouldn't eat. You know, like, it's not part of the healthy diet at all. So it's like, oh, let's, let's get super excited

about, you know, the fact that M&Ms doesn't use this red dye or whatever. It's, they're still M&Ms. So why are we even talking about this? It's such a 0.001% of what's important to talk about when it comes to these issues. And the misdirection aspect of it is that it distracts us from focusing on what's really important,

which are these initiatives, these policies, what research is being funded that's really gonna drive these public outcomes in a positive way. Like on the one hand, it's almost like, We're in favor of regulation because we want these dyes that is like the only way you do that is by passing regulations that regulate food and pharma. But at the same time, behind the scenes, it's all about deregulation so that these big corporate entities can do what they want to do, which is basically, you know, double down on their corporate interests and not be impeded in doing so. Well, and I think on the surface that doesn't really make any sense, right, to really want this regulation around like food dyes and food additives. but then, you know, be the entire party platform is about deregulation.

But when you look at kind of like what that means for their movement, you know, we have these toxins in our food, particularly the idea that these other countries don't allow them. We allow them. It plays right into this idea that our regulatory systems are corrupt, right? And so that's an important part of this movement is this corruption in our regulatory systems. And so that really plays into it. And so that's why you don't see the FDA movement. to regulate these food dyes. You see these kind of questions,

like, could you please remove them from your foods, which is what RFK Jr. is relying on right now is these corporations to basically remove them from their food supply, willingly. Yeah, what is Maha getting right? And what is it getting wrong? And what it's getting right is vibes, yes. But it is also getting right the fact

that there are truths to all of these narratives on some foundational level. Like there is corporate corruption. These corporations want to maximize profit and they don't care about your health. And when they're unregulated, they're going to do what they want. And there is truth in the fact that when we go to our grocery stores,

you know, the only aisles that have anything truly good for us are like on the very far ends and everything in between is essentially monopolized by these ultra-processed foods. And it is true that, you know, many people have had experiences with their GPs or whatever where they're, whatever's ailing them goes misdiagnosed or perhaps they're given a medication that doesn't work or there's some side effects. So all of these things are rooted in some kind of level of

truth that makes it a lot easier to get people on board with this movement and distract them while they're doing other things behind the scenes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, 100%. That's how the best kind of manipulation and pseudoscience spreads is that there is a grain of truth into it. And I just want, what I try to help people to do is to just go one step further. Okay, you say that there's corruption and that's so like our corporations are corrupt. And so why, right? So is it corruption or is it the logical conclusion of the system that we've built? And, you know, when you do that, you say, okay, well, so why do we have a food system that's

70% ultra-processed foods? Well, there's a lot of reasons and a lot of it comes down to deregulation. A lot of it comes down to allowing like mergers and acquisitions. And so now we have very few kind of corporations that own the majority of our food supply. A lot of it comes down to the shareholder value movement that gained a lot of momentum in the 70s and 80s, where the primary goal of corporations was growth was profits and growth, right? That was their primary value at the expense of all other values. So when you're looking at a food system and you're saying, okay, how do we maximize profit and growth?

What you start doing is you start getting rid of local food systems. You start creating these big agribusiness, these big farms that really, you know, they grow corn, wheat, and soy that are really good at exports. They're making us a lot of money from exports. You know, 40% of corn goes to animal agriculture feed. 40% of corn goes to fuel. 20% goes to our food supply. And the vast majority of that goes to these ultra-processed foods. Right. And so we're building this food system. We're incentivizing through things like agricultural subsidies to go to these things like corn, wheat, and soy at the expense of fruits and vegetables and produce that gets less than 2% of subsidies. And so we're artificially making these foods quite cheap and produce quite expensive

and largely inaccessible because when that happened, we started relying on these large farms and we started relying heavily on pre-packaged ultra-processed foods that could travel far, that were shelf stable, and that were cheaper. And so if a corporation's goals are profit and growth at the expense of everything else, they're going to do things like use the cheapest ingredients possible, right? So if we're subsidizing corn because we grow corn really well here, we're going to start making sugar out of corn. And we're going to start making high fructose corn syrup instead of using cane sugar

because it's a lot cheaper for us to create and to produce here. And that's what started happening. And so now after decades of this, we're really in an environment where the vast majority of our food supply are these pre-packaged ultra-process foods that are cheaper for us. I mean, if you go to other countries, like in Europe, my husband's from Romania, so we spend a lot of summers there, you go to different countries and their ultra-process, like, snack foods are not as cheap as they are here, right? They're a little bit more expensive because we artificially make those things cheaper here. That gets us into a whole other conversation about how that has decimated

local food systems and helped to create food deserts and things like that. It's like, okay, our corporations are corrupt. Why are they corrupt? Why is our food environment like that? And then you start to realize it's all about policy. It's all about systems. And if we want to change our food environment, we can't just, you know, yell about food dies because that's a symptom of the underlying problem. We have to actually look at why the system is built like that. What if we've all been thinking about our future wrong? What if there is no finish line? What if there's only a through line. Well, that's the idea behind a special project I've been working on with Lincoln Financial, a four-part series of mini documentaries in which each episode features me

spending the better part of a day with a moment to understand what it really takes to evolve with intention over the long haul, and how to sustain what you love across the physical, mental, and financial dimensions of life. My guests include something for everyone, Andre Agassi, tennis legend, Olympian Sarah True, musician Walker Hayes, and an expert in personal finance. So if you're drawn to the kind of depth that we explore on this show, I think you're going to really connect with this program. It's called The Action Plan, and you can check it out now at lincolnfinancial.com

slash rich roll. Just as one workout does not an athlete make, one nutritious meal does not a healthy person make. Health is a reflection of what you do, the habits you most consistently practice, which is why I didn't even realize I've been drinking AG1 for a full 10 years because it's just a road habit, a non-negotiable I don't even think about. Why? Because it works. That's why. 75 plus vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, superfoods, basically all this stuff. It keeps my energy steady, my digestion happy, supports my immune health, fills in whatever I'm missing from food. Thinking 10 years back, I actually remember being dubious when I first saw the green powder

back in the olden times and bracing myself for something that was going to be unpalatable. But it wasn't awful. It was actually really good, clean, a little sweet, way better than those other green powders that taste like you're being punished for trying to be healthy. And even after countless iterations on their formula even better today. Ag1's just become part of my foundation. When I travel and miss it for a few days, I definitely feel it. So give your body the nutrients it deserves. Just head to my link, drinkag1.com slash rich roll to subscribe for less than $3 a day. If you use my link, you'll also get a free welcome kit with a shaker bottle, five AG1 travel packs, and more with your first purchase. That's drinkag1.com slash.

Ritral. Today's episode is brought to you by Broca. You know, it's funny, we don't often think of eyewear as performance gear until it starts to get in the way. And if you're like me, somebody who has contended with eyesight impairment my entire life, it's a very real thing without a real solution for athletes. I tell you how many times I've been mid-run, constantly shoving my glasses back. up my nose, tripping on roots and rocks because I couldn't see them, or my glasses had fogged up,

or what about out on the bike where the treachery is obviously far more intense? Well, this is why Roca has been a godsend for coaching prescription eyewear from a performance perspective first, but not at the cost of fashion, I should say, helping not only people like me, but all kinds of athletes, including Tour de France cyclists and Iron Man champions with everyday frames designed for movement. Their secret is their proprietary gecko technology and branded nose and temple pads that grip even more securely when you sweat.

No slipping, no distractions. And they're insanely lightweight. Most frames weigh less than a pencil, super light, even with prescription lenses. Beyond the function, the craftsmanship is next level. Razor sharp optics, durable construction, and a design actually is beautiful and keeps up with you. So put them on, feel the difference, and wear without limits.

Unlock 20% off your order with the code rich roll at roca.com. That's r o'clocka.com. We all remember just how pilloried Michelle Obama was when she attempted to, you know. Do we all remember that? Because I feel like a lot of us forget. I remember it quite well. Like all she was basically saying, was like, hey, maybe we should pay attention

to what we're eating and try to eat a little bit healthier. And she had the garden that she was growing at the... And it was just the source of, you know, endless attacks on her as a result of this. Fast forward to today, and on some level, there's some overlap with what's being said right now, but it's a very different environment, which is strange.

Like, other than the fact that she was a Democrat, and this is a Republican administration, Like, how do you make sense of that? It's hard. I think I played a clip of Sean Hannity during the Obama administration, just like of Michelle Obama and saying how, you know, our government was being taken over. And it was a nanny state and all of this government overreach. And, you know, then he obviously was sitting with RFK Jr. at stake and shake, like talking

about improving our food supply. So it's hard to square that circle. But I think that a lot of it is just, it's like, subtle, but it's so different, right? So when Michelle Obama was kind of pushing for this, it was very much focused on like, let's improve the food. Let's get more fruits and vegetables into schools. You know, she started trying to bring salad bars into schools. Let's get our kids moving more. It wasn't about toxins in our food. That wasn't under like the main narrative. It was really just like, let's improve access to food. Let's expand access to food nutrition

services, you know, it was really rooted in a lot of public health evidence, whereas now we're talking about let's improve our food supply, let's improve like our children's health, but we're not, it's rooted more in like, let's get red dye 40 out of skittles and let's, you know, swap beef tallow for seed oils. And it's not, and what that narrative does is it really plays into this idea of this distrust in these institutions. And so I think it's a very subtle. difference, but it's a very real difference that kind of shows you the difference between maybe the priorities on the left versus the priorities on the right and how they can seemingly be talking about the same thing while actually not really talking about the same thing. Well, also, those

initiatives don't require the administration to do any heavy lifting on a policy level. Correct. Yeah. As for the difference between left and right, like I, you know, I remember, like I've been doing this for a long time. And I remember the inception of this wellness movement back in, you know, the earth, like 2009, 2010, when this was really starting to gain energy. And there was a group of people who were becoming forward-facing public advocates of wellness practices. And it was very different then. It felt exciting. There was a lot of energy. It felt united on some level. And it wasn't until the pandemic where we began to see this horseshoe occur, where the wellness world or a swath of the wellness world, which has always been the purview of the progressive left, you know,

yoga moms, Topanga hippies, people who have a certain level of distrust in institutions when it comes to their personal health decisions and are always, you know, looking at alternative of modalities for well-being sort of started to, you know, connect with the right in a very interesting way where alt health became in certain situations like alt-right, which was very deranging and bizarre, but also curious from kind of a pure anthropological perspective. I've done a lot of thinking about this. I think that it's interesting because there's so much overlap in kind of the ideas, and yet how do they end up on opposite extremes? And I think how wellness has always been, as you say, it's always been fairly left in terms of, in terms

of their politics, but it's always been rooted in this idea that you can't really trust institutions. But that was because, kind of like what is the cause of that? That was always because of this idea that, oh, it's because of corporations, not necessarily because of corporations, because there's a lot of good from corporations, but it's because of corporate greed, right? It's because of a system where we're building that system where profits and growth are done at the expense of everybody else. And so these corporations do not have the best interest necessarily, for the most part, of people's health in mind. And so, you know, I'm not going to trust one of these large corporations who aren't really looking out for me. They're looking out for their profits and growth.

I'm going to look out, kind of go on the other side into the wellness world. And I think that that is a is kind of an ideology that's rooted in a lot of evidence in terms of like, you know, why these systems were built, and that distrust is really grounded. Where I think the shift happened is it went from this distrust in institutions because of this kind of like idea of corporate greed to this distrust of institutions because scientists were corrupt and regulation was corrupt. And so it really played really well with the right because the right has always been about deregulation. And so if you kind of like move it to this place where like regulation is the problem, whereas over here on the left in wellness, it

was because of a lack of regulation. More regulation was better, right, to improve our food system and this. And now it's more like deregulation is better, which doesn't always square because, you know, the idea that we want, like food dies out of our food and certain toxins doesn't really square with that. But I think that's kind of the predominating kind of idea on the right right now. And it's very much about personal responsibility, individual responsibility, because we can't trust any of the science or the regulation. And so it becomes about kind of individual responsibility, which is very obviously our value on the right. When I think about how distrust of corporations metastasized into distrust of governmental

institutions, again, there's a kernel of truth here. Like, there is a bit of a revolving door between the FDA and the C-sweets of big pharma and big food companies. Like, these people are kind of, there's an enmeshment there that I think is working. worthy of legitimate, you know, concern. Yeah. You know, we are in a situation in which private corporations are funding research, et cetera, and I think that there's public concern around that. I'd like for you to speak a little bit about what you make of that world and perhaps, you know,

kind of correct some misapprehensions around the way private funding functions in the sphere of scientific research. Yeah, yeah. So I could talk about funding for research. Can I first talk about the FDA? Sure. So I'd like to just play off of what you're saying here. There's also, sorry to jump in, but you're probably going to talk about this, but this notion

that Big Pharma funds the FDA. Yeah. Yeah. So, and this is to your point about taking kind of some truth, which exists, and then kind of manipulating the narrative. And so, you know, this has been a platform of public health people and experts for a very long time about this funding for the FDA. So a big talking point that I heard a lot over the last year that was very prevalent in the Maha sphere was, you know, half of funding for the FDA comes

from pharmaceutical companies. So the same industry that's supposed to be regulating these companies, the funding is coming from these companies as evidence of corruption. And so where that is a bit manipulated is the fact that, so why does, you know, I'm very curious. So I'm like, okay, If half the funding comes from the FDA, why does half the funding come from the FDA? And the reason, if you look back in history, is because in the early 90s, we've always underfunded our public health institutions because, you know, there's not a lot of money to be made in public health. And so for a very long time, including now, our public health institutions have been underfunded.

And so this was really a problem back in the early 90s. You know, we were really going through this deregulatory era, coming out of the Reagan era, into the Clinton era. Clinton was also very deregulatory. he was a centrist. And, you know, what happened was there was this backlog of basically like drug trials. So pharmaceutical companies wanted to expedite these drug trials, but the FDA didn't have the ability to do that quick enough. And so there was this big backlog. And so instead of Congress allocating more money to the FDA to be able to hire more people to go through these applications, what they did was instead they passed a law that said, okay, we're going to charge user fees to the pharmaceutical companies. So if a pharmaceutical company, wants to have their pharmaceutical drug go through a trial, they now need to pay whatever the fee is, a couple million dollars, whatever it was,

and in order to go through that trial. And they were able to use that money to hire more people to be able to expedite these drug trial reviews. And so when that happened, I mean, it's very similar to how any other regulated industry works. If you look at the airline industry or any other regulated industry, they pay user fees in order to go through regulation. And that's exactly what's done now.

So when you hear someone say half the FDA's funding comes from the pharmaceutical industry, it's not that the pharmaceutical industry is like buying these people off. They're paying these user fees because if they don't pay them, if these companies aren't paying them, the taxpayers need to pay them. And so our tax dollars will have to be allocated more heavily towards the FDA. And Congress has never wanted to do that. They've never wanted to allocate more money to the FDA. And so instead that this is the law they passed. So it's a law that they passed in order to make this happen. I think. last year, I think it was 47% of the FDA's funding came from these user fees from pharmaceutical companies. So when it's talked about as a corrupt act, the act is right. Like, pharmaceutical companies are paying the FDA, but it's not, I don't view that as corruption. Now, I'm not saying I'm pro that. Me and many other public health experts, this is where like the kind of overlap comes in. We've always been against this, against this practice. The Republican Party has largely been for it. Democratic Party money of them have largely been for it. Public health experts have been saying, hey, we should fund the FDA with more tax dollars. So Congress should allocate more tax dollars to the

FDA so that we don't have to rely on drug money in order to do these processes, but that's just never happened. And so this is the system that we have. And so, you know, when people come in, kind of what I would term bad actors, come in and say, this is evidence of corruption and we can't trust the FDA. You know, and then people like myself who have always been against this practice, are now having to, like, defend the FDA, which is like my least favorite position to be in. I would much rather be more critical of the FDA, right? But when we're talking about this in a really insincere way, I think it's really important to just set the record straight, right, and why this is happening.

And if we want it to change, because you have to understand why it's happening if you want it to change. If you want it to change, we have to push for more federal tax dollars to go towards the FDA. And obviously what we're seeing right now is the exact opposite of that, right? So you have this movement that really wants less corruption. But what we're doing by cutting funding at the FDA is the exact opposite of what you would need for less payments from the pharmaceutical industry. And then in terms of private corporate funding of scientific research, how do you consider that landscape? Yeah. And again, this is a bit of truth. And it's something that's, you know, ever since I got into the scientific field, it's been talked about, right?

Like how can we improve the system so that we're having like the most accurate science that's coming. out because there are problems in science. And I think that what's being tapped into here is our real problems. What's not being done is talking about it in an honest way of how we can improve it. Instead, we're just cutting about half, like 40% funding from the NIH. So scientific research is very expensive to do, right? The multi-million dollar trials to do some of these big projects. And so that funding has to come from somewhere. So right now, the vast majority of funding comes from the federal government. So from places like the NIH or NSF through grants that scientific researchers, whether it's at academic institutions or research institutions,

they will submit a grant and then that will either be approved or not approved. And most of them are not approved. It's very competitive. And once you get that grant, that is funded through our federal tax dollars, right? So a percentage of our tax dollars go towards like the NIH, for example, to fund scientific research. And that funding is very important because it funds a lot of the basic research that isn't necessarily going to be profitable right away. Right.

So that funding comes from, again, places like the NIH. Then you have about maybe 40%, and it's going to depend on the space you're in, but about 40% of funding comes from industry funding. So that's things like medical device companies, pharmaceutical companies, other companies, food companies that are going to do like marketing research. That funding comes from them. And they're going to fund, pharma is going to fund like their big drug trials, right? They're going to have, obviously, scientific researchers do it, rather it's at different

institutions, but they're going to provide the funding because there's really no one else who would provide that funding. And then about less than 10% comes from like philanthropic organizations, like American Cancer Society, things like that. And so that's essentially where you can get funding for scientific research. Now, if you don't get funding from those places, because that's the issue, right? We're saying, okay, industry is not okay to get funding from. The federal government's not okay to get funding from. Then you don't have money for scientific research, because then you're left with like maybe individual billionaires will fund things. You know, there's just a lot of issues with all of those things.

So what you have to do is you have to instate kind of stopgaps for a lot of this research, right? So if you have, you know, industry funding, there are things in place. It's not just that they're funding and then they have all of this influence over the research. There's a lot in place where it's like blinded. That's what peer review is for. So it goes through the peer review process to ensure that like the study design and the question was asked in an appropriate way. so it wasn't leading and all of those things.

And there's a lot of things that are in place, disclosures. You have to, I mean, if you ever read a scientific study, you have to see all of the disclosures from the researchers. So there's a lot of things to prevent any kind of bias or influence. That doesn't mean it 100% prevents it, but it means that there are things in place to prevent it. Now, if we want to strengthen that even more, scientists have been talking about this for a long time,

and there's a lot of good ideas to do that. You would have those honest conversations and then strengthen those stopgaps so that there's even less. influence or even less availability for bias, what you wouldn't do is just say, write it all off because they're getting funding from somewhere because you have to get funding from somewhere and then defund, you know, your government agencies that are doing the research, which that's the most unbiased research, right? It's government funded. It's just paid for by me and you, our tax dollars. That's a bit of where the disconnect is in the scientific funding.

Yeah. The problem is that when you accept that funding, it doesn't matter what stop gaps you've instantiated to prevent any kind of hint of corruption, it makes for a very easy clickbaity headline. Like we saw this happen recently with Christopher Gardner and his twin study that was funded at least in part by Beyond Meat. And I know him and I know that he, you know, did all of the appropriate things to prevent any kind of conflict of interest. And yet, it just, you know, it's too delicious for people to, you know, avoid kind of sighting. that as a way of dismissing his conclusions. And we're seeing this, you know, all over the place,

which I think is, you know, causing a lot of confusion. And I believe also on top of that, an added issue is the incentives of academia, which are, you know, publisher parish. And so we have a lot of studies being performed that perhaps are less than, you know, less than ideally conceived and in all kinds of, you know, journals based on data sets and procedures that are not replicable, but are handy to cite to support

whatever kind of a gender or conclusion you're trying to promulgate in the world. And so there's studies out there that can substantiate whatever claim that you would like to make. That's a harm to the public because it leaves the public confused and further entrenched in a distrust of anybody who says basically anything because they're getting it from all sides and all of these ideas seem to conflict with each other. And I think that's why it's so important to explain and to help people understand scientific consensus versus just taking a single research article because again, a lot of this distrust comes from real issues, real issues in science around publisher parish and just publishing bad studies that get through peer review. But a good scientist is never going

to take one study and make outcomes based on that. And so what happens is you need to have that study and then it needs to be replicated multiple times by different labs. And you have to see the results over time in different areas and different scenarios. And then you're able to make kind of like a consensus statement. And so when we talk about scientific consensus, I think it's maybe a misunderstanding. Scientists aren't taking single research articles and saying, you know, seed oils are actually okay for your health, right? They're taking consensus over the course around the world, not just in the United States, because research is done globally in many different research labs on the same topic and then being able to come out with an overall conclusion of what's

happening in that area. Within that, you're going to have studies that kind of go one way and then go the other way and they maybe like say different things than the other one. And to your point, you can always find a study to kind of like back up your claim if you're just trying to pull individual studies. And when we talk about cherry picking evidence, that's kind of what that means, like just taking a single study and saying, well, look, this happened. But it's like, okay, but what did the 47 other studies say that were published in this exact same area? Yeah. And in the hierarchy of evidence, you know, reflecting on meta-analyses and, you know, multi-year longitudinal studies, particularly the ones that are coming out of places like

NIH, these are what are suffering funding cuts right now, interrupting the research projects that have been going on for years and need to continue on for years, rendering them, you know, basically unusable all of a sudden as a result of what's happening, which can't but harm our attempt to solve chronic illness and create better solutions for the public. Yeah, we're seeing, I mean, the most intense funding cuts to science that we've ever seen right now and not just cuts, but also these pauses for grants where they're trying to cut them, but then the courts are coming back and saying you can't cut them. And that's great. And that's like a victory for science when that happens. But the problem is, is even those pauses, you know,

when you have longitudinal data sets where you're just continuously like collecting data over time, over decades in some cases, you can't experience a pause like that. And if you have a stop in funding, you can't continue those projects. So it's very, it's very, detrimental. And we've seen, you know, we've seen an immense amount of funding right now cut from even cancer research, Alzheimer's research. I mean, many of the chronic diseases that we talk about being really important to try to solve. I mean, that starts with scientific research funding. So. Movement is so much more than just exercise or training or motion even. Movement is a language. It's a way of

connecting body, mind, and environment, movement as a way of being. A way of being that brings me close to myself, and to what matters most in life. And for me, what we wear in that pursuit plays a crucial role. And that's what I appreciate about on. They don't just make gear. They engineer apparel that supports and elevates the practice of movement itself. From running shorts with built-in support to technical. that cool you down right where it matters.

Every detail is widely intentional. Scene placement, reflectivity, breathability, minimalism that works together so the gear disappears and nothing gets in the way. This is apparel born from precision and tested by elite athletes for anyone committed to the path. I've been with On since 2023,

and I'm still just so impressed by how they continue to elevate and innovate in the name of purpose, not flash. Head to on.com slash rich roll to explore gear that supports you every step of the way. This episode is brought to you by WOOP. I just returned from a week in Boston where I had this really amazing privilege of spending the better part of two entire days at the Woop headquarters. I got to spend time with Will Ahmed, Woop's founder and CEO, as well as dozens of key team

members who pulled the curtain. me a rare behind-the-scenes look at what they do, how they do it, why they do it the way they do it, the culture, the intentionality behind the technology, the exciting innovations that are on whoops near horizon. And it was all just so impressive and really affirmed why I not only love the product, but feel their mission, a mission I have been aligned with for years, evidenced by this ban on my wrist right here, and why I never take it off. In any event, in case you were wondering, WOOP is the only wearable that turns your health and fitness data into personalized guidance, leveraging everything from resting heart rate, HRV, efficiency, and real-time stress levels to inform how you train, work, and recover so you can live better.

And now the all-new whoop is here and the recent upgrades are dramatic. In addition to the sensor, now being 7% smaller, the battery life now extends to a remarkable 40%. The new health span feature shows how your daily habits impact your pace of aging. And hormonal insights provide personalized guidance throughout your cycle or pregnancy. And the new WOOP-M-G even boasts a heart rate screener with on-demand ECG reading, so you can monitor your heart any time and share your results. And you can join now at join.org.com slash roll. That's join.

WOOP-W-H-O-O-P-com slash roll. We can't just continue to distrust institutions. Like, we have to find a way to rebuild that trust because we need experts and we need trust in those experts. So what is the way forward or back to this from your point of view? I think it starts with, meeting people where they are. So talking to people in a way that is not in jargon, is not the way that you would talk at a scientific conference, for example, trying to put things into perspective for people. You know, I kind of mentioned before, scientists deserve some of this blame in the sense that we haven't always gone to where people are going for information. Again, we talk in a language that's not often accessible for people. So, you know, that allows people to kind of write scientists off and write science off and allows the narrative to be kind of taken by these people who are great speakers and they can talk and they can weave these kind of narratives.

So I think a lot of it starts with we have to figure out a better way of communicating. We have to go to where people are. And we have to explain things. We can't take for granted that people just know what public health is, for example, right? We can't take for granted that people are just going to believe us because we have a PhD after our name or because we are a medical doctor. Right. So getting away from this appeal to authority and really just talking about these issues in a really honest way. Meet people where they are acknowledged that here are the issues, right? Like the FDA example. Yes, the FDA is funded 47% by the pharmaceutical industry and then explain why and then walk them through. Okay, those are issues and also here is why that's happening.

Here are all of the good things that the FDA does. If we didn't have the FDA, we wouldn't have oversight over our pharmaceutical medications. We wouldn't have oversight over our food and we would see a lot more food-borne illness. They're actually incredibly effective. We rank third in the world and the quality and safety of our food supply, according to the Global Food Security Index, in terms of lowering food-borne illness and pathogens in our food and all of that. So the FDA is very important for all of those things. And if you never tell people what the FDA does and how that actually impacts them on a day-to-day level, it's very easy to write it off. So I do think that a lot of it comes down to kind of getting away from the appeal to authority and the reliance that a lot of us have

had just on kind of this inherited belief that people always instilled in institutions and really just talking people through and meeting them where they are. An added acknowledgement, I think that would be helpful would be to sort of point out and admit where, hey, we got it wrong here. You know, here's what we messed up. Here's what we're doing to, you know, not make that mistake again, which plays into this idea of transparency. I think there is a public demand for greater transparency around things. Yeah. The irony being that the transparency

that is sort of purported, you know, coming out of the administration as anything but, but I do feel like there's an appetite on behalf of the public to like have a little bit of, you know, of course, sort of come to Jesus moment. Like, hey, and in truth, like this is what science is.

It's like, hey, we do our best. We test this. When we discover that we didn't get it right, now we're going to do it, you know, we're going to learn from that and we're going to move forward. Like, science isn't a thing. It's a, it's a purpose.

Yeah. I think that that's a big thing is acknowledging when there's an issue, when we're wrong, when we've changed our minds, because that's what science is all about. When you get new data, when you get new information, you change your opinion or your mind. Why do you think that seed oils became like just the utter obsession of so many people? What is happening around this particular issue? Yeah. Okay. I think that this is where that like there's a small amount of truth. that is getting blown out of proportion, right? So for a long time, first of all, I have a PhD in nutrition science. I never even heard of the term seed oils until social media recently. Like, you know, in the last multiple years. It's just not what we talk about. Well, we can't trust that institution. Yeah, right. That gave you that PhD. Yeah, we talked about them as like vegetable oils or the individual oil, like safflower, sunflower, the individual oil we were actually

talking about polyunsaturated fatty acids, but never seed oils. That's just kind of of like a new made-up term. And I think it comes from the idea that like seed oils are a highly processed oil compared to something like an extra virgin olive oil or something. And so if you're looking at it strictly from like a nutrient basis, like how nutrient dense is this oil, right? It doesn't have the same like vitamins and minerals that you're going to find in some other some other oils. And so I think that that initially made it pretty easy to be like, oh, we shouldn't consume these oils as much as we should be consuming like olive oil. But what the research actually shows, and the nutrition science research is very clear on this, like when you actually look at the

epidemiological research, there is no issue with seed oils in the diet. And in fact, they might be a little bit more heart protective than saturated fats if you're replacing them with saturated fats, right? And so that's been a longstanding for decades' acknowledgement in nutrition science research. I always talk about how, like, there's a lot of nuance with something like food dies. But with seed oils, it really does fly in the face of nutrition science research. So I don't know why it's become so big and such a marker, but I do know that they're used predominantly in these low nutrient ultra processed foods, which is true. Like if you consume less of those low nutrient ultra processed foods because you got rid of seed oils, you're going to feel a lot

better, right? If you're like somebody who's like, I'm going to avoid seed oils, you're going to be avoiding all of those foods because all of those foods contain seed oils because, again, it's a cheap oil. It's flavorless. And that's flavorless compared to something like olive oil. That's why a lot corporations use them. So if you're consuming less of those foods, you're going to feel better. But if you're sauteing something, you know, like my mother-in-law from Romania, she pretty much exclusively uses vegetable oil to saute her like vegetables and things like that. And there's just not evidence to suggest that that's harmful. It's certainly a standard ingredient in many, many ultra-processed foods. Yeah. It's not a health food. It's calorie dense and nutrient poor.

the roots of this must have originated out of this butter is back kind of movement that happened, you know, several years ago where people kind of cottoned on to the idea that, hey, like maybe margarine isn't so good, which it originally was meant to be like a healthier alternative to butter. We're back to butter. And that kind of broadens the aperture to this kind of fallacy around ancestral living.

Like we need to get back, you know, we need to get back to the way, you know, our great grandparents did things. and they cooked with beef tallow. And so beef tallow was better because our grandparents did it and that was before this, you know, in the food environment that we're in now. But there's no evidence to suggest that beef tallow

is a better alternative to seed oils when it comes to like making french fries or things like that. Like to me it's just like, I don't understand why people are so excited about beef tallow as an alternative to seed oils when the evidence at least as I understand it, is pretty clear that it's, you know, driving a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease because it's higher and saturated fat, et cetera, you know, on and on. Yeah, in fact, as you say, the opposite, right?

If you remove the seed oils from something like french fries and you put in like beef tallow, you likely are going to see worse health outcomes. That would be what the evidence would suggest. We'd have to see that data. I think you're right. It probably started like with the paleo movement and then kind of not going into the carnivore movement, but I think that it's quite misguided in terms of in terms of the idea that we all can't be consuming these seed oils. And again, they're mostly in these low nutrient ultra-processed

foods. So that's fine. If you want to avoid those, you're going to be, you're going to probably improve your diet quality, and that's great. I mean, they're not higher than any other oil or butter, but they're high calorie, low nutrient. And so, you know, removing them would probably be fine. That's not the point. The point is more that the vast majority of people, it's a very affordable oil. And so when you're looking at the public as a whole, you know, most of, most people in this country aren't going to be able to afford an expensive olive oil to cook with, for example. And so telling them that they're kind of poisoning themselves when they're consuming, you know, a little bit of canola oil in their stir fry is just problematic. On top of that,

there's the further irony that a fast food retailer like, what does it call? shaken. Steak and shake. You don't frequent there, do you? By making, no, I don't. By making that shift, like, it's this brilliant marketing move for that swath of the population who now, like, feels really favorably towards this brand and is probably going to go there more often and eat more of these unhealthy foods that are going to make them less well because this is maha. Yeah. This market's confusing for me. Like, basically, it's encouraging people to go to places like that and eat more of those foods.

Or in the example of the candy brand that's no longer using the red dye, like, oh, well, now I feel incentivized to go and purchase that and eat more of those foods than I ordinarily would. Yeah, when we really should be talking about, like, let's get more people, more access to fruits and vegetables and legumes

and, you know, fiber-rich foods and less reliance on fast food. This is, you're back to the nanny state now. Jessica, how dare you? I know, we don't want government control. So it's like, yeah, it's a tough not to unravel, just in terms of trying to understand it, right? And I think the other kind of piece at play here

is the sort of false equivalence of evidence. There's this asymmetry, right, where there's the canon of evidence and science, and then somebody has a contrarian, you know, conspiracy addled notion that contravenes that. And these two things, you know, sit in equal measure towards each other and we must debate them. Yeah, that that's the false dichotomy and fallacy that that is very, very, very helpful in

propaganda. It's one of the most effective strategies in propaganda is saying that, you know, I'm going to pit science against pseudoscience essentially, you know, kind of like, because this conspiratorial narrative and they're on equal playing field, whereas one has an immense amount of evidence behind it and the other just doesn't. And so, you know, it becomes this thing where it's like, oh, well, why don't you, you know, why don't you just debate, you know, the, this per, whoever it is, ex person about this issue. And it's like, well, have they cited any evidence for their stance or are they just making it up out of thin air? Like, what are we, what are we working with here? And so I think that false dichotomy can be really harmful in a lot of these narratives. It's not coming to the table with like a, like a genuine inquiry or trying to uncover like, okay, well, what is the evidence actually? actually tell us. And a lot of it is reliance on this distrust in evidence. So, you know, a lot of people just don't care that there's evidence or not because they don't trust the

evidence because a lot of these narratives, which I think can be really harmful in these conversations. The consequence of this is, is that we found ourselves in this war against science. Yeah. What's motivating this? What's behind this? Where is this headed? Yeah. So back to your Trojan horse comment. I've used that term a little bit for for this Maha movement. And, you know, there's kind of been this longstanding. Science can can be inconvenient to policy decisions, to things that people want to enact or don't want to enact. We saw it for a long time with climate science. That was kind of the first area. And now we're seeing it again with kind of public health science. And so, you know, public health science can be, there's can be a lot of evidence

behind something, and that won't be good necessarily for corporate profits or whatever it is, incentives, other incentives. And so I think there's always been this underlying move to kind of push science away a little bit. And right now, what we're seeing is it's been a real goal of this administration to defund science, particularly federally, federally funded science. And so I think Maha has been very helpful to the administration in the sense that it kind of brought in more and more people who maybe hadn't even thought of these things before, maybe distrusted a little bit, but like didn't know why exactly. And so instead of having, you know, a scientist

come in and be like, here are all of the issues. We do have an issue with, you know, replication and funding biases that these are the things that we actually try to do to mitigate those funding biases. We had a movement come in that really was like, you can't trust any science, right? And you hear it with RFK Jr's rhetoric all the time, you know, saying that he's gone after some of the leading scientific journals in the world, JAMA, New England Journal and Medicine, Nature, and saying that they're all corrupt and he wants to create his own scientific journals. And I think for a lot of people, it's so many things that it's hard to keep up with. But at the end of the day, it's just eroding our scientific integrity and our scientific basis. And so I think that that's

the most dangerous thing right now is when you erode science, it becomes a lot easier. And you erode trust in these institutions and you erode trust in experts and scientific experts, it becomes a lot easier for people to just come in and make up narratives that fit along an ideological spectrum that can then be manipulated to create policies out of. And that can be very harmful. And to do so without repercussions, it seems. Because there's so, like, every day, there's something happening to your point. It's like this gish gallop where like there's just a tidal wave of strangeness coming at us so consistently that you can never get your handle around like even one of these issues before it's yesterday's news and there's something else. I mean, the fact that

RFK Jr. in this HHS report, you know, that came that came out. The MAHA report. Yeah, the MAHA was citing research that didn't exist, like these AI hallucinations that made it clear that like, you know, not a lot of thought went into this or it was just purely agenda driven. That just happened and now we're on to the next thing. And, you know, there's no price to pay for that. Like, we're in an environment where stuff like this, you know, that would have been Watergate level in terms of like the fallout just, you know, rolls off our back. Yeah, I mean, that Maha report, you know, it came out. The idea behind it was we're going to try to figure out, we're going to create a report that basically is focused on the causes of chronic disease,

particularly in our children. And as somebody who studied the causes of chronic disease for my entire adult life, I was very interested to read the report and see how they were talking about the real root causes of chronic disease, many of which come down to these social determinants of health that we were talking about, like income inequality and disparities. None of that was in that report. So what was really largely in the report was toxins and food, you know, over medicalization. basically the talking points of Maha, and it became very clear that they already had kind of like a preconceived idea of what they wanted to build this report on.

And that became very evident when we saw that there were seven hallucinated citations in the report because what AI does, right, is if you come into it and say, write me a report that basically like says that these are the roots of chronic disease and then in children, what it will do is it will build a case for that. And so instead of being a genuine scientific inquiry into like what are the like the root causes of chronic disease, it was more like these are the root causes of chronic disease help me build the case, which is very much like, you know, RFK Jr's a lawyer, kind of what a lawyer might do in terms of the way that it's going, which is the opposite of what like scientific inquiry actually is. And so I think it's not just about that there were seven hallucinated citations. It's about what that actually means in terms of the process of how they're going about this because that report is now going to act as the foundation. Again, the causes determine the solutions. That report will now act as a foundation for what their solutions to tackling the chronic disease crisis is. And if the causes are missing the mark like that, which they are, the solutions will largely miss the mark. And so that's supposed to come out in November. But I think it's so much more than just the fact that they used AI. It's like why they used AI and what that actually means. And, you know, in academia, that's a failing grade in any

professor's course. If you have hallucinated citations, it means you used AI to write your research paper and it's an automatic fail for the vast majority of people. And so to see that at the highest level and for there to be no repercussions, we don't even know who wrote that report. I have ideas. But where's the radical transparency that is supposed to exist in HHS right now? Yeah, I mean, that was what was campaigned on, radical transparency. And we deserve radical transparency. I mean, whatever party is in office, like that's a big problem for the Democrats as well. They haven't always been radically transparent when they've held these offices. And so I think that it was a good thing to run on, but we're seeing the exact opposite right now.

If making America healthy again is truly a priority, then it's hard to make sense of how the, the quote unquote, like big, beautiful bill passed. So can you run us through what's actually in this bill and the impact that it's, it's going to have if it's not having already on health and well-being. Yeah. So the big, beautiful bill was Trump's budget bill. Essentially what it is, it's a spending bill. It's major tax cuts that are primarily going to benefit the wealthiest people. I mean, independent analyses have come out and shown this, that the bottom 10% are going to actually lose money. And then the top 10% are going to make a lot. That's a lot of money to make those tax cuts for corporations, to extend the

tax cuts for corporations. And so you have to pay for that somehow. They're paying for it by largely contributing to the deficit and then also cutting social programs. And so our largest spending programs, you know, our federal tax dollars go to specific things. And a big thing that they go to is health care and food assistance, nutrition assistance. And so what this bill does is it cuts hundreds of billions of dollars from health care, mostly from Medicaid and also some ACA rollbacks. But, you know, the estimates suggest that millions of people are going to, you know, anywhere up to 16 million people could lose health insurance coverage because of these cuts. And, you know, they're positioning that as just able-bodied people. Like, people should be working,

right? So we're going to implement work requirements and they should be working. And that's kind of like how they're positioning it. But what we know from data, because Medicaid is operated at the state level. In other words, just to back up. Yeah. So people are clear. as a prerequisite to being able to be on Medicaid, there is this work requirement. They've now implemented a work requirement, right? And so it's 80 plus hours for the month, I think, for specific people who don't meet, who aren't able to not meet the work requirement like needs. So people who have exemptions, like they are caring for children, they are disabled, they're elderly, those types of things.

And so they've increased the age to 64, I believe, down from 55-ish, don't quote me on those numbers, and things like that. But what we know, again, because Medicaid is operated at the state level, and some states have implemented work requirements in the past, is that work requirements do not increase the number of people working. What they do is they create more bureaucracy. They create more red tape and more paperwork. They're really paperwork requirements.

And so what happens is a lot of people, people who are eligible for their health care will lose their health care because they won't be able to operate the system. They either can't or they will miss deadlines because there's more deadlines for the work requirements. And it's very difficult to navigate that system. Like my in-laws, my husband, you know, does this for my in-laws every year. And it takes him, he hates it. It takes him like almost his entire day. And it's just a difficult system to navigate. And so now it's just making it more difficult. And so what will happen is a lot and we've seen it happen in these states that have implemented them, a lot of eligible people lose their health insurance.

That is how they are basically projecting to have all of these savings, because if you look at the big, beautiful bill, that's a huge savings area for them. And it's not just people who are eligible to work that are going to be adding to these savings. It's all the people who will lose health insurance that will add to these savings. So that's one aspect of the bill that really impacts public health, because if we look at the data on, okay, well, why is health care so important? And one of the main determinants of health is access to health care because people who have access to health care are going to go for preventive visits, right? And so they're going to have things caught early and things are way cheaper and way more manageable when you catch them early, right? Then if you end up in a place where you're ending up at the emergency room, which is what happens with a lot of people now, they end up at the emergency room and emergency rooms aren't going to turn you away.

So if you're having a heart attack in the front of the hospital, they're going to accept you and you're going to go in. And, you know, they'll provide care. And so who pays for that care, it goes on to us as taxpayers. So whether that's increased insurance premiums or it's increased, you know, rates at hospitals, or it goes into something called uncompensated care, which we all pay into, which is basically what the federal government pays out to hospitals when they can't get that care paid for. And so it benefits all of us as a society to have more people on health care so that they can be going to these preventive visits and they can stay more well. because isn't our goal to make America healthier.

And so one of the ways you do that is you ensure that people can go to these preventive visits. So taking health care away from 10, 12, 16 million people directly kind of negates that. So that's one of the big things. And then another big thing in this bill that's also a main determinant of health is food access and food accessibility. And it cuts hundreds of billions of dollars from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is formerly food stamps, which helps low income people, particularly children, and get access to the food that they need to eat. It's a massive transfer of wealth away from people who need it

to fund these tax breaks for the ultra wealthy. It's essentially what it is, and to your point, like estimated up to 16 million people who could potentially lose their health care, $1.1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. You spoke about the work requirements, $200 million in cuts to nutritional assistance. I mean, these things are just going to further drive deeper income inequality and lower food security.

Yeah, and one of the main ways, like if you were asking me to devise kind of like a public health strategy, one of the main things to do would be to increase accessibility of food to populations that are living in food insecure households because about 13 and a half percent of the population, 13 and a half percent of the United States population is living in food insecure households, which doesn't necessarily mean they don't have access to food. it means they don't have access to nutritious food, the nutrients that they need to meet their nutrient needs. So the way that you help those people get access to nutrient-dense food and nutritious food is that you expand accessibility of some of these food nutrition programs like SNAP. And then individual states have these really cool programs. They're called double-up bucks.

Colorado has it. Nebraska has it. Lots of states have them. And essentially, these incentive programs for people on SNAP to use their dollars. to buy fruits and vegetables. Do people do that? Like, is there data to suggest that that actually works? Yeah, there's buy-in on it.

When you actually have those programs, people will buy more fruits and vegetables. And so, you know, what the idea has always been is let's not take away from people. Let's incentivize them to make these purchases. And so you can use them at farmers markets and things like that, too. And, you know, Snap Education is also something that's being cut in this bill that's not getting a lot of press. But SnapEd is a wonderful program that helps these. people on SNAP, so low-income individuals for the most part, it helps, does cooking classes, it teaches them about healthy eating, it teaches them about nutrient-dense foods and how to incorporate

that, especially on a budget. There's some wonderful registered dietitians who work within that program who are really committed to helping people to be able to make healthier choices on a really tight budget, and that whole program was cut in this bill. I think people bristle at the idea of deeply funded government programs and they think bloat and like is this even doing anything like this just seems like a big waste let's cut it but to the extent that you know there is data to suggest that they are effective and driving these outcomes like it's upsetting that they would be cut but i think it's helpful to disabuse people of perhaps their preconceptions of it by contextualizing it in economics.

Like, this makes economic sense. Like, we're spending a lot for these programs, but in so doing, we're saving way more because we're avoiding these people, you know, falling prey to these diseases that then create this massive burden on our health care system, on the insurance companies, on, you know, everything.

Like, we're going to pay for it down the line and then some if we don't enact these preventive measures to keep this from happening. Yeah, I agree. with you, like putting it into an economic perspective can help a lot of the time because I think you're right there is this perception. That's an intentional perception that a lot of these programs are wasteful or, you know, there's a lot of fraud in them, which there's just not. I mean, there's evidence on this that look at fraud rates in these programs and, you know, it's less than 1%

in a lot of cases. And the vast majority of fraud in the Medicaid system certainly doesn't come from the people needing health care access. It comes from, you know, like hospital systems and individual doctors committing Medicaid fraud. It's not, it's not like the, you know, Aunt Joe going to the doctor and committing Medicaid fraud. And so, you know, I think, I think that there's a perception that there's, there's a lot more fraud and waste in these programs than there actually is. That's not to say that we can't improve them. We should always strive to improve programs and improve efficiencies in the programs, right? But let's improve efficiencies in the programs. Let's not just cut billions of dollars from the program. So what is the charitable interpretation of this

bill? Like if I was to be speaking to someone who is in the administration, like how are they defending this from a health perspective? I'm not sure that there is a defense from a health perspective. I think what they're really saying is that the cuts. I mean, I see a lot of comments from people saying, you know, the idea is they're cutting like middle-aged men who aren't working, who should be working and are just mooching off the system from Medicaid. And that's, you know, I think that all of us can get on board with the fact that people shouldn't just, you know, not be working if they can be working. But that's just missing a lot of understanding of how those cuts.

Again, they like implement paperwork requirements. Lots of people like grandma and grandpa will fall off of Medicaid or someone who's disabled and can't navigate the system because grandma and grandpa are probably more on Medicare. But someone who is disabled and can't navigate the system will, fall off of Medicaid. And we have lots of data on this. And that's exactly what happens with those cuts. So I think from a health perspective, I think they're just really, I don't know, I would ask you what you've heard, but I've heard a lot more of just like they're getting rid of just what's not necessary, which is just not accurate. You can't cut $200 billion from a program like SNAP, which is an

incredibly efficient and effective program for reducing food insecurity in this country and say it's not necessary. In the context of a bill that only exacerbates the budget deficit. I mean, that's a whole other conversation, right? I know. Fiscal conservatism. What's the most frustrating piece of health misinformation that you come across in your social media activities? Well, like, what's going on online? I think it's, um, I think it's more holistically, um, just the idea that a lot of people right now have an immense amount of health anxiety. They have this idea that they can't eat anything. They can't trust anything. They don't know what to eat. You know, what brought me to social media was I was pregnant with my son at the time, or my daughter at the time. And I started, I usually

don't see, like, misinformation videos just because your algorithms are so, like, tuned to who you are. When I got pregnant, I started getting fed all of this, like, pregnancy information. And I saw and I was just like, there's a lot of incorrect information and inaccurate kind of like fear-based information really targeting pregnant women. That's not accurate. So that's actually what brought me to social media in 2022 was just kind of combating some of that about like the oral glucose tolerance test and the vitamin K shot and like pregnancy, nutrition in general, because it's just a really vulnerable time in life where you're really susceptible to just you want to do what's best for your baby and your children and yourself. And so I think it started there and then it's

evolved a lot. But I think it always comes back down to this idea. that, you know, because of all of this misinformation, I did a video where I found people saying basically you couldn't eat apples and then you couldn't eat beans and then you couldn't eat, it was like all of these different foods. And it got down to a video where a woman was talking about how you shouldn't be drinking water because it doesn't have enough electrolytes and it can dehydrate you. And so instead you should be drinking only coconut water. And like you can really find a video out there just fearmongering and scaring the heck out of you. It's any food. There's a video out there just like there's a study out there. There's a video out there for any food that you

want a fearmonger about. And there's a way to take a bit of truth and then weave this conspiratorial narrative about that food. And so I think that's what's most concerning to me right now in the social media space is just this idea, kind of exacerbating orthorexia, exacerbating health anxiety in people. I get DMs all the time from people who are like, you know, I was literally scared to eat anything. I just had never had the opportunity to hear another perspective. And for someone to explain kind of the science behind these things to me. And that kind of brings a back to the importance of science communication and a lot of these things.

Because a lot of people, they're not necessarily in a camp. It's just they've only ever seen these scary fear-mongering conspiratorial videos that do really well on social media. And so, you know, they kind of get caught up in that and get really scared to just eat anything. Yeah. The thing that works online is, you know,

the most outrageous fear-inducing claim, you know, behind which there is a dark cabal, you know, and there's something that lights up the human brain about that, that's very interesting. But in truth, again, like, our environment is kind of toxic. Like, most of the foods that are marketed towards us,

like are not good for you. Those are the ones that are the most well-funded, that are based on ingredients that are subsidized to keep them cheap. And, you know, when it comes to personal care products and all kinds of, you know, home cleaning products, like, there's a real conversation to be had about the toxicity.

you know, that we kind of voluntarily invite into our homes, but to the extent that it paralyzes us and makes us afraid to live our lives and we're captured by, you know, an algorithm that is constantly feeding us these things that are making us afraid to, you know, eat food that is perfectly healthy for us. I mean, that's like a terrible situation. Yeah. And I mean, it's funny you say that because when you were saying that before, I was thinking, but the truth is also so interesting and should capture attention, right? Because we also, there's truth to this. There's a lot of truth in these kind of claims. The conspiracy is capitalism. It's just like this system that we're in, you know, that we all like, you know, are part of. Yes. The conspiracy is unfettered,

deregulated capitalism to a large part. And I think that I try to help kind of steer the conversation more in that way. Because if we can start having honest conversations about it, okay, you're nervous about the toxins in your food. What actually causes the toxins in your food? Well, we're deregulating all these environmental regulations right now. We're increasing fracking. We're increasing all of these things that are actually like presenting more heavy metals into our air, soil and water, which by the way, those heavy metals are ending up in our food supply. Right. Like that connection, you know, that's a, it's lacking. It's lacking. You know, the food, the red dye is taking up all the bandwidth when the deregulation that's leading to the

pollution of our waterways and the fracking and the you know destroying our environment like yeah like well we're not going to talk about that part right and if we don't talk about that part if we just focus on this you know what the corruption and we don't talk about why the corruption exists how are we ever going to create solutions for it for that right i feel like there's that's that's kind of what's lacking a lot in this maha kind of rhetoric it's it's a lot about the conspiracy and the corruption but like where are the solutions and what are the solutions because right now the solutions that i see are not addressing any of the problems. And in fact, we're making the problems far worse, which is, which is the major problem. Another argument that gets tossed around cavalierly is this one around,

like, the EU versus the U.S. Like, you know, we all heard these, oh, you go to Italy and you eat as much as you want, blah, blah, blah, and you don't feel bloated like you do here. And they're doing it better. That plays into the stuff you've already talked about, about this misunderstanding around like what they sort of dies and additives that they allow that they don't allow in their food that we do, et cetera. Like what's a little truth versus fiction when it comes to this part of the discussion? I think European countries overall have stricter regulations across the board for pretty much everything. They, you know, and they don't call that government oversight or nanny state. They just regulate because they prioritize the health of people.

over, you know, unfettered corporate profits. Corporations can still profit, but not, and it's not like European is this like, they have issues too, right? Like all these European countries. It's not a monolith, one, and also they have issues in their systems as well. But overall, they have stronger regulations that protect public health and prioritize public health more so than we do in the United States. From a regulatory perspective, there's actually far more similarities in what you see at the FDA.

versus EFSA than what you might think from just looking at social media. I mean, the vast majority of things, you know, there's going to be differences. We actually have approved far less food dyes, synthetic food dyes, than they have in the European Union. I think that might be surprising. Not to say that they use them all,

but what's approved are far more in the EU than we have here. But there's going to be differences based on cultural differences. There's going to be differences based on, you know, accessibility differences. And then also just, you know, we all are looking at the same. same evidence and then some differences in terms of how the EU is maybe looking at that. So EFSA really kind of takes this precautionary approach to things.

And again, these differences are so much smaller than the similarities between the FDA and EFSA. Sometimes with ingredients, they'll be a bit more cautious. So for example, we allow, which most the world allows monk fruit extract in the United States. And EFSA has said, you know, if you look at their latest kind of regulation about that, they've said, okay, well, we don't have enough data yet. You know, it's likely safe, but we don't have enough data to rule out something like genotoxicity, which is essentially cancer-causing. And so we're not going to, we're not going to allow that yet.

That's for monk fruit extract. We allow it. Many countries allow it. And so those are kind of some of the differences. Another big difference, and this is where I think the Maha movement has shown light on. And, you know, I'm often asked, like, well, could RFKK? Jr., has he done anything that you would agree with or like, what could he do that you would agree with? And one of the things he's talked about that I very much agree with, and most public

health people agree with, is kind of closing the grass loophole. So grass is generally recognized as safe. It's this loophole. Essentially, I mean, it started off as a really good thing. It was essentially they were looking at all the ingredients in our food supply and, you know, what can we do to ensure regulations on these? And so they created this designation called grass. And basically it was used for foods like butter and oil and vinegar, things that had been in the food supply forever. And they were generally recognized as safe. That was instated as kind of like this section of ingredients. And that kind of persisted for a long time until essentially we, in the 90s, again, we talked about it with the FDA. We were going through this deregulatory era.

And essentially what happened is they took, they allowed corporations because there was this backlog of grass ingredients. A lot of like new ingredients were coming. on to market and corporations wanted to be using those ingredients, but we didn't have the funding at the FDA that we needed to kind of go through all of those approvals. And so what the FDA did is they said, okay, we're going to allow you to self-designate things as generally recognized as safe. So you have to, you have to go through the same process we do. So you have to go through the scientific process, show that they're going to be safe. But you do it on your own. You hire your own scientists. And then you just let us know or don't let us know. So they didn't even require

like corporations to tell the FDA about this. They required them to kind of do the whole process. They said they had to do the whole process, but they could do it on their own. There's obviously problems with that. Just self-regulating, self-pleasing. Obviously problems with self-regulation. The idea behind it was, okay, corporations aren't going to want to put ingredients in their food that are going to make people sick because that's going to be really bad for them as a corporation. And there's some truth to that. But also, they're probably going to cut corners on safety evaluations. You know, I don't have proof to say that they've done. that. But that's a real issue. And public health experts since this has happened have been

like, guys, let's not do that. Let's just fund the FDA more so that the FDA is kind of reviewing all of these ingredients. And so instead, since the 90s, that self-affirmation process has happened. And that's allowed a lot of ingredients into our food supply. And what will happen is essentially it doesn't go, the FDA doesn't have oversight over it initially. If something shows that it's causing problems, then they'll step in and have regulatory oversight. But Obviously, the ideal would be that we're actually having all of that oversight prior to introducing it into the food supply, right? And so that's an example where that's a real issue, and we should have real discussions about why that happened and what we can do to fix it. But it doesn't just scream corruption and then not do anything to fix it.

On the subject of like EU versus the U.S., there's also plenty of cultural differences. They don't supersize everything. You know, their markets tend to be small. People shop in these kind of local farmers market-esque type situations. They buy their stuff fresh. They eat more whole foods. Like, it's different in that regard. But on top of that, in terms of like public health outcomes, again, they use not a monolith, but like, you know, generally, you know, there's sort of universal health care availability.

There's safety net. there are cities that are walkable and, you know, the infrastructure is around, like, you know, people moving themselves by themselves on bikes and by foot, you know, to be more engaged with the community and all these other things that are, like, very important in this discussion. Yeah, I just did a video recently on this exact topic. And it was essentially, like, you know, Maha was celebrating that a, I can't remember what candy company, I think Hershey has said that they were going to remove artificial food dyes. And it was like the same day, the big beautiful bill passed that was stripping health care and nutrition assistance away from people. And, you know,

they were talking about how European countries, you know, it's going to be more like Europe. Our candy will be more like Europe. And, you know, I think great. Like, let's, let's, okay, so we, we are celebrating the fact that we're going to have candy that is less colorful and more like the candy that you see in European countries, but also we seem to have blinders on and only want the European food regulations, the food additive regulations, and none of the other things that European countries do that actually protect public health in those countries. So to your point, you know, when I'm in Romania, my mother-in-law and I will just walk down the street to this like enormous market that's just filled with like fruits, vegetables, all of this produce. And

it's cheap. It's like that's the cheap place to go for the produce. It's not that, that's a cheaper than you go into a supermarket. Here, I mean, farmers markets, you can find them, but they're incredibly expensive. It's kind of like a luxury to go to a farmer's market. So it's very different. I mean, they have local food systems where, you know, you live in a small village. You just go to one of these markets because they're very much growing their own food around in the area. And Romania, you know, again, not all European countries are the same. Romania is lowest in terms of the European countries that eat ultra-processed foods. If you go to someplace like the UK, they've actually seen a lot more an increase in intake and ultra-processed foods. But, you know, all of these social

determinants of health, health care access, food access, the built environment, as you say, walkable like sidewalks and public transportation, all of these things play right into the health of people in those countries and income inequality, all of it. And so, you know, when we're looking at what are European countries do that are keeping their population healthier, we can take a lot from their public health policies, not just their food additive regulation. Right. Let's just focus on the food dyes, though. That's myopic. If you found yourself suddenly in the role of Surgeon General or head of HHS,

like, what are the policy initiatives that you would be trying to push forward? Like, what would your agenda be to promote public health? How much time do you have, right? I got all day. We can go for like five hours. So a lot of people will ask me, like, what is the number? one thing you would do. And I think that I have to say, the number one thing I would do would be to overturn Citizens United, which I think a lot of people might not, like, think that that's related to kind of this topic. Well, it's like, in the context of health, it's like, okay, you want to

solve a health problem. You have to get to the root cause. Like, this is the root cause of basically, you know, so much ill in the world, in our world. Yeah. And so, you know, I mean, it's reshaping campaign finance reform, right? And ensuring that individual donors can't just, put an absurd amount of money into campaigns in order to basically buy elections. And so what you have is you have politicians who are really because of the system we've built, not necessarily because of like corruption that nobody can see, but because of the system we've built where individual people can literally buy elections, what you see is politicians who are really voting in favor of a lot of these corporations and a lot of these special interests at the expense of public health. So you don't

have people kind of looking out, a lot of politicians looking out for what's best for public health. You have them looking at what's best for their next re-election campaign, right? And so reshaping campaign finance so that we have politicians who are actually invested in creating a system that is impactful for public health. And even politicians who are going into, like, we have some younger politicians coming up who are like, are not taking corporate donor money and that type of thing. They're still working within the system with this campaign finance. And so, you know, really reforming that, I think it starts there because a lot of the policies I'll outline right now, it's almost impossible to get them done because of, because of the

immense corporate power that that is in our politics on both sides of the aisle. And so starting there, then you have to think about, okay, well, what are the pillars of health, right? We're going to talk about food, you know, exercise. If I was working, if we were working one-on-one, if we were talking about individual wellness, right? We're thinking about, okay, the food that you eat, are you moving your body, are you having exercise, stress reduction, sleep, preventive health care, having access to health care. So all of those things, within all of those pillars, there are systems and policies that impact that accessibility. So if you're thinking about food, what would I say about food? I would say, you know, right now, over 90% of Americans don't meet their fiber intake

guidelines and don't meet vegetable intake guidelines. 50% of Americans eat too much added sugar and over 70% of Americans are eating too many calories for their needs. Why? How do we fix that? Well, we look at, okay, our food system is 70% ultra-processed food. You fix that through shifting agricultural subsidies. You fix that through investing in agriculture to help smaller farmers kind of have a leg up, right? And helping people shift from maybe what they're growing right now is monocultures, you know, growing corn, wheat, and soy to growing more of a diverse kind of crops. And so you have to invest in that.

you have to help these smaller farmers go into these smaller locations and bring back local food systems. You have to look at food deserts in this country. We have millions and millions of people living in food deserts where they don't always have access to the food that they need. And so what a food desert is, you know, a lot of us think of rural areas when we're thinking of food deserts. And those exist. If you drive across the United States, you'll drive through a town and you're like, where do these people go for like groceries? And that's true. But that's actually a very small percentage. The vast majority of our food deserts are in our urban populated areas and cities and things like that. That's a result of, you know, largely redlining

and structural racism where, and so a better name for that is really food apartheid. And the problem is, is that, you know, because of disinvestment in those areas, a lot of food chains left and went to the suburbs where there was more money. And so what they've been left with is a lot of fast food, a lot of corner stores, a lot of dollar stores, and that's where they have access to get foods. And so, you know, incentivizing some of these smaller grocery chains to go back into those areas and you have to do that through things like grants and bringing that, bringing more produce into those areas, I think can be very helpful. You know, that's not going to change on its own. If you just like make it accessible, that has to be kind of paired with other public health

efforts like education efforts, like improving school nutrition and those types of things. So all of those can help improve our food supply for exercise. you can help by creating better built environments, by, you know, creating better infrastructure. You know, we just had a big infrastructure plan a few years ago. Building sidewalks, America was really built for cars. A lot of our cities and towns and everything, you need a car to get anywhere, creating sidewalks, creating safe parks to play in for children, you know, bringing back recess into schools and ensuring they're getting out to recess. All those types of things can help as well. And, you know, you have to look at obviously income inequality. I mean,

That's one of the biggest things is income inequality. And, you know, when we look at the disparities in health, it's always driven by income inequality. And there's other areas, race as well. But the biggest driver right now when you look at the differences is really income. And so between your highest and lowest, and I kind of mentioned those stats before. And so if you're looking at how do I make a robust, healthy nation, you make sure that people, you know, you make sure you create an economy where, yes, people can be successful and they can take risks and they can work as hard. and they can have success, but also everybody has a baseline of needs met so that they're able to enjoy health as well. They have access to health care. They have access to food.

They have access to housing. And that's really public health infrastructure. They have access to clean water and air because in a lot of areas, in some areas in this country, I mean, environmental racism is what it is, but we essentially, it was a dumping ground, right? We put all of these environmental toxins into very specific areas. So ensuring that that's, not happening and we're cleaning up those areas. That's essentially like those are the policies that can actually start eliciting real change for people. But it's so systemic and it's not flashy and fancy and easy to talk about. I just think I spoke for like eight minutes. I'm just like, no, but this is, yeah, it's not sexy, it's not fancy, but this is what we need. And once again,

it is in our national economic interest to make these investments. It is. There's also a good argument to be had around why it's in our national security interests. Like food security is national security. Like all of these things taken holistically are very important to having a robust, you know, healthy nation. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, at the end of the day, like, if we want a robust healthy nation and we want people going into the military, I think that was what they talked about and like a percentage of children aren't able to qualify for the military, we have to start thinking, I think the reason that I think it's so important to kind of connect these dots is because we have to start looking at like why the system is built this way. And what are we doing to enable it? So I talked about income inequality, you know, being a huge factor in health disparities. Well, the bill that just passed is going to worsen income inequality. That's not my opinion. That's independent economists saying that it's going to worsen income inequality because you're taking from the poor and you're giving to the rich and you're exacerbating income inequality. And so when you do that, you're going to see worse health outcomes.

And so a lot of the policies, and we kind of started with this, a lot of the policies that are being said, you know, we want to make America healthy again, we want to clean up the food supply. We want to, you know, even on the Maha website, the environment is on there, that they want to clean up the environment. And I think that all of those things are in a bipartisan way. Many of us want those things. What I look at is not really what they're saying.

It's more of what they're doing from a policy perspective. And from a policy perspective, they're doing a lot of things that are going to worsen our health outcomes right now. And they're rolling back environmental regulations, which is certainly going to worsen environmental outcomes. There is a conspiracy. And that conspiracy is our system that caters to corporate interests for the sake of, you know, quarterly profits and the cost that's paid is to us as people and our health outcomes. the health of the planet and our personal health. Yeah, and so if we want to improve our personal health and improve our country's health,

then we have to fix that system. The person who's listening to this or watching and is one of those people who feels a little bit paralyzed by all of the health information that they're inundated with that is leaving them confused. Like, what is your message to that person? I think there's a lot of people right now out there who are able to capitalize on this moment of distrust

and make a lot of money off of us. And so I think that it's really important to be aware of who you're getting your information from. And it's not that I don't think that people should be making money. We all need an income. It's the way that it's being done. So if people are using fear and they're using a manipulated narrative

and they're purposely driving this conspiratorial narrative to then sell product, I think that you have to be aware of that and just be aware of like where you're getting your information from and be more discerning about where you're getting your information from. What I find to be really helpful in areas that I'm not an expert in, which is every area, except for the one one area I am, is that I find people who are experts in those areas and they're not just going to rely on me just believing them. They're going to walk me through their thought process and they're going to show me evidence and they're going to talk me through

like, oh, and help me to understand. So, you know, I do this like in the beauty space because like I don't know about beauty products and the chemistry behind that. So I have a couple of great chemists that I go to. And I think that that can just be really helpful in just finding like your trusted people that you go to for that information. And then making sure there's a couple of them. So you can kind of get differing views and differing opinions because there is diversity of thought even within, you know, expert communities in different areas. And then I think just you know, the fundamentals at the end of the day, let's just speak about nutrition because that's kind of my area. The fundamentals haven't changed that much over the decades, right? The fundamentals

are really like eat a predominantly plant-based diet, you know, and that can incorporate meat or not, but most of the time it does. Eat a predominantly plant-based diet. Meet your fiber needs, meet your nutrient needs. You know, eat less low-nutrient, alter-processed foods, drink water, you know, limit your intake of alcohol and cigarettes and other psychoactive drugs and things like that. And you're already going to be far better off than the vast majority of the population who aren't, I mean, most of us aren't doing, even those basics. And so everything else is great. And it's for optimizing and all of this stuff. But everything else like online, kind of like scaring you away from things, it's all just noise. And at the end of the day, if you like go back to

the basics, which they're pretty fundamental. And again, they haven't changed over the decades. You're going to be far better off than you would otherwise. The basics aren't fun though. No, they're really boring. I want to hear about how everything you, ever thought about X is completely wrong, and here's what they don't want you to know. Yeah. Like in terms of a heuristic, you know, if you're looking at your feed, your information feed, like that whole kind of paradigm is a red flag. I mean, what would content be if someone who just came on every day and they were like,

eat more fruits and vegetables? That wouldn't be very cool. I've been trying this for many years, you know. It's like it doesn't tend to go viral. You know, but you've done a good job. I mean, how long have you been making publicly facing social media videos? 2022 is when I started. I started on TikTok.

And again, it was really predominantly in the pregnancy space because I was pregnant at the time. And I was like, oh, no, like, especially in the diabetes realm because that was what my research was in. And I was like, this isn't right about the oral glucose tolerance test. That evolved towards kind of where my area of expertise is, which is in chronic disease prevention and public health. I saw a lot of traction right around before the election when the Maha movement was coming out last summer was really when I started seeing kind of this narrative coming out. And I think just because it was my exact area of like focus for so long, I saw kind of how that narrative was being manipulated. And so that's when I started making content about that. And then around the time of

the election, I think a lot of people were just hungry to under, like I was presenting information in a way that was accessible for people. And they were hungry. for a different narrative than what like their entire algorithm was. And so I found a lot of success since, since then. Yeah, so, reaching people. I think you have over a million on Instagram. I'm not on TikTok. Is it more there? No, it's Instagram's more.

Yeah, Instagram's more. Yeah. I mean, I'm heartened by that. Like, it speaks to an appetite for, for wanting to know the truth and the fact that you're able to kind of dispel, you know, some ideas that are swirling around there and that that is getting traction, that people are, you know, attracted to that

is a hopeful message. I agree. When people ask me like, what's making you like hopeful right now? It's usually that. It's the fact that like, you know, we talk a lot about Instagram algorithm or social media algorithms in general and how they really rely on these like

conspiratorial fear-based, like all of that kind of information spreads really fast. I mean, my videos. are pretty long, too, like two, two to three minutes sometimes. And really just trying to explain kind of the root of these issues. And I've, I've just found a lot of people who are really thoughtful and really interested in understanding. And, you know, I just got a message from somebody yesterday. It was funny. She was like, you know, I came here as a hater. I thought I was going to hate everything you were saying. And then I just, like, kept listening and you kept

making good points. And, like, you helped tell, like, me to understand. I never really thought about, like, public health systems before, kind of, like, on this level and, like, how everything's kind of connected. And I think those kind of like messages that I'll receive like are very heartening that people, you know, a lot. And that's why I don't hold like I don't ever like derive you. I don't look at people and think like, oh, you're the issue. I just think that like the people who are manipulating the narrative are the issue. And a lot of us, the vast majority of us all want the same thing, which is just a healthier food supply, a healthier environment, just a healthier life. You know, a government that cares about us and doesn't like just look out for corporate profits.

I think that I'm finding that a lot of us really do want the same thing. We get caught in these social media narratives and like this like dichotomy of thoughts. And there's just a lot of overlap in what most of us believe and want. Well, I think it's a real public service and much needed. We do need effective science communicators, more of them, particularly women. And so I think you're playing like a really vital role and fill in. a real need that we have right now. Thank you.

That is giving me hope. And I, you know, I appreciate you coming here to talk to me. If there's anything I can do for you, I'm at your service. Like, I just think it's really powerful. And again, the fact that you are getting so much traction and there is so much interest around what you're doing is, is an indication to me that we're seeing a shift right now. People want good information. They're realizing that we need people who know what they're talking about.

to help guide us. We've been lost in this forest of confusion. You know, we need anchors, and you are one of those people. I really appreciate that. So, thank you. Come back. We can talk more about this. Yeah.

All right. Thank you. Thanks much. Peace. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and research,

related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, My Books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and the Plant Power Way. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors

who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com slash sponsors. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered

by Jason Camellolo, The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake. Content management by Shana Savoy, copywriting by Ben Pryor. And of course, our theme music was created all the way back in 2012 by Tyler Piot, Trapper Piat, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.

Namaste. You know what I'm going to do.