The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - How To Eliminate Toxic Ingredients & Products From Your Life Ft. Ken Cook, President Of The Environmental Working Group AKA EWG

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

#574: Today we're sitting down with Ken Cook, president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group. Ken is known as one of the environmental community’s most prominent and influential critics of industrial agriculture, U.S. food and farm policy and the nation’s broken approach to protecting families and children from toxic substances. Today Ken joins us for a really insightful conversation about the ingredients inside our cosmetic products and food, and how making the switch to non-toxic products doesn't have to be intimidating. He gets into the laws and lack thereof surrounding ingredient testing in the United States and gives our audience tangible tips for phasing out the toxic products that we use on a daily basis. He also dives into foods: what foods should be bought organic VS what foods are safe to eat non-organic, how to grocery shop for long term health, and what foods you should absolutely avoid. To connect with Ken Cook & The Environmental Working Group click HERE To visit Skin Deep click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential This episode is brought to you by Sakara Sakara delivers science-backed, plant-rich nutrition programs and wellness essentials right to your door. Their ready-to-eat meals are nutritionally designed to deliver results—from weight management and eased bloat to boosted energy and clearer skin. Go to Sakara.com/skinny or enter code SKINNY at checkout to receive 20% off your first order. This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat-only therapy sessions. So you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It's much more affordable than in-person therapy & you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/skinny This episode is brought to you by Wella Wella Professionals just released its most luxurious hair care line; Ultimate Repair. You can purchase The Ultimate Repair Miracle Hair Rescue at Ulta stores, or go to wella.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by AG1 AG1 is way more than greens. It's all of your key multi-vitamins, minerals, pre-and probiotics, and more, working together as one. Go to athleticgreens.com/SKINNY to get a free 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. One of the main ways that I have built my business is by doing a specific planner prompt every single morning. It's so easy. It's like one page. And how I sort of built this prompt was through interviewing a lot of successful people and putting together a bunch of their ideas with my own and then answering the prompts every morning. So I have my Ivy Lee method going on. I have the book that I'm reading, the music that I'm listening to, my gratefuls, my intentions. I have everything written out. And since this prompt has helped me build my business so much, I launched a skinny confidential planner with this exact prompt in it. The planner sells out

every single time we drop it, but we just got it back in stock. And I thought that I would tell the podcast listeners first. It's a beautiful pink and lilac spiral planner. It lays open. It's got big, beautiful pages. And I'm obsessed. I use it every single morning. And I thought that you guys would like it too, especially if you're a podcast listener. You like to optimize your life.

You're always looking to be the best version of yourself. So I think you're going to like this. Go to shopskinnyconfidential.com and grab the planner. We also have things like the ice roller, driving gloves, pink balls, all the things in one spot. That's shopskinnyconfidential.com. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her.

I do put a lot of trust in the government, but I always try and verify it, certainly in the environmental area. We have developed our own standards at EWG because the government just hasn't moved. One of the great benefits of the environmental revolution that began in the 60s and 70s and 80s was all this information that was generated that was never there before. Information on everything from air pollution, tap water contaminants, to endangered species, to wilderness areas. All of this was collected. It's a huge victory for the environmental community that we got those laws put on the books and that information was collected, even if it wasn't always used. Hello, it is Monday and we are coming at you with an insane episode. Today, we are sitting down with Ken Cook. He is the president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, also known

as the EWG. You've probably seen this website everywhere. It's this incredible database. And basically, it researches everything that's in your beauty products, your personal care products, your food, your water, your tap water, your skin. It goes through everything and sort of gives it a score. So I was even surprised to go on there and search my kids' water wipes that I use for changing diapers. You can really search anything and you can find out the real deal about what is in your food and your products. I have made so many switches to non-toxic products and I've used the EWG. It's famous because they really specialize in research.

So I reached out to them and borderlined harassed them. I was like, can I please interview Ken? Luckily, Michelle Pfe products you should be looking out for, why you need to do your own research, taking accountability for your health, the lack of laws surrounding ingredients, buying organic versus non-organic, playing the long game with your health, toxic products, cosmetic products, and how to easily find non-toxic products. This episode was so eye-opening for me. Ken was kind enough to do a huge clean skincare giveaway. He is giving away so many incredible products. I am going to list them all at the end of this episode. But basically, to win all of these clean skincare products, all you have to do is follow at the Environmental Working Group on Instagram and comment your favorite takeaway on my latest post at Lauren Bostic. On that note, let's welcome

the iconic Ken Cook, president and co-founder of the EWG, to the show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. I could not be more excited to do this episode. I think this is going to wake a lot of people, including myself, up. First, I want to lay the land. How did this even start, this idea for EWG? So this is our 30th year. I know I don't look a day over 20, would you say? Yeah, you look good. Maybe 25.

I have a girlfriend to hook you up with. Happily married. But no, we started this back in, you know, 30 years ago in the early 90s as a think tank, a typical environmental think tank. I grew up in the generation where I wanted to be like Ralph Nader. I wanted to develop science and law and facts and make the case for protecting consumers, protecting the environment, protecting public health. And the way you did that was you went to, you develop your information, you went to Congress, Congress passed a law, the agency implemented regulations and the know got the industry to comply and we all benefited the air got cleaner products got cleaned up and so forth we

still do a lot of that but along the way because of some really smart people who came on to our team we started putting information out that directly reached consumers especially obviously after the Internet came along and people could go directly there. This changed everything for us because now we were suddenly not having to wait, and this is a subject we should touch on a little bit, wait for the government to get its act together

and do something in response to a problem. The wait period, as we've all noticed, has gotten longer and longer, like forever. We could go directly to consumers through the internet, interact with them, and they started changing their behavior. We showed them what foods had the most pesticides, and we heard from food companies, this is changing our marketplace. We started illustrating thousands of ingredients in thousands of personal care products, and we identified the ingredients that we thought

deserved concern. Markets started shifting away from those ingredients and those products, the same with cleaning products, the same on and on. So what we discovered was a change in the way environmentalism worked. And EWG today is known to most people as a great source of advice they can trust on toxic chemicals in their everyday life. It could be something in your tap water. It could be something in the furnishings you bring into your home or how you clean your home. It could be personal care products, skincare, cosmetics, what have you. And of course, whatever you put in your grocery cart. We have gone through all of those giant categories, looked at tens of thousands of products, pulled out the ingredients, evaluated the ingredients, and come back to people with our best guess.

In some cases, it's a guess because information can be pretty sparse, but our best assessment of the health and safety of the ingredients and the products that they're in. I have a weird question. I keep hearing about baby toys. Yeah. There's all these things in baby toys. Well, over the years, again,

the regulatory landscape. So let's just say if you're at the Environmental Working Group, which we are right now, right? Environment to us is everyday life. It's not wilderness only. It's not smokestacks off in the distance. It's not what comes out of a tailpipe. The environment is what you metabolize in everyday life. You know, the tea you're drinking now, the food you eat, the personal care products and so forth. And that includes all the products in your home. So we knew from years ago that the government was fairly lax when it came to the chemicals in children's toys and other products. There were phthalates in children's toys, plasticizers that shouldn't have been in there, lead levels that weren't accurately assessed or tested. And kids have this hand-mouth thing they

do, right? Especially little ones. And the exposure was enormous. The same with dust in homes. Kids are crawling around on the floor and on the carpet, right? Well, you know, you can't say to an 18 month old, hey, now be careful. Don't, you know, you've been crawling around for an hour. Don't put your finger in your mouth because it's already in their mouth. It's maybe even in mom or dad's mouth too. So all of these behaviors combined with the product offerings that have come out in many cases from unregulated industries or very lightly regulated industries puts us on a collision course where there's lots of environmental exposures we haven't thoroughly analyzed. They happen legally. All these products are, in many cases, they're perfectly legal and the ingredients in them, no rules really about what you can put in,

with a few exceptions. And as a consequence, you get these discoveries that, oh my gosh, there's jewelry with lots of lead in it or children's toys with lots of lead in it. Maybe the lead doesn't leave the jewelry and get onto your skin. Maybe it doesn't leave the toy. But why do we have it in there to begin with is the question. Why? Yes, right. Because it's cheap, because it's a habit, because it's the way industry's always done things, because there's no watchdog in the government looking at it. And that's why groups like EWG, we try and play that role.

Is there a rise in these components in these products with the rise of lobbying? Is that correlated at all? Well, there's a defensive response by regulated industries or just industries generally for sure. They spend a lot more money than the environmental community does, public health community does collectively. So there's always resistance. You can't think of a major environmental or consumer regulation where industry hasn't pushed back on us, right? And so what I would say though is since we're no longer entirely dependent on the government to protect us, we can go and to trusted sources online. And there's sources that are more trustworthy than others. And we have plenty of shots taken

at our credibility by industry and even sometimes by independent scientists. So that's out there. We recognize that. But the information that's now available is so much better and so much more actionable that people can take smart steps. They don't have to move to a yurt in a mountain meadow to, you know, to have a clean and healthy life. They can make steps in their everyday lives to eliminate tens of thousands of exposure events, as we call them every year, pesticides in food, sketchy additives in food, chemicals that ought not be in personal care products like these PFAS chemicals. You've probably heard about the Teflon and Scotchgard family of chemicals that are in all of us now.

They're in wildlife all over the world. Well, some people thought it was a good idea to put it in personal care products. We acted, and in California they're going to be banned now, but you've been exposed to them if you used any of those products, thousands of those products, for decades those products for decades and no one protected you. I am about to move to a yurt. What did you say? I'm like, I'm borderline yurty. I think that the problem, one of the biggest problems, especially in a country where you feel like, you know, we, in a lot of ways we live in a very artificial environment. That is,

we have the illusion that we're safer all the time than we really are. I don't think, I mean, you could see even these last two years, I think people were shocked. Many people were so shocked because they realized, wait, I didn't realize I was this vulnerable. I didn't realize I was this at risk. And a lot of people couldn't process that. They just think, hey, and you see these, they walk around with their head down on their phone. They're just buying anything off the shelf. I think everything's safe. And they assume

that because it's on a shelf or because it's in a store, because that it must be safe that the government or the people that put it out there have their health interests at heart, right? There's so many things that get through to your point, this process or this regulatory system, you have no idea what they're even doing. They just assume it's there. It must be safe, right? And I think that's the big, the reason I wanted to have you, or we wanted to have you on here is I wanted to kind of share with you that you really have to kind of take your health into your own hands and understand that you're always at risk. And it doesn't mean you have to be scared all the time, but you have to be paying attention to what you're doing, what you're

consuming, what you're wearing, all of these things. Ken, do you think that there is something nostalgic for the older generation to have to let go of their Windex, to have to let go of their Tide laundry detergent, to have to let go of these smells that they've almost gotten used to? There's a little bit of pushback I noticed from the older generation. Do you get that? Yeah, for sure. And it's not just, you know, it's not just older. It can be anyone who's just accustomed to, you know, those kinds of products and thinking that that is, as you say, you know, it's on a shelf. Surely someone in government has taken a look at this and made sure it's okay. But we hear, you know, all the time that something the government has said is safe,

sometimes for decades, suddenly they're banning. Roundup. Roundup is, I mean, we're not ready to ban it yet, but it's been said to be safe. Asbestos. We don't think it is. Asbestos is a great example. These PFAS chemicals, right?

So the Environmental Protection Agency has known for decades that these chemicals that were used in Scotchgard and Teflon and other such applications in tens of thousands of consumer products, multi-billion dollar industries. They started to hear no later than the late 1990s. And industry knew decades before that this stuff was toxic in many ways. It could cause cancer. It could interfere with hormone activity, all kinds of adverse effects just from this family of chemicals. For decades, that was hidden from EPA. But even when EPA knew it was a problem, it took decades to take serious action.

First, they banned two of the major ones. We were involved in pushing for that in the early 2000s. But then nothing happened for like 20 years. And just recently, the agency has said, we need to restrict the amount of PFAS in drinking water to three parts per trillion. Three parts per trillion. such a tiny amount. Why?

Because that's the level they think you could consume without harm. We think it should even be lower. But decades later, so we've all been drinking this. And when I say we've all, EWG published a peer-reviewed study where we estimated that some 200 million Americans have this stuff at above one part per trillion in their drinking water. So just as that one example, here you have this agency that's supposed to be looking after us. First, they're not told the full truth in a timely fashion by industry, as they should have been required to do. Then the lobbying begins, the pushback.

Don't even propose a standard for decades. Finally, they propose one, and now industry's pushing back and saying it's too strong. If you go forward with that standard, it'll cost too much to clean up. It'll raise liability questions for polluters who are continuing to use these materials that ends up in drinking water, and so forth and so on. So I think the main distinction people need to understand is the distinction between what's legal and what's safe. I would love to go through a couple of products that people are using that you maybe

would advise to really look into? And quickly, between legal and safe, all you have to look at is the tobacco and alcohol industry, right? Totally. And you also just have to look at it to know how much the government puts your health. There is enough information out there now to clearly point out that, and listen, I consume alcohol and many people do, but there's enough information out there to know that it is not good for you.

There's no health benefits. It's not good for your brain. They had this study for a while where it was like resveratrol may be good in wine, but they found out that the alcohol industry is the one that did all these studies, right? They're lobbying. So listen, I'm not saying you can't have alcohol, but to your point, you have to know the difference between legal and safe. It doesn't mean just because it's there, it's good for you. In many cases, things are there and they're terrible

for you. Yeah. I always give the example that people can immediately relate to of speed limits. Right. So for a time we had the national speed limit lowered to save energy during the Carter administration. A lot of your listeners may not remember the Carter administration, but lowered it to 55 miles per hour nationally to save energy because you use less energy when you go slower. And we were in a crunch, right? We were out of oil. Prices were sky high, lines around the block. So they imposed this 55 mile per hour speed limit and thousands and thousands of deaths and accidents, injuries were avoided immediately, right?

Then pressure came back to say, hey, this is too slow. Western states, rural areas, whatever, let's lift that 55 mile per hour limit on highways. And as soon as we did that, we had thousands of excess deaths every year. Legal, but not safe. The same with drinking water contaminants, the same with pesticides. We have examples of pesticides. Chlorpyrifos is a good example. A bug killer was used for decades.

And only recently, both California and EPA have moved to ban it. But we've had a robust scientific literature that showed for decades that this is a nervous system toxicant that we should simply get out of the food supply. But industry pushed back very hard. Farmers pushed back. They wanted that tool, which is how they refer to it, to be able to control bugs. Industry was making money selling the pesticide. So we kept eating it. And all the way up until the moment when EPA said, it's unsafe, we're going to ban it, they said it was safe.

So you have this, I think, consumer collective memory now that this happens. This is, I think, what you're talking about. People are beginning to realize, hmm, you mean this stuff that's been in my water since I've been alive and I'm 55 years old or whatever, this stuff, which EPA for years said was perfectly okay, suddenly they're getting it out of water because it's far from perfectly okay? I mean, it's no secret that during COVID, I was very hesitant to just take everything from the government at face value. And I've not been shy about saying that because, to your point, I kept looking back at instances where they got it wrong and then later changed their opinion.

I can't remember. You might know this. There was a vaccine for pregnant women that they gave a while back, I think in the 50s or 60s. And then they had to later go and say, if you were a baby that was born and had a mother with this vaccine. They do still try to vaccinate pregnant women. I can't remember what it was, but there could be complications. They had to like go and retract and look like this. There's a lot of stuff that we've gotten wrong. And if you think about it from a modern technology and science perspective, like a hundred years ago, it was a very, very different time. We've

moved very, very fast in a short period of time, but it's a blink of an eye in terms of the time in this world. And so I've just like, I'm always hesitant to just take anything at face value. I'm like, oh, because somebody in a position of authority is saying that they have to be correct because I've seen them retract too many times. No, I think it's healthy to have that skepticism. People make fun of those who do their own research. I'm not sure that's the right approach to take. I think we should encourage people to get better and better at research, but I don't think we should ever say discount it. And to your point, if you look across the categories of products that are tested for

safety, arguably the most rigorously tested are drugs, right? Because first you do laboratory studies, can include animal trials. Then you do human trials if you want to bring a drug to market. You're looking for side effects and efficacy. You want to see if taking it causes problems, health problems, and you want to see if taking it solves the problem you're taking it for, right? Almost every year, there are examples of drugs that have gone through that whole process that have to be withdrawn because they're injuring or killing some people. And so

those are realities. These are realities. And so what do you do? Well, I do put a lot of trust in the government, but I always try and verify it, certainly in the environmental area. We second guess all the time. We have developed our own standards at EWG that we think, because the government just hasn't moved. One of the great benefits of the environmental revolution that began in the 60s and 70s and 80s, then it kind of slowed down, which we could talk about, but one of the great benefits was all this information that was generated that was never there before. Information on everything from air pollution to tap water contaminants, to endangered species, to wilderness areas. All of this was collected. It's a huge victory for the environmental community that we got those

laws put on the books and that information was collected, even if it wasn't always used. Yeah. Well, and also I want to make the distinction, there is a middle ground here where to your point, if you're wearing a tin hat, living in a yurt in the middle of nowhere, that is also not the answer. You can't be here where to your point if you're wearing a tin hat living in a yurt in the middle of nowhere that is also not the answer you can't be so scared of your environment where you totally where you where you're running around paranoid about everything that is in a modern environment at the house yeah but you know like you know do i there's i think people take this to an extreme there's like yeah you know there's yeah i want to double verify and question assumptions and take some time and skip a beat and collect as much information as i can but i also don't want to go off the deep end and be like, the government's

out to get me and I got to move to the middle of nowhere. But you better sure as hell bet that I am going to test or go on your website and put in what lotion I'm putting on my brand new baby that is going to disrupt his endocrine system. Michael's like, what are you talking about? I look at the oil. I want to know what I'm bathing him in every day i want to know what toothpaste my daughter is using there i mean i'm sorry like i feel like this is something though that you have to take extreme accountability for yourself and your own health and if you're unwilling to do that and you're just going to blindly trust all these people i mean there's sounds like to me there's going to be consequences. Well, the way we got introduced is through Michelle Pfeiffer, who came on the show.

Such a lovely person. Hi, Michelle. And like, it was a fascinating episode because she was just talking about all the different perfumes and colognes that we put on our body without, you know, and all these different endocrine disruptors that we're unaware of. But people think, hey, it's in a department store and it's got a, you know, a fancy brand label on it and it must be good for us. And what could go wrong? What could go wrong? But then as we got through that episode and listen and listen to our mission

behind Henry Rose, like it clicked and made so much sense. That's actually all we wear now because we realized like, Oh, she's right there. We're putting all this stuff on our body to smell in a kind of artificial way, but with stuff that we, we don't know what's in this stuff. And there's a lot of stuff that gets through here that probably shouldn't be on our skin and in our body. No, that's right. And one of the many amazing attributes of Michelle's brand is that she's part of the EWG Verified Program, which is a pain in the ass to go through.

She would be the first to say that. I think she did say that. She probably did say that, yeah. She discloses all the fragrance ingredients. If you get a product that says the word fragrance on it, it can be fine fragrance that's all fragrance. It can be a soap or a skincare product, whatever, and it says fragrance on there. That can hide dozens of chemicals that they don't have to disclose because they managed to get federal law to block disclosure of fragrance. They want to keep that little industry nice and traditional

and secret. That's how it works in a very old-fashioned way where fragrance manufacturers sometimes won't even disclose the ingredients in their fragrance to a company that buys it to put in their product. So it's very, very deep secrecy that's rooted in this sense that, you know, fragrance houses are creative places, and they are, that produce these unique blends of chemicals that provide the sense that the fragrance houses are known for. But in all of that is the possibility that there will be chemicals used that are not healthy, not safe. I just got back from Mexico. I had my birthday there. And of course, I brought my Saqqara detox drops. I brought these

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Ulta now. You can also go to wella.com. That's W-E-L-L-A.com to learn more. I feel like we also kind of know a lot of this stuff deep down. I'll give you like a really stupid, strange example of as you were talking. Obviously, I have tattoos and who knows, like, you know, younger, younger me. But when you when you get tattoos, we would always go and get fragrance free soaps or lotion. You just knew you wouldn't get something that's like, hey, I need the lemon because you know, you don't want it in that freshly kind of punctured skin. And this is just stuff people know like and so there's a reason that like i think a lot of this stuff's deep-rooted and you can tell like this is artificial and maybe shouldn't be in our system

and we wouldn't put it on our baby or we wouldn't put it on freshly tattooed skin but then we go and we kind of nullify all that in our everyday life and say okay i will still use and we use our redken hair paste that i can't get him off well that's probably rated negative 800 some things lauren i know but i i could do without that but you know what i'm saying like we just we know some that I can't get him off of that's probably rated negative 800. There's some things, Lauren, that we're going to... I know, but I could do without that. But you get what I'm saying? We know some of this stuff deep down, and we know it's not natural, but we do it anyway.

That's right. And you don't want to... The point you made earlier, one of the things that we pride ourselves on at EWG is we try not to be the environmentalist some of your listeners may have in mind that's wagging their finger at you all the time, that's not us. What we're really trying to do is we're trying to say, look, our scientists have taken a close look at whatever it might be.

It might be something in the personal care aisle. It might be something that you put in your cart at the shopping center. It might be something you wear. We try and take a close look at the best available science. And sometimes there's very little science available. And then we always try and give you an option. Here's what you can do if you want something on your skin to soften it or make you feel smooth or whatever experience you're trying to go for. Here are some alternatives that don't have these same sketchy chemicals. Giving people, first of all,

not dictating to people, not telling them, give up deodorant or give up whatever your personal, your Redken. I'm not going to take sides here. Here's an alternative. Try it. And you don't have to throw everything out and try everything new. We also want to make people realize you've spent money on something. Just start experimenting with another product that substitutes for that that might be fine. A perfect example of how we first started is our list of fruits and vegetables that based on government testing,

we know are pretty high in pesticides. What's number one? We call those the dirty dozen. Usually it's strawberries or apples, one of the two. And we publish a report every year updated by the latest USDA data. I love to hear it's apples. I hate when people chew apples. It's the worst sound. Oh, you have a, well, you may have that. I can't remember what that's called. Sensory issue with the apples. Whenever she's irritating me, I grab a big apple. Just grab a big apple. Just start going to town on it. Yeah, there you go.

All right. But when we were developing this list, we also looked at the fruits and vegetables that because of the way pesticides are sprayed on them, when they're sprayed, what types of pesticides, they end up having very few residues in those fruits and vegetables when they reach consumers. So that's the clean 15, which is my point. Of course, if you can find and afford organic, which my friend Phil Landrigan still says is kind of like private school for food for many people. It's great if you can find it and afford it, but not everyone can. So we said, let's make sure people have fruits and vegetables, which we need to eat a lot of. Let's give them that list that's not organic, but doesn't have pesticides. The Clean 15. Can you name some off that list?

Bananas are one that I always think of because I love bananas. And conventional bananas, if you peel back the peel as we do, unless you're eating the peel, the pesticide levels are quite low. And so we have that list updated every year for people. You can get it directly into your phone when you go to the grocery store. You don't have to give it a thought. And we're not saying never eat, except in front of you, never eat an apple. Never eat an apple. Never eat. What we're saying is just think about the option.

Think about the possibility of buying organic apples or organic strawberries. The market for those has exploded. The organic food industry is, when we first started doing this work, organic, you couldn't tell if organic food had been harvested or if it had escaped. It was that, you know, it looked that bad. It was sort of looked like it was raised in a, you know, like in a camp or something somewhere. But now it's a 60, 70 billion dollar industry. Produce is available in most parts of the country.

Organic offerings are there, potatoes frequently, carrots, broccoli, in-season grapes, and so forth. Things have begun to change, and that's not because of the government. That's because consumers using their power have started to drive the market. Same thing's happening in personal care. Michelle's company is a great example. Same thing's happening in cleaning products. We don't have to wait for a government and we shouldn't wait for the government. No, you're so right. This is why this information is so important is the consumer base drives the markets, right? Yeah. And companies are listening and there are a lot of great people out there who, I mean, I said at the top, I wanted to be Ralph Nader.

There are a lot of people in these companies who've never heard of Ralph Nader, but they want to produce clean, safe stuff. Did he run against Clinton? No, he ran against a lot of people. He ran against Gore. He ran against Gore. That was in 2000, and that was the big, that's when some of us fell off the bandwagon. I want to give the audience some things that they can do immediately that would blow their mind. What are some little tiny

things that they can tweak? He ran his Green Party, right? I'm listening to Green Party. I just can't remember. He ran Gore V. Bush. Finish the thing. I just had to remember. Go ahead. It was not pretty. I'm going to punch that Redken paste right on his face. I had to close the native loop for some

reason. I closed the loop. Okay, what are some things that would blow Michael in my mind, the audience's mind, that they could change right away that is like lurking in the shadows in their house? Well, here's what I always advise people. First of all, you don't have to do it all at once. So straight and easy, simple, straightforward. We strongly recommend that because this is the long game, right?

We're talking about, for the most part, chronic illnesses, right? Illnesses that develop over time. Sometimes they're very complex illnesses like cancer can be. Most cancers are pretty complex diseases. It can take a long time. We don't fully understand what triggers them. We don't fully understand what unleashes the rapid growth that leads to metastasis. All of those uncertainties tell you that you should be thoughtful before you feel like you have to make a sudden change.

Here's where we tell people to start. Pick one category. Pick personal care, for example. The shampoos the makeup skin care whatever you use right hey Lauren's sweating no yeah makes me sweat go to our skin deep database it's EWG org or just type in skin deep and EWG look a thousand people an hour go to this website whoa and which I we didn't see coming again we thought we were a policy shop. And if we put this great database out there, it would help us prove that we needed regulation. It does show that. But we didn't realize that consumers would start going and shopping.

So when you go to Skin Deep at our site, enter in some of the products that you use and love and just see how they rate. And then we talk about each ingredient in those products, whatever information we can find out about them. You'll just get a sense, and I think it's worked out for a lot of people this way. You'll get a sense that this is not a thoroughly regulated industry. These ingredients aren't going, any of these ingredients aren't going to kill me immediately. Again, it's long-term. What can I do to start shifting away from products that I've maybe relied on that don't get a very good rating in Skin Deep, if you're concerned about it, and move toward either

eliminating that from your daily care, and people use lots of products every day they don't necessarily need, right? Maybe eliminate that or go to something that rates better. And we show those right on Skin Deep too. You can do the same with food. Our food scores database, tens of thousands of foods, we score all of the ingredients and then we give a comprehensive score for the individual foods. We recommend going one at a time and just give yourself some wins. Give yourself some exposure reduction. Participate in a way with this information

that allows you to take a little control over what you're exposed to. This brings me to a question that one of our incredible team members added here, and I'm just going to read it verbatim because it's relevant to what you're talking about right now. It says, the FDA has banned the use of 30 ingredients in cosmetics

slash personal care products in the USA, but the EU has banned more than 1600 ingredients in their products. Can you get into why this is allowed to happen here in the United States and why the FDA is allowing over 1570 known toxins into our products compared to the EU? Well, this is an example of an industry that is not rigorously regulated. And you would think going to the cosmetics counter or going into a department store or CVS, wherever you shop, the soaps and the creams and all the rest, that there are pretty rigorous rules about what can go in there. No, there's no pre-market testing required of any ingredient on the part of the government

before you formulate a personal care product. Now, we just passed some legislation that gives important, but still kind of rudimentary authority to the FDA to, for example, recall something that has shown in consumer complaints to be causing a health problem like serious rashes or something like that. FDA didn't even have the authority to do that on the books until the end of last year. So the long and the short of it is here's how we regulate cosmetics in this country. No pre-market safety testing.

Finally, the ability of the FDA to recall when there's a dramatic health problem that pops up from consumer complaints. by a group called Cosmetic Ingredient Review that is funded by, selected by, and located in the trade association for the personal care products industry. So you could, and now we have had a good relationship with that trade association. I just want to be clear. And they have sided with us on a number of important issues that I think a lot of their members have recognized they need to do. Like, we need to get these PFAS chemicals. There's no reason to put something like that in a personal care product. So we had the support of that industry to ban it in California.

Likewise, we came together and supported it. It wasn't enough for us, but we want much more rigorous regulation. But they were on the same side to get basic regulation upgraded last year federally. But we have a gap here. This is not a regulated industry. Same with cleaning products. You can put almost anything in a cleaning product. Food additives. This is not a regulated industry. Same with cleaning products. You can put almost anything in a cleaning product. Food additives. This is one that blows my mind. Most of the food

additives that you see that are allowed now, some of the colorants and the flavorings. Natural flavors. Even if they're called natural. In many cases, those are on the market because the industry has asserted without fda doing a careful review it's almost like don't ask for permission listen this is going to be very vulgar language but i'm just going to i have to say even when you were kids there was this joke if you drank mountain dew with red 40 in it your dick was going to shrink that was that was a joke that was like boys so did you and taylor drink it no i stayed away

hence thorn you know you can tell i stayed away but but but kids like even i mean i remember being a little kid seven eight nine years old i mean like don't drink mountain dew there's red 40 and they're like what the hell is red 40 this is something that is abundant in many of our products and i i excuse it in his orange chicken excuse the language but why does that product why does that need to be in our food supply, and what is it, and how does it affect us? And to your point, like, you know, it's just... Well, there was a huge...

They say, I don't know, I'm not a doctor, that there can be a relation to RED40 and ADD. Was it RED40 or RED5? All these REDs, but yes. There was a huge surge of ADD when that came out. Yeah. No, I mean, we're, California Assembly just passed a bill

that would ban that again in California. And here's, this tells you something about the state of our policymaking process. We could not get that done in Washington, D.C. But in California, you have, you know, a different makeup of our legislature. They're much more progressive in terms of concern about the environment and human health. They're really leading the nation.

We have a governor right now who's also inclined that way, and his wife is super inclined that way. They're just very thoughtful about it. We couldn't get it done in Washington, but we can get it done here. And when you get it done in, what, the seventh or eighth largest economy in the world, then companies manufacture across the board to safer standards. So in that sense, we are seeing progress made. on our own in our daily lives. It's easy to do. You can't solve all the problems. Some pollutants are out there and only government, only society can act and it damn well should. We ought to expect our government to protect us. But in other cases, you can't and shouldn't wait for the government to protect you.

You should just make changes in your daily routines, your purchasing patterns, your behaviors, and you can eliminate a lot of these exposures, probably save money in the process, and certainly avoid some of the worst, sketchiest exposures that you could face just in everyday life. This is where I go back and forth because part of me is I'm, you know, we're part of a capitalist society. I'm, you know, capitalistic and all the things, things but at the same time i think that it's really important that people take personal accountability and do their own research we live in a strange period of time where we've evolved so fast there's such an abundance of products there's such an abundance

of offerings there's so many options where we just didn't have that 100 years ago right we didn't have this abundant food source and all this storage and all these cosmetics and all these things and so people were really thoughtful back then on what they did, what they ate, how they got their foods, where it was sourced. We don't do that anymore. So there's a part of me that's like, listen, we live in this kind of society. Business is going to do business. But we've also gotten complacent as a people where we say, oh, if it's out there, it all must be good. And there's a lack of research and personal accountability that takes place. And we believe, again, that we're safer than we really are. And it's a lot of the time because you're not participating actively in your own health or your own environment. Can I ask you a couple

rapid fire questions about this? Go for it. What laundry detergent do you use? We use one of the EWG verified approved laundry detergents. I don't want to say exactly which one, but we use the detergents that rate well in the EWG system. And the reason I don't want to mention is because there are quite a few of them that rate well. And I don't want to tilt the scales away from a company that's doing a great job that someone who goes to our website can make their selection. But I always shop according to the EWG recommendations. That's kind of my question. So instead of shouting out a personal brand, you can go on there and you can see the top like 10 laundry detergents.

Or you can eliminate stuff that, like there's stuff probably on there, they're like, this is no chance. Do you ever call out brands or are you hesitant to do that? We tend to call them out online and sometimes in other ways when obviously there's a problem. For example, we called out Cheerios a few years ago. Oh, Cheerios. Honey nut or regular? Both of them, actually.

From a nutritional standpoint, the regular ones are much better than the ones that are loaded with sugar. Cheerios, we found through laboratory studies we commissioned, had a weed killer on them called Roundup, called glyphosate. Oh my God, my dad eats honey nut Cheerios. Daddy, you better get rid of those. Yeah, he eats them.

Your dad's a grown man eating honey nut Cheerios? Yeah, he loves cereal late night. Late night, there you go. Late night, he loves a bowl of cereal. And also, he better be using almond milk. Of course he do. Captain Crunch, I's going on with you, man? Late night, there you go. Late night, he loves a bowl of cereal. Bro, what are you doing up there, man? And also, he better be using almond milk. Of course he do. Captain Crunch, I hear you. Look that up right now. Just munching on some Roundup.

Yeah. And here's why he's eating a weed killer, is because oat growers, primarily in Canada, at the end of the growing season, they spray this Roundup on their oats to kill the crop uniformly so that they can harvest it in a much more organized, predictable fashion, right? And it doesn't get wet from late season rain and all kinds of... So as a consequence, boom, up pops up.

Ken, Taylor, I just pulled a Captain Crunch up on the EWG and it's not looking good at all. It's 10. It's 10 out of 10. Too much sugar. Taylor literally has Roundup in between each tooth. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, so that's the, this is the thing, these regulatory gaps that, you know, we try and understand, try and probe, try and apply our research. We have PhD toxicologists and chemists who are constantly looking at the science. They're looking at regulatory decisions made in other countries where we often will say, hey, you know, like the food data that we're talking about banning in California, they're

banned in Europe. So we're saying, really, seriously, you mean to tell me that a multinational food company formulates products in Europe that don't have these sketchy things, but they don't formulate them that way here. Why? So some of that basic research, and we're not the only organization that does it. We take a lot of pride in the fact that we do it and do it well. And a lot of consumers come to our site. We probably, you know, I'm going to say ballpark 25 million visits a year. That is changing things. So here's what we know.

We know that the environmental movement, when it was getting its start in the 60s and 70s and 80 books, was first passed, I think, in 63. Then it was updated in 70 and 73. It kept getting updated because new science was coming along telling us, here's what we know about LA's air. We've got to do something, right? But the pushback that began as a result of that success, which is the other dynamic here, is what we're dealing with, right? So industry resisting regulation, maybe losing some battles, redoubles its efforts, more lobbyists, more campaign contributions, makes it harder and harder to pass a new law that

updates, say, the Clean Water Act or the Safe Drinking Water Act. I mean, let me put it this way. We couldn't pass the Wilderness Act today. We couldn't pass the Endangered Species Act. We probably couldn't pass the current Clean Air Act if we took it to this Congress. That's how strongly industry has learned it needs to resist this regulation. And so that means, so what do we do? Well, with clean air, that's a societal obligation. You can't clean up LA air. You can clean up your home air, and that's important. That's your main source of air pollution exposure. But we can't clean up the skies.

We need the government to do that. For many other categories of your daily life, though, you don't have to wait for the government to update its regulation and push through the opposition from industry and others who want to make money. You can do it yourself. And that's one of the main appeals of EWG, I think, is that we give people this information. Also, when we don't know, we tell you. If we have a question mark about the data availability on an ingredient in cosmetics, we tell you. If we have a question mark about the data availability on an ingredient in cosmetics, we describe that. We say data poor, data non-existent. When the data is non-existent, should you be more hesitant? I guess you don't. You know, it's just non-existent. And the

scientists at our shop who are making those judgments, they don't want to condemn something because the data aren't there. They also don't want to ignore the fact that the data aren't there, and it should be. But people aren't required in the personal care product industry to develop a rigorous data set. If you're not required to do pre-market testing for safety, then you're not conducting the studies. In some ways, it's good. We shouldn't be doing animal studies that kill animals to see if an ingredient causes cancer and it happens to be in your makeup. But we can do lots of other studies, if we required it,

that would eliminate some of the uncertainty around these chemicals. But we don't do that yet. So we try and we give it our best educated judgment and let you know what our scientists think. The Skinny Confidential Him and Her podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. We've had so many high performers on this show talking about multiple facets of life and how they find performance, longevity, health, wellness to live happy, productive lives.

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skinny. Check it out. Quick break to talk about Athletic Greens. Regular listeners of this show must be living under a rock with their ears plugged if they haven't yet started taking Athletic Greens, also known as AG1. We have been talking about AG1 for years now, and we aren't the only ones. For those that are still unfamiliar with for years now, and we aren't the only ones. For those that are still unfamiliar with Athletic Greens, let me break it all down for you. Athletic Greens is your one-stop shop for everything you need to start your day right. It's the green powder of green powders. Simply take a single scoop of Athletic Greens in the morning with a large glass of water to get your daily multivitamins, your prebiotics, your probiotics, your adaptogens, and your minerals, all packed into one scoop of delicious green powder.

Lauren and I take Athletic Greens every single day. We take it when we are at home and when we are traveling. It's an absolute game changer for us. We have noticed more energy, more focus, better skin, no more dark under eye circles. We just feel better. It's made with 75 super high quality vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients that deliver benefits like mood, immune system, and sleep support, sustained energy, and so much more. Something else I love about AG1 is that it is delivered monthly. It shows up right to my front

door so I never have to worry about it running out. So if you want to take ownership of your health, today is a good time to start. Athletic Greens is giving you a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com slash skinny. That's athleticgreens.com slash skinny. So again, Athletic Greens is giving you a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com slash skinny. That's athleticgreens.com slash skinny. Check it out. This podcast has a lot of people who are listening, who love beauty products and skin products.

You called out Cheerios, you called out Captain Crunch. Are there any beauty products that we should just steer clear from? I wouldn't say there are any categories necessarily. You should steer clear. Like old spice. Old spice. Well, look it up on in skin deep it'll probably it probably won't be good news what did i used to wear as a teenager my son's into fragrance now so we're having conversations about it english leather okay that wasn't that a thing yeah i was an english leather guy okay probably see that you

look like an english lady yeah oh yeah secret deodor. Secret deodorant. Look it up. I mean, I think, you know, the unscented one might be marginally better. I don't know. I'm just guessing. If it has fragrance in it, we ding it pretty hard in our Skin Deep program because then we know people are, you know, that term is hiding ingredients that we can't evaluate because we don't know what they are. You know what? Old Spice has a pretty decent score. Is it okay? Two. Oh, that's pretty good.

Oh, that's not bad, right? Yeah. Huh. Yeah, just don't- The fragrance ones have three. So that's, I mean, it's not great, but it's- Wait, so 10 is the worst? 10 is the worst in our system for personal care products.

And the ones are the best. Okay. The zeros and ones. The green ones. Green, yellow, red. Okay. And the ones are the best. The green ones. Green, yellow, red. And then above all of those in terms of quality is the EWG Verified. And that's the program that Michelle and Henry Rose are in. And what that does, we decided at one point, what if we actually knew in great detail what was in these products?

We evaluate for Skin Deep just on what's on the label. We add some other data too, but deep just on what's on the label we add some other data too but it's basically the listing on the label they're required to list ingredients by law it's one of the few things they're required to do in the personal care industry and so so we you know we decided to to dig in and and see what all of those ingredients were and once we started doing that we realized that there were an awful lot of products out there that were okay, as best we could tell, right? If fragrance was listed, you know, that's not okay.

We don't think fragrance should be a shield for, in some cases, dozens and dozens of chemicals, some of which we know from our, we've tested cosmetic products and we know that there are ingredients in some of the fragrances that you shouldn't have on your skin. A lot of people are talking now about how all these women are wearing leggings and a lot of women wear it without underwear and all these chemicals are seeping through the leggings. Is this something that we should be concerned about or is this a little far-fetched? What's your vibe on that? That I

don't know much about. The whole question of what our scientists would call migration, chemical migration from certain materials into your body is another one where we would really love to have more data. You're not required before you bring leggings on the market to do pre-market testing about migration from the fabric into your skin. There's no requirement. So we don't know. You could do some lab testing and find that out.

Similarly with food packaging, we have some indication that some of the materials in food packaging and that's also a Wild West that it migrates into your food and that's how it gets into your body for personal care products you apply it to your skin oftentimes the products have chemicals that are known in the set in the industry as skin penetrators or penetration enhancers because you want it to go into your skin. Well, if it is enhanced penetration and some of those ingredients are sketchy, they end up in your body. And we've done biomonitoring studies, tested people's blood and urine,

and found cosmetic chemicals in their bodies. In your opinion, after seeing all of this, what are the sketchiest things? Like if you were to tell your son the five top sketchy, what is it? I would definitely stay away from highly processed foods because of the many adverse indications there are about nutrition and also the additives that are frequently in them. So a lot of stuff with long shelf lives. Yeah, just eat simpler, right? Eat lower on the food chain, eat fresher. Okay.

Right? I would definitely say look at your personal care regime and eliminate stuff that you might be doing for strictly cosmetic or additional reasons that aren't essential. These very elaborate skincare routines that require many, many products, I would really give that some close thought. I don't want to speak for anyone who might be listening about what they prefer to do. I would simply say to them, and I know it sounds like a soft sell, but really for it to to work it feels like it has to be a suggestion and not a finger wagging i would say look look at those products on our skin deep database and ask yourself if you really need that kind of routine got it stay away from black dark hair dyes oh

right i just dark dyed my hair brown it looks Thank you. I just want the record to show. Don't get on me about my hair, you know, looking back at my hair. A redken paste. I just looked it up on EWG. What is it? It's like an 11. Is it actually? I don't know.

I'm just kidding. I don't want to say that. I haven't looked it up. If you could leave our audience with some advice, with everything you've learned, what would that be? That if you're thoughtful about this, not panicked, not paralyzed, if you're thoughtful about this whole question of what you're exposed to in daily life and start forming some new habits, you can make a huge difference on your own that won't require a dramatic change in your lifestyle, won't require dramatic

increase in spending. It's very attainable. And there's an environmental health economy out there that's growing to help you do that. There's plenty of sketchy claims. We'd have to go through them one by one. But there are also plenty of good products and companies out there that are trying to do the right thing. Now, I'm not one for the neoliberal market solve all the problems. I still think we need to hold our government accountable.

They're paid to protect us. They should be damn well doing it. But I will say that there's tremendous potential that you should feel hopeful. There's never been a better time to be the kind of environmentalist I'm talking about, which I am, which is an environmentalist in daily life, right? Yes, I go to wilderness areas when I can. And yes, I see smokestacks when I drive through LA and other places. But in the daily life I live, and with my family, my son and my wife, we just try and be careful in what we buy and bring into the home and use. We have lots of tips on our website for how to do that.

Don't get overwhelmed. Start with something that's straightforward and easy and feels right. Give yourself a win and then give yourself the next win and the next win and the next one, just like everything else. I would love to see a house tour by Ken Cook. I would love to go through Ken Cook's home and see a house tour at some point. Yeah. I bet it's really cool. We have done some tours with people in their homes and gone through their medicine cabinet.

A colleague of mine years back looked under the sink, looked up all the stuff on our website, and you could pretty quickly tell how easy it is to eliminate some exposures that you don't, when you think about it, don't really need. You can clean your countertop with lots of things that aren't toxic. You can wash your laundry. You can, you know, fill your refrigerator. I've never thought you on this one. She's nodding her head over there. No, I'm just nodding my head because when we first got together, there was an undertone of Windex.

Well, I think there's a lot of people that either grew up with these products or they put them off a shelf. You mentioned dryer sheets. I don't think a lot of people wouldn't even think. I used to use dryer sheets. Fortunately, I don't do my own laundry anymore. I've reached that level of my life now

where I don't even think about it. We don't use dryer sheets. Molly Suds. Molly Suds. I'm going to look it up on the EWG. You're not saying anything. If only a group of seven-year-old boys would go to Congress and lobby and say,

listen, you're going to have a small sex organ if you don't remove these ingredients, I feel like we'd make some progress. I'm just kidding. We're just kidding. We could cut the rest. Well, you know. We got to find something these guys care about and that could be it. We don't want to be a country of, you know, what I'm saying here.

No. Well, we did focus groups one time and we really thought we were making headway with a group of men. We divide men from women, of course, because the men mansplain through all the focus groups but we but we but but there was a wonderful moment in the focus group where we really thought we had presented some information that was going to flip the switch and bring them over to the side of environmental health we talked about these chemicals that were linked to reduced sperm counts and reduced sperm activity. And the room got quiet.

And finally, one guy raised his hand. And we're on the other side of the one-way glass. We're thinking, we hit the jackpot. We finally found out how to reach guys. Raises his hand and he says you know when we first signed up for this you said there'd be sandwiches oh jesus all they're thinking about is sandwiches it's not funny i'm just saying i'm just saying that's my tribe yeah listen i i thought you were going to say that he said oh can i use this when i have sex with a

bunch of girls because my sperm counts i'm not gonna get someone pregnant this honestly may sound sexist but i think and i'm i'm saying this nicely us men are just we are just dumb animals we need the women to lead the charge because when my wife tells me we're changing the household products or i'm changing the skin products we're changing skin products we moved from la to austin i said every single thing in your life is changing i said and can you know it as a married man i said okay well that's what we're doing i guess every single thing about the way we live yeah and it and i appreciate it now i'm like that i notice a difference i like it i like the ingredients i like this you know what's crazy too we're just too dumb as men we just can't do it to a friend of ours home like six months ago and it smelled like a sterile hospital.

And the reason that it smelled like a sterile hospital is because they use just regular cleaning supplies. But we've gotten so used to not having it. And what I've noticed even with using Michelle's fragrance, Henry Rose, is that when I smell now a cologne, it's extra invasive into my space because I've gotten used to not having it. Yeah. We had a woman come in here yesterday with a ton of perfume on and my eyes were watering. She was a very lovely woman, but it's probably, you know, thinks that she's using great stuff, but it's just because I'm so, I'm not used to it anymore. Once you strip the stuff, you feel it's almost like sensory overload. No, I mean, it's like art, right? People will accept bad art as long as that's all that's available.

Right. It's like Taylor's teeth with the roundup in it. I can really tell. Taylor's having a bowl of coffee crunch back there. Ken Cook, where can everyone support what you're doing at the EWG? Tell us all the things where they can go find everything, your Instagram, the EWG Instagram. Well, the best place to start is EWG.org. We have a healthy living app you can download for food and personal care products.

So that's, you can be right in the store and find out, you know, on the spot. But I recommend people still come to the, you know, to a webpage, the old fashioned webpage, just because of the wealth of material and the ability to really dive into it. The app is great for checking individual products, but if you want to sort of give some thought to why you're doing all this, why you need to do it, and we've talked about a lot of the themes already, right? The government's just not able to protect you in the way we want, even though they should, and we're holding their feet to the fire. There are many more offerings

out there for all of these categories than there were just a few years ago. And the more you support that growing environmental health economy, the bigger it gets. The more it shoves aside the bad stuff in any market segment and takes over market share and it makes it easier. It would be great if you didn't ever have to go to the EWG website, if you could just go into the store and you'd be fine. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. So EWG.org is the place to start. Honestly, I could see you doing like grocery stores or something or like beauty products yourself that are already verified. One more question.

Yeah. Michelle and Lauren promised me a sandwich for doing this. I'm just kidding. Thanks, Ken. You're the best, man. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. It's been fun.

Okay. So here's the giveaway details. You're going to want to win this. They are giving three winners, three of you, a package of EWG approved clean skincare products. Three of you are going to win Nena Cleansing Cream, Three Ships Exfoliation Mask. Oh my God. Olay Brightening and Vitamin C Serum, Dime Hyaluronic Serum, The Golden Secrets Heal All Oil, which I love, Codex Labs Balancing Soap, and Amazon Aware Daily Body Lotion with vitamin E in it. To win, all you have to do is follow at Environmental Working Group on

Instagram and comment your favorite takeaway on my latest post at Lauren Bostic. I hope you guys loved this episode with Ken as much as I did. I know this was very enlightening. And with that, we will see you on Thursday.