The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 171. Courtney Swan: Why Your ‘Healthy’ Food Is Actually Harmful

Starting point is 00:00:00 I was looking for answers, right? But I was looking in all the wrong places. I was eating Slim Fast bars for breakfast and thinking that I was going to lose weight and like get healthy, which is so ironic. You know, in the States, a lot of our food is just not even food. This is what many people need to understand is that the majority of the food on our shelves was not created with health in mind. It was created with profits in mind. I don't think that we got here overnight, and I think we just ignored the problem until we are at the point where the cost of healthcare

Starting point is 00:00:28 could break the entire system. What's gonna stand the test of time when it comes to nutrition and health? We always need to be coming back to eating real food. The sinister things that have gone on for decades and the reason why the majority of people are just walking around probably 60% of their true state of normal and just believing that this is a consequence of

Starting point is 00:00:48 aging. Just because it's happening to a lot of people and it's becoming normalized does not mean that it's okay. That does not have to be your experience. So where does this go in a perfect world? Where does your mission, can you have the greatest effect? That's a great question. If I could just change one thing, that has been the basis of my entire business and my message is that we need to be. Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between.

Starting point is 00:01:30 I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, and today's guest, Courtney Swan, you are going to love her. We did podcasts before we actually got on the podcast. We did a podcast while we ate lunch between the podcast. But I'm so excited to bring this woman on because as young and beautiful as she is, she is an OG in this space because she's been in this space more than 10 years, really fighting for awareness and drawing people's attention to nutrition, our food supply, the corruption in our food supply. She's a major advocate for public policy.

Starting point is 00:02:07 She is an advocate of the Maha movement, as am I. And so you're really going to enjoy this podcast. Stay tuned to the end. I've got a lot of things for you guys. But welcome to the podcast, Courtney Swan. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to have you. This is so much fun. We were talking earlier on my podcast about how we just felt like little kids.

Starting point is 00:02:23 We're just like so excited. Just so excited to be in this industry and so excited to the caliber of people that we get to associate with and the sincerity of the commitment of most of the people in our industry, our peer group. It's just, everybody wants to see the tide raise all of our boats.

Starting point is 00:02:41 And we're all on the same mission to just better humanity. And I find that there's a lack of arrogance and a sincere fabric of authenticity in this community. And everyone wants to see everyone else thrive. And it's just very unique, I think, to a lot of, you know, different industries out there. So we are both very, very blessed to be a part of this. Yeah. And you've had kind of an interesting journey, which I find fascinating. And I really think that your influence

Starting point is 00:03:14 is now beginning to be recognized to the point where you're able to have a bigger voice and potentially make a bigger impact. So talk a little bit about your journey to becoming this advocate for food. Real Foodology is her podcast. If you haven't seen it, you've got to check out Real Foodology.

Starting point is 00:03:32 I was just on it. So at a minimum, watch my episode. But talk a little bit about the genesis of this. How did it become your purpose, your passion? Like what ignited it for you? Yeah, it was a it was a journey for me to get there for sure. We had talked about this earlier off camera, but I started out working in music actually. My mom had really planted the seeds for me when I was a kid because she was buying organic and natural food before

Starting point is 00:04:00 it was even a movement or a thing. And when I was a kid, like most kids, you don't realize how good you have it, right? Like I was watching all my friends eating Dunkaroos and getting Burger King every night for dinner, and I was upset, and then I was going home to my amazing, organic, home-cooked meals that my mom would be in the kitchen almost for two hours every night making everything from scratch. Which you despised her for at the time.

Starting point is 00:04:21 Oh, I despised her at the time. You're like, what about Lucky Charms, Mom? Yeah, I was like, I want the McDonald's. Like, I want a Happy Meal. And now, I mean, obviously I am so beyond grateful. I went to college. I started eating fast food, and I don't even recognize who that person is anymore.

Starting point is 00:04:36 But, you know, I was eating in the dining hall, which is, you know, Cisco and Shamrock Foods Catering. And I gained a bunch of weight. I got acne I'd never had before. I was fatigued. And it wasn't and I gained a bunch of weight. I got acne I'd never had before. I was fatigued. And it wasn't until I took a nutrition course and also my mom had sent me a book on nutrition. It was literally just called, You Are What You Eat.

Starting point is 00:04:53 Wow. And, cause I was looking for answers, right? But I was looking in all the wrong places. I was eating Slim Fast bars for breakfast and thinking that I was gonna lose weight and like get healthy, which is so ironic, right? And I found this book, it's called You Are What You Eat, and it really just, it was, talk about a light bulb moment for me.

Starting point is 00:05:09 It made me really understand, oh wow, the things that I'm putting in my body, the food that I'm eating is quite literally building my cells, and it's gonna either determine whether I have good energy and I'm gonna be at a healthy weight and I'm not gonna be inflamed all the time, or it's gonna drive all of that. And it's so funny looking back to that now,

Starting point is 00:05:26 thinking how much of a light bulb moment that was for me, but it really lit a fire in my ass, because I quite, to be quite frank, I was pretty mad that I had not learned that sooner. Because I was probably 20 at that point. And you were in college. And I was thinking, why aren't we teaching small children this?

Starting point is 00:05:42 Why doesn't every human know this? And I was also thinking too, looking at all my, you know, my parents' friends and like older generations and a lot of them still hadn't figured it out. And I was so flabbergasted for lack of a better word because I was like, this is so simple, right? It's so simple.

Starting point is 00:05:57 The things that we're eating and we're putting in our bodies are either fighting disease or fueling it, you know? And so that really ignited a passion in me. And then I just could not get enough information. I found Michael Pollan back then when he was writing about food. I found Dr. Mark Hyman. I think I read one of his very first books, Love Him.

Starting point is 00:06:17 And he introduced me to this world of functional and integrative medicine, which is root cause disease protocol, where you're looking at the root cause and you're looking for the root cause and trying to mitigate symptoms with diet and lifestyle changes. So that really affected me a lot.

Starting point is 00:06:31 I was in school, or sorry, I was actually touring at the time. I finally decided- In the music industry, yeah. Exactly, so I was with the music industry. I decided to quit that and I went back and I got my master's of science in nutrition and integrative health.

Starting point is 00:06:44 Wow. And then actually during that time I got pulled back on the road and I ended up being a nutritionist for four years for a pop star. Really? Yeah, which was pretty amazing. So cool. And it was very cool because it was, you know, I got to kind of blend both of my favorite worlds, which was nutrition and then being on tour and getting to work for musicians, which was so much fun. But I did hit a point where, you know, we kind of talked about this on my podcast, that it was really starting to to really like tax my body. Like I just was feeling the effects of not getting enough sleep. And, you know, it is harder to eat healthy.

Starting point is 00:07:15 And so I finally in 2019 decided to no longer tour anymore. And I had been building real foodology on the side. And at the time, it really was more just of a hobby. I really had no plan. I had no like goals foodology on the side. And at the time, it really was more just of a hobby. I really had no plan. I had no like goals or plans of turning this into anything other than it started with a passion where I felt like this was information that people largely didn't know.

Starting point is 00:07:35 And I was seeing so many people suffer. And like you just said a minute ago, I wanna see people thrive. And so I started real foodology as a blog and I was just kind of Instagramming my touring life. And then in 2019, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna pursue this full time. Started my podcast in 2020.

Starting point is 00:07:50 Wow, 2020, that's awesome, yeah. Yeah, and then it just kind of has exploded from there. That's so great. You know, I think too that, you know, sometimes when we travel, we realize that, you know, you go to Italy and you have a bowl of pasta and a basket of bread, maybe a glass of wine, and you feel amazing.

Starting point is 00:08:09 In fact, some people will travel to European countries and lose weight even though they're eating high carbohydrates. Pizza, pasta. I remember when the research came out on the Blue Zones, and I was watching the documentary on the Blue Zones, and I was reading the book on it, and I read Dr. Valter Longo's book on the longevity diet.

Starting point is 00:08:27 And I realized, you know, there's no continuity between diets that are helping people live to be hyper centenarians. I mean, it wasn't carnivore, keto, paleo, pescetarian, vegan, vegetarian. It wasn't the hyper dogmatic diets. It was just whole food. Yes. Like just whole food. Yes.

Starting point is 00:08:45 Like just real food. Yes. And you know, in the States, a lot of our food is just not even food. And I wonder if we could talk about that for a minute because without sounding like fear mongers, you know, a part of what I believe our industry and people like yourself are trying to do

Starting point is 00:09:02 is just help people get around the system and just get to back to the basics almost, right? I mean, I feel like if most people just got sunlight, touched the surface of the earth, focused on their sleep, hydrated, some minerals, ate whole foods. I mean, just those basics would have such a dramatic impact on their life.

Starting point is 00:09:26 Yeah. And so I know that you're very connected to and an enormous supporter of the of the maha movement. We talked a little bit about it on your podcast. I wonder if we might just delve into some of the sinister things that have gone on for decades that are really leading to this chronic disease epidemic that we have. And the reason why the majority of people are just walking around probably 60% of their true state of normal and just believing that this is a consequence of aging.

Starting point is 00:09:58 So that is one of the biggest myths in all of this and the nutrition, wellness, and medical system that really drives me nuts is that people just think, oh, this is just what happens. You start aging and then you don't feel that well and your energy plummets and then you know, you maybe have to go on a couple of medications and maybe you get diabetes. Oh, that's just aging. I hear that all the time. It's just, oh, well, it's just part of being human. That does not have to be your experience. Yeah. And I think it's normalized, not to cut you off,

Starting point is 00:10:25 but I think it's normalized too, because at certain ages, your whole peer group is experiencing the same thing. They're like, well, none of us really sleep well, and we don't remember anything. I can't find my car keys and my belt in my wallet. And they're like, oh, it's normal, because all my friends are doing the same thing. Yeah, I think it's a spare tire that I never really had,

Starting point is 00:10:40 but all my friends do, and I'm on three meds, but all of my buddies are on three meds, and my wife's on three or four meds. And I think that normalization almost makes it feel like, now it's just a part of quote unquote what happens. Exactly, but just because it's happening to a lot of people and it's becoming normalized does not mean that it's okay and that it should be happening.

Starting point is 00:11:02 I agree, yeah. And yeah, and you know, a lot of this is largely driven by the fact that we are, for the most part, not really eating food anymore. 60% of Americans' diets are coming from ultra-processed foods. 60%, that's more than half of our diet. What does it mean to be ultra-processed? I think a lot of people don't understand what that means.

Starting point is 00:11:21 I mean, does that mean that we just take a cow and slaughter it and chop it into steaks and package it and send it? No, so that would be processing. Yeah, so there's a lot of discrepancy between like processing versus ultra-process because I see some of these like RDs or dissenting voices out there that are saying,

Starting point is 00:11:36 oh, well, applesauce is processed, bread is processed. So that is absolutely true, but there's a huge difference between eating applesauce that maybe is just made with apple and Maybe that a little bit of sugar and some water versus if you were going to go to McDonald's and get an apple pie So the difference between ultra processed and just something simply Processing that we've been doing since the dawn of time is with ultra processed foods You're adding a ton of additives and preservatives and fillers in there and that food no longer a ton of additives and preservatives and fillers in there and that food no longer resembles what that natural state of food once was. I often tell people if your grandparents were to time travel,

Starting point is 00:12:12 or maybe like your great grandparents, like someone who's no longer alive, if they were to time travel and you just drop them into 2025 and you took them to the grocery store and you showed them all these food products that we're eating, they probably wouldn't even know where it came from. Like they wouldn't even be able to tell you just by looking at it, like, oh, I know that that is from potatoes. They would be like, what is that? That would be something that would be ultra-processed foods.

Starting point is 00:12:33 Ultra-processed foods are made with a bunch of ingredients that you would not normally have in your kitchen. There are a bunch of ingredients that you find in factories. And my argument, and the whole reason that I started Real Foodology, my whole thing was when I came up with that name 14 years ago, I sat down and I thought, what's going to stand the test of time when it comes to nutrition and health?

Starting point is 00:12:51 We always need to be coming back to eating real food. That's so true. And that has been the basis of my entire business. And my message is that we need to be getting back to eating real food. And right now, more than, or the majority of our calories are coming from these ultra processed foods. You know what's amazing is I still remember going into my grandmother's basement, Grandma Rose,

Starting point is 00:13:13 who I named my daughter after. So my grandmother, Rose Brekka, she, in her basement, which was always like a little cool, were all these like canned vegetables everywhere. And she would, every year, you know, she would can vegetables and she would make like sauerkraut and kimchi's, pickles and all of this stuff. I always thought it was like a little weird, but I really identify with it now.

Starting point is 00:13:35 And I remember I used to press the lid and if the lid was still tight, she was like, yeah, bring it upstairs. If the lid pops, throw it in the trash. And I still remember it, I like, this is so weird. Cause I was here last Christmas and that pickle was right there. You know, so something tells me

Starting point is 00:13:50 I shouldn't bring this up and eat it. But it made so much sense. They didn't have preservatives and they didn't have the, you know, the thickening agents and all a lot of these artificial ingredients. And so they preserve them naturally through the fermentation process,

Starting point is 00:14:06 which actually made them more healthy. And you know, like fermented vegetables, one of the healthiest things you can put in your body. I try to eat a lot of kimchi and sauerkraut and get the soluble and insoluble fibers. But you know, I think we've modernized things. And I don't think that we got here overnight. I think we got here really slowly.

Starting point is 00:14:26 And I think we just ignored the problem until we are at, call it pandemic levels, crisis levels, whatever you want to call it. I mean, we are at the point where I think from a financial perspective that, you know, the cost of healthcare could break the entire system. Oh yeah. Right.

Starting point is 00:14:46 I don't think people understand how detrimental it is actually. I don't think so either. I wonder if you might talk about that a little bit. And I wanna go into some of the chemicals specifically like glyphosate. We hear about these things, but we don't really know how do they get

Starting point is 00:14:59 into our food supply, why are they in our food supply? Is there some kind of sinister profit motive behind it? And if so, what can we do to address it? Yeah, so I largely believe that most of this stuff started with good intention. The problem is, is that now that we have the data and the science and we know that these chemicals and certain processing, you know,

Starting point is 00:15:19 things that we're doing with our food, we now know that they are harming people. And now it is to the point where it is becoming sinister in my opinion, but I don't think it started out that way. Largely a lot of what we're doing with our food, we now know that they are harming people. And now it is to the point where it is becoming sinister, in my opinion. But I don't think it started out that way. Largely a lot of what we're dealing with now, which is an industrialization of our food system, was started because of the war. You know, after the war, there was famine. People are president was genuinely concerned about getting enough food to people,

Starting point is 00:15:39 having it be cheap, accessible, fast. So that's when we started paying subsidies to farmers because they thought, okay, what crops can we grow just rows and rows and rows of, grow them really fast and then commoditize them. Commoditize. Commoditize them. Why was that so hard for me to get out? You actually said a word on the podcast last time.

Starting point is 00:15:59 That was the first time I'd ever heard it. I need to go back to it. Infantilize maybe? Infantilize. Yeah. That was the word. I almost fact checked you on that because I was like, I I'd ever heard it. Infantilize maybe? Infantilize. That was the word. I almost fact-checked you on that because I was like, I've never heard of it, but the context, I got it. Yeah. So it is really a word.

Starting point is 00:16:13 It is. Well, I say regardless and lots of other things that are not words, but that's really good. It's rare that I hear a word and I'm like, wow, that's a new one. It's fine. Infantilize. I've been trying to broaden my words. You're gonna hear it start popping into my podcasts,

Starting point is 00:16:27 right, I hope I use it well. I'm gonna be like, oh, Gary got that for me, I love it. Not to infantilize you, but. But. If you want protein to build lean muscle, but without the caloric impact or need to cut, you need perfect amino. It's pure essential amino acids,

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Starting point is 00:18:02 Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. So historically you think that, you know, obviously after the war we needed to promulgate crops and we needed to have them less expensive and more readily available. And there was also this notion, which we're still seeing today, is that they wanted to feed the world.

Starting point is 00:18:18 So this is when we started introducing things like glyphosate, for example, which is one that I really am hyper-focused on right now. I'm incredibly concerned about glyphosate. Over 90% of Americans were finding glyphosate for example, which is one that I really am hyper focused on right now. I'm incredibly concerned about glyphosate. Over 90% of Americans were finding glyphosate in their urine and it's coming up in placenta, it's coming up in breast milk. I had it in my urine. I did the vibrant wellness test. Yeah, even those of us that are eating organic and we're doing really hard and we're doing saunas and we're detoxing, we are all finding it in our blood and it

Starting point is 00:18:42 is so incredibly concerning. So glyphosate is an herbicide. It's also known as Roundup, which was created by Monsanto. Now in 2018 Bayer, which is a pharmaceutical company, bought Monsanto and now they are also a agrochemical company and they own a majority of our food system now because they have patented genetically modified seeds, which are corn, wheat, and... or sorry, sorry, we just started genetically modifying wheat recently, but corn and soy are the majority of those. Now during the war, what we did is we started paying subsidies to farmers.

Starting point is 00:19:12 What are subsidies? These come from taxpayer dollars, and it's money that we give to farmers in order to incentivize them to grow specific crops. Now some of the crops that we do with that are corn and soy. Now it's why I would encourage everybody listening, if you have any ultra processed foods in your cabinet, I would go and I would read the label and I would argue that almost every single one of them

Starting point is 00:19:32 that you pick up, it's gonna say, may contain corn, wheat and soy. Really? They're in everything. Because we are paying farmers to grow them, so we have them in surplus and it's cheaper, it's more accessible, it's more affordable. Again, we have it in excess so we're using it in everything and so not only is it being pushed into

Starting point is 00:19:51 our ultra-processed foods in the forms of you know vegetable oils, all of our processed grains, corn syrup is a really big one. Wow, yeah high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup. Yeah, we're also using that to feed our livestock so we're also getting it on the other end in our meat, our dairy, and our eggs. And glyphosate is incredibly concerning. It has very concerning back, very concerning backstories. So this is actually what I did my Senate speech on. I was so grateful to be a part of this roundtable, this nutrition roundtable was hosted by Senator Ron Johnson back in September and it was with Vani Hari,

Starting point is 00:20:27 Michaela Peterson, Jordan Peterson, RFK Jr., Callie and Casey Means. I remember that. It was so amazing. Yeah, some of the talks that you guys gave were so impactful. I mean, thankfully a lot of those videos have gone viral. I've had the majority of those people on my podcast

Starting point is 00:20:42 and it was so impactful. I actually remember seeing Cali Means on the Tucker Carlson show with his sister. And for someone that is, you know, is woke, whatever you wanna call it, and aware of the biohacking community and nutrition in general, I was blown away because he laid out

Starting point is 00:21:01 the sequence of corruption. And I think that those two particularly have a really interesting skillset and background, even though now they have a shared mission, one coming from a very allopathic, I think she was had neck surgeon from Stanford. And then he came from highly educated, and he came from the political side of things where he was a lobbyist.

Starting point is 00:21:25 Yeah, he was working as a lobbyist for companies like Coca-Cola. So it's fascinating, because he had a look under the hood that many people are not actually revealing to the general public, which was fascinating. I had him on my podcast a couple of years ago and same thing, I was blown away.

Starting point is 00:21:41 Because a lot of what he is saying, he's just validating what a lot of us have been trying to say for years. And he came out and he said, yeah, this is all true. I was literally in the boardrooms, a part of these conversations. Yeah, it was part of my job to influence politicians for these certain outcomes.

Starting point is 00:21:55 And I think he just woke up one day and was like, wait a second, this is all wrong. I mean, when he started talking about the intentionality of it, that's what really began to sway my opinion. It's one thing to be doing something and not know. It's another to know, intentionally continue, and intentionally and aggressively covered up to the point where you're actually willing to ruin somebody else's life, or smudge somebody's

Starting point is 00:22:22 reputation, you know, harm children. You know, that's when you realize the sinister intention of it. And one of the things he said, I'll never forget was that his group had five lobbyists for every member of Congress. Right? That's nuts. So I'm just thinking, man, if you're, so if you're a member of Congress, and this is only one group, you know, one lobbying group has five lobbyists assigned to you.

Starting point is 00:22:45 And it was like it was our role to try to take up all their calendar slots, contribute to their campaigns, support their events. Wine dine them. Wine them, dine them. And to try to just overwhelm them with meetings and appointments and essentially try to take up as much of their bandwidth as they possibly could. And that's when I realized, man, we have more of an intentionality behind this than I thought. Just like you said, I don't think it began with sinister intentions, right?

Starting point is 00:23:14 You have famine, you need to feed the nation. And then it just grew into this big chemical agricultural industry, a lot of which is wholly unnecessary now. Exactly. And which is wholly unnecessary now. Exactly. And humanity is paying the price. Exactly. Like, again, you know, at the time, I think it was great. It was this modern technology. Oh, my gosh. What do you mean? We don't have to can everything now. We can just add these additives and preservatives in there that will prolong the shelf life.

Starting point is 00:23:40 This is what many people need to understand, is that the majority of the food on our shelves was not created with health in mind, it was created with profits in mind, because they want it to be shelf stable so that it can stay on the shelf for long periods of time. I was doing this little personal experiment at my house, still kind of ongoing, and I've released two videos about this already,

Starting point is 00:24:00 but I bought just a bunch of conventional bread, loaves of bread from the grocery store in December. I got Sarah Lee and some other like... In December? Yeah. It's April now. Exactly. It's almost April. Those bags have been open. They've just been open sitting on my counter and since December and there is not a drop of mold on any single one of them. Nothing. They smell quote unquote fresh. Like it's still squishy. It's not dry.

Starting point is 00:24:27 Really? Yes. Wow. And I have like five different loaves. That's the preservatives. That's the additives. That's wow. Exactly. The folic acid. Yep. Exactly. All of those things. Yeah. So you're hyper focused on glyphosate because, you know, they call it a forever chemical and I'm, because, you know, they call it a forever chemical, and I'd love for you to define what that means. But why glyphosate in particular? So glyphosate, well, first of all, the reason I'm most concerned about it is because it's it's become so ubiquitous. So we're spraying it on all of our fields.

Starting point is 00:24:58 The the backstory of glyphosate is they were using a lot of these chemicals in World War II. The Nazis were using them as nerve agents and gas chambers. They weren't using glyphosate specifically, but they were using known insecticides and pesticides. And they have similar chemical components to glyphosate. And then same with the Vietnam War. Agent Orange was created by Monsanto. So now fast forward, these agrochemical companies need somewhere to use their chemicals

Starting point is 00:25:28 and their fertilizers, and so they pivoted to spraying them on farmlands. And what happened initially is they said, oh, they're totally fine, these are not harmful at all to health, so the farmers are spraying down their crops and everything, and the glyphosate was killing everything, including the plants that they were trying to grow. So what happened was they genetically modified seeds,

Starting point is 00:25:48 they genetically modified plants to grow, so where they could just spray the fields with glyphosate and everything would get covered in glyphosate and the plant itself wouldn't die, but it would kill everything else off. Well, here's the issue with that, and this is where I get super passionate about something called regenerative farming,

Starting point is 00:26:03 because the soil, we talk a lot about soil health. So glyphosate also acts like an antibiotic which means that it's not only killing off bad bacteria but it's also killing off of the good bacteria. And we talked about how a lot of people are consuming glyphosate and they're getting it in their bodies and then everyone's having all these you know IBS and Crohn's and gut issues and... Antibiotic resistance. Exactly. Well it's no wonder because all of us are consuming an antibiotic almost on a daily basis and we don't even know.

Starting point is 00:26:28 And on top of that, it's not labeled. It doesn't need to be on the label so people can be consuming it and they have no clue. Now, where my passion really comes in all this is that when we're spraying our soil with glyphosate, because it's an antibiotic, we're killing off the entire ecosystem of soil that makes the plants healthy in the first place.

Starting point is 00:26:45 I don't know if you've heard this before, but I've heard this quoted often. We are only as healthy as our soil is. No doubt. Because our plants are growing in our soil. And if our soil does not have the ecosystem, the bacteria, the bugs, there's this whole ecosystem that half of what we probably still don't even understand

Starting point is 00:26:59 what's going on there. We're killing all of that. The soil is barely hanging on. And then we think that the plants that are gonna grow out are gonna come out with enough vitamins, minerals and nutrients for us, absolutely not. And when you leave nature to do what it is intended to do, what it's meant to do,

Starting point is 00:27:12 which is a thing called regenerative farming, there's this incredible process that happens called carbon sequestration, where carbon is actually pulled out of the atmosphere because a lot of people were super concerned for good reason about there being too much carbon in the atmosphere. If we leave nature to do her thing, she pulls the pulled out of the atmosphere, because a lot of people were super concerned for good reason about there being too much carbon in the atmosphere. If we leave nature to do her thing,

Starting point is 00:27:27 she pulls the carbon out of the atmosphere, and that is actually food for the soil. And if we're not spraying it with all these chemical interventions, we're letting the soil thrive with the bacteria and the bugs and everything that it's meant to be and how it's meant to be there. The carbon's in the soil,

Starting point is 00:27:42 and it's this really deep, rich, like beautiful black soil, that's gonna be food for the plants. And we see so many articles now saying, oh, our food is losing, it's devoid of vitamins, minerals and nutrients. You talk about this all the time. I did, yeah, I talk about it all the time. It's funny, I love the book that you read,

Starting point is 00:27:59 We Are What We Eat. But I think we're also what we eat eats. Yes, exactly. Which is getting you closer to the soil. I mean, I totally agree when you have, you know, when we feed livestock. You know, if you've ever driven by a commercial feedlot, it's really kind of a sad, sad place.

Starting point is 00:28:19 It's heartbreaking. It's just acres and acres of dirt and mud, no grass as far as the eye can see, feed troughs, you know, which are very often corn, soybean, millet, these other things. And I've even, there's a butcher in Naples that I'm friends with and they stopped buying meat from a certain farm and he said they were actually adding high fructose corn syrup to the feed. And the meat was so full of pus because the... Because they were actually adding high fructose corn syrup to the feed. And the meat was so full of pus because the animals were dying of type 2 diabetes right before they were slaughtered. They were on their way to dying from type 2 diabetes. I mean,

Starting point is 00:28:56 where in nature does a cow run into high fructose corn syrup? And he said it was actually causing their teeth to rot all the way up into the gums so they would lose their teeth so they couldn't really chew. And I love cows, that actually breaks my heart. Yeah. I do too, I love animals in general. Yes, well, I saw something online too. And a farmer actually verified this to me.

Starting point is 00:29:18 They're starting to feed candy to our livestock now too, just to fatten them up. They don't even think about the nutritional value anymore of like, oh, how can we feed them so that they're healthy and they get enough nutrients? No, they're just like, how can we fatten them up as fast and quick as possible? So they're feeding them candy bars.

Starting point is 00:29:33 They'll just throw candy bars in their feed. And sometimes they don't even take the wrappers off, I heard. Yeah. It's horrible. Yeah, I mean, you see a lot of those videos of the, especially pigs that are eating garbage, but a lot of it has plastic in it. I mean, they don't even take the plastic out of it.

Starting point is 00:29:49 So where does this go? So glyphosate is an issue and for the first time maybe in our adult lifetime, there is potential opportunity to affect public policy because people like yourself going to speak in front of Congress and the whole Maha movement, which I think is just phenomenal. No matter what side of the aisle you're on, you've gotta be pro-nutrition, pro-healthy food, because we all deserve,

Starting point is 00:30:13 especially our children serve clean food. So where does this go in a perfect world? Where does your mission, where can you have the greatest effect? That's a great question. I mean, look, if I could just change one thing, it would just be, can we just get these additives out of our food and focus on real food?

Starting point is 00:30:35 I think a lot of it is, there's an education component there because there's a large portion of the population that's been eating so much foods out of packages that they, one, are scared to cook now, or they feel like they can't cook, or maybe it hasn't been passed down through generations through them anymore. So I definitely think there's an educational component there. So how can we really start? Like, honestly, what I would love to see is we start doing this in schools with kids,

Starting point is 00:30:59 you know, have them when they're in kindergarten, have them start tending a garden and teach them the importance of growing your food and then show them how that food is then ending up on their plates for lunch, you know? And then how can we have them have a cooking class? I think this should start very, very early because there is a large education component there because now we're just telling,

Starting point is 00:31:20 because this is, I have a huge issue about this. I actually just talked about this on a podcast yesterday. We are telling people, oh, you don't have time to cook or it's so expensive. Don't even try. So I think so many people are not even trying anymore. They're not even attempting it because they just think like, OK, well, that's that's one that's too expensive for me and it's not going to be accessible for me. And it's super hard.

Starting point is 00:31:39 We live in the most amazing time of information. You can literally open TikTok, open YouTube and just type in any recipe you want to make and you can watch a video. So you can very easily, and I think so many people are scared to cook, but it is so easy. It doesn't have to be complicated. Grill up a steak, and then bake some sweet potatoes, and then add a little arugula on the side. Like done. It does not have to be so hard. So from a policy standpoint, what we need to do is a couple things. I think first of all, we need to stop paying subsidies

Starting point is 00:32:10 for foods that are driving our chronic disease. Corn and soy, like I said earlier, are largely making up of the majority of the food like products on shelves. Is it corn, soy, wheat, those are the big ones? Yes. Corn, soy are the majority. Yes, so over 90% of our corn is genetically modified and over 90% of our soy is genetically modified.

Starting point is 00:32:28 And those are a lot of what we're paying subsidies for. And then wheat as well. And then wheat is just now starting to be genetically modified. And so that means that it can withstand glyphosate. So you hear all this talk online saying, oh, GMOs actually means less pesticides. No, the pesticides are quite literally in some of those seeds that are genetically modified, and if they're not, they're having to spray everything

Starting point is 00:32:50 like crazy with glyphosate, so it actually means more pesticides, not less. Yeah, because if something is genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate, it's probably going to absorb and survive holding onto the glyphosate. I mean, we already know that it not only makes it into our food supply, it makes it into our blood.

Starting point is 00:33:09 It made it into my blood. And if it's getting in mine, it's getting in everybody's. So I promise you that. Exactly. Because we're eating organic and we're going above and beyond. I mean, I filter my water. I filter my shower. I'm eating all organic in my home.

Starting point is 00:33:20 The only time I don't eat organic is when I'm eating out and I can't control it. Like many of you, the hardest thing for me is to shut off my mind at night when I want to sleep. And it's funny because sometimes I'll wake up tired already thinking of when I'll get back to bed again. But exactly the moment that I lay my head on the pillow, it feels like the machine of crazy what if thoughts is turned back on. Does this happen to you? Let me tell you my new secret to deal with this. You may have heard of magnesium breakthrough by BiOptimizers and how great it is for sleep and promoting calmness and relaxation. What I found out is that the brains behind magnesium breakthrough have taken it to the next level with a product specifically designed for sleep. It's called

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Starting point is 00:34:41 forward slash ultimate to get your sleep breakthrough and find out this month's gift with your purchase. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. You know, I've heard you talk a lot about you. I actually want to come back to regenerative farming, but I heard you say something that, you know, organic eating is now no longer negotiable. And I wonder if you might describe organic eating, organic food labeling. Because I think too that there is, maybe it's not direct corruption, but there's a lot of misinformation, if you will, on organic food, food labeling. So for the average consumer walking into the grocery store,

Starting point is 00:35:18 and it's like, okay, I'm going to sacrifice some other areas of my budget, because I'm going to make sure that my family's eating the cleanest organic food. Where do they start on that journey? Yeah, well, first and foremost, the reason I'm such a huge supporter of organic food in general is because there's a lot of laws and regulations around what is allowed

Starting point is 00:35:39 and what is allowed to be sprayed on organic food. So legally by law, if it's stamped organic, it means that it was not allowed to be sprayed by glyphosate. If it's meat or dairy, it wasn't allowed to be injected with growth hormones. They're not allowed to give them pharmaceutical drugs. There's a lot of laws around it. Also, they can't eat genetically modified crops with organics.

Starting point is 00:35:59 So if you buy organic meat, exactly, you know that they're not eating this pesticide laden grains. So that to me is the biggest concern right now and why I feel like it's non-negotiable. But what is so insidious about all this is that organic is just what we should be eating. There should not be two different options. What I would love to see is that we're just not using these pesticides anymore. And organic is just the only option. It's just food, right?

Starting point is 00:36:26 Because 50 years ago, what our grandparents were eating, they were eating organic, but they weren't labeling it organic. It just was food. It's so true. I heard Max Louis Versey on a podcast one time, if your grocery store has a healthy food section, what does that tell you about the rest of the store?

Starting point is 00:36:39 What is the rest of it? I mean, it was just so simple, but I loved it. I actually was in Medellin, Columbia a while back and we were eating in this restaurant and I ordered steak and I asked the guy if the steak was grass-fed and he literally looked at me like I had two heads. And because, you know, for him, he was like, what else do cows eat?

Starting point is 00:37:01 Like, why are you asking me that? Of course it's grass-fed. And it just dawned on me, I was like, well, in the States we have to ask this, right? We have to check. I realize here all they eat is grass because you guys got it right. Which I think is part of the reason why you see

Starting point is 00:37:18 our life expectancy has dropped. We talked about this on your podcast, but has dropped to 66th in the world, you know, beneath some countries that don't even have clean water and sanitation. And I think in countries like that, your only accessible food is real, is real food. It's whole food. And this is supported by Blue Zone Research. They were all eating whole food. They didn't eat dogmatic diets. There was almost zero processed ingredients

Starting point is 00:37:49 in the diets of these centenarians. Plus they moved and they had a sense of community. But I wanna work my way back to regenerative farming because there has to be an answer other than just stop poisoning the food because what the chemical industry is gonna say is, if we stop spraying glyphosate on the crops, all the pests are gonna eat it,

Starting point is 00:38:11 this is an herbicide, the weeds are gonna take over, and that's gonna be worse for your food than what you're getting in this small amount of micro poisoning. What we have is the grass guideline, right? That generally regarded as safe. And I think that a lot of these guidelines are based on single dose toxicity.

Starting point is 00:38:34 Meaning, yeah, if you go out and eat an inorganic piece of fish or chicken, or traditionally fed cow and some non-organic vegetables, is that gonna kill you in a single meal? No, but it's the cumulative dose toxicity over time that our cellular biology just can't handle anymore. And our immune systems can't handle it anymore. Well, we're seeing a really concerning trend right now.

Starting point is 00:39:00 I would encourage people to Google this because you can actually look up photos. So look, you can never outsmart nature. Nature always finds a way. And what's happening with a lot of these weeds that were initially being killed off by glyphosate, you're seeing these crazy glyphosate-resistant weeds popping up everywhere that the farmers don't really know how to handle because they're no longer responding to the glyphosate. And so it's, again, like nature always finds a way.

Starting point is 00:39:24 It's similar to, you similar to like the antibiotic resistance that we see when you're taking too much antibiotics and we're seeing it a lot because we're giving it prophylactically to our livestock. So there is, yeah, there's a huge concern with that as well. And there's a lot of pushback against the organic movement from the agrochemical companies because they say, well, how are the farmers gonna survive? How are we gonna feed the world? How are

Starting point is 00:39:47 we gonna create enough food for everyone? And what I always tell people is there's this amazing farming systems trial that's been going on for 40 years and what it is it's been an ongoing study that's still happening right now they've been doing it for 40 years through the Rodale Institute and what they do is they have conventional farming on one side and then they have organic farming on the other side. It's incredible and what they do is they have conventional farming on one side and then they have organic farming on the other side. No. It's incredible and what they have found is that in this organic farming system it produces the same if not sometimes even more yield than what the conventional is yielding and then on

Starting point is 00:40:17 top of that it's sustainable because what we're doing in our conventional model right now is we're getting to a point where we are desertifying the soil. Yes. And we're depleting it of model right now is we're getting to a point where we are desertifying the soil. Yes. And we're depleting it of so much nutrients that at some point you literally cannot plant there anymore. And you have to go somewhere else to plant. And they are theorizing if we continue down this path and we keep ignoring this that we have about, depending on who you talk to, anywhere between like 52 to 54 harvests left where we will no longer have soil that's plantable for plants.

Starting point is 00:40:46 Wow. So we need to do something, because what we're doing right now, it's just a quick fix, right? It's not long-term sustainable, and our grandkids are not even gonna have soil left to plant in. What is sustainable agriculture?

Starting point is 00:41:00 What is regenerative farming? And can we do that on a mass scale and still allow farmers to be profitable and maybe clean up the food supply? You know, I get a lot of my stuff here in Miami from this place called Southwest Ranches, which is right down the street, and they're hyper vigilant about where they source their meats,

Starting point is 00:41:22 their line caught fish, their honey, their maple syrups, all of their raw dairies. I can tell when I'm home and I'm eating that type of food and then when I go on the road and my choices are limited. My wife can too, like instantly feel it. It's just like we were saying before, when you go to Italy and you have a bowl of pasta and a basket of bread and you feel amazing, and you come back here and you have a bowl of pasta and a basket of bread and you blow up like a tick. Exactly, like oh. Yeah, you blow up like a tick.

Starting point is 00:41:52 But do you have a hope that maybe under this Maha movement that the subsidies coming from the taxpayer will go towards quality foods? I really hope so. That is one of my number one dreams, like hopes that we get out of Maha. I know Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is incredibly passionate about regenerative farming

Starting point is 00:42:14 and I know he knows about it. And also too, we know that it can be done large scale. I mean, we have these farmers like Will Harris and Joel Salatin that have these huge regenerative farms and they all came from the traditional conventional path and they switched over to regenerative and they also provide a lot of resources for farmers that want to switch over. It's also healthier for the farmers because they're not using all this glyposate and all the other stuff that so many of these farmers, no one is really talking about this. So many

Starting point is 00:42:42 of these farmers are now getting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. They're getting crazy aggressive forms of cancer from using these chemicals. Turbo-cancers, yeah. Exactly. But part of the issue is that we need an entire reform of our food system here in America, because right now we have, I don't know the exact number, but we have a small amount of just really large industrialized farms, And then they're just shipping out everything across the country.

Starting point is 00:43:07 And what people don't realize is that an apple that you get at the grocery store has probably been, it was probably three weeks from being picked because they picked it and then they sprayed it with something in the truck that makes it ripen while it's on its trip to you. And then finally, by the time you get it at the grocery store, it was picked like three weeks ago

Starting point is 00:43:25 and it was ripened in the back of a truck, not on a tree. And we're doing this largely across all of our food systems. So what we need to do is we need to incentivize farmers to go back to regenerative farming. We need more local farms where we can get local produce from our communities. And do you think that there'll be a point where we start to subsidize regenerative farming

Starting point is 00:43:50 and sustainable agriculture, and we actually get back to taking good care of the soil? Because I see it in our clinic system too. So many human beings are just nutrient-de You know, their vitamin, their mineral, their amino acid, their nutrient division. And when you look at the importance of these nutrients in the human body, you know, how our calcium and phosphorus form hydroxyapatite to create bones and that process needs 12 minerals. When we're

Starting point is 00:44:21 actually creating neurotransmitters, which form the basis of our mood, that process needs raw materials, vitamins, which used to be prevalent in our food supply, and they used to be prevalent in our fruits and our vegetables, and now it's just so depleted. I wonder if there's, you know, an era where we're not subsidizing non-foods, we're actually subsidizing, youfoods, we're actually subsidizing the whole food.

Starting point is 00:44:46 That would be amazing. Why can't we subsidize whole real foods and encourage more local farmers to wanna get back into farming? I think a lot of these smaller farmers that are super passionate about all this, they're all getting pushed out by these big industrialized farms

Starting point is 00:45:00 that are taking over everything. And then they're just ruining our food supply and they're spraying everything and they're conventionally farming and Yeah, and you're to your point. I mean you talk about this all the time in the nutritional deficiencies Americans are overfed and undernourished. Yes, they're eating Overfed because we're undernourished which is really interesting Exactly, and we're not getting enough nutrients from our foods because we're really not eating a lot of real foods anymore and then when we are, they're devoid of vitamins and minerals and nutrients that were there before.

Starting point is 00:45:30 And this is another argument for organic. They do a lot of, there's been a lot of studies and testing done and they find time and time again that conventional crops, you think that the organic food is lower and devoid of nutrients and minerals and vitamins. The conventionally grown has like nothing left. Right. So at least organic it's higher in the vitamin minerals content, mineral content, and it's still a lot lower than generations before, but at least in organic it has higher amounts than the conventional does.

Starting point is 00:45:56 You know, and I think too that when you look at cellular biology, these deficiencies trace to very specific conditions and diseases. And it's not like all vaccines cause autism, all glyphosate causes cancer. It's this multifactorial thing where our food system has become so corrupt. And I wonder if we might even talk for a moment about the influence that the chemical industry has on our government and public policy. Some of that's happening right now.

Starting point is 00:46:28 Yeah, and I want you to bring it up so that you disappear and I can continue my podcast. My fiance has really- I always tell my audience, I'm like, if I disappear, open an investigation because I'm really, really happy. I'm like, I love my family, I love my wife. Yes, not suicidal, I love my family, I'm about to get married, I'm very excited. No, I mean my family, I love my wife. Yes, not suicidal. I love my family. I'm about to get married.

Starting point is 00:46:46 I'm very excited. No, I mean, really honestly, my fiance recently was like, are we good talking about some of this stuff publicly? Like, are you gonna be okay? And I'm very spiritual, and I really believe that I came to Earth with a purpose, and my purpose is to help people thrive and wake them up to, I think it's greater than even the food system, but I think right now currently my mission is to help people wake up to

Starting point is 00:47:11 their own innate power and knowingness about themselves and knowing how to feed themselves and how to take care of themselves and how to thrive because the human body wants to be healthy we just need to give it the right tools too. And healthy can mean it's so much more than just diet, right? It's your mental state. It's your community, how much sleep you're getting. Like it's more than just the food. But I really believe that I came here with a purpose and I just can't shut up. So like, sorry, I'm not going to stop talking about it. And so I feel like I have a certain I know he's like you're gonna get

Starting point is 00:47:51 But okay, so glyphosate so this is a This is where this is where it does become insidious because now that they they know that this is happening So I mentioned earlier Monsanto was bought out by Bayer in 2018 and then shortly after that months or Bayer Monsanto was bought out by Bayer in 2018. And then shortly after that, Bayer, which was before Monsanto, started getting pulled into a ton of litigations with mostly farmers, but just Americans in general that were getting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from glyphosate. To this day, they have spent over $2 billion

Starting point is 00:48:19 paying back farmers and other Americans that have gotten non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from glyphosate. The IARC, which is the International Agency for Research on Cancer through the World Health Organization says that glyphosate, it classifies glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Now meaning that we probably basically know that it causes cancer. So this is why it's so incredibly concerning. And now Bayer knows this, but they are currently working and they're going state by state. It's actually on the governor's

Starting point is 00:48:50 desk right now in Georgia. They're going state by state. They're trying to go through their legislators, their senators to get immunity from being sued if someone gets cancer. So essentially if this passes in Georgia, it would mean that if you or I were farming or just in general, if we were using glyphosate in our lawn and we got cancer and the research shows that glyphosate is connected to cancer and we got the cancer, we're using the glyphosate, we would not legally be allowed to sue them. It's actually the same thing that the vaccine companies went for in 1986, which is the immunity shield, where if you get harmed by a vaccine, you can't help hold the company liable. Right. So it's mind numbing to me. I mean, it's it's insidious. Why can't we just stop using the chemicals, but instead they're they're pushing back even

Starting point is 00:49:35 further and they want to get this immunity. And if it passes through Georgia, there's a huge concern that then it's just gonna, you know, pass like wildfire throughout all the other states. Wow. So we're currently trying to block it. In fact, I post about it all the time on my Instagram. I post numbers that you can call, emails you can call. I'm going to do that too. Yes.

Starting point is 00:49:51 Yeah, give me that information because I will stand with you on that. So if I bring this back to the consumer, you know, I'm a mother or father. I'm listening to this podcast. I'm concerned. You've sort of woken me up to this. What do I do tomorrow?

Starting point is 00:50:05 Right, I mean, how do I, where do I start in the grocery store, you know, without really breaking my budget? What are some ways to avoid some of the most sinister things because we're not gonna shift everybody's habits, you know, all the way overnight. But I think a lot of people hearing this are like willing to make incremental change.

Starting point is 00:50:27 So where does that start with them around the kitchen? Well, okay, I think first and foremost, this is, I would be remiss without talking about this. You have to reframe and understand that there may be a little bit of budgeting and reframing of priorities that has to happen. Because unfortunately we are living in a time right now, if you do not make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness. It is just that dire at this point. And I'm

Starting point is 00:50:54 not trying to scare anyone. But I just I believe in telling people the truth. And if you know this, then you're going to be way more more inclined to actually wanna take action. So some of that is, okay, instead of eating out for every meal or post-mating everything or going to Starbucks every single morning, how can you make that coffee at home? How can you stop getting food delivered every single night? How can you have just dinner out one night a week and make it more of a special thing

Starting point is 00:51:22 and start focusing on buying groceries and cooking at home. It doesn't have to be these fancy, you know, five course meals, it can be something really simple to make. I think also too people think that fast food is cheap. It is no longer cheap. In fact, I did a series on my podcast called Organic for Everyone. It was so much fun.

Starting point is 00:51:39 Yes, my producer and I would go and we would buy really popular fast food items and see how much the cost of that was. We did Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch, for example. And then we also bought all the ingredients to make that at home. Every single ingredient was organic. We were buying it from super accessible stores

Starting point is 00:51:55 like Walmart, Ralph's, Kroger. Really? Okay. Every single ingredient was organic. And then we made a copycat of that at home. And every single time, it was cheaper to buy all organic groceries and make it at home than it was to go through the drive-through. Wow, that's so amazing.

Starting point is 00:52:09 I'm going on your Instagram and I'm gonna refor... Yes. I'm gonna reforward all of your videos and put them up on my Instagram. And if you wanna make me a collaborator on them, I would love to help you get the message out. Because I do this similar thing called lateral shifts where I'll take anything that people like to eat

Starting point is 00:52:30 and I try to make them two promises. One, I won't change the flavor profile and two, I won't add a dime to their budget. And I had a very similar experience. That's amazing. So people would go to their refrigerator and sometimes these are on lives. We got thousands of people on and they'll go to their refrigerator and sometimes these are on lives. We got thousands of people on

Starting point is 00:52:48 and they'll go to the refrigerator and they'll open the refrigerator and they'll say, what do you like to eat in there? Like, oh, I love this, I won't say the brand name, but this yogurt brand with fruit on the bottom and it's all the individual peel off packs. Like, okay, well, let's spin that around. And you look at the back and it's like,

Starting point is 00:53:02 oh, 54 grams of sugar, high fructose corn syrup. There it is, natural fruit flavor, which means ain't got no fruit. And you say, well, which one of those do you like to eat? Oh, I like the blueberry. And you say, okay, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to the grocery store. We're gonna buy a quart of whole fat Greek yogurt.

Starting point is 00:53:22 We're gonna take a basket of organic blueberries and we're gonna get a quart of whole fat Greek yogurt. We're gonna take a basket of organic blueberries and we're gonna get a bag of monk fruit. And we're just gonna scoop some of that whole fat Greek yogurt in there. You're gonna throw in a fistful of organic blueberries and put a teaspoon, teaspoon and a half of monk fruit, mix it up. And you tell me if, you know, how's that tasting?

Starting point is 00:53:40 Like, oh my God, it's amazing. And when you actually look at the buying it by the court and the basket and the bag versus buying it and a lot of these convenience. Exactly. So a lot of times like the crap food is packaged in a convenient way. And so people are actually paying for the convenience

Starting point is 00:53:58 Exactly. and getting the crappy food. And I think that's a big narrative that needs to shift is the expense of convenience of convenience. I say this all the time. Yeah. Convenience is killing us. It really is. And we think that it's so, I said this earlier, it has been so hammered into us. Oh, it's so expensive to eat healthy.

Starting point is 00:54:19 It's so expensive. I am not, I'm by no means saying that I think that, that some of this stuff is not overpriced. And I know if you really start getting into ins and outs of it, it can get really expensive. But if you are dire straights, really on a budget, forget the organic, okay? That is concerning and I focus on it. But like if you are dire straights and you were just trying to eat more whole real foods,

Starting point is 00:54:39 just get ground beef, rice, beans, a big quart of yogurt. Normally eggs are well-priced. I think they're going back down right now. Yeah, they are quart of yogurt. Normally eggs are well priced. I think they're going back down right now. Yeah, they are back down now. I think so, right? Yeah. I heard they're like back like four or five years ago priced.

Starting point is 00:54:51 Oh, okay. I need to, I've been traveling so I haven't gone to the grocery store recently. But you know, focus on the basics like that. And like you said, get fruit and get yogurt and just focus on eating as many whole real foods as you can and dump all the convenience,

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Starting point is 00:56:02 Trash Panda. What is it called? Trash Panda where you can scan everything. So people can go and scan everything in the grocery store. And it's- Trash Panda. What is it called? Trash Panda, where you can scan everything. So people can go and scan everything in the grocery store. And it's called Trash Panda? Yeah, it's actually kind of a cool name. I know, it's such a cute name, I love it. That's catchy, Trash Panda, great job.

Starting point is 00:56:14 And so you scan the QR code on any food label? Exactly. And it'll tell you- And then it'll tell you, it rates it, and then they tell you all the ingredients that are red flag, why they're red flags, and then it'll give you alternative options. Really? Yeah, it's really cool.

Starting point is 00:56:27 That is amazing. Okay, so I'm gonna link these in my show notes, like seed oil scout, what is it? Trash panda. Trash panda. It's so cute, I know. There's another one that will, and I'm gonna figure it out, it's just not coming to me right now,

Starting point is 00:56:40 that will tell you where your local farmers markets are. Yes. And shockingly, when I look at the number of places where you can buy locally grown food, nearly every state in North Dakota, you know, I mean, like colder climates, you know, there's a lot of places that have farmers that are growing foods and make it available to the public.

Starting point is 00:57:04 And there's apps that you can use to help you find that. I use one here called Southwest ranches and raw dairy, raw cheese, you know, they're bees, they're they're honeys. I mean, and it's and it's just it's just amazing. And I think that we can have a shift. And I also believe that awareness is key because there are people like yourself, myself,

Starting point is 00:57:27 and all of our peers, if it becomes politically not cool to be siding with chemicals, synthetics, pharmaceuticals, highly processed foods, which is poisoning our children, that's a giant win. And if the consumer, you know, if their buying habits shift, then there's no choice but the further market to shift.

Starting point is 00:57:54 It drives the consumer trends. Actually, during our Senate speech, Jason Karp, who's the founder of Hugh Kitchen, he actually said this and he has, he knows what it's like to be in those boardrooms with those companies. And he said that a company like, for example, Kellogg's, General Mills,

Starting point is 00:58:10 if they see just a 10% drop in their sales, they scramble. Just 10%. Do you know how little that is? Billions of dollars. But I mean, from our perspective of like, if we all of a sudden just decide like, we're not gonna buy it from their products anymore and we're gonna buy from a smaller local farm

Starting point is 00:58:25 or a smaller company that's actually doing right by us, that doesn't take that many people to see a huge shift like that. And I mean, look at Organic. Organic has absolutely exploded in the last 10 years and it's all driven by consumer trends. We drive that with our money. I think people don't understand

Starting point is 00:58:40 how much power we actually really have. Yeah, and I think that now there's an opportunity because of social media, which can be good or bad, but because of social media, to kind of circumvent that system too, to circumvent that media narrative, because it was really interesting, just as a crazy exercise during the Super Bowl this year, we sat with my family and we were just taking note of all the commercials.

Starting point is 00:59:01 Yes, it was all junk food. Oh my gosh, it's like, the consumer doesn't even stand a chance. If I, like I know the Osembe Jingle by heart now. Oh, oh, oh, Sam, Sam. It's like the choir's back there, like. We're all singing along. Singing along, and you know, and then,

Starting point is 00:59:20 you know, the Doritos commercials are so cool. But you know, what I find really encouraging, we just banned red dye number three. There are certain states like Texas. There's a state recently, I wanna say. West Virginia just banned it. West Virginia. Huge.

Starting point is 00:59:36 Just banned it. And so this means now, if you're one of these major manufacturers or distributors, and you just cut off an entire state. Yeah. They're gonna be forced to make that change for everyone else too. We will start, you know.

Starting point is 00:59:53 And do you think that this is profit driven? Because they've already made the changes overseas. I think this is another thing that the public doesn't really, you know, Foodbabe does a great job at highlighting this. Raising awareness to the fact that it's not something that can't be done because it's something that they're already doing.

Starting point is 01:00:09 Exactly. It's just they're not doing it here. And these American companies are making these for other countries. That's what drives me nuts about it. That blew my mind. I know. That when you compare the labels of,

Starting point is 01:00:24 again, I won't use a brand name, but a box of certain cereal here in the same box, identical box of cereal made by the same manufacturer in the UK, or even in Canada, in some cases, the dramatic shift in the ingredients. And I got to think it's just got to be pennies per product. But you know what that is, actually. So Jason Carpigan was talking about this at our Senate hearing. And he was emailing back and forth with one of these companies and the issue is that they have realized that the brightly colored cereals and brightly colored fruit snacks or whatever it is that they're adding those dyes into, make them more appealing and addictive to

Starting point is 01:00:59 children. And so that's why they do it. So Trix actually famously a couple of years ago, they announced, we're taking out all the artificial colors. Yeah, and they're like, we're gonna use natural dyes to color them. Well, they're not as bright because they're colors made in nature. It's why when you see cereal,

Starting point is 01:01:16 it's like fluorescent highlighter color. It's not colors that you use. Fluorescent highlighter. Mauve and chartreuse, you're like, I don't see those in nature. I do not see those in nature. Yeah, it's like highlighter. You have mauve and chartreuse. You're like, I don't see those in nature. I do not see those in nature. Yeah, it's like highlighter colors. They actually saw a dramatic drop in their sales

Starting point is 01:01:33 because Trix was the only one that was doing it. And so they brought them back. So this is a large part of the issue is that these companies are digging their heels in because they're like, no, we're gonna lose money off of the profit of these cereals. But I think also if there weren't alternatives. Well, exactly. If everyone was forced to, then the kids will just have to acclimate. And honestly, it will be so much

Starting point is 01:01:53 better for them. The reason why they've banned them in places like the UK and Sweden is because they have recognized that these dyes cause hyperactivity in children. Talk to anyone who's an educator and who's been in the space for the last 20 years. I can't tell you how many teachers DM me almost on a day-to-day basis. And they'll say, I've been working for 20 years as an educator and I have never seen so many behavioral issues ever in my life.

Starting point is 01:02:15 Really, yeah. And you hear this in schools, I mean, and you, and again, it's multifactorial and I don't wanna sound the alarm on any one thing causing everything, but at some point, these skyrocketing rates of autism, And again, it's multifactorial and I don't want to sound the alarm on any one thing causing everything. But, you know, at some point these skyrocketing rates of autism, skyrocketing rates of childhood cancer, the skyrocketing rates of obesity, it's scary the number of children now that

Starting point is 01:02:35 have fatty liver disease. Almost 15% of our teens and pre-vibescent teens have fatty liver disease. I mean, that used to be reserved for alcoholics. Alcoholics. Oh, that condition largely didn't exist 50 years ago. That one really gets me. It gets me too. And the, you know, autism, which again is multifactorial,

Starting point is 01:02:52 but it's a neuroinflammatory condition. And we know that certain things are causing these neuroinflammatory cascades. And a lot of autism distance on the spectrum is related to the grade of inflammation that they have, and the amount of this neural damage. And the exciting thing is that a lot of this is reversible. And I think, you know, people like myself that had a career in mortality, coming together with people like yourself that have a career in nutrition,

Starting point is 01:03:23 and other people that have careers in politics and medicine. We're all starting to realize that, man, we really need to do something, but this solution is very promising. Like it's really exciting. It's not a restriction of the freedom of choice, because that is one way that this movement gets attacked. I get attacked, you get attacked.

Starting point is 01:03:48 Is that, you know, we're just going to strip free choice away from everybody, which is not what we're doing. We're not saying you can't have ice cream. We're not saying you can't, you know, do all of those things that you know are going to decimate your health. But there's no reason why we should consciously be allowing this stuff into the food system. So, back to the average mom and dad, or baby biohacker that's just getting going,

Starting point is 01:04:17 what would you say, because I love that you pose this question to me on your podcast, what are two or three things that they could do tomorrow, not big shifts in their budget, that you think could dramatically change the trajectory of their health? I would say first and foremost, do an audit of your pantry and just start paying attention and reading ingredient labels. If you can do that one shift and start slowly swapping out

Starting point is 01:04:43 a lot of your normal everyday food products that you're buying for ones that are made with real ingredients, you're gonna be off to a great start. So I have a really, really simple hack for this. When you're in the grocery store and you're reading a label and you see all the ingredients in there, you never wanna just look at the front. The front is a billboard for the package.

Starting point is 01:05:02 They're just trying to sell it. Oh, and they'll also often have the health claims on there. Exactly. Something else that Max Luger talked about that I thought was, it was also one of those just phenomenally obvious things that I never really thought about before. And he was like, you realize that most health foods

Starting point is 01:05:16 don't make health food claims. Exactly. There's not a claim on the avocado. Really healthy fatty acids. Heart healthy. Maybe, mainly to longevity and LPR, but you go to the seed oils and it's like, heart healthy, low in saturated fat, polyunsaturated, you know, it's like, you need to try to eat vitamins

Starting point is 01:05:33 and four nutrients, fortified, enriched, you know, it's amazing how, well, it's amazing how many non-health foods, they have to make health claims, you're right, right on the front of the package. So spin it around, look at the ingredients. Yep, and I would say the more health claims they make on the front is usually a really red flag. So you'll learn, here's the thing,

Starting point is 01:05:54 the first couple times you do this, you'll probably spend a couple of hours in the grocery store, sorry. But you get in a rhythm and then you kind of understand and then you know what foods you like and you kind of start to understand which ones are just the red flag. You don't have to do it again. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:06:09 Right. So my rule is if you can read, so read all those ingredients. If you could technically, if you wanted to make this product at home, I'm not saying you have to, but let's say that you were like, okay, if I wanted to make these crackers at home, could I buy every single one of those ingredients in the grocery store? I always use Simple Mills as an example. Simple Mills has rosemary extract, it's made with almonds, just all whole real foods. You could technically buy every single one of those ingredients

Starting point is 01:06:32 in the grocery store and put it in your cart and make those crackers at home if you wanted to. Wow. Whereas alternatively, if you turn around something like Cheez-Its, it has BHT in there, it has some preservatives and some other crap in there that you're reading that and you're going, I have no idea where I would find BHT in the grocery store. Where would I find that in the grocery store?

Starting point is 01:06:48 It doesn't exist. Wow, that's a great point. So that would be something that I would say, put that one back on the shelf, look around. There's a lot of different alternatives now. If you're looking for a cheese like cracker, there's a couple of other brands now that are creating ones that are just made with real food ingredients.

Starting point is 01:07:02 If you start doing something like that, that is, you're already gonna be off to a great start. Another one that I love to remind people, real food tastes amazing, amazing. It is so good, especially if you learn a couple things that you love to make, you can repeat those, get, you know, follow some creators online that teach you how to make really simple

Starting point is 01:07:24 whole real food ingredient recipes. Also, you don't have to give up your favorite foods. We literally had burgers for lunch. I eat burgers a couple times a week. That's so awesome. Yeah, and we had organ blend meats and we had the ground beef with it and we had some shaved goat cheese on the top.

Starting point is 01:07:38 It was amazing. It was delicious. It was so good. And this is what I remind people all the time. You don't have to give up your favorite foods, but make sure that when you're eating those foods, they're made with whole real food ingredients. So if you can't find a restaurant nearby that's, you know, using 100% Italian flour or whatever it is in their pizza dough,

Starting point is 01:07:56 make pizza at home. Make those burgers at home. Or find a really good burger place that has grass-fed burgers and, you know, beef tall fries, if you can find them. So that would be my second one. That's a great spot, okay. You do not have to be restrictive. In fact, I have never had a healthy relationship with my food ever in my entire life.

Starting point is 01:08:14 I've never had a healthier relationship with it because as long as it's real food, nothing is off the table for me. I don't feel like I'm like, oh, I can't have that cookie or whatever. I'm like, is it made with real ingredients? Great, I'm gonna have a cookie, love it. That's my only restriction is that I want it

Starting point is 01:08:29 to be made with real food. Whereas before when I was eating like Slim Fast Bars and stuff, I was literally trying to like, oh, how many calories is in this? And like trying to track everything. And I don't even think of that way anymore. Yeah, neither do I. So I'd say that and then I would say the last one

Starting point is 01:08:42 is try to eat as many meals at home as you can Because when you eat out this is when you're gonna start seeing the additives and the seed oils and everything else So try to eat as many meals at home as possible. I love it Courtney. You're amazing. You're definitely coming back on I hope We have so many friends in common and you know, it's it's it's an absolute honor You know and a blessing to be on this journey with you you know and giving the support to this maha movement um i have a vip community so they i let them know who's coming on the podcast and so they're waiting for you and they they've got some questions for you so we're going to jump into my vip here in a minute and if you're

Starting point is 01:09:20 interested in becoming a vip just go over to the ultimate human.com. And that's the ultimate human.com forward slash VIP and you can sign up to be a member of my VIP community. I'll even send you a free box of H2 tabs. If you sign up to be a VIP, this is where we do live coaching, we do challenges, we have private podcasts. This is where I really am pouring the best of what I'm doing in my research and in my travels around the world. So Courtney, I end every podcast

Starting point is 01:09:48 by asking every guest the same question, and that is, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? I think, oh man, I have to think about this for a second. How do I wanna answer this? I think to be an ultimate human is to live, live with your soul's purpose and also to live in integrity and always strive for the truth and to be the best you can for yourself and

Starting point is 01:10:16 for your others or for everyone in your life and everyone that you love. One of the main reasons that I got into healthy eating in the first place is because I knew what it felt like to feel really sick. I think a lot of people largely walk through life not even knowing how sick they actually are and how sick they actually feel because they have no comparison. And I went from feeling really good in my home, then going out of the home and eating like crap all the time, feeling really sick, and then coming back and realizing, oh my gosh, like this is what so many Americans go through every day and they feel this way and they don't even realize. And so I think learning how to nourish my body, take care of my body and just to feel better.

Starting point is 01:10:52 And then as a result, I'm more clear headed. I'm more in touch with my innate knowing what's best for me and I can have better discernment. And yeah, it just, it helps me live a better, more full life. And also I just, I wanna live a full life. I wanna have fun. Yeah, me too. I wanna have fun. I wanna have fun with my friends.

Starting point is 01:11:10 I wanna have energy. I wanna do all the things I wanna do. I have so many things that I wanna accomplish. And I think being healthy and taking care of my body allows me to do all of that and show up for others. That's so amazing. So for my audience that's not familiar with you, where can they find you online?

Starting point is 01:11:25 And where can they find out more about real food ology? Yeah, so I'm at real food ology across the board on Instagram. I have a podcast called real food ology I'm starting to get more active on X and Yeah, oh also I have a free grocery guide if you go to real food ology comm and you just plug in your email You'll get a free grocery guide sent to you and it goes over everything we talked about today And you just take it your email, you'll get a free grocery guide sent to you. And it goes over everything we talked about today. And you can just take it with you to the grocery store. If you're like, what, what did Courtney say on the podcast about X, Y, and Z?

Starting point is 01:11:50 And you can reference it in that. Amazing. Courtney Swan. Thank you so much for coming on the Ultimate Human. And guys, until next time, that's just science.

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The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 171. Courtney Swan: Why Your ‘Healthy’ Food Is Actually Harmful

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