00:02:40.140Why did these tobacco companies buy the food companies?
00:02:42.940Well, it was about that time that cigarettes were getting a bad rap.
00:02:46.180And there was literally a campaign after campaign telling people cigarettes are going to kill you.
00:02:51.600So they saw, number one, the industry that they were in was going down in flames and maybe saw an opportunity in the food industry to go in and say, well, maybe we are the addiction people.
00:03:05.820Let's figure out how to apply what we know to process foods.
00:05:46.720Let's give a free gift with a happy meal.
00:05:49.500I mean, they pulled out all the stops.
00:05:50.880And I also think about just like the health movements of the 1980s that weren't really about ingredients, but just about like, you know, no trans fat or low carb or things like that. And so something that was essentially really unhealthy was marketed as healthier, just, you know, based on arbitrary diet standards.
00:06:11.480Yes. And speaking of diet standards, Patrick, do you want to talk a little bit about the food pyramid and how different it was and has been until RFK Jr. has flipped it on its head?
00:06:22.660Well, I think it's one of the best visual tactics that HHS has employed recently, this campaign to eat real food by flipping the food pyramid that came about in the 80s, 90s, which had at the very top of it, animal protein and saturated fat and olive oil and butter and dairy.
00:06:43.940And at the bottom, grains and rice and pastas and was built, we now know, thanks to lobbying efforts on the behalf of grain producers and not really based on full scientific basis of what we as humans have been eating for centuries.
00:07:02.680So flipping the food pyramid upside down, putting the emphasis on animal fats, on dairy, on vegetables, and really de-emphasizing grains in particular, I think seems to make a lot of sense given what we know about metabolic health.
00:07:23.260it's actually insane to think about how that you know no pun intended is ingrained in our minds
00:07:30.220that you should have the most amount of carbs that you can have and like a little bit of meat
00:07:35.680like i'll be honest even as someone who knows the importance of protein that i can just feel that
00:07:40.720underlying assumption in my mind that you should you know fill your plate with rice or potatoes
00:07:45.540and like small vegetables small piece of chicken when the opposite is true it just goes to show
00:08:18.460Well, one of the most eye-opening things for me was essentially realizing that there are seed oils in almost everything, even things that are marketed to be healthy.
00:08:31.380And to be clear, seed oils are sunflower oil, canola oil. These are highly processed oils that become inflammatory during that process. Basically, they become oxidized and they're cheap to use.
00:08:47.380so if if you're listening and you're like not quite sure what to stay away from in terms of
00:08:52.240seed oils coconut oil avocado oil olive oil those are very good oils those are kind of the ones i
00:08:57.980stick to those are not seed oil those are not seed oils yes but the safflower sunflower canola
00:09:04.620all of those oils that have been very heavily processed those are the oxidized rancid right
00:09:12.480Yes, and then they deodorize them. It's a very industrial process to create seed oil. It was originally machine lubricant. It was oil that went into machines in the World War II, during World War II, because it was a cheap way to produce a lubricant.
00:09:32.060Yeah, it is crazy. The health foods that like Annie's, Annie's Mac and Cheese, Annie's Bunnies, they're better than Cheez-Its for some reasons. But you know, there's seed oil and those baby formula. I know a lot of times has sunflower oil or canola oil. And so people can really feel like they don't have any true options without seed oils.
00:09:53.280I mean, even like hummus and what you think of as maybe a more healthy salad dressing, Italian salad dressing, or anything that's like pre-prepared, start looking at the labels because they sneak that in everything.
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00:11:05.420would you say that the reason that these food companies use these cheaper ingredients is
00:11:15.700just to make money or is there some other more nefarious thing going on
00:11:20.420i mean it's hard to like guess what the motives necessarily are i mean profit motive you know
00:11:29.340the phrase follow the money is pretty good at predicting uh what you will see happen and for
00:11:36.620them to say okay uh we could use extra virgin olive oil but we can get this stuff from canada
00:11:44.360called canola oil that's made from rapeseed terrible branding name but canola comes from
00:11:50.100canada oil and it's made from rapeseed and it's one tenth of the price yeah is it safe
00:11:57.320everyone else is using it and that's really i think the main issue is you know then with the
00:12:03.940consumers not being educated and not even understanding that the seed oils are harming
00:12:08.100their health they're looking at price tags so they're going to go down the grocery aisle they're
00:12:11.940seeing all these different salad dressings and they're looking at the prices and if there's one
00:12:15.960italian salad dressing that is using extra virgin olive oil and it's two dollars more than the one
00:12:22.080next to it that isn't and they don't know to look or know the difference i mean as a business
00:12:27.080owner they're going we're not going to be able to keep up yeah you know unless more companies start
00:12:32.980doing this too i don't think we can make it there's not enough demand for what we're doing
00:12:38.440right and that's why we're so passionate about like let's help educate people on what
00:12:42.680they need to be looking for so that they can be educated to vote with their wallet to demand
00:12:48.760better and protect their own health yeah yeah what is when you say big food because we say that about
00:12:55.060a lot of things, big tobacco, big, you know, everything. What is big food?
00:13:01.800I think it's loosely defined as the large health company. I'm sorry, health companies. What a
00:13:08.320funny kind of thing to say there. The large food companies that are making highly processed foods.
00:13:15.340And allegedly, Robert F. Kennedy has stated that we will be getting a definition of what
00:13:22.320highly processed foods actually stands for are ultra processed foods. So it'll be very interesting
00:13:28.540if by defining what an ultra processed food is, that creates the impetus to create essentially
00:13:35.960the same kind of black box warnings that ended up on cigarettes. That seems like the direction that
00:13:42.220HHS is headed. And obviously that worked when it came to, you know, decreasing the demand
00:13:50.880of tobacco. And so it's a possibility that that could decrease the demand of highly processed
00:14:00.720foods or at least warn people what they're doing with their bodies when they're consuming them.
00:14:05.860Y'all released kind of like a cheat sheet to help people understand what they're eating,
00:14:10.860what ingredients to look for, right? Can you talk more about that?
00:14:14.040Yes. We started getting so many questions from people like, okay, this just feels totally
00:14:17.620overwhelming. I don't know how to read a label. I don't even know what these words mean. So we
00:14:22.460created the dirty dozen ingredients to avoid. And it's just a PDF you can download on breaking
00:14:28.020big food.com. You don't have to register for anything. You literally just click it and it's
00:14:32.580made for you to like keep on your fridge or save it on your phone so that as you are starting to
00:14:36.980shop down the grocery aisles, you at least have something to reference. And they're kind of the
00:14:41.540most common offenders on there, like the seed oils, the artificial flavors, MSG, like the gums
00:14:49.480and the emulsifiers that are just in so many things that can be really disruptive to the gut
00:14:55.620and the microbiome. What would you say is maybe one ingredient that people don't know to look for?
00:15:01.180I've heard a lot of people talk about seed oils and different things, but what would you say is
00:15:05.580may be one that doesn't get enough attention that people need to look out for? I think natural
00:15:12.040flavors can be tricky. Sometimes they can be from naturally derived sources, but specifically if
00:15:19.600they are used in savory foods, a lot of times it can be code for MSG. And what is MSG?
00:15:27.160It's, how do you say it? Monosodium glutamate. The concern is that it's an excitotoxin,
00:15:32.920a neurotoxin to the brain at specific dosages.
00:15:36.520And it does have a natural sort of savory flavor to it.
00:15:40.800So think of like your stovetop stuffing kind of thing
00:16:02.220But you're saying it could be in something that's marketed as healthy, that doesn't have any other bad ingredients, but it does have natural flavors, which honestly, a lot of times I've kind of just resigned myself to being like, well, that's the only thing in it, then whatever.
00:16:18.440Yeah, and that would be something that you kind of look at the FDA and say, I think they're asleep at the wheel here on yet another issue regarding food labeling.
00:16:28.620i think most americans want to know they want to educate themselves they want to feed their
00:16:36.820families healthy food and they're sort of expecting fda whoever is in charge of what
00:16:44.040is on the grocery store shelves they kind of expect that the fda has kind of done their homework
00:16:49.120they're sadly mistaken that there are loopholes like natural flavors there's also the loopholes
00:16:56.960of grass, generally recognized as safe, where in America, you have to prove harm rather than
00:17:06.660proving safety. So for the past 30 years, the FDA was overwhelmed and they allowed big food to begin
00:17:14.700introducing new chemicals into the food supply that they allow the food companies to self-regulate
00:17:22.280as well we think that's generally recognized as safe and as a result uh you hear claims i'm not
00:17:29.700sure if the number is correct but there's about 10 000 chemicals in the united states that are
00:17:36.560allowed to be used under generally recognized as safe principles and those same chemicals are not
00:17:43.320allowed to be used in europe so you end up with the example of people i went to italy and ate
00:17:50.020pizza for two weeks and I came back and I felt fine while I was there. But my doctor told me I
00:17:56.900was celiac and I can't eat pizza and gluten here, but I ate it while I was over there and I felt
00:18:01.580fine. Maybe it's not the gluten. It might be all the other junk that is generally recognized as
00:18:09.240safe and might not actually be. I think all of us want to be able to trust the FDA or just trust
00:18:16.420the experts in general in anything, I think COVID taught us that we can't necessarily do that,
00:18:21.600that we do have to take charge of our own health, but not everyone feels like they have the capacity
00:18:26.820or the knowledge to do that. It's so overwhelming. Yeah. And they just want to be able to trust
00:18:31.920the FDA. And a lot of people just assume that the FDA is doing their job and rigorously testing
00:18:38.160every single ingredient. But you're saying that that kind of testing isn't really happening.
00:18:43.080Do you have any insight into, like, what is the process of actually testing ingredients that are on the market?
00:18:50.380Well, first of all, the FDA does not actually do any testing themselves.
00:18:54.800They read the reports that are done by other third-party laboratories.
00:18:59.040And so some of the most common testing done on food would be heavy metals and heavy metals like lead and mercury and arsenic.
00:19:10.980Yeah, that we know clearly are poisonous at a certain threshold.
00:19:16.120Now, the irony is that the threshold is somewhat debated sometimes where they're like, well, a little pinch of lead might be OK, but a whole spoonful is probably bad for you.
00:19:27.020And there probably, I believe, is truth to that.
00:20:50.400Well, that process involves sort of a lot of science and sort of a lot of guesswork of, okay, well, this derivative of this chemical, we're not aware of any danger that has happened, so we're probably okay to use it.
00:21:09.060So really what the American scientists and the American food system and really FDA relies on is like warnings and, okay, it seems like there's been an outbreak of something, but then you're literally having to try and prove harm.
00:21:23.660And it often turns into, you know, court cases and trial trial lawyers. And it's it's I would guess I would call it innovator friendly where, you know, here in America, I think that we have a very entrepreneurial spirit and, you know, we are entrepreneurs.
00:21:41.860I'm very much in favor of that, but also sometimes you can get a little out over your skis and
00:21:49.320if there's not enough regulatory sort of hold back of like, wait, are we sure that that's safe?
00:21:56.040You end up with, you know, basically too much leeway. I mean, I think that the tension between
00:22:01.700innovation and regulation should be there. It should exist for the safety of all Americans and people.
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00:23:15.820You mentioned glyphosate. What is glyphosate? Well, glyphosate is something that companies
00:23:22.200like Monsanto spray on the crops to kill the bugs, essentially. Well, hold on. Monsanto is
00:23:29.540the creator of glyphosate most commonly known as roundup uh monsanto was acquired by bear
00:23:38.040uh the makers of aspirin uh however many years ago and so glyphosate has been increasingly used
00:23:46.240on crops in america uh starting really in the 1990s and it was this very sort of novel pesticide
00:44:40.780I want to talk about childhood obesity for a little bit.
00:44:44.840Most people in this audience have kids and it's a struggle for a lot of parents to feed
00:44:50.380their kids the right things, or maybe they just feel like, I don't know, their kid is
00:44:54.440addicted to the screen, which is a whole other conversation.
00:44:57.280But the fact is in America that 17% or no, in the last 17 years, obesity has increased
00:45:04.120to 21%. Chronic conditions because of that obesity have been rising sharply. And I'm just
00:45:12.580curious if you all think childhood obesity is because of these ingredients that we're talking
00:45:19.280about. Are there other factors? What do you think is going on here? Well, if I'm not mistaken,
00:45:26.02062 percent of calories that kids age one through 18 consume 62 percent of those calories are
00:45:35.540ultra processed foods do you think that that's having a impact on the weight of children right
00:45:42.480yep absolutely and that's what they're getting in cafeterias too right and these companies are
00:45:47.820directly marketing to children i mean they're trying to they're playing the commercials on the
00:45:53.160whatever shows these kids are watching and then they beg their parents for it or the
00:45:58.180the kid next to them at the lunch table has all these fun fruit snacks and whatever else
00:46:02.760in their lunch and that's what they want and they don't want to be the weird kid with the
00:46:06.280healthy things in their lunch box i mean there's just so many things um but sadly kids are the
00:46:11.480target right for this type of food yeah it is really such a blessing when you have moms in
00:46:17.200your kids class who are on the same page as you and i love the text like uh yeah we're bringing
00:46:22.040a dye-free snack today and it can be really hard to navigate because it's hard to be that one
00:46:27.300parent that's like actually we don't want those cupcakes because like we don't we don't do dyes
00:46:32.800and i'm sure there's a there's a balance there um but this is another one of those things where
00:46:38.600it just takes some deliberate discipline on the part of parents to like make that one replacement
00:46:45.160um and it really is like it's an investment in your child's future even if it's a hard thing
00:46:50.960in the moment a huge investment and we're hoping our film breaking big food will be an inspirational
00:46:58.740thing that families can watch together to get a sense for where food comes from why most of the
00:47:06.180ultra processed packaged foods is not going to be healthy for your family and to get a sense of like
00:47:13.440you know cooking together as a family is an important if not sacred ritual that has been
00:47:20.260done for millennia. And it actually leads to healthier outcomes for families anyways. So,
00:47:27.060you know, movies like ours, documentaries like To Die For, which we talked about,
00:47:33.480D.Y.E. And even a great film, The Biggest Little Farm, that shows a couple transitioning a
00:47:41.500monocropped field into a organic regenerative farm over the course of seven years. That was a big
00:47:49.920inspiration for us. And I think it is the answer for how to make food small and local again.
00:47:57.240Yeah. My oldest daughter and I were reading the Little House on the Prairie series,
00:48:01.740which of course is set in the late 1800s. And it's very descriptive about how the moms and
00:48:07.380the kids are making the food, even the dad's contributions to that process, usually hunting,
00:48:12.420and then how the kids spend their days. And it's just, I mean, it really hearkens you back to a
00:48:17.880time that you really want to go back to, but everything, the pace was slow and deliberate
00:48:23.780and the preparations and the thought for the next season were just so intentional and the
00:48:30.200kids spent their days working, playing, a mixture of both, but it was never, ever, except
00:48:35.580for Sunday afternoons, just sitting down and doing nothing.
00:48:39.260So it's such a combination, I think, of all of these things of idleness.
00:48:43.680I don't think that we are productive enough as people.
00:48:46.100We don't make our kids be productive enough. And then also, yeah, like where we're getting our food and the detachment that we have from our food that contributes to this whole vicious cycle.
00:48:56.140Yeah, I think helping the kids fall in love with food, real food and like the process of making it, like Patrick said, like do a family day to the farmer's market once a week so that the kids can like meet the farmers and like see all the what does produce look like when it's like just straight from the dirt?
00:49:13.200you know it's just I think um getting back to that yeah buy a planter and plant some tomatoes
00:49:19.740or some strawberries yeah I feel like I saw a clip online of like a kid like picking a strawberry
00:49:28.160and was like wait so we can just actually eat it yeah like we don't have to go to the grocery
00:49:33.320store to get it like we have become so detached from where food comes from and that's such a
00:49:39.320beautiful description the little house on the prairie yeah sort of like i mean food shelter
00:49:45.860water that's kind of the things that we actually need we don't need internet yeah we don't need
00:49:52.340facebook yeah we don't need instagram like we enjoy them sort of but we don't need them yeah
00:50:01.120they actually make you feel bad after you use them unlike when you make something really good
00:50:06.060that sustains your family, it makes you feel good.
00:50:08.180So we should be doing more of the things
00:50:10.100that make us feel actually good in a lasting way