First Lady Casey DeSantis joins us to talk about the stunning findings that Florida researchers have done in the state of Florida into the poison that is in so many of our foods and even baby formula. She explains why Florida is leading the fight to make healthy food choices a reality for Americans like you and me and those that are trying to make healthier choices, especially for our kids.
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00:00:30.760People have the right to not be poisoned.
00:00:42.060They are leading the states in trying to make Maha a reality for Americans like you and me and those that are trying to make healthy choices, especially for our kids.
00:00:51.700We've got First Lady Casey DeSantis here today to talk about the stunning findings that their researchers have done in the state of Florida.
00:01:00.000Into the poison that is in so many of our foods and even baby formula.
00:01:26.300Tell me why Florida is conducting all of these tests on candy, on food, on things like bread and baby formula.
00:01:35.180Well, first of all, it's the right thing to do, right?
00:01:37.120I think consumers should have full transparency about what they're consuming and what they're eating.
00:01:41.600But it really started with the governor, Ron, looking at this and wanting to be a force multiplier to the federal government.
00:01:48.500What can we do in the free state of Florida to help try to make America healthy and how can we help make Florida healthy?
00:01:54.880And the Surgeon General and I got together, who's an excellent human being, and we sat down and we said, well, why don't we trust but verify kind of what's going on with our food supply?
00:02:02.800And that led into testing of baby formula first, because we thought it was important since these babies, that's all they're eating in the first years of life, that we should ensure the integrity of that.
00:02:13.800And then when we got the results back, we were very startled and obviously disquieted by the fact that there was 17 out of 24 that came back with problematic levels of arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury.
00:02:27.940And then we went into other components, and that is the candy, and then ultimately now going on and looking at the bread.
00:02:35.960Okay, let's talk about the baby formula first, because I find this to be really disturbing.
00:02:40.740A lot of moms, for a variety of reasons, have to rely on formula to feed their babies.
00:02:46.000And you would think that with babies, our most vulnerable citizens in this country, that we would want to be extra careful about what we put in our formula.
00:02:55.540But it seems like, actually, these industries care a lot less about what's put in formula.
00:03:01.600I mean, you can't find formula in the United States that actually has whole, healthy ingredients.
00:03:11.120And this is not something that is new, right?
00:03:13.840So if you go back to last year, the beginning of last year, Consumer Reports came out with their own study showing that there were problematic levels of these contaminants.
00:03:23.100And then as a result of that, on the federal side, Secretary Kennedy and rightfully President Trump decided to launch Operation Stork Speed, basically saying we need to go in and test a lot of this stuff.
00:03:33.700Well, here comes Florida, and now this is a year later, and there's still problematic contaminants in the baby formula.
00:03:42.320Because it's particularly frustrating as a mother when you go into a store and you're looking at the store aisles and you're looking at the products on the shelves and you're thinking that everything on there, you have an assumption that it is indeed safe.
00:03:57.200So you're making the best decision that you can for the best interests of your child.
00:04:02.220And when we find out that this stuff is in it, it's totally unacceptable.
00:04:06.300So the question is, is where do we ultimately go from here, right?
00:04:09.860Like there hasn't been a lot of change.
00:04:11.960So what we are doing in Florida, we're publishing all of these results so consumers can make informed decisions.
00:04:43.720Not only are we trying to put some sunshine on it by doing our independent testing in Florida, we're also asking and calling on the states to join in.
00:04:52.980And so I had a great call earlier today with the first lady of North Dakota who is all on board to be able to try to help from her state's capacity.
00:05:01.480I talked to the first lady of Oklahoma, talked to lieutenant governor of Indiana.
00:05:05.500We're reaching out to West Virginia and Arkansas and Georgia.
00:05:08.200And we're having really robust conversations about, OK, let's all be forced multipliers to the federal government.
00:05:13.720Let's all find data and evidence and the truth about what's in the food supply and then give that to Kennedy and McCary and these guys.
00:05:21.240And so, therefore, they can come in and hold these companies accountable.
00:05:24.220And I think that's ultimately how we get to change, utilizing federalism of the states, using these incubators of innovation to try to drive the accountability that ultimately can force, we hope, companies to make better decisions because that's what the consumers want.
00:05:42.400Yeah. You know, people who can't afford to get their formula from places like Denmark or Germany, where the regulations are different and you can actually find much more wholesome formula brands are kind of forced to choose from what is in the grocery store.
00:06:00.100As you said, they're trying to make the best choices.
00:06:02.720They assume that Infamil and these other brands are creating these really good products for babies, that it's all tested.
00:06:08.780But what you're saying is basically we are forcing especially lower income moms to choose unhealthy items for their vulnerable babies.
00:06:17.660And people might not realize that this doesn't just have an effect on a baby for, say, the first year of their life, but there could be long term consequences to things like heavy metals and elevated mercury levels in this formula.
00:06:31.220Can you tell us, like, what has research found about what this can do to a child's behavior in mind?
00:06:36.620Yeah, you're right about the heavy metals and they don't just leave the body easily, right?
00:06:43.440And unfortunately, what our Surgeon General in Florida has said, that you have a definite increased risk of cancer over the course of your lifetime if you're consuming this early in life.
00:06:52.640And he looked at something like 20 percent increase.
00:06:54.880Plus, there's a lot of other things that are bad with consuming arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury.
00:07:02.300It is not fair to any mother to go into a store to have to sit there and wonder which option is better than another when all of it should be safe.
00:07:12.580All of it, you should have an expectation of it being safe.
00:07:15.460So one of the things that we've done to partner with the federal government is we looked at WIC, which is Women, Infant and Children.
00:07:22.180These are women that receive federal assistance to be able to buy formula because we are under a certain amount of moms that apply to that federal group.
00:07:31.720Prior to this discovery, there was only one supplier that was supplying that formula because of our work with Secretary Kennedy and others.
00:07:38.960We are now opening that up to two suppliers.
00:07:41.180So they have more options and some of those options do not have those harmful metals in it.
00:07:48.400And so you can you can go to exposingfoodtoxins.com and then you can find an option no matter what to be able to help fit, obviously, your family that doesn't have this junk in it.
00:07:59.980OK, so we also found that bread has something called glyphosate or not all bread, but a lot of the brands that you're getting in the grocery store.
00:08:06.920This is another one of those ingredients that most people can't pronounce, so they don't know what it is.
00:08:11.900And they think, OK, well, if it's in all the bread, then it's probably fine.
00:08:14.740But what is glyphosate and why should we care about it?
00:08:39.220And of course, our surgeon general has said there's a lot of problems that can happen at the cellular level with your microbiome, with your gut, all of these things that, you know, we're starting to get more and more evidence on.
00:08:49.920But, you know, when you read the Roundup label and the glyphosate label, you see where it says, like, if you touch it, do X, Y, and Z.
00:09:00.320Like, there's all of these problematic things with being in close proximity to glyphosate.
00:09:04.420Probably safe to assume that it's not good in the food supply in bread.
00:09:09.320So, again, on the website, we put down the breads that were tested and the levels of glyphosate that's in there so that people can make informed decisions and they can find something that doesn't have this stuff in it.
00:09:20.040Okay. So, this is not an ingredient that people are seeing that's bad for them.
00:09:23.960This is something that's completely hidden from most consumers.
00:09:27.400And regulations right now are saying that it doesn't have to be disclosed that the products that someone is consuming at one point was basically sprayed with Roundup, which we know and have known for a long time causes all the health problems that you're talking about.
00:09:39.920Yeah. So, the silver lining is what I would say with this.
00:11:02.460There is the sugar, which obviously parents know is problematic.
00:11:05.780There's a generally accepted as safe principle.
00:11:08.360These are the things that the additives that are put in there.
00:11:11.720We can get into the antiquated law of what these things actually are.
00:11:15.160And then there's the third side of it, and that is the pesticides that we see, excuse me, with the arsenic that we're seeing in it.
00:11:23.060And what we have found through the Florida Department of Health is, and they're testing, we're not talking about one Jolly Rancher, right, on one time.
00:11:30.480What they're finding is when you eat it in aggregate.
00:11:33.580What's the context and perspective for your viewers?
00:11:36.300Well, our analysis found that if you eat more than 96 nerds over the course of a year for a child, you are exceeding the allowable threshold of arsenic for a child.
00:11:46.240If you eat more than six Jolly Ranchers, that is exceeding the allowable threshold of arsenic for consuming in a child over the course of a year.
00:11:53.580So it's realistic to assume that children are eating more than 96 individual nerds.
00:12:02.000When you look at a box that you get in a movie theater, there's 8,000 nerds in it.
00:12:06.500And how much food and candy are they consuming on Halloween?
00:12:09.760Or Valentine's Day is right around the corner.
00:12:12.120So it's the consumption in aggregate that is very problematic.
00:12:15.260And that has to be taken into account.
00:12:17.700And that has to be disclosed to parents so that they can make better decisions.
00:12:21.980And, again, I go back to the silver lining of all of this stuff.
00:12:24.640And that is there are some candies that don't have it.
00:12:28.220As a matter of fact, I was looking at our results.
00:12:30.620And, again, you can go to exposingfoodtoxins.com to see this data for yourself.
00:12:35.060Some of the healthier varietals, it's not oxymoronic, right, healthier varietals of candy don't have any arsenic in it like Unreal and Yum Earth.
00:12:44.580So if you wanted to give the kids something, you can give them something with a little bit of an assurance there's not rat poison in it.
00:12:50.860Yeah, and we should have that assurance.
00:12:53.360And like you said, we should have a right to be able to choose from any manner of food and not be poisoned.
00:12:58.420How much sugar we want to put in our body, that might be a choice that we make.
00:13:01.820But we should definitely have the choice of not being poisoned.
00:13:05.000And I just think about, as with so many policies, this disproportionately affects kids who are consuming the formula,
00:13:11.300who are eating the PB&J sandwiches on the bread, who are getting rewarded.
00:13:15.680Maybe at school, I know that growing up, we would get rewarded with Jolly Ranchers all the time.
00:13:19.580You're talking about the threshold, right?
00:13:20.900Oh, I definitely exceeded that threshold for arsenic when I was growing up.