519. If Another Country Did This to Our Citizens, It Would Be War ｜ Vani Hari
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 11 minutes
Words per Minute
170.53346
Summary
Vani Hari is a food activist who has been fighting for years to force food companies to be held accountable for their impact on our health and well-being. In this episode, Vani shares her story of how she became involved in the fight against the food industry, and why she thinks food companies should pay their fair share of taxes.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
People are fat and diabetic at rates that are criminal.
00:00:03.700
38% of preteens ages 12 to 18 now being pre-diabetic when it used to be zero.
00:00:10.900
I don't think I ever recovered from reading about the fact that marketing people built the food pyramid, right?
00:00:19.700
There's this revolving door of people who are working for chemical and food corporations
00:00:24.480
and then going to serve in government to kind of uphold their interests.
00:00:28.120
Tell me what you know about the tobacco company's purchase of the food industry.
00:00:47.700
So I've been dragged kicking and screaming into the issue of nutrition, I would say.
00:00:54.000
And some of that's for personal reasons and some of it is for intellectual reasons, let's say.
00:01:02.400
I had reason in my own family to look at nutrition very carefully because it turned out that my daughter,
00:01:08.040
who had a very serious illness, Michaela, was reactive to a very large range of foods.
00:01:15.760
And that was rather a shock to discover, you might say.
00:01:20.940
And I've been experimenting with diet for quite a long time in a radical way, far more radically than I like.
00:01:28.560
That's the first thing and that I would have ever expected to do.
00:01:31.400
And that's had some pretty positive consequences.
00:01:34.360
And I've heard from many thousands of people positive tales about the consequence of their shift in diet.
00:01:44.220
And I've interviewed people like Chris Palmer, who's a psychiatrist at Harvard,
00:01:48.180
who's been using dietary manipulations to treat intractable psychological disorders.
00:01:55.120
And I know that people are fat and diabetic at rates that are criminal.
00:02:00.320
And so even though this isn't something I ever hoped I would be interested in, even that's become necessary.
00:02:07.900
Now, I went to Washington a while back at the invitation of Ron Johnson to partake in a hearing there.
00:02:15.880
And I met Vani Hari at that roundtable, at that discussion.
00:02:27.360
And she has a large following and is very interested in the pathologization of the American food system.
00:02:34.780
And for personal reasons, as well as professional reasons, let's say,
00:02:39.100
some of which are akin to the issues that my daughter faced.
00:02:44.040
And so she came in today and we had a chance to talk about, well, the hearing that we participated in jointly.
00:02:53.200
And then we talked about her career, how she moved from consultant to food activist and rekindled that more recently at this hearing.
00:03:05.320
And we walked through a discussion of the major problems that beset the American family, let's say, especially children.
00:03:16.340
Children and mothers, I would say, probably most are most effective, although men are not far behind for obvious reasons.
00:03:23.600
Made a chance to walk through all that and to start to puzzle out, well, the nature of the problem.
00:03:29.800
Tremendous rise in obesity, tremendous rise in diabetes, there's catastrophic consequences of the transformation of our food supply.
00:03:40.140
And we talked about that and we talked about what might be done about it.
00:03:43.960
And especially given the radical transformations that are upcoming in the new Trump administration.
00:03:49.940
And it's surprising synergy with this Make America Healthy Again movement.
00:03:56.180
So, if you don't want to be fat and stupid and diabetic, this is not a bad podcast to listen to.
00:04:08.420
So, why don't you talk about that event a bit and how you got invited and what you thought of it and why you were there.
00:04:18.720
So, you know, I've been a food activist for many years, for over 10 years.
00:04:25.160
And I have been wanting to hold American food companies accountable for using ingredients that are banned or heavily regulated in other countries for a long time.
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I think it's immoral that an American food company can serve a better, safer version of their product for another country and not their own citizens.
00:04:58.100
And how, when they find out they can make a product that's safe, they don't do it for all of their customers.
00:05:06.860
And so, I've been working on this issue for a long time through petitions, through campaigns to get food companies to change because government regulators have been asleep at the wheel.
00:05:20.380
They haven't held these food companies to change because they haven't held these food companies accountable.
00:05:23.920
The conflicts of interest are riddled in the government that prevent them from enacting anything that would be helpful to safeguard ourselves from these chemicals.
00:05:36.000
And so, when I was invited to be part of the Senate roundtable with Senator Ron Johnson, at first I said no, actually, because for many years I've been off the scene.
00:05:51.820
I haven't been holding the food companies accountable in that big, bold way because I became a mom.
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I started a food company to change the food industry from within.
00:06:02.560
I took kind of a backseat to this activist role because you could say my nurturing phase of my life became more important to safeguard my kids.
00:06:15.280
And when I was an activist and I hit the national level and the national stage, I was attacked.
00:06:21.860
I was attacked by the media. I was attacked by paid-for scientists. I was attacked by, quote-unquote, independent experts who were actually getting paid by the food industry.
00:06:33.960
And to the point where I had to have security when I went to go speak at universities.
00:06:39.520
I had people drive by my house. I had, you know, death threats, rape threats online.
00:06:45.500
So that work going up against a trillion-dollar industry kind of took a backseat when I became a mom.
00:06:58.340
And so earlier this year, I was called upon to be part of this new kind of campaign to hold Big Food accountable.
00:07:10.380
And my friend, Jason Karp, who was also at the Senate hearing, called me and says,
00:07:15.620
Bonnie, this is something I really want to do. Let's get together and figure this out.
00:07:19.500
And then we got together with Callie Means as well.
00:07:29.360
And I realized that we really have an opportunity at this point in time that I never thought was possible in my entire career with the emergence of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. taking these issues at the national level.
00:07:46.140
It wasn't anything that you'd predict in relationship to Trump.
00:07:53.940
And, you know, for so much of my life, I was jaded about politics.
00:07:58.540
I, you know, I was a Democrat delegate for President Obama in 2008 and 2012.
00:08:09.600
I thought he was going to be the savior of our world.
00:08:13.080
And when he got into office, I quickly realized that special interests, lobbyists, corporations were controlling him and controlling the message and controlling what he could get done.
00:08:24.260
And then the two-party system itself allowed him not to get much done.
00:08:29.480
Yeah, well, it's not obvious how much power the president actually has, right?
00:08:34.440
Because the system is very complex and there's weird things wrong with it that aren't obvious at all until you understand them.
00:08:42.540
You know, like congressmen, this is something that just stunned me when I found it out.
00:08:47.760
Congressmen spend about 28 hours a week fundraising.
00:08:52.660
So they have these ratty offices in the outskirts of D.C.
00:09:01.240
So they're spending—and if they don't do that, they're not funded by their parties.
00:09:05.460
And then they spend a bunch of time campaigning because they have to be elected every two years.
00:09:11.220
It's like they don't have any time to do their job.
00:09:20.400
And, of course, the president's term is limited sometimes to four years.
00:09:26.020
And four years, you know, it takes two years just to figure out how to do a complicated job.
00:09:32.020
So there's a lot of things that have gone sideways.
00:09:36.180
So let's go into this—your past as a food activist.
00:09:46.460
You could say it happened by accident because I was so wounded by the truth about the food industry when I was finding it out.
00:09:57.960
Like, you know, as a child, I grew up with two immigrant Indian parents who came to the United States.
00:10:03.440
And they were so trusting of the American food supply and the American way of life that my dad introduced my mom to a McDonald's hamburger.
00:10:13.060
It was the first thing he introduced her to when they had an arranged marriage and came back to the United States and said,
00:10:16.960
if we're going to live in America, we're going to eat like Americans.
00:10:19.760
And they lived in a very poverty-struck environment in India where it was hard to get food and hard for people to eat.
00:10:29.800
And so it suddenly became so easy, and it was cheap, and it was readily available to the point where, you know,
00:10:37.040
my parents thought it was great that you could go and get fast food very quick.
00:10:41.120
And they would give a free meal to you if you colored a drawing on Mother's Day and Father's Day.
00:10:46.540
I mean, I was there at McDonald's doing that every holiday so I could get the free meal.
00:10:51.560
And as a result, I had such terrible health issues, me and my brother.
00:10:57.640
I mean, in and out of doctor's offices on prescription drugs nonstop throughout my childhood.
00:11:09.280
Everything from three different medications to control my asthma, Singular, Adver, Aburrol.
00:11:17.860
Then to just control the situation when it would flare up, I'd be on prednisone.
00:11:21.880
I'd be on antibiotics three or four times a year.
00:11:25.900
Then there was the eczema medications, the costacorduroid on my, you know, the cream.
00:11:32.260
You know, I mean, all of the things that they had to deploy to just make me feel normal, right?
00:11:38.880
And I look back at my childhood, and I was walking around like a zombie.
00:11:46.020
I mean, I didn't feel motivated to go to school.
00:11:52.360
Even though I had these two immigrant Indian parents that put a lot of emphasis on my academics because of where they were.
00:12:07.380
So I think that's where I ended up going, where I went.
00:12:09.920
But I know I could have done so much better in my early career, in my early life as a student, as a young person, if I had not been subjected to that food.
00:12:25.880
And what made you determine or discover that your health problems as a child were food related?
00:12:35.820
I was working for a big six consulting firm called Accenture.
00:12:43.200
I was in this situation, again, where I'm outsourcing my food to the corporation this time instead of to America, right?
00:12:49.460
And it's nonstop wine and dine dinners, five-course meals.
00:12:59.760
I just, you know, they would bring in droves of food, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so that you would bill more hours to the client.
00:13:18.080
And when I went to the doctor the first time, the doctor said, oh, there's nothing wrong with you.
00:13:24.680
And thankfully, my parents said, you know, something doesn't seem right.
00:13:27.460
You need to probably go see your regular doctor in the morning.
00:13:29.580
And when I did, he was like, you have appendicitis.
00:13:32.940
You need to have an emergency appendectomy right now.
00:13:37.460
And at that point, I went to see the surgeon, had my organ taken out of my body.
00:13:43.160
And this whole time, the doctors are saying to me, nobody needs their appendix.
00:13:56.320
And something doesn't seem right, that God would give you an organ that you don't need, first of all.
00:14:01.580
Second of all, I started to question, first of all, why a young 22-year-old is in the hospital with this type of surgery.
00:14:17.540
And it was that moment that I decided to take my health seriously.
00:14:25.080
And the first thing I did was research why you get appendicitis.
00:14:29.560
And I found out the reason you get appendicitis is because your body's inflamed and your digestive system has become inflamed.
00:14:35.780
And actually, your appendix is there for a reason.
00:14:37.600
It actually populates your gut with good bacteria.
00:14:42.640
And so, I started to discover all these things about my body and about the human body that I couldn't stop learning about.
00:14:53.320
So, I was a, I have a bachelor of science in computer science.
00:15:07.100
I was number one in state three years in a row.
00:15:15.460
Because it's hard to get hired as a consultant.
00:15:18.420
But I think my debate skills are probably what allowed me to do that.
00:15:27.120
We had to go to the library and we had to look at the microfiche and carry these big tubs of evidence around and photocopy evidence to take.
00:15:34.740
And you'd have to learn both sides of the argument, affirmative and negative.
00:15:37.260
So, you learned to see the world in a whole view through these topics and debate.
00:15:43.760
And so, one year's topic, what happened to be healthcare when I was in high school, I never applied anything I learned to it to my own body.
00:15:51.480
And so, I started to check out these big books on nutrition.
00:15:55.240
And one of these early books that I read was called Conscious Eating.
00:16:00.140
And in there, he talked about how the majority of foods in the grocery store shelves are dead.
00:16:05.340
And I was like, that's how I felt most of my life is dead.
00:16:08.260
You mean like the whole center of the grocery store?
00:16:13.840
I don't think I ever recovered from reading about the food pyramid.
00:16:23.880
That it was a marketing lie from beginning to end.
00:16:30.620
You know, when you first started talking, I thought, you know, I have qualms about activism as an entity.
00:16:38.760
And there's a lot of, like, nutrition is such a complicated topic.
00:16:43.760
It's like, there's so many ways this can go wrong.
00:16:55.940
You know, you see on, if you go on X now, you see these videos of people on the beach in the 1960s.
00:17:03.420
But regardless of that, like, when I was a kid, there was, like, one kid who was plump in our class.
00:17:11.600
And, like, he would be well within the normal range now.
00:17:15.800
And so something, yeah, I went home to my hometown, Fairview, last Christmas.
00:17:23.120
And I went to see a hockey game, 17-year-old hockey players, you know.
00:17:32.160
And after the game, the guys invited me into the dressing room to talk because they knew me and knew who I was.
00:17:41.720
And so I went in and I saw three or four of them without shirts on.
00:17:45.000
And I thought, Jesus Christ, you guys, you look like 45-year-old men, you know, like breasts, guts.
00:17:52.220
It's like no one that I knew looked like that when I was 17, certainly not the bloody hockey players.
00:17:58.160
And I thought, man, if the hockey players look like that, what do the rest of the kids look like?
00:18:05.880
Okay, so you suffered from all sorts of health complications when you were a kid and then a young adult.
00:18:10.840
So that's very reminiscent of my daughter, by the way, as you know.
00:18:13.940
And you started preusing the scientific literature.
00:18:17.340
You had a little bit of background in that because of your preparation as a debater.
00:18:22.420
And so you had to teach yourself at least to some degree to think like a scientist, which is to contrast the evidence, to learn to read the journals as well, which is not a simple matter.
00:18:36.300
And so, and then you had this bout with appendicitis.
00:18:42.360
So, you know, I continued working on in the corporate world.
00:18:45.640
And I remember having this really terrible boss.
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So bad that I started not being able to sleep at night.
00:19:53.320
I started to get very fearful of, you know, just going to work, and it was becoming an issue.
00:20:00.580
He was very aggressive, and in the way he not only managed his employees, but treated me in general.
00:20:11.660
You know, it was very misogynistic, if you will, and so I started to feel like kind of this situation where I suddenly just stopped sleeping.
00:20:25.740
So I went to the doctor, and I just remember this moment because I sat in her, you know, she was my internist, and I sat on the table, and I told her, I was like, you know, I just can't sleep.
00:20:35.800
I have a lot of stress at work, and she just asked me, like, kind of what's happening, and she goes, oh, okay, this is what you need.
00:20:41.140
You need Ambien, you need Xanax, and you need, starts with a C, it's an antidepressant, starts with a C, I can't remember the name of it.
00:20:53.280
But, and I said, wait a minute, like, really, like these, you want me to take these three drugs?
00:21:00.660
And I was so trusting of my doctor and so trusting of the medical system that I took those drugs to get through that time period when she should have just been saying, hey, Vani, why don't you quit your job?
00:21:21.680
You don't need to take this mistreatment from this dude because you're making a big paycheck.
00:21:28.860
But this is kind of where I think the rubber meets the road for me when I was going through that period because that's really where my—
00:21:43.540
And it was around that time where I said, I don't need to be on these drugs.
00:21:51.320
They were, first of all, making me completely numb and crazy, right?
00:21:55.860
I wasn't—I suddenly was laying on the couch all day not doing anything, right?
00:22:01.420
And it was that moment that I just said, you know, these drugs aren't for me.
00:22:04.760
I need to get off these drugs, but I don't know how to do it.
00:22:06.980
I found an integrative psychiatrist that also practices acupuncture, and she helped me get off of it.
00:22:15.060
And I started learning about natural foods, and I started learning about real food.
00:22:20.660
And I started learning about food in a way that I had never known before in terms of—
00:22:28.980
And I started looking at ingredient labels of things that I had been eating most of my life,
00:22:35.620
and I became horrified because I realized that they were man-made chemicals invented for one sole purpose,
00:22:44.700
which was to improve the bottom line of the food industry, not improve my health.
00:22:50.160
And so I was eating this, like, science experiment.
00:22:56.040
And I had gained the weight and ended up in the hospital with appendicitis,
00:22:59.060
but also didn't even have any other mechanism to get through a stressful time.
00:23:05.580
The only option I was given from my doctor was,
00:23:08.580
here you go is, you know, all of these different, you know, brain-altering medications.
00:23:15.480
And it wasn't until I made the connection that you can actually get through stressful times
00:23:21.440
through meditation, through sleeping well, through, you know, eating well,
00:23:26.760
from getting off of processed foods that actually make it very hard to think clearly.
00:23:32.620
And as soon as I changed my diet from a processed food diet to a real food diet,
00:23:39.120
things from earth—basic meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds—
00:23:52.340
I started to look completely different to the point where my friends and my family around me
00:23:58.420
couldn't believe the remarkable transformation to the point where one of my aunts joked with one of my cousins,
00:24:19.120
Of, oh, I thought this was healthy and this isn't.
00:24:21.980
You know, and there were so many time periods where, you know,
00:24:24.520
I wouldn't eat a McDonald's hamburger anymore, but I'd go to Subway
00:24:31.140
And then I found out Subway's bread had close to 50 ingredients,
00:24:34.880
an ingredient in there called azodicarbonamide that you find in yoga mats and shoe rubber,
00:24:43.920
You know, they don't use it in Singapore and Europe and Australia and everywhere else,
00:24:50.060
Like, what is this chemical doing in our bread?
00:24:54.120
I mean, if—I mean, look, Europe is very over-regulated, right?
00:25:00.360
And America is less so, and it's much more competitive.
00:25:04.160
And so excess regulation can really be a problem.
00:25:06.660
And now I know that has to be differentiated, and I'm not taking issue with the case that
00:25:12.920
It's like, if they're selling these products in Europe and in Canada, and they're free of,
00:25:19.340
what would you say, chemicals that people have—whose utility people have questioned
00:25:24.440
elsewhere, why do they continue to do it in the U.S.?
00:25:28.640
Like, what difference does it make, fundamentally?
00:25:31.160
Fundamentally, for the food companies, it makes them more money because it's cheaper
00:25:35.020
to use a chemical additive made from petroleum or coal tar or some other substance than to
00:25:41.680
And the reason why it's cheaper for them to do that is because it doesn't break down
00:25:50.500
I mean, it's economics because it allows them to keep that bread there longer at every subway
00:25:57.920
It allows them to have that uniformity of that product as well, which is what fast food
00:26:03.660
tends to do, which is you want that same product every single time, and you want it to taste
00:26:08.840
the same every single time, no matter who's making it.
00:26:11.760
Well, and there's also utility in producing food that doesn't spoil, as long as you
00:26:15.240
don't poison it, because spoiled food is also poisonous.
00:26:20.100
Like, I've had a lot of mixed feelings about all of this because, as you pointed out too,
00:26:25.380
when your parents immigrated to the U.S., there was the immense advantage of free and
00:26:30.400
abundant calories—or cheap and abundant calories.
00:26:37.760
Now, not starving and becoming obese and diabetic, well, that's not an optimal solution.
00:26:45.520
I mean, I was shocked 25 years ago when I drove across the U.S., especially in the northern
00:26:53.820
God, you know, we'd go into towns where—and into little shops when we were driving across—where
00:26:59.420
Tammy would be the smallest person by a lot, including the nine-year-olds, you know?
00:27:06.040
And so I could tell at that point that something was off, and it's got much worse since then.
00:27:12.280
But these problems are so complicated because it is necessary for the fast food companies
00:27:18.080
to produce something approximating a uniform product and to work against spoilage.
00:27:24.040
And there is the complex problem of over-regulation that plagues the Europeans, that's for sure.
00:27:29.740
And—but when I look at it, you know, I try to look at the most important data first.
00:27:36.960
So when I look at the climate change problem, for example, I think the planet is 20% greener
00:27:48.760
It's like, no, semi-arid areas have got much greener.
00:27:54.100
That's the end of the argument, as far as I'm concerned.
00:27:56.380
And then with the health thing, it's like, well, everybody's fat and diabetic.
00:28:02.900
You know, for example, this is a terrible thing.
00:28:05.360
So, you know, when they measure your blood sugar, they adjust the blood sugar norms by age.
00:28:12.080
Well, this is a terrible thing because it means that when you're 40 and you get your blood
00:28:23.380
Right, because you shouldn't age norm that particular measurement.
00:28:29.720
And if you, and you undoubtedly do know, insulin resistance is a disaster and too much sugar
00:28:46.860
And then, you know, I came to all this kicking and screaming to some degree because I always
00:28:51.600
thought that people who were concerned about food, over-concerned about it, were neurotic
00:28:56.540
and really needed to find something better to do.
00:28:59.940
But when I saw the rising rates of diabetes and obesity, and then also learned about the
00:29:11.340
This is a complete bloody catastrophe and a real, like a rat's nest and a Pandora's box.
00:29:17.000
And well, you found that out when you were in your 20s.
00:29:21.160
Like, what did you just, you changed your diet and then that's a personal thing.
00:29:27.040
And so then I couldn't shut up about everything that I was learning.
00:29:34.620
So I started a blog and I wanted to call it eathealthyliveforever.com.
00:29:40.560
And my husband, who's the tech geek in the family, thought that was a terrible name.
00:29:44.080
And so he said, he found on auction a few minutes later, Food Babe for $10.
00:29:50.600
And at first I didn't want to call it Food Babe because it felt kind of foreign.
00:29:54.300
Like, I didn't feel like a Food Babe for most of my life.
00:29:58.000
But I said, you know, why don't we teach people to become a Food Babe?
00:30:06.300
Because Food Babe has the, it's a, what would you say?
00:30:15.400
But it makes people uncomfortable in some settings, which I find so interesting.
00:30:19.300
And maybe you can comment on that because it's really interesting that it makes people uncomfortable.
00:30:25.380
Like Senator Ron Johnson, for example, like when he announced, you know, that I was about to give my testimony.
00:30:30.840
He's like, I didn't come up with the name Food Babe, right?
00:30:33.260
He just, he didn't want to take responsibility for it.
00:30:37.820
Well, I think it has the advantage of popular appeal and the disadvantage that it isn't a
00:30:44.380
And so those are competing advantages and disadvantages.
00:30:49.920
And there's no sense talking unless people are listening.
00:30:52.760
And of course, that's always the marketing conundrum.
00:30:54.820
So, you know, I don't have anything more to say about it than that.
00:31:13.080
And I gave up television to find time to blog outside work.
00:31:22.040
You know, for everybody watching and listening, you know, if you're looking for time to do
00:31:26.000
something that you want to do, you can always give up something that's not particularly
00:31:31.900
And that giving up TV, that was probably good for you too.
00:31:40.600
And I started to just have this insatiable curiosity about all the things that I was eating
00:31:46.340
and then looking at the ingredients and posting the ingredients for people to see what they
00:31:52.040
And my friends and my family, like my mom and my few friends that wanted to read my blog
00:31:55.660
at the time, but it started to reach a wider community.
00:31:59.560
And I realized there's other people out there looking for this information on what they were
00:32:06.940
And it was probably when I wrote the article, Chemical Filet or Chick-fil-A that went viral
00:32:13.980
and Chick-fil-A invited me to their headquarters to consult on their menu changes and ingredient
00:32:31.920
They were really smart to try to make friends with me.
00:32:37.720
More food industry executives should hear that message because the reason why Kellogg's
00:32:45.480
is suffering so bad right now is because they wouldn't let us in, right?
00:32:49.440
We just recently went to their headquarters with over 400,000 signatures to get artificial
00:32:54.480
food dyes and a preservative called BHT that's linked to cancer out of their cereals.
00:33:02.280
They wouldn't even sit down with us to take the petitions in person.
00:33:12.980
And now Fruit Loops is down 54% in the last 12 weeks on grocery store shelves.
00:33:25.760
I knew that was not a good food when I was like four.
00:33:28.840
I'd like, so Fruit Loops were fine, but really?
00:33:32.220
The reason Fruit Loops is such a good example, they already make other cereals without these
00:33:42.100
Canada, Australia, Europe, India, you know, everywhere almost.
00:33:49.080
And so Kellogg's is one example of a larger problem.
00:33:52.660
Are you concerned with Fruit Loops, for example?
00:33:54.140
Like, are you concerned about the fact that it's basically sugar?
00:34:02.040
I'm concerned, number one, I think the main concern I have with Fruit Loops is I don't
00:34:13.560
But what is it about Fruit Loops, particularly, that if you have to focus on what you think
00:34:21.480
You talked about the chemicals, but it's also a highly processed carbohydrate.
00:34:30.940
And the biggest profit generator for Fruit Loops is actually in U.S. schools, in schools.
00:34:42.420
So it's being sold to schools and served for breakfast to our little children.
00:34:46.780
And then it has chemicals in it that affect their brains.
00:34:51.500
In Europe, you have a cigarette-type warning label on any product that has artificial food
00:34:56.100
dyes that warns parents that says may cause adverse effects on activity and attention in
00:35:00.600
In Europe, parents get to know, have full informed consent on a product.
00:35:09.060
We allow our companies to just put these poisons in our food when they've already reformulated
00:35:16.020
And then on top of it, these carcinogens are made from petroleum and-
00:35:23.240
And just the way that they are produced create all kinds of carcinogens and other problems,
00:35:28.920
immune response, allergies, other things in the human body, eczema.
00:35:32.500
So one of the things that I first did when I went through my transformation is I suddenly
00:35:41.680
And just that alone helped me transition to a better, cleaner, healthier life because
00:35:47.560
the products that didn't contain artificial food dyes were few and none, right, at the
00:35:52.660
Now, there's a whole other industry being created without a lot of these chemicals, which
00:35:58.280
You know, one being my company, Truvani, where we're creating products that are processed.
00:36:03.340
Like our bar is processed, but it's made with ingredients you would find in your own kitchen.
00:36:10.880
And that's the kind of food we should be consuming and have available to the public to eat, not
00:36:18.500
food that is made with poisonous carcinogens that make, for example, like let's take yellow
00:36:28.020
Yellow number six, there's a new study that just came out.
00:36:37.400
They're terrible, but I grew up on them and so many children eat them.
00:36:45.900
They're a pretty sketchy item as well, all things considered.
00:36:53.040
You know, this is what kids are getting after their soccer match.
00:36:55.580
This is what is happening out there that's available whenever you go to a show or anywhere
00:37:01.740
I mean, you go through the airport, that's what's available.
00:37:04.300
And if these are riddled with these carcinogens like yellow six, for example, that they just
00:37:17.440
Like, this is horrifying what it's doing to animals in animal studies, but we allow ourselves
00:37:31.800
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Diving into the scientific literature in relationship to nutrition is, it's just a rat's nest.
00:38:51.340
I mean, any clinical studies are, clinical studies are impossible, right?
00:38:55.680
I'm amazed that anyone ever does a clinical study on anything because it's so hard.
00:39:00.460
And then on the nutrition side, you have the problem of an immense number of variables,
00:39:06.880
So most of the studies that you read that the press publicizes pick one variable among a
00:39:14.760
thousand and make the claim based on a correlation that, you know, X causes Y and the probability
00:39:21.740
of that is zero most of the time as far as I'm concerned, which is why there's been so
00:39:27.660
How do you know that you're a bit, how do you know that you have any ability even to
00:39:34.520
Like, I mean, I understand your claim and your claim is that, at least in part, that European
00:39:41.820
countries, Canada even, have taken a different approach to the regulation of extraneous chemicals,
00:39:47.980
colorings, for example, in food, and the U.S. is lagging behind that.
00:39:52.180
And that's, that's, that's an interpretation, but that's predicated on the idea that the
00:39:56.760
Europeans know more about what they're doing than, than Americans do.
00:40:01.620
Now, their obesity rates are quite markedly lower in Europe, which is very interesting,
00:40:06.320
I mean, it's not obvious why either, because that's even true in places like Italy, where
00:40:13.360
And so it's, it's, it's, it's not easy to figure out exactly what's going on.
00:40:19.480
And so it's possible that the differences in food constituents are contributing to that.
00:40:24.460
How the hell you'd ever parse that out is beyond me.
00:40:26.980
But you seem relatively confident in your ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.
00:40:34.860
It is really hard, but I don't think nutrition has to be rocket science either.
00:40:40.760
Like, I don't think, I think the only people that have made it difficult to understand or
00:40:45.440
calculate in a way has been the food scientists themselves that have created these chemicals
00:40:50.720
using the same technology as tobacco companies.
00:40:54.400
You know, RJ, R. Reynolds, and Philip Morris bought up all the food companies in the early.
00:41:02.360
So we should go into that a little bit too, because that, that's a fact that I've only
00:41:06.140
stumbled on, I don't know, maybe it was only since that Senate hearing, you know?
00:41:20.320
And so the food pyramid catastrophe is the fact that marketing people built the food pyramid,
00:41:29.520
And their own scientists warned them, their own consultants, that they would produce an
00:41:39.560
And I guess it was out of that, I hope I have this right, that subsidies that made corn syrup
00:41:46.780
And I suppose that had the advantage of cheap calories, but like everything and its dog has
00:41:55.440
I mean, it's a basic question to ask, why does the Coca-Cola served here have high fructose
00:42:02.280
corn syrup made from genetically engineered corn here in the United States, but in other
00:42:11.160
Like we have a seriously different set of ingredients and chemicals that we are being exposed to than
00:42:21.060
So why do you trust the Europeans more than the Americans on that front?
00:42:25.340
Because they're using more natural ingredients, things that came from the earth.
00:42:28.500
And I'm using my own, again, going back to this idea that it doesn't need to be rocket
00:42:34.240
The food scientists have made our life complicated because all you have to do is go back to real
00:42:39.620
Like intuitive eating and going back to like what you would find in a farmer's market is
00:42:46.100
literally the first step to unleashing your grips on this industry that has harmed our
00:42:53.940
Well, so one of the things that I've thought through with regards to this carnivore diet
00:42:58.220
that my daughter and my wife have been instrumental in pursuing is that it radically simplifies the
00:43:08.400
I mean, and I'm trying to think just strictly as a scientist in that regard, if you have
00:43:14.880
a chronic illness or a set of chronic illnesses and the etiology is unspecified, which is generally
00:43:20.900
the case for chronic illnesses, the first thing you might want to do is simplify the landscape,
00:43:27.040
Now, you can't simplify it more than with a meat-only diet or a beef-only diet even.
00:43:31.860
That's the simplest you can possibly make it because you can live on beef almost indefinitely.
00:43:43.500
Although they don't eat beef, but, you know, they eat meat and fat fundamentally, and they
00:43:52.640
And so that way you eliminate, well, a plethora of potential food-related symptoms, and then
00:44:05.800
And if it works, well, then you can experiment slowly to see if there are particular things
00:44:12.480
Or that—because what we've seen with the carnivore diet, you know, they say the plural
00:44:17.960
of anecdote isn't data, which is a cliche I really hate because the plural of anecdote
00:44:24.520
If, you know, a thousand people tell you something, it's like, maybe, maybe we can test it and
00:44:36.380
But it's the beginnings of the process of investigation.
00:44:41.680
Well, it's clear to me that the carnivore diet radically reduces obesity.
00:44:48.320
I mean, I had a friend who recently started it.
00:44:50.680
Again, this is an anecdote, but I've seen this with many, many people.
00:45:02.220
You know, because obviously that wasn't all fat.
00:45:05.260
I don't think it's even metabolically possible to do that.
00:45:12.480
Reduction in fluid from inflammation, maybe, at least to some degree.
00:45:16.440
But the typical response that I've been told by people is that people seem to lose about
00:45:23.540
seven pounds a month, which is still, that's a lot, man.
00:45:39.600
You go back to real food without added chemicals.
00:45:42.200
Well, people say you eat around the edges of the supermarket.
00:45:52.260
And, you know, I think what has been so disturbing about the American food supply is
00:46:00.740
it's been engineered to get us to eat more than we should.
00:46:06.200
So this is where we're going to talk about the tobacco companies.
00:46:10.440
So tell me what you know about the tobacco company's purchase of the food industry.
00:46:16.840
And like, just lay that out because I don't really understand.
00:46:20.460
So RJR Reynolds and Philip Morris bought up General Foods and Kraft back in the day.
00:46:28.420
And what they did was they said, we have an opportunity now to get into the food business
00:46:34.500
because there was a decrease in the use of tobacco because of the cigarette type warning
00:46:39.300
labels, you know, the warning labels that they enacted.
00:46:41.560
And people became clear on you shouldn't really smoke tobacco.
00:46:45.400
And so they were looking for another opportunity to diversify their portfolio.
00:46:51.520
And so they said, well, we have all of this amazing research that we've used to hook people
00:46:59.760
Well, we can use the same research and the same scientists to do the same thing to food.
00:47:04.260
And we're going to buy the flavoring companies too, right?
00:47:16.820
So it's easy to verify whether or not the tobacco companies bought the food companies,
00:47:23.320
But the next parts of it, like, why do you think that's true?
00:47:27.100
Like, I understand that they bought the food companies.
00:47:30.060
And the fact that they were tobacco companies and they bought the food companies is suspicious,
00:47:36.280
But then to say after that, that they consciously plan to use their scientists to addict people
00:47:44.820
to fast food, let's say, or processed food, that's a different thing.
00:47:52.520
Well, I mean, PepsiCo has a robot that has mimicked real human taste buds that they use for testing.
00:48:01.860
And this kind of information is getting out now because we have a teenager in Pennsylvania
00:48:08.520
He's 16 years old, has non-alcoholic fatty liver disease-
00:48:15.800
And he is suing 11 of the top food companies in America for his ailments, saying that the
00:48:21.840
ultra-processed food diet that he was on made him that way because it was addictive in nature.
00:48:27.540
And so as part of that lawsuit, they've come out with this evidence, right?
00:48:32.900
And more is going to be discovered in Discovery, which I'm so excited about because when I read
00:48:37.520
the lawsuit, it was over, I don't know, 150 pages or something.
00:48:41.100
And when I read it, it was like a horror movie because it showed, even though it was in the
00:48:47.220
exact pictures of what kind of technology they used to addict our taste buds and our senses to
00:48:54.320
food, they showed the types of technology and the brain nodes that they actually attach
00:49:03.300
Yeah, well, people understand the opening system pretty well now.
00:49:07.780
But how would you distinguish delicious and easy from addictive, right?
00:49:14.360
Because, look, it's not surprising that food companies would attempt, of course, they're
00:49:32.100
If you're not killing these people, then who is?
00:49:37.560
The only investigating I'm doing these days is who shit their pants.
00:49:51.560
Now, that's the thing, is that are they competing to please you or are they competing to addict
00:49:57.480
And then the next question is, why are those different?
00:50:00.880
Like, because the hallmark of addiction is maximization of short-term pleasure.
00:50:06.160
Now, it becomes pathological when the maximization of short-term pleasure interferes with medium
00:50:20.720
The line between addictive and pleasurable is, that's a thin line.
00:50:25.300
And so if I'm a food company and I want to make a product that's competitive, I'm going
00:50:28.760
to try to make it as delicious as possible and as easy.
00:50:34.660
So that's where the moral dilemma comes in, right?
00:50:38.780
Well, and the criminal dilemma for that matter.
00:50:42.040
I mean, when we have 38% of preteens ages 12 to 18 now being pre-diabetic when it used
00:50:57.180
We have to look at what's happening in the food supply.
00:51:00.100
We have to hold someone accountable for it or create some type of regulation or change
00:51:06.080
that would prevent this from continuing to go down in the dumps, which is where we're
00:51:10.500
headed because right now we're last when it comes to 60 other kids.
00:51:16.920
You know, because one of the things that I think has happened too is that, and I don't
00:51:20.840
know how to make heads or tails out of this, is that obviously what's happened is that
00:51:25.680
food preparation has been taken out of the home and transferred to companies.
00:51:30.740
Now, the advantage of that is that it's fast and cheap.
00:51:37.720
I mean, when people were preparing, this would be particularly true of your home country,
00:51:42.160
I mean, how many hours a day would women be spending preparing Indian food in the traditional
00:51:47.420
way, like in a village, like all day, right, right, all day, 100% of the time now, and they
00:51:54.360
were using a variety of different spices and a variety of different fermentation techniques.
00:52:00.360
Like I know that one of the reasons that modern bread isn't as edible as traditional bread
00:52:05.400
is because we use fast rising yeast, which speeds things up, which is a plus because we
00:52:10.600
like time, but it also, it's less effective in breaking down the proteins, and so they're
00:52:19.380
I mean, all these traditional ways of making food were time-tested.
00:52:25.380
Now, we've substituted ease and we've substituted industrial ease for home food preparation.
00:52:32.700
Now, the upside of that is, well, that's four hours a day, five hours a day that are freed
00:52:39.060
So then why go after the companies and why not go after the home and say like, because
00:52:46.320
if you're going to solve it, you need to solve the crux of the problem.
00:52:50.040
And I mean, you can say that I'm doing both in a way because I'm an activist on one side,
00:52:54.540
but I also am a cookbook writer on the other, right?
00:52:56.540
I've written two cookbooks where I'm teaching people how to make things faster with real food
00:53:03.760
And so, but the problem is the way our nutritional science gets divvied to the public and decimated
00:53:12.800
to the public, it's riddled with conflicts of interest.
00:53:17.540
It creates a situation where, for example, you know, you have these studies that come
00:53:22.220
out and they say, you know, candy is actually makes kid athletes better at their sports.
00:53:28.820
You know, this was a headline that went out, right?
00:53:31.320
And it was a study funded by Mars and, you know, the company who makes M&Ms and the other
00:53:39.480
Well, these studies come out, not because they, like, we're going to believe them and we're
00:53:45.620
going to call out the bullshit for them, but it makes it so that when a mother is in the
00:53:52.180
line at a grocery store and their child is tugging at their skirt, grabbing those M&Ms and wanting
00:54:00.180
to put them in the cart, they say, oh, it's really not that bad, right?
00:54:05.060
It makes that situation so that they feel okay doing it.
00:54:11.880
And that's how probably 90% of the information that gets sent out to the American public through
00:54:19.360
media, through marketing, through magazines, through wherever we're listening, TV is happening
00:54:27.440
The real information about how our food is full of chemicals and has been designed to make
00:54:36.820
And so when you make such an interesting argument, and I love that you've delved deep into the
00:54:42.020
psychology behind this, because it is true that the food companies want to make their food
00:54:47.640
Yeah, well, and I would say they've succeeded as well.
00:54:50.260
Oh, I mean, of course, because, but is it an unfair advantage to an American, to a human being,
00:54:59.900
that a company can have that kind of technology, a robot that has taste buds?
00:55:07.240
Well, you can say the same thing about social media.
00:55:11.080
Well, you have industry-sized enterprises focusing on maximizing short-term pleasure for commercial
00:55:21.680
And that is, it is like, it is a hard thing for the average family to compete with.
00:55:30.380
We can't, we don't even stand a chance up against that science because they're creating
00:55:37.380
You know, the reason why nature is so important for a child to eat at a very young age and allows
00:55:45.140
them to become a less picky child is because, take a blueberry, sometimes they're mealy,
00:55:50.180
sometimes they're hard, sometimes they're juicy, sometimes they're plump, sometimes they're
00:55:55.200
It's different every time you have a blueberry.
00:55:58.280
Whereas if you go and get a blueberry Nutri-Grain bar or some other cereal, it's the exact same
00:56:05.700
And then they're using the one millionth best part of a taste in a flavor component that they
00:56:10.920
call natural flavor on the label, which could mean a thousand different chemicals.
00:56:15.720
And if your kid grows up on that, they're going to be picky and hate real food.
00:56:20.180
And they're going to end up in that 38%, you know, pre-diabetes situation that we have right
00:56:27.360
Whereas if you start your child on blueberries, real blueberries, they're going to have a chance,
00:56:37.840
We have to hold the food companies accountable.
00:56:39.680
We also have to educate the public the truth about the food industry, the truth about nutrition,
00:56:45.040
the truth about real food, what's been done to our food in the last 50 years, how to undo
00:56:49.980
that in your own home and how to get the products out there and how to pick the right products
00:56:54.180
that are using less, you know, chemicals and additives so that you don't expose your family
00:57:00.700
And we're just at this critical phase right now where we have an opportunity like we've
00:57:07.120
never had before because of the national conversation.
00:57:10.620
And I have more hope now that we can actually change the trajectory of where we're headed
00:57:19.880
And it's allowed me now to get back in the game, whereas before, again, I was worried
00:57:25.540
about getting back in the game because I have children now, right?
00:57:27.840
And it was the reason why I wanted to say no to doing the Senate testimony.
00:57:31.500
But I'm so glad I did because now we have created a—it's beautiful because we've created
00:57:38.260
this community of people, this movement of people that not only care about their own health,
00:57:43.960
but they want to hold these companies accountable.
00:57:46.840
They want to spread this message far and fast and wide.
00:57:50.880
And it's taking over social media to the point where it's getting to people that I
00:57:57.760
And that's the piece that I think is so important about the work that I do is I want people to
00:58:04.980
And so when I pick a certain company and I target some individual company for a chemical,
00:58:10.000
it's not necessarily about that chemical or that company.
00:58:12.420
It's about waking people up because of the injustice of what's happened to our food system.
00:58:20.480
What were the consequences for you of the Senate hearing?
00:58:25.120
Well, first of all, after the Senate hearing, I couldn't believe the media, for example.
00:58:32.300
We had the left-leaning mainstream media either ignore us or call us names.
00:58:42.980
Well, you know, there's nothing more corporate friendly than the left-wing media.
00:58:51.400
I don't understand the current political situation at all because 20 years ago, if you stood up
00:58:58.020
against the giant corporations, the left was all over you regardless of who you were.
00:59:03.540
The mere fact that you were standing up against the giant corporations was sufficient to validate
00:59:08.380
you. And now, like, I can't really think of anything that should appeal more to people who
00:59:15.260
are on the left than individuals standing up against gigantic corporations run by, like,
00:59:23.820
Right? But no, that's not—now, obviously, that has to have something to do with advertising.
00:59:28.760
One hundred percent. One hundred percent. Because they didn't even bother to ask for
00:59:33.500
comment or, you know, interview us or anything like that. They just wrote the article. And
00:59:44.880
You know, I used to read it all the time. It was a great magazine. And then something—I
00:59:48.320
think it changed ownership. It did change ownership. And I think that's what did it in.
00:59:54.740
It makes me mad because it was one of the—you know, it was one of the—it was great.
00:59:57.960
—the Christmas gifts that my father-in-law would send to us. And I'm like, great, I can
01:00:04.840
So, you know, that was really disappointing. And it was—
01:00:08.340
Were you surprised that it was Ron Johnson who did this? I mean, this is the other thing
01:00:12.440
that's so weird. It's like, okay, so it's the Republicans and more the traditional
01:00:19.760
The traditional Republicans are calling on food activists to go after the large food
01:00:26.000
companies run by the cigarette companies. It's like, how the hell did we get there?
01:00:29.660
And let me just tell you, the four hours we were there, there was not one political partisan
01:00:38.500
party talking point talked about. It was four hours on how to save humanity. And nobody wanted
01:00:48.920
to cover it. It was insane. I just couldn't believe it. That, like, the mainstream media
01:00:53.260
just completely, you know, ignored us in a way.
01:00:58.960
I mean, and I just—it was like the Twilight Zone. I really couldn't believe it. And I also
01:01:04.500
want to say thank you to Senator Ron Johnson for allowing me to—
01:01:08.920
How did he get involved? Like, why did he do this? Why, like, you know?
01:01:13.200
I mean, I think he cares deeply about what's happened to our health in this country. And
01:01:19.840
he wanted truth tellers to be there at the table telling the truth. And he allowed me
01:01:25.460
to talk about the food companies in an uncensored way that has never been before Congress in
01:01:35.480
Oh, yeah. I mean, and I honestly am so thankful for that because my testimony went so far and so
01:01:44.000
wide. I mean, hundreds of millions of views across so many different platforms. And people were all
01:01:50.640
of a sudden just waking up going, oh, my gosh, I had no idea these chemicals are in American food and
01:01:57.480
not other countries. And why are American companies doing this? And the questioning starts to happen in
01:02:02.620
someone's mind. And they start to question what they're eating. And that's where it starts, right?
01:02:06.480
That's where the change happens. And I do this work because I want people to never get in the
01:02:12.720
position I was in when I was younger. I want to reach them before they get to that point.
01:02:18.220
I don't know if I'm successful or not. I feel like I'm successful in that I get the people that
01:02:23.340
are starting on the verge of being sick or they're looking for change. But I'm really hoping I get to
01:02:27.680
the people that haven't had to go through the trouble that I've been through. And that is what
01:02:35.880
ultimately motivates me to keep my message loud and clear. Because I think where people start to
01:02:45.320
pay attention is sometimes this situation where it's taken from a different point of view. It's not the,
01:02:52.780
oh, you should eat healthy. You should eat more fruits and vegetables. Oh, you should look at
01:02:57.560
your nutrition, what the traditional route of a nutritionist or a registered dietitian would have
01:03:04.000
done, right? But from an activist standpoint, I think it's like everybody wants to hold someone
01:03:09.180
accountable for this mess. There has to be a villain in this, right? And the villain right now is the food
01:03:15.400
industry in a way because, again, they have put profits over people over and over and over again.
01:03:22.920
And now we're in a situation when we look at the chronic disease rates.
01:03:27.820
Hey, everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and
01:03:32.180
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01:03:37.520
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01:04:03.740
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01:04:10.120
watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the
01:04:16.060
brighter future you deserve. We are in a dire situation where we all have to work together,
01:04:24.920
corporations and government, to try to solve this. And that's what I'm so excited about because after
01:04:33.240
that Senate roundtable, it was like an explosion happened with our movement. I don't know if you
01:04:42.380
felt that. I mean, I just felt like it was the turning point in a way. I mean, just having Robert
01:04:49.180
F. Kennedy Jr. sit down with us and hear each one of our testimonies and him say these words to me,
01:04:55.480
and I'll never forget, he said this. He said, if another foreign nation was doing this to us,
01:05:01.400
it would be considered an act of war. When it came down to, you know, American companies using
01:05:08.000
ingredients that are banned or heavily regulated in other countries, not in their own, you know,
01:05:12.360
not, you know, they use a safer version for other countries and a more toxic version here.
01:05:19.240
That is something that just needs to change and fundamentally stop. And so-
01:05:24.300
Have there been companies, I mean, you talked about Chick-fil-A and they worked with you.
01:05:28.560
Have there been companies that have reached out to you other than Chick-fil-A to improve the quality
01:05:36.780
of what they're offering? I mean, I know what's happening with Robbie Starbuck. Now, it's quite
01:05:41.600
frequently the case that when he reaches out to a company now, particularly, they make changes very
01:05:48.500
quickly and adjust their behavior. I mean, he said when I interviewed him, he said that a lot of the
01:05:55.660
executives didn't even really know what their DEI people were pushing fundamentally, which doesn't
01:06:02.460
surprise me in the least because what people don't know about DEI and its philosophical roots
01:06:08.600
could fill many books. And, but they, you know, and one of the things about corporations that's a
01:06:15.740
positive, I mean, there's many things about corporations that are positive, but they do tend to
01:06:20.060
be quite responsive to the public. I mean, corporations that aren't responsive to their
01:06:25.020
customers disappear quickly. And so you'd think there would be a pathway to cooperation on this
01:06:32.280
front. And especially given, it's so weird though, eh? Because obviously the MAGA crowd have decided
01:06:40.060
they're on the make America healthy again side, which is weird, but it happened. And that's half the
01:06:46.500
American population at least. So you'd think there'd be a massive marketing opportunity there. I guess
01:06:52.200
part of the problem is that likely the corporations don't know how to market except through the legacy
01:06:58.840
media. And the legacy media leans left in this weird way that's pro-giant corrupt corporation, which
01:07:06.040
is also impossible to understand. So, you know, how much of it is that they just don't know, that they don't
01:07:12.500
know what to do. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's really interesting. You know, when we took
01:07:17.400
the petitions to Kellogg's headquarters and I used, you know, my Senate testimony kind of lay the
01:07:22.620
framework of that petition drop because- So this was after this Senate hearing.
01:07:27.040
That's right. And so I, I said in this, in my Senate testimony, I said, I was going there on October
01:07:31.980
15th and you should come. You know, I invited everybody in the room and I invited other activists
01:07:37.000
and in the public and they came. I mean, we had a thousand people on the ground in Battle Creek,
01:07:42.300
Michigan, very hard place to get to. And we, we marched to Kellogg's headquarters. It was
01:07:48.980
a pivotal moment in my career to see that many people care about the American food system and
01:07:55.680
changing it. And, and they understood that this is a much bigger issue. But when, you know, Kellogg,
01:08:01.920
when we got to the front door and they didn't let us in, they sent out a security guard.
01:08:05.460
Uh, we looked up in to the building and in, in the window, one of the executives was still in
01:08:11.600
the building. They actually told most of their employees to go home that day. Uh, he, on a
01:08:16.580
whiteboard, that rolling whiteboard, he wrote, get off our lawn and, and showed it down to all of
01:08:21.320
the women and the children and everybody who was gathering there that day. And it was all captured
01:08:25.760
on film. And this really made a lot of people mad, made me mad. I had to cool off for a second
01:08:33.320
seeing that sign. Like, I can't believe they don't even have the decency to take these petitions
01:08:38.100
in hand. I mean, when I, when I did this with Kraft, when they were doing this with Kraft macaroni
01:08:42.640
and cheese, using one set of ingredients here in the United States and another, in other countries,
01:08:46.740
I petitioned them as well. And I delivered those petitions. They, they invited me in,
01:08:50.540
you know, that's what you do when someone gathers that many signatures and takes them to your
01:08:55.040
headquarters. You don't deny them entry and, and, and treat them like a, you know, a terrorist,
01:08:59.320
right? Um, but since then, what's been so amazing to, to watch is I, I'm sending letters now to other
01:09:08.840
big food corporations. I sent a letter to General Mills. Immediately they responded. They didn't
01:09:14.980
ignore me. And, and that's what I expect food corporations to be doing from this point forward,
01:09:21.400
because it is the biggest PR mistake ever. Oh, definitely. Especially right now. Yes.
01:09:28.580
Because the tide is obviously turned. Right. To not listen to us, not sit down and talk to us.
01:09:32.380
Oh, and also to not market to half the American population, right? That's right. That's a big
01:09:36.980
mistake. Big mistake. So what that also means is that companies that do pivot will have a definite
01:09:41.840
advantage and quite rapidly. So, right. And General Mills has already created a new cereal without
01:09:47.820
artificial dyes. So they're on, I think they're on their path. I think they're going to be probably
01:09:51.660
one of the first to change. Um, but again, you know, cereal is not exactly the healthiest thing we want
01:09:57.720
people to be eating, but this is about a bigger issue, which is getting the chemicals out of the
01:10:02.900
food, making it more real, having processed foods be available, but not full of carcinogens and other
01:10:09.460
toxins that could be affecting your brain, affecting your body, affecting your immunity,
01:10:14.420
um, and increasing cancer incidences. Uh, we have to look at everything, right?
01:10:23.260
That's a good place to end this section, I would say. So, um, for, for those of you who are watching
01:10:30.140
and listening, you know, we continue our discussion for half an hour on the Daily Wire side. And I think
01:10:34.540
what we'll talk about there is what, what could be done with the new administration and the new
01:10:42.280
health initiatives that are being put in place. I mean, the Trump administration people are sorting
01:10:50.620
all of this out now, trying to figure out how to rejig the food system, for example, so that it
01:10:56.360
doesn't produce the catastrophic consequences that we can see now. And so I think we'll get
01:11:02.100
Vanny's opinions about what she hopes that Trump team might do, like where's the biggest bang for
01:11:11.400
the buck, so to speak, in terms of re-evaluating how we prepare food and eat it and what we serve
01:11:17.760
to our children. So that's what we'll do on the Daily Wire side. So you could all join us for an
01:11:22.440
additional half an hour there. Thank you very much for coming in today. It was very nice to meet you
01:11:26.980
again, and to hear a bit more about what you've been doing. And to everybody watching and listening,