In this episode, the Right Response Ministries team discusses the alarming rates of childhood obesity, diabetes, and chronic illness in the United States, and what we can do to address the problem. In part 1 of a two-part series on the U.S. Health and Human Services Department's new report on childhood obesity and chronic disease, Right Response Minister, Dr. Michael O Rourke, joins us to discuss the findings of the report.
00:00:54.320Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services released a 69-page report under the direction of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. diagnosing the American child health epidemic as a symptom of environmental toxins, poor nutrition, chronic stress, and what he calls over-medicalization, and said that America is literally the sickest country in the world.
00:01:23.780Close quote. Critics from legacy media were quick to dismiss the report, some for its skepticism
00:01:31.920toward the pharmaceutical industry, others for its emphasis on personal responsibility
00:01:37.840over systematic reform. But even the loudest detractors had to confront the numbers,
00:01:44.920skyrocketing rates of cancer, obesity, ADHD, and mental illness in a nation that spends more on
00:01:52.960health care than any other civilization in history. So here's the truth. We are not simply
00:01:59.760failing to treat disease. We are cultivating it. And the national debt that we should be most
00:02:07.020concerned with isn't fiscal, but moral. A debt owed to our children for the bodies that we've
00:02:15.060poisoned, the minds that we've dulled, and the institutions we've trusted to care for them.
00:02:21.860This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and Reese Fund,
00:02:28.340as well as our Patreon members and our generous donors. You can join our Patreon by going to
00:02:34.460patreon.com forward slash right response ministries, or you can make a donation by going to
00:02:41.640right response ministries.com forward slash donate. So what now? What does Christian
00:02:48.860responsibility look like in the face of a national health crisis, one that implicates not just
00:02:56.460bureaucrats and corporations, but the way we shop, eat, parent, and medicate. Let's dive in.
00:03:04.780all right all right all right here we are uh michael you've outlined this episode for us
00:03:19.880on the health crisis that's currently underway in our nation particularly as it applies to
00:03:25.620our children so do you want to go ahead and lead us off i know that you've got a lot of research
00:03:29.440and stats that you want to get to and i think that this is one that uh the listeners um will
00:03:35.180be very eager to hear yeah so the goal with this episode we have talked about health crisis in
00:03:40.700america and how we're fat and lazy and healthy before um so this episode is a little bit different
00:03:46.640in that just last week rfk and the hhs released what they call their diagnosis of the state of
00:03:53.120health particularly among uh children in america and then he said within three months they'll be
00:03:58.820releasing their prescription. So this was just, this is how bad things are. And then they're
00:04:03.320working on plans and proposals and things like that, that they can put forward, um, to help
00:04:09.460fix the problem. But, uh, last week was just the 69 pages of, um, this is the situation and spoiler
00:04:17.080alert, we're fat and sick as a nation. I've been to Walmart recently. I know. Yeah. What's that?
00:04:23.280Oh yeah. Exactly. So the other thing that I'm hoping will be a little bit different with this
00:04:27.940episode is I took the time to break out, like, what would it look like for an average budget
00:04:34.840to make this change or that change, right? So if some of these numbers alarm you, or if you and
00:04:40.880your family have been thinking about trying to make some changes, I tried to give some real
00:04:44.320practical, like, this is how much this costs, this is how much this kind of food costs, this is what
00:04:48.560it would look like to make this change. And so beyond just speaking in the abstract, trying to
00:04:54.200help give the listener a real practical idea of what some of these changes might require for your
00:05:01.160family, for your budget, for your time, things like that. So we do want to go ahead and jump
00:05:07.880into a little bit of the background and the report. So Nate, if you've got those slides that
00:05:12.700I sent you, the ones that I formatted for you, I'm just going to kind of go through those one at a
00:05:17.500time here at the beginning. Okay, so this is according to the report from the HHS and RFK
00:05:24.500Jr., the causes of illness in the U.S. Number one, poor diet driven primarily by ultra-processed
00:05:31.600foods. And I think that this is the one where almost nobody can argue with this. He had a great
00:05:38.040one-liner. Someone was interviewing him, and they said, how are you so sure that we're the sickest0.93
00:05:44.700country in the world or something like that he said just look at us look at our children
00:05:49.020it's like can't argue with that um let me expand on ultra processed foods for just a second that's
00:05:55.140if you think of your nutrition label obviously there's individual ingredients that go into there
00:05:58.820but i really can't think of a good nutritional food that's going to have a super long list so
00:06:04.360of course maybe you've got bread you've got a couple things in there but when we say ultra
00:06:07.340processed what we literally mean is just there's more and more and more things being added to it
00:06:11.600A good example is things that are added to help preserve shelf stability.
00:06:15.040This means you can make more of it and it lasts longer.
00:23:22.960So that is very different than a lot of other countries.
00:23:26.640The medical advertising on TV is very different in the U.S. as well.
00:23:30.960Most other countries do not permit this at all.
00:23:34.000I literally worked in this industry for about two years.
00:23:36.400So that field that navigates the transition from making the product and it being approved actually on the market is called health economics outcomes research.
00:23:44.300What the U.S. does different than a lot of these other countries.
00:23:47.100And when I was younger, I think I would have celebrated it.
00:23:49.400But now I would say my view is definitely more complex.
00:23:51.760A lot of other countries have what are called HTA agencies.
00:23:54.200so there's a health technology assessment agencies and they go through and they're centralized and
00:23:58.760they actually say this is the amount we're paying for the drug we've gone through the safety we've
00:24:02.460gone through its efficacy we've gone through its use we've looked at how many people in our country
00:24:06.440actually have this disease so i mean there's some countries we're like guys we're so small we're
00:24:10.140literally talking about five people right sometimes they'll pay whatever price but the u.s doesn't
00:24:14.300have that kind of centralized it kind of goes down to the state and then privatized at the insurer
00:24:18.400level and this is one of the advantages of i think of places like norway that are obviously smaller
00:24:23.340being centralized the government can then say I know you want to sell your drug for $80,000 per
00:24:28.420dose here but we've looked at it it's not that effective it's not that healthy we're going to
00:24:32.520pay you a max of this now anyone who needs it certainly they can travel out of the country
00:24:36.320that's literally one of the big reasons we just don't have a centralized HTA health technology
00:24:41.680assessment process whereas almost every country from Canada from northern Europe from even some
00:24:47.060of these developing nations in the east they have something like that and they rigorously look at
00:24:51.060they're central and they say we're not paying that much or here's the max amount that we'll pay
00:24:55.680i would imagine that to get something like that put in place it would require an act of congress
00:24:59.260absolutely that is heavily controlled by the pharmaceutical lobby so chances of something
00:25:03.700like that happening that have a lot of money because we've let them operate how they've
00:25:07.100operated yeah right i want to show one other thing before we go to our first break and i'm
00:25:10.500not going to read through all of this but nathan if you have the timeline um so this is just kind
00:25:15.460of a timeline you could freeze frame this or pause it if you wanted to get an idea of just
00:25:19.400basically with nutrition how the process has gone and some of the big ones are um the u.s
00:25:24.860government starting to introduce dietary guidelines and lunch program guidelines um but a lot of those
00:25:30.500were heavily in the um don't eat the saturated fats eat the seed oils eat the grains things like
00:25:38.040that um wes i remember from you i heard that mcdonald's up until the 90s used to fry all of
00:25:42.820french fries in beef time right it was a huge campaign uh phil sokoloff had a huge campaign
00:25:49.080against they're called tropical oils like your palm oil and your coconut oil which are really
00:25:53.320good for you and he also advocated for skim milk and he's also jewish right i'm not even kidding
00:25:59.420you the guy who got tallow out of mcdonald's for frying is uh there we go jewish which you know
00:26:05.100it's crazy because david the psalms are full of like you are better to me than than marrow and0.76
00:26:09.800fatness and you know like you would think that anyway right but it's the cream of milk yeah
00:26:13.940yeah is it cheaper it's cheaper oh yeah of course of course yeah okay let's hit our first commercial
00:26:19.160break and when we come back we're going to start to dive into um you know what this what this would
00:26:24.620mean for families and what can be done on a practical level what if your family's financial
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00:28:51.740free bag of coffee today all right welcome back we are um picking up the conversation here where
00:29:01.040we left off. And just to summarize that, we're extremely, extremely sick. It's not just that we
00:29:07.540are like unhealthy, right? There's kind of an unhealthy where you just are kind of, you sit
00:29:15.320around on the couch all day and things like that. We are sick as a nation. We are actually sick. We
00:29:19.380have chronic diseases. We have diseases that we don't know about. We have diseases that are being
00:29:24.040called, you know, good. And what's worse is most of the people who recognize that they are sick
00:29:30.740and are unhealthy um you know if you're fat what do you do now you take an injection um to to curb
00:29:37.800your appetite or to get rid of your weight problem what's that pill or injection xempic was the one
00:29:43.620that's ruining people's eyes but now there's an injection one that i forget it's it's all the rage
00:29:47.740right now um and if you do go to a doctor and i thought it was interesting that one of the
00:29:54.240recommendations was ask your doctor about root causes not just about your symptoms uh like my
00:30:00.540wife has been in the medical field for a long time and it just drives her crazy that all doctors
00:30:05.620not i'm not gonna primarily most doctors are interested in just treating a symptom right and
00:30:12.020when you talk about well what's the root cause on my body level that's causing this it's like i
00:30:16.120don't know you just have high blood pressure take this pill yeah well why do i have high blood
00:30:19.300well walk you know walk 10 000 steps a day okay you know so we are sick as a nation which is bad
00:30:28.640enough but also we are we are doing very little to treat the root causes of our sicknesses right
00:30:34.220well i would imagine that's probably not a good business plan nope not a good business plan like
00:30:39.880if you actually get to root causes and you actually fix the problem instead of simply
00:30:43.920because if you're addressing the symptoms then you're able to sell a product indefinitely
00:30:48.940to the same you know to the same market again and again and again you have a lifelong customer yes
00:30:54.420yes i should have run these numbers but it'd be really fascinating to know the increase
00:31:00.220in size like per capita of the health care industry um over the decades of the u.s i mean
00:31:06.420used to be a town would have a doctor and he would go there with his little bag right and uh you know
00:31:11.960that that was your your health care system right we've said it before but the love of money is the
00:31:17.660root not of all evil but of all kinds of evil yeah all types of evil all varieties including well
00:31:24.520we'll give you a pill because that gives us more kickback we'll get your child vaccinated because
00:31:28.860that gives us more kickback we're going to grow this we're going to do so many things and what
00:31:32.260is it for so people will be healthier thrive uh nope so we make more money and it's it's related
00:31:38.480to the love of money but in a different way rush duny said that one of the big changes that happened
00:31:42.660was that doctors started being sued and so the idea of the single doctor in the village was no
00:31:47.300longer an option because he couldn't defend himself from lawsuits and so large hospital
00:31:53.120organizations had to form and they had to have huge legal teams and they had to have teams that
00:31:58.640reviewed processes so they could say hey we followed this process and then the government
00:32:02.460had to release protocols and the hospitals had to ensure they were in a line and all of that
00:32:06.460well a lot of that was so that they wouldn't get sued into non-existence anymore and so a lot of
00:32:12.600the healthcare industry is simply compliance and um what can we do to make sure we don't get sued
00:32:18.940what can we do to make as much money as we can and what can we make sure we don't lose that money
00:32:22.980right by being sued as much as possible in as little as possible going out yes i swear when
00:32:27.860they're bidding for like uh like sheets or bed spread at the hospital they're like get like we
00:32:32.620want the most threadbare i need you to find the ugliest possible pattern that you can yeah oh it
00:32:38.420looks good it's warm out out we need nasty threadbare sheets yeah to save money i don't
00:32:44.320know if that's really why but it seems like yeah the sheets are like plastic yeah well
00:32:47.940it might have something to do with what they have to clean off of it too yeah that's probably true
00:32:52.380but um okay so here are some i'm going to go through just four recommendations west feel
00:32:58.400free to interrupt and then i want to go back and go through them um just for the record real quick
00:33:02.200one of these days we're going to have to do an episode on capitalism um because i think like as
00:33:07.700you were talking about, you know, private individual doctors being sued. And so then
00:33:12.420teaming up with conglomerations, you know, and all these kinds of things, because they want to
00:33:16.860make money, keep money, you know, and defend against being sued for money. There are, and it's
00:33:24.160not to say that, you know, like that, okay, so this other system is there for the answer. There
00:33:28.960are massive problems, you know, with multiple systems of money and, you know, systems, you know,
00:33:35.780economic systems but i do think that um you know we're like well i'm american you know america baby
00:33:41.420and um and we think that you know capitalism can't have any problems at all and and that's something
00:33:46.840that like i didn't really i don't think i ever had to think about until i was older and not just
00:33:53.120because of age and maybe maturing but um older in the sense of just the world and and its innovation
00:33:59.260and the ways that things have developed like i think of the 2020 election what do you do
00:34:04.700when you know like a handful of individuals i mean you could write their names down on a napkin
00:34:10.160actually collectively they control every single platform for free speech and so if they decide
00:34:16.740together that the hunter biden laptop story is just not going to be available then poof it
00:34:23.500disappears and there are many people who said that that actually would have swayed their vote
00:34:27.000Perhaps it could have swayed an entire election, you know, and then all the consequences over the next four years and how that affected, you know, people thrown in prison for praying outside of abortion clinics or 13, you know, U.S. service members dying in Afghanistan and the disaster that that turned out to be.
00:34:43.380So there's all these consequences that happen, you know, as, you know, the implications for elections and then elections themselves can be virtually determined, if not outright dictated by the suppression of certain stories.
00:35:01.720and and to be one thing if you know the public square was you know like there was a time where
00:35:06.640it's just it's flesh and blood it's the public square is like literally going into the town
00:35:11.580square and raising your voice and sitting at this meeting and it's available to anyone but
00:35:15.900like what do you it's like well build you know and this is the rhetoric that people will you know
00:35:20.220conservatives should build their own platform you know whatever and it's and then some guys do and
00:35:24.840then it gets shut down they're like well build your own servers and then some guys do and they
00:35:28.640get raided by fbi you know and like right so like what like what do you do when the means
00:35:33.600of speech for your voice to actually be heard um is um not just controlled but first and foremost
00:35:41.280from an economic standpoint monopolized right like what do you do when there's a monopoly
00:35:46.520on on the the very platform for free speech and i think what we've seen is that the government
00:35:55.000has to step in and i know that that offends our you know our american sensibilities but i think
00:36:01.020there are certain things that um the founders as much as i appreciate them and i appreciate them
00:36:06.600as much as the next guy there's so many things that we need to return to the founders that they
00:36:11.260had right and we've gotten wrong but then there's a few things it's not even that they got it wrong
00:36:15.440so much as they just probably couldn't conceive you know like like it's it's just impossible to
00:36:21.240conceive that you know 250 years later that there's going to be the internet and then
00:36:27.340artificial intelligence you know and social media and twitter you know and like i mean how do you
00:36:33.820how do you predict some of these things i just i don't think you you do and so that's why like
00:36:38.360we've done episodes you know in a general sense not specifically on economics but in a general
00:36:44.080sense related to the state and and we've made the argument that seems counterintuitive for most you
00:36:50.220conservatives but we've made the argument that yes we believe the state should be smaller in
00:36:55.820some regards but there's other there's other ways in which the state should probably be larger i
00:37:01.320remember arguing with my brother uh one of my brothers uh was you know like a self-described
00:37:08.020marxist um but don't worry if that if that concerns you he now would uh describe himself
00:37:13.480as a communist so he's moving in the right direction yeah uh so he's a communist and uh
00:37:18.760And he would probably say his older brother is a fascist, you know, which means that we are arch enemies.
00:47:37.700There has to be a well-considered system for the time accompanied with, and Wes, you and I have talked about this a lot, what went wrong?
00:47:46.320Well, it seems like what went wrong was that belief that the system must be preserved, tweaked, modified, and continually be worked on to be the appropriate governing set of principles for the time.
00:48:01.180and the constitution and the republic and the founders they became that thing where we as
00:48:07.640americans said because we have that we don't have to be on guard anymore right we've got it we're
00:48:12.360good yep no problem yeah yeah i people change and and therefore systems of government that's not to
00:48:19.320say that any system of government you know could be appropriate i do think there are some immutable
00:48:24.440standards like i think that communism is actually um universally and more right and uh so there's
00:48:31.660you can't say well this is a particular time and place where communism can be permissible okay i
00:48:37.320mean you can read just you know just the the the the default you know basic definition of communism
00:48:43.000and it actually you know directly contradicts um the principles and commandments of scripture
00:48:48.720but there are other forms of government that i don't believe are inherently wrong now they may
00:48:55.660not be prudent in various places with various peoples in various times but there is an argument
00:49:01.440for moral permissibility and we've said it several times but i'll say it again i think a constitutional
00:49:06.840representative you know republic for me is an ideal form of government but i think it's a form
00:49:13.940of government that people have to aspire to and we think that it just fell out of the sky like for
00:49:18.520the first time we found the inherently righteous form of government, and that before we were just0.89
00:49:24.800ignorant. What we neglect to realize is that this republic was only suitable for a religious0.99
00:49:34.180and upright, morally upright people, and it's wholly fit for no other. But then that begs the
00:49:39.040question, where did we acquire this kind of moral and religious people? And the answer to that is
00:49:45.660from about 700 years of a Christian monarchy0.84
01:05:55.340yeah um let's briefly talk about water um because water is super important too and um it's sad to
01:06:03.400me that our water is so unhealthy because i remember you know growing up in a third world
01:06:09.000country i i just thought it's incredible that in the u.s you can just turn on the tap and drink the
01:06:13.380water you thought well what we were getting in venezuela was the bacterias that are going to
01:06:19.260give you you know all sorts of yeah dysentery and all of that stuff um and so you don't get that
01:06:24.380here that's true but you are getting the microplastics the pharmaceutical products
01:06:28.960whether it's the birth control or things just being washed through you're getting a lot of
01:06:33.140heavy metals depending on where you live and so even even the tap drinking water now and fluoride
01:06:39.040if your city or county fluoride fluorinates the water so I did a little bit of research on
01:06:44.100alternatives that you can do to have better water so Nate let's show this real quick again this is
01:06:49.420something you can come back to and pause it and look at bottled water is an option it's it's going
01:06:54.140to not have the contaminants in it but you are going to get a lot of microplastics from the
01:06:58.380water so not probably the best option for if you're looking for long-term health but there's
01:07:05.600there's pitcher filters there's faucet mounted filters all the all the um the options there and
01:07:11.920then the average cost both to um buy that thing on the front end and then to maintain it if you
01:07:17.640have to change filters over the year things like that and then it lists what those remove does it
01:07:22.200remove micro uh microplastics does it remove fluoride does it remove heavy metals etc so
01:07:27.920lots of options there we um we use a the countertop one at the bottom because we do not own our own
01:07:34.120home um and that works really great it it for a drinking water it's not their shower water and
01:07:39.020things like that but we use that for all our cooking and drinking and it wasn't too much on
01:07:42.540the front end we change the filters twice a year um and it it really filters out as far as the
01:07:47.880drinking water goes oh like all of the contaminants that you could want to so yeah i was just going
01:07:53.300to say thank you do reverse osmosis yep you can think house level filtration i've known a number
01:07:58.120of people that they actually had acne and so like the water you shower with could be hard water
01:08:02.340could have different minerals in it that's not great for your hair not great for your skin so
01:08:06.060don't just be thinking drinking at your sink but also think for the whole house so we have a whole
01:08:10.180house water filter and like you said a reverse osmosis oftentimes you put that under your sink
01:08:14.240so specifically what you're drinking and sometimes it'll strip everything out of there and so you
01:08:18.620want to add remineralization back in that's right so don't just think like okay how does my water
01:08:22.520get good oh i just do a brita or filter but no like my whole house all the water we're intaking
01:08:27.140then underneath my sink and then how am i adding in some of the stuff that's accidentally stripped
01:08:31.200away yeah good steps at a time though that does not need all to be done this weekend that's right
01:08:35.420that's the thing is yes the situation in our nation is dire and things need to be done but
01:08:41.240on a personal level like um it's so easy to jump in with both feet and then realize you don't know
01:08:47.320how to swim right um and so if this is something you're serious about talk to your your wife or
01:08:53.880if you're listening you talk to your husband um and make practical steps that can be sustainable
01:08:59.480over time it's better to take a couple small steps that you stick to rather than take one
01:09:03.940giant step and then fall backwards and and that's the end of the story yeah yeah great episode okay
01:09:09.440Thanks, Michael. I think this is an important topic, and I think you gave us a lot of practical application that people will be blessed by. Thanks for tuning in, and Lord willing, we'll see you next time.