The Peter Attia Drive - Qualy #73 - How can we change the food system when 10 companies control almost 90 percent of the calories we consume in the US？

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00:01:03.120 i looked into this a few years ago and maybe the numbers have changed but directionally i think this

00:01:09.480 is still correct there were something like nine companies that controlled basically all of cpg

00:01:15.480 consumer packaged goods 10 there's 10 okay 10 control 90 of the food yeah that's basically my

00:01:21.100 calculation was 10 of them controlled 85 of the calories that people consumed yep you face a very

00:01:26.620 uphill battle because you're trying to get them to change the way they do business but they answer

00:01:33.640 to shareholders not to you and the way they're doing things right now is working out reasonably for

00:01:39.740 their shareholders not great these aren't the most high-performing companies in the world but how in

00:01:45.080 the world when such a small group of companies control so much and going back to what you said

00:01:50.980 earlier you're asking parents to double their food budget to feed their kids correctly and spend twice

00:01:57.120 the time doing it right what does this look like in 10 years how does the story end well i don't know

00:02:01.140 how it ends this is a battle royal like tobacco was and it took a long time to win that and there

00:02:07.720 are people who say we haven't even won that one yet you know e-cigarettes now come but we have another

00:02:12.040 proposition here in san francisco tomorrow about tobacco to kids here's the deal the food system

00:02:19.020 needs to change they're not going to change it from the inside because right now sugar is their business

00:02:26.720 model it's the thing that increases their sales when high fructose corn syrup and the dietary guidelines

00:02:33.500 of 1977 were first available the profit margin of the food industry went from one percent per year to

00:02:42.740 five percent per year this is their juggernaut this is their gravy train they add more sugar they sell

00:02:48.040 more food and they know it and that's why there's sugar in all the food because when they add it you buy

00:02:53.120 more for all the reasons we've discussed they have to change the food which means they have to change

00:03:00.520 the business model so how do you change the business model well there are four potential ways to change

00:03:07.740 the business model one is educate the public so that they don't want that food in which case then

00:03:14.560 they won't sell it we're trying to do that that's one reason i am the chief science officer of a

00:03:19.580 nonprofit trying to do just that okay called eat real and real is an acronym responsible epicurean and

00:03:26.940 agricultural leadership we are trying to change the food system by praising the good and hoping that

00:03:33.260 that will induce competition amongst restaurants cafeterias hospitals schools to procure market and sell

00:03:40.620 real food or you can have executive branch efforts like the fda or the usda but not in this administration

00:03:53.660 if anything they've rolled back opportunities for that like the nutrition facts label or you can have congress

00:04:01.040 legislate specific changes they're not doing that because they're all paid off from the american legislative

00:04:08.720 exchange council and other concerns like the coke brothers what have you or you can have judicial

00:04:15.560 impact and so there are lawsuits against the food industry going on as we speak in an attempt to try to

00:04:23.440 shall we say regulate from the bench which no one thinks is optimal but seems to be the only thing

00:04:29.840 that's available at the moment aside from education so those are the four ways to do this my goal

00:04:37.920 would be to get rid of food subsidies are the food subsidies what enable the junk food to be

00:04:45.740 basically half the price of real food or is it that the real food is twice as much to make

00:04:50.400 not independent of the subsidy it's about the subsidy making junk food cheap if you got rid of the

00:04:56.860 subsidies then the market would work okay right now any subsidy distorts the market and there's no

00:05:03.220 reason for food subsidies in fact there's no economist worth their salt today that believe in food subsidies

00:05:08.220 because they distort the market so the question is would food get more expensive if we got rid of all

00:05:14.780 food subsidies the genini foundation at uc berkeley engaged in this exercise several years ago and

00:05:21.940 they computed what would happen to the price of food and it turned out that the price of food wouldn't

00:05:27.160 change except for two items corn and sugar would go up but how would that not impact the cost of all

00:05:34.140 other foods given how ubiquitous they are it's a complex modeling and i'm not yeah i'm not an expert in how

00:05:40.360 they arrived at this but empirically this is what fell out of it is that you know the price of wheat

00:05:47.100 wouldn't change the price of soy wouldn't change only corn and sugar and that is where the dietary

00:05:54.160 sugar in our food comes from so i think that that would be a really smart way to start you know the farm

00:06:02.120 bill is you know re uh portioned every five years and right now there's actually tension around that

00:06:10.460 farm bill it has to do with other things but i would like to see the issue of the metabolic cost of

00:06:17.800 food built into the farm bill because right now our government has not linked or yoked the productivity

00:06:26.340 and uh economic costs of medicare medicaid social security with food i would like to see that link

00:06:34.220 strengthened because we have the data is there is there anything is there anything right now that

00:06:39.460 you consider a victory because when you look at the smoking story you had surgeon general's report first

00:06:43.920 you had changes in advertising next you had excise taxes and then ultimately environmental changes

00:06:49.600 we have excise taxes for soda do you have any advertising rule changes yet well here in san francisco

00:06:57.020 we have a warning label on billboards that is right now there's a temporary injunction about

00:07:03.500 because the food industry uh but the smoking one was interesting i didn't know this until a few years ago but

00:07:08.380 basically a law came out that said anytime a tobacco commercial was on tv it had to be followed by an

00:07:15.620 anti-tobacco commercial right it turned out the fairness doctrine yeah it turned out the anti-tobacco

00:07:19.500 commercials were so popular and so effective that tobacco voluntarily withdrew from television indeed

00:07:26.760 is there anything around creating that type of awareness no what there is is the question of

00:07:33.080 marketing to children and the thing is that many of the conglomerates have said they voluntarily

00:07:40.580 will not market to children at least during certain times of the day when kids are more likely to watch

00:07:48.060 but in fact watchdogs have been looking at this and they say that it's lip service that they're not

00:07:55.440 actually doing it so you cannot expect the food industry to police itself i hope you enjoyed today's

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The Peter Attia Drive - December 10, 2019

Qualy #73 - How can we change the food system when 10 companies control almost 90 percent of the calories we consume in the US？

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