00:00The question I guess I have now when we're talking about Make America Healthy, as we listed the report card, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, things like that that affect the life expectancy of Americans, of us as a whole population.
00:15Are we losing sight of that by in this administration arguing about vaccines and in the last administration arguing about gender affirming care?
00:23I mean, there's so much more to health than those two issues.
00:27So, you know, how do we make sure that we're addressing my health and your health and the health of our children and then the health of our parents and our grandparents in this way where we're not so caught up in the messaging, I guess is the best way to say it.
00:41No, you're spot on.
00:43And I have said for the entire year, this is a red herring.
00:48Hmm. This this is like everybody's screaming about this on the left because it's like, let's not talk about what ag and food and pharma and insurance are doing.
00:57Let's just make him like a crazy anti-vaxxer so nobody pays attention to the bigger issues.
01:05But I have to address those things because that's where the top criticisms come in.
01:09So now having said that, let's look at some of the things you just brought up.
01:13So first of all, he's working with states to get them to update SNAP waivers, nutritional assistance programs, so that you can get healthy food and not soda and candy and chips, which is not food at all.
01:31By the way, there's zero nutrients and there's calories, but there's no nutrition in that whatsoever.
01:36And in fact, there's a host of anti-nutrients in these foods that make people sicker.
01:42And there are great statistics that show people who are on SNAP are actually sicker.
01:46And I wonder if it's because the food that's available to them is not actually at all food.
01:51I think available is such a key word there, too, because if you remove some of those, like you said, sugary beverages, I mean, who would ever argue that a Mountain Dew is the pillar and the pinnacle of what you should be drinking for your health?
02:02But if the stores that you have access to don't have fresh vegetables, how do you buy them?
02:06So it's like such a it's such a nuanced thing to try to get into.
02:10But of course, like healthy, fresh vegetables are what we all should be eating.
02:14Sometimes they're just not so delicious.
02:16I do love that.
02:17I understand that completely.
02:19You're not wrong.
02:20But think of it like this.
02:21If you have a continuum right over here, foods that fight cancer.
02:26And we all know what that is.
02:27It's wild caught salmon, organic blueberries, you get it, right?
02:33And on the other side, foods that arguably cause disease, fast food, sodas, chips, cookies, candies, all of that crap.
02:41Crap.
02:41That's the word I was just going to say.
02:43Crap.
02:44Somewhere in the middle that we can land on.
02:47But making these foods more available and utilizing nutrition assistance to help people get literal nutrition is one of the things that they're doing through SNAP.
02:58So that's one.
03:00Another one is a reevaluation of what's called the generally recognized as safe rule or the grass rule.
03:07So this is a loophole that has been used by big food, I honestly think, for a couple of decades.
03:15Don't quote me, fact check me on that one.
03:19But many, many years.
03:20A long time.
03:20Let's put it that way.
03:21Many, many years.
03:23And what it does is it allows the big food companies to go, oh, yeah, the polysorbate 1,785, oh, that's safe.
03:32There are 10,000 chemicals.
03:37Exactly.
03:38Exactly my point.
03:39There are 10,000 chemicals that make their way into our food, which has never been properly safety tested through this loophole.
03:48So it's like, oh, you guys say it's cool?
03:51Yeah?
03:52Cool.
03:54But it's not at all cool.
03:56And subsequently, there have been numerous things that have been removed from grass.
04:01And that's because they overtly caused cancer in rodents.
04:08But the long story short is Kennedy has moved to completely close that loophole.
04:13He's engaged in radical transparency with regard to industry, right, like big food funding the FDA, the guy that works at Pfizer going and running the FDA, then going back to Pfizer.
04:25Like, he's closed that revolving door of corruption.
04:29Let's see.
04:30What else with food in particular?
04:31We all know that he banned food dyes.
04:33I can tell you there's a lot more work to do there.
04:36But nevertheless.
04:37That was going to be my next question for you as you look ahead to presumably the next three years that Kennedy will be in charge.
04:44What would you like to see be prioritized or focused on?
04:49I mean, there's something that I always think about when I think about following you because I've followed you for years and years and years.
04:53That there are no magic pills.
04:55There are no magic pills.
04:56There are no magic answers.
04:57There are no quick fixes.
04:58It is about consistency.
04:59It is about seeing results over time.
05:03And you can't really see something in a week or two weeks or a month and think it's working.
05:08You have to be consistent.
05:09I mean, I have that, like, drumbeat in my head whenever I think, I don't want to go to the gym today.
05:14It's consistency.
05:15So it's almost like we can't even assess some of this until down the road.
05:19But what would you like to see the focus be?
05:24I would like to see more regulation on the chemicals that go in our food, on our food, in our water.
05:34Because the reality is that I can tell you all day long, go to the gym.
05:39And I can tell you all day long, eat a salad.
05:42But if you come to me in five years and you say I've got cancer, it then won't be because you didn't go to the gym and you didn't eat your salad.
05:51It'll be because of the pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides on the salad.
05:56It'll be because of the way all that crap and then some ran off into your water along with a host of other garbage like heavy metals and pharmaceuticals that we all pee out that don't get properly filtered.
06:07Or it's all of the chemical exposure that you and I really cannot effectively mitigate.
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