Nutrition Expert: This Is Why Eat Less, Exercise More Never Works

24:11We just have to give up on them. And they used India as an example. They said, we're no way we're going to feed India. We just have to give up, not even try to send food to India. Let the people starve because we just we can't do it. And that was. And so what they didn't count on was the Green Revolution. The Rockefeller Foundation found Norman Borlaug, this plant geneticist, wrestler, tough, tough, tough, tough guy, never give up, who went to Mexico. And for 10 years, he spent laborious, laborious seasons breeding first wheat and then eventually rice and corn to really understand how we can maximize yield, how we can get the most yield out of an acre of land.

24:49Not nutrition, not taste or flavor, but yield. How can we get the most yields? Yield, which essentially means calories, right? Calories, starch. How can we get the maximum starch in wheat, right? And how can we also then maximize that by adding artificial pesticides, DDT, which was discovered in World War II. And he knew about DDT because he came from DuPont, which had discovered DDT. How can we add artificial fertilizers to support this massive growth because it depletes the soil? And so all these bomb factories had leftover ammonia. And so he took the nitrogen and made nitrogen fertilizers. And then how do we add intensive irrigation because there's not enough water?

25:35And so he started depleting the aquifers with intensive irrigation. And what was incredible, to his great credit, yields of wheat, rice, and corn went up 1 ,000 to 2 ,000 percent per acre, right? Not doubled, not tripled. They went up 10 to 20-fold in just a handful of years. And so Mexico and then India, Pakistan went from countries that were on the brink of starvation to food-exporting nations in five years. Five years by the time. And so modern agriculture, the monocropping of, you know, wheat, rice, corn and soy, which is about 60 percent of our calories come from like five species.

26:16Dr. Mark Hyman:And we swung from starvation to obesity because of the amount of starch in the food and the volume of calories that were presented. I mean, we have 500 calories more of corn per person American than we used to have. And it's crazy. And we're eating it. This saved a billion people from starving. It was a huge win, right, obviously, because if we didn't have the Green Revolution, we would have had massive famine and disruption and war and social disruption. So give credit to it. But it led to a massive loss of biodiversity of the food that we eat, right, and reliance on starchy crops that were bred for starch.

26:51And then the third thing that happened, Mark— And there's less protein and less nutrients in those crops, too. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And then—so now we're in, like, the 60s. So the first was 40s and 50s, and then calories was 50s and 60s. Radical, rapid changes to food. Totally, you know, food was totally different by 1970 than it had been in 1910. And then in the 80s, we sort of have the rise of ultra processed food. That's the third big, big thing that happened. And while there's not exactly the same obvious date of why and how this started, like there is for vitamins and for the Green Revolution, I think one of the major things that accelerated this was the low-fat dietary recommendations of 1980.

27:35Because once we had to take fat out of foods, companies had to figure out how to make all these products and have them have the same taste and mouthfeel and flavor and take out all the fat, which was terrific for those things, which was a big mistake. And so all of a sudden we had to have emulsifiers and stabilizers and, you know, other additives and flavorings and colorings and kind of to make these foods. Now, that wasn't the only reason. We also then had the tobacco companies, the two biggest tobacco companies, Philip Morris and RGR bought pretty much, they bought almost every food brand that you know.

28:10Philip's Morph Crass, RGR Nabisco, yeah. All of them, yeah. And they've since sold them. They've since divested, so they don't really own them anymore. But there was about 10 or 20 years where they owned all of them. And they took the exact same scientists, exact same scientists and teams that had worked on the brain addiction and marketing to kids. And they figured out how can we create foods that are addictive and we can market to kids and create brand loyalty just like they did with the Marlboro Man. And that was the really, that's the nefarious part of all of this. Up until now, it had been good intentions.

28:44Dr. Mark Hyman:But I would say, I'm just going to pause for there for a second. I'd say it started even before the 80s because I think it was like 50s, 60s, General Mills had a big meeting of all the food companies in Minneapolis saying, hey, there's a movement towards people eating real food. There's this woman, Betty, who's a home ec teacher who's trying with federal extension workers training mothers and families how to cook and eat and grow gardens. And they were freaking out that people weren't going to eat their foods. So they basically made Convenience King and then they started inserting people into the culture like Betty Crocker who was an imaginary person.

29:16Dr. Mark Hyman:Betty Crocker was, I thought it was Betty Crocker, but all the recipes that, you know, add a can of Campbell's cream mushroom soup, add a roll of Ritz crackers to your casserole, it was like insinuating highly processed food into the American kitchen. And then they hijacked the American kitchen. And I remember I grew up in the 60s. We had, you know, TB dinners, we had Tang, we had flesh with margarine, we had a craft macaroni and cheese, all this crap that I grew up with. And so it started even before that, and it was deliberate. And then there was that, you know, those two Harvard scientists who I think, you know were the leading nutrition scientists at harvard in the 60s who who were basically paid by the sugar industry to say that it was fat not sugar that was causing heart disease and that was published in the new england journal medicine and and that recently sort of was exposed but they paid them the equivalent of like 50 grand to do this and that couldn't happen now because of ethics rules but it was pretty bad and that kind of led in sort of seeded the whole low fat thing with with um you know uh ancel keys and all of his disciples it was it was quite it was quite bad.

30:14Dr. Mark Hyman:I wouldn't say they were all good intention. Well, no, as I said, I think that, you know, I'm talking about like the major trends, you know, and I do, I do cover a lot, a lot of those things you mentioned in the book, a couple of points that mark important, you know, one is that they not only created Betty Crocker, but they actually started paying for and infiltrated the board of the national kind of home economics programs across in high schools and across the country. And Home Ec went from trying to teach people how to cook to teach people how to get processed package items and prepare them from packages.

30:53And so they actually took over Home Ec. They literally paid for it and took over Home Ec purposefully. So for sure, I mean, food industry. But every industry is trying to sell their products and make a profit. So it's not different for phones or cars or anything else. But the nefarious stuff was when they really, I think, started trying to make the food addictive. But the point you made about fat, I want to get back to because the reason that, you know, fat, people say, you know, why was fat vilified, right? Why did they pick fat? And also, by the way, in 1980, they also did recommend low sugar at the same time, but fat was really vilified.

31:29Why was it vilified? Because they had, scientists had figured out the nutrient that caused curvy, vitamin C. They figured out the nutrient that caused night blindness, vitamin A. They figured out the nutrient that caused pellagra, niacin. And so in the 70s, when all those diseases had been conquered, they said, well, what should we do now? And they started looking at chronic disease and they started with heart disease because that was the top killer. And so the mistake that was made, which wasn't nefarious, but was just accidental or natural maybe, was they said, well, we figured out the nutrient for these other diseases.

32:02What's the nutrient that causes heart disease? There must be a nutrient. And they picked saturated fat as the nutrient from this research and then total fat. And so to me, Mark, what we've learned since, since the 80s, is that if you have a simple vitamin deficiency disease, a nutrient causes or cures that disease. There's a one-to-one correlation. But when you have complex chronic conditions that develop over years, mental health, obesity, diabetes, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, poor gut health, cancers, the list goes on and on, cognitive decline, kidney dysfunction, peripheral vascular disease, gut health, all liver health, all influenced by nutrition, there's no nutrient fix, right?

32:46It's about complexity, molecular. It's about food is medicine. It's about, I've heard you say, and I've borrowed, and now I repeat, food is information. Food is not calories. Food is information for our bodies. And so they mistakenly took what had work so well, this nutrient focus and extended it to chronic disease. And that was the big mistake of 1980.

33:10Dr. Mark Hyman:It's so important. I think, I think we did, we did get there in some ways unintentionally, but once we got there, the food companies really wanted to hold on to their stomach share. You call profit share, they call it stomach share and they didn't want to give that up. Uh, now, now I want to kind of switch into, into the, the topics I think people really are confused about calories, protein, fat, sugar, and also protective foods. So let's start with calories. There was a really important paper that I read, and I think it was the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that you wrote, where basically you said that, and you presented the science pretty clearly, our calorie consumption has gone down while our obesity has gone up.

33:54Dr. Mark Hyman:Can you unpack that because we all were trained that calories in, calories out. You eat too much, you gain weight. You eat less, you lose weight. Somehow the science doesn't support that. And yet most physicians and nutritionists and most professional societies still adhere to that ideology. Can you kind of help us understand what the hell is going on? So the first part of my book, Food is Medicine, I kind of go through how we got here. And then the second part, I go through heart disease, obesity, the microbiome, and kind of put it all together to what we have to eat. And in doing so, I kind of go through how in each case, we started out with a really oversimplified story about what we should do to prevent heart disease and so on.

34:37And then now what the new science is showing us, which is mind-blowing and really eye-opening. And so we've kind of, most people have kind of started to understand this for heart disease, that it's not about fat anymore. And it's probably not even about saturated fat anymore because it's much more complicated. But as you said, the same is true for obesity. Just like focusing on fat and saturated fat is horribly oversimplified when it comes to heart disease, focusing on calories is horribly oversimplified when it comes to obesity. And the science shows that, but most people don't know that science.

35:11And so I really go into that cutting edge science. So, you know, in the 70s and 80s and 90s, as, you know, waistlines and body fat began to grow, people were eating more and food companies were making more food and obesity epidemic wasn't really a thing. We didn't talk about the obesity epidemic in the 90s. It wasn't really recognized. And then around 2000, it started to be recognized. There started to be a lot of messaging around obesity. Around 2000, you know, Americans started paying attention and calorie intake based on multiple different measures since 2000 has either been flat or even slightly declining.

35:49So calorie intake has gone down or is about the same as 2000. And physical activity has gone up since 2000. Not a lot. We're still as a nation, you know, under exercising, but it hasn't gone down since 2000. It's gone up. More people are exercising. More people are in gyms. More people are doing marathons. More people are doing yoga. And even if you use objective objective measures of energy expenditure, like doubly labeled water over time in the United States and in Europe, physical activity has gone up. So we have a paradox. Physical activity has gone up, calorie intake is flat or has gone down, and obesity has dramatically gone up since 2000.

36:28So how is it possible? How are our bodies violating the laws of thermodynamics?

36:32Dr. Mark Hyman:So eat less, exercise more, which is what we're all told doesn't seem to be working. We're doing it. We're doing it as a population. We're eating less and we're exercising more. Everybody's paying attention and we're gaining weight. And so what's kind of amazing, what's truly amazing is the science of how food affects our biology. And while we're still unpacking the details, Mark, basically what we're learning is that the type of food we eat long-term is way more important than its calories for weight gain. Of course, short-term calories matter. You can count your calories and figure it out and cut calories and you'll lose weight.

37:11And that's why any fad diet works. You can go on any diet and pay attention to your calories, you'll lose weight for a few months. But the biology fights back and the biology becomes important and people regain the weight. So what's the biology? I think two of the most interesting things we're learning about is one, how food affects our resting energy expenditure. the amount of calories we're burning while we're not doing anything. REE, resting energy expenditure. One of the most interesting things is thermogenesis, the generation of heat by the cells of the body. This was really understood well in hibernating bears.

37:44Bears have a lot of brown fat, this type of fat that's different from white fat that doesn't store calories but burns calories to give off heat. So imagine you're eating food, it's going to your fat cells and your fat cells aren't storing it, they're burning it and making you warmer, right? And so for a long time, it was thought that after infancy, humans don't have brown fat, but science in the last 10 or 15 years has made clear that we do have brown fat. It's quite active. People who have obesity have less active brown fat. And guess what activates brown fat? Good nutrition. And cold plunges.

38:20polyphenols in blueberries, EGCG in green tea, you know, quercetin from, you know, other plant foods. Diet activates thermogenesis. And in fact, low-fat diets seem to blunt thermogenesis and kind of high-fat ketogenic Atkins-style diets seem to activate thermogenesis. Protein activates it. Protein requires more calories. Protein activates thermogenesis, absolutely. And so we're not talking about small effects. these studies have shown that over the last 20 years, at a population level, our resting energy expenditure has gone down by 220 calories per day. That's more than enough to explain the obesity epidemic, right?

39:00We're doing everything right, everything we're being told to, but our resting energy expenditure has gone down. The second critical thing that isn't accounted for in the equations of energy balance, you know, eat less, move more, is what our microbiome is doing. When we eat, we're sharing our calories. We should be sharing our calories. Our bodies are digesting some of the calories, and our microbiome is digesting some of the calories. I'm not talking about fiber. People think of fiber. Fiber doesn't have calories for us. That's only for our microbiome. But our microbiome actually evolved because when we ate minimally processed foods out in the wild, they were in their intact natural structure, and you'd chew them nuts or beans or fruits, or you'd catch animals.

39:44And not all the calories would get digested in the stomach and the small intestine. The calories, the starch, the sugar, the protein, the fat, it would get to the microbiome. And the microbiome would digest those calories, harvest them, and give a little bit back to us and keep most of it for themselves. And we had a wonderful, thriving, symbiotic relationship. And so if you have a true kind of traditional, minimally processed diet, we digest and consume about 80 % of the calories. And the microbiome digests and consumes about 20%. then. So it's about a four to one split. If you have a healthy microbiome.

40:17And if you have a healthy microbiome, of course, yeah. In the modern ultra-processed diet, 98 % of calories are consumed by us and we're starving our microbiomes. So that's another 20 % of calories. If you're eating 2 ,500 calories, we're talking about a 500-calorie swing in how many calories you're digesting versus your microbiome. I think the bottom line point is the type of food we eat, the quality of the food is really what's crucial for long-term management of obesity, prevention of obesity, treatment of obesity. We have to focus on the quality of the food because if we focus on activating thermogenesis, on feeding our microbiome, then we don't have to count calories.

40:56We don't have to go crazy and follow packages and track our food.

41:00Dr. Mark Hyman:You just have to eat a healthy diet and pay attention to that. Yeah, well, that's so important. Our friend and colleague David Ludwig did a really important study where he did a clinical trial, and he fed people food so they knew exactly what they're eating. It was the same identical calories, and one was low-fat and one was low-sugar and starch. And the ones that had the low-fat diet burned about 400 calories less a day, eating the same amount of calories. So he said, it's not how much you eat that you should pay attention to, it's what you eat. So if you pay attention to what you eat, you don't have to worry about how much you eat.

41:35Dr. Mark Hyman:And I find that for myself. I never, you know, calories, I eat whatever I want, and I just eat real food. And it just, your body, it's like naturally regulates it. There was a great book I read by Fred Provenza called Nourishment. And he talked about the study where they gave kids, and this was in an orphanage, I think in the 20s, they couldn't do the study now, but it was in an orphanage in Canada. And they gave these kids like brain and kidney and liver and all these weird things that you think kids would eat and all these other foods. and the kids literally chose and selected the foods that were the most nourishing that would actually help them develop and grow.

42:06Dr. Mark Hyman:Like animals do that naturally. They have this innate wisdom. They know to eat this plant for this medicine. They know to eat this plant for this calorie content or starch. And they sample hundreds of plants and they have a couple of main food crops that are basically for calories, but then they eat all these other plants. And it's quite interesting that they know we've lost our innate wisdom when it comes to food our innate signaling because all of our hormonal signaling our immune signaling our microbiome signaling all the it's like a complete cacophony of of biochemical signals that is driving us to overeat and to be hungry all the time and to dysregulate our metabolic system and dysregulate our microbiome and so that's why we're in this pickle.

42:50Dr. Mark Hyman:And the whole calories in, calories out thing is just such a distraction. I never have once told a person to lose weight. I've never once told any patient to count calories. And I've had people lose literally probably hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds in my lifetime. And it's just by eating, like you said, eating real food. Yeah, you're absolutely right, Mark. I totally agree with everything you said. And I cover a lot of this in the book. And one of the signaling molecules that you're talking about is GLP-1. And this is why we can't blame willpower and lack of knowledge and other things for the problem.

43:32We're talking about biology. We've hijacked our biology. The food system has hijacked our biology so that most people are up against innate biology that they can't fight with their conscious conscious decisions. Although, of course, you can start to move in the right direction, but you're fighting, you're swimming upstream. And so, you know, GLP-1 lasts for just minutes in the bloodstream when it's naturally produced by the intestines in response to eating. But its effects last for hours and hours. And more and more research is showing that's because there's metabolites that if you have a healthy diet and a healthy microbiome, there's metabolites that go into bloodstream that activate the same receptors and the same pathways that GLP-1 activates in the brain and around the body.

44:15So the microbiome is potentiating the effects of GLP-1 signaling. About 25 % of all the circulating signaling molecules in the bloodstream are directly from the microbiome, and about another 25 % are altered by the microbiome. So you're talking about 50 % of our signaling molecules directly produce fire altered by the microbiome. It's another organ that's affecting our mood, our behavior, our brain, our diet, our appetite. And you see this now with GLP-1 drugs, which we can talk about separately what their role is. But I think one of the most interesting things about them is that for many patients, not all, for many patients, it not only makes them less hungry, it changes their preference for foods.

44:58And they no longer can actually even tolerate eating the processed foods they ate before. There's a great New York Times Magazine article that I write about that went with some of these patients in the grocery store. And the patients say, I crave, you know, cherries. I crave kale and vegetables. I crave fish. You know, I went and I bought a, you know, a Ho-Ho's or a Twinkies or candy or a soda and tried it. And it tasted fake. It tasted fake in my mouth, they said. I had to sit it out. And so I think for those of us like, you know, you and me, Mark, who I think we've been fortunate, blessed, you know, good food growing up, microbiome, epigenetics, whatever it is that we had, we have normal GLP-1 signaling.

45:44And so we crave naturally, just like those kids at the orphanage, we crave healthy foods that are good for us. That's what we actually want. And ultra processed foods taste awful. They don't actually taste good. They really taste bad. And so I think the majority of the nation with ultra processed foods and generation after generation of sickness for the last 30 years and kids being born to mothers who are sick and all the changes that are happening have altered GLP -1 signaling. We basically have altered GLP-1 signaling on a national scale, and it's altered people's biologic preferences for food.

46:21And so what's, I think, really interesting about GLP-1s, of course, they can be good for weight loss, but they're restoring the natural human biology. And why I think that's important, Mark, is there's been a narrative that the food industry has hooked us on sugar, salt, and fat, that we innately crave ultra-processed food. And so there's no way out. We have thrifty genes. It's just innate biology to get sick if we have a lot of food. And what I think GLP ones are showing us is that innate human biology is to eat healthy, minimally processed food that's actually delicious.

46:54Dr. Mark Hyman:One of the biggest mistakes people make with protein is thinking it has to be complicated. The truth is consistency matters more than perfection. Having simple ways to add protein throughout the day can make a huge difference. That's one reason I keep Paleo Valley's grass-fed manila bone broth protein on hand. Yep, I add it to smoothies, but what I really like is how versatile it is. You can mix it in coffee or use it in baking when you want an easy protein boost that actually tastes good. And with Paleo Valley's sweet and savory options, it's easy to work bone broth protein into all kinds of everyday foods and drinks.

47:26Dr. Mark Hyman:It's made from 100 % grass-fed and grass-finished beef bones and provides collagen-rich protein that fits easily into a whole food lifestyle. Now, when healthy habits are simple, you're much more likely to stick to them. And this is one that's been easy for me. Keep protein simple and go to paleovalley.com forward slash Hyman to save 15 % off your first order today. Have you ever climbed into bed exhausted, but your body just won't switch off? Your mind keeps racing, your muscles feel tight, and you can't fully relax. Well, a lot of times that can come down to one foundational nutrient, magnesium.

47:58Dr. Mark Hyman:It plays a critical role in sleep, recovery, stress regulation, and muscle function. Yet many people simply are not getting enough. And that's why I've recommended Magnesium Breakthrough from Bioptimizers for years. And now they've introduced Magnesium Breakthrough Advanced 10 with 10 bioavailable forms of magnesium and even more elemental magnesium to support sleep, muscle recovery, and metabolic health. It's become part of my evening routine, especially during periods of travel, training, and higher stress. Go to bioptimizers.com forward slash Hyman and you should go to Hyman to save 15 % off your order.

48:27Dr. Mark Hyman:I think I want to double click on what you said because it was quick and I want to unpack it a little bit. one, you said that 25 % of the biochemistry, of the metabolites, of the chemicals and molecules and messenger signaling things in our blood come from our gut, come from the microbiome. From food, yeah. And then another 25 % is modified by it. And second, it's important for people to understand that they're eating for themselves, but they also have to feed their microbiome. I call it feeding your inner garden. Because what you're saying is that if your microbiome is healthy, it will help naturally regulate your appetite and weight among many many other things immune function mood function i mean pretty much everything but importantly around this conversation you know we don't think about how do i feed these critters what are the prebiotic foods i need to eat what are the what are the um polyphenols i need to feed the microbiome what are the probiotic foods that i can eat how do i eat extra fiber to feed these bugs i mean what this is these are things that we should be really thinking about.

49:30Dr. Mark Hyman:And I think about, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm going to have artichokes because I know it's good for my microbiome. I'm going to, I do this, I'm going to eat a plantain because I know it's good for my microbiome. And I think that it's really important to actually start to learn how to not just feed yourself, but feed the little critters inside you that determine so much about your health, including your weight. That's a perfect, you know, statement mark for us to talk about protective foods, because for decades, we've sort of framed the fight against chronic disease for food as one of deprivation. Like don't have salt, don't have fat, don't have sugar, don't have food that tastes good, right?

50:03You know, you have to have to don't have calories. You have to reduce, reduce, reduce as though food is a bad thing. And of course, there's negative things in foods that we have to avoid and we have to reduce. That's true. But more disease is happening, Mark, and we've quantified this, more disease is happening and is occurring because of insufficient intake of good things than too much intake of bad things. It's both. But there's more disease from people not eating enough good things. And so everything you just said, you didn't say, I'm avoiding this or I'm avoiding that. You said, I'm craving and I'm looking for it.

50:38I'm seeking out these foods that are good for me. And so that's the message of food is medicine. It's an optimistic message that having a healthy diet is not about depriving yourself of something. It's about embracing delicious foods that are protective for your, for your body, for your gut, that taste great. And ultimately, you know, we need system solutions so everybody can eat that way. Because right now, the way our system is, you know, you have to have a lot of things. You have to have time, knowledge, cooking equipment. You have to have a lot of things to be able to eat that way. And we need to have systems where that's the easy, easy rock for everyone.

51:15But, but so, you know, eating, eating more of the good is really critical. And, and, and so, you know, we can talk about kind of what, what that priorities are, but I just wanted to highlight how important it is to embrace what's good in food. I think you're right. It's, it's,

51:26Dr. Mark Hyman:you know, we, we focus on the bad, but it's not what you take out. It's what you put in the matters. And it's the protective foods that are so healing and will really reverse disease. And I, I mean, I have been a practicing doctor. I'm not just a podcaster or an influencer. like I actually see patients and I've seen a lot of patients and it's amazing to me when you understand how to use food as medicine, how powerful it is. And we're talking in generalities about just eating good food, eating real food and so forth. But as a, as a functional medicine doctor, I can tell you that there's, it's very specific.

52:00Dr. Mark Hyman:If you think about drugs as medicine, there's different drugs for different diseases at different doses at different frequencies for different durations. It's the same with food. I will treat a person with autoimmune disease, different than I'll treat someone with diabetes, different than I'll treat someone with migraines, different than I'll treat someone with SIBO. It's very, very specific and it's personalized and it's about what that person particularly needs. And when you understand how to apply food as medicine, it's miraculous the kinds of results people get around the whole spectrum of chronic disease, not just obesity or heart disease or diabetes.

52:32Dr. Mark Hyman:So I just want to say that because is people don't understand how powerful it is. It's not just a metaphor. It's not just a nice phrase, food is medicine. It's actually a drug. Food is the most powerful drug on the planet. And it works faster, better, and cheaper than any other drug. And it illustrates your gene expression, your microbiome, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your metabolism. Literally, your immune system, it regulates everything. And so that's kind of a really important insight that most people don't get. It's not just, I'm eating for energy. you're eating for everything. And it works fast.

53:06You said it quickly, but it works fast. So we're not talking about years and years and years to see benefits, right? You can see changes to the microbiome and energy and mood and sleep within days. You can see changes in glucose and blood pressure within weeks and cholesterol levels within weeks. You can reverse diabetes, lower risk of heart disease within months to a year. We're not talking about waiting decades to see these benefits.

53:30Dr. Mark Hyman:I gave a talk at Cleveland Clinic when I first got there and I was talking about elimination diets and so forth. And this guy came up to me, I think it was even a patient actually, and he said, hey, Dr. Hyman, I just want to say I tried this elimination diet where I got a gluten, dairy, sugar, ultra processed food and ate all these protective foods. My rheumatoid arthritis went away in 10 days. Is that possible? I'm like, well, yeah, it happened to you. That's how quick it's like, like that, if you, you know, I'm sure he probably had a gluten related issue, which can cause autoimmune disease. So it, you know, somebody else who had another cause for rheumatoid arthritis might not get better.

54:08Dr. Mark Hyman:But in that case, it was like, it was quite amazing. All right. So let's talk about a couple of things. Let's start at the big picture. Ultra processed food. Right now, the federal government is in a process of defining it. Maybe when this podcast comes out, we'll have the definition, but you know, you've been part of that. I've been trying to help with that as well. And I think, you know, there's a lot of controversy and confusion. The food industry is very good at trying to, you know, poke holes and say, well, there's, it's hard to define. You're going to discriminate against this. It's kind of that.

54:38Dr. Mark Hyman:And have all these kind of talking points that they use to sort of make people doubt that we can define ultra processed food. But most people know what it is. Like, you know, it looks like what it is. Like a Twinkie is ultra processed food. Nobody's going to debate that. So how do you think about ultra-processed food, how you define them, and why are they so bad? The concept of ultra-processed food is actually pretty new. It was really thought of in 2011, you know, 15 years ago by Carlos Montero, a friend and colleague in Brazil. And his insight was that there's got to be something going on with modern food beyond sort of the typical nutrients and ingredients we look at.

55:13Because food companies are formulating products, and if you look at the numbers, they seem to be hitting all the targets. You know, it's low fat, it's low salt, and it seems to be okay, but people keep getting sick. And so he wondered, he hypothesized whether, you know, the processing itself beyond the actual nutrients could be really making a difference. And so he came up with this concept of ultra-processed foods. Now, ultra-processed foods doesn't mean foods can't be processed. He had a separate category for processed food. And so, you know, natural processing, a natural, you know, bread, canned, you know, beans, jarred fruit, a tin of tuna fish.

55:52Basically, if you just have food that's been slightly processed that you would do to preserve it or in your home is fine. Ultra-processed foods are things that you wouldn't see in a home kitchen, right? It's molecular assembly and disassembly of food molecules, putting together packaged foods. There's literal real food ingredients. There's chemical additives. There's packaging contaminants, often from the plastics. There's agricultural contaminants because they tend to use the cheapest commodity crops from industrial farms. And so he had this hypothesis that maybe this is important. And what's been amazing is in just the last 15 years, nearly 100 long-term observational studies around the world in every country that's looked has seen that people who eat more ultra-prosted foods have higher rates of major chronic diseases.

56:40From the brain to metabolism to the heart to the gut. and beyond. And that's true even if you adjust for kind of the major nutrients that we worry about, like salt and sugar and saturated fat and things like that. And three randomized controlled trials, relatively short term, one week to eight weeks, have also shown that if you match diets on kind of all the macros, protein, fiber, sugar, everything else, but you have one altered process to one minimally process, people eat more and gain weight without realizing it. Sort of proving in trials that for obesity, at least it's important. And so I think it's clear and obvious and convincing that ultra processed foods, which I would define as, you know, basically a food that you can't make in your kitchen, right?

57:26It's got additives and contents and formulations and loss of food structure that you wouldn't just be able to naturally make yourself. Ultra processed foods clearly are harmful and they clearly need to be defined and they need to be labeled. and they probably need to be taxed. We need to do a lot of things to address them, but as a start, they need to be labeled so that we know what they are, and we can be transparent to the consumer, and they recognize them. And of course, there's heterogeneity in the definition. And so an ultra-processed yogurt might be better for you than an ultra-processed soda.

58:02An ultra-processed candy bar might be worse for you than an ultra-processed whole grain. That's true. But what I really want to emphasize here is that those are industry talking points that, well, we're going to discriminate against certain foods. Ultra processing isn't supposed to be replacing everything else we know about nutrition, Mark. We're not supposed to forget that, well, whole grains are better than refined grains and yogurt is better than candy. It's supposed to be added to our knowledge. We're still supposed to pay attention to the kinds of foods you eat and avoid salt and avoid added sugar.

58:33So as long as we remember that ultra processing isn't supposed to be the only rule that you follow, but it's one additional important principle. It's a very, very useful concept. And right now, 50 to 60 % of calories in the U.S. food supply are ultra-processed food. And by the way, the next highest country is like 20%. So we are well above the world in our consumption of ultra-processed food, and it's devastating our bodies. Well, you hinted at this.

59:00Dr. Mark Hyman:This is a sort of molecular science project. This is not food. The food industry takes commodity crops, they alter them biochemically, they break them apart into sort of these molecular components, they reassemble them into these things that are food-like products, but they're not actually food. If you define food according to the Webster Dictionary or the Oxford Dictionary definition, and I'm going to begin, it's not exactly right, but it's something like this, that food is something that supports the health and the growth and the development of an organism, whether it's a plant or a human. and these foods by definition are not foods.

59:33Dr. Mark Hyman:So ultra processed stuff. I don't even want to call it ultra processed food. And I think, you know, most people intuitively know what it is. It's junk food. And I always say there's no, there's no just thing as junk food. There's junk and there's food, you know? So I think kind of that's where we are. And it's important people understand that this, I don't have many hard lines, but this is not food. You should not be eating it. Don't eat a rock. You know, don't eat this stuff. It ain't food. Okay, so let's talk about things that actually are food. And there's a couple of big, big things out there in the public zeitgeist right now that are very controversial.

1:00:07Dr. Mark Hyman:One is protein, another is seed oils. We've had many conversations about this, but talk about this protein craze. Now you can get protein, like Dunkin' Donuts milkshakes, which are just sugar with protein thrown in them. And to quote Sarah Palin, you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. So everywhere there's protein. I went to the supermarket and it was like protein Cheerios. And I'm like, what is this? And so can you kind of help us unpack this whole protein craze and the controversy about it? And are we eating too much? Are we not eating enough? What do we actually need? And how do we get this right?

1:00:44I unpack this in more detail in my book and really explain the science and tell stories and kind of make it fun and interesting. But I'll do it quickly here. So I think there's three things we need to think about, right? What does protein do? How much do you need? And what else is coming with it? And what else is coming with it in the food you're eating? And so the first thing is, what does it do? There's lots of things protein does, but one of its major purposes to have more protein is to build muscle. Again, there's other purposes for metabolism and other things, but the main purpose, the main thing people are thinking about is to build muscle.

1:01:18And it's certainly true that if you have a higher protein diet versus a lower protein diet and you're strength training, you're going to build muscle faster and you're going to get stronger if you're eating the higher protein diet versus lower protein diet. That's why bodybuilders, you know, take protein supplements and eat a lot of protein, right? Because it does work. But there's a couple of key points to that. You know, one is that most Americans are already eating enough protein. That's the higher levels that's been studied in those trials, right? So the average American is eating 16 or 17 % of calories from protein, which means half of Americans are eating more.

1:01:52And in those trials, the high protein diets are around 16 or 17 % of calories from protein compared to lower. So most Americans are already eating, 90 % of Americans actually are already eating enough protein for normal regular strength training to build muscle. We're not talking like to be bodybuilders, but for normal strength training. There are certain populations, younger women and older women in particular, who don't eat a lot of animal products and might not be getting enough protein, but most Americans eat enough. The second key point to that is that if you're not strength training, the protein is not going to have a lot of benefit for muscles.

1:02:28You're not going to build muscles and look like a bodybuilder if you're not strength training. And so protein, like sugar, like starchmark, if you eat excess protein and you have the amino acids circulating in your blood stream, the muscle says, I don't need them. You didn't work out in the last couple of days. You know, I don't need more, more amino acids. What happens? Insulin goes up the counter regulatory hormone insulin, the same hormone that, that regulates, you know, glucose goes up and turns those amino acids into fat for, for, for storage in the body. So protein gets turned to fat. So if you're going out and having protein, you know, drinks and protein energy bars and protein shakes and protein junk food and you're not exercising, you're just building body fat.

1:03:12Dr. Mark Hyman:Especially eating protein with sugar, like a Dunkin' Donut or a Starbucks drink. And then the last point, I think, which is probably to me as a cardiologist, the most important is the muscle is not the only organ in your body. So even if you're strength training, don't go get your protein sources from foods that are going to devastate every other organ in your body, right? Think about the food source. The food source matters because not for the amino acids, and there's all this stuff about complete protein and incomplete protein. That's mostly not that important, actually. You can get your protein from plants or animals, and you mostly get all the same amino acids.

1:03:50What's really important is, is it a processed food? Is it minimally processed or not? Does it have phenolics? Does it have fiber? Does it have all the other protective qualities we've talked about? And so to me, if you're going to get your protein, think about the other health effects. And if we talk about the other health effects beyond muscle, you know, plant sources of protein and seafood sources would be at the top. They're the best for overall health. I'd say then, you know, yogurt and cheese and fermented foods would probably be next. And then you'd have sort of your fresh animal foods like eggs and poultry and red meats, especially, you know, regeneratively grown or pasture-finished red meats, which have lower inflammatory levels.

1:04:29And then the worst is processed meats that have chemical nitrites and added sugars and other things, salamis and bacons and bolognese and all the low-fat processed deli meats that are in hospitals and in health conferences and in lunchboxes of kids because moms are trying to do the right thing. Those are actually the worst dose of protein. Plus all the junk food, all the soy protein isolates in junk food that's just being thrown, or protein's being added to it as protein Pop-Tarts is a real thing. So that's kind of how I would summarize things. You know, first, you're probably getting enough protein if you're eating an average diet.

1:05:03You don't even need to think about it or get more. Second, make sure you're strength training. Everybody should be strength training, you know, at least three times a week, doing at least 30 minutes of strength training, especially important as you age. And third, remember that you're more than muscle. And so, you know, make sure you're getting your protein from healthy sources.

1:05:18Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, very important. I think that's important. I think there's, you know, there's edge cases where if you're older, there's anabolic resistance and you don't use protein as well. So you may need a little more. And I think it gets harder to build muscle as you get older. Although I found that I'm 65 and had a catastrophic back infection and lost 25 pounds of muscle. I was able to gain it all back, which I didn't know it could, but I really had to increase my protein and like whey protein shakes and make sure I was strength training. And it was amazing how I've even gotten back better than I was before.

1:05:53Dr. Mark Hyman:The body's amazing, and I think you just need to provide the right fuels. Let's talk about seed oils for a minute. You know, you and I have debated this for a long time, and I was really kind of pretty far in the extreme of, I think, they're evil and bad. And, you know, you very, very lovingly, and with a lot of patience, has helped me really understand that it's a more nuanced conversation. and then ultimately a lot of the problems with seed oils are that they're a biomarker of bad food. In other words, they just are found in most ultra-processed foods, and that's where we're getting most of our seed oils.

1:06:30Dr. Mark Hyman:But in and of themselves, they're not necessarily a big issue. So I think maybe you could kind of talk about where we should be concerned about them and where we shouldn't be concerned about them. Yeah. So most of our oils, I don't call them vegetable oils, I call them plant oils. And I talk about that in the book because they're actually are bean oils. And I just see nuts, right? Yeah. Nuts, seeds, and fruits, right? Our oils come from nuts, seeds, and fruits. And so - Beans, like soybeans, right? And beans, yeah. Nuts, seeds, beans, and fruits. Yeah. And so those are the healthiest foods in the food, among the healthiest foods in the food supply, nuts, seeds, beans, and fruits.

1:07:09And so oils from all of those foods are amazing. They're packed with both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are both really, really good for health. They often have, especially if they're more virgin oils, they often have the phenolics and other beneficial compounds that come along with those nuts and seeds and oils that are fat soluble. And so just first remember when you're talking about a seed oil, you're talking about the healthy fats from seeds, which are among the healthiest foods on the planet. And so just based on first principles, we'd expect these to be really healthy.

1:07:44Why has there been concern that seed oils are not healthy. I've thought about this a lot, and it doesn't come from, I think, any ill intent. I think it comes from people looking at pieces of science and history and kind of putting it together in ways that seem to make sense. But when you actually pull the card out, the whole house of cards kind of falls down and doesn't make a lot of sense. And it's basically a few things. One, vegetable oils that were industrially produced for decades were partially hydrogenated. And partial hydrogenation, which we made Crisco and sick margarines and a lot of almost every package of foods, it partially hydrogenated, you know, soybean oil, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

1:08:30Those had trans fats, these industrial fats that were really toxic. And it took the FDA 20 years. It took them way too long to remove them. But finally, by 2018, those have been banned from the U.S. food supply. They're banned in Europe. They're banned in a lot

1:08:44Dr. Mark Hyman:countries not not all but by the way they're still there in the food they are you can still go buy crisco and things that are are full of uh hydrogenated fats in the grocery store because i check it's not it's not a ban it's like a it's a that's non-grass so it's not recognized as safe and they're supposed to take it out but it's still there those are fully hydrogenated so they don't have trans fat anymore so it's the partial hydrogenation that made the trans fats that's that's really gone orc that's partial hydrogenation is really gone there's fully hydrogenated oils which we can talk about, they don't have the trans fats anymore.

1:09:15So even Crisco and those things don't have the trans fat. So that's true. And so that really led people to think, okay, industrial fats and oils are bad for us because they were, they were for a long time. So then the second thing is this concept that omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids are pro-inflammatory, which comes from, you know, molecular theories and animal research that was done by Bill Lanz, who I knew and spoke to before he passed away a few decades ago. Really a wonderful scientist. And that kind of biochemistry and animal science has been now tested in humans, and it doesn't happen in humans.

1:09:51Omega-6s are not pro-inflammatory in humans. It's not a concern. And so that's the second thing, which most people kind of don't understand. And I think the third thing is just this, back to this idea of ultra-processing, you know, to get oil out of seeds, you can't just squeeze them like avocados or olives, right? You can't have a virgin sunflower oil because you can't just use squeezing in low temperature. You have to really use, you know, high heat and chemical processes to get oils out of a seed. And those processes do introduce some trace toxins, right? Some trace toxins that are not in virgin oils.

1:10:25And so, yeah, because of the presence of those trace toxins, virgin oils are probably better for you on average than industrial oils. But this is the key point. Countless studies, randomized trials, carefully done studies, observational studies, feeding trials have shown again and again and again that industrial seed oils net are still really good for our health. And so I think of them as perfectly fine. Soybean oil and canola oil are probably the best choices among seed oils because they have plant omega-3s in them. They have the highest levels of plant omega-3s on average. But I think any plant oil is good for you.

1:11:00So if you have to choose, go ahead. We use extra virgin olive oil because I like the taste. We use avocado oil because I like the taste. But if we want to deep fry, those aren't good. We use canola oil and it's fine. So I think you're right.

1:11:14Dr. Mark Hyman:You can get expeller cold-pressed versions, right? Just for the better part of the allergy. If you can find and afford cold-pressed versions, they're probably better. But the industrial versions aren't bad for you. And so, and so I think, you know, like you said, Mark, it's a distraction because they're a marker of processed foods and the processed foods are bad in other ways, but it's not the C2Ls that are the problem. And I think there's one other point. I don't know if you've covered this in your book, but it's something I see clinically at Function Health. We test everybody's omega-3 fats.

1:11:40Dr. Mark Hyman:It's just part of your standard panel, which has probably hasn't been done at scale like that ever. We asked Quest, like this is unheard of. They had to, they had to build a new lab for us because we were doing so many omega-3 tests. Well over half of our members or more have a low omega-3 index, meaning they're lower in omega-3s than we should be. And so it may not be the omega-6s that are the problem. It may be the fact that we're low in omega-3s, which are anti-inflammatory. And so when I looked carefully at all the trials in my book, E-Fat Get Then, years ago, I was like, oh, this is interesting.

1:12:15Dr. Mark Hyman:This is really, it's about not just the excess of omega-6s, it's the lack of omega-3s in our diet. And I think that's a really key point. And when you actually look at the data, the studies where they had oils that were just pure omega-6 had a little bit worse outcomes than when they added the oils with omega-3s. So I think there's a subtle point there, but I think it's important. I think people need to make sure they're eating those because they're not typically in our food anymore. We used to eat wild food. They're in wild plants. They're in wild animals. They're in wild fish. and we get it in wheat sardines and things like that that are wild, but it's rare to get them nuts and seeds to have some, but they're not well converted into the EPA, DHA that we need.

1:12:53Dr. Mark Hyman:So I think that's a kind of a nuance. If I were to say anything about it, I think focus on omega threes and don't worry so much about the others. So all my first research focused on omega threes. That was kind of in the omega three mafia, you know, with all the researchers doing this real omega-3 research. And so you are 100 % correct. I'm surprised it's even 50%, you know, have reasonable levels. I can't remember the exact number, but... Yeah, we have a national crisis of omega-3 deficiency. We really do. Much more important than, you know, many other vitamins that we talk about. And so most Americans aren't getting enough omega-3s.

1:13:31And so that's why when people talk about the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, yes, if you have a high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. It's really bad for you, but it's because the omega-3s are low. Trying to fix the ratio by moving the omega-6 isn't going to do anything. You got to move the omega-3. I think that's a take-home for people.

1:13:49Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, that's a take-home. Okay, so we've covered a lot of why we got here, how we got here. We've covered calories. We've covered protein. We've covered seed oils. We've covered fat to some degree. I want to sort of end by briefly kind talking about system change because I wrote a book, Food Fix, how to save our health, our economy, our communities, and our planet one bite at a time. And it really talked about the nexus where food touches everything that we care about almost. And it is the solution for a lot of what we care about. You have come to the same conclusion. And that's why a lot of your work as a doctor is now in policy.

1:14:27Dr. Mark Hyman:It's like I was sitting in my office. I'm like, I can't cure diabetes in my office. It's cured, you know, on the farm, in the, in the grocery store, in the restaurant, in the kitchen is that's where, where diabetes is cured. And so you and I have come to the same conclusion and you spend a lot of time thinking about it, a lot of time working on these policies, a lot of time actually doing research, showing how food is medicine can be a tool by medically tailored meals and a lot of other ideas. What are the biggest levers to pull when it comes to policy change. Let's say we have two years left in this administration and we have the most friendly administration, aside from all the other complications and problems of the administration, we have the most friendly administration when it comes to food policy.

1:15:10Dr. Mark Hyman:So can you talk about what would be your dream changes over the next two years that would be implemented if you could be king for two years? Well, I want to emphasize what you said about the system being broken, right? Because when you have, you know, young kids, five years old with, with obesity or with type two diabetes and insulin resistance, when you have, when you have 94 % of Americans, Mark, 94 % of Americans have suboptimal, of adults have suboptimal cardiometabolic health, hypertension, blood pressure, glucose, body mass, 94%, only 6 % of American adults have, have optimal cardiometabolic health.

1:15:49The system is broken, right? And so, and so while, of course, first you can go out and do your best and everybody should go out and do their best and try to eat as healthy as they can. When the system is broken, it's hard for everyone, especially for people who have lower income, lower education, are facing structural racism, are facing physical debility, other challenges, which is a lot of Americans. A lot of Americans are struggling. Costs. So we need to fix the system. And what's really exciting is we now have this solutions in our hand and we could actually implement them and fix this. And there's no one solution, but there's a handful.

1:16:25There's just a handful of things we need to do. So I go through them in the book. I tell kind of the stories of who's really on the cutting edge and, you know, really doing exciting things and what the barriers are. And so I'll just kind of go through the list of them and maybe I'll just focus on healthcare, but agriculture, right? We need to fix agriculture sure, and it's doable. We can make farmers, make profits, you know, having healthy food. We need to fix kind of our education, our dietary guidelines, our labeling, you know, kind of all the things we do for information for consumers. That's number two.

1:16:56We need to fix the FDA in terms of its regulation of food safety, the additives, the chemicals, marketing, you know, with the FTC and FCC. We need to fix kind of the regulation of food for things that we're supposed to regulate food safety around chemicals. We regulate food safety for infectious disease, like E. coli, but we don't regulate food safety for chemical safety, right? All the chemicals in our food. We need to leverage healthcare and make sure nutrition is in healthcare. And I'll come back to that one. I want to highlight that one. We need to leverage our federal nutrition programs, almost$150 billion a year goes to SNAP, WIC, school meals, meals for the elderly, like meals for early childcare.

1:17:45So we need to leverage that spending, which is basically going to industry to make sure it's going to healthy food. We need to leverage nutrition science, and we need to have far more investment at the National Institutes of Health, which is supposed to be our country's leading organization focused on health, but is not investing in the top cause of poor health, which is nutrition, right? So we need to really have a new food shot in nutrition science. And then lastly, I would love to see a national program where the government, federal, states, local, prioritize innovators and entrepreneurs in the food system, from farmers to restaurants to supply chain to food manufacturers that are truly making better food, right?

1:18:30We've done this for railroads, for cars, for electronic chips, for energy. We've done it for all kinds of things that the government recognized were national priorities to fix. We need to do this for food. We can't let the companies that are trying to do well just fight it out with the consumer. We have to reward them and encourage the industry. So that suite of things done together would shift our food system in 10 or 20 years. And I think healthcare, to me, is one of the most important just because of the size of the dollars, right? We spend now almost six.

1:19:05Dr. Mark Hyman:Five trillion. It's almost six, Mark. Oh, damn. That was last week it was five. It's incredible. I've been saying five trillion. Last year it was up to 5.6, and this year it's estimated to be close to six. Daria, I went back and saw a slideshow I did in 2000 and it said 1.6. Our healthcare spending is swallowing up everything else. Like it's almost, you know, unfathomable how much we're spending on healthcare. People just can't get wrapped. It's so much money. You can't wrap their mind around it. The numbers that I use to make it real for the average family of four, we spend$50 ,000 a year on healthcare.

1:19:42So imagine how much they spend on their food, on their transportation, and even on their housing. 50 ,000 a year for the average family of four, one in five dollars that goes through our pockets goes way bigger than all the money that's being spent on AI and data centers and all that. All the money the country is spending on AI and data centers is about 2 % of GDP. 2 % of our gross domestic product is being spent on AI. We're spending almost 20%, tenfold more on healthcare than everything we're spending on AI. And at the federal government, almost 35 % of every dollar in the federal government is being spent on healthcare, which is massively increased.

1:20:19And so how do we use those dollars? And so you've worked on this, we've worked on this together, Mark. We need to get doctors educated in nutrition. That's happening. We need to have effective treatments, not prevention, but treatments that are food-based for disease. And so if you have diabetes, sure, you could get put on a drug, you could get a a surgery or a device if you need it, but you could also get a healthy food prescription. If you have kidney disease or heart failure or cancer, and we find that certain foods can help, you know, amplify your chemotherapy as has been seen with certain immunotherapies and other therapies that work with the gut microbiome, you can get medically tailored meals where you're actually getting medical meals that support your disease.

1:21:00There's no reason that food can't be part of medical treatment for the right patients under the right conditions as a treatment. We're not talking about handouts. We're not talking about using health care as social welfare. We're talking about medical treatments that are medically indicated. And we have shown that giving food to people with heart failure, depression, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, not only makes them feel better, but it keeps them out of the hospital, keeps them out of the emergency room. And in some cases, you actually save money. Even accounting for the cost of the food you're giving people, you save money.

1:21:31So I think health care is really exciting. And what a lot of people don't are not familiar with is that this has happened. This is happening now at scale. There's 30 states, 30 states mark, that are testing these kinds of food as medicine interventions in Medicaid, which is the health insurance program for the poor. The VA hospital for our veterans is testing these programs. The Indian Health Service is testing these food as medicine programs for tribal communities. Medicare Advantage programs are testing these programs. And so I would estimate now, there's no single number, but I would estimate now that at least$10 billion are being spent in healthcare on food.

1:22:08Now imagine if healthcare is$6 trillion,$6 trillion. So imagine if 3 % of that, 4 % of that was spent on food, right? We're talking$240 billion. Our total spend on food right now is about$2 trillion. So if we spent another$240 billion on healthy food, that's a massive, massive signal to the market, right? To farmers, to restaurants, to grocery stores, it's a massive influx of dollars to change their practice and make them more profitable. So to me, healthcare is the single biggest lever and where I'm really focused the most. Yeah.

1:22:44Dr. Mark Hyman:And I think the food industry is very good at obfuscating, confusing, and misdirecting us and telling us that it's complicated, it's difficult, it's hard. You know we don't have all the answers we need more science and I'm just going to call bs on that we know enough about what to eat and what not to eat to be healthy we know enough about policies that need to change to fix the problem and if we do that in the next 10 to 20 years we could meaningfully impact the health of America we could mean back our mental health crisis our obesity crisis our environmental crisis our economic crisis I mean I I know for a fact that you know they went to a governor who wanted to ban the dyes in food and i think food items and dyes are you know they're not the biggest problem we have but it's a thing and the the food industry came to him and was like you're gonna put grandma in jail for making red dye cupcakes you really want to do that and like manipulating him and making him scared of what's gonna happen to his consumers is this election and he called me and was like what what should i do like what's going on like well here let me tell you and he ended up you know doing the right thing but it was the pressure they put on isn't massive i mean the consumer brand association i know for a fact has created a war room to basically fight back against the policies that need to change it's not just that they're doing things unintentionally and and you know benignly and then they oh sorry we didn't know they're like they know and they know what they're doing and they're very deliberate about it and And to me, it's really bad.

1:24:16Dr. Mark Hyman:So I think your book, Food is Medicine, Healing Our Bodies, Nourishing Our Minds, and Transforming Our Food System is a really important book. I think everybody should get a copy. It's about what you can do for you and what we can do for us to really transform our health and our food system over the next few decades. And I hope all of our dreams come true. And honestly, when I wrote Food Fix seven years ago, I never dreamed that we'd be in the position we're in now where there's actually things starting to happen that I talked about. I thought it was just, I was putting it out there and maybe sometime after I died, maybe things would change, but we're seeing change.

1:24:51Dr. Mark Hyman:And I think we just, as a society, as individuals, we really need to continue to push things in the right direction for ourselves. And those choices we make individually, the choices we make at the ballot box, they all matter. So vote with your fork, vote with your vote, and let's change the system. And what I'm excited about, and this is why I have a whole chapter on business innovation, Mark, is that the food sector is doing some terrible things, but it's not like tobacco, where there's one product and a handful of companies. The food sector, from farmers to restaurants to retailers, supermarkets and food manufacturers, there's a broad set of actors.

1:25:27And there are many trying to do the right thing and trying to make healthier products. Farmers trying to make healthier food. There's manufacturers trying to make healthier products. Supermarkets trying to highlight and sell their produce and other things. And so we need to elevate and celebrate those stories and use policies that give them more demand and help them. And we need to do, you know, punitive and disincentive and other policies to deal with the bad actors. And so this isn't an industry we want to kill. This is an industry we want to help shift. And we did it with energy. We did it with energy.

1:26:03We've shifted, you know, 25 % of all energy in the United States is out of clean energy. You know, almost 50 % in some European countries. And so we've done it with energy. We were able to shift away. And so ultra processed foods is kind of the coal and gas of, you know, the body. And we need to shift towards clean food. And, you know, we can do it. And so I'm really excited. I hope that people read the book and come away, you know, knowing what to eat for themselves, but also knowing what to do in their community, in their organization they work in, what to do, what to tell their elected officials, what they want to see in the world.

1:26:41Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, thank you, Dari, for your work for decades to help build the scientific foundation for what we're doing now, for your advocacy, for your mentorship for me, and for your friendship. This is a great journey to be on with you. And I think I'm very hopeful for where we're going. So thanks for everything. Everybody, buy the book, Food is Medicine. You can get it anywhere you get books. Thanks so much for being on the podcast again, Darry. Great. It's great to see you, Mark. Thanks. Thanks for everything you do. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it.

1:27:10Dr. Mark Hyman:You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to The Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.

1:27:39Dr. Mark Hyman:Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient.

1:28:09Dr. Mark Hyman:It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.