It’s Time to End the Corruption of the Food & Pharmaceutical Industries

Last week a group of doctors, podcasters and entrepreneurs went to Washington DC for a health and nutrition roundtable. 

None of the presenters were nutrition scientists but they did a better job articulating the urgency of our chronic disease epidemic that is largely driven by the corruption of the food and the pharmaceutical industries than the majority of public health experts in the United States.  

They addressed our skyrocketing rates of chronic disease in both children and adults, the toxicity of our ultra-processed industrial food system, the deception of the USDA food pyramid, the lack of regulation for tens of thousands of harmful ingredients that are banned in other countries, pesticide exposure, the United States government subsidizing the foods that are making us sick, lack of nutrition education in medical school, and the corrupt influence that big food, big pharma and big ag have over our nation’s public health guidelines.

As Dr. Casey Means said in her testimony: “You would think our healthcare system and government agencies would be clamoring to fix metabolic health and reduce American suffering and costs. But they are not. They are deafeningly silent about metabolic dysfunction and its known causes.” 

Calley Means asked: Why is the FDA funded by the pharmaceutical industry? The pharmaceutical industry spends 5 times more on political donations and public affairs and lobbying than the oil industry. 

Robert F Kennedy Jr stated: “if a foreign nation did this to our country we would consider it an act of war.” 

While mainstream news outlets have been silent with virtually zero coverage of the roundtable, for the first time ever it feels like enough people are waking up to these issues that there is a real opportunity for change. 

You can watch the full 4 hour hearing. Today I’m sharing key takeaways from the panel.

Clips from The Event

• Why is the FDA funded by the pharmaceutical industry clip 
• Most Americans don’t even know they are constantly exposed to thousands of untested ingredients clip
• I learned virtually nothing at Stanford Medical School clip   
• Froot Loops in Canada versus Froot Loops in the US clip

Casey Means, MD, Co-Founder of Levels and Author of Good Energy  

“Over the last 50 years in the United States we have seen rapidly rising rates of chronic illnesses throughout the whole body: infertility, obesity, type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, cancer, heart disease, stroke, autoimmune diseases, mental illness, chronic pain, fatigue, congenital abnormalities, osteoarthritis, chronic liver disease, autism and infant and maternal mortality–all going up. 

Every disease I mentioned is caused by or worsened by metabolic dysfunction….Metabolic dysfunction is largely NOT a genetic issue. It is caused by the toxic American ultra-processed industrial food system, toxic American chemicals, toxic excess of American medications, and toxic sedentary indoor lifestyles. 

You would think our healthcare system and government agencies would be clamoring to fix metabolic health and reduce American suffering and costs. But they are not. They are deafeningly silent about metabolic dysfunction and its known causes. 

It is not an overstatement to say that I learned virtually nothing at Stanford Medical School about the tens of thousands of scientific papers that elucidate these root causes of why Americans’ health is plummeting and how environmental factors are causing this. For instance, in medical school I did not learn that for each additional serving of ultra-processed food we eat, early mortality increases by 18%. This now makes up 67% of the foods our kids are eating. I took zero nutrition courses in medical school.” 

“I didn’t learn that professional organizations that we get our practice guidelines from like the American Diabetes Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have taken tens of millions of dollars from Coke, Cadbury, processed food companies and vaccine manufacturers like Moderna.” 

“Instead, doctors are learning that the body is 100 separate parts, and we learn how to drug, we learn how to cut and we learn how to bill.”  

Calley Means, Co-Author of Good Energy 

“The pharmaceutical industry is the largest funder of news, of medical research, of medical schools, of civil rights groups, and of politicians themselves. They spend 5 times more on political donations and public affairs and lobbying than the oil industry…We need to disallow USDA officials who make nutrition guidelines for our children to take money from food companies. Every American listening would assume this is already the case, it’s not.” 

“Why is the FDA funded by the pharmaceutical industry? Why is pharma lobbying to pay billions of dollars out of pocket to fund their own regulatory agency? The FDA should not be funded by the pharmaceutical industry.”

“One other is SNAP. It is suicidal public policy that with the program that lower income Americans depend on for supplemental nutrition that 10% goes to sugary drinks and 70% goes to ultra-processed foods. We are underwriting the poisoning of our lower income population and then Medicaid picks up as a lifetime annuity to pharma…We should not be subsidizing ultra-processed food for children.” 

“During COVID there was zero curiosity about why we were dying at a 3 times higher rate than any other country. When you listen to independent media all they are talking about is the exploding rates of chronic conditions. There is never a segment–CNN, NBC, Today Show–they will not have my sister and I on. We have a book about medical empowerment. They will not have any healthcare author on that even questions medical orthodoxy because it goes against who is paying their bill. We should not have an institution that fundamentally profits from Americans being sick then being able to buy off our information sources.”

“Food and exercise and basic metabolic habits are clinically the most effective reversal and most effective treatments for the chronic conditions that are plaguing our industry. It needs to be the center of healthcare. Regenerative farming, transforming our food system, exercise–that is healthcare.” 

Jason Karp, Founder and CEO of HumanCo. 

“We have an overreliance on scientific studies at the expense of common sense. We don’t need 10 years of clinical controlled studies to know that we shouldn’t have plastic in our brains. 

We don’t need 10 years of studies to know that if there is a pesticide that kills every insect, every microorganism that we don’t need 10 years of studies to know that we should not be putting that in mass quantities in our bodies.” 

“It is a travesty that the majority of Americans don’t even know they are constantly exposed to thousands of untested ingredients that are actually banned or regulated in other countries. 

To put it bluntly, for the last 50 years we have been running the largest uncontrolled science experiment ever done on humanity without their consent. Why should America, the greatest country on earth, be the last to protect its people?” 

Marty Makary, MD, Author & Expert at Johns Hopkins University  

“Our healthcare system is playing whack-a-mole on the backend and we are not talking about the root causes of our chronic disease epidemic. We’re so busy in these short visits billing and coding…but the country is getting sicker, we cannot keep going down this path. We have the most overmedicated, sickest population in the world and no one is talking about the root causes”

“Maybe we need to talk about school lunch programs, not just putting every kid on obesity drugs like ozempic. Maybe we need to talk about treating diabetes with cooking classes, not just throwing insulin at everybody. Maybe we need to talk about environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo to treat it. We’ve got to talk about food as medicine”

“The best way to lower drug costs in the US is to stop taking drugs we don’t need.” 

“The greatest perpetrator of misinformation has been the United States government with the food pyramid.”

“The purpose of science is to challenge deeply held assumptions.” 

Vani Hari, Food Activist of FoodBabe and Founder of Truvani 

“Our government is letting US food companies get away with serving American citizens harmful ingredients that are banned or heavily regulated in other countries. Even worse, American food companies are selling the same exact products overseas without these chemicals but choose to continue serving us the most toxic version here. It’s un-American.”

“I want Americans to be treated the same way as citizens in other countries by our own American companies.” 

“We use over 10,000 food additives here in the United States and in Europe there’s only 400 approved. In 2013, I discovered that Kraft was producing their famous mac & cheese in other countries without artificial dyes. They used yellow 5 and yellow 6 here.”

“Ordinary people who rallied for safer food shared this information and signed petitions were able to make these changes. We did this on our own. But isn’t this something that the people in Washington, our elected politicians should be doing?” 

“This game of whack-a-mole that I’ve been playing with other concerned citizens for the last 10 years isn’t enough to protect Americans from the unethical and hypocritical practices of these companies. We deserve the same safer ingredients other countries get. We cannot allow our own American companies to treat us this way anymore. We have had enough. It’s unethical and it needs to stop. 

Right now we are at a critical moment where Americans are sicker than ever and much of this is due to the alarming amount of harmful chemicals allowed in our food. Asking companies to remove artificial food dyes would make an immediate impact–they don’t need to reinvent the wheel. They already have the formulations, as I’ve shown you (in other countries). Consumption of artificial food dyes has increased by 500% in the last 50 years and children are the biggest consumers.”

“The worst part–American food companies know the harms of these additives because they were forced to remove them overseas due to stricter regulations and to avoid warning labels that would hurt sales. This is one of the most hypocritical policies of food companies and someone needs to hold them accountable. The FDA is asleep at the wheel.”   

Alex Clark, Host of the Culture Apothecary Podcast 

“By virtually every measure, millennials are more health conscious than any generation before us but at the same time we are also the sickest. That is until our children end up surpassing us. The next generation of children is predicted to not outlive their parents if we continue on the trajectory that we are currently on.” 

“The food pyramid told us that all fat was bad, a lie. It told us to make complex carbs like pasta, bread and processed breakfast cereal the bedrock of our diet–not because it was healthy but because it was the most profitable recommendation for big ag and big food. We became the first generation subjected to sugar, fattening and inflammatory foods, deliberately engineered to be as addictive as heroin thanks to the food companies buying the scientists from the cigarette companies for that exact purpose.” 

“These experts are bought and paid for from every direction and they are currently allowed to shape and create public policy that affects you and I.”

Courtney Swan, Host of the Realfoodology Podcast

“Why is the US government subsidizing the most pesticide sprayed crops using taxpayer dollars? These are the exact foods that are driving the epidemic of chronic disease. Glyphosate is classified as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. 

They’re finding glyphosate in human breast milk, placentas, our organs and even sperm. It’s also being found in our rain and our drinking water. Glyphosate still isn’t labeled on our food. Parents in America are unknowingly feeding their children these toxic foods. 

Meanwhile Bayer is doing everything to keep consumers in the dark while our government protects these corporate giants. They know that their product is harming people. 

We have industrialized our food at the expense of our health, prioritizing profits over people to the point where our bodies can no longer cope with this chemical assault. We must stop subsidizing the foods that make us sick. We must prioritize people over profit.” 

Max Lugavere, Host of the Genius Life Podcast 

“Today 73% of the modern supermarket is made up of ultra-processed foods. Food that barely resembles what we have evolved to eat. All Americans are under attack and it’s costing us dearly. 

A recent umbrella review of meta-analyses linked ultra-processed foods to 32 negative health outcomes. Everything from cancer, heart disease and diabetes–the usual suspects to depression and anxiety. Not one single positive health outcome was associated with these foods. 

Ultra-processed foods are engineered to be hyperpalatable and addictive. They drive us to overeat by as much as 800 calories per day, simply due to the quality of the food. Every 10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed foods in the diet is associated with a 14% increased risk of all-cause death.” 

“If your grocery store has a health food section, what does that make the rest of the store?”