So I think in a lot of it has to do with our whole food system and our food policies that drive and agriculture system and a food production system that bruises really bad food that has multiple Downstream consequences mostly unintended but real and serious and they need to be dealt with our food system creates chronic disease and kills 11 million people a year from bad food. It bankrupts. Our nation's ninety five trillion dollars is what it's going to cost our nation just in America over the next 45 years.
Has to deal with chronic disease, it causes social injustice because the kids who eat this food can't learn in school and are cognitively impaired the causes mental illness. It causes violence and divisiveness. We know that people who eat these foods are more likely to have homicide suicide and violence.
Bulletproof radio state of high performance you're listening to bulletproof radio with Dave asprey. If you've listened to the show for a little while. You know, how important your gut microbiome is for how you perform how you feel new researchers coming online that shows how important the biome around you your external micro biome is critical to your health and now we
and how to fix your gut microbiome and there's a new way to fix your home microbiome as well. And it's a technology called home biotic and the idea is to shift the balance of species around you to include the natural bacteria that stops mold growth in its tracks. If you use the normal antibacterial cleaning products, you can lead to a catastrophic loss of beneficial bacteria in your home and it's kind of like when you use antibiotics too much in your gut what homeotic does is it reintroduce has beneficial
After all soil-based bacteria that can literally reprogram our hack the biology of your home when you spray this odorless colorless. You can't tell it's their home biotic to a clean surface. It forms an active biological defense against toxic mold and other mold, that isn't toxic it. Does this by called noising the surface and it out competes the mold so start protecting your home now by visiting home biotic.com and use code Dave to get 10% off your first order. That's hom. Ebi. Oh,
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Today's cool fact of the day uncovers why people with celiac disease get nauseous within hours of eating gluten and it turns out we Now understand that some immune cells dump immune chemicals that turn your stomach these called cytokines into the blood soon after your cells encounter gluten, which triggers those symptoms at least according to a new study in scientists already knew that some of those immune cells called CD4 plus T cells in people with celiac disease react to gluten proteins in wheat barley Rye.
Try and get a little bit of damage to the small intestine and it's interesting because normally T cells don't rev up until a day or two after you're exposed to a protein that triggers your inflammation. But if you have an autoimmune disorder like Celiac in this case, it affects one percent of people but many many more are sensitive to gluten, but those people have that nausea pain and vomiting within an hour or two eating gluten. So they're the extreme responders and there are many people aren't quite as extreme responders who get chronic inflammation.
Mission and now we understand so much we know that cytokines called interleukin 2 or il-2 and other things released by T cells climb and they climb in they climb. These are compounds of inflammation and thus compounds of aging and that's kind of cool because if you understand which T-cells do what and which cytokines are released there are herbal compounds and pharmaceuticals that can block specific inflammatory molecules. I'm very interested in this because as an anti-aging guy in a biohacker if
you know, which inflammatory cytokines are plaguing you maybe you can just turn them off. It's not permission to eat gluten, but wouldn't it be nice if you accidentally got exposed to gluten that it didn't knock you on your ass
now.
And just full disclosure if you want to perform really well gluten. It doesn't belong in your diet it I don't really care if you say but I don't feel anything when I eat it is still not making it live longer and perform better and the fact you like croissants. I don't care you might like heroin to that's okay doesn't mean it's good for you. Although actually in superhuman my new book. I do have a chapter about heroin is an anti-aging substance liar. Actually. It's about heroin analog low dose.
All tracks own opiate receptors and it turns out people who use pharmaceutical-grade heroin at loaded normal doses not as addicts not living under bridges not cut with God knows what actually age much less quickly than the rest of us. So there you go in my book. I talk about nicotine as an anti-aging compound and heroin and I'm telling you don't smoke and don't use heroin, but these pathways are so cool.
Today's guest on the show. He's a little bit intimidating because it only has like 14 million New York Times Best Sellers may be more than that. He's almost as tall as me. Fantastic dollar. He's you got the old age stooping my friend. He's he thinks he's better looking than me and it may be may be true and a guy if you don't recognize his voice who's been on the show a couple times a dear friend and a
Changing superhuman in his own right? Dr. Mark Hyman Mark, welcome back on the show. Oh Dave. Thank you. Love being on your show. Now Mark, a lot of people know your name your director of functional medicine at the Cleveland Clinic you've written extensively about the dangers of gluten and I want to talk with you today about some of the other toxins that you've dealt with with the thousands of patients in your Ultra wellness centers, and I want to talk also about food policy because I set out to do
Disrupt a big food with bulletproof my guys. Here's what how you feel. Like when you eat food that's done. Right like eat this protein bar versus a sugar bomb candy bar and see what happens to your life. Yeah, things like that and you're looking at how do we fix policy? So there's gonna be a fun interview because we're going to talk about all kinds of cool. Yeah, and I'm trying to figure out where to point people for your work. You've done the broken brain documentary that I was in that was really good
and doctors Pharmacy my
podcast other ago doctors Pharmacy. In fact, I was just
Western doctors Pharmacy that's with an F which is doing really really well and I'm just counting the number of times you've been on before you've been on three times. So your this is your fourth time you're setting your tying the record for the most times on the show because people don't even understand who you are last episode you talk a bit more about why you do what you do, but knowing you really well, you have story after Story of oh, yeah. I wasn't the first airplane to Haiti bad things happen and you help people in such a profound way. So I just love you.
I interview you and every time we get feedback from people who look at the show. They're like, I love that episode. So you've you just you've got good energy man. So I'm always pleased to just do this and we're actually doing this interview live at your headquarters in Santa Monica is true, which is super cool and you wrote a recent book called food. What the heck should I cook? Yes. I did. I love the title and let's start there because it leads to the
Thing about right? How do we fix our food system? So you talk about cooking being a revolutionary Act and why is cooking revolutionary? And why did you write a
cookbook? Well, first of all, if all of America started cooking whole food from real ingredients, like whole grains like any brick and all food, I mean, I don't care actually
this point you're right. I
mean, like if they just got off the crap and start eating real food and literally unplugged from the industrial food system their health would dramatically
improve we would reverse climate change. We would end social injustice poverty. We'd have money enough for free education and free healthcare for everybody and can support the neediest Among Us with no effort and have lots of money left over to do cool stuff and create new science and solve all the world's problems just by cooking at home. Why because if we eat real whole food that's made from real ingredients it changes. What food is grown that's food is produced. What food is distributed it.
changes our own biology and resurrects us from the path to death that we're all on in a rapid way and it and it is fun and delicious and it actually is what is needed as the antidote to the food system which has deliberately disenfranchised us from our kitchens and from our ability to cook literally the food industry during the 50s when there was a woman named Betty Who was a home act teacher trying to get
America to learn how to cook and take care of themselves and she was going around teaching young families how to grow a garden and how to cook meals and how to take care of things. They were terrified because they were producing all this processed food and they didn't want that to happen. Right? So they got together in Minnesota generals headquarters and they had a big convening and they decided they were going to make convenience King they were going to create it as a value. So you deserve a break today, right? That's that's that messaging and they literally invented somebody.
Called Betty Crocker now, I thought Betty Crocker was a real person. Your mom might have had the Betty Crocker cookbook. My mom
did so red and white checked.
Yeah, I remember this little picture of Betty on the front. Yes. It Betty was an invention. It wasn't a real person and and they put in all this processed food into the recipes like Campbell's Cream of Jones sukar manicure casserole or take a strip of Ritz crackers and crumble them and put them on your casserole. I mean and then they went further the TV dinners and then processed food and then all the fast food restaurant, so they
Literally disenfranchised from our kitchens. We re generations of Americans who don't know how to cook Americans spend more time watching cooking on television that actually cooking
at home. Now my do you know my friend Betty rocker? Ha ha ha Betty rocker? No, it's a she's a real person or name is Bree. She's a fantastic person and she's teaching people how to cook. So the antidote to Betty Crocker is Betty rocker a lover Instagrams. Awesome. Okay rocker, but we do need an antidote to that because I mean
You look even further back in big food history, you know where graham crackers came from? Mr. Graham. Oh, mr. Graham, but do you know why he did what he did and corn flakes were from the same
Colt? Oh, yeah because of mr.
Kellogg they decided that male sexual desire was the root of all evil and if they could just make a food that would lower libido that it would solve The World's ills so they created graham crackers and cornflakes low-fat high-carb because those do lower testosterone.
Our own if you eat that for breakfast. You're probably not going to want to go out and have male libido is or do anything
else you got you got to watch that movie The Road to Wellsville. Have you seen that knows about Kellogg and about this place called Battle Creek, which is where they used to have this spa and they'd bring people in and all he Corn Flakes. It was like it was wow that it was kind of scary know about poop was very funny movie. But the point is you're right. We decided to create all these industrial Foods sometimes for good reasons and as for not-so-great reasons, but
At the end of the day these process industrial foods are killing us killing the planet and by learning how to cook and that's really why I wrote a cookbook because it you know, I want to show people you can make real food that's delicious this easy to make it's cost effective and it's not that hard. I mean, I actually like, you know often don't even use recipes. I just learned the basic cooking skills the building blocks. It's like you've learned the alphabet you can write, you know, the Great Gatsby or you know, Warren piece. It doesn't matter what you want to be alphabet of the skills of knife.
Gills and cutting and chopping and actually how to combine ingredients in the right way and what to put in first second third in the time you can be else. It's not that hard you can make amazing meals. I mean I cook three meals a day. I can do it in less than 30 minutes total. Yeah breakfast lunch and dinner super easy and have delicious amazing food. And I'm all kinds of shortcuts. I've learned because I'm busy but you know, sometimes I make meals and take longer or you can throw stuff in a hot pot or like a, you know, Crock-Pot and or a dutch oven and stick in the oven for three hours and you end up with a delicious meal. So
People learn how to cook a one people just take back their kitchens. I want people to actually start to enjoy it as a community event with their families and friends and it's just the best thing ever.
It is. It's funny. My second book was the bulletproof cookbook for the same reason that look when you cook your own food and you use the right ingredients. You will naturally learn to select the foods that are good that are fresh that are going to make you feel good. All animals do this causal walk around eat that tuft of grass. Not the other one because that one had the right.
It's we actually have that but when you're done, you should have food. Hi, not the sugary MSG high but I mean like you just mad I feel so
good after eight that like I'm
recharged and I don't get that at restaurants very often at all. And when I do I go back. Yeah, and so the value from the big food industry that we are both disrupting. It was all about convenience, but there's a good side to convenience because if
Look at the amount of time that women spent just letting bread rise waking up at 5 a.m. To need the bread to make the morning bread. It has been between laundry and cooking. These have been the things that kept women from doing things that they wanted to do not even counting about your child rearing and things like that. So there was a war over baking powder not an actual War but a marketing aggressive or with attorneys and things like this because baking powder set women for it's a them two hours.
Is a day and it's okay to use baking powder to make something rise versus natural yeast, right? And yes, you might lose something in the soaking of the grain or whatever else but it wasn't that good for you to eat bread. Anyway, I wanted to say you said something really important there in that. You can do it in less than a half hour. It takes 15 minutes to drive to restaurant sit down wait
order. You're actually not
saving time and go to restaurant you're saving dishes though know
like for the more I really like make two poached eggs slice of tomato and avocado pour some olive oil quick.
Right, lots of protein fat vegetables. I'll make a quick protein smoothie with like nuts and seeds and frozen berries and some, you know, coconut oil or some avocado just super easy delicious and for lunch. I'll just throw together a quick salad. I'll get the pre-washed arugula. I'll get the cherry tomato some to cut on I'm like lazy I'll get pumpkin seeds on there. I'll put some sliced avocado. I'll throw a can of wild salmon or maybe some sardines on there and I get this delicious salads high in fat. It's full of vegetables and nutrients
Super easy quick dinner, maybe quickly stir fry some greens. Maybe I'll throw a sweet potato in the oven sometimes, you know just add that in there and leave it for an hour and it's ready for dinner. I'll make it's not a piece of fish or chicken or meat quickly on the stove on the grill is really simple and easy and it doesn't take a lot of time and it's super delicious
back. If you ever thought about doing an intermittent fasting cookbook with just a third of the pages are blank
that's a great idea actually recipes are
amazing. It's like it is
Zero time to make right ready in an
instant if you did have time in the morning and you're worried about that you could skip breakfast and have 1/3 less cooking and save some money and that's of happens as well. So I find it kind of confusing that people saying cooking's too hard because if you have the tools and there's an investment good quality knives and good quality pots it but it's just not that hard. But other question for you is grocery shopping.
So what's your take on having your groceries delivered or using one of the services that just pick things up? Is that a good move? Is that a
bad move? I mean listen sure if that helps no problem. You know I use Thrive Market where I can order all the non perishable stuff and regenerative Lee raised meat which is almost impossible to get any fish and get it delivered to my door. You know, I have to recycle all the packaging which is annoying. But I basically it's super easy and I get it a half to a quarter off there.
He'll price and then you know, I get no other things like butcher box where I basically get the organic grass-fed meat delivered to my house. I don't have to worry. So I do have things for convenience. But actually I love going to the grocery store. I love like hunting and gathering in the pharmacy there. You know, it's like I caught my Pharmacy Farr I met Cy where I go and find all my medicines and you know, I learned a lot about what food is medicine and which foods to use and which combinations and so I literally am looking for all my drugs and I bring them home and I make delicious meals that
That
he'll I I feel like there's something really valuable to go to either farmers market or grocery store and look at the broccoli. And I want that broccoli because that wouldn't looks better than the others for whatever the reason is and I find when I order fresh produce from a delivery. I'm like, oh you got me moldy blueberries. Yeah, like I wouldn't have bought them.
Yeah. I actually don't I usually get the
produce fresh. Yeah. I think that all the produce things. Sorry Amazon, you're not going to win on delivering produce because when we see
It is our cells know what to eat and what not to eat and I've never been happy when I have
produced. Although some of those in your community supported agriculture is great because that's different. Yeah become a farm delivered that day you pick it up is just literally
there's a 90% hit rate because the food was grown right when you're going to a small farm and for me, I like I live on a small farm, we grow almost all the food we eat including our pork and our lamb and most of our veggies.
I know you had a run-in with a pig recently.
Yeah. I I sprained my
my spine making sure I didn't end up in the mud after I pushed on a pig but he did move into the new Pig Pastor. So it was all it was all good. So I just I'd like there's some about selecting the food and then interacting with it in the the Dalai Lama has he's very precise about who he allows to repair his food and in some of the Buddhist teachings at the number of because the Chinese want to kill him. Okay, then there's there's also the like the the notion teaching in Buddhism that you want.
You were people to touch your food and that that somehow better and I teach my kids look it tastes better because you put love in it and that's one of the ingredients and when you cook with just within 10, you have to sing a song over your food, but you just you think about how is this going to taste? What's it going to do to the people eat it including yourself and and you're creating instance an Act of Creation for that. And so having a cookbook that's sort of like, look here's the ideas. Here's the palette. You don't have to do an exact paint-by-number, but
Do it like this. It seems like it's a skill. That's that's devolving. Yeah, what are the things that people can do other than we'll just start cooking damn it. It seems like it's almost like a lifestyle surgery to
become. Yeah. I mean, you have to start slow and say, you know just sort of take the few steps but in the cookbook, you know food was like should I cook I give you a list of what are the tools you need? You know, what are the ways to cook without recipes? What are the basic strategies for how you make animal protein or vegetables or how you just
Pair things and I think it just gives people a framework for how to do it. And then you know just pick recipes. I you know, the way I think about recipes is sort of like paint by numbers. Yeah, like once you kind of figure it out, then you kind of can do it on your own and I almost never use recipes all I've been making a lot of recipes from The cookbook and they are unbelievable.
You did something cool you reached out to a bunch of friends and like you yeah, I contributed recipes for it
and got a recipe in the cookbook.
Yeah, and it's one of the things right? I'm happy to contribute. I want people to just go out and buy them.
The good stuff because one of the concerns that you and I both share is habitat destruction. And if you're on one of these corn and soy based diets, which includes eating industrial animal meat. Yep, or just eating corn and soy themselves because you wanted to cut out the middleman of the Apocalypse
we can get to that
what you end up doing is you end up supporting monoculture and when you do that all of the bunnies mice ladybugs,
Birds I'm only picking the cute ones slugs but insects insects we end up killing Michael wildly of the soil. The soil destruction is I'm actually more worried about soil destruction then ocean destruction. Yeah, because we're going to run out in 60 years at the current rates and it's hard to build soil because it takes
decades to build consensus actually doing it the right way and it turns out it
doesn't it. What makes the best soil Boop.
I knew you were going to say sheep so walk around.
Shit everywhere heart indiscriminate looking scratching the ears and they're pooping because their job is to reach any kind of prevailing view is that cows are the cause of all of our problems in terms of climate change or at least a big contributor and that is true. Absolutely. If you're talking about Factory farmed animals, but the best way to build soil is to integrate animals into a regenerative Farm. Thank you and and
The truth is we had 60 million bison and probably 10 million elk and many other ruminants roaming around America, which is by the way far more than the cows we have in America creating tens of feet of topsoil and not contributing in any way to climate change and they were belching and pooping and doing all that stuff back then but they were roaming around in the grass in a way that they mowed the grass not all the way down. So overgrazing is bad. They dug it up with their hoofs just by walking on it and they pee
Peed and pooped everywhere which is like natural fertilizer nitrogen and PS nitrogen,
it works and it
works and it literally built tens of feet of topsoil. So when Farmers like gay Brown from North Dakota used to be a conventional farmer, his farm is destroyed by hail and drought and he had to convert to rajendra farm and he researched about he learned about it and he started doing it and now he makes more food better food makes more money and has complete drought and flood resistance where his Farmers fields are flooded his aren't because the soil its buildings built Wayne.
Inches of topsoil in just a few years by integrating animals in a very strategic way not just overgrazing let him roam around but you move them in this thing called adaptive multi Paddock grazing. So what we do or managed grazing and that actually helps to create new soil in a very Rapid Way and turns out soil is the biggest carbon sink on the planet it can hold three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and it's really the solution to climate change. There's very few technologies that can allow us to draw out carbon. There's carbon capture Technologies, which
you're going to cause billions of dollars factories all over like it's just like seems like a Nutty thing. I mean, maybe it'll help but we had the most powerful technology ever invented to draw down carbon of the environment is called photosynthesis. It's this ancient technology that plants actually suck carbon out of the environment. They breathe carbon dioxide. They put it into their Roots. It goes into the soil. There's organic matter that develops and that becomes this massive carbon sink. So people think the rainforest the rainforest. Yeah, they're important.
But the grasslands are the rainforests of the Prairies,
it's funny. I also I talked with my kids about this. One of the things that animals do is they eat stuff that we can't eat. Yeah, and they transform it into delicious amazing yelled and they fertilize the soil and if you're doing it the way I do on my small farm, you know, you treat the animals really well, and they're well cared for and
just pick that pig in the but I didn't kick in my class.
Even with me pushing the
pigs, but I can tell you that's gonna be the
best seems like that seems like pretty animal cruelty to me there. That's what you got your do. You got injured you
got I did but it's funny actually get to know your animals and things like that and people say, oh it's so mean, how can you die, it's like look man go to
a therapist already like it. Look at Mother Nature. There's a wasp
that lays its eggs inside a spider it paralyzes and eggs eat the spider from the inside out like mother nature hates you and wants you to die like like that is actually how
Nature works could be also provides a lot of abundant. So it's course it does but here's the deal you have
to be comfortable with
both sides of that stuff. So I just learned life right Simba. Yeah. I was I was a vegan I was a raw
vegan and and I don't like animal cruelty, but I'll tell you just like you talked about in sort of the pegan diet paleo plus vegan. I
will eat the vegan food not the gluten
crappy soy whatever but only vegetables if there is no grass fed meat to be had.
And all of my recommendations in superhuman are eat less meat industrial meat is bad for you bad for the soil bad for the planet. It's not food just like random junk food isn't food. So once you take those out
what's left you eat less and
guess what happens? If you eat more than 20 percent of your calories from protein turns into
sugar 400
percent increase in all-cause mortality. It doesn't just turn into sugar. It creates inflammatory things throughout the body because your amino acids get screwed up you get too much system.
In methionine this one of the anti-aging
things just sort of why I came up with the whole concept of pegan, which is kind of a joke making fun at the extremes of paleo and vs. And the cookbook is sort of a paean cookbook and there's vegan recipes. There's you know, and you and I have more
in alignment with vegans than anyone in paleo keto or any standards and here's the thing you should be hitting mostly vegetables and you and I would say not mostly grains and a lot of vegans are all about the grains and canola oil because those are vegan so it's not about whether it came from animals or didn't
That's an artificial distinction because every plant came from animal poop which came from an animal and if you get rid of the animals and you only have plants you just deplete the salt the topsoil and we are going in a very bad direction if we go out if we think that's going to work through and if we allow the continued destruction of the soil from from just raising huge amounts of corn and soy to feed the cows like that also is bad, but the idea that we have to be an extremist like eat crappy meat or eat no meat at all. It doesn't work in the system.
Of life and you recognize that in your work and in your cookbook, so I would I just I fully endorse the approach you took in this what are the other mistakes that people make either when they're choosing their Foods or when they're cooking
their Foods? Well, I mean is grabbing for that thing. That's so easy. That's all pre processed and prepared and made in a factory. I think you know, one of the saddest things is that we've lost the family dinner that if we do eat family dinner, it's usually less than 20 minutes each person eating a different factory-made science.
Project made in the microwave from a different Factory all while watching TV or on their phones. Yeah, and I think that's really you know, what I want to share with people is that you know, if you create cooking as a chore, but as a community event, right I invite my friends for dinner over I don't prepare everything before they get there. They come in the kitchen. We talked I chop I give them a knife. I give my cutting board. We all work together. We have fun. We laugh we talk.
What life is and I did that with my kids? I got them in the kitchen early making stuff, you know, making food they loved it and they got to eat it. And then I taught him how to grow food in the garden. I and you know, my daughter thought an eggplant there's eggs. So she picked it but you know, I think it's really about bringing those values into your family and
your home. My kids are 10 and 12 now and we just told them two weeks ago guys. You're going to be cooking one meal.
One dinner every week each and really as yep and if you want some help will help you out. But you decide what it is. We're not going to you'll be your Sous chefs. You already know how to do it. And so my daughter Anna said I'm going to make a stir-fry really like those so she picked the vegetables from the garden. She sliced him up. She asked me to help slice some of it and then she cooked everything and you know what, it was really good because the kids have seen it they've helped
before it's so her first one was a success
and man the sense of accomplishment there. She was really happy.
And she took some to lunch the next day. It's really empowering you kids and it's a social time and what kids want most they don't spend time doing stuff with their parents. And so you can do that and when they're in charge I find that that is it's good father children time totally now. Okay. So what about people who say look I live in New York, you know, I just don't have a big
a change or if
some people have any kitchen but let's say my kitchen isn't
big enough for
things. Well, I mean they're you know, I remember going lived in China for a year. And I remember going to this restaurant was just when it was starting to sort of have private restaurants and it was this guy's house and he cleared out a room in his house and he didn't have a kitchen. He had a Coleman stove with two burners in the back and two walks and he was in an Alleyway in the side that was his kitchen and he made the most unbelievable gourmet food I've ever had in my entire life from through. So I think you know the
That oh, you can't cook even in a small space you can in my in my apartment New York, you know, we do what we call an alkyl geyser. So essentially we get a ton of veggies and we make it in our Vitamix every morning and we drink two or three glasses veggies every morning and it's awesome and you feel full and it's delicious. I need to blender now means blender and you don't cook but I think there's lots of ways to make simple food. I make salads, you know, you can do
it when I was first getting going with Bulletproof.
Stephen Jenkins from Third Eye Blind. I met him at this dinner somewhere and he said Dave let's let's like film a cooking thing like really this is super cool. So let's do it before my concert in Portland. So I gather and how do you bring everything to cook something? So before they open the doors for the concert? We're at the base of the stage there and I've got a one like an inductive cooker thing for 80 bucks like a single burner and a pan and a cutting board and a card table and we we made this delicious salmon dish with like a
Coffee rub and and all this and and I just pops out because it wasn't very much gear and I could carry it all and it was delicious and it was amazing but it took a little bit longer to cook than I expected and I said Stephen your concert started 20 minutes ago in the doors aren't open yet. Like you want me to cook this backstage was like, I don't know what to do here. And he just looks Amigos. I'm the rock star. They'll wait. I'm acharya given you are the rock star Vance. It was one of the most memorable things but we made fantastic.
Wild caught sockeye salmon that was delicious and it took 25 minutes and all the stuff you needed to cook it was with me. So it's just not that hard if you're determined to do
it. Yeah, exactly
and bonus points if you get to do anything with her die blind, they're cool. Haha now.
I'm also thinking about people say look I shouldn't have time to pick up the ingredients and you have talked about how you would go to thrive markets. There's put your box. There's grass fed Coop and now you can get it and it's actually very affordable. If you order grass-fed meat if you buy it at your local butcher, you're supporting a local business, which is great, but it can be more expensive.
Yeah. I mean, there's place you can get it for eight bucks a pound which basically makes a serving of grass-finished beef cheaper than a McDonald's
hamburger and we're talking you should be eating.
Quarter pound not a half a pound or a pound of this knife and if you're worried about animals or some or something like that, you got to do the math a butchered cow. If you re a pound of meat a day, you kill 0.7 cows per year eating a pound a day. So if you were to eat a quarter pound a day, that's a quarter of 0.7. So basically point to animals every five years. It takes one cow for you to eat a quarter pound of meat every day.
And that cow doesn't kill anything if it doesn't eat corn and soy if it walks around on grass admit built soil it built a healthy ecosystem. And so we have to do that. I just
I'm gonna get Kim, you know, people can be done at scale. Is it hard? I think you know, I wrote my book food fix which is out in February 20 2008 about the science ever generator culture and the estimates of if we took all the land that was available the grasslands that are not suitable for growing crowed. Yeah.
Bureau of Land Management land it's not managed. Well, if we take some of the sowing corn fields that are used to grow food for animals and turn them into a generator. Just your ethanol for gas service. Yeah, we do it right. We stopped all that and if you look at all the land, we actually could raise almost twice as many cows then as we do now with factory farming if we use all those lands in America,
and those cows would be healthy and they would build soil that would suck carbon out of the
air. It's absolutely
So, how's it going to happen? We got to fix this. I'm gonna live to a hundred eighty. I don't want to be breathing oxygen bottles while I'm a hundred and
forty is true. So I think in a lot of it has to do with our whole food system and our food policies that drive and agriculture system and a food production system that bruises really bad food that has multiple Downstream consequences mostly unintended but real and serious, and they need to be dealt with number one our food system creates chronic disease and kills 11 million people.
A year from bad food. That's a lot of people more than any other thing in the world including smoking. It bankrupts. Our nation's ninety five trillion dollars is what it's going to cost our nation just in America over the next three to five years to deal with chronic disease, which money could be spent on education for health care or Social Service, whatever the heck, you know inventions science, whatever wood or more bombs are going to you know, and and that is about three point one trillion a year in our total tax. Revenue is 3.8 meaning it.
Aren't almost our entire federal budget. We're wasting on this. It causes social injustice because the kids who eat this food can't learn in school history and are cognitively impaired. It causes mental illness. It causes violence and divisiveness. We know that people who eat these foods are more likely to have homicide suicide and violence it leads to threats to National Security because we can't even mount an army because 70% of military applicants are rejected because they are too fat or sick to fight it leads to
Tremendous environmental degradation. We are depleting our soil as we mentioned. We 70% of our freshwater human use of fresh water is used to grow food for animals for human consumption, which is the factory farm animals
were depleting our aquifers in our reader Water Resources.
We are also causing loss of biodiversity. We now have 90% less species on the planet. We have 90% less plant varieties. We eat about 12 varieties of food and plants and half of all livestock species are gone and we also
So are contributing to climate change through the massive amounts of of commercial agriculture that we're doing end-to-end. The food system is the number one cause of climate change. So when you count in deforestation soil erosion factory farming of animals the food waste which is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after us and China who were country and when you count in the the refrigeration processing transport of food all that and to n is the biggest source of climate change,
And then you've got all the policies that we have that are driving this food system. So the way we subsidize agriculture that grows commodity crops that make people sick and fat 60% of our diet is processed foods, essentially that's made from these crops supported by our government when you basically are giving that to the people who can afford to eat enough. So people who get snap or food stamps are 46 million people including one in four kids, and they are sicker and fatter than the rest of Americans and
mostly junk food 75% of its junk food seven billion dollars of its soda and you got food marketing unregulated food marketing to kids and the adults which drives consumption you've got food labeling which is super confusing. You've got all this stuff going on because the policies that are are being manipulated by the lobbyists that are spending half a billion dollars just on the farm bill. So this is all bad news, but the good news is we can change it by changing what we eat by changing how we deal with our
Waste by actually being active politically boating with our votes being Advocates working with Grassroots organizations. These are things that actually can shift and change you talked
about unregulated food marketing. Yeah. I mean as a food manufacturer, you know, I want to do it right. I want to show the big food companies. Hey people will pay for food that makes them feel good instead of food. That's just convenient and I am not allowed to say
what kind of Health claims but they're actually
Really born out by masses of science course and so the regulatory environment makes it very hard to be
truth to do the right food. It's easy to do the wrong thing. Right these big companies are advertising two kids through all these cartoon characters and heavy-duty marketing regulation eat at no adver games would suck people in and you know,
but if you want to say for instance, this has these benefits that are borne out by studies. I did not pay for that are well established. Yeah. It is except
The heart in fact, there's a rule right now. If a food contains saturated fat, it is not allowed to say healthy on it. Yeah any saturated fat, even though 45% of your cell membranes in your body are saturated fat and we know that the stuff that clogs arteries is 100% made by bacteria in your gut. It is not from the food you eat, right? So even if you have all sorts of good stuff that one ingredient doesn't
work, so we have just bad
science.
Was of lobbying that gets built into regulations.
Let me the dietary guidelines the new Administration 13 of the 20 people in the new guidelines committee are in bed with the food industry the woman who actually overseeing our dietary guidelines process in the Trump Administration. Her former job was a lobbyist for the corn refiners Association of America and the snack food Association. So the people make high fructose corn syrup and junk food. That was her job and now she
Me now. She's helping design our dietary guidelines that
is crappy on so many different levels because corn farming is one of the things that is causing the most harm to the environment. We've taken millions of Acres of grassland and turn them into corn Land We spray glyphosate or enjoy. Yep, which destroys the soil and it kills the bacteria that live in the soil so and it kills us to oh, yeah. I
mean, I read the most frightening study by glyphosate, which is basically Roundup.
I mean, they're now multi-billion dollar see settlements against Monsanto any bears going down. Yeah, I mean their stock price went down 35 billion dollars, but but going this study was frightening because it showed that when they Fenton's of course an animal study, but when they showed they gave like the grandmother rat mmm glyphosate and then they her health effects and then the mother then the grandkid makes me the grand rat baby and what was striking was at the epicenter?
Genetic effects, the harm was passed down to Generations. Even if that baby rat was a never exposed to glyphosate. So it turned on disease and cause heart disease kidney disease all kinds of chronic issues that were pretty frightening to me when you think of the amount of glyphosate if it mean if it was an ingredient on a Cheerios box, it would be higher in terms of its quantity that all the vitamins in there. Really and yeah that yeah and General Mills, General Mills
Got taken out for this and they committed whether it's just a PR stunt or not. They committed to putting a million acres into regenerative agriculture
that is profound. In fact,
very recently in the last couple days
before we're recording this one of the very large food companies like 19 of them got together and decided that they were going to do
a some really large regenerative farming things. I'm hopeful
that the the work that you're spreading the things that we
talked about just as
In
terms of health based on reality is that
the food companies did see like the Campbell saw 20% drop in
sales because I don't want to eat that stuff. So now they have this this decision, which is well, do we spend money convincing people that are crap isn't crap and you can do that. Unfortunately, it's easier for us to learn these days. So social media does that and just people are more able to access information or you could spend the same amount.
Amount of money or maybe even a little bit more making food that people want to buy and you've probably met some of the people who run the big food companies have I have as
well what I find is that by and large
they look at me and they say we want to make better food for people people won't buy it. If it costs one cent more they'll buy the corn syrup stuff from our competitors. How do we deal with this? Like we want to improve but it's a race to the bottom.
Yeah. What do you say to them? Well, actually I met
The guy was the vice chairman of Pepsi and you know, we have very fun banter back and forth. Oh, yeah, but I respect music. He's a good human being and he said, you know Mark we want to do the right thing. We went in fact, he was invited to the United States Department of Agriculture to give a talk. I'm like, why is the vice chairman of Pepsi going to the USDA to give a talk and it was about regenerative agriculture was about what we need to do to transform agricultural system, but he said, you know each any one of us can't do it alone because of
this competitive Marketplace and we can't convene actually all of us together, but the government can and we can collectively come up with Solutions. You know, I literally just got a text this morning because I gave a podcast on the on the carbon underground about how to bring soil back to life using regenerative agriculture and someone who's a friend of mine who works for Nestle says I can arrange meeting with CEO. I want you to talk to me about this. So I think there's an interest in this
it it's funny because I've in
Assisted on grass-fed collagen and all of the bulletproof products and the reason collagen is a thing is because of that early work just popularizing it and why grass-fed collagen because of poop because you have to have this out here. So it is cheaper to go by non grass-fed collagen unquestionably. Of course, you're probably getting glyphosate which is the glycine molecule in that bad collagen. I wouldn't want to eat that stuff myself, but you can save money so if people don't know
And your big company and it's the race to the bottom you're going to go with that and the person doing the formulation. The big company probably doesn't know either but they're starting to wake up to that because you're talking about it because I'm talking about it. And if the CEO of nestle is talking about it all the sudden. It's like actually we're doing this to make the world a better place and because we want to feed it
Tori. I'm hopeful I just talked to someone. Yeah, so there are many governments in Europe that are getting together. I think with The Who and the UN to create a food a food Summit, but in 2021 to dress these all these issues that I talked about
That are seen as separate things. So my passion has always been about creating healing and finding the root cause and as I began as a doctor to see that most of my patients were sick because of food, I began to ask. Why do we have the food system we do. Well, it's because of the policies we do and the food is producing all that all those problems and we can fix it. So tell me
the five worst foods the five things that people should never buy a cook again.
Well, I mean high fructose corn syrup. Okay trans fat anything with
Additives in it that you don't recognize or can't pronounce which is 3,000 additives. We about 3 5 pounds of those a day. If you just start there, you're like 90% of the way there. Okay, and and then I think there's you know, clearly things that are things we should be avoiding like Factory farmed animals like factory farm chickens and beef and so forth. And what's the fifth thing? I would say, you know, I think gluten and dairy are problematic because of how they're raised and grown. I mean, it's like we're
Eating the grains that our ancestors ate we're not eating the dairy. Our ancestors ate it's very inflammatory because a lot of gut issues and health disease and disease problems. So as a doctor, you know, my super
powers come from, you know, knowing
that and often getting rid of gluten and dairy people's diet and seeing like magic
happen and when you talk about Dairy specifically there's Dairy sugar, there's Dairy protein and there's dairy fat are all three equally bad.
No good point. Dr. Dave Okay, so
So what is problematic is that? We've created these hybridized cows? Yes holsteins that are basically all the same kind of cow. They're probably fertilized by like three bowls in the country and as a really tired boy and then they're pretty homogeneous not homogenized what homogeneous and they've been bred to have a certain kind of casein which is called a one casing super inflammatory creates. A lot of gut issues ottoman diseases may be called cancer and it should
Be something we're eating tip. The heirloom cows all these. I mean, I've traveled all over the world. You see it's really weird funny-looking cows my I'm rehearsing. It can't look like that but these are funny looking cows and they have more like a to casing just like sheep and goat I think many people don't tolerate lactose because lactose is a problem. It's a it's a milk sugar that it's 75 percent of the world's population can't tolerate then there's you know butter and ghee which you know are different. So dairy fat if it's from grass-fed animals has a lot of beneficial properties that has CL.
Ray which is basically anticancer Sports your metabolism. It contains a lot of vitamins like vitamin A nutrients and it has a good source of saturated fat, which I think can be part of a healthy diet. I don't think it should be the staple you want to be in sticks of butter every day, but I do think it's it seems like I'm some and I think you know, I think different people Barry and their ability to tolerate it like everything. So I think it's just something
we should be really aware of and I
think we don't want to be these modern cows. And also we even if he'd a grass-fed
Cow that's organic. You still might be getting when they when they do the milking of the cow. It still might be milk. When is pregnant because they just keep milking them all the time and you're getting all these extra hormones. And so I'm not a big fan of milk. I think butter and gear are on my
list it milk raises igf-1 which can increase cancer risk and also as the author of a very detailed book on fertility a lot of people don't know this but
But if you take human mother's milk from the morning and you give it to a baby at night. It'll keep the baby up at night. And if you give them night pumped milk and give them two in the morning, they'll go to sleep because your secreting circadian hormones in your breast milk to help the baby, right and melatonin.
So God knows what kind of homogenized stuff is coming from that cow, but that's how biology works.
So, all right. I have a couple more questions for you. I know.
Running short on time one of the questions for you though. Okay, we talk about 5 things you just should not do give
me three or four
foods that people probably aren't eating that. They should be eating
great question. I mean, I I always
say eat weird food. I'll go cows gotta
eat weird food because when we eat these modern industrial fruits and vegetables were not necessarily getting very nutrient dense foods. So if it's like a watermelon radish,
Or some funky green or dandelion greens or some weird fruit or some funky thing. I think those are great things to include in your diet because they're far more nutrient-dense have more phytochemicals. I think fermented foods are awesome for the microbiome thing like sauerkraut. Miso things like that. I think there are also really important phytochemicals and food that we're not getting enough of and one of the sort of big discoveries in the last years has been that the microbiome depends not just on
Fiber like you're talking about but also depend on polyphenols after you can do feed the good bugs by giving them all these colorful compounds and fruits and
vegetables and coffee and tea and chocolate are huge sources of polyphenol.
Yes. I mean unfortunately coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in the American diet not because it's such a great source, but because we don't eat any other
incidents what and it's full of those dark colored compounds and you also get in fact inner fueled the new
Take that. I made has probiotic polyphenols in it that are shown in studies to change your gut bacteria. But like you said watermelon radish with those colors. I had those for lunch because we use those at the Bulletproof Coffee shop because if you're eating Cooks cruciferous vegetables and you have one bite of watermelon radish, it has an enzyme that releases the good compounds in cruciferous vegetables. So you can use the things like dim and it's such a complex amazing thing, but it comes
Down to eat a bunch of unusual Foods unless they're ones that cause inflammation for you. Yeah, right. What do you think about the whole Nightshade
thing? I think you know nightshades lacked in, you know, Tomatoes potatoes green peppers eggplant. They you know, you never need Italian food
or Greek Greek sucks. But I have too
many of those. I think it's a very small my experience in 30 years of practice. It's a very small subset of the population that has trouble with
these with all of them are with some of them.
Well well,
Well with any of them, I think they're mostly tolerated by people. But I think for some people they are big triggers of inflammation. So if you're that person, so what I tell people is if you have inflammation stop them you do it's easy to try that anytime. Yeah and see how you feel. Yeah
and eat none of them for a couple weeks and they need all of them for a day. Yeah, and if the next day feel like a train hit you you're
sensitive exactly. I always say the smartest doctor in the room is your own body. They will tell you every time what works and what doesn't work.
There you go. So I'd be the first person
To
say, you know, I wouldn't say those are bad or good I would just say their suspect. Yeah and until you've eliminated them. You don't know but when you add a lot of varieties a man, I added those weird Golden Nugget things. I got from South America and I felt like garbage next day. She probably listen,
right and otherwise Edom. I mean we used to eat 800 species of plants now we eat about 12. Wow.
Well, and actually sixty percent of our calories comes from three
corn soy and rice and
rice globally.
I mean Wheezy is, you know writing up there. But what about fish Mark? I mean, we've got all this mercury poisoning plastic and
the Asian fish. Yeah fish is probably one of the healthiest foods on the planet except in 2019. I'll be one of the worst foods on the planet
even wild caught fish and one of the will
lose II can tell you my experience.
As a doctor seeing people who eat fish and even people who try to eat healthy fish like wild salmon is still has mercury in it. So it's not because the food in deliberately has mercury because I mean naturally has mercury is comes from the pollution in the coal burning in that we've done that and now in addition to the heavy metals we put in all sorts of Plastics in the ocean. So microplastics are these tiny little plastic balls they make up up to a third of the way to
Some fish-eating birds because of all the murk of all the Plastics in the fish. So I do worry about that. I think there are sustainably organically raised farm-raised fish, which I think are probably going to be the best option and aquaculture. I think small wild caught fish probably still okay, you know anchovies sardines Herring mackerel, those are my favorites, but if you don't like those, well, there's other options it but I had to be careful. What about Sakai? I think Sakai was Hammonds Okay small is good bigger bigger as worse. Like you said a hundred pound halibut
Don't eat that. Yep, but a little one. Okay, I tend to recommend Sakai because it only lives for two years and because it's been tough assignment fresh water and it can't bio accumulate and eats very low on the food chain. Well
freshwater can buy accumulate. Yeah it single River
and it absolutely but it only lives for two years versus like a king salmon which lives much longer and eat other fish. Yeah versus the Sakai. So I just look at eating lower on the food chain in terms of big fish. It's the safest of the big fish, but it's certainly a hundred pound tuna or something and that's it off. I'll still eat.
Some good sushi, but when I do it take my key leaders. Yeah, I take my key leaders at the same time you bind it and microplastics. This is something we probably have time to talk about today, but that's a big issue for soil and for the oceans and for us and it's probably going to require lots of fire as in burn the plastic so it doesn't bio accumulate and I'd rather do what those chemicals
the more tournaments something good. There are people who turning all the Plastics into biofuel into
fuels and yeah, just good good stuff. There's technology coming for that. Well Mark your
Cookbook which includes a lot of this thinking just as you tell the story of the food where do people pick it
up? Amazon.com then go to Food The
cookbook.com. They'll have booked a food The cookbook
doc. I think food The cookbook.com and there's amazing recipe videos where I'm actually cooking the videos. You can get them for
free. Are you wearing an apron and
stuff? Actually? No, I didn't want anything and I did not know I just wear my nice shirt. I mean all these recipes are there just so fun.
And they're so delicious and there's some great content on there. So food the book.com and and just check it
out. All right, Mark. It's always fun to pick your mind. And I know behind the scenes how much work you do to create positive change in the world that is outside. Just the field medicine. So thank you for just continuing to push. I see it and I appreciate
it. Thanks Dave. As always I love talking to you. This is such a great podcast and keep up the work you
do will do if you like today's episode, you know what to do.
Head on over to your favorite place to buy books and pick up a copy of Mark Hyman's new book or go to Food The cookbook and look at the videos and all that sort of stuff and actually cook dinner for someone you care about even if it's just yourself and you might find that it tastes better and makes feel better. And it's fun and you have kids do it with them. And after you do all that leave a review for Mark or for me because as authors, we like to know that we made a difference. So if you can help us by leaving reviews we go to
On leave a review. We'd love to hear. All right.
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