- And then of course, we
need government policy change
and that's the hardest part, right?
'Cause you know, people go to
Washington, it's a shit show
and you know, nothing's gonna change.
- Yeah.
- I give up and like, it's just,
but you know, there
are things getting done
and there is a way to change things
and the people you elect do
care about getting re-elected
and they want your vote and if they know
that you care about stuff,
they will change things.
- They'll change it.
- They will change things.
- They wanna be in power.
- Yes, they wanna be in power.
- They wanna stay there.
- So we can actually be active.
♪ La la la ♪
(funky music)
- Welcome back everyone to The
School of Greatness podcast.
We've got the man, Doctor
Mark Hyman in the house.
Good to see you man.
- Good to see you too.
- Super pumped you're here.
I think you've been on twice before.
- Yes I have.
- [Lewis] So it's the third time.
- Yes, trifecta.
- And you are arguably the leading expert
on all things health, nutrition,
and an amazing doctor as
well to Cleveland Clinic.
So thanks for being here,
I'm super excited about this.
You've got a mission that you're on
which is to change the food system.
- Yep. (laughs)
- [Lewis] Not just teaching
people how to eat better.
- Yep.
- But actually changing the whole system
of what's actually legal and not legal,
and what we can eat I guess.
- Yeah.
- Or what we as Americans
can have at stores and what we buy.
- What we grow, what we
produce, what we process,
what we market, what
we eat, what we waste,
the whole food chain
is messed up. (laughs)
- [Lewis] It's really messed up.
- It's messed up.
- Well there's a lot of sick
people, especially in the US.
- Yes.
- How many people are sick?
- Oh, it's terrible.
- And what do we
categorize as sick?
- That's a great question, so.
- [Lewis] What's obese,
what's sick, what's?
- So at the top level,
we have to understand
that over the last 40 years,
the tsunami has come that
we weren't aware was coming,
that we weren't prepared for,
and still haven't grappled with,
and that tsunami is chronic disease
and food-related illness.
- In 40 years.
- [Mark] In 40 years.
- Did we have chronic
disease prior to this?
- We did, of course we did,
but not to the magnitude.
We used to have like 5% obesity rates
in this country in the early 60s.
It's 40% now is most states.
- I thought it was like
30 a few years ago.
- [Mark] Nope, nope, nope-ity nope.
It's like-
- 40%.
- Many states are 40%, and
many are just pushing 40.
So it's 35 to 40, depending
on where you're looking.
Like California's probably
less, Colorado's less,
but Mississippi and Alabama.
- Right, right.
- Are you know, 40 plus.
So we have six out of every 10 Americans
who's got a chronic illness.
Four out of 10 who have more than one.
Like 10 years from now,
we're gonna have 83 million
with three or more chronic diseases.
Heart disease, diabetes, obesity,
cancer, dementia, you name it.
We are having 11 million people,
and this is I think a
conservative estimate,
11 million people around the world
die every year from bad food,
from ultra-processed food
and not enough good food.
Now, I think it's more like 50 million
when you look at all the
related conditions and so forth.
It's a staggering number
that beats out smoking, war,
violence, accidents, you name
it, nothing else comes close.
Not malaria, TB, AIDS,
all that is a fraction,
a third of the deaths that
are caused by chronic illness.
And they're mostly preventable,
and they're mostly caused by food,
and they're mostly caused
by the ultra-processed food
that our food system produces en masse.
It's the biggest industry on the planet,
it's 15 trillion dollars,
about 70% of the world's global product,
and it is controlled by a few dozen CEOs.
- Really?
- That are in monopolies
around seed production, agrochemicals,
fertilizer, processed food companies,
it's staggering how the system.
- Wow.
- Has sort of just
over the last 40 years
completely transformed.
And I remember I was
in some store or cafe,
and I saw this picture of Woodstock.
And I'm looking at all the
sea of people, and there was-
- 60s right?
- 69, there was one overweight person.
I watched this movie,
I think it was called Amazing
Grace about Aretha Franklin,
an African American church,
now African Americans,
80% of African American
women are overweight.
It is-
- 80% today?
- [Mark] 80%
- Why is that?
- Well, because they're
targeted by the food industry,
because they're in a vicious
cycle of economic stress,
of social stress, of unfair targeting
and manipulation by the food industry.
This is well documented by
for example, studies from Yale
where they look at the amount
of advertising and targeting
to poor and African American,
Hispanic, and it's staggering.
And there was not one overweight person
in a sea of African Americans in 1970.
And so it's literally just happened,
and I was 11 years old in 1970.
- Yeah.
- And in my lifetime,
you see this change.
So we have a staggering
problem of chronic illness
which people suffer from,
it's bankrupting people,
it's bankrupting our country.
I mean, think about the
amount of economic stress.
We talk about-
- Well, insurance too.
I mean, so much insurance money
that's involved in this too.
People are having to go
to the doctor so much more
probably now because
of these issues, right?
- Absolutely, people, and then many people
are not adequately covered,
so there's a lot of copays.
I mean, people can have 10,
20 thousand dollars in copays.
I had a patient the other
day who had diabetes
and I fixed his diabetes through food,
and he says I save
$10,000 a year on copays.
- [Lewis] Wow.
- [Mark] For my insulin and I'm like.
- Just the drugs?
- Yeah, and when you look at the amount
on diabetes spent in this country,
which is basically one
out of every two Americans
has pre-diabetes or type two diabetes.
One third of Medicare
spending is on diabetes.
- One third of Medicare is on diabetes.
- Yeah, yeah.
Medicare, if it was a company,
would be the biggest company in the world,
a trillion dollar budget a year.
- Shut up.
- Yes.
One third of our total
federal tax revenue,
expected to grow to 100% of
our mandatory spending by 2048.
And in six years Lewis, six years,
the Medicare trust fund, which
is sort of a bank account
that we use to make sure
that we cover Medicare.
It's a little complicated how it works,
but the Medicare trust
fund's gonna be out of money.
So that means that we're gonna have
to get a trillion dollars a
year out of our tax revenue,
we're not covering it.
- Oh my gosh.
- So this is a threat to our economy,
it's a threat to our political stability,
it's a threat even to national security
because seven out of 10 kids
who apply for the military
get rejected.
- Can't get in?
- Because they're too
fat or unfit to fight.
- No way.
- Yes.
It's a, there's 700 admirals and generals
that published a report called
Unhealthy And Unprepared
about the threat in our
military and national security.
And not only that,
soldiers are overweight.
So we're feeding them crap,
they go in Iraq and Afghanistan,
the number one reason
for medical evacuations
was not war injury, was
obesity-related problems.
- No, come on.
- Yes!
100%.
- Obesity-related problems,
what does that mean, like they're-
- Injuries.
- Like a heart problem, or?
- Injuries from being overweight.
- [Lewis] Wow.
- And you can read about this,
I didn't make this shit up.
- Right. (laughs)
- I mean, it's in that report
Unhealthy And Unprepared.
- Wow.
- Just Google it,
you can read it yourself.
- Wow.
- It's staggering.
So we have a 22 trillion dollar debt,
we have this threat of
chronic disease exploding,
it's getting worse and worse.
Medicare for all is kind of a silly idea,
so is repealing Obamacare,
neither are gonna help the problem
unless we figure out how to stop people
from going into the
system in the first place.
- Into the system of getting unhealthy?
- Yeah, if they don't need
medical care, it's cheap.
- So let's go back to
diabetes for a second.
Tell me again the stat on diabetes.
How many people have
it or are pre-diabetic,
and what, I'm uneducated on this,
so how many different
types of diabetes are there
and how is it caused?
- Okay, okay.
So type one diabetes is
an autoimmune disease.
Pancreas fails, it's called,
it used to be called juvenile diabetes,
and you need insulin, it's just-
- [Lewis] You need it.
- You need insulin.
- If you have type one
diabetes you need insulin.
- [Mark] You need insulin.
- To do what?
- Because your pancreas dies,
because your pancreas makes insulin
and helps your blood sugar get balanced,
keeps the blood, it's
sort of a gatekeeper,
lets the glucose into your
cells, so it's really important.
- So how does that die?
- [Mark] How do people die from that?
- I mean how does the pancreas die?
- [Mark] Oh, well it's
an autoimmune disease.
- How does it get to that point?
- It's an auto, like you know
you get multiple sclerosis
or rheumatoid arthritis.
- Got you.
- It's basically your body
attacks your pancreas.
- Is that from eating a lot of bad foods?
- Well, there's been links to dairy
and actually as a driver
of type one diabetes.
Gluten, 29% who have type
one diabetes have coeliac
that are undiagnosed.
- Wow.
- So a coeliac is a big
cause of autoimmune diseases,
including type one diabetes.
So that's a very small
number of people, very few.
- [Lewis] Okay.
- One out of two Americans have
what we call type two diabetes.
We used to call it adult onset,
except now kids as young as three
are getting type two diabetes
from drinking soda from the crib.
- Oh my gosh.
- I was working in, when I was
a resident in an urgent care center.
And this woman comes in for back pain
and she got her baby in a carriage,
and I see her feeding this baby
with brown liquid in a bottle.
It was seven months old.
And I'm like, what is that?
- Soda?
- I'm like what is that?
She's like that's Coca Cola.
- No!
- I said why are you
feeding your baby Coke?
She says well, he likes it.
- [Lewis] Oh my gosh!
- I'm like listen, my
wife showed me this video
on social media the other day.
It was of a baby, looked like it was
maybe eight or nine months old baby
having ice cream for the first time,
having sugar for the first time.
And you watch the baby eat the ice cream.
- And light up.
- The eyes, and then the
baby grabs the thing.
- I want more.
- And stuffs it in his face.
I was like oh my god,
it was just so crazy.
And it's highly addictive, so yeah.
So now we're seeing one in two Americans
suffer from either pre-diabetes.
- Or type two.
- Or type two diabetes.
And that is when you eat
too much sugar and starch,
and every time you do that,
it raises your insulin,
your body becomes
resistant to the insulin,
it doesn't work as well,
so you need more insulin,
and insulin does what?
- Insulin makes you hungry,
it makes you store belly fat,
it locks the fat in the fat cells,
and it slows your metabolism.
It's like a quadruple threat.
- It's bad.
- For your body to gain weight.
So it's why we're seeing, you know,
and that goes back to
what we're growing, right?
So why are we eating all this food?
It's because that's the
food we produce, right?
And so that's the other
part of the problem.
So we have the chronic disease,
we have the economic impact,
and then we're like well,
why do we have this food?
So as a functional medicine doctor,
I'm always asking why, right?
Well why are my patients sick?
- 'Cause it makes money, right?
- Well no, yeah, but I
mean going even further.
- Right, why is my patient sick.
- Why I got interested
in this, because as a,
why would a doctor care about agriculture
and soil and all this crap?
Because as I was thinking
about my patients diseases,
most of them were caused by
food and can be cured by food.
So I'm thinking, well, if it's caused by-
- How many are most of
them, just like 50%, 70?
- 80%.
- 80% of anyone that
comes in to the hospital.
- Yeah.
- Or your patients.
- [Mark] Yeah, my patients.
- Who has some type of disease.
- Yeah.
- Or some type of sickness.
- I mean, unless it's like
an environmental thing
like mercury or lime or mold.
You know, most of the things-
- Or cancer.
- Cancer.
Cancer's caused by food.
- Really?
- 70%.
- 70% of cancer is caused by food.
- And sugar is the number one culprit.
Heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's,
heart disease, the big killers.
- Are by sugar and food?
- [Mark] Yes, yeah.
- So if you change your diet,
you should be able to cure-
- Prevent.
- Prevent.
- Or cure sometimes really.
- Sometimes cure.
- Yeah.
- Depends how far along
things are I guess?
- [Mark] Yeah, yeah.
- But you can prevent
heart disease, Alzheimer's.
- Yes, 100%.
I mean, the studies are there.
- It's crazy.
- Even people who already
have Alzheimer's when
they improve their diet,
they can wake up feeling better.
- [Lewis] They get more
functionality back.
- Yeah, so you've got me thinking
okay, well if a patient's
diseases are caused by food,
what's causing the food?
It's the food system.
And I'm like, well what's
causing the food system?
It's our food policies.
I'm like, what's causing
our food policies?
It's the food industry
that's lobbying Congress.
- It's got money.
- It's the biggest lobby group in Congress
is agriculture and food, by far,
like by twice as much
as the next lobby group.
- By like gas and oil or whatever, yeah.
- Yeah, exactly, right.
And it's like what?
So then I began thinking well,
if I'm gonna help my patients,
I can't do it in my office.
I can, it's like I'm in the boat,
bailing the boat with a hole
instead of plugging the hole.
- Right, you're not going to the source.
- Right, so then I'm thinking okay,
well what do I need to do as
a functional medicine doctor?
I need to go to the root cause, right?
The root cause, and why.
And then it became clear to me
that it's our agricultural system
that's driving so much of the problem.
And that what we grow is
based on good intentions
that were in the 50s, people were hungry,
there wasn't enough food,
there was a lot of poverty,
and so we figured out a system
to produce an abundance
of starchy calories.
- So we could have food and not starve.
- [Mark] So we could have
food, and we were great at it.
- Cheap.
- And we had cheap, abundant
corn and wheat and soy,
which are the commodity crops
that are turned into
industrial processed food,
which is now 60% of our diet.
And for every 10% of that you eat,
your risk of death goes up by 14%.
- [Lewis] Shut up.
- Yeah.
- Crazy.
- So you're basically
feeding Americans a diet
that we know is going to kill them.
The research is so clear on this,
there's no scientific debate,
and yet we don't do anything about it
because we have
dysfunctional food policies.
And then the way we grow the
food causes climate change,
and we'll get into that,
but the number one cause
of climate change is our food system.
- [Lewis] Really?
- People don't realize
that, I didn't know it,
I'm like oh, it's oil and
gas and all this stuff.
- But what is it, is it the trucking,
is it the animal feces, is it the?
- End to end, okay, so first of all,
deforestation is devastating.
Not only do we destroy the soil
in which we cut down the trees,
but the trees are a carbon
sink so we lose that.
- So they're not sucking in the bad air
and putting out good air.
- Not sucking out
carbon dioxide, right.
I mean, basically plants
suck out carbon dioxide,
that's what they breathe.
We breathe oxygen, they
breathe carbon dioxide.
So they're a perfect antidote, right?
And then the soil also we're damaging
by the way we're farming.
We've lost a third of our top soil.
It's responsible, and
people don't know this,
but of all the greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere,
the loss of soil, organic
matter, like healthy, rich soil,
is responsible for 30 to
40% of all greenhouse gases
currently in the atmosphere
since the industrial revolution.
- Does that mean it, why
is that, does it suck up?
- Okay, well because
soil can hold more carbon
than is in the atmosphere right now.
- Really?
- There's a trillion tons
of carbon in the
atmosphere, which is a lot.
I don't, a trillion tons,
I don't even know how to measure that.
And the soil can hold three
trillion tons of carbon.
And how does it do that?
It's an ancient carbon catcher technology
that is available all over the world,
that's free.
- Free, yeah.
- That can be more effective
than all the rainforests on the planet,
than all the forests
and trees on the planet.
It's called photosynthesis.
And if you have like
grasslands for example,
like we had big prairies
in the United States,
they suck down carbon, they breathe it,
and they put it through
the plants into the roots,
feeds the mycorrhizal fungi,
which then makes healthy
soil, feeds the bacteria,
and you get this incredibly rich live soil
that holds tremendous
amounts of organic matter
that is carbon, right?
I mean, carbohydrates
comes from the word carbon,
which comes from carbon dioxide, right?
- Wow.
- Ding ding ding, it all connects.
- Interesting.
- And so we've lost-
- So we don't have the soil
for it to consume that we,
it just bounces off back
into the air I guess
and we're consuming it in other ways.
- Yeah, and the soil
can hold so much carbon,
the UN estimated that if we took
five of the five million hectares
of degraded farmland around the world,
if we took just two million of that
and spent 300 billion, which
is the total military spend
for 60 days around the
world, which is not much.
- Yeah.
- 60 days, two months
of everybody's military spending,
we literally could stall
climate change by 20 years.
- Wow.
- Because of putting back
the carbon in the soil.
And not only that, it holds water.
You see in Iowa, and in the Midwest.
- [Lewis] Moisture.
- There was floods that just
destroyed a million acres
of cropland that otherwise
could've been fine
if the soil could hold the water,
but it just sits on the
top or it runs through
and we lose all this water.
So that when you have a organic matter,
the soil, it holds 27,000 gallons
for every 1% organic matter
in the soil per acre.
So it's an incredible water
sink, it's a carbon sink,
and we've lost all these soils,
and it's because we're
growing these commodity crops
in ways that destroy soil.
- [Lewis] Soil, gotcha.
- We're tilling the soil, we're
turning over soil erosion,
it runs off into the rivers,
we kill all the life in the organic matter
by poisoning it with fertilizer.
- Right.
- With pesticides, with
glyphosate, herbicides,
and it's staggering, and then we have
all these sort of unintended consequences.
You know, we started
growing all this food,
and then we thought this
agriculture illusion was great,
all these chemicals were
great, fertilizer's great,
we can do all this good
stuff, tractors, big farms,
more food, feed the world,
it's backfired on us.
- Wow.
- And it's producing the
worst food on the planet,
it's causing devastating
environmental damage,
staggering climate change,
so it's the soil loss,
it's, and the deforestation,
it's the factory farming of the animals
which should be banned,
it's the transportation,
storage, refrigeration,
and the food waste.
I mean, food waste in-
- Lotta waste.
- Yeah, well we waste 40% of our food.
- That's not a play, we don't eat it.
- Imagine going to the grocery store,
buying a bunch of groceries,
and getting home and
throwing 40% in the garbage.
The average Americans waste
$1,800 of food a year,
and it's about a pound a day,
and that goes to landfills,
the landfills then,
it rots and creates methane,
so you could be a vegan throwing out
your food waste and scraps,
and you could be contributing
to climate change.
If food waste were a country,
it would be the third largest
emitter of greenhouse gases
after the US and China.
- Wow.
- Yeah.
It's methane they produce,
and we need a compost,
we need to have community gardens,
like it's always to fix it,
but it's like when you look
at the whole and food system,
it is the number one
source of climate change,
about 50% of greenhouse gases,
and people just don't appreciate that.
- So why, I mean, if this
information is public
and it's out there, and
policy makers are aware of it.
- They're not, they're not.
- They're not aware of it.
- No, I spent two hours
on a sailboat this summer
with a senator, a smart senator.
- And he wasn't aware of it.
- And I literally, his jaw was
hanging open the entire time.
- Are they not presented with
this research and information?
- No, because.
- Because they've got so
much money sent to them
by the lobbyists probably.
- Well, right, I mean listen,
if all the people who
are working our office
are Monsanto and Cargill
and McDonald's and Pepsi.
- [Lewis] Right.
- And they're all donating
millions of dollars,
I would say billions of dollars,
they're not hearing the
other side of the science.
And how do you fight that?
So I always said to write to lobbyists,
but I plan on creating a food fix campaign
which is a non-profit, along
with an advocacy organization
to start to literally lobby
senators, congressmen,
key people in the administration
around these issues
and start to drive policy change.
- Because in the UK, and you
were talking about I think
in Australia and New Zealand,
or I think in Asia you were saying that
you can't do certain things with the food,
otherwise you'll go to
prison, you'll go to,
you know, you'll get killed, you'll.
- Well yeah.
- Like in the UK,
they don't have a lot
of these dyes, right?
- Yeah, so it's funny,
and the FDA is so influenced
by the food industry,
and I was once with the former
head of the federal Drug Administration,
Food and Drug Administration,
Peggy Hamburg.
- Former.
- Former, she was,
but then she was the FDA commissioner.
- [Lewis] Yeah, yeah.
- But now she's former,
and I was at the World Economic Forum,
I said Peggy, how come
we have so much trouble
with getting advances in food labeling
or dealing with toxic
chemicals in our food
or the antibiotics in animal feed,
or, you know what it's like.
She's like well, when we try
to make too aggressive change,
Congress threatens to
shut down our funding
because of the food lobby.
- They threaten to shut it down?
- Yeah.
- And then what?
If they shut it down, what would happen?
- Well, they're limiting
their ability to do their job.
- Oh man.
- And so the FTC,
the same thing happened in the 70s,
there was a movement by the
Federal Trade Commission
to have negative, I mean
positive education campaigns
around sugar and how bad it was.
But the Congress says we're
gonna pull all your funding
and shut you down if you do this.
And so they pulled back.
So for example, you asked
a question about Asia,
we have this thing called GRAS,
which is generally recognized as safe,
so the food additives.
We have thousands of food additives,
only about 5% have actually
been tested for safety.
- In the US we're talking about.
- Some of them are
grandfathered in, right?
So like Crisco for example, trans fat,
was grandfathered in
as a safe food to eat,
but it took 50 years for researchers
to finally prove to the
FDA that it wasn't safe
because it was the basis
of all processed food,
like Crisco shortening, you know,
shortened your life or
something like short.
- Oh my gosh.
- And so they literally had
to be sued by a scientist
in order to actually turn
into a non-safe substance.
And then of course, they
gave the food industry
years and years to get it out of the food.
- [Lewis] Right.
- But in this country,
there's so many things
that are used in our food supply
that are banned in Europe.
Like BHT, butylated
hydroxytoluene, food additives,
various dyes, and something
called azodicarbonamide,
which is a softener that makes
bread more fluffy and soft,
and which is in Subway sandwiches,
our friend Vani Hari outed them,
said this is your yoga mat
material in your Subway sandwich.
- And they got it taken out right?
- And pretended to eat her,
yeah, and she got it out,
but the FDA still says it's fine to eat.
- Right.
- And in Singapore,
if you use it in your food producer,
you get a $450,000 fine
and 15 years in jail
for putting it in the food.
- That same ingredient.
- The same ingredient.
- That anyone can use in the US right now.
- In the US, yes.
And most of the things that are safe,
quote safe here, are banned in Europe.
So it's like yeah, they're
not doing their job.
And then the antibiotics, you know,
we have 30 million pounds
of antibiotics are used
in animal feed, we have
about 37 million total.
So about seven million for
humans to treat disease,
and 30 million for animals, why?
For growth, it's a growth factor.
- [Lewis] Right.
- Makes them fat, and
it makes humans fat too.
And it is used for
prevention from overcrowding,
and the FDA says well,
this isn't a good idea.
I mean, nobody thinks it's a good idea,
but they go would you please,
pretty please not do it.
It was a voluntary guideline
that the FDA produced.
Not mandatory.
- Please don't do it, yeah.
- You have to have a vet
certify that the animal's sick
before you give them antibiotics.
- [Lewis] Oh man.
- And now they continue
to do it and just laugh.
You know, they have voluntary, the FDA,
FTC put in voluntary guidelines
around junk food marketing.
Would you pretty please
not advertise the bad stuff
and advertise more good stuff?
It was just voluntary,
and the food industry
went ballistic and had it overturned,
so even the voluntary
guidelines are nullified.
- Like null, wow.
- [Mark] And it just, it-
- I mean, sugar, I mean, I'm
the first one to raise my hand
when I say I love sugar and
it's my biggest vice, right?
- Everybody does, everybody does.
- I love cookies and candies
and cakes and brownies
and anything you can think
of, I love it, right?
- [Mark] Yeah, we're
programmed to love sugar.
- I don't know why I don't have diabetes,
so much sugar I've had in my whole life.
But I-
- You can't be having
that much, 'cause you look pretty good.
- Well I train hard too, right?
I go in waves.
But as a kid, I would drink like
nine, 10 Dr Peppers a day I remember.
- [Mark] What?!
- Like some days in the
summer, you just sit around.
- You could've been president,
isn't that what our president?
- Exactly.
I would just, I mean, I
would run around and work out
and play sports.
- Yeah.
- But then I would just drink,
'cause I thought that's what was on TV.
- [Mark] But you were, you
were 16, 18, and you're like-
- No, I was like nine, 10, right?
- Oh.
- So I was like,
but it was, you see it on commercials
of like your NBA superstar
drinking Dr Pepper or Sprite
or whatever after on the basketball court.
And I don't know if it
was just like subconscious
or if just, it tasted good,
and you didn't think about it.
- I mean, this is where
the food industry is so,
I mean, I talk about it
in my book Food Facts,
but the food industry is so strategic
about how it advances
it's mission and goals,
and it does it through multiple channels.
And I'm just gonna go through 'em
because it just, people just don't know.
- Celebrity endorsements, right?
- Yeah, first, you know,
obviously you know celebrity endorsements,
which is the obvious one.
They co-opt social groups,
so they fund groups like the
NAACP and Hispanic Federation.
The African American
and Latino communities
are the most affected
by diabetes and obesity,
and they co-opt them by funding them.
I wanted to show the movie Fed Up
at The King Center in
Atlanta and Bernice King,
Martin Luther King's
daughter was all about it
and she was excited, but
once we got it scheduled,
a few days later I got a call
that we couldn't show it.
I'm like why?
She says because Coca Cola
funds The King Center.
- [Lewis] No.
- Yeah.
I went to Spelman College,
which is an African American
women's college in Atlanta,
and the dean said to me
half of the 18 year olds
coming into college
have a chronic illness.
Obesity, hypertension, diabetes.
18 year old women.
And I'm like why is there soda
machines all over the campus?
Why are there?
She says because Coke funds.
- [Lewis] No, man, wow.
- And one of the people
on the board of trustees
is one of the highest
executives at Coca Cola.
- At Coke?
Oh man.
- An African American woman, it's like,
so they co-opt social groups.
And that's why they for
example oppose soda taxes,
'cause they're in the funding
of these big soda companies.
And then of course, they fund research,
so they fund 12 times as much research,
12 billion dollars
worth of research a year
to study nutrition, so
Gatorade gets studied by Pepsi.
- Really?
- Gatorade's the best thing in the world.
It's not, it's just sugar, right?
- [Lewis] Right, right right.
- So it corrupts and pollutes science,
so people are confused.
Why is there so much confusion
about nutritional science?
Third, they create front
groups called spin doctors,
so they create front groups that seem like
they're independent groups like Crop Life.
- Yeah.
- Or, you know-
- And they're tweeting.
- The Center For Consumer Freedom.
- [Lewis] Right.
- Or The American Council
On Science And Health
which by the way, is run
by a bunch of doctors
who suggest that pesticides are safe,
high fructose corn syrup is great for you,
that smoking isn't cause
disease, and you know.
- Why would they do that,
'cause they get paid a lot?
- They're funded by Monsanto
and Big Food and Pepsi,
just look at their funders.
And they're basically, I mean,
they spent 30 million dollars
fighting GMO labeling in
California, this front group.
- [Lewis] Wow.
- But it was all funded
by Monsanto, right?
And then you, so we've
got these front groups,
and then you have them co-opting
scientists and academies,
so The Nutrition Academy, The
American Heart Association,
American Diabetes Association,
their funding in large
part comes from industry,
and so the Academy of
Nutrition and Dietetics,
which is our main nutrition association,
40% of their funding comes
from the food industry.
You know, they have sponsored
lectures at their meetings
that are with people saying
high fructose corn syrup is good,
and diet drinks are good, and like.
- Right.
- It's just completely corrupted,
and so these professional
societies give guidelines
and they're corrupt, and
Doctor Ioannidis from Stanford
who's a scientist who looks
carefully at the research
and conflicts of interest says you know,
these professional societies
like The American Heart
Association, Diabetes Association,
should not be making guidelines.
And then, so you've got all these ways
in which they sort of screw things up,
and then of course they're aggressive
in advertising and marketing,
which is illegal in most countries,
and then they have lobbyists
running around Washington
driving policy that supports
all of what they do.
So you've got this massive effort,
and it's often subversive and illegal.
And you know, it's kinda shady.
- [Lewis] Yeah.
- I mean, here's an
example, like in California,
there was a group that
wanted to have anti,
to promote GMO labeling.
And they put in a ballot.
- What does that mean,
promote GMO labeling?
- So that you have to
label if you have a food
that has GMO in it, you have to label it.
- You have to put, yeah.
- So on a can of Coca
Cola, it'd say GMO, corn.
- Right.
- Corn.
- Right?
- Kinda like on
a cigarette box where it
says this will kill you.
- Right, and your plant based burger
would have to say GMO burger, right?
- [Lewis] Right.
- So the food industry didn't like that,
so the Grocery Manufacturers
of America got together,
'cause it like, it would cost
them huge amounts of money,
people are aware of
this, they don't wanna.
- They stop buying it.
- [Mark] Yeah, and by the way-
- Why don't they label it though?
That seems like the smart thing to do.
- [Mark] Well, by the way,
most countries do have it.
- Really?
- Like I think 30 to 50 countries have it,
including China and
Russia, which are not known
for transparency or democracy, right?
So and we, and they
don't, and it's terrible.
So they basically tried
to put this thing down.
The food industry got together
with the Grocery Manufacturers of America,
which is their trade group,
and they're like, we can't have this,
so they spent millions
and millions of dollars
fighting this ballot, and the
way they did it was illegal
because they got the food
companies to donate in a way,
well it should be transparent
for a campaign finance,
you have to be all
transparent, it was all secret.
They got caught.
The Grocery Manufacturers of America
got fined 18 million dollars,
which is the largest fine
ever for an infraction
for a campaign finance violation.
But they appealed it and then
it was down to six million,
and they appealed, but
it's like, and of course,
the ballot, because they did
all that work, it didn't pass.
So they were successful, so
what's a few million dollars
when they had billions at stake?
So they're so corrupt, and then they,
and then in California, it was even worse.
There were four soda taxes passed here
in the 2016 election in many states.
- Soda taxes passed.
- A soda tax, right?
So you pay an extra
penny an ounce, whatever
for a sugar sweetened drink.
Which by the way, has been proven
to reduce consumption dramatically.
It works, that's why they wanna do it.
- [Lewis] Right.
And it works, and that's why
the food industry's so against it.
So what the American Beverage Association,
which used to be called
the American Soda Pop Association did,
was they took, and this is crazy,
they created a ballot measure to prohibit
any local taxes from being passed
unless there was a two thirds majority.
Which would mean that you
couldn't fund schools,
police stations, fire
stations, local stuff,
and it would've crippled local governments
all across the state.
And it had nothing to do with food.
But then they went at the last minute
before it was about to pass,
and they spent millions pushing this,
they went to Governor Jerry Brown,
the most liberal governor
we've probably ever had in America,
Governor Moonbeam he's called,
and they were like look, you pull this,
you pass this pre-emptive
law which means you can
never pass another soda tax in California,
and we'll pull this ballot measure.
So basically they got Governor Brown
to pass this pre-emptive law
which means you're not allowed
to go and pass another
soda tax in California.
- Why?
- [Mark] Why, because they
don't want soda taxes!
- It's crazy.
- It's crazy, and why
did Governor Brown do it?
Because he didn't want his
entire state local governments
to be crippled by this new ballot measure
that was about to pass.
So it was all done behind
closed doors, it was-
- [Lewis] You can never tax again?
- You can't now in California.
- You can't?
- [Mark] No, and they're
doing it in states all-
- Can you change the law back?
- [Mark] You could, you could, you could.
- It would just take
more effort and energy.
- You're gonna have to, but
they're doing this in states
all across the country.
- Oh my god.
- And it's the playbook that
the tobacco industry used.
- Isn't tobacco, I mean, isn't cigarettes
have a tax on them now, or in some states?
- They do, they do.
- Where it's like-
- There was a huge lawsuit
that changed everything, right?
There was huge litigation
and multi billion dollar settlements
and all kinds of restrictions.
- [Lewis] Wow.
- That did happen, but
food is more complicated
'cause it's not, cigarette is one thing,
it's not soda, it's processed
food, it's everything.
So this is all the bad news,
the good news is that we
can fix these problems.
We can reverse climate change,
we can reverse chronic disease,
we can fix these
dysfunctional food policies,
we can end some of the
social injustice issues
which we didn't talk
about is related to food,
we can actually help save our economy
if we change the way we grow food,
the way we process food,
the way we distribute, market, eat it.
- [Lewis] Market it, yeah.
- And waste it, and we can do that,
it's not like we need to
invent some new technology,
we have the ability to do
it, we know what to do,
the science is there,
it just is gonna take
a grass roots movement and some
political pressure to do it.
- What would be the first steps
that someone could take to help?
- [Mark] Well I think, you know-
- It seems like such a big, a big.
- It is, it is, it's
a little overwhelming,
so let's talk about some of the solutions.
So we know food is
causing chronic disease,
it's destroying our economy,
it's crippling our climate.
- [Lewis] Climate change, yeah.
- It's destroying our environment
and killing all the pollinators and all,
biodiversity, and it's
causing social injustice
because it targets poor minorities
who suffer from problems,
it prevents kids from learning in school
'cause they're eating all this crap
and threatens our national security,
it creates political instability,
so we know all these things.
But the good news is that
by fixing the food system,
we can solve these, and how do we do it?
Well, it's gonna need citizen action,
it's gonna need business innovation,
and it's gonna need policy change,
and of course, other philanthropists
and governments to help get on board.
And I think that's what's
really exciting to me,
'cause there's so much hope.
So for example, on a personal level,
you can shift what you eat and what you do
to drive change in the marketplace.
Why are companies like Nestle
and Unilever and Danone
creating regenerative ag programs
within their supply chain?
Why are they're trying to
up the quality of their food
and take out chemicals?
- Right.
- Because consumers are demanding it.
Why is-
- Well, they're buying
companies like Primal Kitchen
that have like healthy.
- Like Kraft, right,
bought Primal Kitchen,
which is basically a whole foods,
really high-quality nutritious
product with no junk in it.
- Exactly.
- Right?
So there's, and yes,
that's part of the problem,
they're buying up these companies,
but I think they're seeing the change
and there's a positive change.
I mean, General Mills just
committed a million acres
to regenerative agriculture.
That's incredible.
That happened because people
are demanding different things
by voting with their fork,
voting with their wallet.
And I think we can also do things
like join community-supported
agriculture associations,
which gets food delivered to
your house from a local farm,
you can shop at farmers markets,
you can use a company like Five Markets
that sources regeneratively
raised products,
or Mariposa Ranch where you
can buy direct from the ranch
regeneratively raised meat,
you can actually start a compost pile
which will help end food waste
because we don't throw
out our scraps, we can,
if you live in an apartment like this,
you can still have an in-apartment
little composting bucket.
- [Lewis] Really?
- That then you can take
to a local compost place.
- [Lewis] Interesting.
- In some states, like in
California and San Francisco,
Mayor Newsom who's now
governor, mandated composting.
So you go to the airport in San Francisco,
there's a compost bucket there.
- [Lewis] Wow, that's cool.
- You know, there's compost,
there's mandatory composting,
you can't throw out your garbage.
In states like, in countries like France,
you get a fine and you can go to jail
if you throw out your garbage.
In Massachusetts, they
passed a law that if you
produce more than a ton
of food waste every week,
that you can't throw it out.
So it's now created side businesses
where Whole Foods or other grocery chains
are giving their waste to farmers,
and these dairy farmers who
are struggling to make money
'cause dairy consumption's going down,
I mean, nut milks, right?
- [Lewis] Right, right.
- They partnered with
this sort of venture firm,
I think Vanguard, and
they created this model
of anaerobic incinerators,
which essentially is a,
is a digester, an anaerobic digester
where they throw in the food waste,
they throw in some cow
manure from the farm,
and it produces energy
that creates electricity
for 1,500 homes from this one farm.
- Wow.
- In Europe, there's 17,000
of these anaerobic digesters.
We should mandate that nationally.
- Sure.
- So you can actually
do something good with your waste.
So there's a lot of things we can do.
You can actually be an
activist in your schools.
I know so many people around the country
who've been an activist in their schools
and got their school food changed.
- So bad food.
- And that can be done
to the school nutrition guidelines,
it can be done with the budget,
there's a group called Conscious Kitchens
which creates a template
for schools to do this,
there's something called
My Way Cafe in Boston
where they've done this at scale.
So there's so many
opportunities for moving on.
In your workplace, you
can be an activist and say
let's get the soda outta
here, I mean, universities,
Cleveland Clinic was one of the first
to get all the sugar
sweetened beverages out,
and the University of
California San Francisco.
- Isn't that crazy that
hospitals used to have.
- [Mark] Oh yeah, and McDonald's.
- And still do have all the
vending machines, sugar, candy.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- With sick patients.
- Oh my god, yeah, I mean, when I went to,
when I was working in
the inner city hospital
in Springfield,
Massachusetts as an ER doc,
I literally like, we were working hard,
and you don't always have time to go,
'cause the cafeteria's
open from eight to nine.
- [Lewis] You just grab
something real quick.
- And 12 to one, and six to seven.
So the only thing that was open
from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. was McDonald's.
- [Lewis] Yeah.
- And I would go get the burrito thing,
'cause I thought it
was a little healthier.
- [Lewis] Sure.
- But it was like, it was terrible,
and so there's a lot of things
that institutions can do.
There's something called The
Good Food Purchasing Program
where institutions can buy food in ways
that are good for their employees,
that are good for the animals
that are raised in humane, safer ways
that are good for the
climate and so forth,
are good for the farm workers,
so there's a lot of
things that people can do,
and I have a whole action guide
if you go to foodfixbook.com,
which is where you can
find out about the book,
you can pre-order it.
You can also get an entire action guide
that guides you through all the things
that you can do in your own life.
And then of course you
can vote with your vote.
You know, people are so apathetic
when it comes to politics,
and we live in a democracy,
we take it for granted.
- You can change it by voting.
- You can, because it matters, you know?
And I think 50% of people don't vote,
and often people vote who might have
different values than you
and you think it doesn't
matter, and it does matter.
I mean, you know, I had a worker
for me in Cleveland Clinic,
this young African American
woman who grew up very poor,
and I said why aren't you voting?
She goes no, I'm not gonna vote.
I'm like, why aren't you gonna vote?
She's like it doesn't matter,
it's like, irrelevant.
But you know, we look at
what happened in Alabama.
The African American women
in Alabama went up to vote,
and they voted for a
democrat, and that was like,
I don't know when the last time
they had a democrat in Alabama was.
- [Lewis] Yeah, yeah.
- Because they stood up and
asked for something different.
- [Lewis] Change, wow.
- So there's a great website
called foodpolicyaction.org
where you can look at your
congressman and senator,
what their voting record
is on food and ag policy.
- Wow.
- And then you can
write to them, and all making
for being activists to communicate,
and they even ousted two congressmen
who were in the pocket of Big Food
by a big social media campaign
based on using citizen activism.
That's how things happen, right?
We think our voice doesn't matter,
but look at what happened,
look at abolition, right?
Our entire economy, our
entire agricultural system
was based on slavery, it ended.
Women's vote, you know, women got the vote
because they stood up and said hey.
It took another 50 years
to get civil rights.
Civil, I mean women's rights,
civil rights, same thing.
Gay rights, same thing.
You know, it didn't start in
congress, it ended in congress.
Right, so we need to actually
create a grass roots effort,
and everybody needs to
be empowered to do this,
and that's really what the book is about.
And then of course we need
business innovation, right?
Like these anaerobic incinerators.
It solved food waste,
it solves the methane from the cow poop,
it solves the economic issues of farmers
'cause they make 100 grand a year,
and it produces renewable energy
and electricity out of poop and garbage.
- It's pretty amazing, pretty cool.
- So it's like what?!
So there's all kinds of
great business things that are happening.
There's a company called,
I think it's a private
equity group called private,
it's called Farmland LP,
and basically they buy
up conventional farms,
they convert them to regenerative farms
and which basically restores
the soil like we talked about,
and they turn the profits
from single digits
to more than double digits,
so their first fund had a 67% profit.
And then there's this thing
they called ecosystem services,
so every year, we use up
natural capital, right?
We take out resources from the earth,
lands, biodiversity,
mineral, everything, right?
Soil, water, and we use up about
125 trillion dollars a year
of natural capital, which is about 40 mil,
40 trillion more than the
global economy, right?
- [Lewis] Wow.
- And most of the way we farm now
depletes our natural capital, right?
With conventional farming,
destroys the soil, water,
pesticides, chemicals,
pollinators, bees, blah blah blah.
Chronic disease, they
create regenerative farms
which actually put in 21 million dollars
of benefit to the environment,
whereas the conventional farms
will in the same amount of farming,
will take out eight million
dollars worth of benefit.
- [Lewis] Wow.
- So it's a win win win,
and this farmer in North
Dakota, who had, Gabe Brown,
who had his farm decimated
by hail and bad weather,
and was about to go bankrupt,
and he started researching
and found out about regenerative ag,
and he started to convert
his 5,000 acre farm
in North Dakota to regenerative ag,
and now, he's built 20 inches of soil,
he doesn't need water, he
doesn't use pesticides,
fertilizers, chemicals,
he produces more food
on the same land, and it's
a very diverse set of crops
that restores ecosystems,
restores pollinators,
restores the soil organic matter,
and he makes 20 times the
amount of money as his neighbor.
And produces more food, better food,
with less inputs in ways
that restore the environment.
So this is a scalable thing.
- It's innovating, yeah.
- Yeah, it's innovating.
- Yeah.
- And I think this is a
model that needs to be grown.
And yes, we need incentives
from the government,
we need business investments
like these guys from Farmland LP.
So whatever way we need to do it.
And then of course, we need
government policy change,
and that's the hardest part, right?
'Cause people go to Washington
and it's a shit show,
and you know, nothing's gonna change,
I give up, and like it's just,
but you know, there is, there
are things getting done,
and there is a way to change things,
and the people you elect do
care about getting re-elected,
and they want your vote,
and if they know that
you care about stuff,
they will change things.
- They'll change it.
- They will change things.
- They wanna be in power.
- [Mark] Yes, they wanna be in power.
- They wanna stay there.
- So we can actually be active,
and I'm working with a group that is
an incredible strategy group
that launched bottles one campaign
which raised about 100 billion
through congressional appropriations
for AIDS and poverty relief,
democrat or republican bi-partisan effort,
and they know how to make
sausage in Washington,
and I'm working with this crew,
and we're raising money to actually change
the policies that matter.
You know, we need to start
supporting regenerative ag,
we need to implement policies
that help create food
as medicine to treat chronic disease,
we need to get rid of the
dysfunctional food policies
like food stamps, which pays
for seven billion in soda.
- It's horrible.
- You know, we need to
get school lunches better,
we need to end all the
food marketing to kids,
and these things are not gonna be easy.
We need better food labels.
- Yeah.
- So people know what
they heck they're eating
instead of like, you know,
it says 40 grams of sugar,
nobody knows that's 10
teaspoons, you know?
So there's so many things we can do,
and we're working on a
very focused strategy.
I'm super excited, 'cause one,
unless you identify the
problem, you can't fix it,
and two, once you do, you
can mobilize grass roots,
you can pressure congressmen and senators,
you can do all sorts of
things to change policy.
And I think it's gotta happen here,
it's gotta happen globally,
it's a global problem.
- Yeah, it's huge.
So they can get the-
- [Mark] Sorry, I get carried away.
- No, it's great man.
- [Mark] Keep going here in my monologue.
- You got all your, the resources
and the information on this
at foodfixbook.com, right?
- [Mark] Yes.
- So they can go there,
they can get free downloads.
- Yeah.
- They can buy the book there.
I'm curious, you said something
about nut milk and about dairy.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- Dairy, has dairy been declining?
- Yeah, dairy-
- In the last five years?
- Yes, dairy consumption has
been declining dramatically.
- Do you know the percentages or the?
- It's like yeah, I think
over the last few years
it's gone down about 25%.
Borden, which is a big meal producer,
it's been around since 18 I
think 87, it has gone bankrupt.
- What?
- Yeah.
A lot of these bills make milk produce.
Now, people are still eating
cheese, they're eating yogurt,
they're eating these, but
actual milk consumption
has gone down and then
nut milks have gone up.
- Why is that, is that
because of education,
is that because of disease?
- I think, you know,
I think probably a lot of reasons,
I mean, 75% of the population
is lactose intolerant.
- Yeah.
- So they don't feel good.
- I used to drink so much milk every day.
- [Mark] And how did you feel, fine?
- I always had like a stuffy nose.
- [Mark] Right, right.
- Like I was always tired
in workouts and practices.
- [Mark] Yeah, yeah.
- I was always blowing my nose.
- Which is actually, milk
is nature's perfect food,
but only if you're a calf.
(both laugh)
- Right.
- I mean, we're the only species
that consumes milk after weaning.
There are very few populations
that seem to thrive on milk,
the Maasai and some of
the northern Europeans.
The other problem, the
dairy we're eating today
is not the dairy we ate, right?
So there are heirloom cows, I mean,
travel around the world,
you travel, I travel,
and you go see these
really weird looking cows
in other countries, I'm like what is that?
And it's a cow, you know?
- [Lewis] Right.
- But these are complex breeds
that have different types
of protein in the milk,
different types of casing,
and the Holstein, the
sort of homogenized cow,
I don't mean homogenized milk,
but they're all the same.
- Not this-
- And they're fertilized by
these three bulls I think,
they get the sperm of the bull,
and it's like they're all the same.
And they have bred out the
beneficial or the safe casing,
which is the A2 casing,
and they have A1 casing
which causes more
inflammation, more congestion,
more irritable bowel, more
autoimmunity, more skin issues,
so people are getting that
milk isn't always the best,
and I think then people
are eating nut milk,
so now they're not completely-
- Are those good for you though?
'Cause a lot of people have
still skin problems, and.
- Well, nut milk's a little problematic.
So one, almond milk is great,
but you know, almonds are.
- But you can't have too much of it.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- I started to get a rash after I switched
from milk years ago, and
I started to get eczema,
like a little eczema here and there.
- [Mark] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And then I'd stop drinking
it, it would go away,
and I was like huh, maybe I'm drinking
so much almond butter,
almond milk and everything.
- Well a lot of them had carrageenan in it
which causes leaky gut.
You get leaky gut, you get eczema.
So it's a thickener they
put in into these milks.
They put a lot of sugar in these milks,
they put a lot of gums into these milks,
so you have to be very careful
about which one you're having.
- Just 'cause it's healthier,
doesn't mean it's healthier.
- Yeah, and I don't recommend like,
and drinking tons of soy
milk, it could be GMO soy,
it could be full glyphosate, if not,
it could be getting huge
amounts of these phytoestrogens
which our bodies aren't
really meant to get.
Eating traditional foods in
traditional amounts are fine.
Tofu, miso, tempeh, those are fine.
- [Lewis] Really?
- Those are how people have
consumed soy over millennia,
but not 10 pounds a
day, and not three lots.
- Not gallons of it.
- No, I had a stepdaughter
once, she loved soy milk,
just drinking it all
day, and she started like
at nine years old getting little breasts.
And I'm like, well that's not good.
You know.
- [Lewis] Yeah.
- And so yeah, we have
to be smart about it,
and I think if you're using
it a little here and there,
but I don't recommend
people drink it as a drink.
You know, if you wanna
put a little in coffee-
- Almond milk or soy milk or not milk.
- [Mark] There's macadamia
milk, coconut milk, oat milk.
- Don't drink it.
- No, I mean I think have
it sometimes if you want.
- You can have a glass once
a week maybe it's okay,
but not like drinking glasses every day.
- [Mark] Yeah, probably not.
- But you can add it to things.
- Sure, you know, put it in a smoothie,
and mix them up, there's macadamia milk,
there's cashew milk,
there's hazelnut milk,
there's all kinds of milks
now, so I like macadamia milk.
- [Lewis] Macadamia milk's
so good, it's sweet tasting.
- Yeah, yeah, you can
make your own nut milks.
I have cookbooks, my food
with which I cook and others
teach you how to make your
own nut milks at home,
you soak the nuts, you put them
in a blender with some water,
there's no additives,
ingredients, sugar, it's great.
- But not too much of it
is what you're saying?
- [Mark] Yeah, yeah, it's like anything.
- That's a challenge.
Except for water, drink a lot
of water, that's pretty good.
- Yeah, I mean listen,
anything can kill you, right?
Water can kill you.
You know, marathon
runners who over-hydrate,
their body is diluted,
their blood is diluted
with too much water and they
get low sodium or hyponatremia,
and that causes seizures and death.
So yeah, you can die from
drinking too much water.
So it's all about eating
stuff in complex amounts,
and a complex variety of foods.
- So a variety of food is good.
- Yeah.
Huge, we used to eat
800 species of plants.
- And that's good, not having
the same three things every day.
- No, all you're missing,
most of our diet is corn.
- Meat.
- Soy and
corn, soy and wheat, most of our diet.
You know, and in other
countries, rice in there.
And those are all mostly
turned into processed food.
I think we used to have like I said,
800 species of plants
we ate, now there's 12.
We've lost 90% of all
our edible plant species,
half of all our livestock species, so-
- We've lost them.
- [Mark] Gone, extinct.
- What do you mean, those plants are gone?
- [Mark] Gone.
I mean, there are-
- We can't make, we can't create,
there's no seeds anymore?
- [Mark] There are seed
banks that are there,
there's seed vaults in Alaska.
- Oh, those are
probably valuable.
- Yeah, the USDA has
a lot of seeds.
Actually a friend of mine
was trying to develop
different varieties of plants
and was trying to get some old seeds,
and got the USDA, and by
accident, he got a packet
which was numbered like 43216 or whatever,
and he called them and said what is this?
'Cause he was working
with an agricultural guy
to grow healthy food.
And they go these are
these Himalayan buckwheat,
Himalayan buckwheat, which
is kind of a rare buckwheat
from the Himalayas, it grows
in really rough conditions,
and it's one of the most
nutrient, phytochemically rich,
dense foods, high protein, low starch,
full of phytochemicals,
vitamins and minerals,
on the planet. (laughs)
- And it's almost extinct.
- Pretty much.
Maybe there's a few villages
in the Himalayas who grow it.
- Wa.
- So how do we bring that back?
And how do we start to create
different more beneficial grains?
There's Kernza wheat which
has been developed by
Wes Jackson out in, Wes
Jackson out in the Midwest
which is a perennial wheat
that grows roots that go
tens of feet into the ground,
breaks up the soil,
creates organic matter,
and creates incredibly delicious wheat,
it's heirloom wheat,
it's actually a new form,
but it's actually, it doesn't
have all the gluten in it,
it's more less inflammatory, less sugar.
- [Lewis] Oh man.
- So we need to bring back some of
these different kinds of
foods in these complex farms
that actually restore
soil, restore human health.
- Oh man.
- Yeah.
- I love this.
- Crazy.
- Foodfixbook.com, and get
all the information there,
they can get the book.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- Your podcast has a lot of
amazing information as well,
people wanna learn more, where can they?
- [Mark] The Doctor's Farmacy.
- [Lewis] Where, and, the pharmacy-
- The Doctor's Farmacy is the podcast.
- [Lewis] Yes.
- Doctor's Farm with an F.
- And then when's the new?
Are you talking about the
new product as well or no?
- No, we can mention it.
So I spent 30 years doing
functional medicine,
and just seeing the power of
food to actually heal people.
And people don't often
understand how close they are
to feeling good, or how bad they feel.
- [Lewis] It can be like
one or two days switch.
- Yeah.
- What you eat.
- People say Doctor Hyman, I didn't know
how bad I was feeling 'til
I started feeling good,
and I always joke, I say
well you have FLC syndrome
which is when you feel like crap.
- Right.
Well it's just like the
information, the pain, the achiness.
- Yeah.
- The tired.
- Like you said, you had congestion nose,
your digestion's not right,
you have a little headache.
- Tired all the time.
- You're sluggish,
you have brain fog,
you're tired, you're achy,
you don't sleep well,
you have skin problems.
- [Lewis] Blurry eyes.
- Yeah, all that stuff, and
people think oh, this is normal,
this is just normal, I
have irritable bowel,
I have sinus issues, I'm like,
my joints are a little sore.
- [Lewis] No, that's your food.
- It's what you're eating.
And so in 10 days, you do a 10 day reset,
and literally it's like when
your computer's not working,
you hit the reset and
it reboots everything,
it's like a reboot, and then
you get to see within 10 days
how powerfully food and reset-
- [Lewis] Impacts you.
- Yes, and then you go
oh, now I can choose,
now I can feel like
crap, or I can feel good.
- But now I know.
- Yeah.
- I have the information.
- And a more serious form
of what we call feel like crap,
which is FLC syndrome,
called FLS. (laughs)
- Right, exactly.
That's when you go to the doctor, yeah.
- And we have a, and the first
time I ever created anything
because I really want
people to have experience
is called this company called Farmacy,
and you go to getfarmacy.com
with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y,
and you get the 10 day
reset, it's a whole program,
it's really integrated and it's powerful
and it involves lifestyle
change and diet change
and the right nutrients
and supplements and shakes,
and it's just awesome.
- Wow, 10 days, reset it.
- 10 days.
I mean, I even do it.
You know, I came back from the holidays
and I try to do well, I
cook Christmas dinner,
I'm Jewish, for my wife's family
and I made it all healthy,
but you know, when it was
her mom's house or here,
it's like oh, well ice cream, or this.
I didn't go too far,
but I didn't feel great,
and I came back and I just
did the whole 10 day reset,
and it's like I feel amazing, I mean,
you don't crave bad
stuff, your energy's up,
your sleep's better,
your joints don't hurt,
your digestion's good.
- I gotta get it.
- Yeah.
- I gotta get it for me and the
team, make sure we reset it.
Amazing, so getfarmacy.com.
- [Mark] Yes.
Food Fix Book.
- Foodfixbook.com, and your podcast.
- [Mark] Doctor's Farmacy.
- Doctor's Farmacy.
- Yeah, we need everybody on the team here
to fix this food system, cause
it's an existential threat,
if we don't do it, we're screwed.
I mean, we're just, we know
the decline of the Roman Empire
was because of the bad stuff
that was going on there.
Well, our food is the
decline of our empire.
- [Lewis] Really?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Well if we're all sick and
dead, we can't do anything.
- Yeah, I mean yeah, the amount
of disability and suffering.
- [Lewis] A lot of pain.
- Mental illness, mental
illness is connected to food.
- [Lewis] Depression.
- Depression, obesity, chronic disease,
it limits our productivity,
our ability to engage in life,
like we all wanna feel
good, we wanna have energy,
we wanna be able to love the
people we love in our life,
to do the work we want,
have the mission we want,
to be energetic and
engaged and not just wanna
sit around all day and
binge on Netflix, right?
- [Lewis] Yeah.
- I mean, watching Netflix is fine,
but like not in a way that avoids life
because you feel so bad.
- Yeah.
- And I think what's
frustrating for me is Lewis
that I see so much needless suffering.
- [Lewis] Yeah.
- You know, some things we can't change.
You know, we can't
change natural disasters,
I can't end war, but this
is a solvable problem.
- Yeah, solvable.
- [Mark] Yeah, totally fixable.
- Love it, check it out,
we'll link up everything below
and on the resource page as well.
And Doctor Mark Hyman, appreciate you man.
(hands clap)
You're the best.
- Thank you, all right.
- [Lewis] Appreciate it.
(uplifting music)
