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- [00:01]
Monty
Make America healthy again. A war on ultra processed foods, warnings about semi glutide, and apparently most of our food is incredibly toxic. I've worked in the exercise space for 15 years and pretty familiar with nutrition and a lot of what's coming out is very overwhelming. And honestly, it uses fear to sell products and motivate policy that isn't actually helping the problem. Which is why I've invited our guest here today. Dr. Jessica Nurick has a Ph.D. in nutrition science. She's a registered dietitian, has worked in both the research space with food as well as being a tenure tracked professor. And she's here to talk with us today about health and not just about the myths and the misinformation that we're getting, but America does truly have a food problem in the sense that we're struggling with obesity, we're struggling with chronic disease, but what are the systemic causes? It's not just about, oh, eat less and walk more, it's much bigger than that. And I love her page. It's one of my go to pages when I'm dealing with anything related to Maha or the hhs. Wonderful information. And we're going to have a conversation about is this movement really making America healthy? And if it's not, what do we do to actually do that today on flipping tables. All right, and is it Dr. Nurick?
- [01:20]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, that's right. Yes.
- [01:21]
Monty
Nailed it. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for being willing to come on the show. One of the areas I talk a lot about, deconstruction and growing up in fundamentalism. One of the areas that we're seeing a lot of is kind of this propagandization of science or a distrust of science and medical care, which I think is really dangerous. And so it's really awesome to be able to bring you on and really talk about these things and kind of work through the mist of some of the stuff that's coming out recently. So thank you for being here.
- [01:53]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, I appreciate you having me on.
- [01:55]
Monty
And so just for listeners who are not familiar with you, can you give us just a little bit of your background, what your expertise is?
- [02:03]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Sure, yeah. So I have a PhD in nutrition science. I'm also a registered dietitian. And my research work and focus was really on risk reduction for cardiometabolic disease. So looking at what are some lifestyle nutrition strategies that we can use with people to reduce risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, namely. And so I really started on the personal kind of health journey thinking about, like, how can I, like Help individuals kind of like optimize their health with these strategies. And when I started diving into the research, it was, it became really clear that kind of, we knew a lot of what could help actually to reduce risk for these chronic diseases. But where kind of we faltered was in the behavior change aspect. And so behavior change was one of the most difficult things to actually do. So I started focusing on what I termed easily adoptable strategies. So like, what is the minimum viable thing that we can get somebody to do that could actually have meaningful impact on their risk reduction for something like type 2 diabetes? So we use strategies like fiber, fiber supplementation and walking after a meal and those types of things. But you know, on that journey, start to think about those kind of like concepts and like, you start to ask questions like, why is it so difficult to get people to adopt these behaviors? Which really, if you are like being genuine with those questions, it all automatically will lead you to a systems approach and thinking systemically about our country. And like, what are the barriers for people, who are the people most affected by chronic disease and all of those types of things. So it was kind of this like, journey for me from like the individual health aspect to kind of the public health and like, what are the systemic barriers to people's health? And so, yeah, that's, that's kind of been my focus and I am on social media and that's kind of the area of focus that I talk about a lot.
- [03:52]
Monty
That's amazing. So, and this is gonna be fun for me because my platform is mostly deconstruction, politics, history. But I'm an exercise physiologist. I've worked in the fitness side of the world for 15 years. And it's the same thing. So I lost £90, got into it. How do I help people lose weight, feel better, feel stronger? And you start to realize that it's much bigger than, you know, just the individual person and individual barriers, that there are these bigger barriers. So talking about like America as a whole, before we dive into new policy and news that's coming out around health, what do you think are in the United States for people? What are the top three barriers to really getting adequate nutrition, healthy lifestyle choices? What do you think are really standing in front of people more on a systemic level than an individual level?
- [04:44]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, I mean, so we have things called the social determinants of health. Right. And those are these major, like non medical factors that directly impact people's health. So things like pots, you know, if you look at, again, if you look at who is most impacted by a lot of these lifestyle related chronic diseases. It's not evenly distributed across the United States. So people in low income households are twice as likely to have diabetes, for example, than people in high income households. They're five times more likely to report poor or fair health than their wealthier peers. So they're disproportionately impacted. And then you look at a kind of race based analysis as well. You know, black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy related causes than white women. And so, you know, you have to kind of look at all of these different barriers and then you have to say, okay, well what is actually impacting that? So if we focus on income, which is a huge one, because our low income populations are the ones who are overwhelmingly impacted by obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and you know, life expectancy, there's a 15 year, a nearly 15 year life expectancy age gap in men and a 10 year life expectancy age gap in women. When you look, when you compare low income households to high income households, and that's a huge age gap. You know, we hear a lot about like America's life expectancy versus, you know, other wealthy nations. But we can do those analyses right here in the United States, looking at different states and looking at different income levels because there's big gaps right here in the US and so when you start to kind of get that picture, you start to think, you know, what are these barriers? Well, poverty is a huge one. Right. Food accessibility is a huge one. Some of the other, like social determinants of health are access to education. Access to healthcare is a really big one. Because think if you don't have access to healthcare, you're not gonna go in for checkups, you're not gonna go in for preventive care. You're gonna wait until it's really dire and you're gonna go and get, you know, show up at the emergency room and need help at, at a really further along period in that kind of health journey when it's, when it's a lot worse. So those are some of the big ones that I would say are some of the biggest barriers systemically.
- [06:57]
Monty
And do, do the income and the education barrier kind of overlap? Are those like in both groups?
- [07:04]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah. Yes, they absolutely overlap.
- [07:06]
Monty
Okay. And so as we, I've been interested to see this change. So we've seen the rise of make America Healthy again. And you, and I'm sure you've seen this being in nutrition, I've seen this on the exercise side where even a few years ago not that long ago, people were criticizing Michelle Obama for prioritizing healthy food in school lunches. There was the absolute outrage in trying to limit like soda sizes, you know, from being 64 ounces or whatever. And now there's all this change where it's, it's seed oils and it's. And obviously all of this is spearheaded by rfk. What does RFK get right and what does it get wrong? Like, we'll start with him and we'll kind of build outward.
- [07:46]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, yeah, that, that is always interesting, the hypocrisy with like the Obama era and yeah, I'm like, wait a minute, we already did this. Yeah. The Heritage foundation actually took out like a full page ad back in the day of, of Mayor Bloomberg and like dressed him up as a nanny and called it like nanny state. Like a nanny state.
- [08:04]
Monty
And literally they were trying to get rid of 64 ounce Big Gulps. It was like, it was literally a gallon of soda that they were like, we probably don't need that.
- [08:13]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:15]
Monty
Anyways, go ahead.
- [08:16]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah. So what was, what was your question? Because I got, I got focused on the hypocrisy of it all.
- [08:21]
Monty
I know I get fixated and even stuff with like gluten and all these other things, like things that the health.
- [08:26]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Interesting.
- [08:27]
Monty
Yeah. Like, so obviously he's kind of the origination of this movement and he, he does talk about things that we know are corre. Like he talks about, you know, healthy food and sunshine and exercise. So what does the movement kind of get right? And obviously this is him being the center point. And what does it get wrong with rfk? Like, as far as how he's approaching health.
- [08:49]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, yeah, I've, I've actually, I mean, I get asked this question all the time and so I've done some videos on this and I mean, I've, I've kind of landed on, especially after what we've seen in the last few months. He gets, I call it the vibes. He gets the vibes. Right. He gets the problem largely right. Although he overstates the problem quite often. And I'll give you an example of how he does that. He'll be talking about, you know, he already knows he has people bought into this idea that there's just like this horrible chronic disease epidemic in the United States. And again, there's, I've been studying this for the last 15 years. There definitely certainly is some merit to that. There certainly has been this rise of lifestyle related chronic disease in this country, especially as we live longer. Right. We're not dying of infectious disease anymore. So more people are living longer and our food environment is contributing to that. And so he gets a lot of that aspect. Right. Although he'll say something like, you know, 30% of U.S. children have diabetes, when it's actually less than 0.1% of U.S. children that have diabetes. Right. But nobody like questions it. Cause they're just like. Yeah, like that sounds right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so that's a big issue when he, he will like utilize that kind of like, oh, everybody's already bought into this, so let me just make it even worse than it actually is. But he largely gets the problem. Right. And that's what Maha has been so, so successful with, is tapping into this kind of like idea that we do have health issues in this country. We do have a food environment that is made up of nearly 70% ultra processed foods by some estimates. Right. We do have kind of like these rising childhood chronic diseases, particularly if you look at children. But where he goes wrong is on the causes often and the solutions. And so his causes are quite conspiratorial. They're very kind of like based in the science is corrupt and our regulatory agencies are corrupt, which is a complete distraction of what the actual causes are, which we can talk about. And then the solutions, obviously when you have the incorrect causes, are also not going to be addressing the most important things to solve a lot of these issues.
- [10:59]
Monty
And one of the things so you mentioned that he talks about like the science is flawed and don't trust this. What is the real cause? You know, cause growing up in fundamentalism, they teach you from a young age to not trust science. Cause it makes it easier for you to be swayed by movements like this. So what is the real problem? Cause it's not the research and it's not giving people snap when they need it, which a lot of people blame. Like, oh well, people on food assistance. Yeah. They tend to get more highly processed food in part because they're also in food deserts a lot of times. So what do you see as some of the actual problems that are fostering this environment where we are seeing this rise in chronic illness and this rise in obesity.
- [11:45]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah. So a lot of the causes have to do with. It's not a lack of the science. It's not that we don't understand what is needed. We have a fairly great understanding of how we could improve chronic disease rates in this country. It's the lack of political will to act on that science. And so what's being done now because you know, a lot of people, unless you're in this field, you're not thinking systemically about these issues. You're not connecting agricultural subsidies to the food that ends up on your plate, right? But they, they have a direct, like agricultural subsidies have a direct role in the food that ends up on a lot of Americans plates. And so basically what it is, is it's, it's a distraction, right? If you blame the science over here, like look over here. While we by the way, are not going to do any of the policy work that needs to be done to help people's health, and in fact we're going to actually make that policy worse, right? So like we're. Yes, Medicaid and SNAP are two very evidence based ways to improve the health of Americans, right? Because it gives people healthcare access and it gives people food access, like two vital necessities in order to help people to be healthier, right? Being able to get preventive care and being able to eat. And so if you want to improve the health of Americans, you want to make sure that those programs are working effectively and efficiently. But what they're doing is cutting billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars from those programs, right? And so it's like, don't look over here at what we're doing to actually make chronic disease worse. Focus over here on like corrupt science. So that by the way, it helps us gain support when we cut billions of dollars from scientific research funding, which is the exact opposite that we to be doing. So yeah, it's a huge distraction. And the thing is they take kind of like, they take a little bit of truth, which is oftentimes the most dangerous, right? Take a little bit of truth. And so you can kind of like for example, in science, we do have some issues in science, right? We have issues with, and this is well known in science, it's well talked about. We as scientists are trained when we're doing research to be able to identify bias and things like that. But you know, funding, you have to get funding from somewhere, right? And so predominantly most research funding comes from the federal government a little over 50% and that will vary depending on the area. But on average a little over 50% comes from the federal government, like the NIH. And then you have about 30 to 40% that comes from industry and then you have like 10 or 10% or less that comes from like these nonprofit organizations. And so if you're not getting it from any, any of those sources, it's pretty impossible to do research because research is quite expensive. So So a lot of industry will fund kind of like industry will fund research that helps them to get kind of like products to market. Right. So we do a lot of basic science and we need government funding for that basic science. And then industry funding will come in and help fund their own research trials because we don't have that kind of funding unless we want to really increase taxpayer spending on research, which, like I'm all for. But yeah, most people will be like. Most people don't. Yeah, yeah, most people don't want that. And so, you know, so industry, like the pharmaceutical companies will like, you know, spend money and have these independent trials run in the food sphere, which is where I kind of conduct research. I don't do pharma research, but. Well, I don't do research at all anymore actually. But when I was, it was in the nutrition space. And so, you know, we do have an issue in the nutrition space where industry funded research will oftentimes significantly more find positive results for whatever it's being done. So let's say it's the Cranberry Institute and they're going to run a research study on the positive benefits of cranberries and they will oftentimes find a good outcome on cranberries. I'm just randomly picking cranberries because it's not someone that will probably sue me. I don't know that there even is a Cranberry Institute. So there is a little bit of that. And we are trained to be like, oh. So this research question was set up in a way that is, it's pretty clear that it was written in a way to find a good outcome. And so what they do is they'll take that and they'll kind of blast it out to people who don't really understand the research process and that we never look at one study. So even if that cranberry study found a positive outcome, we're not going to change clinical practice because of that one study. You have to see replication, you have to see repeatability of studies. And then you take all of the research as a whole, but they don't explain that nuance. And so they'll just kind of talk about like corrupt science in this way where like, you know, and they'll use the example of like industry funded research often finds these positive findings. So that's just one example of kind of how they'll take a little bit of truth and then like make it work into their kind of like conspiratorial story about it.
- [16:38]
Monty
Well, and also you mentioned, you know, foundationally for the health of America. Medicaid and SNAP being so critical, how do you respond to. Because so many, you know, ultra conservatives, MAGA will be like, well, I don't want to pay for someone else's health care. What's the response there?
- [16:55]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, that's a very uniquely American viewpoint. First of all, you know, the rest of the world, every single other industrialized country in the whole world has universal healthcare except us. And so, you know, this idea that we don't want to pay for other people is very American, but that, and you are already paying for everybody else's healthcare. I don't think people understand that if you don't have healthcare like the hospitals don't just close their door in your face. If you're having a heart attack like you, you're, you're getting care. It's, it's their legal obligation to provide care to you. So what happens is people who don't have healthcare access, they just don't get preventive care which is far, far less expensive than, than, you know, emergency care. Right. And so what will happen is because they aren't getting that preventive care cause afford their medications, they end up in the emergency room. That's why our emergency rooms are so overcrowded. They still get that care and then those costs, they can't pay those costs. So those costs get passed on to us. Right. In the form of overcrowded emergency rooms. If you've ever gone to an emergency room and you've tried to get in and it's been like an eight hour wait, that's why. Right. They get passed on to us through higher insurance premiums. I mean, what do people think insurance is? It's a cost sharing, risk sharing kind of like service. Right. So I'm not just paying for my own health care. I mean my family and I, because my husband and I both kind of work for ourselves, we pay sixteen hundred dollars a month for our insurance for our family of four. Wow. Which is like wild. But we're not even using that. I like knock on wood. I mean thankfully we, you know, we don't really need the doctor very much but like so we're paying for other people's care. Right. But if we, if we do need it, it'll be there for us. That's what insurance is. Right. So it's this shared risk pool and so I'm not sure people really realize that. So again, people are still going to get that care and you're still going to have to pay for it. You're going to have to pay for it, as I said, in those ways, also directly through your taxes, because we pay to a pot called uncompensated care, and the federal government pays out to these hospitals that have to provide uncompensated care. So, yeah, I feel like maybe people don't really understand that. And so. So putting our tax dollars towards something like Medicaid is actually cost effective in the long run. So a lot of people, I can appeal, people who are advocates for Medicaid or Medicare for all, we can appeal to their, oh, I want to help. Right. I want to help everybody in my country and help people who don't have. But a lot of people obviously aren't like that in this country. And so if you can, there's an economic reason to support it as well, and it's because you're actually paying less in the long run when you're paying for that cheaper preventive care, so that they're not, like, ending up in the emergency room long term. And, you know, this administration is very focused on Trump's first day. He said he wants to end the chronic disease epidemic in this country. Well, the way that you can do that is you can make sure that people can afford their medications, they can afford healthcare, preventive healthcare. So they're not, you know, letting chronic disease get so far down the line that they end up in the emergency room and, like, you know, in a, like, diabetic coma or something like that.
- [20:03]
Monty
Well, and that's the other thing is, once it's that far, it's so much harder to treat than to, you know, catch your blood sugar early and say, hey, you know, your numbers are getting a little high. We need to watch this. And one of the things I was surprised by as I started to learn more about this world is how much money we would actually save with Medicare for all. Because I grew up with this idea of, like, well, we can't afford healthcare for everybody. It would be too expensive. You know, people wouldn't be able to receive the care they want. When I started actually studying that, I was shocked to find out it would actually save us a lot of money because it's so much more efficient. What does that look like? I mean, I don't know how we would implement something like that, but do you have an idea of what those numbers look like or how that would fix certain problems in the system, the medical system that we have now?
- [20:50]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, I don't know the numbers offhand, although I should, because I literally just read about it yesterday. But for whatever reason, My brain is blanking on this. But yeah, there's quite a few independent analyses that have shown that a single payer system for all actually would reduce costs. I mean, this is another area that RFK and Maha will talk about. Right. We pay twice as much as any other country for our healthcare and we have worse healthcare outcomes. Well, then you have to ask why? Why do we pay twice as much for our healthcare and we have worse outcomes when all these other countries have universal healthcare? Right. And so it's just so funny that they use that as a talking point and I'm not even sure their point is when they use it as a talking point because I'm like, yes, that's true.
- [21:33]
Monty
Exactly.
- [21:34]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Let's look at why. So I don't know like what their supporters are thinking when they say that. I'm not really sure.
- [21:40]
Monty
But I really think it comes to this idea. I think it goes back to the idea that they think that they're going to pay 80% of their taxes for healthcare. You know what I mean? And it's like that's really not how the numbers work. And we can see that the numbers don't work that way by all of these other developed countries who have free health care.
- [21:57]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
And yeah, and it's by the way, add your insurance premiums to your like monthly tax bill and I'm sure that it will, for many people it will come out much lower, you know, on the back end than your insurance premiums.
- [22:10]
Monty
Oh, it's so crazy. I just can't, like, I'm getting distracted too by some of the hypocrisy. I'm like, it's so frustrating and I don't know. I was going to ask you about this one bill in particular. I'm going to grab my phone because it's Oklahoma's State Bill 806 that they recently passed and I have some mixed feelings about it. So it's called the Oklahoma Food is Medicine act and it seeks to integrate nutrition into healthcare by incentivizing Medicaid contracted entities to offer medically tailored meals and produce prescriptions for individuals managing chronic outcomes. The bill claims to improve health outcomes for Medicaid members with nutrition related chronic diseases by covering a range of nutrition based services. What's kind of your initial reaction to that?
- [22:53]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, so we already do that. That's not like a new thing. This is another thing Maha does they like act like something's revolutionary for them. This was under the Biden administration. This is why this can be enacted in Oklahoma. Is he actually Worked to push these like waivers. I think they're 11, 15 waivers, essentially saying that like, we can like Medicaid can cover kind of like lifestyle things like nutrition, nutrition prescriptions and these like healthy kind of boxes and things like that. And so I love the idea. I think that's actually a great idea. The problem is, is that the Trump administration has shown that they don't. They may not. We'll have to see. Because what it is and what it's being pitched as is Oklahoma already did this. The thing that it is is it's saying that they're going to ask the federal government. So they have to ask, ask cms, which is the center for Medicare, Medicaid and Medicare Services. They have to ask them for the funding because this bill doesn't actually allocate any funding from the state. It just says, okay, you guys can now ask the federal government to basically like reimburse this. And so we'll see if Medicare and Medicaid under Trump actually allows this to happen. You would think they would if they're talking about the importance of making America healthy again. But again, this was kind of like a Biden led initiative to start getting states on board and they did. I don't know exactly the number of states, but there's around like seven or eight that are currently already doing programs like this. And yeah, so again, we'll just have to see what happens. But it's a very interesting thing that it's being pitched as like this revolutionary Maha win. And it's great. I'm all for it. And I will be the first to say, if Maha does something that I'm supportive of, I'm going to say that. Right. If they somehow figure out how to close the grass loophole, which we can talk about, I'm very all for that. But on something like this, again, it's disingenuous when all these social media posts are like, Oklahoma did this big thing already and they're the first to do it. I did a thing about there was a big social media account who kind of reported on this and was like, I never thought I'd see this in my lifetime. And I was like, what do you mean you never saw? You'd see this in your life. It's already happened seven times.
- [25:08]
Monty
Well, and also, especially because this is Medicaid focused. And again, I agree with it as well. Like, I was like, that's awesome. But if you're cutting billions of dollars in Medicaid, Medicaid is not going to reimburse these particular they're going to reimburse someone who's having a heart attack type of thing versus nutrition care. There's not going to be any funds for it. My other fear was because, you know, and I'm sure you've heard this a lot, like, especially women coming in for health concerns. And a lot of times the two questions that we get asked is, well, are you pregnant or you need to lose weight? And it's. For me, there was a little bit of the concern. I know that food is medicine, working in health and this side of the world. But also I feel a little bit concerned that this kind of mentality is going to be used to dismiss people's real concerns if they happen to be overweight or especially if it's women, especially black women.
- [26:02]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
So I think you're touching on something that's very hard because I'm in the science communication space, in the policy communication space, as I think you are as well. And so this is like a very hard thing to get across because it's like, it's essentially saying it's the same idea, right? Like, these waivers to allow Medicaid to cover, like, food, what you're saying is so accurate. And it's like, okay, but like, you can't just do these waivers and then also cut here. So are these waivers actually a way for you to be like, oh, we're going to cover nutrition instead of insulin, right? Or instead of medications? Whereas if it's coming from an administration that is very supportive of Medicaid expansion and access, then these waivers are an excellent thing, right? And so that's, it's so hard to be like, because it's the same action, but to explain that it's because of, like, the package it's coming with. So, like, SNAP is a really good example. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Right now, Republicans are really pushing hard for SNAP restrictions. Essentially. Like, we need to restrict, restrict soda, we need to restrict all junk food, they call it. So, like ultra processed foods. And like, it's really important to understand that that's coming along with an administration that's cutting billions of dollars from snap, which millions of people will lose access to SNAP benefits, right? And so if it becomes really clear that those restrictions are not actually before their health, those restrictions are a gateway to make even deeper cuts to SNAP. Whereas if those restrictions. So, for example, in 2023, there was a bipartisan bill that was put forth by Cory Booker and Marco Rubio at the time, who were both senators, and it was basically to study the effects of, like, Soda restriction on snap, because SNAP participants do tend to drink a lot of soda. And this has been talked about in the public health sphere forever. Like, should we kind of limit soda on SNAP soda specifically? Not like all processed food and all of that, but soda specifically. And so they were going to study, like, what would the health outcomes look like? Would they just go from soda to hi C or something like that? And so there would be no meaningful improvement, so it wouldn't be worth the extra work to do it. And I was supportive of that legislation because I was like, yeah, we should study these things and see what the health outcomes look like. But again, that was being done under an administration that supported SNAP benefits. Right. And it wasn't being done as like a gateway to cut SNAP and make deeper cuts to snap. And so I do think that's a really important distinction. And it's kind of hard sometimes to get across, especially like on social media when it's like such small sound bites are what go viral.
- [28:42]
Monty
You get everything in three minutes and then you're out of time.
- [28:46]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Which, by the way, is already so long. It's so long.
- [28:48]
Monty
It's like, what is going on with these, especially with SNAP benefits? You know, again, going back to, yeah, like, it would be great if we could get people off of ultra processed food or reduce that soda intake at the same time. Again, a lot of these people are in food deserts where fresh, like, healthy, organic food is not readily available. It's infinitely more expensive. And what shocks me about this movement is like, well, I would rather you eat what I want you to eat or not eat at all. It's such an extreme mindset to have, because I, if. If all you can have is a bowl of cereal and that's what you've got, I would much rather you have the bowl of cereal than not have anything at all. I always say that if you're wondering what you would do in Nazi Germany or Jim Crow, you're probably doing it right now. Last year we know that there were 900 anti LGBTQ harassment claims filed. And those are just the reported cases. Yet we have Republicans out here calling PBS groomers for daring to post about Pride, meanwhile staying real quiet when it comes to the fact that there is a case of Catholic priests suing to not have to report claims of child abuse because instead of being reporters to protect children, they claim it's a violation of their religious liberty to have to report. When I went to groundnews.com I saw that there were less than 50 sources reporting on this story. And it was a complete blind spot for the right. They weren't saying a word about it. This is being brought to the Supreme Court by the Beckett law firm, which is also bringing two cases to the Supreme Court that would allow religious institutions to not pay unemployment tax and to prevent books that acknowledge gay people exist to even be in classrooms claiming it's a violation of religious liberty to acknowledge that people exist. So when I look at information like this and I'm trying to find out who's covering what, where is the resources coming from? I like to go to ground news.com and if you use ground news.com tables, you can get 40% off their vantage plan, which comes out to about $5 a month. And what I used for this story was their blind spot feature, which shows me who's covering what. What is the left missing? What is the right missing? What's not getting accurate coverage? Because our silence isn't just about what we allow to happen. Our silence also says who we want to protect and who we're not protecting. This episode is also brought to you by Intravenous Solutions, Nashville's premier IV therapy and wellness center. IV therapy can help you recover quicker from heavy workouts or illness, treat the symptoms of dehydration, and improve sleep and give you healthy, glowing skin. Being on stage several times a week, I can say that IV treatments help keep me on my feet and are a lifesaver. I've also recently in, in an attempt to really restore my health, has started doing ozone therapy with Intravenous Solutions, which has been a game changer in my energy, my sleep and my chronic inflammation. With four locations in Nashville, Hendersonville, Franklin, and their brand new location on second Avenue in Bankers Alley Hotel by Hilton, it is so easy to get high quality care all week. So come party in Nashville and beat the hangover. Intravenous Solutions, you can give the code Monty10 at checkout for a 10% discount on services.
- [31:59]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, yeah. I think the support comes from kind of people have a really elementary view, like understanding of this particular topic. Right. And that's not like a. I have an elementary understanding of most topics. Right. And so they. Yeah, except for this particular topic. So they use this understanding that people don't really know how integrated all of this stuff is. And so it does intuitively make sense to somebody. Like, yeah, we shouldn't be subsidizing junk food. Right. That's the way they think. I don't love that term. I'm just using that because that's how they describe these foods. Right. And they tend to be talking about low nutrient, ultra processed foods, packaged foods that can travel far and by the way can actually be accessible to people in these food desert areas. Areas. But so they rely on people to kind of think, yeah, we shouldn't be like subsidizing these foods. That makes sense. But to not understand and not have an understanding that not everyone has access to a Kroger, you know, a mile away that they can just drive their car to. And so, you know, I think that I did like a whole series on my Instagram channel about food deserts. And I had so much feedback from people who actually had lived in food deserts. And so I shared all of their stories, like in my stories, stories, stories. And I had so many DMS from people who were like, I just never knew people lived like this in the United States. So I think there's this, this real like ignorance and that again, not a negative term, but that just of how a lot of people in the United States live. And, and you know, people don't realize. And I'll just kind of define a food desert. A food desert is where somebody doesn't have easy accessibility to fresh food. Fresh, like nutrient dense foods. And so you see, like a lot of us think of food deserts like rural, rural America. And that is true. You know, you're driving like across the country and you go through those towns and you're like, how do these people get groceries? Like, there's food deserts. Yeah. But the vast majority of food deserts are actually in our cities. So in urban areas where, you know, and this, the term that's used in academia now is actually not food deserts, it's food apartheid for the, this, this particular, these particular areas. Because it's really these areas where, you know, because of redlining and because of different, different policies that have led to kind of like these seg segmented areas, a lot of like grocers have left those areas. Right. Cause it's not because we live in a capitalist society. And if you're all about profits, you go to where things are profitable. I live in kind of like the suburbia area of Denver in like a nice suburb. And I can go like, there's like four grocery stores all around me, right. Because there's like tons and tons of homes here. And so that's where people go. But in these urban areas, you know, the grocery stores leave. And so a lot of these people rely on dollar stores and gas stations for the bulk of their food. And I know that sounds like to people who don't live that or they've never been involved in like volunteering in these areas. It sounds like it couldn't be true, but it really is the reality. I talked to someone who was a nutritionist who volunteered in D.C. and she volunteered in a food desert in D.C. and she worked with these women. A lot of them were single moms trying to get to a grocery store that had fresh produce, right? That wasn't just the corner store that they could walk to. And they had to take multiple different buses and it took them an hour and a half each way. And again, they don't have a car to just load up, right? They have to carry all of those groceries home and it's just unsustainable. And so what happens is these people don't have readily accessible fruits and vegetables. And so they rely on these ultra processed packaged foods that are shelf stable that you can go. Or they rely on the little like counter of produce, right, that has like if you've ever seen it at a gas station that you've stopped at. And that's what people, millions and millions of Americans are relying on. And so if you talk about, you know, restricting SNAP benefits without the understanding that millions of Americans experience these circumstances, it becomes a really disingenuous taste. And then it's hard though, because it gets positioned when someone like me is like, oh, well, I don't actually support that. They're like, you support ultra processed foods. You just want everyone to be unhealthy. And it's like, no, I just have this full understanding of what's involved. And if we want to restrict SNAP access, we also have to do the other side of things, which is addressing food deserts and addressing our food environment and accessibility.
- [36:30]
Monty
And you brought up something that reminded me. Have you ever read the book Invisible Women?
- [36:34]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
I haven't.
- [36:35]
Monty
I can't remember the author's name. It's very data heavy. It's a really good. I liked listening to it more than reading it. But she mentions, because you triggered a memory for me, she mentions in there that women are far more likely to use public transportation than men are. Women are more likely to not have a car, especially single mothers. But bus routes are built for male traffic. So bus routes have been built around where men go. How do they get to their jobs quicker? They're not built for the woman who needs to get from her home to the daycare to the grocery store. So it's actually not built on female transit patterns. Most bus systems didn't even take female transit patterns into account. The same with sidewalks, sidewalks in other countries in the. In the Scandinavian countries in particular, have started to change because they realize we're not taking into account how women are getting from place to place. So on top of these women, the nearest grocery store is an hour and a half bus ride away. The reason it's an hour and a half is because those bus systems aren't built with them in mind to, like, make their lives and day easier. They're built with the mentality of, okay, well, how do I get to work and come back? Which makes it that much more inconvenient, especially if you have small children.
- [37:48]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, that's fascinating. I've never, ever thought of that. I feel like I need to read this book now.
- [37:52]
Monty
Her book blew my mind. I didn't realize that. I didn't know the question, if that makes sense. I wasn't asking the wrong question. I wasn't even thinking of the question. And she talks about how in everything from how the incidence of sexual assault in public spaces for women could be almost completely negated by hiring one, a security guard, and the cost on the economic system as a whole would plummet. And she goes through all these numbers, everything from healthcare to bus systems to sidewalks to ice removal. It's genius. But it just triggered my brain because I was like, oh, that makes so much sense. Plus, the buses aren't built for us. And you said, I feel like you're.
- [38:34]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Gonna have to link that book now.
- [38:36]
Monty
Okay, I'm gonna put that in the show notes. It is really good. And if you're someone who really likes reading numbers, read it. If you're someone that's hard, listening to it is great. I would listen to it when I did cardio at the gym, and I would stop it and go back a few seconds.
- [38:48]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
She said, what?
- [38:49]
Monty
That number. The numbers are shocking. Shocking. It's so good. And it helped me understand systemic things a little more thoroughly. Things I'd never even thought to consider. You said. Did you say glass holes, grassholes, something? A couple minutes ago, I made a.
- [39:07]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Note of a grass. I said the grass loophole.
- [39:10]
Monty
Grass loophole. Okay. What is the grass loophole? I made a note to come back because I was like, what is that?
- [39:16]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, so that was just me talking about things that I potentially could agree with RFK Jr on. Right. Some of the things amidst all of the chaos and the gutting of public health, if a couple of good things happen, that would be one of them. And I was just mentioning that I would show support for something like that. Yeah, this is kind of a big Topic. But grass is just this designation called generally recognized as safe. So, you know, one of the big platforms for MAHA and one of the big things that have gotten them a ton of traction is this idea about toxins in our food environment, right. And like toxic food ingredients and all this. So grass is this designation generally recognized as safe. It started off in the 50s with very good intent. It was essentially a designation that said, okay, well a lot of food ingredients have been around forever, right? Like butter and vinegar and flour. So we're going to designate those generally recognized as safe. They're not going to have to go through and show all this scientific evidence that they're safe, because we already know they're safe, right? Like everyone for hundreds, thousands of years has been using them. So that's how it started off and that's kind of how it, how it went until, well, in the 60s under Nixon, he decided that there was going to be this affirmation process. And, and so they went through all of the ingredients that had this grass designation and they made sure that they went through this kind of like process to get them on this kind of grass list. And so anytime a company wanted to introduce a new ingredient into their food and they wanted to designate it as grass, they would have to show scientific evidence that it was safe. And then that would go through kind of FDA approval and the FDA would kind of look it over, make sure that everything looked safe, and then they would give it the grass designation. And that's how it went until 1997. And in 1997, if you know much about kind of like the historical aspect of the 80s and 90s, it was a very deregulatory era. Right. Which had a major impact on our food environment. Yeah, exactly. So very deregulatory era. And by the way, Clinton, he adopted a lot of that deregulation because it was kind of like the beliefs at the time and it was like, oh, this is gonna be better for everybody and it's gonna be politically expeditious for me. So he also was supportive of a lot of deregulation. And so in 1997, food companies wanted to introduce ingredients more than what the FDA could. Actually they had this huge backlog at the FDA because we historically do not fund our health agencies, our federal agencies well, and so they're oftentimes short staffed and there's a lot long wait times at them. And that was exactly what was happening at the FDA at that during those times. And so because we were like very pro corporation during that time, I mean, we Always have been, but, you know, so we were like, okay, well what can we do to help expedite this process? And so what the FDA decided to do because they weren't getting more funding from Congress, they weren't allocating any more funds to hire more people. So what they did was they said, okay, we're gonna make a self affirmation process for grass. So we're gonna allow corporations essentially to hire their own scientists in order to do their own safety reviews to make sure that an ingredient is safe. And the thought behind that was, you know, it's in the corporation's best interest to make sure that like the safety review, they have to go through the same process and they'll make sure that it's safe because it's really bad for them if it's not. Right. Because they could like go under. That was kind of like the thought process and the whole goal was like, to help corporations kind of like, like go faster in terms of these approval processes because the FDA had this backlog. Well, obviously there's a lot of issues there, right. And so public health experts, since that happened, have been pushing back on this and have been like, no, we should be funding the FDA so that we can actually go through FDA approval. Because not only did they let the corporations hire their own scientists, they actually like let them just self affirm it. They didn't even have to tell the FDA that they were doing it so they could go through this whole process and not report it to the fda, because the FDA again, didn't have kind of like the manpower to go through all of these. And so, yeah, there's issues with that because obviously the FDA doesn't even know all of the ingredients that are potentially being used in these foods. Because these corporations have gone through their own self affirmation process. And the FDA really, the only time they would step in is if there's like an issue that comes about because of an ingredient that's being used in the food supply. This has happened a couple of times, not a lot, but I think olestra is one of them. There's probably a couple of others, but yeah, so again, public health experts have been largely against this. They've been saying, we need to fund the fda, let the FDA go through proper approval for all of these ingredients. And yeah, that's never really been changed. So one of the things RFK Jr has run on is closing what's called that grass loophole, which is allowing the self affirmation process. And this is an area where me and, and most Nutrition experts, public health experts I know would be supportive of that if he could get that done. The problem, though, is they've cut thousands of jobs throughout HHS, 20,000 jobs throughout HHS, many at the FDA. And so if you're cutting jobs at the FDA, that's the exact opposite thing you need to do in order to close the grass loophole. Right. You need people working at the FDA in order to go through these approval processes in order to do that. So, again, it's not in alignment with what he's saying and what he's doing.
- [44:47]
Monty
Yeah, I had no idea that that had happened. Like, I was familiar with. With grass as far as, like, generally recommended. Like, recommended as safe. But I had no idea that in the 90s, they were just like, you do it yourself. You don't have to show your work or anything, as long as you promise. That seems really dangerous.
- [45:04]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's. I mean, and obviously, like, Maha really leans into that. Right? Cause they're like, we have no idea what the hell is in our food supply. And that's not necessarily true. Like, largely we do. And if there were issues, like, the FDA would step in. And it is a little bit in the. In the. Obviously in the corporation's best interest to make sure that they're using safe ingredients in their food. But. So it's not as big of a problem as what they paint it, but it's certainly, like, not ideal. Right. And, like, the ideal would be that the FDA had oversight on every ingredients in our food.
- [45:39]
Monty
And as someone who has worked, you know, you've worked so extensively in this space and in research, what are some. If someone. If an organization or an administration was really serious about fixing obesity and all these issues, you know, mentally. They talk about mental health a lot. Oh, we need to get people outside and working. I think that's wonderful. As someone who previously struggled with clinical depression, awesome. Also, it's largely biochemical and biological, and you can't out sunshine it. But what do you think? Like, if you were looking at an administration, what policy would they have to be making for you to say, okay, this administration is serious about making changes for the health of Americans. What are some things that you would see that would give you kind of a green flag on those?
- [46:25]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Oh, I have so many.
- [46:26]
Monty
I'm so ready. I'm ready. I got water.
- [46:27]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
How long do you want this to be?
- [46:28]
Monty
I got water. We got time. I'm good.
- [46:31]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
So, first of all, overturning Citizens United, which I think people don't really realize how Impactful.
- [46:37]
Monty
That is deep dive on that because that is great.
- [46:40]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah. On literally everything. So essentially Citizens United just allows like unlimited funds to pour into, kind of like influencing our politicians, right? Lobbying our politicians, influencing our politicians, paying them off essentially. And so what happens, what the result of that is, is that we have large corporations putting large amounts of money into candidates and then even like once they're, once they're elected. And that influences decisions. Right. So you know, if you have even like with the farm like you have, you have right now the agricultural industry like big ag, really lobbying hard against like this MAHA document that came out because they were going to talk about glyphosate potentially, right. And so they're like no, like here's. So they, and they have like full time staff, like tons and tons of lobbyists putting in this effort to basically like make sure that laws are enacted in their own favor. Right. And you see this throughout. I mean the pharma's got this huge lobbying end, it's called PhRMA H R M A And they are responsible. I mean there's tons of people who work there full time and their whole responsibility is to lobby for pro pharma, you know, laws. And so if you get rid of that, if you get rid of that lobbying ability, at least largely. Right. At least the amount that we allow for that can help to enable our politicians to enact laws that are in favor of the people and not necessarily the corporations that they're indebted to. So that's the first big one. And I think that would just take care of a lot of things. Not necessarily take care, but really help and help out a lot of things. And when I go through some of these policies that will start to make more sense. So some of the things, if you think about our food, I kind of think of buckets of health. Right. So if you're working on an individual health basis, what are you going to talk to people about? You're going to talk to them about diet and nutrition, you know, talk to them about exercise, you're going to talk to them about sleep, mental health. Right. Like social. And getting out like in the sunshine, getting out with people. All of those aspects go into health. So there's policies, so that's the individual side of it, but then there's policies that help make that more accessible to people. Right. And help remove barriers of entry. Let's just take food for example. If I'm working with you one on one with food, as a dietitian, what am I going to tell you? I'm going to tell you to try to eat more whole foods, eat more fruits and vegetables, because over 90% of Americans are not meeting vegetable and fiber intake guidelines. I'm going to tell you to really focus on those things. Kind of limit your amount of ultra processed foods, like nutrient poor, ultra processed foods. That's what I'm going to work with you on, like one on one. Well, what needs to happen to that? Because right now the United States, our government, recommends half your plate as fruits and vegetables. But we absolutely do not subsidize that. We absolutely do not enact laws that, that favor or help that. Because right now our agricultural subsidies largely go to commodity crops. And that's corn, wheat and soy. And we build food systems right now, not even for us to eat. We build it really. And this again happened, you know, early on in kind of like the 70s and then 80s, we really started focusing on, okay, let's really subsidize. Or it might have been in the 60s. I'm losing my train of thought when he was out of the usda. But they really like started thinking, okay, let's just pour our money into corn, wheat and soy, essentially these commodity crops, because those are good export crops for us. We grow them really well and they export really well. And so why are we doing that? We're doing it for profits and money. Right. We're not doing it because that's what's best for the people. And so they took farmers who used to have these like wonderful farms with like lots of different fruits, vegetables, all of these different things, and they just started, you know, a single crop. They would have these giant or they do. They have these giant farms of giant, just corn, those rows and corn, those.
- [50:30]
Monty
Big combines and like you'll just see it and it'll just be fields of it.
- [50:34]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah. Go through like middle America. That's what you see. And you know, the thing is, is that that's really bad for the soil. It's also really bad for our food environment because what we're doing is we're subsidizing corn, wheat and soy. Corn, by the way, 40% of corn goes to animal agriculture, animal feed. 40% of corn goes to fuel. So it's. That's not even being really grown for like us. The answer eat. But what corn, wheat and soy are, they're the basis for most ultra processed foods. Right. And so we don't put any subsidies. Less than 1% of subsidies go towards fruits and vegetables in this country. So we're telling you, eat half your plate of fruits and vegetables. And then we're not subsidizing fruits and vegetables. So what happens is our fruits and vegetables, our produce becomes more expensive and we artificially keep the cost of these ultra processed foods lower so they're more accessible for people who have less income. And so that's why our food environment now is about 70% ultra processed food. Because we really decimated local food systems. Again under Reagan was a big part of this. It happened in the 70s with the farm crisis and then it exacerbated under Reagan with a lot of this deregulation and this pro big ag. And so we kind of like eliminated these local food systems. And so we're heavily reliant on these big agricultural big food systems that make foods now. You know, because we don't have good anti TR trust laws and things like that. We have like very few corporations that own the majority of this ultra processed food supply. And so we're heavily reliant on food that travels fast and is shelf stable. And so that all impacts our food environment and what is accessible to us. And that, that by the way that also starts to change culture when you have that for decades and decades and decades. Because one of the big things is you can start to change some of these things. You're not going to see, you may see some sort of transient immediate response, but some of there will be a lot of pushback, right? Because now it's like part of our culture. Like I grew up in the 90s, I was a kid of the 90s and like I just remember so many commercials of just like the Trix guy and like all these commercials just like targeting children.
- [52:37]
Monty
Pop Tarts, Hot Pockets.
- [52:39]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yes, just like the bright colored foods and like, I mean that's just like what we ate and what was available to us. So anyway that, that's one of the ways you start to change the food environment is you start looking at agriculture and agricultural policies, you start looking at marketing. So you start putting marketing limits on children like to, for these corporations to market to children and low income populations. I mean that can really start helping you start investing in nutrition education. Because if you start investing in nutrition education young, it helps to change demands. And what we have, again, a largely deregulated capitalist economy. That is their number one priority and value is profit and growth right above all else, above much more, way far more above your health. And so they're going to make what you demand. If you demand healthier options, they're going to put healthier options in there for you. But if we don't, if we keep demanding bright blue cereal, they're going to keep making bright blue cereal. They're not out to. Despite what the conspiratorial narrative is, they're not out to keep you sick, they're out to make money. And that just so happens to be with the food that tends to be less nutrient dense and kind of lead to some of these chronic diseases. So all of those things can start to kind of reform our food environment and kind of the nutrition side of that. Right. Another big thing is addressing income inequality. I mean, that's going to underlie all of these because again, people eat what they have access to. And a lot of people, their food budget. I mean, 40% of SNAP recipients get the maximum benefit, which means they don't have any money left over for groceries. So that program, even though it's called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, it's not supplemental for them. 40% of SNAP participants, that's all they're. That's their entire grocery budget for the month or for the week. And so you know that you have to kind of like start addressing kind of some of those more systemic things that may like at first glance not be related to nutrition. Right. So like, when I'm talking about how do we improve nutrition in this country, addressing income inequality might not be on somebody's mind, but what that does is it enables people to have access to these fruits and vegetables. You start addressing food deserts, and you can do that by, you know, incentivizing grocery stores to go in. You're gonna have to do that with grants. Right, because they're not just gonna do it out of the kindness of their heart. You can do it with like a lot of. There's a lot of, like, not startups, what's the word? Nonprofits, who. They'll go in and they bring like these mobile food carts into food deserts which, which can be really helpful local, like corner stores, kind of incentivizing them to bring in fresh produce farmed, like local farmers, partnering with local farmers for these, like, farm to school programs and these farm to food bank programs, which, by the way, the Trump administration cut.
- [55:33]
Monty
Didn't a grant just get cut that was like a farm to school and like farm to daycare.
- [55:38]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Multiple grants just got cut. Yes. Yeah. The big one, they cut a huge one, I think six hundred and something million dollars from one that literally was, you know, it was a Covid era grant. It was started during COVID but it was exactly what Maha talks about wanting. And it helped basically local Farmers have a market, and it helps schools get fresh. Schools and daycare centers get fresh local food into their schools and daycare centers. And then another one that was kind of connected to that that they also cut was the same thing. Local farmers getting food to food banks in these areas to help get fresh local food to these, like, packaged meals that they were giving out at the food banks. Both of those were cut. They also cut the Patrick Leahy Farm to School program, which was this, like, wonderful program that's been in existence since 2010 that essentially, like, help helped create school gardens so that you could get, like, kids interested in gardening. That's so cool. Yeah. And helped get local produce into their school meals as well. So. Yeah. All of those were unfortunately cut by the USDA this year.
- [56:46]
Monty
This year? Yeah. I just saw an article about it, and I didn't have a chance to deep dive, and I'm like, wait a minute, didn't they just cut? That is so counterproductive. And plus, not only do you have. Now you've reduced the amount of fruits and vegetables people can access, but now you've cut all this funding from farmers who, like, who's gonna buy their product? How are they gonna keep their farm?
- [57:07]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah. I mean, there's story after story of farmers that are. That are. You know, they've already invested all of this money. Cause they were already promised this money. And so they had to, like, plant and all of this. And now they've lost their contracts.
- [57:19]
Monty
That's awful.
- [57:20]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah. So. And that. That's just on food and nutrition. Right. And so then there's other. There's. There's these other aspects. I'll just do one more. Which is, like, physical activity. Right. So you said you were in exercise science or exercise physiology. And, like, so obviously we want people to be physically active, but also 80% of the United States is not meeting physical activity guidelines. Right. The basic minimum physical activity guidelines that are put forth by the government, which are based on scientific evidence that that's kind of the most healthful for most people. So 80% of the U.S. so then you have to ask, well, why is 80% of the United States not meeting these physical activity guidelines? And it's multiple, but you have to start looking at systems, because people make individual choices within systems. And a lot of us have pretty easy access to be able to work out or even, like, move or even walk. And a lot of us don't. And so that's called something which is a social determinant of health. It's called the built Environment, which is this idea that the United States was really built for cars, for the automobile industry. Right. Which is very different than a lot of countries in Europe that are often used as kind of benchmarks of where we should be from a health perspective. They, you know, their, their towns and cities are very walkable and bikable. There's sidewalks everywhere in the United States. That's just not the case in many, many places. Right. And so investing in urban infrastructure is a big one. That's, that's kind of like a systemic approach to help improve physical activity. Because if you live in an area where you can't walk, right. You can't just like go and walk in a safe place. You're not going to walk. And so, so it's like, I don't.
- [58:55]
Monty
Want to get hit by a car. Thanks.
- [58:58]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
And so you can't just tell people like, well, you need to walk more. You need to walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week. If they don't have access to a place to go walk. Right. And so just the physical access is one. Right. Like bike lanes and parks, public transportation, so they can walk to the public transportation and take that, those types of things. And then also just another thing is like investing in children's physical activity programs there. Right. So starting them young again is another like systemic change we can make to improve physical activity kind of throughout the lifespan. But yeah, and then, you know, incentivizing transportation and incentivizing people to take public transportation, you know, but you have to have public transportation accessible in order to do that. So those are some of like the systemic approaches to improving physical activity where on the individual side we might say, you know, you know, you want to do cardio, you want to lift a couple days a week, you want to make sure you're walking 10,000 steps a day, whatever it is, right. Those might be your individual things. But then when you're thinking of a public policy perspective, you're thinking, what can I do from, from a policy perspective, from a systemic perspective, to increase accessibility so that people are able to adopt these, recommend these evidence based recommendations that we're providing. So that's, that's the kind of the key distinction there.
- [60:15]
Monty
That's incredible. And one of the things as you're talking about this and we're talking about policy and regulation, you know, again, I grew up under this idea that deregulation is best, the government needs to mind its business. And as a, I've, you know, grown from that and educated myself. I look at these European countries and Their regulation is to protect people from corporations. And it's this idea. I think it's Germany, I think it's Germany where they don't allow for pharmaceutical companies to have public advertisements. Like you can't advertise on tv. You can't.
- [60:49]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
It's. That's every country except us. And I think New Zealand. Oh, really? Really?
- [60:52]
Monty
Oh, I think because I was in Germany and they were, they were like, yeah, they're like, no, you go to the doctor who recommends your medicine. They're not allowed to try to sell it to you on the street. So then you go ask your doctor. I'm like, that is genius.
- [61:05]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Like, and to your point, it's something we don't even think about as Americans. Right. Because it's just so ingrained in us. But like, why are they advertising pharmaceutical medication? Why are they saying to go ask your doctor for this pharmaceutical medication instead of your doctor recommending whichever medication based.
- [61:20]
Monty
On what you need? Yeah. And that I remember being in Europe. Cause I lived in the UK briefly and I was like, that is amazing. And then these other. They just have these guardrails where it just protects people. It makes transit more accessible, food more accessible. So in this space of maha and everything from vaccines are bad and vaccines cause autism and all these, how do people, especially people that don't have the science background, how do you recommend people navigate this space space with all this misinformation around health? I even, I've been tracking the conversation around. Now they're demonizing birth control. As you know, it's, it's the new demon. How do you recommend that people really start to kind of suss through this? Because it's a lot. In addition to all the other headlines we're getting hit with every day.
- [62:09]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, I think it's really, it's a good question. It's very difficult for people, I think, to, I mean it's something that I'm asked all the time, like, how do I know, like what's right and what's wrong wrong? I think there's a couple of things to look for. Expertise is specific. And so I think a lot of times right now, and this is kind of a fault of scientists and experts and academics essentially so of not getting on social media, of not going to where people go for their information for a very long time. And so I'll give you just a quick story. In 20, 2016, I was a brand new professor. I was a assistant or yeah, I was a tenure track professor and I was teaching in the nutrition program at The University of Nevada. And I was like, okay. I also think that it would be cool to go online and start teaching. It was like a time when a lot of courses were really big and I was like, oh, I could create a nutrition course because I'm teaching nutrition anyway. I was so ignorant about what the space looked like. And so I started going online just to talk about basic nutrition. And I was like, maybe people will be interested in that, this. And I got so much pushback for doing that. And so many people in my program and colleagues of mine would be like, they'd make fun of me. They'd be like, what are you doing online? Like, why? They'd be like, how is your vlog doing?
- [63:28]
Monty
Oh my God.
- [63:29]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
And so it was really, you know, I was a brand new professor and so I was like, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. So like, let me kind of get off. So I stopped after, you know, I didn't even go a full year and I never went back on until, until 2022. But I do think that that was a very common mentality for academics and scientists and medical professionals for way too long. And we lost an incredible amount of traction where we could have been getting on these platforms, which is where people were going. Because a big problem we have in science is it's inaccessible to a lot of people. We speak in jargon that is not accessible to people. We write in a way that is not accessible to a lot of people. Our work is behind paywalls that you have to pay like 70, $80 to read a single scientific paper. Like, who's going to do that? And so, you know, it's kind of like gatekept. And scientists haven't really been accessible to explain the evidence behind some of these things. And so because of that, the narrative has really been able to be fueled and led by people who don't have that specific expertise. That's changing now. I'm really happy to see it. We have some incredible science communicators and some great people online now that are kind of giving good evidence based information. But you know, you're never. It's going to be really difficult to make up for that 10, 15 years that, you know, influencers were kind of, maybe not 15, but like 10 years that influencers were really kind of running the show. And so I think when you're looking for content to trust, there's a couple of things to look for. People who are really giving misleading information or flat out false information often use really inflammatory language so they'll do Things like they'll start their video with some sort of hook like, are you poisoning your kids? And almost always I've actually never seen. And that's like a very specific example. I actually stitched someone who started her poisoning it from a story. And so like scientists aren't gonna do that, right? We're not gonna, we're not gonna start like experts, medical professionals are not gonna do that. They're not gonna start with are you poisoning your kids? And then scare the shit out of you, you. And in order to, by the way, sell you a product on the back end. And so looking for inflammatory language like that that's just like using words like poison or they're out to kill you or conspiratorial language. If you think back to kind of how I was talking about grass, the grass loophole, there are issues there, right. But I kind of tried to explain the nuance behind the issues, why they happen, what could be done to improve it. Putting it in context, that's what you'll find from a lot of people who are giving you actual evidence based information. It's not as flashy and it's not as fun and it doesn't actually like work with the algorithm as well. But those are the people that you know that like you can probably look to for good evidence based information. People who are giving you sources for what they're saying. Right. And that can be a little bit tricky because I've seen a lot of these kind of influencers spreading misinformation that like link one single study and you know, I'll go to the study and it like, it's like really poor quality study that doesn't even have the conclusion that they're saying it does. But you know, they know that a lot of people aren't going to go and read that scientific article and know that. Right? Yeah, but, but for the most part, like people who are just making really like, if it seems like a like surprising wild statement and there's not evidence to back up what they're saying, it's probably misleading or inaccurate. So just being really like careful to kind of look for those things and why they do it is because that works really well on social media. I mean that stuff travels fast and you can get a lot of views and for most of these people, they're selling products on the back end, right. And so they can get you into there, you know, you'll DM them and they have an automatic DM that comes up and then you get, you get into their email list and their email sequence and then they sell you some sort of like thousand, twenty thousand dollar program. I mean some of these are crazy.
- [67:25]
Monty
So expensive.
- [67:26]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, yeah. And I don't, you know, I get, I don't have a problem with people selling things online. Right. Like everybody has to make a living. But it's the fear based predatory marketing that I have a problem with. So you know, if somebody is really like genuine and like talking about a fitness program they have or something like that, I think that's great, like build your business, you know. But when it's, when it's, you know, what brought me to social media was I was pregnant with my daughter and so I started seeing all this like pregnancy content and, and there's just so much misinformation and so many people targeting that, that demographic of people. Because we're at a vulnerable life stage. Right. We just want to do what's best for our babies and like keep everybody as healthy as possible. And, and they sell you a lot. Yes. And so that kind of predatory marketing I, I think is a really, is very problematic. And I try to, I try to help people kind of like spot what to look for for that particular kind of like, type of stuff. Stuff.
- [68:22]
Monty
Okay. Yeah. Because that is hard because you have so many people that come on and you can't necessarily verify their credentials online. Right. They can say they're so and so or I studied here and you don't know. And as far as like with this, the, this movement of misinformation and confusion, what do you think are like the top either myths or misinformation going around in the health space right now? And how do people combat those things, even just one or two to things that you've really seen kind of become a big issue.
- [68:53]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah. Just in general, I think that a lot of people are just scared to eat anything in our food supply because they have this idea that our food is toxic because of a lot of these influencers who will, you know, like take something like trisodium phosphate and then like drive to, you know, Home Depot and show you like a jug of trisodium phosphate. Even though there's like food like, you know, sodium bicarbonate, by the way, is baking soda can be used in baked goods, but it can also be used. You can also drive to Home Depot and get sodium bicarbonate to use as a cleaner. So that's just a misunderstanding of chemistry. And some of these ingredients can be used in multiple different ways. And so because people will take that little bit of truth and then they'll just completely scare the shit out of people and pretend like things are toxic when they're not. Right? They'll take a study that looked at rats giving somebody like 40% of their body weight of this particular substance, 40% of the rat's body weight, they'll give them that substance and it induces some sort of problem in the rats, right. And they'll take that study and they'll attribute it to humans and say, oh, this is linked to, they use that term. This is linked to all of these different conditions. When in humans, at the doses we're exposed to, because dose makes the poison always at the doses we're exposed to, there's absolutely no evidence that any of those things are harmful. And so what's happened is that a lot of people are terrified to eat anything and they're like, what can I eat? You go online, you can find things telling you not to eat apples because they're toxic, or even the most benign things, beans. They have lectins and they're gonna destroy your gut microbiome. And it's just at the end of the day, we have a very safe food supply. We are routinely ranked in the top of the world in our safety and quality of our food supply, despite the rhetoric. And so in terms of safety of what we're consuming, it's overwhelmingly safe. But there is a problem with us over consuming these nutrient poor, ultra processed foods. Right. We're not meeting our nutrient needs, we're not meeting our fiber and protein and micronutrient needs needs. And we're consuming a lot of sugar and fats and calories. 70% of the United States over consumes the amount of calories they need or that their body requires. So there's an over consumption problem. But that doesn't mean that these individual ingredients are problematic. It's your entire dietary pattern and kind of over consuming things. So I just think there's a ton of health anxiety out there and food anxiety that really doesn't need to be there. We need to start talking about just dietary patterns and how to get more fruits and vegetables and fiber into your diet and those types of things, rather than just scaring the shit out of everybody and saying that you can't eat anything, which is just not true.
- [71:44]
Monty
Yeah, that's something I've been noticing too, is I remember, and you probably remember this too, when gluten free kind of became a thing. And at first it was really hard to find gluten free options. Now there's a ton of them. But People kind of demonized it, like, oh, you're just being ridiculous. You're being too picky. People aren't allergic to it. And now it does seem like when I'm on the health side of my algorithm, it's a new food or a new ingredient every day that now you can't have. And it's just like, man, this is exhausting. If I were to stay in this space for very long, it would be exhausting. And so last question I have for you with people who are concerned about their health, concerned about their neighbor's health health, what can we as people do to start promoting a better system? Like, what are ways that we can get involved, like in our communities and nationally to start maybe shifting some of this positive change even in the midst of kind of some unfortunate policy we're having right now?
- [72:42]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, I think in your individual, like, worlds, right. In your individual environments, we always are making choices with our dollar. So where you should shop, you know, if you have the means, if you, if you're a higher income earner and you have the means, support your local producers, go to farmer's markets, even better than farmers markets, start buying from CSAs, which are these like community supported agriculture, because that's how these small farmers, you know, people kind of lump all farmers together. But you have these like small farms, which are very different than like big ag, which are these like huge industrial, like huge corporations essentially. And so supporting those smaller farmers will help to support your local food system, which is really important, I think, and starting to, you know, purchase foods that are more in line with health. And then, you know, again, demand is going to dictate supply. Right. And so if we're demanding more of these products, then, then we'll be supplied with more of these products. Pushing for staying kind of involved and pushing for systemic change at the policy level. I think one of the benefits of this Maha movement, I do think, you know, if I had to like find some, some light at the end of the tunnel, is that it's gotten a lot of people, even more so than maybe during the Obama era with Michelle Obama's whole, I mean, her entire campaign was improving the nutrition for our children and, you know, getting them to move in schools. But even more so than then, I do think because of social media, there's. There are people who have never thought about kind of public health or our food system or any of that who are actually interested and they're like, oh, how does all of this work? I've actually never thought of how the food I'M eating gets to my plates. Like, how does that all work? And so I think that there's a real opportunity for science communicators and public health experts to actually be able to educate people who maybe wouldn't have even cared two years ago, but do have this, like, increased interest in this topic. And so, you know, I think that's great. And I think, you know, making sure that we're kind of like following those types of people and helping to get the. They're helping to support their work and get it seen and things like that can be really helpful too, to kind of drown out some of this noise and then pushing for policy changes at the federal level, at the state level as well, and at the federal level. So staying involved in your local kind of government and what policies they're enacting and pushing back on policies that you don't agree with. Right now, the USDA is coming out with policies, agricultural policies, that are going to drastically kind of exacerbate the issues of our food environment. It's shuttling more money to Big Ag and not giving any money to small farmers, which is exactly what we would want to be doing. At least not giving very much money to small farmers and removing a lot of those programs like we talked about that small farmers and small local farmers rely on. And so they are saying one thing and doing the exact same thing opposite from a policy level. So just staying involved in seeing kind of like what's going on. And I know that that can sound daunting because as you mentioned, there's so much going on. Right. And so, you know, just finding, just finding people that you can trust who are reporting on that stuff. Right. So if this is an area that's of interest to you, find some of the people who are doing that work and that you can trust and be like, oh, these are the policies that are coming out. I think, I think in be helpful as well. So those are some of the big ones. Talking to people in your everyday life about some of these issues who maybe have this different idea and give them a different perspective that maybe they've never heard before. I hear from a lot of people on social media and they'll be in my DM saying, your account is the first I've ever heard of a different perspective than Maha. And I never even thought of some of these issues you're bringing up. I never even knew what a food desert was. How is that possible? I'm 45 years old and I've never heard of a food desert. And so I do think that just like, a lot of people are really well meaning, they just don't know. And so, like, having conversations with people in your life can be really helpful too.
- [76:44]
Monty
And where can people find you on social media? Because what I've found helpful is I have key people that I look to when I have a certain question. Like, if I have a news question, I go to this person. If I have a political question, it's this person. You. It's medical or nutrition question. So what is your all. Where can everyone find you on all the platforms?
- [77:03]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
So I'm on. My main platform is Instagram and Substack, I'd say. So I. My Instagram is Dr. Like, my handle is Dr. Jessica Nurick. Just my name. And then I publish a couple of times a week on Substack as well. And that's where I can like, get into issues a lot, a lot better and kind of like link sources and things like that. I'm on, like, all the. I'm on TikTok. And also I just got on Facebook a month and a half ago, which I haven't been on Facebook in years, but it's actually been going quite well, so I'm there as well.
- [77:31]
Monty
Facebook is coming out of the nether realm. I forget about Facebook half the time. And what, as you're doing this work, what is giving you hope as you move forward, especially with all the weight of everything?
- [77:43]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Yeah, I'd say it's what. I'd say it's just a reiteration of what I already said. It's that it's seeing this interest that people have in this particular area. I mean, I've been doing. I've been in this field for a very long time now. I mean, like, you know, all through college and graduation and for the last 15 years, I've been doing this work and been really interested, and it's kind of like been my central focus. And now it's like all of these people are really interested in this area that, like, I just did a substack live last week about, like, the farm bill. And I'm like, I didn't know anyone would ever care about the farm bill, but, like, look at all these people who care. So I think that that's giving me hope that there are, you know, people are starting to realize how. How much, like, propaganda is coming out right now and just how much, like, this particular administration is saying one thing and doing the exact opposite in terms of legislation. And I think people are hungry for, like, the truth, like, what's actually happening, you know, and it's kind of like, wait, waking some people up maybe, or making people more interested than they otherwise would have been. So I think that that's the hope that I have is that people who are really interested and do I think that that's a bipartisan thing, that we want a healthier environment and a healthier food environment. And if we, if we can help people to understand kind of like why our food environment is the way it is and what are some solutions to actually improve it. Because swapping out Red Dye 40 for carmine from bugs or another natural red dye like beet juice is not swapping out Red 40 and Skittles and putting in beet juice is not going to improve the health of Americans. It's just not. So what are some policies that actually will and what needs to happen for those. So I think that that's where I'm most hopeful is that we can actually start to have genuine conversations with people who are genuinely interested about these topics about how we improve the health of Americans.
- [79:32]
Monty
That's incredible. And thank you so much again. That's Dr. Jessica Nurik and it's K N U R I C K. Yeah, got it. Thank you so much for being here and thank you for being a voice like you are, especially when I'm looking at health policy or health things that are happening. You're the first page I go to to. And so I appreciate your work and just helping people kind of see through the mist. And thank you for being here with us today.
- [79:57]
Dr. Jessica Nurick
Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
- [80:00]
Monty
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. As always, if you would like to receive these episodes ad free, you can subscribe to my patreon for $1 a week at patreon.com Monte Mater always in the show Notes. Thank you so much for your support and I hope to see you next week on Flipping Tables.