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Scrolling with Hayley
Exposing Big Food w/ Patrick & Ashley Sullivan - Scrolling w/ Hayley (Ep. 240)
00:53:01
In this episode of Scrolling with Hayley: The filmmakers behind the hit new documentary “Breaking Big Food: How The American Food System Went Rotten, and How It's Being Revived” Patrick and Ashley Sullivan discuss all things MAHA!
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Scrolling with Haley. I am Haley Carignia. Thank you for tuning in today. On this Friday episode, I want to make sure that you all subscribe to the show rumble.com Haley is where you can watch the show in full live. And we are Monday through Friday and we are right after Dan Bongino's show. It'll raid right into here. So make sure that you scroll all of scroll with all of my homies in the chat. And of course you can listen on your favorite podcast platform, Apple Podcast, Spotify, I Iheart. Wherever you get your shows, just make sure that you show us some love. I appreciate it. And today's show is very special for me because we are diving into all things Maha Make America healthy again. All right, well, during the pandemic and its aftermath, a lot of Americans, myself included, our eyes were open to all of the different lies that have been told surrounding our health for years. Then we started questioning, what am I putting in my body? Why is the government pushing vaccines? Why are they downplaying natural alternatives, natural remedies? Why are they telling us to mask up and not go to the gym? For me, after doing research and learning more about my health, those questions quickly became how and why did I ever trust the government to know what's good for me and my body and my health? Well, my next guests know all too well how the American food system is rigged against us. Would you believe me if I told you that most of the big food corporations are owned by tobacco companies? Well, our food is poison, but we don't have to let it poison us. And knowledge is power. Patrick and Ashley Sullivan are the owners of an organic mold free coffee shop and market in Arizona. They're also the filmmakers behind the hit new documentary Breaking Big. How the American Food System Went Rotten and How it's Being revived. And they join me on today's episode of Scrolling with Haley. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to have you both. And this is my first ever Maha like Maha from start to finish episode. So I'm very, very excited to have you guys on.
- [02:14]
B
Oh, we're so excited to be here. Thank you for having us, Haley.
- [02:17]
A
Yeah, this is wonderful. And I loved the documentary which we will get into. But I want to start with where all of this Maha stuff began. It seems like it started maybe about 2020. After 2020, nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to the government. Did you guys see an interest in the maha movement since 2020 or where do you think this all started?
- [02:39]
C
I think in your intro. Yeah, you. You nailed it. Why have we been trusting the government, so called experts at all?
- [02:48]
B
It.
- [02:48]
C
It really. I think Covid revealed much of the brokenness in the systems that we assumed we could trust.
- [02:59]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And it just seems like since then, people have started questioning what we're putting into our bodies. I know for, you know, myself and I know that Alex Clark, the host of Culture Apothecary, was in the Breaking Big Food documentary. And I started listening to her podcasts a while. This was like before Maha even started. But I feel like the drip, drip, drip of information started coming, coming. I feel like moms, suburban moms, were getting very interested in what they were feeding themselves, their families, their babies. And that has really prompted a lot of people to vote for Trump and even liberals who were. Maybe they were fans of RFK Jr. And they thought, well, I would never vote for a Republican, but I care so much about my health. What have you. What have you made of all that? Do you think that there is just a re. A revival among moms that has really made the Maha mom movement a thing?
- [03:54]
C
A hundred percent, yes.
- [03:55]
B
Yeah. I feel like moms are angry. I think the veil has been lifted and they have. I mean, now they can see what's been going on and they're like, the tiger moms are coming out and they're saying, no more. I'm going to take control of my family's health and I'm going to make. I'm going to do better for them. And they just. They've lost all trust in the system.
- [04:18]
A
Yeah. And just with baby formula, seed oils and baby formula chemicals and children's food and things like that is just. It's eye opening. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Patrick, I want to ask you about your own health journey because your struggles kind of prompted you to dive deeper into this industry, right?
- [04:36]
C
Yes. In 2014, I felt a lump in my throat, and it turned out that that lump was thyroid cancer. And if you ever hear you have cancer, it's the worst words you feel like you can have. And it was so scary. Yeah. Incredibly stressful time. We worked with a number of different doctors to get several opinions, and Ashley and I eventually agreed that the best move was to do a thyroidectomy where they surgically remove the thyroid. And then, quite frankly, Haley, we didn't really think about that time in our lives for several years. It was such a stressful time dealing with the I have cancer demon screaming in my head for six months that once we did the thyroidectomy. We kind of buried that until. Fast forward to 2024, 10 years after the initial thyroid cancer, we started to work on this film, Breaking Big Food. And the director that we were working with asked me, you know, why are you. Why are you guys making this? And the first answer that I gave was a little bit more along the lines of, like, well, you know, health and wellness and nutrition is just absolutely an important subject. And we had seen Callie Means speak at conference in the summer of 2024, and we felt like we wanted to help amplify this message that was in his book Good Energy and that. And the documentarian was kind of like, okay, but what's your personal reason for wanting to do this? Like, I agree with you on all that stuff on health, but why do you want to make it? And it was almost like the light kind of pierced through the veil of like, oh, yeah, I had cancer.
- [06:26]
B
Right.
- [06:26]
C
I'm actually a cancer survivor. I don't think about it because it was so stressful, but thinking about that, the thing that I think we struggled with the most was no doctor ever told me how or why the cancer got into my thyroid in the first place. And so one of the worst parts about that is like, well, how do I. How do I stop it from getting there again? If I got cancer once, could I get it again? And I have really come to believe that nutrition is a part of the broader environmental factors that comes into play on whether cancer is created or destroyed in the body.
- [07:04]
B
Yeah. And Kali Means and his sister Casey Means, in their book Good Energy, they really laid out beautifully. And in just the various interviews that we heard Callie doing, talking about, know, this health crisis in America totally reminded us, oh, my gosh. Okay. So the cancer had to come from somewhere. They didn't tell us how it got there. They didn't have a clue. Maybe this. Maybe this had a. Something to do with it. I mean, we didn't know how to read a nutrition label back then. So it was kind of like, okay, that. That passion, that mission became fueled more and more based on our experience with the cancer. And just like, other family members and other. I mean, it's all over the place. Illness is everywhere. And so we were just like, we've got to help any way we can.
- [07:51]
A
Yeah. And you know, when you hear cancer, because so many people are affected by this, and there are so many different kinds, and there are cancer patients and survivors in my family, as I'm sure everyone listening and watching has a similar story, it touches so many of us. And it just seems like when you hear cancer, you think of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and other medical interventions. But some of the cancer survivors that I know have become the most Maha people I have ever known because they take their health so seriously, because they know that it is an environmental thing. When you hear cancer, my question is, what's causing it? The same way that Patrick, you asked that. I mean, how did this thyroid. How did this cancer get in my thyroid to begin with? It seems like everything causes cancer now. Plastic sunscreens, everything. It's kind of like, where do you start?
- [08:45]
C
Well, my personal belief is that any one of those environmental assaults, when built up over time, can trigger the body to dysfunction. We are so fortunate that we live inside of this amazing vehicle, we call it our body, and inside of us is an innate healer that when we can calm down our nervous systems, which is difficult, and when we can feed proper nutrition, I believe that our bodies can tend to deal with most environmental toxins. There is probably a breaking point that our bodies can't get to. But I think that the more we can clean up our environment, the better off that we're going to be.
- [09:36]
A
Yeah. I want to ask you about the food pyramids specifically, because a lot of our environment, we think about the things that are on our body and near our body, and there's a lot that we can do to kind of clean up our lifestyles and make them low tox. But food is a really great place to start. And for so long, the American people have been lied to because we had this old food pyramid that basically told us that you can have 11 servings of bread per day. And that's what the government tells us. And that's healthy for some reason. And the pyramid is totally warped. I mean, it is prioritizing breads and grains, and it is demonizing fats and oils, good fats and oils and things like that. And now with RFK Jr. At the head of HHS, they have basically unveiled this inverted triangle, which is really how we should have been eating for so long. And it's just wild to me that, like, how did we get here?
- [10:37]
C
Well, here's three facts that I learned while we were filming Breaking big food. Number one, in 1990, 1985, R.J. reynolds, the maker of Camel cigarettes, bought Nabisco for $5 billion. Number two, in 1988, Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, they bought craft food for $13 billion. These are only two examples of some of the food processors being purchased by Big Tobacco.
- [11:10]
B
What could go Wrong.
- [11:11]
C
Well, fact number three, by the mid-1990s, the cigarette industry controlled about 40% of the food supply in America. And it's only gone up in the last three decades.
- [11:24]
B
Wow.
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A
And can you tell me about how lobbyists, what they have to do with this whole process? Do lobbyists really control what kind of food pyramid gets out and what, what other government recommendations get out to the public?
- [11:38]
C
Yes. And that kind of goes back to what we were talking about with COVID where we learned of essentially regulators being captured by crony capitalists who were basically saying, hey, here in America, we grow a lot of wheat, we grow a lot of corn. It would be great if we could incentivize and encourage Americans to grow, to eat a lot more of what we grow, regardless of what the science may say about carbs versus proteins and animal fats. So, yes, the recent inversion of the pyramid, I think, has been kind of a brief, brilliant play by RFK Jr. And his team at HHS. And I think that it really does flip on its head appropriately and give Americans better guidance on. Hmm, maybe what I was told to eat before wasn't exactly the right thing. Because here's three more facts to think about. Number one, currently the United States makes up 4% of, of the world's population. Number two, we account for 75% of global pharmaceutical profits. And number three, we rank 49th in life expectancy.
- [12:57]
B
Oof.
- [12:59]
A
That's not good.
- [13:01]
B
No. So I think it's about time that the food pyramid was completely flipped on its head because things. We were literally living in the Upside down and we have to, we have to change it.
- [13:10]
A
Yeah. And Ashley, you were talking about reading food labels. And I have just started doing this recently and I've just learned about seed oils and certain things to avoid. And it's so fascinating to me because specifically I was looking for, I was going to a Publix and I was looking for electrolytes to put in my water because I'm drinking a lot more water now. And I was trying to find a clean one. And that's very difficult to do at big box grocery stores. They don't, they really don't have a lot of these Maha approved kind of items. But I figured, let me go, let me read the labels and see what there is to see. And I pick up one that says zero sugar. I flip the box around, there's glucose. And on all, there's all these other things, maltodextrin and all the gums and all these things. And I'm thinking, how can they even say that this has no sugar in it when there is sugar in it. So can the FDA lie to us?
- [14:09]
C
That's a good question. Well, first of all, one trick that is often used by food makers is that the FDA does allow in the labeling for you to, on a per serving basis, round down. So if the serving of sugar is less than 0.5 grams or 0.5%, you can actually say zero sugar because you're rounding down ash. I think you should talk about a little bit food labels and bring up ingredients.
- [14:41]
B
Well, I mean, they also have, you know, different names for certain substance substances that they can put on there to kind of just mislead. And you know, I, this is why we created a cheat sheet. It's called the Dirty Dozen ingredients to, to avoid. It's on ingredientsnobs.com and you can just go and download the PDF. We just wanted to create a resource because it's a good place to start. As you're out there and you're like, okay, I'm looking for salad dressing, I'm looking for some yogurt. I'm looking for, I want to get healthy stuff, but I really have no idea what to look out for. This ingredient that the 12 dirty dozen ingredients to avoid will be very helpful to just at least the most common ones that are on the labels.
- [15:28]
A
Yeah, it's great to know knowledge is power because once you see these items, these ingredients, then you can go into the grocery store and make better choices for yourself and for your family. But I want to talk to you guys about Firefly, Firefly Coffee, which is a very exciting venture for you too. How did you get into the coffee business to begin with?
- [15:49]
B
Well, it's kind of funny, the timing of all of this. We decided to make this documentary first. And around that same time, I was doing a series of health tests for myself. One of one of them being like a mycotoxin test to see what kind of environmental toxins I'm being exposed to and what am I detoxing when I'm, what am I not? And on that test, four different types of mold showed up, likely from food derived sources. And I was so shocked. I was like, what? Like, I don't even eat blue cheese. How could I be? What is going on here? Where's this mold coming from? So I started to do some research and I found through that research that coffee is actually one of the main culprits. It's a very common thing to find mold or mycotoxins in coffee beans. And I Was like, well, I only drink like, you know, four cups a day. This couldn't be a problem, right?
- [16:44]
A
Wow. So what kind of test is that to test the toxins that are in your body? Like, what, what did you ask for? Because you can't go to a regular doctor and get that kind of stuff.
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B
No, it was a mycotoxin test. They shipped the kit to me. I'm. I think it was.
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A
What was it?
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C
I think it was a urine test.
- [17:05]
B
Yeah, it was a urine test. I'm trying to think of the name of the test itself. I will find it and maybe you can link it in the show notes as well. So if you're curious what your status is any of the audience listening, It's a good thing to do just to kind of be aware of. But. So that sent me down a whole rabbit hole of like, I gotta find some mold free coffee. And also we had developed this algorithm, afternoon latte habit, where we want to go out to a coffee shop and enjoy a latte and take a break from the work day. And just kind of like that became a routine for us. And I really cherish that. And I was like, I can't find a mold free coffee shop in this town. I can't even find an organic coffee shop in this town. So after some discussion, Patrick and I decided, you know what, the spot opened up right next to our office, Jigsaw Health, as well as our indoor pickleball facility. It was like an open suite. And I'm like, what if we did a coffee shop here? I mean, what if we did what we need, what we're looking for, right? It's organic, all organic milks, all organic ingredients and syrups. And we could third party test our coffee and make sure that it's mold free. I mean, if I'm looking for it, I'm sure other people are. So that was kind of the beginning of the, the journey on that.
- [18:14]
A
Well, that sounds like a very cool spot that you have there because you've got like a health company, you've got pickleball and coffee. What could be better than that? It's like a one stop shop for Maha people in the Arizona area to come and get, you know, everything, right? They can. What's better than pickleball on a coffee afterwards? It's perfect. That's amazing. Yeah. So I wanted to ask you, what is mold toxicity? How does that represent or how does that manifest in the body? What does that look like?
- [18:42]
B
The symptoms can be very different for, from person to person, but it can Be fatigue, brain fog, hair loss. Just, you know, overall feeling crummy, low energy. Those were some of the ways that it showed up for me. And I was just like, well, my blood work looks great, you know? Right. There's no issues here. My thyroid is balanced, like, on paper. So it's just kind of, you know, me trying to go down the rabbit hole again, taking ownership of my own health and, you know, trying to find answers.
- [19:11]
A
Right. How do you know? Or maybe you don't. How do you know when you take this test? Okay, Because a lot of people are feeling crummy. They go get their blood work done like you said, and everything's great. And the doctor will tell you, because I've gone down this rabbit hole because I struggle with acne, and my blood work is perfect. They're like, you're the healthiest person ever. And I'm like, something's got to be wrong, though. Something has to be wrong. So I've been going down this rabbit hole myself, which is why I'm interested in these tests and all that. But a lot of people, they feel gross. They get blood work. They're healthy as a horse. Right. How do you figure out if you have mold toxicity or. Or you have mold in your body, if it's environmental or something that you're eating?
- [19:49]
B
On the test, it actually showed the environmental sources, like if it was from the air or if it was from food sources. Actually, quite detailed. Wow.
- [19:59]
A
That's very interesting. Okay, so I, on this show, did a raw milk taste test because I had never had it before. I saw that I had never had it before, and I was pleasantly, pleasantly surprised because I don't really like milk that much. And it turns out that the milk that I was drinking didn't even really taste very good. So it turns out that I'm a huge fan of milk, real raw milk. And it tastes like how milk was intended to taste. I felt like I had been lied to my whole life about milk, because this 2% milk, that's like a little skim milk, and it's kind of, like, transparent and blue, and it's kind of gross, right? I'm like, yeah, I hate milk. Yeah, I hate milk. And then I had that milk, and I'm thinking, we've just been lied to forever. It's amazing. So what about raw milk makes it taste like that? And what are they doing to milk in the pasteurization process that makes it taste like the milk that we've been fed our whole lives?
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C
Well, pasteurization was originally introduced because around cities that were building up, this is about 100 years ago, around cities that were building up, there was not the cleanest conditions on the farms. And so the milk was getting bacteria in it. And Louis Pasteur created this idea of pasteurization, where if we heat the milk up long enough, it'll kill off the bad bacteria. But one of the bacterias that is killed off during that process is lactase. Lactase is actually an enzyme, and lactase is used to break down lactose, which is the milk sugar. And so a lot of people that think they are lactose intolerant and probably are, they have GI issues because there's no lactase in the pasteurized milk.
- [21:54]
B
Wow.
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C
To help break down the lactose, well, we've seen people at Firefly Organic Coffee and Market do a little raw milk shot, taste it for the first time, and they're like, I want to try this and give it a test. We haven't had anybody come back to say, yeah, that was a problem for me. So the milk that we get is from Golden Rule Dairy, which is about two hours south of Tucson, Arizona. We get it fresh every Thursday. And by the way, it's usually sold out by Sunday. But the people who taste raw milk, like you said, for the first time, have this sort of revelation of like, oh, my gosh, this actually does taste good. You know, whole milk is 4% fat, so it's creamier. It actually is also more filling. One of the gentlemen in our documentary, AJ Richards of fromthepharm.org he says that he drinks about a gallon of raw milk during the day as deal.
- [22:53]
B
He doesn't even eat food.
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C
Yeah, he doesn't eat food. Like, milk is his sustenance throughout the day.
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B
Well, if you take a look, actually, whole milk has, like, almost the perfect. Like, you could define your own version of perfect, but like, the perfect ratio of macros, protein, fat, and carbs so that it's like the perfectly balanced meal, frankly. And it's got so many vitamins and minerals in it that are still intact because it hasn't been pasteurized and, you know, heated to such a temperature that it has killed off so much of the benefit. Wow.
- [23:27]
A
That is wild to me. And there are so many people, because I feel like we get into these food trends where people tell you that eggs are bad, people tell you that milk is bad, or everyone feels like they're lactose intolerant now, right? And then they. It becomes this fad where now everyone gets almond milk, everyone gets oat milk, and then the Ingredients in these milks. Milks, if you want to call them that. Are horrible. I mean, they're horrible. I go to the creamer section of the grocery store, and I'm turning it around. No. And I put them all back. I'm turning them around. Even the ones that are supposed to be healthy. I'm looking at it. Turning it back around. No, I'm not putting this in my body. It's. It's crap.
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B
To be quite frank, Patrick says you can't milk an oat.
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A
Right.
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B
First of all, you cannot do that. And. Yeah, and. And it's really about the additives. Like, these additives are so hard on the gut. And. And so this is why. Another reason people are having such terrible gastrointestinal issues. Like, who doesn't have a compromised gut in America right now?
- [24:21]
A
Right?
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B
There are so many reasons. And it's all of these gums and emulsifiers and, you know, preservatives and all of the things that our bodies just really weren't designed to eat these things on a regular basis. Like.
- [24:37]
C
And that's why we. That's why we put them in the dirty dozen ingredients to avoid.
- [24:41]
B
That's right.
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C
On ingredientsnobs.com smart.
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A
So why is there such a stigma around raw milk? And I feel like if I wanted a raw milk latte now that I'm sold on raw milk, that is hard to come by. A lot of coffee shops don't offer raw milk. So you guys have that, but do you. Did you run into any issues with that?
- [25:02]
B
Well, we did when we first opened. So in the state of Arizona, you can sell raw milk, but you can't prepare anything with it. In our minds, we were like, well, if we only do ice lattes, and literally, you're just pouring the milk into a cup, not touching any of the equipment or steaming milk or anything like that, then I don't see that there could be an issue. Well, someone within. I would know. The first month that we were open, we were getting a lot of traction on Instagram for the raw milk latte, and someone had written a letter to the state complaining that we were making raw milk lattes. So our very kind food inspector came in and said, hey, I got this. Like, I haven't had this situation come up before, but I know you can't prepare anything with the raw milk, so you guys have to stop doing that. You can keep selling it in your market. And Patrick said, okay, so if we can't pour in the raw milk, can
- [25:54]
A
the customer pour in the raw milk?
- [25:56]
B
And she's like, actually, yeah. So what we did as a workaround for now is basically you come in and order a naked latte. We put all the espresso and whatever flavorings you want in in it, and you buy your own half gallon of milk that you were gonna buy anyway. You add your milk and then you have extra to take home with you. And so we have a lot of customers that kind of just diy. Yeah.
- [26:17]
C
And what do we call that?
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B
It's the naked latte.
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C
Obviously.
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A
That's fun to say. Then what do you call it when they have to do it themselves? You need a name for that. Like the DIY diy. It's a no longer naked latte when they do it themselves. That's so funny though. But I want to talk to you about some other kinds of food, not just coffee, but all the other kinds of food and local things that you offer at Firefly. Because people are really now interested in sourcing their own foods, thank goodness. And a lot of people do this with eggs. A lot of people have chickens now in their backyard. And I feel like people are kind of waking up from decades long anti egg propaganda. I remember growing up, I remember, I think it was my dad or something was like, well, don't eat too many eggs because it can be bad for your cholesterol. And I feel like that kind of way of thinking has gone away and now eggs are sort of back in vogue again. So tell me about this egg propaganda and what's the truth?
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C
Well, I'll answer that by talking a little bit about the documentary. So the full title, Breaking Big Food. How the American Food System Went Rotten and how it's being revived. And when we were working on pre production, we. We had this kind of internal debate about, like, what is this film really about? And we kind of were seeing this, like, you know, investigative journalism angle. How the American Food System Went Rotten, really, which Callie Means and Alex Clark do a tour de force talking through how we got here. But we didn't just want it to be that. We really wanted it to be inspirational because we, we believe that America, we have to fix ourselves from the ground up. Sure. There are things that we do need a new, you know, and hopefully this new legislation is doing a good job of. Of repairing from the top down, but from the bottom up. Americans, we really need to vote differently with our wallet. So a part of the journey through the documentary is us learning how to source food for the. The Firefly organic coffee and market. And one of the places that we went to was Inspire Farms in Mesa, Arizona, with the. The chicken lady, Tiffany Lilly, who has a great segment in the documentary, you My favorite part.
- [28:40]
A
My favorite part of the documentary, by the way, for sure.
- [28:43]
C
And she talks about this relationship that she's built up. It's. It's great that she started with one chicken, however, many years ago as kind of a homeschool project for her and her daughter. And now she has about 40 chickens and a turkey in her backyard and is supplying eggs in her local community. So stories like that, stories like Arizona Grass Raised beef, which ranches free range up in the Prescott, Arizona area. Wendell Crow from Crow Dairy in Buckeye, Arizona, raising and making the best goat cheese ever. Unbelievably good Chev goat cheese.
- [29:22]
B
But back to the chicken question. I think that, you know, number one, it goes back to, like, I don't know when they were saying, you should eat all these grains because it's heart healthy. And then they're like, don't eat eggs because they're bad for your heart. It's like, wait, what? That's on the upside down? Because eggs are amazing for, like, your brain and your heart. They're so, so full of nutrients. But when you have chickens that are eating soy and GMO corn and all of that junk, then that's when people start to have an issue with eggs.
- [29:53]
A
Right?
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B
And as Tiffany says in the documentary, she said, people come in here and they say, well, I can't eat eggs. And she says, well, what are. What eggs are you buying?
- [30:02]
A
Right.
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B
And what are the chickens eating? And if they say, oh, well, corn and probably soy, she says, well, it's the corn or it's the soy that's bothering you. It's not the chicken eggs. Try mine and see how it does. And she's like, people say I can eat eggs again. Yeah.
- [30:17]
A
To your point about that, I feel like allergies have exploded in the past few decades and it's been pretty recent in recent history. I remember when I was growing up, there was maybe one or two kids with a peanut allergy or something like that. And then in the last, I don't know, 15 years, I feel like all these kids have allergies. They have sensitive stomachs again. Everyone's getting oat milk and their lattes because they think that they're lactose intolerant, but they probably aren't. What do you think has contributed to all of these? I don't know, this uptick in allergies or maybe what people think are allergies and they're not.
- [30:52]
B
I feel like it's just a compromisation of the gut microbiome because of all the additives in the food. The gums, the fillers, the seed oils, the pesticides, every. All of these things just wreak havoc on that gut lining, making our guts more sensitive, making us less tall. Like we can't tolerate things anymore. And all of a sudden you're eliminating and eliminating and eliminating and you're like, I can eat five things now.
- [31:17]
C
Yeah. Haley, have you been to Europe or Italy and, you know, talk to people that are like, oh my gosh, I went there and I ate the pizza and I drank the wine and we walked around and I felt good the whole time.
- [31:29]
A
Yeah. People say that I've been to Italy before and the pizza is great. Don't feel sick after. And the wine doesn't make you hungover. It's amazing.
- [31:38]
B
Yeah.
- [31:39]
C
And in Italy they ban. I think it's about 4,000 or 10,000 or who. Who knows? But there's about umpteen thousand chemicals that we use in the United States that are not allowed in Europe, specifically Italy. That's the kind of prime example to bring up. And the number one problem chemical, I believe is likely glyphosate, AKA Roundup, which is used here in America at scale to dry wheat. Well, a lot of that glyphosate turns out to really upset the digestive tract, it seems. And when you have a compromised GI tract, you end up with a lot of other problems down the line.
- [32:20]
A
Yeah. And I feel like a lot of Americans are obese. We see children who are obese, which is so tragic to see. And unfortunately, a lot of Americans who think they are making healthy choices aren't, because the food industry is essentially rigged against us. Even if you are choosing to have a salad, the chicken that you put on it might not be healthy. The salad dressing that you put on it might not be healthy. The vegetables that you put on it might be killing you.
- [32:50]
C
Tell the hummus story, Ash.
- [32:51]
B
Well, that brings me back to, you know, back when Patrick was diagnosed with the cancer, and I remember, like I was actively attempting to buy healthy food for the house. I would buy hummus, I would buy salad dressing. When I started to learn about these ingredients and especially the seed oils and look at the labels, I was like, I cannot find a hummus that doesn't have seed oil in it. I cannot find a store made salad dressing that doesn't have a seed oil and a bunch of other crap in it. Like, okay, this isn't Everything. You know, it's one thing people like to say, well, but it's. It's in the. Less than 2% of what's in this. I mean, it's really just a tiny amount. But if it's a tiny amount in everything you put in your mouth, it's all of a sudden not a tiny amount. It's the compound effect.
- [33:40]
A
Yeah. And I think a lot of the American food industry, they pump certain, you know, chemicals into food to make them look good. It's so that, you know, you have these big, plump, juicy tomatoes, but real organic tomatoes don't really look like that. And maybe they don't want the salad dressings to be separating on the, on the shelves, so they put all these additives in it to make it look nice on the shelf. I make my own dressings. I do olive oil and lemon juice, fresh lemon juice and a little bit of mustard, things like that. It's so easy to make, you know, dressings. And once you start eating healthy and making these changes, you don't want the thick Caesar dressing anyway. You're good with a little balsamic vinegarette or something like that, and it's just, it's easier. You kind of have to retrain your brain.
- [34:27]
B
You absolutely do. And your body will start to crave that. And then when you taste something that isn't right, your body's just going to be like, why? I don't like that.
- [34:34]
A
Yeah, like you just.
- [34:36]
B
It changes everything.
- [34:37]
A
Absolutely. And I feel like now with this obesity crisis and everyone gets mad at me when I talk about Ozempic. I may. I hate Ozempic. I. I can't stand that. We have large swaths of American people who are obese and they are going. They are basically big pharma experiments, because this drug is meant for people who have diabetes, not for the woman who wants to lose 15 pounds and he. She want. He or she wants a quick fix. And what's interesting is that I have found after dieting for a while, you get used to it. It becomes a lifestyle. It doesn't even seem hard anymore. Once you do it for over 30 days or 40, 40 days or whatnot, it becomes easy. And there are a lot of things that people who are on Ozempic, they say, oh, well, I deal with food noise. Everyone deals with food noises. Word food noise just came out of nowhere five seconds ago. It's like the hot new thing that everyone's talking about. Everyone has food noise. It's called hunger. And you can choose to ignore it or you can choose to eat something every time you feel that, but everyone deals with that. And the less you eat, the less bad stuff you eat, the less you crave it. So I feel like there is a natural way to do what Ozempic does to the body. People just don't want to do that.
- [35:53]
B
Yes, Well, a couple things on the Ozempic thing. One is, you know, I think that there are a slew of people that are on it that are not making any changes to their dietary choices. They're just like, oh cool, well, I'm losing weight and I can eat whatever I want. Maybe I eat less of it, but literally they're just still eating junk. And so that is absolutely a recipe for disaster. And I think, you know, in terms of the diet part, we'd love to bring up Leah Hope's story from our documentary, the Breaking Big Food documentary. She's lost over £200 the natural way.
- [36:29]
C
And slowly.
- [36:30]
B
Yes, slowly. And she's documented her journey and it's fascinating. And people are just like so, so incredibly inspired by her because she just made one small change at a time. Her first small change was, I'm just going to make eggs for breakfast because I think that's what healthy people do.
- [36:45]
C
And her mindset shift was, I'm not going to lose weight, I'm going to gain health.
- [36:51]
B
Correct. Which is huge. And it's really hard to eat overeat a grass fed steak. You know what I mean? Like, it's not hard to overeat processed, chemical laced addictive foods because that's what they were designed to do. But if you're eating whole foods like eggs and beef, you're, it's, it's almost impossible to overeat it. Your body is going to be satiated and say, I'm good now.
- [37:13]
A
Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing what this knowledge can really do. I think a lot of people just don't know that. So your documentary Breaking Big Food was incredible. I loved watching it. It was entertaining. And you get a little more behind the scenes about how Firefly came to be and your whole story story. So I loved it. What was the most shocking thing that you both learned while doing this documentary process?
- [37:39]
C
Well, the three facts that I mentioned that Cali laid out, talking about how big tobacco essentially at the end of the jig is up on cigarettes. They're like, well, where can we put all this money that we have and keep growing our business? Turns out it was food. And that I would say is the number one thing. The number two Thing is, you, you earlier mentioned about lobbyists. Well, Kali Means used to be a lobbyist. And he touches on how he used to be a lobbyist for Coca Cola and was in these meetings where Coca Cola is basically talking the American Diabetes association into saying that, no, it's okay for kids to have sugary soft drinks. It's just a part of growing up and, you know, I'd like to buy the world a Coke kind of a thing. And to kind of realize that those, the downstream effects of those kinds of meetings has led us to where we are now. It's mind blowing and also, I think, inspiring to realize, okay, we, we as Americans from the bottom up can make. We can force Break Big Food into making changes by voting with our dollar. I like to say that the name of the title Breaking Big Food is a little salacious.
- [39:04]
B
That's good.
- [39:05]
A
You want people to watch it.
- [39:06]
C
You want people to watch it. And I would say that I've said this in many interviews, that I think that there is a great opportunity for the Nabiscos and the crafts and the Kellogg's of the world to, to respond to this new consumer demand and to use what is likely good infrastructure and good people inside of their companies to begin making changes. And I'll give you an example of some meetings that happened at the beginning of the Trump 2024 administration, or I guess the 2025 when they came into play was when RFK called all the food companies to a big roundtable meeting and said, look, guys, check change is coming. And reportedly one of the things that they started to talk about, obviously was food dyes. We all heard about that. But in those meetings, what these companies started to say is like, yes, we do want you to regulate these crappy chemicals out of existence. Because the problem is if I, Kraft, decide to make a change, that I'm not going to use it. But Kellogg's decides they are going to keep using red dye number 40. Well, then Kellogg is going to have a brighter cereal for less cost than I will have if I'm using beet juice, which isn't quite as bright. So I'll be at a competitive disadvantage. So I'd like to believe, and maybe it's just the optimist in me, that change is possible amongst the existing infrastructure of Big Food that is there. But Breaking Big Food is just a better title.
- [40:41]
B
And you know, the way that we Break Big Food is we just do that for our own families, in our own communities from a grassroots level. It really has to happen in at home with Each individual taking ownership of what their decisions are.
- [40:55]
A
Absolutely. So I do a segment at the end of my show always called Scrolling time, and I was hoping that you two would stick around. I have three videos that I would love for you to react to. They are all Maha adjacent. So this first video is a farmer who is fighting back. Take a look.
- [41:25]
D
I want to give a shout out and a big thank you to the big corporations for not paying farmers a fair price for their crops. So far this year, I have not sold a single kernel of corn to the big corporations that buy nearly all the corn in the United States. I sold them 0. I've sold all of it direct. Direct to deer hunters and cattle farmers. I've grind in the cornmeal. I've ground in the grits. That bin is getting mighty, mighty low. I sold zero to you, corporate America. I'm selling all direct and I'm making a lot more money doing it that way with my peanuts. They tank the price of peanuts earlier this year. We Normally get about $600 a ton or $500 a ton. Somewhere in that range. In 1980s, we got 750 to $800 a ton. Right now the big corporations are paying peanut farmers $380 a ton for peanuts when we were getting 700.
- [42:20]
A
Wow. So have you heard of farmers trying to break big food?
- [42:26]
B
That's the first that I have seen, I think. But that is fantastic. I love everything about that. I think that now is the time for sure. And I wouldn't be surprised if there are so many out there that we just don't even know of that are like, making those types of changes, standing up for, like, change in America and knowing, like, we have to turn this around and I'm gonna do my part.
- [42:48]
C
Well, my reaction is maybe a little bit different. I think about one of the documentaries that inspired us, which was the Biggest Little Farm, about a couple that turns a old monocropped dust field into a organic regenerative farm over the course of seven years. And it's a beautiful story. It's available on Amazon. The biggest little farm, I think, mono cropping itself, where it's like, I'm only growing corn or soybeans or peanuts and I'm using subsidies from the government. To me, I would like to see change in that area where maybe it's not subsidies, but it could be very good loan terms given to farmers and aspiring farmers who want to turn and convert monocropped fields into regenerative organic farms and then go direct to markets in their local communities. Direct to consumer, but basically direct to markets like Firefly Organic Coffee and Market or like Good Living Greens in Fountain Hills, Arizona, which we also talked about in Breaking Big Food and was a big inspiration for us to create Firefly in the per in the first place.
- [44:06]
B
Local micro markets, essentially.
- [44:08]
C
Yeah, local micro markets that really service the local community. So my, my, my take is a little different than yours.
- [44:15]
B
Well, I just like seeing people being dis to the system because that's when change is happening.
- [44:21]
A
Yeah, the more outspoken people, the better. Absolutely. And even just regular people are starting to figure that something is up with the food. I don't know if it's 3D printed or if it's being frozen and thawed and then frozen and thawed. But take a look at this woman who opened her chicken and saw this.
- [44:40]
E
I bought this chicken at a local
- [44:42]
A
grocery store and immediately it started falling apart.
- [44:45]
E
As I was getting ready to bread
- [44:47]
A
it and put it in the fryer, it started stringing up and it totally disintegrated.
- [44:52]
E
After I filmed this video came into
- [44:54]
A
broke down as these stringy substance like things. What is going on with the chicken? Does anyone have any thoughts on this? What do you think is going on with the chicken? That certainly isn't a farm to table kind of a situation, is it?
- [45:09]
B
Definitely not. I don't know, but I've been hearing a lot of weird things about chicken lately and I will just say I am like my body does not want chicken right now for some reason. And I don't know if it's. It's very strange. But I know also like there is 3D meat in the grocery stores now and I, I don't buy meat from the grocery store anymore unless it's like maybe force of nature or a brand that I'm like feel confident with. But it's scary because I'm the same as you. They put it in the fine print that it's, you know, 3D meat or something. But I don't know. I don't trust it.
- [45:44]
A
I'm having a chicken aversion at the moment. I just stick to red meat now. But yeah, absolutely. Patrick, what were your thoughts?
- [45:52]
C
Well, I would say let's let the chickens play in the fields and we'll eat their eggs and not really do as much meat. That that stringy stuff looked disgusting. And you really do want to question that.
- [46:06]
B
If I didn't have a chicken aversion before. I do now. Thank you, Haley.
- [46:10]
A
Oh, no problem. No problem at all. So this last video that I have for you this is near and dear to my heart because I struggle with acne, and I've done the hormonal testing. I've tried to fix my gut. Like, I've done all these things right. Then I see this video, and this girl figured out that her cystic acne was coming from her bed. Watch this.
- [46:30]
E
I bought this mattress back in October of 2024, and after a month and a half of sleeping on it, I started to deal with severe cystic acne like nothing I had ever experienced before. And that went through most of 2025. And during that, I worked with a functional health doctor to try and figure out what the root cause was. And we tried to go back to see what changed the most during that time period frame. And the biggest one was me sleeping on that mattress. So In July of 2025, I decided to remove the mattress from my environment to see if it made a difference. And within a month and a half of removing the mattress, all of my cystic acne went away. And then about two months after, my hormones leveled back out. So we kind of came to the conclusion that that mattress could have been a huge factor. Factor in disrupting my hormones and cause.
- [47:24]
A
This is wild to me. And I was working with a doctor who said I used to have fungal acne. And she said, I actually, I quit my job, and then my acne went away. And I said, well, what was it about your job? Was it high stress or something? She said, no, I think my boss had all of this moss or something in the office. And she said whenever I'd go on vacation or whenever it was the weekend, I would see my skin start to clear up. And then once I quit the job, it. I. It went away. So it is interesting to think a lot of people think it's food or something that you're eating or putting on your skin topically, but it could just be something in your environment that's really triggering something in your body for sure.
- [48:06]
B
And, you know, like pillows and mattresses and even blankets. Like, they're putting chemicals in all of it. Don't ask me why. I'm sure that, you know, maybe there was a reason in the beginning that they did that, and maybe just unintended consequences or something.
- [48:21]
C
But usually extend the shelf life. Make it cheaper. Make it. Yeah.
- [48:26]
B
Yes. For whatever reason.
- [48:28]
C
Make it for cheaper. Usually, like, cost cutting is usually the reason.
- [48:31]
B
And maybe same thing with the moss, like, whatever was maybe sprayed on it so that it's, you know, fire retardant or whatever, like the chemicals in the environment are a real problem. And again, it's in your cleaning supplies at home. You know, we've cleaned out our entire cleaning cabinet and just like you really have to give everything a really close look. Yeah.
- [48:57]
C
And I think that this is the point of the conversation where almost everyone says, but, wow, I feel super overwhelmed. And I get that we were in that same position before. I think one trick is to maybe reframe this to, okay, each. This is like a video game and each new skill that I unlock is like a new superpower.
- [49:21]
B
Like each new level that you hit. Right? Yeah.
- [49:25]
C
Like to know that like sunflower oil. Oh, that's a seed oil. That's not good for me.
- [49:29]
B
Ding.
- [49:30]
C
Superpower now available. You know, to stay away from that. You know, switching to a brand like Branch basics for your cleaning supplies instead of the Windex. You're like, okay.
- [49:42]
A
Ding.
- [49:43]
C
New superpower. It Just don't get overwhelmed and think you have to beat the game all in one day.
- [49:52]
B
Very well then.
- [49:53]
A
When you run out of one soap, just make sure that you're intentional about the new soap that you buy. So, you know, you don't have to replace everything all at once, but just little by little. Okay, I'm running out of this. Let me research what I can replace it with. So thank you both so much for all of your insights. I love the documentary. Make sure that you plug it one last time for my viewers.
- [50:12]
C
Well, thank you, Hailey. The documentary is breaking big. How the American food system went rotten and how it's being revived. And it's currently available on Apple TV and Amazon prime video.
- [50:24]
A
And then if people want to go visit you at your coffee shop, where can they visit you and where can they follow you on social?
- [50:32]
C
You can come see us seven days a week at the Firefly organic coffee and market in Scottsdale, Arizona. You can just Google us and find us on Apple maps, currently rated 4.9 stars, by the way. Pretty happy about that.
- [50:45]
B
Yeah. Some guy didn't like that we don't take cash, so he gave us one star.
- [50:49]
A
Well, if that's the worst thing, then it's pretty good.
- [50:52]
B
Yeah.
- [50:53]
C
And then on social, you can find us on Instagram at Firefly Coffee and we would love to have you follow us.
- [51:02]
B
Yes, that. I was also going to say, if you're interested in purchasing mold free coffee beans, you can find Firefly coffee beans on jigsaw health.com Very cool.
- [51:13]
A
Patrick and Ashley Sullivan, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you.
- [51:17]
B
Thank you so much, Haley.
- [51:19]
C
Thanks, Haley.