← The Dr. Hyman Show
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- [00:00]
Dr. Mark Hyman
The things we love to eat, we won't be able to be eating soon.
- [00:03]
Sam Kass
What's really at stake is our way of life, our ability to pass down to the next generation the delicious lives we have and try to improve on that. Obviously, there's a ton of problems in our system that we must improve, but even our ability to make any kind of change is under real threat because of climate. And nobody's really talking about those connections to the extent that I think matches the challenges that we face. It's not about our kids and grandkids. This is happening right now.
- [00:27]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Sam Kass served as a senior policy advisor for nutrition in the Obama White House and he was seeking executive director of Michelle Obama's Let's Move Initiative. He's a University of Chicago graduate. He's trained under the Austrian chef Christian Domsch. He now invests in food technology startups and is the author of the Last Supper how to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis. I don't think most people realize the degree to which the agricultural system is contributing to climate change, and particularly the loss of soil. It's estimated that our food systems contribute to 34% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
- [00:58]
Sam Kass
We have not done anywhere near what is needed to prepare our system from an adaptation and resilience standpoint to ensure we're going to be able to produce food in this very volatile climate.
- [01:09]
Dr. Mark Hyman
For people listening who are saying, well, what the heck am I going to do? What can they do to actually change this system from the outside in?
- [01:21]
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- [01:42]
Dr. Mark Hyman
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- [02:08]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Sam, welcome back to the podcast. So good to have you back I think last time we did this, I was in New York City and it was before COVID and life was so different. And since then you've been doing a lot of things. I was thinking about how you came to understand the world of food and agriculture from the perspective of a chef is very similar to how I began to understand how I couldn't really treat patients and cured disease in my office. That it was really started all the way back on the farm and that how our food system is currently is so vulnerable and is so at risk and is also contributing to a whole set of secondary consequences that is affecting all of us. We have a system that's primarily driven through the growing of commodity crops, corn, soy and wheat, and those are used for industrial food, ultra processed food primarily, as well as animal feed. And the way we do it has enormous consequences in damaging the soil and loss of biodiversity, of pollinators, in the destruction of our waterways, through the runoff of nitrogen fertilizer, eutrophication, through the depletion of our ancient aquifers, like the Oglala aquifer, that's being drained trillions of gallons more than it's been replenished every year from rainfall. And then the food we grow cause the consequences of harming people's health and causing metabolic chaos, which is why America's such a sick country and we have a chronic disease epidemic. And then the government's paying the cost of that through, you know, all the healthcare costs, almost $2 trillion a year. We call these externalities. I don't like that term. You know, we call things we don't like side effects on medication, but they're not side effects, they're just effects we don't like. And I think that the price of the food we pay at the checkout counter is not the true cost of the food we're eating. It has so many harmful consequences. So you really, you know, you really laid a lot of this out in your new book, the Last Supper, which I think is tremendous. And it sort of lays out a roadmap for how we can get out of this quagmire that we're in and rethink our food and food systems and how it affects everything from, you know, personal health and national security to climate change and everything in between. So I'm really glad you, you kind of put that together. Let's start out by kind of. I think people will know your background. I'm going to say your bio. You worked in the White House, you were for Obama, you helped with food policy the let's move effort, you know, rethinking a lot of the things around school lunches and the Healthy Hunger Free Kids act and all the things that were great that happened. Which is kind of weird now that it's been co opted by the Republicans. It was a Democrat issue that the Democrats don't want anything to do with it. Now it's Maha, not, you know, Michelle. Obama. Obama. It's all a mess. But at least the thing that I'm excited about is that finally someone is saying, hey everybody, we've got a national emergency here. We've got a chronic disease epidemic and we've got to dig into it. So maybe you can take us into your thinking about why you wrote this new book, the Last Supper and what your central thesis is and what you're trying to achieve by getting this book out there in the world.
- [05:19]
Sam Kass
You know, this book I first did one of these is based on this dinner that I do called the Last Supper. And I first, I first did this dinner at Cop21 in Paris when, you know, the world was coming together to try to set aggressive climate standards and goals.
- [05:35]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And COP is like an annual climate.
- [05:37]
Sam Kass
Conference, right, which had largely, you know, been a failure until COP21, when we finally got the world to come together to set targets to try to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees. But at the time, literally nobody was ever talking about food and food systems and agriculture in the conversation. So I went there to try to get food more on the agenda. And it's basically a dinner that's put together. And at the time I really thought about it around the ingredients that our kids and grandkids would not have access to because of climate. And for a couple reasons I thought that was effective way to start to do it. One is that everybody relates to food where people don't really understand what 1.5 degrees means. Everybody understands their love and joy that they get from the foods they're eating every day. And to try to use food as a tool to help the environmental community make the case more effectively around why we need to make real progress here. Because the foods we're talking about are things like coffee, wine, chocolate, shellfish and crustaceans, stone fruits like peaches, nuts, the list goes on and on. And then regionally, these dramatic shifts and impacts are playing out all over the world. The thing that I got wrong back then, or that has changed since is that it's not about our kids and grandkids. This is happening right now. And so as I started going around the country and detailing, you know, what's how these foods that we love and take for granted honestly every day are being severely impacted. And you know, it's so it's like for us, you know, that I can give a number of examples. We lost 90% of the Georgia peach crop a couple years ago because of extreme.
- [07:32]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, yeah.
- [07:33]
Sam Kass
You know, we could go on and on. And what's happening with chocolate prices were up 200% last year because of drought.
- [07:39]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Coffee, the things we love to eat, we won't be able to be eating soon or we already aren't be able to eat because of what's happening with climate change.
- [07:46]
Sam Kass
Yeah, it's starting to happen right now. And you know, what we're. What's really at stake is our way of life, you know, our ability to pass down to the next generation the delicious lives we have and try to improve on that. Obviously there's a ton of progress problems in our system that we must improve. But even our ability to make any kind of change is under real threat because of climate. And nobody's really talking about those connections to the extent that I think matches the challenges that we face. So that's the point of the book, is trying to dig into what's happening really already. How does food and agriculture drive that problem in and of itself and also where the solutions that it holds to solve, I think is the most essential threats to humanity we face, which is climate and our health.
- [08:34]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, it's true. I mean, most people think of, you know, coal plants and the use of energy and greenhouse gas emissions from burning of fossil fuels. But I don't think most people realize the degree to which the agricultural system is contributing to climate change and particularly the loss of soil. I think it's estimated that our food systems really contribute to probably a third, 34% by some estimates of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from destruction of the soil, from the use of nitrogen fertilizers and the methane produced by gals and all the combination from end to end is kind of staggering. Maybe you could kind of help us understand this because everybody's focused on windmills and solar and rainforests and all this stuff that seems like it's the target for innovation or correcting the system. But it may be that the way we grow food and we'll talk about regenerative agriculture and why it's important, the way we grow food and the food system itself is a much easier and faster and better target to actually fix the problem. I mean, one third of all the soil carbon has been lost, which is accounting for a large portion of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And you know, that's something we have control over.
- [09:59]
Sam Kass
When you get into the numbers, they're pretty staggering. I mean, you noted that over a third of emissions come from the food and agricultural system. But unlike energy or transportation, where we can see a future where that curve is starting to bend, food and agriculture emissions are going straight up with absolutely no end in sight. And as developing nations consume more animal protein, we actually are on track for an explosion of the, of the footprint of the system globally. And not actually a flattening or a reduction. I think the other side that we don't talk about, it's the number one driver of deforestation and land use change. I actually just came back from the rain deep and the rainforest in Brazil to witness the chopping down of forests, the drying it out and the burning it for cattle production. It is devastating driver of biodiversity loss. It is the main driver of biodiversity loss on the planet. And the number one use of the world's fresh water, over 70% of water goes into our the way we are producing food. And that's just truly unsustainable. By 2030 we will outstrip our fresh water supply.
- [11:05]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, I mean I think there's over 2 billion people have water scarcity already now in the world.
- [11:09]
Sam Kass
And this hasn't even really started yet. Like the grips of the impact of climate hasn't even really started. And you know, so we're really, the system is driving this incredible amount of degradation, but it's also on the front lines of the challenge. Right. It is being decimated already on every front. And I think we have not done anywhere near what is needed to prepare our system from an adaptation and resilience standpoint to ensure we're going to be able to produce food in this very volatile climate. We have a food system that was built in the most stable climate on the historical record for the last thousand years. We've just gotten really lucky. It's been temperate, the climate has been moderate. We've had abundant natural resources, namely soil, water and cheap energy. And we built a system based in that abundance. And now we are moving from that abundance to scarcity in terms of that those soil and water resources and into extreme volatility as you mentioned. You know, we are basic 60 to 70% of all calories on planet Earth come from 12 plants and 5 animals. The vast majority of them corn, soy, wheat and rice. Don't forget rice. There's three and a half billion people no, rice.
- [12:25]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, rice.
- [12:26]
Sam Kass
Three and a half billion people in.
- [12:27]
Dr. Mark Hyman
America, not so much. But the rest of the world is huge.
- [12:30]
Sam Kass
And when, where it starts to get quite scary is actually when those big commodities get impacted by climate, you know, like wheat. With every degree in North America of warming, we'll see about a 7 1/2% decline of wheat. It also had to take into account that right now about 15% of wheat is grown in sort of persistent drought conditions. By about 2040 will be about 60% of wheat in persistent drought conditions. And so you're going to see more major disruptions and collapses regionally of these crops. And that's where the national security questions start to come into play. When you look at the declines in yields on rice and how many people who are living on the edge depend on these commodities, on these crops, it gets really serious really quickly. And so we have to start readying the system for the volatility. Right now we basically have all our eggs in, in just a couple baskets. And that is extremely dangerous when you're dealing with volatility. It'd be like hedge fund traders just betting on a couple stocks and hoping it works. They would never do that. But that's sort of what we're doing in our food system. And I'm deeply concerned that we're simply unprepared to manage this going forward. I will just say, and we can maybe segue into this later, but food and what you mentioned around soil and regenerative agriculture and the capacity for soil to sequester carbon for me, and this is what I spend most of my time every day trying to. Trying to, you know, work on and unlock. It is the only system on the planet that has the capacity not just to reduce their negative impact on the planet, but also sequester enough carbon in the time horizon. The science says we have to make a difference.
- [14:12]
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's right. It's the biggest carbon sink on the planet is the soil.
- [14:15]
Sam Kass
That's right.
- [14:15]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And we turn soil into dirt, meaning breakly dust, like the Dust bowl in the 30s, and that can't hold carbon. And, you know, it's amazing when you look at a resilient system. It's complex, it's not simple. When you have a commodity monocrop culture, and by the way, you mentioned animals, I think the meat production is the huge problem. It's not the cows themselves, which are essential for sequestering carbon in the soil. It's how we grow them in feedlots and how much energy and monocrops that are used to use corn and soy to kind of cultivate, to feed them. That's, that's the big problem. And, and you know, the, the amount of, you know, carbon that can be sequestered in the soil is huge, but not the way we're doing it. We're also seeing probably 40% of the soybeans sitting rotting in silos now because China won't buy them. So the whole geopolitical environment is actually driving even more food to challenges and challenges to the food system and in uncovering the vulnerabilities of it. When your book subtitles how to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis, right? So like you're kind of, you're looking in the headlights and the car is coming at you and nobody else is sort of paying attention really. As far as I can tell. It's such is, I've said the same thing. I wrote a book about it, Food Fix. It's like, it's so obvious when you start to look at the data and the science around it, but it's not something that's being talked about, focused on. And honestly it's a, it's a, it's a national security issue. It's the stability of our whole country. So having a resilient food system is really the key. So how do you think about shifting it? I mean, how to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis is the subtitle of your book. What are the things that we have to do to actually deal with the instability of our food system?
- [16:00]
Sam Kass
When it comes to the hardcore national security, I mean, there's a long list of things that I think we have to do. You know, fundamentally we have to become more resilient. We have to embed a lot more diversity into what we grow and how we grow it. Both the genetics inside any given crop, even for wheat, you know, we're going to eat, we're going to continue to eat a bunch of wheat and, but we're only growing a couple varieties and some varieties will be resistant to some pest or disease, some will be more drought tolerant and we need to, even in the commodities that we're growing in, you know, start bringing back a lot more genetic diversity into these crops. Secondly, we just got to start eating a lot more different kinds of more climate resilient foods and, and start diversifying our diet, which I think from a health standpoint is also, you know, very important. We also like can't miss the, just the broader climate policy, an aggressive investment in reducing emissions globally and preparing, you know, a more decarbonized economy. Not just here in the United States, but around the world and helping developing nations as well reach those targets. There's only so much you can do within the food system. If we go, you know, if we blow past 1.5, which we're already at, we go to 2 and to 3, there's only so much we're going to be able to control. And part of what's very concerning about what's happening right now is this widespread pullback around climate policy and climate investment, both in the public and private sectors. That is an existential threat to our health and to our well being. And that has to change. And I'm not optimistic the next few years it will. But when we have the next chance to change, that is absolutely foundational to our ability to feed ourselves. And however much progress we've made will all be undone if people, if prices are skyrocketing, people don't have enough money to afford the basic necessities, they're going to end up defaulting to the cheapest, most unhealthy food because it's going to be the only thing they can afford. So we have to embed much greater diversity. And I think part of what's going to be needed is we have to start finding ways to pay farmers to do the right thing and start practicing different, more regenerative practices in their systems. And as they do that and start solving some of our biggest challenges we face. They should be rewarded for that. And there's different ways to go about that, but that seems critical. Farmers aren't making those kind of decisions because they're just not incentivized. So right now the upside is not big enough to justify the risk that they'd have to take to make those changes. Because, you know, it's risky every day you're dealing with so much risk as a grower. What the weather, the water, the pest disease, the input prices, the markets to sell, everything is very, very sensitive to any kind of change. So to add any kind of, I'm going to change my whole system of growing is really risky. And unless they can be guaranteed, I'm going to get paid for this and it's going to work out for me. On the back end, they're just not. It just makes no sense for them to make those changes. So I do think we need much stronger ag policy on that regard, as well as commercial polls. And there's lots of way we can get into the weeds of different ways to do that.
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- [21:24]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, I mean, I was talking to some senators who are I know friends of mine who are out sort of running for president in the last cycle or so, and they met with a lot of the Iowa farmers and they said many of them really are wanting to shift over to more regenerative, sustainable practices, but they are stuck in a system that prevents them from doing that. And most people don't realize that the farmers are not the Problem, it's our agricultural policies. And they're stuck between having to get crop insurance from the government so they don't have the threat of losing their crops. If they do, they have to get the seeds and the chemicals and the crop insurance in order to get bank loans. So between the banks and the seed and the chem companies and the crop insurance, it's a vicious cycle that they're stuck in. And what I've been seeing on the marketplace, and I'd be curious to hear what you're seeing, Sam, is there are private equity companies and other investors actually taking the risk and either buying up conventional farmland and converting it to regenerative land like farmland, NLP or groups like Perennial that are going into private equity companies and actually helping create a bridge for farmers and covering the cost of them converting over to regenerative agriculture and where they're making more money, they're producing more food, better food, more nutrient dense food, they're sequestering carbon, they're increasing biodiversity, they're using less water, they're using less chemicals. I mean, it's a win, win, win for everybody. And there are models out there. You talk about Gabe Brown in your book. I know him very well. And I think this is something that we actually have the science to do and that farmers actually are more and more open to. But we have an agricultural system from the policy level that is almost prohibiting this. And if, if farmers want to have a diverse set of crops that they grow, they get penalized and they can't get crop insurance. So if a guy's a corn farmer also wants to integrate vegetables or integrate animals or do other things, they can't do it. And so I think, I think it's a fundamental issue. So I wonder if you could sort of unpack, you know, the, the. We sort of highlighted a lot of the problems with our conventional system, the vulnerabilities of it, threats from monocrops, the increasing loss of soil biodiversity and water, and all the things we talked about. What is regenerative agriculture, why is it important? And how do we define it and how could we actually incentivize it from both a business innovation perspective and also from a government policy perspective?
- [23:51]
Sam Kass
I think the simplest way to put it is we're investing in not just what we extract, but what we're building in the soil. And so it's generally a set of practices designed and they differ by region, they differ by crop or animal. And so it's hard to say, here's the five things it is that makes it regenerative? For me, the outcomes are what's important. Are you building oil health? Are you building the biology of the soil? Is there increased carbon held in the soil? Does it have better water retention? Is the diversity of plants and animals and bugs around and pollinators around that ecosystem growing? Or are we wiping it all out and those systems tend to be more productive? Ultimately the problem is there's a, to often a dip in productivity as you start to change and not rely on synthetic fertilizers to sort of boost yield. But really it's about building soil health. And that is a really powerful tool that we have to sequester carbon and build resilience. There's countless examples around the world where there's a great tomato example in Spain where there's a part of the production there that got transitioned to regenerative. They had a drought. The people who were supplying from that farm had as many tomatoes as they needed. The people who were not supplying from that farm had no tomatoes because they all, they couldn't harvest any tomatoes because the drought was so tough and those didn't retain the water. So there's lots of examples about how this improves resiliency. I think where we're getting stuck is and there's definitely policies that can dramatically improve this. But it's not just a policy problem. The question is there's a cost to this transition and the question is who's going to pay for it? And right now we can't ask farmers to pay another dime because they've been fiddled away.
- [25:58]
Dr. Mark Hyman
They're going bankrupt and killing. They have the highest rates of suicide of any population in the US and there are many going bankrupt and they basically scratch by a living and it's basically a really tough life for them.
- [26:08]
Sam Kass
That's exactly right. And this year is going to be very difficult, particularly for soybean farmers. And I'm very worried about what it's.
- [26:16]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Going to be because of China.
- [26:17]
Sam Kass
Yeah, because they lost their big, they lost their biggest market. 25% of our soybeans go to China. And because of the, really, it's the terrorists that are driving this short term issue. But they're not buying, they're not buying our soybeans. So I think rural America is going to get hit really hard in these coming years. So that's, that's, so we have to fight. So anyways, I digress. We have to figure out who's going to pay for this. And the question's going to be is it going to be taxpayers? Because right now or is it going to be big emitters or consumers and depending on you can debate why it should be one or the other right now in a high. People have been struggling with inflation. Consumers don't seem to have any willingness to pay another penny for anything that they're buying. And frankly, part of the harsh truth is that consumers right now don't know what regenerative agriculture is, don't care about it, aren't asking for it, aren't demanding it. So then we asked like the CPG companies, like we need you to buy more, you know, regen, whatever. And they're like, that's great, but I can't sell it. So you're asking me to take on a big cost in this transition, but I can't. You know, nobody's, nobody wants to buy it. So they're like, I can't. So the people, there's people in these bigger companies who are advocating for, you know, supply, you know, procuring much more regenerative ingredients. It's dying at the CMO office because the CMO is like, you want us to spend how much money a hundred million dollars or whatever it may be to help transition these set of ingredients, but nobody cares about it. So internally there are these fights where it's just not going anywhere.
- [27:54]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I think one of the things that's come up is how do we price things and what's the true cost of food? Rockefeller foundation produced a report a few years ago talking about the true cost of food. And it's basically $3 for every dollar we spend on food in collateral damage. And we talked about externalities. But I think there's a speech called the Future of Food that was given by then Prince Charles, now King Charles in 2011, talking about this concept of the true cost accounting. How do you build in the true cost of what we're doing and who's accountable for that? Bobby Kennedy, when he was an environmental lawyer, got GE to pay over a billion dollars to clean up the Hudson river from the PCBs because he held them accountable for the harm they're causing. How do we do that in the food system?
- [28:42]
Sam Kass
I think the true cost of accounting is absolutely right, but essentially what we're saying is we need to embed the costs of that food to society, which is going to mean just a dramatic increase in the cost of food to people. And I don't think that's a winner. I don't see companies, politicians, advoc for that. So for me, I think there's different mechanisms to go about embedding, re embedding that cost one is like a robust carbon market system. Essentially what you're saying is, I think the only way this really works is just to get to my brass tax. After exploring every option I could think of. There's certain set of companies out in the world who have driven most of our emissions and they have the most responsibility of our current situation and the most money to pay for it. Whereas the food and agricultural system is a really low margin system. So there's just not a lot of extra cash floating around to pay for all this stuff. I think we need a robust market that starts to pay for car farmers initially to sequester carbon and then to get into much broader ecosystem services like around water and biodiversity and have the big emitters pay. Big emitters should be paying our growers to solve these problems and incentivizing the proper practices and ultimately improving the nutritional quality of our food. But through the lens of climate, I think that's the only way you have enough resources coming into the system to really pay farmers to make it worth their while to take on the risk associated with this transition. I think there's government policy around insurance especially to help ensure that transition very specifically, which right now we don't really do. So there's government policies at play, but we just need to make the numbers work. And right now the numbers don't work.
- [30:33]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Aren't the farmer, aren't the, aren't these big companies who are causing the problems, the big ag and food companies and seed companies, aren't they going to resist this? They're not going to want to pay for ecosystem services. And I want you to explain what are ecosystem services, because there are countries that are literally paying farmers for the good they're doing to restore biodiversity and soil and water resources. So kind of unpack that a little bit and explain why would they be incented to do this? Because I agree with you, they should be paying for it. But how will we make them pay for it? It seems like the government's gonna have to put some type of policy or regulation in place that forces them to do that.
- [31:10]
Sam Kass
I'm actually, when I refer to the big emitters, I'm actually talking about like oil and gas at the big tech companies. They're the ones who have profited and driven most of the climate footprint. It's growing in food and ag. But if historically it is oil and gas, that is definitely on the hook for the vast majority of emissions globally. And so if you set up a different mechanisms and Carbon is established. It's not exploding right now like we all hoped it would. But if you have a robust system of carbon markets, basically a farmer starts doing regenerative practices, they measure their soil and see, okay, I've built, you know, one ton per acre of additional carbon per year that gets measured and underwritten by a third party to say, yes, we verify this, and then that farmer can sell that credit for, you know, 30, 40, $50 to Exxon, say. And, you know, if you think about there's 95 million acres of soy, you know, 93 million acres of corn. We can debate all the. We can talk about all the negative issues there, but those are huge. Just those two crops alone. You're talking about massive amounts of sequestration and then the money in there to help those farmers transition. That's what I think is going to have to happen, because so far, we've been talking about this for a long time, and farmers aren't transitioning at scale. It's happening little by little. We have to ask ourselves the honest question. Farmers are super smart. They're managing all this complexity, and they're not making this leap broadly. And I think it's basically because the numbers aren't working right now for them. And that's the kind of thing that has to happen to make them work. I think you can set up similar markets around water use, like how do we reduce our water and then how do we measure and improve biodiversity? Those are also things that could be turned into credits that people are then funding farmers to do. So that's what I think is needed. And we were making a lot of progress on that. The current administration has unwound all of that and sort of gone in the decidedly opposite direction on doing all the ag climate policy work that had been done in the previous administration. I find that to be unconscionable and very scary given, you know, how much worse things are getting. But it's going to take action like that if we're going to be able to, at scale, start making real progress here.
- [33:31]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, I know it's true. I mean, I live in Austin, Texas now, and there's a farm nearby, a ranch where I went to visit called Rome Ranch. And it was kind of a cattle grazing area, and it basically had been completely denuded and damaged. And this young couple bought a thousand acres and they reintroduced bison, which was the keystone species in this area of the world I'm going to call across America. And they rotate them around a thousand acres, different fields. They don't let them Stay on any one spot long time, and then they basically don't till the soil. They plant a whole diversity of wild plants and, you know, nitrogen fixing plants so they don't need fertilizer. And it was amazing because you could see the next ranch over. It was a drought when I was there and there were no cattle because the farmers had to get rid of them because they couldn't sustain them on the land. And yet here they had this thriving ecosystem where the soil had increased carbon by 6%, which may not sound like a lot, but for every percent of carbon that you put in the soil, you sequester, and I mean carbon. And you also retain 25,000 gallons per acre of water. And so these creeks that had been the navigational creeks for the settlers coming across America, that had dried up in Texas, were now coming back. Bald eagles were coming back to land, wild animals were coming back, wild turkeys were coming back, and there were plants that had been not germinated for 150 years that had. Maybe there's some special properties of manure from bison, I don't know. But there were these plants that germinated that hadn't germinated 150 years. It was really amazing to see this kind of life come back just by following nature. And I think the best way, I think about regenerative practices, it's mimicking nature and complex ecosystems, which are far more resilient. If one plant dies in a rainforest, big deal. If one plant dies on a monocrop, corn or soy, and if it's corn or soy, it's a disaster. And I think from a national security perspective, from an economic perspective, from a climate perspective, from an environmental degradation perspective, it just makes so much sense. And I think, you know, one of the things that I noticed you mentioned in your book was that we should be eating less meat. And I agree that the current way of growing animals or raising animals is a disaster. Through the confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, which are basically factory farms, they're a disaster for many reasons, and we can unpack that. But I love your perspective on using regenerative practices that integrate animals and actually be able to scale up animal production. Alan Williams talks about how we could actually produce more cows than we now slaughter in America through conventional methods by actually using Bureau of Land Management land, by taking the corn and soy fields, turning them back into grazing land and actually rejiggering the whole system that actually will produce even more animal protein while restoring ecosystems and creating what you call ecosystem services. So can you speak to that because I think we've got the Lancet Commission which has basically said we should all be mostly vegan. And there's a whole narrative out there that you want to save the planet, be a vegan. But I think, you know, Bill Nyman's wife talked about how it's not the cow, it's the how. Or maybe it was somebody else, I forget who it was, but it's basically, it's like not the cow that's the problem. It's how we, how we raise the cows. Can you speak to that?
- [36:57]
Sam Kass
Yeah. So I think there's a, this is obviously a raging debate and we're in a protein explosion right now in terms of, you know, narrative around how much protein we should be eating. And, you know, so I think this is obviously, and I think there's inherent contradictions here that we have to sort of grapple with. All the life cycle assessments I've seen comparing grass fed to, you know, conventional, I just hate that that's our word for it. Current, current state of how we produce. Boom. From an actual pure admission standpoint, they're actually not that much different because the, the grass fed animal tends to, for them to get to a slaughter weight. It is way healthier for the overall environment, but not from an emission standpoint. So I think we just have to try to call this how I see it. I'm a grass fed. First of all, I. Let me just be very clear. I am definitely not a vegan. I love a good steak. I had some delicious regenerative pork for dinner last night, so I am far from a vegan.
- [38:06]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Kosher pork, was it? Kosher pork steak?
- [38:07]
Sam Kass
It was.
- [38:09]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Are you getting ready for Yom Kippur?
- [38:12]
Sam Kass
That pig lived a better life than me.
- [38:14]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, you have something to, you have something to ask for forgiveness for tomorrow on Yom Kippur.
- [38:19]
Sam Kass
Exactly right.
- [38:22]
Dr. Mark Hyman
We're recording this, by the way, on the eve of Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. So I'm just teasing, Sam.
- [38:29]
Sam Kass
I think there's much, there's real benefit to the grass fed systems and regenerative beef systems to the broader environment. From a pure emission standpoint, I think it's not that clear, that is how much better or worse it is, one system or another. But from an overall degradation standpoint, I think it is quite clear. And look, I think the question comes down to what are, from a stamp, from an environmental standpoint, what's the most efficient ways to get us the most nutrient density? The problem with the cow is, it's just not that good at converting energy from the sun into animal protein. Like a chicken is a far more efficient animal in converting feed into animal protein. So I think if you just look at the data and take all the agendas out of it, my advice to the world is to, yes, like put everything we can on pasture. But I think ultimately that means the price is largely going to go up. We're gonna have to eat less of the larger animals. Something like chicken should take on a much greater role in our diets from a climate standpoint. From both. If, when you're trying to balance both the impact to our climate and the benefits of human health, the smaller animals tend to be much more efficient from a feed conversion ratio, which means they take less resources to get us a pound of animal protein. And the cow is just not that good. As delicious as it is, it's just not that great at it. So I think we must transition to a quality versus quantity system where these animals are much more integrated into these biological systems and help build soil health because they are very important in building soil health. All of our soil comes from animal grazing, migratory pathways over tens and tens and millions of years. Tens of thousands, not millions of years. But our overall amount of consumption, I think at least right now, does not help us mitigate the worst of climate. And that's just what the data says. I can imagine.
- [40:35]
Dr. Mark Hyman
But it's interesting. There were like 160 million ruminants roaming around before the white guys got here and they were building soil like crazy and they were 8 to 50ft of topsoil in the Midwest and they weren't contributing to climate change. They were actually.
- [40:47]
Sam Kass
Well, you had a much, I think the difference is you, you had a much more balanced system where most of the, the country was covered by forests and most of the world was covered by forests. The oceans were not over inundated with carbon that it absorbed like the natural. The biosphere had the ability to sequester a lot more carbon because we've cut down most of those forests, we've turned over most of that soil. That balance has been thrown way off. And I think that's what we're grappling with. So the question for us is what can we do in our daily lives to try to make an impact. So I don't advocate for eating less, no meat at all. When you are going to try to find pasture, raised sources and eat smaller animals, I think it's the best balance. But there's no perfect answer here. I think the debate will rage on, and we're gonna all have to sort of navigate this one.
- [41:43]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, we're talking about solutions coming from industry that's the culprit, Oil and gas tech actually helping fund carbon credits that can be used to incentivize farmers to convert from the sort of extractive agricultural system to a regenerative system, which seems to make sense. I don't know how you're going to force them to do it unless you have policy. Then there's policy change that has to happen, and then there's what people can do. And what it seems to me is that when we look at any big change, whether it's, you know, ending slavery and abolition or civil rights or women's rights or gay marriage, whatever, even, even the, the reversing of Roe v. Wade, all that came not from Congress. It came from a. Cultural movements that were consumer driven or, or driven by individuals with certain belief systems that, that then drove the policy change in state and federal legislatures. And so I'm very curious from your perspective, for people listening who are saying, well, what the heck am I going to do? Like, how do I help this problem? I don't want to be having my children or grandchildren not being able to eat peaches or nuts or chocolate or whatever, or worse, not even having food to eat, or being at risk for having massive migration from the global south to the north because of climate change. You know what, what do you say to people that empowers them around this issue? What can they do who are listening to actually change this system from the outside in?
- [43:14]
Sam Kass
Yeah. So after spending six years, like in the White House, trying to drive all these policy changes, and we should talk policy at some point, we should talk a little more about government policy.
- [43:24]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. I'm in with you.
- [43:27]
Sam Kass
I will say that, you know, we're often given this narrative. You know, there's the government colluding with these big companies and they're destroying everything. And there's definitely some truth to that, but what I learned my time in the White House is that policy is actually pretty constrained in its ability to change what ultimately actually ends up on people's plates. And the reality is that fundamentally our culture underpins all of these decisions, both from the private sector, like a business, is what they're making, how they're making it, as well as our politicians, what they care about or what they don't care about, how they act or don't act. And then the choices we're making in our daily lives is so deeply rooted in our cultural values and our cultural norms. Food is one of those things very different than a lot of things that we analyze it. We analyze it too, like smoking. It's not really smoking because, you know, that was just one thing that nobody really needed that was clearly bad and easy to demonize. Food is our identity. It's who we are. It's how we show love. It's how we decide who we're not. And we're all experts in it because we all eat it three, four, sometimes five times a day, depending, maybe more, depending on who you are. And our culture really underpins the decisions that we are as a society making. And I think if we don't do the hard, messy, slow, difficult work of shifting our culture, policy is always going to let us down. Businesses are going to continue to act as they do, and we're not going to see anywhere near the amount of change that we need. And cultural work is hard because you don't get much credit for it. It's hard to kind of track. Exactly. But I think how you led into this question is exactly right. These big breakthroughs and big transitions are really fundamentally cultural shifts that then get, you know, the manifestation in a policy form or in a business start to follow with their policies. That's what has to happen. And I think we've seen a real evolution over, say, the last 30 years in culture around food here, but it's still nascent, and we haven't turned it into a true movement. Now, Maha has definitely made some real progress in some ways there, but it hasn't really translated into, like, this is the norms of what dinner looks like in America. These are what we expect from our community, our state, our local leaders and our federal leaders. And I think it really does start. Start with us at home and what we think of as normal. I told this little story in the book. I didn't think I would even mention this today, but. Cause you bring it up, like, the last time I drank a soda, I was like 19, trying to be a professional baseball player. And my good friend Karan Walker, who was a couple years older than me and just had gotten drafted, I got a Mountain Dew late one night on a Saturday. Like, we were out hanging out, going out, and we stopped at a gas station. I got him on Dew and he was like, why would you drink that garbage? It is pure poison for you. And he's like, look at the ingredients. And I looked at it and he was like, you're right. And I'd never touched a soda since then. It was because he like set a new cultural norm. Like if you're an athlete and this is how you know you want to be like, you want to make it, you don't drink garbage. And I think for all of us, how we impact each other matters. So just in our home saying, you know what we're going to, we care about what we put in our body, we're going to start paying attention, that sets a new norm for your family. And then when you go into your work to say, hey, this food environment is making it hard for me to make a good choice and it's impacting me, like, can we try to improve the offerings here? That all of a sudden starts to change the culture of wherever it is you work, I don't care where it is, could be a daycare center, it could be a big corporate job or anything in between that starts to impact the culture of that place. Wherever you are, your church, your synagogue, your temple, doesn't matter, just raising the question, advocating organizing some people around it saying we expect the food that we're eating here to improve our health and to be done in a way that preserves our farmers ability to continue to produce food for generations to come. Those values can start to really shift and underpin all kinds of things that are even hard to imagine from now. And all of us have that voice and it may feel small, but that is the change that is fundamentally what underpins our ability to make change. When we were in the White House, this is now quite a long time ago or 15 years ago, like we, we were doing that work not because people were demanding it of us, we were doing that work because, you know, the first lady cared about it as a, as a mom and experienced it as a mom and decided to just take on this set of issues in a way that hadn't been taken on before. But what needed to be, what needs to happen is whoever comes to the White House next is so overwhelmed by people saying this matters to us. We expect you to have aggressive policies both on the sustainability and climate regenerative side as well as on the health side. And we will hold you accountable. And if you don't do it, you're out. Like that's how policy is going to start to really change. And if you don't have that, you're only going to get so far. So I. Culture is so overlooked because it's hard, but it is fundamental to everything.
- [48:50]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I agree and I think I spent the last five years in Washington in and out meeting with over 100 plus 50 congressmen, senators, people in the administrations, both the Biden and the Trump administration. And what was really striking to me is that they said what people say matters. If our constituents are calling our office asking for xyz, we're listening. It's probably more impactful than anything else. And it can override what's happening from industry. You see that now with the MAHA movement. I actually have become friends with Roger Marshall, who's the head of the MAHA caucus in the Senate. It and I wrote about him in my book Food Fix and how he basically, in a hearing in Congress when he was a congressman, was belittling the testimony of somebody who was saying that the food we're eating is a contributor to our chronic disease epidemic and obesity. And he's a doctor himself, he's an ob gyn, and he completely dismissed it. And he said, it's all about exercise. And when you looked at who he was funded by, it was the corn lobby and the sugar lobby and. And I'm like. And I kind of gave. I gave him a hard time about it. He said, don't worry, words has happened to me. But now he's kind of flipped because he sees what's happening in the culture.
- [50:05]
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- [50:51]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I also want to challenge something you said because you said, you know, it's not like cigarettes because we have to eat. And you're right. But the difference is what we're eating is not definitionally food. And if you look at the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of food is any nutritious substance. Nutritious is the key word here that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth. So what we're eating, ultra processed food, by definition, is not food. We don't actually need it. It's not necessary for survival, and it's actually making us sick and killing us. So I think one of the initiatives, and I'd be curious to hear what you think about this, that we're working on in Washington now is with David Kessler, who is the former FDA commissioner under Bush and then I think Clinton also. He's a lawyer and a doctor and he's on the podcast. He just recently, I think a couple of weeks ago, and he was sharing about this petition he did to the FDA when they were requesting how do we define ultra processed food? As a way of creating some framework for regulation. And as a lawyer, he went back to the Food act in the 50s and looked at the laws that govern what we call grass generally recognize as safe. If you're using baking soda and it was used for 100 years, it just kind of got grandfathered in as a safe food and ingredient. But. But all these other things that the food industry has started putting in our foods, these deconstructed industrial food ingredients from soy and corn, primarily wheat, that are not molecular the same as food, they have different properties, they do different things in the body that we're beginning to understand. And the science is overwhelming now that they're harmful. He's saying, well, technically the starches and sugars and the forms of them in not sugar that you put in your coffee, but actually these things are definitionally a problem and they no longer meet the standard for generally recognized as safe. And he says we can put the onus back on the food industry to prove they're safe. And that's an interesting way to kind of go around this issue because to try to kind of force the industry to change or do something as hard. But I thought it was kind of a brilliant sleight of hand and I'd love to hear what you think about that.
- [53:02]
Sam Kass
Yeah. Well, first of all, I think the only difference, just to go back on the cigarette for real briefly, is the only difference is everybody eats. Everybody eats. Unlike smoking, where it's still a relatively small percentage of the population.
- [53:17]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Fair enough.
- [53:18]
Sam Kass
And everybody who eats tends to like the food that they're eating, even if it's like a, you know, double cheeseburger. And they probably shouldn't be eating that every day. People who eat that tend to love their cheeseburger. And so taking that away or trying to change that in any fundamental way is much more fraught and difficult. That's I Think the main. The main point. So from a, from a strategy standpoint, there's parts. There's some to learn about tobacco. Obviously, it's a huge win, and it was a cultural shift that led to major policy changes. But it's not as simple and straightforward as that. I guess that's where I caution. First of all, let me just say I love David Kessler. I've known him for a long time. He was one of the first people to reach out when I got to the White House. He's brilliant and thoughtful and, you know, I just. I couldn't say more positive things about the man. I think his petition is creative and smart. I think it's, you know, would theoretically be transformational. Of course, I don't see any path where legally that could work because you have to show harm. Like, the problem is like a piece of bread or a cupcake on an individual basis is not harmful. There's no evidence to show that if that's all you're eating, that somehow it's not safe. It's the aggregate dosage among the population that is leading to these big declines. And regulating that, I think would not stand up in court, is my read on it. And from what, you know, some folks that are harder on the law side of this, their read on it, I think it's like a. Because you. It's hard to prove harm on any one of these products. It's very hard to prove, like, wheat is killing us. Right. Like. And so I don't see it going anywhere. But theoretically, I think it's really smart. And I do think, think cuts to the heart of the challenges we face, which I liked. I do have concerns that we're paying attention to the wrong things right now. That is the core of it. Like, those empty calories are driving the metabolic disease that we're facing. And it is a policy proposal that gets to the thing that would make a big difference now, whether it's in that form or we should try to figure out other ways to curtail the amount of empty calories, particularly of sugar, that are being pumped into our diet. I'm all for and here to go to war over that. And I, you know, support it theoretically. I just don't think it will go anywhere. And I also think, by the way, it's not going to fly. I also think that what hasn't happened yet, there's been no policy changes that are threatening, really, like, how people are eating. And there's been no backlash, like, because of it. And I don't like but just wait till the country freaks out because you're going to make sodas more expensive or you're going to. We haven't seen any of that yet. That's where it gets started to get politically way more dicey than anything that we've seen recently. And you also have to have policies that are smart enough to withstand that, because that, whether you like it or not, that's just the reality. You got to bet that the industry is going to pay a lot of money to fight back. And I got plenty of scars to prove how hardcore they play. And you got to be ready to fight that with a strategy that can overcome that. And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I think if your policy is so overreaching is maybe the wrong word, but so expansive in your reach, you're going to take on so much that I don't see how that could move forward even if it legally had a path. But worth a try. I mean, it's bad. The situation is bad. So we got to try everything we can.
- [57:01]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, it's sort of interesting how pernicious and deliberate the industry is. And I was involved testifying for Senate Bill 25 in the Texas legislature. And it was basically to really improve the health. And what they were doing was food labeling and ingredient warnings about specific ingredients, their additives. They were talking about how we change things in school and have funding for nutrition education in medical school, including a nutrition advisory committee and empowering the committee to look at scientific studies on ultra processed foods and colors and additives. And it passed. But at the 11th hour, the food mystery got involved and they put in an amendment that basically decapitated the fundamental provision of the bill, which was to properly label the foods that were harmful. We're not talking about taking the ingredients out. We're just talking about highlighting the harm that we know of these ingredients on the label. And I was so excited this bill kind of finally got passed. But it was the deliberate and sneaky kind of legal maneuvering and lobbying that happened behind the scenes. And I saw this happen with Governor Morrissey where he was trying to do the same thing in West Virginia. And I know him personally and his wife. And they said, yeah, the food industry came in and said, oh, you're going to get rid of these dyes and these chemicals. But that means grandma puts a red dye in a cupcake and sells it at a bake sale at school. She's going to go to jail. I'm like, you don't want that. And so they're doing all these Crazy messaging, you know, and, and you know, we had to combat that and say, no, it's actually not what's going on. And I think it's, it's kind of, it's so, it's so. They're so well organized and they're so deliberate. And I laid out how they do that in, in my book Food Fix, and it's coming out with a new version of Food Fix uncensored in February. But it's, it's really about this, this, this sort of ways in which any progress is met with massive resistance from the food industry. And I wonder how you think that we can work around this. Is it through business innovation? Is it through changing culture? Where are the levers? And how do you see Maha as an overall movement, as a wedge in, through to the right path? There's problems with it for sure, and I agree. But how do we create a wedge for that?
- [59:25]
Sam Kass
I think to answer the first part of your question.
- [59:30]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I know I asked three questions at once usually.
- [59:32]
Sam Kass
And they're all big ones, man. They're all the ones. I am super eager to answer. I think we often talk about the food industry as this monolith. And what I experienced in D.C. is that they're not like, there are some companies that are just horrible, like fight against everything, fight to make, you know, when we were there, they made pizza count as a vegetable because of the tomato sauce when we were trying to limit the amount of pizza or made french fries count as a vegetable. So we had to change like how we regulate lunch to make sure there was an additional like green vegetable as a part of it. Some company that's like the, you know, conagras of the world. Like they are horrible, right as you would see them. But there's others that are much more progressive and willing to do either what's right and, or feel like, you know, they're positioning themselves for a healthier kind of consumer and seed advantage there. And so they're willing to play. I think they're dividable, I guess, is my main point. So one thing is to find out who's just going to fight you and then can you get some industry support? And there's probably a bunch of industry who would have no problem with the label on the front of their pack because they got mostly decent stuff in there. And they would love the advantage of having their competitors look terrible with like, like big X's or stop signs on the front of their pack. And I tried to do front of pack too. So we have a lot of War stories there.
- [61:02]
Dr. Mark Hyman
But it's the thing that moves the needle the most. Like in South America, the black warning stop signs on the front of packages that a food that's harmful are the biggest lever that was seen in South America to create behavior change and stop people buying less foods.
- [61:15]
Sam Kass
Well, I think the evidence that I've seen even more so it drives a lot of reformulation because companies don't want to have to put right.
- [61:23]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Reformulated, right.
- [61:24]
Sam Kass
They start pulling out the excess sugar and fat because they're like, you know, oh man, that looks terrible. And so let me get out in front of that. So it's actually an incredible driver reformulation to the dealer. You know, I think the thing that we don't focus on in terms of dealing with companies is Wall street right now. You know, I've experienced a bunch of CEOs who were not, you know, you'd probably, I put them as sort of the enemy per se, but we're trying to move their companies in a better direction and almost got fired for it, right, because their, you know, sales may have taken a little dip or they seem like they're not focused on the most profitable products. And you know, Wall street doesn't like that. And I don't focus on the role of finance that dictates the actions of these companies anywhere. Well enough. You know, I think like, you got to remember they're also highly competitive with each other. They're fighting for pennies like one extra pack a week in the, you know, makes a big difference and they're fighting against each other. So they're not just like friends. There's sometimes where there's a threat that brings them together, but otherwise they're competitors and they're fighting tooth and nail for every, every, every dollar in our wallet. So I think there's opportunity to use that to our advantage in a way that we haven't always. But ultimately the biggest thing we can do ultimately. So we have to put policy pressure on them. There needs to be stronger regulation, and even the threat of regulation gets a lot of movement. We need to start dealing with finance and getting them to start supporting companies that are doing the right thing here and helping give those companies some space and CEO some space to maneuver.
- [63:07]
Dr. Mark Hyman
But we need not just the next quarterly earnings report, which is, you know, the opposite of what China does, which is the next thousand years, not the next quarter.
- [63:15]
Sam Kass
If I had to blame all of this, all of our challenges on one thing, it's short termism, like in the end, only thinking quarter by quarter as A society or election to election is why we're in this situation. If we started thinking about longer term horizons, the next generation and how we're making our decisions, we'd be making very different decisions both on our health and on our planet. But you're not able to make long term investments on these transitions or these changes. If you're being accounted for every four months or every three months of your progress. Their hands are tied in some ways, in ways that I don't think a lot of advocates, and I'm speaking to my friends, really get that dynamic. I think there's a sense of, I like they're intentionally trying to kill us. They know what's right. They're just deciding not to do it to reap more profit. That's actually not their experience. Some of them, yes, but that's generally not how they're how they experience it. They just have a very narrow path to walk to keep their jobs and to keep the business on track. And they try to make changes and they're not good enough. And a lot of them fail because consumers ultimately aren't buying the foods that we would hope they would. And they are responsible for that because they're marketing this junk. But like. Right. So it's a negative feedback loop in that regard. So ultimately we have to start supporting companies that are doing a better job. We have to show them that the products that are going to win in the marketplace are ones that are better for us and better for the planet. And if we can start to do that, you will see those companies race to, to those kind of products because they don't want to lose market share. Everybody's just trying to keep their share.
- [64:58]
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's interesting though it's tough. I think the government has a convening power and I've spoken to the CEOs of many of these big companies like Nestle's. And Mark Schneider, when he was a CEO and he was very progressive, they wanted to convert 70% of their supply chain to regenerative agriculture. They wanted to reformulate. But he said, look, if I do it independently, I'm going to lose market share to my competitors and we all have to do it together. And so you can't do collectively collude as an industry because there's antitrust laws. But the government could convene the CEOs and say, hey guys, gig's up. Let's rethink our food system, let's get creative, let's reformulate. And it's happening globally. And I think one of the problems is you mentioned the quarterly earnings report pressure. There's a number of CEOs that have tried this, like Denise Morrison from Campbell's tried to improve the supply chain and improve the quality of the products and removing certain ingredients. Indra Nuya from Pepsi did the same thing. They both got canned and their boards fired them because they were doing this. And that's very discouraging to me because you have CEOs from these big companies that are trying to do something right. And the financial earnings reports and the short termism as you describe it, really inhibits any progress. How do we kind of navigate around that?
- [66:16]
Sam Kass
Yeah, I mean, I think we need to, and this is probably regulatory, is start accounting for other fiduciary responsibilities besides only return to shareholder value. Because right now that's Wall Street's sole responsibility is to maximize shareholder value and they should be responsible for other implications of those investments on society. And if they had it in their legal mandate to also take into account the impact of their investments on the health well being or the planet as an example, they would then have to start measuring that. And there's examples of that in Europe. And that changes how investors have to operate legally and that changes how then CEOs and their boards have to manage these companies. That's the kind of thing that has to happen. I think culturally, from a finance standpoint, we're very far away from that. But I think these companies are only going to get so far unless we make that kind of change where they have an actual legal responsibility to take into account the impact of whatever product or service they're putting into the market. If we had that, then we'd have a framework and opportunity to start moving these folks in a fundamentally different direction. But right now they can say, listen, on Wall Street, I'm just looking at, do I think this company's gonna make more or less money in the short term or midterm? And that's all that they're calculating. And if they think it's gonna go down, they think they're not gonna have a good next couple quarters and they pull their money out and stock goes down. Yeah, I knew both those women and they were amazing and trying to do better. You know, flawed in many ways as it was, but really genuinely trying to make a difference. And yeah, they did not last that effort. I agree. In fact, I write a little bit about injuring the book as that example. It was a tough lesson for me to understand that it's not. They're not sole actors in this.
- [68:16]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, Sam, you have a lot of insight, not just as a chef, not someone who's just helped with. With the let's Move efforts, and not just as an investor who's looking at companies that are creating innovation in the sector, trying to solve these problems through tech solutions, which I think is amazing. But you were the senior policy advisor for healthy Food initiatives in the White House, and if you were now in the White House or at HHS or usda or maybe you were the food czar, if there was one.
- [68:49]
Sam Kass
I was labeled. I was labeled that.
- [68:52]
Dr. Mark Hyman
How would you be kind of harnessing the. At least the cultural awareness around Make America Healthy Again and help the centers and congressmen and the people at the USDA and the FDA and HHS who want to do the right thing? And I know these people, they want to do the right thing. They're trying to figure it out. You know, they're trying to navigate how to change the thinking and change the policies, but it's kind of messy. So how would you kind of coalesce this and harness this incredible movement that's now sort of emerged? And there's parts of it that I think are really problematic. As I said, we can leave those alone for now. But there's a lot of good stuff around food and around a chronic disease that is being spoken about for the first time. What would you be advising Congress and the White House and the agencies to do? And how would you create a roadmap for starting to change some of the things that need to get changed? Yeah, big question. You said you want to talk about Maha.
- [69:53]
Sam Kass
This is a big question. I think it is important to talk about what I think is really positive in this moment. And then some of the concerns, I do think some of the concerns are undermining our ability to move it things in the right direction. You know, I think I give RFK a lot of credit for, you know, bringing this. These issues back on the national stage. A lot in that world say it's for the first time, obviously, since we were saying many of the same things. I fundamentally disagree with that. But that's okay. It's not about that. And I think his critique, as harsh as it is, I think holds a lot of truth. And I think it's for all of us who've been working on these issues for a very long time, a breath of fresh air and evocative to hear somebody who now leads hhs, the biggest department of the federal government, you know, saying those things in a very forceful way and doing it with backing in the broad Public that I could only have dreamed of having when we were in there.
- [71:06]
Dr. Mark Hyman
There.
- [71:07]
Sam Kass
And I think the one thing that is starting and I. And I gotta say, let me just take a moment to credit you because what's happening now and you've played a real role in this is this is becoming a bipartisan issue, at least for now, in a way that like, leaves me feeling like I'm living in the Upside down. Because so many of these people. I can play you clip after clip, failed against us as the nanny state and fought us tooth and nail on everything. And if I had any support in.
- [71:40]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Congress at all, kind of like the Twilight Zone.
- [71:42]
Sam Kass
I really feel like I'm living in the Twilight Zone. I mean, it's good, but I. It's like. And. And if this be. This should be a pipe artisan issue. We worked really hard to make it not a threatening in its face so we could try to bring as many people into the tent as we could. It was much more aggressive in terms of our strategy. But what we tried to show to the outside world was like, let's all join hands. We'll work all together and let's see what we can do. So it should be like that. And that's right. I do fear that the bipartisanship won't last after this administration, but I'm hopeful that some parts of it can last. I think the problem right now, and this maybe can lead us into what we should be doing is like a lot of the narrative then around, like, what is actually the problem and what are the solutions, I just find to be totally off base. And we're not focusing on the things that matter. And it's leading to confusion and concern. And I can't. And we can just take the two ones that are the loudest so far, at least from what I can and, you know, ascertain. You know, I am not a fan of food dyes. I'm happy to see them go. Froot Loops with food dye is without food dye is still Froot Loops and nobody should be eating that is not good for you. And the reason why all these things have lined up.
- [73:16]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Coke with sugar or hyper carnosia. Right.
- [73:19]
Sam Kass
It's still a hyper processed, terrible food. The reason why a lot of food companies lined up is because it actually doesn't really matter that much. And there's. There's really very little evidence. There's really no real evidence that the food diet itself is causing any of this metabolic problems. They're not causes other.
- [73:36]
Dr. Mark Hyman
It can cause other things. Right. It can Cause, you know, ADD and allergy, and there are problems with them, but it's not. You're right, they're not. They're not causing you to gain weight.
- [73:44]
Podcast Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Right.
- [73:45]
Sam Kass
And if they were, if they, if the science was there to prove that they were harmful, then this, this, this, this director of HHS would ban it. It. The problem is you can't really prove that. You have to. To revoke an approval. You have to prove harm. And that evidence just really isn't there. Which is why I think he's gone the voluntary route, even though that was not sort of the initial framing of that announcement. I also, you and I will probably disagree a little bit on this. I think the seed oil piece is just so off base.
- [74:17]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I agree with you, Sam.
- [74:18]
Sam Kass
Oh, you do? Okay, great.
- [74:20]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I did a whole podcast on this. I think it's a distraction.
- [74:22]
Sam Kass
Thank you. I was ready to like, like, go back and forth.
- [74:26]
Dr. Mark Hyman
No, no, no. It is, it is sugar and it's sugar and starch. That's like the boogeyman.
- [74:31]
Sam Kass
It is wrong. But here's the problem. And the reason why we have to talk about this is like, there's a bit of a. There's a conspiracy approach to this policy making right now that actually isn't rooted in the evidence, and it adds to confusion. And we have the secretary of HHS at a fast food restaurant promoting horrible food for people because it's fried in beef tallow, which the evidence shows is definitely not healthier for you. And it's still a cheeseburger and french fries.
- [75:04]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, it's probably healthier than doing it in trans fat, which is what they used to do.
- [75:08]
Sam Kass
Yes, of course that's true. And look, we worked at ban trans fat. So I agree with you on that. That was a big fight and we won that one. So I agree with you on that. But when we start to focus on this, we. What we're doing is distracting from the issues that matter most and creating a ton of confusion. And we can leave vaccines out of it, but vaccines play a huge role in this and it's extremely concerning to me about what's happening there. And the acetaminophen announcement last, whenever this was recommended. It's so bad, Mark. It's so bad. And it needs to be called that because I can't tell you how many text messages I'm getting from friends, like, should I vaccinate my kids? Like, can I take Tylenol? Is it going to kill me and my kids? When you look at the evidence, there is no evidence for any of this?
- [75:57]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, there's correlation but not causation problem. You can't draw conclusions about causality from these studies. And yeah, we seem to see that's.
- [76:05]
Sam Kass
The big issue, but this is the danger here. But when you at the press conference, they said it was causal and it just is not, you know, organic. We've seen a 3x increase in autism since 2000. We've seen a 5x increase in organic food consumption since 2000. Is it organic food that's driving our autism spike? Of course not.
- [76:27]
Dr. Mark Hyman
My joke is if you did a study, a 55 year old woman had sex, you would conclude that pregnancy never results from having sex. But that doesn't mean it's true.
- [76:36]
Sam Kass
It's not true. And so these things really matter and they are undermining the public confidence and creating confusion which then impedes our ability to make progress on the things that do matter.
- [76:49]
Dr. Mark Hyman
You're saying keep your eye on the ball.
- [76:51]
Sam Kass
You have to keep your eye on the ball. This is just alarming. So I actually am now very worried that this movement is going to actually undermine the public health in a way that we've never really seen in modern times. And with vaccine rates falling, outbreaks increasing, this is like life or death stuff. This is not stuff to mess around with. And we are. And so now if we even.
- [77:18]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Although just to be fair, Sam, the amount of people dying from vaccine related illnesses is like a minuscule fraction of the amount of people dying from metabolic disease that's caused by the food we're eating. It's just like a rounding error. And not that we should not vaccinate, we should. I'm a pro vaccine. But I'm just saying that when you look at the numbers, I agree that we're focusing, yeah, we're focusing on the wrong thing. And I think it'd be a missed opportunity if this administration and the people within it didn't actually double down on the food issues. And I think that is something that is sort of happening under the scenes. There's a lot of work being done that isn't catching headlines. And I think the press unfortunately likes to grab these headlines around Tylenol, around vaccines or on the measles outbreaks, but what's happening, and I'm on the inside of some of these conversations. So I know there's a revision of dietary guidelines that I think are more attuned to what the science is saying. There's also efforts from, you know, the FDA to define ultra processed food to create a proper regulatory path. The NIH and the FDA have created a regulatory science initiative that actually will fund the understanding of how these things should be regulated. The NIH is wanting to fund more nutrition research. We're looking at actually revisions of license exams in medical schools to include nutrition that will mandate the curriculums to change. We're looking front of package labeling change. We're looking at ending food marketing to kids. I mean, there's a whole bunch of things happening that aren't getting the headlines people are working on within administration that I think really are meaningful, that you and I both, I think agree, are essential to sort of move this tanker ship in a different direction.
- [78:50]
Sam Kass
So I don't deny that there are some good things starting to happen or bubbling under the surface. I just encourage all of us to be calling this how it is. I think we've had a lot. My world, my friends have had a lot of hope here. But when you step back, at least so far, and you look at kicking tens of millions of people off of healthcare, dramatically gutting SNAP benefits and WIC benefits for fruits and vegetables, nutrition education, decimating the agency itself, cutting 20,000 jobs out of the agency that you need to regulate these industries harder. And forget about climate, which is like, now we're promoting coal, which is going to make our ability, forget about all the progress we could make. So right now, when I step back and look at the whole of the administration of which RFK is legitimizing and saying, like, look, we're doing this good stuff. Let's not pay attention to that. It's not even close right now in terms of undermining the public health versus the benefits that have happened, happen. I deeply hope that that balance shifts dramatically. I'm skeptical, but I'm hopeful and will stand ready to be help in any way to try to get those things done. But nothing is going to overcome that kind of cuts to the people who are most vulnerable and need the help around just getting enough basic nutrition on their plate. So I think we got to call this how it is.
- [80:23]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So where would you double down if you had Bobby Kenney's ear or you had Trump's ear, or what would you double down? Say these are 1, 2, 3, 4 things that we've got to focus on that are going to move the needle.
- [80:34]
Sam Kass
Yeah. On the health side, from an HHS, strictly NHS lens, I think the relooking at grass is one of the top priorities. There's a lot of work that could be accomplished by redoing how we decide what's safe and what's not. I think the labeling is definitely a good thing. Like, if they could get that done, I'm not opposed to that. I think SNAP is a big lever, having fought all those battles of snap.
- [81:07]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Food stamps.
- [81:08]
Sam Kass
Yeah, sorry, food stamps. Yeah.
- [81:10]
Dr. Mark Hyman
For those who don't know what SNAP is. It's a joke. The joke is it's called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but there's no N in it. There's no Nutrition. It's 75% junk food.
- [81:20]
Sam Kass
So I think we have to be very careful because if you actually look how the dollars are calculated, it's basically like people have to eat mostly beans to make the numbers work to meet the dietary standards of nutrition on the amount of money offered. So right now, what's happening under the guise of nutrition is just cutting these benefits dramatically for people who are not anywhere close to making it. What needs to happen and what I would support strongly is real nutrition restrictions, not dissimilar to wic, which is, I would say, one of the government's. The Women Infants and Children's program, which is one of the most effective programs that government has for. On a nutrition basis. It's probably the most effective, but you have to meaningfully increase the SNAP benefit so that people have enough money in their pockets to buy the more nutritious food. Anything that doesn't do both is just a cover for cutting benefits to poor people, which has obviously been a priority for one party in Washington for as long as time. So, like that we. We had to be very careful not to get caught in that trap. I agree. And I fought this fight. I started working on the first waiver 15 years ago.
- [82:26]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, incredible.
- [82:27]
Sam Kass
I'm in it. I got.
- [82:28]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And now isn't it weird that the Republican states are all submitting these waivers for SNAP so that their populations are restricted from buying soda or junk food on. On SNAP benefits? Which is kind of crazy.
- [82:39]
Sam Kass
It is crazy.
- [82:40]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And.
- [82:41]
Sam Kass
But we gotta make sure that they're also advocating for those families that have enough money to buy nutritious foods. And that's what's missing right now. And if we don't, you're gonna see people just finding other ways to make those dollars stretch, and it's not gonna be any healthier. So that's a big lever and an important one. I think school nutrition has a big opportunity to, you know, to take another pass and level up those standards. I mean, when we got in there, there was no standards basically on anything being sold in school schools. We got a lot done, but, you know, that was quite a long Time ago.
- [83:14]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Now the biggest fast food outlet in the country these days is schools.
- [83:18]
Sam Kass
Yeah, I write about this in the book. The first time I went into the school Nutrition association conference, I walked into this hall and all you could see, as far as you can see, just giant, was just every hyper processed food being pushed on our kids, you know, through this thing. And I literally just started weeping. Like I just started. It was really hard, hard to see. It's come quite a. Quite a long way, but nowhere near what it should be. And I think there's some real intractable problems there that are very hard to solve but. But a big opportunity. Look, I think in the end this comes down to sugar mainly as the first big culprit. I think there's very tough but possibilities around how you use taxes around sugar. I think soda tax doesn't really make much sense to me, but sugar tax could be a very powerful tool, but politically fraught. Like, you know, the corn thing. Yeah. Well, it's also just like people like their Coke and they don't want it to go up, you know, and like if you're going to make somebody's Coca Cola be more expensive, people don't like that. That. And I think that's the thing that we have to really internalize that it's not just the companies, it's the people who eat these products, they like those products and they don't want to pay more for them. And so your levers to either force a regulatory change on the formulation, like try to figure out a way to limit the amount of sugar per serving of something. That's a hard, hard one to do. So those obvious giant levers are hard to find, which is why I think policy has a role to, to play. But really shaping what is on our tables is we may not be as powerful as we think from a policy standpoint. I think the biggest thing needs to happen though is on the ag side where the government is much better positioned to have a huge impact is on the agricultural side. And we need to be de risking these transitions. So we should cover from an insurance standpoint the transition. We should be helping with massive amounts of technical assistance about how to actually do it. Because farmers, a lot of farmers don't really actually know these new systems. They've been farming that way their whole lives. They need support. They need probably some premiums for those sort of outputs or new markets that'll pay for it. The government can play a huge role in enabling that transition and that has been completely wiped out. I think that has to get reinstated and triple, quadrupled down on in a way that's not happening right now. But that's where I would spend a ton of time because I really do worry as much as you, and I know that the current state, the status quo is completely unacceptable. It is unconscionable that this is how we're eating and all the health consequence of that. But I actually really worry that it's going to get a lot worse, that these health outcomes are going to actually be exacerbated by climate. And we would be wishing for where we are today in five or 10 years. And that really scares me. So I would push very hard on that and to make a lot of progress there.
- [86:25]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I agree we got to start at the source. As a functional medicine doctor. It's always about root cause, and it starts on the field and with the seeds, with the soil and what we're growing and how we're growing. And I 100% agree. And I think your book, the Last Supper, how to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis, is hopeful. And we've talked a lot about a little things that are a bit depressing today. But I think there is a hopeful message in here. There is a way out. This is a solvable problem. I mean, Middle east peace is a hard fricking problem. This is not a hard problem. We have the technology, we have the science. We know what to do, we know how to do it. It's really about driving consumer and citizen action to drive from outside to the center, to push the government, to push industry, because they will respond. They will respond. And I think that's kind of the hopeful message in your book. Everybody should definitely get a copy of the Last Supper. How to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis is available now everywhere. You can get books. Books. Thank you for writing it, Sam. It's an important contribution to the whole mess we're in right now to help us find our way out. And hopefully one day soon, I get to come to one of your last suppers. I'm looking forward to that.
- [87:34]
Sam Kass
Yeah, let's do it. And I just want to say again, thank you for all the work you've been doing. You've been tireless in your effort to bring people together around this issue, to make it bipartisan. I got to tell you, I will never forget sitting down with you many years ago pre Covid with you and some of your team and thinking that, like, I love that he's trying, but there's some naivete here. I just don't can't imagine anybody really Taking this up, given my experience, man, what a difference you have made and what a different place we were in. And it does give us a chance to make a lot of progress that I could have only dreamed of. So thank you on behalf of my kids and all of us. Like, thank you.
- [88:12]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I've been trying for your work on. What do you really mean that's that thank you, Sam. That means a lot. What did Margaret me says? Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has. And I've known Bobby Kennedy for a couple of decades, and when I met him, he was eating hot dogs and drinking Coke. I started talking to him about this. So I planted those seeds and he listened. And there's definitely things that I don't agree with him about, but I think there's. There's such good intent behind it all, and I think there's a lot of obstacles he's facing. So everybody listening. Don't feel like you can't do anything. You can. I've written about how your book is about how and whether you're in business, whether you're in philanthropy, whether you're in policy, whether you're just someone who eats food. There's something little things you can do every day that make a difference. And I had a vision once for something called an Eden. You know, like we used to have sit ins in the 60s. Imagine for one day if the entire country, 330 million Americans, did not eat anything ultra processed and cooked, only fresh, real food at home, and didn't go out to eat. I mean, it would be catastrophic for the food industry and it would be hopefully, a catalyst of change. So maybe we can kind of eat it somehow.
- [89:27]
Sam Kass
I'm in. Let's figure that out. I'm in.
- [89:29]
Dr. Mark Hyman
All right, you can cooking.
- [89:31]
Sam Kass
I'll do the cooking.
- [89:33]
Dr. Mark Hyman
All right, thanks, Sam. Great to see you again. And I'll do this again soon.
- [89:36]
Sam Kass
All right, sounds good. Thanks for having me.
- [89:38]
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