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The Dr. Hyman Show
Land, Power, and the Plate: Ending Food Apartheid with Regenerative Justice
01:07:42
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- [00:00]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show.
- [00:03]
Dr. Susan Blum
Deep medicine is understanding that health cannot be pursued on an individual level. That health can only be attained in proper relationship to each other and the entire web of life. And so those activities that we can do around our food system that reawaken, rehydrate our ancient relationships to seeds, to water, to soil, to each other, are going to be a part of that practice of decolonizing our food system.
- [00:31]
Dr. Mark Hyman
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- [01:37]
A long time ago, you were living with your husband in South End of Albany, near, you know, the capital, New York State. And you said it was easier to get weapons and drugs than healthy food and that your neighborhood was a place of food apartheid, which is really an interesting term. I want to get into that. But there were no grocery stores, farmers markets, fast food and bodegas in every corner, just selling processed junk and alcohol. And it sort of helps you catalyze a lot of what you're thinking was and what you're doing and why. Why is this whole term food apartheid the right term that we should be using instead of talking about food deserts?
- [02:16]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Sure. So there's a lot there. I mean, a food desert implies a natural ecosystem, right? It's the term the USDA uses for a high poverty neighborhood without grocery stores. But there's nothing natural about a system where certain people have access to food opulence and others food scares.
- [02:31]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I say man on purpose.
- [02:33]
Dr. Raj Patel
Right.
- [02:33]
Dr. Rupa Marya
So it's apartheid. It's apartheid. And there's a whole history of redlining and housing discrimination that's led to neighborhoods that don't have these resources. And I think for me, living with my children who were quite small then, Nashima was two, Emmett was a newborn. And as you said, there were no grocery stores, farmers markets, places to have a garden. And so we ended up joining a CSA program. So, like a subscription program that cost more than our rent and had to walk over two miles to get the vegetables, pile them onto the laps of the sleeping children in the stroller, go back down, like that was the only way to get vegetables. And so when our neighbors found out that we knew how to farm, there was a clamor for us to create the farm for the people. And that was where the idea for Soul Fire Farm came about.
- [03:16]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow. And so food apartheid really is a better way of describing sort of the intentional segregation, the deliberate policies, the redlining which you described, which maybe you could explain, that led to this incredible disparity in access to food and also in the health disparities that result from that. Because we're seeing this tremendous increase in diseases in African American and Latino populations. It's not an accident.
- [03:43]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Yeah, absolutely. So food apartheid is the right term because as you mentioned, if you are black or brown, you know, Latinx, indigenous, you're much more likely to struggle with diabetes, heart disease, and other diet related illnesses, not to be clear, because we don't know how to make good food choices or know how to cook food or want those foods. It's really because of access. If you have $3 in your pocket and you live in a food apartheid zip code, you can get some hot Cheetos and blue colored drink, but you cannot get a burrito, a salad or anything like that. And so it's really a tragedy that is rooted in institutional racism because. Because as I mentioned, in the 1930s, the federal government commissioned these maps to be made of neighborhoods that rank them from most desirable to lend down to least desirable. And the communities of color were outlined in red as too risky to lend, too risky to have a mortgage, too risky to own homes. And so the wealth disparity has grown and the property ownership disparity has grown. And with it, these neighborhood conditions.
- [04:42]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Incredible. You know, and I think people don't realize the magnitude of the health disparities that exist out there. You know, diabetes, heart disease, chronic illnesses, kidney failure, hypertension, that affect black and indigenous people, Native Americans, Latinos, far more than whites. If you're African American, you're 80% more likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. You're four times as likely to have kidney failure, three and a half times more likely to have amputations from diabetes as whites. And it also somehow connects to sort of how our whole system is operating. It's almost like a weapon that is used against these populations. Not necessarily intentionally, always, but intelligence. It sort of has been the unintended result of our food policies, of our ag policies. And, you know, the way I think about it is we're facing an unprecedented proliferation of biological weapons of mass destruction, our processed food, which kills literally 40 to 50 million people a year globally from hypertension. So how do you see the role of the farmer shifting this systemic violence, these biological weapons of mass destruction, as I call them? And how do we do that?
- [05:50]
Dr. Rupa Marya
I mean, what you said is so powerful because food has intentionally been used as a weapon. I mean, you look at the Greenwood food blockades that were used to punish civil rights activity, literally cutting off food supplies to black communities in the 1960s for the audacity to try to register to vote. And so I actually don't think it's an accident that our schools, our urban schools, our prisons, are filled with these highly processed foods because a population that's not well is not going to resist. If I'm not feeling well and I'm dealing with diabetes, kidney issues, I'm not going to show up for a town hall and tell my senator what they should be doing right. And so I don't think it's entirely an accident, but I do believe it's not just farmers who are responsible for the solution. It's obviously everyone in the food system. But farmers do have a unique role to play because we have an opportunity, one, to see where our food's going and to do what we can to make sure there's equitable distribution. We have the opportunity to make sure that our farm workers are treated fairly, signing onto programs like the Food justice certified and. And we have a unique voice where we can really get bipartisan. Ear farming is considered a like everybody kind of issue. So we can be telling policymakers about the shifts that need to happen on a systemic level.
- [06:59]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Exactly. And I think, you know, we are. Are seeing, you know, a farm system that also, you know, sort of has sort of generated out of a series of policies that have led to the overproduction of, of these highly processed foods. And the poor and minorities are targeted by the food industry with extra marketing for these foods. When SNAP or food stamps come on with your monthly stipend, it's usually at the beginning of the month. And that's when there's maximum advertising in all these bodegas and local stores for more soda and more junk food. So it's a sort of an intentional process. And the other thing that is that I not well understood, I think my most is that your cognitive development depends on your nutrition. So if you're growing up in a poor community with lack of access to nutritious food, with lack of vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients and all the things you need to create your healthy brain, these kids are not going to be cognitively where they need to be. I mean, I mean, even, even, you know, the exposure on farms to pesticides, these kids have lost, you know, 41 million IQ points in farm and food workers, which are among the most dangerous occupations in this country because of the use of these industrial agricultural chemicals. So, you know, we have both the issue of, you know, food justice. We also have like the environmental racism and environmental justice that's connected to the food system because most of the workers on farms today are brown, mostly Latino workers or migrant workers. They're not protected by the farm. I mean, the Labor Fair labor act that was in the 30s because they were excluded mostly because at the time they were mostly African Americans doing the work. And, and it's, it's a biggest, it's a big barrier. So what, what are the biggest barriers you see to what you describe as decolonizing farming? And can you just take a minute to describe what is the colonization of our food system? Because I think people don't understand that we have a colonization of our food system.
- [09:04]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Oh, yeah, that was a lot. That was a lot. Environmental justice, I agree, is absolutely a huge issue. First of all, because we're talking about who's getting environmental benefits and who's suffering from environmental harms. Pesticide exposure, extreme heat from climate chaos. We're talking about the affluent from hog farms and, you know, toxic emissions are.
- [09:24]
Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, abuse, sexual abuse and all sorts.
- [09:27]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Yeah, so I'm glad that you mentioned, because those issues are certainly linked. I mean, the colonization of the food system is the imposition of European control power and European norms over our food system. And it's quite pervasive. I'll tell a quick story just to Illustrate one example of it. You take maize, 9,000 year old staple crop. It was a gift from Sky Woman to the indigenous people of Turtle island of this continent. It was given to prevent starvation. In combination with her sisters. Beans and squash to be grown together. Right. Y' all heard of the three sisters intercropping, right? Yeah. And there's many, many origin stories. But the condition was that that need to be the gift of maize needed to be shared freely. So the colonizers got some too. Right. As a gift. That's how they stayed alive. But look what they did with Maze. Tore her away from the sisters. Monocrop laden with chemicals, pesticides, leading to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Turned into corn syrup, pumped into the veins of our children, driving the diabetes epidemic and genetically modified BT terminator seed. All of this. And so you look at, we could go on and on looking at maize, right. Is just one example of colonization of the food system. You look at the fact that the soil has lost over 50% of its organic matter. 50% of its carbon is burned up into the atmosphere. That was the beginning of the climate change.
- [10:41]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
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Dr. Rupa Marya
Was the 1800s opening of the Great Plains, you know, and so we had.
- [10:46]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Extractive agriculture that was regenerative and that, that's led to this massive climate change crisis. And I think we've talked about in the show. But you know, our food system, end to end is the number one cause of climate change.
- [10:55]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Absolutely.
- [10:56]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And people don't realize that it's about 50%, whereas fossil fuels are about 30%. And it's not just the factory farming of cows. It's everything from deforestation to land destruction to food waste and so forth. So, you know, you, you don't just talk about this stuff. You got your hands in the dirt.
- [11:11]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Absolutely.
- [11:11]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And, and you are not just talking the talk, you're walking the walk. And you created an extraordinary place called Soulfire Farm, which I read a lot about, I watched movies about it. I'm super impressed with what's going on there because you're helping, you know, your community and poor communities sort of understand the benefit of the land and becoming farmers and training them become farmers. And then you're doing all sorts of collateral good in the community by providing food for ex cons who can't get food or for immigrants who can't actually afford food. I mean, it's really amazing. So tell us what you think the role of Soul Fire Farm is in creating a new food system.
- [11:51]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Wow. Yeah.
- [11:52]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Sorry, I'm putting you on the spot.
- [11:55]
Dr. Rupa Marya
No, it's my heart work. So Soul Fire Farm. We are a community farm. There's eight of us up on the land up in the mountains of Grafton, New York.
- [12:02]
Dr. Raj Patel
I'm coming to visit.
- [12:03]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Please do. Every month we have a community day. Everyone can come. But we're dedicated to ending racism in the food system. And we're doing that in three basic ways.
- [12:11]
Dr. Susan Blum
Right.
- [12:11]
Dr. Rupa Marya
The first is to regenerate the 80 acres that we get to steward of Mohican territory. So we're using all these Afro indigenous technologies to heal the land, produce food, and get that to the people who need it most through a doorstep delivery program. That's the first thing. The second thing is to equip black and brown farmers through our training programs and mentorship, helping people get the knowledge and land and credit they need. And then the final thing is mobilizing public support, trying to change policy, get reparations for farmers, reparations for indigenous people who've lost their land and so forth. And, you know, it's been really heartening because we actually haven't had to convince people that this is worth doing. I thought I'd be all alone in the hills. But our waiting list for our programs are years long because we wanna get back to the land as a people.
- [12:53]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, most people aren't aware that Lincoln, when he freed the slaves, promised 40 acres and a mule, which Andrew Johnson, the president who got impeached right after him, revoked. And it's been estimated that if that was in place, that there'd be a land worth $4.6 trillion in the African American community which has been usurped for them. And then at the turn of the century, 14% of farms compared to less than 1% of farmers now were African American. And they were in the south and they were threatening the existing status quo down there. And the people who were running those farms were lynched, their homes were burned, their farms destroyed, their land was taken over. And it's just, it's a legacy that people just don't realize that this was, this was sort of an injustice that's never been talked about, that really never been really addressed. And, and, and maybe we need to get back that $4.6 trillion of land.
- [13:52]
Dr. Rupa Marya
We absolutely do.
- [13:52]
Dr. Mark Hyman
As you mentioned, reparations. And I think, you know, that's what made me think about it.
- [13:56]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Yeah, because 40 acres and a mule was a broken promise. You know, all of the land that black folks got was purchased off their own dime, despite the oppressive sharecropping and convict leasing conditions. And it wasn't just the violent lynching and terrorism that drove people off the land. It was the federal government itself. You know, the USDA, in the 1962 Commission of Civil Rights Report, was named as the number one culprit in the decline of the black farmer. Reagan later closed that office. He didn't like their findings. But that's why black farmers sued the government. They won a settlement of $2 billion in 1999, the Pigford case, which was the largest civil rights settlement in US History. But by then, most of the farmers were in their 90s, and 50,000 is not going to get you back your land. So it was really a symbolic victory.
- [14:38]
Dr. Mark Hyman
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- [15:29]
So you point out that partly as a result of the broken promise of 40 acres and a mule and many other sort of deliberate and political and social injustice that happened, you talk about, you know, how there's been any starting to be an increase in African American farmers. You know, it used to be 14. Now it's like maybe one or two and a half.
- [15:56]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Yeah, yeah.
- [15:57]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So, but you see that changing. And I just saw this incredible graph in one of your articles where there was this complete divergence, you know, where white farmers are going down mostly because they're aging out of farming and no one's coming in new, and African American farmers are going up.
- [16:12]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Well, the USDA actually just got called out for fluffing up its numbers in the 2017 census. So we're not exactly sure if black farmers are on the rise according to the USDA count. I will say, though, that as someone who focuses on training a returning generation of black farmers, that there is a clamor, there is an interest, and there are a number of success stories on an anecdotal level. And so we're hoping to see some legitimate shifts upward in the coming census.
- [16:38]
Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, it's, it's, you know, I, I work a lot in Cleveland and I go through some of the poorest areas there and see, you know, the, the way people live, the lack of access to food. And you know, I, you know, it strikes me that they're in this vicious cycle that they can't get out of and that, you know, thinking about how to bring, and I know it's not your expertise, but how to bring farming and, and communities, agriculture back into these communities. I, I was at Ebenezer Baptist Church number years ago and you know, they had a two acreage plot like right near the church in, in the middle of Atlanta was a massive farm where they're, the church members were growing the food, they were eating the food, they were distributing it to the communities that needed it. I was really like, wow, this is a model that could be scaled and.
- [17:19]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Absolutely.
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Dr. Mark Hyman
So, so how do you see that being part of the solution? Because I, I, it is something I struggle with. It's like I, you see, the problem is so tough. I mean, I'm working in Cleveland. We're working with a, a group there of, you know, really underserved African Americans who are very, you know, sick. They have diabetes, they have kidney failure, they have all these issues. And, and we're, we put them in a group together. We're using community based solutions. We're going to them, we're teaching them how to cook and shop and, and they want it so bad, but nobody ever has helped them. And, and they're losing weight and they're feeling good and it just, it's amazing. But you know, like these, these are just really neglected communities and it's in and it's bankrupting our country. Like we should care about it because a big part of our 22 trillion dollar debt is the cost of health care. So how do you see intervening in these communities as well? Because I think, how do you bring people up to say, okay, well you know, farming is not about slavery, it's not about working on a plantation. It's actually my salvation. It's what you know, you know, my ancestors did and brought to America and.
- [18:25]
I should be proud of it, which.
- [18:26]
Is what you're trying to say. But how do you get people's mindset to change around that?
- [18:31]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Absolutely. I mean, I would say at least half of our graduates from our week long beginning farmer training program go on to start urban farms or work on urban Farms. So it's really part of the same solution. And I think it's a false dichotomy between the rural and urban. I want to shout out, you know, if you look at Reverend Heber Browns Baltimore Black Church Community Food Security Network, he realized, you know, that black churches are actually the biggest landholders in the black community. And so is as you, as you saw in Atlanta, you know, putting in gardens, also sourcing from rural black farmers and getting that food to urban black community. And so it's happening in Chicago, it's happening in Detroit with D Town Farm, Malika Kinney's work. So we're very excited to be collaborating and have found that it's not so much again that we need to convince people. I think the will is there, it's often the resources that are lacking. So if we can make sure that folks don't have to pay a high water bill and, and that they have the tools and the land and you know, institutional support website, develop whatever the thing is that they need, it emerges. And so, you know, we don't even have to evangelize.
- [19:31]
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's crazy. I mean, you know, Heber Brown said, the pastor in Baltimore said, you know, we're losing more people to sweets than the streets because he was, you know, ministering to his congregation and seeing how many people are dying from all the food they're eating. So it's a, it's an, I think it's an important solution to empowering people, getting them out of poverty, giving them food sovereignty in ways that, you know, there aren't, there aren't a lot of solutions that people are offering. And I think this is a powerful one. You know, I think.
- [20:00]
Dr. Raj Patel
You know, but.
- [20:01]
Dr. Mark Hyman
It'S still hard for people of color to become farmers. So how do we overcome those obstacles?
- [20:09]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Yeah, absolutely. So recently the USDA again, we looked at their numbers and they're still giving out a disproportionate amount of their resources to white farmers, large farmers, corporate farmers. And so we need an overhaul of the Civil Rights Commission in the USDA to address that discrimination.
- [20:24]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Is there a civil Rights Commission at the usda?
- [20:26]
Dr. Rupa Marya
There is. And they have a multi year backlog of complaints that are unaddressed. And so we've been meeting.
- [20:31]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Is there one 75 year old lady running the whole thing or what?
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Dr. Rupa Marya
Oh, it is a hot mess. But I will tell you, you know, we've been talking to Senator Sanders, Senator Warren, other politicians for the first time are interested in the plight of the black farmer. And so hopefully we'll get those cases addressed of discrimination so people can get their loans and crop allotments and technical assistance. I think also we need massive land reform. You know, 98% of the rural land is owned by white people right now. That's the highest amount of land concentrated in the hands of European Americans ever in the history of this country. And so we really need to look at a patchwork of land trust and land link and land transfer to make sure that.
- [21:06]
Dr. Mark Hyman
40 acres and a mule.
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Dr. Rupa Marya
Yeah, exactly. 40 acres and a mule in 20. 19. 2020. Right.
- [21:10]
Dr. Raj Patel
Maybe not a mule, maybe some other tools.
- [21:13]
Dr. Rupa Marya
40 acres and a couple tracks.
- [21:15]
Dr. Mark Hyman
What's really fascinating about this conversation is that if you do the right thing for the land, you do the right thing for humans, you do the right thing for climate, you do the right thing for biodiversity, do the right thing for our scarce water resources. Right? You do the right thing for all the things that matter. You do the right thing for injustice, you do the right thing for our economy, the right thing for health. It's like, it seems like too good to be true, but is that how you see it?
- [21:42]
Dr. Rupa Marya
I do think it's all really connected. You know, some of my mentors had taught me how to farm in Ghana. They're called the queen mothers, these elder women who are just badass in every way. But they said, you know, Amita Day, is it true, Leah, is it true that if you have want to plant a seed on your farm in the United States, like, you don't pray over it or sing or dance or say thank you to the ground, Right. You expect the seed to grow? I admitted that was true. And they said, that's why you're all sick. You know, you're all sick because you treat the Earth like a commodity and not like a family member. And so I do think that the reverence that we have for the Earth, by extension the way we treat the land, is going to be mirrored in the way we treat ourselves and our human communities.
- [22:20]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, you're so right about this because when you look at the, at the impact of regenerative act to reverse all the wrongs to our Earth and to humans, it has so much potential. It's like a. I wouldn't say it's the entire solution, but it's a big solution. If we scale this, and I think in doing all the things I said, by producing better quality food where the farmers are happier, they're healthier, they make more money producing food that's good for humans, that actually reverses climate change, that actually doesn't deplete our scarce freshwater resources. That increases the biodiversity, protects our pollinators. I mean, there's all this downstream benefits and it's like a duh, but it's still sort of this people. When you say regenerative ag, like what's that, right?
- [23:10]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Yeah. I mean regenerative ag. I think we ought to give a shout out to Dr. George Washington Carver. People thought he was nuts. I mean, this is a generation and a half before Rodale. And so he's telling farmers literally to let their land rest out of cash crop for a little while. Put some legumes in there. Because legumes, as we know, are best.
- [23:27]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Friends with bacteria and they fix nitrogen fertilizer.
- [23:30]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Exactly. He was getting people to go and muck out swamps to make compost piles. I mean, he literally start quoting Bible verses to get folks convinced that this is what God wanted them to do. Because it didn't make any logical sense.
- [23:41]
Dr. Mark Hyman
How did he figure it out? Was it from his.
- [23:43]
Dr. Rupa Marya
It's from traditional African and indigenous practices, bringing them into the university. So he said, you know, whatever, you know, God says whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me. And God's talking about the earthworms. So come here, over here. And his model was really neat. Cause he would go out to the most decrepit farm in the county, do an extreme farm makeover with regenerative practices, and then invite everyone over to see the model and then move to the next county. So that was the beginning of extension agencies in this country. And we're building on it now.
- [24:10]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Even if, if we have food security.
- [24:12]
Dr. Raj Patel
In America, we don't have nutrition security. And they're, they're quite different. Food security is, I'm on food stamps. I can have, you know, a 2 liter bottle of soda and a giant bag of Chips Ahoy cookies. And I'm food secure cause I have enough calories that's going to cause you to feel sick and not be functional, not work and be depressed and be inflamed. It's not nutrition security, which is access to real whole foods, that's going to promote health and wellbeing and help you advance. And I think the structural changes we're seeing in our society that are from the food system and the way you describe it is really driving some of the worst challenges we see around social justice, around racism. I mean, just the life expectancy drop that we saw in the last report of three years in black and Hispanic communities. We should all be going, wait a minute, why is this happening, what's going on? What's the cause of it? And yes, it's more than just food. It's the traumas, it's intergenerational issues.
- [25:04]
Dr. Mark Hyman
But food is such a central piece.
- [25:05]
Dr. Raj Patel
Of that, and it perpetuates a cycle. And seems to me one of those levers, like Archimedes lever to actually change the whole dynamic of what's happening in our society, from sickness and the consequences of our food system to one that's more able to create a healthy society. And we just are so far from that. But I have rays of hope. I see these things happening on the margins. I see what you're doing, Rupa, and the things you've been talking about, Raj, and I get really inspired to think, wow, there are a lot of people thinking about this and working on it. And I think you're doing the hard work, which is fantastic. What is the Anatomy of Injustice and what are you talking about? And how did we get the food system we got.
- [25:46]
Well, I mean, the reason we chose the idea of Anatomy of Injustice is because we've structured this book as a kind of anatomy. It's an introduction to the immune system, to the respiratory system, circulatory. And we, you know, we go through a number of bodily systems, as one might in one's first year of medical school. So, you know, the. The idea of presenting things anatomically is something that we're sort of taking from the world of medicine, but we're transforming it, and we're along the journey trying to really delve into precisely the kinds of histories you're asking about. Mark, how do we get here? And a lot of the error comes in thinking that there's one entity of society over here. And that society was initially populated by white men who had property and the working class and women and indigenous people and enslaved people were firmly outside that, alongside nature and the rest of the web of life. And then gradually, more and more humans were sort of invited into society after having fought for that. Right. But what that sets up, though, is, as Rupa was saying, the possibilities of being able to exploit and take things from the land. And so really, the sort of first moments of what we understand now as the world food system were birthed in the 1400s with the island of Madeira and sugar plantations in the Atlantic. And then really, the ball gets rolling in 1492 with the arrival of Columbus in the Americas in the Western Hemisphere, but then also with the clearing of Jews, for example, from Iberia, the sort of arrival of the modern nation state and its Technologies of finance and exploitation and racial purity happen in the same year. And it's not an accident. And it's food corporations in particular who are very interested in. This was a rolling colonialism of a frontier of where can we find the best land? Where can we find the cheapest labor? Where can we find the cheapest food products? And, you know, the first products of colonialism are precisely the food that comes back or the cotton or the tobacco. These are. It's all about agriculture. And that's important to bear in mind because, you know, when we think now of, well, of course the United States isn't colonized. You know, au contraire, the. The wealth of this country was made possible through food and agriculture. And there's still a fairly large debt to be redressed. And again, as we mentioned earlier on, those debts are amounting every day because the corporations that now run our food system have, you know, 600 years of practice of making other people pay for the costs that they generate.
- [28:28]
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's so true.
- [28:29]
Dr. Raj Patel
The true cost of food concept that the Rockefeller foundation put a report on recently is staggering. It's actually how I started my book, which is talking about now, what is the true cost of the food we're eating in our human. In the human community, in the natural resources, in our economic resources? So what are the real costs and to our social. Our natural capital and our human capital? I mean, those are real phenomena that we're not really addressing at all in our thinking about how to solve some of our biggest problems. But you talk about the inflammation and how it's actually a natural response to what's happening. And so, you know, when you cut your skin and you get bacteria, your body sends an army of your immune system to go create inflammation and redness and swelling and tenderness. That's all a good thing to deal with an acute injury. The problem is that we're constantly injuring our bodies in the same way as we're for cutting ourselves by the food we're eating, by the stresses we're under, by the structural environments of poverty and disenfranchisement and lack of sense of a locus of control and other traumas that are even worse. You know, sexual trauma, physical traumas, all these things get really written into our genes. They get written into our biology in ways that you're describing in your book. So, Raj, what was sort of unique for you as you began to sort of think about this from a medical perspective?
- [29:48]
Mark
Because your.
- [29:48]
Dr. Raj Patel
Your focus has been on, you know, capitalism and colonialism and food systems from a sort of political and structural view at a very high level. Although you talk about the health impacts, you know, how did this sort of change your thinking about what we need to be doing around our food and food systems?
- [30:02]
Well, thanks for asking, Mark. And I mean, part of the journey for me was realizing that there are so many pathways to and from health. And learning how these circuits work within the body helped me to make connections between the circuits that I was seeing outside the body in terms of flows of life and flows within the economy. So, for example, you know, through the sort of work with Rupert, I was able finally to sort of wrap my arms around a statistic around debt, for example. I mean, you know, in the United States, there's a vast explosion of consumer debt. And right now, as we record, there's the end of the eviction moratorium, which means that a lot of people are going to be finding themselves either with much higher rent or on the streets and unhoused. Now, the debts that come with that are an acute form of capitalist stress. And who should swoop in? But the financial. The sort of the rubber barons of finance offering things like payday loans for listeners who don't know. I mean, if you have a payday loan of, say, 300 bucks, you probably end up paying at payday loan rates about $800 back. And that those kinds of loans are incredibly stressful to manage and they manifest.
- [31:25]
Isn't that called usury and illegal and what organized crime usually does?
- [31:28]
Well, yes, but no, that's it. You see, in other parts of the world, it's illegal, and in the United States it's licensed. And that's, you know, that's a. That's because we are at the apex of this kind of predatory capitalism. But what I didn't fully appreciate was how that stress works through our body, through our microbiome, through our guts, through our skin, and through our endocrine system, and finally drives us towards despair and stress. And so statistics that I came across when we were researching this, that certainly blew me away. And I think Rupert was less surprised because she understood the mechanisms. But if we were to abolish payday loans, the suicide rate in the United States would drop by 1.9% and the fatal overdose rate rate for narcotics would drop by 8.9%. Now, you know, one can trot that out in an economics discussion or in a medical discussion, but when you do it in both, I think you get the full kind of span of how the bodies, our bodies, everyone's bodies, are stressed by the kinds of everyday Rough and tumble of capitalism. And we, you know, unless medicine opens its eyes to saying, you know, a good medical intervention here would be to ban payday loans, then we are, you know, stopping short of how it is that we might heal one another.
- [32:40]
Dr. Susan Blum
No, that's what we're so bad at in medicine. So what Raj was just describing that an actual structural change. So we've gotten good at now noticing the structural determinants of health, but we have no training in how to understand where those structures came from, why they were put there, and then how to dismantle them. And that's what we see with COVID As soon as we saw the racial disparities. Everyone's talking about it, but no one has come forth and said, let's do universal basic income, so all of these folks can just stay home and ride out this wave. Instead, it's been the cattle prodding of black and brown workers back to, you know, serving the interests of Jeff Bezos so he can go on a joyride. So that's the kind of grotesque lack of care for each other we're seeing manifest here. So we have the ability to notice and to describe in medicine, but we don't go that extra step at prescribing describing a change because modern medicine is a part of that colonial capitalist project that this land was colonized by medics, missionaries and military. And so that, you know, that we have to understand that what, what we are a part of so that we can actually effectively leverage and push on points of pressure to change the things that would actually bring real population level health outcome changes.
- [34:06]
Dr. Raj Patel
That's really true. I think we have to go back. And I know in my electronic medical record at Cleveland Clinic, you know, we now have this new feature which is your social determinants of health. And you kind of. But then it's like, well, now what? Like what do you do? We still are seeing one on one patients in the office, hoping we're going to fix them, when what happens in the office isn't really the main determinant of health. 80% of our health happens outside the clinic. And I'm not going to cure diabetes in my office. It's cured in the farm, it's cured in the grocery store, it's cured in the kitchen, at the restaurants. That's where it's cured. And I think we don't even talk about that. And as doctor, I'm so shocked that you actually have gotten this because we basically learned the exact opposite, right? We can fix everything. Just come to us. We got you just follow these instructions and go home. And it's just a farce. And it's why we're seeing escalating costs, escalating rates of all these inflammatory diseases. And it's something we don't really talk about what to do. And I want to get into what to do about it because I think that the concept of how do we solve this is really challenging because it's a big problem. But, Raj, you said something I want to sort of push back on a little bit. You talked about this idea. Both of you sort of touched on it. And I just want to push back around this idea of colonialism and capitalism. One, are they the same thing? And two, is capitalism inherently the problem, or is it a corrupted capitalism that is causing the problem, meaning it's basically rigged and geared for the wealthy, but not for everybody. And it's not really truly free market, because if it was free market, then all the externalities and costs would be built into the price of the goods you're buying. So a price of Coca Cola would be probably a hundred dollars. Looking at the impact on soil, on pollution, on the degradation of our water systems and air quality and climate and health. And I mean, you know, we'd be paying for this stuff four times. That would be the price.
- [35:42]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So how.
- [35:43]
Dr. Raj Patel
How do you sort of frame it in a way that, you know, people are listening? Well, you know, what are we expecting, Communism? Like, where, where, like what's the answer?
- [35:51]
You know, let me. Let me take a stab at that first by just sort of explaining. Look, there are lots of different kinds of colonialism, and there's long histories in the history of human civilizations of, you know, one civilization coming in and displacing or altering another. You see that throughout Asia. You see that even on the land that I find myself on. It used to be Tonkawa land, and then it was invaded by the Comanche Empire, and then it became part of, temporarily part of the Spanish empire, then part of Mexico, and then now the United States. So there's a pal obsessed on the land. So colonialism is one thing where just one power comes in and occupies and dominates another. And then capitalism is this sort of tendency not towards competition and to free markets, but actually to monopoly. And I think that that's the important thing to remember here when we're talking about capitalism is that, you know, and. And you know this well, Mark, I know that this is a kind of softball question, but you know this well through your work in your study in Food Fix, for example, and thinking about how Food corporations work. The way that capitalism has worked in the food system has not been to generate an abundance of free markets and competition and true costs being revealed, but exactly the opposite, right? If we, you know, the report came out from the Rockefeller Foundation a couple of weeks back saying, look, the United States spends $1.1 trillion on food every year. But the damage caused by these corporations, which they haven't been managed to make other people pay for, is $2.3 trillion. So for every dollar we spend on food, more than $2 need to be spared cleaning up, spent cleaning up what these capitalist corporations have involved, have created. So what we're saying is, look, capitalist colonialism is a way of breaking relationships between people and, between people and place and the rest of the web of life. It's a way of concentrating power in the hands of a few people rather than democratizing it. And so what we're excited about is actually what would it be like to have free exchange? What would it be like to have people be sovereign over their decisions in a way that pure economic theory suggests they might one day be? And we kind of like the idea, for example, of competing ideas. And that's why we like science a great deal. We like the idea of level playing fields. But unfortunately, colonial capitalism has kind of prevented those from happening.
- [38:06]
It has, and you're right, the monopolies are true. You look at the food industry, we see all these brands, literally hundreds, thousands of brands, but there's nine companies that own all the brands.
- [38:16]
Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, if you look at the.
- [38:18]
Dr. Raj Patel
Chemical and seed nag companies, you know, there were hundred, like 20, 30 years ago. Now there's like six, you know, that does provide all the chemicals and seeds. And we see this, the consolidation, the monopolization, structural changes that really undermine the ability to actually start to create change. Because all of a sudden it's like there really was democratization of our food system. Then, then new ideas could bubble up and change could happen, and people will be able to sort of implement alternatives. And now it's very, very tough. And these behemoths, you know, like Nestle and, you know, Mondelez and all these, these, these giant Pepsi, Coca Cola, these giant companies are, Are so dominant that it's very hard to get them to shift. I mean, they're, they're thinking about, they're looking at, they're feeling the pressure from our culture, but it's, it's really tough.
- [39:06]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So as you guys have come to.
- [39:07]
Dr. Raj Patel
Sort of understand this and understand the structural violence and understand the colonization of our society in General, how have you understood the food colonization? Because I think it's something that's new. And these terms have been passed around like food apartheid and food colonization and the decolonization of food and medicine. What is that and what does it mean and what do we do?
- [39:32]
Dr. Susan Blum
So I just want to take a moment to point out a couple of the things that you said, Mark, that hit on. Because I was trained in the same medical system that hit on kind of the errors of thought that we are trying to move away from. In our book, one of them was talking about the immune system as unleashing an army. Right. So what we talk about in our book is that the immune system, these metaphors that we use, as in, you know, the invisible enemy, that's Covid. And, you know, we're fighting disease and we're off there with these, you know, these armies of white blood cells. The militaristic imagery is coming from that same time of colonial conquest. We think about self versus other, and that's an error of thought of how the immune system actually works, which is to repair damage. That is what our bodies are trying to do. We're not out there fighting an internal epic battle in our bodies. Our bodies are simply trying to restore the optimum working conditions. So that. And then to posit that the opposite of the violent system of colonial capitalism is communism. And to use the language of, like red flag.
- [40:39]
Dr. Raj Patel
I know people were thinking that. That's why I was.
- [40:41]
Dr. Susan Blum
I know. And that's why I want to address it. I want to address it because we are, again, this is not a dichotomy. We are sophisticated, highly imaginative, amazing creatures that have a whole repertoire of ideas and creations and experiments and expressions that go beyond the dichotomy between, you know, an economic system that is currently destroying the planet and everything that supports human life on it. And, you know, another economic system that we've seen exist in authoritarian models that don't. Doesn't feel particularly inviting. So I just want to share that in terms of what decolonizing medicine and food means, to me, it starts with the concept of deep medicine, which is what we have conceptualized as being an analogy to deep ecology. So deep ecology is the understanding of ecology beyond and outside a human centered approach that life around us is vital and beautiful and amazing and deserves to be respected, regardless of its utility to human beings. It's not simply there to be used by us is to move away from the Judeo Christian framework of, you know, humans up here and life, the rest of life all down there.
- [42:04]
Dr. Raj Patel
The word in the Bible was dominion, which means to rule over.
- [42:07]
Dr. Susan Blum
Exactly.
- [42:07]
Dr. Raj Patel
As opposed to the word which really wasn't in, in the original Hebrew was stewardship.
- [42:12]
Dr. Susan Blum
Exactly. And, and what's interesting, more of care.
- [42:14]
Dr. Raj Patel
And, and not you don't own it. You, you're basically a steward of taking care of it. It's a very different framework.
- [42:19]
Dr. Rupa Marya
Exactly.
- [42:20]
Dr. Susan Blum
A kinship. And that's what, you know, in that beautiful book, Braiding Sweetgrass, kimmerer's book, she looks at the myths, the stories of Sky Woman, who was the Kirk. That creation story is a story full of relationship, as opposed to Eve, which is the severing of relationship and the banishment from the garden. And you don't get to eat anymore from here and now, you get to menstruate and be in pain. You know, so just the whole framework is, you know, what kind of reality, what kind of story do you want to live with? And what we're saying is that, you know, deep medicine is understanding. It's those relationalities that were actually interrupted through a colonial capitalist framework. And we joined those two together because it's the way that capitalism spread. And it was the architecture of cosmology, the way of understanding who we are in relationships to things. Things needed to be severed in order to exploit them. You needed to be able to see the mountain as inanimate in order to mine it and riddle it with holes. You needed to see the river as not a person in order to pollute it. You needed to see the salmon as a commodity in order to not sing to it so you could club it over the head and rip out its eggs, which is how they farm salmon. I mean, it's the most grotesque thing I've ever seen. And so I think that deep medicine is understanding that health cannot be pursued on an individual level. That health can only be attained in proper relationship to each other and the entire web of life. And so those activities that we can do around our food system, that reawaken, rehydrate our ancient relationships to seeds, to water, to soil, to each other, are going to be a part of that practice of decolonizing our food system. And it is directly anti capitalist. It is saying there's no place in this for turning profits and consolidating power and having dominion, an executive having dominion over the workers in the fields. So it's about honoring and respecting our dignity and the dignity of all the entities around us that support, support our health and that are vital for our health. And I feel like for me as a doctor, nowhere is this More exciting. So this shows the gap between the practice of medicine and how we're being educated in medical schools and the, even the cutting edge of the science. Right now there's like a 30, 40, maybe 60 year gap. So we're still being taught of the digestive system as this tube that goes from your mouth to anus. And food goes through the deciding right, but it's in fact a whole rich forest. And that forest needs to be tended like an ecologist. And so that's, you know, deep medicine is really understanding those relationships and putting them into good practice.
- [45:18]
Dr. Raj Patel
And it's ecological medicine.
- [45:20]
Dr. Susan Blum
Well, it's. Yeah, it's beyond. It's like the ecologies of our social ecologies, our political ecologies, our, our biological ecologies and that, you know, those are ways of thinking of medicine that are so exciting. And my medical students, who are especially black, are coming up to me wanting to quit medical school because they know the science. They're like, what we're learning in medical school is not scientifically, it's not actually based in the real science that's here right now in front of us.
- [45:50]
Dr. Raj Patel
Well, it's 20th century. It's not 21st century thinking, it's enlightenment.
- [45:53]
Dr. Susan Blum
It's even beyond. I mean, it's so far gone. And it needs to reassert itself because the lines of power within medicine and those hierarchies are recalcitrant to change. And that's exactly what decolonizing medicine is, to change them.
- [46:08]
Ms. Washington
You know, when I started growing food, I just couldn't concentrate on just growing food because so many things were happening around me. Living in the Bronx for over 30 something years and being a physical therapist, I saw the relationship between food and health. I saw the relationship between food and education and the environment and housing and how they all intersected. And then I realized that, you know, talking to especially a lot of my patients who were older, who came from farms and realizing that at one time their parents and grandparents lived to a hundred years of age. And now here they are, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity, succumbing to strokes, end stage renal diseases. And right then and there, it sort of clicked in my head that there's something wrong with our food system because here were people who grew up on farms who were healthy. Now all of a sudden, because of what they were eating, were getting these diet related diseases. And when I would go into their homes as a physical therapist, I was like a holistic physical therapist because I couldn't really work and do my job unless I looked at their medication and looked at the food that they were eating.
- [47:19]
Mark
So you look at their medication cabinet, you look at their fridge.
- [47:22]
Ms. Washington
Oh boy. And when that fridge, fridge and that fridge and the kitchen cabinet and open that cabinet door and would see cookies and chips in the freezer, ice cream in the refrigerator, soda. And it was like, what the heck is going on here?
- [47:43]
Mark
Yeah.
- [47:43]
Ms. Washington
And so, because like I said, going to my, going to my neighborhood and going to the bodegas and seeing the colors of fruits and vegetables, but yet it was potato chips, it was cookies, it was sodas. And then I got to thinking that, wait a second, there's gotta be some sort of thing that is going on, especially in low income neighborhoods. Because when I would go to my white friends neighborhoods and go into their stores, walking in, you would see fresh vegetables and fruits and you would never see, you would never see the type of food that I would see in my neighborhood. That's number one. Number two on my block, in my area, you can go every block to see a fast food store. But when you go to my white neighborhoods, to the suburbs, you gotta take a car.
- [48:37]
Mark
Yeah.
- [48:38]
Ms. Washington
Drive. And so, you know, it just got me thinking about the food system and what it was happening not only in my neighborhood in the Bronx, but in so many of my friends, neighborhoods that lived in Detroit and Baltimore and Philly. We were having these same conversations about what we see in our food system in low income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color.
- [49:00]
Mark
And did the people who were suffering from diabetes, your patients, do they understand that what was in their fridge and what they're eating was causing them to be sick? Or were they just trying to just get by and kind of eat it as they could?
- [49:11]
Ms. Washington
The thing about it is that when you in a fixed income, you try to stretch those dollars. And so you try to spend as, be somewhat proactive in what you can spend getting, you know, a buck for your dollar. And most cheap, we know most unhealthy food is cheap. And so, you know, I, I didn't want to go there and be, you know, the sergeant and reprimand. I just wanted them to see the relationship to, between food and health as number one. But also to understand that, you know, if you're a diabetic, you know, there's a whole concept with diabetes, you should know about that because you're diabetic, sugar becomes like a drug. You know, you want it more, you want it more, you want more sugar. If you're a dialysis patient, you know, you're limited to amount of liquids, but you want More water and more. And so even though you would try to, you know, talk to the patient and they would understand, don't get me wrong, they understood their disease and what was happening. But when depression, you know, sets in and when you trying to stretch your dollars, sometimes you just say, you know, what the heck? You know, what the heck.
- [50:28]
Mark
So you think it's a lack of education or lack of skill, college this?
- [50:34]
Ms. Washington
I don't think it's a lack of education. What I think it is is that if you gave people healthy food options, they would take it. But there's no healthy food options. You know, what I used to upset is Tom and Tom and 10 people will tell our community, if you want to be healthy, all you got to do is drink water, give up soda, drink water, eat fruits of vegetables, plant a little garden without looking at the systemic problems, the institutional and structural problems that reinforce racism in our society. And no one talks about that.
- [51:15]
Mark
No, it's true. I mean, I remember working with my friend Chris Kennedy and Sheila Kennedy in South side Chicago, where they created a program called topbox. It was a nonprofit that got food basically at wholesale from distributors, right. From the meat packers, the farms. You packaged it up in boxes. It was fresh food. It was 35 bucks for a family of four for a week of fresh food. And they brought it into the churches in the south side of Chicago. And you could see from the church, there was no grocery store in Stipe, but you could see literally from the church parking lot, probably five or six fast food restaurants just circling around. And the whole parking lot was filled with people, mostly African Americans, hungry to get real food if they had access. And I think, you know, that's something you probably have witnessed in your community is when you bring these foods there, people want it. And it's not that they're avoiding it, it's just they don't have access. Is that, is that fair?
- [52:09]
Ms. Washington
Absolutely correct, though. Yeah, absolutely correct. And I say that because you can't tell people to eat healthy, eat fresh fruits and vegetables if they don't have that option.
- [52:22]
Mark
Yeah.
- [52:23]
Ms. Washington
And so for me, you know, I've been trying for years starting, you know, a farmer's market, low income farmers market in the Bronx. We're going on our 18th year to do just that, to provide our community with the access of fresh fruit, fresh fruits and vegetables. And why does it always have to be in affluent neighborhoods and not in our neighborhood?
- [52:48]
Dr. Raj Patel
Yeah, so true.
- [52:49]
Mark
You know, I think. I think the most people don't realize the extent of health disparities and it's often, you know, passed off as genetic or whatever. But, you know, if you look. If you look even at America in the 1960s, African Americans had healthier diets than whites. And if you look at pictures from back then on the marches, there were no people who were overweight of color back then. It was pretty much everybody was. Was slim and. And it was not an issue. And all of a sudden, in a generation, we've seen the incredibles, sort of speed of these diseases ravaging this community. So if you're African American, you're 80% more likely to have type 2 diabetes, four times as likely to have kidney failure, three and a half times as likely to get amputations as whites. Same thing if you're Latino. And in COVID 19, we're seeing incredible racial disparities where African Americans and Latinos are three times as likely to get it and die of it as whites. And it's not just because of genetic susceptibilities. There's these structural racism issues that I think are embedded in our society. Whether it's the essential workers who are mostly brown and black, who have to endure commutes and working in close quarters, and whether it's food packing plants or farms, migrant farmers, they're the ones who are getting sick, or whether it's because they live in more crowded housing and can't isolate, or whether they just don't have access to the same kind of health care. They're not getting the same type of health care. And testing. You're less likely, if you're African American, for example, to get tested for Covid if you have symptoms, then if you're white. So there's all these embedded problems in our system. And I think that, you know, the, the. The framework that you describe is quite different than we typically think of this idea of food deserts. Talk about food deserts as this sort of natural phenomena, like a desert is a natural thing, but it's not a natural thing. It's a. It's a designed problem, and it's. You refer to as food apartheid. So can you talk about this concept of food apartheid and how do we begin to break down this food apartheid issue?
- [54:47]
Ms. Washington
Mark, I don't understand why, especially during this climate right now here in 2020, when all of a sudden people just woke up and realized black lives matter. You know what I'm saying? That's number one. And people know for a fact. Where does the cheap, subsidized, processed food go into? They know. I mean, it's not rocket Science, they know for a fact that it goes into poor neighborhoods, mostly neighbors of color. So you know, let's cut the BS when he has this conversation because everyone knows, because it's not going to end in their neighborhood. So everyone knows that there is a difference between what is in white affluent neighborhoods and what is in poor black and brown neighborhoods. That's number one. And you know, I'm infuriated by that conversation because all of a sudden people act like they're dumb, like they don't know. And they know exactly the difference when it comes to food and housing and education based on color demographics and how much money you make. And so when the term food desert was first brought up to our attention in my community, I sort of like backed off of that. I'm saying, wait a second, we live in a food desert. You know, like first of all, who coined the term? That's number one. Why is, why is being there's some woman in the UK coined it. And then of course the USDA and everyone picked up on it because when you say food desert, it's sort of like softens the, the tone of, of, of, of, of the food disparities we see in, in our society. And so for me it's a forgetful desert because people in the desert would say, wait a second, we can't fool.
- [56:39]
Mark
Yeah.
- [56:40]
Ms. Washington
And so I coined the term food apartheid only because I wanted people to. First of all, what does that mean? But also look at the food system along race, the color of one skin, look at the food system of demographic, where does one live? And look at the food system or how much money you make, your affluence, you know, and economics and wealth. And when you start talking about food and pasta. I wanted people to start having that conversation around these issues because it's time and time again we go over and over again about this food system when we all know for a fact where does a cheap and subsidized food enter each and every day. And I'm sick and tired of having that conversation because for me it's about action. How do we change it? How do we stop spinning our wheels talking about hunger and poverty and food deserts and pre existing diseases and diet related diseases. You know, at one time you look at this country and even just the world was more plant based. And as we started to add more animals, we become more animal based in our food. And as a result, at one time we were 2,000 calories per capita, now over 3,800 calories per capita. And you can see what's happening in other countries as we've gone from plant based to animal based, the intake of.
- [58:17]
Mark
Calories and as you know, starchy, sugary calories. That's it.
- [58:21]
Ms. Washington
Sugary calories. How we pay, how we pay farmers to grow subsidies such as corn. Corn is a billion dollar business to turn into hospital sponsor. That corn that you see is that for us, it's for food and it's for feeding cows that really can't digest it. So.
- [58:40]
Mark
And ethanol, which is stupid, right?
- [58:42]
Ms. Washington
So let's get off, let's get off this bandwagon about the food system and yeah, it needs to be fixed. No one needs to, doesn't need to be fixed. Those are exactly what it's supposed to be doing. Because we know for a fact, you ask any person you know in this country, well, would you rather, you know, shop at a low income neighborhood or would you like to go to like the Whole Foods which are in African neighborhood, Trader Jones and sing?
- [59:11]
Mark
So I'm, yeah, it's fascinating. I, I saw this clip on Instagram of a, a woman talking to a largely white audience, I think most all white audience, saying, how many of you in this audience would like to be.
- [59:27]
Dr. Raj Patel
You know, treat in the way that.
- [59:28]
Mark
African Americans are in this country and have, have their experience. And not a single person stood up, should stand up. She said, I don't think you understood my question. Would anybody would like to be treated as an African American in this country just stand up. No one stood up. She said, well, you all know the problem. You're just pretending you don't know. And I think it's easy to look aside and ignore it. It's easy to blame people. And I think there's a lot of focus on personal responsibility. People just aren't eating well because they don't want to. But there really are structural issues of access, the structural issues of, of, of skills, of knowledge, of tradition that are just, they're just sort of obscured the ability for people to reclaim their, their health and their traditional food waste. And I think that's, that's what you're doing in the Bronx. That's what you're doing with your farm. And I think it's interesting to hear from you. What, what has that experience been like over the last few decades of being in those communities and trying to change the way people think about food and their health and access. How is that giving you insight into maybe how to solve this problem on a bigger scale?
- [60:31]
Ms. Washington
Well, I think for me I, I see myself as an agitator, as well, I've been gifted, I guess, with the ability to say what I want to say. I've never been beholden to like a non profit or job that sort of like, no, Karen, you can't say that. Or you know, the funders are not going to like that. So I've always been a person of very independent in what I've been able to say and do. And so that conversation I would have with my patients was really, really mind blowing because, you know, after a while they would sit down and say, Ms. Washington, you're right. You know, I was, you know, my parents were never sick a day in their life and look at me, you know, and they would want to change. And I would bring them fresh fruits and vegetables from our farmers market at the end of the day because I think I wanted them to care. You have someone to care about them, but then also to take action, talk as chief. People talk about food justice and food sovereignty. But for me, in order to do this work, have to be actively involved in dismantling some of the social injustices that you see. And so for me, doing the farmer's market, going around and speaking at different venues, I think my, my biggest accomplishment has been through the BUGS conference is the impact that it has on young people. Yeah, on the younger generation of black and brown youth. And I say that because growing up as a youth, if I was to tell my parents that I wanted to be a farmer or anybody, they would look at me like I was crazy. I mean, even to think about going on a farm or visiting a farm or wanting to be a farm. Because for so long growing up, farming was equal to slavery, you know, you working for the man this time and so now. And that was a history that was embedded in my head, you know, but since I've been older and really been in the food world and to really understand the history of the African American experience, experience in this country and how African American enslaved people built the agricultural system in this country with seeds in our hairs and knowledge around crop rotation and irrigation and medicinal herbs and tools, all of a sudden there's a resurgence of inquiry, especially from our youth, getting the history right. And once you plant that seed in their head and understand that what we've done wrong as African Americans is that we moved away from the land. And as we moved away from the land, you can see what has happened to us. Our history is that we are agrarian people. This is in our DNA, this is our blood. We are people of land and food. And so when you start talking to that to young people and, and have them understand their place in history, their place in agriculture. All of a sudden a light bulb goes off and it says, wait a second. I've been taught that farming has been slavery, when in fact it's my people who brought farming to this country. I should embrace it. I want to embrace it. I want to understand more. And then I don't want to be like my parents and grandparents who are now stroke, end stage renal diseases, amputations, you name it. I want to lead a more healthier life. That's number one. But then I also want to go back to the land. I want to go back to land because there's a history around stolen land. There's a history around wealth building that has been taken from us. And so we're trying to right that wrong and put that knowledge back into the hands of young people so they understand the importance, the importance of growing food, the importance of going back to the land, the importance of what it means to be in community, what social capital and communal wealth means to us. And so the whole dialogue has shifted and the concentration has been on our youth. So for me to see the overwhelming youth that want to farm, it's extraordinary.
- [65:00]
Dr. Mark Hyman
When it comes to supplements, you only.
- [65:01]
Dr. Raj Patel
Want the best for your body.
- [65:03]
Dr. Mark Hyman
The kind with the highest quality, cleanest and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients, and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, doctorhyman.com has the world's best, best selection of top quality premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So check out Dr.hyman.com because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's Dr. Hyman.coM-R-H Y-M-N.com if you love.
- [65:44]
This podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman.
- [65:50]
Please reach out.
- [65:51]
I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman. For video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
- [66:34]
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- [66:36]
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