The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey

Episode: Reversing The American Food Pyramid | Calley Means
Guest: Calley Means (co-author of "Good Energy")
Date: January 9, 2026

Episode Overview

In this incisive and impassioned episode, Dave Asprey is joined by Calley Means—a leading critic of the American food and healthcare systems, co-author of Good Energy, and founder of the health policy company TrueMed. They dive deep into the structural failures and perverse incentives underpinning the U.S. “sick care” system: from the origins and impact of the food pyramid to the roles of regulatory agencies, pharma, big food, and government subsidies.
The conversation, urgent and wide-ranging, lays out why chronic disease is rising, what’s wrong with current policy, how financial incentives reward illness over health, and what real change looks like at a systemic and practical level. Both bottom-up empowerment and top-down policy reform are explored, with sharp critiques—and moments of optimism throughout.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Motivation & Systemic Failures

• Calley recounts the personal story of his mother's rapid decline from undiagnosed metabolic dysfunction to terminal cancer, exposing how common medical practice repeatedly prescribes drugs instead of tackling root causes.
  • Quote:

    “If at one point...a doctor sat her down and said, this is why your high cholesterol represents underlying metabolic dysfunction...If they, instead of rotating her, that prescription, actually wrote her an exercise intervention and a dietary intervention...she’d still be here today.”
    (Calley, 03:56)

• Calley’s sister, Dr. Casey Means, left medicine after realizing metabolic health is ignored or suppressed in the system, inspiring their family’s mission.

2. Incentives in Healthcare & Food: Perverse and Profitable

• Most institutions, including regulatory agencies, pharma, and food companies, are economically incentivized to keep people sick—the sicker the population, the higher the recurring profits.
  • Quote:

    “Every single institution that impacts our health makes more money when more people are sick, when more people are addicted, when more people are in fear, including the FDA, which does not take taxpayer money. 75% of their money comes from the pharmaceutical industry.”
    (Calley, 05:38)

• Chronic disease is now the “greatest profit invention in human history.” In the U.S., the problem is acute and unique compared to places like Japan.

3. Emergent Behaviors & Fixing the Incentives

• Dave explains systemic problems: when small, well-intentioned actions across a massive, complex system have disastrous emergent effects because of poorly aligned incentives.
  • Quote:

    “When billions of micro decisions are made by people who are well intentioned. And so we fix the incentives and the system will self regulate.”
    (Dave, 08:10)

4. Metabolic Disease: The Lifetime “Management” Trap

• Over a third of American kids (and climbing) are prediabetic; drugs are prescribed for life, from statins to Ozempic, even to children.
  • Quote:

    “All chronic disease treatments say your saviors in this, it’s a lifetime institute of management. Okay, you’ve got at 12 years old, obesity. Ozempic for life... That’s the guidance.”
    (Calley, 09:02)

• The medical system abdicates root cause prevention and is complicit through plausible deniability.

5. Government Subsidies & Ultra-Processed Food

• U.S. food policies subsidize ultra-processed, unhealthy food, especially targeting the poor. Most food stamp spending goes to junk food, in stark contrast to other developed nations.
  • Quote:

    “We are literally systematically poisoning our population. And then healthcare only kicks in to manage disease for your life once you’re sick, to basically benefit pharma and the medical system.”
    (Calley, 15:27)

6. Reframing "Food is Medicine" in Policy & Practice

• TrueMed seeks to enable the use of tax-advantaged healthcare accounts (HSA/FSA) for exercise, healthy food, and supplements via letters of medical necessity.
  • Quote:

    “You can actually save, you know, 40%, whatever your tax rate is on food so we've been evangelizing that...when your doctor is about to put you on a statin...ask them, can they write you a letter of medical necessity for exercise, for healthy food that unlocks [HSA/FSA] and your money can actually go towards that.”
    (Calley, 11:01)

• Dave: the medical system resists classifying food or exercise as "medical" yet prescribes lifetime drugs quickly.

7. Institutional Corruption: Pharma, Media, and Research

• Deep dive into legalized bribery in medical research and policy setting—doctors, “independent” nutrition panels, university researchers, media, and even civil rights groups are often funded by the food or pharma industries.
  • Quote:

    “The food industry pays 11 times more for foundational nutritional research than the NIH. Dr. Ornish isn’t seen as a...unbiased researcher. He’s seen as a public relations asset.”
    (Calley, 38:52)

  • “Pharma...pays 60% of all TV news budgets. So...they fund the research, and then the research has the seal of Harvard or the seal of the NIH on it...It says, for instance, that lucky charms are healthier than beef.”
    (Calley, 54:10)

8. The Role of Free Speech & Independent Media

• Shift away from legacy media to independent voices is bringing the health crisis to mainstream attention despite censorship and coordinated suppression.
  • “Where eyeballs are going is independent media. And then what’s happening, there’s a vicious assault on you, on others who are speaking up. Why is that? Like, why are YouTube videos being censored?...pharma is also one of the biggest spenders on tech.”
    (Calley, 55:17)
  • Social justice messaging is being weaponized to silence critics of ultra-processed foods.

9. Solutions: Bottom-Up and Top-Down Approaches

Bottom-Up:

• Radical personal responsibility: trust your body, learn the basics, don’t outsource chronic disease management to doctors.
  • “You should maybe listen to your doctor, but you should not trust them when it comes to chronic conditions.” (Calley, 24:05)

Top-Down:

• Political change via executive action (e.g., RFK’s pledge to declare public health emergency for food)
• De-subsidizing ultra-processed food, regulatory reform, rebuilding free press, incentivizing regenerative agriculture, leveraging technology (robotics) to decentralize food production.

10. Regenerative Agriculture & Future Trends

• Distributed, regenerative small farms outperform industrial monocropping in yield and health outcomes; new robotics will lower labor costs and barriers.
• Centralization of land is a risk—much is being bought by multinational interests.

Notable Quotes & Moments

On Medical System Incentives

“Chronic diseases are the greatest profit invention in human history because people stay on [medications] and they continue to rack up comorbidities.”
(Calley, 06:10)

On Corrupt Nutrition Policy

“The USDA is saying 10% added sugar for a two year old’s diet is appropriate...President Biden could do that tomorrow [revoke it].”
(Calley/Dave, 33:14)

On Pharma & Media Collusion

“Pharma spends 60% of all TV news budgets...it’s not to influence the consumer, it’s to impact the news itself.”
(Calley, 55:17)

On Bottom-Up Empowerment

"Every animal except humans and animals you’ve domesticated...Don’t have chronic metabolic issues...We’re born with an innate sense...the medical system—by weaponizing the fear of death—has actually taken us out of the awe for what we’re putting in our bodies."
(Calley, 27:05)

On Free Market Reality

"The system is rigged right now. We don’t have a free market. We have a kleptocracy."
(Calley, 62:47)

On Rebuilding the System

“If Coke actually made healthy stuff that tasted good, they would double their market cap.”
(Dave, 64:39)

Important Segment Timestamps

• [03:22] — Calley shares the personal story of his mother’s illness and death; origins of his and Casey’s mission
• [05:38] — How regulatory agencies (FDA) and industry incentives keep people sick
• [09:02] — The economics of chronic disease, lifetime medication, and “plausible deniability”
• [11:01] — Food is Medicine: true policy leverage and how to use HSA/FSA dollars for health
• [15:27] — How US food policy subsidizes and entrenches ultra-processed food for the poor
• [24:05] — Distrust of standard medical advice for chronic conditions; failure of pharma for chronic disease
• [38:52] — Institutional corruption in nutrition research, universities, and medical societies
• [54:10] — Overview of the media, research, and policy pipeline for Big Food and Pharma
• [67:10] — Technology’s role in regenerative agriculture
• [69:41] — Deliberate sabotage of small-scale and distributed food systems
• [71:52] — The blessings and challenges of raising kids with access to healthy, local food
• [72:35] — Final call for optimistic, incentive-driven reform: “The people will make the right decision if they have the right incentives.”

Tone & Style

• Frank, direct, and occasionally irreverent (e.g., “If your pediatrician is fat...get another pediatrician”)
• Informed but anti-institutional; deep skepticism of government, academia, and industry authority
• Passionate advocacy for both radical personal responsibility and urgent systemic reform
• Occasional humor, sarcasm, and colorful analogies (robotic dogs, “politician hair,” etc.)

Summary Takeaways

This episode offers a sweeping indictment of America’s food and medical systems, grounded in both personal tragedy and systemic analysis. Incentives—financial, institutional, regulatory—are at the dark heart of the obesity and chronic disease crisis, but the tools for change are emerging: data empowerment, policy reform, technology, and a new generation of independent, well-informed citizens and thought leaders.

Practical solutions range from immediately actionable (ask your doctor for a letter of medical necessity to use HSA/FSA funds on real health) to transformative (dismantling perverse subsidies and regulatory capture). Both Dave and Calley are cautiously optimistic: “We’re going to win. The people will make the right decision if they have the right incentives.” (Calley, 72:32)