← The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
651. Why You're Sick...It Isn't What You Think, But It's SHOCKING!
00:59:23
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- [00:01]
A
The biggest thing that shocked me overall is realizing that the government is not looking out for you. It is not watching, regulating, making sure that things in the grocery store are safe. Why would they put things in the grocery store that are unsafe? Dr. Amy, they couldn't allow that. Yes, they freaking do. And now that you know it, you get to decide, audience, if you're going to care about that when you decide what you're putting in your cart, I
- [00:30]
B
just want to say thank you. The fact that you're here means that you have trusted me with something so valuable these days, your time. And I do not take that lightly at all. So if you're listening because you're exhausted, you're gaining weight for no reason, losing your hair, getting really frustrated, or you've been told that everything looks normal when you know deep down something isn't right, I want you to know that I see you. I've been where you are. And that's exactly why I created this podcast. My mission is super simple, to give you the information, the hope, and the tools that I wish someone had given me years ago. So my goal is you get to stop wondering what's wrong with your body and finally start getting your life back. So if these episodes have helped you at all, would you do me one small favorite? Take just a few seconds to follow the show, the little button in the upper corner, and then leave a review. Every follow and every review helps this podcast reach another person who's lying there awake at night, wondering why they don't even recognize themselves anymore when they look in the mirror wondering what's happened to this amazing, energized, full of life person they used to be. You're helping them. And not only that, when you follow the show, you'll be notified about the hottest episodes everyone is listening to and everyone's downloading along with any bonus episodes I drop throughout the month. Think of it as your insider pass. So thank you for letting me be part of your journey, and thank you for your time. Now, let's get into today's episode. Here's a question for you. Is it really your lack of willpower that's making you gain weight, struggle with fatigue, battle insulin resistance, battle hormone imbalance, and just fight to keep your thyroid functioning? Or have we been pointing the finger at the wrong culprit all along? Because, let's be honest, we have more diet advice, more medications, more supplements, and more healthcare than ever before. Yet chronic disease continues to skyrocket. Obesity is climbing. I mean, it's. It's everywhere you look. Autoimmune disease is exploding, diabetes is everywhere. 93% of Americans are insulin resistant, Infertility is increasing, and millions of people are told that their labs are normal. While they'll feel anything but normal, you don't feel normal. So what's really going on? Today's guests set out to aim answer that question. Patrick and Ashley Sullivan are the founders of Jigsaw Health and the filmmakers behind Breaking Big Food. Their documentary investigates how corporate influence reshaped our food system, how ultra processed foods became the norm, and why chronic disease continues to explode despite all of our advances in medicine. Today, we're really pulling back the curtain on big food, asking the uncomfortable questions and talking about what every person can to protect themselves and their family. So let's dive in. Patrick and Ashley, I am so excited to have you on this show to talk about Breaking Big Food because like we were saying, off air, in my eyes, this is a documentary that every single person in the world, but especially the United States, and we'll get into the why every single person needs to watch this, because even myself, I've been in the health industry for years now, decades, and my jaw was still on the floor. So first of all, welcome to the Thyroid Fixer podcast. And second of all, thank you for making this documentary that we're going to talk about today.
- [04:24]
C
Oh, thank you so much for having us. This is definitely a subject that's very close to our hearts, and this is a definitely a passion project for us. We believe fully that health is attainable and we need to empower people. We need to educate people. They need to understand what's really happening and why they might be feeling sick and what they can do about it. So.
- [04:45]
A
And we've had half a million people watch Breaking Big Food so far, so only like 299more million to go.
- [04:53]
C
Hey, we got.
- [04:55]
B
That's the goal. But it's needed because, listen, we might have that subset of people out there that they want to stay ignorant, they want to keep their head in the sand. They. They don't care about disease, they don't care about how they look, they don't care about how they feel, but that's a really small percentage. I would say, you know, the majority of people do care about how they feel. They do care about how they look, they do care about their health and whether or not they're going to die of a catastrophic disease. And this documentary sheds such a light. Like I said, like anyone that watches it, I mean, the first 10 minutes, your jaw is going to be on the floor. You are going to learn things and hear things that you never have before that will shock you at first. And then you kind of settle in and go, okay, that kind of makes sense. So I'm going to start off by just, you know what, What, how you guys own a supplement company, a very. I mean, an amazing supplement company. What made you go, you know what? We're going to take on this task of doing a documentary on big food.
- [06:00]
A
Well, thank you for the kind words about jigsaw health. My dad and I started that in 2005, so we just celebrated our 21st birth. And one of the things that Ashley and I have learned over the last 10 years of running Jigsaw is that traditional marketing can kind of fall flat. And we've really sort of leaned into doing content and really passion projects that help to show what we believe in. And we had a fun time making Breaking Pickleball as a documentary. And we have a lot of great electrolyte products that are used by thousands of pickleballers. And as we were getting ready to make Breaking Pickleball Part two, Ashley was the one that said, maybe we're meant to pivot to something else. Why don't you talk about that?
- [06:44]
C
Well, we had recently listened to Cali Means on a couple of big podcasts and his sister Casey Means. You know, they wrote the book Good Energy, and really it was listening to Callie speak. And we sat next to him at the Consumer Health Summit. What was it, 2024.
- [07:01]
A
May of 2024.
- [07:02]
C
Yes.
- [07:03]
A
Sat right next to him.
- [07:04]
C
And when we heard his message, we were both like, okay, I've not heard anyone explain it the way he has. Laying out chapter and verse how the American food system went rotten. What in the world is going on with all of this? And so we were like, we have to help amplify this message. We just made a pickleball documentary. We know how to make a documentary. Our team is incredibly talented. Let's put that talent to something else that we're passionate about, and that is helping to amplify this message.
- [07:36]
B
Yes. Well, I'm so glad you did. So let's. Let's just really just get into the meat of what is in this. No pun intended. What is in this documentary. So the first big, mind blowing point that I want you guys to unpack for me and for the audience is learning that Big Tobacco. I had no idea. Big Tobacco actually started buying up food companies in the 80s. And this is literally like the turning point in the American food supply at this point.
- [08:09]
A
So in 1985, R.J. reynolds, which is the maker of Camel cigarettes, they bought Nabisco for 5 billion. In 1988, Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, they bought Kraft Foods for $13 billion. Those were some of the largest M and A transactions in, in the history of the world. That happened in the 1980s. So as big tobacco was basically being shut down by the surgeon general, they said, well, what are we going to do with all this money? I guess let's go buy Nabisco and let's go buy Kraft. And So by the mid-1990s, the cigarette industry controlled about 40% of the food supply in America. And it's only gone up since then.
- [08:54]
C
What could go wrong? Right.
- [08:56]
B
Well, that was my next question is, do we know the motive? Do we know the why? Why would a big tobacco company with all of these billions of dollars just sitting around go, you know what we're gonna buy? Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
- [09:10]
C
Well, I mean, they learned how to make things addictive. That's what they got really good at. And they thought, well, I think we can apply some things that we learned through selling more cigarettes to how to make food more addictive. What to put in there, what chemicals, what combinations of this and this to set off the brain receptors and whatever else they do to make you want one more. It's the little scene in the documentary that's like that old commercial, the Lays commercial is like, nobody can eat just one, Right?
- [09:40]
A
Yeah. I'm going purely speculative here, but I've thought a lot about that question because it often gets asked when we're being interviewed about the documentary. I wish that we would have tried to dig deeper into it in the film itself. But in hindsight, I think big tobacco is like, well, basically we're a farm to store company. Tobacco is grown out in the fields. We do all this work to process it, package it, distribute it, and people, consumers buy it and it's a consumer packaged good. So for them to look at that and say, well, wheat is grown in fields and corn is grown in fields, and that's packaged up as a CPG product and it's sold to consumers. You know, they already kind of have the mindset for the margin, the distribution channels, the relationships, and even the advertising, magazine ads and TV ads and television commercial ads, although they couldn't do TV commercial ads in the 80s, I don't think. But I think that's probably just sort of their mindset, one of survival. Hey, we're a big company, a big conglomerate, and one of our lines of business is about to get shut down in America. What should we do?
- [10:51]
B
Yes. Yeah.
- [10:52]
A
And the next thing, of course, is like, okay, well, we have all these scientists that used to work on tobacco for us. These essentially, like, what could we do to have them work on the food? And of course, every business, you know, the, the profit motive of how can we make a product for less expensive? Well, one way to figure out is to, like, make it stay on the shelves longer so that there's less waste. Oh, well, hey, I'm a scientist that figured out this cool preservative or this cool new seed oil or this cool whatever, you know, a cheaper way to use sugar. Going from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup. It's like you can kind of trace back every decision over the last four decades to how do we improve our business versus was anybody there asking, is this going to be bad for consumers?
- [11:44]
C
It was just the business mindset, I think. Right. The focus is how do we keep our business alive? How do we save profits? How do we make more?
- [11:53]
B
Right, right, exactly. So, I mean, every industry from healthcare to big food, it is a business. At the end of the day, it is about making money. And these big corporations want to make as much money as possible independent of your health and independent of what is good for the American human. So you have big tobacco buying big food. And now let's get a little bit deeper into this changing of the food itself and literally taking the food and making it, you said it earlier, hyper palatable. So can you unpack for us? What exactly does that mean? And then what's the ultimate outcome for us as humans when we're consuming these hyper palatable foods?
- [12:46]
A
So Vani Hari, the food babe, food babe army, we did actually ask her to be in the documentary and she agreed. But unfortunately we could never get the schedules to work out.
- [12:56]
C
That was like really busy time for her.
- [12:58]
A
She has done a lot of work. Others have as well. But I really credit her the most with showing sort of a before and after of like, you know, this idea that like, well, I used to eat a McDonald's, I used to drink Gatorade, I used to eat skittles, I used to eat Cheerios and I'm fine. Yeah, you know, the sort of 50 year old. And it's like, did you. And she has this before and after of the ingredients in, say, French fries at McDonald's then versus now. And things have gotten a lot different in the last three, four or five decades over on the basis of, like, we Just talked about how do we make it taste better, quote unquote, how do we make it last longer, how do we make it less expensive, Right? So all those things that they did by, you know, substituting, let's say, tallow as what McDonald's used to fry in, what everything used to be fried in for canola oil, well, that one change in and of itself, it can probably account for so, so much inflammation. When I, when I see somebody that's overweight, I look at them with empathy and I'm like, likely this is an inflammatory food based issue. There's probably other factors to it, but they're probably just not aware that things like ranch dressing or hummus is filled with inflammatory seed oils.
- [14:24]
C
Well, and on that note, it's like every food label is saying, but it's below the threshold of being dangerous. It's less than 2% or whatever it is, right? They're like, right, everybody's safe on their label, but if every single label has it, you're all of a sudden eating a lot of it.
- [14:42]
B
Yeah, right.
- [14:43]
C
You know, and like everyone's covering their butt by making sure it's below a certain thing. But then when you start to look at your labels of all the things, even hummus, things that you think are healthy, you're actually trying to do a good job. And you're eating salads and you're buying salad dressing and even Italian salad dressing or vinegarettes, you think it's better than ranch. But if you're not looking at that label, look at it, because it's got a bunch of junk in it.
- [15:07]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And what really surprised me when I started looking at labels and like I said, I mean, your documentary even taught me things and shocked me. And I, you know, here I am in this health space and thinking that I know a lot, but I learned, and that's why I want everybody to watch it. But what really shocked me, even when I started looking at labels years ago, is you would turn over something just like you're saying it's Italian dressing, right? You expect to see some herbs, some olive oil and vinegar, and then you see these words that you can't pronounce and we. Why is there food coloring in my salad dressing? Why do we have to use high fructose corn syrup and sweeten my Italian salad dressing? Why are we using seed oil? I mean, it goes on and on and on. I flipped over a package. I'll never forget this. I flipped over a package of lunch meat because my husband loves salami for some reason. And I flipped over a package of salami and I looked at it and I saw not just meat. It wasn't just meat. There was gluten and wheat and like franken chemicals in the salami. And I'm like, but it's just lunch. Me, like back when my mom used to go to the deli and get salami, it was just meat. It wasn't all this crap in it. So, yeah, to your point, it's wild out there when you actually start looking at labels. If you take the time to do it, you will be shocked because you should be. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you should be able to pronounce everything that's on a label, right?
- [16:37]
C
Absolutely. Either it's real food or it's a chemical. And the whole thing is this becomes like a compound effect. It's these little drip, drip, drip, drip. It's in my coffee creamer, it's in my hummus, it's in my salad dressing, it's in my steak sauce. It's the salami. The chicken at the restaurant's marinated in it.
- [16:54]
A
The.
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C
It's in the salami. It's. It literally is in the bread. It's in everything. And so that compound effect is just your body doesn't understand how to optimize and process and utilize those types of foods and it just becomes like a toxic soup situation.
- [17:11]
A
One of the things that we often hear with people who watch the documentary is I totally am on board with what you're saying and I feel so overwhelmed. I'm not sure where to start. And we recommend step one, begin to learn how to read ingredient labels. And that's why we made a one page PDF cheat sheet called the Dirty Dozen Ingredients to Avoid. And listeners can find that on breakingbigfood.com, it's just a simple PDF download. We really were hoping that people, once they start to learn, we feel like you start to develop a superpower. This knowledge that you have that most people don't really have on, like, you know, what is xanthan gum like? Oh, I should be staying away from that. It's not the gum that you chew, people, although that's full of chemicals and crap you probably don't want either. But the gums, the seed oils, emulsifier. Emulsifiers. Yeah, it's a great list that really. Ashley led the charge on putting together. And the Dirty Dozen Ingredients to Avoid can be found on breakingbigfood.com I'm sure we'll do a link in the show elements.
- [18:18]
C
Yeah, just a way to help people like get started without so much overwhelm. Because it is overwhelming.
- [18:23]
B
It really is. And I think the other argument that I'm sure you've heard as well, and I hear this all the time, is that it's more expensive to buy real food than it is to buy these ultra processed foods. And in the documentary you really, really shine a light on the fact that that's how it's planned, it's meant to be that way. Can you unpack that a little bit? And then what can we say to those people that are really struggling with a budget who they're not wrong. It's literally more expensive to buy fruit, vegetables and meat than it is to buy lunchables and goldfish crackers.
- [18:58]
A
Yeah. And that's because of the subsidies that the American government gives to the corn and soybean growers. They are mostly growing corn and soybean as feed for basically meat, the meat industry. And it leads to quote, cheap food. And of course the cost of cheap food is how you're, how much are you going to shell out for supplements or doctor's visits or whatever else you're going to do to try to overcome that cheap food? So it's a real problem. One of the things that I found, and I don't remember the exact numbers, but I feel like Americans spend about 10% of their income on food compared to Italians that spend about 30 or 40% of their income on food. That's a stark difference. I don't think that those numbers are exact, but the difference directionally is correct. And it says a lot. Where their priorities are, where their priorities are too much. In America, we eat to live, whereas really we humans were designed to like, we live to eat. Like that's what.
- [20:12]
C
It's a primal instinct. Yes.
- [20:14]
A
But why do we make the dough, you know, why do we make a paycheck? It's basically to feed ourselves, to feed our families. So I think the most important thing is to think about food not from a like, just as that category of spending, but holistically, how are you investing your dollars? AJ Richards, who is in the documentary and has a site called from the farm.org he with his partner Brook Ence, business partner Brooke Ents, he has a great saying. You can pay the farmer now or pharma later.
- [20:53]
B
Oh, I like that.
- [20:54]
C
That's a good one, right?
- [20:56]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [20:57]
C
And really I think that if people sat down instead of just looking at the price tag on grass fed meat versus conventional or on goldfish versus the produce. If they sit down and do a budget about like, and put down all of the things that you typically buy, you buy fruit snacks, you buy goldfish, you buy the lunchables, you buy steak sauces and marinades, soda. Soda and all of these things. Right. What if you were to get rid of all of the fluff out of there and put in ground beef, eggs, milk, you know, butter, high quality olive oil and basically make, just simplify your dishes down. Breakfast is like eggs and some sort of like meat or something like that, like versus like, you know what we need Pop tarts. We gotta have the kids like to grab these because they're good to go and it's, you know. No, just make the food from real food and you'll be surprised how expensive the other cheap food gets when you like put it side by side on your spreadsheet.
- [22:04]
A
Yeah, exactly. One of the things that Cali said, I think in our documentary, although he may have said it on a podcast, is like the food that like lays. No one can eat just one. You end up eating a whole $7 bag in one sitting because your body is signaling like, dude, we're not getting the calories we need. We're not getting the nutrition.
- [22:27]
C
Sorry.
- [22:27]
A
We're getting the calories, but we're not getting the nutrition. Try and overeat. Grass fed steak.
- [22:34]
C
Yeah, it's not even food that's going to a lot of the budget. It's junk.
- [22:40]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And just to be clear too, you're not even saying, because I want people to, to really hear this message, you're not even saying, saying that you have to buy the grass fed meat and the organic produce. Just stepping from processed foods to real meat to regular produce is a huge step in the right direction.
- [23:02]
C
Huge upgrade. Yeah. And as you can maybe try and upgrade eventually if you can do some things organic. If not, make sure you're washing the pesticides off of your produce. You know, there are things you can do at home to protect your family. You know, it's not an all or nothing and it is not about perfection. It is about direction and just making small changes.
- [23:25]
B
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, one thing I wanted to unpack something that you said, Patrick, about the, the government subsidies of farmers. Now I live here in Iowa. I drive past corn fields and soybean fields every single day and I don't think Americans understand what's happening. So these farmers are literally being paid by the government to grow the corn and the soil. On top of that, there's Also the layer that they're incentivized to plant genetically modified seed. And many of these farmers, like they have little choice if they want to remain financially viable. They're not allowed to do organic, they're not allowed to do non GMO crops. The government basically forces their hand into buying these GMO seeds if they want to get the subsidies from the government, which basically means it doesn't matter what happens in a given year. If there's a drought, if your plants don't grow, you're making the same amount of money because you're doing what we want you to do as the federal government.
- [24:26]
A
Yeah. I would say that many farmers are in an abusive relationship with the federal government, with Monsanto, which is the makers of Roundup Glyphosate, actually now owned by Bayer. Recently, within the past few months, there's been a lot of dust kicked up about glyphosate. I think that there's a lot of smoke and probably some fire. RFK Jr has really led the charge as an attorney. Previously on Connecting glyphosate usage to non Hodgkin's lymphoma in particular. But there's a lot of signal there that says this is just sort of more corporate misbehavior and essentially being covered up by captured regulatory agencies. You know, the Dark Horse podcast about three or four months ago did a really big sort of expose episode on Glyphosate and the. The seminal article that was from the early 2000s that talked about, oh, glyphosate is safe, except for all these things that are problematic with the article, including Monsanto helped to write it and they weren't disclosed as an author.
- [25:40]
C
Yeah, go figure.
- [25:41]
A
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe a bit of a bias there. So my data, the full name of the documentary is Breaking Big Food. How the American Food System Went Rotten and how it's being revived. We in working with our team initially to sort of figure out what is this documentary going to be. There was this discussion of it. Is it investigative journalism into these stories about big tobacco buying big food? Yes, that is part of it. But the second half was really important for Ashley and I to show inspirational Davids who were fighting back at a local level. And we took our crew to various places in our hometown of the Phoenix area in Phoenix, Arizona and showed a number of places that are fighting back. In fact, how we were inspired to create here in our Jigsaw Health headquarters at the other end of the building, Firefly Organic Coffee and Market. We were inspired by Good Living Greens and Fountain Hills, by Inspire Farms in Mesa. We went out to the Desert highlands, if you will, the high country, to meet Tim Peterson and Arizona Grass Fed Beef. We went out to see Wendell Crowe at Crow's Dairy. And we were just really sort of learning and being inspired about how to do this at a local level, hoping that Americans would be inspired to say, well, why don't we make our own Firefly or something like it here in our neck of the woods?
- [27:18]
C
Or to give them a reason to support someone who is.
- [27:21]
B
Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly. Well, since you brought it up, we have a ton of listeners in the Phoenix area. So if you're in that area, if you're visiting, you have to, have to, have to go to the Firefly coffee shop. You can give the address, the whole deal. Because it's more than coffee. I mean, this was birthed out of. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, Ashley. Weren't you tested for mold and you had high mold mycotoxin come up in this test from a food source and you connected it back to coffee. So that's what drove you to find a mold free coffee. But fireflies become so much more than that. I mean, now you have sourdough bread and you have healthy baked goods and you have the raw milk that you almost got shut down for or got, you know, a slap on the wrist. So tell the listeners more about Firefly because it all ties in. Like you said, you are doing your part in the Phoenix community to at least provide a resource where people can come and they know that anything they consume, from a cup of coffee to buying a loaf of bread that they are getting, you know, everything is pure. It's real whole food. It's not a Franken food.
- [28:29]
C
Yes. And it's all seed oil free, handpicked and vetted by me to make sure that there's no funky ingredients in anything. I mean, really more than anything. Well, of course we were devastated about the coffee thing because I love coffee so much. We both do. And we had developed this afternoon latte habit where we go to a different cafe and like have a latte in the afternoon, take a little break from work. And when I discovered that coffee was such a big carrier of mold as just because of, you know, it grows in humid climates and the processing itself, we realized how important it was that we find a good mold free coffee, realized there aren't that many great options. I mean, there are options and then it comes down to taste. And also there are no cafes There are no cafes that have mold free coffee and there are no cafes that even have organic coffee. And wait a minute, nobody's using organic milk. No one's using organic syrups and ingredients. I now don't feel good about going to any coffee shop. And it's like one of my favorite pastimes. So just basically built out of necessity and then through this whole documentary process, seeing the little micro markets where they're like offering things that you cannot get at your normal grocery store, like the raw milk and grass fed beef and farm fresh eggs. So we did turn like a big part of it is that market. And it's been amazing to see the community around us find us and appreciate what we're doing so much. Like, so many people have come in and said, I am so glad you exist because I literally could not leave my house to have coffee for X amount of years because I have struggled with mold or Lyme or whatever else. And they're very sensitive to that. And so they're just like to have this resource is, is like a miracle. And so seeing people be so grateful for it is very rewarding and it shows how much we need this. We need this on a grassroots, local level. We need more people offering this kind of thing.
- [30:26]
B
Yeah, exactly. You need to franchise it so we can get a Firefly and like every major city across the United States, as long as they fall within the parameters of keeping that high, it has to be Ashley approved and Ashley vetted in order for you to carry anything in there.
- [30:41]
C
I have had a number of people reach out interested in the franchise thing. So it is something that's on our radar. Not right now, but it is percolating back there as we kind of see the more demand come in and the emails like, hey, I'm trying to start something similar. You know, can you help me or are you willing to franchise? So I would love to see the Firefly coffee and market concept all over the country. I think it would be a wonderful thing and a great asset for people to be able to have you just
- [31:11]
B
put it out there to the universe. So now it's going to happen, Roman.
- [31:14]
C
Exactly.
- [31:16]
B
Because just because I want one, it's out of selfishness that I'm manifesting and I want one in Des Moines. So there you go. So let's get back to health. You know, my audience obviously struggles with thyroid dysfunction, hormone imbalance, endocrine imbalance, Hashimoto's insulin resistance, all the things. You know, your documentary is really making me step back and think about the drivers of these diseases, especially endocrine disease. And because we know that the endocrine system is so sensitive to food and chemicals and toxins. I mean, in doing this documentary, what were the light bulb moments that went off for you? All connecting disease states, Whether it's, you know, things that you dealt with personally or things maybe that your family dealt with. Do you start to think like, oh, my God, I wonder if, you know, grandma's cancer was tied to the shadow food that she's been eating all these years. I wonder if my nephew's autism isn't driven by the red food dye that's ever. You know, like, what pieces of the puzzle did you put together with disease?
- [32:20]
A
Well, it hit home for us in 2014 when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. And I talk about it a little bit in the film, and really, the frustrating part was each doctor that we went to go see, nobody could say how it got there. And, you know, I really believe that there are four legs to the health stool. How well are you sleeping? How well are you moving? What is your nutrition and what is your mindset? And I can tell you that in 2014, all four legs of my stool were pretty ratty, pretty broken. A lot of stress, A lot, not great intake, too much alcohol, too much stress. And I think that cancer, as we have discussed in the past, is sort of a mystery and also not. It's kind of like if you look at those four foundational elements and they're all needing work, what else would you expect to happen, Patrick? So for us, you know, having the cancer diagnosis, we ultimately decided to get thyroidectomy. I take T4 and T3 today, and thankfully, you know, my meds are dialed in. But I definitely had that moment of, like, total panic and fear. I did not want to get my thyroid removed. I was just like, once we did it, it was like, okay, let's close the chapter on that. Let's move on.
- [33:54]
B
Yeah.
- [33:55]
A
And as we began to make the film, it was really sort of a question of, like, why is every bad health marker on the rise? And one of the things that Cali said, I think he said in the film, I know he's tweeted about it. Three bullet points that are all very connected. Number one, the United States makes up for 4% of the world's population, yet we account for about 75% of global pharmaceutical profits, and we rank about 49th in life expectancy. So think of those three legs of a stool and ask yourself, what the hell is going on?
- [34:40]
B
Yeah.
- [34:40]
A
Is it the food probably it's not helping.
- [34:44]
C
It's not. Not the food.
- [34:45]
A
It's not. Not the food.
- [34:47]
B
Right, right.
- [34:48]
C
And I like to think of it, too, as, like, I think I had. I mean, I've heard other people use this analogy, too, but I had a realization of, like, the toxic bucket analogy, where everybody's got a toxic bucket and things are getting thrown in there right and left, and you can process some things better and some things not, but as life goes on, pretty soon it can just take one thing for the bucket to overflow, and that's when all of a sudden, you are thrown into some sort of serious health issue that you have. Like, you're just like, where the heck did this come from? And a lot of times it's just not overnight. It's something that's compiled over time, and food is something that is relatively controllable for most of us. Yeah. We can make different choices. So for food to be one of those things that we're piling into our toxic bucket every day, it feels like this gives us a lot of our power back.
- [35:40]
A
Yeah.
- [35:40]
C
To be able to say, I'm going to start making changes right here. I may not be able to change the air I breathe completely or, you know, whatever's in the air or, you know, whatever's sprayed on this couch right here that's probably got chemicals in it. You know what I mean? Like, they're everywhere. But I can control what I'm gonna have to look for lunch today.
- [35:59]
B
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. You absolutely can. And, you know, kind of what we talked about on your podcast, Rock Bottom podcast, when you had me on, we were talking about cancer. You know, one thing I didn't bring up, but it kind of is. Is pinging in my brain right now as you're talking about it, Patrick, is that you're right. Cancer is multifactorial. There's so many different things that go into the triggering of those mutated cancer cells and where they attack in your body. But the bottom line is, I, too, grew up consuming cereal and Schwebel's bread and the crappy government lunches at school and all of the things, honestly, all the way up to even when I shared, when I was competing and dealing with my thyroid issue, we didn't know back then. We did not know in the late 90s and early 2000s about artificial sweeteners and chemicals in food. I remember vividly buying a box from Costco of, like, the 100 pack of the Equal Packets. And because I couldn't have sugar during contest prep, I would open the equal packets and dump them in my mouth just to get stuck. Some kind of sweetness. We didn't know. And this documentary is the one thing that's going to shed light on people and educate them. If they get their head out of the sand, it's going to educate them as to what they're actually putting in their mouth. Because if this documentary was around 20 years ago, maybe, maybe I could have changed my eating, learned from it and maybe avoided hypothyroidism. Of course, I wouldn't be here with you today if I didn't go through that fervor story. But maybe I would have avoided the uterine cancer. Maybe you would have avoided this thyroid cancer. We don't know. But we do know the one thing, and your documentary just hits this point home hard, is that what is in our food supply right now is absolutely driving disease. Whether it's the main cause of it or just an instigator to push it along down the path, it is absolutely driving it.
- [38:01]
A
Yeah, well said. And that's why the inspiration, the idea is to another documentary that we watched that was really inspirational in making this was the biggest little farm. It came out in about, I think, 2018, and it's the story of a couple from LA who are not farmers at all, but they buy an old dirt plot monocrop land about two hours outside LA and over the course of seven years turn it into a regenerative organic farm where it's their mentor says, you know, regenerative farming is the hardest farming to get started because you have to really bring in the balance of nature to balance itself out so that everything works harmoniously. But once you get it going, it's the easiest kind of farming to do. So I may be silly for thinking this, but, you know, when you're driving by fields in Iowa that are just fill of either soy or corn, I'm thinking of, you know, that's some of the richest, most fertile land in the world. In 20 years, could all of those farms, with appropriate government subsidies, possibly or favorable loans from the government, could those farms slowly but surely become regenerative organic farms? To get back to what we city folk think of, when we think of farms, you know, we think of, oh, you got the cows and the chickens and the goats and the ducks and the pigs and everything all working in nature together. Well, farming has become so commoditized and so monocropped really, to drive down costs and improve economies of scale. But what have we sacrificed Time with seemingly a disregard for the health of the consumers and the health of the farmers. If I'm not mistaken, they talk about Iowa has the highest rates of cancer in America. Could it be the glyphosate? You know, it's all connected. And the more we get back to nature and the more we as Americans look at what can I do in my local community? Because maybe I don't have the space or the time or the wherewithal to raise chickens or do my own farm, but I could support a backyard chicken farmer who is and is feeding their chickens without corn or soy. That kind of references Tiffany Lilly from Inspire Farms. Her motto is we Inspire Farms one backyard at a time. And she talks about the story where she couldn't eat eggs because she was allergic to soy. And she's like, well, I'm allergic to soy, but why? What's the problem with the eggs? Well, the chickens were eating soy feed and they were eating soy because the government was paying for the soy to be cheap because they're paying off the farmers. So it's, it's all connected.
- [40:58]
C
It's not what you eat, it's what you eat.
- [40:59]
A
I'm like, I feel like I'm having a Charlie Day moment in the Beautiful Mind. Beautiful. But it's close. But it's always sunny in Philadelphia.
- [41:09]
C
It's all connected. And this is right.
- [41:12]
B
I love it. I absolutely love it. Well, you know, I want to tie this back to with the regenerative farming. And you had made this point. It was either in the documentary or another interview. I heard you on about how when you really break, and Ashley, you mentioned this earlier, when you really break down the cost, when you look at buying, let's say a half of a cow or a quarter of a cow, you know, and you can do this through these local farmers who raise grass fed meat who have the regenerative farming. You can buy a half or a quarter cow when you do the math. I mean, you're getting T bones and rib eyes and some filet and the grass ground meat. When you break down the cost per pound, it's actually less than going to Walmart and buying like some old meat that you don't know what the hell the cow ate it really is. So you have to step back and really look at the budget and break it down pound for pound as to what you're going to be spending on. Because you know what cracks me up is people will say like, oh, that's too expensive, I can't afford it. But yet they'll go out and buy a 500 gut healing protocol from an Instagram influencer and think that they're going to heal their gut with this master class protocol. And then they eat garbage food.
- [42:26]
C
It's like, it's so hard to get people to change their diet. And I think that it's so much easier if someone doesn't want to make that change for them to say, well, must be nice. I'm not rich, I can't afford to eat that way. Yep. Versus actually them having to put some thought into it and look big picture and think, okay, I know it feels like a lot if I'm going to buy like a quarter cow now. It's more lump sum right now, don't get me wrong. And that might be impossible for somebody. Maybe you can go in with a friend or a couple friends. You know, it takes more work to eat this way, especially if you're on a budget. You have to care enough.
- [43:00]
B
Yeah, yeah, you absolutely do. So after doing this film, what changed in your own home? Like, what? Because, I mean, if. If I was shocked, then there had to be things that you guys were shocked about. So what. What was the number one thing that really surprised you or shocked you making this documentary? And then what did you actually have to change in your own home?
- [43:19]
C
Well, I'll speak to the changes in the home. I mean, we essentially hardly ever go out to eat. And I literally will not go to a restaurant unless it's like, on seed oil scout or I know that they're not using seed oils. Like, I don't enjoy the meal anymore. I know too much. I know, like, it's not fun to eat a meal that you're like, yeah, this is probably inflammatory right now. And, like, you know it. I know it's an 8020 and we don't always eat perfect, but, like, it really has taken some of the fun, a lot of the fun of eating out completely off the table. Like, you know, because you just know too much. And so a lot more cooking at home and a lot more just checking all the labels and I mean, I don't have salad dressing in my house anymore. I just make my own. Turns out it's very simple, right? And you don't even have to make it ahead of time. You just can't, like, literally make it as you make your salad. So little things like that. I think that my grocery bill has actually gone down because I used to buy all the marinades and, ooh, this looks good. I'm going to try this. And I don't go on the insides of the aisles anymore because there's nothing there for me. And that's where all the temptation is anyways. So just go to the fresh parts, stick with the whole foods. And it turns out my body is so much happier eating that way.
- [44:31]
A
Yeah. I would say our menu at home has really simplified. And the things that we get from the grocery store, it's like almost an auto ship type of thing in terms of ground beef, eggs, milk, the produce,
- [44:46]
C
we like the pro.
- [44:47]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [44:47]
C
Greek yogurt.
- [44:48]
A
And the variety has maybe shrunk a little bit, but not in like a bad way where I'm like, oh, it's tacos again.
- [44:58]
C
Because our grass fed beef tacos with like raw cheese and slant. I mean, it's so much better though. You're like, oh my God.
- [45:06]
A
But like the rise and puff organic now. Those flour tortillas that you found, like, those taste so much better. And you know, we, we went with a friend to where I can't remember where we got those surprise. But we went to a non seed oil free restaurant. And I could taste the difference because for the last year or so we've been avoiding most of the things that we talk about in the Dirty Dozen ingredients to avoid. So when you're actively avoiding them and you get the taste again, you're like, did I ever like this? How did I like this? Like, this is gross.
- [45:45]
B
Well, yeah, it's like people that avoid sugar and then they taste something like, oh my God, this is so sweet. Because your taste buds do change. Yeah, right? Yeah.
- [45:53]
A
Yeah.
- [45:53]
C
So our, our, your body adapts.
- [45:55]
A
I, I, I'm gonna challenge you live here. Ashley. On the. You should do another PDF that's like, basically here's what you get from the grocery store each week and here's like what, here's what it becomes.
- [46:09]
C
Different meals that can be made from it.
- [46:11]
A
Yeah, I mean that would be great.
- [46:14]
C
I will do that.
- [46:15]
A
All right, coming soon, folks. You'll find if she does this snobs dot com.
- [46:21]
C
There you go.
- [46:22]
B
You got to go buy that URL now if you don't have it.
- [46:27]
A
We haven't really done anything with it, but I love it. Yeah, not yet.
- [46:31]
B
I love that. I love that. Okay, so what shocked you then in the documentary or what made you really pissed off when you.
- [46:37]
C
God, that cigarette thing was the worst.
- [46:39]
A
That was the big unlock in feeling like that is kind of the first domino that happened four decades ago. Amy, you and I are about the same age. So Yeah, I was coming of age in the late 90s, early 2000s. And like in college, it's like I feel like my entire diet was Totina's pizza rolls.
- [47:00]
B
Yeah.
- [47:01]
A
It was like that's what I had as a college student. They were, that's what you could afford. Tasted good. I'm like, probably cancer causing. I mean, in pop Tarts. I didn't, I didn't know about it, I didn't think about it. And I would say maybe the biggest thing that shocked me overall is realizing that the government is not looking out for you. It is not watching, regulating, making sure that things in the grocery store are safe. Why would they put things in the grocery store that are unsafe? Dr. Amy. That they couldn't allow that. Yes, they freaking do. And now that you know it, you get to decide, audience, if you're gonna care about that when you decide what you're putting in your cart.
- [47:44]
B
Yep, exactly. My husband used to work for the government. He says when the government tells you this is for your safety or for your own good or the good of your family, run.
- [47:54]
A
I believe it. Didn't we all just experience that a few years ago?
- [47:59]
B
Yeah, yeah. Just saying a little bit.
- [48:01]
C
Yeah, that's a good little nugget to tuck away. It is for someone who's worked in the government. So.
- [48:06]
B
Just saying, just saying, just saying. Now I do want to kind of make this final tie back to the supplement industry that we're both in. So we both own supplement companies. Like you said, you've owned yours since, what was it, 2005, 2004?
- [48:20]
A
Yeah, my one years.
- [48:22]
B
Okay, so you've been in this a long time now. You have seen this happen through the years where what started off as, let's say, a family owned supplement company, a person owned, a couple owned, sells out to. Same thing that's happening in Big Food, they sell out to Big Pharma or Big Food. Now we have Nestle and Bayer owning supplement companies. So the same thing that you're kind of showcasing on the documentary we're also seeing in the supplement supplement world in that now, you know, Big Food, Big Pharma is taking over your supplements. What do you think is going to happen to the quality of those supplements? The same thing that's happening to the quality of the food, it's going to go down, it's going to go cheap. There's going to be ingredients in there that fly under the radar and that might not be the best of the best ingredients in it, but nobody's overseeing them, thank God. We don't want FDA oversight of supplements. But the bottom line is there's no FDA oversight of supplement. There's no oversight whatsoever. And if it is owned by Big Food, Big Pharma, they're going to do whatever they want to do to those supplements to make the bottom dollar. So I guess this is kind of like a statement and a question all in one. I always tell my people, make sure you are buying supplements from a company that you know the owners, that you can look them up, that they're front facing, they're doing funny videos like y' all. Do you want to be able to know the owners because it's your reputation on the line.
- [49:51]
A
Yes.
- [49:52]
B
And if somebody buys a jigsaw product and whatever, there's like Franken chemicals in it, which there's not going to be, but it's, it's your, it's your reputation on the line. Can you speak more to that piece?
- [50:03]
A
Yeah. And I think like you said when you joined us on our podcast, the Rock Bottom Podcast, you said a phrase, passion to purpose and purpose. Oh, thank you.
- [50:14]
B
Kind of purpose. Brain to verb. Pain.
- [50:16]
A
Yeah. Pain to purpose. And purpose in that case is often passion. You know, my dad struggled for 30 years with various chronic health challenges, everything from anxiety to insomnia, energy, most of which were related to the mercury amalgams in his mouth for so long. That's a subject we haven't even talked about. But if you've got mercury in your mouth, please look into taking those out so safely. You can learn a lot@toxicteeth.org on that. But he wrote a book called Wellness piece by piece, sort of documenting all the things that he learned. And then we created Jigsaw Health to create formulas like MAG srt, a sustained release technology magnesium supplement, so that my dad, with his gastrointestinal challenges could take a high dose magnesium without it causing a diarrhea side effect. Okay, so that is sort of the background. Jigsaw Health. We've been family owned for 21 years. And I think that I have a bit of a counterintuitive approach on Big Food, Big tobacco, private equity, buying up these smaller companies. Siete comes to mind. Which is better for you? Mexican food.
- [51:35]
B
Yeah.
- [51:36]
C
Seed oil free chips.
- [51:37]
A
Seed oil free chips that was purchased by PepsiCo for, I don't know, $2 billion. Whatever. I have no idea if that's true. I think that Big Food, Nestle, obviously being big food, I think Big food and Big Pharma realizes that this is where, as Wayne Gretzky would say, is where the puck is going. It's going to better for you foods and supplements. And I think that rather than Frito Lay trying to modify Fritos, they'll just buy something like Siete that brand, take it under their umbrella and then if Fritos goes up or down in revenue and profitability, they don't really care because they sort of have the better for you version covered in their portfolio. Really they've become, you know, financial management companies. They're conglomerates that are designed to protect the entity. And I think I'm hopeful that they realize that they're smart enough to say there's a number of consumers that will continue to buy Siete Chips, Masa Chips if we keep the formula as is. Right, right. So if they keep that in place, they're going to keep those consumers. I think so. Sort of my counterintuitive approach is that hopefully the people running those conglomerates are profit driven and they are looking at that segment of the American consumer that says, I'm not buying your crappy seed oil Fritos, I want the tallow Masa Chips. So I think it's actually I'm hopeful that over time Masa Chips and Siete and you know, these companies that are doing things with good, wholesome, clean formulas, maybe they do get acquired, but they actually then get some economies of scale and are able to expand their footprint and get Masa Chips into a Kroger. You know, it costs a lot of money from a business perspective to get into a Sam's Club, a Kroger, a Costco. And when you have some of those efficiencies and economies of scale that you get under a Nabisco, a craft food or whatever, maybe it ends up being good. And that is my optimistic stance. I also have a negative opinion that is directly mirroring what you said, which is like, don't buy anything from anyone you can't shake their hand on. Yeah. I am also very cynical and skeptical and sadly being alive for 50 years has made me that way.
- [54:22]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, no, I, I totally agree with you and I think that's a simple message though, that that's easy for people to do. You know, when, when you're buying your supplements, do five, two minutes of chat gpting and see who owns that supplement company. If you can't find the owner and you don't know what he looks like and like you said, you can't shake their hand, you then just move down the road and find a different company that, that is family owned or you know, individual owned.
- [54:51]
C
Maybe ask if they do third Party testing. Do they play the third party testing on their website for all to see? You know, there are. What is their transparency? It's not that hard to kind of go to a website and find out are they really being very transparent? Something that makes me feel like, ooh, intuitively, these guys are, like, doing it right.
- [55:11]
A
Yeah.
- [55:12]
C
Or are they just, like, fancy, like, verbiage that's, like, just trying to sell you into, like, some kind of funnel and you're like, well, I would steer clear of that one.
- [55:20]
B
Yeah, exactly. So I'm encouraging everyone, every listener, to go watch Breaking Big Food. We're going to have the links in the show, notes of where everyone can go to see it. But I want to ask you one last question, because we got to bring it out of the doom and gloom. Are you optimistic? Can we reverse what has been happening and what is the message of hope that the people are going to get after watching the documentary?
- [55:46]
C
Absolutely, 100% we are optimistic, and that's why we really wanted the film to be an inspirational film, and we decided not to go talking head investigative journalism. Yes, we outline the problem, but we also focus on, like, the solution and what can happen in your own community, how you can contribute or how you can support. But most of all, how you can educate yourself to just make better choices tomorrow for you and your family.
- [56:13]
A
I think that everyone will see themselves in one of the characters, whether it's Tiffany Lilly, who is raising chickens in her backyard, whether it's Leah Hope, who lost over £200 over the course of several years by changing her mindset, changing her food, changing her movement, landing flowers. Yeah.
- [56:40]
C
You know, mystery illness. And when he changed his diet, it all went away. And he was like, oh, my gosh, he was one foot in the grave. And I don't even mean that as, like, that's real.
- [56:50]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [56:51]
A
And then I think people will say, well, what am I going to do different? If I've learned something, what am I going to do different? Maya Angelou said, when you know better, do better.
- [57:01]
B
Yep. And like we said in the beginning, you can't unsee it. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. So that knowledge is still going to be with you. When you go to the grocery store and you pick up the Fritos or you pick up the Lunchables, you're. You're gonna stop and think twice after seeing this documentary. You're just going to. Yep, yep. So thank you once again. Thank you for making it, for putting your heart and soul, your time Your money, your energy into making something that is just really gonna rock people's world. But we need to. We kind of. We kind of need to stir things up in order to make change.
- [57:32]
C
Yes. Yes. Amen to that. Well, thank you so much for having us. This has been awesome.
- [57:37]
B
It's been amazing. And we're gonna put all the links in the show notes, but can you tell people where they can go and see Breaking Big Food and where they can find more of you? Follow. You see all the fun stuff that you do at Jigsaw Health, too?
- [57:48]
A
Well, you can go to Apple TV or Amazon Prime Video and search for Breaking Big.
- [57:53]
B
Big Food.
- [57:54]
A
Not Breaking Bad, Breaking Big Food. You'll find it there. It's available for rent. Or you can go to breaking bigfood.com you'll see a list of the sources, a list of the cast. You can see links to Ashley's Instagram, to my ex. And then, of course, Jigsaw Health.com is really sort of the main. The mothership of everything that we do.
- [58:15]
B
Yes.
- [58:15]
C
And you can also get the Dirty Dozen ingredients to avoid Download on breaking bigfood.com as well. So we look forward to connecting with you all if you're feeling moved to connect. And let's keep doing good things for America.
- [58:29]
A
And if you want to start a franchise.
- [58:30]
C
Yeah. If you want to start a fire franchise, reach out.
- [58:33]
A
Email firefly coffeeshop gmail.com. we'll talk. Maybe we'll figure something out eventually.
- [58:38]
B
We're manifesting it. Des Moines people. Starwood in Des Moines. Okay. I'm just saying.
- [58:42]
A
Des Moines, please reach out. You've been tasked. It's kind of fun to have a coffee shop.
- [58:48]
B
It is, it is. It's, you know, community again.
- [58:51]
C
It's community based. So I love it.
- [58:53]
B
You're doing good things. So, no, I love you both so much. Thank you so much for the work that you do. And once again, we're putting all the links in the show notes to go down and check it out. And thank you for listening. Share this episode because this is one that needs to be shared with every single human being out there, because every single human being has to eat food. So they're going to need this information. They're going to need this information live to eat. Pass it on. Pass it on. Till next time.