Reader flora recommended this Tucker Carlson interview with the highly credentialed sister and brother Casey and Calley Means, who both were on well-paid, prestigious career tracks. They gave it up because they could no longer stand profiting from a system that makes and keeps Americans sick.
It looks as if the ground rules for the interview usefully kept Dr. Casey from promoting her book Good Energy (which while getting very good review for its overall analysis and guidance, does elicit some grumbles about her pricey bio-hackish products) and focused on the train wreck of American diets and medical practice, and the incentives that made them so. Some of the factoids are remarkable, such as 50% of American children suffer from a chronic disease, and the stunning increases in some ailments which were once rare. They also describe how the food pyramid was a vehicle for legitimating consumption more sugar and highly processed foods, including in school lunches, and how specialization in medicine prevents doctors from looking at root causes of most ailments. Calley stresses that both food and pharma industry executives are well aware of the damage their business models do, yet shrug as if nothing can be done. But the costs show up, not merely in worsening health despite world-leading expenditures, but also the high suicide rate among doctors.
At the end, they describe how many bad practices, particularly involving corruption in research, could be ended via executive order. Even though it is vanishingly unlikely that either presidential candidate would drop this hammer on such powerful industries, the executive order could also serve as a cudgel to get these industries to abandon some of their worst practices.
In a bit of synchronicity, the Financial Times gives the lead op-ed position today to to Ultra-processed and fast food is everywhere — and causing us harm. Key sections:
Picture a world where Tony the Tiger is caged, Ronald McDonald has hung up his clown shoes, and Colonel Sanders is court-martialled; where what’s euphemistically referred to as “less healthy” food is sold without spin. A world without mascots grinning over photo-shopped burgers or whispering, ‘Go on, try it’ through the TV. If we did it to the Marlboro man; we can do it to a cartoon tiger.
It took the UK 50 years from discovering the link between smoking and lung cancer to finally stubbing out cigarette advertising in 2003, and a further 13 years to end branded packaging. The proposed ban on fast-food advertising has taken a similarly tortuous route. On the table for well over a decade, boosted by one Conservative prime minister and bumped by the next, it’s now on a long menu of tasks facing Labour ministers. Under the proposed ban, less healthy products won’t be advertised on TV before the watershed (from 9pm to 5.30am) and online 24/7 from next October.
This is not enough. As with cigarettes, it’s time we had honest branding — or no branding — when it comes to fast and ultra-processed food. Obesity costs the NHS £6.5bn a year and is the biggest preventable cause of cancer after smoking. One in four adults in England is obese. More shockingly, a nationwide study this year found nearly one in four children in England’s primary schools are obese by the time they leave, making them more likely to suffer health issues throughout their lives. Our inability to regulate the brands and their colourful mascots harms the young most of all.
The last six months have seen a flood of reports about ultra-processed foods, both the threat they pose to our health and their ubiquity. Items we might not have considered particularly bad, such as pasta sauces and ready meals, are on the list.
Now to the main event:
Casey Means was a Stanford-educated surgeon. Her brother Calley was a lobbyist for pharma and the food industry. Both quit their jobs in horror when they realized how many people were being killed by the systems they participated in. This is an amazing story.
(0:54) Who Are… pic.twitter.com/1oIVLvPlAv
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 16, 2024
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I have dipped into the various chapters of the Tucker interview. While I was aware of the dangers of and harm done by ultra processed food, I was shocked to hear these food companies had been taken over by cigarette companies in the 70s and 80s that then used the same playbook to make the food both more addictive and to lobby against legislation. But as lobbyists rule in both Washington and Westminster, not sure if any politician will stick their neck out to campaign against the fast food/cigarette conglomorates. Even attempts in Britain to limit the advertising and consumption of sugary drinks have faced a hostile reception in tabloid media and elssewhere.
Sugar is indeed a big problem. Not everyone is equally affected by the regular uptake of sugar several times each day but many, or even most, are. I am one of those who should avoid sugar as if a venom. One of my problems was that I have several small coffee doses every day (a vice, yes) somehow sweetened. These days I sweeten it with a small amount of honey. The smaller, the better. Not sugar anymore. This means that I no longer buy sugar. With regards to anything else I religiously check the sugar content of any product. Lot’s of products have indeed high concentrations of sugars ranging from 2,5% to well above 10%. 10% is more or less like two full soup spoons of sugar per 100g of product. That’s a lot. Now, my upper limit for any product is 2,5% even if it is to be consumed in minute amounts. Then, there is the problem of starch converted into sugar in our mouths. It is not listed as “sugar” but “carbohydrate” and it is frequently used as a preservative. If you, for convenience buy anything previously sliced it almost certainly covered in starch.
There are so many different names for sugar: like barley malt and agave nectar, rice syrup, and recently I’ve seen some new brand names popping up in the ingredients lists. So even on the ingredients list they are going out of their way to hide sugar content
Try Stevia. Buy the ultra pure powdered version because most other brands and versions will give a kind of a bitter after-taste. Also, when you start off, mix Stevia with some sugar and then slowly reduce the quantity of sugar until you can finally totally cut it out. I managed to do this many years back and recently got my wife to quit sugar the same way. I also only buy Stevia based chocolate. Unfortunately the good Stevia is expensive but only a little goes a very long way in sweetening anything.
Be careful of any sweetener. There is evidence (though not fully conclusive) that artificial sweeteners induce insulin spikes that contribute to insulin resistance. Personal anecdata indicates that artificial sweeteners will induce hypoglycemic events that stimulate the appetite, defeating the calorie-reduction benefits of replacing the sugar with artificial sweetener.
The basis of our home’s food pyramid is coffee. A quarter century ago, we put in non-dairy Irish Cream flavored creamer. Shifted to Ovaltine and half-n-half. Now it’s dark cocoa and organic heavy cream.
The cream now supplies the sweet flavor. Ayurveda describes grains as sweet, not just honey. So the basis of the US food pyramid is the sweet flavor. But that is before processing, which leads to insulin spikes, and that starts with taste on the tongue. To BillS’ point.
If you have to use an artificial sweetener, please don’t use the yellow, blue or pink packets. The first is the youngster of the bunch and leads to short term memory loss and brain fog. The others have been around wrecking for decades.
Black coffee works for many.
See PaulA below. Stevia is natural and SUPER sweet, so you use very little.
But I have always loved my black coffee (you can get REALLY good coffee in Thailand). And a trick if you have a sweet tooth is to try to change to dark chocolate (>70% cocoa) or very sweet fruits (mangoes! figs! dates!) or if you must do the occasional dessert, ones with pretty high fat content to buffer the insulin hit.
maybe that’s the secret with French pastries: they use a lot of butter so a lot of damage is mitigated
Pop over to vn highlands.. the baguettes are lovely, too.
Lived there 7 years. Cafe every few dozen steps .
Start slow. Robusta variety is about 2x caffeine.
Cafe sua da. Ice coffee with condensed milk works well on summer days. Add a shot of homemade rice wine. Not the distilled vodka thing but the milky stuff with visible rice fragments in it.
Brazil is usually #1 in coffee exports, but with a blight or drought vn occasionally wins. Jet blue round trip for maybe 150 USD from bkk..
The link is on artificial sweeteners:
Stevia is not an artificial sweetener, though many products labeled as Stevia are actually blends of stevia and artificial sweeteners, so its important to read labels.
Also Stevia is natural and extracted from the stevia plant leaf. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia
i have used stevia for decades. yes big food poisoned me with high fructose corn syrup, malto-dextrin, sucrolos hydrogenated oils and other garbage.
watch out for stevia in a bag, its more malto-dextrin than stevia.
boxed is better. some liquid ones are good also. for coffee i use flavored ones.
this is not a add, just a example,
https://netrition.com/products/sweetleaf-sweet-drops-stevia-sweetener
i use coffee creamers made with coconut milk, or almond milk. no sugar.
I buy pure Stevia, a refined white powder with no additives, at the co-op in a two kilo bag.
Way expensive but lasts me a couple of years. I have it in a salt shaker and use it sparingly as the taste will get bitter if I use too much. (Most commercial stevia is cut with something to get it into the spoon realm.)
Pure stevia is a strong flavor note so using a little honey makes it more civilized if you aren’t used to it. (I add a little honey for my Beloved.)
When I refill the salt shaker the stuff is so fine that it’s like smoke and I can taste it. (You have a pretty good fit test with your N95 if you can’t taste stevia with your mask on during the operation.)
I have read somewhere, once, that stevia “decreases motility” of the gut biome. So paralyzed, just napping? Not worried because at the other end of the flavor barbel, active sauerkraut, balances that out.
Consumption of the Non-Nutritive Sweetener Stevia for 12 Weeks Does Not Alter the Composition of the Human Gut Microbiota, 18 January 2024
Yeah, I’ve found most stevia sold in grocery stores has been balanced and bulked out with dextrose, maltodextrin, etc.
My preferred sweetener, monkfruit, also has a similar problem, in that it is often sold combined with erythritol, which is a sugar alcohol and has the same unpleasant side effects at higher doses. It is also linked to blood clots.
I prefer monkfruit, especially in beverages. I grew up using the dried fruit in cough and sour throat relief, and for cold/cooling beverages.
Um, honey is a mixture of glucose, fructose, and sucrose, all sugars. So if you’re ‘avoiding sugar as if venom’, you’re going at it in a peculiar way.
The amount of sugar in a given coffee spoon of honey in much smaller than with the same amount of pure sugar.
And glycemic index of processed food is off the charts (not to mention, herbicide dessication & other GE monoculture & industrial agribusiness adulterants?) We’d seen folks mention supplements after COVID/PASC pre-Diabetes & I’m curious about NC comentariat hippy-dippy snake-oil experiments?
https://www.verywellhealth.com/glycemic-index-chart-for-common-foods-1087476#toc-glycemic-index-chart-for-common-foods
https://www.buzzrx.com/blog/metformin-vs-berberine-similarities-and-differences#
A friend taps maple trees and processes the sap into delicious maple syrup. Fortunately, I picked up my mother’s habit of drinking naked black coffee. But on a bowl of oatmeal, I love a drizzle of maple syrup. And I also use it in place of sugar in marinades and salad dressings. Bonus: I get to support a local source who is also a friend! (Maple syrup is not as sweet as honey and actually, I prefer the taste.)
and honey is a live food. People have eaten honey for many millenia. We are adapted to that. “Sugar”, as we call it, is strictly sucrose, not a natural food – though the whole cane is – and is the worst.
We use low glycemic coconut sugar, for coffee and baking, and honey for teas with a little stevia thrown in. Read the ingredients when you get stevia, there are many preparations, and it may not be easy to find pure stevia leaf or powder. It’s a mint and easy to grow. And plenty sweet with no sugar.
If Ignacio is consuming raw honey produced locally, it is one of the healthiest sugar substitutes possible. “Real” honey contains a whole lot more than just sugar.
Especially if you know a local beekeeper and can understand where their bees forage from, thereby limiting potential pesticide contamination from industrial farms.
Honey has other benefits however, and is slower to absorb into the body than sugar.
For an opposite, in Chinese culture bitter foods are thought to have medicinal properties.
See also this excellent book on the same subject:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451300/ultra-processed-people-by-tulleken-chris-van/9781529900057
The author also has many guest appearances on YouTube.
Its become increasingly difficult to avoid sugar – its shocking sometimes reading labels to see just how much sugar is in even products that are not supposed to be sweet, like spicy pasta sauces. And I’m not sure that artificial sweeteners are much better. Not just because they may be unhealthy, but because they are retraining our palates to prefer sweeter foods. Its become ‘normal’ for all sorts of things to be sweet. I was recently trying to buy some protein powders and it seems almost impossible to find one that is not sweetened to some degree. Now I just buy raw vegan protein and make my own flavours.
I do think this is one of the reasons why the US leads in obesity, its not just ‘processing’, its the sweetness of foods. I find that when I visit the US all sorts of foods just taste too sweet for my palate. In contrast, in Japan and other parts of Asia their junk food (and the Japanese love junk food as much as anyone), its much more likely to have a slightly salty or spicy taste without the added sweetness.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to stay reasonably healthy is to avoid all sugary additives and let your palate adapt. When I gave up adding sugar to drinks, etc., it took a while to get used to it, but now I find most processed foods unpleasant to taste, simply because they are too sickly sweet for me.
Yes, I agree. Ever since the various egg and salmonella etc., scandals, I have been wary about making my own mayonnaisse. However, reading the labels of pretty much all shop shelf versions, they all contain sugar. Why? Is sugar also supposed to be a preservative?
Sugar is a preservative. Unlikely that’s why it’s sugars are added to commercially canned foods.
Sugars are insanely hygroscopic, meaning dry granules or powder absorb a huge amount of water. This is the only context where they are a preservative. You’ll find small amounts of sugar added to other powders for this reason: they keep the powder dry.
Some sugar mixed into vegetable matter just makes it ferment faster.
Vitamin C is a preservative, and you’ll see it added to a lot of things. Bitter, though.
High fructose corn syrup lurks on labels, giving that taste and calorie jolt along with a side of obesity.
Recall when the big cola company introduced its new product, including the syrup ingredient in place of the sugar. That was one way to change the supply economics and poison future consumers.
i noticed that in the early 1970’s, seven up went from crisp and cold, to a syrup like substance that did not quench my thirst.
by the time i figured it out, i was 47. the only reason why was that i got on the net in the 1990’s, typed in every ingredient in my favorite foods, and became instantly alarmed.
the junk was in everything. finding food without junk, was a real chore. and imagine my shock to the taste buds of eating real food, i went, what is the stuff!
within weeks i understood what had been done to me. and avoid most so called food like the plague, and enjoy eating again.
Grew up in Hawaii in the 1950s espousing “cane-sugar chauvinism” — after all, the sugar cane plantations were a key part of Hawaii’s history, economy, and identity then.
Now what is old is new again, and my rule when shopping is, avoid added sugar but if can’t be avoided, then cane and only cane.
When I spent time in Jamaica in the late 80s and early 90s, I saw a quite a few people with rotten teeth from chewing on raw cane, some of them were kids.
Sucking coffee, or tea, through a sugar cube has cost many front teeth across the Maghreb and Asia Minor. Other regions, other customs.
I now make my own tomato sauce and bread, primarily to control sodium but also sugar. Most foods not found in the produce or meat sections are loaded with both, at least in US stores.
The evils of sugar ought to have been known for at least 50 years now courtesy of Yudkin’s Pure, White and Deadly but the evil work of Big Sugar’s minions led by the arch-devil Ancel Keys condemned generations of Americans to the ravages of metabolic dysregulation and diabetes.
Chris van Tulleken has written the book on Ultra-Processed Foods, discussed here. Good to see this problem gaining the traction it deserves.
If you click through to his “X” post, it’s 3 (safe, meat & phone) advertisments? Without any acknowledgement, you’re being gavaged to a feeding frenzy of blatant 1971 style, obtuse, dead-eyed Libertarian hucksters; selling you some thoroughly debunked Atkins ketogenic BS. “Security,” you could find better on EBay & a facade of reactionary, elite & racially pure inebriate grandiosity, that permeates much of cable TV viewership?
Yes? Chris has a small percentage of reasonable advice, much like your average tradwife influencer, and then goes bananas. (Such as grocery store and fast food bad, sit-down restaurants good.) At least he says things are complex and it’s hard to know. High tier.
The Means didn’t so much drop out of careers as jump onto a gravy train. To mix a metaphor, they swim in the sea of right-wing grift. Use your insurance money to buy an anti-aging face mask!
Dr. Oz may be president one day is my point, I guess. Liver King as VP?
Gotta admit to Nicotinamide riboside, NAC, Nattokinase, Serrapeptase, red rice yeast, curcumin & Resversatrol supplementation; especially after four SARS CoV2 infections & PASC. So, if HICPAC ever stops mandating perpetual re-reinfection, I’ll cut down?
Or not?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lBzJXAx52oQ
https://peoplescdc.substack.com/p/letter-campaign-to-elected-officials
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/hicpacprotections
Excellent list of what I consider some of my essential nutritional supplementation. I’ve not tried Serrapeptase, but since I’ve had off and on sinus issues of late, instead of taking OTC antihistamines, seems like it would be a more natural (non-pharmaceutical ) option.
I might also suggest perhaps considering: SAM-e. ALC, Coenzymated B-Complex as well as including in ones diet an assortment of fungi such as: Lions Mane, Shiitake, Maitaki and Reichi – preferably in their whole food form, or as capsule or bulk powdered supplements.
Stevia is not an artificial sweetener. It is natural and extracted from the stevia leaf. It is used extensively in Mexican recipes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia
Seed oils, scare me most.
I wish, I was not aware of that danger. They are in everything too……
i use peanut or coconut oils.
Evoo is the way to go.
My favorite as well, except not great for high temperature applications and recipes which need a neutral taste. Avocado oil (cold-pressed, AKA “virgin”, not refined) seems to be the healthiest alternative for those occasions when something else is called for.
Olive oil is good, imho.
I don’t believe that seed oils are that bad. I use all sorts of oils in my cooking, sometimes seed oils. It’s not the presence of seed oils that scares me but the absence of animal fats.
To the point about training the palate to desire/expect sweetness – I’m old enough to remember when you could get unsweetened toothpaste back in the ’90s. It wasn’t the norm, but there was at least one brand. Now it’s impossible. I wasn’t initially avoiding sweetness for health reasons, but because I’m a supertaster and artificial sweeteners (aspartame, saccharine, et al) taste absolutely repulsive; when I first found an unsweetened toothpaste I practically wept with relief, as prior to that brushing my teeth had been a kind of low-grade chronic self-torture. (I later realized I could just use baking soda, which is good because I have no other choice now.) But since the advent of sugar alcohols like xylitol and stevia, the idea seems to be that we can (must) have infinite sweetness without consequences to teeth or waistline, so let’s sweeten all the things! I feel lucky in a way that my sense of taste drives me away from all that, though I do have to scrupulously read the ingredients list of everything that goes in my mouth now, even if it’s not food, because it really does desensitize you and condition you to regard hyper-sweetness as the default “good” flavor.
Instead of stevia, probably meant erythritol? Erythritol is commonly combined with stevia or monkfruit, to balance and bulk out those more expensive low-calorie sweeteners.
Xylitol appears in toothpastes, especially non-fluoride formulations as it supposedly has anti-bacterial properties.
Hard to take this seriously when the first link under the video is to their book…
“I’m here to help! Have I got a deal for you!”
I watched the Tucker vid the other day when Flora put it up. The tangled web of capitalist intrigue is absolutely disgraceful, and keeps me in a dark despair, but knowing a bit more about it lifts me up, even if I can only act somewhat on my own behalf. I eat organic veggies and am thin as a rail. I have a girl friend who never cooks and only eats processed, she is two hundred pounds. I try to tell her when I get out my strong reading glasses to read the labels on her packaged dinners which are very long, and frightening. My food is bulk, isn’t packaged and doesn’t have labels, just organic basmati brown rice, tomatoes, caulifower, broccoli, chard, beets, green beans etc. I never add sugar. Now I’m hungry and off to eat breakfast.
Casey and Calley Means hucksterism seems to be buried in a mass of extremely important, useful, and scary information.
My health has been improving and my weight has been declining ever since I started to reduce the amount of prepackaged processed “food” from both stores and fast food; it is still the old fashioned American diet with plenty of (brown) sugar and (olive) oil, but I avoid corn syrup, which really is much more poisonous than most other kinds of sugar, seed oils, and all the other indecipherable artificial ingredients. My taste has shifted since I started making pre made food taste weirdly. I no longer think of a loaf of store bread as not being cake.
BTW, when you buy brown sugar, be sure to read the ingredients label. Too often brown sugar is merely pure white sugar with coloring added. Deceptive packaging can true for any sweaters that you buy. Corn syrup and white sugar are everywhere.
Big food sells convenience and time. We all have to eat. But many of us are too busy to buy food (in its natural form) and make it at home or feel the pressure to eat out with colleagues at lunch. It’s easier to buy something already premade or from a restaurant.
The science to make packaged foods hyper palatable is insidious. Sugary drinks are awful too.
Pharma sells easy solutions to chronic diseases. The diseases of western civilization (heart disease, type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension, certain forms of cancer) are all largely attributable to poor diet. It’s easier to take a pill vs doing the “hard work” to change eating habits and live a new lifestyle.
This is a vicious cycle. The way to break it is to eat whole natural foods and drink just water.
It’s my personal revolution and middle finger to the system: eating clean and avoiding anything peddled by big pharma.
I highly recommend these two books:
The Hacking of the American Mind by (Lustig) &
Salt Sugar Fat (Moss).
“many of us are too busy to buy food (in its natural form)” — particularly as it’s hard to find and apt to be very expensive once it is located.
Excellent interview and information on the Tucker video. Been watching and recommending to friends.
Out and about, noticing as usual the preponderance of grossly obese people, men, women, and children, was thinking: well, what are the greatest threats facing this country? Will the health and welfare of the citizens ever make it onto a presidential platform?
It would be called fat shaming
I’ve already shared too many details from my unsavory past: drug abuse resulting in arrythmia, overwork, over partying, overeating, etc. Fifteen years of keyboarding had my peak weight at 320 (5’11 1/2″).
Gradually improved my diet through subtraction and workout routines. Lost 50 lbs in just a few years. 4-5 years of more of the same took off another 20 lbs. Thanks to alcohol I yo-yo’ed for a while after the ’16 election, then four years ago got serious, stopped drinking (not that much but it doesn’t take much to undo weight loss) and started seeing core health improvements. More dietary subtraction and more improvements.
Two years into zero processed foods. I feel twenty years younger and in many ways am stronger than ever. No workouts just a more active lifestyle and food discipline (what not how much).
For me, the real improvements came after purging ALL the crap out of my diet. Every new story on health reinforces my desire to never go back to my old lifestyle.
No matter what shape you’re in or how old you are, diet is key to getting healthier. I am literally healthier at 71 than I was in my 50s. OK, I wasn’t healthy in my 50s and in truth I have only improved to where I would have been if I’d taken better care of myself. The point is, IT CAN BE DONE! [fist pump]
If you boil it down to fundamentals we really need a return to small scale agriculture, with more diversity, more care paid to soil health; more individual human attention paid to the wholistic process. This in itself is a huge works project that would manifest a reduction in inequality, more resilient food supply chain, healthier population.
Prior to encountering Casey and Calley Means, I came across Dr. Robert Lustig who’s been on this for a while. I recommend his book ‘Metabolical’ if you want an intense historical critique of 20th Century US industrial food system. A ‘class traitor’ for sure. His you tube’s are great!
None of this is “new” news. We’ve known for at least 3 decades how awful American “food” (if that’s the right word.)
All you have to do is go and spend some time in France and Italy to make the comparison. We have friends in those two countries who used to visit the US. They view US food as toxic. It’s one out of many reasons why they don’t live here.
And the better educated American citizens have taken many steps to thwart the nonsense seen in our grocery stores.
I’ll add that several groups of physicians have documented the food problem(s): Dean Ornish is one. Here are some others: pcrm.org. Or try drmcdougall.com
The “whole foods, plant-based diet” is what they promote. They have documented many cases of diabetes, heart disease, etc. that have reversed once patients’ diets change.
Alrighty then, I suggest ya’ll consider supporting these folks:
https://realorganicproject.org/
As far as I can tell from afar, and I’ve been following them for a while now, they do a splendid job in real organic ag according to their own, strict guidelines.
Interestingly, many of those attempts to reconnect people with the soil that nurishes them/us, have strong roots in the US. Only roots, no shoots, yet. But here in Germany and mostly in Europe as a whole, many, many farmers fight for the mostly subsidised(!) right to keep treating agriculture as an industrial, linear production system. There are exceptions of course and overall the individual farms are somewhat smaller than in the US but industrial agriculture it is nonetheless…
The EU iss supposed to rework the legislature for big ag subsidies but the lobby is strong and I don’t expect much change in the near to mid term.
What I find truly fascinating is that is seems to be absolutely possible to feed all 8 billion of us with nourishing food in a regenerative, organic, equitable and therefore sustainable way, yet we prefer to ruin our soils and eat the crap we’re being offered.
I even tried hard to make systematically healthier choices for the kids and boy did I loose that battle!
Despite being annoyed by Tucker Carlson and a few reverent mentions of odious figures meant to serve as shibboleths to the right (Ayn Rand, Trump) I enjoyed the interview. Definitely worthwhile viewing IMO. Most of what they’re discussing is an open secret to anyone who is skeptical, educated and has been paying attention to what’s happening in the United States for some time now, but the one-two punch of doctor and industry insider/lobbyist perspective was useful for telling a grand tale. The lobbyist brother had some great insider anecdotes and the Dr. sister was full of great factoids and soundbites. “The average American eats a credit card worth of plastic a week” The corruption they described is so deeply embedded at every level (academia, corporations, Washington) its hard to imagine changing the system is possible without completely destroying the entire system and starting over. Depressing as hell the way they lay everything out. The rapacious, health-destroying, wealth-sucking system the Means describe begins its assault at birth and doesn’t stop until you’re dead and drained of all financial worth.
It was an intriguing interview but I kept having moments of cognitive dissonance. Everything that they said re addictive ultra processed foods, big pharma, lobbyists, “not protecting our kids” and wrong incentives (profit?!) was great and on point. But as you mentioned then they would drop in the ‘Ayn Rand’ reference or “Capitalism is the best system evah”, or multiple times “we don’t have a free market, this is not a free market”, “I’d fire every single nutritionist in the govt” (implies govt is the problem, but really it’s only because Capitalism has bought them off via revolving doors). It is the profit incentive in capitalism in health care and food that is driving the behaviors and products that they are warning about. Capitalists will do whatever they are permitted to do to increase profit.
I kept wondering what their idea of a free market really was? Did they mean free from monopolies and free for competition a la Adam Smith i.e. a regulated competitive free market. Because to overcome their issues requires a well (highly?) regulated market to get rid of the monopoly, oligopoly, anti-competitive and detrimental effects, but I’m not sure that that is what they and Tucker Carlson were suggesting. They didn’t exactly say we need more regulation.
I was waiting for some serious suggestions like banning advertising for junk food to kids, or advertisting for pharma etc. They were happy blaming Michelle Obama partnering with Private Equity for sugar water for kids (and rightly so), but how about suggesting some regulations about plain packaging for junk food and junk drinks? And they seemed to miss the Capitalistic Private Equity profit driver in that equation surprise surprise.
They still seemed a bit blind to elephant in the room and ultimate cause, capitalism and profit motives and health care/food don’t go very well together.
I only have 15 or so minutes till break ends and “back to work”. Not enough time to write much comment.
I read that some people look askance at the selling of stuff which Casey and Calley Means are doing at their website.
But if they have walked away from their positions within Big Food, that means they have walked away from their jobs and incomes within Big Food. That means they are going to have to make a different kind of living somehow.
So I would judge their talk in its own terms, and not merely condemn it as guilty-by-proximity of something for being close to the bunches of ads and pitches.