Nutrition Expert: The Hidden Cost of Ultra-Processed Foods

Very large percentage of studies are funded by pharmaceutical companies. It's just disturbing how much control and influence they have. They influence medical journals, what gets put on TV. Convicted of fraud, you know, paid heavy fines really just as a cost of doing business. Like I said, you know, they have that obligation to make profit. They used to say they wanted customers from cradle to grave, but now it says they want them from womb to grave. Our Bay Area narrator today is Terry Ward, author and CPA-turned-health advocate. Her book, God's Prescription, challenges the myths of modern healthcare and exposes how profit-driven systems have led to a nation where 60% suffer from chronic disease and nearly three-quarters are overweight. She connects the dots between faith, mindset, and functional medicine, arguing that healing begins not in a prescription bottle, but in our daily choices and beliefs. In this episode, she shares why the food and healthcare systems are failing us and how we can reclaim our health of body, mind, and spirit. This is Bay Area Innovators, and I'm your host, Steve Vispas. Terry, welcome to our program. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Fantastic to have you on our program from Caldwell, Idaho. That's a first for us. Well, the first I want to ask you, it's your very first question in your book. The very first sentence is, who can you trust? And we're talking here about getting opposite advice sometimes, or so much advice from health providers and health experts. And you ask, who can you trust? So tell us about it. How do we deal with this? Well, I think it's important to remember that experts are human too. And as Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify. In the age that we live in, we really don't have a choice to not inform ourselves. You know, medical professionals have an obligation for informed consent, but they're so rushed and so limited on the time they can spend with any one patient. So it's kind of getting overlooked. And so we have to educate ourselves, you know, do our own research and verify what we're being told. That might mean, you know, instead of trusting a headline, read a study, you know, instead of looking at, you know, one piece of something, you've got to look at the big picture. Absolutely. So mainly we'll be talking about your book, God's Prescription, which I just finished a few days ago. And I was very impressed. Now, one of the things you bring up in the book, and this is pretty obvious, but I'm still going to say it, is that all these pharmaceutical companies, healthcare industry, they are corporations. Now, the main goal of corporations in the U.S. and probably anywhere in the world is to make money. That's their goal because that's how they are structured. And they have investors and they have shareholders that, you know, their main goal is to make money. Now, if everyone was healthy, they wouldn't make money because they wouldn't have no one to sell the medicine or no one to treat. So there's clearly a conflict there that, you know, I think you've talked about this in your book, how in so many ways they almost need to keep us sick. So talk to us more about what you learned, what you studied, you know, how much of this, because it's so disturbing, right? That you think that they need to keep us sick. Yeah, at every level. It's just disturbing how much control and influence they have. You know, they influence medical journals and what gets published. They influence what gets put on TV because they're advertisers. They, you know, same way with medical journals, they're buying reprints of articles. They're paying for advertising and they're heavily influencing what gets published. There's editors that have retired and come out and talked about that. And then they influence medical school curriculum. They donate big pieces of equipment and different things so they can exert influence there. They've got, you know, influence on insurance companies and it just, it runs very deep. As incredible as this may sound, are they really trying to heal or are they more focused on making profit? I mean, there's a balance I guess they're playing and they're kind of playing with our lives in that sense. But what have you seen as far as some kind of definite answer on this as far as their goals? Well, I think what we've seen is not pretty. I mean, they've almost all been convicted of fraud, you know, paid heavy fines really just as a cost of doing business. Like I said, you know, they have that obligation to make profit. They used to say they wanted customers from cradle to grave, but now it said they want them from womb to grave. So, you know, they're even targeting pregnant women. So it's kind of scary. And again, why we need to be informed consumers. And now you bring up some statistics in your books, something along the lines of 60% of our population has some kind of chronic disease. What was more amazing to me was that I think three quarters or 75% are overweight. Why is the modern healthcare failing us so much? It's really not just one thing. I think it's a lot of things. I think we're surrounded by environmental toxins that, you know, influence our hormones and make it easier to gain weight, harder to lose weight. We have a food system that doesn't contribute to health as much as it does disease. And again, doctors aren't educated on nutrition and lifestyle. They're rushed in their appointments. And so consumers aren't really getting the information they need to be healthy. You also talk in your book about breaking through that and redefining normal. Can you share a little bit about, I think you mentioned the Mediterranean diet and things like that. What is your advice of breaking through these health issues that we see? I think it's taking responsibility for your own health. Being a good steward of your body is the first step. I mean, well, it starts with the mindset first, but taking that responsibility on. And then it's not just one thing. It's a lifestyle. It's a healthy diet. The Mediterranean is a diet, but it's also a way of life. So, you know, when they've looked at the blue zones, they call them, where people have longer lives. It's controversial now. Someone said it was debunked. But really, it's about community. It's about movement. It's about faith. And, you know, just really feeling connected to other people, and as well as to what you're eating and to the earth. So it's a bigger piece of the puzzle. It's not like I'm just going to go on a diet and everything is going to be resolved through that. No, definitely not. Can it take just one thing? Probably. I mean, each piece will make a difference. But we're holistic human beings and everything is connected. So it takes a multi-pronged approach. I remember from when I was a little kid, I remember a phrase that was passed around, and it was, are we eating to live or are we living to eat? And if you think about that, you know, I think if we just ask that question, we kind of have a bit of a better sense of what we should be doing, right? Yeah, and I think that food is intended for enjoyment, but mostly for nourishment. So it's not that it has to be one or the other. We just have grown into a society, a supersized society, where gluttony is normal. Yeah, so definitely talk about gluttony because I know you mentioned that. But first, what I found fascinating in your book is you talk about medication and how early 1900s, through the Flexner Report and John D. Rockefeller, our medication has changed from pretty much natural medicine to what you call oil-based medicine. So can you tell us a little bit more about what you found out about that? And I assume this is all public information, it's not secret. Yeah, no, the Flexner Report is out there for anyone who wants to read it. And it was really, it was presented as a way to improve medical schools, to make them better. But what it did is put a lot of the natural ones out of business. The ones that weren't, you know, were using herbs and whatever natural healing. And the ones that got the funding were the ones that would support using petroleum-based pharmaceuticals. And that still continues today. You know, it's kind of, they will start with a natural compound, but then they synthesize it into something, you know, that's synthetic. Tell us more about why this succeeds so well, you know, with Rockefeller and having this new way of medication being introduced. Because if people are used to ways of doing things for hundreds of years, why would they change to like an oil-based medication? Power and greed. Rockefeller was a very powerful and ruthless businessman in the petroleum industry, as well as, you know, the medical industry where he sought to pursue additional profits. And so I think it was just, you know, you kind of do things his way or you're going to get put out of business. So it was mainly looking for more profits to expand his business into the medical arena. Yeah. And I think, you know, people want to trust their doctors. And their doctors aren't intentionally doing something wrong because they're in the medical school, they're taught a certain way, and that's how you do things. So it's just kind of become more ingrained as time's gone on. Have studies, like medical studies or research, been influenced to point into the direction of these oil-based medications? Well, I think a very large percentage of studies are funded by pharmaceutical companies in this day and age. It was during Reagan that actually the government funding of research got cut significantly. And so it shifted to the pharmaceutical companies doing their own research. They could do six studies and they're not required to disclose any but one, the one they want to submit for publication. So they can just keep designing it until they get the results they want. Right, right. Now, another important aspect you talk about in your book is how we move from whole foods to ultra-processed foods. And tell us a little bit about that. You know, you go into quite a bit of detail, but I just want to see if you can summarize. Well, it's kind of like organic. You know, whole foods used to be normal. And now over 70% of our food supply is ultra-processed foods. Whole foods are, you know, in their natural state. And processed foods are, you know, think canned tuna, canned foods are just minimally processed. But ultra-processed foods, they generally extract substances from a food like fats or starches or added sugars. And then they turn those into what I call food-like products. And that was really, I think what really was the impetus for that was World War II and the convenience. When women went into the workforce and, you know, had less time to spend in the kitchen, they saw the convenience of processed foods. And it just started growing from there. And people are spending less and less time in the kitchen, unfortunately. You also talk about the food additives. And what can you tell us about that? Did those come around at the same time that make food either tastier or more rich? Yeah, I think they've evolved over time, depending on, you know, the additives. They might be emulsifiers or preservatives, sweeteners. But they're designed to make things more appealing. They're engineered to hit a bliss point. So people want to eat more. Yes. How about farming? You also talk about how farming changed. Can you tell us how did farming change in the U.S.? Again, that was World War II. They needed more productivity when a lot of the men were off to war. Right. And so then when the war ended, they repurposed a lot of the war chemicals into agricultural products. So that was because of lack of resources, not enough people working in agriculture? Initially, that was when the equipment started doing more monoculture cropping and, you know, so they could produce more with the equipment. And then the idea of the chemicals was that they could produce more, too. It took less labor. I mean, think about your own garden. It takes a lot more time to pull the weeds than to just spray them at a cost, though. The reason I think that's important is because this is pretty much the one thing I always hear when people talk about AI and how AI is going to improve our lives by doing everything that we need to do. And if we say, well, are you sure about that? Are you sure it's going to improve our lives? Well, they say, well, you know, 100 years ago, we spent this much, this many people working on agriculture. Now we have 2%. So that's always seen like this huge impact, this disadvantage. From what you're saying, there's not necessarily a benefit that has definitely a downside to it. Oh, there's definitely a cost, you know, to our health, to our environment. Just, for example, uranium. We had uranium in our well water, and that used to stay in the earth. But when they started using chemical fertilizers, it was released into the groundwater. Wow. Now you have another interesting section in your book about gluttony. And I kind of had to look it up, but I think I know what it is. Tell us about that. I think it involves so many things. You know, you always get more than you need, right? Or not always, but many times you're tempted to get more than you need. And that includes not just food or goods or cars, but you mentioned busyness. Sometimes we are busy, and then we see that as a trait, as something that's good. And then we want to be more busy, right? So tell us about your studies on that. Well, I think that, like you said, gluttony is not just food. It's our lifestyle. We live in just a hurried, excessive lifestyle. We have more food than we need. Not always the best food, but we have more than we need. We have calendars that are overflowing. Even our kids' schedules are overflowing. And it's, you know, one of the sins of the Bible that I think churches overlook. Please tell us about some of your solutions or your advice that, you know, through your study, through everything you've gone through, how do you address some of these issues that are very, very important? Well, I'm a huge proponent of functional medicine, which is, I call it root cause medicine. Because if you can get to the root cause, you can actually fix the problem or support the body's natural ability to heal. Whereas if you just take a pill, it's just going to suppress a symptom. And it's probably going to stop a natural process that has tons of downstream effects. So you could be causing more problems in the process. And that, to me, is the solution, is trying to figure out the root cause and naturally supporting the body's ability to heal. Now, how would one get around in doing that? You know, if they go to their local hospital or Kaiser or whatever, you know, they're not going to get that advice. So you mentioned about doing the research themselves, but sometimes people are slow starters. So how do you see that happening on a large scale? Well, it's going to happen one person at a time. There's just, you know, one mind opens and goes, wow, I need to do this. We have a huge national database of peer-reviewed studies on the National Institute of Health, it's called PubMed. So you can go on there and find studies. They're maybe a little difficult to read until you get used to reading them, but they're pretty enlightening. And I think, you know, if you follow like Institute of Functional Medicine has five R's. So you remove, you remove those things that are causing the problems, whether it's, you know, environmental toxins or gluten or, you know, a lifestyle that you're engaging in. Then you replace, you know, maybe you need more digestive enzymes or your body just needs a little more of a particular nutrient. So you provide that. Then you re-inoculate, you build up that microbiome with, you know, beneficial gut bacteria. Then you repair, you provide the body what it needs to heal. And then you rebalance. And that's kind of where you get into the lifestyle piece of it. Tell us more about PubMed. I know you mentioned it in the book as well. Tell us more, what is it? It's a series of studies done by whom and how? It's a database. It's huge. The vast majority of peer-reviewed studies and papers are on PubMed. Not all of them. It's frustrating when I want one and I can't find it on there. And they're not all available to read more than the abstract. But you can still garner a little bit from that. Would you say they're accurate? And if yes, how did they escape the bias or the push from the big pharma? Well, they don't. Unfortunately, they don't always. But if you can find like a systematic review or a meta-analysis that would include several studies, then it's more likely to be accurate than just looking at one study. Another chapter in your book that I thought is fascinating is the mind-body connection. And I think mindset is part of it. And I think you give an example of your four-year-old. Was it its grandson that told your daughter not to get upset because it's not good for her body? So tell us about the mind-body connection. Because I think that's understood in some way, but it's still a bit of a mystery to a lot of people. Yeah, it's real. I mean, it's talked about in the Bible and it's confirmed by science that our mind and our emotions affect our body chemically and physiologically. So we have to be cognizant of what we're thinking, how we're allowing our emotions to take control. Like if we're living in fear, we're in the limping brain. We're not using logic or reason. And we've got stress hormones running throughout our body. So what do you recommend? How do you calm down? I mean, sometimes people take pills to sleep or to calm down. And what would be the alternative to that? Well, I think deep breathing exercises are very powerful. Meditation is powerful. Things like Tai Chi and yoga. There's a whole lot of mindfulness practices listed in the book. And those can be very calming. Even just prayer, reading scripture. Please tell us about your journey. How did you evolve through this process where you discovered things? You are still a CPA, but you kind of changed careers. You were stressed out, I assume. And then you wanted a different kind of life. So tell us your journey. What makes this change? Well, I first got interested in nutrition in high school because a woman who was successfully managing her lupus with diet and lifestyle came and spoke to our health class. And I was just amazed at the power of nutrition. But at the same time, my mom suggested I take an accounting class a college accounting class while I was in high school. And that just seemed to click for me. It was easy. And so I went down the road of becoming a CPA. I worked for the big international firms. And it was stressful. Very high stress level type of position. And I destroyed my gut in the process with all the stress and the long hours. And I knew that eventually I went out on my own, too. And I wanted to do something else, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I took a cross-country road trip by myself with a cooler in the back of the car. I felt great along the way. I'd stop and visit my cousins and family. And they were eating food that I couldn't eat. And they're not healthy. So I'm like, OK, I know what I need to do. I've kind of recovered my health with diet. And so that's when I decided that I wanted to help others do the same. Because it is very powerful. But food is medicine, right? Tell us about the connection between faith and well-being. And of course, the title of your book is God's Prescription. Tell us about that connection. Well, the connection is validated by science. I actually did a talk called The Science of Faith at a conference. It's amazing how, like I was suggesting, the prayer and meditation, those kind of practices will actually improve health outcomes. And also, just having faith, it's like a mindset. It will influence outcomes for health. And also, I think it makes you a better steward of your body. Hopefully, it does. Now, finally, Terry, I want to ask you your thoughts about this new administration. And Robert Kennedy Jr., he's having a lot of things on his agenda, things that he wants to improve with health, with kids' health in general. How do you see that going forward? And do you think that's actually going to accomplish enough to change the direction of the health problems that we have seen in the country? I hope that he can make a lot of progress. He's got a lot of opposition, unfortunately. And his work, he could be fired with the next administration. So as much as I pray and hope that he makes a lot of good changes, I wouldn't put my faith in that. You have to educate yourself. You have to take responsibility for your own health. Terry, thank you so much for your time. Any final thoughts, any advice to our viewers? Just know that there's a better way. Know that health freedom is possible, that you can enjoy true health as God intended it. Thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you for watching another episode of Bay Area Innovators. If you enjoyed this episode and you know someone who should be on our show, please send us an email at sfbay.epochtimes.com. We would love to hear from you. Thank you and see you next week.