Americans Have Been Treated as Lab Rats and the Result Is Chronic Disease: Analyst

HHS Secretary R.F.K. Jr. is going after the ultraprocessed foods loophole. Joining us now to discuss is Emily Kaplan, co-founder and CEO of the Broken Science Initiative and MedFix, which offers a health curriculum that breaks down how the food we eat is used as energy or leads to chronic disease. So Emily, good afternoon to you. Thank you for joining us today. Now, the secretary is referring to the grass example as a loophole. So a little background here. In 1958, Congress enacted the generally recognized as safe exemption, which allows food companies to independently verify the safety of their ingredients as long as they're considered generally safe. So I brought a clip here with me, Emily, of R.F.K. Jr. talking about it. So let's just take a quick look at that. That loophole is hijacked by the industry and it was used to add thousands upon thousands of new ingredients into our food supply. In Europe, there's only 400 legal ingredients. This agency does not know how many ingredients there are in American food. So let me ask you, in your view, what is the importance of ending the So, I mean, I think if you go back to 1958, right, when this was originally established, the added ingredients were things like salt or vinegar or baking soda, things that we can all sort of collectively agree these are probably safe. I think what has happened is that the chemical processes that are being used really with carbohydrates and sugars are clearly deleterious. Those are what make up most of the processed foods that we have. And I don't even know if you can consider some of these ingredients food. And so I think this is really sort of trying to pull back on what was intended to be things that were generally accepted as food additives that we would have in our kitchen. The things we're talking about now, you can't make in your kitchen at home. They have to be made in an industrialized plant. And so I think his point is that this has been hijacked in the sense that industry has come in and they've started adding all of these things to our food supply. And that really what's important to understand about this is that this exemption was made originally for things that we generally knew were safe. And now what's happened is that the manufacturers of these food products get to pick their own experts. They form a panel of their own experts who they pay to determine that these ingredients are not harmful. And so you can see right there that there's a massive risk of conflict of interest. Are these scientists that are on these panels being really rigorous about this? They don't. It's voluntary whether they let the FDA know about what they have found or what the new ingredients are. So there's a lack of oversight on all of this. And I think one of the things that's always interesting to me is that we can all collectively agree, regardless of how partisan things are, that our health care system is broken and that we've really been sort of lied to about the food that we're eating being safe and being what is effectively providing our body with energy that we need rather than leading to disease, which is really what we focus on at MedFix. But I think this larger picture, we all agree we don't want to be feeding our children or feeding ourselves foods that are made up of chemical components that have probably never really been tested. I mean, the other thing to add about the way that this works in practice is that the manufacturers decide that it's probably okay to have. And again, it's a standard of harm, not safety. So they're not proving it's safe. They're proving that it's not harmful. But they're not going back and re-looking at things that have been out there the way that you would in a long-term clinical trial where you would, you know, any drug that's entered in has to be approved by the FDA. And then there are regular checkups to sort of look, are we seeing a signal in the data that this is actually not safe or there are consequences or symptoms presenting that we didn't initially know? There's none of that in the food supply. So Emily, I'm also wondering here if this is a problem unique to the United States. I'm not an expert, but Kennedy in the clip earlier we showed said there's thousands upon thousands of ingredients in the U.S. while there's only about 400 in Europe. Why is that the case? Is this unique to the United States? Well, I mean, I can just, I can speak to the regulatory process, which is almost the inverse in Europe. And so in order for you to get new additives added to the food supply there, it goes through a regulated body within the government and they are checking to see if it is safe. So again, our standard is it's not harmful and that's decided by the individual private companies that are making and selling the food. And as soon as they make that decision, they can put it on the shelves. In Europe, it's the inverse of that. So they have to, the government has to go through, they're picking people who have to expose their conflicts of interest. If they have any, they're not supposed to have any ties to the food companies. So you're cutting down on that bias potential. And then the, you know, the government is deciding, okay, this seems to be safe and now you can bring it to market. So there's, it's, you know, it's a slower process. Industry here would argue that our process allows for faster innovation. Obviously faster, faster delivery of these products in Europe, they've taken the much stricter route saying we have to know this is safe. Not that it just doesn't cause harm, but that it is truly safe for the body to handle. And I think, you know, when we talk about ultra processed foods, it's important to remember that we really are talking about carbohydrates and sugar. And when the dietary guidelines came out in the seventies, what we did was we removed fat from the diet and we, and that fat was really replaced by carbs and sugar. And so when you look at the chronic disease epidemic, it becomes really clear that this is coming from these carbs. And I would argue seed oils which you really are finding mostly in these processed foods. So I think, you know, part of Kennedy's campaign of eat real food is if you're eating real food, you are not eating this processed stuff and you're avoiding this problem in that way. And now this is another, you know, again, you know, the person who put forward the citizen's petition was the former head of the FDA, you know, under Biden. So there is an agreement on both sides that like something needs to be done about the way that we're delivering this food to Americans. I mean, I think if you really look at the whole scope of it, and this is tough to say, but I think the American public has really been treated like a bunch of lab rats and the outcome has been chronic disease. And we need to start pulling that back. Yeah. I mean, this is a very serious, very practical issue that we're discussing today. You know, I'm a consumer. I go to the grocery store just like anybody else. I want to ask you, is there any way today for an ordinary consumer, you know, to find out how many of these substances, these grass exempted substances are in the food supply? Exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know the total number. I think, you know, one of the things that we teach, we have a two-day seminar that's really working with health coaches and personal trainers so that we have actually over a hundred locations in the United States that are Metfix gyms and Metfix just stands for metabolic fix. And we talk a lot about this, how to help the average person navigate good food choices, because that's really what's going to drive health outcomes. And I think, you know, the easiest thing to take away is that if you are eating food that doesn't have a food label, you are better off and you don't really need to count your calories or your macros. You just need to eat those whole foods. So meat and vegetables as your primary options. Dairy is fine as long as it's full fat dairy. And I think, you know, the more ingredients you see on the back, the more you should be sort of limiting those foods. And certainly when you're reading the label and you can't pronounce what it is that's inside there, because it's a chemical compound that takes up the entire line of the ingredient list, like I'd avoid that. I think that's an easy way to the average person can sort of start thinking about this. You know, the other trick is to shop in the perimeter of the grocery store. So most of the processed foods is going to be in the aisles in the middle, whereas meat, vegetables, dairy are on the perimeter. So if you just stay on the outside, and again, if you just eat whole foods, you are going to be far better off than the average American. And I think right now we have the statistics is so alarming. It's like 12.2% of Americans are metabolically healthy. That's it. So most people could drastically improve their health by learning the things that we teach at MedFix, but that also, you know, honestly, just don't eat food with food labels. If you started there, you would see radical reversals of chronic disease. Yeah, maybe you can give us just finally a bit more tips on that. Just not eating foods with food labels. I mean, I would imagine that might be a bit difficult. So maybe we can hear more tips from you because they're everywhere, right? You brought up grocery stores. They're also in school cafeterias, vending machines, airports, some restaurants as well. Maybe you can give us more tips on how to avoid those foods with food labels. Yeah. So, I mean, I think if you're stuck in a situation where you're in an airport or you're in a place, you know, you're at school and it's very limited, I mean, obviously there's going to be fruit and vegetables usually available to you and there should be meat. And so I would say, you know, you want to cut out the things that have the labels. If they have labels, then look for foods that only have one or two ingredients on the labels. And, you know, I think, again, like we could probably make some correlation between the more ingredients on a label, the more deleterious it is to your health. And so as you're making those choices, you're really trying to find things that are as close to the original source of food that it was, right? So if you're looking for potatoes, you want to find, you know, maybe mashed potatoes that have some cream and butter, but not like a thousand ingredients. And I think we can do that. I know when I travel, you know, Starbucks has egg bites that don't have carbs in them and that are really just egg and then maybe some bacon and some cheese. Meat sticks are always good to keep on hand. I keep those. And if you really want to have potato chips, we do have lots of brands now, like Mesa chips that are made with beef tallow instead of the seed oil. And one of the things we talk about in our seminar is when you introduce seed oils, they have something that, you know, basically we have in our body, reactive oxygen species, which is a signaling molecule in the body. And it tells the cell if it's full or not. And when your reactive oxygen species is low, which is what happens when you eat seed oils, your body is hungry. And so you want to eat more. So I always say, do an experiment where you take some, you know, Doritos or whatever chips you really like to eat. Try eating them. You'll go through the whole bag, no problem. And then you try eating some of these chips that are cooked in beef tallow and you get full faster. And it's at a cellular level, but it's the kind of experiment anybody can do. And I think it's actually a great way to talk to kids about good choices and not good choices. You want to eat food that makes you feel full. And these seed oils don't do that. They make you more hungry. And so you end up eating more of the garbage, unfortunately. And those carbs and sugar raise your insulin, which causes you to store that energy as fat that you can't access. And so you're tired and hungry all the time when you're in what we call a glycolytic pathway. Whereas if you're eating meat and vegetables, you can access the fat on your body for energy. You'll sleep better. I mean, in our Metfix locations, we're reversing type 2 diabetes sometimes in as short as three to four months. These are people who have been told their whole lives they have to be on medication. And by just getting rid of the carbs and the seed oils, they're able to reverse their diseases. And so our Metfix locations are gyms. These are just places and communities all over America that are having this dramatic effect by using lifestyle to educate people and to treat the diseases that we're all facing at such high numbers, even children. I mean, I like to always point out that one in 10 American kids has something called fatty liver, which used to only be seen in raging alcoholics. And it's because of the amount of sugar that they're being fed. And so this is a very serious problem that really deserves all of our attention. And so I think this citizen's petition is looking at how have these manufacturers been able to get all of these chemicals that haven't really been tested at all? I mean, if you put this in the realm of drug approval, it would be unheard of to be putting all this stuff out for the American public to consume without any data publicly available about what they're putting in and what the impact of it is. And so I think this is about more transparency. I think it's about more honesty. I mean, we need to know what your conflicts of interest are. And if the manufacturer is paying you to say that this is not harmful, I'm not sure that I would trust that as much as I would if it was a, you know, a panel of experts that were put together because of their expertise. And we're allowed to say, no, we do think it's harmful. Yeah. I mean, very good information today. So useful, Emily. Thank you so much for speaking with us. Oh, thanks for having me. This was fun.