Jerold Mande (nutritionist)

Jerold Mande is a nutritionist, public policy expert and adjunct professor at Harvard University. He has had several roles in both government and academia over his career. He is currently also the CEO of Nourish Science, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that is focused on solving the country’s current nutrition crisis.  In this episode we discuss the obesity epidemic, school lunches, ultra-processed foods, food additives, food production, and more.

0:00:00 - Intro
0:00:14 - Chronic Disease Epidemic
0:02:15 - Poor People Getting Sicker
0:05:45 - Ultra-Processed Foods & Health
0:13:55 - Price & Quality of  Food
0:17:25 - Food Supply & Infant Formula
0:24:25 - Food Corporations & Government
0:27:25 - Profit in Food & Healthcare
0:30:50 - Preventative Health & Government Guidelines
0:35:10 - School Lunches
0:45:30 - Tobacco Regulations  & Childhood Obesity
0:51:10 - Forever Chemicals
0:53:43 - Life Expectancy & Chronic Disease
0:56:30 - McDonalds, Doritos, Preservatives & Chemicals 
1:09:15 - Gluten Free, GMOs, Peanut Allergies & Studies
1:16:50 - Healthy Diet, American Diet & Vegan Diet
1:26:00 - Seed Oils & Different Fats
1:28:55 - Outro

Nourish Science website:
https://nourishscience.org/

Chuck Shute linktree:
https://linktr.ee/chuck_shute

Transcript

Chuck Shute: 0:13

And I apologize in advance if I get too worked up, I'm, I'm not mad at you, I'm just mad at the situation in our in our country, it's just seems like an epidemic of, of health,

Jerold Mande: 0:26

you're right to be concerned about it. More Americans that should be it's just not a natural, normal or good state to have as many sick people as we do. Over half that nation is sick with a chronic disease, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, cancer, most of those are caused by our food, and so bad that lifespans are declining in the United States were last in the world, among the 20 most developed countries, in terms of lifespan, the maybe most disturbing of all is how sick our children are. And so, you know, it used to be called when I was younger, adult onset diabetes, because it was type one, the type you're born with. But then later in life, some people had chronic illnesses that gave rise to a form of diabetes. Now, we had to change the name to type two diabetes, because it's so common in children. 20% of our children are obese, and another disease that only used to occur late in life, a fatty liver disease often associated with chronic alcoholism. In the last decade, the fastest growth has been in our children. And that's all because of the food were being sold.

Chuck Shute: 1:50

Yeah, I saw that I worked in the schools for 17 years. And the kids, they just I mean, it was they were just eating garbage. It was really sad to see. And yeah, you see all these kids that are obese. I mean, I don't know what their blood work is like, but I can't imagine that it's good when they're walking around with all that extra weight. And it's just sad. And I think it reinforced one of the articles you sent me about the gap between, which is the thing is really interesting, because I think that's something that hopefully will get people on the left to join in this revolution is that the rich people are living longer than the poor people, the gap is widening, because poor people are eating the food that's cheaper, because they're just trying to survive. And this is the food that's killing people. Yeah,

Jerold Mande: 2:38

there is a gap. It's a disease that we're talking about these chronic diseases, death rates. In every area, it's it's hardest on the lowest income Americans. But more than just the very low is really even many middle class people. Of course, people in all groups are sick, but those that you mentioned are sicker. And it's because the cost, you know, often we think of cost is what we see in the food store when we go to purchase something. But another equally important cost is the time it takes to prepare the food and the skill and knowledge it takes to prepare the food. So increasing what our food companies provide is not only tasty, which they should food, more affordable, but also convenient timesaving that you can go right from the box to the microwave to your play. And often those foods are designed and produced in a way that if eaten as designed will make us sick. Yeah,

Chuck Shute: 3:36

I mean, and also I feel like I have the time. And the energy and I took a nutrition class in college, it was a long time ago, but I got an A in that. And I feel like it's an interest for me. And I can go through and read the ingredients and then Google it. I mean, I have a lot more time on my hands on the average, you know, working mom or whatever that's just gotta like grab the food quickly and doesn't have time to research every ingredient and chemical that's in their food and say, Is this good? Is this bad? Is there a way something that you recommend for people who are on a budget like a cheap way to eat healthy? It's

Jerold Mande: 4:08

hard and and and my work is, you know, has been mostly in senior positions in government. And so my view is that, fortunately, we have a Food and Drug Administration at Department of Agriculture that have programs that were created to ensure that our food is safe. Often people think about that in terms of maybe bacterial contamination, acute illnesses that can occur. But the law doesn't make that distinction. The law says that substances added to food may or may not be introduced to health so not you know, it's a pretty high bar there for companies to make sure that the food they're selling doesn't make us sick. Unfortunately, the government is not doing its job ensuring that these foods don't. Yes, there are things we can do individually. We can read the food label that I was helped design, that those things, man Are there steps you can take, but really the the most important step you would need to take is to scratch cook all your food. And that is more than most Americans are able to do. And so it's really not a fair request to say you can do that those who want to do that, absolutely. And we should support that and enable it to happen. But those who through their circumstances have no choice but to rely on what's called Ultra processed food to eat, should be able to do so with not worrying about their health. That is the law and that needs to be enforced. That really is that the number one strategy and your listeners and others need to demand of their a government of the elected officials to make sure that food companies produce food that we can eat every day and not get sick? Yeah, well, that's

Chuck Shute: 5:46

the thing. I think that I get into arguments with people because I don't feel like the food is safe. I mean, yes, it's safe in terms of bacteria and E. coli, for the most part. I mean, yeah, we have the occasional flare up of those kinds of things. But I'm thinking more like, long term like, and I feel like that's the thing that honestly, like, we don't know, a lot of the chemicals that are in our food. Now, we don't know the long term effects of these, right, because they're them. Some of them have just been approved recently. I feel I can't keep up with all the different things that are in there. But and then you and then it's hard to figure out, you read things oh, this is bad. And then you know, but the FDA says it's okay. So it's like, there's a lot of confusion. Even if you're trying to use research the internet and trying to research these chemicals, you'll see conflicting things like I saw an article the other day 12 Dirty dozens, like bvo that I think that is something that now they've officially or tried to ban and I don't know if it's officially banned yet, but it was I think was in Mountain Dew. It's like, native vegetable oil or something. Yeah, yeah.

Jerold Mande: 6:47

So one thing, you know, it's it's not that far off. So as I mentioned before, you know, our children are getting sick. So these aren't things that you're eating today. And you don't have to worry about it for 2030 years, I think what should be an alarm for all of us? That, you know, it strikes us? Not that many years later, the fact that 20% of our children are obese, type two diabetes, right? So it's not that far off, maybe it's not right away, right. It's within a few years. And so that should be a concern, the chemicals you mentioned, and I think the number one problem with our diet is that we are overeating. And that ultra processed foods, the studies at the National Institutes of Health and others have done found that when you feed people a diet matched for nutrients, so the same amount of vitamins, minerals, but also things that people worry about, right Lea, so all the added sugar saturated fat in their food, that if you serve that made by a chef in their facility, versus the foods that were sold by companies in our stores, those who ate those highly processed foods ate an extra 500 calories a day. So the number one way our food is making us sick, not so much that that chemicals may cause a cancer later, we have good systems in place to test for that. But what we don't test for was, is this food going to cause you to over eat and gain weight and become obese? We're not testing chemicals at all for that. And that's how companies appear to be using them. Yeah,

Chuck Shute: 8:23

explain what Ultra process. What is your definition of that? Because this is something that I guess it's confusing for some people. Yeah, no,

Jerold Mande: 8:30

it isn't. It's because it's brand new. It wasn't used until a few years ago, some colleagues in Brazil came up with it to describe another way of describing food. So we're all used to describing a crisp food we know about it as fruits vegetables is a bread, grains, protein, meat, we're all familiar with calling food by its food name. But we're also all pretty now at this point familiar with the reductionist from that step down to the chemical nutrients. So we think about it not as food items of fruits, vegetables, meat, grains, we think about it as a protein, fat carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals. That was a discovery that happened quite a while ago, but was Nobel Prize worthy because it enabled us to prevent maybe a billion deaths globally due to hunger. So understanding that it wasn't just food, but if we made sure people had enough of these individual nutrients, we could avoid these states of malnutrition of hunger have micro nutrient vitamin mineral protein deficiencies malnutrition, we solve that problem, which was fabulous, but it didn't explain the chronic disease. And as we've kept trying to rely on the nutrient approach to explain well, why though, is causing diabetes why though is it causing cancer? It the nutrients didn't seem to explain it. So this group took another approach and they ignored that nutrients and looked at the level of processing, they came up with a system they call Nova no V A V as in Victor. And they broke food into four categories, which I'll briefly explain. The first are are these raw ingredients, we're all familiar with food. So the fruits and vegetables, grains that grow that are the should be at the base of our food. The next or what they refer to as culinary ingredients are things like the oil, salt, sugar, things that you will find in your kitchen and would use and taking the raw food ingredients and making them into dinner. The third category is what they call minimally processed food. And really, it's just taking those first two categories putting together and get that so you don't have the chicken, you don't have the tomato, but you have a cow, but you have the chicken parmesan on your plate. And so you've taken the raw ingredients, you've taken the culinary ingredients, and you've produced this minimally processed dish. But then there's the fourth category, what they deemed Ultra processed food, there are a lot of ways to think about it. One way is to describe it is that it is something that you couldn't make in your kitchen. And if you took the package and the ingredients are required by law to beyond the package, if you looked at that list of ingredients, and then started to take town from your shelf, while you'd find that most of the ingredients there you don't have, in fact many of them you can't pronounce and have no idea what they are. And so I think what Americans don't see which they should see is how much our food has changed, and how you know, where is the food in our food? Let me give you one more example which you know, really stuck in my mind. When I was at the Food and Drug Administration. Your listeners there's a product it's at but VA juice. I don't know if you recall VHS? Yeah, but a vegetable.

Chuck Shute: 11:56

Yeah. My parents used to drink that was disgusting. It looked gross. No, no, it looked gross,

Jerold Mande: 12:00

right? I had the same reaction to it. But when I was at FDA, we got to Campbell's invited us out to see their facility. And it was actually called V seven because the eight was tomato juice. And they had a whole different factory and process to make the tomato juice. But But we got to see as the seven other vegetables that go in. And it was it was really reassuring in the sense that we pulled up to this factory and there was a long line have oversized dump trucks filled to the brim with all of the odd shaped produce you would never see in your grocery store. So carrots that were bigger than I can put on this crane, and little tiny ones, but all the rejects got gathered up that we don't, you can't sell in the store and they were sent there and made into juice. And then you know, you're right, the final product may be something you want, but you'd see what goes into what is offered. If you go into an ultra processed food facility today, you will see powder sludges there is nothing you will see there that you recognize as food. And so they've they've what's happened is our food industry has figured out how to take some cheap out of the carbohydrate class, often grain class, and they really strip it down. They you know, it starts as a form of a plant. But they've stripped it down to the point that even the plant walls and structure the plant are gone. And this sort of framework that's left, they then layer on to it all sorts of flavors smells other things to create this food, they add vitamins, minerals to it. But you know, you have to ask yourself, Is it food or fiction, it really is fiction, it's not food. And yet, that's what makes up unfortunately, the bulk of our diet, these ultra processed foods, no discussion was taken place. There was no government program to encourage this. But today, it makes up almost three quarters of what we find in our food stores and makes up over half of most Americans diets and even more in children's diets

Chuck Shute: 13:55

Leanna I think you receive food Incorporated, or part one or two, those are great memories for people who are just even remotely interested in this topic. I recommend those but I think one of the things they said and I just rewatched it yesterday to get some notes for this interview. But one of the things they said that was so I forgot it was so interesting. They said corn and soy 90% of foods contain one of these two ingredients, and even the animals are eating corn, even the fish are they're finding a way to feed corn to fish.

Jerold Mande: 14:23

Well, you know, we again, there were over time, we've faced different primary problems. And as I said at one point it was make sure enough people in the world everyone had enough to eat that we didn't have a billion people die. And so that was a big priority. And so we created a food system to meet that challenge. Another part is somewhat uniquely American, which is how cheap we want our food. So if you think about it back, well before my time and your time, every family had to ask itself the question where are we gonna get our food who's growing it amongst us someone needed to grow it? That would be you know something for someone to have a career as a farmer and produce farm on their land, you know, interesting even today 90% of farmers aren't able to make a living just on what they farm, they have to do other things. And at one time, that was the case for all Americans is we had to one of the things we had to do is grow the food we eat. Now you fast forward today, and we rely on less, you know, you didn't, I didn't have that conversation to my family who's going to grow the food, we're going to eat less than 1% of us produce the food that we don't need to eat less than 1%. And not only that, that's not enough not only to say, like, you know, we want you to produce all of our food. But we're not as grateful as we should. It's super hard work. Most people don't know who's the farmer who's producing their food or ever say thank you to them, which is a problem because they work a terribly hard. But in addition to that Americans demand not only do we want this food, we want it to be cheap. And so we pay less for our food than any other country in the world, less than 10%. On average, Americans income goes to art food, which is much lower than any other country. And I'll give you one example of that we produce some of the best seafood, particularly shrimp in the world, in our golf other areas. But it's hard to find in our stores, because most of that is is quickly bought up and shipped overseas, where they value the quality of that shrimp, what Americans put before everything else is they want it to be cheap. I was just reading in the news, our red lobster is going out of business. They're going out of business because Americans wanted, you know, all they could eat shrimp, or how did they get all the trip, they didn't get it by you know, harvesting the shrimp and Arcos because it would cost too much. They got it from you know, Southeast Asia where we send our shrimp because the people there demand higher quality shrimp, but then they produce it themselves. It's cheap, poor quality, but we want it because it costs less. And, you know, part of it is a serious problem. And that we have a lot of low income people who can't afford enough to eat always. And so we do need to be sensitive about our food price. But all of it also overall across society, Americans put the cost of the food first. And as a result, we sort of get what we demand, which is a cheaper, lower cost food but also much lower quality. Yeah,

Chuck Shute: 17:20

well, because another part of America which again, I I'm a capitalist, I think it's great to make money, but top the top for food corporations control 80% of the market, or I don't know if that statistic is up to date, it might be slightly different now. But basically, it's just a few handful of companies controlling a majority of this food, and it used to be hundreds or 1000s of farms, giving our food now it's like, it's just like, I think 130 or something, factories or whatever. I can't remember the exact statistic. But it's like, more or less like 13 I think it was at 13 Giant, like factories produce a majority of the food in this country. I mean, and it's kind of scary, too, because if something goes wrong, which I think we saw during the pandemic, the some of the there were some issues with the food supply. I mean, we could run out of food real quickly, right?

Jerold Mande: 18:08

Well, people don't have to worry about we're running out of food Overall, though it can happen. And it happened during the pandemic with infant formula. And exactly for the reason you described the amount of consolidation have brought the number of really large viable infant formula companies that we relied on to just a few. And so when one of them had a problem and had to shut down a major factory that resulted in a decrease of supply. Now in the scale we work on as a country, that's exacerbated because people worry about it. I remember visiting a nephew, they had a big store, they have the means to do this, they have a big, they open up a closet and an infant was filled with infant formula. I go well, what do you know, they're just worried about it, they have the means. And the mom was able to stay on the internet all day, track it down all across the country and find some. So those two factors together the strutting down of a large factory and a consolidated industry, but also a reasonable public response, especially if you have an infant, I'm worried about it. And so all of a sudden supply dipped a little demand shot way up, people started buying as much as they could and and you know that that was a problem. And I raised because the heart of it is, is there's a deep for trust, we could have solved the problem. If everyone sort of trusted more in the government and said that, look, you know, we're going through this period and together, you know, you want to make sure that you have enough info for men, we're going to help you do that, but Don't hoard it. But you know, people don't they look out for themselves I get it and that was the result. So yes, it does happen. That consolidation does happen. It's not quite as extreme as you described. But it is this notion again that we have what we call sort of commodity crops, so soybean, corn, wheat, some of these large almost industrial scale crops. It is okay it helps feed the world those industries are really profitable. Mmm. But it's not necessarily best for consumers, the farmers we rely on for our produce or aren't that same way that that's much more diverse and not quite as consolidated, and part by the nature of the product. But we need to, you know, grow more produce again, so people can eat it, but, but it really begins with people demanding, and I think we can meet that need. It's just that not enough people demand it today. Yeah,

Chuck Shute: 20:22

wait, so explain this to me, though, because I didn't research this. But I do know that you bring up the infant formula, because I remember that story. And I was trying to figure out at the time, and maybe this is misinformation, I don't know. But what I was, like, read something about how there's all again, it's one of the similar similar kind of things. There's only like two or three companies that make infant formula that is up to FDA standards in the US. But there's tons that do it in Europe. And that was confusing to me, because I thought you're a band more ingredients in our foods than than America there. They seem like they have a stricter thing about chemicals and ingredients in our foods. So is that like a kind of a monopoly? Is there some like some shady things going on with the food companies kind of like making it harder to get approved to make infant formula? So they control the market? Or what is the story there?

Jerold Mande: 21:14

Well, there is a consolidation. And that is a problem. My experience in the in the senior positions I've had across government, it's not so much of a conspiracy. It's just a marketplace sort of being unfettered. I am a fan. And I think capitalism is works as a system. But I'll describe a difference. You know, back in the 1920s, or earlier, there was what was called sort of rough and tumble capitalism. And I think that's what you're seeing again, in America. And what you're describing is where the market we put so much faith in the market, and there are so few guardrails in terms of how companies behave, that they behave in extreme ways that you know, give rise to the term rough and tumble of because you don't want to be in rough and tumble. But that's what we experienced more and more as Americans. So what happened for you know, the government is trying to provide for the they're setting standards for infant formula, it's true, the US have slightly stricter standards, because there was an experience in our time where, you know, we did a little bit better than some other countries because we have a tougher standards to ensure our infant formula is safe. So that was a part of the problem, that the barrier of becoming an infant formula company that you have to do is higher here, and so fewer companies go in, but then I was exacerbated again, in a well meaning step, we have a program that I helped oversee at USDA, the women infant and children's WIC program. And in order to keep the cost of that program down, you know, as taxpayers were always demanding that a government you know, costs go down and, and to keep the WIC costs down, they created a competition in each state where the infant formula companies would come compete for the lowest price, and then they would win a exclusive contract to sell infant formula in that state. And so those rules, which companies supported, because it enables them to grow and a few to be successful. And, you know, it's always funny, I find that corporations claim they want an unfettered marketplace. But when I was at FDA, we see some orange juice that was labeled fresh, which wasn't, and it was citrus Hill, they call that fresh orange juice. We were egged on to do it by their competitors. It wasn't that we were trying to do it, people want corporations all the time, I really do benefit from the government rules and try to put in place rules and policies that benefit them. And I think my point is that when people feel like well, the government's a problem. I think more often, it's the companies who are sort of egging the government on in a certain way. And I think that's what happened with infant formula. A few powerful companies sought to get rid of their competitors and, and benefit consumers. But the result was we were left with just a couple of large companies. And then when a problem occurred, the combination of a decrease in supply but an uptick in demand because people are certain, rightly that there'd be enough formula for their children ended up causing a serious crisis where you could go into a store and the shelves were infant formula should have been were empty, and that that should never have happened. Well,

Chuck Shute: 24:26

yeah. And you mentioned the corporations and the government. That's an interesting, real interesting relationship. And they touched on this a little bit in food Incorporated, where they with Monsanto, and, you know, they have a staff that investigates people stealing their seed because they have these Roundup Ready soybeans that they've, you know, developed this special formula, but the problem is that Monsanto has ties to both the Bush and the Clinton administration. So they said I'm this was the movies 2008. So I'm sure Obama and and Trump and Biden to what what is that? Because I think that's very admirable that you told me that you do not go into corporations into the corporate world after being in the government, you go to academia, which I think, much more respectable. What is your thought on people that do that? I mean, is that a conflict of interest? If you work for a food Corporation, then you go in the government or you're in the government, and then later you're you're, you're working for the food corporation that you were supposed to be policing. Isn't that a conflict of interest? I mean, it's definitely a bad look, at the very least. Yeah, I

Jerold Mande: 25:26

think it is a conflict of interest. There are some rules in place some, but they're just simply not affected. So after I've had a senior government position, there's a rule that says that I can't go back and lobby the people I work for for a year, two years, it depends on the administration, it's an it's a step to address what you're talking about. But I can go work for that corporation tomorrow, and teach the people there, how to use what I know, and the people I know, to get what they want, even though I'm not myself directly lobbying. So I'm not lobbying, I'm not meeting with the people I used to meet with. But I can tell the people I'm now working for this is the person you need to meet with, here's what I know about them, here's how to get a meeting with them. And now you can do it. And so I'm following the rules. But you know, it's the companies are benefiting from it. Again, you know, I think we we have, capitalism can be a great, as I said, I think there was way back they had what was called this rough and tumble capitalism, we moved away from it for many years and created a system that much better balanced government oversight of corporations that use their money use them or have a different strategies in terms of getting people to worry more about government than them. And as a result, I think we're really back in as bad of rough and tumble capitalism, as we saw in the past is returning today, increasingly, and I think this movement of people back and forth from government. I mean, some of that is useful, you want to learn from each other, but I don't think there are enough safeguards in place. And and part of that is, it's tough. So for example, particularly in my field and nutrition that all Americans should be concerned about, is the government really doesn't support nutrition research. We have a National Institutes of Health, that we rely on them to come up with a treatments for disease, something we all want. But if you zoom out at a high level chalk and ask, you know, what's going on in America today, why are we so sick? And you say, All right, well, let's explore that question. Well, what are the biggest industries in America? Well, food is one of our biggest industries, that trillion dollar industry, what is the net result of our food industry? Well, it makes people sick. It really does. Yeah, then what's the

Chuck Shute: 27:43

low food cost? But I'm going well, yeah, it's, but somehow they're making a massive profits, I think, because

Jerold Mande: 27:49

they do cereal. Yeah, no. Carbohydrates,

Chuck Shute: 27:53

because I had a buddy who this guy is making this documentary called Food lies. And he has a farm and they sell beef and beef products and, and he said, there's no profit, I was like, Well, what if you raise the price, he's like, it doesn't matter. You can't make money selling meat? Well,

Jerold Mande: 28:08

it's harder, right? Food, there's a very small margin. And the cheapest way to make food is the way they increasingly do, which is they use some very cheap commodities, like corn, soy. And they use just sort of the not even the whole structure, they reduce it in a way and process in a way that provides the bare framework for that. And then they add all these flavors, tastes other additives, to sort of make it end up being like food in the package. But that but what I was saying before, so that's a big industry, but even a bigger industry is what supposed to be our healthcare industry, which is really just a sick care industry. And so if you zoom out at a really high level, we have this enormous industry that feeds us that has the net result of making us sick, and then hands us off to this other even bigger industry health that's really sick here and produces treatments to treat it. Now when I give you that higher level context, because then you go to our National Institutes of Health, and we have Institute's on cancer, heart disease, diabetes, these are the institute's that are working to come up with the treatments to help us when we're sick. You know, absolutely. We want that. So grateful. You may, you know, people, relatives, others friends who've been saved by these drugs and discoveries, we want to have them. But the truth is, we can't afford if everyone is sick, we just need a lot more sick people. So we need the Institute of nutrition at NIH, to you know, make sure we learn that so he can you know, when God forbid you become sick with one of these diseases, even though you've tried to, we have systems to prevent them. You know what, we have the treatments ready to go for you. But for most people, they don't have to live through all of this sickness and suffering and strains on your finances because of it, but we don't have that. And so because the National Institutes of Health don't fund our nutrition or Research is less than 5% of its budget. When I was when I'm in academia, a lot of it's academia, but a lot of institutions depend on food companies to help fund their work. And you'll see it it's the chair of this company, the professor of that company. That's

Chuck Shute: 30:18

what I've tried to explain people and I get called a conspiracy theorists, I'm like, if you follow the money, it's, it's a different kind

Jerold Mande: 30:24

of conspiracy. It's not that someone's planning this this particular way, or have this various, oh, is that smart to make it turn out that way? It's just this idea of rough and tumble capital, you just let the money go where it's gonna go. You don't set any guardrails, you don't hold people accountable. You just let the money flow where it's going to flow. And, you know, a lot of people get hurt in that system. And that's what we're seeing today. Well,

Chuck Shute: 30:45

I think, in terms of things that the government could control, I definitely think that was interesting. When the Obamacare stuff came out. I was like, oh, okay, this is there. I don't remember a piece of it. That was preventative care. And that was really upsetting to me. And I remember like, during the pandemic, they never talked about being healthy, never said, like, hey, you know, one of the best ways that you can help fight COVID is if you go to the gym, you work out, you get sunshine, you eat healthy, you know, you keep a healthy weight, like none of these things are very rarely talked about. And I feel like that could be a huge thing. At the very least, the government can control government food, right, like school lunches. I mean, you said that they you think they got better?

Jerold Mande: 31:27

Well, they did get better. Now they've they're actually there they are. Now, I'll give you a measure. So the government has something somebody elicits my consumer, the dietary guidelines for America. So it's something that our department of agriculture and health work on every five years or so and come up with a list of what people should overall, you know, eat, how much I think you're familiar in the past, it used to be a result. And, you know, it's meant more for a professional audience to help them understand what people should eat. And then it's translated to a lay audience through a system that USDA usually develops. In the past, it was known as the food pyramid. And we got some issues with that one. Yeah, no, well, we got rid of it. When I was at the Department of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack has been open about struggling with his own weight over his life, you know, so I'm looking at this pyramid, you you guys oversee it, tell me how I'm supposed to use it. It's not helping me. And so we got rid of it. I said, the good news, Tom is that you can get rid of it and replace it. So we replaced it with something called my plate. Less people are familiar with that. It's it hasn't been out as many years, but it really just shows you what your plate should look like. And it shows that half of your plate should be fruits and vegetables, which is a wake up call right away. For most people. I know, it was for the Secretary, when we showed him our final design, he he looked at it for a second study, that's how I ship my plate looks nothing like that. And when he met with his plate, the protein piece, you know, dominated the entire plate and the vegetables and things were off to the side. And so, you know, we the government can do a better job needs to do a better job and needs to fund the medical nutrition research that will allow us to answer more questions. So for as I mentioned, ultra processed food, we have studies showing that it's probably a large driver of how we've become so fat as a nation, why we're so old, have so much obesity why that chronic disease has spread the way it has been? I don't know exactly why we could find out in a year or two if the National Institutes of Health would make it a priority. But they don't. aren't, you know, yet again, I don't think it's a conspiracy and that someone's thinking this up in a backroom, but it has the result because food companies make more money. So the kinds of food they do and then are and

Chuck Shute: 33:45

I don't think the food companies are going, Hey, let's kill Americans, but they're saying they're just saying how can we make the most money. And that just has a side effect of

Jerold Mande: 33:53

right. And so it's a subtle solution, Chuck, are FDA and they already have the authority to do this need to go meet with the food companies and say, you know, absolutely taste cost and convenience, need to be three of the top four things you use when you design a food. And food probably number one has to be delicious. No one wants to change that. But there's a fourth criteria that's in the law that we were charged with enforcing and that's why we're here meeting with you today, which is that you need to be able to eat the food every day and not get sick. Yeah, if it's meant to be eaten every day. I'm not talking about a dessert or, or Oh yes, I think that, you know, the, the, you know, the the breakfast cereals we eat are a great example of that. Children eat those I mean, go into the grocery store, look at the child section of the of the cereals, which many of them are and you just wonder what is going on here. You know, why are we serving our children essentially candy for breakfast and chocolate cereals and things like that. You know, the government just has to say Look, guys, absolutely tastes cost convenience. But you know, just you need to do the study to show people can eat eat this every day and not get sick. And if that's not the case, you need to adjust how you design the foods so people can eat it every day. Yeah.

Chuck Shute: 35:06

Well, I mean, going back to the school lunches, though, I mean, I'm still, because

Jerold Mande: 35:10

let me tell you about the school lunches, I started to tell you that I'll finish it. So when we there is this dietary guidelines, it's why I brought it up. And so the government has, you know, a metric called a healthy eating index, it's a zero to 100 score, it's just as you think of a zero and 100 score. So the government says, if you get scoring a 90 or above you have an A 88, right. And if you're below a 60, you get an F. And so it shows you you know, and that's a great that says, How are you doing, and following these dietary guidelines we've come out with, that we've shown through the science are the ones that will keep you healthiest, while the overall American score, unfortunately, is a 58. So we fail. And that's not going to be a surprise to anyone, because look how sick we are, right? So if you have a failing score, you're probably sick. And they are. So that's why over half of Americans have diabetes, or prediabetes, almost half have obesity. And that's right. So that matches the score, we have that score, you would expect that. Now, when I was at USDA, one of the top things we were charged to do by the Congress was to develop new standards for the school meal program hadn't been done in decades. And so we went out and measured the Healthy Eating index score for schools. And it was the average American score 58 a failing score. So we put in place new standards that first of all, kicked fast food restaurants that had schools, set nutrition standards, made sure that more fruits and vegetables were served, importantly, made sure that more whole grains were served in school. And we went back three years after we put the new standards in place and measure the Healthy Eating index score of school meals again, and it had gone up to an 82 in just three years. So it shows you how it's not that hard, the Department of adequate not everyone, FDA doesn't have tools quite like that. But Farmer of agriculture has extraordinary tools and resources and was able to change school meals scores from a failing 58 to a respectable 82 In just three years by creating those new standards. Now, you know, how delicious that is? That's a whole separate question. There are, it sounds like you didn't I didn't have this, but I visited hundreds of schools around the country that do have this, where they've hired chefs or work with chefs scratch, cook their meals, and produce just delicious food for lunch. The problem is that a lot of schools can't afford to do that. A lot of schools were told to get rid of their kitchens and use that space for other things. So they don't have kitchens. And the there's a book on Salt, Sugar Fat that author Michael Moss and investigative reporter wrote that I recommend to you. And he describes the dawn of the ultra processed food era in America. And here's an anecdote that he found through his investigative reporting. As the big food companies started producing this food, they wanted to, you know, figure out one side, how do we market it, but who's standing in our way. And they found out that there were sort of two groups that were standing in their way. And one of them was all of these school lunch, ladies, the school food service professionals who were producing scratch cook meals for our kids when they could be buying these new highly processed products. And so they had the female executives in their firm join the school boards in those schools and had them under the argument of saying we're fighting for our girls, we're giving them we want them to have, you know, we don't want them being homemakers when they grow up, and they shouldn't be they shouldn't have other things. But they kind of conflated it all together that said, we shouldn't be teaching our kids how to cook meals, we should be teaching them other things. Whereas the right answer was that it was wrong to limit just girls to these cookie cutter has been open to everyone.

Chuck Shute: 39:01

That's one of the most popular professional. It should have been. So they should be a chef. So yeah, those lunches that I saw were like, I mean, this isn't like and I get like you won't have a cheat meal or something. But this was like every day it was pizza, burgers, nachos. And then yeah, one thing that's new that recent more recently, I don't know if this was your work or somebody they added you have to take a serving of fruits or vegetables, but what the kids do is they take a handful of carrots, and then they throw them at me this is what they do every time it was like hardly any kids actually ate the fruits and vegetables. While some

Jerold Mande: 39:34

of that does happen. And you know, food waste in schools has always been a problem. But again, you know, that's why science is important. You go out these points when you raise them, you know, we refer to them as sort of hypothesis in academia. And so people are tired, you know, let's sit down and think about well, what do we think's going on out there? Particularly from what's you know what you're describing a sort of anecdotal observation. So let's go out there local, we'd see what's happening and make a point like you just Did what we're seeing here kids are throwing the carrots at each other? Is that what's really going on everywhere? Did we just see that here today? And so we go out and measure that. And what we found is that plate waste has always been a problem in the school meal program, it comes with the age of the kids in part. And so we measured that and show that before the new, you know, with before the standards after the standards of plate waste didn't go up at all. And so yes, there is a problem with kids throwing food, they did it before, they're still doing it today. But

Chuck Shute: 40:29

it was the not that they're not eating the fruits and vegetables. That's bad. But the the the true meal was like I mean, it was like hotdogs, hamburgers, nachos, it was most some are

Jerold Mande: 40:39

doing that some have changed and the school was like, for example, we said, well, you have to put more vegetables right on the plate, as you described. Well, you know, then people have pizza companies in their districts, both Republicans and Democrats. And some of the Even Democrats who fought for the bill is their bill, some of them actually came back to us then after they just fought for it. You know, we congratulate them for giving this and they said, you know, we have a pizza company in our district, and they want to count the tomato sauces of vegetable, we think you should do that. What is that? That's because in our country, you know, it costs so much money to get elected, that even the most scared of our politicians don't have to spend too much time raising money. And who funds it? It's corporations. And that is a big number one problem with people want conspiracies to were hit by our country. The number one is that our courts, our highest courts have have decided to treat corporations as people and give them the same rights as we as individuals have, you know, we the people have these rights, right of freedom of speech, for example. And the courts have said that, you know, that includes your the contributions you make to our political campaigns, and what and for both super rich people and corporations, and so they can now put billions of dollars behind individual candidates, and we don't get to know because it's their sort of freedom of speech. And that's where, you know, it's sort of a conspiracy has happened, which is corporations have sought through the courts to create a mass, even more power than they've ever had, which is led to the return of this kind of rough and tumble capitalism.

Chuck Shute: 42:23

Yeah, they're getting these government contracts. And and then it's hard to, because I think, an easy solution to the kid lunch thing. I mean, you could just do something like Chipotle kind of similar, like where you have like, beans, rice, meat, and, you know, salsa is something very simple ingredients. And maybe kids get to pick how they want to put it together. But I mean, just have like, wholesome ingredients, like, I don't know, yeah, everything's just processed that, I don't know if they just put it in some sort of microwave oven or whatever. But I mean, it will, you know, it's package.

Jerold Mande: 42:53

When I, when my kids were younger, when we visit a school, one of the first things I wanted to see was their cafeteria and talk to the principal about that. And, you know, when I usually encountered was a principal that was under so much pressure around reading and math, and it just wasn't on their list to worry.

Chuck Shute: 43:12

My theory is always that if you if the kids were healthier physically, that they would be mentally better to engage in the school day, and the test scores would actually rise if you fed them healthier foods. I don't know, I just posted this thing. I don't know if you've seen that saw this study about with rats, where they fed rats, one, just normal rat food or whatever. And then the other rat got the American diet high in fat high in sugar, and then they put them in this bowl of water and they had to swim to find the land. And the rats with the American diet couldn't find it. They couldn't figure it out there. And so they were saying that Alzheimer's is a diabetes of the brain, which is this really fascinating. I thought, well,

Jerold Mande: 43:50

you know, I mean, you're right. And it's not. We don't need rats, we know and children when what you said is absolutely true, that kids who get better, healthier diets do better in school, and and yet we you know, we make it hard. And not only in terms of the facilities and not providing adequate facilities. I mean, there are your listeners should know that. Literally 1000s of schools across the country do provide these kinds of home cooked meals, with people who, whether there's a chef consulting with them, or actually in the program. The department agriculture has programs to encourage chefs to work with schools to produce meals, so that there are some amazing, really kind of scratch cooked meals out there. Then there are others where the administrators of the schools are overwhelmed and hire, essentially a large food service company that services these highly processed packaged foods. And because the government's not doing its job policing the quality of those foods in terms of their relation to overeating. You know, our kids are getting sick with these diseases and our school meals despite the new standards are not yet as healthy as they need to be. And then you're right As up, you know, not only are they not healthy, but they end up not doing as well. And, and you know, it's not only just the food we we reduce another equally big problem as we reduce the time kids have to eat the food to, you know, there used to be a lunch our lunch 30 minutes. And now it's often less than that once you wait in line there just really isn't enough time to belong. And it sort

Chuck Shute: 45:23

of brings. Yeah, what about the like, you know, because I think you talked about this before about you know how we, we ban cigarettes for kids, which, looking, you know, you speak about that now people be like, Well, now, of course the kids shouldn't eat or smoke cigarettes. But what if we took a similar approach to childhood obesity and banning some of these junk food items for kids, or at least putting a warning label on it or something?

Jerold Mande: 45:50

Now, that's a great point. And I'm glad you brought it up, Chuck, you know, because I did when I worked at the Food and Drug Administration, we regulated tobacco. And you're right, the reason we decided to do it is because when we stepped back and looked at what was killing Americans, tobacco was the number one by quite a bit then. And so though the FDA had done so in the past, you know, it had authority. And so we try to set out to do that. And, in the end, Congress agreed with us a pass the law. And now there is a Center for Tobacco at FDA, and we regulate a smoking. And your Americans should be super proud about that. Because when we began that work, about a third of adults smoked about a quarter of kids smoked. And as I said it was a leading cause of death. Today, less than 2% of American youth smoke less than 2% to more than 20 years to have that happen. But we succeeded. Does that include

Chuck Shute: 46:46

vaping? Nope. So that's a big,

Jerold Mande: 46:48

so vaping vaping is an interesting thing, we should not allow vaping, mainly because if you were the key to the strategy and reducing smoking was we review the industry's own documents to understand how they created, you know, all these smokers, and learn that they figured out that, you know, I don't know if I don't smoke, I don't know if you've ever tried it. But you know, there's not a lot going for it right you get it smells bad, you get sick, it's just not a product that would encourage you to try it again, if you tried it out once, but they hire these ad agencies. And indeed, we found their oral history in the nation Smithsonian Museum, and they talked about how they normalize smoking. And they sort of either invented or built upon ideas of product placement, celebrity endorsements, all of these things to kind of create the sense that smoking was normal. And that smoking was cool. And you know, there's nothing inherent about how that happened. But they did that they normalize, it did that. So we ended up being able to put in place a regulations that limited advertising to kids and fund through the tobacco companies, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions, literally 10s of billions of dollars of advertising, to denormalize it and the kind of ad we use was not one that warned you about smoking, but showed how you know that I think the most popular ad was one that kind of came in at a kid's eye level into a boardroom and saw saw these suits, you know, laughing and just have a, you know, convince kids that somehow smoking is cool, then when what it really is it's just their way to make billions of dollars and kids get sick, and what suckers kids are and that boy that piss off kids and they stopped smoking as a result. And so we have that success story. We know we can take on a powerful industry and succeed, we need to do that with food. And I think there are just some simple steps we can take. The first is the government should set as its goal of all of these nutrition and food programs is to ensure that every child in America reaches age 18 at a healthy weight and good metabolic health. It's just that should be the number one gauge on their dashboard and year over a year, they should look at that and take the steps they need to to make sure that that's happening. And we're not telling exactly how to do it but just you know, keep looking and make sure we're moving in that direction. That's what we achieved with tobacco a cup and today that's not happening. We the government has programs it has a different goal. It just says what we're going to provide access to healthy food and we're going to provide information there they're on their dashboards are looking and saying well we go into a store is that healthy food available? Might be hard to find that might be over there in a corner. But yeah, there's a produce section. Alright, check the box. Healthy food is available or their labels on the other food. Yeah, okay, check that box. We're providing access and information. So we've met our goal. Well, that's not really the goal is to provide access and information. What you really care about is how sick our kids are. So make that your metric. And that's the number one thing that I think we need to do and what I've fought for for my career is to change the goal of the government. And we're trying to do it this year in what's called the Farm Bill. That sets a lot of our food and agriculture. What's your policy have the government set as its goal that it's going to look at how sick our kids are, what the you know, our kids health, and judge how we're doing based on how that is. And then the way to achieve that are three supplements, we need to invest in more nutrition research to the FDA needs to regulate the design of ultra processed foods don't trust the companies make them do the test to prove, and particularly, they need to test and prove that the chemicals are adding to food, not only are safe in an old fashioned way that they don't cause a mutation in an animal that might give rise to cancer, but that you can eat these foods daily, and they're not designed chemically to cause you to overeat and result in obesity. And the third is the USDA needs to really lean into its programs. You know, it has a extraordinary budget, almost 200 billion and programs that feed one in four Americans each year, they really need to make sure that there are standards and all of those programs that say yes, you know, here's a government program that we're providing food, but the food needs to be a food you can eat every day and state well, then, we don't really do that for most of those programs today. What

Chuck Shute: 51:08

about forever chemicals? That's kind of a buzz phrase that I've heard a lot lately. Is that a real thing? What are forever chemicals? Yeah,

Jerold Mande: 51:15

I mean, again, there are a lot of additives. This was particularly in the packaging kind of chemicals they forever is that they just stick around in the environment, you know, some things break down quickly. For example, most of the drugs we take have short health, half lives, and they're sort of break down into harmless things. Um, some of the chemicals that end up in, particularly in packaging of food turned out don't break down and persist in the environment for forever, essentially. So that's where they get their name. And, again, I think what's changed is that our Congress passed a law in the 1950s. And it said that nothing that you add to food can cause cancer. And if it did, you can't add it to food. And it was called the Delaney clause, it's still on the books today. But here's the problem, when it was passed, our ability to measure things in food was sort of at the parts per million ability. So looking at parts per million, you know, these, there were very few of these chemicals in food, and we could get rid of. And, you know, a forever chemical is sort of an example of that. But then we, as time went on, we improved our analytical chemistry, we can measure parts per billion, even parts per trillion. And all of a sudden, the FDA finds while all these chemicals are actually we can't get rid of them, they're so common in the environment, because our companies are using them for so many different purposes that we're all being exposed to them. And but then the agencies are so Will Congress, what do you want us to do? We don't think you want us to start banning everything at this level. And so people started saying, well, there's sort of a de minimis level, gee, if it's so low, it must be safe. Well, that's not necessarily true, you have to then do the science to find that out. And so I think

Chuck Shute: 52:56

our whole forever in the environment, is it forever in our bodies to? Well, it

Jerold Mande: 53:00

can be you know, unless your body has the ability to clear it out. It's there. And now our bodies are enormously resilient, that the problem we have to keep in mind about our bodies is that they're designed through evolution. And evolution has one goal, laser focus doesn't care about anything else, you need to reproduce and keep us going. That ends at pretty much 40. So our job as a body was designed over, you know, 100,000 years or more to make sure that we can get to 40 and reproduce and what happens to us after 40, our evolution just does not care. And so that's that's the that comes more and more of a problem for us. You know, I've heard you talked before about life expectancy changing. And I mentioned earlier, we talked about, you know, how it's gone down, I think that people need to keep in mind about life expectancy numbers is how do they change what drives them to change? As I said, Now, they're going down because of chronic disease for a long time, they were going up by a lot. So it used to be that your life expectancy was maybe 40 years now, it's 80 years. What's misleading about that as well, why was it 40? I'll give me an example. Alexander Hamilton, the former Treasury Secretary then in the popular culture because of a play his wife out live to be 97. And it shows that even back then, hundreds of years ago, people live to old ages. They're just rare. The reason life expectancy numbers were so low wasn't that necessarily, most people weren't living longer lives. It's just that a lot of people died early in life as infants. So if you if you have someone who lives to 97, and then you have someone who died in the first year of life, what's the life expectancy? It's, you know, 50 it's 48. And so the and they

Chuck Shute: 54:53

were dying of like weird infections and like, you know, we didn't have the medicine. Yeah, so

Jerold Mande: 54:58

you had a lot so the bill Yeah, Getting through the first year of life getting through the first five years of life was tough. People have larger families, because the usual experience of a family was that one of the child or more would die during childhood, either through an accident or disease and infection that we didn't know how to treat. And so that drove down life expectancy. So then you go to sort of modern times where as we've reduced that those early deaths, there's was a big jump forward, because the numbers are dividing, you're there no more zeros, ones, twos, you're putting in there, everyone's leaving. And so you get that number moving up further along. And you have longer life expectancies. So you know what? You know, having people who lived a long time before just shows this is what the human body is capable of, we can live to an age or 100 or so that's the sort of the outer limit based on what we know and the science we have. But that's what drives life expectancy is at what point do people die over time? And where we made when we made great progress? It's because we got rid of these early deaths. What's happening now why it's declining? Is it's not that these earlier deaths are returning. It's that people are getting sicker in middle age because of the food we're being sold. And those illnesses are shortening lives during middle age.

Chuck Shute: 56:17

Yeah, because what so back to kind of tie this back together, like with the food we're eating, and then the Forever chemicals, like, have you seen that video of the McDonald's meal like the hamburger, it's like over time, like, here's normal, you know, Patty of beef, and a normal, like hamburger bun, and it would just, you know, the bun would mold and the beef would go. But the McDonald's wanted, it stays the same for like years, I think, how do they do? What is this preservative they're putting in there? And is this safe to put in our bodies?

Jerold Mande: 56:46

So I think people should, you know, be concerned about, you know, how are foods being designed? What goes into the food, I think the first concern has to be at the level of not the chemicals, if you look at why we're getting over the three, you know, shorter lifespans, why it's declining, why people are getting sick with diabetes, obesity, heart disease, it is primarily from the amount of added sugar saturated fat salt that's in food. Now what's unique about Ultra processed food is in nature, you don't get foods that are high in all three of those in one food, nature might produce something that's high in saturated fat, or it's not added but has natural sugars in it. So it's high in sugars are some foods might even be high in sodium as individual foods. But as part of a diet, it balances out what we find that ultra processed food is not only in there being designed in a way that causes us to overeat, but they tend to be high. And all of these nutrients that we know will make people sick and consumed in large amounts. So I think the first thing that you and your listeners need to be concerned about, and we can find some of that information on food labels today, the first thing that's making us sick is the sort of nutrient profile of the fleur that's made in a way where in one food, you're getting so much sugar, saturated fat and sodium, but together in one food that it makes us sick, you know, then I think chemicals are even maybe more of a concern in terms of how they're being used and flavors and smells and tastes that cause us to override the mechanisms of the brain that would get us to stop eating and that we keep eating,

Chuck Shute: 58:28

like, like what they did with Doritos, as they put these artificial flavors in the make you just like makes your mouth just go oh my god. Yeah, no,

Jerold Mande: 58:36

that's great. There's a book called the Dorito effect. You know, again, because we don't invest in the science, we don't know if this actually is correct. The hypothesis or theory. But the theory goes that as you know, as human beings were unique, and that we're omnivores, we can live on whatever we find, which is part of our success. So some creatures depend on just a vegetarian diet. And if they lived in a world where all of a sudden it became tough to find plants. They were doomed or what some animals were carnivores, they needed meat if they couldn't find that they were doing. So what an advantage we had as as humans is that whatever we find this food, we can make it work for us. And so that gives us a great deal of flexibility in our food and what we eat, and we can eat a lot of different things and stay well. So that's an advantage we have. But then, you know, somehow we need to go back to the point, the main point you wanted to make was remind me what

Chuck Shute: 59:36

we're talking about the McDonald's. Yeah.

Jerold Mande: 59:38

And so what happens in the McDonald's stays? Yeah, so people make the product and they put the additives in it. So it has a longer shelf life. It's not so much that the additives are put that can be but I think in the scheme of things that are making us sick, the fact that a chemical might be just making us sick as a chemical is a concern, but First Things aren't these other larger ones with different nutrients. And I

Chuck Shute: 1:00:04

just lucky I just look at my parents and like a lot of people I know that are getting cancer and they're they're, they're not eating too much. They're these people are underweight, if anything, so the men, they don't smoke, they didn't work in some sort of weird factory where they're exposed to. So I, it makes me concerned I don't, I'm not. Yes.

Jerold Mande: 1:00:22

Yeah, a key part of that is we're seeing a big uptick in cancer in young people. And that should be my

Chuck Shute: 1:00:28

buddy, my, my best my good friends up brother got leukemia, which is and he again, I don't think he's obese. It doesn't a smoker wasn't I don't think it was a big drinker.

Jerold Mande: 1:00:37

We know that this is why we have because we're describing, you know, I would describe as sort of, you know, things happen, right, in a country of over 330 million people, individual cases are warnings. But what is the large, you know, what is the pattern that's really occurring out? There are so many ways to phosphate?

Chuck Shute: 1:00:56

Is that what it's called the some of these pesticides and things that are being sprayed all over the fruits and vegetables, is that safe?

Jerold Mande: 1:01:03

Well, yes, and that we I mean, again, so when I think it's important for people to understand is, you know, where's where are we applying the science? Where are we applying our resources to protect people, and we're things that could be falling through the cracks. So we have laws, we require that the chemicals you're going to put on food are tested for causing certain diseases. Initiating, initiating a cancer is one of them. But there's another way that chemicals and other substances can affect the cancer, which is promoting the cancer. So once a tumor starts in your body, once you have this genetic defect, where a cell starts reproducing, and in a way that would cause cancer, hopefully your immune system catches it and gets rid of it. And I think what people don't need to appreciate is probably often in your life, cancers are starting frequently, but your body has an immune system, that takes care of it. There are other chemicals and substances and food, other things that could promote it. So once it starts, it might help it get home and overcome your immune system. The problem is we're not doing the science and testing for promotion, like we're doing for initiation, right, okay. And then, right, and so also chemicals might cause you to overeat. Now, the the number again, you leukemia is a more common childhood cancer, you may have relatives who've gotten cancers who are thin. But again, when we look at, we actually do the research. And this is why it's so important, because, you know, it's easy for us as people to see something we're terrific, you know, going through evolution to recognize a pattern, whether it really is the pattern or not. So as individuals, we see something, and you know, reminds us, right, you touch the hot stove, we don't want to touch the stove, again, whether it's hot or cold. So individually, you know, we've learned through our own observation, and we draw, we're quick to draw connections from the things we see and say that this is what caused it. Now that's great, and and individually protects us to a degree. But overall, you know, you may get the wrong impression, right, what you saw actually wasn't it was something entirely different. So what we've been able to do as humans as opposed to other species, as we develop language, we develop science, we develop all this knowledge that now allows just not just to rely on Chuck's experience or Jerry's experience and what we've brought together, and we've had the same experience. And now we say This must be it. Now, we've now developed a way that we can actually say that you and I can raise something and say we could have be this. And people take that information, they take it into our universities, they taken into our government, and then they can go out and they have the resources to get hundreds and 1000s of people and ask them that exact same question. And then actually do the science to see is what we observed actually what's happening? Or is that one one off?

Chuck Shute: 1:03:48

Well, yeah, I try to just take, you know, what I read, and what I see, you know, people what people are saying online or whatever, I take that and put it into my computer with my brain. And I take my personal experiences. And then you know, I talk to people about this. And I look at people who are really healthy, hey, what do you eat? What's your I saw in the schools, I saw what all the kids that reading the junk food and their parents, I worked with a lot of parents that were massively overweight, and a lot of them are on disability and things. And I mean, so you can kind of start to put some of this together.

Jerold Mande: 1:04:18

Absolutely. But then I think what you need to do is take one additional step, which is the, you know, to consult that literature and say, Has somebody actually studied this? And no, I think

Chuck Shute: 1:04:30

it's definitely raises concerns of that we should look and

Jerold Mande: 1:04:35

so as I said, with school meals, what you said, you know, what once was the case more, but today, we do know that if you measure the quality of the school meals, they've gone from a 58 failing score to an 82. That's not the set, you know, we need to do better, but then we need we can worry about that a little less than some other problems that we have. So I think what you know what you're talking about these chemicals and such, I think what the key takeaway is then. Alright, so how do we assure the safety of chemicals? Right? Because you come up with these examples of they're causing problems. And what should alarm people is that we count on the Food and Drug Administration, we count on the Environmental Protection Agency to set up systems that companies have to follow to make sure these chemicals are safe. And then you ask the question, Are these systems working? And the answer you're gonna find is they're not. And that's what should alarm so that not that, gee, you know, I've had this experience, they're these forever chemicals. Is this really causing a big problem in society? It's important to back up and say, Well, what is the system we have, you know, is this working at? Is there a system in place to catch these things and prevent it? And what should alarm people is when they learn, for example, with chemicals in our food that the FDA once had, what was a loophole for rare circumstances that they came up with something called generally recognized as safe grass were a few products, a few substances that had been in a long history of use, got a pass and didn't have to submit all of the data to prove it was safe, because we're going to accept that it's been used for decades, and people haven't seemed to be harmed by it. That was meant to be an a loophole that was not loopholes might be not the word, but just an exception that occasionally we would designate something as grams. Now you fast forward today and say, How are our chemicals? How are we to know that the chemicals going in food, not in any one of them as your you can point to one or notice that, gee, this may be a problem I read, this may be a problem. The key thing is to backup and say, Well wait, what is this system that's testing these to assure that that all of them aren't problems, or in a systematic way we're catching it. And what you'd find is that we went from a system where companies had to prove their chemicals were safe before putting it in food to one where they get the self certify that it's grass, and that virtually everything being put in our food today is going through this grass route that was meant to be an exception. That's what should alarm people, not the one off anecdote you read about I saw this person ate that there's so many,

Chuck Shute: 1:07:08

I mean, I just it's,

Jerold Mande: 1:07:10

you know, we know we count on having certain systems in place that protect us to allow us to go to bed at night and not worry about these things. And why would you arm people is we don't we no longer have that, for the chemicals in our food? Well,

Chuck Shute: 1:07:22

I just feel like if, you know, if you think of it like a jar, and like every chemical you put in your body, you know, like, the less that you can put in, you know, the the less you're going to fill up that jar, I would rather have a load a jar of low chemicals. You can't avoid some of this stuff. I mean, it's in since soaps, it's in, you know, deodorants, and I mean, there's it's hard to get police everything. And I mean, I'm sure there's harmful things about, you know, doing the Zoom call with the technology and computers and the radiation. So I mean, it's just like, the less that we can have that I feel like, overall would be better, like, especially like our food, I feel like that's a big one to me.

Jerold Mande: 1:08:02

I agree with you. I think that right, you should be where we don't know, err on the side of caution, saying that we're going to take, you know, be a little bit more careful here. But the key thing is for you and your listeners is that we we have more power than we realize.

Chuck Shute: 1:08:20

That's what if I tried to wake people up if people get mad enough about this, then

Jerold Mande: 1:08:24

because we do it every day. Capitalist system, we all buy stuff every day and what we buy, you know, companies pay close attention to

Chuck Shute: 1:08:34

that example, maybe but look at Bud Light forever. I mean, you can agree or disagree with that boycott. But they change stuff pretty quickly after I mean, things like that people get mad, which is something I feel like this isn't a partisan, political, religious issue. This is like a nonpartisan, like everybody should be upset about about our food, and that we should require demand a higher quality and the safer quality of food in my opinion, right

Jerold Mande: 1:09:00

now, this is where the science and institutions become so important. Because if people demand the right thing, then we get the result. Is that going to help? And I'll give examples. I know there are controversial for some, but but I think it's important to see so something like a genetically modified organism, or Yeah, I wanted to ask you about this, right. GMOs are also something gluten free. I don't know if you've ever seen a product or a menu, something called gluten free, which refers to gluten. It's it's a protein that's in wheat, that there's an illness. Celiac, yeah, we are allergic and it's and it can be life or death. And then there's probably, you know, another couple percent of Americans maybe up to five or so that are sensitive and may get sort of GI symptoms

Chuck Shute: 1:09:43

more than that. If you go on Instagram, and you're like, well, that's right. You know, and this

Jerold Mande: 1:09:47

is why this is why the science becomes important because if you if you just use word of mouth and anecdote, things may, it's hard to know is this is this affecting a lot of people is it making you know what, what's going on? It's why we have the ability of system medically collect the information particularly now in the era of big data, where we have computers who can quickly compile huge amounts of data and see what's happening. And it's important we focus on the right things. People are right to be concerned about things raise the flag, because if you're modifying the genetics of an organism, if you could do something that's, that's dangerous, so you want to make sure you test. But see companies are clever about. They don't you know, things that are simple to solve that don't make, you know, like making a product that's gluten free. That's pretty straightforward and easy to do. And so they can just do that and then advertise it. And what about same thing with genetically modified, but my main point is that we know a great deal of war about what's making us sick, the GMO is gluten free, there are issues there we need to stay on top of, but that they have nothing to do with how sick we are as a population. You know, they're not going to is

Chuck Shute: 1:10:53

the genetically modified peanuts are why are so many kids have peanut allergies? I mean, there, there were so many kids I worked with that had special plans in place.

Jerold Mande: 1:11:01

Well, you know, this is why we need to invest in science, because anecdotally people jumped to conclusions. And the conclusion was that GFI, avoid peanuts, that way to avoid the allergy. And it turns out that your bodies work quite differently. The way you build the resilience that allow you to eat peanuts and not have an allergy is to expose people to it as a young age. But you know, people would get there would be reactions. And

Chuck Shute: 1:11:26

I think this one kid I specifically remember working with the kid ate peanuts for years. And then it was like on his 13th It was on his birthday, he ate something that would end he had an allergic reaction, because it's something about when your your body changes, and when the kids hormones kick in, somehow that creates the auto immune response.

Jerold Mande: 1:11:44

Well, I you know, what you're describing is in the work we do in academia, you know, you do a large study with a lot of people, and then you plot it on a curve. And you sort of see what the results are, what the responses and a challenge is that and then what you want the you know, usually you get sent what's called a bell curve. And you see a point where most of the responses are this. So I'll use an example we have these drugs now that help people lose weight. You know, the GLP ones? Like I was, what

Chuck Shute: 1:12:15

are your thoughts on? I'm not a fan? I've not I

Jerold Mande: 1:12:19

think they're I mean, I think they're working right? So they're, they are helping people,

Chuck Shute: 1:12:22

we have a long term effect. Number five, we

Jerold Mande: 1:12:24

don't know the long term effects are exactly right,

Chuck Shute: 1:12:26

is the trendy drug. I don't know if you were around the FDA when that was approved.

Jerold Mande: 1:12:31

But no, I wasn't. But but here's the thing about it. So you do a study, right? You take a group of people who aren't on the drug, and hopefully and then a group of people are and ideally designed in a way that they don't know whether they're on the drug or not, they're getting a shot every day, it's just that it's not, you know, it's it one has the drug, one has just, you know, saltwater or something. And so you don't know this, and then you reveal the results of your study. So let's say you do a study with 1000s of people, and then you plot it on this curve, and say, Well, what happened to this person? Did they, you know, did they? How much weight? Did they lose their weight stayed the same? Or did they even gain weight. And so when you do it on a population, and in these studies for 1000s of people, what you found with these drugs, is that you found this curve as a drug amount went up. And as you did it, most people started losing weight, and people started losing a great deal of weight. Even more importantly, they they started being healthier, they started having less of some of these diseases. And so based on that data, you would approve the drug and encourage people to take it and people would benefit. But if you go back and look at that study, and you look out on what's called the tail, sort of the ends of what people experienced and the distribution of the results, here's somebody who took the drug and gained weight. Right. And that happens with sort of all things in human systems, they're always what's called outliers. Yeah. And so you'll run across somebody, they're not making this up, they did something that, you know, we're told that if you did this, this would happen. And they did it. And just the opposite happened. They're not making it up. They're not lying to you, that actually happens, because for whatever reason, the the different events, their body, their genetics, their system got that opposite result, and it's real and valid and happen for them. But it's rare. And I think the key thing, what you're describing is when you're setting policy, you know, and you'd see a rise in people bring to an individual result is was that result an outlier? Or was that result? You know, sort of the typical result? You see, and I think that's where, you know, my work has been in public health, where my patient is the population, not the individual. Sure, and this is a really important point for, you know, for people to consider. I chose that kind of work because in a way, it's a lot easier. It's really clear to see if we do this in 1000 people what the result will be for, you know, 950 of those people. Right? And so based on that we can recommend that would be the policy we should do. Because nine because

Chuck Shute: 1:14:58

yeah, we're not if we Think that we agree like with Ultra processed foods, like, we could recommend that everybody should eat real food as opposed to less processed, as opposed to more processed. No one's benefiting from eating more processed food, I guess. But

Jerold Mande: 1:15:12

you might. That's my point. Talking about. No, my point is, you know, if when you do the study, you might find that outlier. For whoever reason, the person who ate the ultra processed food did better again, we don't just just freakin things happen, right? We just have to accept that happens. The problem is, if that's your guest on her show, and they're, they're speaking from the heart, this is the experience they really had. But as a society, you know, it's just we need to know, and this is why medicine, you know, when your is so hard, it's really all that matters is for that individual. And when you have one patient, you have to kind of, you know, it works for most patients. But what happens if you do what works for most patients, you don't get that result. And that happens, you know, not all the time that it happens. And that's what that's what's I think that's what people have to sort out what is what is the outlier? You know, we don't want to rely on

Chuck Shute: 1:16:02

everybody, right? I mean, because that's what you're seeing online with all the Instagram and social media is like, you're saying, Hey, this guy is eating carnivore, and he's in totally healthy and rip, this guy is doing vegan, and he's totally healthy. And yeah, because

Jerold Mande: 1:16:14

with all the social media, all of these outlier individual cases, are able to come to the forefront, and speak with equal, you know, sort of validity in terms of their own lived experience. And it's impossible as someone watching it all, they're telling you the truth in their lived experience, and that this actually happened to them. What we need, though, what people need to insist on is that we put in place this is where we have the expertise and knowledge as humans to then collect all that data and say, Well, what happens in most people, and then that's an important point as well, because at the end of the day, the best we can do for you is, I can say to you, Chuck, if you follow this diet, I get this question all the time people tell me that, look, I'm struggling trying to follow a healthy diet, if you just sit me down, and explain to me, this is a healthy diet. And if I eat the diet you're describing, I'm going to be able to live, you know, and see my grandkids graduate from college. If you tell me that will happen, if you can promise me that, then I'm good. And I'll be able to eat that diet, no problem. And my answer, then will often always has to be the same, which is I say, Look, if you take all your friends, all your family, and you get me a number up to maybe 100 people or more, I can guarantee you that 90 of them will live longer and get to see the grandkids graduate from college. But there are 10 of you. I don't know, you know, you could get hit by a truck today, for whatever reason. And that's the thing as a society, we it's become harder and harder to sort out. What are the things? You know, are you dealing with an outlier? Are you dealing with the main thing, but it's also a real problem. You as individuals, all of us, when we hear advice, we hear this, it's still not a guarantee it works for us, it's a guarantee that it would work for most people. And

Chuck Shute: 1:17:59

you could try these different things. I mean, I did vegan for today, I gained weight, and I felt bloated. I was like this is not a good diet for me. Like it just didn't work.

Jerold Mande: 1:18:07

Yeah. See, and that's a great example, because I did the same thing. And so I decided, you know, I tend to eat a healthier diet, I would describe your Mediterranean pescatarian I had a Mediterranean pescetarian diet. And so I was saying, Well, you know that that's worked for me. And then I was thinking, you know, V and a lot of people say that there's a movie called Forks Over Knives and scription there's one about athletes who became vegan, and all of a sudden their performance was so much better. So you know, it was like for fun. Let me try it. Let me become a vegan. And so I did it for six months, and I did my blood work before I became a vegan and after. And in my case, there was just no difference. I felt the same. The difference was, I was spending way too much time preparing my meals and my family was complaining how much time I spent preparing meals because it's not readily available. You can't buy these foods easily. It takes a lot more work and preparation to make and I noticed

Chuck Shute: 1:18:59

a lot of the vegan at least for me, especially with the vegan restaurants. There are a lot of those vegan foods, especially the restaurants are pumped full of sugar to make

Jerold Mande: 1:19:08

they can be that's vegan. Yeah, that's an important point as well. The term vegan by itself is not sufficient. You have to go back to these macronutrients I was describing salt, sugar, fat, but then there are other examples of former President Bill Clinton, Al Gore became vegans and save their lives and they live much longer lives than they might have if they hadn't. So you get those individual results. But then, and I think that's a key point you're making I think for all of us in the end, it's what's you know, how does it affect you? For me?

Chuck Shute: 1:19:40

I think everyone is pushing vegan like Schwarzenegger is pushing it. And there was some MMA fighter that did it for a while then he lost the fights and then he switched back to a meat based diet like why and Bill Gates is you know, he really the Impossible Burger. This was this big thing. Is there a big profit and vegan food?

Jerold Mande: 1:19:58

It's not that it's a big profit. As I said, I thinking again, I think for most people, if they move from a typical American diet, to a vegan diet, they make changes in their food that are sort of the large changes we're recommending. So they start eating a lot less, highly processed, they could, again, you point out couldn't be more highly processed. And especially as the marketplace catches up, often what happens early on as you know, these foods aren't available as highly processed packaged foods. And so if you want that you have to do it. I better example, is gluten free when, you know, a lot of people I think, say, Well, gee, I went on a gluten free diet, I felt a lot better. That's because when this first became a rage a bunch of years ago, the only way to go on a gluten free diet was to stop eating refined carbohydrates. Because, you know, they were all gluten.

Chuck Shute: 1:20:51

When refined carbohydrates was what we used to tell people, the food pyramid was eating like six to 11 servings, a

Jerold Mande: 1:20:57

day refined that was it was just carbohydrates. But we didn't make the distinction, right? We, as our science, now we do learn more people need to understand it's not that, you know, gee, what we thought was this was wrong. If you go back and listen to the scientists, they say, this is what we know today, it seems to be this, but we don't have the full answer yet. This is a work in progress. So we're not saying for all time, this is the right advice,

Chuck Shute: 1:21:20

the whole thing based on Ancel Keys study of these different countries, but he left out a lot and left out some of the pieces of that, like with France, he left out that they eat a lot of saturated fat. But I

Jerold Mande: 1:21:31

think what you want to say about those is that all of a scientists, including keys, I've studied their work and such like that are doing, you know, really trying their hardest and best to come up with the answers. But they're working in a world where they're under resourced. Governments not really supporting their research, but they're doing the best they can they take the data they have, and they see it. And they say this seems to be a pattern. And so we're doing that, but they're not able to, for example, the studies you really want to do. And this is really the challenge for all of us who work in the nutrition field. The study you want to do is a study, this the sort of the gold standard of studies was what's called a randomized control trial. And so you take two groups of people, you put them in this and you do one intervention with one group and one in the other. And even better if it can be blinded, so the people themselves don't know which group they're in. Well, as you can think about that, that is really tough to do about how people eat right, especially over time, right? Yeah. So we have, we have in our National Institutes of Health, there's an investigator there, Kevin Hall, who's done a lot of the ultra processed food work, he has a facility where he you can go there, live there, and he provides you all the foods, so he knows with certainty, what you ate, and what you didn't eat, that is sort of the gold standard would want to do. Problem is we don't fund them. And so the NIH gives him enough money to only have two beds, two beds. And so he can only study two people at a time. Now, that's not enough to conclude anything. But if you want to study at least 100 people, which is a better number, for six months, he has to do two at a time 50 times, yeah. And he can do they have to go one after another. So if you want to do it six months, for 50 times, then it's that it's going to take him 25, you know, years to do that study. Now, if he had a facility with 100 beds, you could do it in six months, and he would be done. And so we don't invest in that. So because we don't invest in those kinds of studies, then people have to rely on getting a bunch of people interviewing them, and asking them what they ate. And the problem is, we just don't remember, it's not that, you know, some people lie, but other people just really don't remember. And then they collect all that data. And it's flawed data, because it's relying on what people recall. Now we, over time are getting better and better at it. So now we have the ability to also take some blood from them, measure certain things. And we can tell that GE what you said you ate, and we're looking at your blood that that's clearly not what you ate. And so you're just not remembering because you just wouldn't get that result in your blood if that's what you actually ate. So this is a, we need to come up with that. And now we have the microbiome, which is the bacteria in your gut that we can measure as well. So we're getting better and better tools. So I think the way to think about it is our nutrition knowledge is steadily improving. And it's not that things we once thought turned out to be completely wrong. It's just that our understanding of it has evolved in a more nuanced way. And so now we need to understand that and fats a great example, we started off worrying that fat was a problem, but that's because it here's the counterfactual, what we had is a national institute of health that had a Heart Institute, a Cancer Institute, a Diabetes Institute. It was doing no independent nutrition research. The nutrition research they were doing was in the heart, the cancer and the Diabetes Institute. I don't know if you've ever heard of a phrase where you say that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Chuck Shute: 1:24:55

No, that's a great thing. Well,

Jerold Mande: 1:24:57

it's sort of like that. So at the time And the key is time and others, the experts who you know, at the National Institutes of Health, it turns out that one of the institute directors were more interested in diet than all the others. It was a gentleman, Claude Lafond, who ran when led the Heart Institute. And so he spent more time in his Institute than those that the cancer, diabetes or other institutes looking at how food is affecting heart disease. And so it ended up that as a nation, our top scientists in the heart area where we were most focused on the effect that food was having in heart disease. And when they looked at that, in isolation, it seemed to line up initially about the amount of fat that people was eating, that that was a correct observation. And they needed to if they looked a little harder and longer, they would have seen that it's not just fat, it's a little more nuanced. It's more of a saturated fat, and they're actually healthy and unhealthy fats. And so you want good fats, bad fats,

Chuck Shute: 1:25:53

but they started off source of fat, because I mean, people, this source of fat, all these sort of need, I feel like that's pretty natural. But what are your thoughts on seed oils? Because that's a big thing, too, that they say that the way they're making this oil, it's like a six step process. This oil was supposed to be for an engine lubricant, now people can digesting it. And yeah, see,

Jerold Mande: 1:26:13

this is where Chuck, you know, we could talk all day because people start off with tomato. So the notion that somehow seed oils are making us sick is not true, we studied it, that is not a true statement. What is true is that among unsaturated plant based oils, there are different types, there's what's called the Omega six, which tends to be more in some of these seed oils. And there's Omega three, which are things I can fish oils, but also some of the other plant oils, like olive oil. And so what's important is that there's a ratio between the the Omega threes and six, you need to have enough Omega three in your diet, to balance that ratio so that the Omega six are fine. If you don't have the Omega three and don't just have the Omega six, that can be more of a problem. And so that's, you know, it's not that people should be eating less, the answer is not to eat less than the Omega six, the answer is you need to make sure you're getting an eating enough of the Omega threes and getting that right ratio. But Omega six actually are healthy when they're eating in the right ratio with other healthy oils. But again, because we don't do the science fully to begin with. And had we done it back in Ancel. Keys time, if the head of the Diabetes Institute was as engaged as the head of the Heart Institute, he would have been and they were all in the room together, which they never were, what you would have learned was that the Heart Institute, I'm just looking at my clock, and I need to run to another meeting in a minute here. So let me just sorry, just to check what time that is.

Chuck Shute: 1:27:46

No, that's fine. Yeah, I can I can let you go. I could go on forever. I have like a million.

Jerold Mande: 1:27:50

Yeah, I gotta run out. So let's take that up again, sometime. But this was great talking with you. seed oils are not the problem. The problem is people aren't getting enough of the Omega three oils to balance that out. We need to eat up both. But and the biggest overarching problem is we're not investing enough in the science to get solid answers. And then we have to result in, you know, people's anecdotal experiences. And that's a big problem.

Chuck Shute: 1:28:13

What about one last thing before I before I let you go, what about this idea, this is my idea. And you have connections, so maybe you can make this happen. I call it the food visibility act, we have to know not only what's in the food and descriptions of the ingredients and what they are, but also the processing, whether it's GMO lab grown organic, non organic, what kind of pesticides are given me I

Jerold Mande: 1:28:34

gotta run because many times what we do need to do is I helped update the nutrition facts label, okay, eat a better ingredient label the ingredient lists today does not provide us accurate information about what's in our food, and it leaves a lot out the flavors better using the chemicals. They don't even disclose those. We need to update the ingredient list to provide the information you're saying. But that'll run but great

Chuck Shute: 1:28:54

to have you back on. Thanks again. Okay, bye bye bye.