What If Your Diet Is Affecting Your Brain More Than You Think? | Michael Goran, PhD

Email Copy: The conversation about ultra-processed food needs to include more than what it does to our weight. We also need to talk about how it may affect our memory, our mood, and the way our children’s brains develop. Because the consequences of what we eat can reach far beyond what we see on the scale. Today on The Dr. Hyman Show, I’m talking with Michael Goran, PhD, a professor of pediatrics and researcher who has spent more than 35 years studying how food shapes our health. We explore what the science tells us and where to start making changes. We discuss: How ultra-processed foods may be affecting your mood and memory, beyond their impact on weight What a study of children’s brain development could mean for the foods we feed our families Why cutting back on sugary drinks is one of the first changes to consider What to know before choosing stevia, monk fruit, or other sweeteners as healthier alternatives Simple ways to eat fewer ultra-processed foods without spending hours in the kitchen I’ve seen how learning to prepare even one meal can change the way a family eats. Michael makes the point that you can start smaller still: Buy plain yogurt and add your own fruit. That counts. So does making your own salad dressing or learning to roast a pan of vegetables. These are skills you can use for the rest of your life, and every one gives you more control over how you feed yourself and the people you love. View Show Notes From This Episode Sign up for Dr. Hyman’s Brainshaping Academy to learn how to nourish the biological systems that support your mental, emotional, and cognitive health https://drhyman.com/products/brainshaping?utm_source=dr_hyman_show&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=may_27&utm_content=link Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hymanhttps://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journalhttps://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Join the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Healthhttps://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Join the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Resultshttps://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers, Pique, Timeline, BON CHARGE, Cozy Earth, and Paleovalley. Use bioptimizers.com/hyman and code HYMAN for 15% off, special bonuses, and a 365-day money-back guarantee. Get 25% off your first three Pique subscription orders at Piquelife.com/HYMAN through November 29. Support healthy aging and get up to 20% off when you subscribe on top of the new starting price of $79 at timeline.com/drhyman. Explore red light products at boncharge.com/hyman and enjoy 15% off with code HYMAN. Head to Cozyearth.com and use code HYMAN to get you 40% off home and sleepwear from now until December 3rd. Shop nutrient-rich foods and supplements at paleovalley.com/hyman and save 15% off your first order.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Developing body, developing brain is dependent on proper nutrition to help it develop and build successfully. And so we're talking about in utero, infancy, early development, these things are also affected by processed foods. So we tend to think of ultra processed foods as it causes you to eat too much, you gain weight and you get obesity and diabetes and all the rest. It's deeper than that because something about ultra-processed food is also affecting the developmental process.

• 0:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 1:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 2:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  for over 500 pesticides. I love whisking it into a warm drink and starting the day with that calm, focused energy. If you want to try it, go to peaklife.com/hyman and get 15% off for life. That's P I Q U E life.com/hyman. Welcome to the podcast, Michael. It's great to have you. I've been following your work for a long time. So I'm really happy to have the chance to jump in and talk about something we both are passionate about, which is the shitty state of our food system and what it's doing to us and our children.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me on the show, Mark. It's really great to see you and look forward to our healthy discussion about the shitty state of food and what we can do to make it better for our kids.

• 2:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, well, thank you. And you know, you've obviously been a huge pioneer in our understanding of ultra-processed food, of the sorry state of our food system, its impact on our kids, on adults, on the whole spectrum of things that we really should be paying attention to. And I think I'm sort of curious to start out this conversation because right now there's, there's, it was sort of a big effort to define ultra-processed foods, which has been a lot of the focus of your work. And the FDA had put together a white paper, given to the White House, and it's sort of stuck there. And I'd love to just sort of your perspective on, one, how much you are aware of what's in that and whether or not we're on the right track. And two, you know, what your perspective is on, on how do we move forward if the White

• 3:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  House is sort of stuck in this place? And how do we sort of get this moving forward? Because the food industry is so powerful in opposing any kind of definition or any kind of clarification of what is or is not ultra-processed food, because if it's defined a certain way, it has huge implications for them. So I'd just love maybe to start out at that high level. I'd love your thoughts about that, just at the head of the conversation.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  I'm not involved in any way with the federal process for defining ultra-processed foods. So I have no idea other than what I'm reading in the news and blogs about where that's up to and where it's stuck. I think that in my discussions and interactions, I think there obviously is a huge industry opposition. And I think that unfortunately, I think that getting bogged down in the definition kind of detracts from the main issues of what it is about ultra- processed foods specifically that is affecting health. I think we need it for, obviously for

• 4:31Speaker 00

  broader policies like labeling, which I think we need for food labeling. But I think we've worked out, other groups have worked out decent definitions that kind of give some exceptions to the NOVA four definition. It's most broadly used in research. So clearly there are some NOVA four defined ultra-processed foods that are healthy, but there's not that many of them. And I think it should be pretty straightforward to overcome, but there's a lot of noise about it. And I think that's, I think that's unfortunate.

• 5:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I think you're right. I think just for those listening, NOVA classification was a system developed in Brazil from a scientist there to try to define what is ultra-processed food. It was more around classifications for unprocessed, minimally processed, so forth. And the ultra-processed is basically defined as, as industrial ingredients that are quite different chemically and structurally from their original forms that are, you know, found in, not found in our typical cooking or kitchens, right? So I think, I think, you know, in your work, you, you've studied these foods and they have tremendous health consequences for our bodies, for our brains, for kids and developmental processes that they go through. And your research has sort of uncovered and reinforced what we all believe and what we

• 5:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  all see, which is that America's getting sicker and fatter and has more chronic illness and our kids are getting sicker and have more issues around obesity and diabetes, many kids and mental health issues and so many things that are affected by the food we're eating. And, you know, it's, to me, it's one of the central issues of our time, like our food system and the food we're producing, the food we're consuming is driving so much of what's wrong with the world and the way we do it all. And I, and I wrote a book about it called Food Fix, which is really kind of underscoring the, the way this pervasive problem. And I think we used to call it junk food, you know? I used to always say, there's no such thing as junk food. There's junk and there's food. It's not actually food. And by, by the technical definition of food, ultra-

• 6:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  processed food actually isn't food. It's not something that supports the health and development and nourishment of an organism, right? It's just actually not food, even though we eat it, it's technically not food. So when you're sort of looking at this sort of connections, tell us about your, your, your understanding of, about the role that these foods play in our chronic disease epidemic of diabetes, obesity, heart disease, you know, cancers, dementias, depression, fertility, and the whole range of things that we see.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I mean, when we did, when we did the report to, for the, that supported the scientific foundations for dietary guidelines, I was asked to review the literature on how ultra-processed foods. In the report, we called it highly processed foods because we didn't have a definition, but really all of the resources in the literature is dealing with ultra-processed foods. I mean, what surprised me was the breadth and consistency of the effects. So what we did was we reviewed like dozens of meta-analysis. So the listeners of meta-analysis is a study that reviews multiple studies. So we're not like just cherry picking individual

• 7:45Speaker 00

  studies, but even in dozens of meta-analysis, the findings are pretty consistent that ultra- processed foods affects almost every health outcome that, that is, that is, that is looked at, including in children. This is obesity, type 2 diabetes, overall mortality. And let's not forget the effects on the brain and mental health. I mean, these are all also quite dominant effects at both ends of the age spectrum. So in kids, we have studies that show that ultra-processed foods affects executive function, brain development, learning.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  And at the other end of the spectrum, we have cognitive decline, Alzheimer's. All those outcomes have been shown to be significantly impacted by a diet that's high in ultra-processed foods.

• 8:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So it's not just weight and, you know, diabetes and cardiovascular, you're talking about mental health and you're talking about dementia, which are, you know, things we don't typically think of as related to food, but they are. I think, you know, the magnitude of the effects is quite great. I mean, even, you know, some of your data showed that like for every 10% increase in ultra-processed food, your, your risk of diabetes went up 10%. And that's not trivial.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  I mean, there's significant dose responses in these effects. And I think those are, those are meaningful and useful and practical. I mean, that means if you can just cut back your ultra-processed foods by 10%, 10% of your calories, you can have a meaningful impact on reducing risk of type 2 diabetes and presumably other outcomes as well.

• 9:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  My, my view is we shouldn't be eating any of it.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But I'm kind of an extremist when it comes to that perspective. I think people should only be eating food. And I think that was one of the messages of the dietary guidelines that you were an advisor on, which was eat real food. I mean, it's a simple message, but it's never been, it was never said before by the government, which was a huge step. And I think it really threatened a lot of the, the food industries in terms of how they, they think about, you know, coming at this. And I, I know there was a, there was a war room that was put together by the Consumer Brand Association, which represents all the grocery stores and all the food manufacturers. And they, they, they have a very coherent, you know, strategy on, on opposing this, you know, almost like a tactical war room of, of a military to how to combat this at every level, you know, from the news to policy to, you know, local organizations, to really

• 10:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  any, any potential target for, for manipulating, controlling the narrative they're going to use. And it's, it's not, it's not that they're just, oh, shoot, you know, we're making these foods and we really know they're bad and like, maybe let's try to fix it. They're like, they, they want to keep things as they are. And it's, in many ways, I think, you know, I would love to see the, the, you know, like we have with tobacco, like an expose. And, and I know there's a lot of groups out there that are, that are looking at legal action and not just to sort of get a settlement, but actually do discovery and actually look at what they're doing. Cause it's, if the public knew about it, it would be, it would be shocking, you know? And I've seen enough, and I don't, I'm, I'm curious about what you've seen, but I, you know, I'm clearly putting a target on my back by saying these things, but somebody

• 11:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  has to talk about it because this is not, this is, this is a crisis affecting every American in some way or another, through some illness that they have or their family has, or some way these foods are affecting them or, you know, and all the downstream consequence of these foods. So it's, it's, to me, it's the central problem of our time.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I, I think what, what's sometimes missed is that that process starts from, from conception. So the, the, the developing body, developing brain is dependent on proper nutrition to keep it, to, to help it develop and build successfully. And so we're talking about in utero, infancy, early development, these things are also, also affected by, by, by processed foods. So we tend to think of ultra-processed foods as the kind of the conventional thinking is it causes you to eat too much, you gain weight and you get obesity and diabetes and all the rest of it.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  But it's, it's much, it's deeper than that because something about ultra-processed food is also affecting the developmental process of brain development. And we've shown that now in our research, not from a causative perspective, but at least from an association angle. But what's interesting is that we, we don't know what it is about the processing itself. It could be something as simple as that, for example, in children, children are consuming a diet high in ultra-processed foods are just missing key nutrients like choline and magnesium and fiber. It could be just they're missing a key ingredient.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Or there could be ingredients, preservatives, emulsifiers, which have been really completely understudied in how they're affecting the developing body.

• 12:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I think, I think you, you make a really important point there, which is that it's the presence of potentially harmful components that are in ultra-processed foods, whether it's the sort of pulverized, you know, deconstructed things that are highly absorbable and high glycemic foods, whether they're altered fats or altered protein structures that we, we may not know. I may remember hearing an ICE researcher once talking about, you know, I, I hydrolyzed soy protein versus whole soybeans and food and how they had profoundly different effects in animal models on cancer risk, even though it's soy, the way it was industry processed changed the, the effect on the body because food is information. So it's, it's the presence of those potentially harmful ingredients, but it's also the lack of protective ingredients, right? The right nutrients like vitamins, minerals, omega threes, choline, all these things that

• 13:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  you're talking about that are so essential for neurodevelopment, for health and overall health. And so it's a combo package, like bad stuff and not enough good stuff. And I think that's, that's what we're seeing is, is this sort of double whammy effect of this, this diet.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  And the way to overcome it is not to argue about the definition. The way to overcome it is to help people everywhere and communities everywhere get access to real food and, and real scratch cooked foods as opposed to processed foods. And even if we can shift the needle a little bit at a time, I think that will be significant.

• 14:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think I want to sort of just sort of roll the history clock back a little bit and talk about how nutrition policy and how thinking and advice gets made because historically it's about demonizing a nutrient or a category of macronutrient, like fats bad or carbs are bad or, you know, sure. And, and I think saturated fats bad, whatever, whatever the ways we, we sort of label things in, in our diet and we focus on macronutrients or calories or sugar or fat. But it seems like there's something beyond all that, that, that has to do with how these foods are produced and manufactured that are, that are causing these differences in our biological systems, that are causing harm to our microbiome and harm to our immune system and harm to our metabolic health, to our mitochondrial health, to our brain health

• 15:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  that are, that are just beyond these sort of macronutrients. Cause you can take macronutrients and have the same isocloric macronutrient composition, protein, fat, carbs, calories, fiber in, you know, a whole food versus ultra-processed food. And they have profoundly different effects on the body, even though they're exactly identical in terms of the macronutrient and, and the, the fiber composition, right? So that's the part I think is sort of interesting for people to, to understand that it's not just about the, the calories or the, the fat, protein or carbs. It's, it's something else is going on.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we've spent too much time kind of, as you say, demonizing individual nutrients or macronutrients and blaming this part of the diet or that part of the diet. But the reality is we're just not eating enough real food. So we need to get back to more scratch cooking and whole foods and less reliance on packaged foods.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  So that, that, that is the key message that I think we need to focus on, not identifying what, what the nutrient of the, of the, of the moment is that may be harmful to health.

• 16:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 16:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 17:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 18:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  and use the code HYMAN to save 15% site-wide. Bon Charge also offers free shipping on every red light face mask and a 12-month warranty. And the mask is HSA and FSA eligible for up to 30% savings. Get yours today. Yeah, absolutely. So, so when, when you think about that ultra-processed food and the component Instead of you've studied, you've written about, you know, some of the, the non-caloric sweeteners and some of the preservatives and emulsifiers and how those affect, for example, like the microbiome. These are, these are different order effects than just calorie effects or, or sugar effects. There's something else going on with these foods that are, that are a little bit kind of under the radar for most people. They don't understand that these, these things that, you know, they don't really recognize on the label might be doing quite a bit of harm.

• 19:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And now we're beginning to understand what those harms are. So would you mind unpacking what your research has shown around these, these sort of additional components that, that are in these ultra-processed food beyond just the macronutrients?

• 19:13Speaker 00

  I think the most work that's been done has been on the sweeteners. I mean, we, we'd love, we're trying to do research on emulsifiers and preservatives and flavorings and all the other additives. But it's, you know, where, where do you begin? It's a very difficult process to, to, to actually rigorously study those, not just one at a time, but also in combination with each other because they're used in different combinations. So it's really complicated, but we do have the most information on, on sweeteners, which some people use that as definition of processed foods.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  If it has some type of alternative sweetener in it, then that makes it ultra-processed. And studies have shown again, that at all stages of life, that these products can be harmful. They do, they're intended to cut calories, which they do, but studies have shown that individuals who are consuming sweeteners end up consuming more calories throughout the day because it, in a way, kind of tricks the body into feeling it has consumed calories and sugar when it hasn't. And you end up eating more calories.

• 20:34Speaker 00

  We also know that studies, for example, looking at consumption patterns in pregnant women who are consuming high amounts of diet sodas, diet beverages, their babies have a higher risk of developing obesity. And I think that's really noticeable, remarkable. These compounds also affect microbiome development because they're designed to be not absorbed because we don't want the body to absorb them because we don't want the calories, which means that they get processed in the gut, meaning that they get metabolized and broken

• 21:18Speaker 00

  up by the gut microbiome, which not only changes the profile of the gut microbiome, but may produce other metabolites that are released by those microbes that affect the rest of the body. So there's multiple different stages at which, at least for sweeteners, are really affecting development, really affecting outcomes in, in negative ways.

• 21:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You mean the artificial sweeteners?

• 21:47Speaker 00

  Not just artificial sweeteners, but, but also natural sweeteners like stevia and monk fruit. The body doesn't know that it was derived from nature as opposed to synthesized in a lab. And so these are still purified chemicals that are affecting the body and have to be handled in the body in different ways.

• 22:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So there's no, no free ride, whether it's monk fruit or whether it's aspartame is still potentially a problem. And I, I, I think, I think to double click on what you said, I just want to make sure people understood it. You're saying that people paradoxically will consume non-nutritive sweeteners, like zero-calorie drinks or sweeteners in their food with the hope that they're going to reduce their calorie consumption, but when in fact, it actually increases their calorie consumption because they're left feeling hungrier because they're not getting what they, their body's expecting to get. That's a, that's a bummer, right? It's kind of like a little backfire. And that's probably why we see an association with increasing obesity and diabetes in these people because there's, something's going on. And it may not be the, the actual sweetener itself that's making them gain weight or

• 22:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  the non-nutritive sweetener, but it may be that the effects on their overall hormonal neurochemistry metabolic system that's driving these behaviors of overconsumption and overeating and, and, and higher calorie intake when you eat a non-calorie compound. And the microbiome, I'd love you to sort of double click on that a little bit more. Like what is happening in the microbiome? You say basically these, these sweeteners are non-nutritive, get metabolized by the microbiome, they're turned into metabolites that potentially have adverse effects. Can you unpack more, what, what is actually going on there and what do we know about this?

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, again, we know the most about these sweeteners, but the same could be true for emulsifiers, which aren't absorbed, or, or preservatives which aren't absorbed. They impact the, the microbiome. So, so bacteria that are living in our gut that are there for a reason. You have a, a profile that produces compounds that have effects in the rest of the body. If the gut is not absorbing, let's say, aspartame and it's building up in the gut, then it's going to be basically chewed up in the same way that fiber is chewed up by, by gut microbes.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  And that will affect the different types of bacteria that are evolving in the gut and what they're producing and how those products might have impacts on the rest of the body.

• 24:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Has it been identified what those harmful compounds produced as metabolized by bacteria from consuming these non-nutritive sweeteners? Do we know what those are and what they're doing?

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Not specifically. I mean, there, there's been some specific studies in animal models, but I, I think, I think the clarity in the human studies is, is not as result.

• 24:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, but it's doing something and it's messing up our microbiome. And the net, net is that it's having harmful effects on us and it probably is driving more inflammation. I think the emulsifier data is also interesting. I've seen how that, you know, increases risk of allergy and autoimmunity that causes a leaky gut. So basically it disrupts the gut barrier, which protects you from the inside of the contents of your colon, which aren't very good, and, and your small intestine. So that, that leaky gut phenomenon drives systemic inflammation and that may be one of the ways that this also drives chronic disease because that's a, that's a real clear mechanism of anything that goes to inflammation will drive chronic disease. So I think it's interesting to see how these things all connect, right?

• 25:21Speaker 00

  And again, emulsifiers, there's some evidence in, not in children, but in rodent models of, of emulsifiers, leading to anxiety behaviors, for example, potentially against the microbiome changes.

• 25:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I wanna, I wanna kind of highlight one aspect of your research that I think people will find really interesting, which is that a lot of people assume that ultra-processed food causes harm mostly because it causes you to eat more or maybe gain weight or get obesity or diabetes. And that is true. However, your, your, some of your data show that independent of weight and, and change in weight, that these foods have harmful effects on the body. Can you, can you talk about your research around, around this topic? Because it's kind of counterintuitive, right? How, how does something have a bad effect on you if you're not changing your weight? But it, but it seems to.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I, I think that, I mean, that's, that's what our studies are showing. So we, we just published a paper, for example, a few months ago in children, six-year-old children. And I think we're looking at how, how children, you know, by six years of age, children are already consuming 60% of their calories from, from ultra-processed foods. And now it might not be affecting their weight at that age. And I think if we just kind of, we're looking at some of the traditional outcomes like weight, you might say, well, there's no impact on, on the outcomes. But I think that is going to be an outcome that happens later.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  I think to really understand the mechanism, we have to look at development. And so what ours, what we've showed in our study was that children who consumed higher amounts of food from ultra-processed foods had significant reductions in key areas of, of the subcortical brain area. Almost.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  It's a small effect, 2% lower subcortical volume, but this is found in key regions of the brain that are developing and being built. For example, the nucleus accumbens, which is controlling reward and motivation, the amygdala, which is controlling, developing emotional regulation. These areas of the brain are not being developed in the same way. We don't know exactly what a smaller subcortical brain volume will do over time. But we need to look at some of these developmental effects because I think that's where that will be setting the children up

• 28:07Speaker 00

  for longer term outcomes like what you just mentioned. But I think, and that's, that's what we need to be looking at is some of the early developmental effects. Because if we're looking at obesity or diabetes, it's too late. That might not happen for another 20 or 30 years as an outcome.

• 28:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, you know, Michael, I'm sure you're probably more or less around my age, somewhere in your 60s, I'm guessing. And or maybe, maybe.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  Let's just say I just got the, I'm getting all the mailings from Medicare and Medicare asking me to sign up.

• 28:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, Robert Lustig, who you work with, with Eat Real, who's a good friend of both of ours. You know, he talks about how there's like, I don't know, 600,000 new products on the market since the last 40 or 50 years that are all these industrial food products. I'm quite concerned about that. And I think your, your research is important because it highlights this. But I don't know if pediatricians are paying attention to this or who's actually like focusing on this. Because it seems to me this is a generational problem. We're raising a whole generation of kids.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 29:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Who are going to live sicker and die younger than their parents. And who are going to have more challenges than we've ever seen. So it is, it is quite, quite concerning to me. Thing that you didn't notice with these studies was the change in cognitive performance. So I'm wondering what that was about. If you think, you know, maybe it takes longer to show up. Or why, why didn't you see changes in the actual cognitive performance?

• 29:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that's kind of an interesting finding. In our study, I think that it shows that structure may precede function, that we're having structural effects in the brain that may later have functional outcomes. There's, our kids in our study were six years of age. There are other studies in children who are older. I mean, there's, there's even a meta-analysis that reviews dozens of studies in children that does show significant effects of ultra-processed foods on executive function, memory, learning, emotional regulation. So we know the effects are there. I think in our study, we might just have caught them.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  Those outcomes might not yet have developed. So it kind of points to the developmental process that we need to think about how ultra-processed foods are affecting the building of key organs like the brain and the microbiome and the pancreas. That building of those organs is all going to be impacted. And then we'll see structural differences that may precede functional outcomes like emotional regulation, like insulin production in the pancreas. And eventually, excess eating obesity. So it's, it's a progressive thing that starts very early,

• 31:01Speaker 00

  starting probably with structural development of key organs.

• 31:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, and I think that's right. It's like how, how, how we develop as kids is so much about what our life is. And I think, you know, I remember sitting and listening to someone who worked with Save the Children. And they were talking about how they went into Appalachia and they went into a home and, you know, they saw this sort of apathy of little children and they, they were encouraging the parents to play with the kids and play ball with them. And I'm like thinking, yeah, that's great. And if these kids' brains are malnourished, how are they going to even engage? Like if they don't have omega-3s or B vitamins or magnesium or zinc or your microbiome isn't healthy because they're eating all this ultra-processed food and that's affecting their cognition and mood. How, how are they going to, you know, even, you know,

• 31:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  function and, and, and maybe they're focusing on the wrong target. It's not just about engaging these kids in more stimulating activities. It's actually taking care of their brains. And, and I think that's something people don't, don't often make, make the connection with. I, I want to kind of ask you, speaking about the brain, tell us more about your research into the ways in which these ultra-processed foods affect mood disorders like depression and also the cognitive function as we get older and dementia. Like, how, how much do we know about this? And what do the data show?

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, again, the data is pretty clear from, from the report that we wrote. There's evidence to show that consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with cognitive disorders and Alzheimer's cognitive decline. Again, this is, this is not single cherry picking studies. These are meta-analyses that show that. And so we, we do know that consumption of highly processed foods is affecting the brain at both ends of the spectrum, probably in different ways. I think that's important to, to recognize as well.

• 33:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, I think your, your data is compelling because it's not, like you said, a meta-analysis is a study of studies. And you've combined the study of study of studies. And so you, you know, you're looking at over 66 million participants in all these various studies. And you're looking at the trend lines and what happens when people consume more of these foods. And what you're seeing is just this consistent drumbeat of these things are bad for us. And they're causing harm across the spectrum of our lives and across a whole array of illnesses that, that are the modern diseases of chronic illness. And, and that doesn't include diabetes and heart disease and obesity, but also includes things like mental health, our mental health crisis, our, our, you know, increasing rates of Alzheimer's and dementia.

• 33:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So these, these are, these are, you know, for me, it's almost like a, it's like, you know, I can't, I can't end, you know, I can't end wars. I can't create Middle East peace. But this is a solvable problem. Like this is not rocket science. We have so much data, we have so much knowledge. And yet unfortunately, like the, the powers that be are allowing these things to happen. And I was very disappointed that, that, you know, the White House did not release this definition. However imperfect it may have been, to just at least start to have the conversation about how do we start to create coherent policies to protect our citizens, to protect our children? I mean, I have a friend who's a pediatrician, Harvey Karp. And he says, if a foreign country were doing to our kids

• 34:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  what we're doing, we'd go to war to protect them. If Russia or China were doing this to our kids, it would be World War III. But we're doing it to our own kids. And, and we're, nobody's really paying attention as far as I can see in any real way. I think we're starting to, but it's, it's tough.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  But you know, what's also interesting is that, I mean, despite the fact that we don't have that definition yet of highly processed foods, one of the things that surprised me when we wrote all these reports was we're seeing the, almost the same effects. If you just look at sugary beverage consumption, and we know what the definition of that is, pretty much. We see very similar effects. Just if you just look at, again, look at all the meta-analyses that have been done, looking at sugary beverage consumption and health outcomes in children or in adults, you see a very similar pattern. And so if you were to ask me, what's the one thing we could change? I mean, that, that is one simple thing that would have huge impact

• 35:30Speaker 00

  on health outcomes. And it doesn't get bogged down in a, in a difficult definition. It's, it's sugar sweetened beverages.

• 35:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I remember being at this White House Preventive Health Task Force. I was at the White House and it was all these academic scientists, folks like Walter Willet and many of, you know, your colleagues and mine. I remember Walter Willet saying this, it was so clear. He said, the, the single biggest thing that tracks against obesity is sugar sweetened beverages. And the second thing is watching hours of television watched. Now, that was before, you know, we had so much social media. This was even, you know, decades ago. But when you look at the data, it is really compelling that somehow liquid sugar calories are different than other sugar calories or other calories in, in general. So can you explain why these liquid sugar calories seem to be the, the big boogeyman here and why they're so consistently showing this? I mean, one 12-ounce soda increases your risk of diabetes,

• 36:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  according to your data, by 23%, which is a lot.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's not just obesity. It's type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, also the mental health outcomes like depression and cognitive disorders. And I think, and fatty liver disease too. And I think it's, if you think about it metabolically, it's not just a lot of sugar. In fact, our, our meta-analysis reviews of added sugars weren't as damning for added sugars. They were clearly damning for liquid sugar.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  And that's because it's a bolus, it's like a bolus infusion into your body. If, because you, we consume it very quickly and it's rapidly absorbed. And it's to do with how that rapid absorption of sugars is metabolized and handled by the body. And when there's a rapid bolus absorption, it goes to the liver more readily. And it's metabolized by the liver, converted into fat, producing inflammatory molecules as byproducts. That fat is stored in the liver, you get into fatty liver disease. Or that fat is exported from the liver as lipids.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  And then you get high lipids, dyslipidemia. And that's where you get into the cardiovascular disease as well. And so I think it's clearly to do with the rapid bolus absorption and metabolism of liquid sugars being very different from when you eat an apple, which still has sugar. It still has bad sugars, it's got fructose, but there's less of it. It's slowly absorbed because of the fiber and has less damaging effects. So that rate of consumption and that rate of absorption has very different impact in the body. And that's, that's why liquid sugar is so harmful for the body.

• 38:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, I get the apple analogy, but what about cake or cookies? Like it's worse than cake or cookies, according to the data, right?

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Well, there tends to be more sugar there and less fiber. So it is more rapidly absorbed. But you can control that. You can make a cookie with less sugar and still have it be very tasty and delicious, maybe even more tasty with less sugar, you can argue. But yeah, it's still there, but we don't see as much of an effect from the studies. That would be in added sugar. The evidence is much clearer from liquid sugar than it is for added sugar.

• 39:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I think if people listening could do one thing in their life that would make a massive difference is just stop drinking liquid sugar calories, whether it's a tea, a sweetened tea, or a juice, or obviously soda, or coffees, sweetened coffees that you get at all these Starbucks and places like that. They have more sugar than even the cans of soda. That's probably the single thing, biggest thing you can do is, is cut out liquid sugar calories for your health. And I agree with you on that one. I think the data is so compelling and it is quite different than just food-based calories. So.

• 39:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I don't, I don't mix in your can of Coke with a can of, a glass of water.

• 40:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I do that, I do. I take pomegranate juice and I put sparkling water in, it's quite good.

• 40:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 40:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  All right, I want to change gears a little bit and talk about how early chronic disease risk begins, because a lot of your work has been focused on nutrition during pregnancy, infancy, childhood, and, you know, in some ways, your, your health journey begins the moment of conception. And, and during the whole developmental process, you know, your, your health isn't just determined by whatever you do once you're born, or what happens to you once you're born. It's also what your mother consumed. And I don't think people recognize this very well. And I think, you know, I think, I'd love you to sort of unpack a little of your, your work around how these early, you know, neonatal sort of, and prenatal things actually cause, cause harm.

• 42:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's remarkable. I mean, that, you know, mother's consumption of, let's say, sodas or, or diet sodas actually will have this impact. I, I think the, the question is, you know, do we understand the mechanisms by which this is happening in utero? Is it really, is it sort of metabolic changes? Is it epigenetic programming that happens? What, what's actually causing these durable effects? Because I've seen the data that show, you know, your exposures of what your mother did in pregnancy will impact your risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, like later in life. So how, how did that all work?

• 45:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It is, I understand that, you know, it's hard to control things in humans. Free-living humans are hard to control. You need to put them in a lab and lock them down, which is what most people don't want to have done to them.

• 46:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You're probably sick of hearing me talk about sleep. But honestly, I don't think we talk enough about the environment we create for it. Your bedroom should feel like a place where your body can actually slow down, not another place where you're working, scrolling, or thinking about your to-do list. And for me, being comfortable is one of the most important parts of relaxing. I've been using Cozy Earth Sheets for years, and I really do love them. They're soft, they're comfortable, and they make the whole bedtime routine feel a little more special. They also make a great gift because, well, everyone has to sleep. If you haven't tried Cozy Earth Sheets, now is the time. Head to cozyearth.com and use the code HYMAN, and you get 40% off home and sleepwear. Their sale is from November 1st through December 3rd. And when you order, let them know Dr. Hyman sent you.

• 46:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I've been a big fan of Paleo Valley for a long time. And one of the reasons I continue to work with them is the attention they pay to how their products are made. Their grass-fed bone broth protein is a great example. Unlike conventional collagen powders that can be extracted from animal hides, Paleo Valley starts with 100% grass-fed and finished beef bones. They slow simmer the bones in water and gently dry the broth into a powder without using harsh acids or solvents. What you end up with is a collagen-rich, whole-food source of protein that naturally provides amino acids like glycine and proline. These are amino acids I think that are important to pay attention to as part of a nutrient-dense, protein-rich diet. As we head into the cooler months, one I've been reaching for is their chocolate, grass-fed bone broth protein. It has 13 grams of protein per scoop. I love mixing it into a warm drink.

• 47:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It gives you that rich, comforting, hot chocolate experience while also making it incredibly easy to add more collagen-rich protein to your day. So if you're looking for an easy way to add more high-quality collagen-rich protein to your day, visit paleovalley.com/hyman or use the code HYMAN at checkout to save 15% off your first order. That's paleovalley.com/hyman or use the code HYMAN at checkout. But when you add those all up together and you look at the weight of the evidence over dozens and dozens and dozens of studies over many decades, all of them point to the same thing. You know, the orders of magnitude might be different, the methodologies might be different, the number of participants might be different, but the trend lines are all the same. Like, these things don't seem to be good for you, and in fact, are actively harmful.

• 48:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And we saw that with smoking, too. I mean, there was no randomized controlled trial that tobacco smoke was bad for you. It was done through observational trials. And the weight of the evidence just was so great that the people who smoked had more lung cancer and had more heart disease. I mean, it was sort of incontrovertible. You couldn't do an ethically-designed study to determine that. But, you know, when you look at the effects on the population, it was really clear. And I think, you know, anybody who's out in the trenches seeing people who consume these foods, you see what happens. I want to, I want to talk about babies because a lot of your work is focused on not just, not just, you know, what happens in utero and the developmental effects of these foods and chronic disease, but like the formula.

• 49:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And for most people who don't know, and formula in America is mostly, has been really locked down. And there was a recent effort by the latest administration called Operation Stork Speed. I don't know if you were involved in that.

• 49:12Speaker 00

  I was, actually, yeah.

• 49:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, so I remember a friend of mine, David Littlewig, sent me a study, which was on infant formula, showing that most American formulas had the equivalent of like a soda or Coca-Cola or so a day for babies in terms of the amount of sugar they were getting, which was astounding. And I shared that with, with the administration and I, and they were like, oh. And so they started this whole effort. And I think, you know, you've been involved with that. I'd love to sort of hear your thoughts. But you've done a lot of work on the difference between lactose-based sugars, which is what is in milk, and lactose, like glucose, sucrose, lactose is a sugar, milk sugar, versus corn syrup solids or corn sugars, which is in what's most American formulas. Now, in some formulas, and they're changing that, there are lactose-based formulas from Europe.

• 49:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There are some American companies that are starting to do this. But, you know, it's been a pretty locked-down industry. And we haven't even mainly import European formulas to America because there was a ban on that because of the, the formula industry. That's how, you know, kind of crazy it is. We couldn't even buy healthier stuff if we wanted to for our babies because the government said we couldn't. So can you, can you talk about this whole phenomenon, what the differences in formulas, what these impacts have on babies and kids, and how it affects their health and metabolism? And, and what we know about that and other things such as, you know, the microbiome? And then that affects as well?

• 50:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, so you're absolutely right. So most, most formula, the majority of formulas sold in the US is made with corn syrup solids as the sugar and not lactose. And just to be clear, lactose is two sugars joined together. It's a molecule of glucose connected to a molecule of galactose. That's milk sugar, what we call a disaccharide. But most formula is made with corn syrup solids. Corn syrup is purely glucose, so there's no galactose. It's pure glucose that has a much higher glycemic index than breast milk and the lactose formula.

• 51:16Speaker 00

  So we started looking at this because we noticed in our study that a significant number of the babies that we were following were consuming these corn syrup formulas. So we started asking how they were being affected. And so one of the first studies we looked at was just microbiome development significantly altered by six months of age. We're looking at later effects now. We saw effects on eating behaviors and eating development. And then we went to WIC, Women's Infants and Children. They study, WIC is a federal program that provides formula to low-income mothers.

• 52:01Speaker 00

  And WIC is, you know, huge government contracts that buy formula for different companies, including corn syrup formulas. So we were able to look in thousands of children in California based on which formula those mothers elected to, to be provided with. And again, about half those mothers elected to go with the corn syrup formula and half went with the lactose. And what we saw was that by two years of age, three years of age, and four years of age, those babies who were consuming the corn syrup formula

• 52:45Speaker 00

  became more obese by three or four years of age. So that was a paper that we published a couple of years ago in a very large sample across all of California. And then we asked the question, well, if these babies are consuming corn syrup formula with a much higher glycemic index, surely their blood glucose must be dysregulated. But to prove that, we had to do a study. So we recruited babies at six months of age, and we put glucose monitors on those babies. And some of those babies were being breastfed. Some of those babies were getting traditional formula with lactose. And some of them were getting the corn syrup formula.

• 53:29Speaker 00

  And so we published this paper earlier this year. And the babies that were being breastfed, their blood glucose levels, rock solid. You, you would love to have that level of blood sugar regulation and very similar with the lactose formula. But if you, if I was to show you the glucose profile, the CGM output from the babies on the corn syrup formula, you would, you would probably think I was showing you some, an adult with type 2 diabetes, an adult with, with, with a shocking diet. Their blood glucose levels were up and down all day long, really, really dysregulated. And so that was very significant.

• 54:14Speaker 00

  But, but more interestingly as well, not all babies on the corn syrup formula had that. Only a subset, about half of the babies somehow were able to regulate their blood sugars. But half the babies on the corn syrup had that very dysregulated, up and down all day long. So it tells us that Blood sugar regulation is much more tightly regulated with breast milk or with lactose formula. On corn syrup formula, there's some babies who for some reason are able to regulate. But for the others, hugely dysregulated blood sugars.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  And who know, we don't know what that's going to do long term to the baby. That's another study we need to do, but it's not a great start to life.

• 55:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We know that when your glucose goes up, your insulin goes up and you're not measuring that because you don't have a continuous insulin monitor. But surely that's having an effect. And we know that prolonged hyperinsulinemia or elevated levels of insulin are preceding almost all chronic disease and are as causative, whether it's heart disease, whether it's cancers, many cancers, whether it's dementia, whether it's even depression, obviously diabetes, obesity. So this is a huge, this is a huge finding. I think it seems, it seems like probably in the formula world, about half of the formulas in America consumed are the corn syrup solids. Is that, is that right?

• 55:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's more than half.

• 55:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But only about 30% are lactose formulas? Or how much are lactose formulas?

• 55:43Speaker 00

  It's about 55 to 60% corn formula and 45 ish lactose.

• 55:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So from your work, it almost seems like those formulas should be regulated and actually, in my view, banned if they are causing these, these massive changes in metabolic effects on kids and glucose spikes that resemble someone who's basically, you know, got diabetes. There seem to be like a case for regulating these things, don't you think?

• 56:12Speaker 00

  That's, well, that's, that's what I told the FDA. So I was, I was part of Operation Stork Speed. We had a, we had a meeting with the FDA. We wrote a series of papers that were published. We looked at all different types, well, different aspects of formula that I wasn't involved with. I was focused on this issue. And the reason this came to be was because in the 1980s is with the last time the government issued regulations on what formula composition should be. And in 1980s, they said that there has to be a certain amount of carbohydrate in formula. But they did not specify what that carbohydrate should be.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  It had, there was no, it was not like a specific amount of lactose. It was just carbohydrate, as long as it's grass, a grass approved carbohydrate, you can use it in formula. And so formula companies started using corn syrup solids because it's a cheaper ingredient. It dissolves better. It's easier to, to, to work with in the factory. And they marketed it as gut healthy because it's gentle.

• 57:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Gut healthy?

• 57:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. It was kind of ironic. Yeah.

• 57:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's crazy because you're, you're feeding all the bad bugs with those extra sugars and probably creating worse dysbiosis or gut imbalances in these kids who have these, you know, corn based sugars in their formula.

• 57:46Speaker 00

  Well, they did that because they, they made the case that babies who were having digestive issues on formula did so because they had lactose intolerance, which does not, that's, that's how they marketed it for babies with lactose intolerance, which is non-existent in the vast majority of, of babies. And so it's, that's, that's really, you know, doubly ironic because lactose intolerance doesn't exist and it's not good for the gut. It's bad for the gut.

• 58:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, wow.

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Anyway, there was these, last week I saw that Operation Stork Speed was last June. So that's almost 18 months ago. They did announce, I think either this week or last week, a number of key changes in regards to micronutrients. There's not been an announcement yet about the carbohydrate composition. Certainly other countries have recognized this. The EU has very specific regulations on, on this as do other parts of the world. So we're still waiting for the rest of those guidelines.

• 59:05Speaker 00

  So I'm very anxiously waiting to see what they do with that.

• 59:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I bet. I mean, in the EU, you're saying they don't allow corn syrup solids? They, they only allow lactose or what, what is the regulation over there?

• 59:15Speaker 00

  They do allow it, but only up to a certain amount of, a much lower amount. So, and that's what, that's what I think, well, I think it should be banned altogether, but we ought to be able to have a lactose requirement for formula that simulates what's in breast milk. Right? I mean, that's what formula is supposed to be doing. It's supposed to be simulating breast milk, which is lactose. So we ought to have a lactose content requirement for, for formula.

• 59:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, so you're seeing these continuous glucose monitors show these spikes in sugar and people, and these babies having these corn syrup solids as the sugar or carbohydrate in their formula. Are you, are you also seeing that the, these kids have over time worsening metabolic effects on their health as a result of this? In other words, has there been studies that show that, you know, kids who have these corn syrup solid formulas tend to be more obese and more diabetic and have more health issues than kids who were fed lactose based formulas?

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  We're doing some analysis now on that. Again, now we can't, I wouldn't want to do a trial. I can't do a trial, recruit babies and put them on corn syrup formula and see what happens. That would not be ethical.

• 1:00:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Even though you can buy it in the grocery store.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  We're doing follow-up studies. We have a cohort of babies we've been following. We know exactly what they were consuming in early life. And now we're looking at some outcomes at six years of age. It may, again, it may take longer to develop. I don't know. But we, interesting, we don't have the data yet. We're analyzing it at six years of age. We have glucose monitoring in those kids and we're, we're going, we're looking at how their glucose regulation at six years of age is affected by which type of formula they were on in earlier life. That's, that's some of the analysis we're currently doing.

• 1:01:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So we should, we should learn more about it and I think we'll learn more over time. But you know, what strikes me as so funny and actually tragically funny is that it's unethical to recruit kids and babies and put them on the formula that is ethical to sell in the grocery stores and the drugstore. So you can buy it. It's ethical to buy it, but you can't actually do a study on it because it's unethical to do the study on these kids. Well, wait a minute, something's kind of screwed up with that, right?

• 1:01:41Speaker 00

  It's, yeah, it's, it's so ironic.

• 1:01:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wow. So it wouldn't pass an institutional review board because it's not safe to put kids on this formula, but it is safe to sell it to them in the grocery store and the drugstore and for kids to be on this formula. That just makes me crazy.

• 1:01:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In terms of these, these, these metabolic differences that you're seeing with these, these kids, are you seeing these changes in metabolic health as a result of these glucose patterns later in life yet?

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, we, we haven't, we haven't, we haven't studied that yet.

• 1:02:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So I think, you know, intuitively it's obvious to me like, okay, when you, if you drink a lot of soda, you're going to get obese, fatty liver, diabetic and so on. But you, and you have to do these studies to prove what was often the obvious thing.

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's crazy. That, that's why we ended up doing a study in 60, six month olds with the CGM because I was talking to this about someone and he said, yeah, well, where's the data? And I'm like, I don't, do I need the data? Like, they're like, yeah. I was like, okay, we'll do a study.

• 1:02:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. I mean, do I need the data to feeding a baby a can of Coca Day is a bad idea? Yeah, probably, probably not. Well, on the, on the flip side of this, you know, I think, I think there's a, there's also a silver lining in understanding this because there's a real move to try to get schools and kids and have better nutrition. And, and I think, you know, some of the data I've seen has been compelling, some of the most striking data was in juvenile detention centers where they took kids who were, you know, obviously disturbed and had behavioral issues and violent and aggressive. And they swapped out what they were feeding them in the juvenile detention centers, which was all this processed food and junk food to healthy real food.

• 1:03:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And they saw like a 97% decrease in violence, 75% decrease in restraints, 100% decrease in suicides, which was the third leading cause of death in teenage boys. So that, that's just remarkable to me. And I know you work with Eat Real, which is a nonprofit that's run by friends of mine, my, my Dr. Jordan Flane, Robert Lustig and Nora Torre, who's, who's the, runs it. And, and they, you worked collaboratively with them to look at what happens when, when schools that they've been in to improve school nutrition, what happens when these kids eat this better food to their academic performance and to their behavior? So I, I'd love you to sort of share some of what you learned from looking at the data in these kids who've actually started to eat better in schools based on some of this

• 1:04:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  work that these nonprofits doing.

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. So again, this is not a trial. We're, we're trying to get the trial funded. So what we did was we looked in, Eat Real works all across the country now. They've done the most work in California. And in the state of California, we're able to download from the state of Department of Education, all of the test scores for all of the schools for all of California. So it's publicly available data that we, that we pulled. I have, I have a data wizard on my team who's really skilled at doing this. And what we did was we looked at the pattern of, of academic performance in all the schools

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  that got Eat Real, all the school districts in California that got Eat Real and compared them with all the other school districts across all of California that didn't get Eat Real. And we had to control for socioeconomic status, free lunches and stuff like that. And, but the data was, it was pretty clear outcome that we showed that a sustained improvement in the percentage of kids who met, who exceeded academic standards for English language and arts in the schools that got Eat Real relative to the other schools.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  And so this is some of the first evidence, observational evidence that Eat Real.

• 1:05:37Speaker 00

  Is not just going to have an impact on health and diabetes risk and obesity risk, but also potentially going to improve school performance. And so I'm talking now about healthy nutrition in school, not just as a health outcome, but also as good educational policy. And so that's now the trial that we want to do to get more convincing evidence on that. And it's really good timing that you were talking about this because yesterday I was just I was just in the Fullerton School District. Fullerton School District just was awarded their their certification for Meat Real. They've gone through a program.

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  I was blown away by what they're doing. They have a centralized facility where they are processing all of the food

• 1:06:34Speaker 00

  for 20 schools in their school district. So they're they're feeding 5,000 kids a day through this one kitchen.

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  And they're making everything there. They're like, there was, I was standing next to these trays of granola. And I'm like, what, what's all this granola for? They're like, we just made the granola. They're making their own granola. They handed, they were making focaccia bread. And they handed me a sample of focaccia. I took one bite of it. I was like, this is a really unusual focaccia. It was made with whole wheat. Right? It was a whole wheat focaccia. That's the kind of food that they're making. And so they're making not all of their food from scratch, but the vast majority of it now is, and they're able to do this because they have this centralized kitchen that's doing it at scale for

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  all these kids every day. So I mean, I was blown away by the, by what they're doing.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  And, and, and we, we had the school lunch. It was delicious.

• 1:07:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's possible to do. It's possible to do. It's just not, it's, it, it needs to be for within the school budget. I mean, I, I think within the school budget, within the nutrition guidelines, it's, it's doable. I mean, I, I actually had a friend, Jill Shaw, who, who started a nonprofit in Boston called My Way Cafe. And they, they went into Boston public schools and they showed, most of them didn't have any kitchens. They just had microwaves and deep fryers. They brought in processed packaged foods wrapped in plastic, reheated in plastic to kids from other states. And, and they, this woman said, you know, maybe we put kitchens in these schools and we teach the kitchen staff how to make the food and we get chefs to design the food within the school budget guidelines and nutrition guidelines from the federal government,

• 1:08:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  that maybe it'll work. And they found that in fact, it did work and they were able to do it. And kids loved it. They didn't throw the food out. They ate the food. It tasted good. It wasn't more expensive. I mean, all the mythology that it's, it's expensive, that it's difficult, that it's hard. It's just, it's just a matter of will. And, and so they were able to show this. And then the mayor of Boston scaled this across the schools and in, in Boston. I think this is just, there's models like this all around the country. There's Eat Real, there's other, other nonprofits also working in schools, but it is important and parents can be advocates in this way. Sometimes, you know, you, you just wish the policies would change, but if, if they don't, as individuals, we can make a difference. We can make a difference in our own homes. We can make a difference in the places where our kids go to school. We can make a difference in the place where we work.

• 1:09:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So that there are ways to change our environments, although, although it is hard when you, when you're kind of fighting against the tsunami of, of the ultra-processed food that's out there everywhere you turn in America. Love, love to do. So maybe have you end up with is helping us understand if people had like three practical evidence-based dietary strategies that could make a difference in their long-term metabolic health, their longevity, their brain health, what, what would those things be? From your, from your research and your understanding of the science?

• 1:09:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we touched on them. And I, I think

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  liquid sugar should go. I think liquid sugar is probably, we had to pick one thing that has the most damaging effect on health. I think that's something that needs to, to be reduced.

• 1:09:49Speaker 00

  We touched upon

• 1:09:52Speaker 00

  just, you know, doing more scratch cooking, like

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  you don't have to like suddenly become a court of blow chef and cook everything from scratch, like your own granola and your own focaccia, like they're doing in Fullerton. But if you can just start to move the needle towards doing more

• 1:10:15Speaker 00

  scratch cooking and less reliance on processed and packaged foods. I think that the evidence shows that just starting small and sustaining and growing from that can have an impact over time. Moving towards more reliance on real foods and scratch cooking and less on packaged foods could be the second one. And usually one to three, right?

• 1:10:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  The third, I mean, I think the third is just we need to learn more about the developmental process and appreciation of the subtle developmental things that are happening very early in, in the process.

• 1:10:59Speaker 00

  That just because we're not seeing an impact on obesity or diabetes doesn't mean to say that nothing's happening because of diet. There's, there's, there's subtle

• 1:11:13Speaker 00

  things germinating from very early in development that are going to ultimately impact, whether that's

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  dysregulated blood sugars at six months of age. Who knows what the long-term impact of that's going to be, but it's probably not good. Or an altered microbiome by 12 months of age. Or, or lower subcortical brain volume by six years of age. These things are not good signs for development. And we need to appreciate that there, there are these subtle, but significant impacts that are happening before actual disease progression emerges.

• 1:11:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, these are such important points. And I think, you know, the, the, the one thing that, that you, in some ways solves a lot of it is people learning how to take back their kitchens. Kitchens have been hijacked by the food industry. We've insinuated all the, you know, ultra-processed foods into kitchens. Most people don't know how to cook from scratch anymore. Most people have a lot of ultra-processed food in their house. And, you know, at the reheated or to, you know, put in the microwave. And, and we've, we've lost the art of cooking. We've lost the sort of lineage of, of people knowing how to cook. And, and, and I, I, I've shared this story before and I'll just briefly share it when I was, I was in this movie called Fed Up with Robert Lustig, actually.

• 1:12:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And we were both in that movie and it was, it was in, I guess, 12 years ago. And I went to South Carolina with this family and they, and then they were very, very open braids, sick, diabetic. The father was 42 on dialysis, you know, already from diabetes. The son was 16 and 50% body fat where it should be 10%. And they never cooked a meal on their trailer. There was five of them that lived in there. And they, they never learned how to cook from scratch. And, and I, I literally showed them how to cook one meal. Here's how the basic, how's your chop of vegetable? Here's how you roast a potato. Here's how you like stir fry something. Here's how you just simple things like here's how you make a salad dressing from scratch. And, you know, and I was like, okay, good luck. Here you go. Here's a, here's a cookbook and a little guide on how to eat well for less. And, and they did it. I sent them a cutting board and knives because they didn't have any.

• 1:13:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And they were able to lose a couple of hundred pounds in the first year as a family. The father got a new kidney. The, the son ultimately lost 132 pounds and went on to go to medical school, is now a doctor. And, and you know, I was, it just gave me hope. It meant if Jamie Oliver had this whole idea, they were just going to kind of a campaign to teach people how to cook. And if you like, we're basically one meal away from changing everything in America. If people actually knew the basic skills. And I think it's, it's something we don't really talk about enough. And I, I'm, I'm a doctor, but I, I do do videos on how to cook things. How do you make healthy food that tastes good? And is affordable and is, is reasonable to make. And it, it, you can do it. And I, and I have a whole video series on how to do that. Obviously, if you have more money, it's better, but, but it's, it's not impossible.

• 1:14:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I think it ends up being much cheaper if people understand really how to, how to make real food from scratch. And it doesn't have to take that much time. It can be just a few simple things you learn how to make. Three meals, three breakfasts, three lunches, three dinners, and you just like kind of rotate. It doesn't have to be that complicated.

• 1:14:21Speaker 00

  Add to that a little bit, because it doesn't even have to be cooking. I mean, something I call kitchen processing, like let's take a very simple example, like yogurt. Like instead of buying like a processed yogurt that has sugar and flavorings and emulsifiers, just buy a big container of plain yogurt and add your own flavorings, add your own mashed banana or blueberries or a little bit of syrup or something. Probably costs less. And you've, you've cut out the whole factory processing piece of it. And you'll get a healthier product. So I mean, I think those simple messages are, are really important and good place to start.

• 1:15:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I agree. I think it's just, doesn't have to be that hard. And, and I think we make it over complicated, but it is, it is important that people take back their health and take back their kitchens. And, you know, start to advocate for themselves and their families, even if the government hasn't and isn't. I mean, ultimately we'll get there, but you know, it's, it's a very slow process. And you and I both have been working in that. It's, it's like molasses, but it's, you know, hopefully over time, things will shift. Well, thank you so much for your work, Michael, for your dedication to space, for helping us understand the role of ultra-processed foods in our health and our children's health and their development and then, and sort of creating the groundwork for a real, real change, meaningful change in policy. So thank you so much for everything you do.

• 1:15:46Speaker 00

  Thank, thank you. It's my pleasure. Thank, thank you for, for all you do and bringing, bringing this information out to the broader public. I think that's really important part of the process.

• 1:15:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark here. I'm so excited to share that my new book is officially available for preorder today. After more than 30 years of practicing medicine and caring for tens of thousands of patients, I've written the book that brings everything together that I've learned about helping people get healthy and stay healthy. This age, it's called a hundred. What to do today to live a hundred healthy years is a whole body guide to living a hundred healthy years. It's grounded in a new understanding of how our bodies work. It's the new map of the body. And inside, I walk you through the seven core systems that drive your health from your gut and hormones to how your cells make energy and help you understand the signals your body's been sending you all along. Now, a lot of what's in the book, I learned the hard way through my own body. When I got sick,

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• 1:17:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.

• 1:18:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at UltraWellnessCenter.com, and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening. When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest, and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what

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