This is a Brian Kilmeade show special. Your body, your health. Ways to take control of your health to make America healthy again. Here's Brian Kilmeade. Hi everybody.
Thanks so much for listening. I don't think there's any hotter topic in the country after the election. Of course, that was the number one thing. But within that, the story really about your health and what are we eating. So many times people say, well, that person's heavy because they don't exercise. We're too sedentary. They love video games. That's the problem. Americans don't go out enough. They're done social media.
Well, maybe that's the case in some cases, but not nearly as much as you think. What if you think you're eating healthy because you're eating affordably and it turns out the food you think is healthy is actually terrible for you. And this hour we're going to focus on that with people that did the hard work for us to tell us what we're eating and how we're being possibly misled by everything on the boxes to our so-called health experts. Dr. Marty Makary is going to be with us. He's got a brand new book on this. You know he's from Johns Hopkins. Max Lugavere, host of the Genius Life podcast, best-selling author. When his mom died of Alzheimer's, he decided to look into what she was eating and what was it about our lifestyle that led to this. And Dr. Casey Means, Dr. Means as well as her brother Callie, really dominated this business.
They wrote the author of the book Good Energy. Now you had Casey who's a doctor and decided she was being really disillusioned with the medical profession. And then you have her brother who was working in pharmaceutical business and could see how they believe together that the pharmaceutical business working with the medical profession is really designed to keep us sick and to keep us buying pills, many of which became chronic illness.
They became chronic illness in a way we have to take these pills constantly, whether it's blood medication, whether it's cholesterol medication, whether it's mood alteration. It's done it because people are making a profit from it. The health insurance business got to pay for it. And in order to do that, when the prices go up, so do the premiums. It all comes a vicious cycle and maybe we could bring it to an end if we understand what we're reading.
Here's Dr. Casey Means talking about RFK. One of the issues that he talked about was having safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic. Our children are now the unhealthiest, sickest children in the world. Don't you want healthy children? And don't you want the chemicals out of our food? And don't you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption?
And that was RFK got the biggest applause after he decided to endorse Donald Trump. Not that they agree on everything. They agree on that, especially if they need to get along personally on the healthy foods and finding out what we're reading and why the numbers are going up and why America is fatter than ever. Yet we know more about fitness.
We are working out a lot, but it's just not working out for us. Dr. Casey Means knows all that. She was with us before. Our number one best selling book, Good Energy, is still selling huge.
The surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health. And Dr. Casey Means joins us now. Welcome back, Casey. Brian, so great to see you.
Congratulations on all the success, but we kind of knew it when you were in here because people were giving you what type of response to your book? The Americans are sick and tired of being sick. We understand that there are so many lovers of our policy right now that are against American health.
And like RFK said in that speech, American health is getting destroyed and Americans are tired of it. When you just look at the statistics, it absolutely speaks for itself. Children's health is worse than ever. 40% of children are overweight or obese. 36% of children have a mental, emotional or behavioral disorder. Autism rates are one in 22 in California. 18% of teens have fatty liver disease. Young adult cancers are up.
79% were on track to have one in two American adults with cancer in their lifetime. This is absolutely astronomical and it is a historic moment that at the highest levels of politics, we are now calling this out and talking about the rigs, the rigged institutions that are making our country a fertile ground for childhood chronic disease. So when you heard RFK talk, does he get it? Does he get, does he know what you know? RFK gets it completely. He has been fighting this battle for decades.
He's been fighting it in the courts. He's gone up against Monsanto. What RFK really understands is the nexus of pharma, ultra processed food, industrial agriculture and government, which is keeping Americans sick and which we need to unpack this nexus in order to make Americans healthy. He's hitting all the key points, the conflicts of interest in our government agencies, the lack of regulation around the toxins in our food, our water, our air, our homes.
He really does understand the many factors that are keeping Americans sick. So do you remember in the seventies, I'm older than you, but you know, parents used to smoke. I mean, smoking is down very low now. I mean, everyone used to smoke in the movies, smoke in the car with the windows closed and you know, we didn't, we didn't worry about what our cars were spewing out of the tailpipe and we did have a find a way to clean up our air. We thought to clean up our waters, we thought and to eat, have a healthier lifestyle.
Where am I wrong? Yeah, this is, this is exactly right. And I think a key point that you're bringing up, uh, does have to do with the cigarette industry. What a lot of people do not know is that the ultra processed food industry that is keeping Americans sick and dependent on the healthcare industry was created by the cigarette industry. Two of the largest mergers in the 1980s, once the favor for cigarette started declining, two of the largest mergers in history before the 1990s were in the 1980s and it was, uh, RJ Reynolds and Phillip Morris, two cigarette companies buying processed food companies and then using the same playbook that we looked at for cigarettes, make the product addictive and cheap and apply it to processed food. In the 1980s we saw skyrocketing of the ubiquity of ultra processed food and this coincides when Americans and especially children started getting very, very sick.
So same playbook applied to a different industry, transferring the scientific knowledge of addiction from one to another as one fell out of favor. And now we're seeing what the repercussions of that are with 75% of American adults over the age of 55 having a chronic illness tied to food. This is the cost in our country, 90% of our $4.3 trillion healthcare budget, 23% of the largest GDP in the world is going to healthcare, which 90% of it is going towards chronic illnesses related to food. Every American taxpayer should care about this issue. So you're saying big pharma, the food industry want us sick to make a profit?
It's a devil's bargain, Brian. The two are the largest industries in the country and healthcare is the largest and fastest growing industry in the United States. It's a business that's designed to grow. It's a $4.3 trillion industry.
This is the simple economic unemotional reality. It makes more money when patients are sick and it makes less money when patients are healthy. Right now, one of the other largest industries in the United States, which is the ultra processed food industry is leading to chronic illness. And so right now we have two industries that unfortunately, even with the best intentions of the people in those industries at the individual level, they are both economically benefiting off patients who are sick and dependent on ultra processed food, then getting sick and are sick and dependent on the healthcare system. I mean, the numbers are overwhelming.
They're indisputable either. 74% of Americans are overweight, 77% can't serve in the military, even if they were drafted tomorrow. And I'm not sure if it's related or not, but you mentioned that autism number right up top. You say one in, can you give me those percentages again? One in 36 American children now has autism.
In California where I live, that number is one in 22. This is up astronomically in the past 24 years. And you know, this is, it used to be one in 1500, 2020 years ago. It has been one in one 50 in recent years.
And then decades ago it was one in 1500 and it is skyrocketing. So and your belief that food has a lot to do with that because you know, we hear things about inoculations and vaccines and they say that it's been disputed and it's unrelated. Many of these diseases are multifactorial in nature, but what we have to understand that the, the small bodies of children being born into this world, starting in fetal life are being born into a toxic stew that they are not being protected from.
And this is across all, all levers of society. We are over medicating children. 70% of a child's diet is coming from ultra processed, fake Franken food filled with chemicals that are banned in other countries.
They are banned in Europe. Many of the chemicals that are in our ultra processed foods like food dyes and preservatives that we know have an effect on children's behavior and brains. We look at what's happening with the food also in terms of pesticides. There are a 6 billion pounds of these, these toxic pesticides being sprayed on this food that then is going towards children's ultra processed foods. So Brian, the bigger picture is that kids are being born into a toxic stew of many forever chemicals, endocrine disrupting chemicals and chemicals that we know impair neurologic development across food environment and medications and their bodies are getting crushed. And as adults and policy makers and media, we need to have the moral clarity to say enough is enough. Kids are too sick with preventable illnesses and we've got to clean up the environment. We've got to protect our children. And you know, I, I am so deeply encouraged that this conversation is being had clearly at the highest level of government and it's becoming over the last few weeks in election topic. This is going to be on the debate stage and I think we can all feel very grateful for that. So Dr. Casey Means with us, co-author of Good Energy, along with her brother, books number one in the country. So can you give me a definition of a processed food?
Absolutely. So an ultra processed food is a food that is created in a factory. It's, it's made from various extracted and adulterated parts of other food that are put together like a puzzle into a Franken food that's really never, never before been seen in nature.
So it's taking constituent parts from other whole foods that have been broken down and then remodeled into a Frankenstein like food comes from a factory package often filled with preservatives and colorings to make it hyper palatable. This is an invention that again only started becoming ubiquitous in the 1980s. So it's not like we've had these forever. It's not like this is the only thing kids will eat.
They're brand new. This is now making up 70% of the calories that we eat. And so this is the types of things that's lining the, all the middle isles of the grocery store, the things that are in the box and they taste good, right?
That's part of the attraction designed. They are weaponized and designed by food scientists to take you to your bliss point, to be hyper palatable and to include ingredients that turn down our satiety mechanisms to make us eat more. You look at a Pringles box, it literally tells you right on the package. Once you pop, you just can't stop.
It's designed to have all the components to activate your reward circuitry. So you want as much as possible and to sneak in ingredients like high fructose corn syrup that actually we know biochemically make us more hungry. So these foods are designed to get you to eat nutrient depleted pesticide cover food with chemicals that make us feel like we're insatiable. And this is why ultra processed foods are why Americans are eating themselves to death. Do you believe, do you believe the system is curable? Do you believe if an RFK gets in there, he could, he could take that knowledge that you've done and, and scientists alongside you, uh, be able to go in there and streamline a process that is so, uh, fortified.
This is absolutely solvable and truly everyone can be a winner here. Industry, people and children, but we need to move back to eating real foods. I do believe that there are some simple policy changes that we could make in our country that could happen in the first year of administration that could absolutely turn the tides backwards towards American health. And I think the political appetite is strong for that right now. We know Americans are sick of this.
They are cheering at the rallies. They want to hear about getting rid of the toxins in our food. They want to hear about a cleaner, more sustainable food system. So I think the appetite is there.
The political will and some of the policy solutions are being presented right now and it's very, very exciting. And do you, where do you shop? Where do you buy food?
Farmer's market, the best place that anyone can shop. There are 9,000 farmer's markets in the United States. And the key point about the farmer's market is the freshest food and the least toxins. The freshest is important because fresh food has the most nutrients. As a food travels 1500 miles from a factory to your plate, it's losing its nutrients every single day. And as it gets processed, it's losing nutrients.
Our cellular biology, the reason we're all sick kids and adults is because our cellular biology is broken by the lack of good nutrients that we're getting in our food. So buying food as local as possible, as clean as possible without the pesticides and the additives is one of the best things you can do to give yourselves the power to do their best work and minimize chronic illness. If that's not an option, then of course buying a, it's something like a health food store, Whole Foods, um, with, with organic and unprocessed is great. But truly for people who don't have access to either of those unprocessed real food, not in a package, ideally organic, it's incredible.
You know, it's also sinful. They put all that fast food and horrible food in the most working class areas, the most hard up areas where it makes it, their diet is even more challenging, um, and makes it affordable. Say, okay, that's cheap, I'll eat it. But then they feel like then they get unhealthy and they don't necessarily have the healthcare to fix them.
Um, have you noticed that? Well, this is where policy comes in, Brian. So with some simple fixes, we could fill these neighborhoods with healthy, fresh food because, because industry follows the money. So right now on public assistance food programs like snap and wick, 10% of that food is going straight to soda and over 50% is going to ultra processed food. So we allow people on public assistant programs to funnel that money towards food. We could incentivize those programs to get better value if you're buying real food.
We don't do that right now. Number two, our farm bill subsidies are what make those unhealthy foods cheaper. Almost all of our food farm bill subsidies goes to commodity crops, not healthy foods, commodity crops like corn, wheat and soy that are turned into the backbone of ultra processed food. So taxpayers are not only paying for the farm bill subsidies that make the toxic food cheaper, they're also paying for the food assistance that goes towards processed food and they're paying for the environmental externalities of that, uh, toxic food production as well as the healthcare costs of Americans who are getting sick because of the processed food.
So as taxpayers, we need to make this a key issue because we're paying for it on all sides. I hope you're enjoying that. We're gonna have more with, uh, Casey Means a little bit, a little bit later. And she, of course she has that bestselling book out. If you want to have more, you are listening, a special edition of the Brian Kilmeade show. Your body, your health. The war on processed foods is next with Brian Kilmeade.
Precise, personal, powerful. It's America's weather team in the Palm of your hands. Get Fox weather updates throughout your busy day.
Every day. Subscribe and listen now at Fox news, podcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a Brian Kilmeade show special your body, your health ways to take control of your health to make America healthy again.
Welcome back everybody. Brian Kilmeade here. I want to give a little bit more of my interview with Casey Means. I wanted to respond to time magazine story, which really what in defense of processed food, believe it or not, here's what she said. One of the more amusing things that we've seen is, is the mainstream media playbook trying to do what they love to do, which is confuse people into thinking that we don't have a grip on reality by saying, what if alter processed foods aren't as bad as we think that was the title of the article. And fortunately people took to social media in hoard saying we are no longer standing silent while the media tries to gaslight us into questioning the reality that we know is true, which is that this packaged food is trash. And I'll just briefly run through what the media does to make us question our reality about food. They deny the science and seed confusion.
They always will invoke social justice, which they did in this article to shut down conversation. They said that this is what people in America eating. If you take it away, what are they going to eat without talking about the fact that our system is rigged to make this food cheaper and more accessible to marginalized populations and is hurting them. And we could change the policies to make healthy food cheaper. So we seed confusion.
We invoke social justice to shut down conversation. They normalize ultra processed foods. Talk about, Oh, well this is 70% of calories Americans are eating and we are fine. We're not fine. We are almost universally chronically ill. And the fourth thing they do is they do not mention the conflict of interest of the scientists and the nutritionists that they cite in the article. So this is the four part playbook that media uses to confuse us about nutrition. But we all know what's, what the reality is. The reality is, is that these ultra processed foods are not good for us and we need to get back to real food. The good news is time, time article change time magazine changed the title to a, to a different title because social media was an upper age.
So our voices matter. So it was great talking to Casey up next, Dr. McCary, who has the respect of the means family as well as the respect to the medical profession. He's moving ahead of what's wrong and also how to fix it. Special edition of the Brian Kilmeade show. This is a Brian Kilmeade show special your body, your health ways to take control of your health to make America healthy again. Welcome back everyone. Your body, your health special edition of the Brian Kilmeade show.
Thanks so much for listening. So one of the elements I wanted to bring back to you and bring forward is Dr. Barney McCarey wrote a great book on this whole thing and we talked about what we're reading, what we've been told and how to fix some things that are in our diets on a daily basis. Really undoing a lot of the things that we learned. Here's Dr. Marty McCarey. We begin with Bill Maher weighing in on this very topic. If he had said like I'm going to ban vaccines, I would be very against it. But he said just the other day, he said, no choice.
If you want them, you have them. It's not going to be mandated. That's I think what a lot of people objected to before. I mean, I've said it many times. There are some pathogens that if they were going around, I would fight you for the vaccine.
And there are others that, you know, I just didn't want like the one we just had. There was a time in which he might have been asked to leave the country with that statement. That was Bill Maher on Friday.
He's going to have a season finale next week, but weighing in on RFK and being a little atypical from the left who suddenly you have turned on him big time. But I'm more into specifically what he stands for and what he wants to do from food to vaccines to overall health and streamlining a bureaucracy that has not been effective in, in my view, exposed during the 2020 pandemic. Dr. Marty McCarey knows all about it. Professor Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, author of Blind Spots, where medicine gets it wrong and what it means for our health. Dr. McCarey, first off, what do you think about his nomination? Are you glad to see it or is it, where are you like other people in the medical profession? No, I'm, I'm not worried about his nomination.
I'm glad to see it. What I'm worried about is the current path we're on. I'm worried about the status quo. I'm worried about all the medical leaders who misled us in so many ways.
That's what should be raising deep concern. Not RFK Jr. who's now talking about the root causes of our chronic disease epidemic. He's actually talking about the health of the population. Up until this point, politicians have only talked about different ways to finance the broken healthcare system. Now he's actually talking about how to fix it by addressing health. So I know he's a guy that was focused heavily on the environment.
Guy came over to vaccines and other things and food a little bit later. It's going to be an interesting nomination process. He's going to ask to defend all his beliefs. From what you know, is he prepared to do that?
Yes. I mean, if you look at what he is actually saying he wants to do in the job, how could anybody oppose this stuff? He wants to, number one, address healthcare corruption. Number two, return to good solid research so we can use evidence-based medicine as the gold standard. And number three, he wants to address childhood chronic diseases.
I mean there's nothing partisan about that. That's why it was a top campaign issue and that's why people united parents from different sides of the political aisle over this particular issue. You know what's interesting too is when it comes to vaccines, he's saying you can have a choice. But the way you guys have explained it to me, as explained to me, it's been explained to me in the past is, well, we need everyone to get a vaccine or are that going to be effective?
Is that true? Look, I think vaccines save lives and I know Bobby Kennedy believes that. Now, whether or not you follow the rigid recommendations that are out there now or say, for example, use the Japanese schedule or one of the accepted schedules in Europe, like the UK schedule, where they may not give the hepatitis B vaccine on the day of birth. I remember hepatitis B is a sexually transmitted infection and you get it from IV drug use.
Do you need it on the day of birth? If somebody wants to make a personal decision and modify that and postpone it to later in childhood, we live in a free country. And so I think sometimes questions are good. Remember, this is the same establishment right now that's worried about a new measles outbreak. This is the same establishment that lost so much trust over the last four years. And that's why we're seeing less compliance. It's not because of Bobby Kennedy. It's because of vaccine mandates and cloth masks on toddlers and shutting schools down and opioids are not addictive. For 20 years, we heard that.
And the food pyramid, this is all dogma from the government. That's why people are skeptical, not because of Bobby Kennedy. So do you know Dr. Richard Besser? Yes. So he's a big opponent.
Cut 25. So it's not a matter of saying, oh yes, you have access to your vaccines. It's pushing the idea that vaccine should be something that is totally up to the individual.
We have a social contract in our, in our country. There are things we do for our own health, but there are things we do that are good for ourselves, our families and our communities. And vaccination falls into that, that category. And having someone who denies that in that role is extremely dangerous. So that's what he's worried about.
You heard that? Look, what's, and just, just so you know, he is a former political appointee and he is a, he pushed vaccine mandates, he pushed cloth masks on toddlers, he pushed prolonged school closures. So that's the doctor we just heard from. If they would take 10% of their enthusiasm around the rigidity of the vaccine schedule and actually talked about our poison food supply or the toxic milieu or the chronic diseases or cancer going up in young people or early onset Alzheimer's that has tripled or the fact that 40% of our children have a mental health diagnosis, where is the outrage and deep concern about those issues? I think we've been misled with leaders in healthcare that are not realizing what's happening. What's realizing, what's happening is we are watching our nation's children turn into a generation of patients right before our eyes. And more pharmaceutical products is not the answer.
Right. You know, the one thing they also have a stat here, the share of kindergartens with vaccine exemptions has more than doubled over the past 10 years, I imagine mostly over the last three, from 1.6 to 3.3. And I know that doctors, I know some situations, doctors get mad when you ask, does my kid really need that? And there's some people legitimately concerned about autism and it's linked to vaccines. He has brought that up in the past. There's video about him in there or earlier in earlier RFK talking to Joe Scarborough and they're both agreeing, why are all these kids getting autism?
Does it have anything to do with it? But you can't bring that up because people go crazy. Listen to him talk about this.
Cut 26, former CDC acting director. This was a question that was asked and addressed decades ago and to continue to lift that up is a cruel thing to do. We need to, as a nation, address chronic diseases in children.
And one of the dangerous things about RFK Jr. is that there are bits of things he says that are true and they're mixed in and it makes it really hard to sort out what things you should you should follow because they're based on fact and which things are not. We should address chronic diseases. Autism is one of those and spend money trying to understand what are the causes of autism and how can you address that. But keep lifting up the idea that has something to do with vaccination is really a cruel thing to do.
Is it cruel in your mind? Look, don't buy the fear mongering. I mean, that's what you're hearing from from Dr. Besser, who was the acting director of the CDC under President Obama.
He's a partisan. This is the guy who is pushing vaccine mandates. You know, there is a vaccine schedule and it is recommended and it's out there. And RFK Jr. says he got his kids vaccinated, that he's been getting the flu shot every year, that he's not anti-vax. And I can tell you the limited conversations I have with him, he is not anti-vax. He is for vaccine transparency. Do we really believe this dogma we're hearing from the establishment that vaccines are an all or nothing belief system? Do they support the anthrax vaccine that was a total disaster and recalled? Do they support the initial rotavirus vaccine that was a total disaster and recalled for harming babies?
It's not a religion. You've got to use the scientific process. And people like Dr. Besser are using fear and people are not buying it anymore after four years of COVID.
I hear you. You know, Dr. Birx, by the way, I'm not going to play for now, but she was actually more open to it. And she did something that I think Donald Trump's doing, asking questions about what we're reading. People are looking at these boxes, hearing this conversation, and instead of running from it, you have to stop asking questions on vaccines, on what's in your food.
They're entertaining, listening to it and say, how do we address this rather than say an RFK is a crackpot. And you wrote a book about it too, about what we eat. Yeah, look, we have huge blind spots in modern medicine and the food supply is something they never talk about.
Never. They're pushing these medical establishment oligarchs are pushing Ozepic now for six year olds. And they never talk about the school lunch program and cooking classes for people with diabetes and other that's all lip service. And so they're playing with people and they're playing with fear. Ask one of these doctors, how many days of followup were in the initial safety studies of the hepatitis B vaccine that's now given a birth routinely.
It was a five day followup safety study. That's all we have on that. So I mean, are you allowed to ask questions or is this a new McCarthyism? And I think this is the battle for free speech, especially when it comes to health. It's a two things. It's either how dare you ask me?
I went to school for this. And number two is I don't have the answer. So I'll back you off by making you feel less than, than whole or, or inadequate.
Uh, Dr. McCary, thanks so much. I think it's such an important conversation and I think a lot of it's going to come out in these hearings and I think they're going to be surprised that he has a lot of answers. And if you're going to beat him, it's going to be, you're going to beat him on ideas. You're going to bring up stuff. They're going to bring up stuff about it.
It's earlier days when you know, he was living less than a perfect life. I don't really think that applies today. So they're going to have to go out as ideas and then like to say to you, put management experts around him and talk about different ways to streamline. I think Elon Musk could be an ally too.
Final thought. Look, I think that the beat down on vaccines that you're seeing in the media and this meltdown among some politicos, it's not about vaccines. It's about his broader agenda to address giant corporate interests in healthcare.
And that's what they're really scared of. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Dr. McCary. Go grab his book. When we come back, Max Lugavere, why he got into the nutritional profession, what he talks about in his podcast and why he belongs in the segment called your body, your health. This special edition of the Brian Kilmeade show continues in just a moment. More of your body, your health, ways to take control of your health to make America healthy again.
Coming up. This is a Brian Kilmeade show special, your body, your health, ways to take control of your health to make America healthy again. The stuff that he eats is really bad. Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is just poison. That is RFK having some fun, but it's true. President likes his fast food.
We all know it. And RFK said, we got to change that. He's not against fast food. He said, can we just make it like it's been in Europe over the last 10, 15 years, they've gotten a lot of the chemicals and preservatives out of their cereal and other foods. I think that will be his focus. If he can get confirmed, Max Lugavere has dedicated his life to what, to what we're eating and our overall health and chronic illness.
You hear about that in his podcast, the genius life, and he's director of a documentary, empty little boxes. We've had them on before. Max, welcome back. Hey Brian, it's great to see you. So Max, are you encouraged that RFK got the nomination? Oh, I'm incredibly encouraged. I mean, I think we do need to take a bull in a China shop approach today because our health issues are serious.
They're significant. Today, about two thirds of the American population is, is overweight or obese. About 50% of us almost are not just overweight, but obese. We're seeing obesity in children now. We're seeing adult onset diabetes now in children. And the food environment has become a highly problematic. I mean, today, 73% of the items in your average supermarket are ultra processed foods, which are now being considered at the foundation of the epidemic of non communicable disease.
And so I think putting the magnifying glass on how we've been led so far astray, particularly under the watchful eye of the so-called experts, I think it's a, I think these are really important questions to be asked. And I think today, more so than ever before, I think RFK is uniquely qualified. He might actually be the most qualified candidate that we've had thus far to head up the HHS because of his status as an environmental lawyer.
Today, our problems are environmental, whether we're looking at the food environment or our exposure to innumerable environmental toxicants. I think he's highly qualified for, for the position. And of course, I don't know how things are going to go. But all that is to say, I'm optimistic. And his heart seems to be in the right place, his conviction, his passion.
He seems to be aligning with the right people. So yeah, again, I'm optimistic. People are concerned, number one, when it comes to people concerned about dementia more than ever, Alzheimer's.
I know you're focused on that. You said it's definitely related to what you eat in your gut. And they're also focused on why we have this rise in autism. Have you seen food or things in the environment contribute to the rise in both those things? Well, specifically with regard to neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's and dementia, these are intricately, these conditions are now being seen as intricately tied to what are called modifiable risk factors. And we have over a dozen of them elucidated recently in the Lancet, the 2024 Lancet Commission on dementia prevention. But for example, obesity increases your risk for developing Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. Hypertension increases your risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, type two diabetes, which now 50% of adults have at least pre-diabetes or full blown type two diabetes. But 90% of us are metabolically ill in one way or another, illustrated by the presence of at least one component of metabolic syndrome. So it's the environment that seems to be, there's this saying that we often use in the holistic health community that genes load the gun, but it's our diets and our lifestyles that pull the trigger. And our diets and lifestyles are variables related to our environment.
So it's no surprise. So Max, how do we adjust? So if people are going paycheck to paycheck and they tell me to go to a farmer's market, my grocery bill triples.
So what am I supposed to do? Yeah, first of all, we need to, I think, divert some of the subsidies that are currently going to crops like corn, soy and sugar to make fresh fruits and vegetables and eggs and beef more affordable to your average person. You're right. Whole foods can be more expensive than ultra processed foods. But a lot of people today on SNAP spend some of that money, some of those funds on sugar sweetened beverages, which we know are the most nefarious from a health standpoint. About 10% of SNAP spending goes towards soda, which is, I think, a crime. We need to ban that. And we do need to incentivize companies to make healthier products, companies to reduce the added sugar, reduce the cheap oils, reduce the additives, and ultimately to steer the population more towards a whole food centric diet.
Where's the biggest push back then? So what would stop people from just getting on board with what you just said? Well, I think that it's a lack of awareness, to be honest. I think there are still many people that are confused about nutrition, even getting to granular details like whether or not eggs are healthy or unhealthy. An egg is a cognitive multivitamin, one of nature's multivitamins. We need to stop confusing the public.
And this confusion comes from the top echelons of academia. I mean, there are studies that come out left and right, which of course make headlines linking whole nutrient dense foods like red meat to type 2 diabetes. Nobody is developing type 2 diabetes because they've over consumed red meat. Today, I mean, in actuality, our red meat consumption has gone down over the past few decades, while rates of type 2 diabetes have continued to soar. So we need to actually plant a flag and say, look, you need to prioritize whole foods in your diet. These are single ingredient foods. These are not foods that have innumerable ingredients.
These are the foods that you might use in a recipe to cook at home, for example. And we need to actually incentivize people to reduce their consumption of ultra-processed foods, which now make up 60% of the diet of your average adult. And for children, that number is even higher.
It's about 70%. So we need to find these incentives, whether or not, I mean, I'm not an economics expert, but you know, maybe it's tax breaks for people who are doing everything right, you know, who are, because chronic disease is a massive burden. Thanks so much for listening to Your Body, Your Health, ways to take control of your health to make America healthy again, which can't we get on the same page with that? Do we all agree with that? How we get there is going to be interesting. And special thanks to Max, to Dr. McCary and Casey Means for providing the insight. Keep it here. Brian Kilmeachil. Thanks so much.
