The Exchanges

Q What are the levers that could, uh, make a dent in, in reversing some of these trends as it relates to the, to the food system?

A Yeah, from a food system standpoint, I think the biggest single lever that we could pull, which would be extraordinarily politically challenging to pull, is fixing our, like, crop subsidy system. So if you look, the U.S. government over the last, uh, I think it's the last decade, has spent close to, like, a hundred billion dollars on crop subsidies. They're basically subsidizing corn, soy, and wheat, uh, so that American farmers can grow corn, soy, and wheat. Because it's subsidized, it's artificially cheap, so we grow a lot of it. Because it's subsidized, it's artificially cheap, and so these big food companies use it in everything. And so these big food companies have basically gone on like a 30 year journey to replace sugar with high fructose corn syrup or to replace, um, olive oil or something like that with soybean oil, which is highly processed and inflammatory, causes obesity and all sorts of like rat and human models. Um, and, and I think that this sort of wholesale swapping of like, let's take the, the worst ingredients in their most highly processed form and replace them with an ingredient, um, that, that humans traditionally ate Is one of the root causes of chronic disease. Like today, the average American gets almost 20% of their caloric intake from soybean oil. Like this is historically anomalous. And it's not because anyone wants soybean oil. Like you're probably …

AI assessment note: “the biggest single lever that we could pull... is fixing our, like, crop subsidy system.”

Q Yeah. Are there any other really big levers that you would focus on if, if one of your main goals was to target the mental health crisis?

A I think that we are hugely underestimating the impact of, uh, biological health and how that is tied to mental health. Like there's some really interesting studies out there around taking a functional medicine approach where, you know, you come in and say you're depressed and rather than like doing talk therapy and things like this, that statistics show like sort of don't work very well for many people. Uh, we focus just on like reducing your inflammation. And fixing your gut. And there have been studies that show just by focusing and taking a functional medicine approach, you know, focusing on sleep, focusing on gut health, focusing on lowering your inflammation through diet and exercise, that combination of therapies works better than, you know, just talk therapy and things like that. So I think that we massively under underestimate the degree to which we are, you know, human beings who are biological organisms and like our mental health is very tightly coupled To our emotional, um, you know, sorry, to our physical health. And so I would have much, I think that we should fund much, much more of research along these lines of what's called metabolic psychiatry, which is basically this idea that many diseases that we put in the mental health bucket, things like epilepsy, depression, schizophrenia, many of these things have causes that are actually metabolic and root. And like, f…

AI assessment note: “we should fund much, much more of research along these lines of what's called metabolic psychiatry”

Q not just in terms of its, uh, you know, health impacts, but they thought, they thought they were sort of like getting involved in all sorts of foreign wars and like influencing our foreign policy and stuff. And I just say that to say, Could there be competitors to some of these, like, mega, like, could startups even emerge that would begin to, or is it just, like, structurally unsound?

A I think it's really hard structurally, and I think that that doesn't mean that it's not going to happen, and hopefully it will, but one of the things that you have seen is with Monsanto, for example, like, the, the pesticide lobby and the, the chemical and ag lobby is one of the strongest in America, and a big part of what they're doing is, like, For example, a couple months ago, uh, Monsanto was lobbying hard, spent tens of millions of dollars to get a, uh, a rider and a bill that would basically make sure that no one could ever sue them for the potential health impacts of one of their most popular products, glyphosate. Uh, that sort of thing is like, these companies get big, they provide a bunch of chemicals. Monsanto specifically has done a lot of things that, uh, you know, I think are incredibly, like, Morally dubious. Um, and, and then once they get big enough, once they like start selling billions and billions of dollars of these products, they spend a lot of that money on lobbying and making sure that they are immune from any of the harms and health impacts, uh, that come from some of the, some of these like toxic products that they spray everywhere. Uh, like glyphosate is the number one pesticide sprayed in the U S and the largest maker of it is spending as much as they possibly can to make sure that Glyphosate, which, you know, there's been fourteen billion dollars of …

AI assessment note: “I think it's really hard structurally, and I think that that doesn't mean”

Q Are, are some of these ingredients that we're, we're discussing or, or foods or, or, you know, soda, like so danger, so addicting or so dangerous or so appeasant that they should be outlawed? Or is it like, how do we think about that?

A No, I, I actually don't think that many of these things should be outlawed. Like, I, I do actually think that consumer choice is a very important thing. Um, you know, but we have got, like specifically with kids, we have guidelines And we already don't think that kids should have free choice. Like we don't let them drink. So I think that there is a place for soda in this country. I just also think that if you want to drink soda all the time, that probably we shouldn't be subsidizing it by subsidizing high fructose corn syrup. Probably we should not have Coca-Cola spending one hundred forty million dollars to influence our, our nutrition guidelines like they have over the last, you know, 15 years. And I think that it's things like that where A lot of times the big food companies and people will sort of fall back on this idea of consumer choice. I think it's very important, but we also are like currently grappling with an incredibly important chronic disease crisis. And like, if we don't take effort to uniquely like address this thing, I think that the U.S. is like in an incredibly tough spot, 10, 2030 years from now.

AI assessment note: “No, I, I actually don't think that many of these things should be outlawed.”

Q And is that a uniquely U.S. problem or is this?

A Yeah. It's a uniquely US problem. I mean, the US, our food system relative to like Europe or something like that, uh, Europe, many, you know, their countries are smaller. Uh, they tend to lean much more into like a local food agriculture system. They also don't have as much of a like federal intervention on their food system. Uh, you know, the US, like in many ways, this sort of subsidy of corn, soy, wheat, things like that, it had good intent. I mean, in the, A lot of the, the crop subsidy stuff, uh, started with a farm bill in the eighties where basically like farmers were exposed to inclement weather, bad weather that was like impacting their, their crop yields. The U S government stepped in and was like, okay, we're going to try and keep these farmers solvent. Um, I think that the intent was good, but now here we are like years later, we have billions a year going towards these crop subsidies that are making Americans sick. And I think that we used to say, okay, we just need to make sure that we're growing enough calories And make sure that Americans are not dying of starvation. They're not, like, you know, make sure our kids have enough to eat. I think now the problem is, like, we're feeding our kids poison, and, like, all of them are sick.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. It's a uniquely US problem.”

Q Are, are some of these ingredients that we're, we're discussing or, or foods or, or, you know, soda, like so danger, so addicting or so dangerous or so appeasant that they should be outlawed? Or is it like, how do we think about that?

A No, I, I actually don't think that many of these things should be outlawed. Like, I, I do actually think that consumer choice is a very important thing. Um, you know, but we have got, like specifically with kids, we have guidelines And we already don't think that kids should have free choice. Like we don't let them drink. So I think that there is a place for soda in this country. I just also think that if you want to drink soda all the time, that probably we shouldn't be subsidizing it by subsidizing high fructose corn syrup. Probably we should not have Coca-Cola spending one hundred forty million dollars to influence our, our nutrition guidelines like they have over the last, you know, 15 years. And I think that it's things like that where A lot of times the big food companies and people will sort of fall back on this idea of consumer choice. I think it's very important, but we also are like currently grappling with an incredibly important chronic disease crisis. And like, if we don't take effort to uniquely like address this thing, I think that the U.S. is like in an incredibly tough spot, 10, 2030 years from now.

AI assessment note: “No, I, I actually don't think that many of these things should be outlawed.”

Q And I'm also curious for, for you or just, or collectively, like, are we learning more about, um, you know, optimizing our nutrition? You, you got into the, the repeat diet, uh, or you were writing about it. What, what, what, what are, what are your thoughts there more broadly?

A I think that nutrition science is probably among the worst of the sciences, uh, in the U.S. right now. You know, most of nutrition science is funded by a big food company. Uh, they outfund the NIH, like, 11 to one on nutrition science, at least historically. It's hopefully changing. Um, I think that there are all of these different diet tribes out there. The, the Peters, the repeat crowd, I think is one that's particularly interesting. That's focused on like ramping up your metabolism. Um, but I think that for, for many people, you should just kind of try and experiment with the diet that where you feel good. Like we now have lab tests that you can get, you know, via function or something like that to show how does this diet Impact your energy, your biomarkers, things like this. You have wearables that can actually give you feedback around how is your sleep, how's your HRV, how's your resting heart rate, uh, since switching your diet or since doing things differently. And I think that that combination of like getting insight into how these things are actually making you feel and how they're impacting your biomarkers means that people should be just way more open to experimenting and seeing like, Hey, I'll try a Peating diet for like 90 days and just see how I feel. Uh, so I'm, I'm very bullish on like people doing end of one dietary, like exploration and experimentation. And I …

AI assessment note: “I'm very bullish on like people doing end of one dietary, like exploration”

Q Why not just universal basic Ozempic? I mean, what's the, what's the, why doesn't that solve the problem?

A Yeah, well, so I think there's two things. One, I think that GLP-I ones are potentially an incredibly interesting technology. Like, I, I think that we are in the midst of The, the worst chronic disease crisis, one of the biggest problems in the country. And if we don't fix this, like America is going to have even more serious problems like 20 years from now. So given that, given that the average American is overweight, we're looking at almost 80% obesity over rate, overweight rates. I think that it does make sense to put a bunch of these people on a GLP one to try and jumpstart them in a direction where they are moving towards health. Uh, that said, I don't at all think that Giving universal GLP ones to everyone is like necessarily a, a universal solve. Like the, there's just a very poor history of saying here is an intervention that like is going to solve all of our problems as a species. Uh, you know, and, and I just think that it is quite unlikely that Ozempic is the one thing that is going to be a cure all. Like just to use one example, what is, you know, how does Ozempic work? Uh, is it basically, it turns down someone's appetite. So you're just eating less. If you're still eating the same crap, uh, that the average American is eating today, but you're on Ozempic and eating less of it, like, you are almost certainly going to be deficient in protein and micronutrients and a…

AI assessment note: “I don't at all think that Giving universal GLP ones to everyone is”

Q I want to ask you about psychedelics. Um, and I'm curious, like, is that in this discourse at all? Does that move outcomes or is that kind of not really, not really?

A I think that if you just look at the data, psychedelics are an incredibly powerful intervention, like ketamine therapy, ketamine assisted therapy works better than SSRIs in many cases, especially for treating things that are very intense, like treatment resistant depression, PTSD, things like this. Um, I think that for many of our veterans and others that suffer from PTSD and like intense depression, psychedelics Should be part of a menu of treatments that we like are open to giving people. Uh, you know, I, I think that we probably vastly under invest in them. I think that there's a ton of really promising research around their efficacy and things like this. Um, I think it's an open question of like how ready the average American is to think about these things, not as like A group of people dropping acid in Golden Gate Park in the sixties, but as like a vital mental health therapy for people that are really, really struggling. I'm very supportive of, you know, again, just looking at psychedelics as another therapy that can address the many mental health and depression issues that we have in this country. And if you look at it just as that through that lens, a therapy that has few to no side effects, um, especially when done, you know, with Doctor oversight and things like this. I think these should be part of how we treat and address many of the mental health crises that we see…

AI assessment note: “psychedelics are an incredibly powerful intervention, like ketamine therapy, ketamine assisted therapy works better”

Q What are the levers that could, uh, make a dent in, in reversing some of these trends as it relates to the, to the food system?

A Yeah, from a food system standpoint, I think the biggest single lever that we could pull, which would be extraordinarily politically challenging to pull, is fixing our, like, crop subsidy system. So if you look, the U.S. government over the last, uh, I think it's the last decade, has spent close to, like, a hundred billion dollars on crop subsidies. They're basically subsidizing corn, soy, and wheat, uh, so that American farmers can grow corn, soy, and wheat. Because it's subsidized, it's artificially cheap, so we grow a lot of it. Because it's subsidized, it's artificially cheap, and so these big food companies use it in everything. And so these big food companies have basically gone on like a 30 year journey to replace sugar with high fructose corn syrup or to replace, um, olive oil or something like that with soybean oil, which is highly processed and inflammatory, causes obesity and all sorts of like rat and human models. Um, and, and I think that this sort of wholesale swapping of like, let's take the, the worst ingredients in their most highly processed form and replace them with an ingredient, um, that, that humans traditionally ate Is one of the root causes of chronic disease. Like today, the average American gets almost 20% of their caloric intake from soybean oil. Like this is historically anomalous. And it's not because anyone wants soybean oil. Like you're probably …

AI assessment note: “the biggest single lever that we could pull... is fixing our, like, crop subsidy system.”

Q And is that a uniquely U.S. problem or is this?

A Yeah. It's a uniquely US problem. I mean, the US, our food system relative to like Europe or something like that, uh, Europe, many, you know, their countries are smaller. Uh, they tend to lean much more into like a local food agriculture system. They also don't have as much of a like federal intervention on their food system. Uh, you know, the US, like in many ways, this sort of subsidy of corn, soy, wheat, things like that, it had good intent. I mean, in the, A lot of the, the crop subsidy stuff, uh, started with a farm bill in the eighties where basically like farmers were exposed to inclement weather, bad weather that was like impacting their, their crop yields. The U S government stepped in and was like, okay, we're going to try and keep these farmers solvent. Um, I think that the intent was good, but now here we are like years later, we have billions a year going towards these crop subsidies that are making Americans sick. And I think that we used to say, okay, we just need to make sure that we're growing enough calories And make sure that Americans are not dying of starvation. They're not, like, you know, make sure our kids have enough to eat. I think now the problem is, like, we're feeding our kids poison, and, like, all of them are sick.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. It's a uniquely US problem.”

Q I want to ask you about psychedelics. Um, and I'm curious, like, is that in this discourse at all? Does that move outcomes or is that kind of not really, not really?

A I think that if you just look at the data, psychedelics are an incredibly powerful intervention, like ketamine therapy, ketamine assisted therapy works better than SSRIs in many cases, especially for treating things that are very intense, like treatment resistant depression, PTSD, things like this. Um, I think that for many of our veterans and others that suffer from PTSD and like intense depression, psychedelics Should be part of a menu of treatments that we like are open to giving people. Uh, you know, I, I think that we probably vastly under invest in them. I think that there's a ton of really promising research around their efficacy and things like this. Um, I think it's an open question of like how ready the average American is to think about these things, not as like A group of people dropping acid in Golden Gate Park in the sixties, but as like a vital mental health therapy for people that are really, really struggling. I'm very supportive of, you know, again, just looking at psychedelics as another therapy that can address the many mental health and depression issues that we have in this country. And if you look at it just as that through that lens, a therapy that has few to no side effects, um, especially when done, you know, with Doctor oversight and things like this. I think these should be part of how we treat and address many of the mental health crises that we see…

AI assessment note: “if you just look at the data, psychedelics are an incredibly powerful intervention”

Q Yeah. Uh, and I actually have to ask, uh, what are your thoughts on peptides and any, any predictions as it relates?

A Oh man, I think peptides are going to be so disruptive to our current healthcare system. You know, I think that if you look at peptides, uh, there needs to be way more research. I'm like, not totally yet a peptide believer. Uh, but there needs to be way more research, but from early, early signs and even just like N of one people taking these things and using them, uh, This seems like a class of compounds that are very effective. Uh, they are not patentable. Um, you know, like, you can basically buy these for fairly cheap, and I would put them in the bucket of, like, human enhancement companies. Like, our current healthcare system and most of our pharmaceuticals are kind of like, don't die. Like, oh, here's a statin. Like, don't die. Take this pill. Uh, I think that the pep, these peptides are in a different class where many of them are, like, Give me more energy, improve your sex drive, lower your inflammation, improve your gut health. Like they're just a different category of compound. And I think that as many people start to experiment with them and try them and things like this, you're going to see like really interesting, positive health care, you know, um, outcomes from a class of compounds that like no one has thought about for, for a long period of time. I think it's going to be exceptionally disrupt, disruptive to pharma and to like a bunch of other players in the heal…

AI assessment note: “I think peptides are going to be so disruptive to our current healthcare system.”

Q Why not just universal basic Ozempic? I mean, what's the, what's the, why doesn't that solve the problem?

A Yeah, well, so I think there's two things. One, I think that GLP-I ones are potentially an incredibly interesting technology. Like, I, I think that we are in the midst of The, the worst chronic disease crisis, one of the biggest problems in the country. And if we don't fix this, like America is going to have even more serious problems like 20 years from now. So given that, given that the average American is overweight, we're looking at almost 80% obesity over rate, overweight rates. I think that it does make sense to put a bunch of these people on a GLP one to try and jumpstart them in a direction where they are moving towards health. Uh, that said, I don't at all think that Giving universal GLP ones to everyone is like necessarily a, a universal solve. Like the, there's just a very poor history of saying here is an intervention that like is going to solve all of our problems as a species. Uh, you know, and, and I just think that it is quite unlikely that Ozempic is the one thing that is going to be a cure all. Like just to use one example, what is, you know, how does Ozempic work? Uh, is it basically, it turns down someone's appetite. So you're just eating less. If you're still eating the same crap, uh, that the average American is eating today, but you're on Ozempic and eating less of it, like, you are almost certainly going to be deficient in protein and micronutrients and a…

AI assessment note: “If you're still eating the same crap... eating less of it... deficient in protein”

Q And so for people who want to make a difference in the food system, you know, you mentioned that policy recommendation. What about people who want to do something direct? You obviously, you know, before TruMed, you started a bone broth company. What are other big companies that could be built in the space or opportunities to make a difference?

A Yeah, I think there's a ton of opportunities. I mean, within the space that I, like, I think the core problem is that a bunch of these lifestyle interventions, like eating a healthier diet, exercising, taking certain supplements, taking like peptides, if that makes sense for, for your sort of individual person and risk profile, All of these things can be considered healthcare interventions. And yet, if you look at our healthcare system, nothing in the healthcare system thinks about someone who is at risk of heart disease exercising as a healthcare intervention. No payer pays for it. No one incentivizes you to do that. It's just sort of like a doctor is like, yeah, you should like clean up your diet and exercise. And so I think that there is a tremendous, tremendous opportunity for people that want to make a dent on this problem, uh, figuring out how to make These sorts of lifestyle interventions, part of the healthcare system is what we're doing at TruMed, uh, and incentivizing people to actually invest in their health, to invest in prevention, uh, to invest in things that like move the needle from a chronic disease standpoint.

AI assessment note: “figuring out how to make These sorts of lifestyle interventions, part of the healthcare system”

Q not just in terms of its, uh, you know, health impacts, but they thought, they thought they were sort of like getting involved in all sorts of foreign wars and like influencing our foreign policy and stuff. And I just say that to say, Could there be competitors to some of these, like, mega, like, could startups even emerge that would begin to, or is it just, like, structurally unsound?

A I think it's really hard structurally, and I think that that doesn't mean that it's not going to happen, and hopefully it will, but one of the things that you have seen is with Monsanto, for example, like, the, the pesticide lobby and the, the chemical and ag lobby is one of the strongest in America, and a big part of what they're doing is, like, For example, a couple months ago, uh, Monsanto was lobbying hard, spent tens of millions of dollars to get a, uh, a rider and a bill that would basically make sure that no one could ever sue them for the potential health impacts of one of their most popular products, glyphosate. Uh, that sort of thing is like, these companies get big, they provide a bunch of chemicals. Monsanto specifically has done a lot of things that, uh, you know, I think are incredibly, like, Morally dubious. Um, and, and then once they get big enough, once they like start selling billions and billions of dollars of these products, they spend a lot of that money on lobbying and making sure that they are immune from any of the harms and health impacts, uh, that come from some of the, some of these like toxic products that they spray everywhere. Uh, like glyphosate is the number one pesticide sprayed in the U S and the largest maker of it is spending as much as they possibly can to make sure that Glyphosate, which, you know, there's been fourteen billion dollars of …

AI assessment note: “I think it's really hard structurally, and I think that that doesn't mean that it's not going to happen”

Q And so for people who want to make a difference in the food system, you know, you mentioned that policy recommendation. What about people who want to do something direct? You obviously, you know, before TruMed, you started a bone broth company. What are other big companies that could be built in the space or opportunities to make a difference?

A Yeah, I think there's a ton of opportunities. I mean, within the space that I, like, I think the core problem is that a bunch of these lifestyle interventions, like eating a healthier diet, exercising, taking certain supplements, taking like peptides, if that makes sense for, for your sort of individual person and risk profile, All of these things can be considered healthcare interventions. And yet, if you look at our healthcare system, nothing in the healthcare system thinks about someone who is at risk of heart disease exercising as a healthcare intervention. No payer pays for it. No one incentivizes you to do that. It's just sort of like a doctor is like, yeah, you should like clean up your diet and exercise. And so I think that there is a tremendous, tremendous opportunity for people that want to make a dent on this problem, uh, figuring out how to make These sorts of lifestyle interventions, part of the healthcare system is what we're doing at TruMed, uh, and incentivizing people to actually invest in their health, to invest in prevention, uh, to invest in things that like move the needle from a chronic disease standpoint.

AI assessment note: “figuring out how to make These sorts of lifestyle interventions, part of the healthcare system”