Reader flora recommended this Tucker Carlson interview with highly recommended sister and brother Casey and Calley Means, both of whom were well-paid, respected career tracks. They stopped because they could no longer stand profiting from a program that makes and keeps Americans sick.
It seems that the basic rules of the interview prevented Dr. Casey in the promotion of his book Good Energy (which although very well reviewed for its overall analysis and guidance, caused complaints about his expensive bio-hackish products) and focused on the train wreck of American food and medical practice, and the incentives that made it so. Some of the factoids are amazing, like 50% of American children have a chronic disease, and the dramatic increase in some once rare diseases. They also explain how the food pyramid was a vehicle for legalizing the consumption of sugar and highly processed foods, including school lunches, and how medical technology prevents doctors from looking at the causes of many diseases. Calley insists that both food and pharmaceutical industry executives are well aware of the damage their business models are doing, yet they panic as if nothing can be done. But the cost is evident, not only in the deterioration of health despite the world’s leading costs, but also in the high suicide rate among doctors.
Finally, they explain how many bad practices, especially involving research corruption, can be eliminated by executive order. While it is unlikely that any presidential candidate will drop the hammer on such powerful industries, the executive order could also serve as a way to get these industries to stop some of their worst practices.
With little agreement, the Financial Times offers a leading position today that highly processed and fast food is everywhere – and it’s hurting us. Key categories:
Imagine a world where Tony the Tiger is locked up, Ronald McDonald has hung up his clown shoes, and Colonel Sanders has been court-martialed; where so-called “semi-healthy” foods are sold without being thrown away. A world without mascots laughing over photo-shopped burgers or whispering, ‘Go on, try’ on the TV. If we did it to the Marlboro man; we can do it in cartoon tiger.
It took the UK 50 years from discovering the link between smoking and lung cancer to finally phase out tobacco advertising in 2003, and 13 years to phase out branded packaging. The proposed ban on fast food advertising took a similarly difficult route. On the table for more than a decade, encouraged by one Conservative prime minister and beaten by the next, it is now on the long list of tasks facing Labor ministers. Under the proposed ban, unhealthy products will not be advertised on TV before the watershed (from 9pm to 5.30am) and online 24/7 from next October.
This is not enough. Like cigarettes, it’s about time we had a trusted brand – or no brand – when it comes to fast and highly processed food. Obesity costs the NHS £6.5bn a year and is the biggest preventable cause of cancer after smoking. One in four adults in England is obese. What is shocking is that a nationwide study this year found that almost one in four children in primary schools in England are overweight when they leave, putting them at risk of health problems throughout their lives. Our inability to control brands and their colorful mascots hurts young people the most.
In the last six months there have been a lot of reports about highly processed food, both the threat it poses to our health and its ubiquity. Things we might not think of as particularly bad, like pasta sauces and ready meals, are on the list.
Now for the main event:
Casey Means was a Stanford-educated surgeon. His brother Calley was a lobbyist in the pharmacy and food industry. Both left their jobs in shock when they realized how many people were killed by the programs they were involved in. This is an amazing story.
(0:54) Who… pic.twitter.com/1oIVLvPlAv
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 16, 2024