The Health Curve

Ultra-Processed Nation: Why Our Food Is Making Us Sick - with Neeti Mahajan

• Dr. Jason Arora • Season 1 • Episode 10

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In the U.S., over 42% of adults are obese, nearly 12% have diabetes, and around 60% live with at least 1 chronic disease.  Diet-related chronic diseases—including heart disease, stroke, and certain cancers—contribute to approximately 1 million deaths each year.

In a country overflowing with food, why are so many of us sick?

Host Jason Arora sits down with Neeti Mahajan, food industry exec, to take a big-picture look at how America's modern food system may be doing more harm than good. They explore how ultra-processed foods have fueled epidemics of obesity and diabetes, and why the way we farm is depleting soil and heating up the planet. 

If you've ever wondered why junk food is so cheap but eating healthy is so hard, or how our dinner plate is connected to climate change, this episode will give you plenty of food for thought. But it's not all doom and gloom—Jason and Neeti also talk about what a better food future could look like.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the HealthCurve podcast. I'm your host, Jason Aurora. Today's question is simple, but the answer is anything but. Why is our food so unhealthy? It's one of the most important public health issues of our time and one of the most misunderstood. We're not just talking about willpower or calories. We're talking about how the food system is designed. As they say, you are what you eat. And from ultra-processed food products that hijack your brain chemistry, to additives that keep food shelf stable but strip it of nutrients, to farming practices that deplete both the soil and the food itself, there's a lot more going on than what's on the label. Joining me is Neeti Mahajan, a food systems expert who's worked at the intersection of public health, agriculture, and consumer food brands. We'll explore how our food came to be the way it is, how and why it's fueling a chronic disease crisis, and what each of us can do individually and collectively to change it. Let's get into it. Neeti, thank you so much for joining us. It's really good to have you here. Of

SPEAKER_01:

course, happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

So let's dive right in because this is a really big topic and there's a lot to cover. When people say our food is unhealthy and it's fueling chronic disease, what exactly is Do they mean by that?

SPEAKER_01:

So, you know, there's no secret, right, that the American diet, I think, is poor. I think it's a mix of two problems. The first one, and one maybe that isn't talked about as much in these conversations, but I would say is even more important. We all suffer from an excess of calories, right? In the US, we eat too much food. And in particular, there's an excess of saturated fats and sugar and sodium and all of those buzzwords that you've heard, and a lack of some of the key macronutrients that we need, like protein and fiber, that really help regulate our sugar levels and keep us feeling full and keep us feeling regular. And so all of that has led to high rates of chronic illness. People talk about the prevalence of obesity and heart disease and diabetes, all these major chronic illnesses, many of which can be linked right back to what it is we're eating and how much of it that we're actually

SPEAKER_00:

eating. We talk about the different things that make food unhealthy. So we talk about processed food. We talk about refined carbohydrates. We talk about unhealthy fats, things that are nutrient poor. Can you break it down for us a bit more in terms of what does this mean scientifically, I guess? What makes food unhealthy under the hood?

SPEAKER_01:

From my understanding of our food system, a lot of these elements of our modern food causes us to not necessarily feel full. It causes spikes in our blood sugar, and it also causes us to want to consume more. And so in doing so, that is where that excess of calories comes into play and this inability for us to regulate our own blood sugar levels, really driven by all these additional things in our food that kind of mask our body's ability to actually feel satiated.

SPEAKER_00:

And when people talk about highly processed foods, what do they mean by that exactly?

SPEAKER_01:

To be fair, most food is quite processed, right? Most food is processed. I think that definition has been thrown around a lot and doesn't really mean much. When I think of highly processed food or ultra processed food, I'm thinking about food that just has a lot of additional ingredients in it that have been added to it in order to keep it shelf stable, to help it last longer, to have it have certain colors that we as consumers find more interesting or less interesting. And so it's really food that just has a lot of extra stuff in it that your body probably doesn't need, right? That doesn't add a lot of nutritional value. It's not minerals or vitamins or macronutrients like proteins and fibers. That's what I think of when I think of ultra processed food or hyper processed food. you

SPEAKER_00:

And what other kinds of things are added to food to increase the shelf life, make them easier to transport, all that sort of stuff?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, so you've probably heard things like emulsifiers and thickeners and stabilizers, right? And a lot of these things are added, again, to extend shelf life, right? So that things can sit on the shelf at the grocery store, but also just like approve the appearance of food. I think that is something that was an unlock for me in my career was that I realized a lot of these ingredients were added because if something sits for a long time, it might start to separate or the colors might go from being orange to kind of a And so a lot of these emulsifiers and thickeners and staplers are really added for cosmetic reasons to food versus, again, any kind of nutritional benefit to a consumer.

SPEAKER_00:

And what about things that make food more addictive? So we've talked about foods that maybe feed overconsumption, if you will, because they don't really satiate you, you still feel hungry. But how about actually hijacking the reward system of the brain and actually making us want to crave more?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I think sugar and salt are definitely key perpetrators of that. So our body and our brains react differently to sugar and sodium. And so that's why a lot of the snack foods, the ultra processed foods tend to fall in those categories, right? You've got a lot of sweet stuff, whether it's candies, cookies, all of those, or the hyper savory snacks, the chips, the pretzels, et cetera, that really leverage salt to tap into that reward system in your brain and keep you hungry and keep you craving more. That's where cravings often come from. You eat one chip. You can't just eat one. You have to eat the entire bag, it's coming from that feedback loop from your body.

SPEAKER_00:

I definitely try to just eat one, but it never works. Right. And so all these different things, in addition to the fact that the food itself is nutrient poor, so it's got extra things in it that are not good for us that hijack our systems a little bit. And then it's lacking things that we actually need. Macronutrients, talk about protein, carbs, fats, fiber. And then lacking micronutrients, which we talk about in terms of minerals, vitamins, that sort of thing. Can you tell us a little bit more about what's generally missing from a lot of these foods?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think the biggest unlock for me that I've seen when I've looked at the food system is really this combination of protein and fiber, which tend to be the things that help us feel full and feel satiated. And that combination of protein and fiber is also what keeps our blood sugar in check. And so you look at most packaged food and you we're starting to see a surgence of protein claims and protein labels. But for many, many decades, most packaged food had virtually no fiber, had virtually no protein, right? It was hyper processed grains. It was flour that had all of the nutritional benefits processed out of it, again, to make it shelf stable, got rid of all the live piece parts of grain that contain the fiber and the protein, because that was easy and cheaper to make. And so That's where I think started to see this resurgence of protein. You're seeing protein, everything, bars, shakes, chips, even all of that. And I think it's an interesting trend. push to where we need to be. But I think protein at the sacrifice of fiber and protein without thinking about kind of a balanced diet that includes fruits and vegetables and includes kind of plants, it's still going to be lacking.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll come back to this later in the discussion, but it seems like there isn't really a human health lens to the way the foods are designed or it's lacking significantly.

SPEAKER_01:

That is exactly right.

SPEAKER_00:

And just to make this a bit more real for people, what kinds of foods are we talking about? We've talked about chips and bars and that sort of thing. Can you tell us a bit more which foods, which food groups do we typically see this sort of stuff in?

SPEAKER_01:

In the ultra processed foods? Yeah. I think it's shocking because you kind of actually see it anywhere. So if you think about a grocery store and you think about where you're shopping, you absolutely see it in the center of the grocery store, the center aisles. That's where you're seeing things that are in boxes and cans and whatnot. And that would be considered highly or ultra processed foods. But I think the scary thing is you're also seeing it in some of the things around the outskirts of the store where you traditionally see things like dairy and meat and fresh produce. When you're buying food that is processed, that is not just a raw ingredient, you might often see these fillers and additives and in things that were intentioned to be better for you. I think there's been over the last 20 to 30 years, this real focus on better for you products. So how do you have a better granola bar or better chip or whatever, or even a better frozen meal, for example. But even there, you still see a lot of these fillers. You can see it in things like dressing, right? So you might not even think about, but like salad dressing, mayonnaise, like those types of things have these ingredients in them. And so I would say it's actually pretty prevalent across grocery store. And it's almost hard to walk into an aisle and not see at least one product that might have some of these additional additives.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, let's come back to this when we talk more about solutions and how people can start to navigate this kind of thing themselves, because it is really tricky. I mean, how many people read a nutrition label unable to understand it? I did public health training, and I'm not sure we even learned how to decipher these. But very quickly, I just want to clear up what is the difference between processed foods and ultra-processed foods. Because as you said, every food needs a little bit of processing, right, to make it ready to eat. Where's the line between, okay, this is a healthy amount of processing and We're not adding things that are bad for us. We're not taking away things that we need versus this is ultra processed or it is not good for us.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's a tough question to answer. And I think it does actually go back to reading nutrition labels. A processed food at the grocery store, which you might not even realize is processed, is like a baby carrot. Baby carrots don't actually grow out of the ground like baby carrots. They're actually large, normal carrots and get processed down to a baby carrot. I would argue that that's actually probably fine. A baby carrot is fine. I have no qualms about eating that or the nutritional content of the baby carrot. I think ultra processed foods really take things to the next level. And it's really about when you start adding things or taking things out of the raw ingredient. And so that's when you start to get into packaged foods primarily, and you start to get into like the chips and candy and sodas of the world. So again, you might buy vegetables at the store that are actually technically processed when you buy vegetables. Bad kale, that is technically processed, but at the core of that product is still just kale. And so generally tend to find that to be non-problematic.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm trying to get a sense of, okay, how are people interacting with getting food on their table? And so there's going to the grocery store, there's cooking. So there's picking the right ingredients or picking the right pre-prepared food, if you will. But a lot of people order food in as well, or they go to restaurants. Can you tell us a bit more about what happens there?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, restaurants, I would argue the restaurant food is also processed in many ways, right? Even if a chef is cooking it, they're doing something to it. They're either heating it or freezing it or dicing it. All of that is considered processing. Unless you go pick an apple off a tree and eat it immediately, your food is processed in some way. I would say in the restaurant world, I haven't worked in it, but from what I have observed and seen in the industry, again, you don't always know what's going in to what you're eating when it comes to the restaurant world. Unlike with packaged food, where you can actually go read a nutrition label, oftentimes when you're ordering takeout, you're kind of at the whim of the chef or the restaurant that you ordered from. And again, many times things that we think are healthy from takeout, things like salad in a salad place, you don't necessarily know what all of those ingredients are cooked in. Some cooked vegetables might've been cooked in oil that you don't particularly want to eat or you don't find healthy. And so all I have to say is I think all food that you're buying is going to have some level of processing. I would say consumer packaged goods center of the aisle and restaurant food is probably the most opaque in terms of what's actually happened to the food behind processing doors.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. You're basically outsourcing the vetting of the ingredients and the preparation methods to the restaurant without actually knowing what they are, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yep, that's right.

SPEAKER_00:

And all we can really see these days is the amount of calories in a particular dish. But that doesn't really tell us a lot, does it?

SPEAKER_01:

No, definitely does not.

SPEAKER_00:

So if we think about the results of this, and we should go back into the history in a moment as to why we got here and how we got here, but the result is that this is contributing significantly to a public health crisis. Lots of chronic disease, we're talking about obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver, increasing evidence for certain cancers and things like cognitive decline, depression, anxiety, all sorts of things. So it's a significant problem and food plays a big role in this. So if we move on to why are people getting interested in this now, the RFK Jr. things aside, which, you know, we read things in the media now and things are being said and these are true. But in the public health and the medical community, this is the reason I went into public health. Nutrition was a big reason. I wanted to understand what was going on and why we couldn't change things further upstream in terms of what people eat. Why is the general public getting interested in this today?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think it's a mix of things. I think First, there is more information available to the average consumer today than there ever has been before. And so just the sheer access of being able to research things and see how other people are talking about food and health, I think, is a key contributor to the increased focus. But I also think we're now... long enough past some of the decisions that have been made that we're starting to see the consequences, whether that's consequences to planetary health, health rate in the context of soil health, for example, right, and climate change. And we're starting to see the impact of some of these food choices on public health, to your point, and consumer health. And so I think we're just starting to see the impact of those choices from decades ago start to materialize in a tangible and real way. And you have a lot of folks that have grown up in the food industry, have spent decades there that have realized now that there has to be a better way to do things and are starting to leave and create new brands or speak out vocally about how there has to be a better way to produce our food. And so I think it's kind of a mix of information of past choices coming to light and of folks on the inside who are looking to leave and make a change based on what they've seen.

SPEAKER_00:

Tell us a bit more about the impact on the planet and climate change, because that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, for sure. So one of the things that we can talk about when we talk about why the food system is the way it is, a lot of it comes back to what do we grow in this country and why do we grow it? And some of that has had to do with government policy and subsidies, which has led us to prioritize monocultures. So growing a single crop in a field. If you look back historically over time, that's not actually how farming happened. Back in the day, folks were growing really, really diverse sets of crops together, polycultures and monocultures. That variety is really good for the planet. It's really good for the soil, different plant types. provide different nutrients to the soil or take different nutrients from the soil. And so just focusing on a single crop can often deplete the carbon and the micronutrients within the soil and leave it dead. And so there's been a lot of recent knowledge of and understanding of soil health and the fact that soil is not just dirt. It's alive. There are microorganisms within our soil that impact the quality of the food that we're able to grow. And the way that we have farmed historically in terms of monocultures is starting to catch up to us. And so I think there's been just a great increased focus here on how do we get back to having more biodiverse food systems.

SPEAKER_00:

And we're probably going to do another episode on regenerative farming, but can you tell us very briefly what are some of the things being done to change that? And then perhaps we can go on to how is our food produced from farm to fork?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So I think regenerative farming is definitely the forefront of this. Some of the principles right around regenerative farming is really that you're not taking from the soil, but you're actually giving back. And there's lots of different practices that folks employ, whether that's things like cover crops, right? So trying not to leave bare soil, because when you leave bare soil, You're not feeding the microorganisms in the soil. The soil starts to die and then it blows off. That's actually how the dust bowl happens. And so how do we actually keep the ground covered with crops that can actually bring nutrients back into the soil? How do we not use chemicals and fertilizers, synthetic additives? That's something that the organic movement has pioneered for many, many years. But then the regenerative system takes it even a little bit further. This idea that a farm is an ecosystem all the way from the microorganisms in the soil to the humans and the animals that walk through the farm. And so how do we include cattle and sheep and animals in a way that is productive and restorative to the land versus extractive? So how do we graze our cows and rotate that grazing so that they're not over-consuming within a certain area and so that the nutrients from their hooves and their excrements can actually come back into the soil? Those are just some of the practices around regenerative, but the whole concept is not just extracting from the land, but actually giving back to it so that it can continue to give to us in the future.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's not altruistic. This is just better agriculture, right? This is better, more sustainable farming so we can feed more people higher quality food and reduce disease and start to reduce things like climate change. Perhaps we come back to that when we go through how we got here. Why did we choose those methods of agriculture? But can we go through the production of food from farm to fork? So how do we make and process food? How does it get to our plates? And what goes wrong along the way? So

SPEAKER_01:

when we think about the American food chain within the context of packaged foods or consumer packaged goods, you would think that a lot of it starts at the farm, and it does, and that farmers cultivate the crops and the inputs. But a lot of the centralized decision-making is really actually happening at the consumer packaged goods They're looking at consumer demand and what they think consumers want to eat. They're innovating products. So they are creating recipes where they think will be a success in the market. And then they are figuring out how do I actually produce and source the ingredients to produce that product. And so farmers in this country will often grow vegetables. We tend to grow a couple main crops in this country, corn, soy, wheat, that get sent to processors or commodity traders. There's a couple big ones in the world that really process the vast majority of agricultural outputs in the world. And CPG companies or food companies are then buying and sourcing those ingredients, typically from farmers. these commodity traders or these processors. Some CPG companies do source things directly from farmers, whether it's a specialty item or they have enough purchasing power and scale that they can get a better deal by going direct. But one of the benefits of these commodity traders is that they take what is one of the only decentralized parts of the industry today. And I would say it's much less decentralized today than it was decades ago because there are fewer and fewer farmers and they are bigger and bigger. But one of the benefits of these traders is that they help aggregate all of that product, right? And all of those inputs. So it's much easier for a CPG company to actually go ahead and buy that. Once ingredients are sourced, most CPG companies have their own manufacturing facilities and they really do look, they are factories, right? Like you walk through the lines and they are often highly automated, highly machined. And it is taking ingredients and doing what it is that we need to do to them in order to get that end product, whether that's freezing them, baking them, cooling them, whatever it might be. Food is typically produced, packaged, and then stored either at a CPG manufacturer's warehousing network, and then typically sold through either a distributor or direct to a retail store, a grocery store, where consumer then goes to the grocery store, picks out their food, takes it home and eats it. That's kind of the value chain at a really high level.

SPEAKER_00:

So what sounds interesting about that to me as someone who's spent his career in healthcare is the incentive model or making, in this case, food or in the healthcare industry, it's healthcare and where the weight of that sits. So in healthcare... historically that has just been to produce more healthcare, to do more, to intervene more. And you and I obviously met when we were working in a startup where we were trying to change that. And we were trying to change the incentive model to every stakeholder in healthcare should be paid more if they make people healthier instead. And so it seems like in the food industry, this is all being driven by how can we sell more food and maintain a higher profit margin. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_01:

That's very fair, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a business. And the challenge with that is the incentives are not being driven by what is higher quality food or what is going to improve human health. It is what's going to help us sell more food. So it seems that there are a lot of parallels there.

SPEAKER_01:

100%, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

So how is this different in other regions? Because I feel like in the US, we think it's worse here. Is that true?

SPEAKER_01:

I think it is. I think we are seeing the impact of the global economy, the global supply chain impact other regions. regions and economies and more and more food systems, I would say, are looking like our food system. I think two main differences are one, regulation. So the US has the USDA and the FDA and different bodies that allow or don't allow certain things in our food system. I'm sure folks have heard this talk that in Europe, they don't have the same food or they've more intense food restrictions than we do. And so that means that there's less of this bad stuff that ends up in their food. And so in general, better quality food out there. And that is true to some degree. I think regulation does play a big role across the food system in terms of what's allowed and what's not allowed. And then the second one I would say comes back to kind of the agricultural industry and how farming is set up in different countries. In the US, we have fewer, very large scale, highly efficient monoculture type farms. We export a lot of our food and a lot of the food that we grow doesn't actually end up as food. It ends up as things like oils or ethanol. And so that looks different in other countries just based on the fact that other countries might be a little bit more small scale farming, a little bit more agrarian. And so you can have higher quality ingredients coming up. in these other regions than the US. And so I think, again, other countries are starting to look more and more like the US, but there are definitely pockets where it doesn't look like that partially because of regulation and the way the agricultural system is set up.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll get back to this conversation in just a moment. But if you're finding this episode helpful, here's a quick ask. Take a second to follow or subscribe to the Health Curve podcast wherever you're listening. And if someone in your life would benefit from this episode or any of the others you've heard, please send it their way. All right, let's get back to it. I know every time I go to mainland Europe, I can't necessarily say this is the same in the UK, but every time I go to mainland Europe, the quality of the food I get, I can taste and feel the difference. Let's put it that way. I don't feel bloated afterwards. I feel I can eat more of what feels like very rich food. but I still feel okay. So why else is that? I mean, is there anything else there other than the farming methods might be different? There may be different regulations around the kind of food that ends up on plates.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, I think part of it also comes a little bit back to consumer demand. Like at the end of the day, CPG companies are trying to meet consumers, right? What do consumers want? What are they going to pay for? And I do think our food culture in the US is distinct than it is in other countries. I think our culture is known for convenience and fast eating and food isn't necessarily... always in every part of the US treated in the same way that other cultures treat it, right? As a moment to slow down, a moment to connect. There's lots of studies that show that when you slow down and you eat meals with other folks, you're more conscientious of what you're eating. You might actually eat less or eat better. I think that part of that demand that exists in that culture that exists elsewhere drives then what food manufacturers are putting on shelves and putting in restaurants. And so certainly some of it is consumer driven and cultural.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a cultural challenge with healthcare in the same way. And that, you know, it's like, I want the best, I want it fast. And that doesn't necessarily sit with the prevention play or mindset. Just to keep us going. How did we get here? Why did we choose to make food, if you will, or process food in this way?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so historically, for many, many, many years, we didn't have enough food in the world. And we Often early agricultural policy was really geared around this idea of how do we make sure we have enough food to feed our population? And that's what kind of led to a lot of the subsidies the government put in that has now led to the wrong things being grown and made cheap. But at the time, the industrial food system was able to use these monocultures of corn and wheat and soy to grow a large amount of food, to grow food at scale, feed people and do it efficiently, right? It was so efficient back in the day. And so because of that, this is why we prioritize things like corn and soy over things like fruits and vegetables here in the US. And with all of that supply, we've had to think about how to use corn and soy across our entire food system to make sure that we're maximizing the efficiency of that yield, right? We don't want anything to go to waste. And that's why things like high fructose corn syrup became ubiquitous in packaged food. It was really like excess from the corn crops that were being created. How do we make sure that we are making money off of that and not leaving that on the table? And so that sort of led to what we were growing and a couple crops being prioritized at the expense of others in this country. And at first, I would argue that that was maybe a noble cause, this idea of like, we want to create enough food to feed everyone. We don't want people to go hungry. That was the biggest problem we faced as a nation, as a world. I don't think it necessarily came from bad intentions, but we've now gotten to a point where that coupled with then the corporate side of things where we want to be as profitable as we can as food businesses and selling food was really hard back in the day before things like refrigeration and before all these innovations within food that made food more shelf stable, things would expire, things would go bad. And so in a country that is As large as America, as distributed as America, how do we actually make sure that we are extending shelf life and not wasting so we can make the business as profitable as possible? And that's what actually led to a lot of this innovation and shelf stable food. And that's what's led to a lot of this stuff that's been added, this bad stuff, the emulsifiers, the thickeners, the stabilizers. So I think that, and then the last piece of it I would say is as we've had more and more stability in our food system and consumers have craved more and more convenience. And so we spend way less time today making and preparing food than we ever have in our history. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, right? Like we can then use that time to go do other really productive things, but it's also creating an expectation for consumers that they should be able to get all of the calories they need and be able to do so quickly and effortlessly, which is just really fuel that demand for CPG companies to go and try to create these shelf-stable, highly dense foods for consumers.

SPEAKER_00:

So a bit of a generalization, but we started doing this because we were trying to solve a different problem. And that problem was, how do we feed everyone? How do we stop people dying of malnutrition? And how do we prevent famine? That sort of thing. Now we're in a different world. Of course, there are always exceptions. There are parts of the world that still don't get enough food where malnutrition and famine are still very common, sadly. But in modernized Western societies, let's just call it that. Of course, it's not just the West, but we face a different problem today. We have enough food. We have too much food, in a sense. It's just not very good. And so the problems there are, one, that's fueling a chronic disease crisis. And two, because we've built those systems, they're very hard to change now. And it takes time to change both the food system and the state of human health. So I want to come to that next. Why is this so hard to change? Why are we still doing things this way? Because we've known about this for a while now, I think.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we have. Part of it is that the system, while consolidated, is still distributed. There are different parties with different interests at each step of the value chain. It's not like you and I are going to the farmer and buy our food directly. You can do that in small pockets, right? Through farmer's markets. But the vast majority of our food goes to this multi-step, multiplayer value chain. And in order to get everyone on the same page about changing that value chain is hard because everyone's got different incentives. The change is going to benefit some of these folks and it's not going to benefit others to be clear. And so getting everyone aligned on making the change, I think is one of the hardest pieces of this. And I think the second part is it takes time. In many ways, I think it will take time outside sort of regulation or forces in order to make the change because of the differing incentives. And it is hard to get everyone bought into the new vision and figure out how to take a really complex problem and break it down step by step. Even if you can get everyone aligned, but we need to change our food system. What do you do first? Do you change the farmers? You try to change consumer health and consumer taste preferences. What part of the value chain do you tackle first on this journey? It's definitely not an easy problem to solve.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And I think about how do people get around it today? So individuals get around it today because there has been this increasing demand for healthier food. And so those who can afford it, those who have the luxury of being able to do this will go around what's out there for most people to buy healthier food. It is more expensive for the reasons that we've talked about, at least in the current system. But most people can't do that. So when we talk about some of the barriers to change, other than the fact that this is a highly distributed system. There are many different players. There are different aspects, I think, to unpack here. So we talk about government and government subsidies. We talk about corporate practices. We talk about policy and regulation. We talk about marketing regulation. The number of times I've sat down watching a sports game with my children and the ads come on and you see all these unhealthy food ads. And fortunately, in some schools now, kids are being taught that, oh, they're just trying to trick you. But, you know, that's a whole conversation to have, too. So just trying to look behind the curtain at what is going on when we talk about things like the red tape, lobbying, government policy, what kinds of things are happening that need to be changed upstream, which I know is hard to change. But that's one of the reasons we're doing this podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And I think you alluded to it there. There's a lot of lobbying, right, that happens in the food system. I think similar to other core problem areas that we have in this country, we have a lot of folks that represent different parts of the agricultural industry, as well as CPG companies, candidly, that are in the ears of local and federal government trying to ensure that subsidies and structures and stay the same in order to enable them to continue to have the business and operate the businesses that they have. And so it definitely impacts, again, what has grown and sort of what restrictions or lack thereof when it comes to restrictions in terms of what things go into our food. There's definitely been some recent noise with RFK and banning food coloring or food dyes, potentially starting to ban additives. I think that's part of the work that needs to get done on the CPG side is around what things can and cannot go in our food. But there's a lot of work to be done upstream when it comes to farmers. I think farmers are often the forgotten voice in the food system. They're the ones that take on the most amount of risk when it comes to the different players. They often are incredibly cash-strapped. They have to pay for inputs and farming equipment ahead of actually seeing any return. Most of the things that they sell tend to be commodities and are highly volatile based on the market, everything that's going on right now. And Terra certainly is not helping farmers. And I think a lot of the ag policy is not necessarily geared towards the best interest of the farmer. And so I think When I look upstream, like, yes, the CPG sort of USDA type regulations are really important in terms of making sure that consumer health is prioritized. But there's a lot of work to be done to make sure that financial stability of our farmers is there and that folks have the right incentives to make some of these transitions to regenerative. Back in my day, when I was working with a startup that was trying to pilot regenerative agriculture, one of the biggest hurdles was really helping farmers see that this was a financially stable industry. Right. So starting at the

SPEAKER_00:

source and thinking about how to almost redesign agricultural practices, not for new needs, but for needs that we're becoming a bit more enlightened about today, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. And then making sure that that links back to clear consumer demand that is consistent. The worst thing is for a farmer to grow something that someone says a consumer wants. And then when the season ends, the consumer changed their mind and they don't want it anymore. So having to create sort of stability for farmers in terms of building a market for these alternative, healthier products is like key to making sure that we can incentivize farmers appropriately.

SPEAKER_00:

It takes different functional expertise and different industries to come together on this, because even if we think about farmers coming together with public health scientists, for example, to think about how we should be doing this, that probably doesn't happen very often, if at all. And when we think about, okay, we have to be able to support sustainable businesses here as well, what we have created is a situation where we have essentially programmed our taste buds for salt and sugar. And there's a biological underpinning there around the addiction to those things. And what I've seen work anecdotally, and there will be evidence for this too, which we'll share after the episode, is that you can reprogram your taste buds. And that's something that really only a consumer can do. in many ways. And there's nothing special there. It's really just changing your dietary habits, changing what you put in your mouth, and then giving it time to adjust so that you're not used to high salt and high sugar. I know, for example, from my own experience, that when I eat very healthily, even just for a few days, if I have junk food, I can taste the salt and sugar in it. Whereas if I'm eating the junk food continuously, I've stopped being able to taste it, my baseline is different, and then I need more. 100%. Let's move on to what people can actually do to help themselves, because changing policy, changing regulation, these are things that I think the public need to ask for, of course. And, you know, it's again, it's this is one of the reasons we're doing the podcast. It's to stimulate discussion around this. And, you know, over time, hopefully that helps change these really big things. But in the meantime, what can individuals do to navigate these challenges to make sure that they can eat healthier?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think step one is educating yourself. I know for myself personally, I found myself spending lots and lots of time reading food labels and just trying to understand why is this ingredient here, right? If I couldn't pronounce it, I often like to say like if a fifth grader can't pronounce an ingredient, it's probably not good for you. And so if you can spend a little bit of time looking at some of the labels of your favorite foods and being like, I don't know what this ingredient is. Let me spend a little bit of time understanding why it's being added. And it's not something I'm okay with. There's some things that if it gets added for color, okay, maybe I'm okay with that. But if it's added for texture, maybe I'm not. Just spend a little bit of time understanding why certain ingredients are being added to your foods and just pay attention to your nutrition labels because I think it helps. I also think recognizing that this is really hard. We talked about retraining your taste buds. I've gone through that. It took me a long time. It's really hard. And Thinking that you're going to do it all at once is a way to set yourself up for failure. And so take it step by step. In our household, we tackled the breakfast occasion first. It's like something that is highly routine, something that you don't really think about, but it sets a really important foundation for the day. And so... Taking breakfast and realizing, hmm, those breakfast cereals, that's exactly what we were talking about when we talked about ultra processed foods that spike in sugar. Okay, what's like a healthier alternative there that balances both protein and fiber and makes me feel satiated and good in the morning? And how do I lean into that over time? And then think about lunch or dinner or snacking. So really breaking it up and taking it step by step. I think is really helpful.

SPEAKER_00:

Very quickly on that, doing it with someone else is always very helpful. And that's why breakfast, if people do eat breakfast with someone else, it makes such a big difference. If you live with someone, especially, you're going to be buying different ingredients together. And so you have to try to band together with others on this. If you can, it's more likely to work.

SPEAKER_01:

A hundred percent, actually. And that's actually a very good point. I know in our household, there was a while I was on this journey and my husband was not, and I found it really, really hard. And when we both got on the journey together, it was much simpler because we had ground rules around what things we were going to buy or not buy that we were both adhering to, which made those craving moments a little bit easier because I knew that I wasn't going to find that bag of chips in the pantry.

SPEAKER_00:

Just don't have it in the pantry, right? That's the key. If it's not at home, you're not going to eat it.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. And my last tip here is really like ultimately you have to determine what matters to you. It can be really hard to solve for every issue in the food system. Like there is something wrong with almost anything that you buy when it comes to food. And so being able to create some guiding principles for yourself of what what you want to prioritize, whether that's I'm only going to buy organic produce or, you know, I'm not going to buy anything from the center aisle in my grocery trips, whatever it might be. Ultimately, you should figure out what matters the most to you and then prioritize that because that's the only way you're going to be able to navigate kind of the sea of complexity and decision fatigue that exists when it comes to what are you going to eat every day.

SPEAKER_00:

And in terms of trying to understand what you need as an individual, can you tell us a little bit about what kind of changes you might want to make?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. so personal, right? Based on your own health baseline. I think for me personally, I can speak to my journey. I was someone that has experimented with a lot of different diets. I grew up vegetarian. I went vegan. I started eating red meat when I moved abroad. I've tried everything. I've tried pescatarian, all of them. And ultimately what it came back to was I'm in a family that has high risk for type two diabetes, and I often feel hungry. And those are two things that combined make me a little bit nervous about my A1C and my sugar levels. And so for me, it was about how do I make sure that I'm getting high quality protein and fiber in every meal so that I'm full and I'm not eating a lot of extra unnecessary junk. And then coupled with my understanding of the food system and having worked at some food companies, knowing that my bias is always towards whole foods, right? Whether that's whole plants, fruits, vegetables, grains, or lean sources of protein. And those are sort of the guidelines that we live by. That's the rules that we live by in our household is as much whole foods as possible, a balance between fruits and vegetables and protein. So we get some of that great fiber in there and limiting some of the junk food as much as we can.

SPEAKER_00:

And there's this whole 80-20 thing where, you know, even for us in our household, we eat healthy at baseline. That's our rule. And when we get to the weekend, it's okay to have a couple of junk meals within reason. And over time, that's not going to impact you. It's when it flips that it's a problem that your baseline is unhealthy And then every now and again, you decide to have a healthy meal, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

So we focused a lot on what are the challenges with the system? What are some of the problems with our food? How have things changed for the better over the years? I'm sure in some ways things have improved in terms of food quality and it's linked to health. And what are some of the positive things that are coming our way over the next few years, given that we focus a lot on tech and innovation? in all industries. And so obviously agriculture and food too. What are some of the things that we can expect is going to help here?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think we're seeing innovation kind of across both agriculture and CPG, which is exciting. So I think, I know we talked a little bit about how these industries are really consolidated, but we're starting to see new upstarts in both that are really trying to challenge the status quo and do things differently. So there's a lot more emerging food brands. There's a lot of folks that, again, have either spent time in food or have thought critically about the issues in packaged food and are starting brands that really actually are healthier for you. They kind of take it one level beyond the the Better For You movement that's really been prevalent over the last couple of decades. And so I see a lot of excitement there just around new brands, new food products. I also think on the agricultural side, this is where there's been a lot of movement towards regenerative, to rethinking how our agricultural society is set up. We're seeing some of the bigger food players actually make investments there, which is really interesting and exciting to see. Because I think, again, it goes back to, is there enough demand? Is there enough profit there for a farmer? And having big food companies say, yes, we believe in regenerative, and here's how we're going to subsidize that or fund that, I think is a huge first step towards making the change. And then we're also starting to see, even within conventional ag will always, I think, play a role in the world. I don't think we'll ever get around it. And we're starting to see innovation within the conventional world that can at least let us be smarter and better about how we do use things like pesticides, right? So this is where things like precision farming are somewhat interesting within the context of the conventional farming world. So I think we're seeing innovation across the board, whether it's brands or in the ag space.

SPEAKER_00:

And another key takeaway for people, I think here is not just what can you take from this to navigate your own food journey better to improve or maintain your health. But this is all driven by consumer demand. So if you start demanding other things, the industry will actually start to change.

SPEAKER_01:

100%. And I do think, we didn't talk that much about them, but I think the growth in GLP-1 usage in this country has actually already started to drive some of that shift of demand to both grocery retailers and CBG companies. People are taking note. And I think we'll see more of that, right? Whether it's through drugs like GLP-1 that are forcing consumers to have to rethink their diet because they physically need to, or it's consumers that are more and more aware themselves and decide that they want different food options and ask their retailers and their secret sheet companies for it. So yes, it very much stems from consumer demand.

SPEAKER_00:

Excellent. Neeti, thank you so much for joining us. This has been absolutely tremendous. We've covered a lot of ground I know. We'll be coming back to this topic again and again. We'd absolutely love to have you back as well, because there's a lot here I think that our listeners could get some benefit from learning. And again, we've talked about it a lot. This all starts with consumer demand, I think. So thank you so much. Of

SPEAKER_01:

course.

UNKNOWN:

Thank you.