A Dose of Optimism
A Dose of Optimism is a podcast dedicated to exploring the world of healthcare innovation and the optimists driving meaningful change.
Hosted by Omkar Kulkarni, this show shines a light on bold ideas, transformative solutions, and the passionate individuals working every day to make healthcare better for children and their families.
Each episode dives into the real-world challenges facing the healthcare industry and highlights the people and organizations pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. From tackling mental health and food allergies to reimagining hospital care and harnessing Artificial Intelligence for better outcomes. Listeners will discover game-changing solutions, hear stories of creativity and resilience, and gain inspiration from leaders who believe in building a healthier, more hopeful future.
From medical professionals and entrepreneurs to patients and community advocates, the podcast brings together diverse voices united by a shared commitment to improving healthcare delivery. Whether you’re working inside the industry or simply curious about the innovations shaping tomorrow’s care, A Dose of Optimism offers insight, connection, and inspiration.
“The content, views, opinions, and information presented on this podcast do not reflect the views of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles or of the sponsors of the podcast. CHLA does not endorse the views, opinions and information presented on this podcast and CHLA specifically disclaims any legal liability or responsibility for the podcast’s content.”
A Dose of Optimism
Ultra Processed, Under Mentored
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Two things children need more of: someone who shows up for them, and food that doesn't harm them. In this episode, two innovators share their work on both sides of that equation.
Amy Braun, President and CEO of HealthCorps, describes how her organization deploys college-age mentors into middle and high schools across 12 states to deliver health and wellness programming, and why the near-peer relationship is the most powerful driver of real health behavior change in teenagers. 84% of students in HealthCorps make at least one measurable health behavior change. Students are 50% less likely to experience poor mental health days than their national peers. And 73% are more likely to connect with an adult on campus, meaning they stay more connected to school and more likely to graduate.
Dr. Michael Goran, Program Director for Nutrition and Obesity at CHLA and the Saban Research Institute at USC, shares findings from a recently published birth cohort study: children consuming higher amounts of ultra-processed foods from birth to age six show significantly smaller volumes in specific regions of the brain. He also shares striking research on infant formula, over half of which in the United States is now made with corn syrup rather than lactose, and what continuous glucose monitoring at six months of age reveals about how different formula compositions affect infant blood sugar stability.
Episode Resources:
Ultra-Processed Foods Linked to Brain Differences in Young Children
The UN Decade of Nutrition, the NOVA food classification and the trouble with ultra-processing
New US dietary guidelines call for more protein, less processed food
Diabetes & Obesity Research Institute (DORI)
USC & Children’s Hospital LA Team Up with Eat Real to Study How Real Food Fuels Student Success
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
Connect with Amy Braun:
Connect with Dr. Michael Goran:
Connect with us:
Children's Hospital L.A. Website
Children's Hospital L.A. Instagram
Children's Hospital L.A. LinkedIn
Welcome to the Dose of Optimism, where I talk to the optimists in healthcare. My name is Omkar Kulkarni, and I work at one of the world's best children's hospitals where I lead innovation. I started Kids X, which is a premier international startup accelerator for pediatric innovation, and over the years I've met thousands of startups, investors, and innovators. Every one of them has a story, and every one of them is optimistic about the problems they're solving. On this podcast, you'll meet amazing people who will share their stories and what makes them optimistic about the future of healthcare. A little note before we get into this episode: this podcast is for informational purposes only. We are not offering medical advice and we're not endorsing any products. Please talk to your own physician about your health or the health of your children. All right, let's get started. Our first guest today is Amy Braun. Amy's the president and CEO of Healthcore. Healthcore is this great organization that really believes in youth mentorship and leveraging technology to expand the reach of mentorship and the value it produces in youth and adolescents and young adults as they transition into adulthood. What are your thoughts on human connection? How are we doing? Are we better off, worse off than we were years ago?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. I think the thoughts on human connection today is that it's imperative. I think, you know, Healthcore is a national 501c3 that works with middle school and high school students across the country. We're in over 300 schools in 12 states, and we deploy college-age mentors to facilitate the health programming and leadership programming in our clubs. And what we've found from that is that this understanding of relationship that's building between the middle school and high school students and their college-age mentors is imperative. It gets them up in the morning, it gets them going to school, it helps them feel cared about, it helps them feel valued. And it's not just a one-way street, right? I mean, we actually know that the college students are developing deep levels of connection as well with the kids and feeling purposeful, feeling valued, feeling cared for. And I don't think it's something that is replicable in a digital space. You know, we can make digital connections and we can learn and grow and develop with our digital tools through virtual communication tools like we are right now on Zoom. But there's something about that human behavior of seeing that person smile and laugh and the way that it resonates in the physiological elements of your body that just is not replicable in the digital world right now. And I think for the age that we work with, it's absolutely essential. They are bombarded with all of the different digital tools in so many different ways that when somebody takes the time to show up and stand in front of them, it's life-changing.
SPEAKER_01So, in some ways, technology has brought all of us incredibly close together. We can communicate with people around the world using technology like we're using here. We can send messages 24-7. We can communicate using social media to audiences and people that we don't even know about. But to a certain degree, many people in polls and data and all sorts of information that we have available, people are telling us that they're actually feeling less connected than they used to feel. They're feeling disconnected, they're feeling lonely. Loneliness is, I think, a growing epidemic amongst all ages in this country or probably around the world.
SPEAKER_02A thousand percent. Loneliness is a growing epidemic. I was actually just listening to the news the other day, right? That the open table is reporting that single reservations are up, right? Tables for one. People want to get out of the house. They want to move beyond the screen. Even if they're sitting by themselves at a restaurant, they want to feel and understand that part of community. And I think that's the same in schools for our teenagers. I think it's actually even more invaluable. Teenagers' brains are developing at a very integral point in their lives where they are learning how to understand and read behaviors and look somebody in the eye and develop that type of connection. And that human interaction piece is just irreplaceable. And I think seeing somebody who shows up for you in real life, who you actually know you're speaking to, versus sometimes a name behind a picture on a chat bot of some, you know, or social media platform is different. Um, you have to look that person in the eye. You have to read those cues. What you say has meaning, and you can immediately see the reaction that you cause in that person's body language. You know, that type of connection is just not replicable. And I think our teens have really figured out that while I'm speaking to somebody, maybe through Instagram chat or a DM or a Snapchat, it's not the same physiological response as being in the room with somebody and seeing them care for you and see their emotions well up or see them swell with pride as you learn something new or you share something. I believe the technology is important. I believe it has a role to play. This isn't an anti-tech type of program, and we can utilize it to facilitate our lives and our program in so many ways. But we cannot replace the type of impact that an in-person connection can make, particularly in these teenage years. So many of our students talk about the fact that their mentors showed up. My mentor showed up. They came to the classroom. I was so sad when they didn't come. It is this idea that somebody is making an effort to be there with you. And that's so much more impactful to be feeling heard, to be feeling seen, to being cared about. And our kids need that. They need that for their physical and their mental health.
SPEAKER_01So you talk about mentorship a lot. Quick quiz for you. Do you know where the word mentor comes from?
SPEAKER_02No, this is very exciting.
SPEAKER_01So the term mentor actually comes from the Odyssey, which is Homer's famous epic. In the Odyssey, there's a character, mentor, who ends up basically helping Odysseus's son, Telemachus. And while Odysseus is away, mentor provides guidance and advice to Telemachus. Uh, and that's really where the origin of the concept of mentorship started. There's a character in the Odyssey named Mentor. So that's that's where it comes from. But I was thinking about this even more. I mean, Big Brother, Big Sisters is an incredibly successful program that's over 100 years old in this country. And it leans into this concept of youth mentorship, which is something that you've now taken and added technological support to. And you built, you put your own spin on it. But this concept of mentorship is part of history and it's part of the human evolution.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. And I would just say mentorship, as we've been talking about from the human connection part, is so important, but actually it also reduces risky behavior, which is, you know, one of the fabulous things the Boys and Girls Clubs has been able to do. But there are real reasons that we need mentors in our lives. Um they're very grounding, they're very important in helping us make decisions and navigate maybe away from some of the poorer decisions that we shouldn't make. Um, and particularly in our teenage years, a mentor is incredibly important because the biggest sphere of influence for us is the near peer. And so what healthcore does is healthcore pushes into schools, whether it's lunchtime, it could be a classroom, it's a very flexible program. And we educate the teens in the healthcore club on mental health, physical health, and community health. And what makes us really unique is it's not a top-down approach. If you know a teenager, if you've met a teenager recently, the number one thing about a teenager is that they love autonomy and they love to feel powerful. And you know what we like to say? You are powerful and we want to empower you. And so the big difference about our program is that we educate the ones in the club and then we ask them to go out and be change agents in their schools. So every month they learn about a certain subject. They might learn about nutrition, macronutrients, they may learn about hydration and sugar and water, they may learn about exercise or stress. But what they do each month is determine how they want to teach the rest of the students in their community about that topic. So it's an incredibly impactful program for the entire school because we've really nailed down that near-peer relationship, whether it's a college student to a high school student or a high school student to a high school student, is what actually drives the needle to make real health behavior change. And that's one of our ultimate goals. So we are a mentoring program, but at the end of the day, we want everybody to be healthier and we want to see physical and mental health changes. And we do. 84% of our kids make at least one health behavior change. That could be that they're drinking more water, they're exercising more. And of course, all of those changes have, you know, extreme impacts on their mental health.
SPEAKER_01You've always been passionate about data and measuring outcomes. Tell me more about how you are evaluating the impact of the program and other ways in which you use data to help improve the way the program works.
SPEAKER_02Sure, absolutely. I think you know, data is king when you're running these programs. It's incredibly important to make sure that what you're doing is valuable. I started my career with Teach for America and then within the private sector. And everything I've learned from those experiences is that we use data to drive real results. And at Healthcore, we are no different. So we really make sure that we are delivering on what we say we are. Um, and I think of when you have time with kiddos, it's the most precious time and you better maximize it and you better drive the most results you possibly can. So healthcore is sure to pre- and post-survey all the students in our club. Um, you know, we basically ask them about what behaviors they're doing before they start the club. And every year we survey what behaviors they're doing at the end of the club, and we are able to see, you know, what types of changes they're making. And so these behaviors are sharing with us that they are drinking, you know, more water, they're eating less sugar. Uh, one of the stats that I really love the most is that our students at Healthcore are 50% less likely to experience poor mental health days than their national peers. And obviously, in this day and age, as we started talking about technology and we know that the mental health of our kiddos is something that we all need to be concerned about, everybody's mental health these days, but we do know that this program is driving real results. And I'm not talking about 50 surveys or 100 surveys. Healthcore collected over 3,000 surveys last year, um, this past school year alone. So when we're talking about data, we're talking about big numbers of data that we are able to look at and see real statistically significant changes.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. I mean, that's what you're built around, right? Not only mentorship, but seeing change in the health behaviors of the people in your program. You talked earlier about the value for the mentor. So what are you seeing there? These are college-age students that have chosen to mentor. I mean, I can imagine, right? When you're put in that responsibility, the advice you give, the ability to listen and to react and to provide both emotional support as well as wisdom, that itself, I imagine, creates a ton of growth. And so I'm curious what you're finding with your program.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. I love that you asked that. So we survey, of course, all of our mentors the same way we do all of our students. And um, many of our mentors are actually pre-health majors. So they're looking at nursing, they might be looking at physical therapy, they might want to be pre-med, they might want to be doctors. So they're coming in with a relatively strong interest in healthcare. Um, and so they are obviously healthier oftentimes than, you know, perhaps an average individual, but they all get healthier as well. They also improve on all of the metrics themselves, because once you will become a teacher, a lot of that knowledge gets imparted to you. So they're becoming much healthier. Uh, we're also tracking, of course, their satisfaction with the program, their own professional development. And then away from just some of the hard data numbers, one of the amazing things with the club is we're seeing their personal growth, the fact that they feel more confident, that they feel more valued, that they feel like they know that they can make a difference in the world. And, you know, there's so much data connecting that idea of purposefulness and how important that is for your own mental health and how that really allows you to continue to succeed and make better decisions for yourself. I mean, our mentors are getting such an incredible experience themselves. And I think it's really helping educate and prepare the next generation of healthcare leaders. These are individuals who understand upstream preventative wellness tips and techniques that they not only incorporate into their own lives, but when they go and work with others, they will know to ask certain questions about, you know, water intake and sugar and exercise. And, you know, hey, you seem a little stressed. Maybe we could try this activity together. But all these other pieces that are so important to our health, um, that sometimes get left out of the system.
SPEAKER_01So it seems like across the board, across the country, kids who are mentored in some fashion are less likely to skip school and they tend to have better outcomes in schools.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. And our students, 73% are more likely to work with an adult on campus after working in our program. So that means that they are more connected to school, which means they're more likely to stay and graduate.
SPEAKER_01And then in terms of substance abuse, illegal drugs, or even other types of violent activities, mentored youth are almost across the board, tend to have less likely to use those, you know, substances or get into trouble or get into violent activities.
SPEAKER_02Yes, a hundred percent. I mean, I actually a lot of the people who are investing in healthcore right now are individuals actually at the state level looking at important after-school time activities, recognizing that if you utilize time correctly and you provide students with engaging and meaningful activities and mentors that they can be connected to, yes, you are going to see less risky behavior. Um, and actually the Boys and Girls Club did a phenomenal study on this, on the role of a mentor and reducing that risky behavior.
SPEAKER_01That's great. And the last one, youth that have had mentors end up being much more likely to volunteer and give back when they're adults. And on an earnings front, youth who've had mentorship, consistent mentorship for I think it seems like for over a year, end up earning more over the course of a lifetime because they end up having more opportunities, et cetera. It seems like it's mentorship is promising and obviously helpful for youth. And I'm hoping that the youth in your program have similarly great outcomes.
SPEAKER_02I love that. We have not started tracking that, but I can definitely see that. And I think it's a great moment to say if you're not mentoring somebody or you don't have a mentor, go mentor someone or find a mentor.
SPEAKER_01Yes, just like in the Odyssey. We're in a world of artificial intelligence and digital twins and virtual immersive reality. But sometimes some of the most basic time-tested solutions like mentorship that have been around for thousands of years, or if nothing else, you know, in the form of youth mentorship in this country for over a hundred years and simple solutions, perhaps with a digital backbone and upgrade with the right data and the right health focus, sometimes things like that can create sizable outcomes as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. And you know, healthcore, we are utilizing data and technology to able to scale and provide resources to our mentors so that they are more able to go out and work in even more schools with more kids. And that's where I think technology is able to play such an impactful role.
SPEAKER_01Amy, thanks for joining us today. Really appreciate what you're doing and excited to see all the data that'll come out uh around your program and the great impact it'll have on youth and adolescents.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_01Our next guest is Dr. Michael Gorin. Dr. Michael Gorin is the program director for nutrition and obesity at the Saban Research Institute at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. He is an expert and a researcher focused on nutrition, and he's done some recent work on ultra-processed foods that I think is really timely and worth diving into. I hope you'll enjoy this interview with Dr. Gorin.
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SPEAKER_01Gorin, thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_00My pleasure.
SPEAKER_01These days everyone's talking about ultra-processed foods, which is a concept that's been around for a while and you've studied it for a long time. But tell our audience how you define ultra-processed food.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I pretty much go by the most commonly used, which is ANOVA classification. The simple way is that ultra-processed foods can be defined is if you don't if there's an ingredient in that food that's not in your kitchen, it's probably ultra-processed.
SPEAKER_01So some sort of chemical compound or something that's added in the manufacturing of the product that I wouldn't find. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but ultra-processed could be anything that is not natural or has been chemically altered, has preservatives, sweeteners. I mean, some of the classic examples would be like a plain yogurt, for example, without any sweetener or emulsifier, that's not uh it's processed, but it's not ultra-processed. But a flavored yogurt that has added sugars, some emulsifier, some other preservatives, that would be ultra-processed.
SPEAKER_01And I think the issue we're now seeing is if you look at the diet of a typical child, at least in the United States, the a large portion of their calories come from these ultra-processed foods, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, on average in the US, children derive 60% of calories from these ultra-processed foods. It's a relatively new term, right? I mean, the the concept of ultra-processed foods only been around maybe 15 years. So it's not that new of a field. But we we're particularly focused on how just in general what children are eating is affecting their health and development. And a lot of my work over the years landed on when we looked at diet in general, we found a lot of unhealthy outcomes related to dietary sugar, added sugar. But now we're looking beyond that at these ultra-processed foods and and that could be as simple as just overall growth, more subtle things like gut microbiome development, diabetes risk, chronic disease risk. We know in adults that consumption of ultra-processed foods is related to almost any chronic disease or mental health outcome that you can think of. This doesn't happen overnight, right? It starts early in life. You might not see diabetes in a seven-year-old consuming a lot of ultra-processed foods, but you might there might be underlying subclinical effects.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Is part of the challenge that we're not following that seven-year-old over time longitudinally to see what happens in terms of their outcomes. Perhaps we're starting to now, but maybe to your point about this being a relatively new term, do we not have enough data around what happens to these kids as they become adults?
SPEAKER_00There's very few studies that have done that. There's plenty of longitudinal studies in adults that follow adults 20, 30, 40 years and beyond. There's quite a few birth cohort studies that have followed babies since birth or even through pregnancy through adulthood. That's in fact where a lot of the evidence comes from. Those will be core studies or association studies. So yeah, we do we do have quite a lot of those types of studies, uh, but very few have looked at long-term effects of ultra-processed foods.
SPEAKER_01So let's talk about your study recently that looked at brain development. What did you find?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it's uh kind of a chance finding. It's not something that we were funded to do, but the study was funded to look at uh breastfeeding and formula feeding. And so we do have a birth cohort of kids at Children's Hospital. We've been following several hundred children since birth. But with all of the interest in ultra-processed foods, we have very careful records, dietary records from these children. So we went back and analyzed their dietary records since birth. We collected them approximately every six months to a year, and we classified their diets over time according to what percentage of their calories was coming from ultra-processed foods. And we looked at that in the context of brain development because our study was funded to look at how breastfeeding versus formula feeding affects the brain at six or seven years of age. We have kids going in the magnet for about an hour, we collect a lot of information on structural brain, gray matter developments, all the different regions of the brain, their volumes, their sizes. We looked to see what the relationship was between the amount of ultra processed food that was being consumed and the end product of brain structure at six years of age. As well as looking at other functional measures such as cognitive ability. Like memory, performance, cognitive ability as well. And what we found was fairly strong, significant relationships between cumulative consumption of ultra-processed foods from birth to six years of age, affecting how the brain was developing. So what we found was significantly smaller volumes of specific areas of the brain. But interestingly, we did not see a relationship between ultra-processed foods and functional outcomes like memory performance or learning ability, which was kind of unexpected that we would see such a strong effect on brain structure. And it suggested to us that the primary initial effect of these foods, for whatever reason, is on development of the brain, and perhaps some of the functional outcomes are seen later.
SPEAKER_01A lot of what you've talked about before was on the impact on metabolic health and things in that lens. Now we're thinking about lower tissue volume in brain regions, which could have perhaps neurological or mental behavioral health downstream issues.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. And that's the effect. And we know from adults that there's plenty of evidence linking ultra-processed foods to metabolic health, especially strongest for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, even all-cause mortality. Those things have repeatedly been shown to be affected by ultra-processed foods in adults. But also cognitive health in adults, too. There's a pretty strong relationship between ultra-processed food consumption and cognitive impairments in adults and Alzheimer's disease, depression. So we know there are effects on mental health outcomes in adults. And this study in children would suggest that, again, it doesn't happen overnight. There's probably some kind of long-lasting sustained effect over time.
SPEAKER_01Now, your research has also, as you pointed out, looked at birth and corn syrup-based formulas and its impact on blood sugar trajectories compared to milk-based or lactose-based formulas.
SPEAKER_00We're just starting to look at that, and we do see effects of different types of formula. But the study you're referring to was specifically in babies. It's another paper we published. And it surprises a lot of people, but it's no surprise that babies are on formula, but it does surprise a lot of people when I tell them that over half of infant formula in the U.S. is now made with corn syrup, not lactose. Lactose is the sugar, the natural sugar found in breast milk. Corn syrup is a very different sugar. It has a very high glycemic impact, meaning that it spikes blood sugars. And we've shown in our previous research that babies consuming these corn syrup formulas have increased risk of obesity. And in a new study, we put glucose monitors on babies at six months of age because we wanted to show how these different formulas affect blood glucose levels at six months of age, which has never been done before. So it's very interesting. So what we found was that babies who are breastfed or babies who are fed formula with lactose, which should be what all formulas are made with, those babies have fairly stable, robust blood sugar levels, despite the fact that they're feeding pretty much continuously all day long. But babies fed these corn syrup formulas have very erratic blood glucose levels. And you can see numerous spikes of their blood sugar levels happening every day.
SPEAKER_01I assume the corn syrup is introduced to create a product that's less expensive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, ingredients cost less, so the raw ingredient of corn syrup, or essentially corn syrup solids, which is what you get when you boil down corn syrup and all the water evaporates. Fat product is much cheaper than lactose. It's also much easier to work with in the industrial processes, more soluble, for example. The cost to the consumer is about the same, but it costs less to make.
SPEAKER_01Oh, interesting. Well, uh, the reason I bring that up, so the cost is the same for consumers. I think a big challenge with a lot of the analysis as we look at the impact on these populations is that one driver, perhaps, for why certain populations may consume more ultra-cautious foods may be the cost. They tend to be available almost everywhere, whereas fresh fruits, food and vegetables, and fruits and vegetables require refrigeration and certain handling. And so they're only available in certain areas. Is it hard for you as a researcher to tease out outcomes when there may be other factors like socioeconomic factors at play for some of these populations?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we're trying to do that. That's actually some of the current work we're doing, is actually look at those social determinants too. It's uh hard to look at more in-depth things like cost and grocery bills and all that, but certainly looking at some of the social determinants is going to be interesting. It is a big dilemma, and that's one of the big arguments that I hear all the time, is that it's very hard to talk about promoting less ultra-processed foods because they are so inexpensive and convenient and available. And we do know that there's a big disparity, there's a big income disparity, not only in the consumption of ultra-processed foods, but also a big disparity in some of those health outcomes as well, like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
SPEAKER_01So what's next for you?
SPEAKER_00We're looking at other, you know, our first paper just looked at subcortical brain volume. We have a whole range of other metrics from our brain imaging, like gray matter, white matter, diffusion index, myelination, and lots of other different things we can look at. So we are still processing a lot of that data. We just got funding for four more years of the project. Well, we didn't get the funding. I'm jumping the gun. We got a very strong score to renew the funding because we still have 40 or 50 more kids in our cohort left to capture. So we're still capturing data from kids in our birth cohort as they turn six years of age. And we're looking more broadly at the brain outcomes, as you mentioned. We're looking at the social determinant effects. Uh, and we just put in a major new grant to do an intervention. The big limitation in this field, including this study, is it's all from association studies. So there's no actual intervention study that takes kids, let's say, who are consuming a lot of ultra-processed foods and put them on less processed food diets and see if we can uh demonstrate cause and effect more directly with an intervention. So we just submitted a very large grant to do a school-based intervention because there's a lot of interest in school nutrition. I'm working with an organization called Eat Real that works with school districts across the country to help school districts uh modify their school meal plan. We're partnering with them to do an evaluation of the impact of their program because since kids obtain the vast majority of their meals at school in many communities, that's the intervention we want to do. And it's it's a big undertaking.
SPEAKER_01It's exciting. I've read that there are, I think you mentioned about 60% of our calories in this country come from these ultra-processed foods. I think there is a few countries where, whether it's based on culture or food access or even government regulation, they're around 20%. I think in Brazil, Italy, Colombia, some, and for various reasons. They've got lower, at least from what I've seen reported, lower rates of ultra-processed food. It'd be interesting to compare cohorts across countries. I realize there's things you have to manage for and look for, but it'd be as you look at these physiological outcomes and perhaps health outcomes in the future, be interesting to look at distributions and impact in various regions of the world.
SPEAKER_00Part of that is just cultural and differences in the food system. But also some of those countries that you mentioned, like Brazil and Chile, is another good example. They've been very successful in passing a number of different policies to address this issue. Like, for example, food marketing for children is very carefully regulated in Chile.
SPEAKER_01I remember when I was in Chile, they have these black kind of warning labels, kind of like you see in the United States on cigarettes. They have those on certain feeds.
SPEAKER_00And in Mexico, I just go back from Mexico the other day, and all the packaged foods in Mexico has pretty clear signs on there. I mean, the current administration is now talking about some type of labeling system. That's going to be difficult. But it was a big breakthrough. I mean, just to have the most recent dietary guidelines recommend avoiding ultra-processed foods, that's a major breakthrough. That's the first time the dietary guidelines in this country have addressed ultra-processed foods.
SPEAKER_01Some countries have grades. It's not just black or white. It's an A through F where they, you know, rate how food looks. And it's not only about processing or the ultra-processed food, but it's also just looking at very dietary guidelines and sugar content and other protein content, things like that. So there's lots of labeling education and you know, food policy can play a role in the future as we think about this issue. Well, Dr. Gordon, thank you so much for joining us today and looking forward to your continued research on this topic.
SPEAKER_00My pleasure. Good to see you.
SPEAKER_01All right. Thank you for joining us for your dose of optimism. Make sure to check out our show notes to get more information about our guests and the work they're doing. Visit our podcast page on the Kids X website to join our podcast community and to learn more about pediatric innovation. Thank you to our sponsors and to our presenting partner, Kids X. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, it takes a village to make sure our kids grow into healthy adults. So volunteer at your local library, help out at the community center, and if you're so inspired, donate to your local children's hospital. Alright, see you next time. The content, views, opinions, and information presented on this podcast do not reflect the views of Children's Hospital Los Angeles or of the sponsors of the podcast.