Note: I am writing a book and starting a company to put food and lifestyle habits (not band-aids like pills and surgical interventions) at the center of how we think about healthcare. This article is from an email I sent analyzing one fact from this work per day. If this resonates, sign up here:
| Fact of the day: 4 in 10 lobbying dollars go to healthcare or food interests. |
Early in my career, I consulted for Coke to fight back against sugar taxes in Pennsylvania. We first identified the most influential African American pastors in the state. Coke then (confidentially) donated millions of dollars to them. The pastors then held press conferences, saying sugar taxes were racist. The media covered it, racial tensions flared, and Coke defeated the taxes.
This is emblematic of the playbook that pharma and food companies use daily to protect that status quo.
“Personal choice” arguments on food and health used to carry a lot of resonance with me:
- “People like to drink Coke and eat fast food. We can’t infringe on their freedom.”
- “Curbing sugar attacks personal choice.”
- “Patients are going to make bad choices. The Medical system stands ready to clean up the mess.”
- “People getting fat is a matter of personal responsibility.”
But a crucial fact altered my thinking: You can’t have a free market when the current market is rigged. Healthcare and food companies have co-opted free market thinking. They have lobbied more than any other industry to rig the system and then cry that anyone who questions that system is “anti-free market.” Sadly, even some of the most intelligent conservatives I know fall into this trap.
25% of teenagers having pre-diabetes is not a result of “personal choice” – it is because of a rigged system that is decimating human capital. The undermining of our brains and bodies on a systemic scale is a first-order issue to almost any other public policy challenge.
The science is clear: if we want to keep people healthy and improve our human capital in America – we need to do three things:
- Limit sugar
- Limit omega-6 fats (seed oils)
- Limit processed grains
We don’t need to consider bans or taxes. We can start by repealing two of the most destructive crony capitalism policies in America:
- The fact that these items are subsidized tens of billions of dollars
- The fact that these items can be bought with SNAP benefits, a government nutrition program 15% of the country relies on. As my TrueMed co-founder Justin Mares points out, revenue from taxpayer-funded SNAP made up close to 20% Coke’s annual US revenue that year. This is evil.
Again, I think a revolution in health will happen and policies will change – but it will happen from the bottom-up: from the hundreds of microdecisions we all make every day.
If this resonates, sing up for my daily email here:
Calley Means 
This has been something I have been saying for the post 10 Years!
Thank you very much Calley. I live in Spain and here the health system is also rigged. Supermarkets are full of junk food and childhood obesity is already a scandal that can’t seem to be stopped. I will be sharing your posts on the networks. We have to raise our voice by all possible means.
Tinguaro Garcia
I saw ur interview with Tucker on FOX NATION and was blown away and also angry. Thank you so much for blowing the whistle on this corruption. This is so sick how they are killing us for profit. Can Congress help stop this? Again, THANK YOU!
Thanks for making this kind of information available- it is MUCH needed. I hope your email list grows very big, very rapidly and the word is spread widely! Thank you for being willing to share this information so that people will be aware of how they are being manipulated in ways that aren’t good for their health or lives.
My husband & I saw your Fox Nation interview and are interested in seeing how this plays out.
I have long been passionate about preventive/ holistic health and cynical about corporate predators and their incestuous relationship with our government. Pls keep us posted!
I’m 100% in Calley and joining the battle. I used to listen to music when I worked out, now I listen to you, Mark Hyman and Robert Lustig. At 66 I turned it all around and Fatima Stanford can take her genetics to the trash while she deposits her check from Big Pharma. I will be a foot soldier in this cause until they bury me, nothing more important than the health of our children and adults of the future. You can read about me on my Instagram, stephenskellycoach. The only working out I did for the better part of 60+ years was with a fork and my mouth. Now, you’d have to search from sea to shining sea to find somebody who can match my workout! Not a chance, not a fu$@ing chance!
Talk soon,
Stephen Skelly
I just listened to Bari Weiss’ podcast where she interviewed you and Vinay and the other Dr. I liked what your take was on how our food and subsidies are killing us but am glad to know someone who worked for Coke and the sugar industry can share their perspective.
Hi,
I am glad to hear someone agrees with me on the subsides. I once asked my economics professor in graduate school about removing subsides on wheat, corn, soy etc and instead subsidizing fruits and vegetables. She responded that it wouldn’t work/never going to happened.
Our usurious private for-profit debt-based monetary system empowers the few who are making all these bad decisions about what should be happening. Money is the governing factor so it must become a public utility dedicated to beneficial public policy. As long as public policy is in the hands of those seeking to maximize personal gain things will continue to get worse. monetaryalliance.org
I saw your talk with Russel Brand, happy to hear you speaking out.
Aristotle noted that money played two roles. One as a medium of exchange and two an instrument of power which stems of money being a “store of value” which can be hoarded, withheld from the market and used to dominate it. The Egyptians, the high middle-ages in Europe and in a town in Austria in 1931-32 in the depths of the Great Depression, had monetary systems in which the currency went down in value 1% per month which discouraged hoarding (value was restored by purchasing a stamp each month in the latter example), and it increases circulation velocity, so more can be done with less. Most astonishing, due to ‘the dynamics of net present value’ the society shifted from thinking short-term to thinking long-term, building a ski jump, replanting forests, a larger water reservoir etc. So much benefit was coming back to them that they began paying their local taxes in advance. In the 15 months before the government/central bank banned the currency plunging them back from 0% to 30% unemployment, they accomplished $2.5 million in public works circulating only $6000 and hundreds of towns throughout Germany and Austria, even in the US, wanted to duplicate what was called ‘The Miracle of Wörgl.’ American Economist Irving Fisher even wrote a manual on how to do stamp scrip and recommended it as an emergency measure to end the depression. He was rebuffed and he and colleagues came back with a proposal aligned with the Constitution in 33 then again in 39, also rejected. That solution was proposed again in 2011, this leverage point must be changed.