#222 – Sugar, Soda, and Society: Insider Insights into Coca-Cola, the Metabolic Health Crisis, and Systemic Missteps | Calley Means & Casey Means

The United States government subsidizes ultra-processed foods and sugar, and the healthcare system focuses on treating diseases rather than preventing them. These issues are harming kids’ health and leading to crisis-level rates of prediabetes and diabetes in both adults and children. Siblings Calley Means and Casey Means discuss problems with the food industry, government funding, and healthcare, and they propose possible solutions, while also offering suggestions for parents wanting to set their kids up for better metabolic health right now.

Helpful links

Calley Means: https://calleymeans.com

TrueMed: https://www.truemed.com

Calley Means on Instagram: https://instagram.com/calleymeans

Calley Means on Twitter: https://twitter.com/calleymeans

Calley Means on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calley-means-a29b5512/

Casey Means on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcaseyskitchen/

Casey Means on Twitter: https://twitter.com/drcaseyskitchen

Casey Means on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-means-md/

4:01 — Kids are developing prediabetes and Type 2 diabetes at alarming rates

Prediabetes and Type 2 diabetes used to be conditions largely seen only in adults, but that has changed dramatically.

Thirty percent (roughly) of teens have prediabetes or diabetes. That is an unfathomable statistic. Even with you pursuing this metabolic health road, I didn’t fully understand what diabetes was until very recently. That means those poor children, their cells are literally malfunctioning. That’s essentially what diabetes is. And prediabetes—their blood sugar is totally dysregulated, which as we learned from Levels, is the underpinning of really almost every other disease that is costing our budget and hobbling American life. When, a generation ago, as Dr. Rob Lustig has said, a doctor in his profession treating diabetes didn’t see a kid in their career. Now it’s just a steady stream they’re building. They’re building units in hospitals, treating metabolic dysfunction among kids.

5:33 — The government subsidizes ultra-processed foods

Calley Means shares how subsidies are partially responsible for the massive amounts of ultra-processed foods in the American diet.

The fact that Coca-Cola receives a large portion of their money from government programs for lower-income folks… Ten billion goes directly from the government treasury to soda companies every year. It leads to incentives to have people justify why they keep those programs going. And, in the rooms with the NAACP and Coke paying these civil rights groups to say that it was racist to cut funding for Coke—it was, “Oh, we don’t want to take away choice from these lower-income kids. Oh, we don’t want to be paternalistic.” But of course, what’s paternalistic is having not just food stamps, but school lunch programs, agriculture subsidies—all in all, I calculated it’s over a hundred billion dollars a year. We’re really subsidizing ultra-processed food.

13:05 — Ultra-processed food companies incentivize trusted institutions

Calley Means describes the main culprit of the metabolic health crisis.

The American Diabetes Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have both accepted millions of dollars from Coke. And you step back and you accept the fact that the metabolic crisis is really an underpinning of our health crisis right now. And then you look at the factors of that, and it’s obviously eating, it’s sedentary lifestyle, it’s chronic stress, it’s [lack of] sleep. But certainly if you were to rank them, liquified sugar, which is essentially a new phenomenon, basically a weapon of mass destruction, particularly with the no-fiber, liquid form—just literally loading that sugar right to your bloodstream at an unprecedented level—this is a chief culprit, if we’re isolating one thing of diabetes and the metabolic health crisis. And the American Diabetes Association is actually accepting money from Coke and not identifying sugary drinks as a culprit. You know, this is what happens. And that was the playbook. It’s rigging institutions of trust.

21:48 — We only get one life to live

Calley Means shares the motivation and inspiration to pivot from his career in politics and start TrueMed.

A lot of these conditions aren’t luck. They really are tied to metabolic function, which leading doctors don’t even totally understand. And then the last thing, Casey, just to tie it all together, is burying unexpectedly our mom and thinking about these issues—I think it’s a cliche, but it’s very true. You’ve only got one life, and I think we are—and I think many people when, when you really dig down—are in a privileged position to exert their talents where they feel like there’s a big problem. And what I learned from you is—even without a big plan, if you really do that with good energy, it can work out in many ways. So that’s what led me to this, and it led me to start just speaking out in ways that I might have been scared to before and just let the chips fall where they may. Because life is short. And I do think in this era, where institutions are failing us, we need systemic change.

25:42 — The metabolic health crisis is problematic for the economy

Having a population that’s largely sick has economic ramifications.

It’s just so simple. But if you ignore the pillars of metabolic health, if you’re getting crappy sleep, if you’re not eating well, if 75% of your fuel is ultra-processed crap that we’re not biologically made to eat, if you’re constantly experiencing chronic stress and not doing anything to manage that, if you’re living sedentary—when we are made to be in the sunlight and moving—you are just not going to be at your best. And if you add that and add the statistics about the fact that we’re getting two hours less sleep than we did a hundred years ago, that we’re massively more sedentary, that we’re eating and putting in our bodies just absolutely processed inflammatory crap, you multiply that out… You just have humans, kids just not at their best and just not living an inspired, thriving life. So it’s a disaster. I think just caring about American competitiveness from the high end. I think it’ll be the existential problem in our country because we’re becoming a sick, depressed, infertile—very infertile—and overweight population at an exponential rate while bankrupting the country.

27:09 — Giving kids ultra-processed foods sets them up for metabolic health issues

Calley Means shares how ultra-processed foods are often a kid’s first solid food.

They hand you a pamphlet, literally with the advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Their first food should be processed puffs. That is literally what the American Academy of Pediatrics says. And then it’s just this pharmaceutical bandwagon. No discussion of how that kid should not be eating ultra-processed food, and the metabolic health crisis. That in fact, it’s almost encouraging that metabolic health crisis for the kid. That kid’s walking into a space where we’re absolutely getting bombarded with chronic stressors. Where SSRI intake among high schoolers is totally normalized, but there’s no curriculum in any public school that teaches meditation or stress-regulation management. The school start times—the major sleep foundations, and researchers in the country are all saying that it’s absolutely detrimental to the circadian rhythm, which is one of the most important parts of development. Nobody’s changed that. So we have almost this violence on every level. I use the word violent, but it is, I think, very destructive of almost every lever of metabolic health that the kids walk into.

36:48 — Three ingredients make up the problematic foundation of ultra-processed foods

Calley Means describes the three ingredients to avoid—added sugar, processed grains, and seed oils—to benefit kids’ health.

Those three ingredients I mentioned are essentially new ingredients that are the foundation of kids’ food. And if you as a parent can just scan the label and cut those three ingredients out, you’re  basically getting 80 to 90% there, in my opinion… There’s all this talk about the parents and the birthday parties and giving the kids the sugar. And it’s crazy. It is like a big peer pressure thing. It’s everywhere. I mean, you were like a weirdo for not giving your two-year-old sugar. I think there’s two dynamics there. Number one is that those parents are following USDA recommendations. I think the most shameful policy in the United States right now is that the USDA says that Americans two years and up can have up to 10% as added sugar, which is just unconscionable.

42:49 — Parents have a lot of control over what their kids eat—especially when they’re young

Fostering healthy eating in young children helps set them up for better health as they grow.

You can’t control and lock your kid up (that’s going to cause much bigger problems) and totally moderate what they’re eating when they’re in high school. But you as a parent, from zero to two, have full control. And I do think all parents are on their own journey. But you set your kid up and their microbiome in their body up for a lot of good things.

46:49 —You can’t control other adults in your family

Siblings Calley and Casey Means talk about having to relinquish control over other people’s health in their family.

Well, one big one, Casey, is you can’t control anyone, as you’ve elucidated very well. I think I’ve learned from you: we have a dad who’s our best friend, who’s really healthy and practicing great habits, but like any person in their mid-seventies, we’re worried about his health. And a lot of our friends are worried about their parents’ health. And as I got radicalized and felt more knowledgeable about these metabolic health issues, I got kind of angry at him. I’m like, “Dad, you’ve got to do this…” and that energy didn’t work very well. And then you helped me on this… Actually just focusing on myself and the energy I brought in—really not releasing control over him. Casey, you said something very powerful—if you don’t mind me sharing—but just that, it’s almost an extreme stance on it, but like, you’d rather him die early than us having controlling impulses that sour the time that he’s here. And it just is probably not even going to work.

1:02:59 — The healthcare industry isn’t incentivized in the correct ways

Casey Means discusses how the healthcare system is often incentivized to treat with medications, rather than to prevent diseases in the first place through lifestyle or to leverage healthy habits to reverse disease.

We’re actually co-opted by pharma to be like, “Okay, a good outcome is a patient who’s compliant on blood pressure therapy if they have high blood pressure, not a patient who’s actually reversed their high blood pressure.” And truthfully, I feel like if we tied payments to good health outcomes and you said to Dr. Joe out there starting in a couple months, “You are only going to get paid more if your patient reverses their hypertension, things would change instantly. It’s all incentives, like you talk about. And so I think there are ways to make it so that people don’t think, “Yeah, I think pharma would probably suffer and maybe hospitals.” Like you said, those are some of the biggest industries and so it would have economic implications, but I think if you change the incentives, innovation will follow in really amazing ways.

1:07:54 — Calley Means describes, TruMed, his tech startup

TruMed enables people to use their HSAs and FSAs to buy healthy food, exercise, and supplements.

We make it as easy and compliant as possible to get a doctor’s note for me for metabolic healthy items, from an Eight Sleep to supplements to fresh food…hopefully Levels one day. And with that note, save—you know, spend tax-free money and save 30%, 405, 50%. And the way we are doing this is literally just putting a survey right in the payment flow… You just take a couple-minute survey that meets the compliance standards for an asynchronous medical consultation, buy the product with your HSA/FSA if you’re trying to prevent or reverse a condition. And then you get the compliance information. You get the note from us asynchronously. So that’s what we’re doing, Casey, we’re working with mission-driven brands. And soon you can go to TruMed.com and see some of your favorite brands. And if you’ve got your HSA/FSA account, you can use that money—not waiting to get sick and buy drugs, but to stay healthy right now.

Calley Means (00:00:06):

The metabolic crisis is really an underpinning of our health crisis right now. Then, you look at the factors of that and it’s obviously eating, it’s sedentary lifestyle, it’s chronic stress, it’s sleep. But certainly if you were to rank them, liquified sugar, which is essentially a new phenomenon, basically a weapon of mass destruction, no fiber, liquid form, just literally loading that sugar right to your bloodstream at an unprecedented level of a human eating a fruit or something like that. This is a chief culprit. If we’re isolate one thing of diabetes and the metabolic health crisis and the American Diabetes Association is actually accepting money from Coke and not identifying sugary drinks as a culprit, this is what happens. That was the playbook. It’s rigging institutions of trust.

Ben Grynol (00:00:58):

I’m Ben Grenel, part of the early startup team here at Levels. We’re building tech that helps people to understand their metabolic health and along the way we have conversations with thought leaders about research backed information so you can take your health into your own hands. This is A Whole New Level.

Casey Means (00:01:28):

Welcome to A Whole New Level. My name is Dr. Casey Means co-founder and chief medical officer of levels, and I could not be more excited to welcome my brother Calley Means to the podcast today. Calley has burst onto the health scene over the last year really speaking out about the rigged systems of big food, big pharma, big healthcare, big ag, and how they use a really structured playbook to essentially push forward policies that are ultimately making Americans sick and dependent and highly profitable for these industries. He’s really struck a chord over the last year on social media and on podcasts and it’s been really fun to watch. We’re going to talk all about that on this podcast today. Calley is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Business School. He started his career in the political world before really experiencing a huge shift in evolution towards being a health entrepreneur, a health evangelist, and a whistleblower of these big corporate industries that are keeping Americans sick.

(00:02:37):

He is the founder of TrueMed, which is an incredibly innovative company that is allowing people for the first time to use in a really efficient way, HSA and FSA funding to be able to purchase healthy food and lifestyle products tax-free. Really, for the first time making healthy food and lifestyle products the cheaper option, which in my opinion is something that’s going to be a critical piece of the puzzle in reversing the chronic disease epidemics. We’ve got to make the healthier choices the easier and cheaper options. TrueMed is working to do this. We’re going to get into all of this on the podcast today. Welcome Calley to a whole new level.

(00:03:25):

Your journey launching into the health space really started on Twitter of all places. You had a tweet on January 2nd after we’d all been home for the holidays together and you were talking about how corporations like Coke actually pay advocacy groups to call certain policies like sugar taxes racist, so they can barrel through their agendas that are going to be favorable to corporate interests. This tweet went crazy. It got 12 million views and really put you in the middle of a national conversation here. Can you unpack what that tweet was about and really why it struck such a chord with viewers?

Calley Means (00:04:08):

Well, I’ve been talking with you for years. The Twitter is just another metabolically unhealthy thing. It drives up that chronic stress and I’ve been hot or cold on it, but I really do think this was positive. I mean that tweet tapped in, in the coming week I got thousands of messages. They were overwhelmingly parents and moms. I think what it tapped into is people are trying to put their finger on something that just isn’t making sense. I think when you look specifically at kids, there’s something very bad happening. You’ve talked about this case and you will talk about this, but you’ve been the leader and inspiration for me on this. But the 30% roughly of teens who have pre-diabetes or diabetes, that is an unfathomable statistic. Even with you pursuing this metabolic health road, I didn’t fully understand what diabetes was until very recently.

(00:05:04):

That literally means those poor children, their cells are literally malfunctioning. That’s essentially what diabetes is and pre-diabetes. Their blood sugar is totally dysregulated, which as we learn from Levels is the underpinning of really almost every other disease that is costing our budget and hobbling American life. When a generation ago as Doctor Rob Lustig has said, a doctor in his profession treating diabetes didn’t see a kid in their career. Now it’s just a steady stream. They’re building units and hospitals treating metabolic dysfunction among kids. I think that’s what this tweet tapped into. There’s so many doctors from you to Dr. Lustig, to Dr. Mark Hyman who’ve influenced me and millions of others on the medical part of this.

(00:05:52):

But, what I realized in connecting the dots recently, what I did see is there’s real corruption here and it’s working with these folks. Looking back on my early career in politics, they weren’t evil. They weren’t going back home thinking that they’re evil, working with Coca-Cola, working with civil rights groups to try to convince lower income kids to drink soda and that’s okay and get federal funding for soda. I think there’s just nefarious interest. It’s just as simple as follow the money. The fact that Coca-Cola receives a large portion of their money from government programs for lower income folks from food stamps, $10 billion goes directly from the government treasury to soda companies every year. It leads to incentives to have people justify why they keep those programs going. In the rooms with the NAACP and Coke, again, paying these civil rights groups to say that it was racist to cut funding for Coke. It was, “Oh, we don’t want to take away choice from these lower income kids. Oh, we don’t want to be paternalistic.”

(00:06:56):

But, of course what’s paternalistic is having not just food stamps but school lunch programs, agriculture subsidies, all in all I calculated it’s over $100 billion a year we’re really subsidizing ultra processed foods. Casey on my journey, just getting out of politics, getting more into entrepreneurship, seeing your journey, being inspired by the doctors that are in the Levels network and our own experience with our mother who really, I believe, and I know you believe her life was cut short due to metabolic dysfunction. Then seeing my kid recently born, our first son Rourke go into the world and watching the world, kids are going into really not just diabetes and pre pre-diabetes, but fatty liver disease at 20% of teens and 40% of high school seniors having a mental health disorder. Rates of almost every condition skyrocketing among young adults. It helped me put the pieces together and I’ve been happy to try to give a voice to the incentives I saw working with these companies.

Casey Means (00:08:05):

There are so many things I want to follow up from that answer. I would really love to hear you had this really unique perspective early on in your career really being inside the room where some of these conversations are happening that ultimately lead to policies and agendas that are keeping Americans sick. Can you paint a picture of what some of these conversations were like that you were privy to in the early part of your career with the food corporations that ultimately lead to these downstream issues that are allowing for sugar to basically be in everything and be subsidized by our government?

Calley Means (00:08:40):

I think you saw me early on and like a lot of people, I wanted to get into politics and public policy. Growing up in D.C., we were very inspired by my dad. I think ego was involved in wanting to be impacting policy. But we grew up in D.C., and I really did, I think, have good intentions and wanted to get on campaigns and help American competitiveness. What I learned quickly initially starting on campaigns is that people from both sides of the aisle after the campaigns, they inevitably get pulled into lobbying and consulting for companies. The two biggest spenders in D.C., number one is by far pharma. Pharma spends three times more than any industry, five times more than the oil industry, which we hear so much about, and then food obviously one of the most employed and important industries in the country. Inevitably, I found myself very quickly sitting across the desk and helping those two companies.

(00:09:39):

In the case of food, I don’t think we fully understand. It’s not an evil conspiracy, it’s just incentives. Everyone eats food. These food companies are trying to make food cheaper and more addictive. Just as the social media companies are having data scientists figure out how to raise our dopamine levels and get us to stay a little bit longer in social media and have dopamine just keep getting that little nibble so we stay on, it’s the same thing with food companies. I wouldn’t even say this is that evil, but to think that there aren’t thousands of scientists that are working at food companies figuring out how to, I say weaponize, food to put that perfect natural flavor and to make it a little bit more addictive, to put that perfect balance of fat and sugar. To add that sugar, significantly more sugar than we’re we’re evolutionarily made to eat to rise that dopamine signal, as Mark Hyman said, if you do a brain scam, it’s the same areas of the brain that lights up when you take any other drug like heroin, sugar. A different scale, but it’s the same mechanism.

(00:10:38):

That’s happening. As we know from Levels, that’s leading to really our food and other metabolic habits are leading to the bulk of the deaths and healthcare costs in the United States. But food companies want to protect that. What they do and the way food companies protect and really I think gaslight what’s happening, which is that we’re all getting sicker because of food is they pay off institutions of trust. It’s really quite simple. When you have an issue like people asking whether we should be funding in food stamps sugar water, diabetes water, Coke, $10 billion, whether we still should still be having subsidies for sugar, whether the USDA should still be recommending sugar for kids, which they do today. You just go down the list. Who do our stakeholders trust?

(00:11:30):

The civil rights groups, it’s very simple and it’s still happening today and it’s just the raw reality of it. If you call someone racist, if you call someone a sexist, if you call someone an inflammatory thing like that, it’s going to shut down debate. So it was pretty shocking sitting in these rooms with Coke and the NAACP and other civil rights groups. It really is pretty much that transactional. It’s like, “Hey, we don’t want Coke to be taken away from lower income children, children of color. Can we do an exchange of funds. Can you do some PR and make some statements about how there’s really racial bad motivations of taking this Coke away from these kids?” Again, these people don’t think they’re evil, but it’s a very transactional conversation to rig the debate.

(00:12:11):

The other group and the other lever of trust that influences both consumers and very importantly lawmakers and regulators is just research. I was very surprised that as a junior person at one of these companies, I was creating lists of nutrition researchers. I learned that food companies spend 11 times more on basic nutritional research than NIH. If you look at what led to the food pyramid in the 1990s, which said we should eat less healthy fats, more carbs, less protein, shift to sugar and carbs, that the foundational research for that was Harvard studies paid for by the American Sugar Council. They didn’t even try to hide the name back then. It was the American Sugar Council. Up until today, you have the NIH study saying that Lucky Charms are healthier than beef from the Tufts University funded by the NIH, also funded by food companies.

(00:13:06):

What we did with Coke is we worked to really create a donation strategy and a research strategy for nutrition research. Some of the studies still to this day question whether sugar cause obesity, which is just a scandal. The fact even the studies just saying different things, just confusing whether obesity is caused by saturated fat or X or Y or Z, we see the news every day. Just the fact that there’s a little bit of confusion is the goal. That was one.

(00:13:38):

The last thing I’m mentioning, Casey, which is just shocking and I keep mentioning Rob Lustig, but he’s a warrior and this obviously has had a big impact on us. I saw donations from Coke and a strategy to directly influence the medical groups themselves, the American Diabetes Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics specifically have both accepted millions of dollars from Coke.

(00:14:03):

You step back and you just think about, you accept the fact that the metabolic crisis is really an underpinning of our health crisis right now. Then you look at the factors of that and it’s obviously eating, it’s sedentary lifestyle, it’s chronic stress, it’s sleep, but certainly if you were to rank them liquified sugar, which is essentially a new phenomenon, basically a weapon of mass destruction, particularly with the kid, no fiber, liquid form, just literally loading that sugar to your bloodstream at an unprecedented level of a human eating fruit or something like that. This is a chief culprit if we’re isolate one thing of diabetes and the metabolic health crisis and the American Diabetes Association is actually accepting money from Coke and not identifying sugary drinks as a culprit, this is what happens. That was the playbook. It’s rigging institutions of trust.

Casey Means (00:15:06):

If you have heard me on other podcasts that I truly think there are very few problems in life that are not made better by blood sugar control and optimal metabolic health. That’s exactly what we’ve designed the Levels program to help you understand, which strategies are most effective for your body to achieve these goals. We’re all walking around trying to figure out what food is right for us. The purpose of Levels is to cut through all that noise. It shows you how food affects your health by pairing a continuous glucose monitor with our app that gives you instant feedback on what you’re putting in your body and how different lifestyle habits like exercise, sleep, and stress management are impacting your blood sugar. Using CGM has helped me so much over the past four years. It helps me keep my weight stable much more effortlessly.

(00:15:49):

I’ve learned the food swaps that work best for my body like flax crackers instead of wheat crackers and pears work really well for me, but grapes don’t so much. That’s been really useful. I’m also a notorious night owl and I’ve really learned how much prioritizing sleep helps my blood sugar. Countless other things, but those are some of the ones that come to mind right now. Obviously I can’t recommend it enough. I really encourage you to try a glucose monitor at least once in your life so you can see exactly what’s going on with your metabolic health and really just solidify the simple personalized strategies for stable blood sugar for your body. You can get access easily at levels.link/podcast. Now let’s get back to this episode.

(00:16:42):

It’s so powerful, Calley, when you lay it out. Rigging institutes of trust, hijacking the research industry, three times more lobbying than any other industry, and then seeding confusion to just get people a little bit confused so they don’t know what the right answer is. It’s a brilliant playbook, to be honest. I so admire that you’ve put this all together. I kind of want to ask you a little about your journey because obviously I’ve been up close and personal, I’m your sister, but it is so fascinating and I think your journey is really an archetype of hope for what other people can strive for in their careers. I think a lot of people we know, just a lot of people in the world, they’re going along doing their career and they’re enjoying it, they’re exhilarated, they’re liking their work, or maybe they’re not, but are maybe not seeing how they are playing a role in a force that may actually be detrimental to society in a way.

(00:17:43):

You were in the beginning of your career, you were loving it. It’s been 10, 15 years and a lot has happened since then and now you’re looking back on it and can see things really, really clearly. I wonder if you could just lay out a bit of how have the dominoes unfolded for you to have this awakening. I just look at you and your career right now and what you’re doing and you’re on fire, you’re electric, you are living your passion, but it’s a journey. It’s a lot of dominoes having to fall in a big web. I wonder if you could walk through a little bit about how that unfolded, keeping in mind just honestly advice for maybe other people of how to take stock of their lives and what they’re doing with their time and how to really understand to move in a direction towards purpose like you have found.

Calley Means (00:18:40):

Everyone’s unique, but here’s my takeaways. Casey, I don’t need to tell you this and we’re still trying to unpack this with therapists, but for some reason we were from early age success driven, just trying to get those go up the standard pathway. I thought consulting for pharma companies and working for the up the fairway politicians and heralding how great our food system was and frankly trying to go to the good colleges, Stanford, Harvard, you being the pride of the family, Stanford, Stanford Med School, surgical residency. This is the first thing we talked about was kind of the traditional mechanisms of success. I think a lot of people can probably relate to that in just various ways. It’s like we have a success kind of go up the ladder. My journey is very influenced by you, Casey, because again, it was foundational to your identity.

(00:19:39):

It was really core, at least publicly, to our family’s identity, your successes up the ladder of medicine and worrying through that. Just so listeners know your story, when you were looking at your patients and saying that they weren’t getting better and realizing that at Stanford Med School they don’t require one nutrition class and everything you have dealt with is really committing surgery on this inflammation but you didn’t even understand where that inflammation was coming from. You abruptly left. That was shocking. I was still very traditional minded. We had a tough couple years, I didn’t understand what you were doing. I’m like, “You’re throwing your life away.” 12 years of training. It was so scary. I was scared for you. It was just like, “What are you doing? This isn’t the path.” I do feel like institutions are just the centrifugal force to have people go into these traditional industries.

(00:20:41):

I feel like that is financial incentives. This isn’t conspiratorial, but Stanford Medical School or Harvard Business School or these institutions, there’s great benefits to many of these institutions, but they are paid for and they’re mechanisms of traditional industry and really are conveyor belts to feeding cogs into the traditional industries. I do think when you step back, and most of us would agree, these traditional industries from finance, to the environment, to health, to education, they’re failing us. That’s just the disconnect I’m seeing.

(00:21:22):

Going to Harvard Business School, a lot of my friends and me write our essays about changing into the world. Then 85% of the class goes into a traditional job at a traditional industry. Now that’s not any shade on anyone else and everyone’s on their own journey, but there’s a mismatch to that. Interestingly, this impacted me at Harvard Business School where I went, they did a study of graduates 10 years after graduating from HBS and it was the most clinically depressed group of people this professor studied.

(00:21:51):

They studied a bunch of different socioeconomic classes. Just from that little vantage point, I think you have this thing where doctors and people that go to these good institutions, they’re kind of feeling trapped in these institutions and there’s epidemic levels of depression. Doctors have the highest suicide rate and one of the highest burnout rates of any profession. I just think that’s just worth acknowledging. Okay? What I learned from you, Casey, is that having that bravery, pushing back against that sunk cost fallacy that I’ve done 13 years of this and I have to keep going, which so many people and totally makes sense, that you could thrive on the other side. That had a huge impact on me.

(00:22:35):

The second thing that had a huge impact on me is a foundational moment for us in 2021 where our best friend, our mom was perfectly healthy, thriving, but had a pain in her stomach and went to the hospital and got a scan and realized she had stage four pancreatic cancer. 71 had just bought a RV with my dad to travel the country and a boat and to have a good time and had so many plans and abruptly was dead in 13 days. That was around the same time as I was selling my other company, really kind of thinking hard about Covid and how our health institutions have let us down and spending a lot of time with you Casey, and just being so inspired by how you had thrived and thinking a lot about my early career being really ideological and mission driven to help American competitors, but really seeing, particularly with Covid highlighting that if we have an unhealthy population that’s not at their best, where literally our brains and bodies are systematically breaking down and we’re not talking about that, that’s really the first order issue.

(00:23:42):

The fact that during Covid, which was a condition that really essentially only killed predominantly metabolic unhealthy people like most other conditions that we weren’t talking about metabolic habits, there’s something really wrong here. I was really thinking a lot about that. Then this experience with mom did a couple things. It reiterated, of course, this foundational belief on metabolic health because she had pre-diabetes, which is very tied to many forms of cancer. The doctors at Palo Alto, as she was dying, was saying how unlucky it was for her to have pancreatic cancer. A lot of these conditions aren’t luck. They really are tied to metabolic dysfunction, which leading doctors don’t even totally understand.

(00:24:28):

Then the last thing, Casey, just to tie it all together is just burying our mom and thinking about these issues, I just think it’s a cliche, but it’s very true. It’s just like you’ve only got one life and I think many people when you really dig down are in a privileged position to exert their talents where they feel like there’s a big problem. What I learned from you is even without a big plan, if you really do that with good energy, it can work out in many ways. That’s what led me to this and it led me to start speaking out in ways that I might have been scared to before and just let the chips fall where they may because life is short. I do think in this era where institutions are failing us and we need systemic change, more people need to speak out.

Casey Means (00:25:19):

It’s crazy because I’ve lived through all of this with you and yet hearing you talk about it still inspires me so much.

Calley Means (00:25:25):

Thank you.

Casey Means (00:25:26):

I think that fundamentally what I’m hearing you say is a lot about examining our relationship with fear and scarcity and sunk cost and waking up from those things and really looking at this life as precious and finite and abundant. A lot of the constructs we create in our heads that are culturally sanctioned, they are keeping us limited in paths that may not be serving our highest purpose. There is an element of bravery and just realizing that there is something on the other side of the choices that you might be in right now. You may not know exactly what that is, but this is one of the reasons why our family’s very … We talk a lot about gratitude, but I think that one of the reasons gratitude is so powerful is because it helps shape your brain to realize that there is so much abundance in life.

(00:26:24):

Abundance is the antidote to scarcity. Scarcity is fundamentally rooted in fear. Just shaping your life around how much there is an opportunity, I think to me, really feels like the foundation of having some of that bravery that you’re talking about. I want to just maybe use this as a little segue because I think another piece of your journey that was after mom dying was that that was right when you were having a child, your first child Rourke. To me, that also feels like a huge part of this journey because it became then not just about you, but about this child that you were bringing into the world. Nothing has been more inspiring to me than watching you become a father and how you are not only working for you and your passion and what America needs, but also what this baby needs. I’d love for you to talk about how being a father has impacted this passion for health. Maybe just touch a little bit about why you are so fired up about children’s health as it pertains to our rigged institutions in this country and corporate interests above human interests.

Calley Means (00:27:34):

Let me just start really high level, because I studied economics. I’m going to start really high and drill right down to having a kid. When you think about the economy, the foundational unit is individual humans and the point of the economy is for people to be happy and live meaningful lives. The base unit is a human. I think the metabolic health framework is the most important framework in the world because if you get metabolic health right, that baseline unit, those inputs in the economy are thriving, are inspired, are feeling good, are operating at their best. It’s just so simple. If you ignore the pillars of metabolic health, if you’re getting crappy sleep, if you’re not eating well, if you’re putting 75% of your fuel ultra processed crap that we’re not biologically made to eat, if you’re constantly experiencing chronic stress and not doing anything to manage that, if you’re living sedentary when we are made to be in the sunlight and moving, you are just not going to be at your best.

(00:28:42):

If you add that and add the statistics about the fact that we’re getting two hours less sleep than we did a hundred years ago, that we’re massively more sedentary, that we’re eating and putting on our bodies just absolutely processed inflammatory crap, you multiply that out. You just have the economy. You just have humans, kids just not at their best and just not living an inspired, thriving life. It’s a disaster. I think just caring about American competitiveness for the high end I think will be the existential problem in our country because we’re becoming a sick, depressed, infertile, very infertile, and overweight population at an exponential rate while bankrupting the country. It’s also thinking about the kid. I just think, why is this happening? Why are pediatricians essentially saying that the most important thing you can do for your kid is give them a pharmaceutical 70 shots, which many of them might be important, but there’s much more to health.

(00:29:41):

That’s essentially pediatric medicine. They hand you a pamphlet literally with the advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics, their first food should be puffs, processed puffs. That is literally what the American Academy of … And then it’s just this pharmaceutical bandwagon. No discussion of how that kid should not be eating ultra processed food and the metabolic health crisis. In fact it’s almost encouraging that metabolic health crisis for the kid. That kid’s walking into a space where we’re absolutely getting bombarded with chronic stressors, where SSRI intake among high schoolers is totally normalized, but there’s no curriculum in any public school that teaches meditation or stress regulation management where the school start times by the major sleep foundations and researchers in the country are all saying that it’s absolutely detrimental to their circadian rhythm, which is one of the most important parts of development and nobody’s changed that.

(00:30:39):

We have almost like this violent on every level. I use the word violent, but is I think it is. It’s very destructive, almost every lever of metabolic health that the kids walk into. I think as a parent, the best thing you can do is just set the brain and body of your child up to thrive and deal with the inevitable. If we don’t have children knowing stress regulation techniques, mistakes I and inevitably the world will make, and being able to manage that and being able to meditate and being able to know the principles of mindfulness. If we don’t have kids with a great relationship with food and sleep and movement, I think it’s setting them up for lack of success. I really think actually, if I were to wave a magic wand and really what I’m trying to do with TrueMed and speaking out and working with you, Casey, is I think we can move public policy to really be thinking about as the foundation of public policy, how do we improve metabolic health, particularly in our kids.

(00:31:36):

I just think it’s the most important if you think about it, just obviously the most important lever of society, the highest leverage point. You can just start at home and watching these precious little guys, and particularly my little guy, kids are born perfect, they have a predisposition of natural food, to movement, to curiosity, to awe. I do think society through frankly corporate interests and some rigged institutions, see a healthy kid is unprofitable and a sick kid as profitable and a kid in fear and parents in fear is profitable and send us in the wrong direction. We got to ask questions, Casey. You inspired me through asking questions through the medical system and that’s the path I’m on.

Casey Means (00:32:31):

Well, let’s get practical and tactical for parents because we have a lot of parents who listen to this podcast and I’d be really interested, you are a total health evangelist and have really embodied this passion over the past few years at the same time as you’re becoming a parent. I’d be curious, what are you seeing as a new parent? Your work is what? 16 months old now. What have you seen over the last year and a half? You mentioned the puffs and the American Academy pediatrics giving terrible advice about food, but amongst your peers, amongst culture, what is the landscape of being a new parent right now and what is the battle that people are fighting and what does healthy parenting look like to you? What are the frameworks that parents should be using as they have a new baby for healthy lifestyle? Some of the key factors.

Calley Means (00:33:37):

Great. I’ll start with the top down kind of how I think about it from the incentives of the industries that impact your kid’s health. Then I’ll talk bottoms up on some tips we’ve been working on together specifically for our child. From the top down, I do think there’s a big mindset shift and I think parents need to get out of this mindset of fear that the society and institutions are trying to get you in. I just want to set the table. Healthcare is the largest and fastest growing industry in the United States. That is just crazy when you think about it. The largest and fastest growing. I have a tech company, we both do. Generally innovation in most industries like tech means lower cost, better outcomes. In healthcare it’s higher cost, worse outcomes, and it’s growing faster than any other industry.

(00:34:24):

That’s the situation. There’s more people employed in health than any other industry and those incentives, that [inaudible 00:34:30] that’s built to grow. Again, not even pointing fingers at evil people, it’s just the incentives of this institution. It’s bigger than any one person. The most important thing for that system is to get sick people in the system and to get them in for longer periods of time, which means getting them in early. The fact of the matter is getting a child onto the chronic disease, pharmaceutical medical pipeline is very profitable. 30% of kids having pre-diabetes, that’s 30% of teens in the United States needing to go regularly to the doctor for blood tests, for subscriptions, for other issues. Then of course when you get to diabetes, 98% have at least one other comorbidity. Diabetes, as we know from Levels is the blood sugar dysregulation.

(00:35:20):

Many people are on a spectrum far wider than diabetes, pre-diabetes, others, it’s the foundation. You’re going to have those 30% of kids, they’re going to just have to be on the blood pressure medication, have to be on the statin, they’re going to inevitably have fertility issues, they’re going to be on an SSRI because depression is highly tied to pre-diabetes. You’re just going to have all of these appointments, all of these. Just taking any motive away. I think we get to, oh, that’s a conspiracy. This is just if you were to dictate the incentives of what the system agnostically to any morals just would want, that’s it. That’s happening. That’s what your kid is being fed into. I just think from a mindset thing, a lot of these podcasts, inevitably you get some advice and you say consult your doctor.

(00:36:10):

I’ll just say it with chronic disease prevention, with metabolic condition prevention, let’s be very clear about this. When it comes to preventing metabolic conditions, preventing heart disease, diabetes, obesity, depression, et cetera, for your child, you should listen to your doctor, but they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. The track record of the medical system to addressing and preventing metabolic conditions has been an absolute failure. Every single condition from autoimmune conditions, allergies, cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, everything, it’s all going up as we’re spending more to treat it. Why in God’s name would we tell parents, “Don’t question the science, don’t ask one question to your pediatrician.” They’ve failed us. I just would tell parents, and I think we do need to understand humans are the only animal, humans and animals we’ve domesticated like dogs that have metabolic dysfunction.

(00:37:09):

There aren’t systematic rates of diabetes and heart disease and obesity among wild wolves. Dogs who we feed our crap and keep sedentary and indoors have a 50% rate of depression and an over 50% cancer rate, and over 50% of them are obese. That’s happened to humans. The only difference between humans and every other animals is that we’re listening to the experts on preventing metabolic dysfunction and getting terrible advice. That’s just one thing I’d say. It is not conspiratorial to trust yourself and your own intuition with kids. Now, that gets a little bit more into the specifics and the specifics as I think you, Casey, and Levels and the network have has done a really good job is that there’s a lot of incentives to over-complicate it, but it’s not that complicated.

(00:38:00):

When it comes to food, we need to look at what we’re eating. Ultra processed food, which again is what all kids are being pushed onto the puffs and the packages and all these things. The foundation of ultra processed food is three ingredients. It’s added sugar, which amazingly many kids’ foods contain. We’re dramatically obviously eating more processed sugar than we did a hundred years ago. Processed sugar really is a new invention. It used to just be fruits and very rare. Now it’s in all of our food. Highly processed grains, highly processed grains are invention in the last a hundred years. The processing takes the fiber off, takes the nutrition and the fiber of course blunts the glucose impact.

(00:38:42):

I’m speaking to the expert here, but thanks for letting me do it, Casey, I’ve learned this all from you. Then seed oils. Seed oils, you can go down to big rabbit hole on that. I think the core thing I make on seed oils is I think getting into a debate on whether that oil’s best, that oil’s best it misses the point. Seed oils are a brand new invention in the last hundred years. They’re a highly processed industrial byproduct that our body isn’t biologically made to eat it. It’s not a food that we’ve accustomed eating and now it’s the top source of American fat.

(00:39:17):

Just the fact that we’re even in debate whether that’s good or bad, it misses the point. Those three ingredients I mentioned are essentially new ingredients that are the foundation of kids’ food. If you as a parent can just scan the label and cut those three ingredients out, you’re almost forced to feed your kid mostly processed food or potentially some great brands like Serenity Kids like I really like, which is just pasture raised meat and olive oil, really good ingredients, but you’re basically getting 80% to 90% there in my opinion. The last thing I’d say on food is there’s all this talk about the parents and the birthday parties and giving the kids the sugar. It’s crazy.

(00:40:00):

It is a big peer pressure thing. It’s everywhere. I mean you were like a weirdo for not giving your two-year-old sugar. I think there’s two dynamics there. Number one is that those parents are following USDA recommendations. I think the most shameful policy in the United States right now is that the USDA says that American two years up can have up to 10% as added sugar, added sugar. 10%, which is just unconscionable. I do think at the USDA and Dr. Fauci and the head of the NIH as we saw, people listen to the Dr. Faucis of the world. People listen to their doctors and people do what they say quite frankly, for better or worse. I think that we need the peer pressure to go the other way and we need medical leaders to follow the science and say the truth, which is that kids shouldn’t be eating sugar.

(00:40:56):

I don’t want to ban sugar. I also don’t necessarily think we should ban cigarettes or alcohol, but I don’t think we should recommend it for kids. This is a free country, I’m a libertarian. Thinking something should exist is different than recommending to kids. Again, just as we don’t recommend cigarettes to kids, we should not be recommending sugar to kids. That that’s it, Casey.

(00:41:17):

The last thing and can take it wherever you want, but the last thing I just say is I think education, the other important institution I think that’s letting us down is very tied to health. I think where do we lose our way where watching my son at 16 months old, the fastest learning curve of his life, all he does is get up each day and explore the world and play. He’s learning to talk, he’s learning to walk, he’s learning to regulate his emotions. He’s learning more at a faster rate than he ever will at his life. It’s almost as if schools take those learnings of what actually works for exponential learning growth, of play and curiosity, and just sits five-year-olds at a desk and almost just does the reverse of everything that’s worked up into that point in a sedentary sunless room for seven hours a day. I think there’s something really wrong with the connection between education and health, particularly early childhood education, which there’s a lot of people thinking about and I’m digging into.

Casey Means (00:42:19):

Not to mention with school lunches like you touched on Nora La Tore, who’s the CEO of Eat Real, an amazing organization talks about how public schools are the largest fast food chain in America. They are serving essentially fast food, largely ultra processed food, like 3 billion meals a year that is essentially by and large not supporting the health of children. In addition to putting kids in chairs, indoors, windowless rooms, not moving, also of course being gavaged with this ultra processed food. I wonder if you could just briefly paint a picture of, you’ve made a lot of very intentional choices with Rourke and his early life. What does a day in the life of Rourke look like and how have you essentially designed his days to support his optimal health based on everything about the health world?

Calley Means (00:43:25):

Yes. The framework I use, again, I’m just repeating what I’ve learned from you here, Casey. I’m so grateful for you.

Casey Means (00:43:31):

No, but you’re putting into action. I haven’t been a parent.

Calley Means (00:43:35):

Yeah, the framework I have used is that the metabolic health pillars aren’t that complicated. I think the most important is food, movement, if you put any animal sedentary, locked up in a cage without a lot of movement, they’re going to essentially go crazy very quickly. What’s happening systematically in humans by choice. Sleep, chronic stress management, and then sunlight and environmental toxins are kind of the pillars. I think you just go down each of those areas and I think in each of those areas, and this is another thing, and you hear this a lot, it’s like, “Gosh, should I really need to worry about my Tide laundry detergent?” Sometimes people follow, frankly, people like you on Instagram, Casey. It’s like, “Gosh, is everything just screwed? Do I have to worry about everything?” My thought is that it’s actually kind of empowering and you’re never going to get it all right, but we have lost our way.

(00:44:29):

Now, I wouldn’t want to go a hundred years back where we didn’t have light in the house and didn’t have modern amenities. But, the pace of innovation has been exponential and astounding right in the past 100 years. We have a lot of good things, but we have lost our way in core areas and we have got to be aware and pay some taxes and take some personal accountability more than I think most people understand or the government or the institutions are telling us we need to to kind of rejigger. Our water is poisoned, our air is not great, our environment with our supplies around the house are not great. Our food is poisoned. I believe the government’s completely let us down. There are many chemicals and pesticides that aren’t even allowed in most other countries.

(00:45:11):

There’s a lot going on. Thinking about each of those pillars, so to answer your question, and I know you said briefly here Casey, but food, try to do whole foods. Kids are made to chew some meat, some pasture raised grass fed steak, or if you’re more on the vegan train, organic vegetables. Really just figure out, I mean, it’s been a journey for me. Just give your food what you should [inaudible 00:45:37] eating. I will say you can’t control and lock your kid up. That’s going to cause much bigger problems and totally monitor what they’re eating when they’re in high school. You, as a parent, from zero to two, have full control. I do think, and I put this a little, all parents are on their own journey, but I mean, you set your kid up and their microbiome up in their body up for a lot of good things if you could just feed that kid natural food and stay away from the sugar seed oils and highly processed grains.

(00:46:06):

I think getting out in the sun, just as a tactical tip, the research on that, Casey you’ve written some great posts on this, Dr. Huberman and others are talking about this, it’s crazy science. It’s just amazing. Our body’s on a 24-hour clock because of the sun, so much of our evolution is because of the sun. It’s not incremental, I thought it was a little fu-fu back in the day. This is very important. Getting Rourke out in the sun is very important, making sure he has time to move. Then I think parenting is, for me, a wake-up call. Casey, we’ve obviously been on this journey together and getting a lot of good feedback from you and a lot of loving support. I think it’s a wake-up call for your own metabolic habits. Chronic stress management is really important and making sure he’s regulated and able to manage his stress. The way to do that is for me to provide a model of that.

(00:47:03):

I think it’s going and being curious on those five pillars as I’m on a journey for reading metabolic health experts and frankly Level’s blog and just working to improve my myself on eating, on stress management, on sleep. At the very least in the first two years, really have a controlled environment for him where he’s getting off to the right start. Because as Casey, we always say, any problem we have is probably our parents fought when we were zero to two.

Casey Means (00:47:35):

We love blaming our parents.

Calley Means (00:47:37):

We’ve had sleep issues and stuff. We had the best parents in the world. I do think the more you dig into this, it’s giving your kid a big favor if you can get their microbiome right, their food right, their sleep right. You’re never really going to have ups and downs but I think that really sets the right baseline.

Casey Means (00:47:58):

I’ve learned so much from you. I’m so glad you went first having kids because I am just going to basically follow your and Leslie’s model completely. It’s amazing. It’s so beautiful. Rourke is just the happiest baby and never gets sick and sleeps perfectly. It’s amazing what you guys have done. This is a different direction I wasn’t totally planning on going in this podcast, but I think it’s interesting because we’re chatting and we’re talking about family and whatnot. We’re in an interesting place right now where we just wrote a book together. We’re obviously on the same mission here. We both have companies in the space that are working to change the incentives of healthcare and empower people to be healthy. You’re taking dad to England in a couple weeks to go to Russell Brand’s conference. I write articles with dad.

(00:48:44):

It’s a affair of metabolic health right now. I’m just curious, what are your reflections for, I don’t know, maybe other people who are listening who are maybe not on this type of journey with their family, this kind of purpose-driven family, or are struggling with family dynamics. What are some of the takeaways you’ve had from the last, honestly few years, but even longer of what it looks like to build a family culture that is healthy and connected in adulthood and where you can work well with a family together. I’m curious to hear what your takeaways from this whole journey has been.

Calley Means (00:49:23):

Well, one big one, Casey, is you can’t control anyone as you’ve really, I think, elucidated very well and I think I’ve learned from you. By this I mean we have a dad who’s just our best friend who’s really healthy and practicing great habits, but like any person in their mid-seventies were worried about his health. A lot of our friends are worried about their parents’ health. And as I got radicalized and felt more knowledgeable about these metabolic health issues, I got kind of angry at him. I’m like, “Dad, you got to do this. You got to do [inaudible 00:49:59] every day. You got to eat the …” And that energy didn’t work very well. Then you helped me on this but I think actually just focusing on myself and the energy I brought and really not releasing control over him.

(00:50:18):

I mean, Casey you said something very powerful if you don’t mind me sharing, but just that it’s almost an extreme stance on it, but you’d rather him die early than us have controlling impulses that the controlling impulses, and tell me if this isn’t right, but just almost can sour the time that’s here and is probably not even going to work. That was very stark to me. I and a lot of people think, “Oh, I can get my parents on the right track if I kamikaze on it.” And just all that. I’ve been very aggressive in my life as you know, and that’s been a big lesson. I think the more you can just put good energy particularly on this health stuff and this trying to grow. That I think not that the outcome is the goal, but I think has influenced him a lot more and brought us closer because people inevitably pick things up. I’ve been impacted most by other people, not with them trying to control or micromanage me, but just seeing their example. That’s been a big lesson with family. I also would say, Casey, that things change very quickly.

(00:51:28):

Every family has struggles and even you and I have had different periods of closeness. That period, as I said, when you left med school, and I thought that was the wrong decision. We had periods years ago where our mom was worried and really trying to get us to be closer together. I just think things can change if focus on yourself and open to that and would’ve never predicted how close we’d become and how such a traumatic event, mommy’s death, would bring us closer together on this mission and just to where we are now. I don’t think it’s that we have some perfect thing that’s never had ups and downs.

(00:52:18):

I think, for me, the big lesson is, I don’t know, I think it’s what you’ve done, Casey. Just focus on your core mission, your core principles, who you are, your principles for life, and then the universe … Usually good things come around to that. I don’t know that that’s something I’m trying to work on every day with you, Casey, with my amazing wife, with thinking about being a parent. It’s just putting good energy, putting good principles out there, but you’re not going to succeed by trying to control anything too much.

Casey Means (00:52:57):

So wise, so beautiful. No, I love that. I think that’s totally right on. Those are such beautiful takeaways. Yeah, so I agree completely about the control thing. I think the biggest thing probably that we’ve all had to make peace with within a family is the relationship with control. We’re close and we’ve been very involved. I think that plus people being on a commitment to a growth journey, really focused on just growth and evolution and having trust and patience in the process, having trust in the other people that they’re on their own journey, that can be different than yours. I think the only thing I would add, I mean I agree with everything you said, is just always keeping in mind a vision for how beautiful it could be within a family.

(00:53:50):

I think during the harder periods that we’ve had life in our twenties and when there’s been maybe even more controversy, there was always … I think it’s kind of that manifestation piece of keeping in mind what the vision you want in a family is, the beautiful kind of ideal vision of closeness and thriving and intimacy and collaboration and keeping that in the mind’s eye and feeling like that’s possible and that I think a lot of people think like, oh, families are stuck in their ways and patterns and whatnot, but keeping a vision in the mind’s eye of the beauty that is possible.

(00:54:32):

Something I think about a lot is how is something going to come into fruition, especially something as complex and difficult as a truly thriving family dynamic, which is so complex and interdependent, especially in adulthood when people are more separated and living different places and having different lives. How is that beautiful vision going to come into existence if you don’t have it in your mind’s eye of what is possible? Just thinking big, thinking limitless, having hope, having a possibility in your mind. If you don’t have that, no one else in the world is going to be imagining that for you in your life. I think that you have to imagine things before they can come into fruition. Sometimes, I think it can take years for things to truly evolve and into full expression. That’s just also something that I think a lot about is just keeping beautiful visions alive for what you want, whether it’s family or anything, career, whatever.

(00:55:27):

Then let the universe guide you towards making that happen. I think the visioning, and some people call it manifestation, whatever, I think is also something that I think a lot about. Okay, totally going to shift gears here unless there’s anything you want to respond to there.

Calley Means (00:55:44):

No, that’s powerful.

Casey Means (00:55:46):

Okay, so couple hot takes. I want to hear from you.

Calley Means (00:55:48):

Oh gosh.

Casey Means (00:55:50):

I think it’s been really interesting this past couple weeks that after, since RFK Jr. has been on Rogan, he’s getting double-digit support from both Democrats and Republicans. It’s kind of crazy how quickly he’s kind of burst into the zeitgeist. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why he’s gaining so much traction, particularly since his entire Rogan episode was basically about health. What is he tapping into that is so important right now?

Calley Means (00:56:20):

How hot can we go on the level of podcast here, Casey?

Casey Means (00:56:21):

Go hot.

Calley Means (00:56:24):

Okay, so here’s my takeaway on the RFK thing. I think anyone on a podcast talking about RFK, they’re inevitably about to self-censor because it inevitably gets into the vaccine because he’s hung his hats on vaccines. I’ve tried to unpack this because it’s like, “Okay, so he’s talking about vaccines a lot, and he’s resonating with a lot of people. He has the highest approval rating of any presidential candidate.” My psychoanalysis on it is it’s much wider than vaccines. I think most of the country, I think it’s probably right that vaccines generally have done good and it’s good for most folks to take it. I don’t think that’s really what’s at issue. I think what’s at issue is that why has that issue, we’ve been totally barred from even asking a question about it. I think it represents this parenting of the American people, this infantilization of the American people policing of where they can ask a question and why.

(00:57:28):

When you peel it back, why is a parent before they’re going to give 70 pharmaceutical shots that by the nature of the shot and the advertising of what they do changes the immune system for the rest of that child’s life, why isn’t that parent even able to ask a question? Why is that parent labeled anti-science a neanderthal for even … Why that issue? The truth is, from my experience, is that it’s because those products generate hundreds of billions of dollars for pharma. It’s not insignificant. These are one of the most important businesses in the world as far as the revenue products. They’re mandated for every human to take and basically paid for by the government. I think a lot of people, oh, there’s just an anti-vaxx stream. No, I think it’s a very bipartisan group of people. I don’t think it has to do with vaccines specifically. I think it’s like, why do we have a state and media sanctioned inability to even ask a question of a pharmaceutical product that we’re mandated to take and by its advertising as a very powerful product?

(00:58:49):

I think it ties into Covid, and I think it ties in the fact that just the covid policies writ large, which were essentially, we have a pharma-owned oligopoly more than a democracy where the most powerful entities in government were in joint work with pharmaceutical companies to push a pharmaceutical based agenda on Covid and a lockdown policy. I don’t think we’ve grappled with the fact that the Covid response was the worst public policy decision of our lifetime since World War II. The amount of money, the amount of jobs that were destroyed, the lot lives that were destroyed, the amount of issues with children and developmental issues and social and public health and mental health. We haven’t even grappled with this. We’re still being berated for even questioning pharmaceutical companies now. That’s what I think it ties to Casey.

(00:59:50):

We almost get gaslighted. Why is this the conspiracy theories around pharma? Because we’re all getting sicker because the most important element in any person’s life is their ability to thrive. 80% of the American people are overweight or obese, 50% of adults have pre-diabetes or diabetes. Were dying younger. The most sustained life expectancy drop since 1860. That happened well before Covid. Mental health problems are off the charts. This is the most important issue in the world and we are anti-science for asking questions about it? I think that’s the anger. It’s kind of like with me and I’ve been able to isolate a story on Coke paying off the NAACP. It’s a way to really crystallize. I think most people are like, “Why the hell aren’t I able to ask a question for my child on a …” It kind of crystallizes the larger issue.

(01:00:44):

We’ll see what happens with RFK, the American Presidential campaign. I think a benefit of it is it really shows the soul of a person and he has many, many more months to be vetted by the American public. I think right now it’s very real and very serious what he’s tapping into, which he’s giving voice to why are we being berated as American people for asking questions when we’re all getting sick or fat or more depressed or more infertile. We should be asking questions and we shouldn’t be gaslighted. That to me is what it taps into Case.

Casey Means (01:01:18):

Yeah, no, I think that’s actually, that’s such a great perspective that I haven’t heard before, which is that it’s not about the vaccines, it’s about questioning this new normal of not being able to ask questions. I think that’s really pissing people off and he’s basically giving voice to that through the vaccines. But like you said, similar to your Coke, it’s all communications. Your Coke tweet crystallized an issue that is much broader but really gives something for people to grab onto. It’s sort of similar to what RFK is doing here. I think it’s not about the vaccines, it’s about the inability for Americans to ask questions. That’s a huge problem in democracy and he’s tapping into that. That’s really interesting.

Calley Means (01:02:08):

I’ll just take it one step further. Doctors are telling parents they’re committing child abuse by even asking a question about the vaccines, but saying sugar is okay and not raising alarm bells when we have a food-based metabolic health crisis, which is the real issue among kids. When you have a cancer patient, if that cancer patient doesn’t follow the exact regimented pharmaceutical and procedure strategy, the patient has to sign a legal letter saying that they’re being negligent as a patient. But very little talk from oncologists, cancer’s a preventable condition and the cancer cells, and there’s increasing research on this and it’s complex, but feeds in a large way on glucose. When doctors are militant about something, which they often are usually about a procedure or pharmaceutical product, people follow that advice. The medical community has an ability to get people in line.

(01:03:08):

I think there’s just something very off. Let’s just take Covid and the response to that. Just absolutely unrelenting communication from the microphone of the NIH and the White House on taking a pharmaceutical product for two years. Again, that is a small part of it. It’s just a small part. This was a metabolic health, very tied condition. The fact that aggressiveness from public health leaders wasn’t tied to getting Americans in shape, they’ve lost credibility. It’s the most important issue in the world. What we are both fighting on I think is why can’t public health officials communicate what’s actually happening? I think it’s because it’d lose money and it would actually destroy the economy in the short term because health, as I said, is the largest industry. If you have less sick people, it would actually in a short term actually wreck the US economy because so many people are employed. But long term, it would be the greatest thing for the United States, it would unleash human capital. To me, that’s the issue at stake here. I’m glad, frankly, folks from both sides of the aisle are talking about it.

Casey Means (01:04:27):

Yeah, and I agree with you that I think it could have really huge reverberations across the economy if all of a sudden this shifted, but not if we implemented some changes in the business model of healthcare alongside that. I think we talk about this in the book that we wrote that’s coming out next year, but there was this sort of movement towards value-based care with the Affordable Care Act, which was the idea that we would pay doctors more for better outcomes. Because of course, like you said before, high value is good outcomes over lower cost. That seemed really exciting for prevention because oh my gosh, the cheapest thing you could possibly do with the patient is have them walk and sleep. These things are literally free and have the best health outcomes. Unfortunately though, what happened with that sort of seemingly good intention was that the outcomes that were listed for doctors to basically report on to get higher reimbursement, were not actually to have a patient who was healthier. It was how much their patients were adhering to medication regimens.

(01:05:33):

Outcomes based on this system were actually co-opted by pharma to be like, “Okay, a good outcome is a patient who’s on compliant blood pressure therapy if they have high blood pressure, not a patient who’s actually reversed their high blood pressure.” Truthfully, I feel like if we tied payments to good health outcomes and you said to just Dr. Joe out there starting in couple months, you’re going to get paid more if your patient reverses their hypertension, things would change instantly. It’s like it’s all incentives you talk about. I think there’s ways to make it so that people don’t … I think pharma would probably suffer and maybe hospitals and like you said, those are some of the biggest industries and so it would have economic implications. I think if you change the incentives, innovation will follow in really amazing ways. It’ll be fascinating to watch unfold. I’m glad we’re talking about this.

(01:06:35):

This is a perfect segue, I think, to talk about your company, which is TrueMed, which is the most exciting company, literally, and I’m not saying this because I’m your sister. I’m so deeply and profoundly excited about what you’re doing. It keeps me up at night. Can you just describe what TrueMed is and why it is going to really help with a lot of these issues that we’re talking about?

Calley Means (01:06:55):

I’ve been inspired by trailblazers of the metabolic health space, like Levels, and I think that’s a vital baseline to give people the data on what’s happening inside their bodies and really understand what’s happening with metabolic health. I thought a long time inspired by Levels and other leaders in the space just about a question. Okay, so metabolic health is the baseline of health. How do we actually incentivize it? Not to get too on the political soapbox here, but you know, look around in a public space and obviously many people are unhealthy, but I still see determination among the American people. I don’t think people are trying to be systematically obese or systematically get heart disease and cancer and not make their kids their kids’ weddings and milestones. I have a little bit more optimism in America, but I think the deck is stacked against them.

(01:07:50):

I just think as we’ve talked about. The incentives of healthcare is for people to get sick. Healthcare doesn’t kick in until then. We subsidize crappy food in the meantime. That’s what I really thought about for a year, Casey, inspired by you. It’s like, okay. Stop complaining about it. People don’t want to be lectured. How do we make broccoli the same price as a Big Mac? Because if it was, there’d be people that’d buy more broccoli. It’s just simple economics. I started with this thought experiment. We spend more on diabetes management in the United States than the Defense Department. A lot of that’s for people on Medicaid, lower income. It would be much better public policy to just pay every lower income person who is diabetic $1000 a month to exercise. It would literally be a better use of money and achieve better long-term results.

(01:08:36):

I’m like, can we do that? Can we actually change incentives for people to exercise to eat healthy? What I found is there’s one tool to do that, that’s very powerful with the HSA, FSA. Real quick, 80% of the American people have access to one of these HSAs, FSAs. I generally haven’t used it because it’s seen as this money for when you get sick. For drugs when you get sick and there there’s fear of losing the money. Actually from our mutual mentor and Lord and Savior, Dr. Mark Hyman, he actually has talked a lot about food and medicine and actually has talked about how he writes doctor’s notes sometimes in his functional medicine clinics for food and exercise. These letters of medical necessity actually make literally food medicine, if you tie food to the prevention or reversal of the condition, it counts to the FDA or or IRS definition of medicine.

(01:09:32):

We started digging through that with lawyers and it’s very clear as much as pharma lobbies, they’re not able to lobby into a bill that medicine is only a manufactured drug made by Pfizer. That would be a little bit too much of a stretch to actually litigate that into a law. Medicine is what a doctor says can prevent or reverse a disease. Prevent, well, as we know the vast majority of people are urgent risk of metabolic dysfunction and 60% of the country has a chronic condition. There’s a wide patient population that either has a chronic condition, which could probably be reversed by food or is at risk. The American Heart Association has actually said that every adult should be on a [inaudible 01:10:12] because we have such a metabolic health crisis. We agree, we think there’s a massive metabolic health crisis and instead of a [inaudible 01:10:20], we think every adult should be on a prescription for broccoli and exercise and actually doctors can’t prescribe that.

(01:10:26):

That’s what our company does. We make it as easy and compliant as possible to get a doctor’s note for metabolic healthy items. From an eight sleep to supplements to fresh food, hopefully Levels one day. With that note, spend tax-free money, save 30%, 40%, 50%. The way we’re doing this is literally just putting a survey right in the payment flow. Just like you might take a credit survey to do a firm and pay with that, you just take a couple minute survey that meets the compliance standards for an asynchronous medical consultation by the product with your HSA FSA if you’re trying to prevent a reverse a condition and then you get the compliance information, you just get the note from us asynchronously. That’s what we’re doing, Casey. We’re working with mission driven brands and soon you can go to trumed.com and see some of your favorite brands. If you’ve got your HSA FSA account, you can use that money not waiting to get sick and buy drugs, but to stay healthy right now.

Casey Means (01:11:30):

I’m so excited. What’s the number of dollars in a account HSA FSA accounts that are literally not being used every year?

Calley Means (01:11:39):

Yeah, so as I said, they’re under-optimized, but even with that there’s $140 billion sitting in accounts right now. About 92% of that sitting in cash. It’s just people don’t know what to do with it. If you work at Google, Amazon, Apple, a lot of these large tech companies, a lot of the big financial companies, a lot of these Fortune 500 types, you probably have an HSA. I’ve talked to a lot of people at those companies who look into their account. They have $10,000 sitting there for their five years working at the company. I believe Google, Amazon companies like that give up to $3,000 a year, just plop it in the account. There’s a lot of excess money. My message, anyone listening to that is we want TrueMed to be an act of legal rebellion against the healthcare system really.

(01:12:24):

This is a way for you to use that money that’s been sitting there. I think the cynicism we all have about our health insurance, just kind of like there for catastrophic issues or to buy drugs if we’re really sick. No, you can use that tax advantaged money to buy metabolically healthy products. We’re getting some really cool brands on. It’ll keep being updated trumed.com. But yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do. Casey, as we get into open enrollment, it’s just one button on your health insurance if you have access to these most employees. You just contribute whatever you want, a couple thousand bucks now. You can feel safe with TrueMed that you can now buy, exercise, buy food, buy supplements. You can save real money on these good products.

Casey Means (01:13:13):

It’s so amazing.

Calley Means (01:13:14):

Thank you.

Casey Means (01:13:15):

I’ve never had an HSA FSA because I just didn’t really know what I would use it for. But obviously now since you started this company, since the last open enrollment. For this year, my plan is to basically max out my HSA FSA and then probably get a cheaper high deductible plan for catastrophic emergencies and make that monthly premium less. I’m mostly saying this to ask if this is a good strategy. I know you can’t give tax advice. Then, ideally I’m just excited about a world that TrueMed is ushering in where for the first time ever, the healthy stuff is going to actually be the cheaper stuff. Right now we’re so backwards and that we use taxpayer money to subsidize unhealthy foods like commodity crops that are turned into processed foods.

(01:14:03):

Maybe in the future, next year or in a couple years, I’m going to be able to basically get tax-free for all my fresh food, my gym membership, my therapeutic massage or whatnot, things that are all keeping me healthy and ultimately going to cost the system so much less because I’m a healthy person. This just feels truly like this silver bullet to go around the poor incentives that have been designed by using a totally compliant tax system to actually make the healthy choices cheaper, which only going to make a dent in the healthcare crisis so far if it’s more expensive and harder to be healthy. When it becomes easier and cheaper to be healthy. I think only then are we going to cross the chasm to really make health accessible to everyone.

Calley Means (01:14:54):

It’s just that simple. We don’t price in the externalities to the disaster that ultra processed food is doing right. A Coca-Cola is cheaper than a water at many stores because there’s so many subsidized ingredients. That’s what we’re trying to do with this model. Bend the cost curve to make that healthy food 30%, 40% cheaper. That’s inevitably going to change incentives. Then what we hope to do, what our dream is long term is that if we can show results with this, which we’re seeing great indicators so far, I mean it’s free money on the table to use that as a model to change other programs. As we talked about at the beginning, SNAP or what used to be called food stamps is the most criminal program I could think of.

(01:15:32):

Why is a lower income single mom who’s really struggling to do the best she can for her child relying on a government program that pays for essentially what I think are poisonous addictive drugs, sugar water, Coca-Cola, et cetera, for that kid. That’s letting that mom down, that’s letting that kid down. What we hope to do is this should be a model for SNAP that you have doctor recommended ingredients that we make sure we have enough money on the card for those ingredients, but that would save trillions of dollars a downstream health impact. That’s the model.

(01:16:11):

Going back to the political days I’ve met with the White House, with the Biden administration, I met with members of Congress in both sides of the aisle. This is a policy that’s been affirmed and both sides support. I do think both sides and most members of Congress have kids or are concerned about health. I think the influence of pharma and big food is big. Yeah, this is hopefully something it seems like both sides agree on. It’s been validated and just that easy way to steer some of those healthcare dollars not to pharma but to food.

Casey Means (01:16:45):

Amazing. Calley, since the tweet that went viral and 12 million people saw, you have been on Fox News probably over a dozen times. You’ve been on most of the top health podcasts in the country. You have just been evangelizing this message about our rigged system. You’ve actually been in touch with and invited to speak with many members of Congress and politicians and others and have yet truly, I mean you flew to DC you’ve talked to a huge group of lawmakers, it’s been incredible. And I’m just curious, what is your takeaway from talking to a lot of these people who are in policy about where the leverage is right now for making positive change in the chronic disease epidemic and the rigged food system? What are you seeing in terms of the political environment, where the leverage is, and what maybe a constituent can do to influence the conversation?

Calley Means (01:17:48):

I think on the high long-term level, I’m very encouraged. I think the United States often it takes a long time getting the right answer but usually does and it’s very messy. I think what’s concerning me about our health problem is I do think if we fail as an American experiment, the number one reason’s going to be because we let ourselves get sick or fat or more depressed, more infertile while bankrupting our country due to healthcare costs. And I do think that’s a very real threat. That is what’s happening right now. I think mathematically we have to change what’s happening. I think our eyes gloss over when we talk about healthcare costs, but 20% of GDP growing at twice the rate of GDP and not slowing down, that’s going to be 40% of GDP in about 20 years or less.

(01:18:38):

We’re not getting better, we’re not getting healthier. I think there’s a little bit of awareness. I think talking to 40 members of Congress the last month, I don’t think they actually fully understand why and I think the only way to solve this is getting back to basics on food is shifting healthcare dollars to food. The reason costs are going up is because we’re getting sicker. The problem isn’t that Medicare Part D page 100 has the wrong marginal tax rate for health insurance or something, which everyone’s debating this trivia. The problem is that everyone’s sick. The problem is that 80% of Americans are overweight and we’re all just getting systematically sicker. That is the problem with why healthcare costs are going up. It’s because we have the sickest population of any almost any country in the world and it’s getting worse exponentially.

(01:19:28):

You have to make people healthier in order to turn the cost curve on health. And the only way you can make people healthier is ensuring that they’re ingesting less poison. You’re not going to drug our way out of the situation. This whole thing of the miracle of this new obesity drug or the miracle of this new Alzheimer’s drug that we spent $100 billion in R&D. These are all charades. Right? We’re not going to drug our way out of Alzheimer’s diabetes, heart disease, cancer. They’re all the same thing. They’re all metabolic dysfunction. I was actually literally on Capitol Hill and Mark Hyman, who’s an advisor and investor for us as well, huge, huge, we talked about him a lot today. He was randomly there too, lobbying on metabolic health. The calvary is out and there’s a lot of people starting to understand this and it’s long term and I am optimistic.

(01:20:21):

What’s the problem right now? The problem right now is that Coca-Cola and big food are lobbying today in every office in Congress to keep food stamp funding for Coke because that’s up for debate in the next couple months and there’s an all out push right now. They’re able to target specific issues. If I have one call to anyone listening who wants to do something right now, it is, for the first time maybe, call or write your member of congress as senator and focus on a specific issue. The issue I’d focus on is say we should not be using SNAP funding, food stamp funding to fund soda. Simple. Marco Rubio just put a bill forward. I hate to get so tactical Casey, but balancing the targeted lobbying that industry can do with the dispersed, right now everyone concerned about this, all parents concerned, but they’re not exerting force on specific issues. That’s always the problem with policy.

(01:21:23):

What I’d hope to see is that we can marshal this intense frustration people have about the fact that they and their kids are getting sicker and target that more to advocating specific policy proposals. Because I’ve been told, a leading member of Congress just told me this just a couple weeks ago. He said, “Listen, I’m not an evil person. I’m also not a coward. If a food lobbyist comes into my office and I’ve got a hundred moms calling me the day before lobbying for a specific issue, I could tell that Coke lobbyist no. I’ll tell them no. But if I have no counteracting balance, if I have them giving me a million dollars and saying, ‘hey, just support this one issue with the SNAP funding, here’s some studies’ and I’ve got nobody,” they’re like, “I’ve got the war in Ukraine, I’ve got 50 other items, I’m not a health expert.” So that’s what’s happening now.

(01:22:16):

If there’s grassroots support, so that’s what I’m working on. Long term I think there’s anger, I think there’s frustration. I think people are waking up. I think the tides will hopefully term. Short term, call your member of Congress and say, “Why the heck are we spending billions of dollars of government money to addict lower income kids on Coke and other soda? You should not support that.” That actually does make a difference.

Casey Means (01:22:46):

That’s a hot take. I think that’s fascinating. You always hear, “Call your congressman.” And it’s like, “What does that even mean? Is it a waste of time?” It’s like you’ve actually been talking to these people and many of us don’t have the opportunity or privilege to do that. What you’re seeing is … The thing about the balance is so fascinating. If they’ve got this voice from industry saying, “Here’s a bunch of studies, this is why it’s good, this is why it’s important.” And there’s literally no one else calling and there are constituents saying “No, we do not want this. This is not what we want.” Of course they’re going to go with industry. I love the idea of focusing the effort towards specific issues. It almost feels like there’s some sort of business there of how do you actually, because I’m telling you right now, I don’t know exactly how I would figure out, I live in California, what are the issues that are up for debate and who do I call? It seems really overwhelming. We need to talk more about that as a family.

Calley Means (01:23:53):

Both of us have a lot of, we’re running our companies, writing a book. We’ve got a lot. I’ve actually been contacted by some lobbyists with some great people and actually some people are trying to put a group together. If I had a billion dollars, there’s a lot of lobbyists for coke and pharma. There’s not a lot of lobbyists for diabetic kids. You need counterbalancing force. I just want to underline Casey, something you just said and I’ve been really surprised by it, but it’s the one message I’m hearing consistently, which is it’s not as transactional as you think with money. It’s just like these special interests just galvanize the conversation and grassroots support really matters. There’s not a ton of money behind the most powerful issues in the country like abortion and gun control. The issue actually is those galvanized voters, people vote on those issues.

(01:24:43):

People are calling, people are showing up to the town halls. The world would change if the millions of angry, quite frankly, parents out there on the rigged health system, how it’s rigged against kids if they were able to mobilize just putting this out in the universe because this is something people need to work on. If they could be mobilized in a tactical way to go to town halls, to write in, to have members of Congress feel the pressure to feel that there’s a cost for them just sliding in that thing for coke, the world would change. I do think this is needed.

Casey Means (01:25:22):

Yeah, I mean you and I have both devoted, with Levels and TrueMed, to changing consumer decision making, to shift the industry, which I think is another really big piece of it. Because if people demand different products, the companies will respond rapidly. Calley, you have spoken out publicly as have I, about some concerns about the overuse of Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists as like this panacea that’s going to solve the metabolic disease epidemic. I’d love to just hear your take quickly on why you feel that this is not the answer for our chronic disease epidemic and why it might actually be too good to be true.

Calley Means (01:26:02):

If you ask anyone in America what the point of a chronic disease treatment is, they would say to cure and reduce cases of that disease. There has never been a chronic disease pharmaceutical product in American history that has lowered the rates of the disease it’s ostensibly trying to treat. Let’s just think about the past couple decades. The more statins we prescribe, the more heart disease goes up. We’re prescribing record amounts of metformin, diabetes is off the chart. SSRI is the most popular drug in the country, antidepressants, depression and suicides is off the charts. You just go down the list, Ambien, sleep disorders go up, blood pressure medications, blood pressure rates are going off the charts. Literally why is this? Why do we have a treatment for every siloed condition but everything around us is going up. I think when you peel back, it’s very simple. That and the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association, they’ve actually said this in their guidance.

(01:27:05):

The ADA actually as Lustig has pointed out, Dr. Lustig, until 2018 essentially said, “If you take your medication, you can eat whatever you want.” No matter what cardiologists say, they pay lip service a diet. It’s essentially, “Oh, take the statin, you’re doing something now.” People go, “Oh, I can have my burger.” The message with all of these things is that taking that drug is doing something in and of itself and it’s not. If you take your statin and continue eating inflammatory food, if you take your metformin and continue eat glucose raising food, you’re still doing metabolic dysfunction to yourself. Imagine now with Ozempic a child because it’s 12 years and up is prescribed Ozempic and that child is said implicitly and they’re actually being said this by the Harvard physician, Dr. Fatima Stanford on 60 minutes that obesity isn’t tied to diet and throw willpower out the window.

(01:27:59):

A child is being given Ozempic, a lifetime drug and said, “What you eat doesn’t really matter.” And they’re not being trained to eat metabolic healthy meals. They’re continuing to feed their bodies for the rest of their lives with metabolically unhealthy food and have metabolic unhealthy habits. They’re going to get other comorbidities. The whack-a-mole doesn’t work. This is the most important one yet because the market size is 80% of Americans because 80% of Americans are overweight or obese. I think it’s just continued the road of whack-a-mole pharmaceutical products for chronic disease. And then I think very importantly, and this is also the case with the 4 trillion we spent on healthcare, most of it to chronic disease, it’s not working. There’s an opportunity cost. So let’s just take obesity.

(01:28:38):

We know that when volume goes up, drug costs don’t go down because you’re not able to negotiate drug costs as the government. It’s the only industry in the country where the largest buyer can’t negotiate costs so costs don’t go down. Ozempic is going to cost estimated $10,000 per patient per year. We could just steer 50% of that, 25% of that to reinvigorating regenerative agriculture in this country and feeding kids healthier food and subsidizing that food for obese kids and adults. Why are we jumping so quickly to a pharmaceutical product when the root cause is food, is metabolic habits?

Casey Means (01:29:15):

Wow, Calley. Thank you so, so much for joining me on A Whole New Level today. I am so fortunate to get to talk to you every day, but I still just feel like I learned so much from you every time we talk and today is no exception. I’m so grateful for the work you’re doing and I hope that we have follow up conversations on the podcast. Thank you so much.