Creating New Categories: Metabolic Health with Sam Corcos & Andrew Conner, co-founders of Levels

In this episode of The Deep End, Levels co-founders Andrew Connor and Sam Corcos chat with host Marshall Kosloff. They discuss the challenges of creating innovative tech in a brand new category, why diet is something that should be improved even if you feel fine today, and why it’s critical to change dominant food patterns at any cost.

Normalize tech for all ages

Sam says that as they build Levels, they recognized that they needed to normalize glucose monitoring as something that was valuable for all ages.

Don’t build products for an elderly population. Nobody who is 80 years old, wants to feel like they’re 80 years old. They don’t want to be demeaned, they don’t want to be patronized. And so, when you go to your grandparents and you give them this giant telephone with four buttons on it, and you treat them like a child, they get upset, reasonably so. They’re adults. One of the biggest revelations for that book, or that he mentions for that audience, was the iPhone because the screen is variable. It’s the same people, using the same products, but if you’re older, you just make the font size bigger, and it doesn’t have a stigma. Stigma is a really big part of it. So, I think of this very similarly, which is, we need this to be measuring glucose, measuring other biomarkers. We need to normalize this and make it something that reasonable people will do. This is not something that your doctor tells you to do because you feel responsible. It has to be something that’s mainstream first and then you could work towards different things that are clinical.

Poor diet leads to crisis

Andrew says that a garbage diet inevitably leads to critical health issues, even if it takes time for the impacts to catch up with the behavior.

Several decades ago, it wasn’t believed that thin people could develop type 2 diabetes, and we’re seeing this clinically, more and more. Both the physicians and the researchers we’re working directly with, and it’s in the literature that people that feel otherwise healthy, that are fueling themselves on garbage diets don’t really have a feedback loop between their food and what’s happening physiologically. And so, more than just crashes throughout the day or potential accountability for losing weight, there’s a metabolic health crisis at the end of this. Poor metabolic health and insulin resistance leads to things, like you mentioned, diabetes, but also heart disease, erectile dysfunction, PCOS. There’s all these other diseases that are associated with the downstream effects of insulin resistance. The difficulty we have, is in many ways, people don’t care about it. Those fears are not as salient to them. And so, the nice thing we’ve been able to do is actually balance short-term, showing people the feedback loop and how it affects things that matter day-to-day.

You’re fine until you’re not

Both of Andrew’s grandfathers had diabetes, but his own doctor never mentioned diet once. That’s one big reason why creating glucose transparency is so important to him.

Personally, both of my grandfathers has type 2 diabetes, contributed to both of their deaths. This is something that, whenever I see a primary care physician, “I have family risk for this, right?” And one thing that was incredibly disappointing, was diet never really came up. They would run a hemoglobin AC1 blood test. Great, like I’m not prediabetic, and that was is. And I have to wonder if that was basically how my grandfathers’ experience was. It’s that things were fine until they weren’t fine, and it ends up being that insulin resistance can run away. And so, it’s something that we care deeply about, creating this feedback loop now, that’s powerful and important and is tractable for people today that can also improve longterm stuff.

Start with a premium product

Andrew says that innovative new products often have to begin with a premium model that becomes more accessible over time. Levels is no exception.

Sam was talking about that we start with the premium customer and in many ways, we have to because we’re building something in a new place. We are advocating for people to take agency in their own metabolic health. We are leaning strong into personalized medicine that it’s not one size fits all. And the hardware isn’t crazy expensive right now. The nice thing is all of these are solvable and so as we’re able to build our version of the Roadster, it allows us to build our version of the Model X, and then the Model 3, and actually take this mass market. And so, we love seeing that things like metabolic fitness and those sort of phrases are starting to be used a lot more because it means that people are waking up to this bigger reality about, there is physiological processes that occur over the span of decades that if you don’t have a feedback loop for, you can lose track of.

The challenge of creating a new category

Sam says that many medical providers were skeptical at the first mention of Levels, but almost all of them quickly changed their tune.

When you’re in the business of category creation, there’s going to be a lot of new information for people. A lot of doctors, when we started talking to them about this, are very skeptical of its value, but upon giving more information, almost all are convinced that this is at least an incremental path forward. Dr. Lustig, who’s one of our medical advisors, in his latest book, Metabolical, has a section in the book on why measuring glucose doesn’t matter. And there is truth to it in as much as, it’s not a complete metric. It is related to why many people feel tired. It does give you insight into the black box. For most people in the US, the problem with their diet is that they eat too much sugar and too many refined carbohydrates.

People want to be healthy

Sam believes that individuals want a healthy lifestyle, but are uncertain how to achieve one due to modern marketing and misinformation.

We’ve seen some really inspiring and honestly heartbreaking stories of people who have been trying for years to be healthy. They follow all the advice, they eat low fat, they eat whatever the trend is, they’re really, really trying. They have oatmeal or pancakes that says, “Heart healthy”, right on the front because it’s wholewheat, right, wholewheat is good for you. And then they discover that it’s processed, that they have real problems and this is the first time that they’ve been able to see how these are affecting them. Those heart-healthy, wholewheat pancakes might not actually be good for you. In fact, they probably aren’t. Things like Honey Nut Cheerios are a great example. The full bottom-third is in red, with big hearts all over it, on how heart-healthy it is. It’s really, really bad for you and they’ve been able to get away with really misinforming people on a lot of this.

Stay humble and open-minded

Andrew says that while the Levels team thinks their work is revolutionary, they know they need to prove themselves to skeptics and create an incredible product.

Start-ups can be overconfident in how they’re revolutionizing the world and how they’re changing things. And it’s something that we have to stay incredibly humble about, we have to stay tied to the science, working very closely with our medical advisors and hearing from customers and that sort of thing. That we have to be humble about how what we’re doing is impacting people and the claims we can make and things like that. I think that’s entirely true, I think a healthy dose of skepticism is good. In many ways, it sharpens us even more, it makes us hone our message, it makes us hone our product. Like where is the most value that we can get from customers and what are the form of personalized insights that are most meaningful to people? And so, I would say, in many ways, the skepticism is welcome because the outcome that everyone wants, is to reverse the metabolic health crisis. We’re confident that we can make a dent into it, if not a lot more, but it’s something that we need to be challenged by and we need to understand non-biohacker, non-technically savvy kind of people because that’s where a lot of our market will be.

We have to change the system

Andrew says that right now, misinformation and lack of oversight in the food industry is problematic. He’s hopeful that things will improve in the future.

Right now, there is this misinformation mismatch between how food affects people and what their interests are. Living long, living healthy, being able to be functional in life and not feeling like you’re on the energy rollercoaster. Because there’s this impedance mismatch, it’s really hard for people to point their finger and put blame at anyone, thing. Because you’re right, I find it problematic to point to any individual organization, even large food conglomerates. They’re kind of optimizing the system that they have. So, in many ways we have to change the system. I see that as an awareness problem. Is people demanding for foods that are healthier for them and foods that have better metabolic outcomes and support more holistic health? This is something that’ll take a long time, but it’s something I’m also really optimistic about.

Glucose is not the end game

Andrew says that while Levels is zeroing in on glucose, they recognize that it’s only one piece of the personalized health puzzle.

There’s a lot of options here in the future, where as long as we make it as easy as possible for consumers to navigate, find the right foods for them, that’s good for us. We don’t feel that glucose is the end all be all. It’s a really nice slice into metabolic health, which is a slice into overall health. And so, to not overstate how we see glucose, it’s somewhere that was basically begging for innovation, begging for someone to use this data to create the feedback loops for people. It’s also not our endpoint. And so, I think we recognize the long term potential of personalized health and building feedback loops and this sort of thing, to support people to be healthy in general, more than just managing their glucose, more than just metabolic health.

Marshall Kosloff:

Welcome to The Deep End by On Deck. A podcast where visionary builders, creators, and experts discuss world-changing ideas. I’m your host, Marshall Kosloff. Let’s dive in.

Marshall Kosloff:

With The Deep End, we’re creating space where we skip the surface level and go in-depth into ideas that matter. I’ll be your guide as we explore possible futures of commerce, higher education, art, governance, longevity, and more with some of the most exciting figures in their respective fields.

Andrew Conner:

They would run a hemoglobin A1C blood test. Great, like I’m not pre-diabetic. And that was it. I have to wonder if that was basically how my grandfather’s experience was. It’s that things were fine until they weren’t fine.

Marshall Kosloff:

Joining me on The Deep End are Andrew Connor and Sam Corcos, co-founders of Levels Health. This is our first ever episode of two simultaneous guests, which is fitting because Sam and Andrew initially met at On Deck’s first major event, two years ago, the Tahoe Founders Retreat. Since that faithful meeting, Sam and Andrew have gone on to co-found Levels together. Their goal is nothing short of changing the way the world interacts with food, the creation of a whole new product category centered around metabolic health. Levels’ brilliant product, currently in beta, provides a near-instantaneous feedback loop to let a user know how their body reacts to the various foods and drinks they consume. With this new information, people can better optimize what they eat in order to lose weight, have more energy, and get better sleep. It also help them reduce the likelihood of developing metabolic health issues like diabetes down the road.

Marshall Kosloff:

Starting from this deep dive into health, we’re going to discuss a wide range of topics related to food, politics, science, disease, and what it’s like to build a company and a category at the same time. Sam and Andrew are at the absolute cutting edge of what they do and they’re on a mission to change our health trajectories for the better, so you don’t want to miss this one. Before we dive in, I wanted to give you a heads up about an incredible live podcast recording session that you can participate in. One of the best things with The Deep End is how brilliant and curious our audience is. We want to get you more involved in the podcast recording process.

Marshall Kosloff:

In that spirit, we’re inviting you to join us on Monday, August 16th, for a discussion with Delian Asparouhov, principal at Founders Fund and co-founder of Varda Space Industries. A start-up which is building space factories, to build products for us to use back here on Earth. Unlike a normal podcast, you have the chance to ask Delian any questions you might have. Some of which will even be immortalized in the actual, published podcast episode. Don’t miss the chance to participate. RSVP for free at thedeepend.substack.com. This link will also be in the show notes. The Deep End is produced by On Deck, where top town goes to accelerate their ideas and careers. We hope that those who listen to the ideas on the show are inspired to build. To learn more about On Deck’s programs, visit beondeck.com. For show notes and additional resources related to The Deep End, check out ideas.beondeck.com. All right, let’s dive in.

Marshall Kosloff:

Sam Corcos, Andrew Connor, welcome to The Deep End.

Sam Corcos:

Good to be here.

Andrew Conner:

Yeah, good to be here. Thank you.

Marshall Kosloff:

Let’s start here because it’s really key to what we’re talking about today. What does Levels provide for a consumer who is using the product?

Sam Corcos:

The goal is to help show you how your food affects your body. Nutrition’s really been a black box for people for a long time, and the goal is to give transparency to that. A lot of foods that people think are healthy, actually causes a lot of their lifestyle problems. That’s really the main goal of the company.

Marshall Kosloff:

I have to ask the most obvious follow-up question of all time. What is a food that I think is healthy, but is really causing my life to fall apart?

Andrew Conner:

I’m happy to give you my example. So, the biggest that blew my mind is, I considered Clif Bars health adjacent. They’re obviously sweet…

Marshall Kosloff:

Don’t do this to me, Andrew. Don’t do this to me. I like Clif Bars.

Andrew Conner:

Yeah, with an active lifestyle, it’s something you’ll have while hiking or between meals, or something like that. And for me in particular, I am very, very sensitive to rice, and the major sweetener is rice syrup, plus oats, which for me is metabolic jet fuel. Combine them, their response is like triple carb-for-carb, compared to something like ice cream. So, it is more than a candy bar and something that I previously regarded as health adjacent or health enough. Another one that I think blows a lot of people’s minds, is alternative milks. It’s very easy to take a carb and refine it so that it tastes wonderful and it has a really good mouth feel, but basically it can be metabolized incredibly quickly. It feels nice to be able to reduce your animal impact or environmental impact, or anything like that, so they have these halos around them, but we have a lot of data that some of these alternative milks are pretty metabolically dangerous.

Marshall Kosloff:

How about you, Sam?

Sam Corcos:

The biggest one for me is oatmeal and orange juice. It gets more a surprise because of how much misinformation I have taken in, related to them. Just assuming for the first, roughly 30 years of my life, that those would be healthier things that you can do, and then to realize that they were actually the source of a lot of my lifestyle problems. The mid-day energy crash, you could measure it in the data and you could see the huge spike that followed by the hypoglycemic crash, and I would get shaky hands, I would feel tired. I’d always assume that it was caffeine or the lack of sleep or something. It is kind of weird that it never occurred to me that it could be related to what I was eating. I don’t know why I just assumed that calories are calories, it doesn’t really matter. But, the reality is that your body does get affected by these things quite significantly.

Marshall Kosloff:

I have to be honest with the audience. This episode is particularly devastating because with the exception of the orange juice, I am a active whole foods, $3 mark-up consumer of every single one of these products. And I feel really good about myself afterwards, so I think this episode is going to be valedictory going down the line of all those things. Before we get a little bit deeper, I just want to set the stakes then. Sam, you spoke about this a bit with the crashing, the jitters. I’m guessing though, the stakes are a little higher than that, so let’s just understand what we’re talking about the way this is making people feel, especially with your initial consumers.

Marshall Kosloff:

Because what’s interesting about this is, and we’ll get into this in more detail, but you’re taking, as you referenced, the Tesla model here. As in you’re focused on the premium consumer who’s health obsessed. I see a Equinox going, whole foods eating type of person who could want to pay for the lifestyle bits there. But, I feel as if the health problems that are facing the co-ord you’re describing are different than the diabetic or pre-diabetic population, the one we typically think of. So let’s just establish the stakes here, starting with the premium users who are starting off with your product.

Sam Corcos:

I think the main reason is that it’s really expensive right now, just the hardware itself. It’s really expensive. Similar to the earlier Tesla product, it was really expensive to build an electric car, and so, you can’t build a mass market car when it’s really expensive. Another aspect to it is that in order to make something that has consumer appeal, you can’t make it a medical product. There’s actually a really good book. A lot of my learnings for Levels have come from books that I’ve read that are completely unrelated to what it is we’re doing. There’s a great book called The Longevity Economy, which is actually about how do you build products and services for an elderly population. And the biggest lesson from that book is, don’t build products for an elderly population. Nobody who is 80 years old, wants to feel like they’re 80 years old. They don’t want to be demeaned, they don’t want to be patronized. And so, when you go to your grandparents and you give them this giant telephone with four buttons on it, and you treat them like a child, they get upset, reasonably so. They’re adults.

Sam Corcos:

One of the biggest revelations for that book, or that he mentions for that audience, was the iPhone because the screen is variable. It’s the same people, using the same products, but if you’re older, you just make the font size bigger, and it doesn’t have a stigma. Stigma is a really big part of it. So, I think of this very similarly, which is, we need this to be measuring glucose, measuring other biomarkers. We need to normalize this and make it something that reasonable people will do. This is not something that your doctor tells you to do because you feel responsible. It has to be something that’s mainstream first and then you could work towards different things that are clinical.

Marshall Kosloff:

Yeah. How about you, Andrew? So, when you think of the premium consumer, what are the costs of their lifestyle that you think they should be thinking of that monitoring glucose should really provide and actual real value add for?

Andrew Conner:

That’s interesting. Several decades ago, it wasn’t believed that thin people could develop type 2 diabetes, and we’re seeing this clinically, more and more. Both the physicians and the researchers we’re working directly with, and it’s in the literature that people that feel otherwise healthy, that are fueling themselves on garbage diets don’t really have a feedback loop between their food and what’s happening physiologically. And so, more than just crashes throughout the day or potential accountability for losing weight, there’s a metabolic health crisis at the end of this. Poor metabolic health and insulin resistance leads to things, like you mentioned, diabetes, but also heart disease, erectile dysfunction, PCOS. There’s all these other diseases that are associated with the downstream effects of insulin resistance. The difficulty we have, is in many ways, people don’t care about it. Those fears are not as salient to them. And so, the nice thing we’ve been able to do is actually balance short-term, showing people the feedback loop and how it affects things that matter day-to-day.

Andrew Conner:

So, energy levels or weight loss or athletic performance or something like that, while keeping an eye on actually educating people on the long term impact. Personally, both of my grandfathers has type 2 diabetes, contributed to both of their deaths. This is something that, whenever I see a primary care physician, “I have family risk for this, right?”. And one thing that was incredibly disappointing, was diet never really came up. They would run a hemoglobin AC1 blood test. Great, like I’m not prediabetic, and that was is. And I have to wonder if that was basically how my grandfathers’ experience was. It’s that things were fine until they weren’t fine, and it ends up being that insulin resistance can run away. And so, it’s something that we care deeply about, creating this feedback loop now, that’s powerful and important and is tractable for people today that can also improve longterm stuff. And the only way we’re successful, is if we’re able to bring this mass market.

Andrew Conner:

So, Sam was talking about that we start with the premium customer and in many ways, we have to because we’re building something in a new place. We are advocating for people to take agency in their own metabolic health. We are leaning strong into personalized medicine that it’s not one size fits all. And the hardware isn’t crazy expensive right now. The nice thing is all of these are solvable and so as we’re able to build our version of the Roadster, it allows us to build our version of the Model X, and then the Model 3, and actually take this mass market. And so, we love seeing that things like metabolic fitness and those sort of phrases are starting to be used a lot more because it means that people are waking up to this bigger reality about, there is physiological processes that occur over the span of decades that if you don’t have a feedback loop for, you can lose track of.

Marshall Kosloff:

I really want to do one last sciencey question and tell you a story that I promise is true because I’m sure you’ve gotten some version of this skepticism from folks. So, when I told my co-host from my other podcast, Saagar, about your company, probably about the episode. He owns a WHOOP, he just bought his Apple Watch, he goes to Equinox, he’s literally in your target market. So he went to your website and saw your market and he was super excited about it. He brought this up with his trainer at Equinox and he swears this is a true story because this feels a little too constructive for me, but let’s just roll with it for an example. He brings it up to his trainer and then apparently there was a doctor who was working out next to them and the doctor and the trainer were incredibly skeptical. They said, “Look, if you are not at risk for diabetes, you do not need to be worried about your glucose levels.” That’s just not where the health things are, that’s not where the industry is. So I just want to ask, A, What is your response to that, right off the face of skepticism? And then B, How do you as founders think about skepticism at a matter level when it comes to innovating a new thing?

Marshall Kosloff:

Because once again, we’re talking in the Elon category. If you’re Elon, there’s skepticism that you can translate from the first expensive car to a cheaper car. That’s been proven now. You’re skeptical that you can make orbital space load launches, a profitable venture, that’s less skeptical now, but I’d love to hear…

Marshall Kosloff:

Maybe I’ll throw the first one over to you then, Sam. So Sam, the question of, what’s your response to the skepticism? And then Andrew, I’m curious how you just think as a founder about skepticism in spaces that are a little less under innovated in?

Sam Corcos:

Yeah, I think the short answer is that, when you’re in the business of category creation, there’s going to be a lot of new information for people. A lot of doctors, when we started talking to them about this, are very skeptical of its value, but upon giving more information, almost all are convinced that this is at least an incremental path forward. Dr. Lustig, who’s one of our medical advisors, in his latest book, Metabolical, has a section in the book on why measuring glucose doesn’t matter. And there is truth to it in as much as, it’s not a complete metric. It is related to why many people feel tired. It does give you insight into the black box. For most people in the US, the problem with their diet is that they eat too much sugar and too many refined carbohydrates.

Sam Corcos:

And that’s going to show up in glucose and it’s going to really help you see what your diet is doing to your body, but it’s not complete. There are false positives, there are false negatives. If you’re just measuring glucose with the sensors, a false positive would be really intense exercise and you’ll see a big spike, but that’s actually not a bad thing because it’s not caused by food that you’re eating, it’s caused by glycogen getting dumped from your liver to make up for all the glucose that you’re burning. And that’s totally fine, but you wouldn’t really know that unless you have additional metrics that you’re tracking. Similarly, there are false negatives like it can cause people to think you can drink a liter of fructose, which is strictly worse for you than glucose, but it’s not going to show up because it’s not the same type of sugar. So it’s actually worse for you, it’s entirely processed in your liver. You can almost think of it like alcohol in terms of its contribution to fatty liver disease. But it won’t show up because we don’t track a metric that gives you that, so it’s an incomplete metric, but it is a very helpful metric.

Sam Corcos:

Almost all doctors that we talk to, I think the only ones that we really have not been able to convert after giving them more information, are the ones who are kind of jaded and have difficulty with people who…

Sam Corcos:

They’ve just seen a lot of people who do not take their health seriously and are mostly just comments like, “Sure, maybe it’s, but nobody’s ever going to use this.” And I think they are largely incorrect on that. We’ve seen some really inspiring and honestly heartbreaking stories of people who have been trying for years to be healthy. They follow all the advice, they eat low fat, they eat whatever the trend is, they’re really, really trying. They have oatmeal or pancakes that says, “Heart healthy”, right on the front because it’s wholewheat, right, wholewheat is good for you. And then they discover that it’s processed, that they have real problems and this is the first time that they’ve been able to see how these are affecting them.

Sam Corcos:

Those heart-healthy, wholewheat pancakes might not actually be good for you. In fact, they probably aren’t. Things like Honey Nut Cheerios are a great example and a lot of them are…

Sam Corcos:

The full bottom-third is in red, with big hearts all over it, on how heart-healthy it is. It’s really, really bad for you and they’ve been able to get away with really misinforming people on a lot of this. I think that’s the biggest thing, it’s that with more information, those…

Sam Corcos:

This is new for people, so it’s going to take a lot of education.

Marshall Kosloff:

Andrew, how about your perspective on all of this?

Andrew Conner:

To add to that, to skepticism, I think we can also look at how we’re using glucose differently than how it’s been used before. If you think about finger pricks, or even people managing diabetes with a continuous glucose monitor, their usage of the device is very different. They’re attempting to kind of manage their day, they’re attempting to dose insulin, these kinds of things. And so, I would emphatically agree with them. Someone like me, someone like Sam shouldn’t be worried about their glucose, right? In many ways, the absolute level doesn’t matter as much, when someone is otherwise metabolically healthy. But, what’s interesting is, we’re able to give people the feedback loop. Back to my examples of Clif Bars. At my previous start-up, I would eat two a day. And I now know the impact of a Clif Bar is quite high to me, right? And so that’s a bad behavior or a behavior that I should be very cognizant of.

Andrew Conner:

And so, is my fasting glucose bad? No, it’s fine, but it’s incredibly useful that I am able to form this feedback loop or I’m able to see, “Oh, these are the levers that I have control on and I can actually be informed now, on some trade-offs. I can be informed on the types of sugars I want to eat when I do and the difference between different carbs. I mentioned earlier that I am sensitive to rice, I am less sensitive to bread. Now, it doesn’t mean that I should be loading my diet full of just bread, but it informs me of the glucose response of this. And so, I think that’s one of the key things that differentiates how these devices were previously used and how people really thought about metabolic health and glucose levels and things like that because no matter where you’re at, you can collect interesting data. You can see, oh, these behaviors are particularly good for me or bad for me.

Andrew Conner:

One that we ran recently, we internally called the Coke-experiment. I had not had a soft drink in probably 10 years. I had cut the habit a while ago and we decided that we would all drink a can of Coke and be stationary. And then, we would drink one while going on a light walk. This isn’t like a cross-fit exercise or a run or anything like this. This is, let’s just have some physical activity to provide a place for that glucose to go. There’s a blog post up on our blog of the results of this and it’s pretty mind blowing. Like wow, you can have some pretty awful food and pair it with physical activity, and the outcome’s better. And so, in many ways, I would confront the skepticism with just stories from our customers of understanding these levers and how it impacts their day-to-day life, whether it was struggle losing weight or energy levels throughout the day. Anything like that, even sleep health.

Andrew Conner:

There was a recent customer that wrote a really great blog post about he recognized that his Oura ring was signaling that he’s waking up in the night and he noticed that it corresponds to low glucose in the middle of the night. That’s interesting. And he was able to debug it, he’s like, it was a combination of food and supplements at a certain time, was causing these glucose oscillations as he slept. Is that being worried about glucose? Not really. It’s really being informed about how your body is working. And so, that’s kind if how I see it. In general, you would ask about how do we view skepticism in general on a lot of these industries that have minimal innovation or at least a very strong incumbent forces. I think that is a problem across start-ups, it’s start-ups can be overconfident in how they’re revolutionizing the world and how they’re changing things. And it’s something that we have to stay incredibly humble about, we have to stay tied to the science, working very closely with our medical advisors and hearing from customers and that sort of thing.

Andrew Conner:

That we have to be humble about how what we’re doing is impacting people and the claims we can make and things like that. I think that’s entirely true, I think a healthy dose of skepticism is good. In many ways, it sharpens us even more, it makes us hone our message, it makes us hone our product. Like where is the most value that we can get from customers and what are the form of personalized insights that are most meaningful to people? And so, I would say, in many ways, the skepticism is welcome because the outcome that everyone wants, is to reverse the metabolic health crisis. We’re confident that we can make a dent into it, if not a lot more, but it’s something that we need to be challenged by and we need to understand non-biohacker, non-technically savvy kind of people because that’s where a lot of our market will be.

Sam Corcos:

And actually to that point. One of the things that Andrew said is that it’s being used in a very different way than it has historically. Specifically, a lot of the doctors that I talked to, when they hear glucose monitoring, they automatically assume insulin. Some of them, when you say, “glucose monitoring”, they hear insulin pump. And so when we say, “Yeah, we’re having people track their glucose with a glucose monitor”, they hear, “We’re putting insulin pumps on healthy people and injecting them with insulin”. It’s not what we’re doing, so a lot of it is just overcoming that initial hurdle and explaining we’re just measuring or showing them hope their diet affects them. Nobody is taking insulin. That solves for a lot of it. A big piece of this is just this is technology that people were familiar with in a different contexts, that’s why we put so much effort into content. You’ve probably looked over our blog, there’s a lot of content there. We know that there’s a really big education burden, so we put a lot of effort into that.

Marshall Kosloff:

You know, I’m realizing, especially going down your memo, in the show notes, of course, recategorising the premium version of your product as being adjacent to Eight Sleep or a Fitbit, or a WHOOP device, in that it’s designed to give you metrics. And from my personal example, I work out harder when my Apple Watch is going, and it’s tracking my beats per minute. So, I think that is just a useful way of understanding the framework at this level, but I want to pivot to the broader stakes here because this is where it really translates from, “Hey, this is fun, we all want to bio-hack and be vibey”, to there’s actually a broader problem that you’re focused on, which is, you referred to this, “The metabolic health crisis.

Marshall Kosloff:

First you, Andrew. Can you define what that crisis is? Because in the memo, it specifically states that, “We will consider the metabolic health crisis in the terms that we consider cancer and the opioid epidemic five years from now.” So anyone who is either in the United States and hasn’t followed that issue, we’re talking cataclysmic scales of terrible, fatal health outcomes, so we’d just love for you to explain your definition on the actual crisis.

Andrew Conner:

Yeah, so I mentioned that metabolic health corresponds to many diseases and I think the one people are most familiar with, is type 2 diabetes, which is basically insulin resistance because of you being exposed to a very high insulin background. And so, having very high glucose, more insulin load in, overtime you just get less sensitive to it. From memory, I think it was 88 million US adults over the age of 18 have pre-diabetes currently. And the scary thing is, statistically, most of them will become diabetic in their life. So, this is right now, a one-way flow of people go from metabolically normal in a clinical sense to pre-diabetic, to diabetic. And in many ways, diabetes is not treated, it’s managed. There are organizations that are trying to, with very large diet interventions, to reverse type 2, and some of them have been successful. But, if we look clinically how diabetes is actually managed, it’s largely just managing the disease, whether it’s dosing insulin, it’s keeping track of things.

Andrew Conner:

The impact of diabetes is very significant and it’s…

Andrew Conner:

When I mentioned my grandfathers, it contributed to both of their deaths. That’s often how it happens, where it’s a contribution. Amputations for diabetics are very common. People lose sensation in their feet and an infection that happens, and it’s not taken care of fast enough because you don’t feel it. My wife’s grandmother, currently is diabetic and I looked at the material she has and it was very sad. They did not strongly push for diet interventions and things like that. She is currently losing her eyesight. And so, the way diabetes affects people is very strong, but I don’t want to limit it to just diabetes. Heart disease is in the spectrum of insulin resistance. There’s a lot of evidence that different kinds of cancers grow faster in high glucose environments.

Andrew Conner:

You think about it, cancers are cells that are growing uncontrolled. Well, providing a lot of fuel for that can’t be good, and so we’ve actually seen studies where people go on very strict ketogenic diets to try to slow down the cancer’s growth. It’s inconclusive, it doesn’t apply to all cancers, but this is also in the realm. So, if we look at these diseases that are often associated with old age, and we look at what’s happening in the decades prior. What are the things that are leading to them? And we see a very stark outcome. Dr. Lustig, who Sam alluded to, in his book, by some metrics 88% of US adults are insulin resistant in some way. That’s terrifying, like what have we done wrong? How have we messed up our food system and things like that? And so, one of the things that are most exciting for me with this feedback loop is actually creating some accountability for food, where brands can’t so easily talk about how heart-healthy they are, when at the same time we know that diets that are composed of these very simple sugars that are very easily metabolized and cause very high glucose environments, thus high insulin, they’re not good for you. I think that’s the space of the metabolic health crisis that is important to us.

Andrew Conner:

There’s many outcomes of this. Easy one for us to track is, what is the diabetes and pre-diabetes instance rate in America, and if we’re successful, that starts going down. Right now, it’s climbing very quickly, but there’s many other things that we could observe if we’re successful in reversing this trend.

Sam Corcos:

Yeah, and actually to that point, the reason why there seems to be a semantic escalation in today’s news environment about everything being a crisis. But I think people really do not understand the scope of how serious this problem is. Diabetes has one metric for this. It’s more than 10% of the US population right now and it’s increasing at an increasing rate. It’s accelerating. The second derivative is positive, not the first derivative. They are, alluding to something Andrew mentioned before, about they didn’t used to think that skinny people could get diabetes. Well, they didn’t think children could get it either. They used to call it adult-onset diabetes. There’s juvenile, which is type 1, and adult-onset. And then, six-year olds and seven-year olds are getting adult-onset. Like, what the hell is this? We have to come up with a new name for it now, we’ll call it type 1 and type 2 because clearly this is not an adult thing.

Sam Corcos:

There’s also fatty liver disease, which used to be caused by alcohol. Alcoholics get fatty liver disease and then they’re like, “Well, five-year olds are getting fatty liver disease now. They’re not drinking alcohol, so what’s causing this? Well, we need a new category now. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease which is basically caused by processed food and sugar.” Dr. Lustig, he’s proposed calling this processed food disorder, which probably won’t catch on, but one could help.

Marshall Kosloff:

Our doctors are not our marketers, so we have to put people in their specific boxes. Something I’m really struggling with, especially with the opioid crisis example, is who is to blame for the current state of affairs? Because within the opioid crisis example, you see a system where the FDA and overprescribing doctors and bad economic incentives, combined with really negligent companies, led to this horrific crisis that led to just a horrific number of deaths. With this though, the word blame, feels to be somewhat misplaced. So, once again, like within the metaphor, how should we consider the system, but at the same time, to follow up on this real quick, you’ve got a food pyramid, which was horrifically designed to give you all this…

Marshall Kosloff:

So how did the two of you just think of the idea of responsibility and blame and the system that folks’ individual choices are playing into?

Sam Corcos:

Yeah, I think that the short answer is that we didn’t know. I don’t think the low-fat movement was malicious. I think it’s had very negative health consequences for a lot of people, but I don’t think it was malicious. Another thing that Andrew mentioned before, is how diabetes is not treated, it’s managed. I think that these things just take a long time. Most people I talk to, when you talk about things like reversing diabetes, which is pretty well understood at this point in the scientific literature. Virta is probably the best company in this space. People say, “That’s ridiculous, you can’t reverse diabetes, it’s a chronic condition.” Some people just don’t believe you that it’s possible and others just say, “yeah, maybe some people.” But, nobody will adhere to that and then it doesn’t work. And they just generally have skepticism around the human condition and they think really poorly of people, in general, which just philosophically, we don’t share that world view. So, I think that…

Marshall Kosloff:

Quick follow-up, what is your world view then?

Sam Corcos:

I think that most people want to be healthy and they want to live positive and productive lives. I think that one of the biggest reason why they don’t, is that there’s bad information. People don’t know…

Sam Corcos:

One of the pieces of pushback I’ve heard is that, everyone knows that Doritos are bad for you. It’s like, yes, everyone kind of implicitly knows that. I actually have a friend, when he started using Levels, he used to drink four, five cans of soda, every day, and he was telling me afterwards, he’s like, “Yeah, my mom always tells me, ‘Don’t drink soda, it’s bad for you.’” It’s like, yeah, okay whatever. He started wearing a glucose monitor. He started seeing numbers that you’re not supposed to see as a healthy person and he noticed that he would have this huge spike from the sugar in the soda, followed by a crash. And he would basically almost pass out, he was so low on energy and he was craving sugar, and so he’ll have his next soda. And it was just this death spiral and he realized, one, the soda is the cause of these problems, and two, I’m maybe not invincible. I’m seeing now, I thought I was a healthy person, the numbers that I’m seeing are really concerning.

Sam Corcos:

And so, he hasn’t had soda since then. And so, you can sort of know in the back of your mind. It’s sort of like, sometimes people know, it’s like, “yeah, I know that alcohol is bad for my sleep.” I’ve heard that before, but I can tell you for myself, it wasn’t until I wore an aura ring and I saw just how much it impact my sleep. And I said, “All right. I’m going to not do that anymore. I don’t think it’s worth it.”

Marshall Kosloff:

You know, something I’m super curious about, given what you just said, especially, knock on wood, as this first premium product is a success and you move down the income ladder, when it comes to the accessibility for your products. To what degree do you feel people will be able to take actions, based on what you’re describing. So, I’m just thinking of the most conventional wisdom, most obvious responses of…

Marshall Kosloff:

Okay, so let’s say people now explicitly know that your glucose spikes, how do, let’s say, food deserts play into this? Processed food is bad. I think everyone, explicitly kind of get that processed food is bad, but it’s also cheaper, so therefore people have…

Marshall Kosloff:

I think everyone would buy organic food if they could, but there’s a reason why people don’t just do that. So, I’m obviously not saying it’s y’all’s responsibility to solve a broader systemic food distribution issue, but how do you just think about helping people or people’s ability to make adjustments? Because once again, saying whatever we appreciate, there’s your really optimistic take on human nature. So let’s just buy your premise of like, let’s be optimistic of people’s desire too. What are people’s abilities. I’ll offer that to you first, Andrew. As you’re thinking about the thing that causes this not to scale up part.

Andrew Conner:

I think that is a entirely reasonable thing for us to be thinking about long term and for us to think about in terms of access because I think, as you alluded to, a lot of the metabolic health crisis is happening, not on people that are biohackers and that are buying every wearable and things like that. So, the first side of this is access, being able to get the information as easily as possible. I think there’s also a widespread distrust of the medical system, particularly talking about personalized health. When you have a model of one size fits all and it doesn’t fit, it’s very easy to have a jaded perspective of like, “This isn’t for me.” And so, one of the nice things is, everyone can kind of experience things for themselves. Pragmatically, I kind of think about it working backwards, like what if the idea of processed food being infinite calories, cheaply available at any time, and this sort of thing.

Andrew Conner:

What if that’s a bad idea? What if just like fundamentally we have to get away from that? How do we work backwards and increase access? And it’s awareness because you’re right, it is way cheaper. Food that doesn’t spoil, is way easier to transport, it’s way easier to market. If you look at what foods get advertisements, big broccoli is not running advertisements where you’re eating a pound of broccoli, but interestingly, you’ll see these health halo products that do., right? So in many ways, if we need to get back to minimally processed food, people’s awareness has to come first. You have to be aware what is the impact. It will totally take time, but we’ve seen this in many other ways, when there is interest, the market can meet that.

Andrew Conner:

And right now, there is this misinformation mismatch between how food affects people and what their interests are. Living long, living healthy, being bale to be functional in life and not feeling like you’re on the energy rollercoaster. Because there’s this impedance mismatch, it’s really hard for people to point their finger and put blame at anyone, thing. Because you’re right, I find it problematic to point to any individual organization, even large food conglomerates. They’re kind of optimizing the system that they have. So, in many ways we have to change the system. I see that as an awareness problem. Is people demanding for foods that are healthier for them and foods that have better metabolic outcomes and support more holistic health? This is something that’ll take a long time, but it’s something I’m also really optimistic about.

Marshall Kosloff:

Something I’m very curious about, this is a really strong ‘news you can use’ episode. How do the two of you think about fat diets? And I want to say fat diet because that is a bit of a value judgment, but as you’ve alluded to, past 40 years of our broader lifetime, there’s just been a cycle versus cycle versus cycle. Actually, let’s do this. What do we know about health? I’m a 29 year old man, I exercise 3 to 5 times a week, what should I be eating? Because the advice I’m getting is different than the advice I would’ve been getting in the 1980s.

Sam Corcos:

Yeah, it’s funny we’re actually in the process of writing the Levels’ dietary philosophy to try to help people understand this. And I had a long conversation with my cousin, Matt, about a week ago, he basically asked the same question. Is organic…

Sam Corcos:

Does that actually matter? My wife is saying not to eat blueberries anymore because pesticides or something. Blueberries are bad for you now. I don’t know what’s going on. And I think that part of the challenge is, there’s a lot of moralizing related to diet; things that are good, things that are bad. The reality is that life is all about trade-offs and there are things that are better and there are things that are fine. And I would say, Michael Pollan’s advice of “eat wholefoods, not too much, mostly plants”, you’re probably safe. I would say, if you avoid refined sugar and you avoid processed foods for the most part, you don’t have to be fully abstinent. Like I would sometimes have dessert and that’s fine.

Marshall Kosloff:

The way you said that. Sometimes, do a bump of chocolate cake, you know?

Sam Corcos:

Exactly. So, if you avoid refined sugar, if you don’t eat too many processed foods and you eat mostly whole foods, you’re 95% on the way there. And all the stuff about, is it organic, is it grass-fed? Grass-fed is better, but if the alternative is processed foods, between grass-fed beef or non-grass…

Sam Corcos:

Eat the non-grass-fed beef. Beef might have these implications around like marginally increased risk of cancer, but relative to what? If the baseline is the standard American diet, get off of that immediately. If you’re eating TV dinners and you’re eating the standard American diet, get off of that as fast as possible and switch to eating whole foods. And what’s interesting, actually it’s something you mentioned about processed foods being cheaper. I think this is in Dr. Hyman’s work, maybe in his book, Food Fix, it’s actually not that different. Eating your vegetables, eating whole foods, it’s not that different in terms of cost. It’s really just a question of how palatable is our…

Sam Corcos:

It’s food like Doritos are made to be hyper palatable. For a taste per dollar, maybe they’re much cheaper, but in terms of calories or nutrition per dollar, it’s not that different. It’s probably plus or minus 10%.

Marshall Kosloff:

That brings to mind a question though. Eating Doritos is not the hip thing to do in our circle, so I don’t really know any people with Doritos problems. So for the population that is struggling with that issue, are people thinking about nutrition? I don’t know if this sounds condescending, because I, personally, as I’m reaching my 30s, I’ve started to experience the early, early, early effects of aging, but I was just not thinking of nutrition until very recently. So let’s just expand…

Marshall Kosloff:

How much are you actually finding people thinking along the lines of nutrition? Because when I would think about how I eat unhealthily in college, my metric wasn’t dollar per nutritional benefit, it was dollar per, “hey, ramen’s cook really quick”. How do people actually think about nutrition, up until the point where they actually have had the onset of really terrible health effects?

Andrew Conner:

I mean, it’s something that I think everyone has their own journey and whether it’s what’s happening in their family, things that they’ve experienced, there are a lot of people that are very diet centric and naturally adhere to prescriptive protocols. Other people, if you hear Michael Pollan’s advice, they’re like, “hey, that’s for me, that’s something I can stick to, that is something that isn’t heavily moralized.” Many people aren’t aware and I think, early on, that can’t be our market. To take the Tesla analogy forward, early Tesla customers, they saw the promise of electric vehicles. And trying to take someone who likes their Ford F-150, its just…

Andrew Conner:

Early on it doesn’t work, but we’re seeing the latest Ford F-150 is electric. They have an electric model that will sell well. And so, I think it takes time. It’s something that everyone has their own journey. I think, particularly when something is salient to someone, they care. When they feel like they’re on the energy rollercoaster or they have a family member that had a shocking health discovery or something like that, I think that’s when people are really receptive. We see a lot of customers that are older than us three, that are recognizing the effects of aging and they’re like, “Okay, I want to do what I can.” Right? And in many ways, earlier is better, but if you haven’t cared about it, today is perfectly great as well.

Andrew Conner:

To also build on your question about diets, it’s interesting, our chief medical officer, Dr. Casey Means, is almost exclusively plant-based. And so, you would imagine that’s the diet she’s advocating for everyone, and the answer is, not really. There’s many diets that work for different people, and so I think the best diet is one that’s sustainable, that looks different than the standard American diet, that incorporates whole foods. But, whether that’s a keto diet on grass-fed beef and all these things, or it’s a largely plant-based diet, getting almost all of your protein from beans and things like that, we’re seeing good health outcomes in both of theses. And so, naively, you would think that they’re polar opposites, and if you read diet books, you would think that there’s no possible way that someone’s blood work can be really good on a plant-based diet or on a keto diet.

Andrew Conner:

In both, we see that. And so, I think in many ways it’s increasing awareness, creating the feedback loop and we don’t have any suggestive Levels diet. We don’t have a meal plan we’re offering people or anything like that. In many ways, we wanted people to meet us where they are, in whatever’s most sustainable to them. My dad was eating a bagel for breakfast that was causing a large glucose spike. And just bringing awareness of that is really powerful. He might still do that some and I think it’s strict diets in general, worked incredibly compatible with how he saw nutrition, but when he understands the impact of things, “Okay, now I can make decisions on the margin that can actually greatly impact the trajectory I’m heading in.”

Marshall Kosloff:

I’m glad you’ve brought up the lack of meal plans because it’s a good pivot into our last section here, with your name ranks, serial number, founder questions. Are you going to create a meal plan? What’s the long term vision here? Maybe this is crazy, I don’t know the unit economics for y’all’s industry, but I could easily see a world where it’s like, hey, Marshall. I buy a variety of meal prep products, I’ve tried a bunch during COVID quarantine, has stuck with it, it’s really great, especially if you’re working and busy. I would love to be able to send in something that felt customized for me, based on my metrics and my data. You don’t even have to respond to my quick example there slash pitch, but how do you think of the long term vision for what y’all are trying to build?

Sam Corcos:

We’ve talked to some companies that do that, we’re trying to look into it. It’s a tough business. Staying as firmly in software as possible…

Marshall Kosloff:

Logistics and delivery of perishable food items is probably not the next step.

Sam Corcos:

Exactly.

Marshall Kosloff:

What about the broader perspective?

Andrew Conner:

There’s something powerful about accountability with food and we’ve had several brands reach out to us that are like, “Hey, we know that we can support a good metabolic health and we don’t have large glucose impacts, do you have a Level certified thing?” So there’s a lot of options here in the future, where as long as we make it as easy as possible for consumers to navigate, find the right foods for them, that’s good for us. We don’t feel that glucose is the end all be all. It’s a really nice slice into metabolic health, which is a slice into overall health. And so, to not overstate how we see glucose, it’s somewhere that was basically begging for innovation, begging for someone to use this data to create the feedback loops for people. It’s also not our endpoint. And so, I think we recognize the long term potential of personalized health and building feedback loops and this sort of thing, to support people to be healthy in general, more than just managing their glucose, more than just metabolic health.

Marshall Kosloff:

Speaking of the opportunity y’all saw, what’s the quick 30 second version of your origin story? How did you get into this industry and just interested in it? How did you two meet? What did that side of the journey look like?

Sam Corcos:

I don’t know about 30 seconds. Josh…

Marshall Kosloff:

40, 45, I’ll give you 50.

Sam Corcos:

Josh did a really good series of podcasts on the origin story on a Whole New Level. It’s actually our internal company podcast that we publish externally, but we could probably talk about how Andrew and I met. We met at the first On Deck founder retreat. I remember vividly, bumping into Andrew in the hallway and then we started talking. And then the sun went down and three hours later, we were still all standing in the same place talking.

Andrew Conner:

I think it wasn’t…

Andrew Conner:

I know for a fact that it wasn’t anything related to glucose, it think it was something about [crosstalk 00:51:57]

Marshall Kosloff:

That would be crazy. Like he was eating a bagel and I smacked it out of his hand and then we…

Marshall Kosloff:

I think that’s helpful, but how did it translate into glucose? It’s just you meet someone and then relationships evolve over time and a mutual interest develops, that bit.

Andrew Conner:

The interesting thing was, we are a fully remote company and have been from the beginning. I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sam was living in New York. Sam travels a lot for anyone who knows him, and we met up again when he was visiting the Bay Area. Our priority, it seems pretty implausible that you’d be able to start a company with random people over the US. When we started, we all convened on a house in Los Angeles for a few days to work together. Is this something that can happen? How do we like working with each other? That sort of thing. And so, from my perspective, it was a great experience to really be able to work very closely with Sam and the other co-founders, with a take it or leave it…

Andrew Conner:

We’re like, “If it doesn’t work out, cool. I’m gainfully employed.” But it was very clear to me then, that the future here is something that I have to be involved in. I, personally, have been interested in wellness and health for a lot of my adult life. I had tried to get continuous glucose monitors, based on reading biohacker books and stuff like that, and it was declined. And so, this was like a ‘Oh Duh’ kind of thing when Sam started talking to it. I think the phrase, if I’m remembering it right, it was, “I’m definitely investing, but I think I might quit my job for this.” And so, it was something that I want to work on that’s meaningful and I think I started throwing that around. I can’t think of too much more meaningful of helping people change their health trajectory of their life, at least for me. And so, that’s something that I wanted to work on.

Marshall Kosloff:

I think that’s a really great place to leave things. One last question, so for the two of you, what is the immediate next step for the business from the sides you are focusing on? So, let’s start with you, Sam.

Sam Corcos:

Yeah, building up a team. If you know any good engineers, send them my way.

Marshall Kosloff:

I don’t know a single one, so audience, pay attention.

Sam Corcos:

Yeah, building up a team. We’ve put a lot of effort into making sure we’re really are building the all star team, solving this problem. The big part of it is also more tactically, is thinking a lot more about business model and longterm incentive alignment, something that we thing a lot about. We’re going to be putting a pretty big effort into that over the course of the next few months. We’re hopefully going to open up the beta program by the end of the year. It’s not really timeline based, it’s more milestones. We have a number of important things that we need to solve. The chronology is somewhat arbitrary, I think we have something like 60 months of runway right now, so we’re not in a hurry to launch, but we would like to do it as soon as possible because really, we want to solve this problem as soon as possible.

Andrew Conner:

To add to that, one thing that was surprising to me, as we started getting customers onto Levels, before Levels had an app or anything like that, is that it was very clear to us that the hardware is not enough. That just access to glucose monitoring really keeps it in the realm of how glucose is currently treated and doesn’t really open things up to personalized insights and deep understanding of how things impact you. So we were spending a lot of time on that. It’s like, how can we most effectively convey information to people that is specialized to them, that is scoped to their situation, whether it is what they’re trying to optimize or how their glucose is responding to meals, and things like that. We see this huge space on top of just the sensors that closes this feedback loop, that without it, it’s as if I…

Andrew Conner:

A lot of people are into heart rate variability and the most common thing of what’s normal, what do I do? And the same thing happens for glucose. You get your glucose, “Okay, now what?” We’ve been focusing a lot on the ‘now whats’, like how can I make these insights meaningful to me and I close these feedback loops? And so it takes time building in a new space takes a lot of product iteration, it takes a lot of failing, and so this is what we’re focused on now as we support our existing beta program. We’re excited to continue to open it up to more people.

Marshall Kosloff:

That’s awesome. So, any suggestions for where folks should look next, especially since you’ve shouted out the huge amount of blog content? I’m not kidding, did the research for the show, there’s actually literally too much to read. So how about the two of you just shout out, beyond just the secret memo, which is a good place to start. What is the number one piece you two would recommend or pieces that you’d recommend folks go to next?

Sam Corcos:

I think for this particular audience, listening to our podcast, A Whole New Level, is a good place to start. Josh and I did a podcast on co-founder dynamics. Josh had a really open and vulnerable conversation about some of the most difficult times in our co-founder dynamic. So that’s probably a really good place to start. I’m hoping that it really becomes a resource. One of my goals in life is to get more people to start companies. I think that too many people go the easy path of finance or law, and I think that when people see how we’re not superheros. If you look at our website and you go to the bottom, there’s an insight to the company link. You can see our first industrial update, you can see all of our company all hands that we record, you can see what our company was like when we were six people. I think that’s probably the place that I would refer people.

Marshall Kosloff:

That’s awesome.

Andrew Conner:

And obviously, I think our whole blog is wonderful. We have been incredibly fortunate to get the right people involved in writing some truly wonderful content. A lot of start-ups, their content strategy is about SEO optimization. Ours was writing the pieces that we wished existed before Levels. And so, I would recommend people go to Levels’ blog. If anyone wants to read more deeply into the state of metabolic health and the food system, a book that Sam alluded to before, Metabolical by Dr. Robert Lustig, is a very good book. So, even though I’d love to keep your audience on that, is go there if you really want to learn about how body processes food, how the processed food industry has interacted with medicine and these sorts of things. He is an incredibly intelligent individual that has been incredibly helpful, steering us as we think about the food system and metabolic health.

Marshall Kosloff:

That is the perfect place to leave it. Sam, Andrew, thank you so much for joining us in The Deep End.

Andrew Conner:

Yeah, of course.

Marshall Kosloff:

Thanks for joining us on The Deep End. If you enjoyed your stay, give us a review on Apple Podcast and share this episode with your friends and colleagues, to help grow the show with us. We’ve also got show notes and more episodes available at ideas.beondeck.com. See you next time.