Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 48 - Dr Sina McCullough: Pesticides, Regenerative Farming & The Environment

Episode Date: June 29, 2020

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Sina McCullogh to talk about our food. Dr. McCullough has a Ph.D. in Nutritional Science and a B.S. in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior from the University of California at Davis. In today's discussion, Dr. McCullough and Danny take a closer look at GMO's, pesticides, commonplace agricultural practices, and even policies about our food and food production.You can buy Dr. McCuloughs latest book HERE!Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Guys, welcome back in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. Today's guest is Dr. Sina McCullough, and we're talking all about food supply, GMOs, glyphosates, how food is made, how food is subsidized, a lot of really interesting stuff with regards to nutrition, kind of taking it a layer deeper than just, hey, how do calories work, how do macros work, all the way to the level of how food is produced, how food is subsidized. It's a really, really interesting conversation that I enjoyed thoroughly, and I can't wait to have Dr. McCullough back on for a follow-up. So be sure to give this one a listen, tag me, let me know what you think,

and enjoy the conversation with Dr. McCullough. All right, everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Today, we have Dr. Sina McCullough on, and Dr. McCullough has a PhD in nutritional sciences from UC Davis, which isn't too far from where I live in Northern California. And her journey in the nutrition space is kind of unique, not only as an academic, but also as somebody who's dealt with their own health challenges and used nutrition as a way to manage it. So Dr. McCullough, thank you so much for coming on. And I would love it if you actually told your story about how you got into the academic

world of nutrition and how you used that knowledge to kind of combat some of the health issues that have arisen in your life. Well, thank you for having me on the program. It's a privilege and an honor to be here. I'm happy to share my story. It's a privilege and an honor to be here. I'm happy to share my story. I went to UC Davis for undergrad and grad school.

And in undergrad, I studied neurobiology, physiology, and behavior. And I was a competitive athlete for most of my life. So already, I knew that diet played a critical role in athletic performance. And I wanted to expand upon that knowledge base. So I decided to move forward with my education and get a PhD in nutrition with an emphasis in exercise physiology. And I was, I'm very grateful for my opportunities that I had at UC Davis and I learned a lot but what happened was I started to get sick in my early 20s while I was in college I developed gastrointestinal symptoms a lot of cramping bloating constipation

and I saw medical doctors from the beginning. They, of course, prescribed different prescription drugs like Tagamet. But I knew that prescription drugs didn't address the root cause of the problem. So I refused to take the drugs and just kept searching for an answer. And over the next 20 years, I got progressively worse. 20 years, I got progressively worse. I developed things like chronic sinus infections, a tumor that grew on the white or the sclera of my eye. Wow. Yeah, the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. I saw numerous specialists. So they didn't know how to fix it, but they were certain that it would continue to grow and it would cover over my cornea and blind me. Oh my gosh. That was helpful.

And numerous other symptoms as well, including kidney stones. I had five miscarriages, chronic brain fog, chronic fatigue. They diagnosed me with irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, you name it, just catch all groups so that progressed over the next 20 years all the while I was seeing medical medical doctors various specialists they ran so many tests that after a while I lost count and we did multiple colonoscopies signal a breath test urineies, breath tests, urine tests, fecal tests. We even did at the end exploratory surgery. Nobody had any answers. They could not figure it out.

They just kept trying to prescribe more drugs. So then finally, the last doctor that I saw told me that the symptoms had to be in my head because they can't figure it out. And that's when I knew that I was on my own, that if I wanted to heal, I was going to have to step outside of the box that we call Western medicine and find my own path for healing. And so I did that. I started with scouring the scientific literature trying to find any clues that would connect the dots for my of my story and early on i stumbled upon the term leaky gut which this was this was a long time ago so this was not in mainstream media yet yeah no I feel as though leaky gut only became a term that was

colloquially used in like 2016 and later. So it hasn't become popularized until very recently. So you must have been doing some deep diving if you found it that long ago. Yeah, yes, I did. And actually, my husband was my co-detective. He has a PhD in chemical engineering. Oh, that's awesome. He helped me scour the literature and piece this thing together. So yeah, we found that term early on. And there wasn't a lot known about it yet. But we have theorized that I developed leaky gut from chemicals in our food supply, and some foods themselves so for instance from gmos from pesticides and herbicides that i learned were you know um ubiquitously sprayed on our

conventional crops um and also from artificial chemicals that are made created in a lab maybe synthetic chemicals created in labs, processed foods, and also from gluten. So I went on a gluten free diet, or what I thought was gluten free. Yeah, all organic. And my journey went up and down for a while, I get better than I get worse. But I try a new diet, like the gaps diet, I get better, and then I get worse. Then I try a new diet, like the GAPS diet. I get better, and then I get worse. Then I try a candida diet, and I get better, and then I get worse. So it was really difficult to pinpoint what was happening. And then finally, I got to the point where I was in so much pain that I couldn't get off the floor. Yeah. That, you know, now we know I had developed an advanced stage of an autoimmune disease. It was specifically, it was rheumatoid arthritis. Wow.

And that was in my thirties. Jeez. So, you know, not typical. Well, now it's become more typical, but it's not what we think of as a typical disease for a 30 year old. No, not at all. Yeah. So I was in so much pain.

I had, you know, a five year old, and pretty much a newborn at that point. And I just couldn't get off the floor. And my five year old remembers having to bring a glass of water to me with a straw in it just so I could drink water because I could not wrap my hand around the cup. Wow. So it was bad, really bad. And it got to the point where I was having muscle wasting, like a cancer patient could experience. I lost like 15 pounds in one month. And it was crazy because I was eating constantly. Like I have spoonfuls of avocado that I'm eating all day long. Like any calorically dense food I can find,

I'm just trying to eat it. And we just could not stop the weight loss. And then eventually we did find out, you know, that I had the advanced stage of autoimmune disease. And it was because of the leaky gut. It was accompanied by nutrient deficiencies yeah 15 different nutrients wow even though i was taking a high quality

multivitamin and mineral every day yeah so you had some absorption and assimilation issues sure exactly exactly and actually i was so deficientient that I was declared borderline for both Caligra and Beriberi. Wow. Yeah. Both of those diseases were eradicated in the U.S. by the mid-1950s at the latest. But we're actually seeing a resurgence of these micronutrient deficient diseases, largely because of the food supply. Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, so i had that and i also had arsenic poisoning

from consuming the supposed gluten-free processed foods that are heavy um heavy rice base yeah so um it was it was really bad and eventually i was able to actually turn it around um by i watched you know there's free online health summits that are offered there's many many of them they're all free anybody can access them they're going on like almost year around you can find one yeah so i watched it was common for me to lay on the floor and watch about 40 hours a week of wow wow because i was trying to find an answer, you know? Um, and so eventually what happened was I saw a pattern in, um, the practitioners across, across the globe that were successful in reversing people's autoimmune inflammatory chronic diseases. Yeah. I saw a

pattern in what they were doing. And so I put that, I put that pattern together into a program for myself, and follow the program and the disease reversed. Wow. So today, I'm completely disease free. I'm like, I'm healthier than I've ever been. My kids even have a problem keeping up with me because I have so much energy. And now we're actually pregnant with our third child, a healthy baby after having five miscarriages. No, that's awesome. And there's so much to unpack there. And I love it because in our space, in the health space, the nutrition space, the physique space, the performance space, everything is grounded in health. And a lot of people have really, really pushed the narrative forward and advanced what we're

talking about because they have gone through these fallacious experiences where their health has really been something they've had to fight for. And they've had to kind of scour and do the research. And I think having that academic background paired with this story of yours gives you a unique insight into food and how food has kind of permeated our culture that most people just don't have. And for those listening, you know, we know more than we've ever known about medicine. Every day we learn more, we make advancements. But yet these chronic disease issues are getting worse and worse. And it seems to, and you can correct me

if I'm wrong here, but these issues seem to coincide with some of our newer food practices, wouldn't you say? Oh, absolutely. You're absolutely correct. If you look at the statistical data that is available in the scientific literature, you'll actually see, for instance, an increase across the board in what we call these chronic or inflammatory diseases that parallels the use of glyphosate, for instance, in the food supply. And glyphosate, for everyone listening, is a Roundup. Essentially, it's weed killer, correct? Yeah, glyphosate is one of the active ingredients in Roundup. There are other glyphosate-based products on the market as well, but Roundup is the most popular pesticide or herbicide on the market. And it has now, I mean, you may have heard of it because it's in the news a lot lately with lawsuits, with Bayer, which, you know, glyphosate, Roundup was originally formulated by Monsanto and then they were bought by Bayer. And now there's

all these lawsuits and they just came up with a settlement. But the lawsuits were centered around people claiming that Roundup was causing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And the company was found guilty of it. Yeah. And so now they're in, they just settled. But yeah, now we know that glyphosate is horrific for your health. I mean, there's so many different ways that it affects you. But even one basic way is that glyphosate is actually patented as an antibiotic. So yeah, so every time that you're most of the conventional food is sprayed with some kind of pesticide or herbicide. Yeah, most abundantly used. So you can almost guarantee if you're consuming a conventional diet, you are consuming glyphosate in some quantity every day. And that means that if you're consuming it,

you're taking small doses of an antibiotic. Yeah. Which would probably be damaging to your gut over time exactly because i mean as you probably already aware your microbiome is very critical in your optimal health your wellness your performance as an athlete i mean you name it yeah it's your microbiome is involved in it and now we know that so we're more microbe than we are human yeah there's different estimates but it's somewhere around nine or ten to every one human cell so roughly nine microbial cells to every one human cell is what you have and now we know that those microbes actually

not only help you digest your food and like make different nutrients in your gastrointestinal tract and, you know, help you make serotonin and stuff. But now we know that they also help regulate and coordinate every system in your body. Yeah. Including your thoughts. So they are critical to your health. So you don't want to be killing them off. So they are critical to your health. So you don't want to be killing them off. But you eat this glyphosate, it does kill off microbes in your gastrointestinal tract that you need. It does other things too, like it's a known chelator. So it can actually pull micronutrients out of your body, contributing to this rise in micronutrient deficiencies that we're seeing.

contributing to this rise in micronutrient deficiencies that we're seeing um it also interferes with the shikimate pathway um which we humans we say that humans don't have the shikimate pathway but our microbes do the microbes in our gastrointestinal tract have that pathway and that pathway is how we make some of our um our essential amino acids that are involved in, you know, in like sleep, like dopamine and stuff. So we're seeing this rise in like sleep disorders and Parkinson's disease and such. And part of it is because glyphosate is shutting down that pathway

that is in those microbes that are inside our gut. So we're not getting those critical compounds that are being formed in our gastrointestinal tract. Yeah, no, that's so fascinating. You know, my dad actually has Parkinson's disease. And one of the things he always said, he lived a very healthy, active life. But he would always look back in retrospect and be like, you know, nobody in my family had this. I don't know where it would have came from. And this is just pure

conjecture, but one of the things he would always come back to, and I grew up on a winery. My dad had a five acre winery that was half winery, half farm. One of the things he would always double down on is he said, I wonder if it's all the chemicals that was around maintaining this land. And I just, I've never made that connection because I had no idea that it could alter a dopamine pathway, but you know, that's something that he kind of inferred and it could in fact be a player and why that disease developed so early in his life because he got it at 40, which is very early for that disease. And that was just his own conjecture. So it sounds like we're all pretty exposed to things like glyphosate in our normal diet, especially if we're eating a lot of conventionally farmed foods. Is that the case? also been used so much that it can be found in water samples so it could be in your water supply so it's also very important to have filtered water you know like i for instance have a whole house

whole house water filtration system and that way i'm also not getting exposed to chemicals when i'm standing in the shower yeah so that's a must um but. But yeah, it's, it's sprayed on, it's not only sprayed on your food, you know, conventional crops. But for instance, it's sprayed as a desiccant on crops like wheat. Yeah. So that's one thing that, you know, people who support the use of glyphosate, they'll say, Oh, well, it just washes off. You know, we spray it beginning of harvest. And by the time harvest time comes around, it's not there anymore because it's just washed off. Well, there is a lot of runoff.

Yeah, it ends up in the soil. Yeah. And it gets into the, that's one of the main ways it gets into the water supply, actually. Yeah. But we know that it does absorb into some plants um so it is not just on the outside it's on the in the inside of the plant um as well so it is very difficult to actually avoid these avoid consuming glyphosate are there options out there in conventional consumer practice? If somebody said, hey, I want to try to minimize my exposure to this, is simply eating more organic foods a better option? Take it up, get a consume filtered water. Don't consume water straight out of the tap.

And definitely consuming organic produce is going to theoretically drastically reduce your consumption of glyphosate. Even you can look for, you know, if you don't want to go all the way organic yet, you know, like a lot of times people need to take baby steps um i didn't change everything all at once um so one easier baby step that might be more cost effective uh or you know save you some money on the way to organic is to look for the glyphosate residue free seal oh wow and that's put out by the detox project um they have if this is a third-party independent organization that does laboratory testing on not only the raw ingredient but the final product like a process that's cool yeah and their testing is it's the best that we have in the world right now for detecting the lowest level of glyphosate so if you see a processed food that has that glyphosate residue-free label on it, that means that is your best bet in the conventional realm of getting a food that doesn't

have a glyphosate. So you don't have to go all organic. You can look for that label. You can certainly wash your produce because there will be probably some residue on the outside. So that could also help to take it off. Glyphosate is water soluble. So you don't need to use soaps and stuff like that to get to remove it because it is water soluble. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. But that's also a double-edged sword for glyphosate because since it is, since it is water soluble. It ends up in the water supply. What was that?

It will end up in the water supply. It will end up in the water supply, but also that's harmful for your own health because the toxins can either be water soluble or fat soluble. And if you look at more of the natural based toxins, like ones that mother nature would make, they're more fat soluble. Got it. So that's a benefit to you because if you consume a fat soluble toxin, your body will tend to sequester it into your fat source, which pulls it away from your brain. But if it's water soluble, it can travel through your blood

and glyphosate can, just like glyphosate can break down the tight junctions that are in your gastrointestinal tract, which causes leaky gut, right right so we know that glyphosate can directly cause leafy gut it can then get into your bloodstream travel to your brain and you have what's called a blood-brain barrier that's supposed to prevent toxins from coming into your brain but glyphosate can also break through that barrier just similar in a similar mechanism that it broke through your gut so breaks that barrier and it enters into your brain and that's largely because it's water soluble yeah no i i love all that and i think you touched on something when you brought up um organic that i think might be a nice segue and that is the organic food does uh tend to be a bit expensive and we definitely have price discrepancies in certain

products. Organic produce is generally more expensive than non-organic produce. Grass-fed options can oftentimes be more expensive than conventionally farmed options. And to my knowledge, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, the way our food is actually subsidized from the government and how the government subsidizes agricultural practices can contribute to these discrepancies. Is that the case? And if not, what, you know, what role does food subsidization play in food availability for people like you and I, when we just end up at the grocery store? Yeah, that's an excellent question. And you're exactly right. So we're talking about the Farm Bill. And you know, it's funny, because before I researched this area, like before I got sick, I never paid attention to the Farm Bill.

Because based on the title, I was like, oh, that's for farmers. Like, why would I care? You know? But now I know the Farm Bill is so critically important because it affects every single one of us um it affects your health it affects what food is available in the grocery store it affects the cost of that food yeah so it basically allows the government a way to actually choose what's going to be on your dinner plate for you and choose how much it costs yeah so um what the farm bill does in a nutshell is it allows the government to actually pick the winners and the losers so the government will pay farmers to grow certain crops yeah right so right now um 90% of farm subsidies are given to farmers who are going to grow five different crops. And those are corn, soybeans, wheat,

rice, and cotton. And for instance, the corn and the soybeans, most of that is genetically engineered. Yeah. Most of it is sprayed with, with you know with some kind of pesticide um the third one is the wheat you know the wheat is not genetically modified at this point but it is sprayed like as a desiccant as we were talking about yeah and then you have rice which you know rice is common in a lot of processed food including gluten-free foods we talked about, which usually contain higher levels of arsenic. And then there's cotton, which most people are surprised about the cotton, but cotton actually does end up in the food supply, largely used as an oil to fry things with. So you actually do eat cotton, which is crazy. But those are the top

five crops that are usually subsidized. And so what that means is that the farmers are paid to grow those. And so they grow a lot of them, we end up with a surplus of those crops, which decreases the price of the crops. So then the farmers are left with the cheap crops on their hands. And those cheap crops, then you have to do something with them, right? So they don't go bad. So we do basically four main things with them. One is we export them. One is we process them into feed to give the livestock those foods. So now we're giving

the, you know, the animals that we're, some of it eat, we're giving them these foods that they are not naturally supposed to eat. And now they're having health problems from it. The other is we'll convert some of them to ethanol and burn them as fuel. And then the other category, which is the largest contributor, is that we take those crops and in labs, we convert them into cheap synthetic byproducts. Wow. Then put into our processed foods and they replace what would have been natural ingredients. Like a high fructose corn syrup, for example. Exactly. So, and I'm glad you brought that up because this is high fructose corn syrup for example exactly so and i'm glad you brought

that up because um this is high fructose corn syrup is a perfect example of the consequence of the farm bill because um obviously that's a highly processed um sugar yeah um it's very very cheap because of the farm bill and so it replaced pure cane sugar in a lot of foods um so like today it's roughly eight percent of our calories come from high fructose corn syrup wow so not only did the government um so as so the farm bill is really the government killing the free market for crops. Yeah. Okay. So not only did they make high fructose corn syrup cheap, which incentivized food producers to put it in our food,

but they also artificially inflated the price of the cane sugar, which was the more natural sugar. Yeah. That was also part of the farm bill. And they did that to try to guarantee the sugar producers a profit. So they would guarantee a price for the cane sugar. And then they would tax sugar that was imported. And then starting in 2008 with that farm bill, they started burning what they called excess sugar.

in 2008 with that farm bill, they started burning what they call excess sugar. So they drove down the price of the cheap high fructose corn syrup and they raised the price of the more natural pain sugar. And so this is an example of how the government intervention changes the quality of our food. And it's to our detriment that that's actually happened. Yeah. And I'm sure that's not the only example of that. And I think that kind of speaks to a lot of the food we are exposed to conventionally in a traditional Western diet has kind of been pre-selected by these subsidies. And it kind of encourages people to say, oh, well, that organic stuff is expensive or stuff from maybe smaller farms is more expensive because they don't get the subsidies and it's disrupted the market. interested in taking greater control of their health, limiting exposure to some of these perhaps less healthful foods that have been subsidized or some of those food options they want to opt for the ones that have been processed less, have less exposure to glyphosate. For those people,

what are some really actionable things that they can do just at the grocery store? things that they can do just at the grocery store? Well, if you don't want to support the subsidies, then essentially that means you're going to say, I'm not going to eat the most subsidized crops, which are the corn, soy, wheat, rice, and cotton. So if you said that, that means that you're pretty much not going to eat most processed foods. Yeah. Right? You're going to go for whole foods. Yeah, which I think in general, for people who are interested in living a healthy life,

that's probably the best thing to do anyway. Oh, exactly. I mean, yeah, I could not agree more. Probably one of the best ways, one of the easiest ways to see health improvements is to switch from processed food to whole foods, you know, nutrient-dense foods. And when you do that, you actually not only help your own health, but you actually help to take influence away from the farm bill. help to take influence away from the farm bill. So for instance, right, there's about 300 million acres of land that are planted in the U.S. for food. And about two-thirds of those are planted to grow corn, soy, and wheat. So two-thirds, which is about 200 million. In contrast, there's only 11 million acres of land used to grow fruits and vegetables. So, and we're part of that, right?

Like part of that is because the government has selected those crops. But part of it is also because as consumers, we've consented to allow them to do that. because as consumers, we've consented to allow them to do that. So the way we've done that, the way we've consented, is because at least about 75% of our calories of the average American comes from processed foods. And about a third of our calories come from what we call junk foods, like the cookies and the candies and stuff. So when that happens, we're actually fueling this system, the centralized food system

that the government has created for us. And so, and that means you're also eating less fruits and vegetables, which decreases the demand for them, which increases the price. Interesting. It also means that less land is allotted to grow the fruits and vegetables. But you can actually, as a consumer, help determine which crops you're crops are going to plant be planted and how much are going to be planted and that's by like you said your choices in the grocery store yeah i love that a lot of processed foods switch and so what i always say is you know like again do the baby steps so i don't expect anybody to be like it's just to go from eating 75 percent of their calories as processed food to now okay tomorrow i'm going to eat 100 as whole

food but you can do simple things like focus on one meal a day that that's not processed so maybe instead of like eating spaghetti from wheat maybe maybe you would try spaghetti squash. Yeah. Or if you're going to have a hamburger, maybe leave the bun off and add some vegetables to your plate, you know, so simple things like that, um, that you can do on a daily basis and it will start shifting the market. You know, your choices change the market. And then the more you share what

you're doing, and you're probably going to feel better because you're eating less processed foods, people are going to notice that. They're going to want to feel better too. So it's kind of this domino effect that each one of us has the ability to really create, to change our food supply. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media.

Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. impactful than our vote. And for people out there who want to live healthier, one of the best things you can do is decide to spend your money in ways that support that. It's an interesting pivot, though, in most people do make nutritional changes for their own health. But recently,

you know, we're living in a climate crisis right now. We've seen the growth of, I don't even want to call it a diet because it's borderline of religion, but let's just say we've seen an increase in the prevalence of a vegan or mostly plant-based diet. And with it, we've seen the explosion of this narrative that, you know, With it, we've seen the explosion of this narrative that a diet of entirely plants is exponentially healthier for the planet than a balanced diet that most people eat that contains animal products. And maybe that's true with conventional livestock practices and some of the things that we've talked about. But is there a way for humans, and I know you know a tremendous amount about how we go about producing food, is there a way for humans to eat an omnivorous diet that still respects the planet? Yeah, I would say absolutely yes. You're spot on that the way that most of our food is grown, not only the crops, but the animals is actually detrimental to the planet. So it's, it's not just okay, the livestock are grown in these

horrid conditions. They're fed these horrible diets, you know, during the topsoil, that is a huge component of it. And I am, I by no means support industrial, you know, the raising of livestock using industrial means, I think it's damaging for the animal is damaging for the planet. And it's, it's frankly damaging to your own health. So my household, we don't eat any animals that were raised in the industrial process but on the um on the flip side and there's many avenues we can go through you know with this question but but what i'm also saying is that the crops that are that are raised industrially are also damaging to not only your health, but to the planet.

Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. I mean, just, you know, even just what we talked about was spraying all the pesticides on them. That not only, you know, hurts you, but that hurts the plants and that hurts the soil. Yeah. And I think in the same way that a lot of gluten-free products are made with rice, a lot of these vegan products that are you know animal product mimetics they're supposed to look like oh we've got the vegan yogurt we've got the vegan banana bread we've got the vegan fake meat you know a lot of those options are made with these gmo crops that require destroying our soil effectively they are and so not only do they have the gmo crops um well you know and gmos are a threat to all species yeah um so not only do are some of the negative gmos

you know and they contain these these pesticides but they also contain what are called grass chemicals. It's G-R-A-S. Those are chemicals that are generally recognized as safe. And this is a major problem with our food supply that I don't think a lot of people know about. We have roughly 10,000 food additives in our food supply, and most of those were never tested for safety so what happened was in um in 1958 congress passed what's called a food additive amendment and the purpose was it was good it was a good intent they wanted the the chemicals in our food to be tested for safety before we ate them, right? That doesn't seem like it's asking for too much. It seems reasonable.

It seems to be like common sense. Why did we have to have Congress pass a law for that to happen? But we did. And the problem is that amendment contains what's called the Grants Exemption. that amendment contains what's called the grass exemption. So what it means is that if a chemical is declared to be grass, it does not have to go through an FDA approval process. Wow. And so what we find out is that most of these 10,000 chemicals actually fell into this grass loophole.

So the FDA doesn't test them and the FDA actually doesn't even regulate them. The company gets to decide if the chemical is safe and they get to decide at what level the chemical is safe. So all they have to do, all the company has to do is hire an expert to declare it to be grass right and then they can immediately add it to your food and um i thought it was interesting because in 2013 um in the

scientific journal of um the journal of the american medical association they had they did a whole report on grass chemicals and they revealed that these experts often have financial ties to the companies. Yeah, can't say I'm surprised. Yeah, so as soon as one of their experts says, oh, that chemical's safe, there is no waiting period. They can put it in your food, and they don't even have to tell the FDA that they're putting it in the food. Yeah. They don't even have to tell the FDA that they're putting it in the food. Yeah.

Yeah. That process to notify the FDA is totally voluntary. And this was the kicker for that story though. Guess who made the process voluntary? Donald Trump. No, the FDA itself. Okay. Yeah. They actually made this process voluntary. No, the FDA itself. Oh, okay. Yeah, they actually made this process voluntary.

So when the FDA claims that they're this agency that's protecting our food and making sure it's safe, grass is the perfect example to say, you know, hey, wake up, consumers. The FDA is not actually doing what it says it's going to do, because how can it assure you that your food is safe when it doesn't even know which chemicals are in your food? You know, so, so some of these, these chemicals are rampant in our processed food. And like you said, some of these chemicals are in these, you know, meat alternatives. So I don't, for me, they're not a healthy alternative simply from the GMOs, the pesticides and these grass chemicals that are in it. But I feel like there is a, like a middle ground and that is through regenerative farming. And regenerative farming

is a type of farming practice that actually rebuilds the soil. And this is a huge problem with industrial farming and industrial agriculture in general, is that they're killing off the topsoil. Yeah. And they're decreasing the biodiversity in the soil. So they're decreasing the amount of nutrients in the soil, and they're also decreasing the microbial content in the soil, which just like we talked about, we need all these microbes in and on our bodies.

Well, the soil and the plants and those animals raised on those plants, they also need that microbial diversity. And what happens is in the industrial system, they'll tend to raise monocrops. So if you drive down the road in certain farming areas, you'll see rows and rows and rows of corn or rows and rows and rows of wheat, right? So that's monocropping. It's just one crop that they're growing. And by definition, when you grow just one crop, you're going to have a nutrient imbalance in the soil of different micronutrients like vitamins and minerals. But you're also going to have a lower diversity of microbes because you're only raising one crop. And that's not how nature works. So with regenerative farming, it is a farming practice that tries to work in a symbiotic relationship with nature so that the top soil is actually regenerating itself.

You're literally growing more soil. You're sequestering carbon into that soil. You're increasing the microbial diversity. the microbial diversity and you actually have less water loss, you know, largely because you're having, you have like cover crops, you know, you don't have, you don't have bare soil showing, naked soil. Naked soil is not natural. You wouldn't find that in nature. Yeah.

So you have the soils covered. So you're actually using less resources when you do regenerative farming. using less resources when you do regenerative farming and the cool thing about it too is that this type of farming is thought of more like a holistically managed grazing symbiotic relationship that occurs between you know soil the plants animals and the people so the animals are required to be um the animals work on this type of farming system because they are part of the symbiotic relationship with the plants like they all work together to increase um biodiversity yeah you know in that type of farming system so when you have um i know i totally understand where the big where vegans are coming from because I myself used to be vegan.

Yeah. And now I only eat meat from regenerative farms, from polyphase. Yeah. And a lot of meat. I eat it like a condiment. But when I eat meat from a regenerative farm, it has a totally different effect on my body. Yeah. You know, and I think that's in large part because of the way that it was raised and because the way it was managed.

Yeah. You know, you just have that animal integration into the crop system and it just works how it's supposed to work in nature. So there is awesome there is a there is a solution you know a happy medium to it no i i i think so too and i think for everybody who's listened up until this point like we we've circled the wagons nicely like we've we've pointed out some problems in our food supply that people should be aware of. But, you know, we've also presented a solution, some options for where you can perhaps source foods to minimize exposure to some of this stuff. And, and even something to be pragmatic and optimistic about moving forward in terms of

how we practice this stuff societally. And, you know, I think this is a good place to, you know, I, we could talk about regenerative farming forever. But for anybody who's listened to this and wants to learn more, where can they go to learn more about regenerative farming? Where can they find your work so that they can kind of continue to take control of their health? Yeah, so my website is handsoffmyfood.com. But actually, Joel, so Joel Salatin is the owner of Polyface Farm. And people probably heard of him because he was featured on On the Board's Dilemma and many food documentaries like Food Inc. He is the leader in regenerative farming practices across the world. So Joel and I teamed up and we wrote a book together that was just released

this month. It's called Beyond Labels. And that is a step-by-step guide of how to basically change your health through food and also through, you know, more emotional, emotional levels of healing, you know, releasing labels, the labels that we have acquired through society that people have placed upon us. It's about really releasing all that and going beyond the labels to find healthy healing food. And you do it in a baby step approach. So we go tip by tip and tell you what the action is, and then how to actually implement it and why. I love that.

Yeah, it's so far we've getting great reviews on it. Like, you know, we designed it for the busy mom. So that, you know, it really bothers me when I'm reading these nutrition books, and you have to read through like 150 pages. Yeah. Trying to convince you what to do before you actually get to what do I actually do? You know? Seriously. So we didn't want to do that. We just started out by, all right, here's, here's the tips and you can jump around, you know, based on your individual needs. So it's a really user-friendly book. Like I said, it was designed for, for the busy mom who maybe has 10 minutes to read something.

And she just like, give me the quick and dirty of how to do it. And we walk through it from, you know, we give you the full picture. It's actually the first time in history that a scientist and a farmer have gotten together to write a book. I love that. Hopefully it's not the last time because I would imagine that the ability to work together and bring these two sectors together is one of the most important things we can do societally to reclaim some of our health. Oh, I absolutely agree. And while I believed that before I asked Joel to write this book with me, but I didn't really understand just how profound the partnership was until we were working together. And he, you know, cause he's an expert in his field and I'm an expert in my field,

but rarely do those two sides come together. And so he just, um, he taught me so many things that, you know, you think, Oh, I can write a book by myself. You know, when I wrote my first book by myself, so I was like, I could, I could write this one by myself. I just research it. There's plenty of information online, but there's something different when you're learning from somebody who's like in the trenches, you know, I couldn't agree more. Yeah. He's there with the cows and he actually drinks from the same water that the cows are drinking from, you know? Yeah. I did hear him reference that on Joe Rogan's episode that he did. He definitely talked about drinking from, you know? Yeah. I did hear him reference that on Joe Rogan's episode that he did. He definitely talked about drinking from the hose.

Yeah. I don't think I'm there yet. Like I'm not sure I would go that far, but he's, he is one of the healthiest people that I know. His mother is still alive. She's in her nineties and she's lived on their farm their whole life. I mean, there's really something to what he, her 90s and she's lived on their farm their whole life i mean there's really something to what he what he has produced there um in the way that he lives so to be able to write this with him and and be privy to these insights that only he could have it was it was magical i mean i would wake up most of the book was done over email you know back and forth conversation and i would literally wake up every morning and run to my computer like like, like it was Christmas morning, and I was a kid again, hoping that I got an email from him, because I was like, what am I going to learn today?

You know, I mean, it was amazing. So, so it's, it's really this huge blessing that I was able to learn from him, and he was able to learn from me in a whole different field. And somebody who has been sick and almost died from the food supply and now has been able to reverse it. So we combine those two perspectives together in every single tip. We bring it full circle by combining those two perspectives together to try to get, to try to motivate you and encourage you to just try some try this one little tip you know and every tip that you try is an accomplishment

and we try to make sure that we really motivate people because I think there's a lot of fear out there and particularly in the food industry there's a lot of fear. You know, like I was, I listened to a lot of podcasts and watch a lot of videos, read a lot of nutrition books. And it's like, okay, there's all these toxic things around you and they're all causing cancer and throw out everything in your pantry right now, you know? Um, and we don't take that approach at all. We take a baby step approach, you know? I mean, it took you your whole life to get to this point. Give yourself the space to implement and apply, we can't see these things through. And so much of nutrition falls through the cracks because it's not presented in a way that's applicable. And I think that seeing a book like this that's really the first

of its kind is going to really change people's perspective and give them things they can do to take control of their health. So again, where can they find that book, Dr. McCullough? Oh, okay. So Beyond Labels is now available anywhere books are sold. You can get it on Amazon, Walmart, Target, Barnes and Noble now carries it. Or you can order directly from Polyface Farms on their website. That's awesome. Hey doc, thank you so much again for coming on. If they want to find more of your work outside of the book, where can they go to do that?

They can visit me at my website. It's handsoffmyfood.com. Awesome. And again, we will definitely have you on once again because I would love to take a deeper dive into some of these concepts. I think this is a great surface level conversation. I appreciate your time and thank you so much for enlightening the audience on some of these fascinating topics. Oh, well, thank you for having me. This is quite an enjoyable conversation. I appreciate it. Thank you. Have a good one. You too.

All right, guys. So that is that. Thank you again so much to Dr. McCullough for coming on. I thought that was a super insightful conversation. I know I enjoyed our time and we talked quite a bit off air after the episode came to a close and before it started about some of this stuff. These are things that I was only fractionally or marginally aware of and I'm much more passionate about learning more. If you want to learn more about this stuff, do check out Dr. McCullough's work. Her new book, Beyond Labels, is on Amazon. You can find the link in the description for today's episode. Thanks so much for tuning in. Give it a share. Leave me a five

star rating and review on iTunes. If you would like, it would mean the world to me. And also, if you want to support the show, Legion is having an incredible sale this week. Their 4th of July sale starts the 29th, which is Monday, today, the day this episode drops. Everything's like up to 30% off. So go ahead and shop some of the best sports supplements on the market. Put my name, Danny, in the discount code box to save even more. Thanks again.