Recently I found out about a job title that I didn't know existed, a food lobbyist.
I was listening to Mark Hyman's book, "The Food Fix", and it seems that a food lobbyist
is a person who is paid by the food companies to present to the government and anyone who
is opposing the food company's food, why that food should be allowed to be sold, why the
ingredients of that food shouldn't be changed, and why they should consider something healthy
that maybe the scientists are saying is not healthy.
This is all in an effort to make sure that that the food companies can continue to sell
us foods that are unhealthy.
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health and physical health need to be working well together.
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week.
So, we trust our government to determine what is healthy for us to eat, we have the food
guide.
And we trust our government to keep companies in check when it comes to what they are allowed
to feed us.
Most of us don't have chemistry degrees and so and even if we have a chemistry degree
most of us don't have access to exactly what is going into the food because we don't see
anything other than the ingredient list that companies show us and even that ingredient
list is written in a way to protect their proprietary recipe more so than giving us
quality information about what is in the food.
So it was really surprising to me to learn that there's a job where a person is paid
to present the government with arguments and reasons why certain foods that scientists
have found to be dangerous to our health should still be sold in stores and marketed to us
as if they are healthy.
So while I was reading this book, I started to see a pattern to what Mark was saying and
it lead me down a specific path that I have heard before.
So right now I just want to walk you through what this book has got me thinking about lobbyist
and their engagement with our government about the food that is going to be sold in stores
to us as healthy.
So for everybody that is new here and is unaware of the lean of this channel I'm going to be
very transparent.
This is a channel where I talk about psychology and I talk about the ketogenic lifestyle because
I feel like if your mental health is going well and your body is going well you're going
to be able to have that happy life.
I am going to be looking at this from two perspectives but my basic lean is I don't
want people to have metabolic issues.
I want people to be healthy so I'm starting off with this piece of information.
In the world in 2019 ... 1.9 million people who passed away had the reasons of diabetes
listed as what caused their death.
In North America and the Caribbean 132 700 people who passed away had diabetes written
as the reason for their death.
In the United States 85 000 people who passed away had diabetes written as the reason of
their death.
These numbers are not including the people who died from complications of diabetes.
First of all those are huge numbers.
The population of North America and the Caribbean is 579 000 000 people and the United States
population is 328 200 000 people.
So as I was reading the food fix, Mark Hyman's book, what was standing out to me was how
much money companies were willing to pay to block the government from passing laws, creating
bills, funding research, doing things that would protect consumers from eating products
that were going to be harmful to their health.
We would think that the government has a really large motivation to keep it's citizens healthy
because if you health is in decline then it costs the government money to keep you alive,
right.
To keep you healthy and medication etc.
So the government tries to pass laws and legislation etc to keep us healthy.
So it becomes very tricky when we are trying to understand the amount of money that food
companies are actually paying to block the government from putting these laws in place
because as Mark was going through the list you hear like maybe $50 000 here to this researcher
or $100 000 here to this prominent so and so and then you have the lobbyist that they
are paying.
So the actual professionals who ... And then on top of that you have that sometimes what
look like grass roots interventions from us, so the public, is actually funded by a big
company.
What I understood from reading the book is that we were able to find that anywhere from
$50 000 an individual to upwards of $24 million to lobbyists professionals that they are paying
and then there is all of this sneaky stuff happening behind the scenes that we don't
know.
He implies that there might be government officials that might be being bribed and universities
that are being bribed and researchers that are being bribed.
So there's the above board and then there's the behind the scenes.
I decided with this information to just put a big number on it.
Then we can start working our way backwards to see what does this mean for the individuals.
What does this mean for Violet.
And just looking at all the numbers that Mark was talking about and then saying what about
the behind the scenes I came to say, what if we said 1 billion dollars per year is being
spent to block Americans from knowing that a lot of the things that they are eating are
dangerous.
And again I usually talk about sugar but in the book Mark was talking about carcinogenic,
so cancer producing substances being used to make food for us, for human consumption.
He was talking about the fact that in North America we are still allowed to put things
in our food that they've already banned in Europe.
So I'm saying if we say that the food companies are spending about a billion dollars to block
us from knowing this information.
To block the government from stopping this practice from happening.
1 billion divided by 85 000 means that to the big food someone dying of diabetes, so
my life is only worth about $11 764.71.
That's not a lot of money.
I mean it's a lot of money to some people but like sincerely, that's not a lot of money.
Like the average person the average young person who gets their first job could possibly
make $11 000 in a year.
And that's how much big food spent last year when you look at the fact that those foods
lead to diabetes, lead to these people's deaths and they are pushing for these foods to still
be there.
As horrible as that number is, we need to keep in mind that that number is specifically
to fight against the government stepping in and saying that these foods that are killing
people we need to stop selling and the company saying "no no, we want to keep selling them
and we want to keep selling them the way that we've been making them" with carcinogenic
chemicals.
That's the part that caught my attention when I was going through the book.
Carcinogenic chemicals.
There are things that are being put in our food, one of them that he named is something
that is used to make gasoline.
In the other book that I read from him last year "Food: What the Heck Should I Eat" he
talked about sawdust being in our food.
Like, these are things that we would not knowingly eat but they are in there and the government
is being fought to allow them to be in there.
That's what food companies are spending $11 764.71 per person who died from this stuff
every year to keep the right to keep feeding these things to us.
That's what's happening.
But they also spend money advertising these things to us.
I'm not even gonna touch that.
But just to point it out, that's not all they're spending.
Now the biproduct of the government allowing the lobbyists to turn around and say that
their convincing words is more important than what the scientists are showing is that these
foods are then marketed to us as if they are healthy for us to eat.
And I want to be clear on this.
It's like soda, juice, cereal ... these things are marketed like they are healthy for us
to eat.
When we think something is healthy for us to eat, what do we normally do as adults,
as parents.
Well then we allow our kids to eat them.
It is very clear to us that alcohol is not marketed as something that is healthy for
us to eat.
It is aimed at an adult market, it is aimed at people with warning on it that you shouldn't
over do it and if you do indulge you are not allowed to use any heavy machinery.
Like there's warnings, clear warnings around the legalities and the safeness of alcohol.
And so we don't allow our children to engage alcohol because we know it is not healthy.
Right.
We do it at our own risk.
We don't stop our kids from eating cereal, or oatmeal, or granola bars, or cookies.
We don't stop our children from eating things that I'm learning today actually have things
in them that are not healthy.
Oh, and by the way, when I say our children I'm talking about our babies too right.
Like there are baby versions of these.
Those teething cookies, there are baby versions of these foods.
The oatmeal that you feed your baby.
All of these processed foods that don't give us a full ingredient list with percentages
and etc because they need to protect their recipe.
So if we look at the fact that in reality we all eat the food, even our children.
Then they're fight for the right to continue to sell these foods for all of us to consume.
And in that case it's 1 billion divided by 328 200 000 which brings their cost per person
significantly down.
Because now it is costing them $3.05 to be able to continue to sell unhealthy, dangerous,
garbage food to us that's going to eventually kill us.
Eventually.
Right.
Because now we are talking about the world.
We are not all going to die this year from diabetes or complications of diabetes or metabolic
issues or carcinogenic related issues from eating this food.
And the question becomes why would a food company want to do this?
Why would they fight so hard to feed us this stuff rather than improve the formula of the
food and feed us healthy food that's gonna be positive for us.
Well, I mean, my first thought is in order to feed us healthy food that going to be good
for us and not harm us it is probably going to cost them more.
They'd have to use better ingredients, they'd have to stop using the ingredients that they
are using right now.
But then we would eat healthy food.
Is it worth it to them?
Well, let's do a little bit more math because I actually think it is interesting what happens
here.
If we take the assumption that the people who buy the food, and I'm going to just talk
about half the population, right.
Because I'm going to take away the children and I'm even taking away the younger teens
who could go to the store but I'm not counting them in this.
If we just talk about the adults of the world and I say ... of the United States, and I
say half of them are making the food purchases for the household and I that even if the half
of them, if they spend $10 a year on these processed foods that the food company is trying
to get us to buy, what happens.
For the food company, if 164 100 000 people spend $10 a year they still make $1 641 000
000.
Now keep it in mind that if I spent a billion, I've already made $641 million in profit just
by the fact that $10 right, per person.
But what's the chance that you're actually only going to spend $10 per year on the foods
that they're pushing.
Ok, well let's look at that.
If I'm talking just about myself, I used to buy breakfast cereal, soda, snack bars, waffles,
cookies, chocolate, chocolate mix for making hot chocolate, crackers, candies, juice, and
if I were to put on that list a $10, $20, or $30 per item for how much I was actually
buying back then, conservatively, I was up to about $140 in those foods that I was buying
every month.
Not once a year, every month.
If that's what I was spending per month on those things, that means per year, I was giving
the food companies $1680 conservatively because I think it was much more than that.
For these foods that were causing all of my health problems and creating health problems
in my daughter that I didn't know about.
Creating health problems in the boys that I didn't know about.
Creating health problems in Patrick that I didn't know about.
Still creating health problems in multiple members of my family.
Do we start to understand why the food companies would be willing to spend the $3.05 per person
in the United States to keep feeding us these carby garbagy foods.
Let's imaging, how many people would they actually need to purchase like me to make
back their billion dollars.
Well guess what, they only need 595 238 people like me.
So 600 000 people buying their garbagy foods gives them back their million do ,,, sorry,
billion dollars that they spent to get me buy the garbagy foods.
And we do it because these are the foods that we've been told are healthy.
So they are our breakfast, they're our snacks during the day, sometimes they are even our
meal in the evening.
If your buying waffles, that could be your lunch, it could be your supper, right.
Chicken and waffles, I hear that is somethings that people eat in the US all the time.
We are allowing ourselves to eat garbage that's killing us.
If I only need 600 000 people to make that billion dollars back, what happens to the
other 164 100 000 people who are also going to buy the these garbage ... are you seeing
the numbers and how it's ... like ... if they even just spend $10 a year like I said earlier
how much money is the food company actually profiting on this and we're not spending just
$10 a year on this stuff.
The food companies are making so much money A) by using low quality ingredients that doesn't
match what we are trying to get out of it.
Because we are the consumers.
We are trying to be healthy, we are trying to feel good.
We are trying to be strong.
And they are feeding us things that are not helping in that process at all.
And if it is not helping us to feel strong what happens?
You need to check out Mark's book.
It is linked in the description below because it is mind blowing to me that I was unaware
that there was such a thing as a lobbyist who I mean I know I should probably have known
that.
But I didn't know it doesn't make sense to me that somebody would fight against feeding
us food that would be healthy.
That they would actually have the job of feeding other humans garbage.
You want this to stop, you need to vote with your dollars.
Don't buy this garbage food.
Buy healthy things.
We need to start buying only products that we can read and understand every single ingredient
on the label.
Buy whole foods.
Wellness Warriors I'm always happy that you come by and watch these videos.
I want to thank you for Watching Mind Blowing Health and Wellness with Violet.
I cannot wait to talk to you again next week.
Buy whole foods, share this video, improve your health.
You can do it.