Listener Favorite: Dr. Jessica Knurick on MAHA, Seed Oils, and Raw Milk

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Hi, that can't be true listeners. It's Chelsea this week

We've decided to revisit one of our most popular episodes with Dr. Jessica Nurek

She truly is one of the best when it comes to debunking health misinformation online and really just telling us

Where science says something is true where science says we don't know yet and where science overwhelmingly says

That's just not true

This conversation first aired back in October of last year and yet somehow we're still talking about seed oils and raw milk and well

so much more

Dr. Nurek is a registered dietician nutrition scientist and public health communicator

This chat was incredibly enlightening certainly for me

And I hope that you find it as helpful and clarifying as I did and continue to do whenever I revisit it

And if you're newer to our feed, it's a great introduction to the show

Jessica, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you

Great. Well, we open every episode with something called that can't be true

I'm going to play a recent news clip and Jessica. You're going to tell us what the real deal is

Here's health and human services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr

Testifying in front of the Senate Finance Committee last month

chronic diseases reach crisis proportions our country and finally we have an administration that is taking action

We are the sickest country in the world

That's why we have to fire people at CDC

They did not do their job

This was their job to keep us healthy

Thank you. And I need to fire some of those people to make sure this doesn't happen again

We've already righted the ship at NIH at FDA at CMS

And we are going to end the chronic disease epidemic

That can't be true right is the CDC the recent where the sickest country in the world

I think that he is using a very real issue that exists in the United States

Which are the chronic disease rates that we observe and we see and you know a lot of us in a very bipartisan way

Are very concerned about that. That's why I got into this field a decade and a half ago

Was specifically to figure out and study the reducing rates of chronic disease

But what he's doing there is kind of redirecting the cause of the issue

On to our public health institutions

And I think a lot of it comes from him relying on people to not really understand the role of public health institutions

And actually what's contributing to much of the chronic disease rates that we see in this country

And so you know he's using the rates of chronic disease as you could hear him there as an excuse to fire

And essentially got the CDC which is an agency that he's spent two decades kind of condemning and calling corrupt

As if they're responsible for the chronic disease epidemic in the United States

They're an advisory group. They're not they're not regulating. They're not legislating. They're not

They're not in your household, you know, buying your groceries

And so you know, I think instead of kind of looking at what the actual issues are and the causes of chronic disease

We're just blaming our health institutions which obviously the Trump administration is currently kind of defunding and reorganizing

I want to talk a little bit about how

You first became familiar with the maha movement and kind of where

You found yourself as I think many of us who are

Parents do like in deep agreement with kind of some of the stated goals and also as kind of public health people

deeply kind of wary and even in opposition to some of their other

goals

And so I think it was around the time that you were pregnant with your

Second kid that you first noticed that your social media feed was becoming more and more populated

With a lot of fear mongering kind of vitriolic content around health

What did you first think when you began to notice kind of these trends and when did you decide you wanted to

Not be a passive recipient to them?

In 2022 is when I was pregnant with my daughter and um

I had been pregnant with my son in 2019 had my son in 2019

And so there was a little gap there

And I noticed I just noticed it and this was just for me personally a huge change in terms of the amount of misinformation

That I was being fed in my algorithms towards like pregnancy because I was pregnant at the time

Particularly around like pregnancy nutrition and things like that

And so I don't know what it was specifically

I don't know if it was because of COVID and ever more people were on social media

Or if it was because of the release of tiktok because this was largely on tiktok that I was seeing this

And so that's where that's where I actually started on social media

But that's what brought me to social media was just to kind of like combat some of the false narratives

I think I felt um

I felt like a responsibility to do it too

I had postpartum anxiety with my daughter and so I just felt this like

You know, it really opened my mind to how much anxiety women in this life stage are going through

And then you know, they're online and it's just making it even worse, right?

All of the misinformation and fear mongering and conspiratorial information that really plays well to social media algorithms

And so it can be really hard to like cut through the noise

And you get into the wrong algorithm and you keep seeing it

It can really make anxiety a lot worse

And so I decided to go on and just start combating some of the misinformation

I was seeing and just kind of set the record straight and explain why it was false information

And so I grew kind of like a nice little community of like pregnant women and postpartum women at that time

And then I actually remember exactly what I first heard about ma- like ma

I was doing a Q&A in uh in my Instagram stories

And someone was like what do you think of the ma-ha movement or what do you think of ma-ha?

I think they had maybe just announced it now

I just remember thinking like what is ma-ha

And so anyway, that's when I started seeing obviously the narratives come out of this movement

And I think because it was just my exact area that I have been studying for so long

It was nutrition science and then it was also kind of the policies that impact our food environment

And how we can reduce risk of chronic disease

I was very- it was very easy for me to see how manipulative the narrative was

Whereas maybe other areas of politics that wouldn't be as easy for me to spot

You know clearly

Like you thankfully spend a lot of time

You know individually and also kind of in your kind of social media

For like engaged with people who have like very specific concern some of which might be

For you like feel quite outlandish

Like oh my gosh, someone thinks this about nutrition

Like someone thinks like red dye 40 is the source of like

Any cold that their child has ever gotten

um

What are

Kind of the

Questions sent like giving like the sincere questions people have come to you with about your area of expertise

That have most surprised you or that feel most kind of untethered from

Kind of any evidence you know that

You or kind of any nutritional scientist might be familiar with

I would say seed oils is a big one

All right talk talk just about seed oils

Yeah, I mean, it's not my favorite topic to talk about but I can't answer this question without bringing it up

Just because you know, it's it's flies in the face of nutrition science research

It really does and so it's an example of what happens a lot on social media where people will take a mechanism of action

They'll say like you know linoleic acid leads to arachidonic acid and that causes inflammation

And so seed oils are causing inflammation in people

And you know causing chronic disease and you know, there's so many

So many examples of how a mechanism can be true

But when it goes when we actually look at a human model

It doesn't actually pan out because humans are complex and and just doesn't always work like it doesn't elab when you're actually looking at a

At a human model and so and this is a really good example

There's just no data. There's no evidence to suggest that seed oils are

Inflaming us or harming our health and in fact quite the opposite if when we look at epidemiological data and you know when we look at

At trials of people who are consuming seed oils and again, seed oils are consumed all around the world by people

So it's very interesting that like in the US we're really focusing on this

We're the little bit of the truth lies is you know, seed oils are very cheap

They're highly processed and so they don't have a lot of flavor. So when you like compare them to

Like an olive oil right olive oil has a pretty strong flavor

So because of that

They're used in a lot of these foods that food manufacturers are creating a lot of these

Ultra-process foods and particularly low-nutrient ultra-process foods

And so we tend to over consume those foods in this country

And so we're eating a lot of them and that can be harmful when you when you're over consume anything

It can be problematic right? It's a fat source and and that's problematic

But if you're just like making a stir fry with some you know

Sunflower oil

My I mean my mother-in-law is from Romania and she she constantly uses

quote-unquote seed oils what we call vegetable oils to make her food and you know

She's she's cooking vegetables and and things like that with them

And so again, there's that there's just not evidence that they're harmful

But because social media has really leaned into the seed oils idea and that like

Because it kind of plays in this idea that we're poisoning the people in the country, right?

It's like the big olive oil

Conspiracy

It's like olive oil like producers of manufacturers got together like we're gonna

Demonize seed oil so much more people buy our products

Well, and and another layer here by the way is seed oils are affordable, right?

They're much more affordable than an olive oil and this is where it can be harmful, right?

So if you're demonizing this oil that is affordable for people and you know

They're using it to cook vegetables in or you know

Whatever and you're saying that they have to be consuming olive oil, but they don't have the they don't have the budget for olive oil

You're just you're causing a necessary anxiety and shame in a person that like there's no reason for it or or maybe there is a reason for it

Yeah, no logical reason no defensible logical or moral reason

Yeah, but I do want to talk about baby formula because certainly I mean, I'm so thankful that I was able to breastfeed all three of my children

That that was something that my

Like body permitted me to do that it was something that I had the time and the resources to be able to prioritize

doing that

all three of my children latched easily and

That that could be part of my experience with each of my three kids when they were little

sometimes

One of those things isn't true for a new mom and sometimes all of those things aren't true and

It has been noticeable to me kind of the increasing

Sense of not only like breast is best, but if you're not breastfeeding your children somehow you're failing

alongside

kind of the

increasing

Not demonization is too strong of a word, but like denigration

Formula broadly and then kind of all of the swirling questions around like what is in formula?

What is good formula? What is bad formula?

So what do you have to say to kind of any of that and and what should

Any of us who of course care that any and every small human gets the nutrition

That we would want for our own children should know as we try to be like productive

participants in conversations around formula

Yeah, so formula has certainly been something that the maha movement has talked a lot about

I don't exactly know why it probably speaks to more of like

This kind of glorification that we see about like moms who are at home with their kids and kind of this idea of like going back in time and

Living like our ancestors lived

More close to nature and that sort of thing

Infant formula is incredible scientific advancement

I mean, I'm just like blown away by the science and like you Chelsea

I breastfed both of my children and I was fortunate enough to be at home with them

I mean, I'm working from home and able to do that and so it's not it's not as if I'm like

Partisan towards formula because I used it myself. It's just from a scientific perspective. It's an incredible advancement

I mean infants who would have otherwise died without a reliable source of nutrition now get to live and and thrive

Because we've been able through money many scientific advancements be able to

Essentially as closely as possible mimic breast milk, which is so cool my husband was a formula fed baby like

I was a formula fed baby

I'm so thankful both you and here in the world right like we're a better place for both of you

Yeah, exactly well, and and what's really cool about it is that you know, it's it's opened up the opportunity to

Not only allow babies to live

But also to to thrive right and to be healthy and live full lives

So what's what's interesting about formula is there's there's always like advancements that are coming out, right?

And what I think is interesting about maha and the

Operation store speed

I think it's a long time coming for us to do a a thorough review of all of the nutrients because from a science perspective

There are some nutrients that we could be looking at we can be looking at looking at potentially lowering iron levels

And also maybe looking at like

These human milk oligosaccharides and there's some cool advancements that like a lot of formula companies have kind of done on their own

But from like a federal perspective. We haven't actually looked at that in a long time

And so I think that's great what I think is not so great is what's coming out of all of this is this idea that formula is toxic

Particularly like in the United States versus the EU and I've done a lot of videos on this where I like compare the formulas

And they're like pretty much exactly the same like with very little variability

And the seed oil is always come into this as well

For some reason there's a narrative out there that like only we are using seed oils in the United States

And that's not true. I mean every infant formula to my knowledge every infant formula in the entire world uses seed oils

And that the reason for that is because of the polyunsaturated fatty acid content

Which more closely mimics the fatty acid composition of breast milk because if you just use lactose

If you just use cow's milk, which is what most formulas use

cow's milk is not as high in polyunsaturated fatty acids as human milk

So you have to do is you have to take the milk and then you have to add in those polyunsaturated fatty acids

And you do that with with these vegetable oils

And so that's why they're included and so there's a scientific basis for it in a reason

It's not this like conspiratorial idea that they're trying to like hurt the children

It's quite the opposite. They're trying to really help the children

And so I think that's the fear

From a science perspective in terms of this like anti-science movement or this like anti-expert movement

That's you know everybody has these ideas and they all should be like on the same playing field when there's people who have

Been studying this field forever and ever and particularly with infant formula and we should be listening to them

About about what an infant needs

You

You've said that maha largely gets the problem right but they get the cause and the solutions

Largely wrong. What do you mean by that?

Well, I mean the problem is that we have eight we do have a

Lifestyle related chronic disease problem in this country right and so that's what they're very focused on and that's largely right now

oftentimes they overstate the problem

But largely they get the problem right right we have a chronic disease issue

We have a lifestyle related chronic disease issue. We have a food environment that is not built for our health

We have systems in this country that are not built for us to succeed in a healthful way and so

You know when when I'm talking I can often sound like RFK Jr

When we're talking about the problem specifically because we're talking about a very similar thing where I diverged from him

And most scientists and public health experts do is in the causes of of that problem

And so for example his causes and the maha movements causes really lean into this idea of toxins and like poisoning our kids and

You know public health agencies being corrupt

And scientists and medical doctors all being bought off and not being able to be trusted

And you know, they kind of completely ignore all of the very evidence-based

Determinants of health what is actually causing a lot of these lifestyle related chronic diseases

And they do that because it plays into this kind of narrative about kind of the conspiracy and the toxins and all of that

And so what I say is when you get the causes wrong

You largely are going to get the solutions wrong right because you have to figure out like what's causing the problem to come up with a good solution

And if you're getting the causes wrong your solutions will

You know either be benign maybe some will be randomly helpful

But some will be very harmful and we see that with

I mean, I can give a couple examples like fluoride fluoride in the water right if we're saying that without evidence

That fluoride is a toxin and causing chronic disease in our kids

When by the way the number one chronic disease in children is dental carries

And we remove fluoride from the water supply that's going to increase the number one chronic disease in our children

Right with no evidence that it's going to help in any kind of way and and more than that

It's going to exacerbate health disparities because wealthier children are going to go to the dentist

They're going to get fluoride treatments. They're going to be able to brush with fluoride toothpaste

But public health measures are often to help everyone in the United States and often targeting the people who need it most

Which tend to be low income populations in this country and so it will exacerbate health disparities even more

And so that's an example of something that would actually

harm us even more so than help us

Another one is

Focusing our energy on food dies to improve the food supply right like our food supply is not

Problematic because of food dies. It's problematic because the entire system has been built for corporate profits at the expense of our health

And it's resulted in a food supply that's 70%

Ultra-process foods many of those low nutrient ultra-process foods right and so what we have available to people and accessible

Are these convenience foods that aren't necessarily health-promoting foods

And we have an accessibility issue with a lot of these health-promoting foods

And so if you just think that okay, I'm going to swap the color of skittles

Right and and make it not as vibrant that's not going to change health in any meaningful way

And we're going to be distracted kind of thinking that's going to improve anything

Meanwhile, we're not putting our energy into the policies that could actually help improve the food supply

And so just like what advice do you give to anyone?

But like a specifically moms about kind of what they should be advocating for

Because I think it can feel really

Like satiating like oh my gosh like

Kellogg is going to remove food dies from their cereal just to continue on your last point

How do you say like yes like that can be a win and also

We should be advocating for what to really fix our food

Yeah, I think we have to look at the entire system

And so you know from what we grow

To what we put on the shelves to what we market to children and and Americans in general

And so there's some evidence-based ideas on on kind of both of those sides right

So on the on the side of like what's being promoted

You can regulate marketing to children and to low income populations into just America in general right you can put regulations

Right, we do it when it relates to smoking

We do yeah, and we should with pharmaceuticals, but that's another that's another story

But yeah, so we and we can we can put those regulations on

I mean what we know from an evidence-based perspective is that

What makes a food hyper satiating is really the combination of salt sugar and fat

And so we can see we can look at like what are these companies putting in their foods

And what should we be like

Potentially allowing or not allowing we do it in school nutrition right

We can also look at what we grow because what we grow is really incentivizing these low

I mean corporations within our economic system are going to try to maximize profit at the expense of health right and not even at the expense of health

It's just they they're not like they're just trying to maximize profit

Yeah, they're not trying to make people sick. It's just so how do we align their incentives right so maximize profit and

Return on health dollar or whatever the right metric is exactly

So we we have to think about like what do we grow and how do we incentivize farmers to grow different products

How do we bring back local food systems because we have lost local food systems

Primarily because of policy over the last many many decades right and so what we what we're seeing now is we really have a heavy reliance on

Big agribusiness and big agribusiness grows a lot of commodity crops which is corn wheat and soy

And so we grow those very well in this country

But we've incentivized the growth of them over a long period of time

And so you know what we can do is through you know grants and and offerings for farmers and helping them to kind of like be able to

diversify their crops and helping smaller farmers through grants

You know, there were some wonderful grants that the Biden administration came out with helping local farmers get foods to schools and food banks in their area

And we saw with the Trump administration they cut a billion dollars in that funding

And so those are the kind of grants that can help to bring more fresh fruits and vegetables to local local areas

You know, we have an issue in this country with food deserts where a lot of people just don't have access

They they may want to eat more healthfully, but they don't have necessarily access there

They're primarily going to a corner store or a dollar store for their groceries

And I think a lot of Americans who have never experienced this don't even realize that millions of Americans live like this

But you know to get to a grocery store

They have to take a couple of buses and it takes a lot of time

So so they're not going to opt to do that

So like incentivizing things like mobile grocery carts to go into those areas or incentivizing grocery chains

To open there with the grants and things like that

Can be helpful on that perspective too

So there's a lot that we can do just from a systems approach to think of how can we start

Increasing the accessibility and availability of these like you know, nutrient dense foods

And reducing the reliance on these heavily ultra processed foods

And yet last month the Trump administration released its strategy to make our children healthy again

And I don't think any of that was included right there was a lot of

Kind of recommended policy reform around food dies

Around baby formula

But it wasn't the comprehensive vision that you just articulated

And it lacked kind of any mechanisms for how the government would actually implement

Even what was in the quote-unquote strategy

Like do you think they're serious about really trying to make our children healthy again or

No

Yeah, I was

It very interested to read that because that's obviously the follow-up to the original maha report that came out that was supposed to identify the causes of chronic disease

So this was supposed to be what we all expected to be the policy-based kind of response to that right or follow-up to that

Like how are we going to improve upon these things and it's very

It's incredibly light on actual policy right an actual action. It has a lot of good ideas

You know talking about increasing physical activity for children and decreasing you know reliance on

Low nutrient ultra processed foods green. Yeah, screen time

All things that like all of us can get behind you know maha constantly says like this is not a political movement

Everybody should be behind these things and yes when we talk about like what we all want

It's pretty bipartisan. It's what we are going to do about getting there that that can be a bit partisan

But there was very little in terms of what they're actually going to do

So what I see it as as somebody who closely follows policy

I see it as a movement that's keeping people excited

Without actually taking action to do anything and what it was most striking to me is a lot of the things that maha wants and claims to want

You know the Trump administration is legislating in the opposite direction

You know we see it with even like heavy metals. I think they brought up heavy metals in like infant formula

I mean if you want to reduce it heavy metals you got to go to the root cause of what's causing heavy metals in our soil and our water

And a lot of that are these chemical industries

And so if you are deregulating all of these chemical industries and allowing them to opt out of environmental regulations by emailing the administration like the Trump administration is doing

And and you know ushering in the greatest era of deregulation of all time at the EPA

You're increasing the problem of contaminants and heavy metals in our soil or air or water and ultimately our food supply

So that's that's just like one example, but there's so many examples of what they want versus what's actually being done

And so I wonder um

What advice do you have you know for any of us and and for me

Based on what you've seen work to try to help us move out of

Kind of a place where we're constantly like debating or relitigating or thinking it's a he said she said dynamic around

Science

Yeah, Chelsea sometimes I have to ask myself like is this just a social media thing like if I go out in the real world

Are people talking about this like as much as it's happening on social media

But I do I think that where I found successes

I a lot of people are distrusting right now right and that's kind of

Also coming from the top right we have an HHS secretary that is literally telling you not to trust experts his own experts

Who actually work for the department that he leads?

I mean

And obviously the reason for doing that is to pretend that expertise doesn't matter

So that anybody can come in and fill those gaps and like you and I like anybody and anyone have the same or

Opinions are weighted the exact same, which you know just is not is not true

You should not trust my opinion on how to fly an airplane as much as you should trust a pilot right?

Like my opinion that should not matter in that conversation

And so that and that you know obviously is in all areas

Expertise is very specific and people have spent their lives kind of dedicated to a very specific topic

But I do think that we're what we're dealing with right now is this era where a lot of people have lost trust in expertise and experts

And so for some people you're not going to kind of win them over

With this like appeal to you know appeal to authority

Or appeal to expertise. So what I've found to be successful is

Explaining why something's false

And again in my area of expertise because I can't do this outside of it

But within my area I can and I can show why it's false. I can show the references

I can show them go look it up themselves go fact check everything. I say please do it right like be open to that

And then it slowly but surely starts to build trust with people

I've had people who send me messages who are like, you know, I came to your page as a hater

And I you know, I kept looking up what you were saying and it was true

And so it's you know now I like really appreciate you and you've really changed my mind

And a lot of things and I think that's how you start to build trust with a lot of people who are you know, maybe inquisitive maybe skeptical

Maybe maybe just by the way where I was when I was pregnant and had immense postpartum anxiety

Maybe just so anxious that you you just don't know what to believe and so you you know, you're looking for

The answer, but you don't because you've been told like expertise doesn't matter

You're like well, I don't know who's right here, but but if somebody I kind of goes through and explains why

I think that that can be a really effective way

I'm curious

Since you kind of referenced earlier kind of the messages that you received which I hope kind of make you feel as good as you deserve from people who say they now spot information

That now they know is not real or factor evidence base that it is misinformation

Because of the work that you've done

What advice do you have to anyone who might be listening about specific ways that they or any of us could spot

Misinformation when it comes to nutrition

Yeah, there's a few things that I that I would say to look for so

Usually there's a playbook right?

They'll be the video will be very sensational and and there'll be something that's very scary in it

Right when when you hear like a science communicator talking

They're not usually going to scare you. They're going to explain nuance right and they're going to kind of take you through the process

You know, if you hear a video of someone starting it saying are you poisoning your kids or you know something like that

It's usually not going to be accurate information. It's not just scared me. Yeah, like yeah, right?

I mean, I I feel I stitched a person doing that exact video

She was like are you poisoning your kids and then she drove to home depot and like showed you an ingredient

That was also in a food item

Which you know that that's also just like a misunderstanding of science and chemistry because like think of like sodium bicarbonate

Right like we can use that for in cookies, but you can also use it to like clean right

My nine-year-old told me the other day that we have enough iron in our bodies to make a three-inch nail

There you go

Right, I was like wow, that's I don't even know that that's true, but it must be you must know that class

I don't know, but I think I think he learned it in science class

Since he's definitely not scrolling Instagram or has any access to technology. Yeah, probably actually yeah like or a national geographic national geographic or science class

But I'm not going to eat a three-inch nail even though apparently I have enough iron in my body to make one

Yeah, that's funny

But yeah, so that I mean that's the playbook to look for they scare you at the beginning

Then they will kind of like you know misrepresent science usually

And then a lot of times most of the time they will sell you something on the back end right

So they will tell you how toxic this thing is and then they will sell you kind of their non-toxic alternative or whatever it is

They'll tell you you know scare you about

Some like folic acid and then they'll sell you their you know natural methyl folate supplement

Those types of things we see that all the time a couple of other things just for like media and science literacy on social media

Things to look out for as people can flake correlation and causation so they will show you a graph

Two things are correlating and then they will use that to imply causation like one

Caused the other and I always say the best way to spread propaganda online is to show a graph

Basically over time of two things that increased at the same time and pretend that one caused the other

In science what we do is we use that it for that's interesting information

Like let's look at that observational data that two things are increasing at the same time

And then you go and you design studies to actually assess causation and most of the time that things not causing the other thing

But sometimes it is and then be aware of people using this is in the science realm as well

People using mechanisms of action to imply that that's actually going

To impact you on a human level

So for example if someone's telling you you know that I did like a parody on somebody doing this

And I used pickles as an example because pickles have vitamin K

Okay, here's an idea for you instead of brushing your teeth with unnatural toothbrushes

What if instead you ate seven pickles? It's true seven pickles act as a natural teeth clear

And so I said pickles have vitamin K in them and vitamin K is really important to

Create osteocalsin which is needed to create dentin in your teeth

Which is a calcified tissue that protects your teeth from cavities

And so I said you know because of that you should just drink pickle juice instead of brushing your teeth with unnatural toothbrushes

And so that's an example of I know it sounds ridiculous

But this is literally exactly the playbook of what people will do

And obviously eating pickles is not going to protect your teeth from cavities

But they'll do that a lot on social media. So just be aware of that as well

I've never had a cavity. It's one of the only things I shamelessly brag about. I'm very proud of never had a cavity

And I do like pickles. So just see there you go

There's organic totals evidence. I'm so grateful for your time and want to just hopefully do a couple more things

While we have you which is kind of one

Do something that we call the factor fiction segment where I throw out some things that

Kind of we've seen online and have you

react to them. Okay, okay

All right, we're gonna focus on Secretary Kennedy since

He's already had a

Kind of supporting role here in our conversation today

So Secretary Kennedy says he can see chronic inflammation and mitochondrial challenges on the faces of children that he sees walking down the street

Do you think that's fact or fiction?

That's fiction. Yeah, you cannot see mitochondrial challenges

And it's very interesting the well like the wellness phase. It's I mean

It's very clear that he's the kind of talking to a lot of these wellness influencers who also talk about mitochondrial challenges

It's interesting that they focus on that part of the cell, you know

There's like so many parts of the cell that you could focus on but it's the mitochondria for them

Um, but yeah, you cannot you cannot look at a child and know if they have mitochondrial dysfunction

I think what he's doing there is using that

I actually don't even know what he's doing there

No fiction

He's also a very vocal proponent of raw milk

And believes that raw milk provides health benefits um that process alternatives do not uh fact or fiction

I mean when you say processed alternatives

What we're talking about is the alternative is pasteurization which is simply heating milk

So there the reason pasteurization exists

I mean think about dairy dairy farmers and producers right this is an extra step. They have to do

Why would they want to do this? They wouldn't right but it exists because

People were getting very sick from raw milk

And we we were changing the way that we distributed milk as well

And so there was even more opportunity for people to get sick

Um, but I mean raw milk can harbor a lot of pathogens

That can make people quite sick and so what what you know, Louis Pasteur was able to identify was hey

If we just heat the milk one way to pasteurize is you just heat the milk for 15 seconds at 165 degrees Fahrenheit

And then you rapidly cool it if you do that

It decreases the risk of foodborne illness significantly and and drops the rates of disease that we see from people consuming raw milk

Right, and so that's that's what we're talking about when we say like processed milk

It's heating the milk a bit and then cooling it down

And and that just gets rid of pathogens. So so that's what I would say on that love pasteurization

Yeah, I mean, it's a great public health advancement that we have

I should make treat like a t-shirt. I love pasteurization. Yeah, thank you. Thank you Louis Pasteur

So something else that secretary Kennedy is a big proponent of is beef talo as a preferred alternative for cooking

Saying that it's a more traditional way to cook

That there are a lot of health benefits although you can't always describe what those are

So factor fiction on beef talo as a better way

To prepare food. Yeah, so beef talo is just like fat from beef right? It's like it and it's it's a saturated fat

and and what the evidence is very clear on is that

Overconsuming saturated fat is a problem for a cardiovascular disease

Right and atherosclerosis and so we see um, you know

We we see clinical trials that when you replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated fats mono unsaturated fats

It reduces risk of cardiovascular disease. So if you're going to be replacing

Polyunsaturated fats and unsaturated fats with beef talo, which is a saturated fat

What we would expect to see because there's absolutely no data on this

Of like increasing you know beef talo and having any better health benefits

What we would expect to see is the exact opposite of having health benefits at a population level

Um, and we would ex particularly you know what what he's talking about a lot is it french fries at a fast food restaurants

And overconsuming these foods is going to be problematic

So this is an example when you get the causes wrong you get the solutions wrong right and your solutions can be harmful

Okay, last one

Factor fiction Coca-Cola with cane sugar is healthier for you than Coca-Cola made with high fructose corn syrup

Fiction they're they're both Coca-Cola. They're both high sugar low nutrient drinks that we should be consuming less of

um cane sugar is 50% glucose 50% fructose

Cane high fructose corn syrup is anywhere between 42% fructose and 55% fructose

They're metabolically the same given all the information that we have um, it's the over consumption of sugar

And I think people don't really realize this the reason that we use high fructose corn syrup in the United States is because we subsidize corn

And because of some of our trade policies and and quotas that we that we've done in the past and sugar

And so we were protecting our farmers in the United States essentially and our cord producers, right? And so

When manufacturers and corporations they they're looking for cheaper ingredients and because we've made corn quite a cheap ingredient

That's what we use as sugar here if you look over in Europe

They've really protected their their sugar beet industry because they grow sugar beet really well

And so that's what they predominantly use versus what we use here for sugar

But they're both sugar sources and sugar is sugar and we don't want to over consume sugar

We want to limit our sugar added sugar intake no matter where it's coming from

Well, thank you for your time today. You can find Jessica at Dr. Jessica Nurek on TikTok and Instagram

She's also got a sub stack newsletter. I hope you'll subscribe. I do

Jessica, thank you so much for being with us today and thank you to everyone who's listening. Thank you so much for having me

You

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