WITHOUT A DOUBT, THE ANSWER IS A RESOUNDING YES! I firmly and seriously believe that the overweight and obese of our society should be in drug and alcohol DETOX and rehabilitation centers and treated for ADDICTION, not sent off to bypass butchery.
The following is a transcript of a two-part Dr. Phil interview with Calley Means, a former lobbyist and insider for BigFood and BigPharma, now turned whistleblower; Matt, the fitness coach addicted to Diet Coke, although he doesn’t know it yet; a beautiful young lady named Kelsey, a tragic fake-food addict who thinks it’s her own fault; and a the award winning researcher and brain imaging pioneer, Dr. Daniel Amen.
Fascinating, yet infuriating stuff straight ahead. Bring Kleenex and duct tape. Tears may flow, and your head just might explode.
INTRODUCTION
“You need food to survive, but the wrong foods can also kill.”
“95% of the folks that make our nutrition guidelines are directly paid for by food companies, and we’ve gotten people addicted.”
“I really do drink a gallon a day of Diet Coke.” “So, you think it’s healthy.” “Ultimately, yes.” “You’re ear just fell off…no I’m just kidding…” (Everyone laughs)
“Salt, sugar and fat — these are science experiments — it’s literally engineered to hijack our brain to not satiate us but to make us want more.”
“We have an addiction crisis in America when it comes to food, and that’s very profitable. I was a consultant for BigFood. There was a very clear objective: They want to make cheap, ADDICTIVE food. Almost every single chronic condition that is shortening and torturing American life is tied to food. This is obviously a disaster for American health, but for the food companies it’s very profitable. Ultra-processed food is now 70% of our diet — like, the food is literally weaponized with sugar, seed oils, highly processed grains — [what’s] happening in the food industry is not a free market, it’s a rigged market.
Working for the food industry, I helped pay off regulators, pay off the media itself to run stories about how ultra-processed food is healthy — paid off lawmakers, paid off researchers.
Coca-Cola pays The American Academy of Pediatrics, The American Diabetes Association, The American Cancer Society — we did that in spades, millions of dollars to groups that would do that for us.
STOP GIVING YOUR MONEY TO THESE ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE PAID TO HELP KILL US SLOWLY! THEY ARE NOT ON OUR SIDE!
So, [I] just went down the list of institutions Americans trust and tried to get them money — that was my job.”
“Humans are born with an innate sense of what’s good for us and that is being taken away by the food industry.”
IS THE FOOD WE EAT KILLING US? PART 1 OF 2
DR. PHIL: 1.34
Calley Means is Co-Founder of TrueMed, and co-author of, “Good Energy”, which unpacks the incentives of our broken food system and provides a path forward.
Calley, thank you for being here and talking about this.
CALLEY MEANS: 1.47
Thank you.
DR. PHIL:
You’ve been on the dark side — you say it’s the devil’s bargain. What do you mean?
CALLEY MEANS: 1.54
There’s a three-step playbook working for the food companies. They hired all the scientists in the 1980s from the tobacco companies, the big tobacco companies, as smoking went down, actually started buying Nabisco and Kraft, and shifting their scientists over.
The key thing that the food companies know is that ultra-processed food, which is now up to 70% of our diet, is a science experiment — they’re hijacking our evolutionary biology, and they’re making the food addictive.
And, working for the food companies, the first part of the devil bargain is making that food normalized.
So, we paid the USDA advisors — 95% of the folks that make our nutrition guidelines are directly paid for by food companies.
That means the USDA recommends added sugar for two-year-olds. They say up to 10% of a two-year-olds diet should be added sugar.
We pay the lawmakers, themselves, we pay the regulatory agencies, literally the American Diabetes Association, who sets the standard of care for diabetes, accepts money from Coca-Cola.
So, first, we normalize this addiction crisis. When you do a brain scan of a person eating ultra-processed food, it fits all the criteria for addiction, and we’ve gotten people addicted.
DR. PHIL: 2.59
Okay, so — let me get this straight — you’re saying that the major beverage companies, food companies — all of them, are bribing the scientists, bribing the regulatory agencies to endorse their formulas, their ingredients for food, to say that they’re good, say that they’re okay, and in fact, those ingredients are meant to addict people to the foods that they’re selling.
CALLEY MEANS: 3.28
It’s the express purpose. I was shocked, as a junior employee, to see a list of names of Professors from Harvard, from Tufts Nutrition School, from Stanford, and as a junior employee, working for the food companies as a consultant, I steered money to those schools.
The food industry funds nutrition research in this Country eleven times more than the NIH. You are loathed to find a nutrition researcher who’s not directly paid with a direct Consulting Agreement, bribes, and their research is predominantly funded by the food industry.
I can tell you, from working for this industry, that that’s not out of a philanthropic, good will for unbiased research.
The food industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on nutrition research to enhance their bottom line. It’s to normalize these addictive foods.
DR. PHIL: 4.11
Okay, so you say added sugar for two-year-olds, so these cereals that they might eat that have all the cartoons on the front of them and that sort of thing — you’re talking about the same mantra for a drug dealer…
CALLEY MEANS: 4.25
The biggest drug addiction crisis and drug issue in the Country, by far, is the ultra-processed food industry.
And, you’re hitting on the second aspect of this devil’s bargain — food and ultra-processed food is causing absolute devastation in America.
Nine of the ten leading causes of death are food born illnesses. If you take down ultra-processed food, you are eliminating diabetes, you’re eliminating heart disease, you’re putting a stab to the heart of cancer, many forms of cancer are metabolically related. Even Alzheimer’s is now called Type 3 Diabetes it’s so closely related to our diet.
Dr. Phil, the reason I’m speaking out is because a lot of us are parents, and I have a small child, and children are running into an absolute buzz-saw — we’re so metabolically dysfunctional as adults, that children are now developing pre-diabetes and metabolic dysfunction in-utero, and kids, now — 50% of teens are overweight or obese, 25% of teens have fatty liver disease — that’s tied to the mental health epidemic where 40% of high school seniors have a mental health disorder — we’re poisoning our kids and it’s the biggest issue in the Country.
DR. PHIL: 5.25
Okay, so, you’re talking about sugar, obviously, that’s the white devil, right? Alright, what else are you talking about?
CALLEY MEANS: 5.32
I call it the unholy-trinity of ingredients in ultra-processed food. You’ve got added sugar, you’ve got seed oils, you’ve got highly processed grains. All three ingredients are essentially invented just a hundred years ago, and we’re not evolutionarily made to handle these.
DR. PHIL: 5.46
At one time they were proposing a tax on sugar, and, you’re saying they bribed organizations to fight against that, and get it defeated.
CALLEY MEANS: 5.57
Yeah, this is the third step. So, we’re getting really sick because of ultra-processed food, and then the food industry, and the pharmaceutical industry, which profits from [you] being sick, absolutely rigs the debate to make this normalized and obfuscate the problem, and frankly, blame the American people instead of the system itself.
So, we at Coke, paid the NAACP [and] prominent civil rights groups to say it was racist to take away food stamp funding from Coca-Cola.
[*Let that sink in, people…]
Today, the top item purchased on food stamps is sugary beverages.
DR. PHIL: 6.30
So, you’re saying Coca-Cola went and paid the NAACP to call anybody racist that was resisting the sugar tax.
CALLEY MEANS: 6.39
This was reported in the New York Times and throughout the media. The NAACP, after accepting millions of dollars from Coke when I was working for them in 2010, 2011, called anyone who questioned the idea of taking food stamp funding away from Coke racist, saying that lower income kids really enjoyed their soda and it was a personal choice issue.
MATT THE FITNESS COACH:
I’ve been training in the gym for a very long time, and Diet Coke is a huge part of my life. I consume — give or take — a gallon of Diet Coke a day.
When I wake up, most people go for their morning coffee, but I literally run to my local self-serve fountain and just run for a diet soda.
So, when I was younger, I became very overweight because I drank regular Coke so much it became addicting. I made the switch to the Diet Coke and eventually *started improving my other habits, and the synergy of those two things dramatically improved my health.
The reality is, there is virtually zero evidence that diet soda of any kind can cause harm to you, and the benefits on it’s usefulness outweigh, by far, any of the risks.
Some of the benefits of Diet Coke and diet soda in general, are just increased feelings of satiety. And, the reality is, the benefit in the feeling of fullness you get between meals and with meals by doing that dramatically outweighs the tiny little bit of artificial sweetener you might be consuming.
Diet Coke is such a useful tool, because it allows you to limit your cravings.
The amount of times I’ve sat there and said, you know what, I’ll have something sugary after I drink this Diet Coke, and I find that once I drink it, the urge to go gorge on candy, or cookies, or cake is completely gone. [*A pat of butter would do the same thing without the health risks and with health benefits.]
I will probably drink Diet Coke for the rest of my life.
[*Anyone wanna take wagers on how long that might be…]
DR. PHIL: 8.08
Okay, how much are you drinking a day?
MATT THE FITNESS COACH: 8.10
I really do drink a gallon a day of diet soda.
DR. PHIL: 8.14
Really!?!
MATT THE FITNESS COACH: 8.15
Yes. They know me as the Diet Coke guy in restaurants I go to, local restaurants, and they bring me two before I even sit down.
DR. PHIL: 8.21
And you think this is good for you?
MATT THE FITNESS COACH: 8.23
Actually, yes. I was formerly overweight. I was 5’5”, 170 lbs. when I was younger, and I was around 14 or 15, and, as I got older, I managed to lose around 35 lbs. from improving my lifestyle habits. And, one of the main ways I’ve done that is through limiting my cravings, my overeating.
So, I’m using diet soda as a tool to help me limit my alcohol consumption, hardly ever go for cookies, candy, sweets, things like that. So, it has completely altered my eating habits, and there is a lot of research — they have a study here, where 18.65% more people in a group that substituted diet soda for water lost at least 5% of their body weight. So, they were trying to make people lose weight, and they found that more people actually lost weight in the diet soda group than in the water group.
DR. PHIL: 9.08
So, you think it’s healthy?
MATT THE FITNESS COACH: 9.09
Ultimately, yes. In combination with water, yes.
DR. PHIL: 9.13
You’re ear just fell off. No, I’m just kidding…
(everyone laughs)
You don’t think it has any side effects?
MATT THE FITNESS COACH: 9.19
No. And there are some people who don’t tolerate caffeine well, so if you don’t tolerate caffeine well, by all means, don’t drink it.
DR. PHIL: 9.24
Yeah… So, what do you think about him drinking a gallon of diet soda…?
CALLEY MEANS: 9.28
There are two high level points that I think are really important about this, for, I think, the audience to understand. And, number one is — I looked at that study, and that study is funded by Coca-Cola, and I just cannot express this — I cannot express this enough — nutrition research is propaganda in public relations for processed food. There is not a lobbying firm for broccoli, there’s not a lobbying firm for water.
Okay, the reason there’s been 50,000 nutrition studies which I helped rig, in the past two years produced, is because they’re documents to sell us poison.
There’s two other quick points I want to make. There’s a ton of studies — non-partisan, non-conflicted studies — that say that sweetness, that aspartame in Diet Coke — it’s not risk free. It hijacks our insulin levels, it hijacks our glucose level [*and our hormones!], and that actually makes us — many studies show more insulin resistant — what does that mean? That’s our body’s ability to produce energy.
Actually, study after study show that people that drink diet soda actually want to eat more and do gain weight.
So, I think there’s nothing risk-free, and we’ve been sold a bill of lies, [and] that these artificial sweeteners are not without their problems.
DR. PHIL: 10.35
Yeah, because we were looking at these studies that you gave us…
MATT THE FITNESS COACH: 10.39
Yes.
DR. PHIL: 10.40
…and there’s a long list of people that fund and support those studies — General Mills, Kellogg, PepsiCo, Quaker Oats, International Sweeteners Association, Nestle, General Mills — they are funded, as you say, by the people that are selling you what they’re testing.
MATT THE FITNESS COACH: 11.02
Well, as I’ve said, I’m not here to say there are no flaws in this industry…
DR. PHIL: 11.05
Okay, but hang on a second… If you were buying a used car, and you wanted to have it checked out, would you have it checked out by the mechanic that had it for sale?
MATT THE FITNESS COACH: 11.15
Definitely not, but, something to keep in mind is that, this isn’t just one study, they have like 17 randomized studies…
DR. PHIL: 11.20
Oh, yeah, I’ve got them all here, and they’re all funded by the same people — the same mechanic…
MATT THE FITNESS COACH: 11.27
They are published on the NIH, like I said, that doesn’t mean that they’re inherently without flaw. I believe it’s possible that in the future you could come out with research that shows that maybe there is a problem with something [*plenty of that research is available right now], but that could happen with any food item that’s common to you. [*Broccoli?] Ultimately reducing obesity, reducing your calorie intake is so important, [*not at the risk of sacrificing your overall health] and that’s what diet soda has allowed me to do, personally, and allows some other people to do, as well.
CALLEY MEANS: 11.47
I think that’s great for you, personally. The core criminal situation happening is that the farm and health industry is not standing up against our consumption of these frankenfoods. It’s because every single institution of healthcare makes money when we’re sicker.
DR. PHIL: 12.03
You call them what foods?
CALLEY MEANS:
Ultra-processed FRANKENFOODS!
DR. PHIL: 12.05
What are frankenfoods?
CALLEY MEANS: 12.06
Frankenfoods are like Frankenstein’s lab — you’re just putting a bunch of ingredients together. There’s a reason there’s all those ingredients on the label that you don’t understand. These are thousands of chemicals, even in Diet Coke, that the food industry’s lobbied for — many of which are banned in every other country.
The criminal aspect here Dr. Phil, is that the healthcare industry should be speaking out, but, they’re also taking money from the food industry and are complicit in this because they make money when we get sick.
THE HIDDEN DANGER OF SUGAR PART 2 OF 2
DR. PHIL:
Well, tonight we’re talking about addictive ingredients in food. Now, Kelsey says she’s binge eating as a coping mechanism.
KELSEY: 00.11
I’ve been struggling with food for 7 years, now. The type of food that I normally binge on is more processed and, like fast food, and takeout.
I’m very addicted to donuts. I try really hard to like control it. Food delivery apps can be such a struggle because it’s so easy to just like press ‘add to cart, add to cart, add to cart’.
McDonald’s is one of my go-toes, so I get like, a Big Mac meal, large, so large fry, large Sprite, Big Mac, 10 piece chicken nugget, McChicken, a McFlurry, some cookies… [*Just sounds to me like the poor girl is hungry, and knows that this food-stuff won’t fill her up, so she just ups the order. She hasn’t yet learned to simply make different and better choices.]
Last night was kind of a rough night — I made myself so sick from eating that I threw up.
The main component of binge eating is feeling out of control, like you can’t stop yourself, you know — normally doing it in secret — there’s a lot of shame around it.
When you feel like so full after Thanksgiving dinner — like, that’s basically how after a binge is, sometimes worse.
It just makes me feel really bad and, you know, I want to stop, and sometimes I do feel like, am I going to always, you know, like, struggle with this?
*WHAT PART OF THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE DRUG ADDICTION!?!?!
DR. PHIL: 1.28
Well, thank you for being here.
KELSEY:1.29
Yeah, of course.
DR. PHIL: 1.30
What do you think about the fact that Calley is saying that these foods that you have trouble putting down, staying away from, that you’re bingeing on, are in fact scientifically designed to create just that effect on you?
KELSEY: 1.47
Yeah, I think it’s been really eye opening just hearing all of this. And, it makes me feel like — I guess, not relieved in a way, but just like I know that it’s my fault, because I choose to put the foods in my mouth — but, at the same time, it makes me feel like more understood.
DR. PHIL: 2.11
Okay, well, let me say something to you that I think is going to be important going forward.
You just said, “It’s my fault”. And, I think words are very powerful, and so I just have to stop you to talk about this in the middle of this whole thing.
There’s a difference between fault and responsibility. Fault implies intent, that you did something on purpose. It’s like, if I go over and take a hammer and hit that camera, and it breaks, then that’s my fault. If I’m walking past it and bump it, but it was not my intent to do so and it breaks, then, am I responsible for it’s being broken, yes, but I’m not at fault because it wasn’t my intent.
So, you say, yes, I’m putting the food in my mouth and all, but is it your intent to make yourself unhealthy, is it your intent to make yourself obese, is it intent to put yourself in a compromised position, and I would argue that that’s not your intent.
KELSEY: 3.10
No.
DR. PHIL: 3.11
And, if in fact, this entire food complex, this entire beverage complex has been exploiting you by putting ingredients in there that makes your brain signal you that you need to keep doing this, and keep doing this, and keep doing this, to get a high, to get satisfaction, to get satiety, then you’ve been victimized in part by that. Fair statement? [*I submit that this is dopamine resistance, akin to insulin resistance from over stimulation, just like insulin resistance.]
CALLEY MEANS: 3.33
100% fair. I just want to thank you for having the courage to speak out. There is a systemic poisoning happening, and we have to realize that.
DR. PHIL: 3.42
Well, how did you justify it to yourself, when you were out bribing agencies and scientists?
CALLEY MEANS: 3.47
Great question. Nobody behind closed doors is saying that they’re evil, or saying stuff like that, you know. It’s about protecting lower income folks ability to get their calories, their cheap calories.
You know, for the pharmaceutical industry, which is not stopping this epidemic of food borne illnesses, but profiting from it, it’s, you know, we need to get people drug —access to drugs.
You can always justify things, and that is absolutely what’s happening in DC and in these companies.
DR. PHIL: 4.11
Well, you had to know. I mean, if you’re taking money to the NAACP, to call people racist for talking about a tax, or you’re carrying money to scientist somewhere for a food company, they didn’t ask you to do that on the town square.
CALLEY MEANS: 4.24
It is impossible to explain to you how normalized things are. I think we all work for large companies. Many of us work for the pharmaceutical industry. Many friends from Harvard Business School went into the pharmaceutical industry — work for Coke, work for Pepsi — uh, these companies are doing evil, and there is an amazing invisible hand that’s convincing a lot of good people to do bad things.
And I will say, being in those rooms, the NAACP, we were talking about protecting choice for lower income kids. I did not even fully realize how evil what we were doing was.
DR. PHIL: 4.53
So, you drank the addictive Kool-Aid.
CALLEY MEANS: 4.54
100%. And that’s, I think, what’s happening systemically. Healthcare is the largest and fastest growing industry in the Country.
And, the moment you are empowered, the moment a child learns metabolically healthy habits, and doesn’t go on Ozempic, doesn’t go on statins, doesn’t go on SSRIs, doesn’t go on Metformin — which is being prescribed like candy in high schools right now — the moment that happens and they wake up, that’s a not-a-profitable patient, and there [are] trillions of dollars of incentives right now to prevent us from waking up.
DR. PHIL: 5.20
Well, I’m all about waking up.
DR. DANIEL AMEN: 5.21
If you’re addicted to sugar, it’s sort of like you’re in an abusive relationship.
Sugar is addictive, it’s pro-inflammatory, it steals — hijacks — your brain to need it in order for you to feel normal.
I want you to begin to think of it as the enemy. It’s really one of the weapons of mass destruction when it comes to your health.
If you’re looking at that cupcake and go, oh, I wish I had it, you’ve got to work on your mindset.
DR. PHIL: 5.55
That was Dr. Daniel Amen. He’s an award-winning researcher and brain imaging pioneer, with the world’s largest database of brain scans for psychiatry, totaling more than 250,000 SPECT scans on patients from 155 countries.
Now, Dr. Amen says that on average, Americans consume 10 times more sugar than the lowest reasonable recommended intake.
Now, Dr. Amen, this is a dangerous chemical with regard to brain functioning, certainly in excessive amounts, true?
DR. AMEN: 6.37
Absolutely. And, it’s pro-inflammatory, and we think chronic inflammation is a major cause of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes and depression. It’s addictive, in some studies with rats, more addictive than cocaine. And, once you start, you can’t stop.
And so, it hijacks your *pleasure centers, and if you wear out the pleasure centers in your brain, now, you’re not only at risk for addiction, you’re at risk for depression, you’re at risk for de-motivation. [*Dopamine resistance!]
DR. PHIL: 7.15
Right, and this may actually play a big role in dementia. We’re starting to see kind of Type 3 Diabetes may actually play a role in dementia.
DR. AMEN: 7.28
There are 11 major risk factors for dementia.
If you’re overweight, or you have high blood sugar, you have 7 of the 11. You have decreased blood flow to the brain, you have inflammation, it changes your hormones in a negative way.
This is something we can solve, and we have to get the right mindset, and read labels, because I don’t want anybody hijacking me or the people I love.
[*See Brian Cate’s excellent article on what Big Fake Food Corporations have known for years.]
DR. PHIL: 8.00
You have some things for us to look at.
DR. AMEN: 8.02
Right. An area in the basal ganglia called the nucleus succumbence — sort of like the little pleasure button in the brain. And, normally, it’s active. But when it gets hit with sugar, or cocaine, or pornography, that activates and we feel good.
But, the problem is, if you hit it too much, or too often, you begin to wear it out, and then you need more and more to feel anything at all.
[*Again, I submit dopamine resistance, as in overload, just the same as insulin resistance. This is a dangerous game to play.]
DR. PHIL: 8.35
And, what usually happens, certainly with addicts, is they keep chasing that high. They keep going after it more and more, and that’s the whole idea, right, that’s why we’re saying, if you’re binging on these foods, you’re looking for that same satisfaction that you may have gotten much much earlier before. [*Just the same as any other addictive drug, such as cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, etc. Think that over and let that sink in.]
DR. AMEN: 8.56
You know, let me add to that — because, over time, they’re not looking for the high, they’re looking to stop feeling awful. [*Just like any other drug addict.]
And, the problem is, the more they do it, the more worn out it becomes.
But, the good new is, if they get on the right program, and nourish their brain, it’s easier to break this. [*Eating good, healthy fats, such as butter, tallow, coconut oil, salmon, avocado, etc. is key to breaking this addiction. No, eating fat does not make you fat.]
DR. PHIL: 9.18
Well, what happens on the withdrawal that we’re seeing up here when they come down off of this?
DR. AMEN: 9.24
So then, what you see in that area of the basal ganglia — it’s cold, it’s low in activity. So, chronically, now, they feel bad. And, that sets them up for a lifetime of struggle.
DR. PHIL: 9.40
And, this is something that’s chronic?
DR. AMEN: 9.41
And then they end up on psychiatric medication, and most doctors don’t talk about the answer is, let’s get your food right, let’s get you to exercise.
DR. PHIL: 9.51
Yeah.
END./