The Truth About the MAHA Movement — with Dr. Jessica Knurick

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Episode 364, 364 is your code covering Western Kentucky in 1964.

Keanu Reeves, Stephen Colbert, Jeff Bezos, and that's right, the dog were all born.

True story.

We're starting a boy band, and before each concert, we're going to give everyone a Viagra, and we're calling the band One Erection.

That's good.

Go, go, go!

Welcome to the 364th episode of the Prop G-Pod.

What's happening?

I am officially back from Scott Free August.

I knew.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

You've been deprived.

You needed a little scott in your eyes.

You need a little rhythm.

You need a little no mercy, no malice content.

And here we are to deliver.

Back in London, it's absolutely beautiful here.

It feels sort of alien.

You're supposed to get sunshine.

You're supposed to go out.

And by the way, I think we need to do something to convince young people that life is messy, difficult, and really wonderful when it's experienced offline.

In my no mercy, no malice column last week, we did a post called LonelyFans.

I really like that title.

LonelyFans.

Anyways, the LonelyFans economy is booming.

There's just some crazy stats about OnlyFans.

It has a customer base, the population of the United States, about 350 million people.

About 80, 85% of the creators are female, as you might imagine.

I did the math, and if you take out college grads and people in big cities, essentially, if you're in a smaller town or a smaller city and you you pass an attractive woman between the ages of 18 and 25, there's like somewhere between a one and three and a one in five chance that she's on OnlyFans.

And I don't think you can tell people they should have bodily autonomy around family planning and not tell them or not let them have bodily autonomy around how they decide to make money or not make money.

So I don't have a moral issue or problem with it.

I just wonder if it's

essentially creating a new species of asocial, asexual male and that we're kind of planning our own extinction here, that people aren't finding places to connect, spend time, and demonstrate greatness or demonstrate excellence.

And if you talk to married couples who've been together longer than 30 years, 80% of them will say that one was more interested than the other in the beginning, and it was usually the man that was more interested than the woman.

But over time, you know, we went to the temple together and I liked the way he treated his parents.

I hung out with him and found out he was really funny.

We worked together and I was impressed by how good he was at what he did.

And men have a chance to demonstrate excellence, and hopefully the woman decides to

let that person in through her much finer filter, if you will.

But the problem is now, where do men demonstrate excellence?

Or where do people get together to demonstrate excellence to one another?

They're not going to work or into work.

They're not going to religious institutions.

That attendance is off 20% to 40% in the last 20 years.

They're not going to third spaces.

It's too expensive to go out and go to bars.

It's just, we don't have an apprenticeship culture.

It's where are young people

supposed to meet, especially when they've decided, okay, it's just much easier to go home and watch Netflix or scroll on my phone and engage in sort of this bed rot?

Anyways, I worry that we're turning into like an orca and an isolation tank.

And what happens to orcas and isolation tanks?

They go fucking crazy.

And if you look at the natural state of being for dogs, and I am equating humans to dogs because they're mammals, they want to lie on top of each other.

They want to be around each other.

Even if they're not

romantic partners, they want to be in packs.

We are pack animals.

Where am I going with all of this?

I think public policy needs to provide tax subsidies for third places,

sports leagues, parks, Christ, even bars.

To a certain extent, London does that.

There's certain retail establishments or spaces that are only zoned for pubs.

You can buy a nice pub in a good part of town in London for a lot less than you could buy that real estate because it is zoned strictly for pubs.

And I think pub culture and the chance for people to get together is a real key component of our society.

And I wonder if we could do the same thing, mandatory national service, figuring out something I'm really encouraged by is that Tinder and dating apps are collapsing and in-person meetups

are starting to take off, run clubs, sports leagues, dining clubs.

And I think that's wonderful.

I think we have to figure out a way to convince our kids and our species, if you will, once again, that life is hard, people are hard, people are messy, and that's what makes them so incredibly wonderful, that trying to develop a relationship with an online character AI that is frictionless and easy, you end up in a frictionless, seamless, slippery slope towards loneliness and depression.

That all of us need to bump off of each other in person.

And you'll get bruises, but you heal and it's stronger.

And that full body contact, interaction with people is kind of what makes us human.

Okay, moving on.

In today's episode, we'd speak with Dr.

Jessica Neurick, a nutrition scientist, registered dietitian, and nationally recognized science communicator.

Her work expands nutrition, public health, and food policy.

We discuss with Jessica the state of public health in America, how misinformation and the Maha movement are reshaping conversations about wellness, and what real policy solutions could actually improve our health.

Anyways, with that, here's our conversation with Dr.

Jessica Neurick.

Dr.

Neurick, where does this podcast find you?

Denver, Colorado.

Let's bust into our first question, and it's a big one.

What, in your view, is the state of public health in America?

I would say the state of public health in America.

So I think, and this is, I'm sure we'll talk about, you know, the Maha movement and how that's kind of like defined the conversation around public health right now.

I got into this field about 15 years ago, and my main goal and my research focus was really chronic disease prevention, because even at that time,

you could look around and and look at the data and it was very clear that we you know we have done a really wonderful job at tackling infectious disease and

and getting a public health infrastructure in place that undoubtedly impacted our health in in wonderful ways right we we saw a huge increase in life expectancy because of a lot of our public health infrastructure but as we were living longer we were also seeing higher rates of chronic disease and so we were particularly lifestyle lifestyle-related chronic diseases, which is what I started my research focus in.

And so, what I would say is, right now, what we're looking at is a situation where about half of Americans are living with at least one chronic health condition.

And many Americans, 30% of Americans, are living with, you know, more than one.

So, many, many different health chronic health conditions.

And a lot of those are lifestyle-related chronic diseases, right?

And what that means is our diet,

our physical activity, our behaviors are impacting our disease disease risk.

And so, I think that what a lot of people in public health right now or in kind of this Maha movement right now are really getting right is that we do have a big issue with these lifestyle-related chronic diseases.

And so, what I would say is, when we're thinking about public health, public health are really these systems that are looking at the health of all Americans.

And when you're looking at the health of all Americans,

the health of Americans is struggling.

It's not struggling

evenly across the board.

What we see are pretty large health disparities in America.

And we can kind of talk about that.

But a lot of our health issues are really disproportionately affecting particular groups in America.

But we are seeing these big health, these big health issues in our country that I think people are rightfully concerned about.

You've said that behaviors are important, but behaviors basically influence outcomes within the system.

Talk about some of those systems in the U.S.

that make bad behaviors even worse in terms of their outcomes.

Yeah, what I always say is individual behaviors.

So we make individual choices within systems.

And so those systems can either be set up for the most people to succeed or for the most people to fail.

And what we have done in our country is really built systems for the most people to fail from a health perspective.

And there's a reason for that because we have really built our systems for profitability.

So if you think about, you know, if I'm working with you one-on-one on your health, some of the things that we're going to discuss, we're going to talk about your diet, right?

What foods are you eating?

Your physical activity, are you moving around?

Your healthcare access, your stress levels, your sleep levels.

Those are all things we would work or work on on an individual level.

Where public health plays a role is there's systems that are impacting each of those kind of individual choices you're making.

So, just from the food system, for example, which is kind of my bread and butter, the food system in our country, by some estimates, is about 70% ultra-processed food right now.

And so we are heavily reliant in the United States on these pre-packaged ultra-processed foods.

And the reason for that is, well, there's a lot of reasons for that, but it's really because our food system has been built over the course of several decades for profitability.

So, from our agricultural system, which is where the food system starts, what we grow, to what we end up marketing and putting on shelves and marketing to people, has all been kind of designed for maximum profitability, profitability, and growth.

So, you know, in the 70s, we kind of changed our agricultural policies to start really focusing in on these commodity crops.

And so, Secretary of Agriculture at that time, he had this go big or go home kind of like model.

And the idea was we wanted to start growing in mass these commodity crops, mostly corn, wheat, and soy, because we grow corn, wheat, and soy very well in this country.

And they're really good exports for us.

And so we make a lot of money from them.

And so that's what started happening.

And so we started kind of coming away from small local farms, small family-owned farms, to large agribusiness.

And that really dominates our agricultural system now.

And so we subsidized that as a government too.

So we really incentivized farmers to be growing these commodity crops.

And that's kind of decimated local food systems.

And so when we did that, You know, then we kind of came into the 1980s and the era of deregulation under Reagan and then, you know, Clinton as well.

And the idea was, you know, we're going to, you had the shareholder value movement, which was kind of like, let's maximize profitability and growth at the expense of all other values.

And so one of those values is the health of the food that you're creating, right?

And so when you do that, when you have all these like confluence of factors, you create a food system that is really built for corporate profit.

So you are heavily reliant on these pre-packaged ultra-processed foods that can travel far because you don't have good local food systems.

You know, you said, My husband's from Romania, so I'm very familiar.

We go back most summers.

I'm very familiar with kind of like the food systems in a lot of countries in Europe.

And it's just very different than what we have here.

You know,

I'll walk down the street with my mother-in-law and go to the local farmer's market, which is not what we consider farmers markets in the United States.

It's just the market, which is like where everybody goes for their produce.

from like local farms that are around there.

And it's much cheaper actually than to go to the actual grocery store, which is very different than here.

I live in Denver, so we have farmers markets, but they're incredibly expensive.

And they kind of, you know, they sell like goods and things like that.

So we kind of did away from these local food systems.

And so when you do that, you are heavily reliant on these prepackaged foods, which require, by the way, food additives to keep them shelf stable.

And for corporations, food corporations that are trying to maximize profit under this kind of system, they're going to swap and use cheap ingredients.

So, you know, for example, we subsidize corn in this country.

Now,

A lot of that corn doesn't actually end up in our food system.

A lot of it goes towards animal agriculture and then fuel.

But because we subsidize corn, high fructose corn syrup is quite cheap for us as a sugar source.

This is just one example versus cane sugar.

So what these food corporations did was they started using high fructose corn syrup as their sugar source.

The only reason for that was because it was cheaper, not because of any other reason, but they were trying to maximize profits.

And so you do that by cutting cost of ingredients.

And so what we have designed kind of intentionally with policy has been this food system that is not really really conducive for our health, but it's conducive for corporate profits.

And then you can go across the board, Scott, and you can look at, you know, you can look at physical activity, you can look at stress, you can look at sleep and all of the systems that have been designed, you know, just thinking of like physical activity, if you think of the built environment, I mean, in our country, we really designed roads and systems for the profitability of the automobile industry.

And so we don't have, we have lots of towns and cities that aren't walkable and bikeable, which is very different than a lot lot of European countries, for example.

And so that's kind of through a public health lens is looking at those systems that are really impacting our individual choices.

I want to put forward a couple of theses that beg potential solutions and just have you respond to them.

And I'm very comfortable with pushback, recognizing that you're the expert here.

And I do think that we need to bring expertise back in vogue.

One.

This is really just about money.

China's run for control.

Chinese companies are run for control.

U.S.

companies are run for profits.

European companies, sort of a hybrid between profits and what they think is potentially good for people.

And there's downsides.

We grow faster.

We grow shareholder value faster.

There's real benefits to having a robust economy.

But at the end of the day, isn't the primary, if you were to look at people's health outcomes, doesn't it mostly, if you were to try and find something it's correlated to, doesn't it mostly come down to money?

And because I'm wealthy, am I not going to live 10 years longer than someone who is in the lowest decile?

Which begs the question,

It's not romantic, it's not sexy, it's expensive, but would we move the needle a lot more than say maha or subsidies if we said $25 an hour minimum wage?

If we just gave poor people who have the worst health outcomes the money such they didn't have to have two jobs, they didn't have to find the cheapest calories available, which is usually at a

Wendy's or a McDonald's.

Doesn't at the end of the day, like everything else, this come down to money?

Yeah, the main predictor of health in this country is wealth.

So you're absolutely spot on.

There's evidence to show, there's research to show that, you know, there's a 15-year life expectancy age gap for men and a 10-year life expectancy age gap for women between the highest and lowest income brackets.

And you can look at more, sometimes more than 15 if you look at some of the research that looks at zip codes in the same state, and you'll see an even bigger disparity in terms of life expectancy.

And so, yeah, 100%.

When we're thinking of like, how can we help the people who are struggling most?

I mean, not just life expectancy if you think of all of the lifestyle related chronic diseases they are disproportionately impacting the lowest income people in this country um you know diabetes rates are over twice as high um five times more likely to report poor fair health than higher income groups.

And so, you know, if you're trying to design systems to help improve the health of all Americans, you look at the people who are struggling most and it's low income people in this country who don't have good access to, you know, fruits, vegetables, healthful foods, who don't have access to walkable towns, parks for their children to run around and play, educational access, those things.

And so getting those people just kind of like baseline access, right?

Housing access for safe housing.

So I don't know if exactly if a $25 minimum wage would do it.

I'd have to see data on that, but it's definitely getting resources to people so that they can at least have a baseline kind of, they can have baseline health insurance, they can have baseline food access, they can have baseline safe housing so that they can experience health as well.

It strikes me, though, I've read somewhere that we spend a trillion and a half dollars on obesity-related illnesses or obesity-related conditions.

This is just, I used to think we're an addiction economy

or we're an attention economy.

Now I'm convinced we're in an addiction economy.

One of those addictions is to food because there's so much money in it.

But what do you think of the idea or like, well, first off, thoughts on public policy to address it and a simple idea that probably doesn't probably doesn't work.

What if we just massively increase the availability and penetration of GLP-1 drugs?

I think, first of all, let me address just like the food environment aspect in terms of policy.

I think that if we're looking at

why we have this abundance of food, I mean, we have way more calories available to us than

our ancestors did, even like a generation ago, two generations ago.

We have about 4,000 calories available for each person that is alive today in the U.S.

And that's, you know, that that's a lot of calories per person.

We don't need that many calories.

And the reasons for that are these food corporations are, you know, they're trying to stand out

in a system that where we already have too many calories available per person, right?

And so they do that by innovating and coming up with, you know, a different color product or a different, you know, whatever it is.

And so, you know, you go into one of these supermarkets and there's just thousands of products.

I mean, it's really unnecessary, right?

We don't need that many food products on our shelves, but they're doing it because they're trying to maximize profits.

And so, you know, some of the ways that you can counteract some of that is through regulation, and which is funny enough.

Like right now, we're going through, again, we have an administration that's quite deregulatory in their approach, which is interesting for people who want a better food environment.

But, you know, you would regulate marketing, particularly to children and low-income populations who are most impacted by some of this of some of this stuff.

But just in general, you would regulate marketing.

And, you know, one of the reasons we also have it is because we have very few corporations that own the majority of the food supply.

And so they kind of get to, and that was because, you know, kind of this deregulatory era where there were a lot of mergers and acquisitions.

And now, you know, you think that you're getting a product that's a different brand, and but it's a brand that's owned by the same company and you wouldn't even know it, right?

So I think that some of the some of the ways we do this is kind of we we regulate marketing, we regulate, you know, the amount of food that are the types of foods that are allowed to be put on the shelves or those types of things.

And then, but it's also just like deeper.

You have to change the entire food system.

Because again, we have a food environment that's about 70% ultra-processed foods.

You have to incentivize it starting at agricultural policies, incentivizing smaller farmers, incentivizing, you know, through we have the supplemental nutrition assistance program, which helps low-income people get access to foods.

And we have some really cool programs with that that are called like double up bucks, which a lot of states have, which is is basically like if you spend your money on fruits and vegetables, you get twice as much.

So, you basically like double the amount of money that you have.

And so, we have these cool incentive programs that kind of incentivize people to eat more, like, you know, nutrient-dense, health-promoting foods.

Um, so, so, those are some of the strategies to be able to expand access.

You know, you have to address food deserts to expand access to kind of low-income populations.

Um, and then on the other side of it, when you, if you're just thinking of the obesity side and increasing GLP-1 drugs, I think that GLP-1 drugs, you know, I think they are amazing in terms of what they have been able to do and what they, the potential that they can have in terms of improving people's health.

I don't, I am somebody who likes to think of more like root cause and fix the underlying systems before thinking of treating with a pharmaceutical med.

I think there's definitely a place for pharmaceutical meds, but I would like to spend more of my time focused on like, how can we fix the systems that are putting people in these positions versus just treating on the back end.

You said the Make America Healthy Again movement gets the problems right, but the solutions wrong.

What do you mean by that?

Yeah, so when I talk about the Make America Healthy Again movement, I mean, we sound very, like, I sound very similar to them when I, when I'll speak about kind of the problem.

You know,

they do get those problems largely correct, right?

We do have a...

lifestyle-related chronic disease issue in this country.

We do have a food environment that's built for profitability and not people's health.

And, you know, we have we have systems in this country that are not designed for us to succeed, where we kind of diverge is in the causes of those problems.

So their causes largely kind of play into this rhetoric of, it's a very conspiratorial anti-science, anti-regulatory agency rhetoric, which is.

You can't trust, you know, our regulatory agencies.

You can't trust scientists, because apparently scientists are the ones who have gotten us here.

And they kind of like distract from all of the issues that I'm talking about right now.

They distract from

know, the idea that all of the reason that we're here is kind of the logical conclusion of the system that we've built, which is are these systems that have been designed, again, for profitability at the expense of people's health.

And I think there, when you do that, when you kind of just focus on like the problem is toxins in our food supply and you just choose random ones that don't have like it's not as if we have strong evidence behind some of these that they're choosing um you know you get solutions like swapping the color of of fruit loops, right?

And or

swapping high fructose corn syrup for cane sugar and Coca-Cola.

And those just aren't going to move the needle on health.

And they're very distracting from the policies that actually could be moving the needle on health, right?

If you swap red dye 40 out of Skittles and you add in carmine or beet juice instead, like a natural food color additive,

and it's still Skittles, right?

It's still a very low nutrient, high sugar, ultra-processed food that we should probably be consuming less of, not necessarily none of, but less of.

Same with Coca-Cola, same with swapping beef tallow out and putting in, you know, seed oils in fast food french fries.

Like none of these things are going to actually change our food environment and actually make a meaningful difference on public health.

And so it's very much a distraction.

And what I'll say is that if you get the problems wrong, you're going to get the solutions wrong.

And so some of those solutions I just highlighted, which is what Maha is really talking about.

Some of the other solutions that you'll do is say things like, you know, fluoride in the water is the problem, and that's causing all of our chronic disease issues.

And so, we're going to remove fluoride.

Well, at the same time, dental cavities or dental caries are the number one chronic disease in children.

So, if you're trying to improve chronic disease in children and you remove fluoride, which is directly going to increase the number of dental caries, that is a solution that is going to actually cause more harm than good in terms of what our evidence actually shows.

And so, that's the danger in kind of misdiagnosing the problem.

And then your solutions that follow are going to be problematic.

We'll be right back after a quick break.

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40% of American households have some form of medical or dental debt.

And I can't imagine the amount of stress that puts on households.

And shame, quite frankly.

You know, me and my partner are working really hard, and we can't afford to get our 19-year-old the root canal she needs.

And we have to take on debt.

And that amount of stress, which I imagine leads to worse health outcomes, and then you have a kind of a downward spiral.

Do you believe that we should nationalize medicine?

Yeah, I mean, medical debt is also the number one reason for personal bankruptcy in the United States.

Yeah, I'm a big advocate for university for some kind of universal healthcare system,

some kind of system that gets everybody basic access to health care.

And then we can have private insurance on top of that.

If we, you know, like companies can offer private insurance on top of that, but everybody should have basic access to health care, which is what every other industrialized country in the world does.

And let me explain the reason for that, Scott.

It's not just because I'm, you know, I'm altruistic and just want everybody to have free things.

If you give people access to health care, they're going to go to preventive visits.

And when that happens, they're going to be able to catch things early on.

And so, access to healthcare is one of our main determinants of health.

There's an incredible amount of data on this.

You give people access to health care, they get healthier.

Not everybody, but on a mass scale, when you look at kind of the population as a whole, because they're going to go to preventive visits, they're going to go to screenings, and they're going to catch things before they get to too down the line.

When people don't have health care, what happens is, or they have health care that doesn't cover

these types of visits, or they have really high deductibles.

And so maybe they have health care, but they would have to pay out of pocket anyway for some of these visits.

They're not going to go to the doctor.

But the problem is, is that they're still going to get sick.

It's not as if they're just not going to get sick because they don't have health care.

And when they get sick, they're still going to go to the hospital.

They're going to end up in the emergency room.

And what we have is a lot of Americans using the emergency room as their primary care physician.

And so they're ending up at the emergency room.

And if you're in front of an emergency room having a heart attack, that hospital is going to accept you and they're going to give you care.

And when you can't pay those medical bills, that cost is going to come on to us as taxpayers.

So it's not like that cost just goes away.

So, and it comes on to us with increased premiums in our health insurance, with increased hospital costs, with increased uncompensated care.

So our tax dollars go to something called uncompensated care, which goes directly to these hospitals to compensate them for this uncompensated care.

And so, you know, not only is it problematic from a, you know,

money standpoint, but it's also problematic from a health standpoint.

So if we can get more people access to health care, we're going to improve the health of those Americans and also decrease costs because there's some good evidence to show that, you know, I mean, in this country, we pay twice as much for health care and we have worse health outcomes.

You know, we've created a healthcare system that's very profitable for healthcare corporations at the expense of, again, people's health and people getting access to healthcare.

And so, you're going to improve people's health and you're going to lower costs.

So, that's obviously a big solution: universal health care.

That may, you know, if everyone else has done it, I'd like to think we could do it, but most people will say

it would be very difficult to accomplish.

Are there two or three policy solutions or private sector solutions you think would move the needle?

Yeah, I think

if you think of the main determinants of health,

they are healthcare access, food access, income inequality, right?

And probably income inequality is even above the other two.

And so, you know, when you think of policies that could actually help improve health, you have to look at, well, what are the main determinants of health?

And then what are policies that could impact those?

And so if you're thinking of income inequality, it's some kind of solution that decreases income inequality, right?

Which is the exact opposite that we're seeing right now, obviously, with the Big Beautiful Bill.

You know, the Big Beautiful Bill, I'm going to like tangentially talk about this because it kind of counteracts everything I just said.

If you think about income inequality and decreasing income inequality, it's exacerbating income inequality.

If you think about expanding health care access, it's cutting nearly a trillion dollars from health care access, from Medicaid specifically,

which, you know, the Congressional Budget Office estimates 10 million people are going to lose access to health care.

Now, they will argue that those people that are losing access to health care are are, you know, able-bodied people who should be working.

There's just no evidence that 10 million people are able-bodied people who should be working.

The vast majority of people on Medicaid who can work and don't have an exemption are working.

And, you know, we, again, I just kind of explained why we want to get more people access to health care regardless.

And the last one is food accessibility.

And so, you know, getting people more access to food, food is a big social determinant of health.

And this cuts hundreds of billions of dollars from SNAP and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

So,

that's really problematic right now.

What we're seeing is kind of like the it's antithetical to what we would want to see in public health.

What I will say, in terms of like policy-based solutions, it starts with overturning Citizens United and getting money out of politics because that, and a lot of people don't kind of like put that together with the policies that are impacting their health.

But the reason that we can't pass a lot of policy that are health-promoting policies is because

of kind of the corporate capture of some of these politicians.

And

there's not a lot of money on the front end in public health.

And so in order to get something like universal healthcare passed or expanding access to some of these programs, the infrastructure bill that Biden passed was really a great thing because it was looking at kind of the built environment and improving some of those systems.

But it would be a lot easier if we could decrease the amount of corporate lobbying that was allowed at our political level.

What role do you think that social media has played, specifically around the Maha movement?

Why do you think it's resonating so much?

I keep getting served.

I'm very into health, but I keep getting served a reel or a TikTok that's something along the lines of, look at this horrible thing that's in your food.

You can also, it's also used in antifree.

You know, they scare the shit out of you.

And then it always ends with, oh, and by the way, the way you solve this problem and have better looking skin and longer erections is if you buy my supplement.

And they're really elegant.

They're well produced.

It's from someone who is articulate and attractive.

And you kind of, you know, you can see how these are big businesses.

And on the one hand, I love entrepreneurship.

I love people having access to consumers to come up with ideas.

On the whole, I think it's mostly a negative.

And I'm curious,

you put out a lot of interesting.

I love it when you do these stitches where you listen to someone rant about something and then you come in and go, well, actually, no, there's no scientific proof whatsoever.

Why do you think the Maha movement movement is resonating?

What role do you think online platforms play?

Yeah, I think the Maha movement took the wellness influencer playbook that they've been using for, you know, at least the last 10 years.

A lot of my colleagues in the science communication space have been

combating some of this misinformation that's been on social media for years now.

And the Maha movement, I think, saw the success of some of these influencers, particularly some of the ones that are high up in this Maha movement, and really honed in on those.

I think that social media algorithms play, you know, they really play into conspiratorial fear-based information.

That's what sells and that's what that's what spreads fast.

So, you know, I've done some videos where I stitch people who are like, are you poisoning your kids?

And then they go into kind of like a single ingredient in a food item that's also found in like a cleaning agent at Home Depot or something.

And that's supposed to be very scary.

And I think they're relying on people's lack of kind of like chemistry knowledge, right?

And scientific knowledge, because we have, you you know, I mean, just think of baking soda, right?

Baking soda is an ingredient that can be in chocolate chip cookies, or it can be used in some sort of cleaning agent, right?

Baking soda is really great, or it can be sitting in your refrigerator in order to air it out, right?

In order to

make it cleaner.

So it's got lots of different functions.

And a lot of ingredients are like that.

And so, you know, if you, if you rely on people to not really understand that, you can kind of manipulate their lack of understanding in order to then on the back end, as you mentioned, most of the time sell you some sort of product, right?

So I'm going to scare you and then I'm going to sell you a product.

And I think it just unfortunately, the way that social media algorithms are is that that's what plays really well on social media.

I mean, even myself,

if I went online and I just started educating, you know, I think that some people would watch it.

But what I found is that it works a lot better when I show the video and then I like reply to the video.

And, you know, that's me kind of playing into social media algorithms because

that's what works when somebody sees the misinformation and then I correct the misinformation.

And so unfortunately, social media, I think social media takes most of the blame, to be honest.

And then what happens is you get into an algorithm.

You watch one or two of those videos and you get into an algorithm and then that's all you see.

And you don't have a chance.

I can't tell you how many people, when I, you know, started making content, really like targeting, really like combating some of the narratives coming out of this Maha movement, movement, because I just saw how manipulative some of the narratives were.

How many people reached out to me in my DMs and said, you know,

I just never had the opportunity to hear another side to this.

Like, this is literally, I've just seen kind of like what they're saying about all these like toxins and all this.

And I've never heard like a scientist or anyone else talk about that.

And, you know, social media is great at that.

It's great at dividing us and kind of putting us in our camps.

And then you never really see the other side.

So I think it takes a ton of blame.

What are your your thoughts on how COVID changed the landscape?

I think COVID completely changed the landscape.

And so what's interesting about my field is wellness was really always kind of like a left-leaning idea, you know, like hippies in San Francisco kind of like started there.

And then, you know, people who really cared about the food supply and,

you know, small farmers and that sort of thing.

And we've seen over the last five years, like this shift in kind of like wellness discourse that has really kind of moved from left to right.

And so again, like wellness is a bipartisan thing.

Most of us want wellness.

But I think the underlying shift that's happened is this distrust in regulatory agencies and distrust in science.

And I think most of that, I think maybe there was a little of that before, but most of that in terms of like our everyday discourse, it really came from COVID.

And I think.

It was kind of a confluence of COVID was, you know, a novel virus that,

you know, we were dealing with a global pandemic.

And so science was changing because that's what it does as new information was coming in.

And I think there's a bit of a lack of, you know, we don't, a lot of us want certainty.

And COVID did not give us certainty, particularly in the early days.

And so I think as things shifted, it really just opened the door for a lot of kind of manipulative or conspiratorial narratives to kind of enter the fray.

And then at that same time, you know, social media was even getting bigger.

TikTok was released like right before that.

And it was huge at that time.

And I think, you know, those types of algorithms just started getting people into camps.

I don't know that we would have seen the same kind of distrust and the same kind of like response that we saw during COVID if we didn't have social media, right?

Because we've had, you know, not to the same extent, but we've had kind of like these public health crises before, and we haven't necessarily seen the same thing.

And, you know, I think a little bit of some of that definitely, like we as scientists, public health experts, communicators need to take some blame because I think there were mistakes made in terms of like communication at that time and what was happening and really just communicating that, like, this is what we know now.

It could change because of when we get more information.

You know, but because that maybe perhaps wasn't communicated as best as we could now looking back and seeing kind of like what we could have done, I think that it just really left gaping holes open for people to step in and just create conspiratorial narratives around it all.

And that's why we've seen kind of of this huge surge of people who just have complete distrust in our regulatory agencies, which, you know, Maha really plays on.

It seems as if a vessel for some of this distrust or rejection of science is focused on vaccines right now.

What's happening in terms of the mRNA research cancellations and why do you think vaccines have become such a hotbed for controversy?

Well, RFK Jr., as the head of HHS, is certainly part of that, right?

RFK Jr., he's for the last, you know, at least two decades, he's kind of been in this anti-vax space.

You know, he started up the Children's Health Defense, which kind of meant this anti-vax group.

And he, that's, that's his main coalition.

It's really interesting, this Maha movement.

They kind of have two sides, two facets of the coalition.

It's the hardcore anti-vaxxers who have been with RFK Jr.

for years,

who made up kind of his when he was running for president as an independent, kind of like made up his coalition.

And then they brought in kind of of this more like the maha moms who are really worried about like the food additives and the toxins in our food supply and those types of things.

And so they kind of like brought them together.

And there's kind of been some, there's, there's, there's been some infighting there, which is interesting.

But I think on the anti-vax side, you know, we

COVID obviously is part of that.

And RFK Jr.

and his anti-vax like colleagues are certainly part of it.

And now, I mean, he's the head of HHS.

HHS is the biggest public health agency in the entire world.

And he's leading that charge.

And so I think that that's why it's so front and center in public discourse, clearly.

And what we're seeing right now, I mean, he canceled half a billion dollars in mRNA vaccine research.

mRNA is a technology that, you know, the inventors of mRNA just won a Nobel Prize for it in 2023.

If you talk to experts in this field about who are experts in mRNA, they will say that they believe it's going to revolutionize medicine.

They believe it's going to do for the 21st century what antibiotics did for the 20th century.

You know, it's a very elegant technology where it speeds things up.

And so, maybe some people don't understand, but the reason that we were able to get the COVID vaccines out so quickly was because they had spent a decade plus, two decades, working on this mRNA technology.

And so, a ton of research had gone into it.

And so,

when they identified the SARS-CoV-2, they were able to come out with a vaccine quite quickly for it, whereas it would have taken years prior to that.

And so

it's not just vaccines.

it's not just you know infectious diseases it's also that they think it's going to revolutionize cancer um and potentially be incredible for cancer um like cancer treatments um and other like unknown diseases or not well-known diseases and so i think that it's really problematic when when he just cancels half a billion dollars in the research i mean the research is the part that like, let's, let's make things safer.

Let's make, like, let's improve upon what we have.

Let's see what else it can impact.

And, you know, this is research being done globally, and he canceled half a billion dollars here in the United States, which, you know, is, is, there's an economic cost to that too.

So we're basically giving up, we're, we're the leaders in this research right now, and we're giving up kind of that leadership by canceling this research into mRNA vaccine technology.

And so, you know, and that's not all we're seeing with vaccines.

We're seeing, we're seeing the entire CDC essentially being dismantled.

You know, RFK Jr.

just fired the head of the CDC.

Several leadership positions, these are career scientists, some who have been at the CDC for decades, have resigned, saying that, you know, RFK Jr.

is not even listening to them at the CDC.

It's really concerning that when you're when you have an HHS secretary who is literally just not listening to career scientists and instead is kind of listening to his own group of people.

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We're back with more from Dr.

Jessica Neurick.

Where do you think that lack of appreciation for science and what feels to me just like naked incompetence, where do you think that manifests first?

Where is that going to start to bubble up in terms of outcomes?

Science is,

it's an interesting thing because it's what has enabled us, you know, the scientific method, it's just basically science is a way of understanding the world around us, right?

It's not a set of facts that we say are like never going to change.

It's a way of understanding the world around us.

And the scientific method has enabled incredible advances in the last 150 years, over doubling of global life expectancy in just the last 150 years.

You know, I just saw a clip from a few weeks ago of Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about this.

And he put it beautifully.

He said, you know, for thousands and thousands of years, life expectancy was 30 to 35 up until about 150, 200 years ago, when all of a sudden it went up to, you know, in the United States, about 78 right now, right?

And so, and that was because we have been able to create this really beautiful way to understand the world around us it's not perfect it has issues um it's not foolproof and and things change that we and we learn more um but it's a way that we are able to identify viruses identify germ like germ theory has enabled us to identify germs um and so if we disregard the scientific method we don't really have to look far to see what what would happen right because we lived that for thousands of years when we had people who kind of you know treated through uh ideology treated through treated people through like what they believed to be true without necessarily having evidence.

And, you know, outcomes weren't great.

Again, 30 to 35 was life expectancy.

That was certainly disproportionately like young people were dying of infectious diseases or lack of sanitation and those types of things.

And so when we disregard science, what we're going to see are people dying because of it, like to put it bluntly.

We're going to see, you know, if we have another pandemic, if we have, we're going to see a resurgence of some of these infectious diseases that haven't been around.

I mean, we see it with measles right now and the measles outbreak.

And, you know, as vaccination status decreases, we'll see these diseases that used to take a lot of lives and don't anymore resurge.

And, you know, that that's kind of the fear is that if we if we stop investing in science.

we will see consequences of not investing in science.

And that will be that we'll see, you know, diseases that we could have had progress on, we won't have progress on, right?

And so, so those are all really like strong concerns for us in the scientific community.

And then there's an economic aspect to it as well, because you know, we in the United States, we've always, in a bipartisan way, really supported scientific research, you know, and NIH research.

And that's kind of been a bipartisan thing.

Right now, we're looking at Trump's 2026 budget.

He wants to cut NIH funding by 40%.

And, you know, if you do that, you are essentially like giving up your standing in terms of, you know, scientific innovation in our country that obviously has problematic impacts for the economy.

What trends or technologies are you keeping an eye on right now?

Is there anything that you think we're missing to the downside or the upside?

In terms of just public health.

What are you watching right now?

What do you think has been underreported in terms of the impact it might have?

Also, to the upside, is there anything you're really excited about?

I think what's being underreported and under, maybe like people aren't realizing how detrimental it might be are these attacks to science and and what it's doing to young scientists so PhD students young career scientists people in the medical field you know medical doctors and we're seeing you know

I talk to every single day, like young stage career scientists who are looking to leave the country.

We're seeing PhD programs that are not being funded.

And so there are no spots for PhD students.

And so they're having to look outside of the country.

We're seeing like some of our best researchers in some of our fields leave the country.

I know, I mean, like very excellent nutrition researchers that I know are moving to Canada and just accepted positions in Canada.

And so, and we see some of these countries that are creating pathways for scientists.

They're kind of capitalizing on this

brain drain that we're experiencing right now and opening pathways to allow them to move to their countries.

We see France doing it.

We see Canada doing it.

I think there's a couple of other countries that are doing it as well.

And so that is very concerning to me in terms of we may lose because of funding, because of just like the overall feeling of how people are, you know, first of all, there's a loss of funding.

Second of all, there's this idea that, you know, a lot of our medical doctors, people are coming in and just yelling at them or not listening to what their advice is or saying that they're paid off by big pharma and these types of things when you know they get into this field to really try to help people um and i know of a lot of medical doctors who are thinking about leaving the profession and so i'm concerned about kind of the downstream effects of that in let's say 10 years when we have far fewer scientists and medical professionals in the field that's kind of one of the things that i think is being underreported and i'm talking to people every single day who are who are talking about this, who are in these fields, who are who are thinking of leaving, either leaving science altogether or trying to leave the country to go someplace else to do their work.

As a parent, what advice would you give to other parents in terms of where we get it wrong in terms of our own kids' nutrition?

I think right now, one of the things that I dislike so much about the social media aspect of all of this and how these algorithms really play into this conspiratorial fear-based nature is I'm seeing a huge exacerbation of

just food anxiety, right?

And like like fear about like, what can my kids eat?

What can I eat?

And, you know, young parents are especially vulnerable targets.

And so I feel like especially protective over them because we just want to do what's best for our young kids, right?

We just are ourselves, but also our young kids.

And so when we're, when I'm, when I'm talking to them, if I were to give a piece of advice, it would be that the basics of what it are like from a health perspective, the basics that may go into somebody's health are, you know, they've been long standing for decades and they haven't changed a whole lot.

So, you know, try to emphasize like whole foods as much as possible.

Try to get movement every single day.

Try to have a good sleep schedule, those types of things.

And those,

try to play with your kids.

And those things are going to do a lot more than kind of looking at individual ingredients on a label or being scared to eat anything.

And so that's, that's what I want to really drive home in terms of messaging is just, you know, and that kind of goes to everyone in the country, like not just, not just children.

You know, 90% of Americans don't meet fiber intake guidelines.

Over 90% of Americans don't meet vegetable intake guidelines.

80% of Americans don't meet physical activity guidelines.

If we can just focus on the basics, try to get more fiber-rich foods, try to get a vegetable on your plate at most meals, try to move your body.

The average American walks 3,000 to 4,000 steps per day.

Try to get moving a bit more.

That's going to have a way more measurable impact on your health than any of the things that we're spending 90% of our time on social media thinking about.

We've seen those studies where in China, the number one aspirational job for kids is astronaut.

In the U.S., it's influencer.

I think of you as an influencer, and I mean that in a positive way.

And I think a lot of people see your social media footprint as I did and think that's the right type of influencer.

She's bringing substance, an important topic, expertise, measured thoughtful, and you're very compelling the way you articulate these things.

How did you get here?

I just want to know, what is your backstory?

What led to where you are right now?

Yeah, I am.

So I have a PhD in nutrition science and I'm a registered dietitian.

And I got into this field really, it was, I mean, it was a long process, but my goal was really to look at chronic disease prevention.

My grandpa died when he was in his 60s.

He had type 2 diabetes and he died of a heart attack while snowblowing in Michigan.

And so that always had me thinking, like,

how could we have helped him better?

Because what we heard from, you know, and I was a child, I was a kid at this time, so a teenager.

But what we knew to be the case was that he just shouldn't eat sugar.

And so what we would do is we would just find like sugar-free alternatives for him.

And we would get so excited, we would find sugar-free brownies or sugar-free candy, and we would bring it to him and think that we were helping.

And not realizing that that wasn't helpful at all.

But, you know, we thought that what we were doing was the right thing.

And so that just had me always interested in the kind of this idea of chronic disease prevention.

And so when I went for my PhD program, I went into a program that was really interdisciplinary.

So, I mean, the title of it is Physical Activity, Nutrition, and Wellness.

And I really focused on the nutrition science side of that.

But it was cool because we were able to kind of all work together and look at all of these factors that impacted health and how to decrease health.

And so when I was looking at it, I was really focused on the individual.

But when you get into the research, you think you kind of see, oh, we have really good data on what can prevent chronic disease, at least lifestyle-related chronic disease.

But what we're missing is like behavior change.

The behavior change data, it's very difficult to change people's behavior.

And so when you kind of start looking at that data, it's impossible to not look at the systems that are impacting people's behavior.

And so that's where my research led me was just kind of looking at these public health systems that are really influencing us.

And so I was a professor at the University of Nevada for a couple of years.

And then my husband was in San Francisco at the time and I was in Vegas and we lived separately.

And the only way for us to really get together, it was a personal choice.

I left academia to join him in San Francisco.

And, you know, when I was a professor, though, I've told this story.

I tried to go on social media.

So this was 2016 and there was a new app out.

And my brother, my little brother, convinced me to go on and just start teaching nutrition.

He was like, you're teaching in class.

Just go teach what you teach on this app.

And so I did.

And, you know, I talk about this a lot.

It was very frowned upon at that time for academics to go on social media.

Like, that just was not what you did.

And you probably can speak to this as well.

It was, you know, and I was a brand new tenure track professor.

And so I did not want to, you know, I didn't want to negatively impact my career trajectory.

And I would get, I got comments from some of the professors in my department and some previous colleagues basically making fun of me and asking like, what are you doing on social media?

And saying, like, how's your blog doing?

I still relate to this in a department meeting i had a colleague say in front of all of my colleagues that scott is a kim kardashian of academia and he wasn't being kind he had outed you as someone who wasn't serious um which wasn't the case anyways i'm sorry i didn't interrupt you No, I mean, that was exactly my experience.

And so I get off after a few months.

I was like, well, I'm not going to do this.

I'm a brand new professor.

I want to like, I want a career in academia.

But I say that story to say that like, I think we lost a lot of ground for years and years, particularly in the sciences, it was frowned, it was frowned upon for us to go to spaces where people were going for information.

And so, we started allowing kind of these narratives to be owned by people who didn't necessarily have the background to be talking about these topics.

And so, I think that that was, that did us a big disservice.

I think that's changing now.

It's not 100% changed, but it's changing now to be more accepted.

And so, anyway, I went into the startup world and that's where I started working in science communication and working kind of between PhD researchers and business people.

And so I would act as kind of a translator.

And so I honed some communication skills doing that, I think.

And I came on social media in 2022 originally.

I was pregnant with my daughter and started, you know, I just saw a lot of misinformation targeting pregnant people.

And I was protective of them because I was one.

And so I started kind of combating some of that misinformation.

And then it was last summer that I started when the Maha movement kind of started,

you know, coming, coming of age, I started to see, and I think it was just because it was my exact area of expertise, I was able to see, whereas maybe I'm not in other areas of politics, exactly like how manipulative the narrative really was.

And so I shifted my content focus to talk really about my area of expertise, which was nutrition science and public health.

And yeah, my account has grown from there and it's been quite the ride.

And just any, if you were to sort of communicate, if there was one thing as we go into, you know,

well, the 26th election is way off, but if there's anything you would want to remind people, or if you wanted to distill your message down to one basic message you really thought

that resonates with people or that they really contemplate on, what would that one message be?

I think it would be that health is bipartisan, right?

And wanting a healthier food environment, wanting healthier systems is really bipartisan.

And so we have to understand

the problem and how we got here in order to understand the solution.

And so I understand kind of the desire to kind of just latch on to some of these like very simple, easy, kind of conspiratorial narratives in terms of the toxins in our food environment or this or that or you know our regulatory agencies.

But you have to understand why we got here.

And then like, let's solve the root cause of why we got here.

And so one of the great things about the Mahal movement is it's gotten people who have never really thought about these systems and really never thought about public health before to be very interested in it.

And I think that's a real opportunity for us as professionals to be able to maybe for the first time meet people where they are and explain these things and talk to them about how we could improve upon our systems to make an environment that puts the most people in success in a position of success in terms of their health.

And so that's that's what I guess looking forward, what I'm hopeful about is that, you know, I do think that there's a real opportunity here for us to change some things in terms of improving the systems in our country that on both sides of the aisle, many of us want to see and changing those for the better for all of Americans.

It feels as if in our government, we over-index, or at least for our elected officials, we over-index on lawyers and business people and under-index on health professionals.

Dr.

Nurk, would you ever consider running for office?

You know, people ask me that all the time, Scott.

I have two young kids in their five and two, and so I'm not considering considering running for office anytime soon.

I think that I am in a position right now where I am able to maybe potentially do

more help or be more helpful in terms of just a communication role than I would be kind of in a

government office role, maybe in the future, but I don't even know what that would look like or even how you do that.

So probably not, not anytime soon.

Well, Health is Bipartisan is a fantastic bumper sticker.

Dr.

Jessica Neurick is a nutrition scientist, registered dietitian, and nationally recognized science communicator whose work spans nutrition, public health, and food policy.

She's best known for breaking down health misinformation and making science clear and accessible.

She joins us from her home in Denver.

Dr.

Norik, in a world where expertise has been eroded or that

science denial seems to be hip and cool, There needs to be a resistance of thoughtful people that continues to bring science data-driven solutions to a society.

I think you are a gift.

You combine substance,

you are incredibly compelling.

You have weaponized these mediums for good.

And I'm just so,

we're sincere about this.

We want to be a weapon and a platform for spreading your accurate information.

You really are, I think, a huge force of positive information that's really needed right now.

Very much appreciate your work and appreciate your time today.

Really appreciate that.

Thank you for having me, Scott.

Algebra of Happiness.

This episode is being released on the 24th anniversary of 9-11.

And as you know, I never missed an opportunity to talk about myself.

I was in New York on September the 11th, and it was a pretty meaningful and impactful day.

I got a call from my ex-wife.

She and I had split up about 12 months before that,

but

we were still good friends.

And she was staying in an apartment that had this view of all of lower Manhattan.

And she said, can you come over?

Something's wrong.

I said, of course I can.

And she said, the World Trade Center's on fire.

And she was rattled by it.

And she thought at the point it was a fire.

And she said, come over here.

And I went over there and I got on her deck.

And a friend of ours, my buddy Greg Scho, was there.

And he came over and all three of us.

And then we saw another plane, a second plane, disappear behind the second tower and then come out the other end.

And at that moment, we knew that it was a terrorist attack.

And

I saw...

both buildings come down.

And although we were a couple miles or a mile and a half north, I remember feeling a couple things.

One, you could feel the heat from the implosion of the buildings and thinking that it reminded me of a Star Wars episode and that I would never see anything like that again in my life live.

It looked otherworldly and like some sort of episode out of a sci-fi film, seeing these buildings implode and come down, and then a river of people

flowing up Sixth Avenue.

All the cell phones immediately didn't work.

My sister trying to find me, track me down, couldn't find me, got very upset.

And then they came over the radio and said that there were like 22 planes unaccounted for.

And that thought of fear, irrational fear that are there going to be another 22 planes slamming into tall buildings?

How tall is this plane?

Should I go down to the ground?

Or how tall is this building?

Should I go down to the ground?

A couple other observations.

It was the first time in New York where it was totally silent.

For the next few days, there was no honking.

There was just no sound.

And you would walk down the street and you would see someone on a cell phone.

I'm not exaggerating every few hundred feet speaking into a cell phone, crying hysterically.

And everybody knew someone or knew someone who knew someone who was lost that day

in one of those buildings or on one of the planes.

And the moment that will register with me for the rest of my life is I went to Union Square where they were having a memorial and this old Ukrainian couple, I think they were Ukrainian, wearing cheap clothing and they were just tiny.

They looked like they were like four foot eight or four foot ten came up to me and they were handing out flyers the way you hand out flyers for a lost pet.

And this had a picture of this, you know, this handsome young man in a waiter's uniform and he was a waiter at Windows of the World, which is a restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center.

and saying, have you seen me?

And it was in bad, like, have seen me.

They obviously didn't speak very good English, and they were passing it out like they were looking for a lost dog.

And you just knew immediately what was going on, that they were never going to find their son.

And the thing about the deaths that day is people either escaped unscathed or they were killed.

Like they immediately set up San Vicente, was it called?

San Vicente Hospital?

I think it was called.

It's closed now for

injury from the attacks.

And they didn't have any admitteds because everyone either died and was taken to a morgue or survived.

But I remember thinking, you know, it was so obvious

what had happened to their son, and they couldn't acknowledge it.

And it just struck me that people will hold on to like any shred of hope.

And there are all these stories about people who are wandering around Manhattan trying to find their loved ones, refusing to believe that they died.

The other thing that struck me was I thought one of the finest moments in recent history for America was when after spending several years

CIA analysts who had doggedly tried to find Osama bin Laden and then found him and took huge risks and deployed a SEAL team into hostile territory and basically

put a bullet in that motherfucker's eye.

And I love the notion that this guy,

that the last thing that ran through his head other than a bullet was they had found me.

And I think it really spoke to not only America's expertise and skills and the fact that we have so many outstanding analysts in the intelligence community and brave men who are willing to risk their own lives to go into hostile territory and we have the technology and the infrastructure, but that our memory is long and our reach is far.

I thought that was a really proud moment.

And it also strikes me that it was the last time that it felt like America came together around everything.

And

you really never know when is the last time you're going to see anybody.

So my,

what I do now, and it's not a function of 9-11,

but every time I sign off with my sons, I say, I love you.

Also, one of the things that really struck me is listening to the calls from the planes that knew they they were doomed or calls from the passengers of the planes that knew they were doomed.

These were people, they used to have those phones on planes who knew that

this was bad.

They had gotten news reports from people they talked to that these planes were slamming into buildings.

The plane had been hijacked and they knew that probably

their time was coming to an end.

And all of the phone calls, all of the voicemails were along the lines of, I love you.

All of them.

None of them were do this or find my wills here or I'm angry about this or this was what my life meant.

It was all just very simple, I love you.

That when faced with the end, that that is the last thing that runs, that is the last thing that people want to communicate to each other.

This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.

Our assistant producer is Laura Janair.

Drew Burroughs is our technical director.

Thank you for listening to the Prof GPod from Prof G Media.