Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior Elections correspondent at The
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Tristan Justice, excellent reporter for The
Federalist and author of the new book Fat and Unhappy,
How body Positivity is Killing Us and How to Save Yourself. Tristan,
thank you so much for being here on this of
the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Thank you grabbing me. It always fun to be on.
Speaker 1: This is your first foray in two authorship as it
relates to books. You've written thousands of stories, excellent investigative
pieces over your journalism career, but this is your first book.
Let's start there. How does it feel to be a
published author of a book that is doing quite well?
As I understand it.
Speaker 2: Right hot off the press.
Speaker 3: So we were number five, and we got to number three,
number two, and new releases on nutrition and Amazon, so
that was just really exciting to see. But no, I
always had this interest in nutrition, mental health, just health broadly.
Speaker 2: It was actually one of the first topics that.
Speaker 3: I'd been writing out writing about at the Federalist when
I started this job five years ago, and about a
year and a half ago I came up with this idea.
I made like a ten point outline and sent it
to Molly Hemingway and she loved the idea, told me
to run with it, and then two years later, here
we are promoting the book on Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: So it's a huge relief.
Speaker 3: It's a project I felt passionately about, I felt strongly about,
and I'm excited to see people are starting to read
it well.
Speaker 1: It's very well written and always timely, but even more timely,
I think than it would have been even you know,
three or four years ago, because so much has changed,
and as you noted in your book, so much of
this is politics and power. But I must admit, my friend,
this comes at an interesting time, the release of this
book right around Thanksgiving and the Christmas holiday season, the
holiday season in general, where everybody is walking that line
of oh do I have that second plate of cookies. Well,
maybe that's my particular issue. It certainly is how much
more turkey can I possibly eat? Or ham and all
of the stuff. We're all dealing with this kind of
thing because this is a nation that has become very
fat based on the numbers, and in many ways very unhappy.
How do folks navigate through all of that, particularly this
time of the year.
Speaker 3: Well, it definitely makes me feel like the most popular
person at the dinner table telling everybody what's in their food.
So there is that no. I mean, well, for one,
eat the ham, eat meat. We are very pro meat
in the book, I think, but one of the things
is no.
Speaker 2: And I thought about this.
Speaker 3: When the publisher said it was going to come out
right for Thanksgiving. I said, Wow, what a way to
become a popular author telling people to pay attention to
the work they're eating about around the holidays. So the
cookies enjoyer family, spend time. You know, it's food is
such a cultural cultural thing. But I think in our
everyday lives, Americans have begun to treat every day like
a holiday. And you really see that play out throughout
the data. Sugar consumption has risen nine percent since eighteen
hundred and so as the American diet has just fundamentally
transformed for the past few hundred years with the industrial Revolution,
it's become industrialized, and our food is manufactured.
Speaker 2: We don't know even know where it comes from.
Speaker 3: We don't know who grew it, who made it. It
was often manufactured in a factory three states away, grown
four states beyond that.
Speaker 2: People think milk comes.
Speaker 3: From the grocery store and so, but I think Americans
should be cognizant of how they're living in their everyday
life because what we've been doing for the past seventy
eighty ninety years is obviously not working. Forty two percent
of the nation is categorically obese. More than seventy percent
of the country is overweight, So that means if you
are at an otherwise healthy weight, you are in the minority.
For six and ten Americans have at least one chronic
disease already four and ten have at least two or more.
About one in five have excuse me, about one in
ten have five or more. And so you're seeing these
twin epidemics of obesity and chronic disease just explode over
the past especially seventy years, and I think most of it,
it all has to do with our food supply, how
we're eating, how we're living, and we're also seeing that
play out with this mental health crisis. People view the
mess separately, but they're really not. That was one of
the things that really surprised me as I was doing
the research for this book is just how much our
mental health crisis has exploded alongside our physical crisis, and
they're really one and the same. One in five Americans
already have some sort of mental health or substance abuse disorder.
At least half of American adults can expect to meet the
criteria for a mental health disorder.
Speaker 2: In their lifetime.
Speaker 3: And so, and I was doing the research for the book,
I found, you know, the brain is really no different
from any other organ in the body, and that if
you are not nourishing it properly, it is not going
to function properly.
Speaker 2: And so you're seeing.
Speaker 3: These you know, this health crisis continue to swell and
swell and swell, and it's all kind of one crisis.
It's all metabolic dysfunction driven by a toxic food supply.
Speaker 1: Of course, all of these screens that we have subjected
ourselves to and modern life has subjected us to not
helping the brain health issues. Certainly we can delve into
that coming up at a later point. But you know,
it's interesting you noted a bit ago about how Americans,
and obviously true, they don't know where their food is
coming from in so many ways. And I'm telling you
that as a guy talking to you from the great
state of Iowa, the red state of Iowa, farm country.
This is hogland if there ever was. I mean, this
is corn country. We know where our food is coming
from in Iowa. There are still a lot of fat
people in Iowa, and you know that is the issue.
While even those who know and live next to farms
know where their food is grown, we don't exactly know
what happens to it on the farm and to the.
Speaker 3: Market, right and what we're growing isn't necessarily the most
conducive to a healthy society. The reason we grow so
much wheat, corn and soi is because we subsidize it
like crazy in this country. And we continue to subsidize
it because the food industry has gotten really good at
making us subsidize it. The food industry lobby is on
par with the defense lobby in Washington. I would argue
it's actually probably a little more powerful than the defense
industry in Washington. But I think it just speaks to
general awareness of how the self awareness Americans generally have
about their diet. I think there's a lot of ignorance
about what a healthy diet really is because there's so
much misinformation out there, and people get confused, and they
get confused from institutions that otherwise should know better, like
their government that promoted this low fat diet.
Speaker 2: For seventy years.
Speaker 3: And now we're really reaping the consequences of that, because
I think the data is pretty clear now that the
low fat diet was catastrophic. We have about twenty five
good studies and men analyzes contradicting the narrative that saturated
fat is linked with heart disease. So the low fat
diet was this kind of charade that took over public
health institutions, and Americans embraced out of concern for their health.
You had since nineteen seventy grain consumption in this country
go up by thirty percent, and that's from the Pew
Research Center, And so Americans embraced things like the low
fat diet and now you're seeing the consequences of that
seventy years later, with these epidemics of obesd chronic disease,
and mental health.
Speaker 1: There are so many fad diets and that has been
the case, of course for years and years, especially as
we became this fat conscious society, this obesity conscious society,
all of that sort of thing. And I want to
get into that, but it's an interesting point that you
raise about how much money is involved, how much power
is involved in the food industry. But it means a
lot of jobs in this country, it means a lot
of wealth in this country. Certainly as I talk to
you in farm country, there's a huge lobby here for
all of that sort of thing. So how do you
go about changing that? I know that we have a
nominee for the Department of Health and Human Services in
Bobby Kennedy Junior, who wants to make America healthy again.
How do you take on so much money?
Speaker 3: Well, that's the four and a half trillion dollar question, right.
So I think we can do I just think we
could do things better. I think we can grow our
food better. We can grow better food better ways, more
sustainable ways. And I think that's going to be a
primary key to making America healthy again. We don't need
to subsidize wheat, corn and soy the way we do
in this country. So much of that corn gets to
turned into sugar high fruit toast corn syrup, and so
I just think we can do things better and we
don't have to pay for that in lost jobs. We
don't have to pay for that in some of these
different ways that the food industry likes to fear monger.
We can incentivize organic farming and ranching, we can subsidize
healthier products, and there's so many things that Robert F.
Kennedy Junior is going to be able to do at
the top of AHHS. So on one hand, it's a
really exciting time. But I also want to emphasize, and
this is what makes me the most probably unpopular person
at the dinner table, is that at the end of
the day, we're all still a product of our choices.
You know, when we can blow the whistle on the
cigarettes causing cancer, for example, but at the end of
the day, Americans still had to quit smoking. And so
that paradigm is the same thing that's playing it with
food today. And I think we're one of the primary
themes of my book is that our food supply has
become addictive.
Speaker 2: And there's so many parallels.
Speaker 3: With big tobacco and big food here, and I think
we that's one of the things I think we did
really well in this book is outline how we have
an extremely addictive food supply and we need to look
at our food supply the way we do with tobacco.
And one example I like to tell people is, you know,
the next time they go to eat something out of stress,
whether it's some type of favor cereal or some type
of candy bar, to kind of meditate on the kind
of trance state that people will go into when they're
consuming these products.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is.
Speaker 3: So powerful that the chemicals that are released in our
brain when we're more consuming something like a bowl of
cocoa puffs or something else is such highly sugary and
highly processed. There's system molecules to the chemicals released from marijuana,
and so that's what we're dealing with. We've essentially the
food industry is essentially engineered a nation of heroin addicts
shopping grocery stores full of heroin. I am convinced that's
how strong our national food addiction has become and we're
seeing that really play out in the data by just
how sick everyone's is becoming. And I think everyone kind
of understands that a lot of the foods that they're
eating is generally unhealthy, but then they get tricked by
healthy labels in the boxes telling them that these different
products are still healthy when they still have twelve, thirteen,
fourteen grams of sugar in them.
Speaker 2: So the food industry praise on that ignorance.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, Americans, we are product
of our choices, and that's why people should buy my
book and see kind of some strategies of how to
come out of that twilight zone.
Speaker 1: Knowing you're right, we are a product of choices, and
we're blessed to be. We are a product of choices
because of the great blessings of this republic, because of
the Founding Document, because of the freedoms that we have,
that freedom of choice, and well, we've kind of talked
about this. Nobody is despised more than a scold. Ask
Hillary Rodham, Clinton, ask Michelle Obama in this particular context.
And I believe me, Tristan, my friend, I am not
equating you to either of those skolds. But you know
a lot of Americans, like yours truly, we have done
things in our lives like quit smoking because we know
how awful it is. And a lot of folks have
cut down on drinking because they know the health related
problems therein, or any number of behaviors that they understand
and have been told constantly this could really damage you
physic mentally and ultimately kill you. And the one the
one vestige of freedom that we all think that we have,
the one last area that is not seen as heroin
or some you know, awful drug is food, you know,
but now that's becoming just like cigarettes or the scolds
are telling us this is just like cigarettes or heroin
or what have you. And there is a natural resistance
to that. You kind of talked about it, but how
do you break through that resistance as the consumer?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Well, Americans don't like to be lectured, and we really
saw that play out with Michelle Obamas Let's Move campaign.
She launched this initiative just as Americans were reeling from
the two thousand and eight financial crisis, and it was
very much in elite driven campaign, recruiting celebrities lecturing children
and parents about the obesity crisis. But I think Michelle
Obama made two mistakes in that. One, she tried to
make an ally of the very industry she was trying
to defeat, the food industry. The food industry lobbied so
effectively to take out any teeth from the bipartisan legislation
that was the legislative pillar of that campaign.
Speaker 2: So there's that. But also I think.
Speaker 3: The Obomba administration made a fundamental mistake by almost kind
of blaming parents and children for the crisis while they
were trying to make friends with the food industry. And
I think the approach that Kennedy is embracing is going
to be much more effective. We're a little farther removed
from the COVID crisis than the Obama administration was from
the jous and A financial crisis. And also I think
what Kennedy's doing, far different from what Obama was doing,
was that he's convincing Americans to put down the junk food,
not by just telling them put down the junk food,
but by telling them what's in that food.
Speaker 2: Michelle and Mama wasn't doing that.
Speaker 3: She was just dancing on Ellen Degenerous's talk show and
asking people to live healthy, and it just wasn't working.
It just wasn't a receptive message. People found it condescending.
People didn't like being lectured.
Speaker 2: In that way.
Speaker 3: But you know, there was this understanding across the country,
even among conservatives who kind of mocked a campaign, that yeah,
we know that the food that we're eating is unhealthy,
but we don't want to be lectured by elites to
eat healthy.
Speaker 1: Well what what what? What? Whoa wait? Wait a minute, now,
are you telling me that dancing on the Ellen Degenera
show is not a ticket to success?
Speaker 3: Well, obviously, I remember she was doing this social media
campaign post give me five but five.
Speaker 2: Things on the interview that you're doing to live healthy.
It just wasn't going to work.
Speaker 3: And so, but there's this amazing quote in JD. Vance's
Hillbilly Elogy I read this summer where he talks about
the different insecurities that the Obama family kind of puts
on his naighbors, and one of them was that, you know,
Michelle Obama, Barack Obama's wife tells us to eat healthy
things on TV, and we hate her for it, not
because we think she's wrong, but because we know she's right,
and I think that really just.
Speaker 2: Gets the hard part of all this.
Speaker 3: You know, there's this problem understanding that we need to
live healthier lifestyles. Americans just don't know how. And that
was the launch op ed for this book. Americans don't
want to be fat and unhappy anymore.
Speaker 2: They want to be happy and healthy. And yeah, we talked.
Speaker 3: I mean, the book fundamentally is about body image and
the body positivity movement, and it's a response to that,
but it's about so much more than just a couple
of influencers who are kind of reflecting the frustration of
seventy years of the low fat diet.
Speaker 2: It's really about how we got to where we are.
Speaker 3: If you want to explain where the Make America Healthy
Again movement comes from, our book explains that and how
we got there in a way out. But I think again,
what Kennedy is going to do is so much more effective.
It's yes, we're all a product of our choices, but
at the same time, placing blame and responsibility on the
food industry is just exactly what happened with the tobacco industry.
And I think that's such a more receptive message to
Americans by a giving them some validation that it's not
entirely their fault. They were, you know, given this live
of the low fat diet. They were lied to by
the USDA, the FDA telling them to eat products that
were verifiably unhealthy, and that got us where we are.
But the end of the day, I think also kind
of disgusting Americans from the food that they're eating is
going to be an effective tactic.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting because you know, over the years,
we've had government regulations saying that McDonald's and Wendy's and
the rest of the fast food places wherever you eat,
they've got a list the calorate count all of those
sorts of things on the menu. And you know, I'm
going through the drive through the other day and I
you know, I have a penjont for a sausage egg McMuffin,
and I've I've just looked past the fact that that's
a six hundred calories sandwich, you know, because it's there,
We know that it's there, but we're not following that.
What does that specifically ultimately mean if we're already getting
some of that, you know, nutrition information on the boxes
and what have you, and we're not responding to that.
Speaker 3: I can't wait until we kill the calorie. Frankly, I
just I think calories tell us next to nothing about nutrition.
I think Americans use calories often as an excuse to
cheat on their diets often. I think it's calories are
confusing for people. They don't really quite understand that the
nutrition is so much more about quality than quantity. I
just I think the calorie is one of the most
misleading metrics in nutrition. I know that's some of a
controversial opinion, even within the Make America Healthy Again community,
But one hundred calories of a brownie versus one hundred
calories of almonds are going to digest fundamentally differently than otherwise.
And so I just I think the calorie it's so
confusing for people to follow, and people use calories as
a license to eat things that are going to essentially
spoil progress that they've made. What Americans have to realize
is depending on how you know, we're all starting at
different places, right, but depending on how our metabolism is
when we're starting out, you have to essentially biochemically re
engineer the fuel yoursells run on. Americans have been running
on carbs, and our bodies were not designed to run
on these high sugar, high carb diets all the time
because the insulin, you know, fast towards is all about
the insulin response and when you when you have chronically
elevated levels of insulin throughout the day. And this is
one of the big misconceptions I hope we clear up
in the book, is that it's not just about fast
storage too, it's about chronics and insulin effects just about
every tissue in the body. When you have chronically elevated
levels of insulin, that's where you get not just OBCD,
but chronic disease. And so I think calories just kind
of mask the quality of what we're eating, and people
just kind of used a calorie as some type of
get algael three car free card at times.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But see here's here's the ultimate problem. I like
the brownie, I don't care about ye See, that's and
that's what we struggle with or more. And so you know,
I like the breakfast sandwich, and I don't much care
for the dried oaks or you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 4: The irs wants to do your tax returns. The watched
out on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day
Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy
and how it.
Speaker 2: Affects your wallet.
Speaker 4: The IRS now has a one hundred and fourteen million
dollar budget to expand their direct file program. Filing with
the IRS is like playing poker with mirrored sunglasses. Don't
show your cards. Whether it's happening in DC or down
on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2: Be informed.
Speaker 4: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: We are having a conversation about our health where we
are at in America today. Our guest today on this
edition of the Federalist Radio Hour is Tristan Justice and
Well from the Federalist, excellent reporter here, author of the
new book Fat and Unhappy, How body positivity is killing
us and how to save yourself. How much, Tristan does
the FDA, the USDA, so many of these government entities
that have their little fiefdoms of regulation, How much do
they play a part in this crisis in America?
Speaker 3: Well, I want to circle back to the brownie first,
because everybody loves a brownie. Oh. Food is social and
it's fun to bake with mom from time to time,
But when someone's feeling hungry, hunger is the feeling that
drives the need to fix malnourishment. Hunger signals malnourishment when
you eat something like a brownie or a Twinkie. I
use twinkiees as an example because the Twinkie CEO came
out attacking RFK last weekend. When you eat a twinkie,
you solve you might solve the problem of hunger, but
you're not solving the problem of malnourishment. So you're essentially
masking the emotion that is supposed to drive you to fix.
Speaker 2: The malnourishment problem.
Speaker 3: And so several out minutes hours later, when you're hungry again,
that hunger comes back stronger, and you're even because you're
even more malnourished than you were before.
Speaker 2: So you kind of see how this begins to break down.
Speaker 3: You don't solve the problem of malnourishment by eating brownies,
Twinkies some of these other snacks.
Speaker 1: No, that's certainly understandable.
Speaker 3: But you also asked about the FDA and how the
government has kind of played a role in this crisis.
I really think, you know, I love the idea that
Robert F. Kennedy is going to take over AHHS and
he's going to do things like re examine that generally
recognized as safe list, which is the list of additives
that the FDA approves in our food supply.
Speaker 1: Well, hold on just just a minute, Interesstan, because I
did I did want to say this because you brought
it up. Where does the executive of the Hostess Cupcake,
a corporate conglomerate, have standing in this argument? Listen, I
am a as big a fan of the Twinkie and
of Captain Cupcake as you can possibly imagine. But how
does he get off entering this conversation.
Speaker 2: He's got profits to save.
Speaker 3: I'm actually, frankly kind of shocked that he came out
in native statement kind of rejecting this make America Healthy
Again a movement. If I were them, I would have
kind of kept my head down. But also he is
probably speaking to shareholders who are concerned about this kind
of change in American snacking habits, and so maybe there's
some politics at play behind the scenes. But I was
amazed that the CEO came out to kind of attack
a crackdown on snacks.
Speaker 1: I'm just seeing this kind of funny skip play out
in my mind where Tweaky the Kid and fruit Pie
the Magician go to DC and lobby Congress in an
impassioned pitch, and a mister Smith goes to Washington and
passioned pitch for the fruit the apple, fruit pie or
the twinkie as we said. But I'm sorry to interrupt.
I thought that was very curious, and obviously it is.
It is somewhat timely. But back to the FDA and
what they have done over the years, as well as
the USDA, well, I.
Speaker 3: Think the most fundamental problem that we solve from our
government was the low fat diet, and I think we're
going to see some significant shifts in the dietary guidelines
in the next five years if the right people get
into the administration. Kennedy is a good start, but Kennedy
can't do everything. But also again, I just want to
emphasize this point above all others before before going into
the grass list and whatever. Americans should not confuse healthier
with healthy. The government can do all it can to
blow the whistle on food like it did with tobacco,
but at the end, of the day. You know, fruit
loops in Canada might have less food dyes and colorings
that than in the United States, but that doesn't necessarily
mean they're healthy. The fruit loops in Canada still have
I believe the number was roughly fourteen grams of sugar
per cup.
Speaker 2: That's not healthy.
Speaker 3: Americans are not going to solve the health crisis doing that.
And so while there's a lot of really exciting things
that the government can do, like transforming the dietary guidelines
orforming snap benefits, again, Americans need to kind of be
cognizant that this is an addiction and we're going to
have to embrace some addiction strategies to get out of that.
Now that being said, there's a number of things that
Kennedy can do to help the crisis, help us get
out of this crisis. One of those things is to
re examine the generally recognize as Safe List by the FDA,
the list of additives that are allowed in different manufactured
products to go on the shelf.
Speaker 2: It's a privatized list.
Speaker 3: Theware companies can submit their own research to put different
chemicals and additives in the food supply. So I think
that's one area that Kennedy, and it can make some reforms,
but I think the primary is the dietary guidelines and
really lifting the limits on dietary fats and cracking down
on sugars, especially in K twelve classrooms. I think those
are probably the two main areas.
Speaker 1: So who is ever held accountable for all of this stuff?
If this was in certain ways by design through industry
and government collusion. To borrow a word, who is ever
held accountable for all of this?
Speaker 3: That's one of the more frustrating things about all this
because the FDN USD don't really have teeth to enforce
some of these different regulations. That was one of the
primary issues that doctor Robert Lustig wrote about in his
book Metabolical, which is on the processed food industry. The
USDA and the FDA have all these regulations and guidelines
and they can find companies, but they often lack a
lot of teeth to enforce these different rules and regulations.
I think at the end of the day, Americans pay
the price by virtue of declining health.
Speaker 1: Right We.
Speaker 3: During the research in the book, we found people who
are obese pay double and medical expensures expenditures over their
lifetime than people at an otherwise healthy way. And as
there are weight rises, that number goes up exponentially. And
so the people paying the price for all this are
our neighbors. It's us, and there's not there's never it
seems like there's never accountability in Washington for some of
these different issues.
Speaker 2: And we saw that play with COVID, right.
Speaker 3: We saw how the lockdowns were devastating and catastrophic, and
there was a significant lack of accountability for the people
who are promoting this monolithic narrative that lockdowns were the
only prescriptions out of this crisis. I think COVID was
really the wake up call on which Americans slept. I
think Americans kind of waking up on it now this year,
especially with the RFK appointments. I just watched as they
continue to shut down gyms and businesses and tell people
will stay home and binge on carbs, sugar, Netflix, the
snack industry. Their profits went up by ten billion over
those first two years of lockdown. The pharmaceutical industry made
one hundred about one hundred billion dollars on vaccines, COVID vaccines,
which were more like therapeutics and so and there was
a breathtaking lack of accountability for all that. And so
hopefully we'll see what happens in the next four years
in terms of these new people in charge.
Speaker 2: Where are they going to find? Are they going to
conduct investigations?
Speaker 3: Are they going to conduct, you know, the COVID tribunals
that Robert F. Kennedy talked about. I'm curious to see
what kind of stuff is going to come to light.
Speaker 1: As an old emphasis on old, jaded investigative reporter, I
am not very confident that many, if any, will be
held accountable for all of the stuff that you just mentioned.
Speaker 2: But I can hear the paper shrudder is running from that.
Speaker 1: I can too. A boy can dream, just in a
boy can dream. There's been a lot of focus, of course,
on the dysfunctional and absolutely broken healthcare system in America, which,
by the way, let us first and foremost point out
the fix is not a single payer, government run healthcare system.
Let's get that out right off the bat, or all
of the that's another show, all the myriad problems of
those very bad ideas. But there's certainly a problem with
our healthcare system, big problems with our healthcare system. And
we have been talking about that, even more so over
the last several days with the accused assassin, the accused
killer of the United Health CEO. How much of the
food related crisis, the diet related crisis we're talking about,
feeds in to the problems we've experienced in the health
care industry.
Speaker 3: Well, we want to pill for every ill, and it's
not really solving anything. There is so much more money
to be made in a sick care system treating sick
patients than a true healthcare system curing sick patients. And
what we've created is four point five trillion dollar health
care industry that is running on a nation that's left
chronically fat, sick, and depressed. And that's kind of the
whole case of the book. It's that big food and
big pharma have kind of engineered these crises in a
way to maximize their profits, to create this hyper addicted
nation that's just wants to be, that's just enabled their
lifestyles through medication. I think ozampic is kind of running
a parallel to ssriys. People just want the quick fix.
I think people are looking at a xampic as is
kind of get out of jail free card. I think
some of these different weight loss medications can be bridges
to weight loss and success, especially for people in extreme cases.
I don't think they're appropriate for children as young as
twelve and thirteen, which were the new recommendations from the
American Academy Pediatrics last year. But you know, this pill
for every ill mentality that Americans have found themselves in,
it's clearly not working. We have record use of antidepressants,
yet suicides are still going up, depression anxiety are still
going up, and you have these weight loss medications being used,
and you're not seeing a significant decline in OBC and
a weight loss. And I suspect if we do see
a significant decline in weight with these weight loss medications,
I wonder what our chronic disease burden will be after that.
I think there's so many unknowns we know not to
pull Donald Rumsfeld year, but there are I think there
are a lot of known unknowns about the long term
effects of these weight loss medications that we don't even
understand quite yet.
Speaker 1: Well, it is the holiday station, and what an appropriate
time to bring up Donald run Rumsfeld, because nobody captured
the spirit of the holidays quite like old Don Rumsfeld.
I'm very curious about another crisis in America, and as
a reporter at the Federalist. As reporters at the Federalist,
we know very well what that crisis is. And that
crisis demonstrated itself in full force on November fifth this
year in a sea change election in this country. That's
a crisis of trust. So while obviously the majority of
Americans and strong majorities across this country rejected the current
regime because of that trust deficit, we're mindset of Americans.
As Americans anyway, we're already predisposed to being you know, jaded,
I think is the word about things, justifiably more so
over these last four years. Of all the things that
you mentioned, lockdowns, the responses to COVID masks, everything that
the government has done, so many lies told to us.
How can Americans trust anybody moving forward with that sense
of we've been lied to too many times?
Speaker 3: Well, I definitely think it's going to be something that
the Trump administration is going to have to grapple with here.
I certainly feel like I'm wearing a tinfoil half some times,
and I'm walking around the grocery store just after having
read so many books on our food supply health and nutrition.
I just I'm almost scared to walk down the center
aisles the grocer store. I shop almost exclusively on the
outside aisles unless I need something like contact solution. But
it's something that the government is going to have to
grapple with. There's been such a loss of trust, especially
in our public health institutions after COVID, that Americans don't
really know who to go to for trust and information.
But that could change. A lot of things have to happen.
But I think Americans should trust their local butcher.
Speaker 2: If I didn't name.
Speaker 3: Anybody, I think local food is probably the best food
in so many cases at this point.
Speaker 2: I I I just I you know, it's it's hard to.
Speaker 3: I feel a lot safe for eating a raw apple
than I do picking up some apple sauce and so uh,
it's it's a good question, it's not really one I
have an answer for in terms of how we get
how we maintain some of this trust and get some
of this trust back.
Speaker 2: Into the government.
Speaker 3: I think it's healthy, it's healthy to be skeptical of
authority at this point, especially after COVID. But again, it's
it's that's that's going to be one one for the
Trump administration to deal with.
Speaker 1: Or anyone who has freshly read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
Local Butcher is definitely leave the Way to Go Low
a century plus later. Finally, as we close out our conversation,
let's delve into some solutions. Because we've talked a lot
about the problems, and you've talked some about the solutions.
But what can we addicted Americans do in terms of
changing lifestyle, changing the foods that we consume, and strategies
I suppose to get over the hurdle of we have
been given healthy choices, but they simply don't taste as
good to us as the unhealthy choices.
Speaker 3: Right, So the entire second half of this book is
on this point, and we make we outlined five chapters
with solid recommendations based on what we found throughout our
more than five hundred citation sources throughout the book on
kind of how to.
Speaker 2: Fix our lifestyle crisis.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I don't think we have a mental health crisis or
a physical crisis as much as we just broadly have
a lifestyle crisis.
Speaker 2: I think the data is pretty clear on that.
Speaker 3: So it's it's you know, positive food, positive exercise, positive sleep,
positive community, and positive prayer, because I think there's this
misconception that Americans generally want a savior. Americans just want
to be saved. But to be honest, no one's coming
to save you after Jesus. We have to just kind
of pick ourselves up and get ourselves moving, get ourselves
eating right.
Speaker 1: But sure, word, it's truer word. It's never said.
Speaker 3: By the way, the only person, the only person who
can save us after Jesus is ourselves. No one else
is coming to save us. So and so I so.
In terms of food, cut the carbs. This is a
carb driven crisis. Cut the processed food and cut the
especially just just limit carbontake. That's our primary recommendation for
of course, this is all very subjective based on where
you are in your metabolic milestones and age, and that's
all qualified. But also people exercise, regulate metabolism, get out
and move sleep. I think Americans generally don't even know
how they're sleeping. A lot of Americans think they're sleeping
enough sleeping, well, they're often not, and that I think
is the silence is a huge silent killer. So I
think just being cognizant and almost testing yourself how you're sleeping,
and paying more attention how you sleep. But I think
community and prayer are also very underappreciated in how the
influence our own health. Americans aren't living in the community
that humans were meant to live. We all kind of
I think a lot too many Americans are still living
in so much isolation after COVID, spending too much time
on artificial interfaces and believing that's genuine social interaction. I
think Americans still spend way too much time on screens.
So I think just getting out living in community is huge.
But honestly, my favorite chapter of the book was Positive Prayer.
This book just capping off the book on having faith
in something larger than yourself and having a purpose around that.
Speaker 2: There's so much data now.
Speaker 3: To show that people who are very spiritual and take
religion very seriously in their lives often live longer but
also healthier, and I think that's such an underappreciated point
in our culture. So positive Prayer is I think just
huge in fixing our lifestyle crisis. We have to believe
in something larger than ourselves, and that's why I made
that point. You know nothing is coming to save you
of course it's for anyone who's not Christian. You know,
whatever your faith is, but at least your Christian lens,
no one's going to save you after Jesus. And so
I think people, it takes some resilience, it takes some discipline,
and I hope the book is helpful for anyone who's
struggling with anything.
Speaker 1: I think that you make a great point about the
power of prayer and the power of faith, and obviously
that's changed. And just to put a finer point on that,
I remember covering the parade of contenders and pretenders in Iowa,
the Republican presidential candidates throughout twenty twenty three, and a
guy who is about to be in the Trump administration
of the Big Ramaswami running for the nomination, talked about
that void that it is in a lot of Americans' lives,
you know, and that void has been filled with all
kinds of dangerous and deadly things, from drugs to pornography
to arguably fat foods. And I think at the end
of the day, that's what your book really is all about,
and how to change all of that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I hope people will will take away at
least something from this book that will help them from
their day to day lives. And I'm I'm now that
it's been out almost a month, I'm just now getting
some feedback, and it's just it's been very rewarding to
hear that it's already impacted some people, at least close
to me. And so I hope any listeners who buy
the book read the book. I I I hope they
find it interesting. I tried to make it entertaining and
try to make this not a boring policy book. It
deals with policy, but it was a fun topic. I
tried to make it entertaining and readable. It's pretty pretty digestible.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not long and dense.
Speaker 3: It's it's pretty brief, and we kept each chapter pretty succinct.
Speaker 2: And I hope it helps a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Well, I think in the movie, you probably are our
best advised to have our hero go after Twinkie the
Kid and their band of given the Hostess Cupcake lobbies
recent comments out there. But I am indeed waiting for
the movie version of the book. It's a very interesting read,
it's a thought provoking read, and it's an excellent effort.
Thanks to my guest today, Kristen Justice, excellent reporter for
The Federalist and author of the new book Fat and Unhappy,
How Body Positivity is Killing Us and How to Save Yourself.
You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle's senior correspondent at The Federalist. We'll be
back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom
and anxious for the fray.
Speaker 2: Robe sent