Yeah, yeah.

So there's these viral charts going around where it's like five companies and it's like thousands of sub-brands.

This is those brands, those three companies.

So they were all owned in the 1990s by cigarette companies.

And RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris were the two largest food producers in the world.

So this wasn't like some, you know, when you talk about don't demonize food, I'm absolutely demonizing ultra-processed food.

This food was created by the cigarette industry, literally.

That's one of the ways that you can bottom-up rig the culture as opposed to just rigging the system through education, incorrect education.

Can you create that lineage for me? Tell that story.

Yeah.

So in the 1980s, Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds were two of the 10 most valuable companies in the world.

Cigarette addiction, dopamine is really good business.

So it wasn't Google and Microsoft in the '80s, it was cigarette companies.

So the surgeon general way too late had some courage and said cigarette smoking is bad for the first time in the 1980s.

So they had the largest cash piles in human history, the history of capitalism.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's these viral charts going around where it's like five companies and it's like thousands of sub-brands.

This is those brands, those three companies.

So they were all owned in the 1990s by cigarette companies.

And RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris were the two largest food producers in the world.

So this wasn't like some, you know, when you talk about don't demonize food, I'm absolutely demonizing ultra-processed food.

This food was created by the cigarette industry literally.

That's one of the ways that you can bottom-up rig the culture as opposed to just rigging the system through education, incorrect education.

Can you create that lineage for me? Tell that story.

Yeah.

So in the 1980s, Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds were two of the 10 most valuable companies in the world.

Cigarette addiction, dopamine is really good business.

So it wasn't Google and Microsoft in the '80s, it was cigarette companies.

So the surgeon general, way too late, had some courage and said cigarette smoking is bad for the first time in the 1980s.

So they had the largest cash piles in human history, the history of capitalism.

Mm-hmm.

Great to have you on.

Hey, Tony.

Just saying you got to stop putting me after Russell.

It's a tough act to follow.

But I was just thinking back when this whole movement was starting a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to go out to Wales and Russell and rural Wales had this incredible event he threw every year.

And it was thousands and thousands of people.

um a lot of them in recovery the entire focus of the event was wellness there were talks on spirituality talks on healthy eating talks on medical freedom and almost every person i met russell had helped personally he has a hotline that they can call for help for people in need it was one of the most inspiring things i've ever seen so russell love you man and thank you for putting all this great energy in the world back then a couple years ago um I don't think we could have imagined where we'd be today.

were spending on ultra-processed food.

... is there anything else to do?

Yeah, the first thing we have, uh, to say to Americans is that it's not your fault.

You've been completely and utterly let down by the system.

You have been told these ingredients are safe, and we have, um, had dietary guidelines that really did not even call out added sugar, that until this year with the Trump administration did not, uh, say ultra-processed food was harmful.

The Biden administration's dietary guidelines said ultra-processed food was as healthy as real food like broccoli.

It did not draw a differentiation.

Um, w- the, the scientific community, i- i- it's like COVID.

W- what do you say to that?

Can you create that lineage for me? Tell the story.

Yeah.

So in the 1980s, Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds were two of the 10 most valuable companies in the world.

Cigarette addiction, dopamine is really good business.

So it wasn't Google and Microsoft in the '80s.

It was cigarette companies.

So the surgeon general way too late had some courage and said cigarette smoking is bad for the first time in the 1980s.

Mm-hmm.

... is there anything else to do?

Yeah.

The first thing we have to say to Americans is that it's not your fault.

You've been completely and utterly let down by the system.

You have been told these ingredients are safe, and we have had dietary guidelines that really did not even call out added sugar, that until this year, with the Trump administration, did not, uh, say ultra-processed food was harmful.

The Biden administration's dietary guidelines said ultra-processed food was as healthy as real food like broccoli.

It did not draw a differentiation.

Oh.

So it is an honor and a pleasure to introduce my friend, Kelly Means.

Thank you, Mark.

[laughs] Um, I wanna talk about how I've really formed the opinion, learning about Convention of States from Mark, how what, what he's doing and what Convention of States is doing is one of the most important, maybe the most important aspect of reviving America.

I think it's one of the most important issues in the world because I think we all know and a lot of us feel our problems are not fully policy, they're really structural.

We, we, we, we really have in this town just an overwhelming power that's been built up to prevent change and keep the status quo, and we've been saying for decades that Congress has been broken, the Senate's broken, our system's broken.

It's gonna reach a point where we, we have to stop saying that and actually ask about real structural reforms, and I wanna just talk very quickly about how I've come to that realization through my passion, which is changing healthcare incentives.

So I'll just step back and talk about that passion and, and, and what I really got in this fight to do.

[audience applauding]

How, how does that work, and why, why did n- not, people not do this in the past?

Yeah.

I, I...

So Secretary Kennedy took over the largest budget of any government agency of any government ever.

HHS has the highest budget in the US government.

It's growing faster than most other budgets because healthcare spending is out of control, largely 'cause we're just getting sicker and sicker in America.

And what's clear and very pronounced is that there are many good people at HHS, at the FDA, at the NIH, at CMS, but the trillions of dollars of incentives have created an environment where people are not asking critical questions, and there is so much money, an overwhelming amount of incentives, uh, that are dependent on Americans being sick, and dependent on Americans getting more drugs, dependent on more Americans being in hospitals for longer periods of time, dependent on insurance premiums growing.

So maybe if there's a Democrat in the office next term, they will take and do, take it and do it their own way perhaps, and they can spin it where this is our own way of doing health.

It was not what I was expecting would be coming from a government mess hall or a galley or a DFAC.

Our farmers have been shafted and big multinational food companies have seen military food.

They see it as a piggy bank.

This is not a funding problem.

We spend a lot in America on food procurement.

It has been a political will problem.

But when you have SNAP, when you have 10, $15 billion of SNAP, just go to soda companies.

And now it's like, no, actually, it's just eggs are good for you.

Oh my God, that is sick.

You- you just go through the inputs to American health, you know, getting- getting older, um, a teen is eight hours on their phone.

Um, we have the highest cancer rates for pe- for kids of any society in human history this year in America.

Iowa particularly is the highest rates of cancer of any place in the world in human history.

Childhood obesity rates, diabetes rates are six times more, uh, than any other developed country in the world.

So President Trump asked them to get in the room and we started talking about the real root cause.

We started talking about our food system, we started talking about environmental toxins and chemicals, talking about these for the first time, things that the Democrats, Republicans in the past would never talk about.

80?

... tr- that, do you ag- do you think that that's a good-

It's unbeli- it's unbelievable what we're, we're under, we're, we're, we've been undercounting it, um, you know, for teens it's, it's when you add up overweight and obesity it's over 50%.

But if it's 70% obesity, so, so what is obesity? This is something that if you had 100 years ago, literally there was a case report written about it because it was so rare.

And you were in the circus.

Like, like, like somebody that would just be an average American today would b- literally they, they'd be in the circus 100 years ago.

This is an absolutely unprecedented phenomenon of our bodies crying out for help.

And it's the visible symbol of what's happening invisibly in our body.

What, what does this chart say to you? Why, why the difference here in these two world views in fertility rates?

Why do you think it's so important that people are able to use pre-tax dollars for these kind of health investments?

So I was radicalized by Casey.

When she left the medical system, I was like everyone else.

I'm like, "What are you doing? You're throwing your life away." And she's like, "I have to do it." And it came together with my mom's death in 2021.

So my mom was the standard American patient where she had high cholesterol, got a statin, had high blood sugar, got Metformin, had high blood pressure, got an ACE inhibitor.

At a checkup at 70 years old at Stamford Hospital, she was told that she was a healthy 70-year-old because a- on five chronic disease medications, she was on less than the average American (laughs) actually.

The average 70-year-olds on more than five.

(piano music) As a consumer, how do I go to the grocery store and know whether I'm getting ultra-processed foods or traditionally processed foods?

Is that correct? How did we originally put them in here? Because we wanted to have our kids be more entertained by their food, that their food was too visually boring? Uh, am I understanding this correctly that they wanted to make our food more, uh, visually appealing and they risked child's health to do that? That's sick stuff, Callie.

Zero nutritional value whatsoever.

They literally had scientists in a lab figure out how to combine literal petroleum to figure out how to make that neon red and that neon blue.

And this is really important, Charlie, 'cause this is...

I'm a free market person.

This is actually a free market movement.

This is correction of corruption.

This is a big deal.

So what does that look like moving forward?

So I think the framework for Secretary Kennedy is that he's laid out the problem of the explosion of childhood chronic disease in the campaign and rallied a lot of people to- to come to the Trump fold, and now it's time to execute power and he's showing the playbook that he's gonna use and- and part of that is state federal partnerships.

I mean, this administration really believes in federalism and I think one of the problems is you've had these top-down health mandates, top-down food mandates.

I think we remember Michelle Obama was trying to impose top-down standards to school districts to not eat meat.

Um, this is actually a much more bottoms-up approach and where he started was that states oversee in many ways the food stamp program, the SNAP program, and that's the fourth largest entitlement program.

We spend about $120 billion to subsidize food a year for lower income folks.

And the number one item on that program is soda, which just is insane.

Yes.