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All right. The world's a mess.

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(Laughter)

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Climate change.

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Farmlands turning to desert.

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Depletion of our water resources.

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Chronic disease and obesity everywhere.

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Social injustice, violence, poverty.

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Learning gaps in kids.

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Threats to national security.

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Oy.

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(Laughter)

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It's enough to make you
just give up and feel hopeless.

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But there is something
that you do every single day

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that can radically change all of that.

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You eat.

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You see, I've been connecting the dots
as a doctor for 30 years,

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treating thousands of patients.

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And I've been able to use a powerful tool

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to prevent, treat and reverse
most chronic disease,

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and it's nothing I learned
about in medical school,

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and you can't find it in a pharmacy.

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[A new drug]

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It's food.

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Now, food has the power
to cure or to kill.

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And it's the nexus where everything
that matters comes together.

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Most of us believe that what we eat
is just about personal choice,

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that if you're sick and fat,

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it's because of bad habits
or lack of willpower,

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that it's sort of your fault
you're fat and sick.

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It's what the government
and the food industry tells us.

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It's all about moderation,

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about more exercise,
about personal responsibility.

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There are no good and bad calories.

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But what if I gave you a Big Gulp,
which has 46 teaspoons of sugar,

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or 21 cups of broccoli,
which has 35 grams of fiber -

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same calories -

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are they going to effect you the same?

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No, they change your hormones,
your brain chemistry, your metabolism.

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They're very, very different,

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and yet the party line

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from doctors, scientists, nutritionists,
the government, the food industry

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is that they're exactly the same;
there's no difference.

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Eat less, exercise more.

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How's that working out for all of you?

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Right? Not so good.

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And so in a world of misinformation,

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in a world of marketing,

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the whole concept of personal choice
is a little more complicated,

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and I began to really understand this
when I met this young man, Brady,

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as part of the movie "Fed Up,"

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about the food industry's role
in the obesity epidemic.

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I went down to Easley,
South Carolina - small town.

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One of the worst food deserts in America.

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Visited his family of five,

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who lived in a trailer
on food stamps and disability.

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All sick, morbidly obese.

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The father had type 2 diabetes,
on dialysis at 42,

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couldn't get a new kidney
because he couldn't lose the weight.

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They were desperate to lose weight,

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doing all the right things, they thought:

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eating a low-fat diet,
having diet this, diet that.

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So I went to their trailer,

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and I took out all the food
from their cupboards.

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We looked at the packages.

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I covered over the front of the box.

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I said, "Can you tell me what this is?"

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And they couldn't tell
if it was a Pop-Tart or a corn dog.

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You know what this is?

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Anybody?

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It's a Twinkie.

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(Laughter)

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It's not food. It's a food-like substance.

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(Laughter)

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So we know what this is. It's just food.

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It doesn't have a label, ingredient list
or a Nutrition Facts on it, right?

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And so I so simply cooked
a meal with them, of real food,

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and they loved it, surprisingly.

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I said, "You can do this."

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I gave them a guide on how
to eat well for less, a cookbook.

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They lost 200 pounds
in the first year, together.

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The father got a new kidney.

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Brady lost 50 pounds, and then
he went to work at Bojangles'

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because it's the only place
to work down there.

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And he said, "It's like sending
an alcoholic to work in a bar."

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(Laughter)

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And he gained the weight back.

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And then some.

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And finally, he got his act together,
and he lost 140 pounds,

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and last week I got
an email from him, saying, "Hey."

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(Applause)

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I got an email from him, saying,

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"Hey, can you write me a letter
of recommendation for medical school?"

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So what I learned from Brady,

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what I learned from Brady

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was that in a world
where supermarkets are food carnivals

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filled with biologically addictive foods,

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it's not about personal choice.

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It's about fixing the food environment.

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So I began to wonder,

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like, what is the impact
of our food on our world, right?

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I began to think about it
and wondered, "What's going on?"

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So let me take on a journey

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from the field to the fork
to the hospital to Congress and beyond.

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We know chronic disease is epidemic.

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One in two of us have a chronic disease.

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One in two Americans
has prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.

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70% of us are overweight.

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And it's crippling our economy.

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Medicare and Medicaid are buckling
under the weight of chronic disease.

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In 20 years,

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it's estimated that it will comprise
our entire federal budget.

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And it's global: $47 trillion
will be spent globally, across the world,

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fighting chronic disease
that's mostly diet driven.

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And we have tremendous loss
of productivity:

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2 trillion a year from
what I call "FLC syndrome."

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You know what that is?

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That's when you feel like crap.

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(Laughter)

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And we have achievement gaps in kids

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who go to school on Doritos
and Flamin' Hot Chips and soda.

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Of course they can't focus or learn
or succeed or go to college.

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We have analysis

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that food has enormous impact
on the brain and mood and behavior.

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And the studies in prisons -
violent crime in prisons and prisoners

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goes down by 56%
if you feed them a healthy diet

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and 80% if you give them a multivitamin.

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What are the implications of that?

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And we've usurped the food systems
of many poor communities,

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the Native Americans especially.

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We took away their food system,
gave them commodities:

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sugar, flour, shortening.

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And there's a word for people

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who on the reservations
eat those commodity foods.

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It's called "commod bod."

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I remember going on a rafting trip
last summer with a Hopi elder, Hopi chief.

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And he had terrible diabetes,
massively overweight.

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He was so sick.

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I said, "You can fix this."

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He said, "What do I have to do?"

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I said, "You have to give up
sugar and flour and starch."

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He says, "Well, what are we going to do

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with our traditional
Hopi ceremonial foods?"

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I'm like, "What foods?"

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He says, "Cookies, cakes and pies."

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(Laughter)

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And I thought to myself, those are not
his traditional ceremonial foods.

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(Laughter)

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So not only are those problems real,

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but we have, now, in analysis,

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that our food system as a whole,
collectively all the aspects of it,

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is the number one driver
of climate change,

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more than the energy sector,

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and that the way we farm
depletes our soils.

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We mine the soils; we deplete
our aquifers and water resources.

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It's estimated that maybe in 50 years

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we're going to have
no water or soil left to feed us.

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So I began to question:
what is going on here?

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If this is the food system,
and it creates the food we have,

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then how did we get here?

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The heart of the matter is this:

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our food system is not designed

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to create healthy people
or a healthy world.

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It's designed to maximize profits.

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So what are the policies
that drive our food system?

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How do we rethink what we're doing?

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Well, our subsidies, for example,
are for commodities -

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wheat, corn and soy -

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that get turned into processed food.

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It's 60% of our calories in America,

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and those who consume
the most of those calories

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are the sickest and the fattest.

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And those foods are then turned
into processed food,

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which then we pay for
with our Food Stamp Program.

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$85 billion a year, and most of that
is for junk food -

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$7 billion alone is for soda.

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That's 20 billion servings a year
we give to the poor with food stamps.

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Our food labels are so confusing

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you need a PhD in nutrition
to figure it out,

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and even then, good luck.

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You know, we have food marketing to kids,

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where they see 6,000 ads for junk food
every year on television.

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It's unrestricted and probably
much more on social media.

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We know the average two-year-old
can go in a grocery store

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and name brand-name products
before they can barely walk or talk.

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And we have dietary guidelines
that are so confusing

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because they're corrupted
by food-industry influence

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and by ignoring huge amounts
of relevant science.

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And this was from a report
from the National Academy of Sciences.

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So clearly, these policies
are not working to serve us, right?

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The reason is money, money in politics.

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We have half a billion dollars spent
by 600 lobbyists on the farm bill,

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which is essentially our food bill.

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We have nutrition science
being corrupted by the food industry,

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which funds much of our nutrition science.

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If a nutrition science study
is funded by a food corporation,

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it's 8 to 50 times more likely
to show benefit for that food.

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For example, if a food company
studies artificial sweeteners,

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99% of the time, it's fine.

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If independent scientists study it,
99% of the time, it's not fine.

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And then our public health organizations -

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the American Heart Association,
Diabetic Association, Cancer Association,

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even the Academy of Nutrition Dietetics -

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40% of their revenue
comes from the food industry.

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How can we trust what they say?

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Of course, there's this wonderful effort
of corporate social responsibility,

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where Coca-Cola funds NAACP,

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of course, and the Hispanic Federation.

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Of course they're going
to oppose the soda tax.

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They have the consumer front groups,
like the Center for Consumer Freedom,

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which says obesity is a hoax.

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Well, go to WalMart
or Costco, look around.

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Amazing.

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And the American Council
on Science and Health,

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(Laughs)

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which is basically telling us
that pesticides and smoking is okay.

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I went to show the movie "Fed Up"
at the King Center,

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and it was all set up.

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Bernice King was all into it.

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Got a call the day before -
we can't show the movie.

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Why? King Center's funded by Coke.

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Martin Luther King says,

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"Our lives begin to end

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the day we become silent
about things that matter."

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And of course, since their products
are getting less and less popular here,

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they're going around the world,

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and now China and India
are one and two in diabetes:

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80% of the world's diabetics
in the developing world.

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So if businesses are beholden
to their shareholders only,

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then they don't prioritize
the suffering of millions of people.

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We allow them to privatize profits
and socialize the costs

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and put profits ahead
of public good and public health.

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What if all the externalities
in our food system

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were embedded in the price of food?

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How much would a can of soda cost?

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$100?

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What if the impact on health,
the environment, the economy

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were all included?

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What would a cost of
factory farm meat be for a pound?

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$1,000?

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We can no longer ignore

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the impact and the consequences
of our food system

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on everything that matters.

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We cannot do that any longer.

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And we have to rethink this.

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And the good news is there are efforts
happening around the world to change this.

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Paul Hawken has estimated

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that if we change all the aspects
of our food system in the right way,

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00:11:59,157 --> 00:12:01,778
that we could draw down carbon
to pre-industrial times,

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like regenerative agriculture.

250
00:12:03,407 --> 00:12:06,700
We have health systems, like Geisinger,
paying for food pharmacies,

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giving diabetics $2,400 a year in food

252
00:12:09,772 --> 00:12:13,243
and reducing healthcare costs by 80%.

253
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We have countries, like Chile, being brave
and going up against the food industry

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with 18% soda tax.

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They've eliminated food marketing
on TV, radio, in print, in movie theaters.

256
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They put warning labels,
like on cigarette boxes,

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on the front of cereals,

258
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and they've gotten rid
of cartoon characters.

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They've killed Tony the Tiger.

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(Laughter)

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So there are some things we cannot change,

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but this we change.

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We vote three times a day with our fork.

264
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What we do to our bodies,
we do to the planet.

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What we do to the planet,
we do to our bodies.

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It's time that we step up and speak
and act about things that matter,

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and food matters most.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)