What you do with your fork impacts everything | Mark Hyman | TEDxChicago

Dr. Hyman is a practicing family physician, an ​eleven-time New York Times bestselling author, speaker, educator and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the Pritzker Foundation Chair in Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and director of the Ultra Wellness Center, chairman of the Institute​ of Functional Medicine, medical editor of the Huffington Post and a regular medical contributor in the media for CBS This Morning, Good Morning America, CNN, The Dr. Oz Show and more.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx.

All right. The world's a mess.

(Laughter)

Climate change.

Farmlands turning to desert.

Depletion of our water resources.

Chronic disease and obesity everywhere.

Social injustice, violence, poverty.

Learning gaps in kids.

Threats to national security.

Oy.

(Laughter)

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

But there is something
that you do every single day

that can radically change all of that.

You eat.

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

treating thousands of patients.

And I've been able to use a powerful tool

to prevent, treat and reverse
most chronic disease,

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

and you can't find it in a pharmacy.

[A new drug]

It's food.

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

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

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

that if you're sick and fat,

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

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

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

It's all about moderation,

about more exercise,
about personal responsibility.

There are no good and bad calories.

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

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

same calories -

are they going to effect you the same?

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

They're very, very different,

and yet the party line

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

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

Eat less, exercise more.

How's that working out for all of you?

Right? Not so good.

And so in a world of misinformation,

in a world of marketing,

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

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

as part of the movie "Fed Up,"

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

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

One of the worst food deserts in America.

Visited his family of five,

who lived in a trailer
on food stamps and disability.

All sick, morbidly obese.

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

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

They were desperate to lose weight,

doing all the right things, they thought:

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

So I went to their trailer,

and I took out all the food
from their cupboards.

We looked at the packages.

I covered over the front of the box.

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

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

You know what this is?

Anybody?

It's a Twinkie.

(Laughter)

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

(Laughter)

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

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

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

and they loved it, surprisingly.

I said, "You can do this."

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

They lost 200 pounds
in the first year, together.

The father got a new kidney.

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

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

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

(Laughter)

And he gained the weight back.

And then some.

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

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

(Applause)

I got an email from him, saying,

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

So what I learned from Brady,

what I learned from Brady

was that in a world
where supermarkets are food carnivals

filled with biologically addictive foods,

it's not about personal choice.

It's about fixing the food environment.

So I began to wonder,

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

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

So let me take on a journey

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

We know chronic disease is epidemic.

One in two of us have a chronic disease.

One in two Americans
has prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.

70% of us are overweight.

And it's crippling our economy.

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

In 20 years,

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

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

fighting chronic disease
that's mostly diet driven.

And we have tremendous loss
of productivity:

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

You know what that is?

That's when you feel like crap.

(Laughter)

And we have achievement gaps in kids

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

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

We have analysis

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

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

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

and 80% if you give them a multivitamin.

What are the implications of that?

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

the Native Americans especially.

We took away their food system,
gave them commodities:

sugar, flour, shortening.

And there's a word for people

who on the reservations
eat those commodity foods.

It's called "commod bod."

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

And he had terrible diabetes,
massively overweight.

He was so sick.

I said, "You can fix this."

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

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

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

with our traditional
Hopi ceremonial foods?"

I'm like, "What foods?"

He says, "Cookies, cakes and pies."

(Laughter)

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

(Laughter)

So not only are those problems real,

but we have, now, in analysis,

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

is the number one driver
of climate change,

more than the energy sector,

and that the way we farm
depletes our soils.

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

It's estimated that maybe in 50 years

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

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

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

then how did we get here?

The heart of the matter is this:

our food system is not designed

to create healthy people
or a healthy world.

It's designed to maximize profits.

So what are the policies
that drive our food system?

How do we rethink what we're doing?

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

wheat, corn and soy -

that get turned into processed food.

It's 60% of our calories in America,

and those who consume
the most of those calories

are the sickest and the fattest.

And those foods are then turned
into processed food,

which then we pay for
with our Food Stamp Program.

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

$7 billion alone is for soda.

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

Our food labels are so confusing

you need a PhD in nutrition
to figure it out,

and even then, good luck.

You know, we have food marketing to kids,

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

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

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

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

And we have dietary guidelines
that are so confusing

because they're corrupted
by food-industry influence

and by ignoring huge amounts
of relevant science.

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

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

The reason is money, money in politics.

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

which is essentially our food bill.

We have nutrition science
being corrupted by the food industry,

which funds much of our nutrition science.

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

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

For example, if a food company
studies artificial sweeteners,

99% of the time, it's fine.

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

And then our public health organizations -

the American Heart Association,
Diabetic Association, Cancer Association,

even the Academy of Nutrition Dietetics -

40% of their revenue
comes from the food industry.

How can we trust what they say?

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

where Coca-Cola funds NAACP,

of course, and the Hispanic Federation.

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

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

which says obesity is a hoax.

Well, go to WalMart
or Costco, look around.

Amazing.

And the American Council
on Science and Health,

(Laughs)

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

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

and it was all set up.

Bernice King was all into it.

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

Why? King Center's funded by Coke.

Martin Luther King says,

"Our lives begin to end

the day we become silent
about things that matter."

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

they're going around the world,

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

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

So if businesses are beholden
to their shareholders only,

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

We allow them to privatize profits
and socialize the costs

and put profits ahead
of public good and public health.

What if all the externalities
in our food system

were embedded in the price of food?

How much would a can of soda cost?

$100?

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

were all included?

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

$1,000?

We can no longer ignore

the impact and the consequences
of our food system

on everything that matters.

We cannot do that any longer.

And we have to rethink this.

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

Paul Hawken has estimated

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

that we could draw down carbon
to pre-industrial times,

like regenerative agriculture.

We have health systems, like Geisinger,
paying for food pharmacies,

giving diabetics $2,400 a year in food

and reducing healthcare costs by 80%.

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

with 18% soda tax.

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

They put warning labels,
like on cigarette boxes,

on the front of cereals,

and they've gotten rid
of cartoon characters.

They've killed Tony the Tiger.

(Laughter)

So there are some things we cannot change,

but this we change.

We vote three times a day with our fork.

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

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

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

and food matters most.

Thank you.

(Applause)