In today’s podcast episode, Kathleen Zelman and Tom Rifai talk all about foods and food choices with Mark Bittman, a leading voice in global food culture and policy for more than three decades.
They discuss how to become more aware of where food comes from; choose foods intelligently; pay attention to nutritional principles; snack judiciously on a plant forward diet plan and eat less ultra-processed food.
Say his name and most people recognize this award winning power house, chef extraordinaire, bestselling author of more than 20 books, teacher, lecturer and champion of culinary simplicity, healthy and socially responsible, guilt free pleasure and common sense advice. He has been writing about food and food policy for more than 25 years, has his own podcast and is a regular on all forms of media.
If you follow the New York Times food section, you know Mark’s column – he started his journey at NYT in 1984 and stayed for 30 years, creating delicious recipes, writing cookbooks and opinion pieces. About 20 years ago he became focused on a way to eat that is good for the environment, good for us and delicious. That journey continues today and in fact, his latest book How to Eat: All Your Food and Diet Questions Answered, is co-authored with Dr. David L. Katz, founder of the True Health Initiative.
Plant forward diet plans are best for health and the environment.
The more control you have over your diet, the better off you will be. Set up your personal rules, make a plan and get back into the kitchen.
Vegan diets are not the holy grail, what’s more important is to eat more plants. It is not an ideal.
60% calories produced in U.S. are in the form of ultra-processed foods.
Take care of yourself, enjoy the foods you love but be smart, no austerity required.
Try to use everything in the kitchen to reduce food waste.
Dr Tom: [00:00:00] Lifestyle is medicine when done right. Especially food choices has the potential to eliminate 80% of chronic disease. Our mission is to be the trusted signal of truth, based on the weight of the evidence that rises above the definitely noise of misinformation.
Kathleen: We offer you a no nonsense and enjoyable approach to the fundamentals of nutrition and wellness.
Our goal is to give you simple and actionable strategies so you can make. Health promoting decisions every day. Welcome to the true health revealed podcast. I'm your host, registered dietician, nutritionist, Kathleen Zalman. And today I'm delighted to be joined by my cohost, Dr. Tom Revi. It's been a minute since we've been together.
And I look forward to a fascinating discussion today with a fellow member of the true health initiative board of directors, which is our mothership mark. Surely, you know, that name, most people [00:01:00] recognize it. He is an award-winning powerhouse chef Xtrordinair. Best-selling author of more than 20 books.
He's a teacher or lecturer champion of culinary simplicity, but also healthy and socially responsible guilt-free eating. So he's got lots of great common sense advice. He's been writing about food and food policy. For more than 25 years, all you have to check him out on his podcast and, um, you could find them in all forms of media.
If you follow the New York times food section, you know, his column, he started that journey back in 1984 and stayed there for 30 years, creating delicious recipes, writing cookbooks, those opinion pieces. About 20 years ago, he took a fork in the road and started focusing on food. That's good for the environment and good for us and delicious.
And he continues that journey. And in fact, he wrote his latest book. I think it's your latest book. You might have more after it, how [00:02:00] to. He co-authored with Dr. David Katz, who is the founder of the true health initiative. So I could go on and on and on, but I want welcome, mark. Thank you for joining us.
It's great to have you, mark. Yeah, well, let's just kick it off by, you know, give us a snapshot of your personal journey. How'd you get into food and cooking, you know, back in the day, was it a grandmother or w how, what was your inspiration to follow this journey of food and nutrition?
Mark: I honestly don't don't know I'm going to, I will answer that question, but I'm going to just say something about the fork in the road thing.
Cause it's it's it is, that is a funny, it's all very vague. I mean, I'm in my seventies, this is, you know, it's getting to have been a long, a long journey here. So, um, but the fork in the road thing is an interesting, because. I was, I was, when I was young, I was very young in my twenties. I was a [00:03:00] community organizer and I wanted to make the revolution as many of us did.
And, and when I wound up as a recipe writer or person who taught cooking and wrote about food, I felt a little guilty, or I felt that I wasn't doing important enough work. And as the years went by, I came to realize that. Teaching people how to cook and how to deal with good food and how to feed them themselves.
Well, as opposed to eating the crap that, that the industrial food system would like us to eat was actually noble work. And I was, I became happier about that. And then when I became more convinced that plant forward, whatever we call them diets where the diets of the future and that, and that agriculture.
A big problem, a big contributor to climate change. And the way we were treating animals was bad for us and bad for the environment and obviously bad for the [00:04:00] animals, blah, blah, blah. It didn't feel like a fork in the road. To me, it felt like an evolution. It felt like a graduation and, um, or really not even a graduation, just going, following a natural path.
So I, you know, I don't mean to pick on something you said, but at something I've been thinking about. And it's interesting to me. And as for how I got started, I honestly, I don't know. And I've been giving it, I've been giving it a lot of thought. Um, cause I'm working on, what's going to be a memoir and, um, I just, I have never had a good answer to that question.
I used to make a joke and say, I started cooking out of self-defense because the food where I was living, which was in Worcester, Massachusetts was so bad that I had no other choice, but at least lead, not everybody who went to Clark became a food writer. And, and, and there's nothing in my childhood that you can look at and see.[00:05:00]
Here was a person who was, there was no such career as being a food writer. When I was a child, there was no way to even think about it. And I just, I'm thankful that I did have one grandmother who really cooked well and, and a grandfather who thought food mattered and, but not so much more than other people.
And I think I was lucky that I grew up in Manhattan where I was really exposed to a lot of different foods, which many people who grew up in the fifties and sixties. You know, well, it,
Dr Tom: it, the human condition is enough to just become, you know, passionate about food. It's so essential to surviving in one way or the other mark you've evolved, uh, towards what seems to us.
And we've got three on the line here. If you will, a flexitarian or a plant predominant, flexitarian a sustainable and a minimalist approach to doing so that seems to reverberate with more and more people surveys of. Done. And when asked if they're want to go more plant rich, you know, vegan so on, except flexitarian that, that discipline without [00:06:00] extremism approach seems to really stand out maybe a little bit about how you got to your, uh, plant predominant flexitarian approach and, and minimizing, and maybe a little bit about, and how much you do have little crap.
By the way, we, we define that in our medical program is. CRRAHP: calorie, rich refined, and highly processed, but it still sounds like crap, please go ahead.
Mark: I love that reminds me, you know, I, I wish we were more successful. I think that's the first thing. Every day, I have this conversation about how, uh, there is lip service about plant forward diets and people will say things like, well, I'm trying to be a vegan, but I'm failing.
Or, and it's as if it's, we're just not doing it. And we collectively are somehow not doing a good enough job of branding or selling plant forward eating because people do understand [00:07:00] that, that it makes sense, but that doesn't mean that they're acting on it. And, um, you know, we all know that the numbers continued to move in the wrong direction and, and that's depressing, but, um, For me, I, I do think there w there were two moments and this I can identify a little more clearly.
I wrote how to cook everything. It was published in 1998. And I think right about them. I thought I really don't know enough about, uh, whole grains, all the vegetables that are available, all the plan. And, and this is really, so obviously the food of the future. And so that's when I decided to write out a cook, everything vegetarian.
So I then had the opportunity to spend whatever it was, two or three years heavily researching and cooking plan forward plan forward food. So that was one thing. But then several years after that, let's say 2005, 2007, [00:08:00] I was in my mid fifties. My blood numbers, all of my numbers, which had always been pretty good, started to go in the wrong direction.
Uh, and at the same time, there were starting to be literature about the impact of industrial animal production on climate, so that it was more than just, oh, saturated fat is bad. Which of course we don't say as much anymore, but we were saying all the time back then, um, It was also animal production is a big contributor to, to climate to the way we're doing animal production as a big contributor to climate change.
So this sort of was this confluence of my diet, seeing what the future would look like and this kind of immediacy of how are we going to scale back greenhouse gas production. And that led that really was the transitional moment for me. And it's [00:09:00] when. Uh, quote unquote invented VB six. I mean, I did invent the name, but obviously it's just, part-time veganism or extremely plant forward eating or whatever you want to call it.
But also when I started pushing the New York Times to let me write about food in a much more serious way, and that that really happened between 2005 and 2010 and culminated in my getting the opinion. Really demanding that I have an opinion column, but, but successfully demanding, um, to write about issues in food that were about food as related to climate change, food is related to nutrition.
Food is related to, uh, animal welfare food is related to all of these things. And, um, you know, that was, that was probably the most intense period of my career. 2010 to 2015.
Kathleen: Well, that's fabulous. And, and I think, you know, when we talk about [00:10:00] sustainable agriculture, it's, it's not easily understood nor is the term plant forward.
I think a lot of people are interested in doing it, know that food as medicine really has a place in your life, the power's on your plate, but how do you do it? How do you eat more beans or tofu? So what kinds of advice do you have for people who are trying to get out there, trying to do this flexitarian cause I think we all agree that doing vegan is tough.
I mean, it feel free have at it, but it's a little bit more difficult when you totally eliminate all animal products. So you're the chef with great ideas. Give us some good, actionable things that people can do at home to start working towards a more plant-based diet. Yes.
Mark: I think there's more than one answer to that question.
And I know I've been a very, given you a couple of long answers and this was going to be another one. Um, first of all, I think that, [00:11:00] that, there's absolutely no reason to see veganism as this holy grail. Um, and, and to see yourself as a failure, if you're not a vegan, I, we all know that there's a spectrum.
Well, all of us on this call know there is a spectrum of most groups will know there's a spectrum between the supersize me diet and veganism. And all that's important is that we move on the spectrum towards eating more plants and seeing yourself as a failure. If you're somehow not a vegan, that is a, that's a very American thing to do.
You know, we're saints or sinners, right? Where there's no in between for us. And, and B it sets yourself up for failure because if you think I'm only gonna eat pure, I'm only gonna eat clean. I'm only gonna eat vegan. And then you fail to do that. You think, oh, well, damn it, I'm a failure again. I'm going to go have a double cheeseburger.
And, um, there is a middle ground and it's the middle ground where people live and where we need to live. We just [00:12:00] need to live. We need to shift where we are in that middle ground. So I, I think that. One important, very important thing to say. Second is, is that the more that you have control over your diet, the more you CAN have control over your diet.
And what I'm saying is if you are able to eat at home, if you are able to shop for yourself, if you're able to cook for yourself, you are already so far ahead of the game. It's it's, uh, it's incredible. So, um, from that, from that position, if you have control over what you eat and then you make some rules, I'm gonna, you know, only have whole grains and berries for breakfast, I'm going to only have salads for lunch.
I am going to only have quarter pound servings of animal product to dinner, whatever rules you want to make. I mean, they're, they're kind of arbitrary, but, but, but anyone who needs [00:13:00] rules can find them. Or ask me, I'll give you some rules.
Kathleen: I mean, you need a plan. You need a plan. Absolutely.
Mark: Actually, I've been meaning to call David Katz and talk about this because I think it's funny that now two out of every three people I meet tell me they're intermittent fasting, and I don't think there's any magic about intermittent fasting.
I think it just means you're eating less.
Kathleen: Less. Less is good!
Dr Tom: introduce you to flexible fasting.
Mark: I have no problem with intermittent fasting, whatever works for you to get you any less crap or junk or ultra processed food, whatever you want to call it. And fewer animal products, whatever puts you in that world is great. But I need to say this third thing.
Um, and I know you, I know, you know it, and, but it's really important. We don't all have control over it. We're not all able to shop for ourselves. We're not all able to do our own cooking. We are not all able to gain control over our [00:14:00] diets, whether, for reasons of time or reasons of money or reasons of ableness or a there's 20 different reasons why you might not be able to do everything that I just suggested, and most people are in that boat or in the I can't control. I don't have control over my diet boat.
So what has to happen then is the longer term, the long game, and the long game is changing agriculture, changing food policy, making it so that the food that we know to be better for us and better for the environment, uh, and better in so many ways, is the food that's more commonly grown.
You know, I don't throw around a lot of statistics, but the one that I do throw around is the, is, is, uh, not, it's a relatively new number. And that number is 60%. Then it's that 60% of our calories, 60% of the calories produced in the United States wind up as in the form of ultra processed food or what you've [00:15:00] Tom just called CRRAHP.
And I'm nearly defined. That means either that either that all of us are getting 60% of our calories from that kind of food or that 60% of us are getting a hundred percent of our calories from that kind of food. We know that it's somewhere in between. All of us eat some junk food and some of us eat mostly junk food.
And some of that indeed is an issue of demand. But much of it is an issue of availability and supply and affordability and access and so on. If you don't have a lot of money and you don't have a lot of time and you need to eat fast and you need to get it done, you are… the chances of you eating ultra processed food are so high.
And we all experienced that every time we go to an airport and start traveling, or even start driving down the road. We know that if we're going to wind up eating something, Uh, it's likely to not be good for us.
Dr Tom: Let me inject some possible hope here and get [00:16:00] down to some granular. There are things we can control, but there are things we can influence.
Thirdly, of course, there are things we cannot control at. One of the things we talk about is fixed environment. I must say, in our Metro Detroit airport here, we have a wonderful plum market with lots of unprocessed and very minimally processed opportunities. But maybe Detroit is obviously an exception.
Uh, we interviewed the VP of food beliefs at Panera, which obviously sells, and they admittedly say that they sell CRRAHP there too, but they are making a cool foods menu and you can tweak your orders. And so forth. And being hired now, as - I'm still CEO of my company, Reality Meets Science - but as the medical wellness director now for Magna international, which is a $40 billion auto company and mobility company that is very interested in wellness to the point that they took a lifestyle medicine physician said, let's put him on the inside and have carbon neutrality in terms of the, the vehicles they're helping build, I think we're seeing a confluence of events here as well. And so where people can start. Mark, how about your home? Like where, how [00:17:00] is Mark Bittman's home set up for the default choices, the healthy choice.
And when you travel to work or in a car, or what, before you get to the hotel, do you pull off to the side and, and instead of buying the $8 M and M M and M's in the refrigerator or whatever it is just, what are some of those granular things that you do? Like when you travel, you favor cook scratch cooking restaurants, so you can order whatever the hell you want, whatever it says on the menu, does it matter? What are some of those down and dirty rubber hits the road? No pun intended, from Detroit… things that Mark Pittman does?
Mark: (laughs) uh, a Detroit saying… um,
Dr Tom: That's right.
Mark: Well at home. Uh, as I said at home, it's, it's super easy, but, um, you know, the, the trick is to, I, I don't mean to encourage food waste, but the trick is to have a lot of food around and much of that should be and in my house is in the pantry.
And that means it's a big selection of whole grains, a big selection of [00:18:00] legumes and a big selection of things to flavor those, those width. And then our refrigerator that has lots of vegetables, obviously, and some that are long keeping and some that are short keeping. And just to try to favor that stuff.
But as I, as I said at home, it's, it's easier. On the road, you know, I will say, I'm not going to disagree with you. I'm going to say it's. It does fall into that category of things. That we can influence, but it's, it's borderline of things. We have no control over because for every good market you name and Detroit Metro airport, you know, I can name 500 terrible markets in every airport around the country.
And, and so some people get to go to an airport where maybe they have the time and the money to go buy the good stuff. But most of us are scrambling. I I've written about this and I've written about it. [00:19:00] um in some detail and some of the most fun I've had is challenging myself to be out on the road and eat and eat well.
And, and you know how to do this cause you, you said it already, but instead of going straight to the hotel or instead of driving six hours nonstop and driving through a drive through, in order to keep driving, if you go to a supermarket first, you can find plenty of stuff that you can eat, you know, on the spot without much trouble and, and that's, um, that's good.
And then good FOR you. It's not, it's not as easy, but you can, you can drive in a car. You can fly on a plane and you can be eating carrots or guacamole or hummus, or whole grain crackers, or any other number of things and be eating and be eating pretty well. It does takes a little planning and it takes a little forethought.
But [00:20:00] that's the, that's the strategy. The strategy is to just not get stuck in a place where your only option is the drive-thru.
Kathleen: Plan ahead. Absolutely. Well, mark, give us your definition of overly processed food, because it's another one where, you know, I mean, obviously we couldn't eat those baby carrots if they weren't processed. Milk is processed. I mean, there are lots of foods and beverages that are minimally processed. But when, when you talk about overly processed foods, what is your criteria or how can you define them? So our listeners can learn how to avoid them.
Mark: You know, I think probably one of you could answer that question better.
Cause you'd come up. You'd have some systematic way of stating it, but, and I should, but I don't, but it's not recognizable as food in a natural form. I mean, an ultra processed carrot or a peeled baby carrot still looks like a carrot. Milk still looks like milk. I'd say one thing is it doesn't, it doesn't bear much or any resemblance to its [00:21:00] original form.
Another is that it doesn't exist in nature. Another is that you don't find it in a kitchen where cooking is done. Another is the number of ingredients it's arbitrary, but you could say if it's got more than three or more than five, it's likely to be ultra processed. And I think. This is the fifth. And I think these are the five that I normally would come up with. The fifth is that your grandmother, or if you're younger than me, your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food. She'd say, what the hell is that?
Kathleen: (laughs) I love that.
Mark: And I think that's a good one because
Kathleen: We can relate to that.
Mark: a lot of this food… Yeah, well, a lot of this food that's making us sick didn't exist, literally did not exist a hundred or 125 years ago.
And I think we have the choice between living on the same food that people were living on 10,000 years ago and even longer, or living on food, living and getting sick on food [00:22:00] that was invented in the late 19th, early 20th, or through the mid 20th century. And to the extent that we choose the traditional stuff, the stuff that, you know, I have long grown and long lived on and long, long relied upon.
We're going to have healthy diets. I mean, you, you know, the catch phrase here is every traditional diet. Every truly traditional diet is a healthy diet. It's only modern diets that are, that are unhealthy.
Dr Tom: Yeah. And a little bit of a story behind how crap came to be. And I have to admit, I was given a mini lecture by Barbara rolls at, at Penn state.
I'm sure. You know, the author of volumetrics. And she said, you know, Tom, it's not just the processing, it's the refinement. So I said, okay. Cause we used, I used to use Jeff Novick's crap, just calorie rich and processed CRAP. And I said, well, calorie, rich, refined, and highly processed. Okay. Still sounds like crap.
And. I think when you see the fiber drop, right? The, uh, the [00:23:00] calorie density goes up, it's dried out the potassium and minerals are extracted and typically the sodium goes up. You've got crap. If it hasn't been made into a beverage, And it's all over the place into some of the tastes. So exquisitely, good.
Look, I have a PhD in the anatomy of a kit kat. I got it from mom university. She kept five pound boxes all around the house. I can break it out like a, like a model plane in my mind, you know, it's take the top layer off and you get the chocolate around the edges off and get the wafer in the middle. And if you tell me I can't have that, I'll just obsess about them.
So a question for you, Mark is how much, you know, we see the blue zones have about maybe 5% calories from crap or the Bolivian Chimani about 5%. You know, we, we call it the 5% fun zone in our flex five flexitarian lifestyle system. I've already admitted some of my kryptonite, right. For that freedom from guilt, right.
That, that occasional once in awhile thing, the Sardinians going crazy on Easter and Christmas. And then they go back to what they're doing before goat, herding sheep, shepherding them, no guilt or anything like that. What is Mark's occasional? [00:24:00] obviously far less than American average. It's like all of us here, but, but not zero tolerance, not a pressure cooker without a release valve lifestyle.
What's one of your fun zones. We don't call it guilty pleasure or cheats and what they're cheap. But what is a 5% fun zone moment for mark?
Mark: I mean, I have, I have that every day. I drink wine. I eat meat, I eat ice cream.
Kathleen: flavor. Favorite.
Dr Tom: What's a
Mark: favorite flavor. Do any of those things? My favorite flavor, I don't know if I have one.
I'm not very good at favorites. I mean, chocolate chip from the past. You know, I, I, I don't do those things every day, but I try not to be austere. I mean, I think it goes back to saying veganism is not an ideal. The ideal, the ideal is to take care of yourself. And part of taking care of yourself is eating foods you love and for better or worse, we've all grown up eating foods [00:25:00] that we love that are.
Don't love us back. Not that good for us, but you know, you can't kill yourself over this. It's just, it's not worth it. So I don't have, I don't have days that I allow myself to eat worse than others. I think I don't have, I mean, I do have celebrations like everybody else and days when I just refuse to think of.
What I'm eating, but they're, they're increasingly rare because I think the better you eat, the better you tend to eat on the worst you feel when you don't eat well. So
Kathleen: that's absolutely correct. And you know, there's, there's statistics I think, are worth sharing right now because the better you eat, I mean, you are what you eat and if you eat healthfully, you really can make a difference.
The, um, the global burden of disease, uh, a report that was put out in 2019, I said one in five deaths globally are due to that suboptimal diet, which is greater than any other risk factor, including tobacco, a recent study that came out this year [00:26:00] showed that if you adopt the diet that we're talking about, the flexitarian type diet, you can add years to your life.
So if you start, when you're 20 years old, you can add from 10 to 13 years with no 20 year old is paying attention to that. But even if you're 80, you can add three years. I made food as medicine is really an important concept. And, and you personally, I, I read in your bio that you lost a bunch of weight because when those numbers went up, your doctor said, it's time to, you know, make a change and make getting people back into the kitchen, paying attention to, to, you know, filling their pantries in the refrigerators.
Hopefully that they can. With affordable food is really going to make a difference, but I want you to wax on about food waste and being responsible in the kitchen because that's another number that is staggering in a 40% of the food that's produced in the United States. Ends up in landfills. So we want people to [00:27:00] cook, but we want them to cook and, and be responsible.
So any advice that you have about reducing your carbon footprint by reducing food waste in the kitchen?
Mark: No, I don't. I do use. Everything that I can from top to tip and from those detail and so on, I try not to waste stuff, but some waste is inevitable. I think that, you know, I've gone through periods of freezing all my vegetable trimmings and making vegetable stock periodically feel passionate enough to do that.
But I think that that 40% of what's produced in landfill. First of all, I, I think that if we go back to the 60% number I was using before. There's a tremendous amount of land. The majority of land in the United States is wasted in growing food. That's either being used for ethanol or being used to feed industrially raised animals are being used to turn into junk food and.
The most [00:28:00] serious form of food waste that there is, is wasting land that could be put to use growing food. That's good for us and that's not as damaging to the environment. So that's the first point I would make about that. And the second I think that that 40%. Figure if it's correct, then let's assume it is.
Yeah. I don't think that very much of that is attributable to individual behavior now it's um, certainly if you eat out a lot, portions are way too big and we often don't wind up finishing. What we order in restaurants, and that is a problem. And, and food is too cheap in the United States. So we often overbuy when we go to supermarkets and wind up throwing out that head of lettuce, or that salary that's gone bad, or that milk that's gone bad or whatever.
But I think a lot of, uh, that 40% number is food. That's lost in production, left in the fields and transportation and so on with all that, especially with. During COVID when animals were [00:29:00] being killed because there was no market for them or they couldn't be gone tomorrow.
Dr Tom: Yeah. That brings up some mark. I want to ask you your opinion right?
On the spot here. So people are traveling, they eat out at restaurants. Let's just say that that's a given, you know, you try to lean toward. A more scratch cooking restaurant that will do your bidding. Uh, you still get a large portion and you try, uh, something that we call the one-minute halftime because as a speed eater and I've slowed down, nothing makes me want to hate eating more than putting my fork down and chewing 40 times.
But I can one time, just one time halfway through the meal. Well, not actually, I love. Passionate to not be mindful all the time. I like to actually just immerse myself in the, in the emotional experience, but I can be mindful enough to stop one time halfway, just we call it one minute, one moment halftime.
But down my fork, take a sip of water and feel just re-engaged because otherwise it could plow through the end of the plate. And I save the other half. I save the other half for later intentionally, if I'm truly not hungry, if I'm, [00:30:00] if I'm hungry at that point, I'll eat a little more, but a typically end up with a nice snack
Mark: for.
Hmm. A lot of people do that strategically. Uh, they go out to eat planning to bring things home and have dinner for two nights. And I think that that's, that's brilliant. Another strategy in restaurants that I often adopt and that I think makes a lot of sense is ordering sequentially and just saying, we're going to have appetizers and then we'll get back.
And you, if you order an appetizer per person, you are never going to wind up ordering a main course per person. You'll wind up sharing main courses because we all know our fall after, you know, after eating appetizers. So there is that too, but again, I don't, I really want to avoid blaming the victim here and saying food waste food waste of courses, to some extent of personal responsibility, but so much.
With the way food is produced in the United States, including the amount that's wasted, um, [00:31:00] that it's, we really have to look upstream for a solution to this problem. What do you
Dr Tom: any, any thoughts regarding how we subsidize grains and just the whole farm bill and, and, you know, 30% of our arable land just goes to corn.
And like you said, it's not mostly corn on the cob it's feed and it's
Mark: probably one. Yeah,
Dr Tom: exactly. I mean, what about, you know, government policy that can start to nudge along with. Uh, more interested, um, uh, consumer base that starts to shift choices so that these little things like cool foods at Panera and these little signs of hope they sell out meal at McDonald's and whatever can start to grow more.
How about on that policy end?
Mark: Well, I think the simplest thing to say about this is. We have spent 135 years roughly subsidizing the production of food. That's not good for us. Subsidizing agriculture that damages the environment, subsidizing agriculture, they focus is more on yield than on [00:32:00] producing the most nourishing food possible.
It would be a difficult change, but ultimately just as easy to subsidize the production of good food as it is to subsidize the production of crap. So long-term, that's what has to happen and will happen or we're facing certain disaster. Short term. I think it's when you look at sourcing more locally, we look at sourcing more responsibly.
We look at reducing pesticide and antibiotic use. We look at improving school lunches and teaching children, what real food is and all the things that we all talk about all the time. I think those, those are our changes that need to be made. Certainly we should be cutting back on, on subsidies, subsidization.
Of corn and soybeans and on and on are on crops that are being used to produce junk food.
Kathleen: Indeed. Well, mark, we could talk to you all day long. I want to respect your time and thank you [00:33:00] so much for a very insightful and interesting discussion. I think that, you know, your prescription is to become aware of where food comes from and choose it intelligently and pay attention to those important things like sustainability.
I think it's, uh, it's critical that we all just take more responsibility and then together, we might be able to move the needle and improve the health of the nation and the policies that support it. So thank you, sir. Yeah. There you go for you and David Katz.
Mark: I just want to say. More of this from me.
Anyway, the place to go is mark bittman.com and we have a near daily newsletter. We have our own podcasts, obviously, and many books that people can look at it.
Dr Tom: M a R K B I T T M a n.com.
Kathleen: Yep. When we drop your episode, we'll let you know, and we'll make sure that all that's there so people can find [00:34:00] you and all of your books and we'll tag you on social media as well.
Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure.
Mark: Thanks for having me take care of both of you.
Kathleen: Uh, you know, what a guy great, you know, I'm, I'm so I'm so thrilled that he's part of our true health initiative. You know, I'd like his voice more, you know, I think he's, he really has a lot to say and he's clearly, I mean, he's not a nutritionist, he's not a doctor, you know, he's just a, an advocate for healthy living and obviously an amazing show.
Dr Tom: We need more like that. It's, it's wonderful to have us professionals out there, but if you don't have the, the real, well, I guess we're real people, but, uh, you know, well, you don't want, I mean, if you don't have to. Yeah. If you don't have people outside the professional realm, uh, buying in, uh, no pun intended, then you got nothing.
So mark is a great guest and, uh, you know, we, uh, we didn't give him too much.
Kathleen: No, he loved that. He loved that. Well, it's so nice to be back with you. I [00:35:00] mean, I know you're busy and so this is really terrific. And, um, I'm looking forward to some of the other ones we have planned coming up. Okay. All right, buddy.
Take care.
Dr Tom: Thank you for listening to the true health revealed podcast. We appreciate your time and hope you'll join us again for more information on today's episode and to subscribe to future pod. Please visit true health initiative.org. And to help us continue the fight against fake facts, please consider donating to our nonprofit true health initiative. .