Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Pedram: Hi, everybody. Dr. Pedram back with Dr. Sarah. Hello.
Sarah: Hi, everybody. Pedram: It's nice to see you, Sarah.
Sarah: Nice to see you, Pedram. Are we talking GMO's today?
Pedram: Today's GMO part one. Sarah: Right on.
Pedram: Yeah. I know that you've been hanging out with Jeffrey Smith. We had him here, I
don't know, maybe about a month ago. He was in my office in Southern California. I got
to spend a good part of the day with him. It blows my mind. You read about this stuff,
but when you actually stop and think about what the heck is going on with our food and
what some companies are doing to just mess with us, you have no choice but to start thinking
evil empire. What's happening here? You guys, if you've got kids, if you've got an interest
to be happy and alive in this world, this is the show for you. It's pretty gross what's
happening with some of these foods and what Franken-food is doing to us. I know you just
got off hanging out with them. I'm going to let you take the lead on this one. Let's talk
about GMO's and your health. Sarah: Totally. I just got on the stage with
Jeffrey Smith yesterday. He's the founder of Institute for Responsible Technology, and
he's really led the charge against medically modified organisms and how they've infiltrated
our food system. Pedram, I want to start off with a confession, actually, because I really
feel like I heard a little bit about GMO's. I had a sense they weren't so good for our
health, but I also felt like do we really have enough data showing that they're dangerous.
I had these ambivalence about it until I started to look at the data, so I'm really excited
to talk about the data [inaudible 00:01:45]. I just wanted to start off by saying I wasn't
thinking about this very much until I read a New Yorker article. It was actually an article
in February where the article was about Dr. Oz. One of the digs that this particular reporter
took was saying Dr. Oz had Jeffrey Smith on his show.
Dr. Oz's wife, Lisa, is a huge fan of Jeffrey Smith. She's very anti-GMO, and this reporter
just crucified Jeffrey Smith saying that he's not a scientist and what he's talking about
is all hype. I just want to separate the truths from fiction today. I thought we could do
that. I want to start off just by talking about how GMO's really became part of our
food system on a large scale in 1996. 1996 was a major tipping point, because that's
when we had a gigantic rise in the obesity epidemic, a gigantic rise in the diabetes
or [inaudible 00:02:49] epidemic as Mark Hyman puts it. An increase in liver disease; more
liver cancer, more thyroid cancer. All of these things started to happen, and oh, by
the way, there are all these animal studies connecting those conditions to genetically
modified food. I thought we could dig in and start with some of these basic building blocks
of what GMO's do to your body so that we can make this really practical. How does that
sound? Pedram: You know what? Perfect, because what
a lot of the people I talk to, they say, "Listen, corn is corn. I don't understand the difference.
If they've adapted it to grow better and be more robust, then what's the problem?" I think
the first place we need to dig into is differentiating GMO food from real food in terms of what's
happening with this food and how our bodies are recognizing it as really friend or foe.
Sarah: Yes. That's a huge one. Here's what know about these genetically modified foods.
Basically, you take a gene from one plant, and you introduce it to the genome of another
plant. When you do that, you can introduce a lot of different things such as the Bt-toxin.
That's the major part of genetically modified food. Another example is Roundup. Roundup
is an herbicide that's used very broadly. It's amazing how something like 90% of the
US population and Canadian population has been exposed to Roundup. Roundup has a major
toxin called glyphosate. Glyphosate has been known to change more than 400 genes in rats.
Many of the genes are related to insulin, so you know I'm hormone girl, and I like to
talk about the hormones, but insulin is such an important one. It's in charge when you
eat some food. I just ate some chicken and some kale for lunch. When you eat food, insulin's
in charge of whether you use that as fuel, or you store it as fat.
We have an obesity epidemic. What we know when it comes to Roundup, for instance, is
that it turns on your fat genes, and it turns off your skinny genes. That's the basic way
that these genetically modified foods change your biology.
Pedram: People say, "Well, I don't use Roundup around my house." That doesn't matter. Your
farmer is buying it by the ton. What happens with this Roundup stuff is that it's been
engineered to basically kill everything except the plant that it's been programmed to avoid.
If you have a cornstalk, they're going to drop a bomb of this stuff all over it. The
corn survives, everything else is decimated for miles and miles and miles. What does that
do? Okay, it helps us keep growing corn and not all this other life which we don't want
around us kind of thing. It's worked well in that capacity, but it's so short sided,
because when you start looking at what it's doing to the soil and the glyphosate and all
these other things that we're just starting to become aware of, people are screaming at
the top of their lungs saying, "Stop the presses." Obviously, Monsanto doesn't really have very
many fans anymore, but unfortunately, they have a lot more money than fans.
You have companies like this that are just pushing this agenda, because it's a monopoly.
It's like, "Hey, man. This is a great product. We're selling it by the ton. The farmers are
stuck, because the pesticide and the seeds work hand-in-hand. We have this seed lock
mechanism where you can't really be taking seeds of your own, planting them, and growing
food like our ancestors have done from time immemorial. Now, you got to buy our product
every season." Sarah: That's right. You're exactly right.
What we know with Roundup, for instance, I'll just mention one study, because you know I'm
a total nerd, and I love to talk about the data. There's one study, a French study, that
showed when you feed rats fed Roundup for two years, and you compare them to rats that
are fed their normal feed not containing genetically modified organisms, they found a number of
striking differences between these two rats. If you're saying to yourself, "I'm not a rat.
What is she talking about," it turns out that 90% of our DNA is the same as rats. Some of
us are a little closure to rats than others. When it comes to these rats, those who are
exposed to Roundup had major liver toxicity; three to six fold compared to the controlled
rats. They had longevity that really suffered. In fact, they died at two to three times the
rats that were not fed GMO foods. They had a problem with their hypothalamus
and their pituitary. Their pituitary became disabled. Remember, the pituitary is like
NASA. It's responsible for the all the hormones in the body. It's really important. Rat brains
are especially similar to human brains. Our nervous systems are very similar. There was
also problems with reproduction. Fertility was decreased among these rats. On and on
and on. There were so many differences between these particular rats, and the rats that were
control rats. There's been a lot of controversy about this particular study. There's been
this outcry in the scientific literature, and people have been crucifying this particular
scientist who's French for some of his methods. I say this is where we've got to apply the
precautionary principle. We just have to assume guilty until proven innocent. We have enough
evidence of harm to say, "We should not be exposed to these foods." At the very least,
they should be labeled. Pedram: We had an initiative in California,
which went down, which is really sad in terms of what has been happening in terms of legislation.
There was so much misinformation. The industry has really pushed hard and went after people
trying to tell them that this initiative isn't going to be good for them. We had a GMO labeling
initiative, which is just to say, "Hey, look. These foods are GMO. We're not saying don't
eat them, but we're trying to inform the consumer." Now, we're going back, and there's a real
tipping point. I think a lot of the Institute for Responsible Technology and a lot of these
guys that have been really just rolling this boulder uphill for years are starting to gain
the momentum. What's happening is the industry is starting to say, "Uh-oh. People aren't
buying our products, if they're GMO." There's this huge rush for people to run out there
and try to get non-GMO sourced food. Guess what? There's not that much of it, so
it's creating this market shortage, and it's creating this ... in my opinion, it's a good
thing, because it's basic capitalism and economics and supply and demand. Now, starting next
planting season, all these farmers are going, "Screw you. I'm going non-GMO, because people
aren't buying GMO anymore." It's starting to turn it, but I want to be very precautionary
in saying, "Look, I'm super stoked on the good news about all that, but these industry
people don't go down without a fight," so there's a lot there. Real quick, just so you
guys know, there's six major crops in the United States or just basically anywhere that
are GMO crops. They are soy, corn, canola, cotton, sugar beets and alfalfa. You're like,
"Well, I don't eat alfalfa." Yeah, but the animals that you eat are fed alfalfa. I don't
eat soy. You know what? Most of the animals that eat are, chickens in particular, are
given soy as part of their vegetarian feed. It becomes really important to start looking
at this stuff. Corn, obvious. It's in everything. I have an admission to make as well. Jeffrey
was down here about a month ago, and the guy looked like he was about to fall over. He
is a hard working, dude. He's charging. He's constantly trying to get out there and get
the message out there. By the time he got to us for our video shoot, the guy looked
like he was going to fall over. We go to location. I stopped at a gas station to get some bottles
of water, and I go, "Okay. What can I get this guy? He's a GMO guy, right?" I go get
a bag of trail mix. I bring it in. He looks at the label, and he goes, "I can't eat this.
It's got canola in it." I go, "What?" Why is there canola oil in trail mix. It was one
of these things where I have to stop myself, and I consider myself a relatively intelligent
human being, and it didn't even occur to me that there would be GMO stuff inside of a
bag of nuts. It was one of these things where I had to
stop and be like, "Oh, my God. You've got to read every label, because this stuff is
just snuck in everywhere." It was a real ah-ha for me. You can't fall asleep. You can't snooze.
Sarah: Yeah. Going organic is one way to avoid the GMO foods. That's not the solution for
the inner city, because they don't even have a grocery store where they can buy organic.
We've got to start somewhere. We do know that the fastly growing niche in the food industry
is non-GMO foods, so hooray for that. You're right. Properties that have got seeded in
California, even though 89% of the nation is in favor of labeling GMO foods, this food
came into California, the Grocer Association, and they spent $45 million to feeding this
proposition. Fortunately, word got out, and there's a few other states that have now approved
labeling. Thank goodness for that. Europe decided a long time ago that they were not
going to allow GMO foods to come into their continent. In part, because of some research
that was done showing that animals that are fed GMO foods have more leaky gut.
If you look at their stomachs after they're fed this food, the stomach have hypertrophy.
They have hyper replication of the cells, kind of precancerous. Then, the intestines,
where we're supposed to be absorbing all the nutrients from our lovely food that we eat,
had lots of gas. They had leaky gut. That was what led Europe saying, "No, we're not
going to do this kind of food." Here in the US, we're just a lot slower to look at the
data and say, "You know what? This is harmful for the public. We can't do this." I can tell
you, Pedram, the practical thing to me is stop eating GMO foods. That's my prescription.
No GMO food. Pedram: People say, "Well, that's really hard."
You say, "Well, you know what's even harder is taking all of the energy that you produce
every single day around an inflammatory, leaky gut, ramping up your immune system to fight
yourself, developing autoimmunity problems, and not absorbing your food to create energy,
and going into this downward spiral of just feeling like crap. What's harder, living your
life with no energy or just paying a little attention at the grocery store?" It's simple
math. People don't do it, because they're so used to mindlessly putting food in their
mouth. I was a monk for four years. I spent a lot of time with my mouth shut. A lot of
the rituals we had around food and eating was about understanding what we're doing in
the process of ingesting, and this is what I'm going to become. Are you going to ... you
are what you eat. Are you going to become this chemically induced Franken-food that's
killing your insides, and you're just doing it, because you didn't have time to think,
or is it important enough to do it? Now, that being said, we're busy. Here is
the non-GMO ... let's see [inaudible 00:14:50]. Yes, the non-GMO shopping guide that the Institute
for Responsible Technology has put together. We'll put links on it on all of our stuff
as we put this out. These guys have an app. They got a bunch of stuff that they've developed
so that it makes it easier for you guys to make informed decisions and figure out what
is and what is not GMO. It's really not that hard, you guys. There's plenty of good food,
whole foods that you can eat. There are organic non-GMO varieties of corn. If you say, "Oh,
my God, I can't. I grew up on corn on the cob," right. Fine. You could find an organic
strain and go for it. The point is to understand that there's whole companies that have said,
"Uh-uh. We're throwing the gauntlet. We're not going to do this. We're keeping this out
of our food." Eventually, it's going to happen to the supply chain, when Wal-Mart realizes
that they're losing money, because people don't want GMO.
When Wal-Mart tells the companies that they won't stock anymore GMO food, Wal-Mart, we're
talking to you, right ... Wal-Mart, pay attention. You want to pretend you're green, or you want
to do it for real? This is what it is. It's the consumer driving the companies to do the
right thing, and then the companies will say, "Oh, my God. Wal-Mart's our biggest buyer.
We can't sell to Wal-Mart, if we put this crap in our foods. Oh, we're going to pull
it out." They're not going to do it for your health, because it's cheaper for them to produce
the GMO stuff. They'll do it, because it's hitting them in the pocket book. Who's going
to hit them in the pocket book? You people. Everyone out there listening to this. When
you choose non-GMO foods, what you're doing is you're choosing the foods that are going
to edge out this bad guy business of food leading to crazy medicine and all the things.
There's an epidemic of problems, health problems, in this country and the Western World for
various reasons. This country just did this in '96, as you illustrated, and the one-to-one
correlation is when they started introducing genetically modified stuff. I want to be really
clear about something. It's not just saying, "Oh, we took three strains of corn and found
the strongest one and that became part of it." We got spider DNA getting mixed in with
carrots and corn and whatever else, a goat. These guys are doing crazy stuff in labs.
If you guys knew what they were doing in the labs, you would run for the hills. That's
the part of the story that is not being communicated that I think is really important; is there's
no governors on this site. Sarah: That's right. The FDA is the former
general council for the head of the FDA. There's so many issues here in terms of no one protecting
us. This is one of those situations where we really need to step up. When you get 100
scientists together, it's really hard to have consensus. They say things like, "I think
there's evidence that maybe it's a little bit cold today." There's this lack of being
able to make a statement about something that really requires common sense once you look
at the literature. I think it might be helpful just to recap some of these main findings
that we've had from the GMO studies just to really drive this point home. I mentioned
the leaky gut, and that's especially a problem for children. It's a problem for adults too,
but we know that this is part of the autistic spectrum, the autism spectrum that we see
in this dramatic rise in autism which, oh, by the way, also increased when GMO crops
were introduced in '96. There's also fertility problems, reproductive
problems. We know that agricultural workers who are around Roundup have higher rate of
pregnancy problems and difficulty getting pregnant. There's the whole issue of diabetes
and insulin resistance and how genetically modified organisms change your relationship
between insulin and glucose. I think that's another really important one. There's headaches.
There's inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome. There's a really broad spectrum
here. I just wanted to hit some of the highlights so that people can connect the dots and really
understand that food is your best medicine. You don't want you food to contain genetically
modified organisms. Pedram: Yeah. If you're a nursing mother,
or if you're an expecting mother, if you're trying to get pregnant, and you're eating
GMO's, boy, are you stacking up the odds against you. You want to set your system up to not
have to go to these IVF clinics and spend 40 grand trying to get all this stuff done.
There's been such a rise in all of this infertility care, and the question is how did we become
so infertile? You got to go back, follow the breadcrumbs, and say, "Well, what's changed?
Why all the sudden are girls not being able to get pregnant?" It's a complicated matter,
but, guys, safety first. It's not that hard to pull these things out. The thing is, what
blew me away was we can geek out about this all we want, but Jeffrey had come that morning
when I was hanging out with him a little bit ago; he had come that morning from talking
to a number of parents and pet owners interviewing them about what has changed when they pulled
their kids off of GMO's. It was tear jerking stuff like, "My kid, we
had to take him out of school, because he had all these behavioral disorders," and all
sorts of really aggressive types of symptomatology that they were being medicated for all this
stuff. They pulled a kid off the GMO's, he's fine. The pet is running around biting on
people and all this stuff. They pull him off the GMO's, pet's acting like a normal dog
again. It's story after story after story. We'll share that stuff with you. We'll get
Jeffrey to get some of that footage over and share that in a subsequent webisode or whatever
we do here. Take it from us, guys, this is real deal stuff. It's super easy to avoid.
I want reiterate the list here. It was corn. It was soy. It was canola. Where's my list?
It was canola. It was alfalfa sprouts, and what was the sixth one? Lost it. Canola and
safflower, safflower. Guys, look for anything that has that in there and just don't buy
it. If you have it in your house, get rid of it.
You will be happy you did so. What we'd like to do is challenge you guys right now and
say, "All right, you've seen this. Take the Pepsi challenge here. Go off GMO." Let's do
a GMO challenge, okay. Do it for two weeks, and then come into our comment threads wherever
you see this video, and let us know how it's going, what's going on. Then, we'll engage
back with you, and we'll figure out how to help you through this. I think you guys are
going to be surprised about what's going to happen in your life in even two weeks of getting
off of this stuff. Sarah: That's right. There's nothing more
powerful than actually feeling this in your body. Pedram and I can talk to you about the
things that we think are important for you and based on the evidence what we think is
important, but there's nothing like feeling this transformation that can happen in your
body. We really want you to take on this challenge. After you've pulled GMO's out of your diet,
and you've seen these health benefits, share this video with 10 of your friends, because
this is the message that we want to share. We have to pressure our government to step
up and do what's needed. There was a great analogy that a pediatrician gave yesterday.
I was on the stage with Jeffrey and also a pediatrician and Ed Bauman who's the founder
of Bauman College. This pediatrician was saying, "Why don't we take a look at the history of
lead and what happened in the US." There was evidence that lead was bad, and Australia
banned lead, Europe banned lead. I forget exactly when it was, 1950 or something like
that. The US was so slow to ban lead. It was something like 1972. It was just outrageous
how long it took us. Let's not let that happen when it comes to GMO's.
Pedram: Look, you guys, paternalistic medicine is what's gotten us into trouble. Go ahead
and eat all these Doritos, and we'll come up with some diabetic medication that's going
to get you out of it. We all now know that that model doesn't work. Waiting for your
government to fix your problems isn't going to work. Those guys can't even fix their own
problems. Really, it's about taking things into your own hands, feeding your family the
right stuff, taking care of yourselves, and doing it from the inside. Vitality emerges
from within. What you need to do is establish a protocol for health and vitality in your
own life. As you start feeling better, what happens is people go, "Hey, man. What's up
with you, man? You look so good. What is that?" Sarah: "Did you have work done?" That's what
the girls say. Pedram: Oh, my God. Totally. Totally. You
must have done something. You're lying. Sarah: I love getting asked that. I'm like,
"Uh, healthy food. Organic food, non-GMO." Pedram: In time work. Yeah, exactly. I'm just
not being silly about what goes in my body. That's really the challenge, you guys, is
just see what it feels like to feel better. Then, if you really are a glutton for punishment,
two weeks later, go ahead and try some GMO food and tell us how you feel. Ideally, you
do that for three weeks. You just let yourself ... like elimination provocation, you let
yourself come off of the stuff. Then, you take a little bit of GMO and see what your
body does. It'll punish you, and you'll be like, "Oh, my God. I was eating this everyday,
so I was used to the poison. I'd have to my afternoon coffee, or I'd have to take my Advil
every other day, because the headaches wouldn't go away." However it manifested in your body,
when you start pulling off this stuff, you start feeling better. It's like you start
realizing how life can be. It's pretty powerful. It's pretty powerful.
Sarah, I know you are going off to get some well deserved R and R. Yes, I want to wish
you the best. I'm all sunned up. I'm all charged up and feeling good, so you need to go get
yours. We'll see you in a couple of weeks; two, three weeks. We'll start up the show
again. We got a bunch of guests that we're lining up and all that. You guys, if you're
enjoying what you're seeing here, please share it, please like it, and all that so that we
know that we're of service. We're here for you. Give us story ideas, if you think that's
there stuff that you want us to talk about. We'll go after it, because we're here to help
be advocates for you. Again, we'll step out of the talking head thing and get into empowering
you. I want you guys to doctor yourselves. We want you guys to feel good about what's
happening in your own bodies and share that. Sarah: That's right. I couldn't have said
it better myself. Thank you, Dr. Pedram. Pedram: Thank you, Dr. Sarah. Good to see
you. Enjoy your holiday, and we'll see you shortly there after.
Sarah: Sounds good. Bye, everybody. Pedram: Bye, everybody.