Pharma, Food & the Fluent Consumer Ep.3/4

How many eggs are you allowed this week? Depends what year you ask. In Episode 3 of 4 in thos series  co-hosts Ashok and Meera Vasudevan take the second corner of the triangle — the food industry — and the verdicts that flip a full 180 degrees within a decade. Eggs, butter, coconut oil… and the peanut reversal whose bill was paid by children. 

In this episode

•    The egg: 47 years rationed to three a week — on a cholesterol cap with no clinical-trial evidence

•    Butter → margarine → trans-fat ban → “butter-style spread”: the consumer left keeping score

•    Coconut oil's three verdicts, red wine, and the MSG myth — same molecules, flipped opinions

•    Why guidelines outlive the science by a generation

•    Peanuts and the LEAP trial: the reversal whose cost was paid by children

Thanks for tuning in to "Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy"!

Hosted by Meera & Ashok Vasudevan

Stay Connected

#PayTheFarmerNotThePharmacy

#PlantBasedWellness

#NaturalFood

#AffordableWellness

#GutHealth

#ImmunityBoost

#NutritionTips

#CSAW (Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness)

#Meeravasudevan
#Ashokvasudevan
https://umaglobalfoods.com/

https://csaw.co

https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/pay-the-farmer-not-the-pharmacy/id1512934794

https://open.spotify.com/show/34nzNQQ62O8tygMaut2h8V

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hey, quick question, Leila. How many eggs am I allowed this week?

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Well, that depends on how many on which year you ask me that question.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Exactly, because for 47 years the official answer was no more than three.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

And the number that rule was built on a cholesterol cap that it turns out nobody ever had the data for.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Welcome back to Pay the Farmer, not the pharmacy. I'm a shok.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

And I'm Mira. Last week we did the first corner of our triangle. Pharma moving the goalposts. Today, corner two, the food industry. And its signature move isn't nudging a line slowly, it's flipping a verdict completely.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

You know, one decade a food is a villain, the next, it's a hero, and the food itself never changed at all.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

So let's start with talking about the egg. In 1968, the American Heart Association said no more than three a week and no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol a day.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

And that 300 number, folks, essentially arbitrary.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

No clinical trial evidence behind it. And it's stuck for 47 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

With real consequences, because in 1972, the average American ate about three and a half eggs a week. By the late 80s, that had halved. A whole generation gave up eggs on the strength of a number with nothing under it.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

And then in 2015, the US guidelines very quietly dropped this cholesterol cap. It turns out the cholesterol you eat barely moves the cholesterol in your blood. And by 2019, the AHA agreed there was not enough evidence to put a number on it at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

That's the American Heart Association, folks, and the egg isn't even alone. Butter was the enemy suddenly, so we all switched to margarine. Then they banned the trans fats in the margarine, and then we went looking.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

For coconut oil, the villain of the 80s. The superfood by 2010. Back again to being a villain by 2017. Three verdicts, the same molecule. Red wine went from your heart's best friend to a carcinogen. And then MSG got blamed for headaches. The very same glutamate that makes tomatoes and parmesan taste so good.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

You know, folks, my uncle switched to margarine because the news said so. Switched back to butter because the news said so. And finally just bought a tub labeled Butter Style Spread because he'd given up trying to keep score.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

And here's why it keeps happening: a guideline is far easier to issue than a retract. By the time the science catches up to its own earlier opinion, the aisles of supermarkets have been rearranged. The food industry has built a whole category, and we've already internalized their rule.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

So the correction does arrive, but the rule outlives the science by a whole generation. But the reversal that genuinely breaks my heart, Mira, is peanuts. Because that bill was paid by children.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Yeah. In 2000, pediatricians advised that at-risk babies should avoid peanuts altogether. Sounds sensible. And over the next 15 years, peanut allergy in Western countries roughly tripled. Not so sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Meanwhile, I know. I know. Meanwhile, in Israel, babies happily ate a peanut flavored puff called Bamba from about six months. And peanut allergy there was something like 10 times lower.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

You know, a British doctor noticed this and he ran a trial. He deliberately fed peanuts to at-risk infants instead of withholding them. The 2015 results were so clear that the advice was reversed outright. Introduce peanuts early.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

You know, the grandmothers in Tel Aviv had it right a generation before the trial. The parents who dutifully followed the official advice were simply told years later, sorry, that advice helped cost the very thing it was meant to prevent.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

And to be fair again, this is not villainy. Nobody is setting out to harm the child. It's just that issuing advice feels safe. But reversing it is slow and awkward.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Which is why the safest recipe is the oldest one. If your great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother would recognize it as food, it's probably not going to be reversed on you in 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

So the next episode we deal with the third corner and the most uncomfortable one us. How our own cleverness about food turns us into the perfect consumer for pharma and the food industry.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Until then, nourishing well being, remember, is easier than nursing ill health.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

So pay the pharma.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Not the pharmacy.