503: Alex Clark—Don't Eat That

The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

Mike Rowe welcomes Alex Clark, host of the Culture Apothecary podcast and advocate against harmful food practices, to discuss her documentar

Key takeaways

• Big Food industries use marketing strategies similar to those of Big Tobacco to downplay health risks.
• Ultra-processed foods often contain unpronounceable ingredients that may be harmful despite being labeled 'safe'.

Main topics

• Big Food industry practices
• Processed food dangers

Notable quotes

"It feels to me as if virtually everything has something in it that's just either unpronounceable, unnecessary, or bad for us."

Conclusion

Alex Clark's passionate advocacy underscores the urgent need for consu

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:03) And welcome to another episode of The Way I Heard It. How are you, Chuck? Speaker 2 (0:09) Great, Mike. How are you? Are you hungry after that one? No, not entirely. Not entirely. Speaker 3 (0:15) This episode is called Don't Eat That because, honestly, everywhere I turn, everywhere I look, it seems that that bit of advice in some way, shape, or form is being articulated and directed toward me with an increasing level of passion and enthusiasm. Is it just me? Speaker 2 (0:33) No. In particular, this Alex Clark really brought the passion and enthusiasm. Speaker 3 (0:39) Yeah, you know, I don't know if you know her. She's made the rounds. And every week or so, she seems to be getting more and more traction out there in the ecosystem of whatever this is. How do people get known these days anyway? I mean, you know, all of a sudden, you're everywhere all at once. Speaker 2 (0:58) Yeah, video goes viral. You say something off-color or maybe controversial. Controversial, Speaker 1 (1:06) yeah. Speaker 3 (1:06) Yeah, Alex Clark has said some controversial things. She has a very successful podcast that's growing by leaps and bounds called Culture Apothecary. Yep. What Alex is doing is taking on virtually everything and everyone. It feels like. Speaker 3 (1:27) The stuff from seed oils to the stuff in toothpaste that really shouldn't be in toothpaste. And I'm not talking about fluoride. I'm talking about sugar and all sorts of other things. Stuff that's in the lotions. Virtually everything in your makeup. It feels to me as if virtually everything has something in it that's just either unpronounceable, unnecessary. were bad for us. Speaker 2 (1:51) Yeah, everything's going to kill us in one way or another, it seems. Speaker 3 (1:55) Yeah. So there's this movie called Breaking Big Food that I watched a couple of months ago by a couple of Sullivans, I think, right? Yeah, Speaker 2 (2:05) that's right. Patrick and Ashley. Speaker 3 (2:07) Yeah. And they're just on a mission. He got sick, and a lot of it had to do with his diet. And so they just kind of turned their lives around, like so many people are doing. And Alex, Clark is mentioned in this movie. In fact, she's featured. And more recently, she's been to the White House to express her frustration with an executive order that did not, in fact, ban the use of a chemical most often associated with Roundup. I think it's called... Speaker 3 (2:37) No, it starts with a G and ends with a Thane. There Speaker 2 (2:40) you go. It's not glutathione. Speaker 3 (2:41) That's what I want to say. Are you sure? Yeah, because I drink that every night for my liver now. Oh, Speaker 2 (2:46) really? Yes. Okay. It's not glutathione, Speaker 3 (2:48) but it's something like that. Anyway, she's a lot of fun because she cares deeply, and she's well-informed, and she's very controversial because she's taking on the establishment, and the establishment does not like to be taken on, but she's pissed. She's pissed off. Because among other things, a study was released not that long ago that argued a bowl of Lucky Charms Speaker 2 (3:12) had the nutritional equivalence of a bowl of ground beef. That is just ridiculous. It's like common sense would tell one that that's not true. Speaker 3 (3:22) Yes. And so whatever's happening in our culture more broadly... has really been synthesized into Alex's brain and to her podcast and to the mission that she is clearly on. So I thought it would be a kick to hear from her, and I was right. She has a lot to say. She's smart. She's funny. She's convicted. Yep. You'll meet her, and you'll remember her right after this. Speaker 3 (3:53) Much as I'd like to attribute Pure Talk's explosive growth and unprecedented success to their decision to hire me as their official spokesman, I'm afraid I can't do that because I don't tell people to switch from big wireless to Pure Talk simply because I did. I tell people to do their homework. And even though I'm personally delighted with the service and the company, and even though I've personally saved thousands of dollars by switching, I'd never tell anybody to simply take my word for it. What I will do is brag about the results of the largest industry survey of its kind. 120,000 wireless customers were just asked to rate every wireless company out there for coverage, support, value and data. Well, guess which company was the only company to get five stars in every category? That's right, Pure Talk. I'm talking about unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99 a month, plus an additional 50 % off your first month when you visit puretalk.com slash row. Switching is easy, but don't take it from me. Take it from the 120,000 other wireless customers who crowned Pure Talk. the only American wireless company with five stars across the board. Coverage, support, value, and data. Everything you need and nothing you don't at puretalk.com slash row. Pure Speaker 2 (5:16) Talk. Speaker 3 (5:33) Are we rolling, Chucky? Speaker 2 (5:34) Yeah, Speaker 3 (5:35) we are rolling. Fantastic. All right, Alex Clark is here from Scottsdale, where we were just discussing the temperature on the ground is somewhere between the surface of the sun and supernova. Speaker 1 (5:45) Yeah, and Satan's butthole, probably. Jeez, you had to drag the devil into it. Speaker 3 (5:51) Yeah, I never really think about the devil as having a lower GI tract or anything involved, but I guess he must, right? I mean, if he embodies basic sort of human form. Speaker 1 (6:01) It's definitely possible. I mean, he was an angel, right? Who fell. He's a fallen angel. So I don't know. But I don't think people go to the bathroom in heaven. So maybe not, you know? Speaker 3 (6:11) Do you think maybe in hell then they never leave the bathroom? Speaker 1 (6:15) That would make sense. I mean, if you've ever eaten a Taco Bell, it would make sense. Speaker 3 (6:19) Oh, God. It is so hot there. I remember leaving Phoenix a couple years ago. It was 121. And the pilot came on with two announcements. The first was, he said, folks, we'll be on our way in a minute. Our tires are currently stuck to the runway. Speaker 1 (6:35) Oh, gross. Yeah. And Speaker 3 (6:36) then he came on to say, you know, we've just been doing the math up here in the cockpit. And we've determined that we'd be better off holistically if we had a few volunteers just to get off to get the weight ratio. And at that point, I'm like, I'll go. I'm off. Speaker 1 (6:51) Well, anytime you land in Phoenix during this time of the year, it's a requirement. You have to make sure your air vents are on in the plane. All of the window shades have to go down. Oh, yeah. You know, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. Because it is the worst. Speaker 3 (7:01) Did you grow up there? Speaker 1 (7:01) I didn't. I grew up in southern Indiana by Louisville, Kentucky. Uh Speaker 3 (7:05) -huh. Speaker 1 (7:05) So going to the Derby and doing all that. I started a radio career there. Uh Speaker 2 (7:09) -huh. Speaker 1 (7:09) And I was 18, just had graduated high school. And that kind of... Started the whole trajectory of how I ended up at Turning Point USA. What Speaker 3 (7:17) in the world happened to you? I'm sure you're sick of telling the story. I wanted to talk to you because I think... I think the most important quality and the one that's in short supply right now in our country is skepticism. I think it's really, really important right now, if we're ever going to get our faith back in our institutions, to be brutally skeptical of them now. And you seem to be pretty skeptical of a lot of what you might call the standard orthodoxy around the food and nutrition. Speaker 1 (7:52) Yeah, and I wasn't always. So basically, here's my story. I grew up in Indiana in a Christian conservative home. I had, you know, my parents had Fox News on every single night. I grew up listening to Dennis Prager and Michael Medved and watching the O'Reilly Factor, right? And Sean Hannity and Combs and all of that stuff. Speaker 3 (8:08) And Speaker 1 (8:09) so that's how I grew up. And so as a conservative, we were very distrusting of mainstream media and, you know, the Department of Education and big tech and all of those things. But conservatives never historically questioned pharma or food. We just assumed if it's being sold in the grocery store, then it's safe. Speaker 3 (8:30) Because we have an acronym looking out for us, right? We have the FDA. We have whatever other long list of bureaucratic assignations that are going to protect us. Speaker 1 (8:41) Yeah. And so I thought, like, I think. the majority of Americans thought is, well, there must be so many steps and rules and things that brands have to go through before they're allowed to put an ingredient in your food. Speaker 3 (8:53) And Speaker 1 (8:54) during the pandemic, And I had grown up, well, let me say this. I had grown up eating primarily ultra-processed food, standard American diet. In high school, it was very normal for me to go through the line and just take six Rice Krispie treats and a Hawaiian punch, and that was my meal. I mean, it was horrible. I had zero nutrition for like the first half of my life. And my mom definitely tried, bless her heart. She tried to get me to eat real stuff, and I just didn't. I was addicted to sugar and ultra-processed stuff. And by nature, they make it so addictive, which we can get into. During the pandemic, when they mandated the vaccine, as somebody who had never questioned any health advice or anything or our medical institutions, I just thought, this is so wrong to me to tell people you have to put something into your body, whether you like it or not, or you're going to lose your job or you're not going to be allowed to participate in public spaces. Speaker 2 (9:43) And Speaker 1 (9:43) so when I started looking into that, I thought, OK, well, has the FDA ever been wrong before? And of course, you start looking into this and you go down the road of thalidomide, which was recommended to pregnant women, you know, which caused all kinds of birth defects and- Love Canal. Yeah, all sorts of stuff. I mean, there's a bunch of things, but it also reminded me of OxyContin. And OxyContin, we were told, was the first non-addictive opioid, right, when it came onto the scene in the late 90s. Speaker 3 (10:11) You ever see Dope Sick? Speaker 1 (10:13) So this is what's crazy. I'm so glad you bring this up. During the pandemic is when Dope Sick comes out. And I'm watching this and I'm already having like the wheels are turning where I'm questioning, you know, how much can I trust the government when it comes to health recommendations? I'm watching Dope Sick and I was very ignorant on the opioid crisis. I'm very privileged to be able to say, you know, my family wasn't touched by that. And so I just didn't understand a lot of it. And I'm watching this show and I am enthralled. Like I am reading every book I can about the Purdue Pharma scandal now and Oxycontin and all these different things. Yes. And I just thought this is the. number one American true crime story. How is not everyone talking about this and talking about how we are not, it's not totally guaranteed that we should trust some of these three-letter institutions, right? And so that really jump-started my journey after watching Dope Sick into questioning everything I had been told about health. Speaker 3 (11:10) Dope Sick, if I remember, that's actors were portraying real-life stories. Right? From people who had become just remorselessly addicted. And it was just one story after another. But it was powerful because it was rooted in a doc, but it was a portrayal. Was that the one? Speaker 1 (11:30) Yeah. So it's based on the book by Beth Macy called Dope Sick. And so that was like a real life kind of picture of these blue collar states and cities that were wrecked by Oxycontin and stories of real people who were affected from doctors to... athletes and, you know, just stay-at-home moms or whatever. And so then Hulu came in and they were like, okay, let's have actors portray some of these stories. So it was like, you know, probably a little bit twisted or embellished, but overall based on the real story. Speaker 3 (11:58) Well, sure. I mean, I just talked to a guy the other day who produced a great movie called Young Washington. And he made the point, he's like, look, when you're dealing with a topic, any topic that's really rooted in history, you have to remember. when you're making the movie, you're not taking a picture, you're painting a portrait. And, you know, it's incumbent on you to get the broad strokes right. But the rest, you've got to get people interested enough to watch. You know, you've got to get them engaged. If you don't, then, well, who cares? What have you done? Speaker 1 (12:30) Yeah, so I was staying up. all hours reading books on Monsanto and the American Beverage Association and all these different things and just had never heard any of this. And so I started sharing the information I was learning with my audience, which are a bunch of, you know, typically conservative women, 25 to 35 years old. And I'm like, have you guys heard this before? I had never. Your Speaker 3 (12:55) audience, are you talking about the radio days or culture apothecary? Speaker 1 (12:58) With Turning Point USA. Okay. So these are a bunch of young conservative women who had been following me and they kind of grew up similarly to me and they had never heard any of this either. And I start sharing everything that I was learning and my analytics for my content on social media, my show just go through the roof. And so I knew that I needed to rebrand my show to be specifically a conservative health and wellness podcast, which is what it is now. And so in early 2024, I told Turning Point, hey, I think I need to rebrand. I think actually the future of the conservative movement with women is going to be health. And nobody was talking about this. They were like, what are you talking about? What does health have to do with conservative politics? I was like, I don't think you understand. Everyone is so passionate about this and nobody votes harder than a pissed off mom of a sick kid who cannot get any answers. you need to be paying attention to this because if the Republican Party, because, you know, I'm a conservative, so I care about us winning. And so I'm like, if we want the Republican Party to win, we need to start sharing what we're going to do about these different issues. And by the way, these are all nonpartisan issues. So it's really not Republican. I'm just saying someone, Democrat or Republican, somebody should be talking about it. And nobody was. In fact, you know, Bobby Kennedy, who now, of course, famously jumped in there with Trump. He tried to go to the Harris campaign and said, hey, would you guys be willing to talk with me and work with me on how we can make America healthy again? And she said no. I really think that Kamala could have had a better chance of winning if she would have taken that opportunity to partner with Bobby that Trump did. Speaker 3 (14:32) Why didn't she? Speaker 1 (14:34) Because she's one of the most bought and paid for candidates that pharma has ever had. And so the Democrat Party is completely bought into pharma. But to be fair, because I call everyone out. The Republican Party is completely bought and paid for by big ag and big chemical. Speaker 3 (14:48) No kidding. What the heck was... What was that EO with that unpronounceable crap? Speaker 1 (14:54) Glyphosate. Speaker 3 (14:55) Yeah. What? I mean, come on. I mean, you grow up in a part of the country where farmers are getting absolutely, they're just taking it in the neck on account of this stuff. It seems, it seems like it. Speaker 1 (15:10) It's definitely going to go down in history as one of the most controversial moves by the Trump administration, bar none, for this term. Speaker 3 (15:17) Explain it just so people are. Speaker 1 (15:19) So the Trump admin comes out with this executive order basically saying we're going to protect glyphosate, which is a pesticide that is used on crops. You find it in Roundup that you spray in your yard, at our playgrounds where kids play. And the Trump admin says basically we're going to protect it. It's a national security issue because without it, you know, everybody starves basically. Speaker 3 (15:44) Right. The whole food chain would. get very wobbly if you suddenly said you can't use this. Of Speaker 1 (15:50) course. And I have never advocated for a ban of it. But the problem is, one, we shouldn't be just going out and saying this is a national security issue. We need to ramp up production and then also protect it. We should be saying, okay, how are we going to help our farmers transition off this cancer-causing pesticide? Everyone who is a friend of Bayer is going to say, well, there's no proof it causes cancer. Then tell me why you've done over $16 billion in settlements for cancer. If it doesn't cause cancer, what are you settling on? Speaker 3 (16:24) That's a German company, right? Speaker 1 (16:26) Correct. So that's the other thing. So we are partnering with and protecting foreign chemical companies, ChemChina. China. Bayer is Germany. These aren't even American companies that we are going above and beyond to protect. But what made this so bad in particular is that you have moms across the country, Democrat, Republican, and everybody in between, who knows that this pesticide that is covered, has covered our food. And the parks that their kids play in is, you know, contributing to asthma and allergies and all of these different gut issues that kids have. Of course, cancer, and they want something done about it. And so the executive order comes out at the same time that companies like Bayer are going state to state and trying to pass pesticide liability shields. Now, these liability shields would prevent citizens of that state from suing over 57,000 different chemical products and their companies if they are made sick from their product. Now, I can't imagine, I can't think of anything less American than that. That if this product makes you sick, and by the way, it's owned by a foreign company, you cannot sue if you, your husband, your child gets cancer. And so I have been working really hard in the last year with a few other key people in the Maha movement, the Make America Healthy Again movement. We've protested at the Supreme Court and we've gone to the White House to meet with the president himself and done a roundtable with the whole admin. explaining why this is so important to change track on because this really matters to moms, but families. Did Speaker 3 (18:00) they listen? You're worried they're patting you on the head a little bit? So I'm having a love affair with my socks, not the weird dirty. inappropriate way, but in the way a grown man does when he finally realizes, well into middle age, that the socks he wears have as much to do with how his feet feel at the end of a long day as the shoes that surround them. I'm talking about Ironside Merino Wool Socks from Camel City Mill, made by hand in the great state of North Carolina. These are not the cheapest socks on the internet, but I do believe they're the best. And if you think about cost per wear, they're an absolute bargain because every pair