The focus is on tackling America’s health crisis through meaningful policy changes and education. The discussion highlights the dangers of processed foods, artificial sweeteners, and harmful additives like food dyes, emphasizing their links to chronic diseases and behavioral issues. Alternatives such as natural sweeteners, healthier cooking oils, and raw milk are explored as potential solutions to improve overall well-being.

The conversation also delves into broader issues like the cultural shift away from home cooking and the impact of corporate influence on public health. With calls for stricter regulations and an emphasis on empowering individuals to make healthier choices, this episode presents a compelling vision for making America healthier, one step at a time.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:03 – Introduction to RFK Jr.’s Health Agenda

02:59 – Dr. Matt Chalmers Joins the Discussion

03:43 – The Decline of Home Cooking

04:38 – Issues with Artificial Sweeteners and High Fructose Corn Syrup

06:34 – Dangers of Food Dyes

08:42 – Healthier Cooking Oils

10:16 – The Case Against Diet Sodas and Artificial Sweeteners

12:35 – Raw Milk Debate

14:58 – RFK Jr.’s Chances of Success

16:18 – Broader Cultural and Health Observations

Narrator [00:00:01] Newsradio 700 WLW.

700 WLW Host [00:00:03] So one of the things that Donald Trump did during his campaign was partner with RFK Jr. RFK Jr. Son of a legend in the Democrat party. His father was attorney general murdered when he ran for president back in 1968. His uncle was JFK murdered, of course, in Dallas. We know the lineage, I think fairly well. RFK has always been somebody that has been out there and not necessarily somebody that was a, you know, a solid centrist figure in the Kennedy family. He always marched to the beat of his different a different drummer. But one thing he was and is sincere about is the fact that a lot of the food that you and I eat is absolutely horrid for us. We probably had some yesterday, but a lot of it is bad just by design with food dyes and fats and how it’s consumed and what I did on and on and on it goes. But during the campaign, RFK, who fancies himself as a candidate, then realized he was not going to get elected, dropped out, partnered with Trump. Trump promised him a spot on, you know, in the Cabinet when and if he was elected. And so now RFK Jr is going to run Health and Human Services and he’s going to, quote, make America healthy again. But how is he going to do it? Because one of the biggest lobby groups in Washington, D.C., is the food industry. And the fast food industry is part of that food industry. And it’s a very difficult mountain to climb, and there’s only four years to climb it. So how is he going to make America healthy again? How is he going to get us off high fructose corn sirup, for example, or the stuff that McDonald’s makes its French fries in, which is not good, or food dyes that cereals use? How’s he going to actually accomplish that? Or is it just basically a bunch of words? Standing by as somebody who is hoping that RFK can accomplish this. Dr. Matt Chalmers is a healthy living expert. He takes. I was, I would say, more of a holistic approach to medicine than a traditional approach to medicine. Looking at the mind, body and spirit, if you will, of his patients. But nevertheless, he is someone who was in simpatico with what RFK wants to do. And it’s kind for him to give us some time on this day, kind of a holiday, but still a part of the Thanksgiving Day weekend. Kind enough to give us some of his time today to talk about how RFK would change McDonald’s, make America healthy again and in the process, change the president elect’s diet. Dr.. Chalmers. How are you on this glorious Friday?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:59] Man Fantastic. Good to be here.

700 WLW Host [00:03:01] I’m glad you are here. Now, look, Donald Trump wants to make America healthy again. He’s chosen RFK Jr to lead that charge. We’ll see if RFK gets approved by the senate but the bottom line is a lot of the stuff that we do need isn’t any good for us. The problem is a lot of the stuff that isn’t any good for us tastes really good. That’s By. That’s the by the by product of all this, isn’t it?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:27] Yeah, that’s that’s the problem because what we’ve done is we’ve bought the food. The food manufacturers use a lot of chemicals that are not only addictive, but they’re extremely toxic for us. Put them in our food. So now we’re we’re overeating and we’re getting toxicity with all sorts of different jobs.

700 WLW Host [00:03:43] I think a lot of it is we’ve lost in this country. I don’t know if it’s because of two income families or maybe never, nobody getting home in time to do it. We’ve lost the ability to cook healthy in this country and we defaulted, quote unquote, eating out. You go to any restaurant, anywhere in any city and the places are normally jammed. And I don’t know, I’m old enough to remember 30 years ago that restaurants did really well on Friday and Saturday nights and struggled the rest of the week. I think we need to go back to maybe cooking our own food. That wouldn’t might be the answer to a lot of these problems.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:19] You know, it’s kind of funny when I talk to people and I don’t want to give up my ice cream, my cakes, my cookies, my dessert. If you make them at home by yourself, you can have them. And they’re actually really healthy for you. And they’re not going to make you sad because you can make them without the sugar. So making stuff at home is a really, really good way to not only save money, but really increase your health.

700 WLW Host [00:04:38] Okay, Let’s talk about that just for a second. Artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn sirup. What’s wrong with those things?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:48] So the hybrid is corn sirup and the things that have what we call a glycemic effect. They way they raise insulin levels, insulin levels, those are what’s actually causing you to store sugars as fat. And so that’s what is happening and that’s what’s making us fat, is those there’s a really high glycemic surge. Now the the non glycemic or the non caloric, the aspartame, it’s not like that. Those have the synthetic ones cause a number of different problems with us chemically because inflammation, because our goal is to kind of not understand what’s going on because they’re, they’re tasting sweet but they’re not getting anything on the other side of it. So those are creating all sorts of issues from inflammation. And that information we’re seeing are trying the cancer.

700 WLW Host [00:05:32] Yeah. I was going to say, as I recall, when all of this stuff came under public scrutiny, one of the things that people said was or that that scientists said was, is that they cause cancer in lab rats. And everybody was saying, well, I’m glad I’m not a lab rat, but I’m chances are, if it’s if it’s causing that in one particular, I guess mammal or whatever, it probably could happen in the human body as well. That’s the real problem with artificial sweeteners, is that over time and and just in a cumulative sense, at the very least, it’s going to cause inflammation in the body. But it may cause something, as you mentioned, as deadly as cancer.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:12] And a lot of times it does go that way. Now, if you’re trying to make it sweeter, there’s a lot of good alternative. Speed is one, monk, fruit is one, resveratrol is another. Our yellows, there’s a number of things you can use at home. There’s these are starting to become more widely available and like Quito products to to give us some sweet without giving us the glycemic issues.

700 WLW Host [00:06:34] Yeah food dye is a big thing. RFK Jr is on record as he really wants to get into what food dye does and you see that in a lot of junk food. But you know, I found this interesting. For example, he he’s big on talking about Fruit Loops and the food dye that’s used, yellow, blue red dye. But he said the exact same products by Kellogg’s is manufactured in Canada, where, I don’t know, they must have stricter enforcement of their drug laws up there. But whatever. Kellogg’s can make Froot Loops without all those colors in Canada. Well, then, if they can, it’s not like it’s going to be any big hurdle for Kellogg’s to jump over to make the same thing here in in the United States. So what what are we like, the way things look as well as the way things taste? Is that what these food dyes are all about?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:25] Well, the funny thing is, is that there’s a lot of actual natural dyes that people can use to maintain the same the same colors. What they’re actually doing is they recognize that a lot of these dyes are what we call exciting, toxic. And so what ends up happening is that the issue kind of hooked on on consuming more than you normally would. And so when that happens, you will eat more out of the products, get to buy more the product more often. And so that’s where a lot of the problem comes in. So we can color these things with better chemicals, you know, from made from fruits and things like that then we’re using right now. And the other problem is that these extra toxins are really bad for things like ADHD and behavioral issues.

700 WLW Host [00:08:05] Well, wait a minute now. So we could again to go back to Froot Loops. Kellogg’s could make those different colors if they chose not to use the cheaper way to do it. Is that what you’re saying?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:17] That’s exactly what I’m saying. And there’s a lot of ways like Europe has a bunch of stricter laws than we do. And like you said, they’re already making these foods for these other countries. We have the loosest laws here in the United States. If we just said, hey, we’re going to tighten down and do the same thing you’re making, you’re already making for all the other countries, it would radically decrease our health and it shouldn’t really change that much of any cost structure or eliminate any of the foods we’re already eating.

700 WLW Host [00:08:42] President Trump, as you know, well known for his affinity for McDonald’s. And, you know, again, not to just pick on one particular fast food chain, but RFK Jr saying that the problem with, for example, fries is they’re far too salty and they’re made with seed oils like canola soybean or something called hydrogenated soybean oil. I mean, I don’t know what is that? I know what canola oil is, but what’s soybean and hydrogenated soybean oil? I always thought soy was good for you, that it was better than milk products, but apparently in oils are not. What am I missing here?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:22] So a lot of these oils are high in what’s called omega six. So we want you to make it threes and make it through. These are good. The omega six are pro-inflammatory and so that creates some issues with the liver. The other thing is your body. Imagine how many sunflower seeds you’d have to crush to get two tablespoons of oil. It’s tens of thousands. Your body would never be able to consume those normally. So we want to kind of stay away from those, those especially the steak oils like the canola and stuff like that. We want to stay away from those the the richer fats, the tallow, the avocado oil, the olive oil. These are the coconut oil. These are much, much better options for us to cook in because, one, they don’t denature when they get hot. And two, they’re a richer source of the make it three. So they’re not going to create the issues of the liver or the inflammatory processes over the body. And you can literally have French fries that are there are fried and tallow. They’re substantially healthier for you than the ones in the vegetable oils.

700 WLW Host [00:10:16] Okay, So so tallow, look, let’s just say I’m cooking at home. Well, it’s just they’re like French fries. They’re much better to cook in tallow. Well. And by that you I think you mentioned one of the tallow oils is is olive oil. I mean, you could do that. I mean, that’s not a hard thing to do.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:34] Well. So the tallow was actually beef tallow. It comes from. From cows instead of cows. Yeah. You can get you get to be pretty easy to fry them in that and they taste a lot better. So plus because you’re not you’re not heating that oil to a point where it’s breaking it down. That oil is now good for you. So the entire thing can move from very bad for you to, you know, a positive function for it, you know.

700 WLW Host [00:10:57] And the other thing, too, I don’t drink it. I used to when I was younger, are carbonated sodas, particularly diet sodas. I remember I like Coke. I drank Coke. Coke had a lot of calories in it. So I went to Diet Coke. This is many, many years ago. I haven’t really and truly I can’t remember the last time I had a carbonated beverage. But we had talked earlier here just a few minutes ago about aspartame, the stuff that’s in Diet Coke and RFK said that it’s not unlike the chemical makeup of some of the things you find in Roundup. I mean, is that a stretch or is that true?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:33] It’s kind of a huge stretch. Glyphosate. What we find in Roundup, I’m glad to say that it’s very toxic to the gut and there’s a lot of people that that is actually the cause of their gluten sensitivity because there’s so much glyphosate on everything. So it’s not a huge stretch to say there’s a little bit closer to formaldehyde, but there’s a bunch of bad things that go on with these artificial sweeteners. Yeah.

700 WLW Host [00:11:57] And again, RFK, who some people would look at them and say, okay, he’s out there. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says. He’s big on this raw milk thing, which not just him. I mean, there are a lot of people in this country right now. That thing, raw milk, you know, it’s it’s things that it’s milk that’s not pasteurized. I mean, it sounds like it’s right from the cow to right to your table. And, you know, I can imagine what some of the germs might be. People say maybe listeria, maybe E coli, I don’t know. But what of raw milk as opposed to the kind you go to the, you know, the grocery store and it’s homogenized and pasteurized.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:35] Well, so we’ve been drinking raw milk for thousands of years. Lots of people in other countries are drinking it. We haven’t only been doing pasteurization for a little while, the pasteurization actually damages the proteins that are in the in the milk. And so that creates a problem. The homogenization chemically alters that. You’ve heard the expression cream always rises to the top. We’ve chemically altered this notion that will never happen again. That also damages the milk. And when we pasteurize, it’s that bacteria that’s dying. That’s your probiotic. And so that’s a major problem because one of the biggest issues we have with depression, weight gain, all sorts of issues within the body is we have lost our gut flora. Your gut flora makes all your serotonin. And so we don’t feed it. It’s not going to be there. And so adding these probiotics in like raw milk is a great way to go back to restoring the way your body’s designed to function.

700 WLW Host [00:13:23] But I mean, if you’re if you’re going to buy raw milk, I mean, it’s shelf life can be very long, right? I mean, if if you put it in a refrigerator, it can’t be good for more than a couple of days. Right.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:34] If it’s roughly the same is milk has been pasteurized. You can get it and drink it. Well, those who are going to go through a gallon and a half gallon of water growing up faster than it’s going to go back. That is typically what we’re saying.

700 WLW Host [00:13:45] What does it taste like?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:47] It tastes like really, really good stuff. So it tastes like, you know, like I like a creamier milk. The ones I’ve had of all this whole milk and they’re really, really good. We’ve had them on farms and they’re delicious. We’ve never had any issues with them. Never had any health issues of any of the patients who’ve done it. It is it’s a really, really thick, creamy, real, satisfying note.

700 WLW Host [00:14:07] Dr. Matt Chalmers is with his healthy living expert, and you can find him at Chalmers wellness.com. That’s c h l c h h l mers wellness.com all one word. You know how things work in this country when somebody comes along and pushes back against a very big lobby group. They normally have problems. This is this is going to be a fight that RFK Jr. Will have on his hands if indeed he is confirmed by the Senate. How successful do you think he’ll be? I mean, in four years, do you think you and I, if we talk, then we’ll be talking about McDonald’s, any kind of fast food chain whose food is healthier, people consuming raw milk as opposed to pasteurized and homogenized? I mean, if that’s the hope, that’s great. But in reality, what kind of success do you think this guy’s going to have?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:14:58] I think he’s got a really good shot. I like to think that people don’t know that he’s not just like he’s been screaming about this. He’s one of the best trial lawyers at this. But he’s he’s beaten Monsanto. He’s beaten a lot of these guys already in the past 20 years. He’s taken a giant step forward. And the nice thing is that now he’s able to come out. If he gets to this position, bring the research and bring the facts out and say, here’s the research, we need this change. And I think that he’ll have a substantial amount of impact on the on the whole health culture. I think it’s a phenomenal option.

700 WLW Host [00:15:32] Somebody once told me if you’ve got to look on the label to see what’s in the product, it’s probably not a good thing to buy. Do you ever hear that?

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:15:40] Yeah. The biggest one is if you can’t pronounce the words that are in the ingredient list, you shouldn’t eat it.

700 WLW Host [00:15:47] Yeah, I know. I mean, and it’s amazing to me and maybe amazing to you that we are allegedly, no pun intended, the land of milk and honey, a country of great riches, a country that produces better income from people than anywhere else. And it just seems when it comes to our food, we’ve gotten awfully lazy and less healthy than the rest of the world. I don’t understand why that is. Dr.. And maybe it’s just that it’s just Americans and the culture that we live in, but it would seem to me it would have to be better than what we’re living in right now.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:16:18] There’s a lot of changes that can be made that make it substantially healthier. And they’re talking about taking the fluoride out of the water column on day one, which is a massive change. Fluoride actually competes with the thyroid for iodine and it’s responsible for a lot of that in research clinical damage to the thyroid. So just from that one change will be a tremendous benefit.

700 WLW Host [00:16:39] Dr. Matt Chalmers Great, great stuff. We’ll see where RFK goes if he has a chance to do this or not. But Trump wants to make America healthy again. And I think what you and I have talked about over the course of this interview is a reason why he he’s probably focusing on all of this. Doctor, thank you very much. I tell you to stay well. But you’re a doctor, so you probably do. But hopefully we can visit again.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:17:03] Absolutely. Sounds hip.

700 WLW Host [00:17:04] I hope so.

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