Courtney Swan
Appearances
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
We do. We need somebody to go against the status quo, because right now what we're doing is clearly not working. And the people that are in there for right now, for whatever reason, whether they just don't think that way or they don't feel like they're allowed to, they're just not asking questions anymore.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
They just have been trained to think like, OK, we just know it's X, Y and Z. And there's this thinking, I think, in the medical system that we just we've we've figured everything out. We have it all figured out. We're fine. We can just throw a pill at something. We can have a surgery.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
But in the medical system, we need a whole uphaul upheaval because we need to go back to prevention and we need to go back to what is the root cause of this? What is causing this in the first place? We shouldn't be thinking, OK, well, now that we have this, let's just like throw this pill up there or let's put all of our money in our research into now you have the cancer. What do we do?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Why aren't we putting all of our research into can we prevent this in the first place? If there's chemicals that we're spraying on our food, can we stop doing that so that we don't get the cancer in the first place? And there doesn't seem to be a lot of that happening in our Senate right now and in our health care system. And so there is a lot of pushback from senators. You're right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I think there's like this old mentality and people are scared maybe of what's going to come out of it, of the truth. Maybe they are scared of losing money, losing funding from big pharma companies.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, it's it's interesting and it'll be really I'm concerned because I feel like if Bobby doesn't get in there, I'm concerned that we're losing our opportunity to have somebody new in there that's going against the grain and going to actually bring up these questions.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And I said this earlier that I have been following Bobby's work for about 10 years now. I love him. He's an environmental environmental lawyer. He also was on the litigation team against Monsanto. It was a guy that was spraying on. Yes, exactly. The groundskeeper. And he got non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And Bobby was very famously on that litigation team.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
That is true. Thank God. Is what I feel. Do you feel that way? Yeah, I do. I just worry that if we have somebody that gets in there, if Bobby doesn't get confirmed, that maybe it's just from the old school thinking. And then from the top down, we don't get a lot of change. But look, at the end of the day, I mean, I've been doing this work for publicly for 14 years now.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I've been talking about this in my inner circles for like 18 years. I'm so happy because I've never, I've never seen it talked about it on a stage like this before. It's getting national attention. I mean, whether or not it's like good or bad press, it's still, it's all over the, you know, Washington Post, New York Times. It's on our political stage now. We have our president saying this.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, Trump literally said a couple months ago that he wants to get to the root of the epidemic that we're having right now of chronic disease. So I'm grateful that the conversation has at least been started and more and more people are starting to wake up and ask questions because I mean, if we can't, If we can't change from the top up, we can absolutely do it from the bottom. Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So it was a gradual waking up for me until it all just kind of hit me one day, I feel like, because I was very fortunate growing up. My mom has always been really healthy. I was the kid that my mom was buying the off brand natural cereals like we were shopping in a grocery store before we even had Whole Foods. But then Whole Foods came in and bought them out.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And it was this really small little natural food store. And I remember I would go to friends houses and just binge on their like Dunkaroos and Doritos and all the stuff that like I couldn't have. And at the time, I was pretty resentful to my mom about it. My mom still she loves to give me every time I see her now.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
She's like, remember when you used to have tantrums every night because your friends were getting Burger King for dinner and I wouldn't let you have it because my mom was making. I mean, I look back and like it's just I'm horrified that I was so upset about it because my mom was making these gourmet meals from scratch.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And this is something that I'm incredibly passionate about that we can talk more about. The glyphosate thing is a really big issue. So watching that confirmation today and seeing these senators just rip into him and knowing that this man... is taking bullets right now for the American people because he genuinely cares. He also said this. He said, I don't need to be here. I have a happy life.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, I would literally sit on the counter and she would be cranking out homemade pasta and baking her own bread, which is my dream now. I wish I could go move in with her now, honestly.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Literally. So she was really on it. And very, very early on. I mean, my mom told me in 2006. It's crazy that I remember the date, but I remember the year because she cut out a newspaper article and physically mailed it to me at my college dorm. And it was an article about trans fats. And she said, watch out for hydrogenated oils because trans fats are really bad.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Well, then we know now, obviously, that trans fats are really bad for us. And they ultimately were pulled from our food supply in 2006. when was that? 16, somewhere around there, where food companies were finally, they were legally required to take them out. But this is how far back my mom was in on all this. So I had my mom kind of like in my ear showing me stuff here and there.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
But at the time I was kind of, you know, I was like 21, like, oh yeah, whatever mom kind of mentality, you know, but it was interesting. I was still kind of taking it in. I took a nutrition class. My last class in my undergrad was And it really sparked an interest for me that I had never experienced before nutrition. I have a very inquisitive mind and I love to know how things work.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And learning about how food affected our bodies and how important nutrition was and when I really started to make the connections of what I was putting in my body and how food is literally code for our DNA, right? I just was fascinated by all of that. And then fast forward to when I started finding the works of people like Michael Pollan and Dr. Mark Hyman.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I was really upset to learn that what I was discovering about food and how food can be used as medicine wasn't actually being applied for the general public. In fact, it was quite the opposite. And I started learning about things like, I mean, the FDA has admitted that they don't have the full manpower
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
to man all of the stuff that's coming onto our into our food supply and going onto our shelves they just don't have the manpower the funding they just admitted this to bernie sanders in a hearing like two months ago there's this misconception that if something is on the shelf that it's been safe and vetted for and that it's healthy and that it's considered to be food i don't consider these old processed hyper processed food like products to be food
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So there was a large awakening for me there. I felt a moral obligation to tell people because this was largely not being discussed. I mean, when I was starting to wake up to all of this, I started Real Foodology in 2011. And there were circles, little circles of people talking about it and, you know, natural food stores popping up and stuff like that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
But it wasn't being talked about on a stage like it is now. So I just felt this moral obligation to let people know, like, hey, guys, this is how we navigate a broken food system and this is how we can change it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I have a happy family. I'm not getting anything out of this. He's like, it's not like I'm getting a significant amount of money in this position. He's doing this because he cares, because he thinks that we need a reform in our healthcare system. And so seeing this pushback, and then you look...
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, I feel like it's the obvious offenders, like the cereal, just anything that's ultra processed. That's when I... So I started vigilantly reading food labels. And I was horrified because before then I had never even looked at them. In fact, when I was in college, I'm so embarrassed to admit this now, but I was so uneducated.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So I had gained a bunch of weight when I was in college because I went from...
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
eating these amazing meals at home to eating fast food and partying and drinking and so I gained a bunch of weight and I was trying to lose the weight and I was eating lean cuisines and slim fast bars and at the time we were being told in magazines I'm opening and ads on the tv that this is what you eat to be healthy and so when I started reading those ingredient labels I was horrified by what I was seeing because you look at that I mean there's 40 plus ingredients on that and it
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
It shouldn't be that many ingredients. And more than half of them, you look at it and you're like, I don't even know where I would buy this in the grocery store. Where would I buy BHT in the grocery store? You don't. You get it from a factory.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And then it's being put in your food so that it can be preserved and so that it can sit on that shelf for a lot longer so those companies can make more money. It doesn't have to do with your health whatsoever. It's all about the profits for the food companies. So I would say, yeah, the largest offenders are all these ultra-processed, hyper-processed foods that don't resemble food anymore.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I have been going hard on this online today, but if you look at all the senators that are pushing back on him and they're making millions of dollars off of pharmaceutical companies and that's the whole reason they're going after him because they're all scared that it's going to be exposed.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Is it the plastic list?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
This is why I don't understand the resistance to all of this, because there, there is a large resistance to it and people have made this largely political. And I don't understand how we can't just all agree that, We have an antiquated system happening right now. We largely didn't understand the implications of plastic on our bodies 10, 15 years ago.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
You know, thank God for the work of Dr. Shanna Swan, who I'm sure you're aware of, who wrote The Countdown. And she talks all about how phthalates are affecting our bodies, how it's affecting our fertility, men's testosterone levels, sperm counts, like... We largely didn't know that this was really an issue until more recently. And now we know. That's the thing is we have the science.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
We have the data out there. But now we need to understand where we're getting all this exposure from. And there's the obvious low-hanging fruits like stop buying the plastic water bottles, right? But the meat, I mean, I was at the grocery store the other day. I can't even find meat at my local grocery store that's not wrapped in plastic. And that was the first thing I was thinking.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I didn't even think about them physically eating the plastic. Although, horrifyingly enough, I've heard in factory farming settings that they will take expired bread from grocery stores still in the plastic wrap and just feed it to them. Candy bars in the wrappers.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Now, I don't think that that's allowed in the grass-fed organic realm, but in the factory farming realm, I've seen a lot of reports of that happening. So there's largely a lot of stuff happening right now in our food system that needs to be addressed, that for whatever reason we're not talking about, we're not looking into it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And there's all this conversation politically right now about how we're wasting so much of our government funding going to these weird freaking freakish studies that no one even wants to have studies on anyways. Why are we not putting our money towards this? This is something that sustains our life. We eat three meals a day. This is what we need to live on this planet, and we're largely...
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Thank you so much for having me.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
poisoning ourselves in so many different directions. So why are we not looking at that?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yes. I've
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, I can take this two different directions. I feel like why, well, first of all, we know these foods are addictive, right? So would we, I mean, we're, there's this weird thing happening right now where we are encouraging people with needles and stuff. That's a whole different argument.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
What I was going to say is why would we want to encourage drug addicts instead of give them, get them the education, let them know that this is actually doing to their body? Because I think largely, I don't think people really understand that. I think people are starting to kind of understand like, oh, you know, if I drink a bunch of sodas, it's probably not the best for me.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
But I don't think they literally understand like this is the matter of you between you getting diabetes and like having your leg chopped off, like the difference between that or the difference between getting a rampant cancer and dying at a young age. I don't think that we're truly – as a population understanding the implications of these food products.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I think people think of it kind of in this way of like, oh, I'm being bad today, but it's fine. I also don't think people understand how much they're consuming these products now. You look at the standard American diet, and if people are not reading ingredient labels... They're eating upwards of, I don't even know how many additives and chemicals, 50 plus a day probably.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
We haven't studied what all those different additives and chemicals are doing in conjunction together in the human body. So to answer your question, I think there's largely an education piece that needs to happen here where people really understand what's happening so they can demand better for themselves. Because I think at the end of the day, everybody wants to be healthy.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Nobody wants to feel sick. I think we also have a large problem where part of our population doesn't really feel well. A large portion of our population is metabolically unwell, and they don't know what it feels like to actually really feel well and healthy. So how can we get that education out to people that it's not hitting yet?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Because it's very much hit our world, but it's not largely hit the American population. So how can we get that education out there and then get them to actually be demanding better for their foods? And then also... Real food tastes good. There's this weird notion out there that if you're eating healthy, you're eating rice cakes and boiled chicken with no seasoning and broccoli that's bland.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I have a rule in my house. If it doesn't taste good, I don't eat it. Like I'm not choking down things just for the health of it. Eating real fresh food. I think you probably have the joy of knowing what it's like to go to a farmer's market here in California and get really fresh food and make a meal from that at home. Nothing tastes better than that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And there's this notion that if we're going to take away people's ultra processed foods that we're taking away, you know, delicious, yummy tasting foods. I don't think any of those foods taste good. I tried Reese's Pieces last year. They used to be my favorite candy when I was younger. I spit them out. I thought they tasted absolutely disgusting.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So I think there needs to be this level of education around all of that and maybe slowly introducing people to healthier foods. Like how can we encourage them to want to do this for themselves and empower them to do that? Because people are largely addicted is essentially what I'm saying. And they don't know what it's like to eat real food and what it really tastes like.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
It was honestly uncomfortable to watch. Yeah. It was hard, too. I don't know.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Well, isn't it crazy that we don't teach children this? They should be learning this in kindergarten. I mean, I remember, did you ever watch that show Jamie Oliver when he went into our school system and he tried to clean up the food system?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
They didn't even know what they were. Yeah. I feel like we have our priorities so backwards. Like this should be the first thing that we're teaching kids. Put a community garden in all of those schools and have them gardening when they're in kindergarten or elementary school. Help them make the connection with the foods that they're putting in their bodies.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
There is literally nothing more important. Because without your health, you have nothing. You're not going to be here anymore without your health. You also don't or you're not going to have energy to show up for your life. Your body is not going to be functioning if you don't have your health. So why is this not our first priority and something that we teach kids at a young age?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And then, yeah, I mean, I see these photos circulating all over like Twitter and Instagram. All the schools across the globe, like Italy, Japan, these kids are getting real food, meals. And then you look at what our kids are getting, and it's all white foods. It's like fried chicken tenders and mashed potatoes and like maybe a couple green peas that the kids are probably throwing away anyways.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I heard this today on the Senate hearing, actually, where one of the senators said, if you go and you look at the trash cans of all these schools, they're largely throwing away all this food because it's all ultra processed garbage that they don't want to eat anyways. And then they're just going and buying snacks. And that's what they're eating for their meals.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
They're buying the lays and the sodas. And and that's what they're eating because they don't even want to eat the food that we're giving them. It's like prison food.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Well, first and foremost, we have to understand, at least right now, that our government is largely not taking care of this. So we have to be our own advocates. We have to be the CEOs of our own health. we have to be in control of what we can control. There's obviously a lot that we can't control. And if we're eating out, you know, it's fine.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Like I still eat out like a normal person and I try not to worry about it. But in your home, you completely control the groceries that come into your home. So I would say first and foremost, do your due diligence.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
If you live in a place where you have access to a farmer's market or, I mean, my mom lives in San Antonio and she has a farmer that she drives, she drives like 30 minutes to meet a guy that comes into town to bring all of his meat in, a rancher. And so find things like that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
There's so many communities now that have CSA boxes and farmer's markets or ways that you can contact your farmers and figure out how you can actually get food from the source. So I would say first and foremost, like, yes, absolutely. Just take it in your own hands.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So I've kind of been going back and forth on this all day. I'm not really entirely sure. I think I have a lot of faith that he is going to get in there because I ultimately believe that the light outshines the dark. And I think we're dealing with a lot of darkness right now with the pharmaceutical companies that are that have overpowered the conversation in the media for a very long time.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
If you have a kid and you're worried about what your kid is eating in school, start a group with your mom friends and start raising hell because I know there's a lot... I get messages almost every single day from moms in my messages saying, I am horrified by what my kid is being fed in school. How do we fix this? Start creating little coalitions with your mom friends and demand change.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, we said this earlier. The senators are saying that if they hear enough about a problem and they realize that this is what people want, they are going to be forced to change or they will be voted out. They do listen to their people. They just don't think that people care because nobody is really raising alarm about it until recently. So get involved in the places that you can.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
If you're a nurse, start a coalition and try to change the food system in the hospital. The hospitals are horrifying. I mean, people go there because they're sick, wounded, healing, and then they're getting these ultra-processed fake foods loaded with sugar, loaded with preservatives. So there's a lot that we can do.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And then I would say on a political level, start calling your senators, start emailing them, calling them. They listen to us. And the more that we raise alarm about this, the more they're going to realize that this is something that people actually really care about.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yes, I was getting it from personal level and then also online. I will say largely my community was actually pretty on board because I – it's funny that I sit here today and I'm considered to be somewhat political now because I spoke in front of the Senate and I've really aligned myself with Bobby. But largely before that, I completely stayed out of the conversations.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I never really wanted to have anything to do with politics. And in fact, I had my own kind of reckoning and come to Jesus moment because, I mean, I lived in L.A. for the last decade. I've been a voting Democrat my whole adult life. I mean, I voted for Obama. I voted for Biden the last election. So... I just I believe so much in this cause.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And I think enough people are waking up to it. I've also seen Twitter just absolutely exploding today with people just making all the connections with, oh, this senator was going hard after him because look at all these payments that they've been getting from X, Y, and Z pharmaceutical companies. So I think
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And I also was listening very intently to what Bobby was saying. And I was also finding that to be true. And I'm sorry that I'm not even sorry, but this is going to come across political. But this is what I believe to be true. Bobby very eloquently stated that. he felt like the party left him. He said, I don't recognize this party anymore.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
They're aligning themselves with war and they're aligning themselves with the corporations. And he's like, I feel like I haven't changed. And that's exactly my stance. None of my opinions have changed since I was voting for a Democrat. I'm anti-war. I'm anti-Big Pharma. I'm anti-large corporations meddling with us. And it feels as though the parties have shifted.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And I'm not even taking a full stance on the right either, to be quite honest. I really consider myself to be living in the middle.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
But the way that I see this is that it's so funny because I was literally having a conversation with girlfriends about this today because they're seeing all these people online right now being like they agree with everything that Bobby says, but they're so scared to align themselves. So they'll say they were saying things online. There's this trend right now, people being like.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
well, I don't eat seed oils, but not in like the RFK Jr. way. And I was laughing about it because I'm like, why are we so scared to step outside of party lines? Why can't we just say, hi, I'm a human individual that cares about individual things. I'm pro-choice. I care a lot about that. I also care a lot about the state of the health of this country right now.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And quite frankly, with the infertility rates and the way that they're going right now, we're not going to have to worry about abortion in 20 years if we don't fix this. In my opinion, this is the largest issue that we're dealing with right now. We're quite literally extincting ourselves. And if we don't figure it out and address it, we're not going to be here anymore to vote anyway.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So in my opinion, this is not about politics. And I hate that everybody's making this about politics. And I understand why they are. But you have to zoom out and start asking questions. why when Bobby Kennedy reached out to Kamala, she completely shut him down, didn't want to have a conversation about it, didn't want to ask any questions about the American health of the people.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
That to me right there was a full stop and made me think, huh, OK, so the Democratic Party, as at least right now, they don't care about the health of the American people. And that's the way I took it. And again, I'm sitting here as someone who considers myself moderate.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
People are definitely waking up to it, and I'm hoping that these senators are feeling the pressure. The last couple days I've been urging everyone that is in my community to call their senators and put pressure on them to vote him in.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I'm not like a Trump sympathizer or saying like I love everything that he does, but I largely love the way that this is going right now. And him saying that he wants to get to the root
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And I've gotten several messages back from people saying, oh, my God, they just said that their phone lines have been ringing off the hook all day and that this is all people are calling in about right now. People really care about this.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Oh yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Exactly. If there was a weird swap and all of a sudden the Democrats are the one that are that are fighting for Maha. Great. Then I guess I'm a Democrat. Like I have no alliance to any political party. I just have alliance to my core beliefs and what I think are most important. That's it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And I just don't like that we have turned this now because now what you're seeing, like, for example, when we saw in that Senate hearing today, Bobby is sitting there in front of them going, can we please, can we please put our side, our political agendas here? This is about our children. This is about the future of this country. This is about addressing the chronic diseases.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Oh, yeah. Just from the way that the senators were going after him, it just, I don't know, it kind of broke my heart because I've been following his work for probably about 10 years now.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
This is not about if you're left or you're right, because look, I'm sorry, if you're going to, if you get cancer, it doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican. So how can we not all come together on this and all decide? Cause we're,
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
We could be so much stronger and smarter and figure out things so much faster if we just stopped infighting about the political, well, you believe in this and we believe in that. It's like, okay, well, can we at least agree on this one thing and address that?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Same as you mentioned earlier, I went to Capitol Hill to the Senate for a nutrition roundtable that was hosted by Senator Ron Johnson, who was there today back in September.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
A second opinion on nutrition. It was a round table hosted by Senator Ron Johnson. Got it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Publicly or do you mean like in circles?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, that was a really surreal experience. It felt like everything I had been working hard for the last like 14 years was finally starting to get recognized. And, you know, let me say to the first seven years, I think I was doing real foodology. I didn't I wasn't making a dime. This was not it was in fact, it's I laugh about it now because it was never my intention to ever become a career.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Like I just was passionate about it. And then all of a sudden was like, oh, I'm putting a lot of time and effort into this. Like, how can I actually make this a job? So it was surreal because it felt like all of the work that I've been doing for the last 14 years was finally starting to get recognition. And it's not about me. It's just the message was getting recognition.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And actually, people were paying attention to it. It was so validating to hear our U.S. senator sit there on a public stage and say, why are we not asking these questions? Why are we not addressing this? Why? Why does Japan have a 3% obesity rate? And then we have a 74% obesity rate in American adults and then 50% in our children. So it was, it was a surreal.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And then I got out of it and yeah, I mean the videos went viral, which was amazing because I want people to understand what's happening with Monsanto and glyphosate. My phone was getting blown up. It was funny. I've had so many friends because, you know, I've been doing this for so long that, like I said, this wasn't even always my career. I just was in my circles.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I was kind of known as the like a little bit like crazy about nutrition kind of thing. Like people would always make fun of me for it where they just be like, oh, my God, Courtney's crazy. drinking your almond milk and like, you know, buying organic food and lecturing us about all of it or whatever.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And I was getting a lot of texts from people being like, wow, you have like stuck with this for a really long time and you're finally getting your message out there. And it's really cool to see. So it was, it was awesome.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah, it's awesome. We have a, we have a group chat going where we, we keep each other up to date on, on everything, which is really fun and cool. And we all kind of motivate each other and it's awesome. Yeah. So Will was a friend of mine. Max was a friend of mine. I met some amazing people. Um, I had the pleasure of meeting, uh, Michaela Peterson and Jordan Peterson, which was surreal.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I think Jordan is amazing. Um, and I love what Michaela is doing. Um, yeah, it was, it's cool. Cause then now it feels like, it's so funny because I feel like this work I've been doing alone for so long, like I've known people in the space, right? Like I've had a lot of friends in the space just from living in LA and doing podcasts and stuff like that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
It's absolutely surreal.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
But it, it largely felt like I was doing this kind of alone for a long time, just because a lot of the work we do is like, you know, videos and trying to get the word out and educating people in the, or my podcast is largely alone.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So it's cool to feel like you have this kind of tight knit group now that we're all, we all have the same goals in mind and we're all helping each other and propping each other up. And it's, Cool. It's fun.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So my specific presentation, my speech was all about glyphosate. This is something I'm incredibly passionate about, about the way that we're farming right now, big ag and these big agrochemical companies that own the majority of our food system right now, specifically Bayer. Bayer bought Monsanto back in 2018, and Monsanto is largely responsible for GMOs that have been put into our food system.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
That one's really funny. And it's interesting because we've gotten a little bit of pushback on that even too. And I'll explain all the ins and outs of that. Red 3 was just the lowest hanging fruit. It's been banned.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
It was Red 3. Okay, got it. Red 3. So there's been a lot of pushback from people saying, well, Red 40 is so much worse. It's so much more ubiquitous. It's in many more foods. Yes, all of that is true. Red three was just a very easy, low hanging fruit. They could immediately be like, OK, we know this. We've already banned this.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
They banned this 30 years ago in cosmetics because there's a link to cancer. Why it ever ended up in our food, I don't know. But this is a perfect example of the competence, if you want to say, of what's happening with our food policies right now. And so and I think it largely was passed through because Bernie Sanders had a Senate hearing with the FDA, and they sat down in front of him.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, he was grilling them. It was honestly amazing to watch.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
He showed up really strong, and it was really awesome, and it made me so happy. And they admitted. They said, we don't have the funding. We don't have the manpower. They admitted that we are largely behind in our research compared to other countries like the EU. And what I want to know is, well, why can't we just look at the research the EU has done?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, the EU, you have to there's a warning label on foods that contain red for you or any of these dyes if they're in the UK and places like Sweden. So I think there's just a low hanging fruit. That was an easy one for them to just be like, OK, we're going to we're going to ban that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, it should give everyone listening hope because it showed us that if we put enough pressure on them, that we can start getting this stuff recognized and actually addressed. So the hope is, is that now that they've done red three, that they're going to start looking at the other ones like red 40, yellow five, all these other dyes. I mean, those are also easy anyways.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
They serve no nutritional value whatsoever. They're simply there to make the foods look more appetizing. And they've admitted that they know that they're more addictive for kids because the kids love the bright colors. So that's an easy one. I think the harder ones are going to be the glyphosate and some of these preservatives and additives.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And they also own something called Roundup, which is also known as glyphosate, which is an herbicide that is widely being sprayed on our food system right now. Back in 2017, 16, they estimated that we were spraying 287 million pounds of glyphosate a year on our farmland. And it's projected that it's much higher than that now. So I presented to the Senate. I was incredibly concerned about this.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So I understand the criticisms because I'm seeing a lot of people saying, OK, well, even if you take out these dyes, it's still not great food for you. I totally agree with that. But I see it. I see a couple different angles here. One, I see it as like you said, I think it's great momentum. I think it also gets the message out there to people and it starts helping people connect to. Wait a second.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Our FDA has allowed this dye that we know has caused cancer. It's linked to cancer, and it's been banned in cosmetics for the last 30 years, and they've allowed this dye in our food. What else are they allowing into our food? So it's sparking these questions in people. And also, look, we're in this problem in the first place because we're not making – food anymore.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
We're making food like products that have all these additives and have these dyes. If we can start stripping all of that, I'm not inherently, I'm not against buying things in packages, but I buy things that are made with three, four ingredients that are made with real whole food ingredients. So how can we get to a place where
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
We can strip all of those packaged foods of all the things that we shouldn't even be eating there in the first place. So I just see this as the first step to hopefully many where we start questioning all this and going, oh, OK, so the dyes are not great. OK, well, what about the preservatives that are making the food not mold and sit on the shelf for three years without molding?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Maybe, you know, we should look at that. And I think it's just going to I think it's stepping stones, right? It's baby steps. We can't there's no way we're not going to sit
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I think I've heard of that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
We're seeing rates of cancer go through the roof. And then you look at what's happening in the courts right now with Monsanto Bayer. They're getting destroyed. They've paid over $2 billion to people that have gotten non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from using glyphosate, from using their products.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
It's nuts. And then you want to know how insidious this is and full circle it is? So these farmers are spraying glyphosate, which is owned by Bayer, on their farmlands. And then when they get cancer from it, they're given chemo drugs that are also created by the same company, Bayer.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
It's also wild because it sounds conspiratorial. I woke up to this around during COVID too, where I was learning about if they were doing trials on these vaccines and they would have like an adverse event, then they would just push that person out of the trials. And then they just wouldn't even count it as part of their data is what I was hearing.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And largely that's all pretty much everything that was considered conspiracy during COVID has all largely been proven as fact now. There's also a really interesting statistic that I think – You know, everyone holds science on this pedestal, right? Of like, it's almost become this like cult and this religion.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Well, we forget that on average, it takes about 17 years for the science to catch up to what we already logically know to be true. So when everybody's saying, oh, we need the data, we need the science to back it up. Well, sometimes we just don't have it yet because we haven't finished studying it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Or, you know, there's things that we logically know to be true and it takes 17 years for it to catch up to it. So we're not always going to have data right away, but I don't understand how we've gotten so far from this notion of common sense that now we need a study just to prove things that we oftentimes already know intuitively are as common sense. And look, I'm a huge proponent for science.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I'm not sitting here bashing science. We have to understand what the process is. And when you start learning things and you start diving into really complex things, for example, like how the human body works, you realize that largely we don't really actually know that much. And we're learning things all the time. And that's cool. And that's a beautiful thing.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And the beautiful thing about science is you learn one thing and then maybe 15 years later you learn, oh, we were actually not entirely correct about that. And we need to, you know, rewrite that and correct that. And so science is ever changing as we learn new things and we're constantly learning new things. And I think we forget that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah. So I'm the host of the Real Foodology podcast. I've been doing that for in September, it'll be five years. I'm so grateful for that. That's a large portion of my work because it's how I'm actually able to sit down. And I mean, the conversations like this are so important because it's hard to get everything you need to get out in a 60 second video on Instagram, you know?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Dwayne Lee Johnson. Yes. So that was a really famous case because I believe he was the first one that put it on the map. He set the precedence for the rest of it. And Bobby was a part of that litigation team. And so I've been following his work for a long time.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And so I love to sit down and talk about all the ins and outs and the nuances of everything so people can really understand where you're coming from and also understand what you're talking about. Um, Instagram is also a place where I, I mean, I just have fun.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I love to, it's a great place to get information out to people, to get people involved, to get people excited about the movement, get them calling their senators. So it's largely what I'm doing. And I'm also working on a book right now. I'm currently writing my book proposal right now.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this, but I'll say it anyways. It's not really giving anything away, but essentially I'm, I'm largely talking about what I do every day on my Instagram, but, but telling the full picture. So I want people to understand what happened, how we got to this place, what the policies look like now versus like how we need to shift.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And also just knowing all of this and what we need to change, how can you get involved and actually help be a part of the change and just how you can navigate all of this.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah, exactly. And just the actual history of, you know, big tobacco buying big food in 1985 and what happened with Monsanto, just kind of telling the whole, painting the whole picture of how we got to this place with our food system.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And I can see how much he cares about the American people and his whole message and what he's been trying to get out to people is these corporations are poisoning us and our government. And we have policies in place that are allowing these corporations to get away with it. And he's just sitting up here now in front of the American people saying, I want to change this.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah, it's exciting. It's an exciting time. It's cool. I don't know how this will land for people, but I found this super interesting. For the first time, the White House press secretary is opening up their doors to podcasters and content creators. I saw that. I thought it was amazing. I saw all these comments of people saying, oh, great.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Now, I don't know, everybody's saying that it's just going to make the information worse. But in my opinion, I'm like, we've already been... We've been lied to so much by our media companies. I'm shocked that anyone even believes them anymore. And so we're kind of forced to now have other people tell the truth of what actually is happening. So I thought it was cool and I thought it was a big win.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah, for sure. Well, and you have to think about it, too. Like a lot of these people that, I mean, let's just say CNN for the sake of it. I'm not pinpointing them because they're all doing this. But, you know, they're all getting their funding from Big Pharma. They're largely getting their funding. All these large media companies are getting a lot of funding from Big Pharma. Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
of course they're not going to be able to tell the full truth. So we need to get other people in there that are unbiased, that are not getting paid by any company to say anything other than just simply what the facts are and what the truth is.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
No, I didn't see this.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Who was it?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Of course it was.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
We need to get these corporations out of the way so that we can actually have a true gold standard for real science, not science that's being paid for by these companies that have vested interest. And also so that we can get their vested interest out and stop poisoning our Americans. Because right now we're more concerned about profit than we are about the health of our human population.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And then I'm sure everyone listening has seen this, but the whole compilation of the brought to you by Pfizer, brought to you by Pfizer.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Oh, yeah. All of them. That's what I'm saying. It's not just CNN. I just was using them. Yeah, they're all doing it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
They're all taking funding.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Which actually had nothing to do with him, by the way.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yes. Oh, my gosh. A lot. All sorts of stuff.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I know how you did that. I was vegetarian for five and I tried to dabble in the world, but I could never fully. Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And it's crazy. Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I do, yeah. She grew up on a farm. I don't know her personally.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Oh, that makes me feel sick.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, so there's a couple of really easy ones depending on your budget, but I would say get a really good air filter. I have an air filter in every room in my house. And if you're lucky to do that, at least just get one really good one. I love Jasper. They're a little bit more expensive. There's also another brand called Air Doctor that I love. There's a lot of great ones out there.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Those are just the ones I've looked into. So do your own research. Find a really good air filter. The EPA is also saying that our indoor air is even more toxic than our outdoor air. And it's a combination of, you know, cooking, you're doing candles, burning candles, the off-gassing of all your furniture. And then on top of that, you think about how many hours a day you spend in your house, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So get a good air filter. Make sure that it's a good one. Um, and hopefully you can invest in one that will last you a long time. Um, air or sorry, water filter is also a really good one. Water quality is a huge one that we need to be worried about. There's so much of pesticides are getting in there, heavy metals, pharmaceutical drugs, everything.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So fluoride, fluoride, which hopefully Bobby's going to address if we get them in there. But yeah, there's a lot of concern with that too. Um, and then also, you know, I tell people like, look, We need to control what we can control, but don't live in fear because if you're living in fear and anxiety, that's also not going to serve you. And also, we're here to live. We're here to live our lives.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So do the things that you can control and then trust that you're doing the best that you can. Our bodies are also really resilient. And then get a sauna if you can afford it. If you can't afford a sauna, draw a really hot bath. Put Epsom salts in there. Make it to where you're going to get a good sweat and do that a couple times a week. Or honestly, just exercise every day.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Because it gets your lymphatic system moving. Your lymphatic system is like the sewage system of your body. It's going to sweat out. You're going to sweat out all the toxins, get them out. So just moving your body and sweating as much as you can, just making sure that you can get rid of all that stuff that we're being exposed to.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And then try not to worry about it and just trust that you're doing the best that you can. And we're all in this together, you know.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Exactly.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Exactly. Exactly. I think people think that I like live in a bubble and I obsess about this. I honestly like some of my friends are shocked at how chill I am about it. I think it's just because it's become such a part of my life. Like I filter my water. I eat organic food. Like I have these little habits in place that I've been doing for so long. And then I just try not to worry about it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I mean, I just did a sauna last night and I feel great. Like just I try to do those things to mitigate the exposures because we're all going to be exposed whether we like it or not. And so just try not to stress about it. Do the best you can, you know, and then live your life.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah. So the Real Foodology podcast, it's on all major podcast platforms. I'm the most active on Instagram, which is also just Real Foodology. I'm becoming more active on X, Twitter, whatever you want to call it. And I'm also on TikTok. But I wasn't that worried about it being banned because I'm not as active on it. But I'm happy that it wasn't banned. It's great that it's still there.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So I'm also on TikTok and everything across the board is Real Foodology.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah, thank you so much.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
I know, I was going to say the same thing. That's like up there. Number one, yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah, I mean, it's wild. I never thought I would find myself here. I mean, I was in school. So in 2011, I was getting my master's of science in nutrition. And around that time, I was finding the works of people like Vani Hari. We just brought her up, the food babe, Dr. Mark Hyman, Michael Pollan.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
So this morning was a Senate hearing confirmation for RFK Jr. And that was, did you watch it?
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And they were really trying to sound the alarm back then about what was happening with our food system. But largely, it was being ignored, especially by our media and by our So I got very involved in it back then because I felt like the American people needed to know what was happening with their food. You know, we were blindly being poisoned.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah, it's interesting. The younger generation, I think, are really feeling pretty pissed off about this because they feel like the boomers have just poisoned all of us and allowed it to happen and then lied to us about it. Yeah. That's what I'm picking up on on TikTok.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
And even though when you feel like you're maybe making the right choices and making healthy choices, if you don't know how to navigate all this, like chances are you may not be. So I was so passionate about this. And then fast forward, I just ended up in this Maha movement. But I've been doing this for about 15 years now. Like this isn't a trend thing that I've just been jumping onto.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Oh, that's right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
He's been, yeah. He's been coming out. He's been interesting, yeah.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Stop Letting Your MRI Define You—The Truth About Pain & Healing | Dr. Danny Shapiro
Join the club.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Stop Letting Your MRI Define You—The Truth About Pain & Healing | Dr. Danny Shapiro
Yeah, yeah.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Stop Letting Your MRI Define You—The Truth About Pain & Healing | Dr. Danny Shapiro
Are you looking to reclaim your health? Tune into the Real Foodology podcast hosted by me, Courtney Swan, integrative nutritionist and real food activist. I'm on a mission to transform our food system by challenging the corrupt practices that undermine our health and replace them with choices that genuinely support our wellbeing. Listen to Real Foodology podcast on your favorite podcast app.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Stop Letting Your MRI Define You—The Truth About Pain & Healing | Dr. Danny Shapiro
New episodes every Tuesday.
The Dr. Tyna Show
The Superfood for Hormones, Energy & Aging—Why Algae Changes Everything | ENERGYBits
Exactly.
The Dr. Tyna Show
The Superfood for Hormones, Energy & Aging—Why Algae Changes Everything | ENERGYBits
Are you looking to reclaim your health? Tune into the Real Foodology podcast hosted by me, Courtney Swan, integrative nutritionist and real food activist. I'm on a mission to transform our food system by challenging the corrupt practices that undermine our health and replace them with choices that genuinely support our wellbeing. Listen to Real Foodology podcast on your favorite podcast app.
The Dr. Tyna Show
The Superfood for Hormones, Energy & Aging—Why Algae Changes Everything | ENERGYBits
New episodes every Tuesday.
The Dr. Tyna Show
GLP1s and Dementia: What the Latest Science Shows | Quick + Dirty
Are you looking to reclaim your health? Tune into the Real Foodology podcast hosted by me, Courtney Swan, integrative nutritionist and real food activist. I'm on a mission to transform our food system by challenging the corrupt practices that undermine our health and replace them with choices that genuinely support our wellbeing. Listen to Real Foodology podcast on your favorite podcast app.
The Dr. Tyna Show
GLP1s and Dementia: What the Latest Science Shows | Quick + Dirty
New episodes every Tuesday.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Tirzepatide + Metabolic Health: What the Latest Study Really Shows | Solo
Are you looking to reclaim your health? Tune into the Real Foodology podcast hosted by me, Courtney Swan, integrative nutritionist and real food activist. I'm on a mission to transform our food system by challenging the corrupt practices that undermine our health and replace them with choices that genuinely support our wellbeing. Listen to Real Foodology podcast on your favorite podcast app.
The Dr. Tyna Show
Tirzepatide + Metabolic Health: What the Latest Study Really Shows | Solo
New episodes every Tuesday.