Dhru Purohit Show
Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan
Wed, 05 Feb 2025
This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Bon Charge, and Momentous. Regardless of your political stance, the conversation about changing the food system and removing toxins from our environment took center stage in the last presidential election and continues to be a key issue in today’s political climate. What’s behind the Make America Healthy Again movement, and what are the hopes of those fighting behind the scenes? Today’s guest gives us an inside look and reminds us why these conversations matter—no matter our beliefs. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with food activist and nutritionist Courtney Swan. Courtney shares her journey into food activism, the pivotal moments that shaped her path, and her key takeaways from the Senate confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She also discusses why the Make America Healthy Again movement has gained national attention and offers insights on the current political landscape, and highlights the power of nuanced conversations and advocacy-driven solutions. Courtney Swan, MS, Integrative Nutritionist, is a passionate food activist working to fix America’s broken food system. As the host of the popular health and wellness podcast Realfoodology, she challenges misconceptions about nutrition, our food sources, sustainability, food policy, healthy living, and more. In this episode, Dhru and Courtney dive into: Courtney's journey as a food activist (1:00) RFK's confirmation hearing and Courtney's thoughts (4:10) How the younger generation views chronic disease and politics (14:31) Why the MAHA movement is getting national attention (19:00) Courtney's Red Pill moment (21:17) The biggest food culprits—ultra-processed foods (26:35) The impact of toxins and plastics on our health (31:54) Solutions through advocacy (40:28) Courtney's comments on the current political stances (44:07) Second Opinion On Nutrition Event (51:04) Banning of Red No. 3 (54:30) The truth about drug development research and peer review (59:34) Courtney’s latest projects and what’s next (01:07:39) Actionable takeaways (01:15:03) Also mentioned in this episode: Documenting Hope site John Abramson’s book - Sickening Article on Fred Kummerow’s research Air and Water filters For more on Courtney, follow her on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and her Website. This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Bon Charge, and Momentous. To get 20% off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru today. Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the purest form of creatine made by and used by the best. Go to livemomentous.com and enter promo code DHRU to get 20% off any order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is Courtney Swan's journey into food activism?
Courtney, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much for having me.
We're recording this on a kind of a pretty important day. Do you want to tell our audience what's happening today?
Chapter 2: What happened during RFK Jr.'s Senate confirmation hearing?
So this morning was a Senate hearing confirmation for RFK Jr. And that was, did you watch it?
I watched, I kind of caught a little bit late because I had something in the morning, but I came in at a very contentious moment. It got pretty contentious with a few senators.
It was honestly uncomfortable to watch. Yeah. It was hard, too. I don't know.
I felt like he handled himself extremely well.
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.
Yeah, talk about it and talk about yourself in the context of it. If some people know you've been part of the Maha movement, you've been raising awareness, you went to Capitol Hill, you've Long before that, you've been a food advocate for a long time, helping people understand what's really in our food, sounding the alarm, why it needs to be a national conversation.
But bring us up until this point. What's your role and how have you been involved with this movement? And what do you think about everything that's going on?
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.
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.
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Chapter 3: How does the younger generation view chronic disease?
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.
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...
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.
You know, if you look at the history of Bobby, it's like for a long time, he was a darling of the left because he was going after all these companies that were polluting the environment, the Hudson River that were sort of using corporate capture as a way to skirt around regulation. And then, you know, we've gone through this big period where largely, you know, we've had this sort of
legacy media is brought to you by Pfizer, brought to you by Merck, brought to you by all the pharmaceuticals. And they have completely one-sided the conversation. Anybody who's honest about his work or even he himself, sure, there might be some things that He hasn't gotten right fully, but it was an important part of the conversation or starting it.
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Chapter 4: Why is the Make America Healthy Again movement gaining attention?
But the idea that we can't even have this conversation about the role of pharmaceutical companies and health and the role of big pharma and how it's shutting down so many things that were labeled as conspiracies later to found out as true, it's kind of nuts.
Yeah.
It's really nuts. Okay. So give me your hot take on what else you felt from today's hearing and what's your gut instinct? Is it going to be confirmed? Is he not going to be confirmed?
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.
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
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.
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.
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Chapter 5: What are the biggest food culprits affecting our health?
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.
Well, tell us what it was like. I mean, some of the videos from that have gone viral. We'll link to them in the show notes. You put them on your YouTube page and everything.
It's absolutely surreal.
What were you talking about?
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.
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Chapter 6: How do toxins and plastics impact our health?
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.
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.
Nuts.
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.
Wow. Well, the janitor, I looked it up for your reference, Dwayne Lee Johnson.
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.
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.
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.
And it's crazy. Yeah.
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Chapter 7: What solutions can we advocate for in the food system?
Yeah. And I think, you know, when you look at all these senators that are taking money from pharmaceutical companies, I would say that that's one piece of it. Another piece of it is just the general group think that you will get ostracized from this group if you go against it. And listen, that happens on the left. That happens on the right. That's the nature. Yeah. of politics that are there.
But it's so tough in this moment when I think literally one of the quotes from him from the hearing today was like, this isn't a Republican issue. This isn't a Democrat issue. This is just something that we can, we should all just care about. And it's made for interesting bedfellows. You know, I have so many of my friends, regardless of their views on politics, especially the younger you get.
I think the older you get, it's a little bit different. We'll talk about that in a second. But no matter how they think about so many things, they largely feel very hopeful and excited about the Maha movement and the fact that there are people that are driving awareness because so many of them are dealing with all sorts of stuff.
They're dealing with, I can't tell you how many friends I have that are dealing with some version of infertility.
I know, I was going to say the same thing. That's like up there. Number one, yeah.
Right. And that's not putting it all on pharmaceutical companies. That's even just environmental toxins, xenoestrogens, microplastics, a whole host of things. For sure, there is the general movement that we have to acknowledge that, you know, women and couples are having babies later on. Yeah. Right. That plays a role into that component too. Yeah.
But something else is going on in the background and we don't fully understand the story. So infertility, autoimmune, right? I, I myself, I haven't even talked about this in the podcast this that much, but last year I went in for an MRI, just like, like a standard sort of thing, like a whole body MRI scan.
Actually it was two years ago and some stuff showed up and I actually had, it was with Pernuvo. I'm not affiliated with them, but we had the CEO on the podcast to talk about it. I had two little tiny brain lesions show up for me and we couldn't tell at the time if they were inflamed or not because the scan was, without contrast. So you don't see if they're inflamed, if they're not inflamed.
So talk to a bunch of functional medicine doctors that I work with. And they were like, Hey, pay attention to this, take a look at it, you know, monitor. So I was monitoring it. And I did some more scans later on. And some information came back that I'm working with a great doctor here, you know, knock on wood, I'm healthy.
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Chapter 8: What are the actionable takeaways from this episode?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Well, we'll try to get out of this episode ASAP. And I'm sure by the time this episode gets out, we'll know if he was confirmed or not. So let's see what happens at that time. But I think that there's something that's important along with it is that, you know, this movement's not going to stop of people caring about it, right?
And it might have different voices that are at the helm, but whoever that voice is at the helm, if it doesn't happen with them, it's going to happen with somebody else. Like you cannot put this movement back in the bag, right?
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.
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