The Dr. Hyman Show
Ultra-Processed Food Is the New Tobacco—How Big Food Manipulates Science, Policy, & Your Cravings | Michael Pollan
Wed, 05 Mar 2025
The modern food industry is built for profit, not health. Ultra-processed foods dominate grocery shelves, fueling the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease. But how did we get here? And what can we do to fix it? In this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, I sit down with Michael Pollan, award-winning journalist and food activist, to break down the hidden forces shaping our food system and the urgent need for change. In this powerful conversation, you’ll discover: How a handful of corporations control our entire food supply—and why that’s a problem. The shocking truth about ultra-processed foods and how they’re engineered to keep you hooked. Why our food system collapsed during the pandemic and what it revealed about its fragility. How food companies quietly buy up health brands and use misleading labels to keep consumers in the dark. The role of policy and lobbying in keeping unhealthy food cheap and widely available. Make sure to tune in—this is a conversation every American needs to hear. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal This episode is brought to you by Seed, Sunlighten, Big Bold Health, PerfectAmino, and AirDoctor. Seed is offering my community 25% off to try DS-01® for themselves. Visit seed.com/hyman and use code 25HYMAN for 25% off your first month of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic. Visit sunlighten.com and save up to $1400 on your purchase with code HYMAN. Try Big Bold Health's HTB Rejuvenate and get 25% off by going to bigboldhealth.com and use code DRMARK25 at checkout. Get pure essential amino acids today. Go to bodyhealth.com and use HYMAN20 to get 20% off your first order. Get cleaner air. Right now, you can get up to $300 off at airdoctorpro.com/drhyman.
Chapter 1: What is the impact of ultra-processed food on health?
coming up on this episode of the dr hyman show ultra processed food i think is yeah it's it's a scourge if you go to latin america or south america where these food companies don't exert as much domestic power you'll find some powerful labels i mean skulls and crossbones and stop signs all right other countries are starting to deal with it unfortunately we haven't yet
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Chapter 2: How has the food system changed since the pandemic?
And the public health authorities in these towns and Waterloo, Iowa is the one we focused on. We're trying to like close them down for a while to clean them up and put some protocols in place.
And rather than do that, the president of Tyson writes this letter asking the president of the United States, who was Donald Trump at the time, to invoke the Defense Production Act to force open their production lines. And lo and behold, two or three days later, the president does it. The president writes an executive, signs an executive order written or drafted by Tyson and
opening up their production lines. And the reason we have antitrust laws in this country is to avoid concentrations of power. It's not just to protect consumers from price gouging. It's to protect the republic from overly powerful interests. And if you ever needed an example that we had gone too far in that direction, when you can have a company force the president's hand, and
And the Defense Production Act, you should understand, was something passed in the 50s, giving the president the power to force a company to do things in the public interest that they don't want to do. Like, say, a car company should start making tanks because we're in wartime or planes.
And basically, this was a perversion of the act because it was allowing the company to do exactly what it wanted to do. but using the federal power to do it. So all of this told us that the food system had reached a point of crisis in terms of concentration, and that was a reason to reopen the story and take another look at the food system.
Yeah, and most people don't realize that the food industry is the biggest industry on the planet. I think it's $16 or $17 trillion a year because everybody eats. and that it's controlled by just a few dozen CEOs. When you look at the seed companies, there used to be dozens and dozens of them. Now there's like five or so, the fertilizer companies.
Yeah, or meat. There are four companies slaughter all the beef. Look at infant formula. Remember that crisis? There are only two companies that sell all the infant formula. And when one of them had a contamination problem on their production lines, Mothers couldn't get formula. So if you had 20 companies or 10 companies, a screw up at one of them would not have affected everybody. But.
So it's the old adage, we're putting all our eggs in one basket and that's never a good idea.
And also they're insidious in how they work because they work to kind of gobble up other companies that seem to have a halo of health. So a lot of the health brands that you're having are actually bought by these big food companies.
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Chapter 3: What problems arise from food industry consolidation?
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One positive change since 2008 is like allies in Washington. And I'm sure you've had this experience too. There's a group of people in the House and now a couple in the Senate who are committed to food issues. We spent a lot of time with Cory Booker making the film.
And here is a person who was an urban legislator and a mayor who gets to Congress and decides to use his political capital to get on the Ag Committee, the Agriculture Committee. That is not a place that ambitious urban legislators go. But he understands that the health of his constituents in New Jersey depends on what's going on on the farm.
And if we're growing monocultures of corn and soy, his constituents are going to be eating ultra-processed food. And that until you change agricultural policies, you're not going to have an impact on nutrition and the issues we care about. And yeah, I mean, labels are really important and better information is really important. But in the end, food choice is driven in large part by price.
And the unhealthiest calories are the cheapest calories in our food system. And that is what has to change. And that won't change until you have policy. So I think building, you know, a caucus of people who care John Tester is another one who has – he's a farmer himself, an organic farmer in Montana. Very popular despite the fact he's in a – Yeah, he is a great guy. And he gets it.
He understands this industry. He sees what they're doing to farmers. And, you know, I also think the Democrats have to do a better job talking to farmers. I mean, they've completely lost that register, that vocabulary. And rural America has turned against Democrats. Yeah, it's true. We forget that Obama won Iowa twice. That is unimaginable today. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: How do food companies manipulate consumer perceptions?
That's right. Same thing with my family. I always started cooking with my kids, brought them in the kitchen. Even when they were making a mess, I didn't care. And there was that, Molly Katz had that great kids cookbook, Pretend Soup. And it was like all these really healthy recipes, but they're kind of kid friendly and they're delicious and they're fun. And so.
You know, I think, you know, it's an incredible way to bring families together and to create health. I was in this movie, Fed Up, where we went to South Carolina, in Easley, South Carolina. And I was with this family of five that lived in a trailer. They were on food stamps and disability. The father was on dialysis at 42 from kidney failure from diabetes.
The mother was 100-plus pounds overweight. The 16-year-old son was almost diabetic and 50% body fat. He should be 10% at that age. And they didn't have a single fresh food in their house. And they had only packaged box package frozen foods. And I didn't even know what they're eating. And I showed them what they're eating. I didn't give them a lecture on how to, you know, eat healthy.
But I said, like, do you know how to cook? Let's, let's make a meal together. And I basically got the guide from the environmental working group, EWG, called Good Food on a Tight Budget. It's good for you, good for your wallet, good for the planet. And I showed them how to peel garlic, how to stir fry, how to make turkey chili, how to make simple salad dressing, how to make a salad.
And they were shocked and they loved the food. And then they were like, one kid goes, Dr. Hyman, do you do this with your family every night? I'm like, yeah, that's what we do. And then they ended up doing it. They didn't have a cutting board or knife. I mean, I was trying to cut like sweet potatoes into pieces with a butter knife. It was not that easy. So I bought him a cutting board.
I bought him knives on my way home on the plane from Amazon, sent to their house. And I gave him a cookbook and I said, you can try it. Here you go.
And they did it, and the father lost 50 pounds, got a new kidney, the mother lost 100 pounds, the son lost 50, regained it, and ended up going to work in Bojangles, which is like a fast food chain down in the south, because there's no other place to work for these kids. It was one of the worst food deserts in America.
And, and I was like, wow, we're basically just one meal away from solving our health crisis. Like one. And I, and, and the son then, you know, gained the weight back, but then he called me and I helped him and he lost 132 pounds and ended up asking me for a letter of recommendation for medical school. So it gave me, it gave me such hope that like, if
You know, we can get out there in the community with each other, helping and supporting each other. It works. You know, I did this with the church and Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. We did it with 15,000 people, and they lost a quarter million pounds in a year by doing it together. I did this in Cleveland Clinic, you know, at South Point Hospital, which is mostly African-American community.
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