In a recent interview, activist and former food and Pharma industry employee Calley Means joined Russell Brand to discuss the dangers of the new obesity drug, Ozempic. Calley, who worked for Coca-Cola and other large food and beverage companies, has since become a whistleblower on the ways in which these companies rig the system to maintain profits and keep consumers unhealthy.
During the interview, Calley discussed how the American Academy of Pediatrics, which sets guidelines for Pediatrics in the United States, is actually a wholly owned subsidiary of Pharma, with the majority of its funding coming from Pharma. Last week, the Academy recommended that every obese and overweight person in the country over the age of 12 be given Ozempic, a lifetime injection with serious and unknown metabolic effects if patients go off the drug. This is a huge scandal, as 45% of American teenagers are currently obese or overweight due to a rigged food system.
Calley argues that obesity is not the problem but a symptom of a larger issue. Systematically, the food system puts poisonous, processed foods into children’s bodies, which damages their cells and leads to disease. Even if Ozempic were to work perfectly, which it does not, it would not solve the problem. Patients would still be eating poisonous food, and would not be living optimal lives.
Furthermore, Calley argues that the food and Pharma industries are devoted to creating new clients, patients, and consumers for their products. They do this through lobbying, controlling the stories around food and nutrition, and funding studies that complicate the issue. For example, processed food companies contribute 11 times more funding to nutritional research in the United States than the National Institute of Health (NIH). By funding thousands of studies, these companies have complicated the issue and created mass confusion. Elite research institutions (Harvard, et al.) are still putting out studies questioning whether sugar causes obesity.
Calley’s sister (Dr Casey), an elite surgeon who trained at Stanford, experienced an out-of-body experience when she was performing surgery on a patient one day. The patient had inflammation and she was doing a sinusitis operation, cutting out their sinus, and she realised she did not know why that person had inflammation because she was only trained in medical school on how to cut that out and how to prescribe drugs. She realized that over 80 per cent of all the elite med schools in the USA (Stanford, Harvard, et al.) do not teach one nutrition class to doctors and that when you trace the funding more than 50 per cent of medical school funding touches Pharma in some way. Doctors spend almost every moment in medical school learning pharmacology; they do not have any awareness or understanding or curiosity about the interconnectivity of our body and the miraculousness of Life. The medical system is incentivized to stand and wait for people to get sick, so she quit and has been on the warpath ever since.
The medical system is complicit, as they are not ringing alarm bells about childhood diabetes, obesity, and other diseases. This is because they profit from interventions for sick patients. The most prescribed drug in the country is a mental health medication, and 25% of the United States is on this medication. Additionally, over 40% of men over 40 in the US are on a Statin to prevent heart disease. However, all of the conditions mentioned by Calley – cancer, diabetes, and heart disease – are getting worse, even as trillions of dollars are spent treating them.
The foundational reason for these diseases is food.
And, as Calley states, “we’re being gaslighted” about the issue.
If processed foods were banned overnight and people ate healthy food instead, what would the difference be to diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer?
Calley argues that the cost of healthy food for children would be much cheaper than the trillions of dollars being spent on drugs and treatments for the illnesses caused by processed food and that many of the conditions affecting us could be reversed by removing the toxins in our processed foods.
Calley’s argument is an important one, as it sheds light on the ways in which large corporations are working to maintain their profits at the expense of consumers’ health. It is up to consumers to demand change and push for a more transparent, healthy food system.
Watch the interview here:
