Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / What's the deal with organic food?

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What's the deal with organic food? · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So Perry, today we're talking about organic food and I
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: want to tell you something that's really great and special
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: about my life in Rhode Island. Rhode Island's like the
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: best place to live and one of the really great
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: things about it is there is a really amazing organic
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: farm down in Warren. For those of you who live
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: in Rhode Island, it's called Long Lane Farm and they
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: have this amazing farm stand and the produce is like
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: just spectacular. They have the greatest tomatoes. They have these
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: amazing salad greens. And it's like during the summer, it's
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: just this incredible delight of amazing produce that we get
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: all the time.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: It sounds great.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: It's so great.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: It is organic though, but they wash it and so on.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: And the other day, a thing that I really like
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to eat is what I call a big salad. That's
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: how I refer to it. I put it in a
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: mixing bowl and I have a lot of salad greens
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and chicken and like guacamole and maybe some hummus and
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: like some other roasted vegetables and some tomatoes. And I
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: like mix it all up and it's like really big
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: and it's a big salad. And the other day I'm
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: eating it and I'm like, huh?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Oh no.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: There's something like a little crunchier than I expected in this.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Oh no.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: And it's cricket.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It's a cricket head. Okay.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: And- That begs the question, Emily.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Half of the cricket was still in the bowl and
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: half of the cricket was in my mouth. And, you know,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: some people would have stopped eating the salad. But honestly,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I just took the cricket out of the salad and
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I finished it because it was so delicious.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I think that's, first of all, good protein. Yes, exactly.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: People eat insects.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Someday we'll all be eating insects.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I ate crickets in Mexico with my wife. It was
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: like a local delicacy. They were fried and salty and
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: tasted like bacon bits. So I think it's a good option, actually.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that organic produce is great. It
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: contains extra protein and crickets are crunchy.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: I'm Emily Oster.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I'm an economist and a data expert.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: It's Thursday, October 22nd, 2026, and this is Wellness Actually.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: information nowadays from every source imaginable. And some of it?
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And some of it is, well, actually bullshit. Fortunately, we're
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: both people who know how to read studies, how to
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: parse the data, and can tell you what's worth thinking
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: about and what you can safely ignore.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: But before we dig in, a note that this podcast
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: is for educational purposes and should not be construed as
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: medical advice. We don't know your unique situation, so talk
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: to your doctor for personal health decisions.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: This week, we're asking, what's the deal with organic food?
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Perry and I will give the official smasher pass, and
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: then we'll get to your question of the week. But first,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: let's do the health news roundup after the break. And
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: now for the health news of the week. Perry, there
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: is a new article saying that doctors are writing mean
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: things in my medical records. Explain yourself. Oh, gosh.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: It's true, everyone. It's true. We write horrible things about you.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: The context here is that the 21st Century Cures Act
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: made it way easier for patients to access their medical records,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: like read their notes. Of course, you could always do this,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: but it used to be that you had to go
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: to the medical records office at the hospital and file something,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: sometimes pay money, and it would take months to get
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: your records back. And it was a whole process. But
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: now you basically get to see everything as soon as
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: it comes up. And to be honest, doctors... don't 100%
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: love this, in particular when it comes to certain lab
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: tests or pathology results where you're calling us about it
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: before we've even had a chance to look at it
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: and think through it and process it. And so there
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: are some issues with this. But one of the issues
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: that this article, which appears in JAMA Network Open, by
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: the way, this comes to us from MedPage Today, Christina Fiore,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: who's actually one of my favorite medical science writers, was
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: writing about this. But the study in JAMA Network Open interviewed,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: surveyed 500 adults, and 18% of them reported seeing disrespectful
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: or judgmental language in their medical records. And the vast
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: majority thought that that type of language would lead to
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: worse care. You know, we do write that... Doctors still
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: don't have it in their heads that their patients are
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: going to read every single thing they write, particularly older
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: doctors like me. And so I think it's very, it's quite,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: this doesn't surprise me, basically. Doctors will write things in
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: the chart like, you know, the patient is an unreliable historian,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: which is, you know, our euphemism for like, we don't
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: believe what this guy is telling.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Us, right?
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: The patient denies drug use despite you're in toxicology showing cocaine, right?
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Like there's things that we'll put in there that are
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: a little bit snarky. I don't think it's entirely deliberate,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: but you know, doctors are humans and have biases. And
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: I actually think we, I actually believe that like language
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: does have power and you can color other doctors' perceptions
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: by the way you write notes and things like that.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: But I do have to say that as doctors have
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: become aware of this, the notes have gotten much more sanitized.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: And by and large, that's good. But I do miss
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: some of the best all-time notes. And I'm going to
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: give you two great examples. First of all, the best
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: notes in the entire hospital are the psych consults. Because
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: psych really writes. Psychiatrists are literary people. They've read their Freud.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: And they write these long, gorgeous notes about their interviews
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: with patients who are having some kind of psychotic break.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: And the one that I remember, I'll never forget, is
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: this long note. And the psychiatrist writes, you know, As
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: the patient was describing, you know, how much he did
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: not appreciate the food that was being served to him
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: in the hospital, he started casually masturbating. And it just
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: moves up, you know, because it's a psychiatrist. They just
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: document everything.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: It's amazing. The other one I loved was there was
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: a patient and how do I say this without violating HIPAA?
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Let me think for a second.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: She had... Good.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: Thing we can edit this podcast.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, it's going to be fine. It's going
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: to be fine. Her first name was an emotion, a
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: positive emotion. I'm not going to tell you what that
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: positive emotion was. And my attending at the time I
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: was in training, she was having a tough time in
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: the hospital. And his opening line was like, this is
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: a 67-year-old woman with an ironic first name who presents
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: with shortness of breath, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like....
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Those little things, I don't know.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the humanity in a good medical note like that.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I can only imagine what my medical notes during pregnancy were.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: It was like this crazy bitch.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: It's like, why does she have so many questions?
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: We try to avoid crazy bitch that we say.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: But I was a lot.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: So, you know.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: You know, the patient seems quite anxious about multiple aspects
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: of her care.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: It has a lot of questions. Okay.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Emily says, We might now have an answer to the
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: age old question that any couple trying to conceive, trying
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: to get pregnant is asking, which is how long should
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: the man euphemistically hold off before attempting conception? And I
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: had heard back in the day, two to seven days.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: That's what I heard. What do we know now?
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: So people ask about this all the time. And the
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: question is usually, you know, like in order to get pregnant,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: you need to have sex right around ovulation. There's kind
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: of a two, it was like a sort of six
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: day total window, but it's kind of two days of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the month that are really like, you really want to
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: hit it on those days because that's the high end day.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: And so People are sometimes told you should only have
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: sex every other day because when you store up the sperm,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: there's like more of them or they're better or something.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit ambiguous, like what exactly you think
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: is happening as you store the sperm for longer. But
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: that's the canonical piece of advice. Yeah. Of course, this
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: is actually a little complicated because if you're not exactly
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: sure when ovulation is, you really should just sort of
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: be having sex every day. So now you're trading off
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: like hitting the day of ovulation against this like arbitrary
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: sperm storage planning. Good news. There's a new meta-analysis in
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the Proceedings of the Royal Academy B, which is a
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: journal that, yes... There's also an A. They took a
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: bunch of studies with a large number of men. And
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I would say on the whole, the evidence suggests that
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: actually it's better to have more ejaculation than less, that
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: actually sperm has sort of slightly less DNA damage and
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: better motility if it's fresher, I guess.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Makes sense.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: And so, but more or less, like I read these
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: as relatively small. And so for my taste, I would
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: say less abstinence and more of an effort to hit
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: the days of ovulation if you're attempting pregnancy. Yeah.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: So daily in this study seem to be associated with
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: a lower sperm count, like less, you're right. Sure, because you.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Don't like build them up, but they're better.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: But they're better, higher quality. But they're better.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: And you have so many sperm, right? It's not like X.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: You're putting out a lot of sperm.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I would trade off for the better sperm.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Of course, there's an interesting other study that one could do,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: which is, you know, have people... like have sex every
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: other day versus every day or hold off for a
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: long period of time and try to hit the ovulation timing.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: You know, my guess is this matters like almost not
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: at all. Let me tell you another thing, Perry, the
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: other really big question people have here is about whether
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: you can influence the gender of your, the biological sex,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: let's say of your child by when you have sex,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: people think that the male sperm is faster than but
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: it doesn't live as long. So if you want to
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: get a boy, you want to have sex right at ovulation.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: And if you want to get a girl, then you
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: have sex a longer time before, but then not right
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: at ovulation.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: I cannot emphasize enough. No, this is, does not work.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Actually this has been tested and the answer is no.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: So don't know.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Okay. No, it seems like, it seems like it would
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: have to be no, because otherwise I feel like we
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have such an even distribution of sexes, right? Because
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: like you would just get more boys. Right.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, I agree.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: Given that like, yes, totally agree.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: And also just, this actually has a name, it's called
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: the Shettles method, but I don't know who Shettles was,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: but he was wrong. Or I mean, it could have
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: been a she, but let's be honest, it was presumably
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: a he.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: All right. So in any case, people are trying to
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: get pregnant. Have sex a lot. Have sex a lot. Guys,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: feel free to share this with your significant others. Okay.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: So speaking of things about men, uh, we're also going
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: to be talking again about testosterone. Uh, so we've talked
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: a few, we talked a couple of different times about
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: the military's ridiculous plan to measure, uh, testosterone and, uh,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: now they did it. So, uh, not in a uniform way,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: but in a research oriented way. And now we know
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: what would happen if we did this, what happens?
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: So what happens is that you find some men in
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: the military have low testosterone levels. Uh, Which shouldn't surprise
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: anyone if you listen to our testosterone episode. So this
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: is appearing in JAMA. It's a research letter. 479 military men,
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: ages 20 to 60, got their AM testosterone levels measured once.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: And just to put some numbers here, the sort of
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: American Urologic Association criteria for low testosterone is a level
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: less than 300. The CDC pegs that a little bit lower, 264.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: a quarter of the men these military guys tested were
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: below that 300 cutoff and 15% were below the CDC
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: cutoff of 264. You were more likely to be below
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: these averages as you got older. These actually mirror the
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: US population. That's pretty similar to what you see if
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: you test any men, but there's a Big difference here
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: because both the AUA, the American Neurological Association, and the
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: CDC established those cutoffs in the context of screening for
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: symptomatic problems, right? So generally sexual dysfunction. So in the
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: context of sexual dysfunction, a testosterone of 250, yes, might
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: indicate like, oh, you should be treated because you have
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: a problem and you have a level that's on the
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: lower side. Let's try treating. That is not the case
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: for just broad-scale population screening, which no one is recommending
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: except Pete Hegseth. Once again, we talked about this in
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: the testosterone episode, but testosterone levels within a man are
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: wildly fluctuant. Fluctuant? Fluctuating? They fluctuate wildly. Fluctuate a lot.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: They move around a lot. And so all the guidelines
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: say you have to measure multiple times, actually. So you
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: can easily get like a 250 one day and a
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: 500 the next day just based on random variation. So-
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Just depending on luck of the draw, when they happen
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: to catch you, a bunch of these guys are going
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: to have low levels that are completely meaningless. If we
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: did take these percentages and scaled them up to the
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: entire military, approximately 100,000 military men would need further workup,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: at least repeat testing, which obviously will have expense and
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: has no clear benefit. So there we are.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I think this is like all of the kind of like,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: let's do more testing. Let's do like, okay, but then
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: you're going to end up doing something after that, which
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: is expensive and disruptive and has other, you know, potentially
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: negative knock on. So before you start testing everybody for
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: something for no reason, you really have to like ask yourself,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: what's the reason? Yeah.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Which is what all the societies started with. They're like,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: you have a reason to test and then here's how
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: you should interpret the results of the test, right? Like that's,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Broad scale population screening is reserved for a very limited
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: number of things that we have good evidence, you know,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: saves lives like mammograms.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Okay. Okay.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: So that's it for the health news of the week. Now,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: what's the deal with organic food?
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: All right, Perry.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: So I... We spent a lot of time in this
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: episode thinking about organization because I think the question of
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: like organic food and pesticides, you can very quickly go
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: into like a chemical rabbit hole, which... Which is.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Why everyone's here. And I'll spend the next 30 minutes
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: talking about deep biological chemistry.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm concerned about. And so I think for
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: my taste, I think basically there's like three... things we
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: want to understand here. One is just literally what do
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: we mean by organic? Because for many of us, and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I would put myself in this category.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: Organic is like fancy.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: And so understanding like, is it this, it's like a,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: it's like a fancy vibe. Like it can get pajamas,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: like the bamboo, organic bamboo pajamas. You get the, it's like, it's,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: it's fancy. You get whole foods, fancy. But actually this
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: has a more formal meaning.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: So there are rules.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: There are rules. And then within the organic space, there's
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: two really big claims that people make. I think one
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: is about health and the other is about the environment.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: And those are both worth visiting once we understand what
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: we're actually talking about.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: But let's start.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: I'm going to let you start because this story is
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: really great and I'm going to give you the opportunity
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: to tell it. Please tell me more about nerve gas.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: I'm always happy to talk about nerve gas. The year
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: is 1936. We have Gerhard Schrader in Germany, which has
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: undergone Nazification, although we're still prior to the start of
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: World War II. And this is a guy who is
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: trying to synthesize insecticides, chemical insecticides to spray on crops.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: He doesn't. He accidentally creates a chemical called tabin. Tabin
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: is the first chemical weapon, the first nerve agent chemical weapon.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Germany would go on to stockpile a bunch of tabin
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: in World War II. We don't actually have evidence that
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: they used it, but it was used in the Iran-Iraq War.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: This class of nerve gas are known as organophosphate acetylcholinesterase
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: inhibitors is the same class that sarin and VX nerve
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: gas are into. This makes... For those of you who
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: are faithful listeners, I think the third episode in a
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: row that VX nerve gas has gotten mentioned, right? Because
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I think we talked about it in Botox. I'm sure
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: we talked about it in Botox as a poison that's
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: less poisonous than Botox. And I feel like we talked
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: about it last week for some reason too, but you
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: guys can check me on that. In any case, he
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: invented nerve gas. It was subsequently used, although not in
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: World War II. And, you know, this is the same. Eventually,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: we get to insecticides that work in a similar fashion.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: We have a variety of different insecticides now. So knowing that,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe it's not surprising that people are like,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: should we be spraying these things on our crops when,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: you know, spraying them over cities kills a bunch of people.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: And that seems like a good argument for organic food
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: to me. I agree.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think this whole thing is sort of
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: overlaid with a lot of a lot of feelings, but
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: also a genuine concern that these are the goal of
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of a lot of the pesticides that we use in
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: farming is to kill things, literally to decide the pests.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: As a result, they might decide other things that we
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: might that we might like or us. And that's the
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: fundamental thing here is the question of, are the ways
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: that we're doing conventional farming dangerous because of these chemicals?
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Which leads me to what I think is an important
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: thing to note, which is what is the legal definition
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: of organic farming? And so the U.S., and again, this
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: is going to differ across places, but for the U.S.,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: There is a legal definition of organic farming, which involves
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: no genetically modified, no GMOs, no radiation, no sewage sludge.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: That seems like a good idea.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: And synthetics from something called the National List, which is
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: a list of synthetic things that are used.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: For example, glycophosphate.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So this is a thing people will think all about
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: all the time, which is like Roundup, which we will
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: talk about more specifically. Organic farms cannot use these things. Basically,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: they cannot. use anything that is a synthetic pesticide. Yeah.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: I think this is where the first distinction between the
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: vibes and the reality come to light. So The International
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements, which is this major regulatory
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: body in this space, has their quote, which.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: Makes- By the way, this is iPhone.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: iPhone.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: You know, it's iPhone.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: iPhone.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Not the iPhone.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: iPhone. This is their quote, which makes organic sound pretty
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: amazing to me. Organic agriculture is a production system that
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: sustains the health of soils, ecosystems, and people. It relies
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: on ecological processes, biodiversity, and cycles adapted to local conditions
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: and rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation, and science to benefit the
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: shared environment and promote fair relationships and a good quality
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: of life for all involved. That sounds like sunshine and
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: rainbows to me.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Look, that pitch is what people have in mind, which
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: is like the organic farm is like the small holder farmer.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: You know, it's you know, ballerina farm or something. It's like, we're,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: we're rotating our crops through the, you know, like the
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: beans and then are feeding the nitrates in the soil.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: And it's all like working together in this, in this
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: complicated way. And we're living in, in harmony with the,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the bugs, but actually it doesn't, that could be, that
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: could be a description of an organic farm.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: There are certainly farms like that.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: There could also be a description of a conventional farm
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: that has those features that, The difference is more specifically
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: in this question of pesticides and actually in the difference
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: of what kind of pesticides.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: So typically, any farmer needs to kill pests.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Everyone wants to aside their pests, whether they are organic
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: or not. The question is what you are using to
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: do that. And organic farms are restricted to using natural pesticides.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: The most common one is pyrethrin, which is actually from chrysanthemums.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: There are also synthetic versions. There's boric acid, copper sulfate, sulfur.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: There are some natural substances you can use as pesticides,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: which are allowed in organic farming. And as we have
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: said on this podcast many times, just because something is
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: natural doesn't mean it's good for you.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Do you want to tell us about rotone?
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Rotenone. Rotenone.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: What's it called?
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Rotenone is a natural substance. It came from a root
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: of some It's some kind of extract that was permitted,
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: I think, to be used as an insecticide for organic farming.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: And then some data came out that suggested, although to
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: be fair, it's not clear cut, but that it might
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: be associated with Parkinson's disease. And it was subsequently largely banned,
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: at least in the US. Yeah, natural doesn't mean safe.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: The most toxic thing on the planet is botulinum toxin,
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: which is a natural substance that comes from Clostridium botulinum.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: as we talked about in our prior episode. And yeah,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: the idea that just because you're spraying something that comes
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: from a chrysanthemum as opposed to spraying something that gets
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: synthesized in a lab to kill pests makes it somehow
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: safer has a name. That's the naturalistic fallacy. There's plenty
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: of things in nature that will kill you very quickly.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: The other thing I want to highlight here is that
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: to get that coveted organic label, that sticker, does not
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: mean that you have to be a small family farm
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: who's in touch with the earth and feeling the grass
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: every day and like breathing in the fresh mountain air.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: There are gigantic factory style organic farms, huge billion dollar industries.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: And all they have to do is meet these checklist requirements.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Did you use Roundup?
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: No.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Did you use ionizing radiation or sewage sludge? No. Check, check, check.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: And then you can get to that organic label. So
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: we really do, I mean, we'll talk about whether it
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: makes a difference in health, but we do want to
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: separate the idea of organic as local, fresh, and healthy
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: from the reality, which is it's a set of practices
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: that have a definition. And people are financially incentivized to
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: meet that definition because you can sell organic produce and
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: organic food for a higher price point than you can
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: sell conventional food.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: We should also talk about the rules on fertilizer. So
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: in organic farming, you can use things that fertilize. So typically,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: they cover the crops outside the growing season, which fixes
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: nitrogen in the soil. And then there's animal manure, blood meal,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: bone meal. There's stuff from animal bones that can be
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: used as fertilizer. Conventional farming uses synthetic fertilizer, which was
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: developed in the early 1900s. And We can come back
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to this, but the development of synthetic fertilizer has saved
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of lives over the course of its period. So,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: you know, it's potentially has things one might be concerned about.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: But what's called the Green Revolution, which was spurred on
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: by the development of fertilizer by something called the Haber-Bosch process. yes,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I will let you describe it in a minute, has
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: been just like totally transformative for changing hunger in the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: modern era. Now I'll let you do chemistry. Perry, please
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: display the Haber-Bosch process to us.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Haber-Bosch. I mean, what you need to know is that
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: an important component of fertilizer is nitrate. And prior to
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: to the Haber-Bosch process, which was developed in 1909, the
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: way you got nitrate was you either mined it from
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: like nitre deposits in very specific parts of the earth
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: or from guano, like bird and bat guano. So there
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: are these islands where like the seabirds land that basically
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: got completely strip mined for guano in the late 1800s
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: to add nitrogen to soil. Haber, who interestingly enough, also
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: worked on chlorine gas development for Germany during World War I.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know why so many German chemists keep trying
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: to kill people while also developing agricultural products. In any case,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: that's an aside. The air is 79% nitrogen. So it's
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: a very reasonable question to be like, wait, there's all
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: this nitrogen everywhere. Why can't we get that into this world?
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Why are we looking at bad poop?
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Right. Why do we need to mine all the bad poop?
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: And the answer is that nitrogen gas N2 is very stable.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: And what you actually need in the soil is nitrate.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: And turning nitrogen gas into nitrate is not easy. It
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: requires a lot of energy in this special process, which
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Haber developed and subsequently won the Nobel Prize for. But then,
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: this is called bread from air. It basically meant, okay,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: we no longer have to go out and mine nitrate
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: or mine guano. We can just use natural gas as
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: the energy source and turn the nitrogen in our air
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: into fertilizer. And you're right. I mean, it's very hard
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: to argue that this didn't save millions, potentially hundreds of
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: millions of people from hunger. And also probably estimates I
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: saw around 18 to 27 million hectares of land from
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: agricultural development because you could grow so much more on
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: less space. But that's all part of conventional farming. The
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: nitrate that is generated from the Haber process cannot be
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: used on organic farms.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: And so this sort of happens early in the sort
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: of Green Revolution is a long period. But in the
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: 1960s in particular, we start getting what I would describe
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: as a backlash against pesticides. There is this book Silent Spring,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: which describes the possibility of all of the birds being killed.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: This is partly a response to widespread spraying of DDT,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: not across crops, but literally across neighborhoods. Really good at
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: getting rid of mosquitoes. Also turns out to be bad
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: for birds. That was eventually banned. The organic food's Production Act,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: which set some standards for this, started in 1990. By 2002,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the USDA has an organic seal. And so we sort
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: of edge into this environment where perhaps as a reaction
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: to some of the fear that people have, we then
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: get this new kind of like, well, here's the better version.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Here's the thing that moves away from this fear. And
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: as a result, perhaps organic food tends to be more expensive.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: So People are paying more for organic. And then I
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: think the question for consumers, for the world is, is
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: that better for you individually or is it better for
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the planet? Right.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And before we move on to talk about health,
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: I think, in case I haven't made this clear enough,
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: that that label is worth something, that organic label. And
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: we'll get to people's perceptions of food. when we talk
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: about health, based on just seeing that label, people will
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: cheat like all things. So between 2010 and 2017, a
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: farmer named Randy Constant sold grain from Nebraska. It was conventional.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: It was the standard run of the mill Nebraska grain,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: but he labeled it as organic and took in an
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: excess of $ 140 million by that sort of fraudulent claim,
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: was arrested, like was found guilty. And that subsequently led
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: to a 2023 enforcement rule that sort of tightened how
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: organic farms are monitored here in the U.S. But I
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: think it's always worth remembering, you know, not to fully...
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: trust anything, no matter how nice the package looks. So
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: we will move on to health, but after a break.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we're back. We're going to talk about organic farming.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: food and your health. And I want to start by
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: saying the.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: Placebo effect is real.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: And in this case, people really think organic is healthier.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: And there's a really fantastic study by two social psychologists
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: from about 15 years ago involving Oreos.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: And the sort of short version of this is.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: They took, as social psychologists do, a bunch of college
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: students and they showed them labels for Oreos and half
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: of them had it say, you know, they were made
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: with organic flour and sugar. And the group and half
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: of them did not get that label. And the group
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: that thought that this was organic rated them lower in calories.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Just to be clear, organic food.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Is not lower.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Like growing your corn.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: With organic methods does not lower its caloric intake. But
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: there was this perception of like, oh, it's organic. I
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: think it's healthy. The beginning of this article actually has
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: like starts with a quote from Mom, look, organic gummy bears. Yes,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: I see. No more sweets.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: Mom, but they're organic.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: And then it's signed as overheard by one of the
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: authors in the checkout lane of a natural food store.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: And this is like, this is like where researchers get
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: their ideas. That guy was like Norbert Schwartz was probably
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: in line at the organic force. He was like, I
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: should study that. Totally. My point is that, uh, if
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: people think the food is organic and this is particularly
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: true for students who are more pro environment, they thought
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: that the Oreos were better for you. And I would
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: say that's a general, that's generally true. Um, of people.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And this has been replicated across multiple food, multiple
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: food stuffs, you know, blind trials, organic bananas versus conventional bananas. And, and,
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: and some of them, they lie to you and they're, they,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: they're both the same and they, but they tell you
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: one's organic and some, there really is one that is
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: organic and one conventional. Typically, if these are appropriately blinded,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: so you actually aren't told which one is organic, People
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: rate in terms of taste and texture generally pretty similarly.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: The one exception I found is there did tend to
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: be people found organic food, even if they weren't told
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: it was organic, to be slightly sweeter and maybe juicier.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: So if you care about that taste, maybe that's real.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: But once you tell someone something is organic, then it's like,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: oh my gosh, you're off to the races. It tastes
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: so much better. It feels better. You feel better after
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: you eat it. And that's a lot of placebo and
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: a lot of marketing.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Placebo, it's the best effect. In practice, if we look at,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: that's about taste, if we look at the nutrient features
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: of this, they are very... Similar, there's like one meta-analysis
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: which said maybe organic foods had more antioxidants and less cadmium.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: There was another meta-analysis that said there was no meaningful difference,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: not really even clear like, well, okay, what do you
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: mean less cadmium? Like, it's all safe. I don't know.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: It's not obvious why you would care about this.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: And in general, the most important features of foods like
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: your macronutrients or micronutrients are very... It does not matter
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: how you treated the pesticides, how you treated the food
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: with pesticides.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I mean, the one... kind of nutrition study
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: I saw that rings a little bit true to me
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: was there was a study that suggested, this is a
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: meta-analysis that is coming to us from the Annals of
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Internal Medicine, and they found that conventional chicken and pork
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: were about 33% more likely to carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: that does kind of make sense to me because organic
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: chicken and pork, you can't use antibiotics on, and so
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: it would seem less likely that you would develop antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Obviously,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: you should be thoroughly cooking your chicken and pork no
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: matter what to kill bacteria because you don't even want
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: non-antibiotic-resistant bacteria in your body. And there was no difference
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: on that metric. But there might be some small differences
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: on that side.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And these were all below... Less people come away
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: from this thinking that your chicken is going to kill you.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: In that study, everything was largely below maximum allowed limits.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: So I do not want people to leave thinking they
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: cannot eat chicken.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Eat your chicken. Just cook it. Cook your chicken.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Just make sure you cook it. Don't eat raw chicken.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: This highly insightful and actionable health advice from Wellness Actually.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: This is why we're on top, Emily.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Having said that.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: Having said on topic. So having said that.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: There is a difference between these two products, which is
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: one of them uses pesticides and one of them does not.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: And in fact, we can see that when you are
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: consuming non-organic foods, you are consuming typically small amounts of
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: these pesticides. We can talk about how you can get
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: this off with washing, but even with careful washing, on average,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: and we see this in a study of some adults
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: in Australia, they had people eat mostly organic food. And indeed,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: they saw their organophosphate markers go down over the course
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: of a week because of what they were consuming.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: It's not obvious why that matters.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: It's nerve gas. That's why. You might as well be
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: in the trenches in World War I.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Good news for you is that the EPA has set
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: limits on exposure to these things. And even for the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: sets of foods that people most worry about pesticide exposure for,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: what the people have termed the dirty dozen, which is
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: the foods with the highest level of pesticides, you would
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: need to eat a tremendously large number of these foods
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: in order to have any danger of hitting the EPA limit,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: which is itself set 100 to 1,000 times below the
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: effect where we don't see effects in animals. So I
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Just to give you a sense. So the EPA takes
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: a mouse and gives them ever-escalating doses of a pesticide
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: by injection or whatever. They observe the smallest dose at
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: which there is any physiologic effect on the mouse. Not
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: that the mouse dies. Just like, oh, we see something. Like,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know, their heart rate goes up or whatever.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: They then divide that dose by 100 to 1,000 to
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: set the maximum limit on humans. And then we can
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: look at, okay, like the dirty dozen currently is... strawberry, spinach, kale, grapes, peaches, pears, nectarines, apples,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: bell and hot peppers, cherries, blueberries, and green beans. So
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: those are the crops that require the most pesticide or
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: they get the most pesticide now. And we can actually ask, okay,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: how many apples do you have to eat cumulatively to
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: hit that exposure threshold that the EPA has set, which
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: is still a hundred times less than what you would
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: need to show any effect in a mouse. And the answer,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: back of the envelope here, is you would have to
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: eat 22 apples a Every day for the rest of
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: your life to hit that threshold. You would be so sick.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Hungry for apples?
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: You would be so sick. That's a lot of apples.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: It's so much fiber.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: It's 5,700 strawberries per day for the rest of your life.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: I believe that kills the human. And then 6,500 cherries
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: per day for the rest of your life. And I
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: didn't do the math for the other ones, but they're
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: all an insane amount. Tamara, our producer, says she could
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: eat that many cherries.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Just to be clear, if you ate 5,700 average-sized strawberries,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: that's about 23,000 calories.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: That's much worse for you than the best to say.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: That would be bad.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: The problem with eating that much, you would hit your
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: limit of stomach capacity long before.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: Other problems.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I don't think someone could consume 23,000 calories a day.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: It's an awful... I bet... I mean, I wonder if
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: like Kobayashi, like the hot dog eating guys, I know
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: they don't really digest all that, but anyway, we can
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: figure that out.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: My point is that the dose makes the poison, and
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: these doses are very, very small. And if you are
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: still like, okay, but I'm still super, super worried about this,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: if you rinse and rub with 30 seconds your produce,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: that removes... basically all of the pesticides or almost all
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: of it. And you could also soak it in baking
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: soda for 15 minutes, although people aren't going to do that.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: And the organic food also has pesticides. They're just not
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: these pesticides, right? Like pyrethrin, which comes from chrysanthemums, is
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: still poisonous at a high enough dose. Like all things
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: are poisonous at a high enough dose. Emily said the
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: dose makes the poison. For those of you playing the
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: wellness actually drinking game, it's time to do a shot. Yeah.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: I don't usually get to be the one who says that,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: so I'm very excited. So related to that dose poison point,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: there actually are some concerns about health impacts of these
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: pesticides that have been raised in.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: Many settings.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: And I want to talk about the roundup question, but
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: I think one of the real concerns here has to
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: do with people who are living near or especially working
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: in fields in which these pesticides are. used. So our
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: evidence on this isn't very good at this point. I
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: don't think we have a lot of very compelling evidence
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: in one direction or the other, but there is potentially
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: more reason to be concerned about about farmworkers and their
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: exposures to pesticides than about your average American eating strawberries
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: from the grocery store. And I mention this because I
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: find this aspect of the discussion, honestly, somewhat upsetting because
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: it feels like we are sort of over here in
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: one space being like, oh, I'm terrified about feeding my
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: kid these strawberries and let me do everything I can
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: to avoid my child's potentially minute exposure to one itty
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: bitty piece of pesticides, where maybe we could focus that
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: attention on like, let's improve conditions for farm workers who
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: are being exposed to very high levels of these pesticides
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: and think about what are the protections that we might
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: potentially want to have in place. So without going like
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: too off the rails here, and without saying that we
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: have strong evidence that there are problems, I think that
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: there's more to be done there that is being missed.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: That's all.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: I think that's very well said. And so let's dive
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: in then to the concerns about some of these. You
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: mentioned Roundup. I'll just say the other big one in
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: case people have heard about it is chlorpyrifos, which some
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: studies linked to exposure to chlorpyrifos, which is a conventional
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: pesticide to lower IQ in the children of farm workers
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: that were working on farms that used it. used that pesticide.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: EPA banned that pesticide in 2021. The ban was overturned
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: in 2023. It is now used for some crops. But again,
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: that's the environmental exposure, not the intake on food. But
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Roundup is the big one, right? Roundup is kind of
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: an amazing story because it ties together corporate greed, our
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: own feelings of like helplessness at the hands of the
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: oligarchy and then possible but not actually very strongly documented
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: health effects of a synthetic chemical. So can we dive in?
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: Plus RFK.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, an RFK.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: Roundup's got everything.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: It's got everything. Let me start with just what Roundup is.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, you've seen it. Like you've seen Roundup in
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: the hardware store and stuff. Sure.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Home Depot.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: Right there.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Glyphosate is the chemical name. Glyphosate blocks an enzyme plants
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: use to make aromatic amino acids. Animals don't have that
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: pathway at all. So unlike the nerve gas stuff, which
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: kills insects and humans, if you give them enough, Roundup
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: is a plant aside. It kills plants. And in fact,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: basically every plant will die if you spray Roundup on it.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Enter Roundup-ready crops, which are genetically engineered crops that were
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: created by Monsanto to have a change in this enzymatic
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: pathway that make them Roundup resistant. What that means is
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: that you can spray Roundup on your Roundup ready crops
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: and they continue to grow, but everything else, all the
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: weeds and stuff just dies because they don't have that
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: genetic resistance. Roundup ready crops like this is where you
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: get into the sort of corporate greed oligarchy. The way
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: this works for farmers is that they sign a licensing
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: agreement with Monsanto. I think Monsanto and Bayer, I think
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Bayer owns Monsanto now. Check me on that, but whatever.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Pharmaceutical company and a major agricultural company. They sign a
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: licensing agreement to buy seeds for these special crops. They
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: cannot plant their own seeds. They can't harvest the crops
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: and use the seeds from the plants that they harvest to, um,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: to plant the next season. So they're like locked in
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: contractually with these people. And it essentially has become the
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: most used herbicide on earth. Only recently have weeds started
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: evolving resistance, which you would expect, right? Like life finds
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: a way, you know, just by natural selection, you're going
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: to get some weeds that do have some resistance roundup. Monsanto,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: you could do a whole episode about this this company.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: They are one of the manufacturers of Agent Orange, another
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: herbicide that was used extensively in the Vietnam War and
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: probably has some particularly bad health effects. And then we
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: have to talk about the litigation around the health effects
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: of Roundup. This is really hard, because we try to
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: look at the data here and give you a nuanced approach.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: And what people claim... is a huge variety of health
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: effects from Roundup, ranging from cancer to a bunch of
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: other effects, which has been, frankly, difficult to prove. The
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: data is actually not that compelling that it has crazy
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: health effects in humans. The one thing that has stood
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: up a little bit in subsequent studies is an increased
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, again, in people with high exposure,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: typically farm workers and Even then, I see you shaking
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: your head.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Even then, this is not like- No, it's just really hard.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: This is like observational data on very high levels of exposure.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: It's difficult to know. Certainly, there's nothing randomized. There are
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: differences across these groups. But again, even in that, I
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: think the groups we're talking about are farm workers with
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: high levels of exposure, which is a very important space
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: to understand and is different from what people consume.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. So I'm not even sure if the NHL
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: signal is causal. If there is a causal health signal,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: that's probably it. I guess I'll say it that way.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: And again, in pretty much in farm workers. But Monsanto's
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: behavior was bad around this. They released a paper in 2000,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: a glyphosate safety review, basically a large paper saying, OK,
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: here's everything we know about the safety. And it said, oh, look,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: it's lovely and safe and it's great. It subsequently came
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: out under litigation in 2017 that people at Monsanto were like,
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: let's just write this paper ourselves and have respected scientists
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: sign their names. We'll just pay them to be co-authors
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: and they'll sign their names. And they were totally astroturfing
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: this paper. It was actually retracted in 2025. So 25
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: years after publication, that safety paper was retracted. Again, not
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: because we know that like, oh, it's not safe, but
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: because this was gross and done in an academically dishonest way.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: And there's a difference there. There's been a lot of litigation.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: In 2020, Bayer set aside $ 10 billion to settle potentially
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: 100,000 class action claims against, you know, for people who
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: typically people with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma who are claiming exposure to Roundup.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: There is a proposed $ 7. 25 billion class action settlement that
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: has not been fully decided yet. But there is a
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: big wrinkle here. So all of this litigation was based
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: on failure to warn. The glyphosate label doesn't say, be careful,
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: might give you non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in In June of 2026,
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court heard this case and actually came out
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: seven to two in favor of Monsanto saying, well, the
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: EPA doesn't say that Roundup has this problem. And if
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: the EPA doesn't require a cancer warning, states can't either.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: So it's like an individual state isn't allowed to say
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: that there's a failure to warn. It has to be national.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: And the thought is, I'm not a lawyer, that this
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: might end most of these remaining suits. Glyphosate was removed
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: from Roundup that you buy in the hardware store in 2023.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: It's still used on crops, but like the Roundup brand
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: no longer contains glyphosate that you can get at home. Emily,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: can you tell me where RFK Jr. comes into all this?
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Because this is just maybe the like pièce de résistance
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: of Roundup glyphosate nonsense.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: So RFK Jr. was actually on the environmental side of
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: some of these lawsuits before he became the health secretary.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: But then as the health secretary, he has been on
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: the pro-roundup team because the Defense Production Act in February
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: of 2026 actually was intended to boost glyphosate production. Obviously,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: Maha was not very happy with him about this. I mean,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: stepping back, I think there's like so much in this story.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: It is incredibly complicated.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: I think the two big takeaways are, one, even if
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: we are talking about potential harm or potential lawsuits or
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: potential evidence of harm, it is in high levels of exposure,
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: not in people who eat Cheerios for breakfast. And maybe
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: the second point is that all of these things are
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: very complicated and there are many threads people can pull on.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Early on in this, there was a computer scientist at
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: MIT who said that this was going to cause one
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: in two kids to be autistic by 2025. That obviously
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: didn't come to pass. It was also an insane thing
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: to say at the time. So this whole conversation is
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: really pretty confusing. Yeah.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: And it's rational not to trust the people in power
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: about this. I think that's why conspiracy theories take root
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: is because why would you trust Monsanto to tell you
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: that this thing is safe when we already know that
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: they tried to white paper their way out of this
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: in 2000? Honestly, why would you even trust RFK Jr.,
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: who is on the defense team for this $ 290 million verdict,
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: the first big verdict for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from Roundup, and
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: then backed Trump's order to increase glyphosate production through the
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: Defense Production Act.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: That's another topic. Another topic. Okay. Let me say two
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: other things about health and then I want to move
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: on to the planet. So one is that for sure
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: you can find all kinds of correlations between eating organic
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: food and having a lower risk of cancer and heart
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: disease and whatever. There's plenty of studies that will show that.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: That's because organic food is expensive and rich people have
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: better access to healthcare and we don't have to go
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: over why we don't like those kind of studies. The
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: second thing is the other, another like thing in this
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: space people worry about is heavy metals. And that has
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: something to do with organic food. So eating organic, you know,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: organic baby food, organic food is not going to address
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: concerns about heavy metals, which largely come out of the soil.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: And so if you are looking to this to like
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: fix your heavy metal exposure, look elsewhere because that's not
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: going to work. Okay. Should we talk about the planet now?
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: We should talk about the planet. We care about the planet.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: Is it better for the planet?
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: I think it's really complicated.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Man, we just finished something complicated. Let's do something simple.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: I think this one is complicated in a way that
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: maybe is simpler to explain. So there is kind of
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: one obvious win here, which is that relative to like
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: per acre of relative to conventional farming. Organic farming has
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: lower nitrogen losses. You aren't burning natural gas to make fertilizer.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: There's less nitrous oxide. So it has a sort of greenhouse,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: like a positive greenhouse gas footprint per acre cent. However,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: the yield on organic farming is much lower because your
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: crops are getting eaten by pests, because your pesticides are
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: not as good. And Because your fertilizer isn't as good.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: You can't grow as dense. Yeah. Yeah.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Like conventional farming is the most efficient per acre approach
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: to this. And so actually like per unit of food,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: emissions are about the same. And organic farming has more
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: land use because you are growing less per acre. So
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: it's actually like not– like the tradeoff is not at
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: all obvious, I think.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I'm seeing that too. And we have
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: some simulation studies on like, well, we have a simulation
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: and a real study, but on a countrywide level, for example,
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: there's a study by Smith in 2019, which took the
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: hypothetical of like, okay, if England and Wales went 100% organic,
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: so they just converted all their farming to organic, the emissions,
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: like again, greenhouse gas emissions and stuff would drop. by
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: about 6% in those countries. But as you point out,
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: there'd be a bunch of missing food because you can't
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: grow as much on organic farms as you can on
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: conventional farms. And so they'd have to grow that food abroad,
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: which would take, they estimated about five times the land.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: And their final conclusion was that net emissions would actually
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: go up. So like a whole country switching to organic,
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: even though they don't have to use the Haber process
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: to use natural gas to create fertilizer from thin air,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: it might actually be worse. I don't know. Maybe the
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: take-home is that it will end up being a wash.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: I will say that good crop rotation can increase the
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: yields of organic farms. And so if you have organic
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: farms that are really doing crop rotation nicely, maybe it
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: wins out in the end, but it's not a slam dunk.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: And you'll certainly hear people say organic is so much
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: better for the environment. It's just not that obvious that
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think from an economic standpoint and from
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: a feeding your population standpoint, there are real considerations here.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: 2001 Sri Lanka banned synthetic fertilizer. Their rice yields totally collapsed.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: It had terrible impacts on the economy. It had other
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: very bad impacts. They had to reverse the ban because
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: fundamentally they were not equipped to not have conventional fertilizer. Yeah.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, the green revolution that we talked about, again, like.
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: It was a revolution.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Really saved a lot of people.
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: Saved people. If we were to undo all of that-
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: A lot of people would die of starvation, which again,
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: it kind of gets to the point about like, are
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: we caring about ourselves? Are we caring about the farm workers?
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Are we caring about the population of the earth writ large?
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: Because it's like, sure, I can eat organic. I can
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: have a little farm that is making me organic food,
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: but we can't have everyone eat organic or like literally
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: people will die. And so then it's like, why do
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: I get to eat organic and no one else does?
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Okay. I want to end, Perry, before
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: we get to smash or pass, by talking about the
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: phrase biodynamic.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: Oh my God. I'm so excited. I love biodynamic.
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: Biodynamic is crazy.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: Um, biodynamic is the craziest thing. I, I, are you
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: a wine person?
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: Am I, I don't know if we've ever talked about this.
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: Okay. I, I certainly, I like, I mean, I, I
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: don't drink biodynamic wine.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: That's for sure. But I have, I did one time,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: one time someone did, I do go a party where
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: someone brought some biodynamic. Yeah.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: It was like full of sediment.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know. We do love a good sediment. So biodynamic,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: for those of you who are unaware, is like take organic,
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: like multiply it times 10, and then add magic. Then
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: you get biodynamic. So biodynamic agriculture was coined actually in
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: 1924 by a guy named Rudolf Steiner.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: Let me guess, he was a German who worked on Narcassus.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: Who also tortured kittens.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: I believe he was German, but I actually don't know
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: that he was trying to kill his fellow man as
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: aggressively as the other German scientists that we've discussed today.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: So he comes up with this term biodynamic. It actually
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: predates the term organic. So maybe this is the OG.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: And he had a lot of strange beliefs. Some are
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: just like, I think, sound very nice. So the core
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: belief is that a biodynamic farm is a self-sufficient entity.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: So biodynamic Everything you use in that farm has to
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: be grown on that farm, even the fertilizer. So a
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: biodynamic farm, like a biodynamic vineyard that's making biodynamic wine
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: has to have animals that like eat the grass and poop.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: And then you use the poop to make the wine.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: Like you can't import anything. So that's why I say
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: it's like organic times 10, which to me sounds kind
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: of nice. It's like, oh, it's all self-sufficient and sustained.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: And then there's the magic, which is like he wanted,
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: you know, you had to use astrological signs to determine,
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: you know, when you're planting and when you're harvesting and
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: what house the moon is in and what Mars is in.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: And then you plant these like cow horns filled with
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: different things. These are called preparations. There's like preparation 505,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: which is a cow horn filled with manure that you
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: plant one season and then you dig it up and
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: you crush it up and you spread it over the crops.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: And then there's preparation 504, which is like a cow
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: horn filled with quartz crystals that you then crush up
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: and spread over the fields. There's kind of a lot
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: of like woo, but people, particularly wine snobs go sort
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: of crazy for this stuff. And obviously it charges, it
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: costs a premium. And if not adequate, like if you
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: tell people that one wine is biodynamic and one isn't,
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: they will definitely tell you it tastes better. And then
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: if you blind people, they can't tell the difference.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This is, I mean, I feel like this is
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: true of like so much wine, right? It's true of
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: almost all wine.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: This is like a thing about wine.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you give people like the fancy,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: like probably fancy wine people can tell between the box wine,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: And the other one, but like fundamentally.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: We used to every year do a statistical wine tasting
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: at my house where we had 10 wines and You'd
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: like this M. 10 wines ranging from the cheapest I
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: could find to the most expensive I could afford. And all,
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: you know, in exactly the same container. And people just
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: had to put them in order by price. Like they
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: just had to say like, okay, what do you think
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: is the most expensive and the least expensive? And it
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: was super fun. And it won't surprise you to hear
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: that like, yeah, no one can do this very well. Yes,
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: the $ 1 bottles that I was able to like scrounge up,
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: people tended to rate pretty low. But like once you
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: get to 15 bucks or so, like no one can tell.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: Fun fact, Perry, we also do that activity in my
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: family at the holidays. That is also an activity in
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: the Osterfair household with my dad and my brothers. And
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: my husband is like weirdly good at it, even though
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: he doesn't drink at all. And I think it's because
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: he doesn't really enjoy it very much. So he's just
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: like really good at putting himself in the mind of
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: other people.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: So he's like, so maybe that's the secret to winning
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: that game.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: Before we get to the very end, I want to
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: ask you an economics question because for some of us,
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: with a food budget that is fixed and not necessarily
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: can expand to whatever we want, as we pointed out
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: multiple times, organic is more expensive. And so we haven't
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: presented any incredibly robust data that organic is better for
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: you or for the environment, but there are certainly signals.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: And I think From some small organic farms and things
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: like that, maybe just the effort associated, the thoughtfulness that
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: goes into the farming might be something people desire. But
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: if I have a fixed amount of money, is it
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: worth it? That's an economics question.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: I would say that if you're asking a health, if
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: we're just asking an individual specific health question, the biggest
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: problem people have in their diets is that they're not
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: eating enough vegetables and produce in general. And I would
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: worry about allocating money towards organic versions of produce rather
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: than just increasing the total amount of produce that people
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: are consuming. So that's how I think the tradeoff is.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Spend your money buying more produce and you can buy
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: more conventional produce.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: I think people should spend their money on having more
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: whole foods and more produce rather than having a smaller
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: amount of those things, but having them be organic.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: Okay. Well, so with that in mind, Em... Organic food,
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: smash or pass?
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: This is a very hard one. I'm going to say
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: pass because I think that although it's a perfectly reasonable
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: choice and I probably consume a fair amount of organic food,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I worry a lot about the global sense of this.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: And so I guess I'm a pass. I soft pass,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: soft smash.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: I don't like, is there a middle? I, um.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: I'm concerned. I think I have a middle ground. Uh,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: let me, let me say I I'm in a pass
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: and what I think, uh, again, assuming, assuming money is
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: no object. So we're taking that. I think that your
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: economic argument is actually quite reasonable. Limited food budget just
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: got use as much as you can to buy as
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: much produce as you can. Seems reasonable. If you're not
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: that worried about your food budget, um, I think I'm
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: a pass on organic and what I'm a smash on
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: is local smaller farms. If you're going to spend extra
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: money on food, let's not give it to the giant
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: corporations who, yes, may be organic, but are still broadly
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: doing factory farms. Let's get our food from farmers that
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: you can drive past, like the one you have in
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: Rhode Island. I don't care so much what kind of
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: pesticide they use. I care that they are... in it
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: to grow great food that tastes good. So I'm kind
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: of passing on organic and smashing on like farm to
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: table and crickets in your salad.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, I agree with that.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: Good middle ground.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's it for organic food.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: Your question of the week after the break.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: Perry.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: Perry.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: I have a question from a friend of mine. I'm
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: asking for a friend here and it's about kidneys and urine.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: And so I'm asking you because you're the nephrologist I
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: have the most access to.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: Get ready.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: Here's a question.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: After a hard workout, sometimes there's blood in my urine.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: How concerned should I be?
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: This is something that certainly happens after a long, hard workout.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: Certain workouts predispose this more than others, particularly ones where
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: you're jiggling, like impacting up and down. Horseback riders are
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: probably the ones who we see this most in, but
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: I think real endurance runners could do this too. That
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: being said, it's probably worth someone who has... what we
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: call hematuria, recurrent hematuria after exercise to just get checked
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: out once to make sure their kidney function is normal.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: There are certain genetic conditions that can predispose to blood
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: in the urine that would be worthwhile to know about
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: and monitor. And then the thing that kind of itches
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: the back of my brain is this condition called rhabdomyolysis,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: which is muscle breakdown in leading to coloring of the urine,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: actually not with blood, but with myoglobin, which has a
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: sort of similar color, maybe a little more rust brown
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: than bright red blood. But certainly after very vigorous exercise, again,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: people with certain genetic predispositions can have muscle cells dying
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: and releasing all their evil humors into the body. And
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: that can be somewhat nephrotoxic. So don't stress out too much.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: It is normal. I'd have like, talk to your PCP
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: about it, get a kidney function test once and make
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: sure things are, things are good. Um, one, one thing
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: to know, just so people don't get totally scared is
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: a tiny drop of blood in your urine turns it
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: quite pink. Like, um, if you add a drop to
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: a cup of urine, if you just add a drop
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: of blood to a cup of urine, it's like red,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: like it's a, it's a very strong dye. So I
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: think people often freak out more. They're like, oh my God,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: the toilet bowl is bright red and it's not as
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: much blood as you might think, but it's worth a
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: kidney function test just to make sure there's nothing going on.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, thank you. That's it for us today.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Stick with us next week, just in time for Halloween,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: when we will ask, what's the deal with living forever?
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: Or Perry's title, what's the deal with death?
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: What's the deal with death? Spooky effect.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: See you next week. Wellness Actually is produced in association
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: with iHeart Media. Our senior producer is Tamar Abishai. Our
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: executive producer at iHeart is Jennifer Bassett. Our theme music
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: is by Eric Deutsch. And our content is for educational
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: purposes only.
• 1:04:46
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• 1:04:49
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• 1:04:52
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• 1:04:54
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• 1:04:59
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• 1:05:01
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• 1:05:04
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• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: We'll let the influencers have the last word. So this
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: is my $ 924 grocery shop. Trying to eat as organic
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: and clean as possible.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: Heaps of zucchini, cucumbers.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: We go through tomatoes like hotcakes, potatoes. The berries I
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: will wash because they're not organic, they're not in season.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: And the herbs, I'm.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: Going to try and grow a herb garden.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: Because I'm overspending money on herbs. Pichu, avos. Oh, these
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: grapes were on sale, so I got two of those.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: And then this yogurt. I've never tried this one before,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: but it's organic, so we'll see. And it's whole milk.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: See how it goes.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: Heaps of apples. Heaps of plums, which is awesome.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: Some pears, organic ones. And a rinds are in season, apparently.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: Heaps of sweet potato.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: And then everyone was obviously having a dig at me
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: for giving them white bread.