A Turning Point in the Nation's Thinking about Health and Food

Everything I’ve been yammering about for the last year and a half on this Substack has just been thrust into the public’s eye by two astounding events, and I couldn’t be more thrilled and surprised.

Two things happened this past week that I didn’t see coming. And both events convinced me that the thousands of hours I’ve spent clunking away at this Substack were well spent. 

Often in life, when we are beginning something really important, we labor quietly in a corner, investing our time in something that doesn’t give us immediate returns. We have to repeat to ourselves multiple times the mantra: “Do not despise the day of small beginnings.” 

But then one day, we wake up and find that everything is shifting, and our work is becoming part of a larger movement. And we’re so thankful that our small contribution gets to participate in something great. 

In the last two weeks, two things happened that I believe will profoundly change the trajectory of the public’s perception of health, medicine, and food. 

First, Tucker Carlson interviewed a brother-sister pair named Casey and Calley Means—and it went viral. Just the YouTube video alone, not counting all the podcast platforms, had 1.6 million views in ten days.

Casey Means is a Stanford Medical School-trained surgeon, who graduated at the top of her class and was her medical school class President, and trained in one of the highest-ranking specialties that exists: as an ear, nose, and throat surgeon.

After investing a decade of her life and over half a million dollars, Casey walked away from medicine in the final year of her residency because she was disgusted with the inescapable corruption inherent in the system. The interview is full of real-world examples from an insider who knows first-hand. 

I’ll whet your appetite with just one example. In the final year of her residency, she was operating on the sinuses of a patient for the third time, and she suddenly realized that she had not the slightest clue why in the world this person continued to need sinus operations. What was the root cause? Was there a lifestyle change this lady could make so she could stop needing such invasive operations? Casey, one of the most highly trained medical professionals in the world, had not received one blip of information about how the body works as a system.

Her brother, Calley Means, someone I’ve listened to many times over the last couple of years, explains from an economic perspective, the incentives that cause the medical, pharmaceutical, and Big Food world to ruin our health. As a former lobbyist and consultant for both Big Food and Big Pharma companies, he tells the inside scoop about how all this works.

Let me stop right and here and just say: you DO have time to watch this interview. Maybe not right this moment, but sometime in the next week, while you’re cooking, driving, cleaning, walking, relaxing on the couch, grab a family member to watch with you. Maybe you watch only a half hour at at time. It’s densely packed so you will not be bored. But you may wonder what just hit you. 

Here is the YouTube video:

It’s also available for free on all the podcast platforms (Spotify, the Podcast app, your web browser, etc). If you only watch one health video this year, this is the one to watch. 

The second thing that happened was that RFK Jr endorsed Trump with the hope of getting a position in his cabinet where he could work to undermine our toxic food system and reform the corruption that exists in the FDA, CDC, NIH, HHS, USDA, and other government organizations that are controlled by Big Food and Big Pharma interests. (What a shocker!)

But get this: In RFK’s speech, he mentions Casey and Calley Means, and specifically that Calley Means called his cell phone and convinced him that he could be useful to Trump because they both agree on chronic disease! What a week!

I couldn’t find a YouTube clip of the part of the speech where RFK talks about this, but I did find this 2-minute Twitter clip (available to watch whether or not you have a Twitter account).

Between these two happenings, I am thrilled that millions of people are now being exposed to the idea that our chronic health problems have reached a fever pitch and things must change. I am thrilled that these concepts are getting before the public! 

A side note about politics that I hope will be unifying and not contentious

Addressing politics is getting way off topic for this newsletter but I feel forced to say a few things. This is because politics has weaseled its slimy little way into every corner of our lives, and there are precious few topics one can address without “getting political.”

This is not because food and health are invariably political topics but because politicians have made food and health political. 

However, I think what I’m about to say will be more unifying than divisive because I want to simply state my baseline approach to politics—my underlying assumptions—for others to examine. Anyone is free to respectfully disagree.

One of the most important political positions I hold is the belief that politics is not my savior. It is not my savior now, it has never been anyone’s savior in history, and it will never, ever be anyone’s savior in the future. Here I stand, I can do no other. 

This firm stance causes me to bristle any time I hear statist slogans promising a better world, a brighter future, hope, and joy (Barf). And this applies to both sides of the aisle. Sometimes I feel that our two options for most elections are Statism, and Statism Lite, although the Lite part is becoming increasingly potent. 

As soon as you understand, deep down in your very bones, the limits of government and its paltry ability to “do good” in the world, you look at politics from a completely different perspective.

If politics can’t save, then I’m no longer looking for a president who can be my savior. So what am I looking for in a political candidate, if not a savior? 

The number one thing I’m looking for is someone who will slay Leviathan! (For a great book on this subject, see Slaying Leviathan: Limited Government and Resistance in the Christian Tradition by Glenn Sunshine.)

What is Leviathan? In the book of Revelation, Leviathan is any political government that has grown its power beyond its proper biblical requirement to punish the evil-doer. Leviathan is “here to help.”

Leviathan pretends to even the playing field by taking the profits of those who work hard and giving it to those who don’t care to work as hard.

Leviathan claims to support the little guy while in reality enacting COVID lockdown policies that enabled the largest transfer of wealth in world history from small businesses to gargantuan globalist corporations such as Amazon. It took trillions from Mom & Pop Shops and sent it straight into the hands of trillionaires ALL FOR YOUR OWN GOOD (of course). 

From this Reuters article:

Forbes' annual world's billionaires list this year included a record-breaking 2,755 billionaires with a combined worth of $13.1 trillion, up from $8 trillion last year. [2021]

What Casey and Calley Means exposed is that our current situation, which brings me full circle to talking about health and food, is that this overgrown, bloated, power-grubbing, emergency-declaring Leviathan has been rigging the free market by picking winners and losers in the food, healthcare, and medicine space to crowd out competition, make small farming nearly impossible, stifling functional and natural medicine, and make “a pill for an ill” philosophy seem like the only science-based healthcare option. (See this post for how John D. Rockefeller started the trend of pharma writing medical school curriculum to secure sales of the pharmaceuticals he invested in.)

The FDA, which was developed to serve as an INDEPENDENT agency (ha, ha, ha, how naive) to regulate food and drugs, instead uses its power and unmatched conflicts of interest to protect the corrupt Medical Mafia and Legal Drug Cartel, aka Big Pharma.

And then there’s the problem of farm subsidies which Calley Means elucidates in the Tucker interview. The farm subsidies forced farmers to mono-crop disease and obesity-causing crops such as corn and soy in mind-boggling amounts, making it almost impossible for small, independent farms to compete. 

Don’t you just love all the “good” Leviathan does? Poisons the food supply, and then sells you the medication to manage all the diseases. Notice I said MANAGE, not cure. You can’t cure a nutritional disease with medicine, but that’s the genius of the business model—it creates drug customers for life. 

And then it propagates the idea that anyone who eats whole foods and takes no medication is a tinfoil hat-wearing weirdo.

And this is where I think that some conservatives have been played, and I include my former self in this category. Although I might not have admitted it, when I was unhealthy, I subconsciously thought of people who went to health food stores and shopped exclusively at Farmer’s markets as a little fringe. I’ll go so far as to say I was even a little proud of my Walmart cart full of “regular food.” And although my Walmart cart was never as processed-food laden as some people’s (I’ve always made the majority of our meals from scratch), it was sure a far cry from what I buy these days. (I still get some things from Walmart—no judgment.)

Some of us have been played in that we imagine that freedom and supporting ‘Merica means we should gorge ourselves on Lady Gaga Oreos day & night because that’s what the free market is for.

Don’t take this as judgmental against people who eat Oreos. I used to eat Oreos (now I can’t imagine enjoying one because I’ve completely lost my taste for all of that!)

Instead, it’s a call to rethink whom you are supporting with your hard-earned dollars when you constantly indulge in those foods and then head to the doctor for your cocktail of blood pressure-lowering meds, heart disease pills, diabetes drugs, and heartburn-managing capsules. 

If that last sentence describes you, then you are Big Food and Big Pharma’s lackey. Repent. Change course. Now.

The realization that I had been played, more than anything else, is what made me grit my teeth and determine that I was going to find a way to cure my prediabetes (I did!) before I got on the Big Pharma gravy train of Metformin, insulin, neuropathy drugs, pills for kidney disease, and finally amputations and heart surgery. 

Defunding Big Food and Big Pharma may be the best motivation for many other people as well. We just need a good ole’ knock upside the noggin’ to wake us up to what we’re doing.

Take your health back into your own hands and start thinking for yourself!

Stop going to your legal drug dealer to get hit up, and stop pretending that he’s helping you. Stop participating in the medical mafia who wants you sick. 

Stop filling yourself with seed oils that were farmed on the world’s most depleted and sprayed soils, made from hybrid GMO crops, sprayed with pesticides and herbicides, and then put through a 9-step bleaching and deodorizing process using toxic solvents, the residues of which remain in the final product. (I explain more about the seed oil refining process here.)

Get off the corrupt health insurance wagon. You could change to a high-deductible plan that includes an FSA or HSA. When we opted for this, our premiums went from $1,200 per month to $200 per month. We spend some of that extra $1K/month to buy local raw milk, pastured eggs, local grass-fed beef, chicken, and pork, and in-season, local vegetables from our farmer’s market and our local co-op. We have a $5k deductible but we also have over $5K in our HSA. 

For those whose employers don’t offer those options, consider a health-sharing ministry such as Samaritan Ministries or Christian Healthcare Ministries. But these work best for those who are not on multiple meds.

With our HSA, we have some flexibility on how we spend our tax-free dollars: on eyeglasses or contacts, dental care, and lab tests that I order for myself through LabCorp.

(I do this quite often because I’m a total nerd when it comes to self-experimentation and how my diet is affecting my A1C, vitamin D levels, C reactive protein, fasting insulin, cholesterol levels, cortisol, etc.

I also spend my HSA on buying keto and glucose strips so I can be super annoying and beg my friends and family to let me take their readings for my ongoing data collection purposes. I’m learning a ton about ketosis by the way. Last night I ate half a stick of butter—true story—and my ketones shot up, and I got a ton of energy. Note: this only works when you’re eating close to zero carbs as I have been for the last few weeks.)

Anyhoo, back to politics so I can land this plane. What am I looking for in a political candidate?

I’m not looking for anyone to fix the world’s problems by creating an even bigger Leviathan! I’m not putting my hope in man. The very most I’m hoping from the government is that it can stop making a fraction of the problems that it’s caused.

Making an even bigger government to solve the problems of a big government is like injecting someone who has cancer with more cancer.

I’m interested in hearing from any politician who will slay Leviathan by returning to the limits put in place by our constitution. He need not be someone I like—I’m not going to live with him. He need not be someone I would want one of my daughters to marry. He need not be someone I would choose for my pastor because he’s not my religious leader. He need not be someone I would want to be my child’s teacher because that’s not in the job description (thank goodness). Sure, I’d love it if there were people in politics with sterling morals but I’m not looking for a moral leader.

I’m looking for a dragon-slayer; morals would be a nice addition. 

I want someone who is going to reduce the medical tyranny and food tyranny. It’s quite a simple job description actually.

I’m hoping this explanation discourages comments and private messages that I often receive when I merely mention the name of a political candidate. Such comments always have the tone of: “I am unsubscribing from this Substack because I cannot believe that you would mention the name of a person who…[insert laundry list of faults that nearly every political candidate ever has had]…” 

For example, a few months ago, I merely mentioned the book The Real Anthony Fauci written by RFK. I didn’t even slightly imply that I would ever consider voting for RFK as President (his stance on abortion is polar opposite to mine since I’m one of the most pro-life peeps you’ll ever meet).

But just the mere mention of the book caused someone to write me a note saying: “I used to be a paying subscriber to this Substack, but I’m unsubscribing because I cannot support anyone who agrees with RFK.” I don’t know which political persuasion this person was coming from, (RFK angers all sides), she didn’t say, and it doesn’t matter.

So this seems like a good time to state that I’m not for everyone.

I’ve never tried to please everyone. Any Substack that attempts to carefully couch statements so that they can’t be twisted or misinterpreted by those insistent on finding offense, is one Substack I never want to read, and definitely never write (even if that were possible, which it isn’t). 

However, I used a heading above that said that my political statements were supposed to be unifying. Didn’t I just offend half the country by saying that supporting big government is supporting a bloated monster personified as Leviathan?

I don’t believe so. I firmly believe the best about the average American, that he has a dose of common sense that I could only dream existed in a fraction of a degree in the out-of-touch upper-crust elites who control the Mainstream Media Mafia. 

No, the average thinking person, my fellow American, understands that this country was founded on principles of freedom from Leviathan-esque tyranny, and desperately wants a return to such freedom.

Small, independent farms, ranches, and businesses built this great country without any processed foods or any pharmaceutical drugs, and any government subsidies, and without 40% of their hard-earned income being confiscated through the combo of federal and state income tax, property tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, and a tax code so complicated that partially grasping it requires a full-time career. 

The thing that brings unity is a return to the fundamental principles that every human being can agree on. There will always be disagreement about how to get back to freedom, and I make a practice of respectfully listening to others’ viewpoints when they seek to persuade me with reason instead of mudslinging and vitriol. 

In conclusion, the main thing that came to the forefront of many people’s minds in the past two weeks is that Big Food is broken, and Big Ag is stupid, and Big Pharma is evil, and Big Medicine is a dumpster fire, and Americans’ bodies are chronically ill because our big, ugly, monstrous, overgrown government has done what every bloated beaurocracy in the history of forever has done—it’s become corrupted by powerful interests. Shocker!

The forces of Big Food and Big Medicine will always attract the most corrupt interests because if you can control the two things that people must live on (poisonous food makes drugs necessary), then you control the world. 

The biggest mistake that people make in this area is that they have not sat down and had a good, hard, coming-to-reality chat with themselves about how inherently corrupt humans become when in power. There’s this category in some people’s brains that says: sure, bad things happened in Nazi Germany, and in Stalin’s USSR, and in Mao Zedong‘s China, but surely not here, not now. 

Surely the uber-rich whose wealth and power are tied up in Big Pharma profits would never withhold life-saving, off-patent cancer cures from other Americans simply because the profits would obliterate the entire cancer industry they’re invested in. (Except some oncologists admit otherwise.)

Surely, no oncologist would poo-poo an off-patent drug, that happens to be the safest drug in the world, with far fewer side effects than Tylenol, that costs about $70/month compared to $100,000/month for a dying patient, for which the conventional treatment has NO CURE and can only slightly extend his life. Surely, no oncologist would be that cold-hearted, right? RIGHT? 

WRONG. 

Mainstream cancer murderously (and I mean that) defames medicines that the brightest oncologists in the world support. For instance, Dr. William Makis, an oncologist who has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, when the average oncologist has published zero articles, provides copious evidence that ivermectin has the potential to cure many cancers that mainstream cancer drugs cannot cure. Furthermore, the most prestigious medical journals in the entire world, namely Nature, have published articles (such as this one) showing all the mechanisms that fenbendazole uses to fight INCURABLE cancers. (There are numerous anecdotal stories.)

But none of that compelling info matters, because your neighborhood, unpublished, Big Pharma-shilling, bought-out, compromised, oncologist without a conscience, who apparently has never read a cancer study in his life, is warning his patients not to take the world’s safest medicine, a medication so safe that there is no known overdose level. (If someone wanted to kill himself by taking ivermectin, nobody knows the amount he’d have to take because no one has ever overdosed on it. For a Tylenol, the amount is about 8 pills—less if you have poor kidney or liver function. It’d be easier to kill yourself by drinking too much water, something that people have done accidentally, than taking ivermectin.)

I think the angriest I have been in my entire life is when I heard about a mainstream oncologist warning his cancer patients not to take ivermectin or they might die while simultaneously prescribing poisonous cancer meds that are so toxic they burn the patients’ skin from the inside but can’t cure their specific cancer, only slightly extend their life (supposedly). Meanwhile, ivermectin has next-to-no side effects AND COULD PUT THE INCURABLE CANCERS INTO REMISSION. But money.

How does such an oncologist sleep at night watching people die while warning them away from the only thing that could save their incurable cancer simply to secure his profits? Someone, please illuminate me in the comments because I can’t sleep at night thinking about how such people CAN sleep at night. Ambien? Ambien plus alcohol? In ever-increasing amounts? 

Such corruption can only continue when reasonable people sit by idly and watch. COVID was just the tip of the iceberg, a peep behind the scenes of a medical mafia so corrupt that few had an imagination dark enough to see it. 

So make it a priority this week to listen to the facts. Nothing in the Tucker and Means interview is speculation. It’s merely testimony from two people who have worked behind the scenes and are letting the world know how the sausage is made. If you’re going to eat the sausage, you might want to know what’s in it. And you might want to tell a friend. 

One of the most interesting questions Tucker asked Casey Means was why did you drop out when you saw the corruption but no one else did. Her answer was instructive: because she had parents who taught her to ask questions.

That’s my challenge to you. Ask the hard questions. Ask what is causing this unprecedented rise in autoimmune disease documented in this chart published in The New England Journal of Medicine:

Ask why chronic disease continues to rise despite the pharmaceutical industry spending $86 billion per year on the research and development of new drugs. Are the drugs not working or is the model broken?

Don’t blindly walk into your oncologist’s office, hold out your arm, and let him inject you with whatever expensive cocktail of drugs because “doctor knows best.” Ask some hard questions. Ask him how many off-patent drugs he prescribes. Ask him why so few. Ask him what percentage of his income comes from the sale of chemo drugs! (It can be as high as 70%).

You don’t owe him your life. Of all the things that people give their lives for, sacrificing your life to protect Big Pharma interests is the most ridiculous. Advocate for yourself instead of blindly trusting an institution that profits from off-patent meds. You can always go to an integrative oncologist. And why not get a second opinion? I’m not saying to never do chemo, I’m just saying to advocate for yourself and gather all the info you can before deciding what to do with your body.

If you’re ready to get off the chronic disease train, check out my course on chronic disease, health, and nutrition.

Also, check out my fasting course. Together, by making free simple changes, we can bankrupt the forces that collude to make us sick and healthy, one person at a time.

And that’s what this stack is all about.

Blessings,

Leslie

[This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not designed as a substitute for medical advice. The reader bears responsibility for any advice taken. Talk to your doctor before beginning any dietary changes, especially if you are on medications for diabetes. Fasting while taking certain medications such as Metformin and especially insulin can lead to dangerously low blood sugars. If your doctor does not support fasting, search for a physician who will support your fasting journey. Fasting is not recommended for those pregnant, breastfeeding, or for children and teens still growing and developing. For those with diabetes, personal fasting coaches are available through Jason Fung’s site TheFastingMethod.com. I receive no compensation or ad revenue for anything in this newsletter including links to books, videos, websites, podcasts, or supplements with the exception of a book I contributed to called Yankee Doodle Soup, but I only receive compensation if someone writes “Taylor” in the box labeled “contributor’s code” during checkout.]