I spoke at the People V Poison rally yesterday. This issue is at the epicenter of our American chronic disease crisis. Companies, who knowingly poison our children, should have full liability for their actions.
Finnish scientists trucked in real forest dirt and grass and laid it over the gravel at four daycare yards. They let the kids dig around in it for a month. The blood tests came back with changes the researchers hadn’t expected to see so fast or so clear.
The study ran at ten daycares in two Finnish cities with 75 kids aged three to five. Four of the yards got the forest treatment: about a tennis court worth of soil and grass laid over the gravel, plus planters and peat blocks the kids could dig and climb on. Three others stuck with their normal gravel yards. The last three were daycares where the kids were already visiting real forests every day.
After one month, the variety of bacteria living on the kids’ skin shot up, and the kind that helps train the skin’s immune defenses jumped the most. Their gut bacteria started to look like the gut bacteria of the forest-visiting kids. Their blood showed more of the immune cells whose job is to keep the body from freaking out at harmless stuff like pollen and peanuts, and overall inflammation dropped. The kids on the plain gravel yards showed none of this.
Childhood asthma in the US doubled between 1980 and 1995. Food allergies in kids jumped 50 percent between 1997 and 2011, then jumped another 50 percent between 2007 and 2021. And peanut allergies in one-year-olds tripled between 2001 and 2017.
The Finnish researchers think one of the reasons is simple: kids today don’t get dirty enough. 37 percent of American preschoolers now spend an hour or less outside on a normal weekday. Their immune systems are getting trained in environments stripped of the bacteria humans have always lived around.
Aki Sinkkonen, who led the study, put it in plain words: “It would be best if children could play in puddles and everyone could dig organic soil.” The Finnish government is now helping pay for daycares across the country to make the same changes.
McDonald’s used to be an organic burger shack.
Then executives chose profits over human health.
“McDonald’s was an organic burger shack.”
“The fries were fries, tallow, and salt.”
“The beef was grass-fed.”
“And then a bunch of people got around the table… And we’re like, ‘Well we're gonna have to basically commodify the plants and we're gonna have to have our own farms for potatoes and we're gonna have to figure out some chemicals that preserve it, that make it consistent.”
“It went from 3 ingredients to 11 ingredients.”
“The extra 8 ingredients are all things you don’t want to eat.”
@yoalexrapz@humankarp
@patrick_oshag If you look at history, and the amount of “on paper” trillions of wealth creation from AI-related everything, the odds are very slim that we don’t have a massive correction.
I spoke at the People V Poison rally yesterday. This issue is at the epicenter of our American chronic disease crisis. Companies, who knowingly poison our children, should have full liability for their actions.
I spoke at the People V Poison rally yesterday. This issue is at the epicenter of our American chronic disease crisis. Companies, who knowingly poison our children, should have full liability for their actions.
“You do not have to be remembered as a poisoner.”
Jason Karp makes a plea to pesticide companies, the Supreme Court, and Congress.
“I have sat in those rooms and I understand the dilemma.”
“You know what your products do to our children.”
“You have read the studies that you do not show your shareholders.”
“And somewhere inside of you, when you turn off the distractions, you can hear your soul begging to do the right thing.”
“To the 9 justices in the building behind me, deciding whether the poisoned can still seek justice, the law you serve is not the highest law.”
“The verdict you write will be read by your children and your grandchildren.”
“To the lawmakers listening, those who will shape the next farm bill, what you sign will outlive your career, your party, and your lobbyists.”
“But it will not outlive the children who eat the poisoned food.”
“We all know something is deeply wrong, but there is still time for redemption.”
“A court can correct itself.”
“Congress can choose differently.”
“What was broken can be rebuilt by those who are willing to do the work.”
“You do not have to be remembered as the Congress that sold our children for better crop yields.”
“You can be remembered as one who honors this sacred duty.”
The year is 1950. Your doctor lights a cigarette and tells you smoking is fine. He read it in a study. He is telling the truth about having read it. He does not know, or is not saying, that the study was funded by the tobacco industry.
The year is 1958. Your doctor tells you to eat less fat. The evidence is contested. The contestation is not in the public messaging. The food industry has been helpful in clarifying which findings deserve attention. Some researchers who published contradictory data have been quietly defunded. Ancel Keys is on the cover of Time magazine.
The year is 1962. Your doctor prescribes thalidomide to your pregnant wife for morning sickness. It has been approved. The FDA gave it the green light in Europe. Twelve thousand children will be born with severe limb malformations before anyone in an official capacity acknowledges the problem. The families are told the drug was safe. The drug was approved. Both of these things remain true.
The year is 1972. Your doctor prescribes Valium. Britain is in the grip of a benzodiazepine wave that will last two decades. The dependency risk is known internally. It is not shared. Your doctor is not lying to you. He was not told either.
The year is 1999. Your doctor prescribes Vioxx for your arthritis. It is newer than ibuprofen, well-tolerated, and Merck has a study showing it works. Merck also has internal data suggesting it roughly doubles the risk of heart attack. This data will not reach your doctor for four more years. Fifty thousand people are estimated to have died in the interim. Merck eventually settles for 4.85 billion dollars. No criminal charges are brought.
The year is 2002. Your doctor prescribes OxyContin. Purdue Pharma trained its sales representatives to tell doctors the addiction risk was less than one percent. That figure came from a letter, not a study. The letter was about patients with terminal cancer on short-term doses in hospital settings. Your doctor is a GP with a patient who has a bad back. Nobody draws a distinction. Nobody is required to.
The year is 2008. Your doctor checks your cholesterol. Your LDL is elevated. You are prescribed a statin. Nobody mentions that the number needed to treat for primary prevention is approximately 250. Nobody mentions that the muscle deterioration you'll notice over the next two years is listed as a rare side effect rather than a documented pattern affecting a meaningful percentage of patients. The trial that informed the prescription was funded by the manufacturer.
Now it is today.
Your doctor has new guidelines. New studies. New consensus.
He is confident.
He has always been confident.
The confidence has never been the problem.
The confidence is, in fact, precisely the problem.
The sun was free. They sold you SPF 50 and a vitamin D deficiency.
Sleep was free. They sold you an app, a pill, and a wearable that tells you your sleep was bad.
Walking was free. They sold you a treadmill, a fitness tracker, and a £180 pair of trainers.
Fasting was free. They sold you meal replacement shakes and the anxiety that skipping breakfast would wreck your metabolism.
Cold water was free. They sold you a £3,000 plunge barrel and a podcast episode about it.
Silence was free. They sold you a meditation app with a premium tier.
Animal fat was cheap. They sold you seed oils, then supplements to replace what the animal fat contained.
Tallow was cheap. They sold you a seventeen-step skincare routine and a clinical trial proving your face needs ceramides.
Meat was cheap. They are currently selling you the idea that you shouldn't eat it.
The 20th century removed access to everything the body needs to function.
The 21st century is selling it back, one subscription at a time.
Your great-grandmother had none of the products.
She had all of the things.
We initially thought GLP-1s like Ozempic, Tirzapeptide and Retatutride just reduced food cravings. Now, we know they work for alcohol, cocaine, gambling and other addictions too
But do you know what runs on exactly the same circuit?
Falling in love
GLP-1 receptors sit in the exact same brain regions that light up when you’re in love
The insane thing about them is that they don’t just suppress appetite. They suppress wanting in general, including romantic craving another person
Something like 60M+ people are now on anti-desire drugs and it happened in the blink of an eye
I predict in the coming years, we will see people on these drugs be less able to fall in love. We will also see them fall out of love, or be unable to feel it, in relationships that were previously great
If your girlfriend or boyfriend started taking GLP1s and your relationship started failing, there’s a good chance that’s why
Jason Karp: “The more money and technology we throw at our healthcare, the worse it’s become.”
“We’ve never exercised more, never had more knowledge, never had more technology, never had more medications or procedures, and yet Americans have the worst physical and mental health in recorded human history.”
“I believe we were put on this earth for a reason.”
“I believe that reason is stewardship and service.”
“To love one another, to protect one another, to be stewards of this extraordinary creation.”
“God gave us a sacred duty: take care of each other.”
“In the last 100 years… we decided that money and efficiency were more important than that duty.”
“And that’s when the system started to fail.”
@humankarp
.@SecKennedy’s team has done hundreds of meetings with retailers to discuss how to use the MAHA political moment to push positive change.
When a retailer like Target enforces requirements, it moves the entire market.
I’m looking forward to more major announcements.