MAHA’s Making Our Children Healthy Again Strategy Report is out, and “strategy” is a generous term for this document. Beef farmer Trampus Harmon and public health dietitians Selena Salfen and Meghan Cichy return to the show to share their thoughts. 

Post production note: Dr. Casey Means has resumed the path to becoming Surgeon General and is declaring her conflicts of interest. 

Dr. Jessica Knurick newsletter

Marion Nestle

Wellness Farms

RFK Jr on autism

Trampus on collagen and beef tallow

Trampus on raw milk

Meghan and Selena on the first MAHA report

Meghan and Selena on Levels and CGMs

Meghan and Selena on the first 100days of RFK

Selena and the Levels intro

Selena’s Regrifting episode on Casey and Calley Means

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Jessica Wilson's book: It's Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

Would you ever add chia seeds to your latte? Levels Health, a health-tech startup co-founded by presumptive Surgeon General Casey Means, is a deeply unserious company and provides both hilarious and irresponsible guidance on its app. 

Public health dietitians Selena Salfen and Meghan Cichy return to the show to discuss our 30 days of using a CGM paired with the Levels app. 

Jessica didn’t find what she was looking for in her CGM data and laughed at the app’s inaccuracies. 

Meghan thought she was working harder than Levels, and found both more helpful and nicer CGM feedback with ChatGPT. 

Selena shared her history with health anxiety and her longer term use of a Stelo CGM. She shares how her experience was impacted when Levels provided her with incorrect data and biometric analyses. 

The three get into whether we should be using CGMs and if so, under what conditions. 

The three also discuss the most recent Levels podcast #280 and how it seems to answer a lot of concerns Selena and Jessica had in the CGM intro episode. The episode also discussed a lack of research to back up claims made by Levels and Casey Means herself. Host Ben Grynol and guest Dom D’Agostino, PhD took an unexpected turn and veered into the closed off “adult” section of Blockbuster; could there be a tie to food choices and curiosity? 

Imprecision Nutrition? Intraindividual Variability of Glucose Responses to Duplicate Presented Meals in Adults Without Diabetes

Casey’s Instagram post with her food scores 

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Jessica Wilson's book: It's Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

Journalist Jamie Ducharme joins the show for the 100th episode!! She talks with Jessica about her  experiences after the TIME magazine article, “Still Processing; Not all  Ultra-Processed Foods are the same. Or, some argue, even unhealthy.”* was published. RFK Jr entered the chat about the article and things got a bit out of hand. 

The two talk about food as identity and nutrition journalism today and why there seems to be a lot of stories that don’t add much to the conversation. 

*This is the print edition title. The online title changed to Why One Dietitian is Speaking Up for Ultra Processed Foods, as discussed in this episode. 

Jessica’s ultra-processed food experiment results

Jessica’s ultra-processed food experiment parameters

Jessica’s Slate op-ed: Ultra-processed Foods Have a Terrible Reputation. They Don’t Deserve It.

Avoiding UPFs may DOUBLE weight loss

Marty Makary on The Conversation

Jessica reading feedback she got about TIME

This episode is sponsored by BIG FOOD

Initial TIME recap episode

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Jessica Wilson's book: It's Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

Bryan Johnson made a fortune and then decided to spend it on rivaling Jesus Christ and developing his Blueprint supplement line. 

Johnson was born, raised and married Mormon before leaving that religion and family to pursue eternal life on his own. He is the health and tech crossover personified. His quest for longevity has led him to replace his plasma with that of his teenage son, and receive gene therapy in an unregulated area of Honduras. Johnson’s life is pretty much an algorithm, which is fitting because he believes we should fire ourselves because our brains can’t be trusted. 

The Netflix doc about his quest to not die was released this year and Jessica Wilson, MS RD is joined by editor extraordinaire, Jen Jacobs, to discuss it. Jen is a cult enthusiast and breaks down what about Johnson’s quest smells fishy. 

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Jessica Wilson's book: It's Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

Conspirituality podcast about Johnson

Louis Theroux

Don’t Die community

Ro

Crisis lifeline

Dr. Maisha Davis joins the pod for a hilarious chat about using constant glucose monitoring devices (CGMs), the Levels app and the Oura ring. The two talk about how and why collecting and reviewing health data can be comforting to some people, and also how using a CGM could be a slippery slope. 

Jessica and Maisha are currently using the Dexcom 7 and they share what their experiences have been using that brand. Maisha took extra steps to calibrate the CGM while Jessica didn’t go through the trouble and the two talk about how a CGM is only as good as its reliable responses. 

The two discuss the case of Cassie Cattie, a Nurse Practitioner, whose Oura ring detected her cancer 8 months before she received a diagnosis, but was that information helpful? 

Maisha also introduces us to their newest bff, the Ninja Creami and the secret to eating ice cream for breakfast. 

You can find more information about CGMs in this episode.

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Follow Jessica Wilson on Instagram @jessicawilson.msrd and TikTok @byjessicawilson

Jessica Wilson's book: It's Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

What can listeners take from Jessica’s conversation with Dr. Robert Lustig? She looks at the interview through a historical lens and addresses eugenics and war. She then shares some possible present day applications. Jessica also shares feedback she’s gotten from listeners and from a few people working for UCSF.

Lustig’s article in Frontiers: ⁠https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2023.1098453/full

You can contact the show at [email protected]

Follow Jessica on Instagram @jessicawilson.msrd

Like this episode? You can rate, review, subscribe, follow, share and comment!

Questions about the show? Guest pitches? Email [email protected]

You can buy awkward merch!

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Jessica Wilson's book: It's Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

Dr. Lexi Brown returns to the show to talk to Jessica about her hospitalization last year and the options she was given to treat her epilepsy. Not interested in brain surgery, Jessica was willing to try the next option: a ketogenic diet. Since January Jessica has been trialing a ketogenic diet to mixed results, mostly due to her questionable choices. Today she’s sharing what impact the diet has had on her for the past seven months and what she, reluctantly, should do going forward. Lexi talks to Jessica about taking her health seriously and how she should go about her CGM experiment. 

Ketogenic diet history

Keto diets for epilepsy in kiddos

Jayson Carr recently died from a brain eating amoeba 🙁

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Jessica Wilson's book: It's Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

RFK Jr wants us all to be using wearable devices! Presumptive Surgeon General, Casey Means, co-founded Levels Health which pledges to unlock our metabolic health through the use of a constant glucose monitor(CGM). What is a CGM, what promises are made by Levels, and should we care? Jessica and Selena Salfen are going to find out! The two have teamed up in August to use a CGM, link it to Levels and let the app work its biometric magic. The two will be optimized in just two weeks, according to Dr. Robert Lustig, medical advisor to Levels.

Today is just an introduction, there’s so much more to say about wearables and personal data, we will be back with more of a conversation and our metabolic results!

Lustig on Levels; understanding your lab results

RFK Jr at Energy and Commerce hearing

Take Back Your Health campaign

Levels podcast archives

What is a CGM

Like this episode? You can rate, review, subscribe, follow, share and comment!

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Jessica Wilson's book: It's Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

Chrissy King joins Jessica Wilson, MS RD for a conversation about being childfree by choice. Chrissy talks about how she made her decision and how Jessica didn’t ever think it was a choice she needed to make. Chrissy got to share her thoughts on many things including the marketing of parenthood, the idea of it taking a village to raise a child and aging like the Golden Girls.

The two talk about how they’ve been asked about their decision not to have kids 347 times but it’s not the norm to randomly ask parents why they decided to have kids.

They both talk about how much their moms poured into their upbringing and how that impacted how they viewed them and their decision not to have kids. They also talk about what it’s like to live in a society in which parenthood, particularly motherhood, is the norm. 

After wrapping this conversation Chrissy and I discussed the potential for backlash from this conversation and that parents might take our choices personally. Either way we’d love to hear your feedback!

Motherhood Should Come with a Warning Label

Childfree Reddit

Chrissy King

Chrissy’s book

Re-release! Originally published 9/14/23. After receiving an email from Dr. Robert Lustig about his concerns with Jessica's work she was fortunate enough to catch Dr. Lustig on the phone for this interview. In addition to giving her advice on what to tell a patient who needed to choose between a can of ravioli or nothing he shared his beliefs about calories, metabolic health, starvation, and how he distinguishes between what an eating disorder is and what it's not.

Content Note: This episode discusses topics that may be distressing to those who are food insecure, live in areas of food apartheid, experience anti-fatness, and/or have disordered eating.

Part 2 of this episode will air in two weeks.

If you have comments, feedback and/or analysis you can email or send a voice memo to [email protected].

Dr. Lustig's website 

His profiles at UCSF and here. 

Lustig's article that he sent to Jessica.

Like this episode? You can rate, review, subscribe, follow, share and comment!

Questions about the show? Guest pitches? Email [email protected]

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Follow Jessica Wilson on Instagram @jessicawilson.msrd and TikTok @byjessicawilson

Jessica Wilson's book: It's Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

Originally published 9/14/23