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RFK Jr. Takes on Big Pharma: How Diet Could End the Antidepressant Era

The AHA! Team — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 05:09:23 +0000

Cassie B. via Natural News – In a bold move that could upend the $15 billion antidepressant industry, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is spotlighting groundbreaking research linking poor diet to mental health disorders like depression and anxiety. Linking poor diets to mental health disorders Robert F. Kennedy Jr. highlights research linking poor diets to mental health disorders, challenging the $15 billion antidepressant industry. Studies show diets high in sugar and saturated fats alter brain chemistry, reducing grey matter and disrupting neurotransmitters tied to depression and anxiety. Kennedy argues that toxic food ingredients fuel mental health crises, while Big Pharma profits from treating the fallout with medications. A growing movement for cleaner food is emerging, with restaurants replacing harmful ingredients in response to consumer demand. Upend a $15 billion antidepressant industry? In a bold move that could upend the $15 billion antidepressant industry, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is spotlighting groundbreaking research linking poor diet to mental health disorders like depression and anxiety. Drawing on studies from Stanford, Harvard, and other institutions, Kennedy argues that the toxic ingredients in America’s food supply are fueling a mental health crisis—and that Big Pharma is profiting from the fallout. With 40% of U.S. teenagers now struggling with anxiety or depression, Kennedy’s message is resonating: food is medicine, and changing what we eat could be the key to healing. The science behind the connection Recent studies reveal that a poor-quality diet—high in sugar, saturated fats, and ultra-processed foods—can alter brain chemistry and structure, leading to mental health issues. Research from the University of Reading found that unhealthy diets reduce grey matter volume and disrupt neurotransmitter levels in the brain, particularly gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate. These changes are associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety, including rumination, a hallmark of mental health disorders. We can eat ourselves well! Dr. Piril Hepsomali, a lead researcher on the study, explained, “We can eat ourselves well! Ultimately, we see that people who have an unhealthy diet – high in sugar and saturated fat – have imbalanced excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission, as well as reduced volume of grey matter in the frontal part of the brain.” Kennedy has been vocal about these findings, telling Fox News, “There are studies coming out of Stanford and Harvard that show a lot of mental illness, including anxiety and depression, are related to food… Food is medicine. By changing your diet, you can lose some of those diagnoses.” Threatening Big Pharma profits The implications of this research are seismic. If diet is a primary driver of mental health issues, the demand for antidepressants—a cornerstone of Big Pharma’s profits—could plummet. Kennedy has criticized the pharmaceutical industry for perpetuating the narrative that mental health problems are solely a matter of brain chemistry, requiring medication. “We are letting down these kids. And there is a moral issue here… it’s a financial issue. Health care costs are going to sink us. And the only way that we’re going to solve it is by changing what we eat,” he said. The stakes are high. In the U.S., 40% of adults are obese, compared to just 5% in Japan, where life expectancy is seven years longer on average. Over 1,000 ingredients banned in Europe are still allowed in America’s food supply, contributing to a toxic diet that Kennedy argues is making people sick—and Big Pharma rich. A growing movement for cleaner food Kennedy’s campaign is already sparking change. Restaurant chains like Steak ’n Shake and Sweetgreen are ditching harmful seed oils in favor of healthier alternatives like beef tallow and avocado oil. Outback Steakhouse is also reportedly reevaluating its ingredients in response to consumer demand for cleaner food. A shift reflects a broader awakening This shift reflects a broader awakening to the connection between diet and mental health. Many people think antidepressants are the solution to depression, but it’s time to shine a spotlight on the significant role diet plays in mental health. RFK Jr.’s crusade against Big Pharma and toxic food is more than a critique—it’s a call to action. By highlighting the link between diet and mental health, he is challenging Americans to rethink their relationship with food and demand accountability from corporations that prioritize profits over public health. As the science continues to mount, it is becoming increasingly clear that the path to better mental health may start on our plates, not in a pill bottle. Sources for this article include: Modernity.news NeuroscienceNews.com NYPost.com Health.Harvard.edu To read the original article, click here

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Eat to Beat Disease: How to Eat for Optimal Health

AHA Publisher — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 08:00:04 +0000

Dr. Josh Axe, DC, DMN, CNS – It’s no secret that what you eat has immense effect on your health, and it turns out you can actually eat to beat disease. No one know this better than Dr. William Li, MD, author of the book “Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Health Itself.” Li has been featured on numerous media outlets, and he’s also the author of over 100 scientific publications, including research published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet. He’s also served on faculty at Harvard Medical School and has spent decades practicing medicine. I was lucky enough to talk with Dr. Li on my podcast, where he shared insights on how to combat cancer and other diseases through diet by activating the body’s five health defense systems. Here are his insights on how to eat to beat disease. The Study of Food One of the biggest breakthroughs for Dr. Li during his career was the realization that while the practice of medicine is vital and life-changing, a lot of his formal training focused on treating diseases and little on prevention. “When I went to medical school, I was really taught about health for maybe a few courses, and then everything else was about disease and what we should do to stamp it out, treat it, cut it burn it, give chemotherapy or antibiotics. That’s really how I entered the world of medical practice,” he says. “It is really just waiting for the horse to come out of the barn, which is illness, and then throwing the kitchen sink, ideally, smartly at it. “… I started to realize after many years of practice that the science was advancing so rapidly for treating disease and yet it didn’t seem like it was being applied to actually preventing disease, and you know prevention is really the mirror image of treatment.” Li realized that you can’t really use drugs as a prevention method so in order to focus on disease prevention, he shifted his attention to food. That led him to start researching the effects of food on health in the same manner medical researchers studied drugs, utilizing the same tools and methods to understand just how powerful food can be — and how to eat to beat disease. “I grew up uh eating traditional Asian cuisines and Mediterranean cuisines, whole foods freshly cooked not too much, designed to be really tasty. So I always felt that food was something that sustained me and sustained my well-being,” says Li. “… As an adult on my own eating in the cafeteria or hospital food, traveling around and going to restaurants, I started to realize we’ve actually lost touch with what our own history and cultures actually have given us, which is something pretty elemental that speaks to the body.” The focus for many today is on dieting, which can cause its own issues. Most diets are strict and exclusionary, and that can make them difficult for people to follow and sustain. “I just felt like there’s got to be a better way to do this, and what I discovered is when it comes to food and health, in fact it’s not just about the food — it’s about how our body responds to what we put inside it,” Li says. “You have to understand first before you choose any diet and any food combination how your body responds to keeping your health intact.” What Li found working for more than 30 years with Dr. Judah Folkman, a pioneer in the medical field, is that health is critically dependent on circulation. When circulation is excessive, it can feed diseases like cancer, while lack of circulation can cut off oxygen and nutrients to tissues so they die off — which in turn can promote disease. “Lab research has shown when a cancer that doesn’t have a blood supply suddenly gets one, that tiny little tumor can grow 16,000 times in only a couple of weeks. That’s enough to kill somebody. That’s led to the development of more than 18 medicines that cancer doctors use to cut off the blood supply to cancers,” Li says. “Using the same tools to discover medicines that can interfere to cut off a blood supply to starve a cancer, I’ve actually been able to test food, and when you test food in those systems, you can test them head-to-head, side-by-side, you wind up seeing that green tea, soy, lavender, citrus fruits, broccoli — they can stand up right next to cancer drugs.” The 5 Health Defense Systems The body is designed to protect health, while environmental factors all around are trying to get in. “Think of our body as a fortress. If you remember a medieval castle, you got the moat, you got the tall, sloping walls, you’ve got the little slits in the walls where people could shoot arrows out, you’ve got the little tiger traps, little holes with spikes in middle it, you got the winding staircases — all these things. A fortress is designed to protect itself from invaders,” says Li. “That is exactly our body except that rather than stone structures or spears, it’s actually biology.” There are five main health defense systems, according to Li: Blood or circulation/angiogenesis — The body grows blood vessels that feed every cell in the body. Stem cells in bone marrow — Help us heal from the inside out and regenerate our organs as we age or when we’re injured. Microbiome — This is the healthy gut bacteria, and humans have almost 40 trillion gut bacteria. “You know how a pregnant mom says, ‘I’m eating for two?’ We’re eating for 40 trillion, and that’s leading to a whole new insight into what we eat and how it impacts our gut defense,” says Li. DNA — Our DNA is hardwired to protect us against the assaults from the environment. Immune system — “It is more powerful than we ever thought because we now know that even an elderly person in their 80s, their immune system is so powerful that it can not only help resist infection, but it can help resist cancer as well.” “These five health defense systems are at play all the time, and when we sit down to eat something we are either building up and fortifying and boosting these defense systems or we’re taking it down and destroying it, ” says Li. “Everybody who thinks about food and health according to the traditional ways that have been everywhere for the last few decades, it’s about what program should I get into and what things should I cut out and what do I need to eat every single day. Here’s the news flash, which is good news: There’s no one size fits all. It’s about our individual preference, what our bodies seek, what we enjoy — and by the way, the enjoyment’s really important because if you can pick something that’s healthy that you enjoy, then you are already ahead of the game.” How to Eat to Beat Disease In “Eat to Beat Disease,” Dr. Li touches on 200 foods that can help boost immunity and activate the health defense systems. Here are some of the top foods to eat to beat disease: 1. Soy “There’s a belief out there that soy is actually dangerous for your health because it can cause breast cancer, and we believe this because there’s a plant estrogen in soy that we know is there, and we know that some types of human breast cancers can be activated by human estrogen. However, if you look at soy plant estrogen vs. human estrogen, they don’t look anything alike, and it turns out the science shows us that plant estrogens actually counter the effects of human estrogens so they actually block human estrogens almost like a drug does,” says Li. “There’s a study of 500 women who already have breast cancer, and it was studied that those women with breast cancer who actually ate more soy had better survival — they had about a 30 percent reduced risk of dying from breast cancer — and those who ate more soy were able to decrease the risk of having the cancer come back.” A note is to be wary of highly processed foods, including in soy products. A lot of soy milk is overly processed and contains unnecessary and sometimes harmful additives. That’s why I’m a proponent of natto, a fermented soy. It’s also why I’m in favor of fresh foods instead of buying juiced foods. Eating blueberries or an apple vs. buying blueberry juice or apple juice — it’s better to eat the whole, fresh fruit that hasn’t been processed or had any unhealthy ingredients added. Flaxseeds have a similar compound as soy that can protect against disease, along with lavender, vitex, clary sage. They can actually balance estrogen. 2. Tomatoes “There’s a lot of people out there saying tomatoes are harmful because they’re related to the nightshade plant,” says Li. “In fact, tomatoes don’t have any of the poisons of nightshade, and in fact there is a really important natural chemical called lycopene which is present in tomato. “Lycopene in tomato has been studied. There’s a study of 35,000 men, and they looked at their intake of tomatoes, cooked tomatoes, and found that those men who ate two to three servings of cooked tomatoes actually had up to a 30 percent lowered risk of developing prostate cancer. “In those men who did develop prostate cancer, the more tomatoes they ate, the less aggressive their prostate cancer because lycopene is anti-andorgenic, which means it cuts off the blood supply feeding cancers. It starves cancer in this really remarkable way.” 3. Green Tea Drink two-plus cups of green tea a day. It floods the system with natural bioactive chemicals that come from the tea plant that can actually cut off the blood supply to tumors, actually even kill cancer stem cells. It also protects blood vessels. 4. Tree Nuts Pistachios, almonds, cashews, macadamias and walnuts are some of the best options. “A major study of over 700 people from the American Society of Clinical Oncology showed that people who ate a couple handfuls of walnuts a day, about 15, a week actually had up to a 50 percent reduction in death if they had stage 3 colon cancer, and if they had their cancer successfully treated, it also markedly decreased the risk fo their cancer coming back,” shares Li. “A couple handfuls of nuts as a snack is a really great way to reduce your risk of cancer. “It turns out nuts not only have healthy omega-3 fatty acids that can cut off the blood supply feeding cancer cells, but they also have insoluble fiber. They’re a great source of fiber. “This insoluble fiber feeds our microbiome and activates our immune system. It lowers inflammation, which lowers cancer risk.” What Does Dr. Li Eat to Beat Disease? First and foremost, Dr. Li stresses “there’s no single food you need to eat all the time. It’s eating diversity, mostly plant-based foods, minimal processing like ultra-processed foods and cutting down on your meat also reduces your risk of cancer as well.” Instead, he says to focus on dietary patterns, such as the Mediterranean dietand traditional Asian diets. In addition, he likes to focus on plant-based foods and tries to build his meals around a vegetable. So what does Dr. Li typically eat to beat disease each day? Breakfast “When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is reach for either green tea or coffee,” Li says. “Coffee contains caffeic acid, chlorogenic acid, all these natural bioactives that are amazingly healthy for you. They increase your telomeres, which slows down cellular aging. They’re anti-androgenic so they cut off the blood supply feeding cancers, and they make our blood vessels actually healthier. Many lower the risk of dementia. “… I’ll have tea or coffee every day. Every day...

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Could a Diet High in Carbohydrates Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease?

AHA Publisher — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 08:00:16 +0000

Dr. Mahshid Dehghan interview conducted by Emily Henderson, B.Sc. via News-Medical Net – In this interview, News-Medical speaks to Dr. Mahshid Dehghan about her latest research into diet, and how a diet high in carbohydrates could increase your risk of heart disease. What provoked your research into diets? Diet is one of the most important modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease and other non-communicable diseases. In 2017, we published results of the PURE study in the Lancet and reported the association between the number of carbohydrates and health outcomes. We found those who consumed more than 60% of their energy from carbohydrates had a higher risk of mortality and CVD. A month ago, we published the results of another study in BMJ. In that study, we assessed the relationship between the quality of carbohydrates as refined, whole grains, and rice and health outcomes. We reported that highly refined grains, compared with a low intake (<50 g/day v >350 g/day) were significantly associated with a 27% higher risk of total mortality, 31% non-cardiovascular mortality, 33% major cardiovascular disease events, and 47% higher risk of stroke. In the present study, we were interested to indicate the extent to which the glycemic index has any value as a marker of carbohydrate quality related to chronic disease in general and cardiovascular disease in particular. By better understanding the harmful effect of poor quality carbohydrates on health outcomes, we will able to prevent premature death and CVD. Why is having a healthy balanced diet so important for our health? Diet is one of the most important modifiable risk factors of chronic disease and premature death. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality worldwide, with 80% of the burden in low-income and middle-income countries. Therefore, the impact of poor quality diet maybe more profound in those regions and among low-income families around the world. Please could you give some examples of poor-quality carbohydrates? Poor-quality carbohydrate foods include those that contain a low amount of fiber, a higher percentage of refined grains than whole grains. Poor quality carbohydrates are mainly processed grains such as refined grains (e.g. white bread) with a high glycemic index. By contrast, low glycemic index foods are a rich source of fiber such as fruit, vegetable, legume, and whole grains. Low glycemic index foods gradually increase blood glucose and this is one of the reasons that they are healthier than refined grains. Can you describe your latest research into carbohydrates and heart disease? Using data from a large prospective cohort study that included 137,851 people in the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, we assessed the association between glycemic index and health outcomes. During a median follow-up of 9.5 years, about 9000 death and more than 8000 cardiovascular diseases were recorded. Dietary information was obtained using a country-specific food frequency questionnaire at the beginning of the study. Our study population is unique because it includes people from 20 low-, middle-, and high-income countries throughout North America, Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia. What did you discover? After performing extensive adjustments, we found that a diet with a high glycemic index was associated with 28%, 25%, 14%, higher risk of stroke, major CV events, and death due to cardiovascular disease respectively in all participants. Associations were even stronger among those with preexisting CVD with a 71% higher risk of stroke and 49% higher risk of CV events. Results concerning glycemic load were similar. Your study geographically is the largest study of this kind. Why is it important to study a large and dietary diverse population for this type of research? The study population is unique because it includes people from 20 low-, middle-, and high-income countries throughout North America, Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia. We know that burden of non-communicable diseases is higher in low and middle-income countries. 80% of CVD happens in low and middle-income countries where poor quality carbohydrate consumption is high. Therefore, people in those regions benefit more by lowering their intake of high glycemic index foods such as refined grains and this would be the same for low-income families in high-income countries. Also, our results are robust in different populations with varying dietary patterns, which suggests that the findings are widely applicable. What advice should be given to people regarding their diet and heart health? Intakes of a combination of cereal grains with a lower intake of refined should be encouraged while promoting a higher intake of whole grains. Reduction in quantity and improvement in the quality of carbohydrate is essential for better health outcomes. We always encourage choosing minimally processed foods, higher consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains over refined grains as often as possible. Do you believe that with continued research, people will have a better understanding of harmful diets? We are providing new evidence and we hope that dietary guidelines in North America, with its multicultural population, consider these findings and encourage individuals to lower their refined grain and sugar intake and promote a higher intake of whole grains. Also, public health policies should encourage a diversity of sources of carbohydrate consumption, meaning consumption of foods from all types of grains, legumes, roots, tubers in moderation. These messages should be distributed to the public by media as well. What are the next steps in your research? Currently, I am investigating associations of foods with varying degrees of processing and health outcomes and am hoping to publish the results of this research soon. Where can readers find more information? Jenkin D, Dehghan M, Yusuf S. et al. Glycemic Index, Glycemic Load and Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality. NEJM 2020 Swaminathan S, Dehghan M, Yusuf S. et al. Associations of cereal grains intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality across 21 countries in the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiological Study: A prospective cohort study. BMJ 2020 Dehghan M, Mente A, Yusuf S. et al. Association of egg intake with blood lipids, cardiovascular disease, and mortality in 177,000 people in 50 countries. Am J Clin Nutr. 2020 Dehghan M, Mente A, Yusuf S. et al. Association of dairy intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 21 countries from 5 continents: The PURE study. The Lancet. 2018 S0140-6736(18)31812-9. Dehghan M, Mente A, Yusuf S. et al. Associations of fats and carbohydrate intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 18 countries from 5 continents: The PURE study. The Lancet. 2017. 4;390 (10107):2050-2062. Miller V, Mente A, Dehghan M et al. Fruit, vegetable, and legume intake and cardiovascular disease and deaths: The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study in 18 countries. The Lancet. 2017. 4;390 (10107):2037-2049. About Dr. Mahshid Dehghan Mahshid Dehghan is an investigator for the Nutrition Epidemiology program at Population Health Research Institute and the nutrition lead of the PURE study and the INTERSTROKE study. Her main interests are the development of methods to measure the long-term dietary intake of individuals around the world and understand the impact of dietary factors in the cause and prevention of cardiovascular disease and cancer. She has published 64 papers and 2 book chapters. She holds two Masters of Clinical Nutrition and Health Research Methodology and received her doctoral degree in Clinical Nutrition from Newcastle University, England, and completed post-doctoral training in Nutrition Epidemiology at McMaster University in Canada. To read the original article click here.

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