How Big Food—and Bad Policy—Destroyed Our Health | Dr. Mark Hyman

If you watched the Super Bowl, you may have seen the Make America Healthy Again commercial. It featured Mike Tyson speaking about his sister Denise, who died at 25 from a heart attack linked to obesity. Tyson also spoke candidly about formerly weighing 345 pounds and experiencing suicidal thoughts. And he’s not alone: Roughly 40 percent of Americans are obese, and six in 10 live with at least one chronic disease.

The message of the ad was clear: “Processed food kills.” And as Tyson confesses, his addiction to junk food nearly cost him his life.

But one American doctor has been sounding this alarm for years. Dr. Mark Hyman has written 15 books, hosts the hit podcast The Dr. Hyman Show, and is now a contributor at CBS News. His company, Function Health, uses comprehensive lab testing to empower people to better understand what’s happening inside their bodies. He has also just published a new book, Food Fix Uncensored, an updated and revised version of his 2020 bestseller.

In the book, Hyman details how the American food system—from farm to factory to grocery store aisle—has been corrupted by corporate money, lobbyists, and special interests, who have incentivized us to shift our diets from whole foods to ultra-processed products loaded with artificial ingredients, sweeteners, and chemical flavorings. As Hyman often notes, we now live in a “soup of toxins.”

I sat down with him to discuss why America seems to have sleepwalked into this crisis; how we can take on powerful food interests; what the human and economic costs of the current system are; whether drugs like Ozempic actually make us healthier; and how new trends to advance longevity are reshaping health and medicine.