Latest news with #SamKass
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
‘A Total Sham': Michelle Obama's Nutrition Adviser Lets Loose on MAHA
Before there was MAHA, there was Michelle. Anyone following the rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again movement can't help but recall former First Lady Michelle Obama's efforts to improve Americans' diets — and the vitriol she faced in response. Now, many of the same Republicans who skewered Michelle Obama as a 'nanny state' warrior have embraced the MAHA movement. To explore this head-spinning turn, I called up Sam Kass, the former White House chef under President Barack Obama and a food policy adviser wholed the first lady's 'Let's Move' initiative. Kass said he was happy to find common ground with Kennedy and his MAHA brigade where possible. But he argued Kennedy's HHS has done little to actually improve the health of the public so far, and was instead mostly taking steps that would do real damage, including by undermining the use of vaccines. Kass also warned potentially MAHA-curious food advocates against legitimizing the Trump administration by offering support for Kennedy. 'Those who are lending their voice for the things that they support are going to ultimately help enable outcomes that are going to be quite devastating for this country and for our kids,' he said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. At the same time, Kass is not surprised with MAHA's growing popularity. In the 10-plus years since Kass left the White House, the issues of diet-related chronic disease haven't abated and Americans are more anxious about their health than ever. Wellness is a trillion-dollar industry, and MAHA influencers have filled the gap left by Democrats. 'The Democratic Party has absolutely blundered this issue,' he said. 'We're getting what we deserve here in some ways.' This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. How do you square the earlier conservative criticism of the 'Let's Move' initiative with the rise of MAHA? Are you surprised by the seeming contradiction? I think most of that is because Republicans are fearful of President Trump. And therefore, if he is putting somebody in a position of great power and backing him, there's a huge part of the party that's going to go along with whatever that may be. I don't think this is actually about the Republican Party taking this up. This is actually about a Democrat, traditionally, who had built up a pretty strong following on these issues, and decided to join forces with President Trump. It's not like any of these ideas are coming from the GOP platform. This is an RFK-led effort that they're now supporting. So are they hypocrites for that? Certainly. But I welcome Republican support on trying to genuinely improve the health of the nation. Frankly, if we had had that for the last 20 years, I think that cultural retention would be far better. The reality, though, is what they're actually doing I don't think is going to have any positive impact, or very little. Even what they're saying is problematic on some levels, but what they're doing is a far cry from anything that's going to create the health outcomes this country needs. When you say that, do you mean banning soda from SNAP or the food dyes issue? Are there specific things that come to mind? It's a long list. There's the critique that MAHA brings at the highest level, that chronic disease has exploded in our country. Nobody can refute that, and what we're eating is a big driver of poor health outcomes on many different levels. That is absolutely true. What we grow, how we're growing it, and what's being made out of it is quite literally killing people. That is something that First Lady Michelle Obama said way back when. I've been saying it for a couple of decades. After that, everything falls apart in my mind. We can start with food dyes as the biggest announcement they made thus far. I'm all for getting food dyes out of food. There's just not a basis of evidence that most of the ones that are being used are actually the drivers of many of these health conditions. It was reported that they were banning food dyes. Sadly, what they did was a total sham. It was a farce of an event. There was no policy at all that was announced. There was no guidance, there was no regulatory proposal, there wasn't even a request for information. There was absolutely nothing put forward to revoke the approvals of these dyes. And the reason I believe is that to revoke an approval, you have to show that it's harming the public health. That's what we did for trans fats. Trans fats had been approved for consumption. There was plenty of evidence to show that that food was really driving death and disease in the country, and we banned it through a regulatory mechanism. I could not fathom making an announcement like that without actually having a real policy to put in place. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry about what they did. Also, you see a bunch of the influencers holding up bags of Fruit Loops and saying, 'In Europe or Canada, these have no [synthetic] food dyes and ours do.' But the fact of the matter is Fruit Loops aren't good for you either way. Part of the danger of RFK is he keeps talking about gold standard science and rebooting our public policy and science. The reality is he's doing the exact opposite. He's going to fast food restaurants, touting them on national television as the head of Health and Human Services, [saying that] a cheeseburger and french fries is good for you now because it's cooked in beef fat which is just the most insane thing on literally every single level. It has absolutely no basis in science. We're focusing on issues that are absolutely not going to make an iota of difference in public health. It's absolutely shocking. They have a platform that is fear-based on certain issues, like these food dyes or seed oils, which are absolutely not addressing the core of what we're eating and the core of what's really harming our health. The problem is the fries and the cheeseburger. It's not the oil that it's fried in. It's actually quite scary to me to see what's playing out. Why do you think the politics of food have changed in the years since you were in the White House, and why do you think MAHA ideas have such appeal? I don't exactly know for sure. In the age of social media, the thing that gets the algorithms the most activity is more extreme views. I think people are very vulnerable to very compelling, very scientifically sounding narratives that [MAHA influencers] all have, based on one study here or another study there, that can weave a narrative of fear. It's not like food dyes are good, I'm happy to see them go. But you get people scared of what they're eating to the point where people stop eating vegetables because they're worried about the pesticides, which is just not good for their health. This fear is definitely taking hold. I think it's because the mediums on which this information travels are exacerbating that fear. You already mentioned the food dye announcement and why that was concerning to you. What are some of the other actions that you think aren't necessarily achieving the stated goals? If you step back and start to look at what actions have actually been taken, what you're actually seeing is a full-on assault on science throughout HHS. You're seeing a complete gutting of NIH, which funds much of the research needed to understand what in hyper-processed foods is undermining people's health and how to actually identify those correlations so you can regulate it very aggressively. You're seeing the complete gutting or elimination of departments within CDC and FDA that oversee the safety of our food. Food toxicologists have been fired. There's a department in CDC that's in charge of assessing chronic health and environmental exposures to toxins. Those offices have been eliminated. The idea that somehow you're going to be more aggressively regulating based on the best science, while you're absolutely wholesale cutting scientific research and gutting the people who are in charge of overseeing the very industry that you're trying to clamp down on is a joke. Then look at the 'big, beautiful bill' that is being supported by this administration, and it's catastrophic to the public health of the United States of America. Eight million people are going to lose access to health care. Three million plus are going to lose SNAP assistance. Then we can get into USDA and EPA. Everybody's got to remember that the number one threat to the public health of the United States of America is climate change. If we continue on this path of pulling back every regulatory effort that's been made to try to transition our society to a much more sustainable, lower-carbon world, that's also preparing itself to deal with the volatility that's coming from the climate, we're not going to have food to eat. This idea that you're going to have big announcements about food dyes and Fruit Loops, while you completely roll back every effort to prepare our agricultural system and our food system to deal with climate change, you're gaslighting the American public. Have you spoken to the former first lady about MAHA at all? Not in any kind of depth. Have you ever been in touch with Kennedy? Have you ever talked to him about these issues? He's very close to a number of people I'm good friends with, but no, I have not. You noted Kennedy used to be a Democrat. His issues — his opposition to pesticides, his support for healthy nutrition, with all the caveats that we just discussed — these were Democratic issues. Now, this MAHA coalition helped Trump win the White House. Why do you think Democrats have ceded this terrain? The Democratic Party has absolutely blundered this issue. These are kitchen table issues. Our very well-being, our ability to eat food that's not harming ourselves and our kids, is fundamental to life on planet Earth and what it means to have a vibrant society. The fact that Democrats, much to my chagrin, definitely not because of lack of trying, have not taken this issue up with great effort over the last 15 years is shameful. We're getting what we deserve here in some ways. I'm deeply critical of Democrats, with some exceptions. Sen. Cory Booker has been amazing on these issues. [Former Sen.] Jon Tester is also great. But it was never part of the platform, and it absolutely always should have been. If there's some common ground to be found with Republicans, then great. We could get a lot done. But we can't just turn over the keys to this issue to people who are not serious. When you worked in the Obama White House, you pushed better nutrition labeling, active living, bans on unhealthy foods in school meals and trans fat. The recent MAHA report pointed the finger at similar programs for chronic illness. Is that a place where you and MAHA advocates are on the same page, and how do you balance that with the concerns you've raised? There's no clean answer to that. We largely, not entirely, share the same critique when it comes to food. Vaccines are another thing which are important to also talk about. People are trying to pick the issue that they like and can get around and pretend like the rest isn't happening. It would be great if we got food dyes out, but it would pale in comparison to if he continues down the path to undermine vaccines as the foundation of public health and people start dying, like they are, with measles. That is not even close to a trade. For all of my food friends who read this, or everybody in policy who are like, 'Oh yeah, I can work with him on this issue, but I'm going to turn a blind eye to that,' that doesn't work. That's going to lead to devastating outcomes. On the report, I share the general critique of the problem. I spent my life saying those things and working on these issues. That's the easy part. What matters is what you do about it. How do you actually change what people are eating, and what is it going to take to really put the country on a different trajectory when it comes to health? So far, I've seen absolutely no indication that the issues that they're focused on are going to have any meaningful or measurable impact on public health. Frankly, there's many other things that I think are going to be extremely detrimental. We will see. We're only a few months in. I could, depending on what happens, have a different perspective in six months or 12 months. RFK has blamed the food industry for Americans' poor health. He's argued that government institutions are overwrought with corporate influence. Do you think he's right? And what do you think about RFK's approach to trying to curb corporate influence? I'm all for curbing corporate influence. I had some big fights with industry. I won some of them, and sometimes I got my ass kicked. It's the nature of Washington when you're threatening the basic interests of an industry. What's stunning to me is that the food industry so far has been silent. They haven't done anything to fight back, which says to me that they're not feeling threatened yet. I think they're waiting to see what's going to happen. I'm sure they're doing some stuff in the background, but this is nothing like what we were dealing with. I agree that we should put the public's best interest first, not succumb to industry influence. I think the way that RFK talks about it is a real overstatement down a very dark conspiracy theory. The idea that JAMA and the American Medical Association and the New England Journal are just like corporate journals that just put corporate, completely distorted research out for the sake of making profits, it's just not serious. He starts to discredit the very institutions, like HHS, that you actually need to do the work to rein in industry. The way that industry does make inroads is that they fund a lot of research. If you want to reduce industry influence, you should dramatically increase [government] investment in funding of scientific research on agriculture and climate change, on food and nutrition. One of the biggest fights in the Obama era was over stricter nutrition standards for school lunches. The administration won some of those battles, but quite a few children still have obesity, according to the latest data. Is there anything you wish the Obama administration had done differently? Are there things policymakers should be doing differently? School nutrition is just one part of a young person's diet. You're not going to solve kids' health issues just through school nutrition, but obviously it's a huge lever to pull. If we really want to make progress, you have to look much more holistically at the food environment that people are living in. This is generational work. It's going to take literally decades of work to shift, not just the policies, but our culture, our businesses, to change how people are eating. I think the one thing we missed would have been a much stricter restriction on sugar across the board. We had it for drinks,, but we didn't [apply it across the board], and that was a miss. We should have pushed harder on sugar. I think the policy was a really important start. It can always be improved and strengthened. Both the first Trump administration and this one are looking to roll back some of that. The thing that we have to not forget — and this is true for schools, and certainly true for SNAP and WIC — is the biggest problem is not enough money for these programs. I started doing a lot of work on finding ways to restrict sugary drinks as an example from the SNAP program. But if you want to do that and actually get the health outcomes you need, you need to also increase the total dollar amount that people have so they can purchase healthier food. Part of the reason why people are drinking these things is they're the cheapest available drink. Coke is cheaper than water sometimes. RFK recently called sugar 'poison.' Do you agree with that? One of their tactics to obfuscate truth in science is dosage, right? The amount that we're consuming matters. If you had a birthday cake on your birthday and you have a cookie — my kids eat a cookie, they're not dying, they're not being poisoned to death. They're fine. I think the problem is the amount of sugar we're consuming and the sizes of the portions we have. It's the cumulative amount of sugar. It's probably technically not exactly the right word, poison. But I don't take issue with that. I think the levels of sugar consumption for young people are deeply alarming and are absolutely going to drive preventable death and disease for millions and millions of people. It already is and will continue to do so. It is a very serious problem. But what do you do? I can't wait to see the policy proposals here. It's a tough problem to solve. It is not a problem that can be solved overnight, and it's going to take a very comprehensive effort to really shift the amount of sugar we're consuming, but it should be the goal of this administration. They should work very hard at it in a very serious and science-based way. Thus far, I have not seen that.
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Experts give harrowing list of beloved foods that are at risk of disappearing forever: 'It's a pretty scary future'
Increasing global temperatures are threatening beloved foods such as Georgia peaches, coffee, and chocolate. Sam Kass, an American political adviser, chef, and news personality, highlighted the severity of these problems on The Excerpt Podcast, transcribed by USA Today. He was emotional over losing "these foods that we hold near and dear to our very identities, to our way of life, to our culture." He cited numerous examples of agricultural problems. Georgia lost 90% of its peach crop in 2023 because of weather conditions. Coffee farmers must plant trees on mountainsides to avoid hot weather. And chocolate costs 200% more because of droughts, per the BBC. Some farmers have moved operations to regions with hospitable climates. However, this is not possible for everyone in the agriculture sector. "It's a pretty scary future that we're going to face if we don't dramatically accelerate our ability to decarbonize," Kass said. There are countless reasons to care about these shifts. The next generation may never get to taste a Hershey's bar. Your morning coffee could cost two or three times more in the coming years. Mashed potatoes might not grace your Thanksgiving table. Maple syrup, potatoes, beer, lobster, salmon, grapes, blueberries, and olive oil are just a few more foods suffering, per Earth Island Journal and Forbes. As Kass mentioned, losing these foods isn't just about your taste buds missing out. Grocery prices will rise, people will lose foods significant to their cultures, diets will be less diverse and nutritious, and food insecurity will increase. These agricultural issues could even lead to global political instability. If the planet's overheating continues to weaken these vital crops and food sources, everyone will suffer. The consequences will be widespread and catastrophic, ranging from higher grocery prices for consumers to political upheaval in numerous countries. In the podcast, Kass discussed ways to save "severely threatened" foods and struggling food systems. It comes down to adapting to changes in environment and climate. He emphasizes embracing technologies that solve these challenges. What is stopping you from upgrading to a heat pump system? The cost of installation I live in a cold area I don't know enough about it I already have one Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. This includes technologies that sequester carbon and capture carbon in the air as well as the use of nature-based solutions. Diversifying the human diet can also help mitigate disasters due to volatile climate conditions. More than ever, farmers must utilize green practices, such as plant covers and forecasting tools, as explained by the Environmental Protection Agency. Everyone can do their part by preventing food waste and conserving fresh water. Reducing your carbon footprint by using less energy, recycling, upcycling, and implementing other green habits can help humanity keep chocolate and coffee around for generations to come. Join our free newsletter for easy tips to save more and waste less, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
USA Today
07-02-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Coffee, chocolate, peaches: climate change is affecting them all
Coffee, chocolate, peaches: climate change is affecting them all | The Excerpt On a special episode (first released on February 6, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: While agriculture is currently a greenhouse gas contributor, accounting for about 30% of global emissions, it's also being dramatically impacted by our warming planet. Many foods we consider essential will simply not be around for our children and grandchildren. But it's not all doom and gloom. New tools and technologies hold incredible promise when it comes to not just slowing down climate change but actually fighting it. Culinary Entrepreneur Sam Kass, former chef to the Obamas, joins The Excerpt to help us understand the role of food and agriculture in the global fight against global warming. Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello, and welcome to the Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, February 6th, 2025, and this is a special episode of the Excerpt. Agriculture currently accounts for about 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change is already impacting food production around the world. Many foods we consider essential will simply not be around for our children and grandchildren. Peaches in Georgia, chocolate, coffee, these and many other foods are severely threatened by our warming planet, but it's not all doom and gloom. New tools and technologies hold incredible promise when it comes to not just slowing down climate change, but actually fighting it. Here to help us understand the role of food and agriculture in the global fight against global warming, I'm now joined by culinary entrepreneur, Sam Kass, former chef to the Obamas, author, and investor. Sam, thanks for joining me. Sam Kass: Thanks so much for having me. Dana Taylor: Let's start with some of the bad news here. I mentioned Georgia peaches, chocolate, coffee. Are these staples of the American diet going away, and how many staples are we talking about here? Can you give us a sense of the scope? Sam Kass: The scope is pretty broad. These issues are playing out around the globe really, and definitely having a huge impact here in the United States. Not everything's going to vanish. Of course, you'll see some major disruptions year over year, like Georgia years ago lost 90% of their peach crop due to climate related weather conditions, but hopefully this year the peaches will be back. But year over year, we're going to see declines in yields across many of the foods that we love. Coffee is already going through really difficult, challenging times around the world and here in the Americas, where farmers are having to plant their coffee trees up the sides of mountains because it's getting too hot in the kind of valley regions that traditionally coffee has been grown, but in many places they're running out of room. They're only so far up the mountain one can go. Chocolate last year saw a 200% increase in the cost because of massive drought in many of the regions that produce chocolate. And by 2050, the models show that very few of the regions that are currently producing chocolate will be able to continue to do so. Coffee, chocolate, peaches: climate change is affecting them all New tools and technologies hold incredible promise when it comes to not just slowing down climate change but actually fighting it. I think the other area that's very important to pay attention to, and as a land mammal, I think we have biases towards the issues playing out on land, but our oceans are really also bearing the brunt of climate. The oceans are drawing about a third of the emissions we're putting into the atmosphere, it's warming the waters and also making the water more acidic, which is impacting shellfish and crustaceans pretty dramatically. The snow crab fishery that's been on an operation since basically the beginning of civilization in the Americas has now been closed for the second year in a row because there's simply no crabs. We've lost over 80% of the crabs in five years. I mean, you've seen a complete collapse of that population. Same with the salmon, commercial salmon fisheries in all of California have been closed, there just isn't any salmon. So these issues are playing out, I think faster than models and experts have predicted, and these are foods that we hold near and dear to our very identities, to our way of life, to our culture, and it's a pretty scary future that we're going to face if we don't dramatically accelerate our ability to decarbonize. Dana Taylor: Sam, for agricultural producers, why can't they simply migrate production to regions that are now more hospitable to the crops they want to grow? Sam Kass: On some levels that's already happening. When I was a kid, there was not a single stock of corn in the Dakotas. None of the Dakotas are major corn growing states, and that's because the plants themselves are migrating as the weather is warming. You also see mass migrations of fish and animals moving north because it's getting too warm where the natural habitats have been. So on some levels that's happening on its own, but tell that to the Georgia peach farmer whose family has been growing peaches in Georgia for decades, for generations. Yes, can Maryland start growing more peaches and then Maine start growing peaches and then somewhere up in Canada start growing? Yes, and that is what's going to happen, but it's going to come at a extraordinary costs. We have hundreds of billions in trillions of dollars, really invested in the way we produce our food in certain regions with pieces of equipment with whole agricultural systems, and cultures that have built up around certain products. They're more than just a food. They're really truly a way of life for these regions and these communities. And as those trees have to move one, it's very expensive. You can't just pick up the trees, can't walk very well, so they're not just going to pick up and move. So there comes just a huge cost to society, both economic and social and cultural. And so you're going to see, I think the big implications here are just rising food prices, like significant rising food prices. And we've already seen examples of this. A couple years ago the oat harvest was down like 40 to 50%. Oat prices were through the roof. Oatly couldn't source enough oats for just their oat milk, let alone the rest of the use of the oats. I can go on and on about these examples. For so many families, millions of American families and certainly hundreds of millions around the globe, this throws more and more people who are already food insecure into real crisis, and that's when it starts to get pretty scary for those families. But also from a geopolitical and national security standpoint, massive political instability around the world, as more and more people simply won't have enough to eat or at least can't afford to feed themselves the prices of food in the future. So, those issues are quite serious and we have a lot of work to do to ready ourselves for how to produce food in a far more volatile future. Dana Taylor: Let's talk about red meat, which is often blamed for its huge contribution to climate change. Some people have said we just need to give it up altogether in order to solve global warming. Are you in that camp too? Sam Kass: So, I'm a chef first and foremost, then a policy wonk, and now an investor. So, I look at this issue from many different angles, but for me personally, no. I enjoy a good steak as much as anybody, although there's absolutely no question when you look at the science that we're simply consuming way too much animal protein and certainly way too much beef. It is taking a massive toll on the environment. Anytime you see a rainforest being chopped down, like in the Amazon for example, that's being chopped down for two reasons. One to either graze cattle or grow soybeans to feed animals. So, it has both a direct emissions from burping, etc, from the feed that we're feeding these cows, and then also from deforestation that's being driven by animal agriculture. I think the reality is, people are going to eat meat. Given all the outcry, meat consumption is still on the rise and it's in some parts of the world exploding. I think we need to be pragmatic and ask people to dramatically reduce the amount of meat, both in terms of what they're eating in a single serving. So, gone should be the days where we have just a giant steak as your main meal and just eat it less frequently, but allow people the space to enjoy those products, because I just think that's the reality. In a utopic world, would we be producing beef very differently? I think there is sustainable ways to have animal protein. It just to create enough animal protein at a price point that the mass market can afford just comes at a huge cost, and essentially we're externalizing the environmental impact of that production system. We're pushing that out and we're not paying for that part, and that's why meat is cheap and that's why we're eating so much of it and that's why it's having such a negative impact on the environment. So, and this is what I've done in my life, just try to eat a lot less of it and every once in a while when you want a special treat, go for it. Dana Taylor: Now I want to switch to some of the ways food might actually help solve some of the very problems it's contributing to. Things like deforestation, overuse of water resources, loss of biodiversity. Tell me how this might work. Sam Kass: I think there's sort of two buckets here, the work we have to do in the food system. The first is we have to invest heavily in preparing ourselves for producing food in a very different environment and climate. For the last 1,000 years, we've lived in the most stable climate, from a climate perspective, the most stable period in the historical record, and we've just gotten really lucky. The weather's been very moderate, we've had endless water and plenty of soil and lots of cheap energy. So we've created a food system around that stability and bounty of resource. We're now moving into a future where we have huge constraints on water, we've lost a huge amount of our soil, energy is going to increasingly become more expensive, and weather and climate is going to be extremely volatile. We're seeing that play out now year over year. And by the way, as bad as the fires in LA were and I know so many have been affected personally in my life, this is just the beginning of our future and it's very scary to think about. So we have to figure out how to ready our system to deal with the volatility that we're going to face in the future, and we just don't have a system built for that. So that means investing heavily in more resilient genetics, both plants and animals, more diversity in the foods that we're eating. Right now, we're only eating a handful of foods, really, and most of our foods comes from about five crops, and that is a lot of risk when you're starting to see more extreme weather patterns play out when you have kind of... We have all of our eggs in basically a couple baskets, so to speak. So we have to get much more diversity, in terms of what we eat and how we produce it, to ready ourselves for extreme weather conditions. So, that's a big piece of business. I think the second part is, and this is the part that gets me very excited, particularly on the startup land that I spend most of my time on trying to find companies and technologies that can solve some of these challenges, is that food and ag culture, yes, is one of the biggest drivers of emissions and environmental impact globally, but it also holds the key to so many of the challenges we face. So much of the carbon that's in our atmosphere used to be in our soils and nature-based solutions. Broadly, forestry and oceans hold extraordinary potential to sequester the amount of carbon we need to fundamentally shift the carbon footprint. And it's a system that has over a billion people currently working in it, and one that can be harnessed through the changing of practices and new emerging technologies to start to not only reduce our footprint, but start sequestering this kind of carbon in the time horizon that the science says we have. I think the thing that people miss on a lot of the, there's a lot of carbon direct air capture technologies and all these other kind of science fiction-like futures that are getting a lot of money and a lot of attention because they're very sexy sounding. But the costs and scale of these emerging technologies simply aren't anywhere close to making an iota of difference in time. I think it's great that it's happening and maybe someday in the future they'll have a big impact on our global footprint. And so I applaud the work, but they're like $1,000 a ton of carbon per ton removed, and it's just not scalable at all. I think the difference that soil has and nature-based solutions has is that it can scale really broadly and can start bending the footprint right now. And we only have a few years left, frankly, to avoid really extreme catastrophe. The clock is really ticking, we are completely out of time. We have to start incentivizing growers, just change the way they're farming and start adopting new technologies that can really change the environmental footprint of our economy. And I think it's the only system that I know of that has the capacity to do that. Dana Taylor: What's one thing that all of our viewers and listeners can do to support sustainable food production? What's a takeaway you want to leave people with? Sam Kass: I'd say two things. One, I do think to our earlier conversation, we really do need to eat less animal protein, especially the bigger animals like beef and lamb are two of the bigger emitters. You get down to chicken, it has a much smaller footprint, so I'm all for that. So, that's one thing we can all do in our daily lives. I think the other thing is, choose brands that are making some kind of sustainability claim. Now, there's a lot of nonsense out there, there's definitely plenty of greenwashing, but we all are busy. I got two young kids, a bunch of jobs, plenty of stuff to deal with. We all got a lot going on, and we all do not have the time to start doing the research. This one company who claimed that they're whatever was produced sustainably, you try to do the research to figure out whether that's true or not. I understand that that's just too much. But as consumers, we have to send a very strong signal to food companies that we will make purchases based on products that are produced in a more sustainable way. That's the other thing we can all start doing and it could have a huge impact. Dana Taylor: Thanks so much for joining me on The Excerpt, Sam. Sam Kass: Such a pleasure, thanks. Thanks for having me. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcast@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor, Taylor Wilson. We'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
