Behind the Scenes of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement with Food Activist Courtney Swan

Dhru Purohit Show

Dhru Purohit

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Alternative Health

4.7 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Bon Charge, and Momentous. Regardless of your political stance, the conversation about changing the food system and removing toxins from our environment took center stage in the last presidential election and continues to be a key issue in today’s political climate. What’s behind the Make America Healthy Again movement, and what are the hopes of those fighting behind the scenes? Today’s guest gives us an inside look and reminds us why these conversations matter—no matter our beliefs. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with food activist and nutritionist Courtney Swan. Courtney shares her journey into food activism, the pivotal moments that shaped her path, and her key takeaways from the Senate confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She also discusses why the Make America Healthy Again movement has gained national attention and offers insights on the current political landscape, and highlights the power of nuanced conversations and advocacy-driven solutions. Courtney Swan, MS, Integrative Nutritionist, is a passionate food activist working to fix America’s broken food system. As the host of the popular health and wellness podcast Realfoodology, she challenges misconceptions about nutrition, our food sources, sustainability, food policy, healthy living, and more. In this episode, Dhru and Courtney dive into: Courtney's journey as a food activist (1:00) RFK's confirmation hearing and Courtney's thoughts (4:10) How the younger generation views chronic disease and politics (14:31) Why the MAHA movement is getting national attention (19:00) Courtney's Red Pill moment (21:17) The biggest food culprits—ultra-processed foods (26:35) The impact of toxins and plastics on our health (31:54) Solutions through advocacy (40:28) Courtney's comments on the current political stances (44:07) Second Opinion On Nutrition Event (51:04) Banning of Red No. 3 (54:30) The truth about drug development research and peer review (59:34) Courtney’s latest projects and what’s next (01:07:39) Actionable takeaways (01:15:03) Also mentioned in this episode: Documenting Hope site John Abramson’s book - Sickening Article on Fred Kummerow’s research Air and Water filters For more on Courtney, follow her on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and her Website. This episode is brought to you by Birch Living, Bon Charge, and Momentous. To get 20% off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru today. Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the purest form of creatine made by and used by the best. Go to livemomentous.com and enter promo code DHRU to get 20% off any order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Courtney, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. We're recording this on kind of a pretty
0:04.6	important day. Do you want to tell our audience what's happening today? So this morning was a Senate
0:08.6	hearing confirmation for RFK Jr. And that was, did you watch it? I watched, I kind of caught a
0:14.4	little bit late because I had something in the morning. Yeah. But I came in at a very contentious
0:19.7	moment. It got very contentious moment.
0:23.1	It got pretty contentious with the few senators.
0:26.0	It was honestly uncomfortable to watch.
0:27.4	It was hard, too.
0:28.2	I don't know. I felt like he handled himself extremely well.
0:30.7	Oh, yeah.
0:31.1	Just from the way that the senators were going after him, it just, I don't know.
0:35.3	It kind of broke my heart because I've been following his work for probably about 10 years now. Talk about it and talk about yourself in the context of it.
0:41.2	If some people know, you've been part of the Maha movement, you've been raising awareness,
0:45.7	you went to Capitol Hill. Long before that, you've been a food advocate for a long time,
0:50.2	helping people understand what's really in our food, sounding the alarm, why it needs to be a national
0:54.8	conversation. But bring us up until this point. What's your role and how have you been involved
0:58.7	with this movement? And what do you think about everything that's going on? Yeah, I mean, it's
1:01.8	wild. I never thought I would find myself here. I mean, I was in school. So in 2011, I was getting my
1:06.9	master's of science and nutrition. And around that time, I was finding the works of people like
1:10.8	Voniehari, we just brought her up the food babe, Dr. Mark Hyman, Michael Pollan, and they were really
1:16.0	trying to sound the alarm back then about what was happening with our food system, but largely it was
1:19.9	being ignored, especially by our media and by our politicians. So I got very involved in it back then because I felt like the American people
	...

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