I hope you all are enjoying the summer’s bounty of fresh fruit. Yesterday I ate part of a watermelon, a nectarine, and some blueberries. Do not miss out on this summertime glory. Before you know it, it’ll be January and you’ll be sad and depressed, dreaming of the days when nectarines were must-be-eaten-over-the-kitchen-sink juicy.

Today’s letter includes:

• Avocado oil is fraudulent and why ROB cannot endorse it

• Erythritol’s shady entry into the market via the GRAS loophole—and its concerning effects on health.

• Round-Up exposure causes pre-term births

• Alpha-gal solution

• The drink of the summer

“Put a slot in your next Substack about avocado oil being fake healthy. Please.” This is a text I received last week from one of ROB’s medical advisors. I was already on that same train of thought.

I first did a deep dive into avocado oil—how it’s made, when it was first used—back in 2019, when I became radicalized about seed oils at the hand of Dr. Cate Shanahan’s Deep Nutrition.

Dr. Cate reinforces a simple, intuitive concept: the fats that have been around forever (butter, tallow, ghee, olive oil, coconut oil) were great for you, while the new fats made by way of the Industrial Revolution (seed oils) were to be avoided.

Avocado oil has never fit neatly into this binary. It’s a 21st-century oil, but its fatty acid profile was supposedly akin to olive oil: made up primarily of monounsaturated fatty acids rather than polyunsaturated fatty acids—the type found primarily in seed oils and that are prone to oxidation.

I could never really accept that it was akin to butter and olive oil, as most of the health world did. Dr. Cate’s test of antiquity—and whether or not you could make it yourself in your kitchen—stood unassailable in my mind. Because of that, ROB has never formally promoted or endorsed avocado oil. (I may have given an apprehensive “it’s fine” to some of you at one point or another when you’ve asked if it was okay, but I’ve never said: yes, eat or cook with avocado oil.)

I honestly didn’t have it in me to say: don’t eat avocado oil! Because I know a lot of you are out here just trying your best. But now, after a stunning new study, I’ll say it: don’t eat avocado oil.

Researchers from UC Davis recently gathered 54 popular avocado oil-labeled snacks. Think: Kettle and Siete chips, Chosen Foods mayonnaise, and Primal Kitchen salad dressing.

They found that 48 of the 54 avocado oil-labeled foods were not made with pure avocado oil, but adulterated with seed oils. 😱😱😱

Of the products tested, 93% of chips, 71% of mayonnaises, and 100% of salad dressings labeled as containing authentic avocado oil contained other oils. By contrast, when researchers applied the same purity tests to 20 olive oil-labeled processed foods, only one failed.

From the UC Davis research team:

The gap between avocado and olive oil results reflects the fact that olive oil authenticity has been studied, tested and scrutinized for decades. Avocado oil is a relatively new and expensive product category and has not been monitored at the same level. As a result, consumers have less protection against misleading labels.

The lead researcher, Dr. Selina Wang, noted that many food companies source their “avocado” oil from third-party sellers, oftentimes using multiple suppliers.

“If consumers are buying potato chips that say they’re made with 100% avocado oil, that should be the product that they’re getting,” Wang said. “I don’t think there is enough accountability throughout the supply chain. Suppliers of adulterated oil may be hiding behind a couple of layers of supply chain, making it difficult to identify where the problem originated.”

Last year at this time I noticed just how omnipresent avocado oil was. Knowing it was first produced in 2006, I had a hunch that there was virtually no way that a brand new oil—one that requires a key, already hard-to-grow and come by ingredient like avocados—was suddenly available to everyone. The math wasn’t mathing. I even reached out to Chosen Foods multiple times to ask how they sourced their avocado oil, and they never got back to me. Flash forward to this summer, and turns out that thought I had was true: there’s simply not enough avocado oil in the world for it to suddenly be used in every chip, cracker, and salad dressing and mayonnaise. The UC Davis study affirmed this.

Now, it’s fair to point out that this study isn’t saying that avocado oil is bad. It’s saying that most avocado oil isn’t actually avocado oil.

But it’s ROB’s opinion that avocado oil—even if it is pure avocado oil—doesn’t have a place in the kitchen. It fails the antiquity test, and therefore, it is unqualified. Call me an oil snob, but I genuinely don’t need avocado oil.

Any roasted veggie tastes better with butter, ghee, or olive oil (I even like coconut oil on my sweet potatoes, but I know you guys will come for me in the comments, so I won’t recommend that).

As for salad dressings: I know there are some of you out there who make homemade dressings (lovely) with avocado oil (horrendous). Salad dressings are the PERFECT opportunity to soak up the loaded polyphenols that come with a high-quality olive oil. I use McEvoy Ranch olive oil. As for mayo? Make it homemade with olive oil. So easy, and actually quite nutritious if you use high-quality ingredients.

RFK Jr. ends the GRAS loophole: The FDA introduced a new rule that would end the decades-long GRAS loophole. GRAS stands for “generally recognized as safe,” an undefined standard created by…the food companies themselves(!), allowing them to introduce new ingredients/chemicals with little to no pushback from the FDA. There are hundreds of ingredients that Americans are now consuming that have slid into the food supply this way.

Here’s an example: In 2001, Cerestar Holding Company filed for erythritol, a sugar alcohol made from corn starch, to be GRAS. The company said it would be used for anything that sugar was used for: pastries, yogurt, candy, and beverages, submitting to the FDA that it was safe based on “scientific procedures.” The FDA responded with no comment, and boom—erythritol is introduced to the U.S. population and is now ubiquitous throughout the supermarket.

It’s thought of as “sugar-free,” “keto,” “healthy” sweetener. Yet, it’s made in a lab from glyphosate-ladened corn. And now, what we do know now is that sugar alcohols like erythritol cause dysbiosis in the gut, and possibly heart complications.

Now, the FDA is seeking to close the GRAS loophole. If food companies want to introduce new chemicals into the food system, their approval will be contingent on science that they themselves did not conduct. This is a giant win for American consumers.

• A new study linked RoundUp exposure (glyphosate) to preterm births. “Our findings add to a growing body of evidence that exposure to glyphosate early in life may lead to health concerns that can echo throughout a lifetime.”

• Aaron Rodgers called Dr. Fauci an “absolute coward.” Celebs can say what they want to say, but I honestly love it when they just do their thing—throw footballs, sing songs, and act in movies. I don’t care to hear their thoughts on politics, even if they’re aligned with mine sometimes.

• The drink of the summer is not matcha, and it’s not the Hailey Bieber smoothie. It’s water. Specifically, Loonen water. It’s allegedly microplastic-free, and Alexandra is a big fan.

• Speaking of Queen Alexandra: check out her new podcast covering Alpha-gal syndrome. I know some of you have been asking for a good resource on it, and now we have one. Thanks, babe!

• And speaking of Alpha-gal: people are avoiding Martha’s Vineyard this summer, as the island is a hot spot for the lone star ticks that transmit the disease.

• Really looking forward to what unfolds here. Seems exciting!

Today we’re interviewing the founder of Lovebird Cereal, Parker Brook.

As you’re about to see, Parker’s a boss. He spent more than a decade at General Mills before becoming convicted by what Big Food was perpetrating against the American people. So he walked away and started Lovebird.

Before we go any further about my love letter to Lovebird, I must say: no, Lovebird is not a sponsor.

I reached out to Parker to write about Lovebird because my fandom, like its ingredients, is organic. It’s part of my nightly routine after dinner. Just ask Alexandra. She will testify to this habit. (a post-dinner snack/meal is something I only recommend for competitive athletes, just to be clear.)

In fact, I’m eating a bowl right now as I’m writing this piece.

I didn’t grow up eating cold cereal because my mom loved me. And by the time I became an adult, my convictions against processed food were pretty staunch. So I’ve never really eaten cereal—not because I didn’t like it, but because there was never a genuinely good, healthy version.

That is, until Lovebird entered the scene.

Brands like Lovebird are a rarity. They’re not just greenwashed hype. They don’t just tell you they’re healthy on the package (though their branding is brilliant, too); every ingredient they use is top-notch. No chemistry lab weirdness.

As if Lovebird wasn’t cool enough for creating a genuinely great product, they also set aside 20% of their profits to support families battling pediatric cancer. So yeah, the Lovebird team basically makes Mother Teresa look self-interested.

The Interview

ROB: You worked at General Mills for years—aka you were #PartOfTheProblem when it comes to Big Food’s assault on Americans’ health. What exactly was your job there? What did a typical day look like?

Parker: I managed brands like Cheerios, Yoplait, Nature Valley, and Totino’s Pizza Rolls. The job was to get people to eat more of your product and grow market share or “share of stomach.” You would have a team of 50-100 people working on ways to make products taste addictive, be within arms reach for shoppers, as cheap as possible, and spend millions of dollars on advertising. In the job, you view all consumers as a “number”, that you want to use to grow your brand and hopefully climb the ladder with a promotion. It’s very spiritually empty work selling a concoction of chemicals wrapped in calculated marketing engineered to drive over-eating.

ROB: What finally made you leave General Mills and start Lovebird?

Parker: My own personal health journey combined with the birth of my daughter. I felt like I was going through the motions and didn’t have alignment between my work and my values. I personally discovered the power of food as medicine and help manage my autoimmune disease. That discovery made me question the system and try to change it. When I became a dad a year later, my whole world change. That feeling of trying to make difference became my mission. I had a Jerry McGuire moment and left General Mills to save our food future - determined and hopeful.

ROB: I recently spoke with a Big Food executive who was in complete denial that the industry is fueling chronic disease. What’s going on inside these companies? Is it genuine denial? Willful blindness? Something else?

Parker: That’s the standard thought process. Most of these employees are brainwashed and in denial. They don’t do the mental math: highly addictive food + empty calories + super cheap prices = overeating and overconsumption of synthetic food additives leading to inflammation-driven chronic disease. Back in 90’s food industry executives had a secret meeting discussing this topic led by a whistleblower - nothing happened. Their paycheck depends on that statement not being true so it’s easy to turn a blind eye. It’s a harsh reality and they point their finger at “consumer choice” or “move more, eat less” to deflect responsibility.

ROB: Big Food loves to say, “We just follow consumer demand.” Skeptics—including this one—argue that consumer demand is often engineered by Big Food long before anyone reaches the grocery store. Do these companies merely respond to consumer behavior, or do they actively shape it?

Parker: In the glory days of Big Food, they absolutely created demand. Look at the invention of breakfast cereal, a food that previously did not exist, or the explosion of convenience food in the 70’s/80/s/90’s. Big Food spends $14 billion annually on advertising their franken-food (most of it geared towards moms), with $2 billion spent directly on advertising to kids. Now, Big Food is struggling as their old tricks don’t work - people have become smarter. It should be “we follower consumer demand when it fits our profit margins” - they do not care about consumer health just consumer consumption. That is a recipe for health disaster. All Big Food sales are declining so now they are buying “healthy” brands or supplements and will apply their playbooks to drive consumption and increase profits at the expense of our health.

ROB: On a scale of 1 to 10, how difficult is it to make a genuinely healthy cereal when you refuse to cut corners?

Parker: It’s a 10. You see the box the shelf, I see countless hours perfecting the recipe, testing the ingredients, and sourcing suppliers that meet my industry leading clean ingredient standards. I spend $100k a year testing my products for gluten, heavy metals, glyphosate, and other things you do not want in your food. Our food environment is sick making the majority of Americans sick as well. This makes it very difficult to a) find trusthworthy suppliers b) test those suppliers to meet your high standards and c) make it taste good with synthetic flavors or sweeteners. At its core, real food should taste real good and be good for you. That’s what I try to do with every box.

ROB: What’s the difference between Lovebird and Magic Spoon?

Parker: To start, taste. Magic Spoon tastes like chemicals. Lovebird tastes great using real food ingredients like organic honey and organic coconut sugar NOT a science experiment. Magic Spoon is a venture capital-funded box of chemicals that’s only goal is to sell out to Big Food. Look at the ingredients: they use the same synthetically processed “natural” flavors as Big Food, they use an untested high-potency sweetener called allulose (which is banned at Whole Foods), and their whey protein is conventional not grass-fed. There are a lot of brands out there like Magic Spoon that don’t care about what’s in the box and only care about selling out. If that’s your only goal, achieving it feels empty. With Lovebird, I’ve kept it 100% family-owned for the sole purpose of fulfilling my mission of cleaning up junk food. We do that by using organic, whole food ingredients, with NO weird stuff, and NO refined sugar. For our protein cereal, we use Grass-Fed Whey, and we always use the best available ingredients.

ROB: What’s next for Lovebird? Any exciting products or projects in the pipeline?

Parker: Maybe a new flavor with Alex!!! We just launched our protein cereal and protein granola and people are LOVING it. Who would have thought, a protein cereal that actually tastes good and people like it... We do have some new flavors launching in January so keep an eye out for those. I’m always interested in ideas so please DM me @eatlovebird on instagram and I’ll see if we can make it happen.

ROB: Where can people find Lovebird?

Parker: You can find us at Whole Foods, Sprouts and now Walmart and Target. Walmart and Target are a HUGE step to grow our mission of cleaning up cereal with real food. You can also find Lovebird at lovebirdfoods.com or Amazon. Please check us out wherever is most convenient for you. I stand by my products and offer a happiness guarantee so you can try Lovebird risk-free; if you don’t like it for whatever reason, I’ll give you a full refund.

We’re thrilled to announce Running On Butter’s latest ambassadors, who will rock a ROB sweatshirt in their respective regions. Each of you was selected based on your commitment to the movement.

To those who were not selected: it’s not that you’re not committed, per se; it’s just that the competition was stiff. Don’t think of this as rejection. Think of it as an opportunity to reflect, do the work, and be better. Applications open again in the fall.

The 10 winners of the ROB sweatshirt competition are announced below.

There were too many compelling contributions to pick just five winners, so we picked 10. I am humbled by ROB’s takeover and thrilled to continue this conquest with our new ambassadors.

(Winners: please DM me so I can send you your sweatshirt!)

Lila from Pennsylvania 🏆

“A ROB sweatshirt would be a most helpful tool to explain the wonders of butter to my oat-milk pilled, toxic dye filled, microplastic mogging friends!”

Lila: you’re giving us hope for the future.

Hannah from Dallas 🏆

“Ok I’m not going to win any vibes awards for pointing out a grammatical error but it must be done! Just want ROB to maintain the standard of high quality that it’s held for so many years. So at the risk of angering you and your unpaid intern, I’ll point out that it should read “the fewer the better”, not “the less the better” when talking about restaurants visited this month.”

Hannah: you’re a baller for having the courage to correct this infallible, sacred page. Game recognizes game.

Sasha from the Southeast 🏆

“There is no corporation too big, government too corrupt, or chemicals too damaging to warrant quitting doing what is right.”

Sasha: please run for president.

Abbie from New York City 🏆

“Someone needs to start telling people of this city that it IS possible to live a non toxic life in a toxic af city. Soon people will be cheering on the streets for raw milk, local farms, organic mattresses, and turning off the WiFi at night as loudly as they cheered for the Knicks winning the championship.”

Abbie: Zohran Mamdani will tremble when he learns of the ROB insurgence.

Annie from Washington State 🏆

“For DEI points, I am a straight stay-at-home mom in WA state, making me a minority.”

Annie: you’re in the trenches. Stay strong.

Jessie from New Zealand 🏆

“New Zealand needs some truths about the importance of consuming butter (and the nutritious whole foods that we grow here) - although there is a slight crisis about how the cost of our butter has skyrocketed recently! In fact, supermarkets even started importing some American butter at one point (sorry not sorry but it was terrible - so pale white and just ew).”

Jessie: We’re thrilled to know the ROB waves have reached the shores of New Zealand, but saddened to hear that our butter is not better. Disappointed but not surprised.

Judy from New Hampshire 🏆

“I’d be thankful and proud to wear my investment-quality ROB hoodie while not only RUNNING on butter, but also teaching my group of homeschool families to (responsibly) kick butt on butter (butt-kicking Buttercups, that’s the goal!) at Liberty Martial Arts.”

Judy: will you lead a ROB self-defense class? Could be life-saving in the event that Big Pharma or Big Chem shows up at our door.

Kaitlin from Michigan 🏆

“If you want to do business with me, know that I’m growing a baby in me. (Conceived due to the healthy vitamins my husband and I received from butter. This is our sixth baby. When we switched to a butter diet, yes, a butter diet indeed, our babies increasingly grew smarer. Coincidence? I think not.) The bigger I get, the more I’ll stand out. A waddling butter ambassador”

Kaitlin: eat at least 3 tablespoons of butter for a pain-free birth.

Alexis from Hawaii 🏆

“I also started listening to Alex in 2023 and since then have begun milling our own flour, purifying our condo with the elite Jaspr, have eliminated seed oils from our home, and gotten rid of our TVs before our first was even six months old (we’re currently traveling to visit family where my 1 year old just discovered what a remote control is)…”

Alexis: when can we come visit?

Amelia from Louisiana 🏆

“I recently made the move to the great state of Louisiana where I will be a nanny. You know I will be feeding those kids raw milk, my homemade sourdough, raw honey, and fresh eggs from their chickens. Unfortunately I ate out a lot more often this month than I usually do, but hey, I was traveling. The good thing about having a big family is that I am a representative within my whole family. When they asked why I did my nails in a butter yellow it opened the door for me to tell that all about ROB and what you stand for.”

Amelia: you are giving Fraulein Maria a run for her money.

Today’s letter includes:

• Full breakdown of why my LDL cholesterol is high—and why I’m happy about it.

• The HHS cooking show ft. Bobby Kennedy

• Farmers’ markets boom

• Rethinking Red Bull

• RIP to LIV golf

• A Centralia man brings attention to fluoride in the municipal water

Read more

I’ve received some great messages from y’all with your new Running On Butter (ROB) sweatshirts. Shoutout to Taite, a longtime ROBer, for repping the bright blue jersey in Florida. As such, I’m dubbing her our official ROB ambassador to the Gator State, where she’ll carry out ROB’s national interests.

If you’re interested in WINNING THIS SWEATSHIRT, please comment on this post about why you’d make a standout ROB ambassador to your community.

My unpaid intern Alexandra and I will select 5 winners based on:

• Vibes

• Compelling ROB policy propositions (domestic or international)

• How many times you ate out last month (scoring for this one is like golf; the less, the better)

We don’t want a dissertation. Keep it succinct. Brevity sits next to godliness.

And lastly, we’re all about DEI here at ROB, so extra points to the double-amputee queer poet writing in from a cave in Afghanistan.

Drink coffee, not whiskey: A new study following 355,000 adults found that coffee drinkers have less liver damage than non-coffee drinkers. This comes on top of the AHA saying that most adults are good to consume up to five cups of coffee. As someone whose brain’s synapses don’t begin until my first cup of coffee, I am relieved. And honestly, even if the research about coffee was damning, I would gaslight myself and you all to high heaven. I would stand by my double espresso like Dr. Fauci stood by the efficacy of masks.

I have a full coffee breakdown here. But before we leave the topic of caffeine, I need to take this moment to tell my coworkers Noah, Vanessa, and Dylan, for the hundredth time, to please consider not drinking synthetic caffeine (energy drinks, Diet Coke). Another brand-new review just came out reaffirming what ROB’s reported on for years: lab-made caffeine is linked to heart complications, while God-made caffeine protects the heart. There are hundreds of anti-inflammatory compounds in coffee and tea, whereas when caffeine is synthesized in a lab, the molecule is isolated. Without the company of the beneficial compounds, caffeine seems to be problematic.

AI health influencers coming for your mom: The NYT exposed how supplement companies are creating AI/fake health influencers to sell their products. Their target audience is the boomers who have a tougher time discerning what’s real and what’s AI. You see smart-looking “doctors” selling a supplement for better heart health and wise-looking Asian ladies raving about how “a capsule a day of this ginger—used by ancient, much wiser societies than our own—cures knee pain.” This is super upsetting to me, mainly because these AI companies stole ROB’s idea of targeting a vulnerable, easily impressionable audience. Like, am I going to have a team of NYT reporters requesting comment for a story “exposing how Running On Butter recruits and radicalizes easy targets”?? There’s nothing to see here. Please spend your resources and energy exposing other platforms, like this one, whose supposed “mission” is to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I mean, come on. What even is that? Seems very AI-y to me. Even the host of that seems a little too perfect looking to be real.

High T Department of War: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that the military will start screening for testosterone deficiency in service members over the age of 30. If guys are below optimal, the military will supply testosterone replacement therapy (TRT). At face value, this seems like a cool initiative. However, I don’t love the idea of our military needing to go on infertility-inducing TRT to be optimal. The number one factor affecting low T is sleep deprivation. So my recommendation is that our military takes the nights off, gets at least eight hours of sleep, and does war in the daytime. And also, I feel like most times when I see a service member, they’re drinking an energy drink. Red Bull will tank your T. ROB’s official military regimen for high T would look like: as much sleep as possible, nutrient-rich food, Olympic weightlifting, and zero synthetic fragrances, microplastics, and energy drinks. Lethal.

The peptides are coming: The FDA advisory panel moved to approve 6/7 new peptides, including the infamous BPC-157. I don’t love peptides, but I don’t dislike them. So I really don’t have any thoughts here, other than that if people are going to take them, I would rather they have access to purer forms approved by the FDA than off-market, Chinese-made (potentially tainted) compounds. It’s sort of like the parent who supplies alcohol to their underage children: “If you’re gonna drink, I’d really rather you do it safely.” Pulls out Jell-O shots for you and your friends after prom.

Another opportunity to call out Noah, Vanessa, and Dylan:

LeBron James’ 76th season: Lebron James will play his final season with the 76ers. He chose the team because it matches the number of seasons he’s been in the NBA. LeBron is a s healthy-ish eater. It’s ROB’s opinion that his longevity in professional basketball is connected to his nutrition. Which is all to say: if you want your kid to play in the NBA, feed him butter. Also, have freak athlete genes.

Mile world record—we’re coming for you: Scottish runner Josh Kerr broke the mile world record with a time of 3:42. For those of you who keep asking me—yes, I have ran faster than that before, but it was in practice so it technically didn’t count. And technically, it wasn't a full mile (it was a half mile). But technicalities won’t stop me from telling Josh: don’t get too comfy with that WR. Mr. Running On Butter is coming for that 3:41. Technically, this time. Josh told the WSJ that his nutritional regimen in preparation of the WR attempt featured a salad at every meal, including breakfast, “which kind of sucked, if I’m being honest,” he said. ROB salutes Josh and his commitment to the veggie game. The tastes of radishes at 7am doesn’t last forever; world records do. That is, until I break them.

🧈Don’t forget to drop a comment for a chance to win a ROB sweatshirt🧈

Special letter today. I interviewed one of my new favorite voices in the health space, Dagmara Beine, PA-C, PhD, an integrative and ER specialist (a rare combo!).

I first came across Dagmara’s writing last month, and once I read her story about her daughter’s battle with cancer, I knew it was a voice I wanted to broadcast.

Dagmara was gracious enough to answer my questions about her approach to medicine and disease. And boy, what a knockout thinker she is.

We discuss:

• The multifaceted reasons her daughter got leukemia (glyphosate exposure, tonsil and adenoid removal, and fertility treatment)

• Whether we should be concerned about Alzheimer’s genes

• Why she thinks children should get lab work

• How to avoid insulin resistance

• Whether or not she approves of butter

Please make sure to subscribe to her Substack to continue to glean from her wisdom.

1. You’ve endured profound personal loss, from your daughter’s battle with cancer to the sudden death of your brother. How have those experiences changed the way you practice medicine?

Most of what I learned, I learned from my daughter Zuza while she was alive. She was in and out of cancer treatment for over a decade, and she taught me that a person can hold suffering and joy in the same hands, in the same moment. I didn’t believe that was possible until I watched her do it. That lesson shapes how I sit with grief now.

Those years also taught me how to keep my own nervous system steady, how to carry hope without lying to myself, and how to take care of me so I had everything left to give her.

Then, one week apart, we lost the two of them in the two most different ways a person can. Zuza we lost slowly, over eleven years, no rock left unturned, every choice made and every option tried. Olaf we lost in an instant, sudden and traumatic and out of nowhere. Two griefs that don’t sit the same way, arriving at the same time. Nine months into that apprenticeship, I’m learning how to carry both.

One lesson only arrived after she was gone. Anyone facing cancer, a parent sitting with a sick child or an adult facing their own diagnosis, needs hope, and also needs someone willing to talk honestly about quality of life and to sit in both places at once. As practitioners, we tend to project our own fears onto our patients without meaning to. I never steered away from real conversations about death with my cancer patients, pediatric or adult. But without having lived it, I couldn’t feel my way into those conversations the way I can now. Since Zuza, I can sit in that place fully, and walk a family through end-of-life decisions with a steadiness I didn’t have before, because I’ve been all the way through it myself.

Olaf’s death taught me how silent mental health can be. Zuza had cancer, and all of us knew, and everyone rallied around her. Olaf suffered quietly, with a smile on his face and a warm heart, and none of us saw how much he was carrying. It opened my eyes to how many people, young men especially, are hurting behind a smile. I look for it in my patients now in a way I never did before.

2. Cancer rates seem to be rising, especially among younger people. What do you think is driving this trend?

Cancer is not bad luck. We’ve been told it strikes at random, and that isn’t what the research shows. Up to 90 percent of cancers trace back not to a roll of the dice but to the terrain a body is living in.

Here’s the part most people never hear. All of us make cancer cells. Our bodies produce abnormal cells, and a healthy body finds them and clears them before they become anything. So the real question was never whether you make a cancer cell. It’s whether the environment inside you lets that cell take hold and grow.

That environment is your terrain, the soil your cells live in. It’s what you eat, so much of it now ultraprocessed. It’s what we put in and on our bodies, including harmful medications and injections, makeup, hair dye, and perfume. It’s what you breathe, how you sleep, how you move, and the chemicals and stress you carry. Good soil clears the bad cell. Ruined soil lets it grow.

And this is where epigenetics comes in. Your genes are not your destiny. What they do is set how vulnerable you are to everything hitting your terrain, how well you clear a toxin, how well your body handles what comes at it. That’s why two people can live in the same town, drink the same water, and only one of them gets sick. Same exposure, different soil.

So a cancer diagnosis is rarely one thing. It’s a perfect storm, a stack of small hits landing on a terrain that couldn’t keep up. Let me show you what I mean with my own daughter. Before Zuza, I had two miscarriages, and I was prescribed a fertility drug to conceive her. It worked. Later I found research linking maternal fertility treatment to a higher risk of the exact type of leukemia she had. Then we bought our dream house, and it sat behind a cornfield sprayed with glyphosate season after season. Zuza’s epigenetic testing, a test I now run on every patient, showed she couldn’t clear glyphosate well. And on our pediatrician’s advice, we had her tonsils and adenoids removed, which research ties to a higher risk of childhood leukemia. Not one of these alone would likely have caused cancer. Stacked together, in a small body that couldn’t clear what it was handed, they became her perfect storm.

The hopeful part is the whole reason I do this work. You are not helpless here. You can’t change every gene you were handed, but you have real say over your terrain, and that is where the power is.

3. You often say that inflammation is at the root of most chronic disease. What do you mean by that, and why is it so important?

Inflammation is the match that lights the fire.

Go back to cancer for a second. You can have a few cancer cells sitting in your body, but if you’re not inflamed, the fire never catches. Inflammation is the thing that lets it take off. It’s the accelerant under most of what makes us sick.

I support patients through cancer, autoimmune disease, long COVID, histamine problems, and a long list of other chronic conditions. On the surface those look like completely different diagnoses. Underneath, they share one thing. Every one of them is running on inflammation.

And here’s what most people don’t realize. We can measure it. Not with a guess, with your blood. I look at inflammation three separate ways with three simple tests, hs-CRP, sed rate, and LDH. They’re cheap, they’re on almost any lab menu, and together they tell me whether your body is quietly on fire.

This is the part that gets me. When someone comes to me with a new diagnosis and I pull their old labs, I’ll often find one of these markers, usually CRP, was already climbing years earlier. It was the check engine light coming on. Their primary care or their specialist looked right past it, because it wasn’t high enough to earn a diagnosis yet. That early signal is exactly the window where we could have changed the story.

It matters because that number is not just a curiosity. Elevated CRP tracks with higher all-cause mortality, meaning a higher risk of dying from any cause, not one specific disease. Your body is waving a flag long before anything gets a name.

The hopeful part is that inflammation is one of the most changeable things in all of medicine. Food, sleep, movement, stress, and the gut all move that number, and when you cool the fire, you change the whole trajectory. That’s why I start here with almost everyone.

4. You’ve argued that pediatricians should be doing more routine lab work. What tests do you think are being overlooked, and what can they reveal?

I think we’ve decided that a healthy-looking kid doesn’t need labs, and that’s backwards. The years we should be watching a body most closely are the years it’s still being built. A yearly panel on a child isn’t overkill. It’s a baseline, and it’s how you catch a small problem while it’s still small.

Here’s the minimum I’d want run on kids. A CBC. A full CMP. hs-CRP. Vitamin D. Ferritin. And a full thyroid panel, meaning TSH, T3, T4, and thyroid antibodies, not just a lonely TSH. That’s not an exotic workup. Most of it is inexpensive and available anywhere.

Now what each one actually tells you.

The CBC is the workhorse. It catches anemia, it flags chronic infection, and it can surface allergy patterns hiding behind vague symptoms. The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio off that same test is a quiet read on how the immune system is doing, and almost no one calculates it in kids.

The CMP opens up a lot. It’s an early look at blood sugar and prediabetes, which is showing up in children now in a way it never used to. It shows liver health and kidney function. It tells you whether a child is getting and absorbing enough protein, which is a real question in picky eaters and gut issues. Read right, it even hints at thyroid trouble and malnutrition.

hs-CRP is the inflammation flag, that same check engine light, and it belongs in kids too.

Vitamin D is one of the most common deficiencies I see in children, and it’s not a small thing. It drives bone development, immune strength, and mood, and low levels are everywhere, especially in kids who live indoors and on screens.

Ferritin is iron storage, and low ferritin is one of the most missed findings in children. It shows up as fatigue, poor focus, restless sleep, and irritability long before a child is technically anemic. Paired with certain CMP clues, a low ferritin can also point toward malabsorption or a leaky gut, which sends you looking for the actual root instead of just handing over an iron pill.

B12 is the one I go back and forth on. On its own it’s not a strong test. The serum number can look fine while there’s still a problem sitting underneath it. But it gives me a clue, and what I’m actually chasing with it is methylation. A lot of kids carry a common variation in a gene called MTHFR, which changes how well they process folate and B vitamins. When that pathway runs slow, it can show up as things that look a lot like ADHD, anxiety, or mood struggles. Those kids get a label, and sometimes a medication, when part of what’s going on is a methylation issue you can support with the right form of the nutrient. So I don’t lean on the B12 number itself. I let it point me toward the bigger question.

Here’s the thing I’ll keep saying. Children are not small adults, and the ranges that matter for a growing body shift by age and stage. So this is not about panic over one number. It’s about building a baseline early, watching the trend, and catching the drift while it’s still easy to turn around.

5. Many people have heard about the APOE4 gene—a risk factor for Alzheimer’s—but don’t know what it means. What is APOE4, and how concerned should people be if they carry it?

Start with this, because it’s the whole mindset. Your epigenetics are a loaded gun, and your environment pulls the trigger. The gun alone doesn’t fire. That changes everything about how you should hear news like this.

APOE is a gene that helps your body move fat and cholesterol around, including inside your brain. Most people carry the common version. Some carry APOE4, and that one is the strongest common genetic risk factor we know of for late-onset Alzheimer’s. It also changes how you process the fat in your food.

The numbers sound scary until you understand them. About one in four people carry a single copy of APOE4, which more than doubles the lifetime risk. A much smaller group, around two to three percent, carry two copies, which raises it far more and tends to bring symptoms on earlier. Here’s the part that matters most. Carrying it is not a diagnosis, and it is not a destiny. Plenty of people who carry APOE4 never develop Alzheimer’s at all, because whether that gun ever fires depends heavily on how you live.

So when a client finds out they carry it, and many of mine do, I don’t treat it as a sentence. I treat it as a blueprint. Now we know exactly where to aim your energy.

And the things that lower the risk are within reach. Keep your blood sugar and insulin low, because a brain marinating in high blood sugar is a brain in trouble, which is why I lean toward lower carb and quality fats for these clients. Move your body, since exercise is one of the most protective things we have for the brain. And use heat. A Finnish study followed men for two decades and found those using a sauna four to seven times a week had about a 65 percent lower risk of Alzheimer’s than those going once a week. Sixty-five percent, from sitting in a hot room.

That’s why I test epigenetics on everyone. Not to hand someone a fear, but to hand them their own blueprint, so they know where their body is vulnerable and where to spend their effort. You can’t change the gun you were handed. You have a lot of say over the trigger.

6. Insulin resistance affects millions of people, often without them realizing it. What’s your practical action plan for preventing, or reversing, it?

The first step is running the right test, and this is the one that gets me most.

The earliest sign of insulin resistance shows up in your fasting insulin, and that test is not part of the standard annual panel your primary care runs. It’s cheap, it’s available anywhere, and almost nobody orders it. That blows my mind.

So order it yourself if you have to. Every year, check three things. Fasting insulin, under 5. Fasting glucose, under 90. And hemoglobin A1c, under 5.3. Anything creeping above those is the start of a slow march toward prediabetes. Because nobody wakes up diabetic. We drift there over years, and the labs show the drift the whole way, if someone bothers to look.

And here’s what makes me angry on my patients’ behalf. When a provider does run a fasting insulin, they’ll call a 20 normal, because the lab flags “normal” as anything up to 25. A fasting insulin of 20 is insulin resistance. Calling it normal takes away your chance to turn this around while it’s still easy. Normal is not optimal. Normal just means average, and the average American right now is overweight, inflamed, and unwell.

This is the part I love. I reverse prediabetes and diabetes with patients most of the time without medication, using lifestyle. A low carb, nutrient dense diet. Movement that builds and holds muscle, because muscle is where you burn glucose. And a few targeted supports like berberine when they fit the person.

This is the whole game, because insulin resistance sits underneath so much of what wrecks our health. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, the misery of perimenopause and menopause (which should be a beautiful transition, not a crisis), acne, stubborn weight, fatigue. So many of them trace back to this one broken pathway. Fix the pathway, and you don’t just dodge diabetes. You take back your energy, your weight, and a whole lot of your future.

This is exactly why I built what I built. I love my 1:1 work with clients across the country, and I always will. But I can’t sit with everyone, so I created a coaching community and course that teaches you to read your own labs against optimal ranges, with a tool that reads them back the way I would if you were sitting in front of me. It’s called Optimal Not Normal (skool.com/optimal-not-normal-1374). Because the goal was never for you to need me forever. It’s for you to understand your own body.

7. And finally, the question every Running on Butter reader is waiting for: are you a fan of butter?

Huge fan. Real, grass-fed butter is one of the good ones.

We’re about to make our move out to the farm, and one of the things I can’t wait for is making our own. There’s something about butter that’s this simple, this old, this made-by-hand that feels like the whole point of what I teach. Real food your body actually recognizes.

I take mine very salted, or with truffle salt melting on top. So yes, put me down as a fan, and I’m honored you asked.

Last week, Alexandra and I went shopping, where she was on the hunt for me to wear something “respectable” for some upcoming meetings. We went to Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli, two fine Italian designers with whom I was unfamiliar.

Upon being in those stores with the great playlists and helpful tailors who provided espresso while we were fitting summer linen pants, I had the thought: Running On Butter needs to enter the luxury fashion market.

Like Cucinelli and Loro Piana, we’re visionaries here at ROB, and it would be unkind for us to withhold our excellent taste from the general public. So we saw it as our duty to design a Running On Butter sweatshirt for y’all.

As with the best luxury brands, this sweatshirt isn’t merely nice to look at. It’s a statement piece. It’s an indictment of who you are and where you belong. This piece says: you’ve arrived. You are elite.

Now, is it handmade in Italy? No. I think it’s made in Indonesia or something, probably in some questionable working environments, but hey—kids gotta work too!

You can buy this one-of-a-kind piece here.

Remember, as Alexandra told me when I saw the price tag on the loafers she picked out for me, it’s an investment.

(Alexandra is wearing a size small and she told me I had to say to size down because it fits like a medium.)

• The country broke down this week after reading an Atlantic piece citing that on 18% of the country reads on a regular basis. Many people are concerned and upset about this. Me? I’m not mad. It’s actually going to make my job here at ROB a lot easier as illiteracy proliferates. I’ll just start communicating nutritional truth via TikTok dances and emojis. 🍟🍬🍩😀💊🫩☠️🪦

• Liquor sales are dropping. Probably a good thing, but boy, sobriety is NOT easy.

• Gordon Ramsay is partnering with Uber Eats. We’ve tracked Gordon’s downfall closely, as he partnered with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter last year. Now he’s essentially saying not only to cook with industrial, solidified seed oils, but also: actually, just order Chick-fil-A and have it at your door in thirty minutes. Gross. Depressing. ROB says: Gordon, go straight back to Hell’s Kitchen.

• The FDA approved a new cholesterol-lowering drug from Merck. Other than the Great Commission, the good Lord put me on this earth to be the meteorite that destroys the idea that cholesterol is bad. LDL cholesterol is not bad and never was. In fact, people who have lower LDL have a shorter life expectancy than those of us with higher LDL. I say “us” because my LDL is incredibly high, thanks to all the butter I eat. But I’m not worried about atherosclerosis because the quality of my LDL particles—big and buoyant—is actually incredibly essential to my overall health, including hormone production, cell protection, and yes, vascular health too. It’s the small LDL particles that have oxidized that are the problem. Butter and saturated fat do not oxidize LDL. What does are inflammatory foods like refined sugar and seed oils. Merck’s new drug—based on a scientific hoax—will come $10.50 per daily pill or $315 per month, which inevitably generate billions in revenue.

• Madeline Kearns wrote a great piece on how restorative reproductive medicine solved her infertility—and why the left hates it.

• Gen Z’s new thing is birding. Wholesome.

• A dental student went to the ICU. He died without ever being examined by a doctor. Telehealth ICUs—where ER doctors monitor patients remotely—are expanding. And as a result, the quality of care is dropping. I feel like being an ER physician is not one of those jobs where you can work from home. Like, Oh, you have a shift on Friday, but you want to head to the lake for a long weekend? Just log in. “Sorry, my Wifi’s a little spotty up here at the cabin. Can you zoom in on the hemorrhaging patient for me?”

• Britain is implementing a midnight-to-6 a.m. social media curfew for teenagers. However, you can opt out—sort of like every other law in Britain right now.

• How to handle the cyclospora situation (which is way more dramatic than it needs to be): grow your own veggies or shop at the farmers market.

One of God’s greatest gifts to mankind is fresh fruit. And here at ROB, we don’t discriminate against any particular fruit. We love them all. When they’re in season.

But now, as a result of advanced agricultural technology, concepts of fruit seasons are pastime. At least, that’s how Driscoll’s, the $7 billion berry company, is conditioning us.

Strawberries in November and blueberries at Christmas? Sounds like something generations before us would dream of, or perhaps how their pastor might describe the feast of the lion and the lamb.

But now that we do have fresh berries 365 days a year, it just doesn’t feel right. Like an endless summer vacation where vacation becomes the norm, not the exception, therefore diluting its specialness.

Driscolls may seem like they’re just a family farm, carrying on a legacy of growing strawberries to be judged at the county fair, when in reality, their operation mirrors something like Pfizer scientists creating a new biotechnology.

From a NYT piece on the company last week:

Inside a nearby laboratory, where two full-time sensory scientists make their assessments, 210 raspberry varieties were laid out in a grid of plastic pints. Some had been bred for visual appeal, with more shapely shoulders, uniform drupelets and less “hair” (the thin red styles that sprout where the berry is pollinated). Others were developed to maximize yield, with fewer thorns and better “plant architecture” — tall, fluffy stalks that make the berries easy to pick. Each cultivar is tested for qualities like P.S.I., the interior pressure that determines whether a berry will yield to the teeth with an explosive, juicy pop.

In some regards, ROB loves that fresh fruit is more accessible than ever. But at the same time, we’re also as metabolically unhealthy as ever, so it’s not like strawberries in January are making us ready for swimsuit season in July.

And with the intensive hybridization to make fruit as sweet as possible—and to improve things like appearance, yield, and shelf life—we’re breeding the nutrition out of the food. What may seem healthy, like a strawberry, is essentially flavored water.

Meanwhile, wild fruit remains a nutrient boss. Wild blueberries, for example, contain 3x the antioxidants than farmed blueberries. One of the coolest things you can do for your health this summer is take a mountain hike, find some wild berries, and eat a ton of them. Just make sure they’re not poisonous.

The towns are truly idyllic, with pink and blue hydrangeas bordering the cedar-paneled homes like thickly piped cake frosting. The shops are filled with vintage European designer brands, $90 coffee table books that are bought based on their covers, and porch signs that read, NO CRYING ON THE YACHT.

In Southampton, next to the picture-perfect Ralph Lauren store, sits the town’s art center, where they were displaying works of Schiaparelli, which, until yesterday, I thought was a pasta shape, not a designer. I walked in to check out the art, and upon entering, the museum worker informed me that the art teacher who was doing a workshop (something she thought I had signed up for, I guess) would be late due to an anxiety attack. I said I understood completely, then exited the building out of respect for the stressed-out worker—and Schiaparelli’s work, which did not deserve that emotional distress.

As I walked up Main Street, I was behind three blonde ladies in the thick of menopause talking about their girlfriend’s divorce, saying they were happy for her freedom and that she gets the home in Aspen.

At dinner, I sat outside across from a middle-aged couple with thick New York City accents. The husband was wearing a silver Rolex but was talking about how his friend Brad just got a “beautiful rose gold watch.” He told his wife it would be $40,000, and she said (I wish this was a joke, but it’s 100% verbatim what she said), “Well, if Brad has one, then you need one too.”

After dinner, I went to an Italian restaurant and bar for an espresso. I sat next to a ~70-year-old at the bar who was drinking white wine. I asked him if he was a frequent at this joint, and he said, shortly, that he was. I then followed up and asked him how long he’d summer in the Hamptons, and he asked, flustered, “Why are you asking me these questions?”

I told him I was from out of town and wanted to learn more about the community. He rolled his eyes and didn’t respond. It was a clear answer to my inquiry.

And it solidified my belief that the Hamptons need Jesus. Badly.

The one church I saw in Southampton was a Methodist church with pride flags, whose reader board read: WE STAND FOR JUSTICE AND AGAINST HATE.

I’m sure there are Christians in the Hamptons who have fidelity to Scripture. But the overarching spiritual air of the swanky area felt adrift.

I left the Hamptons less jealous of rich people and their nice homes than when I arrived. These people—some of the world’s wealthiest—are living unhappy, insecure lives. Their countenances, gray and forlorn, belied the summer glory that defines the Hamptons.

And it seems they're in denial of how short life is. They have everything materially, a lot less relationally, far less emotionally, and pretty much nothing spiritually—unless you count the $50 hot yoga classes.

It reminded me of two important things:

I would rather make $30,000 a year and have a joy-filled heart and a secure identity than $30 million with a bitter heart and an identity contingent on Brad’s watch collection.

And secondly, we are all truly the same. We all die. And you won’t get the house in Aspen after the body’s divorce from earth.

We will all show up before the Lord Almighty, where He will ask us to give an account for our lives—not view our bank accounts. We’ll either be covered by the blood of Christ and enter into an eternal paradise that makes the Hamptons seem like trailer trash, or we will be covered with the blood of the sins we’ve committed against each other and God, which will direct us to an eternity of pain.

To the seemingly Christ-less people I met in the Hamptons, may I recommend you acquiesce? Lay your burdens down at the foot of the cross. That is the good life. That is eternal life.

I hope you all had a terrific Fourth of July. I spent America’s 250th birthday in Washington, D.C., which was exciting in some respects and saddening in others—namely because I couldn’t be in northern Idaho, where my brother Elisha hosted what looked like a killer cookout and a fiddle contest of sorts.

Lucky for them I wasn’t at the competition. Fortunately for the country, given my proximity to POTUS, I was instead able to lend my expertise on Middle East foreign policy, which is why we’re bombing Iran again.

There I was in the Situation Room advising, “Mr. President, we’ve gotta strike while we can.”

Needless to say, my Raytheon stock is looking great.

Now let’s get to some health news.

In today’s letter:

• Vitamin K shot for newborns (y/n)

• Creatine’s anti-cancer potential

• Bryan Johnson’s quest to live forever hits an autoimmune road block

• Lionel Messi x ROB collab (?)

• Protein ice cream

• An Idaho mother who publicly claimed her 18-month-old twins died from vaccines is now being charged with their murders.

“They’ll say it’s a one-in-a-million bleeding risk,” said Dr. Annemarie Stroustrup, the senior vice president of pediatric services at Northwell Health, a large health care network in New York and Connecticut where several infants have hemorrhaged in the past two years. “It’s decidedly not.”

The New York Times ran a piece highlighting the increase in parents choosing not to give their newborns vitamin K shots, which are essential for blood clotting. If a newborn begins to bleed, things can get dicey scary, and sometimes, fatal. But many parents are choosing to opt out of the shot, citing concerns about the ingredients it contains.

I genuinely see why some parents choose not to give the shot, either opting out altogether or choosing an oral form of vitamin K instead. But reading these stories in the Times—very graphic, very sad—was sobering. I understand that the story is meant to make us scared, and honestly, it accomplished that.

Sometimes in the holistic health space, it’s said that we shouldn’t make decisions out of fear. That we should trust our intuition and trust the body. Again, I understand the heart behind this, and I generally agree. But I can’t sign off on it as a life motto for major medical decisions. Sometimes fear should be the deciding factor.

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I’ve been discouraged watching the political team I expected to advance policies I care about instead seem content to bathe in the very swamp they promised to drain.

I worry about the lack of principle within my own political party. And I’m disheartened by the rise of socialism across the country.

But this week I realized something: my ability to complain about America is one of America’s greatest strengths.

Try doing that in Russia—a country whose laws and values have been portrayed by Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens as more aspirational than America’s.

There, sustained criticism of the government can land you in prison—or worse. If Candace Owens were half as critical of the Russian government or the Russian Orthodox Church as she is of America’s institutions, she’d likely be silenced, threatened, or imprisoned. And Lord knows she wouldn’t last long without the oxygen of livestreaming her latest conspiracy theories.

Russia is hardly alone. Across much of the world, freedoms Americans take for granted are increasingly restricted. In England, people have been prosecuted—and in some cases imprisoned—for “offensive” texts. In Qatar, another country that Carlson and Co. speak favorably of, criticism of the ruling monarchy can carry serious consequences.

Should we acknowledge America’s problems? Absolutely.

It makes me angry that powerful industries so often shape public policy and that too many members of Congress are whores to the algorithm than public servants for people who elected them.

But the question isn’t whether America has problems. The question is what free people do about them.

The answer isn’t to black-pill ourselves into believing everything is hopelessly rigged. Complaining is easy. It’s enjoyable. And complaining about the government is one of the most American things you can do. But complaining alone has never changed the government.

Every worthwhile movement that has made America a more perfect union has required decades of persistence. Every meaningful reform has faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

When the Supreme Court handed down its disastrous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, affirming racial segregation under the doctrine of “separate but equal,” those committed to civil rights didn’t surrender. They organized, persuaded, litigated, and kept changing hearts and minds. It took generations, but eventually the culture shifted, political leaders followed, and the law changed with it.

That’s the pattern throughout American history. In a republic, culture is upstream of politics. Convince enough people that your cause is just, and politicians will eventually have little choice but to follow.

America has never been perfect. But unlike so many places in the world, it gives us the freedom to criticize it and the opportunity to improve it.

To those frustrated with America: I see you. I understand you. I’ve been there.

But don’t let your frustration become fatalism.

Remember that we possess freedoms that billions of people throughout history—and millions still living today—could only dream of. We have the right to speak, to persuade, to organize, and to change the course of our country.

That’s what makes America the greatest nation in history.

So don’t just complain. Build. Organize. Persuade.

As for those who insist Russia is a better alternative to America: if it's so great, move there.

Yesterday I received Alexandra’s weekly newsletter. This week she decided to share a few recipes with her followers, who had apparently been asking for the delicious-looking dinner she’d posted.

When you look at the photo, you might think, Wow. Alex really knows how to whip up a beautiful meal.

When I looked at it, I thought: Fraud.

Because the person who actually made that dinner was yours truly.

What’s worse is that Alexandra had confidently informed me she was making dinner that night. But when I arrived at her apartment, she was busy taste-testing some new Masa chips while the chicken sat untouched on the counter.

So I seasoned the chicken and put it in the oven. Risking my fiddle-playing fingers, I even broke out the mandolin slicer for the cucumber salad.

At one point she thoughtfully asked, “Can I help?”

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I’ve been enjoying watching the World Cup, where Lionel Messi has further solidified himself as an absolute legend of the world’s most popular sport.

To be honest, I’m also just now learning about some of these countries. Take Cape Verde, a tiny island nation off the west coast of Africa that’s holding its own against countries where soccer is a more powerful institution than the government and the church combined.

Then there was a team with the abbreviation KSA. I have no idea what that stands for, but they lost, so it’s sort of irrelevant anyway.

I also noticed Iran is playing. It’s a country I’m fairly certain I’ve heard mentioned recently, though I can’t quite place where. Perhaps it was in that article, Cheapest, Most Exciting Honeymoon Destinations of 2026, that I read earlier this week?

I want to give a shoutout to Mrs. Allen, who wrote in yesterday to inform me of a grammatical error.

My copy editor is currently on strike after refusing to be compensated exclusively by words of affirmation. So Mrs. Allen, being the English teacher extraordinaire and overall gracious woman that she is, saw what needed to be done and did the work herself.

Mrs. Allen is a longtime friend of ROB, and we are indebted to her eagle eye. So much so that I’ve just comped her a lifetime paid subscription.

As for the rest of you who have yet to prove your worth... well, all I’ll say is that, out of the kindness of my heart, I’m cutting subscription prices in half for this week. So if you want access to the good stuff, become a paying subscriber.

This week only—it’s cheaper than a cup of coffee.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DISCOUNT

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Welcome to all the new readers here. It’s a privilege to write to you. Allow me to detail a bit about my health history, philosophy, and the reoccurring themes you’ll encounter here at Running On Butter.

I first learned about seed oils’ ability to impair sperm in 2019.

I read about it in Deep Nutrition by Cate Shanahan, the most impactful book I’ve read apart from the Bible. It was given to me by Dr. Matt Angove, who recognized a budding interest in health and handed it to me as a gentle nudge down that path.

The book stunned me. Sure, the chapter on seed oils nuking sperm was freaky. But what captivated me was the worldview it presented: a cogent synthesis of history, science, food, and disease that answered questions I didn’t know I was curious about.

Since then, I haven’t stopped reading, researching, and reporting on health.

For a while, I thought I wanted to become a naturopathic physician. But after spending a few months learning what Dr. Matt and his wife Dr. Amadea actually do—listen to people’s problems all day, patiently guiding them through years of bad habits, and gently encouraging change—I realized I wasn’t cut out for it.

Like, I’m a nice guy. But if someone sat down in my office and said, “Dr. Vance, I don’t know why I feel terrible all the time,” and then informed me they were consuming 80 grams of erythritol a day while scrolling Facebook until midnight, I’d probably respond with something like:

“Julie, have you considered not doing that? Geez, put two and two together, sister.”

Julie starts crying.

This is why I am not a naturopathic physician.

Still, that conviction for health remained.

Then I discovered the work of Nina Teicholz. Reading her reporting, I realized there was another path. I didn’t have to become a physician to contribute to the health movement. I could investigate, write, and tell stories.

I could tell people the truth without having to delicately navigate the emotional fallout that often accompanies the truth. It was the perfect fit.

So I switched up my degree, studied journalism, and started Running On Butter (ROB) while I was in college.

After graduating, I landed a health reporting gig with The Epoch Times, where I got to investigate and report on overlooked yet important health science, interviewing some of the world's brightest doctors and scientists along the way. It was exactly the kind of work I had hoped to do.

I reported on everything from the financial incentives behind C-sections, to why kids need boredom, the risks of ibuprofen, drug shortages caused by Big Pharma’s greed, what your dreams say about your health, and, of course, why butter does not cause heart disease.

Over the past seven years of researching and writing about health, I’ve become convinced of and convicted by certain truths that have come to define the overarching principles of Running On Butter.

Here are a few:

• The human body is an intricate, dynamic creation. The pinnacle of God's earthly handiwork. It is not a software program to be hacked or a machine to be optimized.

• Chronic disease does not manifest overnight. It is stewarded by habits accumulated over the course of years.

• Social media is the defining pathogen of the 21st century.

• A life of spiritual, physical, and intellectual inactivity is a life robbed of joy and meaning.

• Historical illiteracy kills.

I go through various seasons of WHAT’S-THE-MOST IMPORTANT-THING-YOU-CAN-DO-FOR-YOUR-HEALTH-STARTING-TODAY!

Avoiding seed oils, lifting weights, breathing fresh air, getting sunlight, touching the earth, eating butter, etc.

And while that will continue—those pinpointed passions shaped by whatever I’m reading or concerned about at the moment—I hope to present a coherent, consistent picture of health.

I’m never going to swear by a supplement, diet, or piece of tech (unless, of course, Pfizer offers me an eight-figure contract to push the 39th version of the Covid vaccine. At that point, my principles and influence become remarkably negotiable).

I’m also pretty opinionated, which my nine siblings could attest to ad nauseam. But if I’m doing my job here at Running On Butter well, you’ll encounter opinions, ideas, and yes—even objective truths—that you may not enjoy. I am not here to reaffirm your existing beliefs the way an algorithm does.

When you read something you disagree with, don’t allow it to send you into a spiral. Simply say to yourself, “Hmm, I disagree with him,” and move on with your day. Water the flowers. Feed the children. Call your mother.

ROB is not for the intellectually fragile. Nor are we here for the illiterate who cannot discern sarcasm and humor.

If, despite these ground rules, you still have a complaint, bring it to the queen Buttercup. Just know she’s generally less gracious than I am.

And again—thank you so much for being here.

That’s right. I’ve found The One. My best friend with whom I share a vision for life and deepest held convictions.

The one who makes me smile like a fool whenever she sends me a text, not knowing if it’s going to be a niche meme, an encouraging Bible verse, or a reminder to reach out to one of our friends and ask how they’re doing.

Her name is Alexandra, and she’s the woman of my Wildest Dreams.

The woman who, when I see her across the room—whether it be in her apartment when she looks like a “slug” (her words, not mine) or at a fancy ball looking like the visual aid for Merriam-Webster’s definition of striking (my words, not hers)—makes me think: That girl is mine, and I get to be her man.

If you haven’t experienced this kind of mutual romantic proprietorship, then you haven’t known peace or passion in their fullest form. Having my person—the one with whom I’ll bury metaphorical bodies and also hatchets—is an insane feeling, and even better reality.

Here’s how it went down.

Alexandra has a cute little health podcast called Culture Apothecary, which is sort of like a Temu version of Running On Butter.

Just kidding. Her podcast is brilliant, and it’s how I first discovered her more than three years ago. Over the last few years, I had listened to her grow as a thinker.

As I was hearing her evolution (radicalization) in real time, I was thinking we’d make a great couple.

So I petitioned our mutual friends, Samuel and Anne Sey, and also Katy Faust to help a dude out. I hounded them to help me land a date, but each time I reached out, she was dating a loser.

It wasn’t until last fall that I would finally get her attention, here on these hallowed pages of ROB. I gave a casual shout-out, not thinking anything would become of it.

I had been down bad crying at the Crossfit gym thinking I’d never get a shot with her. She didn’t want me. I posted the piece and went to bed.

The next morning I woke to dozens of texts messages and missed calls. I thought something was wrong, but it was all of you—the Buttercups—telling me that Alexandra had seen and shared my post.

“VANCE!! WAKE UP! ALEX FREAKING CLARK IS A BUTTERCUP! SHE KNOWS YOU EXIST. GET ON IT NOW AND SHOOT YOUR SHOT!!!!”

When I saw this, my first thought was: What will our children look like?

I then got her number, called her, and asked her to dinner. She gave me the option of going out the next day or the following week because she was traveling. I picked the next day. I had to capitalize on the moment.

We went to The Ends in Scottsdale, where she showed up nine minutes late. Each of those nine minutes had me reconsidering my firm conviction against physician assisted suicide, unsure if I could continue in this life if she stood me up.

I will never forget seeing her for the first time. I’d seen images of her, of course. But the pictures and videos online were incapable of translating the charm and voltage of her presence.

The conversation at dinner was animated by topics including church, politics, family, health, if our kids would have my eyes or hers, and music.

Our second date was hanging with Crossfit Kevin and his wife Jordan, and our third was at my church. At church, we were sitting in the pews and she reached over and put her hand on mine. I remember thinking: In the house of God?!? Bold move!!

I had to fly out of town that night for work, and she offered to take me to the airport. I made her chocolate chip cookies as a thank you and she put together a MAHA snack bag for my travels. On our way to the airport, I asked her to my girlfriend. She was shocked by the velocity of my pursuit.

The reason I asked after only three dates was because she casually mentioned she might go on a second date with another guy. My reaction was immediate: absolutely not. I saw the target, was homed in, and needed exclusivity.

She said yes to being my girlfriend, and well, it’s been a wild ride ever since.

We’ve protested at the Supreme Court and taken moonlit beach walks in Florida. We’ve kissed in Central Park and two-stepped in Arizona country bars. We’ve been to great indie-pop concerts, symphonies, and sang our favorite songs together in the car.

We’ve played pickleball with friends and have eaten a lot of pickled vegetables. She’s my biggest cheerleader when I’m challenged at Hyrox races, and I’m hers when she’s challenged by the White House.

We did Thanksgiving together in Indiana at her mom’s, a lady who I’ve come to admire and appreciate deeply. We did Christmas at my family’s in Washington where she handled my family—parents, nine siblings, eight in-laws, 39 nieces and nephews—with grace and confidence.

These are just what we’d consider the Instagramable moments, which, sure, are cool. But it’s the non-eventful times that are sweetest with Alexandra. The moments where we talk about anything and everything, and encourage and challenge each other. Where she makes me laugh uncontrollably and where I remind her to meditate only on the things she can control.

We love being greeted by a sweet gray-haired lady named MaryLee at our small church, followed by an afternoon of grocery shopping and cooking a Sunday roast.

Put simply: We love living life together.

When we first started dating, my brother asked me what I like about Alexandra that most people wouldn’t know.

I told him that she is, without a doubt, the most multidimensional person I know. Her mind is quick. Her preferences, eclectic. Her opinions, original. Her convictions, biblical.

She is also the most principled person I know. There have been multiple opportunities for her to undercut her values—to stay quiet about the pesticide battle or advance a cause she doesn’t believe in—for the sake of being invited to the right parties or simply keeping the peace.

But in a world full of people whose values are tethered to whatever the algorithm rewards, Alexandra, in her stupidly priced high heels, is immovable.

Sometimes that stubbornness is frustrating. Like when she’s following a recipe with absurd fastidiousness, and I suggest adding an ingredient that isn’t explicitly called for in the cookbook. But being the intricate person she is, that obstinance is equilibrated by a tender heart.

She’s curious and caring, somehow maintaining what seems like 57 best friends, each convinced they’re the favorite.

That strong will + soft heart = the best soul.

This being the case, I asked her to be my wife in Seattle—a nod to one of her favorite films, Sleepless in Seattle. Without hesitation, she agreed to be Mrs. Running On Butter.

Together, our indefatigable campaign to heal a sick culture will be amplified tenfold now that we’re operating as a unit. Note to new readers: If you think Alex is radically MAHA, I make her look like Ronald McDonald. (Or Grimace, if you’re a real one.)

And if you are a new reader, subscribe for more chronicles of the adventures of Vance and Alexandra.

We’d appreciate prayers for a blessed engagement season and God-glorifying marriage.

I cannot wait to start my life with this woman. And Lord willing, raise some butter babies together.

Subscribe now

I just got back from visiting family in Washington, where we celebrated my brother’s wedding. We are soooo stoked for his wife to join the family, and the wedding was an 11/10 on the sweetness scale but a 1/10 for the uncouth emcee who kept hawking his brand from the microphone throughout the reception.

“...Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Tucker Voetberg…And make sure to subscribe to RunningOnButter.com for GREAT content on how to take your life and health to the next level.”

Classless, right?

Other than my brother’s holy matrimony that took place in Seattle last week, there are no other major personal updates. Not a lot going on at the moment.

Now, let’s get to some health news.

Running On Butter exists for many reasons: to inspire, to educate, and, obviously, to achieve total world domination.

But one of our highest callings, dear Buttercups, is to obliterate the fiction that butter—saturated fat—is what caused Grandpa Frank’s heart attack.

Last week I had a conversation with a prominent cardiologist that reminded me of the importance of this mission. He’s a smart physician who has led teams of hundreds of doctors and medical students.

And yet, despite all that training and authority, he’s profoundly misguided about what’s driving plaque buildup in his patients’ arteries and the weakened heartbeat he hears through his stethoscope.

You’re probably thinking:

“Vance, are you—a 26-year-old keyboard-and-CrossFit warrior—seriously telling us that a veteran cardiologist who’s overseen thousands of patients doesn’t understand the nature of heart disease?”

And to that entirely reasonable hesitation, I ask:

Is the Dark Knight trilogy a cinematic masterpiece?
Is there good surf in Hawaii?
Was King Solomon wise?
Is it impossible to make the Olympic Games as a 26-year-old who was a medium-good distance runner in high school, has a background in backyard volleyball and basketball, is above average at pickleball, but really wants it with all his heart?

Some questions simply have obvious answers.

Here’s what ROB has that Nice-but-misinformed-MD does not: Facts and—not for nothing—glasses that make me look smart.

There’s so much research to unpack with the saturated fat controversy, which I have many times, including here.

For today, I just want to arm you with a little bit of your own common sense and intuition.

Heart disease and strokes are a relatively new phenomenon. The 20th century was when things skyrocketed. So why, then, would we blame ancient foods like red meat and butter for modern maladies? And why do countries like France who eat a lot of saturated fat have low rates of heart disease?

Cholesterol is allegedly the bad guy. “The best thing you can do to never get a heart attack is to keep your cholesterol to as close as zero as possible,” the cardiologist told me.

Then why did this brilliant meta-analysis find that those with higher cholesterol live longer? And what are we to do about the fact that LDL cholesterol is a multifaceted compound essential for a myriad of biochemical processes like building the cell membrane and producing hormones?

Next time your doctor or friend tells you that saturated fat and cholesterol are villainous, please challenge them with these questions. And if they’re still not convinced, send them to me. Few things bring me this much joy/rage than this topic.

• The Tennessee Titans removed all seed oils from their nutritional protocol. I’m a believer in cutting out of seed oils. We love to see it. But the Titans were 3-14 last year, and I think they need a bigger intervention than the swapping fats. My recommendation:

  

• Vermont became the first state to ban paraquat, a Chinese-owned pesticide. Exposure to this pesticide significantly increases the risk of Parkinson’s disease. I have a close family friend who sprayed synthetic pesticides regularly as a nursery owner. He died a few years ago from Parkinson’s.

• Gen Z, the generation of which I am a part, oftentimes complains about not having enough money to buy a house. And it is empirically harder now to buy a house than it was for our parents. But also, we’re faced with our own set of challenges. What am I to do when Spotify Premium increases their prices? Go to the free version like we’re living in 1936? Another burden we’re faced with is the convenience of DoorDash. Again, what are we to do? Cook our own food?

• The Enhanced Games, a sporting competition where they pumped a bunch of athletes full of performance-enhancing drugs, went down last week. The premise was simple: Prepare to have your mind blown. Witness the absolute limits of human performance! What actually went down was considerably less impressive. In the men’s 100m, for example, all of the times were slower than the finalists at the Texas boys state championships. Even more surprisingly, none of the athletes ran a personal record ran fast than when they weren’t doping. In swimming, a non-doping swimmer beat the enhanced athletes. The Games were backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Peter Thiel, which feels very Roman-emperor-ish.

• Bromocriptine, pluchea, and hwyl were just a few of the words spelled correctly by the winner of Scripps National Spelling Bee. I cAn’t spelL those words, but I can spEll my favorite word in the whole world with eXcellent precision.

• Justin Whitmel Earley, author of Habits of the Household, wrote an essay nobody asked for in Christianity Today arguing that men should get vasectomies as an act of masculine leadership and sacrificial love.

This article is empty-headed and problematic for many reasons, but its central flaw is that it views sex through a secular lens. Sex, in this article, is reduced to risk management, bodily autonomy, and the equitable distribution of burdens. Missing entirely is the Christian understanding of sex as a covenantal act ordered toward union and fruitfulness.

He also attempts to argue that getting a vasectomy is an act of masculine leadership and sacrifice. That a husband proves his love by taking on the medical burden himself. But this—again—is a modern, therapeutic, and even feminist view of the body. One that sees fertility as a problem to be managed and healthy bodily functions as raw material to be modified in pursuit of personal preferences.

Intentional sterility may be a habit of Mr. Earley’s household, but it will not be a habit of the households we’re building at Running On Butter.

Last weekend I did a CrossFit competition with CrossFit Kevin. We did not win. Nor were we remotely close to winning. And Kevin is still not over it.

All week I’ve been getting texts of regret and disappointment, thoughts clearly keeping him awake at night.

Kevin at 2:09am Sunday morning:
“I can’t believe I missed that 235# snatch.”

Kevin at 11:04pm Tuesday night:
“Do you think if we’d strategized the rowing workout better we could’ve had a shot?”

Kevin at 4:10am Thursday morning:
“Heading to the gym. Still can’t get over my effort on the Echo Bike. Time to train. No excuses.”

Then this morning Kevin’s wife texted me asking if I could come over for an intervention. Apparently he’d been doing an every-minute-on-the-minute of strict handstand push-ups through the night. He was on hour 12—a protest of sorts—saying he wouldn’t stop until he felt improvement.

Anyway. Enough about Kevin’s midlife crisis.

How are YOU doing, Buttercups? Life still treating you alright?

• Speaking of not being enough physically, a new study out of Finland found that the right playlist can increase workout endurance by up to 20% for the average athlete. Researchers divided two groups of cyclists, and the ones with their own killer playlists lasted much longer than the group cycling in silence. What this tells us? Kevin and I need a better gym playlist.

Read more

I’m on my way back from D.C., where I did some light protesting against Bayer’s request to SCOTUS for legal immunity from glyphosate, also known as Roundup.

It was inspiring spending time with the brilliant researchers who have dedicated their lives to researching glyphosate, the doctors who have devoted their practices to helping patients harmed by glyphosate, and the attorneys who have spent their careers defending farmers and gardeners who have been sickened—or killed—by Bayer’s Roundup.

At the same time, it was disheartening to sit in the House Rules Committee meeting and watch firsthand how many politicians—mostly Republicans—seemed uninterested in the potential harms of glyphosate, as the committee once again pushed legal immunity for pesticide manufacturers in the upcoming Farm Bill—an effort that ultimately failed, thanks to the aggressive MAHA advocates who dissuaded Congress from siding with the chemical giant.

Still, right now, Bayer is in the halls of the Capitol, courting the Trump administration, and petitioning SCOTUS—asking all three branches of government to provide legal protection so that average people like you and me, your friend who farms, or your grandma who gardens cannot sue if they’re harmed by RoundUp. It’s an effort that undercuts one of this nation’s most fundamental legal principles: the right, guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment, to have your day in court.

I cannot think of another issue where there is this level of coordination stemming from a single company. It should also be noted that Bayer is a foreign company.

I really wish the “just asking questions” crowd on social media would direct their queries toward this matter. If Bayer were an Israeli company (it’s German), I suspect Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson would be all over this topic. But alas—no Jews, no news.

• Allyson Felix is coming out of retirement, aiming to make her sixth Olympic Games in her hometown of Los Angeles. She’ll likely be racing the 400 meters—and, by the grace of our Lord Almighty, I managed to get tickets to the women’s 400m semifinals. Part of me was thrilled to snag the tickets. Another part of me felt a little defeated, because buying tickets to the Olympics means accepting the fact that I won’t be there competing. Acceptance, the final stage of grief. 🥲

• Two runners broke the 2-hour marathon in London. 4:33/mile pace. Insane.

• The latest workout trend is shock therapy. Athletes (a generous use of the word here) strap into wetsuit-like gear wired with electrical currents that stimulate their muscles for 20 minutes while lifting what appear to be eight-pound dumbbells. The setup relies on electrical muscle stimulation machines that cost $20,000 each. The business director behind one German company said Americans are their target audience. “The U.S. is a big market, there’s many lazy people,” he told the WSJ.

• Speaking of environmental toxins: a study from MIT found that NDMA—a toxic byproduct of several industrial processes—may be significantly more harmful to children than to adults. In the early 2000s, a Massachusetts community’s drinking water was contaminated with this chemical, and pediatric cancer rates there were higher than in surrounding areas. In this new lab experiment, researchers found that the same DNA damage had very different consequences depending on age. “The double-stranded breaks were exclusively observed in the young,” the study’s lead author explained. What I find—well, I don’t know—worth pointing out is that there seem to be some very serious ties between Germany and MIT. (one of the physics professor is from Munich.) Germany, as we know, is where Bayer operates—and it’s also where they’re making this shock-therapy-style workout equipment. What’s going on over there in Germany? Are the vibes off? Hard to say. But the ROB Central Europe bureau has some fascinating tips coming in. Our sources there run deep. We’re keeping our eyes on you, Germany.

• Two-thirds of babies under two watch screens daily, with 30% watching screens for more than three hours a day. Have we forgotten Matthew 18:6?

• A 71-year-old man is running 100 marathons in 100 days to raise awareness for Parkinson’s research. At face value, that sounds admirable. But hundreds of millions are already being poured into the search for treatments. What receives far less attention is prevention. There are dozens of studies linking pesticide exposure to Parkinson’s, yet we rarely talk about what might be driving the disease in the first place.

• Steak 'n Shake hired a “Chief MAHA Officer.”

• “A basketball court is essentially 94 feet of prefrontal cortex development opportunity,” says Dr. Matt Angove, the ROB Godfather. Read his excellent piece on why kids should play basketball.

  Dr. Matt

  Want to Give Your Child A Hand Up in Life? Sign Them Up for Basketball.

  I’m serious, this is easy health accumulation…

  Read more

  4 months ago · 11 likes · Dr. Matt

• The White House is fast-tracking research of psychedelic drugs. Running On Butter has no official stance on—nor experience with—these substances, aside from that brief period when I started a commune in Ecuador. Wild times down there in South America.

• Celebrities seem to be abusing GLP-1 drugs and looking increasingly anemic and emaciated. Not good, but also not new. Drug experimenting is sort of a defining celebrity trait. Last year it was Adderall. This year it’s Ozempic. Next year? Probably psychedelics from Ecuador—which, again, can we please stop bringing that up? I told you it was just a season of my life.

We’re starting a new column here at Running On Butter. One that looks back at significant moments in health history: atrocities, miracle medical breakthroughs, and lost traditions that can help us think more critically about health and how it ought to shape our lives.

I’m your all-knowledgeable professor. Questions are encouraged. Questioning me? Strongly discouraged. Attendance is mandatory.

Now everyone sit down and listen.

Humans have been searching for the fountain of youth for millennia. It’s instinctive for us to chase rare potions and cutting-edge technologies that promise extended youth and restored beauty.

Sometimes this impulse has led to remarkable scientific discoveries. But it has also produced some of medicine’s most catastrophic mistakes—like at the beginning of the twentieth century, when people believed Marie Curie’s discovery of radium, a mysterious new substance that seemed to radiate endless energy, might reverse aging and restore vitality.

Marketers began putting radium in drinking water, cosmetics, even blankets—promising it as a cure-all for fatigue, aging, and illness. Today that sounds absurd. Of course drinking radioactive material causes harm. We look back and think: how could anyone have believed this?

And yet the mindset that produced the radium craze hasn’t disappeared. It has simply changed its vocabulary.

I think about the current peptide craze, and the way biohackers rattle off military-sounding code names—BPC-157, CJC-1295—as if they’re reciting coordinates to the future of human perfection. To be clear, peptides used as targeted medicine to restore something broken can be genuinely helpful. I know people who have recovered more quickly from injuries because of them.

But the broader promise behind much of the biohacking movement—the idea that we can engineer our bodies to live to 120 through stacks of synthetic compounds—is based on a troubling assumption: that the human body is a machine we can endlessly optimize without consequence.

Miracle drugs that promise extended life often underestimate the complexity of the body itself. Every day, millions of biochemical reactions interact in ways we still only partially understand. Introducing powerful synthetic compounds into that system for decades at a time is not the same thing as using medicine temporarily to treat disease.

Right now there is enormous hype coming out of places like Silicon Valley and Austin around secret protocols and longevity compounds that supposedly unlock radically extended life. Most of these claims are dramatically overstated. And there is an important difference between taking a short-term pharmaceutical intervention to treat illness—like antibiotics—and integrating synthetic compounds into your body as a permanent lifestyle strategy.

There’s also a growing concern that many peptides sold online do not contain what they claim. The FDA has warned that roughly one-quarter of tested peptide products include undisclosed ingredients.

The lesson of the radium era isn’t that innovation is dangerous. It’s that innovation without humility—and without respect for the complexity of the human body—can lead to costly mistakes.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the reality is that the best way to live a long, healthy, and meaningful life isn’t to chase every new cutting-edge technology. More often than not, it’s simply to keep running on butter.

Life’s been busy lately, which is why I’ve been a little MIA here. I’m sorry for the negligence. I’ll try to be a better leader. I know I haven’t always been there for you. But I’m trying now. I’m back on the straight and narrow.

In fact, I even found a support group for dads who just got out of prison and are trying to reconnect with their kids. I am not a dad, I do not have children, and haven’t been incarcerated. Not yet, at least.

But honestly, it’s the closest thing I could find to help me figure out how to reconnect with you all.

Anyway, I’m glad to be back. And your mother and I are going to see if we can patch things up.

I went to checkout the NYTs yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to see a MAHA piece as the cover story.

My favorite quote was from Alex Clark, a health podcaster who said that “Republicans would be stupid, moronic to let these voters just slip through our fingers.”

It’s fascinating, because this is the exact diction my girlfriend deploys when I add ingredients to a recipe that aren’t called for. She’s a stay-within-the-lines kind of girl when it comes to cooking. Me? I’m more free-spirited. I like to experiment. This is also known as “stupid, moronic.”

Anyway, it’s a great piece you can read here.

I went to dinner this week with a friend who was recently diagnosed with colon cancer.

I’ve read many reports about the disease’s rapid rise—about 1 in 25 men and 1 in 26 women will develop it, with incidence increasing roughly 3% each year—but this week I was struck by the humanity of it, sitting across from a middle-aged, otherwise healthy man facing a stage-four prognosis.

Fortunately, he has an excellent team of physicians and family around him, and he’s doing remarkably well. He’s hopeful.

Still, his diagnosis sent me back into the research. Why is colon cancer skyrocketing?

There are hundreds of papers investigating the question. Each offers a piece of the puzzle—but the overall picture is not nearly as mysterious or complicated as it’s often made to seem.

Essentially, we’re destroying our guts.

Like many cancers, colon cancer does not have a single cause. There is no sole perpetrator.

Researchers point to several contributors: the liberal use of antibiotics, ultra-processed foods, inactivity, pesticides, certain pharmaceuticals, and even specific viruses.

Together, these forces have bulldozed our microbiomes like a post-apocalyptic cityscape. They leave behind ecosystems that are depleted—dysregulated by a scarcity of beneficial bacteria and increasingly dominated by pathogenic species.

But fundamentally, a gut environment that fosters disease is not created overnight. It is shaped by decades of continual and invasive mistreatment. And among all these factors, the most influential is what we eat.

Are we eating foods that nourish the gut—foods that feed beneficial bacteria, introduce microbial diversity, supply essential nutrients, support digestion, and equip the immune system to disarm pathogens? Or are we feeding ourselves foods that do the opposite—foods that contain little life at all?

You may feel fine eating a muffin and a Starbucks coffee for breakfast. A Chipotle burrito or Chick-fil-A lunch may be convenient—and again, you feel fine, at least for now. A frozen pizza or DoorDashed dinner is easy and satisfying.

Life is good, you feel fine!

But these lifeless foods, compounded over years, refashion your gut so that what seems like diminutive changes are in fact tectonic.

Add to this repeated courses of antibiotics, chronic medication use, and pesticide exposure, and suddenly the terrain of the colon begins to resemble something closer to Chernobyl than a healthy ecosystem. Colon cancer does not arise from nuclear radiation, of course. But it manifests and thrives in environments that have been similarly stripped of their natural defenses.

When I think about the sudden rise of young people like me developing colon cancer, I consider what the average upbringing of my generation actually looked like—and I find myself thinking: well, of course. Did we really expect there would be no consequences from:

• formula replacing early microbial exposure from breastfeeding?

• Fishy crackers for toddlers?

• Lunchables for elementary schoolers?

• Taco Bell and energy drinks for high schoolers?

• chronic exposure to glyphosate?

• multiple courses of antibiotics every year in childhood?

We’re feeding ourselves dead foods.

There’s obviously the junk foods, but I’m also thinking of foods that may not contain many calories and that advertise themselves as good sources of fiber, calcium, whole grains, and so on. They may even be good sources of those things.

But whenever we’re grocery shopping, eating out, or preparing a meal, it’s Running On Butter’s standard that we ask a simple question:

Is this food full of life—or is it a dead food?

That may sound arbitrary or subjective. But I can promise you that once you start thinking through this lens, your God-instilled intuition begins to kick in.

And if you’re still unsure what I mean, cook for real flavor rather than what you’ve been told is healthy.

Think: fresh basil and cilantro tossed into a salad with olive oil and apple cider vinegar. Fresh raspberries in a bowl of yogurt with raw honey. Cinnamon sprinkled over sliced apples. A turmeric-ginger chicken curry simmering on the stove. Pulled pork taco bowls with fresh pico de gallo, homemade guacamole, and pickled onions.

An easy way to dramatically increase the life in your meals is simply adding a few spoonfuls of sauerkraut to your plate, as I do most days.

Again, you may be thinking: seriously? My best defense against cancer is a Granny Smith apple and some cilantro?

To that I would say: yes. Eating this way is exactly how you avoid giving cancer daylight.

One meal becomes a day of eating. A day becomes a month. Months become years. And years become decades.

Small, seemingly insignificant decisions—repeated over time—culminates in at the emperor of all maladies: cancer.

• Freya India’s article on how social media is feminizing us all is excellent. “Indirect aggression, for example, is how girls typically fight; they are more likely to use tactics like passive-aggression, social exclusion and reputation destruction, rather than getting physical. But now boys are growing up doing the same.”

• Rory McIlroy’s 2026 Masters Dinner menu included bacon-wrapped dates with goat cheese, grilled elk sliders with caramelized onion jam and garlic aioli, peach-and-ricotta flatbread, and yellowfin tuna carpaccio with foie gras, toasted baguette, and chives. These are not dead foods.

• Fertility rates have dropped again. I don’t think you are to blame, given that my core readership consists mostly of moms with at least four children.

• Remember when the grandson of Reese’s Candy blew the whistle on Hershey’s for not using real chocolate and peanut butter in their peanut butter cups? Well, the company heard his—and the public’s—complaints and announced it would be returning to real chocolate and peanut butter. (This is not Running On Butter endorsing candy bars. I just find the succession drama interesting.)

• The EPA and HHS are taking on microplastics.

• Pfizer had to cancel its trials for a new Covid vaccine because they couldn’t find enough willing participants. They should’ve asked me. I’d be curious to find out whether I got the placebo or not. I suppose if I developed myocarditis, that would settle it.

• HHS is threatening to pull funding from hospitals if they don’t align their food with the updated dietary guidelines. Turns out Jell-O and pancakes with Aunt Jemima syrup are not exactly the recipe for healing.

• Kylie Jenner has pivoted her vodka soda company into a hydration brand. The multi–plastic surgery patient is now reminding us that “beauty starts from within.”

• Texas AG Ken Paxton is suing SHEIN, the Chinese clothing company that sells $4 sweaters, over alleged lead contamination. Our clothing safety laws haven’t been meaningfully updated since the 1940s—even though dozens of new synthetic chemicals are now routinely used in modern fabrics. It turns out many of these substances can be absorbed through the skin and pose health risks. RIP to my Lululemon collection.

• Do yourself a favor and watch what is my new favorite surf doc:

Last night on my way home from work I was tired. I was at the office late, and it was one of those days when the grind was grinding. I was so tired that rather than making dinner I picked up Sweetgreen on the way home.

“You never eat out,” my girlfriend said over the phone as I was heading home. “Are you feeling okay?”

Truth is I was just tired and sort of wanted to veg out. My brain seemed to be fully saturated and completely tapped for the day. I wanted to turn on a movie and zone out, or scroll YouTube to watch House Hunters, a heresy hunter, or bear hunting.

But then at 7:09pm CrossFit Kevin texted me about the workout in the morning, and said he wanted to meet up before the 6am class to do some additional conditioning. This may sound silly to you, but this actually pumped me up (the gym is my happy place) and sparked new life in me for the evening.

I decided there and then to turn my night around. To reclaim it.

So rather than reading the twelfth update of the day on the Iranian war (as if monitoring the situation is something I need to do for our nation’s national security), or watching YouTube videos about how JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette were much more problematic than what’s recently been portrayed, I picked up my fiddle and played some tunes.

Playing the old tunes that my sister Liddy wrote was literally, as my favorite composer J. S. Bach says, a complete “refreshment to the soul.” It was like my brain cells were parched and dehydrated, and the act of playing music—creating—was the water that brought everything back to life.

As my brain turned on again, the creativity started pouring out, and I ended up writing a new song on the fiddle. It made my soul so happy.

In contrast, the mindless scrolling of the news or online creators hashing conspiracy theories would’ve bogged my mind down like a dense Northwestern fog.

I empathize with the way many people feel at the end of a long work day, when the only thing they want to do is zone out and not think. But the things that we think will be restful and rewarding—social media scrolling, binging sports, the news, or reality TV—often do the very opposite of what’s actually satiating.

They deplete our minds and discontent our souls. They hijack our dopamine so that, not unlike addicts, we keep needing more and more for another hit.

My mom always told me and my siblings that we are a family of creators, and not consumers. I’m embarrassed to say that many times I choose to consume over create. But last night, I created something. A new song.

Creating not only keeps our minds agile and strong for a long, vibrant life, but it also reinforces our identity as image bearers, knowing that unlike everything else in the world, we—created in God’s image—have the ability to create things out of nothing. This shouldn’t inflate us but rather humble us, knowing that we ourselves are fearfully and wonderfully created.

Anyway, I wanted to write down this thought and share it with you. Know that Mr. Running On Butter himself still at times struggles to combat idleness and the lie that vegging out is rest. It’s not.

Here’s the new song:

You are seen. You are heard. You are among friends.

This letter is dedicated to my coworkers Brynn, who started her Friday with chocolate milk and fruit snacks, and Jett, who showed up with a Celsius energy drink in hand. You guys are the reason why ROB exists.

A new review found that healthier diets are linked to lower depression rates in teenagers. We shouldn’t need to fund research to tell us that Taco Bell and Celsius energy drinks (cc: Jett) aren’t exactly supporting adolescent development. But this research can help clinicians whose knowledge and practices are limited to what’s peer-reviewed. Research like this will (hopefully) help pediatricians start prescribing steaks and salads rather than SSRIs, which more than 2 million teens are currently taking.

Erythritol, a sugar substitute popular among Keto kings and low-carb queens, has been linked to changes in brain cells associated with increased stroke risk.

The sweetener is common in protein bars, low-sugar sodas and ice creams, and is often mixed with monk fruit or stevia as a zero-calorie sweetener for baking or coffee.

After studies found a strong link between erythritol and strokes and heart attacks, researchers at the University of Colorado tested whether the connection might actually be causal. Their findings suggest it may be.

When they exposed brain blood-vessel cells to erythritol at levels similar to a typical sugar-free drink, the cells became less able to relax vessels, less able to break down clots, and showed more signs of stress and damage—changes associated with increased stroke risk.

“Given the epidemiological study that inspired our work, and now our cellular findings, we believe it would be prudent for people to monitor their consumption of non-nutrient-sweeteners such as this one," the lead research said.

Protein bar sentenced to the gulags: David Protein, a popular protein bar I’ve covered closely, is now facing a class-action lawsuit from plaintiffs alleging the bar contains roughly 70% more calories than advertised based on third-party testing. The company says the claim misunderstands a key ingredient: EPG (esterified propoxylated glycerol), a lab-created fat substitute that technically contains calories, but isn’t absorbed by the body.

What I find fascinating is the defense itself. In effect, the company is saying: you’re misunderstanding the label because you’re assuming this is normal food. It isn’t. The ingredients are engineered so differently from traditional foods that it’s not really food at all, but a substance designed to resemble it.

This is treasonous against our bodies and food itself. ROB’s House of Justice™ therefore sentences David protein to 10 years of hard labor in Siberia.

The founding chef of Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant that’s spent years at the top of the world’s best-restaurants list, has been accused of physically abusing his kitchen staff. One allegation involves him punching a sous chef for turning on techno music. Which, honestly, is fair.

Another chef said working there felt like “going to war,” and that “you had to force yourself to be strong, to show no fear.”

To which I say: how do you think three Michelin stars are earned? By patting backs and handing out gold-star stickers?

The current seasonal menu features reindeer brain custard. Innovating a dish like that isn’t for the weak. Sometimes punches are part of the price of inimitable cuisine.

• A Canadian woman went to the hospital for back pain and was offered assisted suicide. She refused, recovered from her injury, and at 80 is now traveling the world. 5% of deaths in Canada are from medical assisted suicide.

• The International Olympic Committee says it will introduce genetic sex testing for the 2028 Games. France called it “a step backwards,” and I agree. Devastating news for my gold medal pursuit.

• Ozempic causes appetite loss. But many users also report losing their desire for other different aspects in life, too. “You can imagine a dystopian future—not unlike the sci-fi movie Serenity—where an entire planet’s population was decimated because their DNA was changed to make them not desire,” said Stanford researcher Dr. Anna Lembke. Not alarming at all.

• Check out this great video essay on the political apparatus safeguarding glyphosate.

• “My grandfather, H. B. Reese (who invented REESE’S), built REESE’S on a simple, enduring architecture: milk chocolate + peanut butter. Not a flavor idea. Not a marketing construct. A real product identity consumers trusted for a century,” wrote Brad Reese, grandson of the peanut butter cup mogul. Today, he says, that identity is being rewritten. Not by storytellers, but by formulation decisions that swap milk chocolate for compound coatings and peanut butter for “peanut-butter-style crèmes” across multiple REESE’S products. Brad, we here at ROB see you and respect you. Consider yourself a bonafide (peanut) Buttercup.

Both make arguments predicated on the idea that some Christians—the “crunchy” ones—take their health too seriously. And as such, it’s causing them to be fearful, prideful, judgmental, and even to delve into gnosticism.

Today here at Running On Butter, we will examine—and dismantle—the “concerns” these men have about the rise of we who eat butter and minimize microplastics.

I place “concerns” in quotation marks because their arguments are predicated on scenarios that are either nonexistent or vanishingly rare. In ROB’s house, bringing attention to a non-issue isn’t discernment or vigilance; it’s noise. Clanging cymbals. And frankly, it’s peeving this Buttercup to high heaven.

Stewardship: taking care of God’s creation or vanity?

Christians are called to steward God’s creation. We often think of safeguarding the beauty and integrity of the natural world as part of this duty. And rightly so. But it is our own physical bodies, the pinnacle of creation and now temples of the Holy Spirit, that ought to be governed with the greatest sobriety and gratitude.

In the aftermentioned podcast, Greg Gifford, a biblical counselor and professor at the Masters University, suggests that using the principle of stewardship to care about our health is “nebulous” and that “scripture doesn’t give us a detailed blueprint for how to manage every aspect of our physical health.”

This line of thinking—“it’s not mentioned in the Bible, so out of sight, out of mind”—from a biblical counselor, no less.

Scripture does not provide a detailed blueprint for most areas of life, yet we are still held accountable for how we steward them. Our finances. Our knowledge. Our children. Our government.

To silo bodily stewardship for its supposed lack of specificity reveals a hodgepodge, piecemeal theology. One that clings to explicit directives while overlooking the broader call to honor God in all things, even in what we eat and drink, as the Apostle Paul exhorts.

In a way, this is its own form of legalism—not building one’s life and convictions on the full counsel of Scripture and its repeated principles, but on what Scripture does not explicitly say.

Even if we grant Gifford’s premise—that Scripture says little about nutrition and health—we are still called to steward our bodies through natural law and wisdom, applying common sense in light of the knowledge we have.

After all, the New Testament offers virtually no detailed directives for how to establish a government. Yet we would not conclude, as Gifford suggests, that there is little to glean or build upon in constructing a government that provides its citizenry protection and freedom.

Parents, too, might wish for a meticulous account of what their child’s upbringing should entail. How to discipline (what do you do with a defiant three-year-old or a rebellious teenager?), how to educate (where should they go to school, and what should they learn?), how to nurture (how do you show love while encouraging independence—and when is the right time for it?), and how to pass along faith and tradition. But they are not given one.

And more than that—Scripture does, in fact, provide a remarkably rich account of guidance related to health and nourishment.

It warns, “it is not good to eat much honey” (Proverbs 25:27)—a principle that, in our context, readily extends to the overconsumption of all sweets. It commends nourishing foods: sprouted bread (Ezekiel 4:9), vegetables (Daniel 1:12–16), olive oil (Psalm 104:14–15), milk (Deuteronomy 32:14), meat (Genesis 9:3; 1 Kings 4:22-23), and fruits like figs, grapes, and pomegranates (Deuteronomy 8:8), each received with gratitude and without excess (Proverbs 23:20–21). It calls us to discipline our bodies (1 Corinthians 9:27), to walk in self-control (Galatians 5:22–23), and to glorify God in all things—even in eating and drinking (1 Corinthians 10:31).

And there are many more examples that could be added. For further study, Jordan Rubin’s andDr. Josh Axe’s The Biblio Diet offers an extended look at Scripture’s health-related principles.

Legalism: confusing seed oils with sin

The examples Gifford offers to support his reasoning for speaking on the topic are that some of his online followers feel so overwhelmed by food and health discourse that they begin asking questions like: Is eating seed oils sinful? Is it morally wrong not to avoid microplastics?

I know a lot of healthy, godly people. My nine siblings, my parents, my church, hundreds of friends. Even my girlfriend happens to be pretty into this health thing.

And not once in real life or online have I encountered anyone who questions whether raw milk is morally superior to pasteurized milk. I don’t know anyone—or have seen a sliver of content—advancing the idea that Wonder bread is unholier, spiritually speaking, than homemade sourdough. I have never once thought: we gotta deploy Romans 14 to combat this heresy.

And yet these nonexistent examples are treated as the foundation of Gifford’s and Wilson’s critique of “crunchiness” in the church. When the supposed threat does not exist, the critique becomes unwarranted and unhelpful.

But even so, let’s again assume that Gifford’s examples are true—that some people actually wonder whether they need Christ’s intercession for choosing conventional carrots over organic ones.

Let’s grant the scenario: suppose this person—let’s call her Jessica—is one of Gifford’s own counseling clients. As she begins to unpack her moral anxieties, a wise counselor might ask:

“Jessica, what are you reading or watching that’s giving you the impression that scented laundry detergent is sinful?”

She might mention a few mom influencers or a doctor she follows on YouTube, expressing that she feels “mom guilt” and like she’s failing as a Christian.

The counselor nods. “And when they talk about microplastics entering the bloodstream… are they quoting Scripture, or just explaining how the body works?”

“Just explaining it,” Jessica admits.

“Right. So they’re not saying it’s sin?”

“No.”

“They’re not suggesting you need to repent for buying conventional carrots?”

“No…”

The counselor pauses.

“Jessica… did any of these people at any point claim to be your pastor?”

“…No.”

“Did they assign you a penance at the farmer’s market?”

“…No,” Jessica says with a cracking smile.

“Okay,” the counselor says. “Then I think we’ve found the problem.”

Jessica: “Hi, I’m the problem. It’s me.”

“That, you are.”

Jessica represents a contingent of people (oftentimes mothers) who interpret information—scientific findings, observable realities—as morally loaded guns. As though health scientists at Stanford spend their mornings plotting how to unsettle suburban Christian moms with their research papers on microplastics.

If you feel that your mind or spirit cannot handle certain reports of reality—that you cannot take in information that may be, at times, concerning or even convicting—you have every right to step away from it. You don’t have to follow accounts that talk about healthy deodorant. You have agency. You can unfollow.

Better yet, you can remove yourself from the online discourse altogether. As a good health influencer might say: go outside and touch some grass.

But if you find yourself writing to a biblical counselor about it—on Instagram, no less—the issue may not be the information. Like Jessica, the problem may lie closer to home.

Gluttony: the bygone sin

In all his discussion of how Christians ought to think about health, Gifford neglects Scripture’s clear warnings against gluttony and laziness. Solomon is unambiguous: “the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty” (Proverbs 23:21), and “a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Proverbs 25:28). Paul likewise commands believers to “glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20).

I find myself going back and forth on where to place the blame for America’s food and obesity crisis—whether on systemic failures or on individual responsibility.

Most days, my heart breaks for Americans—often low-income families—who are given few real options and little informed understanding of how damaging much of our food supply can be. I have many friends who have been shaped by this system, and I feel for them deeply.

And yet, at times, I find myself wondering whether part of the issue may also involve something Scripture speaks to plainly, but the church rarely addresses: the sin of gluttony.

Perhaps this is a difficult topic because, statistically speaking, many Americans are overweight, and a significant portion are obese. It’s understandable that churches would want to tread carefully, not to offend or to “major on the minors.” I share that instinct. Sunday service should be about God’s holiness. I’m not advocating for the church to become a kind of hybrid between a recovery program and a fitness class.

But I do wonder if there is a faithful and compassionate way to speak about what Scripture actually says—about self-control, about discipline, about stewardship of the body. At the very least, it seems worth having thoughtful conversations about health as a matter of stewardship?

I don’t pretend to have a perfect answer for how churches should engage this issue. But I do believe that avoiding it altogether has contributed to a kind of ignorance around a discipline that is both spiritual and physical.

They don’t know what we’re dealing with

In both Wilson’s book and Gifford’s podcast, there are clear indications that they lack a serious understanding of how health actually works. Wilson, for example, mocks those who avoid gluten, suggesting that unless someone has a “sincere” allergy—something like an immediate, severe reaction—they should simply eat what’s put in front of them.

But this reasoning reflects a shallow view of health. It assumes that only acute, dramatic reactions matter, while ignoring the far more common reality: the body is shaped by cumulative, everyday inputs.

Many people avoid certain foods not because of life-threatening allergies, but because of how those foods affect us 10 years down the road. What seems insignificant in a single meal, over time, meaningfully reshapes the body’s biochemistry to where disease proliferates.

The chronic diseases that now dominate American life do not arise from “sincere” allergies. They develop slowly—over years and decades—fueled by repeated bad habits and seemingly “insincere” allergies or sensitives.

For Wilson, who emphasizes long-term, generational thinking, this issue should be especially significant. It is difficult to build a lasting Christendom if we are a people increasingly weakened by insulin resistance.

Gifford cites the FDA and expert consensus. Need I say more?

Their ignorance of modern health and disease hinders their ability to consider this issue with both biblical wisdom and modern context. Which makes their confidence in addressing it all the more puzzling, and frankly, irritating.

“We’re all gonna die anyway”

Many Christians poke fun at health-conscious brothers and sisters, saying things like, “We’re all going to die anyway,” or “Our days are numbered.”

Of course, both statements are true. Our bodies will eventually fail, and God knows the number of our days. But that reality shouldn’t discourage us from pursuing wisdom and living healthfully.

If anything, it should motivate us. Because my days are numbered, I want to steward them well. To live with energy and strength.

Yes, to enjoy life and the people I love, but more importantly, to have greater capacity to serve others and faithfully carry out the work God has given me.

(I also recognize that God often uses suffering and illness for our sanctification and for the advancement of the Gospel. That is not what I’m addressing here. I’m talking to the 25-year-old guys who habitually eat fast food and drink energy drinks.)

I believe in God’s sovereignty. And I also believe that we are given real responsibility in how we live day to day.

After all, if the apostles had adopted a fatalistic mindset—“we’re all going to die anyway”—their mission would have been truncated. Instead, they endured, acted, and pressed forward with purpose. Even Jesus, at times, withdrew from danger until the appointed hour had come—showing us that personal action operates within God’s sovereign plan.

Trust in God’s authority has never been an excuse for passivity—and certainly not laziness. It has always been a call to faithful stewardship.