The last few weeks have been busy, as I’ve been helping get some of my favorite communists elected to office.

We’ve got some massive hits today. We’re talking: Calley Means’ explosive interview with Joe Rogan, Susie Wiles’ exit from the White House, and what Stephen Miller’s arrival could mean for MAHA. Plus, energy drink cardiac arrests, Abbie’s reporting on the $60 loaf of sourdough, a $120 Thanksgiving pie, a mysterious illness-inducing half-marathon, vitamin K shots for newborns, California’s war on creatine, genetically modified mosquitoes, dengue strikes Tampa, Novak Djokovic’s luxury wellness hotel, and the great McRib controversy. And we have a new health test for ROB readers created by Anson.

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I heard there was an opening for an ambassadorship in Greece. I humbly submit Running On Butter to represent U.S. interests in that beautiful land because (1) I watched The Odyssey this summer and (2) I love Kalamata olives.

Something for U.S. officials to consider, though: I can’t promise any less corruption than my predecessor. Like, what am I to do when rich people invite me aboard their private jets for a ski trip to Gstaad? Be rude and decline? Running On Butter is many things, but impolite is not one of them. You call it corruption; I call it genteel diplomacy.

In today’s letter, we’re discussing: Calley Mean’s departure from the White House, blueberries for the blues, a World Series’ pitcher’s aggressive nap schedule, Seattle’s burger-fueled marathon and grocery theft problem, cafés that require a fellowship to afford, a butter competition with bad judgment, and why King Corn still rules. Plus: infertility, a cute podcast host, and an invitation to share your own butter-worthy dispatch.

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Alexandra and I spent the weekend with some of our best nontoxic friends: Allison and Will Evans, founders of Branch Basics; Taylor and Ryan Dukes, founders of SAVA Nutrition; and Amy and Nick Migdalia, who played in the NFL for 10 years (Nick, not Amy. Though Amy is wicked smart and has the loudest laugh I’ve ever heard.)

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An indelible childhood memory I have is the smell of wild-caught salmon smoking on a cedar plank at my grandparents’ marina on Hood Canal. My grandpa would spend weeks yachting to Alaska, navigating through the San Juan Islands alongside the orcas, before returning with a plethora of sockeye salmon to feed his plethora of grandchildren.

I grew up loving the buttery, flaky taste of salmon. But when I began to run on butter, I grew uneasy about eating too much seafood as I learned how the Industrial Revolution had polluted our oceans, causing mercury levels in marine environments to rise as much as threefold. Heavy metals are no joke because the body doesn’t really shed them. They just accumulate. And heavy metal toxicity is biologically burdensome. Life-draining.

Then there’s the whole micro- and nanoplastics situation, with hundreds of trillions of plastic particles now floating around our oceans, many of which end up in our seafood.

It’s all rather sad. The way we have failed to properly steward the oceans. I’m all for capitalism and industry and everything, but the lack of regulation has compromised aquatic life, which, in turn, threatens our health.

One thing I did not forecast for my life was becoming passionate about the health of our oceans. Yet here I am, out on these mean streets with my bullhorn, being a voice for the orcas. #SaveTheWhales.

It is upsetting that we’ve compromised one of the most nutrient-dense classes of food in the name of modernity. So for a good while there, I ate fish sparingly. Cooking salmon for its taste, but thinking: This is a plate of microplastics.

That’s until I discovered Seatopia—a seafood company that works with aquaculture farms around the world to curate some of the best, cleanest seafood on the market.

I first heard about Seatopia at Ama, the healthiest and probably only microplastic-free restaurant in America. Seeing that Ama used Seatopia, I knew it had to be legit.

So I went on a deep dive into the company. They work with aquaculture farms that raise fish regeneratively, stewarding the environments in which they’re raised for optimal health for both the fish and the ecosystem. It’s regenerative farming taken to the sea.

Until last year, I thought wild-caught was always better. But I was wrong in some regards. I will never eat conventionally farm-raised fish. The New York Times actually just ran a great piece about how gnarly conventional fish farming is. It’s akin to cattle raised in tiny feedlots or chickens that never see the light of day before they’re butchered.

But when fish farming—a practice that’s been around for thousands of years—is done well, farm-raised fish can actually be healthier than their wild-caught counterparts.

Take, for example, the salmon raised by Bakkafrost, Seatopia’s salmon supplier, in the waters surrounding the Faroe Islands:

Seafood is objectively one of the healthiest foods we can eat, which is why I was so depressed about having to limit my consumption before Seatopia entered my life. The omega-3s. The vitamin D and B12. The selenium. Seatopia’s fish are loaded with these nutrients (they detail the lab-tested nutrient profiles on their website).

As Dr. Axe told us last week, salmon, in particular, offers remarkable benefits:

“The omega-3s EPA and DHA, which become part of your cell membranes and help your cells communicate. They also contain astaxanthin which protects your cells from oxidative stress. They’re also the raw material your body uses to make compounds that actively resolve inflammation instead of just quieting it. Aim for two servings this week.”

Alexandra and I have been heeding Dr. Axe’s advice, cooking salmon twice a week. We’re also excited to cook up Seatopia’s branzino and try the salmon roe we have in our fridge—another food loaded with nutrients.

Seatopia works much like any other online meat company, delivering frozen seafood directly to your doorstep. And good news for you, my dear reader: Running On Butter is now officially a partner with Seatopia, meaning that if you use code “BUTTER” at checkout, you’ll get $20 off your order.

I recommend starting with some salmon fillets. You can use Alexandra’s recipe below, which I know my grandpa Leon would have loved.

Important announcement: I’ve created a ROB playlist. After my wedding playlist hit the streets, the people demanded more, praising my musical distinction. At first, I told Alexandra I didn’t want to share any more playlists because I liked the concept of gatekeeping my superior taste. It was for me and a select group of aficionados alone. Running On Snobbery, if you will.

But then I realized it was selfish to withhold this gift—which sometimes feels like a burden, you know?—from those of you who still listen to the same seven songs from junior year of high school.

I have many friends who fall into this camp. I am speaking to you.

If you still think Maroon 5 circa 2013 is acceptable, you’re part of the problem. If you think “Dude Perfect Radio” is fine, you’re the target audience. If you find yourself turning on Rachel Platten’s Fight Song for a dose of inspiration, you, my friend, are in dire need of this playlist.

This playlist is the current soundtrack Alexandra and I have on for evenings cooking dinner and drives through the desert.

Critical note: This playlist does not include my favorite genres—classical, Celtic, and also jazz standards. I don’t think those styles lend themselves particularly well to a playlist. Instead, this collection leans heavily into indie pop and folk.

And a fair warning: this is very much cool music. It’s not the Von Trapps, nor is it the Gettys. This is just good, cool music.

If it’s not your taste, drop a recommendation. I will listen—and judge.

For those interested in exploring my core musical tastes, I recommend starting with these three albums, one from each genre. Consider them the three strands of my musical DNA.

• Hilary Hahn Plays Bach

• Chet Baker Sings

• Whorls

If you’re wondering why the butter guy is telling you to listen to music, it’s because we hold a firm belief here at ROB that music plays a central role in living an abundant, healthy life.

God did not create Spotify so you could drive to work, cook dinner, write a blog post, or fall in love in silence.

In today’s letter, we’re talking about a new turmeric cancer-fighting study, America’s rise in Olympic weightlifting, a remarkable MLB underdog story, Crumbl’s cookie crumble, why seven days of strength training can change your fat cells, declining enthusiasm for IVF, and Blue Bottle Coffee’s return to real milk. Plus, AI is coming for mathematicians, Running On Salmon, and the Chicago Marathon could be one for the record books.

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Today we’ve got a terrific interview with Dr. Josh Axe.

Dr. Axe not only has the name of a superhero, but he’s also something of a Superman in the holistic health world. He’s been doing the Lord’s work for years, and the world has benefited greatly from his wisdom.

He, along with Dr. Will Cole, just released Heal Your Cells. I read it on my honeymoon, and as someone who reads a lot of health books, I can confidently say this one is exceptional.

The book is scientifically thorough, historically rich, and, perhaps most importantly, incredibly hopeful and accessible.

It’s a great resource for doctors, stay-at-home MAHA moms, the health-curious who haven’t been feeling quite right, or even your libbed-out Aunt Karen who just got her 27th Covid booster.

1. When you became so sick you were bedridden for months, was there any embarrassment or shame in that? [Editor’s note: Dr. Axe developed a life-threatening spinal infection following stem cell treatment. He shares the full story in his book.]

Absolutely, there was. When your name is on a health website that millions of people read, there’s a quiet pressure to always be the guy who has it figured out. Then I’m lying in bed for months, barely able to stand up straight, and the questions start: What did I miss? What will people think? I’ve helped other people heal but can I actually heal from this?

I am incredibly grateful to God that I was able to heal 100%. As you know if you’ve read the book, I didn’t walk on my own for 10 months, then a couple more months on a walker due to a spinal infection that had begun destroying my disc, L4 and L5 vertebrae and an abcess growing by my spinal cord. A big part of my healing was daily prayer and a highly anti-inflammatory diet consisting mostly of salmon, berries, pomegranate, bone broth, and steamed vegetables. I got a hyperbaric chamber several days a week and also utilized peptides and stem cells for healing. I’m happy to say I’m now playing pickleball, snow, skiing, and able to run around and be very active with my kids.

That season became one of the greatest gifts of my life. It humbled me. It made me a better doctor, because I learned what it feels like to be the patient who feels like they have a mountain in front of them and doesn’t have answers. And it pushed me deeper into my faith. Second Corinthians 12:9 became real to me: God’s power is made perfect in weakness. I didn’t need to be the picture of health. I needed to be honest, rest, and let the body God designed do what it was built to do, which is repair. That’s really where Heal Your Cells was born.

2. Yet again, one thing that struck me in the book is just how intricate the human body is. Help me connect the dots: How do seemingly simple lifestyle choices—what we eat, how we sleep, how we move—compound over time to change what’s happening at the intricate cellular level?

Your body is made of roughly 30+ trillion cells, and every one of them is constantly listening. What you eat, how you sleep, how you move and what you think are all signals. Your cells respond by turning genes on or off, making more or fewer mitochondria, calming or fanning inflammation, and deciding whether to clean house or let damage pile up.

In the book we lay out nine hallmarks of aging, things like mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, inflammaging, impaired autophagy and cellular senescence. None of those happen overnight. They’re dominoes. A night of poor sleep raises cortisol. Higher cortisol pushes up blood sugar. Repeated blood sugar spikes increase oxidative stress. Oxidative stress damages mitochondria. Struggling mitochondria make less energy and more inflammation. One domino doesn’t feel like much. Ten years of dominoes feels like disease.

The good news is that it works the same way in reverse. Get morning sunlight, eat a colorful meal, go for a walk after dinner, pray instead of scroll, and you’re sending repair signals. Your cells are always renewing. You’re literally rebuilding yourself every day, so you get to decide what you’re building with.

3. You’ve remained remarkably steady in a health world full of ever-changing fads. How have you avoided getting swept up in every new health trend?

I run everything through two filters: ancient wisdom and modern science. If something has been used for thousands of years in traditional medicine and modern research is now confirming why it works, it is always encouraging. If it’s brand new, has one study behind it and someone’s selling it hard, I wait.

Also, I’ve learned to think in principles. Because I understand the way something works and the way the human body works, I can often see their good marketing and unreal promises.

I also look at whether it works with the way God designed the body or tries to override it. The things that last, like whole foods, herbs, sleep, sunlight, movement, fasting, community and faith, support the body’s own repair systems. Fads usually promise a shortcut around those foundations. There isn’t one.

That doesn’t mean I’m against new things. Some of the most exciting work today is in regenerative medicine and cellular health. But a new tool should sit on top of the foundations, never replace them.

One example might be around red light therapy. I know that the sun gives off of red light, which can be healing to our bodies. What we’ve done with red light therapy as we have been able to harness a few of the types of light that come from the sun and it benefits us because most of us do not spend enough time outdoors and get enough sunlight. The same is true for a lot of our modern day bio hacking and functional medicine therapies.

4. We often think of healthy eating as bland chicken breast and broccoli. But in your book, you paint a much more exciting picture of food and the incredible variety of compounds God created. Could the very things that make food delicious—its flavor, color, spice, and aroma—also be clues to its nutritional value?

Yes, and I love that you picked up on it. The color in a blueberry, the bitterness in dandelion greens, the bite of ginger, the aroma of rosemary are all compounds plants made to protect themselves. Anthocyanins, carotenoids, polyphenols, glucosinolates, gingerols, terpenes. When we eat them, many of them act as gentle stressors that tell our cells to switch on their own antioxidant and repair defenses.

Traditional Chinese Medicine has taught this for centuries through the five flavors: sweet, sour, bitter, pungent and salty, each supporting different organ systems. Modern science is catching up. Research on the gut microbiome has found that people who eat a wider variety of plants each week tend to have a more diverse microbiome, which is linked to better health.

So yes, bland chicken and broccoli isn’t the goal. Add herbs, spices, bitter greens, deep-colored fruits. If your plate looks like a rainbow and smells amazing, you’re probably eating closer to how God intended.

5. Give us three foods we should eat this week, and tell us why.

Wild-caught salmon. It’s rich in the omega-3s EPA and DHA, which become part of your cell membranes and help your cells communicate. They also contain astaxanthin which protects your cells from oxidative stress. They’re also the raw material your body uses to make compounds that actively resolve inflammation instead of just quieting it. Aim for two servings this week.

Pomegranates. Pomegranates are loaded with ellagitannins, which certain gut bacteria convert into a compound called urolithin A. Urolithin A has been shown to support mitophagy, the process where your cells clear out worn-out mitochondria so new, healthy ones can take their place. It’s a perfect example of food, microbiome and mitochondria working together. Eat the seeds on a salad or by the handful.

High-polyphenol extra virgin olive oil. Not all olive oil is created equal. The high-polyphenol varieties (the ones with a peppery bite in the back of your throat) contain compounds like oleocanthal and hydroxytyrosol that fight oxidative stress, support healthy blood vessels and help switch on autophagy, your cells’ cleanup crew. A tablespoon or two a day, drizzled over vegetables or salads, is a great start.

[Editor’s note: I kid you not—Alexandra and I have been eating so much salmon, olive oil, and yes, even pomegranates lately. Her favorite is fresh-pressed pomegranate juice, which we’ve been making with the hand-cranked juicer CrossFit Kevin got us. We’ve also been adding the seeds to our yogurt and homemade guacamole. I high-key felt so legit when I read this answer from Dr. Axe. “Wow,” I thought. “We’re like A+ students down here in Scottsdale.”]

6. What do you say to the 25-year-old who drinks Diet Coke, eats Chick-fil-A regularly, but works out, stays thin, and feels great? Why should they care about their health now when their body seems to be handling everything just fine?

I’d say: feeling fine and being healthy aren’t the same thing. Most chronic disease is silent for years. Insulin resistance, arterial plaque and gut damage build quietly long before they show up as a diagnosis. Thin on the outside doesn’t always mean healthy on the inside.

Think of it like compound interest. At 22, small choices feel like they don’t matter because you can’t see the balance yet. But your cells are keeping the books. Daily artificial sweeteners have been shown to alter the gut microbiome. Energy drinks keep your stress hormones elevated and borrow energy from tomorrow. Fried foods cooked in industrial seed oils add oxidative stress. None of that sends you to the hospital this year. It shapes what 40 and 50 feel like.

The flip side is that your 20s are your greatest opportunity. You have more cellular resilience right now than you ever will again. Protect it. You don’t have to be perfect. Swap the daily Diet Coke for sparkling water with lime or an organic green tea with honey, or even something using a more natural sweetener like stevia that tastes more similar to your favorite beverage. At Chick-fil-A, go grilled over fried. Get to bed earlier a few nights a week. Small habits started at 22 are what create a 60-year-old who still has energy to play with their grandkids.

7. What is your favorite food, and why is it butter?

Ha! I have to be honest with you: I don’t actually eat butter very often, because I don’t tolerate dairy all that well. But I love the taste of butter.

For a lot of people, especially with quality grass-fed butter, it can be an incredible healing food. It provides butyrate, which fuels the cells lining your colon, along with fat-soluble vitamins like A and K2. For people with heart challenges, though, I’d keep butter in low to moderate amounts and lean on high-polyphenol extra virgin olive oil as their main fat. It’s simply a better fit for their cardiovascular system.

So butter gets a spot at my table. Just not the head of the table.

Thank you, Dr. Axe, for your contribution to Running On Butter. I’m still trying to reconcile your half-in, half-out stance on butter. I can’t decide whether that makes you an ROB legend for challenging our infallible orthodoxy or a treasonous insubordinate.

I kid, of course. Dr. Axe, you’re a legend. So grateful for your creative and intellectual output.

NOW, ALL YOU LOYAL, NON-INSUBORDINATES, GO BUY THE BOOK AND DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

It’s one of those weeks where I’m just so grateful to have a family who not only loves me, but also challenges me. Not directly, per se. But sort of passively.

You see, it’s cross country season back up in Washington. Everyone in my family is running races right now, including my 4-year-old nephew, who just ran his first XC race.

My 14-year-old twin nephews are absolutely cooking it this season. I got a text from a friend who said my high school distance records are now under threat because of them.

Which, if they break them, I’ll be happy. No, really. They deserve it. They’ve worked hard.

BUT…back in my day, the conditions were much harder. We were basically running on a mud track, and my shoes were, if memory serves me correctly, Converse. High-tops. These days, they’re running with freaking carbon-fiber soles. They’re putting springs in the shoes now. Like, okay, I guess anyone can be a 4:21 miler now.

But anyway, I’ll celebrate with them if they hit that milestone, giving a jaw-clenched smile, thinking: This cannot be happening.

My siblings are also turning up the mileage. My sister-in-law Kennedy and mom of four ran the Portland Half Marathon last weekend. My sister Annie has also been cranking out some impressive 5K times. My brother Tucker, The Fluoride Czar, is training for a marathon. My brother Deter The Cop is pretty much always running, chasing down felons and such. And my brother Rudy is running from his past, trying to find meaning in this world beyond his former life as a Burgervilleholic. ROB stands with you, Rudy. Stay strong.

Me?

I can’t just sit here idly, watching my siblings get super fast and letting them beat me on our family runs. So I’ve been racking up the miles the last few weeks, putting the running in ROB, and doing the work to preserve my he’s-probably-the-fastest-brother reputation*.

In today’s letter: Your gut bacteria might be aging your brain, True Food Kitchen goes bankrupt, vaccine-loving Dr. Mike could be the next Bachelor, I’m under consideration for the Supreme Court, MAHA has a $99 million problem, protein salad dressing nobody asked for, grass-fed Argentinian steak, the strange mystery of anesthesia, and why you desperately need a hobby.

*not all brothers accept this fact

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But first, Running On Butter has an important announcement to make: we’ve hit 10,000 subscribers.

All I can say is (1) thank you, and (2) thank you to the DOJ and FTC for allowing the corporate-brand merger of Culture Apothecary x Running On Butter to go through.

The merger/marriage has been great for ROB. I’m not entirely sure what Culture Apothecary has gained from the acquisition, other than my two grandmas, but, as already discussed in these pages, they’ve both recently passed away.

Hoping I don’t get an email from Culture Apothecary’s lawyers with the subject line: Revisiting The Terms of the Deal.

“There’s a fight for MAHA’s soul.”

That was the takeaway that one ROBer texted me after she attended this week’s MAHA Summit in DC. Some of the regulars were there, like the MAHA patriarch Bobby Kennedy. But many of its founding fathers and mothers were replaced with AI companies like Anthropic and corporate giants like Walmart and Hims and Hers.

ROB is not against corporate money. Like, if a venture capital firm came to me and asked, “Would you want our investment to spread your butter propaganda?” I would cash that check.

But I also know that when outside money slips into a movement, the mission can become convoluted—or splintered. So if the VC firm were to tell me to keep writing about butter, but also to advance something that I believe devalues or dilutes my message, I would shred that check.

This is my hesitation with the corporations buying their way into the health zeitgeist. (The brands reportedly paid $300,000 for speaking time at the summit.)

Defenders of the corporations entering (buying) their way into the conversation claim that that legitimizes MAHA and makes us less podunk. If Walmart and Anthropic want in, they say, this will make us look more authoritative.

I have two objections to this reasoning:

MAHA is effective and appealing to people who have otherwise not cared about health because it is radical. The whole “eat your veggies and whole grains” and “it’s all about balance” messaging over the last six decades has done precisely nothing to reverse course in this metabolic disease epidemic. Now, we have Paul Saladino and RFK Jr. doing raw milk shooters in the White House, which has a shock value that leads to real consideration, then habit changes, and then, before you know it, that infamous steak and sauerkraut diet is reversing type 2 diabetes.

People can call us kooks and quacks, but it’s really the only health movement that’s moved the needle.

My second objection is that: corporations are dispassionate about our health. They care, simply, about how much money they make. Which, by the way, is their prerogative! I’m not mad about companies wanting to make money.

But allowing these companies to purchase access into the dialogue—and policy—will inevitably alter the meat of the MAHA message. This summit proved it already has.

The most recurring topic this week was disease prevention, which is ostensibly very MAHA-coded. But there are two different definitions of prevention in the medical and health communities. Mainstream “prevention” strategies against disease are: earlier screening and more data.

Doctors at Yale, for example, who are on the “cutting edge” of colorectal cancer research and treatment, have this number one advice: get screening earlier, with little mentioned about what causes it in the first place.

Whereas the MAHA definition of prevention has historically been: how do we thwart the manifestation of disease?

I cannot overemphasize how essential this line of thinking is to the movement. The root cause philosophy is the heartbeat of good health and medicine. The “oh, let’s just wait around and find out earlier” is unintelligence coupled with the opportunity to create and sell products, as numerous tech and pharmaceutical companies have already been doing.

That’s why it’s frustrating to see GRAIL—a cancer screening company—on stage at the MAHA Summit rather than, say, a smart doctor and patient who’ve worked together well to combat or prevent cancer altogether. Talk to a woman with the BRCA1 breast cancer mutation, and ask her all the ways she’s living that will mute the expression of that gene.

Highlighting early detection also undercuts the entire self-empowering message of MAHA that says: hey, your genetics are not your health destiny. You can take agency over your health, starting today. You don’t even need the healthcare industrial complex to reclaim your health.

But the early detection approach is constructed on the fearful (and false) notion that you could just be living a regular life, then all of a sudden, BOOM, CANCER. STAGE 4. GET INTO TREATMENT STARTING YESTERDAY. It says: you need the healthcare industrial complex to stay healthy.

My hope for MAHA as a political movement is waning. Its defenders will say, “It’s a lot easier to throw stones than it is to build something.” I get that. But isn’t what we’re building—and who we’re letting build it—sort of important?

• Phoebe Bridgers, the indie artist whose target audience is SSRI users, is banning phones from her tour, saying she wants her fans to appreciate the moment. What is the point of going to a cool concert if you can’t post you’re at the cool concert? Same with vacations and restaurants and reading the Bible. Like, did you do your morning devotions right if you didn’t post it?

• The EPA allowed Bayer, the German chemical giant to pick the regulations for its own pesticide. Some analogies I can think of for comparison include a taxpayer deciding how much he owes in taxes (fifty bucks seems fair, right?), a criminal picking how long he will serve in prison, or Lance Armstrong administrating his own drug testing. Shoutout to my wife who’s been beating the EPA corruption drum for months on end.

• The NCAA really doesn’t like its athletes getting paid, so they petitioned the senate to “save college sports” and put a cap on how much college athletes can earn. The senate passed it 77-22. I appreciate Joe Nocera’s take:

  “Nobody put a gun to Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork’s head and forced him to pay his star wide receiver $5 million. Nobody forced Northwestern University to raise $875 million to build its new football stadium. And certainly, nobody forced LSU’s president Wade Rousse to give the university’s new football coach, Lane Kiffin, a seven-year, $91 million contract and pay the coach it fired, Brian Kelly, a $54 million buyout—even as Rousse was complaining that “we’ve got to stop the bleeding.”

  The days of college sports being for the love of the sport ended decades ago, and athletes have been pawns for too long. ROB supports college athletes getting paid. Students receive grants to study and research Shakespeare, which generates zero dollars for a school. Why shouldn’t athletes, who help pay the school’s bills, also get a cut of the revenue they generate?

• Recipe developers on Substack are accusing the NYT and Bon Appétit of recipe plagiarism. I know what you’re thinking: aren’t all chocolate chip cookie recipes, like, the exact same, and don’t they all plagiarize from each other? But these examples here look pretty damning for the NYT. Justice for independent recipe developers!

• Most people don’t think college is important:

• I wonder why?

ROB supports a professor who grades off good vibes and passion rather than actual skill.

Derek Thompson wrote a great (kinda sad) piece about the decline of the dinner party. American dinner parties are down 74%. I can gladly say that my wife and I are not part of this statistic. We’re having friends over tonight. I’m making pasta, and we’re playing pickleball. Alexandra will be there in her “super cute outfit” swinging with good vibes and passion rather than actual skill.

I knew based on many years of investigating the pharmaceutical industry that this assertion was a stretch. There’s simply scant chance that the green juicing and creatine economy are making Pfizer look like a mom and pop shop.

But I wondered where this commenter got that stat. Four times seemed specific. I found the report the commenter was referencing, and at face value, the United States “wellness industry” is valued at over $2 trillion, indeed approximately 4x higher than the current valuation of the $600 billion pharmaceutical industry.

But when I dug into the report, I discovered that the the “wellness industry” includes “traditional and complementary medicine,” “wellness real estate,” vaccines, spas, personal care and beauty products, wellness tourism, “public health,” “mental wellness,” “healthy eating,” and many other categories, all of which go undefined or are broadly defined.

So basically, in this context, “wellness” is essentially everything in the American GDP other than the defense industry.

But what if we used a better honed definition? And what about the heart of accusation itself? Is my wife simply selling wellness products to people fleeing Big Pharma, promising them a better life in Big Wellness? And is it all a grift?

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I am in Orange County for the weekend for a CrossFit competition in Huntington Beach. Yesterday, I went to Eller, a sick bakery in Costa Mesa.

I got to connect with the two owners, Ken and Thomas. Ken owns a coffee shop in Newport and oversees the coffee roastery. He’s from Portland, Oregon, and I felt the PNW brotherhood. Thomas is the head chef and is from Austria. He was slightly annoyed by my enthusiasm for what they were doing, which was honestly very European and cool of him.

They opened three years ago, and they’ve been cranking out croissants and sourdough from their stone mill ever since. They source their grains from farms across the West Coast, primarily in Washington’s Skagit Valley.

I got there in the afternoon, so most of their inventory was already sold out, but I was able to snag a ham and cheese croissant, and it was fantastic. The layers were eternal, and the sharp cheddar complemented the nuttiness of the fresh-milled flour pastry.

I also got their market salad, which was okay. I liked the poppy seed dressing, but there was too much cheese (saying this as someone who loves cheese), and the peaches were immature. (Video evidence below.) Serving unripened peaches is a Running On Butter criminal offense. And what’s a bummer is that the salad had perfectly ripened plums. They did not need to add the stone hard peaches. Unforced error.

The iced espresso was a medium-light moment and was so enjoyable that I ordered a second.

I got two plain croissants and their last sourdough chocolate chip cookie to go—carbs that are really coming in clutch for this weekend’s fitness. (4K beach run tonight!)

I asked owner Ken how business was going, and he said that running a business in SoCal sucks. The taxes, the rent, the minimum wage.

Nevertheless, they persist. They’re looking to add on to their building, and are going to start selling their flour in addition to the coffee they roast.

I lowkey pleaded with him to open a bakery in the more business-friendly Arizona, and he said he might be up for it. Between Gavin Newsom pushing them out and ROB readers inviting them in, Scottsdale could be the place for Eller Bakery.

Overall rating of Eller Bakery: 9/10. Drop the unripe peaches for a perfect score.

Also, a very sweet mom named Hailey came up to tell me how much she appreciated my wife, which was cool but caught me off guard. A week ago, I was known by, like, the 14 people who read Running On Butter. That number recently dropped to 12, as both of my grandmothers passed away.

This week, I touch down in LA and I’m basically being swarmed by fans. At what point do I hire a publicist, and at what point do they start calling the paparazzi?

• A new study following over 2,000 children aged 10–17 taking GLP-1 drugs found high rates of nutritional deficiencies, particularly in vitamin D, iron, and calcium. Gosh. This makes me so sad. These poor kids and their families are victims. First, of Big Food, which knows exactly what it’s doing when it makes dopamine-roller-coaster products targeted at families. Now, of Big Pharma, which is profiting billions from the truly diabolical idea that a child needs a drug to lose weight. And now the drug is depleting bodies that are already struggling of key nutrients essential for development. The American Academy of Pediatrics, an institution whose guidelines are followed closely by pediatricians across the nation, recommends GLP-1s for obese children as young as twelve. An analysis estimates that GLP‑1 drug developers paid the AAP $1.9 million to $2.6 million in corporate sponsorships between 2012 and 2024. While I certainly think industry is influencing these guidelines, I mainly believe the doctors making them are dim-bulb MDs whose methodology is: health problem = medication. They think that way because med school taught them to. Industry doesn’t even have to bribe these people as much nowadays. They’re pretty much programmed to reach for the newest meds without asking many questions. We lack smart physicians who are bright enough to discern that the effects of a childhood diet of corn syrup infant formula and Fruity Pebbles can be reversed without a drug.

• REM sleep helps protect against a multitude of diseases, according to a new study examining 90,000 individuals. Conversely, getting less than five hours of sleep was associated with a 17% increase in disease occurrence. It cannot be said enough: there is no medicine like sleep. This is when the body restores itself and builds resilience to chronic and infectious diseases alike. I know it’s hard sometimes, depending on the season of life. But I also know that many of us are blue-screen scrollers before bedtime. This disrupt our natural circadian rhythm and robs us of precious medicine (unconsciousness!). I am not perfect in this area and need to do a better job of tech hygiene—putting away my devices when I should be winding down.

• LA is doing electric-bike buybacks, paying residents $1,000 to give up their e-bikes, which have risen in popularity by over 1,000% since 2020. A plethora of serious accidents have been reported as 12-year-olds whip around SoCal beach towns on what are technically motorcycles. I, for one, am all about these buybacks. I despise e-bikers who take up running lanes! I have almost been hit many times on runs in Scottsdale and even went full-on Karen and complained to a city manager about it. They should be outlawed on pedestrian pathways. People need to, like, use their own legs to pedal. ROB stands firmly against e-bikes.

• Sea bass and bok choy were served at the state dinner with President Xi of China, which had a “subtle Chinese influence.” Alexandra discovered she loves bok choy this spring and requests it at least once a week. I stir-fry it with coconut aminos, fresh ginger, coconut sugar, red pepper paste, and a dash of sesame oil.

• Starbucks is closing 250 stores. Is it just me, or have we as a nation moved beyond PSL season? I don’t see the hype around it anymore. Are people still drinking pumpkin spice lattes? ROB ships a pumpkin spice flavor but rebukes Starbucks’ take on it. It’s got an ungodly amount of sugar and uses fake flavoring agents. Instead, make your own with real pumpkin and spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger, which are so good for your cells.

• After an investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Sprouts agreed to stop spraying ProduceMaxx on all of its produce nationwide. It also agreed to stop using any synthetic antimicrobial pesticide on organic produce. Did not know that stuff was on our bok choy.

• I am my wife’s #1 fan and implore you all to watch her hilariously entertaining new podcast episode this weekend:

It’s a tough week here at Running On Butter, as we were one of the publications blocked from the White House press room.

While I wish I could say this is disappointing—perhaps even maddening (THE PRESS! WE NEED THE PRESS TO DO ITS JOB!)—I’m not upset whatsoever. I’m a partisan hack, and I’ve accepted it.

Today’s letter includes: ROB’s fall recommendations, fraternity wellness parties, the government finally taking another look at glyphosate, a socialism conference on the fascism of fitness, the decline of facial filler, buying a cow with your friends, and the job opportunity that may finally force Alexandra and me to move to London: butter sommelier.

• Fraternities are having wellness parties instead of ragers. From a great NYT piece: “On a recent Saturday at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Olivia Suskowicz, a sophomore, got ready for a party. She picked an outfit, grabbed her sorority sister and headed out the door to join hundreds of other college students at a fraternity house where a D.J. was already spinning tunes. The workout was set to begin at noon.” ROB wishes Olivia the best, and hopes she finds herself a nice Chad at one of these wellness parties.

• The EPA and HHS are reviewing glyphosate safety. Good, I guess, but it sort of feels like something we should’ve done before spraying hundreds of millions of pounds of it on our food for the last 30 years??

• A new study out of France found eight common food preservatives often used in processed foods are linked to blood pressure abnormalities and heart disease. Preservatives like potassium sorbate are put in everything from salad dressings to processed meats to jams and jellies, and are known to cause oxidative stress. Takeaway? Get back in the kitchen and make your own delicious, preservative-free foods.

• ButcherBox launched a Cow Share program connecting consumers directly with ranchers, so you can split a cow with another family—or order the whole cow, as my family did growing up.

• The Pentagon wants only the fittest troops to attend Pete Hegseth’s upcoming “State of the Force” speech. Service members must meet waist-to-height standards and have “impeccable” grooming. The same requirements Alexandra and I had for our wedding guests.

• A socialism conference hosted a breakout about how health = fascism. “As governments retreat from care, and health increasingly becomes a signifier of discipline—rather than provision—fitness, disability, fatness, illness, Blackness, impairment, and bodily capacity are mobilized into measures of moral worth and political belonging.” It was a privilege leading this breakout session, and I thought we had a really productive conversation!

• Just Ingredients, the growing protein and supplement company, added six more NFL players to their roster. But friend of Running On Butter, SAVA Nutrition, locked down Brock Purdy, the coolest NFL player.

• Filler sales are down nationwide, though I don’t think Scottsdale has received the memo yet.

• Last week Alexandra and I went to the Heritage Foundation’s Restoring Men’s and Women’s Health Summit and had the great opportunity of connecting with , who might be one of the sharpest thinkers we’ve got at the moment. She’s at the forefront of making the case that IVF is not only morally dubious, but bypasses the underlying causes of infertility rather than actually helping couples restore their reproductive health and fertility. She’s so much of a threat to Big Fertility that I feel like I’m seeing a new profile written about her every day. They’re scared. Rightfully so. If you aren’t reading Emma’s work, you’re behind the game.

• There’s a luxury members club in London looking for a butter sommelier. “A true butter sommelier must understand the nuances between different cream sources, the impact of seasonal variations on flavour profiles, and the optimal pairing of specific butters with particular dishes.” Ummm. Alexandra, we’re moving to the UK. It’s as if the good Lord Almighty stepped down from His throne to personally design this position for me. Alexandra, baby, please! I think you’ll like aspects of London. And I’m sure Meghan and Harry could use some friends, being that they just moved back too?

• I made a butternut squash soup with bone broth and powerful herbs and was reminded yet again just how much I love that flavor = nutrients.

And welcome new readers. I’m honored you’re here.

One of the many things my lovely new wife has informally introduced me to is a pop-culture podcast called The Toast. She calls herself a “Toaster.” She puts it on while she’s doing laundry or making dinner.

I have listened passively for approximately 17 minutes total, which I believe makes me qualified to say that the hosts—sisters Jackie and Claudia—seem to have hearts of gold.

Which is why I was so dismayed when Alexandra informed me that their latest

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I’m writing this from a private island in French Polynesia. The view is nearly perfect: turquoise water, white sand, palms swaying gently.

What pushes the scene into perfection is my smoke show wife lying in the sunshine, reading a John Grisham novel.

I’ve already read the book—The Pelican Brief—and what my wife doesn’t know is that, at this particular moment, she looks less like someone reading a John Grisham novel and more like the final scene of one: tan skin, tropical island, safely disappeared somewhere in the South Pacific after uncovering a vast government conspiracy.

[Running On Butter obtained EXCLUSIVE, never seen before images of the day.]

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Special letter today. We have a guest contributor.

His name is Anson Stoller (better known as Chicken Joe), and he serves as the official ROB ambassador to Orange County, California, where he proselytizes surfer groms and babes in all the ROB ways.

I was hanging with Anson last weekend when he showed me what I can only describe as a groundbreaking piece of independent research: an apple grading list ranking sixteen different varieties. And now, graciously, he has agreed to release his findings to the public.

Anson’s methodology:

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Glyphosate Queen Will Head the FDA

Heidi Overton will be the new commissioner of the FDA, much to my and Alexandra’s dismay.

Overton was the brains behind the executive order declaring glyphosate essential for national security. Overton is the antithesis of MAHA. She’s an institutionalist who has practiced conventional medicine and, in my view, lacks independent, critical thinking. During the Covid era, for example, she championed Operation Warp Speed and was very late to the game in advocating against school closures (March 2022).

What’s sad is that her predecessor, Marty Makary, was precisely the opposite: (1) he was a smart practitioner who acutely understood what we needed to do to get Americans healthy again; (2) he was level-headed during the Covid era; and (3) he was deeply principled—which ultimately got him fired, given his refusal to green-light fruit-flavored vapes.

Overton is the Glyphosate Queen with malleable principles, which, unfortunately, is exactly why she’ll head the FDA. She’ll do as Trump and foreign chemical companies request of her.

Cancer “Vaccine”

Ella Langley and Morgan Wallen just got dethroned for collab of the year, as Moderna and Merck teamed up to create a new cancer “vaccine” for melanoma. Love it when two greats get together to do their thing.

However, calling this a vaccine is a giant scientific leap. It’s not like it’s a shot that contains cancer antibodies so you’ll never develop melanoma. It’s an individualized therapy used in conjunction with another immunotherapy for patients who already have high-risk melanoma!

If this is a “vaccine,” then so, too, is my daily multivitamin.

What Moderna and Merck are doing here is excellent PR and savvy business. The companies haven’t even released the full, meaningful data yet—a detail Wall Street doesn’t seem to care about, as Moderna’s stock doubled the day of the announcement. They read “successful” and “cancer vaccine” and think 🤑.

This will generate billions in revenue. The individualized nature of the treatment means they’ll charge tens of thousands of dollars per patient, I bet.

ROB is not anti-cool scientific and medical advancements. But the cancer research and treatment development industry—despite hundreds of billions of dollars in investment—has yielded little meaningful progress. Cancer proliferates.

We don’t need to spend more money to “cure” it. “Cure” and “cancer” is another grossly misleading, oversimplified talking point that has been used to convince Americans that all we need is more money and resources for research and treatment.

I don’t think we will “cure” cancer. But we can prevent it.

If just 1% of what’s been poured into cancer research were allocated to cancer prevention campaigns—through the government, medical schools, pop culture, etc.—so that our country actually understood the role lifestyle can play in cancer risk, I believe we’d see a dramatic decline in diagnoses.

But there’s no money to be made in telling the masses that they have agency over their health by eating nutrient-dense foods, reducing their toxic loads, moving their bodies, living in real, authentic community, and, yes—eating butter.

• Meta will pay up to $18 billion over allegations it addicted kids to social media. Meta has reached a landmark settlement with nearly every U.S. state over allegations that Facebook and Instagram were intentionally designed to addict children and harm their mental health. Meta will pay up to $18 billion over the next decade and, more importantly, will be forced to change how kids use its platforms—including a two-hour daily limit and blocking access from midnight to 6 a.m. without parental consent.

• A new Gen Z insult is calling somebody “polyester,” meaning they’re fake and inauthentic. Running On Butter mogs. Moderna is polyester.

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating food companies caught up in the avocado oil sham for allegedly misleading consumers. This investigation comes after ROB reported on it. Is ROB the new NYT?

• Speaking of the NYT, they have a great report finding that roughly 1 in 4 NFL players could develop a brain disease associated with repeated head injuries.

• The FDA cleared a new pancreatic cancer drug therapy that nearly doubled median survival in a clinical trial, from 6.7 months with chemotherapy to 13.2 months.

• The founder of David Protein is launching a new candy company using the same gross, weird, proprietary EPG fat they use in their weird, gross protein bars.

• Jenny Simpson, an American distance-running great, won’t ever run again after suffering cardiac arrest two months ago at a track meet. I’ve watched Jenny race multiple times and have long been a fan. Few American distance runners have accomplished what she has. She’s a legend and obviously goes hard. But yeah, when we get a Code Blue on the track, I think it’s fair to maybe move into a coaching role?

• Big Food is alarmed by GLP-1s.

• There’s a marathon in France where you drink a ton of wine throughout the 26.2-mile race. Running On Butter Cabernet.

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.

Read more

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.