Good morning everyone. A lot to cover today.
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!
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.
Thank you for addressing this early screening push! I believe that’s why they are mandating the newborn heal prick testing from birth as well. Your genetic testing becomes your identity, for lifelong treatment. Would love more moms to know that they can opt out of it!