#370: Neal Barnard, MD: Why He's Is Suing The Federal Government Over the New Dietary Guidelines
Read about PCRM’s lawsuit HERE
Dr. Neal Barnard is back on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast — and this time, he and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine are taking the federal government to court.
At the center of the fight? The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Neal says the government tossed aside the work of a transparent scientific advisory committee and instead moved forward with recommendations shaped by a nine-member panel that operated largely out of public view — with members he says had significant ties to the livestock, dairy, and low-carb industries.
And that matters. A lot.
These guidelines don’t just sit on a government website collecting dust. They help shape nutrition policy and what gets served in schools, hospitals, correction institutions, military facilities, and other federal food programs.
Neal is especially fired up about the push for more protein, more animal foods, full-fat dairy, and even beef tallow. His point? Most Americans — including kids — are already getting plenty of protein, and piling on more animal protein can also mean piling on more saturated fat and cholesterol.
But here’s the key: PCRM isn’t asking a judge to decide what the perfect diet should be.
They’re asking whether the government followed the law.
Rip and Dr. Barnard dig into:
• Why PCRM says the new Dietary Guidelines were created through a flawed process
• The industry ties Neal says existed among members of the advisory panel
• Why this lawsuit is about transparency and process — not asking a judge to settle nutrition science
• Why school meals are one of Neal’s biggest concerns
• Whole milk, animal protein, saturated fat, and the comeback of beef tallow
• Why lumping all “processed foods” into one big bucket misses the mark
• PCRM’s history of challenging the government over dietary guidelines
• Why Neal believes this case is strong
• His surprising roots in the cattle industry
• Why compassion still sits at the heart of his work
• A major diabetes study PCRM is conducting with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota
• And a new breast cancer awareness campaign featuring Venus Williams and Dr. Kristi Funk
This is bigger than politics and bigger than one set of guidelines.
It’s about who gets to shape the food messages Americans hear, what ends up on millions of plates, and whether science, transparency, and public health are actually leading the way.
Episode Resources
Watch the Episode on You Tube: https://youtu.be/gI13Pr1Lh9c
Read more about the lawsuit: https://www.pcrm.org/news/news-releases/physicians-sue-government-withdraw-dietary-guidelines-americans
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Episode Transcript via AI Transcription Service
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and you're listening to the Plant Strong Podcast.
Today on the Plant Strong Podcast, we're jumping into a fight that is happening right now, and one that could affect what millions of Americans are served in schools, hospitals, military facilities, and federal nutrition programs. On August 18th of this year, 2026, Dr. Neal Barnard and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a lawsuit, against the federal government over the process behind the new dietary guidelines for Americans that came out in January of this year. In it, they say that the process behind the newest guidelines wasn't just scientifically questionable, they believe it violated federal law. So they are suing the federal government. And if you're wondering whether this is PCRM's first lawsuit rodeo, Neal jokes that they have challenged the government TNTC times, which means that's too numerous to count.
Neal says that a secret panel with significant ties to the meat, dairy, and low carb industries helped produce guidelines that promote more animal protein, full-fat dairy, and even beef tallow, despite decades of evidence linking saturated fat and dietary cholesterol-rich foods with cardiovascular disease. But this conversation is not about political mudslinging. It is more about transparency. It's about conflicts of interest. It's about following the law. And perhaps most importantly, it's about the food that we're teaching our children to eat.
PCRM's argument is simple. The process matters, transparency matters, and the law matters. I am so proud to have Dr. Neal Barnard and PCRM out there fighting that fight. And today, Neal takes us inside the lawsuit, why he believes the case is strong, and why this battle over America's Dietary Guidelines should matter to all of us. We'll have this conversation right after these words from Plant Strong.
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All right, Dr. Neal Barnard, I want to welcome you back to the Plant Strong Podcast. Podcast for people that listened. The last time you were on the show was about two and a half years ago. It was episode 241. And we talked about power foods for lasting weight loss, which was another book that you had written. But today we're not here to talk about a new book. We're actually here to talk about a recently filed lawsuit against the federal government. And I want to dive into that. Before we do, for listeners that don't know about PCRM, if you could just let us know what's the organization's mission and what drew you personally to spend your career advocating for plant-based medicine? Well, first of all, Rip, it's great to see you again. Thank you for all the incredible work that you do to spread the word about how people can really retrieve, health when it might have been lost or stay healthy if that's the issue. So, thank you for everything that you've done. Thank you. And it's great to be back with you. Yeah, the Physicians Committee is a group I started in 1985.
I was fairly new to my medical practice at that time. And medicine, medicine with a capital M, I mean, we do a pretty good job of dealing with illnesses when they come into the emergency room, but we don't do such a hot job of preventing anything. And we haven't done a particularly good job of using nutrition, which is the biggest driver of illness. So I wanted to get the voice of doctors involved in that. And we also do research trials. So we are actually doing research to show what diet will do. And then we push for ethical research as well. So we're focusing on human health, in what we think is the best possible way. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. So let's talk about these new dietary guidelines that dropped on January 7th of 2026. I'd love to know before we dive into the lawsuit, what was your initial gut reaction in the first hour after reading them?
Yeah, I have to say it's a troubling document. Now, there's always been a tension. The tension is between... Food scientists, people who know that foods cause illness and certain foods can be helpful. And there's been a tension between that and the people who are stocking the shelves at the grocery stores or the meat counter or whatever. There's an industry science conflict there. And the usual process is that there is a scientific panel that pulls together what the recommendations are based on health. And then it goes to the government, which can kind of water it down a little bit. And that's always been there. But I have to say, this time, it was very much like the cattle industry wrote the guidelines.
And that was disturbing to see. Because in the United States, the number one killer is cardiovascular disease. Number two is cancer. We've got obesity all over the place. and pushing meat and animal fat and dairy products into even more prominence in the diet is really problematic. And where it is most problematic of all is for kids. You know, you or I can follow the guidelines or not. You can ignore them if you want to. Childs can't because the guidelines are the foundation of what is served in schools. And so that has been their mission, and it's been troubling to see. That said, I think it is possible for us to take what is the residue that is good in them.
If possible. But also, I think we've got to fight back against the part that's really problematic. Yeah. How many times have you sued the federal government over dietary guidelines?
We have a word in medicine, TNTC, too numerous to count. Well, I have to say, though, back in 1999, we brought a successful lawsuit over pretty much identical issues. And it was because the dietary guidelines at that time were... Conceived by a committee behind closed doors. So the public didn't know what evidence they were looking at and really didn't have input. And it really doesn't matter how many attorneys the government had to try to defend itself. I mean, we had one attorney at the time, but if you're right, it really helps. And so the judge went in our favor and the guidelines at that time were deemed to have not been done properly. And I want to say that ever since then, That was for the 2000 guidelines. Ever since then, they've been better. It's been a better process and it's been better guidelines. They're not perfect, but they've been getting better. And now I got to tell you, we're kind of back to square one. Yeah. Why do you keep coming? And I know the answer here, but I want to hear it from your lips. Why do you keep coming back to this fight instead of just walking away? I mean, how can you walk away? I mean, in this situation, um.
Why It Matters
The consequences of this are enormous. The dietary guidelines are the foundation, as I mentioned, for what's served in schools, what's served in every federal nutrition program, whatever that may be. And also, they're sort of the foundation of what people in government and people outside of government are supposed to think is healthy. And so it affects the media. It affects people's understanding. And right now, I mean, we are in a tough situation, despite the fact that we know more about nutrition than we ever did. I mean, our nutrition science has grown enormously. And you and your work, you have taken the best of nutrition science, put it out there for people to understand and to bring it to their own life. But despite that, the threats are still here. Americans eat a million animals every hour. It's not so hot for the animals. It's not so good for your coronary arteries. We're depositing enough cholesterol to sink a ship.
And what we are doing to the environment is no longer debatable. I mean, we are really hammering our health. We're hammering the animals and the environment at the same time. So the current guidelines say they were released with a new inverted pyramid. The old pyramid that came out in the early 1990s was a pyramid saying grains at the bottom. That was the foundation and vegetables and fruits and meat and dairy were a little smaller parts. And then sugars and oils were the tiny little part at the top. And the whole idea was make grains, vegetables and fruits your base. This turned it upside down. It looked kind of like a pizza slice, I have to say. And the big chunks of it were meat, dairy products, cheese. And the whole idea is to increase protein. Increase animal protein specifically, bring whole milk, full fat milk back, which schools had managed to get rid of it.
All these things are problems. And so that's where we're going with guidelines, if nobody was able to stop them.
Secret Panel Exposed
Yeah. So you're calling this a secret panel. Um, like walk me through how eight of the nine members ended up with, you know, direct financial ties to beef, to pork, to, to egg, low carb, you know, industries. Does, does this just happen by accident or, or how? I don't know. Um, there, there is something called the federal advisory committee act. And so if you're going to set up a committee to decide anything for the government.
Who to contract with to buy military aircraft, for example, or what the dietary guidelines should be, any government policy. The Federal Advisory Committee Act says you've got to select the panel openly and transparently. People have to be able to weigh in who's on that committee. They should nominate the people who are most qualified. And you can't have a biased committee. You can have individuals who have their own biases, but there's got to be balance in it and in this case of the nine people five of them had loyalties to the livestock industry i'm talking about financial relationships uh an overlapping five had uh conflicts of interest with the dairy industry and there were three who had conflicts with the low carb fad diet industry, um and so when the guidelines came out you heard they're saying try a low carb diet and you think good heavens is this because it's the right thing to do, or is this because it's biased? Of the nine people, we can only find one where there really weren't any significant conflicts of interest. Yeah, yeah. So-
The panel had less than three months to produce this 90-page report with a 418-page appendix, and the public didn't see any of it until the day that the guidelines dropped. So, I mean, my question, how is this even possible, or was the science just pre-decided? Well, I should say there were two committees that should be distinguished. Way back in 2003, the legitimate committee got pulled together. And over the next two years, it was totally transparent. You could testify. I testified before the committee. And you could critique the evidence they're looking at. It's totally transparent. And we're going to take some of the credit for that. Because if it's not, we have been litigated to make sure that it is. And they did a good job.
And frankly, in 2025, 2024, when the guidelines came out, or the guidelines committee came out, what they came up with was reasonable. It really brought plant foods forward. But then their report, which was lengthy and detailed, was thrown out. And then this new secret panel of nine people, nobody saw anything until January 7th. And they issued a report, and they issued what the guidelines would be, and they issued some details of what they'd come up with, and they basically cranked out what they wanted. And the public had zero input anywhere in the process.
So do you have any kind of like a smoking gun document, or is this just based on who was in the room? Well, I should say that when they released.
What they call the scientific foundation for the guidelines, the guidelines themselves are really short. It doesn't say much of anything except it pushes protein, unfortunately, and pushes animal protein in particular, pushes fat, and it says bad things about processed foods. But it's really quite short. The scientific foundation is not very long either, but part of the scientific foundation does declare their conflicts of interest. They actually revealed it. So we didn't have to hire a detective. They revealed them themselves. But here's the issue. Why are we pushing protein? The N. Haynes study looked at how much protein are kids getting at school or in their life. And the average boy between age 14 and 18 is getting 90 grams of protein per day. The average girl, 65 grams. I mean, they're getting adequate protein. The idea of pushing more is risky because you're getting plenty of protein. And if you push more, what are you going to do? You're going to push animal fat and cholesterol along with that protein. And kids don't need any more fat in their diet. They're pushing whole milk. Right now in schools, you have 2% milk. Okay, that's allowed. 122 calories, Whole milk, suddenly you add 30 more calories to every cup of milk, 752.
So anyway, that's where they're going. And they're saying you should be cooking in beef tallow. There is zero science for that. So this and if they win, that's what's going to happen. But I mean, that's going to be the routine at schools. But I think we could stop. One of the hottest bars right now, selling bars for like snacking is a beef tallow bar. It's just, it's just, it's just asinine. Yeah. Now I got to tell you, it's not all bad news. The dietary guidelines do have a couple of good things in them. They do say vegetables and fruits should be.
A big part of the diet, and they do promote whole grains, that's good too. So that's all defensible.
Good News Wins
And I want to say that a week after the guidelines came out, a piece of legislation came up from the government that's 90% bad, but 10% good. And it was called the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act. And it said schools should be able to serve whole milk. Schools didn't want to because it's very fatty and it's got saturated fat that kids don't need. So that act is generally bad. However, we were able to work with Congress to insert an amendment that said a school can serve soy milk if they want to, or they can conserve any plant-based milk that is nutritionally equivalent to cow's milk. And for now, that's really just soy milk, but they could do it. And previously, they only would do it if, there was a note from a parent that there was a medical condition that your child had now they could just do it no no no nothing, i mean it hasn't been written into the regulations yet but it was passed in the law january 14th and so schools can now be serving soy milk and it's uh for them a little bit more expensive unfortunately a little bit less available but it's gonna it really does help improve the options that the schools have Hmm. Hmm.
Legal Strategy Explained
So I want to I want to understand a little bit better. So you're suing the federal you're suing under the federal advisory committee act rather than on a like nutritional scientific ground. Like so explain to me why you're fighting this as a process instead of as like the science is wrong.
The government has great leeway with regard to interpreting the science in its own way. In fact, what they could have done is they could have said when they got that 2023 to 2025 committee, when they got their report in the end of 2024, they could have said, thanks, but we're going to come up with our own guidelines. They could have done that. But instead, they put together this secret panel that came up with wacky, with all due respect, I'm going to say we'll call it wacky, guidelines.
That are really going to be a problem. So anyhow, they do have the authority to come up with guidelines if they wish to and to interpret the science in their own way. And even the previous committee, which while I think it was the best we'd ever had, the one appointed in 2023, even they had some things that nutritionists might say could have been better. The court doesn't want to decide that. They don't want to decide what protein level should you have. Should it really be plant protein? Is it okay to have a little cholesterol or not? The court doesn't want to decide that. The court just wants to say, in coming up with these guidelines, did you follow the law? And that is what we are fighting in court.
What Victory Means
So speaking of court, let's say that the court sides with you and PCRM. What happens? Do the guidelines get pulled like overnight or does this take like years while the flawed guidelines are going to stay in the classrooms and hospitals? They're not in the classrooms yet. Well, they might be. They're not in this. I should say they're not in the school lunches yet. They haven't yet written the regulations for what the schools are serving. So they might have that sort of pizza slice looking thing.
The dietary guidelines diagram may be used. But yes, all that would be withdrawn. And that's what we're asking the court to do. We're asking the court to declare that this was an illegal process and that the dietary guidelines that flowed from it have to be withdrawn. And that could happen. Our case is really very strong because what the law says is really clear. Um now the courts are they've been a bit unpredictable this past year or two um but i think i think that our case is strong and it's going to be difficult for them to not go our way i think, yeah i mean considering the, administration and to your point how you know you you don't really know how the courts are going to rule it's it it's a challenging political climate no doubt about it. It is, it is, but the law is really clear. And it says that the committee has to be selected. It has to be done transparently. Their evidence has to be transparent.
Checkoff Influence
And moreover, it also says something else. We have in this country a beef checkoff. We have a dairy checkoff and an egg checkoff. The checkoff programs are government programs to promote agricultural products.
They are not allowed to weigh in on policy. Their job by law is to promote these products, they are not supposed to tell you what you have to eat. And I got to tell you, they were all over this. They were doing their best to influence policy. They just brazenly violate the law. And so that all of that has to, I mean, we've just got to call foul.
Have you have you ever had the opportunity to to meet RFK Junior?
I've I've been in meetings that he has held, but no, I haven't spoken to him personally. And by the way, let me say I'm not trying to criticize him personally. And here's why. Here's why. He's not a scientist. He's the secretary of health and human services. He was appointed to that job. And so if he's got that job, he, like you or I or anybody else, has their own ideas about nutrition, their own education, their own prejudices, and they may be right or they may be wrong.
If he is going to call on advisors... To give him the straight story, they cannot be people who have industry influence and are going to speak only for industry. They've got to be people who tell it straight. And that's not what happened. So I'm going to say he was not well served. And I think he would be well served if he had had a panel that had independent judgment. So our fight is not with him. Our fight is to make sure that we have the law is followed and have the guidelines come out in a more reasonable science-based way.
RFK Jr. and Rhetoric
Okay. So I appreciate that. And so if your fight is not with, you know, RFK Jr., well, how do you feel about like his rhetoric around fighting food industry corruption with the guidelines that, you know, you and I both feel our industry written?
Yeah, I think there's been some bad verbiage here. The one is that they're, if you want to look up the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, it goes to a website called Real Food. And you and I remember what that phrase was used for. The beef industry said, beef, it's real food for real people. And that was their advertising line. In fact, at the time, we used to joke, you know, well, if that's your idea of real food, you ought to live real close to a real good hospital. You're going to have a real hard time. And to see that phrase come up and become government policy, eat real food.
What they're trying to do is they're trying to scapegoat processed foods and say, that's really the problem. That's the big issue. By the way, which is an interesting issue in and of itself. Processed foods do raise issues. But when we look at what is defined as an ultra-processed food.
By far, the one that drives diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease the most is the ultra-processed meat products. So it's hot dogs and bacon and sausage and all those kinds of things. Right behind that, a little ways behind that is sodas. But the plant-based processed foods don't promote diabetes at all. In fact, they're part of the solution to it. If you look at a veggie burger, or for that matter, processed fruit snacks or other things, breads, breakfast cereals, the more people eat of those, the lower their risk of diabetes, the lower their risk of cardiovascular disease. So Harvard researchers did an interesting study. they looked at the 10 major categories of ultra-processed foods. And they said that only two of them, and that was the processed meats and sodas, are driving the health risks. All the others are more or less innocuous. And the reason I'm mentioning this is that the dietary guidelines and the rhetoric behind them has been the problem is processed foods. Don't eat any of the processed foods. That's the problem. Um, and meat is real food and cheese is real food and da, da, da, da, da. And that's just not an evidence-based rhetoric. Um.
Industry Blowback
So let's go, I want to go back to, so you are, I mean, you're, you're, you're kind of attacking some really powerful organizations here between, you know, the, the national Cattlemen's Beef Association, the National Dairy Council, American Egg Board, Pork Board. Are you worried at all about any kind of professional or financial blowback to PCRM or yourself for taking this on? My grandfather was a cattle rancher and my father grew up in the cattle business, um, in the Midwest. And my father realized this was not for him. He said, I don't want to be in that business anymore. He left and he went to medical school. And my father then became the diabetes expert, uh, working at the Fargo clinic in Fargo, North Dakota. But I, my uncles and my cousins have been in that business and they're honest people. Um, They're good business people, and they do a good job with promoting their products.
And they're very much like the tobacco farmers a few generations before, where those are honest people, too. And they're raising a product, and then us Killjoy scientists come in, and we discover that there's a health risk to their product. And so it didn't mean that the tobacco farmers were dishonest. Although there was, once the health risks became known, there was some kind of hanky-panky going on to try to bury those findings. But by and large, these were business people who got caught into an unexpected issue. And you have no choice. Once you discover that tobacco causes cancer, I mean, you can't support it anymore. So with beef, back in the 1940s, we got the first inklings that meat and the cholesterol levels that it engenders. Are the problem with cardiovascular disease. And so suddenly you get industry stuck. And so I don't want industry to be our enemy. My thought is let's find ways to give them a parachute into better ways of using their land, better ways of using their investment so that we can work on this together. We shouldn't forget that the cattleman's son and daughter.
The people who might inherit that business, their number one cause of death is cardiovascular disease. Their number two cause of death is cancer. They've got the same problems as everybody else. They're going to school, and the school lunches are going to serve what the dietary guidelines tell them to serve. And so we've got to find a way to work together. Will they blow back? Absolutely. Will they attack us? Will they criticize us? Sure. We don't take that too seriously. Yeah.
Compassion and Roots
You know, where do you feel like you got.
Your sense of doing the right thing and also empathy? It seems like it's very deep rooted in you. Is that from your mother, your father, a first grade teacher, just the way you were born? Well, thank you for saying that. When I was young, as a teenager, I drove cattle to slaughter myself with my uncle, who raised those cattle. And I've spent a night at the Stockyards Hotel at two bucks a night for the auctions the next day. My dad gave me a 20-gauge shotgun when I was a kid. We would go out and hunt. I know what that life is like. um but at some point you come to realize maybe the bigger picture, and for me it's been all the different pieces of this um yes i'm a doctor and so i'm cheerleading for keeping our coronary arteries clean um but i also say i have to say that i do remember the look of the cows coming off the truck, and the look of the animals that we killed and i've decided that compassion needs to come back into life. And I know that people are a little bit allergic to that because it doesn't sound very macho to be a decent person. We'd much rather be intimidating.
But I think the foundation of medicine is compassion and the foundation of how we raise our families and kinds of policies that the government brings forward should be compassionate too. And that means humans, animals with whom we share this planet, And maybe the planet itself could use a little bit of a lighter hand. Yeah, sure could.
Government Mistakes
So you mentioned earlier, Neal, when I asked you, you know, how many times have you filed a lawsuit against the federal government? You said too many times to count. Right. And so I'm wondering, is this a symptom of something that is structurally broken and how the federal government sets nutrition policy every five years or something else?
In hospitals, a generation ago, if somebody would have a problem, there was a problem in the operating room, malpractice was committed, somebody left a sponge in while they were doing the appendectomy, the hospitals would go to ground and they'd kind of be quiet about everything, and then somebody would sue and it was kind of an antagonistic relationship. And then at some point, about 20 years, 15 years ago, hospitals realized, wait a minute, the best thing to do is realize if you made a mistake, own up to it, fix it, apologize. And that has been a really good way to work. And the government makes mistakes, too.
These guidelines came out on January 7th. on January 8th, we filed with the inspector general in the Department of Health and Human Services and Agriculture. We filed a complaint to have them withdrawn on that day. It wasn't a lawsuit. We went to the departments themselves and showed how they were not evidence-based. And what was their reaction?
Crickets. Had they been honest and pulled together an independent panel to look at the process and look at what they come up with, they would have said, you know, this does not serve America very well. We can do better than this.
And that's what should happen. Yeah. And the actual lawsuit was filed, was it August 18th? Just a few days ago? Yeah.
Schools At Risk
Right. Yeah. All right. So you mentioned earlier, I mean, we talked about how like, you know, These guidelines, they shape school lunch programs, military rations, hospital menus. Corrections. Yeah. What I mean, is there any in particular that worry you the most while this lawsuit is playing out? But schools more than anything else, because you have kids of six or seven who are not only learning what good nutrition is, and they're looking at diagrams that becomes part of their teaching, they're also learning tastes for fruit. Kids should understand what vegetables and fruits taste like. They should understand what a veggie burger is. They should understand what hummus is and where it comes from and what its history is. Um, why not learn those things instead of learning this idea that you've got to make sure that you're getting loads of protein and beef tallow and cheese and so forth. Um, that kind of skewed thinking carries forward when that student is now 50 years old on our exam room in the hospital, um, recovering from a heart attack. Um, so I'm most worried about what happens at schools. Yeah. You think you're going to win the case? Yeah, I do.
You can't tell I mean because judges are new to this they're not nutrition experts themselves and they have their own prejudices that they break to it so you could never say with assurance what will happen but our case is strong the law is clear, the need is enormous and I do think we're going to win is this something where you actually you know, get on the stand or whatever and you know plead your case um, for this i probably won't have to um, because it's procedures it's it's their attorneys trying to defend what they've done and i was showing uh how they missed it how they missed it yeah do you uh do you like your attorneys yeah, Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Our senior vice president for legal affairs is Mark Kennedy. He's terrific and a brilliant mind. And he's right. And let's be clear. We're not going after this because we were wronged or that we were trying to score something economic here. We are doing this because America has been wronged by this. Um, and that allows you to hold your head up pretty well. Yeah. Is Mark Kennedy any relation to Robert? Let's, let's, let's call it a pleasant coincidence. Okay.
Mark is a terrific attorney. And we have a whole team. We have a whole team that we work with and litigation, litigation doesn't mean that we're enemies. Um, I will happily shake the hand of the secretaries of agriculture and health and human services. And I want to work with them. And even while this is cooking, we litigate against the government all the time. And yet you work with them at the same time. Litigation simply means you did not come to an agreement and you need a court to decide it. That's what we're doing. And so at any point we can come to an agreement and we can work from there. Bravo. So let me, so is there a plan B if you do not happen to, you know, get the win? Well, that's what appeals are for. okay.
That's what appeals are for and and if if the worst comes to worst and these are the guidelines, uh back in february the usda sent to schools uh a memo that said get ready, um get ready to boost protein get ready to to boost uh animal fat and all this kind of stuff and so we are uh already working with schools now to try to say here's how to try to minimize the damage if you if you need to. Hmm.
Wow. Well, so I love that. So Neal, tell me this outside of, you know, um, trying to get the, you know, real science back into the federal nutrition conversation. What else are you working on that you're super jazzed about?
Well, I have to say a couple of things on the research side of things. We're doing a huge study with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, which is looking at when people with diabetes go on a vegan diet. How much money do you save in health care costs? So it's a big, big, big study. We've been doing it since 2023 and we made huge progress. And it's the most exciting thing is to work with the participants and they talk about how they feel making these changes. So I'll have results for you when the study is finished. But right now, in the short term, we just shot a, you might call it a public service announcement, except it's a message that's going to go into every, it's going into every movie theater, AMC movie theater in the country.
It's Venus Williams. And it's in advance of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, October, where Venus Williams and Kristi Funk, who is the greatest breast cancer surgeon that I know, they're talking together about changing your diet. So that you take into hand the power of a plant-based diet to reduce your risk. Nothing's perfect, but plant-based diet, it helps reduce the risk of cancer. So anyway, I'm super jazzed that Venus and Kristi made this powerful PSA. It's going in the movie theaters. It's going to go all over the place. And I think it's really going to make a wave. Do you know how many AMC theaters there are across the country? That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that, but I love the image of a person walks in with their Dr. Pepper and their popcorn and they're sitting there in their seat. And this is the one place where people don't look at their phone anymore. I mean, the things come up and you've got their complete attention. So it's going to be wonderful. How did you get AMC to partner with you on this kind of a public campaign? Well, first of all.
It's not entirely free. We are making a big economic investment. But second of all, this is something that they want to do. I mean, let's face it, A&C Cinema sees kids coming in. They were there to watch the Barbie movie and the Taylor Swift film and all these kinds of things. And so it's certainly in their interest to look after the next generation. We're thrilled that AMC is working with us on this. Yeah. So I just. I got to say, I got to say, I want to say thanks to Venus. I mean, Venus Williams is a powerhouse and what a, what a career she has had. And for her to come in and say, let's tell the truth is, is a wonderful thing for us. Yeah. So is that something where you reached out to her and just kind of said, Hey, this is what I'm thinking. Would you be willing to partner on this? Yeah, exactly. That was it. Yeah. And she, it was, she didn't have to be asked twice. And she said, absolutely, let's do it. She is a wonderful, I mean, a brilliant athlete and a wonderful person. So I just looked it up. There's about 670 AMC locations across the country. I'll see you there. Yes, you will. Well, Neal, I am so proud of you and the work that you're doing at PCRM and just fighting the good fight. Love it. I appreciate you coming back on the Plant Strong podcast and.
Sharing a little bit more around the context of the lawsuit and the AMC breast cancer campaign. Thank you. Well, rip right back at you. Thanks to you. Thanks to your family for all that you do individually and collectively to make people healthier and to make the next generation the healthiest woman we've ever had. There's a lot to be done, and I love what you're doing. Thank you. right on. Hey, can you give me a little Plant Strong fist bump on the way out? You bet. Boom! There you go, Neal
All right. Thank you, Rip. I want to sincerely thank Dr. Neal Barnard and PCRM for their valiant efforts. What's really amazing and so admirable is that even after more than four decades of doing this work, Neal still refuses to shrug his shoulders and say, oh well, that's just the way the system works. If the science gets distorted, you challenge it. If the process isn't transparent, you expose it. And if the policies could negatively influence what millions of children are being taught to eat, you fight like heck to make them better. I also loved Neal's reminder that this doesn't have to be about creating enemies. Farmers aren't the enemy. Government officials aren't the enemy. The goal here is to build a food and health care system that serves people better and, as Neal so poignantly put it, compassion. We'll be watching this lawsuit very closely. And until next time, keep piling those plants onto your plate. Keep asking good questions. And always, always keep it plant strong.