Congressman Tim Ryan

our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep them else moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Welcome to the show. Our guest today is Tim Ryan, the U S Representative for Ohio's thirteen congressional district, serving since two thousand three. Tim is the author of a Mindful Nation, How a simple practice can help us reduce stress improve performance and recapture the American spirit. Tim also has a new book called The Real Food Revolution, Healthy Eating, Green Groceries in the Return of the American Family Farm.

Before we get to the interview, I did want to mention that the One You Feed podcast was recently included in iTunes Best Podcasts of two thousand and fourteen. Eric and I would like to thank our listeners for all the support in the dedication, So keep coming back you Hi. Congressman Ryan, Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I am really excited that we were able to get you on for of variety of reasons. One is, uh, you're in Ohio and like us, we're based in Columbus. Uh.

Two is you're a congressman, which is great. And three you are really into mindfulness, which is a big part of what we talked about on the show a lot. So I'm really glad that we were able to find a time to meet up. Yeah. I'm excited too, And I'm glad you're pushing out the message in Ohio because I think it's a great place for us to you know, really transformed the state with some of these ideas and practices. Yep.

So our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,

which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops for a second and he thinks about it, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which and winds, and the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you how that parable uh applies to you and your work and in your life. Well, I think, uh, you know, attention and awareness practices like mindfulness help you to see what is going on inside of you and helps you to

see um those emotions as they arise in you. In in help you cultivate awareness so that you can see what you're thinking about um. And so a lot of

times you don't know which one you're feeding. You may have some delusionary idea that you're feeding one and you're actually feeding the other, uh, And without I think taking time in your day or in your life, to have some contemplation, have some present moment awareness, see and spend time with the TV off and the radio off and the UH and the technology put down so that you can actually see what's going on inside yourself, UM, so that you can properly feed the ones that you want.

And I think the work that I do with trying to get these awareness and attention practices in the schools, in the healthcare to help with veterans who are coming back with post traumatic stress is really the first step to knowing who, which UH, which wolf you're going to feed. And so I think it's fundamental to living a good life and living with an intention of you know what you want to do and be and in your own life. Yeah, I agree that awareness is such a such a key thing.

And one of the things that I think meditation has brought to me is the way I describe it as there's an old line I think it was Victor Frankel, about you know, between stimulus and response, there's a space. And I found that by practicing meditation and mindfulness that space is just a little bit longer, it's a little

bit has a little bit more space in there. For me to sort of think about what's happening before I either react in a certain way or habitually start to sort of think about it in a certain way, right, and your anger will arise in that space. And then if you've got enough space in there, then you will realize that you don't have to hold onto it. You know, you don't have to uh, you know, take the bait

and then run with the anger or run with the fear. Uh. Give it enough space and it'll pass in the uh. And that's what the awareness practice does for you. Yep. So you wrote a book called a Mindful Nation, How a simple practice can help us reduce stress, improve performance, and recapture the American spirit. What eventually or what originally brought you to mindfulness or meditation? Where was your initial introduction to that? Well, I trace it back really to

growing up Catholic. Uh. You know, I went to Catholic school for you know, twelve or thirteen years. Um. I had a lot of people in my life that uh made it a point to take time to pray the rosary, to meditate, to say their prayers, and that kind of contemplative aspect of life was always valued, you know, growing up, and so I trace it back to that kind of culture that I grew up in with my grandparents praying

the Rosary, my mom, my football coaches. I would see duck into the chapel at school, um to say their prayers and meditate and all that stuff. So um, and then on and off throughout my life, like most people did it for two days and thought, wow, this is great. I can focus more, I can concentrate better. I'm kinder. And then I don't do it for like a year, you know, And then you do it for three days, and then you don't do it for six months. And that went on for you know, really probably a decade

or more. And then identified day retreat. Uh. That really kind of expanded my practice or developed a practice into a daily session that I do most most uh every day. And but it goes back to just these points throughout my life where adults were reinforcing that kind of approach. Excellent. And so what does you know, mindfulness is a pretty vague term. I think people interpret it differently. What does

mindfulness mean to you? Um? Being aware is I think more most fundamental I do, like you know John cabot Zen's definition of paying attention on purpose to the present moment without judging it. Um. And I think that's a pretty concise definition of what mindfulness is to me. But I think that the short would be the shorter version would be being aware. You know, it's awareness mindfulness being aware of what's going on outside of you, being aware of what's what goes on inside of you, and um.

The more you can cultivate that awareness, the you know, the more aware you are. But I think the better decisions you can be and I think the less stress you have, because you notice that things are impermanent, you know, and always in transition those emotions. You know, you sit down in a quiet room and it's just you and you know your emotions and your mind. You see that, you know, fear can come in for a you know,

thirty seconds, a minute, two minutes, five minutes, whatever. Then it passes and something else comes up, and then something else comes up. It's depending on what you're thinking about or what's going on in your life. But you start to really become aware of all of that internal dialogue that's happening. So the short answer is a harness. I assume you have a daily meditation practice that you do sort of a formal period that you think then helps you to be more aware during the rest of the day.

Is that how you approach it? Yeah, you know, I had one in the morning for the longest time, you know, years, and then I got married and had a couple of step kids, and then about six months ago, I have a newborn baby, and the baby did not get the memo on my meditation practice. UM, so it's been a little on and off in the last six months. But yeah, daily practice normally, UM quiet time either on a cushion or sitting in a in a chair. UM. The breath practice.

You know, your mind goes past future, you come back to your breath. I try to do a lot of body work where I just tried to ground my mind into my body. Um to you know, keep it grounded. I mean, you've got a couple of really solid anchors for your for your mind, that's your breath, which is relatively important to your life, and then your body, which

is always with you as well. So if you want to be in the present moment, you know, you can really start practicing being rounded in those things that are always in the present moment, not your body and your your breath, In your book, you talk a little bit about a moment in your life where you realized that you always had some story going on in your head that you never shared with anybody else and you weren't

entirely conscious of. But it had so much to do with always doing things perfectly, and you know, all the time and energy you spent trying to uphold that story in your mind that you sort of missed your life. Well, I think that's it. I mean, once you have the awareness that you are daydreaming a lot and not present, uh you there's a little bit of regret there to think. You know, I was thirty five when I went on that retreat. I know still have plenty of moments of

being distracted and whatnot. But uh yeah, you know, you realize you're missing your life. You know, you get in a car to drive the work, and you arrive at work and you realize, how the hell did I get here because you were daydreaming the entire time. Um Or you're with your kids and your minds at work, or you're with your grandparents who you know are near the end of their life and you are thinking about work

or something else. You know you're not there with them, and and to me that's you know, those are the things you regret and then you forgive yourself because you didn't know any better. But um, you know, ultimately, yeah, I had that feeling of you know, why didn't somebody teach me this when I was when I was a kid.

One of the things that you have started to do, I know, uh is try and bring some mindfulness to Congress, or at least certain members of Congress, which strikes me as an overwhelmingly large task and uh, quite a place to to remain mindful in. Do you have any stories or or anecdotes about how that's been going for you? Well, it's a slow but sure. You know, the more um kind of publicity and stuff that that I get, um,

the more people are hearing about it. And uh, I have a lot of spouses of members who come and and asked, me, uh, you know, they want to meet me for lunch. And guy came up and said, Hey, my wife wants to meet you for lunch, and I said, are you gonna be there? You know, but was into meditation and yoga and wanted to meet me because she read about me in a couple of articles. So therefore the husband Uh, is you know, a little bit more interested. Now.

I had a guy this morning is you know, three or four term congressmen, Um, you know, saw my book I was reading, um, you know, in the House Jim, and said, hey, you know, I'm you know, we've talked about this. I see that book you're reading. I really want a book that can help introduce this to me.

So over time it's been working. We do a session once a week with members of Congress in the House Chapel, and then we do a session a week where we have teachers come in and teach um the staff here, so people who are doing meditations with veterans or in hospitals and schools and um, you know, in the Marines

for example. UM, we have them come and lead a thirty minute um you know, basically guided meditation for the staff here once a week, just to help educate them on how kind of pervasive this is within society now in all these different areas. So we're trying to push it out that way too. UM. But it's you know, slow mature, and you know, we're just trying to create

a little space and a little bit of awareness. Yeah, your book is interesting in a in a lot of ways, but one of them is that you really walk through the ways that mindfulness. I mean, the title was, you know it's a simple practice, um, the ways that mindfulness can help in schools, with our emergency responders, with our veterans, with our health system. UM. And so one of the things that you've done as a result of that is you've brought mindfulness education into some of the schools back

in your home district in Youngstown. Can you may be given update on how that's going. Yeah, it's going great. I mean with the the teachers are really starting to see the difference, the change in the in the the students, the the incidents of misbehavior or down significantly. In fact, one school had no behavioral incidents going in there like October of the school of the school year this year. Um,

you know, the parents are noticing a difference. I've had you know, Republican teachers come up to me and said, you know, uh, you're always gonna have my vote because you know I'm a Democrat. You're always gonna have my vote because because of what you've done to this school. And uh, you know it's a city school in Warren, Ohio, and uh, you know, mid size city, you know, multicultural district, a lot of economic inequality, bad neighborhoods, you know, the

whole nine yards. And we went right in there and uh, and they're starting to see see a real difference with what we're doing. And and so I'm super excited about it, and you know, trying to use this as an example of how we can um really you know, shift policy and let others in the state and local communities see you know how fundamental it is. I mean, if you if you're trying to teach a kid and they're not

paying attention, what's the use, you know? And so we yell at kids to pay attention, and what these practices are are teaching the kid how to pay attention instead of just yelling at them to pay attention. And I don't know a parent in America that doesn't want their child to have a higher ability to mobilize their attention span, to have a higher level of focus, to have mental discipline, to have resiliency, uh a mental resiliency, and toughness and

the kind of grittiness that leads to a success. I mean, these are the kind of things that ultimately are going to be the tools that the kid's gonna need when they go out into the real world. And so there's not a better, more fundamental skill set that we can give these kids. And that's why you're seeing this in corporate America. I mean, you're seeing in the Marine Corps, you're seeing it a Google, You're seeing it at Target,

You're seeing it in other corporations. A lot of the Silicon Valley folks are now having embedding into their newer companies UM mindfulness type practices and meditation practices because it gives them the replenishment, the focus, the attention, uh cultivation, the awareness cultivation, the ability to really sit and listen and not be jit terry and agitated, but sit down and you know a certain amount of relaxation and solve these problems. It doesn't mean you're soft. It means you're

you're tough. You know, it means you're discipline. You've got mental discipline. And that's why I say, in places like Ohio, I can't imagine, you know, a Republican couple in Delaware County in Ohio or a Democratic you know couple in you know, Northeast Ohio somewhere, UM, both want the same thing for their kids. And I don't know any parent that wouldn't want the school system to start teaching these kids some of these basic skills that are are really

hurting or not, they're not hurting. These skills are not being developed because of the technology, because of the TV, because of the iPhone and the iPad, and the constant stimulus that they get from all of these things. Um, we've we've got to push back and we better come up with some strategies that are going to allow our kids to develop their attention span, cultivate that awareness, and

be functioning adults. I mean a lot of times you look at kids, they don't even look in the eye, you know, they don't look at you because they're looking at their phone and they're they're losing the ability to have face to face conversations with people. And to me, that's that is not the direction that we want to

go in as a country. And so these practices, to me, you know, if it's good enough for the Marine Corps, good enough for the Seattle Seahawks, good enough for the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks, you know it's good enough for our kids. And every kid should have the opportunity to learn it. You said

that part about not being soft. We had Dan Harris on the show, who wrote a book about mindfulness, the ABC News anchor, and he he talks very much about, you know, not not losing your edge, and I and you you use some terms in there around grittiness and toughness, and I'm curious what you think or how you think, because I think that the main thing that meditation has, you know, Dan says meditation as a bad pr problem, right, which is that it's thought of is this soft thing.

And the terms that you're using are really not soft at all, nor shouldn't they be. I mean, I think we all respect people who have mental toughness, who can get knocked down and get back up, and who can do that. While someone who can keep their eye on the ball, have a goal and go after that goal with all your heart and all your mind and then you get knocked off track. Inevitably in life, you're gonna

get knocked off track. Do you have the ability to stay focused and be resilient enough to stay on track and get back on track and then keep going. I mean, these are the qualities that we really admire in people. You know, the redemption, you know, the person who gets knocked down and gets back up and and stays in the game. These are things that we really appreciate. And in these practices, you know, it's hard to sit still.

It's not easy. You know, it's it's easy to daydream, and I think that some day dreaming is appropriate at times, but you know, it's not easy to stay focused on your breath, stay in your body, your mind goes to the passion mind and come back and keep coming back and keep coming back. That builds a mental toughness, of a tenacity that is needed for you to go out into the world. That's not a soft skill, that's a

that's an essential skill that you need. And which is why you know, the Marine Corps UH is interested in this stuff and why athletes are starting to really gravitate towards it. And it's not just being able to stay on track, but also having the awareness of, Okay, when do I need to adjust. You know, I'm not putting on a helmet and running into a brick wall with my head just because the walls in the way. You also have to have some awareness of, Okay, I know

what the goal is. You know, I know, I want to go north, but there's a swamp in front of me. I need to figure out how to navigate that stuff. So you need to be adaptable, but yet keep your eye on the ball or your eye on the goal. And these are the kind of things and qualities and traits that you cultivate while you're doing this that are essential for um for success in life and success however you determine it, whatever you want your goals and dreams

to be. And you know, I just feel like in a lot of ways, you know, I'm in the hopes and dreams of business, you know, I mean, like, how do I help young people? How do I help people who are sick get into a mindset to be successful, to do extraordinary things? And uh, I think this practice is really fundamental to doing that, to cultivating that grittiness that you need to succeed. Yeah, I think that's a fundamental. There's a fundamental misunderstanding about mindfulness or meditation, and it

was one that plagued me for a long time. It's that I think I was too focused on what was happening while I was meditating, what what my experience was, Like, Oh, I should be really relaxed or I should be really happy or and realizing that it didn't really have anything to do with that. What it had to do with was how it improved the way my mind worked the other twenty three and a half hours of the day. And it didn't have to do with being blissed out

in that moment because I rarely am. Um. It had to do with with what happened when I got back up and went into my day right right exactly. And that's it, you know, it's taking it off the cushion, it's taking it off the chair. It's you know, you go to practice during the week for the game. You know, you practice and practice and practice. I mean the sports analogies to this for me or are unbelievably connected. And you practice, and that's why they call it, you know,

meditation practice. So that you know, that's not it. It's about when you get up and go into the world, you have a little bit more awareness, a little bit more focused, um, a little bit more kindness in your heart, a little more softness you know, off the edge, um, but still maintaining that kind of grittiness, you know, and it's all right there. There's a lot lot of scientific data out there on meditation. You cover a fair amount of it in your book. There's been you know, it

continues to just come out. Do you have a favorite study or two maybe you could share with this about that gives some scientific basis to the benefits of meditation. Well, I like the one UH that I write about in UH for psoriasis patients, which was really interesting. They took a group of people who have psoriasis, and they separated them into two groups. And the one group they at. One of the treatments for shariasis is you go into a light box. So UH, they put all this both

groups into a light box. But the one group they put into a light box and while they were in the light box they practiced mindfulness. They came back and the study said that they needed four times less the treatments than the original group that just went into the light box. So it was so significant they thought they screwed the study up. So they went back and they did it again. They've got the exact same results four times less UH and and treatments UH then than the

other group. And I love that because it makes a couple of points. The first point is that UM, your body naturally wants to heal itself. Uh, you have a problem. It wants to heal itself if you remove heavy levels of stress. You know, diets very important as well, but if you remove levels of stress, your body will function properly and try to heal itself. So the stress is what prevents your body from really healing itself in the way that it that it needs to. Then I think

that's really important. In the other pieces from the public policy side, um, which you know, people's eyes tend to glaze over, But we do have a national discussion about healthcare costs and and you know the the national debt which is driven by two healthcare programs in our country, Medicaid which serves the poor, and Medicare, which serves the elderly. These are the two main drivers of our national debt.

So if I'm a policy maker and I look at that study, and I say, wow, this person practices mindfulness and go by in the light box and needs four times less treatments. How many how much is it? How many people have prisis, and and how much is each treatment? And so you take those numbers and you stay multiplying, and you say, okay, we're gonna need four times less.

You start doing the math on this, and do the same thing for high blood pressure and ulcers and a d D and a d h D and all of these things that that I think could um be diminished by a mindfulness practice. You start saving real money. And I think it's important for conservatives and liberals to say, well, wait a minute, we want higher quality of life, we want to spend less on healthcare. Well, here's a practice that's very low cost, there's no side effects, and you

know what's the harm if if you don't think it works? Nothing? But you know why, so why not give it a try? Sometimes in Washington we think, boy, you know, we've got this really complicated problem, and if we have a more complicated solution, maybe we can fix it. When the reality is we need to get back to the fundamentals and start simplifying and uh, you know there's nothing more simple than you know, trying to relax by by following your breath.

What are some of the main objections that you come across from for lack of a better word, i'll just call it mainstream society to these ideas of mindfulness. I think there's a general um unawareness really of what it is and what it does, or even even knowing about it. You know, a lot of people don't even know what the hell it is, you know, I mean, it never it has never crossed their their mind. You know, they don't know a whole lot about it. And that's changing

a lot more. Now you see Doctor Oz talking about Doctor about it. You can see some of these other TV shows are doing, um, you know, stories about it. Even one of the sports uh radio and TV shows when the when Phil Jackson went to the next they were talking about it, what he's doing with that organization. UM. A lot of it is people don't know about it

or they have a misunderstanding of what it actually is. Uh. And then you have a small group that is convinced that it's you know, some religious uh you know, conspiracy coming from somebody, um. And then you have the group

that knows about it and tries to promote it. So I think it needs to be more of an education campaign, and I think more people learn about it, see about it, here about it, um, the more open will be in the real criticism, I think comes from people who aren't aware and they say, well, this is this is some religion, this is Buddhism or something like that. In the reality is this is about awareness, and awareness is a human capability, a human quality to be aware as a human being,

and so to cultivate that awareness. Doesn't matter what religion you are. I'm Catholic. I was Catholic before I started doing this. I'm Catholic after. I you know, I'm afterwards. I haven't changed at all. Um. And many people feel like it deepens their religious practice because they're more present there in the present moment experiencing what, um, you know, God's creation and all the rest. So um. The religion thing, I think is the most uh that you hear about most,

But it's also the most kind of misunderstood. You know. I feel like those folks are, um, don't understand actually what it is. One of the things I'm always I'm always I'm skeptical, and I think people tend to be skeptical of things that sound too good to be true. Um. And and sometimes some of this this stuff sounds like that. And yet a line in your book that I thought was really good because it was very very practical and sort of laned meditation or mindfulness here, and I'm going

to read it to you. It says mindfulness won't eliminate the responsibilities and pressures that causes to become so scattered, but it can help us deal with them in a more effective way. Yeah. You know, um, you've got a bad back. You know, you go to therapy and you uh, you do some exercises, you do some calisthenics or whatever. You know, you still got a bad back, but it's different now because you have strengthened some muscles around it, or you relate to it differently, you are better able

to kind of deal with it. I think it's the same thing. You know, you still have moments where you're really scattered. You still have fears and anger and joy and everything you attributed to the two different wolves. You still have that. You don't make that go away. You know, people say sometimes I sit and meditate and I just that the stot the thoughts still keep coming, and it's like, yeah, I mean they're probably not going to stop for a while.

You know, you just got to relate to them differently and recognize that you are not your thoughts, and you know you can let them pass. And so I think that is you know what I meant. You know, really, when I wrote that it's about having a different relationship, you know, with whatever it is that you're dealing with, and not getting caught up and really making matters worse. I mean, we see this a lot when you hurt yourself. You you know, you sometimes say, oh, I got a

pain in my back. Oh my god, I've had this pain in my back for a couple of hours. Now, you know, my you know, my dad has cancer. Maybe it's cancer. You know. You like, you go from A to Z and you create an entire story as opposed to saying, well, I got something in my back. I'm just gonna see what it is and write it out, and of course you're gonna think the worst. Let that go. It's okay. You know. We build these stories up and

then you stress out about it and it makes matters worse. Um, instead of having some clarity with what's really happening, which may which maybe nothing, you know, maybe you've got a kink in your back, you know exactly. So you wrote another book that maybe we could just spend a couple of minutes on before we wrap up here, called The Real Food Revolution, Healthy Eating, Green Groceries and the Return

of the American Family Farm. Can you give us a little overview of the book and what what you're trying to impart there. Well, our country is sick. We have a sick country. We have in the next few years, half the country is going to have either diabetes or pre diabetes. UM. We have one in four teenagers that have either diabetes or pre diabetes. UM. We weighed twenty more pounds than we did in the nineteen sixties and

we've only grown an inch towler on average. And this is going to be the first generation of Americans that won't live as healthy or as long of a lot as their parents first generation. UM. So we're a sick country right now. And if we want to be competitive economically, we need to be a healthy country. And the system that is currently in place makes um really highly processed, bad fake food with Dr Mark Hyman calls food like

substances UM really cheap and affordable. So all the people who you know aren't making the money they were making and struggling to make ends meet to have access to this, you know, cheap food, and we subsidize that with taxpayer money.

And this of course is making a sick Like I said earlier, with the Medicare program, the Medicaid program, and then we subsidize the healthcare, whether it's through the Affordable Care Act or these other programs, to pay for healthcare for people who are sick because they're eating cheap food. It's highly subsidized and made cheap by the subsidies that the farmers get to grow these kind of crops. It's insane, right.

So a real food revolution is about how do we shift those subsidies into creating more access to fresh fruits and vegetables, real food and therefore driving down our healthcare costs. And how we can do that in urban areas, how we can do that and you know all kinds of farming land and places like Ohio um to really reform our our food system and our agricultural system. It is kind of stunning when you when you dig into the

data and learn more about that stuff. I've typically just until really the last year, not not cared too much about diet, I mean enough to to stay relatively healthy, but not paid too much attention to what's really going on.

And when you get into some of that stuff that the numbers of you know, the diabetes, the pre diabetes, the obesity at staggering and you look at to your point the subsidies and the type of food that's widely available, and it's another one of those that reminds me of what you're saying with mindfulness that there are some really easy,

low cost solutions out there that UM is. Of course, sometimes why I think that they're not more UM widely pursued because there's no real way to make money on them. If you're you know, the government can save money, but there's no way to make money on them in as much in the private sphere, which I think sometimes stops them from getting the momentum they could otherwise. Yeah, well that's why, you know, I say we need a revolution,

you know, we need an organic UM growing uh. You know, people power movement in the country by those very same soccer moms in Delaware County in Ohio or other suburban areas in America that are really concerned that their kids aren't going to be healthy. You know, what are these kids eating in school? And I know people say, you know, what's the cost of changing the system, or what's the cost of not saving the system or changing the system? The cost is your kid is not going to live

as long as you did. For the first time in the history of our country. I mean, that is amazing. And and so you know, we're gonna we're gonna know that the you know, the cost of anything of or the cost of everything and the value of nothing. And then you know, if we value our kids health, if we want to be competitive, I mean, here's the thing.

We only have three d million people in America. Our kids that graduate from our our high schools and our colleges and our community colleges are competing with China one point three or four billion people, or India at one point three or four billion people. We only have three million. You know, we better be ready to kick some butt. And we better be healthy and have a focus and concentration, mental discipline, physical discipline, create activity, awareness of what's going

on and changes in the economy. We better be innovative. You can't do that if you're sick. You know, you can't do that with diabetes, with everybody having type two diabetes, you just can't do it. You can't do it with the sick workforce, you can't do it with the sick country. And and the reality of it is, we better fix this, and we better fix it fast, or we're going to continue to fall behind in our in our health care system.

It's gonna collapse on its own weight, because there's no way if half the country has diabetes, we're gonna be able. We're gonna spend our entire federal budget on uh, taking care of people that are sick with you know, these things that come from eating highly processed food and and these food like substances that they just add sugar and fat and salt to them, where if you didn't ad it, it would be cardboard. UH can't have it, you know, And the levels of sugar and some of these um

products are unbell eviable. We just we just set a letter to the f d A saying that they should change. If you look on the back of a product, it will say grams of sugar in there. Well, nobody knows what the hellogram of sugar is, you know, I don't. I don't think anybody else does. So we said convert that to teaspoons. So for every four grams is one teaspoon. Now you go and you try to even get yogurt and there'll be they grams of sugar in there, which

is like five teaspoons of sugar. So would you give your kid five teaspoons of sugar, you know, and say this is healthy. So we've got to help the consumer to try to understand this. And I'm just saying, like we can't. We've got to do something. I'm not a prude. The first story in my book is that I'm addicted to chicken wings and ice cream. I mean, I love it, you know. I love to watch football and eat chicken wings and have a glass of beer and every now

and again have some ice cream. I'm just saying, you can't do that everything all day, and you can't eat and drink gallons of pop and uh and expect to be healthy. And what's happening now is we're sick and we've got to change it. We've got to change it now. I agree. Well, I think that brings us to the end of our time. Tim, But thanks so much for being on the show. I am very proud to be in Ohio and have you as one of our congressmen. Well, thank you so much. It's great to be with you.

And uh, you know, I think there's a lot of people in Ohio and across the country that are interested in these issues, and I look forward to hopefully we can you know, build an army across the country that can help change the policies in Washington and our state capitals across the country to bring about some real change for the sake of our kids. Well, thank you so much.

We'll talk again soon. Bye. Thank you. M. You can learn more about this podcast and Tim Ryan at one you feed dot net slash Tim Ryan