Calley Means is the cofounder of TrueMed, a company that helps businesses qualify products and services like supplements and ice baths for HSA and FSA money. Casey Means is the founder of Levels, a continuous glucose monitor subscription service aimed at the biohacking community. The brother and sister recently appeared on Tucker Carlson's podcast to rage against seed oils, as well as the food and pharma industries' focus on profits over people.
Derek dug into their business models, finding them guilty of the same "crimes" they accuse others of.
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Recently, brother and sister Callie and Casey Means were on Tucker Carlson's podcast.
Callie is a co-founder of TruMed, which I'll get to in a little bit, and his claim to fame is being a former pharma and food consultant turned whistleblower, though I haven't been able to identify any companies that he actually worked for.
His sister, Casey, also has an origin story.
She's a Stanford-trained physician who left during her last year of surgical residency to focus on treating the whole person.
More recently, she founded Levels, which is a continuous glucose monitor subscription service.
It would take a really long time to fact-check all of the questionable or false information they share during this podcast, in part because they start from a place most of us agree on.
A lot of Americans are not healthy and suffer from a variety of diseases, and a lot of the blame for that falls on profit-motivated corporations in the pharma, healthcare, and food industries.
I'm with them on all of this.
But here's the thing.
The way that they suggest battling this, and the businesses that they operate, are guilty of the very same crimes that they're criticizing others for.
Let's dig in.
I'm Derek Barris and this is a Conspiratuality Brief, ultra-processed pseudoscience.
While I'm not going to focus on the following topics in terms of this podcast, because honestly,
this whole thing is two hours and 20 minutes long and it would take a lot, I can break
it down into several episodes, I want to note off the top there's a few interesting conspirituality
crossovers.
At one point, Casey says this while talking about childhood vaccines.
A child born in a hospital in the United States today, within hours of coming from source into this body, the first thing that happens to them is pharmaceutical intervention.
I'm not going to get into the vaccine science of what she's saying, but I will note that it continues to get rather evangelical.
I cannot wait to have children.
There is no greater role in this world.
I was told such a bill of lives, like climb the medical ladder, become the chair of an institution.
I can think of no greater thing that we can do than have children and keep them healthy.
And just up until a couple years ago, I didn't even want to have children.
That's a weird moralizing tone.
If you want to have children or if you have children and that is your greatest service
to the world, that's awesome.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But what happens is people tend to think that what they believe is the greatest service
or contribution to life should be the same for everyone.
There's plenty of us who aren't having children for our own reasons and we contribute to society in our own ways.
But what's fascinating about this line of thought is that sort of fundamentalist overtone translates into their business operations as well.
So as I said, the entire Tucker Carlson podcast is quite long, but for the rest of this episode, I want to focus on one of my favorite heuristics, which I operate from and which very much fits into what the means are doing here.
Watch what they say and then watch what they sell.
Callie made a few claims early on which perked up my ears.
Here's the first one.
Seed oils are the top source of American calories.
And this is actually...
Seed oils are the top source of American calories?
Soybean oil, canola oil.
This is the baseline of American calories right now.
Okay, so that's completely disingenuous.
The top sources of calories in America are grain-based desserts, yeast breads,
chicken dishes, soda and energy drinks, and pizza.
Some of these do contain seed oils, but that's not the only issue with these foods, and there's no evidence that seed oils specifically are the top caloric intake of the American diet.
But as you'll see, Cali really needs an enemy to focus on here, so this sort of manipulation of information continues.
Let's go on.
And these seed oils were actually created by John D. Rockefeller as a byproduct of oil production.
It's basically engine lubricant.
And Rockefeller and those aligned with him actually lobbied to have this suitable for human consumption.
That's how seed oils came into the American diet.
There's no evidence that John D. Rockefeller is responsible for the creation of seed oil.
The earliest seed oil came as a byproduct of cotton production.
Rockefeller focused on petroleum, and his business has nothing to do with cotton.
Plus, seed oils are not engine lubricants, but it makes for a very scary sounding headline for you to monetize, which we'll find out about.
Cotton seed oil was developed decades before Rockefeller really came to prominence first of all, and the first mass market Seed oil was produced by Procter & Gamble, you might know of Crisco, which also had nothing to do with Rockefeller.
And you can certainly debate the healthiness of that product, but the Rockefeller link is, I'm guessing, related to a philanthropic endeavor that he embarked on with Andrew Carnegie, where they funded medical school programs around the country.
Now Carnegie's foundation also produced the Flexner Report in 1910, and this is a favorite target of modern wellness influencers.
And I'm guessing that's what Callie is referring to here.
Now this report was focused on the state of medical education in America during that time, and it has been rightfully criticized for being racist and sexist.
But what gets a lot of wellness people is the fact that it called out pseudoscientific practices like homeopathy and botanical therapies that had never been tested.
So again, think of Rich Man Rockefeller in oil, problematic for sure, but you create this boogeyman and then you can just basically attribute anything you want to him and create this aura of I don't have holistic pretentiousness in my view, but it really does scare people to think there was some nefarious agenda behind the initial production of seed oils, which I've found no evidence for.
Now, as I said, it does play into how Kali monetizes his companies, which I'll get to in a moment.
First, one last clip.
They're much cheaper, but they're highly inflammatory.
Okay, we don't know.
Some research reveals a link between inflammation in some seed oils and others do not.
There are a number of seed oils, first of all, so we have to take that into consideration.
A lot of the evidence has been found in lab studies, but they haven't been replicated in actual human bodies.
If you talk with certified dieticians, they'll tell you that a balanced diet is way more important than cutting out seed oils, which no expert calls toxic.
But if you're wondering why Kali has to say that, well, let's now look at his company, Truman.
First off, if you're not familiar with HSAs or FSAs, let's define those terms.
So HSAs are health savings accounts.
FSAs are flexible savings accounts.
And they're ways of using pre-tax dollars to pay for healthcare-related expenses.
That could be going to a doctor, that could be going to a chiropractor.
That could actually be going to acupuncture because that's covered, or it could be
ordering Advil from Amazon.
There are a number of ways to use it.
It just has to fall under the purview of healthcare in some capacity.
My wife and I have one, and it's fine.
I mean, my opinion about them is they're effectively a band-aid because we don't
have socialized medicine in America.
So it's one of those perks that businesses offer,
but kind of in the same way that 401ks replaced pensions.
We used to have businesses that took care of you, and now we look for ways to keep it more in line with the capitalist system we live under.
But that said, better than nothing, I guess.
TruMed, they connect businesses with medical practitioners to write letters of necessity for those businesses.
So what this does is it opens up new product lines or services that could now be covered by HSAs or FSAs.
The argument that TruMed makes is that these products or services may treat, mitigate, or prevent certain health conditions.
Then you land on TruMed's Supplements page.
They partner with 104 supplements companies that I'm guessing they have affiliate deals with.
And how do I know that?
I'm guessing, but if you look at the UTM code when you click on the link, it's tracking affiliates when you scroll over each one, and that is one form of tracking that leads to monetization.
Now remember, TruMed explicitly states that they're getting doctors to write letters of medical necessity for products or services that may treat, mitigate, or prevent certain health conditions.
None of these supplements have been tested for efficacy.
In fact, if you go to any one of their pages, those companies have to have a disclaimer by law that states they have not been proven to work for anything health-related.
What else do you have on your page, TruMed?
Cold plunges.
The purported benefits of ice baths are highly debated, and there's definitely no way to state that they treat or prevent health conditions.
If you like ice baths, awesome!
I've done them, not my thing.
TruMed also works with sauna companies.
I go to my gym sauna a couple of times a week.
I love it.
I do it because it feels good.
I don't really care personally about the health benefits.
There seems to be a little more evidence of efficacy for certain conditions with saunas, but ice baths are highly debated, as I said.
And then we get to health tech on the TruMed website.
Red light therapy, at-home laser therapy, sleep tech.
It's a smorgasbord of pseudoscientific products, some of which may work for certain things, but others which have definitely not been proven to work for anything.
TruMed also offers pre-tax gym memberships, which I think is an awesome idea.
I found two of my former employees, Equinox and the YMCA, which are at opposite ends of the membership fee spectrum, on their site, and that's great.
Anything that gets people into a gym and can help offset those costs, I personally think is wonderful.
And one thing we know that does treat a number of health conditions is exercise and regular movement.
So, no problems with this page.
Everything else, though.
TruMed is probably monetizing through these affiliate deals.
They might be monetizing by charging for letters of medical necessity.
There could be fees for reimbursement services, payment processing.
It's not clear because I didn't sign up for a call about my business to try to get their services.
But they are a business, which is fine.
Businesses need to make money.
But when you go on Tucker Carlson, And you have this extremely binary conversation about big pharma and big food being what's creating all of our health problems in America, or on the TruMed site, 95%.
And then you're monetizing products and services that have not been proven to do anything health-related.
That's pretty gross.
And that's what I meant earlier on when I said they're guilty of the same crime that they're blaming others for.
Sure, they might not be making billions of dollars, but if you're following in those footsteps, that's a pretty big red flag to me.
It does seem to run in the family, so let's talk about levels for a moment.
And I won't go into a deep dive into that right now, but suffice to say that if you're not a diabetic, The idea of biohacking with a continuous glucose monitor is also not based on evidence.
CGMs measure interstitial glucose, which is not as accurate as a finger prick.
And I know diabetics use that as well because they don't want to cut themselves all the time and that makes sense, but just understand you're not getting a completely accurate reading.
And that brings us to the second problem, which is that normal blood glucose fluctuations may be misinterpreted as problematic.
We've covered this before on the podcast.
When naturopaths, for example, do these sorts of tests, they always end up with a supplements recommendation, which if you go to either TrueMed or LevelSight, you're going to find plenty of focus on supplements.
The idea that you can properly read your levels without an expert is also a problem.
I know there's a lot of blog posts on levels and maybe they make recommendations, I don't know, but I would want a medical expert leading me through that process, and I don't think that is covered in the subscription fee.
And then there's the very real risk of developing anxiety or obsessive behaviors around your blood sugar, which will then create paranoia around your diet.
I've written extensively about this topic because I've suffered from orthorexia before
for about 15 years.
I've hosted a few actual experts on conspirituality talking about this.
Eating disorders present differently in men than women.
And right now at least, the biohacking industry is predominantly targeted at men.
The idea of taking this perfect or ideal diet in order to achieve certain physical results does create a lot of anxiety Again, I know it very well.
And for a company to be selling something that can lead to that without ever addressing it is really problematic.
If you're reading the package on everything that you're eating, you might have a problem and you might need to see some help.
But one thing's for certain, that teaspoon of canola oil is not going to kill you.
So we need to stop demonizing entire categories of food for that reason.
Now we talk a lot about how conspiritualists get the feeling right but the facts wrong, and I think that applies to this entire story.
Naomi Klein wrote about this in Doppelganger very well.
Topics like this are really challenging in the sense that I want to live in a healthy nation as well, and the means keep going back to that about the state of American health.
I don't disagree there.
But to achieve that, you have to discuss public health and regulatory issues, not bespoke supplements protocols and cold plunges.
Both Callie and Casey were recently on Instagram railing against ultra-processed foods based on a somewhat nuanced Time magazine article that honestly had a truly horrible clickbait trash headline.
And yet, TruMed's co-founder, his name's Justin Mares, founded a non-alcoholic wine company, which is definitely a processed food, especially since you have to de-alcoholize regular wine and then usually add sugars back in.
He also founded Perfect Keto, which sells tons of processed foods like protein powders and bars.
And it seems like in these situations, what people like The Means are doing is they're focusing only on the ultra-processed foods that they want to scare you about, but will happily then go sell you other processed foods without ever talking about the distinctions or the nuance which has to go into this entire conversation.
I'm not personally complaining about processed foods, since the supermarket mostly contains them, and the idea that all Americans are suddenly only going to shop in the produce aisles and the meat counter is just absurd and it comes from such a privileged place as if people could afford that or they have the time to cook like that on a daily basis.
But in both of these situations, the meanses are railing against processed foods and then turning around and accepting affiliate deals with companies that are producing a shit ton of processed foods.
I mean, I don't personally know of any tree you can go up to and shake protein powder off of.
I agree with them that we need a better system, but from my research, how we're going to get it is way different than what they're suggesting.
I'm currently reading a book called Tyranny of the Gene, Personalize the Medicine and its Threat to Public Health.
by University of Utah professor James Tabery, and it really speaks to a lot of what companies like TruMed or Levels are trying to do by focusing on the individual health instead of the actual population health.
This passage from Tabery really jumped out at me.
Champions of personalized and precision medicine go wrong in thinking that the best way to improve the health of patients and populations To cut the rising costs of healthcare and to narrow health inequities is to orient healthcare around the genetic differences between us because, as we'll soon see, the right treatment for the right patient at the right time has always been about prioritizing DNA to decide what's right.
Unfortunately, the means' focus on individualized medicine instead of common-sense public health protocols, socialized medicine, and regulatory guardrails just tells us they're playing on the same capitalist field that they're raging against.
Good marketing strategy for sure.
But when there's no evidence that the range of healthcare products and services you're partnering with and selling actually accomplishes what it claims, that's not really helping the problem.
Plus, the only people it's really going to appeal to are those who can afford these products and services.
And that gets us into the icky world of social equity.
