In a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, guest Louis J. Gomez and host Joe Rogan were talking about food quality when the conversation turned to agricultural chemicals and the political and economic forces surrounding them.
After Gomez shared that he lost five pounds during a week in Italy while freely eating pasta, bread, and gelato, Rogan responded bluntly.
“We are being poisoned,” he said.
That remark opened the door to a discussion about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his efforts related to food and agriculture policy.
“And the, you know, RFK Jr. has been working really hard to try to stop a lot of what is f**king with us with our diet in America,” Rogan said. “God, the resistance is crazy.”
Gomez suggested that some of the opposition might be politically motivated.
“People decide what side they’re on and they go, ‘I don’t care how good it might be. F**k you. You’re part of Trump’s cabinet,'” Gomez said.
Rogan acknowledged that politics played a role but clarified that he believed economic interests were the bigger factor.
“It’s a little of that, but what I’m talking about is the resistance from corporations,” he explained. “And the effect that they have on policy and then the reality of economics.”
Rogan then pointed to glyphosate as a specific example, describing how the herbicide is often sprayed on wheat as a desiccant after harvest to prevent mold growth. He used the issue to illustrate the difficult trade-offs policymakers face.
“So RFK Jr. was trying really hard to stop that,” Rogan said. “But Trump essentially said that if they passed this ban on glyphosate and they forced all these farmers to stop moving glyphosate, it would destroy the farm market in America. It would destroy it. Like 90 something percent of these people use glyphosate.”
Gomez replied, saying that it may be due to the dependency the agricultural system has developed on the chemical.
“That’s because they have to like it’s it preserves it essentially,” he said. “So they could keep it longer.”
Rogan then went on to explain that certain crops, particularly corn, have been engineered to survive glyphosate spraying, something he referred to as “nuclear corn,” before arriving at what he framed as the central contradiction in the system.
“Our whole system depends on it,” Rogan said. “Like we’ve got a bad system and the solution is keep the bad system for now because if we don’t, if we don’t feed people poison then we’ll go under.”
Rogan then summed up the dilemma in simple terms.
“It’s so crazy,” he said. “And that’s how that’s what it is in America.”
