How Truemed Is Incentivizing Americans to Invest in Prevention
Summary
Justin Mares argues that America’s chronic-disease crisis is the predictable output of an environment engineered for sickness, not merely a mass failure of willpower. Since the 1970s, shareholder pressure pushed food companies from real ingredients toward cheaper substitutes such as strawberry flavoring, high-fructose corn syrup, and soybean oil. Most kids now get roughly 70% of their diet from ultraprocessed food; the average child spends less time outside than a maximum-security prisoner, while people spend eight-plus hours on their phones. “The environment that we exist in is just structurally hard to be healthy.”
The highest-leverage policy intervention is fixing the subsidy system that makes corn, soy, and wheat artificially cheap—and therefore ubiquitous in processed food. Mares says the government spent close to $100 billion on crop subsidies over the past decade, while the average American gets almost 20% of their caloric intake from soybean oil despite not specifically seeking it out. The policy began with good intent, but its present effect is stark: “We’re feeding our kids poison, and all of them are sick.”
GLP-1s might jump-start a population approaching 80% overweight or obese toward better health, but Mares rejects “universal basic Ozempic” as a cure-all. Appetite suppression without dietary repair could leave patients consuming smaller quantities of the same nutrient-poor food, creating long-term deficiencies in protein and micronutrients. “We fundamentally have to solve the food issue if we want to have a healthy country.”
TrueMed’s wedge is to redefine qualified lifestyle spending as healthcare, letting consumers use tax-free HSA and FSA dollars for interventions that treat, reverse, or prevent disease. The company uses letters of medical necessity and a payment integration with partners including Eight Sleep, Peloton, Momentous, and Life Time Fitness. Mares sees infrastructure that could redirect “hundreds of billions of dollars” toward prevention while using people’s own tax-advantaged money.
The investable mismatch is that preventive behavior remains cash-pay while the healthcare system willingly spends hundreds of thousands or millions after a heart attack. Mares learned through Kettle & Fire that demand for healthier products is real—the broth launched at about $16 per 16-ounce carton and, nine years later, averaged about $7 while reaching grocery stores nationally—but affordability remains decisive; Costco and Walmart being the largest organic sellers reinforces that view. TrueMed’s incentive is therefore less about health education than changing the economics before acute disease arrives.
Mares frames chronic disease as a national-security problem compounded by regulatory capture. In his hypothetical, an adversary causing 75% of Americans and 45% of children to become overweight or obese would provoke an emergency response; instead, subsidies, corporate influence, and permissive chemical rules are normalized. “No matter if we win the AI race, get rich or whatever, if most of the country is sick, it’s kind of like, what is the point?”
The next healthcare opportunities may sit outside conventional pharmaceuticals: metabolic psychiatry, community-scale prevention, peptides, and measurable N-of-1 nutrition. Mares is “not totally yet a peptide believer” and wants more research, yet predicts inexpensive, non-patentable enhancement compounds could be “exceptionally disruptive” to pharma. After a decade-plus of mostly low-carb, kind-of-Paleo eating, he added orange juice and morning fruit, felt better, and reported improved biomarkers—an example of his preferred rule: experiment for roughly 90 days and measure the result.
Deep dive
1. America’s environment systematically produces unhealthy people
Mares traces his obsession to age 20, when diet, exercise, toxins, and energy felt like a hidden “secret.” The data looked less mysterious once he adopted a systems explanation: worsening obesity and heart disease were what an environment full of addictive food, sedentary defaults, and novel compounds should be expected to produce.
His great-grandmother lived healthily to 95 without shopping organic, requesting no seed oils, or practicing today’s elaborate avoidance rituals. She inhabited what he calls a less “sickness-promoting” environment; the Amish supply a contemporary contrast through locally grown seasonal food, outdoor manual work, and tight-knit community. Torenberg jokes that they are not doomscrolling; Mares replies that they are “uninformed” and asks, “At what cost?”
In Mares’s account, the deterioration accelerated during the 1970s. Shareholder-owned food companies optimized earnings per share by repeatedly swapping real ingredients for cheaper facsimiles—strawberries for flavoring, sugar for high-fructose corn syrup—until “the majority of what people are eating is ultraprocessed crap” that is addictive and nutrient-poor.
The zoo analogy carries his causal model: wild animals in species-appropriate habitats tend to remain healthy, while displaced zoo animals develop obesity, depression, and abnormal behaviors. Human health likewise reflects environmental health; the average child spends less time outside than a maximum-security prisoner, and people spend eight-plus hours on their phones. A viral post’s compressed remedy was to smash the phone.
2. Subsidies and regulatory capture keep the unhealthy default cheap
Mares’s subsidy chain is explicit: close to $100 billion over a decade supports corn, soy, and wheat; artificial cheapness creates excess supply; manufacturers then replace sugar and olive oil or similar ingredients with high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil. He characterizes soybean oil as highly processed and inflammatory, citing obesity and other problems in rat and human models. Americans consequently receive almost 20% of calories from soybean oil, not because they seek it out, but because “it ends up in everything.”
He says the original intent was to keep farmers solvent after inclement weather and other conditions damaged crop yields. His view is that the system’s good intentions have resulted, years later, in billions of dollars annually supporting ingredients that contribute to an unhealthy food system.
Mares asks listeners to imagine China or another adversary deploying a bioweapon that left 75% of Americans and 45% of children overweight or obese: the response would treat health as an existential security issue. His “magic wand” agenda combines subsidy reform, much greater preventive spending, Singapore-style health coaches, healthier school and military lunches, and stricter review of novel chemicals. He notes that 80% of schools have contracts with soda companies.
He contrasts the US approach to GRAS—“generally recognized as safe”—with the EU’s more pharmaceutical-like premarket review of novel chemical compounds. He claims the resulting gap includes 60,000–80,000 compounds present in the US but not allowed in the EU.
Torenberg’s startup question meets a structural answer: incumbents can use lobbying to entrench themselves. Mares cites Monsanto’s alleged effort to secure glyphosate liability protection while noting that roughly $14 billion in damages has been awarded to people he says suffered cancer or other diseases from glyphosate exposure.
3. Better incentives matter more than prohibition or miracle drugs
Torenberg’s challenge—why not “universal basic Ozempic”?—draws a qualified answer. Mares considers GLP-1s “an incredibly interesting technology” that may help overweight people start moving toward health, but history makes him skeptical that any single intervention will solve a species-wide problem.
His objection is mechanistic, not ideological: GLP-1s reduce appetite. If patients simply eat less of the same low-quality food, they would almost certainly become deficient in protein, micronutrients, and other essentials over a long period. Medication may address weight while leaving the food system—the upstream source of poor nutrition—intact.
Mares welcomes revised dietary guidance centered on whole foods, vegetables, fruit, meat, and well-sourced protein, contrasting it with past guidelines that, he says, recommended 15 servings of whole grain and some sugar for children under two. But he resists broad bans: “There is a place for soda in this country”; the sharper target is subsidized corn syrup and Coca-Cola’s reported $140 million of nutrition-guideline influence over 15 years.
Prevention remains economically inverted. A person at cardiovascular risk pays personally for exercise and better food, whereas someone who does nothing may receive hundreds of thousands or millions in care after a heart attack. Singapore’s coaching model suggests a different architecture: make sustained nudges and lifestyle intervention part of healthcare before an acute event.
4. TrueMed makes preventive spending tax-advantaged healthcare
Kettle & Fire exposed both demand and the affordability ceiling. Its 16-ounce bone-broth carton launched near $16 and, after nine years, averaged roughly $7 while reaching grocery stores nationally—yet buyers still called it expensive. Costco and Walmart’s organic sales reinforced Mares’s conclusion: mainstream consumers want healthier goods when economics permit them.
The TrueMed idea crystallized when Dr. Mark Kimman, a functional-medicine doctor and co-founder of Function Health, explained letters of medical necessity. For qualifying patients whose lifestyle intervention matches a condition they are treating, reversing, or preventing, such letters can unlock tax-free HSA or FSA spending on exercise, sleep aids, supplements, and healthier food.
Mares saw an opportunity to reuse telemedicine rails other companies had built, but support food interventions, exercise, and related care rather than Ozempic or testosterone replacement therapy. He considered a health-oriented grocery store and a life insurer that aggressively helps members live longer, then chose infrastructure with the potential to channel far more capital toward lifestyle interventions.
TrueMed now combines qualification and payments for partners including Eight Sleep, Peloton, Momentous, and Life Time Fitness. The decade-long ambition is straightforward: every American with or at risk of chronic disease should be incentivized to invest in prevention, including cheaper gym access, rather than waiting for an employer or insurer to cover downstream illness.
5. Mental health may be partly metabolic health
Mares supports treating psychedelics as legitimate options rather than symbols of “people dropping acid in Golden Gate Park in the ’60s.” He says ketamine-assisted therapy works better than SSRIs in many cases, especially for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD; with doctor oversight, psychedelics should join the treatment menu for veterans and others with severe illness, though public readiness remains uncertain.
His broader pushback on conventional mental-health care is biological: depression may respond to improved sleep, gut health, diet, exercise, and reduced inflammation rather than to talk therapy alone. He cites studies suggesting that this functional-medicine combination can work better than talk therapy for some people. “Our mental health is very tightly coupled to our physical health.”
Metabolic psychiatry extends that thesis to epilepsy, depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, which Mares says can have metabolic causes at root; he claims ketogenic diets can resolve these conditions in many cases. Torenberg preserves the practical triage: before constructing a deep psychological explanation, ask whether the person is sleeping, eating, exercising, and getting outside.
6. The next frontier shifts from individual optimization to measurable systems
A health-directed grocery store would do more than source better products: it could use biomarkers, track macros, recommend what customers should eat, and become responsible for improving their health. Mares then scales that logic from shoppers to communities—health-oriented towns, developments, or group insurance for people who share healthier environmental defaults could have a larger impact than isolated self-optimization.
Consciousness is the philosophical edge of his health inquiry: what does it mean to be alive, feel energetic, and feel great in body and mind? He expects to learn a lot over the next decade but offers no consensus or predictive theory; it remains a personal interest rather than a current company.
Peptides look disruptive precisely because Mares remains uncertain: “I’m not totally yet a peptide believer,” and he wants substantially more research. Individual reports nevertheless suggest inexpensive, non-patentable compounds that might improve energy, sex drive, inflammation, and gut health—a human-enhancement category distinct from pharma’s “don’t die” orientation and potentially threatening to incumbent economics.
Nutrition science, he argues, is unusually compromised because big food historically outfunded nutrition science by roughly 11-to-1 relative to the funder he names ambiguously in the transcript. Rather than join a diet tribe, he favors 90-day experiments tracked through labs, sleep, HRV, and resting heart rate. The “Peaters” approach directly opposes Bryan Johnson-style caloric restriction: Mares’s own biomarkers improved after he added orange juice and morning fruit, making the contrarianism worth testing, not canonizing.