Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy

Meera & Ashok Vasudevan
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Nutrition
  • Updated Biweekly

Meera & Ashok Vasudevan bring 50+ years of experience as leaders in the Plant-based & Natural Food industry. Their entrepreneurial journey continues with the recent acquisition of 2 heritage brands- Annapurna & Captain CookIn this timely podcast series titled "Pay the farmer, Not the Pharmacy" they show you how to unleash the magic in your kitchen with evidence-based tips & tricks that improve digestion, enhance gut health, build immunity and provide simple solutions to affordable wellness. Pay the Farmer, Not the pharmacy. Brought to you by CSAW, the Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness.   Also, included are other talks, interviews and discussions of Ashok Vasudevan on a range of issues, not only related to food to wellness 

  1. 6d ago

    Read the Label Episode 4/4-

    Share your thoughts The MUST Test: Raising the Bar on Food A pill must prove it does good. A food additive only has to prove it does no harm. Why? Three weeks of asking what is in your food, and now the question the whole series was built for. Before a medicine reaches you it must prove not only that it will not harm you, but that it actually does something — measured against a placebo, under scrutiny that assumes nothing. A food additive, eaten daily for a lifetime, faces a far lighter test. In the United States a great many enter the food supply under a doctrine called GRAS, “generally recognized as safe,” where the company making the additive often assembles its own evidence and declares it safe. In this finale Ashok and Meera make a proposal that is not “ban the chemicals” — it is change the question. Call it MUST: Minimal, Useful, Safe, Tested. They take the fair objection head-on (who decides what “useful” means, and wouldn’t industry capture the new bar as it shaped the old?), then come home to the one shelf you actually control. Your pantry should be a cook’s workshop, not a miniature of the supermarket aisle. Based on Ashok’s essay “Trust but Read the Label”: https://ashokv.substack.com/p/trust-but-read-the-label Thanks for tuning in to "Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy"! Hosted by Meera & Ashok Vasudevan Stay Connected #PayTheFarmerNotThePharmacy #PlantBasedWellness #NaturalFood #AffordableWellness #GutHealth #ImmunityBoost #NutritionTips #CSAW (Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness) #Meeravasudevan #Ashokvasudevan https://umaglobalfoods.com/ https://csaw.co https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/pay-the-farmer-not-the-pharmacy/id1512934794 https://open.spotify.com/show/34nzNQQ62O8tygMaut2h8V

  2. Sep 21

    READ THE LABEL — EPISODE 3 OF 4

    Share your thoughts Food Additives: Banned There, Allowed Here Same chemical, same evidence, opposite verdicts — and the global safety vote that passed sixty-nine to sixty-seven. The same additive is illegal in one country and perfectly legal in another. Not because one set of scientists found harm and the other did not — but because the two are answering different questions. This week Ashok and Meera open the case files: potassium bromate, banned across the EU, UK, Canada, Brazil, China and India and still legal in the United States; titanium dioxide, the bright white in icing, banned in the EU in 2022 and permitted in the US; the nitrites in cured meat, the one genuinely settled item on the tour. Plus a deliberate act of fairness — the exoneration of MSG, the most feared additive of the last half century that turned out to be among the safest. And then the moment the whole series has been walking towards: July 2012, when Codex could not reach consensus on a growth drug in the world’s meat, and so it voted. Sixty-nine to sixty-seven. Seven abstentions. That is how the global definition of “safe” was settled. Based on Ashok’s essay “Trust but Read the Label”: https://ashokv.substack.com/p/trust-but-read-the-label Thanks for tuning in to "Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy"! Hosted by Meera & Ashok Vasudevan Stay Connected #PayTheFarmerNotThePharmacy #PlantBasedWellness #NaturalFood #AffordableWellness #GutHealth #ImmunityBoost #NutritionTips #CSAW (Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness) #Meeravasudevan #Ashokvasudevan https://umaglobalfoods.com/ https://csaw.co https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/pay-the-farmer-not-the-pharmacy/id1512934794 https://open.spotify.com/show/34nzNQQ62O8tygMaut2h8V

  3. Sep 14

    READ THE LABEL: EPISODE 2 OF 4

    Share your thoughts CODEX: The Committee That Feeds the World A committee in Rome decides what goes into your food — and it was never asked whether any of it makes you well. Last week we turned a packet over. This week we go to Rome — to a building most people have never heard of, housing a committee that quietly decides what may go into food, everywhere on earth. Ashok and Meera introduce Codex Alimentarius: founded in 1963 by two arms of the United Nations, 189 members, and the author of the rulebook behind almost everything in your kitchen. It ended chalk in the flour and water in the milk, and it deserves real credit for that. But read its own stated purpose twice — “protecting consumers’ health and ensuring fair practices in the food trade” — and you find health and trade in the same breath. The operative word is protect. Not promote. In this episode: why a Codex number is a passport rather than advice, the machine that subtracts goodness from food and sells a fraction of it back as innovation, and the startling arithmetic of who actually sits in the room where “safe” gets defined. Based on Ashok’s essay “Trust but Read the Label”: https://ashokv.substack.com/p/trust-but-read-the-label Thanks for tuning in to "Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy"! Hosted by Meera & Ashok Vasudevan Stay Connected #PayTheFarmerNotThePharmacy #PlantBasedWellness #NaturalFood #AffordableWellness #GutHealth #ImmunityBoost #NutritionTips #CSAW (Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness) #Meeravasudevan #Ashokvasudevan https://umaglobalfoods.com/ https://csaw.co https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/pay-the-farmer-not-the-pharmacy/id1512934794 https://open.spotify.com/show/34nzNQQ62O8tygMaut2h8V

  4. Sep 7

    READ THE LABEL — EPISODE 1 of 4

    Share your thoughts  Food Labels: What’s Really in Your Food? The ice cream that wouldn’t melt — and the question nobody is asking about what you eat. Ashok bought an ice cream bar at a railway kiosk in Wales and made the mistake of turning it over: the first seven ingredients belonged in a kitchen, the next ten in a lab. Then, from Wales to Antigua — where Meera made her own discovery: a strawberry ice cream in a cup that simply refused to melt, sitting there like a mousse, holding its pose long after real ice cream would have surrendered into cream. In this opener of our four-part Read the Label series, Ashok and Meera ask the question nobody official is asking about your food: not “is it safe?” — that’s been answered thousands of times — but “is it good for you?” From an 18-ingredient loaf of bread to the strange comfort of the word “approved,” this is where the story of your label begins. Based on Ashok’s essay “Trust but Read the Label”: https://ashokv.substack.com/p/trust-but-read-the-label Thanks for tuning in to "Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy"! Hosted by Meera & Ashok Vasudevan Stay Connected #PayTheFarmerNotThePharmacy #PlantBasedWellness #NaturalFood #AffordableWellness #GutHealth #ImmunityBoost #NutritionTips #CSAW (Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness) #Meeravasudevan #Ashokvasudevan https://umaglobalfoods.com/ https://csaw.co https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/pay-the-farmer-not-the-pharmacy/id1512934794 https://open.spotify.com/show/34nzNQQ62O8tygMaut2h8V

  5. Aug 31

    WE ARE WHAT WE EAT— EPISODE 4 OF 4

    Share your thoughts The Kitchen and the Pivot: Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy (We Are What We Eat, Part 4 of 4) The finale begins in the oldest wellness institution on earth: grandmother's kitchen. Turmeric, ferments, whole grains, seasonal vegetables — preventive medicine served three times a day and called lunch. In the closing episode of the series based on Ashok's Substack essay, Ashok and Meera connect that compressed wisdom (via Michael Pollan's famous rule) to the modern evidence — and then make the pivot: an appeal to the food industry itself. Scale and nutrition are not in conflict. Convenience and integrity are not opposites. Drawing lightly on Ashok's four decades in food, this episode argues that community health isn't a constraint on business — it's the foundation of it. Plus: what "pay the farmer, not the pharmacy" actually means, and three evidence-based things you can do this week. 📖 Read the essay that inspired the series: https://ashokv.substack.com/p/we-are-what-we-eat We are what we eat. Eat well — and pay the farmer, not the pharmacy. Thanks for tuning in to "Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy"! Hosted by Meera & Ashok Vasudevan Stay Connected #PayTheFarmerNotThePharmacy #PlantBasedWellness #NaturalFood #AffordableWellness #GutHealth #ImmunityBoost #NutritionTips #CSAW (Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness) #Meeravasudevan #Ashokvasudevan https://umaglobalfoods.com/ https://csaw.co https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/pay-the-farmer-not-the-pharmacy/id1512934794 https://open.spotify.com/show/34nzNQQ62O8tygMaut2h8V

  6. Aug 24

    WE ARE WHAT WE EAT—EPISODE 3 OF 4

    Share your thoughts The Great Decoupling: Sixty Years, One Chart (We Are What We Eat, Part 3 of 4) At the heart of Ashok's Substack essay is a single chart: sixty years of food industry growth — revenue up ~26x, market value up ~100x since 1980 — drawn against sixty years of rising obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and depression. In Part 3, Ashok and Meera read that chart honestly: not as prosecution (correlation isn't causation, and they say so), but as provocation. What changed in the 1970s and 80s, when food science shifted from preserving food to engineering desire? How did the "bliss point" become a business model, and ultra-processed products come to supply over half our calories? And why did nobody decide any of this — yet it happened anyway? The decoupling of business success from community health wasn't a conspiracy. It was ten thousand small optimizations. Which means it might be reversible the same way. 📖 See the chart and read the full essay: https://ashokv.substack.com/p/we-are-what-we-eat We are what we eat. Eat well — and pay the farmer, not the pharmacy. Thanks for tuning in to "Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy"! Hosted by Meera & Ashok Vasudevan Stay Connected #PayTheFarmerNotThePharmacy #PlantBasedWellness #NaturalFood #AffordableWellness #GutHealth #ImmunityBoost #NutritionTips #CSAW (Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness) #Meeravasudevan #Ashokvasudevan https://umaglobalfoods.com/ https://csaw.co https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/pay-the-farmer-not-the-pharmacy/id1512934794 https://open.spotify.com/show/34nzNQQ62O8tygMaut2h8V

  7. Aug 17

    WE ARE WHAT W EAT— EPISODE 2 OF 4

    Share your thoughts The Four Disorders: What Modern Food Does to Us (We Are What We Eat, Part 2 of 4) Obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, depression — four conditions that now define modern healthcare, each with a direct line to the plate. In Part 2 of our series based on Ashok's Substack essay "We Are What We Eat," Ashok and Meera take the four disorders one at a time and follow the evidence: the NIH trial in which ultra-processed diets led people to eat 500 extra calories a day without noticing; how refined carbs wear out the insulin system; why processed food's sodium-up, potassium-down arithmetic raises blood pressure; and the emerging gut-brain science — including the SMILES trial — linking diet and depression. Plus a careful look at additives like emulsifiers, and what the research actually says. One pattern runs through it all: overprocessing. And one reframe: every one of these conditions has a lever in the kitchen. 📖 Read the full essay: https://ashokv.substack.com/p/we-are-what-we-eat Key studies mentioned: •       Hall et al., Cell Metabolism (2019) — NIH ultra-processed food trial •       Jacka et al., BMC Medicine (2017) — the SMILES trial We are what we eat. Eat well — and pay the farmer, not the pharmacy. Thanks for tuning in to "Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy"! Hosted by Meera & Ashok Vasudevan Stay Connected #PayTheFarmerNotThePharmacy #PlantBasedWellness #NaturalFood #AffordableWellness #GutHealth #ImmunityBoost #NutritionTips #CSAW (Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness) #Meeravasudevan #Ashokvasudevan https://umaglobalfoods.com/ https://csaw.co https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/pay-the-farmer-not-the-pharmacy/id1512934794 https://open.spotify.com/show/34nzNQQ62O8tygMaut2h8V

  8. Aug 10

    WE ARE WHAT WE EAT: EPISODE 1 OF 4

    Share your thoughts The Promise: How Food Became an Industry (We Are What We Eat, Part 1 of 4) For 150 years, the food industry was one of civilization's great success stories. In Part 1 of this four-part series — based on Ashok's Substack essay "We Are What We Eat — And What the Food Industry Decided to Feed Us" — Ashok and Meera trace the remarkable arc from Nicolas Appert's 1810 preservation breakthrough, through the rise of the great brands that fed growing cities, to the Codex Alimentarius of 1963 that made food one of the most trusted, regulated industries on earth. This is the story of business and community in genuine symbiosis — the promise the industry made, and kept, for a century and a half. Understanding that promise matters, because in the next episode we ask: what happened when it quietly broke? 📖 Read the full essay: https://ashokv.substack.com/p/we-are-what-we-eat Coming up in this series: •       Part 2: The Four Disorders — obesity, diabetes, hypertension, depression, and the plate •       Part 3: The Great Decoupling — sixty years of data, one uncomfortable chart •       Part 4: The Kitchen and the Pivot — grandmother’s wisdom and the way forward We are what we eat. Eat well — and pay the farmer, not the pharmacy. Thanks for tuning in to "Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy"! Hosted by Meera & Ashok Vasudevan Stay Connected #PayTheFarmerNotThePharmacy #PlantBasedWellness #NaturalFood #AffordableWellness #GutHealth #ImmunityBoost #NutritionTips #CSAW (Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness) #Meeravasudevan #Ashokvasudevan https://umaglobalfoods.com/ https://csaw.co https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/pay-the-farmer-not-the-pharmacy/id1512934794 https://open.spotify.com/show/34nzNQQ62O8tygMaut2h8V

See All (95)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Meera & Ashok Vasudevan bring 50+ years of experience as leaders in the Plant-based & Natural Food industry. Their entrepreneurial journey continues with the recent acquisition of 2 heritage brands- Annapurna & Captain CookIn this timely podcast series titled "Pay the farmer, Not the Pharmacy" they show you how to unleash the magic in your kitchen with evidence-based tips & tricks that improve digestion, enhance gut health, build immunity and provide simple solutions to affordable wellness. Pay the Farmer, Not the pharmacy. Brought to you by CSAW, the Centre for the Spread of Affordable Wellness.   Also, included are other talks, interviews and discussions of Ashok Vasudevan on a range of issues, not only related to food to wellness 

Information

  • Creator
    Meera & Ashok Vasudevan
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    95
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy
  • Show Website
    Pay the Farmer, Not the Pharmacy

You Might Also Like