As Delaware implements the nation's first insurance mandate for early allergen introduction on January 1st, 2026, Meenal Lele, Founder & CEO of Lil Mixins and author of The Baby and the Biome, shares her journey from food allergy parent to medical entrepreneur. With multiple patents, published clinical studies, and an engineering background, Meenal built Hanimune Therapeutics to address a crisis affecting 33 million Americans. She discusses the clinical evidence behind early allergen introduction, navigating insurance coverage, and why state-level policy changes matter for reducing childhood allergies while saving healthcare systems millions. Discover how maternal insight combined with scientific rigor is transforming prevention.
Meenal Lele, Founder & CEO, Lil Mixins
Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live
00:00:00 Intro: Welcome to digital Health talks. Each week we meet with healthcare leaders making an immeasurable difference in equity, access and quality. Hear about what tech is worth investing in and what isn't as we focus on the innovations that deliver. Join Megan Antonelli, Jenny Sharp and Shahid Shah for a weekly no BS deep dive on what's really making an impact in healthcare.
00:00:29 Megan Antonelli: Hi everyone, welcome to Digital Health Talks. This is Megan Antonelli and today we're continuing our Food as Medicine and Female Founders series. This one is a two for one and is a conversation that hits close to home for millions of families. On January first, twenty twenty six, Delaware will make history as the first state to require insurance for early allergen introduction, a policy shift that could prevent countless food allergies and save healthcare systems millions of dollars. My guest today is Mina Leal, founder and CEO of Lil Mixins and Hand Immune Therapeutics. Manale is an engineer with multiple patents, published clinical studies, and over a dozen profitable medical products. She's also the author of The Baby and the biome, and most importantly, a food allergy parent whose personal experience drove her to build evidence based solutions for thirty three million Americans living with food allergies. Lil Mixins is the only insurance covered brand for food allergy prevention, and its work is changing how parents and physicians approach allergen introduction. This is a story about maternal insight, meaning, scientific rigor, and proving that prevention works right now. How are you? Welcome to digital health talks.
00:01:44 Meenal Lele: Thank you so much for having me. I'm doing great today. Thanks.
00:01:47 Megan Antonelli: Yeah I love this story. I mean, for so many reasons. Obviously as a mom had so many, um, you know, friends and kids in our, in our sort of circle with allergies. Um, and it's just, you know, knowing that when you, when you have kids, all, you know, that that focus on them and how to help them is, is so important. And I just love your story of how you founded Lil Mixins. Tell us, tell us how, um, it came to be.
00:02:15 Meenal Lele: Yeah. So the story has been is well trodden, but my, um, my older son ended up developing a whole bunch of food allergies and, you know, kind of looking back, he is what one would consider low risk kid. You know, no family history, normal birth, healthy, um, I guess eczema, but pretty mild, honestly. Um, no real risk factors. And, um, but the one thing we didn't do was train his immune system that these were foods he was going to be seeing when he got older and, um, you know, so he ended up developing a bunch of food allergies. And then this was upsetting. It's like it's I would say like, the egg allergy, you know, is kind of the most frustrating because it's just in everything and in all the things like kids, like, you know, like birthday cake. And, um. The. Yeah. Anyway, so when, um. But when my younger son was born, we really wanted to. We found out a week after his first er visit that food allergy, turns out, is a preventable disease. And so we're upset. And then when my younger son was, um, little, we wanted we did early allergen introduction with my younger son who doesn't have any food allergies, but it was just really difficult. And, you know, and I, uh, I, we can get into this just how stacked the odds are against a parent trying to prevent, um, allergies in their kid. And I don't think I fully understood that stack when I thought, hey, what we need to do is make this, you know, relatively inexpensive for parents and super easy to do because people don't do things that are difficult and expensive, right. Especially prevention. So, um, that's that's kind of how it started. And I wanted to I just, I really wanted every as many other kids to not go through what my kid was going through. If if it was avoidable.
00:04:00 Megan Antonelli: Yeah. Well, and it is you know, it's one of those things. I mean, I always think so much about how, you know, as you have kids through the decades, the practices and the recommendations change, right? I mean, my mom used to my mom, my mom actually had three kids in three different decades, right? Seventy four, eighty four and ninety six. So the differences of what she was told to do changed dramatically. And of course, then I started having kids in two thousand and four. And so the changes were happening. And so seeing that and certainly allergies have been something that the recommendations have changed. So tell me a little bit about that. I mean, because I think I'm actually when I had my kids, we just couldn't eat anything. Right. They were they we couldn't. You didn't give them the stuff. So I think the recommendations have changed over the years. Um, so tell me a little bit about that. And, um, then we can get into some of the other stuff around your. Great.
00:04:55 Meenal Lele: So the the story is really that like you said, you know, I'm a kid of the eighties and there weren't really food allergies back then. I mean, they obviously have always existed. They were just much more rare in the nineties. The rates start spiking. And so the pediatricians didn't really know what to do. And so in, um, in the I think two thousand, they started making this recommendation that that was avoid all these foods, um, in infancy. And a great way to not have an allergic reaction is to just avoid the foods. Right. It just so turns out that also avoiding the foods in infancy will cause the allergy. So, um, but in two thousand and eight, they kind of walk back from that a little bit and said, like, actually, we don't have any data. We never had any data. When we said that, we just sort of were like throwing darts in the darts in the dark. And, um, and then the Leap study published, and that was the first big randomized controlled trial that they actually were like, well, let's just ask the question, you know, like what happens? And they showed that in children, specifically in families. And this is really important for families that are eating these foods. So if you eat peanut in your household and your family, um, the child, the infant, to be clear, um, being fed those peanut in this case between the ages of really like four months and twelve months, cut the risk that that baby would develop a peanut allergy by over eighty, well over eighty percent. So that's a that's a really massive effect. Right. And then they show the same thing for egg. And so now then they in twenty twenty the the recommendation swung to say actually actively introduce peanut and at least at least peanut containing products and well cooked egg containing products. Um into the infant diet no later than six months, no earlier than four months, and keep it in the diet. And then they make more of a passive recommendation around the rest of the foods. Um, it's just because it's harder to do the randomized controlled trial so they don't have, you know, it's more rare. So they don't have a study that shows and proves that hazelnut, for example, uh, Risk will be reduced. And so they say there's no reason to avoid hazelnut, for example, but they don't have the data to say like definitely make sure the kids eating data eating hazelnut. Right. In theory, anything you're eating in your house, that's what the kids should be eating too, right?
00:07:07 Megan Antonelli: Except the subsequent addiction to possibly Nutella, that could then be problematic.
00:07:11 Meenal Lele: Yeah, yeah.
00:07:13 Megan Antonelli: Um, but yeah. No, that's it is. It's interesting. I mean, and I my kid, my first son was born in two thousand and four and then twenty eleven. So just, I mean, just in the same household, the recommendations had changed for sure. Um, so and you have an incredible background, you know, coming not from a clinical side, but as an engineer. How did that, you know, kind of, you know, shape how you approached this problem solving in your household?
00:07:42 Meenal Lele: Yeah, it's it's a great question, actually, and I talk a lot about this sort of idea of the there's a there's a known phenomenon of a seventeen year bench to bedside lag, meaning that after people definitively prove something, it takes seventeen to twenty years for it to actually be implemented in practice. That's a lot of people born right in twenty years, and that's a lot of time in which maybe was cool if, you know, you were getting your news monthly. But now that we get our news and everything else updated every few seconds, twenty years is like eons, right? Um, but anyway. Yeah, so. So I'm not a clinician and a doctor, and so nothing, you know, we're not focused on proving that this stuff works or even inventing the idea that it works, if you will. Right. Um, that was all done. The question was like, how does somebody actually do this? And I think that's that's interestingly a classic case of where, you know, science can often fall down. It just sort of says like, this is what we should do and we can talk about it. This is true of anything, right? Because um, we might have recommendations or we're seeing this a lot with food, right? We have these recommendations where people should eat less sugar and then. And that's fine. And it's true. It's just a question of like, if all the food in the child's diet at their lunch is full of sugar, what are they supposed to do? So we can't just say, eat less sugar. We have to actually get it out of the lunch, if you will. Right. Or out of the. And so really similarly we focus on the how which is what you know what were the barriers. Well parents didn't none of these foods are safe for an infant. You can't give a baby a hazelnut or a peanut. You can't even give them peanut butter. They'll choke on it for months, right? So how do you do this in a pre-prepared way? And then secondly, it doesn't work if you give them random trace amounts. So if you were to sort of like, you know, dip your pinkie in peanut butter and let your baby suck on it, that is not an adequate quantity to train their immune system. They need to be eating two grams of the protein. I mean, do you happen to know off the top of your head how much peanut butter is two grams of protein like? No, nobody does. Right? So how do you do? How do you take that work and that thinking out. Because remember like if this parent has a four month old, they're like high priority here is like, when is nap time? You know which of the seventeen meals a day are we on? You know, um, there's just so much else going on between the, you know, are they turning their heads? Right? And they're doing this and that and all the other stuff. So we got to make it really, really easy.
00:10:16 Megan Antonelli: Yeah. No. And. Right. And I mean, when I just remember being, you know, a new mom and everything is overwhelming and there's so much there are so many sort of rules and, you know, recommendations. And everybody from your, you know, from your mother in law to your mother to, to you know, what to expect when you're expecting has recommendations on what to do and then they change. I mean, back to your point, around the seventeen years from, you know, from bench to to sort of practice. And, you know, I think we're seeing that now. I mean, we're seeing a lot of things coming out on the internet that work. And, you know, people having these sort of anecdotal, you know, sort of real time recommendations and studies and you see that. I mean, plus, you know, certainly, you know, sort of the growth of GLP one and people's medication and all of that. And that being so rapid, how people have taken it that that in fact, their anecdotal evidence is the body of work and body of science, that then science, you know, then the researchers are going back to and I think with allergy, it's much the same way because, you know, it's one of those things where there isn't the financial backing to drive the research because it's about something you're not supposed to eat. There's not something you can necessarily sell except in your case to prevent them, you know, and and so that, that, um, you know, sort of work and research doesn't get done, um, you know, which speaks to kind of the broader challenges within this, the system of healthcare in the country. And so I want to talk a little bit about, you know, what's going on in Delaware. Tell us a little bit about this insurance mandate. I think, you know, it's important for everyone to understand what that means and why, um, you know, why it's even a thing? Because it's like, why wouldn't it be covered?
00:12:01 Meenal Lele: Great question. You would think like, oh my gosh, how awesome. Like, the doctors proved that something so simple works. Like we would be handing it out in, uh, leaving, you know, baskets as people leave the hospital or whatever, like, but no, that's not how it works. Um, the it turns out that, um, basically, you know, insurance will cover things that are drugs and things that are treatments in the, you know, medical devices or surgeries or things like that. Um, when there are interventions that are actually so low cost that they're actually just food insurance refuses to cover them. And this was but we have examples from the past, right. So we take the example of folic acid. It was proven that this could prevent all sorts of neural tube defects in in in pregnancy. And so eventually legislators stepped in and said, you know, the insurance has to cover this because, you know, human beings, first of all, most parents don't have that much money, right? So, so even something that costs you might think, you know, this sort of prevention at thirty dollars or forty dollars is not very much, but it's a lot to some families, and it's specifically a lot about a problem they don't have today. Right. So I think and that's really one of the things that gets confusing for people, because most of us are motivated to spend money once we have a problem. But honestly, if you ask, most of us would love to just not have had that problem in the first place, right? So yes, am I motivated to be on a GLP one or, you know, to to get the ACL surgery or something after it's born? Yeah, sure. Definitely. But like, maybe I just didn't want to tear my ACL at all. Right. And if you could have given me and I'm not saying this is a real thing, I just mean like if if every kid in playing soccer gets the right warm ups so that they don't tear their ACL. We would all prefer that, right? But that's not an industry. And so this is the same thing like the the legislators in Delaware recognized. And it was I really want to give props to Kim Williams here who is a representative in Delaware. And she was the first to really see like but this just saves the state so much money. And and I hate to make it just about the money because I really do want to American study of so many of us are suffering from chronic diseases. So it shouldn't be that hard for people to empathize with. But chronic diseases are awful, right? You just never get to let up. And there's no real way to define the value of just not being miserable all the time, right? But but it is like if you have food allergies, like just you're constantly cycling, like, what am I going to eat? How am I going to eat it? Right? So I'm thinking about I was just looking at a flight, for example, and and the flight had a layover. And so most people are thinking, oh, that's three extra hours or like, you know, whatever. But no, I'm cycling. If I'm taking my son, how will we have enough food to last that layover? What if it's different meal? Will they let us pack multiple different kinds of meals? Can I afford a layover? Even if it's cheaper, I might. I might pay twice the money for a direct flight just to avoid an extra meal. Right. And that is a lot of thinking to do months before a trip. But that's what your life is like about everything. Can I go to this networking event? And so but that's that's not how we factor in costs. And Tim Williams really saw that. And she was like, no, that the trauma that these people feel and then the difficulty they'll have navigating life, that's what she wanted to prevent. Right. And so she she was she's a force of nature. But she she really took the time to help all of her colleagues see the benefit. And once, um, you know, it was interesting, uh, you know, all the doctors societies sent in their letters of support and things like this. But once we got down. But most things in just don't move. They never move. But she made it move, right? She she just really she insisted that it come up for a vote. And then once it was up for a vote, all these legislators stepped in and said, hey, my constituents have these allergies. I have an allergy. You know, like, if we can do this, this would be great. But, you know, right now we're stuck in a couple of states in Pennsylvania and New York where it just won't come up for a vote. And so I just want to give Kim Williams, the representative, Williams, the, um, the credit she deserves. Right? For it was that she was a force of nature. She is a force of nature. Yeah.
00:16:16 Megan Antonelli: Well, that, you know, I mean, it is, um, you know, I mean, I think it's incredible that you were able to kind of work with Kim and make this change happen, but I think, um, you know, the fact that it needs to happen to make this a thing is, you know, what is the, you know, it's sort of shocking. So in terms of Lil mixins and and what it is, tell our audience a little bit about how it works and kind of what the you know, what the process is and, and how it helps.
00:16:44 Meenal Lele: It's it's the opposite of rocket science. It's literally just defatted dehydrated food. That's it. It's there's nothing more complicated than that. So if babies are supposed to be eating well cooked eggs, which means a hard boiled egg, well, but those things are not shelf stable, right? So then they become expensive. So all what the magic is taking that and dehydrating it. So you can put dozens of eggs worth into a single unit, and that can last someone multiple months to do it. But then once it's in a powder form, a dehydrated powder form, it's very easy to measure specific doses, right? Then you can say, well, this this scoop size is equal to a serving. This is like not complex stuff, but it's just instead of saying a third of an egg or something. But what size egg grade A, grade B whatever. It's just it's a scoop. And same with peanut butter, right? We just take the fat and the water out so it's shelf stable. Um, Um, it maintains in both cases it maintains all the nutrients. But just now it can't choke a baby. And it's easy to dose or make servings.
00:17:45 Megan Antonelli: Right. And so it's added to the baby food or to correct at the right age. And you give that kind of dosing appropriate. And in this um, you know, obviously I'm sure, you know, parents who are, you know, sort of on top of it and, you know, all, you know, but as you said, um, you know, it costs money. It's expensive. So we want to get insurance coverage for it so that it is sort of part of that, you know, almost like part of the vaccine curriculum, you know, schedule. Right? Correct.
00:18:15 Meenal Lele: It's it also just takes time. Like it's not it takes thirty minutes to to boil an egg, let it cool down, puree it for the baby. And that's thirty minutes that when you're very tired with a four to six month old, you don't have. Right. Um, and that labor is also. This is another thing, right? Like, the mom's labor is never counted. But if you factor in the labor of preparing these foods, it's so much more. So much cheaper to just make it ahead of time.
00:18:42 Megan Antonelli: Right. And then, you know, in going back to kind of the insurance coverage and as you know, we've talked a lot about food as medicine. And, you know, I think it sort of came into our vernacular. I mean, obviously there's Michael Pollan and there's all these, you know, sort of movements. But as it started, you know, I don't think it really kind of came into health care administrator politics, you know, sort of the policy piece of this. Um, you know, less about five, ten, you know, five, ten years ago. And now, you know, it's gaining momentum. You're seeing events around it. You're certainly seeing some, you know, some people willing to talk about it, however. And we've got, you know, we've got examples of health systems that are, you know, funding their own farms and trying to feed real food to patients and getting the benefits of that. Um, but who's paying for it in general? It's the health system or, you know, there are a few areas where you're seeing some pockets of Medicaid paying for some programs. Um, you know, we've had the folks from Eat Real on the show in terms of schools and school lunches and as a place where that, you know, is able to get into it. But you know this in terms of, you know, insurance coverage and, you know, to some degree, what's broken about our system is that we don't pay for prevention, right. And then we say, and when we talk about the importance of prevention, we say, who who's supposed to pay for it? Right. And the ones that we come to are, you know, well, the employers or the or the or the insurers have the most financial interest in paying for prevention. So you've done a lot of work in Delaware. Now we're coming to sort of in Pennsylvania and New York. What are some of the barriers? Why? Why isn't this like yeah, obviously we're going to we're going to cover this. It's so simple. It's not an expensive intervention. It's certainly less expensive than any kind of anaphylactic episode that a child might have because of an allergy. Um, reaction. So what's the you know what? What is the you know, what are the barriers here?
00:20:46 Meenal Lele: It's if I may step back for a second, I just I want to bring up the point you made about, you know, Michael Pollan and everything else. And I think this has gotten kind of conflated, um, a little bit because there's sort of food is medicine and food as medicine, and they get used interchangeably and they're a little bit different. And I know I'm splitting hairs, but I just want to talk about this because I almost feel like there is diet as medicine. And that's I think what most people mean when they say food as medicine. They're like, what if we just ate better, right? If we were overall healthier? And that would obviously make us all better off. Right. And I'm totally pro that obviously. And then I think in this particular case, this is a specific example of food. Is medicine like the food is literally the drug. And if you think of medicine as drugs, right. And food early allergen introduction is as direct and intervention as like giving sailors vitamin C so they don't get scurvy. Right. It is that linear of a correlation or mechanism of action. And and so or folic acid in pregnancy. Right. Where it's it's it's literally it's just so happens that the drug itself happens to also be a food. And I'm just differentiating those two situations because you would think that it would be hard for a system to get around the idea that, oh, what am I going to do, pay for everyone's Whole Foods bill, right? That diet as medicine should be harder to wrap your head around than food is medicine right where this like I'm just preventing scurvy. That should be really straightforward. And it isn't. And and it's I, you know, honestly, the only the only opposition we have to the bills in Pennsylvania, New York are the insurers themselves. And They have come out and said that they will not. They will. They will fight a mandate, but they won't do it without a mandate. That's it. They said it will cost twelve cents. A person that they know that that's the cost, not the savings. Right? So long term, it will save them a ton of money. They admitted that that was their own analysis. It's twelve cents a person and they said they will not do it. Um, and you know everybody nobody likes food allergy. Nobody is better off in a world with more food allergy, right? Like, teachers hate it. The restaurants hate it. Tourism hates it. Employers hate it. It's increasing. Like we can't have a lunch in our office anymore because it's really difficult to do or go on a field trip or whatever, right? Everyone's worse off. You know who else hates it? The egg producers of Pennsylvania, right? Because who's eating their eggs? If everyone has an egg allergy. You know where all the peanuts and eggs are grown in the United States. And so we're hurting our own agriculture basis, right? But to all of these people are worse off. Right. But the insurers are fighting it and they're winning. And and that to me. And when, when the when they were asked why are they fighting it, they said, well, we're forced to cover folic acid and not everyone uses it. This is in writing. And you're like, well I don't what how how is that a problem?
00:23:54 Megan Antonelli: Right.
00:23:56 Meenal Lele: Mystery.
00:23:57 Megan Antonelli: Right? No, it doesn't make any sense at all. Yeah. I mean, you know, and I think that there's and I think what I love about, you know, sort of work you're doing obviously the impact on, you know, those with allergies. And, but I think it's such a good example of sort of these simple, low tech, easy remedies treatments, you know, preventative measures that we continue to kind of ignore because the system is built, you know, to ignore them and not because, you know, I also stand by the fact that everyone who works in healthcare, even the insurers, the insurers, pharma, you know, goes into healthcare because they want to help people. They want to help people be healthy. There's no there's no one who says, I want to stop people from being healthy. It's just that the laws, the policies, the, the, the real systemic issues within healthcare tend to push whatever stakeholder they are to make poor decisions that tie their hands in some way. And ultimately, to make any change happen, we have to do what you're doing, which is to take, you know, sort of these small examples that are, you know, have impact, but make, make huge change. Right. And to, to really go after, you know, this. So I think your story is super inspiring from that standpoint. Tell our tell our audience a little bit about, you know, what that has been like. I mean, in terms of sort of changing the conversation both, you know, we talked a little bit about insurance. I imagine you also talk to a lot of pediatricians and parents and and kind of get the word out that way as well. I mean, it's, you know, it's obviously available to folks. Um, otherwise as well.
00:25:35 Meenal Lele: Yeah. It's, um, you know, so look over. Overall, everyone wants healthier children, right? And then healthier humans, like, they're just. I don't know who you are. That that that would not be the case, right? So in general, it's a really easy conversation. It's been really gratifying. Um, it's great to see, you know, a big study came out that did Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where they showed the food allergy. Peanut allergy rates are falling in the United States as pediatricians implement and talk to more parents about early allergen introduction. They estimated sixty six thousand children who would have had a peanut allergy don't have one today because of that. So it's great, right? Like that's a healthier population. We can get a win. Um, the the other the other side of it has just been sort of fascinating like study of human psychology, of like how people just don't evaluate things on the basis of the data. They just want to see other people do it. Like most people are not actually evaluating whether something is true or false, they're just evaluating if other people are doing it. And um, and like that kind of thing. And, and um, and also but even amongst a lot of doctors like we get you get pushback. They're like, well, people don't need products. And I said, okay, you know, do you use baby food? And they're like, yeah, all my patients use baby food. I was like, you know, baby food isn't a real thing. It's just adult food. It's been pureed like there's no reason for the baby food aisle to exist. It's like, do you really needed a company to mash a banana for you and put it into a pouch? That doesn't make any sense. And but I can tell you as a parent, I did actually need that. There were a lot of times I didn't have the time, and yes, I needed the baby food. So. But how can a doctor, like, wrap their head around? And I actually got into a debate once with a doctor. He said, well, people don't need products. They can do early introduction themselves. And I said, okay, so what are you having for dinner today? He's a takeout. I was like, all right, so tell me more about that. So you can't feed yourself, but you're sure that your families can, you know, and you're hungry. You know, you have a problem and you're willing to feed yourself, you know, but like, this is a problem they don't have. So anyway, that has been a really fascinating I think, um, just that like this whole idea of food, like we really, in the United States have separated medicine from food, right? And and yet we intellectually understand that it is our medicine and yet but like, bridging those two things has been challenging.
00:28:02 Megan Antonelli: Um, it is I mean, I mean, it it's systemic, I mean, and and then at the same time you've got, you know, FDA, right? So the Food and Drug Administration, you know, we we actually deliberately, you know, I mean, we, we by doing that have have to some degree made that distinction And it continues to be. And I think, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier around what is that distinction that drugs have an inherent risk or there's a cost, you know, a risk benefit calculation that food for whatever reason, we don't attribute that to. But of course, some of the foods that we eat are some of the more risky things we put in our bodies.
00:28:46 Meenal Lele: Yeah, but this is this is true also, right? Like so people believe that their drugs are cleaner than the food they eat, right? Most people believe, oh drug is made in GMP. It's higher quality. But I can tell you from having worked in both scenarios, I was like, what? I always remind people. I was like, how big is that? Tylenol you took, how much? And then and then think about the bacterial load that it could get away with versus the salad you just had. Right. Which of those two things is bigger? So which one do you think is cleaner? Actually the salad is actually cleaner. Our food is actually often produced at higher quality, with less bacterial load than our drugs are, because you're not taking enough of anything to get sick off of it, right? And and you brought up this point about why did the FDA start approving drugs is because we thought they were risky, right? The thalidomide scare showed us that you can't just put anything in humans and assume it'll be fine, right? That that, uh. It's not a scare. The thalidomide disaster, I should say. Um, there were certain things that could have value, but we needed to prove that they had value because they were so risky. But we don't approve food because it's not risky. It's not dangerous to eat kale. It's not dangerous. I mean, produced at the when it's produced at the quality that American food is produced at, it is not inherently dangerous. You can't OD, you know, on spinach. So there's no risk, right? You know, so that's why the FDA doesn't have to step in. Because you can only you will naturally stop eating it. You will be fine. And and so but it's somehow that got inverted, where people thought, oh, the fact that they're approving it means that it's better for me, but it's actually the opposite. The fact that they're not approving the food is what makes it better for you. The fact that it was never risky to begin with, it has all these upsides.
00:30:34 Megan Antonelli: You know, we can talk about it. We can talk about kale and bananas and and real foods. But ninety nine percent of us are eating foods that are so full of chemicals and, you know, drugs and additives and everything else that, you know, there's that the idea that we don't then continue, you know, that that we've not put together the fact that food is medicine is, um, you know, makes very little sense. And I think, you know, you see it, you know, there's certain things, you know, obviously Europe and internationally where they do not, you know, you can't have a Twinkie because the additives and the chemicals that are in there, um, you know, that it's become food is poison. And half of the stuff that we're eating, right, is.
00:31:17 Meenal Lele: They take the they take a rational approach, which they just say individual ingredients pose a risk or don't pose risk and then need approval or don't need approval before they get into the system. Right. So that the plastics in your chewing gum, they might say, well, hey, nobody needs that. Right. And it is a potentially risky thing. So let's make sure it's safe first. Whereas we're not going to do that with the banana. Right. And we weirdly are like if you're eating a lot of it that's fine. But if you're going to put a little bit in your Tylenol and then, you know, then we're going to ask a lot of questions, right?
00:31:49 Megan Antonelli: Yeah. No, it is, you know, and it just goes back to the, you know, the system. There's a lot a lot of levers to change. And so I really, you know, it's um, I think that there's, you know, the work that you're doing to kind of, you know, impact and make change around the policy. Tell our audience a little bit what they can do. Can they help in terms of particularly in New York and Pennsylvania? We've got lots, lots of listeners there.
00:32:13 Meenal Lele: Yeah, I mean, the number one thing anyone in Pennsylvania and New York can do is call their state, state representatives or assembly members in New York and senators and say, hey, I know this bill. It's, you know, House Bill six seventy four and Senate Bill nine seventy eight and Pennsylvania and Assembly Bill seven seventy one in New York. And I forget the number of the Senate bill. But in any case, these are they've just been they've this the insurers won't let them come up for a vote. And all you can ask is like, I'm not asking the senators or Republican, you know, I'm sorry, Representatives. I'm just saying let it come up for a vote. If this is something you care about, you think it should be heard, right? Like let the debate at least happen. Um.
00:32:58 Megan Antonelli: And then in terms of. Yeah, right. Call, call and and make noise, that's that's how we can make change and make an impact. Um, in terms of, uh, folks who might be, you know, have have kids and who are interested in, you know, getting little mix ins, can they get it themselves? They have to go through their physician. What's the best way to get it?
00:33:18 Meenal Lele: No. Little Nixon's is totally available. Um, you know, DTC through Amazon or anything else. And I do want to caveat the two things like like that I've been pushing back on, number one, that you don't need little mixes if you are comfortable making the foods and preparing them safely for your kid, please, by all means go for it. And in fact, we restrict our customers on our subscription to four months because after that, your kids should be old enough to be eating real food. So we don't want people on, you know, even the dehydrated forms, they're perfectly the same nutrition. But my point.
00:33:49 Megan Antonelli: Is, supplement my protein needs that I. That I should not exist.
00:33:53 Meenal Lele: Please just eat the real eat the the naturalist version. Right. Like if that's peanuts or if that's peanut butter, I you know, we really want babies, especially eating as close to exactly what they're going to eat as adults. And so, um, that's great when you can do that. So you can get it at, you know, online any all the major sort of places, but also feel free, feel very, very free to make it yourself and do that, because I think a whole food diet is is the best medicine we have.
00:34:22 Megan Antonelli: Absolutely. Well, with that, thank you so much for joining us. It's really just been a pleasure to hear hear the story, learn about the work that you're doing, you know, and think about it in the context of, you know, kind of this bigger picture around, you know, making an impact. Food as medicine and food is medicine and making those changes so that prevention, uh, you know, is, you know, is just easier for folks because that's that's really what it all comes down to in terms of, in terms of health. So thanks for joining us. Thank you to our audience. And thank you for joining us on Digital Health Talks. This is Megan Antonelli and we'll see you next time.
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