3 Experts Reveal the Secrets to Optimizing Your Nutrition | 1201 | Dave Asprey

How would you suggest that listeners know whether they're eating the good stuff versus stuff that looks like the good stuff?

Eat weird food. And I go to the farmer's farm, like, what is that? I never see that before. I'm gonna eat some of that bitter melon or what is that fruit? Or. And I. And I'm sort of always trying to eat weird, strange food because the more wild, the less commercially raised it is, the more weird it is, the better it is for you.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Do you use ghee or olive oil? Like, what kinds of oils do you recommend for kids?

The. The main cooking fat in the cookbook is ghee, and there's. There's olive oil in there. I use duck fat, tallow. But the main. The main cooking fat in there, because I think it's really accessible for parents too, is. Is ghee.

Yep.

And in my house and in the bulletproof diet, it's always been ghee, tallow, duck fat, which is not quite as good as tallow, but still pretty good. Or rendered lard from pasture raised pigs that didn't eat corn and soy, which is decent but not amazing. And maybe some coconut oil or palm oil if you need to. Or, you know, the local restaurant wants to use palm oil. That's a safe oil. It's just not as good as the others. So that's amazing for kids. And what happens when kids start eating those kinds of oils?

Well, I think it's good for their brains. Yeah, it's good for their. Yeah, their bodies. I mean, they're growing so, so rapidly that I think it just feeds. Feeds their brains.

It definitely, in the studies I've seen, it feeds their brains. It also accelerates their metabolism. Saturated fats warm you up. The polyunsaturated fats slow metabolic rate. And when you first eat only plant oils for about six weeks, you get high from it because your body panics and gives you extra thyroid hormone until your thyroid runs out of the ability to do that. And then your metabolism starts to slow. In fact, it's omega 6 fats that cause bears to hibernate in the winter. If you give them butter, they don't hibernate. They just keep going. So I don't want my kids hibernating. It doesn't seem like it's good for them. And so that's one of the things. It's energy and it's also satiety. 1. There's a couple stories that come up for me. One of them is incredibly bougie. But we, we feed our kids in the morning. Back when they were younger, it was avocados and smoked salmon for breakfast. Because smoked salmon from Costco, you know, can get sockeye sandwich actually surprisingly cheap. More expensive than baloney, but not that much more expensive. And we would do that with some sort of grain free wrap that we would put together for them and they loved it. But then, you know, one day my son, as all toddlers do, it's going, nah, and you know, I don't want to. And I said, hey, some kids who go to school don't get any breakfast or maybe they just get a bag of chips like, like you're really lucky to have smoked salmon. And he looks at me, almost has tears in his eyes. He goes, you mean their mommies don't make them because this is what he wanted, breakfast? He goes, you mean their mommies don't make them bacon and duck eggs for breakfast? Because our local farm had duck eggs. So like he's having the best food on the planet and he's just mad because he didn't get that food instead of the other best food on the planet. And I just was shaking my head going, have no idea. Um, but he did eat the smoked salmon, so that was good. Um, and then my daughter came home from kindergarten or first grade or whatever and she says, daddy, as soon as I get to school, the teachers try to make me eat and I'm not hungry, I just had breakfast. How can the other kids eat? Don't they have breakfast? And I, I said, well, ask them what they have. And she comes back and says, you know, little Susie or whatever her name is, she had a green apple for breakfast. I said, well, if you ate a green apple, would you be hungry? And she said, yeah. I go, that's why the teachers are doing it. So we had to actually sit down with the teachers and say, don't make my kid eat if she's not hungry. How do you handle that with your kids?

Well, I think that I talk about this in the cookbook. When my kids have over snacked, they aren't going to come to the table hungry. They are going to pick around if there's a new food that I want them to eat. They're less likely to eat it if they're not hungry. And I think that snacks are just, they're just marketed to, you know, you know, schools, preschools, parents, all of us, we've all, you know, we live in a snack kind of obsessed world. And so I think that snacks are fine, but I. I want to be really. I try to be mindful about them because I really do think sitting down and having real meals is what is. Is the. The healthiest and keeps us full and. And feeling. Feeling better than grazing all day.

One of the things that worked for me when the kids were protesting new foods is. And I only had to do this once, actually, I said, you know what? I'm so happy that you've decided to join me in an intermittent fast. It turns out our bodies could live for 60 whole days or more without dying of starvation, even if we're really hungry. So let's both put our food in the fridge, and we can intermittent fast as long as you like. And instead of the normal thing, which is parents, we innately feel that, like, we are starving if our child is hungry, because we're wired by mother nature to make sure our kids eat. Like, it's a very deep, visceral parental response, but it's automated in your body's operating system. And when I said that, son just looked at me fine. And then he ate, and he never pulled it again. Because they eat what we eat. The downside, though, is we go to a restaurant, there's no kids menu expensive. They look at the kids menu, and they're like, what is this crap? Like, are you serious? You know, macaroni and cheese and fish sticks. Like, we would feel our tummies would hurt if we ate that. We're not going to eat that because they have eaten it once or twice and their tummy's hurt, and we're done with that. So it is expensive. You got to eat. They eat the salmon or they eat the steak, because that's what they have at restaurants that's edible. And all this, you know, lasagna with whatever chemicals in it, it doesn't work. Everyone's hungry or gets a headache after they eat that. It's, you know, it tastes good, but it's not a good choice. So, yeah, it's quite expensive. But that's why we eat at home a lot.

Yeah, and I say. I say that a lot, too. Like, the cookbook is marketed as kid food or. But it. The recipes are their family recipes. Therefore, it's adult. Adult food, kid food, it's the same thing. And that's what I'm trying to. I had to market the book, but, like, I want this to be for parents. Like, we have to eat the same foods as our kids because we're modeling what. What we, you know, want them to be eating. So they need to see us eating the foods that. That we want them to be enjoying.

And.

And they're not the exception, I think at the dinner table. Sounds exhausting to be cooking two different meals anyways. But I just. I want my kids to see us enjoying the foods that. With them.

How many dishwashers do you have?

We don't have a dishwasher.

Holy crap. You know, Dishwasher. Are you a masochist?

Yes. We do not have a dishwasher. We. We have. Yeah, we. We have a small. A small house, small kitchen. I'm actually at my friend's house right now because my house is too crazy to be doing an interview at.

But no, the two small kids. I get it.

Yeah. But, yeah, no, we do not have. We have a dog, so he's our Similar. Yeah, so he. So he does a lot of the cleanup. But, yeah, no, no dishwasher.

Wow. So one of the things that.

That.

Because we're doing three meals a day, usually with the kids, and it's just too many dishes. So I lobbied very hard to get a second dishwasher put in, and it changed our lives. It saved at least 45 minutes a day. That's because you just set the table out of one dishwasher and clear it into the other, and. Oh, my God, it was. It was literally so much more quality time with the kids. But our. Our dogs don't eat people food because when they do, they fart all over the place, and it didn't work for them, so they just eat raw meat and they're much happier.

So, yeah, our dog. Our dogs don't have the best. Best diet. But, yeah, no, no, no dishwasher. So we just. There's a lot of dishes. There's a lot of dishes. But I've gotten efficient. I've. We've never had a dishwasher, so I don't know. I don't know the. The difference. All right, maybe that's it.

Hats off. That's enough. Impressive. I thought you were gonna say you had one. I was gonna upsell you on two. But yeah, it's. It does become. For a lot of parents, though, especially if you have a normal job with a normal commute, the amount of time it takes to do food prep, even if you're not doing, like, the crazy vegan thing I used to do where it's, you know, two hours of soaking and blending and sprouting and all that crap, it can be just overwhelming. So what's the fastest recipe in your book?

Oh, gosh. You're putting Me on the spot. The fastest recipe. I mean I do, I mean eggs, I think, you know, that's sort of my lazy dinner is you know, doing some sort of an omelette or a quiche, just you know, quick stove top eggs, which I have in here, but I do a lot of, I call them just like pancakes but like these two ingredient pancakes where it's eggs and either meat or, and you can dollop it with some, you know, yogurt or some herbs on top. But I kind of do these little blender meat or vegetable pancakes with eggs and just fry them up and that can be a meal with you know, a little side. But the recipes are, all the recipes in the book are, are catered towards busy parents because I, I'm there. I, I, you know, I don't want to be spending out but you know, but you are cooking. They, they are still recipes, you are still cooking, but they are. With busy parents with, with jobs in.

Mind, it's so tempting to go to Uber Eats or somebody and just have some seed oil soaked, slightly cold restaurant food sent to your house that's expensive and you, and you feel like you're saving time and then you realize your trash can is full, you gotta take the trash out and you had to tip the delivery guy and you just realize you didn't save time when you did that. And when you become efficient in your kitchen, which parenting drives kitchen efficiency in a way that's insane when you do that. Like, oh, I cooked the entire thing in one pot. We did a lot of soups. I love the omelette thing. It works really well. And we throw the veggies and the meat and the pan, saute em a little bit, you know, take some blended, you know, raw egg stuff and pour it on em and there you go. Like it. It's an actual protein and fat rich healthy meal. Unless you're allergic to eggs, which a lot of kids are these days. So I, I love that it's one pan or maybe two if, if you actually do two at a time. So I love that that you in.

The cookbook and there's a lot, there's a lot of sheet pans in the, and sheet pan meals in the cookbook as well. So kind of same idea, one pan and in the oven and just gotta chop a little bit.

But yeah, it's totally manageable. By now you've probably figured out that taking Omega 3s every day is a really good idea if you care about your cardiovascular health, how your brain works and even how your Eyes, work and quality really matters in fish oil supplements. And that's why Puri stands out. Puri's O3 is third party tested, certified by the Clean Label Project and IFOS. Puri runs all of their supplements, including their O3 Ultra Pure Fish oil through lab tests for more than 200 contaminants and they published all the results online. So you know what you're getting that transparency means that you can have peace of mind and you don't have to worry about all the bad stuff that can be in fish oil supplements. Right now you can get 20% off site wide, including things that are already discounted like subscriptions, but will knock almost a third off the price of fish oil that you really want to take. Go to pury.com Dave that's not spelled the way you think. It's p r I.com Dave again that's p-o r I.com Dave 20% off. And this is really good, really clean ultra pure fish oil. Why does it take up to 30 exposures for a baby to get used to a particular food?

So this was, this is what I learned from a feeding specialist, a child feeding specialist. And I think that, and most kids, it's not up to 30, but it can take up to 30 exposures. And I think that kids, you know, there, there can be a fear around a new food or what it looks like, what it feels like in their mouth and it goes back to that kind of, you're modeling what you want your kids to eat. So even if your kid doesn't eat something or I always encourage parents, don't, don't, don't say my kid doesn't like this anymore. Like they're learning, they're still learning, they're, they're, they're new eaters. So I think if, you know, if you want your kids to, to like beets, you know, continue to serve them maybe in different ways, but even if they're not eating them, I think it's still important to have them on the plate and not, and also not. I don't think we should let our kids hear us say oh, they don't like that or they're not going to eat that. I think, and I, and I'm guilty. I've had to catch myself with like, oh, she's not going to eat that. And we don't know, they'll surprise us. And they go through phases and that's just part of toddlerhood and young children. But I think that the 30 exposures is a real, it's a high number, but it was. It's a real. Kind of real study that. Yeah, it can take. It can take a while. So don't give up on if your kid turns their nose up at broccoli. Keep going.

One of the things that I learned as a. As a parent, as a farming parent, is that if my kids usually liked, say, broccoli or some sort of a food, and then one night, like, I don't want to eat that. I used to just make them eat it. Like, come on. Like, that's what you do. And what I noticed was that those are the nights when I wouldn't feel good after dinner, and the kids would misbehave and they'd have tummy aches. And eventually I realized that there is something called alternaria brassicas, which is a type of mold that grows in brassicas, which is broccoli and cabbage and things like that. And it grows when they're wet. I live in Canada, where it's always wet, and most of the research on that particular mold is from Russia. But I would notice, too, on those nights, like, I got, like, a weird headache, and I'm sort of seeing colors. That's. It's called alternaria because it makes you see colors and, you know, it rips up your gut, and it's just not good for you. So I realized my kids were using their internal radar to say, I don't want to eat that. So after a while, especially after age five, like, okay, if they always like this, but this time they don't want to eat it, I probably shouldn't eat it either, because some part of them knows. And then it's. It's down to training versus intuition. And I still wouldn't say that I've at all mastered it, but I noticed it enough that I always thought twice. And. But that's only after they're used to it and they like it. And if they suddenly don't want to eat it that one time, you might ask them why, and if they don't know why, maybe it's all right to skip it. Do you do that?

Oh, totally. And I. It's hard, but I try. And it goes back to, like, I can control what goes on the plate, but they ultimately control what goes into their mouth. And I want the dinner table to be a joyful place. And I. I think if. If we try and micromanage too much, it. It turns into. Into not an enjoyable experience, but I. I do. Yeah, exactly. Like, if.

If.

If my daughter's Saying my tummy hurts or I'm full. I don't want her to ignore her intuition. She knows how she feels, I don't. And our kind of rule for the most part is we will save, you know, no, that's okay. You don't have to eat, but we'll save this for later. No snacks.

One of my favorite types of recipes, even on the bulletproof diet, which works for kids, but it's designed for anyone, is purees. And my all time favorite is like a cauliflower mash, you know, boil or steam or roast cauliflower, blend it with some butter or some ghee or whatever and, and it, it tastes good. In fact, I had that for lunch with my son today and we threw some chunks of steak on it and that was like a very fast one pan meal with probably three tablespoons of dried herbs to get all the polyphenols and we're full and happy after that. You have some amazing recipes like that in your book as well, but you do some interesting stuff. You talk about using dust, duck fat or olive oil. So when you're doing your deviled cauliflower mash, which is similar but it's got a unique take, do you remember that recipe off the top of your head?

I, I, I remember most of the components, but I, I add a hard boiled egg yolk to it which makes it, and I've, even since then I'll sometimes add two or three. But it makes it extra creamy, extra nutritious, extra fatty. It's delicious.

And you also add some yogurt or goat or cow or I would, you don't have it in your recipe, but I use sheep yogurt whenever I can because it's the, the best you can get from human compatibility. And you, you do that, which gives it a real cheesy kind of flavor along with some thyme. So that's the kind of recipe I had not thought of adding a hard boiled egg yolk. But I can see how that would be more of like that deviled egg consistency. So it, it, there's, there's really good flavors and that's going to fill you up because, because of the fat and you're going to pair it probably with some kind of protein. Right. What's your favorite protein to eat with something like a deviled cauliflower mash?

Oh, like a steak. I think it's a steak. And then just, and then just, you know, doing the, you know, fork it, fork the steak, dip it in the mash and yeah, it's yeah, it's, it's.

Heavenly when you do that. I don't know if it reminds me of childhood or something, but it's just, it's, it's better than mashed potatoes. Uh, the other thing that I've been doing for a long time is if I'm in a hurry, I will take some of the, like I used to use the bulletproof collagen back when I was involved with the company. Um, but I will take a grass fed collagen protein and I will take a few scoops of that and put it in there and it's invisible. You cannot taste it, you cannot see it. Kids don't even know it's there. I tell them, though, cause I want them to know. Uh, and then all of a sudden you just added 60 grams of high quality animal protein to a meal that helps to build their connective tissue in their skin. And, and they don't see it like they would a steak, even though they want the steak. So that's kind of my secret. I'll add that to almost any recipe in your book and you can't.

I like that. I like that.

All right. When kids are eight months and beyond, pediatricians say, don't give salt to babies. But you talk about giving salt to babies. How dare you?

Yeah, I think that, you know, again, I wrote the book with, I want people to take what they're most comfortable with. So I use, I use salt sparingly in recipes for the minerals, and it can help with digestion and help increase the nutrients of, of the food.

Why would you use it sparingly?

That doesn't seem to make, Well, I mean, yeah, I use a cut of sparingly, but, but you would have a heavy hand, it sounds like. So I think go with whatever you're comfortable with. But, yeah, but yeah, I use, I use salt in the, in the cookbook. And if you Google salt and baby, I mean it. No, no one, you know, when I was starting to feed my children. Yeah, no salt. And anytime you have a recipe out there with salt, it's like, don't give this to babies under one. And, and just through my own kind of reading up on it, I, I, I, I disagree. You know, agreed to disagree.

What did you find in your research on salt and digestion in babies?

Well, I like the cookbook that I, that was the most inspiring to me. Or the book was Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. And she, yeah, it really is. And I give her a lot of credit to making me feel more confident as a Mom and the choices that I was making in the kitchen for my. For my children, and. And she kind of gets into the talking about salt and children, and I kind of felt more comfortable than not.

Almost 20 years ago, when I was running Palo Alto's first anti aging nonprofit education group, before I started the biology movement, I gave this really carefully researched talk on salt and the history of why we decided salt was bad for us. It's not. We used to eat about 20 grams of salt a day because we didn't have refrigerators, and all of our meat and all of our fish was salted. And it did not cause high blood pressure. It did not cause problems. It gave us a ton of minerals. And so our salt consumption has dropped so much that if you were to follow the FDA's guidelines and why anyone would listen to them after the last three or four years, I don't know. But if you still followed their. Their guidelines and had less than 2.4 grams of salt a day for an adult, that is so low that it increases your heart attack risk, because when sodium is too low, it increases stress, which increases a hormone in the blood called rennet, which increases heart attack risk. But if you were to instead have 4 grams, or when I do 8 grams a day for my body weight and to keep my blood pressure where I want, completely changes your digestion, changes your life. And if you're on a keto or a carnivore diet, you need even more. So the idea that your baby is supposed to not have salt, even though salt helps with a stress response. No, you probably don't want to have a heavy hand of salt, but you do want a little bit of salt, because we're made out of salt water. And how's your baby supposed to hydrate if it doesn't have a little bit of salt? So that advice is absurd, it's wrongheaded, and it doesn't make any sense. So the idea that somehow babies are little aliens that don't need normal nutrients, a lot of that's overblown. But don't give your little babies honey. Right? That seems like that might be a problem, right? If you want to extend your life, you got to take into account your health, your fitness, and how you look. Armor Colostrum does all of those things. It's a bioactive whole food, which means it works with your body to perform better. That means it can help your body fight everyday threats, things like junk food or toxins that form in your gut or that you get from the world around you. One of the ways Armor Colostrum works is that it helps your stomach be less bloated and it keeps your gut lining strong. It helps your body absorb nutrients better, can help to balance your blood sugar and to burn fat. And check this out. Armor Colostrum can help you grow hair and it can improve the appearance of your skin.

So.

So you look younger, you feel better, give it a try. Try armor.comdave and get 15% off your first order. They've sold out multiple times. I take this almost every single day and I bring it with me when I travel because you can feel a difference.

The power of regenerative agriculture, starting with the seed and the farm and the soil to produce more nutrient dense food. And it's better for you. That is actually more profitable for the farmers. That conserves water, that eliminates the need for agrochemicals, that helps to mitigate climate change and drought and floods, and makes the farmer 20 times as much money. And at the same time draws carbon out of the atmosphere, puts it in the soil where it belongs. I mean, one third of all the carbon today in the atmosphere from climate change, one third comes from soil erosion, from the loss of organic matter in the soil as a result of over tillage and the use of antibiotics on the soil. What I mean by antibiotics, like glyphosate is a microbiome destroying compound that's used on the soil. It's on 70% of all crops. It's the most abundant agrochemical used around the world. It's like hundreds of millions of pounds of this stuff every year. Billions of pounds. I think it's ridiculous the amount they use, you know?

You know, Mark, if I wasn't already taken, I think I'd want to marry you.

I know, I know we have a bromance going on here, but like what you're saying.

Yeah, it's why I live on a small farm, it's why I'm building soil, it's why I eat what I grow. And it makes such a difference. And you can see where the animals poop, the plants are twice as tall. And I put it on my Instagram channel. I'm like, look, do you see this line right here? That's where the fence was. This is where the sheep poop. This is where there is no sheep poop. And we want to fix the planet. Elon Musk is saying, I'm going to spend $100 million on carbon capture. I'm like, it's called farming done right. That is the biggest carbon capture we can have and it makes you live longer and healthier and you eat the stuff that comes off that land.

Exactly.

There's no loser in the system except Big Ag in Monsanto.

Right? It's true. There are, there are some losers. And what's really fascinating is it's looking even. This is not some left wing opinion thing. It's, you know, the UN has come out and said if we take 2 million of the 5 million degraded hectares of land around the world that has been degraded through modern agriculture, we converted to regenerative agriculture, incorporating animals in the ecosystem to build soil. We could, it would cost $300 billion, which is basically less than we spend for Medicare and diabetes every year. And also, I mean we spent $3.7 trillion in America, direct indirect costs for obesity and diabetes. 3.7 trillion. And we're talking about 300 million. Could convert 2 of those million hectares of land into regenerative agriculture would stop climate change for 20 years, giving us more time to figure things out. And it would produce better food. More food. And the thing is, people understand is like, well, we could be all vegans to, to save the planet. And then climate change and factories, factory farming is an abomination. It's bad for the animals, it's bad for humans who eat them. It's bad for the planet. A hundred percent. We should ban them. They should be no longer on the planet. We should get rid of every single one. I mean, I was just talking to my friend Kelly Brad out. He said there's like 69 million chickens and 30 million HODs and like North Carolina is one county and it's, it's just so toxic and polluted, it's horrifying. That does not mean that in done in the right way according to ecological principles. Incorporating animals into an overall ecosystem on a farm is a bad thing. In fact, it's a necessary thing. And, and then you could literally stop climate change for 20 years, giving us Runway to figure things out. So we really need to move in that direction. And under the Biden administration they're now talking about creating an initiative of regenerative agriculture. I've been working with the administration and trying to get farmers and others involved in communicating these ideas. And I think there's a real openness to it. And what's interesting is when you do that, when you eat in a way that, that is choosing and by the way, there's very few regenerative farms out there so you really need to hunting seriously gather for these places. But they're out there and they're resourced in the book. But the more people ask for it, demand it, encourage it, more people shop at farmers markets, go to their community, support agriculture, buy online from regenerative farmers like Bel Campo or Mariposa Ranch and others. You and I think Gabe Brown, I think I forget the name of his regenerative product company, but he's got a great regenerative meat service as well. If you do that, you start to move the market. Right? You start to move the market and you see what's happening with all these health brands. It's really driving the marketplace. That's why General Mills and Danone have literally funding millions of acres of regenerative farming in America, which is really exciting to me. And it's say it's greenwashing, but I don't think so. I think they're recognizing their supply chain is threatened by the way we grow food and so they want to keep having the raw materials.

Walmart did the same thing a while ago. They said we want more organic stuff and they oh wait, if we bought as much organic cotton as we want, we would buy more than is made in the world. Therefore we have to change the world to make the stuff we want to buy. That's right. So the power of big business to realize we won't buy industrial animals that deplete the soil and we won't buy plants grown on depleted soil. They will have to, to stay in business, do what's right for the planet and what's right for us. Just make food that's worth eating.

Absolutely. And, and, and Walmart is the biggest organic grocer in America. Many people don't know that. So, so one, it regenerates the, the health of the planet and the soil and the animal. It's all good on that. But what's even more interesting is the, is the role of this type of farming in generating much more nutrient dense food for us humans that has these phytochemicals that literally can reverse disease and produce food, real food that's good for us and good for the planet. So this is the win, win, win, win, win across the game. It's good for the farmers who are squeezed between the banks and the agrochemical companies and the crop insurance and the government. It's good for the ecosystems that regenerate and bring back pollinator species. It brings back conserves water resources that are depleted around the world. It builds soil which we're losing at incredibly accelerated rate. So it's got a win, win, win. And it generates products and food Products that are more nutrient dense and more healthy. So Gabe Brown and his farm, they've been testing their carrots and their vegetables and they have far more phytochemicals than the traditional farms. And what's even more amazing, I literally just got an article in my inbox this, this week about how, and I have a chapter here about is, is meat medicine basically. And as I know it's a kind of. That's the title that's going to be a little provocative, I think. And what's so fun about it is that I've been learning from guys like Fred Provenza, who's a rangeland scientist, who's working with scientists at Duke University, actually analyzing the differences in phytonutrient content. And I said this, right? Phytonutrient content in meat that's grown regeneratively. And what that means is that if animals are foraging on wild plants or on lots of different varieties, like 100 different varieties of, of various plants, each of which has its own phytonutrient content and composition, each of which has very unique vitamins or minerals or other compounds, the animals seek this out. So the animals are smart. They know how to eat for nourishment, they know how to eat for health. So they're literally eating their medicine and finding it and eating the drugs that they need on the farm so they can stay healthy. And as a consequence, these compounds get incorporated into their meat. And when you eat them, you're getting the same thing. And some of these animals have as high phytochemical contents as the plants that they're eating. If you would just eat the plants.

It's really different on my farm. Our sheep walk around and we have forest here. They eat whatever they want. They'll eat a little bit of rosemary, I call that inner basting, but they'll eat a couple bites of, you know, pine, which is anti parasitic, but they'll go and they'll, they'll muzzle it. And if instead you take animals in a compressed area and you pour a bunch of mixed up food into a trough, they don't get to do that. And the difference is that when we put the meat in a local market, someone will come and they'll buy some of it and they'll come in the next day and they'll buy all of it. Because like, that is the best meat I've ever had. I felt so good when I ate it. So I'm actually opening a restaurant in the middle of the pandemic in Victoria, downstairs From my office in a little while. And we're actually going to take the animals that we raise ourselves and use them in the restaurant because you get a food high when you eat. An animal that ate what it was supposed to eat was treated kindly throughout its entire life. It's not even in the same universe as an industrial steak for. From the store.

Totally.

But most people have never felt the difference.

No. In one of the studies I quoted the movies in, in Australia, they did a study with kangaroo meat, which they have abundance of there, and compared it to feedlot meat. Same, you know, ounce rounds of protein. Profoundly different effects on the body. The feedlot meat causes inflammation. The kangaroo meat reduced inflammation. And so wait a minute, how does that possible? Why? It's the information in food, it's the instructions that are programming your biology. So quality is really important. And in the book, I go through every bit of food we eat. You know, what, what protein and, and fats and carbohydrates, you know, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, chicken, fish, meat. What you should be eating in each of these categories. Because a feedlot beef is very different than wild elk. Right. A wild blueberry is different than a, you know, know, I don't know, some, some horrible, like, starchy tomato that's grown in a hot house that has no nutrients in it. It tastes like carbon, in fact. Right.

You said blueberries. Even those. If you're not comparing it to some random tomato. If you get the normal industrial blueberries from factory farms that grow blueberries and there are such things, versus I live in the Pacific Northwest. I buy a couple hundred pounds of blueberries at the height of the season from a local regenerative grower. And, and they taste like blueberries. And we freeze them and we hoard them because they're so good. And if you go to the store and buy a little shrunken baggie of whatever, they don't taste like blueberries. They taste like something else. And what we have here is it's legal and considered normal to say, well, if it looks like a tomato, it's a tomato. But just because the outer layer looks like a tomato, the inside is completely different based on how it was treated, but we don't have standards or way to tell. How would you suggest that listeners know whether they're eating the good stuff versus stuff that looks like the good stuff?

Well, you know, there are ways to sort of ensure a little higher quality nutrient density. One is source your food from the right vendors. Right?

Yes.

Farmers markets, community supportive agriculture, online resources for, for example, Regenerative food like Tribe Market has incredible sources of regenerative meat and sustainably harvested or, you know, low toxin fish, for example. So there's vital choice seafood that again, sources their fish from really great Alaskan waters that are small fish. And so there are ways to get these things. It's a little bit more work and a little bit more detective work. Also eat weird food. And I go to the farmer's farm, like, what is that? I never see that before. I'm going to eat some of that bitter melon or what is that fruit. And I'm sort of always trying to eat weird, strange food because the more wild, the less commercially raised it is, the more weird it is, the better it is for you. And so I've got on the behind me a whole like tray of fruit from Hawaii. And I stuff there. I've never eaten eaten before. I'm like, what is that?

I'll warn you, jackfruit is gross. No matter how much you torture it, it still is not meat when you eat it. The information signal from jackfruit will never be meat.

Yeah, yeah. Jack prune. And there's breadfruit and there's. I don't even know. There's all kinds.

Breadfruit's awesome. And that's a feature guide.

So I think we are really able to sort of be a little more diligent. When you go to the grocery store, buy stuff that is sort of a little more funky. Like get mustard greens, get dandelion greens, get things you don't normally would eat. Eat seaweed. These are just ways of picking out things when you go to the grocery store that aren't these big commercial products. So there are ways to do it. It's a little trickier, but you want color, you want variety, you want organic, when possible. Regenerative, you can get it. There's a new regenerative organic certification that Rodale and Patagonia are putting together. So there's. It's coming, it's coming, this is coming. And there are more and more farms that are converting to regenerative agriculture. So it's going to take time, but you literally can transform your diet by starting to sort of widen out your palate by exploring different foods. I mean, I got these, I got these bitter melon greens which are really wild, and I got the bitter, you know, from, from the farmer's market. You just don't see that stuff. Right. Or I'll get, you know, these weird different mushrooms and things that are just kind of funny. And I tend to include as many of those things as possible. Variety is key because like those, those cows that are foraging on a hundred different plants, we need to forage on a wide variety of foods. I mean the carnivore diet can help a lot of people with chronic disease because it eliminates stuff. It's not so much about the meat, it's about what else they're not eating. Right. They're not eating.

Thank you for saying that.

Right. They're not, they're not eating dairy, they're not eating gluten, they're not eating greens, they're not eating beef, they're not eating sugar, they're not having lectins, they're not having all these inflammatory foods in their diet and they're taking out all the hormones, the antibiotics and the pesticides and the, and all the weird crap. I mean hopefully they're eating grass fed meat but you know, it's like, yes, but it may not be the meat. And then long term it's going to.

Be a problem with you.

Long term it's going to be a problem.

I've said the same thing. And what all foods have in them is they have energy. And in the traditional American farm know, agricultural lobby industry, energy is the only thing that matters. It's calories. As if that's somehow the most important thing. But we do have to have some energy from our food. Then it has the good stuff, the nutrients, the, the signaling phytochemicals, the polyphenols, the vitamins, minerals, and then it has stuff that's not good for you in it. And depending on how you prepare the food and how you grow the food and all that, it can have more of the bad stuff or less of the bad stuff. And yeah, when you go carnivore, you remove all the bad stuff plants are doing to people, whether they're bad plants or good plants, whatever else. But then you eventually find, you know, I tolerate some plants really well but that plant's not compatible with me. And that's been kind of the core of what I've been doing. On the bulletproof side it's like, look, find the foods that work for you. It's not the same for everyone. And I think in the vegan diet you've become really programmatic about it, like it's fine. You might do so well on red bell peppers because they're full of parenthocyanins. Me, they give me rheumatoid arthritis like I am never going to. It doesn't mean they're good or Bad, it means they're compatible or not compatible.

Yeah, like I love raw onions and I love raw garlic, but if I eat it, I feel like crap. I get a brain fog headache, I.

Don'T know what to eat, I don't touch the stuff.

Some people have reactions. Cooked onions and garlic are fine. So. And sometimes I'll go, I'm in garlic because I just love raw garlic. And I'll put in something, but you know, I have a little bit, it's okay. But I think, I think everybody needs to understand what is their particular biology. And so the ideology and dogma that we have has really kind of usurped common sense and science. And so the take home should be let your biology rule over your ideology. See what works for you. If you, if you go vegan and you lose your period and you have no sex drive and your muscle mass goes down and you're tired all the time and you're kind of, you know, want to stay in all the time and hide, that's not good. But if you're a rich roll and you're like running tribe, you know, Ironman triathlons that you figured out to do it, go for it.

People get really angry, like, ah, you have to eat the way I eat. And I'm like, I would recommend people do eat the way I eat, which is don't eat the stuff that makes you weak and then eat the stuff that makes you strong and eat enough calories at the right time there. Eat the way I eat. That's it.

Right. And within that algorithm, very different it is. And there's a little bit of homework that has to be done. I go through how do you personalize your diet in the book. But, but within that, within that, like there are foundational principles of how do you choose quality and the best information in every bit of food you eat and then how do you personalize it and how do you optimize all your functional systems? Because, you know, as a functional medicine doctor, I don't treat disease. You know, the body is structured in a way that has nothing to do with the way medicine is organized. Right now. Medicine is organized in specialties. You've got your cardiologist, gastroenterologist, rheumatologist, your neurologist, your dermatologist. Like everybody, you got an ologist for every part of your body and nobody talks to each other. And people often have multiple things, they call them comorbidities, which means you have multiple diseases, which is absolutely nonsense because they're all connected. If you have migraines and rheumatoid arthritis and irritable bowel reflux and you have rashes and you have headaches. It's not just a random bunch of bad luck that you got all these things. They're connected underneath by common mechanisms of inflammation and dysbiosis and other factors. And so functional medicine is about how do you optimize these systems? So I never treat disease, I optimize these functional systems and it turns out the biggest influence on these seven dynamic functional systems that are your biological network, your ecosystem, the most important influence on these is food for bad or good, Right?

Yep.

Right.

So for example, what percentage is it? 80, 90%.

I mean I think it's probably like, yeah, about upwards of 80%. I mean if you look at, you know, there's a class of things that are not food related. So I've had those, I'm good with diet, but I've had stuff that's taken me down.

If you're living in toxic mold and automobile exhausts, it doesn't matter what you eat, you're probably not going to like it.

Yeah, so Dave, you know you helped me when I almost died a few four years ago from mold toxicity in my house and I, this is after I, you know, been your movie about mold and after like I knew and I just collapsed and, and so, you know, I could eat all the great food I want. It wasn't helping or. Yeah, you know, I, I had mercury poisoning. You know, that's not going to get sorted out by, you know, eating better. I mean, yes, you have to cut out the swordfish and all that and eat vegetables that up regulate your detox. But it's really about, you know, finding those things that are real triggers but absent that knowing like Lyme disease, tick infections, mold, mercury, environmental toxins, all that. Yes, parasites, gut stuff. Yes, you need a little extra help. But for most of the problem that's facing America today, and by the way, Dave, we are, we are in a real pickle. Why is Covid so prevalent in America? It's not just we eat a lot.

Of omega 6 plant based fats and a lot of sugar and a lot of crap. Yeah, that's my assumption. Do you agree or is there something else going on?

Yeah, yes, I, I agree. I think, I think what, what's happened is people don't understand is in America is one of the unhealthiest nations in the world and Covid kills you by inflammation and we are all pre inflamed. 88 of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. That means they have some form of prediabetes, insulin resistance, poor health from their metabolism. When you have that, that's an inflammatory state. That's nine out of ten Americans. Even people who are just a little overweight, a little bit of belly fat seem to have higher risk of severe illness and death from COVID So it's not like you have to be £300. You could be just a little over or even not even overweight, but just more belly fat. And I think we're. We're in a situation where we haven't even talked about that in America. We're talking about vaccines and masking and social distancing. I'm like, wait a minute. There's a lot we can do aside from, you know, nutraceutical interventions, which like vitamin D and zinc and vitamin C and quercetin and green tea and NAC and a lot of things can really help. But. But the food is such a big, big, big, big thing. And I. I think that we just kind of are missing the boat here. And America, if I were president, I would say. I would say, listen, America, get off your crappy diet. You're all getting the quarantine 15 or the COVID 19 pounds. Like freshman 15. This.