RPM Friday Night Live: Balancing Act!

He's Brendan Clarke, who you know and love, and him, he's Conor Brady. I think he wrote— did he, Brendan, did he write a book recently?

There was something, there was a little bit of a blip in the Amazon market and something happened and then I've not heard anything since.

I was waiting for— Karen Becker was supposed to be doing a thing on it last week, remember I was telling you all how excited I was and I was there like my tail wagging furiously watching Facebook for 24 hours solid, never came up. I got on there then, Karen, what happened? And apparently somebody forgot to do something, so I'm bumped back for that. Anyway, I told everybody, I practically had a popcorn party at the City Hall with everybody, lovers and haters there.

And so is Karen going to promote it at some point?

Yeah, we did a big, we did a big, you know, like an interview thing for a few hours, and she's put a piece on the on her call and so, so, no, that would be good.

When did you say that was going on? Because I've done the same with her and with Rodney and it's taken 2 and a half months.

That's how long it's taken me, 2 and a half months is when I was speaking to her. So that's how in advance they are. They have a big team behind them, it's a lot of effort what they— compared to, like, you know, we— compared to— I'm not going to say that we wing it, but like, you know, they have a big team behind. So anyway, look, it's coming up, I think the 23rd of May. If you get onto it, they usually have a date. So it's exciting, isn't it? Because that's brilliant. Huge following, like 3.5 million people. You can't— it's a staggering number. But anyway, look, that's that.

Hey guys, yeah, welcome to the 140-odd that have already joined us. It's great to see you streaming in there. Thank you. And guys, it's working. Yeah, it's not working.

We have a link.

Yeah, very impressive technology. Well done, Bren. Bren's all over it, actually. You've suddenly become the technophile. Is that good? Is that a big thing?

I think it was him that broke the internet last time, you know. Definitely degenerating into something else if you're not careful.

It's a fact. I know all these names. I know these names from Patreon, actually, a lot of these names. Thanks to everyone. Now's a good time to say thanks to everybody for coming off to Patreon. That's been coming in for the last few weeks. 117.

People are giving us a tiny, not some not so tiny, their support. Guys, we could not do it without you.

We could not do it without you and we really appreciate it. Yeah, it's great. So it's, uh, we really appreciate it and we are going to start increasing our content on the Patreon as well. And we get all your questions. If you have any questions, as you learned last two weeks ago, guys, it's best the questions are sent into Patreon. We can spend some time at it. And we can address it. If we don't get it, if we don't address the questions here tonight, you'll get us on Patreon and you'll get a couple more pieces as we, as we go along. We're going to start increasing our content there.

We've got some exciting news for that as well. There's some more content stuff that we're going to talk about in the coming weeks too.

So if guys, if the Patreon guys, if there's any burning things that you want us to see, you have got our attention. So, you know, you just shout out if you've got any suggestions, really do. Patreon guys, fabulous, thank you so much.

And also thanks to Pedio Ridge. So Pedio Ridge have been our long-term sponsors now for the last few months, and they've just been fantastic support for us. So Pedio Ridge, fantastic, most awarded pet food, and 2 years in a row Britain's favorite. So check it out, guys, they do hampers and little money-offs and stuff and ways to sweeten you and lure you in, check out their new website paleoridge.co.uk. Thanks very much, Paleo Ridge, for your support. It's very much appreciated. So guys, how have you been for the last 2 weeks since we've been talking? Anything dramatic happen that we need to know about?

Well, I'll tell you what, there was a big article by somebody called Wheeze. I've forgotten her name. Wheeze?

Weiss.

Yeah. And basically she just had this irrational rant about raw food and I couldn't help myself, but I just sat down and for 2 hours I wrote out and I answered every single one of her questions and I sent it to the Vet Record. This is a piece in the Vet Record and I sent it to them and it came in about 900 words. They've just got back to me about an hour ago and they said that we can't do it if it's more than 400 words. So I'm going to have to take my 900 words down to 400 words. I know, it's painful, isn't it?

Very good. It's a real shame.

It's a real shame. How about you, Conor? Anything exciting?

Yeah, I mean, it's been 2 weeks since we spoke live anyway, but yeah, lots of posts and stuff. I had a good post there today, I felt, because we were talking about joints. I'm doing a lot of consults there in the background. And there was a dog here that's just, you know, I got very annoyed about it because she's a kind of 14-year-old lab, very stiff, and still being lashed in with the boosters and the, you know, and the whatnots. And it's kind of like, you know, anyway, she was stiff as a board. So I started looking— I recommend this product, you know, YouMove. Everybody uses YouMove. It's a good product, you know, no doubt. But in the back of my mind, I always thought I could look at YouMove and look at the ingredients and see, you know, can we do this a little bit better? So that led me down the route of you can buy your green lip mussel extract kind of separately. And I started talking about eggs. Did you see those studies of the, of the improvements in arthritic joints in humans by eating the membranes of eggs? 25, the equivalent of 25 eggs a week, I think it was.

Do you know how much membrane you get in every egg? No.

Do you know the answer to this?

It's no, but it's really because we get— we've got chickens, so we get fresh eggs. And so when you crack them, you always see this membrane. It's— so it must be about half a millimeter thick on the inside. There was a product—

does this not—

this is not the Flexadin, the Collagen 2? Collagen 2, that's exactly right. Into the Peyer's patches of the gut and it desensitizes the immune system to the damaged Collagen 2 fibers in the joint and therefore reduces the inflammatory process. So what better way than feeding raw meaty bones with cartilage and joint stuff? Are you going to get raw? Doesn't work if you cook it because it changes the protein structure. What have we been saying for all these years? But there you go. So you can now buy a special little chew which has collagen 2 raw in it, okay, to feed to your dogs with arthritis.

And it's stewed up eggshell membranes, possibly.

But you can obviously just go for eggshell membranes.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you have to strip them out from the shell?

Does it work just as well Yeah, I thought a good tip was that when you boil your eggs, you know, you've got the shell, it comes off much easier. But you're saying that—

don't do that, it's cooked.

Oh, that's made it very tricky for me now because a raw eggshell is far more difficult to work with.

So guys, this is a little tip. If you're going to feed eggs to your dogs, what you should do is crack them, separate out the yolk, dispense with the albumin, and then put the yolks in with the shells. Why are you getting rid of the whites?

Tell me that.

Because there are lots of anti-nutrients within the albumin.

Which you can sort out by the yolk.

No, no, no, but if you're feeding— so what you're doing is you're feeding the yolk because of all the benefits that that has, right? And you're feeding the shell and the membranes, but you leave the albumin out.

No, no way. Disagreement.

Okay, what you need to do with those is make meringues. Sugar, totally destroy your kids' diets.

The point of that piece was that, you know, that membrane there is 3 ingredients. It's collagen, perhaps collagen 2. Okay. It's hyaluronic acid. Tough one to say. And it's pure chondroitin, which is— the studies are behind chondroitin for helping your joints, but glucosamine significantly less so. But so those are 3 key ingredients of You Move, not slagging You Move off. I'm just saying these are found in eggshell membranes. But it led me on to the topic tonight, which was these ingredients that I just mentioned that are in eggshell membrane and in joints. It's just joint material. That is a bonus in dry food. It's not in the AAFCO feed profile. It's not recommended they have to include it. It's a bonus. So you'll probably get it under prescription for joint care, glucosamine and chondroitin, as if when your dog gets stiff at 6 years or 8 years from cutting these vital nutrients out of the dog's diet, then we'll give you some ground-up cartilage in a capsule. And I just thought, what a better— what better way to start tonight, like, than talking about that stuff is left out of dry food. And that's just one of the many, many, many, many things.

It's criminal, isn't it, that a dog who's not on raw food is not going to get that incredible collagen, you know, among other things. You know, that's the beauty of the Balance thing, is that there's 100 nutrients in there that we don't even know about yet that you are giving when you give a raw food diet, which you totally, totally do not give with, with, with, with kibble.

You know, I've written down some of this. I've written down some of these things like, you know, creatine. We all know, like, you know, a lot of guys go to the gym, know about creatine, androsine, carnosine, glutamine, spermine, glucosamine, chondroitin, all the bioactive compounds in the likes of secretory organs. Like on and on and on and on.

Does it mention omega-3, Conor? Because last time I looked, it said you need to give them omega-6, which is wrong in my book. But yeah, but, and I don't think, well, the FEDIAF guidelines, I don't think mention omega-3. What about AFCO? Have you— what do they say about omega-3?

Guys, you've totally mixed up the plan for tonight. Yes, just come on back a bit. Okay, sorry, I'm gonna reel you guys in because you've just Totally blowing the, uh, the— okay, guys, just, just for those, those, uh, look, there's a few things that we need to say. There's the wine club which is joining us for RPM, so tonight's recommendation, okay, uh, definite recommendation, you've got to go for this lovely, um, Sauvignon from New Zealand, okay, uh, definitely recommended by my wife. Okay, lovely glass. Absolutely.

How much, how much a bottle is that, mate?

I'm not allowed to say.

However, I would say to people, you cannot go wrong with a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. Marlborough is a region in New Zealand, and that's where this is from. Everything, even the cheap stuff from that region, tastes of gooseberries, and it's fresh and it's amazing for summer drinking. It's unbelievably good. Yeah, you get something for £6 a bottle from Lidl's, it'll be amazing, I guarantee it.

But the Ned, Ned is a really good one too. That's £6 a bottle.

There you go.

Yeah, and it's beautiful. But my other thing for the week, you know, we've had some books that are on and we're going to be launching this one to look at is this one. Okay, very much in line with the ones that we've been reading. Okay, but definitely worth a listen. And we'll put the link on as we have with the others. Some great information in there. You're mentioning omega-3s and 6s. There's a lot of stuff about what happens if you leave those too long. You leave them in the capsule, you leave them in the bottle, you leave them to go close to their sell-by date, but also how some of them are extracted and how what they measure when they're looking at the ingredient is not what you get in the end product, right? They've been extracted in a different way. So just be aware of that. So lots of information in there. Um, so that's about good fats, bad fats. It also has about carbs and what they do to you inflammatory-wise. Um, why you should be eating more organs. Um, so there's— they do 4 pillars, um, which is about eating more organs, eating fermented foods, eating bone broths. Okay. And taking definitely pasture-fed meat on the bone. Okay. As for humans, actually, the thing about these books that I'm recommending is I am surprised the number of animal studies that they put into their text about feeding real food and the damage that feeding processed food does. Brilliant. That's why I'm recommending some of these, not because they're just for human nutrition. Good for you, good for your kids, good for everything else, but also great for your pets because there's information in there.

That's cool. Yeah.

And it's exactly the same with the, with the Spoonfed from— let me do this without a hat. Spoonfed, just for the recap.

Spoonfed on the site. That's on the Facebook page.

It is. I couldn't get the photo of it.

It's on there.

Oh, it is. Well done.

Yeah, we've been posted lower down.

Oh, good man. Good man. Yeah, Spoonford, amazing. He does— he quotes a lot of rat studies and what have you. And Gary Taubes is the same, The Case for Keto and The Case Against Sugar and stuff like that. Lots and lots of animal studies, which is, which is so reassuring, you know, because we thought we were behind the times, but actually we've got, we've got data coming out of our ears.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So there is on the Patreon page, we have put a post in for the book recommendations. So there's lots of books you'll see on that book recommendations, the RPM book club. Okay, so we're slowly topping those up. We got to a point where I think Patreon got sick of me posting new books and started trying to mix the pictures up with the, uh, the posts.

And then I'm laughing back here. Gina Dallin said cat's piss. Um, that's in relation to something.

Sorry, is that because you started going on about Avco and Fedia?

She doesn't like red wines. Let's see what else is going on. She's so cute. Listen, oh my God, there's so many people on here tonight. So obviously we've been building this up because we're so animated about this whole balance thing. But it was yourself that saw Lisa Wheat's piece, Nick, and as you alluded to at the start, you wrote back to Veterinary Record, which is a journal that we all use, you know, peer-reviewed journal. But you can write editorial notes, notes to the editor type things at the back, which aren't peer-reviewed, but they're like your opinion, and if it's good, it'll be put out there for debate. So Nick saw this piece that Lisa Weed brought up, which is another veterinary nutritionist of some renown, you know, and she wasn't happy about the fact that you might get the balance wrong. So Nick wrote this long piece— not long piece, short piece, 900 words—

back.

So that's what got us talking about balance. So we want to hit this tonight with a couple of key points Who wants to start off a little bit about balance, guys?

I think, I think it's really, really important. There are groups within the raw feeding community. There are those who want to balance every meal, and there are those who— and they are called formulators. They formulate, Brendan. Yeah, they're the formulators. Okay. And I respect them. And there are those who are the ratio feeders who kind of I'm just going to make sure that they've got plenty of variety and they rely on variety to provide that. And I think this is a really important distinction. When, when, when the raw feed manufacturers make a feed, they more or less have to come up to a certain standard. And some people will say that's AFCO, some people will say that's, that's FEDIAF. And Conor, you're going to be talking about AFCO. It's not a very good guide, but it is at least it's a line in the sand.

It's something, yeah.

Well, that's certainly their point of view is we're balancing to a line in the sand so that people can't shoot us down, where I think it's a poor line, but you know, it's a line in the sand, whereas some of us will take that view of, look, I never, you know, for my two children, they've managed to make it past 20, you know, without, you know, me killing them by going down the supermarket aisle and picking things off the shelf. Yeah. So it, you know, I think there are people that are making it hard enough that it gives them a role in life to be advisors. And I think that's my concern, is that actually they're overcomplicating things. I think there are some basic principles that nutritionists should be standing up and saying, not that they should be trying to balance every single bite. You know, we— I think across the board, us three agree generally that variety is what gives us balance. And we can talk more about that. But I think ultimately I would say, you know, unless somebody out there has a nutritionist that they know on first-name terms that's sat behind them right now, okay, just making sure they're eating the right things and their children are, I don't believe that even those veterinary nutritionists have that level of understanding of what's going in their own food, let alone their children's food.

Also, you've got to think that food is a variable feast. A cabbage in June is going to be very different from a cabbage in August. And meat in the summer is going to be very different from meat in the winter.

A US blueberry to a Spanish blueberry, one grown in a greenhouse, one on a slope. And you're trying to compare like this is what—

local medicine does this all the time. You know, the herbal stuff is, yeah, you have a materia medica which stipulates exactly how you should crop that herb, how you should, you know, what phase of the moon you should crop it at, let alone how it's grown. To then, you know, how it's prepared.

Yeah.

And yet all of a sudden you'll get a high street herbalist— let's, let's not name names— that will suddenly think, but I can get that super cheap from the Far East, you know, produced in huge quantities, a minuscule amount. And they think that that herb is going to be the same as the one in the materia medica. And it's the same for foods. As Nick said, you know, even a chicken breast that's fed pasture-fed outside with high vitamin D levels because it's out in the sunshine, it's going to be totally different to something that's inside. And then on top of that, you put processing and what that does to all of that nutrient content, which makes a mockery of what they're saying. In fact, actually, Catherine Shanahan also says this of saying that there are nutritionists out there that don't get that that highly processed thing is totally different to this raw thing.

Yeah.

And that's so important for us to try and get across here that actually, you know what, there's also in the other book that I recommended last week, they were reckoning 4 times the good diets around the world where people, indigenous people are doing really well. Generally they have 4 times, that's 400% of the RDAs within their diet.

Yeah, interesting.

And they're the good diets. So, you know, actually they're underselling by, you know, 4 times what you should have in your diet. And that should come from a mix. Nick, I'm going to let you talk about what you think about variety and how you should establish it.

So, yeah, shall I just give some, some thoughts? So I'm sold on the idea of variety. I just want to just before I dive in, Well, it's 18 past, so we're good. Um, just want to ask what, uh, what, what, uh, computer programs you use if you're formulating, uh, if you're formulating for a company or for your— for an individual, what would you use?

What do you use? Beg your pardon?

Is that a general question to readership or—

No, no, no, no, sorry, this is to you two actually.

Yeah, I'm actually in the middle of this, Nick, at the moment, right? So I, you know, I've formulated for companies before. And the problem is that you've got vets waiting at the end of the line, not to want to know— let's pretend this is the AFGO feed guidelines— and they want to be able to tick these boxes. Where did you get your selenium from? Where did you get your copper? How much is in the mix? And so what suits these vets at the end of the line is clearly that you would grab the USDA search database, which is a very good link. Guys, check it out just for interest, USDA DA, US Department of Agriculture search database. And you can type in an ingredient, any ingredient on the planet, and they have got the profile of that when they analyze it in America and who, whatever type, who cares. But it's a good guideline. But you can use that to satisfy, uh, full-time kind of your, your FEDIAF feed guidelines for these vets. That's one type of way to do it. Another way is to make your own assessments based on stuff you found in the internet and keep those files and studies. Well, this says there's this much vitamin C in the blueberry, and I've used 20 grams of blueberries, so I've got this much vitamin C. And then there's also programs out there that have more up-to-date databases, which I know they just mentioned the website to me. Do you know what it is, Nick?

Yeah, it's the Animal Diet Formulator. And I think they do 3 levels. They do kind of super duper one for companies to use. They do one for vets to use, but they also do one for people to use. And so I was just going to say, if people want to do some formulation or to try and work out what's in there, what's in their diet. Yeah, they might retro formulate. Then the Animal Diet Formulator, ADF, Animal Diet Formulator, is about as good as it gets. And apparently in the offing, these guys are going to have an app that you can take to the supermarket and go, right, well, if I get that much beef and I get that much spinach, what do I, what do I need to add, which I think is quite cool. Again, I think that it, because there are so many variables within the food that you feed, it's always going to be approximate. Yeah, we're not putting together Mercedes-Benz here, we're putting together, it's food, it's a variable feast.

So I'm not just like that, I really respected that, and I went to the level of looking at all of the books that gave you prepared raw diets and what you needed to add to make them perfect diets for every single day. And you know what? That was the biggest turnoff for owners around the year 2000. I really concentrated on trying to sell that. Look, you need this book, you need to get these things. Pitcairn does one, you know, Billinghurst is one. Yeah, these are really great, fully balanced. You can get it because they were all— that was all the rage then as well. And you know what people would just say, oh my God, that's such a faff. And since we've gone to more, you know, be relaxed. Yeah, chill out. Yeah. You don't do it to your children. Why would you do it to your pet? Make sure what you do do is you choose the best ingredients you can, okay? And you feed them raw, you feed them variety, and actually you can relax because over a month over a season, you're going to get balance.

The ADF thing you mentioned there, Nick, my only problem with that and why I don't use it, my only problem is that if this program was developed in the US, it started off by Steve Brown, legend, and, and since been moved on to a couple of groups. But the fact is this started off on American ingredients, food ingredients, most likely using the USDA search database. And the reason I suspect that is because to do a complete amino acid breakdown, like the 3, 6, 9, breakdown of foods is very expensive. To get crude protein, fat, fiber, cheap as chips. I did it all the time when I was making raw dog food myself. But getting down to the nitty-gritty where you want to get the 30, 40, 50 nutrients that we think are, you know, something a part of the vital diet, that's a mega expensive test. Now you can do that test once of the blueberry that you sourced yourself in America, or you could do the test 1,000 times incorporating all the countries and different types of blueberries and different hill slopes like these wine drinkers can tell. So my problem is that this Excel file has been built by someone, and I've built one myself, okay, but it's based on a lot of American information. And so when a person in Birmingham is going around the supermarket from the imported— all our fruit and veggies come from Egypt and Spain, massive greenhouses there— you know, that, I wonder of the actual relevance. Fair enough for the macro ingredients, which you alluded to, which is definitely important, okay, people don't have a clue, carbs and protein and fat, that's kind of cool. Yeah, but down below that, like the vitamins and minerals, to suggest that you're— you know, this app can tell you how much vitamins and minerals is in that fruit, I think could be possibly a little bit misleading if you're trying to build one diet forever. You know, that's my only reservation.

Yeah, but the thing is, if you're building one diet forever, you're going down the same line as Hills and Royal Canin.

This is what these companies want.

That's why they're so concerned about deficiencies, because they've stuck you on one diet forever and processed at that. So, you know, it's just like, it's just a formula for disaster.

So therefore, why do they formulate? And the answer is that there is a very small proportion of people who don't get the raw thing and don't do variety, either because they don't get it or because the dog won't eat anything but chicken, and they have to formulate approximately complete approximately in order to, you know, the consistent diet day in, day out, the 1% who feeds the same thing every single day. But those in the know know that variety is everything. Let me talk about— let's, let's, let's vaguely get back online. So, um, so balance. Here's, here's what I, you know, I used to say feed, you know, something different every day, but nowadays I reckon I hang with one protein from one species if you can for about a week. And if you've got, say, therefore you've got about 4 or 5 different protein sources, it means that that one protein has got— so you've got 5. Yeah. So it means that when you're on it, you're on it. And when you're off it, you've got 4 weeks of none of that. For example, if you— if the first protein that you chose was chicken and then you went to venison, then you went to turkey and then you went to lamb and then you went to rabbit, It means that when you, when you're on venison, you're on venison. When you're off venison, you didn't touch venison. And I think that's a very healthy way of feeding. I am against— if you look on Instagram, you see these amazing bowls of food with 9 different proteins. They'll have a quail's egg and a lizard's toe and a turkey neck.

You're mixed up with that witch's side that you keep going on.

Okay, and they have it and they look fantastic, but I think In nature, that's not going to happen. I think dogs are going to eat bunnies all spring and then in the winter they're going to eat, I know, elk or buffalo or God knows what. And it's going to be a lot of monotony. And I think that that's how they're built and that's what the microbiome likes. It likes to really get its teeth into one sort of food. So that's my thought, is weekly proteins and go for single proteins. You know, a dog of whatever description is not going to be— it's not going to be eating salmon and chicken at the same time. It's just not going to happen. So if you can avoid it, I'm being very idealistic, but, you know, people pay me to be idealistic, really.

Yeah, but you like that.

People pay you.

I know it's ironic, isn't it? Because nutrition is actually one of the— and raw feeding is one of the simplest things in the world. Don't tell anybody. Raw feeding is super, super—

We'll edit this out later in the long run.

Okay, so I like single proteins. I really like single proteins. If you— the way to go for NHS, nuts, herbs, and seeds is to go— just go seasonal. So in the spring, go for the seasonal herbs, you know, the, the rosemary. And then when the sage comes through, then you go heavy on the sage and you just Use Mother Nature, she knows best, doesn't she, boys?

Always.

She always, always, always— Marine oils, if you're going to use marine oils, you've got to read the book that Brendan has just mentioned because there's levels of knowledge there that I haven't even got a clue about. But for marine oils, what I say to keep things nice and fresh is you go a month on marine oil and then you go a month on a flax oil and you only buy enough for a month so it's fresh and and, and, and lovely. And with the marine oil, I'll do salmon oil for one month and then we'll go flax oil and then I'll do a pollock oil for the next month and then I'll do a flax oil, then I'll do a sardine oil and then I'll do flax and then I'll do a krill, something like that. Because variety is the spice of life, isn't it?

I'm going to ask you that question next week. I'm going to see whether you've read the book and changed your mind, because I think what you'll need to understand, I mean, Connor, you talked about the vitamin C level in blueberries and bilberries and things like that. But actually, when you've got pasture-fed animals, the vitamin C level in their muscle that the carnivores get is huge. The levels of omega-3s that are in their muscle with their pasture-fed, you know, is huge. And actually, a lot of the supplements that we're adding in is often because we're using meats which are not ideal.

That's great.

We're having to supplement. So guys, you know, I'm not saying don't supplement. I'm saying that actually we're having to fall into that trap because unfortunately there just isn't enough good meat in the world to be able to feed us all, including our pets on that line.

What's really, really interesting— and I read Good Fats, Bad Fats Gary Taubes, and he was talking about scurvy. You know, the classic line is that if you're out to sea long enough, you will get scurvy because there's no vitamin C in there. That's not the case. What actually— no, no, no, this is really, really— I know he says that the normal diet of the guys on the ship, the sailors. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to recreate the wrong And he says, no, it was ships biscuits, a little bit of grubby, horrible meat, which is neither here nor there. And it definitely wasn't good quality. And they'd have, they'd have sweet, sweet honey and things like that and, and rum. So it's very high carb and a lot of that's going to be broken down to glucose. And glucose competitively inhibits the absorption of ascorbic acid. So one of the reasons they got, they got scurvy was not because there was nothing, any meat. It's because they, they were— it was being blocked. And so the only way to get around that was to put limes. Yeah, limeys and all that stuff. Whereas if they were eating fresh fish and seabirds and whatever they could, you know, pigs and free-range and grass-fed, you wouldn't be on a zero vitamin C diet there. I mean, they wouldn't on a zero vitamin C because they put, they've put people on meat diets, pure, pure meat. They put them in a room for a year just eating meat and they don't get scurvy.

It's interesting, guys. Nick, that was really interesting. It's 19:31. We've got 15 minutes left. Bren, I'm going to move on to yourself there. Um, what are your points about balance that you want to get through tonight?

Yeah, look, I've talked about some of those, uh, you know, right at the beginning. I think, look, understanding Quantities, we've got this illusion about calories going in versus calories going out equals what's remaining. And actually there is, there's a couple of myths in there because microbiome creates some of your calories as well. And yeah, the couple of books that we've been promoting, you'll have an understanding of that. Really interesting things. There's all sorts of stuff around your set points. So your animal set point about what happens with the balance of insulin, the insulin resistance, the leptins and the ghrelin, all hormones related to how you're feeding, how you're satiated and how much your metabolism is working. And those need to be helped by reducing some of those carbs fermenting. I'm— we're going to be talking a little bit more over coming weeks on Patreon. We've got some stuff coming, uh, so we've got some chopping board stuff. We're going to talk about how to ferment foods for your dog. So that's one of the things alongside bone broths and other stuff. So keep looking on Patreon if you want to learn more about that. But looking at the nutrients that you can generate by promoting your gut flora rather than just thinking about what's in the food that's going in the front end. And I would definitely say if you're having issues with weight with your dog, okay, then think, have I got an issue with their set points? Are there things— and it's not— so this is an interesting issue. Both a lot of the books from the human side, they think that fasting is great for apoptosis and for cell turnover. But it's terrible for setting those hormones off and setting— if you do too much fasting without setting it up, your body goes into panic mode and will store fat every time it then comes across anything that's got any calories in. So you've got to balance things very carefully with regards to, you know, so a lot of people are moving to 16-hour fasting, 8-hour feeding scenario, which is easy overnight for most people.

Intermittent fasting.

Yeah, intermittent fasting rather than doing the, you know, the 5:2 diet. So 5 days eating, 2 days fasting, or even I've heard somebody talking about, you know, going on mammoth 18-day fasts, you know, going to 42-day fasts and building themselves up into these and because for some people it actually gives you a weird sense of sort of out-of-body sensation when you get to that level of fasting. But there are some downsides, you know, to your, your liver should really have a little bit of glycemic backup. Okay. So if you totally drain it, you totally drain that battery, then it gets into a process which can be really hard to restart proper metabolism. So I would say that the calories thing is probably really interesting to get into. Don't balance your diet based on calories, which unfortunately you're going to talk about this, Conor, is what all of the guidelines from FEDIAF to AFCO back to the NRC stuff is all based around nutrient to calorific value.

That's interesting.

I would say not only is calories a total fiction of how you should look at that, it's actually about other nutrient contents, but also this misunderstanding that, you know, we've talked about different foods can be different in their content of nutrient. But actually, just because I'm okay, I'm not as young as him, but, you know, I'm a similar size to Conor. Okay. Does not mean that I'm going to need exactly the same nutrient content and exactly the same calories. We're individuals. Everybody is an individual. Every animal is an individual.

My brother's golden retriever is like, you know, 30 kilos, decent-sized golden retriever and a bit chunky. And she's eating 500 grams of raw a day. My Duggee, my cocker spaniel, lean as a whip on 400 grams of raw a day. So the golden retriever is eating bugger-all food, and yet still I look and go, John, I know you're overfeeding it. No, I'm not.

I hope he's not. Yes, actually, with my Labrador— my spaniel, who's three-quarters of the size of my Labrador, eats slightly more every day.

Maybe it's a spaniel thing because they're just so insane all the time, burning calories.

I would like to get across, yeah, we're not clones. We haven't created clones. They might look similar in the breed, but it's just so wrong to assume that those guidances that said, you know, a dog's a dog is a dog, you know, they blow the myth about, you know, that basal metabolic rates and how that's calculated and how it was literally somebody going, I think the calculation should be this.

And it's just— and a lot of the ASCO things are based on swine. So it's like, oh, here's the maximum for iron based on 2 studies in swine. And they retracted those two studies a few years ago.

Yeah, because the hormones are different. And then there's— and I haven't even gone into epigenetics, which they have to look at. And so I really would say that this is why formulation for me really irks. Yeah, I think you've got to just say best foods you can. And actually, you can have your dog slimmer, thinner than you would really expect it to be. Okay. Because that's actually normal.

Yeah.

And give good quality ingredients with smaller amounts and you will get the most brilliant diet.

Yeah.

And that's what I would really implore people to start investigating and looking at and going through. I mean, there's so much in that I could carry on piping on, but we're going to run short of time. So I'm going to leave you in Conor's capable hands to—

Nick's the one who sparked this off. Now I've made a few notes. This is how nobody can read.

It's cryptic.

I actually had to sign a few books and nobody could read any of the messages. Stress on myself because I had to do 20. So I did a different message in each one because I thought people might share it online, didn't want the same message. And I realized I can't write at all anymore. It was typos in my handwriting. So I was like, sorry for all the typos. Typos? Typos. I'm scribbling. I know Margaret's going to put that up at some stage anyway. It got better as time went on. Look, the thing is about— I just want to have a good bitch about this because Balance is a big thing and it comes up all the time because they can't talk about nutrition because, you know, obviously some pellet made by a candy company with a woeful reputation for nutrition in humans is hardly going to put out a nutritious product for pets when we can't name one nutritious product they make for us. So we know the nutrition argument is pants. So you've got fear. Fear is the best motivator of you guys, and it's either fear that somebody's going to get sick, which is a great one at the moment, or fear you're going to make your pet sick, which is a big one. Yeah, so that's the balance bit.

That's a guilt trip.

Guilt trip. You're going to like, if you don't get the right amount of manganese, the dog's arse will fall off, you know, give me a break. So as you guys have said, you've no idea how much calcium your kids need. And in fact, when I asked one of these top veterinary nutritionists, Marge Chandler, in fairness, because we've got it recorded, it's on the webinar, and it's just at the end of the thing about raw dog food. In fact, you know, I just put out the— typed in the message, how much calcium does an average child need? And she just says, I'm sorry, I don't do children, you know. And I just thought, well, that's very telling. You have no idea how much calcium you need or children need, but you say it's important for pets. Why would pets be more complicated? So why are veterinary nutritionists so obsessed with this idea of, of balance? And honestly, it's because they mean well. It's not like there's 100 veterinary nutritionists on the planet. There's not a whole lot of them. There's 3 in the UK. 2 do not talk to vets or a vet owner. So you've got one veterinary nutritionist for the entire UK, 80 million people, 20 million pets, 20 million dogs, and 60% of them are obese, okay, overweight and obese. So that's 12 million overweight dogs can only go to Marge Chandler for advice, okay, because vets aren't geared up to give therapeutic advice with nutrition. That's supposed to be for a veterinary nutritionist, but Marge Chandler doesn't talk directly to pet owners, the 12 million that are waiting for her. They'll only talk to her vet. So the pet owner has to go to the vet and pay the £70 for the consultation. The vet then goes to Marj Chandler, who will get a specific diet for your overweight pet and come back to you, which will no doubt have, with no offense, lots of carbohydrates probably. And back it comes, and the pet owner's left spending £300 or £400, and 12 million people are supposed to do that. This is where we are today. It's not that veterinary nutritionists are, you know, evil and they want to do things. These guys have been coached this way, and they do believe they're doing right. And a lot of them are coming to making home recipes real ingredients, about time, and here they come. So it's great, but the thing is they have been coached on dry food literature. It's very clear because most of them are still promoting dry food. I mean, if you're coached on any other literature, any independent canine nutritionist doesn't recommend a pelleted food made by, made by a candy company. So that's where it's coming from. If people are wondering where this— when they're worried about balance and stuff, it's not because they're trying to increase the bottom line of this multibillion corporation. It's not that they're doing that. They don't need to do that. They're not paid to do that. They're doing it because they believe that you're going to get it wrong. So when Marge Chandler does a webinar on raw feeding— because who else would you get to speak on raw feeding but Marge Chandler— and she said, look, it's all the anecdotal stuff about raw is what bothers her. She started off by spending 7 minutes of a 1-hour lecture on raw talking about a single Shetland sheepdog fed an unspecified raw diet, had suffered cranial cervical myelopathy, hypocalcemia, hypophosphatemia, rickets, suspected nutritional secondary hyperparathyroidism. So this terror that you'll do it wrong will result in this— we're just not seeing it. Anyway, look, I could go on, but I just want to have a little bit of a go. The fact is that these guys rely on complete dry food to provide all the nutrients. Quen Hills pet food, the top-rated pet food, we have to imagine because every vet promotes it, every conventional vet is feeding it, and put out 22 million cans of pet food out the door of a factory without it being checked, excessive in vitamin D, which will lay out your pet. Okay, so that's not some conspiracy, that's the FDA stats. Okay, and they got a slap on the wrist for it, and that's— they said it's the only factory that's doing that and that's okay. But studies show that 92% of canned pet food made in the UK and 62% of dry food, of complete dry food, doesn't meet AAFCO's minimum nutritional values. They're not optimum values, we don't know what the optimum value is for a pet, minimum. So was that Davies, I think was the study in 2006?

Davies, yeah.

Oh yeah, 62% of dry food. So if that's what we're told to rely on, we are in big trouble because these things are not meeting the minimum guidelines. On top of a vast number of issues, the reason so many pets die when they're eating complete pet dry food and canned food— unlike a single dog to die from a complete raw dog food, not one, tens of thousands dead from ultra-processed pet food and canned food, the safer option— the problem is that they say to feed the same product every day. So when this product is clearly out of whack, all the studies warn us and you feed this pet the same thing to the pet every single day, you know— thanks, Jennifer— it puts me off when you say it because I'm reading the comments at the same time. I'm trying not to sweat, but like, the same unbalanced crap to your dog every day, that's where you're going to get the issue. And I don't understand why veterinary nutritionists don't see that. We've got the studies showing they're not balanced. How the hell should you feed the same thing? And no table scraps, definitely no variation. So coming on to my last point, the whole thing is balanced according to who? Balanced according to AAFCO, the American Association of Feed Control Officials, which are to all extents and purposes the vampires guarding the blood bank. These guys are feed control officials, these guys are the pet food companies, and they set their own guidelines so they can drop the protein contents as much as they want and do all sorts of things like allow people to say prescription on a diet when actually you don't need a prescription to buy it. And change meat meal, which is actually bone meal we call it in the farming industry, but it's meat and bone meal. Well, they call it meat meal because it sounds better. They now call that dried meat or dehydrated meat on the label because, you know, it's a pure scam. So AAFCO set these guidelines, the amount of protein a dog needs. If you saw the science behind that, you'd weep. There, the zinc— there's not enough zinc in prey animals to suit them because the zinc that you use in pet food, zinc oxide and all the cheap forms of zinc, the dogs don't digest a lot of it, so they pump loads of it into pet food. So when I'm formulating for a raw company, I have to run around finding ingredients that are higher in zinc, like milled seeds, and grind them up to defend myself to make sure, oh, there is enough zinc in it now, you know, as if they're really normal foods. On and on and on. If I could just finish lastly, the same, um—

oh no, that wasn't us! We were enjoying the run, just like the rest of you.

I'm just gonna go Quick glass of water. I've got heartburn because I was getting so overwhelmed with that.

Oh, guys. So really what Conor is saying is, yeah, there are a lot of companies out there that have a lot to lose if they don't give you a perfect balanced diet because they're asking you to get their product. So the illusion that gets me every time is the number of people that think they're getting bespoke processed foods for their pets. And what ends up happening is that they get one of four formulations which just happens to have their pet's name on it and they call it bespoke. And how they can do that, God only knows. But Conor's back to finish off. You've burnt out the internet line from through the Irish Sea.

We're over time, so like, I just want to skip back to Lisa Wheat and, you know, the vet nutritionist that put up this point. And I had a quick look at her Twitter account just for fun, and, you know, the tweets that she's putting out, like, one-third of pets are obese. Like, yeah, that's true, you know, actually about 65% are overweight and obese because most of them are feeding high-carbohydrate food. If you feed that food, your dog's going to get overweight. And what I didn't like was that she ended the tweet with, are you overfeeding your pet? As if, you know, are you giving too much of the stuff that makes them more overweight? And that's— I don't like that.

It's like you're blaming on the owner, isn't it?

It's blaming—

it's what the obesity industry have been doing. They say you're eating, you must be eating too much Mars bars.

So look, the last tweet, just to wrap it up, and skipping a few points, was her mention about, listen, cats can't be fed vegan food, but dogs can because they're omnivores. And that belies how— what a poor understanding of nutritional needs there is in the dog. Like, I mean, the fact that they suggest based on zero evidence that vegan dry foods are a good idea for a dog and cat really kind of belies it. And it was very interesting when I was formulating Paleo Plus for Paleo Ridge, and the Berry Good product, which is just a mix of fruit and veg, organic fruit and veg, very simple, that was the most complete product according to AFCO than any other of the 6 products that I put together off the top. Like, I had my dream lamb product, my dream turkey product, duck product. I put them together with the organ meats and we had a look at it, and Berry Good by far was the most balanced according to AFCO. Can you believe that? So you can make on sawdust with— if you add in the George Jetson sprinkle of nutrients on top of it, you can make that balanced according to these guys, but it means nothing in real life. Finally, to end on some tips, guys, we better do 1-minute tips for raw feeders. My tips are the only thing you might get when it comes to doing balance, the thing that's hard to find, is manganese, because that lives in the hair and the feathers and the hide and stuff of the animal, the nails. So we don't put that stuff in pre-made raw dog food specifically. So if you're not a prey feeder, you might be short on manganese. Don't— no drama, a bit of shellfish can sort that out. So a little bit of frozen mussels. It's a great little addition, great omega-3s in there.

Any seaweed?

Uh, any seaweed? No bugger all, unfortunately.

What we feed the girls is, um, rabbit's ears.

Hairy rabbit ears, yeah.

Hairy rabbit's ears, or you just get hide, you get hide and you just feed them that for your manganese.

It is good, actually. Yeah, the rabbit industry is a little bit worrying now.

It is.

Wild rabbits is good, but the farm guys are not And Patricia Gatton—

a dearth of rabbits—

yeah, yeah, there you go, give us a few years, post them over to me. But Patricia Gatton from Raw and Holistic Cat and Dog Support Group on Facebook, fantastic. If somebody could type that in the comments for me, and check it out, she's all about testing. So if you're really worried about your nutrient balances, there's a very simple solution. Go talk to one of these guys and say, I want to do a nutrient test on my pet, and just check out the nutrients. Where am I on my vitamins and minerals? It doesn't cost a lot. You get to see the vet once a year, and instead of getting a ridiculous annual vaccination without a shred of science behind it and probably harmful for the pet, you can go for a nutrient test. Now we're talking sensible spending money. I'm done.

Yeah, if you want to send me your diet, we— I can analyze it for you and give you whether you're way off on target or if they're—

just because he hasn't got enough work at the moment.

May. Yeah, we can do a computer analysis on which will give you an approximate idea, which is a ballpark. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So my advice would be fur, so rabbit's ears, lamb's tails, lamb's legs. You get amazing venison hide rolls, they look like a truncheon of of hide and they're furry, you can stroke them like this. Amazing things. I would say that's really, really good. My girls really love them. And lots of manganese. Brendan, your final parting shot.

My final parting shot is, guys, relax.

Yeah.

Okay.

You know, you really can't go that far wrong if you give variety.

And that's the point.

Yeah.

Don't go down this route of my dog will only eat chicken breast, okay? Because that is going to set you up for a fall. What you need to do is get variety. And I'm fine with these people that want to give— I mean, just poultry. Let's not go to just chicken, but maybe just go for poultry for a week. But please remember, organs, so rich in so many nutrients. Liver, kidney, lung, heart, all of that stuff. And if you're really struggling and you feel that you've got to add something to the diet, then a ferment. Think about fermenting some foods for them. It's really easy to do. I'm going to launch a little video club on Patreon, which we're going to talk about how to produce some of this stuff. Okay. I've got my chef's hat on. In fact, actually got presented with something special. Okay, oh, here we go, my lovely, lovely daughter. Okay, and this is, this is a special.

Okay, look at that, that's the most important thing.

So this makes this, this is, this is my special. Okay, I'm going to put that on so that we can start to learn a little bit about those useful additions without having to reach out for the capsules, the tablets, the extra, you know, expensive supplements. So how we can use, you know, if my very, very last point is please choose something that was living and hasn't been processed to feed to your dog. Okay. That would be the thing that I really want you to think about.

Guys, you can pick up dried seaweed off the beach. As you were talking about a vitamin and mineral supplement, somebody asked back there. You know, any of those things that you can get are great. But guys, you can pick up good quality seaweed, trim it off rocks, you can pick up good quality after rough seas if you're near the coast, and you can dry it yourself in the garage and it'll last forever. You can just hang it off a line and you can crumble in a little bit into the food. That is a powerful— it's a source of iodine because you're not eating a lot of organic meats. And so it's fantastic to put that— those little ingredients, absolutely anything that's cool out there you can put in there. But really, as Bren says, it's coming from your whole ingredients more so than the window dressing that people try to sell their products on the back of Thanks again to everybody for going to Patreon. If you enjoyed tonight, I can see it went down pretty well. Patreon is where we're at. The price of a cup of coffee a month keeps us able to prepare more for this, so it's a bit more enjoyable for you guys. We do appreciate the support.

As long as we don't break the internet.

Yeah, and if you can't afford it, that's totally cool as well. We understand that. We're in the same boat, so we understand that. And also thanks to our sponsors, payyourage.co.uk. Been fantastic help for the last few, few months. Deeply appreciated. And any questions you have from tonight, guys, you can send them over to Patreon and we will get to them. And we're bringing on a bit of help to help us out do these things now, and we'll talk to you about that in time as it comes along.

So what are we going to do next week, boys?

Vaccinations, wasn't that— oh, vaccination.

And then can we—

yeah, yeah, over and over again, vaccinations, big one. I think we're going to— can we start off with puppies? Can we do the— I think what we should do is initial vaccination and options and how people talk about that. We can talk about repeat vaccines, another one in the future, but there's so much to talk about to cram it into 45 minutes. I think we need to split it up a little bit. And so I think inoculating your puppies and kittens, how to approach that safely.

Yeah, cool, cool.

Okay, let's do that next week.

All right, that sounds good.

Puppies, kittens, vaccines.

Awesome.

Okay, amazing guys, it's been really, really fantastic. I'm going to outro us here. It's great to see you again, and it's nice to be back again because the internet isn't broken and because I'm not unable to attend. So I can't wait for one of these guys not to be able to attend. We're going to have a ball, we're going to have an absolute ball. Great, good night guys, thank you so much.

Thanks everybody for coming.

Thanks guys, thank you.