Selenium

Just you, Conor.

Here we are, Raw Pet Medics. It is Tuesday at 7 o'clock and we are here. I'm very excited to speak to you about selenium, of which it seems like the whole planet knows very little. However, we've got lots of interesting things to talk to you about. Um, we are on, uh, Patreon and we say thank you very much to everybody who supports us. You can find us if you go to Patreon and you just look up Raw Pet Medics. Any little contribution you can give us every month is very, very, very gratefully received. And we are on podcast. Anywhere you get your podcasts, you can get us, so we can come along as you walk the dog. How about that? You cannot get away. You can run, but you cannot hide.

We are everywhere. We're in your kitchen, in your sitting room, in your bathroom. Yeah, you will always be— we are always there.

You've just put everybody off.

We will find you. Amazing, guys.

Yeah, everything's second God on your lives, fellas.

Great weekend, great weekend in Scotland. Partying indeed. Well, just, uh, you know, being to a few lovely places up in, uh, um, the Whiskey country.

That looks like medicine, actually. That looks like herbal tincture.

Yeah, of course it is. True medicine.

True medicine.

Water of life. Sorry, any Scots who are listening. Just say which— what the brand was from the oldest distillery in Scotland.

This is Boreas, which is the monastery where they first started distilling.

Distilling the mash. The mash.

So anyway, it was—

Wow.

That's their story anyway.

Yeah. I wonder who first even came up with the idea of distilling, like, you know, tequila or whiskey or all those other foul-tasting drinks. I wonder, you know, the guy in his shed inventing all these horrible mixtures. It's like, oh, that's disgusting. Oh God, that's disgusting. And eventually he gets to whiskey or tequila and goes, oh, that's lovely. That's just what I'm after. Do you think so? Because I Flavourless, has he given up?

I think if you've been raised on mead or ale or something like that, which is what they used to give in the old days as children because it was safer than the water, and then you suddenly come across whisky, it's going to taste like petrol, surely. Or you're José in Mexico and you've been drinking, I don't know, beers or what have you, and then you come across tequila, it's like, yeah, it's not, it's not, it's just fermented, uh, cactus.

So do you think it came— they came across it a bit like they did the— you know when you've got those, uh, fruit laying under the trees in Africa and all the whales are going— all the, um, elephants are coming along and they're all sort of taking the fermented fruits off the ground and getting their hands off each other? Do you think that's what they did in Mexico? They just found a load of half-fermented cactus Yeah, that's going to be us in America in October. I'm gonna be driving across the marshes of New Orleans and we're going to be getting you out, Conor, and going, do it, do it!

Fermented liquids only the whole way. Oh, car powered by it, body's powered by it. I think that would be a good one.

I'd love to look at the history of distillation. Wouldn't that be amazing?

Where did it start?

How did they start using it on beeries? Winy things to produce stronger material.

You could tell our listeners it's about brewer's yeast, but actually we just want to do an hour of distillation.

It's all about Saccharomyces this week.

Yeah, absolutely.

Actually, amazing.

Interesting that you bring up Saccharomyces. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the yeast that's used in nutritional yeast that vegans will use to make their food taste nice. And nutritional yeast is one of the best sources of selenium. Because they grow nutritional yeast in a medium that is soaked in average selenium, which is the stuff they use in pet food and supplements and crap, selenium salts and stuff. But the yeast eats it and converts it into organic selenium, selenium methionine, which is the cool selenium. And then the— that's, uh, so Saccharomyces boulardii is the one we all know as a soil-based, um, kind of yeast. And this is Solanaceae, it's also great for your gut. Then they get all that yeast, it grows in this medium to make this tick soup and then they dry it out and kill it by, by heat killing it and turn into flakes, which are really tasty. But now it's high in the selenium that your body can absorb. So selenium kind of boosted up nutritional yeast is a, is a really cool segue into, into our conversation. Before we do, I want to talk about the fact that I received this book. Did you guys get your copy of this book? For those listening on podcast, I am holding it to make them really jealous.

Oh, did you think you were special? Yeah, yeah. But there's something, Conor, that we just want to just show to the listeners, um, and that is that if we take your book—

oh, go on.

Oh, grab now.

That's gonna make a man happy. Be careful, be careful, he might cry.

Just, just what we're gonna do is— oh, so what we're gonna work out is, so, uh, what Wider?

Yeah. Oh no, it's just peeking out the top.

Look at that.

You've got an inch.

We've got an inch there.

I'm an inch longer, just in case anybody's wondering.

Did you just say what I think you did?

Yeah, that's half an inch.

Are you bragging that you're half an inch longer?

Most important, I sincerely hope Rodney Habib is watching this.

He's in the throes of releasing this book. This is their second book. This is The Forever Dog Life, and it's an awesome book, and they are working hard and doing a bit of promotion about this. So the one thing that they're saying to people is that, lads, if you buy the book, do review it. I always remember when I had my book, I couldn't say that enough to people. So wherever you get the book, do leave them a review, honest review, but do leave them a review because it gets the book up the rankings and it keeps people talking about it, which is good for the movement. So Fair play, it's an absolutely beautifully illustrated book. It is just gorgeous. The very first kind of cookbook for dogs, it's beautiful.

You know, just talking about—

and Rodney did all the pictures himself, didn't he?

He did every picture himself, every picture himself.

I mean, I think Bee had something to do with it.

The cost to produce books like that is— this wouldn't be a project for making money, let me tell you that, as a as a minor author, that is a hard thing to do. So they put a lot of work into that. So thank you guys for sending out that book.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Hungry, I might need to leave you guys and just go and nip for a look at that mushroom broth.

Just keep it still there. Oh, that's good, that looks good. Yeah, so thank you, Karen, and thank you, Rodney. That's really fabulous, really look forward to jumping into that. Um, Conor, you were saying that you've been— you've got a little project this week. Tell us.

Yeah, we launched this little, um, um, an academy.

So we—

I, I have a kind of a course up on drconorbrady.com, which is my other website, and that's where I'm going to put all my little videos and whatnot because a WordPress website doesn't make that too easy for you. So I put that on my, uh, drconorbrady.com membership. But we launched it this week. Lisa Hannaby-Ard of iPet fame has come in and, uh, we between us designed this kind of introduction to raw feeding over 20 weeks. So it's a lesson each week and Lisa gives a half-hour kind of pitch on whatever topic was just introduction today. It'll be the studies supporting raw feeding next week and, you know, how to feed bone and introducing raw and everything you need to know. So that's what we do. And we just launched it today. And it was great. So it's in my membership. I just want to tell people about that because we have a decent following here on Raw Pet Medics that we don't hit people enough with. And I'm kind of saying, look, this is the sort of stuff we're at. And it's cheap as chips. It's £9 a month. And so you get your 4 lectures, access to all my online courses for that. And we're on there every week doing bits and pieces of stuff and bringing in experts to chat about things. And you can read my blog, which has audio, all sorts of things, all included in a tenner a month. But now the Academy too. So if you have anybody that's new to Raw, please do check out drconorbrady.com, where we started this off, and come and chat to us live, which I thought would be a useful little addition to the market. So yeah, thanks.

And if they are new to Raw, that segues really, really, uh, very, very nicely into what I've been doing. I have— so last Thursday I sat down for about 6 hours with the adventurer and filmmaker James Levele, L-E-V-E-L-L. L-E, all the L's, all the E's. James Lavelle, check him out. Adventure— imagine having that on your CV: adventurer and filmmaker. I want that. Anyway, he, he— I've been seeing his little puppy Pepe. So, uh, James, I hope you're watching, and a little shout out to Pepe the puppy. And I'm helping him with Pepe, and he's helping with me make a video. And we, we recorded 3 hours, took us a whole day. Recorded 3 hours of how you as dog owners and breeders and, and, you know, ordinary, wonderful, decent, amazing, raw feeling people, how you can talk to vets. Because, oh nice, it's not always an easy conversation. 1% of the time it is, it's a dream in, in maybe 1% of the, the situation. So we're dealing with a 99% where there may be a bit of stickiness, a bit of resistance. So we're talking about techniques to talk to the vets, and we're talking about why there may be resistance, what's the historical background there. And we're talking about, uh, we're talking about the, um, the WSAVA, those guidelines, which is what will be the main ammunition that the vets will, will come back at you. But we're also talking about the ecological aspects and the cost aspects and these kind of things. So it's all there, it's all coming together, and, um, that So that will be coming out. We're just in the editing, which is the most painful process in the world, but I'm not doing it. James is, God bless him. And so within a month or so, that should be coming out— how you, the army, the raw food army, can talk to, very pleasantly and very constructively, to your vets. That's— watch this space.

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, we've got so many things going on, and I'm looking forward to meeting those people that are coming along to the stuff on microbiome behavior and raw food feeding in a month's time, just over a month's time. So if you want to get onto the RFDS, don't forget, if you can drag your vet along on the 19th and 20th of July, you get a free ticket for yourself. So get yourself in there, go online, find those. There's some emails gone out to your vets as well, so just ask them to look in their email inbox And they should be able to see an invite. So cool. Great.

Very good.

We should really crack on, guys, because we should talk about Selenium. And we need to do quite a bit, I think, just to help people update.

Okay. Do you want to start with a little quiz, guys?

Okay.

So here we go. So Selenium gets its name from the Greek word selene, which means what, gentlemen?

Dionne, singer.

No, ancient Greek. What does Selene mean? S-E-L-E-N-E. It means moon. But even more interesting, what does Dionne mean? As in Celine Dion. What does Dion mean? D-I-O-N. What does that mean?

How did you know? How did you know that you— I was going to say Dionne.

Because there's only one Celine.

Celine Dion. Come on.

Yeah, go ahead.

Keep it up.

What does Delene Sion?

No. Delene Sion?

No, Celine means moon. Okay, we've got that. But what does Dion mean?

Shine.

Dion, from an ancient Greek dialect, actually means really painful Canadian singer. Oh, we got it, we got it.

Oh my God, we're going there.

Okay, so second, second question. Tell me when you've had enough of the questions. Selenium has an atomic number of 34, therefore how many protons does it have in its nucleus?

It's a true question. Brad's going to know this because Brad plays with molecules to help him go to sleep. At least that's what he told me he was doing.

He plays with it. Every day I play with molecules.

He plays with his molecules. It has 34 protons, therefore.

34 protons.

Atomic number is 34.

Yeah, probably 34 neutrons. Okay, I won't ask you for its atomic number. Okay, atomic weight.

No, atomic number is 34. Atomic weight.

Atomic weight, yeah, is 78.972.

Oh yeah, I was close.

Yes. Oh, very good, Bren, off the top of your head. Okay, so it was discovered in, uh, Sweden by Swedish chemists, no less, uh, in 1817. Okay, but it was considered toxic until a certain point, and then it was discovered to be essential, and there was a complete 180-degree flip. What was the date of that flip? So discovered in 1817, so was it 1818 or 1819?

Hating this table quiz, I'm absolutely hating these questions. What date was it? Uh, the 14th of—

oh no, approximately, approximately. How long was it before they cottoned on that it was essential? It wasn't toxic?

1976.

Brad? Surely not that late. 1952.

Very good. '57. Oh yeah, that surprised me because that's pretty late, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, it's like, keep away, keep away, keep away. Oh no, it's good for you.

You've got 1 point for being within 5.

Yeah, they taught us— they taught that there was people publishing in the '70s that thought zinc had no— had no function in the body. In the 1970s, biotin had no function in the body up until the '90s. So there's been people publishing on vitamins, just nonsense, like, you know. But anyway, go ahead. Any more?

Right. Do you want one more?

One more. One more. Go on.

Okay. This is quite interesting. Electrical engineer Willoughby Smith discovered that selenium reacts to light, the photoelectric effect, and was using it as a light sensor. So his dates are 1828 to 1891. Wow, that kind of gives it away. He was using it as a light sensor in the 1870s. Can you believe it?

I don't really know what you mean by light sensor.

Like, what, as in something that when you shine light on it, it makes a noise or go electric?

Switch is a switch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, um, I'm not that staggered by that. Okay, okay, approximately how much selenium— if you bear in mind that, yeah, you know, how much zinc is mined every year. It must be a million tons or so. How much selenium is mined— well, is extracted annually worldwide? How many tons? I can give you some, some figures. Is it 2,000 tons? Is it 6,500 tons? Or is it, uh, 21.78 tons, 1,000 tons.

Um, I'm going to anchor you up high because the amount of zinc mined each year, 13 million tons of zinc is mined each year.

Oh, there you go.

All right, so I'm going with the higher figure of selenium before Bren gets to pick.

Okay, uh, Bren, where are you going? Oh, tons of selenium extracted annually worldwide.

Very, very, very little.

2,000 tons, boys. That's it, that's it.

Isn't that—

I was surprised at how little it was. Yeah, just 2,000 tons. So there you go, there's— that was a little quiz. I thought it was quite, quite, quite—

I think that's probably the— that's surely the first and last quiz on selenium that's ever been done in humanity. It's the only 4 questions that exist on the internet about selenium. Nobody else would read the blog post but Nick. Interesting question.

I love it.

Oh, I enjoyed that. I thought that was very good.

And I only gave you half the ones that I'd prepared. So that's it.

Go on then.

Who's next?

Brad, have you anything interesting to say about selenium that you'd like to share?

I think something that was really interesting is so it creates folds within protein, so it changes protein structure slightly and augments them for the body's use. So you get these selenoproteins and some of the really interesting points is these will help with particularly the immune system and immune modulation. So we've got to think of the health reasons why selenium can be really useful, and that is particularly around the immune system, particularly around thyroid. So around thyroid in dogs, deiodinization. Yeah, not just about chucking in the levels of iodine and trying to hope that the thyroid will kick in and produce more. But actually, if you can modulate the immune system to switch off the autoimmunity, then you can do that with adding selenium into the diet. So it might be that you can promote better health in hypothyroid dogs by improving the selenium intake. And we'll talk about foods a little bit down the line for the best foods to get your selenium intake. Something really interesting, if you overdo selenium, do you know what happens? What's your first signs that you're overdoing selenium?

Don't you get crinkly hair or something like that?

Yeah, it starts to knacker your hair and nails, so you can get fractures of the nails and things like that. So you get really brittle.

Who eats too much selenium?

Ah, but that comes too if you start sticking selenium supplements in, in too high a level. So it's not necessarily in foods. This is when somebody goes supplementing a diet, especially those weird people that decide that manufacturing foods into little brown pellets might be a good idea. You know, they go sticking in foods. If your dog is getting the wrong amount of selenium its needs. Watch out for fracturing nails, brittle nails, and certainly, you know, the number of people that come that they've gone on the internet and started looking at trace element supplementation, maybe not using an appropriate chelated mineral, but they're just, just sucking in excessive amounts of selenium. I mean, Conor, you must know off by heart. Does it say in this book? Shall I have a little look to see whether— yeah, Have you put it in here?

It's not fair to ask me any facts that might be in the book because I'm going to have a quick look. There's not a whole lot about selenium in the book, but I tell you, when you said that to me when we came on, I thought, oh my God, I never thought to check the book because I just kind of know when the book is useful. And I thought selenium is not something I know a whole lot about. But I did a quick search of my book and I found this little stat: men who took multivitamins were twice as likely to die from prostate cancer compared to those who didn't. A fact that was corroborated again in 2011 when a study of 35,000 healthy men found that supplementing with vitamin E and selenium increased prostate cancer by 17%. Now you have to be very careful with those studies, but I just thought, ooh, all is not totally well in the supplement industry when you look at it. But as Bren just alluded to, it definitely has to do with the types of selenium you use. There's kind of selenium salts that they use in pet food, which is sodium selenite. And that's a very common supplement now. And studies show, compared to kind of the more organic forms of selenium, which I said, like from nutritional yeast, which is the selenium methionine, which is the way the body likes it. And studies show when you compare those two seleniums in pigs, that the crappy selenium from a conical flask, sodium selenide, is absorbed just as well as the selenium from food, selenium methionine, absorbed just as well and will do some of the things equally well. But what they found was over time that selenium didn't build in the muscle stores of the pigs on the sodium selenite. So it could have this little effect that you want affecting some of the enzyme activities and stuff that it's involved in, but it didn't build in the storage of the pigs. So the pig's liver, kidneys, and muscle didn't actually store the selenium from the crappy supplement. Just a little warning that I was like, maybe the body doesn't handle conical flask nutrients. Like, for example, iodide. Supplementing pet food with iodide is a terribly difficult thing to do because putting any sort of iodide in there can really impact the thyroid if you get it wrong. But you can eat a lot more iodide when it's bound up in food and fiber and protein as you can with selenium, because the body doesn't absorb it all. It's all tied up in the foods and doing all different things. And it's the same with many other things.

And it's really interesting you mention that, that it's not stored in the meat so well. When it's in that conical flask supplement. Yeah, it's actually selenium. One of the other things is it's a really important cofactor in the enzyme as an antioxidant, antioxidant. So in the superoxidase enzyme to reduce the oxidative stress when you're exercising. So really important. So you'll find it in the heart muscle, you'll find it in the muscle meat. So that's one of the reasons why if it's in the right form, meats such as even chicken and turkey all the way through to beef should have plenty of selenium in it. So it's really interesting that you said they don't seem to hold on to it if, yeah, not in the right form.

Yeah, which is what we found, you know, with other things like phosphorus. You know, you put in organic food-derived phosphorus into a kidney cat and they're in good shape, but if you artificial, then you get excessive artificially risen phosphorus levels. And this is true with practically everything we talk about. If you go with a natural source, you're probably in good shape. And that was one of the things I was wanting to say to people, you know, don't go for a supplement where there is a food source. And the list I've got is Brazil nuts, which is the obvious one, hence the photo. Nice photo, by the way, Bren.

Lovely.

Kidney, beef, shellfish, chicken. So basically, if you're feeding a decent raw food diet, you're good to go in terms of selenium. However, most people in Europe are low in selenium, and the reason for that is because we used to import our wheat from Canada, which because of the soils has up to 50 times more selenium than the, uh, the European, the UK's, uh, wheats. Okay, and so ever since we didn't import from Canada, we've had a lower source of selenium from wheat.

Interesting.

And so if we look at, you know, for men, the intake should be about 75 micrograms and women about 60 micrograms. And that's because the average man and the average woman, very, very average, but the average, there is that kind of difference. But most people are kind of— are— take their blood levels, their body levels is the equivalent of eating kind of for men 40-ish and women 35-ish micrograms. Yeah. So, so a lot of people have low, you know, and ultra-processed food, forget it. There's just this. There's just, you know, it's a, it's a micronutrient desert.

I thought you were going to say our move to vegetarian veganism in the West and in Europe has dropped our selenium contents because I think that would do it as well, because grain is a terrible source. Grain and plant matter is a poor source of selenium compared to meat and eggs and fish and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the veggies are going to be okay if they're having eggs, then, then that's going to be a source.

Yeah, I mean, look, if we— should we, should we just bring that in?

Oh, people listen on podcast, Bren's just shared a lovely image, he's going to tell you about it.

But I think if we just, if we just talk it through, shall we? Because like, if I, if I hide me and Nick and Conor, no, it leaves that. No, no. So, um, yeah, it's things that we've got to think about. Dairy, nuts particularly. So Brazil nuts, even cashew nuts, but Brazil nuts, um, all nuts.

It's just the Brazils are the king of selenium.

I think all nuts, you know, I think it's something like 1% of, um, your Brazil nuts in selenium. It's like something, some ridiculous amount of selenium in there, um, in the Brazil nut. It's ridiculous.

You only need, as a human, you only need one Brazil a day and you're good for selenium.

No macadamia nuts for doggies, just in case.

Yeah, yeah, indeed. And then pumpkin seeds, even though zinc is often thought about, that's pumpkin seeds, selenium, chia seeds. So if you want to improve the fiber in your dogs, and you— that's the thing that's just above the prawns but below the pumpkin seeds, there's chia seeds. So you can just soak those, chuck them in. Okay, some companies actually use chia seeds as fiber that they add to their raw foods, so just watch out, it might already be on the packet. There are oats, I know you love your oats, don't you Conor?

I love them.

Not sowing them, just love them.

I am an oat man, I put some oats in my kids' banana pancakes this morning instead of flour and that's just a wonderful start to the day. Banana pancakes with 50 million eggs and a couple of bananas and they have just eaten a ferocious amount of eggs for breakfast. So beautiful. I put in a bit of oats to hold it together. What's in the top right there, Bryn? Are they otter's nipples?

Just before we go there, just talking about oats, guys. So we know that oats will deplete dogs and humans of zinc, even though they do actually contain, you know, trace minerals. So the question therefore would be, if you take, I don't know, 100 grams of oats and that's got a certain selenium content, Is that a kind of a technical intake? Because is that— are the oats going to chelate that selenium in your gut and they're going to steal as much as they give? Yeah, just a question. I don't know the answer.

Those figures are when the product is incinerated in a laboratory. And so the chances of you— that's always the case with, say, the protein on your dry pet food. So Krogdahl did a great study of puppy pet foods and he included all the brands and said their names. So Mars was in there, Purina, and they measured 4 puppy foods and they all contain the minimum amount of protein your pup needs for 6 months because that's obviously— but he— so they started 22%, but he said only 70% of that protein is bioavailable to them. So it doesn't matter if it says 22%, they're all deficient in protein. So that was a really important study. But yeah, that's interesting. So you're not guaranteed to get that out and then things clash and there's phytic acid that binds things up and Yeah, yeah, totally.

Just because it's in the food that you're eating, that it's going into your body, doesn't actually mean that that micronutrient makes it to your tissues to actually do some good.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, there's lentils in there, and, and, you know, those can cause their own issues if they're not processed properly. So, you know, it's interesting that they are rich, but as you say, yeah, there's seafood in there, oysters, even though again we think of zinc, selenium in there. What do you mean?

Oh, I hate oysters. I hate the look of them.

Anyway, you can go for any sort of shellfish, seafood, fish, muscle of fish, tuna, things like that can be really rich. So interesting that this is one of those that turkey and chicken make it almost onto the leaderboard as far as selenium levels are in there.

Is that because they're supplemented with it in their food?

Well, I— well, it's certainly not what's named in there, so it may well be that they do try and preserve the integrity of the muscle and the antioxidants, because otherwise you can get— if you get muscle breakdown on the breast muscle, it can be really bad, isn't it, as a selling point for that.

Yeah, because I remember back in the day there was a bolus that we used to give to sheep called Cosicure, and that's the only way I remember that it was contained cobalt and selenium. You remember those, Bryn?

I do.

Because your bullets.

Yeah.

And, and I think that that's possibly where some meats are getting an extra boost, boost of selenium. They put it into, you know, because of the, the stress of— let's— here's, here's a thought experiment. Chickens are very stressed. Unless they're in the backyard, in which case they don't grow very fast and it's not economic. So you put them in 30,000 in a chicken shed, they're going to be stressed to hell. They're going to be eating less than perfect. It's going to be a lot of soy, it's going to be GMO, it's all these kind of things. Maybe they put quite a generous amount of selenium in there to just as an antioxidant for the chickens. And the side effect of that with chickens and turkeys is that there's plenty in kind of commercially produced.

It's great for their immune systems as well. So it's actually bolstering their immune system at the same time.

So it will, it will. But if they were left to their own devices, they wouldn't need that bolstering. If they were not stressed because of the, the modern production methods, then they wouldn't need it. I just, just, just, you know, just to chewing the fat, really. What do you reckon? Yeah, that works.

I have some figures there on what chickens can absorb. And you were saying that, like, what's the bioavailability of selenium out of foods? Chickens can get 27% of the selenium out of animal products and 47% of the selenium out of plant ingredients. So chickens can actually get more selenium from plant ingredients than they can from meat ingredients, pound for pound. So that's interesting.

What about people?

Well, what about dogs indeed? Let me— can I Are you finished there, Brian? Can I—

yeah, yeah, you—

here, listen to this, right? So when it comes to dogs, right, we're trying to find out how much selenium do dogs need. And, you know, you go to the, you know, if you want to find out, you go to the Ronald McDonald's book on nutrition, okay, the Small Animal Clinical Nutrition, and it's written by Hill's Pet Food, and it's, you know, it's full of science. And you go to selenium and you learn about selenium, okay, and in fairness to them, they do make like in the very first paragraph they say, look, the best sources of selenium is like liver and eggs and all the stuff that they don't use. And so they say they highlight the NRC, which is the other book that you go to, much easier to read. I love picking up this book because the other one's so horrible. But between the two of these, the NRC, which is over in the States, they recommend 0.35 milligrams of selenium per kilo of dry food per day for dogs. Around the same for cats, 0.35. AAFCO say 0.11, 3 times less. I mean, that alone should tell you how much science is involved in the nutrient requirements of dogs and cats. They're thinking 3 times less, and these guys love each other, these two books. It's like huge disparity. Where—

just say that again, how much was that?

0.35 milligrams per kilo of dry food, so 35 parts per million of selenium. Per kilo of dry food.

Okay, so that's because I'm looking at the FEDIAF here and it's 35 per 100 grams dry matter.

Oh, that's per kilo. One of us has to be very wrong there. I've got—

it's probably per 100 grams of dry food, so it'll be a factor of 10.

I will eat my hat if I'm wrong, but I will hate to— I'll Google search it afterwards. Let's just— let me just find out what that is right now.

Okay, so this—

they're saying whilst we're just doing that, we'll just finish off some of the foods because he can then come up with that. So, okay, they're not beaver's nipples as Connor said. They are actually a couple of mushroom powders that are in the, uh, top corner there because mushroom also, uh, contains selenium.

Eggs—

had a really interesting conversation with an egg man at the weekend, um, rears huge amounts of free-range eggs, giving me the ins and outs of how they're extending the longevity of birds through mineral supplementation. And then obviously we also have things like broccoli. Good old broccoli always should be there. So that's a great addition to any dog's food. Please remember, don't give it in that form. Do make sure you blend it down at the very least. Even lightly steam it first just to release some of those nutrients.

Yeah.

So, so that gives a roundup. And dairy, of course, is also a great source of these trace minerals.

So remember, if you can get it—

yeah, raw if you can get it. Absolutely. Yeah, that is full-fat golden A2 milk. From creamy Jersey cows. There we go.

Lovely.

Or goats or sheep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Back to the selenium. Okay, so the recommendations are— we both buggered it up, Nick, to be honest with you. On the plus side, I would be closer. The NRC and AAFCO recommend 0.35 milligrams of selenium per kilo of dry food. For dogs, 0.3 for cats. So per kilo is that 0.35 figure. Let's just stick with that one for the moment, okay? 0.35 milligrams of selenium per kilo of dry food. As if anybody listening to this really falls for these figures, but let's just go with that, okay? This is what the dry pet food world— this is exactly how much selenium you need. And to give them their dues, they say meat's the best sources of it. Liver, kidney, muscle meat, eggs, and grains are a lesser source of it, and they can contain up to 0.3 milligrams, which which is quite a lot, but it depends massively on the soils, and most plant ingredients don't contain that. Anyway, they go on to say this Wedekind in 1998— they keep, both books keep referring to this study, Wedekind in 1998— and they talk about it's a chicken bioassay. So in other words, they use chickens to see how well they— they know exactly how much selenium has been fed to them, and they measure how much comes out, and then you know how much the chicken absorbed. And they keep talking about chickens, chickens, chickens, and it turns out Your Cat and Dog's recommendations are based on this study of chickens. So it's how much the chicken could absorb from certain ingredients. And you might say the chicken's a slightly different looking animal to a cow or to a dog or a cat. So we know that the selenium recommendation— I mean, the zinc recommendations and copper recommendations are based on pigs for dogs, but for the selenium, it's based on chickens. And you're thinking, wow, that's a very different animal altogether. So They use this chicken bioavailability study, but listen to this, okay? They needed a frame of reference to start with, like how much selenium does a dog or a puppy need? Okay, it's not, you know, we need to know how much they actually need before. So your dog's recommendations and your puppy's recommendations are based on this. They needed a frame of reference for potential selenium need in pups. For that, and all they have is a single study from 1975 a study that was an examination of what would happen when they removed all the selenium and vitamin E from a group of puppies 5 to 8 weeks old. So it was a nutritional deficiency study, okay? And, you know, they removed all the vitamin E and selenium, and unsurprisingly, these pups got very sick. And I shouldn't laugh, but that was the end of them. So they divided the pups into 4 groups: very little, or no selenium, very little, a little bit more, and a lot. And what they found was the ones that got a lot of the selenium, so supplementation lived and the other ones got all sorts of terrible kind of diseases. And on the basis of that study, they've come up with this figure of 0.35 milligrams. The authors and the AFCO since and NRC use a lot of kind of calculations and formula. They keep on referring to this 1975 study of deficiency, selenium and vitamin E deficiency. And they say, yes, also those pups were vitamin E deficient, but if they weren't, we reckon maybe half the full dose that they gave of selenium, and they plucked this figure from the sky, 0.35 milligrams of selenium. This figure, that's the only basis. This study from 1975 and a whole lot of formulae based on how well chickens can absorb selenium from their foods. They marry those two things together and come up with this Frankenstein figure of 0.35 milligrams of conical flask selenium. And so when you go and formulate raw dog foods and your vet says, does it 0.35. This is why it's so frustrating. You're saying that is such—

what vet ever says, yeah, it contains 0.35 milligrams of selenium? You know what I mean?

It's just so— and like, it's not just selenium. You could pick any mineral and like you read these things, your tail's wagging because you know it's going to be that bad. And it's just as bad for cats. They have a single study of 10-week-old kittens supplemented dry food for a few weeks from that was the evidence for cats. And they state themselves there was a dearth of information on interaction with selenium once they put it in the products. So they don't have any idea how much that gets through or that kind of thing. I've got one more thing. A new study came out in 2016 called Selenium Digestibility and Bioactivity in Dogs: What the Can Can, the Kibble Can't. Very clever, they like a clever title. And what they found was that the selenium measured how well dogs can absorb selenium from canned food and dry food, and it turns out they can absorb the chemical flask nutrients from dry food, but it has a different effect on the body. And what they found was the canned diets typically contain higher concentrations of meat and/or byproducts, whilst kibble diets contain mainly cereal grains and cereal grain byproducts. So that was the main big difference between them from a selenium point of view. But more importantly, studies suggest that dogs absorb overall more of the synthetic nutrient from kibbles, okay, but the net biological effect for the body is poorer, these guys found. So yes, you will absorb more of the synthetic mineral that they put in there, which is what they measure. Does it hit the blood? Yes, it does hit the blood. But how does the body react to this toxin once it goes into the blood is completely different. But these studies don't go on for 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 2 years, 10 years. That's not measured at all. It's just what happens with a couple of pups in a cage they both absorbed it, job done. But that selenium doesn't look anything like the selenium that you get from your food, or the vitamin E, because selenium and vitamin E are blood brothers. And if you have a deficiency in one, you're going to have big problems with the other. That's a whole other thing, but they are really, really important. But the vitamin E that goes into dry food is a Frankenstein. It's half the hormone, you know, you can't make the whole thing in the lab. So I like the fact that this 2016 study concluded with, we've got to really reassess giving a blanket figure for canned and dry food. You could add in there and fresh food. What they're saying is kibble and canned are completely different because canned uses meat to provide this selenium, whereas kibble uses this synthetic stuff, and the bodies are processing this stuff differently. And they're putting their hands up going, hey, we can't just give the same figure for these two products, they're totally different. Enter raw dog food, which is completely different again, you know. So it just goes to show, that's just one little mineral and look how flimsy the science is behind that, and that's what you're counting on. I mean, it's madness. Anyway, that's what they have to say.

So I think we've got to round up for this evening. We've got to talk about, look, if your dog is suffering from tiredness, maybe weakness of the muscles, it's looking at its immune system's not functioning 100%, then those are good reasons to maybe just double-check, you know, what is going into its diet. Have you got enough selenium going in? Remember, you know, NHS from good old— oh, which of you said that?

Oh God, it wasn't him.

It wasn't. Oh yeah, I did mean to say it.

So that's one of mine, guys.

Just to hit the nail on the head.

NHS. I've been saying for the last—

don't forget. Yeah, yeah, all right. Yeah, yeah, we know, we know.

I know, I know, we know, but I'm just, just sharing it with, with, with everybody.

It'll be written under headstones.

But, but remember, just, you know, maybe so either ferment or, um, soak those because that can reduce some of the phytates, uh, that are going in alongside that. Um, and you know that you can then blend along with your veg, put it into ice cubes that you then just dish out with your meats if you're doing it yourself, or if you've got a prepared food, just have a little look. Ask the company, ask the company, are they using chelated minerals? Are they using it from good meat sources? Are they testing the food that comes out of the factory, or is it just on formulators? You know, it's a simple, simple thing just to have a little dabble into what are your dogs getting, what are your cats getting. Remember, this is just as important for your cats as it is for your dogs.

The thing is, Ben, if they're feeding decent meat and there's, there's going to be some organ component to that, QED, they're going to be getting selenium.

Oh yeah, absolutely. You, well, you would say, yeah, a half decent diet, you're good for selenium.

Muscle meat is the best source.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And liver. You know, it is just looking at are they using good sources, and we know farming matters, you know, what is going into those farm animals. If they're chucking in, just as we've just talked about, conical flask supplements because the sward is too deficient in minerals because of how they farmed it, then of course there's going to be a risk that They—

how do you know, Brad? How do you know if your grass is of certain nutritional quality? And do farmers measure that, or you can analyze it?

Yeah, because in the UK there's a thing called tiered soils. I think I've mentioned it before, and I can never remember whether it's— I mean, we're going back 30 years at vet college. There's a thing called tiered soils where it's either low manganese or low selenium, and it will affect the fertility of your dairy cows, for example. And therefore you need to address that with putting selenates and what have you onto the soil to improve the selenium concentration to keep your cows cycling and fertile. Do you remember? Teared soils, low selenium. Is that—

yeah. So, well, there's all sorts of things that you can do because you can even test your sward. You can send in samples mashed up and they'll look at what's actually absorbed up into the plants. Because again, it's not just about what's in the soil, it's about what have you done to the bacteria and the yeasts and everything else that's feeding those plants. Are they actually binding those minerals up into a form that the plants can take up? Okay, so it's not just the soil, it's then the plant material, it's then getting that into the animals.

Just because it's in the soil doesn't mean it gets the plant? And if it does get into the plant, does it therefore get into the tissue? And if it does get into the tissue, is it in a form that the body can actually utilize?

Yeah.

Oh, it's great, isn't it?

Interesting.

It's really great.

Yeah, it's this kind of like— it's a kind of a hangover from like the George Jetson cartoon of, you know, science and chemistry has the answer. And we've gone gung-ho with that approach, thinking we'd just be taking a a protein pill and a few vitamins and minerals here and we'll all be fine. And that is just not working out. It turns out it's incredibly complex. We haven't a clue. You know, we just cannot do this perfectly. It's great to get us out of a bind, but I mean, to rely on them as a lifestyle way of a lifetime way of feeding is nonsense.

And how we're falling into that trap with insect protein. But then beyond that, the fermented proteins, you know, you can produce a fermenter can produce 32 cows an hour of protein. But what they don't say, that's protein, unfortunately. What about all of the vessels and fats and, yeah, you know, coenzymes and everything else that comes with that? Yeah, what about all of those chelated minerals, the vitamins? I asked the question of them, what happens when they try and put in bacteria that would produce some of those postbiotics, which could be really beneficial Oh, we don't want to do that, sir. You know why? We destroy the whole fermenting process. You have to clean out the tanks. You're down for 2 weeks. If you're thinking that's 32 cows an hour and you're down for 2 weeks, how many cows have you lost? It's just like, oh my God. So actually what you're saying is this is, as you say, George Jetson protein with absolutely nothing added.

Oh yeah, it's the hubris of thinking we know what we are getting from our food. Which, which, you know, that's, that's just— yeah, sorry guys, we are only just beginning to scrape the surface of that.

You're peeking at it with a telescope and you're going, I see planets and some stars.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe there is a moon of Jupiter. Yeah, maybe, maybe it's not. Maybe it's just, I don't know, something in my eyes on my screen. But the thing is, if you, if you, if you, um, calculate that for an ideal human you're never going to find the ideal human. Okay, so you might be able to get it for an idealized situation, but then you come across, you know, Mrs. McGregor, who's had 5 courses of antibiotics through her life, and her microbiome doesn't do the same thing to the food that goes in her mouth as it does to Mr. Jones down the road, who's never had an antibiotic in his life.

Yeah, yeah, microbiome are just central to all this as well. We don't even talk about that. It's so complicated. But you know what, it makes it— it's so complicated on one end if that's the way you want to think about food, but on the other end is it's wonderfully easy when you park all that madness and those huge books and go, do you know what, I'm just going to keep on eating food and feeding the kids the way I feed them and listen to what my mum told me. And, uh, if I had done that a bit more, I probably wouldn't have that little bit of pudge around my tummy that I have and I'm trying to, trying to lose. But you know what I mean, it's just, it's It's so complicated. All the atoms and molecules are moving to the front of the packets, the front of your shampoo and all that kind of stuff. It's just nonsense. It's there to make you worry and fear and that'll make you buy.

Marketing, guys.

Yeah, yeah.

Eat food.

Yeah, stop worrying about it so much. That's for sure. That was cool.

Okay, let's jump over to Patreon for 10 and then I'm gonna have to shoot.

Okey dokey.

Okay, well guys, thank you, Patreons. Thank you, thank you, everybody for following.

See you next week. Oh, what's next week? Week, guys. What are we doing next week? Um, we're gonna have to plan this out because we're gonna have some interesting times when we go down to, um, the farming, um, conference with Groundswell.

Yeah, Groundswell.

We've got to get down there on Tuesday night, so that's going to be— yeah, next week, week after, Nick, week after.

It is next week.

Next week after.

Are you both going to be down there camping? Yeah, little tents.

Yeah, you're coming.

It's not midgets, sorry, nothing wrong. No problem with midgets, I just— oh God, that's gonna be snipped out. They just know I'm going. No, I'm not. It's not— ah, camping. I don't think I'd travel too far to do any camping. I would do it on a duress if my kids were coming with them.

It's the 26th, 27th, So we can do some filming there with some interesting regenerative types because they're always very interesting. Yeah, we'll do that. I've just emailed Peter Dobias, depending on how you say it, and so hopefully we'll grab him to come and talk to us sooner or later.

I'll take it offline, I'll let you know who they are just before we commit to it.

Lots down the pipeline, guys. Thanks to everybody who supports. We really, really appreciate it, and we'll see you next week. We're doing something.

We're doing something.

Yeah, we're always doing something. Look forward to it.

And now for something completely different.

Brilliant. We'll see you over on patreon.com/warpetmedics, and catch you soon.

Take care.