EPS. 31: Nutrient-Rich Nourishment: Chef James Barry on Rediscovering Organ Meats

Hi and welcome to the Restorative Wellness Clinicians Corner video series exclusively for functional health professionals, where we interview the top experts in the latest research, products, tools and best practices for getting your clients exceptional results. So welcome everybody to this episode of the RWS Clinicians Corner. And we have a very special guest with us tonight, Chef James Barry. And I have his formal bio here, but I'm going to riff on it because as you all probably know by now, we go, we go way back. He's actually up in the attic. So this is my husband, but we met and we've started actually working together before we ever romantically. In fact, we met, what was it now, 14 years ago when I was writing my first book, Eat Naked, and he helped me. He co authored the recipe section of that book and the rest is history. But so James is an incredibly, an incredibly seasoned chef. So he started off his career as a private chef to a lot of the celebs in la. You will know these names. Tom Cruise, Mariska Hargitay, George Clooney, Gerard Butler, Sean Puffy Combs, Barbara Streisand, John Cusack, the list goes on and on. And he then started a meal delivery company, one of the first, back in the day before there was hundreds of these in la called Wholesome to Go, and then sold that when we moved away from LA and has recently launched an incredible functional food product that that many of you probably know called Pluck, which is an organ based seasoning. It's the first of its kind and amazingly easy and delicious way for people to get organ meats into their diet. So we're going to be unpacking all things organ meats today, ancestral diets, talking about some of the logistics and the practicalities of getting your clients to eat things that they might have some ick factor abound. James.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. Hi, everybody. I just want to, you know, I just want to shine a light on Ms. Margaret there and just, and just honor her. It's been. When we met 14 years ago, I was actually studying nutrition because I really saw the gap between nutritionists towards the culinary arts and towards chefs with nutrition. And we met, she was mostly doing nutrition, I was mostly doing cooking. And she was so good at what she does, I immediately was like, okay, you be the nutritionist, I'll be the chef. And we just like. I stopped studying nutrition and I just focused on being a really great at what I did. And, and as she said, the rest is history. But you guys are all in such good hands as you know, and it's been such an honor watching her grow as a practitioner and come into restorative wellness and then step into the role, the leading role in restorative wellness and now take restorative wellness to just all new heights. So kudos.

Stop it. Stop it. This is supposed to be about you and your skill set, but thank you. I want you to share with everybody a little bit about your journey. I like to always start from the beginning. And I of course know your, your history with this and, and you know, you didn't necessarily. We weren't raised by Che. So tell us about. I'd love to hear kind of two stages of things. I would love you to share with everybody your journey to becoming a chef. What was most important to you in that journey? And then. Well, then I'll talk about the functional foods afterwards. Let's just start with the beginning of your journey.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think I've always loved cooking. I was introduced to it very young age, around I want to say five to seven. I. My first thing was scrambling an egg and I loved it. I just, there was something about the act of cooking, the expression of cooking. I just, I just loved every part of it. And I think, I think we're built on contrast. You know, a lot of what we become is due to contrast. And my household was such that you knew dinner was ready because the smoke detector went off. So you could say that I had extreme contrast because my, my mother and, and father to a degree did, really did not know how to cook. We were shaken bake kids and TV dinners and all that kind of stuff. So cooking was a real passion. My neighbor was a, was extremely proficient chef, just a, just a household chef. But he was very good at it and he kind of introduced this artistic side to it that you could make things from scratch and. And then I just kind of kept learning on my own, but I never saw it as a career. There was just, you know, back in the day, if you all remember anyone, anyone that's, you know, in their 50s or older, there was really like two cooking shows. It was Julia Childs and the Frugal Gourmet. That was it. So the idea of a celebrity chef non existent, it was like you cook in a restaurant or you don't, or you, you don't make a living. And the idea of cooking late nights and being away from my family was not attractive because my father used to work nights and I used to not like that as a child. So I was really kind of hesitant towards that lifestyle. So I Just put it on the back burner. It was like, just something I was going to do as a hobby. And then 911 happened, and I completely revisited my entire life and audited everything. And I was just like, okay, life is short. You don't know when you're going to go. Everything I choose from this point on has got to have heart. It's got to be something I truly am here to do. And that's when I. I look back and I was like, well, what did I love as a kid? And it was cooking. But what was interesting is I never wanted to be a restaurant chef. So I, I never looked at cooking the way some chefs do. For me, it was all about health. I. I recognized when I was growing up that I had some health issues. I had, you know, kind of constipation issues. I. I had some food stuff, like, where I feel like I was not eating enough, and then I would binge that kind of thing. So. So just. Just kind of seemed like there was constantly some either emotional or physical issue going around food. So I recognized how important food was. I just didn't understand it. And then when I was in college, I got a kidney stone. Extreme pain, extremely painful. And never wanted that pain again. And learned that it had to do with what I was eating and drinking. You know, here I was at 21, and I finally learned that food affected my health. So from that moment on, it was like, how do I connect these dots and how do I support other people?

I'm sure there's a lot of folks here, you know, you say finally, at the age of 21, most of us are working with clients who are well, well, well past that and are still having to learn that lesson. So you actually learned it really early. You know, one of the things I want to get to the organ meats in a moment, but one of the things that I believe is one of your superpowers, and I would love you to just talk a little bit about how you came to this, is being able to understand what is important to somebody in food beyond just, you know, we all have our favorite foods, we have our comfort foods. And of course, when you're working with these big name celebrities, they're having to. They're having to modify their physique for specific roles. Like, they don't. They're not going to sit down and eat, like Mac and cheese every night. Right. But sometimes they want that kind of thing. And one of the things that you learned really early and you're so good at is to mimic those Comfort foods, not just by recreating them, but you. You understand what those things are satisfying. Can you speak a little bit about that? Because I think that plays into how we can support clients to eat things that they might be reluctant to eat otherwise.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I. I think I. I think we're all kind of overwhelmed with the idea of what is healthy. I call it the illusion of health, because there's so much messaging out there of what is healthy that we kind of don't know what health is anymore. You know, there's a great quote from Bill Schindler, who's a professor of archaeology. He points out that we are the only species in the world that looks to someone else to tell us what to eat. And that quote always floors me, because we are animals. We're. We are very human, human animals. And so the fact that we did once know what our bodies needed, and now we've gone so far from that, is alarming to me. So I have recognized early on, though, in my culinary career that you. You cannot bring someone to the well if they're not ready to drink. And so I would always try to meet them where they were. And one of the ways I would do that was to identify the psychology of food for them. So what. What are the textures that they gravitate towards when they're emotional? Not. Not just every day, but when they're emotional, when they're having a hard day? What are the textures that they go to? What did they eat when they were a child? What was like an average week of food? What did that look like? So I really try to tap into those. Those streams that have to do with their past, because I recognize that most likely how we were raised with food, whether it was emotionally kind of abusive with food, you know, like, you must eat. You cannot leave this table until you finished your plate. To shaming to food that's just extremely overcooked and gross. And you're being. For, you know, there's. There's an instinct in your body of, like, this doesn't seem right. I don't want this. But you're being forced to eat it. Any. Any kind of emotional or psychological abuse around food, I think we carry with us. And so inevitably, I would ask someone, like, okay, what's a food that you don't like? And usually you'd hear Brussels sprouts. That's like a big one for most people. And I'd be like, okay, so how did. How did. How was it prepared? And who prepared it? Because obviously, who prepared is Also important because if you say it was. It was my mother and you had a horrible relationship with your mother, then you're carrying that story of that relationship with that food. And. And so then it became identifying the emotional triggers, identifying the textures, identifying the flavors that they do like and gravitate towards, and then fusing, taking that knowledge and fusing so changing it up. So let's just say if the texture for brussels sprout was boiled and it was that lime green color, I would go opposite, I would go broiled. So I would. I would bake it in the oven under the broiler, and I would toss it in fat to give a different texture. I would make sure it wasn't like pale green. I would add some salt, make it more savory than mushy, you know, crispy versus mushy. I might add, if they tell me, oh, they grew up in the south or something, that I might add some southern flavors to it. It I. If they grew up, you know, eating lots of Asian food, I might add some Asian flavors. You know, you just, you basically build the stack from there. So you're just changing the look, you're changing the texture, you're changing the colors. Because something that's really important is you have to remember where does food start? Where. Where does the initiation of food really start? It starts with our eyes, right? Think about yourself back in the day. I'm not saying as a child, but I'm saying primally, like our prime. Me, our prime, primal kind, self. Like, where did it start? It started with us seeing something, you know, afar. What is that color? What is that thing shining in the sun? Let me go check that out. And as you got closer, you then, you then operated your smell because you could smell something now. So it went from eyes to smell and then. And then you bring. You grabbing it now you're touching it. Then from touching, you're putting your mouth. There's a texture feel, a mouth feel. Then. Then you're chewing it and there's new flavors that are coming out. Like we talk about texture with wine, for example, right? Or even chocolate. How when you have really qual quality product, you might have three or four different tones of flavor. Well, when you find really ripened, very good food, that's the same thing, right? Strawberries that are ripened have multiple flavors, not just one tone. And I always look at food as music, to be honest with you. There's high tones, there's low tones, there's mid tones. And. And so I, I'm always trying to engage those pieces. So you. You start with the senses and you. And you. You then. Or I guess you start with the emotions, but then you tap in the senses, and then you incorporate all. All of it together. And now you're producing a product that is completely satiating that person on a very deep level.

It's. This is great. I wanted to share a little anecdotal story. So when we lived back in LA and I was seeing clients full time and James had his healthy meal delivery company, I would often refer clients to them because I was at the time, the business doesn't do this anymore. But at the time, I was able to say, here's the MRT list. Here are the 15 different foods this person can't have. Oh, and they don't like tomatoes unless they're cooked. And, you know, we were able to give all the specifics, and they would meet it maybe some problems with scalable.

Not scalable.

Yeah, not scalable. Business model. But it was delightful for it while it lasted for me as a nutritionist. And. And I remember I had a client on a very specific protocol, and she called me one day and she was like, I just. I'm just. I really don't want to share this with you, but I need to confess for my own self, and I'm so sorry that I have to, like, rat on your husband's company. But as you know. And she was. She had very severe sensitivities to corn. She's like, I am not supposed to have corn, but they served me tamales, and it is my favorite food, and I ate it. And she was like, and I have to tell you, these were truly the best tamales I've ever had. So he is. He is like, this company makes incredible tamales. And I ate them, and I'm sorry. And can you let them know that they've made this mistake? And so I called up James and read him the riot act of, like, you cannot give my clients things that they're not allowed. And he just, like, smiled and chuckled, and he goes, that was cauliflower. And, you know, it's funny because I knew she hated cauliflower. And so it didn't even dawn on me that he had subbed it out. And when I went back to her and I said, actually, they weren't corn. That was cauliflower. She was. She at first argued me. She's like, there's no way. I hate cauliflower. I don't. I recognize, like, when they put cauliflower in the things. So all to Say, you're very good at that.

I remember. I totally remember that.

Remember that, because I remember I was mad when I called.

I definitely remember that. Yeah, yeah. There's so. I mean, once again, so. So where what we're doing is we're messing with the texture. Right. But we're not just making mushy cauliflower. No, you can actually firm it up a little bit with arrowroot. There's different things you can do. You can use different fats. Like, a lot of times people are just putting, you know, olive oil as a fat, and it's like, well, no, if you put, let's say, lard or if you do text ghee, for example, you're going to get a totally different texture and flavor. And you can mimic what they're doing in corn, you know, in tamales, and when most of them do have lard, for example, you know, so you're basically just trying to mimic that texture and flavor. And then if you really. You know, sometimes you can also mimic color, of course, as well. And you don't have to use, you know, like, dyes. You can actually use spices to. To create the different colors. I forget the name because I haven't used in a while, but I think it's like amarado, amaretta, amaranth, amorado. There's a spice. It's like this red spice, but we used to. We used to use it a lot to kind of recreate different colors. And it was literally just a spice that didn't have any flavor, but it just created beautiful. They use a lot in cheese, for example. I think it's called amaretto. Yeah, yeah. And then, like, other things, like sometimes, you know, you're speaking of that list, for example. So that's also something I got really good at, is when. When people would give us sensitivity lists, I got really good at finding alternatives, you know. So, for example, anyone out there that ever has a list that says no lemons. Right. That's a tough one, right? No, no. Lemon juice. Well. Or lemons. Well, you can. You can use. Oh, gosh, I just had. I just lost sumac. Sumac, yeah. Thank you. Sumac. Because it has a. It's. It's a spice, and it has a naturally lemony taste to it. So there's. There's ways that you can mimic it and definitely defer. Definitely recommend. Just kind of searching for those things.

So let's shift the conversation now to organ meats.

Anato. Yes. Thank you, Courtney. It's an auto. Thank you.

Excellent. Oh, yes, thanks. So let's shift the conversation to organ meats. What brought you to this crazy idea of adding dehydrated organ meat to herbs and spices and turning it into a food?

Yeah, well, two things. So one is I'm a very picky eater. I mean, I was very picky growing up, and I still am to a degree, but I've not as much as I used to be. But I definitely am qualified to support any picky eater because I am one. You know, my. Hi, I'm James. I'm a picky eater. And. And so that's one thing is that I didn't grow up eating organ meats. I used to eat some of the giblets from the chicken, and I just, I remember I liked them at one age, and then at one age I didn't. You know, I just. I remember there was this phase I went through and then eventually stopped eating them at all. But. But ultimately what then brought me back to it? So I always had studied through wise traditions about the importance of organ meats. And I knew that this was something that was the most nutrient dense food on the planet. Like, I knew that, but I also recognized, like, oh, well, you got three main hurdles. You got the ick factor, you got the sourcing issue, and then you got the culinary knowledge issue that we've mostly forgotten. And. But I had though that I, you know, that was all in my head, but I didn't really put any focus to it until we had, you know, until I had kids. And it was a trip that we went on Canada, when our kids were very young. I think sia was like 5ish, and Sasha was like 1 1/2.

2.

1. Yeah. So she was really young. And they both. They both got Shiga toxin, which is a form of E. Coli, and it's very dangerous for elderly and young children. And Sia, it passed fairly quickly, like three days. And basically, when you're. For those that don't know, sugar talks, you can't hold anything in. Like, it goes out every end, basically. And. And you just. You can't even. Water. You can't hold water and nothing. And. And so here our youngest. So Sia passed fairly quickly. And then our youngest, who, as Marcus said, was 1ish, she was already a very lean child. And it lasted, I want to say, for eight days, something like that. It was a. It was a long time. And I had to go on a trip at around day six, and I thought she was on the mend. So here we had already gone through this hell of watching Our child not be able to eat anything for six days and just in so much pain. And I came back from that trip thinking she was better. And she was literally skin and bones. Like, I could see her bones, the shape of her bones. It was very, very scary. And I just remember in that mom moment thinking if there was just something I could help her with as a chef. And because she went, couldn't eat anything, wouldn't eat anything, and then it turned and she was able to eat toast. And that's where it really hit home. Then I was like, oh, because that's all she would eat. You know how when that happens, when you, when you get sick on a food, the food that you don't get sick with becomes your go to food and that's it. You almost get shy with other feet foods. And so she became basically a toast addict. And so I, we were both sitting there, you know, as health people, like going like, our kid is eating gluten free toast all the time. And it's just killing us because there's nothing healthy about that. And, and that's when I got the idea of like, what, what if I could put something on that toast that would result in her getting more nutrition, but without me or, or Margaret having to deal with the kind of picky eating or the issues that can come around, certain health foods with kids, and, and then skip ahead another year because that's, that was just where it initiated. Then, then skip ahead. And I was realizing that when we make pates now, what happens in a household usually, and I'm gonna say it's the women usually, because at least in our household, it's Margaret who would make the pate, or even I would make it, but she'd be the one that ate it, let's put that way. So there would be a pate made and really, you know, like I said, Margaret or another household, it would be the, the woman would eat it, the, the person who made it or someone. It would just be like one person out of four or six people. And I was thinking to myself, well, wait, wait a second. What are you putting in a pate? You're putting, you're putting onions, you're putting some garlic, you're putting herbs. I'm like, well, we have those in dehydrated form. Like, we have those as seasonings and spices. And then, and then it was like, oh wait, we also have that in organ meats. Like there's already freeze dried and powdered organize. And that's where I kind of got the idea To. To combine the two. And surprisingly, no one had ever done that. That's also a rarity, is you don't find food products these days that are natural, like pluck is, that were not made in a laboratory. And so I feel really fortunate that we discovered, you know, came to that.

It was a powerful moment. I will remember all of that. I will give a little context since we're all nutritionists here. The reason why we found out it was Shiga toxin is because after two, three days of this and it wasn't going away, I was like, I have stool tests all over this house. I'm just going to, like, grab some of this and send it into the lab. And the lab called me in a panic saying, do not let anyone give this child antibiotics, because if they do, because the Shiga toxin is coming out of the C. Diff. And if. What would happen is if the antibiotics would lyse all of that C. Diff and actually flood her system with the toxin and kill her. So it was one of those moments that I was very, very grateful to be me and to have. To have so many stool test kits just hanging around the house and to be able to find that out. But this is, to this day, she. She loves her toast, and now she loves toast with.

And she knows toast with pluck now too. Yeah. Yeah, that's. That's the power. So. So everything I've shared already about how I look at food and the. The emotional side, the texture, the color, you know, when we look at organ meats, that's really what we're. We need to identify, you know, a little bit of history with organ meats. So. So this is obviously something we used to eat. Bill Schindler, who I quoted earlier, he talks about how, you know, we started out as scavenge or actually foragers, you know, our ancestors, and then. And then we eventually became scavengers. And we did get a little bit of protein meat then, but it wasn't until we got a rudimentary tool and became the. The predator ourselves. We got three things that we had not previously gotten. And this is, of course, you know, a few million years ago, but we got three things, which was blood fat and organ meats. And that is what changed us. That's what eventually got us to this Homo sapien body that we have. And, and. And so if you think about it, how are we eating now? You know, we. We historically, we used to eat more organ meats. Our ancestors, grandparents, right around World War II or kind of really. Really. It started before then. But basically when organ meats were, when meat was started to get centralized, it was right around, I think, Michigan area, Chicago, whatnot. But they basically started to. So I guess that's Illinois. But they started to put things on trains and they would. They had refrigerated train cars, but they couldn't get them that cold. And so you could refrigerate meat to a certain temperature, but you had to refrigerate organs that had to be even colder and they couldn't do it. So they were starting to train organ, the, you know, transport organs across the country or, sorry, meat across country. But they really just stopped including the organs because they couldn't refrigerate it properly. So now you have more and more people that are getting meat, but they're not getting organs. So that kind of switched people's priorities a bit. Then eventually organ meats became the food of the poor. At least that's what it was associated as because it was cheaper than muscle meat. Then you had World War II come where there's this concern of meat shortage because they're needing to send the pro, the meat protein abroad to the soldiers. So they actually started campaigns. A lot of people don't realize this, but like Meatless Monday started then. That's something the government actually promoted. They promoted organ meats. They called it variety meats. They were literally trying to rebrand it to have a different names so that they could inspire people to do it. And they were like, eating organ meats is all American because now our troops can be fed with the muscle meat. You know, so it became this, this, this kind of glorified thing to do. And it worked. You know, they put money behind it and it worked. And so you started seeing. That's why people like my mother, who's in her late 70s, early 80s, she had liver and onions because she was of that generation. So, so a lot of our grandparents did get that. But then now you have the soldiers coming back. Now there's two people, you know, making money in the household. There's more money coming into the household. Oh, well, we don't want to eat that cheaper stuff. We want to get the roast beef, the high, the more expensive cut. So eventually, you know, if you're not buying it, then the butcher is not going to carry it because it's just going to go bad. So you're going to start to, you're going to stop seeing it at the butcher. And once you stop seeing it, you're no longer buying it. And now when you're no longer buying it, you're no longer cooking it. And so you start to lose this kind of familiarity with it. And that's kind of where we're at, is we just, we're just out of touch with it all. So one thing I right away try to support people with is, well, how do we. How do we ease back into organics? Because it can't be all or nothing, right? Because the reality is, is you're not, you're not gonna just cook, you know, not gonna go into your house and be like, okay, let's do liver and onions night and watch everyone eat it. And like, that's the primary protein. Not gonna happen. Like, it'd be pretty rare unless it's someone that has already eate, they like it. So one thing I like to do is I like to once again go to psychology. So I actually think that when people see organ meats, I think that they feel a vulnerability, you know, that they. They feel that they. They think of their own organ meats. And I think that that's uncomfortable for some people. So right away, I like to change the look of what I'm cooking. So let's just say if I'm trying to get multiple organs into someone's diet, I would start actually with ground meat and I would. I would actually buy like ground meats that already have the organs in it. If I'm working with my own, you know, meat share and I. And I have the opportunity to talk to the farmer or something like that, you can actually request some of those organs get ground into the ground meat, anything like that. If you don't have access to that, you can actually buy a beef liver. And the key with any organ is when you get it, it's usually frozen. And you want to keep it frozen because it's when it's defrosted that it's most overwhelming. So just keep it frozen. So, for example, the liver, you get it frozen, it's in your freezer when you're ready to. When you're making any ground meats, doesn't matter what species, any ground meat, you pull out that frozen beef liver and you just grate it, Use a box grater and grate a little bit of it into that ground meat. And now incorporating that, you know, mix it well. The key is ratios as well. So I find as long as you don't go over about, I would say about 20%, no one will know it's there. So what does that look like in a pound of beef? That would look like about a fourth of a cup or less. But I would not start at a fourth of a cup. I would actually start at a tablespoon and then go up to maybe two tablespoons, which is about an eighth of a cup. I would start somewhere around there. Now that's just kind of easing into it. Now you can also do things like liver shots. If you don't know what those are. You, you basically take the liver when you receive it, it's still frozen. Let it defrost just slightly and then, and then you cut it into very small like pills size pieces and then you freeze those as they are. Then you put them on a bag and now, now literally you can just swallow little pieces. Now that is a lot of people I know in the Wise Traditions or Weston A. Price communities. That's what they do. I, the one reason I don't like that is, is, and it's kind of a similar reason why I don't, I'm not a big fan of the capsules as well is because you're not initiating your biological digestive process. You're, I mean you are obviously when you swallow something, it's, you're, you are digesting it, but it's, you're not initiating what we talked about earlier. There's no smell, there's no sight, there's, there's no chewing, the mastication with saliva. There's none of that biological process that allows our bodies to communicate to itself about how much or how little it wants. And I know that was one of the questions someone asked is like, well, how much organ meat should I get and how much is too much? And I was telling Margaret, like, you know, really it's, it's really no different. You guys face this all the time when with working with clients is like, well, how much meat should I be eating? How much vegetables? It's like, it's like, well, do we really have an answer? Because we're all bio individual. There's not really one true answer. What we get is we test, right? Which is what you guys do and you learn where someone is deficient and then you're basically basing your recommendations to them off of those deficiencies. But even when they take supplements or pills, you don't, it's still guesswork. You don't know if they're going to get too much. You don't know if they're going to have too little. That's why you have to retest, right? So you just keep kind of guesswork. Let's retest. Guesswork. Let's retest guesswork. But one of the ways that you can alleviate that is by having them eat it. When we eat our food, and I use salt as an example, if I put salt on your tongue, your body communicates immediately whether it wants more or less of that salt. And it actually, the salt taste changes when. If you get too much, like, you literally, like, I try to have three dips of salt, you know, on your tongue, it's really hard. Your body will kind of almost reject it. And the same thing can happen with, let's say, beef liver. If you start eating beef liver after you've already been acclimated to taste, it will taste extremely metallic and you just won't be able to eat anymore. Like, it will start to taste really gross. And that's your body saying, I'm done, I'm good. Right? So we don't get that communication when we swallow things.

That's the. For those of you who are trained through nta, particularly those of you who studied the functional testing, if you think back to the lingual neural testing, I mean, that's really what's happening, is you're initiating that communication between the mouth and your nervous system and getting that whole additional layer of information which I think is so important. I would, I would love you to talk a little bit more. You've talked about some of the beginner steps here. We've had lots of questions about how to prepare different things where. Before we get into all of that, which we will. I want to just talk about, you know, how to. When we, all of us here are sold on the benefits of organ meats.

Right.

But that's. We don't need to be sold. We need to be able to sell this to clients. And so what are some of the strategies that you have seen most effective for getting people. Because even, you know, your product pluck, it removes a lot of these barriers. It removes the sourcing issue. It removes having to prepare it. It removes to a certain degree, not a full degree for some people, but to a certain degree. It removes the ick fact. But even with something like that, there are still people who are like sometimes. So talk a little bit about how to help clients overcome that ick factor and some really introductory strategies. I saw, I saw the comment here, and we had talked about this earlier, Mandy. You know, my liver has been frozen for two years. And that was one of the conversations we had earlier is like, well, we can talk about preparation and we can talk about all this stuff, but let's all be real. Like, even those of us who are in the field. We get our organ meats, we put them in the freezer, and then they're there for a really long time.

Yeah. So we have best intention. Yeah, we have best intentions. But the reality is, is that when these things are not familiar, they're not habitual, you know, they're not part of our habits. It's just. It's a hurdle. And who has time for that? You know, by the time most of us are eating, you know, we're. We're done making decisions. We're. We're just kind of done. We want to. We want to eat and. And then call it a day. So, you know what I typically do? What I typically do, and I guess it kind of answers some of the questions that have come up is I. I think it's easy. Like, a lot of people have been focusing on beef liver, for example. That's. That's the main liver everyone focuses on. And, and yes, it's. It. Joey. It is more nutritious than chicken. That's why it's focused on. But chicken is actually a really great entry point. So different species, the organs have different flavor. One of the reasons, for example, sweet breads, sweet breads is the. The thymus gland, okay. A lot of times when you go to a restaurant, they try to pass it off as other things. Sometimes they'll say it's the pancreas, the ovaries or testicles or something, but it's actually the thymus gland. That is what it is supposed to be. And one of the reasons why it gets that sweet bread name is because it's sweet. They are sweet. The bread is not because it's bread, like, but it's something different. But it gets the sweet because they are sweet. And some people will say, I mean, I know Margaret thinks this is chicken hearts, for example. So I would ease into these organs by starting with the organs that are closest to being muscle. Like, so most anyone that's ever had, like, a defrosted liver, they. They know there's. It's nothing like a. A muscle. Like, it actually disintegrates in. In room temperature. So it's got a totally different texture, different mouth, feel everything, and of course, different flavor. But there's two organs that you have absolute access to. And most grocery stores will have this part of the animal in the freezer. But you have the tongue and you have chicken hearts or sometimes even the beef heart. And those two are much more muscle. Like, so I would absolutely start there because it's going to be a Texture thing, right? And then it's. It's. It's really not that different from what Suzanne Susan Berry said is. Is like we. We forget that. That as humans, we just kind of like, if you give us the same thing every day, we will eventually like it. You know, you talk to anyone who's ever gone to prison, they would. They went into that prison, the food was disgusting. When they left that prison, they missed that food, right? We. This is what we do as humans. We, We. You. You do something enough, and it becomes your palate. It becomes. It shapes your palate. That's why sugar control detoxes work so well, right? Because you remove certain stimulus and you change someone's palate. And so that's one of the things, like if, you know, in America, we skew sweet and salt salty, those are the two flavors that we really skew towards. But organ meats have umami naturally in them. And then, of course, there's the bitter and the sour. So one of the things that I do with people with oreo meats, and in general, we actually even get this feedback from practitioners and parents with pluck, is that you try to introduce these other flavors, the bitter, the sour, and the umami, but you do it almost like you would a dog. So you. It's all about little bits at first, and you support the palette in changing, so you don't have to do much. And that's. This is one of. To answer. To fully answer your question about how do we actually talk to people about this? Because one of the. One of the questions I get all the time about people with pluck is, well, well, how much should I be taking? And how much is, how do I know I'm really getting something? And my point to everyone is like, okay, well, yes, it's microdosing plus frequent use, which equals cumulative effect. So that is what pluck is, and that's what a lot of things are. But ultimately, if you think about as practitioners, what is the thing in your own life and in your. And in your client. Client's life that truly moves the needle? It's the things that we do daily. It's not the things we do weekly. It's not the things we do monthly. It's the things we do daily. And when you can remove something from having to be a new habit, which is always the hardest hurdle for people, right? Changing their diet is so difficult for people. But if you can remove that hurdle of it being a new habit, which is why I made pluck the way I did, is because we already season our food. Everyone salts or peppers or seasons their food, right? So all I'm saying is instead of using what you're using, use pluck. And now you're getting micro dosing, but you're doing it every time you eat. You're getting it frequently. And if you really want to remove, like, the ick factors, you have them put it on their favorite food. So, like, for example, popcorn. People freak out about having pluck on popcorn. And what you do is you put butter all over that popcorn, you put some pluck on it. And now you're. You're supporting someone not only in kind of adapting their palate because they're getting that umami, they're getting something a little bit savory. And they start to as over time, as you slowly give them a little bit, you start to see these changes. I mean, I have heard things like a father messaged us saying that they had tried everything with their child who had skin issues, and they started using pluck, and the skin issues went away. I've heard that picky eaters, some spectrum kids that were very limited in their diet, all they did was started using pluck, and it changed. And. And I'd love to be able to say, like, oh, this product is so amazing, but it's really. Do believe it's because we're training their pallet. We're changing their palette. You. You. It's amazing how much you can do when you just focus on the palette.

And I. One of the things I think that's so important about that is that for a lot of these kids, you know, I'm seeing Cindy's question about, you know, is this type of food introduction applicable to something like avoidant restrictive food intake disorder? And, you know, for a lot of these kids, the texture piece can be such a big deal. And you're not messing with the texture at. You're starting with, as you say, you're starting with the flavor, you're starting with the palette. And you can go really, really slowly and start in kind of build, build, build. I know I have had multiple clients who've had kids with really who are quite picky eaters. And then once they've started using this more, they've been like, oh, wow, you wouldn't believe what she tried today, you know, and just being able to. But they did it very slowly over time. So I think that's a really good point that you're working through palette and you're in some of these other variables that can be really, be really challenging. To manipulate light texture in particular, can. Can stay the same.

And. And once again, going back to it, it's not all or nothing. You guys all know this. You can't move a client faster than they can move, right? So it's the same thing with organ meats. A little bit goes such a long way. Like, Nita is mentioning that they're literally using their. Their. Some organ meat right now in their. In their beef burgers. And it's like. Like, even if you just put in a teaspoon now, you're. You're going to start to actually give that palette these new flavors that it was not getting before. And that is going to start the process, and then you do it the next night when you just do it every time you have the ground meats. You know, the other thing that we kind of talked about, but I want to just reiterate, is texture and how it looks, right? So beef heart, if you have that, is a great way to make jerky. For example, like, to change how you would normally do it. Like, probably the hardest thing to do is to make it be the centerpiece of the meal, right? Because when it's the centerpiece of the meal, you really have to be ready for that. But it's very easy to change the look, to change the texture, to have it be. Like, one thing that we do at tongue is we put it in Taco Tuesdays, right? So let's just say you're using pork butt or. Or some brisket or anything like that for your Taco Tuesday kind of meal. Well, you can still put a tongue in there. And tongue is amaz. Like you. You basically braze it in some liquid. You're boiling it about an hour and a half, and it has that sheath in it, that really thick skin. But once after it's been boiled, that skin just kind of peels right off, and then underneath is this very delicious, delicate muscle meat that takes on any flavor, right? So now I have that tongue, which is definitely smaller than a brisket or even a pork butter shoulder. And I can now shred them and comb them so that once again, that the ratio of the thing that we are familiar with is the higher ratio, and the thing we are unfamiliar with is the lower. And I've done that at dinner parties, and no one knew, like, not a single person knew they were eating tongue.

What I need to say just to. Is that the person cooking needs to be ready for the tongue. You can do this as the chef and sneak it into other people. I wouldn't recommend Your clients who are squeamish. Because if you, any of you have seen a cow tongue, it is. It is something to behold.

Yes.

And it is. It is. Yeah. Certainly not for your former vegetarian clients that you're trying to introduce this stuff. Let's start with a powder. That's not. It is.

No, no, for sure, for sure. That's. That's like kind of phase five, you know, I would say, like, this is how I usually break down the Easing the organ meats. Usually I say, okay, pluck is the gateway because it's so easy. It's delicious. It doesn't look like. Or meat. Meat you don't even realize you're getting. Or meat. So I always say that's kind of phase one. Phase two would be the ground meat and the. The blends, you know, or you either grading the meat, the liver into your ground meat, or buying the blends. The third one, I would say is now incorporating a. A new, like an organ, but not having it be the show. So that's when I would say, let's use chicken hearts, for example. So chicken hearts, I usually use, like a mushroom. So. So let's say you're making a spaghetti sauce. If it's not a mushroom centric spaghetti sauce. I'm probably using, what, two, three mushrooms, Maybe two. And I'm chopping them up and I'm throwing them, and we'll just treat instead of mushrooms. Do the same thing with chicken hearts. Just chop up two, make them so they're diced so that they don't look like a heart, throw them in that. In that sauce, let it cook the same way you do everything else. And I promise you, not a single person will know there's chicken heart in there. Not a single person. Person, guaranteed. And so that. That's what you start to do, is you start to incorporate. And then I would. Once you're done the chicken heart thing for a little bit, I would then graduate to maybe trying the tongue. But once again, you. The chef is the one who knows it's the tongue, but everyone else doesn't need to know. Just incorporate it with your other meals. And then you start to get into this place of, okay, like, let's start putting the organ meat as the main show. But I would still ease into it, like, maybe do a pate then after that, because what's nice about a pate is you can incorporate multiple organ meats. You can also change the flavors depending on the herbs and what else you're putting in there. You can use different fats. But what's cool is that people get to eat it with whatever their favorite food is. If they like crackers, great. Dip the cracker in there. If they like carrots, celery, whatever, you know, cucumbers. Like, they get to control how they eat it, which is always important, right. With food and, and humans is that there has to be a level of what are they getting in control, particularly when something's. But when they are ready to really do a deep dive and go all in with organ meats, there's some great sites that you can do, and one of them is this one. And I'm going to put in the chat, it's called Awfully Good Cooking. This is my. My friend Janine Farzen. So Janine is a really interesting person. So she was a techie kind of woman, did a lot of computer stuff. In about 15 years ago, or maybe even more, she changed. She was noticing she had had her first child. She was noticing they are having chronic, chronic issues going on at a very young age. And she was like, huh? And she read Nourishing Traditions from Weston A. Price and was like, I'm gonna change our diets. And she started to experiment. Well, now, 15 years later and many more kids later, she has truly cooked every part of the animal, every part. And she chronicled it on her website and she even has it tabbed off. Like, if you want to know how to make sweet breads, boom, go to the sweet bread tab. And she, she has done it all. And it. She's just really cool cat. And her kids are really fun in that when they free. She's told me, like, when they have birthdays, they eat organ meat. Some form of the animal, the whole animal, they eat it every week. And, and. And she said when her bird. When our kids have birthdays, they actually ask for menudo. And menudo is a Mexican dish that uses the stomach lining of the. The cow, which is called tripe. And it's. It's. When it's made well, it's like a really nourishing, flavorful soup. And that's actually what her kids request. So she's completely changed not only the palate of her kids, but the health and the kind of sensibility of what they're willing to eat and try. And I would offer that to everyone. Like, we've talked about, you know, doing things daily, right? Little steps, the power of little steps. We've talked about that. But one thing that I think we also should touch on is like, kind of taking the piss out of this. Like like, we all got to, we all gotta like remove the drama from this. It's just like if I put, I always say this to people. I'm like, if I put any dessert in front of you, doesn't matter. Everyone would be like, I'll try that. There's like no hesitation. But if I put something savory in front of you, you're like, what's in it? Why does it look like a heart? Like, ah, you know, like we get all heady and it's like. So there's kind of mindset stuff that you can actually support your clients with. Like something I do when I go to conferences. The first thing I do is I like, okay, like, what's the statement you have around organ meats? And most people be like, oh, the organ meats are gross, right? So then I'm like, okay, great, say it again. Organ meats are. Grows. Okay, now do it in like a really slow voice. Organ me to grow now sit in really highways. Organiz. It grows now sitting, you know, and I get them to like just take the piss out of it of like, stop taking it all so seriously. It's just food. It's. It can be fuel. And like, we need to change our mindsets around these things. But what happens is once you do start to change the mindset, start to support the change of the palate, people start to crave it. Because here's the harsh truth. And we all know, I know you all know this, but it's like, this is the reality. We are a very nutrition, nutrient deficient society. We need these nutrients. Our bodies want these nutrients. This is the most bio. Biodyn, you know, bioavailable form of these nutrients. And our bodies know it. So the minute our bodies start to get this nutrition into kind of, it's almost like bone broth where your body just wants to curl around it and like take it on a great date and just hang out all night, you know, with it or something. It's like, it's like your body instinctively ancestrally knows this food is what I need and want. So it's just about acclimating the person in every way you can to that. But their body will take over at one point.

I, there's. There's a bunch of questions in here, in the chat, and I also want to ask, ask a question and, and support the answer of this because we get to ask this all the time or I know you get asked this all the time, which is, you know, any deeper insights into considerations for those with uric Acid trending higher than we do, like organ meats are lumped into the higher purine foods list. But we also know how nutrient dense they are. So any nuanced insights into how to weigh these two factors for each individual? So I'm. You are all practitioners, so I'm going to give you a very nuanced answer to this. The first question I would say is, if you're looking at client labs, are you talking about uric acid lab high or functionally high? Because those are two different things. One is a trend heading in that direction. Another is like, truly elevated. The second question is, what is the rest of the clinical presentation of this client?

Right.

Are we actually thinking about gout? Because that's a situation when, yes, you want to be limiting high purine foods. Or we know that uric acid can elevate in a lot of things that don't have anything to do with gout. Right. Like, so it can have a lot of different reasons. It can be just about part of an inflammation pattern. It can be part of cardiovascular pattern. It can be part of elevated blood sugar, oxidative stress. So are you actually seeing trends not just in uric acid, but in other markers that would make you suspect that gout is something that is a risk factor for your client, or is it uric acid independent or as part of some of these other. These other trends and tendencies in your client? So that would be. That would be the next question to be asking. And then the third question would be, you know, are we talking about full organ meat consumption or are we talking about using something like plug? Because that is different if somebody is sitting down and eating. You know, I will share that. When I was. Was in both pregnancies, I craved organ meat like there is nothing else. And I would sit down, I would go through things of pate, like two or three of those a week, that kind of volume, and somebody whose uric acid is trending high. And if, especially if it's part of that gout pattern starting to creep in, then definitely no. But if we're talking about using a little bit of pluck here and there, it's going to be. It's just a different volume. So we just need to be thinking about all of these different pieces. There isn't. It becomes, you know, when you're working with something like pluck, it is going to be a little bit different because how much is the individual using on their serving versus is it being used in the cooking overall? You know, I mean, there's a. There's A lot of, you know, it is micro dosing as opposed to, you know, sitting down and eating a whole chunk of liver pate. So it is necessarily going to be different.

Yeah, well, I'll add, I'll just add to that. So, so there's people like, you know, Dr. Paul Saladino, he'll, he'll say, you know, people should be eating like 2 ounces of. This is wet organ meats. You know, not freeze dried powdered, but 2 ounces of organ meat. I think he says a day actually. But, but it to me, I, I always hear that and I'm like, well, but how does he know? And is he just trying to sell his supplements? Because, you know, when, when you think about if we were a tribe back in the day and we killed an animal, well, how many livers were in that animal? How many hearts? There's one. Right. And let's just say we're a tribe of 23 people. Like, how much are you really going to get? And so I think it's, that's really kind of how I designed pluck because I, my key was I wanted you to be eating it, not swallowing it, but two, I also wanted to balance it in a way that you were really getting more flavor and just getting a little bit of the organ meats, but you're doing it with every meal. And that's what people don'. Understand when I try to tell them because they're all, everyone's been trained to just look for, well, like what pill do I have to take and how much do I get from that? And so how many pills do I take a day? It's like, well, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the micro dosing a little bit every day so it's gentle on your body. Because one of the inevitably what one of your clients is going to probably ask, well, wait, aren't the organs, like, aren't those where we detoxify, you know, toxins? And won't you just be eating toxins? It's like, no, no, no, that's, it's, it's not like a, a sponge. It's more like a filter. Right. And it's designed to, to take those toxins and turn them water soluble so they'll leave your body, you know, through your elimination pathways. And it's so, and if anything, as you all know, it's like if toxins get stored anywhere, it's going to be in your fat. That's why someone who's very obese, if they Detox too quickly, they can actually get toxic burden and, you know, feel overwhelmed. Right. But it's the same, this, the same concept of like when you get a little bit. And so this is for those people that have gout or uric acid issues by using pluck. So it's got about 15%. It's between 15 and 17, depending on the, the blend you're getting. But it's about 15 or 17% organ meat. It's not a huge amount, but. But keep this in mind. It's freeze dried and powdered organ meat. So when I take a, a wet organ, 100% wet organ, and I freeze dried, I'm about 20 to 21% of that. So it's. You lose a lot in water weight. So a little goes a long way. But like I said, we're doing more with this product than what I think people really get, which is we're not only getting you the, the, we're not only getting you the nutrients gradually, but we're also supporting the change of that palette. So that's why I say pluck is just the gateway. Like, I'm not trying to get people to only use pluck. I mean, great if you do great, great if that's all you want, great. But I'm supporting. I believe we need to be eating whole animal. I believe we need to be eating more of the animal than just muscle meat. So how can I support people in doing that? It's by getting your pallet acclimated to eating organ meats. And pluck is just the gateway. But you'll find that the more you use it, the more you'll be willing to be more adventurous with your food choices and your clients, of course, as well. Well.

We'Re pretty much out of time. We have a. Normally, I know you guys know I sometimes let these go over a little bit. We have a youngster at swim practice that ends.

Someone was asking, if I can just answer this real quick. Someone is asking about dairy replacement for the pates. You do not have to use dairy. You know, like you don't have to use butter. Of course you can use ghee, which, you know, can be, you know, obviously the type of type people use could be sensitive to, but you could use coconut oil. Now one thing Sally Fallon talks a lot about this is she says, like, you know, when you have liver, it's high in vitamin A. Beef liver particularly, it's high in vitamin A, but lard is high in vitamin D. And those two go very well together because they support absorption. So she always recommends when you're making, for example, a pate, a liver pate that you use, use lard. So you can really change it up, but you just need a fat. It could be lard, tallow, butter, coconut oil. Could even be olive oil. I mean, doesn't. Doesn't matter.

Awesome. So do you have a little discount code for my people?

If anyone wants to try it wants.

To become an affiliate so they can recommend this to clients and earn some money off of it. Can we set them up?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So I'll put the link right here. Yeah. And we also do wholesale. If you have, if you have. If you have a clinic, there's the.

Affiliate you were asking about Australia and New Zealand. This is all available there, correct? Or what's the situation?

Oh, my gosh. Well, here's the deal. I. You. Yeah, that's true. You have an Australian faction. So we do ship to Australia. It costs a lot, but we're looking for someone who wants to, you know, distribute it there. Because we get so many people. We get a lot of Australian customers. We get a lot of people asking.

So business opportunity for our Australian.

If someone wants to wholesale or knows a wholesaler there, like, basically you, you. You make 40. I think it ends up being like the way it's structured, you make 40% as a distributor, as someone who is just getting. Ordering the pallets. So yes, you do have some. You have to be able to order a pallet worth. So that can get expensive. But if you can just do that, then you can. You're making 40% off that pallet. It's like 20 to 40 off that pallet. And then you're also making money off the sale too. So it, it could be lucrative. But it's very wanted over there. Yeah, you can DM me. I'm. My email is James.

I just put it in there.

Oh, okay. Perfect. Yep. So, but most importantly, y', all, you know, the. The key is we just. We just want to get. We want to meet people where they are and we want to get people down this path and whatever that takes, whether it's the grading the liver into the ground meat, it pluck or whatever that is. I cannot emphasis the import. I mean, you all know, you all know how important this nutrition is. And I think it's ironic that what we're doing when we throw, when we don't eat the organs from the animals and when I say organ meats. So we define organ meats not just as liver and kidney and heart, it's Actually, the. All of the animal except muscle, bone, and. And bone, basically. So even blood is considered part of the organs. Right? So. So when we're not eating this more than just the muscle, we're wasting about 40% of that animal. So we talk about, you know, global. You know, taking care of the environment and. And green. All this stuff about being conscious of the animal. Like, the. The way to honor an animal is to eat the whole animal if you're killing it, not to waste it. And we're turning around and we're spending trillions of dollars on supplements. Billions. I guess maybe it's trillions over many, many years, but billions of dollars on supplements when we could be getting a lot of this nutrition from just eating what we're already killing. So it's. It really is not only good for our health, but eat the whole animal. And between. I put on Eat Pluck up there as well. We have a recipe section on our website. We have lots of great recipes. There's a cookbook called Takes. It Takes Guts by Ashley Von Houten. That cookbook is all about eating awful. There's Janine's website. So there's lots of really, really great resources. And I'll just kind of share one thing. I had meant to say this earlier, and I know we have to go soon, but this is a good one. So one of the things that people inevitably wonder is, do I need to soak the organ? Because there's this idea that soaking the organ in lemon juice or buttermilk is going to clean it or purify it. You will get it slightly cleaner because it won't be as bloody or anything like that. So, yes, it can work. And how long is. Honestly, it's however long you want to do it. I mean, even Janine talks about. She's like, I've left it overnight sometimes, and sometimes I've left it only an hour and a half. And it just varies. But. But here's the thing. Even if they don't soak it, it's okay. It's gonna be okay. Don't worry about it. Because even Janine. Janine and I always laugh about this. It's like every chef, every person who goes down the culinary road starts doing everything by the book at first, but by the end, you know, years later, they don't. And we don't soak them anymore. We don't do any of that stuff anymore. And it's fine. Fine. It's fine. No one's, you know, no one's passing out from a toxic because it's like, it's okay. The key is you're buying it from, from quality animals. If the animal is healthy, then you're going to be healthy. If it's a sick animal, then it's questionable. So you just want to make sure you're getting it from, you know, regenerative farms, grass fed, grass finished. Make sure that that animal, the environment of the animal is conducive towards how you would want to live yourself, you know, like if you were a cow. So, so just make sure that, that, that those pieces are there. And don't worry so much about the details, but just start down the path with your clients because you'll see it. It's like, not only is it cheaper, it's not as expensive as organ meat, it has more. I'm sorry, as muscle meat, it has flavor, it's more flavorful. And you'll just see it's their, their lives will start to change because they're basically eating their supplements instead of swallowing them.

Well, on that, we will leave it here. I've thrown some links in the chat and we will of course post all of this to the recording as well. Thank you all so much for your great questions. This was super fun. Thank you, babe.

You're welcome. See you in five minutes.

Yeah, see you in a couple minutes. Have a great night, everybody. We'll see you soon. Take care.

Thank you all. Take care.

Sa.