James Barry - Organ Meats "Mother Natures Vitamin"

But if you wanna just believe what you wanna believe Then you can leave it up to me and I'll give you the key it's easy just keep on hopping, keep on rocking and don't start stopping Everything you need just to walk the season if you wanna make it go I believe for you you wouldn't believe what I see and you so stop don't let the dream drop hold up and make it lovely make it real and make it your.

All right. I'm super excited to have you joining me on the show today. You have a great product. It's an Oregon based seasoning called Pluck. And so I'm really excited to chat about all this. As you may know, I had the muscle maven on my podcast a while back, Ashley Van Houten, we talked all about organ meats there. But they're a really underestimated important part of our nutrition. And a lot of the things in them are things we're not getting in our daily nutrition that we are taking in. So I love what you're doing. How did you get going with that?

Well, thanks for having me on. So I'm by trade a chef. I've been in the culinary arts for over 16 years. And my whole goal as a chef has always been about taking comfort foods, but making them healthy and making them accessible. Because I recognize early on that the kind of sad, the standard American Diet, the sad diet, is just not working. And so I explore that and I worked with lots of high profile clients and I kind of became known for, for being able to take people's dietary specifics and apply them to comfort foods, but make them actually healthy. Like people started to know me for that. So I'm always thinking about food like that. Always. I'm always thinking about, and I'm a father now, so I have two young kids. So I'm always thinking about how can I support people to get the most nutrient dense foods in their diet, but not have these be like these synthetic lab created foods. Like have them be what we know, which is real foods, foods that come from nature that aren't adulterated. You know, that's how I'm always thinking because to me it's like I don't want to know what's trending, I want to know what has worked historically. And organ meats have. So that's where I started looking was like, hey, what's one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet? Organ meats. Organ meats are what I call Mother Nature's multivitamin. You can Put them against any other food, you know, what foods do you think? Now I know you're pretty adept at food, but what do you think of like when you hear people say, what's nutrient dense foods? What do you hear normally?

Well, I mean, people mostly think like spinach and broccoli and, you know, lots of leafy greens. That's what the typical, you know, stereotypical healthy foods are, right?

Yeah. So I hear kale, broccoli, I hear spinach, of course, blueberries, I hear, I hear, you know, beef, you know pasture age, you know, grass fed beef. But you put all of those up against beef liver and beef liver knocks them out of the park. And not just by a little bit, by a lot. And it's awesome because when you, when you look at all the nutrients and vitamins being measured, usually one of those items doesn't check a box off. But with orgami, it checks off every box. That's why it's truly the multivitamin from mother nature. So my whole thought was like, well, how do I get this into our diets? Because people have a few issues with them, right? So one of them is taste. People associate organ meats is just tasting kind of icky, you know, you mentioned organ meats, anyone? They go, ew. They scrunch up their face and go, ew. You know, so that's, that's one big hurdle. The other one is most people don't know how to cook it. We've lost the art of cooking it. When you think of organ meats. And I know once again you've talked to the muscle aim. So you probably have thought about different ways. But when you think of organ meats or when you've cooked organ meats, how have you cooked them? Is it pates only or how do you.

Well, so I am funny, I am not a huge organ meat fan. Heart, I'm okay with tongue. We do heart and tongue, no problem. But we're big hunters, so. So we actually grind our organ meats into our ground beef. When we harvest our elk or our deer or whatever it may be that we're working with, we go ahead and we just grind all the organ meat into there so that it's mixed in and we're not missing out on any of that nutrient density.

About what percentage do you put in?

I don't know. I divided up amongst the whole animals. So last year we had a cow elk and a bull elk and we mixed all of it together and ground it up except for like the steaks and roasts and things.

Like, yeah, that's a great way to get organ meat is just to put it in the ground. Now I found though personally that anything over like 20% and then the ground meat starts to kind of get that organ texture. And it's not even just the texture, it's a flavor as well. It just starts to get a little bit organ tasty, but absolutely great way. But when I talk to most people, even in the Weston A. Price foundation world, like you talk to most of them, you're like, how are you eating your organs? It's like we make pates, like pate, pate this, pate that, you know. But the reality is is most people don't like it like that. They don't like the texture. They don't or they don't even, they, they see making pates as labor intensive and, or they want something beyond that and they just, they don't know how to saute, they don't know how to cook it. And so I was really setting out to solve those two things is the taste and, and the kind of culinary restrictions. And I love this, I love this name that a friend of mine came up with that basically what I'm doing with Pluck, which is an organ based all purpose seasoning, right, is bridging the gap between ancestral wisdom and modern day convenience. So I'm taking the modern day convenience of freeze dried powdered organs. So never, you know, in our history have we been able to do that, right? But now we have these freeze drying techniques, they've been around for a while. But I'm just saying in the history of humans you couldn't freeze dry something. This is a, this is a more recent modern technology of preserving food. So I'm utilizing that. But then I'm supporting the flavor because it really is a strong flavor. Like if you just open a supplement capsule and put it on your food, it's going to be really strong, strong flavor. And for some people it will be a real turn off. But by complementing with herbs and spices, I offset that kind of organ meaty or irony taste that lots of organ meat has. And, and I make it actually very, just tastes like a normal all purpose seasoning. So now not only does it taste good, it also makes other food taste good. And you don't even need to know how to cook like you can, you can eat McDonald's if you want. I'm not here to tell you how to eat. Like, I'm just like, I just want you to eat organ meats. I don't, you know, if you want to eat McDonald's, go ahead, but sprinkle pluck on it now. You've just upped the nutrient value of that food.

You know, I love what you said right there, and I kind of want to, like, emphasize that for a moment because, like, I, I get a little bit of a. I mean, there's so many different diet camps and nutrition camps out there, right? And. And you have the camp out there that's like, if it fits your macros, a carb is a carb. Doesn't matter what kind of carb it is, all this kind of stuff. But, but what you just said right there, I really want to highlight that, because white sugar, and we'll just say oatmeal are two different things. They're made of two different sets of nutrients. White sugar is essentially nothing, at least oatmeal. You're going to get other things out of it. And so what you said right there, in all actuality, somebody's probably not going to go do that. But taking the food that had no nutrients and at least adding some kind of nutrients to it so it had some kind of a value is a really great thing.

It's huge because, you know, our palates are informed by what we eat. And a lot of people think that, you know, at one age or one point in your life, let's say you eat a food and you don't like it. They think, well, you're forever not going to like it. But our palates change, our palates adapt. I mean, you try, you try. Basically, if someone, let's say someone that's listening, drinks soda all the time, okay, if they were to then just stop cold turkey and just drink water, I guarantee that water is going to taste good. Weird at first, it's going to taste plain, but then the longer they do it, their palate is going to change, and then suddenly that water is going to taste refreshing. It's not going to have, like an ill association with it. So our palates change. Like, same thing. If you cut out sugar, then suddenly you're going to start tasting the subtleties of food and then you'll, let's say, try. Like I've done these sugar. My wife, who's a nutritionist, and I, we used to run these sugar control detoxes. And it would just be cutting out anything that was literal sugar and anything that converted quickly into sugar, right? So it's really a blood glucose kind of diet. And it was just two weeks. But in that two weeks, we would see people who are drinking Three glasses of wine with their meals before the two weeks. And at the end they could barely drink a full glass. Like they could barely drink a half a glass because their palate had changed. That's how quickly your palate can change. So I'm huge proponent of never, never like holding yourself to like, oh, but this just doesn't taste good or whatever, right? Because our palates change and it starts with just a little bit of something new. And what is awesome about organ meat is that it has umami. So we have, we have the four kind of tastes that we are all familiar with. You know, salty, sweet, bitter, sour, right? But they discovered a fifth which is umami. And umami is kind of like a savory. That's how you would best describe it. But it's truly unique. And what's really neat about it is that it actually enhances the flavor of the other four taste receptors. Receptors. So when you. That's why in processed foods, you'll see a lot of them have like MSG or some kind of yeast or something that has that, that kind of the, the umami flavor to it. That's why they're doing it, because they know if they put that in there, it's going to not only enhance all the other flavors, but it's also, what it also triggers is that kind of addictive part in your brain. It makes you want to eat more of it. And in the case of pluck, that's a great thing because I want you to get organ meats in your diet, but I want you to do it in a way that works for you. You know, I don't want you to feel like that is stressful or it's hard or oh, like if you talk to most of, most of us out there in the kind of organ meat eating world, a lot of us have like, I don't know, like heart or liver that's been sitting in our freezer for like years. You know what I'm talking about?

I think I actually have a beef heart right in my freezer that's been there for a couple years. So I'm actually even guilty of that myself.

Totally.

Right?

So you get it and you have the best suggestions. You're like, oh, this is awesome. I'm living the dream. I'm being what I say I am. I'm a nutrient dense, you know, carnivore, whatever, Paleo key, whatever you label yourself. And then it just sits there because you're like, what do I do with it? Or when do I do it? You know, when do I do it? So you just got to sit there. I mean, even the best of us sometimes just don't get to it, right? We just don't get to it. So I love that with this product.

It doesn't.

You just use it like salt and pepper. I mean, we have it on our table. My kids request it and everything. It's so versatile. And it's like, you don't have to think about. You don't have to think about knowing how to cook or make, you know, making a whole thing about it. It's not stressful, and I think we put way too much stress on food. I mean, like, I mean, a question, I'm so curious of what your answer is, but it's like, why. Why is nutrition so, like, why is it so complicated? Like, how would you answer that? Why is it so complicated?

Because everybody overcomplicates it. And I try to, like, make social media posts about this and things like that, because everybody overcomplicates it. They think they need to make these, like, crazy four course meals with all of the. All the things. Like, I remember I used to think, this is exactly how I used to think when I was cooking before I got into nutrition. I thought that we had to have, like, four things on our plate, like a veggie, a meat, like, then like a mashed potato and then like a biscuit. You know, I don't know what was up with that, but in my thinking, that's how it always had to look. Right? And, you know, I think everybody overcomplicates things. They think they need to cook these gourmet meals for their family and for themselves. And. And honestly, it's not that complicated. You pull out a meat, like some kind of protein and a vegetable, and you're good to go. You really don't need to add a whole lot to that. And it's so easy. And I tell people how easy it is, and they're like, well, that doesn't seem easy. And I'm like, yeah, it is. You throw the veggie in here, you chop it up, it's great. In the air fryer, Actually, I'm pretty addicted to the air fryer. And I smoke all my meats. And, you know, I just think that it gets overcomplicated.

Yeah. I mean, and then you add that to the marketing. You know, that the way that we're. We're so misled around marketing. I mean, something I'm always pointing out on my Instagram is like. Like, you, when you are shopping for food, you cannot just look at the front of the product because the front of the product will be like, it will only highlight the thing that's marketable. Like, I remember there was this product recently. Oh, man. What was it? Um, it may have even been like a four ingredient thing, but it was like, it was like olive oil, like rosemary salt. And that's all they highlighted. They were like, oh, this is made with like olive oil. They were really pushing olive oil. But then when you go to the back, it was like olive oil wasn't the first ingredient. And then it also had sunflower oil. And it's like, well, why didn't they put that on the COVID You know what I mean? So it's like, if you don't read the back, like, even like those, there are those bars that are. They advertise themselves as being like RX bars, right? If you just look at the front of the, of the package, it's like, it emphasizes like it has, you know, egg whites, it has that. But then you go to the back and it says natural flavors. It's like, wait, what? They just totally presented it like it was this real food thing. But then if they're adding natural flavors, it ain't real food. It's processed. It's like, this isn't, this isn't what they're. They're selling. So you always have to go to the back.

Always. Well, and you're totally speaking my language here because this kind of stuff drives me crazy. The front of the package is not even regulated. And so you see all these key terms that people are looking for, you know, less calories, more protein, more fiber. They're not talking about all of the artificial crap on the back or the added sugars, or like you said, the oil. The oil is a big one lately. And another thing is the old switcheroo that they've been doing on a lot of things that I've seen quite frequently throughout my whole health career here is something starts out healthy, and then all of a sudden it's not anymore. They change the ingredients. It's like they hook, you get you used to it. And then they hope that you're not going to turn around and look at the ingredients because they just changed it out for a cheaper ingredient. Oh.

And a lot of times, so a lot of times that's. That is that relationship happens because the company started with, let's say, like someone small, you know, some, some entrepreneur that really believed in the product that was really put, you know, put there. But to invest in that product that got to a certain point and then someone else bought it. And the minute like, you know, Hanes or Best Foods buy something, they looked, they looked to streamline it to make it as cheap as possible to up their profits. So, yeah, you're right. That's such a great point. It happens all the time.

Oh, yeah. And then usually when I notice it a couple times and I'm like, no, I was so used to this and I like, suggested it to all my clients, and now I'm going to have to tell them that it's not. Not kosher anymore. You know what I mean? It's such a horrible mess. And it's really unfortunate. The situation we are in with marketing and this illusion that people try to place around food and what's healthy and what's not and, and it's definitely no sur. Is that people don't know how to get healthy now because they, they are just bombarded with so much information and so many things out there telling you what you should and shouldn't eat.

And that's why I really emphasize, like, it's not about falling trends for me. Like, my, my career, I've always been, I've always had to understand the trends because I used to work for some, you know, clients that they, they were following the trends. So as a private chef, I had to be able to. To do whatever the trend was. So when I first got into culinary private chefing, it was like the fat flush diet. Like, so I had to know that in and out because that's what all the clients were wanting. You know, and eventually there have been other diets over the years, but so, but personally, I'm not into trans. Like, my whole thing is like, real food. Like, I just want, I want the most natural, real food as possible. The thing that doesn't that. The thing that is an ingredient that doesn't have ingredients. You know, I'm saying like that thing to me and I love. You even highlighted this in one of your podcasts about how it's like, it's not for you, at least you shared. It was like, about the little movements. It's like, like little bits here and there is what eventually got you to where you are now. And I'm a huge proponent of that. You know, you got to crawl before you can walk. And that's what I love about pluck is because it's truly a gateway to getting organ meats into your diet. I'm not here to say, like, oh, you know, never eat real organ meats because I Mean we're using powdered freeze dried organ meats, which is real food. But I'm saying like, that doesn't mean I'm discouraging you from actually eating liver, you know, in your food. But I'm just saying this is a gateway in so that you can start bringing this incredibly nutrient rich food into your diet. I mean, it's there. It's like this has been available for a long time and it used to be something that was in everyone's diet. I mean, you talk to any, I mean, I have to say great grandparents because now some of, some people are so young that their parents didn't do this. But, but for most of us it's either our grandparents or our great grandparents or even our great great. But you talk to any of them and they'll say, oh yeah, I grew up eating organ meat, liver and onions, you know, chicken hearts, whatever. They, they grew up, that's what they ate. That's how it was. I remember, I remember when we used to have, when I was younger, our stuffing used to have the giz, you know, like organs in them, you know, when we would do, you know, the big Thanksgiving feast or whatever. So they all did it, but for some reason we're not doing it. And isn't it interesting, and I'm not saying this is the exact reason, but isn't it interesting that we're also in the first time ever where people's, the young people, you know, the kids of parents are expected to not live as long as their parents. This is the first time ever. And I can't help but wonder if it's because we're buying too much into these trends and we're not sticking to these ancestral foods.

We know the ancestral foods work 100%, definitely. No, I agree with you in so many ways there because I think that because of the changing atmosphere in the food industry, I mean now they're bioengineering things to hit certain sensors on your brain so that you are literally addicted to them the minute you eat them and you have to have more. And so, I mean, they are, I mean, I saw a label the other day, I can't remember what it was, but it said something about being engineered right on the label. Like they had to disclose it maybe because of the process that had gone through, I'm not sure, but I literally pointed out to my husband and I was like, holy crap, look at, they said this on the label. Like, this is crazy stuff. And, and, and so this is one thing that I, you know, also people get sucked into is because then they will start going out and buying healthier food, but then they're putting a whole bunch of seasonings on them or sauces or marinades that are just full of this horrible stuff. So that's another thing that, like, I actually just had a lady reach out to me the other day, and she was like, we are trying to do the GAPS diet, but we can't find anything that we can actually season our food with. And that's a thing, right? Is. It's so hard to find stuff. I mean, there is sugar and processed ingredients and artificial flavors and just about everything.

Absolutely. And, you know, that's where, you know, I can't. We can't have this discussion without talking about, like, sourcing and the importance of quality. Because you're right, most seasonings out there have some kind of sugar sweetener in them, which is totally unnecessary. Particularly anything that you. Whenever you see something that says, like, barbecue or like, like even lemon pepper, I mean, gosh, it's like, it doesn't just have to be barbecue, but anything that alludes to, like a sauce, it's. Let's say it's a seasoning, but they're alluding to it being like a sauce like product, like something that typically. Then that's going to probably have sugar in it.

And.

And then, of course, they also have, like you said, synthetic ingredients. They sometimes have stabilizers. They have things that will keep it from clumping. They sometimes have wheat in them. So if you're gluten free, you're. You're out of luck, you know, so you really do have to look them even there was this product. Like, what is. Oh, geez. I. It was like, kind of like. And I don't want to bash them because it was a. It was a. Oh, it's called spike seasoning. Spike. So when I was first getting into kind of the natural food scene, notice I didn't say the health food scene because I think we. We think just because something natural that it's healthy, but it's not always right. But when I was first in college, I was getting to the natural health food scene, I got turned on to spike seasoning. And I thought, oh, my God, this thing is so flavorful, so amazing. But if you look at the ingredients, it's got soy and it's got this, it's got that. It's like. It's like, holy moly. Like, I know they have good intentions of trying to help people, but, you know, like, this is not as healthy as I Thought it was, you know, so I, I think it just goes back to. You always have to re ingredients and that's why even with pluck, like to me when you talk organ meats you have to talk about quality. You have to get it from 100% grass Fed animals because all animals are grass fed. All animals, they're all cattle, I should say all cattle are grass fed. And it's only at a certain point that conventional meat then starts feeding them something else. But it's that something else that's really important because it's things like sick animals. It's things like, it's like things like off byproduct from other industry. It's, it's genetically modified. It's like, it's just, it's tons of soy. It's just, it's tons of stuff, corn stuff that the animal cannot sustain its life on. But basically they feed it what that extra, let's just say 20% of its life, that other stuff. But if they were to try to feed that cattle that other stuff for very long, the animal would die. So it's only able to eat it for so long. That extra stuff pumps it up, makes it more, you know, allow them make more money off of the cattle. And, and, and then that's what most people are eating when they're eating conventional, those animals. Conventional animals. I would not eat those organ meats personally because when you have an animal that's sick, the organs become a. Typically organs are not where things are stored, they're actually just where things are filtered. And then they leave your body through your skin, your excrement, through pee, you know, whatever you, whatever your kind of detoxification ways are, that's where the toxins leave. And if anything, toxins store in our muscle. I mean, sorry, in our fat. In our fat. Right. But a lot of people think toxins store in the organs and that's not true unless the animal is sick. So that's why it's so important that you find healthy animals. And yes, that's going to mean it's more expensive. But if you're eating meat, that's where, that's where your money goes. You need to be buying high quality stuff because like you said, they're, they're now, did you hear about how they're. Now they're going to be creating pigs. Pigs. Like it's going to be. They're not like, they're basically genetically modifying pigs.

Great.

Just like they've done with salmon. They farm salmon. You know, they're doing so all these things. And what's so upsetting is they don't even have to label it. They don't have to say, oh, this is a genetically engineered, you know, animal.

Yeah. And it's really, really sad to watch the agriculture industry going that direction. Honestly. I grew up in agriculture, I've been in all parts of it and like, to see all the crazy things that are happening now, it just completely blows my mind.

Yeah. And we, I mean, in people, some really smart people are, you know, they'll talk About Zach Bush, Dr. Zach Bush is one of them. And there's a bunch of people that they're highlighting how, like, we have to change because there's already a downwards. We're like, like 20, 30 years away from our downward spiral, like a point of no return. And it's not about just climate change, it's actually about our agricultural systems. We're. We've lost so much topsoil. And by doing this tilling, this, this kind of the way that we farm right now, these huge mono crops and the tilling, we're just, we're losing not only nutrients, but we're going to enter, like dust bowl, you know, realities. And it's not far off. So this is direly serious. Like, we have to change how we eat. And isn't it ironic that we have this, you know, COVID virus going on for the last year and a half? Right. And how many times have people talked about changing how they eat from.

Not at all. And that's very. As a nutritionist, that is a very frustrating subject to me. And, you know, I've tried to be that person that's just like, okay, I'm letting it ride. I talk. If you hire me, I'll tell you how I feel about it. But, you know, I feel like we need to start speaking out against that because there are so many people that are trying to be like, listen, hello. You've got all these things going on to try to prevent this virus when, when health and fitness and sunlight and nutrition and all these things are much more important than some of these things that they're trying to push in order to help this.

Oh, yeah. Supposedly the amount of viruses in the world are. And I'm just talking, even in just water is like as many stars there are in the sky. It's like, it's an insane amount. So the idea that this is the last virus we're ever going to see, you know, or that, that even. That the virus is how it's being presented, it's like, no, this is our life. We have got to rethink how we were not only growing food, but how we are intaking food. Because if we don't start prioritizing health, then it's not going to stop here. You're going to be susceptible to every single virus out there. I mean, that's not a life. If you're living inside your house, scared to go outside or scared to hug somebody or scared of not wearing a mask or whatever, not to have whatever the newest vaccine that's out, it's like, you know, that is just not a life.

No, absolutely not. And you look back to, like, you know, not even that far back in time, right. We weren't filtering our water. We weren't. There was no purification systems for it at all. We drank it right out of the stream. We were fine. Maybe some people would end up with some kind of a stomach bug for a while and then it would go away. Now, most people, if they were to go up and drink out of a mountain stream, they're going to end up with some kind of stomach upset because their system has not been exposed to that kind of bacteria ever. And so it has become something that's a threat rather than something they have developed a natural immunity to.

Absolutely. Yeah. So to me, it all goes back to, okay, what are you putting in your body? And, you know, I think we started out this saying, like, oh, I'm not here to tell you to be a carnivore or a paleo or even a vegan or vegetarian. I know what works for me. But I love. You actually talked about this on your podcast. Like, so you, you embraced the GAPS diet for a while, right? And you and your husband then saw, oh, you did this diet, but then your body gave you feedback, and he was like, oh, I don't have any back pain anymore. And you were like, oh, I don't have. You know, my, my digestion is working. You know, like, your body gives you the feedback, so we don't need to, like, get into our head about it. We don't have to be like, you know, ethically, you know, or. Or mindful about all this stuff. We just have to choose whatever you want. I don't care. Choose whatever you want. But then you better listen to your body's feedback. Because if, let's say you go vegan and you're gassy all the time and you feel bloated, that's body feedback. And I don't care if you're worried about hurting the animal. It's like, no, you got to listen to your body.

Yeah.

It's unique and beautiful and it will. It will self heal, but you got to listen to it. It gives you feedback. Every day, every minute, it's giving you feedback.

Absolutely. And one of the most basic of examples of this is when somebody starts with me. I don't care what their background is, what their ideals are. I remove gluten from everybody's diet. It is the very first thing that I remove. And nine times out of 10, that person will come back to me and they will be like, oh, my gosh, I cannot believe how much more energy I have. What did you do? What did you put in my food guideline? What did you like? And I said all we did was remove gluten. Like, and it was the most basic of things, but it seemed like something huge because they didn't realize how much it was actually affecting their health until it was gone. And I kind of like, I make that. Like the smells in your house, for example. Okay. And I hate to go back to my roots and talk about this kind of stuff, but I was raised on a very goat dairy farm, basically, and goats are very smelly animals. And I, as a child, didn't ever notice any kind of goat smell or anything. And we had goats in our house. We had goats everywhere. I mean, it was a mess. Right. I almost have a clean house PTSD now because of the goat situation we had. I mean, it was like literally, banjos playing where I lived when I grew up. Okay. Anyway, the smell of the goats was awful. Awful. And I will never forget the first time that my husband got exposed to my roots and we went back to that same place and we both walked in and we were blown away by the incredible smell. And it wasn't a positive smell. It wasn't like, oh, I'm home. It was like this smells like goat urine and feces and. And all like a farm, you know? And I as a child never noticed it, even up until I graduated high school, because I lived in the middle of it. My body was used to it. It's the same thing when people live in mill towns and they have pulp mills and those pulp mills stink. You get used to it for a while, but then once you eliminate it, you all of a sudden realize how much better it is without it.

Yeah, absolutely. So does it affect you now? Like, whenever you have any Go product, do you just automatically go to that smell?

Pretty much. I can't eat any goat meat, unfortunately. It's like goat milk. Even now, it's just too much for me, just because I was raised with it, and the taste just kind of looms in my head for some reason. I haven't tried it again recently. I do want to try some goat milk at least again. But the other thing is venison has a very similar flavor to goat, and so it catches me up sometimes. And so. But the funny thing is, like, llama, I can eat llama no problem. Doesn't bother me at all. So I don't know, I just catch that kind of, like, goaty taste and things sometimes, and it's. And it drives me crazy.

Yeah, totally. Well, and that's. And that's a lot of, like, what I hear a lot of times around organ meat. So I hear, you know, people that eat liver, I hear that has an irony taste. People that eat kidney, I hear it kind of has a uriney taste. You know what I mean? And then. And I'm just like, well, so pluck has. Pluck has liver, kidney, heart, spleen, and pancreas. First of all, spleen and pancreas is something no one's getting in their diet unless they're taking supplements. So kidney, liver, and heart, maybe people are getting. Maybe. But you hear those kind of comments of, like, the taste and. Yeah, anything anyway. So if you could get the benefits of something but not have that taste, you would probably do it, right?

Yeah, oh, absolutely. And that's the best part, right, is you can sneak it in on everybody. Just go buy a bag of that stuff and sprinkle it on your husband's food. That seems to be the thing that I hear the most that holds people back from their health journey. Right. Is their husband. They say, oh, well, my husband won't support this. Well, you can start sneaking it in on them, too. It's okay.

Now, how do you handle. You have kids, right?

Yes.

How do you handle food with them now? Because when you and your husband did your change of nutritional change, did you have kids prior to that, or.

Yeah, we. We changed because of my kids. Because of. My son was struggling with some really severe ADHD and stuff, so we switched over because of that, and the whole family switched.

And was that challenging, though, that switch? I mean, like, in terms of what your son or your kids are willing to eat, like. Or are they kind of just go with it?

No, because I was pretty firm with the fact that that was what they were getting and they weren't getting anything else. And so it was pretty quick that they were like, okay, fine, that's what we'll eat. I mean, and I Remember, I have this specific moment in my head where I had made the typical gaps, like bone broth, and then I took the meat out of it, and. And there were some, like, really squishy vegetables in there. And I remember being like, okay, everyone's at the table, and they're like, oh, like, this has, like, no flavor. What the heck? You know? And I remember that specific moment where the. It was just really not flavorful at all, and it was not that great. And I remember looking at everybody's faces, and I was like, well, I don't know what to tell you, but this is how it's going to be for a while.

How old was your son then?

I think he was 7 or 8, I'm not sure.

And he still went with it. You didn't get any lip or any.

No, because I was. I literally removed everything out of my house, though, so it was a little bit of a different situation. They couldn't go sneak some Cheetos or whatever they found. I took everything out of my pantry and the refrigerator and everywhere. I took it all to the food bank or gave it away to homeless people, and I was done, and I went and filled my refrigerator, which was very hard, with things that were only GAPS approved, and there's not a lot there. And that's when I started reading labels, and I was like, oh, my gosh, there's sugar in this. Oh, my gosh, there's artificial stuff in here. I mean, that's when all of a sudden my eyes were really open to how bad food really was. I mean, I used to look at the. The ingredient label kind of. And then when I started actually knowing what I was looking for, to not have in the ingredient label was all of a sudden like, whoa, it's in everything.

Yeah.

And that was a real huge eye opener to the whole thing. Right. But I didn't really give my family an option. And, I mean, I packed my son's stuff meals for daycare. I think he was still going to daycare at the time. I don't know. Wherever he was going, I was packing his meals and I was sending them with him. And he. The crazy part was, is, like, probably two or three or four months into it because family and people didn't really want him to come stay at their house because he was so hyperactive. They couldn't handle it. And they started being around him after we made this. The GAPS transition, and they were like, wow. We would actually let him come stay at our house now because he's mellowed out so much, and he's doing so well and amazing.

There's still people that don't believe that food affects health, though. Isn't that amazing? Because you have direct experience of it in many ways, but beyond your son, of course. But, like, I'm always blown away. I mean, even with COVID people are like, oh, well, changing my diet's not going to affect whether I get or not. It's like, what?

Yeah.

Yeah. Well. So the craziest part was about the whole thing, though, and this was the part that really made an impact on a lot of my outside family, was he went over to my stepsister's house to stay the night, and they were all making s' mores around the campfire, and he literally looked at them. They said, hey, you want one? And he literally looked at them, and he went, no, I don't like to eat that stuff because I really don't like how it makes me feel. Wow. He said, I feel like I'm out of control when I do that kind of stuff, so I just don't do it.

Don't you feel like as a parent, you did your job, like, you drop the mic kind of thing? Like, that's it. I'm good. I accomplished what I needed to accomplish. I'm done.

I did at that point. But then there was a point, you know, I mean, he's much older now, right? And so there was a point where it's not always going to be like, roses and rainbows and sunshine all the time either, because, you know, then he starts getting into middle school where he's eating this healthy food and all the kids around him are bullying him over it, right? And he was getting bullied a ton. And so he started sneaking their food and eating the stuff that they were eating. And, like, they'd buy a Mountain Dew and bring it with them and share it. And he started doing that. And all of a sudden, all of these behaviors came back, like, tenfold. And it ended up being a really big mess, and it took a lot to fix it, but he ended up coming back around again, and he was like, listen, I don't eat that stuff. It does not make me feel good. And now even. You know, he's almost 15 years old now. When we go to restaurants and things we do have, like, I don't want to call them cheat meals, but we will go out to eat. We eat. We pick our restaurant selections very carefully. But we just went to a place, maybe it was in Hood River. You'd be familiar with that kind of area. But it was like an organic restaurant and he orders himself a gluten free bun and makes wise selections based on the menu. So I'm like, okay, it came back around. So even if you're in a low spot and you're a parent and you're trying to handle these things, please know that you're trying to imprint these things upon your kids and give them the right tools for their toolbox. And they may or may not use them later, they may or may not use them now, but hopefully at some point they can refer back to that tool in their toolbox and use it.

Yeah. And I mean, and I would offer, I mean, I love this talk, by the way. It's like, so for the parent out there that's struggling or even the individual that's like, how do I make the shift? How do I change so that I'm more healthier? One thing that I always suggest is something you actually cover is the things that you don't want to eat. Don't bring them into the house. If they're in the house, they will get eaten or used in some way. Just don't bring them in. That's like tip number one. And then two is, is, is basically like have support and whatever the change is, don't be alone with it. You know what I mean? And I think, I think that that's so important. It's like even your son, it's like he's. Yeah, his friends were, were making fun of him when he was younger. And I experienced that as well with my, my daughters. That's one of the reasons I actually develop pluck, was because I was like, hey, how do I get these nutrient rich foods in their diet without them being a freak? You know, without them being like the, the exception? And it's like, oh, okay, here's this seasoning you could put on and no one even knows it's there. And if anything, they, it tastes better. They don't even know what it is. Right. So that was like, I definitely appreciate that because we experienced that as well. But at least he knew he wasn't alone, that he had you, that when he went home, he has family and hopefully your close inner circle that ate similarly and connected, you know, you've been connecting them to his body. So the more that we can eat something and then actually take a breather and like see how it feels in our body, like, that's key. But one of the, one of the things that I'm always encouraging people around health that I don't think is talked about enough is meal planning. Because I find that if I, if I kind of create my agenda for the week in terms of what I'm going to eat when, if I meal plan and you create a grocery list from that, that basically when you go to that grocery store, you're, you're not going to go off, you're not going to go on those impulse buys because you're going to follow your list. And then that also means that you're going to, when you're making food, you're going to every day you're going to know what you're making. So you can plan ahead and you can just kind of be not as stressed about what's coming. Because I hear so much about families who are like, oh, I didn't plan food, let's just order pizza. I hear that more than anything. And it's just like, yeah, I hear you. Because the day gets away from you. It's stressful, it's hard. And if you just meal plan, it would have been a non issue.

Yeah, no, I fully agree with that. And I think that, you know, the great thing about that is you can actually meal plan with your family. It can be a family thing. I mean, kids can, I mean, there are some really fantastic, like paleo books out there, for example, that have wonderful recipes in there. And sit down on the couch with your kids and say, hey, what would you, what would, what interests you in this book? And honestly, I used to make like 5 of that thing. When we sat down and we cooked it, I'd make like five and I'd freeze some of it and I would make it available so that when I did find myself in that pinch, I actually had that stuff in my freezer and I could pull it out and use it. And it actually really came in handy before I would do bodybuilding building shows and things like that, because I didn't realize. But when you make multiple plates of something, like multiple casseroles or soups or whatever it is that you're making, and you eat one and then freeze the other four, that stuff builds up over time. And I literally had six weeks worth of food in my freezer that was totally cooked and ready to go before I did my last bodybuilding show, which made it great because it was like go time. There was a lot of stuff going on. I didn't really have time to cook and I literally had everything set out every night. And I was like, here, this is what goes in the oven the next day. And it worked amazing. It was a great thing. So there's a lot of different ways you can tackle it.

Yeah, that's brilliant. And absolutely. That was going to be the thing I was going to ask you is, in your household, do you guys eat a lot of leftovers? Because we do that. So we make a bigger dinner and then lunch the next day is always leftover dinner. And it's just, it makes it so, so much easier.

Absolutely. And I mean, if you're gonna make something, it's not that hard to double or triple the recipe. It really isn't. You're getting all of those ingredients anyways and then you're able to utilize them all and then have some leftover for later. And it works really, really great. And then when in doubt, make it basic. We cook. I mean, we've been really busy all summer. We. I have not like meal prepped anything. All I do is cook a ton of meat on my smoker steaks and chicken and all of these things. And then I literally have vegetables pre chopped up in ziploc bags in my refrigerator and I use those in my air fryer, you know, so there's a lot of ways to do things. You just have to find out what works well for you.

Yeah, that's great. And like, I think ultimately the goal is take the stress out of it. Take the stress out of figuring out what to eat. You know, when we're talking about cooking from home, it's really about, well, you have to make the food from scratch. Right. Because if you're buying something that's prepackaged, it's not. It's going to be a very specific kind of ingredients, going to be very specific volume of food. So if you're making it from scratch, you can really make more. You can really have fun with the different flavors and keep it as simple as possible. You know, there's, there's the saying that 85% of. 85%, what is it? It's like 85% of like your diet is shopping like so basically like. Or I say, I guess I'm saying diet, but I guess a food like 85% of like a delicious meal is really the shopping of it. It's like if you're, if you pick really good in season, you know, organic, hopefully, so it's non GMO and whatnot. But like you get food that's just like allowed to grow on the vine or the tree or whatever it's coming from. It's just so flavorful. You really don't have to do much to it, you know. And even though I'm peddling a spice and seasoning. I'm all for, like, keep it simple. Just keep it simple.

I love that. I love that. Well, so if there's anything that you could get out there to my audience, what would it be?

Well, so here's. Here's my kind of steps towards getting organ meats in the diet, because that's really what I. What I'm really trying to support. And. And I. And you brought up the muscle maven early on. And she's someone who we've been, you know, she's. We got some recipe of hers on our site. Like, we've been. We've really pushed her product. Her cookbook as well. She's got a great cookbook on eating organ meat. So I love that you're promoting organ meats because it's just. To me, it's like, it's the food that we're not getting in our diet that we need to. So here are tips on how to do it. Now, the first one, as I mentioned already, is the gateway, which is Pluck. You just order Pluck. Our website is eatpluck.com. you go to. Go to Pluck and you use that on your food. You can use it. It's very versatile. You can use it on breakfast, lunch, dinner. It doesn't matter. Like, we put it on popcorn on kids. I mean, it's so good. It's so good. Eggs, it's just so good. So do that. Start there. But then the next thing is, I would start with what you do, which is having some ground organs. Usually it's liver and heart or maybe just liver. It depends on what you can get access to. But have some ground organs in your ground meat, and you can start with a very little bit, maybe 5%, and then up it. But I recommend not going higher than 20%. And there's a lot of places, particularly in the farmers market, that will sell the grounds already, you know, with the organ meat. So you just got to look. Sometimes they call it paleo or boosted. It just depends. You got to look for it. But. So I would then do that. Then the next thing I would do is buy, like, some liver, you know, and beef liver is pretty big, right? So it's okay if you buy one, they're really big. But keep it in your freezer. You don't have to defrost it and then be stuck with this huge piece of liver. Just keep it in your freezer. And what you can do is then take a zester or a grater and grate it over your food, and you can even do this over your ground meat. Then you never have to defrost it and deal with, like, the kind of, like, pressure that we talked about earlier. Like, what do I do now? I have too much, Right? So just grate it and just. And then put it right back in the freezer. So. So that's a really easy way of getting that organ meat. And then the other organ that I would start with, when you're ready to actually, like, saute with it or like, ingredients, have it as a meal, is chicken hearts.

I love chicken hearts.

Yeah, right. They're so, like, they're. They're so not what people think organs say they're sweet. They're. They're kind of like. They take on other flavors really well. They're just really mild. And so it's a great entry into actually eating an organ. And then the other one I would recommend, which you mentioned, is tongue. Tongue is amazing. If you go to many really good Mexican restaurants, they'll have it. They call it langua, but tongue is. You cook it. Let's say if you. If you ever make pulled pork or pulled beef or anything like that, you just cook tongue the same way. But then when you go to pull it out, you just strip it and. And the muscle even actually has a great recipe in her cookbook on. On tongue. But the tongue is such a great thing because once you cook it and you shred it, it tastes just like shredded meat. I mean, you would never know that you're eating tongue. We were blown away when we started cooking with tongue. So those are kind of like, easy steps into doing organ meat. You don't have to go crazy and start making pates until you're ready. But I would. I would just start with those, like, five tips I just gave. And you'll find, you know, you. Maybe you'll do this every other week. You know, you don't have to do it every week. Now with pluck, I recommend doing it daily because it's only pinches you're not using. You're never going to get as much of the organ in pluck as you would if you ate the organ on its own. So that's why I recommend using pluck daily. But then when you actually graduate to eating organs, you don't have to eat those every week, you know, but you'll get just an amazing amount of nutrients. So I just recommend they're in the diet. Like, I don't care if it's once a month, once every two weeks, but they should be in your diet. They just really should.

I love all that. And I love that you brought up the chicken hearts, because I actually had somebody ask me that the other day. They were like, well, what if you're afraid of them? What was the. What would be the first thing that you would cook? And that was what I brought up. I said I would. I would buy some chicken hearts, I would saute them in some real butter with some garlic and some basil, and just. They're really, really good. And then you can just eat them. It's one forkful per bite and you're good to go.

Totally. And if you need to, you know, cut them up so you don't have to think about that. They're little hearts, you know, whatever it is. Because I know that for some people, it's not just the flavor, it's also the aesthetic or, you know, the texture or the look. So, you know, just accommodate, you know, add it to add other meat to it. You know, if you go to like a Brazilian food restaurant, they'll usually add heart and different organs into the food. You don't even know it's there. You don't even think about it.

That's awesome. Well, if you. I know you mentioned your website. Is there other places that people can find you if they want to go look for you and look for your product and what you have to say, because you have more. It goes far beyond just a seasoning. You have a lot of knowledge to put out there.

Yeah, we're really big into promoting regenerative farming, which we talked about earlier, about how agricultural has to change and regenerative farming and no tilling methods are really, really key to that. I'm also really into nose to tail eating. You know, we eat the muscle meat, but it really, you know, ancestrally, the muscle meat wasn't even the prized part of the animal. And we go back to like, all the ailments that are happening to people in today's modern world. And I cannot separate the fact that we don't eat the way our ancestors ate, you know, and so to me, eating nose to tail is one part of the puzzle of getting healthier. So we're all about that. But you, as I mentioned, the website is eat pluck.com and then our social handle istpluck. And then my personal is at Chef James Barry with an A. That's B A, R, R, Y. And I'm always for. I mean, everything we touched on today, I talk about in my personal Instagram. And I'm really about Like I call it don't fall asleep at the cart. You know, like that idea that when you're going grocery shopping, that's where it's kind of starts, you know, I mean, like how you grocery shop. Are you going off of a list? Are you not going off a list? What aisles are you going down? You know, like what, what's the priority when you're in the grocery store? It's got to start there. And, and why I say don't fall asleep at the card is exactly what you touched on, which is don't just assume the product you're grabbing. If it's in a box, in a bag, if it's processed in any way, don't assume what it is. Read the label. And if you don't recognize, you know, the majority of those ingredients, then I would put it back on the shelf.

Absolutely. I love that. And I think I've actually brought that up in the past, long ago as, like, it's like a fruit snack might say it's strawberry and look like a strawberry, but when I look at the ingredients, I can't picture any of those growing in a field. So, you know, if you can't picture it in its real form, like a sweet potato growing or. I mean, I'm not a huge grains fan, but if you were to picture like oats growing or whatever, you know, I guess, I guess. What do they say? If it has a label that is your warning, it should be single ingredient foods that you're eating.

Yeah. And, you know, the fruit thing is funny too. As a parent, you know, I remember I once got asked like, oh, I'm at Costco and someone was texting me. They were like, I'm at Costco and I'm trying to get some, you know, snacks for lunches, for school. And what do you think of these, you know, these fruit bars? And. And it was those fruit bars that it's this, you know, it's concentrated in dried fruit, so the sugars are extremely concentrated. And it's not that the ingredients were that bad, but I was like, well, why not just include an apple or an orange in their lunch? Like, why don't I just give them the real thing with the fiber? Yeah, I'm like, real fiber. And we can't recreate that stuff. Right. It's like when they give you vitamin C tablets or capsules, it's not the entirety of an orange. They're only isolating certain parts of the orange because they cannot create an orange in a laboratory. They cannot create an apple, only Nature can do that. The more we can stick to nature, I think the better off we'll be. And it's simpler. You don't have to worry about, am I hurting the environment by this wrapper? It's like, no, you just, you eat the apple and then you put the core in your compost.

Absolutely. And that's a great thing. I think I need to do a whole podcast on kid snacks in and of itself. Maybe we need to collaborate on that because that seems to be the biggest hang up for a lot of people is what can and can't they do. And so. Yeah. Well, anyway, I'm sure we could go on about all of this for hours, but I am so thankful you decided to join me. Talk about pluck and its mission and why getting organ meats into your diet is so important. Because it really is. I mean, especially like there's a carnivore movement going on right now. Some people do do the nose to tail thing. Other people think that that's just eating steak. Whatever camp you're in, I try to tell my clients, okay, if that's something you want to do, then feel free to give it a try. I've personally done it. I mean, I don't. I think that it's okay to give it a try, but make sure that you're getting organ meats in there. Make sure that you're making bone broth. Make sure you're utilizing all these things because it's all really, really important. So that's kind of my take on it.

Yeah, it really is. You know. Yeah, I agree with the carnivore diet. It's like, I think it's. I think it's just like keto. You know, a lot of people use some of these diets as excuses for what they choose. And it's like, well, the originate nader of carnivore. It's like he didn't see it as just muscle meat. I mean, if you read what he started out with, it was all parts of the animal and that includes organs. And even he's changing his definition of that, as he's learned. And same thing with some of these keto. It's like it wasn't all just about like eating bacon, you know, or fat. It's like the quality, the types of these things, you know, you don't just stick to the same thing over and over.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so, so much for joining me. I'm really excited to get this out there. I will put all of your information in the show notes and we will be publishing you asap.

Thanks for having me. And please everyone who's reached out and let me know what you think of pluck once you try it. I look forward to hearing from you. Yeah.