Pluck TV - The Ingredient Guru: Mira Dessy

I love sharing with people about the importance and the foundation of what's in what we eat. You know, one of the things that happens, so many nutrition professionals, they get out of school and they're all like, okay, I got it dialed in. Like, I'm going to tell people with this to eat this and people with that to eat that and don't eat this, and that's fine. And they forget that. There's actually this, what I call the foundational level of what's in what we eat. It encompasses so many things because it's not only the ingredients that are in things, and even things that fall into the supposedly good category can have negative ingredients in them. It's also about food contact materials. It's about quality of the food. I mean, there's so much of that that we tend to forget about. And if we can incorporate that, it helps our clients get better so much faster.

Mira Desi, I am so excited to talk to you. Full disclosure, I know Mira. She's particularly good friends with my wife, Margaret, but we've known each other for many years now. Gosh, I don't even know how many. But I feel like you've been in our lives, particularly even more so, which is so exciting. I feel like in the last three, three years, you've really, like, almost become part of our family, like, to the point where our kids talk about you. You have a beautiful exchange happening with my older daughter Sia. So it's just so lovely get talk to you, though, one on one, since we don't get to do this very often and really unwrap your story more and more of what your interest and purpose is on this planet. So I want to just set up, though, that you are known as the Ingredients Ingredient Guru, which is one of my favorite names I've seen in the health field. I just love that name for you. You're a holistic nutritionist and a real food advocate. You wrote a book called the Pant the Pantry Principle, which is basically how to read food labels and how to understand what you're eating. Right, which is so important. I know I do that on my Instagram as well. Like, I'm constantly. I think that is one of the. The gateways to people really changing their health is understanding the food labels. They have to understand those to understand that. Thank you for talking with me.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, like you said, I just adore your family, and I love that there's enough of a connection that we wind up traveling to each other a couple of times a year. Which is great. And I believe when I first met you and Margaret and Sia, it was in Portland. And I believe Sia was four.

Oh, wow.

So that was a long time ago.

Okay, so it was a little over four years ago then. Yeah, she's eight and a half now.

Yeah. So I believe. I believe she was four at the time when we met. But, you know, I think one of the things that I love about, you know, Margaret and you and your family is you guys. You're totally in that same mindset that I am. It's about real food and about nourishing and supporting, and I love that you're my foodie friends. And like I said, you know, when we visit, we always have great, great meals and great conversation, which is just fabulous.

Yeah. I almost feel like that's a podcast. It's just recording, like, these dinners with other health practitioners, because they always go to really interesting places. And to that point, actually, I think it's really easy for people to forget that every health practitioner started somewhere.

Oh, yeah, right.

Started somewhere and arrived where they are because of where they, you know, because of. Usually it's an illness or something. So do you want to just share a little bit about, you know, what brought you to nutrition? What brought you to even thinking about food in the way you do?

Oh, sure. You know, and it's true. I know very few practitioners who have either not personally or had a family member go through some kind of a health challenge in one way or another that led them down this path, and that once they get here, it becomes a passion. So I started many, many years ago. I was actually in a completely different field. I was a database administrator for an international research firm. So totally different. And I became very, very ill over a period of time. I got sicker and sicker. I began to have a lot of fatigue, a lot of really negative physical symptoms. I became so exhausted. I was living my life on the sofa. If I wanted to walk upstairs to go to bed, when I got to the top of the stairs, I had to lie down on the floor and recover before I could crawl to bed. It was awful. I eventually wound up being diagnosed with five different autoimmune disorders. Ulcerative colitis was my primary.

Who diagnosed you? Is it a Western?

Doctors. Medical doctors.

Okay. Interesting. Okay.

But it took a long time. Like, one of the things that sort of fires me up is part of my journey because I had so many doctors say, well, your results look fine to me, you know, which is terrible. And then I wound up. My joke was if there was an ist, I had it. I had a rheumatologist, a cardiologist, a gastroenterologist. Like, I had all these. These doctors. And so for me, the big change came this one week. And I don't remember, like, the exact date, but I just remember this week very clearly. I went to see my rheumatologist, who said to me, I want to give you this medication, but I don't know if your endocrinologist is going to like it, so I'm not going to do it. And I was like, okay, because I'm, you know, I'm one of those l' esprit d' escalier kind of people. Like, I think about it, and then I get back to you. And so as I'm driving home in the car, all of a sudden I'm thinking, I'm going wa a minute. First of all, aren't you two people doctors? Don't you talk to each other? The answer is no. And then the other thing is, if you're not going to do something about it, why would you tell me? Like, why would you tell me that and not do something? And then a couple days later, I went to a new to me cardiologist, and I thought because he was a new doctor, he was going to want to hear my story. And so I start talking to him and sharing with him, and he goes, Mrs. Desi, you are getting older. Now, in his defense, he looked like he was about 12. He was probably, like, newly minted out of med school. But I was only 42 years old, and this man was willing to consign me to a sofa for the rest of my life.

Wow.

And that's kind of what it took to light a fire under my butt. So I went home, I picked up the phone, and I called my insurance company, and the poor woman who answered the phone got an earful. And I was like, it makes me almost cry how mean I was, because that's not how I normally am. And she offered me what's something called an executive checkup, which is where you go to a major hospital and you have a gateway doctor who brings in all these different specialists. And over the course of four or five days, you go through an unbelievable barrage of tests. And every doctor commits to following your case for the entire time that you're in the system. So every day they have a meeting at the end of the day, and all the doctors get together and share and talk. And then in the morning, you meet your gateway doctor who tells you what they found and sets up your appointments for the next day, and they give you a medical concierge who makes sure that you get to all of your appointments like it's an unbelievable system. So at the end of that, they give me this huge packet to take home to my doctors, and they change a few things. So there's a couple of things that stood out for me from that prior to this. And even in that point, nobody ever, ever talked to me about my food, ever. It was certain changes, physical changes. I have some mechanical things that were interfering with part of how I was functioning. It was about medication changes, that kind of thing. But nobody really talked to me about diet too much. Now, to give him credit, my gastroenterologist, my original gastroenterologist, had sent me to a nutritionist who told me to try becoming a vegetarian for a little while because it would be easier on my stomach.

Oh, geez.

Well, believe it or not, it worked. It helped, but it only lasted for so long. And then eventually, I went back to being an Omni. But in any event, I came home realizing that I needed to have more participation in the conversation. I needed to stop letting them make the decisions, and I needed to voice my opinion. I also needed to make sure that everybody was talking to each other. And then a friend of mine gave me a book that talked about food color, and I went, what? And I started going through my pantry, and I started getting rid of the food color. And then I was like, well, wait a minute. What are some of these other things? And then I began to get rid of those, and then I began to start feeling better, and I was like, wow. So then I really began to try to educate myself. And the more I removed from my diet in terms of things. And here's the thing, at the time, like, I thought we ate a pretty healthy diet. You know, I made all of our bread, all of our jam, all of our pickles. We belonged to a csa, you know, we did all of that stuff. And my friends would say, oh, my gosh, you are the healthiest eater I know. But we still had, you know, things that were not good for us. I am going to confess, there was Captain Crunch in my pantry, you know. And so as I began to remove a lot of those things from my diet and I began to feel better, I just became very enmeshed in trying to figure out what all this stuff was that they were doing to our food. And eventually I got to a point where I had to go back to school because I had taught myself everything I could on My own. And then I wound up writing the book because it was like, why is it this hard to find all of this information? Because it's scattered all over the place. And the challenge is, even now, all these years later, I graduated from Bowman College in January of 2009. All these years later, they are still doing stupid stuff to our food. They are still approving more harmful ingredients. They are still allowing a lot of other things to happen with our food process that have been shown to not be healthy for us. But they do it because it is cheaper and because they can.

Right? That is so interesting. Hi, Melissa. I'm glad you joined us. That is interesting because you didn't have a revelation with your health around, like, oh, I took these supplements or I healed the gut. It's like, oh, it was directly at first, at least food. And you just started removing these things that were the ingredients that none of us really understand anyway. Now, how did you. How, like, how did you piece some of this stuff together? Because some of this stuff is still hard to piece together. Like, we still don't really know what natural flavor is. We still don't know what's in artificial flavors. Right? So how. Where are you getting your information?

So, you know, it's. This is one of the really cool things that happened because of my background as a data driven person. Like, I'm pretty good at finding stuff. And I began to discover that there were a lot of industry resources. And even now, as the ingredient guru, I sign up for so many industry things. I subscribe to over 50 different industry newsletters every week. And I tell them who I am. I'm the ingredient guru. I'm a nutrition educator and I share information with people and they go, okay, great. And they send me their newsletter, even if it's like really horrible stuff about what they're doing, like how to. How to shift natural flavor in your favor. Like, that's a white paper. You know, they send it to me. But the other thing is, I also began to discover that there are, you know, medical libraries, medical dictionaries. There are things that you can start looking these things up. And I just began to do the research from there. And then I also began to realize, you know, one of my seven rules for simple grocery shopping is if you don't know what it is, don't eat it. And in the beginning, I discovered it. Even now, there's a lot of things where I don't really know what it is. Like bha, for example, I know that stands for butylated hydroxyanisole And I know it's a preservative. I don't really understand the deep chemical nature of what BHA is, but I know it's not something I want in my body. I know that as a preservative it can have some negative impacts on the body. For some people, it causes rashes. There's like all different kinds of things. I don't understand it on a very deep level, but I understand it enough to know it's not great. So my way to fight back, I guess is instead of going to all these companies and saying, don't use this stuff, because that's kind of a David and Goliath situation. There is. I'm going to teach people what they don't want to eat. And if we do that, then guess what? The companies will change. And it's happened. It happens a lot. You know, if you look for example at high fructose corn syrup. So a long time ago there were all those stupid commercials, you know, hey, want a popsicle? No, thank you. Why? It's got high fructose corn syrup. Really? What's wrong with that? You know, so they make you look stupid. Well, now we know high fructose corn syrup is really bad for you, bad for your liver, is responsible for non alcoholic stereo hepatosis, like really bad stuff. So now companies are putting no HFCs on the front of the label. Why are they doing that? Because a whole bunch of people said, you know what, I'm not buying that. And food producers, man, they're not really in the business of making food. They're in the business of making money. They do it with food. And so if you won't buy it, they will change it. And so I feel like it's better to educate people.

When I was in college, so that's when I started to get clued into some more natural foods. I went to Santa Cruz and was very kind of granola, kind of natural food environment. And it's funny because there's, there's this idea too. It's like, oh, I'm eating more natural, but I'm still, I was still drinking soda, I was still eating chips, I was still eating. But they were just the more natural versions, right? Whatever a natural versions of a soda is, you know, it's like, it's still sugar water, but, but so Blue sky soda was very popular at the time. And, and, and it had sugar in it. And then at one point they changed it to corn, high fructose corn syrup. And I wrote to them and I said, why did you guys do that? Like, are you just. You're just going the cheaper route? You're just getting a cheap material. And. And I wrote to them and then they, they wrote me back, said, well, until. And basically said, exactly. We said, until the. We don't. We're going to. And I was like, you are. So that is just incredible to me. You know, it's not necessary.

You just.

I just had this sense of like, you know, it's not as good, right?

Oh, absolutely.

That they're gonna. Are okay with it.

Well, and so. So one of the interesting stories in that vein is Starbucks. So Starbucks has a beverage called Strawberry Frappuccino. And you can order it like off the counter, but you can also buy it in a bottle, a glass bottle. And they were coloring it with food based coloring, which typically tends to be things like beet juice or things like that because it has a nice red color. And at a certain point they decided to switch and they shifted their red coloring to cochineal, which is made from bugs. It's crushed bugs, beetles, and their shell makes this very red color. And they didn't tell anybody, they just changed their formula. But the thing is, the law says they have to put it on the label if it's in there. And somebody noticed and they blurted it out on the Internet. And a whole bunch of people got really upset. First of all, all the vegetarians got grossed out. Vegetarians and vegans don't like eating bugs. And then all the kosher people, although I don't even know if that's kosher, but if it was kosher, they would be upset about that because they don't eat bugs either. But there was such a huge stink about the fact that they had shifted from a plant based color to a bug based color that they were forced to shift back. And it was probably.

Have you heard of Mom's Organic Grocery?

No, I haven't.

Have you heard of Mom's Melissa? It's in the east coast. I think it's around D.C. area.

No, I live in Oakland.

Oh, okay. Okay. I'm on the west coast, so Mom's Organic to me. Mom's Organic to me is a really. Is a really like, fascinating store because it's. To me, it represents what's possible. So look up Mom's Organic. They have a humongous list. And I guarantee it's a list that you will see and you'll go, yes, this is my list. This is my store. And they say we do not allow anything with these ingredients into Our store. And it is an amazing list. It's way better than Whole Foods, and Whole Foods has that list, too, but it's way better than Whole Foods list.

Isn't that great?

No, it's not. And I think it's gotten worse since it has.

It used to be better.

Yeah, so. But moms is, like, got the morals in place. They've got the standards in place. And I was just. I just learned about them recently because someone's recommending our product. You know, pluck to them.

And.

And so I'm learning about them. But I just. When I saw this, I thought, you know, what? If every business did this, the company. No different than what you're saying. The companies would change because they want to sell their products. But if every business said, we won't accept these ingredients, think about what a different world it would be. Because if they don't have distribution, they don't have distribution, you know, they can't sell their product.

Well. And the other thing to keep in mind is the fact that part of the initial barrier for a lot of people is cost, because admittedly, those products cost more. One of the examples I use for people is to look at milk, for example. Milk, conventional milk, tends to have growth hormones in it. It tends to have antibiotics in it. It tends to have lactating hormone in it. It tends to have a bunch of things. And people drink a lot of milk in this country, especially, you know, feed it to their kids. And so when I first began this journey, I had three little kids at home. Believe me, we went through, like, two gallons of milk a week. It was a lot. And so I started buying organic milk. Well, the Delta, the difference between the conventional milk and the organic milk at the time was over $5 a gallon. You want to see a spitting man, Mira's husband, you know, that's adding that $10 for milk to the grocery budget. And, you know, the thing is, he was like, I don't understand why. And so I started explaining all the reasons why these things are bad for us. And he wasn't very happy about it, but I did it anyway. And nowadays, the difference between conventional milk and organic milk tends to be about $2. And the reason it's so different is not because the cost of milk has come down, but because so many people are buying it that for the producers who choose to essentially raise organic cows without all of those things in it, is a little bit more affordable, because anytime it costs more to the producer, it costs more to the consumer.

Right, Right. What are you so you shared a little bit about where you've come. What is something that you've learned recently that's kind of new and. Or blowing your mind?

Well, I think one of the biggest things that I'm looking at right now is how much companies are focused on what I consider to be manipulation. How can they manage labels? Like I said, you know, natural flavor, in your favor kind of thing. They're looking for ways because one of the things that they do is they take a lot of time and a lot of money to study the buzzwords and the things that consumers are interested in. And they then use that to try and figure out how can they market to us, how can they put these things in front of us, either through front of package marketing, by not changing a brand when they buy it. Like, the web of ownership is enormous. There's actually, you know, 10 companies that own most of our food. But when they buy a brand, they don't change the name because they. They're buying that consumer base. And people don't. Once people have found a good product, they don't remember to keep checking the label. So. So if it changes, they don't know. So that's one thing that's come up on my radar. The other thing that has come up on my radar is the deterioration of products, companies that I thought were better than that. So, for example, there's a kombucha company. Their kombucha used to be 4 or 5 grams of sugar per serving. Now it's up to 16. And I'm like, I don't care how good kombucha is for you. 16 grams of sugar per serving isn't good for anybody. Just having to stay on top because they're trying to beat the market. Now that kombucha is popular, now that there's tons of brands on the market to stay ahead and make theirs better. And instead of doing it by being better, they're trying to do it by devolving to, you know, the taste war, so to speak.

Yeah. Isn't that interesting? I've been noticing that, that kombucha is becoming kind of the new soda in that the amount of sugar is just going up. And you got to also wonder how authentic the kombucha is too, right? I mean, how fermented it is, how. How aged it is. I'm. I know that GT's Kombucha, they had to have two versions, right? They had to have the dark glass version and then the lighter glass, and the lighter glasses could barely be called kombucha Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Well. And you know, again, that's a. You bring up a really good point. Is how they're making food. So one of the things that happened. There was a yogurt company that I used to like, and, you know, they commit to buying milk from, you know, cows that don't have growth hormone and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, one day I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, this is not looking good. And sometimes I make my own yogurt, you know, and it wasn't coming out right. And so followed my own advice, I looked at the label and there was pectin in the yogurt.

Wow.

So what that tells me is they're not culturing their yogurt long enough for it to naturally culture. They're doing a partial culture to hit the amount of bacterial colonies that they need in order for it to qualify, and then they're doping it up with pectin to make it thick enough.

Yeah. That's so interesting. I think that point you made about how we really can't. I've been using the term don't fall asleep with a cart because I think you really bring that to light, that you cannot just assume that a product you've been using for years is still going to be the same. I mean, you're right. The minute they get bought by a bigger company, that company tries to convert their ingredients to more the ingredients that they're using for all their other companies.

And it's not only when they get bought, though. One of the things that happens sometimes is when there's been a management shift, you know, because again, comes back to what we were talking about earlier. For a lot of food companies, it's a matter of dollars and cents. What can we do to get this food onto the shelf cheaper and make it last longer so that it becomes more profitable, you know, and they will do whatever they can get away with. So there are a lot of products that we look at. They make one version for the United States. They make a different version for Europe, for example, where their rules are different and their labeling laws, their requirements are different. And so they'll. They can make it differently. They just choose not to because they're going to do whatever they can get away with.

Let's talk about that, because I think this is so fascinating and I don't know how much people know about this, that if you go to other countries that are a little bit more stringent on their labels and a little bit more stringent around their standards. The companies will create different products for that country and yet still give the country that's not as standardized or is not kind of what, you know, doesn't have. The watchdogs still give them the kind of the crap product. And that's happening in the US we are getting the crap product in places like Switzerland or the UK are getting the cleaner product. What's your thoughts on that stuff? Or is there more that you can unpack around that?

So I think the thing that I think is most horrible about that is usually it's the same company. It's not like there's a different company making that product overseas. It is the exact same company because in the world of global commerce, it's the same company. So at one point, for example, I wrote a blog post about artificial colors in Kraft Macaroni and cheese. Not that I recommend Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, but it tends to be something that everybody has. And so it's a really good example to teach people about how to read a label because it's not a lot of ingredients, but some of them are not great, you know, kind of thing. And so I talked about the fact that overseas they use natural based colors, plant based colors, and in the United States they use petroleum based colors, which have been shown to be really bad for people with attention related disorders, anxiety, that kind of thing. So not great for brain health. So this blog post is up and I got a response from somebody at Kraft who said, we don't understand what you're so upset about. We're not doing anything illegal, right? I was like, it may not be illegal, but it's not right, you know, and so that's the way they look at it. And I think part of the challenge is there's something called the revolving door of politics where there are people who work for a particular company and then they go into politics and then they leave politics and they go back into the food world or the agricultural world or whatever and they bring their connections with them, but it makes it very difficult for us to change things. In spite of a land talking about artificial colors, in spite of a landmark study published in the Lancet, very huge double blind, well run scientific study that shows how bad artificial colors are for children. Because that's what they look. They looked at two age cohorts. Our FDA says we're not convinced, you know, and so that gives companies free reign to keep doing what they want. And again, it comes down to if you buy it, if you continue to buy it, they Will continue to produce it. So.

Go ahead.

Yeah, I was just gonna say. So years later, all of a sudden, Craft started taking artificial color out of some of their products. Not all of them, but some of them because people stopped buying them.

This is in the U.S. yes. Interesting. Once again, it goes back to that, you know, vote with your dollars, right?

Yes, absolutely. Vote with your wallet.

Yeah. So what advice do you give someone nowadays in terms of, like, you know, they want to make some food changes, they have a limited budget. But what advice are you giving them in terms of what do they focus on first? I mean, I know you're talking about reading the food labels, but, like, what even beyond that, should someone start?

Sure. And so generally, what I encourage people to do is to start somewhere. So in my book, the Pantry Principle, I break it down. You know, this is about colors. This is about, you know, the dirty dozen. This is about quality of animal products, that kind of thing. And really, I just encourage people start somewhere, anywhere. Figure out what's most important to your family. So if you have someone who has a particular health condition that's impacted by some of the ingredients that you've just learned about, remove that and just focus on that. Don't try to do it all at once, first of all, because it's really difficult. I mean, I kind of tease people that I didn't become the ingredient guru overnight. You know, it's a process, and so it's about figuring out what's most important for you. I do find that for most people, the two places they tend to start are either by choosing organic dairy, because a lot of them tend to use a lot of dairy products, especially if they have small children, or they start with the dirty dozen, getting rid of that pesticide load by making sure that they're buying organic for that. And as they begin to do that, they realize that it's not that much more out of their grocery budget. And once they've got that kind of dialed in, because with the Dirty Dozen, you also have to remember to take everything downstream. So if you're looking at apples, which are always on the list, you're also looking at dried apples, apple juice, applesauce. Anything with apples in it needs to be organic, or at least the apples in that product need to be organic. And so it's a lot more work than just saying, oh, I'm going to buy these 12 fruits and vegetables the whole grocery store. But once they do that and they've got that mastered, then move on to the next thing.

That's such a great Point now regarding, like current trends or current diet trends. Right. How do you advise people around the ingredients for that? For example, like a lot of these zero calorie sweeteners, you know, they're coming out and everyone thinks that they're the magic pill. Like, oh, now I can eat my desserts. And really it's because they haven't been tested properly. And now only later do we start to realize and this happens, you know, historically. Right. Always. We get the data afterwards and then we learn, oh, wait, actually it doesn't. You do have an insulin response. It's just delayed, you know. So what kind of advice do you give towards people that are following the current trends?

So first of all, to remember that those trends are things that food producers pay a lot of attention to. So I don't know if you remember, but, you know, many, many, many years ago, you would walk into certain aisles of the grocery store and it would proudly proclaim how many grams of fiber and how many whole grains were in things. Because that was the buzz. You know, we needed our whole grains. Well, now it's all about protein. So you look at packages and it's like high protein this and high protein that. Like, honestly, they would probably come up with high protein floor polish if they thought it would sell.

Keto floor polish.

Yeah, keto floor polish. There you go. So really, first of all, knowing, taking the time to look at the label, that is your most important thing. And also taking the time to look at your body and how you feel when you eat things. You know, one of the biggest sweeteners that's making its way into everything right now is allulose. And it's even making its way into things like, you know, protein bars from some of the supplement companies which are supposedly, you know, good or certain brands that fit the mark. For a lot of people in our space, they're using allulose. Well, it's not very well tested and it turns out a lot of people, their guts don't like it. And so if your stomach rebels or if you start getting a rash, if you start sneezing or like, we need to pay attention to our body because it will tell us what's going on. And we need to remember also that when we have things that are generally recognized as safe, the federal government doesn't really test any of that. The way that whole system works is the company that wants to do it says, we have hired experts that have said that this is okay. And the federal government either says yes or no or it needs a warning for A color label, because certain things are modifications of coloring agents or the company withdraws it. Like, that's the four ways that it happens, you know. So look at, look at trans fats, for example. They were generally recognized as safe forever, and now they're no longer generally recognized as safe. But they haven't been pulled. They're not banned in the food supply, so they're still there. But people don't understand that.

And they're showing up in different ways on the label.

They are, absolutely.

I want to open up. Thank you so much for this conversation. I want to open it up to those participating with us. I see we do have a question regarding the vote with your wallet. She's saying she wonders if that's some sort of classist in terms of voting with dollars. And she's just wondering, is there another way that we can improve food illiteracy? How can we actually impact policy? Or is it possible? Or is it purely like either you buy it or you don't? And that's truly how to impact.

Well, some of it honestly has to do with being able to reach out on a broader scale. Yes. Unfortunately, people who live in areas where they tend to be more food deserts or where they have less access tend to also have less dollars in order to be able to afford the higher price. And so that becomes a matter of trying to allow things like SNAP benefits to be used at farm markets and to get approval for certain foodstuffs that are better quality to get into school systems and that kind of thing. It's an uphill battle and it's really challenging. I feel like we've made progress, but it's still very, very slow going, you know, because they're just. Unfortunately, when you have places where, you know, the biggest food store for 10 miles around in an area where people don't have cars or good access to public transportation, and their best grocery store is a Dollar General, it's really, really hard to make that shift.

Yeah, absolutely. If anyone else has a question, feel free to either unmute or raise your hand.

So the other thing that I wanted to mention to you, by the way, which I think is really important, is, and you had asked me earlier, what are some of the things that I'm seeing. Food producers are starting to have a lot of chatter in their arenas about clean food labels. And what does clean really mean?

Yeah. What does that mean?

Yeah. And part of the reason for that is because a lot more people are demanding transparency on the label. But with transparency comes a potential backlash from the purchaser against Certain things. And so they're trying to figure out how can they get away from that so much. And so it's just a matter of really first, last, and always. Your best defense is to read the label, and if you don't understand it, learn what it is.

Yeah. And I think. I think you brought up the next best defense, which is listen to your body. Right. I mean, I think what we put in our mouth is always a choice, but what's not a choice is how your body reacts.

Yes.

Right. So you really need to listen to your body, because if you eat something and it doesn't agree, you better listen or you're going to be dealing with chronic issues down the road.

Well, and, you know, part of the challenge is sometimes it can be difficult to pick it apart. So that's where you need to start food journaling and really paying attention. Like, it's a mindful process. We're in this country, at least, and I don't know how it is in other countries because I grew up here, I live here. We are taught to feed ourselves, not to nourish ourselves. And so this process of learning to actually nourish our body and pay attention to what our body needs is very difficult.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining. I wanted to end with just a couple of quick questions that I'm going to be asking everyone. One is, what did you have for breakfast this morning?

So I had eggs sauteed with greens and a tomato and some plug I did. Because I love it. It's great. Actually. You know what? One of my favorite ways to have it lately, which I don't do very often, but it was amazing. It's fabulous on home fries.

Oh, yeah? Yeah. I find it pairs so well with fat. So anything that has fat on it just goes so well.

It's amazing in bone broth. I've started every time I make, because I make my bone broth and then I put it in jars, but I don't season it until I'm ready to heat it up and drink it. And it's just great.

Oh, that's great. You know, thank you, Melissa. I'm glad you got your sample that you got your goody bag. One of the things that gave me the idea for pluck was actually the bone broth, the broth bar here in Portland. When we first moved here, it existed. It's now closed. But she would put bits of actual organ meat in the broth, and I was like, huh, that's a really cool idea. I'm like, how Can I make that actually, like, viable? You know, like, how can I actually. Because a lot of people aren't going to want pieces of heart. You know what I mean? So how can I actually make it? So you're getting that, but you're not thinking about it, Right? It was definitely one of the inklings for that. So I definitely credit Tessa is her name, who owned the broth bar, with planting the seed in my head.

Well, it's great. And you've created a fabulous flavor profile. I do like it. I've even put it on, like, I get liverwurst from. From US Wellness Meats. They have a fabulous beef liverwurst that I love. And I'll put pluck on top of that. So it's like a little bit of that on top of liver. Like, it doesn't get any better.

Oh, that's so good. Amanda, who is a friend and does the social media, you know, she's the one that actually made me aware of that. She's like, you know, you can still use pluck on organ meat. There she is.

Yeah.

Like, you know, you can use pluck on organ meat. And I was like, oh, yeah. Like, it's like, it's just funny, like how the kind of lane that I get in sometimes, you know, mentally, and I just kind of stay in that lane a little bit and. But I'm open, you know, at least I think that's my saving grace to hearing other people what other people say and then expands my view. So thank you. Thank you for your time today and I hope everyone joins you for your talk tomorrow.

It was so fun to chat with you.

It is. It's super fun. I learned so much. And do you want to just mention you have a book club? You want to talk?

I do, yeah. So I have. It's called the Healthy Readers Book Club and we read 10 fabulous books a year. Right now we are reading a book called Suffering Succotash, which is about picky eaters. And it's really fascinating. Learning so much stuff. So if you go to the website theingredientguru.com and go to the shop, you can see the book club and sign up there.

And how can people. What's your handles on your social medias? How do people follow?

My handle is mostly the ingredient guru that's on Instagram. Facebook is, I think, the ingredient guru. Or it's Mira Desi. I can never keep straight which is which. But Instagram is definitely the ingredient guru and I share quite a bit over there. So lots of good stuff.

And people can get your book, the Pantry Principle on Amazon, correct?

Yep, Amazon. And it comes in either ebook or in in paper format. And for those who are in the nanp, it is required reading for board certification. So be sure to copy. Yeah.

Oh, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for joining us, everyone.

Thank you so much. Thanks for joining me, guys.