Why “Survival Food” Should Be Meat, Fat & Salt with Phillip Meece

Forget trail mix. What if survival food wasn't junk, but real ancestral nutrition in its purest form? This episode is all about survival food redefined. Philip Meese is our next guest on the Everyday Ancestral Podcast. Founder of the Carnivore Bar and former combat medic joins us to share how ancestral wisdom and battlefield grit shaped a bar made from just meat, fat, We talk pemmican, purity, and why modern convenience food is due for a reckoning. I'm your host, James Barry. Welcome to Everyday Ancestral. Who was Philip Meese before you joined the Army?

Oh, that's an interesting question. So, um, I did a lot of different things as a kid. I was a missionary kid. Um, I went to Mongolia.

What were you doing there?

So my parents were missionaries, um, and they were there at the fall, you know, basically right at the, you know, the Iron Curtain lifting. So the Soviet Empire falls in the early '90s, and they were going in as medical missionaries to like help and like spread the good news and then also do deliver medical care to people in need. 'Cause there was a lot of it. As you can imagine, you know, a government collapse, it's like, you know, especially a dysfunctional government and there's a lot of human need. And so my parents were out there helping and they brought us along. And, and so it was a, it was a very interesting childhood. And then, from that reacclimation to society after they finished doing 2, I think it's 3 years overseas. They came back to the States and I did Boy Scouts, I did theater, and I was a theater major. And so, you know, part of my plan to get socially attuned to American culture is to learn how to speak to other people and be a theater major. And that was kind of like, that was what I did before the Army. Graduated in '09, just as everyone was losing their shirt. And I was like, well, I need a real job. I need some real experiences. So I joined the Army, got sick, been on a health kick ever since. And that's me in a nutshell.

Wow. What part of the drama were you doing? Acting or behind the scenes? What was your focus?

Mostly behind the scenes. So I, I did, um, like stage combat violence, like, uh, special effects, things like that. That's what I love doing.

That's— I, I'm imagining like in another life, you know, you're the, you know, special effects guy on all those movies or something. Like, like, should you have gone a different path? I can kind of see— I can definitely see you doing that.

Yeah, I mean, it was fun. It's just It's a little unstructured. And so you can make it big or you can get totally devastated doing that. And so if you have any health complications and you're not comfortable sleeping wherever, living wherever, staying up into the middle of the night doing whatever it takes, I wouldn't recommend it. And so that's a unfortunate trend with people who are out there on the edges of society doing wild and crazy fun things is they often, you know, have undiagnosed illnesses or afflictions or, you know, they need support of the services that are in the middle of civilization, but yet they're out there on the edges where there isn't any. And so, it's like, you know, part of what both of us do is to bring high-quality nutrition To people, to everyday people, you know? And so making those support structures available is really, really key and making them accessible.

Well, and you, you really came to that conclusion after your stint in the Army. Can you talk about like what, what was it that sparked, what was that spark that led you from that combat medic to creating the Carnivore Bar?

Well, I mean, just because you asked, I mean, the theater stuff also plays a role too. It's like I'd be doing like amateur filmmaking and I'd be on set for 12 hours, but, you know, and there's like free pizza. But the same is true for the story that I tell in most podcasts, which is that I was a medic and the ER had free cake and free pizza and a tiny little fridge that was basically only for doctors. And, you know, so the medic, you know, is low man on the totem pole. Like, I, you know, I'm mostly cleaning beds. And so it's, and just running the labs, doing like the grunt work. And it's the doctors and the people who with tenure who get the coveted fridge space. But, you know, like all hierarchies, there's all these unintended consequences, you know? Having a special parking spot, you know, it doesn't confer any like negative effects, but the fridge space does. If you are not able to like bring your own food or think ahead or prepare high-quality foods, then you're stuck with a vending machine. So it's like, you know, these unintended consequences of luxury are often benefit. And so with the Army, You get the same kind of rank hierarchy. So in medicine, in film and theater, and in the Army, you got this rank structure where, you know, some of the privileges and perks of leadership and power and authority tend to have these unintended benefits when it comes to avoiding disease and supporting nutrition. And I think that's where We really need to make, you know, healthy eating egalitarian. Like, that's really important to me. I think that's really, really critical because a parking spot, fine. A fancy costume, fine. You want a funny hat, everyone to salute you, that's cool. All that, I'm all for it, 100%. But I think we make a really mis— big mistake when we lower the quality of nutrition of the base rung of the ladder because we are Promoting disease when we do that.

How do you feel though about this? This is a statement that I, I talk about a lot and I'm very mixed on it. But that health is for— healthy is for the wealthy. And here we are, 2 entrepreneurs who have 2 products that are expensive.

Yeah.

So How do you, yeah. How do you feel about that?

I think that's definitely, that's at the heart of my chief concern. It's like, especially meat prices, I think just this year went up another 10% after going up like 10% the year before and the year before and the year before. It's like, since the pandemic, we've had this huge cost increase in meat and bioavailable animal-based nutrition. Which is kind of our shtick. It's, you know, what to do about that for the average person who is, you know, trying to be meat-based or at least nutrient-dense, you know, as those elements of nutrition are getting more and more expensive. A little bit, it's kind of out of our scope, you know, at where we can comment on it, but it's like we can't fix the economy. Trying to be a health entrepreneur to sell nutrition and promote its use. But I think one of the things that I would say to you, you know, just as a, you know, a brother in arms in the space of fighting for human nutrition and health and wellness is that it doesn't matter what it costs. You know, if I'm spending 90% of my paycheck on groceries, In a weird way, that actually brings us back to our ancestral norm where you're spending 90% of your time looking for food. I think that food is that important that whatever it takes to get it, you spend that time. You know, if that means like not seeing your family and hiking for months on end to go chase down the bison, it's like, On foot because there were no horses on this continent for thousands of years. It's like, yeah, I mean, that sounds savage. Like really, really savage in a way that we don't even realize how those people lived.

Yeah.

Because as soon as like 1500s came, like Europeans dropped horses here, we fundamentally changed, uh, the continent. So when we got to the plains, And there were horses everywhere. We thought there were always horses, but there weren't. And so it's like we have no idea what it was really like before we got here to write about it. And it's like we'll never really understand, I think globally, how people really lived back then. We'll do our best with anthropology, but, you know, every indication is that they spent a vast majority of their time time looking for food. I think that in a way, we're kind of decivilization, you know, decivilizing ourselves, that food has become so expensive and good food at that. Nutrient-dense food is becoming even more expensive. The fresher it is, the more nutrient-dense it is, all these things are adding costs. And yeah, you could say they're a luxury, Or you can say that, you know, people need to reorient their priorities. And I've certainly done that. And I know you have too, with devoting so much of your time to promoting Pluck and promoting this nutrition. It's like, you know, if you would map out how much of your time is devoted to this, it's like, well, what's your take-home? You know, what's your profit versus how much time you've invested into Helping other people, it's like you're gonna be skewed way towards philanthropy.

Mm-hmm.

You know, we, we in this food space, um, we could be selling, uh, cheap GMO wheat covered in sugar and, uh, chemicals that help make it more addictive.

Sure. The same old stuff. We could be selling what the general—

For profit.

Industry is selling.

Yeah. Right. And so it's not that we are like, oh, animal-based nutrition, we found this really cool niche that's like insanely lucrative and profitable. And like, we have this unique angle that we're going to make mad money. It's like, no, we've kind of taken a monastic step back into philanthropy and is saying like, well, no, human nutrition and human flourishing And human health is so valuable that no matter what the cost, I'm going to pay it to provide this to the public. And yeah, I hope I can pay my rent, but like, that's not the point. The point is that human flourishing is almost like a sacred calling. And that if you feel called to provide healthy food for people, you know, it really— money is a secondary concern. Um, you want to be able to pay your people. You want to be able to support your family, but really making a product that is, that's good to eat and available for everyone, even if it's, uh, not lucrative, is a calling all into itself.

There's so much to unpack too around it because there's the concept that Well, at least during our lifetime, particularly from the '70s into the '90s, you know, with the subsidization of subsidizing of food, you know, we grew up where hamburgers were 25 to 69 cents, right? It's like this concept that people thought, well, really what people didn't have a clue on what the real cost of food is.

Yeah.

Because we were being sold this idea that meat was cheaper than French fries, right?

Right.

It's like, so it's so skewed. And if anything, we're now even doubly skewed because now we're seeing some foods come out that are really basic, like really not even meat-based. I'm talking like they're single fruits, you know, singular ingredients. And yet just because they're organic or whatever, they're, you know, sourced from the way the that food really shouldn't be sourced anyway. Like they're non-GMO, they're organic, they're on a regenerative farm, like all the way that ancestrally it should have been done this way, that these things are incredibly expensive.

Yeah. You got a $20 pear.

Yeah. When a pear is not $20, right? And so we're doubly screwed. Like, so now people think, They're, they're learning the real cost of food, but then we still have people taking advantage of this concept.

Well, yeah. So you, at the same time, you have someone going to extreme lengths to create something nutrient-dense at what seems like an exorbitant price. And then you have people who will greenwash and spoof that product with something that came from Walmart. And then they'll greenwash it, and then the difference will be their margin. And so the consumer is faced with this impossible task of trying to, you know, weed out the snake oil salesmen from the true believers and then kind of parse out like, okay, well, this product is from a reputable source. I've tried them, I trust them, versus I don't really I don't really know the criteria to how to examine our food because we live in a world where our institutions have let us down. You know, the food pyramid everyone knows and has known for decades is a joke. But that leaves us in a place where, you know, opportunists can take advantage of us and they'll have a new fad diet, a new thing to try, a new chemical. You know, it's like, Hey, don't worry about your diet. Just take Ozempic. It's like, it's like, um, yeah, but it now puts the, it now puts the entrepreneur in an uncomfortable place of having to promote and distinguish themselves where I think clarifying what we offer is, is good. But at the same time, having to tear down frauds, you know, there's a huge conflict of interest. It's like, how do we ethically talk about people who are spoofing this idea or who we suspect might be spoofing it? And that's the thing, it's like when your own ego gets involved, you're like, are they really? You know, for me, I'm selling grass-fed, grass-finished beef, and there are all these changes that happen in the chemistry, especially with the lipids, with the fats, because fats are like the cornerstone of pemmican. And so, from there, I'm like, well, you know, people will say these generate general statements of like all grass-fed, grass-finished fat should be yellow. And it's like, it depends on how fasted, how oxidized, how much beta-carotene is in that fat versus like, and it can come down to the, the goom count of the, you know, the cow of how much it ate. It could come down to like the perennial grasslands or the latitude that the cow is raised in. Because, you know, different latitudes, different fasting slaughtering schemes are going to lead to different oxidation rates in the beta-carotene and the retinol.

Yeah, different outcomes. It's different outcomes. It's wild. It's a living organism. It's going to change and be adjusted by everything you're mentioning, by the land that it's feeding off of, by the lifestyle, by the slaughter, by the timing. It's all, it's everything. Yeah. And that is, that's a huge thing. People forget that food is not controllable in that way. It's a wild organism. And that when we talk about nutrition around food, that it's a generality because every season it's a different nutrition. Every breed provides a different nutrition. You know, they're all, it's always fluctuating. Yeah.

And it's like, well then how do you, how do you establish You know, authenticity and authority in a space like this? It's like, well, unfortunately it's like one customer at a time, face to face, by being consistent and providing consistent results. I think that's— I wish there was a shortcut or like an accrediting body that we could trust to just put a stamp on the good people, but I haven't found it yet. I haven't found it.

I just, Well, okay, so let's take a step back cuz we're assuming a, a lot of people even know what pemmican is. So why, why did you choose pemmican? And pemmican is one of the most, I would say closest you can get to an ancestral food out there in terms of that it, that it's been used for, I mean, you, well, you tell me how many years has pemmican, what's the oldest pemmican they've found and why, why did you choose this as your model?

So we know of it from a modern interpretation, modern being 300 years ago. So it is, it's ancient. It's like the bow and arrow of foods. So until very recently, nothing was refrigerated. And like refrigeration was rudimentary. It was a hole in the ground with ice that you smuggled from the mountains and someone had to carry a giant block of ice from the mountains all the way down to your hole. And your hole would be, you know, 50-some-odd degrees. And so it's cooler than up above, and you put the ice in there and it radiates cold and it's your, you know, it's your cool room. And that's the best refrigeration that money could offer or money could buy back in the day. So, you know, and there are evidence of people doing that in every culture and climate, even in the desert, like you wouldn't believe. Which is very impressive, the human ingenuity and spirit to, to try to refrigerate things. But long story short, it, you really need a way to preserve a kill if you are going to be animal-based, if you're going to be hunting. If you're going to be a hunter and gatherer before the dawn of agriculture 12,000 years ago, we would've hunted and gathered. And a real big liability is that if you cannot eat the entirety of the kill, you know, it's going to spoil because there's not a good way to salvage that without preparation. And so drying meat into jerky, into strips of jerky, was the first way you do it, but jerky has some fundamental problems. If you eat just lean meat, it's not satiating. So just lean meat is not satiating by itself without the fat. But if you include the fatty bits in your jerky, the jerky goes off pretty quickly. So it spoils the oxidation, the water content in the fat. It's connected, the collagen, the connective tissue. It's all very nutritious, but it's very, very perishable. And this is this paradox that we both face of high nutrition, high perishability. So pemmican is a way of separating the fat and the meat and then preparing both of them in a way that they're both gonna be more shelf stable. So the collagen and all the, the bits of connective tissue are removed from the fat. The fat is broken down and then rendered. So under heat, probably, you know, preferably not too much. And that fat is rendered into tallow. Tallow is a broad term, but traditionally would've been made outta suet. So it would've been very, very high in saturated fat and would be solid at room temperature. So if your, if your tallow is soft, it's probably more like drippings. It's not really tallow. That's kind of a misconception, but tallow is solid at room temperature. In the heat of the summer, it will melt. So, you know, up to 90 degrees, but in the back of a mail truck, it's more than just 90 degrees. It's good and hot. And so even very, very saturated fat, even cacao butter, which is extremely high in saturated fat, coconut oil, you know, these things are, peak saturated fat will turn liquid in high heat. So, you know, you have this problem ancestrally of like, okay, well, it's gonna get 90 degrees. There's no air conditioning as well as no refrigeration. So, you know, what do you do? So you have this rendered fat, you render it down on purpose, turn it into a liquid, and then you take the jerky, the same jerky that you made, but you cut it extra thin. You cut it extra thin because you're gonna break it with 2 rocks, essentially a mortar and pestle. You're gonna break it and pulverize it. You break it and pulverize it till it's almost like a dust. Sometimes it can be a little stringy. There are question marks on how pulverized you want to go, but all the way pulverized is the best. And if you go all—

What's the question around it though? Why, why is there a question around how, how far you pulverize it?

So imagine it like a rope. So you have all these muscle fibers that have little Myosin heads that contract and they pull. They pull when your nerves send acetylcholine to go contract the muscle, the calcium channels open, it has a binding site, the myosin head pulls, it contracts. So essentially you have millions and millions and millions of these things like ropes and they contract. And that's the contractile power of muscle. And it has a lot, a lot, a lot of protein in it. So When you are breaking this down, you look at all the physiology, it's like it's going to, it's going to turn into these tiny, tiny little ropes. And it's like, well, each rope while connected still has water in it. So if you have all these strands of, of meat together, you have water locked in each strand.

Got it.

And so how do you break it out? You kind of have to smash it. You have to dry it. And so the water that can come out will come out, and then you have to break those, those strands at least a little bit, agitate them so the water can come out. So you're gonna pulverize it.

Ultimately, the pulverization conversation is about moisture. So it's about, yep, how far do you have to go to ensure that the pet mican is doing the preservation job that it inherently is supposed to, to do?

Yep. And, and it goes down to the 2 main causes of spoilage. Which is oxidation, you know, being exposed to the environment. It's like 20% oxygen in the normal atmosphere and it's slowly degrading and unraveling everything, you know, rust, you know, it is happening to everything at different rates and has different consequences to all matter. And at the same time, that's just what allows us to be metabolically active. You know, it's a, we don't want this mechanism to cease for any reason. We want the oxygen in the air, but it tends to degrade things. And then the second is moisture is biological life. So you have water and you have oxygen. So these are the 2 mechanisms that you have to mitigate in order to prevent spoilage. So for the fibers, you're breaking 'em up, you get all the moisture out for the fat. You're doing the same thing. Collagen is really hard. It's like the chewy glycerin bits. It's gonna, it's very, very hard to get that dry enough without modern technology. So, you know, this is a kind of a liability for the fat. And you also don't want to just scorch the fat with infinite heat. Like you want to break it up mechanically, remove all the lipids. Without scorching them and then preserving any of the vitamins and nutrition that's in that fat. And then you want to discard all of the co— collagenous bits and the, the fascia. Essentially, they're little packets of fat wrapped in fascia. And so that holds moisture. So you break the fascia in the same way you break the, the muscle strands, and then you are melting it. So only what is renderable. And the fat is gonna be renderable and the collagen is not. The collagen is gonna turn into this little brown crispy. You're gonna discard that because it has high moisture content. So you're gonna get just, just the lipids and just the amino acids and some of their trace vitamins, as long as you didn't expose them to too much heat. You mix them together, a ratio of about 80%. Calories from fat, which happens to be by weight, 50/50. So you take these 2 macros, 50/50, it tends to be because of the energy density of fat tends to be way higher from fat, calories from fat. It just happens to be perfect keto macros. It's like 80/20 calorie split from 50% dry weight combined. And they would pack it in rawhide bags. So this solves the melting problem. So they pack it in rawhide bags. You don't want to have seasoned leather because you use bacteria and you use, like, urine, use a lot of, like, curative ammonia, like, use toxic chemicals to cure leather. So you want to take the leather that's been cleaned, defleshed, and made into rawhide. Rawhide is a dried leather product that is perishable when wet. And so you take that rawhide, you sew it up, you fill your bag full of pemmican, and you just make these little balls. You pack 'em tight. It's equal parts fat, rendered tallow, and dried protein. You mix 'em together, and then you pour a sacrificial cap of tallow, just tallow, on the top. Now that piece of tallow should oxidize. And it's, it's sacrificial for a reason. You're gonna discard that. That is your wrapper. And they would do this, um, in colonial, uh, situations too. They would do potted meats, you know, so they would, they would like can or pot, uh, hot stew. So it, it's cooked out all the bacteria and then they would put a layer of tallow on the top and then they break it, or you can even use wax. You can use wax, you can use paraffin. And so they use wax or tallow on the top, melted wax or tallow, and then they'd put a cloth, just a cloth dust covering over that, and then seal it with a piece of twine. And so you have a ceramic pot, and so now you have shelf-stable food for a long time. So they would use that kind of colonial art in this ancestral way, doing it with rawhide. Um, and that rawhide bag could travel with you as long as you didn't get it wet. It was essentially impervious and you could get rawhide a little wet. Like you can get rain on it.

You know, a lot of crossing of rivers and stuff. So that must've been a concern, right?

You can get it a little wet, but you just air it out, dry it out, and it should be fine. It just can't stay wet. If it stays wet, uh, the rawhide will rot and, uh, then your pemmican will be lost. So you, they have found, they've found like pemmican, viable pemmican, like 50 years after its creation.

I was just gonna ask, what's the, so how long does it last?

Wow.

50 years.

Yeah. So essentially that's wrapper-dependent degradation. So if you have a good enough wrapper, it should never spoil. It should, you know, there isn't a mechanism by which it should spoil because you have those 2 factors. If, and it's like the half-life of the vitamins becomes the next most interesting concern, which I know you and I are, are, are interested in because you have to imagine that these vitamins, they're very bioactive. And if they're not being absorbed by microbes because it's spoiling or molding or, or bacteria getting into them. If you've successfully prevented that, there's not enough moisture for those things to grow and consume those vitamins. You got to imagine that those proteins are denaturing at some point, right? But we don't know how long it takes to do that, especially in an oxygen-free environment, because almost everything is broken down by oxygen.

Oxygen, right? Oxygen and water, everything gets broken down.

So if you don't have oxygen, All life is predicated on their, you know, taking it for granted. It's in the air. It's assuming it's gonna be there. It's like when you take something out to space, you know, how does it break down? You know, it's like, well, what's gonna, what mechanism is gonna work on it? And it's like maybe radiation cause, you know, it's like it's gonna take a long, long, long time for that to break down. So if you're on Earth and you're in an oxygen and moisture-free environment, Food lasts a very, very, very long time. And once you get past like the 25-year mark, it's kind of like, okay, for a human span of relevant time, it's pretty much, it's good. It's good. We don't need to worry about that. And so the reason that I got so deep into all this science is because I didn't want to add preservatives. Preservatives made me feel sick. In Afghanistan, they fed us MREs. And they were just like the plastic, you know, just the worst kind of quality loaded with crap that tasted, you know, passable once, but like made you terribly, terribly sick. And eating it day in, day out, it's just no way to live. It made people horribly dysfunctional without getting too graphic, horrible dysfunctional as far as their digestive pathways. And so, You know, I was like, I need something that's gonna be ridiculously shelf-stable if it's gonna make it to Afghanistan and not have any of this junk in it.

MRE, if for those of us that don't know, what, what does that stand for?

So MRE is a meal ready to eat. So it's a field ration. So Army doctrine is, is set so like you're not supposed to have the field ration for more than 21 days. In ideal conditions, you're gonna rotate back to base. So it's like a, they're camping trip food, but that's assuming that you're in a normal situation and it's assuming that your war doesn't like persist longer than it ought to. Like World War II, like those guys were out there for like 5 to 7 years before they saw their families again. It's like we go on a deployment. It was 15 months, then they dropped it to a year, then they dropped it to 9 months. I went on the year-long deployment. Um, they started to see like degradation in the troops and it's like, well, yeah, you're not feeding them well. Or, or sometimes they'd rotate back and sometimes they didn't. You know, it's like we couldn't control the, the circumstances. And that's because we have like, uh, basically an incompetent field ration. It's, it's a ration that if you went to war, you know, you wouldn't want, you wouldn't want your soldiers eating that for 7 years.

Why do you think the military, the hospitals, the schools, just this, this institutional systems Why do you think they're just pushing all these kind of very ultra-processed foods, these very kind of like nutrient-voided, you know, nutrient-devoided foods? Like, do you think it's just because they're co-opted by lobbyists or big ag, or do you think it's just absolute like ignorance? Or I just don't know. I don't understand why is this system still pushing Those types of foods that are not filling you guys in the way that we know you should be filled?

Well, you know, it comes down to the USDA. The USDA was put in place, the food pyramid, all of this, all the subsidies that we just take for granted to make corn cheap, soy cheap, and cheaper than cheap, just nearly free. This model was designed to support the American farmer back in a day where it was really, really important that, you know, politically, they thought it was important to support the farmer. And so we put these incentives in place, we put these programs in place in a completely unrecognizable time. And they've just lingered without being updated. And so you have an unequal playing field where these agro, you know, products are incredibly cheap to make and they're incentivized. There's all these different things you can do with it. It's like a million different uses for corn. You can even put it in your car, you know, with ethanol. So it's like, there's so many different ways that gums and products and corn solids and all these different things that you can do with corn. Because it's like nearly free. And so because nearly free is a great price, you can add it to all these different things and then have all these different value adds. You don't need to make very much on corn solids, but you make a few cents and then you put it in like 5% of the food supply. Like now, okay, now you're, now you're talking big money. And you don't want to switch to anything nutritive because anything nutritive would be, you know, 10 cents versus 5 cents. It's like, well, so we have stacked the deck in a way that deprioritizes current concerns for historical concerns. And then when we get to the government agency, we look at them and we grade them by whether or not they are on budget or off budget. So it's down to dollars and cents. So We have set up a messed up game with perverse incentives. And then we've told our hospitals, we've told our schools, we've told our prisons, you better stay in budget. And so now they're interfacing with this system that has all these old laws on the books that incentivizes cheap, ultra-processed food. You know, and so now you have this cheap, ultra-processed food. You could buy this brownie, Brownie A, for, you know, $1 per unit. Or you can buy this other brownie made with, with real eggs and real milk and real, real ingredients and cane sugar and all this. And it's, it's actually like $3.43. And you're like, well, how many people in this prison am I going to feed? It's like, okay, well, I've just lost $2 and some odd cents per person per meal, you know, for how many years? And it's like, oh, well, you know, this institution's been around for 120 years. And it's like, I mean, it starts being millions and billions and billions of dollars for a brownie. And it's like, yeah, the cheap brownie's fine.

Right.

You know, and then you're talking about a brownie. You're not actually talking about like, Something that you're concerned about nutrition, really, you're just trying to like, this is a placating food designed to make people feel not so bad that they're stuck in a cafeteria. They can't see this. They can't see outside. They're stuck under fluorescent lights. You know, it's palliative care. And so palliative care with budgetary constraints tends to go to the lowest common denominator. And that's ultra-processed food that is Terrible for you.

But do you think it's just budgetary constraints? Because I'm even thinking, going back to where you started with like, you know, movies and craft service, you know, play, uh, stations at, on sets, they're filled with just junk.

Yeah.

And those people have money, they have the knowledge, the awareness. And so is it just like, oh, Yeah, this doesn't fit our budget, or is it, and we don't want to actually do the work to reeducate people on like snacking differently or not snacking. Like we just want to give them the status quo of like, hey, you're used to eating this way, so let's just provide it because we know it, it gives the illusion of quick energy, even though we know there's a crash right on the other side of it. Well, people are— but you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like, is it, is it also the psychology we're butting up against or the kind of common The lowest common denominator of, in terms of what people are used to, or, or is it just budget? I don't know. What do you have? What do you think?

Well, I think it's both. And I think, you know, this is more your world too. It's a chef. Like, it's like you're asked to do a spread and it's like this, uh, you know, this multimillionaire will ask for a Coke. And it's like, dang, you know, all this effort, you know, you could, you could have the most expensive, exquisite, like wine or whatever drafted that has low sulfite. That's like, you know, as good as wine can get for you. And then people will just have this familiarity with their beverage of choice that's cheap and effective and, you know, gives them the energy that they need. And, and they become addicted to it. So the, the way that, you know, and as an entrepreneur, you get this too, the way that you make profit is you give people the thing of the lowest value possible. You hype it up in marketing and you charge the difference, and that difference is your margin and it's your profit. So if they are selling super high-end products, They need to be charging double that. Like, they can't give you something of high value for an affordable price. They can only give you trash for an affordable price because the difference has to be their margin or their take-home. So there's no incentive for them to deliver any kind of quality. And then once you become habituated to that, you're going to crave and want and desire and not be satisfied by anything other than that processed junk. And so if you are not the kind of pretentious person that wants fresh oysters flown in this morning that were harvested in the ocean in the morning, and by lunchtime they're 700 miles away prepared, if you're not that kind of person who wants the exclusivity, You're actually not going to get high-quality nutrition because there's not a middle bracket of sensible nutrition-based food that people widely accept and understand. I think through health, all these people getting devastatedly ill and then realizing that nutrition is the missing link to their wellness, I think they are creating this category from scratch, but it's It's still nascent. It's still growing. Like, people have to be more aware. And that's part of why we're doing this podcast is like try to help people be aware that you don't have to be the pretentious snob, rich luxury person to get high-quality nutrition, nor do you need to be just the zombie going along with the standard-issue crap that makes everyone rich. It's like there is a middle way, and that middle way is high-quality nutrition. That's a high-value product that has paper-thin margins by someone who truly believes in it.

And here we are. Yet it is, it is interesting. It is interesting to your point that even like with our products, right? So yes, margins aren't like incredible when you're trying to push real food with very simple ingredients as well, because clearly the simpler the ingredients, And the quality of those simple ingredients make it actually more expensive than the bar or the product that is, as you mentioned, kind of more overly processed and subsidized ingredients. Because those are all cheap.

Yep.

So, but what I find is interesting that if you were to price your bar too low, people would say, well, is it not, is this conventional meat? They would think the quality of the bar was lower. And so it really is a dance of like, you have to meet your needs as a business owner, but you also, and, and yet also try to be, try, you know, true to like your mission of like, hey, I want to help people. So I want to make this as accessible as I can to as many people as possible. And yet I also have to be aware of people's psychology that if it's cheap, then they think the It's cheap quality.

Yeah, exactly. So say you were completely benevolent and you wanted to have zero margin or a negative margin. You wanted to give it away. Um, but you wanted to like offset some of the costs so you didn't give it away completely and you sold like a $2 steak. People would be like, what's that real meat? They'd be like, what's wrong with it? What's wrong with it? Why would you—

I have no clue. Yeah.

Why would you give away? So people have this baked-in expectation of what things cost, and it's a two-edged blade. Like, as inflation especially hits food, like the hardest, you know, it's something that's not even calculated in inflation. It's excluding food and rent, the things you have to have. It's like, uh, that doesn't seem like a good measurement if it excludes the two things I absolutely have to have, food and shelter. But nevertheless, food costs keep going up and up and up. People's expectation of that is that it should cost a lot for good things. And so on the higher end, middle class to upper middle class, you know, they probably will have like a dollar cutoff. If this steak didn't cost more than $20, it's probably not safe to eat. And so If you can get your margin so that your costs, raw costs, say you're a steakhouse and you're offering it, like you want to get it low enough so that you have a margin, but like not, not cut yourself so thin that you can't sustain that or keep supplying it. Because that's another thing is like equipment breaks, facilities need upgraded, the roof needs fixed, you know, the plumbing needs upgraded. It's like, There are all these expenses and all of these things are not on linear growth paths either. So like the HVAC guy who you could call it pre-pandemic is not going to cost the same as the same HVAC guy today. Like all the experienced people, you know, retired. They're like, ah, it's not worth it. You know, 2 weeks to flatten the curve turned to, you know what? Everything's fine. I'm just gonna retire early. And so now there's a bunch of young people in the pipeline or just not enough informed, not as informed or as, you know, as practiced.

Right.

And, and there's not enough of them to go around.

Yeah.

So there's too young, inexperienced people in the pipeline of our skills trade that don't know what they're doing and there's not enough of them. So the price is gonna go up. So you're gonna pay more And get less quality work in plumbing, electric, electrical work, HVAC, refrigeration, all these key ingredients to food manufacturing. And so it's like, okay, our prices are gonna skyrocket because you look at a big food plant with all of this refrigeration technology and all this energy and all this hard work going into it. And like even the cost of energy itself, you know, it's like all of that factors in. It's like if, you know, the more green we go, the more expensive energy it gets as a baseload, which means the more money you will have to pay just to eat. And I, and, you know, not to get political, but it's just, so that's, that's just a truth, you know? So if you don't have a stable baseload that's affordable, then you're going to have to pay for it somewhere. And one of the ways that you pay for it is these big food plants. You know, they have to keep cold food cold. They have to keep hot food hot. They can't have hot food get cold and then reheat it. It'll grow bacteria. It'll be unsafe to eat. They can't let cold food get hot. Same thing. It'll mold. It's like, so all of that energy to keep food within these safe temperature ranges to defeat bacteria, they're mandatory. So no matter what the the price tag is of the energy, they're obligated to keep it within that range. You know, if we get hit with a solar flare and it's 200 degrees outside, in order to serve that steak, you have to keep your fridge at temp. It's like, well, so you do whatever you can. You're gonna have stacks of dry ice and, you know, blast coolers going. And it's like, you know, you, whatever it takes, you have to keep it at that temp. Or you cannot serve it. And so, you know, that'll be a million-dollar steak because it's 200 degrees outside. It's like, there are these hard limits when you come with microbiology and physiology, biology in general, that is just not fungible. And so for me, I like to preload my work into the pemmican and have all that hard work done. It doesn't require any refrigeration. Heat does not affect its shelf stability. And I know that I have a high-quality, nutrient-dense, energy-dense meal anywhere in the world I would go. And for me, that just gives me peace of mind because no matter what kind of chaos we're going to be in, war or otherwise, I know I'm good.

Yeah, I got to say, when I was traveling, moving from the West Coast to the East Coast, I bought a box of bars and I brought them with me. And they saved me. No, no joke. I would get to towns where everything was closed except like an A&W. And I just, I haven't eaten fast food in, I mean, 30 years, I want to say. So I just, and I, I just can't go there, you know, now that I know what I know, right? I just can't go. It's hard for me to go backwards. And, and so I would just have a bar. I would just have a carnivore bar. And I was completely satiated, like completely. Yeah. It was truly a meal replacement.

You're avoiding all those seed oils. And we make 2 of our bars, the zesty garlic and the honey barbecue. We make it with your spicy, spicy pluck. And so because it has pluck, it has nose-to-tail nutrition, has that high energy density, and it has things like that the normal bar doesn't have. Like I have a normal bar that's just beef tallow salt. But the beef tallow salt plus pluck has, it has copper, it has trace minerals, it has, uh, I think there's, I forget, you know, I used to be able to rattle them off. I had them all memorized, but there's a lot of things. Watch one of those Nutrition with Judy posts, has all the different things in liver and different organs. And not just liver too. Pluck has so much more than just that. It has like a full complement of those organs in it that for me, I just feel like if I'm worried about it at all, like have real organs, like get, get nose to tail, have all your bases covered. And that way you don't have anything to worry about.

What's, what have you learned in, 'cause you guys have been around now, how many years? 4 or 5? 5? No, 6 maybe.

Um, yeah. So I started product development in, uh, 2018. And I launched officially the Kickstarter in 2019. Yeah.

Okay. So you've been in this process for about 6 years. So how, uh, 6, 7 now actually. Um, how, what's changed for you? Like, what do you, what do you kind of see? Well, we could pull a few different questions from this. Let's first start. What, what are the changes that you've learned In these 7 years, just around the systems of making pemmican?

Well, I mean, it's a lot of hard work. I mean, I wish there were more shortcuts. I wish there were like, you know, 2 to 3 years in, there'd be like, aha, I found a way to make this really cheap and easy and quick and everyone can do it. But It's actually mind-bogglingly difficult to make good quality pemmican and to resist the temptation to just cheap out and use cheaper alternatives. The sourcing of good high-quality fat and suet specifically, the solid fat, it has all the vitamins and minerals that you come to think of beef tallow. Are from the suet. Like you're getting a completely different fat, like bouquet of different fatty acids in the trim fat. Like people don't realize that cow fat from nose to tail is different every single inch. Every single inch of the cow is a different amount of nutrition. Well, it's the same as why organ meats are so important. It's like, you know, liver is here and the pancreas is there and the lungs are here and the heart's there. And it's like, well, you know, if you want CoQ10, that was the one. It, it's, you gotta go for heart.

Yeah. You gotta get the heart. Yeah.

You know, and there are certain things that are only in the kidneys. There's certain B vitamins that are, that are only in the pancreas. There's certain, you know, minerals that are only in the liver because the liver does different things. And so. When you're thinking about the fat stored on an animal, the fat does different things. You know, some places you want subcutaneous fat for cushioning because you don't want to get bruised up. You know, sometimes you want to cushion organs. Other times that's a sign of ill health. You know, like the fatty liver disease. You don't want to grain finish your animal because it has all these toxins that build up in the liver. So you want to make sure that your offal, your organs are from grass finished animals. At least when it comes to liver. Now, the heart may be unaffected. So there's an opportunity there if you have grain-finished hearts, it may be less affected, but grain-finished livers, it's going to have a milder taste, but it might have metabolites that are, you know, less desirable. So it's like, well, if you have certain grass-finished animals, it's going to have more Of these different elements. So it's like you gotta analyze the chemistry all the way through every single histological process. As a medic, I'm thinking about all the different tissue types and all the different tissue types have different nutrition types if you're gonna eat it. So you, you can't just, you know, blank out. You know, one of the things that I love about organs is the collagen that I'm removing, and this is a big macronutrition element, the glycine and methionine. So if you're eating a bunch of muscle meat, you're not getting the collagen on purpose. You're removing the collagen. But what are organs like mostly made out of? The actual structure of the organ itself. Yeah, everyone's excited about the vitamins and minerals is like, but actually the physical body of it isn't. Yeah, it isn't a connective muscle. You know, your liver doesn't move things from A to B. It doesn't move things from distance. It's just all collagen matrix. So it's that collagen that's in those organs naturally that because you've dried it and you've done the hard work of making it taste good, and it's like, I can add that to my pemmican and I can get a whole different side of that nutrition into my bar and not compromise the shelf stability, which for me is, is the holy grail of what I'm trying to do is like reach back in time to my past selves. You know, stuck on set or stuck in Afghanistan, God forbid. And breathe into that nutrition and life and the healing power of animal-based nutrition, which I am a strong proponent of.

How do you see the ancestral eating evolving in the next 5 or 10 years? I'm sure even in your 7 years, you've seen the evolution, how people are kind of more keen to eating this way. They're more keen to organ meats. You know, it's becoming a little bit more trendy, but so how do you see it evolving?

Well, it ebbs and flows certainly. You know, hesitate to mention, but you know, I think it's worthwhile. Liver King, for example, the fraud of him using PEDs and he's promoting these organs and pills, desiccated organs and pills. And I'm like, at one point I'm like, ah, that's not how you should eat food. But on the other hand, I look at the reviews, I look at the reviews of the lives changed, and I'm just like blown away. Like, hey, I had this kidney complex and this issue resolved for me. I had this heart complex, I had this liver desiccated organ, and this changed for me, and this changed for me, and this changed for me. And like, and I didn't have to taste it. So people are so stuck on like how organs taste. Which is why adding spices is such a great idea. That way you're getting your medicine with your flavor. But, you know, these pills have really been enlightening to me in just the understanding the biology and understanding the changes that are happening in the human species is like, as everyone eats these ultra-processed foods, we are specifically deficient in these vitamins and minerals. that are so potent that even in these infinitesimal amounts, like the amounts that are in these pills are, are kind of, that's where the inflammation comes from. It's like you go to your butcher and get like a whole liver and they might even give it to you for free because no one's buying it and they have too much.

Now people are buying it, but yeah, I hear you.

Now people are buying it, but like back in the day especially, it's like, this is waste. We just throw it, we just feed it to the dogs and it's like, But that's actually incredibly, incredibly valuable. And so when you're, when you're getting it in the pill form, you're getting such an unfair amount for every dollar you spend, except that people value that not having to taste that awful, that liver tastes or that whatever organ they're eating tastes. They're, they're, they're squeezed out by it culturally. And so they are getting healthier on taking organ pills, which to me says like, Okay. As a species, like whatever it takes, we need to get this animal, we need to get this animal-based nutrition into people. And if this pill, if these pills are helping, then God bless. Like, God bless. Like, seriously, that's, I mean, at the end we want human flourishing. I'd rather them eat whole foods, but man, if that's working, then I think culturally the more we normalize that, The more that every animal-based brand is gonna take off and do better. Because I've seen things get really, really hot and excited in 2019. Things kind of surge with Liver King early 2020s, and then things kind of fall off where ancestral nutrition is a fraud. And then it's like, no, actually people are still getting healthy. You know, he, he lied about a physique issue, but his physique had really nothing to do with The, all of these positive effects that people are getting from including animal-based foods. And so the fact that we've outlived the scandal and it would continue to grow and we're growing and growing and growing, and it's like, I think that really shows that we're not just a fad, that a scandal can't take us down and growth is still continuing unchecked, that people are getting healthy and that sick people are turning to carnivore in droves. and animal-based in general, as an understanding of nutrition and these micronutrients that are absolutely critical for your health and wellness and happiness. It's like, I think the movement has nothing but growth in its future.

I think it's really fascinating that, you know, we're ultimately, we're both in the business of helping to get people to Real food. It's, yeah, there's, both of us have very simple products. There's no additives, there's no fillers. It's like, this is all real food at its best, highest quality, real food. And do you get, well, I still get pushback. Like I still get people to your point saying like, well, this isn't going to be that, or this isn't enough of that. Or it's like questioning real food. And I find that both fascinating and disturbing that we've come to a place where we're giving real food this scrutiny that we would give to the laboratory food. And sometimes we're giving less scrutiny to the laboratory food than we are to the real food. And it almost seems backwards to me.

Yeah. It's like, um, If you have pizza and beer as, as your breakfast, lunch, and dinner, um, people aren't concerned. They'll wag their finger at you, but they won't actually like look into what minerals and, uh, vitamins you're gonna be deficient in.

Exactly.

They won't care. Like the, ah, you know, you shouldn't do that. And then they'll grin at you and say, but I understand.

Yeah.

Like, you do you, boo. You know, like, But then if you see, if you have like, you know, let's, let's go more traditional than carnivore. Like you have a, a, a huge steak and you have like, like fermented veggies and you have a little bit of perennial fruit. And then, but you're eating this huge amount of red meat and saturated fat, you know, but you're eating what mainstream or paleo, you know, would be like Okay, that seems pretty healthy from an ancestral point of view. And then the mainstream people are like, well, what about your green leafy vegetables? Like, what about your this or that? And it's like, you know, it's like, in what world would we have had access to like exotic tropical fruits or acai berry bowls or, you know, giant heaps of unrefrigerated green leafy vegetables that don't have any like anti-nutrients in 'em. It's like, I mean, that's not realistic. And like people have all this scrutiny for a plate that is, you know, beyond defensible as far as ancestrally. And it's like, why, why is this under this much scrutiny? And it's beyond, it's beyond understanding.

It, it really is. There, there is one thing that you're bringing up that I think is really fascinating. I'm curious about your perspective on this. So, I mean, we're both clearly very pro animal-based foods. We're also pro people following their dietary preference, you know, whether it's carnivore or any, you know, whatever they choose to, however they choose to eat. But one of the issues I have with any dogmatic diet, and carnivore is part of this, is that when I think of ancestrally, I believe there is no world where we would ever have focused on one thing. We were opportunistic. If there were strawberries on the wild strawberries growing on the ground and we're walking by it, we're going to pass those up. Like there's no world where we would not take advantage of a resource that was in front of us.

Well, I would say I agree. But with the caveat that a strawberry is, is, is no bigger than this.

Yeah. The wild strawberries particularly are very tiny.

And it's bitter. So as far as would we put it in our mouth, I, you know, I grew up in Missouri where it's nothing to grab a piece of clover and like chew on the stem, you know, and, and just kind of play With vegetables and play with vegetation. And it's, uh, or honeysuckle. You bite the end of a honeysuckle and there's a little bit of nectar at the bottom. It tastes really, it's a, it's an interesting, um, thing. I definitely think that wild humans would have put everything in their mouth, just like a baby. But we have to also, like, take serious stock going out into the woods.

Yeah.

And most of what we call fruits and vegetables today have been hybridized to the point of unrecognizable proportion. I think we would've put everything in our mouths, but there are berries, there are things that look good to eat that are deadly. And I think there would've been exploration, death, and some acceptance in equal parts in the, in the plant world. And I think that we would've been hungry enough, protein hungry enough that we would've really, really looked for animals to satiate that hunger. Because I don't think that if you're looking for like, for take root vegetables, potatoes are awesome, right? People love potatoes. They're medium to low on the inflammatory scale. But like, if you're going for like North American root vegetables, you're going for something like a leek, right? So go out there and hunt leeks and get enough to make a plate of French fries. It's like, well, first of all, you know, the main work of, of the energy is going to be the oil. And it's like, where did you get the oil? Where'd you get the deep fryer? Like, let's pretend you have free oil and you have free deep fryer. Where do you get enough leeks? Enough volume with enough starch to actually like fry 'em up to survive. It's like there's just not enough volume of it. I fully agree. We would've explored with anything and everything. And if there was edible fruit, I'm sure we ate it. It's just a question of like, how much heavy lifting nutritionally is that doing compared to the animal products? And I am of the opinion that eat whatever makes you flourish. And if it makes you flourish, like, don't listen to anybody on the internet, talking heads or otherwise, like, ignore everyone. If it makes you flourish, again, God bless. Like, that, that's the whole point. But if you're not flourishing, you should take a look at what you're eating and say, like, okay, is this serving me? Is this making me better? Is this making me worse? And you know, for me, when I, when I eat animal-based, when I eat more nose to tail, for me, like, There's a certain amount of nose to tail that's good and certain amount that's too much. You know, a light dusting of a seasoning is really perfect for me because I don't want to do, I don't want to do tons and tons of offal. I don't feel my best if I eat like liver every day, but a little bit.

Yeah.

A little bit like purposefully included in my diet. You know, you think about like special occasions, like Or special metabolic conditions, like say somebody who's older, like you give the liver of the kill, the whole tribe shares the animal. You give the liver to the older person. The older person literally can't absorb as much nutrition. So as you age, your ability to absorb all of the vitamins and minerals that you need to survive goes down. So if you give them something that's super dense in, in and vitamins and minerals, and their ability to create enzymes degrades, their ability to break protein degrades, their ability to create acid to get those amino acids, all of that degrades. It's like giving them liver might breathe life into them. Or someone who's pregnant, you know, you're building a whole new human being from scratch. You might be in a unique metabolic situation where you might need a little bit more vitamins and minerals for that short duration. That may not be for every time, but like, I think you can target this stuff sensibly and really make sure that you're getting this high quality nutrition in, in accordance with whatever other diet you thrive on. I think just adding it in, sprinkling it on top, which goes so well with Pluck, you know, I think is a great way to add OFLA into your life and just make sure you're covering your bases. And if you're anything like the people taking the pills, A little goes a long way. It makes real change. Just a little bit can make a big change in your, in your overall health and how you feel.

Well, you bring up a really good point too, which I've actually never thought about, which is the protein of, in the Orgami. So the actual sheath that's, that's embodying the Orgami is easier to break down.

Yeah. And you're getting more of that methionine.

Yeah.

So, or wait, no, no. Glycine.

Someone who is older, someone who is, uh, um, not digesting their proteins very well is going to digest organ meats better.

Yeah. And I get, I get that mixed up. The methionine glycine, it's a ratio. And so they're, they're a bonded pair, like copper and zinc are a bonded pair. You're getting, um, you're getting zinc and the muscle meat, but you're not getting copper unless you eat, unless you eat the liver.

Unless you eat the organs, right?

Yeah. So the methionine glycine is the collagen to muscle meat, uh, amino acid dominance. So you're right, they're getting it more bioavailable, but also joints tend to wear out. They have a, they have a finite lifetime if used under ideal conditions, but if you don't use 'em under ideal conditions or you get injured or you get arthritis, it's like, where are you gonna rebuild that? And so it's the same thing.

You, you gotta do it with your, yeah, through, through the foods you eat. Yeah. Yeah. That's great, man. It's, it's so great to talk to you and I hope we can do this again 'cause there's so much more to mine always. We're gonna put in the show notes how people can save 10% on ordering Carnivore Bars should they want to try. My favorite personally is, is the honey barbecue. I just, I, I think you nailed that one. They're all great, but I just mean that, that one just hits my savory and sweet notes perfectly. Yep. But where can people, where should people look to connect with you, find you on socials?

Just The Carnivore Bar or carnivorebar.com. We're fortunate enough to have a fan get the domain and sell it to us for a reasonable price during the Kickstarter. So we are, you know, community-based, community-supported carnivores. For carnivores or animal-based ancestral, you know, we love talking about organs. We love talking about nutrition. So just hit us up on social.

Yeah, you guys are knocking out of the park too. There's so much. I highly recommend everyone check out their Instagram. It's, it's just so informative. You're always keeping on top of like current news as well. And we try. Yeah, you do a good job. I'm, I, I I think so at least. And, uh, thanks. Um, and you're a good person. You know, I, I think, I think as you mentioned, it's like, I, I wish there was someone out there that was, um, kind of highlighting businesses that actually have heart, that have, uh, good people with good intentions that are really trying to help, 'cause you would be at the top of the list.

Awesome. Well, thank you. I, I, I feel the same about you. I think we find each other and we shout each other out and we just point out like, we can't know everything, but you know, we have repeated experiences with this person and they're a rockstar.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you, Philip. And thank you everyone for joining us in today's talk. It means so much to have you with us. And please leave a message, rate us, just give us some communication of how you're enjoying this podcast. And most of all, stay curious and let's fight the good fight together. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You could find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.