S2:E4 - Lierre Keith - Enterprise Podcast

This is the show that lets you inside the doors behind the personal training studio. Welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Ottobre, and today I blow some dust off one of the old Maximus Mark podcasts. This podcast is entitled The Vegetarian Myth, which of course my author— my author The guest on the show, Lierre Keith, she was the author of the book entitled The Vegetarian Myth. Now, in this show, this is absolutely probably one of my favorite podcasts that I've ever done. Uh, reason being is the content in this is just so deep. It's so rich. Uh, we talk about a lot of issues that I feel really matter in the world of nutrition, which is around politics. Around what is happening with farmers around, you know, if you do decide to be a vegan or a meat eater or whatever, there's a much more bigger system at play. And that's, you know, where we get our food from, where we're buying our food. And I've done a lot of videos on this recently. We did a video on Facebook on organic farming and on veganism as well. But, you know, I'm going to say it now, I'm going to say it again, and we talk about this in the podcast, but you've got to vote with your dollar, folks. If food matters to you, you're not going to buy cheap and nasty. You're going to buy organic because especially if you're involved in veganism. But this podcast isn't, definitely we're not pro-vegan here. But if you are, that's cool too. It's not an issue. I don't want to make one by any stretch. Each to their own. But if you are doing it for moral reasons and political reasons that you want to more sustainable future and a more sustainable planet, you know, simply being vegan isn't enough because you can still give money to the people who, you know, promoting CAFOs and all this kind of stuff. And that's, you know, concentrated feedlot operations for animals, which are horrendous, basically concentration camps for animals really is what that is. And that's horrendous, right? We don't want to be promoting that by any stretch of the imagination. So Yeah, this podcast is awesome. I really enjoyed it with Leah Keith. Go check out her book, which is The Vegetarian Myth. I think she really does a good job at having quite a lot of empathy for the situation where vegans, they want to do the right thing by animals, but they want to do the right thing in terms of their health as well. And she really, I think, lays out the arguments in a very non-judgmental way, which if you are a vegan and you need a different approach, it might be just what you're looking for to kind of have more of a holistic look at what you're doing. And if you still decide on the same outcome, that's your call. But, you know, I hope you enjoy this podcast and I'll speak to you on the other side of it. Lierre is the author of The Vegetarian Myth, which is not just about vegetarianism, but the whole farming and agricultural system. It's an unbelievable book. Lierre has broken up the book into 3 main parts: moral, political, and nutritional vegetarianism. It is an amazing read and I highly, highly recommend it. Thus the reason I've been pumped all day, all week for this show. Lierre has spent a whopping 20 years as a vegetarian. Her actual experience experience with vegetarianism is why many consider her to be the world's leading authority on vegetarianism and its problems. 20 years is enough time to know if something works. Lierre has always stood for justice and compassion, and after writing The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre has been able to study the broader picture of the world's food supply. She offers insight and wisdom. I believe she definitely has some of the answers in regards to what should be done in the world— with the world's food supply, a very important topic for anyone who eats. So with that said, let's welcome today's guest, Lierre Keith. Welcome to the show.

Well, thanks for having me on. I wish I could meet that amazing person you just talked about. That was very sweet.

You're too humble. All right, well, first question, probably the most obvious. Can you please share with our listeners your background, your story, why you were a vegetarian and why after 20 years you found it unsustainable?

Right, well, first of all, I was a vegan. I was never a vegetarian. It was all or nothing for me. And I became a vegan when I was 16. And I think like a lot of people who decide to try that out, the reason is because I met some other vegans and they had some very compelling arguments about why this was a good thing to do. So it seemed, you know, from this package that I was presented, that if I simply removed animal products from my diet, I could do all this great stuff. I could improve my health, I could save the planet, I could, I could stop animals from being hurt and I could provide food for hungry people. So it seemed like a really simple thing to do to solve all of those problems. So I took it up with, you know, the fervor of a teenager and I did it for 20 years. The reason that I stopped was because my health failed catastrophically. And that is, you know, where the road ends if you do this long-term, there's just way too many deficiencies and there are way too many problems with this diet for it to be sustainable long-term. And I found that out. To my great detriment. So that's one of the reasons I wrote the book is that I really don't want other people to have to suffer the way that I did. It's really not for any good reason at all. You're not doing any of the things that this diet claims that it does, and you will in the end damage your body.

Awesome. Well, before we get into, I guess, the meat and veg of the interview, I just wanna get some background on a few topics. One of the topics, not a lot of people obviously think about this all that much, but let's start with the soil. A lot of people don't realize that soil is very, very alive, or at least should be alive. People often don't think about this, but what does soil eat?

Soil, well, you know, soil is not, we think of this as being this sort of insensate, you know, dirt, and it's not. I mean, 1 tablespoon of soil can contain over 1 million different living creatures, and a handful of soil can contain over 1 billion living creatures, and a meter of topsoil can contain over 1,000 different species of animals. So, Yeah, it's hungry. And depending on which little critter you wanna look at, they eat all kinds of different things, but all of this together makes healthy soil. So you need plants, and at this point you need animals, and you need both of those to make healthy soil. And it's the bacteria that break that all down. And there's a great quote by James Nardi, who's a soil scientist, who says, "It's to the bacteria of the world that," I don't know, I'm gonna get this exactly right, but he basically says that it's the bacteria of the soil that are constantly renewing our earth, and that without them, there would not be life. And yes, they need to be fed. So, you know, they're eating all the other biological matter that falls upon them. And a lot of that is cellulose from plants, but you know, also animals. And we all play a role in that cycle, keeping that soil fed. I mean, the thing is that we owe our entire existence to 6 inches of topsoil and the fact that it rains. So when you take away that soil, it means that land life is essentially over. You know, there's nothing for us, you know, all those biological processes will grind to a halt and there will be nothing left. So no plants, no animals, no bacteria, and that means a dead planet. Well, life in the oceans might be able to continue, but certainly all land life, you know, that would not be possible without soil. So this, I think, is why a lot of indigenous people have these concepts of, you know, the soil and plants as our parents and our grandparents and our beloved kin, because that's what the soil did. The plants and the soil together created the topsoil, and they also can create created that oxygen-rich environment that were really a cradle for animals like humans. So it's true, I mean, they worked on it for millions of years and, you know, finally the planet could support animals. So, you know, our lives are very precarious, it's really, we're dependent on these, you know, millions of other creatures that we can't even see. And by doing agriculture, we've been destroying all of that, and that's one of the big problems right now.

So just for so we can get some definitions for our listeners who might not be familiar, the difference between, I guess, normal soil and topsoil, could you just kind of differentiate the difference between the two?

Yeah, topsoil is like the top inches, like usually 6 to 8 inches of soil, and that's where almost all the biological activity happens beneath that. Now, topsoil can be a lot deeper, like in a prairie situation and grasslands. I mean, those are incredible plants, and they do an amazing job at building topsoil. So that topsoil can be 8 feet deep, 10 feet deep, 12 feet deep. In forest, it's a lot thinner. And of course, in things like, you know, tundras and other kinds of polycultures, it would be even thinner because there's not a lot of biological activity going on. But underneath that is just the subsoil, and that's mostly just kind of minerals and clay and rock and stuff like that, not a lot of biological activity, but it's in that top chunk, that's where everything's going on. And that of course is part of the problem, because when we do agriculture, we're destroying that, which means we're destroying all that biological activity, destroying all those creatures, and we are making the planet less and less fertile, you know, every single day by doing this process called agriculture.

Yeah, absolutely. I pulled some quotes from your book I wanted to share about this. So, manure is not biological waste, but a gift. And the other one that really stood out to me was, What the plants eat, they don't just happen. Eventually the question has to be answered, fossil fuel or manure. So in comparison, the soil is literally eating, as you said, you know, it wants dead animal matter to obviously regenerate and get all the good stuff. But today, you know, you make reference to, we're literally eating oil and gas. Can you explain to the listener exactly how we're actually eating oil and gas?

Right, well, one of the main nutrients that plants need to grow and also the animals need to grow is nitrogen. Nitrogen, you know, you've probably heard this concept of amino acids are the building blocks of protein, right? Well, the building blocks of amino acids are nitrogen. So every living creature needs a lot of nitrogen in order to literally, you know, just put itself together. And so plants draw it out of the soil. There's a few plants, and we can set this aside, but there's a few plants that do help build nitrogen in the soil, but that's sort of an exception. By and large, Plants get it because either the cellulose of other plants or animals, their body, they die, and those bodies decompose, and they're decomposed by those bacteria. And then the plants take up the nitrogen again and are able to grow. So that's where nitrogen generally comes from, and they talk about the nitrogen cycle, and that's, you know, just this circle of, you know, birth and death and birth and death and things breaking down and being you know, taken back up by the next living creature. So the problem is that when we do agriculture, you know, we clear the soil and then you have to plant those annual crops. And in that process, of course, the soil is exposed. Every time you do that, you're destroying some of it. This is actually a biological emergency at this point. There's basically no topsoil left. We've used it all, we've skinned the planet alive. And by 1950, all the major grain-growing regions of the world were played out. You know, it had all been fairly well destroyed. And what happened then was this phenomenon called the Green Revolution. And what the Green Revolution did was figured out a way to make nitrogen in a laboratory, in a factory, and then apply it to the ground that had been stripped of its nitrogen by agriculture. So you could apply this other fertilizer and that would provide the nitrogen that plants need. And that's true, it does do that, but it's an expensive process. Incredibly energy intensive and extractive process. So use gas and oil as the feedstocks, it takes tremendous pressure to do this and a lot of heat. And it also just takes gas or oil to actually produce this, but the nitrogen comes out of this. So, you know, you apply this huge industrial process, very energy intensive, and at the end of the day, you do get nitrogen fertilizer and it's very powerful stuff. And so they use that now, they spread that everywhere, and these, you know, super duper Green Revolution crops have been bred and now they've been genetically engineered. They have very short stems and they don't, you know, they produce very little cellulose compared to their wild progenitors. And of course, what they do produce instead is this great big seed. So they were able to quadruple the amount of grain that was being produced because of the nitrogen fertilizer. It's, you know, really potent, it's way more potent than anything that would ever come out of a barn, okay? It's not like manure, it's not like anything else. And at this point, you know, somewhere between half and two-thirds of the people alive on the planet are only alive because of this process. It's called the Haber-Bosch process. Those are the two people who invented it. Fritz Haber was a German scientist, and then the other guy, Bosch, was an engineer, and the two of them together figured out how to do this. And the original reason was because Germany needed nitrogen to make bombs. So, you know, there's this huge overlap between war and agriculture. I mean, in many, many ways, these are the same process, but that's one of the ways. So they invented this process for war, they went on to use it for agriculture, and now this is what is keeping, you know, all this, all the grain that's being produced right now can only be produced because of those nitrogen fertilizers. So, you know, the real problem is that gas and oil do not reproduce, okay? These are non-replicating resources. And this is one of the things that this culture does not wanna face because it's scary. What is going to happen when that gas and oil run out? Well, we're already on the downside of peak oil, right? Peak oil was probably 2 or 3 years ago. We're never gonna have that much oil again. What are people gonna eat when this runs out? Because the soil is done. I mean, there's nothing left for the plants to eat naturally in the soil. The only way you're gonna get it is by applying these horrible fertilizers. And this was not a plan with the future. I mean, you know, we've been on drawdown for 10,000 years, you know, by wrecking the soil and then, you know, going, you know, as a fallback position, figuring out just technologically how to extract nitrogen from the world, you know, again, you're gonna run out. So these are processes of drawdown, they're extractive processes, and we're painting ourselves into a real corner here as a species. And, you know, there are some hopeful things, As an entire species, we're gonna have to make some decisions about what we're gonna do next, because as it stands now, we're headed for some pretty ugly scenarios, things that are already unfolding around the world. When societies go into states of collapse, it's really ugly, and agricultural societies always collapse because they are always destroying their soil. And this is a process that's been set in motion 10,000 years ago, which you can, you know, historically look at every single continent, every place, agriculture, it follows that same pattern of collapse. And we are not going to be an exception. We extended this for another 50 years by figuring this out with the nitrogen fertilizer, but you know, the same end awaits if we don't wake up to what we're doing. But just to put a number on this, the average farm in Iowa right now uses anywhere between 3,000 and 4,000 tons of TNT for every acre. I mean, that's a vast amount of fertilizer. That's how much energy goes into it. And the state of Iowa alone uses 4,000 Nagasaki bombs every year in terms of energy, because agriculture is a war, and that's what it takes to fight the planet. So that's the nitrogen picture. Yeah, it's, it can be a little overwhelming, but like I said, there is hope, but we've got to face the problem first.

You wrote in your book that it takes, let me get this, if I can get these numbers right, 4 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food. Am I getting that correct?

Yeah, but it can be even worse. I mean, sometimes it's as much as 10.

Right.

And then when you add the transportation costs in, it can be over 100.

Wow.

I mean, I live on the West Coast of California and it's, you know, you can get organic peas from China. It's completely insane. What are people doing shipping peas across the Pacific Ocean? And they're called organic, which is even crazier. But, you know, the amount of energy in every one of those peas, the embodied energy, that's insane. I mean, what are people thinking? You know, it just, it doesn't make any sense at all.

All for the corporate good.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I loved another quote in your book and it was, "So you're an environmentalist, why are you still eating annual monocrops?" Now, obviously there's a lot of listeners out there who have probably never heard of monocrops or really know much about, you know, the whole farming process. Can you explain what monocrops are and parental polyculture is.

Right, so first we have to talk about what agriculture is. You take a piece of land, you clear every living thing off it, and I mean down to the bacteria, those important life-producing bacteria, all of that gets cleared off the land. So you have this bare field and then you plant it to human use. And a couple of things happen right away. One is that you destroy the topsoil when you clear it like that, And the other problem of course is that you push all the plants and animals off it and they've got nowhere to go. So that's a nice way to say extinction. We are now losing 200 species of animals every single day going extinct. This is just completely horrifying, right? The planet is just being gutted, right? It's being skinned alive, drawn and quartered. I don't even know what metaphor to use at this point. And the point is that you take this thriving biotic, lush, dense community, right? All these different creatures working together, plants, animals, you know, microfauna, everybody working together, you clear it all off, okay? You destroy it, and then you plan it to human use. And so what's being cleared off is the perennial polyculture. So perennial means plants that live a long time, okay? And the polyculture just means, you know, poly is many, so it's many plants. So you've got all these different kinds of plants plants, and they're all working together. And they work together in really amazing ways. They form communities, you know, they communicate, they help each other, they send each other messages, they send each other, you know, nutrients, they send each other chemicals when they need them, they protect each other as a community. And the more you know about this, the more in awe you must be. I mean, it's just incredible what's going on out there. So all of that is happening, and one of their main goals of the perennial polyculture is to create more soil. That is what makes land life possible, is the work of those plants. And they're really good at producing soil. That's one of their main jobs and they're good at it. And that means that they take carbon and they build their bodies out of it and they built their roots and they built their stems and they built their leaves and then they die and all of that gets recycled into the soil. So they're building soil. And then the problem is of course that humans are doing this thing called agriculture. So you clear away all those plants, all those deep-rooted plants, you know, that density community of creatures, and you just plant one thing. And that thing is going to be an annual. So instead of being a long-lived plant, it's a short-lived plant. Now in nature, you know, those are the two kinds of plants generally, there's perennials and there's annuals. And the perennials, like I said, their role is really to create soil. And one of the ways they do that is that they have really deep roots. So a tree has way deeper roots than your head of lettuce or your, you know, a stalk of corn. Corn. And the reason that they have those deep roots is because they live a long time, and that means they have the time to build roots, okay? So if you're gonna live 10 years or 100 years or 1,000 years, you got plenty of time to stretch out and stretch down and make this huge root structure. The annuals only live a brief 2 or 3 seasons, and then they die. So there's a time limit, right? The timer is on from the moment that seed sprouts, they've got just a really brief amount of time to reproduce, right? Their whole point is to make that seed. That's their only reproductive strategy. So they don't live a long time. They can't put down short roots, deep roots in that amount of time. They have very short, shrimpy root structures, and they don't get very tall either. They can't, they don't have time to do it. And all their focus is really on getting that seed out. Because all their biological resources go into that seed, it means the seeds are bigger. Annual seeds tend to be way bigger than perennial seeds. And the disaster here is that humans found some of them enjoyable to eat. And so in the service of what we get from eating grain, we've essentially killed the planet. Agriculture has blown through every continent except Antarctica and taken what it can take, which is to say all the topsoil, all the plants, all the animals have been removed, and it's now just miles and miles and miles of wheat or corn or soy. So that's an annual, it doesn't live very long. And the monocrop part is, these are monocultures. I mean, if you've ever driven through, you know, any of the grain growing regions of the world, I mean, I've driven across the United States 2 or 3 times now, and it's all you see is either corn or wheat or soy, you know, depending on what state you're in. And it's really horrifying because it's a clear cut of the grass forest. I mean, that should be a prairie, there should be 25 plants per square meter, and there aren't, there's just one crop for miles and miles. So all of that life has been eradicated. And this is not a plan with the future. There is no way for those plants to rejuvenate the soil. All they do is take. So some people say that we're mining the soil. And one of the things that we're mining, of course, is the minerals. It's only those deep-rooted plants that can get minerals out of the deep substrata of the planet, right? Our planet's a rock, right? And then there's soil on top of that, but to get down to where the minerals are, to get down into that rock, it takes really deep roots. So it's only plants like trees or perennial grasses that have roots that are that deep. Corn or wheat or soy or lettuce, none of those can do it. All they can do is take minerals out of the soil. So this is why they say it's mining the soil because it's literally just taking the minerals out and they can't be reproduced. They can't be, you know, nobody else can get them except those deep-rooted plants. So that's the role of perennials. You know, they hold the soil in place, literally they're the matrix. They draw up more minerals every time by holding that soil. It's a great big sponge for water. So every time it rains, they can absorb the water and then they hold it for the whole community. So there's water there, that means there's life, biological activity can happen. The bacteria have their water. If it's too dry, then the bacteria die. And then the soil is just dust, it turns to dust. So that's what the perennials do. Now the annuals do have a role in nature. It's not that annuals are bad, but they're the first responders. So the image I like to use is if you cut your skin, you know, if you have an accident in the kitchen or something with a knife, you will stitch your skin together, stitch over the wound, and then you put a Band-Aid on it, and then eventually your skin will knit back together. And that's what the annuals do. When there is a disaster in nature, like a flood or a volcano or a fire, the soil is bared. Well, it's an emergency for the planet, and the annuals are the first responders. Spring to life. Those seeds may have been waiting 100 years for their moment. They cannot compete against the roots of the perennials, but the moment that the perennials are gone because of one of these natural disasters, that's when the annuals spring to life. And their job is to simply cover that soil until the perennials can knit back together, just like your skin does. So annuals have a place, but it's not a big place. I mean, there aren't a lot of annuals in nature, mostly because the planet has to be covered, you know, for the soil to be protected, for topsoil to build. It's gotta be covered all the time, you know, with those life-giving plants. So, but the annual, that's what they do. So annuals and perennials, and so the annual monocrops, of course, are a system that nature does not recognize as a natural system. And it is no, there's no way to sustain it. The only way to sustain it is by doing the things that humans are doing now. So applying fossil fuels, using plows and tractors, using fences, and ultimately a great deal of energy, because that is the only way to fight that constant battle against the perennials that would like to take the planet back and create more life. That's their job, that's what they're here for. And every time you do agriculture, you are fighting a battle against those perennial polycultures. It's one of the reasons it takes so much energy.

So essentially, basically, monocrops aren't natural at all, by any means, supposed to grow naturally, and humans have to basically fight an uphill battle with all this energy, TNT, as you said before, to grow those monocrops.

Yeah, that's exactly the problem. And before we had fossil fuel, before humans had figured out how to use fossil fuel and to build those machines, so before the Industrial Revolution, what humans used instead was other humans. So this is why agricultural societies always end up slave societies, because anywhere from, you know, 80 to 90% of the population has to be enslaved to provide labor, and also draft animals, of course, come in handy. So those two, you know, that's the way that it was done before, and what this means is that, you know, everybody mentions Athens as the great birthplace of Western democracy. 90% of the population in Athens was enslaved, okay? And you can talk about the year 1800, that's the year that, you know, the fossil fuel age really begins, but in the year 1800, three-quarters 3/4 of the human beings alive on the planet, fully 3/4, lived in some form of slavery, indenture, or serfdom. Okay, so for anybody to have leisure time, it meant that a whole bunch of other people had to be enslaved. And that has been the pattern for 10,000 years, is these highly stratified, hierarchical, militaristic civilizations. And that's what it requires for anybody to have time to do the arts and sciences that we think of when we say civilization, means that a whole bunch of other people have to be immiserated and kept in these horrible conditions, backbreaking labor from dawn to dusk. So it's, I don't see this as a positive motion in human history. And Jared Diamond says that agriculture was the biggest mistake that the human race has ever made, in part because it's inherently unsustainable and in part because it destroyed human society. It made us hierarchical and militaristic and violent and, you know, all that great stuff that we're fighting. And it goes back to this living pattern that's based on, you know, drawdown of natural resources and the inherent unsustainability and violence that's required to do that.

So just a theoretical question on that one, if there was no agriculture today, so, you know, none of it ever happened, Would you think there would be, like, basically the way I see agriculture, it did help, I guess, cities be formed, like things like TV, civil, what we could basically call civilization today. If it was never formed, do you think that would still happen, or would we have advanced the way we have, or what's your opinion on that?

I don't think so. I think that indigenous people who are living in a harmonic balance with with their natural environment, with, you know, the living community around them, they have different technologies. They don't need to make those kinds of technologies. They have technologies that are spiritual technologies, and they have technologies that are about getting what they need to survive without hurting the land around them. And that's a very different kind of technology than the technology of agriculturalists, which are technologies of domination. So I think that they're very different. I mean, this is gonna set you on a very different path in terms of what you think you need, and how you think you're gonna get it. I mean, like a lot of people say, well, you know, beavers make dams, so what's wrong with dams? And, you know, my response to this is, well, when beavers make dams, what they create is wetlands, and wetlands are the most species-rich habitat on the planet. So they're making way more life when they build a dam. I mean, an extraordinary thing happens when beavers build wetlands. And contrast that to the dams that humans make. We create deserts. Behind our dams. We kill the forests when we make dams. Completely different. So I would say that, you know, there are ways to use technology. Humans always make technology, we are tool-building animals. But what kind of technology? Is it technology that's inherently democratic, that anybody can learn to make, anybody can learn to use? Or is it technology that requires hierarchy, that's gonna require the destruction of your environment, which means it's going to be a violent process, it's gonna require a military, military, because people don't willingly give up, you know, their trees and their soil and their water and their fish and everything that's destroyed by industrial processes like mining. And the only way that I think, you know, we're able to have this in the industrialized world is that we live behind a military barricade. So we outsource the violence to other places, poor places, and, you know, we pretend that it's not happening, but it is happening. And, you know, right now people in China are dying to get the rare earth metals that create the magnets for windmills. You know, everybody, "Oh, we're gonna go green, we're gonna build windmills," and just amazingly destructive process to get those rare earth minerals out, just creates toxic sludge all over the land. So here's these people in China, like literally, you know, dying so that we can pretend we're being green by making windmills. And it's not moral, it's not just, and it certainly isn't sustainable, so, I think we're gonna have to look past that barricade, that military barricade, and really acknowledge the cost of this way of life. And that, you know, there's a basic value problem here. You know, does the world exist for us to use, or are we simply one more participant who should, we need to take our place again as, you know, life-affirming participants in those biotic communities. Otherwise we're all dead. I mean, it's a kind of a grim choice at this point, you know, Yeah. We're out of time. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. So let's just switch gears for a second. Let's talk a bit more about grains. After reading your book, grains don't only seem like a really bad health choice, but obviously one of the most destructive crops to the planet. I just want to set up this question with a couple of quotes that I pulled from your book. The surfeit of US grain and the starvation in poor countries are not inverse, but proportional. Why should people in Cambodia be dependent on the US for basic sustenance, and it costs a farmer $3 to grow a bushel but only fetches $2. The difference is paid by the federal government. So corn— now we know that corn is cheaper to buy than it is to sell, and obviously the difference made up by the US government. So can you please explain, uh, why the US government subsidizes corn and how does it actually affect the rest of the world?

Yeah, this is a real problem. There's essentially 6 corporations that control the world food supply. That should scare people. 6 corporations control the world's food supply.

What are the 6 corporations?

There's Continental, there's Cargill, Monsanto, I'm trying to remember what the other ones are off the top of my head. I should have written this down before you called. Anyway, Cargill and Continental, for instance, they each account for 25% of the grain trade. So 2 corporations control half of the grain around the entire planet. So that should be terrifying. Cargill is the third largest privately held corporation on the planet, third largest privately held corporation on the planet. And there's 5 companies that control 75% of corn, and there's 4 that control all the soybeans. So it's like, you know, it's a monopoly. Because they have a monopoly, this is what they're able to do. They can drive the price of those grains below the cost of production, which is to say that no matter how hard farmers try, they cannot keep their heads above water. There's no way. And so they're always having to produce more just to try to, you know, make ends meet. So every year there's more of a surplus and every year they can get less money for it. And so then the next year they've got to go out and do the same thing. And, you know, hand in hand with this, of course, there's more fertilizer, you know, more of these industrial processes, this endless battle to try to make, to force these plants to produce, you know, even bigger seed heads and shorter stems. And now we've got genetic engineering, which is its own kind of nightmare. But anyway, that's what's going on sort of economically is that these poor farmers, there's no way for them to do this. I mean, they would be out of business immediately. And that monopoly power means that they can, you know, that those corporations can make the price that low. So what happens is the US government steps in and gives subsidies to the farmers. And that is just a direct contribution right into the, you know, the profit margins of those corporations. It didn't used to be that way in the United States. We used to have a completely different kind of foreign policy because they recognized that those surpluses were always gonna work against farmers. So that all changed, and now it's all just about corporate profits. I think part of the reason is that way more people used to farm. I mean, half of us used to live on farm, it wasn't that long ago. Now farming is a statistically insignificant occupation in the United States, 'cause it's less than 3% of the population. So people don't have a clue what's going on in farm country, but what's going on is actually a lot of suicides. Suicide is the number one cause of death death for farmers right now in the United States. In other countries, that's true as well, but that's how grim the situation is, okay? No matter how hard they work, they can never make back their production costs, let alone enough money to live on. So then the government kicks in with all this money because of the farm policies put forward by these corporations, okay? You gotta understand who's the guiding hand behind the government, you know, and it's the giant corporations. And then there's these huge surpluses, and so you get two things with that. One is you get factory farming, farming because the grain is so cheap. You can feed corn to cows and you can torture them and, you know, create this hell for animals, but you will get cheap meat at the end. And the other thing that they do with the corn is they, it's called agricultural dumping, and they go to poor countries and they flood the market. And this drives the peasant farmers off their land, out of business and into urban squalor. And this is what really has created these gigantic slums around cities in the third world. And it's all about the profit of those corporations. And their goal is to drive those farmers out of business, and they've been very successful. So the moment that NAFTA was passed, within 2 years, there were, I think, 2 million farmers in Mexico went out of business. And what that meant was they had nowhere to go and they were starving. And if people in the United States wanna understand why there's a problem at the border between the US and Mexico, that's why. Where else are they gonna go? You know, they've been driven off their land, they've got no way to support themselves, they're starving. So what options have they got? And this is true around the world. It's true in the Philippines, it's true in India, And these horrible corporations are, you know, just destroying everything as fast as they can by having these cheap, very, very cheap foodstuffs. And it destroys the local subsistence economies. And that is exactly what it's intended to do. And it's very successful. So, you know, Indian farmers, they drink poison to die. They take the toxic chemicals they're supposed to put on the land and they've had mass suicides, you know, where a dozen of them will do it at once to try to get somebody to pay attention. You know, if you talk to food or democracy activists from around the world, that's the number one problem is this cheap agricultural dumping. And the odd part is that in the United States, all these, you know, progressive environmentally minded people think that this is the way, what we're supposed to be doing, that somehow that cheap grain should go to starving people. They've got it exactly backwards. I mean, all the major hunger organizations, all the democracy movements say exactly the opposite, get your stupid corporations out of our country. You're killing us all, you're destroying our lifeways, you're destroying, you know, our traditional cultures, and you're just creating all this millions of people in misery now, all for a little, you know, for their profit. So, you know, on every level, again, this is just, it's unjust, it's miserable, and it's just destructive. And I, this part we really have to get right. This one we've had wrong for about 30 years now, and we've got it completely backwards. And so again, the agricultural dumping is really, It's a human rights violation, so it's just gotta, we've gotta make this stop. But it means that we've gotta face up to the power of those 6 corporations and sort of name the man behind the curtain and the amount of power that they have, why do they have this power, why have they been able to destroy everything, and why everybody is so passive about this process? 'Cause the same thing happened here in the United States, people were pushed off their lands, they had to go to urban environments, and this is the reason why. 'cause they were able to drive that price so low. So does that answer your question?

Yeah, and then some. So just to, I guess, kind of put a summary on what you just, you know, kind of said was that the last place on earth where you would want cheap US grain to go is somewhere like Cambodia or a third world country 'cause of the fact that when they do get that grain, you know, the farmers can't compete with the price of the US grain. So then, 'cause they can't compete, people start, you know, buying the US grain and they eventually go out of business. They can't support their family. And that's obviously an industry for the country that, you know, is going to produce revenue for the farmer and for the community. And because the US and people keep sending cheap grain, it's basically destroying the whole economy of that country. Is that correct?

That's absolutely right. That's what's happening around the world.

Yeah, yeah. One of this question might be a little bit redundant, but we'll just kind of get a summary on it. One of the vegetarian myths is that agricultural foods, foods of peace and justice. With that said, can you explain the grain cartels, which you pretty much already have, who they are, what role do they play in the world's food supply? So if you just kind of put a summary on that question.

Yeah, well, you know, they've just got these vast profits. They don't get mentioned very much, but they pretty much control everything. I mean, they're all owned by the same people, whether it's McDonald's, whether it's, you know, your vegan Morningstar hamburger fake burger, you know, whether it's your Silk soy milk, whether it's, you know, the almonds that you got, it's all owned by the same people. And this is why it doesn't really matter what you buy. You know, if you think that you're buying that vegan soy thing, you know, as some kind of response to either world hunger or corporate domination, you've given money to the people who are creating the problem. So it doesn't really matter whether you eat McDonald's or whether you eat the other, it's all the same people. It's one industry, you know, they're completely, you know, hand in glove with each other, and, you know, they've got, they control everything. They control all the food around the planet. And this is gonna be a huge battle, you know, like we're gonna have to face the facts here. It's way bigger than just, well, if I eat this food and not that food. You know, they have an amount of power that's like, you know, in his wildest dreams, Julius Caesar could not have dreamed of this. I mean, it's really scary. And they do, you know, anybody with that kind of power has all the money and they, you know, they own the government essentially. So all of this is, we're gonna have to face this and we're gonna have to fight it. We're gonna have to fight it down because they've done the same thing everywhere. They did it, you know, they've gutted rural communities here in the United States and they've done the same thing around the world.

And that's the thing I think most people don't realize is that whether they do buy McDonald's or whether they do buy that veggie burger, they are still actually supporting the same people. And that was something that I actually wasn't aware of until I read your book. But it's absolutely true that the money is all funneled to the same spot. And you're trying to fight the battle and trying to do the right thing, but then you realize that there's a whole other issue that no one actually was even looking at. And yeah, for me, that's one of the biggest take-homes that I got from your book. And one of the other quotes that I'd like to share is, just as war needs soldiers, the civilized need slaves. Um, I know before you spoke about ancient Athens and how, uh, you know, the grain— grains need slaves, and that pretty much is still happening today in terms of, um, except we have more machinery. Is that right with the farms?

Yeah, well, the, you know, at least in, in the more industrialized countries, we've been using machines now for about 100, 150 years to do that work. So that's why only 3%, less than 3% of the population is needed now to grow food is because we're using all this fossil fuel. And this is also another problem for people in poor countries is because they cannot afford that equipment. They can't afford, you know, the gas and the oil to keep it running. And so they get these horrible bank loans. I mean, the IMF had this huge program, you know, this was gonna be their goal, get everybody hooked on these machines. So they would give these people the bank loan to buy it, and then they have to pay it back. Well, you know, what happens when, they can't actually sell their grain in the market because the price has been driven so low. And this is another way that farmers, you know, all around the world have been, you know, sort of led down this, you know, rosy path to destruction is, you know, those bank loans from the IMF trying to get them into this high-tech farming. I mean, to use a draft ad, you know, that animal will heal itself and it will reproduce itself. You're done. So it's the sort of traditional ways that people did things with half, it's just been another disaster for indigenous and traditional societies around the globe. So where was I going with this? What was your question?

It was about the slaves, how just as—

Oh, the slaves, yes, yes, yes. Right now there are There certainly are agricultural slaves, things that are cash crops. So there's a lot of slavery involved in chocolate, for instance. And it's really hard to know whether the chocolate you're eating has slave labor in it or not. But any of those big cash crops that come especially from tropical countries, you kind of have to assume that there's slavery involved in it. And even here in the United States, I mean, it's what happens to the migrant laborers is just really horrendous. It has been for 100 years.

Would things like the goji berry be slave labor? Because that's more of an exotic.

I'm sorry, what did you say?

The goji berry. The, um, you know the goji berry, or they call it the—

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know about that one in particular. That would be worth looking up. I don't know. I don't know where it grows. But, um, it's all these kind of cash crop things, you sort of assume that there's either slave labor or something close to it. The people are just driven into, they're just driven until they drop, and some of it's child labor as well. So that's where it's all coming from, and that's been true for, ever since imperialism started, that's been true. So again, there's that 10,000-year timeframe, but that's what it does to human societies as well as the planet. It's just a really destructive process.

So grains, they're not only bad, obviously we've spoken about how bad they are for the environment and for everyone, right there. But what's your opinion on grains? You know, we have the USDA food pyramid and things like that where they promote eating grains, which is completely ridiculous, you know. What is your opinion on grains as a human product for digestion for our diets?

Well, some people call the food pyramid the food tomb because it's killed so many people at this point. You know, they're doing this massive experiment in this country where, you know, they decided for some pretty stupid reasons that we should all eat this high-carb, low-fat diet. It has been an absolute disaster for public health. I mean, diabetes now is so widespread that they can't call it adult onset anymore because children are getting it. So you've got 10-year-olds with adult onset diabetes. Why? Well, you know, we used to eat eggs and bacon for breakfast. And now what does everybody eat? It's cereal and skim milk. It's nothing but sugar. The human template was never meant to handle that amount of sugar. So you got a whole bunch of problems that just cascade into, you know, these chronic and degenerative diseases like heart disease and cancer and autoimmune diseases. And all of this essentially is caused in the end by this agricultural diet. One way that we know that for sure is to look in the archeological record. Archaeological record. So you've got all the hunter-gatherers and they're tall and they're long and they're strong and their bones are beautiful and disease-free. They've got all their teeth. Agriculture begins, bam, the next set of skeletons you dig up is 6 inches shorter, the teeth are falling out of their heads and their bones are riddled with diseases and signs of inflammation. So the moment people switch to agriculture, their health just collapses. And the big question is, why did people do this? It's backbreaking labor for really bad nutrition. Why would anybody do this? And that's an interesting question if we want to talk about that, but back to the grain. No, I don't think it's edible. I don't think people should be eating these products. Number one, it's way too much sugar. So you've got this huge insulin surge and now you're on this insulin rollercoaster, right? 'Cause you've either got too high or too low blood sugar. Your brain can only function within a very, very small range of glucose. So the moment you overload your system to the system, it's an emergency. So all these chemicals come into play. So insulin has to grab it out of the bloodstream as fast as possible, shove it into the fat cells for storage, and then everything gets inflamed. Another problem with insulin is that it actually triggers the growth of cancer. One, two things we know about cancer, insulin triggers it, and what cancer eats is sugar. So the moment that you're eating one of these high carbohydrate, of course you're gonna get cancer across the population. That's what triggers it and that's what it feeds on.

And one of the worst things I've seen in Western medicine is they actually hook people up with glucose and insulin for people who have cancer, which is completely worthless.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and this is, you know, we have this concept that the diseases of civilization, okay? There are no corresponding diseases of hunter-gatherers, okay? So it's diabetes, it's heart disease, cancer, and then all those autoimmune diseases they do not exist in hunter-gatherer populations. They only come into play when people start doing agriculture. So what we're doing is we're hurting the human genome, we're hurting the human template by eating foods we were never intended to eat. So they're way too high in sugar, and they're also high in a bunch of substances that will trigger various disease processes. So plant lectins, for instance, may be the cause cause of a lot of autoimmune diseases. These are substances that look very much like different tissues in the human body. For instance, there's protein in wheat that looks like cartilage in joints. And this is one of the reasons why, you know, people get rheumatoid arthritis is from things like wheat. And this is why if you have an autoimmune disease, you should never eat gluten again as long as you live. It's definitely, you know, a factor. I say this to somebody who has an autoimmune disease, you know, I had to learn about this 'cause my life kind of depended on it. So yeah, you gotta go gluten-free, but the high sugar, I mean, that creates all the inflammation in the, your blood vessels. This is ultimately what creates heart disease and atherosclerosis. All of that is stroke. All of that is really created by these high insulin diets. And it's also responsible for a lot of the other kinds of problems that we're seeing in the United States. I mean, they talk about this, quote-unquote obesity epidemic. Well, if you're eating these high-carb diets, I mean, insulin is the fat storage hormone, that's what it's called. It's one of its jobs is to pull sugar out of the bloodstream to keep that glucose level, you know, where your brain won't collapse. And then it shoves the sugar into the fat cells and then you can't get it out. As long as you have high insulin levels, you can't access the energy that you have stored. And this is why, you know, you can be, You can look like you have a lot of energy stored on your body, but you can't access it. So you're exhausted all the time and you don't know why. And people call you lazy and they call you these horrible names and it's not your fault. I mean, you did what the government said and this is the results. You're exhausted and you're sick. And this is ideological, you know, it's got— people have to face what's happened. Yeah.

Yeah, I tell all my clients, they're not gonna be burning fat as long as they've got a high insulin.

I know, and there's no way to access that energy. So, and I feel really bad for the children because I know that they're having to face all kinds of horrible things at school and teasing, and they feel, the kids feel terrible. I mean, they're exhausted all the time and nobody's telling them, nobody's telling the parents the truth about this. Nobody's actually offering these kids what they need. So, okay, that's one problem with the grain-based diet is that you've got way too much of stuff that the insulin is, the sugars, way too much of some substances. The other problem is that it's displacing other foods that we should be eating instead. I mean, you can only eat so much food in a day. There's only so much you're gonna be able to get down your gullet. So if you're eating all these kind of high sugar, essentially, you know, empty calories, it means that you're not eating the food that humans need. And, you know, one real fact about humans is that we have very big brains and we have very small digestive tracts. And that happened at the same moment, evolutionarily speaking. If you look back in our history, there's this moment where, you know, our predecessors got, all of a sudden our brains get really big and the digestive tract shrinks. And what happens in that moment is that humans, proto-humans learned how to eat nutrient-dense foods, and that is animals, okay? We are, people say, "Oh, gorillas are mostly vegetarian, blah, blah, blah." Yes, they've got way smaller brains and they've got absolutely gigantic bellies, 'cause they've got these huge digestive tracts. We don't have that. So we've got to eat nutrient-dense foods. And the foods that hunter-gatherers treasure the most, the sacred foods around the world, are the organ meats. So if you compare muscle meat to plants, there's at least 10 times as many nutrients in the muscle meat. But if you compare muscle to organ meats, again, there's at least 10 times as many nutrients. So those were really the foods that gave us these great big brains. So it's things like liver and heart and stuff we don't really eat in the United States anymore, but it's a crying shame 'cause that's the stuff we really need. So there's all these things that we're not getting. So we're not getting vitamin A and vitamin D, we're not getting the high minerals that we need. We might not even be getting enough protein, but when you eat the diet, that's that nutrient-dense diet, you're getting all of those things. And this is what leads to perfect health generation after generation is having those nutrient-dense foods. And we're gonna have to put this back in our diets if we're gonna make any kind of dent in these public health crises that are going on right now.

For sure. I've gotta ask you this question. You were obviously, you were a vegan for 20 years. So when I hear people say, you know, it's bad to eat meat or you shouldn't eat meat because it's bad for you, how would you answer that statement?

Well, So it depends how it's said. I mean, if it's really hostile, there's not really any point in getting into it. But if they really wanna understand this, then I would talk about the things that humans have to eat or we die. And those things include proteins, there are amino acids that are essential, we cannot produce them, we can only eat them. And there are essential fats, essential fatty acids, we have to eat them, we cannot produce them. And then you've got all of these fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A and vitamin D and K2, Again, you know, we can't really— you can produce some vitamin D if you're in a very bright, sunny climate with overhead sunshine, but it's not really gonna happen for most of us. So you really do have to eat it. And it's the same with vitamin A. You can eat protovitamin A, carotenes in vegetables, but they have to be converted to real vitamin A. And humans are not good at that. In fact, a whole bunch of us can't do it at all. And those people are called obligate carnivores. If you are from a coastal, people or an island-dwelling people, that may be you. Your ancestors may have stopped making the enzyme because there was so much of it in their food. They don't need to do it anymore. Well, now you're not living on that nice island anymore. And, you know, you think you're gonna be able to get it out of carrots, you can't. So the vitamin A, the vitamin D, and then all the minerals that are in bones and bone marrow. And, you know, every traditional people have a way to eat bones. They either make broth or they figure out how to eat the bones themselves. Really, really, it's the minerals. We need all those minerals for our brains to function, for our eyes to function, for our reproductive systems to function. We've gotta have the high mineral diets. You're not gonna get any of that from grain. You're really only gonna get it from meat. So if you look at just biologically, leave the ideology aside, just look at us biologically, what do we need? Okay, those needs are not met by grains. They are only met by nutrient-dense animal foods. And the other problem is that the, if you're eating all that grain, of course, it's gonna displace all the really good food. And what you're also gonna get is, oh, this is the other thing I was gonna say, that there actually is no such thing as a necessary carbohydrate. So we need fat, we need protein, but every last molecule of sugar that your body needs, it can actually produce. So there's, you don't need to eat, any of that, you know, you don't even need to eat fruit. It's all anything that you, the glucose that your brain needs, your body can make out of fat and out of protein. And so there's really no reason to eat those foods at all. And this really shows that I don't think we ate them until very recently. And the archeological evidence is also quite clear. I mean, they actually have fossilized human waste that they found, you know, in archeological sites. So what were humans eating? Well, what's in that fossilized waste is things like, bones and feathers and, you know, obviously meat. And what's not in there is some of them, there's not even a single, you know, molecule of plants. So they didn't eat any plants. And, you know, the final piece of evidence really, just look at the cave paintings. I mean, it's all animals or people hunting animals. There is no cave painting of an apple tree. There's no cave painting of a head of lettuce. It's all animals and hunting animals. So it's quite clear what people were doing. Plus there's all these weapons lying around and then you've got, you know, the carcasses, the bones that have the cut marks from the weapons. And it's just, it's an overwhelming amount of evidence. It's an orgy of evidence. And when you're a vegan or vegetarian, I mean, we had our own creation myth while I was in that world, completely different from the facts, you know, that people were all vegetarian and, you know, there's no evidence for this at all. We wouldn't have survived if we would not have these great big brains and we certainly wouldn't have survived if we had not been eating, you know, those nutrient-dense foods.

I've been told once before that vegetarian in, I think, one of the native Indian tribes actually means poor hunter when they translate it. Right, right.

Yeah.

I gotta ask you this question. A lot of vegetarians will, you know, they will go to things like protein powder and thinking that they're making up their protein requirement with either, say, a soy-based protein and most everyone knows the problems with soy or a whey-based protein. We all know that soy is bad, bad news, but do you see any problems, you know, with a whey protein powder for some people to supplement with that?

Well, it depends because I know there's some whey-based protein powders that are heated at a very low temperature, and that's what you want to aim for if you're going to use those products for any reason. If it's done at a high temperature, you're destroying, you're denaturing the proteins, you're destroying the kind of chemical, the structure of those proteins, and you can turn them into really toxic substances by using high heat and high pressure. So you don't wanna just get whatever's the cheap thing. If for some reason you feel like you need to eat whey protein, like a protein supplement, get the low temperature ones and, you know, just be very strict about that because you don't wanna be eating really carcinogenic toxic substances come out of, you know, heating whey at temperatures that would never have existed in nature. If it's a long slow process, then it's, you know, probably intact. Dairy products, dairy proteins are very, they're very beautiful and they are very fragile and they are easily damaged by heat. So that's why it's really important to get the low heat kind. But you know, for most of us, we really should just eat food. You know, there's not really any reason for us to be eating these, you know, industrially manufactured products. Products, we should just eat. We should have good food and we should eat that food and then we wouldn't need this other stuff. I understand sometimes medically it's necessary if, you know, you have a certain kind of lifestyle, but overall we really need to get back to honest food from real farmers.

I had a lacto-vegetarian friend and she wanted me to ask this question, but she eats all organic local produce. Is, do you see any health risks with a lacto-vegetarian?

Yeah, you'll last a lot longer than, you know, a vegan will, 'cause at least you're getting some appropriate fats and some fat-soluble vitamins. But ultimately it's still way, it's almost impossible to eat that diet without overloading your insulin receptors. So it's just way too high in carbohydrate. It's just impossible to get the protein that you really need without overloading. You can only eat so much cheese in a day, you know, and cheese has a lot of fat and not that much protein. I mean, unless you're gonna eat 12 eggs a day, which you're gonna get really sick of, you know, eventually the insulin's just gonna kill you and, you know, you'll get hypoglycemic and eventually you could be diabetic. And then you're gonna have all the problems that excess insulin causes. So the inflammation in your blood vessels and the heart disease and all of that, that's cancer, all what's brought on by the high insulin levels. So it's just not an appropriate diet for human beings. I'm sorry, 'cause I know people are very attached. I mean, clearly I know how attached people get to these diets, and it is very hard to absorb this information when you're that attached to, you know, something that seems moral, and it seems like, you know, you're doing the thing that you're called to, you know, you want more justice and you want more compassion in the world. The values are not the problem, and I always try to be very clear about this. The values are not at issue, compassion and justice and sustainability, anything that questions human hubris and human entitlement, only values that are going to get us to the world that we need. So that's really not the problem. The problem is just purely information.

Yeah, for sure. So let me ask you this, where do you see the world's food supply going? Is it, do you think it's going to get worse or is there something we can do?

Well, here's where I see the hope. If we took, in the United States, if we took all the agricultural land, that's essentially east of the Mississippi River, east of the Dakotas, and we put it back into the kind of grassland that it would vastly prefer to be, the United States would immediately, in the first year, immediately become a net carbon sink. That's how good plants are at building soil and storing carbon. If we did that on only 75% of the world's trashed-out rangelands, and that's a lot of land, but 75% around the globe, it would take about 15 years, we would sequester all of the carbon that's been released since the beginning of the industrial age. Now, this is the only hope that I see for global warming. We've got to let that grass come back. We've got to reestablish the prairies that have been wiped out. 99% of the prairies on the planet have been eradicated, okay, 99%. That's just complete habitat destruction around the globe. And it's all because humans wanna do agriculture, that's what's growing there instead. So we've got to put those prairies back. That's really the only hope that we have. And then having done that, grasslands cannot exist without ruminants. Okay, they all play, both of those people play a role in making those communities work. So without the grazing action of animals, without the manure and the urine for fertilizer, all the things that the ruminants do, the grasslands would actually turn to desert. So you've got to have the ruminants back on there. And of course, the role that people play in this is that we eat the ruminants, the ruminants eat the grass, and then the grass eats the dead animals, and it all goes around in a cycle. And that is the role that humans and wolves and bears, you know, the sort of apex predators, that's our role is, you know, to keep them, the grazers in check, the browsers in check. So, you know, we could restore all that and we could have really great nutrition for humans once again, we could be participants in these soil communities. Instead of being parasites. And then the question though was, well, how many people could we support doing this? And the interesting thing is that in a lot of places, there wouldn't even be less food. And I say that because there used to be on this continent, North America, there used to be 60 million bison and the European settlers came, they wiped everything out, they traded in those 60 million bison for 40 million tortured cows. So it's less food at the end of the day, and the place has been trashed. I mean, it doesn't even make any sense. So, you know, my little mantra here is that we have to repair, restore, rejoin. We've got to repair those perennial polycultures, restore the animals that need to live there, and then rejoin as members of those biotic communities once more. And, you know, the other good thing about this is that farmers who switch, you know, from annuals to this kind of grass-based farming system and who do things like grass-fed beef and grass-fed bison, a lot of them in the very first year can turn a profit. Now remember that, you know, growing corn or soy for Monsanto, you will never turn a profit. You are only there as a serf, you know, paid by the US government. But the moment that you switch within that first year, literally these people can make a profit. So we don't even need the government. It's like people just need to start doing this. We need to understand the problem. We need to understand that there is a solution and then, you know, create this consumer network to help those farmers get started, to get them out of that serfdom and get them back into doing the honorable work that they wanna do, working on their land, feeding people. That's what farmers wanna do, that's why they're called to it. And this could be done and we could repair the planet. So I do see a lot of hope here, but it's hard because, you know, the institutions that control everything on the planet are on the wrong side. So we are gonna have to fight political battles. It's way bigger than just me. What I decide to eat. So it's a fine thing to look at the ethical decisions that go into food. And I'm glad, you know, for the vegetarians who have made food a political issue, I mean, that part they get right, and this is a good thing. People need to be examining this. And certainly we all need to get involved in stopping factory farming. I mean, that's across the board. Anybody with a conscience should recognize that, but, you know, there is hope here for our planet and there is hope for this project of repair. and there would be plenty of food for humans as well. So, you know, that's where I see the hope, and that's what I think, we've got to understand this as a program, as a political program.

So, would a take-home step, just buy all your food from a local farmer who is—

That would be great, because those farmers need help, and especially if you can prepay. I mean, I always buy, a lot of what I buy is like, I'll buy half a cow, like I'll go in with a friend, but we pay 6 months ahead, we'll pay the farmer, It's like, here's the money, go ahead and buy one, we're all set. And then I wait, I'm totally happy to be patient and along it comes, and in the fall, we get our cow. And that's a great thing to do. And there are people all over who wanna switch to this kind of farming, or there are young people who wanna get started at it. And if they know that there's a market demand, they can go ahead and do it. So I, yeah, I'm a big believer in those kinds of local networks. And the more we can get the word out about, how healthy this food is, how environmentally reparative it is, and how it makes justice for farmers and for local rural communities, there's no reason not to do this. We can do it now, we can get started. And that's, I'm a big supporter of the Weston Price Foundation. They've been fabulous at getting those kind of farm-to-consumer networks in place. If people don't know Weston Price, it's westonaprice.org. And you can look up your region, your country, your area, and they'll, tell you where the good farms are. There may be, you know, other resources that you know about in your area, but that's a really great place to start. And all the Western Price people are really excited. So they're very, very happy to help. So they're good people to call and to email and they'll help you.

Yeah, for my Aussie listeners listening in, what you can do is if you go on Google, search for Rotary Farmers Markets, you'll find heaps of things. There's a Rotary Farmers Market in pretty much every area around Australia. And that's where, you know, that's where I met my local farmer and I order half a cow with a friend exactly the same way. And it's grass-fed and it's absolutely fantastic. He vacuum seals it. And the thing that I find, and here's the kicker, it's actually cheaper.

So you know what I mean?

Yeah, it is, it is. It's just, it's mind-boggling to think that, all right, you're saving the planet, you know, you're helping the planet, not maybe saving it, but you're definitely putting a step in your own individual way towards helping the planet. And you're getting meat that is grass-fed, awesome meat, and you're supporting your local community and the economy. So it's a much better win-win and you're not giving money to the people who are perpetuating the problem either. So it makes sense on every single level to buy from your local farmer, every single level.

So yeah, it's a great thing. Yeah. And you can— a lot of them will let you come visit. So if you have any questions about, you know, are the animals being treated well? This is the question for me always, especially coming out of my vegan background, but it's really great 'cause you can go visit and you can see how happy are these animals. And if they don't look happy, then move on. But, you know, they do, they're sitting on the, you know, they're on their grass, they're eating, their chickens are running around, the pigs are having fun, everybody's having a good time. So you can see that these are very good lives and they're well-lived and that, you know, everything looks healthy and the soil looks good and the plants are lush. It's just, it's what it should be, you know, and we all think farm, I think we have these sort of idealized images, but you can find those farms, they are there and they are doing a good thing. So it's worth it, even if you have to travel a little, or even if you pay a little more, it's well worth it. And the benefits to, you know, you and your family in terms of health, especially if you have children, I mean, it's just, I don't see any other options. I mean, if you've got kids, you've got to learn about this and try to do your best with it.

So, uh, and another tip that I, that I, I do as well, um, from the farm, if you actually ask them for organ meats, they'll pretty much give it to you for free.

Yeah, yeah, because nobody wants them.

I've got 2 livers sitting in my fridge, grass-fed livers, and they're probably about 20 kilos each, and I got them.

Yeah, they're huge. Yeah, yeah.

So that's another thing is saving money.

Yeah, you know, we gotta get a little creative. I don't know how it is where you are, but in the United States Most people have forgotten how to eat organ meats. It's like, you have to be like really quote unquote ethnic to still be eating organ meats. And it's insane, it's the most nutrient-dense part of the animal. I mean, it's just, they're great. I eat liver twice a week, so I had to learn how to do it, but I did. And it's well worth it, especially if you have any chronic health problems, you can find just incredible amounts of healing in those foods. So, investigate it. You know.

Do you think there's any cap on how much liver someone can eat per week?

You know, various people, I have seen things like on the Western Price website where people debate, you know, how much is good, how much is bad. I'm sure that, you know, 2, 3 times a week is fine. I don't know that you wanna eat it every day if you're eating a lot of it, but you know, I aim for twice a week and that seems to be just fine. I don't want it any more than that, so I leave it there, but, Yeah, I don't think we need to get too upset about it. I mean, most people's vitamin A and vitamin D levels are so low right now that it would be a really good thing to increase them. And we haven't really touched on Weston Price, but, you know, he was a dentist who traveled the world and tried to find out what diets made people healthy over generations. And one of the things he found was that the healthiest people, they had vitamin A and vitamin D levels in their food that were something like 10 times more than what the average American was eating. And this was in the '30s. So this has dropped dramatically. So you can imagine now that it would be more like, you know, 20 times or something. So eat liver. Learn to eat liver. I know it's not an easy thing if you've never done it, but you can start with like, you know, Jewish chopped liver with the hard-boiled eggs and the onion. It's actually quite nice. It's very mild. That was how I started. And I worked my way up. I will admit that I do eat it raw now and I've gotten really hardcore about it, but that's where I started. It makes a very nice pâté, even kids will eat it. So yeah, it's a good thing to learn, relearn those traditional eating skills, yeah.

[Speaker] Yeah, you was gonna touch on one thing before, before I get your final thoughts about why do back, I think it was on it back when people were doing agriculture, why did people do, backbreaking labor? What was the motive?

I gotta ask. There's this great quote from Colin Tudge at the London School of Economics, and he says, "The real question is why anybody took it up when it's so obviously beastly." I just love that quote. Obviously beastly. Well, there's different theories, but none of them really match the physical evidence. So I mean, what I learned in school when I was a child was, well, the world got too crowded. So people had to figure out how to make more food per acre. Well, agriculture does that certainly, 'cause you're pushing everybody else off that land, but the archeological evidence doesn't back that up. If hunger was the driving force, you would see those half-starved skeletons in the record before agriculture. So people would have shrunk already and they'd have diseases and they'd be losing their teeth and there'd be signs of malnutrition and illness. There aren't. Those, that doesn't happen until after agriculture. So that doesn't really work as an explanation. The only explanation I've ever read that makes sense is the fact that grains contain opioid substances and they are addictive. So people did it because they got addicted. And that to me is a reason to destroy the planet. I get the driving force behind those kinds of addictions. And I mean, I'm somebody, I'm not, I can't eat any grains, because of my autoimmune disease, especially gluten grains. And I know how addictive that is. I mean, wheat just calls my name and everybody in my family is the same way. You can't just eat one, you have to eat the entire plate. You know, I can't just have 8 slices of bread, I would eat the whole loaf. Once it got started, there was no stopping it. And, you know, you talk to people, what do you binge on? Nobody ever says hard-boiled eggs. Nobody says, you know, steak. We know what people binge on, you know, it's cookies and cake. And all that, you know, it's the carbohydrate stuff. And it's because there's a number of chemical reasons for that, but one of the main reasons is because of those opioids. So, you know, if you're eating it 2, 3, 5, 6 times a day, you don't necessarily notice how addictive it is. You just know that you kind of crave it all the time. That is the only explanation that makes sense to me because people will do anything for their addictions. And I think that that was probably what, my guess is that's what drove this, 'cause nothing else makes any sense to me.

That makes a lot of sense.

So addiction, that was the reason.

Yeah, that's the first time I've heard that, but that does make a lot of sense. So do you have any final thoughts or anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up?

Just that it's not too late for this planet. I mean, we may be losing 200 species a day and it's too late for them, but resistance is possible. I mean, we've got a lot that we're gonna have to face and that we're gonna have to fight and that we're gonna have to overcome. but it's not too late. And I was just doing a speaking talk in Maryland, which is on the Eastern Seaboard in the United States, and it was this wonderful experience I got to have. There was a local farmer who had 5,000 acres in his family, and he decided that he didn't wanna farm all of it anymore. He was gonna donate 1,000 acres of it. He didn't know what to do with it. And so some of the local people who were, you know, really radical environmentalists, sort of worked with him, and they restored the land to a native prairie. And they did very little. I mean, all they had to do was stop plowing, and the plants came back, and these plants that hadn't been seen in 3 or 4 generations. So the meadow reestablished itself almost instantly. And then the real miracle is that there were birds that came to live in the meadow. Some of these birds had not been seen for 100 years in that part of the country. All you have to do is give them food and give them some habitat and they will find it. And I was so moved, and I got to go see this, you know, and I was just so moved to know that life wants to live, and if we just help it a little bit, you know, if we stop this destructive process and decide that we're gonna make a place for our whole family, that we can all live here again and be part of this, and I don't know what else we could want, really. This is the most beautiful planet that than I could ever dream of. And I think that we just have to fight for what we love, so.

Well, that's a really great message as well. So yeah, thank you so much for taking the time out. It's probably one of my favorite interviews I've ever done. So really, thank you. As I said before to you, before the call, your book is an absolute contribution to the field of nutrition. I'm sure my listeners will get a lot of great value. Your insight and the way you come at with the issues, And the way you explain it is just, you know, everything, everything is absolutely brilliant. So, you know, I really want to thank you for doing the research that you've done, putting the information out there that you have, and from the perspective that you've done it, because I don't know of anyone else who's doing it quite like you. So, you know, thank you and keep up the good work.

Well, Mark, thanks for having such great questions. And I just, from the bottom of my heart, thanks for having this radio show because Somebody has got to get the word out. You know, we're at the end here and it's— we're in a crisis and I'm just really glad every time I get to do one of these interviews. So thank you.

Yeah, awesome. Thank you. Pleasure. There it is, folks. Another podcast from the vault. That was Maximus Mark Podcast. Back in the day before podcasting was cool, I had a podcast show called the Maximus Mark Radio Podcast. Podcast show on iTunes. Had about 30 episodes, so blowing some dust off those old ones, putting him on the Enterprise Fitness Podcast so you guys can enjoy the new audience. Some very rich content episodes. So some more that are coming up is the episodes with Dr. Art DeVaney. That was an unbelievable show. I mean, that guy's crazy, you know, crazy smart. 70-odd years old, probably 77 now. I think when I interviewed him, he was 70 years old, right? So some years on, I had Mark Schaus, which we re-releasing pretty soon, as well as a few other episodes with T.S. Wiley. That's one to watch out for. John Demartini as well, I got to interview. Charles Poliquin, Scott Abel. So yeah, Bob Guiel, fair few episodes coming off that we're gonna re-release in the Enterprise Fitness Podcast. So look, make sure you subscribe. I am well aware that these episodes, I sound like I am 9 years old. And, you know, fanboying all of the guests that I have on. But look, folks, I can look past that because the content on this is, you know, I'm quite self-conscious of myself, obviously. But seriously, if the content wasn't as good as it is on these podcasts, I would not be sharing these because I sound like I'm 9. But I can get past that. I'm sure you can get past that too because the content's good, if I don't say so myself. But if you want to know more from us, like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, Enterprise Fitness. And also just to alert your ears and alert your eyeballs, go to YouTube, type in Enterprise Fitness. Folks, we've almost got 1,000 subscribers. We really want to hit that 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. And we've got some pretty awesome videos there, if I don't say so myself. Pretty funny. We've got some good in-house editing and video production. Team that do some, we do some creative stuff and at the same time entertain and educate you. So, it doesn't get much better. And also subscribe to us on iTunes and leave us a review. Geez, I'm asking a lot. But at the end of the day, folks, if you need a hand with your health, fitness, or nutrition needs, the one-stop shop, Enterprise Fitness, reach out to us, info@enterprisefitness.com.au. And We will get back to your inquiry, help you train, help you get better, help you perform. Look, I know I've just given a lot of different links, so you really don't know where to go, and you probably just keep listening to the podcast show. So if you do, I hope my voice is soothing in your car, if you're listening to it in the car. But that's where I listen to all my podcasts. But anyway, folks, I'm going to quit rambling. I'm going to see you on the next show. We've got a fair few episodes that we're going to re-release. Hope you enjoy. Till then. You know the one. Supplement smart, train hard, and eat well.