Eugene Trufkin | The Anti-Factory Farm Shopping Guide: How Big Pharma Owns Big Food | Wellness Force

And I do get a lot of like, mothers, for example, like, oh, but I buy the organic brand. It clearly says USDA organic.

Yes.

So what organic basically means for the most part is like a factory farmed operation where they feed them nothing but organic cranes. And that's like literally the only difference between just a factory farmed operation where on the other hand they would just feed them genetically modified queen of soy, which is bad for a myriad of reasons too. We can get at that also.

Yes. Welcome to Wellness Force.

No, thank you. It's awesome to be here. You played a, like a big part in, you know, the book, the contents of the book we'll be talking about today. So we'll get to that. To that later. So actually, thank you for having me on the show.

Thank you for saying that.

Good to meet you in person.

We're here in Austin, Texas and you're, you're living in San Antonio, but we both used to live in California.

Yep.

What was your journey to California? We're going to talk about all things factory farming, organics and truth about nutrition and just a deep dive into your work. But, you know, for people that don't know, you give us a little backstory. Like what was your road to, to California? You were actually born out of the United States, right?

Yeah, I actually like was born and raised on an off grid biodynamic farm in Ukraine.

And you don't hear that every day.

Yeah. And then for your listeners that don't know, it's, it's like a big part of the reason for this book as well. Like biodynamic farming is probably like what they have a mental image of when they think of farming. When you tell them about the farming life, they see like huge open pastures, like many, many different animals, many different crops. Like a small family living and self sustaining themselves on that farm ecosystem. So that's kind of like how I was born and raised.

What line of work were your parents in?

They were. Well, I actually was born and raised by my grandmother. They were college students. So their line of work was college students at that time, I guess. What did they do afterwards? My mom was a teacher. I believe she was like a math teacher. And then my dad was, he was on like the Bulgarian wrestling team.

Okay.

So. But back then it was all one country. It was all the ussr. So now it's all like separate countries. But yeah, I was born in like basically between Moldovia and Ukraine.

So that's quite the background to come to California on.

Yep.

So did you pull from any of your time in Ukraine to that really led you to health and led you to California. Like, what's the, what's the story between Ukraine and California?

Well, my parents came over here and then I came over with them, so it was that simple.

How old were you when you got here?

10.

Oh, wow. Okay.

So it's been.

Do you have memories of Ukraine and the nature there and what it was like or not so much?

Yeah, quite a bit. I mean it played a big role in like my upbringing obviously. And then I've gone back there like many times since then, so to kind of spend my like a summer here and there with my grandma, etc. Etc.

So yeah, the, the factory farming that is so just incredibly crushing to our nation, to our world really. We've had so many guests on the show that have educated us on, on controlled animal feeding operations and the monocrops and just like the absolute, really just let's be honest, raping and pillaging of mother Earth. And I can't think of a better topic that's timeless to discuss with you than how we can actually heal ourselves and heal the planet. And this is not like Kumbaya hippie around the fire. Although I feel like the hippies got some things right, you know, especially when it comes to like how we treat each other emotionally and how we treat our, our world with our actions. So did you remember a time in the journey when you got here where you were like, hey, I'm really interested in the biodynamic farming and I'm really passionate about human health. Like, when did that start to come online for you?

Yeah, so basically when I first came here and like I went to the supermarket for the first time in my.

Life, it was a Costco. Right? You went to Costco?

We went to Costco and like Ralph's, you know, like Albertsons, all those stores you'll find at in Southern California area. And like the first time I walked into those stores, I just thought like everything there was produced on a biodynamic farm. You know, like those 50 eggs you see at Costco for like a dollar fifty. I'm like, man, this is like why the US is like a powerhouse, you know, like look, they can produce like 50 eggs on pasture with chickens fed a species specific diet for like a dollar fifty. You know, like no one's going to be able to match that, match that price and that quality of eggs. And I didn't know any different. I just thought everyone produced food the way we produced food on, on that off grid farm you know, like without synthetic biocides, all the animals got to roam outside all the time. I didn't even know like factory farming existed or anyone did these highly confined operations, et cetera, et cetera. And it was basically probably, I think like four, maybe five years ago at this point, I ran into a guy you've had on your show like plenty of times, one of his videos on YouTube titled Nutrition the Dirt Facts. And it was hosted by Paul Chek, obviously. So he's huge into promoting sustainable agriculture. Biodynamic farming is his preferred preference. And he kind of gave an outline of the stark differences between factory farming or chemical agriculture and then like biodynamic farming, more organic farming practices. And at that point that's when I kind of woke up from the matrix. So I'm like, oh man. Maybe there's like a. Actually is there is a huge difference between the way we produced food on that farm and the way food is being produced typically in the US in general.

Was it a rude awakening or was it just like beginning to peek your eyes open?

It was more honestly a beginning to peek my eyes open. And that's where actually all the confusion began. And, and what I mean by that is let's just say you have a person that is health conscious and is trying to make the best decision. It's still like, I would say extremely difficult, almost impossible to find high quality food in the US And I'll kind of go into detail on the show here.

There's a lot to unpack that happens. Yeah.

And basically let's just say for an example, like a random person, they're trying to improve their health, they go higher, like a registered dietitian. And among like a myriad of variables that registered dietitian tells them to do to improve their health from a nutritional perspective, let's just say she says, oh, you know, like do something as good as just eat more grass fed beef, so that's good on the surface.

Or eat whole grains. Right. It might be the first mistake that they even go to the registered dietitian in the first place, depending on that dietitian's training.

Yeah, so the reason I didn't mention that is because like, very few people would argue, you know, like, grass fed beef is probably overall like slightly nutritionally superior to grain fed beef, for example. Yes, I just mentioned something as obvious as that because few people are going to, I guess, deny the difference contrast between like a grain fed or grain finished, rather in grass finished beef.

Yeah.

But just getting back to that, let's just Say okay, so she says go eat, go buy grass fed beef. And the average person, they're going to, they're going to take this information and they're going to go to the grocery store, they're going to see that grass fed label. Remember they're trying to improve their health, they're trying to maximize their health from a nutritional perspective and they're going to just trust that label and buy that beef. And this happens across pretty much every single category of food group that you'll run into pretty much in the U.S. so this person goes to the grocery store, they see that grass fed beef, they see that label and they purchase it. But let's kind of dive into what actually goes into that claim and how deceiving it's become and how difficult it's actually become to source actually legitimate, like for instance, 100% grass fed, grass fed beef in the U.S. so, so I guess for the listeners, just a quick background like all cattle are, are grass fed. So all cattle spend about like 80% of their life on pasture eating like forage and grass, which is their species specific diet.

Even the cafo.

Yeah. So basically here's how it works. So they spend 80% of their life out on pasture eating a species specific diet. So they're a herbivore, so they're meant to be eating grass for example, and that helps maximize the nutritional profile of the meat. But then probably I would say 98 to 99% of the cattle are then sent to a feedlot on the last few months of their life where they're fed predominantly nothing but grain, probably like genetically modified corn and soy. So once again that label isn't lying to you, it is grass fed. But then they leave out the part where it's grain finished. So once again the person is trusting this label. They're thinking that's, and of course the pictures always show like an open pasture, etc, etc and they're trusting this label. They're buying the product thinking they're buying a nutritionally superior product, but most, most of the time it's not. So most of the time, once again it's center sent to a feedlot where they're fed heavy amounts of grain. This does change the nutritional profile of the meat. So it typically ruins the natural omega 3 to omega 6 ratio. Typically omega 6 would be a lot higher than the omega 3 in the meat versus when it, when it is finished on grain.

And why is that so important for people that don't know? Because I mean we've discussed it not too depth not in too much depth, but what is the ratio that's really required for optimal health with the omega 3 and 6?

Yeah. So you typically want like a 1 to 1 or 2 to 1, like 1 omega 3 to 1 omega 6, for example.

Got it.

And in grain, grain finished beef, you typically get like 1 to 10 or 1 to 8. So you get 8 or 10 omega 6 for 1 omega 3. Where for example, like the place I volunteered and learned about grass fed beef production, five bar beef, they did a meat analysis on it and there you'll typically find a ratio of like 1.7 to 2 omega 3, 3 to 1 omega 6. So dramatically different ratio compared to the grain finished beef. So the reason for that, the reason for the importance of that is if your listeners look up the inflammation theory of disease, they'll see obviously that 99% of disease arises from chronic inflammation, which happens from poor dietary choices. But on top of that, poor lifestyle choices, long hours of work, maybe even over training, for example, would cause a spike in inflammation as well. But it's, it all, it all adds up.

Also emotional, like, you know, chronic fatigue or chronic stress. All these things.

Yeah, Like a myriad of relationship issues, financial issues, et cetera, et cetera.

But spiritual growth.

Yeah, but every single, I would say predominantly the large portion of Americans are facing all of those issues. So obviously inflammation is through the roof.

Yeah.

And dietary choices play a big part in increasing that inflammation as well.

You, you just rocked my world because I've, I' explored so many things about the controlled animal feeding operations. I didn't know that all cattle were essentially started on grass. But since we're on this topic of beef, there's so many terms that are thrown around in your book, which we'll link in our show notes today. You go deep into this, but can you explore for us that we don't know the organic, the free range, the pastured, the all natural. You know, there's so many things that confuse people when it comes to beef. I mean, I can't think of a more really argued about topic than beef. I mean, we had Rob Wolf on the show and, and he wrote Sacred Cow with Diana Rogers and, and he really unpacked a lot of truth there. But what, what's been your research and, and what's been that, that path of learning for you when it comes to all these confusing terms around beef?

Yeah. So that's just kind of scratching the surface, the grass fed claim. So sometimes a lot of people will be like, well, Eugene, don't even, don't Worry about it because my, my beef, it says grass fed and grass finished. But typically what, what a rancher could easily do. And remember, there is no on site inspection for any grass fed claims. So you simply fill out some paperwork, you say you're grass fed, no one checks anything and they just take your word for it. That's actually the level of auditing that goes on in the US beef market.

Wow.

So let's just say you have grass fed and grass finished beef on your label. Okay, so that's great. I could actually feed the cattle grass for about 8 months of their life, 8 to 10 months of their life. Feed them grain for like 4 to 5 months to fatten them up quite a bit because it's a pound per pound industry. Finish them on grass for about a week or so and still label it grass fed and grass finished. And I'm actually not lying to you, it really is grass fed and it is grass finished. But I just kind of didn't, I didn't include that part where it's like grain fed in the middle, which happens very, very often. And obviously the general consumer is so far detached from the farming lifestyle, it's not even something on the radar for them to ask for.

Most people just buy whatever beef is the cheapest. I mean that's, let's be honest, I don't know the percentages maybe, you know, but I'm guessing it's the 90% of Americans that just buy the cheapest possible beef.

No, that's true. And my book is more for people that actually want to make consciously better food choices. But the whole point of the book is just to show them like, even for the person that is consciously trying to make the best decisions, how difficult it's become. Because imagine like I even run into a lot of people in the holistic circles, you know, that are actually trying to optimize their health physically and mentally, and you still see them running into these mistakes, like constantly, you know, once again buying this product, trusting the label or trusting the claims in some sort of. And then just buying those products for years and years on end thinking they're getting the maximum nutritional profile in that food group when they're just like simply not a lot of times too. It's like sometimes you'll see 100% grass fed. Okay. Like I could just, first of all, not even finish them on grass, just finish them on grain because once again, no one's going to check. And in a competitive market, a lot of these ranchers remember they have international competition as well. As local competition now, because actually 90% of the beef sold in the US is sold from overseas.

I noticed that. And y' all check it in Trader Joe's, it's from like Australia and different companies where maybe there's one vat of a hundred percent grass fed organic beef, but it's from like five different countries. If you look on the back at Trader Joe's.

Yeah, exactly. And yeah, and to make that confusing, sometimes it even says like product of the usa.

Exactly.

And it's. So here's the thing with product of the USA label claims, I can buy carcasses from Mexico, import it into California, cut it up and process it into packaging here in California. Well, not here now we're in Texas, but yeah, in California. And then that I can legally claim as product of the usa. That's just because it's processed actually in the usa. It didn't used to be this way, I think like five to eight years ago. But then obviously these meat packers changed the laws and now that's, that's just how it is.

So product, I'm, I'm dumbfounded because one thing I want to explore with you is the other animals, right? Like the, the eggs and the chicken and things like that. But since we're on beef, like it's so incredibly high in nutrients. The right kind of beef, the organic beef. But what does that even mean anymore? Organic beef? That's, you know, organic free range. What are these terms? What's the real truth about these terms now?

Yeah, that's actually a really good question. And I used to do like grocery store tours very often teaching people about food production practices. And I do get a lot of like, like mothers, for example, like, oh, but I buy the organic brand. It says, it clearly says USDA organic.

Yes.

So what organic basically means for the most part is like a factory farmed operation where they feed them nothing but organic cranes. And that's like literally the only difference between just, just a factory farmed operation where on the other hand they would just feed them genetically modified corn and soy, which is bad for a myriad of reasons too. We can get into that also. Yes, but basically that's for the most part what, what the organic label entails. So.

But, but the certification for soil, which is a different part of our show today. But the certification standards that, that you've done research. And by the way, how long have you researched to come out with this book? How many years have you been diving into this?

It's probably been already like close to four years. And I'M still like finding out like new stuff like daily. It's like it seems, I thought it would be like a two month project. It all started with just trying to, just trying to find healthy eggs. That's where it all started. I just wanted healthy eggs for myself. And even that with the, you know, cage free, free range, pasture raised, USDA organic, non gmo. Than the myriad of variables within those variables and I'm like, man, like at the end of the day like I just want healthy eggs. How come? It's, it's, it's like way too much to ask for these days just to have something like. It seems like so simple and basic.

Yeah, well, it's confusion by design because the food industry is essentially hijacked and completely bastardized by the pharmaceutical industry. The connection there is so ever present and so clear. Which, which I'd love to get in later with you on. But going back to this organic term, there's soil organic certification. I think it's two and a half years or three years where they test way down into the soil and make sure it's free from all any kind of fungicides or pesticides that may not be healthy for humans. And there's a strict process there. But for beef, the organic certification for beef, what is the real truth about that?

Yeah, so it could, it could vary. Like I mentioned, it could just be a factory farmed operation, like a highly confined operation where you're just feeding them organic corn and soy. But even that's questionable these days because half of the, half of those grains that the US gets once again it comes from overseas. So it comes from like super corrupt places like Ukraine and Turkey.

What's the overseeing body for organic certification for beef? Who is that? Is it the usda?

That would be the USDA in terms of the grass fed label claims, there is no overseeing like government body.

So we're just trusting these ranchers.

Yeah, there are a few private like third party companies like American Grass Fed association is a great company. We can talk about them a little bit later.

Okay.

But basically, yeah, you're just for the most part just trusting these companies. But really quick regarding the grains being imported, so very common. The Washington Post did a really good story on this and I, and I actually got this from Joel Salatin. He's one of the people like I interviewed to get some good information for the book.

Polyface Farms is Joel Salatin's business. He's like one of the speakers at I believe Paleo Effects. He's, he's got two like doctorates, I believe. I mean, he's highly educated.

Yeah. I don't know, probably an author of like 200 books at this point or something like that.

Legit. He is legit.

Yeah. So. So, yeah, a lot of times, like the Ukrainian farmer, for example, would raise the crop conventionally with a lot of synthetic biocides. The paperwork would just get switched around at the broker level. So the corruption isn't so much at the farmer level, it's at the broker level and basically just get imported as organic grain into the U.S. so even now, when you're buying that organic label, and I covered this with Joel Salatin, it's a very well known problem. It hasn't been solved yet, effectively. So even now, when you're getting the USDA organic label claim, although it may be fed with grains, you don't even know if those grains are actually organic grains. So that's like a, that's like another issue. And then combined with like the fact that, you know, so much of the beef is imported from overseas, etc. Etc.

What's the, the damage that that can possibly do to our system, to our nervous system, to our digestive system? Because, you know, in my mind, I think we, we already have known about the mycotoxins. You know, the fattier the cut of beef, the more mycotoxins we're going to eat. And those toxins are created from these cows being fed pesticide antibiotics because they're sick from the pesticides. I mean, the whole thing just makes me incredibly sad, actually. Like when I, when I really look at what's going on, like, it's, it's pretty startling. And, and that's why we're here, man. You know, we're here to talk about this and, and this passion that you have for this work as we maybe close the chapter on the beef conversation and go over into the other animals. What's the guidance for people? And I know you go into a lot more depth in the book, but what's, what's just the top of the line guidance for people that do want to be healthy? Is it, is it strictly just local farmer, cow share, or are there other options?

No, there are a couple of options. I mean, it depends on what lens you're looking at it from. If you have like a lot of time on your hands and you are very passionate about the subject, you could just do what I do or what I did. Is that.

Write a book?

Yeah, like. Well, yeah, you don't have to write a book, but I went and actually Volunteered and worked on a lot of pasture raised operations to learn about those food production practices. So like happyhands.com I learned about pasture raised egg operations there that are, that don't use any corn and soy and they are certified organic beef production. I learned about Frank Fitzpatrick. He's been doing it for like 40 years. That's in kind of Santiago Canyon in Southern California area. So he's like one, he's like a legitimate 100% grass fed. He doesn't even vaccinate any of his cows. So he had a herd, he started this herd like I think 30 years ago and basically he just let the ones that would naturally die out in that environment die out. And then the ones that survived were strong enough to survive in that environment to reproduce once again, cattle that are strong enough to survive in that environment and he doesn't use any vaccines or medicines and they're extremely healthy. So there's that he doesn't clip his bulls, doesn't dehorn the cattle or anyway, so that's. So it's basically just like wild meat at that point. All he does is just. All we did was basically just rotate them onto fresh pasture occasionally just to have that rotational plant grazing to kind of maintain the soil as well. And so they could do that. That's not realistic for most people or most people don't have that much passion.

Yeah, more like people in New York City or people in like a food desert. We hear this claim a lot like food desert, food desert. There's so many programs that deliver to your house.

That's exactly what I was just going to get to. So like two really good websites, americangrassfed.org is great. They can go to that website, they can scroll to the bottom of the page, they'll see interactive map of the entire usa and you simply click on that map, click on your state and you'll see a myriad of what regenerative agriculture really means is you just let the animals do what they would do naturally without humans being around. It's just a fancy phrase for basically minimal or no human interaction. So they would find many operations there. They could just click on one of those whichever they want and they deliver straight to your door. So like usually how it works is like for instance, they would ship out on Tuesday, so you'd order before Tuesday, they'd ship out on Tuesday and you get it on Thursday. And it's like 10 or 12 bucks for shipping. But you can once again order maybe like 40 or 50 pounds. So that way you get like still a really good deal. And some people would say, like, I don't want to pay that 10 bucks. But look how much time it takes you to, like, you know, get in your car, drive to the grocery store, get in the parking lot. Then you have to hustle around the grocery store, Then you have to get in line, and now you have to wear, like, the silly mask all the time, and, oh, I can't.

I can't stand that. And honestly, man, you're bringing up such an easy solution. It's really empowering and easy. Like, it doesn't seem hard to me. Just find, like, what was the website again? Americangrassfed.org americangrassfed.org thank you for that resource. Before we get into, like, the chicken and the poultry conversation, because, like, you, you just gave us massive easy clarity on beef, which. Thank you. Because I think sometimes people can be so passionate about. They get lost in the weeds. And that was those really clear. What fires you up about this? Like, it's not easy to research and go work on farms and do all this stuff for four years. Did you go through a health journey or a threshold of some sort? Like, what. What fires you up so much about this work?

I just wanted healthy eggs. I mean, it's really that simple. That's how it all started. I just wanted.

Because you wanted the eggs.

I just wanted eggs that, like, my grandmother, for instance, raised on her biodynamic farm without any grains, and she just fed them, like, worms and crickets and stuff like that.

Yes.

And I'm like, man, why is it so hard to, like, find healthy food even when you want healthy food?

Yeah.

And a lot of times, too, you got to be careful with small farmers, not to put them down. But just because you kind of work for yourself, too doesn't mean you're, like, really good at what you do. It's the same exact thing with farmers. Because sometimes a lot of times people would say, like, oh, like, I go to a small farmer, so everything is okay. But really, is it like, let's say with chicken operations, you know, like, I could go to a small farmer. Let's just say they have, like, an acre of land. They have 400 chickens, like broiler chickens for meat chickens, and they just basically have them on that land with maybe like a few small hen out, like a hen house here and there.

Yeah.

So if they're not, like, for instance, rotating them onto fresh pasture daily, chickens, all they basically do is get up in the morning and then they eat all day and then go to sleep, you know, they're like, as Joel Salatin would say, like the perfect worker. They don't party, they don't stay out late. They're very on schedule, they're on point. And because they eat so much food, they basically deplete that land of worms or whatever other minerals you can get from that soil, like, very, very quickly. And when that happens, like, and you're not taking the hens to. You're not taking the hens to the food. You have to bring the food to the hens. That's how it always works, you know, like, if you don't do rotational grazing, you always have to bring the food to the animal.

Yes.

And 80% of the cost of an operation is feeding the animal. So what are you inclined to feed them? What's subsidized by the US Taxpayer? Grains.

Yes. Primarily canola, wheat, soy.

Yeah, Primarily corn, Like, primarily corn and soy, for example, that gets the chickens to grow, like, very, very quickly. And it's very inexpensive because it's subsidized by the US taxpayer. So a lot of these operations actually just feed them, like they would say non GMO corn and soy, but it's not organic corn and soy.

Right.

So now you run into, you know, the pesticide residue of whatever they happen to use to actually grow that corn and soy. And then on top of that, also the chickens, species specific diet isn't vegetarian fed. That's another mislabeling claim. You go to the grocery store, you see vegetarian fed very often on a lot of meat labels, especially chicken, like chicken and turkey, for example. Yeah, but the thing is with chicken and turkey, they're omnivores, they're not vegetarians. When it says vegetarian fed, what it really means is it's grain fed. So you run into all the same problems we just talked about in beef production.

That's a huge point to pause on right there. Like, we have chickens here at Ta and Cole's house. And thank you to Ta and Cole for letting us use your home for this podcast. And we fed some chickens earlier this morning. Worms. Chickens eat worms. They don't eat soy. They're not designed for that. And we try to fight nature and we try to commoditize all of our food and live way outside the healthy boundaries of nature. We end up having unintended consequences, man. And these unintended consequences, they're emotional, they're physical, they're really, in my mind, economic, which then turns into psychosomatic stress and all these different things. So, yeah, when it comes to both beef and chicken. These terms can be so incredibly confusing. And I honestly want to speak to the heart of most people right now. Most people are so overwhelmed with their financial obligations and living a life maybe not connected to their dream, not connected to their purpose. They're literally just trying to get by. What could you say to them to make the right choices in that situation they're in? Because that's real. You know exactly what I mentioned.

Yeah. So you know the price objection when you. Right when you throw out the word organic, people, instantly super expensive. But here's the real problem. Price difference. So I went to. The best way to talk about this is from a couple of different vantage points just to get a thorough picture. But I went to Sprouts Farmers Market. This is the trench level stuff that the average American will run into. So I went to Sprouts Farmers Market for your listeners. It's like a higher end like organic supermarket that has like half factory farm stuff, half organic stuff. They have a couple of options, but basically for a 2000 calorie factory farm diet, it ended up costing like $7.77 per day. In a 2000 calorie supermarket level organic diet, it ended up costing $12.20 per day. So some people would automatically say, well, Eugene, there you go. It's almost a $5 difference. And there's your difference. And it's definitely, it's definitely more expensive. But one, people that tend to shop organic also eat out way less. So that saves a lot of money to begin with.

So we're really talking about $300 here. I mean, let's go brass tax on it. Yeah, it's about 300 bucks more if you're really mindful.

Yeah, I think the total prices. Yeah, per month it's about $350 to shop all organic. So per year it's about like almost $4,000 basically, which people think is a lot. But let's go ahead and break down. You know, the average American is spending about 8 to $15,000 a year, non essential expenses.

So this includes like alcohol, Netflix going and clubbing and. Yeah, masquerading as if your life is perfect when you're really just drinking to stuff down the weight.

Yeah, exactly.

That's a big one that people aren't aware of.

Yeah, exactly. And then you know those same people that would say like, oh, 300 bucks for high quality food is too much per month, but maybe spending like $40 or $50 on alcohol per weekend, going out with friends is not too expensive or you know those, or you Know like a high end smartphone that basically only an executive needs or a business owner really needs. That's not too expensive getting the brand new phone.

It's a thousand dollars for an iPhone.

Yeah, exactly. That's already, that's already like one fourth of your total food bill for high quality food per year. And then like the average also in general, like the average American spends about like 5 to $7,000 a year on medical expenses that are directly as a, that are direct result of just poor lifestyle and nutritional choices. So when you factor in, you know, the fact that the average American is spending eight to $15,000 a year or so on non essential expenses and then spending, you know, like five to $7,000 a year on medical expenses, all of a sudden that, you know, $3,700 a year for organic food doesn't look that expensive. Because if the average person really sat down with their financial sheets and looked what they're spending their money on, they would clearly see they're already spending way more money than that. Yeah, on living a lower quality life. Because at the end of the day, like what are those, you know, non essential expenses? Like what value do they really add for your life long term, except that short term, like maybe happiness, it could give you a little bit here and there, you know.

Yeah, it' what we talked about before we started recording when you got here, you know, renting versus owning. Are you renting some kind of short term happiness, perceived happiness which is really going to compound with interest with poor health and with broken finances later? Or are you going to take the ownership to make the right sacrifices to actually own something and put money into your pocket? You know, are you going to be like the master of your domain? Are you going to take full ownership of your dominion? And I think it's really confronting to people, Eugene. I think people feel so super confronted when they're forced to really look at, oh my God, what am I spending on alcohol? What am I spending on these non essential things that are actually disconnecting me from myself, my partner? And what are the easier decisions that I can make? And maybe they're not that easy sometimes, but like it starts with food and with breath and with sleep and water. I mean, if we're not doing those things, we're setting ourselves up for even more unintended consequences. I'm curious how you feel about that.

Yeah, I'm totally in alignment with your idea there. In my opinion, like it doesn't matter what your goal is in life, whether it's to be like a High end computer programmer or like a podcaster or some business owner or even like the president or anything of that sort.

Or a great mother or a great father.

Yeah, just whatever.

Either one.

Like, how are you going to do any of that stuff with, like, lower back pain or mental depression or any of the other myriad of side effects of having, like, a poor diet and having poor lifestyle choices, you know, like, how are you going to accomplish any of that stuff? It sets, you know, your health, your mental and physical health, sets the foundation to literally anything you want to accomplish. So it sets the foundation. You have to have, like a strong foundation, because if you don't, then anything you kind of build on top of it will eventually crumble and not be able to be sustained. So it should be a high priority no matter what, no matter what you're trying to do. It should be the number one priority. And then after you have that down, then you can kind of build a house on top of that foundation.

Yeah. Our whole country is built on sand, it feels like at times, because Everybody's spending like 2x their means and they're eating all this food that's super cheap and they're not aware of, like, the interest that's banking up year after year.

Yep.

And I love the way you explain that because there's a part of me that was so disconnected in my 20s, even when I was a personal trainer. And I know you have a large background in fitness as well. You know, there's Redline and adrenaline products and all these super unhealthy fitness products that give people, like, the short term, look at my six pack, look how awesome I am. But the long term and the longevity and the sustainability is really what we want. Like, that's what this community is all about, is how do we become intelligent. Intelligence is not like, how quickly we can get to something or how many books we can read or even how many podcast episodes we can listen to. Intelligence is like, okay, I'm going to take a breath, I'm going to gather information from Eugene, I'm going to apply it, I'm going to test it, I'm going to track it, and then I'm going to embody it. And then it's a habit that sticks. And if you look at any behavioral science, there's always like, the internal locus of control versus the external locus of control. What is it about the psyche specifically when we look at this way of eating, like, really just, it's not that complicated. It's like just hunting for the truth and eating real foods. And True Foods. What have you seen with working with clients? What mental hurdle do they go through when you start sharing this information with them?

Honestly, at least with the clients I've had to deal with, I try to make it, like, everything, like, very, very simple and streamlined. And they already come wanting to change for the most part, like, probably 99% of them want to change. So they just need the information. That's at least the kind of client base I work with. I don't see, like, much, like, for instance, self sabotaging behavior. They've already had, like, years of, like, pain or just, I guess, been overweight for too long, and they're just ready to make the change.

And they're just like, tell me what to do.

Yeah. And then I streamline the process. I tell them what to do. And yeah, I mean, it is. It is like there are huge differences, obviously, when they change their diet with their health. And then obviously you have to do, like, lifestyle adjustments as well and then get them at least moving according to their goals or whatever they're trying to do, etc. Etc.

Yeah. So, but I mean, to go a little bit deeper, I mean, I understand what you're saying, but you're telling me you've never had a client that had mental struggles around behavior change?

Oh, yeah. I mean, they're always there, but I would say it's like a very small percentage of people that actually come to see me, at least.

Okay, well, maybe there's other coaches out there that specialize in self sabotage.

Yeah. And you can refer them out from WeHLC is. Is a great resource for that. So. Yeah, there are other coaches that specialize in that.

It's really cool, man, because food. And I heard this from Sean Stevenson, actually, who's a mentor. I've been following his work for, like, seven years. He's probably one of the most intelligent nutrition professionals I've ever seen. And he talks about food being information. Like, when we. When I eat organic peach, the amylase and protease already is getting to know that food. It's going into my digestive tract. My. My hydrochloric acid is digesting the food. It's going into my gi. It's information from my body. So when we're eating as nature intended, and I want to, like, pause there because, like, that's really what we're talking about. We're just following the laws of nature. Just like, if I were to pick up a ball and drop it, that's the law of gravity. Well, nature has her laws too. And we're totally ignoring her. And your work brings us back to the truth of, like, okay, let's not ignore mother anymore. Let's. Let's, like, listen to our mom because she's really smart. We came from her.

Yeah, she's only been around for, like, 5 billion years.

We came from her. So can we honor her a little bit more? And so, with this concept of food being information, if we're taking in the wrong information on a biochemical, biological level, what's starting to happen to our physiology if we're eating foods that aren't laid out in your book?

Yeah. So objectively speaking, one way to look at it is since we're talking about predominantly animal confined operations, we could talk about, like, vegetables and fruits as well. Because a lot of vegetarians probably listening to this podcast are like, well, I don't. That's why I don't eat meat, because of all those things.

See, I told you.

Yeah, but they run. They run into a tremendous amount of problems, too, with fruits and vegetables. We can get into that later. But basically, like, one objective way to look at it when you don't follow the laws of nature is. And I got introduced to this topic by the author of the Wild Itarian Diet. I always seem to forget people's names.

Daniel Vitalis. No. What was the dairy?

Cochrane Wilditarian Diet.

Cool.

And basically like aa. Amyloid buildups in animal tissue, in animal organs and animal tissue. So what happens when you confine an animal to a confined operation is you get chronic inflammation from three variables, mainly from the confinement, which is stressful to the animal, you know, being packed shoulder to shoulder, the bacteria buildup that happens in those facilities, then their immune system is on overdrive to try to fight off that bacteria and those viral infections. That causes chronic inflammation. And then also the vaccines administered to these animals causes chronic inflammation. And all three of those variables happen in confined operations all the time. So what happens in that case is the liver of the animal ends up releasing too many serum amyloid A proteins. They are okay, in, like, small amounts, they're soluble proteins, and they break down into the body. But when the inflammation is chronic, it releases too many of them. And then certain serum amyloid A proteins begin to break up into amyloid A proteins. Those proteins are not soluble, and they actually form a plaque around the organ tissue, like various organ tissues around the animal, primarily the liver, the kidney, and the spleen, and also to a smaller degree, in the muscle tissue. I found, like many rat feeding studies, that rats fed contaminated meat or fed AA Amyloids actually developed a amyloidosis in their own body. And depending on whether it's specific to a specific organ, it's systemic. And it's usually systemic. It affects many organs. The person that's eating that meat could develop something as extreme as Alzheimer's or type 2 diabetes, gut issues, joint issues of various sorts, and other pathologies as well. So that's just one example, objectively speaking, of how if you go away from nature, the type of abnormalities that happen in the food group that then you eat, obviously they send chemical signals into your body that changes your composition, then you develop those pathologies as well. So it's kind of that saying is you eat what your food has eaten. And remember, like vegetables are omnivores too. They eat also dead animals. The fungi and bacteria break down those animals. It gets absorbed into the root system. All the pesticides these days are systemic, so you can't wash them off. They get embedded into the flesh of the fruits and vegetables. So that's another misconception. I hear people say like, I'll buy the conventional stuff and just wash it off. But they don't know that most, most pesticides are systemic. So once again, they're meant to get soaked up by the root of the plant and actually become part of the plant.

Yes. This is why Monsanto has the patents on the GMO corn.

Yeah, they're BT corn.

Yeah, BT corn. It's, it's absolutely insane and super. So pernicious. It's so sinister.

Well, I think, I think BT corn, they actually genetically modified that pesticide to already be part of the corn. But the pesticides they're using these days, you kind of spray onto the crop and it gets soaked up or the, the soil and gets soaked up into the root system of the plant and becomes part of the plant. So yeah, one is done through transgenesis, but one is done just by chemical application on the crop itself. And a lot of times people are like, well, the government knows best and they wouldn't release these dangerous chemicals in to the agricultural system if it really did affect my health. But the way that testing works in the US is that to get a chemical compound approved for use in agriculture, in the food that you're going to be eating, for example, all the chemical company has to do is just test the active ingredient in the entire chemical in isolation on its own. The complete formulation is never actually tested for safety. So a typical formulation has active ingredients, which is the main thing. Like glyphosate is very popular these days. It's been on the news a lot. And then there are a bunch of inert or inactive ingredients. And these inactive ingredients are meant to actually increase the potency and the lifespan of the active ingredient. So it makes it a lot more lethal and a lot more durable in the environment so it doesn't get washed off by the rain or stuff of that sort of. So the testing, it just requires you to take away all those inactive ingredients, which obviously dies down the potency of the active ingredient, and then test the active ingredient in isolation on its own. And that's all that's required to be tested for safety. They never test the complete formulation for safety where that's where common sense would come in handy. You know, like I would test the entire poison, not just a certain ingredient of that poison, and see how poisonous it is. That never happens. And then, and yeah, so that's, that's how on top of that, it's all done in house at these companies facilities by their paid scientists. So obviously there's a tremendous amount of conflict of interest there. Like the Myth of Safe Pesticides. It's a really good book by Andre Liu. I interviewed him extensively. He's been doing this. When I first ran into his book, I thought like, he's one of these like holistic, like fear mongering people, you know, they take something small and they kind of exaggerate it through the roof. But I looked at it myself, I spent like months researching it. And also where I lived, the FDA headquarters was actually right across the street from UCI.

So it's like the irony of that. You lived across from the fda?

Yeah, the Death Star.

That's hilarious.

No, they're good in many ways.

I'm sure that there is good. And I don't want to demonize here. This conversation, this podcast is not about creating separation. That's not my intention. But there's black and white and night and day for a reason. Right? And so you make your own choices, everyone watching and listening. But I will say, because I want to go back to what you talked about, man. Like anytime we are told to trust the government, it reminds me of what happens when we're children and we trust our parents. We love our parents to the best of our ability and we give our parents the benefit of the doubt and know they're not perfect. Well, neither is the government. So if you are one of these people, and I've been quite triggered by this actually, so I get to explore why I'm so triggered when people start defying science and making science a God and saying, well, the government and science say so, just like mom and dad say so. Why don't you open up your intellect in your heart to know that the government isn't perfect just like your parents weren't. And I think that's a big part of this conversation is like, if we're ever going to blindly trust anything, at least trust ourselves to make a decision based on taking calculated information, just like you've done, and then putting it into practice. What are your thoughts about the emotional aspect of this whole understanding of farming, food and chemicals and what journey has that looked like for you? Was there ever a time where you were like, yeah, the organic stuff doesn't really matter and my government knows best, or is that just like never been in your psyche?

No, I didn't even think twice about it, honestly, until I ran into that video that Paul Check did nutrition the door facts. I was literally just buying the cheap. I never like really ate fast food. I was never like a fast food kind of guy. But I just bought like the cheapest stuff you would buy at Costco, for example, you know, just because I didn't even know there was a difference, I figured I'm still continuing to live after I ate it one time. That means not, not, not too much can go wrong, you know. So I think it's just one of those subjects that goes under the radar of like 99.9% of people. It's not even something they think twice about because organic food, factory farm food, it kind of like visually looks all the same. Although honestly you can kind of tell the difference if you know like what to look for. But pretty much like even sometimes biodynamic fruit or vegetables look even worse than the factory farmer. Hydroponic stuff. Yeah, they're like perfect deformed and weird looking. While hydroponics, it's always like uniform, perfect, same size all the time. Yeah, hydroponics is one of those other things for your vegetarian listeners. The US is the only country in the US that allows hydroponics to be certified as USDA organic. I'm sorry, the only country in the world.

In the world, yeah, Obviously the only country.

Not much place to go if you're the only country, you know.

Yes, yes.

So yeah, they're the only country that allows hydroponics to be certified as organic. So predominantly a lot of the most likely, a lot of the lettuce, the tomatoes, the blue peppers, or the, the blueberries, the bell peppers you're buying at the grocery store. Even if it's organic, it most likely Comes from like a hydroponics facility in my opinion. If it says I don't want anyone from Driscoll's contacting me. So this is just my opinion. If it says Driscoll's, it's like most definitely hydroponics. Okay, yeah. And you see Driscolls like everywhere, including Whole Foods, for example.

Everywhere.

Yeah, yeah. Another huge problem with especially crop production is the amount of genetic selection that has happened over the hundreds and hundreds of years. So for example, the carrot started as a root in Afghanistan. Then over hundreds of years it made its way to India where it became purple. Then hundreds of years later it made its way to China where it's become red. Then hundreds of years later it made its way to Turkey where it became white. Then hundreds of years later it made its way I believe to like Netherlands where it became orange. So the average person thinks carrots do look like oranges or do look orange, for example, but really they're kind of like purple or like a white like grayish root from against it. That's actually how the orange is supposed to look. And throughout all of those hundreds of years of genetic selection, what happened? What happened is the anthocyanins, which is like a very potent anti inflammatory micronutrient. Like for example, in a purple carrot you get like about 900% more anthocyanins than you do in an orange carrot.

And what does that do to the body?

Yeah, anthocyanin is basically an antioxidant that acts as an anti inflammatory. So.

Oh, I remember William, Dr. William Lee was talking about this. And a lot of that is found in the tops of the carrot as well. Besides just the multicolored carrots that you're talking about, the beneficial nutrients are found in the actual stalk and the top of the carrot too. Have you seen that as well in your research?

From my understanding, it just the high levels of anthocyanins comes from like purple or like bluish kind of fruit and vegetables stuff of that sort.

So yes, because this you can go into the ultimate rabbit hole. And I'm sure you have researching all of these things. You know, I want to go back to, because we got into vegetables a little bit, but we didn't close the loop on the poultry and the eggs and the chicken. The same kind of simplistic guidance you gave us for beef with that amazing resource. And can you give us that same guidance for poultry and for eggs as well?

Yeah, poultry, it's even more deceptive than the beef one. So for example, here's the level of trickery like we mentioned with the vegetarian fed label. Obviously chickens are omnivores, they're not vegetarians. So when you see like for example, let's just say the best you're going to get at the supermarket is like free range organic chicken. And that looks like very, very good on the surface. Very solid. So what industry free range really means is you have like a huge warehouse with a small little concrete patio. So you have about like 30,000 hens in this warehouse.

30,000?

Yeah. Or even more. Some operations are even bigger, some operations are a little bit smaller. They're indoors. Probably 99% of them never even go outside. If you go to any of these operations, you'll see that maybe like 50 or 60 of these hens are outside on these concrete, like smoke pit kind of areas. And then the rest of them are stuck inside. Because the production cycle for especially like meat chickens is like eight to 12 weeks, maybe 15 weeks. So they're always like very, very young. And these openings that they have in the sheds, they're kind of like there's light coming in, it's like very bright. They're obviously very scared of that light. So they predominantly stay inside. So because of that high confinement and in a free range operation, the typical square footage you get is like about 1.5 to 2 square foot per hen. That's industry free range. So because of that confinement, you run into that amyloid buildup, for example, more so in egg laying hens versus meat chickens. Yeah, but you still run into that issue there as well. Once again, you're not taking the hens to the food. You have to bring the food to the hens. What's most economical? Corn and soy, you know, so they're bringing that in even if it's organic. We talked about. Is it really organic if it's coming 50% from overseas?

Yeah.

Regardless. If it's, even if it is legit organic, it's not a species specific diet for the hen. They're not vegetarians. And the thing is, the company isn't lying to you when they say vegetarian fed. That's a dead giveaway that it's a confined operation. Because if they're truly running outside, if they're truly free range, like you mentioned with the chickens you have here, they're.

Gonna eat some worms.

Exactly. And then you can't label it vegetarian fed because then there would be. They have an omnivore diet. Right. It's a mixed diet. So you can see it's like they're telling you the truth, but they're saying it in such a way because, you know, with all these Netflix documentaries, the average American thinks like, the vegetarian is like the epitome of health.

Sure.

And you'll probably find some very healthy vegetarians and many unhealthy vegetarians. Just like in any, you know, carnivore community, you find the same thing. Some healthy people, many unhealthy, etc. Etc. But the average person kind of automatically has a mental image that the vegetarian is like the epitome of health. So they see that on the chicken. They're like, well, if a human vegetarian is really healthy and this chicken is vegetarian, it must be super healthy as well. But once again, when you feed it heavy amounts of grain, predominantly that's all they're eating. It shoots the Omega 6 way up in relation to Omega 3. In fact, like, Joel Salatin did a egg analysis comparing his pasture raised eggs that are legit, like pasture raised rotated onto fresh ground. Because a lot of times, like small farmers, if they don't rotate them on a fresh ground, once again, they run out of food. They, they have to supplement heavily with grains. Most likely it's, it's non GMO grain. If they're a small farmer, that's very common, but that doesn't mean it's organic as well. So. So yeah, once again, they're fed heavy amounts of grain. It shoots the Omega 6 way up in relation to Omega 3. Once again, Omega 6 is a pro inflammatory micronutrient. The linic acid. I always have trouble pronouncing these words.

Linoleic.

Yeah, there you go, man.

Say that three times fast.

Yeah, I just go la. So the LA is found in the seed of the grain. As it's eaten, it's converted into arachidonic acid in the flesh of the animal. And that's like a potent, a potent inflammatory micronutrient. So the Omega 6, that's what has, how it makes it.

I remember, I remember. I love what you're saying because I remember Paul Saladino, MD, when we talked about the carnivore code on the show, and he was talking about the linoleic acid being like really in almost everything because so many things that so many animals that aren't designed to eat, these plants are eating them, they're being fed and also like in the seed oils and everything else. So if people are wanting clarity on, okay, what is the actual poultry that I should be purchasing and what is the eggs, what are the eggs that I should be purchasing, where Are those, do those, do those exist on a grand scale? I mean, it's hard to really send eggs in the mail. They're going to crack, you know.

Yeah.

But chicken and poultry, I would think there is some great delivery services for that.

There are, but I think at a commercial level, not to be like a downer or anything, you're just not going to find grain free operations. No way.

Okay.

Not in the U.S. maybe if it's like some guy is doing it. Like you have the two chickens here, you can probably just feed them like worms, crickets for example. They could just whatever vegetables you have left over, they'll eat all that stuff.

Yeah.

You can supplement them with like flax seeds, like 15% of their diet. And flaxseeds, especially towards the finishing stage. And their omega 3 to omega 6 probably be like 2 or 3 omega 6, omega threes to 1 omega 6. Where like the commercial operations, especially if they're feeding them soy, would be like 1 to 10, 1 to 20.

Okay.

Omega sixes. So basically getting back to your point, with poultry, you're not going to find grain free operations. You might find some operations that are soy free, but they feed them a tremendous amount of other grains, which basically still is not a species specific diet. Also like a lot of I found small, smaller farm operations. Typically what you find is like they have high density because they need to make money. You know what I mean? At the end of the day, you can't raise like two chickens, three chickens, and then make money off of that. And they're already running on small margins. So they have a lot of numbers. And typically the more numbers of hens you have on any given territory, the less each hen has to eat of those worms and the ants and the bugs and all that stuff. And the more they have to rely on those grains.

Again, it doesn't sound like there's a simple solution for the poultry question at all.

For the poultry, it's, it's really tough for eggs. The only corn and soy free operation I've been able to find, at least in the California area, is from happy-hens.com cool. And I volunteered there to learn about their operation. They're like USDA organic certified.

What part of California are they in?

Ramona.

Oh, cool. Yeah, that's San Diego.

Yep.

Yeah.

And yeah, their average hen, for example, has, I think it was like 250 square foot per hen.

Amazing.

Where industry pasture raises 100 square feet per hen and then industry free range is like 1.5 to 2 square foot per hen. So it's almost like nothing at that point. That's a great resource.

Do they. They don't ship the eggs, though. I mean, you can't really ship eggs in the mail.

They don't ship. They don't ship the eggs. I know they're constantly expanding their operation. I don't know where they're at at the moment. It's been probably like a year since I worked there, so. Or volunteer there, rather.

The simple solutions you give are awesome because there's a lot of backstory that leads people to the simple solutions. But just because something's simple don't mean it's going to be easy. Like, people actually have to take a breath and take an honest inventory of, like, hey, is this really important to me? Which, yes, the answer is yes. But the mind does interesting things, you know, when we're stressed and when people are paralyzed by fear or especially with, like, the forced lockdowns and forced mask wearing. Like, I've even been surprised with some of the health influencers and the health leaders in our world just having this continued narrative of, like, wear your mask, do what the government tells you. It's like, whoa. I'm so shocked at the lack of leadership. And then I'm also amazed at how so many people are stepping up. But, you know, this. This leads to the. To the ultimate question for you in this entire conversation, and that is, like, for parents and for people that actually want to live a life well so they can teach children and pass on, how important is this way of eating? Close to nature, close to the land? I mean, it seems so obvious, but share with us your perspective on that. You know, for parents specifically.

Yeah. So, you know, there are a myriad of variables that go into optimizing your mental and physical health. Obviously, nutrition isn't the only variable you should be focusing on, but I feel it is, like, one of the main pillars to optimize your, like, mental and physical health. And we kind of talked about, you know, like, it doesn't matter what you want to do in life. Mental and physical health sets the foundation to accomplish any of those things. You know, like, what are you going to do with chronic fatigue, mental depression, et cetera, et cetera. So I would say it's one of the biggest things, especially when you're dealing with kids. They don't have, like, you know, that body mass to absorb all those chemicals or that high metabolism to process those chemicals out. So it's even more impactful. And the average child, like, born in an urban environment in the US these days is born with trace amounts of about 200 different chemicals in their bloodstream. Even me and you are, I would say, above average health conscious. We probably, if we got our blood tested, we'd probably find like 100 plus chemicals in our, in our system.

You know, there's glyphosate in you and I right now.

Nice.

I mean, whether. Whether we want to admit it or not. Right?

So. No, yeah. I mean, I'm sure we have, like, plenty of trace amounts of, like, a myriad of different and who knows what, this cocktail of chemicals constantly brewing in your body 24 7.

We're the experiment, Eugene. We're the experiment. That's what people forget. Like, we are actually the guinea pig started in 1960. I forget the exact year, but. Earl Butz, where they commoditized, farm and did monocropping and did it in the name of, quote, saving the world and feeding everyone. But this, this, this question for parents is big, you know, because I'm going to be a father next year in 2021, and like, thank God I have this knowledge that I get to embody and then share and teach. But for people that maybe have a less discerning ear or a less discerning eye, can you give them some heartfelt guidance on everything we've discussed today?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, when you make it a priority, it's very easy. I provided that americangrassfed.org company, they deliver to you. How much more convenient can that get? Eatwild.com is another great resource in terms of. With the kids. Andre Liu wrote a great book called Poisoning Our Children. So he talks about. He's also the author of the Myth of Safe Pesticides. That's a great book. It just talks about the impact of, you know, a lot of times, like, maybe parents sometimes say, like, oh, like, I can't even see the chemical residue on this crop. Like, it's so small, it has no impact. But like, for instance, glyphosate or atrazine, a lot of chemical pesticides, the lower the dose, the more potent or dangerous it becomes because your body actually has then at a certain point has a hard time interpreting that as a foreign substance. So it just gets embedded into the hormonal receptors of your cell and actually then starts disrupting your hormones from there. And it has a greater impact when you're like a child versus a grown adult, but it still has, like, a great impact as you're an adult because, I mean, go walk outside, like, anywhere in America these days. Like, literally anywhere in America these days and like 9 out of 10 people you run into are full of obesity and disease, like full of mental and physical pain.

Yes.

So clearly there's something that's not working, you know. And once again, like I mentioned, there's a myriad of variables that go into being physically and mentally healthy. But nutrition is one of the main pillars. The main pillars?

Yeah. And people tend to be attracted to your work because they want to be healthy, they want to optimize their health. And you work across the world with people. Yes. You do a lot of zoom calls and online coaching. What does that look like for you right now? And then what do you see that unfolding to in the future? Like, what's your dream on that?

I love remote work. Some people are like, oh man, I don't like being held up in the house or I like going to work, et cetera, like being there in person, et cetera, et cetera. I actually enjoy it. I like, I have my at home gym. I built it out. I wake up in the morning, I do like a solid like hour, hour and a half workout. I have this like 20 minute meditation practice thing. I do some stretching. I have like an at home garden that produces about like 85 to 100 pounds of vegetables per year that's like fresh off the ground. And then I just do my work. I love like studying. I'm an avid reader. I love to read and take random courses. Probably like you as well.

Yes.

And so I hang out with my girlfriend. That's here in the background as well.

I love it. I love what I love about you the most, man, and what's hit me the most in our conversation today is just your humility. You're a very humble yet hungry man. And if there's no right or wrong answer to this either, because I ask a lot of people that come on the show that are really like ambitious people, you know, they want to achieve either like financial or social impact or some way that they're really like changing the outcome of our world. If you could wave a magic wand, let's say you had all the emotional financial power to just wave a magic wand and change the way that people eat animals and vegetables and the way that the food runs in our country, with a deep breath, like, share what that would look like, you know, magic wand it for us.

I know you would ask deep questions. So I don't know. I'm going to try to answer this one the best I can. But I think the best thing is simple and that's just to get people to live closer to their core values. I think if just that happened alone, that probably end a lot of misery and suffering just right there. It's not going to solve every problem obviously, but yeah, because. Well, regarding, regarding, you asked me this a little bit later or a little bit earlier. You're like, oh, you know, do you run into people with self sabotaging behavior? So regarding the topic of nutrition, let's just say something with like weight gain. There's a great product on this that Paul check did the 1, 2, 3, 4, overcoming obesity and Disease. And basically the model is like very simple. And this is like my interpretation of it is, let's say, you know, fat gain. It's like a symptom, you know, it's not a cause, it's like not a standalone cause. It's a symptom, It's a clue. Yeah, yeah, it's a symptom of what do you got? You got poor lifestyle and nutrition choices and then poor lifestyle and nutrition choices. Like what's that a symptom of? It's like a mindset that doesn't facilitate like health conscious choices. And what's that? A mindset. So that typically trickles down to three main variables with the fourth one that I included as well. One, you have some kind of like love hate relationship present in the person's life. So typical one is like, I've been married for 10 years, I love this person initially, but you know, gone our separate ways or whatever. And I just don't like this person. But I'm staying with them because of like loyalty reasons, religious reasons, social pressure. Yeah, kids, whatever. And this creates kind of like an insidious stress on the body because you're kind of always being fake in a way. You know, you come home from a day of work and then you have to kind of pretend to like this person, et cetera, et cetera. What happens is typically when a person doesn't have control in that environment, what do they do? They seek out food. Food gives them unconditional love. It accepts you for who you are whenever you want it. And then it gives them the control they don't have in that relationship either. They can put it away when they want to and they can pick it up when they want it. You know, so they have the control, they have the unconditional love. The other variable is some kind of story gap. So a person, let's say, wants to be an artist, but they don't feel financially safe expressing that desire in the real world. They're like, well, if I go this art path, I'm not going to make any money, you know, so I'm going to become like an mba and I'm going to get into finance, you know, and this might be okay for like a few years, but then eventually what ends up happening is like, you go to work and you're like in the back of your head, I wish I was just drawing or learning art, learning these art techniques or whatever. Start growing disgruntled towards your work. Then you start growing disgruntled towards your employees.

That's what brought me here to you. That's what created Wellness Force was exactly this story gap.

Yeah. So that's. That's a huge one. And then once again, why that leads to seeking out food. Once again, it provides them unconditional love. It accepts them for the artist that they are inside. They can pick it up, have that love when they want it, put it away. They have that control. They feel they don't have that control in the real world because they. They feel like they don't have, like, the business skills to succeed as an artist or something of that sort. Or maybe they think their art isn't that good, so they don't feel like they have that control.

It depends on how they were supported as well by their parents.

Yeah.

And that magic wand question was a big question. Yeah, that's a big question.

Yeah. And then it goes, obviously the. The last one is sometimes people don't do the deep soul searching and they always feel empty. Like the ladder is. No matter how high they're climbing, it's always against the wrong building kind of thing.

Yeah.

And then the fourth one these days, unfortunately, like, mental and physical pain has been normalized. Even unhealthy people feel healthy in the office environment because everyone around them is so much more unhealthy.

Just drink another cup of coffee. Yeah, suck it up, pussy.

Yeah, that's.

That's one narrative that crushes people.

Yeah, that's one kind of behavior, like, I really don't like about the corporate world. You know, I feel that corporate America has a lot to offer, for sure, but I feel like that's a very destructive mindset that's present in that environment almost every corporate environment. You know, if you're basically not killing yourself for your job, which really no one even wants to do that environment, but because the hamster wheel is spinning, everyone is on it kind of thing. So, yeah, there's that aspect. And then obviously all of that, what does that fall down to? A disconnect between your core Values. Then deeper than that, you get into Dr. Stefano Wolinski's work of quantum psychology. You know, the false core and the false self. You know, you feel like you're inadequate. You kind of sense this spaciousness, you know, or this spaciousness. It's kind of like, you know, you have a thought and then a space and then another thought.

Yes.

And then, you know, sometimes when you're sitting around and you're like, oh, you feel this spaciousness and you then interpret it as emptiness. And then you interpret that emptiness as like depending on your upbringing, let's just say inadequacy. Oh, I'm not doing enough, I'm not being enough. So then that's your false core because you put some kind of meaning on an external object that has no meaning. And then you based your entire personality off that interpretation of the external object. So, oh, I'm inadequate, so what do I have to do? I have to be overly adequate. And then you base your whole entire personality off a false hypothesis. So you can't possibly come up with the right answer once you start that cascade of events. And then it leads you up that whole entire chain disconnection between your core values. Getting in the wrong relationships, getting in the wrong occupation, not knowing who you are leads to unhealthy mindset because obviously that's not sustainable. Leads to poor lifestyle and nutrition choices, leads to weight gain. So, boom, there you go.

Wow. I mean, that was like the most bottom up power answer I've ever heard to the Magic Wand. Because I was thinking top down and you were like bottom up with that answer, which is amazing because, you know, there are so many systems that even let so many systems that are in place, that are broken, that even led you and inspired you to create this book. And that is, in my opinion, the axis, right, the triangle between pharmaceutical, medical, and then big food. Like that is in my opinion those three oligopolies. Each one of those sectors have maybe 10 or less companies that basically run the whole show. Yep, this is what we are lovingly at war with. I'm not saying we need to like get up and fight every day. What I'm saying is we got to be really aware of the real story here because these narratives are passed on and on and on. I mean, think about where you came from, how much emotional pain was there and how much that that country went through. And think about how we even came to the United States. And then the advent of the industrial revolution and the agriculture. Agriculture revolution. And now we're in the informational Revolution and the technology revolution. I feel like we're just starting to grow up, man. I feel like we are like a 13 year old child and we realize like who we actually are. We spend our whole lives either waking up to who we are or denying who we are. And you talked about that with like the false self and getting into the wrong relationship and wrong job. And I just want to share with everyone, like, you are exactly where you're meant to be, otherwise you would not be there. So this isn't about shaming. This conversation with you started with food and I love how it ended up with self awareness because that's the point of all this stuff. Self awareness without judgment, without shame, without putting yourself into the coals of resentment. That is the path. And as we say goodbye, man, I just want to say thank you for this work that you do in the world. Because the more people we have having real dialogue and real conversations about how we can heal ourselves and our mother earth eventually with our children. And I don't know if you do want children or not, but whoever is going to bring new life into this world, they have to embody this type of knowledge. And when you're around somebody, you can tell, like they either embody it, it's in their body or it's not. And we all go through unique challenges. Right. Like I shared with you, like, this is the most weight I've ever carried, but I can dissect it to misappropriation of stress and poor decisions and I can unpack and really intellectualize and also in my body heal the things that have brought me to this point. Because at some point I think we all just get beat down. I think we all make decisions that guide us closer to where our soul's trying to go. So on your path as you've written this book and you've done such a great job about describing all the ways that we can eat well and close to nature. How would you actually define wellness? You know, what is Eugene's view on what it actually means to even live our life? Well, how would you define wellness?

I would just go back to being aligned with your core values, not having that story gap. I think that sets the foundation, you know, and then you can get into the details after that. So I feel if like the disconnect is there, then it's like no matter what you build upon it, once again you have that poor foundation, it's not going to be sustainable. Yeah, so that's my take.

Well, it's a pretty simplistic take for a Very advanced and very, like, nuanced life, Eugene. Share with people, man, where they can get the book and where they can learn about you.

Yeah. So first, thank you for your show because honestly, after I ran into that video with Paul Chek, I started working on the book, but then I'm like, ah, man, this is just too much work. Because I wrote a book before this one and it's like, it's. It looks like a very simple project, but it always takes up way more time than you thought it would and.

Twice as much money. Twice as much time, maybe even more.

Exactly. And I kind of dropped it. But then I ran into your episode with Paul. Check. You know, like, the revolution is near. I forgot it. The exact name.

Because it's been like, the revolution is coming.

Yeah, the revolution is coming. And that's what motivated me to get back into it. So I'm pretty sure if I wouldn't have run into that actual episode, I probably wouldn't have actually finished the book. So.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, thank you for that.

Thank you.

I appreciate that. Finally, what's your Instagram and your website and like, where can people get involved with your coaching and tell everybody about that?

Yeah, so the book they can buy, like on Amazon, for example. I have it on my website as well, that truffganathletics.com and just like with your name, probably they could just Google my name and find all the Instagram and all that stuff. So.

And it's a very one of a kind last name. I've never heard that last name before.

Truffkin.

Do you know any other Truffkins that are in your family?

I think it's like a copy and paste name in Eastern Europe. Maybe not so much here, but.

Well, one thing I've enjoyed so much about this conversation is again, your humility and your hunger. And it's no doubt that's why you wrote a book about how to eat food close to nature. So until Eugene and Josh see you again, we're both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you soon.

Thanks, guys.