Barbell Shrugged - It Takes Guts: The Most Nutrient Dense Food You Are Missing Out On w/ Ashleigh Van Houten, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #494

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

Food (and life) is all about perspective: having an open mind and an adventurous spirit can take you to wonderful places you’d never experience otherwise.   Pre-Order your copy of “It Takes Guts��� here: Amazon and Barnes and Noble   From health and nutrition writer, podcast host, and self-proclaimed health nerd Ashleigh VanHouten comes this entertaining and user-friendly guide to enjoying some of the more adventurous parts of the animal, as well as understanding the value of whole-animal cooking. Enjoy 75 delicious and uncomplicated recipes sourced from an enthusiastic advocate of nose-to-tail, ancestrally inspired eating who does not have a background in cooking or organ meats—so if she can do it, so can you! Ashleigh has also enlisted the help of some of her chef friends who are known for their beautiful preparations of nose-to-tail dishes to ensure that her recipes nourish and satisfy both your body and your palate.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   What are the benefits of organ meat. Sustainability and eating nose to tail. Why is organ meat so much healthier yet we never eat it. How to make organ meat a part of your daly diet. Gut health and the microbiome.  Where to find Ashleigh’s new book, “It Takes Guts” on preorder   Ashleigh VanHouten on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Shadow Creative Studios - Save $200 + Free Consult to start you podcast using code” “Shrugged” at podcast.shadowstud.io   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   http://onelink.to/fittogether - Brand New Fitness Social Media App Fittogether   Purchase our favorite Supplements here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4    Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrug family, Ashley Van Houten is back on the show. This week on Barbell Shrugged, Ashley Van Houten is coming to us talking about It Takes Guts, her brand new book, nose to tail, how you can incorporate organ meats into your diet, why you are missing out on the most nutritious meat, and how you can get stronger, healthier, by including some organ meat into your life. Check this out. I have a fun story inside this episode about the first time that I ordered an entire cow, showed up to my gym, and we had an organ meat party. It was insane. It was super fun. We ate some eyeballs. We ate

some tongue. Some of the things were delicious. Some of the things were not as delicious, but I highly recommend you get Ashley's book. You can get over to Amazon right now. It's on pre-order. I have a couple coming my way, and I've already convinced my wife that we're going to have an organ party. We're going to invite some friends over. We're going to try some of Ashley's cookbook recipes, and we're going to see where this thing takes us. We're going to invite some friends over, have a couple drinks. It's going to be a really classy night. We're also going to eat some beef

tongue. It's going to be delicious. Maybe some beef cheek, maybe a heart. Heart's actually delicious. But before we get into the show, actually, you need to get over to Amazon right now and just punch in It Takes Guts, or you can check out in the show notes. I've got a link to her book. So make sure you get over and do that right now. She's a good friend of the show. We really love Ashley and it's super cool that she has gone out, written this book. It's just standing out on an island by herself. And the more we can support her in this endeavor, I can't wait to see where she takes it. And I can totally see in like the next couple years, a docu-series of Ashley going out and finding all these tribes

that are cooking orc and meats and going nose to tail with all the animals incredible she's a savage and I can't wait we're just going to jump into the show reads are coming in the middle and I will see you guys at the break welcome to my little shrug I'm Anders Varner Doug Larson coach Travis Mash the muscle maven Ashley Van Houten yo I'm so stoked to be on the phone with you today or on Zoom or whatever we're doing, whatever this virtual thing, this virtual reality life that we live in. You're up in Canada hanging out. Yes. Mash, are you in North Carolina?

No, I'm in South Carolina. Yeah, South of the Beats, but we're coming home tomorrow. In Memphis, Tennessee, we got all corners of the world here, sort of. Yo, we're going to talk about organ meat. You have a brand new book. How in the world do you start a cookbook with organ meats? Because you can't just go write a cookbook and, like, sample, like, just, like, dabble, start.

You were eating unattractive, not good-tasting food for long enough that you decided you were going to be an expert and publish something on how to make unattractive, not good tasting food for long enough that you decided you were going to be an expert and publish something on how to make unattractive, not good food, good and attractive. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. Okay. Well, first of all, thank you for having me.

It's so fun to hang out with you guys again. I miss you, bros. I miss you. I miss you, bros. I'm so glad that we're doing this again. I've got a lot of things to say about that introduction because I'm going to disagree with you on a bunch of things immediately. Wow. Is that the biggest stigma that they taste gross? Is that like the biggest thing with the

organ meats? I mean, there's a ton of things about it, but like, so to start at the beginning, I'll try my best and you guys just at will interrupt me because I'll just go. Because obviously, you know that this is my- We all play the same game. We're all talkers. Yes. This is my hill to die on, as it were. I love it.

This is my thing that I'm very excited about, so I can talk about it forever. It's so good. Okay. First of all, I did not grow up eating this way. Like a lot of people did in different cultures and different parts of the world. I grew up with American parents in Canada. I ate what everybody else ate. I don't know, cereal, Dunkaroos, whatever the hell people ate in the eighties and nineties. Right. So I ate normal food until I was in my twenties and I started getting into CrossFit and I started getting into paleo and I started caring about what I ate. And the organ

meat thing, I think was like a natural evolution of paleo where the more I learned about food and learned about like nutrient density and eating, like getting the best bang for your buck with what you eat and eating animals and being like respectful of the animals you're eating, all of that stuff. It's like really just a natural progression for me. But like looking back, I always like to eat stuff that other people thought was like intense or weird. Like that was like a thing that I like to do. Like fear factor. Perfect contest. 100%. 100%. I love that. You just like the reaction from them, like shock value or what? That's not how it may have been how it started a little bit. Like when I moved to New York in my mid twenties,s, I was exposed to just so many different cultures' foods, right? So if you look at a lot of Asian cultures and

African cultures, they're eating weird parts of animals that we wouldn't normally eat, and it was very normal. And because I always loved food and I loved learning and new experiences, I just always approached it like an adventure. I didn't look at weird food like, oh, that's gross or weird. I was like, all right, let me try it. Because I just know that like the risk reward thing is so you try something, you don't like it, you don't like it, you move on. But if you try something and you like it, like there's a whole new kind of world opened up to you. Right. So I was never scared to try new foods or new like ingredients or body parts or animals. So I just, I did that. And like the more I got into it, the more like, it was funny that other people reacted and freaked out. I found that

entertaining, but I, when I did it, I was like, I actually like this food. I actually like the way it makes me feel. I like the taste of most of it, not all of it, most of it. Um, and I just enjoyed it. And so it started to kind of like percolate in my head as I've been like getting older and growing my brand and my career and like trying to really double down on like what I care about and what's important to me. And nutrition wise, this was something that I just, I felt really strongly about. And people were starting to respond to me because I'm posting on social media that I'm eating hearts or I'm eating tongues or whatever. And people were like, that's gross. Or that's interesting. Or how do you do it? Or how did you get into this? Just asking me questions. And so I started to kind of think like, okay,

maybe there's something to this. Like maybe people are interested. Like maybe it's a very niche group, but people who started writing keto cookbooks two years ago, it was a niche group for them too. And now there's 200 keto cookbooks in Barnes and and noble you know so i'm not saying this is going to go like hugely mainstream but like there's a there's an audience out there for everything right and if i'm interested in it there are other people who are going to be interested in it and that's kind of how it how it started i feel like i feel like liver is probably the most common then maybe like heart yeah but what's like the full spectrum of of the all the foods that are going into this cookbook? Like are brains in there or I think kidneys are in there, right?

Are testicles in there? What's the full gamut? I love how excited Andrew is about it. I have a great story whenever I'm allowed to talk again. Okay. I think probably all of us have some great stories. So awful or organ meats basically constitutes anything on the animal that is edible that isn't muscle meat, right? But with that said, some awful, some organ meats are also muscle

meats. So heart, for example, is one that I recommend to people a lot because it doesn't, it has a very mild, normal, familiar taste. It doesn't have like a weird texture or a taste that's going to be very unfamiliar to people who already eat meat. And it's a muscle meat. So again, a lot of people have issues like texturally with a lot of organ meats, and this is just another muscle so um but it ranges like head to literally head to tail so tongue is a really good one brain is in there um tendons uh you know um stomach stomach lining kidney spleen um everything let's get it, Mash. That's what you're missing, my man. So when I opened the gym in 2010, like the paleo thing was just taken off, right? And we all, it was like your badge of honor to be like more paleo than the other paleo

person. So you like start figuring out, yeah, like everyone's just kind of like getting into it. You're building the gym and like the culture of it. And you're as CrossFit as possible. And the most CrossFitter, most CrossFitty you can be is like to be more paleo. And you're the most natural monkey in the jungle, whatever you are. She wins.

Yeah. I ordered, somebody wrote in our like little members only group like i'm ordering a cow would we like to do a cow share in the gym and we had all these people say yes i wanted so we ordered like a full cow yes there is a giant difference between getting a butchered piece of meat and i swear when they dropped this thing, it was as if like they killed the cow and then just like chainsawed it into chunks and put it in a bag and dropped it off at the gym. And we didn't know what to do with all the extra stuff.

Like we tried to divvy out the meat share. That's what you do. Yeah. I wish you had been there. And we threw a big party and we had like an organ party because no one really wanted it. No one knew what to do. Who's going to eat the eyes? There's only two of them.

How do we split them? We had brains. We had the tongues. We had the cheeks. We had – tongue is delicious. When I've said unattractive things, it's when you start to get into like blood sausage where you look at it, you're like, that just isn't for me. Blood sausage, also delicious. Probably one of the

most delicious recipes in the book. But you did touch on something unattractive 100% because I am making a cookbook and I am trying to take pictures of this shit for the cookbook that looks appealing. And listen, this is one area where like the vegans have an advantage because if you're making like an acai bowl with like some berries and shit in it that's very pretty it's like lots of colors colors and like whatever everything i'm making is just like a pile of meat like it's tough like i had to get pretty creative and it's like deep purple oh yeah i mean lots of deep purples of like deep blood colored stuff same time um what do they do should we say why like you know before we go deeper like you know what's the why is it better like you know why are you doing this yeah what the hell

is really the question but like you know is there is there a point to it like is it more healthy like um is there research on that or yeah yeah so first of all yes you have asked the exact question that my mother asks me on a daily basis yeah that and many other choices i've made in my life why um but yeah so big question there are actually a ton of research backed reasons why to do it. And I'll try to kind of like quickly go over the main ones. And I talk about this a lot more in the book. But basically, almost any criteria that you would give to mindfully eating is checked off when it comes to organ meats. So things like sustainability, it's a nobrainer that if you are one of the many North Americans

that does still eat meat, even though the internet is trying to convince us that veganism is better, most of us still eat meat. If you do, it is simply just a more sustainable way to eat. If you're going to eat true nose to tail, you're going to make use of the entire animal that is already being harvested for the steak that you want to eat. You're going to eat the whole thing. It's better for the planet. It's more ethical. It's the most respectful way to do that if you care about that part of it. Economical, most of these parts are cheaper because frankly, they are less in demand. So like for example, a lot of times, and I'm talking grass fed local, like good quality organs, you can get tongues for like eight or nine bucks

that'll feed four or five people. You can get a heart that's like three and a half pounds, a heavy, big piece of heart that can feed you for days for like 15 bucks. Chicken hearts, you can get a pound of them for like $3 just because people don't know what to do with them and they don't know how to prepare them. So they're not in high demand. So oftentimes it can even be tricky to get them because butchers aren't bringing them in because no one wants them. But some of this stuff, yeah. Where do they go by the way? They just ground up and put into animal feed or? That's one of the things. Sometimes they're actually exported to places like Mexico where they actually eat organ meats, which is ironic when you think about these slaughterhouses that are killing cows, sending the most nutrient dense parts to other places. And then we're

essentially eating the leftovers really, when you think about it. But anyway, that's, yeah, that's a whole other story. I mean, most of it really isn't getting wasted. It is getting reused. It's not like they're like throwing it in a landfill, but we might as well be making use of it and getting like the nutrients out of it. So then the other part is that it is incredibly nutrient dense. Liver is pound for pound, the most nutrient dense thing a human being can eat. And you don't have to eat 12 ounces of it every day to get the benefits. So all of the vitamins and minerals and amino acids and micronutrients that you can get from liver, you can eat two or three ounces maybe once a week

and you're getting plenty. So yeah, bang for your buck. It's really good. So I mean, that covers a lot of it. Yeah. Good for the planet. The nutrient density thing. That's what Jack was going into. Go ahead. Yeah. The nutrient density thing is a really important one. And I don't know how deep it actually goes. Doug, I kind of want to kick it to you if you had some like real knowledge into the actual nutrient density. But I know that liver, I've gone to purchase liver at the local butchery and it's incredibly cheap. And I've always just wanted to learn how to cook it, to eat it. And then I see it and then I don't do it well. And then I'm like, ah, maybe in like five more years, I'll try it again. It's just a, it's a tough meat to cook. Yeah. The other, I mean, another

recommendation that I give to people when they ask me is if you are interested in these things and you, you understand, like you don't need to be convinced anymore. You know, it's healthy, you know, it's good for you. You're willing to try, but you don't know how to do it. You're a little bit intimidated because you think it's going to be gross, or you've had it before and it was gross. The recommendation that I give is generally to start with chicken because unless you're, like, super anti-chicken, I don't know, but if you eat chicken, to start with chicken or poultry

because the smaller the animal, the milder tasting their organs are going to be. So a chicken liver is much more mild and borderline sweet than like a buffalo or a beef liver, like these bigger organs are going to taste stronger. So most people, I say, if you're going to get into liver, start with chicken liver and maybe pan fry them, chop it up, pan fry it with some bacon and onions. Cause bacon masks, all kinds of problems. Um, or make a chicken liver mousse that you can put on some toast or crackers or something. And you're putting some booze and some cream in there. It's delicious. Right. In the mountains, everybody eats chicken livers. There you go. And chicken, chicken hearts as well. Um um i think that i don't

yeah i don't have like the uh the numbers right in front of me and i i believe probably that there are some animals that have like a little bit more b12 or like beef is going to be like a little bit more dense and whatever but like generally speaking liver is liver if you get it from a well-raised healthy animal it's going to be super nutrient dense so like stick with the the easier tasting stuff first and kind of like work your way in. I'm not sure why I know this or why I remember this, but I heard one time for, I believe it was polar bear liver. Did you get any polar bear liver in your diet in the last year and a half? Dude, I wish. I heard that you're likely to die like you'll you'll you'll essentially i want to

say it was do you know anything about that i would have i would have assumed maybe like mercury or something because they're eating so much fish but um i have never heard that and that is like a very stereotypical canadian thing that i probably should know about that i have eaten bear though um and moose obviously which is delicious. And then the other day I was talking to somebody who had eaten mountain lion before and I was super jealous of that. So there are lots of animals I haven't eaten yet. I'm kind of sad. I had not heard that about polar bears. There are certain organs and certain animals that like you need to be careful of. So also in the book, I have laid out like like, if this isn't just a recipe book, there's a whole backstory. There's lots of like kind of handholding and education,

because I get that people, even people who are interested, like you need to be informed before you like dive into something that's scary. So there's a big part of the book that talks about preparation, the benefits of the specific organs, and then also maybe even things that you need to sort of be aware of. Like there's maybe even things that you need to sort of be aware of. Like there's maybe issues sometimes with people, depending on your preexisting conditions, where you don't want to eat a ton of iron, or like you said, like a ton of vitamin A or something. This is pretty rare, right? Like you would probably know if you have some kind of condition that you need to be careful of certain like vitamins or micronutrients or

things like that. And also you probably need to eat a ton of whatever it is. And look, most of us just are not eating like two pounds of liver a day. Like it's not really going to be an issue. Um, and then of course there's like cooking methods. Like there's like myths that you need to like super overly cook things. Whereas actually with liver, you don't want to cook it really, really well. Cause that's going to make it rubbery and taste really gross. You kind of want it a little pink on the inside. Things like brain, there's like this big, of course, that's a hard one. Like that's a next level organ. We can get to that. But a lot of people are scared of it because maybe they've heard about like mad cow disease or whatever back in the day. And this again is something that is not actually transferable to

human beings nearly as much as we think and it's basically been eradicated it's extremely rare but it essentially goes back to the common sense advice that you need to be sourcing these ingredients well you need to know where you're getting it from you need to make sure that it's uh that it's fresh um and you need to like develop relationships with your farmer or your butcher or the, even the online store where you're getting these from, like you should ask these questions and be informed. And if they can't tell you, then that's a sign, right? Like they don't know where the stuff's coming from. They don't know how fresh it is or whatever. That's a sign for you,

right? So you need to get most of your stuff. I'm sorry. Did you get most of your stuff from local farmers or do you have a good online source for people? There are great online sources. I did end up getting most of mine online because again, most of the work that I've been doing, I've been in Canada. And so most of the online companies that I use are American. They are not sending organs over the border for me. But I'm really lucky because where I am, I'm in Ontario and I'm close to Quebec and Quebec has, you know, the French have a slightly different kind of cuisine than we do. And they're like more into organs and eating cool animals, I think generally than English speakers are. So

like I can get a lot of stuff there. And I also have a great relationship with a butcher close by and a farm close by. So I've been really lucky that I've been able to. When you go back to a regular grocery store, how do you feel after and when you look at the meat counter after having an actual relationship with a butcher? I feel like most people don't understand even what that means because they just go to the Publix down the street and whatever's there, that's all they get. It's true. Yeah. I feel bored and sad by it. But also if you actually go to like even a regular grocery store, you'd be surprised sometimes the things that you would see there that

your eyes have literally passed over in the past. Like things like chicken hearts and chicken gizzards, you can probably find at your local grocery store, but we just don't even think to look. So we don't see this stuff, you know? And I've had people come to me who are actually like kind of intimidated about the process of seeking out organ meats because they're like, are people going to think I'm weird? Like what questions do I even ask? And I have some stories sourcing ingredients for this book that if I was like maybe a little bit more shy I would have given up because I okay a couple recipes needed blood okay blood sausage blood pudding whatever I need a bunch of blood

that is not an easy thing to find okay and I went to like sourcing blood I love it right I don't have any extra i'm just looking for some like typo anybody anybody got it literally i'm not a vampire i promise maybe or type a i'm not really into that it's not my thing it's too sweet whatever yeah but like i literally went to a couple butcher shops where and these are butchers these are butchers that i'm speaking to and like i feel like i'm i have like normal social skills like i'm not a weirdo I'm not like coming in with like a trench coat being like hey you got any blood like I'm a normal person and and I walked into these places and they looked at me like I did ask them for like their personal blood like people were giving me looks like but again this goes back to

the fact that North America North America, and also let's be real white people, we are not familiar with this stuff. And so we think it's weird when the rest of the world does not think it's weird. I would say flatland. I mean, like, none of this sounds weird to me in the mouth. Like, you know, where we, I saw my grandmother grab a chicken by the head and go like this and rip the head off right in front of me i'm six years old and she pulls this chicken's head off and then we ate everything the gizzards the livers are you scared by it or are you not like no i just how do you think the man deadlifted 700 the other a couple years back yeah his first rep one rep seven okay so maybe not just that's how he got so strong i would say

flatlanders or and we were just super poor and you see you eat what you need to eat and so you're right you're that real thing by the way when you lived in the mountains so they call the flatlanders like we're like a different yeah oh yeah set of. It was like the mountain people versus the flatlanders. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Studs versus pussies. Yeah. Good. Yeah. That's what happens when I drink too much bourbon. I mean.

What kind of day is it? Travis is on vacation. Travis is on vacation. I'm on vacation. I wish I knew it was a bourbon call. I would have. Never too late. Yeah.

Man. Okay. But going back to to that like i maybe i'm painting all north american white people with a brush that i shouldn't because yes southern people yeah on the west coast don't paint me like that rocky mountain oysters you know yeah it's the thing but i guess bulls balls is what she's talking about yeah yeah like again it goes back to like even veganism and vegetarianism and stuff like this is like a privileged modern way of looking at food because we can choose to like only eat like soy burgers for the rest of our lives because we have access you just got so much trouble like that i love it no me either good for you and i'm also not like i'm past the point of like actually

morally personally judging people who are vegetarians because it's not in my business and I actually don't care I don't I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything and I'm certainly not trying to sell this book to vegetarians I'm selling it to the vast majority of people who still eat meat because that is most of us because that is how we're supposed to eat and if you want to choose to eat another way you totally can but yeah but but it's like again it's just like going back to the idea that this is a very like privileged and also sort of um uh bubble experience where we can like just choose to eat this one cut of an animal because that's the tastiest and the easiest and what we're used to and anything else

is weird think about how arbitrary it is for those of us who eat animals all the time and don't blink an eyelash and eating a steak to think like oh but it's fucking creepy and weird and gross and extreme to eat that animals another part of the animal's body like we are killing this animal and eating this part of it but this part of it over here that's weird and creepy don't touch that that's bizarre and no nobody in the history of the planet has ever been that way except for us right so have you done any research or talked to anybody that is is on like the gut biome side of this in that like your gut if you were to look at mine i eat chicken and beef and eggs and that's the only

bacteria i have in there to digest food if you gave me a liver right now of like a deer or something, the gut biome I have doesn't know what that is. Have you been able to connect with any like researchers on what that does to have such a wide variety of different parts and animals that are coming into your system? Yeah. Well, I mean, first, you're not like carnivore. You're not like just eating those three things.

No, that's just like the meat that I typically am eating. If I was left on my own and didn't have a family or a wife, be like ground beef and cheese. It's not like when I was single, I was like going out expanding my horizons it's like uh this looks like a pound of meat i'm gonna put it in a pan and in about five minutes i'm gonna eat it all yeah so there isn't like a ton of variety that i have i mean i would um probably ask people like maybe paul saladino or maybe like Gabrielle who actually Gabrielle Lyon um

who's very much about like high protein hey bud bringing bread into the scenario wrong podcast man the audio listeners my two-year-old just showed up with a bunch of bread. Hey, bud. Back to the kitchen, please. And he can get away with it. But I haven't really gone too far down that rabbit hole. And it would be interesting. But I do think it goes back to general health and resilience starts with gut health. And if you're healthy and you have a healthy gut, and again, you're eating good quality.

Like we're not talking like who knows where, like dubious origins of these like weird organ meats you don't know where they came from like good quality stuff i don't think it should be an issue because again our bodies and our guts are meant to digest um organs see i haven't really had many people having an issue with it yeah anecdotally yeah how far down into like the food system did you end up traveling? I imagine it, it doesn't, that may be a rabbit hole that you tried to steer clear of. Cause I imagine it's pretty scary once you start to get into like understanding how the food system actually works, talking to a butcher, where they're, where they're sourcing their meats from. Was that something that you either tried to stay away from or did you kind of go down that rabbit hole?

I mean, I was trying to learn as much as I possibly could. I mean, I think one of the one of the cool things about this experience for me has been that, first of all, obviously, there's not a lot of organ meat cookbooks out there. If you Google it, there's maybe like two. So I'm like ahead of the curve with that, which I think is good. But the ones that do exist are from professional chefs, like French trained chefs and hunters, right? So there are people who like hunters, again, don't bat an eyelash at the stuff. And then like classically trained French chefs are familiar with foie gras and things like that. And one of the things that's been really cool for me is I don't have a background as a chef. I don't have a whole lot of like professional training with any of this stuff so

it's really been like completely self-taught learning as i go and and i i had to like i mean i'm not an overly squeamish person i've never had an issue with like i don't know handling raw meat or anything like that but like guys when i got a brain for the first time, and I'm alone in my kitchen with a fucking brain, it's like a trip, right? This stuff, I can handle it, but I was just like, whoa, guys, whoa. And when I had tripe, you guys know tripe is weird, right? It doesn't taste that great. Wait, you usually have that in the bowl.

In pho, yeah. Yeah, in pho, yeah. So tripe actually has like zero taste. It's the texture that people freak out about because it's kind of like rubbery. But again, it's like people in different cultures put that in their soup on purpose because they like the rubbery texture.

Like everybody, it's just about what you're familiar with, right? But a lot of these things are weird. Like when I bought tripe for the first time, like I can send you guys pictures. It has the texture when it's raw of like a deflated beach ball. And it kind of looks like one too. And it's,

it's intimidating. It was like, when I had to like learn how to cut the skin off the tongue for the first time, cause you boil it, it looks like a tongue. It straight up looks like a tongue. It has taste buds on it.

It has a thick tongue skin on it. And then you have to cut, you have to slice it off. Like there are, there are things where I was like, this is, this is gross. I'm not going to lie to you guys. This is kind of creepy and gross, but we, again, as a society are so disconnected from our food that maybe things have to be a little bit gross when you're preparing food. Cause you're cutting up a dead animal and we should remember that we're eating an animal, right? It's a body part. We're not supposed to pretend that this is something else right so i'm scheduling my first right now this week scheduling my first hunting trip because of

exactly what you're talking about for the first time i want to go kill something so like i want to go hunt and know what it feels like to take an animal's life get it butchered bring it home put it in the freezer and eat it for however long i can that's huge because i've never i've never done it i want to go when are you going i want to see this i want to go with you i'm going shooting on sunday i'm going shooting on sunday i'm going to the range on sunday sunday morning 6 45 bro just come to my farm we shoot every day it's like yeah we have yeah please come yeah i mean i'll show you how to shoot this is a trend though that um one of the things that people are seeing during quarantine and i actually read an article about this that um it's the trend towards learning about hunting

has been going up um among a lot of different uh demographics including women um very recently and i think a lot of it has to do with COVID and quarantine and being stuck in our houses. People are caring more about not being wasteful, being self-sufficient, being able to take care of themselves. And, you know, it's silly, like, you can kind of joke about like, oh, we're all pretending that it's like the apocalypse, or we're like going back to olden days. But like, this is maybe a good reset for people to like, learn how to take care of yourselves and also learn how to take responsibility for the things that you are eating. I think that's really important. I actually signed up for it too. And my course was supposed to

happen a month ago and they put it off because of COVID, but I'm doing it this summer too. Cause I feel the exact same way. Like I've gotten to this point where I understand these things and I know how to prepare it, but I need to have the experience, you know, and I'm not like super pumped to kill animals, but like it's... I remember the first time my buddy shot a deer that I went out on the four-wheeler and like tracked it down and we found it. And when I walked up to it, I was legitimately freaked out that there was a dead animal really next to me. And I wouldn't touch it.

Like, I just didn't – I wasn't there. I didn't realize, like, how kind of, like, that was a living being. It was hot. It was, like, warm. There was, like, an aura around it. But now I'm ready to step back in and see if I can be a part of it. Boys, we should do this together. I would love to go with you two

and cap some animals. Travis is shooting a shotgun sideways. He's robbing a bank. It's like an NWA music video. I have no problem shooting animals.

Travis, what kind of animals do you hunt? I mean deer. In the mountains of North Carolina, a lot of deer. Believe it or not, this is about to be crazy, I'm about to tell you, but I have a grandfather, Wilbur Waters. He's like a world-famous bear hunter. So he was like, this is the coolest thing I've talked about on this show. But in North Carolina history, if you study that,

and as you grow up in North Carolina, they talk about my grandfather. He was like, you know, there's a big monument where I'm from of him where he killed over 100 bear in his lifetime. And so there's all kinds of stories of, like, him being in a deer stand and a bear getting up there with him, and he kills it with his knife. Anyway, so, like, I have only killed a deer stand and a bear getting up there with him and he kills it with his knife and anyway so like um so i've i've only killed the deer um i can't i don't think anything else other than just a deer but i would love to go i would like to go bear hunting but i would like to go like what i would like to do is learn how to shoot a bow and go like bear that's like the next level that's the

next level is the bow hunting i think what you're talking about actually about how everybody's really starting to like pay attention to this is now that we can't go anywhere we all have to like instead of focusing on what's out there and all the things that we want to go do and attain and acquire and be a part of outside of there it's like okay now i'm in here i'm in here. I'm in my house. I'm with my family. I have to focus on like what's going in my body, how I'm like interacting with my family. All of these pieces are now like very obvious, the relationships and your health kind of, everybody's talking about health right now. But when you don't have the option to go out, the only way to go is in. And now you start to, like, I feel like a lot of people are really starting to focus on maybe not making it such as much of a priority as we do, but, you know,

they're at least aware. And I can see that trend happening for sure. Yeah. And I do think too, like, I'm not saying that this is going to turn into a zombie apocalypse. Like I kind of was hoping that would happen at the beginning, but I don't think that's going to happen. But I do think that this is, this is reminding people that our concept of society and the world as being like well run and in control is very tenuous and like shit can go South at the drop of a hat and not to

sound like crazy, you know, like, you know, everybody needs to get into a bunker. But like, I do think that this is a reminder for people that we need to learn how to take care of ourselves and be self-sufficient. And if stuff does go bad, can you handle it? Do you know how to take care of yourself and your family and live if things go bad? And I think that that's, I don't think that's a, I think if you get to the point where you're obsessed with it or you're, you can't function in real life, that's a problem. But I think that's crazy. That's a feeling we should all, we should all have. Like we should all be more connected to how to take care of ourselves in any situation. Ever wonder where all the protein goes? How does a hamburger

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consultation and $200 off getting you all set up. It's going to be sweet. You need a podcast. Get on there. Talk about all the things. And then our friends over at Organifi. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. That is where you save 20% on the green, red, and gold drinks. You're probably not getting the micronutrients you need. We know that you need to get the vitamins and minerals into your system to help with all the systems keeping you moving in the right direction. You don't want to be losing the gains because you're not getting the micros. That's one of the biggest problems I have with the, if it fits your macros, nutrition protocols, that it's all a bunch of junky food, you're getting all the processed stuff. So if you are somebody that has a really big problem getting whole foods, if you're on the

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Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Let's get back to the show. Yeah, part of it is like I don't know how to do anything. Like legit, I don't know how to fix things. I don't know how to – I can deadlift. I can squat pretty well, front squat mainly. Reverse lunges off a deficit. Let's get some.

Throw a sandbag. Come on. Gardening, first one ever, COVID-19. Hunting, result of COVID-19. I'm going to learn how to do these things. You want to become more self-sufficient because this probably is like where, you know, everybody, we are doing, putting an addition on our house because my wife's going to be home. She's like permanently working home but that's really just what it is is it's like we have to all focus on like this thing that actually matters the most which is inside our house the people around us all the time and how do we how do we make that better

because we don't have the distraction of all the other things that we could be doing right now pretty cool i guess um yo when you start cooking meat, I actually have, because we all talk so much, I've been writing notes down on things I want to ask you because it might be 30 minutes before we get back to them. It's like the first time I take notes in shows. Beef tartare served raw. How many things do you actually need to cook and what is the temperature is it organ to organ how do i know when like liver is done versus brain being done or you know how do you kind of just outside of like getting your book and following along, like, when do I know that beef liver is, is ready to be eaten or like optimal for eating? Yeah. Uh, I mean, first of all,

best thing to do definitely buy the book cause it's all in there. Um, but what is the name of the book by the way? So I haven't like formally launched it, but I can say it here cause I don't know when this is going to go live and I'm going we're gonna pair it up when when's the launch well so it's technically going to be ready for when this goes out we'll just say it'll be ready for pre-order because it's essentially ready now it's just there's like a couple like bits and pieces like logistically that we have to like put into place before i like launch it when this goes out it'll be available for pre-order we're like three months ahead already yeah so we're good yeah okay um what was i saying about okay so the name okay and stuff yeah the name yeah so it's called it takes guts

nailed it i love it it takes guts to try something new and weird and scary and also literally it takes guts obviously i'm pretty proud of that so i and i'm like that i came up with a name that didn't have like the word like awful in it like awful good recipes whatever so anyway that's what it's called um and you had chitlins yes of course come on of course do you guys even know what chitlins is uh it's i've heard of them it's the guts ah fried right most of the time they put stuff in the guts too but you know that's yeah that's always a preference of the family but yeah how do you cook brain by the way i've never had brain before you just you just

slice it thin like pan fried or what do you do with it there's lots of different ways i mean like like travis said i mean if you fry anything it's going to make it taste more delicious that's almost like the cop-out option like for a lot of these ingredients you just fry it like you just batter it and fry it because it's going to taste good because everything tastes good fried um but so going back to like general kind of rules for like how you know things are cooked or whatever, like there are definitely different temperatures and amounts and stuff. Like for example, like one of my favorite recipes in the book that I'm so proud of is a, it's a stuffed, I think it was a bison heart, maybe a buffalo, but like a big heart,

stuffed heart. And it was stuffed with onions and uh mushrooms and bacon and you basically just prep the heart you slice it open you stuff you cook that stuff first you stuff it you know um whatever put some twine around it put in the oven and it comes out and you slice it almost like a roast and it's like nice and pink on the inside but it's cooked it's just delicious it's so good um but anyway all the different parts, they are cooked in different ways at different temperatures at different times. You really kind of need to play it out. But I think one thing to remember

for stuff like liver and heart is that it's kind of the same as if you're cooking like a pork chop or a steak or whatever, there's a little bit of intuition. There's a little bit of personal preference. And it's not as scary as people think where if I don't

cook this liver at this exact temperature for this exact amount of time it's going to be full of parasites it's going to kill me or whatever it's it's the same as a steak like if you want to eat a little bit a little bit more pink you're good if you want to if you really want to overcook the hell out of it and eat like gross overly cooked steak that's on you you do that it's fine you can do that um in terms of the like raw like the um tartar stuff you probably want to talk to do you guys know paul saladino like do you talk to him much the carnivore guy uh i have not talked to him but i know who he is he he set it up let's go yeah yeah you guys would you guys i mean you'd get a great chat with him too like he eats a lot of this stuff um raw and i guess there's Like he eats a lot of this stuff raw,

and I guess there's the argument that a lot of this stuff when it's raw and like the closest – The raw thing is weird. Like beef tartare is cool. It's like a high, classy, you feel good eating it. I don't know if you were like – it's more like I feel cool eating it than maybe I need to. But the raw thing is weird.

Like when you're taking that paleo thing so far that you're just eating – I ate half a pound of raw meat one time in hamburger because I wanted to prove a point that I wasn't afraid of it. That's gross. What happened? I didn't get sick. That's cool. If I have bourbon, I can still eat anything.

I'd be like, boom, boom. No, I think somebody was like, it was like grass-fed, really high-quality beef. And I was like, watch, I'll just eat it. And then I was like, next thing you know, I had a couple bites of – Yeah, it was just cold and gross. Well, again, it's a textural thing, right? But I think I'm not going to tell anyone to eat raw heart and liver because there are risks involved in this.

The same way as eating a raw piece of fish or a raw piece of steak, there's risks. If it's not super fresh, if it's been left out for a minute, if you don't know where it came from, yeah, there might be parasites. You might get sick. But it's also just like every other – we eat sushi all the time. We eat beef tartare all the time if you are smart and informed and you are also aware of the risks and you're getting the freshest stuff you can it's probably the risk is probably the same as eating sushi um i haven't done a lot of like the raw um organ meats mostly because i get again i'm just like i really want to be so sure that it's good because i just want

to make myself sick i'm not scared of it per se i think i'd be interested in trying it but i would prefer to like go to a restaurant where they specialize in things like that and eat it there. Cause I just, I, you know, I want to be sure. I think a lot of times sushi is flash frozen to kill bacteria.

Is anything like that happen with any organ meats or is that not necessary? I read the tartar stuff. Yeah. I read somewhere that that is not as reliable a process as people think. I'd have to go back and like see where I saw it because I'm just kind of speaking out of my ass at this point. But like I read somewhere that like that is not as reliable as you think. So I would say, you know, when you're talking about eating any animal products raw, like exercise caution.

Like use your common sense. But it's not like across the board gonna kill you or bad like i mean it's just it's just about actually would you kill a deer cut it up and take the heart eat it straight out like you know when it's still warm would you do that i would try that yeah yes she's a keeper bring her down let's go i would love to i would love to go hunting with you guys i think that would be fucking hilarious i need the whole damn thing it was like a cultural aspect too right like you know and i i'm not somebody like i don't think you're ever gonna see on my instagram in two years like me posing with like five dead animals. Like to me, that's not really what it's about. And again, if you're a trophy hunter, that's your, that's not my deal. I have nothing

to say to that. I am not going like, because I'm super pumped about like, Oh yeah, I get to kill a bunch of animals and tell people about it. Like I want to be a part of this process because at a certain point I feel like it's hypocritical. Not, I'm not, I'm not saying that everybody who eats meat has to kill an animal, but I'm obviously taking this a step further. Like this is something that I feel really, I think it's kind of hypocritical to just go to the grocery store and not be okay with the fact that some animal had to die and you don't know what it is. That's one of the reasons I'm really interested in doing it. Like when I moved from San Diego to here, a goal of mine was to learn how to hunt and go through the process. I have to, I have to go through it one time,

got to kill something. You got to bring it home and you got to eat it. And it probably feels amazing. I'm hoping it feels amazing. But if you're, if you're eating meat from a grocery store and you're mad that people hunt that's completely ridiculous it's so soft like where do you meat eaters really are like that like do you actually know like can you name like five people you know that legit because i hang out with like i hang out with people that i have decent brains on their head look at. Look at who's on this call right now. These are the people I hang out with. And I don't want to, again,

turn this into like a vegetarian versus meat eater thing because I think there's too much of that on the internet already. But like, it is this concept of people trying to pretend that the way we eat doesn't kill animals. And if you are eating, if you are alive and eating food, animals are dying for you. I don animals and if you are eating if you are alive and eating food animals are dying for you I don't care if you're a raw vegan I

don't care if you're a vegetarian I don't care what you are animals are dying all the time for us to eat and so instead of focusing on let's pretend that animals never die and we're living in a Disney movie let's instead focus on how we can we plow main as possible right because we don't want nobody nobody in the world wants animals to suffer and die horribly nobody wants that if you want that you're psychotic right so like let's figure out the ways to do this in the most sustainable healthy ethical way possible and i i've interviewed recently some farmers for the book for research for the book who they have these animals book, who they have these animals.

They raise these animals on these farms and they give them names and they love them. And they still slaughter them at the end of their lives and honor them and eat them because that's what life is. Life is everything lives and dies and feeds other things. Right? I don't know if I ever give them names. Every time the vegans talk about like you're killing the animals as if like and their feelings and all that stuff like you you assume that like spinach doesn't doesn't it's not alive you still have to kill something you still have to end a

life of a living being to process its energy to go through you so you can keep going it's the same even if it's a tree it's all trees like music grass likes music plant likes music it's all the same it's all living interesting exactly man it's all carbon dominated things like it's all alive energy is still there it's just you know define alive it's a great point like how do we introduce oh go ahead sorry you also people also assume that animals who are not on farms so like animals in the wild die peacefully in their sleep when it's time to die when animals die in the woods they are ripped to shreds by other animals like destroyed i've spent some time imagine if your life was ended by a pack of wolves that's how

they all die a pack of wolves attacks them if you want to see any of that you can always follow the nature is metal i love it it's my favorite it's fantastic it is my favorite just like that imagine yeah six coyotes surround you they're not. It's not a peaceful way to go. That's also what I think about all the paleo people too. They're like, well, back in the day, it was like a peaceful time to live. It's like, no, there was tribes at war. They were skinning each other's heads off. You know what it means to be scalped?

They just took your hair and gone. It wasn't peaceful. It wasn't like all the tribes got along and it was paleo times because we're farming as well no the 23 year old coolest guy in the whole tribe was out trying to scout people yeah he's trying to scout the 23 year old on the other one i heard a story about that one time about a guy that actually got scalped and lived through it and then like wrote about it and told the tale like like him and his whole family he was like a 13 year old kid like traveling through the middle of nowhere and there's native americans around this is like in the mid 1800s

and uh native americans came in and just killed everybody and threw him on the ground and put a bunch of arrows into his back to staple him to the ground and then stout him and like he said it sounded like thunder as it was like just like oh skinning the entire top of his head he didn't bleed out and die they just left him on the ground with the arrows in him and he somehow survived and then wrote and wrote about it and told the tale that's the man i saw a painting of of the guy from back that's a man so he pulled it he literally pulled the arrows out of the ground as he stood up, as they're yanking on his body. Oh, my God.

That's the baddest man ever. Okay. This escalated real quick. Like, that's a man. He lived in the mountains somewhere, guaranteed. Shit gets really real when Doug chimes in. By the way, I know the Maasai tribe in Kenya and Tanzania and Africa, they drink cow's bloods during ceremonies for births and marriages

and things like that. And they do it in a way that keeps the cow alive. So I actually researched these guys from the blood section of my book, and they have figured out a way to – like they tap the jugular they get the blood they need they you know clean it up the cow lives like it's like sustainable blood source for them but anyway just to close the loop on the like you know animals dying and stuff so when I was speaking to some of these farmers and I spent a lot of time talking to Diana Rogers who's doing that sacred cow book and documentary with Rob Wolf and it's huge um you know a lot of these farmers to Diana Rogers, who's doing that Sacred Cow book and documentary with Rob Wolf, and it's huge.

You know, a lot of these farmers who take all this extra time and all this extra money to raise animals in a way that's as close to natural as possible, that, you know, supports the land that they're on, that makes them as healthy as possible, and they do their own kind of like ethical slaughter, all of this stuff. Like these animals are living as close to the best possible life that they can and then they die painlessly one day like we could all hope to live like that right and then their their body is being used to nourish other people like that is about as as good and natural a life cycle that any creature could hope to have right Right. So I just think that if we

start to like, just again, stop pretending, like stop trying to create this, this idea of the world that will never exist and instead try to just make the processes that do exist better. Let's be realistic. You know, I've never been around a cow, man. Like be i'm gonna be very real because i grew up on a cow farm i grew up on a 600 acre cow farm and cows they moo and they shit and they eat and that is all they do they do not love on you like a little dog or they don't purr like a cat they they they eat they shit and that's it and they stand there that's all they do man like they like if you don't eat them you're dishonoring that cow because the only value they have is like to sustain like they've been bred that way i bet a cow used to be a badass until we put it in the cage and then we

bred it cage after cage after cage and now it's just that's what it is well these cows had a 600 acres of romon and they just stood there eating and shitting and moo's just that's what it is well these cows had a 600 acres of romon and they just stood there eating and shitting and mooing and that's all they did and so like pasture to pasture so like when they got killed i remember i had a cat you know we grew up and my grandfather would give us the grandkids a cow and my cow was i don't know annabelle and so they're like oh we killed him you named them too you named them yeah we named them and like but when they told me they killed him, I was like, cool. It didn't bother me whatsoever.

Cause it wasn't like, if they killed my dog, Roger, I'd have been like destroyed. This cow was just like, all right, now that we don't have this thing standing around moving and eating. Okay. I'm just being real. Yeah. Ashley, I gotta know.

How did this, this uh how has this venture um i know that you hang out with people that are in this world so they think it's cool versus weird but um how is it like affected well maybe i think it's cool i think it's awesome um but like the um like the personal relationships like are you show have like oh come over to the house tonight we'd love to have you and your family over we've got elk brain yeah for dinner yeah like do you drop it on them and then like oh by the way there's also like a cheeseburger in the back but it's cold you can have that too later if you want. But elk brain, elk brain's delicious. So I haven't quite graduated to like preparing a lot of this stuff for other people. So essentially like my immediate group of like friends and people who care about me,

they're supportive because they know that I'm excited about it. And they're like, most of them are fully like, I will never ever touch any of this ever in my life, but I'm proud of you for doing something that you care about and working really hard. I of course do have friends who are like, yeah, of course I'll, I'll try anything like the same kind of attitude I have. And then I'll get them to eat some part or some, some liver. And they're kind of into it. My mother, it's hilarious because she is like actually a recovering vegetarian. She was a vegetarian apparently for like 15 years when she was younger. And she just like eats protein now because she like has to, because she knows it's healthy. And like literally every day she's like, what did I do to you? Like, why, why are you this way? And I was like, I don't

know, but I'm pretty healthy. Like I'm pretty healthy and happy. Maybe like, you know, deal with it. But my, so my, my good friend is my photographer for the cookbook and she doesn't eat any of it. And like every weekend I like come to her house with like plates of sweetbread and kidney and stuff. And she's like, all right, here we go again. Like, you know, it's just more leftovers for me. So, yeah, I mean, people like I found I've found a community online as we all do. Right. Like you go online with any passion whatsoever and you're going to find- They're all out there.

Yeah. You're going to find some people who share it with you. So that's- Organ meat is like almost middle of the road and how crazy the internet could get. Yeah. Go on Reddit for an afternoon and you'll find out organ meat is just scratching the surface of weird. Exactly. Like level zero weird. 100%. And like, that's actually one of the main things that I'm trying to do with this book is it's like that old cliche, like if I can do it, anybody can do it.

But it's this idea that I'm just trying to normalize something that is actually normal and is actually healthy and is natural because we are living in such an unnatural environment and time in the world. The things that we do on a daily basis, the way that we eat, the way that we move our bodies and interact with people is very new and in a lot of ways not healthy for us. And I just want to remind people that this actually is normal. So like just

give it a try, you know? My marketing brain already wants you like going and visiting tribes, going and visiting places that like, I want documentaries. I want like going and visiting tribes going and visiting places that like i want documentaries i want you going and like figuring out how these people have been eating this stuff for all of time up until 200 years ago or 100 years ago whatever it is i think that's such a good idea hook me up with some tv people i think i could be like, call whoever made Anthony Bourdain, you know, but like Andrew Zimmern, like back his show where he was traveling all over the place eating bizarre foods. I think they couldn't call it that anymore for whatever reason. But anyway, I think there's definitely like scope for that. I think like people, and you know, I've been following since

quarantine, Steve Rinella, you know, Steve Rinella and his like meat eater show and the podcast. And I think he does a really good job of like bridging the gap between like, you know, hunters and like a very specific subset of the world and actually showing it to the mainstream that like, this isn't weird. And like women can be into it too. And these, these foods can actually be very sophisticated and delicious. And, and I definitely think that there's like, there's scope for that. And I really do think that like, I'm a good indication of like the every person who can do this because like I said, I didn't grow up hunting or eating these things. And you know, it doesn't, you don't have to have a background in it to enjoy it and

just be willing to like open your mind, you know? You are the muscle maven. How much more jacked are you right now since you've gone and taken the deep dive into the organ meats? Is the double back and by lat spread, is it bigger and better than ever? I mean, the back is still like everyday back day. Come on. But listen, listen. Four months without the gym, and I do have a home gym.

I do have a pull-up bar. Like, I'm still crushing it. I'm actually very happy with how little the body composition has changed. But one thing I will say, and again, not a doctor can't like say that this is what it is, but since I've started like significantly adding organ meats to my diet, like knock on wood COVID season, I have not been sick in years. Like I've not gotten cold. I have not been like, I travel all the time. I was in New York when COVID like hit and I was like visiting sick friends. Like I was all over the place in airplanes, whatever. I really do think it has

something to, it contributes greatly to like just my overall kind of health and like resilience. Like I just don't get sick the way other people do. Like you, you think it's like a normal thing to get sick, like every kind of time the season changes or whatever, cold season, like I still get sick. So yeah, you still have your podcast muscle, maybe radio, has it allowed you to connect with kind of all these people that are in this, uh, very niche little world of yours to like, who, who else? And, and and i guess are you kind of in like a practical way the leader of how people can use this in their lives like how many other doctors mds just people out there that are actually able to go in and kind of study and back up the fact that this is a really

healthy way to to get a ton of nutrient-dense foods into your diet. Yeah. I'm hoping to kind of humbly, maybe not so humbly, I really am hoping to be like one of the like kind of leaders like at the forefront of this right now, because there really aren't a lot of people talking about it. There are people, there's just not many. And I think that having different voices and different types of people in any community helps, right? Like you've got the, again, Paul Saladino talks about organ meats. Chris Kresser talks about the importance of organ meats. Kate Shanahan, super smart.

She talks about organ meats all the time. And then you've got like the Sean Bakers, like carnivore people. And you've got like Gabrielle Lyon talking about nutrient dense animal protein. So there's like definitely a community that is informing people from a very like medical and research back standpoint that this is healthy. And then I think in a sort of different but related community, you've got the people like me who are just showing with my lifestyle and the way I operate that this is healthy, and also also doable and also enjoyable and all of those things. So I really am hoping that I can get to people in a way that maybe like doctors or like technical people couldn't, you know, problem. Do all three of us just try to

jump into you? Do you see that? It's like we're in a bar or something like there she is. If they're going to eat raw, eat raw like you know where would they start where would you suggest okay somebody listens to you and they're like all right i'm gonna try this you know organ meat what's the first one to start you know like sushi you could probably eat some kind of uh i don't know where's a good suit i don't like sushi but like you know there's a starting point so you're in california roll and then you move on from there right if you're a thai food and then you move on from there. Right, right, right. You go to Pad Thai if you're a Thai food person, then you move on from there.

But no one that really loves sushi or Thai food eats Pad Thai or California Rolls. You got to move on. It started there maybe. It started there. That's why they start there. I mean, I would say for a lot of people, I would say start with even like pre-made,

somebody else made it, like pâtés, liverwurst, like, you know, chicken liver mousse. Like you can buy some of these at literally, again, any grocery store. It's going to have liver in it. It's going to be like high fat, whatever. And they're really delicious. They're like really palatable. So start with those. Have somebody else make it for you.

There's no effort. You don't have to think about what it is, whatever. You just kind of try it um and then i would say like the next step that's still very easy for people to get their heads around i think is start go to your grocery store go to your local butcher and get some chicken hearts and get some chicken uh livers because they're super cheap they're super easy to get and they're super easy to make you literally put chicken hearts in your pan like with some butter or ghee and like cook them for 10 minutes and then they're cooked and you eat them and they're delicious. It's just so simple. It's just like a little piece of meat. You just, you don't have to do anything with it and just

try it from there. There's like very little risk involved. I think one of the biggest hurdles to overcoming this being like weird is that most people don't even cook. They go out and eat. And where do you go out and eat? It's like you go to, this is an overwhelming majority of people, not really the people on this call, but it's like they go to the fast food joint that has either beef or chicken or maybe fish. So there isn't one, you're like overcoming the cooking aspect of it, but that's what people deem as normal is what can I get fast at the drive-through? Or even if you go to a restaurant, it's overwhelmingly chicken and beef, maybe some pork, maybe some fish. But for the most part, chicken and beef are like the two staples that

people are going to be comfortable with and be the most. Is there a way to sustainably or just maybe even not sustainably just to get it into people's diets, but keep the quality of the food and actually start to push this stuff into more of a mainstream? I feel like if I was to go to a restaurant and they had liver on the menu, I'm probably at a relatively nice restaurant, and it's going to cost more money than people want to see their dinner bill come out. Like, you're at a nice place. Someone knows how to cook food. That's too bad.

It's not. It is too bad. It used to be like that. Or whatever it is. Liver used to be very common, like, on several menus in restaurants. I remember eating liver at, like, Kentucky Fried Chicken growing up. Like, it used to be very common like on several menus in restaurants i remember eating liver like kentucky fried chicken growing up like it used to be very common and then it's gone we've reverted the other way when it comes to eating organ meat we're a bunch of sissies but yeah i mean there's

there's a couple ways to look at this too like you're 100 right you can find things like sweet breads and liver and foie gras on nice restaurant menus all the time. You're not going to see it in fast food places and you probably never are. And we have to just be okay with that. But I think that there's like some ways, like we've been talking about, there's some ways of like changing your perspective about food that are going to have to happen if you want to make changes that are going to make you more healthy. So, and one of those things is that we generally do not spend very much money. And I'm saying generally, not us, but the general

population, we're spending less than we ever have on food and we're spending less time preparing it than we ever have. So we have now this expectation that food should be super cheap, super easy, taste incredibly delicious all the time and be immediate, which is why fast food does so well, because we don't have to think about where it comes from. We don't think about the quality. incredibly delicious all the time and be immediate, which is why fast food does so well, because we don't have to think about where it comes from. We don't think about the quality. It just tastes delicious. It costs very little and it's done immediately. But if you want to be healthier, you may have to get your head around the fact that you're going to have to look a little harder for good ingredients. You're going to have to spend a little bit more time making food and turn that into something that's fun and pleasurable for you and your family,

instead of like this chore you have to do. Like what is more important? There are a few things in our lives that are more important than what we're putting into our bodies. So instead of thinking about how cheaply and quickly and easily we can get it, maybe we should think about like, this is an important part of my life. Like let's make this a fun part of my life. Like searching out the cool ingredients and trying new recipes and spending some time doing these things like the family or you know like that's it's we may not have a quick and easy answer to it we may just have to change our our view of how we think about food you know and it's like creating an experience right like if you're just throwing food on a table which I mean let's let's yeah I did see it I'm surprised you didn't just catch it. And eat it. Eat bugs too.

Is there anything that makes you feel like a boss more than catching a fly? Like super simple. They're not that hard, but as soon as you do it, you just, wham, got it. Then you're like, well, what do I do now? I got it. With chopsticks. If you're a man. But it created kind of that experience, right? And each time you bring these things up, I'm like, it'd be kind of cool to have like somebody that knows how to cook this stuff, have a dinner party. And you've got eight, ten people. Probably not.

I don't have that many friends. My friends plus their plus one one maybe eight people and um we just create an experience out of it and like get comfortable with it because i'm probably not going to be cooking you know bring home the the brain and set it on the table like dinner let's go like it's it's probably not a tuesday night thing but if you start to make experiences out of it and find out what you like and bring your friends into it there's something to talk about it creates this like connection that everybody's got and now kind of get back to like what what food should have been or was at one point in which we all as a community get together to have this this we share real the organ night man yeah you just bring your bring your organs

we got bro vacation coming up soon we're going. Yeah, we're going to get some liver. I'm grilling some brain. Someone bring some brain to Kentucky. Let's do this. Last time we had a big bro vacation. Last time I had a big bro vacation, we took like 20 guys to the Ozarks in Arkansas, and we actually had a cow heart that we made one of those evenings. We all shared it, and then nobody wanted to eat the rest of it, so we shot out of a big potato gun into the river you can also do that at the cookbook you know like

your organ meats you can just shoot them out of potato gun all right so i'm gonna say that you guys probably didn't cook it very well and that's why you didn't like it i think we might invite ashley to our bro they can yeah i mean i'm at least as much of a bro as like the least bro-y person i mean i'm pretty bro-y honestly you're you fit yeah you fit right yeah you're you count she's eating more organs than we have so she's a bad more badass than all of us i hope you follow her on instagram i do lots of hearts yeah yeah and packs back of buy spreads. But, Anders, honestly, like, you know, all bro talk aside, like what you were just saying is 100% hits home with what I'm trying to accomplish with the book,

which is it sounds like I'm trying to get over that it sounds a little bit corny, but it's so sincere that it's not corny. It's like this concept that what I'm trying to show is yes organ meats are healthy and fine and they don't and they taste pretty good it's good but also this idea of like just being willing to like have an open mind and try new things because yeah you can do that in one area of your life you can do it in other areas of your life and that's gonna make you like a happier better person like being closed off to new experiences is like never a good thing. My wife is such a savage. Pre-kids, we had a little bit more time, pre-kid. And she used to

organize like dinner parties that were based around like experiential things. So like we would invite people over and we'd have all the ingredients and we'd do like sushi night. So everybody had to like watch a tutorial on how to make sushi. And then we'd all make our own sushi. Like this would, this would be right up her alley because she would, she would figure out how to make it. She'd take your recipes, turn them into some sort of bite-sized things that everybody could have. And it would be a really cool thing. Um, but that's like, when I, when I hear about this stuff, like nobody's going to do it, I shouldn't say nobody, many people won't do it on like a Tuesday night when they're trying to like rush their kids to bed and do it needs you have to like sit down and be prepared to possibly not like something and also probably

find something that you do like and share that stuff with your friends and have something to talk about I think that that is a piece of, you know, being a meathead, being somebody that just wants calories and eats a lot of meat, like that. I lose that I just eat because I consume it and I'm supposed to eat it and I need to eat it and I need the protein amount. I don't really think too much about it. But when you are actually creating that experience with your friends, and you're going through this moment together, it really like, it brings people together. And that's, you know, that's how you become comfortable with stuff is just bringing it in, but also bringing a community into it. Yep. I think we're also in a time too, like with the COVID situation where

people are realizing they have a little bit more time on their hands like you know like it's the whole like everyone's making their own sourdough bread and has their own backyard garden and stuff like people are spending a little bit more time with it and I did with the book I did try to come up with like a range of like super easy palatable stuff slightly more challenging stuff there's sides and things like that that aren't weird that you can mix and match with them there's things that take 20 sides and things like that, that aren't weird that you can mix and match with them. There's things that take 20 minutes and things that take hours. So like there's a whole kind of gamut depending on how comfortable you are and how much time you have and all those

kinds of things. So you can kind of play around depending on your needs too. Is that organized by organs? Like chapter one is kidney, chapter two is heart that etc etc there's like five to ten recipes for each one or how's the structure yeah and i actually this is this this is a good story for um for bro chats because this isn't appropriate for every uh for every so i i did organize it weirdly like most most um most books are like soups and salads and whatever and i organized it by like body parts so I have like from the neck up which is like cheeks and tongues and brains and then I've got like just eyeballs in there I don't have any eyeballs in this one because I could not source

any and I don't know what to do with eyeballs like let's be real I I have my I have my limits like I've eaten like fish eyeballs and maybe like eyeballs before but like I don't know what to do with that so So anyway, there's a couple of things missing, but, but yeah. So anyway, I have a whole chapter that is like collagen, bone broth, bone marrow, like all these delicious, you know, bone related ones. So of course I called that chapter let's bone. And the publisher was not into it. They were like, cause we're a family

publishing company. Like we're not doing that. And I was like, man, it's so it's clever. I'm talking about organs here. There's a blood chapter. I'm like, people are cooking brains. Like, do you expect like nine year olds to be buying this book? Like, I'm pretty sure we're all adults here, but they were not having it. So, you know, I had to change the name of that chapter, but it's a good chapter. There's lots of delicious things in there. What did you name it?

It's not that extreme either. Like that name is not that crazy. Let's bone. That's a very subtle reference. That's what I thought. I thought it was pretty PG-13. I thought it was like kind of spicy in a PG-13 sort of way, but they were not.

I don't know. It's some boring thing now. It's like, it's all about the bones or something. I don't know. You get the point. But I will say, I will say like the publisher, it's Victory Belt and they've done, they worked with Kelly Surratt. They've worked with Ben Greenfield. Like they have been fantastic. Like everybody talks, like has horror stories about working with publishers and how they're terrible, and it's this awful experience. And I have had nothing but positive experience with these guys. I'm so lucky how it's all turned out. It's been a ton of work, but very, very positive. So I'm actually really happy with it so far. I want to go back and listen to the interview that we did with you at Paleo FX two years ago, because I think we actually talked about writing a book in that show. Do you even want to talk? We should talk about paleo effects offline why wouldn't we do it right

now okay well let's just finish let's just finish talking about my book but listen we may i would be the only person learning something go ahead we we may have talked about a book but honestly like this well it wasn't this book obviously i think i i i was i'm still very interested in just the fact that you're like a professional writer um that's that like this really combines all of your best your your most unique trait with the trait that is also like near and dear to you've been writing about health and fitness for a very long time um and lifting and health like this this just. I imagine it's sometimes it's scary when somebody says they write a book and then you know, it's a ghostwriter because they can't put a sentence together. Like you actually wrote this book. Big time, big time wrote it. And I

also, I also really like, like the fact that this book, when you guys get copies, you'll see like my personality is very much in it. It's not just not just like hey i'm writing a book about organ meats here's the first recipe like there's really like there's a lot of like backstories for every recipe because sometimes i have hilarious stories about sourcing blood that i just want to tell you guys so like there's there's stories and stuff like weaved throughout it but i have to say like without getting too kind of like mushy like this book has been just so it's so cool and I'm sure you guys have all had this experience at some point in your professional life when things come together because you are just so sure of what you want to do and so the pieces fall together in a way that

you're like oh I must just be so lucky or like this is just a crazy coincidence that this is all happening and it's actually just because everything that you want to do and the things you're good at and everything, it just clicks together and it just works. And that's what's happening with this. And it's just awesome. That's your subconscious communicating with the universe. Big time. Yeah. Like I literally, I was thinking about writing this book. Yeah. I was thinking about writing this book in November of 2019, just thinking about it in my head. I was just like hey I know some people who've written cookbooks and they don't seem that smart so I feel like if they can do it

I can do it and I was just literally in my head you just threw down on some people but yeah go ahead I'm just saying lots of writers they're cooks and lots of successful people are successful because of the people around them not because of anything that they did anyway i'm getting like wow i don't keep going boom boom i just had like a specific experience where i was just like with all due respect i feel like if you can do this i can do this anyway um so i was thinking about writing this book and i was getting this like idea in my head and i was kind of just like mulling it over and i was talking with another good friend of mine who had written a number of cookbooks and i was just like kind of pitching it to her like what do you think like it's kind. Like, what do you think? Like, it's kind of crazy, but what

do you think? And she literally was just like, I think this is a cool idea. It hasn't really been done before. Let me talk to my publisher. And if they're interested, they'll reach out to you. And I was like, holy shit, that's amazing. I don't need an agent. I don't have to pitch anything. Like you're just going to go talk to them. And if it's relevant, they'll reach out to me. And a week later, the publisher called me and I was just so on fire about what I wanted to write they were like oh shit like you you've got this sorted out I'm like I'm gonna write this like whether anyone reads it or not I'm gonna write it like cool we're into it and like a week later I had signed the contract and it was happening like I

just when you're when you're so sure about what you want to do like the pieces fall together you know yeah what. The process of actually writing, how long does it take to write a book the size of the one that you're putting together? It takes as long as you give yourself time for. So my timeline was ridiculously short. Like I said, this book was an idea and the time that it it was an idea the time that it was the first draft was done was about like five months which is very short yeah very very short but i i didn't i didn't did you have the recipes done no so you had to create them all yes and write it damn it's been a stressful few months guys um but yeah but it's it probably it probably seems like the most fun

time you've ever had putting it together yeah Yeah. Because you know, and like, again, you guys know, cause you've built businesses when it's something that you're doing for yourself and it's your idea and it's your thing that you're passionate about. Like it can be stressful and still awesome at the same time. And I knew that however much time I gave it is how much time it would take. So if I told them, I'm so proud of you. You're such a rad chick. Damn, you're awesome. If somebody, if I had said like, look, this is gonna take me two years, it would have taken me two years.

But, and then, you know, COVID happened and I was stuck in my house anyway. I had nothing better to do, but like cook liver every day. So that's what I did. Like I just, anyway. I want you to go read, what's the name? I just did a podcast with Corey G this morning.

What's the name of that? How to Raise Your Own Salary? I really want you to go get that book and just read the first two chapters because it talks about so much of what you're talking about right now, not that you have all this extra time on your hands, but there's an entire chapter on that's just – the first chapter is called definite of definiteness of purpose or something like that um and and it's it's really like once you know exactly where it's

going and what it looks like it's all going to happen and you just have to go and just take action in the line anders did you read it it's the only book I think I'll ever read ever again. I actually talked to Corey this morning about it. We did like two hours this morning. And he was the one that told me about it.

And I was like, yeah, I'll check it out. I own the audio book and I own the hard or the paperback because it really is probably the only book I will need to read again.

Anytime I can just go back and do it. So I listen to it much faster and then I read it at the same time. But you should totally do it. You will love it because all the things you're talking about right now, you just, at any point in time, and like the gym, the other business I own, this one, like at any point in time, what you're talking about is

always the key to where you're going in that it's this definite purpose of like, I have to, I have to help these people solve this problem. And this is how I'm going to do it. And everything starts to align and fall into place. Once those, once that just like you, you get the, I keep talking about the universe, like working for you, but that's, it's just like you, you get the, I keep talking about the universe, like working for you, but that's, it's kind of like what happens. Like you're like, I have to go. And then all of a sudden, like these doors open and you have a friend that knows a publisher and like it all aligns with where you're going. It's awesome. It's not really like the secret woo woo stuff. Like it might kind of sound like it, but when you think about it, like

coming up with a goal or a life purpose is not easy. Most people don't have one or struggle to find one. So it's not like, just wake up one day and find your purpose and then it'll come to you. Like that's, it's hard work. It's actual work you have to do every day. And it takes people a long time to get there and it can change and all these things can happen. But I do think that having like a clarity of goal is what helps you get there. And it's the same with, if you're trying to get a heavy deadlift or you're trying to like, you know,

look a certain way or you're trying to, whatever it is that you're trying to do, if you were just like nebulous about it, you're just like, Oh, I just want to look better. Or I just want to be strong. Like those,

those sentences mean nothing. Like you have to have real tangible goals. You know how to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, where can they find this book? Are you going to be on the New York bestseller list?

I'm excited. Um, if you guys, everybody that likes me buys five copies, then I will definitely buy five of them. I appreciate that. Um, there's no way I'm not buying five.

I'm buying one for sure. And having a guys weekend with you guys. We're going to eat some stuff. Pro trip. Kill our deer. We can only eat the things that Travis kills. Kill the deer,

cook the shit, and drink bourbon. Take it home. Let's go. Dude, that's a lot of testosterone, boys. We we'll leave there our squats will go up 50 pounds each i love that yeah 10 test one rms the next day oh for sure i believe in that strongly um yeah so i mean but i don't whatever this comes out it'll be and this is a real book i want you everybody to know this is like a real book this is not your ebook on Amazon in which you're going to be a bestseller in nine different boxes down on the bestseller list, right? This is going to be in a bookstore that people can buy.

100%. This is not going to be- Ah, it makes me so happy. I have a bestselling ebook if you go far enough down and you just find Barbell Shrugged. Striking conditioning, fitness, lifting weights, lifting weights heavy, barbell shrugged, bestseller. Listen, self-publishing is actually legit. But it's like a completely different project than having a publisher, right? Like you can self-publish and it can be like a big deal and super successful. I wanted to go this route because I didn't want to do all of the extra work like you realize how much work actually goes into making a book exist and be professional and I'm like I'd rather just give the publisher most of the money and have them do that so that's that's why I you know but yeah so you can you'll be able to get it on Amazon Barnes and Noble I don't know Indie bound here's here's how I think we make all the money on this and we can we can talk this, is I want your online course, the online course after your book comes out. Book is the big lead magnet.

We make the money on the contract, and then I'm ready for the online course on how to make the top eight recipes, and then we go all in. How to chop a brain up. Yep. Yeah, I would love to do that. Your first working job. You first chop the Corpus callosum right in the middle. in how to chop a brain up yep yeah i would love to do that your first your first you chopped the corpus callosum right in the middle basically yeah yeah that's actually not the grossest one to to cut i mean there are there are grosser organs to deal with than the brain the brain

what is the grossest one the brain was only weird because it is like by far the most recognizable like a heart does look like a heart but it's's so big and like, okay, the tongue is probably one of the grosser ones. Really? I actually made a lot of- Is it bloody? No, no. It just looks like a tongue.

Like it just looks like a tongue, except if it's a beef tongue, it's this big. Giant. Oh, it's like a blown up tongue. But wait, what was the other gross one? Oh, some other weird stuff i made um like uh like chicharron and like fried pork skin and i made some like chicken skin chips like so they're like air fried chips made out of chicken skin so good um but i i went to the butcher again and i was like hello may i please have some pork skin and they're like what

and also why and how much and what do you want? Like, anyway, I was like, just give me some pork skin. I don't know, a pound of it. Just cut off some pork skin. And that is weird. That is weird. Like raw, fresh pork skin is skin. Like it's not like a hide, you know, like you cut.

It's good though. It's delicious, but it's like. Pork skin, chips, kind of. Have you ever had, yeah. Pork rinds, is that what that is? I'll send you guys pictures. I've had lots of that. Yeah, yeah, that's what pork rinds are. Bro, so good with beer, like, I mean, but what is it? Oh, it's so good. All right, tell the people where they can find it. We've got, we're pre-order. Where can they find pre-order? I'm going to drop the show whenever you tell me to.

I appreciate that. Yes. So tell them exactly where they can go. It takes guts. Pre-order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Chapters if you're Canadian. You can also go to my website. It'll be available on that, ashleyvanhouten.com. You'll have to put that in the show notes.

No one can spell it. And also, obviously, say hi to me on Instagram because I'll be available on that ashleyvanhouten.com you'll have to put that in the show notes no one can spell it um and also obviously say hi to me on instagram because i'll be like obnoxiously pushing it out on instagram um at the muscle mavens beautiful as you should be the best instagram name out there coach travis smash when are we going hunting let's go kill some stuff at the at the farm i'm ready to go kill something. I might go out tonight and kill a duck in the water. It's a poor duck. Stop it. I'm sorry. I have to.

She told me. She told me I had to do it. I'm going to get trouble with this now. I'm going to get trouble with this now. It's so good. You're going to be over there at the country club on vacation chasing Canadian geese around the golf course. Yeah. Come here.

Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. All right. Where can they find you, Travis? Mashley. Can you guys hear me? Yeah, now you're back. Yeah, mashley.com. Doug Larson.

You bet. Ashley, stoked you came on the show today. I hadn't gotten an update on the book since you told me about it many months ago, so I was excited to do this. Appreciate you coming out. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas C. Larson. We haven't even talked about this yet, but the highlight of this show so far is those bright green nails you've got going on right now.

Damn! You can't see them on the radio right now, but you got the fire green nails going on. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. Get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash store for all the e-books, programs, nutrition, and mobility to make strong people stronger.

Thank you for coming on. This has been so awesome. See you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get into the show notes. Find Ashley's book, It Takes Guts. I'm really, really proud of her for putting this book together, and I can't wait to support her.

We'll probably be doing a giveaway on socials here in a little bit once the book actually launches, just to get some copies into your hands. Also, make sure you get over to our sponsors, Organifi.com forward slash shrug to save 20% on all of the green, red, and gold juices. Also, I want

to thank our boy Yannick at Shadow Creative Studios. Podcast.shadowstude.io That's where you're going to get your podcast from idea to live in two weeks. All you need to do is upload the audio and work with them. They're going to make it profitable on day one. Also want

to thank our friends at Fit Together. Killer giveaway going on right now. The check-in challenge is live. Get in there now to win six months of your gym membership paid in full and two of those grand prizes and then a runner-up prize getting a brand new Fitbit. Also,

last but not least, buy optimizers. Love them. Masszymes.com forward slash shrugged free to get your free bottle of Masszymes. Masszymes.com forward slash shrugged free. Friends, we will see you on Monday.