Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #182 Anya Fernald

Starting point is 00:00:00 what's up guys thanks for tuning back into the show we've got anya from belcampo who has become a very good friend of mine absolutely incredible every time i come out to la uh i am treated with her presence and her wonderful meat we're going to discuss regenerative agriculture we're going to discuss the best ways. We're going to discuss the best ways to cook nose to tail, everything in between all the meats that you don't know how, or maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just me that doesn't know how to cook anything but filet mignon or New York strip. And that's hopefully doesn't come across as some pompous dude who I only eat filet mignon. I don't mean it in that way, but yeah, I can't cook to save my ass other

Starting point is 00:00:45 than the main cuts of meat. So we take a deeper dive into some of the lesser known cuts and just all the ways to utilize the wonderful grass-fed, grass-finished, regenerative meat that we consume and put into our bodies. And we dive into all different parts of the animal, how we get more collagen out of the meat that we eat, even outside of just eating the standard bone broth, drinking the bone broth. There we go. And much more than that. So I'll make this quick.

Starting point is 00:01:11 And of course, there's many ways you guys can support this show. Number one, click subscribe. Never miss an episode again. Tell your friends about it, but better yet, leave us a five-star rating. That way the world gets to know with one or two ways the show has helped you out in life. Last but not least, check out our show sponsors they make it absolutely possible today's show is brought to you by sports betting dime.com if you're looking for odds and analysis of the sports entertainment or political world check them out you can get into the analytics and finer details

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Starting point is 00:07:34 All right, we're clapped in. Anya, thank you for joining me via online. Absolutely. Tell us about your background. We know that you are one of the co-founders of Belcampo Meats out in really far northern California in the great state of Jefferson. And I had an opportunity to meet you with a handful of awesome people out in LA at one of your three, you have three or four restaurants now? Five. Five. Oh, wow.

Starting point is 00:08:00 Blown up. Well, when's the next one coming? Well, we're going to be outsized in COVID, so we're going the other direction, but they're getting better. Okay. Phenomenal. Well, tell us about life growing up. Did you grow up on a farm? What got you into this? I was actually born on a raw milk dairy in Bavaria. I'm not German. My parents lived there for 10 years, just do their careers. My father was a scientist and did a bunch of study over there. So I definitely had early exposure to a lot of raw milk and being around cows, but I was tiny, you know, we moved when I was three. So I don't

Starting point is 00:08:31 really think that that was a huge factor. But I did have the sort of touchstones of being comfortable around agriculture with that background, because I would go back as a child, you know, my parents had strong relationships there in Bavaria on this farm, and we would go and spend time there. But I was always drawn to food and eventually to agriculture. The initial pull for me was the ability to help my family. My mom would often get really overwhelmed and anxious with cooking, and I am somebody where I can keep all the plates spinning. I'm just good with managing a lot of different tasks. And I love taking care of people.

Starting point is 00:09:07 I love like nurturing people. And that kind of cooking brought that together. So I started like doing my family's Thanksgiving when I was maybe like 10 or 11, like tiny. Because I could just handle it. I could handle the stress and I could keep everything moving. And so it kind of played this functional role where I was just really into it because it was this sort of like little, you know, you discover when you're a kid, you have like one or two superpowers. And that was like one of my superpowers where I was like, oh, I'm good at this. And it makes my family happy. It keeps my mom

Starting point is 00:09:35 calm. And it was just, and my grandma was a really good cook and she loved to put on big events. I learned a lot from her. So they're just like, I kind of had like culinary urge. But, you know, I pursued it professionally. And I took a year off of college and worked as a baker and as a chef. And I kind of realized that I didn't love the, I didn't want to work in a kitchen. I didn't want to be a cook or a chef. And part of it was just cultural. It's a kind of a crummy environment for women.

Starting point is 00:10:04 The work hours are pretty terrible. Honestly, you get harassed all the time. It just wasn't my jam. And I also didn't like that it was, the food was pretty, like the real story with restaurants, unfortunately, and I know this from operating them, my biggest problem is my cost of goods in my restaurants

Starting point is 00:10:21 because we use no canola oil, no soy, no GMO ingredients, we use all of our own really expensive meat. And it kills me, we can barely make money because of the cost of ingredients. So the real sort of ugly truth with restaurants is that you can really, you know, you're sort of squeezed, right? Especially if you're operating in California, your labor costs are through the roof, your rent costs are extremely high. So the only kind of place where you can give and capture margin is in ingredients. So I've sort of found that early on where I was like, I don't really feel great about the quality of food that I'm making.

Starting point is 00:10:52 And I was really drawn to the ag side of it. So I actually took off after college. I moved to Europe. I started working as a cheesemaker. And this is like in 1999. So, you know, I moved to Europe with like a I had a folding bicycle. And I had a carry on bag and I moved there. And I came back seven years later. And I worked in Derry's. There was like no cell phone. I went there with traveler's checks. It was like I had

Starting point is 00:11:15 like, I had this fire where I'm like, let's just get over there. You're gonna learn stuff. And it was amazing. It was an incredible experience. I just learned how to cook and how to live and how to eat. And my health got radically better. You know, I left in 99. I was a athlete in college and I was, you know, paid attention to what I ate. But the whole world then was like no fat. And all of a sudden I'm eating like two pounds of cheese a day and salamis that are like more fat than lean. And I was feeling amazing, you know, just like everything in my body got better. And I thought, Okay, this is great. Like I want to I want more of this, you know, so I ended up just staying there until I was almost 30. And I by the end, you end, I worked as a cheesemaker physically,

Starting point is 00:12:07 actually making cheese for about a year. And then I became the effective marketing director for a consortium of cheesemakers, like a group of cheesemakers in Sicily, so an extremely rural part of Italy. Learned Italian fluently, was working in Italian. At that point, I was recruited to Northern Italy to run a microfinance fund for small-scale food producers. So we made little grants and investments in lots of kind of small-scale food producers and helped them develop regulatory compliance for the European Union. So my gig went from hands-on cheesemaking to much more of the kind of planning and operational side of things, which is really where my career has grown into.

Starting point is 00:12:50 But it's just the magic for me was just learning that you could get optimal health with an optimally simplistic diet, you know, like that the simplicity and eating seasonally and eating from the land and of the region, just fostered amazing energy and health. And so that kind of putting those pieces together has really lit my fire for like the next, you know, the next phase in my career, which eventually led to Bo Campo. Yeah, that's that's such a beautiful trajectory. And I had I have not heard your origin story. So thank you for that. Because I did not expect to hear that you were making cheese and living out in Europe. That's incredible.

Starting point is 00:13:34 Like for breakfast almost every day. I'm like, I think cheese is the original superfood. It's so good. I think if you're genetically, there's definitely people that are less, you know, I'm European origin. So it's probably better for me genetically. But like, especially the hard cheeses, like a Parmesan cheese. That's just like, to me, it's just, it's like God's protein bar.

Starting point is 00:13:52 It's just right there for you. It's so healthy. It's so incredibly high in protein. It's just a superfood. And it's, it's so durable, too. I mean, you can, you can just put it in your bag. Like, it's, it's an amazingly, I mean, this is what people, this is what like basically peasant culture developed as their energy bars. You know, the need for functional on the go nutrition isn't new. Right. But we've sort of

Starting point is 00:14:13 abandoned the functional on the go nutrition of the past. It was dried meat and it was, it was hard cheese. Yeah. Things like pemmican, which was like maybe one berry, a decent amount of fat and a bit of meat dried and rolled together. Like it versus now you have, you know, 50 ingredients in one bar, none of which you would have gathered together with pea protein and all this other nonsense and a ton of preservatives and sugars. Um, we've lost a lot of the old world. I think for me, I first took a deep dive when I was fighting into nutrition through Paul check and then nourishing traditions was a book that just turned me on my head because I was like, damn, we have lost so much from the old world. So much of that slowing down, taking our time, even with how we consume plant matter, for that matter, you know, like how we process these things where there was an inherent knowing.

Starting point is 00:15:03 Before we understood lectins or any of that stuff, hey, we need some of this stuff off we need to soak and drain soak and drain we need to go back and forth with this before we you know so much more went into preparation and i think as life has sped up we are consistently looking for ways to grab something that's convenient or to cook in a hurry and obviously with microwave food and things like that, and all the snacks in the snack aisles, the majority of the grocery store is in the aisles, not in the refrigerator section. So there's a lot that's changed there. I want to dive into some of the ways that you've slowed down in terms of, because you're not just running a farm and restaurants. You also have a love affair with culinary arts and cooking. And some of the things that I've loved hearing you talk about and having first

Starting point is 00:15:50 experienced your cooking over at our friend, Justin Resvani's house back in LA. I was like, Oh wow. I've never experienced any of these cuts of meat in this way. I've never cooked anything properly to be honest. Like unless it was a New York or some of these. I'm not a people to cook for that's gusto that's like it's a it's a like I would love to cook for you anytime oh thank you but people who are like open and try stuff and enjoy it you know hell yeah but um yeah I want

Starting point is 00:16:18 to dive into some of the recipes and and the knowledge that you you really provided on the second podcast with you withGuevier. But first, let's talk a bit about the farm because, you know, we are at a point now in the world where we see, you know, a further divide. Obviously, that's political. But I mean, you know, with the way we consume food and the way we grow our food, and we know this through monocropping and big agriculture and all the chemicals being sprayed in the ground.

Starting point is 00:16:51 And I often think of the beginning of Interstellar, where they're now in the future and they can grow one style of corn and it needs chemical fertilizer, chemical pesticides, because all the soil has been ruined. And as I started diving into soil, first with the book, The Soil Will Save Us, which we'll link to in the show notes, and then documentaries like The Biggest Little Farm and Kiss the Ground, we really see the awareness, consciousness expanding to restore the land and understand that. So talk a bit about what regenerative agriculture is and what you guys are doing at Belcampo that makes a difference, not only for the animals and our bodies, but for the soil and the earth itself. The health of the food we eat starts from the health of the soil. And the health of the soil starts from carbon availability in the soil.

Starting point is 00:17:31 A higher carbon availability in the soil increases the richness of the microbiome of the soil. Just like our guts and ourselves, like every system maps in the same way, the soil has a microbiome. And that microbiome is actually bacteria, but it's also like nematodes and tiny little organisms that that thrive and live off of rhizomes and little tiny shreds and bits of of um root systems in traditional agriculture like the way that we practice at belcampo our root systems for our perennial grazing crops are 30 feet deep right so there's 30 30 feet of root systems of a rich

Starting point is 00:18:07 microbiome. This is an environment that's not getting tilled or disrupted ever, right? That every year is sequestering carbon and that carbon is like the food, right? It's like the sugar for the bacteria effectively, it facilitates life, right? So we think of carbon as this negative, we want it, we don't want an environment, But the reality is the soil needs it. And the soil then cleans it and converts it into a life force for plants. Industrial agriculture is relying on kind of two major bummers for soil, right? And the first is tilling. And tilling is just the annual destruction of the root systems of plants. All of the plants that we grow commercially can reseed naturally, right?

Starting point is 00:18:52 Tomato doesn't produce tomatoes because it wants you to enjoy tomatoes. It produces tomatoes so that there's something appealing for animals to eat and deposit their seeds in a package of manure that then can turn into next year's crop. Not saying that's a realistic way to reseed a tomato crop, but we grow, I mean, for example, artichokes are a classic perennial crop. We grow them annually. Even crops that are really, you know, for centuries have been farmed as perennials, as multi-year crops, we now grow annually because you can get a big burst of production by putting a lot of, you know, focus on one year of of fertility as opposed to long term so we till annually the annual tilling disrupts this root system and then the second piece of it is we use

Starting point is 00:19:33 pesticides and herbicides those pesticides and herbicides we focus as you know the modern farmer focuses on what they do above the soil so above above the soil, the pesticide kills all the bugs that are eating that delicious sweet corn. The problem is that below the soil, the pesticides also kill all the little micro animals that support healthy root systems and micronutrients in the soil. So when you read those studies about why, you know, everyone's like, oh, broccoli used to have way more, you know, you've seen those studies, right? That, you know, everything, every crop that we have, that's why we need to supplement in today's world. Like, because every crop we have has far less nutrition than it used to have 30, 40 years

Starting point is 00:20:13 ago. There's a lot of great studies about that. You can Google it or link to it. And everyone's like, oh, it's because of the way we farm. But we're not exactly, you know, clear on the why. And the why is actually because we're farming on impoverished soil when you farm on impoverished soil same thing as if you eat an impoverished diet it's difficult to achieve a vibrant health right if you farm on impoverished soil you cannot achieve high

Starting point is 00:20:35 micronutrient density and the potential of the vegetable or whatever crop you're growing so we are killing the micronutrient density of the soil. And we're doing that through this mix of breaking, continually disrupting it and also using chemicals on it that actively kill the pesticides, kill the microbes, et cetera. And then the, you know, the herbicides will kill the whole micro root system as well. So that those two processes. So why do we do that? Well, it's a real conundrum because there's always a short-term and a long-term gain. I think about it as like, okay, I have like an insane day tomorrow, Kyle. So I'm going to just like drink like 15 high balls and effing crush it. And you're like, awesome. You'll have a great day tomorrow, but Saturday is going to be a bummer, right?

Starting point is 00:21:25 You're going to feel terrible the next day. And you probably won't recover till Tuesday, right? As opposed to like, I'm going to go to bed at seven. I'm going to get up early. I'm going to get some movement and some light into the morning and try to stay really like in my zone and focused all day. Will I achieve as much?

Starting point is 00:21:39 Probably not. Will Saturday be a great day? Yeah, right? So that's the kind of thinking about it. It's like a short term. And there's parallels for this throughout nature. You know, like the biggest tool people think, I often get kind of the question of like,

Starting point is 00:21:53 well, if your animals are so healthy, how come they don't grow as fast? Because growing fast is a sign of health. And I say, well, actually obesity is unhealth, right? But for example, the way that you get chickens to lay eggs so quickly is you force starvation, they go through what's called forced molting, which is starvation cycles. You know, the nearness to death in females increases fertility, right? Because in our case, our lifetimes as females

Starting point is 00:22:19 in the human species now negate that function, but we have that too, right? So we as a female, if you're faced with starvation you'll actually start to ovulate a lot and produce a lot of eggs so we'll um you'll get into this and then of course there's a tapering point at which you know you lose your cycle and those kind of things and you won't actually be that fertile but there's that you can ride that wave so we do this in all these species like these short-term like pressures to produce same thing goes with you know tree crops if you have you'll you see this if you grow in your garden, you know, there's ways to actually force productivity through unhealth. So we work these systems. And then we also, you know,

Starting point is 00:22:55 deplete the micronutrients of the soil. And then we add nitrogen based fertilizers to the soil. And those fertilizers are, you know, really petroleum based, they're extractive, and they don't increase the density of soil health. It's like a layer of it's like giving sugar to a kid, right? It's like it'll add the little pop, but it's not going to actually create any long term health in the soil. It's not going to increase the richness of the soil. And that's just simply that it's not part of the natural system. So it has sort of a mimicking effect of there is, but it isn't actually. The nitrogen that's produced naturally in the soil from carbon is a much slower cycle, and it'll have a lot of positive benefits in the entire cycle of its production in the soil.

Starting point is 00:23:35 If you add nitrogen to the crop, it doesn't have that multi-layer effect. And so the soil is left after that nitrogen more impoverished than before. So it's the more that I, in my journey as running, you know, a farming operation and, you know, to be clear, I'm not a farmer. And I really oversee primarily, you know, the product brand and the marketing of the business and building the concept of it. But in my journey of what I've seen in the, in the growth of Belcampo is like every choice that I make for quality is a choice that's anti-economic. And it's hard.

Starting point is 00:24:15 You know, every choice I make, think about that. Like every time I'm like, I want to do the better thing from an animal wellness, animal, you know, health, planetary wellness and taste perspective, it's always worse for the bottom line. So that's the challenge in this. Like these practices take way longer and they're more expensive. So that's really the why of why. And it's not that they're more expensive

Starting point is 00:24:39 if you look at the whole picture, right? But unfortunately, we look at just one vector of cost, right? So along that one vector of cost of actually dollars that it takes to raise a cow, dollars that it takes to raise a chicken. The way I raise a chicken takes five times as long as a conventional chicken. Every day a chicken's alive costs me money. It takes five times as long. If I was to do it in a very, very traditional way, it will take 25 times as long.

Starting point is 00:25:04 Wow. I have to be able to charge 25 times. I just can't. Right. So we sort of settle at a midpoint and I still sell it like a chicken that's $25 for chicken. You know, people laugh at me like you're laughing all the way to bake on you. And I'm like, this is my lowest margin product. We're barely eking by on this. So it's a real challenge because the doing things the right way costs a heck of a lot more. And it's a long-term mentality, right? And unfortunately, the short term, it's just more costly. Yeah, that's a beautiful answer.

Starting point is 00:25:38 And I like, especially online, because of the delay, the tape delay um i like serving softball pitches so you just take it and run with it as long as you want there's no i got no issues of that um dole salatin who was in food inc and runs polyface farms he was on rogan's and he talked about that that cost you know rogan was like yeah but the cost the cost the cost and he said you know we're really only looking at that price tag that we see at the store or online. And we're not thinking about the cost of our health in general. You know, there's no doctor that's going to, I mean, unless they're functional medicine and they understand health and wellness from a dietary perspective and a holistic perspective. Not many people are going to connect the dots on the cost of your health.

Starting point is 00:26:21 How much does it cost for medication? How much does it cost to, you know, scrape by with disease, because you're in a diseased state for not putting the right food in your body, not getting enough light, not getting enough sleep, right? And a lot of these things we can control, like, it costs me nothing to go to bed on time. And that's so that's cool, I can just get to bed on time. And maybe if I need a little help, there's other things that I can do to work with that. But really, we're, we're paying a bit more upfront to make sure I don't have those high costs at the end of my life to make sure I don't have those high costs now, with disease and with issues running into all that comes from from not putting good things in my body and not taking care of myself. But even just from like a performance standpoint, which is

Starting point is 00:27:05 really why I started learning about health and wellness and diet nutrition, how I feel on a day to day, it matters what goes into my body. It's not just, you know, people used to do the kind of cookie cutter analogy of, well, would you rather put 100 octane in the tank or 76 in the tank? You know, and it's like, yeah, all right, I get that. But it goes, it goes so much further than that. Everything is affected by what we eat from the neurochemistry to organ function to skin, eye health, you name it, like how I think, how I feel, how I operate, it actually does matter. And for every supplement on the market, I used to talk about that there's no nootropic or no amount of caffeine that will dig you out of a hole from not sleeping

Starting point is 00:27:45 well and and there's absolutely yeah and there's there's no supplement that's going to give you the energy to counteract a shit diet you know if you're you're constantly cramming dead food into your body and thinking that you can just take you know an energy drink or a little bit more b12 or any of these other things that are going to rid you of the the overload that you have um that's just not money well spent so ditch 90 of that and put it into your diet and then you'll see the results and then you can fine tune and and tweak around that um yeah i think too a lot of for women in particular so much around the beauty industry is like fixing you from the outside in and i just think for for women in particular that are so squeamish about meat it's like collagen is

Starting point is 00:28:35 just the mat and yeah you can get a supplement but we know that bioavailability is far better when you have it in meat and it's amazing to me that there isn't a little bit more consciousness that like i always get questions like what's your skincare regime and I'm like I don't have one I just eat like a ton of collagen and a ton of meat and what really does I mean I notice it in my the tensile strength of my skin when I drop off that regime and when I pick it back up for whatever like when I'm traveling etc you know just the things even like that this is definitely what I noticed when I first moved to Europe and and and just by the nature of living on animal farms adapted effectively like a keto diet and really high animal protein diet.

Starting point is 00:29:10 Like I, I immediately all this stuff that had worked from a totally aesthetic perspective, you know, everything from like split ends to split nails, cavities to, you know, acne,

Starting point is 00:29:22 dry skin. Like I haven't had dry skin in 20 years. And in my youth, I thought that was just part of who I was. And I didn't realize it was entirely diet related. You know, so it's like, it's an amazing, there's just so much that you can and I also think too, it's like, the reason that we take care of aesthetics, the reason we do it is because we are, they're indicators of internal health, right? So the whole system now coaches us to put on makeup and do things to ourselves on the outside that give a parvance of excellent internal health, right? And we don't think about the other way, which is like beauty is supposed to be an indicator of your

Starting point is 00:29:56 vitality and fertility, right? Effectively for your mate. And we're being coached to like, I mean, this is the dawn of time women have done this, but it's like, there should be a thing of saying, like, what you're actually trying to create is this, like, this sense of vibrancy and vitality. So actually, be vibrant and vital through your diet. Like, there's a different way of thinking about it. And you can still do all the other things, you can still wear makeup, I still wear makeup and stuff like that. You know, it's not like, I'm saying be austere. But it's like, if you want those indicators of health, try just being healthy, you know, as opposed to just like, you know,

Starting point is 00:30:30 the thing with the nails is that the reason that I think psychologically women are so obsessed with nails is that nails are an amazing indicator of health. Right? Spots in your nails, flaking your nails, those are indicators that you have a poor diet. And so I, you know, you look at the way women take care of their nails. Now it's all about sticking things on top

Starting point is 00:30:48 of their nails to make them look like they're giant claws. Like I can take the freaking paint off the walls with my nails, right? Because I drink like a quart and a half or two of bone broth every day. But I never really thought about it that way. You know, it's always like, well, put paint on your nails or go to these, you know, chemical toxic salons where they do all this stuff to you to make them look better that actually impoverish them. So it's like kind of a bigger metaphor for how we do everything. We're just more obsessed with the way it's appearing on the outside, making the outside shell look like something and neglecting that there's a way to pivot that to think about how do I turn the inside towards that projection or towards that goal? Yeah, that's so beautifully stated. It just reminds me of the as above, so below,

Starting point is 00:31:25 as within, so without. We think about that with our own microbiome and the microbiome of the soil, but also our internal systems when they're vibrant and healthy, that's expressed externally. And we do see a lot of people who look fucking awesome and they can't get pregnant.

Starting point is 00:31:40 They need help. I have lots of friends too. And there's no blame there. It's just the current state of where we're at. And it's so much about aesthetics. But if we think about how we heal from the inside out and collagen too, and bone broth, by the way, like for everybody who has survived on a shitty, sad American diet, like I did for the first 30 years of my life, what better way to heal the gut than to go right in with

Starting point is 00:32:01 bone broth and allow that to heal the gut? Everybody's worried about which probiotic do I take and uh what kind of kefir is good look they're all good but start by fixing the actual structure of the intestine start there and and bone broth is so good at that you can bone broth is the the gateway and you can that's what i do is like my hack right but the other thing that you get an enormous amount of collagen from skirt steak um from any braised meat like a braised chuck or braised lamb shoulder um you know chicken soup made traditionally with the whole chicken carcass incredible sources of collagen so you know you can get there is there's we've we also i think that we bone broth has been this magic breakthrough because it has such an immediate transformative effect.

Starting point is 00:32:47 That's actually for my company. When I started in 2012, you know, I was selling spleens and guts and kidneys. And I was in Marin, California. It was just a mess. Like we weren't finding our people, right? And so we pivoted towards more of a gourmet positioning for the brand. Like, you know wow everybody with our pork shoulders and these big beautiful steaks which we still do but we weren't

Starting point is 00:33:10 able to really embrace wellness until my bone broth started to take off and the reason why is i started to get these customers who were like recovering from cancer recovering from childbirth recovering from whatever you know even like a broken bone and they would come in and they'd be like no this changed my life and i started to get calls like from the local hospital in Marin County saying, we have so many patients that have had these really powerful experiences after cancer with your bone broth. Can we, you know, figure out a way to work together? So it was all of a sudden, like this whole health piece, which is amazing, because it aligned with where I was coming from.

Starting point is 00:33:41 But bone broth has this, it's like you just pour something into a desert, right? There's like such a total absence of that. But when now that I'm, you know, looking at it kind of more holistically, it was great for my business. But now I also want to coach people saying, you can get bone broth from so many connective tissue, which steaks, you can also get it from braising. And you can also, you know, there's, there's, you know, it's in really, really present in marrow, you know, marrow's, there's, you know, it's in really, really present in marrow. You know, marrow is this amazing cocktail of just fat and collagen. And so there's lots of ways to get it because basically, you know, collagenous tissue surrounds any muscle in its, so any muscle has a sheath that's made out of this collagenous tissue.

Starting point is 00:34:25 And there's a fine sheath that surrounds it that allows muscles to slide. So if I, well, you'd be more impressive if you flex, but if you flex, there's a bunch of muscles that are like seizing up and they're next to each other, right? And they slide, they don't stick to each other, right? They move independently. That's how our arms move and things. And so those sheaths are made out of collagen.

Starting point is 00:34:40 So when we braise, we basically allow those sheaths to disintegrate and turn back into their components. Then there's another major place where we have collagen, which is in the tendons and sinew in the body are also made out of collagenous tissue. So in actually even when you're pregnant, your fetus, its bones will be initially a collagenous matrix that calcifies. So there's actually collagen embedded in bones as well, which is why we get it in bone broth. So collagen is just throughout the animal's body. So we get it out of the bones. And it's a great, you know, thing for us too, because those are bones that in start of the business, I was paying people to

Starting point is 00:35:20 remove for me now I can turn them into money. But I also which is important when you raise things the way we do, we got to kind of extract value out of every single part but um the other as a as a user and as a cook you can you can look at everything as an opportunity for collagen and i actually think that's a people kind of think about um as like oh this is indulgent and it's fatty like you look at cuts that are like more exciting and less exciting because of fat content, I would encourage you to look at cuts really from access to collagen content. Because you know, these striated muscles like ribeyes and New York's and stuff, they're delicious, they're very easy to cook. They're, they're fun, we know how to we know how to handle them as Americans, right. But that they don't actually have, they have basically

Starting point is 00:36:05 no collagen, because it's just one single large muscle. So if you look at the opportunity to things like shoulders, and all animals have lots of different muscles that move side by side, lots of complex joint structures, there's a huge opportunity for collagen in that. So that's why I'm always like kind of looking at my diet on a weekly basis. It's like I want, you know, the majority of my meat to have a rich collagenous content as much as just the deliciousness and the protein. And the collagen is crucial to extracting your glutathione as well. So you actually can better metabolize glutathione, which is the master amino acid in meat, when you have available collagen in your diet at the same time. So it allows you to take the superpower nutrition out of meat, you know.

Starting point is 00:36:53 So it allows you to extract that, metabolize that, as well as in and of itself being a great protein. Yeah, you increase bioavailability of everything through that. Yeah, I want to ask you, you know, let's, let's just jump right in. How do we, this is going to sound, uh, well, I'm just going to say, I'm a little embarrassed to say, but I can cook New York's and ribeyes pretty well. I have no idea how to braise meat. Can we talk about which, what we would cut? You know, I've done pork shoulder, pork butt in a crock pot, whole chicken in a crock pot. That's pretty easy. What are some of the methods you use in the oven? I mean, I mean, it seems like any, especially in Texas, it's like if you're, you can smoke low and slow. If you got the big smoker or the Traeger or these things,

Starting point is 00:37:34 then I get that. But if I'm not grilling, I really, or crock potting, I really have no idea what the fuck to do in the kitchen. Totally. So we'll start off with, you know, with collagen, with any cut that you're braising, you can soften it and make it available to your gut by the addition of water, right? So collagen is soluble in water. So the active braising is simply taking tough sinewy collagenous tissues and slowly liquefying them in abundant water. That's what we do when we braise. Every other part of braising is about adding flavor. Smoking also can tenderize, but it won't fully eliminate them.

Starting point is 00:38:17 So if you were to smoke something with a, you know, you can cut around it afterwards, but you're not going to get that same access. I have to say too, I am, I need to do more in this, but as a consumer of all kinds of meat all the time, I had some doubts about, you know, in general, I try to limit the amount of smoked meat and preserved meats I eat because I'm made of meat and I don't want to stop my natural microbiome and natural degradation processes in my gut. Right. So I just in general recommend like smoked meats are awesome. They're delicious. I love them, but it's something that I try to consume in balance. Um, because just like any preserved meats, I don't want stuff that's like my tissue that has stopped on its journey of degradation

Starting point is 00:39:03 and evolution to be in my body that makes sense yeah yeah totally it's like that's like why i don't eat much lunch meat i mean every once in a while salami it's fine absolutely especially things that are on a natural product but the smoked meats i really feel it in my gut too when i eat it um i also have a tendency to eat a lot of it because it usually has sugar on it it's got that kind of cocktail of stuff um but it's the kind of thing where you eat it and you're actually like, wow, I just put a bunch of like stuff that's very genetically similar to me, but that's not allowed to biodegrade into my body. It's going to be tough on my system. Braising, on the other hand, I find makes everything more bioavailable.

Starting point is 00:39:39 And in general, you know, the ways you can cook are hot and fast, which is well suited for very tender muscles, right? And or you can cook a lot of things hot and fast and cut them in a way that facilitates tenderness, right? So you can cook any cut of meat, like this is what they do in most of Asia, cook any cut of meat hot and fast and then cut it very thin against the grain and mix it with a marinade or something afterwards. That's the typical way of cooking there. So there's ways to handle that. But typically, hot and fast is best suited for the American favorites of a New York marinade or something afterwards. That's the typical way of cooking there. So there's ways to handle that. But typically hot and fast is best suited

Starting point is 00:40:06 for the American favorites of a New Yorker or a bun. The other way is like a low and slow dry heat, which will not work on liquefying any of your collagenous connective tissue. It's not going to work as well for like a lamb shoulder or a chuck or something because it'll just slowly dry out those collagenous tissues.

Starting point is 00:40:24 But it's very good for large, leaner cuts of meat without a lot of connective tissue. That's what you do for like a, or just, or large, fattier cuts of meat with that much connective tissue. So that'll work great for like a ham, a large single cut of meat from the leg of the animal. It'll work well for a top round, which is, you know, a similar, similar position of meat from the, from the beef. So those things will, that low and slow dry heat works well for big cuts that are not made up of many small muscles. The majority of the

Starting point is 00:40:51 animal is made up of tons of little muscles, shoulders, shanks, all those, I mean, the shoulders also called the chuck or the picnic, right? So there's lots of different cuts, names for these cuts. Those cuts, what we're going to be doing typically, what I recommend is depending on the size of the animal, you can braise it whole and something like a lamb shoulder, which is very, very flavorful and delicious. I will simply put that in water, heat it up to a low simmer, and I'll cook it for three to six hours in moisture, low and slow, and add aromatics about halfway through.

Starting point is 00:41:25 So I'll add chili and garlic and bay and paprika and anything else that appeals to me to that to add flavor. And then I'll cool that, skim off the fat, and it'll be a pulled meat. The other way to braise it a little bit faster is to cut the meat up into smaller pieces so that you increase the surface area to volume ratio. So if I take that same lamb shoulder, instead of tossing it in a pan, covering it with water,

Starting point is 00:41:47 and just hanging out for three to five hours, whatever that ends up being, until it's truly tender and liquefied. If I cut it smaller, I increase the surface area to volume ratio. So there's more surface through which the water can penetrate. So it can have access to that collagen and liquefy that collagen just more efficiently, right? So I can cut that braising time down to like an hour, right? The other key part of braising that many people love to do, myself included, time permitting, is to sear it first. And the reason we sear it first, in that case, I'll take suet. I cook mostly with suet in my kitchen, which is just a rendered beef tallow.

Starting point is 00:42:22 You can also use ghee. I wouldn't recommend butter because it's got a lot of compounds in it that can burn but you get some a nice high heat fat up hot and then sear the chunks of of this collagenous tissue rich meat in it and you'll get it brown on all sides then add your liquid the reason we do that that's like in a coq au vin you do that with the pieces of chicken the beef beef bourguignon, it's very typical for like European braises, it adds mouthfeel and interest, right? So instead of things getting pulled and just being big, soft fibers of meat, which is delicious, but more applicable for like a taco or something than just like a main bowl, then I'll simply, I'll just sear that into chunks, and then it retains these nice little moist chunks of meat

Starting point is 00:43:04 in your final product. That's the kind of matrix that you can do to anything. Now, the key thing though, is that moist cooking, right? Like doing something like the braises I was just talking about, it has to be high collagen. That's a comment I get all the time of like, I made a braise like what you put on Instagram, but it was super dry. And I'm, well, what cut cut did you use top round? And it's like, well, there's no connective tissue. So all you're doing is just drying the heck out of some striated muscle. Same thing goes with like a chicken breast, that's going to be a terrible braise. Those are those those long striated muscle fibers simply dry out and become stringier and stringier. So if I am raising a whole chicken, for example, I'll pull the i'll sear the

Starting point is 00:43:45 breast pull them out and then add them at the very end and just poach them because that that fiber of that muscle doesn't actually respond well to moisture because it does not have enough collagen in it that makes a lot of sense well you're you're getting my my wheels turning to get creative there and try some new things um speaking of new things i get a lot of questions around organ meat and a lot of people are averse to it i've uh, you know, I've tried just about everything with our mutual friend, Paul Saladino. In fact, he brought over a Rocky Mountain Oyster to Aubrey's house the other day, and we had that raw. It wasn't as bad as I suspected, but he likes a lot of things raw. And, you know, raw liver is okay. Raw kidney is pretty damn tough to take down.

Starting point is 00:44:26 What are some of the ways that you prepare organ meat? Because, you know, I've spoken quite a bit about this on this podcast, the benefits, the bioavailability. How do we make these the most bioavailable and how do we make these the most palatable? Yeah, so that's a great question. You know, let's talk about it by organ. Okay, because they're they behave differently. In the case of liver, the best trick for palatability is to barely cook it. And it's a little bit anathema for the American consumer to hear that because you're like, Oh, my God, it's so dangerous, right? So think about it. The reason that liver is dangerous now, or we perceive it as being dangerous, is that we are accustomed in America to products that perform well in our supply chain. Our supply chain is predicated on things being able to be frozen and shipped long distances

Starting point is 00:45:18 and stored and refrozen and et cetera. Right. The organs are extremely delicate. They have no striated muscle they're just little blobs of fat and soft soft threads of connective tissue that hold them together so they're like little clouds that are suspended within the animal they perform terribly in the modern system so what happened is when things really industrialized in the 50s and 60s when these products were commercialized, they were awful, and they developed lots of really bad flavors. And in fact, you know, when you if you get liver from Belcampo, it should be, you know, it comes off the animal, it goes into the freezer,

Starting point is 00:45:55 and it shipped to you. And all that happens, you know, pretty rapidly, it's like within a week or two, right? In in many small quality producers like i'm sure who paul brought the rocky man oyster from like a lot that's how smaller operators work in bigger systems when you have a thousand animals being killed a day in a huge plant and buckets of liver accumulating and moving into the cold chain quickly but they're having to be doused with different you know lactic solutions and bleach solutions to ensure sanitation the product handling is just not there. And that that little soft organ just can't take it, they can't be taken, thrown into a bucket, you know, like they're very, very delicate. So the first thing is to start with sourcing, right. And then once you're sourcing, well, you're paying more and assume that what you're paying

Starting point is 00:46:39 for it with that extra dollar or two that you're spending on that per pound on that liver is the security to cook it to optimal deliciousness not the fear that causes you to cook it to the point where you're sure that any potential pathogens are dead and that's freedom right that's a that's freedom to be able to cook to things being awesome tasting not having to cook to the point of like killing all the e. coli, right? I mean, think about it. Like if we were expected, like for let's say, even apples at home, like, oh, got to cook this to 160, because there might be E. coli on it. People would think that was crazy. But somehow we've accepted that with meat, right? And I know that the risk factors are high. It's a little bit of an extreme example I give to make a point. But broadly, our mentality around meat,

Starting point is 00:47:23 you know, or imagine if it was like oh yeah any any cucumbers you need to wash in like a light chlorine solution because there's likely to be something yeah okay cool but that's what we've done with meat we're just like great we're here for it no problem we'll over and again all these emails from people why why do you say to cook your turkey to 150 uh you know thanksgiving instead of 165 or i say 145 or 150 because it's the most delicious it's like yeah but why does the usda say 165 because they'd like you to kill to be sure that you're killing any salmonella i would like you to be sure that there wasn't any salmonella to begin with right so thinking about the liver it's everyone's overcooking it because in the industrial

Starting point is 00:48:00 system that product is more likely to be a pathogen vector. You got to be really careful. And we're accustomed to overcooking it. So the key thing is to the consistency. I like to ensure that the middle is pink on the liver. And that will make it much more delicious and much more palatable. And that it's primarily a textural issue. The liver itself is so high in fat. And as I mentioned, it's got it's got actually tons and tons of very small, very fine collagenous tissues, we were talking

Starting point is 00:48:30 about collagenous tissues don't do great with hot, dry heat. Problem is you cook the liver really hot and dry, those collagenous tissues seize up, and it's really chewy, and they're there like gnawing on that liver, right? And it's just not delicious. So if you can minimally sear it to ensure that those tissues are just minimally kind of, you know, holding the gel together and make yourself comfortable with that experience, that's going to be a much better eating experience. Other key things with liver, salt it abundantly. The's it's the irony taste is counterbalanced with salt, and then finish it with always with an acid. And that helps with nutrient absorption. And it also makes it much more delicious. So it's about kind of, it's not about masking the flavors, but any very flavorful

Starting point is 00:49:18 needs more salt and more acid. So the more flavor, it's almost think about like, you got to kind of meet it where it's at, you know, it's the same reason that we wouldn't put like maple syrup on a strawberry, because a strawberry has got a very mild flavor. If anything, it might be like some coconut sugar or something, right? But like, you're going to avoid you don't put really strong or like, you're not going to put like an anchovy on, you know, something that's very, very mild, right? So you're going to go for things that are more like you'll put that on something with cheese on it, you're put, you know, you'll pair it with garlic, like you're putting strong flavors together.

Starting point is 00:49:46 So with liver, you're going to want to put stronger flavors together. And do you, for the acid, would you use something like a citrus or would you use apple cider vinegar? What, what generally would you use there? Culinarily, I love lime or lemon, like a citrus on, on a liver. Um, I, I also like sherry vinegar. I don't like apple cider vinegar culinarily i love to drink it but i find that the apple leaf flavor is kind of overwhelming and i

Starting point is 00:50:11 don't really want that with the liver um and then you'll notice too you know typically traditionally caramelized onions are a natural pairing with liver and that's because the strong sweetness is also a masking and meeting kind of component of it so if you wanted something like that without the without the caramelized onions you can always caramelize onions if you want that but a balsamic is also nice too because it's got that sweetness so sweet salty acid paired with that strong kind of muscular liver flavor is going to be a great way but the first step is just don't overcook it perfect and you gotta go and you guys uh i think mike salemi was telling me this i don't know if it's if it's still the case but

Starting point is 00:50:51 originally you guys had a dog food that was a an organ meat blend and then that's now just uh just now that's that there's enough people that are demanding it that you make this grind for people that we were starting to get um like people uh using our dog food for human food so i and then i've you know in that case left from the butcher shop right so that we have a little bit of shops and for those would they would use all their different grinds together um but now we do do in some of our locations we offer like a carnivore an awful grind um i'm considering it making it into a regular product there hasn't been as much of a demand for it when i've launched it but there's a huge demand for our liver we have a really hard time keeping up with liver and

Starting point is 00:51:35 suet demand right now so it's another one that's just been going bananas for us which makes sense so it's like just a fantastic cooking fat it It's super inexpensive. You know, it costs like a tenth of what ghee costs. And it's basically the same fat. It's cow fat, right? That's pure and performs really well at high heat. So I sell that unrendered and on our website. And we just go through it like crazy. So it's like these soft little bags of fat that surround the kidney.

Starting point is 00:52:02 And they're adjacent to a couple different organ packets. So as I mentioned, the organs are very delicate. In the animal's body, just like out in the real world, there's hard parts, there's ribs, there's bones, there's pieces, right? So the suets are these little soft clouds of fat surrounded by connective tissue that protect the organ from bumping and falling and aggression within the animal. And it's particularly soft and well-adapted for cooking. So if you buy suet whole, you just put it in a pan with a little bit of water.

Starting point is 00:52:32 You should try this. And then it's amazing because you cook it down low and slow, like three hours, pour it off, and then you have beef suet cracklings left over. So like they're little shreds of collagenous tissue with fat embedded in it.

Starting point is 00:52:47 It's like a chicharron, but a beef chicharron. So my kids like, they salt those and like snack on them. You get a lot of them. It's a lot to eat, but they're really only good like they also have a party that day or something or give them away. But it's like really crunchy, deep fried pieces of collagen basically.

Starting point is 00:53:02 So super healthy as well. But suet's another item i also really recommend i love cooking so you'll find when you cook with suet that it's got a pretty pronounced scent i actually use it for skin care as well um it's really good on your skin it's really similar to um human um fat too i mean pig fat is actually more similar but i find the the scent is a little bit much for me but the suet you'll put it on you or you'll cook with it when it's cold you smell the strong smell from it and then when you warm it up though it immediately just it's like sort of nice and beefy um it's really delicious so it's a it's a fantastic

Starting point is 00:53:35 just way to also increase the you know your animal fat in your diet healthy animal fats so that's what i absolutely recommend for searing your liver is to, you know, if you can get a little bit, a teaspoon of suet and just put that in there. Yeah. It's interesting. I have, I've only tried it with saladino. I've only had the, the raw, you know, just cut it, cut it like a little, little, little sliver and add some sea salt. And I know you don't, you're not a fan of it. I was a huge fan of it. I was, we went hunting with Manso and I was like, this is the greatest snack ever. I mean, I was blown away and, and really, you know, like, uh, you talk about, you know, conventional animal fat versus, you know, this traditional and,

Starting point is 00:54:14 and in alignment within the sacred hoop of all the life that goes into that, you know, it's so robust and yellow and there's so much, you can see that the carotenoids and the vitamin A that's in it and it's like wow like this thing it looks completely different than any fat that i've ever seen before but it tastes incredible i've yet to render it and use it for cooking but it's phenomenal stuff yeah i haven't we saw a lot of people snack on it i mean it's good but if like of the landscape of things that i like to snack on it's probably not the top. But I don't think a piece of parmesan over there, but I get my animal fat and all that,

Starting point is 00:54:49 but you'll find, I just render it and sort in Mason jars in my fridge and it'll keep for a year in the fridge. And I always have one jar out on the counter at room temperature and we cook everything in eggs. And I mean, and really, you know,

Starting point is 00:55:02 I think our suet right now is something like like $6 a a pound something in that zone and if a pound you know you can make a pint so you basically get a pint of like ghee quality fat for six bucks it's a great deal as well yeah i mean it's cheaper than oil cheaper than good ghee so i i use it mostly for that just culinary but i get it as a snack too um i think that the interesting thing about the suet, because of that collagenous matrix, you can get that. I have to say from a snacking perspective, I probably enjoy back fat more, just straight up back fat, because it has more flavor, you know,

Starting point is 00:55:37 and it's been on the exterior of the meat. It's got a little bit more of that kind of pronounced beefy flavor. So in terms of like pure fat snacking, I think I'm probably also in a place where my nutrient needs are not as extreme as yours like in terms of like the landscape of what i'm going to snack on for nutrient but um but yeah it's it's it's a super power food too you get that like incredible like burst of energy from it the stearic acid in suet i've is interesting too you know it has this sort of waxy coating feeling in your mouth,

Starting point is 00:56:06 the hysteric acid. So for me, that's a little bit off-putting about eating it at room temperature. I don't love the full waxy mouthfeel. It feels like I'm kind of eating a candle. But if you warm it up and put it in your eggs, that's all just gravy. You don't taste any of that and you get all the nutrients.

Starting point is 00:56:21 Yeah, texture has been a big thing that I've been kind of reframing my brain around from the little kid brain i don't want to try this to like okay let me see all right i know i understand on the back end what this does for me health-wise let me see if i can get around it in the mouth and see if i can come to terms with it but um i think i mean two days into eating it i was like yeah this is good you talked a bit about that with max too this this um you know when we when we slow cook things in a crock pot or something like that, like when we do a whole chicken, how when the collagen tissue breaks down, it provides that stickiness, you know, that we would find in a stew or something, that feeling, you know, that's

Starting point is 00:56:57 a different feeling and how full we get from that. Expand on that a little bit. Yeah. So, I mean, collagen has the benefit, right? There's all these great benefits of coating the gut. So when we say it soothes your gut, physically what's happening is that the collagen liquefied in or dissolved in moisture will cover the cilia that are lining the inside of your stomach. And since many of us are in America in a constantly inflamed state, so there's cilia, they're on the lining of your gut, and those are actually

Starting point is 00:57:29 engorged and they're sort of, they're not like smooth, right? So then there's fissures. And actually, in terms of disease and disease prevention, a lot of these reasons about like being in good health and resisting diseases like COVID is that when you ingest a virus, it can permeate your gut wall through fissures. So the more healthy your gut is, the more resistant you are to disease, the more resistant you are to gut upset, all those different things happen. So there's an analogous thing that happens like actually just within your mouth, though, where it actually coats your taste buds. And it gives a sense of a full mouthfeel. So I think about it as people,

Starting point is 00:58:07 you know, I think love like bacon because of that mouthfeel of the pork fat, warm pork fat, and how it coats your mouth and gives a sense of satiety. And it's really gratifying. It's like the crunchiness and then all this, this, this covering of your mouth, and collagen gives you something similar, right? So it's that kind of just basically a more, if you look at the kind of holistic feelings of wellness, that to me is interesting. Like there's, when we're eating a lot of foods that don't have collagen, part of the issues is like,

Starting point is 00:58:36 you're not actually ticking all the boxes that make you actually feel full, right? So when we're looking at what is satiety, what is feeling full? It's not really about calories or fat, right? We've all had the experience of eating nutritionally bereft food, and then eating a ton of it and still feeling hungry, right? We kind of call that like part of that's emotional eating, but it's not really it's actually just like that that food doesn't have what it takes to make us feel full.

Starting point is 00:59:01 And it's because we don't really want to eat just for calories. We're eating for wellness. Like we're evolved to eat for wellness. We used to spend 90% of our time messing with our food, soaking it, drying it, gathering it, killing it, cutting it up. Like that used to be what we existed to do, right? And then every once in a while,

Starting point is 00:59:21 we'd be like focusing on babies. Like that was kind of life for the majority of human existence, right? So when the reason we focus so much on is that that's the major way that we have to control longevity and life and life quality. So when we're eating, we tend to think about people go on a diet, it's like, oh, I'm going to limit my calories in calories in calories out. That's part of the picture, but it's not the entire picture. So when we're eating, and we get that satiety feeling from collagen, it's not that somehow we're tricking our body. It's that our body is like, oh, we've got this fullness feeling in our mouth, we're likely

Starting point is 00:59:52 consuming collagen, we can slow the roll, right? And you look at this like kind of people who have experiences of getting lean or controlling appetite, like with soup, right? There's something in it. And it's not that that soup so magical, but it's like, you know, when you've got a little bit of collagen in it, you trigger the satiety feeling in your body. And you actually and I actually do that to control like yesterday, I had a hell of a day, you know, we're going through shutdowns, and we're very close to another stay at home order, I had to temporarily close one restaurant, lay off people, it's a very stressful day for me. And I managed that by making chicken soup. And I was like, I ate like little bowls of

Starting point is 01:00:30 chicken soup during the day, it wasn't really emotional eating, but it's like eating for soothing and eating for also for easy satiety. Like there's some of these things too, where I'm like, okay, I don't really have time to slow my roll, drinking a cup of broth, eating soup all day long, it keeps me in even keel i feel i feel full enough to function but not overly full and stuff like i would if i sat down and ate a big plate of something or a bunch of vegetables that slow my roll um so there's like there's ways that you can actually use those collagenous rich foods to kind of control your emotional state you know and i also find too when i get into a place where i feel like the edge of like the kind of cravings,

Starting point is 01:01:06 that's actually when I try to eat liver or marrow, really high fat, high collagen foods, because I think cravings are my body being like, Oh my God, I'm a little freaked out. Like I'm going to get my cycle or whatever, you know, like trigger hormonal thing is happening. And I try to say to my body, look, we're fine. We got all this fat. Feed that micronutrient needs. So if like, if you're,'re that's one thing i would this is a little bit radical but if you're craving brownies try liver like try what are you craving in that brownie what are you craving we are actually looking for some a sense of security right and what is real security it's like abundant

Starting point is 01:01:39 animal fat right so you can tell your body everything's OK by providing that. Yeah, that's beautiful. As you're talking about that, the soups and with the current climate politically and everything that's happening. That, you know, that really is something that that resonates deeply with all of us. We all think of these comfort foods, you know, what grandma made when we were growing up, the thing that makes us feel full and happy and just calm, at ease with the world and at ease with what we're doing in life. And the biological response that happens from eating these things is, it's undeniable. There's no two ways about it. I think about that too. One of the first things when I first started getting into ketogenic diets, and I'm not on one now, but when I first started with that, I was like, oh, this is the first time I feel like I'm not enslaved to what I'm going to eat next in two hours. Like I was just like, oh, I'm free.

Starting point is 01:02:32 Like I can eat when I need to eat, and I'll look forward to eating, but I'm not constantly looking at the watch and constantly looking for a snack. And I feel the same way when I do a good crock pot, you know, even if there's carbohydrates in it and I typically don't do well with starches, but I can put sweet potatoes in there or Japanese yams and eat them and three hours goes by and I'm not sitting there looking for something sugary or a piece of fruit or anything,

Starting point is 01:02:56 you know, the next bowl. I feel a sense of wholeness and wellness that's lasting. Yeah, I think any diet that you're on that creates a sense of deprivation is not sustainable it's it's a form of fasting there's no two ways about it it's meant to be done in short periods exactly it's fine for a short thing if that's your jam but like that sense of like i mean i i feel it too with um like i try to fast like 14 hours a day. But I try to do it in a way that doesn't create a sense of deprivation, because I'd like to do this forever for my life, you know, and, and it's like, you

Starting point is 01:03:32 got to kind of find the find the mix of things that create that. I also think it's funny, too, when people say, oh, when you're doing keto, like stay away from nut butters, because it's, you know, easy, difficult to control the amount that you eat. And it's like, well, I would say then, instead of saying, just look at it as something that's difficult to control the way you eat. It's like, say, what is it about that that makes it difficult? Right. And it's probably that it's not answering a broader spectrum of needs, right. So I sort of wonder, it's like a lot of these foods when you say, oh, it's difficult to control consumption, or I overeat this, like you're maybe not overeating it, it maybe isn't giving you the full bandwidth of nutrition that you need, or not giving you the full experience of eating that you need. Like,

Starting point is 01:04:11 you know, we all know that you eat a handful of nuts, you're like, cool, that's great. We have a jar of nut butter, it's like baby food, right? And so, you know, it's like, there's things that you can say, well, what is it? Is it the nutritional thing? Is it the act of like chewing and salivation and, and the full act of eating it that isn't gratifying me. So it's like there's things that you can say, well, what is it? Is it the nutritional thing? Is it the act of like chewing and salivation and the full act of eating it that isn't gratifying me? So it's interesting to say, to try to turn that a little bit on its head and say, instead of what is this about this that's making me overeat? Say, what is it lacking that I keep eating more to try to find and I'm not getting, you know? Is it because I'm not chewing it? I think it was that, but that's probably it right

Starting point is 01:04:45 so there's kind of like you got to look at things critically um and people have this mentality i think of being sort of afraid of their pantry because it's this temptation zone it's like you know you get you got to just find stuff that that is deeply more look at everything from both sides of it not necessarily that you're you have bad willpower maybe it isn't serving you And what do you do differently in terms of your selection of food to get things that are actually serving your deeper nutrition, right? In your everyday. I love that. Well, talk about, talk about Belcampo, talk about what you guys are doing and anywhere people can find you guys. Yeah, we are in Northern and Southern California with restaurant butcher shops and encourage anyone that's a fan of quality meat just to come in, even if it's just for eye candy. They're beautiful, great products.

Starting point is 01:05:33 We always have organ meats, beautiful steaks, all the things, whole chickens. And then we've got an amazing e-commerce selection online at belcampo.com. That's something that's been just a gift of god in in covid it's just we've gotten this huge lift on our e-commerce platform and we've added tons more organs we have spleen now um which is great so some of the really kind of unique cuts as well then i've got lots of cuts there we're talking about rich collagen cuts things like the kanya and skirt steak i have on the website so things that you can't really get copa steak from which is a pork shoulder steak amazing collagen fat, fat-rich cut.

Starting point is 01:06:06 I'm going to send you some of those. I think you'd like them. They kind of cook like pork, but it's just amazing nutritionally. So there's a great range on belcamo.com. And then I also sell in a couple grocery stores in Air Ones and in Met Market up in the Seattle area. So that's a growing area for me is selling through grocery. But the place to start is just belcamo.com. You can find out about our stores there. Of course, we're heading into Christmas right now. We'll give you a healthy gift discount to share with

Starting point is 01:06:32 people there. We'll do 20% off for people who are listening and can go and use a gift code. So, and then we also, it's, you know, the meats are seven species, right? So I raise beef, pork, lamb, chicken, geese, ducks, and turkeys. I think every one of those, except for geese, is available on the website right now. And everything is organic certified, regeneratively farmed, and certified humane. So we're actually third-party verified as being carbon sequestration positive. So we put carbon into the soil. We have monitored that over seven years. So you can feel super good about, you know, know the purchase our product is going to be more expensive um

Starting point is 01:07:09 typically not as like not as extremely expensive as as you might imagine but it's usually around 20 to 30 percent higher than what you'd see for a for a grocery store yeah and you're worth it you're getting the best no question yeah i i. I always laughed with, you know, I told Mike Salimi this, but the first time he sent out bone broth, I was like, oh, this looks really good. You know? And I thought it, and then I was making it for Tosh while she was pregnant. And I had to squeeze and knead the last part out. Like it was toothpaste. That's how thick it was. I've never had bone broth this thick. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, just incredible stuff. So that's actually something I'm really proud of. You know, people drink bone broth for

Starting point is 01:07:52 collagen, and a lot of it doesn't have the collagen because it's not made out of the right cuts. And it's also difficult, you know, like these are there, it's a hard product to make, we've developed our recipe and formulations over five years. And then now we've scaled it up with a different type of packaging and those different things. But it's a challenging product to make we've taken we developed our recipe and formulations over five years and then now we've scaled it up with a different type of packaging and those different things but it's it's a challenging product to make and ours has the highest collagen and tastes the best of any that's on the market right now so and i'm also going to be launching next year a collagen enhanced bone broth so like a bone broth with um like a shot i'd love to hear what you think about this but like a shot of bone broth that's got like as much protein as two chicken breasts in a mix of natural collagen and enhanced collagen.

Starting point is 01:08:27 So like an idea of like a recovery drink that you would just warm up and then drink it like an eight ounce portion with tons of collagen. Cause I love that. Like I liked, I'm drinking bone broth for collagen. I'm not drinking it for like, you know, there's other good stuff in it,

Starting point is 01:08:40 but that's why I want it. So I want it to deliver on that. From my perspective, I'd rather pay a little bit more, but have it have, you know, three times the collagen. That's, that's what I'm, that's what I'm here for. So I tried to make our product as, as thick as possible. And then, you know, we actually, we, we were, we were called out by the USDA because our collagen content was so high. They were like, this is technically a meat product. And so they made up, I had to get it co-packed because I made it in the commercial kitchen on our

Starting point is 01:09:07 farm. And we, the USDA, we have a USDA slaughterhouse. Like we have our own slaughterhouse adjacent to the farm. And we brought, you know, the USDA inspector checks out our other facilities sometimes.

Starting point is 01:09:19 And they were like, they tested the bone broth and they're like, this is technically a meat because it's so high in protein. Because broth is not typically regulated by it's so high in protein. Because broth is not typically regulated by the USDA. That's incredible. So I had to get to a USDA plant or they were like, no problem. You can water it down. Wow.

Starting point is 01:09:34 It's like, thanks, but no thanks. Right. So, yeah, that's there's like a lot of stuff with the government that are like, I mean, it's well, it's all well intentioned. Right. But it's like, are you kidding me? So, yeah, we had to we had to move toentioned. Right. But it's like, are you kidding me? So yeah, we had to, we had to move to a co-packer because it was too high in protein.

Starting point is 01:09:48 And it was like either co-pack it with a USDA plant or just add water. Well, that's a great problem to have. I absolutely love your stuff and I love you, Anya. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Starting point is 01:10:00 All right. Bye.

Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #182 Anya Fernald

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