Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 296 - Piedmontese Owner Shane Peed and Kayla Springer

Episode Date: December 17, 2019

Yes, the owner of the company that brings you the absolute best beef on the planet, Certified Piedmontese Beef is here today! He and Kayla are gonna teach us a lot about meat, specifically Piedmontese Beef, and how they're able to provide the absolute best tasting and macro friendly beef. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/shop.aspx?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Power%20Project for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 15% off your order! ➢Quest Nutrition: https://www.questnutrition.com/ Use code "MARKSQUEST" at checkout for 20% of your order! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

And Seema, I hate to admit this, but you're looking pretty damn good lately. You're looking like a snack over there. I know. You got any room for any snacks in your nutrition, in your diet? I know you're trying to keep everything pretty clean. Well, I mean, yeah, I kind of have room. You know, I kind of overdo the snack thing. But like, I do like the Quest cookies because, again, they have a good amount of fiber.

They're not something that like I really tend to overeat on, but they hit the spot. When I need something that can get me some little sweetie, sweetie, I like those. Those are good. Yeah, and for people that struggle and have a hard time with snacks, I would recommend this is something that you do at the end of the day. That way you go to bed, you're satisfied, you had something sweet, and you can turn over to something new and start a new day what do you got over there did in sema say sweetie sweetie he did i was losing it over here yeah he did if you guys want some of that sweetie sweetie goodness head over to quest nutrition..com, enter promo code MARKSQUEST at checkout for 20% off all the

sweetie sweetness. So in SEMA, I know you come from a background of kind of counting calories and weighing stuff and things like that. But more recently, you've been doing a lot of intermittent fasting and you cut out a lot of carbohydrates, right? Yeah. I've been going super, super, super low carb. How are you doing that with jujitsu and power and you're still strong? I mean, I think it was just a two months ago or so

you pulled like a seven 25 deadlift. Yeah, no, it's, I think it took a little bit of getting used to, and it took a little bit of experimenting with things I could use in my fast to just make it go a little easier. So I wasn't, you know, feeling like crap. I think some of the perfect keto products are pretty awesome for that too. Um, like the MCT oils in the morning. But, um, yeah, it just, it took some time. It took some getting used to not having anything in my stomach and not eating food during the day. My, uh, my brother really struggles with fasting. He's like, I can't fast. And I was like, well, what if you have, you know, some MCT oil in your coffee? He's like, oh yeah. He's like, I can fast then. So he can make it to like one or two o'clock each day. A lot of people really struggle with that. They get too hungry. You

know, and the Perfect Keto products I think are a perfect addition to anybody that's trying to mess around with fasting or trying to make some good lifestyle changes to their diet. You can try the bars, you can try the MCT oil. They also have collagen. I mean, they sell all kinds of stuff and all the products are really super high quality. People should be checking it out. Check out Perfect Keto. What do we got, Andrew? Tell them where to find it. Cool. So our listeners can enter and stay in ketosis today by going to perfectketo.com slash powerproject

and use code powerproject and get 15% off all Perfect Keto products. It's that time of year. It's that time of year when everybody gets fat, right? It's that time of year when everyone goes off their diet, everyone goes off plan. But if you have food that tastes good, you don't have to go off plan. If you got some Piedmontese steaks, you don't need to worry about what's being cooked up for Thanksgiving or what's being cooked up for Christmas or you don't have to involve yourself with what everybody else is doing. You can keep it keto or keep that protein up nice and high with some Piedmontese steaks.

I cooked up a big old ribeye. Did you let it sit? I did. That's always tough. I was successful letting it sit. And I did a reverse sear, which I've never done before. I couldn't figure out how to do it either because the ribeye was gigantic. And so I was just like, I don't know what to put it in or put it on so i put it on like an uh iron uh what the

hell those called a cast iron pan and i threw that in the uh in the oven cooked it like that for probably like 20 minutes because it was massive somebody just told me like oh you only need to do like 10 minutes but this thing was huge huge. So I did 20 minutes. And then when I took it out, I cooked it for about another five on each side. And it was just, just absolutely ridiculous. It was, it was so good. I ate the whole thing. Well, I had a little help from Daisy. Oh, really?

You gave her some? My little doggie. She, she helped me with some of it. Yeah. One bite for her, like one bite for us would be like half her body weight. So I know. And I saved the dog bone. I put the dog bone in the freezer because her birthday is coming up. one bite for her like one bite for us would be like half her body weight so i know and i saved the dog bone i put the dog bone uh in the freezer because her birthday's coming up oh that'll be cool you guys take a bunch of pictures for us hell yeah yeah so um if you guys want to check

this stuff out like um piedmontese beef has been huge huge for me with this whole shred down thing and when i noticed the biggest like eye opener was when i i calculated piedmontese macros and then i had you know just like i had ground beef and i'm like oh i definitely don't want that i'd rather have this because i could have way better stuff here yeah yeah but anyway um during this month we're actually not running a promo code with them they are just giving everybody 25 off damn yeah so if you guys want to they're getting serious yeah yeah so if you guys want to check this stuff out head over to piedmontese.com that's p-i-e-d-m-o-n-t-e-s-e.com everything's already 25

off but if you guys want to support the show use the link in the show notes right now hello hello there you go he doesn't usually let me on the air you have to yell i'm like i couldn't hear myself the whole time you sure that was working he's like yep everything i made the mistake i i thought that was in seba's microphone so i wasn't gonna turn his on but you know how we kid around all the time about like when things actually on or not yeah that actually happened the other day with carlos oh no i talked for like 20 minutes and he and he's like it's like all right hey just any you know anytime you want to let me know you're ready we can start and i was like um i started a long time ago he's like no i gotta hit the old record button i think the only time that happened here

on air or not on air was I was like messing with the compressor. And I was like, so are you ready to go? He's like, dude, I've been going for like 20 minutes. I thought we were like, oh, my bad. I think it was the time The Rock was here, right? We missed the whole thing. No, that was the podcast we did in the coffee shop. Oh, that's right.

Yeah. The Lost Coffee Shop episode. That was a great episode. One of my favorites. And Simi, you know anything about cows? No, I really don't. I know that these Piedmontese cows are jacked and

we need to get to the bottom of this. We need to figure out what's going on with these things. Have you seen pictures of them? I have and they look like professional bodybuilders. It's crazy. They are. Are these Piedmontese cows lifting weights or what are they doing? Why are they so jacked?

They are 100% natural. In fact, they have a super natty like they don't they're not on any testosterone or growth hormone. And then they don't even lift, bro. Right. No hormones, no antibiotics. It's all genetic. Actually, the Piedmontese have inactive myostatin gene. So myostatin is a gene that regulates muscle growth.

And in the Piedmontese, it's inactive. So they just continue to grow and grow. How do we get that? Million-dollar question. So it exists in a few other breeds of cattle, a few other species. Yeah, like the Belgian blue cow and stuff like that, right? Yep. But Piedmontese is the only breed where it's actually linked to tenderness.

So it's usually super like typically with cows that have this deficiency, it's usually like they taste horrible? Yeah. So the meat will be tougher because it's so much – it's always leaner. But it causes muscle hyperplasia. So increased number of muscle fibers and cells in the muscle tissue, which means less room to deposit connective tissue. So basically with Piedmontese, actually like the leaner the cut gets, the more tender it'll be.

Does the cow grow throughout its whole life? Does it continue to get more and more jacked the older it gets? So cows that are used for breeding purposes, those don't. It is still somewhat limited by the amount of feed intake that they can have over their life. But a cow will stop growing at a certain point the the bulls uh they actually will just continue to grow you get to like a four-year-old piedmontese bull and um i mean they can weigh upwards of 2500 pounds so that's the thing with hyperplasia it's like like it grows until its life is over with, like a mouse. A mouse will grow muscle tissue until it's no longer around.

But the longevity of a bull is a bit shorter than a breeding cow. A breeding bull, typical lifespan may be in the four to six-year range. With a cow, they will just continue and continue until they don't get bred. And that's basically when they're culled from the herd. Because it costs too much to maintain a cow for an entire year if they're not producing a calf. So we've had cows in our system that are upwards of 15 years old. So they have much more longevity than the bulls typically. The bulls, they work a lot harder basically is what it amounts to.

When they get turned out into breeding pastures, it has a lot of wear and tear on the animals over time, especially when they get to that point where they're four or five years old and they weigh that much. And that's not just unique specifically to the Piedmontese breed, though. Like any other breed, breeding bulls will continue to crow more than cows will. So beyond a brand, Piedmontese is a certain kind of cow as well? So it's the brand certified Piedmontese. And Piedmontese is the breed of cattle that we raise that originated in the Piedmont region of Italy.

So northwest Italy near the border of France is where the Piedmont region lies. I'm Italian as well, by the way. Nice. That's why you're jacked. Yeah. And the breed was discovered there in the late 19th century and brought over. The original importation into Canada of five cows was made in the late 70s. But it's remained a relatively obscure breed in North America because the breed doesn't

marble that heavily. So if you don't have an end consumer market for this product, it's not going to grade that well on the USDA scale because that's all based off of intramuscular marbling. So it never really caught on because if the producers don't have the link to that end consumer, it's going to be a difficult product to market. And that's why we recognized that opportunity when we got into it because we wanted to take a vertically integrated approach to our business. So we wanted to own cattle as well as sell beef. And that's relatively uncommon in this industry. A lot of times you have a producer who sells calves at like a sale barn who then goes to a feeder. The feeder will market it to the slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse will sell it to a wholesaler. And it may go through five different hands before it reaches the end

consumer. And we want to take an integrated approach to that. So we knew we had a unique opportunity then as well to market Piedmontese for the value that the breed has. What's the difference between, in terms of breed has. What's the difference between, uh, like in terms of, uh, getting meat, what's the difference between, uh, organic and non-organic and what's the difference between a grass fed, grass fed and non, don't like all cows eat grass. I mean, yeah. Yep. Um, all cattle, uh, do, do eat grass, um, and only grass for the majority of their lives. So a calf will typically stay on the mother cow before they're weaned until they're about 500 or 600 pounds, and then they're weaned off of the cow. And then that's where they go to a feedlot or sometimes what we refer to as a backgrounding yard.

That's kind of an intermittent step up to a feedlot or sometimes what we refer to as a background in yard, that's kind of an intermittent step up to a feedlot. Um, but even at that point, um, even, uh, uh, uh, calf, once it's reached a feedlot, their, their diet, um, will still be 60 to 80% roughage grass. So they never eat 100% grain. We recently, within the last couple years, have launched a grass-fed Piedmontese line. So those animals are 100% grass-fed, grass-finished. They never receive any grain or grain byproducts in their ration for the people who are desiring a grass-fed product. We do offer that as well.

So grass-finished means it's all grass? All grass, yeah. Okay. What about – what are maybe some other companies or other people feeding cattle to get this uh kind of intra muscular fat like uh is there is there some things like that we're doing that aren't great like that people should maybe be paying attention to or uh so again back to the point that our cattle are all natural so no hormone implants um you know that's a uh that's a big selling point to our program, as well as no antibiotics. And that's been a bit of a controversy within the industry and the general public is what's essentially like an indiscriminate use of antibiotics in feedlot settings know the entire herd may be treated because one animal gets sick or they're actually just in some cases can be just treated with antibiotics almost

as a preventative measure um and you know that raises a lot of concerns of a carry-through of the antibiotics to the finished meat product, as well as antibiotic resistant strains, um, that are being found in, in cattle now. And then what about, um, what impact does it have? Like what, what's the negative connotation surrounding, uh, feeding these animals hormones? Like what does? Does that do something negative to us as well? I think that's still a bit out for debate. I mean, from the numbers I've seen, there is a slight increase in the hormone level in the meat compared to other food products.

So if you've ever seen this information, it's relatively insignificant. Like if you compared it even to tofu or, or, you know, a soy product, our podcast just got shut down. Hello. Hello. Hello. In terms of the way you guys take care of these like cows, how does it compare to like, what do you guys do differently in taking care of them versus other companies? So we're very big on, um, on humane treatment of animals. Um, you know, obviously it's, it's best for the animals. It's best for the finished meat product as well, because when you have animals, um, that live lower stress life, they produce better quality meat.

Um, especially during the finishing stages. We hear that a lot from hunters and stuff like that as well. Yeah. Basically, just let them be cows. Let them live their life. I mean, you don't need to stick a whole bunch of them in one area. We let them roam, all that kind of stuff. So, I mean, we just treat them like they were not pets,

but we treat them with respect, and it shows in the product as well um another big thing there is we don't allow the use of hot shots which is like a electrical shock that's used sometimes in cattle handling um and you know it's stressful because i'm not familiar with this either so it's basically to get them moving i guess is what it boils down to um and uh you know there's better ways to handle uh animals like that's when you know say if you have to load them out uh to to a truck um or anytime they're being handled like into a pen setting um when they need when they need to be, we don't allow these pot shots. Go ahead.

Kind of go back on your question with the organic. I know people like organic and stuff like that, but you're also paying for to say that. You're paying the government for them to say, yes, this is organic and stuff like that. So you have to have organic feed and you have to pay for that organic feed and you have to pay the government for that. So you're going to pay a lot more for organic. That's another reason to why organic is so expensive. Um, so I mean, if you know, you're going to pay for what you get, obviously, and that

obviously shows through with our product as well, because we do take care of it. No, we're not saying we're organic, but we're, we're, we're pretty transparent. I mean, we, we tell you how we raise our animals and we tell you what we're feeding them and everything like that. So, I mean, as long as you're being honest, um, you're going to feel good about the product that you're eating in the end. Some further clarification to that too. Our grass-fed program is non-GMO. Like we don't feed any GMO feed to our grass-finished animals.

We can't, although it's very minimal, we can't validate that for our regular Piedmontese product just because like when you introduce grain or grain byproducts into the cattle's feed ration, it becomes very difficult to remove GMO sources of feed in that. And to kind of speak to the GMO a little bit more too, there have been studies and I've seen as well, the amount of GMOs that's going to end up in your meat product is going to be 0.000000, 0.1. So I mean you're going to have to eat a lot of beef

in order to get the GMOs into your body. So I mean the GMO aspect kind of applies a little bit more to what you're actually ingesting yourself directly with the grains. So, I mean, a lot of the non-GMO claims it's, you know, it's better served when it comes to a carb product, when it comes with grains. Do either one of you have any idea about the practices of maybe some of the fast food companies? Because, you know, we follow like a kind of a meat-based diet, you know. And there's – like I'm a believer that better is better, you know. If you get grass-fed stuff, if you can get, you know, if you can get a better quality of anything, I think it's better quality.

Like I'm a believer in that. in that. But there's really not like a lot of research showing, as you were mentioning, like how much of a negative impact it would have to have, you know, meat that has hormones in it or how much of a negative impact, what does it even matter if something's organic or not? So do you guys know anything about like, you know, what like a McDonald's does or like an In-N-Out burger? Do you have any idea what they eat? Like are they using real meat? They do use real beef, yes.

It's not always 100% beef though. And because we don't typically sell our product to those types of customers, I can't speak to every single one of them and the details of their programs. But a lot of times they are using binders or fillers in their product. I think they've gotten away from that in recent years as consumers caught on to that, you know, and that's why you see a lot of marketing towards from fast food companies that our patties are 100% beef.

What kind of tricks are there out there that we should maybe be aware of? Like when someone says a hundred percent beef, like are they, are they being genuine that it's 100% beef or is there some sort of weird way to word it in a weird way that confuses you? It is 100% beef. It wouldn't be- 60% of the time.

You know, a lot of times like those animals are probably not natural. So they may have had hormones, antibiotics. And typically for those types of food applications, they're coming from old cows and bulls. So like our breeding stock, so we don't turn that into beef like those cows when they get 15 years old. We sell them off on a commodity market, and those very well could end up in a fast food hamburger because a purchaser will buy those.

They'll put them on feed to finish them out, fatten them up. They may implant them with a hormone as well. And then they take them to slaughter, and they grind the whole carcass because they won't produce a high-quality steak out of that animal for any program, let alone a big one. So people are really just trying to – I mean, it sounds like they're trying to be as resourceful as they can. It is, yes. This is an older cow.

It wasn't used for this purpose. Yep. Let's try to almost like – I mean, it might sound inhumane to some people, but like, let's repurpose it for something different. Yeah. You have to do something with it. So, I mean, I'm not saying it's bad or anything, but that's where that meat typically comes from. And that, I mean, and also that kind of what sets us apart from other companies, we can tell you exactly where the state came from. A lot of those companies, you can't, they have, you know, 2000 head of cattle a day that they're running through so i mean chances

are they have no idea where they came from either you know so they don't know how they're being raised you don't know how they're being treated you don't know you know what they're being filled with so i mean that's one thing that we can speak to we know exactly where these steaks come from we can tell you it came from you know this lot of animals this is where it came from so that's you know that's kind of a selling point for us as well and the way i became aware of you guys was there's a local market here called nugget and i was looking at steaks and i looked at like a ribeye and i don't know i think it said like 20 grams of fat on or something like that and i was kind of looking at that and then i i looked at one of the ones that you guys have and i i just did like a double take i was like i was like doesn't make any i'm like my

like reading this wrong or just like serving size wrong and then i that's when i started looking at some of the other meat that you guys had i looked at like a new york strip and i looked at a few other ones and i was like man the fat is just you know super low on this uh on these meats and i at the time i was unaware of the company so i didn't really know uh what the difference was and then um i told my brother that and we started buying it from that market kind of all the time and i think then my brother i think uh communicated with you guys but um it's been a huge blessing for a lot of people that are uh trying to pay attention to their calories it's been a huge blessing for people that are just you know they don't want the extra fat calories uh you know kind of for no reason um and then the other odd thing that i found i was like i'm gonna cook this up and this is gonna taste like crap this is gonna be like a

hockey puck you know it's it's gonna be awful and i was surprised and it was excellent and that's not you know you guys do sponsor the podcast and stuff but this was all going on before uh we had any involvement whatsoever. And I appreciated the meat, like even from the jump, from the get-go. And it was something I never experienced before because normally you get something leaner, like chicken versus steak. Like I'm not going to eat a chicken breast. Like I don't enjoy chicken breast.

It's always like drier and stuff. How are you guys still able to get the flavor? Is it just a kind of cow that it is? So I think you're just, you're tasting more of the meat there, you know, rather than having a lot of competing flavor from the fat. So like if you've ever had any game meats, you know, it's not a gamey taste to it, but you're really just tasting just the muscle meat there. taste to it, but you're really just tasting just the muscle meat there.

You know, another thing that really helps with it, though, is that it is so lean, but just as tender as prime. So we ran shear force testing at the University of Nebraska, which is a measurement of tenderness of a steak. We were looking all that up. Yeah. We're like, what is this shear force testing? And just as tender as prime. And depending on the cut, it may have even up to 50% of the fat.

Wow. It's significantly less, regardless of what the cut is, but just as tender. And is it because it's leaner that it cooks so much quicker? Because the first time I cooked one of them, I was like, oh, shit, I overcooked this. That is the reason that it'll cook faster is because it's leaner. And also the reason you don't want to overcook it. I mean, I wouldn't really encourage anybody to cook our steaks past a medium doneness, ideally like a medium rare would be best because it'll retain moisture better.

When you take such lean cuts, and again, similar to like a game meat they're very lean if you overcook them uh you know fat will hold moisture better than than muscle will so but what's funny is because my husband can't see any pink in his meat whatsoever he loves it it's so tender still even if you cook it well done it's still it eats amazing that's that's the crazy part so if you mess it up a little bit it's still going to taste good. It's not going to taste, you know, like a sirloin you get from the regular grocery store. That sirloin is going to taste like a well done filet mignon. So,

I mean, it's, it's pretty amazing. Yeah. And just, just so people even like understand what we're talking about when it comes to like the fat content and all that. Um,

this is my, uh, my favorite cut that you guys make. It's the flat iron steak. So for this whole steak right here is 92 grams of protein, 4 grams of carbs, and only 8 grams of fat. And it doesn't make

any sense to me, but it's so delicious and I love this one so much. That's definitely, it's insane. 92 grams of protein, I think that's a world record. Yeah. And what's cool about the flat iron itself is actually this the second most

tender cut in the animal behind the filet mignon and you know a whole lot of people don't know about that number one because it's a hard piece of muscle to get to and it's also a pain in the ass to try to to deal with and cut down into steaks um but that was actually discovered at the university of nebraska so how did you guys get involved with this company? Piedmontese? So we have two segments to our business. We have a live side of our business that's actually called Lone Creek Cattle Company. And then we have certified Piedmontese.

It's our beef brand. We started the cattle company back in 2005, 2006. And like I said, we wanted to take an integrated approach to our production process. Ultimately, our goal was to have a finished beef product to bring to market. At that point, we were just a cattle company. At that time, we'd never even heard of Piedmontese yet.

We thought we would just try to do it with a grass fed beef program. Um, so we did some experimenting with that in 06, 07, did a couple of trial runs with, um, what would be considered like a typical, uh, Angus crossbred, uh, calves, uh, at our ranches in Nebraska. Uh, We weren't too happy with the results of those test runs. The product was very tough and had some different off flavors to it as well. So we kind of abandoned that idea and we came across the Piedmontese breed, which, like I said, we saw a lot of potential in that. It kind of fit the bill for targeting a health-conscious consumer, because that's what we were originally

after with doing a grass-fed beef program in the first place. But we could bring those health benefits to the consumer without sacrificing anything in the way of flavor or tenderness. without sacrificing anything in the way of flavor or tenderness. So we acquired our first Piedmontese bulls in 2008, and then we've just been growing the herd from there. And now most of our resources within our cattle company are dedicated towards improving the performance within the breed itself from like a seed stock standpoint. So those are the animals that are used to produce the bulls and cows that are used for breeding purposes.

And that's mostly what we dedicate the resources in the cattle company for now. And then we work with a close network of producers around our local area that breed their cows to our Piedmontese bulls. And then we buy the calves back from them once they're weaned off the cow. And that's kind of how our production process works. So we take ownership of the calves when they're six or 700 pounds, and then we take them out to finish weight. I don't know anything about cows. Are the males the only ones that are used for the meat, or are they both used for meat? So that's the difference between our regular product.

When you go on our shop page and you go to that first page that you land on, you'll notice we have three different programs. And the core program is what you'll see on the first page of the shop page. Then we have the grass-fed line. And then we have the dynasty selection. So the core program is a Piedmontese bull that has bred commercial Angus, commercial Charolais. You can cross them with just about any breed, but it's always like a full blood Piedmontese bull that's used for breeding purposes. So then the calf is a half blood.

And this is very typical of what a lot of like breed specific beef programs will do. And the inactive myostatin gene, the bull will carry two copies of the allele. And their offspring then, if they're bred to a cow that has zero copies, will be a one-copy calf. So they carry one copy of the gene every single time. And that's what our program is based around. And then the dynasty selection, though, is our full-blood cattle. So they carry two copies of the gene. So all of these benefits that we talk about to the Piedmontese program are even magnified in that product. So it's even more lean and even more tender because they carry two copies of the gene.

And that's the one that's wrapped in gold, correct? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You guys dressed that one up real nice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What's, I just saw it a second ago, the Beef Club.

What's that? So Beef Club is you can sign up to get, we do monthly shipments and quarterly shipments, and we have two different clubs there. So you can sign up to get – we do monthly shipments and quarterly shipments. We have two different clubs there. So you can sign up for $100 a month. We'll send you this selection of beef. Every month we'll create a different one. Same with a quarter.

And then we also have – there's two different lines there. So one is going to be a little more expensive than the other. You also get different things. So there's no no thinking to it you just sign up for it every month you get a shipment of beef um we're actually working on doing a customization type thing too so you can pick and choose which ones you want every month so if you like you know you like this every single month this is what you're getting every month yeah i was gonna say is there a flat iron club oh yeah just for you yeah but i mean you can't you can't

beat i mean the prices are going to be discounted, obviously. So you get a nice break there. There's no charge for shipping on top of that. So, I mean, $100 a month and look how many different things that you get. You can just try different things. I mean, that's what the cool thing is about our program. There's a lot of beef products that people will never even think to try. Like, what's a Bavette steak?

You know, no one has any idea what that is. I didn't even know how to pronounce it to be honest. Bavette. I know that's part of, part of the sirloin. So it's a really lean cut, but it's really good for stir fries, you know, cut things up that way. So, I mean, part of it too, is to try to introduce you to new cuts that you would never even try yourself.

So, you know, just trust us. We know what we're doing and recommend some good stuff to you. When you go to restaurants, it's usually like two different kinds. Maybe three if you go to a steak place. Yeah, you know, ribeye, New York strip, and a filet. And that's normally all that's there. So you would never know to try other cuts because, you know, how do you even cook this thing? And we have a recipe spot, too, that you can try to cook different things.

But yeah, that's what Beef Club is. That's what I really actually liked about what you guys did because when you sent it out, there's a recipe book there. And for those of us who are cooking challenged like myself, it comes in handy. in handy yeah how much is a um like you you mentioned getting like getting into the business like how much does a bull cost like how much i mean obviously it would depend on the weight and depend on how many you're purchasing and stuff like that but yeah it depends um on on the quality of genetics in the bull as well like that that price could vary significantly like our price for for calves is pretty standard because we follow like a market base plus a flat premium essentially but for a bull i mean you're talking anywhere in the range from uh four thousand to fifteen to

twenty thousand dollars for for a bull um there's there's bulls in like an Angus breed that they'll go, you know, well, well above that, uh, well into six figures. Um, but you know, a typical breeding stock bull is going to be in that range or on the lower end of that range that I just gave. So, you know, what's the deal with like a, like a wagyu steak or something like that like are those um like why are those so expensive uh so wagyu would be actually quite similar to piedmontese as far as like what those programs are doing with their their breed the breed or the product performance of the finished product though is night and day difference from Piedmontese. So they're accomplishing tenderness through excessive intramuscular marbling, whereas Piedmontese is obviously completely different. There again, like a lot of Wagyu programs would do the same type of breeding practices that we do where they take like a full blood Wagyu bull and crossbreed them to, you know, commercial Angus cow.

Some programs are doing the full blood program as well, which like I said, we offer. Back to that, the comparison between the three programs, because I know it is a bit confusing. So we have our regular core program that's a half blood calf. Those calves are the same calves that that we would put into our grass-fed program so um that's just a matter of like once they uh once they get to the point in their life cycle where they would be introduced to grain we just you know make sure that that they don't get that feed and that they just you know stay on on, on pasture. Um, the dynasty program, like I said, the, the full blood, uh, program. Um, and as far as like, from my personal experience, the dynasty product and the grass fed

are actually fairly similar. They're both a bit leaner, a bit more tender, um, even than our, our regular product. So in terms of like, let let's say cooking and i know you guys send a cookbook but is there like a best way to cook the beef because like these guys know um i could call that shit in the air fryer and it's good like okay but is there a way you guys would i mean i i have my personal preferences and that's what it really comes down to i think like we're we're in nebraska so i i grill when the weather is suitable for that but like right now it's it's not so much so i do a lot more indoor cooking either um in a sous vide i really like that or um or i'll just cook on on a cooktop like in a in a cast iron um i usually cook in ghee so like our product's very lean so i don't think you have to worry too much about like cooking in fat like that ghee or

avocado oil uh i really like or doing a reverse sear method so you know start it off in the oven depending on the cut and thickness of the cut um you know you may cook for 15 or 20 minutes in the oven uh and then just sear it off uh yeah i do that i do that uh i've been doing that lately i did it last night actually it just kind of softens it up and then you just sear both sides and let it let it rest which is always the hard part oh yeah i let it rest and yeah it was just ridiculous it's easier to can to control like an even doneness on it. Like that's the advantage of the sous vide as well. It's like you set that temperature on there and then you just sear it

off and, and you can, you really can't mess it up. You know? So like if you set your sous vide at, uh, you know, like a one 30, um, and then just sear it off in the pan, you know, that's going to increase, uh, once you sear it off about five degrees, um, and you got like a medium, uh, medium rare steak. What about like that shoulder roast that you guys have? Some of those other like roasts and things like that. I just threw it in a crock pot and it actually came out amazing. I was surprised how well it worked.

But do you have some suggestions on some of that stuff? So, I mean, we have, like I said, we have the recipes on the website that kind of break it down a little bit to help you out. But if you cook them just like a traditional roast, just Google it. You don't just cook it that way. Just keep in mind that it does cook quicker. So we say make sure you have a thermometer. So you're paying attention to that temperature. And then keep in mind you do have to let it rest for a little bit.

But, I mean, it's nothing too special. Yeah. for a little bit. But, I mean, it's nothing too special. I mean, you may have to try it a few different times, but in the end you can cook it like any other beef. Just keep in mind that it does finish quicker. That's about it. What are some of your favorite cuts that you guys enjoy? I like the sirloin. I'm a huge lean, lean, lean person.

So I like sirloin, the flat iron. The Seneca ribeye is a really good one. I got introduced to that one when we started carrying it. I've never heard of it before, but you still get the good beefy flavor. You said Seneca ribeye? Yeah, center cut ribeye. Oh, center cut. I thought you said Seneca.

What? No. Okay. Pretty much. And then you can't go wrong with the stir fry. You just can't. Okay. I agree with that like i um cut that i've been most

impressed with is anything off the sirloin of our grass-fed animals so grass-fed tri-tip grass-fed sirloins um have really just blown me away uh flat iron is another one um that's at the top of my list or favorites uh and then yeah we have that center cut ribeye so you can get a full ribeye steak or a tomahawk from our website but we also do a cut where we take the middle of the ribeye and we separate that from that outer

cap portion of the ribeye which in itself is a very good cut that's another one of my favorites that's kind of predominantly fat right the ribeye, which in itself is a very good cut. That's another one of my favorites. I love that one, yeah. That was really good. That's kind of predominantly fat, right?

That cap part, right? Cap's got a little bit higher fat content than the center cut. What's actually missing in that then is that big fat kernel that sits in the middle of the ribeye. So, I mean, you're not getting that, but like having those cuts isolated, you know, I think it's a unique offering. And like I said, the texture and flavor profile on that cap steak is amazing. I agree 100% because you're getting the ribeye flavor without all the extra calories. Right, right. And I just got some intel back here so if you were to get like just like your a roast from piedmontese or whatever um cook it make it awesome and then

actually you just cut it like you're gonna make some steaks right you said it was uh what what type of steak oh so before you cook it my bad so you know for someone like me that's needing a little bit more food right now or you know i can just grab a whole roast and then you know, for someone like me that's needing a little bit more food right now, you know, I can just grab a whole roast and then be my own butcher. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. So if you want to have like an inch, inch and a half thick strip steak, you buy our strip loin roast and you could cut that.

I mean, you may have a 16, 18 ounce New York strip that way. And then even your guys' hot dogs are like kind of crazy, right? Like I haven't had one yet, but Mark was saying. Yeah, they're awesome. I eat them all the time. So they're all beef. We use trimmings off of our steak productions to make those actually. Because we have to do something with that material.

Yeah, quarter pound. I want to say it was like kind of the reverse of what you would normally see with a hot dog. I think a hot dog would be, you know, probably like, I don't know, 15 or 20 grams of fat and there'd be half that amount in protein. This is just flipped the other way around. It's like 21 grams of protein

and there's like 10 grams of fat or something like that. Well, having an all beef hot dog is unique. You know, most hot dogs are going to be predominantly pork, maybe some beef. grams of fat or something like that well having an all beef hot dog is unique uh you know most hot dogs are going to be predominantly pork maybe some beef and then um you know they put god knows what in it you know i mean a lot of times you'll end up with like a lot of other byproducts uh and offals in it which offals are there's a certain percentage that are allowed in them and those are basically basically like your organs and whatnot. I remember the movie The Great Outdoors with John Candy, and they state that there's lips

and assholes in hot dogs. Absolutely. Yep. Not ours, though. But not in those hot dogs. Not ours, no. What's the difference between like Prime, like when you go to the store, you see all these differences, and they're more uh cuts and things like that what's the difference

between all those so again um that's based off of usda grading system and they grade uh you know based on intramuscular marbling uh from a certain point in the in the ribeye and uh we did away with grading our program a long time ago, almost since inception. And the reason for that was because Piedmontese, when raised properly, should never grade prime because they just don't have that much fat in them. Still, again, just as tender.

But that grading system doesn't really jive with our program. So that's why we just did away with it. So we're just going to sell Piedmontese and not concern ourselves with the grading system. I mean, our plants are still USDA inspected. Just to clarify that. We're not doing this out in a back garage or anything. It's just that we makes a lot of sense. I mean,

there's a lot of negativity surrounding like Kobe burgers and things like that. Like, yeah, some people will say, yeah, they taste, they taste good,

but like at what cost, you know, we're overfeeding these animals and you know, it's just, maybe it's, maybe it's overdone. Right. What I noticed too,

though, about your, about the actual hamburgers, you know, that was really different because when I had the 96% lean ground beef that you guys have, I was, I for sure thought that that was going to taste like shit and I was wrong once again. It was actually really good. And my wife made some meatballs with it last night and it turned out really well. How like, you know, you answered a lot of questions about how the you know, how you're able to kind of control some of the flavor profile because of the kind of cow that it is. But like when I'm eating something like that and I'm seeing the amount of protein that's in there versus the amount of fat, I'm just thinking, man, like maybe they messed up their calculations somehow, you know, like this can't, this can't be true, but people that are

looking for, you know, we've, we talk about it a lot in this podcast, people that are looking for something leaner, people that are doing bodybuilding or people that are doing that just, you know, care about their physique and want to be leaner. I mean, these, you guys are presenting some great options. What have you guys thought of the kind of like meat movement that's going on, the carnivore diet? You know, my brother sticks to it pretty strictly. I'm a huge fan of it as well. And you got Dr. Sean Baker, and I'm sure you guys are aware of some of these other people that are out there. Have you seen some growth in business kind of because of this movement?

Yeah, we have. in business, uh, kind of because of this movement? Yeah, we have. I mean, I, I think it's, I think it's great, like not just because it's great for our business, but, um, I think it's a, I think it's a good approach, um, you know, to, to dieting, if you're going to call it that, um, it takes a lot of, a lot of the junk out of the diet, you know? Um, I mean, on the opposite end of the spectrum, like the same thing could be said about like, you know, vegan diets, um, is once you remove a lot of that junk. So like, you're just displacing it with, with more beef. Um, I've actually even done the same, my, myself, like in recent months, cause I was kind of following,

uh, you know, the carnivore stuff. And, um, to replace excess refined carbohydrates in my diet. And I really noticed some good positive impacts from it. I think you said that really well. And that's something that we've talked about on this show before. It's like what you eat is obviously insanely important. But for a lot of maybe a lot of average americans uh that are overweight um focusing more in on what they shouldn't be eating is might be a better place to start or a little bit easier more gradual approach and i think that's why we see some people saying i swear like

i just you know i eat vegetables and i feel amazing and then you got the other people on the other side and saying i just eat meat and both feel amazing. And then you got the other people on the other side and say, I just eat meat. And both are really kind of saying a similar thing. They're saying, I don't eat a bunch of bullshit, basically. Right. Yep. Yeah. And there's just, I mean, there's still a lot more research that needs to be done with the whole meat thing in general.

I mean, you've been told up to this point for how long that red meat is bad for you. It's, you know, it's going to give you cancer. It's going to make you fat. It's going to be terrible for your cholesterol. And that's just not always the case. And so there's still a lot of research that needs to be done. And our beef is not just for people who are, you know, in the fitness industry. It's anyone who's looking for to just be healthy in general. I mean, it's a good, clean eating experience in the first place. And, you know, you can get really sick of just eating chicken all the time. And I

don't know how many times I've, you know, had people come up to me and go, you know, I want to eat beef, but, you know, my doctor tells me not to. It's like, okay, well, why does your doctor tell you not to? It's because you need to lose weight because you're probably eating too much crap in the first place. Well, it doesn't mean that meat is in that category. I mean, you can still make good, smart decisions. Make sure it's obviously a company where you know that they're taking care of their animals and that they're handling the process through and through. And so, and that's where we kind of come in. We're not just for the fitness people. We're kind of really for anybody, anybody who loves to eat meat. I mean, if you like to eat meat, you're going to try it. And

that's the biggest part too, is people don't believe us. And like you said, you saw, okay, it has no fat in it it's gotta taste like crap and then you try it you're like there's no way we we still get blown away every single time we do demos you think that you would get sick of meat um and you take a bite of it and it's just as tender as the last time and it's just crazy to me but it you know a lot of it comes down to you got to do what is best for your body um like just recently i found out that i can't have fructose at all. And so fructose is in everything. So garlic and onion, I can't have any of that stuff. So I've been eating mostly, and I still have to have carbs just because, you know, I'm a wimp like that. And so I eat every day

at least a pound and a half of beef for an all together and then rice and potatoes. And I have felt so much better it's insane just cutting out you know all the crap that doesn't work for my body and that's the thing too is if people have to realize too what works for your body is going to be different than what works for someone else for you and you you know um but ice cream won't work for anybody unfortunately right no it won't no yeah and there's you know there's so many things that dairy in general people there's like what 70 people shouldn't be eating dairy anyway. What's fructose do to you?

Make you crazy? Yeah, exactly. No, it actually, obviously, there's the gas, the GI issue. Nothing stays in your body. Like everything, what goes in comes right back out. And that's the part of the sex. You can't absorb any nutrients whatsoever. And not only that i i just feel like shit um i you know when i had to do the test for it they make you drink fructose just to see if you respond to it for three days my body

hurt so bad it hurt so bad and just everything ached um so as soon as i started cutting all that stuff out and i just stick with meat, rice, potatoes, and I feel phenomenal. How did you come to the conclusion? Like, how did you even get to the point of taking that test? You got other blood work done? Yeah. So I just wasn't feeling good. You know, I would go to the gym. You know, they tell you you need to have sugars after your workout to help fill up your muscles. I'm like, absolutely. Cool. Drink some Gatorade. So I started increasing my Gatorade intake, trying to make sure that I keep my carb levels up, all that fun stuff. And I just kept feeling like crap and I couldn't figure out why.

And I thought maybe it was Crohn's, stuff like that. I think Gatorade does have fructose in it, doesn't it? It does. Yeah. It does. Yeah. It's basically, it's just fructose. Right.

Yeah. So I went through a whole process, did the whole colonoscopies, all that fun stuff. And basically they came down to. They checked everywhere. They did. Yes, it was great. No. So they basically just, okay, well, let's try this.

And that's actually a breath test is what it was. So you drink the solution and then you breathe into these tubes and they send it off and then they test it. And like, well, yeah, your body can't process fructose. And obviously I could when I was little, but over time, you know, the different things that you're doing to your body, you know, it'll, it'll add up and, you know, it can affect your body in certain ways. So, um, yeah, I mean, I was just happy to find out what was wrong and know what I can and can't have. And it's nice to know that I can have good, delicious meat and not feel like crap. Do either one of your families get tired of meat?

Like, come on. Really? You're going to cook that again? No, actually. They look forward to it. Sometimes it's chicken. You have to overload it with a lot of seasoning to make it even stomach. But no, I think they love it.

I know. We eat it probably six nights a week yeah we may have chicken the other night and uh and then they're reminded how good beef is you know just it's more it's more flavorful yeah um so you do triathlons i do yep brutal how long you been doing that for um about five about five years. So that's kind of what led me into it was because like when I'm, I'm doing, um, like heavy endurance training, um, especially on days where I'll burn, uh, like four or 5,000 calories on the, on the weekends. Um, then I'm, I'm, uh, just taking in massive amounts of, of carbohydrate and it's, it's a lot of, it's like really high glycemic stuff. So naturally, like, I think I was starting to develop,

um, some insulin resistance. Um, and like, if you're not careful with it, like, I think it can actually lead to a very unhealthy lifestyle in triathlon, especially like I do mostly long course, like half Ironman and full Ironman, uh, distance races, um, done 11 full Ironmans.

And I think that was kind of, like I said, it was building up like, um, it's what's essentially like pre-diabetic conditions for me. So even though like I'm doing, you know, something that would otherwise be viewedabetic conditions for me. So even though like I'm doing, you know, something that would otherwise be viewed as very healthy for me,

it was causing, you know, quite a bit of damage to my body, I think. So back in August, like I started to cut down carbohydrates. And by like September, I wouldn't say I've eliminated them. And I adjust them a little bit depending on my training load. Was this kind of in collaboration with maybe talking to some other athletes or hearing podcasts? Yeah, I've seen what Zach Bitter's done, if you're familiar with him. There's some others like Dave Scott who won the Ironman World Championship a number of times, and he's a big proponent of a higher fat, low carb.

I didn't go like full keto approach. I kept my protein up a little bit higher. Um, and then as you know, like gluconeogenesis would convert that into, um, into the carbohydrate that your, your body needs. Um, and I know it's a significant improvement from it. So, um, so I've been sticking with that since, uh, since about August. What would be a low carb for you on like a competition day or before a competition day? Like, um, on a typical day, like, uh, you know, maybe a hundred grams of carbohydrates on like one to two hours of training. Wow. Um, when I raced though, uh uh and this is where like my insulin sensitivities picked way back up because i've noticed i've raced a couple times this fall the last race i did this year was iron

man arizona about three weeks ago and where i normally take in um like 70 to 80 grams of carbohydrate per hour um and this is spaced over like a 10, 11 hour race. Um, I was doing like 30 to 40 grams of, uh, I was using a long chain cyclic dextrin, so it doesn't, um, you know, spike as much. It keeps it a little bit more stable. Uh, and then I used, uh, actually I used a ketone ester on top of that. Um, and a couple of Piedmontese meat sticks. Those ketone esters are delicious. Yeah. They, they taste like crap. Yeah. They work. Yeah. They work really well. And you know, they're working because like I've seen, um, you know, they're being used in professional sports. Uh, like they're being used, uh, the tour de France winner was using it.

And I think the use is actually a lot more popular than people even realize right now. It's still very confusing to people because I think originally it was marketed as you're getting into ketosis from taking this product and it's going to get you lean. And that's not really why you're taking it. I view it more as a performance enhancer. It's a macronutrient that could give you energy during your exercise. Yeah, so I'm not – because otherwise I was worried too that it would throw my system for a complete shock if I'm so low carbohydrate. And then I know to do that kind of distance,

I have to take in carbohydrate. So if I went from like taking under 180 grams a day of carbohydrate to 80 grams an hour during a race, I think that could cause some major GI issues. And I just I wanted to become better fat adapted. Like I don't think I had any fat adaptation given the five years that I've been feeling this sport off of like pure carbohydrates. And at the moment I'm, I'm training for a ultra distance triathlon coming up in March. And that's where like,

I knew I had to become better fat adapted. How many miles is that by the way? I don't know. It's three days. It's way too much cardio. It's called an Ultraman. So the first day is a 10K swim followed by a 90-mile bike. Second day is a 170-mile bike.

And then the third day is a double marathon. And I don't think there's any way that I was going to be able to complete that distance if I didn't make some big changes. Dude, you're a badass. That's wild. this makes me hurt uh just to clear things up for people just uh you know trying to get your body fat adapted uh there's some information out there that people kind of just like oh you know go on a keto diet for like two weeks and then you're fat adapted it usually takes a really long time like it could take six months um for you to truly be fat adapted to perform, you know, at the level that you're performing at.

It can take a while. And also, too, it probably just makes sense. I mean, sometimes you just think about like some common sense. Like does it make sense for you to go from eating 300 carbs a day right down to zero? I don't know. Like you're probably not going to feel great. Then you're going to be frustrated. Then you're going to think that diet's stupid. I don't know. Like you're probably not going to feel great. Then you're gonna be frustrated. Then you're gonna think that diet's stupid.

I'm never trying that shit again. You know, you're probably better off kind of easing your way into it. Yeah. I think it took some, somewhere in like, it was around early October that I was probably like, I felt like I was truly fat adapted.

I felt like I could go out for a workout either in a fasted state or not having any carbs that day and still feel, you know, within my comfort zone on it. I kind of eased into it. So I didn't go from eating the diet I was previously just to straight into a low-carb or keto diet. I've eased into it over three to four weeks.

But it's still tough then, especially keeping up that kind of activity level. Do you mess around with intermittent fasting at all? I do a little bit. And again, sometimes I'll do it on a Monday is when I find it easiest for me to do. So after I've done my big workouts on the weekends, the longer ones three, four hours. Um, I'll do that on a Monday. And then I try to throw in like a, a fasted workout, um, at the end of the day, uh, you know, like four or five in the afternoon. Um, and I think that's really helping me, uh, boost my fat adaptation is doing a, doing like a, like a one hour aerobic paste workout,

um, in a fasted state do you mess around like pricking your finger and all that good stuff i haven't done that i kind of uh do it mostly like by feel right so no it's really awesome especially like when you're doing a cardiovascular based sport because like you're always fed that you need to eat a lot of carbohydrates to be able to actually perform and then when you don't have to do that, it's especially within this past year, seeing all the athletes like yourself doing that, it's crazy, you know? Yeah. I knew it was getting bad because like I would do, um, you know, like that one hour aerobic paced workout and I'd feel like, Oh, like I got to take in like a couple hundred

calories before I do this. But like physiologically, there's absolutely no reason that you should, but you know, it's kind of a, it's kind of a mindset. And, um, you know, the other thing too, is like that time in the sport, like, um, I've had those times when I've, when I've bonked, you know, and that's a, it's a really shitty feeling. And, uh, I'm always trying to like, make sure like, I don't want to bonk on this, on this one, or if I'm doing a run outside, like I, I can't go out for like an, uh, you know, 60 or 90 minute run, uh, without taking some calories with me because I don't want to, you know, end up in that state. How bad has that been? Like, uh, when you have bonked out, how, how, how bad is it? Um, I don't know if you have to discontinue? I have to stop and then I have to take in some simple sugar, like straight glucose fast to get back going if I want to continue.

And a lot of my workouts are indoors, so it's not a problem there. But like if I'm doing outdoor workouts, then like you may be stranded or, you know, I mean, like if I'm on a bike, I gotta, I gotta go find a gas station, you know, to find a candy bar, you know, and then that's just like exactly. Snickers bar in that case doesn't mean that's an amazing job on the body, right? Yeah, it does. But that's also like, again again back to like the root cause of the issue so it's making it better temporarily right only so yeah because your body's used to running off of sugar so that's that's what it's accustomed to and so you feed it and it feels okay for a little bit and but the main thing on these uh triathlons and stuff is that you really can't um you can't get enough uh in your body you can't get enough glycogen in your body

you can't store enough glycogen for the amount of aerobic activity that you're doing right yeah that's correct so if i'm taking in like 70 to 80 grams of carbohydrate which is about all most people's stomach can can handle um you know that equates to you know about 300 calories and i'm usually burning you know probably somewhere in the range like 700 calories per hour so i end up in a huge deficit and the only place that that can come from is is fat that's why i love the meat though because honestly because it's lower fat you can eat a fuck ton of it like i'm a glutton like you can eat a lot of that meat you can get in the fat you want but then it's just a ton of it. Like I'm a glutton. Like you can eat a lot of that meat. You can get in the fat you want,

but then it's just a ton of protein. And there's literally no negatives to excess protein. You can still work out. Sometimes like if you eat, like if you were to eat a big chunk of meat, like that'd be the last thing you'd want to do. Right. All that fat trying to digest,

you know, but in this case with the meat being leaner, you could eat a little closer to a workout and not have the ill effects. Maybe not work out like you do, but no, especially like the, the leaner cuts. I mean, I've, um, I've actually fueled like, uh, like a two hour, uh, aerobic run off of eating, uh, eight ounce, uh, filet. So I just ate that. And 30 minutes later I went for a run. And, um, I think, you know, like, like I said, it, it does convert to the, um, uh, to the carbohydrate that your body needs to fuel. Um, and it's a lot more of a stable process. It doesn't create a huge insulin spike when you eat,

uh, um, heavy sorts of protein like that. And it, it digests well. So how has a weight training helped? Cause he got to get, you got to hit the gym, right? I do well. So how has a weight training helped? Cause you gotta get, you gotta hit the gym, right? I do occasionally. So that's another thing. Um, I started along with this whole process was I, I used to, I know it's had a huge impact for some people that do triathlons or like, I don't really don't love, that's like not my thing, but I know that I go in there and it makes a big difference. Yeah. I got to keep the strength levels up. I used to lift a lot, but then when I got into endurance sport, I didn't touch a weight for five or six years, but in August I got back into it, um, and improved strength, but improves hormone levels as well. Um, like, uh, endurance sports can really trash

your hormone levels. Um, so just, you know, lifting a couple of times a week for me and just doing some like some key like compound lifts I think makes a big impact there also it might be a weird way of looking at it but just anything to prevent you from running you know what I mean like that's the same thing with somebody being vegan or someone being carnivore it's like hey man whatever you got to do to prevent yourself from eating like crap, doing more damage. Because, you know, for us, we love the gym, you know. So if we can find something that's not the gym, I like to walk. He likes to do a lot of jujitsu. Like just find something that's maybe just a little different because a little goes a long way.

But too much can set you backwards just as well. Yeah, that variety helped a ton. It's like Arizona, that race went really well for me. And it was probably on like the least amount of training that I've, I've ever done, but the changes to my diet and, and to my, uh, training routine coming into it, uh, even though it was actually backing down on my total running, cycling and swimming training volume, um, still worked out really well. What's the hardest part of this, uh, business, shipping out meat, you know, all over the country, right? Not the world, right?

The country. Yeah, all 50 states. Yeah. What's like the, what's the hardest part of all this for you guys? I'd say the hardest part is that, you know, like obviously on podcasts like this, we have the time to like go through the intricacies of our program but like if we're trying to make this sale to somebody and um like in a 30 second window it's difficult to cram all this information into that yeah our meat's better than everybody else's because right right and half the time people don't believe you that's the thing that

it's like there's no way it's going to taste good if there's no fat in it. There's no way it's going to be tender if it's that lean. So a lot of times you've got to get the product in front of the people to try. Once you try it, seriously, you can't go back. You're going to be spoiled from there on forward. Or it's just simply overcoming some of the misconceptions that are out there now

like that red meat is bad for you. There was the WHO report released a few years back that then they've now backpedaled on as well. And, um, you know, that's really confusing, uh, to consumers in the general public who maybe, um, you know, don't educate themselves that, that much on these issues and, um, never screaming the loudest basically. that that much on these issues and she's ever screaming the loudest basically yeah so that that's another challenge that i think is faced industry-wide it's not just unique to our business on your website what are the uh what are other like really unique meats that you guys have because

you have hot dogs which i haven't had yet but you have beef jerky too what other stuff do you guys have that's just like jerky uh is great um that's whole muscle jerky so it's not like a restructured project uh product we use uh we use around and um so it's so it's all one muscle um and again all of our products are natural yeah um so we have to keep the ingredients in line with that like you won't find find any nitrates, nitrides, MSG. We don't have any MSG in any of our products. Our snack sticks are really good. We have two flavors right now.

We're continuing to develop more. So we have original jalapeno. And within the next few months, we'll be out with a few additional flavors. Seasoning mixes that we have. And then we do also, and these aren't products that we produce, but we sell bison on our site. You can find that on there, just ground bison.

And then we have a variety of organic air-chilled chicken from Smart Chicken that we sell on our site as well. So you can get a variety of proteins on our site. Pretty cool story about that jerky right there. My fiance actually won it through Instagram from Piedmontese. Oh, did she? Yeah, and then so I'm like, man, we need some representation on the table

because we had the other sponsors up there too. So I'm like, okay, is it cool? And she's like, she donated that one. so that's where that one actually came from we have we brought some we'll get her some more awesome thank you that's cool you ever have any issues with uh supply like you ever have like a shortage of cows you're not able to get them from like you know there's got to be difficulty in uh you know, bringing the cows, you know, to Nebraska and stuff like that, right? Yeah, so we're building up those numbers. As I mentioned earlier, all of our resources within our cattle operation now, besides procuring, you know, the feeder calves from these producers that we work with, everything internally we use to develop more bulls and cows for our breeding stock purposes.

So from a supply standpoint, we're ramping up big time. It takes some time to get there, though. Cows have a nine-month gestation cycle, so like the same as humans. So it takes a cow nine months to give birth to a calf so you run on a annual cycle it takes a full year to get a new calf out of a out of cow so like to ramp those numbers up it just it takes time wow are these cows any more active like just because they're more jacked they move around a little bit more or not really push Do you do push-ups? Not necessarily. How much do they deadlift? That's what we really want to know.

All the weight. Only in the sense that we're big on allowing the access to free range and not overcrowding into pen settings. Our bulls, we develop predominantly on pasture um you get better

development um and that's like breeding stock use bowls that are used for breeding so you get better development like in uh in the feet and legs because of that so if you keep them confined like too much or in a pen setting um they don't work those muscles and those joints enough to be strong. So in that sense, yeah, I mean like they are worked out. I mean it's not like we – Put them through a training program. Yeah, put them through a training program. This guy claims he got super jacked off of goat milk.

Oh, okay. I know. I said the same thing. I said, all right. Very suspicious. Is there any Piedmontese milk? Can we get some extra protein from these cows through milk? I'm actually looking into it.

I'm very intrigued by that. So in Piedmont, they're used. It's like it's the only milk that doesn't have any lactose in it. In Italy, they're still used as a dual purpose animals they're used for both their milk production and their meat production that milk production mostly goes into making uh cheeses in piedmont um but we'll see i i don't know we never intended to start a dairy with this program but um you know i honestly like i never thought we were going to be back into the grass-fed deal but we did this trial, I honestly, like, I never thought we were going to be back into the

grass fed deal, but we did this trial a couple of years ago with Piedmontese and we were really surprised and impressed with the results of how Piedmontese did, uh, finishing them out on grass. So you never know. I think you were mentioning checking the amino acid profile and stuff like that. Yeah. So, um, we got, well, we're starting out with meat. We'll probably do this with milk eventually to test the amino acid profile just to see, you know, what it looks like and how it compares. So we took four cuts and we're testing the amino acid profile of those four state cuts. steak cuts. We're really big on just collecting as much nutritional data as we can on our product. We actually have a full fatty acid profiles on all of our grass fed products. So, I mean, we have a lot of data and we're open to sharing any of that publicly we don't promote it too heavily like in our marketing uh just because it you know it's it gets very detailed and and frankly it's not like it's not that distinguishing you know that it's not like a

major selling point but we do have all that information so wow let me ask you this have you heard of um cows getting put uh the vr thing on them to like, you guys haven't heard about it? I've heard about it. I don't know. Like, that's not part of our business. So they're starting to at least cows that are, I guess, in lots. Right. They're putting the VR thing and like it's supposed to be like a fake pasture so that it feels a little bit better no i always did the real thing that'd be interesting i feel like cost wise it might just be easier to let them outside put some blinders on unless they're like playing video games or something but like i don't really that's pretty crazy you know yeah it just sounds wacky

what do you got over there, Andrew? I can't stop thinking about that. Like, why would they even, like, it's a real thing? Yeah, it's a real thing. They want the cows to feel a little bit calmer since they're stuck in shit. What do you think about sustainability? You know, sometimes people are like, well, if everyone started switching over to eating more meat, we would have a real issue. Is that something that you believe is a real concern?

I think it's important. It's important to our business as well. I mean, we do a number of things for sustainability, but probably I think the best example of this is we operate on around 60,000 acres of land total, like within our own system. 60,000 acres of, of land total, like within our own system. And, um, about 95% of that land is untillable. So it can't be used for anything other than grazing ruminant animals on. So you couldn't go grow corn or kale or any other crop on there. Um it has no other purpose than grazing animals on. Of that remaining 5,000 acres that we operate on, a lot of that is what would be, I guess now this is considered like monocropping,

and it's land that's used predominantly for corn production. You know, just go corn after corn crop after corn crop every single year. and it's land that's used predominantly for corn production. It'll just go corn after corn crop after corn crop every single year, and then sometimes they'll rotate soybeans in on it. And we have about 5,000 acres that we were doing that on, and over the last five years, we've converted all of that land to forage crops. It's kind of an expensive process but that was done out of um development of like our grass-fed program and feeding some of our breeding stock animals on um and just again a concern for sustainability is that we we have a little bit more of like a

biodynamic approach um to the crops that we produce on those lands now. What does that mean exactly? Biodynamic just in the sense that like we're grazing on them or I guess so it's referred to as biodynamic. What I've been hearing a lot lately is it's called regenerative ag. So like we're putting as much back into the soil as we're taking out. Like cattle graze on those fields now instead of just stripping the nutrients out of the soil to have to replace them the next growing season with synthetic fertilizers. Got it. So those crops would contain things like rye, millet, forage sorghum crops, alfalfa.

I mean, it's a pretty extensive list of crops that we grow on there. Brome grass is another one. So it's diverse crop options. But like I said, it's an expensive process to convert those fields over. And the reason those fields are monocropped in the first place is a lot of these farmers in these areas farm thousands of acres. And that's what their systems and that infrastructure in our part of the country has been set up to, to handle. So, um, you know, we're lucky to be in, in a, uh, position that we were able to, to do that. Um, but not everybody is, um, and it takes, I mean, there, there, uh, operations with huge amounts of working capital, um, you know, that

not everybody can do that. And those, those crops are heavily subsidized by the government. So when you do that, you also give up your extra paycheck from the government. What about methane? Are these cows farting and causing some real serious problems or is this not really that big of an issue? I don't know. It's hard to say. I've seen a lot

of conflicting evidence on that. I've seen a lot of that too but I don't know. I really don't have the answers to that question because I don't think anybody out there has hard definitive evidence

that supports some of the claims that are being made out there on either side for that matter. For our peeps that are wondering like UK and all that type of stuff because you only ship in the US right now, are there any plans to get worldwide shipping? We're looking into Canada right now. We have a lot of people at Triathlon World who are asking about

getting it up there. A couple of people on Instagram have asked if we can do that too. That's our next venture. We've done export sales on a wholesale level but to do a direct-to-consumer sale on an international level

there's just a lot of hurdles there. Yeah, once it gets to customs, it sits there for, you know, two or three days, and at that point, it's going to be thought out, gross. So Canada's probably be a little bit easier to do that direct-to-consumer than overseas. As I mentioned, we do currently all 50 states,

so we do ship Alaska and Hawaii as well. From a nutrition standpoint, you guys have maybe some family members and some just maybe friends that you run into. And, you know, maybe they have a, you know, kind of health issue or health concern. And you're just kind of thinking, well, you know, the key is, you know, some of this meat that we have you know have you guys um intervened in any way in any in in uh anyone in the family or a friend or somebody like that and help them in that way uh not not directly yet but there again i intervened with myself you know and so i have the you know like the personal or first hand experience from that i mean obviously like i was still eating a lot of meat before that you you know, it's just, I probably like doubled my meat intake. So

instead of just seeing it every night for dinner, I eat it for, um, for breakfast and for my, my after dinner meal, you know, like, cause I got to have my, my second dinner. That's right. Um, so I think that's a, uh, one of the biggest advantages of that whole carnivore diet movement is like, that's the ultimate elimination diet. And I think a lot of people, uh, you know, could, could learn a lot about themselves to just like give that a try. And then, uh, you know, if they're having some, maybe some, uh, some gut issues or whatever it may be, um, or, you know, autoimmune

type of problems I've heard it's been great for, uh, and then re start reintroducing some things back into your diet to see, um, see what's really causing it. You know, did you start out with maybe like getting rid of bread or something like that? Or, um, yeah, so it's's like there's a lot of bread uh you know cut out the like the gels and blocks and stuff that i take during my workouts and start replacing like the only thing that i like i have to replace those with is like there's the cyclic dextrin or like you can mix a super starch you know so like those kind of long chain carbohydrates. But yeah, cut out, I mean, bread is probably the biggest one. Yeah. But then you start looking at like once you get further into it, though, like the refined

sugar or the high fructose corn syrup, whatever it may be, is added into literally every single product that we're consuming, like ketchup. I use a ton of ketchup and it's in that. Yeah. So for myself, obviously, I'm the walking example of what I can and can of ketchup and it's in that yeah so for myself obviously i'm the walking example of what i can and can't have and what's good and not good for you so and i do all the shopping in the house so basically whatever i buy everyone else is going to eat um but uh i've my parents i've turned them on to it um yeah and my husband's a big example too he he loves his cake

and cookies and ice cream. So he's incorporated a lot more of meat and protein into his diet, and it's showed a lot. He's got a manual job. So he works in a warehouse, so he's on his feet all day. And that's one thing that he notices, the amount of energy that he has. And then he's still able to go and work out at the end of the day um and not just be completely exhausted so it's helpful a little bit cool oh well last thing in terms of the uh meat quality when it comes to your door it's it's honestly been so much better because whenever i'd go to like costco sometimes they don't have what i want there in the past when i had to buy it from

there so it's great that like when it comes to your door it's all so damn fresh and it makes costco meat tastes like shit now it really does like you get spoiled you really do yeah i i ran out of everything and i'm like well costco was good when i was going there and so let me you know grab that and actually me and chris bell were talking about that how like once you go i was waiting for that well you guys know you can finish the sentence but yeah and then the other thing is like um when you guys are you know mark asking you guys if you guys have like converted anybody or turn anybody on to like you know like how amazing this stuff is or how good it is for you um my family freaks out every time i cook piedmontese beef like that's it's it's incredible like whether it be sliders

or the flat iron steaks and oh we almost forgot to mention the sliders thank god you let them in there oh my god they're so good um the the biggest or best example i i can give people is like if something's good you know your kids are gonna love it my daughter eats the steaks first like she doesn't do that with any other protein and i mean as parents we know that like trying to get kids more protein is always kind of a challenge and so with these with these steaks it's like here you go but it does get to the point where i'm like hey i'm running low so uh i don't know go go have some fruit rolls or something you know obviously not but that's i mean that's the biggest sign for me that that tells me like

yes this stuff is amazing so yeah we really appreciate you guys absolutely thanks for having you guys i appreciate uh you guys guys taking the time to come out here. Excited for the seminar tomorrow, I think it is. Yeah, yeah. Brought lots of steaks. Maybe I should show up tomorrow, huh? Seminar tomorrow with my brother. Again, thank you guys so much for coming out.

Is there anything else that you guys would like to share, like them to know about the company? No, thanks for having us. I know you have 25% off for the whole month, right? We do, yep, through the end of the month. Yep, we have that sale going on,

so take advantage of it. $99 or more, it's free shipping, so you can't beat that. Andrew, what's the website? It's pmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E dot com. If you guys want to support the show, use the link in our bio. You guys go there and literally anybody can go get 25% off right now.

I'm at Mark Smiley Bell on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. At Nsema Eang on Instagram and YouTube. At I am Andrew Z. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you all later.