Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2660: Dr. Autumn Smith

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

 Dr. Autumn Smith Autumn’s early life and struggles surrounding food. (1:17) Her journey of being a personal trainer while going to school. (3:14) Why she decided to go paleo. (4:17) Why their beef sticks stand out above the rest! (10:15) The origin of anti-meat propaganda. (14:52) What is regenerative farming? (18:44) The carbon imprint from this type of farming. (28:00) The difference between grass-fed vs. grass grass-finished. Buyer beware. (29:17) The nutritional differences between conventional and non-conventional types of meat. (33:09) What made them go with bone broth protein? (38:35) Find what works and put a lot of resources into that. (46:33) Not all vitamin C is created equal. (48:44) What is the difference between broth and collagen protein? (52:10) Breaking down the value of the organ complex. (53:30) The consumer breakdown of their products. (59:20) Their bestselling beef sticks. (1:00:14) The evolution of her relationship with food. (1:01:50) Her travels with J Lo and the celebrities she trained via the Tracy Anderson Method. (1:03:58) New products on the horizon. (1:15:34) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Paleovalley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Discount is now automatically applied at checkout: 15% off your first order! ** Visit Transcend for this month’s exclusive Mind Pump offer! ** Telehealth Provider • Physician Directed GET YOUR PERSONALIZED TREATMENT PLAN!  Hormone Replacement Therapy, Cognitive Function, Sleep & Fatigue, Athletic Performance and MORE! ** August Special: MAPS 15 50% off! ** Code MUSCLE50 at checkout ** Wild Pastures Meet Allan Savory, the Pioneer of Regenerative Agriculture How to fight desertification and reverse climate change Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Beef Production PSV-30 A nutritional survey of commercially available grass-finished beef American Grassfed Association Made in America Nutritional Comparisons Between Grass-Fed Beef and Conventional Grain-Fed Beef Bionutrient Food Association The Glycine Miracle: The Science of Living Long and Free from Inflammation Friend or Foe? The Role of Animal-Source Foods in Healthy and Environmentally Sustainable Diets Tracy Anderson Official Site | A Revolutionary Fitness Method Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Dr. Autumn Smith (@drautumnsmith) Instagram Robb Wolf (@dasrobbwolf) Instagram Mark Sisson (@marksissonprimal) Instagram Tracy Anderson (@tracyandersonmethod) Instagram Ben Bruno (@benbrunotraining) Instagram DON SALADINO (@donsaladino) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today, we had the founder of Paleo Valley on the podcast, Dr. Autumn Smith, talking about paleo approaches to farming, diet, how to use food, to make yourself feel better like medicine?

It's a great episode. By the way, Paleo Valley, great company. Go check them out. Go to paleovali.com forward slash mind pump. Also, this episode is brought to by a sponsor, mphormones.com, hormone replacement therapy and peptide therapy with real doctors. Now that gray market stuff, not research chemicals.

You're going through real doctors, mphormones.com. Get your labs checked out. See if hormone therapy and or peptide therapy is right for you. have a sale this month. Maps 15, half off. Very popular program, 15 minutes a day, build muscle, burn body fat. If you're interested, go to Maps 1.5minutes.com, Maps 15minutes.com. Use the code Muscle 50, muscle 50 for the discount. Here comes a show. Dr. Autumn Smith, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here with all of you.

So just so our audience knows who you are, your background a little bit, before we get into some of the topics that we have. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Basically, I'm a girl who grew up in Montana and started having digestive issues at the age of 10 that no doctor really knew how to solve. And so I kind of went about my life. They said, take Bino. I did it. And it didn't address the root issue, as you might imagine. And as I got into my teens, it started to become mental health issues. I got kicked out of my parents' house before I even graduated high school and kind of just continue to struggle. Like, I made things happen. I went to L.A. I dance professionally, work for Tracy Anderson.

But it wasn't really until I met my husband that my story changed because he saw me suffering and said, I just, I think we need to do better. And doctors in L.A. weren't really able to help me address it either. So we got on Google and saw that some people were having luck changing their diet and improving their digestive health, which at the time was really a novel idea. It was back in the early 200s or 2,000s. And we did it for 30 days. I just cut out processed foods and my digestive issues went away completely within 30 days.

And I was working as a fitness trainer for Tracy Anderson doing all these fun things and decided I just needed to quit that job and go back and fully understand how food could have changed something that nobody else knew how to treat for 15 years. And so we saw the writing on the wall, though. We originally started as like information products and realized that information was going to be more free. And I went on a world tour with JLo and I couldn't have the staple. that I needed to keep my digestive system happy because we were gone for seven months. So when I came back to America, we started Paleo Valley.

And so I'm a co-founder of Paleo Valley. I'm a mom. We started wild pastures and really just incredibly passionate about food is medicine and how to bring really high quality options to the masses. So you were a trainer and then did you go back to school?

Is that what you did? Oh, okay. Well, tell me a little bit about that journey of being a personal trainer, having that experience, and then going to school, probably to get even deep, deeper knowledge around what you're starting to learn.

Did you feel like you got what you were looking for at the school, or did you feel like they were even missing on stuff and kind of old, old science? What did you find? Well, I chose it really strategically. So I did more holistic programs. Yeah. So I didn't go back to traditional school. I went to something called Hawthorne University.

And then, yeah, American College of Healthcare Sciences, because I knew what I had tried learning that a calorie was a calorie. And growing up as a ballerina, I basically just didn't eat too much. much. That was kind of the advice. Like, you can eat whatever you want. Just don't eat too much and you'll be fine. And that led me to junk food and candy and whatever. So I chose the school very strategically because I knew what had worked for me and not worked for me. But, and I was a fitness trainer with Tracy Anderson. So I didn't like do all the traditional fitness training, but Tracy Anderson's method specifically. So when you, when you, so you're already a trainer,

you're eating quote unquote healthy, right, as a trainer, whatever that means. And then you change your diet. What was it that you took out of your diet? Because as a trainer, I'm assuming you're not like total garbage all time, but you must have had foods. Or are you just keeping it low? Yeah. What was it like? What were the things that you changed? I basically gluten was a big one for me and processed foods.

I was eating a lot of processed protein bars, you know, and I was having like a green machine every morning, which has like 50 grams of, you know, sugar, whether it's natural or not. But I was just kind of on a roller coaster. Lots of caffeine, lots of green machine, lots of processed foods and protein powders that didn't really serve my digestive system at all. So I wasn't eating total garbage, but I was also a lot of processed food. So what I did is just anything that wasn't whole food, I just cut it out, including gluten and dairy for a while and beans. I basically did paleo diet.

I found Rob Wolf in Marxistin. And so just eliminated all processed foods, protein, vegetables, fruit. That's a lot of what my diet became. Yeah. And caffeine, too, I got rid of it. But I don't think everyone else. You know what's interesting because I had lots of gut issues myself, 90s, early 2000. There wasn't a lot of information.

It was very difficult. Leaky gut syndrome was people made fun of. Now they call it intestinal wall hyperprimeability. It's got a now a medical term for it. There wasn't a lot of good information. And there definitely wasn't good information around the connection between the gut and mental health, which now is, I think, pretty well established, although we're still getting more and more science around that. What were your mental health symptoms with your gut? Because when I say gut health, people, okay, fine, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, everybody understands that.

But there's a very strong connection between mental health and gut health. What were your symptoms before? And then what was the symptom relief like after and how long did it take to start to notice those benefits? Yeah. So very anxious. I think for some reason, I think gluten was a huge problem for me. And I know it doesn't manifest that way for everyone. But for me, it was definitely inflammatory.

And you know that for some people that inflammation is a part of depression, I think like a third or a subset of people that can trigger depression. So I had anxiety and depression, which you know kind of go together. Also as a young dancer, I had an eating disorder. And eventually substance abuse when I was in so much pain and I didn't know why. And sometimes my stomach would look pregnant. And I just kind of like turned to alcohol and a lot of different things I could get my hands on to just kind of numb out. and just to try to feel something different in my body. And so all of that persisted all the way through my early 20s.

And when I changed my diet, it was probably, it wasn't just taking out processed foods. It was then learning to stabilize my blood sugar too. I think that was a huge piece for me. And so over the course of the next year, I suddenly felt stable. It was that stability that I was missing, just like, I think physiological stability, not being on this roller coaster. And then I started to see like a light, like, things were exciting again.

I felt inspired. I wasn't just struggling every day. And so I was able to think beyond just making it through every day and what I wanted to contribute instead. So it was kind of an enthusiasm, a stability, a peace, and an excitement that I just didn't know for.

Were you able to mask all this with your family and friends? Like when you were like going through like your addictions or going through the eating disorder like, does everybody kind of know it and you don't realize? Or is it kind of one of those things where like nobody has any idea. Eating disorder, for sure. Parents knew about that. But I, and I did get kicked out of my

parents' house before I graduated high school. So, no, I don't think I was fooling anyone. I think if you would ask anyone that I went to high school with, if I would own an organic food company, they would say that was crazy. Yeah, absolutely insane. It's a total shift. Wow. You know, in my experience, because I had some anxiety connected to gut health, the gut health symptoms got better. before the mental health stuff started to feel better. So it was like I noticed better digestion. And then it was, is that what happened to you as well? Yes, the digestive issues, 30 days.

I could not believe it. They were gone for the most part as long as I cut most of those foods out. But it was about the course of the next year when I really started to say, whoa, emotionally. Because my husband and I, when we first met, I was a bit of a roller coaster. And we would fight and I'd crash at the end of the day. And I was just kind of a unstable human. And then I became stable and peaceful. But yeah, it took about a year, I'd say.

Did you notice to your sleep being affected in a positive direction? Yeah, well, I just used to sleep so much more, which is interesting. I would crash in the middle of the day. I needed naps, and then I would come home and I would sleep a really long time. So it kind of regulated in the opposite way, actually, for me. I got a healthy meal to sleep. You know, it's interesting with people who have chronic gut health issues is when they start to figure out what works for them, a centerpiece of their diet is almost always mean.

You almost never find someone who's like, oh, my God, I had chronic health, gut health issues, and then they became a vegan and it got better. In fact, I don't know anybody that's ever. Now, I'm sure there's some out there that might say that this helped them, but it's almost always meat is always the center of it. And I speculate part of the reason is meat is we're so non-reactive to meat. Like, meat causes very, very few reactions of people from an immune system standpoint. But did you find this for yourself? Did you find that that meat became more of a staple in your diet? Absolutely. And like you said, it's essentially an elimination diet when you cut out all the processed foods and, you know, vegetables for some guts are very, they give them issues. And yeah, meat became really important. And I tried to avoid it when I was young. And I really think that I had some sort of protein deficiency, amino acid deficiency. You know, amino acids become our neurotransmitters, right? And so it's really important. And for that stability. But yes, I brought in animal products as a staple, the centerpiece of every single diet or every single meal three times a day. And then when I snacked, I snacked on.

animal products protein meat sticks and I think that was a huge piece of it that's why our product was a beef stick you know I never thought I would make a meat stick but it was so integral they are the they are the best though I tell you that's what actually that's what sold us that's the sold us on where was we've had yes we've had so many uh different uh meat sticks every jerky company in the world yes and and we and one of the things that's always kept like I don't know I don't see myself eating this the time and we had yours and like oh my God, this tastes so good. You guys hit it out the park.

Well, thank you. It's because it's different. It's fermented. And that was a key. Is that what the difference is? Yes, here's the thing. Because when I was in France and I was really struggling to find food on that tour that I could eat, my husband brought over this, like literally a suitcase of beef sticks.

And they were grass fed. And I thought, okay, that's going to be healthy. For whatever reason, they still ripped my stomach up. So when I got back to America, I was like, let's figure out what this is. And we called a bunch of manufacturers and they used an ingredient called encapsulated citric acid. that's just, you know, made with processed oils and GMO ingredients anyway. I thought, okay, well, how can we do it without that? Maybe that's playing a role in it.

And I found out, you know, if you could ferment meat. It takes a long time, four times as long. It's not as lucrative, but you can do it. And a few, one person was able to say, okay, I'll try making this for you. And it's that fermentation that kind of breaks down the meat, but also gives it a juiciness rather than like a really tough texture. What's the encapsulated? So go back. Why do they add encapsulated?

What is it? Citric acid. Is it citric acid? Yes. So usually. Is it as a preservative? It is. So it'll take like, you know, corn, genetically modified often.

And then they coat it with like this processed oil, like a cotton seed oil. I had no idea to do that. And then it just melts into the stick when it hits a certain temperature because it changes the pH with the citric acid, drops it. Okay. And then makes it shelf stable. And that helps keep, okay, keeps it shelf stable. It does. Now you're saying you take the meat, you ferment it.

So what do they mean? What's the fermentation process look like? Do you add bacteria to it? Exactly. Yep. we just grind it up or add the organic spices and then the bacteria and then that drops the pH because it produces it eats this carbohydrate substrate and then it produces lactic acid and then that also drops the pH so it's just a different way and what that's doing is it's

breaking down the meat which makes it not tough that's the difference is your those meat sticks is tender yeah they're tender whereas other meats and they're juicy exactly so different it's the fermentation process and it takes so much longer right but you avoid the use of that And you get an entirely different texture. It's kind of like a kielbasa. Is meat fermentation, are there cultures that do that often? Is that something that we've done for a long time? Oh, yes.

Is that done typically? Yeah, I know you can ferment fish in Norway. I know that they make like Polish sausages, you know, there's all throughout the world and we've always been fermenting meat. But then when we came up with, you know, refrigeration and then we've been adding citric acid, it kind of like went by the wayside. Okay. But we just decided, well, what if we didn't?

Like our ancestors fermented it? Let's try to bring it back. And smart. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. How much does it cut the cost for them not to do that and then the speed of production? Because I'm assuming that's the reason why we went that direction.

It's the four times as long. It's got to make it way less. It's got to cut into the margins. Oh, yeah. Nobody wanted to do it when we called them. They were like, oh, you don't even have to label that ingredient. You just have to put citric acid. Like, no one even knows.

And like, this is what everybody does. That's what they would tell you? They would tell us that. And I was like, that's just, it still matters to us. So we're going to still try it. And like I said, one, I think we call. called like a hundred different manufacturers. And one guy was like, oh, I'll do it for you.

But yeah, four times as long, time is money. Obviously, it takes a lot longer to make. Wow. Did they go, did they take off right out the gates or was it just when we talked about? Just kidding. No, did they take off around. Because they do taste very, very good. It did.

It's funny. Because we started to attract customers. I would just tell my story. So many people have digestive issues, right? You know, like almost half of America has some element. And so, yeah, people. loved them. Yeah, it's always been our best selling product. The taste speaks to themselves. I mean, as much as I love to give us credit for something like that, I mean, we had so many

companies that sent us stuff that we could have worked with. And because none of us fell in love with that. The first time we've been into that, I was like, oh, my God. The other thing, too, a lot of people that know this with jerky or meat sticks is oftentimes they use, they'll sneak that in there. Yes, they'll use, gluten will be in the meat. And so you'll eating jerky and you're like, oh, I'm going to go with protein and meat, not realizing you're getting as much gluten as you would be if you're eating like a cereal bar or something like that. And sugar. They have sugar, too, and you're like, why are you adding sugar to meat?

I don't know. But, yeah, there's just a bunch of random ingredients. So, so, you know, my generation, we grew up, you still, actually, I don't even know why I said that, you still hear this today, but meat's bad for you. Meets bad for you. You can cause all the different problems. Yet, when you really look at people and you really boil down the data, it's not bad for you. Where did that idea come from that meat was bad for us? Like, where's that coming from?

What's going on? Is this like a red meat? Is this like an anti, like, is this like a PETA propaganda thing? Because sometimes I read the things that are written and I go, this can't be, who would write this? This is not true. Yeah, there's a lot of factors. Have you guys heard the story of Belinda and Gary Fetke? Okay, so this is really interesting.

It happened down in Australia. He was an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Gary Fetke, realizing that his diabetic patients were receiving amputations. And he realized, okay, well, he was learning about low carb and thinking, okay, well, maybe if I just told him to avoid some sugar. maybe that might help them. And he did. And then he got turned in by the dietitian on staff for, you know, giving advice that she didn't think was good. And he actually became the first doctor ever silenced about talking about nutrition

because he recommended avoiding sugar to his diabetic patients. So. That's crazy. It's crazy. You can't believe the controversy around that? You have issues processing sugar. I'm going to have you avoid it, you know? No, can't say that.

I know. And in the course of like four years of litigation, his wife, Belinda, he would go on the stand. and then they'd have these representatives, which she later found out were from cereal companies, like saying, okay, no, you, you know, sugar isn't that bad and blah, blah, blah, basically. And so Belinda really dove into, like, where this idea came from. And it has a lot of historical, like, religious origins. Really? Like Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Yep.

He created Kellogg's cereal because. To stop people for masturbation. Yes. That's literally why it was invented. Exactly. Yeah. So a lot of the Seventh Adventist Church has kind of instructed us that meat is sinful. and so that's embedded in lots of hospitals, lots of universities throughout the country.

And they're actually really proud of their influence on that. They've written a paper about it. And so religious ideation, of course. And then we have Ansel Keys research, I'm sure you're familiar with, saturated fat. We do have environmental activists. We also have people, animal welfare rights activists. We had the jungle. We had sugar industry executives.

They came in, and I'm sure you guys have heard about. this too. So yeah, there's just so many different interests kind of coming to converging to create this idea that meat's harmful. And also people who don't understand the environmental aspects, right? You can raise meat in environmentally ethical and sustainable, even regenerative ways. Yeah, I want to get back to regenerative farming because that's different than doing it ethically. It's better. So I want to get, I want to talk about that. But, you know, I do have this theory also around this anti-meat propaganda. And that's that, you know, GMO products are incredibly profitable.

Like, if you can patent a plant and then sell it, like, that's great. Otherwise, everybody could do the same thing. There are to, right now at least, no GMO cows or sheep. So it makes sense that a lot of the money would go towards, let's be able to sell this corn or the sugar that comes from this corn or this whatever, these products that are for GMO type plants. So to me, that's, I think, another angle, another reason. Thoughts on that? Absolutely. Yeah, and I mean, it's so consolidated now that four companies own like 85% of the processing in the cattle industry.

And so it's getting a little bit dicey there too. But what I think we need to do is go back to the family farms in our particular bioregion. And I think, but I think you're absolutely right. It's not profitable. You make a far smaller margin on animal products than you do on something like sugar, wheat, corn, rice. And you don't get all the subsidies. You know, the government doesn't support you in the same way. All right. Let's talk about regenerative farming. What is that? And why is that different than just like good farming?

Commercial. Yeah. So there's like three types of agriculture happening today. We know about the commercial, the conventional model where there's glyphosate, you know, pesticides, fertilizers, and a lot of animals in factory farms. That's where 90% of our animal products come from factory farms. And then we have sustainable. And that's something like organic, where essentially you're not creating damage because we've been creating a lot of soil, desertification, and other environmental issues with the conventional. system. But then regenerative is this third type. And it's actually to return to a higher war worthy state. That's what regenerative means. So sustainable is like stopping the bleeding, but regenerative is actually rehabilitating the land. And that's why it's really different. It's using metrics like soil health, biodiversity, water holding capacity, and actually measuring where a plot of land is before and where it's going afterwards. And this is really important because 60, between 30 and 60 percent of our soil has been desertified essentially. And so we don't know the exact time frame. People estimate 60, 80, 100 harvest left. We don't know if we continue at our

trajectory that we might lose the capacity to create our own food one day. And 95% of our calories over 95% come from the soil. When was it that we, what was it that we figured out that we could replace the soil and just get it to continue growing things? But we don't replace the minerals and the, what was it that we started to replace? It was like fertilizer, but what are we adding necessarily? NPK. Okay. Yeah. Is that what, is that okay? Yes. Okay. So, so they replace that and that allows you to keep growing plants, but they don't replace everything else. Exactly. Think of it like, that's like the macro nutrients for a plant, proteins, fats, and carbs, but then we just forget about all the micronutrients. Yeah. Exactly. And the microbial

life. So what happens in like the rocks, the minerals are in the rock. right and then we have the plants but the plants need the minerals in the rocks and then they become food for humans and humans get access to the minerals but it doesn't happen without the microbial life so when we come in with pesticides and fertilizers and other you know agents chemicals that are essentially killing that microbial life the microbes will when they get carbon from the plant then they go to the rocks and then they bring the minerals and make them accessible to the plant so when we kill that microbial life basically the taxi system between the plants and the nutrients the minerals in the soil is broken. So then we get nutrient depleted plants and nutrient. It makes me think of it's like if it fits your macros for plants. It's like, you know, eat twinkies, eat whatever, as long as it fits in your macros. We're not going to talk about all the other things and all the other benefits that come with all these phytonutrients and stuff. Exactly.

And then it harms their immune system. So plants become more vulnerable. And then we bring in the pesticides and the weed kill. You know what I mean? It's just, it just becomes this cyclical thing. And you call it desertifying? Yeah, desertification. And that's because the soil becomes essentially dead.

Depleties of the... It goes from something that's living, you know, more living microorganisms in like a teaspoon of soil than there are people on the planet to something that's like caked and dead, devoid of life. That's where you get that like, you see the chocolate cake soil. I don't know if you've ever seen these pictures or you have this like brown crumbly stuff. It's just devoid of life. Now, how do you regenerate that? So how do you get it better, you know, through harvest versus just stopping the bleeding? Yeah.

So animals. There's like several principles. One is least disturbance. So you want to keep a living root in the soil as long as possible because, again, we're creating that taxi system. We're feeding the microbes. You want soil armor. A lot of times we keep our ground barren and that leads it very vulnerable to wind and water erosion. And again, we're not feeding it.

Animal integration. This is why I think is so important. Animals are natural fertilizers, right? So cows come on. They hoop on the ground. I thought cows were bad for the environment. Exactly. They are.

Only when you raise them in certain ways. Have you guys heard of Alan Savory? No. Oh, I got to tell you that story in a second. But essentially, they act as fertilizers. They create little divets for waters to pocket and to stay in the soil. Biodiversity. We've kind of separated animal and plant systems, but I think ideally we've got to bring them back. Because you don't need all the fertilizers when the animals come and bring the nutrients back to the land. Right. And a lot of our ability to hold water in the land is because, or inability now, I should say, is because, again, we've killed that microbial life. So is there a cycle in this season where you're like, okay, we're going to let the cows come trample all over this area and poop all over? You need a lot bigger land to do this because of, yeah, being able to kind of cycle them through? I love that question. And yes, okay, so it's really interesting. It depends on how you do it because you'll need more land, but a lot of times these regenerative farmers find that they can actually have three to four times the amount of animals on that land.

But what Alan Savory, I'm going to go, Alan Savory is a fascinating individual and he was an environment. environmentalist living in Africa and he thought animals did lead to desertification. And so he and his colleagues made a decision to kill 40,000 elephants because they thought, oh, well, this is going to help the land get better. But what he found out was it didn't. It actually made it much worse. And so then he went back and licked it to the research from Andrew Vassan and all these regenerative ranchers finding that it's it's not about the animals. It's about the way that we manage them. Right. So moving animal from a plot of land to a different plot of land, you know, sometimes, Sometimes daily. I've had regenerative farmers move them more than once a day. Sometimes people move them weekly. It really depends on where you're living. But yeah, the animals cycle through different paddocks, they call them. And they watch, right? You don't want an animal to overgraze because then that is harmful. So when you put a cow out in a pasture or animals and you don't manage them, they will. They'll find their favorite plants. Then they can continue to eat them over and over. And they can do damage to the land. But if you're watching them, managing them in what they call predator prey cycles, essentially, animals wouldn't have ever gotten onto a plot of land and then stayed there. No. They would move because they would poop on it or they would be chased out. And so it's really just building a system that mimics that by looking at, okay, how does the land look today?

And then where are we going after that? And then that ends up making the soil better than it was first time around. Exactly. Because the soil, the land needs time to recover, right? It needs that disturbance. It's like exercise, right? You guys know this. We stress our bodies out a little bit.

And then in the recovery, we become stronger. and that's what adequate recovery will do to the land. And so they might be on a plot of land. And then they'll give it lots of rest, like 30, 60, 100 days. Yeah, too. Like how some farms do it now, like when they don't have crops, sometimes they'll plant like non-fruiting plants there. Hovercroft.

Yeah. So is that a successful strategy at all or is that somewhat? Absolutely. Yeah. And especially like if you're talking in terms of like carbon sequestration, And the more you have photosynthesis happening, the more carbon, they're literally like sucking carbon out of the air with their leaves and storing it underground. And that carbon becomes the food for the little microbes and the taxi systems that then, so yes, it's rehabilitate sequestering carbon. It's the water holding capacity too that it's building, which is really important because most of our floods and droughts.

It doesn't come because we don't get enough water. It's often because we can't hold the water. We can't retain the water. But when you bring that microbial life back. Now, what about, like, insects and, like, this whole, like, biodiversity thing of, like, or ecosystem, like, how can they manage that better with the insects instead of having, like, pesticides all the time? Yeah. So what they find is that it's just different populations come. Like, the dung beetles, they're actually really important for taking nutrients and bringing them back.

And so different types of pests or pests will arise. But many of them actually work for the system. right, in a healthy system. Or aren't there some, too, that will, like, counter or take care of, like, keeping some at bay? So it's like, these ones live and kill and eat these ones so they don't get overpopulated and kill the plants. Isn't there?

Aren't there some pests like that? I'm sure there are. I'm not an expert in that particular area. But, yeah, I do know that when I speak to the farmers, they say, we were trained that we just needed to kill everything. And once you start interacting with the ecosystem in a different way, you realize that it's not incredibly, it's not totally necessary. and that a healthy thriving ecosystem will have a lots of diversity,

and it won't always be destructive. Now, is it, again, are the margins smaller with regenerative farming, or is it can be just as profitable? Like, what's the deal with it? Because obviously there's a reason why less, more farmers either way. Maybe it's education, but I'm assuming it's less profitable. Like scale-wise, yeah. Oh, man.

Yeah, it's really hard to take that chance and be regenerative farmer. But like I said, once you get through that transition period, it can become as profitable, if not more profitable. Because you can have cows, chickens, hogs on the same plot of land, right? Usually we have cows, right? Or, you know, they're specializing in one particular system. Then they can have honey, right? And they're running three to four times as many animal per acre.

You know, they're running larger herds. So you can get there. And I absolutely think it can be as profitable. But I'm not going to lie that there is a transition period. And you're not getting subsidies for corn and wheat. And, you know, so they're kind of unplugging from a system that supports farmers. Now, we mentioned carbon earlier, and you hear the term carbon footprint, you know, footprint. Does this type of farming produce less of that, the same, or is it better from that standpoint?

Yes. Have you guys heard about the white oak pastures analysis? No. Okay. So basically down in Bluffton, Georgia, they have a farm, a regenerative farm. And they had, they did what's called a life cycle analysis from kind of cradle to harvest, like, what is the environmental footprint? And they actually compared it to other similar proteins, you know, soy, conventionally raised beef, pork, chicken, and found it was the only net positive food.

So for every pound it produced, it was about 3.5 pounds of carbon that was actually sequestered. Then they compared it to even like plant-based burgers and found around 3.5 pounds were emitted. So he likes to joke that if for every plant-based burger you would eat, you'd have to eat one of his grass-fed beef burgers in order to offset the footprint. So, yes, which is kind of funny, which is so counterintuitive.

But absolutely, and in many people will refute this. But what is often missing is the accounting for the carbon sequestration. People aren't often taking that into consideration when they look at it. But there's been research out of University of Michigan, Dr. Jason Roundtree, and that analysis to suggest. Now, explain the difference between things like grass fed, grass finished. And because I know there's some controversy too around that. Like, if I recall, like, unless it says grass fed, grass finished, then what a lot of these farmers are doing is they're using the benefits of saying I'm grass fed,

but then they're still pumping them full of grains and things in the last couple weeks to fatten them up so they can make. So explain all the difference of that and what that looks like. So as of 2016, that regulation largely went away. So no one's really ensuring that it's grass finished. And all cows begin their lives on grass, right, for the first six months. So in 2016, so we're not like regulating that now? Not really regulating that, no. Wow.

And that's really clear in a paper that came out, Bronchema, 2019, I believe, where they surveyed many different American grass-fed farms, and they found the omega-6-3 ratio was like 26 to 1, which is highly indicative of a lot of grain feeding all the way down to like a two-to-one. So, yes, you don't really know, right? No one's really checking on that. As of 2016, grass-fed can mean grass-fed. fed and grass-fed, or it could mean grass-fed and grain-finished, or grass-fed-fed

distiller's grains. I've heard people going and dumping grains onto a pasture and calling that grass-fed. Wow, so how do you, okay, so as a consumer, as a consumer, how do you, how do you even protect yourself if they're not regulated? There must be third-party certification, okay. Yeah. Okay, so tell me what they should look for then when they're buying a product, since we now know that grass-fed could totally be grain finished, and they're not.

not regulating it. So how does the consumer know they're getting one that's purely grass fed? I love American Grass Fed Association. So they certify beef and pork and I think even buffalo bison. And so you can see they actually go in and verify. But unfortunately there have been recent reports like the food safety and inspection service is the one who you would go to to get these sort of certifications. And what they found is that a lot of times even they're not going on site typically. It's just an affidavit that they're filling out. And there was one report that said something like 80 percent lacked sufficient substantiation. Some of them didn't even have applications. Some of them had applications that were only partially filled out. And so yeah,

I think across the board, it's hard to say. I would imagine this is probably one of the biggest challenges you guys would be having right now is that just because there's so many bad apples that you get lumped in potentially with some of these people. It's like, I mean, I was just telling the guys before the show, I just was sharing with Sal that my buddy and I, we were just talking about this. And he's like, something like 98% of everybody that says they're grass-fed, grass-finishes bullshit. Like, it's very, very, very small percentage are actually truly up to par to what they should be. That's crazy. Yeah, it's really insane.

That's why we do the third-party audits and just grass-fed, grass-finish. But yeah, it's really, really hard to know what you're getting as a consumer. I talk a lot about that, even with cage-free and free range or Made-In-America's a good one, too. Made in America does not mean... Doug, look up some of... I want to see what this looks like. Like, I want to see what the certification or what does it look like on the packaging

for somebody? Like, that's what I'm trying to think like as a consumer. What's it called again? American Grass Fed Association. It's got like a little circle and then you'll see like AGA and then like a little grass on there. Now that's the one you like.

Is there more that do with those or a couple other organizations? Or is that the main one? You know, I think in terms of like regenerative ag, there's the Savory Institute, but they're more looking at environmental footprint. So American Grass Fed Association is the one that I would trust. Okay.

Most, I mean, sometimes if you have 100% grass fed and finished. Oh, there it is. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, that's the one that I would trust. That's the one you trust. That's the one I trust. And they have a focus on environmental stewardship and just, you know, I like that. What are the big nutritional differences between, you know, conventional and maybe non-conventional type meat?

Yeah, we actually just did. For my dissertation, I did that. this project with Dr. Van Vleet, have you heard of him over at Utah State? And this is this whole area of research. And so we took, I think, it's going to be about 200 different producers all across the country from grain feeding in a feedlot, feedlot light, you know, grass-fed grain finished and grass-fed totally grass-finished and then even regenerative meats and then put them all together.

And the main ones that we found, more omega-3s, which you would think doesn't matter. And you've heard that because it's an absolute amount is small. But there have been at least 6 to 8 trials showing that when you eat grass-fed beef, your levels compared to grain-fed beef, the levels of omega-3s in your blood rise appreciably, like significantly different. And I think that's really important. The other one is a much lower omega-6-3 ratio, which people believe can contribute to inflammation. You find about a 2-1 in grass-fed, grass-finished, and about an 8-1 in grain-finished, for example, a different saturated fatty acid profile. And we've all heard all saturated fatty acids are bad. But we know that's not true.

And longer chain forms and even stearic acid. So the type of saturated fats are different. I don't know that. The type of saturated fats are different. Yes. So more steic acid. Stereic acid is known as a more neutral. It's not going to raise your levels of cholesterol.

And then behenic acid and erichitic acid are these very long chain saturated fats that they've actually seen. Now, this is associative evidence that they are associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease in the very long chain. form. So that's interesting if you guys have heard about pentadecinoic acid. Yeah. So that's slightly higher in grass fed meat as well. Some people believe it's like a necessary nutrient.

There's supplements now selling it. Exactly. Fatty. Yep. Yep. Yep. So that's a little bit higher. And then we also did mineral analysis. And so the selenium content was six times higher. Copper, calcium, and iron were slightly higher in the grass fed beef. I eat a lot of beef. probably, easily a pound a day, but closer to two, probably. I know it's a big difference if I go conventional versus if I go grass-fed. I just feel different.

I feel way less than flame. My digestion's better. I just feel different. I can tell. And I think it's the fatty acid profile's got to make the, because I eat so much of it, it makes a big difference for me. Yeah, and there was a preliminary study too. And this is what Van Vali, it's doing next.

He's putting it into human bodies and then measuring the levels of inflammation. Yeah, it's really cool. So there was one in 2010 where they looked at kangaroo meat versus feedlot fed cattle and everybody has an inflammatory response after a meal, but the degree to which that happens depends on what you eat. And it was a much larger response in inflammation when they ate the factory fed meat than when they had the leaner grass fed meat. So what he's found more recently is he did a trial where took people off the standard American diet and put him on a Whole Foods diet and then also had an arm where they went to a conventionally raised

diet, you know, something raised with pesticides and animal products and feedlots versus regenerative. So he saw the biggest decrease in inflammation, obviously when you went from conventional diet to Whole Foods diet. But he said there's also a trend towards further inflammation reduction from upgrading to a regeneratively raised diet, diet without. So yeah, he said definitely bigger here. So that's like big, like let's start here. That's what we typically recommend on the show. Start here and then this is the next step. Yeah. And if you have the resources and it matters to you and you can do that, then you probably see another further. Was this the paper you said you've been working on?

Yes. Okay. And is this out for people to see? It has been submitted to the Journal of Animal Science. And so, yes, my dissertation, I would be happy to share with anyone. That was specifically about the fatty acids, but then the mineral profiles and this. And this is only the halfway point for the project. It will continue because I think their goal is to do over 300 producers. And really, this all came about. Have you guys heard of the Bionutrient Food Association? So this is a big project with Dan Kitchard's ultimate goal is to create a handheld meter for people to be able to go to the store and like scan produce or an animal product. Oh, that's cool. And to see what the nutrients are because his parents wrote organic standards and he's just seen too many farmers.

Right now we're prioritizing efficiency and we're not looking at the nutrients. Yeah. Right. And how do you flip the incentives in agriculture and with consumer preference? So that's where this whole project came out. That was there. I don't, maybe you don't know this, but I think. I think I read that there's this new coating that they're putting on fruit that is,

they're like, look out for this. I think it's, is it called a peel or something like that might be? Yeah. Have you heard of this? What's the deal with? I've heard about it. I don't know a lot about it. I think Bill Gates.

I know. I was going to say, I have heard that name associated with it, but I don't know anything about it. Well, I have a lot. So what is it like they're going to, like, like, a wax coating? Yeah. It's like some kind of special coating that keeps it from going bad. And they're like, when you get this, make sure you scrub your fruit clean or peel it And there's something like about, it's just kind of sliding in.

Have you heard that? There's not a lot of publicity of people. Yeah. Maybe Doug, you can look it up so I can. Yeah, that would be. So we can see what it is. Did you find it? Appeal sciences.

Edible coatings made from mono and diglycerides. Yeah. There you go. Edible coating. That's a nice, like, oh, no. It's a nice way to put it. Made from plastic. That's delicious.

That's great. So what, so the first product that got, that sold us to work with you guys was the meat six. Then we had the bone broth protein, which is another level. Yeah. What made you go with bone broth protein? Who were your top consumers with it? And then for the record, I like to talk about it because when bodybuilders bring up proteins, I like to talk about way protein, egg protein.

When it comes to gut health, I find it to be the easiest to digest. I mean, I could take a lot of it. I can take an 80 gram protein serving of the bone broth protein. It's like water. It's easy way to bump your protein. I could not do that with any. anything else. So why did you guys go with bone broth protein? Was it because of that? Was it the gut health stuff? It was the gut health stuff. Yeah. And I realized, and the more I've dug into

it, too, there's like, you know, not all proteins are created equal. They have a very different amino acid profile. And that glycine is really key to keeping your gut cells happy. Have you guys heard of this? It's kind of like a trigger lock glycine is for your macrophages. Have you heard this? This is, I've become totally obsessed with this research because I just read this book called The Glycine Miracle by Dr. Joel Brind. Now, career, he's got a PhD, started really honing in on amino acids in 2007. And what he found was that basically your macrophages are like your first line of defense. When something happens, they come in, they either gobble it up, they tend or they rend.

They can come in and they can create a lot of like problems. They can essentially shoot bullets, cytokines, all these things. So what determines whether they do one or the other, he will, has a lot to do with glycine. Because glycine, if there's enough, will actually allow chloride channels to open. This is so nerdy. But it's, it matters. And it keeps the cell hyper-polarized. So when it depolarizes, then it can release, you know, cytokines and create damage. So essentially, glycine keeps those cells quiet and doing more of their tending and befriending work. And he's found, again, we know that glycine also is a calming agent in the

central nervous system. But what he believes is, because we're throwing the bus, bones now in the trash rather than into our soup like we've done historically that most of us are glycine deficient. And there is research and experts who believe that. We eat three grams a day. We produce three grams a day. But essentially we need about 15 grams a day of glycine. And many experts believe it should be at least a conditionally essential amino acid, though it is today considered non-essential because we can make it. But the amount we make isn't tied to the amount we need as long as we weigh more than 88 pounds. So conditionally essential, meaning we make some, but we just don't make as much as what we probably need.

Yes. So the metabolic demand after your 88 pounds, it just shut off. And a lot of people believe this is why larger animals suffer from osteoporosis because obviously glycine is a building block for our cartilage, our collagen, also glutathione. So, yeah, many believe at least 8 to 10 gram glycine deficiency we could be suffering from each day, which is causing this kind of unregulated inflammatory response, or what he would even call, Dr. Joel Brind, an inappropriate inflammation response. His big idea is that inflammation, like the kind where you come in and they shoot things up,

that should happen with infection, but not necessarily with injury. And he says nobody really knows why when you become injured, your body would then create a situation where it would be hard to move, right? He said, if you're out in the wild, that doesn't really make sense, right? Maybe you can't get away. And there's one theory that it's supposed to keep it from you, moving it. So they can go in and heal it. Right. But he says his big idea is, no, that's just an inappropriate response of the inflammatory system. Interesting. Because we don't have enough

glycine around. So, yeah, and glycine has so much other research on it, right? Insulin sensitivity. There was a study in 2008 where you could take it. I think it was five gram dose three times a day in type two diabetics. And it was able to reverse, improve insulin sensitivity, and also reduce inflammation without even weight loss. So, yeah. And sleep. I mean, it's crazy. That recently taken three grams of it before bed and empty stomach improve sleep quality.

Exactly. And serotonin levels and drops the body of temperature, glutathion. Have you guys seen that trial where they did Glynax supplementation? No. This is, it was just a recent trial and I think like 24 elderly people. And Glynec, so Glycine and acetyl Sistine, which you'd find in way, they combine their two of the amino acids you need to create glutathion. And so what they did was they gave them this supplement and then watched many.

parameters of aging and all of them, almost all of them positively improved. And so I think if we took, you know, the glycine from bone broth and, you know, the cysteine, this is, the glycine is the one in shortest supply. And so could we be robbing ourselves of this glutathione and this ability to kind of create appropriate inflammatory responses? Because we don't have. Well, historically, we've always eaten a lot of collagen proteins, right? Yes. We've used the bone. First of all, you would never, humans wouldn't catch an animal cut off the, you know, They ate everything, including the bones, including everything.

You melt it down and you eat it all. And so we just don't do that anymore. So it makes sense that we probably should add more of it to our diets. Yeah. And I think there's this big controversy around, oh, collagen, it's not stimulating muscle protein synthesis to the same degree. And obviously, it's not. But I do think there are important roles around anti-aging for it.

Listen, I'll say this. In fact, we just did an episode where we talked about tendon strength and connective tissue strength, which is very important. In fact, oftentimes you see injuries and athletes because, like they'll blow out in Achilles because the muscles may be stronger than the tendons can hold type of deal. So it makes sense that you should add it. So you could still take your way, but also add some, you know, some collagen-based proteins like bone broth to strengthen those tendons and those ligaments, especially if you're important, if strength is important to you. Absolutely. You know, I think it makes a really big difference.

Now, before you started making like these products to produce and run a business, where you like, experimenting at home or trying things. Like, I mean, the fact that you guys nailed it with some of these products and taste like it makes me go like, how do you, you must have been trying other stuff well before this? Or did you get that lucky? What happened? No, I'm obsessed. Everything that goes on the market, I bring it home and I tinker with it and I try it.

And then we got really smart and we hired two amazing food scientists. Like reverse engineer stuff? Yes. And we take every idea and then they just execute it beautifully based on what they know. But yeah, I live and breathe this stuff. It's just every product on the market is something I genuinely enjoy. Like, what is the magic you do? Because it tastes really, the bone broth protein tastes silly good.

Yeah. To the point where I give it to my family members is true now. And if this ever comes out, I'll be upset. But they're like, there's no way this doesn't have sugar. They're full of crap. I'm like, no, I'm telling you, it's like very minimally processed. Look at the bag. But it tastes so good.

Is it these food scientists? What do I do? It is a lot of them. And it's that creamy, that coconut powder. and it's also a little monk fruit, right? So, yeah, it's just food science. There's nothing hidden in there. But there's very minimal ingredients.

If you look at the bag, it's very minimally processed. And you have to know it takes a very long time for us to get it right, a very long time. And we're willing to wait because we want every product to be something that we, like, genuinely look forward to and want to consume everything. I also think too collagen protein in general is easier to make taste good. I think some proteins are difficult, like vegan proteins. Really hard to not get them to taste like grass or whatever. Yeah. So I think it's just, it's a protein that's easy to maybe flavor.

And it's knowing the complementary flavors. Has that been an intentional strategy for you guys? I feel like you just like one product at a time and it's almost like a really slow process. A lot of some companies tend to like, wow, like all this stuff at one time. You guys have been very slow to like release one thing after another. Has that been intentional like that? Absolutely. We are perfectionists for sure.

And again, we just, our whole family taste test. It has kind of get approval throughout. And so, yeah, we don't, it's not a volume game for us. Yes, it's quality. So, okay, the business question, then, I mean, what is the indicator or marker that you go, okay, we can now do the next thing? Like, I mean, I imagine a lot of this stuff you guys doing, like, I've refused to let Sal would, his dream would be for us to run a, own a supplement company. And I refuse to let him do it because I understand how difficult it is to be very, very successful. I also understand the margins.

I get it. And so they're not very, a lot of people think supplement companies are wildly profitable and all this. money, but it's like, no, margins are very slim. It's extremely competitive. There's all kinds of red tape. So how does one do that in your guys' situation, especially when you guys are taking the more expensive, longer route on stuff? I mean, did you guys do really well, something else? And so you had the luxury to be able to do that. I mean, I'm so curious to the business side. About Bitcoin? Yeah, no, I wish we have bootstrapped this thing. But I think what really works is my husband is a marketer. And so his background came from marketing things.

online from the early 2000s. And so he knows how to find the people who are really, really appreciated our products. And then we're smart. Like, we don't really do anything that we can't track, right? We're not just throwing money out here. And so we become really aware of these products

are working and these products are not working as much. And so not every product isn't given the same amount of bandwidth. Okay. Right? We have our keystone products. That's where we put most of our attention. And as you've stated, the supplement market is becoming very various everybody has a supplement line so we're going really hard into animal products

doing we just built our own bone broth manufacturing facility and so we're bringing it we're becoming a little more integrated and we're building the supply chain because right now regenerative meats are really hard to come by and so we're investing in farmers and their processes and so yeah that's kind of like a roundabout way to say we find what works and then we really put a lot of resources into that and and my husband also is good at seeing what's coming and we knew just like we knew information was going to be free and we're going to have to provide a product he now sees okay we got to build this supply chain out we got to get this manufacturing facility up so it's intentional and like a lot of behind the scenes I have a

question you might be able to answer I got a debate uh with a friend of mine over vitamin C uh and they said that synthetic vitamin C natural vitamin C it's the same you look under a microscope it's identical there's no difference my argument was that natural vitamin C tends to come with uh you know bioflavinoids and cofactors to help you absorb it. Is there a difference between the two? Yeah. Okay, what is it?

I think there is so, yes, this is a hotly debated topic. Right. But obviously there's like dozens of compounds in a whole food vitamin C, a food. And there's one, ascorbic acid, right? So there was some research, 2016, showing that you could give an equivalent dose, I think it was a thousand, a gram of escorbic acid or a gram of camu, Camu juice, like a whole food source, and one reduced inflammation, the whole food and oxidative stress markers, and the other one didn't. Now, that being said, I think that there can be in really

high doses a case for scorbic acid if you can't afford, you know, whole food vitamin C. But there's dozens and dozens of compounds all working together to do far more than raise your vitamin C levels. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, because you eat an orange or something with vitamin C. There's like bioflavinoids and compounds of vitamin nutrients that seem to. Inaptist bioavailability. Now, I brought up vitamin C because it plays an important role in collagen. Exactly. Right?

So when you're taking bone broth protein, vitamin C, this is for athletes. Like you want to strengthen your tendons. You give yourself their bone broth protein for tendon in ligament strength or connective tissue strength. Take a dose of vitamin C with that or eat a food that's high in vitamin C with that. Exactly. To improve that. Vitamin C and copper. That's why we do the organ meats too.

Organ meats are really important. Copper in organ meats are really important for. collagen synthesis as well. But yeah, I know I think that there are differences absolutely in whole food. Just the metabolomics research that I got to do with this project in Utah State, there's literally like 40,000 compounds in beef. 40,000. And we label 13 and we track 150, but there's so much to be learned yet about food. 40,000. 40,000. Metabolomics, like, amino acids and all these metabolites, all these different nutrients, all this phytonutrients. Yeah, because you just think proteins, fats and, you know. No, no, no. I think. I

think we will just continue to learn more and more. And I think a lot of these vitamin C research, they're looking at absorption. And yeah, scorbic acid is absorbed. But, like, what are the long term? I think that's what the research is really missing, like the inflammation and the oxidative is just down the line. But yeah, I think we're just going to continue. I love, I mean, this just confirms what I've been saying for so long.

When we talk with this, like, we act so arrogant that, like, we know so much. So we distill it down to a few macronutrons. Oh, it's like the MPK analogy you gave earlier. It's like, okay, we know those are the main things that make the plant grow or the body grow, therefore, oh, forget everything else. And I think there's so much still unknown about the human metabolism that we're not even certain how so many things were together. I find it so arrogant that we get on, you know, podcasts and we write and talk about how, oh, this is the way or we know this for sure. It's like, you remember watching there was this supplement. It's called Soylent that came out, came out of Silicon Valley.

Do you remember this? It was like, for tech people who don't want to get a. up out of their desk. Just take this. Everything you need. And you would see these people and they were gray. Like you'd look at them. Like, you'd look at them. Like, you might be getting the right about calories. You might be living. Yeah. You might be alive. You might be alive. Not living. So what, okay, along those lines in, what's the difference between bone broth and collagen protein? Like I was saying collagen protein, but you're, but you get collagen fun bone broth. What's the difference? Yeah. So collagen, if you look at it like an all-star team, bone broth. We got many

different players doing many different things. And then collagen is kind of like that one star player. So bone broth. We make it from bones. And then you get the bones that contain collagen. You're going to get the collagen. You're going to get the gelatin. But you're also going to get electrolytes, magnesium, phosphorus. Minerals that are in bone too. And healing compounds potentially, hyluronic acid, you know, sulfate, chondroitin. Those are all part of bone broth. But then collagen typically comes from hides. And it's, you know, it's the amino acid profile. You know, hydroxyproline, proline, and glycine primarily, but other amino acids too. And usually a far more industrial process, you're going to have solvents to take a hide into a powder, as you

might imagine, high heat, pressure, all of that. So what we do instead is use bones and water and time. Where do you guys get your bones from for your bone broth? Well, right now, as I said, a lot of them come from the animals because what we do with both of our businesses is we buy animals, live animals, and then we use the organs, we use the bones, and we use the meat, and just the whole animal utilization. Wow. What do you do with the organs? Oh, organ complex. Yeah, well, so tell me about that.

So tell me about organ complex. What's the value of that? Why don't I just take a multivitamin if I need some of those things? Because they're the most nutrient-dense foods in the world. So Dr. Ty Biel did research back in early 2020s and found when you look at, so all these algorithms are so interesting. Right. Plants are typically glorified as the most nutrient-dense foods. But that's often because these algorithms are the way they're determining the most nutrient-dense food is penalizing saturated fat or really prioritizing vitamin C. Or you know, they're just more favorable to plant-based foods. But when you look at the nutrients, most people are deficient in worldwide, calcium, iron, zinc, you know, B-12, vitamin A. Oregon meats are the most nutrient-dense foods in the world for the nutrients most much. And they're also the most bioavailable form. So anytime you have a nutrient in an animal form or a plant form, your body usually prefers the animal form nutrient.

Well, all your evidence is here, if you, not saying this is ideal, but if you, if somebody said, I'll give you a million dollars to eat only one food for an entire year and not die and not become nutrient efficient, the thing you would pick would be meat. You'd have to. Yeah. You couldn't get away with anything else. You could eat meat and not saying it's ideal, but you'd probably be okay. Yeah.

You couldn't do that with any other single food. Definitely not a plant. There's not a single plant. You would have terrible nutrient deficiencies and you die within that period of time. So that's all the evidence right there. Yeah. What goes in the organ complex?

Which organs are you guys putting in there? We do heart, liver, and kidney. And then we freeze dry them because the reason we did that is because I couldn't eat organs, even though when I started to try to eat them, I felt noticeably different. Probably due to the iron, you probably have heard there was a Nobel Prize

for the finding that beef liver could cure pernicious anemia back in the 1930s. And I think that's a lot of, Even, you know, B12, vitamin A, the richest natural source. Prenicious anemia is when you're iron, they measure your blood. Oh, iron is fine, but you're actually, it's a B12. B12. B12.

It has a lot to do with B12. So that B12 in liver, it's actually all of, it's B12, it's retinal, and it's copper and it's iron that all work together to improve iron levels. Because, again, just taking iron isn't the same as getting iron. What's interesting about organs themselves or even supplementing with organs is that the nutrients found in that organ almost always correlate to the organ that you have. In other words, you know, heart, you know, cow heart will have high amounts of co-cutan, for example, which your heart needs.

So, like, you have an organ that they used to call it glandular, I think it was science back in the day. But if you need, like, if you have an organ that's maybe not working so well, typically eating that organ provides maybe the nutrients you might be deficient in, which I find fascinating. It's amazing. It's the like-cures-like principle where they would eat the eyeballs. And then Vladimir Covenson, back in the. in 1930s, he was doing research for the Russian military, and he actually found that the term

bioregulators, have you heard this? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So they believe that eating that organ contains specific compounds that will rejuvenate that organ. So I've always heard, oh, there's not a lot of scientific evidence for it. Maybe not, but it is a reservoir of the nutrients we need. There is evidence, but it's Soviet evidence. It's true. You can look up bio-regulators. Yeah. They still give them in Russia until today. Yeah.

They still prescribe them. And people here use them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now you see athletes are starting to use them. But the research, and you'll see this when you look it up, all the research only comes out of Russia. I'm like, okay, so I guess we don't believe it.

Right. They don't have a patent on it. So it's the deal. Super random question. Did you guys fill an uptick in business when Liver King had his big fallout? Yeah. Oh, man. Oregon Complex is one of our best sellers and always has been.

So maybe, maybe that's a little fuck. I just, I mean, I didn't think about until we're talking right now. I'm like, oh, I wonder if she really felt that because he's had a, you know he's had like a mass. Oh, yeah. And he's in prison right now. And he's got caught for trying to stock Joe Rogan or something like that. And that was real. I can know.

I just don't know anymore with the AI. I'm like, is that a real thing? Because I saw him like, anyway, supposedly from his house. But yeah, so Oregon, that's always been one of our best sellers. But also a lot of people have Oregon. complexes on the market these days. A lot of people are kind of finally, after 10 years of, you know, trying to encourage people. A lot of people are doing it too. But many times they're imported, you know, not always grass finish, like we're saying. So the label that I had you

or had Doug pull up so we could see what it looks like. Will you see that in a grocery store? Is that, you will. So some, some brands will actually have that. Yeah. You know, now that I think about it, probably harder to come by in a store. Probably harder to come by in. a store. You'd probably want to, Wild Patchers is our other business. We use AGA certification. I actually, I'm not aware of a lot of other brands that do, unfortunately. I don't know. Well, the fact that you, I didn't, I had no idea that in 2016, they totally like got rid of the, yeah. Yeah, they got rid of the reason. Because I knew about the kind of the hustle before where the grass fed and then you grain finish it, then you can still fall on the category. But the fact

they're not regulating that at all anymore is like. Yeah, it's a bummer. Yeah. It's alarming. And that's the Same with like, even with collagen, a lot of times collagen grass fed. I mean, I think the good news about that, though, is companies like yourself will win in the long run. It makes it a little difficult right now. Yeah. It makes it a little bit more difficult right now because you're going to get lumped in with all these bad apples.

But sooner or later, the consumers will get smart. And because, I mean, I guarantee a bunch of people didn't know that until right now until we just brought it up on the show. Yeah. And they'll start going, oh, shit, this whole time I thought I was making a much healthier choice. Now I got to really got to go to the next level of looking for those. markers and then it'll serve you guys. I think it will long term.

And I think people are more excited about this stuff than they ever have been. So I think eventually. What's the consumer breakdown for Paleo Valley? Do you have more men than women? It tends to be families. Pretty even. Okay. It's pretty even.

And all across, I mean, I think more of our customers is a 40 to 65 range. But we're getting those younger generations in as well. No wonder we were. Who was originally who found it? Do you know who on your team connected us? Is it Shana? I think it was Shana. I couldn't remember if it was Shana or not, but I think it's been working together

for so long. I was trying to remember how you guys, I thought maybe your husband, because he said he's the one who's always looking at and finding talent and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. No, I think it was Shana. Yeah. So with your consumers, are you getting a lot of people who are trying, like yourself, who were trying to fix gut health issues, or is it now moved up beyond that?

It was. That was initially. That was our audience and that we knew what they wanted because it was what I needed. But now it's becoming far more mainstream. Yeah, we've had a lot of growth recently. What are the most popular flavors of the beef turkey? Oh, original. Oh, original.

And probably also the jalapeno. Halapinos. Oh, it's so good. That's the best one. Yeah. Mine too. I actually, unfortunately, I can only eat the summer sausage, really, because I have a garlic allergy. Oh.

But I can eat that one in the venison. I like the buffalo chicken one. Oh, so good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the venison, I love. Do you guys, are you venison? Oh, yeah.

Any times you guys, have you guys tested one and then had to get rid of it because it didn't sell or didn't work? Or have you been able to stick with every flavor? The liver sticks. Oh, I know. We really want to do it. Oh, we really want to. We're trying to. Yeah.

How do you make liver taste good? Yeah. It's really hard. We start with the primal blend in wild pastures where we put a little bit of liver. People were clamoring for it. My wife does that on her own. She'll throw a little bit because you can't taste it in there. Exactly.

And, you know, organ meats are so dense and nutrients. You have to put a lot to make it. a difference. Yeah, it's true. And so, yeah, it's just a little pop in there and people love it, but that was another idea. Someone else is executing on that right now because we haven't been able to make it taste in a way that we thought that most people would. So is there, are there any flavors or things that you guys are going to get rid of? Wow. We haven't yet. We've been really lucky because I think we're so slow and intentional and we taste and we taste and we taste. And our son is actually one of our biggest tastesters, and he is very honest. You know what I mean? Like,

he doesn't like it. It's not happening. It's actually pretty. good strategy. Yeah, we've been really fortunate. Eat your food and see what he says, right? Yeah, he always does this. He's no filter. He's not going to lie. How has it been since you've healed your gut and done all this with the eating,

the issues with your relationship with food? I've trained a lot of, I've trained a few dancers in the past. And I'd say those are some of the hardest demographics just in terms of like they develop a relationship with food over years. It's so hard to kind of come out of. Like, how has that been for you? You know, that's such an interesting question because in my training through, they taught me to smoke cigarettes, eat lettuce or whatever, take ginseng.

Great advice. This is my advice. Oh, you're hungry, smoke a cigarette. No, I remember the dancers would smoke while we trained. It was kind of just encouraged. So, no, it's really interesting because I think on some level my brain was starving, honestly, for nutrients, four amino acids. And once I brought that back in, I just feel like so much better.

It's not a struggle. I don't have these ups and downs. I don't obsessively think about food. It's kind of like I eat and then I'm satiated and then I kind of go on with my day. So you're not fighting this constant thought or what around food. Or fixation. It's actually really wild how healthy you look for someone who's talked about. I didn't know your history with eating, drugs, all the above.

So for you to look. Like, you look is pretty amazing. Now, was there a major transformation? Like, if I look back, say, 15 years or however far back it goes, like, have you seen like a difference, like just your skin health, like your vibrance, your muscle mass? Like, did it all evolve and change? Absolutely. It's like night and day.

I looked like a totally different person. I was always very skinny, as you might imagine. Horrible cystic acne, my poor, my poor skin. And I was always bloated. And so, yeah, over time. And I'm someone who only does moderation and moderation. and moderate, you know what I mean, I just do things full out. And so once I realized I had a choice in how I felt, it's just so easy for me to choose it

every day because the way, where I came from, not somewhere I want to live anymore. And so, yeah, I've just been really dedicated, but I just feel like it literally changed my life. You said you traveled with J-Lo. J-Lo? I'm glad you asked. I did. I know we had to get all the science and fitness stuff, but I do want to ask about that. I know.

So let's get into that. So, yeah, Tracy Anderson, she's a fitness trainer, as you probably know, and she hires dancers. So I was dancing in a modern company. She picked me up, and then she just sent me on tour with J-Lo as her fitness trainer. So I would just-you- Were J-Lo's trainer? I was J-Lo's trainer. Oh, wow.

But for the Tracy Anderson method, right, it was a very specific type of training we were doing. Oh, so, okay. So explain that to people because I actually am not familiar with Tracy. Yeah, I'm not. Oh, you're not? No, I'm not. Oh, and you're a little bit embarrassed. Marginally.

Marginally. Okay. So, yeah, explain that. And what it sounds like to me is like it's like a company. And then she basically farms you out to J-Lo then. So it's her brand. It's her brand. Dance-based fitness?

Like what's the... Yeah, this is interesting. So she dated... Well, actually, married. Come on. Google me up some stuff, bro. So I can see some images why she's talking about. I'm so curious. She's a thing.

I mean, she's got a massive following. Obviously, if she had J-Lo, I'm sure... Yeah. Oh, J-Lo. Shikira, Molly Sims, Victoria Beckham. I mean, so many celebrities. Wow. So anyway, basically she had a professional basketball player, husband, who had back problems.

And she kept going on in Mexico and meeting with these doctors and them telling her, oh, you don't need surgery. You can completely redesign the muscular structure of your back with different movements. But you have to change them really often. This is what she told me. So she created this method where basically she's, her job is to wake up the smaller muscle groups, which she calls the accessory muscles. And yeah, it is based on dance. But it's like you did at the time I was training like a 45 minutes of what she called muscular structure based on dance, just these different movements of your arms and your legs. What would you say it's close to?

Is it closer like bar, Pilates? Is it look like it's ballet inspired? Mobility stuff. I mean, that's what it sounds like she's doing. What does she? Yeah, we start with like free arms where you're literally just rotating your arms in all of the different ways that a dancer would. Yeah. And then you're doing the same thing with your legs, all of these different rotations that you wouldn't, you wouldn't do.

squat there. You would do these like kind of like you'd go to the corner and you go out. I mean, it's just all these very elaborate moves designed to not necessarily use the main muscle groups. And so, yeah. So basically she has a lot of celebrity clientele and I started working with them and Jalo and I just were doing well together. And so when she went on a world tour, she's like, hey, do you want to come? And I had just gotten married. So part of me was like, oh, yes. Did your husband go or did he stay at home? No, he stayed at home. So you went off to the... I did, because I feel like

that's just not something you say no to. He hung in there early on with you too with your boy, that guy, I'm going to have to give him a hug on the way out. You got to give... But you also... Chaz is a lone wolf. He's like, I'm never really lonely.

He's pretty cool on his own. But he did come visit me. Like, luckily, not luckily, I got sick when we went to France and Ireland. And so he got to come over and spend time with me. And then we took a tour. You know, we went to South America. And then we had a little of a break.

And then we went to America, you know, North American, Canada. And then we went to America. We went to the other one. So there were moments when I got to see him. When was this that you were traveling with that? 2012. So did you go to a ditty party?

Oh my gosh. No! No, no, no, no, no. I am so upset by that too. But no, absolutely. Was she dating him at the time? No, she was dating her dancer, Bowcast.

Oh, that time. Who I worked with him too. Oh, wow. I was going to ask about the ditty party. So I'm, okay, I'm still hung up. I'm still hung up on this modality because I always, I mean, One, the business side of me, I'm fascinated with something like this could explode. But you see what this is, right?

So she found a way to connect and relate to all these dancers by teaching them great joint articulation, waking up all these dormant muscles in some sort of a dance-like flow. That probably worked for a lot of people that had low back pain, hip issues. And they probably didn't. We're like, oh, my God, I feel so much better. And then branded it. And then was J-Lo one of her first big people that she got or did someone even bigger before? What is interesting.

Madonna was actually her big one. Wow. Our first one was Madonna, but then Madonna, there was some, a bit of a falling out there. But, yeah, so when I worked, it was Courtney Cox, it was Jennifer Aniston, it was Victoria Beckham. So you're around all these people doing stuff. Well, my first day, one of my first assignments, she's like, okay, you're going to go to Courtney's house. And I was like, oh, okay, Courtney, yep. And she's like, he lives in Malibu's, I had no idea it was going to be Courtney Cox.

And then she's, I was like, oh, well, that would have been good to know. And then Shakira flew me down to Uruguay for 30 days to spend. the holiday with her because she said she'd bring Chaz or I could bring anyone I wanted so yeah lots of them I guess uh any any favorites of all them that you've had I mean Shakira's amazing really Taylor 2 Victoria Beckham

I worked very closely with her Molly Sims Ashley Green was actually my flower girl um they're just Kate Hudson was great I mean there was so many I'm trying to use So that's interesting to me because typically celebrities athletes sometimes can be a pain in the ass and most trainers don't want anything to do

with them like my experience with celebrities and athletes are like the opposite is like they have this God complex or just and they, I mean, sounds like you did not have an experience like that. There were moments, you know, but I am someone very empathetic

and I'm like, I can see why you'd be stressed right now and why you'd be all in my, you know what I mean? And yeah, you kind of have to agree, well, at least in my time, like when I was on tour, I was on call all the time for seven months, essentially. So that's what they do.

pay you to be like, I'm going to tell you when we're going to meet up and we're going to meet up. Well, this particular arrangement, that's what happened. She basically was like, I don't know what I'm going to want to work out. So just wait. Dude, imagine how Uber, Uber successful she has to be to be able to charge, like, super famous people and not even have to go show up herself. Like, that's kind of, that's like, I mean, if break into celebrities is already a big deal.

Like, we just had a good friend of ours. Ben Bruno. He trains like all, probably one of the biggest client lists, our other friend, Don Saladino. also has a crazy client list, but they have to train them. Yeah. I mean, it's them training them. The fact that this chick is built something so big, I can hire somebody else to go do my method, which is not even like a real method, is freaking pretty amazing to me.

So this is like wild. I had no idea about her. This is crazy. And she's obviously, if she had Madonna, she's been doing this for a very, very long time. Oh, yeah. Were she based out of? Well, she has studios in L.A., two of them actually. actually, and then in New York.

But I think she's out of the Hampton. Or I'm sorry, no, Tribeca is her main studio in New York. But all over the world now, I think there's one in London, and she's international. Wow. Wow. I want to interview? Wow. Did you like...

You got it? You want to interview? I'll get you in touch. I would love to send for you. Sure. I would love to be a story. The fact that I didn't know, I feel kind of embarrassed, I should know, like, but I'm so fascinated.

I don't want to know the origin of how something like that gets to this level. Do you have you sent some of you? your paleo value products to some of these people that you've worked with? Because, I mean, I could see them being interested in, in the, you know, products and how good they are. Yeah, were you able to leverage your brand with any of this stuff? You know what? I'm kind of someone who's like, I don't want to utilize those relationships necessarily.

You know, that's very Don Saladino, Ben, Bruno. That's why we like those guys so much is they don't use their celebrity connections to, you know, I was like they began their different terms where I was doing something. Yeah, I just don't like people to feel like I'm. She wants something from them. You know, I think that's, if you connect with those people, you have to be like that. Because I think most of them, and that's why I mean, Donna. They're used to people trying to leverage them.

Everybody wants something for them. Can you imagine? Yeah. The only way you're probably going to be a true friend with them is you don't treat them like that. Yep. So I think there's been one. I think Ashley Green posted something herself because I had sent her a box. But no, I have no expectations of them.

And Tracy's a vegan. So you might have a very interesting. I think she was at least. So, yeah, definitely not. I don't think she'd appreciate it. But I would love to introduce you. You'll find her. She's fascinating in one.

I can imagine. I can only imagine. And is she like the business brain behind all of it also? You know what? She partnered with Gwyneth Paltrow. So Gwyneth was another one of her early clients and she was also my boss. And so yes, they've kind of built it together. And only very recently, I think, has she had like a CEO.

So yeah, they've done it. And it's kind of just, like, grassroots in L.A. It's a big deal. Obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I feel like such an idiot. You should. Like, you say, like, I'm like, oh, I don't know.

I don't want to ask her. I feel like I'm supposed to know. Well, I didn't know. You're not a dancer, probably. You know, maybe. I don't know. Maybe you are. See him on the weekend.

I feel like I'm really good when I drink. That's all it counts. That's all it counts. But I'm, no, I'm really genuinely curious now because I bet I was trying to like, okay, if something goes this wild, you can't just be famous. You can't, like, it has to help people or work really well. Oh, it has. And so, and I can imagine a lot of people who suffer from chronic pain, whether you're

a basketball player or a dancer, they don't know how to get to the bottom of it. We try and teach this all the time of helping people find the root cause. It's almost always because of some sort of instability and weakness somewhere. And she has tapped into a way to help these dancers and athletes get there. Now, before he did that, did you dance competitive? Like, were you, did you perform on, so what was that like for you? Yeah, that was, I mean, since the age of four, I was a ballerina, and then I got incorporated with this Russian Bolshoi principal, and he was like, oh, I want you to come to Russia.

And I decided, no, when I was 16, I wasn't going to go to Russia. But I practiced ballet, and then I was in a company in college, a modern company. Then I went to L'A. And I danced for, like, a Disney artist named Lelaine. she was on that Lizzie McGuire show and just kind of got into the modern scene and so it was awesome but by the time I was 24

I had had a 20 year career and I was kind of like oh I just really strong feet oh you guys should see it I can walk on the tops of my feet so I have a cousin I have a cousin who she does ballet

and she was part of a big production company before she now she's married and she stopped but her she mean she could do anything with her feet she has got the strongest toes and feet because of what they do So is that one viral video possible then? I saw this girl tiptoeing on top of bottles.

Oh. Yeah. Like ballet, yeah, style on top of these. Is it an Instagram real? This is it? What was it? What was it? Yeah, it was on Instagram.

Well, I haven't seen that. It was crazy. Yeah, I don't feel anything in my feet. I have calluses everywhere and they're so strong and so worn, you know, kind of like my son makes fun of it. But, yeah, I wouldn't doubt it. Like a ballerina, you know, you over time with those. point shoes. That's where you get blisters, blisters, and then eventually callous, just

everywhere. So I would say probably could be true. It's crazy. The person was a ballerina. You don't have any like OnlyFans' feet pages going on. Oh, God. You know what is so funny. My husband's like, you should do that. I'm like, no, no. I don't, even if my son could see a pinky toe. Like, stop. Yeah. Maybe for your son's friends. No, I would never want my son to be able to like, oh. I'm going to stick to the beat products. Yeah, beefsticks only. Help people. Yeah.

Any new products that are going to be coming out? Can you tell us about anything cool? Something you might like is a sleep formula that's bone broth based. Oh, gosh, because you know the glycine already drops the body temperature. But then we've added so many other kinds of ingredients, chamomile, tart cherry. An actual whole food melatonin derived from tomatoes. It's really cool. And we made it, it's called strawberries and cream is where we landed.

It's delicious. We're always looking for sleep stuff, yeah. This fall. And then we have another savory flavor if you like savory. Because, like, I don't know if you guys have tried the savory flavors. Pretty good. We have a turmeric ginger coming. Make rice with it, by the way.

You can put it in your rice and add protein to it. It's delicious. Exactly. Protein, vegetables, soups, as the basis. Yeah, it's all good. So those two are probably the closest to being done that I can talk about. Okay. Can't wait for Doug.

Doug's always struggling with sleep. So he'll be the tester. for the sweet product. We'll send it. We'll send some your way. Thank you. That's awesome. This has been awesome.

I'm so glad to tell you guys. This is really enjoyable. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

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