Realfoodology - 41: Chemical Warfare in the Grocery Store with Mollie Engelhart PT. 1

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

This is one of the most important podcast episodes I have released to date!  I meet with Mollie Engelhart of Sow A Heart Organic Farm.  She is also the Executive Chef/Owner of 4 Vegan/Vegetarian Restaurants in Los Angeles, called Sage.  In this TWO PART series, Mollie passionately explains the importance of regenerative farming, why we need animals as part of the regenerative farming model, how eating cheap food is a privilege, the chemical warfare we are experiencing on the farm and as a result in our food, how sterile food is impairing our gut and immune systems and so much more! Show Links: Find Mollie https://www.instagram.com/chefmollie/ Sage https://linktr.ee/thekindsage Sow a Heart Farm https://linktr.ee/sowahearthttps://www.instagram.com/sowaheart/ CSA Box Order (Los Angeles Area Only) https://app.barn2door.com/e/5NzdL/all?sellerSubCategories=19633,19634,19635,23100

On today's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. Where is the outrage about the chemical warfare that we are in right now? Like, we are in a chemical attack and there's no outrage. And if I even bring it up, like, hey, don't eat Doritos, even though that's the purple bag, because it's really bad for you. People are like, you and your privilege, not everybody can eat all organic. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast. I am Courtney Swan, your host and the creator of Real Foodology, which started out as a food blog in

2011, and then morphed into an Instagram and now of course, this podcast and I am so happy that you're here. Today's guest is Molly Englehart, who is the executive chef and owner of Sage Vegan Bistro, which is a collection of amazing vegan restaurants here in LA. And she also owns So A Heart Farm. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I went and volunteered at this farm not too long ago. And I also get CSA boxes every two weeks from them. It's an amazing organic regenerative farm a little bit outside of Ojai.

If you live in the LA area, I highly, highly recommend picking up their CSA boxes. I get mine every two weeks. It's $35 and it is more produce than I as a single person can even eat. So I can imagine for a family of two, three, four, it would be a great super budget friendly way to not only support your local farmer, but also get really high quality organic produce that comes from a regenerative farm. If you could hear that lovely banging in the background, that is Turkey's attempt at trying to get my attention.

Now he has his collar in his food bowl because he's like, ding, ding, mom, pay attention to me. I got to take him to the dog park after this. Sorry for the interruption, guys. And if you're concerned about him being hungry, I promise I'm going to feed him as soon as I'm done recording this. But anyways, let's get back to the intro. Molly has a regenerative farm called So A Heart, like I mentioned. Hopefully by now you guys have heard enough about regenerative farming to understand the importance of it and how imperative it is that we move away from this industrialized conventional GMO farming and we get back to nature. change, because not only does it reduce our carbon footprint, but it actually does something called carbon sequestration, which means that it pulls carbon out of the atmosphere. So it actually

reverses the damage that we have done with climate change. And then on top of that, you think about the added impact of all of the chemicals that we're spraying on our food. And with regenerative farming, we are actually supporting the microbiome and the ecosystem that lives in that soil. And we are providing life in that soil that way that it can grow really highly nutritious foods for us that our bodies need. And we're not getting all the added side effects of spraying those chemicals on our food. Molly and I dive deep into this conversation. We talk a lot about regenerative farming. We also go into why going vegan is not the whole story concerning environmental reasons,

because if you are not buying organic, you're contributing to the conventional model, which is part of the problem. We also go into social justice, social justice for food workers, specifically, they have horrible working conditions and they're being exposed to these toxic chemicals that we're spraying on our food that is leading to cancer and diseases in their bodies. A lot of these farmers are experiencing miscarriages as a result of working with these horrible chemicals on the farm, not to mention getting aggressive forms of cancer. So if you believe in social justice and you care about people of color, then you care about what kind of food you buy because black and brown people are harmed by

non-organic food more than any other groups. We also talk about this notion that eating healthy is privileged, but actually eating cheap food is a privilege because cheap food is abusive food at the expense of other human lives. So we go deep into that. We also talk about microbes on our food and why we do not want to be eating sterile food. And by sterile food, I mean stuff that has been sprayed by glyphosate, for example, which kills off all of the good bacteria that our bodies need because our microbiome is built off of microbes. And we get a lot of these microbes from the soil. We get these microbes from our food that we eat. And when we're spraying them so heavily with chemicals that

kill them off, we are not contributing to a healthy microbiome in our body no longer. And then let's not forget that up to 70% of our immune system lives in our microbiome, in our gut. So when we're eating these foods that are killing off good bacteria, not only on our food, but also in our gut, in our microbiome, ourselves, we are then dealing with immune compromisation. So impaired immune systems, leaky gut, inflammation, and we cannot forget that inflammation is the basis for almost all disease. It's mostly where it starts. We talk about CSA boxing and composting and so much more. I'm really excited for you guys to hear this episode. Before we get into it, I just want to say one more thing. I hope that it was clear in this episode that when I talk

about veganism, that I'm in full support of this movement. I just feel like I always need to reiterate this because I personally am not vegan. And I was vegetarian for almost five years until I had doctors and everyone around me telling me that I needed to start eating meat because I personally got really sick. And this is only my journey. And I love Molly so much for her conversation that she had with me about this, because even though she's vegan and she's been vegan her whole life, she doesn't believe that we need to be putting this on everyone, that everyone needs to be vegan. And I believe this way as well.

I think if you can be vegan and you can be healthy and have energy and feel great in your body and thrive, I am fully in support of it. Where I have a hard time with it is for someone like me, for example, that read all the literature, followed everything to a T. I'm a nutritionist. I know how to feed my body in a nutritious way. I know how to get all the protein that I need from plant sources, but I ultimately got really, really sick. I had to see a doctor. I was also seeing a nutritionist. I had lab work done. I had really aggressive cystic acne that would not leave my face. It was constantly popping up on my chin. I had extreme fatigue. Um, I, I gained a lot of weight.

I had a really, really crazy hormonal imbalances happening. And, I was not well, I was very sick. And I remember leaving my nutritionist office one day crying because she told me, she looked me straight in the eyes. And she said, Courtney, you have to eat meat. And I was like, I will never I refuse. And she said, Well, you'll wake up one day and you'll you'll realize that you need to. And it wasn't until I started having dreams about eating meat, which in my five years of being vegetarian, I never craved meat. I never, never certainly never had dreams about it until that point. I remember my mom actually was like, Courtney, you are dreaming about eating meat. Your body is literally screaming for it. Did you know that most cookware

and appliances are made with forever chemicals? Yes. That means your nonstick pans, your air fryers, your waffle makers, your blender could possibly have PFAS and yes, even our beloved crock pots and pressure cookers. I have actually been talking about this for so long. Back in 2006, my mom came to my dorm room and made me get rid of all my nonstick pans because she was concerned about me being exposed to something called Teflon. Teflon is a coating that is used on nonstick pans and a lot of these appliances that I just named. So I've avoided Teflon, nonstick, PFA coated appliances, pots and pans, you name it for a very long time. And the only option for the, for a very long time was just stainless steel pots and pans, you name it, for a very long time. And the only option for a very long time was just

stainless steel pots and pans. So I was really excited when a company like Our Place came out because they started creating really beautiful cookware and appliances that are like pieces of art. Every appliance that I have from Our Place, I legit want to store it on the counter. And I'm the type of person that does not want anything on my counter because I like it to look really just clean and minimal. But I'm so obsessed with all the art place products that I have so many of them displayed on my counter because they are legit pieces of art. Our place is a mission driven and female founded brand that makes beautiful kitchen products that are healthy and sustainable. Other products are made without PFAS, which are the forever chemicals and also made without PTFE, which is Teflon. If a company is not outwardly stating that they don't use these

chemicals, then if they are using nonstick coating on their appliances, they are absolutely using forever chemicals. And there's been increasing global scrutiny for their impact on the environment and our health. And recognizing this impact, the EU plans to prohibit PFAS by 2025. Our place has always been PFAS free and they offer durable toxin-free ceramic coatings, ensuring a healthy, safe cooking experience. And let me tell you, you guys, they are changing the game with non-toxic appliances. They have a blender, they have an air fryer, they have a crock pot, not to mention their amazing always pan. They have a perfect pot,, not to mention they're amazing. Always pan. They have a perfect pot, which is just the perfect size for soups. And they also just came out with a cast iron

that I'm loving as well. And I more recently replaced all of the bowls and plates in my kitchen because I really needed an upgrade. My other ones were so old. So I got some from our place and they are so beautiful. The ceramics are beautiful. The colors are amazing. Like I said, everything is like a piece of art. If you want to try any of the products from our place, go to from our place.com and enter my code real foodology checkout to receive 10% off sitewide. That's from our place.com code real foodology. Our place offers a 100 day trial with free shipping and returns. This is really exciting. Organifi now has kid stuff. They just released two kid products. One is called Easy Greens, and it's a refreshing green apple juice where kids will never know

that it's packed with veggies. And the other one is called Protect. It's a delicious wildberry punch like the Kool-Aid that we used to have as a kid, but without any sugar. This is really exciting. And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Organifi and most specifically because every single product that they make is glyphosate residue free. So you know that you're going to be able to give these powders to your kids and know that they will be able to consume them safely without any glyphosate in it. So let's break down each one. The Easy Greens is a nourishing and delicious blend of superfoods and veggies that provides essential nutrients, probiotics, and digestive enzymes to bring balance to kids' growing bodies without fillers, additives, or junk.

It helps to fill in nutritional gaps, aids in growth and development, supports digestive health, has a rich micronutrient profile, and includes digestive enzymes. This would be a great way to sneak in greens for your little one without them actually knowing that it's healthy for them. And the second one, which is the Wildberry Punch, to Kool-Aid is called Protect. And it is to support your child's daily immune health with food derived nutrients that work to strengthen their body's first line of defense. I know just through girlfriends of mine that have children that when your kids are going to school, going to daycare, they're coming home sick a lot more

often just because they're getting exposed to different kids and different viruses when they're out in the world playing with kids. So this would be a great way to help to support your little one's immune health. It's organic and it's also made with real whole food ingredients. It has a delicious berry taste and it's low sugar and it's gentle enough for kids to take every single day. And I really love the ingredients in this one. It's orange and acerol cherry, which is a powerful source of vitamin C and antioxidants. Astragalus, elderberry, and propolis. These are all really great for overall immune health.

If you wanna try the products that I talked about today or any of the Organifi products, go to organifi.com slash realfoodology and use code realfoodology for 20% off. Again, that's Organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash real foodology. So I am an advocate for listening to your body. And I'm such an advocate for everyone figuring out exactly what works for them. And I just want people to thrive and feel good in their bodies. And we just need to learn to check in with ourselves. And, um,

if something's not working for us, then change it. And going back to the conversation around veganism, like I said, I am fully in support of the movement. And I definitely think that humans in general should be eating less meat than we do, because I think we would all be better off eating less meat. But what I have a problem with is this narrative right now in mainstream media that going vegan and vegetarian is the best thing we can do for environmental reasons. And that narrative alone is not telling the whole story because the underlying narrative in that conversation is that they're just saying, now we need to start buying and eating impossible burgers and beyond burgers, but these are

incredibly highly toxic and I would not even consider them food. They're highly inflammatory. And then above everything else, there is no conversation about buying organic food. And when you're buying things like these genetically modified beyond burgers and impossible burgers, you're actually not helping at all. You're only contributing to these climate changes and environmental issues because you're contributing to the conventional model, which is the problem. And this conversation is not being had. And this is what I have a problem with. We need to have a conversation around buying organic and buying from regenerative farms, because if you're not buying organic or from a regenerative farm, all of those vegetables that you are buying and eating and the fruits,

they're just contributing to the tilling of the soil and the spraying of the pesticides. And that is really what the issue is when it comes to climate change. So if you really, really want to make a difference, we all as a society, we need to shift to organic and regenerative farming. And I know that there's accessibility issues. There's also socioeconomic issues and affordability. And this is why I have this podcast because I want, I believe that organic food should be for everyone.

I believe that is a basic human right to have access to healthy food that is nutrient dense and is not going to cause cancer from all of the pesticides and everything else that we are spraying on these, on this produce. So I'm going to end this rant with a reminder. It is not the animals that are contributing to the problem. It is what is being done to the animals. And I would also say that about our vegetables, our fruit, our industrial agriculture is the problem. It is not the fruits and vegetables themselves. Obviously it is not the meat itself. It is what is being done to them is the problem. So we have to get to the root cause and we need to get back to regenerative farming where

we actually take care of the soil and nurture the land. If you're listening and you want to dive deeper into this topic, I highly, highly recommend checking out the documentary Kiss the Ground. They talk about this in full detail. It's really entertaining. I've seen it twice. I absolutely love the documentary and I recommend it to everyone I know to watch it. So please sit down with your family, with your friends, watch it because the information in the documentary is what is going to save our lives and our planet. Molly and I ended up talking for almost two hours. This is such an amazing conversation. And because it's so long, we decided to turn it into a two-part podcast episode series.

So you were listening to part one. If you enjoy it, please make sure you go and listen to part two. Hi, Molly. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. I'm not sure if you remember, I've come out to your farm a few times to volunteer. I totally harassed you into bringing me onto your podcast. I was like, you picked the wrong sibling. You did.

You did harass me, which I'm so glad that you did because I was like, oh, let's do it. This is great. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. So for people listening that are unaware of what you do, why don't you give them a little background on you and what you do. My name is Molly Englehart and I'm the founder of Sage Plant Based Bistro and Brewery in Los Angeles. And we have four locations. I'm the executive chef. So I design the menus and all of that. And after a few years of finally getting my restaurants going, it took a long time to make them not lose money. I realized that in the vegan community, we kind of have an attitude or a feeling like we don't eat animals. So therefore, we don't, we were doing our shit for the environment. And then I realized that the

biggest cause of animal, I mean, the biggest cause of methane in the environment was food scraps. And I realized how much food we were throwing into the waste at our restaurants and different municipalities have different rules. And a lot of them don't even have a compost option. Sorry. And so because there isn't even a compost option, we're just throwing it away. So I started thinking and I'm telling everybody, oh, my God, you know about regenerative agriculture. We all should be drawing down carbon. We've got to buy farms. And I'm talking to everybody that I know. I'm like, you're rich.

You should buy it. You're rich. You have a good job. You should buy a farm. And then I realized, like, oh, I should fucking buy a farm. So I started looking, but I made the mistake of marrying my husband prior to starting to look. And then we could not get a loan because he was undocumented. So there was like no loans out there.

So it took us seven years to get our farm. But in the end, what happened was we had found an owner that would owner finance for us. And we bought the farm and we started composting all of our food waste. So every time you bought food at the restaurants, you would know that, okay, well, this is going to a good place and they're doing regenerative farming. And then from there, I was like, okay, well now we need to grow food for the restaurant. So then we started growing and then we started growing hops for the beer, for the brewery. And it just kept going, going, going like that. That is amazing. And for anyone listening that does not live in LA, Sage is, it's one of my favorite restaurants in LA. When I found out that you had started that, I was like,

oh my God, that's so amazing. When I came to visit LA before I even moved here, it was the restaurant that I would always go to because I was vegetarian at the time and it's just great food. So I love Sage and I love supporting them. You guys, we actually have one right down the street for me in Echo Park.

So I go there often. That's the OG location, the area where it all started. That's amazing. Yeah, where it all started. That's amazing. Yeah, so we are a regenerative farmer and we own vegan restaurants, which doesn't really go together in most people's view because regenerative farming often includes incorporating animals into the system. And vegans want there to be no farm animals at all. And so I live in the dichotomy in between these two worlds.

And I hope to support people on both sides to understand each other better. Actually, in all ways, that's my 2021 thing, that we can we can all understand each other better that um there was four years spent of just like divide divide divide and then um physically we all divided from each other in 2020 with the social distancing and everything and i think that there's a lot of healing that needs to happen and remembering humanity and remembering how we all make mistakes and how we all are have our flaws and we all have our positive qualities and that we need to love and have compassion for humanity as a whole. into any of those boxes like vegan or regenerative farmer or Republican, Democrat, Black, White, Mexican, Italian, like all of us are so dynamic in who we are. And there's so much of us that aligns with any other human being on the planet. And there's so much of us that doesn't align with any other human on the planet. So 2021 is about bringing people back

together. That's my commitment. And, um, so, but I sit in between these two very specific worlds, the regen agriculture world and the vegan, um, food world. Imagine having a metabolic coach in your pocket that you could access at any point, any time in the day, whenever you want. That's what Lumen is. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and even stress management. I have so many podcast episodes about metabolic flexibility and why it is so incredibly important for your overall health and longevity.

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neurohacker.com slash realfoodology for up to a hundred dollars off and make sure to use code realfoodology at checkout for an additional 15% off. That's neurohacker, N-E-U-R-O-H-A-C-K-E-R.com slash realfoodology for an extra 15% off your purchase. Thanks to Neurohacker for sponsoring today's episode. I love that so much. And I think you touched on such an important thing. Cause you know, I've always had a hard time with it. It feels like it can be, you know, it's almost like the vegans, like us versus them kind of thing where it's like vegans versus, um, everyone else. And I have a hard time with this because I see like what I'm doing in

buying locally, buying from regenerative farms, from farms that actually take care of their animals. And they're concerned about the wellbeing of these animals. I see that as we are both on the same team. I understand that there is a component there of the compassion for animals. And I totally understand why some people would want to not eat them at all. But I feel like we're missing this conversation here. And what the real issue in my eyes is that we need to get rid of CAFOs, the factory farming that's happening. And in my eyes, I feel like in a way we're both on the same team,

vegans and people that actually are concerned about the quality of their food and where it's coming from. I mean, for sure we're on the same team. But when you start to divide the teams more and more and more, the powers that be, and even bigger than CAFOs, because CAFOs are a problem. Don't let me say that CAFOs are a huge problem, but there is a chemical attack on humanity right now.

We are being attacked by chemicals, and we could use Roundup as an example. Roundup, we started spraying Roundup directly onto all of our grain, not GMO grains, not just corn, but like rye, wheat, cotton, cereal grains, cotton, obviously too, which we wear on our body. Yeah, but still, yeah, exactly. Sheets and all that. So right now, since 1996, we started spraying glyphosates on everything before we eat it. And before that, it was only approved for spraying around the bottoms of trees, like to kill the weeds. And then the fruit up above the tree, it would go through the roots and up to the fruit, but way less exposure. In 1996, we started spraying it directly on.

We never did any testing to see if this is okay. The same 14 days prior to harvest rule was made. So let's say you have a whole field of wheat and the price of wheat is really good right now. You can spray your whole field of green wheat and turn it instantly into dry wheat so you can combine it and harvest it. Well, yes, that's effective for the farmer and I'm pro farmers having tools they need, but there's never been any studies to show how, what is the impact on humanity when it comes to that. So if you're eating GMO soy, GMO corn, glyphosate-sprayed wheat, and it's all vegan, to me, we're missing the point. We're still very separate from nature.

We still think that our food should grow in a sterile environment, that we are separate. And if we look at, there's some statistics, and if you look at the cancer numbers from 1996 till now, if you look at the autism numbers from 1996 till now, if you look at the miscarriage numbers from 1996 till now, if you look at the infertility from 1996 till now, I mean, it's like a ski slope and it's a black diamond ski slope. It's not the, it's not the green square, like the bunny hill. This is a big hill. This is a big, this is a black diamond ski slope. And so we are being attacked. And the other thing is all of these endocrine interrupters that are plastics in our food, plastics in our packaging, plastics in, and then fragrances. Fragrances are the devil.

And we're washing our clothes in these fragrances and these endocrine interrupters that our body recognizes as hormones and they disrupt. And hormones are so important to our function of our body. And if your body thinks it's getting these other hormones, this is where breast cancer, this is where all these other cancers are coming up. And so for me, I love the vegan's passion. I love, I'm part of that community. I love the passion for the care of animals. I have that passion for the care of animals. But where is the outrage about the chemical warfare that we are in right now? Like, we are in a chemical attack, and there's no outrage.

And if I even bring it up, like, hey, don't eat Doritos, even though that's the purple bag, because it's really bad for you. People are like, you and your privilege, not everybody can eat all organic. And I'm like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Privilege is eating cheap food that somebody that got paid very little money to touch those chemicals, to harvest in those chemicals, to spray those chemicals so that you could have cheap food. That is the privilege. People of color are dying so you could have cheap food. That is the privilege. The privilege is not waking people up to eating foods that are not adulterated with chemicals. And I refuse to bow down and say that eating food without chemicals is privilege. It is a privilege to have the knowledge to make the shift. But the real privilege is eating cheap food and other people dying for it.

The real privilege is eating food that make you sick and the whole having to be responsible for the healthcare system that that is a tax on. That is the real privilege. And we have to train people that drinking water is important. There's things that people say, oh, if you don't have a lot of economic resources, you can't eat healthy. This is a problem. There is food deserts. There is, but there is things that everybody can do. Everybody can switch from soda to water.

Everybody can switch to less meat and more vegetables. Everybody can switch to great, like eating less carbohydrates. There's lots of stuff that everybody can shift to no matter what your economic resources are. And I think that it's messed up to think that people don't want to make those changes in certain socioeconomic groups. That's ridiculous to think that there's certain people that don't want to make those changes in certain socioeconomic groups. That's ridiculous to think that there's certain people that don't want to make those changes. And that's a ridiculous, racist thought process for people to have. I have a newly adopted son. I have an 18-year-, uh, it was an unaccompanied minor. He crossed the border, uh, and he was going to high school in LA and he found out about our farm on Instagram and he was

passionate. He's from Guatemala. He came here. He's passionate about regenerative agriculture. You should see him talking to the guys that work on my farm that have been here a long time that are eating whatever. And he's like, hey guys, these are organic tortillas. They're better for you. And it's all in Spanish, but he's explaining to them, hey guys, don't eat that meat. Eat organic meat. And he'll go and take his own money and buy organic meat and share it with the guys on the farm. He's so passionate about it. And I love with the guys on the farm. He's so passionate about it. And I love him. He has a mother. He's not really my son, but Osmar, I call

him my adopted son because he comes here every weekend to work on the farm. Even Mondays, sometimes he distance learns from here. He loves regenerative agriculture. he's like so inspired about his mom works at a fish factory in downtown la and he's able to get as much free fish and he was like oh no i don't eat farm-raised fish i'm i'm very mindful about what i put in my body so people that are passionate about making a change are going to make a change and we cannot make this an issue of separation. We can't, we have to stop saying like, oh, that's a privilege. That's a privilege. It's a privilege to only eat plant-based. That is a privilege. There is lots of places in the world where that wouldn't be possible. There's all types of privileges in the world. And we're so lucky that we live in America

where there's lots of privileges. But one of the privileges that none of us in America have is a government that will stand up to the chemical companies. None of us have that privilege. We as the people, we the people, must be the ones we've been waiting for because nobody in our government is going to tell us we're going to stop it.

Mexico, look, there's lots of countries that have banned glyphosates. There's lots of countries that have banned GMOs. And do you want to know what? The United States is just, even the Terminator seed. Remember when everybody was so upset about the Terminator seed and Greenpeace made a big deal. And then Monsanto just turned around, put it to bed for a couple of years and turned around and bought it and nobody made us fucking squeak about it. So look, we do not have the privilege in America

of a government that cares what they are feeding the people. So we have to care about what we're feeding the people. We have to take ownership of the land, be custodians of the land and feed our own communities. And that is the most important thing that that is the most important job on the planet right now. Yeah. And man, you touched on so many amazing things that I want to that I want to talk about. First and foremost, yeah, I mean, the privilege like eating cheap food is a privilege because cheap food is abusive. And I think a lot of people don't make

this connection of the social justice portion for these food workers that are on these farms working incredibly long hours and then being exposed to incredibly toxic chemicals. And I just find it so infuriating because, I mean, we even know now we've had Monsanto lose many lawsuits against farmers that have gotten really crazy aggressive forms of cancer and they've had to pay out billions of dollars. But yet they are still in the business of making our food right now or growing our food. And it's absolutely insane. If there's numbers and I don't want to quote them because I don't want someone to say, oh, she's lied about the numbers. But if you look at miscarriages, like just look at,

there's numbers around strawberry field workers and their miscarriages with all of the intense antifungal and all this different stuff. Cancers in, I had a woman who worked for me and she had cancer and I, and she said, oh, it's from the strawberry fields. And I was like, what do you mean? And she was like, oh, like everybody on my team got some form of cancer over the five years that we were

working and so there is so much sickness associated with working with these chemicals and when people say the jury is still out on fungicides when the jury is still out on Roundupides, when the jury is still out on Roundup, I'm sorry, the jury is not out. There is so, and here's the thing, and you can say, oh, well, you're saying it's a causational effect, but there's no evidence. Right. So there's lots of chemicals that are bad. We've ramped up all the use of these chemicals and we're all getting sicker. So that is an obvious connection. Now, if you're going to say, well, you can't blame it exactly on Roundup. You can't blame it exactly on fungicides. You can't blame it exactly on petroleum-based fertilizers. You can't blame it exactly on dead soil and eating foods that are no longer nutrient dense. You can't blame it exactly on endocrine interrupters. You

can't blame it exactly on microplastics in your body. No. But we can blame it on all of those things. And I'll tell you what. If you look, do you want to know where the highest rates of cancer are in the whole United States? Farming communities? No. You'd think that, but no. It's on either side of the

Mississippi River because all of the junk. Oh, the runoff. All the runoff from all the farms is going down that Mississippi River. And so the highest concentration of cancer is on both sides of the Mississippi River. What is the Mississippi River? It's draining all these chemicals into the ocean. So when will we stand up? And it is true, not everybody can go buy a farm and do this,

but a lot more people can go buy a farm than are doing this. How many, we live in LA. We have lots of friends that have a simple two, three bedroom house that's worth a million dollars. For a million dollars, they could buy a farm and they could be contributing and making a difference and drawing down carbon and creating nutrient dense food. But they're not. They're driving their Prius, drinking their

oat milk and thinking they're done. Their job is done. I'm sorry, your job is not done. There's more work to do. There's a lot of work to be done. And I think the the vegan narrative right now that's happening in mainstream media is really infuriating to me because now they're just pushing beyond burgers, impossible burgers. There is no conversation about the conventional and GMO farming that is only contributing worse to environmental factors than the meat itself. I got attacked on social media for saying, and I didn't think this was going to be controversial. I said, I'm disappointed when the Impossible Burger came out on Burger King. I said, I'm disappointed to see all these people in my feed who love animals so much promoting Burger King.

Like, I'm disappointed. And supporting Burger King is never a win. People lost their mind on me. Like, 275 comments. Like, I get your privilege, too much money, can buy all this food out of here. And I just said, I just don't understand. I don't understand why we want to support Burger King. Burger King is deforesting the rainforest. Burger King has CAFO meat and abusive practices, doesn't pay their workers enough.

I mean, I can't even think of something about Burger King as an organization. I mean, I don't even know. Like, at least McDonald's, like, pays for scholarships or something for kids. And I also know that McDonald's makes a big deal to, like, try to help people get franchises inside the organization. I don't know. Maybe Burger King has that. I just don't know about it. But I can't think of anything good to say.

So I didn't think that would be controversial. It was crazy controversial. That's so wild. My thing is, if you are reading the ingredients on the back of a package, well, first of all, if there's more than like 10 to 15 ingredients, I think you should just toss it just put it down exactly but then when you start to agree and read the ingredients if you can't imagine what that looked like in your grandmother's garden if you can't imagine what that thing if if

it's like beta something something seven three i'm like who what does beta seven seven something three look like when it's growing if you can't imagine what it looks like when it's growing, do not eat it. Like it's all corn and soy metamorphosized into different things. Like it's just, yeah, it's heated and treated. You know, it's so funny. I say something very similar to people all the time. I say, look at the back of the ingredients when you're in the grocery store. And if you could technically make this at home, like let's say you look at the ingredient list and there's like five ingredients and it's like, I don't know, almond flour, eggs, whatever. If you could buy all those ingredients and make it at home, then it's fair game to buy. But it's when you start getting into, you know,

the corn syrups and like the polysorbate 80 and like all these random colorings and stuff that we were never meant to eat. Those were never meant to fuel our body. They were never meant to be in our body. The other thing is if it needed a food scientist to make it. Yeah, I'm OK. I'm cool. I'm cool. I don't need it because they're engineering it to make it addictive. I want food. I want food that grew in soil, not hydroponics, not in chemicals. Don't get me started on hydroponics. But I want food that was grown in soil. I want to rinse that food in clean water, and then I want to eat it. I don't want to sterilize it.

I don't want to HPP it. I don't want to dip it in some quat or dip it in bleach. They're dipping our food in bleach. And we wonder why nobody has a healthy gut. We wonder why everybody's having all these problems with their immune system. Come on. You're killing the microbiome in which we have lived in conjunction with for all of humanity. The more sterile our farms get, the more sterile our guts get.

The more sterile our guts get, the more we rely on chemical and drugs to heal us. And the more we rely on chemicals and drugs to heal us, the more we do. The sicker we are, the more we rely on the, um, these larger corporations, whole drug system. I don't want to, I don't want to rely on the government. I don't want universal nothing. I want, I want my body. I want to, I want to be responsible. I want to take care of my body. And yes, I had a child at home and I had to be transferred to the hospital and I would have died. And don't get me wrong, like Western medicine is extraordinary. Being able to go there and have them help me and awesome, awesome as an option. I'm not saying it's not awesome,

but what I'm saying is how often do we not even try to make a shift? How often do we not even try to make a shift how often do we not even listen to our bodies i i go through a phase almost every year where i start to feel a little like achy when i wake up and a little uh i'm like okay taking a break from coffee taking a break from sugar taking a break like i listen to my body and i make those adjustments and if those adjustments are not enough i make more adjustments and i'm not adjustments are not enough, I make more adjustments. And I'm not the healthiest person. I'm for sure a little bit overweight. I just had three babies back to back.

But I eat healthy. I breastfed all my children to give them the best chance. And I started my large family at 37 years old. And I have a one-year-old and I'm almost 43. And I got pregnant the first time. It was a one-night stand. That's actually how I married my husband. So, you know what I mean? Like, I'm healthy as fuck.

Like, in the way of, like, my cardiovascular body is working, it's working well. And I don't eat meat, but that's fine. I'm a blood type and it doesn't bother my body. I'm super happy eating a lot of carbohydrates. I'm super happy eating a lot of greens. Like it's, it's perfect for me, but I know people that got vegan and sick hair falling out, like types of stuff and their and their doctor was like yeah just know you can't eat wheat you can't eat soy you can't eat this you can't eat that they were like well what am i gonna eat and and they now eat meat very sparingly and like shamefully in a closet because their whole community is vegan and they don't want anybody to know about it and they're so much healthier eating it and it might be once a month twice a month they just

eat a little bit but i want that person to be able to be vegan 30 28 days a month and feel good about it and do what needs she needs to do for her body the other two days. I also know people who got pregnant and like craved red meat and like hid in a closet from their own husband to eat a burger. And I'm just like, come on. Like, I feel like cancer culture is pro is provasive in the vegan community. And I feel like we have to give people grace to be the best that they can be. And I also think that we can't take statistics from just like one angle.

There's lots of ways to lie with statistics or there's lots of ways to make your point with statistics where it's not a lie, but- Maybe not the whole picture. But it's not the whole picture. Like, I mean, the other day when the jobs numbers came out, I watched both channels. Like I watched MSNBC and I watched Fox and I saw what Rachel Maddow tell a story about how the family income was higher than it ever had been before under Biden in March and April of this year. And so that's one view. And it was not a lie. Nothing she said was a lie.

And Tucker Carlson went on a whole rant about how there's all these jobs and nobody wants to take them and they're all sitting at home getting free unemployment. Also, probably not exactly a lie because maybe the jobs that are available or not, the people are qualified and leaves out the whole thing about what's going on at the border and how many people left during the Trump administration. So they're both telling a story. Neither one of them is a lie. They're both using statistics and they're both valid versions of a reality omitting a lot of other things. And that's the thing. When we look at like a vegan diet is the best for the environment. In lots of cases, yes. If you live in Venice and you're only you're eating like whatever and you're eating out a lot and you're this and that,

I would say, yeah, I don't, I would say that I tell lots of people, you should probably be vegan when you go out. Cause you never know what people are serving you and you should probably not eat any grains out. You should not eat wheat.

You should not eat any of these glyphosate sprayed grains when you go out. But if you live on a farm and your chickens are laying eggs every day, should I buy just I don't have a taste for eggs. But if I did, it would make no sense for me to buy just egg in a plastic container when my chickens that I need for fertility, I need their poop. And then people say, well, you don't need chickens for poop. No, I could buy chicken poop from a factory farm if that's what you want me to do. But then they're eating really terrible food. GMO feed. GMO feed. GMO feed. And you don't have to have a certified organic facility to use the poop for a certified organic fertilizer.

So there's been situations where there's so much roundup in the organic fertilizers that they got recalled because they were killing people's crops. I'd much rather know what my chickens are eating, collect their poop. I have alpacas. I have chickens. I have cows. I have goats. I have sheep. And I know that they're all eating organic. I know that they're eating the spent grain from my brewery. They're eating the scraps from my restaurants. They're eating non-GMO organic alfalfa and orchard hay. And I know that that's all turning into super dope fertilizer for my plants. And I don't have to worry what kind of terrible things is in my fertilizer. And so that's why I chose to do it in this more holistic round approach. And people can say that I'm using

those animals. I feel like I'm partnering with them. I feel like they have a great life and they give fertility to the world and to the farm and the farm gives food to the world and together we're sequestering carbon in mass amounts and we're building soil in mass amounts. In just three years,

you can't believe we went from it taking four minutes for four cups of water to infiltrate into our soil to 19 seconds. That means that my little parcel of land is drawing down more carbon, but also drawing down more water into the aquifers. And the thing is, this year we're busy fear-mongering about other stuff. We forgot to fear-monger about the drought. But over here, we went to the Historic Society. There's no record of a more dry year where I live on record.

We only had three inches of rain. The average is 24 inches of rain where I live. We only had three inches of rain. But we're too busy being afraid of something else to bring up this. But believe me, it'll come out later how scared we are about that. But it's definitely terrifying as a farmer

to be here and waiting for the rain. We do dry farming of wheat. We do dry farming of rye and other stuff, sorghum for our beer. We were unable to grow it this year. There just wasn't enough water and it all died. Thousands of dollars of seed in the ground that just died because there was no water.

That's crazy. It's crazy what's going on. And it's crazy. Nobody's paying attention. And so I think whenever you start to feel like judging someone else's view or like, oh, they're an asshole or they or like start to you feel, you know, when someone's talking and you don't agree with them and a deep breath at that moment. And I'm saying, let me view their commitment and let me see how my commitment aligns with their commitment and how can we be partners. And that is the approach I'm trying to take because the powers that be want nothing more than for us to be fighting each other and not looking up and fighting the big fight.

Yeah. Yeah. And the big fight, number one, I think being the chemical warfare on our crops right now, on our agriculture. It's chemical warfare on all of us. It's our children are eating this food. Do you know what the heaviest crop, the heaviest, there's a group that does tests every year for food? G glyphosate. Cheerios is the number one. Oh, it makes me so sick. And the sad thing about it,

and you had touched on this earlier, is that there's a huge education component on this because mothers don't realize they are buying Cheerios thinking that they are getting something healthy for their children and thinking that they're feeding them something healthy when they're feeding them something that is sprayed in a really toxic herbicide. Yes. Really toxic. It's infuriating. And then kids only want to eat carbohydrates. So you got to make sure you're feeding them organic because they're eating so much of it. I know. I know. And, uh. And then it comes back to the privilege thing. You know, I will say that's been one of the biggest hurdles for me online. Every time I have this conversation where

I tell people that, you know, we need to be buying, if you do eat meat, buy organic grass-fed meat that comes from regenerative farms or, you know, support your local farmer, make sure you're buying organic produce. And then I always have people coming at me saying, well, that's a privilege and it's expensive and not everyone has access to it. So what would you say to someone that says that if they feel as though they live in a community where they don't really have access to that kind of food? It's a privilege to eat meat every day. And not even every day, people eat meat every meal of every day. And there is lots of ways to get grass fed beef. And to my vegan customers, I am not telling people they

should go eat meat. What I'm saying is if you eat meat, let's eat a meat that's better. Let's eat a meat that's better for everybody because not everybody's going to be vegan. So we have to first step over this idea that everybody's going to be vegan and realize that there's got to be, it's not black and white. It's not only everybody's vegan or they're a terrible person. We have to give people other pathways or they're not going to try anything. So just to clarify to my customers who I love and my community that I love, I am not advocating for people eating meat, but there is ways to like a whole family can go in on a whole cow. A couple of families could go in on a whole cow and there's lots of small farmers that don't have a USDA blah blah blah but so you

have to buy the cow while it's still alive and then it gets divided and then it gets butchered for you specifically that's how the laws work it's weird you can sell a live cow but you can't sell a dead cow um but so this I mean I see them from as low as 1200 up,200 up to $1,700, but it's a year's worth of meat for two families of four if you ate a lot of meat. So there is lots of ways that people could do it differently. And then people will say, well, not everybody has $1,700 to split between three families or whatever.

And I totally agree. I'm just saying there is other possibilities. But what I noticed as someone who's growing food on a farm and not meat, but I don't throw broccoli into the compost that is totally edible because it's like slightly wilted. I eat it. I chop it up. I put it in some kind of something, make a pot pie with potatoes and broccoli inside. And nobody knows it was a little wilted. When you put the effort into growing something or you spend a little bit more on it, you will take care of it and you will eat it. And when 30 to 50% of all of our food is thrown into the landfill, um, between from the farm to the consumer.

I think that if people made a big deal about it, Sunday, we're going to do organic carne asada on Sunday and it was $100 worth of meat, nobody would throw any of that meat away. Everybody would relish it and appreciate it and honor the animal that had it. Why should we be able to eat a being, a sentient being for less than $10 a pound? Why should we be?

What kind of privilege is that to be able to eat a sentient being, a living sentient being for less than $10 a pound? When people say like, oh, oh an organic chicken i don't know because i don't buy but i think they're like 25 or 30 dollars for like a a local organic chicken at the farmer's market and people say that's ridiculous we don't eat our chickens and we don't harvest them so but i do know it takes a long time to grow a chicken. And if you don't buy those chickens that are like all messed up to grow in nine weeks or whatever broiler chickens that grow really fast,

like the old heritage breeds, they take like nine months to grow. So it's like, if we want normal food, the way it used to be, then I mean, you couldn't raise a chicken, even if you got a broiler chicken. I say it would be hard for someone to raise a chicken, give it a house, give it a bowl, give it food, give it water, pay for the labor or the time out of your schedule every day to take care of it for nine weeks, even if it was a broiler chicken, for $30. You couldn't. So why should you get it for $6? I mean, that's insane. That's the privilege. The privilege is going to be able to buy a rotisserie chicken for $6.95.

A sentient living being that was butchered, feathered, cooked in a rotisserie, seasoned and put into a plastic container that will never buy out a great for six dollars and ninety five cents. That is a privilege. In most first world countries spend as much as 30 percent of their income. You go to France, you go to other places, they spend 30% of their income on food. We do not. And if we do, it's because we're buying Postmates and like a tech company is getting 30% of the money. So. And you know, where we pay that money that other countries pay for in their food, we pay for that in our healthcare system, or I call it sick care. We put it back in the medical system because everyone is so sick, you know, and that's the thing with cheap food. I always say this, you either pay for it now or you pay for it later

in your health. So either you pay for it up front at your farmer's market, the grocery store, whatever it is, or you're going to pay triple, quadruple the cost in medical surgeries, sometimes medication, whatever that is. And so it's either do you want to pay for it now or later in your health. And that is the end of part one of the two part series. If you're enjoying this episode, please make sure you go and listen to part two. It is up now. Bye.