Realfoodology - 7: How to Navigate the Egg Aisle with Anya Fernald of Belcampo

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

I think we all know the feeling of being overwhelmed and confused when standing in the egg aisle trying to decipher the difference between all the different labels. Anya Fernald of Belcampo Meat and I break down what all these different labels mean and what eggs you should be buying if you want healthy eggs that came from humanely treated animals.  Show Note/Links: EP. 6 Why We should Care About Organic Grass Fed Meat with Anya Fernald of Belcampo https://belcampo.com/ https://www.instagram.com/belcampomeatco/

On today's episode of the Real Foodology podcast, when you're looking for those terms as an educated buyer, cage free, free range, they mean something, but they don't mean what you think they mean. Hi, guys, welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast. I'm your host, Courtney Swan. And today's episode is kind of a part two, because I enjoyed my conversation with Anya Fernald of Belcampo so much that I wanted to bring her back on to have a conversation about another topic that is very confusing to navigate, but super important. Egg labeling. How many times have you stood in front of the egg aisle, completely overwhelmed with all the different labels and left not even sure exactly what you bought? Free range, cage free, organic, antibiotic free, et cetera. We break down exactly what you bought. Free range, cage-free, organic, antibiotic-free, etc. We break down exactly what all these labels mean and what you should be buying and looking for if your prerogative is healthy eggs that came from humanely treated animals.

We also go a little bit off topic about why struggling to eat healthy is not your fault. It's such an informative episode. I'm so excited for you to hear it. And I hope you leave it with a better understanding of how to navigate the agile. With that, I'm going to answer a question first. And I have a little disclaimer before that. These answers and this podcast are for educational and informational purposes only and are not a sub for individual medical and mental health advice and do not constitute a provider-patient relationship.

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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 want to try the products that i talked about today or any of the organifi products go to organifi.com slash real foodology and use code real foodology for 20 off again that's organifi it's o-r-g-a-n-i-f-i dot com slash real foodology today's fan question is not really a question. It's more of a constructive

criticism, but it's something that I really wanted to address. She writes, Dear Courtney, I've been listening to your podcast and I've also been a longtime follower of your IG. I guess this is more of a constructive criticism that I have and is not meant to be a jab. You're very fortunate to be able to eat organic on a daily basis. That being said, not every person is lucky enough to have access to real food and nutrients. And as sad as that is, I think you can come across as being judgmental and ignorant towards this reality. Okay. So this is a common concern that I get a lot. So I really wanted to address it. First of all, I want to say this is not my intention. And in fact,

I try very hard to get the point across that this is a multifaceted issue because it is. I teeter a fine line here of being aware of privilege, but also this is really important information that needs to get out because there are many who are unaware of what's going on. Like I said before, it's a multifaceted issue that needs to be addressed from many different angles. There's an education component of it where some people are simply unaware of what's really going on

and what it truly means to be healthy. I'm not putting blame on individuals for this. This is a perfect example of how our government is failing us by allowing food companies to make false advertisements and misleading labeling on our food how our government is failing us, by allowing food companies to make false advertisements and misleading labeling on our food, and also for allowing lobbyists to control our food system, and for not banning foods, additives, and toxic chemicals that we know to be harmful to the human

body. Many do not have the access or resources, financial or otherwise, to healthier food. This is not their fault. This is a system that has failed us. But there is also an accountability aspect to this as well. There are some people who just don't care, nor do they want to take responsibility over their own health. And that's okay. That's their choice. I'm not condemning. I am not condemning anyone for it or even judging them. My message is not for those people. I do think it's irresponsible though to avoid having these hard conversations as hard as they are, because if these issues in our food industry do not come to light, we will never be able to fix them. For those of you listening,

if you have anything to say, I say this all the time on my Instagram, and I'm going to say it on my podcast as well. I'm here for open conversations. I welcome constructive criticism as long as it comes from a place of love and not hate. I won't address the angry haters, but if someone writes me with a genuine concern and a want to talk it out and have a conversation about it, I welcome that. And I'm totally here for it. So please email me realfoodologypodcast at gmail.com. And with that, let's get to the show. So I have Anya back for another episode because I wanted to go over the ins and outs of egg labeling. I know this is an incredibly confusing topic. I get questions

about this all the time and I get it until I really sat down and researched what all the different terms mean. I was completely and utterly confused by like what eggs to buy because there's cage free, there's free range, pasture raised, organic. There's like an entire aisle just for eggs. So I wanted to bring Anya on so we can talk about that and break it down and really help you understand what eggs we should be buying for the health of our bodies. Hi, Anya. Thank you for coming back. Thank you for having me. And eggs are a subject close to my heart. I mean, it's like the first product that I think many people start to think about on their health journey, right? And I have also heard plenty of stories of people who say, I thought I was allergic to eggs. And then I started

eating a different quality of egg. And I found my allergy went away. So it's one of those things that has a unique kind of spectrum of inflammation characteristics associated with how it's raised, in my experience. So that's another reason why. But it's like, it's like milk. It's one of the first things that I think a lot of people are actually kind of duped where they end up spending more for what they perceive to be a premium. And what they get in the box is not substantially different from a truly mainstream product. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it just goes back to how all of the labeling and our food across the board is so misleading because we don't have a ton of regulation. And a lot of companies,

I mean, I was reading earlier that companies can just say that their eggs are free range, but it's not an actually regulated term. So that's a real complication. And let's just start with the fact that the head of the USDA is an ex-Purdue executive, right? So if you say these terms are unregulated, let's just think about that differently, which is like there is very significant vested interest in ensuring that regulatory terms are meaningless. Wow. That's really powerful and true. Yeah. There's, I mean, and the reason why is it's a lot cheaper to produce things the other way. I mean, let's start with the word natural. Okay. For eggs, natural means no additives or colors. So how would you add something to an egg? Inject it, right? So you

see natural eggs, just know that means they haven't been colored on the exterior and there's been nothing injected into them. So you could also just at that point say whole eggs, right? Or in their shell, right? It's things that are kind of blatantly obvious. And natural is something we see all over the place. Um, and that's in specifically around eggs. It's totally meaningless term. You're, you're paying a premium for a natural egg, big air quotes that really isn't merited. You know, and just for people listening, we can apply that across the board, really to any sort of like processed food, any sort of labeling that says natural, that is not regulated and it doesn't really mean anything. So it's an important thing to remember. Yeah. Natural is one

of the most overused words. And that's actually something that in my company at Bell Campo, we've chosen not to use that word because I'd rather not have something on my package that's on the package of, you know, a mainstream conventional product that's so, so different. And that can be misleading. Wow, that's interesting. Okay, so then let's kind of go down the line. So first of all, what do you see often in the grocery store cage free? What is cage free mean? Absolutely. So that's a now in all this, I have to say there's there's activism behind the word cage free that I have to acknowledge is kind of like part of the legacy, right? We got we got we got a lot with cage feed. Cage feed was a response to pretty horrific battery egg production.

And battery eggs are animals that were caged in the same way that mom pigs are caged, which is less commonly known. But farrowing crates is another thing where the mother is encased in a cage so that it can't move its body around. And that battery hen, that's one of the most significant animal abuse that I'm aware of. And their life is dramatically short, huge amount of cortisol, huge amount of stress, need for a lot of antibiotics. So when we first were trying to fix industrial ag, just saying, let's get rid of what are called battery hen cages was the battle. OK, so big industry response said,

no problem. Here's your cage free egg. You know, they're not in a cage, but they're still spending their entirety of their life indoors enclosed. And basically living on top of each other. You guys can Google this. I've seen videos inside some of these hen warehouses just because they're not in cages doesn't mean that they are living a healthy life. I mean, I've seen them where they are quite literally almost like stacked on top of each other because there are so many that they're fighting for space in the warehouse. So yeah, the cage-free inside of what's called a hoop house or a large confinement,

you still have extremely poor air quality. The animals then still may be treated with prophylactic antibiotics, even though if it's claimed that they don't, they often do. So cage-free, I'd say, is probably like it's the minimum. It means something because it means that it's not raised in a battery operation. And still remember that the majority of eggs are still raised in those horrific cages. So cage-free is incrementally better. It's not like natural where it's just putting a label on something that you couldn't really do differently.

Another example of that is when you see hormone-free pork, it's actually illegal to use hormones in pork in America and chickens too. So if you say pork has no added hormones, it's like, congratulations, you're just following the law, right? So natural is the same thing. It's like, congratulations, you just made an egg. That's natural. Cage-free does mean something. It's like, congratulations, you're just following the law, right? So natural is the same thing. It's like, congratulations, you just made an egg. That's natural. Cage-free does mean something. There's a cheaper way to do it with the animals in the battery cages. And the cage-free is actually, they're at least outside inside of a building, right? But they're not enclosed in a body cage. Okay. So somewhat better, but still not meaningful. Exactly. Which I think it is important to note that because they never get access to outdoors,

they're not getting the sufficient vitamin D from the sun. And like you said, the cortisol from being trapped inside, like these are just, these are not healthy hens. So they're not going to produce superior eggs. Well, there's a, okay. So that's, this is kind of what I want to think about or to challenge you and your listeners to think about. I, right now it's October in

Northern California, and I have a little veggie garden, right? And I've got some bean plants. And those bean plants are going bananas, right? And they're putting out tons of little weird shaped beans. And if you're a gardener, you see this, right? And you see animals or plants at the end of their life, there's this hustle to produce a lot of eggs. This is like why a lot of women too, in their like late forties can get pregnant. Surprisingly, there's like a, towards the end of your fertility as a plant or as a human or as a mammal, there's like, there can be this spike in fertility. So the stressful conditions for animals effectively, it's like, we're going to die. Let's put out. So the question would be, and this is a challenge I've gotten in my social media. It's like, Hey, if feedlots are so bad, how come the animals

are so fat? And I'm like, well, there's a lot of reasons. So producing a lot of eggs or gaining a lot of weight is not necessarily an indicator of health. Actually, it can indicate in the case of weight gain inflammation and in case of rapid increase in eggs, like a proximity to death. Okay. Wow. So when you, these, these high stress situations, it's like, oh my God, somebody is about to turn off the lights, better pump out the babies. That's what's happening evolutionarily in that system. So that's why, because you would think if it's producing a lot, isn't it healthy? Like, aren't we as women to always try to be more fertile and do things to enhance your fertility? Well, another way to enhance your fertility is to effectively one way is a low stress that leading to a high stress that can indicate end of life. So in the free range, right.

Being outdoors dramatically reduces egg yield. Because all of a sudden... Interesting, because they don't feel like their life is about to end. Yeah, no, that's, I mean, that's really the issue is that they're, that being outdoors, they're kind of like, this is great, right? And I'm going to be here for the long term, I'm going to plan, I'm going to slowly pop out eggs. And those eggs are more nutritionally dense, right? Anything that you make slower is going to be better. But any exposure to the outdoors, and that's really why the free range designation is designed as it is. Free range means that the animals have access to the outdoors,

but they do not spend their lives outdoors. So that can mean that there will be like a hoop house that's like 60 to 80 feet long that has a single 18-inch wide, a foot-and-a-half-wide door, to an outdoor run that's like akin to like what you'd see in a dog park for a dog run. And that's free range. So they can hypothetically get out there and run around on basically dirt if they wanted to. But I do want to know that I, I still feel like free range is a bit of a misleading label because according to the regulations that I read on the USDA website, they still, even though they're called free range, companies are kind of free to do what they want with that. It does not specify the quality or the size of the outdoor

range or the duration of time that the animal has accessed outside. And I've read that because there's no regulation around this, that oftentimes there's a very small, teeny, tiny little door. And so a lot of hens may never even find their way out the door. They may not even know that it's there. Or the ones that do make it outside either don't get to spend a lot of time outside and there's not a huge area of grass for them. So because there's so many hens in the warehouse, many of them don't even make it outside because they either don't know that the door is there or there's not enough room for them.

Absolutely. And keep in mind that these animals, I mean, their lifespan, I mean, in confinement and even in these animals that are, these operations that are quote unquote free range, but are basically kind of like a workaround. I mean, it's basically you're being tricked, right? The average lifespan in that case, I mean, it's under two years. In an operation like ours, it's five years. And in kind of nature, it can be up to 20 years that hens live, right? So it's not a healthy environment. And you're talking about, you know, in the battery environment, the free range, the big drop-off is when animals actually spend the majority of their time outdoors. Their egg laying drops by more than half, right?

So you need twice as many animals to get the same amount of eggs if they're outdoors, and sometimes three times as many, depending on how free range it is. So just remember, there's a very strong disincentive. If you think about it, like, I think about the math behind this. It's like, how can it be less expensive to build a house that has to be heated or cooled, depending on the temperature of the environment, has to be ventilated because there's so much waste, you know, and chicken waste is very toxic. So it has to be constantly ventilated to take away this really heavy ammonia load that's in the air and make it so that the animals don't die because of the off gassing from their own waste. So how can that be cheaper than just like putting them outdoors in a yard? Right. So you have to think about that math and say, wow, OK, the productive

increase must really outweigh the cost of the building and that capital expenditure. And that gives you a sense of the order of magnitude, right? I mean, these structures, they cost millions of dollars to build. They cost millions of dollars per year to ventilate and run and tractors and air quality and electricity and water systems. There's a lot of machinery that goes into these systems. How can that be cheaper than just putting them outdoors? Right? So if you look at that, it's like, well, the reason it's cheaper is that they produce three times as many eggs. Okay. And that's really the offset. So that's where free range, you're really being tricked because they've kept the productive part.

They kept the productive part, which is they get to be inside in this high stress environment. Their lifespans are shortened. They pump out the eggs. Their production is like 300 eggs a year. That's a very, very, that's a massive incentive for them to keep them indoors. And so the workaround is like, yeah, if they can find that door and get outside where there's no water and no food, they can get outside. But the bigger incentive is that when they're indoors, their higher production, their lifespan is shorter, but that's compensated for by the velocity with which they put out the eggs. So free range is a term that has been absolutely co-opted by industry. And once again, they are more concerned about their bottom dollar and producing more eggs to make more money than they are about the quality of the eggs that they're producing. And this is the whole problem. The piece that I want to call

out as a term, what people think they're getting when they buy a free range egg is a different term. And that term is pastured. And pastured is a registered term. And in pasture, that means the animals have to live outdoors and they have a space to go indoors if there's bad weather. Yep. Or at night. Yeah. Or at night or with predation, you know, like there are circumstances where you'd want a chicken, a little chicken to go, you'll have to go inside. So that pasture though, they're outdoors all the time, but they can be. And then there's a minimal structure provided for them to go indoors. So when you, what you look at, when you see that egg carton and you see a little picture of the red barn and the little chickens outside in the grass,

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the nutritional quality, all the characteristics of the egg are much improved in that context, the animal's diet is much more diverse. So that's, that's really what you're when you're looking for those terms as an educated buyer cage free free range, they mean something, but they don't mean what you think they mean. Pastured means what you think it means, what you think those other words mean. Absolutely. So I was going to say, I went on a trip, uh, two years ago with vital farms and I love their eggs. They are one of the most, I think actually they are the highest selling, um, producer of pasture raised eggs. And they actually took me to a few of their farms and I got to really see what pasture raised meant. And they had these huge barns for these hens. They would every single morning at sunrise

open the entire door. So everyone, I mean, it was so cool. We went there one morning at sunrise and literally witnessed it. They opened this door at sunrise and all of the birds just come like flying out. And it's such a beautiful thing to witness. And then they stay outside all day, just pasture, you know, just raising, or I'm sorry, just roaming the pasture, eating bugs, getting sunlight, living happy, healthy lives. And they have a huge span of land that they, that they run around in. And then every night they herd them back in just right before the sun goes down just to protect them from like coyotes and wolves. And yeah, I know that's exactly right.

And vital farmers is a great example that you don't have to be tiny to be regenerative and do the right thing. This idea that's like, I get that too. Like, oh, that's cool, lady. You can do that for your like five customers in California. And I'm, you know, this could be the mainstream and Vital's done it.

They focus on one thing, but they've done it right. Like, and there's a couple bigger operators, Shenandoah on the East Coast for some of the meat birds. I mean, there's bigger operators that are doing this. The idea that there can't be or these aren't scalable, it's like, no, just like anything, you can do it bigger, you can do it smaller.

But these are scalable techniques. I mean, they're what we've done for centuries. And, you know, keep in mind that the lifespan of a commercial chicken in 1950 was 54 weeks, just over a year. The lifespan of a commercial chicken in 2020 is two and a half weeks right so the poultry industry has just consolidated in the same i mean eggs is different on lifespan because there's a little bit of an incentive there to produce i mean think about it it's like a it's a it's an extractive industry in the way that milk production is where they've taken you know the the lactating animals and turn them into these beasts that live you know

some of these milk animals will live 18 months, you know, two years, two and a half years. Layer chicken, same thing, under two years from the natural lifespan can be as long as 20 years. Right. So you've dramatically shortened the lifespan and because the replacement cost is cheap, dramatically increase the productivity in that time by creating this very, very high stress environment. It's cheap. So if you can buy pasture raised and you know, vital farms is a great option. Or if you can find a local farmer even better at the farmer's market that does that. I know I see in my grocery store, I see a lot of different pasture raised eggs now popping up. And I think a lot of them come from local farms like around California. So you'll have to check your grocery store. Yeah. And eggs are something people can do at small scale, you know, like people can do in

their backyard. And let's talk a little too about stuff that people think is meaningful. That's not as meaningful as they think, because this is a little bit of an ax that I have to bring. Like vegetarian fed. Okay. Vegetarian fed also brown versus white. Okay. Brown versus white doesn't actually mean anything about where the hens were raised, how natural they were. That has to do with an attempt to differentiate by farmers in the 1980s and 90s that some of the natural farmers came in with brown eggs to make it really clear that they were different right when people started to kind of like offer some alternate avenues to the mainstream products.

But brown eggs, it just has to do with the breed and the feathers of the breed. Granted, brown eggs are more likely to come from some of the more, you know, the traditional breeds, like the Rhode Island red has brown eggs. Blue eggs, for example, that's just a breed characteristic. It's the same thing as having blue eyes or brown eyes or blonde hair or brown hair. It's genetic. Okay. So it's hard-coated genetics. Our count of chickens produce blue eggs. Rhode Island reds produce brown eggs. Other breeds produce more white eggs. So that's totally a breed thing. White eggs more likely to be from some of the more industrial breeds, but there's great, we occasionally have white eggs depending on which flock is laying. A lot of other small

farmers have white eggs. Okay. Not as important as you think. Somewhat indicative, but don't use that as your only sign. Second thing, and this is indicative, but don't use that as your only sign. Second thing, and this is going to surprise you to not use as your only sign, is the color of the yolk. Yolk color comes from carotene access in the diet. If chickens are eating grass, they get more carotene. Carotene is the color orange. It's part of grain. And so grass has a lot of carotene.

Carrots have a lot of carotene. Butternut squash has a lot of carotene. Oh, sweet potatoes, right? Everything orange has carotene. Carrots have a lot of carotene. Butternut squash has a lot of carotene. Oh, sweet potatoes, right? Everything orange has carotene. If you want your eggs to be bright yellow yoked, you can just feed them carotene enhanced feed. Just put carotene powder into the feed and you can buy it. It's a very common feed to sell. Seasonally produced eggs will have fluctuating yolk colors because our seasonal pastures like a belcampo sometimes it's all green sometimes it's not so green we're in california i mean everywhere there's seasons

where it's browner and seasons where it's greener um that is a it kind of it's frustrating to me when i see people looking only to yolk color and you see in europe too people go to europe oh my god the eggs here are so orange it's like yeah because it's very common to use carotene enhancement in their feed. Now you can also get a bright orange yolk from a beautiful pastured bird naturally. We get them in the peak of our green grass seasons, right? In the end of spring and at the end of fall, we get that too. But we don't get it year round because sometimes the animals have less green forage. Now, keep in mind that chickens are omnivores. Laying hens eat mostly grain. But when they're free range, they can eat up to 10, 15 percent of their diet will naturally

come from like grubs and grass. So that it's not like the entirety of their feed is ever going to be grass. And in fact, you see grass fed on an egg. That's not true. There's no way that they can survive eating just grass. That's basically another way of saying pastured, but less regulated. Okay. So the, the yolk color though, false indicator also can be indicative, but also like the brown eggshell, you can't use your eyes, unfortunately, for those two indicators for quality. I didn't even know all of that. So

thank you so much for pointing that out. It's very interesting. Okay. One other fun fact for how you can use your eyes on eggs, though, is yolk height and shape for freshness. Okay. Okay. So when you crack an egg, it's kind of cool. Eggs are baby chicks, right? And the way that they form is that when they get fertilized, the little placenta is eating the yolk. So the yolk is the part that holds fresh.

It's like this big ball of fat and nutrition for the eventual baby. But over time, that placenta slowly degrades. So it just can't last. I mean, eggs is like God's perfect vessel. It's incredible how long it'll last. Most eggs in supermarkets are about two months old. Occasionally, they'll drift beyond that. And you can tell if you crack an egg, you'll have it where the yolk goes totally flat. That's an old egg. And then you have the ones that are like, look like a

little mountain. Yeah. That's totally fresh. It's like, it actually has a little point. That's a super fresh egg. I actually had an egg this morning that did that. So glad to know that it was fresh. Yeah. So you have to, um, just have to, I'd say that, so the visual scan, brown, white, not so meaningful. Yolk color can be meaningful, can also not. Yolk shape, you can't cheat on that one. What I've observed is that the better quality diet, that'll be a firmer. It's like anything. It's like the reproductive health is better when the when animals rested and not producing at really high volume.

So I've noticed in general, the peaked yolks come from the free range eggs. And that's like a super primo little ball of fat and protein for you if it's peaked. OK, well, I mean, I've I use this across the board for all of my food, but the healthier that whatever you're eating was or is, the healthier that food is going to be for you. And actually, the pastured eggs have four times the omega-3s of any enclosed egg and probably more. That's like the standard, the mean. And they have 50% more of all the vitamin A, vitamin E, all the good stuff. Is it because they're putting it in their feed? Well, it's because the omega-6s come from seeds.

So if animals have access to pasture and they're naturally sourcing, I mean, the chickens will scratch at the ground all day long, picking up little things to eat and little bits of grass and hay and stuff. They want the nutritional fiber as well. And so when they have that diverse diet, then their omega load is different.

So you get far more omega threes because they're getting far more omega threes because you get omega threes from green things, you know? Well, and I also, I mentioned this earlier, I want to touch on this vegetarian fed. This I've always found to be incredibly misleading because chickens are not vegetarian. They still eat bugs and, you know, little things in the grass. So I always thought to me, I was like, I don't, I actually want to avoid the vegetarian fed ones because then that means that they were basically being fed corn and soy. And we know in this country that the majority of our corn and soy is GMO. So they're, unless if they are labeled non-GMO,

they're getting genetically modified soy and corn in their diet. That's totally fair. That's totally fair. It's like a false positive. It's like a red herring. Like some of these things like natural and vegetarian fed, they're put on the eggs as a sort of like a fake indicator to mislead you into being, you know, feeling like you can trust that brand, but they really are meaningless. And unfortunately, I mean, food labeling in the U.S. is riddled with these things, and you actually have to really empower yourself. I mean, the other piece of vegetarian feed and the reason it came about is that, in general, we don't eat carnivores, right? Like, humans don't eat many carnivores. Carnivores don't predate too many other carnivores. You know why? The risk factors are bananas. Like, the mad cow disease came from,

you know, basically eating animals, eating animals. So when we eat animals that are too much like ourselves, you know what happens is like coronavirus, right? I mean, these are like, these are prion and mutations that happen when we eat flesh of things too like ourselves, which is why people don't eat dogs because it's gross. People don't eat dogs because it's actually pretty risky for us to eat things that are eating too much, too or too much like our own digestion. There's a similar pathogen mix. Okay. So what vegetarian feed came about in the, in an industry where it is meaningful, which is the beef industry, because what, why mad cow happened is that shredded up sheep parts that were infected with scrapie were fed to cows over such a long period of time and with such frequency that the cows adopted and mutated the disease scrapie through eating dead sheep okay cows should not eat sheep

okay there is a really good, and so vegetarian fed became a really important indicator for beef because it's like less likely to have mad cow disease because that's what happened. Now, in the case of pigs and chickens, they're naturally omnivores. They're not carnivores, right? So not the same risk factor.

It's not like for a human, don't be worried about eating omnivores. But vegetarian fed became conflated where the industry is like, oh, cool. Customers want vegetarian fed beef. Great. Let's give them another vegetarian fed product. It's like, well, that's totally meaningless. Right.

But. And it's so misleading. Yeah. And that's it's also actually bad because it's I mean, our chickens will peck at garter snakes like they'll go after it. They don't want anybody messing with their flock. They'll eat the heck out of flies and bugs and larva. And actually, it's kind of cool. In our system, we rotate the chickens behind the cows. Cows drop cow patties

covered in flies, tons of maggots. This may be too much information, but it's part of a healthy ecosystem. You'll actually get the chickens that come in and they'll break the parasite cycle they'll eat all the larvae out of every and that's how systems used to work that's why you used to have a bunch of different animals in your little backyard small scale farms is that they actually break each other's parasite cycle um so as opposed to when you feed similar animals to each other they they amplify the parasite cycle. That's where mad cow happens and actually what happened with coronavirus fundamentally. But if you keep have animals that are really genetically distinct, they can break each other's parasite cycle because

that that fly larva isn't going to do anything in the guts of the chicken. They'll actually just eat it and metabolize it. So we actually encourage our animals to not be vegetarian, you know, but that's different. Like vegetarian also implies that it's like eating a steak, you know, it's, and to be clear, that's kind of like saying they, our animals aren't Buddhists. Like they, these, you know, like that's, I'd say it's more, don't think of it as if it's not vegetarian fed, it's being fed like, like, um, some type of like macerated meat, the furthest thing from it. It's just that it's eating larvae. Yeah. Which is really important. I mean, I was just thinking about this mother nature always knows best, you know, she knows what she's doing. We have a whole ecosystem set up and,

and humans came along and we've messed with it. And no wonder we're unhealthy. So we're creating an unhealthy product and we're messing with nature. Yeah. It's, it's, it's definitely the past 60 years have been an experiment in efficiency at the cost of human welfare, right. In terms of us eating the products, right. Like our human, I mean, if people talk a lot about animal welfare, but I actually think it's, we should look at the human cost of like what this nutritionally impoverished inflammatory food is doing to us. You know, we're a generation of anxious, overweight people. And we may not be paying for it at the grocery store. We're paying for it in our healthcare and our health, you know, so we're paying for it in other ways. And it's becoming exponentially more expensive than it would be to just do the right

thing, eat healthier, because we would be able to lower our healthcare costs and we'd have a healthier population, a healthier society. Well, I mean, it's kind of controversial, but think about it. I think there's a protection around the impacts of big ag that you see right now in COVID, right? That in COVID, we don't talk about the surveillance of obesity, the correlation with obesity and mortality. It's, you see it in the alternative press and things, but like in the mainstream, there's no discussion of that. And it's, and I see that as big ag fundamentally, you know, I think it's, it's, there are so many vested interests in us being comfortable as a culture with being inflamed. And, and, and I really don't think it's calories in calories

out. I think a lot of this is inflammation and issues that our food doesn't satiate us. And so we, we eat to bloat, but we don't eat to satiety. Exactly. Like I said earlier, we're overfed and we're undernourished because we're not getting the nutrients that we need from our food. So we're overfed and we're undernourished because we're not getting the nutrients that we need from our food. So we're overeating to compensate for those nutrients that we're not getting. Totally. Completely agree.

And I mean, think about with eggs. It's like, oh, wow. So a free range egg has like four or five times the omega threes. It has maybe double the vitamin E and vitamin K and stuff. Wow. So you're talking about as an eater, you think an egg has 90 calories, right? How many calories do I have? 70 calories, something like that. Like, are you going to eat like four eggs or two eggs? Well, all of a sudden you're needing to eat, you know, 400

calories of eggs to get the same amount of nutrition that you can get from 100 calories of eggs if they were free range. So there's an exact like, right with what we've been talking about, that's the math, you're eating somewhere between two and four times the calories, and your body is hungry for that other stuff. You know, and so the problem is that you're, you're eating and eating, and you're, you're not, you're not hitting the goal post of what your body's craving. So you just keep on eating. But unfortunately, there just isn't anything in it, you know? Yeah, this is such an important component of this conversation. It's a tricky one, too, though, you know, because I want to be sensitive to people,

you know, all body types. And it's a hard conversation to have. But I fully agree with you. And I think I agree with you as well. We're not having this conversation in mainstream media because to a certain extent, you know, big pharmaceutical and our food industry, they make money off of us being just a little bit sick, you know, just enough to where we're, we're still alive, but we're sick enough to be on, you know, we're going to need a couple of different medications and we continue to eat that super addictive, high caloric nutrient dead food. And once they get addicted to or get us addicted to

that food, we just continue to eat more of it and buy more of it. And you know, it's it's all it's a system. And I think people forget that it's all about making money. These are all businesses. And it's not grounded in a desire to create healthy products. It's all grounded in a desire to make money. It's a, it's, it's all, it's a pretty strong, like vicious cycle. It is challenging though. I think to talk about this without having a lot of judgment in it, I can speak to my own story of, you know, when I moved back to the U S I gained 50 pounds and I'm tall, I'm five, 10 plus, but like, it was amazing in four months, just boom. And I, the time, I thought, I'm like, I haven't changed that much. But I struggled.

I felt terrible about myself. And I felt like it was out of my control. But I also like, I'm like, I own it. Like maybe this is just me now. Who knows? And then I had to really strip down every single thing out of my diet down to the bones. I didn't just buy the walnuts. I got the walnuts from the organic farm.

I didn't just buy the beef. That's when I started to buy whole cows. I bought the beef from the farm that was grass-fed and finished. And slowly, like I started to spend way more on food. I just didn't know what I didn't know. You know, it was 2015. And I recently talked to a woman who had lived, another American woman who'd lived a decade abroad in Spain and came back to the U.S. And same thing happened to her. And she was like, how did you do it? Like, what happened? What's going on? And she put on like 40 pounds in a couple months living in the U.S., eating what she thought was the same diet. That's why I say, like, I have had the experience that it's not your choices.

Like, it's actually a whole system that's geared up around your gains and not the positive gains that we're all looking for. It's like it's really unfortunate, but I feel like I learned the hard way. Like, you just can't make casual choices in the US. And I've been there. I did it. And it was horrible. And I fought back.

But it's like, it's part of where my passion around this comes is I'm like, hey, people, this isn't your fault, really. This is a whole, there's like so much that's conspiring against you being at a BMI that feels great, whatever that is, right? Yes. And I'm so glad that you brought that up because it's such an important component. It's not anyone's fault. This is not like you're not doing good enough or, you know, you're eating horribly. Like sometimes that's the case, but we live in a country where the system is set up against us and we're fighting

that. And it's unfortunate. It's I, I say this all the time. It's so sad that we have to literally become detectives. It's so sad that I have to have an entire podcast episode, just breaking down egg labels because our government's not doing that for us. And they're not saying, Hey, this is what all of these mean. Instead, we're just getting all these confusing, misleading labels on stuff. And then we're kind of just left to fend for ourselves and figure it out. And so for the people that like us that didn't learn or to do the digging and aren't even aware that this is going on are essentially like victims of that. And it's really unfortunate and unfair. And it's why I started this podcast, because I want more people to

understand what's really going on and learn how to navigate and how to eat better and healthier in a system that's geared against us. And also I wanted to note, yeah, that, so I talked about this on my very first episode podcast ever, and I was working for the Swedish woman, a band, and it was her and four other men from Sweden that came over and they were touring around the U S and they said that, you know, after a year of being here in the U S that they all went home and they couldn't even button up their pants. And they were all like dumbfounded because they didn't, they were like, we didn't really change our diet. I've pretty much been eating the same thing that I've,

I always eat at home. I didn't do anything different. And it's because we have different food and we put different things in our food and we process it differently than in other countries. I've heard the same thing from so many immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Like there's something different in the food. Like I had one kid there and I have one kid here and this kid struggles and this kid doesn't like it's it's really compelling and I think it's part of part of the part of the dialogue that we don't have the data to to really talk about in a meaningful way but we all know the stories you know and it's like it's too compelling I'm I'm I'm like I have my own case study of myself you know exactly the same

thing lived abroad for seven years came home ate the same thing. Lived abroad for seven years, came home, ate the same thing, put on 40% more of my body fat just out of nowhere. I mean, come on. Like, this is not, like, emotional eating or something. Like, this is a different type of food. And what I've learned is, like, and I also think that's why people in the U.S., like, if you're going to be healthy, you kind of don't eat bread here. You know, and it's like, I eat bread in other countries because I'm pretty sure it's cool. I don't eat bread here unless it's like from Misfit or something really specific from the local baker that I know buys organic from this one place.

You know, it's like occasionally, but it's not that we're all neurotic, you know, but it's like, yeah, I drink dairy all over the place when I'm in Europe. Don't hear I drink dairy one or two places. You know, it's like, you just, you have to have these really strong guardrails here because most of it is, is just not, um, it's not what it appears to be, you know? And the labels like we just talked about are set up to mislead, you know? Absolutely. It's so unfortunate. I'm so glad that this conversation. You're doing the right thing of like, I love that you called me out and said, like, let's do a specific around that. Um, because it's, it's really important to, to, to just empower yourself. You arm yourself with the narrative, you arm yourself with

knowledge. It's like same way you go into a big meeting for work, you know, your stats, you're ready to go. You're ready to argue your case. You're going to get it done. Like, think about your food the same way. It's a project that you're managing, you know, and you're managing to lifelong positive outcomes. Approach it like a business, you know, like, and just say, like, I'm not just going to go in there and roll over and say, yeah, whatever you offer me in the evening, I'm going to take, you know, whatever you offer me for my house, I'm going to take. Don't do that. You wouldn't do that in anything else in your life. Don't do it with your food. You know, you know, imagine you're selling a house and somebody comes in and is like, oh yeah, this is a great deal. Take it. Great. I'll take it. No, of course you're not

you're researching the market. What my neighbor get? What's you know, how many square feet is it? What is you know, you're going to ask around. So do the same thing with your health. You know, it's all it's all the same type of question. Like it's it's a challenging landscape, people are going to mislead you empower yourself with knowledge. I couldn't have said it better myself. I'm so glad the conversation went this way, by the way. This is great. So there's one last question to kind of round out the end of this. And because I think you had kind of briefly mentioned this, but I want to talk about this because I think it's a misleading label. No hormones and antibiotic free. I think one of them you said is not even allowed in hens.

And with antibiotic free, I need to, you know, that's whether or not it's prophylactic antibiotics. And so then antibiotics that are used for an animal being sick is an exemption. But the problem is that in battery hens and confinement animals, they're almost always sick. So the actual feed is enhanced with antibiotics, and then they're prescribed that regularly. So my understanding is that if you say there's a risk of a salmonella outbreak, for example, you're allowed to prescribe antibiotics in that case. And the antibiotic refers to prophylactic antibiotics. Prophylactic means just like, it'd be as if you just said, I'm going to take tetracycline for the rest of my life so I just don't get any stomach aches, right? Like it'd be kind of crazy to do that. So people,

that's what people are most afraid about because that's what creates the antibiotic resistance, which is what would happen to you if you were to treat yourself that way. But the catch is that antibiotic usage in food increased weight gain at 1.5 times and increases laying rate as well. So it's a really great enhancer for all the outputs. So that's another one where, you know, what you're looking for is a never, never, right? So no antibiotics ever. And you have to read the fine print because a lot of times it'll say no, that clarify that by saying no prophylactic or caveat it. So if you check and make sure it's a no antibiotics ever that's a good sign um i'd say though in the ranking from my perspective as a consumer if i'm traveling and

walking to a grocery store the number one thing i'm going to look for is pastured okay yeah second to that is this would be surprising but it's organic because there are battery organic animals that can be, I mean, there's maybe not totally battery, but there's caged animals that are organic. There are hoop house animals that are organic. So there's a lot of organic doesn't mean, organic means that the, that the feeds used are GMO-free and pesticide-free, which is great. But from a perspective of humane and quality, pastured actually trumps organic. So I'm looking for number one, pastured. Number two is organic. And then really beyond that, none of the other certifications matter to me. I'd like to see certified humane or Animal Welfare Association approved. Those have some

great benefits and they tend to reinforce the other claims. So if I see pastured and certified humane, that's going in my shopping basket. Um, if there's no pastured, I'll take certified humane or animal welfare association approved, which are kind of analogous humane certifications, plus organic as a proxy, right? Like in a pinch. But really what I want are those two words, pastured and certified organic. Inorganic means that it's not allowed to have antibiotics, correct? Correct. Absolutely. That's important qualifier. Thank you. Yeah. And I mean, it's no antibiotics and it does have access to the outdoors is built in. And then there's no forced molting as well. And forced molting is a starvation practice to increase production. So again, I mean, forced molting as well. And forced molting is a starvation practice to increase production.

So again, I mean, forced molting, you're like, what does that mean? You know, it's not too bad. But what it is is starvation to get them to pump out eggs on the brink of death. Wow. That makes me sick. Well, molting is, you know, they lose all their feathers. So they're starved. All their feathers drop out.

They pop out the last of the eggs, like giving it our all, like sunset's coming. And then they're given feed again. So it's just a way to prompt action. And the sad thing too, is like, just from a humane perspective, it shortens their lifespan. So URC organic does do some good things, you know, some good things like no forced molting. Absolutely. The thing is that with pasture, that's all implicit anyways, right? You could, forced molting requires extremely austere, I mean, it requires a totally controlled environment, right, to do that. So, I mean, starving the animals, they can't peck at each other. The other thing too is, you know, they're deep-eeked and there's pretty horrific practices go along with that because they're under so much anxiety, they'll actually peck each other to death and try to eat each other. They are omnivores. In those circumstances, they have to be caged. So

basically, yeah, like there's some, I mean, the worst of the worst, you're going to be getting out of the way absolutely with kind of most of these claims, right? So the forced molting and the battery, you're going to get rid of that by looking for cage-free or free range. That gets rid of like the true horrific stuff. But then if you're starting to look for the notch up with like some significant health benefits, it's pastured and organic. Amazing. Well, I feel like we covered everything and hopefully everyone listening will understand the importance of buying organic and pasture raised eggs now. Look for the peak yolks. Yes. I love it. Anya, thank you so much.

Thank you. This is fun. Thanks again for listening to this week's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. The show is produced and mixed by Drake Peterson and Christopher McCone of Peterson McCone Productions. Hit them up if you guys have any podcast needs. They are amazing. My theme music is by the singer Georgie. Please subscribe, rate, and comment on either Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any major podcast platform.

If you want to find me on IG, my handle is realfoodology. See you guys next week. I try I know that