Shaun Newman Podcast - #498 - Malcolm Saunders

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Malcolm, aka “The Malchemist”, graduated from the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition in 2005. He is a public speaker, author and intuitive chef who specializes in sharing the alchemy of superfo...ods and superherbs. He has an expertise and passion for creating and teaching others how to make energizing and healing foods, including chocolate, elixirs and ferments. He also operates his business owner "the Light Cellar" in Calgary Alberta.   Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastPatreon: www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is late and great. This is Tanner Nadey. This is Donald Best. This is Granny Mackay. This is Steve Holmstrom. This is Viva Fry. You're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.
Starting point is 00:00:11 Happy Friday. Hope everybody's week has been moving along. Let's get to our episode sponsors. First, George and Old World Flooring, their go-to, your go-to crew, for Tile and Calgary and surrounding regions. From a new kitchen backslash to a handicap, accessible shower. We do commercial and residential jobs. new homes or renovations. They want to make sure that by the end of the project,
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Starting point is 00:00:49 www.ow.lted. And of course, George, if you haven't listened to him, go back to episode 4,66, 5, and hear his thoughts. And that's coming out of Old World flooring out of Calgary and he can service the surrounding area. Take back Alberta and is teaming up with Dr. James Lindsay. So one of the things I was just talking back with Drew Weatherhead and David Parker, they were on and I'd had Dr. James Lindsay on. He's coming to Alberta, Monday, October
Starting point is 00:01:22 2nd in Emmington and Tuesday, October 3rd in Calgary. They had both their venues shut down. Then they had Event break, cancel everything. So they've got ticket sales back up and rolling. You can find it all at Taking Backalberta.ca. There you can get tickets and you can go support them. Tickets are $39.99. So I think that's pretty darn affordable. It's a Monday, October 2nd, Tuesday, October 3rd.
Starting point is 00:01:46 And like I've been saying, I plan on being there. Reach out if you're going to be in Emmington or Calgary. And I think there's a group of us meeting up in Calgary for sure, not sure about Emmington just yet. Either way, I'd love to see you guys out there. Silver Gold Bull is North America's premier precious metals dealer with state-of-the-art distribution centers in Calgary, Las Vegas, and they ensure fast, fully insured discrete shipping right to your doorstep. They also offer a diverse set of services, including buyback, wholesale, registered savings, and IRA accounts,
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Starting point is 00:02:59 It's about a half hour walk, depending on how many people show up, maybe an hour just on your feet kind of thing. But it's a half an hour of walking. And we'd love to see all you find folks there. Of course, September 20th is 1 million March for children, trying to give voice to parental rights in school and pull out some of the sexualization in the materials and that type of thing. So my hat's off to ignite distribution for highlighting that.
Starting point is 00:03:28 McGowan professional chartered accountants, Kristen and team, I might as well call them saints or angels because they just deal with me and my ability to really be slow and this and that and drag my feet when it comes down. I swear when we get this ironed out,
Starting point is 00:03:44 it's going to be a load of stress off me and I don't know why I'm such a procrastinator, but when it comes to accounting, bookkeeping, business consulting, training, financial planning, and tax planning, which they all offer, or dealing with a schmuck like me, they're fantastic,
Starting point is 00:03:57 they do it with a smile on their face, and you can find out more about them, McGowan CPA.ca.ca. And then we got rec tech power products for the past 20 years. They've been committed to excellence in the power sports industry. They offer a full lineup,
Starting point is 00:04:11 Canem, Skidu, C-Doo, Spider-Mercary, Evan Rood, Mahindor, Roxor. And you've got to stop in West Side of Lloyd, take a look at their showroom, go bug Ryan, and see what deals they can get going for you. It sounds like they got some cool stuff
Starting point is 00:04:25 coming in here right away. that's going to only be offered in their neck of the woods. So I maybe should, maybe I'll leave you with a cliffhanger for next week so you can wait to see what all the details are. If you want to get them sooner than that, stop into rec tech and find out what special things they got going on in the power sports industry. Of course, they're open Monday through Saturday. They've got a full parts department that can hook you up. And for everything else, go to rectech power products.com, and that'll give you all the info. Now let's get on to that tale of the tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years.
Starting point is 00:05:01 They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol, and chemicals delivering to your farm, commercial or oilfield locations. For more information, visit them at Hancockpetroleum.com. He graduated from the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition in 2005. He's a public speaker, an author, an intuitive chef, who specializes in sharing the alchemy of superfoods and superherbs. He has an expertise and passion for creating and teaching others how to make energizing and healing foods, including chocolate, elixirs, and fernments. He's also known as the Malcolmist
Starting point is 00:05:35 and runs a business, the light seller out of Calgary, Alberta. I'm talking about Malcolm Saunders. So buckle up, here we go. This is Malcolm Saunders, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Malcolm Saunders.
Starting point is 00:06:00 So, sir, first off, thanks for doing this. Absolutely, thank you, Sean. I'm already like, the next time we do this, you're coming to the studio in Lloyd Minster. you're going to bring your bag full of whatever it is that Malcolm carries around, because I'm sure he does. And we're going to have a little bit of fun in person, because I assume you know this just as well as I do.
Starting point is 00:06:20 It's always better in person when you can have these conversations. Either way, I appreciate you. Give me some time this more. Yeah, absolutely. You've been following along your work. Thank you for everything you've been doing. And, yeah, the most recent episode I listened to yours was with Sean Buckleyan. Absolutely amazing.
Starting point is 00:06:37 Yeah, I've got great respect and admiration for that. man and it deepened even more during that conversation you had with him yeah it's um I didn't know who Sean Buckley I shouldn't say I didn't know who he was I'd watched a bit of the NCI and and and certainly I was like oh okay and he'd been suggested and then finally we nailed it down and he came on and I was actually listening again this morning because uh there was a bunch of things I just kind of want to refresh my brain on you know and I'm like listen I'm like holy man is this guy a wealth of information from an interesting perspective you know the lawyer background and everything and and yeah there's a lot there in that interview it
Starting point is 00:07:12 certainly you know I was mentioning before we started that with the phone you know people when you hit something if people really respect somebody or they really disagree with somebody that phone will start beeping at me and after Sean like it was just like beep beep beep beep beep right really lit up the text line people really enjoyed his thoughts and his perspective which leads me to why getting someone such as yourself on with your background to come and give this, you know, I don't know, some days I think I know a little bit. And other days I'm like, I know nothing. And today I'm pretty sure I know nothing. And that's
Starting point is 00:07:49 why I wanted to get you on to give some of your background and some of your thoughts on not only what Sean was talking about, but just from your perspective as a business owner and everything else. So before we get to all that, you got to give me a little bit about Malcolm and and tee up the listener of who you are. And, you know, and we'll see where we go from there. Okay, right on. Well, I'm streaming in from Calgary, Alberta. I was born and raised here, but leaving ever since I could, as I like to say, because the grass is always greener. And it is for a while. One needs to kind of leave their hometown, you know, go travel, learn adventure. And I did that. But yeah, as fate would have it, it would kind of bring me back to Calgary where I've rooted for the last. When you went, when you went for the adventure, where did you go? Oh, all over, actually. It started with just kind of hitchhiking around Alberta. Alberta, BC, and then went to Scotland, England, India, Nepal, throughout the kind of Western states.
Starting point is 00:08:46 And it was a bit of a bit of a pilgrimage. It was kind of originally yoga and meditation inspired, which turned into more kind of like gardening and health and yeah. Were you 18 when you left or were you? 18, that's right. Yeah. And why, why hitchhaking? I'm just, I'm curious.
Starting point is 00:09:06 I got brothers who've traveled for, you know, a year each, and they talk about hitchhiking, like, in Australia and different cultures where it's kind of like, you know, it's just something that you get accustomed to. And we have Uncle Bob out in B.C. He's been a hundred and some odd countries, and he talks about hitchhiking. So it's not foreign to me. But in Canada, I would say, especially today, nobody hitchhikes. Yeah, it just isn't a part of our culture.
Starting point is 00:09:32 So what was it back then that you're like, oh, yeah, I'm just going to start hitchhiking? Yeah, well, I mean, part of it, there was two aspects, but I think it was a deeper part of getting to know myself, exploring the world, and really just putting myself in a place of trust. You know, I had this vision of like just being on the side of road, sticking out my thumb and like, okay, who's going to pick me up? Where am I going to go today? And how's it all going to unfold? Just this adventure of surrender almost. What? I hate to hop in.
Starting point is 00:10:04 But I'm just like, the next time this happens, Malcolm, because it's going to happen again. I can already feel it. You're coming to the studio. So when I talk over here, people are like, try, let them talk. I'm like, I got to know what book you read that gave you that outlook on life. Or was it parents or was it schooling? Something had to have been like, man, I'm just going to see where the day takes me. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:23 Well, there was two influences. There was a lot of, you know, kind of in high school I got into a little bit of Christianity, Eastern religion. I read a book by Paramahansa Yogananda, autobiography Yogi, and many others, like just reading books about saints and sages. You know, I grew up in suburban Northwest Calgary, and, you know, I didn't like it. You know, I love my childhood. I love my parents and everything that they cultivated and created for me, but had this disconnect with, you know, modern society and in the modern world. And I know a lot of people felt that, you know, over the last few years, but I've always felt that. And I felt, you know, powerless to change the world.
Starting point is 00:11:04 So I actually wanted to just kind of run away from it and just like, well, if I can't change the world, I'm just going to get to just look after me and explore and just kind of find out who I am. And, yeah, hitchhiking was a big part of that. It's interesting because, you know, like, I would have never thought a hitchhiking. What year roughly is this? Okay. So this is probably 99. 2000 okay okay so i graduated in 2004 so end end of the the 90s kind of time frame and i remember as a young farm boy stopping in at almost every vehicle broke down trying to help people all over the
Starting point is 00:11:43 town and and and eventually that's it's not lost in our culture anymore certainly people still do heck i was just a lady was on their way to the lloyd dump uh this is like last week i'm talking on the phone and i'm like i look up and she's had her um uh part of garbage had come out. It was actually a mattress, folks. And so we stopped and threw it back in and it wasn't that big a deal. But it almost felt like kind of foreign because I hadn't done it in so long. And yet as a kid, you know, on the farm, that's kind of what you did. Not every day, but you know, you get the point. So you're going to experience this adventure back in the late 90s. I just am trying to frame my mind of when Malcolm's leaving the nest and what he's experiencing.
Starting point is 00:12:24 Sorry, I hate to hop in so many times, but you just got my mind rolling this morning. Yeah, no, absolutely all good. I mean, I grew up, you know, kind of with the expectation, leaving school. I would go to post-secondary. I'd get a, you know, good grades to get a good job, to be well-paid, that kind of thing. And, you know, as a young person, conscientious of their future, you know, I did. I go to, went to music school. So I did two years. I got a jazz music degree. And then after that, what I thought, you know, all I wanted to do was just live, eat, and breathe music, just immerse myself in that world. I got to that and I was like no that's not it so I basically just gave everything away and yeah hit the road and went went traveling and just to kind of find myself and it was a number of years of yeah sitting serving in different like communities meditation centers and yeah met my kind of then to be wife along those travels because every once in a while I have to come back to Calgary to make a little money so I work a job for a month or a month and a half and then I go travel and I go travel and I have to come back to Calgary to make a little money so I work a job for a month or a month and a half and then I go travel traveling again and we did a little adventure to India, Nepal, Scotland, England. We went for six months with 1,200 bucks between us and came home a change. So we did everything on the cheap. But, you know, during that time, my wife had a recurring dream that every single dream. Recurring dream. That every night, she was returning home pregnant. And she didn't tell me that, But that's a dream that did come true.
Starting point is 00:13:58 And after, you know, literally years of meditating, sitting anywhere from four to 14 hours a day, I felt a shift coming, some of the kind of work that I was into, traditions, this idea that, you know, in the past, I kind of used to romanticize the idea of becoming a monk. To me, that was an easy way out of, okay, I don't fit in this world, I don't like this world,
Starting point is 00:14:23 I'll just kind of retreat. and, you know, do the hermit type of thing. But why was that appealing to you? That makes, I'm sorry, I'm just like the, everybody by now knows I'm like, I would love to have a new person in studio, well, as much as I could handle, I guess. And a monk is, I don't know, is probably the complete opposite, right? You come to a place of quiet and you sit internally and you think maybe Sean needs to do bit more of that folks anyways what drew you to that I drew me just the myth the mysticism and and again I
Starting point is 00:15:02 think there was this urge to kind of like you know transcend to almost you know leave the world in that way because I didn't resonate it I didn't necessarily feel at home I felt the most at home in nature I was kind of raised atheist in that sense and ever went to church nature was always our church and that's where I felt the most kind of at home and most connected and then as I and to, you know, different types of spirituality and reading about all these kind of monks and their adventures and I don't know, it just just had an appeal. But as I kind of went down that path, yeah, there was this kind of message coming through and through others that, no, now is about the time to be in the world. And so my thinking changed, especially with the arrival of the
Starting point is 00:15:47 child and really took on this mantra, you know, be in the world to help change the world. It's interesting. I don't know, you know, when you think of adventure, folks. I don't know what comes to mind for you, but monks and adventures doesn't really fit for it's not that it seems, but that's a really cool sentence, I guess, is I'm like, ah, interesting what different people can gravitate towards and what they see adventure in, you know? That's a really cool thought. You know, before we get to, you coming back and your wife, her dream, recurring dream, which she wasn't telling you about, I'm always interested in like, man, traveling is to different cultures, different places, seeing different things.
Starting point is 00:16:29 What did you see that really shaped you along the way? You know, you mentioned meditation for up to 14 hours in a day, which I think most people can't sit still for, you know, 20 minutes, you know. What was it that wherever you went, you know, and kind of guide you for those six months? What was it that really stuck out to you? I don't know. When you think back on it, you're like, man, I don't know. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, India was probably the most intense place I visited. In fact, for a lot of Westerners, an acronym that India stands for, I'll never do India again.
Starting point is 00:17:05 Is it just because of the amount of people? It's everything. It's the like the sheer like, yeah, volume of people, the density, the smells. Oh my gosh, like the smells are just so intense around every corner. The sounds. Yeah. It's unbelievable in India. You just have to go there to experience it to know what it's like. Yeah, the level of poverty, you know, you see death. Like it's in your face. You see, you know, lepers on the street. You see people gang green on their feet.
Starting point is 00:17:39 You see dead bodies floating down a river. You know, burning corpses, burning garbage, along with things like curries and spices. And, you know, like it's a land of real extreme. So you've just given me the extreme of like, you know, never go back, you're kind of thinking. Where's one place, though, you think was, it was hard to leave because it was just like, I don't know, serenity or whatever word you attach to it? What was the place that you're like? I didn't realize there was this type of peace on earth, maybe.
Starting point is 00:18:11 Right. Well, I have a, so there's two places that come to mind. I really, really love BC. Although one thing that traveling, like, still to this day, I just got back. from a trip a few weeks out on the coast visiting friends you know being in the forest like I just love going to BC to for the forest I love the trees I also love northern Scotland as well so my ancestor from Scotland from England I love visiting those places I love like you know there's a real tangible feeling to the depth the history that is there and yet every
Starting point is 00:18:45 time I go anywhere whether it's South America Central America or Europe I know where home is and for now it's it's Calgary. I've got a role here to play, and I love this land as much as I love kind of the novelty of traveling. Home is really important to me, community, you know, having roots, that type of thing. So in your entire travels, just so I'm clear on this, which I've been across our entire country, so I understand what you're saying, but I just want to be clear on this.
Starting point is 00:19:14 The place on earth that gives you the most peace is the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia. Yeah, yeah. Isn't that a wild thought? It is. It's such a trip. Yeah. You know, I think of, I don't know, I think of a couple books that stick out, like The Alchemist.
Starting point is 00:19:34 He goes all across the world and where's the gold or the treasure. Yeah. Right. Right. And I'm like, you see that play out in a lot of people's lives. It's just interesting because I thought for sure you're going to say, I actually don't know what I thought you were going to say, but I just thought you'd have like some random country and this beautiful spot and if you if you can ever get there you need to go no it's
Starting point is 00:19:54 literally your backyard folks i mean for you sit right get to the mountains and and now you're pushing on me because i'm married an american and she's never been into bc yet so i'm like oh yeah and i've been doing a poor job i can just hear grant right now who helped me line this interview up going well now you really need to come back sean anyways yeah there we go for sure yeah well there's something really especially unique about, you know, where Calgary is situated. Like any direction you go outside of the city, you're in a completely different eco zone. You've got the plains and prairies to the east. You've got, you know, the badlands kind of northeast. You can go north up into the boreal forests. We're kind of nestled right in the foothills, the Aspen Parklands, and then
Starting point is 00:20:36 further west, you've got the Rocky Mountains. It's amazing. And it was, it was tough as it all was. the last few years, I had many people, many friends, people in the community that were like, I got to get out of Canada, right? They just saw the deterioration and they wanted to escape. And, you know, I just kept coming back to like, there's nowhere to go, right? And I'm here for the fight. I'm here to build something, you know, more beautiful. As Charles Eisenstein says, the world our heart knows, the more beautiful world our heart knows is possible. Yeah, and I just was talking with another about, you know, in the beginning I didn't know any of you existed, you know, we all thought we were, I don't know, the word everybody uses is island, but certainly alone. And the more people I interview and talk to, I'm like, man, there is a lot of us.
Starting point is 00:21:32 Like, I didn't. And it's only growing. It's only getting bigger. It's not getting smaller. And like people aren't falling off of this. They're coming towards it. So, yeah, I share your thoughts. So you come back, I think you said 1999, correct?
Starting point is 00:21:47 Roughly? Yeah, I mean, that's when the travel started. It was probably more above 2003. Yeah, my daughter was born in 2004. So that's kind of when we came back with, you know, BC dreaming in that sense. So like, oh, well, maybe go to BC, go to the interior, start a farm, you know, that type of thing. but you know my kind of career path as it were had changed from you know music to well i'll just be a wandering homeless you know meditating hitchhiking hippie uh to men and have known a business
Starting point is 00:22:28 card hey but uh yeah then there did always i tell you what you know uh one of the most interesting people would have a business card like that right a wandering homeless hippie you know it's like that guy's got some stories you know I could probably frame the episode as that and people would be like well what's this guy going to say you know yeah very cool
Starting point is 00:22:49 and so since I was 16 there was a real threat that has followed throughout even still to today and it came out of a kind of a single decision I'd made you know I was it was a Tuesday afternoon unlike any other it was coming home from school
Starting point is 00:23:05 mom was preparing supper she's Scottish you know and she fed my brother and I you know, traditional foods, meat, potatoes, but you know, him and I, we loved junk food. We love fast food, processed food, that type of thing. So she's preparing food for us. I could smell the chocolate chip cookies cooling on the counter. And I was like, a little bit nervous. I had this announcement to make.
Starting point is 00:23:24 I says, mom, I'm going to become a vegetarian. She says, well, you're still going to eat this supper, aren't you? And it ended up turning a bit more of a coming of age speech. She was going through a divorce at the time. And she says, you know, Malcolm, I support you, but I can't help you. And I was on my own. And I literally went from eating overnight meat, potatoes and junk food to just potatoes and junk food. And it did not go so well.
Starting point is 00:23:51 I had nobody was in for. It was just born out of kind of more environmental aspirations. I mentioned kind of my connection to nature, to the trees, to the forest. And as you can, you know, there's all the documentaries and books out today. They're like, oh, are you going to become a vegetarian to help save the world? And it's like, okay, you know, I'm going to do it. That was the beginning of my, you know, first awareness that, okay, there's something more to food than just whatever is quick, easy, and taste good. Because my health went rapidly downhill.
Starting point is 00:24:20 I started having blood sugar issues. I was tired all the time. And I was like, okay, I got to figure out this out and how to feed myself. And I first got into whole foods. And my culinary skills, unlike most people, especially at that age, I knew how to make Pop-Tarts, grilled cheese and microwave pizza. Great college diet. Right? And so, you know, okay, I'm going to have to learn how to feed myself, getting in whole foods.
Starting point is 00:24:48 I got into, you know, preparing things from scratch. And for a number of years, I didn't eat anything that I personally had not prepared from scratch or someone I knew had made from scratch. I literally didn't even eat out at restaurants. And it was a massive learning curve, and it took me a long, long, long time. And it was almost 15 years. I tried every iteration of vegetarian from a philosophical perspective that turned into a health perspective that was kind of backed by this pseudo-spiritual ideas. And now I'm no longer vegetarian, spoiler litter.
Starting point is 00:25:23 We can get into that journey if you want or why or why not, but I sum it up into one sentence. It's not the cow, it's how. So everything you hear about vegetarianism and how it's good for X, Y, and Z, it's only half the story. We're omnivores and we thrive best, you know, when animal foods of different varieties and high quality is included in our diet. And but that's what started to be on the path. And so, you know, kind of at 23, 24, I was at this crossroads of, you know, coming back into society looking, okay, how do I be a provider?
Starting point is 00:26:00 And I was like, do I go to baking school? Because I had this love of like sugar, basically. To say I was a vegetarian is not quite right. I was more of a carbotarian. It was, you know, cookies, breads, pasta, that type of thing, like, just trying to get enough energy. So I was considering baking or I was like, or I go to nutrition school. And I did like a 10-month kind of nutrition degree, which was just solidifying a lot of what I'd kind of been learning on my own journey and solidified a career path, like, this is the way I'm going to go.
Starting point is 00:26:29 But I knew I didn't want to do, you know, one-on-one, like consults in that sense. I love making food, preparing food. And so, you know, after a few more kind of learning experiences and journeys, came back to Calgary and started teaching classes. I started teaching people how to, you know, ferment their own food, how to make chocolate, healthy chocolate from scratch. And then my business, Lightseller, was born out of that. And its real mission is extension of my own path, my own journey,
Starting point is 00:26:57 which is to help people find and learn how to craft their own food in medicine. My brain is like, okay, which way do I go with this? because like you just gave me, oh man, four hours worth of material, you know, like, I'm like, I find all of that so fascinating. As a guy who just, you know, we just had a billet kid move into our house, 15-year-old kid. Right. And Mel and my wife and I, like, we're okay cooks, okay. But when you have somebody move in and you realize, okay, I need to cook every day.
Starting point is 00:27:31 This is the most I've cooked in my entire life. And I'm realizing, I actually have that bad of a cook. they may not think that but I think I'm like I'm actually pulling some things together so I'm going okay I'm really curious about going from vegetarian to realizing I'm
Starting point is 00:27:50 it's you know there's going to be some meat in the diet because to me that's like a huge mind shift I would say and a huge like realization of like oh because and most of us well we get hung up on that or we struggle with that etc etc etc
Starting point is 00:28:05 and in today's world we really get set up on that but I don't know the thing the thing that the next thing I'm thinking is man when it comes to food I want to understand everything there is to know about food and finally I didn't bring you on not to talk about the things that are happening on like the natural side of things with our government and everything else as a business owner and what that could mean so I'm like okay Malcolm you got to help me here for once because I'm like I'm like I got lots of time I think but I'm I'm like, I don't know if we can, I don't want to rush you through anything.
Starting point is 00:28:38 And so if you're like, oh, no, we can talk about all that. Then let's begin with your journey because I'm really fascinated by that. But I really want to know the power of food as well. Yeah, absolutely. Let's dive in. So maybe we can, yeah, the vegetarian thing, like I said, started with a kind of environmental aspirations. Sure. There's tons.
Starting point is 00:29:00 and I'm going to call it that out there right now. I mean, maybe it's not all propaganda. A lot of it is just misbelief, misinformation. You get this idea that, you know, sure, great. Like we can live off just, you know, plants, just vegetables. They're supposedly the most healthiest thing for us. But, you know, the kind of the modern narrative, the consensus narrative around food and nutrition has always been wrong, right?
Starting point is 00:29:26 at least in modern industrialized societies, traditional societies, they knew what to eat. They weren't confused. And if they got it wrong, they didn't survive. So the only way they had to find a diet that produced health and allowed them to successfully reproduce generation after generation. And it's only in our privilege, modern industrialized society where we literally have access to any food we want, 24-7, 365, it's remarkable. However, in that access, in that kind of volume of quantity,
Starting point is 00:30:07 the quality has really, really, really gone down. So, you know, I started with this idea, this belief that, you know, just to help save the world, okay, I'm going to become a vegetarian. That didn't help my health. I was like, well, I've got to figure out how to do this successfully. And, you know, whole foods, all that kind of stuff. It wasn't just vegetarian. I went vegan.
Starting point is 00:30:26 I went raw vegan. I think I was on my way to becoming a breatharian. Because you go down the rabbit hole far enough, like everything that we eat, you know, in some way causes some sort of harm or suffering or, you know, whatever. And at some point, there was, yeah, just a reality that I couldn't deny. You talk about it was tough. It was extreme in the sense of overcoming, you know, so many years of my own belief. leaf systems that I had built up.
Starting point is 00:30:56 Now that this is the way, you know, I'm sure you've met vegetarians and vegans. It's a very righteous kind of path. Like I was the type of guy that would wear a t-shirt that says milk is murder and make you feel bad about their breakfast you just ate. Not a good way to make friends or even, you know, influence people in that regard.
Starting point is 00:31:13 But I had to be honest, you know, I'd look in the mirror and I didn't see health. Like that wasn't the reflection that I was getting back. And I would start to have dreams, you know, that I needed to begin to eat meat. I would be listening to a podcast, and suddenly the conversation would turn and the person I'm listening to talks about
Starting point is 00:31:32 how they just went through this transition from their vegetarian back to eating meat. And so I just couldn't deny it anymore. Despite, again, having built up such a solid belief system, it was really built into my identity, like who I was, not only in a personal level, but even from a business perspective, I was starting to kind of build a persona and a brand,
Starting point is 00:31:53 around, you know, that way of eating. And, you know, fortunately, I was still early enough in my days and fortunately had enough kind of humility to go, you know what, I was wrong. And so what I did is when I first kind of was open and accepted that maybe what I'm doing is not quite right. Because it was always like, oh, well, if I just add this or if I just cleanse a little more,
Starting point is 00:32:14 if I do a little bit more at this, then I can, you know, it'll work out right. And so I was like, all right, I'm just gonna like put all that aside, all my belief systems. and just try it, right? I tell people, you know, meat rots in your gut, it'll make you unhealthy, da, da, da, da. It's like, well, let me experience that.
Starting point is 00:32:31 Let me just eat that. And so that was coming from literally, like, raw vegan for more than two years. I didn't cook any foods. I would just eat kind of raw plant matter all the way from salads to smoothies to, you name it. I know this must sound really crazy and extreme to you, but. It doesn't sound crazy. I'm fascinated.
Starting point is 00:32:52 Yeah. How long in total did you not eat meat? It was completely out of your diet. So almost 15 years. Okay. Yeah. Except for the odd exception. So one time we were in kind of, we're in Rajasthan in India, desert, like really remote.
Starting point is 00:33:15 And we were invited into this family's home, which was literally just a hot dirt floor. and there was a festival going on and they wanted to honor us as guests so they actually slaughtered one of their goats and you know made a stew with it and my wife didn't do it but i did just kind of you know just accepting and whatever uh so that was the one time i'd had it and then there was another time you know this is the thing the vegetarian is like you're you're going against your own biology on such a kind of a hardcore level occasionally every once in a while you just kind of break down so there was another time where i experienced fermented and I'd eaten like a little bit of ostrich meat. But basically for the only twice, you know, in those like almost 15 years.
Starting point is 00:33:59 So yeah, I just had to kind of put everything aside and I went out. There was there was two, two experiences. So one was the first was eating sushi. So I was like, okay, it's raw, it's wild. I'm going to eat shishimi just like went to a restaurant, you know, had the little pieces of salmon and ate it. And it like it literally just dissolved into my body. It was the most incredible experience.
Starting point is 00:34:27 I felt so much energy. I felt like I could like swim up water. And we were leaving this sushi restaurant. And, you know, I say to my wife, I'm like, I need some more, you know. But you can't just like leave a restaurant or like turn right back around after you've paid and like order some more. So we went down the road to another sushi restaurant and had some more shishimi. And then another time I'd eaten raw bison, liver. And this is again, this is like had meat meat in 15 years and I was like literally high
Starting point is 00:34:58 for for two weeks just just with energy and clarity. So I just could not deny anymore that this is really truly what my body needed at this stage. And this is quite a number of years on now. I mean, but my wife still jokes. She's like, you don't really eat vegetables anymore, do you? I'm like, nope. So I would definitely say I eat more of an animal base. diet right now it's definitely not carnivore it's not you know exclusive you know it's it's middle paths like we're omnivores it turns out that we actually do only eat four food groups as humans you know but it's not the ones we learned in school it's not the Canada food guide like what an abysmal failure that
Starting point is 00:35:40 is you know to to us as a society I mean you get you know a little bit of training in grade two around Canada food guide not to say I do I think it should be government's job to educate ourselves, but we're totally lost as a society. And the only, you know, reliably bad cultural diet, which, you know, if anybody wants the diseases of the day, you know, picket, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, these kinds of things, it's not diet based exclusively, but many of these are huge contributing factors of diet and lifestyle. The only reliably bad diet is the standard American diet, the modern Western industrialized diet, you know, if you, you, you want your pick of the top, you know, conditions of the day, just eat that diet.
Starting point is 00:36:25 No problem. But if we go back to traditional diets, how people used to eat throughout time all around the world, turns out there's actually only four food groups. And if we eat from those four food groups, we can achieve health. And it's funny. You know, it's kind of very analogous to, you know, my own, like, as you mentioned, right, it's like the leaving to only come back to where you started. you know, it's a little bit like that for me, having gone so far, so long, so extreme to kind of
Starting point is 00:36:54 coming back to just simplicity, right? Even though I have a nutrition degree, I don't call myself a nutritionist. I don't think food and nutrition should be that complicated. And yet, unfortunately, it is. We can get into these rabbit holes. We can get misled. We can get misinformed. But our biology will tell us.
Starting point is 00:37:12 And I'm a really, really big fan of intuitive eating, being your own nutritionist, being your own herbalist, following your gut more than nutrition trends. And if we want to get into the four food groups, what those are, that's plants, that's animals, that's bacteria, and that's fungi. And if you can think of any food that humans eat, not what Michael Paulin, New York Times food writer would describe as edible food-like substances, but any food that you consume that's outside of those four food groups, which we can consider almost like kingdoms. I know technically there's six different kingdoms, but we can group those into four plants, animals, bacteria, fungi.
Starting point is 00:37:51 If you can think of anything outside of that, I'm open, but pretty much anything that is a good, whole natural nourishing food comes from one of those four kingdoms. And that every single culture around the world eats from those four kingdoms. And what I love about it isn't tell you what to eat, when to eat, or how much to eat, because that's a personal journey. It changes every day, doesn't it? changes every month with every season, with every year. And, you know, to have that kind of foundation and be able to kind of intuitively move season to season year to year, you know, with your own body and having that, what I call, you know, food intelligence. It's a great feeling after so many years of not having health, to be in a place of like, yeah, I got this. And it's actually pretty
Starting point is 00:38:37 pretty simple and I love it. It's a it's a good journey. I have never heard that before and I might be showing more of my colors folks, but I'd never heard of those four food groups before. Well, most haven't. Yeah, it's just a kind of an interesting way to put it. I mean, if we break it down, okay, what are plants? Well, that's obviously your nuts, your seeds, your grains, your fruits, your vegetables, but it also includes, you know, leaves and flowers and roots and barks and pollens and algies and everything. I mean, one thing that the modern industrialized diet has done has really reduced the diversity of foods, both plant foods and animal foods and certainly bacterial and fungal foods that we consume.
Starting point is 00:39:17 So when I introduce these, I say, you know, like get into each, explore it, expand the diversity that you consume from each of these kingdoms. And probably one of the best things that, you know, about becoming a vegetarian was that I really, like after I got honest of like, you know what, I'm not really eating like plant foods. Like I'm eating grains. Like I'm not really truly a vegetarian. It forced me to kind of really expand what I was consuming from that kingdom. And I would say maybe the most important thing that I, that we as humans can get from the plant kingdom is plant medicine, right?
Starting point is 00:39:53 The idea of herbalism, which a friend of mine describes is nothing more than the institutionalization of wild plant intuition. every single culture around the world, right? It's always been the people's medicine and plant medicine, herbal medicine. So not necessarily as a food stores, but as a way to, yeah, bring in certain compounds to kind of, yeah, assist the body in health and in healing. You know, it's just, it's another thing that I'm like, oh, man, like, I don't know how many different things you wish schools would take. You're like, why don't we teach that? And when you get talking about, you know, like as you get older and you see all the processed foods and different things, you're like, that's not good. Well, that's not good.
Starting point is 00:40:42 And I don't have the mind that can see it like you. I'm just like, you know, I always wonder if I had a time machine, what would you go back and change? And I'm, you know, I got to live over in Finland for a bit and people asked from time to time, what was it like? And I'm like, it was really cool about it. is there was I think one McDonald's in the entire town I lived and it was the size of for people in this area of Vermilion so I don't know 10,000 people something like that but like you come to Vermillion and I think they got I don't quote me for folks they got an A&W a McDonald's a Tim Horton's I'm sure they're missing a subway and you know we go on you come
Starting point is 00:41:19 to Lloyd Minster and it's like every 10 feet and we run off this diet of like man like you can you can do it when you're a university kid, you get older and you start to realize your body just does not like it. Yeah. You know, and so one of the cool things, I guess, from getting removed from our culture and going somewhere else where even their fast food was like, you know, pizza that was like hand tossed and things like that. You're like, it's not quite the same.
Starting point is 00:41:45 It's just, it's not quite the same. And so it's interesting to hear, you know, when you're talking about all these different things, like you must look at people and go. Oh, or look at the school system and go, oh, man, right? Because one of the things in our school systems is we've been taught since, you know, I was like knee high, the five food groups, six food groups. Five food groups? Now I'm now I'm spacing on if it's five or six. They keep changing.
Starting point is 00:42:14 They keep changing. Canter food diet keeps evolving or she devolving. Yeah, we have no idea. And, you know, it's one of those things. Should it be the role of the government? Should it be the role of the school system? I personally don't think so. You know, yeah, I think it comes back to individuals, which is the family, which is tradition, the culture.
Starting point is 00:42:36 But here we are, you know, we've got to kind of navigate our way out of this mess. And I got there through kind of a health crisis that was self-induced in that way. Other people get there from, you know, years of, you know, living not in alignment in accordance with, kind of natural laws and their body and then it's a wake-up call. Others never get it. I'm just going to bring out a book here, which is amazing. Actually, no, shoot, it's downstairs, but it's called, it's the greatest nutrition book that no one's ever read.
Starting point is 00:43:13 Which is called? Yeah, it's called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. And it's by a man named Weston A. Price. and why it's one of the greatest books is the information that's in it and all this spin-off from there. So there's a group called the Westonate Price Foundation. It was founded by a woman named Sally Fallon. She's written a number of books, and so many people have referencing his work. And it's so fascinating in the sense that, so he was a dentist back at the turn of the last century, early 19-
Starting point is 00:43:42 I've heard his name lots. Yes, okay. Sorry, carry on. I'm just like, where have I heard this name? Dentist, now it's all coming to me. Carry on. Totally. And you've probably heard that phrase, you know, never lift a, never look a gift horse in the mouth because you can tell so much about the health of an animal, also, i.e. a human, by looking at their mouth. And yet, you know, how many of us, like myself included, like mouthful of cavities as a kid, right? Crowding, all this kinds of stuff. I mean, my background is British, right? We're not known for our beautiful. a great set of teeth.
Starting point is 00:44:15 Yeah. And it's a result of our overall health. It's a reflection of. And so, you know, as a dentist, he at that unique time in history, just when, you know, a lot of remote places around the world were opening up, he actually went and visited indigenous tribes around the world. And by indigenous, you know, that term actually means just to be of a place. And so, yes, he went to, you know, northern Canada, he went to the depths of Scotland, he went to Africa, he went to Switzerland. And he documented all these tribes where modern processed foods were just beginning to show up, right, because of road access, because of, you know, how the world was changing. And they went, some of the people at that time were switching to modern industrialized foods.
Starting point is 00:45:08 So refined grains, you know, canned products, this type of thing. And moving away from their traditional diets. And he started looking and noticing quite dramatically. And the whole book is just full of like really intense pictures of, you know, overcrowding, you know, cavities. Whereas the people on traditional diets had had beautiful teeth, you know, like, you know, nice arches, wide jaws. And just kind of the strength, the resilience of these people was, was, was my own. amazing. And he's like, you know, what's going on? What's the difference? And yeah, he broke it down into characteristics of every single traditional diet around the world. What was common to all
Starting point is 00:45:50 of them that kept them in such good health? And then conversely, you know, what did these new modern processed foods have or not have in them that were causing such damaging effects? So incredible, huge amount of research in there. That's absolutely fascinating. You know, from where you sit, you know, and you look at everyone's traditional, you know, now traditional way to eat and operate and everything else, you must have like your go-to, like, here's a couple pieces of advice. If you could change it, and it's not that hard to change, and here it is, boom, boom. Yeah, absolutely. What would you say to folks? Yeah, okay.
Starting point is 00:46:33 So I think as a foundation, fermented foods, every single culture around the world, you know, you. makes and consumes its own live culture ferments, which is one of the things that was kind of, you know, pushed out of modern food processing because it's bacteria. Not only do we have wrong think around bacteria, right? It's always like the germ, we've got to kill, we've got to sterilize, we've got to pasteurize, you know, even just for things like shelf life, right? Industrialized foods, you know, preservation. One of the foundational forms of preservation was to ferment.
Starting point is 00:47:08 There was a real function to that. But with the advent of refrigeration, the advent of canning, the advent of, you know, trucking and all our kind of food routes that we have, that brings us access, well, why do we need to ferment, right? It's just going to maybe cause spoilage or people, you know, whatever. There's all these reasons that we stopped fermenting on mass. Now, obviously, a lot of things have continued. And fortunately now there's this fermentation revival where it's really taking more of a center stage,
Starting point is 00:47:38 like, you know, the artisan, the craft ferments that are coming out all the way from, you know, live culture sauerkrauts to raw milk cheeses to, you know, kombuches, that type of thing. But absolutely essential and foundational because, you know, we are a community of organisms. We're actually more bacteria than we are human cells. So it's kind of on two sides, you know, stop doing the things that, you know, harm your microbiome all the way from, you know, chemicals to hand sanitizers to, you know, getting chlorine out of the water, that type of thing, antibiotics, and then beginning to bring those good probiotic foods into one's diet to help with digestion, help with immunity. There's actually, again, spin off from that West Ender Price Research. There's a book called Gaps, The Gut and Psychology Syndrome, this woman Natasha Campbell-McBride. but she has a protocol for what she calls healing and sealing the gut, where she will reverse things
Starting point is 00:48:37 like ADHD, dyslexia, even schizophrenia. We know there's this gut brain connection. So it goes beyond just digestion and immunity. And, you know, it can be as simple for a lot of people. Change nothing. I mean, I've gone through such an extreme path with my food. You know, I'm way more into adding in and upgrading. So it's like, great, if chickens for dinner, You know, like source the best, you know, local, heirloom, organic chicken that you can, right? And then start adding in. Okay, put a little sourcrout or put a little like live culture ferment, you know, on the side of the plate. What is what is the, what is live culture permit?
Starting point is 00:49:18 Yeah, okay, great question. I don't know if it's a great question or not. I'm just like, I have no idea what you're talking about right now. You're so far above my head. I'm like, okay. Yeah, all right. Well, maybe a good example is pickles. So I teach people how to ferment their own food, and I'll often get into conversations around pickles, you know, to create pickles out of different types of vegetables.
Starting point is 00:49:40 And most people know like dill pickles with cucumbers. And, you know, one way to make them, which is not right or wrong, it's just one way is to put them into vinegar, you know, add your spices, little salt, little sugar, and then you heat can it. And you've got some nice pickles. Well, a more kind of ancient, traditional way of making it would be to use bacteria, living bacteria. You've heard the term possibly that you find in like the probiotic capsules, yogurts, like lactobacillus, acidophilus, just as one species that has kind of been known. Like how you can rattle that off. That's great. That's great.
Starting point is 00:50:18 That's a great name. Carry on. So these bacteria, just by adding cucumbers in our example, to water with salt, you create. create the right conditions for those bacteria, good bacteria, the probiotics, to grow to thrive, they will naturally acidify those cucumbers and turn them into pickles. And the benefit is that you've got these living bacteria, these probiotics, with that food. And Joseph McCola, he's done some studies where he says that, you know, in a tablespoon of sauerkraut, you'll have, you know, easily, you know, an entire bottle worth of probiotic
Starting point is 00:50:55 pills, you know, the equivalent in bacteria. But yet, it costs you far less. It's in a food source. Yeah. You know, I can hear Dale Wilker out in Vermeer, BC, if I recall, Dale, going, yes, I already talked to you about some of this, and my brain's going, oh boy, this is like, I feel like I'm on a bullet train now trying to keep up here, folks. You know, I was having dinner with Grant and Kathleen when I was out there, and they,
Starting point is 00:51:24 he was, he pushed me to have some sour cream. And I'm like, man, sourcrow. I don't need to have sauerkraut to it. I'm like, you know what? Good farm kid, I'll try anything. So I had some sauerkraut. I'm like, oh, yeah, it isn't that bad. I don't know why I fought it so much.
Starting point is 00:51:36 But I didn't ask why. And you just laid it out why sauerkraut should be added to everyone's diet essentially. Yeah. Well, there's lots more reasons. You know, like these probotic bacteria, not only are part of our body, our ecology, essential for digestion. They'll actually help predigest food. So I don't know if you know many people that maybe have a dairy sensitivity or they're like,
Starting point is 00:52:01 oh, I've got a gluten, I can't eat gluten, this kind of a thing. Well, it's not the problem of the dairy. It's not the problem of the gluten. It's more likely the form that we're consuming it in. So dairy has been a kind of a healthful food of people for millennia. But in our modern society, what we do is we pasteurize it. homogenize it. There are other factors in terms of breeds and also like what we're feeding them, how we're taking care of them. But in an ideal scenario, like raw milk or fermented milk in the
Starting point is 00:52:35 case of all the way from, you know, sour creams to cheeses to clavours to yogurts, you name it, somebody would be like, oh, I can't drink milk, but yeah, I can eat cheese or, you know, like yogurt. It's predigested. So there's enzymes in that bacteria that will break that food down for us that makes it more digestible. Not only that, they actually, add more nutrition. So there's, as an example, there's more vitamin C in sauerkraut than there is in cabbage. So they transform the food, make it more digestible, actually make it more nutritious. So for the folks that are listening then, that have, you know,
Starting point is 00:53:12 all the different things they can eat for all their different reasons, what you're saying is, is if they actually look into this a little deeper, there's probably things they could do, which I think all of us realize, but sometimes we get a little bogged down. I'm like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. But what you're saying is there's actually avenues where you could all, you could fix some of your gut problems, essentially.
Starting point is 00:53:36 Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Not just gut, but, you know, health, like bone, joint, as we even talked about, even kind of mental, psychological, that we might necessarily connect with, you know, physical health or eating. So these microorganisms, you know, your microbiome, they produce. serotonic, right? So they can help uplift your mood. You know, depression can be a result of
Starting point is 00:53:59 gut issues. You know, it's one of the things that, um, on this side, uh, you know, I, I love messing with my body, you know, so like, uh, because you can see, only you can see it because you're the one doing it, right? And you have to mentally work through it because, you know, like you're, you're torturing yourself with different things. And so one of the things when we did the carnivore diet, me and my brother, only did it for a short period. one of the things is we added liver because we'd heard that liver is a source of all this different things plus people on carnival or diet say you ever need an energy boost just eat liver so to hear you talk about the bison and eating the liver and being like holy dinah was i jacked yeah like liver i couldn't believe it how like you know who needed coffee or or if you know my my mother is shout out to my mom she she always uh loves a bottle of coke dad always swore by a bottle of coke when he drove truck because he's you know my mother is shout out to my mom she she always uh loves a bottle of coke dad always swore by a bottle of coke when he drove truck because he He's like, I don't know what they put in that thing, but you can't fall asleep on it. And it's different than, let's say, Pepsi are the different versions.
Starting point is 00:55:00 They're like, bottle of Coke, and you will drive through the night. And I'm like, now I'm like, I don't know, chew on some liver. And I tell you what, you'll drive through the night because I don't know what's, you know, I don't know the scientific breakdown of a liver. But experiencing that firsthand is like, nobody can tell me different. It's like, I've been there. So when you bring it up, I'm like, if you haven't, you know, because now when I was a kid, I don't know about you, Malcolm.
Starting point is 00:55:26 But as a kid, we used to go to my grandmas, and liver would be liver and onions, and you're like, oh, as a kid is just, even now, the texture, it's just like, I don't know. I don't know. But I understand by messing around with some of the things in my body, you can, you're like, oh, but I felt pretty dang good on that, and I better write that down. Totally.
Starting point is 00:55:47 Well, this is the idea of intuitive eating. Like, forget this mumbo-jamo, like nutrition, you know, science or whatever that comes out. It's like, how do you feel? What do you experience? And, you know, like you said, liver and onions, right? How many people had grandparents or whatever, right? It was a traditional food. And my father ate a little bit and he enjoyed it, but my mother didn't.
Starting point is 00:56:08 So my brother and I never saw it, never touched it. She didn't prepare it. We missed out on that. And so now I'm kind of like, oh, yeah, I've got to get into this. So Weston A Price, he says, every single culture around the world prized the organs. The organ mate. Yeah. Whereas in our modern world, we're like, yeah, we don't like that.
Starting point is 00:56:26 And part of it, you know, the shift was in the, in, even for myself, traveling to, you know, South America, for instance, there's a lot of traditional foods like maca or quinoa or whatever that, you know, you and I might hear about like, they're on trend. They're really like revered, this kind of thing. You go to South America and they're like, oh, no, we don't eat that because that's considered more like peasant food. They want to kind of, you know, progress. They want to eat modern foods. They want to eat chips and Coke and this kind of thing. Otherwise, you're seen as like backwards if you eat traditional diets. There's a little bit of that too, like, oh, we don't need to eat the awful, as they call it, the off fall.
Starting point is 00:57:06 We can eat steaks. We can eat these types of things, which are considered, you know, more of progress and wealth and this and that. So, you know, for the longest time, all these organ meats were off the plate. But now there's a resurgence of like, whoa, this is where the good stuff is at, which is what people knew for sure. It's kind of funny that somehow eating like part in the French, but eating like shit has been prized of like you're advanced. When where we're sitting today, we're all like, okay, I know something's wrong. And I know that it comes from food, a good chunk of what's going on with me. And certainly McDonald's, I understand, isn't great.
Starting point is 00:57:48 but like there's like I don't know how many fad diets out there I can't even begin to count them all off and it's been going on since I was well I don't know I remember coming at a high school and and you know as an athlete I still laugh about this a little bit but at the time my body frame is I'm this short stocky guy you know I love to look like Brad Pitt but folks I'm just not there I in fairness to Brad Pitt I don't think too many people are but you come out and you're like all right well maybe I'll try this diet or that diet and I hear people on diets I'm like eventually you just got to take that
Starting point is 00:58:24 well for me anyways I just got to kind of throw that in the garbage because I want like a healthy lifestyle I want to live life I want to enjoy some things yeah but in saying all that I'm listening and I'm like oh man I got a lot to learn when it comes to the the side of food and making it not only nutritional like to where you know you bring up the sauerkraut which I would have never really thought about. But to where you can cook food and add some of those things in and make it still like taste good. Because young kids are funny.
Starting point is 00:58:56 They look at things and they're like, screw you, I'm not even that. My youngest is first day of pre-K today. And last night, we made something that, you know, just ground beef and a couple other things. I thought it looked pretty good. I thought it tasted really good. He looked at it, went, ugh. And I'm like, no, you've got to try one little bite. And so he puts it on his tongue, spits it out, and didn't eat the rest of the night.
Starting point is 00:59:19 I'm like, wow, good on you, kid. I'm not, I wish you would eat it. But I'm like, most of us will suffer through just about anything to have a meal in our belly. Here's this kid that's just like, no chance. So once again, I'm a little bit of a, I look at it and I'm like, how do you get food to be nutritional and taste good so that not only the picky of us, but certainly the kids will enjoy it and want to eat it, you know? Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, there's two elements to that. There's, there's kind of the, the art form of just kind of relearning, re-training our palate. And, you know, honestly, if you start them young, like kids will, like my kids, like I've got two, one that's almost 19, another one that's four. And yeah, the four-year-old, like, ever since, like, he was young as an infant, like, we started to feed him, you know, cod liver oil, like, give him little bits of liver. Like, it's amazing, you know, the palate of a young child and what they're open to. And I think the earlier we can start, the better. I even came across a study one time that said, you know, the introduction of sour,
Starting point is 01:00:23 as early as you can do it for a child, we'll have, they'll crave less sugar and sweet later in life. You know, we really need to kind of broaden our palate, like bitter. You know, who really eats bitter? You know, nobody. It's sweet. It's salty. It's fatty. There's certain things that we kind of gravitate towards and we get in these habits.
Starting point is 01:00:44 and I think, you know, it's retraining the palate. It's getting an acquired taste. And, you know, it was a little while ago now, but, you know, in my effort to really integrate organs into my diet, you know, for a whole month, I was like, all right, I'm just going to eat organs every single day. And the very first time, because I talk about them like, oh, they're so great, they're so wonderful.
Starting point is 01:01:06 But again, if I was honest, it's like, I don't really actually eat enough as I should. And I don't like the taste. So I just kind of, you know, made it a challenge. And the first night I cooked it up and my wife's looking at me, she's like, you're not enjoying that, are you? I'm like, no, but I'm going to do it.
Starting point is 01:01:21 And so there was a bit of skill that needed to come of like, well, how do you cook this stuff? Like I was vegetarian, no, I've never cooked liver. So there's a bit of skill in terms of learning that, but there was also just that palette of just adjusting. Like, okay, one of the best things you mentioned about ground beef is nowadays you can actually get ground beef with an organ blend. And it can be percent.
Starting point is 01:01:43 Well, that's exactly where my head went, was you get it blended in because some organs, you're just like, I don't know. Yeah, I joke about this. Showed it to Dean Amundrew because when I used to work in the outfield, I'd go out to Serafina, which is no longer they were bought out. But once again, he was in the control room and he'd cook for me all the time. He loved cooking. So he fed me like, you know, moose tongue and random things. And I'd be like, normally I'd never try this, but I'm not going to let Dean down. I'm going to try it.
Starting point is 01:02:12 And it's pretty crazy. When you got a good cook, they can make a lot of things taste where you're like, huh. And the one that always comes to mind as a kid and getting some city slickers out is always funny when they realize what they're eating. But prairie oysters, right? Right. You know, and if you don't know that, go look it up. But I remember as a kid trying my first prairie oyster and then being told what it was. And I was like, oh, but it actually tasted pretty good.
Starting point is 01:02:39 Like, I don't know, right? Oh, totally. And, you know, maybe not quite the same level as liver, but man. Correct. Yeah. I'm not trying to put it on the same level as liver whatsoever. Just a fond memory of the prairie oysters. I couldn't tell you the last time I had one, but it used to be a thing. Anyways, it's a long story, but as a kid, we were exposed to a lot, I guess. Yeah. And I think you're more unique because you were living in more of a rural community. Correct me if I'm wrong, you know, but it's, little bit different than me like deep urbanite in Calgary.
Starting point is 01:03:16 Well fast forward then, you know, to today with with, you know, like Sean Buckley, we were talking about it right at the hop, you know, um, there's a lot of things going on in Canada specifically to try and penalize all the, you know, access to all these different maybe not foods, but certainly health products. etc you have a business you know and I don't know I I don't know I'm curious your thoughts on it because up until Sean Buckley I would say I knew I knew a little more than zero for sure but I was surprised at how little I knew and how little I knew you know I'm always surprised at how long the fight has been going on you know you assume it's just been
Starting point is 01:04:02 overnight they want to do it but this has been a long time in the making and it's rearing its ugly head all over again. So I'm just curious, Malcolm, your thoughts, you know, all your travels, your background, everything. Yeah. And the history goes back even longer, right? You know, today we have the government, you know, before it used to be the church in terms of a lot of traditional cultures and their diets or their medicine practices, you know,
Starting point is 01:04:31 like that needed to be eradicated. It was kind of seen as a threat. So, yeah, the, you know, from natural health, I'm going to, I'm going to pulling on that one, natural health products were seen as a threat to the church. Yeah, yeah, for sure, because they didn't understand it. It would be kind of grouped in with like, you know, pagan mysticism, like the witches, you know, what are they doing? But what is a witch, right?
Starting point is 01:04:57 It was somebody that was, you know, a little bit closer to nature that, you know, maybe they weren't throwing eye of newt and this and that and to, you know, into the pot, there was that potential for healing. There was the potential for, you know, a relationship with the land. And I think at that time it was seen as a threat. And then as modern medicine got established, yeah, there was kind of a conflict and a threat between that and the shift away from botanicals to, I mean, most of modern medicine and gets its kind of source from, obviously from nature,
Starting point is 01:05:36 but it's all about kind of taking compounds and just shifting it so they can patent it, making it unique novel better than, you know, what you can just find in the woods, for example. Actually, I was having this conversation, I forget who was that, maybe it was Chuck Pradnik. Chuck can remind me, I think it was before we got on the podcast. We were talking about weed or cannabis or whatever.
Starting point is 01:05:57 Anyways, and we got talking about it and he's like, today's weed is so different than what would have been around, let alone 10 years ago, 100 years ago, or was found natural and, you know, no different than alcohol, right? The ability to just like create such a potent blend now, he goes, it's so, the world's different. And I'm like, oh, I guess I'd never really thought about it before. I'm not this giant pot smoker. I don't, I don't care if you do. I just for me having a
Starting point is 01:06:31 Celebratory beer is a lot more manageable than going and smoking weed But him him explaining You know because he did security for for a grow-op right and and he he was talking about just how like potent it is I'm like oh, I guess I've never really thought about that before you know I I mean The history you know in Canada and cannabis of it being legal is like like a minuscule amount of time. And certainly if you hadn't been doing it before that, you wouldn't know any better.
Starting point is 01:07:05 Yeah, totally. And maybe I'll pull on another thread. You mentioned Coca-Cola, you know, just as an example. Sure. So part of it is with cannabis is hybridization for sure, you know, selecting for different breeds, getting stronger and stronger strains, you know, growing under lights, all this stuff that really has changed the planet. Another thing too, so with Coca-Cola, you know,
Starting point is 01:07:31 coca actually refers to the coca leaf, which is where cocaine is sourced from. Cocaine is one of many alkaloids in the coca plant. That's just a natural herb that is traditionally used by, you know, people in South America. Certain countries, it's kind of been eradicated, but if you go to Peru, you'll find coca, right? They chew it, it helps with altitude sickness.
Starting point is 01:07:54 It's actually considered a vital part of of providing nutrition for their diet. And it has all kinds of benefits of like, you know, giving you energy, reducing fatigue, soreness, muscles, all that. There's a extremely valuable herd, but yet, you know, the difference between coca leaf and cocaine is a difference almost between, you know, poppy seeds and heroin, right? There's, uh, it's, how it's processed in, in context and so forth.
Starting point is 01:08:25 So Coca-Cola does actually contain coca leaf but it's been decoconized or like the cocaine is taken out sold to the pharmaceutical industry it's also got colon nut in it which is a high caffeine containing herb but that's an original herbal formula same with root beer as well and in fact it used to be in wine it was called Vin Mariani and everybody was into coca back in the day like Sigmund Freud was a cokehead in that sense that he really was into coca and used it as a plant, but it fell out of favor and no longer is kind of used or viewed in the same way because of, you know, the counterpart of cocaine, which is,
Starting point is 01:09:11 I would consider, you know, a dangerous drug. It's got its use, its place, but not as kind of a street thing. And, you know, coca as the leaf is an amazing herb. You know, I'm pulling us off the topic of today's Canadian government and everything, just for a quick sec here. But, you know, if you want to start to learn more about food, and I just think about a long ball of yarn because I look at you and I'm like, well, I mean, part of your journey is 15 years as a vegan and trying to live that life and experiencing things, and that gives you an interesting insight. It also shows how much time and effort you put into your diet and understanding food and everything else. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, I can just safely say, I don't need to go down that road.
Starting point is 01:09:57 But let's say you just want to start to begin to understand maybe some of the, not even the powerful nature of food, but just some different things you could be adding into your diet, that type of thing. And you want to start pulling on the thread. You just, just ever so slightly, to get people, if their curiosity is peaked right now, they could just start pulling on it and start to learn more and, you know, how this goes. Then they start pulling more and they start exploring and they start cooking and they start doing all these crazy things because that's what you. what's gonna do, you know, one of the lovely things about having children is it made me start cooking in and I didn't realize how much, how enjoyable it can be. Anyways, my question is, what is something one can do to just ever so slightly pull on that thread to start to maybe go down that path? You'd mentioned the Weston Price book as being, you know, one of the books that
Starting point is 01:10:52 maybe would be understanding how diets affected the health. and I'm sure there's more in there. Is that your easy pull on the thread? Or is there something else that might be very beneficial to people? Yeah, I would say, you know, that book is not a good place to start. Like it's too thick, it's too dense. But there's a ton of other resources that are based upon that research. So the Weston A Price Foundation, again, going back to traditional diets,
Starting point is 01:11:18 sort of those common characteristics, meaning to add those foods in. I think you're exactly right. This can and should be enjoyable. you know, like a great easy journey. It shouldn't take 15 years. You don't need a degree, and that's why I'm into the adding in and the upgrading, right? Do what you do.
Starting point is 01:11:36 Just go back to quality, you know, heirloom, right? Not these crazy hybrids. Go back to kind of natural sources of food. So an example is, you know, wild lettuce is in a powerful, powerful plant, you know, considered a herb in most, you know, herbal traditions, you know, the result of kind of our modern lettuce is iceberg lettuce, right, which is kind of takes the junk that it's basically just water, like it has no nutrients in it, right? So if we can kind of pull our way back to those more ancient, you know, genetic, natural strains of
Starting point is 01:12:15 food, so that includes adding in wild foods. And maybe I'll just break it down. I'll do it in the context of the four food groups. So with plants, I think the best thing one can do is to. be their own herbalist. Well, how do you be your own herbalist? You don't need a degree to be a herbalist. You just need to start taking herbs and begin to learn about herbs. Again, every single culture around the world, this has always been the people's medicine. First line of defense is something simple as like a little bit of ginger for the tummy or peppermint or chamomile for sleepy time.
Starting point is 01:12:49 You know, just begin adding those in and learning little bits. You don't need to have encyclopedic acknowledge about all the herbs and, you know, pretend that you're going to be treating people. No, this is about you and your relationship with plants and bringing that in to kind of really help and assist you. I mean, one of the things that I found was a really big gateway herb for a lot of people the last few years was pine, you know, like the number of requests that we got, you know, for where do I get pine needle tea? And I'm like, have you looked outside?
Starting point is 01:13:17 I bet you got a pine, you know, on your street. You can just go and harvest those needles and make yourself some tea. They contain a compound called chichemic acid. Shechemic acid is the foundation of Tamiflu, the world's number one selling anti-flu pharmaceutical medication. Pines got it. You know, it inhibits respiratory viruses. It's high in vitamin C, like so many benefits to it.
Starting point is 01:13:42 And it's all free. It's outside of our door. We can grow it. We can, you know, do all these things. And it only starts with one plant, you know, one at a time, just slowly adding that in. Now, if you go to animal foods, you know, I would say organs, we touched upon it. You know, however you can do it.
Starting point is 01:13:57 Organ capsules are a great way to start. Organ blends if your ground beef is another way to do it. And then you slowly work your way up and, you know, explore. You're going to hopefully get your hands on some prairie oysters and feel the juice and the power of eating those things. Bacteria, those are our fermented foods. So whether it's sauerkra, whether it's yogurt, whether it's, you name it. I mean, there's so much diversity. Someone like yourself, like, ah, sourcrow, nah, not so interested.
Starting point is 01:14:25 Not into it. Great. Choose something else. There's something called not. No, no. After you gave them the cells, I'm going to buy some sauerkraut like tomorrow. And Grant, he'll be happy about that. So, Grant, next time you're in Lloyd Mintz, we're having sourcrow on everything.
Starting point is 01:14:38 All right. I mean, like, I can't listen to that and go, well, it should probably be out of it. Okay. Anyway, sorry. So there's two forms of fermentes or bacteria-rich foods you want to get. One is the live culture, exactly what we talked about. about which is it's still it hasn't been pasteurized it hasn't been heat treated or canned it's a living product ideally made by you at home but if you're not at that stage no
Starting point is 01:14:58 problem you know find some sort of local craft artisan that's got a living probiotic ferment be it yogurt or sauerkra or kefir whatever it is that you can add into your diet great awesome the next type of ferment would be something like it's not living culture but it's still fermented so sour dough bread. If anybody enjoys bread, best type of bread you can consume, sourdough. It's been broken down. It's predigested. The flavor is even better. So look for sourdough bread or, you know, tempe, you know, doesn't have to be live culture. Those are great foods that you can add into your diet. And then the fourth, the final one is fungi. And you might be wondering like,
Starting point is 01:15:41 what does that have, what's that all about, right? Is that the brown button mushrooms at the grocery store? It could be. We're talking about the kingdom of fungi, all the way from single-celled yeast up to what I would describe as the medicinal mushrooms, the polypores, things like Rashi, Chaga, Lionsmane, which there's a lot of buzz about them and how key and essential they are for our immune system. And that would be a whole show we could do just on the world of fungi and mushrooms, but beginning to bring in fungi like the medicinal mushrooms to help really support and fortify our immune systems and all the the other benefits that they'll offer.
Starting point is 01:16:21 You know, as I listen to talk, I wrote it down. You've mentioned a couple times that, you know, it's the people's medicine. And I think a couple things right away. I think I bet as I sit here, I'm going to get some texts from my local community going, oh, you should talk to Barb or, you know, or Bill or Bob down the street or whatever. And he's been sitting in your backyard the entire time, Sean, and you just never ask. That's fair. And I look forward to those texts.
Starting point is 01:16:47 and that probably is true of pretty much every community out there. They're probably just sitting there and this is what they do. And they know how to talk about everything Malcolm's talking about, right? Because if this is as old as Malcolm says, which I think we can all agree on, that means the information, the knowledge has been being passed or somebody's been finding it or is further along your journey. And all you've got to do is find that in your area. And I would argue then that there is businesses that have been formed,
Starting point is 01:17:17 to help provide this knowledge and the products to the people, which brings me full circle to what Sean Buckley and the businesses of Canada are facing now. And I guess I'm curious, Malcolm, I'll come all the way back to my question from 25 minutes ago. You keep pulling me off of it because you got my brain running here. But, I mean, as a business staring down what the government of Canada wants to do, They want to pull everything under pharmaceuticals or the drug kind of angle of, you know, it's a chai tea.
Starting point is 01:17:52 Nope, you got to have this, this and this in order to be able to. What does that mean for a business owner such as yourself or the hundreds, if not thousands of them across our provinces, country, et cetera? Yeah, it doesn't look good, you know, in that regard. And yet I also take the hope and optimism of someone like Sean that, you know, the big, public-led kind of backlashes have been around natural health supplements. I think as a foundation, you'll never get rid of this because it's so core to who we are, whether it's foraging, gardening, hunting, raising livestock, like just eating good, wholesome food. I would say we've
Starting point is 01:18:35 gone so far, we've taken the pendulum so far, people are getting so sick that we just can't, we can't go any further, right? People are starting to turn around going, like, like, you know, we've gone too far. We've got to come back. So that will continue to happen. And you can never get rid of, you know, the grassroots movement that's happening. What really concerns me is so many people, and I would put myself in that category, have come to this because of its growth over the last, you know, five, 10, 20, 25 years that it is allowed, yeah, more access, more awareness. That I want to see grow. I don't want to see this whole movement push back to grassroots.
Starting point is 01:19:14 That concerns me. We're already seeing the implications in terms of, you know, not being able to access, you know, the variety, the diversity of the products. The states is way more abundant, not just because of the population, but as Sean mentioned, because of kind of the rules and the regulations around these types of items and products. Yeah, so it is limiting or access currently. If everything goes through, as, you know, they've been describing. as Sean has been sharing, it will dramatically continue to reduce our access, increase the cost. And yeah, so I think, you know, we've got to all be on the grassroots. It's challenging. I'd love to say, and one of the things I do, you know, now that I've kind of figured out my health, I teach people about that.
Starting point is 01:20:05 Now I've kind of figured out how to run and grow a successful kind of community-based business that can support myself and others in this area. I want to help others do the same. So, you know, I'm working with nutritionists and herbalists to help grow their business. And I'm a little bit like, you know, I want to encourage them. But, you know, with what's there, there's a bit of a ceiling to growth. And grassroots is awesome. I'd love people to, you know, be there at the farmer's markets, that kind of thing.
Starting point is 01:20:35 But I want it to grow bigger and beyond that. And there's been a window of opportunity because I think, as Sean mentioned, like the biggest limiting factor to all this being implemented by Health Canada is enforcement. And then that's why they've come up with what they call their cost recovery program, which they want to implement in April 2025, which is to then have the kind of resources to go out and police all this. That's when things will really turn. Although again, repercussions are already starting to happen. A friend of mine, he started the company called Harmonic Arts. and he's wanted to go national, wanted to grow, be on that large scale, you know,
Starting point is 01:21:16 not just a small community herbalist, and he's gotten there. But as a result of having to do that, he's had to reduce probably 60% of his line. He's had to change some of his formulas just to be able to comply, just to be able to play the game. And if we reach that point of April 2025, where they have this kind of enforcement of what's existing, plus not to mention what else the controls and things that will be putting on top of that, it'll create this divide, you know, like it'll all kind of, yeah, sure, you'll be able to get vitamin C at a certain dose for a certain price or certain herbs like chamomile. That's not going
Starting point is 01:21:58 away. You'll still be able to get chai spice. But there's a ton of other extremely valuable, you know, plant medicines, nutraceuticals, everything in between, that won't be accessible because the barrier to create it and market it won't be there or it'll just be completely restricted and what we can say about these things. I mean, if we thought the censorship of the last few years was bad, it'll kind of be on a similar level. But the hope is that, as Sean says, you know, 70% of Canadians use natural health products. I bet you Trudeau himself probably takes supplements, right? So at some point, there's going to be, you know, we're going to go so far.
Starting point is 01:22:41 There's going to be another backlash and I don't know where it'll go, but we can't, you know, stop doing what we're doing and what we need to do and what we're here to do. So you've got to keep moving ahead and that's what I keep doing. And my business is, I don't want to share too much to kind of expose myself. there's a lot that I'm doing that I'm not supposed to, right? And I've been able to do it because it's not being enforced. When that time of when it gets enforced, my business will look very different, unfortunately.
Starting point is 01:23:11 But I don't fear it. I don't keep myself up at night. I'll just like, I'll deal with it when it comes. I'm not going to preemptively censor myself or not do what I'm meant to be doing just because they're talking about this or they have certain rules that are in place right now that I don't agree with. So I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. It's certainly I've known more about food than maybe some people, but I sit and I listen to you and some of the things that, you know,
Starting point is 01:23:43 I talk about my brain getting running ahead of me. I'm like, oh, I've got to try. Oh, okay, maybe I've got to look at that. And I'm like, now I'm like, I've got to search out something in my community to sit and have a few discussions with to just kind of, you know, mess around with some things cooking-wise is what I think. Yeah. But even having young kids health-wise, you know, having different things to work on with them and everything else, I'm like, ah, you just, you go, I realize this has been going on a long time. I just can't imagine a world where, you know, they police it that tough that you lose some of these incredible things. And yet, I mean, I just go back to listen to Sean Buckley. It's like, well, no, they've already been doing that. And the population, we've allowed our government to really do some strange things.
Starting point is 01:24:30 And the fact there isn't more media outcry, maybe there is. You know, honestly, maybe there's been a ton of media outcry on this, and I've just never paid attention. But. You never missed it. It doesn't exist. Yeah. Well, isn't that an interesting thing, right?
Starting point is 01:24:45 It's like we want the only place you can get medicine is from the pharmacy. And does it have its place? Sure. I'm not here to argue against it, sure. Yeah, no glory. You know, if I talk about, you know, how much do you know on honey, Malcolm? Oh, I love honey. Okay, well, then you can solve this thing for me in a nutshell.
Starting point is 01:25:08 So I am, I'll try anything. Literally, if you said, oh, you should try a little bit of this. You'll be amazed at what happens. All right, sure. And if you said eating crickets was the thing, I'd be like, well, I mean to try it once. big deal right now I'm for once so I got like honey from a farm or an acreage close to where I grew up and and I can't remember who I was listening to but I had peppermint tea and I was just having issues sleeping nothing too crazy and I can't remember why I thought peppermint tea at the time
Starting point is 01:25:43 and so I'm like oh I should put some honey in it but then I had this like internal argument I'm literally going to add sugar to my honey I maybe shouldn't do that but something in time I was like I'm not sleeping like that great anyways. And that night I like fell asleep so hard, I like drooled all over myself. And then the next morning I was, man, I slept good last night. I never equated anything to anything.
Starting point is 01:26:04 So then the next night comes and I'm like, you know, maybe I should have another tea. And I know, well, the honey didn't hurt me any because I haven't quite added it up yet. And I slept as hard as I did the night before and I drooled all over myself again. And then after two nights in a row, I'm like, what the heck? So I started talking about people about honey.
Starting point is 01:26:21 And then some people are like, yeah, don't you realize the importance? And I started talking to some of the older generation. They're like, oh, yeah, we used to use honey for everything. And I'm like, man, things we have forgotten. What is it about honey that, you know, if you're just buying the store bought honey, that I've watched enough of a documentary on it to realize you're not getting honey anymore. But, you know, there's all these beekeepers. They got their glorious honey, the nectar of just like, oh, man.
Starting point is 01:26:48 What is it about honey? Oh honey is absolutely amazing. It's uh, you know, I call my business light seller super foods. Um, and that's just not some sort of like cheap marketing trick. It's because they are incredible. They're super liver is a super food. Like you taste it, you feel it, you experience it. There's nothing like it, right? It's one of the most nutrient dense parts of the animal. And it's it's super. It's not muscle meat. There's a qualitative difference that you can experience consuming it. Honey is one of the absolute greatest foods, uh, on the plant. planet, it's the highest source of enzymes, in particular amylase, which helps break down
Starting point is 01:27:24 carbohydrates. Maybe that's why we put honey on toasts, right? It helps with the digestion. It's actually, you know, another kind of view into superfood is it's both food and medicine, right? We throw that around all the time, right? Oh, let food buy them medicine, medicine be thy food. You know, it's got medicinal qualities, medicinal properties, even to the point where you can put on your skin and it'll help heal skin wounds.
Starting point is 01:27:48 wounds it helps inhibit each pylori bacteria so you don't get ulcers unbelievable amount of healing and nutritive qualities to the point that we haven't even cracked the code on what honey is right there's oh there's the macronutrients of this types of sugars the glucose the fructose you know there's these types of minerals and these vitamins but then there's all these like identified compounds but there's actually even more unidentified compounds that we don't even know what's in there but what's interesting about honey in particular to sleep and what was happening with you it's to do with the liver so there your liver is using up glycogen as you sleep and so instead of your body like running out because you've you know eaten at 6 p.m. or whatever a little bit of honey before
Starting point is 01:28:35 bed you know keeps that source uh for you and then your body doesn't like wake up looking for that It also helps with release of sleep hormone, like melatonin in the brain. So, yeah, it's... So can I get away with just having a spoonful of honey and go to bed, or did it need to be in tea? No, you could just do a little spoonful, just as is. Well, I'm going to try that tonight, folks, because I'm just like, well, now you have me even more curious, because I've always thought it was something to do with it being in hot water and everything else, and maybe it doesn't.
Starting point is 01:29:09 Maybe it's just literally a spoonful of honey. I don't know. I mean, there's definitely something to that, you know, having the nice, like, you know, warm, liquid delivery system, you can even, you know, explore different types of herbs like chamomile or Valerian or Passion Flower that will also assist, but it's not required. Like the honey is going to have its own magic just in that way. For people in the different communities, you know, like obviously if you're sitting in Calgary and you want to visit the light seller, that's nice and easy, right?
Starting point is 01:29:41 look you up and you drive over or what have you. And maybe sitting in Lloyd, I'm doing you a disservice. I'm assuming I can work with the light seller and have a working relationship there as well to get things I want and everything else. But would you suggest that people look into their communities and find the little businesses that are built around this or push them to farmers markets, that type of thing? Because there's these people sitting there? Yeah, 100%.
Starting point is 01:30:10 you know and one of the things i'm almost hesitant to say never right because who knows but this is one i'm almost pretty clear on i will never franchise you know i will never you know my goal is not to have multiple locations and you know world domination of my business i'd rather see somebody else with a similar idea and their own community and their hometown you know create what i've created or something their own version of it so absolutely you're right like there are um you know Many people, there's this kind of new way, whether it's fermentation or herbs or nutrition, people are coming back to this. And as they do, like you said, they're creating little businesses to share that with their community in the ways that they are. So yeah, we're based in Calgary.
Starting point is 01:30:53 I do get people coming from as far as Ontario, BC, California, like, oh my gosh, I've never experienced a place like this. It is unique. It is quite a hub. And I would love to, you know, connect with anybody that's interested. I've got a ton of content online in terms of learning. and getting deeper into this. We do classes in person. We also do them online. We have an online store. I can help people that way.
Starting point is 01:31:17 But you're absolutely right. That's what I would say is connect with those in your local community. And they'll be able to fill you in on some of those components. And if there's other things that I can provide, you know, by shipping it out or, you know, connecting online through some of the education that I provide, then great, I can do that too. What's one of the things you're telling your local community right now? Like, what's one of the things that you think is really important? You know, we're rolling into flu season.
Starting point is 01:31:45 They're talking, I got really irritated the other day because I just don't want to talk about it. But they're, you know, talking about getting your booster and wear your mask and get ready. And I'm like, well, it's flu season again. Like, guys, let's just relax here. We're going back into flu season. It comes around every year. But, you know, with your community, whether it's flu season, whether it's something else, what's something you've been encouraging your community of right now?
Starting point is 01:32:08 Yeah, absolutely. There's something called fire cider. And this is such a traditional kind of preparation idea, concept that there was actually a lawsuit. There was a company that tried to trademark the term fire cider and a bunch of kind of grassroots herbalists, you know, fought that in court and won that it couldn't be trademarked because it is so kind of ubiquitous and traditional. So it's the idea of taking vinegar and putting things like onions, garlic, ginger, chili, horseradish, like you name it. You can get really creative. Then you put in like herbs, like oregano, whatever you want. You can make it kind of as flavorful as you want. You can use it in your meals, put in your soup, but you can also just take it as like a medicinal dose. Or how about this one? I think this one's even better. Okay, we talk about honey. I love honey. Honey's the most one of most amazing foods. And it's a fantastic medicine by itself, but also delivery system, right? So Mary Poppins was onto something. Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine. go down right behind me probably can't see it my office a little messy that
Starting point is 01:33:13 these jars right here on that those are all different herbal honeies so I have black currant honey Labrador tea honey large honey pineapple weed honey wormwood honey basically I take you know leaves berries roots I mean you name it barks and then I put it in honey and the honey begins to extract the medicine it preserves it, and it's the ultimate delivery system. So, you know, let's say pine needles. You get some pine needles, you kind of cut them up, chop them up, put them in honey, and now you've got a pine needle honey.
Starting point is 01:33:50 And so something that is perfect, amazing, especially it's not only helps inhibit respiratory viruses, but if you did get that, it'll help deal with some of the symptoms as well. I feel like, I'm just like, I feel like we're going to have to do is we're going to have to have you back on at some point so I can like get some questions from you and and go play around because you know one of the things about playing around with your body and cooking and different things is now I'm like oh I got I got so many things I want to go and try and the next time we have Malcolm on we're going to make sure that I've tried a few things and certainly had some listeners ask ask some questions because when it comes to what you're talking about and the body and different things I'm like
Starting point is 01:34:34 I'm sure people are like just not irritated with me, but they're like, oh, you should be asking this and this and this and this and this and this and this and that. So regardless, he's located in Calgary. They can find you online. What is website, social media, where can people find you? Yeah, totally. So the website is lightseller.ca. That's L-I-G-H-T-C-E-L-L-A-R. People are like, what, you sell lights or something? Like, no, the source of all food, the source of all nutrition is light. That's kind of that original inspiration. It's a bit of back from my kind of raw plant food days. But, you know, the name seller came from wanting to re-inspire people to have a cellar again, a store of food.
Starting point is 01:35:16 Don't just live day-to-day week to week. We've seen what can happen with supply change disruptions. Not only that, cost saving, so on and so forth, but going to that, that name speaks to that kind of older way of living and being. So, lightseller.com is our main website. You can find us on social media. YouTube or all their educational videos are, at Lightseller or on Instagram, and then myself personally, I'm on Instagram as The Malcolmist. That's cool.
Starting point is 01:35:46 I don't know. You know, there's so much more to that. I want to make sure people can find you. Can they order things from you and have it shipped right to them, all that good stuff? So it doesn't matter in Canada, they can go across Canada, not a big deal? Yeah, across Canada. we even ship a little bit to the states as well. So lightseller.ca.
Starting point is 01:36:07 You mentioned, I think, I think either classes or courses or something along that lines, do you put on those? Or are you hired to come in and do that? Both. Yeah, all the above. Yeah. So we have a regular class calendar. Mostly during the summer, we're doing wild foraging.
Starting point is 01:36:29 So I'll teach people, you know, what's in their backyard? What's out in the local forests and fields that you can pick is both food and medicine. And I've got an online component to that as well. We call it the foraging forecast. So I'll send out regular videos of like, hey, here's what's going on right now. Like look for this tree. Here's what you want to pick. Here's the type of area.
Starting point is 01:36:51 Here's what it's good for, how you use it. So that's a good way if somebody's kind of can't come to a physical in-person plant walk. And then our regular classes, could be all the way from, again, fermentation, the different aspects of how to ferment your own food. I have an elixir crafting. I'm really big into chocolate. So I teach people how to make healthy chocolate.
Starting point is 01:37:13 Again, it's that idea of like adding in and then upgrading. And then a question on Firesider. Is that something you can just walk into your store and buy or you actually have to physically make it? There are people that make it. So we make it here at House as well, but it's so easy to make. You literally, you know, pick your variety of things, put it into vinegar, let it sit, let it'll extract, strain it out, and you've got a bottle of it.
Starting point is 01:37:40 No kidding. Okay. Well, I've got it written down here. I'm like, am I going to go down this road, folks? I don't know if I am or not, but I'm looking at it. So let's slide in. Before I let you out of here, let's do the Crude Master final question. And I'm going to go to Dale, you know, you're reminding me of a lot of the things Dale Wilker said on here once upon a time.
Starting point is 01:37:59 And so we'll use his thought. And it is what is next for Malcolm and how can people support or help? Ah, okay, great question. What next for me is more the same. I think a lot of what I've shifted to now is really empowering people with local plant medicine and wild foods foraging. So, yeah, I'm really inspired. It's all within that umbrella of teaching people how to learn how to find and craft their own food and medicine. And that can be literally what's growing in our backyard.
Starting point is 01:38:33 So if folks are inspired, interested in about that, the foraging forecast, maybe we can do a little coupon where people get, you know, the first month free. I mean, I literally charge nine bucks a month for people to join that service and get an insight into that world that begin to develop their knowledge and skills in that way. Well, I appreciate you coming on and doing this. And showed out again to Grant and Kathleen for helping hook this up. You know, while I was in Colonna, we were sitting at the dinner table and they're like, you got to do. this Malcolm guy and so they're handing me the phone and I'm talking I'm like this I'm like yes I don't know what to do with this right now but I understand now why they're they're pushing on me to get you on and and talk about some of these things
Starting point is 01:39:12 because it's it's very interesting and I think a lot of people are searching for good information and different things to change within their own lives to help them you know moving forward in the future and if there's any ways to you know help your body feel better or whatever else. I don't think there's too many of us that aren't willing to at least give it a shot because, you know, if you can add that in and tomorrow feel an improvement, it's like, well, why wouldn't you do it? You know?
Starting point is 01:39:43 And certainly there's probably a few answers to that, I guess, maybe work or money or on and on it goes. But certainly I appreciate you coming on. I don't think it'll be the last time because now I'm going to go try some things and get it horribly wrong and then be texting you going, this didn't work. And I'm sure it'll lead to a lot of fun chats in the future. Either way, I appreciate you coming on and doing this and look forward to the next time. Okay, right on.
Starting point is 01:40:07 I appreciate it. And maybe we'll do what you suggested at first is I'll come busy. I'll bring a box of stuff and we'll kind of do some live on air, like tasting and trying and just chat. Oh, boy. That's, I'm not going to lie. That sounds, I'm a foodie. That sounds like a lot of fun, even if I'm like, who, what was that? Anyways, cool.
Starting point is 01:40:25 Well, I appreciate it, Malcolm. And until the next time. All right. Okay. right on hey folks that was Malcolm Saunders so I hope you enjoyed that this episode has been brought to by Calrock Industries when it comes to new used and refurbished oil and gas equipment in stock that are equipment in stock Calrock is your best bet when it comes to finding that and they're here located in Lloydminster so just go to calrock.ca for all your needs there
Starting point is 01:40:50 and once again I don't know what I've opened myself I've opened a can of worms today because I'm like okay well fire cider are we going to do that now I got to go buy some some sourcrow, but hey, I love getting a few things that I can incorporate into the world. And like I said, we've got a billet kid living with us now. And Blair, and that's forcing me to cook a bit more, which isn't a bad thing. I enjoy cooking.
Starting point is 01:41:14 It's funny, it takes time though. So you gotta set aside the time to like kind of work through some things and have a little bit of fun with it. And sometimes, it just, you know, knowing you can sit down, set aside some time, cook some things, taste it, and be like, well, I didn't realize I could make something that tasted that good, you know? And, well, I don't know, maybe that it just comes with age.
Starting point is 01:41:34 Either way, hope you enjoyed today, and I look forward to hearing your guys' thoughts. You got a favorite part, you know, shoot it to me, and we'll see if we can get it clicked all that good stuff. I love hearing from you all. Either way, until the next one.

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