The Bossticks - The Truth About Red Meat & Sustainable Eating With Anya Fernald - Founder & CEO Of Belcampo Meat Co

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

#233: On this episode we sit down with Anya Fernald. Anya is the co-founder and CEO of the Belcampo Meat Co. and on the show today we are diving in to the truth about red meat and sustainable eating. ...We are also discussing sustainable farming and viable diets for the human body. For those of you who are interested about learning more about how to integrate animal protein into your diets, this is the episode for you.  To connect with Anya Fernald click HERE To learn more about Belcampo Meat Co. click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by THRIVE MARKET. We use Thrive for our online grocery delivery on a weekly basis and we also now get our wine at Thrive! They provide the highest quality products and ingredients delivered straight to our door with unbeatable prices.  Be sure to grab our deal by going to to https://thrivemarket.com/skinny to receive up to $20 shopping credit when you join today! This episode is brought to you by BETABRAND and their Betabrand dress pant yoga pants. To try these pants go to betabrand.com/skinny and receive 20% off your order. Millions of women agree these are the most comfortable pants you'll ever wear to work.  Produced by Dear Media 

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Starting point is 00:00:00 The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you alone for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.
Starting point is 00:00:24 99% of beef produced in the U.S. is produced in what's called a confinement animal feeding operation. which is a lot, typically cement or dirt. Essentially, the animals are enclosed in a pen. It's about 20 by 20 feet and there's 15 to 20 plus animals in that pen. They're fed a highly intensive diet. So they take them from effectively prepubescent animals right off their moms and they fatten them on a very intensive, this maladaptive diet. So when I say maladaptive, it means something you didn't evolve to eat. Boyle boy, do we have a tasty episode for you. That clip is from our guest of the show Today, Anya Fernald, on this episode, we're talking about red meat, the truth behind red meat, sustainable eating, farming, all sorts of different things.
Starting point is 00:01:10 My name is Michael Bostic. I'm a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of the Dear Media Podcast Network. And across from me, my co-hosts, my star, Lauren Everts. I am Lauren Everett, and I love a Belcampo burger. Guys, we're about to talk to you guys about, you're going to get hungry on this episode. I'm hungry even doing the intro to this episode. There's one thing I want to address, though, before we get into it. Something I want to talk about.
Starting point is 00:01:36 Someone slid into Lauren's DMs today and gave her a good scolding. She has been battering me for years. I'm a beaten down husband. I've been abused. I've been tormented. And I don't know if I can take it much longer. Yeah, someone said that I was mean to my husband. But I feel like if you know us in person, this is our love language.
Starting point is 00:01:56 If you know this, I am hurt. I'm asking for help. This is me crying to the audience to come and save me. I don't have thick skin. You like it. I'm withering away. It's how we do foreplay. You know, we like to just tease each other.
Starting point is 00:02:12 We like to keep it witty and funny. I do not know how to take a joke. I don't know anything about comedy. I don't know anything about sarcasm. And I'm really hurting over here. All right. Well, I think Michael's fine, guys. Someone slid into my DMs and said that, you know, you're a little mean to your husband.
Starting point is 00:02:27 She's straight up abusive to me. I am not abusive to him. He's very well taken care of. In fact, last night I literally fed you and then put you to bed. And I won't give my chips and tricks on how to put you to bed. But it's a very specific way that you're very satisfied with. I was satisfied with that. So yeah, you know, you take the good with the bad, everyone. I got to take the, you know, the favors later. I got to take it. All right. Just kidding. Anyways, guys, we are excited. And if you didn't get the sarcasm there, then I don't know what you're doing, listening to the show. Anyways, we have an exciting episode today. with the guest that came highly recommended after we fell in love with her restaurant, the Belcampo Meat Co. Lauren and I, I don't know how many burgers we've eaten from Bel Campo in the next, in the last like three months, but it's been a lot. Okay, so here's the wild thing. Our friend Khalil, who's been on this podcast, if you haven't listened to this episode, you have to go back and listen. It's one of my favorites took us to Bel Campo with his girlfriend, and we sat there and we tried all this different kind of meat. Now, through this whole pregnancy, I have not been big on
Starting point is 00:03:26 meat. It's turned me off and grossed me out. This has been the only meat that I can eat. And we'll get into why my body is telling me like not to have other meats. And I'll give you an example. I had in and out probably like I would say four weeks ago. I felt so sick afterwards. This has been the only kind of meat I have craved. And I know it's legit because my chihuahua screams when we eat it. Michael, she throws herself against the wall. You're here in this episode. I saw Lauren. I saw Lauren. and dive into liver. Like she like dove in and licked the plate. I've never eaten liver in my life.
Starting point is 00:04:00 Listen, the baby knows what it wants. I'm listening to my body. So guys, here we go. Who is Anya Fernald? Anya Fernald is a sustainable food expert and the co-founder and CEO of the Bell Campo Meatco. She has appeared as a judge on the Food Network, Iron Chef America, and the next Iron Chef. And now, most recently on the skinny confidential him and her with that, Anya, welcome to the show. This is the skinny confidential, him and her.
Starting point is 00:04:24 Anya Fernald in the studio, we cannot stop eating the Bel Campo burgers. Throughout Lawrence pregnancy, we've probably each had, I'd say, 20 burgers, I think. I ate them three days in a row, you guys. Only in bed. Maybe more. I might just be trying to downplay it a little bit because I'm ashamed of how many burgers I've eaten. I don't really have an excuse, though. I just like I'm, you know.
Starting point is 00:04:47 It's empathetic. Yeah, I'm not pregnant. I cannot stop eating them. I've been eating them in bed in the dark. It's really creepy. and my chihuahuas go crazy. So I would hypothesize that in your pregnancy, you get access. It's like a gift.
Starting point is 00:05:03 You get access to greater intuition on a lot of fronts. And a lot of ways prepares you for being a parent. But these cravings that we feel in pregnancy, my theory, you know, for both of my kids, I had strong cravings. And I think it's about your intuitions guiding you towards healthy food. And you are being taught by your body what to feed yourself. You know, we actually have deep. deep intuition about food in our DNA. You know, until a couple hundred years ago, food was
Starting point is 00:05:30 almost exclusively how we healed ourselves, right? And now we're fed this nutritionally impoverished food. All the food we eat is a fraction of the protein and micronutrients that it was just a generation ago. And so we're questing for that. So I think these these cravings that we get, when women talk about pregnancy cravings, I'm always like run into it. Don't be afraid because you're actually, your body is telling you very clearly, it's tapping into deep wisdom. Okay, but what about the nostalgic brownies that I'm eating, too? What about that? You also are under an elevated caloric need.
Starting point is 00:06:02 Yesterday, I was bawling, crying to Michael about being bloated and feeling fat while I was making brownies. I'll give you my keto brownie recipe. I have a bomb keto brownie recipe. I mean, like, I got to tread lightly here because, you know, there's a lot of hormones going on. But she was looking at me and crying to me and saying she said as she had the spatula icing of brownies. He gently looks at me and he goes, Lauren, you're making brownies as you're saying this. If this was anyone else, you would tell him to put down the spatula. That's amazing.
Starting point is 00:06:34 Which is fine, you know. And then I started crying because he called me out about it. But it was one of the rare times I actually kind of saw her like recess into herself and not say anything else because she did. So how did you get into this? So I worked in animal agriculture my whole career. I was a really early adopter into food. So at 21, when I graduated from college, I moved to Europe and I became a cheese maker. And I was at the time, you know, I graduated from college in 98. So it was the height of low fat. I was on a super low fat diet. That was what everyone was doing in the 90s. But I was personally interested in baking and
Starting point is 00:07:11 cheesemaking and food, but I didn't want to like be a chef. I felt like there was something calling me to connect with the earth, learn more deeply about food. And I'd travel enough in Europe to, to realize there was something there that kind of drew me. So I got this fellowship. I moved to Europe. I I started working in dairies as a cheese maker. And I actually had a pretty radical health transformation. Immediately lost weight on a diet that was exactly the opposite of what I'd been coached that was healthy for me. So I was working in dairies and I was eating like 2,000 calories of cheese a day. And a lot of physical labor and movement and animal agriculture. So you're milking and things. Lots of salami. Lots of cheese. I had been a vegetarian for nine years. So I had the whole vegetarian suite.
Starting point is 00:07:51 I had like TMI but frequent UTIs. I had flaky nails. I had really dry skin. I had tons of split ends. I had actually pretty fluctuating moods. Were you raised vegetarian? I was not. But I became a vegetarian for the same reasons that I started a meat company,
Starting point is 00:08:05 which is I love animals and care about the earth and wanted to. I was concerned and the trigger for me on becoming a vegetarian. I still remember the day was learning that it was 12 pounds of grain to make one pound of meat. And it was like the Ethiopian famine at the time. I'm like, oh, God, I can't do that. You know, like those kids could have that. Then I learned later in life when I started working in dairies and living in Europe, like, oh, cows don't have to eat grain.
Starting point is 00:08:29 It's actually maladaptive for them, makes them super sick, bloated and inflamed. The same thing, you know, highly processed diets and maladaptive diets due to us. And I learned that whole story. And I'm like, well, give me the meat, but give me the good stuff. So, Lord, I had this massive change in my own health. I was much more high energy. My moods kind of evened out. I felt extremely focused.
Starting point is 00:08:48 It was like I had just been given this gift of a different type of health. I actually got a job then working in Sicily with a group of cheesemakers. And then I got gravitated towards the marketing and finance side of things. And I became the director of a microfinance program for small-scale food producers in northern Italy. Wow. So that was all before I was 30. So I had a pretty rapid career because I became fluent in Italian. I was really well-versed in a lot of different styles of artisan food.
Starting point is 00:09:13 You know, when I came back to the U.S. in 2006, been away to say. seven years. I had a totally different perspective, but I actually came into the U.S. right as we came back right as the sort of artisan food movement starting to percolate. So I came back thinking, wow, I actually have built some skills where I can change the system and be an agent of change for healthier food. Because what I saw in Europe was that actually the less affluent you were, the more likely you were to have a garden to cook more frequently. It was actually things that people did who didn't have the resources to go out. And you saw a correlation with healthy eating? Hell yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was an amazing.
Starting point is 00:09:48 of industrialization because I actually lived in a really rural area of Italy. Where was it? At first in Sicily, in Ragusa, southeastern Sicily. It was just an amazing experience for me and also just lived in a town where on the weekends people would go forage for herbs and forage forage for meats and food. So I would go out and forage. So just stuff that's now coming to the mainstream as something that's of interest. But I got a real sense of like intuitive eating there. People eating herbs medicinally, people healing themselves through food, a seasonal eating so that you eat certain foods in certain seasons and then not again, part because it's right, but also part because of what it does for your body at that time. You know, you're heading into the cold season.
Starting point is 00:10:23 You start eating broths. Also things like finishing every meal with a cup of bone broth, something I learned in Italy. Finishing, not starting. Finishing. Why is finishing? In that culture, and it's actually true in Korea as well, think of it as closing off your stomach after you've digested a lot. So it's like you leave the last sort of memory in your stomach of residue of collagen. that's not what they call, but basically that you're soothing your stomach after a large meal. I want to take a portion, you know, we're going to go into a lot. There's so many places to go with you. I have like endless notes here, but I want to take a portion to discuss red meat, right? Because there's a lot of myths, a lot of preconceived notions, a lot of people are confused. Do you eat it? Do you not?
Starting point is 00:11:01 What's the right type of red meat? What's the wrong type of red meat? That's so fascinating. I didn't realize you were a vegetarian before when you, you know, obviously have a farm and you've done sustainable butchering and all this. So let's start with, what is the sustainable way to eat red meat if you're going to? If you're going to eat red meat, you need to be looking for grass-fed and grass-finished for both lamb and beef, which I consider the major categories of red meat. So 99% of beef produced in the U.S. is produced in what's called a confinement animal feeding operation, which is a lot, typically cement or dirt. Essentially, the animals are enclosed in a pen. It's about 20 by 20 feet, and there's 15 to 20-plus animals in that pen. they're fed a highly intensive diet. Now, they're not their whole lives. They're there from about,
Starting point is 00:11:48 it depends on the different operation, but around, let's say, 10 months to 18 months. So they take from effectively prepubescent animals right off their moms, and they fatten them on a very intensive, this maladaptive diet. So when I say maladaptive, it means something you didn't evolve to eat, right? I consider a lot of the American diet maladaptive for humans, too. Right? So we have a totally analogous system for how we raise animals. Rumen, right, the gut of the cows, very large. It's evolved to eat high fiber, so bulky, big things, five stomachs so it can take this super rough food and slowly process it into something digestible that can be converted into energy for the animal, right?
Starting point is 00:12:25 Then there's also the kind of woo parts of that because the animals move around, right? They actually seek out. If they're feeling sick, they will gravitate towards bitter herbs. That's documented in ruminants like beef and lamb. They will go and seek out herbs that will heal them. So they're actually interacting in a natural environment, eating an adaptive evolutionary diet. Let's toggle to the picture of the American system, which is in a CAFO. They're enclosed in a pen.
Starting point is 00:12:48 There's no grass. They're in a highly stressful environment. And they're eating this very poor diet. It's like living in a city in the U.S. But think about it for yourself. If you were to eat only Fritos for 10 months compared to eating kale, charred, spinach, in rotation of what's seasonal, right? And some probiotics in the mix.
Starting point is 00:13:08 So where are you going to be leaner, obviously, the latter? Or you're probably going to be happier and healthier, probably the latter. And what are you going to need if you're on the former program is some serious antibiotics, right? So they're actually dose with antibiotics not because they're sick, but they're dosed preventatively to ensure that they don't get sick because they are so ill. E. coli, we hear about a lot. E coli makes cows sick. It's bad for them too. It's so prevalent in our system because those animals in those confinement operations are being fed food that's so bad for them that they deviant. develop this very bad bacterial culture in their stomachs. And they're having diarrhea and vomiting, too. And this practice is what primarily gives red meat such a bad name, right? So yeah, the issue with that, and this little bit more tweaks on that, too, if you look online for this too, you know,
Starting point is 00:13:58 it's totally legal to feed lots of different candy waste to beef. So they actually fed whole candy that's been damaged or is overdue in their wrappers. Like what's a can, like a like a snickers bar? Yeah. Like they just give it to the cows? In their wrapper. Oh, shit. It's also legal and common to use plastic shavings as a fiber additive. The dense diet's so bad for them, they throw in plastic shavings, which is non-regulated for BPA, not regulated for food. Saundas is also common. Chicken manure is used as well. There's some nutritional value. So they're basically processing garbage, literally garbage, candy that you can't sell. I also have this weird theory and tell me if I'm crazy. When the animals are treated so badly, their cortisol is up, right? That's not a weird
Starting point is 00:14:36 theory. That's totally right. Their cortisol is so high and they're so stressed out. And so when you eat that as a human. Aren't you absorbing their stress and cortisol, or is that crazy? Well, I think depends on how kind of open you are to the woo, right? I'm like very in tune with energy. So that's why I ask that. Yeah. For me, animal wellness and human wellness are one in the same thing. Yeah. And I look at how many women in America are anxious. I mean, statistics are insane. Women eat so much chicken. And chicken is the most stressful. But they're raised actually in the dark. They're de-beaked so they don't peck each other because they're under so much stress. They're fed to slurry. Can you imagine like their beaks are cut off and their tongue and they're just eating a slurry? I mean, it's an intensely stressful environment.
Starting point is 00:15:19 I'm not a chicken fan. But think about how many women eat primarily chicken, you know, because it's leaner, et cetera, and how much anxiety it is. And I'm going to connect the dots. But there's not science to support that. Well, this is what I want to talk about. Red meat in some areas in some communities has a bad name, right? It's like, I'm going to go to chicken. I'm going to go to fish. But then they don't think about the things you're talking about here, which is like, is that chicken actually good either? Is it being sustainably raised? Is it eating sloth, whatever trash, whatever the hell they're eating. My problem with a lot of the conversation is like, they'll make blanket statement say, red meat is bad. It's bad for you. That's like not, maybe the red meat
Starting point is 00:15:49 you're describing could be bad for you. But that leads me to my next question is, okay, if you have sustainably grown and raised calves and meat, what are the health benefits to grass fed beef? Little pause for a hot tip. Thrive Market, you know it. Learn it, live it, love it. If you don't, it's the best. It comes straight to your door. You get to curate your shopping experience. It's simple. It's affordable. It's the best. It takes the middleman out of everything. They do sort of the curation for you. So you know you're getting organic, healthy, minimal ingredients, all the good stuff. Now, specifically, I have been starting to look at baby food. Okay. This has been something that I feel like I need to research more on, but I have found a brand on Thrive Market that I'm absolutely obsessed with.
Starting point is 00:16:37 and I can't wait to give our daughter, and that is Serenity Kids. So if you're out there and you're a mom and you want to have stuff delivered to your door, definitely check out Serenity Kids. That has definitely been my favorite brand that I have seen, and they have it on Thrive, which is so amazing. Anyway, I thought I would shout that out. I obviously don't have a kid yet, but it is 20% off right now, which is unbelievable. Everything on Thrive Market is 20% to 50% below retail.
Starting point is 00:17:03 Like Lauren said, they take the middleman out. They source all the best ingredients. You can shop by diets. You have a specific diet, whether you're gluten-free, organic, paleo, raw, vegan, vegetarian, they have it all. Beauty supplies, household supplies, meat and seafood, wine, vitamins, supplements, beauty. So when Lauren says it comes straight to your door, it really all does come straight to your door because they have everything. I have basically one order that I place every single month. I just go on my profile and click reorder, and it comes every single month straight to our house.
Starting point is 00:17:32 I hate going to the grocery store. I don't know anybody that does. Listen, it's 2019. It's time to save time, optimize, use services like Thrive that will help enhance your life for the better. And today, as always, we have a special offer. They are offering three different membership options to suit your lifestyle. One month membership for just $9.95 a month, a three-month membership for just $6.65 a month. And what we have, the 12-month membership for just $5 a month. Enjoy up to $20 of shopping credit when you join today. Go to thrivemarket.com slash skinny. Again, that's Thrivemarket.com slash skinny.
Starting point is 00:18:07 Save up to $20 of shopping credit when you join today. Now back to Anya. It's radically different for your body, and it has to do with a fat profile. Grasses are rich in omega-3 fats. Omega-6 fats come from seeds. So beef that's been raised 100% and finished on grass has a one-to-one omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, which is the perfect ratio for the human diet. beef that's raised on a confinement diet is anywhere from 1 to 20 to 1 to 30 of omega-3s to
Starting point is 00:18:36 omega-6. So it's a toxic ratio for your body. That's the biggest documented difference. Now, if I get into the kind of woo of it or things that I've observed in my operations, our beef are raised till 26 months typically. In confinement, they're slaughtered around 16 months. So my beef at when the time that they're processed are actually smaller, right? So they achieve a higher weight in two-thirds of the same.
Starting point is 00:18:58 the time. That fast-growing muscle fiber, I think, is more difficult to digest. So Lauren was mentioning why is your meat taste so much cleaner and better. And that fast-growing fiber, to my observation, right, and also in extremists, there's certain types of pathologies that develop in meat that are considered defects. And one of them is called woody breast and chicken that comes from super fast-growing protein. It actually gets strips that people, when a consumer, finds it, they think it's wood. It's that tough. So my thinking is if there's that in the extreme case, there's a other version in the less extreme case. And it's just about the actual meat fibers grow very quickly. They're difficult to digest. That's my observation on it. The really clear difference
Starting point is 00:19:38 for you as a consumer, though, is that three to six ration. So is it crazy that I get energy off your meat? Not at all. I'm viving on that all day long. Because I mean, the question for me of like animal wellness and human wellness, we share 99% of our DNA with these animals. To think about what a confinement is like, imagine being like in fourth grade in the height of like pre-pupy because they're all like basically pushed to the edge of puberty, some maturity, and then they're a process. So imagine being in that recess and it being like twice as packed with people and dark. And you don't know where the food is and you don't know where your friends are. And you haven't ever met your mom. Yeah, it's fucked up. That's the analogous situation for a
Starting point is 00:20:17 human if you were to put yourself in that. So if you eat an animal that energetically their entire life is in that huge state of adrenaline response, cortisol response, maladaptive diet, inflammation. And I look at the, you know, the diet-related diseases here in the U.S. and they're exactly the things that we push the animals to do. We create obesity in our confinement. With your animals, yeah. I mean, we're creating obesity. And then we're surprised that obesity is an endemic in the U.S. It's like, yeah, but we actually push our primary source of protein to, in an abysogenic environment, to hit obesity very, very quickly and to grow. I mean, they're not obese technically, but they're on that path, a very, very rapid weight gain.
Starting point is 00:20:56 Our chickens on our farm take eight to ten weeks to reach two and a half pounds. Tyson, it's two weeks. Wow. So it's one quarter of the time. And it's not a different breed even. It's just about access to fresh air and so people think it's all about hormones and antibiotics. And it kind of is antibiotics are big on weight gain. They really do facilitate weight gain.
Starting point is 00:21:17 But it's more about creating this intense, high stressful environment. We all know what that's like. You're under a huge amount of stress. You're sick. That's when you gain weight. We talk about it all the time on the show. We've had hormones experts on the show saying, you know, like if you get your hormones out of whack and imbalance, then it's easy to gain weight because you're out of whack. It makes complete sense what you're saying. And it's funny. And we talked about this off there right when you came in. But my wife has never been a big red meat eater. I mean, she dabbles here and there. When we went to your restaurant, Belcampo with our friend Calliou, who's been on this show many times. He ordered liver. I've never seen Lauren really eat any kind of red meat, let alone liver. She dove into this liver like it was her last meal. And I couldn't believe it.
Starting point is 00:21:52 It's intuition. When you're pregnant, you were saying earlier, like there's intuition. you have when you're pregnant. Like I tell him like right now, I feel like a clairvoyant. I mean, I just, my body wanted liver. And I listened to my body. It woke her up. I listen. I also, I don't like the word balance, but I just really try to listen to my body.
Starting point is 00:22:09 And at that moment, I wanted liver and I was going to eat it. And I did get energy from it, which is so wild. Another thing that I notice, and this is maybe another crazy thing, is that my dogs, when I'm eating like an in-and-out burger, like they'll beg because they're dogs. But with your burger, my dogs are like. like throwing and thrusting their body against me. Like, if I don't give them a piece of Bel Campo burger, it's, they're going to off themselves or something. I have to leave the room.
Starting point is 00:22:37 It's too intense. We have to literally bring her upstairs. We do make dog food too. Oh, you do? Yeah. Yeah, it's in the freezer case. It's labeled dog growing. So, yeah, it's a good thing for them.
Starting point is 00:22:46 I was going to ask you about that because right now they're doing tiki dog and I feel like you're going to tell me something bad about that. I don't know much about it. I mean, the reality is that most available protein, unless it's really clearly. marked is going to be from confinement. Okay, and it's made in Thailand and who knows. I would love to try your dog food because I was literally the whole time you've been talking. I'm like, but what am I feeding my dogs? Bone broth is also amazing for dogs. Boone was having bone bread. So you love animals. When it comes to butchering animals on your farm, like how, I don't want to say
Starting point is 00:23:16 how you've made peace with that. What's your perspective on it now? So, I mean, I guess there's a contradicted and implicit in that. I mean, I came at this industry out of compassion for animals. I look at the same way as a hunter who hunts his own food. I actually think that's more sustainable and more compassionate than getting it just from the meat market. Yeah. I mean, part of it for me, if I can just dive deep into my true motivation, I see huge beauty in ecosystems and I see huge beauty in regeneration. You know, I think things that are rooted and makes sense and that are contributing to the earth.
Starting point is 00:23:45 Like, I look at our farm and I feel like, man, that's something I'm incredibly proud of, you know, having been a part of leading that team and building that operation because we've gone from the farm being kind of dusty and dry and not very beautiful to lush and biodeverse and lots of different wild species engaging with it. So to me, part of it is like I love animals because of just loving nature and wanting to be part of a shift in the ecosystem. And then another part of like my drive as an entrepreneur is to show that there can be another way. You know, part of when I got into meat, if I can get back to my journey, when I came back from Italy, I was eating a lot of meat at that time. Still am, but I gained about 40 pounds in, I'd say probably six months right when I moved
Starting point is 00:24:29 back home to California, just like, boom. And I didn't feel like anything had really changed into my diet. So when I started to figure that out and unwind it, I started to look at where my meat was coming from. So I started buying whole animals and actually getting them processed at the time. This is far before Bel Campo. But that's where I first started to start. to learn how it all worked. And in doing that, I kind of got the seed of like, man, well, that's a system that I want to change. Because for me, as a consumer who wanted to eat clean meat and not gain all this weight and feel, you know, lethargic and foggy, you know, is this feeling like I was under a blanket all the time. I didn't feel good. And it was 2006, you know, it wasn't like
Starting point is 00:25:10 there was all this amazing opportunity of food that there is now. I saw this chance to, like, be a challenge to that and to find a way to make that the new mainstream, or at least an option, right? So what that time my life revealed to me is just how hard it is to get access to clean meat. And then by virtue of that, it's like, wow, all these animals are living in these really torturous circumstances. When I say I'm an animal lover, I'd say I'm just broadly in love with the idea of creating a system that animals can thrive and flourish in, still be a healthy part of our diet, but be treated with dignity, respect.
Starting point is 00:25:42 And I focus on evolutionary diet, mating, and child wearing. So those three aspects is where. we try to look at how do we have maximum kindness and integrity. So, and we designed our production systems at our farm at Bel Campo, we looked at, okay, what's the best evolutionary diet? Like, let's look at what these animals evolved eating. What's the best way for them to meet? And what's the best way for them to birth and then rear their young? So those are the kind of the pivotal points in life, right, in terms of where you can thrive. So that was how we oriented. So for me, the beauty of it and the love for animals is like building a system where this can all be working in concert with nature.
Starting point is 00:26:19 in a way that feels high integrity in every aspect and feels kind. Now, the animals that we produce obviously do get processed in our plant, and we have a... Let me say process because we keep saying it's butchering. It's killed. They're killed. And I used to be much more aggressive about that, and I realized I was sort of unnecessarily provocative, you know, because they're slaughtered. It is a slaughterhouse. We call it the butchery. We actually built the first new slaughterhouse be built in California in 50 years and opened it in 2012 in Wairika. We process all of our animals. all seven species that we raise in the farm.
Starting point is 00:26:52 And the reason we built one is that there was no way to actually find a slaughterhouse in California that could process the animals with the dignity and practices that we wanted to do. As a former vegetarian, and obviously like these conversations always, people have their different opinions and perspectives. But how do you now speak to or address vegetarians and vegans? My sense is that there is a small portion of the population that thrive on a vegetarian and vegan diet. If you're one of the people, awesome. You know, you may have found your diet, right?
Starting point is 00:27:23 I think the majority of people are healthier on protein. And there's some really compelling data about this. You know, one is that if a woman eats meat in her childhood and then becomes a vegetarian as a teenager and doesn't eat meat again until she has children, she will actually hold in her body certain DHAs and essential amino acids that she only can get from meat for her fetus. That's how important those proteins are. So people who are lifelong vegetarians, right, or born vegetarian, don't have that, right? It's not things you can get from the air. But if you were eating meat at any point of your life as a female and then stop, even if it's for 30 years, your body is still holding on to those essential amino acids. That's how important they are for your fetus. Let me ask you this about the fetus just because I'm pregnant. So say someone's a vegetarian. They've been a vegetarian for a long time or a pescatarian and they just eat fish and they get pregnant. Based on research, and this is just your opinion, would you recommend that they start? eating meat because they're pregnant? Yeah, there's some amazing research actually done at the University
Starting point is 00:28:23 of Santa Barbara that shows a higher statistical correlation between access to high quality proteins and the mother's diet and their child's eventual IQ and performance on standardized tests than to their country's economic index. Like that's bananas, right? So I'd say your baby's brain, I would highly recommend it. I mean, that's data that's done. It's 30 nations. Well, for adults, too. So I need a burger in bed tonight, Michael. Also, your breast milk quality when you're eating meat and lactating is also extremely important because you pass omega-3s on and DHAs. And yeah, you can get those in certain supplements.
Starting point is 00:28:58 That's another question. But can you really get all of them, especially for the brain. I think there's certain supplements that I think can substitute for me. But really, like, some of the things you need for your brain, I don't know where you can necessarily get them outside of healthy meat. That's the question. You know, there's so much we don't know about how nutrition works together. And, you know, I take supplements.
Starting point is 00:29:15 I think they're great. But I feel like there's always these countervailing kind of forces in natural food and in vibrant and healthy food that you don't get from the pill. You don't get the file of things work together, right? So I know that in meat, we're just now learning like that there's different types of proteins within collagen. You know, actually there's certain types of collagen that are less digestible. So we're learning all the subtlety now. Do the guys who are making those pills know that in this minute? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:29:38 Is that information transparent to you on the label? I don't know. So I don't think we know enough, but we know that the meats themselves, that's the whole person. products have that. But it's a tough ethical choice. And I actually have a huge amount of compassion for people who say, well, I can't imagine an animal dying to support my life. I mean, there's some reasons that I'd say, hey, if that's your belief on this, then you should, you know, live that truth. But if you're looking at it from either carbon perspective or from a health perspective, I would strongly challenge that decision. And carbon, I mean, carbon, where our farm is climate
Starting point is 00:30:10 positive, carbon negative, we sequester carbon. I mean, all the data about water usage and carbon is from confinement farms. It's like saying, oh, I'm going to get to that building over there. I'm going to walk. And I'm going to, then second time, I'm going to take a Hummer, right?
Starting point is 00:30:24 Or a helicopter, right? And the carbon footprint of Anya getting to that building is one and the same. Right? It's like you can't conflate those two. Grass fed and finish is radically different in terms of environmental impact. My point on like,
Starting point is 00:30:38 and I've said this on the show before, about thinking that, you know, hunting and killing your own food, butchering your own food is actually more sustainable and actually more responsible than just going to the store and picking up. It's like us as human beings, we've evolved to this place where it's like out of sight, out of mine. Like if I just go to the store and pick up some meat, that's in some way more humane than me actually going and killing it myself. But really, it's like if you backtrack it and I think of the way
Starting point is 00:31:00 that animal got there and the way it was butchered and the life it lived before it got put in that store, I would argue that a lot of these hunters that hunt one animal and keep meat for, you know, months and months is actually much more responsible and much more sustainable. You know, I would also say, people say, how can you kill your meat? It's like, well, you're just getting it from somebody else that did that, but in not such a responsible way. Well, meat's also this huge risk factor. I mean, a lot of ways, it's the riskiest food that we eat.
Starting point is 00:31:24 It has a high potential for contamination because it's so appealing, right, to bacteria as well as to us. So it's such a great substrate for things. So my intuition is get closer to the source, get it less processed. I sell a good amount of processed meat. And I'm really proud of, I know, we're now launching cooked meatballs and we have bacon and all sorts of bone broth of stuff. So we do a lot of cook products as well.
Starting point is 00:31:45 To the attentive consumer, you want to know more, not less. And you want to go as far down the food chain towards the source as you can with meat because of the risks associated with protein. I wouldn't outsource my protein as a, you know, just if you're going to outsource anything, you know, you can take your spirulina powder and don't bother making that. You can have somebody else dehydrate your reasons. If you're going to take anything on, I would take the meat cookery on because that's really a high risk, right? And, you know, I think also there's something crazy to me going to the grocery store and feeling desensitized.
Starting point is 00:32:15 You know, I look at how like sort of fundamentally antisensual so much of the meat presentation is. Like everything's like square or round or the chicken fingers are shaped like a star. And everybody's afraid to have things that look like real meat, have bones, have any kind of personality to them because it's like it makes it a safer choice. It feels more sterile. It's like I'm having a cracker and then I'm also having a square thing. It happens to be meat. That to me is something we've been convinced as consumers is better for us. But I challenge you like get closer to the source. Don't accept square meats. It's marketing, right? It's like these companies have evolved over time to be smart enough to know like this is the presentation to get people to buy this. And there's a big bone sticking out. Like, okay, that's not as appealing to somebody's, you know. People associate this hypersterell packaged with safety. Yeah. And what they should be associated with safety is the thing wrapped in paper with a guy handing it to you. Remember when we went to Spain and there was, what is it?
Starting point is 00:33:07 Well, they called like the homoen legs, you know? Haman legs like hanging in the house. They hang it in the house. And I'd never, this is like 10 years ago. I'd never seen this. And I was like, oh my God, it's just such a different way than Americans do it. What are some benefits? And you can get specific as possible.
Starting point is 00:33:23 Like you could say it brightens your eyes of eating really good grass fed meat. Speaking of some tasty cuts, you know what gets my blood pumping, Lauren? What is that, Michael? You and those work pant yoga pants by beta brand. You do get excited, don't you? Okay, guys, talked about these 100 times on the podcast. They're stylish. They're comfortable.
Starting point is 00:33:42 You can wear them to work. You can wear them to yoga. You can wear them wherever you want because, like I said, they are comfortable. So I like the black ones. We've gone over this. I like dark pants, preferably, especially now that I feel like Violet from Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory when she turns into a blueberry right now. But anyways, these make getting dressed very, very easy.
Starting point is 00:34:04 they also make packing for a trip, a breeze. They have bootleg, straight leg, skinny, cropped, six button, and wide legs. So you get a lot of different options and you can sort of pick what flatters your shape. Everyone's shape is different. I personally prefer a skinny gene, especially right now. I need like all the flattering I can get. You know what I mean? They have dozens of colors, patterns, cut, styles. So you can sort of, like I said, do what works for you here. And not only does Beta Brand have office wear. They also have premium denim. So make sure to sort of stock the site. And they're all super comfortable. It's so important to be comfortable. There's nothing worse than walking around with pants that are too tight and wanting to unbutton them every chance you get.
Starting point is 00:34:45 Anyway, so Beta Brand's dress pant yoga pants are the one you want to go for. I'm telling you, and especially because they stay wrinkle free. That's very important to me since I'm always on the go. You've got to try a pair of these pants from Beta Brand. Trust me, you guys are going to love them. I know it. And you get 20% off at beta brand.com slash skinny. So don't wait. See for yourself why millions of women agree that these are the most comfortable dress pants ever.
Starting point is 00:35:11 Go to beta brand.com slash skinny for 20% off. That's B-E-T-A, B-R-A-N-D dot com slash skinny. All right, let's get back to those tasty cuts, Michael. I'd say starting from the aesthetics, it's great for your hair, skin, and nails. Collagen, primarily, which comes from connective tissue. And you don't just get that from bone broth. You can also get that from ground meat made from any cuts that are like our Belcampo burger has collagen in it.
Starting point is 00:35:36 For example, only the very lean muscle tissue won't have any collagen, like the middle part of a rib eye or a filet mignon has no collagen. Everything else, including most ground meat, have a good dose of collagen. First thing for me is saying your skin tone and skin elasticity, your hair thickness and growth, your nails will be stronger. Those are just some basic aesthetic things. gut health is definitely promoted by collagen. Collagen actually soothe the cilia, which are the what kind of fingers that line your stomach lining. And when you're inflamed, when people say
Starting point is 00:36:07 they're inflamed, that's actually they're talking about their cilia. And these are these things are actually shaped like fingers and how nutrients are absorbed. So when you're inflamed, you can't absorb nutrients and then you become deficient in things like vitamin B and vitamin D and all those, you know, good for your things. You can't absorb them. You get lethargic. So collagen helps basically soothe those and allows them to calm down enough to absorb nutrients on your behalf. Those are some really basic things. In terms of meat as a food stuff, it's just extremely high protein and rich in things like iron, zinc, vitamin B12 as well as a host. Where do you get a vitamin B12 if not through meat? Like what's a, I mean, I know they have supplements and you can get shots, but like really
Starting point is 00:36:42 like what is a, outside of the grass fed meat? What is a good source of vitamin B12? It's a hard nutrient. Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to find. Exactly. And you need it. Yeah. And also things like creatine, which you can also get in powders, luteum. There's a number of like micronutrients that people who are really into health are aware of. But the top ones is really that iron, folate, zinc. What are those associated with folate all about brain health and babies and, you know, babies brain health as well. Iron is energy supports a lot of different immune functions. Zinc is great for your immune system. So they're all things that are just generally, sort of like your basic package of health, right? We're not talking about obscure like Lions Main or, you know, like little things out
Starting point is 00:37:19 and the periphery that can take you from awesome to amazing, right? But these are like your fundamentals of human health meets about the building blocks, high protein and efficient, fairly low calorie, depending on which cuts in how you prepare them. So it sounds like I should have another burger tonight. I'm getting hungry here. I know. I'm getting hungry too. I want to go back a little bit. So listen, you've done a lot here. You've got all these amazing restaurants. You've got this farm. Like, how do you actually go about obtaining a farm and building it and working with all these farms? I'm sure there's a crazy story involved. There's a lot of crazy stories. I mean, I started the company with my business partner, who still is my business partner. He's the majority owner. He had sold a financial
Starting point is 00:37:57 services company and wanted to make an investment in sustainable agriculture that was transformative. I think really out of a place of a legacy project for him. And we started the company together in 2012. I had built and sold two different companies at that time back in the U.S. I had this background in Europe in a really great kind of understanding of premium what we call value added foods, things like cheeses and cured meats, et cetera. So I was in an interesting position where I knew kind of enough to be dangerous about a lot of different types of handmade foods. And we started in 2012 with 6,000 acres that he already owned. Okay. And he bought. Is that up? In Mount Chasta, at the base of Mount Chasseh, beautiful farmland. Very affordable for California too.
Starting point is 00:38:36 An operation like ours, you could never do in SoCal or in, say, like Sonoma or something. You know, we're talking very low land values for California. He had been a very low land values for California. He had bought some land effectively kind of as an investment property, and I worked with him on a business plan, pitched him on the idea of Belcampo back in 2011. We started it in 2012. And between 11 and 12, I bought the land for the slaughterhouse when we built the slaughterhouse. So we opened our slaughterhouse on November 9th, and we opened our first restaurant, I think, on November 21st of 2012. So that was a mess. You guys moved fast. It was crazy because, you know, all...
Starting point is 00:39:09 I was doing the math in my head, like, man, that's a lot of execution right there. So basically between end of 2012 through 2015, I think I basically just made every mistake in the book. We had a restaurant. It was all about whole animal utilization in the early years. I was more on the, let's see if I can get people to cook more and encourage people to eat liver. And it was a bit ahead of its time, honestly. I think now that pendulum is swinging. But by 15, we started to really get some buzz. I opened down here in L.A. as well at Grand Central.
Starting point is 00:39:38 We started to get the buzz about the burger. You know, it was actually really cool because one of my dreams. dreams had been, man, if I can create the win-win where it's the best tasting thing, and it's also hands-down the best thing for the environment. That's amazing. That's what I want to do. Because I always feel like there's a lot of ethical brands where you're like, oh, I guess I'll buy that one. But you know it's not the most delicious. Right. So I wanted to be the win-win. Listen, ethical or not. Like, it has a taste good. You can't just bite off a piece of cardboard and be like, well, it's sustainable and it's ethical. Like, you can't do it. You know, you only live
Starting point is 00:40:06 once. Yeah. So tell us about the bone broth. I want to know more about the bone broth. So I started making the bone broth in 14, in 2014. I had that background in Europe and had tasted it then and loved the benefits. I make it at home all the time. And I opened in downtown and I had been to New York and seen a restaurant or two that was serving it in cups. And I was like, I should try doing that. And so I started it there in Grand Central. We were selling it by the cup. And then I opened in West Hollywood and it started to just percolate. And it was just two things in my career that at Belkampo, where I sort of stood back and other things too, where you know, and you just hand. hit some virality. Like you meet a need and you meet an unmet need. And it's a niche. Yeah. And it was
Starting point is 00:40:47 really cool. So I remember sitting in West Third when we opened there and seeing like these like really beautiful LA women coming in and buying like 14 courts, you know, like $17 a quart, a lot of money. And I was, what the heck is going on? And we couldn't keep up with supply. So then at that point we were a little haphazard. We were making it in the different kitchens using and initially it was whole animal optimization because we were paying to throw away bones. Right. I was like, just like on a lark, try this out. Started going gangbusters. And then I spent about six months really standardizing the recipe. And we moved production to our central farm kitchen. And then we also use waste from our butcher shops and restaurants and make it there. We basically then, I started to
Starting point is 00:41:24 see we had some virality. I really worked on the recipe with our farm kitchen guy. I mean, I feel like I have the best tasting bone broth in the business. It just tastes delicious. And part of it's the great bones. But we also have, you know, it's five pounds of bone per cup of broth. And isn't there like an oil or something that you guys have in there? Like there's something at the top that is different than other bone broths. There'll be a little bit of fat usually. It's the fat. Yeah. Okay. A little bit of fat. I like that. Okay. Yeah. It can be, yeah, we have poultry. We have beef and pork and we also sell lamb bone broth. So we do all three species and now our poultry is our bestseller. It's an amazing part of our business. It's so cool too because bones are the memory of an animal, right? So it's
Starting point is 00:42:04 like a lot of toxicity is stored in bones. So if you're eating, say, mara. I would never eat confinement meat, but especially don't eat confinement marrow because actually marrow is, you know, that's where brain cells are generated. It's a real like motor of growth for the animal. And it's actually, and actually blood cells are produced from marrow, right? So it's an amazingly rich, functional part of the animal. But things like BPAs, heavy leads, metals, toxicity are held in marrow. And they're also held in organs. So for anybody who's listening who wants to eat more organ meat, be double, triple cautious because liver, what's the liver do? Right? Yeah, filters. That's why people who drink too much have liver problems because liver is trying
Starting point is 00:42:43 to filter that toxicity around. So in animals, it has the same function. So if you have an animal with a heavy toxicity load, that liver is going to be holding onto that. It'll be cleaning the animal. And the same with kidneys. So you actually have to be super cautious. So I love that our bones are, A, they're really strong. I've heard this comment from my mother was the first person who she said, you know, I've been getting the chickens now that you've been growing. And she's like, I can't break the wish bones. Like I can't break the wish bones. She said, my chickens from foods, I can just snap the wishbones. And I can't break them. I was like, that's kind of a head scratch. It's sort of funny. And then I did it and I saw them. I'm like, wow, the bones are so much richer.
Starting point is 00:43:17 And then I learned like, oh, because we're actually in a volcanic area. We're feeding on natural pasture. There's lots of calcium in there. So there's lots of reasons why that's a richer and healthier pasture for them. So the bones hold that health. They are the memory. They are the residue of whatever toxicity that animal is been exposed to. I love that we're able to extract every ounce of value. And that's where I talk about like honoring the animal, something like, something like 40% of meat produced in the U.S. is actually thrown away. You know, so we raised animals in these stressful, awful conditions. And then we throw them away.
Starting point is 00:43:46 We kill them in awful conditions. And then really, what's the point? You know, and then, you know, the toxicity for humans, they documented that if you live within two miles of a KFO, you have like double the risk of low birth rate and miscarriages. Wow. So it's like, it's a human toxicity. It's not just about eating them. Even if you live close by, you're going to get that toxicity.
Starting point is 00:44:03 So we're building a system that's terrible for animals and terrible for people and terrible for the environments and then we throw it away. So with our system, we have extremely low waste and we actually use all those bones in the broth as well. So that to me is powerful. Benefits of bone broth, like just, I know there's so many. It's really high protein and very lean. So if you're looking to lean out, it's a great way to get a super high protein, very, very low calorie. The protein in bone broth is all collagen and gelatin is a part of collagen. So gelatin collagen are one and the same. If you're not buying Belcampo, bone broth, be very suspect if any bone broth that is not thick when you take it out of the refrigerator. It should be solid or quite jiggly, right? You notice that from our
Starting point is 00:44:40 bone broth, it's like viscous and thick. That's a sign that there's high collagen. If it doesn't have that, it doesn't have any of the collagen. Collagen is really the one big health benefit from bone broth. So collagen, which is protein, and then a lot of micronutrients as well, some things that are documented, but nothing with a tangible, like documented health benefit. Okay. And how often should you be drinking it? I drink so much bone broth. Can you drink too much or no? I don't think so. It definitely will help with all of your soft tissue. Just give you that advice when you're breastfeeding. Okay. And your soft tissues are like giving up the ghost. Bone broth will really help because it's what your breast tissue is made out of this. And it's so interesting because I met with an
Starting point is 00:45:17 RUVadic doctor. And she was like, you need to be having bone broth every single day of your pregnancy. And then I met with the doula. She was like, you need to be having bone broth every day of your pregnancy. And so it's like across the board, it's something I think everyone agrees on. It also really helps with healing. So even things like cuts in your skin. I've recently read a study that if you have like an ACL or a ligament injury, bone broth with lemon in there or collagen plus vitamin C can double your recovery time. And so you can make it twice as fast, you know, so half the time. So it's amazing.
Starting point is 00:45:48 So that's also in recovery after childbirth because there's so much strain on your soft tissue. It'll be really helpful. But I drink about a quarter of day. That's a lot. Think about it evolutionarily. We didn't evolve eating steaks. Sure. We ate basically boiled meat, right?
Starting point is 00:46:01 We ate meat from old animals because animals served a function. in the farm, right, for their whole lives. And then they were turned into meat after that function had been exhausted. So when we ate beef, we ate, it was like we're eating the tractor. You know, it's like we pulled the cart for eight, 10 years or produced milk for eight, 10 years. And then when that functionality is spent, then it would turn into it. And you got to put old Betsy down and and that meat was super high in connective tissue. It doesn't like that. Old Betsy. Well, I was just thinking about the milk cow, you know. My Pilates teachers named Betsy. Can you get more creative? So let me ask you this. So for say you're a listener to the show,
Starting point is 00:46:40 we have a couple, and they're sitting there. Maybe they've bought into the story that red meat is not good for them. And so now they've heard this conversation saying, hmm, maybe I do want to get back into eating sustainable, grass-fed meat. What is something we could tell them to, a place for them to start and some of the benefits they can understand? Because I think, like I said, and I've talked about this a lot, is that the blanket statement that red meat is bad because there's a lot of documentaries, There's a lot of people saying that. It's just, in my opinion, not true. And like, I'll make that statement here. So what would you tell those individuals that are not like, hmm, maybe I actually am open to this perspective? I'd start with ground meat. The revolution's happening. I mean, there's grass fed and finished ground meat available in the freezer section of pretty much every grocery store now. And there wasn't even a year ago, right? So it's everywhere now. At least the ground product. I'd say encourage that people to start by trying that. I also think inform yourself. Read about the carbon footprint of grass fed and finished meat, you know, become uninformed. consumer or read about the health benefits of meat. If you're already on the path of making the switch, you probably don't need to get informed about this as much. But one thing that's really shocking to
Starting point is 00:47:40 me is there's rock solid scientific evidence that hyper-processed foods, you'll eat around 500 calories more a day. The more highly processed, the more calories you consume. Because you're not getting the nutrients, right? And you're craving the new, and you're craving as you you're overeating. Because you're trying to satiate things that aren't in there. And all those meat substitutes are highly processed foods. So one thing to think about in terms of your health is that you're also going to be getting more satiety faster and you're going to be less likely to overeat and overconsume because you'll be getting that micronutrient dose that your body is actually, you're hungry because your body wants calories, but it also wants healing, right? And so if you're
Starting point is 00:48:14 feeding it nutritionally impoverished, highly processed foods, you're not getting that healing. Before we go, what can someone expect from your farm? Like if someone were to go there, can you give us a visual, like really describe it? It is so amazing. It is the most beautiful just piece of land at the base of Mount Shasta. We host events. I actually host all the events there all summer long. They're called meat camps and we also have a wellness retreat there. And it smells incredible. We have a big orchard with all these different organic fruits and a massive garden. People can go out and pick and we cook every day over the open fire. So it's just very idyllic. It's a picture of what things could be. I mean, when we saw Tara, it was our frontero and Kalil's pictures of
Starting point is 00:48:56 the first thing I told on it was like, I don't know where these people are, but it looks amazing. I feel really energetically like uplifted when I'm there. It's a magical space. It's also just Mount Chassehast is just beautiful. It's just huge volcano. If you've seen pictures of it, it's stand. I mean, volcanoes are special. Mountains are magical, but volcanoes are just spectacular. So you're always looking at that volcano and you're in a place where the earth has really been healed and restored. That concept of regenerative agriculture, that's agriculture that is putting back into the soil. That's what we do, right? Many other farms do it too. It's a word that people are listening who want to eat better quality meat should be looking for a local regenerative firm as much as they're looking
Starting point is 00:49:33 for organic, right? And regenerative is always going to be a grass fed and finished. And you can really feel that, you know, like the streams are clear. There's bald eagles. There's hawks. There's all kinds of animals and wildlife. And it's just alive. When my kids are up there in the summer, they're literally just like grabbing frogs all over the place. And I'm just so proud that I can be there with my kids and they're eating fruits and grabbing bugs and everything's clean. You know, you're not like, oh, don't touch that or wash your hands. hands, right? That's amazing. What is like, what do you think the biggest, the biggest lesson you've learned from working with these farmers is? I mean, there's probably so many. Well, that's our own
Starting point is 00:50:07 farm, right? And then we're now going to be expanding to work with other firms. But my lesson is to dig deep into your integrity and your authenticity in your own path. You know, like I started doing this in 2012 and it didn't feel like it could ever be a reality. And now I feel the momentum of people wanting clean meat, wanting better health, being open to animal wellness and human wellness, connected. And it all came from like this digging down into what I knew authentically was going to be healthier for people and better in the long term. And now things are starting to shift. So that's really my takeaway is like, you know, you can root down and dig into beliefs. You know, there's a million things I feel that on the way. But the core belief of like if I do the right thing and offer
Starting point is 00:50:50 people a better product, sooner or later people will be telling me, hey, I can eat your meat when I'm pregnant, I can't eat other meat. I knew that people would intuitively respond to that better product. And that's about, like, leaning into integrity and belief. What's a book, a podcast, or a resource that you can recommend to our audience? I think something maybe specifically with what we talked about today if they want to learn more. I would start with Diana Rogers from Sustainable Dish. She is a ballsy farmer in the Northeast. And her whole platform is about kind of reputation of meat in the regenerative movement separated from confinement. Diana Rogers at Sustainable Dish. She's a badass farmer and another female rancher.
Starting point is 00:51:31 I have one more question that I want to ask. You highlighted the question for me to ask, but I can't pronounce what that says. So I'm like waiting for you to ask. So Tara's like you need to add. You have to ask. He said, what's a lumerian and why do people believe they live in Mount Shasta? So I was talking about the energy of Shasta. A lot of people go to Shasta and just fill up water bottles from the springs and get their crystals recharged and do energy work there. When you guys come up this summer, you'll get the sense. of it's just a magical place. Like the water's magical. I'm packing my bags right now.
Starting point is 00:52:00 It's incredible. It's restorative in that true sense. And like many places that have a significant energy to them, there's a lot of theories about that energy. And one of the more prominent kind of kooky theories in that area, he's not the right word, but there's a belief that there's a prehistoric race of alien people that live at the top of the mountain, that get in and out of the mountain when there's a pink cloud around the top of the mountain, which happens very frequently. I actually climbed Mount Chasta. I didn't see any of them. so I can't personally verify, but it is a very energetic mountain. And that particular community of people all wear white and live in the town of Mount Shasta
Starting point is 00:52:35 and have a whole kind of affiliated set of beliefs that are associated with these giant pink people called the Lumerians. I'll take anything pink. There you go. This is 100% a tarot question. No wonder he asked that. This is like so. Terra. Tara Santa sold shrooms.
Starting point is 00:52:51 Now he should talk about the Lumeras. Is that he saying? Lomerians. Lomerians. Lomerians. Lerians. That's amazing. Now that you've answered it, and now I know that I'm like, okay, no wonder to ask me.
Starting point is 00:52:59 I believe, though, that you said the water and all that is energetically healing. I know this sounds crazy, but I truthfully think grounding, like, and putting your feet in nature and earthing, cures hangovers and jet lag. And he, the other day, had a hangover, and I was like, let's go to the beach. You said that you felt better afterwards. I did feel better. Listen, it was the transitional period between getting me from where I was to the beach. That was the picture.
Starting point is 00:53:25 I mean, next time if I get pregnant, I just think that you should do a nice nine months no alcohol with me. Nobody wants that. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can everyone find you? I'm at Anya Fernald on Instagram and at Belcampo Miko. That's our farm. And then if they want to come. We have five restaurants between northern and southern California all on our website and one restaurant in Hudson Yards in New York.
Starting point is 00:53:50 Oh, rad. Yeah. And then also at belcampo.com, we can buy all our meats online as well. And you can do what I do. Lay in bed in the dark. Watch housewives and postmate that shit and make your husband bring it downstairs. Sometimes I even add sliced jalapinos on top. I'm probably going to get one tonight now that I'm going to get one tonight.
Starting point is 00:54:07 Thank you so much for coming on. That was so informative. Thank you. I hope that episode brought you a ton of value. We have teamed up with Bell Campo to do a fun little giveaway and give you guys a discount code. So if you're going to go on their site, it's bellcampo.com. Then be sure to get the bone broth.
Starting point is 00:54:24 is the best. It's the cleanest. As you can tell, I'm obsessed, the dogs are obsessed, Michael's obsessed. Pixie has it in her food every single day and Boone tries to look it. You can buy it on the website and use code Skinny 20 when you're checking out for 20% off. Then for a little giveaway, like always at the end of every episode, all you have to do is tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram at the Skinny Confidential and follow Bell Campo on Instagram and we will send one of you a $100 gift card. Thank you guys. We'll love it if you're not a vegetarian, of course. But I think they do have vegetarian options. They have sweet potato fries, right, Michael? Yep. All right. With that, we will see you on Friday with Alexis Haynes and my
Starting point is 00:55:06 sister, Faye. It's a good episode all about pregnancy and babies. This episode was brought to you by Thrive Market, our favorite one-stop shop for all things, grocery, household supplies, pet food, beauty, supplements they've got it all and even wine now wine thrive wine guys to try thrive thrive go to thrive market.com slash skinny to find a membership that fits your lifestyle again that's thrive market.com slash skinny to find a membership that fits your lifestyle everything is 25 to 50% below retail straight to your door thrive market dot com slash skinny

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