The Dr. Hyman Show - Is Bone Broth Worth the Hype? with Marco Canora

Episode Date: October 24, 2018

Food should taste good, smell good, look good, and it should be good for you. That’s what this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy is all about. As a chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author, Marco Canora promotes delicious, simple, and healthful food. His restaurant Hearth is one of my favorites in NYC and has earned positive reviews from The New York Times as well as a prestigious “Outstanding Restaurant” nomination from the James Beard Foundation. In 2017, Marco won the James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef NYC.

Hello, I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. That's F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations to matter. And today's conversation with Chef Marco is going to be one that really matters and will blow your mind because it's a whole different way of thinking about food and cooking and the meaning of food. It's pretty awesome. Now, Marco is a chef. He's a restaurateur. He's a cookbook author. Marco Canora promotes delicious, simple, healthful food. He opened in 2003 something called Hearth. It's a restaurant in the East Village of Manhattan,

which I've been to many times because it's so darn good. He has a local following. He's really been promoted all over. He's a two-star review from the New York Times. He's got the prestigious Outstanding Restaurant nomination from the James Beard Foundation. And in 2017, Marco won the James Beard Foundation Award for the best chef in New York. That is no easy feat considering how many unbelievable restaurants there are here. He's also the founder of Broto. And this is something you better pay attention to, which is a bone broth company, a popular to-go window serving coffee cups, not of coffee, but hot,

nourishing, organic, grass-fed bone broth. Now, Brodo, along with the recipes and a good food day, reflect his renewed attention to his health and wellness, and you can check out that story in the introduction in the book. Now, his first book, his first cookbook was Salt to Taste which is pretty awesome, was a major success and nominated for the James Beard Award in 2010. He's been written about in the New York Times

and Food and Wine, he was a finalist on The Next Iron Chef, a judge on Chopped and Top Chef. He also appeared on Today, Good Morning America, Martha Stewart, Nightline and he lives in New York with his wife and two daughters. Now Marco and I first met on a boat, and it was called Summit Boat, and it was a bunch of creatives, entrepreneurs, amazing people, and he had a big stand of this Broto bone broth, and you had to wait in line for like an hour to get this bone broth, and it was so good,

and it was sort of before he really started having his commercial avenue on this. But it was so good. I think it probably inspired him. And it was great to connect with him. We were on a panel together talking about health and wellness and things that are not typical often for traditional chefs. I remember being at Kenya Ranch 20 years ago. And I stood up at a meeting with the chefs, nutritionists, the doctors, the owners.

And I said, food is medicine. And we need to focus on that here. And this was a long time ago. And the chefs got up and go, this is not a effing hospital. This is a, you know, a spa, and we have to focus on taste. And I'm like, you don't have to give up taste to have great stuff. So let's talk a little bit, Marco. Welcome. Thank you. It's great to be here. Let's talk about Hearth, which is this amazing restaurant. And the word Hearth or Hearth is about home. It's about real food. It's about cooking. It's so many great connotations.

And again, I've been there a number of times. It's amazing. And he celebrates food in a way that most restaurants don't. And I go there and I look at his menu. Now, this menu we're going to post a link to. But it's pretty cool. And on the back of the menu, I mean, the front of the menu is great, which is all the food, which we'll go over, but he talks about some of the principles of what his philosophy is about food. Wild fish, getting rid of the high mercury fish,

the chef rules he talks about. We'll get into that. Having more variety, flavor, color, texture of vegetables, more veggies. He talks about fat, has a major food group that we need to be eating more of and the right kinds of fat. He talks about awful. Now, that's not A-W-F-U-L. It's O-F-F-A-L, which is organs. And we'll talk about why that's important. It sounds a little weird, but it's actually amazing.

He talks about how to eat clean food, how to have food that's sweet, but actually good sweets. He talks about how to have grains that are freshly milled and organic, and why organic isn't the only thing we should be focused on. So it's really an amazing education about the quality of the nature and the importance of the food we eat, and how it contributes not just flavor, taste, community, deliciousness, and fun, but also health. So Marco, how did you get this vision for this restaurant about food as medicine and food as celebration and all those things put together in an amazing way?

Sure. Well, thank you for that introduction. You know, Hearth, we celebrated our 15th year this year, so that's pretty cool. So Hearth has been a work in progress and has obviously evolved over the years. A couple of years ago, I really wanted to kind of shift our focus and like scream a little louder out the rafters. I wanted it to align more with Brodo and the ethos that kind of spawned Brodo. So, you know, the, the big, the big idea is, listen, like, of course I'm a chef and of course i care about the way the food looks and the way the food tastes and the way the food smells because that is so critical right like um and and but the thing that i think we often forget about is what we call our fourth rule

which is it should make you feel good so i can't tell you how many times through my 25 years of living in New York City and dining out where at the end of a meal, you don't feel good. You feel like it might have tasted good, and you might have enjoyed your time with your mate or your loved one. But at the end of the day, it's like you left and you were kind of holding your gut, and maybe you ate too much or you were eating, you know, highly processed oils. And, and I was really surprised at the fact that I could walk the aisles of a supermarket and learn so much more about my food choices than I do when I am navigating a menu in a restaurant in a, in an urban center. So I really

wanted to kind of, um, put forth all the ideas that drive our, our food purchasing decisions in our restaurant. And you know, that infographic that you referred to, uh, it's a, it was, you find it online. Yeah, it's online at hearthrestaurant.com. Um, but it took me so much editing, right? Cause you go fall down rabbit holes and there's so much you want to say. So it really, it was like eight months in the making to distill it down to these little three sentence sound bites. And everybody was like, it's way too long. It's way too long.

And I was like, I can't say it any less. No, it's so good. I mean, so yeah, it's really fun. People respond to it. I think we often focus on all the bad things going on in our food system, agricultural system, health system, etc. But I really think that we're living in an amazing time right now. And what you're doing and what so many great people are doing out there and the awareness around food and the importance of food and the notion of food as medicine, which I like to say food is medicine that tastes good, which is not very common in the medicine world. So, you know, I'm super thrilled to be kind of in the current kind of state of the world right now in this country.

So when you go to your restaurant, you get not only delighted and excited and stimulated by the food, you're also getting healed at the same time. So people often think that food is good for you, has to taste bad. You know, Pepsi had this whole campaign of food that's fun for you and food that's good for you. The fun for you food makes you sick and good for your food, I don't know. But it's sort of a false dichotomy, right? Yeah. I mean, it's nonsense too. I mean, you know, the more nutrient, you know, I believe that the more nutrient dense the food products are, the better they taste. And if you and you know, I implore everyone to do a little. The only way to know that is to do side by side stuff. And it's really awesome when you get a cauliflower from the green market that was picked yesterday and taste it next to a cauliflower that maybe it's even organic, but it's grown in soil that doesn't have nutrients and cook them side by side and taste them side by side. And you will see that the nutrient dense product tastes better, smells better, performs better when you cook it

than, you know, the, the mono crop organic true cauliflower. There's industrial organic. Yeah. Yeah. And they may have any even be bad for the environment and climate so you could think you're eating being a vegan and eating a healthy organic vegetable diet exactly grow it through methods that use tilling that right are intensive in terms of water resources you you're depleting the soil you may be contributing to climate change when you're eating your vegetables so So it's a little more complicated. It totally is. It's such a great vision for a restaurant because you're introducing people to a way of eating that is community-based. I mean, the dishes are all basically family style.

They're meant to be shared. They're incredibly delicious. I mean, and you've got some kind of weird things on your menu, like variety burger. Yeah. You've got a very, very interesting things like awful food, right? You've got organ meats and you've got liver and things that typically people sort of steer away from. So let's, let's talk about the whole awful thing. Why should we be eating organ meats? It sounds like that's the stuff that everybody throws away. It's the cheap stuff. It's not really part of gourmet cooking like why would you want to use that so it's funny the anecdote i use at the back of the menu on the infographic is i look at the jungle and i say you know guess what the king of the jungle eats when he takes down an animal that he's going to eat and it's like

the guy that's the highest on the pyramid chooses what he wants first and guess what he always takes first it's the guts and you know and it's a pretty compelling argument i think because if you look to nature you know everybody we're so obsessed with research science proving our beliefs and it's like i like to look other places i like to look at history and i like to look at nature for my belief system yeah and it's like if the king of the jungle decides that he wants guts first and leaves all the other stuff for everybody else that's pretty compelling to me i don't need a double blind research study so um and you know the fascinating research is there you know i recently saw a spreadsheet of comparison of different vegetables and grains and nutrient-dense foods and then liver.

Powerhouse food. Looking at just the number and density and amount of nutrients, liver compared to the best plant foods on the planet. Blows it out of the water. It's like tenfold better in terms of nutrient density which is sort of surprising like vitamin c and yeah antioxidants and the b vitamins and minerals and things that you know you think the bees especially right in the liver yeah it's pretty impressive and a close second is oysters is my understanding uh super nutrient dense food like the two most nutrient dense foods beef grass-fed beef liver and oysters yeah So you're not worried about

the toxins in the liver? I mean, no, I'm not. I mean, if it's grass fed. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, that's the other thing I really wanted to pose with you is that, you know, one of the things we often, when we talk about health and wellness, we don't qualify things we want to say low carb but we don't want to qualify the carb and we want to say low fat but we don't want to qualify the fat right and those say high fat or high fat right and it's like they're that you know are we don't have a lot of time for nuance these days but the fact of the matter is is when you're having a conversation around diet or macronutrients or micronutrients you need to qualify this stuff right a beef liver isn't a beef liver isn't a beef liver and a carb isn't a carb isn't a carb um and you know this this notion of low carb

and i think you mentioned this once before it's interesting because if you're talking about from a caloric standpoint, low carb is still a lot more carbs and volume than the fat, right? And that's, I really have such empathy. That's why I say most of your diet should be carbs. Correct. Which are plant foods. Right. And it's counterintuitive.

By volume. Right, by volume. But by calories, it should be fat. And, you know, it's like I have so much empathy for people because it's like, it's really more, it's really hard, right? So, you know, the fact of the matter is, it's like all vegetables are carbs and we need to be eating a lot more vegetables. Ask Terry Walls, right? Yeah. Terry Walls was a doctor who reversed her multiple sclerosis using the power of vegetables.

Nine cups of vegetables a day and the phytonutrients and the 18 servings of vegetables right the five to nine right so it's it's confusing and i have so much empathy out there and it's like i'm really on a mission to like help people navigate all the weird stuff because it's not that easy you know you say high fat low carb well we got to define the carbs and we have to have a qualified conversation around what do you mean? Yeah. And that really speaks to the very foundation of functional medicine, which is the food is information, right? So just when you say protein, fat, and carbs is meaningless. You can have a pound of trans fat or a bunch of omega-3 fats, profoundly different effects on your body.

Same thing. You can have white flour, which is a carb, or you can have broccoli, which is a carb, profoundly different effects on your body. same thing with protein the quality of the protein matter is vegetable protein or animal protein yeah and it's interesting you know i've been saying a lot lately since i've been like trying to grow the broth business is that um there's everybody understands the notion of good fat bad fat because we've been talking about it for a while you know trans fat bad you know olive oil is a good fat and like there's a conversation the same with carbs like people understand like highly processed white flour carbs bad but slow carbs that are a sweet potato or a broccoli like

people are really getting to know that right and it hasn't entered the macronutrient of protein yet no and i can't wait for that conversation to, which is qualifying what a good protein is and qualifying what a bad protein is. Because I'm of the belief that protein powders are simply highly processed foodstuffs. Yeah. And, you know, the one thing I think we all agree on in the health and wellness space is that you should stay away from highly processed shelf stable foodstuffs as a general rule yeah um and it's just it's interesting right because that's what and i've heard you mention it on your podcast quite a few times like wait a minute these are these are industrialized but could you like for example dehydrate your bone broth and then

add hot water like that would be okay, right? But the end. Or not. See, there's a lot we don't know. Which by the way is awesome. I'm having some right now. Thank you. You know, I think one of the things that everybody needs to feel more comfortable with is we don't know a lot.

And, you know, I follow a lot of people I respect like Peter Atiyah and Chris Kresser and all these guys who are like great research doctors um and they all agree like we don't really know a lot i i we know more than we think though there is more agreement on things than disagreements sure i mean when you pare away all the nonsense of extremism and ideology the basic foundational principles that you even put on your menu here right eat whole foods pretty much yeah we could agree on that yeah for sure that's why i created the pegan diet which is essentially a joke which i love vegan yeah and it's sort of the same principles like eat real food if you're gonna eat animals eat these kind of animals if you're gonna

eat fat eat these kinds of fats if you're gonna you know we should be eating mostly plants not plant-based plant-rich i call plant-rich diet right the vegan thing is tricky too because like you know guess what soda's vegan it's true chips and soda vegan so is a donut and so is like so many things are vegan i mean it's i think you can do it it's just tough to do it right and i think um you know i've seen over decades, many patients and tested extensively their metabolic nutritional status. And I can say, you know, unequivocally that, you know, vegans and often vegetarians are neutrally nutritionally depleted, uh, deficient, they're deficient. And it's, it, you, I think you can do it well, but it's not easy. And it's

the default for what you eat is is often a problem where do you get your b vitamins as a vegan from a bottle of pills oh got it okay from b12 you have to supplement it i mean you know vitamin d omega-3 fats uh you know vitamin b12 these are things that are very tough and there are other nutrients that get depleted like choline and um you know selenium and iodine and i mean these are tough to get i mean iodine is you have to supplement to get in some seaweed you know you can get in fish but you have to supplement yeah so um let's talk about bone broth okay you know it's this happy to thing kind of fatty thing like not fatty but right faddish uh the bone broth and collagen, it's this thing, kind of fatty thing, like not fatty, but faddish. The bone broth and collagen, it's the next best thing.

Everybody's, you know, saying it does all these magical properties, like heal your gut and improve your muscle mass and protein. First of all, all I have to say is that Broto bone broth tastes great, which is what I care about. I don't eat stuff that tastes awful. It's delicious. And you kind of make it in a very unique way that I'd love you to share about

and what the ingredients you use are and how you sort of create. And you created this cookbook, which is a whole bone broth cookbook, which I encourage everybody to get because it's pretty awesome. It's called Marco Canora Brodo, a bone broth cookbook.

And I'm just looking through it and you've got such creative things forora Broto, a bone broth cookbook. And I'm just looking through it and you've got such creative things for chicken bone broth, fish bone broth, grassroot beef bone broth, putting in vegetables, different spices, really creating food is medicine. Yeah. That tastes great. It doesn't taste like medicine. Yeah. Back, back to this notion of, you know, research and what have you, you know, my belief is that, uh, why I believe that this is truly a, uh, a great restorative elixir is because it's been on every corner of the globe for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. It's not a new thing. It's not a new thing at all. So like to me again, like I, I,

I don't need a double blind research study to tell me that this is a good thing to ingest on the daily. Um, there's been people around the world doing it for centuries and that's pretty cool whether it's look at chinese medicine or ayurvedic medicine or you know so many cultures have long long histories of traditional broth making yeah um and and you know and when you want to talk about food waste it's like 30 of a a grass fed cow is bone. So we need to utilize those bones. We need to get those nutrients out of those bones and put them in this delicious broth that, by the way, is the forgotten staple in your kitchen. I like to say salt, pepper, fat, water, and broth are the things you need in your kitchen to become a great cook.

Yeah. And I know you believe in cooking as much as I do. Yeah. Um, so, you know, there's a lot of debate around, is it stock? Is it broth? Is it, and it's like, I kind of, my response is like, call it whatever you want. You know, you boil, you boil clean bone, you know, bones from clean animals, uh animals for a long time, and you get all of the connective tissue to release all of its goodness into the broth, and you end up with a nutrient-dense, filled with umami, with the glutamate. I say it's the natural MSG because there's a lot of glutamate in there, the G of MSG.

And it makes everything taste good whether you cook rice in it or cook quinoa in it or deglaze a vegetable or deglaze a pan with it um so you know there's nothing you know it's interesting like with brodo or broth shops it's like we have one foot in the tradition of it because it's been around forever and then we have another foot in the fun innovative part because you know if you put it in a coffee cup with a sip lid and you start adding things and customizing those things um with other powerful food stuffs like ginger and garlic and turmeric and fat um you really it's like an amazing palette even have a bone marrow bone broth yep we buzz the grass-fed bone marrow into it and then we do barbecue spice bone marrow into the beef broth and it tastes like you're drinking

like barbecue um and it's kind of endless how much you could do and how tasty it is and by the way it doesn't have 50 grams of sugar the way a lot of these uh sweet coffee beverages have. And a large broth has 20 grams of protein. Yeah. So let's talk about what's in it because it seems so mysterious. You know, you take these bones, you throw them in water. It's really not. What do you do? What do you put in it? How do you what's in these bones? Right. And what does it do for you? So I like to use a variety of bones, right? So, you know, I believe that a lot of the collagen exists in the connective tissue. So I believe that a lot of the collagen exists in the connective tissue. So I love to use feet. I love to use knuckles. I really love to use neck.

What's cool about the neck bone is it's hard to get all the meat off of it. And you want some meaty bones because the meat is where the flavor is. And I think a lot of people go out and they buy marrow bones, which are femur bones. And it's very easy to strip the meat off of a femur bone. So a lot of people are at home making stock with a bunch of clean white bones. And then they're like, God, this tastes awful. And it's like, well, of course.

Or some bone marrow, maybe. Yeah, but of course it tastes awful because it's just bone. Like you need meat, you need vegetables, a little tomato product, some pepper, some bay leaf. You know, it's like it's a thing making broth right more just it's more bone soup than bone right and i think we're so obsessed with function right it's like i went to expo east this year and it's like everything is so function based function function function where it's like the name of the thing is you know

based on the function of the thing and it's like you know let the thing is, you know, based on the function of the thing. And it's like, you know, let's not forget that it needs to taste good or there's going to be no adherence, right? Like, as you know, one of the most difficult things is for people to adhere to the program. And I tell you what, it's going to be very easy to adhere to the idea of drinking a cup of broth every day. Yeah. And that's important. And that's to the point of making food taste good with the healthy ingredients. It's like you have, you know, food is absolutely medicine, but it's our job as chefs and doctors to figure out a way to make it taste good so that people have adherence to this new discipline of cooking for yourself, eating healthy foods.

So the shocking thing you just said was that bone broth, like a cup of bone broth has 20 grams of protein? Yep, our 16 ounce cup of beef broth or hearth broth, 20 grams of protein. And then we put an egg yolk in it too, by the way. You whip an egg yolk into that thing, add some like nutmeg and cinnamon, and it's like you have a broth-based eggnog

that is like to die for. Wow, so that's an amazing amount of protein. and it's not just like any protein right it's got bioavailable protein i think that your body understands right i mean it's unique protein and has different amino acids and let's say you'd get from beans or grains right right so you it's a soluble protein too yeah and uh very high in glycine ar arginine, glutamine, proline. And if you look at research science, there actually is a bunch of studies around these component parts and these particular amino acids that are purported to do all kinds of things from, you know, helping the mucosal lining of your gut or building stronger tendons or building more muscle. Yeah. Or, you know, glycine is even purported to help you sleep better because it's like a GABA thing and it like it helps calm your brain. It's also important for detoxification and building glutathione. Exactly.

So, boy, us stressed out New Yorkers, we could use a little bit of all that stuff, right? Yeah. You know, essentially when you drink it, you just have this sense that you're doing something really awesome for your taste buds and your body it's really energizing yeah i find it like calming and it's got some interesting like magical property i don't know what it is but every time i drink i'm like yeah i feel so good and i'll tell you anecdotally being at being at the window or being in my shops it's like the customer feedback is just, if I ever get down at the struggle of growing a small, growing a upstart business, I just go and spend a couple hours in my shop because seven out of 10 people who walk into the shop are just filled with like all these

unbelievable stories. Just before I got here, a woman was like, you know, I've had gastrointestinal problems for years and years. And ever since I've started coming here and I drink it every day and like, it's totally gone. And it's like, yeah, glutamine is so important for repairing your gut. Exactly. And it's one of the amino acids in there. And it's like this notion of N equal one study, you know, it's like, if it were, you know, everybody is complex. Right. And it's like like if it works for you then it works for you and i gotta tell you i hear time and time again day after day for three years now how this really helps people and it drives our whole company um because it's really exciting now can you just get

it in new york or do you guys sell it online or so we sell it online both coasts free two-day shipping uh through e-commerce and it'll come like cold or yep it comes in this in this awesome box uh with some um insulation that you run underwater and it goes down the drain so it's like super eco-friendly insulation that we're really proud of you need a factory in uh iowa so you can get the whole country exactly that's that's coming we're getting there um but we really believe in shops you know two of our shops are pretty close to Starbucks and, you know, we don't aspire to have 18,000 Brotos, but you know, we'd like to say for every 50 Starbucks, there could be a Broto broth shop. Um, it's certainly, uh, it's certainly when you look at them side by side, you know,

it's, it's really no contest in terms of the nutrient value, right? I mean, there's no sugar, there's a lot of protein, it's low in calorie, there's no dairy, there's no gluten, it's like an allergen-free food. So it's got a lot going for it. And most importantly, as you said, it tastes really, really good. Dr. Justin Marchegiani And it connects to this whole idea of food waste, right? Dr. Peter Salgo Well, yeah. Dr. Justin Marchegiani You mentioned, you know, 30 percent of a cow is bone and other animals

probably about the same ratio so right we just what do we do with them normally throw them out well for a long time they were it wasn't worth the time and energy i mean now that now that this country seems to be somewhat obsessed over bone broth you know that's changing the game a little bit in terms of uh you know what you used to be able to get bones for seven years ago compared to now it's changed, but like, that's certainly, uh, a better model, right. To use, to get people using these bones and getting more nutrient value out of them. The problem is, is like the vast majority of our, our, uh, supply chain now is still commodities beef. Um, which, which you know as you know there's a lot of problems with that so you know as a chef uh you know it seems a little bit out of

your wheelhouse to be focused on things like sustainability and climate and the environment and even nutrition i mean as a chef it's not something most chefs focus on. It was taste and flavor. And yet this is really the core of who you are and what you do, which is amazing. Now, in your world of chefs, is this a trend? Is this a movement? Are more and more chefs caring about this? Certainly, there's more and more awareness around all those buckets you mentioned. I was really surprised. We did the whole, the nutrient dense forward menu concept a couple, three years ago at hearth.

And I was really surprised, frankly, that there hasn't been more people doing that. I mean, that's not to say that there's, it actually happens more in the fast casual world where there's this folks focus on function and nutrient density um whether it's a salad concept or like a quick yeah i mean there's

a lot of it happening in the fast casual world a lot more so than in the more fine dining world and you know that's fine with me because i feel like we're like standing out on an island a little bit um in a very competitive climate that is Manhattan. So I'm very happy that there aren't a lot of followers, but I am surprised by the fact that there aren't more chefs out there in the fine dining world kind of talking about the choices they're making as it relates to nutrient density and nutrition. Because a freshly milled grain is very different than a flour that you buy and and all the things that we talk about right um they're all pretty important like dan barber

and david oh my god these guys anthony mitch and anthony mint who's boulet and barber i mean they're amazing dan is the stuff he's doing with seeds and like he's just one of the most brilliant chefs in the world. Yeah. So, so it is certainly happening. Absolutely. I mean, in general, people's awareness around food and the power of food is just, and it's why I said to you earlier, it's so exciting to be part of, you know, all that. Oh my God. The energy around it is like so real and palpable. And I feel it every day in the shop

and every every night in in my dining room like people want it people are conscious people are reading labels more um and they just you know the big thing is we have to convince them they have to spend more money on food yeah like that's the big hurdle it's like you think about in you know united states we spend probably nine percent of our income on food in europe it's 20 right in some countries it's 50 yep uh we don't prioritize it we'd rather buy our fancy stuff i don't know screen tvs or computer and we give up so much for convenience too you know i've heard you say that before it's like convenience comes at a cost to our health and we have to start realizing that um and also it's like infrastructure has to change right our distribution system is not built

for fresh food our food manufacturing system is not built for fresh food our agricultural system is not built for nutrient-dense fresh food i mean it's commodities yeah you look at the farm bill right how much is going to the other category, which is like all the things we should be eating. The farm bill is a joke because it's not really a farm bill. It's a food stamp bill, which is about 75% of the trillion dollars,

which is three quarters of a trillion dollars is spent on food stamps, which is important for the poor. But most of that is spent on highly processed junk food and 10% of it is spent on soda alone. Yeah, it's scary. Yeah, it is scary. These numbers are insane.

Yeah. So what about the food waste issue? Because, you know, Dan Barber has this really cool thing where he makes these amazing meals out of food scraps. You've got companies like Imperfect, which are taking all the ugly food and misshapen miscolored things that get thrown in the landfills that creates methane and climate change 40 of our food is wasted so what's your view on this whole food waste issue and how do we do it and how do

you how do you work with it in your in your restaurant um it's obviously a very complicated issue a lot of people um want to kind of like force this idea of it's obviously a very complicated issue. Uh, a lot of people, um, want to kind of like force this idea of it's elitist to say this or think that, but like one of my beliefs is we need to spend more money on food. And once you start spending more money on food, you have more focus and attention to get the most out of the food. And I understand that the zip code drives like the people who need it the most. And that's true. But, um, you know, I think part of the problem is we're producing so much cheap food that, uh, it's, it's pretty easy to throw it away because you don't perceive a lot

of value. It's like, you know, it's, you could, you could liken it to anything. Like you buy the great leather jacket that you spend a lot of money on and you take care of it and you have it for 25 years of your adult life right or you could just buy like crappy leather jackets and buy 15 of them i think that there's a an interesting conversation around and i saw it happen at hearth when we decided to like shift everything to like a better version of the thing one of the big conversations I had with my cooks early on was like, listen, we're only getting grass-fed butter right now. So guess what? You better be really careful about where you use it,

what you're basting with it. Don't put too much. And like you create more attention and you put more value on things and then you're going to waste less of them. I think part of our problem with food waste is we're producing so much bad food, you know? Yeah. And I, you know, I think, uh, it's something we aren't really aware of, but, you know, it sort of links to also food waste that happens, not just on the farms or in, in restaurants or grocery stores, but even in the home.

And I think how do we sort of get people inspired about cooking? Because as a chef, that's your life. It's huge. It's what you do. It's what you care about. And yes, we want people to eat at your restaurants and buy your bone broth. But at the end of the day, most of the time, most people have to learn how to cook at home. And it's such an obstacle for people. I think it takes too much time right it's expensive it's difficult it's hard how do you

break through that you know so much every so many things boil down to education right and like one of the things around food waste is people have to understand and i learned a lot in the past couple years growing uh the broth company but it's like you have to understand why things spoil and and then what to do to mitigate against that spoilage right and it's like, you have to understand why things spoil and then what to do to mitigate against that spoilage. Right. And it's like things like, you know, acidity levels and water content. These are all things you look at that, that, you know, add to shelf life or take shelf life away. Right. And just learning and educating yourself around some simple traditional preserving techniques, whether it is cover it in vinegar

or put it in the oven overnight at 180 degrees and dehydrate all the water out of it. If you have some beets that are going bad, well, slice them up and put them in the oven overnight at 180, and you're going to get the water out, and you're going to dehydrate them, and you're going to have this cool little beet gummy bear that you'll extend the shelf life.

That sounds good, beet gummy bears. Yeah, beet gummy bear that you could that'll have you'll extend the shelf life yeah um and you know cooking yeah beet gummy bears are amazing um but yeah i i agree like cooking is such an unbelievable uh process that people need to just dive in and learn how to love it um it's one of the few things we do that engages all of your senses. And it's pretty accessible. You know, you don't need a ton of tools or training or training. And you have to like, cut yourself a break and be a little bit forgiving and start simple. And you know, it's one of those things where it's so important that you need to figure out a way to learn to like it and learn to deal with like yes it means dishes but it's like guess what a lot of people do instead of cook they watch tv and they watch cooking shows it's like that's true you know

spend more time watching cooking yeah and actually cooking right and there's such a payoff right there's such a payoff to your health There's such a payoff to your health. There's a payoff to your palate. There could be a great payoff to your pocketbook. You know, like the idea of learning how to buy whole chickens and breaking down those chickens and using the parts and making broth. It's like there's it's really. And Mark Pittman wrote an article about that, how you can eat a meal for a family of four with chicken and salad, some basic food. Cheaper than you can go for McDonald's for a family of four. Yeah, exactly.

There's so much benefit from learning how to cook that it's our job to encourage it. And frankly, we need to bring home economics back into our schools, right? Because we need to teach kids from a young age. Yeah. You know, I'm trying to pitch this idea of like the electric company of cooking and nutrition and health, right? So that there's a chef and there's a farmer and there's a nutritionist like yourself. And it's like, it's just like electric company. And there's all these fun and colorful things around growing food and cooking food. And why? Because there's too many children out there that have no idea and we need to we need to change it from the ground up and that means bringing home ec back

yeah well that wasn't an accident that disappeared it was the design of the food industry that subverted it and invented a woman named betty crocker which i've talked about in the show who basically i thought was real my mother had the betty crocker cookbook you've probably seen it and there was a woman named betty who was a home ec teacher that was promoting families growing gardens and learning how to cook and having meals together. And they were like, this is dangerous to our convenience culture. We need to shift that and get rid of home ec and take over the kitchens of America. I think the thing about people don't realize about cooking is that it's modular. And that if you understand the building blocks of how to cook food,

you need to have nice skills in how to chop stuff. You need to know how to saute, how to roast, how to bake, what timing you need for different foods

so they come out at the same time. You don't want to stir fry vegetables and then cook your meat, which is going to mean your vegetables are going to be soggy and dead after. So it's really

some basic, modular, simple skills that are kind of lost. It's a lost art. And I think if you teach people those simple things, then they can use recipes,

but they don't necessarily need them. They can just make simple food. And I can make dinner in much quicker time than I can go to a restaurant, order the meal, and eat it. No doubt about it. And save yourself a lot of money.

Yes. And it's probably going to be better for you because you're going to use you know likely you're going to use a better oil and you're going to get something at the green market and obviously not everyone has access to the things that we have access to living in new york yeah um but still like you know shop shop in the produce section no matter where you are well some some areas of the country don't have a produce section for hundreds of miles. It can be hard. I mean, I used to live in a small town in Idaho with 3,500 people. I think, you know, there were people that probably never ate a vegetable in their life.

The produce section was as big as my dining room table, which was not very big. And most of it was kind of gross. But we figured out how to use the stuff that was there. Sometimes we'd drive 50 miles to the next town to go to Costco or Trader Joe's or somewhere where they had cheaper, healthier food. And there's a way to do it. And in the world of e-commerce especially, right? Yeah.

All the blue apron type companies, it's like you get stuff delivered right to your door. So amazing. delivered right to your door so amazing so um how do you uh look at your restaurant in terms of the experience you want to create for people because i've been there and one of the things that really was powerful it was symbolic and it was meaningful was you had this little box on the table yeah so tell us about i love the boxes on the table is it there for? Why do you have it? And tell us about, you know, started it. Well, four or five years ago, I started noticing how taught, how insane it was the people in their phones. Right.

And it was just like, it was to the point where I would walk through the dining room and I just could not get over how extreme it was. Right. And like not many people get that angle of like being in a dining room with 80 people to really see it i mean you see it walk in the streets but i was privy to seeing 80 people at once and when i tell you so in a place where people come to connect with each other yeah exactly and when i tell you that 60 to 70% of them were not connecting with each other, and they were all like embedded their heads into their phones, whether it was a couple or a family or whatever. And it was insane. And we started as a as a group managers at hearth, we started talking about it. And we wanted to figure out a way to do it that was kind of chill and low key and not dogmatic and wouldn't create complexities.

And we're like, maybe we could ask them to check it like a coat. And then we're like, no, then we're responsible for these $800 things. And like, that doesn't work. And we debated for literally,

we debated for like 18 months, how to execute in a way that would be super easy and not really require dialogue because I really can't stand. Preaching. And dialogue, like servers having dialogue table side at a restaurant is a pet peeve of mine. And it's like. You want them to talk to the customer. Well, it's like you need to be you need to be prepared to answer any question that a customer asks but they're there to be with their guest and like it's just so annoying when they go on and like when the

when the table side server diatribe goes on and on and on i find that very intrusive and annoying so we're very conscious of that like we're there and we want to be attentive and we want to provide great service and we're obviously educated and informed to answer any question you may have yeah but we're not just gonna like spew out stuff like you need to ask yeah um so i didn't want there to be like this thing on the table like if you want to put your phone away like you'll get a free drink or whatever and we didn't want to do that so we finally came up with this idea of you know what let's find some cool old cigar boxes online let's put a note on top that says open me and then inside it says we would like to invite you to put your phone in the box and be present with your guest and that's it yeah and you know what everybody sits at the table and there's like

a knife and a fork and a napkin and a you know the the standard tabletop stuff and then there's like a knife and a fork and a napkin and a, you know, the, the standard tabletop stuff. And then there's this cool, colorful box and it says, open me. So it's like, we don't have to do anything. Like the box does everything. And, and it's amazing. Like for one, there's always a conversation around it, which is great because people start talking about it. I would say seven out of 10 people are like, they light up and they're excited

and they throw their phone in the box and it's fantastic. Eight out of 10 people, seven, eight out of 10 people use it. Um, so it's fantastic. And like, you know, guys like you in the functional medicine world. And if you look at the whole blue zone concept, one of the things that I believe never gets enough play in terms of like the holistic view on what it means for health and wellness is the notion of like connection and community. Right. And how what a vital role that plays into one's psychological health and physical health and i think that when you look at the blue zones one of the things they all really have that we don't have much of is community and connection and gathering around a table and having a ritualistic meal together and like i really believe that that is so critical to your health um so the fact that people put away their phones at a restaurant

and you see they become more animated, they actually start looking at each other in the eye and they're engaging. And I really think that that is as important as the healthy foods that we're preparing and putting on a plate for these folks. And by the way, if you eat the best quality food and you're stressed and disconnected from your body, your digestion can't work. You can't absorb the nutrients. They've actually studied this. You

literally don't absorb the nutrients because when you're stressed, you don't want to be absorbing food. You don't want to be running from a tiger, right? Right. So it's powerful. So, you know, your restaurant does that in so many ways. One, just the name of it. Let's gather around. The center of the home. Two, the shared plates. So you're eating in community. Yep. Passing things.

You can't just be on your phone and eat your food because it's going to be gone if you don't look up. Right. And you've got this beautiful box, which inspires people to sort of stop for a minute and think about the quality of their experience. Yeah, we were super excited when we landed on how to do it. And then we launched it and the feedback was great and yeah, it's really special. I love it.

Yeah, I think everybody should get a box for their home. A lot of people have and they're starting to do that. Right, when people come to my house for dinner, I'll often say, here's a basket,

put your phone in it. Put it away. Let's just be here. My God. And for my wife, I tell this very many times, but for our anniversary, I gave her a box. She's like, oh, that's a nice little box but no that's not the present the

present is i put my box in the my phone in the box for the weekend right i'm all yours yeah what a great gift like such a gift that we we can really each other that is more valuable than anything especially if you have children or you know your family or yeah your wife i mean it's so valuable to like put down your phone and be with whoever it is you're going to be with, even in a, you know, business meetings as well. It's like, you know, it's like, I'm here to engage with another human. And it's like, we're kind of, we're kind of losing our, we're losing our skills. Um, and it's pretty frightening. So it's great at Cleveland clinic. We have our staff meetings and everybody puts their phone on the table.

So important in the front of the room and then nobody touches them and everybody's present. It's just awesome. Yeah. A real productive meeting, right? So Marco, if you were king for a day and you could change something in our landscape of food and health, what would it be? Can I have more than one? You got as many things as you want.

Oh really? Oh God. We'll be here. You can make as many decrees we'll be here all day you can change everything we'll be here all day um so let's see uh one of the things i would do is i would have a better um i'd put something in place around the process of making foods. So if you look at our packaged food world and our supermarket world, there's so much oversight around ingredient panels, and there's so much oversight around nutritional facts panels. Not necessarily the right kind, but yes. Correct, correct.

But the thing that they're never transparent about is the process. And I think there's pro i think there's problems in in process right and i think that i as a consumer i want i have the right to know the way in which you're doing the food because yeah the origin of it and also the process by which you're doing it because like you know i don't know like if you take a chickpea and you like fill it with air and then dehydrate it and then put it fry it in some crazy oil and then puff it through some crazy machine it's like i want to know about that right and i i don't buy the fact that like you know because it has all the right buttons on it you know the the healthy

snack food market like there needs to be transparency around the process a lot of it's junk because yeah so i think that that you know and people need to understand that and right now we can't because there's nothing that says you have to talk about process so i would i would have a new section on packaged goods that is like the process section you know there is a there is an environmental working group food score app you're interested actually put in and scan any processed food and they will tell you the degree of processing all those things really yes that's amazing quality the nutrition I'm gonna get that immediately processing and you know whether there's any weird bad stuff in it it's actually interesting right so

that's that's one yeah another another one is the research science in this country i think is flawed and i think you know nutrition yeah nutrition research and you know uh peter attia and i think gary taubes were doing this thing called nusi and they and basically the premise was you know what we need to do research that is independently uh financed right so that it's like if you you know what, we need to do research that is independently financed, right? So that it's like, if you, you know, research science today is funded, it requires a lot of money, and it's funded by the people with, you know, big food and they want it to say something. So if you follow the money, you usually find that research is kind of flawed, right?

Eight to 50 times more likely to find a positive outcome for a study if it's funded by a food industry company versus an independent researcher. So I feel like third parties need to fund in this country. And I think if that happened, there'd be more, there'd be better research. Philanthropy. And even the government has to fund the right. Exactly. So it changed the way in which we do research in this country.

And then the other big one for me is like, I would change the cafeteria systems in hospitals. Because it's just so disturbing to think that the sick people in our country that are in beds in hospitals are being fed what they're being fed it's absolutely true um and it's just like it's so problematic on so many levels because these are the experts these are where we go like we have trust in that system and doctors and they're the people that take care of us and then they bring up the tray of food and it's like a packaged drink that has like you know protein it's just you know what's happening it's franken it's like the hospital's serving franking food do you know what's happening at lenox's hell hospital in new york they've got a bunch of chefs together

creating delicious meals right about 20 to 30 percent of the food was wasted because people don't want to eat it now everybody's eating the food it's delicious it's transforming the system so there needs to be more of that right like so i would put huge focus on that and i would make sure that you know i would just i would accelerate that mission because it's true it's starting to happen um it just needs to be happening a whole lot more yeah uh we need to they need to understand that they need to spend more money on food so good so those are three things it's great and by the way, I just came back from Abu Dhabi. Yeah. And the Cleveland Clinic has a center there.

And I've been working with a team at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland to reform the food in the hospitals. We're all over it. The challenge is working with these big food service companies like Sodexo, Aramark. It's very hard. And it's very tough. Margin, margin, margin. Right. And it's very tough.

So in Abu Dhabi, it's very tough. Margin, margin, margin. Right. And it's very tough. So in Abu Dhabi, it's amazing. It's more of an autocratic system and there's less bureaucracy and the alignment of incentives are all there. And the CEO of the hospital says, no more white, no more white flour, no more white sugar, no more white rice, potatoes, all this stuff that's starchy and is making people sick, out. And only good food in organic. All the food in the hospital is organic.

It's unbelievable. It's such a no brainer though, right? It's like, like how is it possible how is it possible that that's not happening faster it's so great it's really a shame these are all inspiring ideas this has been a great conversation thanks thank you for being on the doctor's pharmacy marco and uh talking about things that really matter you've been listening to doctor's pharmacy with marco canora the founder of hearth restaurant the author of brodo a bone broth cookbook many other cookbooks check out his restaurants his site get some bone broth and if you like this podcast please leave a review we love to hear from you sign up for this and subscribe wherever you find your podcasts on google play itunes

wherever and if you liked it share with your friends and family And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy for another conversation that matters.