Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - What We Can Learn From Ancestral Diets – With Dr. Bill Schindler

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep110/ To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com This episode is all about bringing back many of the ancient healing principles that our primal ancestors did years ago. Dr. Bill Schindler is the author of Eat Like a Human: Nourishing Foods and Ancient Ways of Cooking to Revolutionize Your Health and is an internationally known archeologist, primitive technologist, and chef. He founded and directs the Eastern Shore Food Lab with a mission to preserve and revive ancestral dietary approaches to create a nourishing, ethical, and sustainable food system and, along with his wife, Christina operate the Modern Stone Age Kitchen, a foodery designed to provide nourishing food created using ancestral approaches maximizing safety, nutrient density and bioavailability to the community.  His work is currently the focus of Wired magazine's YouTube series, Basic Instincts and Food Science, and he co-starred in the National Geographic Channel series The Great Human Race, which aired in 2016 in 171 countries. Please see our medical disclaimer. 

There are some incredible insect farms that are growing insects for human consumption around the world. It's something we really need to pay attention to. And if you are really trying to change your health and at the same time, you know, me to exceed other important obligations and expectations of eating in a sustainable way and an ethical way, then this is, I think, something that's worthy of your time to do. Resetters, Dr. Mindy here, and I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you believe in yourself again. Let's jump in.

On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you back, Dr. Bill Schindler. So we have already done two episodes with this brilliant mind that you're about to. here. And where Bill and I really meet on missions is that we both are so focused on trying to bring back many of the ancient healing principles that our primal ancestors did years ago. How do we bring those into this modern world so that our health can thrive? So I love it because I feel strongly that we can do this through fasting. And Bill feels very strongly that we can do it through food. He has a new book that's out and it's called Eat Like a Human. It is like no other health book and cookbook. It's a combination of both that you will ever find because this man has

traveled. He's a food anthropologist and he has traveled all over the world looking at different cultures going back in time in history and seeing how we prepared food, the quality of food that we ate and certain food groups that we used to eat that we are no longer eating again. So in this episode, we actually talked about three key things. One, we talked about something as simple as corn, all the different variations of how corn is prepared and that when you're actually eating corn in a processed way, you actually could be setting yourself up for certain deficiencies of different nutrients. So we talked about the preparation of corn

and how important that was to our overall health, especially vitamin and mineral balance. Second thing we talked about was insects. Now, this is fascinating too. There is a lot of evidence and emergence in even different foody worlds that insects are an incredible source of protein. But I don't know about you.

Do we just pick up insects off the ground? How do we cook with insects? Are they safe? These are all the questions I had for Bill, and he will show you a whole new approach to insects and eating insects in a way that will give you extra protein, will give you more amino acids. Okay, third thing. We talked about clay, activated charcoal, and ash, which clay comes from the earth, and many cultures in our world use clay in their cooking as a detoxifier.

We also talked about activated charcoal and ash as the residue left over from fire. Our primal ancestors also used those as detoxifiers and nutrients. And we can now bring these back into our diet. And Bill is going to show you how exactly to do that. He's going to talk about resources for all these. He talks about recipes in his new book. I love this man. I love the mission he's on.

And he brings a whole new discussion to figure. that nobody's having. So Dr. Bill Schindler, enjoy. And if you get inspired to make one of his recipes or to start eating crickets, please, please tag me on any social. I can guarantee you that after this conversation, I wanted to know how I could start cooking this way.

So if you come up with some new ways that you experiment with this type of style of eating, let me know. I'd love to see your pictures on social media. you enjoy so here's what i love bill about you i mean many things i love about you and your family but when i first started to understand fasting what my where my brain went to is that the human body right now in this modern world is living totally out of sync with our ancestor ancestral uh what do we call them, I guess, our ancestors, our primal ancestors. So what is it that we can bring back into this

world that they did, that we could use as a tool now to be able to thrive as humans in this crazy modern world? That's such a great question. And it's a question that so many different people are addressing from so many different places. I know those people talking about grounding and, you know, cold therapy and all these other sorts of things. And then sometimes people are going a little bit off, in my mind, a little bit off the deep end where they're, you know, recreating failed hunts and then doing these other sorts of things. Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's, and it isn't brand new. That's something that was going on 20 or 30 years where, you know, you come up with this reconstruction of your mind, what life was like in the past. And then you try to replicate all of it. And there's some validity to that, no doubt. But the reality is the amount of time that we're talking about, millions of years of diversity. And then within those millions of years, diversity geographically and environmentally all over the place, people didn't do the same thing all the time for three and a half million years.

So you wouldn't have this certain kind of a hunt for the entirety of a population and then a failed hunt and then a certain kind of fat. And then people would eat. There's even people that will cut themselves because they think, well, if I was fighting a match, Astonon, you know, and this, it really, so it does extreme to the absurd. And I'm not suggesting to go that route. But a good, solid understanding of the relationship between people in their environment, I think is very important. And I think trying to replicate access to things like sunlight and fresh air and the earth and all the microbes and all that is important. And then from my point of view, one thing that you know I'm focused on is finding ways to replicate how,

our ancestors approached food to make it as safe and nourishing as possible to get it ready for our bodies. Yeah. And you're, by the way, the only person I know that's really truly looking at our primal ancestors and showing us food styles and ways we can start to look at preparing food, that would mimic that, which is why I love your book. And I'm going to really recommend, you know, all of you listening that you go and get, eat like a human and it's just a great. I mean, the concept's great.

So let's dive in. I want to go through three things and just filling everybody in because these three things are are really topical and interesting to my mind and I think there's a lot we can learn from them. The first is I want to talk about some of the ways we're preparing food now. So you have a thing on corn that I want you to dive into old corn versus new corn. I definitely want to talk about bugs and how we can eat bugs. I'm so, I have a whole bunch of, so, I'm so interested on this.

And then I want to talk about ash and using ash for healing. So why don't we start with the corn? What, what is it that's really missing in a main crop right now like corn? You know, one of the things that's really fascinating to me are the different modern factors involved with kind of teaching us in a very bad, a bad sense. what food is and how much of it we should be eating, right? We don't have the same sort of triggers and barriers and things in the past that promoted certain things in our diets and restricted other things in our diets. For example, we have way too much easy, cheap sugar in our in our grocery stores today. And all of a sudden, because it's so cheap and because it's in so many things, many of us don't realize how bad it actually is.

Like, how could something this bad be this prevalent? Well, it is. But it's the same thing with cranes and maize or corn. And for the real quick, just a little semantics here. Corn means grain. So it's an old, an old world term that means grain. And that usually refers to the local grain of an area. So if you said corn in Ireland back in the day, it would have meant oats, right?

If you said corn and say England, it would have meant probably wheat or something like that. So when the early explorers came to the Americas, armed with this word corn, that just means local grain, and they saw the Native Americans with maize or what we now consider corn, they just called it corn. It just meant grain. And now it's kind of stuck. So it's really synonymous, right? So corn or maize is really the same thing. But on the same sense, and this is very important as well to understand, the two major ways that most of the. us eat corn or maize is one in a in a dried usually ground up form like corn meal and then also like

at a at a picnic where you're eating corn on the cob yeah corn on the cob is an unripe version of the grain right so it has different nutrients different problems with it different good things about it but it is we're talking about that essential plant which is a grass that has this grain or the or maize. Now, the problem with maize, several things is, and one and how I started is that it is the most widely grown grain in the entire world. One of the good things about maize is that it's very easy to grow. And within certain latitudes, it's just so easy. And within that band around the planet, we see tons of maize being grown. In the U.S., we have government subsidies to grow these things. So it's actually relatively cheap. And we see it in everything. That's,

Well, I don't know if it's good or bad, but here's some bad things. One is it's probably the most difficult grain for the human body to fully digest. And back to, I know we've talked about this before and I know probably most people understand this now, but just because you put a food that contains certain nutrients in your mouth, that doesn't mean those nutrients are in an absorbable or usable state by your body. And Mays is a great, Maze is probably the poster child for this. And I'll tell you a story in just a moment. But just because you eat Maze, the only thing you can get it.

guarantees that it comes out the other end. And do that. Completely whole sometimes. That's it. I got to tell you. Actually, can I grab something? It's going to take me 10 seconds. I see it.

One second. Okay. You went here first. So it's okay that I go here to now. All right. So this is my. I'm going to have to describe for our listeners. He's now opened up a very big container of mystery stuff.

Post corn in the stool. conversation. I'm a little nervous when it's coming out. Okay, this, so when my youngest daughter, who's now 14, was very young, we, we had, we had just moved here. And where I live is in a fairly rural area. There's not a lot of access to stores, especially stores to stay open late. And it was the night before Christmas Eve. And my wife called me, Christina called me. She said, listen, you know, she was counting all the gifts and all the stockings and all this. And she says, listen, obviously, we have three kids. We have to make sure everything's equal. And she's Listen, we're shy, one stocking thing for Alyssa.

And you have to go get something and you have, you know, you have a maximum amount. You can spend like $5. And I'm like, you just set me up for failure. We're in the middle of Chestertown, Maryland on the eastern shore. Everything's closed. I have to buy a gift for a four-year-old daughter and a $5 limit. So I went into Twos and I was going through all the aisles and I couldn't find. And then I went to the Plato aisle.

And I saw it. I saw it. It was perfect. And I got two because of her one for me. And this is it. So number one, it has the, so you can describe this mold, but it has this mold. He's got a poop mold. He's holding up a poop mold.

I just want you all to know. And it's got two colored things. One, somebody's really sick who invented it. They either got fired or promoted. I don't know. So it's got this like greenish brown. That's disgusting. Which is obviously for the poop.

But here's the important piece. It also has yellow. And it's for. the kernel of corn on the mold. So the mold has not only poop, but a kernel of corn. So I bring this when I speak because it's a perfect example. All of us, everybody listening has eaten corn on the cob. And usually when you eat it, it's completely overcooked, overbilled.

It's terrible at a picnic and we eat it. And every one of us, whether we want to admit it or not, has seen whole kernels of corn the next day in the bowl. And we maybe laugh about it. Most people other than you and me don't talk about it. But the reality is, what are we doing? I mean, that was supposed to be food, and all it did was take a ride on our digestive track. That's it.

It doesn't even break down. Doesn't even break down. And that was a visual example of it. I mean, grains, nuts, legumes, seeds, they are physically and chemically designed to withstand the digestive track of animals. I mean, that's exactly what they do. The fruits, on the other hand, that most of these things are encased in are they're to attract. they're sweet smelling, sweet tasting, and they're wonderful.

So they want to get eaten. Then the seeds survive the digestive track and then they get dumped in a pile of manure for us. And that's exactly how it's supposed to work. But here we are trying to derive nutrition from this thing that is physically and chemically designed to withstand our digestive track. And that's such a great example. Now, here's the part we don't usually see.

Even if you took that maze or that corn, dried it and ground it up in the cornmeal, we wouldn't see it the next day in the bowl. But what the reality is, a lot of the nutrients that were in it did withstand our digestive track. And if we have a second, and here's the powerful story. So Mays was first domesticated probably, and there's a lot of debate. At minimum 8,000 years ago, some suggestions are up to 12 or 1,000 years ago or longer. In fact, there's some suggestion that Mays could have been the first domesticated plant on the planet. Regardless, it has a very long history.

And it was the staple food of so many civilizations. the Incas, the Omecs, the Mayans, I mean, Aztecs. And it wasn't like they had, you know, a little bit of maize in their diet and other stuff. It was a bunch of maize in their diet and a little bit of other stuff. I mean, it was at that level. Then, and so it spreads throughout the Americas from South America, Central America, all the way into North America. It actually hits places even like New York State at a very early time.

So Native American diets in general were, in many cases, dominated by maze by the time the early explorers came and saw it for the first time about 500 years ago. So explorers saw it. It tastes great. It's filling. It's easy to grow. Of course, they took this back to Europe with them and tried to spread it. And it did spread.

It spread like wildfire. But along with the maze on the tail of the maze, as the maze spread, a disease called Pelagra was followed in its wake. And it was first documented in the 1700s in Spain. And then it was documented in Italy. And then we see it in Eastern Europe. Europe. And this disease, it's very, it's fascinating, really. This disease first shows up as skin lesions, and then, you know, pieces of skin are falling off. And sometimes it was misdiagnosed

as leprosy, eventually untreated or undelt with blindness and then even death in many cases. And this was anywhere where you saw maize, this, especially in poorer populations where what maize dominated the diet because it was so incredibly cheap and filling, you saw this Pallagra and it just followed around. It showed up, believe it or not, some authors and researchers suggest that it was the basis for most of the vampire mythology because it shows up in Eastern Europe at that time. And you would get bleeding in the mouth, aversion of sunlight, pale skin, all of those things. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. We see it again in the 18, mid-19th century at the end of the Irish potato famine because the U.S. as famine relief food was

shipping massive quantities of maize to Ireland and people now that had access to that maze were no longer dying of starvation but they were getting sick and dying of this weird disease they never saw before. Right. And then most recently, well, most dramatically for at least for us, and then early 1900s, 1920s, 1930s in the American Southeast, it showed up in a mass amount. People were dying and getting sick left and right. And the really interesting part of the story is that our government hired an infectious disease doctor by the name of Jeffrey Goldberg. And they asked him to study this and they said, you know, you have to tell us what

disease is causing all this trauma. And he studied and came back and he said, listen, I am, I'm an infectious disease doctor. This isn't infectious. It's not infectious at all. It has to do with food. I think it has to do with corn. And they were like, there's no way, first of all, there's no way a disease this bad is food-related. Right. It's the sound familiar. And number two, don't mess with corn. You know, corn is king of the South. Don't even mess with it. Go figure out what this was. So he went to mental institutions and prisons, things you can't do today. And he divided the populations in half, fed half of them nothing but corn, fed the other half regular diet, whatever diets they were getting.

and people that were fed nothing but corn started to get sick and show symptoms of this disease. Still couldn't convince everybody. And what he had to do was he and his wife and his partner would hold these parties parties. He called them filth parties because this was a disease that was usually something, you know, it showed up in impoverished areas. People called it a filth disease. It was something if somebody in your family got, you were very embarrassed that it had happened. And they brought, gathered a whole bunch of people around, brought people that were suffering from this disease,

up to the middle and they would take swabs and swab their mucus membranes and then swab their own. And then they would draw blood from the people that were suffering from it, then stick, put the blood right into their own veins. And then even they would take the skin, the scabs from them and eat them just to show that it wasn't infectious. And they finally convinced people. It's, okay, this isn't infectious. But they couldn't figure out what the cause was. And it wasn't until 1936 that a team of doctors who won.

scientists of the year in Time magazine that year as a result of this realized it was a result of a niacin deficiency in their diet. So here's the crazy, crazy part and the punchline of the whole story. This happened in areas where people were starving or very sick already, or actually malnourished already. And maize comes in, it's incredibly cheap, and maize replaces anything else they were eating because it was just so filling and cheap. And all they were eating was maize and all different, or corn in all different forms. They weren't suffering from this disease before because even though they weren't eating enough food, they were getting food from a variety of different sources and getting niacin from some

of those sources. But when they just ate the maize, they weren't getting the niacin in their bodies where it needed to go and they were getting sick and literally dying. When I say some over the core, even in just the U.S. alone, over a span of just a couple decades, millions of people got sick and hundreds of thousands were dying from this disease because of eating maize, because of eating corn. But again, the punchline of the story is, you know, all that you can sort of maybe understand, but the problem is maze has massive quantities of niacin in it. I mean, the funniest part is

they were eating food dying and suffering from malnourishment, you know, not getting enough niacin while eating massive quantities of niacin. The problem is the niacin and the maze, along with other things are locked up in a state that our bodies can't access unless we process the maze properly. This is why we don't see evidence. And this is exactly what the Native Americans are doing for literally thousands of years. We know for sure they were doing it for 4,000 years. And we just identified a new technique, archaeological technique to directly look at an archaeological site and tell if they were if they were actually nistomelized in the maze. So that 4,000 is going to get pushed back. I bet by thousands of years as we look further and further. So here we are.

millions of people around the world were getting sick and dying from a disease while eating the food that contained the thing that they didn't, you know, weren't getting into their bodies. And the only thing that they had to do was process that maze properly. And the way to process it properly is called nishtomelization. And it's incredibly simple. In the past, you would use wood ash and water to create an alkaline or lye-like solution, simmer the kernels of maize in it for about 30 minutes, let it sit overnight and wash it off. that's literally all you have to do. Today we use other alkaline things like lie or something called cal or calcium hydroxide, which you can dig up out of the ground. And that's all you need to do. Originally grits were made the same way. Real tortillas up until the Civil War,

the Civil War, almost all grits are just ground of corn. They're not nistomelized. So the same issue is there. Cornmeal is not nistamalized. But a real genuine tortilla like you would get in Oaxaca Mexico is nistomelized. A tamale, which the word comes from mistomalization, a real one is actually made properly. Yeah. So please tell me you have a course on how to teach people how to do that with corn. We do. And it's so simple.

And all you need is the corn. And you can go to, literally you can go to Walmart and buy pickling lime, which is actually calcium my drops that and do the entire process in a pot on your stove. Or go to a Mexican grocery store. or Hispanic grocery store and get calcium hydroxide. It is incredibly cheap. And you were talking about not only improving the nutrition, but it improves the flavor.

It improves the aroma and improves the texture as well. Amazing. Just to back up one step. So what I heard in that is they were niacin deficient because the food product that was supposed to give them niacin didn't have an available, it wasn't an available source of niacin. Right. It's in a state called niacetin.

which our body can't do anything with. It has to change. It was locked up in the maze, and they were actually, it was passing right through their bodies. So is corn our number one way to get niacin? Or can we get niacin from other foods? Oh, you can get niacin from other foods.

The reason this was such a huge issue in the examples that I mentioned was because, and why it usually only happened in impoverished areas where people didn't have a lot of access to food, is because corn dominated the diets and replaced other foods in their diet. Got it. So it's not like, and I do want to be very, very clear here. I think there's two big takeaways for us today. You know, most of us have access to a lot of different foods.

You're not going to get sick by eating corn on the cob. You're not going to, you know, you're not going to die of pelagra because you're getting all these from other places. But at the same token, you know, that story about maize, I think it's a profound, very interesting story, but is just one example of you could tell very similar stories about literally almost every single food in our diets today. And it's about that processing. So it's happening in maize. It's happening in dairy. It's happening in grains. It's happening all over the place. And it's the culmination of all those things where the real problems, the root of it is. Do you think I'm going to go as bold

as to say, do you think humans are on a collision course with extinction if we don't come back to some of these ancient food preparation strategies? Oh, I think absolutely. Extinction for not only ourselves, but all the resources. So this is the most widely grown grain in the world. And I have been a part of and also witnessed so many conversations where you have some of the best scientists in the world sitting there saying, okay, how are we going to feed a growing population? Oh, maybe we need to genetically modify corn better so that we can plant more stalking. on the same acre and I'm sitting there saying you're not even getting all the nutrition from the corn we already have. Right. Let's not even start to. Maybe that is an important conversation to have

some time, but we're not there yet because we're not getting all the nutrition from the food we already have access to. Right. And I will tell you on the flip side of that genetically modified conversation, because I've had it with with friends around the dinner table that are really, really intelligent people who are advocates of genetically modified foods because you can feed so many people. But what I hear you saying, and I would agree with, is just because a food can sit on your table and can be highly processed and can go in your mouth, doesn't mean it's giving you the nutritional capability that you need to function normally, not even thrive, to function normally as a human. And that has to change, or we are on a collision course with a lot of things.

And on top of that, with sitting on your counter and all this processed food and you're looking at the box or the can or the plastic package and you read the nutritional breakdown on the back and the macro and micronutrients, and you have that unfortunately false sense that, okay, if I eat that food that's going into my body and it's going to nourish, all that's going to nourish me. And the reality is even if it's there, much of it is going to pass right through your digestive track if you're not. if you're not healthy and if your food isn't processed properly. Yeah. And so what do we look for in corn? Like, is there a line, a word we can look for? Or do we have to really make it ourselves at home the way you're talking? No, there's a couple things you can do.

And I know some of these conversations seem so complicated. But first of all, instead of being exhausted by listening to something like this, get excited because it's interesting, right? But also, you know, you have the ability to inform yourself. make these decisions and make really profound changes. And these kind of changes aren't the change that, well, you make that change and you feel better in a week. This is the kind of change that culminates over days and months and years, right? And you and just as importantly, in your children and the rest of your family. So the, if you come, if you start from the perspective that

maze is incredibly difficult for the human body to drive nutrition from, and it must be processed properly, then all of a sudden, almost all of the corn products you have access to are off the table, right? Or at least aren't going to deliver all the nutrition that it can. The best way to do it, and I say, and I truly mean this, and this sounds exhausting too, but again, I find it exciting, but it's empowering is the right word. If you eat a lot of corn, then you know what, nistomelized once. Just do it one time in your kitchen. It'll take literally a couple hours, try it, deal with it. If you never do it again, you know more than anything that I could tell you,

and then it'll help you read labels and deal with things. But aside from that, and we have instructions in the book on how to do it. I was going to say, do you teach it? Yeah, do you teach it in the book? Yeah. We teach it in the book and we have a bunch of different recipes for Nishtamilized maize and then when we do it here, we go through the entire process, and then we make tortillas and we make tamales and we make grits and we make all sorts of things,

all sorts of things with it. totally but if you're trying to buy something that is at least nistomelized believe or not there is there is something and it's called maseca or dried mass of flour um the problem and it's actually in most grocery stores you can find it and if it's not by the regular world the other regular white all the flowers and things are go over to the Hispanic section um and then you can find it there there is one downside though of to maseca so it's it's been processed properly The problem is it's almost always de-germinated. So it's the equivalent of white flour compared to whole-weed flour.

And the reason they do it is the same reason you do it with flour is because as soon as you break that germ, you release the oils and the oils can turn rancid and it has a shorter shelf life. Yeah. So you're getting this time. You're getting like a nistamala. It's like you're getting a sourdough white bread, 100% white flour, sourdough bread. whereas compared to the kind of version I'm talking about would be a sourdough whole wheat loaf or something like that. So are we better off just skipping it? I mean, I can say in what I just learned in the last 15 minutes from you, I'm like, okay, so if I go out to a restaurant and there's corn on the menu, the first thing I typically look for is, is it organic, non-GMO?

But what I'm now hearing is if I'm going to eat it, just realize that it's a taste food. it's not going to be anything that's going to contribute to my health in that moment. Not significantly contribute to your health. I mean, you can almost think of it as empty calories, just empty carb calories. It really is. Now, with tortilla chips, just very quickly, because semantics here are very important. And this is so crazy. A tortilla chip, if it's called a tortilla chip, according to the FDA, it has to be Nishtomelized.

Unfortunately, so it has to have gone through that process. unfortunately it's almost always that de-germinated version, but it has been misdomelized. If it says corn chip, it's not. It's like a, like a Frito, for example, would be just straight corn, but a tortilla chip will have gone through it, but it's the white flour. But here's the sticking point, and this is where it's by definition, according to the FDA, or tortilla chip has to be fried in vegetable oil. It has to be called a tortilla chip. Yes. It has to find

Inflammatory, just so everybody Let's just point. Yeah. You can't fry it in lard. Yeah. That'll make you insulin resistant really quickly. And here what we do at the Monterecite kitchen, you know, we, we nechtomelize every week. We have a Molino where we stone grind and then we hand-pressed tortillas and sell those

and put those in some of our meals. But we also then take those and fry them in lard. And now that is a completely different food. It is nishtamilized whole grain maize, heirloom maize that we import from Oaxaca and then fry an animal fat. That's a food. It's not something I eat tons of, but that's a food that is something that we, I have no problem feeding my kids. Yeah. Amazing.

And your recipes, by the way, and eat like a human, unbelievable. It takes a lot to wow me on a recipe because we love to cook. And I was like, when I looked at all the fermented products, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is gold like this book. I hope people realize that it's not just a book that's going to educate you on things like this, but it's a cookbook too. Right. And that's the intent. There's hopefully a huge takeaway. And those recipes are the recipes that literally my family is built on, not only from, you know, sort of that emotional sort of heritage perspective, but also physically that we're built on. We cook all the time. I also have to tell you, Bill, I love watching you guys on social media,

because I love how you and your family show up. It really hits my heart because this is how we are with our kids. We just want to do everything with them. We're foodies. We love adventures. And it's just, it's really sweet to watch your family online. Thank you so much.

You know, I know we're seeing the highlight reels, but the highlight reel looks good. Well, thank you very much. We work hard on it. Yeah. So, okay, now you have to go into, insects with me. Now, let me tell you a little story on my end, on the insect thing.

There, a while ago, this was about seven years ago, there was a set of chips that came out that were like cricket chips. Chirps chips. Yeah, chirps chips. Yep, chirps chips. So, okay, so I turned, when I found out about him, my son must have been like an eighth grade at the time. And I said, hey, would you eat, you know, cricket chips with me? He's like, sure. So I ordered a bunch of them, we ate them. They were really good. I didn't have like bug legs hanging out my mouth or anything like that. So help us understand why insects are so such an important part of our diet. And how do we start to bring these back in? Like do I just walk outside and pick up a bug and cook it in my house? So insects were, have been in our diets longer than just about anything else.

We were, and many people believe that, including me, that before we started creating tools, insects were the most nutritious thing in our diet. And without them, we wouldn't have been doing much of what we're doing. And I went to a great presentation at the Smithsonian, oh, about six or seven years ago, gosh, I forget the woman's name who gave the presentation. Brilliant. But she was talking about how important insects are in mammal diets in general, but mostly humans and our ancestors. and she did a lot of work with chimpanzees and also important chimpanzees. And she was saying that the most nutrient needy time in a woman's life is when she's lactating, even more so than when she's pregnant.

And she had a, I love the, she showed this picture of a chimpanzee nursing and eating ants or termites off a stick at the same time. It was perfect. It like drove everything home. But it is true. They're incredibly nourishing. there and just as important, and we just had this whole conversation about maize,

they're incredibly, the nutrients in the insects are incredibly bioavailable. So the nutrients are there and our body has access to them, we're doing very much work at all. So from a nutritional standpoint, there are definitely a win. And at least, and I can't speak for all insects. I do a lot of work with crickets right now because that's what we're using for the base of some of the foods that we're creating here. but crickets have all nine essential amino acids,

plus a ton of other things. But they have, and many insects have really high quality fat in them as well. But from an environmental and sustainability perspective, they are, you look at all numbers about how much water goes into growing a pound of meat and how much acreage you need for the animals and all that, not only the resources that are getting consumed, what is compared to the output of the nutrients, but also the waste that's part of that.

You know, insects blow those numbers off the charts. I mean, they are incredibly sustainable. They're incredibly easy to grow. Anything that comes out of them is usable in a number of different ways, and they're incredibly nutritious. So the hard part is most of us were brought up to fear insects or to hate insects or to kill them and throw them away. or just get them away from us at best, not to eat them.

So there's a huge mental leaf. We have swatters for them. We have like, we feel both kinds of. We like swish them with our foot. Like, you're right. We have totally villainized them. So to turn around and eat them is like a 180 degree turn in our mental thinking, the way we approach this.

And it was for me too. And the story was we started. I've read about this a little bit in the book. But what now is it? I was in graduates. school, what's the 2006? It was a long time ago. It was almost 20 years ago. I was defending my dissertation. I'm sorry, no, let me back up. I was teaching, I was in graduate school and I was teaching a graduate class and we were talking about insects in our ancestral human diets and then

insects today and all the kind of things we just briefly mentioned. And I hate to speak about or teach anything that I haven't done or experience at some level. And I know that's a really tall order to try to do, but it's important for me to be able to do that. And here I'm talking about insects and I've never had them. So my wife and I were at the time where we're newly married. We had no money. We're both in graduate school. And I said, I'm going to buy some insects. And she's in at the, she was a vegetarian at the time. And she's like, man, what do you mean buying insects? You need our money to buy insects? And I said, yeah. And by the way, and this was a while ago. Now there's a lot, not a lot, but there's places we can really high quality insects we can get in the

U.S. and Canada and other places. But at the time, there was none, none of that. And I said, yeah, the only place I can get them is from Thailand. So the shipping is out of control. And she's like, no. I'm like, come on, don't tell me no. I'm teaching here. This is I need to do this. And we've, we can literally count the number of arguments that we've had on one hand, like real arguments. This was one of them. And I finally, I guess you don't really win an argument, but I won that piece of it. And we got them. And I brought them and I had them. And I, it really started an important conversation between me and Christina. And then when I defended my dissertation a few years later,

we actually brought, it was her idea. We brought a bunch of insects or everybody to try. And then it really sort of became a thing. And part of it for me was, can I overcome this sort of fear or cultural block that I had of eating these? And yeah, I mean, I will try anything. I'll put anything in my mouth.

But can I do it and enjoy it? Because that's part of it. Can I do it and not only derive nutrition but be fulfilled by eating it? And I can now. And it took a lot of work. It really truly did. But there's a lot of ways to do it. There are some incredible insect farms that are growing insects for human consumption around the world. There are laws changing left and right. In fact, the EU just changed an important food law. I think it was two years ago that allowed, I believe, meal worms to. to raise it some status. And now they can be shipped from country to country and be used in restaurants and foods and things like that. And a lot of things are changing. And there was a big push.

Like you mentioned a few years ago with chirps chips at the same time. There was a guy named Pat Crowley who won, not chirps ships and Pat Crowley both won or did whatever on Shark Tank and got funded for their projects. He came out with something called Chapul bars, which were fantastic. And there were a couple other versions. of these. And every now and then at some whole foods, there's some health food storage.

You could see them. And there was a little bit of a rise of it for about a year or two. And then it started to decline. It kind of was a fad thing maybe. But now it is finally starting to receive the attention that it deserves. And some of that attention is because of sustainability reasons and some of it is as a result of nutritional reasons. It's something we really need to pay attention to. And if you are really trying to change your health and at the same time, you know, me to exceed other important obligations and expectations of eating in a sustainable way and an ethical way, then this is, I think, something that's worthy of your time to do. And so are all insects, do they pack the same amino acid punch? Like, how do you choose which insect?

And like, I know when I've been at a Mexican restaurant before and there's like grasshoppers on the, on the menu. I always, I'm up for an adventure, so I'll order it. And the one time I did it, like the grasshopper legs, I'm not joking. They were like in my teeth. I'm like, okay, this, talk about not enjoying it. Not only did it not taste like anything, I had grasshopper legs in my teeth for like the rest of the day. Yeah, and that's not enjoyable. It's not. It's not a good look. It was not a good look for me or an enjoyable experience. It's, Seinfeld's wife came out with a book years ago, and it was kind of like how to hide nutrients in your kids' foods or something like that. And it was like how to make like brownies with broccoli and them so you can get broccoli and your kids and they don't know it.

And I really had a huge problem with it because part of the eating is, yes, I want to nourish my family. But I also want them to know what they're eating. And I want them to know why they're eating. and I want to sort of build on one another. And I feel, and I probably bring that up because I feel kind of the same way with insects. There's a couple different approaches to putting insects into your diet. I know some people who have started companies where they're sort of making or using cricket powder or cricket fire, which is nothing more than crickets that are roasted and dried and ground up into a meal.

And you can stick it in just about anything. You can put it in a, you can make the most amazing protein shake on the planet. you can stick it in baked goods, you can do it all, excuse me, all sorts of things with it, which is awesome for getting the nutrients where they need to be. It does nothing about creating a big larger understanding about the role of insects in our diets and that sort of, you know, those other sorts of things. So we went and we talked about this in the book. We went to Thailand as a family several years ago because I wanted to experience three

different things. I wanted the entire family to experience three different things. And most of the research we did for the book was done as an entire family because I know my brain is wired in a certain way. And I wanted to experience the things we were experiencing not only through my eyes, but through my wife's eyes and through my kid's eyes. Because I wanted to be able to bring that information back and reach a much larger audience than I would as a 40-something year old man. And it's really, really worked and really broadened my. outlook on a lot of these things when we went to Thailand the three things I want the family to experience was I wanted to go to some of the major markets in Bangkok and just see what a normal

everyday person was buying and how they were purchasing and consuming insects which there was huge stalls of insects in some of these markets I wanted to go to a rural area in Thailand and where there's more traditional consumption and production of insects going on we went to a a weaver ant farm in a place called Fitzanulik. And then I wanted to go, there was an amazing chef. His name is chef that, I believe, who had a restaurant called insects in the backyard. And the entire restaurant, and I don't know if it had a Michelin Star or not, it should have. What?

But he was doing the exact opposite of hiding cricket powder in, pasta, he was actually celebrating the insects. He was, he wouldn't have never given an insect leg that would stuck in your teeth, but he was celebrating, you know, the plating was revolved around the way the insects looked. He wasn't hiding anything. He was, you know, he was, celebrating the textures and the flavors and the nuances of different insects in all of these dishes, the way they should be celebrated, just like we did the same thing with certain vegetables and meats and those sorts of things. It was brilliant. But what struck me, and I think This was a big takeaway.

And I don't want to give anything away, but I'm going to because it's that important. We made a deal with my youngest daughter, Alyssa, that she wanted to go to this thing called the Unicorn Cafe in Bangkok. And she promised us that she would eat all the insects we put in front of her if we brought her to the Unicorn Cafe. Now, we made the worst parenting mistake on the planet. we brought her to the unicorn cafe first because it worked on our schedule better. So we gave her the reward before she did any of the work. That's parenting 101. Oh, I know.

It was so bad. But we went to this thing and it was horrible. I mean, it looked like unicorns threw up. I was just going to say, oh, no, I feel like it's the opposite of anything you stand for. It is, it is. But I really wanted her to experience the other side. So she did that first. Then no matter where we were,

she wouldn't do it. Like she wouldn't eat the insects. Even at this amazing restaurant, she wouldn't eat them. We were with a guy that was doing, making some of the pasta, like I mentioned, it was actually an Italian guy living in Bangkok that had started a company hiding cricket flour and pasta. She ate like one piece. But when we, the last, our last stop was to that village in the middle of nowhere.

We had to take it. It took us forever to get there. And we spent all day harvesting these weaver ant eggs. And then the entire village came out. and we spent the entire day cooking and preparing all these dishes with the village. So nothing was hidden from her. In fact, she helped prepare the dishes with all these people. And when we sat down to eat, there was nothing she didn't eat.

And it was all about the context. It was, you know, we put her in an incredibly safe, real. I mean, we just met these people, but it was a loving and caring situation. It fostered nothing but like human relationships. She cooked alongside of all these people. It was an amazing day and then sat down and ate the meal. And that was what put her, not put her over the edge, but helped her take that next step. And it was brilliant.

It was magical. So I have two questions on that. One, how do we travel with you? Because I know sign me up next time you guys are going somewhere. I want to go with you. That sounds amazing. And then my second question is, okay, so how do we get insects into our diet here in America? or, you know, we do have a worldwide audience, but most people don't have access to a chef who specializes an insect.

Right. Let me answer both those questions. The first one is, and it's actually a timely question, COVID has thrown a wrench into a lot of things, as you know. We are launching very soon, and please keep an eye out on both my website, Eat Like a Human.com and our family's website, the Modern Stone Age Kitchen. we are re-putting back together because we had everything planned right before COVID hit. We are going to start off by running hopefully three trips a year. Beautiful. Food, culture, history, archaeology, anthropology-related trips, one to Ireland, one to Oaxaca, and one to Kenya.

Amazing. And then we're hoping to expand on that. But those are the first ones just because we know those areas so well and we have really good context. and the stories and the food are just incredible. Well, sign me up. Okay, perfect. Let us know. We're in a new phase of our life.

Our kids, one's in college, one's living out on her own in our early 20s. And so we're empty nesters. And so we're looking for more adventures. So we will definitely join you on one of those. And maybe we'll bring them along with us. But if I tell my children we're going to go to Kenya and eat insects, I think one of them would be pretty excited. the other might be a little apprehensive.

Eat in sex, drinks and blood milk, we all said. Right. I remember the blood milk story. I asked you just to fill everybody in. You guys can go listen to the podcast I did with Bill a couple years ago, but I asked him what the most interesting thing he's ever eaten. And you told me it was milk mixed with blood from a cow and that it tasted like chocolate milk.

That's all I remember. Chocolate milk with a little bit of iron in it. With a little bit of iron. Amazing. Amazing. So, okay, but how do we get it here in America? Because I'm with you on this idea. And I also don't know if you know that when you get 30 grams of protein at one sitting into your body, you trigger an amino acid receptor sensor in your muscles that force, like opens up that muscle for those amino acids to go in and make that muscle function better. But the, but the threat. is somewhere between 25 to 30 grams at one time. Okay. So that's what the research says. So they are now saying, you know, muscle is the organ of longevity.

I can tell you women over 40 as they go through menopause, really have to focus on muscle. So if insects become this power protein amino acid punch, it really can help with our need to really add more protein into our diet. Absolutely. there's a couple things. This is the perfect time to have this conversation. If we had this conversation even two years ago, it'd be difficult for me to even help you find good sources of insects. But over the past few years, more and more have been popping up, more and more facilities that

are actually raising these insects for human consumption. So when I started, I was other than shipping stuff from Thailand. And real quick, the reason we went to Thailand is because I wanted to go to the place that we got the very first insects that we ate. There's a lot of places we certainly could have gone. But that was that was why. But then we started eating a lot of insects from bait shops, which isn't a really good thing to do. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's not from bait shops. Bates shops, yes. Like you go fishing and so you brought them home to the family. Or else you go get things like bait shops and pet food shops. I mean, that's where you get mealworms and crickets and grasshoppers and all those things. So that, that,

Those aren't raised for human consumption, and I don't suggest that. So your choices you really have are, one, are you going to go out and harvest these things yourself, which you can. And I think it's amazing. Be careful, though, because insects can very easily take in toxins and pass on toxins from their environment. So if you're living in the middle. Yes. Yeah. So most people, I would never want to sort of unenpower.

somebody by suggesting that you can't go get some food yourself. But I am suggesting that you have a responsibility and a need to figure out where these, first of all, not only to identify them properly, but also, you know, where these insects are living and where they're getting their own food from. So the easiest and safest way to go about it, especially when you're starting out, is to find a place that's raising insects for human consumption. And more and more are popping up. The one that we, all the time because we have a relationship with them. And he and I just love what they do is intomal farms, E-N-T-O-M-O.

Entomophagy is the consumption of insects. So Jared Golden runs that place. It's very funny because his brothers all started raising insects for bait shops and for pet food stores. He's like, I'm going to raise insects for humans. And he's doing amazing. That's awesome.

But even it, so I have a couple other places in the book where you can go ahead and look very easily and find them. The cool thing is when I was teaching at Washington College, every year we would do an insect meal or an insect offerings. We would cook a bunch of insects and serve them and provide a bunch of information about the health and environmental reasons to be consuming insects. And it started at the health department was like, you can't do this. Like, no. And the only reason they let us do it at all is because we're in a closed, we were kind of a gray area because it was a closed community.

and we weren't like advertising to the public and all this. But she kept saying, no, you can't do this. And they kept hiding me under the steps to go up to the cafeteria. We had this little table under the steps. And it kept making me so angry because I wanted to show that this is actually real food. And everything everybody was making me do was showing that it was this weird thing. Right. And I kept pushing the health department, pushing the health department until she finally dove in deep.

And she found out that insects right now in the U.S. are classified as G-R-A-S, which means generally regarded as safe. Oh, yeah. It has the same designation as salt and pepper. So as long as they're coming from an approved source, as long as they're coming from a place that's growing insects for human consumption, you can serve them, you can make them. We sell insect-related foods here at the Monterey Soneh Kitchen.

And what was very cool is, you know, we were under the steps for like eight years. And then finally we were freed. And the next year, we built a mock-up taco truck up in the dining hole and people got tacos from us. And the next year, they gave us an entire station in the dining hall one day. And so it really, I was so proud because it was like, you can go and get this that you consider food, this that you consider food or this that is actually also food. So, yeah, there's a lot. So the modern Stone Age kitchen is, can people order online? Again, we have a worldwide audience.

Yes. So we, yes. So we have two, Christina and I, I left the college in June. Yeah, congrats. Thank you very much. It was a very good move because we have been able, we've had so many dreams about doing everything we can do and power and nourish community that we've been able to take the steps we need to do that.

We have the Eastern Shore Food Lab, which is what I started through the college years ago, has now become a nonprofit. And so all of our teaching and research and outreach is done through. through that. And then our for-profit food production, the Modern Stone Age Kitchen, is actually downstairs. And we have a storefront there. We do deliveries. We do the farmers markets. But yes, we do have, we're expanding our shipping. And some of the insect things that we're creating, we will be shipping very soon as well. So that you can find a modern stone age kitchen. Yeah. And I saw that actually on one of your posts on Instagram that there was like, it looked

like a little fat bomb of insects. And, and of course, my, little fasting brain was like, oh my gosh, that would be perfect to break a fast with because it's high protein, high fat. What's that call? I meant to order some. I just saw it like at 10 o'clock one night. Cricket protein bombs, we call them. But it really is, it's fat and protein is really what it is. Amazing. Very little carbohydrates. We have, it's sweetened a little bit, or a little bit, not a lot. There's a little bit of dates and a little bit of raw honey. But that's it. Okay. Yeah. But perfect to break a fast with. Absolutely.

Because when I'm doing a lot of teaching right now and actually I've dedicated a whole chapter to it in my new book on the importance of what you break your fast with. Because like you, where both of our work comes together is I love fasting so that we can mimic our primal ancestors and we can go into these feast famine cycling style of eating. And yet what I see when I'm teaching fasting to the modern world. is that people are breaking their fast with toxic food. And it's not hard to get toxic food to your point on maze. I mean, it's easy to get toxic food.

I mean, you have to really be conscious to get not toxic food. So I'm always trying to come up with new ideas for breaking a fast. And protein is an amazing way to do it. And I looked at those, what do they call them cricket balls, cricket fat bombs? We call them cricket protein bombs. We were calling them cricket balls. but that didn't go for very well. No, maybe not.

Yeah, but that would be a perfect thing to break a fast with because if you look at just the two states of healing in the body, when you go into a fast, you go into what we call atophagy, where the cells are cleaning themselves out and making themselves more efficient. But on the other end of that is a cellular process called mTOR. And mTOR builds up your mitochondria,

powers up your cells, can build you up muscle. but they're like night and day. They can't exist at the same time. So when you go into a fasted state and then you take something like these cricket treats and you break your fast with that, you've now literally have the best of both worlds and you're mimicking what our ancestors did. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I'm so glad you said that it's got me my mind spinning right now. But we have three teenagers and it is so hard to have a snack in the house that we believe in. Like something that you can just pop into your mouth that's actually slightly storable that has the nutrients that we want and doesn't have any of the bad stuff in it. This is one of the few things that we actually have in our house. I mean, we believe in and love when they eat. And the other thing, we are. committed. Anything that, you know, it's so funny because we spent, Christina spent all this time

trying to do a whole, really the reason we did almost all the research that we did was trying to learn how to just feed our own family. Right. And then, you know, we certainly, there's still a lot to learn, no doubt. But we wanted, we've been very happy with what we've figured out. So we wanted to share it through the book, which is what we did. And now we get to turn that book and make it into reality. And we're making all the things from the book here at the, at the shop. But we're committed that our number one priority is to empower people to take this into their own hands and do it themselves. So those cricket bombs, those book, they're actually, that recipe is in the book and we're making it here. And for anybody listening, if there's something that we have and you

want the recipe too and you don't find it there, ask us. We're happy to share. I would love for you to make it yourself. And if you don't want to reacant, then ask us and then we'll make it for you. But that's really what we're looking to do. And what I would love to do is look, I'm going to go back and look at those recipes with a fresh eye and go look at the modern stone age kitchen website. Did I say that right? That's right. Yes. Okay.

And look at what would be perfect for breaking a fast. Because again, where you and I geek out together here is mimicking this primal ancestor. And how do we thrive in the modern world? So those foods sound perfect to break a fast with. So I'm going to, this is a to be continued conversation where I'm going to. to look at your food and match it to my fast and let's come up with like the perfect like feast famine cycling experience for a human. Awesome. I love it. I love very part of that. Absolutely. Yes. To be continued. Okay. To be continued. Yes. You have to, we can't finish this conversation

without a good old explanation of ash. You, that in your book was another thing that I, it was brilliant because we have a green egg in the back of now in our house and my husband and son loved the green egg and there's a lot of ash there. So is ash from a fire something we should be looking at as a healing food or a healing tool and how would we use it? Yes, and it depends on what the fire was built on, right? Just like the insects. Just like the insects. So if you're burning, usually conifers, which most people don't burn, but things like spruce or hemlock or pine, there's a lot of issues with the residues left behind from the resins and those sorts of things. So most of the time, that ash is not desirable.

And if you're burning pressure-treated wood or painted wood or those sorts of things, then that ash is more toxic than it is helpful at all. So like Duraflame, the ash- Deraflame is not what we're talking about. here. A good old fashioned fire made from a hardwood like hickory or oak or maple or something like that is a completely different thing. Now, there is a difference and these terms often get confused between charcoal and ash. Ash is what happens when something organic burns in the presence of oxygen and that's what's left. So if you had a burning log and you just let it burn, you had a pile that really kind of gray feathery stuff. And if the wind blows, it kind of just goes there.

everywhere, that's ash. If you put something in high heat in the absence of oxygen, you create charcoal. It carbonizes. So if you maybe had a campfire, actually, if you have a campfire with a bunch of logs, and then, you know, it's burning, you go to bed, you wake up the next day, and you have probably a bunch of this feathery ash around the outside. That's what most of the, you know, the wood burned completely down. But then you have a couple of logs that maybe didn't fully. burn and you turn it over and on the bottom it's like really black and it looks like a charcoal briquette. That's charcoal because that didn't have any oxygen because it was sitting against the ground, right? So there are two different things. And they often get confused. They have different

properties. Ash itself is fairly, what's the word I'm looking for? Alkaline and was used in the pass for all sorts of different things. Ash, and believe it or not, one of the first things, one of the first chemical leaveners ever was ash. Ash, you know, baking soda in the presence of an acid. So baking soda is alkaline and vinegar is acid. You put it together and you make the volcanoes like in third grade. You put it together and you make pancakes. You put it together and you make muffins. I mean, those are, but the original, that is actually a chemical version of ash. Ash is alkaline. Ash, it was a chemical leavener for things.

Ash, a refined version of ash called potash, worked even better. And a more refined version of that called pearl ash was actually what we started to make synthetically in the 1800s to make baking soda. So you can actually bake with ash. You can make soap with ash. You can put ash on the outside of cheese to have different kinds of things happen. So in your part of the world, I've had that. I think I've been in Napa Valley drinking wine and eating cheese with ash.

So they do it for two reasons with ash. There's some, there's some French cheeses that it would take a farmer two days to make, to get enough milk to make that cheese. So they'd actually milk the cows, make the curds, press them, get them ready. But then they wanted to keep the flies off them before the next day's milking. And they'd cover it with ash. And then they'd do the next one. And then they'd kind of have that line in the middle. that was it. But quite often you see ash on soft cheeses like different kinds of goat cheeses for age goat cheeses. And what happens is cheese is acidic. It's gone through a fermentation process. And when you, so you take that acid and you put an alkaline substance like ash on the outside, it changes the pH, it neutralizes it. And it allows other things to grow on the outside for different types of effects for the cheese. So you're changing that pH with the ash. charcoal, on the other hand, is like a natural detoxifier.

Yeah, I was just say, we use charcoal in our detox programs. It's a really good binder. It's amazing, right? And if you, you know, if you overdose on something, one of the first things they do when you go to the hospital is they give you charcoal. I mean, it is incredible. And it has, we've used it for so many things for so, so very long. Both of those foods have been in our, both of those things have been in our diets since we've, had access to fire. There's no doubt. I mean, they just by by by mistake and also on purpose.

So ash was, it was the original thing that was used in mistomelizing of maize to sort of, you know, bring it back to that. It's used, like I said, it used to make silk, used to make all sorts of different things. One of the easiest things to do ash-wise is actually, if you have any leftover herbs, you know, burn them, literally burn them, put them in your oven. I talked about in the book, put them in your oven at a high temperature until they leave. literally burn and turn to ash, and they've become a storable seasoning now. And there's a lot of high-end restaurants doing just that. The reason I put this in, and we had a long discussion with the publisher, whether this chapter even should be in the book. I said, absolutely. Listen, I am

asking people if they're going to take that step to rethink what real food really means and turn to the past as sort of, you know, framework for this understanding. I mean, we're still living in these Stone Age bodies. Let's talk about all of those. it. And we still didn't talk about everything. I mean, pre-masticating our food and all those sorts. There's all sorts of things we could have talked about. But I wanted to sort of push that a little bit. So it's earth ash and charcoal. And I know, ash is important. Charcoal's important. Earth is incredibly important as well. I mean, there's certain kinds of, like dirt, like clay. Yeah. Almost every animal on the planet eats clay. And they do it for two main reasons. One is to

get different kinds of minerals that they're not getting in their normal diet. PICA. PICA, do you remember? I was one of the things I've, remember learning like early on like people who eat dirt had a mineral deficiency and it's a legitimate thing called pipe it's legitimate absolutely and but it's not like you're eating lead paint chips off the windowsill it's you're eating something that your body actually needs and the other reason is because clay binds with all sorts of toxins and allows those toxins to safely pass through their body your body and it's actually used in a bunch of traditional cooking so um there's how do we eat that It's great.

So it is in the book, like you mentioned. There are actually books on just including these things in your diet. There's not a lot about charcoal and ash except for, you know, little mentions here and there in other applications like cheese making books, for example, and the like. There are entire books on clay. And you can actually, the cool thing is you can go to Amazon and buy ash, food grade ash, food grade charcoal. and activated charcoal and also food grade clay. You can't.

As well. And do you have recipes in the book on how we cook with those? Absolutely. Yes. You have a recipe for everything. Does it go into like a bread? Like I'm trying to act like a flower. Is that where you would put it?

What? The clay? All of it. Clay, the charcoal and the ash. Probably all have a little different texture. We, unfortunately. ultimately, charcoal is not on the GRAS list. In fact, even though it's been on a diet's forever,

even though if somebody's sick, it's one of the first things we give them, and even though you can buy food-grade charcoal all over the world, it just isn't on the list. But I will tell you, we are actively working with the FDA right now to try to get it on there. But several things happened. There was a huge festival.

They sort of looked the other way for a long, time. There was a huge festival, I believe it was in San Francisco about 10 years ago called, or maybe a little more recent, but it was called 50 shades of charcoal. And all the chefs, it had charcoal in every dish that they presented there. And it caused this big uproar. It was widely accepted by everybody that went, but the FDA went nuts. And then a bunch of, right afterwards, a bunch of chefs in New York City were using charcoal in a lot of their cooking, which you can go all over the world and see charcoal. In, it's, potentially put into food.

Pastas, breads, there's a traditional Italian bread around Easter time. It's black bread that's made with charcoal in it. And it's very adsorbent and helpful with removing toxins from your bodies. It's wonderful. But it is as a result of the chef's using, it is actually illegal to use charcoal in a restaurant in New York City any longer. And we started when we launched the Saradoe Bread Company, one of our first products that was most widely received was charcoal crackers, which were, they tasted great, they looked cool. Even people around here who grew up on nothing but like meat and potatoes,

love them. And then we were told we're not allowed to make them and sell them anymore. So the recipe for them is in the book because you can make them in your own home. So charcoal is easily put into all sorts of baked goods. It's easily put into things like shakes and the like. Does it change if you cook it? Like if you heat these, all of these up, will the temperature, change the healing property? For those no, unless, you know, the activated charcoal is brought up to a

super high temperature. I believe there's some chemicals involved making it activated. And all activated means is, you know, the reason charcoal is so incredibly adsorbate is because it has all these caverns. I mean, it's just like, it's nothing but a shell of caves and everything can get stuck up in there. And activated charcoal just has more of those, has more of that open space on the inside. and there's a couple ways that they make that happen. But no, I mean, with a lot of things like baking soda, for example, if you heat that, it does chemically change to something different. But ash, I mean, these have already been through the heat process.

Nothing you're going to do in your oven is beyond what it's been through already. Yeah, yeah. So fascinating. And do you feel like when we look at these three categories, I feel like we've got two sides of the health equation, We've got the destruction that food is doing to our health. Just normal food walking into a grocery store is no longer the same food that we had years ago. So we have this modern made version of food in our supermarket and then we're missing these key things like ash and insects and then just the way corn should properly be made.

Do you feel like if we brought, just let's just take those three things. If we could just bring them back into our diet, it's powerful enough to overcome the lack of nutrients that we're getting from our normal food that we're buying a supermarket. That is an awesome question. I don't know if it'll overcome all of it, but I think two things are going to happen at the same time that's going to allow the issues to be overcome. One is yes, you will get an influx of nutrition, your body. can actually do something with that will work wonders, no doubt.

I don't know if it'll overcome all of the issues, but at the same time, by opening your mind and including things like properly processed maze, some insects, maybe some things that are on the fringe like some earth and ash or some charcoal, you're putting your mind in a different state to look at your entire diet through a different lens and probably take whatever steps are necessary to overcome the rest of it. But yeah, those are great steps, no doubt. And the insect one is so easy to take. And I know some people are sitting here cringing, cringing.

But we eat them as kids. I mean, we actually pull insects out of our kids' hands as they're putting them towards our mouths. I mean, it isn't a non-human thing. It is a non-human thing to force us not to eat food that can deliver such incredible nutrition. And if done properly, also, you know, meet the other cultural and emotional expectations of eating. It's worth it. And you know what? Start with some cricket powder.

start with some of these cricket balls and it's going to blow your mind. We started putting them on the shelves a month ago here, and we can't make them fast enough. Yeah. I can't, oh, I can't wait to go and order a bunch of stuff. Plus, you know, Sequay and I are foodies. We love cooking. This is why we love watching everything you do online and how you're like all the amazing recipes. But now I'm going to go home tonight and be like, okay, we're going to expand our diet.

I really am a big fan of diversity of foods. I feel like in order to feed your microbiome, you have to stop eating the same foods over and over and over again. And you just gave like three huge food categories of that will be a whole new experience to the gut bacteria in our guts. So I'm like, I can't wait. This is amazing. This is so this was like as interesting as the first time I talked to you. Thank you. I just, I love what you're up to.

Let me finish on this thought. one, how can people find you? We've already talked a lot about that. But for my listeners, you know, what I think is so beautiful about the marriage of your information, of my information, is we truly are trying to get the human body back to a more foundational way it wants to be treated. So how do people find your resources? So our websites, we have two primary websites. One is eat like a human.com. And that's sort of the Eastern Shore food. lab side, the research and education piece. So all of our, you know, there's information about the book, there's our blog, there's the classes. We teach a lot of in-person and virtual classes as well.

So all that information can be found there. And any upcoming research, those sorts of things, that's the home for it. And then the food production side, the Modern Stone Age Kitchen, is at Modernstoneachshkitchen.com. And you can see all of that there. And on social media, same thing. You can find me at Dr. Bill Schindler. So DR. Bill Schindler. on Facebook and Instagram mostly. And then Modern Son Age Kitchen is where the other food pieces are. I love it. And when we choose which one of those excursions we go on with you,

I'll announce it on my social media. Awesome. Like, come join us. I'll be a student in that experience. But I just think it's so neat and I can't wait to join you on that. I would love to have you there. Oh, my gosh, it would be so much fun. So, okay, I'm going to finish up with this question.

Sure. You know, this is the third season of my podcast. And this year, we really wanted to focus on gratitude because there's so much of an opportunity in the world right now to be focused on what you're not grateful for. But there are, you could go to the other side of that coin. And you could also look at a lot you can be grateful for. So do you have a gratitude practice that you do on a daily basis? And what are some of the things that you're immensely grateful for right now. Well, I am immensely grateful. And this, I mean, immediately as you're talking, I know exactly what is. My wife is the most amazing person on the planet. I mean, the most amazing person on the planet. And I think not only has she

made me a better person, but the kind of work that we're doing now is a direct result of her pulling me into reality. Like, you know, if it was, if it was just, me, I'd be living in a straw hut in the middle of the top of a mountain somewhere, you know, banging rocks running around on a loincloth, and I'd be perfectly happy, but it wouldn't be doing anybody any good. No. She is, you know, it's sort of that yin-yang thing. You know, I'm, my head's buried in the past, and her head is up and looking around

and saying, hey, if this stuff is that important, what can we do to make it relevant today? So I'm immensely grateful for her. I'm immensely grateful for my family and my parents for never, I mean, I failed out of college and I dropped out of the same college. and it took me 10 years to get my undergraduate and my parents for never giving up on me. And then finally, you know, getting my PhD and things later, but never giving up on me. I'm immensely grateful. And I have to say one more thing.

I have two corneal transplants. And they, I know, I know that one of, and I shouldn't know this, but I do know that one of my corneas is from a 13-year-old boy who was in a traumatic accident. And I don't know the situation in the other, but I do. you know that in both cases, the families of the people that passed made the decision to donate their organs. And I literally am seeing the world through their eyes. And I am immensely grateful for that as well. Wow. Wow. Well, I didn't think I could love you anymore, Bill. And you now have crawled you and your family have crawled deeper into my heart. So thank you for what

you're doing. I just, I love people on a mission to help other people. And you, You just, you're that. You're exactly that person, not just you, but your whole family. So, so appreciate you. It's always a pleasure. Always. Thank you for enlightening me. I will be sending you messages of my insect rest attempts.

And we will report back. So everybody go grab his book and go check him out online. And thank you, Bill. So grateful for you. Thank you. So great to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining.

me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.