The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 472: Anna Vocino—Eat Happy

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Mike sits down with comedian, voiceover pro, cookbook author, and culinary entrepreneur, Anna Vocino. Anna shares how her Eat Happy journey—from her bestselling cookbooks Eat Happy, Eat Happy Too, and Eat Happy Italian to her podcast Fitness Confidential—grew out of personal health struggles and a lot of hustle. She also pulls back the curtain on her voiceover career and explains why getting a food product onto grocery store shelves is a lot harder than most people think. It's a candid conversation about creativity, rejection, persistence, and what it really takes to turn passion into product. Tip o' the hat to our excellent sponsors PureTalk.com/Rowe Choose a wireless company who shares YOUR values. ZipRecruiter.com/Rowe to post a job for FREE. GoodRanchers.com Code MIKE gets $25 off your first order MDriveForMen.com Code ROWE gets you 20% off your first order

It is the way I heard it, and I'm still Mike Rowe, and my guest today is Anna Vocino. And it's certainly possible that listeners, Chuck, have heard her name invoked in prior episodes. Yes, 100%, probably with a fellow by the name of Vinny Tortorich. No sugar, no grain. It is a drumbeat that I first heard on this podcast. I don't know, a few years back. I've been aware that sugar's bad. I know that grains are not great.

I do believe that the food pyramid was, in fact, among the great lies voiced upon the great unwashed. And I bought it, and a lot of people grew up with it. And it's just extraordinary to me how long it's going to take, how slowly perceptions and beliefs, how long it takes for them to unravel. Yeah, but I think they're unraveling quicker and quicker nowadays. I think a lot of people are aware that seed oils are bad. I think a lot of people are getting the idea that, you know, that your cooking utensils should not have a coating on it that's that you can scrape off.

Stuff like that. Stuff. Yeah. Well, you know, Vinnie spoke very highly of Anna because she's basically his co-host and she was his producer for a long time. Right, right. And that's, what is that called? Was it fitness confidential?

Fitness confidential, yes. Yeah. And so I've been meaning to have her on for a long time because I got her cookbook. And her cookbook is very popular in my little house. It's called Eat Happy, which is what we're calling this episode as well. And I really like her philosophy a lot. You know, it's not about counting carbs. It's not about weighing things.

It's not, it's a balanced look at the choices that we can make and the reality of putting better stuff in our bellies than we currently are doing in a rational way. But what I like even more is that she makes her living in voiceover. Yeah, she's got a great voice. She's silky smooth. And she's funny. Yeah. And she's smart. And she's building a brand.

So this is a conversation, I think, with something, look, if you're an entrepreneur or entrepreneur curious, if you've ever wondered about how the voiceover business really works, and most importantly, if you'd share my addiction to chewing and swallowing things, this is a really fun conversation. She was so generous with her time, and she brought gifts. She brought a lot of gifts. Not only did she bring wine from her area in the Santa Barbara area, but also she brought these pasta sauces, which I have been buying since I met Anna. I didn't meet her, but since I first

talked to her like two years ago, you know, I've been buying her sauces ever since. They're really good. Her putanesca. My favorite is her Arabiata. You know, and now she just introduces us to these cheesy crispy, crunchy cheese bites here.

Listen to that. Yeah. Mm. Sometimes you just need a little crunch. He's happy with Anna Vocino. Right after this. So my friends at Pure Talk have been sending me customer feedback from Consumer Affairs.com, where thousands of people rate and review the top wireless providers.

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What are your favorite varietals? Big, bold, obnoxious cabs. Okay, I brought you a cab, so I'm glad. It's great. You like cab francs, you like the GSMs. Yeah. Great, me too. Just got back from France, two weeks, doing Chateau Niftap, Burgundy, the whole, it was.

That's a good one. Dude, it was a sick itinerary. If you ever go to France and you want to do that, tell me. Because I'll tell you the it's insane. Have you found last bottle? No. Oh, God. Are we rolling?

Keske-Sah. Define rolling. Oh, dear. Well, you know what? I wasn't going to share this because it's like one of the great finds, but last bottle is a website. And they make

really high-end wine available in a super limited way for a very short window. Okay. So I just got an alouette, I think. Great. That's like a $360 bottle of wine for $39.

And they go fast. By the case? Or it's like they're like, we have... You can get a case? We have 20 cases of this. So first come for serve. They don't tell you how much they have because it goes fast. Yeah.

You know, it's such a classic supply and demand thing. Wine is, it's so crazy. This is Anna Bocchino, by the way. She knows everything about wine. Everything about food. I don't know everything about wine. I'm just learning still. See, what you did was just tacitly confirmed that you do know everything about food,

which is ingenious. Wow, thank you for doing the reverse. I don't know. I feel like you psyched me up, bro. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I think we call it a compliment in the business, not left-handed or underhanded, but really a participatory serendipitous.

I throw it over the net. You hit it back, and it ultimately redounds to your benefit. I was going to say win-win, except there's nothing in it for me. All I've done so far is plug second bottle, which I shouldn't have done and kiss up to you. Just bleep it. Bleep it in post. Do we still bleep stuff, Jeff? Bleep it.

Yeah. we bleep stuff. That's fantastic. We bleep, we bleep, we bleep. Shit? I don't,

no, no, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, all the, they say shit on, all the nasty lady part. Where do we don't,

we definitely bleep that. All right, all right, so folks, it's all out of our system now. Prepare, strap in for a G-rated conversation. That's right.

I have been wanting, well, I've been wanting to meet you, and talk to you. I have been wanting to meet you and talk to you, so the feeling is mutual. Why?

Say something nice about me for a change. Here's the thing. I'm going to change it up and say something nice about you. Thank God. You are such a fantastic conversationalist, and I listened to you for years, and I think to myself, oh, my God, if only I had the chance to have a conversation with this man. And then, Chuck calls me. Today is here, and I'm like, wha!

It's happening. Yeah. What if I screw it up? And I will. We'll let you know. And that's okay. Thank you. But later.

Yeah, full disclosure. Somebody canceled. We knew you were close. Oh, no. I know. Did he really tell you that? I have a career based on people either not being available, canceling. That's how I got to voice promos for NBC for years.

Love it. Is because the woman was not available. And they were like, well, we need to have a lady in there. So I was like, I'll do it. And I got the job. You obviously know the answer to this because if you're not the queen of the voiceovers, you're certainly in the royal court. But Don LaFontaine was a producer for Paramount.

Yes. And his talent didn't show up for a movie. and that's how we got in a world. In a world. One man. A cookbook. He guested on a show, a woman with a mission. She's so hungry.

In grocery stores. Riddled with tapeworms. It doesn't work when I do it. It works when you do it. Thank you. I have to do other things to make, you know, ladies in voiceover, we get accused of being too shrill, so we have to like make sure that, you know, we keep it velvety smooth. You know what?

It is a criticism. I don't think it's fair. Of course not. But I'm not entirely sure it's grossly inaccurate. Right. What do you mean? Shrill? There you go.

There's a sample. I think one of the greatest reads in the history of commercial voiceovers on the female side of the fence. Yes. Had to be Sally Kellerman. Oh, my God. For Hidden Valley Ranch. We talked about Sally Kellerman recently. So it's funny that you bring that up.

Yes. She had a fantastic voice. and you wanted to buy that ranch. Hidden Valley Dijon Ranch. Just right on the edge of dirty. If you go back and listen to the voiceovers for ads back in the day, they sound ridiculously cheesy. Like now we have to have to have to have to make it sound like it's conversational.

Right, right, right. Like the vocal fry and the millennial float and like those, all that stuff. Whoa, wait, what? The millennial float? That is from my friend Nancy Wolfson, credit to her, the millennial float where you no longer will say, eat happy Italian. You'll say, eat happy Italian.

Oh, right. Throw it away. We're not committing. Throw it away. Yeah. Throw it away. Yeah. You're happy Italian.

Maybe you don't. Maybe you don't. Honestly, I'm not even Italian. I don't care. I can't even eat. I'm not attached to if you buy my product that we're advertising to you currently. I listen. I can't even eat.

I heard a movie trailer the other day for The Exorcist. I was online. Like an old? The old movie trailer. And this. really, Chuck, you'll appreciate this too. I've heard that recently as well. We kind of live in this world, and I'm drawing a blank on the guy's name,

but they were doing something back in the 70s around horror movies that was ingenious. And they weren't leaning into, like they weren't doing the spooky thing. And they weren't, you know, it was like a newscaster. But they were all newscaster reads then. Yeah. But for this horror movie, like, well, you. When you watch, when you see her head spin around, right, and all the green vomits flying through the air.

And the guy is saying, you know, it's a catastrophe unlike anything the church had ever seen. I love the pregnant paws after church. You're just like, you know what? It just brought a level of verisimilitude to it. Thank you for saying verisimilitude. You're welcome. And it just reminded me, you know, that was, I don't know, I think too many people have fallen too much in love.

with their voice and less enamored of the message they're simply trying to impart. Oh, you're talking about as an issue with voiceover in general? Yes. Yes. And hopefully a good director will bring you out of that and to the performance that should happen. How often does that happen with you? How often does a director make you better? Here's what I've noticed.

The thing you do to get the job is not the thing you're going to do in the job. So they say every piece of copy. which, by the way, full disclosure, I've been doing this 25, 30 years, and I don't even read specs anymore. Maybe I might glance just to see, I kind of just vibe it. Yeah.

Any piece of copy that says, non-announcery, make sure you're talking to your friend, all those things that are loosely veiled instructions to not suck. They just want you to not suck. Or suck less. We can live with a certain, a modicum of sucking. It's got to be red like you're talking to your friend,

really off the cuff. We want somebody who's raw. They always say, we want, raw. Okay. And then they write, you know, clean your toilets with Dow Chemical or whatever the thing is, you know, and they write the most salesy copy and you're like, wait, what? And now, it used to be you would go into a room and you'd have an engineer, maybe there's a director in there, somebody would be directing you. Even for your audition, you'd go to your agent's office and someone would be a booth engineer directing you. Now you're, by yourself, you have to be

your own director, your own engineer, and your own talent. And you have to figure out. how to read this and go, oh, God, like, how am I going to say, clean your toilet with Dow chemicals? Plug for Dow chemicals. They do make a hell of a chemical. With Dow chemicals. And now they're making toilets, too. Are they? They've got, oh, yeah, yeah.

Poop in your Dow chemical toilet and then clean it. With this. With Dow chemicals. Now like you're talking to a friend. Okay. Hey, friend, do you poop in a toilet that's not a Dow Chemicals toilet? We'd like you to please buy a Dow Chemicals toilet so you can poop in that. Dow chemicals.

Okay, now we're cancel. canceled by Dow. Here's when I, you know what, they've never, I don't even think we ever had a shot at getting a sponsorship with Dow Chemical. No, not with DuPont paying for this whole, it never happened. Yes, the DuPonts, from Delaware. They're from Delaware, by the way, the DuPonts. So, yeah, well they, that's why, you know why there's no sales tax in Delaware.

DuPont pays at all. Everything. The DuPonts are thinkers, okay? Play in the long game. Playing the real long game. Playing the long game with DuPont. With DuPont. We don't have to make dumb toilets like Dow does.

Or clean them. That's why we poop in a hole. DuPont. We're from Delaware. Okay. I went to school in Delaware before you. I love you, Delaware. Sorry.

Here's where I knew. Well, two quick thoughts. One is doing voiceover, as Chuck and I did for decades, sure gets different when you get famous. Sorry, dude. Oh, of course it does. Wow. I mean, it's just there's no more.

like all that nonsense. Oh, everything you do is gold. It's just amazing. It's just gold. Oh, my God. It's just incredible. And then they get to say on the links out in East Hampton, well, we had Mike Row on the Ford thing. And isn't that great?

And oh, good for you, chippy or whatever, you know, and slap each other on the back. So that's good. But there are people like me who are the journeyman voice actors who I've been very lucky to make a living doing it. And I've done, worked every contract I think that there is, except for if they have a separate. contract for porn, I haven't done that. Well, I haven't done porn voiceover. I didn't really, but I'm thinking you might be old enough to remember the Spice Channel. Yes, totally.

I did the promos for the Spice Channel. You did? Yeah. Of course you did. Yeah. Yeah. But they weren't like super dirty. They were just.

No, they can't be. It's still television. They were poorly written and just cheeky, you know. Yeah. When Jane had a problem with the fireplace. Frank came by. Frank was very thorough, and Jane did not expect to get her ashes hauled. And, like, all of that.

Yeah. Yeah. But Jane did. I'm involved in this story now. Jane was a sport. I'll say. Here's where I knew we really... Quite bendy, Jane.

She's gumpy. When the disclaimer on the pharma spot... Yes. gets into 40, 42 second territory. So you got an ad for... I voiced those, yeah. I have that voice. I have a very, like, you know,

stop taking this thing if it causes anal leakage. Could cause anal leakage. Infection of the paracetalysis or whatever that part of your body is. I do a lot of medical things. I don't know what I'm saying. When does anal leakage morphed toward or away from just common diarrhea?

You're going to have a doctor on to answer that question. Because that's the other thing. voiceover and I'll read a script. I'll be like, well, I know everything about that topic now because I read the script. Well, it is amazing, isn't it, how we can create the illusion of knowledge and short bursts based on the last thing we narrated. Well, did you used to do this in your career? If somebody ever says like, hey, that's easy. What you're doing, you're just talking. You look for opportunities to get them to try to read some copy and they can't do it because you're like, okay, there's my job insurance. Look, it's so, you know, we...

You still don't do lessons, do you, Chuck? No, I don't teach anymore. I stopped during COVID. A lot of people did. Unseemly. Unseemly. Yes, to be teaching voiceover during COVID. Yeah.

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It's bad. One tier like iron ice coat each. That's just... Who wasn't even an Indian, by the way? He was Italian. Yeah, he was. He was Sicilian, I think. That's probably why you know him.

You're Italian, right? Yeah, we all know each other. Yeah. Iron Ice Cody was the sad Indian who stood by the side of the road in the 70s for the Keep America Beautiful Campaign. That's right. One of a large container of. Do not litter.

Trash landed at his feet and he had the little lip going too. Yeah. He really was in the tear. He was tow up about it. Oh, toe up. Yeah. That's what the kids say. We're going to get to the reason you're here.

Yeah. But why? Well, I'll tell you why. Okay. Because nutrition is universal. Yes. Food is certainly the great Uniter. And you're building a brand.

I am. And the brand that you're building is going to rely in large part on your ability to talk about it. That's true. To communicate it. Correct. And a crisp, well-modulated alto. Megan, your sales director is here nodding furiously in the background. Okay.

Do we need to strike her from your eyeline? No. No, it's okay. Just checking. I didn't even see her. I'm just assuming she is. No sales director could sit quietly in the midst of that and not nod in violent agreement. That's right. So really, all challenges are communication challenges.

They are. Brand building is an epic journey of communicating to people why they should buy your stuff when there's all sorts of other things they could be buying. Yes. Vinny and I got into that. If I didn't mention it in the preamble and how would I know because I haven't recorded it yet. But Vinnie Tortorich is a frequent guest. And you are highly recommended on account of him. Yes. You're still doing his pod? Yes.

We do the Monday show every week. We've been doing it for 13 years. And I'm his original producer of the fitness confidential podcast. I was podcasting back when we had to update XML code in 2008 to 2012. But, well, 2012, we finally had WordPress plugins. But, yes, I was podcasting back in the day. And he called me. And he said, I can't turn on a computer.

but William Morris told me I needed to get a podcast in order to release my book. And Nancy, who I mentioned earlier with the millennial float, said, you know how to do podcast. And I was like, Vinny, no, like, no, what I, no. And I only knew him from working out with him, which he's a great trainer, by the way. Give me the millennial float again, real quick. I was like, Vinny, no. You know what? Like from a punctuation standpoint, the millennial float really relies heavily on the ellipses.

The ellipsies or an M-Dash, apparently now, but now an M-Dash is indicative of using chat GPT. I was like, I just got attached to the M-Dash. Walk me through the M-Dash? I'm not clear. Just the little hyphen. I call it a hyphen. Where the letters touch on either side. That's the M-Dash.

That's the one I correct on your stuff. Oh, that's the one. You take it away from him. No, no, I give him the M-Dash. But it's like two, it's two dashes. Right? Is that the M-Dash? No, it's one solid dash in between, you know, the end of a word.

it in the beginning of the next. Okay. All right. People should know. But why do they call it the M-dash? I don't know. I didn't know what it was, and now I know what it is. It's a hyphen. Yeah, or a dash. What's the dash? I'm Gen X. We call it a hyphen. I want to understand the difference between a dash, a hyphen and an M-dash. And in the meantime, I'll talk about the Vinny origin story while you guys... I do want to hear that, but I just something... Here's a symbol. I don't... Are you familiar with the Interabong? Oh, the Intera Bong. Oh, the Intera Bong is fantastic. Fantastic. I was so excited a couple years ago because I thought I had found a grammatical or a bit of punctuation that wasn't represented by a symbol. And what I'm trying to impart is a combination of surprise and...

Oh, so interrogation. And question. Okay. Like an explosive... What would happen if you took an... An explosive question mark? Yes. Or a statement that embodies equal parts, surprise. So I have to do a question mark and an exclamation point when I feel those feelings.

That's what it is. And in Teribong, it's a question mark incorporated into an exclamation point. It's an actual thing. It's one. Yes, it's one symbol. It's one wing ding. Chuck, when you have a moment, if you could get us an interrobong. I can only do one thing at a time. I'm going to put this up here and you could read it and I'll look for.

A hyphen is the shortest for compound words like well-known, full-time job. gluten-free. Oh, it's an N-dash, E-N. No. It says N-dash. I was referring to the M. The N-dash is shorter? About the width of the letter N used for ranges.

And look at that. Yeah, the N-dash is longer. Oh, and then there's the E-M, the E-M-Dash. That's what I was referring to, the width of the letter M. Okay. So, folks, if you want to use a short dash, I guess you would go with a hyphen. A slightly longer dash is the E-N-dash, about the... width of an N as in Nancy, who we keep mentioning. And M. E.M. That's a hyphen the width of the letter

M as in Mike. You get the longer dash. Congratulations. So, in order to transition smoothly and live up to the conversationalist that you've described me as, okay, well, as AI completely upends. I forgot we were talking about that. over business and we are ushered into a new state of skepticism where we can't tell the difference between that which is artificial and authentic. I do believe an honest brand like the one you're trying to build is going to become super relevant. And I also think honesty in food, recipes, everything you and Vinnie have been doing is going to become hyper relevant. And since we're at the beginning of another year and everybody's fat...

doing new year, new you right now. Great. Love it. So having said all that, yes, thank you. I think I can justify the last 18 minutes. A plus. Okay. A plus segue. Now let's move into the things you truly care about. The AI stuff, I always said for me personally, I watched really talented women above me and the generation above me in voiceover age out. And that bummed me out. And that kind of this confluence with me getting diagnosed with celiac in 2002 and starting to figure out what the hell can I eat. I can't have gluten. What can I eat? And 2002 was a time that gluten-free wasn't really in the lexicon. We weren't really having that conversation. It wasn't, didn't even have time to have a backlash at that point. Was gluten even a thing? I don't think so,

because I really had to do a lot of explaining to people. Whole Foods in Pasadena had this little end cap with some gluten-free cookies, like with some, with some legacy brands like Pamela's and annies and things like that. And I bought this $17 bag of cookies because I was like, well, I can have these. And back then, you know, that was a lot of money. My husband and I were young artists and were like broke AF and... Excuse me, but that's your tarabong right there. That is shocking. Isn't that beautiful? It's a thing. That looks like an ear.

I know. It looks like an ear. It's simply, if you're not watching folks, visualize an exclamation point with a question mark going over the top of it, but then coming down to merge before the dot at the bottom. That is shocking, but it's also not in the Apple keyboard yet. No. No. It's not on the keyboard. Can you be responsible?

I think, if I could set a goal for you. Sure. I want this to be like on your Wikipedia page that Mike Roe is responsible for the entire bomb appearing into keyboards in the QWERTY keyboard. Yeah, because look, somebody did the hard work. Somebody actually designed that. Right. So why is it not on a keyboard?

And you, when you start looking for it, like our brain does this with everything, right? It finds whatever you tell it to look for. If you start looking for phrases or moments in your own phraseology that incorporate that mix of questioning with excitement, you're going to start using the InteraBong all over the place. I've been using two different characters. And imagine the time saving. I'm busy. I'm building a brand.

I don't have time to type two. I don't have time for two punctuation marks. So, yeah, so I bought the $17 bag of cookies. and it tasted like absolute dog shit. And I wound up having my Tara moment of like, I will figure out how to make yummy cookies. So help me God. And I did.

And then working on camera and working in the entertainment industry, I was eating all this gluten-free stuff and putting on weight and putting on weight. And by the way, when I was coming up in Hollywood, there was you were a character actor or you were, you know, an ingenue or a lead actress. There wasn't a lot of wiggle room. So I would always starve myself so I could go be the mom on the commercial,

on the whatever commercial. You were either a question mark or an exclamation point. So there was a little bit of that. And then stuff obviously has loosened up about now we see all different kinds of body shapes on TV, which I think is an amazing thing and a wonderful thing.

The mindset messes with folks a little bit, I think, of us older generation. So I met Vinny, Roderich in, he was training me and he said, I don't know how to turn on a computer, please, can we do this podcast? And he said, I wrote this book, Fitness Confidential, plug. And he still holds up, by the way. It does.

He sent it to me, and I read it on a girl's trip on my iPhone three. And when I couldn't sleep, we were in Hawaii, and I was reading it, a little PDF page by page, and it was so good. And I begrudgingly said yes. and that completely changed the course of my life. Why begrudging? I don't know. I've never been one of those people who's like,

you know the phrase, like if it feels like a hell yes, unless it's a hell yes, it's a hell no. I'm not. There have been some times where it felt like a hell yes, but for the most part I'm like, I don't know, I guess I'll do it. Hell maybe. Hell maybe. Millennial float, you know, I don't know.

I'll know it. But that was one of those things. And then I said, okay, well, We're going to produce it, Vinny. Here's how it's going to go. Because he's like, we're going to do drop-ins and sound effects. Because he comes from the radio world in the 80s. And I was like, no, we're not doing any of that.

We're going to turn on the mic. Because we did three shows a week in my garage every Sunday in North Hollywood. We're going to do, we're going to turn on a mic and we're going to talk. Sorry, 2000 when? This is 2012. Okay, 12. Yeah. Turn on the mic.

Turn on the mic. Three times every Sunday. So this is like when Rogan is starting this thing? Yeah, yeah. Slap on music. That's it. I am not producing like a crazy, like involved show. We can have guests. We can have I have all the equipment. I have a studio in my house. So yes, we can do that. So that's how that all came to be. And then I changed my focus from being gluten-free to now being low carb because I was

putting on weight. I was pre-diabetic. Getting the thyroid issue, like because I was aging as well. Did you know what was causing this at the time? No, of course not. No doctors were saying like, every doctor was saying, I came up in the low-fat world. Like you have to cut out fat. You have to cut your calories. You have to count your calories. So I was like, well, I guess I'll just do Weight Watchers again because I know I'm shooting this thing.

And it was like crazy crash dieting, basically. I knew that if I starved myself, then I could go shoot for a week on that show and then I could go back to eating again, which, by the way, I think most people do that. Well, sure. But I want it. I don't, I didn't, I didn't love that life. And then changing to be low carbs. So cutting out the processed sugars, grains, eating more fat.

What do you mean? I can have full fat dairy? What do you mean? I can have the chicken thighs? Are you kidding me? I thought that I had to have steamed broccoli and chicken breasts with a little bit of tiny bit of salt and lemon juice. That's what I was brought up knowing that, and it works. Sure.

But it's not sustainable and it's not fun. It's not fun. I am Italian. I like food. You are Italian. You're full on Italian, right? Full on. No, I'm half.

I'm half. What you have? I don't know. I can't say. Is it divided lengthwise? visor, horizontal. Good ranchers isn't the only company that promises to deliver high-quality American raised meat to your front door at a fair price, but they are the company I use, and I'll tell you why.

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If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. A-ha! The smart half? The smart half. Yeah, so that kind of, it colors everything that I do, along with the fact that I had a mother who was a sugar addict. And in 2014, she went in for a routine.

I mean, it's a serious surgery, but it was routine. they're used to doing it, heart valve replacement, and she never woke up. And her body was not strong enough to fight the infection that she got in the hospital. And a lot of that had to do. I wound up getting the autopsy. It was very dark, very dark time. But it colors a lot of why I do this, which is if I could not talk to her about it, she also had celiac.

That's how I found out I needed to get tested. But she went the other route and got really addicted to sugar. And that's all she ate was sugar. and her body was not in a position to be able to fight when she needed to fight. I think I ask Vinny this too, and I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but do you reckon, do you reckon? I reckon. Is there a more addictive slash dangerous drug in the country right now than sugar?

I mean, it's not one as pervasive. I mean, I guess sugar doesn't have fentanyl in it, so it's got that going for it. Way to make lemonade. Yeah. Yeah. I always look on the bright side, check. Mm-hmm. Say sugar now with less fentanyl with that millennial float. Sugar now with less fentanyl.

Is it fentanyl or fentanyl? Fentanyl? Tomato. Well, look, I mean, it's so obviously your mom, I mean, that's an inciting incident. That's when things get dark and real. But in your interaction with Vinnie, the guy had already written the book. Right. And the book is fabulous. But had no sugar, no grains become a thing in his world yet?

He was kind of starting it. I'm not sure exactly when he coined it, but I was like, you know what? I'm going to switch my focus on my little food blog, my little gluten-free Anna food blog. I'm going to switch it. And then it became, what if I had the audacity to put all of these recipes

into a bound book? And 2016, Eat Happy came out. And then I was like, I'm never doing that again. And then in 2019, Eat Happy 2 came out. And then I said, I'm definitely never doing that again. And then last year, Eat Happy Italian came out, and I was like, well, I'm done writing cookbooks.

And then next fall, I have another book coming out. And now I really am done, I will say. Are you wearing a bathroom? You know what? It could be a bathroom. It could be a ghee. It's been a lot of discussion. I thought it was a really cute little shirt that had, but just had like a wrap clothes.

Yeah. But a lot of people said. That's a bathroom, probably from the Huntley Hotel. All right. Well, then I just want you to feel at home in your kitchen. It's all doing mine. Yes. I have your first one.

You're soon to have this one because I brought you that one. I went through all of my favorite classics that I love. My Italian and my Italian American classics, but low carb. I know you're going to, that's the face of a man who wants to have pasta. I get it. It's so, okay. I know. Just.

Well, look, again, I will have sucked up properly in the preamble yet to be recorded. And we'll make sure all this is clear. But, you know, I've had a dozen recipes out of this book so far. Oh, really? Yeah. I'll get the, the, the one. and I live with has many questions. She's a huge fan.

That is so nice. Yeah. So we'll get to all that. But I'm still, like, I want people to understand who maybe don't have a gluten issue or is it's silly act. It's gone beyond that.

Right. Because now, I feel like we're in a world where really the mainstream, we did the low carb, and if you've seen Vinny's docks, which clearly you have, but you know, that. Many times. It's like, so the flag has been stuck in the ground. Agreed.

Right? And now the communication really starts, right? Again, which justifies that first 18 minutes of re-association. But like we have to, this whole thing is going to, the country's relationship with sugar, which is fundamentally bad and dangerous, is only going to improve. We hope. we can articulate. Why?

Yes. Yes. Well, here's the thing. I'm not a scientist. I choose to eat this way and offer solutions to people who are looking for, you know what? I don't feel good when I have too much sugar, when I have for all this processed food. I'd like to get back in the kitchen, but I'm scared. I'd like to do grocery shopping, but I don't even know where to begin.

That's where I get practical with people. And that's where I'm helping people. Now, my marinara, for example, I'm, like I, like I, I'm Italian. I identify as an Italian American. And I've been making this marinaris as I could turn on a stove. Like, I just know how to do it. And I know that, like, there are certain foods.

Pizza is one of them. That's the first thing. Everyone goes through the temper tantrum phase, right? Explain that more. So, like, the doctor said with celiac in 2002, you can't have gluten anymore. And I was like, well, that what can I eat? And, you know, you get real dramatic and you throw your toddler temper tantrum. And it's okay.

It's part of the jury. And in fact, I know I get emails from people all the time, and especially, usually it's women who are writing me and they're furious that their doctor said that they can't have X, Y, or Z. And they looked in my book and they wanted to have this, but then I, but then I had dairy in it and they can't have dairy and they're furious. And I'm like, you're doing the thing and it's totally okay. And I'm here to support you and I get it. You're going to come out the other end and you're going to equip yourself. You've got to get the new folds in your brain about what you're going to cook for dinner. I don't know if coming out the other end is the best metaphor for what I'm talking about it.

But still. But still. So like I think I'm maybe then at the second level of... You're past the temper tantrum? No, no, I'm still having a temper tantrum. Okay. But I'm... That's okay.

I'm no longer frustrated by the fact that I have to do things differently because I can see your excellent books and others out there provide a roadmap, a how-to thing. The next level of the temper tantrum is why is it so brick and hard? It is hard. Why can't I walk right in the store? Why isn't there a whole aisle labeled stuff that won't make you fat or hurt you that's tasty that you can eat in a fairly robust quantity? Why isn't it easy to find? And then I think the third stage will be, because that'll come.

And there are stores. I mean, maybe it's a whole foods. Maybe it's whatever it is. But you can find little nooks and crannies and aisles and corners and so forth where all that. Now, why is it so freaking expensive? Right. Right. So there's plenty to justify a good long-term tantrum.

There are a lot of stores that now have a better-for-you-Ill, or maybe there's, you know, there's in the grocery industry, there's conventional grocery, there's specialty, there's natural, those are specific channels, like natural will be like Whole Foods or Sprouts and conventionals like Giant or Kroger or Albertsons, you know, where you'll find the regular things. So when you're going into these stores,

and some stores have wonderful produce and great meat programs, and some don't, and it's really hard. And there's food deserts. There's a big issue moving food across this country. That is really tricky because it's very expensive. So you have upstarts like me making very heavy pasta sauce in jars, which we had explored doing some R&D with doing pasta sauce in the tetrapacks, you know, in the square. Tetrapak. Tetrapak are those rectangular. You'll see a broth in those rectangular.

cardboard boxes or broth out, right? You can do Tetrapack. They do it in Europe for their pasta sauces, but they don't do it here. You put it in Teribong on a TetraPack. You'd be like, hey, what a surprise. I didn't know. I didn't know. This is great.

I didn't know! I still have questions, but wow. Isn't this wonderful? What is this? Hey, that was a little shrill. How many people are on your blog now? On my blog? Yeah, you're still blogging?

I am. I'm on a substack. I think I'm at like 20%. 25,000 people on the block. How important is reaching people through that media? It's very, very important. I actually love the substack platform because I can reach people through it

and I can put all kinds of media on it. I do a thing where I call five customers every day. And I talk to them. Same five? Hey, Wendy. It's me again. How are you doing? I could use a little picnic.

Still fat? Oh, sorry. That's actually, okay, yeah. So five of your customers. I do call customers. I like to talk to people. I mean, does it freak them out? How do you get their numbers?

Yeah, it does. So like you just got, you get the data. Well, if they buy on Shopify and they put their phone number in, I call them. If they've opted into communications. Do you? Sometimes they've opted not, they said no and I still call them. It's a really good idea. I've read the law.

Do you record them? I want to. I need to start recording them. I've recorded a couple, but you know, you have to ask. permission and sometimes I chicken out to ask permission. Because I just want to how, I want them to feel like they can just talk. One woman called me back, but I posted the message. I got permission.

Yeah. And I posted her message and she was so excited that she found us in Fred Myers in Alaska in her town that she bought one of each. And she just was so glad that I called her to tell her that we were in Fred Myers in her town. I was like, listen, if I have to call every single one of you and tell you that we're at a store near you, I'll do it. Megan, sales director, nodding her head in violent agreement. I mean, look, well, look, a phone call is not much more complicated than a Zoom call.

Nobody picks up the phone anymore. Or Riverside. If you get their permission, why not record them? Get their permission, obviously. But then, you know, whether it's substack or Instagram. Well, yeah. I mean, it's an honest conversation. I think, you know, I think people are very hungry for that.

Because back to the AI thing. Connection. Every single thing either has a patina of bullshit on it or it doesn't. And that's why I think the AI is such an interesting corollary because it's going to touch on every single thing that you're doing. AI recipes are horrible, by the way. Where do they come from? Well, I think that they scrape the internet and then you can put in like make me, you know, lemon bars or whatever and chat GPT poops out something. and being a recipe writer, now having published 800 recipes,

I can look at it and go, that does not work. Like, no, that does not work. I'm sure law of averages, chat GPT would poop out some good recipes from time to time, but it's an issue. In fact, that was one of the hesitations I had coming out with the first book, and this is before AI, I thought, you can just Google chicken with zucchini and get a million hits. Like, why does anybody need to buy a book anymore?

And Vinny was the one who got to talk me off that ledge. Like, you know what? just do it. Wrap it up in a bow and do it. And I appreciate him for supporting me in that way. Because I always say, any doubt that you have while you write your book, don't worry, you're going to get that reflected back to you in a review on Amazon. So just let it go because people psychically will know that one thing you feel insecure about in.

They'll find it. They'll find it. And it's okay. It's part of the process. Yeah. And the way you handle it is part of the process. It is. So like everything is either going to go in the authentic category or the artificial category, I think, including...

That's interesting. Yeah. Everything we've talked about from, you know, building a brand is communicating. Voiceover is obviously the very definition of it. But, you know, so too is chewing and swallowing. We're all addicted to that. Yeah. And so that's what I think is cool about the life you're living right now.

you've very few people can understand or relate to the challenges of reading copy with a millennial what's it called a millennial float a float Nancy Wilson's going to lose her mind when she finds out that we why do I know Nancy Wilson Nancy Wolfson is she is a very esteemed voiceover coach and a dear friend of mine since 2003 she's wonderful oh that's nice she's taking new pupils I don't know maybe Do do do do do do do. Dumb. Part of the reason the whole supplement industry has such a lousy reputation is because so many of the companies paint with a very broad brush. For instance, they'll tell men, especially men my age, that we need more discipline and better habits when the issue is often biology.

Obviously, if you're a lazy slug who never works out and eats a steady diet of crap, you've got problems. But if you've always looked after yourself, if you've exercised and made good choices at the buffet, but now you're suddenly low on energy or putting on weight, that's not your habits. That's your metabolism, which is why you might want to consider boost and burn from MDrive. Unlike most of their competition, MDrive is rooted in science, not marketing. They don't overpromise. They don't overcharge. And they don't paint with a broad brush. consequently, they have thousands of very satisfied customers, regular guys of a certain age,

who were still exercising and still watching what they ate but not getting the results they used to. MDrive can change that. You can find them nationwide at Sprouts or Amazon, or you can go to MDrive formen.com and order straight from there. Try MDrive boost and burn. Use code row for 20% off your first purchase at mDrive for men.com. That's MDrive for Men.com. Promo code row to save 20%. Look, I worry for the voiceover industry.

I do too. Like for the non-famous part. Well, no, for people like me, the scale actors? Absolutely. And by the way, it used to be, hey, I would get this rate for the things and this video game, you say two lines and you get all this money.

It's not that way anymore. I had a friend of mine was paid some ungodly money by Toyota in the 90s just not to do another car spot. And I was like, yeah, those days are long gone. Yeah. I was Mazda. Right. For years.

And the majority of the money. And that was before you were Micro the voice or that you were being micro. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was 95 maybe. Okay.

Yeah. I won't tell the whole story because Chuck's heard it a thousand times. But all I had to say was Mazda, you know. All I had to say was Mazda. And they lifted it. I went in. I went in and I said Mazda three times. to give the engineer a mic check.

Then the client came on. And then, so Tokyo's on the phone, Shaiate Day in New York and an agency in Chicago. And of course. They all have different ideas about how to say Mazda. And then it was going to run in Japan

so they wanted. So over there, it's Matsuda, unless you're in Hokkaido, which, then it's Mazda. And then somebody on the call thought it would be a good idea If I record it with a Japanese accent for Tokyo, yes, it's 1995. Oh, okay, yeah.

So it's, you know, Mazda. Did you have to growl before? Yes. Yes. I mean, I didn't have to, but they were paying for it. So I gave it a value ad with Mike Rowe. Moral of the story is I'm in there for an hour because they paid for an hour. And what they went with was the second take of the mic test.

Of course. They didn't take anything. Because that's when it's the best, when it's the freshest, when it's just... Well, I kind of threw it away, like a millennial float. Like a millennial float. Yeah. But is there a corollary for what's happening in the food business? Because it feels like in the voiceover business, now everybody's got the tech.

You can hop on garage band or whatever the thing is. Like, anybody can do it. And you can say what you want about it. But if you succeed with your brand, anybody's going to be able to make amazing dishes. that are really, really healthy for them without the expert patina. Well, I think that it comes down to quality control, and I want things to be really good because I want to purchase products that are good. You know what I mean?

I'm always kind of like, is that the golden rule? Like, treat others how you want to be treated? That is the golden rule, yes. Do unto others. As you would have others do unto you. I don't want people to do unto me, though. You know what I mean? Like, that sounds untoward.

Well, it's just as old. I know. You know, a lot of people... It's King James is what it is. Actually, I don't think it is. No, it's just... I don't think it's biblical. I don't think the golden rule is in the Bible.

Is it not? I don't think it is. Chuck, have a look. Looking. And if it is, I bet there's an interrobong after it. Do it to others? Do it to you? I thought of that.

Give it to me as a millennial... Dealing to others. doing to you, I guess. I guess. I guess. You know what? Okay. Okay.

That actually works because there is, the millennial float leaves you uncertain. And what we're desperate for. That's why I'd put the millennial float under, like closer to the AI category, if not firmly in it. Because in this world, in this world of nutrition, where there's just so much nonsense out there. Right. We're just desperate.

People are desperate and I have found, because I don't, I'm a low carbur, but I don't put like the carb grams or the calories and that kind of stuff in my book. And that is really hard for some people. And it used to be hard for me because I was a professional dieter. I knew the points and the calories and the fat grams and the carb grams and every single thing. And when you're counting, you're not living your life. So if you're eating real food, chances are you know. do unto others Matthew 712

is the golden rule and its most famous source is the Bible I don't believe it I don't believe it well that's that's according to chat GPT Matthew and Luke

oh see Rabbi Hillel the elder said what is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor well he put a twist on it he did yeah huh

Confucius said it well I mean 5th century Oh, well, So Christian They lifted it Like they lifted like the pagan calendar kind of thing Yeah, the Gregorian calendar

The Roman calendar Okay, the calendar is such a mess But relevant to what you're saying Because it's the very manifestation Of counting and keeping track of things Our desperation to keep track of time Is real. There is, I mean, it's the Tower of Babel without it.

You're saying that if you're counting calories, if you're measuring, that whole way of thinking is kind of doomed. I think it's doomed because it puts us in this mentality where we're not safe. We make it unsafe to be trusted. Like I just can't trust myself. And to me, there's something to be unpacked there. And what I have found in my experience talking to people, most of the stuff comes from that kind of deep-rooted, I'm not trusting myself.

I can't be trusted around food. There's something I'm covering up. There may be a layer of, like there's a lot of stuff tied into. So when people quit eating processed sugars and grains and they're no longer medicating by stuff in the food in the pie hole, stuff comes up. And that's totally fine and normal, the temper tantrum, the whatever stuff's going to come up.

That's for your therapy session. Go do that. And that's great. We want those things to not torture us anymore so that we're not fat, sick, and unhealthy anymore, right? But ultimately, we still want to be. to enjoy food. Food's a wonderful thing. Food should not be demonized, I think. I think that food should be available to people in the grocery store shelves. I think it's really tricky with what some of the

big food companies have done with, you know, cutting corners and putting fillers in and not labeling things correctly and all the things that I've learned trying to be somebody who manufactures food and finding the right partners who are going to make a good product with me. And is that where you are now? You're manufacturing. Yes. I'm not manufacturing. We work with contract manufacturers, comans. So I now have five pasta sauce skews, four spice skews, and three cheese bites, which are just cheese with the spices. So there's nothing, there's no like anti-caking agents. There's no sugar, obviously. Everything has to be clean, clean, clean. And no seed oils. And I am thinking with the mindset of somebody who's trying to quit sugar. So that's why we've gone into those three different

categories, because as somebody who writes recipes, those are the things that I'm looking for. For example, the cheese bites I was making in my kitchen for years, toasting cheese with my spices. And, oh, that tastes like a ranch Dorito or that tastes like a, you know, a cheese it. And but not wanting to have the carbs, but still needing that crunchy snack, right? So I started calling companies that work with cheese and going to trade shows, talking to people, who's going to work with me and make this product with me. So that's about 18 months, just finding somebody who will do it without putting the crap in it.

Yeah. And then going back and forth on R&D. to get a product plus the packaging design, which you know very well, that whole thing to get the CPG thing designed. And then where does it go on shelves? Well, right now we're talking, because it's only available direct to consumer because we just launched it a few months ago, but we're talking with the grocery stores. Where does it go? I'm talking with the buyers. And they're like, does it go in salad? Like, because it's a salad topper? Does it go with crackers? Well, guess what? You're going to go up against Frito Lay, and they're not going to like that very much. They hate that.

They do hate that. So, you know, where do we find space on the shelf? And so my approach has always been let's launch it direct to consumer first because my audience will tell me if they like something or if they don't like it. I try to have it as dialed in as possible before that happens so that hopefully I've gotten ahead of any obstacles. But we launch it that way first because, A, the margins, if we sell it direct to consumer, we have the money to pay for everything else. It's so expensive to go into grocery stores, paying for the shelf space, offering free fills, which is the free case per skew per store when you go into a big chain. And all of this stuff adds up.

And we've done a little bit of crowdfunding with my cookbook audience who invested in my company. They own a portion of my company. That's smart. They're the best. They're the word of mouth. They're the reason that I have this company. What are you liking that to? Is it like a GoFundMe?

Is it a co-production? How do you think about it? It's called an equity crowd fund. That's what the legal term is by the SEC. And they only recently started doing this, I think, at the past five or six years, allowing people who aren't accredited investors to invest in a private company. So we raised close to $700,000, which by most CPG brands is absolute chump change.

But for me, I'm like, this is insane and awesome that people believe in what we're doing so much that they're going to put their hard-earned money into the company. They want to be investors. And I know, like, I was like, guys, this is the long game here. You're not going to, like, see a fat dividend check every quarter. This is not what we're doing. Well, you know, to answer my own question,

earlier, or at least an observation, the temper tantrum that I experience when I can't easily find the stuff that I want is sort of indirect correlation to the difficulty of launching a brand that could in fact satisfy that and the ways that the retailers and the manufacturers and the whole giant top heavy glittering edifice just makes it virtually impossible. People should understand how hard it is to launch a brand. I want to give one example. I didn't know. I thought when you saw the sale tags at the grocery store, when you're like, oh, it's on sale, it's a dollar off, $2 or buy six, you know, get one free or whatever the thing is. I thought the store was paying for that. The brand pays for that.

I didn't know that going into it. So not only, if I'm selling something on my website for $14, but I sell it into the store for $6, and then I've also got to pay for $2 off on this, plus the fees that get added on and the shipping and the freight, the problem of moving the food across the country. I need these sales to be able to pay for that because we're losing money, hand over fist, over here, until we get to a place where we've scaled, and that's going to take getting multiple production partners across the country. See, this is why I think...

It's a puzzle that all has kind of got to raise up. at the same time. Right, right, right. But it's back to communicating. Because if people don't understand the fundamental difficulty of trying to do what you do, you have no hope of an equity funding thing. But that might be the way to get the thing that you want. You know, I know I told you this before we started rolling,

but when Dirty Jobs was the biggest show on cable, I had a Dirty Jobs cleaning product, and I had it on shelves in every single Walmart. in this country. And that's huge. And here's the heartbreaker. The people loved it. Everybody who used it was like, this is the best cleaning product ever. Well, it's gone. You can't get it anymore. And the reason is because Walmart simply can't put a thing on their shelf if that thing isn't supported by an advertising commitment. And I mean, this millions and millions and millions of dollars, until or unless you're able to spend that kind of money on your brand,

then the existing shelf space, that's very expensive. And you have this beautiful platform that you've created for yourself. So I think that's why we're going to see a lot more people with platforms coming forth saying, hey, I really believe in this cause. I'm making these products that are an alternative to the ones that are out there. We have to have grassroots support. we have to in order for it to work. Or you just sell a bunch of equity

and you get a huge investment and you blow it up the old-fashioned way. I don't want to go that route yet. I know I'm going to need to get funding. I know I'm going to have to have investment at some point. I'm just not ready to do it yet. I want to see how much we can take it as a community first. I think that's smart

because I think it's happened in a lot of other verticals where everything, it's like this combination of homemade and lo-fi. You're messaging, you can have. handle that yourself. The tech permits it. Your distribution, get on all the social channels. Tell your story as best you can. And then, but then you come back to logistics, transportation, and like those real capital costs. And I don't know how to, you know, this is an ingestible we're talking about. It's got to be refrigerated. It's got to be shipped. There's FDA.

If you were in frozen or refrigerated stuff, I bow to your logistics prowess because we have shelf-stable. I mean, our pasta sauce is three-year shelf-stable. I mean, it's a jarred sauce. It could last decades. You know what I'm saying? Sure. It's been properly done. For anybody who's doing refrigerated stuff, frozen stuff, holy crap, that's a lot.

Well, I mean, go back to Hidden Valley, Sally Kellerman. She probably had the cushiest gig of that whole entire adventure. I mean, that Hidden Valley story is amazing, by the way. You should Google it. I do need to Google it because I sell a ranch that's better. What? Why is it better? Because it's clean and it's delicious.

What's it called? That's why. Eat Happy Kitchen, ranch dust. Ranch dust. Yeah, and here's the thing. I sell ranch dust. I sell it specifically. Again, I've been making this recipe at home.

It's actually a recipe in my second cookbook. By the way, that's the other thing. Democratization. Get my cookbooks. You don't have to buy any of my stuff. make the recipes in the cookbooks. See, there you go. I'm literally like making things available, right?

So, no, the ranch dust is because, first of all, I love ranch. What Americans don't like ranch, ranch is delicious. But when you buy the Hidden Valley, it has some things in it that you're not going to love seeing on the ingredient list. Don't come at me, Hidden Valley. They're laughing. They're laughing all the way to the bank, right? Good. They're going to be okay.

They're going to be just fine. So, yeah. So I just come up. with stuff that I have not found clean versions of that I've been making and make it and sell it. Do you think when you do this, are you mostly trying to do stuff that's pleasing to you? Or, you know, do you have your finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing? And are you trying to make something to satisfy a demand that is out there? Well, I hope a little bit of both because I think that you have to infuse it with your own little bit of

you know, inspiration, but you want to catch some, catch some tailwinds with it. Yeah. I ask everybody a version of that simply because if you're not pleasing yourself, you're never going to last. Right. But if you're only pleasing yourself, then you're just building little statues to yourself. Exactly. And that's not a business.

Yes. No. So how do you decide which recipes go into these books? What kind of testing do you do? Well, how do I decide? Well, I generally write a whole bunch of recipes and then I'm like, like for the next book, for example. I've always wanted to do a party book. I think being social is very important relationships.

And maybe this is a fallout from the whole COVID isolationism. But I think that us socializing and finding a way to socialize without having to just get completely hopped up on sugar and alcohol. And I love alcohol, by the way, I'm not saying I'm not a teetolar. Clearly. Clearly. What's in this cup? What is it? What isn't?

So I thought, let me put together party recipes. And then it just, I don't know. It just kind of, I just kind of think of it. I'm like, you know, it would be fun. Chipped beef? I don't know. Like, I just like, you know what's yummy? I just, I have a friend of mine who you can say to him,

what would be good right now. And he'll always, he just knows what would be good right now. And I just kind of, I always love that. I'm like, and I think, you know, what would be fun? We need this kind of a thing. I don't know. It just... See, I think I start to get it a little bit, I think. Part of eating happy has to be letting go of counting the calories, weighing your food and doing all the physical, chemical, measurable things. The other thing is, you know, I think the first time I talked to Vinny, I said, can you just, can you give me something? Because I'm, at this point, I don't care.

Just tell me what to do, bro. Just tell me what to do. And I said, I don't care what it looks. like, I just want something that when I'm hungry, I can grab it and it's satisfying. And what did he say to Chuck? What are those things that nut? The nut butter. Oh, the nut butter. Yeah, nut butter. It is good. He stopped making him. He stopped for a minute. He's going to come back to him, but he stopped. Everyone's like, give me my nut butter. Well, it was an interesting thing for me because when I'm in the mindset of saying, I don't need a meal. I don't need an experience. I need something that tastes good and that is.

It's easy to, I need fuel. Right. But fuel is not eating happy. It can't be. Yeah, but if you're fueling yourself, what if it also tasted good and wasn't killing you in the process? Great. Wouldn't that be great? Sure.

But if it looks like soil and green. Okay. Like if we've all bought those products that we're like, oh, cool, put it in a shaker and then you drink it. Right. Yeah. You know, it's like, okay, so it tastes better than I thought. But it's still beige and it's in some sort of thing. Yeah. And that's not a meal and that's not communal. And that's, it's not Italian.

No, I mean, I'm a feeder. I like to feed people. So I, you know, what can I say? Well, you want to be happy. I do. And the happiness also stems from, for me, being in a creative profession, having a lot of ups and downs. It's not great on the mindset. And when I did shift my focus to low carb and was no longer on this crazy sugar carb train, My brain chemistry did a wonderful thing. And that was my experience, and I'm thrilled about it. So I literally became a happier person by cutting out the processed foods. You know what?

Before I ask you these questions, that's actually worth really. How would you describe for people who haven't done this yet? When you're really off sugar, for a day, for three days, for a week, for a month, what is that trip like? if you really do it right, if you really cut it out. So the first time is always the hardest. Hardest? I was just waiting for a first time joke.

But it is the most difficult because you are resetting things in your body. I don't know the science behind it, but I know that you will go through some sort of withdrawal. I don't understand it. You could perhaps have hot flushes and headaches. Some people get it like a migraine. They always say take more salt, you know, if you can take a salt pill or electrolytes or whatever, but then don't get electrolytes or sugar.

So there's a bit of withdrawal that happens. You can get cranky. You can have the plunges of your emotions might plunge up and down. And it gets hard because I think that we're just conditioned. It's like smoking. You're just, you associate certain places. Like I always stood outside in my theater in the 90s and would have a cigarette. And then you have to be like, okay, I'm not doing that anymore.

So I have to figure out how I can have an association with. that location, right, without the thing that you're trying to give up and have it be a positive association. So about a week in, gosh, I feel like you should really be feeling better. Maybe you wake up and your feet don't ache when they hit the floor. Maybe it's that your hands aren't so achy because that's another thing with too much sugar and processed food. A lot of joint pain. Inflammation. Yeah, inflammation will go down. Maybe you'll find one night in the middle of the night around a weekend, you're peeing, you have to get up to pee like three times. You're like, oh my God, why am I peeing so much? A lot of that is the flush, because when your body is less

inflamed, you'll release all that water and literally pee it out. And then generally, you'll find that you drop maybe three, five pounds that first week and everyone is riding high because you got a little evidence that it's working, right? And then things taper off with that because you've dropped the water weight. I mean, if you're really big, you might drop a lot of water weight over some time, but eventually that kind of tapers off and then it becomes about kind of dialing it in. Like, am I still carb creeping here? Or you take, you're like, I got this. Everyone, you know how we all do. When things are going great, we think we have it dialed in and we don't put in the work. Like that's on every topic and I'm the exact same. I'm like, things are great. I don't need

to meditate or things are awesome. I don't need to do the thing that you have to do every day. And about a month in, you're going to be like, ooh, you know what I can have now? Ice cream. I did it. I'm going to have ice cream. Time for a reward. The reward is huge, right? We love a reward. And it's really hard to go, okay, how do I figure out what the reward is?

And have it not be food because a lot of us, food is always the reward. That's how we were rewarded as kids or that, you know, you got good grade. You got to go out for ice cream. You got to, you know. And I never want to demonize any kind of food. I feel like life should have these things. I don't want food to not be innovated or, like, I don't want to live in a world where there's not the fun things to eat.

And I learned that, too, from Vinny because he's a voice of reason in a very, like, crazy space. And it makes sense to me, and it resonates with me. But, yeah, then you go for, like, I'm going to have that whole pizza, my favorite pizza place. And either you wake up feeling like crap or you don't, and you continue to do it until you wake up feeling like crap. And then you're like, oh, God, I got to go back to it.

Yeah. And that's, I mean, that just strikes me as way more mental. It is. Than physiological. That's generally when the stuff comes up. Like things come up. You're like, no, but I'm going to that party. And so-and-so already always makes their X, Y, Z thing that I eat and I want to eat it.

Great. Go eat it. Go eat it. Enjoy your life. Do you, what do you think about cheat days, the concept. I don't care. I don't care. you want to have a cheat day, great.

If that's what keeps you in the mindset of living your best life, that's awesome. If you go and have a cheat day, then that becomes a cheat six weeks, and then you're off the rails again. There's probably something to look at there. Well, I just don't, it seems to me, even if you are fairly disciplined, the argument says, well, look, you're human. And if you really love this stuff, treat yourself every so often. Sure.

Just don't be a lunatic. But if you do that, then that means the thing you're holding out for, for is still the thing that you crave most. For sure. So you haven't eliminated the craving. You've just lessened, you've just closed the window. You haven't eliminated the relationship to that thing that is dysfunctional. That's what you haven't eliminated.

If something is making you crave something so hard, it's not about that thing. Something else is going on. That's what I'm trying to say. If so, then you can just have, oh, I love that thing. I'm going to have a few bites. And you literally will be like, mm, that was good. I'm done. Oh, that tasted too sweet. I'm surprised. Oh, wait. I quit sugar, so everything tastes extra sweet now.

So I can have a couple bites of that thing and it doesn't torture me. And I go, oh, my God, it's freedom. But this happens over the course probably of several months to years because we're all trying to redefine our relationship with food. But there's also the collective. There's also. Yes. There's grandmothers. There's nonas. There's cultural. Don't tell Mexicans not to have the tortilla. Don't tell Italians not to have the pasta. Don't tell Asian. folks not to have the right. It's a whole, I get it. Everybody has the cultural pressure and I'm a feeder. I like to feed people. And when they're like, oh, I don't eat fat. I'm like, what? No, you have to eat my meatballs. I don't eat red meat. What? No, you know, I get it. We're pushers.

I mean, how do you, the thing that tasted quote unquote good, 500 years ago. Right. What was that? I don't know. And what did it taste like? And on what basis did the fat part of the bat, Like the most people go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the mead. That's it. That's the thing. I've never had mead. I would like to try. Is it not good? Is it too sweet? What's in the box? What would you bring me? Oh.

Is there mead in there? No, just spices and pasta sauce. And cheese bites. Oh, were these the crunchy things you were talking about? Yeah. That's ranch. Is this good for me? Yeah, it's just cheese and spice. That's all it is. I eat not bad for me. Eat happy kitchen.

White onion and cheddar, which is kind of like a sour cream and cheddar situation, but it doesn't have sour cream. You know what I'm saying? But that's the flavor profile of it. Uh-huh. And then there's a barbecue one. Where's the barbecue? There it is.

Okay. See, very satisfying. Sometimes you just need a little crunch. Sometimes you just need a little crunch. Can you just do a little ad for it right now? Sometimes you just need a little crunch? Well, you know what? You're adjacent to a copyright infringement.

A very, um. Oh, you'll remember, sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't. Oh, men just got nuts. Mounds don't because... Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't. Yeah.

That is a... That will forever be in my brain. See, now we're getting somewhere. Yeah, now we're getting somewhere. Only two five hours. Well, you take voiceover. Yeah. And you put music behind them.

You've got a whole new genre called jingles. Jingles. Jingles are very powerful. Very powerful. They're like metaphors. And that whole, sometimes you feel like a nut. That's a, I believe it's called a tautology, where, oh God, Chuck, what was the? Totology, like T-A-U-T-O-T-O-O-G-E.

Yeah, yeah, it's sort of like a syllogism. Never mind, that's even worse. You pedantic. I am. Genos. Remember Ginos? Oh, yeah. Gino's, pizza rolls.

Remember it? Everybody goes to Gino's because Gino's is the place to go. Yeah. Brilliant. Everybody's good. Were you in the D.C. area when June Rees self-defense commercials played? I remember June. I remember every word of that.

I'm not going to sing it because. Racist? Yeah. Yeah. But it's in my, it will always be there. Matsuda. Mazda. Yeah.

You can't be very careful. The lead in, the vocalization that goes into the lead in of saying it. I appreciate that so much because I just did a session yesterday where they're like, you know, give it a little pre-life. They call it pre-life. Oh, yeah. Give it a little pre-life. So that was pre-life, what you're doing.

So pre-life is the sound you make before you articulate. You know, I was hungry, and I thought, I need to meet Happy Kitchen. Like, that's pre-life. Give it a little pre-life. It makes it sound natural. What would post-life sound like? I was hungry. I don't know.

Just let the word linger like a legato, like a whole note that never ends. It just kind of trails all. And then just go, then you do a little Christina. Aguilera. I don't know. I don't know. It never ends. The actual jingle, with the music, everything was, everybody goes to Gino's, because Gino's is the place to go. Everybody goes to Gino's, because Gino's is the place to go. And it just, it goes through, it goes through the circle of fifths. And if you really think about it, it's an indictment of how easily we're beguiled. Because you would just sit there and not really question it. And

In fact, the logic is irrefutable. Where was Gino's? In Baltimore. In Baltimore. There's only one. Which makes the question. I don't think everybody went. I guess not.

They didn't open one. They certainly didn't have it in D.C. I'll tell you another one. Okay. Since you're a big drinker. Schaefer. You remember Schaefer? Chaffier, we called it, in high school.

Chaffeeier. When we got to steal a case of Chaffier. 299 a case when I was in college. Yeah. for is the one beer to have when you're having more than one. That is just... That's just good copywriting. I mean, that's madman stuff.

Yeah, that is. That's like... You see Don Draper walking down the hall going, hey, fellas. I got this. I got something. I think I'm on to something. The one beer to have when you're having more than one. And by the way, are you the kind of guy that only has one beer?

You're in the wrong room, champion? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, Chaffier. So you need a tautology for... Yeah, I do. I do. And the definition of a tautology is saying the same thing twice in different words,

generally considered to be a fault of style. That's right. They arrived one after the other in succession. That sounds like being redundant. Is that the same? It does sound it. It is. Well, if it's unintentional, it's a mark of idiocy.

Right? But if you do it on purpose, then you're either in on the joke or you're selling something. Okay. Because, of course, the magic of advertising is... Well, I'm selling something, kids. That's to say, kids, I'm selling something. You know, kids, you're just... Everything, you just repeat it and repeat it.

And repeat it. And repeat it. I'm learning that, by the way. I'm learning that as somebody who's building a brand because I feel like I've said all the things that I need to say on social media, how many more times can I repeat my And it turns out I have not even done one tenth of one percent of saying all the things the number of times I need to say them. Which is bonkers. And it makes sense because we see during the NFL, during the football games, we see all the same things over and over again.

And there's obviously a reason for that. Think about the habits you're trying to create. And think about the thinking you're going to have to debunk. Right. Now think about the money and the time and the brilliance. that was spent in creating the habit the pre-existing thing. Oh, yeah.

Right. I'm up against it. Go down the list. Coca-Cola, could it? I quit. I quit. What do you mean? It's too much work.

Oh, right. I'm done. I'm not trying to discourage you. No, no, no, no. But it is, that's exactly, I'm unwinding. I'm attempting to unwind that programming. Yes. And I want people who are listening, if anyone still is.

God bless you people. We love you. We love you a lot. We love you. We love you. It's important that people understand why they buy the foods they buy separate and apart from the cravings they think they have. We've been manipulated, and that might sound a little too conspirator, but that's what advertising is. we've been taught that Crest is different than Gleam

and that Gleam is different than Colgate. Gleam? Remember Gleam? Yeah, oh yeah. Well, now there's something called Happy Tooth, which doesn't have any of the stuff in it, all the, you know, the bad stuff. Oh, the fluoride or the whatever they think.

Which, by the way, don't we like floor? Until five minutes ago, fluoride was the thing that kept my teeth from falling out. Right, right. Now apparently, it's why there's blood my urine. Fortnightly, yes. Wait, what?

Oh, I haven't told you? Yeah. A lot of. A lot of blood in the urine. A lot? A lot. No, I'm kidding, of course. There's not.

But look, you don't need a lot. Call the doctor. You don't need a lot of blood in the urine to really get your attention. Honestly, that is very true. Just a drop. Just a slight bit is cause for alarm. Well, it diffuses in such a way that you would think maybe you throw a rod, you know, or like something really cataclysmic happens.

It's not good. It's never good, but it's rarely as bad as it seems. Okay. I don't know if that's true, by the way. But if I were to write a jingle about it, I would say, you know what, I would not write. Blood in the urine, it's never as bad as it seems, or is it? We don't know. In Terabong!

We don't know. We don't know. We're curious and surprised. Yeah. Yeah, that's what happens, Chuck. When you look down and you see there's blood in the bowl, your first reaction is going to be, what the heck is that? Wonder, questioning, alarm.

And then cool ear wingeding with the... And then you remembered you ate some beets yesterday. Some red beets. That is such a boy. That is a real mind melded. That's not a urine thing. That's back to what she started with the whole doll, pooping up your bowl thing. Yeah.

I showed up late for a shoot once. I missed... There was nothing at craft services left but beets. And they were delicious. And I ate probably two pounds of beets. I was starving. Starving. And I went home that night and had a relatively normal dinner.

and the next morning, now, into the bathroom, took care of business, looked in the bowl. My God. My God. I was... Have you had beats since? Well, I hopped on the internet. Oh. Oh, yeah, I eat beats all the time now.

Okay. Now you know. Now I eat as many as I can because it tickles me to look in there and go like, see, not blood. I love to know your hobbies. Thank you. It's a big one. Yeah.

But I was so sure that I was either bleeding out or something. really catastrophic had happened. And the last thing I saw before I went to the doctors was, unless, of course, you've had an inordinate amount of beats, which really will mess with your stool in a big way. Turn it right. You've never seen it in your urine either? No, I haven't. Oh, yeah. Why does asparagus have such an impact on our pee? Is this in any of your books? It's not, I have asparagus recipes, so if anybody wants to do some at-home tests, isn't it a genetic thing? Like some people have attached earlobes. Some people have stinky asparagus pee. You know, that... Or does everyone have stinky asparagus pee? I think everybody got... I don't think you get a pass on that. Okay.

What about the crease in the earlobe? Do you think there's any truth to the fact that... Is that not from like just sleeping funny? I thought it was, but somebody... I have a crease in this one. But not in this one. And it's like, well, you've got a real blood flow issue. I did the 23 and me and they were, they were like, you probably have attached earlobes and I don't. So I don't know how accurate that data is. Oh, they're attached. They're just not attached to your jawline. They're removable. I have some questions for you from my household. Oh, yes, Sandy's questions. This is a segment.

We like to call Sandy's Questions. Sandy's questions? Whatever. Recipes that we've made from this book. Okay. Okay. Zucchini pasta bowl andase. Love it. Chicken with artichokes, spinach, and cherry tomatoes.

That's a good one. We're going to rename that one, date night chicken, because people have written me saying that they get laid when they make that recipe. Huh. Yeah. How about that? So first, you need to have a chat candy.

First the chicken lays the egg, and then Jimmy cracked corn. And I don't care. Eggplant Parmesan. Great. Roasted asparagus with Manchego and pine nuts. Pinoles, yes. Yep. Ginger, cilantro, cauliflower, rice.

Oh, yum. Chimmy chori sauce. Yeah. Chicken cauliflower rice bowl. I was concerned about that because the rice. Is rice good, bad? You don't care? I mean, I know it's happy, but I thought rice.

It's cauliflower rice. You're not having rice. Yeah, that's true. It was the word rice that threw it off. Yeah, well, I put it in quotes because it's not. Oh. Should I use an M-Dash next time? I'd go with an N.

An N-dash. Okay. Not a full M. No, and certainly not an enteribon. Roasted tomato basil soup. Yeah. That's actually of, I mean, I like them all. Oh, it is?

Yeah, so you have that book, too. Oh, man. God, I got all your books. We've also used barbecue dust. on pork tenderloin. And I've got some barbecue dust here for you. Nice. I mean, dust, it was such an interesting noun

to really incorporate into the culinary space. Yeah. It sounds like it's dirty, but it's not. You can just put a little dusting on there and put a little dust. It sounds dusty. Dill dust. Dill dust, which we've now changed to ranch dust for the obvious alliterative. Obviously.

And here's one that surprised me. Dildo dust. Yeah, that's in there too. That, whoa. You have to order the books. It's like a surprise end. ending in the choose-your-own adventure of these books. I think it's a happy ending.

And I think you might want to save that for your pop-up. Marinera sauce, arrebiata sauce, Putanesca. Yeah, that one pasta sauce of the year in 2024. Did it? It did. I will talk about that till the day I die. By the way, here's the thing about having, being green to the grocery industry. I thought to myself, no one's doing Putaneska.

It's like the best. We're going to kill it. And then now I realize why no. no one's doing Puttenesska because Americans don't know what a Puttineska sauce is. And then it won pasta sauce of the year. And so I have a moral imperative to discuss Puttanesca sauce, which basically means hooker sauce. Yeah, it's a horse.

It's a horse sauce. There's all sorts of conflicting, like Italians can argue about anything, but especially about the origin of Puttinesca sauce and like, did the horrors make it? Then there's a story like, no, the wives made it to make their husband stinky, so they wouldn't, it doesn't make any sense. It never makes sense. So it's a sauce that's a red sauce that adds olive, caper, onion, oregano, red pepper. flake and if you're doing it properly, a little bit of anchovy. But in America, we can't do that

because most Americans are not a fan of the anchovy. So we achieve that same briny flavor with the caper brine in our putanesca sauce. And it won pasta sauce of the year last, in 2024. Now it's 2026. It's so interesting. But to my earlier point, was there a time in our species when the plurality said, oh, anchovies, delicious? I don't. Ask the anchovies. Who doesn't want them? I think that would be a great topic for one of those podcasts that does the deep dive on the history of different kinds of foods because I would like to know that as well because I love anchovies, anchovy paste. I put it in all kinds of things, but I understand that mentally people have a hard time with it, but it's just salty goodness.

What do you think about cooking shows in general and what are your favorites and why? I love cooking shows. I want to do a cooking show, but I'm also doing a cooking show because it's called the internet. So we have the ability to produce our own cooking shows. So I put cooking content on the internet all the time. My favorite cooking shows, I think, are more personality-based. Like I love Ina Garton, and I love Gordon. Gordon Ramsey. And who else do I love, Megan? Jada's great. Gata? Yeah, she's big. I see her all the time now. She's fabulous. And all these people have been doing this for so long. And, but one thing I learned about recipe writing, because I had to make and test all of my own recipes because I'm not a celebrity coming at it from that. I don't have people

writing recipes for me. I'm writing all of my own recipes. I found out that there's a lot of non-testing of recipes because I would get a cookbook from somebody that I liked and then the recipe wouldn't work and then I would find out that it was being ghostwritten and not tested or corrected. I was like, well, hey, I don't want to have that kind of rep. If I don't have anything else to stand on, all I have is like that my shit's good. So that goes in the AI column. That could go in the AI column. Like the artificial. Something's fake.

Something's ghostwritten. Something's not. Yeah. Look, my theory is not yet, but sooner or later, that's all going to fall weirdly out of favor. Would you do a cooking show for a network? Oh, yeah. Oh, a thousand percent. Hey.

Yeah. You know what? I pitched. You'll appreciate this. I was at one of those upfronts a couple years ago. And the head of the food network was there. And he was like, would you ever do a cooking show? And I said, well, you know, probably not.

I don't cook much, but I do an eating show, you know, for sure. And he's like, well... I could cook and you could eat. Well, I had two pitches. The first was called Messkitt, where I'd go to famous battlefields with a cook and a historian. Right. To your point. Yeah, I love this.

And the historian would tell me exactly what happened at Hastings or Normandy, wherever. And you'd have to eat that shit. That's it. I'd have a cook there who would, you know, and together we would cook. We're making hard tack. Whatever they were eating. Yeah. That's what you eat.

He liked it. But the one he really sparked to, I would go out into the world and find people, you know, with the, nothing like your books, like the old Betty Crocker books. I love those books. I love vintage. I want to make a steak, Diane. I want to do pineapple rings on ham. I want to do all that. It's that.

But it was, for me, it was the casserole, like the meatloaf casserole. Hell yeah. And anything with gelatin that was just like, what in the world? A congealed salad. A congealed salad, right. I wanted to go and find the descendants of people who put those recipes in there, who would have surely owned the books themselves, and then go and make this. I have several of those books.

I collect. I love old cookbooks. I called it Eat Me. And I thought it could really just a thing I could shoot, you know, with the people, just the real, you know, the real people. So he said he'd get back to me, but never did. You still waiting to hear. I'm still waiting.

That's what my husband likes to say to me when I see a, I auditioned for that role and he goes, you're still waiting to hear? I'm like, yeah, I am. They never got back to me. I was up for the lead role in the merchant of Venice. What happened?

I didn't get it. We used to laugh, man. I mean, for years, the amount of auditions, you know. And the thing is, you just never, you never tell anybody what you're doing. No, you can't. Especially your mother.

You learn that early on. Because all they're going to do. Did you hear back from the people? McDonald's audition you went to. I actually see when I came here not to docks where you guys are, there's an audition place right down the street that I used to go to as a baby actor when I first moved to town. And I was like, oh, these are giving me feelings coming back to this neighborhood.

A little PTSD-ish. Yeah, a little bit. Trying to find parking at 5 p.m. on a Friday to do a McDonald's callback where there's 14 people staring in their laptops and not paying attention. Yeah, it's cool. Another ingenious jingle, man. You deserve a break today. You deserve.

So get up. Mary Manila. Get away. What's the, um, no, it's the, um, to, icy cold, thick, shakes, sundays, and apple pie. Two Big Mac, filet of fish. Oh, uh. To all be patty, special sauce, lettuce cheese, pickles onions. No, but it's the, um, it's the thing where they used to, is in the 80s.

Oh, man. They're too young. Yeah, too young. Sorry. Big Mac, fillet of fish, quarter pound of French fries. Icey cold, thick, shakes, sundays, and apple pie. That's what they would say. Yeah?

Like a, like a mantra. Like you're in a parade and you're doing it. Like the drum line is... It's so interesting that that's stuck in your crawl. I guess. You know? And... TV theme songs, too.

Oh, my God. We started with those. Well, that's another show. No, it's actually, it's not. It's all part of communicating. And I'm sure I can hit you with some theme show trivia that would warrant the use of a Terebonne. Does it involve Alan Thick?

Thick Allen, we used to call him. Alan Thick, who is Thick Allen. You knew Alan Thick, didn't you, Chuck? I knew. I'd met him a couple times, yeah, because of Rico's show. His widow was a friend of mine. Tanya, she's lovely.

Yeah. Does she eat happy? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. She's in Carpenteria. I give her, absolutely. Alan Thick's widow gets whatever she wants, okay? Remember Leaves to Beaver?

Yes, but they were in reruns by the time I was watching. Remember the theme song? It was like a whistling thing, and then they showed Jerry, Jerry Mathis. Jerry Mathers as the beaver. And Eddie Haskell. That's it. There was a second one. Yeah.

That's it. Six seasons in, they changed the theme song. They did. Without changing the notes. What they did was they changed the rhythm. And it had never been done before, but they updated it. So it went from to da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Oh, they jammed it.

Dan, da, da, da, da, da, yep, da, da, da, da. I thought that was amazing. Gilligan's Island, you know that one, right? Yeah. Sit right back in here, a tale, tale of a faithful trip. The original. There was an original.

What was that? Gilligan, the skipper to the millionaire's wife, the movie star, and the rest. They didn't count on Professor and Marianne, both being the two hotties that would really, they thought Ginger was going to be it. Yeah. They didn't know they needed a girl next.

agent called and said, what do you mean? And the rest? Don Wells gave me a blanket in 2004 at slam dance when I had a film in the film festival. And I still, I cherish that blanket. And she was the nicest human. And it was like, again, still very early on in my career. So shout out to Don Wells giving me a blanket in 2004. It's still in my car right now. Is Dawn still in your car? I did not kidnap her. No. She's still around? Is she lovely? No, she passed. I'm sorry. Yeah. She was something.

She was lovely. She really was. Here's some questions, I promised to ask you. The young people in the room were like, who is that? Oh, no. These dudes know Dawn Wells. They know. I saw her do the odd couple with Marsha Wallace.

On Broadway? No. Just in a theater. In North Hollywood? They did it in my office for me. It was great. It was amazing. Command performance.

That's weird. I forget where it was. I knew Marsha because I'd done a pilot with Marsha. And so she said, oh, you want to come? Save me on this play. I'm doing it. I'm like, oh, it's Don't. Don Wells.

Yeah. Meet Don Wells. Yeah. It was great. Why wouldn't you? When we first moved to town and my husband was sitting, he had an audition because he started as an actor and then became a writer and he was sitting next to Aaron Moran at the audition. And he was like, and that we didn't know that like once your show was off the air, you

then have to go back to auditioning for things. And he was like, oh my God, Joni's here, you know. It was like such a thing. And then one time I went in, it was a radio spot for Blockbuster. Okay. So it's radio. We're not even on camera. Right.

And they're partnering us all up back when they would still hire, you know, four actors to be in one radio spot where they had the money to pay for that. Right. And this woman is rolled in by her caretaker in a wheelchair. And I go to the sign-in and I'm signing. I'm like, oh, I wonder. And I look and it's Rose Marie from the Dick Van Dyke Show. No.

And I was like, you did not make Rose Marie audition for a blockbuster. Like does have one line as Grandma. And I was like, oh, this, this is Hollywood. This is the real Hollywood. Oh, man. That is such a great story, though. Isn't that crazy? I was like, oh, my God.

And also, too, I was probably the only one nerdy enough to, like, know who she was. So we had a lovely conversation. I'm still waiting to hear. I'm still waiting here. You shot that now. I'm still waiting to hear. That's not a bad title for this. What are your thoughts on seed oils?

Do you think they are all bad? Okay. I always say refer to Dr. Kate. Shanahan's book Dark Calories, but now there's several books as well. But she wrote a really good book, and I interviewed her, and she makes a lot of sense. I avoid the seed oils whenever possible. It's not possible to avoid them all the time because every restaurant, there's no way a restaurant can stay in business without using some form of seed oil. It's really tricky.

But this is my temper tantrum. Like, what do you, I mean, these things to me seem right like you could justify putting a skull and crossbones on them. They're just not good for you. I don't touch them at home. However, okay, so this is the price complaint. Everybody wants cleaner food on the shelves. Nobody wants to pay for it. It's become untenable.

I even get kicked back. We have eaten so much in our margins to get to a $9.99 shelf price when I sell it online for $14 a jar. I'm selling a really nice sauce, right? So think about something like olive oil as compared to highly processed seed oils. And I'm not, it's not okay, but I'm just saying like, this is why restaurants have to use it because restaurants are already operating on razor thin margins. So you just really have to like either you find some guy and you're just going to pay an upcharge and you're okay with that. By the way, the people who originally started buying all of my stuff, you know, I'm indebted to them because they're the ones who chose with their wallet and to pay for expensive food until I could even get the price down a little more.

So it's tough. And seed oil, I'm not a fan. You know what? It feels. Olive oil, coconut oil, butter, done. Tallow. Great. It feels like fraud to me. It is food fraud.

No, I mean literal. Like the reason I'm looking at Minnesota and I'm looking at California, not to get political, but we're so used, the taxpayers are so used to paying so much of their money knowing it's going to be wasted. Right? We know it. Being a homeowner and a taxpayer here, yes, yes, I agree. And so we're used to seed oils. It's like, well, it's in everything.

and gosh, to take it out of everything would be so onerous and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We just take it. The second part of your statement is what I disagree with because we have to start taking action to take it out.

But it's almost like this confluence of events has to happen. People have to understand how expensive everything is. People have to start choosing where they can. You have to start treating, picking different food things,

that you're allocating where your resources are going. Not everybody has endless resources, of course. So how are we going to change this and make a difference? Maybe it's a community garden. Maybe it's like you share a cow with your buddies. I'm not to be a big ass garden, man. We're a big ass garden. But I agree. We're very sick and the seed oils don't help. And I'm, I'm actually really sorry that this has now become a completely divided political issue. That should not be a political issue. Vinny and I were talking about no seed oils back long before and

everybody was like, you're crazy, you're nuts. And then the science kind of started coming out. and people were writing about it and bringing the attention to it. And all things being equal, wouldn't you rather have the oil that's pressed out of the olive? Yes. Than the super. Now that being said, sesame oil, right? That's taking a sesame seed and cold pressing it and you put a little bit of sesame oil in your beautiful stir fry, right? That's not the same thing because people write me about, well, did sesame oil is a seed oil?

I'm like, that's not the same thing. You can have some sunflower seeds. Corn syrup. You know what I mean? Corn syrup. Corn syrup. It's just bat-shit bonkers crazy. Bonkers bananas bad.

And yet. And yet. So that's a better example. It's like, what are you going to do? Like we throw our hands up. But here's the thing. We started having the corn syrup dialogue a long time ago and now it has been pulled out of things. And by the way, big food, the big food companies, if they hear you complaining enough

and not buying their products, guess what? They're going to change their formulas to take those things out. So we do have some power there. Yes. All the way back to the very first point, an hour and a half. half ago. Communication. You've got to grab the country by its metaphorical lapels and you have to shake them. Yeah. Now, I'm sticking with this metaphor for another 10 seconds because, you know, when I see Nick Shirley, citizen journalist, getting the country's attention vis-à-vis the

fraud in Minnesota, you know, they knew about it for the last nine years in Minnesota. Like, they were, charges had been filed. They were aware. But there was no urgency, there was no outrage. There was no, holy crap, look at that. Interesting. Now Nick Shirley goes in, and now every news outlet is really having, I guarantee you, they're having staff meetings going, you know, why weren't we there? Yeah.

Why didn't we do that? It's going to happen with corn syrup. I bet it's going to happen with seed oils. I feel like it's happening with corn syrup. They are taking it out of formulas. They're going to continue to. With seed oils, I feel like the kickback. to create it into a political issue has been, I was like, oh, that's strategic. They're

communicating that it's now political. And you're nutty if you want to get rid of, there's nothing wrong with seed oil. You're bonkers if you want to get rid of seed oil. Like, they're spinning the messaging with communication. And so I, no. But you've got to make it, if people are going to defend corn syrup, you can do it. You can write a tautological jingle and use all the interrobongs in the world and get people distracted. But look what they're doing. now they're otherwise rational people are defending the fraud right they're saying look it's bad but if we eliminate fraud what damage might me cause what you know it's like what are you even saying isn't that like kind of what happened with the tobacco in the 80s yes that's exactly what everyone was terrified of

like well you can't get rid of a whole industry well you can and we'll come up with the new ways of economic prosperity you made the point perfect standing outside smoking a cigarette yeah It wasn't about the cigarette. It was about the place you were standing, the people you were standing with, it was about the routine. It was the cheat moment in your day. A little dopamine hit. And he got to chat with your friends. And all of that thing got baked into the habit.

Right. Right. And that's why it's tough to break. But it's, we use beef, tallow, ghee, and olive oil. Wonderful. Are you concerned about using plastic and aluminum? If so, have you replaced them in your kitchen? Yeah, I try to be clean about that.

I always feel like every three or four years, we find out new information about our cookware that you then have to be like, okay, well, wait, first it was the BPAs, then it was like, well, the nonstick's not good. What's a BPA? The biopoly-pratrophied. Ah, right, right. Yeah, of course. You're with me. But anything that's coated in the plastic that's toxic for us, like maybe it's non-stick

cookware that's been coated. Oh, PTFE, polytetrophore ethylene. Thank you. Inside of what you call. T-fall. Tefal. T-fall cookware. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can't find it that much anymore. Ah, yes, you know, because of the, you know, polytetrophlorathylene, yeah. Polyethylthylophora ethylene. Polyethyl. Polyethyl. Polyethyl. Polythyl. Petroflora ethylene.

Ethel. Don't bring ethel into this. So close. Glass storage containers, metal cutting boards. I've not used the metal cutting boards. I'm a big fan because I just like people, fans have made me these beautiful handmade wooden cutting boards that I'm obsessed with and I love the booze. I just love.

them so for butchering and stuff like that. I mean, you can't in a restaurant, you have to use metal and glass of things. How much actual butchering do you do? Well, I mean, let's say I'm just spatch cocking a chicken or I'm taking a prime rib and I'm cutting it into rib eyes. What's that word? Spatch cocking? Spatch cocking. It's walk me through the admonaut. You take apart the chicken and then you lay it flat. Yeah. In parts basically, you're basically like splaying it. Oh, okay, splaying. That one I know. But it's called spatchcocked. Two of my favorite words grouped up in a most surprising way. Is it hyphenated or do you go with an M-Dash and something like Spachcock?

I think it is a compound noun. It's all together. Is that one word? I feel so validated. You think there's any validity to the idea of eating foods in a particular order for digestion and to help manage blood sugar spikes? I'm not an expert in that, but if it blows your hair back, sure. Okay.

Yeah. I'm going to file that under unpersuasive. Yeah. Okay. Allulose, monk fruit. Here, okay, here's my thing. As sugar substitutes. I have a dessert chapter in all of my books because, like I said earlier, I believe in living a life.

When you quit sugar, you're going to be shocked how sweet things taste. So I use the least amount of sweet possible, but I use real sugar. Maybe it's, maybe it's coconut sugar, maybe it's regular sugar, whatever, but it's sugar. And sugar is sugar. I learned that from Vinny. Your liver doesn't know the difference. Now, the sugar substitutes and the sugar artificial sugars, I hate the way they taste. I think they taste like you brewed sugar through dirty tea socks, and I don't want any part of that.

I don't like the way they taste, the way they make the food taste, and they upset my stomach. I know I might be in the minority on that, but I don't work with them. So I, again, an unpersuasive, if you want to mess with it, go for it, bra. So, I mean, what is your recommendation then? Is there a sugar substitute that you like? There is a sugar substitute. What's it called? That I like?

Yeah. No. See, you're really not playing the game. You can't pass. Because everybody wants to know, like, I mean, if you like Stee-Nos, because Gino's is where everybody goes. Yeah. Everybody eats stevia because Stivia, like, if you like stevia,

use stevia. If you like monk fruit and erythritol, use it. I avoid the tolls. The tals are sugar, alcohol, malatol, erythritol, but that's why they cut arithetal with some monk fruit to keep you from getting disaster pants because the sugar alcohol is malatol, What did I say? Malatol, xylitol.

What are disaster pants exactly? What do you mean? Just when you can't trust a fart. Oh, right. That kind of situation. So, you know, but not everybody has that reaction. Some people just eat it and that their tummies are great. It can affect some gut flora adversely.

And I don't like the taste. So why I don't mess with it. I wonder if there's a disclaimer on the product that speaks to that. I don't think it's considered grass by the FDA, generally regarded as. safe. Are you concerned about products like appeal? Does it concern you? I don't know what that is. It's a it's the coating that they put on fruits to make it look appeal. I get it. Yeah, AP. Like how they polish, they wax the apples. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I don't like that.

I have an apple tree at home. I have the best apples. So plant an apple tree in your house. That's all. I wouldn't say anything. Your apples are pretty sweet. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. the best cookware there is. Stainless steel is great. I use some all-cloud. I use a couple of all-clad non-sticks. What about hexclad? I love cast iron.

I haven't messed with hex-clad. That's my next. That's actually a project that I have is to get some hex-clad and work with that and go down the rabbit hole. You mean like to do the VO for them in their new campaign? Hexclad. I'll do your VO if you send me some pans. I work for pans plus ten.

Thank you. What do you think of the new FDA nutrition guidelines? Oh, yeah, something just came out today. I saw Nina Tyschultz put up the reverse pyramid. I was confused. I didn't understand why did they just flip. Like, I understand what they're doing, but I don't think it's going to be clear to Americans.

Now, Vinny sat right there and said he believes the greatest lie ever foisted on Western civilization, was the food pyramid. Absolutely. I agree with him on that. And it's not just because I've been completely brainwashed by him, which I have. He is beguiling. Isn't he? Any thoughts on Intermitts,

intermittent fasting. I love it. I do it. But also, if you're hungry, eat. So what do you do it, like four or five hours at a time? Definitely between lunch and dinner. Sometimes between breakfast and lunch. I like not eating, you know, if I can.

Yeah. Not eating after like 7 p.m. And then going to bed and having some coffee and then waiting until I'm legitimately hungry the next morning. But I'm also, I think people need to find what works for that. I think part of the issue is that you hear a guy talking about intermittent fasting and everybody's like, yeah, I'm doing five two bros. And then like you hear a guy talking about macros, you don't count my macros. And I don't mean to like, I'm not trying to like, you know.

Culturally appropriate. I'm not culturally appropriating the bros, but I am. But generally they're the launch pad, the biohackers are the and I love biohacking. I think that's awesome. Figure out what works for you. But at a certain point for me, it's like I want to live my life. I want to eat good food. I have a business to build.

I have voiceover to do. I'm busy. Yeah. I don't need to sit and be like, I don't count my account. Yeah, man. You know, the biohacking thing is, do you think we've gone too far?

I mean, do you think Huberman and so many of these people, it's like everything seems to have a hack? Everything seems to have a hack. It does. No, here's the thing. I don't think it's gone too far in the sense that people should be able to have access to this information. because I feel like we haven't.

And now we have this beautiful thing called podcasting where we can have these long-form conversations and you can hear from Huberman about how coal plunges will affect your life at certain temperatures. Isn't that cool? That's great. Or how psilocybin is a molecule

that matches the serotonin or, I don't know. I didn't even know. I listen to him sometimes and I'm like, I don't know what that is, but that sounds cool. But when you're like taking it all to heart and that becomes your identity, maybe that might be too far.

Again, I want to be a voice of reason. So if it works for you to do the coal plunge, which, by the way, I love a cold plunge. Well, it's because you don't have any testicles. That's true. Well, you don't know that for sure. Pretty sure. Okay.

Pretty sure. Pretty sure. Now, look, I've been taking, I mean, that's a great example. I didn't buy a cold plunge. Yeah. I'd go in my pool in the winter, and it's fabulous. Well, I'd take cold showers. Yeah.

That to me is braver because I feel like when you, on the head is too much. If I just dip into the neck, I'm like, at least it's not my head. Well, I'll tell you what's tough. I like to shave in the shower. It's very tough to shave, you know, when you're shaking. As a rule, you've got... But aren't you supposed to take a regular shower and then you end with the cold shower? No, I go cold the whole time.

The whole time. The whole time, yeah. Well, that's probably a short shower, then. Eight, ten seconds. Just enough to get the bits. Do you think grass-fed meat is actually better than grain-fed meat? Do you care? Yeah. If you can.

Do you think European flour products are cleaner and better than U.S. flour products? I am almost 100% sure on my N-Equels-1 experiment that European food is much cleaner than our food supply. Just from being a manufacturer and owning a brand and having to make multiple things and also spending a lot of time in Europe, yes, it's completely different. I'm super interested in this. Totally anecdotal, but I have some neighbors who are glutton's and they're constantly, being very careful about what they eat, but they had like a cheat two weeks. They go to Italy,

and they just eat like a house of fire. You must. Pasta three times a day. Of course. Each of them lost three pounds. Yeah. And then you come home and you're like, what sort of sorcery is in our food?

Can we get European flour? Does it take an act to Congress? Am I going to have a temper tantrum over availability or cost or anything? Send your cousin Joey over there to get some flour, get some semolina. What's a difference between semolina and flour? I don't know.

It's probably the grind. I don't eat gluten. Get off me. I don't know. This is funny. She asked it. I mean, it's not funny, but it's very personal. I did get personal.

Oh, she's asking a personal. Yeah, these are all her question. Why do you think so many people have gluten issues? Gosh, I wish I knew the answer to that being one who has them. So celiac is an autoimmune disease. So that means when my body, when I eat gluten, My immune system attacks the villi in my small intestines. So if we remember back to seventh grade biology,

the villi are the little microscopic particles on the duodenum and the small intestines that absorb the nutrients after you've digested your food. You flatten the villi, you start to have a breakdown in different systems because you're not absorbing any nutrients. So when I was diagnosed at age 28, I was extremely, not anorexic, I did deal with anorexia, but I was, what's it called?

Alemic? No, anemic. Anemic. Anemic. So I was extremely anemic. That's iron, right? Iron deficiency. And I was extremely, that was diagnosed with osteopenia, which is the stage right

before osteoporosis at age 28. Jeez. So for me, like basically my body's like you haven't digested a nutrient. So that's where I was starting to break down, didn't even realize I was sick. I had the blessing of being tested because my mom, who was 58 and diagnosed, said I had to get tested. That's how I learned. She was really, really ill.

And so people with celiac have a legitimate reason to not eat gluten. A lot of people find they feel better not eating gluten. So there's now non, I think it's like, I can't remember what it's called non-glutin sensitivity or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, something like that, where they legit feel better not having gluten. It can be inflammatory. I don't know if it's the roundup. I don't know if it's the, you know, we're just, we've evolved. It used to be called celiac sprew back at the turn of the 19th century.

Sprew. Sprew, which is kind of like an interesting. Sprew gives me like the vibes of like, oh, she's got, you know, the vapors or rickets or something. Yeah, she's got the sprue. And I always thought that was like a fascinating thing and it was very rarely diagnosed. It wasn't a thing. And now it's a thing. Like the peanut allergy.

Why did the kids have the peanut? I don't know. Well, see. Are we all covered in chemicals? Or is it, I don't know. If you don't have a name for a thing, is there a thing? Right. Like what really happens when you name it?

You know, I mean, it seems like 15 years ago. I just wasn't hearing about gluten at all. Yeah. And now it's... Yeah, now it's... Yeah. And a very common mistake is people think they're going to lose weight automatically just by cutting out gluten.

And my experience was the opposite. I was a size zero and could... I couldn't gain any weight ever. I was like, this is great. I'm just always skinny. And then when I got healthy, my body started digesting food and being like, no, no, no.

And started packing on the pounds. So for me, it was opposite. Some people do lose weight just because when they switch to a gluten-free diet, maybe they're cleaning up some of the processed foods that they're eating. So it can happen. I'm not saying it's not going to happen. But everyone's different and doesn't necessarily mean you're going to lose weight. But people think, well, I'm going to go gluten-free.

That's going to solve all my problems. And I'm like, they might not be that. It might not be. It might be. But it might not be. We're complicated, man. I mean, we're a pain in the ass, aren't we? We are.

We're a tautology. We're complicated. We're predictable and yet unique. And we're desperate to paint with a broad brush. And, of course, what's true for one might not be nearly as relevant for another. So we just do the best we can. We do the best we can. And listen, we all want a set of rules.

and it's going to be different for everybody. Where should the people go who just can't get enough of you? I would love for the people to go to either eat happykitchen.com, check it out. All my books are on Amazon, Barnes & Noble,

wherever you buy, all of our fine book selling retailers. Well, I've got two of them, apparently. I know I had one. And now you have Italian. anavichino. dot substack.com is where I publish all new recipes

that are not in a cookbook. And, yeah. Hey, you're going to take my advice. You're going to start zooming with some of your customers, get their permission, record them, put them out there? Yes. I think that's wonderful. I want the people to see. You're welcome. Well, thank you for having me. You bet. If you're done, please subscribe, leave some stars ideally five. Five lousy little stars. The way I heard it is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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