Regenerative Meat Could Save Your Health (and the Planet) | Autumn Smith

Food is medicine isn’t a slogan—it’s how our bodies are designed to heal. My guest today, Autumn Smith, knows that better than anyone. After overcoming years of digestive and mental health struggles, she co-founded Paleo Valley and Wild Pastures to help others access truly nutrient-dense food. On this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, we explore how regenerative farming restores both soil and human health, why food quality matters as much as food choice, and how regeneratively raised animal foods can contain the same healing compounds we find in plants. Watch the full conversation on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. You’ll learn: • How to tell if your meat is truly regenerative • What labels like grass-fed, grass-finished, and regenerative really mean • Why soil health directly impacts your nutrient intake • Easy ways to lower inflammation through better fats • Affordable steps to eat well and support the planet When we heal the soil, we heal ourselves—and that change starts with what’s on your plate https://wildpastures.com/ https://paleovalley.com/ View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman https://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal https://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Join the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Health https://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Join the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Results https://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley, Sunlighten, Function Health, Fatty15, Big Bold Health and Pique. Get nutrient-dense, whole foods. Head to paleovalley.com/hyman for 15% off your first purchase. Visit Sunlighten.com and save up to $1400 with code HYMAN. Join today at FunctionHealth.com/Mark and use code HYMAN100 to get $100 toward your membership. Head to fatty15.com/hyman and use code HYMAN for 15% off your 90-day subscription Starter Kit. Get 20% off HTB Immune Energy Chews at bigboldhealth.com and use code DRMARK20. Receive 20% off FOR LIFE + a free Starter Kit with a rechargeable frother and glass beaker at Piquelife com/Hyman

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What you put at the end of your fork is more powerful than what you'll find in a prescription bottle.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  But I remember feeling like I was trapped in this body working against me and that I had no control over it. I just had bloating so badly that I looked pregnant. I would wake up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain. It almost felt like a knife like twisting on my inside. It wasn't until I changed my diet that things really started to stabilize.

• 0:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Autumn Smith, Masters in Science, PhD, and FDNP, with a Master and Doctor of Science in Health and Holistic Nutrition. She's a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, a Certified Eating Psychology Coach, and former celebrity fitness trainer. She co-founded Paleo Valley and Wild Pastures with her husband to help people thrive through nutrient-dense whole foods and magenerative pasture-raised meats. Let's just start with what the problem is with our current food system.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  The nutrients that used to be in our food are no longer in our food because, you know, our food supply is more depleted in nutrients than it's ever been.

• 0:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Why is that?

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Largely due to our industrial agricultural practices. We're filling our bellies, but we're starving at a micronutrient level and our cells just don't have what they need to produce energy. We really do want to take factory farming and make it a thing of the past.

• 1:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So Autumn, it's so great to have you on the Dr. Hyman Show. I really have been so excited about this opportunity to talk to you about some really important things, which is the quality of our food, why we're sick, and how many people are suffering out there that don't need to suffer. And the answer is sort of literally at the end of your fork. I've always said, what you put at the end of your fork is more powerful than what you'll find in a prescription bottle. And obviously, food is medicine and the whole framework of everything that I do. And you embody that so well, not just in your personal life, but in the companies you've created, Paleo Valley and Wild Pastures, which is basically about getting regenerative meat to people over in America. You know, I really think, you know, want to start off by kind of inviting you to share how much you were suffering when you were younger.

• 1:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Because I think one of my life goals, and when I say, what people say, what Dr. Hyman, what's your purpose and mission? My mission in life is to end needless suffering through the power of functional medicine and also through the power of community to help change behavior through the science of functional medicine and the science of how we change. And You know, people walk around just feeling like crap all the time and they think it's normal. So I just want to invite you to share a little bit about your initial struggles with irritable bowel, how that affected you, how you felt, and then what you did to overcome it.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, first, let me say it's an honor because you were one of those people who provided that hope for me early on in my journey. But I remember feeling like I was trapped in this body working against me and that I had no control over. So I just had bloating so badly that I looked pregnant. I would wake up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain. It almost felt like a knife like twisting on my insides.

• 2:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Call it a food baby.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  A food baby, exactly. But like a violent food baby.

• 2:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's kicking a lot.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was really bad.

• 2:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Triples in there, all kicking at the same time.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it was unpredictable. And I, on the outside, looked fit. I was always a dancer and but I was just not well. And so that started about 10. And then, no doctor really knew what to do with me. They put me in the irritable bowel syndrome category, which we kind of know means, we don't really know. We ruled out more serious pathology and we just, you should take Beno and Gas-X, which I did to no avail.

• 3:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Beno, Gas-X, and Metamucil.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and don't be stressed.

• 3:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it's all in your head. And just basically.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Stress-based condition. Yeah. So I was like, well, okay. And then as I got into my teens, my mental health started to suffer because we didn't understand at the time that there's a gut-brain link. And I do think that directly contributed, that unaddressed inflammation. Oh, yeah.

• 3:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There's actually, just interruption for a sec. There is actually a paper in like the Journal of the American Medical Association that talks about how the belief that doctors have that irritable bowel is caused by anxiety and people's mental state is actually backwards, that the inflammation in the gut creates inflammation in the brain, and irritable gut causes an irritable brain. It's not the other way around. I mean, it obviously works both ways, but like, the real primary challenge is this bottom-up, the gut to the brain connection. And that's, you know, what you're experiencing.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Exactly what I was experiencing and because I had that anxiety and depression as a teen and really just kind of flew off the rails. And it wasn't until I changed my diet that things really started to stabilize because I think I was just on a roller coaster, right? Inflamed, blood sugar up and down. And my husband, it wasn't until I met him that he said, wow, you're really suffering and you live like this? Like this is your normal. And he wanted better for me. We lived in LA at the time. He got on the internet, saw that a few people in 2007 were using food as medicine and talking about it. And I thought that was crazy that food would have anything to do with my digestive issues.

• 4:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Who was that?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  It was you. It was you and I think Rob Wolf or, you know.

• 4:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I had like a video podcast blog essentially in 2005. It was crazy.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I've read all your books. Like I said, like you've been a real mentor from afar for me. So, but yeah, even just 30 days of dietary change, my digestive issues went away. But it was a few other pieces I had to dial in to where my, it was like the fog lift.

• 5:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, what did you do? What did you do diet wise and what did you do?

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I started first, we just crowded out processed foods, right? Anything that was processed and not a whole food. I started going to Pasadena's farmer's market, fruits, vegetables, and really high quality animal products. And I was someone who kind of avoided animal products in my youth and I think that contributed. And then the next pieces were really focusing on the gut health.

• 5:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  So the bone broths and the fermented foods.

• 5:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  And then stabilizing my blood sugar. I am someone who benefits from a low carbohydrate diet without a doubt. And so that was kind of the last piece. And I, I started to feel a calm, like a sense of stability.

• 5:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  That I just didn't know I was always a restless, agitated spirit. You couldn't find her center.

• 5:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  And then it was just like, whoa, what's that?

• 5:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This is so important. I want to double click on this because what you're saying is, is something I want everybody to really take in.

• 6:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Depression, anxiety, bipolar disease, maybe even schizophrenia in some cases, other mental issues that people suffer from. And it is, it is the number one cause of disability in America. You know, yes, so B city heart disease, diabetes kills a lot of people. But in terms of disability, what we call quality of adjusted life years means say, how many qualities, how many happy years you have. It's the single biggest cause of disability. And most people don't realize it's connected to what they eat, or how they live, or some other factors that's modifiable. And it's not them. People say, oh, I, I'm depressed, like, like I'm John, or I'm Sally. And no, like,

• 6:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  it's like, no, there's something awry in your system and it's fixable. Sometimes it's a big diet change. That's the whole journey here is people don't have to suffer. That they, that you, you know, you, you figured it out yourself, but you did it, you know, in a way that, you know, it's hard. Your doctor wasn't giving you the answers. You had to go on your own and research, but you, but you did it. And now like, look at you, you're glowing, you're happy, you're, you know, you'd never know you were depressed and anxious and miserable.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  I know. I'm generally a happy person. And I am, like you said, so inspired by the metabolic psychiatry movement and all the things, you know, the trials in ADHD and even anorexia, binge eating, schizophrenia, bipolar. My aunt was bipolar. I just wish that, you know, we had known she's, she's passed.

• 7:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. I mean, it's quite powerful. We're in this moment of nutritional metabolic psychiatry. We've had a lot of people on the podcast around this. I've had Sabani Sethi, I've had,

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  you know, Dr. Uma Naidu, I've had, I've had a lot of people like James Greenblatt psychiatrists.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'm going to have another psychiatrist on, Robert Hadea. So we're, we're going to start more and more talking about this whole idea of how do we, how do we help our, our brains and our minds? Whether it's Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, or anxiety, depression, or OCD and ADD, like, whatever it is, like, there's another way to think about this than heavily medicating yourself into oblivion.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Has because I I was a teen on antidepressants.

• 8:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  That did not go well for me. It was really hard. And also for my final project for my Mark David class that I did.

• 8:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Institute for the psychology of nutrition.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah. I focused on the ketogenic diet for eating disorders, which you'd think, oh, it's a restrictive diet. But it was so helpful for me. And now they're doing research to suggest it might be helpful for others.

• 8:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's quite powerful. So, and when you meant no low carbohydrate, just to be clear for people, I think you mean no refined sugars and flours, but you eat vegetables.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But vegetables are carbohydrates. My joke is carbohydrates are the single most important food for your health. And because they have like, you know, phytochemicals and nutrients. And so if you're eating spinach or your broccoli, that's a carbohydrate.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yes. I'm not like keto and I'm not carnivore. Most of my diet is plants, actually. 50% of my plate, absolutely. The low carb starchy variety.

• 9:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Exactly. So, so just to be clear, you don't, low carbohydrate isn't necessarily technically low carbohydrate. It's just low sugar and starch. So we established that, you know, one, people are suffering out there, including you and including me back, back, back in the day, that, you know, we discovered that food is medicine. You know, and, and most people listening to this podcast probably were also that, that, you know, ultra-processed food is not the best thing for you. And thank God now, you know, I'm working with the FDA to kind of help put in a petition to find what is ultra-processed food. They're, they're actually asking for the desire to make an initial assessment of what is ultra-processed food so it can be regulated. There's a whole.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Great.

• 9:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. So there's a whole NIH FDA collaboration on regulatory science, which means how do we figure out how to regulate food in the right way? And so we're really kind of moving in this direction, but most people don't realize that 60% of their diet's ultra-processed food. It's almost 70% of kids diet. It's 73% what's on the grocery store shelves. It's, you know, mostly funded by our government through, you know, crop subsidies and SNAP, which is a hundred billion dollars of payment, 75% of which is for this junk food. So all this is true. So Americans are really at the effect of this horrible food system, uh, which is, you know, tempting to be addressed now through this, through this administration for the first time in history, which, you know, whether they get it right or not. I don't know, but like it's at least it's at least it's a conversation.

• 10:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And that's incredible to me, especially like the last dietary guidelines committee did not make a determination ultra processed food, which just blew my mind. And there's a lot of technical reasons why they didn't do it, but still it's like, give me a break.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Right?

• 10:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, you know, just for a little bit, tell us about your perception of the problems with our food system. And then let's talk about, you know, the, like, the idea, how do we, how do we actually

• 10:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  think about food in a, in a way that understands that it's medicine? And I want to get not just into the like metaphorical aspect of, oh yeah, food is medicine, it can heal. My hypocrisy said, but actually the granular science that you've been involved with, with one of my previous podcast guests, Stephen, Stephen Van, how do you say his name again?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Stephen Van Vliet.

• 11:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Stephen Van Vliet, I say Valet, but Stephen Van Vliet, who's at the Utah State University. My daughter actually did her, her pre-med school, actually. I was in Logan and Tom. And, and he's doing a lot of research, looking at the, the actual metabolomics and nutrient density and in a very sophisticated scientific way. What is the difference between like regenerative or grass fed organic? But let's just start with what the problems in with our current food system and why it's killing us.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Well, I think my problems were twofold, right? You were, we were eating mostly processed foods, I was, that were creating inflammation. So like you said, majority of Americans diets are ultra processed. But then also we have this situation where the nutrients that used to be in our food are no longer in our food. Because you know, it's more, our food supply is more depleted in nutrients than it's ever been.

• 11:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Why is that?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Why is that? Largely due to our industrial agricultural practices that are destroying that life in the soil that acts as a taxi from the rocks where the minerals originate.

• 12:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Into the plants.

• 12:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  And then we eat the plants or the animals. And if they're not able to get into the plants, then we never get to benefit from them. Magnesium that helps us ease tension and the iron that gives us energy and the calcium that helps our bones be strong and make sure that we don't have cravings. Like we are not able to access those. Studies have shown, you know, five to 40% decline. And I read one the other day that there was like an apple. In nineteen twelve, when you compare it to nineteen ninety two, there was fifty percent less calcium and eighty percent less magnesium and ninety percent less iron. And if you

• 12:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In today's apple.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  In nineteen ninety two. Now, if you take that at the same rate of decline, it would be sixty one percent less calcium and almost no iron or magnesium at all.

• 12:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So it looks like an apple, but it's not really an apple.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. We're filling our bellies, but we're starving at a micronutrient level and our cells just don't have what they need

• 13:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  to produce energy. So, and this again, comes back to the way we've been doing agriculture. And we just have to kind of get into a place where we realize the health of the soil is the very basis of our health and we cannot thrive until we rehabilitate the soil and the plants and the animals. You know what I mean?

• 13:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's it's basically what the plants are eating, which is in the soil and what the animals are eating, which are the plants. And so if that's all depleted, you're getting a whole depleted food supply. And I think what you said, I just want to double click on because it's so, it's so important for people to understand. There's a difference between soil and dirt. Soil is that rich, loamy, warm, like nice smelling like

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Chocolate cake.

• 13:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Chocolate. It looks like chocolate cake. Yeah. It's like rich soil. Whereas dirt is just like dust and sand and it crumbly. And what we've done in America has taken this rich soil, which we had eight to fifty feet of in the Midwest, and just lost a third of the topsoil through our agricultural practices, through the tillage, through the use of chemicals, which are like basically, they're like poisons. I mean pesticides and herbicides are poisons and that are meant to kill

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  living things. So like

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Literally.

• 14:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Literally. I mean, for those who don't know, the history is that pesticides came from biological weapons and nerve gases because they're nerve gases and glyphosate came later, but that's not was, you know, used to clean lead pipes and ended up killing everything downstream in the river. So they're like, oh, this is an herbicide. And, and so we depleted this soil and turned into dirt. And then, like you said, that the microbes in the living soil is a taxi. I never heard that before, but it's a great, it's a great metaphor. It's like basically it shuttles the nutrients from the soil into the plant. And the nutrient density of the plant depends on the health of the soil and the nutrient density of an animal, which we don't even think of, oh, come meat is meat is meat is

• 14:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  meat. It's not. It was like an apple in 1912 is different than apple now. If you have a eat a bison in 18, you know, 12, it's going to be different than a than a feedlot cow in 2025. I just went to a place where they had buffalo is amazing. And then they had one bread that was bred with a cow. They called a beefalo, but the bison didn't like it. So it was banished to another paddock. I mean, me very sad. Anyway, I digress. I digress. But but this is such an important piece. So our whole foods apply just from the from the soil on up to the groceries or shelves has just been completely decimated. And, you know, there's really not much nutrients in in ultra processed. There's calories and there may be some protein or fat or car, but it's usually the bad kind.

• 15:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So sort of we all kind of, you know, understand that. But what people don't understand is what I want to dive into next. And this is really where using hard science to actually say, oh, I'm not just a hippie wanting to eat organic or regenerative, like, you know, it's good for the planet and that's kumbaya, blah, blah, blah. There's actually some extraordinary science and Fred Provenza, who I've had on the podcast and Stephen Van Vliet, Van Vliet, also they work together to look at the the impact of different diets on animals and their own nutrient density. So I want to kind of dive into this. And, you know, Fred Provenza wrote a book called Nourishment, which what we can learn from animals about

• 16:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  how to eat. And it just, it's just what the most amazing book I've ever read. First of all, he's like, he's like a guru poet, like, he's like, he's got this big white beard. He's got this shrubik smile. And he's just always happy, but he's like a deep philosopher.

• 16:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And he's like this rangeland ecologist who studied the relationship between soil and plants and animals and how animals can identify what plants they need if they're left to their own devices in the wild because they're using different plants for different medicinal purposes or different nutrient purposes and for food, you know, calories. It just was fascinating. And so the work you're doing is taking that work and actually even, you know, putting more hard science behind it. So tell us about the work you're doing with the BioNutrient Definition Standards Board and the BioNutrient Institute and the scientific work you're doing because it's really important and like what's being looked at. I just, I think people need to understand that. And we're going to jump into meat now and beef because it's one of those

• 17:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  really controversial topics like should be, everybody should be a vegan to be healthy, which is basically the cultural narrative, which I don't understand. There wasn't even the word vegan until like the 40s and there was no voluntary vegan populations on the planet. The 70s Adventists, you know, were one example of vegetarians, but it wasn't like a thing. This BioNutrient Institute, it's leading this multi-year data-driven study about how to look at what's going on in beef and what farm practices to the soil health impact the profile of meat. So kind of take us through like, you know, what are you guys looking at? You know, how are you doing the studies and how are you comparing

• 18:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  the nutrient density and quality of like feedlot meat or even, you know, even grass-fed meat to regenerative meat and kind of walk us through that whole journey and story, how you got started, you know, what you guys are doing, what you're learning and what it means for us.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Okay. First, I listened to your podcast with Dr. Pivenza and I really loved, there's that kangaroo study. Do you remember the kangaroo study in 2011 where they ate kangaroo from native pastures or feedlot beef and saw a reduction in inflammation when you had the native pasture-fed kangaroo meat as opposed to CAFO meat? And I thought, well, that's interesting.

• 18:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  CAFO meat is a confined animal feeding operation. It's basically a feedlot.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I thought, wow, we're all thinking That meat is protein and fat, but this guy seems to know it's so much more than that. And so I contacted Fred and he's just the loveliest soul, as you know, and he connected me with Van Vliet. And so the project is called the Beef Nutrient Density Project. It's a collaboration between the BioNutrient Food Institute with Dan Kittredge and Utah State with Van Vliet. Now, the BioNutrient Food Institute, I'm sure you've talked about this, but they're they're creating a handheld meter. Do you know about this?

• 19:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I heard about it.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Okay, so his goal, his parents basically wrote the organic standards. He's been in agriculture for so long. And as you know, the incentive is right now yield, profit, shelf life, rather than nutrition. So how do you flip that on its head? You give consumers the ability to see how many nutrients are in the foods that they have right in front of them. And you change what people are growing eventually.

• 19:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So you scan the barcode and you see?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Well, it's like a a fructometer, like it gives you a wavelength, you know, all the different nutrients have a different wavelength.

• 19:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I know about this, actually.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. So anyway, in order to define nutrient density, you have to go cross.

• 19:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Just stop there because people have probably missed that. What you're talking about is like a like a like a Star Trek.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Device that you basically you you kind of aim it at the meat or the vegetable. And it kind of reads the light energy within it and basically gives you a reading about the nutrient density. So that's my.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Isn't that cool? Because he's done a lot of testing and it's even between varieties, like, you know, the mineral content can vary by like four to 18%. And when it comes to antioxidants, polyphenols, like 100 times, you know, so it's just huge intra variability, even within a one product situation. So how do we let people decide and get back to that? The core of what we need is those micronutrients. And so then what we did is the Beef Nutrient Density Project, they started with beef because it's one of the most commoditized products out there. But they wanted to categorize that variability because you can have factory farmed meat, obviously. But then there's so many other flavors. There's grass fed and then there's beyond grass fed. There's regeneratively raised meat. So there are 300 samples from all across North America.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  That was the cool thing about this project is it was so diversified in locations the beef came from, but also their. Commercially available. So it wasn't this like very stoic, highly controlled scientific setting. It was the foods and the products that you'd actually have access to.

• 21:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  People are eating.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  That people are actually eating, that you'll see out in the marketplace. And so what we found is I think like five major things. First of all, the metabolomics is a big deal because we're often looking at 13 nutrients on a nutrition facts panel and believing that that is what a food's made up of, but it's thousands of bioactive compounds that change dramatically.

• 21:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Okay, so let's just stop there. Metabolomics, most people have never heard of that. What is metabolomics?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  It's basically metabolites. It's there's tens of thousands of compounds that change that make up your metabolism, that make up an animal's metabolism, that you can actually capture now with more advanced technologies, rather than looking at iron, calcium, or minerals, you know, fatty acids. It goes way beyond that. And you look at like

• 21:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So it's not like 10 or 20 test, you get thousands of these metabolites that are actually bioactive, that regulate your biology, that influence every function in your body, that are medicinal in many ways, or that are harmful if they're bad metabolites, right?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. And finding that, you know, certain animal products can have as many phytonutrients as plants. You know, in one analysis, lamb liver had as many phytonutrients, phenolics specifically, as an eggplant, or a turnip, or a squash. And so basically, meat was a photograph of the land. It's literally the land, the biology, the life of the animal is kind of written into the meat itself.

• 22:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Okay, stop there. You just laid another giant bomb there. What you just said was animal food, meat, liver, can have the same medicinal phytochemicals or plant compounds as the plant.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I wrote, I wrote about this actually in my book, because in Ikaria and Sardinia, they know, they take their goses, they eat this plant at this time of year, and eat this plant at this time of year. And they're not doing it because they want to get more phytochemicals. They're doing it because they know the flavor changes. And what Fred Prebenza says is flavor always follows phytochemical density. So the more phytochemicals, whether it's meat or plants, they taste better, right? And, and so they know that they, this one guy, Olinto, said, he fed me like a Goes to tell pig meal. He says, we, we flavor the animal before we kill it.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 23:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They feed a carob, they feed it acorns, they feed it whatever vegetable. I don't know what they feed it, but it's, it was exactly this concept and they didn't know scientifically. But what you're saying is that the plant foods that the animals are eating and the compounds in those plant foods that are beneficial for us. Get into the meat. And so it really matters what you eat.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And these anti accident, anti inflammatory, you know, anti carcinogenic, antiviral, these compounds have so many different health benefits. And animals can also consume things we wouldn't otherwise consume, right? So then they metabolize them and then they increase the diversity of our diet. One of the main things I hear when people eat this type of meat versus a factory farm is that they finally feel satisfied. And that's another thing Dr. Fred Provenza believes is working for that type of meat is that ability to feel satiated is kind of gone when you.

• 24:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, yeah, you know, that's another thing that he, that Fred did, which was so amazing was he, he basically would give these animals different plants. And as soon as the phytochemical level hit a certain level in their blood and he would measure their blood, they stop eating.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 24:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They stop eating. It was like, I was like, wow, that's, and he did, he, he did the same thing with, there was a reporting on a study that was done in the twenties in Canada with orphans where they basically. Gave them brain and liver and kidney, whatever, like all these weird things the kids wouldn't eat, right? Today at least. And, and let these kids naturally choose what they would eat. And they, and these kids all, all chose foods that made them healthier. They had this natural intelligence. And so basically this book nourishment is like. What we can learn from animals about how to nourish ourselves by being in touch with their own natural sense. Cause when you're craving sugar or you're craving crap or carbs. Your, your body's dysregulated. But when you get in balance, like when I go like, and I'm in an airport and I go to Starbucks and there's all that.

• 25:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, pastry and stuff. I mean, to me it looks like a rock. Like I would never buy it if I was hungry, even though I was starving. Like, well, maybe I was starving, I would eat it, but. But I'm like, you know, like it doesn't actually even call my name anymore.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I'd rather have a. Paleo Valley Meat Stick, or, you know, I mean, and in fact, that's what I did yesterday. I was like, I was like hungry and I was working all day and I missed lunch. And I was like, I need like three sticks and I'm good to go for my afternoon podcast, you know?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  I do that too.

• 25:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  It's gonna make you hungrier than the rock, that is.

• 25:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And so it's like, your body can reset and it's like, all this GLP-1 stuff, it's fine, but like, it's not addressing this fundamental issue. How do, how are brains and our metabolism, our biochemistry and our microbiome, and our hormones and our immune system has all been hijacked by ultra-processed food.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  By this, you know, cutting down what we're eating to 12 foods, right? 75% of our diet comes from 12 foods. And that's what we've done with animals too, with these total mixed rations. They're fed whatever we give them. They're no longer able to self-select. They're eating more, they're gaining a lot of weight and it's translating into the meat.

• 26:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, so take us through then, what are you, what are you finding from Caffo Feedlot meat?

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Versus like regular grass-fed, uh, maybe grain-finished or organic meat or versus agenda meat? And maybe define the terms because people might not know what they all are.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  For that, we didn't look at phytonutrients, but I just wanted to highlight that because that was a big piece of their research before. We had five major findings. First is just the lower omega-6 to 3 ratio. And so in grain-fed, about an eight to one, and in grass-fed, about a two to one. And so we know that that's pretty consistent. So maybe linked to lower levels of inflammation. The second was, it is a really good source of omega-3 fatty acids, grass-fed. So you could eat one grain or one grass-fed steak or three grain-fed steaks and get about the same amount. And I don't know if people understand, but beef in the UK can be considered a good source of omega-3 fatty acids. Anything over 40 kilograms.

• 27:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You don't even eat fish, you're saying?

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Well, no, I think we should all be eating fish.

• 27:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But I mean, you're getting the fish fats from the meat.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Exactly. In their long chain form, which is different than the ones that you would get from plants. So we measured EPA and DPA and DHA. A lot of prior research hasn't measured DPA, but that is another omega-3 fatty acid that's really important. And when we do start to measure, we realize, oh, wow. The amount in animal products can be significant. And they've done several trials where they actually watch people and they take them from grain-fed. And put them to grass fed meat and the levels of omega threes in the blood increased significantly.

• 27:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So not only the animals have more of it, but when you eat the meat, you have more of it.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  It's trans. Yeah.

• 27:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's not the meat you eat. It's whatever the meat you eat ate.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. It's what your meat ate that matters. Yes. So. And then the other one was around the saturated fatty acid profile. I don't know if you've talked about the diversity in saturated fatty acids.

• 27:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, but, but there's also another fat that's really interesting.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. CLA.

• 28:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The CLA. So there's another fat that's in grass fed meat or milk. It's incredibly important and maybe you can just chat a little bit. People know about like omega threes and EPA, DHA basically, but there's also lower ratios of omega six to three and, and these fat, these meats, which is not omega six are bad and omega threes are good. They're, they're both needed. It's just the volume we have. When you start seeing 21 omega six to threes, you start getting into health issues. And I think that's most of what Americans have. But talk about CLA because CLA is really something that is something most people don't know about. It's not really out there as a supplement usually.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so, but it's really important for our health. So talk about what it is and why it's in the grass or regenerative feed meat.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So conjugated lialic acid is another one of those fatty acids that we know has cancer protective properties potentially, as well as an ability to help improve body composition and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. That's what some of the early research is showing and 1.6 times higher.

• 28:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  To less cancer, less heart disease and better metabolism and body fat.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Seems like a good deal. Yeah.

• 29:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's pretty amazing.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And 1.6 times in the grass fed versus the grain fed. So yeah, that's another fatty acid. And then the saturated fatty acids, like I said, changed a lot. So there's a diverse array of saturated fats and we all lump it into one category where we've been kind of led to believe that it all acts the same. But we had more stearic acid, which is the cholesterol neutral saturated fatty acid. But then these very long chain saturated fatty acids, which are actually associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease in associative evidence. Like a richidic acid and behenic acid.

• 29:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Those were increased. And then we have odd change.

• 29:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So just so everyone knows, I wrote a book called Eat Fat, Get Thin. And basically there's no such thing as saturated fat. There are many different types of saturated fat. And you just mentioned one stearic acid, which is the main saturated fat in meat, which you also just slipped in there because I'm slowing you down because people, you're going so fast.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you should.

• 29:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Is basically a stearic acid, which doesn't have impact on your blood cholesterol. Okay. So this is like, don't eat meat because it's going to raise your cholesterol. Maybe that's not true.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And what kind of meat, right?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that. And then even maybe with these longer chain, you can actually improve your cholesterol or reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease. And we've all probably heard about C15 or pentadecanoic acid.

• 30:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Thought to potentially be a new longevity nutrient or required nutrient.

• 30:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  And those levels also increased. Now, the absolute amount isn't large in beef, but it still was higher.

• 30:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Interesting, yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Pentadecanoic.

• 30:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I just did a Instagram Live with Stephanie Watson, who's basically the veterinarian who discovered that dolphins who age well and long time have higher levels of these fats that have longevity protective effects. So.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  That are saturated fats.

• 30:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, that are saturated fat. Yeah, so saturated fat is not in the boogeyman. In fact, even Marty McCary, who's our FDA commissioner, came out and said, hey, we got this all wrong. We took a left turn in 1960s. And for those listening, it was, it was, there was a very dominant, strong scientist named Ansel Keys who pushed this theory. And in the end of his life, he actually retracted it. But because he realized it was wrong. But it was even the sugar industry that paid these new scientists, like the top nutrition scientists at Harvard, to, with the equivalent of like $50,000 to write a paper that said, hey, guys, it's not sugar, it's fat. That's the problem in heart disease. And that was the beginning of the end for America.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  It really was. I, we talked about that in the rethink meat series. But yeah, we've gotten really off course. We just, and now I think with these new, more advanced studies and more nuanced studies, we're starting to see, oh, wow. This is, you know, really nuanced. And we've tried to make it simple and we've suffered as a result. The other one that we had was minerals.

• 31:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Minerals.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  So minerals, we found six times the selenium, three times the amount of calcium, two times the amount of copper and 1.2 times the amount of iron.

• 31:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wow.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So can you imagine? That adds up as we're talking about. And they've done other research to suggest that it's related to the soil biology.

• 31:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's not what you eat. It's what you ate, ate.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's an imprint of that land that it came from. And they're even recently published a paper where ergothionine, it's this compound that's actually made by bacteria and fungi, actually got transferred right into the meat when it was one of these.

• 32:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Tell us about it, because that's an important compound. You're throwing out like big words. I'm just kind of like slowing you down and helping.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I better understand, because this is important. This is important stuff, guys. The, the, the, the, this is a revolutionary idea that you can actually get.

• 32:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A lot of plant medicines when you eat the right meat. It's crazy. And it may explain a lot of the longevity benefits of the amount of cheese and milk that from goats and sheep that was eaten in Sardinian Ikari, where I visited when I wrote my book, Young Forever. So I really think that, you know, this is such a massive discovery that no one's talking about.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so ergothionine is this compound, I think we traditionally associate with mushrooms, but is produced by bacteria and fungi in the soil. And it can be transferred into plants and even into the animal products. And so they looked at forage and also the meat. And they found it was about 11 times higher in the forage when you compared it to something like a total mixed ration. So if you're eating a botanically diverse forage, you're going to already have a higher amount of that ergothionine. But then if it transfers to the meat, it was about 2.8 times higher than in other meat. Again, and this has potentially

• 33:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What does it do?

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Cytoprotective, anti-inflammatory. It's thought to get in and really improve mitochondrial health and improve the health of our brains. And so I think more and more research is being discovered about exactly how beneficial this compound is. But it's again, one of those things we've, the dark matter of nutrition that we've largely ignored.

• 33:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, you know, the Rockefeller Institute is spending $200 million creating the periodic table of phytochemicals. They literally are doing, you know, deep research analysis on plants to look at the tens of thousands of molecules in there that bioregulate us. And I, years ago, when I was learning about food as medicine, I came up with this term symbiotic phyto-adaptation, which essentially I made up words that I made up.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  I've heard, I've heard you say it.

• 34:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And in English, it basically means we co-evolve with plants because while, and I'm just going to just take a, turn it on, get back to you in a sec, but I joke about, you know, your thermos keeps your soup, you know, hot in the winter and your lemonade cold in the summer. How does it know what to do, right? It's like, how did the body evolve so that these phytochemicals interact with certain receptors and genes?

• 34:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And to regulate our biology, you know, everybody's heard of like red wine and it's good for whatever, but it's rispertrol, which is the phytochemical in there that interacts with our mitochondria and certain, certain one receptors which regulate longevity, the fructuins that I wrote about in my book, Young Forever. So like, it's like, how does it, I mean, yeah, okay, a vitamin, but these, I don't think of these as, as kind of like, you know, you're not going to get an acute deficiency disease like scurvy, but these are essential nutrients for, for life. If you're going to live a healthy, good life.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that's what we've called them secondary compounds, as Fred Prudential will tell you, but they have very primary roles in the body, potentially improving satiety, our ability to defend our DNA, you know, anti accident protection, potentially how we age, I think is probably the quality of our lives, our vitality.

• 35:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And there are a lot of plants that regulate GLP-1, right? So, or your insulin, or your, you know, inflammation level, or your hormones, or your brain chemistry. All of these things are modified by these phytochemicals.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  And if you read the papers that they write, you'll see dozens of benefits, cytoprotective, cancer protective, cardiovascular protective.

• 35:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So you mentioned ergothanine. What other things were, were you finding? You're doing this metabolic analysis. You're not looking at like, you know, 20 nutrients. You're looking at thousands of compounds. So what, what was the difference between like a feedlot, you know, cow, a grass fed cow, that's just eating maybe one or two crops on grass fed fields versus a full regenerative cow? And explain, like, as you do this, what the difference of what they're eating is?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  So the difference in what they're eating, it just, it was all across the board. That was my role in the project. I got to speak with the ranchers and the farmers and talk to them. What are you exactly, what are the species in the pasture? How diverse is the pasture? How long are they feeding? So we had people who did feedlot samples, right? So they're getting a total mixed ration, you know, protein, corn, soy, you know, some added vitamins. And then you have the grass fed and finished and regenerative systems where you could have up to 30 different species or, you know, and what we found in our research is these were two really cool findings for ranchers and producers, is that up to 10, the more species in the pasture, the higher level of ALA, the plant based alpha linoleic acid. Yep. And then And also, the longer the grazing period at the end of their lives that they got directly implanted,

• 36:50Speaker 01

  you'd have more ALA and a lower omega six to three ratio, suggesting we want these botanically diverse pastures and we want them to be grazing, you know, their entire lives or as long as possible.

• 37:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You want a, you want a complex diet.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. Just like humans. We're built for this diversity and we've kind of reduced everything that we're consuming. And I think.

• 37:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think broccoli is good for you, but if all you is broccoli, you would die.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 37:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right?

• 37:13Speaker 01

  And that's what we're forcing our animals to do. And in turn, we're eating the same things over and over. And, and so, and that was another one of the major takeaways is that grass fed is not grass fed, is not grass fed, grain fed, and it was just not captured by our current labeling system. And so we just need to do.

• 37:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What do you do? Like I'm, you know, go to Whole Foods or whatever, and I try to find grass fed, or is it grass finished or grass fed? Or is it regenerative? Like, is it, what, like, what, how do I determine what's what? Or is we can't?

• 37:42Speaker 01

  It's really tricky. I think we wait for the Star Trek. Just kidding. But also I think we try to find producers or companies who we can trust, who are prioritizing the way animals are fed. Cause you know, 2016, grass fed doesn't always mean grass finished. Because you can have grain at the end of their lives. They've done even.

• 37:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like most animals spend most of their life on grass. And at the end, they throw them in a feedlot and they pump them full of corn and soy and they pat them up and they give them hormones and antibiotics and then.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  And that can still be technically grass fed today, right? Because no one's going in and really regulating it. And there was a paper in Bronchema, 2019, I believe, and they looked at the commercially available grass fed beef and the omega six to three ratio, which is very indicative of what the animal's consuming. Went from 28 to one, which is.

• 38:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Terrible.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Definitely getting grain there, but it was still grass fed technically, all the way down to two to one, which is more in alignment with what we've seen in our studies, about a two to one versus an eight to one.

• 38:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When you think about it, when you look at the, the data on the, on long-lived societies, and we talked about the Blue Zones today, and Dan Meehan is a great friend, but, but, and he's, you know, highlighted a lot of what they do. But back a hundred and 25 years ago, at the turn of the 19, you know, the 20th century, 1900, the, the Plains Indians, like the Lakota and the Sioux, like they, they, they had the longest lived population. They were tons of centenarians in that community. And pretty much all they ate was bison, buffalo, and some berries and, you know, whatever they could forage. And. And so, you know, we were told, you know, meat is bad for you. Don't eat meat. It's going to cause this and that cancer and heart disease. And, you know, people still think that's true.

• 39:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it is true. I think if you're eating crappy meat.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Potentially. Yeah. Crappy meat combined with the crappy ultra processed.

• 39:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And for those who want to know more, read my book, Food, What the heck should I eat? Or the Pegan Diet. I go really deep into all this stuff. But because I was like, I don't know what's true about meat. And I didn't have no clue. And I actually came to Austin, where I'm living now. And I went to this hotel and locked myself in there for a week with about 100 different of the top scientific papers on meat. And I'm like, I don't care what the headlines say, or what the media says, or what doctors say, or nutrition say, I want to read the actual science myself. So I read through it all. I was like, oh, now I get it. You know, it's the regenerative meat has so other things too. Like it's the fats composition is different. It's the omega three fats, the minerals. But I think it's this phytochemical richness that is kind of the secret sauce. Because when you're eating

• 40:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  wild animals, it's really different. And we went to Rome Ranch around here. You know, probably know them.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Which is this couple that did Epic Bars, and they sold it to General Mills. And they got them to do like a million acres of regenerative farming. And I have a podcast with them. And I went to visit them not far from here. And it was a bison harvest day. So they pick up bison that needs to be culled. And they, you know, they go up to it, and they separate it from the herd. And then they shoot it right in the head, and things dead before it even hears the bullet. You know, the sound travels very, you know, the bullet travels faster than the sound. And so basically, it doesn't, it doesn't know. And it was, it was, and then we butchered it. And they opened it up. And I was like, oh, my God, like, the fat in it was bright yellow. Like, not white fat. It was like

• 40:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  bright yellow. And I'm like, wow, these are the phytochemicals, the carotenoids, like your salmon is yellow, right? Or your carrots are yellow.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like, these are the carotenoids and the phytochemicals that are in. Inside the animal that we're eating.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  It's amazing, isn't it? And what I think is even more interesting is that they're getting into human clinical trials now.

• 41:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. So, so what, what is, tell us about that. So, so, okay, so great. We, we, we've established that regular meat is not something we want to be eating. And, and there's a cost issue for sure, but there's ways to get cheaper meat. And I talked about it in my book, cause you can, you know, get a cow share. You can get meat directly from farmers. You have wild pastures, which, which is your company that helps people get access and lower cost or force of nature. So a lot of companies out there that are doing this, which is really great. The science is, I think from my perspective is pretty well established on the nutrient density, the phytochemical richness, the better fatty acid profile, the better mineral profile, the better antioxidant profile. I mean, you can go down the list for regenerative meat, which is basically regenerative. It essentially means you're, you're, you're actually mimicking nature and having the animal go from pasture to pasture,

• 41:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  not over grazed, eat a lot of different plants and have a life that's pretty much like they would if they were a wild animal. So that's kind of a summary of it. But what is the impact then on humans? And tell us about that research, cause that's really interesting.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  That's my favorite part about it. So there was a trial back in 11, 2011, which I mentioned.

• 42:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Kangaroo study.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  The kangaroo versus feed lab beef. And then Dr. Van Vliet's now working on, and there's preliminary evidence that he took people from a standard American diet onto a whole foods diet. Saw a reduction in markers of inflammation, but then also took them from a standard American diet to a diet where they only ate organic produce and more of this regenerative, totally grass fed type of meat. And also saw a few of the inflammatory markers reduce.

• 42:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  So again, I think it was IL6 and TNF and CRP.

• 42:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Okay. These, these are, we call cytokines. Everybody heard of the cytokine storm during COVID. So interleukin six, tumor necrosis factor alpha, C reactive protein. These are standard measures of inflammation and we can test them. And so if they go down, that's significant.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  That's good because every time you eat, we have an inflammatory response. And so if every time we eat, we're having less of that inflammation, our body's going to be able to resolve it, potentially not leading to a chronic inflammatory response, potentially.

• 43:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  But this is where, but he did, he likes to be clear that going from the whole foods diet was the biggest lower of inflammation.

• 43:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  But that there was also potentially another beneficial effect. And he's still working on these human trials and he's doing more than one of them.

• 43:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, so has there been trials where they've looked at, you know, just swapping out the meat? Like, you know, like let's say you had a whole food diet, but you eat feed lab meat.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what he's working on.

• 43:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Of course, there's a whole food diet plus regenerative meat.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what the second part of that trial was that. And he did see again, a small reduction in inflammatory markers, smaller than moving from the standard American diet to a whole foods diet, but still potentially.

• 43:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And that's compounds, just for real understanding.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you're every day eating a diet that's slowly increasing inflammation, it compounds over time like compounded interest. And the opposite is true. Reading an anti-inflammatory diet over time that benefits compound and you get healthier and healthier. And aging itself is an inflammatory process. And so the less you can have inflammation, the better off you are.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then there are the other trials I was speaking to about the omega threes and their ability to get in your, the ratio specifically, they've had people go from grass fed meat, from grain fed meat to grass fed meat and see a significant reduction in that omega six to three ratio in their blood and in their platelets. And I think that's a really another interesting burgeoning area of research. The omega three index and just having more omega threes, 90, potentially 84,000 Americans die every year due to omega three fatty acid deficiency. So.

• 44:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wait, wait, say that again.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  I think Harvard research showed that about 84,000 people in America die every year because they're not getting enough omega three fatty acids. And I think.

• 44:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And that's, that's about as many more that people die from drug overdose, which is a big crisis. It's a quote, a national emergency, right? And what about omega three deficiency? Is that a national emergency? Maybe.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  I mean, can't be, and imagine if you had to eat one steak instead of three to get a significant amount of omega threes, even outside of your fish consumption, which we hope everyone can access and eats regularly. But.

• 45:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But this is important. It is a big deal. I mean, think about that. Eighty three thousand people dying from deficiency disease that we aren't even testing for in traditional medicine, except with Function Health, which is a company I co-founded. And we, I'm like, I'm the medical, chief medical officer. And I'm like, we're testing the nutrients. We're testing vitamin D. We're testing iron. We're testing, you know, zinc, we're testing selenium, we're testing omega three fatty acids, we're testing all the B vitamins, methionine, homocysteine. We're, we're doing a deep dive in your nutritional health, but, and we know what we're finding on them.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  But.

• 45:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Almost 70% of our members. Are deficient in one or more of the nutrients we test. And we're using the reference range from the lab. Not what I would, as Dr. Hyman would say would be the optimal range. So example, vitamin D, reference range in labs is 30 and lower is deficiency. For me, and when you look at the scientific literature, it's 45, 50. So, you know, what I'm saying is almost 70% of people at an extremely low level. Like iron, you know, your ferritin should be 45 or 50. But 16 is the cutoff on the lab. Right. So I'm just, I'm just, you know, the reference ranges, in my view, are wrong.

• 46:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And still within those reference ranges, which are, I think are too generous. We're still seeing almost 70% nutrient deficient. And if you're saying, you know, omega threes are killing 83,000 people a year. That's big. And all you need to do is eat some regeneratively raised meat or eat some sardines or take your fish oil pill. And it's so easy.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  It is, but it's something most people don't recognize. And you're getting a skewed population who's far more aware of these deficiencies, probably than most normal people.

• 46:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  So I'd say if you take that out, population level, it's almost everybody.

• 47:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And omega three fats are really rich in wild foods, which is mostly what we ate as hunter gatherers. So we've only been agricultural producers for 10,000 plus years, maybe 12,000. Then I hear you listen to, we've been humans for 200,000 years. So like, what were we eating? Where did we evolve on? We evolved on wild food, which has got all these phytochemicals, which is all these omega three fats. And, and, you know, the Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, they actually used this fish as currency, which was so oily and so fatty and so rich in omega three fats that everybody knew how valuable it was. And instead of money, that's what they would use to trade.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  That makes a lot of sense.

• 47:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's crazy, right?

• 47:39Speaker 01

  That's insane. And, but I've noticed a profound difference.

• 47:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'm just full of these like stupid factoids. I don't know why they pop out of my head, but here we go.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  And it's easy maybe for people to understand that omega threes originate in greens, right? In plants. And then the grains are really high in those omega sixes.

• 47:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  And this is in addition to the high levels of vegetable oil consumption, obviously, but. The way our animals are being raised now, I think, is another significant contributor to a rise in that omega six to three ratio.

• 48:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Especially when it comes to chicken and pork, right?

• 48:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Beef is a little bit more moderated because of the process through their rumen. But when it comes to beef and chick or pork and chicken, they can be like a 20 to one ratio, 20, 30 to one ratio.

• 48:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Okay, okay. So the belief is chickens are healthy, pork, the other white meat, which is, I think, you know, a really dangerous marketing campaign that the government and industry paid for, like Got Milk, these are checkoff programs that the government does that are supposed to be in partnership with industry to improve the health and the nutrition of the population and do research, but instead they use it for marketing, like pork, the other white meat, really? So can you kind of take us through the pork and chicken story? Cause I think this is important, particularly chicken, cause everybody's like, I'm gonna eat chicken breast, that's gonna be super healthy. And maybe it's not, so.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Maybe not, maybe depending on.

• 48:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Walk us through that.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe how it's raised and I've gotten really, as a result of that project, kind of zoned in on this omega six to three ratio. But when you go and you get a conventionally raised chicken, that ratio, 20 to one, 20 times more omega sixes than omega threes. And the pork is even worse. It's, you know, can be 30 to one, 35 to one. And when you change their diet, because like I said, cows have the ability to biohydrogenate and they kind of control the polyunsaturated fats. It's really nerdy, but they just have a different type of digestive system. But pigs and chickens are mono-gastrics. They have one stomach. And so they just have higher levels of omega sixes get into their meat, like far higher levels. And so even in our factory farmed beef, the ratio was eight to one.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  And that is far lower than chicken and pork in conventional settings. So truly, you know, sometimes if you're just looking at that omega six to three ratio, beef could be, even factory farmed beef could be a better choice if you don't think about the antibiotics and hormones.

• 49:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Than chicken and pork that most people can buy today. So if you're wanting to balance that, I would go for beef and fish before chicken and pork.

• 50:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Personally. And I've had a farmer, a rancher, he's a buddy of mine, and he actually wants to set the world record for the lowest omega six to three ratio in pork. But he got it down to a five to one. And the way that he did that was he put his pigs out on pasture and just didn't supplement them with grains. And it was a specific breed of pig. And so there are lots of factors and variables that go into this. But you can reduce that significantly. And it's also something my team and I are working on. I think chicken as the meat that we consume most often, you know, probably around 60 pounds per person per year for beef, but about 100 for chicken, because we've been taught that it's

• 50:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Chicken is better, right? Actually, meat consumption has gone down over the last 50 years.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Poultry consumption has gone up.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And we're staying sicker and fatter.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So what?

• 50:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, so the chicken thing is interesting. You know, Joseph Hiblin?

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Mental health guy.

• 50:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So he's the guy who said, gee, in population studies, which don't prove cause and effect, the places in countries where there was higher, much higher omega six intake and lower omega three intake had more suicide, homicide, mental health issues and so forth, which was kind of an amazing study. But, but he, he and I met in Washington. He worked for the NIH and I was just very impressed with his research. So I reached out to him and we hung out. He was talking about chickens. I was like, yeah, these chickens really have lots of these omega six fats. And we're, and when you look at heart disease, you know, the way that it's not cholesterol itself that causes heart attacks. It's rancid cholesterol.

• 51:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's, and, and, you know, when you know, it's much easier for a oil like soybean oil or corn oil to go rancid than it is, for example, butter or lard or ghee, for example, which has got all the milk solids out. You can leave it out of the fridge on your shelf for months and it's fine to eat. Whereas if you did that with another oil, it would become dangerous. It would be rancid. And what he said was that the oxidized LDL is carrying these oxidized omega six fats. And that's what's causing a lot of the heart disease. And we know this is a true, this is not something that's like, you know, I'm making up, this is our cardiologists really most understand this. So that's true. And you're eating this, you know, increase the ratio of omega six to threes, you're, you're, and you're eating a lot of chicken, you may actually be worsening your risk of heart

• 52:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  attack. And, and he was talking about how do we create a line of chickens where that that's not the case. So can you talk about your efforts on the chickens?

• 52:35Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. Yeah. Cause they get into our cell membranes and they make different compounds and different signaling molecules. But yeah, so my husband and I have become obsessed with, you know, not only optimizing for the environment and sustainability of the animal products that we provide, but also for that nutrient density and that balanced ratio. And so we're working on a feed that will reduce that. We've had it testing to four to one so far, but we're perfectionists. And so we want to even get it below.

• 53:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So what is it in most like regular chicken you buy in the grocery store?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  What are they consuming?

• 53:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What's the ratio?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Oh, 20 to one, 25 to one. It's really high. Yeah. It can be lower. I mean, again, this is.

• 53:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And just what humans should be generally eating is like two to four to one is, is okay.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 53:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Maybe even six to one, but yeah.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And can you imagine eating all of your meat with that ratio? And then what could happen if you potentially lowered that ratio?

• 53:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You're like chicken breast, chicken breast, chicken breast, chicken breast. And you're like, don't even realize what you're doing. But so, so you're getting it down to four to one.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Four to one so far, but we're going to keep going. And actually, like I said, after this, we're going out to our poultry farm and we're going to work with our farmer and rancher on this particular project.

• 53:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Can you tell us what you're feeding them?

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 53:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or is it, is it, is it, is it a secret?

• 53:44Speaker 01

  It is kind of a secret, just like forage, which my, I think my husband would kill me if it wasn't because it's not quite finished yet. But when it is, we will share it with everyone. We don't want this to be like a trade secret or anything like that. But we're just increasing, you know, the forage and then we're fermenting different types of grain and really looking at the different ratios in each different type of grain. And so we're just, it's a very specific process because, you know, corn, soy, wheat, they all have this different omega six or three profile that then gets transferred into the meat.

• 54:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And if you have pasture raised chickens, it's different because they're eating like, no, I was in my friend's house somewhere. This video, they had a regenerative farm and they had these chicken houses and they had these, they had these cows and sheep and chickens all living together. They moved them around and every time the chick, they would, you know, move the cows and they would move the chickens into where the cows were. And then the chickens would go out and eat all the maggots and worms and I don't know, whatever bugs that are in them, in the manure and, and, and eat all whatever is in the grass. And then they're, the quality of, of the taste of those and the meat is quite different. And, and everybody knows this, like if you've seen an egg. From a like pasture raised chicken. It's like bright orange. If you get a commercially raised egg, it's like this pale yellow yolk.

• 54:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And if you touch it, it just breaks. Whereas the pasture raised egg yolk is hard to break.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  I first noticed that when I was in Uruguay.

• 55:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  And I was like, whoa, what are these eggs? This is not American eggs.

• 55:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I went, I went to, I went to New Zealand and I've eaten a lot of pastures here. I went to New Zealand and they, and they've served us eggs. And I looked at the egg and I'm like, this is like a, like, this is like a giant bright sunset. Go like orange.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  It's like beautiful.

• 55:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, like I took a picture of it. And I was like, this is a beautiful egg.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  It's so true though.

• 55:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  They do a lot of that pasture based in Uruguay. And so, and that's the carotenoids, you know, creating that robust, beautiful color that is transferred again, right into the meat and the animal products.

• 55:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So you're, you're, you're kind of redoing chickens.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  We're redoing chickens.

• 55:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Tell us about like wild pastures, cause you, you founded that, uh, you know, to, to try to address this issue. Cause access is a problem, you know? And, and we're talking about all this and they're like, yeah, but like I got, I go to Safeway or I go to like, you know, IGA or I go to Publix or I go to wherever, wherever you live, whatever the grocery store is, HEB in Texas. How do I know what I'm getting? And, and I, I don't know if I can afford, you know, a $70 ribeye steak. You know, it's regeneratively raised, right? So what, what do I do?

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So basically we, we did wild pastures when we started to realize, okay, the nutrient content of our supply is dipping. Soil is kind of restoring soil is probably one of the most important public health interventions of our time. And so we wanted more people to be able to opt in to supporting that rehabilitation of the soil and to put a dent in factory farming. So that's our big thing, but food sovereignty is really another piece. It's creating these bio regions where people in their own communities are producing the foods that they're consuming. And so we only source from American regenerative farmers and ranchers. Because there is heavy amounts, and you've written about this, of consolidation in the beef market specifically. And we have a lot of CEOs.

• 56:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like five companies that basically run all the beef in the world.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Four and runs 85% of the beef processing. JBS, Cargill, National Beef, Tyson.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  And few of them are foreign owned. So that's a scary thing when they're coming from Brazil or even China has its hands in our meat supply.

• 57:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  My God, Smithfield, which was bought by China, is basically a pork production. They're just producing pork in the worst way for their market. It's really quite bad. And they're destroying. And, you know, I'm just going to go on a rant here, but like I wrote about it in my book, Food Fix, the amount of harm, forget, forget the eating of the food that's not good for you. The amount of harm of these factory farmed operations of chickens or pigs or pork, or pigs and pork are the same, or cows, is creating such environmental damage, you know, the runoff of the manure, the pesticides, the herbicides, the, the effluent from all the, the waste is creating toxic air. And if you live near there, your health is dramatically impacted because

• 57:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  you're getting asthma and all these horrible illnesses and their, their, their life expectancy is going down, property values are down. I mean, it's, it's really having a terrible impact.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And antibiotic resistant bacteria kills 700,000 people worldwide. Like you said, and these costs are all externalized.

• 58:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You read my book.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  I did. And yeah, and you don't pay for these at checkout, but I like to think when you buy this cheap food, it's like a down payment because you're paying in environmental costs, you're paying in maybe a lower quality of life, you're paying for the cost of disease later. And so, and also people in far off countries, they're not going to treat your community the way that you would, right? They're just not invested. They're not connected. And so how do we get Americans connected back to the American food supply? So that is another major tenant. And then also keeping the costs as low as humanly possible because everyone deserves access to high quality food. There is too much inequality in this country.

• 58:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How do they get it?

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Wild pastures. What we do is-

• 58:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You go to wildpastures.com?

• 58:42Speaker 01

  You go to wildpastures.com. And we also do like whole animal utilization. So we, Paleo Valley and Wild Pastures use the organs, right? We use the bones for our bone broth. We use the tallow. And so it's that whole animal utilization that allows us to keep the costs really low. We're constantly tinkering. In our seven years of business, we've only raised our prices once. And if you know anything about the meat market right now, the beef prices are out of control. And so it is always our last, we would never want to pass the cost back on to the consumer because we really do want to take factory farming and make it

• 59:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Basically like doing direct from farm or ranch to the consumer. You're cutting out the middleman, you're cutting out the grocery store, you're cutting out the distributor. You're able to lower the costs and make it accessible.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and right now.

• 59:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it comes frozen.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it comes frozen, it's convenient and it's affordable. And so, and it also gives the farmer and rancher a better wage, right? A better quality of life because our poor farmers and ranchers are trapped in this system. I grew up in Montana, I know it, it's a hard life. And so, yeah, we just really want to restore the nutrient density of our food supply. I do believe well raised meat is one of the most valuable tools we have for restoring this micronutrient deficiency. Obviously, you know, lowering our risk to antibiotics, hormones and all of the chemicals and environmental pollution. But also just making sure that anyone who wants to opt in can opt in easily.

• 59:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So just you touched on something again, I want you just to fill with just all these great little things you whiz over that are, I just wanna, I wanna kind of dive into again. He says something really important and we're talking here about human health and its impact of eating the wrong kinds of meat versus the right kinds of meat. The benefits of regenerative on our health, the animal's health and you know, even the environmental issue. But what you're, what you're really talking about is a much broader restoration of our entire ecosystem. So regenerative means to regenerate, to renew, to repair, to heal. And we have a whole field in medicine called regenerative medicine, which is about like using the body's own healing properties

• 1:00:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  to actually activate healing responses like stem cells or exosomes or peptides. So these are the body's own regenerative systems. They're not a drug, they're actually something the body makes to do like when you cut yourself, how does your body heal? Well, it recruits stem cells, recruits the exosomes that get released, it releases healing factors and growth factors and recruits fibroplas and connective tissue. You're not going, oh, would you please heal Mr. Skin or Mrs. Skin, right? So, um, so the, the body has this regenerative capacity, but the earth also has a regenerative capacity. And we saw that during COVID when everybody was locked in and the humans disappeared from the world for a short period of time. Nature surged back like insanely, you know, populations of.

• 1:01:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Populations of dolphins and sea life and animals. I mean, it was just, it was remarkable. How the body can reclaim and David Attenborough, who's an incredible filmmaker, he's a

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, environmentalist, actually made this film about the kaleidoscope of his life and how the environments change, how many species we have lost, what the degradation of forests has been. It was kind of depressing, honestly. But at the end, he goes to Chernobyl. Which, I mean, most people have this image in Chernobyl as a nuclear toxic waste dump and nobody lives there, which is true. But he showed that he went there and he showed that it had completely regenerated, that the trees had taken over. It was like Planet of the Apes, you know, like it took all, it all came back to nature. They were deer, they were wolves, there were bears, there were animals all over. It was like this really thriving thing. So what regenerative agriculture can do is not just feed us well, but actually restore a lot of our climate and environmental problems.

• 1:02:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So you speak to that.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. My favorite analogy is from another one of our ranchers who said, nature's like a horse behind a gate. If we just let her out and let her do what she wants to do rather than working against her, like the most beautiful things can happen. And that's essentially what you said regenerative agriculture is all about is just restarting all of those cycles of nature and working with nature rather than against it. And so, yeah. Our soil can also be a storage house for carbon, right?

• 1:02:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  You know, three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere can be trapped in soil. So we can

• 1:02:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's the biggest carbon sink on the planet. Forget, forget rainforest. Yeah.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. So we can build soil and the organic matter in soil. And then again, that organic matter is going to feed the plants. It's going to make all of those nutrients accessible. And again, even soil contains microbes that improve serotonin levels, right? And that diversity in the soil, some scientists even believe there's a relationship between the diversity in the soil and the diversity in our own microbiome.

• 1:03:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And your brain.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  And our brain and life-saving medicines. They come from the soil, right? So many of our life-saving medicines come from the soil and that biodiversity, 25% of the biodiversity is linked to the life in the soil. And like you said, we've destroyed and decimated that biodiversity, I think over 60% of it in the last few decades.

• 1:03:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, there was a bacteria. It's really interesting. There's a bacteria in the soil. Of Rapanui, which is Easter Island called Rapamycin. That is one of the most promising longevity compounds out there. So the soil is like a storage house of healing. And I mean, think about it like we're looking for the fountain of youth. And this drug isn't the fountain of youth, but it's the closest thing we have today.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  To the fountain of youth.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we see that looming threat of antibiotic resistance. And I read a stat the other day that only 5% of the lifesaving medicine compounds have probably been discovered in soil.

• 1:04:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  So like you said, when we're depleting the soil, we are really depleting our best chance we have at a vibrant health and for generations to come. And that's what I hate about the thought that we right now, depleting our soil as we are, we are essentially like passing the bill to our children.

• 1:04:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Future generations, because they're the ones who are, we're already suffering. But if we don't fix this issue now, they're going to be suffering.

• 1:04:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, so I think this is so important, and I know it's hard for people, but wherever you can, whatever you can do to support regenerative agriculture is important. And there's new regenerative organic certifications that are emerging. You know, there's, you know, people are kind of self policing now, so you have to kind of do your homework. But, but there are companies out there like yours, like Wild Pastures, to do this and do the hard work and, and source good stuff. And, and you know, what's interesting, I don't know if you know this, but in, in Europe, people spend 20% of their income on food. In America, it's 9%. So, you know, we want to spend money on, you know, whatever, video games or clothes or I don't know, lattes.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  I guess just food technically.

• 1:05:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How many, if we did like a math of like, how many lattes Americans consume? How much they spend on lattes a year? And if they just invested that in their health, it would be amazing. Make, get a machine and make your own latte at home.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  It's so true. Because it's $5 a day. There was a time when I was doing that, you know, $35 a week, like two, you know, several hundred dollars every month. And yeah, just put that towards a CSA, put that towards better high quality meat. Go to your farmer's market. See, you can really make those dollars.

• 1:05:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, there's a really good book I read years ago called Your Money or Your Life? And it was essentially talking about the value of your money based on how much it takes to earn it. So like, if you make $30 an hour, you know, if you go buy a $30 shirt, that's an hour of your time. Right? And so it kind of like recalibrates it. It says like, what, what do you, what are your values? Like what matters to you? Do you really need to spend $3,000 a year on lattes? What if you took that $3,000 and spent it on a gym membership or on better quality food? Or on taking a vitamin D and a fish oil pill every day? Or, you know, like, there's a million ways to invest that, that extra cash that we don't think we have.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And you can just start with one small decision. Like you said, I'm not going to have a latte. I'm going to do this. What we did for, we just said, we're going to go to the farmer's market this summer. And we found people who were selling their produce, their imperfect produce at far lower prices, or by the end of the day, they just wanted to get rid of things. And so you can find deals there. We found people making our milk down the road, fermenting vegetables. And so, yeah, I think just choosing one thing to change at a time.

• 1:06:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  It creates momentum.

• 1:06:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It does. And I think, you know, we are giving is hope for people, right? And I think what, what I want to sort of come to end on is like, people listening go, oh, well, that's for the elite and that's for people who can afford it. And that's for the wealthy and it's not for me. And I can't really eat well because it's too expensive. And I'm on a budget or I'm on food stamps or whatever. Right? And, and this is a message that I think has really been promoted by the food industry. You know, you know, that's elitist. It's, you know, expensive, you know, let us help you. Let's make safe, convenient, cheap food for you. We're taking

• 1:07:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  care of you. We love you. This is the food industry's propaganda. But it's making you sick. So whatever you're not paying on food today, you're going to pay on your medications and copays and doctor's visits when you're sick later. You know, you pay now, you pay later. But even with that, you know, I think there are ways to navigate how to eat well for less. And quick story, because I've said this many times, I think on the podcast, but I was in a film called Fed Up, went to South Carolina, one of the worst food deserts on, on, in America. They have, they call the retail food environment index, which is how many fast food and junk food stores and bodegas are out of healthy grocery stores. It was like 10 to one. And the family was massively obese. They lived in a trailer, a family of five,

• 1:08:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  disability and food stamps. The father was 42 on dialysis already from kidney failure from diabetes, right? Which doesn't usually happen to later. The 16 year old was diabetic, pretty much. It was like very overweight. And I went to their house, well, their, their, their house and I, I, I said, let's just cook a meal together. So I got this guide called Good Food on a Tight Budget from the Environmental Working Group. And I picked some recipes from there, went out the ingredients. And we made turkey chili. We made a salad with fresh, you know, vegetables and olive oil and vinegar, not some weird dressing that they had in the fridge. And they didn't even know what they were eating. It was all processed food. And, and they learned how to do it. And they lived in one of the worst food deaths in America. And they, I said, here's the guide, here's a cookbook.

• 1:08:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I left and I bought them cutting boards and knives because they didn't even have them. Everything was in a microwave where, you know. And so they didn't really even have things to cut vegetables with, you know. And I showed her, I just showed them the basic cooking skills and one, one meal. And they were like, Dr. Hyman, do you like eat like this every day with your family? Like, yeah. And we had, we had a great time. And a week later, their mother texts me back, we lost 18 pounds of family. A year later, 200 pounds. So father gets a new kidney, the mother loses 100 pounds, the son lost 50, gained it back, working at Bojangles. Ended up getting himself together and we, I coached him a little bit. He lost 132 pounds and went to medical school. First, not in first person's category, but he was the first person to go to college.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:09:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So I'm like, wait a minute, here's a family that's, it's extremely, in extreme poverty. Who's in one of the worst food deaths in America. And they figured it out. And it's not about inaccessibility. Now, they're probably not going to get a $70 grass fed, regenerative ribeye steak.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But, you know, they're eating real food. And that's the first step. And so, so talk about how, um, you know, it, it's not inaccessible. It doesn't have to be expensive and, and the real cost of cheap food, which is, you know, when you paid at checkout counter is not to actually the, the real cost of the food.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  No, like I said, it's a down payment, right? You're paying an environmental pollution that's degrading our topsoil. Exposure to chemicals, which we all are learning far more about, you know, 11,000 people, the farm workers, 11,000 people die from just handling pesticides, from pesticide poisoning, right? Antibiotic resistance, like these are. All costs that the companies, the mega corporations are are externalizing.

• 1:10:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And what is the cost of losing forty one million IQ points in kids who are the children of farm workers? I mean, what is the cost of that?

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  And the cost in the quality of life? These are all things that we are paying, but the corporations are just not paying and making it look like cheap food. But it is not cheap food. So like

• 1:10:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Somebody's paying, it just ain't them.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's our our tax dollars.

• 1:10:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Our tax dollars, our own, our our salaries, our, we are, we are the ones who are paying.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  We are paying. And so, like you said, switching to whole foods and making really simple meals. I think that's the top thing is like eating out less. We go out as a family of three, it's a hundred dollars. But we make a meal from ground, like a pound of ground beef. Then we just, we do it like our our beef pizza, we call it. And then we just add tomato sauce. And then we just have like potatoes that we slice and then we rub with tallow and then we cook them. And then we have a fermented food on the side. It's like a twenty five dollar meal.

• 1:11:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Like you said, for a family of three. And so I think eating more at home, and they do not have to be fancy meals. Mine are never fancy meals, but they're just whole food based. And then, of course, connecting, right? Getting to these companies that cut out the middlemen, getting to know your farmer and rancher. And you don't have to say, oh, where's your organic certified beef? Talk to the farmers. Sometimes they opt out of certifications to keep prices lower, but that they're doing practices.

• 1:11:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Rotation grazing, avoiding all the hormones. So that's good. The other thing that I really like is eating nose to tail. So a lot of meats are way cheaper and organ meats are some of the cheapest cuts that you

• 1:11:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And the most nutrient dense.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  And the most nutrient dense.

• 1:11:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, go to chat GPT or go to Google and say, please analyze the nutrient density of chicken liver or beef flavor versus the most nutrient dense vegetable. And you're going to see it's like um orders of magnitude more nutrient dense.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  It's wild. And you saw that Dr. Ty Beal paper, Priority Micronutrient Density, where he looked at the nutrients most people are deficient in worldwide in low and middle income countries. And the foods, heart, liver, kidney, spleen.

• 1:12:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Top of the list, goat, beef, eggs, and then one plant based food, the leafy greens. But if we can work organ meats back into people's repertoire.

• 1:12:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They're cheap.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  It's affordable. Yeah, it's like half the cost at least.

• 1:12:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Um, and so, and you can start small with just like a Primal blend, like you don't have to go hard and fast and just like saute.

• 1:12:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Basically like ground beef with a bunch of ground organisms, organs. So you don't really notice it. So you can make, you know, like sauce, meat sauce or things like that. And you don't have to like, or hamburger and you don't actually go, I'm eating organ meats, right?

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:12:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's what I do.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  That's what I do too, because I can't stand the taste.

• 1:12:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, I love chicken liver, but anyway.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  Oh, you do. That's much more palatable than beef liver. And you can soak it in milk. I mean, there are ways, but it, and then also just what we do too is cook in batches. So the beginning of the week, I make a big salad. I make a big soup. So even if the only thing you have time to do at night is to cook a high quality animal product, you have things ready, you're not wasting food, you're not going out at the last minute. It's kind of just setting it up yourself up for success. And then eating local and in season too, because again, you can, that often cuts costs because the average meal travels about a thousand miles. It comes from five different, you know, countries, most ingredients. And so if you can just eat local seasonal food, that's often a lot cheaper too. And get it Instapot, like a crock pot. And you can actually

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  throw these tougher cuts of meat, again, that are far less expensive in there and create a really delicious meal that takes almost very, very little time. And so there are ways.

• 1:13:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So this is great. So Autumn, you basically said, what's a meal on the day of life of autumn? I like, I like.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  That is my life, very low, low effort, high nutrient density.

• 1:14:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. So this morning, I, you know, I was, I had pasture raised eggs with just chopped up some onions and tomatoes and olive oil, salt and pepper, scrambled eggs with, it was just too, it took me like five minutes and it was a delicious nutrient dense meal.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. I use sardines and you mix in some honey mustard. You know what I mean? Like that can be lunch. It could be super simple, super cheap, those small fish also very, very affordable.

• 1:14:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So yeah. I mean, I literally able to make. Three meals in less than 30 minutes total.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yesterday, for example, protein shake in the morning, three minutes. Lunch was basically sardines with seed crackers and dinner was lamb chops. And I just cooked in a pan and put in the oven for a minute. I put sweet potatoes in the oven, which let them cook for an hour, but I didn't, you know, it wasn't there.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I stir fried bok choy with ginger, which took like three or four minutes. So basically I had this, you know, lamb chops and Japanese purple sweet potatoes and lots of ginger and bok choy, which is a cruciate vegetable. Then it took me literally like 15 minutes to make dinner.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So it's, I mean, I'm not making super fancy recipes. It's just, you know, and cooking is a skill we haven't learned. And, you know, we've been disenfranchised from our kitchens. The food industry's insinuated itself in there. I've told this story before, but Betty Crocker was not a real person. I thought she was a real person.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  I did too.

• 1:15:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and she was a fabrication of the food industry in order to actually insert recipes into people's lives that had, you know, take a roll of Ritz crackers and sprinkle it on your broccoli casserole, or put in one can of cream, Campbell's cream of mushroom soup into your blah, blah, blah. I mean, it was sneaky. And then, you know, you know, there was TV dinners and then it was, you know, this kind of got, it just kind of got worse and worse. So I think what you're saying is a really hopeful message, Autumn, is that one, you were sick and you got better. Two, the earth is sick and we can make it better. The animals are, we're eating, are living horrible lives and we can choose different ways to support a more humane way of, of raising animals. And, and that we can actually use food as medicine across the board and that meat isn't the boogeyman we thought it was.

• 1:16:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If we eat the right meat and that there are ways to do this in an affordable way. And all the links and all the things we're talking about, we're going to put them in the show notes. Everybody can learn more about you, you and your work. What you're doing, they can go to Paleo Valley, right? And, and learn more about that. Wild Pastures, there's a Instagram at Paleo Valley and at Wild Pastures. And of course, your website's wildpastures.com and paleovalley.com. So I think you're, you're an inspiration, Autumn. I love what you're doing. I've used your product for years. I didn't really, haven't met you until this moment, but I'm just so grateful for the voice and the way, way you have actually taken a stand in the world to create something that's going to improve the health of people. So thank you for what you do.

• 1:16:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Thanks for being on the podcast. Any last words that you want to share with the audience?

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, thanks for being my mentor from afar. I couldn't have done any of it without the knowledge that you disseminate. But yeah, I guess my message is just today, it's not always easy to be healthy, right? It's not something that we are given necessarily because of many different factors, but that I just invite you to, yeah, I hope that this inspires you to just take control where you can with what food you're consuming, noticing how that food is raised, because I think it's one of the most important things that we can do for the time, for our people, for our children, for ourselves. And I just hope that people find hope in that message.

• 1:17:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You remind me, just to end with a quote from Mother Teresa, you kind of remind me of, of this quote that she says, you know, "There are no great acts of love, there are only small acts done with great love."

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  Hmm, I love that.

• 1:17:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  And I love Fred Prebenzus too, that we're members of nature's communities.

• 1:17:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  And what we do to them, we do to ourselves.

• 1:17:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Exactly.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  Heal our soil, heal ourselves.

• 1:17:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Absolutely. Well, thank you for being on the podcast, thank you for what you do. And I'm going to keep following what you're doing and the studies and the research because it's so important to really illuminate what, what we really need to know about how food affects us. So thank you. If you love this podcast, please. When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand-selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients, and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, drhyman.com.

• 1:18:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Has the world's best selection of top-quality, premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So check out drhyman.com because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's drhyman.com, D-R-H-Y-M-A-N dot com. Share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my

• 1:19:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

• 1:20:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.