Deconstructing Conventional
Welcome to Deconstructing Conventional, a show fascinated by one simple question: How did we get here? How did what we call “conventional” come to earn that title? Is there a better way, and if so, what would it look like? This show is about deconstructing two things: Our individual biases, and the systems that run (or attempt to run) our everyday lives.
We do this deconstruction with an eye for where we can reconstruct something better that leads to flourishing societies, and robust physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. In short, this show is about questioning our assumptions and practicing systems-level thinking.
I’m your host, Christian Elliot, I’ll do my best to stay curious and humble. You do the same and we’re both bound to learn something. Welcome to the show. Prepare to have your thinking stretched.
Deconstructing Conventional
Sally Fallon Morrell - Timeless Nutrition Wisdom and the Fight for Food Freedom
This episode features the incredible Sally Fallon Morrell, a trailblazer in the nutrition field whose work with the Weston A. Price Foundation has made waves across the world. Sally joins us to share her extensive research and insights on the power of real foods, the importance of traditional diets, and why bone broth and raw milk should have a place in your kitchen. We also tackle the fallacies in Matt Walsh's recent comments on raw milk, offering a well-informed perspective grounded in Sally's decades of expertise.
We break down the role of animal fats in our diet, particularly focusing on the essential fat-soluble vitamins A, D, and K. Discover why getting these nutrients from natural sources is far superior to relying on synthetic supplements. Learn about the historical use of cod liver oil, its modern-day controversies, and how to balance these vital nutrients for optimal health. The episode also addresses the critical role of animal protein, emphasizing the need for moderation and cautioning against excessive intake which could lead to health issues. Hear about traditional diets that promote a balanced intake of both animal and plant foods.
Join us as we discuss the real food movement, what you can expect at the annual Wise Traditions Conference, and the urgent need to support local farmers. Hear about the challenges and triumphs in advocating for raw milk legalization and combating industrial food systems. We also delve into the importance of building a sustainable future of food through regenerative farming and local investments. This conversation promises to leave you inspired and equipped to make informed, healthier food choices for you and your family.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
- Matt Walsh on Raw Milk
- New Trends Publishing
- Weston A Price Foundation
- Real (Raw) Milk Finder
- Wise Traditions Conference
- Wise Traditions Podcast
- Find a WAPF Chapter Leader
- Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
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- Visit our website
- Compare our Detox Programs
- See our recommended products
- Download the Healing United PMA App
- Reverse Any Chronic Illness in Three Steps
Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 37. This is the sixth episode in my Sovereignty series and my guest today is one of my favorite people in the world. Besides her just being amazing and someone I want to adopt as a family member, I say she's one of my favorite people because I don't know where I'd be without her influence. I can attribute the health my family and I enjoy in large part to my guest, the lovely Sally Fallon Morrell.
Speaker 1:There is so much I could say about this wonderful woman. She has been a tireless warrior and role model for me about what it means to fight for what you believe in and have staying power while you do it. So I have a soft spot for Sally because she has modeled to me what it means to keep working to solve the next problem and the next problem and so on, until you really start to make a difference against a major injustice you see in society. For me, that injustice has been watching people unnecessarily live with poor health. Following her example, I just kept iterating and iterating over the years to find solutions to the very real problems that come up with clients as they work to reverse disease or stop pain or lose weight or heal their past and so on, and Sally has done that in the vast world of nutrition, from teaching what real nutrition is to starting a foundation, to hosting conferences, to supporting farmers and engaging in activism. Sally has been relentless at making a difference, both in the US and internationally, at helping people get access to real food, and I shudder to think what kinds of foods the population of the US would be eating if it were not for the work of Sally Fallon Murrell.
Speaker 1:This next point I have to make. I don't usually throw anyone under the bus in my episode introductions but in case you missed it, after I recorded this interview with Sally, matt Walsh got way out over his skis recently and made a totally uninformed comment about raw milk. When I read it I thought finally there's a debate Matt Walsh would lose easily. He is a smart guy and he has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to milk. He made the following post on X he said raw milk is disgusting, which I would take to mean he's never tasted it, because it pretty much tastes like melted ice cream. But Matt dug the hole deeper and went on to say this we live in a first world, civilized society and people are actively choosing to consume milk riddled with E coli and listeria. Pasteurization is not some evil sorcery, it just kills the dangerous bacteria. You morons, yikes. Those are some feisty words from somebody who usually does his homework. So, matt, I admire much about you, but you totally missed the boat on this one.
Speaker 1:If you actually want to have that debate, I can point you to no one better than Sally Fallon Morrell. She will run circles around you and it would be a mark of true integrity and humility to man up and ask her for that debate. I can promise you she's too kind to call you a moron after she puts your ignorance on display. So if your ego isn't too big or too fragile, I'd sincerely encourage you to reach out to her and have that discussion. If you want an introduction, you can reach out to me, christian, at truewholehumancom, and I'll make an introduction for you.
Speaker 1:For context, sally has decades not just studying, writing and teaching about nutrition, but she's the only person I'd confidently call a nutrition historian. She probably knows more about historical diets than any living person today. You can check out her well-researched tomes at New Trends Publishing, with titles including Nourishing Traditions, the Cookbook that Challenges the Diet Dictocrats and Politically Correct Nutrition, nourishing Diets, how Paleo, ancestral and Traditional Peoples Really Ate. She also wrote Nourishing Fats, nourishing Broths, nourishing Traditional Diets the Key to Vibrant Health, the Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care, and she co-wrote Eat Fat, lose Fat. And that's not all she's written. So, matt, it would be great having you on Team Reality when it comes to food, but in the meantime, try not to undermine yourself with uninformed comments about milk.
Speaker 1:Okay, with that said, here is one of my favorite episodes to date with the living legend Sally Fallon Murrell. All right, welcome everyone to today's show. It is my deep honor to welcome Sally Fallon Murrell. For those of you who don't know, sally is the founding president of the Weston A Price Foundation and the editor of the foundation's quarterly magazine. To give some context for how significant the foundation is, it has over 15,000 members and over 400 chapters worldwide. So Sally is also a prolific author, but probably most known for her best-selling cookbook, nourishing Traditions, with the cheeky subtitle, the Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats. And, personal note, I can say my wife and I have been using that cookbook for a long time. It is a tattered tome in our family.
Speaker 2:I love to see the tattered pages.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's got food stains on it. It's the back cover's missing. If it were a velveteen rabbit, it would probably be alive by now. It's really just a treasure in our family and largely responsible for the kind of the abundant health that my family enjoys to this day. So you really freed us from the clutches of the food guide pyramid and helped us find bedrock in a very confusing world of nutrition. So thank you for that.
Speaker 1:So a few other things I'll mention about Sally. Some of the culinary ideas that she introduced in nourishing traditions have stimulated the growth of a variety of small businesses, and so some of the foods you may be familiar with, like the nourishing foods, such as lacto-fermented condiments and soft drinks, including kombucha. She also popularized bone broth, animal fats, organ meats, genuine sourdough bread and real milk, which in other words is called raw milk. Just to give you one example of how impactful Sally's work has been, she founded the campaign for real milk in 1998, which you can find at real milkcom, and the website listed only 28 sources of raw milk in the United States back in 98. Today there are over 2000.
Speaker 1:As far as I understand there's three there's now 3000 different and hundreds more probably that are not listed, so 3,000 places you can get raw milk now and, despite the challenges in the dairy industry, raw milk is the fastest growing agricultural product in the US. Sally has also been instrumental in establishing the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which is a big reason why there's a flourishing network of direct farm-to-consumer buying arrangements, which we have participated in for years and are so grateful for. In 2009, Sally and her husband, Jeffrey started their own regenerative farm and, just to make her more amazing, she speaks English, French and Spanish. Of course she does, and she's a mother of four, has four beautiful grandkids and Sally.
Speaker 1:I need to catch my breath after reading all of that, because I guess I want to say from the heart thank you so much for what you've done for the real food movement. And from everyone who doesn't have the chance to say thank you in person, I just want to say thank you on behalf of us and if I had a Lifetime Achievement Award to give out, I'd give it to you. I wouldn't hesitate. You have done so much for me and my family, so it's an honor to have you for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:You know there's a lot that's wrong, a lot that still needs fixing, but even at our local grocery store now we can get pastured eggs, pastured butter and pastured meat. Yeah, this is a rural grocery store, it's nothing special, but it's there. And you know, people are waking up. Slowly, but people are waking up.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and you've been a tireless warrior for decades on it, which we'll kind of get into as we go. But and I probably need 10 hours to scratch the surface of every topic I like to cover with you, but we'll get to your insights on nutrition are so profound. But before we get there, I just want to back up and, for those people who don't know you or don't know your story, just tell us a little bit about yourself and your family. When did you start coming across the work of Dr Price and what got you interested in this world to begin with?
Speaker 2:Well, I think I was very lucky to be born into a family, I would say my parents were the original foodies. They were really interested in food. They traveled a lot and my mother was a wonderful cook, and when they came home from a trip she would make the foods that they'd eaten. You know, we ate cassoulet and we ate prosciutto, and she always used butter, and so we ate real food. We grew up eating real food.
Speaker 2:Now there were some things that were missing. We were not drinking raw milk, we were not getting cod liver oil or not really getting organ meats or fermented foods. Nevertheless, it was a good, solid, healthy diet of real food. And I like to cook. Just I like my parents cooked. I like to cook, and I cooked French food with lots of butter and cream, and I loved rich food. And in 1974, I read Dr Price's book and realized that the way I was cooking was basically how these healthy people ate. And so I didn't flinch in the teeth of all this propaganda about low-fat diets, and actually I was really concerned about the push to put children on low-fat diets. I just knew this wouldn't work for children. The children need rich, satisfying food. So then I got this crazy idea to write a cookbook that put these traditional foods into practical form for Americans, and I'd never written a book before. I didn't know what I was doing. My kids made fun of me. I mean, they tease me.
Speaker 2:They tease me. Mom's writing a book, you know. But the book took off much to everybody's surprise, especially my children's surprise. And then Mary Enig and I decided that we needed an organization to keep up with the science, to continue to educate people in as many ways as possible. So we founded the Weston A Price Foundation, and the rest is history. It's just people have often said to me you know you've created a monster and that's a nice monster, but there's no, I just there's no way to get out now.
Speaker 1:You know my calling yeah, well, and it's certainly. You've not shirked it, you've leaned into it. So when you set it up, did you have any idea?
Speaker 2:I love the work I'm doing and I have lots of wonderful, talented, smart help, um. But like you that I couldn't do anything without all these wonderful people who support me and work for the foundation our chapter leaders 400 chapter leaders I mean these are the greatest people. So it's been a lot of fun. I couldn't do it if it weren't fun and challenging stodgy old academics and challenging the status quo. This is fun. Yes, that's I highly recommend it as a daily activity.
Speaker 1:Right? Well, that's what this podcast is about. That's what I'm about as a person. So we are peas in the same pod here. So, okay, one of the things I love about the Weston A Price Foundation is just how much breadth and depth you guys have. So your topics you guys cover are food. Well, one of the things I love about the Weston A Price Foundation is just how much breadth and depth you guys have. So your topics you guys cover are food, farming and the healing arts, and then you have a three-part mission of research, education and activism, which just gives you such a broad purview and, to your point, you have to have a team to pull it off. But tell us a little bit about how the foundation came to that mission and how it plays out in the day-to-day operation.
Speaker 2:Well, we just worked on our mission statement. I don't really know where that phrase food farming and the healing arts came about, but it perfectly describes what we do. We're number one about food, and of course, good food has to come from the right kind of farming. And why are people searching for the right foods? Because they're having health challenges, and so that's where the healing arts come in. Okay, and then it's education, research and activism, and education is number one. But we do do some research. Over the years we've done some very interesting projects, and then the activism mostly has been focused on the raw milk issues, because this is a state by state project, it's not a federal government project. So when we get a chance to lobby for and I won't say lobby, we're not supposed to lobby, but educate about the benefits of raw milk in a legislature, we always have people to do that.
Speaker 1:Well, and I noticed your newsletters have local to the subscriber where there are relative or the relevant data as far as, like the prime act or different legislation that's attempting to be passed or not passed to protect local farms or put them in handcuffs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do look at federal issues and one of the big problems today with expanding the grass-fed farming movement, for which there's a tremendous demand, is that the lack of abattoirs, the lack of butchers where you can get your pigs and your cows butchered and cut up so you can sell it. And the USDA has been closing or making it very difficult for small local abattoirs to continue and, like down here in Southern Maryland, we have to drive three hours to have our pigs butchered and we have no place to get beef butchered.
Speaker 2:We'd like to get beef but we can't, so this has really got to be addressed. That's kind of the next big challenge, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and I'm confident the foundation has the people and the organizing capabilities to work on that.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, we are. We've been working with Thomas Massey, who will be the keynote speaker at our conference, and he's a wonderful congressman who's worked on this his whole time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, he's a great pillar of needed advocacy for so many good things. So, yes, right on. Ok, well, let's. Let's start with this. I'll go. Research, education, activism We'll kind of go in that order. I want to pick your brain about a few topics related to each of those. So obviously there's so many in the research lane, but we'll hit a couple of high points on fat and protein, because you may know, in my opinion, more about that than anyone alive. So one of the things you mentioned when we were dialoguing before this interview was there's currently a big brew ha ha going on related to vitamin A. So a couple of things, give us your thoughts on the vitamin A, but if you would kind of zoom out one frame and just put vitamin A in the context of the four fat soluble vitamins and where they're found, why they're important, and we'll, address vitamin A specifically.
Speaker 2:Right of Dr Price was that the diets of healthy, traditional people were very high in the vitamins that you find exclusively in animal fats and organ meats and shellfish is another place you get them. So these are vitamins A, d and K. The fourth one is vitamin E, which is in plant foods also, so we don't spend a lot of time on that. But the first three A, d and K they're in the very foods that we're being told not to eat. So this is real fun to challenge these people. And they're going to be higher if the animals are pasture, fed out in the sunlight. So this is why we advocate pasture-based farming and the real challenge is to get enough of these vitamins in the diet, in the modern diet. Not easy. You really have to do make a conscious effort yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So, um, it's very interesting about vitamin a because vitamin a is, to me, it's the foundational vitamin. Nothing else can happen in your body without vitamin A. It's the regulator of stem cells, it's the regulator of hormone production, it regulates fetal development in babies. You need it for growth, for healthy eyes, healthy bones, I mean it's just a fundamental vitamin. Growth for healthy eyes, healthy bones. I mean it's just a fundamental vitamin.
Speaker 2:And for this reason there has been a kind of campaign against vitamin A and indeed studies have shown that if you're getting a lot of vitamin A from processed food, so this would be synthetic vitamin A that is associated with osteoporosis because it competes with vitamin D. If you're getting too much vitamin A, it depletes vitamin D and that's fine. But we don't advocate processed food. We advocate real vitamin A from things like liver, and no study has shown that vitamin A from liver is harmful. From things like liver and no study has shown that vitamin A from liver is harmful. So we have been at the forefront of promoting the use of high vitamin A foods and getting them back in the diet. Cod liver oil is one. We're big cod liver oil fans.
Speaker 2:But I stumbled across a discussion the other day and I had no idea this was going on. There is an author and a website who is saying that vitamin A is poisonous. It's not even a vitamin, it's a toxin, and he recommends a diet without any vitamin A or any carotenes. Oh man, it's going to be really hard, and so I just was very surprised to find this, because we have been working so hard to vindicate vitamin A, and I don't care what he says. You do need vitamin A. It is a vitamin, and you need it from the animal foods, not from the carotenes.
Speaker 1:I know okay. Well, you mentioned cod liver oil specifically, and I know vitamin A and even D are something you can get from. So tell us people. Tell people why you're such a big fan of it. I know there's been some controversy around cod liver oil.
Speaker 2:Oh, there has been. Tell us a little bit about that. Nothing is simple in the field of nutrition.
Speaker 2:So Dr Price used cod liver oil in treating patients treating tooth decay. He had an experiment where he brought a nourishing lunch to school children who had a lot of tooth decay and a lot of health problems and part of that lunch was cod liver oil. And they did very well. They got better grades, their tooth decay subsided, and so forth. So cod liver oil was a recommended supplement by the medical profession up to the Second World War, and pretty much every American born before the Second World War got cod liver oil. You got it in school, your parents gave it to you, you got it in Sunday school because they, for one thing, that's what they had to protect children against things like measles. But they also recognized that cod liver oil was very important for growth and development. And that all stopped after the Second World War. Antibiotics took the place of cod liver oil. So, um, we've kind of brought cod liver oil back.
Speaker 2:But there's a couple of caveats though. Um, today most cod liver oil is manufactured by molecular distillation. This is a very harsh, uh temperature intensive process. It's heated several times and that kills the natural vitamins and they have to put synthetic back in. So there's only four brands that we know of that are not heated, that are extracted in other ways, and these are the ones we recommend and we list them on our website. The other caveat about cod liver oil was Dr Price always gave cod liver oil, which is a source of A and D, with what he called high vitamin butter oil, which is a source of vitamin K2. And you need all three of these together. So this is why we really warn against taking supplements. Okay, you know we have people out there taking 10,000 units of vitamin D a day. This will deplete you of A and K2 very rapidly, because you need all three together. And now they give you vitamin D and vitamin K together and that's going to deplete you of vitamin A real fast. Yeah, get these vitamins from food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, get these vitamins from food. Yeah, yeah, and I've made that point, and you are one of the few people I know who actually kind of talks about the idea that nutrients need each other in order to work. And we have this reductionist look at vitamins. Like, stand back everyone. Vitamin D is here and everything will be fine and there's no maverick nutrient that is by itself.
Speaker 2:They're dangerous by themselves. A perfect example is iron, and we're putting iron in everything and we're giving iron supplements to pregnant women and this iron is very toxic and that will deplete you of copper and vitamin A and so forth. Now you need vitamin A to absorb iron. You don't need much iron in your diet if you've got plenty of vitamin A. So yeah, it's just a mess. Just a mess.
Speaker 1:Right, well, take a minute or two and kind of for people who are waking up to the idea that fat, and especially animal fat, might be good, kind of break the spell that that fat is what makes you fat, or fat's going to clog your arteries, or that sort of nonsense.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, this idea that saturated fat clogs your arteries. This was dispelled years ago. The fat that they find in the artery clogs is mostly unsaturated fat, the kind that's in vegetable oils Very little saturated fat. In traditional cultures, what they prized most was the fat of the animals and, for example, they would only hunt animals at certain seasons of the year when they were fattest, and if they killed an animal that didn't have enough fat, it was called rubbish and it was thrown away. The lean meat in, let's just say in a buffalo was cut into strips, dried, salted or dried or smoked, and all the fat was rendered and that was spread on the lean meat. They never ate lean meat. They never ate skinless chicken breasts. The fruit was left on the trees for the birds to get fat and, by the way, we now know that the best source of vitamin K2 is bird fat, bird fat and bird liver. So if you're eating skinless chicken breasts, you're losing the plot there. It's what the dieticians recommend. But duck fat, goose fat, these are very, very healthy fats for us.
Speaker 1:Right on. Well, I think I heard you in a different interview mention something like you had your diet analyzed at one point Just to find out your ratio. Your diet was like something like 70% fat 70% of calories is fat.
Speaker 2:That's the diet that works for me. My health challenge is hypoglycemia, and if I don't eat enough fat I just can't function. And we know that the vegetable oils are not good for you. What I eat is butter and I cook in lard and drink whole milk and um, and that keeps me going, keeps my blood sugar from dropping.
Speaker 1:That's no, that's known science okay well, and there was, I think, a different interview you had mentioned. There was some somebody that had written in and he was. He loved fried foods and all he did was switch out his vegetable oils for lard and that was the only dietary change he made and he lost a lot of weight just with that one switch.
Speaker 2:I well believe it. In fact, I wrote an article recently I found this study where the researchers had gotten the rats addicted to sugar. They had the sugar water for the rats and then they gave them a diet that was 40% lard, and you know what? The rats didn't want the sugar anymore, and the researchers weren't happy about this. They said these rats on the chronic high fat diet is what they call the chronic high fat diet no longer wanted their sweet, palatable foods. And so what's the reason for this? Well, sugar raises dopamine, makes us feel better temporarily. But guess what Fat does too? Animal fats raise dopamine. So why not raise your dopamine with something that's good for you instead of something that's empty calories and depletes you of nutrients? Wow, this is so funny.
Speaker 2:A lot of people tell us so many people are addicted to sugar and it's very hard to get off this addiction. We've had a lot of people tell us when they get on our diet it doesn't happen immediately, but over weeks and months eating the high-fat diet real food suddenly their desire for sugar goes away and they don't need willpower to stop eating sugar, they just don't want it. So I think that's really good news for all of us.
Speaker 1:Right, and don't be afraid of fat is kind of the takeaway.
Speaker 2:Like lean into it, don't be afraid of fat and it will be good for you and will help you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:And as for gaining weight, as you said, this guy actually lost weight switching to lard. A lot of things in processed food make us gain weight, such as MSG. That's known in the science. But I'm also concerned about and especially women holding them to very strict standards, especially later in life, when you go through menopause. In traditional cultures, every woman gained weight. They got sturdier and stronger because they were had a different role and some of the women became hunters for their families and Fisher Fisher women. They needed to be sturdy and strong and I think I always say if you can wear your prom dress when you're 50, you're too thin, because women who don't gain weight at menopause become frail and wrinkled and that's not good.
Speaker 1:No, nobody likes saggy. Yeah Right, well, that's several good nuggets in there, so there you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, let me good news for women that the average size in America is size 14. You know you don't want to be a size 18. I understand that, but you don't need to be a size 10 anymore, and one survey found that the women who were happiest were the women who were size 14.
Speaker 1:There's something about a particular body image and it's like so.
Speaker 2:I find with clients often there's a tug between I want to be this size, but I like how I feel better at a different size, and that's precisely what you're talking about, like exactly, and I really fault the medical profession, for you know, the standard that you're supposed to weigh now is not the healthy weight at all. The insurance companies put your weight much higher for optimal health.
Speaker 1:And isn't there an uptick in cholesterol, sometimes related to that that is used to scare them back into submission with particular that that they is used to scare them into back into submission with particular.
Speaker 2:Possibly, cholesterol should go up as you age because cholesterol protects you against cancer, so you need more protection as you age and yeah, this whole cholesterol thing is a totally false path. It's the last thing we need to worry about, even if your cholesterol is very high. You just don't need to worry about it Now if your cholesterol is very low. Yes, that's a worry because low cholesterol is associated with cancer.
Speaker 1:There you have it, people. Okay, well, sally, one of the concepts that you I think you were the first one to articulate is the difference between a processed food and a denatured food. So I want to use that to frame protein a little bit, but tell us what the difference is, and then we'll zoom in on protein and maybe even milk specifically.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, we've always processed our food. We make bread, we make pickles, we cook. Cooking is processing, uh so? Uh, it's not. And that kind of processing often makes the food more digestible. It releases nutrients, it increases nutrients. When you make sauerkraut, you increase the amount of vitamin c and cabbage tenfold. So you only need a little spoonful of sauerkraut to get the vitamin c you need for the day. So that's a good kind of processing. We call that traditional processing. But modern processing denatures the food, adds toxins, reduces the availability of nutrients, and so this is the. I would call it industrial processing. That's not what we want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, and it specifically came in a lot in the, because one thing is a health coach and people in the exercise world, and the convenience foods comes in in the form of protein powders, and so talk a little bit about that process and what it's doing to the food or the protein specifically and what your thoughts are on it so, uh, we have, of course, anything you think is true.
Speaker 2:We're against this whole emphasis on protein. Now, we do need protein, we need animal protein and we need 10 to 20% of our calories as protein. You need a higher amount. If you're an athlete, if you're growing you know working out a lot. Yes, you need about 20% of your calories as protein. You know working out a lot. Yes, you need about 20% of your calories as protein.
Speaker 2:Your kidneys are not designed to deal with much more protein, and especially the concentrated protein in protein powders. And the other thing that protein does it depletes you of vitamin A. You need vitamin A to use protein and the more vitamin A replete you are. If you're taking your cod liver oil and you actually can get by with very little protein because you're using it efficiently and appropriately, then there are some proteins that are really denatured by processing, and we'll start with milk proteins. These are extremely fragile and when you make protein you know milk protein powders, whey powders they become twisted and warped and your body says I don't recognize this protein. This must be a foreign protein and has to mount an immune response or the kidneys have to work overtime and you can see where this will take you over time and you can see where this will take you. So we do need animal food, we do need protein, but not too much, and we do we.
Speaker 1:What we really need more of in the modern diet is the fats we're not getting enough of well, it's more representative of the idea that we can just take one nutrient, remove it from its context and eat it, and then somehow we're getting the benefit that we otherwise would.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dr Price found in Africa. He was able to compare different diets. One of people was mostly animal foods, one of people who had mostly plant foods and one of the people who had mixed diet. And the mixed diet people were healthier. They um were not quite as tall as the animal food diet, but they were really well um proportioned and very strong. And I just this is wonderful news. You don't have to eat an extreme diet, uh, to be healthy. You know the whole old, old-fashioned plate of meat, veg and carb. That's fine, it works.
Speaker 1:It just put a lot of butter on the vegetables yeah, I've heard you joking before vegetables that exist to carry butter vegetables are really fat because you put butter on them right, there you go.
Speaker 1:Well, obviously. So one of the foundations big. They're a big proponent of animal foods, and since it's such a popular topic these days, I don't want to miss my chance to ask you about it. So there's this trend of, I guess, what you could loosely call the carnivore diet, and there's obviously different versions of that. But what are your thoughts on the movement and what, if anything, might be some of the limitations of eating that way for a long runway?
Speaker 2:Well, there were some diets like that that Dr Price looked at, especially in the frozen north, where they didn't have, they didn't have plant foods, and they did fine. They had to have lots and lots of fat in that diet. That diet was 80% of calories is fat and they had special fertility was a problem in those all animal food diets and they ate thyroid glands and things, things like that, when it was time to conceive, and that that's because the carbohydrates are very important for thyroid function. So there you know, it was a diet that required special attention to certain aspects. Let's let's put it like that, the other thing that happened they would some of the men would go crazy in the spring and Chris Masterjohn believes it was because they were low on vitamin D at that time of the year. Yeah, okay, but most of the diets were mixed seafood, land animals, birds, carbohydrate foods, vegetables and fruits, and always with as much fat as they could get and eat.
Speaker 2:And if you have dairy foods, I mean dairy gives you such an advantage, because butter fat is the healthiest fat in nature. It's the fat for the growth and development of all mammals. There can't be anything wrong with it. It's a fat that's impossible to imitate. You cannot get all the wonderful fatty acids and butter. You know imitation food and it's got the fat soluble vitamins, especially if it's from pasture fed animals. It's just the perfect fat. It tastes wonderful and if you have access to dairy foods, you have access to this fat. The other advantage that people have with dairy foods is that they have calcium, and in cultures that didn't have dairy foods they had to pay a lot of attention to calcium. They ground up bones of fish and small animals and added that to their food and they tended to be shorter, not as tall, as the people who had the dairy in their diets. And we know that being tall is an advantage in life. People who are tall do better, they're more successful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay so generally speaking, not always, but generally speaking.
Speaker 1:Okay. So what I think I'm hearing is there's just there are some limitations to eating exclusively, you know, animal and or exclusively like. Some people even go so far as, like the only thing you eat is ground beef and salt.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, I think, and I'm telling you I'm talking as a mother you cannot raise a family on ground beef and salt. I'm sorry they will rebel. They'll go out and get junk food. They'll go from your puritanical diet right to the pornographic food. Nice frame right to the pornographic food.
Speaker 2:The number one requirement for a healthy diet is that your children will eat it and they'll be happy with that food and they won't need any other kinds of food. Yeah, Okay. By the way, one reason that people do go to this all meat diet is because they're having digestive problems with plant foods. And.
Speaker 2:I understand that Plant foods are very hard to digest and most of these special preparation techniques have to do with making plant foods more digestible. Grains are very hard to digest and all traditional cultures took steps to pre-digest the grains with soaking or souring or sprouting or or whatever. Nuts are hard to digest. They need to be soaked. Also, most vegetables need to be cooked and with fat. So um I I can see how they get to this spot and why the all-meat diet makes them feel better, but it's just not sustainable. You can't eat this way all the time. It's no fun. It's no fun. I mean, what's the fun of eating ground beef with salt?
Speaker 1:all day. Yeah, they're not the life of the party. Anywhere you go, that's your diet, for one. But yeah, I've known a few people who've done it for an extended period of time and they end up inevitably drifting back to more omnivorous ways of eating.
Speaker 2:Yes, for various reasons, that's the way we're supposed to eat yeah, I think you're right, you know I'll tell you something interesting about the eskimos. Um, when they came in contact with the europeans, the the one thing they didn't necessarily abandon their food ways, but they all adopted what they call bannock bread, and this bread made it in a cast iron pan and now it's considered like an original part of the Eskimo diet. They all eat this bread and apparently they just felt better if they had this source of carbohydrate.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that All Eskimos eat bread today, even if they're in a traditional lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Where they get their grain is maybe the question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know how they. I don't know the details of how they prepare it, but it seemed to be something that improved for them. It's just like in the South seas Once the pig was introduced. The tradition is they stopped being cannibals because the pig supplied the saturated fat and nutrients that they were missing in their native diet.
Speaker 1:Wow. Okay, let me close the loop on protein and protein powders in particular. Is there any protein powder that the foundation has found that they can actually get behind or recommend, or is it all just too?
Speaker 2:denatured. They're not natural foods, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Now, one thing that traditional people did do they didn't make protein powders, but they did dry foods. Now, one thing that traditional people did do they didn't make protein powders, but they did dry foods. One thing that was pretty widespread was drying shellfish. They would put the oysters out in the sun and when they were very dry they pounded them, made a powder and put the powder in little leather bags and they traded that or they just saved it to eat later.
Speaker 1:Wow, I did not know that.
Speaker 2:So that is a way of preserving Drying is. A lot of cultures did this, so we do get behind the desiccated liver and the desiccated oysters and these kind of powders.
Speaker 1:It's that whole food. It's not a particular macronutrient, it's the whole thing powdered, and that's the difference. Is what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Yes. Okay, and all the nutrients are there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've more than once jokingly said in reference to you, you've probably forgotten more about nutrition than I've ever learned, and I think you've just demonstrated that. So thank you for that. Okay, so that's kind of just a quick take on just some of the research and depth that goes on. So I want to switch to education. As far as the foundation's mission, so obviously what we're doing here is educational. You've been on countless shows. I also noticed you've been writing for the Ech times yeah your joke about I'm just taking a sabbatical from that.
Speaker 2:I just, I've got so much else to do, but I told them I'd come back to them yeah, well, I popular those articles they have been, and for good reason.
Speaker 1:I noticed in that one you had your joke about how to know when kale is ready to eat. You want to tell the listener about that one well, it's never ready to eat.
Speaker 2:You don't have to use kale. Kale should be cooked a long time. You know, in the southern greens. It's one of the greens they used. But you cooked it. You cooked it and cooked it hours, chopped it really fine and then you put turkey tails or back fat or always had fat with it. But people are making juice with raw kale. This, this is not good.
Speaker 1:No not at all no, okay, well, okay. So we've got just obviously the shows you've been doing that you also have an amazingly rich educational uh content on your website. If somebody stumps me with a nutrition question, that's the first place I go. I start looking and finding what things you guys have been doing.
Speaker 2:Everything we've ever published is on the website all our book reviews. You know, if we do 20 book reviews a year, uh, it's all on the website. We also have a very popular podcast. You know a lot of people would rather listen than read and we understand that. We have scientific articles, but we also have kind of soundbite articles. We have our little flyers, which have been very popular just like butter is better flyer and explaining why or dangers of. Let's see, no one's called my friend cholesterolesterol, so we kind of try to break it down so it's not too much information at one time. So there's lots of different ways of learning things. We're also working on a course, wise Traditions course. It's going slowly, it's going slowly, but we're working on it, yeah.
Speaker 1:It seems like any way that somebody prefers to consume information or to learn. You're working to meet them where they are.
Speaker 2:That's what we try to do. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:One thing I love about the foundation is that you are not beholden to any industry or institution. And you're not, I just get to go. Oh they're. They're not promoting or saying this because they've been paid to or there's a corporate you know bent here.
Speaker 2:Even our ads. We don't let people have big ads in our journal. The biggest ad they can have is a half a column and it's $240 a year and that's that's it. So we don't get any government money, we don't get any corporate money and we basically rely on membership. So I hope that your listeners will become members and receive our quarterly journal and support the work we do, and people have been very generous with us also, so we're very grateful for that.
Speaker 1:Well and your membership is low cost. It's not unapproachable. Tell people what it costs.
Speaker 2:It's $40. And if that is a hardship, you just let us know and we'll give you a $25 membership. But it's $40. And if you, if that is a hardship, you just let us know and we'll give you a $25 membership but it's $40.
Speaker 1:For how long? A year, not a month. So four great journals for that cost. So totally worth it. And I want to back you up on the success of the podcast. Hilda is amazing, that is. I actually had the honor of being on the show and it is literally my favorite podcast, just because of the breadth and depth of what she covers. There's so many good topics and several hundred episodes.
Speaker 2:Good interviewer, she keeps rolling along, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so many times she goes over the research, education activism and food farming and the healing arts. There's just so many different interesting topics. If people want to learn to be educated, it's a great place to go, so, but you also have your annual Wise Traditions Conference, so tell people about that.
Speaker 2:Annual conference. This year it will be in Orlando, florida, the 25th through 27th of October. We have 30 to 40 speakers every time, three to four tracks every hour. But what we're most proud of is we really do the food. This is a. With your registration, you get five meals of nourishing, traditional foods and we try to show all the components of a healthy diet. We always have lacto-fermented foods. We serve kombucha, we make sauces with bone broth, we serve pastured butter, we do organ meats, we do pate. Yeah, so you will. If you're new to this, it's a great way to be introduced to the way we eat. To see it's like it. I've got a funny story.
Speaker 1:So I took my family to the way we eat to see it's like it, I've got a funny story. So my I took my family to the conference in 2021 in dallas and it was beautiful, fresh air. Just because you think 2021, we're finally able to see each other and hug and there's no masks, and it was just like this room full of people. But we had the meal ticket and my son thought he was getting himself a big slice of chocolate cake and he sat down with liver took a big bite and he was like whoa, what, what is?
Speaker 1:this so yeah, it's a, that was a pattern interrupt for him. He's like, okay, I didn't see that coming, but yeah, if you've never been, it is such a great experience.
Speaker 2:You're with food, love, foodies and freedom, loving people, and there's just so many cool vendors, lots of wonderful people, and the people are very talkative and very friendly. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is. It's just like oh, I can speak freely here, my people, you guys get it. There's something energetic about being in that environment. So if you've never been, definitely got. My wife got to go last year too.
Speaker 2:And she just loved it. So it is, and we do have a children's program too.
Speaker 1:Yes, they love. The children really enjoy it.
Speaker 2:Tell them what the kids do in the program. Well, they have little lessons. They do crafts um, they go outside.
Speaker 1:They do lots of things you know, they actually, I think, made kombucha, and one of the ones, my oh, is that right?
Speaker 2:yeah, they did some food. Yeah, yeah, I think they made butter in one of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's one they did as well. Yeah, so there's just, it's a family-friendly event. It is your people waiting for you. Then there's just your energized being around, that many speakers who are approachable, and it feels not too big and not too small. That's a wonderful.
Speaker 2:And great, great exhibitors too, and we handpick exhibitors. They have to all be approved by us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, ok. So that's kind of some of the education, the content or a resource that you have just on your website and your other outlets with the conference and such. But the other big piece of the foundation's mission is activism. So to me this really kind of rounds out the significance of the work you do and why I think you've been so successful. So I guess we can research and educate all day, but if we don't have the ability to advocate against some of the attempts to centralize the food system, this might all be for nothing. So this podcast is called Deconstructing Conventional, and one of the things I love to deconstruct is the history and agenda of the food system so people can see what's going on and um.
Speaker 2:So my listeners is just how the food companies took over the teaching of nutrition, and to dietitians, of course, but also to the doctors. And the food companies cannot make money if they have to use animal fats they're too expensive. So the vegetable oils came in. I call them industrial seed oils. These are the most harmful thing in the modern diet, and they basically started using them and then, at the same time, with their advertising, demonize the competition. What's the competition? It's butter and lard, and they have created the impression that it's vulgar to use lard and that we should feel guilty. We should feel like privileged elite and feel guilty if we're eating butter. So that's been the agenda for many years. This is what we're fighting against. This is what we're fighting against.
Speaker 2:But, most of our activism has been in the field of raw milk, as you say. When we started out, well, there were 27 states that allowed the sale or allowed farmers to provide raw milk in some way. It could be retail. It could be on-farm herd shares or pet milk. Now we're up to 47 states. We have three more to go.
Speaker 1:And yeah, that's been a.
Speaker 2:And so that's been a lot of activism on the state level, in the state legislatures.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I want to even widen the frame one more. So my listeners are not unaware that food is just another aspects of our lives that are being weaponized as part of more of a globalist agenda. And there's a there's a push to get us to eat mass produced bugs and lab grown meats which are grossly made from bacteria and cancer cells and important fetal cells.
Speaker 2:Well, that's not going to fly. People don't like them. They, you know. They've put all this money into developing these foods and they, they flop. The only way you can get people to eat them is if they don't have anything else to eat, if they're in institutions. Yeah. And even then it's hard to get people to eat these foods.
Speaker 1:When they're even getting sneaky with trying to get mRNA technology in every aspect of food system. We even noticed organic Stonyfield Farm now has CRISPR gene edited bacteria in it and it's showing up in kombucha and there's even really, oh dear yeah, chr.
Speaker 1:Hansen, there's a patented bacteria now in some of the kombucha brands, so I started. We just have to keep paying attention to these things. So there's, there's a. I guess they're even trying to put vaccines into lettuce, like. So give us just, I guess, your perspective, because you've been at this so long, your seasoned perspective on where the real food movement is today and what are the opportunities and challenges and how do we expand our protection of real food.
Speaker 2:We have something called the 50% campaign, which is we urge everybody to spend 50% of their food dollar in direct purchases from grass-based farmers. So your eggs, your milk, your meat, your cheese, all these foods, and then your artisan foods you know the person who's making them sauerkraut, sourdough, bread at least 50% of your food dollar on these foods. Now, the rest of your food dollar. You can celebrate how small the world has become and enjoy rice and pineapple and all those things, but again, you need to be careful of where you buy from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's as much putting your dollar behind the food system you'd like to see, and there's an inconvenience and intentionality that goes with that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You have to. You know, make plans that are not quite as convenient, but you know you know make plans that are not quite as convenient.
Speaker 2:But you know, this is the future. The future is not processed food, and I think the industry is beginning to realize this. The future is real food that you buy from a real farmer and a real artisan processor. And the reason I say that with absolute surety is because the people who do not switch their eating habits to real food are going to die out. That's nature's way. I call it the natural selection of the wise. They'll die young, or their children will die young, or they won't have children, and that's really what's happening now. The birth rate is going down. So many people can't get pregnant and we'll see more and more of this because the processed foods do not support life and most people today are just kind of coasting on the good diet of their ancestors, and this can't go on for many more generations.
Speaker 1:Well, catherine Austin Fitz recently got the Price Pottinger Foundation to release that video they made about the Pottinger's cats. Have you seen that? Or you know? Oh?
Speaker 2:yes, that's a really good yeah. And the cats? When they were on a diet that was not nourishing for cats, in other words, a cooked food diet. By the fourth generation, there was no more reproduction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. In other words, a cooked food diet by the fourth generation. There was no more reproduction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So if you guys, have not seen that.
Speaker 1:You can search for the Pottinger's cast. I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 2:It's such a compelling video of what happens, generation by generation. A lot of us have seen that. Yeah, yeah, it's a very good video. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I want to ask you to kind of dream with me for a second. Put your your systems level generation thinker hat on and and you've lived this. So talk to us about the ways that regenerative farming maybe has matured in the last few decades and what it would take for that kind of farming to you know, recapture the word conventional. What are the milestones that we might go through so those of us like in the fight or with youth on our side, ready to go make change and build the parallel systems, what are the? What are we looking?
Speaker 2:for our 50 campaign is the place to start just join up and um spending 50 of your food dollar from direct um, directly from farmers. And if you're don't know where they are, call your local chapter. They keep a list of who the good farmers are in your area, where to get the raw milk and so forth. Uh, so that's one Um. I had something else in my head. It's gone away. Well, it just, I think there's, it's you. The only people who can change this are you, and you won't change it from the inside.
Speaker 1:They're too entrenched, they're too powerful but, you can change it by just not putting any money into their products yeah now I had another guest on a different topic but he said there's, we have to build a parallel economy.
Speaker 1:It's not like one the system is going to burn itself down in one day and really we're all going to move over it's. We're slowly going to migrate and build the other and, um, I guess I'm as interested to hear like, what have you learned? That are kind of the if we're looking at, you know, in the future we're looking back and say we did it, like, what were the success moments? There's obviously just shifting our food dollar. Are there any other budding things in the regenerative farming or the food scene that we could be looking to get behind that you think, if we put enough effort behind this is really going to push us over the hump.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know, one thing is what I mentioned earlier, the abattoir situation. So we, we, what we really need is wealthy investors to build these abattoirs for us People who really want to help and have a lot of money. They cost about $2 million to build.
Speaker 1:You're talking about the slaughterhouses where we can process them Small slaughterhouse.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people out there that could build abattoirs for the local farmer and feel good about themselves. They've really done something good with their money yeah well, that's another thing. Um the, the sea and the milk. You don't need as much of an investment to do raw milk. You you know you're not killing animals, you're just milking and it's an investment. But it's not like supplying meat.
Speaker 1:Okay, so if an investor wanted to do the slaughterhouse, we're looking at a couple of million. What's a reasonable cost to set up a raw milk farm.
Speaker 2:Oh, if you're just doing milk, you can do it for 10 or $20,000 if you have the land.
Speaker 1:There you go. So if you're somebody listening who has the means and you see the controlled demolition or the attempt to remove independent income from the food scene, you can be part of the solution in that macro way. That would help so many people and really just make this so-called great reset irrelevant. It's like no thanks, we're going to just, we have our food, we don't need you.
Speaker 2:But honestly relevant. It's like you know, thanks, we're going to just we have our food, we don't need you, but honestly, it's going to happen one way or another. It is the future of food, and that's good. This is going to happen, so let's join in and be some of the part of the solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, well, as we start to wrap up, so I guess the last question I have for you today is, just because you're such a remarkable person and your story is just an inspiration and encouragement to so many people, I guess I wanted to ask a couple of things. What keeps you going and, essentially, what can we learn from your story that can give us the reserves to take on big dreams and face our own individual challenges and not quit?
Speaker 2:Actually I'm a very methodical person Okay, person okay, uh, when I took um.
Speaker 2:You know, in high school you took that vocational aptitude test. The thing that they got for me was librarian. So I'm very methodical. I keep good files. I like a really um planned out day. I spend most of my time at my desk and um, you just have to keep at it. You know this is not a flash in the pan thing, you just have to keep at it. You know this is not a flash in the pan thing, you just have to keep at it. Yeah, with your, if you have an organization, you know they, they require tending and they're like a garden, you have to weed and, you know, put water in and so forth. It's, it's not something that just happens by itself. So, and I think the other thing is, you know I I really do not eat any processed food. Everything I eat is natural, cooked by myself. You know I don't eat any processed dairy foods, just raw milk or raw cheese. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and you've been successful enough and you've done so much. You've done so much, you've written so many amazing books and you have, I imagine, the opportunity to bow out of this fight, but you stay in it. So what? What keeps you in it? What drives you?
Speaker 2:well, I can't, I can't leave. Yeah, this monster has just got me by the, by the neck, but hey, well, I'm glad what I do it's a lot of fun yeah, I'm having a little fun.
Speaker 1:I can't ever imagine you retiring. I think you'll just endlessly go on. Well, not in a bad sense, just in a there's always another horizon, there's another milestone and there's people that you can encourage and you've done so much of it.
Speaker 2:So we definitely I've got some people in mind to take over, so yeah, All right.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you again for everything you've done. Give the listeners a little window into where to find your work, or anything else we haven't covered.
Speaker 2:So a few websites here. Our main website is westonapriceorg and our conference website is wisetraditionsorg, so that's where you can register for the conference. We also have a website where you can find raw milk realmilkcom. There's an interactive map. You put your state, your zip code in and you can find the raw milk near you. And finally, my own website is nourishingtraditionscom. I don't write very often for it, but definitely it's a sounding board for new ideas for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you've got so many books you've written too, so can people find those there as well.
Speaker 2:I have a new trends publishing. You can order them, but they're on that. You know that place where you can get books online.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're all there.
Speaker 1:That one place. Yes, that not nameless place. Yeah, we won't.
Speaker 2:Barnes and Noble has them also.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, great. Well, sally, thank you so much for taking the time today. It's been a delight having you on the show and we really appreciate your work. Thank you for having me.
