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about Thorne, go to episode 323 of the BehindTheShield
podcast with Joel Totoro and Wes Barnett. Welcome
to the BehindTheShield podcast. As always, my
name is James Geering, and this week it is my
absolute honor to welcome back onto the show
world -renowned holistic farmer... Author and
speaker, Joel Salatin. And the last time Joel
and I spoke was during the COVID pandemic. So
I wanted to circle around again, especially after
the conversation of making America healthy again,
and revisit so many of the areas that were completely
disregarded after that event. So we discuss a
host of topics from bolstering local farming,
regenerative agriculture, food in our schools,
exercise, community, and so much more. Now, before
we get to this incredible conversation, as I
say every week, please just take a moment. Go
to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe
to the show. Leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five -star rating truly does elevate
this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find. And this is a free library of
well over 1 ,100 episodes now. So all I ask in
return is that you help share these incredible
men and women's stories so I can get them to
every single person on planet Earth who needs
to hear them. So with that being said, I welcome
back onto the show, Joel Salatin. Enjoy. Well,
Joel, I want to start by saying, firstly, thank
you for coming back for the third time. Our first
conversation, you were one of my very first guests,
which I'm honored. That was like nine years ago
now, pretty much. Second time, you were one of
the first people I reached out to during COVID,
realizing that the ownership and the ability
for people to start working on their own health
was not being discussed in August 2020 when we
last sat down. I mean, there's such an interesting
kind of lineage as far as our conversation. So
firstly, I just kind of rounding back to the
beginning of this intro. Welcome back to the
Behind the Shield podcast today. Thank you. It's
a delight to be with you. So jumping straight
in, the last time we spoke, August 2020. I could
see the writing on the wall as far as the autonomy
being taken from people, the impact of their
own underlying health during that virus being
woefully under discussed. And then, you know,
the bottlenecks and some of the things that we
saw as far as food delivery, slaughterhouses,
you know, all those kind of areas. So before
we kind of dive into some of the modern day things,
I'm going to give you the microphone. What have
been the takeaways? As we rounded off the end
of the pandemic, I feel that there was a lot
of sweeping under the rug rather than going,
okay, what did we do well? What didn't we do
well? What can we learn from this? Oh, wow. That's
a broad question. I guess for me, the number
one takeaway, and I'm certainly not alone in
this, is we have, I think, an unprecedented in
modern times, an unprecedented... disrespect
might be too strong a word, but a questioning
of venerable institutions, especially government
institutions, but even doctors. I mean, the latest
surveys show that 67 % of people don't even trust
their own doctors. That's one of the most...
what venerable trust relationships there is,
I mean, next to marriage and things. And so for
people to, for over half the people, way over
half the people to actually admit that they're
questioning their doctor is a powerful thing.
And so what that does, it's not just in the health
field, it permeates everything then. Do you trust
any? official government narrative. And when
you have a basic societal breakdown in trust
of leadership, that we're not getting a straight
answer. We don't trust the economic reports.
We don't trust the labor reports. We don't trust...
the narrative of what's going on in a foreign
country. We're getting ready to, you know, send
a military there or, or aid there or, or break
ties or make treaties or, you know, all of these,
these societal decisions are under this cloud
of, of, of duplicity within the culture. And,
and that, that. can be seen as negative it can
also be a catalyst for major major change and
so you know um obviously here in the u here we're
seeing major changes with maha with trump's election
with rfk jr coming in uh and and literally a
what i call a homestead tsunami uh we we are
just seeing you know, a proliferation of an exodus
back to the land, home gardening, backyard chickens,
home cooking, you know, sourdough starter and,
you know, sprouts on the windowsill and these
sorts of things. And the entire alternative health
community, chiropractic, acupuncture, herbology,
essential oils, everything that's considered
quackery. And so while it's a societal upheaval
to have that kind of spasm occur, we also know
that it is the disturbance that... that facilitates
the next innovation, whatever innovation is.
You don't have innovation without disturbance.
And so innovation becomes a catalyst for new
things. What's been interesting, you know, normally
the conversation will be whatever the administration
is now, they'll be like, oh, well, because if
they did it the way that my, you know, Democratic
or Republican Party did it, then everything would
be fine. And I think. that I'm seeing now, COVID
span both sides, the obesity crisis has spanned,
you know, numerous, you know, decades of both
sides, is I think that people are starting to
see the organizations and the humans that actually
are doing, you know, are serving, are selfless
servants and have the best interests of the nation
in mind. We all are seeing who they are, and
then we're seeing, conversely, the ones that
aren't. And whether it's, you know, the defund
the police or the vaccines or, you know, whatever,
you can insert whatever it is, the things that
people were told versus the actual impact and
the reality are two different things. And I'm
seeing that the cracks are starting to form in
the overall, you know, whether it's government,
as you said, whether it's governing bodies. I
mean, a good example, the FDA approved OxyContin.
and refused to approve MDMA -led therapy. We're
starting to see now where the roadblocks are.
And then I think the backstory, where that money
is coming from, another one, CBD, the fact that
CBD is having such resistance, but you can take
all kinds of antidepressants from your doctor.
Yes. Well, what this is doing, I think that the
bigger societal... societal whatever evolution
in this is that people are beginning to feel
autonomous, that there is a huge yearning actually
to own myself, to own my own decisions, own myself
and to vet for myself. And that's a good thing
because propaganda runs narratives. And if people
aren't thinking, then they're easily led to places
that may not be very good. And so all of this
distrust, mistrust, and questioning is, I think,
moving to a more It is moving us as a culture
to a more independent, spirited thinking that
maybe, you know, maybe I maybe I can take care
of myself. Maybe I can do more for myself. And
of course, the government's bankrupt. I mean,
we're you know, we're now spending eight. billion
a day just in interest on the national debt.
It's growing. And neither party seems at all
interested in handling the national debt, which
can only be handled not by raising taxes. They're
already as high as they can be. But it's going
to be handled by cutting government spending.
But those all become sacred cows because we now
have almost more people on the government teat
than we have actually taking care of themselves
and paying into the system. So, you know, when
you have that many people dependent on these
government programs, it's a serious economic
drain on the country, on the culture. And those
people vote. So, you know, I don't know where
initiatives will go. I mean, if I were making
the rules, I would say nobody can vote unless
they pay more to the government than they receive.
I would make that a new stipulation. We're not,
you know, our founders were scared to death of
democracy. They called democracy mob rule. And
and essentially democracy says, you know, whatever
the majority says goes and there's no there's
no protection for the minority, whereas a republic,
a republic is a representative type of of option.
So, you know, I would see I would like to see.
You know, originally it was you had to own land
in order to vote, but we're not an agrarian society
anymore. So I would move that to, you know, you
should you should have you should you should
pay taxes in order to vote. If you're not you're
not paying taxes, then, you know, you don't get
to vote. That's the new stakeholder. That's the
new country stakeholder benchmark. And so, you
know, I would be happy to to see something like
that. But, of course, I would, you know, as a
libertarian, I mean, I would like to see. 90
% of whatever the government does just eliminated
and let the market, let people, let individuals,
let localities and states take over what they
want and let go what they want. I mean, another
interesting one would be to have people. when
you do pay taxes, be able to designate your taxes.
So my taxes go to, you know, if you like the
military, you can designate it to the military.
If you like education, it can go to education.
If you like, you know, Medicaid, it can go to,
you know, Department of Health and Human Services.
You know, maybe you can't, we couldn't, it'd
be cumbersome to do it in every little department,
but certainly at a cabinet level. And that way
you truly have people. funding or defunding what
they don't want. I mean, voting with their tax
dollars and saying, I want this department, I
don't want this department. Wouldn't that be
an exciting thing? And then the departments would
have to vie for taxpayer dollars, like the grocery
store has to vie for your grocery dollars. That
would put some accountability in the system.
So there's a lot of interesting ways to go, but
I'll tell you, the entrenched power, the status
quo, the entrenched power brokers, they will
not go gently into the night. They're kicking
and screaming on everything. I mean, even the
notion that we shouldn't pay for Coca -Cola in
nutrition programs. I mean, the pushback on that
is severe. What I've said as far as reflecting
on COVID is, you know, we talk about autonomy.
I think autonomy was taken away. And if you could
write down how could you ensure that people are
most vulnerable for this virus as it's through
the nation, it's exactly what they did. Well,
don't let them see family or friends. Don't let
them see daylight. Allow them to get fast food
delivered to their home and alcohol if they want
it. And then they can binge watch Netflix. So,
you know, we couldn't have done it worse. And
what I said is if they really was about the health,
which, you know, this is what was touted to us,
then over the last few years, we would have seen
PE programs restored in schools, you know, arts
and sports bolstered. Local organic farms subsidized,
you know, pedestrianization of some downtowns,
you know, everything that would get people eating
cleaner food, moving better. I mean, putting
real food in schools, especially. And we didn't
see any of that. We saw a complete resistance.
So, you know, please jump in. Yeah. Yeah. Can
you can you imagine? Can you imagine, James,
if if if Anthony Fauci had stepped to the microphone
one day and said, OK, America, here's the deal.
Here's the deal. we're going to try an experiment.
We're going to do an experiment for one month,
one month. Everybody's, you can do this. Trust
me, you can do this. All right. So for one month,
we're not going to eat any junk food, halter
processed food. We're going to, we're going to
cook from scratch, use all our kitchen gadgetry
and stuff. And we're going to, and we're going
to use our crock pots, Instapots, you know, blenders
and slicers and dicers and, and ice cream makers
and bread makers. And we're going to, we're going
to cook from scratch for a month. Number two,
We're all dehydrated. We're all going to drink
half a gallon of water a day. We got to get our
bodies hydrated so they'll function better. Number
three, we're not getting enough sleep. So everybody
is going to commit to getting eight hours of
sleep a night. If you can get eight and a half,
that's even better. But at least eight hours.
You're not going to stay up late watching TV.
We're going to get eight hours of sleep a night.
Next. uh we're going to uh we're going to get
get out in the sun we're going to get in the
sun for 20 minutes a day number next we're going
to sweat for 20 minutes a day you can walk you
can jumper jack you can whatever you want to
do but sweat sweat is the number one detoxing
and get your heart pumping get your get your
lungs moving you know let's move we're going
to get 20 20 minutes of sweat a day and um and
uh let's see what else what else could we do
um uh we can oh, I know what we can do. We can
make a list of all the people that you hate,
all the people that you just despise, make a
list, but write them down on a list and then
forgive them. Just forgive them. And we're going
to let forgiveness run our lives. Can you imagine,
can you just imagine if that kind of language
or experiment had been promoted at the you know,
at the pedestals of power, you know, what would
have happened? I mean, I'm convinced that we
would have had, you know, half the issues and
we would have come through it much, much better
than we did. Absolutely. Well, you talk as well
about the financial side. It's been interesting
from the fire service point of view. We've had
a downward spiral and it's been a recruitment
crisis and they're having to pay overtime because
they don't have enough first responders. And
so you look downstream at the millions, tens
of millions, if you're talking about L .A. and
some of these places, hundreds of millions of
dollars. wasted every year just on overtime rather
than investing in creating a healthy work week
you know a livable salary for our first responders
and it's that false economy and you look at you
know our the health of the nation i mean billions
and billions and billions of dollars wasted because
we haven't invested in the health of our people
i think a good you know comparison is the nhs
when i was young sadly it's been butchered now
but the whole premise was We take care of our,
you know, whoever needs it at the time in the
UK, whether it's people with, you know, that
are pregnant and having young children, whether
it's the elderly, whether it's someone fighting
cancer. But that only works if you forge health
in the rest of the country. So they're not draining
your tax. Now, here we have a profit based health
care system or disease management system. And
so now we're at the point where we have over
70 percent of our population or obese or overweight.
So even from a financial point of view. There's
such a drive to make our nation healthier so
we can free up that that money to to put in education
and first responders and, you know, all the other
things that we've talked about. But this, I think,
is again spans both sides of the aisle is we
have got fatter and sicker and there is a dollar
amount attached to every single illness in this
country. Yeah, that's exactly right. And and
so curative. that brings up the economics of
curative care rather than preventive care. Generally,
certainly here on the farm, I would much rather
spend a few extra dollars keeping my cows and
my chickens healthy than trying to combat an
illness. If I scrimp on the nutrition or the
sanitation or the stress, maybe I've got them
too crowded or whatever. But if I scrimp on that
and they all get sick, the curative bill is going
to way outrun what would have been a preventive
bill, you know, at the front end. And so the
question, you know, I think there are two issues
here that are really strong. Well, how much has
current policy incentivized negative behavior
or dysfunction? And of course, you know, we subsidize
corn, we subsidize soybeans, wheat, sugar cane,
cotton and rice. We subsidize these things. And
so the price of all these things become extremely
low. And and then, you know, the government does
a food pyramid that puts, you know, Twinkies
and Cocoa Puffs on the on the foundational bottom
of the food pyramid. And so so you so you have
this one this one thread or one issue of government
involvement, government intervention, whether
it is whether it's in, you know, health. food
eating, farm, what produces on the farm. There
are all sorts of fingers on the scale, if you
will, that government policy intervenes in the
system. The other part of that then is, the flip
side of that coin is, how do you create a population
in which the average person is making a good
decision, a good choice? How do you stimulate
Good choice. And I think the answer to that is
you have to make people responsible for the outcome
of their choice. You can't stimulate discernible
or discerning choice. And then have a helicopter
safety net that says, well, whatever you choose,
we'll you know, we'll fix it. We'll take care
of it. It's all going to be OK. And you can't
have those two. And so and so. At the at the
risk of sounding, you know, harsh or cruel or
uncaring for me, the way to develop. responsible
decision -making is to exercise decision -making
by having people have, have to, you know, live
with the outcome of their decisions. All right.
You want to drink three Cokes a day and get diabetes?
Well, have at it, you know, and when you get
diabetes, there won't be a government program
to help you. You know, you're going to have to,
and you know, as soon as that happens, People
start making better decisions. I mean, think
about children. I mean, this is a I don't know
if you've got children. You know, we've raised
a couple of children. And yeah, and you you'll
never have a responsible teenager if you don't
let a toddler make some decisions and live with
the consequences. Oh, you know that. that ball
bounced back and hit you in the head. Yeah. I
mean, okay. So balls do that, you know, and,
and you can, and you can learn those kinds of
things. But if you, if you never give a kid a
ball to risk bouncing and hit him in the head,
he's never going to know that a ball can bounce,
hit him in the head. And so, so, I mean, that's
a very, you know, maybe a silly comparison, but,
but I think that's how basic this is. You, you
cannot engender. exercise decision -making muscles
in a society when you don't allow people or don't
put the onus on people to live with their decisions.
And I think that those are two related but very
different things. what should the government
intervene on or the the perverse incentives that
the government uh seems to place place in a marketplace
it's it's it's perverse but then the second part
is the you know the um the incorrect trust that
people place in this in this safety net And it's
very much, as we've seen it now, it's a very
misplaced trust. If you trust the government
to tell you what to eat and what medications
to take and how to live, you're not going to
be a healthy person. Yeah, especially again when
you see some of these representatives are supposed
to be in charge of health and they didn't even
own their own. Like that's a big red flag, you
know. That's right. Well, one of the things that
I try and be very fair about, and again, this
is bringing it out so that we can address this.
I grew up on a farm in England. My dad was a
veterinary surgeon. You know, we ate our own
meat. We had orchards. We had vegetable gardens.
You know, it was 60 acres that I got to play
on as a kid. So my exposure to movement, to suffering,
you know, to the circle of life, to, you know,
what vegetables look like, you know, what, you
know, creating a whole food meal looks like.
was very different than a young boy that grew
up in the Bronx who only had a basketball court
that had gangs on it and then a bodega to learn
about their food. So obviously, one of the best
places that we can take that place then and help
those kids that just don't have that exposure
to the most holistic of upbringings is school.
But you look at... the food that's served in
schools that obviously the the dismantling of
recess and pe and all these other things where
they're outside and playing as well but also
you know soda machines in schools and the processed
food that comes in on a giant shiny cisco truck
these children aren't being exposed to nutrition
and and all the positive things in that system
either so if you were a king for a day What are
we had a pandemic? You know, it got everyone's
attention. It was completely disregarded. We
jump in a time machine. We go back to 2020. What
are the changes that we should be making in our
schools so we can create this environment for
good decisions in the first place? Well, yeah,
just to be perfectly transparent. I don't I don't
think education is the government's responsibility,
so I wouldn't even have a public school. But
if we let that lie, that's too weird for the
average person. So if we let that lie and say,
well, what should we do with school lunches?
Well, I think the first thing would be to increase
the daily allotment. And of course, the problem
is the school lunches go off of the... the nutrition
program, the official FDA, you know, USDA nutrition
program, which is anti -meat, anti -good food,
and the schools don't even cook anything anymore.
And so there have been numerous school districts
who have gone to scratch cooking here, and I've
run into some of them, and they actually make
it work. I mean, I ran into one in Florida, for
example, where they used grass -finished beef
in the school lunch program. And what they did,
they sold the top end of the animal to patrons,
to parents, and then that left enough of the
ground beef in the school lunch program. They
just used the ground beef because they didn't
serve ribeye steaks for the kids in school. It'd
be nice if they did, but they were happy to have
the ground beef, all right? And this gave the
bottom end of the cow, then, who was able to
come in under the per -plate cost. I mean, the
quickest way to move it forward is, number one,
to demand scratch cooking again. I mean, when
I was in school, I went through public school,
and my wife, Teresa, and I were talking about
it the other day. When we were in school, I mean,
when I started my chickens, when I was 12, 13,
14 years old, i took i served two schools two
public schools in our area right here with all
their eggs and i would go weekly and take eggs
in i mean shell eggs to the to the school uh
you know the cafeteria well if you're if you're
using shell eggs you're cooking from scratch
something you know you you are making something
from scratch and i mean they had bags of potatoes
they would They would peel potatoes and make
mashed potatoes. They made bread. I mean, school
lunches might not have been five -star gourmet
Michelin rated, but they actually cooked in -house.
But what's happened is the school lunch program
has been taken over by Coca -Cola and Cisco and
these... you know, Marriott food services and
these kinds of outfits. And it's become essentially
a dumping ground for sell -by stuff. The same
thing is true in prisoner lunches. I was picked
up at the airport by a guy who was an administrator
at a prison down in Alabama. And I asked him
what the per plate cost was for a prisoner's
food. And it was 60 cents, 60 cents a plate.
I said, how can you possibly create a meal for
60 cents? This is ingredients, not labor, just
ingredient cost. And he said, well, he said,
we. We get all the stuff that the sell -by date
goes out of and all this, and we're basically
a salvage operation for, you know, for Tyson
and, you know, Del Monte and whatever when, you
know, if they have a bunch of damaged green beans
in a can or whatever, you know, we get that kind
of stuff. And so the fact is that the public
meal things, whether it's prisons or schools,
Interesting. A lot of similarity between those
two things. That's another talk for another day.
Those we don't have in our culture, we don't
have an understanding of value there. I mean,
let's take the Iraq War. The Iraq War, when we
were in the Iraq War, we spent... Every day in
the Iraq War, looking for weapons of mass destruction,
which didn't exist, we spent as much per day
in the Iraq War enough to double the plate cost
of every public school meal in the United States
for a whole year. That's how much we spent per
day. So, you know, when you start looking at
the figures, you realize there is no problem
on Earth. that isn't being fixed because there's
a lack of money. It's a difference of allocation.
And this is, of course, what RFK Jr. is saying.
I mean, I was just in D .C. a couple of days
ago at a kind of a Maha consortium. It was interesting.
They were saying that for one trillion dollars,
now that's a lot of money, a trillion dollars,
that if that were moved from government health
care to the prisons and the school lunch programs,
it would trade itself off. In other words, the
health consequences would more than... the health
consequences or the lack of needing medical care
would pay the extra meal costs of getting actual
food in the school lunch program. So there's
a lot of ways to skin this cat, whether you just
mandate it, whether you make a trade -off. whether
you cut the budget for one thing i mean i mean
goodness um you know right now the the u .s subsidies
for corn soybean meal and and wheat and sugar
cane and cotton and rice uh those subsidies um
i i haven't i haven't done the figures right
very quickly here but if you took all that money
together those subsidies right there would double
i'm sure would double the per plate cost of every
public school thing. So what we've got to do
is we've got to be willing to sacrifice some
sacred cows for the sake of protecting our children,
which is exactly what RFK Jr.'s agenda is. And
he's being excoriated and crucified daily for
actually suggesting some of these things to take
on the entrenched interests. I would love to
get your perspective on what he's trying to do.
I was a, you know, a huge fan before, you know,
when he was independent. And from I've said this
on here, you know, there was this big kind of
maha push pre election. And then I feel like
his part of this his message. really hasn't been
disseminated on the national stage. Okay, here's
what we're doing. Here's the initiatives. Here's,
you know, the obesity crisis. Here's some of
the solutions we're proposing, et cetera, et
cetera. So you obviously have the kind of lens
that's able to kind of storytell, you know, what
are the initiatives that he's trying to push
forward? And then what, if any, are some of the
roadblocks that he's finding at the moment? Yeah,
well, one, I mean, one initiative for sure. I
was just looking for that here. One initiative
for sure is to do this kind of health trade -off.
And what happens when you start investing in
wellness instead of investing in sickness? is
you start this wonderful domino effect of good
things. And so, I mean, think about the domino
effect of eating nutrient -dense or proper food.
Well, chances are that's going to patronize farms.
a different kind of farm than the industrial
ag complex fewer chemicals maybe smaller scale
maybe local maybe more fresh uh but but you start
doing that well the the now the um the association
between the microbiome and the and the the brain
and the bodily function what what we're seeing
these then suddenly um kids are are more emotionally
stable. You start school gardens. I'm a big fan
of school gardens and let kids get out there
and work in the dirt, find earthworms, all sorts
of things. At one time, we had a juvenile home,
a kind of a halfway house here in our county
for emotionally disturbed kids that were so whatever,
dysfunctional that they couldn't be in a classroom.
So they would go to this, it was a boarding situation.
They would go there every week and live in this
house. Well, the guy that was in charge of the
food, was a guy like, like I believe. And he
said, I'm going to go scratch. I'm going to go
local, blah, blah, blah. Make a long story short.
He started buying all of his meat from us and
with no hormones, no nothing in it. And he told
me that, and he took sugar off the table, no
sugar, no candy, no sugar. And he said, every
week by Friday. Those kids were completely normal,
settled, look you in the eye. They didn't bounce
off the walls. They were fine. They'd go home
with their weekend. Parents would fill them up
with Coke and candy. They'd come back Monday
bouncing off the walls. He said, we don't have
an emotional problem. We've got a food problem.
And I'm sure that that story could be repeated
a thousand times around the country. And so this
domino effect of when you say, okay, what can
we fix? we can't stop every divorce we can't
stop every single parent household i mean we
know those have an effect too we we can't what
we what we can do is what are we buying well
we're buying food so let's start there let's
start with the food and then then just like just
like chemical agriculture has unintended externalized
costs i think when you When you put attention
on food value and you start dealing with nutritional
wellness with kids, you have a domino effect
of unintended, unexpected, positive consequences.
So now the kids sit there, you know, they can
learn. Their brains work better. They have better
self -esteem, self -worth. And the farmers that
are being patronized for this, they become more
successful, which then helps the rural economy,
which then brings back, you know, a functional
economy in some of these, you know, very, very
rural areas. And then we maybe have... kids that
want to, instead of they want to leave the farm
because there's no opportunity, they want to
stay on the farm because now there's an opportunity
for a salary on a farm. So then we deal with
the successional crisis in farms where the average
farmer is 60 years old. We need to drop that
down to 50 and then down to 40 over time. And
so you have this domino effect. And so sometimes
I think there are so many things that we could
do that we become paralyzed to do anything. Because
there are so many things to do. And I think sometimes
if we back off and just say, what's one thing
we can do? Yes, let's not worry about all those
things right now. What's one thing we can do
and just focus on that? I think a lot of times
we have threads that go out throughout the fabric
of society that we can't even imagine. But we've
been successful because we laser focused on one
thing and said, let's concentrate right here.
It's funny because the push that I've been doing
for several years now is the firefighter work
week. It was 56 hours a week. This recruitment
crisis, they're working 80 hours a week. And
so even though it's not low -hanging fruit, it's
actually one that took some courage, some spending
up front to save a lot of money down the road.
um that was the the you know the herd of elephants
in the room as you were so then once you fix
that and they're sleeping well well you know
the weight gain starts to decline the mental
health starts to improve the relationships get
better because mom or dad are actually home when
they're supposed to and then you know there's
this beautiful kind of vicious circle after that
going back to what you said with with the uh
the sugar i was a camp counselor in america before
i even moved here and uh i remember the first
year i was there I was kind of friends with another
English woman who was a school, the camp nurse.
And after dinner, there was all these kids lined
up around the infirmary. And so I went in, I
was like, hey, you know, what are they all lining
up for? She said, oh, it's Ritalin. And I'm like,
what's Ritalin? And she said it was for ADD.
And I'm like, well, what's ADD? And mine came
from England. None of these even made sense to
me. And she told me, you know, what it was. And,
you know, a lot of these kids were, you know,
from. from wealthier families and so they would
have a lot of stuff sent to them and every evening
after dinner they would have what they call canteen
where i forget what it was like two or three
things every day sodas candy bars etc and you
know there you are you've got you know cisco
delivered all the food they had lemonade or you
know all the stuff that with their meals and
even though at least those kids were offloading
a lot because they were doing you know dance
classes and coming down to the waterfront where
i worked you know they were there their fuel
was all this process shit so i saw it even you
know apples to apples with this line of children
that i know just needed focus and some exercise
and some good nutrition and instead they were
given a chemical for it yeah well this is you
know this is the whole thing that um that rfk
jr is trying to is trying to punch through i
mean that the the um you know think about the
the 50 billion dollars in the the health health
research budget and it's all gone to try to find
find cures for all these problems and and his
whole point is let's let's take some of that
research money and let's let's establish why
we have these problems let's not let's not make
band -aids let's decide why we have these problems
and if we if we can determine why we have these
problems now you and i james you know we we've
got our intuition i mean you know for for me
it we don't need a million dollars of research
hey listen here's my here's what i would do if
i was king for a day Here's what I would do,
and it comes from a story in California. I was
out speaking at a conference in California, and
the school district asked me to come out to their
farm. It was a middle school program, and they
had this three -acre farm, and they had these
two ladies that ran the farm, and every week
the kids had to spend half a day, and they rotated
the classes through half a day at the farm. These
ladies, they put in a worm box. And this thing
was like, you know, eight feet long, three feet
wide, three feet deep. It was like a great big,
you know, a coffin for Frankenstein, you know,
like a great big oversized coffin. And worm bed.
Kids love worms. I mean, kids are, worms are
fascinating. You look in there and I mean, it's
all this, whoo, you know, it's all this activity
going on. Well, so the teachers, the... Two farmers
said, OK, kids, your assignment for the weekend
is on Monday, bring some food. So Monday, the
kids come and they bring their Twizzlers and
gummy bears and, you know, Hot Pockets and Velveeta
squeezable cheese and, you know, all this stuff.
And they put it into one end of the worm box.
And the two farmers, they put in, you know, an
apple and a pork chop and a banana and, you know,
I don't know, a biscuit. homemade biscuit. And
so anyway, the week later, so they put it all
in. A week later, the kids come, and they're
all prepped for this. So they go charging up
the hill. They flip open the door of the box.
They look in. They pull out the gummy bears,
the Twizzlers, the Velveeta squeezable cheese,
whatever. They pull this stuff out. They go over
to the other end. There's no pork chop. There's
no apple. There's no banana. There's nothing,
no biscuit. And so the obvious question was,
well, what happened? And so the two farm ladies
used it as an object lesson to query the kids
and say, all right, why would you want to eat
something that worms won't even eat? So, James,
here's what I would say we need to do for research.
Let's go find two or three young agronomy types,
research. agronomy types and let's uh set up
a farm you know it wouldn't take more than i
don't know you know five acres or so with uh
200 worm beds 200 worm beds and everything that
americans want to put on their soil or in their
food gets a one week worm trial So red dye 29,
you know, monosodium glutamate, you know, apples,
whatever. You know, you put that in there and
the worms have one week to decide, you know,
do they like it or do they not like it? And everything
the worms like gets a green light. Everything
the worms don't gets a red light. And we let
the worms, because see, the worms don't, they
don't get lobbied. They don't watch TV. They
don't see advertisements. They don't vote. So
they're completely, you know, disparate, you
know, unprejudiced, unbiased onlookers here.
And so we let the worms decide what we put on
our soil, what we put in our food. Let the worms
decide. And we become a completely worm vetted.
farm food program. It only costs a couple million
dollars. Just think, if we did 200 a week in
a year, we'd have 10 ,000 in two years, 20 ,000.
Within three or four years, we could test every
single chemical input thing, whatever, in our
whole food and farming system, and we'd get a
green light or a red light and take all the lobbyists,
all of K Street, all the whole shoot, take it
all out, and we just let the worms decide. I
love that. It's funny because you're kind of
alluding to something that I say a lot, and I'm
paraphrasing a quote that someone told me once,
but don't wait for science to prove what you
already know is true. And it's the same with
the fire service. People are like, well, we need
to do studies to see if a 42 -hour workweek is
healthier than 56. Take a step back and just
think about what you just said, that you need
a study. That an extra 24 hours is going to make
a first responder healthier physically, mentally,
relationship wise. No study is needed. It's common
sense. And I think this is the problem is, you
know, I've seen this in my profession. People
almost deliberately put these roadblocks, these
hurdles of, well, I need to see the data on things
that we don't. Because for millennia, we've seen
civilizations eat or move or whatever it is,
the certain way. But then you can flip it around
and say, but I do have data on how not to do
it. how not to deal with COVID, how not to work
first responders because our graveyards are full
of the results. Right. That is so good. Yeah.
The thing is, it's so simple. It's so simple
that it's elegant and the bureaucracy, the system.
can't stand simplicity. It's got to take the
simple and make it complex and then oversimplify
the complex, you know, to where instead of the
soil, the soil biota of, you know. billions and
billions of microorganisms. All it needs is nitrogen,
potassium and phosphorus. You know, we just dump
NPK on and wow, we got food. And so the system
tends to simplify the complex in an arrogant,
disrespectful way. And then it comes in and it
takes the obvious simple thing, like, you know,
intuitively and makes it unbelievably complex
with a million focus groups and big research
budgets and agenda driven science. You mentioned
microbiome. If I want to have a one hour conversation
with my dad, who's a retired veterinary surgeon,
I just have to talk about poo and off he goes.
And that's been his passion project for a long
time now. He used to do fecal transfers on horses
years ago. It's amazing. Like the animal studies
on diabetes and all these things. A lot of people
don't realize a lot of the human medicine advances
originally came from the veterinary medicine
world. Talk to me about your kind of. evolution
of your understanding of the gut biome, because
it seems like whether we're talking about mental
health, obesity, I mean, all these different
areas, it's becoming more and more evident that
the gut health is a big part of this, which obviously
is tied directly into what we're talking about,
the quality of food that we're getting. Absolutely.
Well, there are more and more studies now, as
you know, of numerous diseases, you know, from
autism to other things. where the where the the
the singular commonality in this particular whatever
this malady is the commonality is there's there's
something that there's a missing critical bacterial
there's a missing being in the microbiome and
so uh without getting too far in the in the bacteria.
Let's just say that all the research is pointing
to the healthier... Let me back up. The more
diversified the microbiome, the healthier it
is. The maladies that we're seeing are all microbiome
missings, missing things from the microbiome.
There's a fascinating work being done right now
by the Bionutrient Food Association, founded
by Dan Kittredge, where they're taking hundreds
of beef samples and subjecting them to 150 nutrient
analysis. And they've done hundreds of these
now. And fascinatingly, there's only one thing
that has shown up consistently that affects.
the nutrition of a beef. It's not breed, it's
not climate, it's not organic or inorganic or
age or anything that people tend to market. The
only thing that they found that transcends everything
else and is consistent is how many different
types of plants did the cow eat? That beats,
whether it's organic or not, that beats how old
it is, where it's grown, was it stressed or not,
all those things. How many different plants did
the animals eat? And so if we take that to the
human, not that people are going to eat us, but
if we take that idea to us, we realize how simplified
the modern diet has become. If you read, for
example, Dolly Madison's cookbook from James
Madison when he was back in colonial days. Or
Martha Washington's, George Washington's wife.
They both made cookbooks. And if you read those
cookbooks, 80 % of the stuff that's in them,
we don't even know. They're plants and vegetables
and fruits and things, berries that we don't
even have. We don't even know. And you begin
to realize very quickly. how diversified that
diet was in the old days. In Australia, the Aborigines
ate something like a thousand different things.
Native Americans ate a huge variety of things.
Why? Because they ate seasonally and they had
their mainstay, bison, but the bison were eating...
a prairie that was 60 grasses and 100 weeds.
And so the bison had this tremendous diversified
enzymatic and bacterial option feeding into the
microbiome. And so one of the quickest and most
efficacious way a person can diversify their
own microbiome is to eat animals. that have a
diversified microbiome, that are on diversified
pasture, not just corn and soybeans, but on a
very diversified perennial pasture where they're
ingesting, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 different
kinds of plants throughout the season. That's
the way that we can up our microbiome diversity
game faster than actually adding those. different
components to our actual diet because some sometimes
those things are hard to find hard to get another
thing that my dad was just recently talking about
i don't know if you've had this come across your
radar as well was they were seeing a lot of efficacy
as far as using diverse herbs when you're cooking
And again, you know, you look at the simplicity
of our food, that's not normally a thing, you
know, it might be dried herbs, maybe, but, you
know, real homegrown herbs, if you have, you
know, someone who maybe doesn't have access to,
you know, the kind of food that you run at Polyface,
for example, that even that just growing, you
know, some of your own herbs and using that in
cooking can can help stimulate some of the gut
biome that are missing. Oh, absolutely. That's
one of the fastest ways. Herbs in the pasture
field we call weeds. Most of the herbs are weeds,
but they have healing properties. I mean, dandelion,
plantain, mullein plant, wild carrot. I mean,
these are all things with medicinal qualities.
And fortunately now, there are neat little hanging
pvc like pvc pipes with pockets built in and
you can pack that thing full of compost hang
it on your patio and you can grow quite an assortment
of herbs uh just you know on a porch and um and
that kind of that kind of um uh infrastructure
that kind of infrastructure is now very available,
it's very cheap, and it's created an opportunity
to participate in this that we haven't seen for
a long time. You talked about local farmers a
little while ago. This is one of, again, the
real travesties, I think, is that there's still
all these mega farms getting all the subsidies
and what should have... come out of COVID when
we saw this bottleneck of supply and the understanding
that, you know, the hormones and the antibiotics
and the pesticides and all these other things
are detrimental to the human's ability to resist
diseases. I was expecting there to be a big kind
of, you know, 180 and now a lot of local farms
would be subsidized and would be raised up. But
again, that wasn't the case. So what needs to
happen? So as you said, we can empower local
farms to create, you know, clean vegetables,
clean meat, not only from a local economy point
of view, inspiring young people to get in agriculture.
And we have. agricultural schools where I live
here in Ocala, Florida, but also so that the
local population can get the clean food from,
you know, 10 miles away rather than 3000 miles
away. Oh boy. You've just asked a question that's
near and dear to my heart right now. And the
one that I'm putting literally all of my, my
whatever argumentative clout on. And so I've
called it the Food Emancipation Proclamation.
Now, those are strong words, but we have an enslaved
food system to an oligarchy. Bernie Sanders is
right, to an oligarchy that is a cabal between
major industries and the U .S. government. All
food safety regulations are size prejudicial.
In other words, it's easier to comply if you're
big than if you're small. And so right now, we
need a food emancipation proclamation to allow
consenting adults freedom of choice to engage
in transactions neighbor to neighbor. to give
their microbiome agency, I'm using all sorts
of powerful phrases here, without asking the
government's permission. If you want to come
to my house and I'm making a bunch of tomato
soup and you say, wow, that's great. Could I
buy a quart of that and take it home? I can't
sell it to you. That's illegal. If I'm making
a chicken pot pie and you want to... buy a pot
pie because you've got guests coming, you don't
have time to make extra food for them, I can't
sell it to you. Essentially, we have the entire
food system locked down with regulations that
preclude small operators from entering the marketplace,
from getting a seat at the table. And we desperately
need to allow Neighbor to neighbor transactions.
I'm not saying, you know, to sell into Walmart
or ship to Sri Lanka or Vietnam or export. No,
I'm just saying neighbor to neighbor. If you
want to come to my house as a voluntary consenting
adult, ask around, look around and make a choice
on the fuel for your microbiome. You should be
able to do that. We have choice in the bedroom,
choice in the bathroom, choice in the womb, but
we don't have choice in the kitchen. And if we
would allow this kind of transaction to happen,
there would be an explosion of entrepreneurial,
neighbor -to -neighbor, community -oriented culinary
and direct farm marketing that would, in fact,
chip away at the oligarchy way more than a government
agency that will be captured by the oligarchies
they're supposed to. they're supposed to control
which is exactly what's happened over the last
hundred years the pushback of course is well
somebody will get sick what if somebody gets
sick from getting bad food you know what our
hospitals are full of people getting sick from
government approved food so um so let's let's
experiment let's try let's give people some freedom
to actually make their own food choices, farmers
the freedom to be able to sell to their neighbors,
and let's see where this goes. If everybody gets
sick, well, we can stop it. But what if suddenly
the price of good food drops 30%, which it definitely
would, it would drop 30%, because 30 % of the
cost of local food is trying to squeeze that
local food through a size prejudicial regulatory
system that doesn't recognize. the kinds of cleanliness
and innovative processes that smaller outfits
can do. It's a lot easier to keep a kitchen clean
that's churning out 10 gallons of tomato soup
a day than churning out 5 ,000 gallons of tomato
soup a day. Scale does matter, and it's just
easier to keep things cleaner when the butcher,
baker, and candlestick maker are embedded in
a community at a neighbor -friendly scale. So
I can talk a lot more about this, but essentially
I'm concerned that the Maha movement, a lot of
the political clout and equity that the Maha
movement is riding right now will be siphoned
off in trading one regulation for another. Well,
instead of regulating this, let's regulate that.
Or instead of spending money on this, let's spend
money on that. I'm very concerned that we'll
end up all quibbling and squabbling over what
we're going to outlaw or subsidize or whatever.
And so what I like to do is instead of... Instead
of dealing with the issue from the top down,
from a government standpoint, let's simply deal
with a freedom issue and create an underground
railroad, an actual viable underground railroad,
so people who want to exit the current system
can exit easily. And maybe nobody wants to be
free, all right? I'm ready to be taught, okay?
Maybe nobody wants to be free. But maybe 30 %
of us want to be free. And we should be allowed
to take charge of our own health destiny and
chart a parallel universe through an underground
railroad. Well, as a paramedic, I haven't responded
on a single person who's struggling with whatever
issue they're struggling with, aside from obviously
someone who's had a healthy, healthy lifespan
and is just dying of old age now. Everyone else,
I guarantee you that none of them. would turn
away a do -over where they could actually live
a healthy life. And you see this, you know, whether
it's people just carrying a lot of weight, whether
it's someone walking around with an oxygen tank
and a nasal cannula, whether it's a teenager
who's, you know, just been using video games
and phones and their spine already looks like
a question mark. I mean, this is because, you
know, the environment that they've been exposed
to has betrayed them ultimately. And I think
one of the rhetorics that you hear over and over
again is that, oh yeah, but healthy food is expensive.
And I want to get your take on this, but from
my perspective, it's like, A, it's not. If you
go to the farm, you're going to find it's a lot
less expensive than you think. But secondly,
that's because all the support is not going to
our farmers. It's going to these mega farmers.
So can you talk to me about, because I think
that the revolution that's happening is they
vote with your dollar, as they say, and you're
seeing that even in grocery stores and even fast
food being forced to kind of at least pretend
like their food is slightly healthier. But I
think I'm even seeing the tiny, tiny ray of light
of kindness, compassion, and community starting
to show its head again. And I'm working on a
TV show from a book that I wrote last year that
I hope is going to fertilize that, to use a farming
term. But talk to me about how do we really push
on that so that we go back to local healthy food
being the cheaper alternative of the two as well?
Yeah, well, First of all, I disagree with the
cheap food policy. I think any sector of the
economy where the goal is cheap will also create
a cheating economy. Now, that doesn't mean I'm
interested in everybody spending their whole
income on food, but I do think that as a national
policy, We worship at the altar of cheap food
and we pat ourselves on the back that Americans
spend less per capita on food than any other
culture in the world. We also spend more per
capita on chronic non -infectious disease abatement
than any other culture in the world. Perhaps
those two are related. But number two, ultra
-processed food is not cheap. I was looking the
other day, Lunchables. Lunchables are $14 a pound.
that's not cheap you can buy i mean you can you
can buy a sirloin steak from us you know uh basically
at that price and so so ultra processed food
actually is is fairly fairly expensive and it
so if you buy if you buy single you know if you
buy whole foods you know a squash a dozen eggs
you know a pound of ground beef if you if you
buy that the whole food, I'm not talking about
whole foods, I'm saying whole food item, and
use your culinary gadgetry to prepare it, you
can actually eat very cheap. Listen, right now
today, our chicken here at Polyface is cheaper
than boneless, skinless breast at Walmart. But
you got to get a whole chicken. All right. Oh,
yeah. You got to get a whole chicken. Now you're
going to have bones and you're going to have
broth and you're going to have dark meat and
all sorts of. Yeah, you sure are. It's not going
to just be skinless, boneless breast. Skinless,
boneless breast is a luxury item. It's a convenience
luxury item. And so and you know, you can get
chuck roast instead of ribeye steak. And and
you can get you can get on a pork. You can get
ham roast and and shoulder. rather than tenderloin.
I mean, everything has its top and its lower.
And if you buy bulk, if you use your kitchen
to preserve, prepare, and package the food instead
of having it all pre -prepared, pre -packaged,
and pre -preserved, you're going to eat much
more nutritionally. It'll taste 10 times better.
You will compete very well on price with other
things. And quit spending food money on stuff
that's not food. Coca -Cola is not food. Snickers
bars are not food. I mean, the price per pound
of Snickers bars is more than our boneless, skinless
chicken breast, for crying out loud. And how
many people buy Snickers bars? I was in New York
several years ago doing some speaking, and I
asked my hostess to take me to the green market.
So these are the most expensive. This is the
most expensive farmer's market in the world.
We went down to the green market. I said, take
me to the most expensive potato in this market.
So, oh, I know just who the guy is. So she took
me. We wound through the people and went to this
guy, and he had this. beautiful credenza basically
of of like 20 different varieties of potatoes
there were yellow ones and red ones and blue
ones and green ones so i'll you know look through
the and the most expensive one was a blue peruvian
fingerling potato for a dollar ninety a pound
now that's pretty expensive for a potato but
across the street was a supermarket with a with
a a an 80 -foot alley an 80 -foot aisle three
shelves high of potato chips that were $4 a pound.
So let's get it straight. You know, are we actually
buying fuel for our bodies or are we buying convenience
and cheating our own bodies with expensive alternatives
that are for convenience and don't even feed
us value? by themselves. I couldn't agree more.
Well, I want to be mindful of your time. I know
you've got another meeting that you have to go
to after this. Are there any parting words you
want to leave the audience before we close out?
Yeah, my parting words are, you know, we live
in a crazy time. And if you made a list of all
the stuff that you're angry or frustrated or,
you know, irritated about, sometimes there's
catharsis in making such a list. Okay, so you
can make your list. All right. But at the end
of the day, take that list. And what's all the
opposite of that? And can we begin chipping away
personally and corporately at the invert of those
things that frustrate us? Because what we really
need to devote our attention to, rather than
being anti this, anti this, angry about this,
angry about that, is to create hope and help
when society becomes hopeless and helpless.