Transcription
So, when women eat a meal and we have what's called a food baby, that little bit of bloat after eating, is that not normal?
No. Day after day, having a food baby, having that food sit in your stomach or having pain, that's not how we're supposed to live.
You were struggling with IBS and actually were able to completely heal yourself in 30 days.
I was so fit, but I was not well, never overweight, and yet my mental health, uh, my physical health, I looked pregnant after meals, and I kid you not, in 30 days, I was like, whoa.
[Music]
For years, Dr. Autumn Smith lived with crippling anxiety and relentless digestive issues until she was told, like so many others, "There's nothing you can do." But instead of giving up, Autumn took one last shot at healing, and it changed everything. Within just 30 days after doing this one thing, her IBS was gone. Her anxiety lifted, her energy surged, and for the first time in years, she felt fully alive again.
Today, Autumn is a functional nutritionist and the co-founder of Paleo Valley, one of the cleanest, most nutrient-dense snack food brands out there, rooted in whole foods and regenerative farming principles. Find out what is so special about bone broth protein powders, why most beef stick brands at the store are gross and not as healthy as you think, why your kids multivitamin may not be doing much for them, and the secret label that you should be looking for on your meat.
Watch this on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. Thanks to Yrifi for letting us film in their studio due to a family of elves who are squatting in mine. Please welcome Paleo Valley co-founder Dr. Autumn Smith to Culture Apothecary.
What is the one thing you wish every mom knew about getting their kids to eat better?
That it doesn't have to be really hard. That you just What we do is we pretty much have healthy options just at home. And then we have fun food Friday or we have other times that we highlight foods that he might want to eat outside of those parameters. But I think just when it's available, it's the choice, right? It becomes an easier choice.
What's fun food Friday?
Fun food Friday is where cuz our little guy, right, we're obviously we have a pretty food like whole food diet ccentric, but he gets a little bit embarrassed because oh, I don't get to eat all the foods that everyone else does. So whatever he wants to eat on Friday. So, he just says like, "Today I want this and you go get it."
Oh, yes. On Fridays.
So, what if he says McDonald's or something?
Well, yeah. And he has said McDonald's one time, and we did. I went and got him a gluten-free bun at a store because he has gluten bombs, and we let him eat that. I don't want him to not ever have the experience, but I don't also want it to be his norm.
That's an interesting little tradeoff there that I haven't heard anyone else doing. I know that um I don't know if you know who Kate Johnson is, nurse Kate Benny Johnson's wife on social media, but but Kate, they do something where Friday is like pizza ice cream Friday and they walk to like a local pizza parlor, get ice cream, and they just have whatever that conventional pizza is. So, kind of similar so that your kids don't feel too restricted because I think that's a criticism that a lot of moms in the more like whole food crunchy movement get is that you're setting your kids up to fail because they're going to go crazy once they're allowed to choose other options to eat once they're out of the house.
Yeah. And luckily, I lived that life cuz my mom was rather strict with me. And what my sister and I would do was sell flowers or rocks that we found in her yard and we'd go buy like eight candy bars and eat them or hide them under our bed and just binge binge binge. And then when I got to school, uh, three cookies were a dollar for breakfast. And so, yeah, that I've lived that. I know what that's like. So, I want him to have, you know, feel some sense of control and that he will be able to experience all the other things, but also not to make it something that he does every every day or
What are three ingredients in, you know, so-called healthy snacks that mom should really look out for?
There's one ingredient called encapsulated citric acid and it's the industry standard when you're making a meat stick and it's made from seed oils and then they coat it in actually it's made from GMO corn and then they coat it in ultrarocessed seed oils and then they put it in the stick and then it just melts into the stick and it drops the pH and preserves it but it's just it remains in the stick and it's a small amount but it's used and it's just labeled sometimes citric acid or encapsulated citric acid. That's actually why we made our beef sticks um and had something totally different. But that's one of the ingredients. Um of course we have seed oils just in general. That's something I always avoid. And just sugar. It's everywhere. You know, you can have things like BHT carcinogen. Those are also often in meat sticks. Gluten is everywhere. There's just so many different ingredients. But I think encapsulated citric acid is the one that I would watch out for.
Are a lot of organic snacks really still junk food in disguise?
Yes. and plant-based. Do you know what I mean? They take, you know, organic doesn't necessarily mean healthy if it's still ultrarocessed, right? And a lot of organic still has, you know, organic forms of sugar, organic seed oils. I mean, it's better because we're avoiding the use of pesticides and things like that, but I don't think it means healthy.
Yeah. And you can get caught up and like you see the front of the box and it says organic, it says non GMO, and so you don't think to still turn it around and look.
You can't always take what's on the front of the box at face value. Literally, you never should. No, that's like the first date, right? You're getting the picture of what everybody wants you to like the best foot forward right there. But if you turn it around, you have to look at all the ingredients too and the breakdown of those ingredients and which ingredients are first and even, you know, like how much sugar does it have, how much protein does it have. I think you have to do a little bit more digging. And if you just go whole foods, I know that's hard sometimes because we live in a convenience-based society, but whole foods are always going to be, I think, your best bet. And that's what I try to like build our diet around at home.
You were struggling with IBS and actually were able to completely heal yourself in 30 days.
Yeah, it was insane.
How did you do that?
I started having IBS when I was 10 and no doctor knew what to do with me. They just told me to take Bino and Gasex, which I did to no avail. And um and then I started having mental health issues as I got into my teenage years because we know there's a link between the gut and the brain. I didn't understand at the time. um anti-depressants, you know, I got all of the traditional treatments and kind of got into so much pain emotionally and physically that I then turned to substances. Actually got kicked out of my parents house before I even graduated high school. I was really struggling, still made things happen. and I was dancing professionally, moved to LA, and my story really changed when I met my husband because though I was able to kind of like still make things happen and go to school and become a fitness trainer, um I was really suffering. And he could see past that facade, you know, and was like, whoa, you live like this? And I was like, I do, you know, I always have. I I didn't have any hope. And he is a problem solver. got on the internet and saw people were having luck with diet and I was like that's so silly. You're ridiculous. But you know at that time it was like back in 2007 people weren't really talking about food causing digestive issues. So we just took the processed foods out of our diet. That's all we did. We were living in LA. We shopped at the Pasadena farmers market. We got high quality animal products and I kid you not in 30 days. I was like whoa what was that? All my digestive issues were gone. And it took about another year for me to really figure out the diet that would improve my mental health. There's a few other pieces to that puzzle. But yeah, after a year I was like, "Wow, this is profound." And so I was working as a celebrity fitness trainer and I love Tracy Anderson and had so much fun with that job. But I thought, I got to go back to school and really understand what just happened and how that was possible when nobody else offered me any hope, you know, as a youngster.
So you went to school and then were you figuring out the correlation of totally removing ultrarocessed foods healed me like that's what the problem is.
Yeah.
It was well because I was always fit. I mean I was like working as a celebrity fitness trainer. I was so fit but I was not well. I was still struggling never overweight and yet my mental health uh my physical health I looked pregnant after meals and my husband couldn't believe that I would endure that pain. I'd wake up in the middle of the night with debilitating pain. My skin was breaking out. I felt like such a fraud, you know, I was trying to be out there as a fitness trainer and like kind of someone representing health. It's just I didn't have it.
So, when women eat a meal and we have what's called a food baby, that little bit of bloat after eating, is that not normal?
No. I mean, it's probably it can be, I guess, if you're, you know, still eliminating re regularly and it's just like, oh, you have a little bloat, you know, maybe you ate too fast, maybe you have a food that you can't break down that well, maybe you need to digestive enzymes, but no, day after day, having a food baby, having that food sit in your stomach or having pain, like that's not how we're supposed to live. That's not how it's meant to be.
So, when you healed your IBS, did all of your mental health issues also clear up?
Yeah. Well, I it did after about a year. What my missing piece was because when I went to Whole Foods, I was still hitting the fruit juice pretty hard, the dried mango, you know, I was kind of my blood sugar was still all over the place. Um, but then once I did a version of low carb, have you heard about all this metabolic psychiatry stuff?
No. Tell me.
Oh, I'm so This is pretty amazing. So um once I stabilize my blood sugar and I think my body started to be able to use ketones too because your brain operates on it's like a hybrid engine right a lot of us are just running on sugar but if we can teach our bodies to use um ketones as fuel for our brains too what researchers are finding now is that a lot of our mental health issues might be based in this inability and even neurodeenerative issues for our brain it's kind of starving for glucose because what happens if we become insulin resistant or you know unable to process glucose in the body that same kind of resistance can happen in the brain. So you can be having glucose which gets into the brain easily but the insulin isn't able to get in there to help the brain use it. So it might have glucose but it can't use it properly. And so there's really cool research like um Dr. Sephy out of I think she's out of Stanford did a recent clinical trial with keto and schizophrenia and bipolar. I mean really serious mental health conditions that were improved not only the symptoms but also the metabolic issues and that's important because a lot of psychiatric meds come with you know weight gain as a side effect. There's actually this really cool channel I just found and her name I think is Lauren Kennedy West and it was living with schizophrenia and now it's living well after schizophrenia.
Okay. I have been fascinated by this healing schizophrenia stuff that I've been seeing a lot of.
It's wild.
Okay, I have to check her out because I'm really really interested in that. I just think it's so I I think that's one of the most interesting, you know, psychological issues to kind of dive into.
It's just crazy what they have to live with. And my heart just goes out to them. I've like done I've watched those videos where it's like point of view like this is what it's like to live with schizophrenia. you like see all the the stuff and the voices and everything. I'm like this is insane.
Oh yeah. I've had friends who have suffered and my aunt was actually bipolar and there's another man Ian Campbell using um keto for bipolar too and stabilizing those symptoms. And then there's a woman named Dr. Georgia Eid if anyone's interested in this link between diet and mental health. I I encourage you to get very familiar with her work. She was actually a Harvard psychologist psychiatrist and they didn't like that she was using food and so she kind of left Harvard and she wrote a book and she says for you know binge eating disorder which you would think why would you use a diet that's quote unquote restrictive for that but it seems to help and anxiety and depression and sometimes people don't even need to go full keto. She says more serious conditions, uh, Alzheimer's, you know, schizophrenia, bipolar, it might be something that you really need to monitor and your ketones need to be high enough. But for anxiety and depression and things like ADHD, even low carb can really help people. So, I think it was when I shifted to lower lower carbs, not no carbs, just lower carbs, that my mental health, like I was able to give my brain a chance to repair and find a stability and just like a a calm that I like had not known before. I was this restless spirit and kind of always agitated and couldn't sit still and then all of a sudden my it's like my brain just switched into a new mode. I was like whoa. So that was that was the year after.
I've also heard that being vitamin B deficient can contribute to depression.
It's crazy B12 specifically. There's a lot of uh like studies where lifelong vegetarians or a few case reports where you know they went in and they had all the big guns electroconvulsive therapy and you know all the traditional psychiatric interventions.
Labbotoies. Sure. And just hopefully not. Yeah. But then they like finally had a B12 injection and their brain turned back on. So yeah, I mean we have so many different levers we can pull with diet that just aren't traditionally being looked at. My goal, my hope one day is that food is the first. You know, pharmaceuticals, they can have their place, I think, for certain people, but I think food should be the foundation and we need to address that first.
So, once you healed yourself, when did you and your husband decide, let's start Paleo Valley, like let's create an entire snack company kind of combating all of this garbage information that we've grown up with.
So, that was interesting cuz I right after I like reclaimed my health, um JLo, Jennifer Lopez was like, "Hey, do you want to go on a tour with me?" because I was her fitness trainer at the time with Tracy Anderson. And I was like, I felt like you don't say no to that. So I said, "Yeah, I do." And for seven months, we toured everywhere around the world. And it was in that seven months, I couldn't find snacks all the time. I just didn't have access to them. We were in Argentina or, you know what I mean? And I didn't get to leave a lot of times because I had to be there with her. So my health started to uh backslide. I started to get digestive issues again and start to feel kind of, you know, just moodier. And I was like, h so when my husband came over to France, I said, "Bring me all the grass-fed meat sticks that you could find. I just need high quality protein. That's the hardest thing for me to find right now." And he did, but then they still something was up with them. Something was up with those meat sticks. And I thought, "What the heck?" So when we got back to America, I was like, "You know what? I we need to create option for people who want to travel and don't want to cook every meal in the kitchen, even though I think that's great if you can." Um, and so I was like, let's start with a meat stick because I think people are undereating protein. I definitely was. I think that was one of the main contributors to my mental health issues. You know, amino acids are the building blocks for our neurotransmitters. So anyway, I was like, I never thought I'd go from JLo to a meat stick, but I did. I was like, I feel like this is my new calling. And so I found this ingredient called encapsulated citric acid, the one I talked about at the top. And I was like, why are people using encapsulated citric acid when it has these ultrarocessed ingredients? And and I sincerely believed that was maybe why my stomach was still hurting. So I called 100 manufacturers, found one willing to ferment them cuz that's how you avoid the use of ingredients. I was like, "Well, our ancestors ate meat." You know, they obviously had to preserve it. It was via fermentation. And that's why, like you said, our meat sticks taste so differently. It's the only meat stick I will eat. I think all meat sticks are absolutely gross except Paleo Valley. That's just the truth because when you guys sent them over to me, I mean, I told my sponsorship team, I was like, I will try this, but I'm not going to advertise it if I do not like it. And and that's just with anything, you know, and so I tried I was like, this is the only meat stick I've ever liked.
And the chicken ones especially
blew my mind. Like those are my favorite ones of all. Okay. Yeah, the chicken ones are so good.
So explain what you guys are doing then in this fermentation process because not only does that I think make them taste better but it's also way healthier for you right
absolutely and it's something we've been doing for you know hundreds of years this process of fermentation before refrigeration and before these kind of chemicals came into use. So all we do is we take the meat we blend it with organic spices and then we add like a probiotic bacteria and then a starter culture. So like some sort of uh carbohydrate that it can eat and then these these bacteria get to work and then they create lactic acid as a byproduct and that drops the pH. So whereas manufacturers are bringing in citric acid right in these little balls, we just let the bacteria produce the lactic acid and that stabilizes it and more importantly as importantly it makes for that juicy texture rather than that really tough like dried out texture.
That's what I don't like.
Yeah, I know. I I don't like it either. That's why it's like juicy. It's more like a summer sausage or like one of those kilbas. I have this Polish friend of mine who was like, "Oh, it's just like our Polish sausages." That's what it tastes like. So, very different. And yeah, I think it's much better, but it is much better.
I'm biased
for sure.
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Speaking of protein, what is a huge myth about protein you wish more people knew?
There's two. And uh the first one is I've been a little bit obsessed with glycine. If you want to go there, is that okay? So glycine is this amino acid. It's kind of like the unsung hero of the amino acid world. So in our protein conversation, we see on a nutrition label like the word protein, right? But what I want people to know is proteins contain different amino acids. Those different amino acids build different things, but they also act as signaling molecules. So they tell the body to do different things. Now glycine is found in the other bits of animals. So right now we eat a lot of muscle meats, right? But we used to eat the whole animal. And now we're throwing the connective tissue and the bones in the trash. And because of that, experts think we're suffering from a glycine deficiency, which they believe makes us age more rapidly. So, I'll break it down for you, but glycine is like the Swiss Army knife of anti-aging. And this paper came out in 2009, and I think there was research before this, but that we make about three grams grams of glycine a day, and we eat about three, but we need about 15. So, and it's not tied the amount we make to how much we need if you're over 88 pounds, and most people are. And so, we are suffering with this 10 gram deficiency every single day because we're throwing the bones in the trash rather than in our soup like they used to do. So, some of my favorite things about glycine is a it's a building block of collagen, right? The most abundant amino acid in collagen. So, if you're looking to, you know, help wrinkles or joint pain, gut issues, very important for that. It's also one of three amino acids you get in glutathione. Have you guys talked much about glutathione?
Tell us everything.
Glutathione is like our master antioxidant. And as we age, the levels decline. And so they recently did this trial where they gave older individuals and some younger individuals glycine and an acetylcyine, another amino acid, and they called it glyac to replenish these glutathione levels. And it improved almost every hallmark of aging, right? So mitochondrial health, um endothelial function, metabolism, cognition, you name it. So um if we can have more glutathione, we're going to prevent oxidative stress, which is one of the main theories of why we age. And so and if we have glycine in short supply, which most many of us do, we're not going to be building as much. The other cool thing is back to this mental health piece, it's calming. Like we've known in the central nervous system, it kind of works as like a gas pedal and can kind of keep the brain nice and calm. If you take three grams of glycine before bed, it will drop your body temperature. You can produce more serotonin and it helps you sleep better. They've also used it in OCD and schizophrenia. And they even discovered a new glycine receptor uh that they think might be helpful for depression, metabolic health. It in one trial you could take glycine and it reversed um insulin resistance essentially and reduce inflammation. But the thing I think is the most important is its ability to act as a trigger lock for inflammatory molecules like macrofasages.
Oh,
so yeah, this is where it gets really really cool. And there's this guy named Dr. Joel Bind and I've been reading his book. It's called the glycine miracle. And he was an amino acid researcher starting in about 2007. So this has been his his area of focus. And have you ever heard of methane restriction?
No.
Okay. So what they discovered a while ago and have repeated in several studies is that if you reduce the amount of methane in an animal's diet, you can extend their lifespan by like 30 to 40%. And methionine is found in those muscle meats that most of us are eating. And glycine is needed to help the body get rid of methionine. So Dr. Joel was like, well, what if I give the animals glycine? Will that help reduce or extend their lifespan? And he found that it did about to 10 10 to 20%. but it wasn't actually changing the levels of methane in the blood. So he's like, "There's got to be another mechanism." So he went into the literature and found this group out of North Carolina that had that had discovered that glycine essentially goes in and keeps your immune cells calm. So our immune cells called macrofasages are like our first responders when we get an infection or when we get injury. They're kind of like if you go get into a traffic accident, they're the cops who show up.
Yeah. There's two modes. They have one, it's called the tend, kind of like a mother or a nice cop would do. Come in, bring the people to clean up the mess, take, you know, support everyone. But then they also have another mode number two, and that's called rent. That's like if the traffic cop came and just started shooting people up, just brought out the guns, didn't ask questions, just created mayhem and all this collateral damage. That's another mode that our macrofasages can go into. And what they discovered was having enough glycine, and this is four to five times the amount of glycine you need just to build proteins. But having enough glycine actually kept that those cells quiet through this really nerdy mechanism called a glycine gated chloride channel. Just allows chloride into the cell, keeps it hyperpolarized or like keeps the the voltage correct or low enough that the cell doesn't overreact and cause all this collateral damage. Dr. Brend also believes that we shouldn't have in like inflammation as a result of a fall or an injury that yes infection you want those macrofasages to go nuclear or to go crazy but that our bodies might be reacting inappropriately just to simple injuries because of this glycine deficiency which I think you know allergies autoimmune disease uh neurodeenerative disease heart disease there there isn't really a chronic disease today that doesn't have inflamm inflammation or chronic inflammation at its root. And so I just think the implications of that that we have this deficiency that most of us aren't making or eating because of the way we're eating the animal now that we could potentially have an overreactive immune system um because of it. And he has multiple examples of his own health like where he got a sunburn and he just knew it was gonna be terrible the next day and then it wasn't and then he fell and he hit his head and he's in his 70s and then he the next day he went out dancing. Do you know what I mean? So he firmly believes that most of us our immune systems are struggling because they don't have that trigger lock.
So should we be supplementing with glycine? Like just a glycine supplement or eating certain foods?
Well, here's what I do and there's multiple ways to go about this. So, if you can recorporate reinccorporate the whole animal, right? Skin, bones, connective tissue, just eating more even more grass-fed meats will have a little bit more of that collagen in there, but also bone broth. If you guys I don't know if you eat bone broth or you use it, but that's where I would go. I would have bone broth. Collagen supplements will also contain glycine, though they're a slightly more um processed version. And then, just to give Dr. for Brenda a shout out. He actually has something called Swedetamine that he created that you get like the eight gram dose. So there's lots of ways to do it. Do it through food, do it through bone broth, do it through collagen, do it through sweetine, whatever. I think it's just important to recognize like we have this conversation that's like, oh, if it's not a complete protein, then you know, kind of it not worth it or maybe like lesser than. But what I think we need to understand is that different amino acids do different things and we've changed dramatically the way that we're eating today. And so I just think we need to respect the power of glycine and um look more into that research and see what can happen if we correct that deficiency.
So is that the first protein myth that people need to understand? What's the second?
The second one is when it comes to animal products, I think we have to respect there's pretty profound differences based on the system from which they came. And this was what I studied for my dissertation. Again, never thought like beef would be the subject of my dissertation, but it was. And it was fascinating. And what I got to do was team up with a a team at Utah State University. I don't know if you've heard of Dr. Van Gleet.
He's fascinating guy doing a lot of really cutting edge pioneering research in this space. But he wanted to categorize. Okay, let me back up. The whole project started in partnership with a man named Dan Kitridge at the Bi Nutrient Food Institute. Have you heard of this? M their goal is to create a handheld meter because he really his his parents wrote the organic standards and he sees you know in order to change the way we make food we have to change the incentives right now we're prioritizing yield how much food can we grow rather than like what is the nutrient density of that food right like getting into subsidies and stuff.
Yeah exactly and the nutrient density of our food is lower than at any point in history. And so he's like, "What if we built a handheld meter and people could take it to the grocery store and scan it and see the nutrient density of this piece of lettuce versus this piece of lettuce? It would change the way everybody's doing food, right?
How would it know that?
That's that's where we get with this project. So, in order to do that, you have to define it. Um, define nutrient density. So, it's like a a scanner. And I think they use maybe like a brick score. There's different settings that you can do to kind of like when you try to find fatty acids with a spectrometer or you know chrom uh chromatography. There's a lot of different ways that you can use like a little handheld meter and it can use light or other things to identify different compounds. So that's kind of how it works. But in order to create that meter, you first have to define the nutrient density across the entire spectrum of different foods. And they started with beef because it's one of the most produced foods worldwide. They thought, okay, let's define this nutrient density. So, we took over, and this project is ongoing, so it's still going um a 100 different producers, everyone from a feed lot to what they call feed lot light, you know, and then to maybe organic and then grass-fed and then all the way up to regenerative. And they submitted three samples and they submitted soil samples and they submitted forage samples. And then they looked at tens of thousands of different compounds with this new technology called met metabolomics where instead of like on a nutrition label you have like 13 nutrients. Right. Right. Um there's there's like 40,000 compounds in beef.
Oh my gosh.
Exactly. That's why I think it's really important to do this kind of research to kind of further elucidate how profoundly different the changes can be. And so then yeah, we just looked at what nutrients are changing and where the patterns are. And the most fascinating thing is a and this isn't what we studied in our paper, but I just think it's cool for listeners. Um phytonutrients that you typically associate with plants, right? Um they can be in very high amounts when the animals fed on a botanically diverse pasture.
Oh wow. That's Yeah. So like they found in one study the lamb liver had as many phytonutrients as like an eggplant. You know what I mean? So substantial amounts. So good news for us that hate vegetables.
Exactly. You can get some of those same compounds and not only that, but you can get compounds that you wouldn't otherwise consume, right, that a cow would eat and then they kind of end up in their milk. So, it's like
this would have to be a truly grass-fed grass-finish cow.
Yeah.
It couldn't just be some, you know, far factory farmed beef.
This is the point. Yeah. Because it is like they are like a photograph of the land that they're raised on. So those compounds in the grass and that can improve diversity right of your diet which we know for the microbiome and such is is such a good idea. So yeah, so we found phytonutrients and Dr. Rambbley and Fred Provenza do a lot of research around this and the cool thing is and this is something I think people might relate to if they've tried this different type of meat that these compounds can improve satiety right they have anti-diabetic anti-depressive you know genetic they change the expression of genes and they might make you feel more satiated and in fact I think that's why when I eat this type of meat I do so phytonutrients is one and then the fatty acid profile that's what I focused on for my particular um research paper and the most I think What I like to be the biggest takeaway for people is that beef can actually be a good source of omega-3 fatty acids. And 84,000 people die every single year because we don't get enough omega-3 fatty acids. And yes, I think people should eat more fish. And that's very important. But also, if every time we ate beef, in our particular study, eating one grass-fed steak was the equivalent in omega-3s of eating three grain-fed steaks, which is a pretty big difference.
Whoa. And there's a paper showing that for people who don't eat a lot of meat, this came out of the UK, or um fish, that beef is a significant can be a significant contributor to omega-3 status for people. We know omega-3s for our brain, for our cardiovascular system, for our eyes, they have a number of very very important benefits. And although people have argued and still do that it's a small absolute amount you know but when you take it in the blood and people do this they measure they have one group eat grass-fed beef and one group eat grain-fed beef the levels of omega-3s in the blood and even the red blood cells are significantly different just even after a few weeks. So, I think that's very important given that many people prefer not to eat fish, don't have access to fish. Grass-fed beef will have a much higher omega-3 level. Like I said, three like eating one steak is the equivalent of three grain-fed steaks. And I think it was around like 50 milligrams. It might have been higher. I always like to air on the conservative side, but um it's a significant amount. And when you eat liver, if you are into eating the whole animal.
I don't know if if that's a thing you've talked much about.
Um a little bit.
What happens when kids do not get enough highquality animal protein?
O, I think this is what happened to me. Animal protein is grounding, right? So, not only I think that a lot of our kids are living on this blood sugar roller coaster, and we think it's just normal to have them go up and down and energy levels all day, but I it's not. And so, animal products provide like a stabilizing effect. Like I said, high quality protein, they're going to grow better, right? There's been studies to show where you supplement with meat, their cognition improves. Amino acids are the basis of our neurotransmitters. So, and also, you know, B12, vitamin B12 is very important and it's only found in animal products. Like I said, omega-3 fatty acids. I think that's something that so many of our children are needing more of and that can come into play there. Um, vitamin A, I mean, there's just an array of nutrients. And the most important thing is they're in the most bioavailable form. Look, I love plants, right? I get it. I eat like half my diet of plants. But when it comes to bioavailable nutrients in the form your body recognizes, high quality animal products are the ones. And we taught our little boy, he eats the protein first, right? We just start there. And then, hey, eat your other stuff, too. But like protein is going to provide stability and um just like a stable mood and energy levels for your whole day.
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[Music]
Why are meat such a game changer for women and kids?
Oh my gosh. Okay, this is what h this is. See, our products come from my story and um I started to get tired when I got pregnant and I don't do caffeine. I was like, uh, what am I going to do with this? And I looked into the research and organ meats were the most nutrient-dense. And I was like, oh, that's that's too bad. But my husband started sneaking them in and I could still taste them, but what I did see it was like a light bulb turned on for me. Another level of like, whoa. Like a power up in a game or something like that. You're like, I just feel so incredibly different. Like what just happened? just more energy, just thinking clear, more energy. I would do like a happy dance. There was just kind of like a a vi like a vitality that like just it was it came back and I was like, "Oh, I was definitely deficient in something that this is giving me." And there's, you know, the algorithms like the food compass and all these other like nutrient density rating systems. Well, Dr. Ty Beal did one and what he looked at because all these algorithms, it's like, well, what are you prioritizing? Are you penalizing animal products because they have saturated fat or you know what I mean? So what he did is said what are the nutrients that most people are deficient in worldwide and that as a basis showed us that organ meats heart, liver, kidney, goat, you know these are the most nutrient-dense foods that most people can benefit from worldwide when we look at what we're deficient in. So I think again this is one of those missing pieces uh because so many people are deficient in things like B12 and vitamin A which liver are the biggest natural sources of those two nutrients. Also zinc and iron. So there was this really cool research in 1934 where these three researchers got a Nobel prize because they found out that liver could actually cure pernicious anemia. And because not only because of iron, because it's not like it has a ton of iron, it has iron, it has copper, it has vitamin A, and it has B12, which is really important in pericious anemia. So, I have had so many people tell me, I've eaten liver and my iron issues. They're gone. Or I was getting iron infusions and I brought liver back into my diet and I I don't have to have them anymore. Now, in any other culture, I mean, I feel like eating the whole animal or whatever, it's pretty much normal. It's celebrated. I mean, you can go to any like fish market in Asia and like the fish have eyes and stuff and nobody nobody, you know, is all weirded out by that.
In American culture, that's very weird to us.
So, I think for my audience, a lot of women hear these suggestions like we need to be eating organ meats, the whole animal, brain, heart, tongue, liver, and we're like, I can't I just I can't do it. So, then what is the
best solution? Because I know that there's a lot of organ meat supplements on the market, but not all are created equal.
Yeah. And that's what we got into it because like I said, my husband tried to sneak it in. I was like, "No, the flavor. No."
The only time I can do that, I can I like the blended ground beef with organ meats. You know what I mean? Like Force of Nature does that really well. So, I can eat it when it's like that, but I have not been brave enough to just like cook tongue or something. I haven't.
I know. I'm not there either. And that's why we did. But yeah, Primal Blend, that's a good place to start, right? Also, chicken liver much more palatable than beef liver. Okay. Also, if you want to you want like the gateway organ, it's heart. It's a little bit less like
my chiropractor was just telling me about this. So, he was like, "Alex, we started cooking up elk heart for my kids. They are obsessed with it." Like, he said it is the best tasting organ. And and I was like, "Really heart? I wouldn't have guessed that, but I guess just the way it cooks up, kids really like it. It's like one of the easiest things to eat."
It is. So, if you want to start somewhere and it has CoQ10, it's kind of like some people actually believe like heart disease is like a deficiency of CoQ10. It's this really important nutrient that is really hard to get from food. So, heart can do that. Um, and also soaking it in milk before you cook it. So, if you
I it it just seems to take the flavor just down a few notches. Okay. For beef livers in particular, we tried that. I also did um I used to freeze it and then take little balls and put it in my mouth and just swallow them
like a pill.
Like a pill.
Now with the soaking in milk cuz my audience likes very specific instructions.
Yeah.
How long do you soak it in milk? Is it completely covered?
Yeah. I was soaking the milk just like a few hours before you'd cook it. That's what we used to do.
And then how do you cook it?
I don't. That's the thing.
This is what you learned. This is what I've learned cuz my husband would cook it for me because Yeah. For me it's just not something I could do unfortunately. But there are great cookbooks on it. If you're someone who's interested, highly recommend like you do it if you can actually cook it and prepare it. Um but I remember he would just cook it, you know, just basically like sauté it. You can do liver and onions. I know um Sally Fallon has some great recipes for liver and onions
in her nourishing tradition.
That's exactly right. Or like she said, you can mix it in with like a beef like a hamburger. You just mix a little liver in there and you can make like liver burgers or like a 10%. I remember he used about 10%. That was kind of like a ratio that I could tolerate. So, I guess I do have a few ideas how how to cook it. I just didn't often do it myself.
So, what's going on with the majority of organ meat supplements on the market?
Yeah. So, you really want to be careful about where those organs are coming from, right? Because the liver is this organ that can kind of detoxify substances. And if you're getting it from somewhere there's like hormones, antibiotics or other things, you just really want a healthy animal and based on how it's raised to like what it's fed, right? The uh metabolic health of animals are directly impacted by how they're fed. If they're fed a lot of grain, they have more triglycerides, more um mitochondrial stress, things like this. So, I don't think a lot of companies are taking that into consideration. The other thing I think is important is I really like my stuff to come from America rather than being imported. I feel like there's just like another layer of control and a lot of them are coming from other countries or they're giving you really tiny doses. I've seen these supplements where it's just like very small amounts and you want something that's, you know, has a high potency. And for me, I also like a blend. You know, I like it to have more than one type of organ because every organ is kind of a reservoir for different nutrients that that organ needs. And so it really becomes more of a multivitamin uh than any singular organ on its own.
That's what I really like about Ural's organ meat supplement is that it has a ton of different organs in there. It's not only liver.
Yeah. And we we actually used to have brain in it, but it would just make people too scared. And so we took that out. So it's just heart, liver, and kidney. They were scared of rape.
Yeah. I think people were because of that um that BSC scare, you know, mad cow disease, right? which you know the um it's isn't a concern anymore today but at one time it was and I can understand people for being a little hesitant but yeah heart liver and kidney and also grass-fed finished animals you know from America that's kind of how we do it and it's it's unique and we were actually one of the first out there um there was only one other one on the market this little doctor was selling um when we decided to do it I'm just glad that it's becoming a thing right so get your organ meats however you can get them eat them take them
what is the best way to get collagen
Well, I love bone broth. That's because bone broth is a little bit different than collagen, right? Do you know? So, the bone broth that we make or that you can make at home is traditionally made from bones, right? And then you add water and then you cook it down and it kind of releases all those amino acids and the, you know, the minerals. If you can do that, that's more of like a whole food source because it's going to contain electrolytes. It's going to contain compounds like glucosamine, chondroitin, hyaluronic acid. These are like very joint supportive nutrients and the amino acids, right? So collagen is different because it's often made from animal hides. Um, and then it's just a very extensive process using solvents to get those hides down into a powder. And that powder will be primarily um proline, hydroxyproline, and glycine. Those are the most abundant amino acids in collagen specifically. So it'd be more like if you have a whole team over here, like a basketball team, it's like that's a one player, like a really good player on that team. But if you're going for something more whole food, I really like to get it from bone broth and just kind of match how we've been getting food and nutrients for, you know, millions of years.
Well, and that's what I like about protein powders that are grass-fed bone broth protein powders.
Yeah.
Because you get the protein obviously, but then you also have collagen in there because of the bone broth.
Yeah.
And people get really freaked out when they see bone broth protein is they're like, "Ew, well, what's that going to taste like?" I'm like, it tastes like whatever the flavor. I mean, if it's chocolate, it's vanilla. It doesn't taste like anything bone or beef at all.
Exactly.
Um, it's totally hidden in there. But that's what I like about that is because it's like protein but special.
Exactly. It's a totally different amino acid pro. And people have been saying, "Oh, no. Um, you don't want to eat it because it's not that complete protein, but like I said, glycine is one of the most abundant amino acids in there. And it can taste delicious, right? I take it very seriously. Obviously, I couldn't choke down the liver and so um it tastes like hot chocolate." Um, Dr. Drew is obsessed with our bone broth specifically because it tastes nothing like bone broth. And I think that's really important to bringing this kind of nutrition to the masses because I just I just don't think people are going to all sit and simmer bones for 48 hours and then, you know, and there's some days where you don't want to taste something beefy or something chickeny. So, yeah, just adding it. We have a chocolate and a caramel and vanilla and you can use it all sorts of different ways. So,
I love Dr. Drew. I I grew up listening to Loveline.
Me, too. him and Adam Corolla. Oh, they rocked my world. I love
He's like I've never had him on the show yet. He's a dream guest for me. I That's so cool that he likes Paleo Valley.
Oh, I can probably help you out with that.
We're going to hold you to that.
Oh my gosh. I I would love to try him and his wife Susan. They're some of my favorites. They're
so many people have said that about them that they're like anyone that I've talked to that knows them, they're like, "Oh, we love them." Like, so that's so fun.
Oh, he's amazing. He's an incredible person. So, I'll help you out. I was on a plane recently sitting next to a guy who works in fragrance formulation. I lit up. You know what that is? A guy who literally invents the smell of crisp arctic morning by mixing prochemicals in despair. So I asked, "You use this stuff at home?" He laughed. Hell no. I use natural soap. And that's when it hit me. We are the test subjects. The elites bathe in tallow and real lavender while you're scrubbing your armpits with radioactive blue goo from a bottle. That's why I switched to natural sloth beeswax candles. Their soaps, their candles, and room sprays are all non-toxic, made certified, and made with actual ingredients that you know and love, like beeswax, essential oils, and of course, a little love. Plus, it's all handmade in Texas by a veteranowned team who actually cares if your kid grows a third eye from the room spray. You'll smell good, feel clean, and your house won't be a ticking hormonal time bomb. Go to natural sloth.com, use code Alex for 15% off. That's naturals.com code Alex. Tell us your secret morning electrolyte hack.
Okay, this is my favorite thing ever. Um, we made an electrolyte supplement because again, our whole motto as a company is we want nutrients from food. And so it's like seawater, um, you know, and potassium from coconut water. Anyway, when you're sleeping, you you become dehydrated slightly, you know, and so first thing in the morning, I like to replenish those um electrolytes, so the magnesium and the potassium and all that. So, what I do is I take my tea. I'm obsessed with tea. I gave up caffeine a long time ago, so it's usually herbal. And then I add a scoop or like a half a scoop of our electrolytes into it, and it gives it this sweet, satisfying, just kind of nourishing like flavor and feel. So, it just it's something I literally look forward to every single day and feel so much better after I do it.
What flavor?
I have experimented. So, what I do is if you're someone who likes a chai in the morning,
Yes.
the orange is ridiculous.
If you can combine the orange with the chai. Whoa.
Okay. Yes, I'm tracking.
Yes. And then if you like blueberry, the lemon, it's a blueberry lemon deliciousness. I love this company called I don't know who owns it, friendship tea. They have this blueberry. Wo.
Wow.
Wo. or the Earl Grey is kind of really nice too with the lemon. And then my favorite though, if you're someone who really likes sweet, is the watermelon. It pairs well with almost every tea. Like right now, I drink this spring dragon longevity tea in the mornings, which I love. And then I just add the watermelon. You can also do it with just green tea. We know the benefits of green tea all day long. If you need just a little something sweeter, like if you have cravings or you want more of like a snack, you add that in. It's sweet. It's delicious. It's satisfying. I feel like you could even create a iced tea refresher. You could do cold with electrolytes in the summer. This is I love this idea.
Yes. I'm so glad. Oh, it's changed my life because I'm someone whose brain in particular
I benefit a lot from more extended periods of not eating, you know, just like I like to go 14 or 16 hours and that having that in the morning. Yeah. It feels like I'm I have something to wake up and look forward to. when you're buying meat, what labels should you look for?
What's important to know is that we don't the FSIS, the Food Safety Inspection Service at the USDA, it's affidavit- based, these terms. So, it there's very rarely like a third party inspection where someone goes in and says, "Okay, what are you guys doing here?" So, that's good to know. And there's been reports that 85% of those affidavits are lacking sufficient substantiation. Right? So the process has problems, but ones that I think are most interesting, first is made in America. Have you heard about this?
No.
It's called country of origin labeling. So as it stands today, you can raise an animal in another country and then bring it over and then you can basically like just change the plastic wrap or harvest or like process it in America and it gets a made of made in America seal of approval. Now that's going to change as of 2026, but it's still op like something you can do voluntarily. It's not moving.
Who decided that? Is that something that RFK is working on?
Yeah, I think well I think it was actually before. So they have been pushing hard for this American farmers for a very long time because what happens is these big meat companies they import meat from other countries undercut our opportunity to get it from America and then people don't know. they don't have the ability to just decide because it looks like it was made in America. So, people have been working on that for a long time and it will change as of 2026, but again, it's not mandatory. So, I think always just like knowing like where is this race important. Second one is grass-fed. So, the labeling around the regulation around grass-fed label is gone as of 2016. And all animals, all cows begin their life on grass. And then it's what happens in the last like 30 to or sorry 90 to 120 days. the way that they're fed, that's what kind of the fatty acid profile that ends up on your plate. So, a lot of them begin on grass and then are grain finished. And there was an interesting paper done in 2019 where they looked at 12 different grass-fed suppliers in America. And then they looked at their omega 6 to3 ratio, which can often tell you very clearly whether an animal is fed grain or not. And a lot of them were definitely definitely fed a lot of grain. So, when
what does that do to us health-wise when an animal is grass-fed grain finished?
This is where Van Vleet's research is going now. So, he's doing human trials to determine that and I'll tell you the findings of his in a second, but there was one trial that looked at kangaroo meat, wild meat that ate its species, natural species diet, and then versus feed lot meat. And what they found was when the people ate the uh feed lot meat, they had higher levels of inflammation after a meal. I'm not shocked.
Yeah. So, there's that. and and they didn't do a beefto beef comparison because that was kangaroo to beef. Um, but Van Vleet is doing that now. What he's found is he did this study where he took people from a standard American diet to a whole foods diet, right? And then also to a regenerative diet like what happens if we only eat organic produce, regeneratively raised meats and all that. Is there still a significant improvement inflammation? What he found was the biggest needle mover is obviously moving from the standard American diet to a whole food diet. That was the most dramatic reduction in inflammation, but there was still a trend towards reduction in inflammation from a conventional whole food diet over to a regenerative and organic whole food diet. So, the omega 63 ratio is kind of an area where a lot of people think this really matters. So, omega-3 and omega6 are are polyunsaturated fats. A lot of people lump them into one category, but omega-3s are those omegas from fish, right? They come from leaves. When animals eat more plants, they have higher levels omega-3s and um omega sixs also important, but but also the ones you find in seed oils and um when animals eat grains, they're going to be higher in omega sixes. So, a lot of researchers believe that this ratio is really important. So, when we eat animal products with a lot more omega sixes to omega-3s, like we want one ideally, but like pork can be 30 to1 more omega-3s and even eggs um if they're conventionally raised 20 to1. Do you eat pork? Um, I do, but it's always pastured, you know, so I'm very choosy. We had a we had a worked with a pig farmer actually who ran his own experiment and he said he took this specific breed and put them on grass or half grass, half grain and then or grain and he took that 30 to1 ratio down to a 5:1 ratio. So my gosh.
Yeah. And the cool thing, the interesting, another takeaway from our beef study is that beef, even grain-fed had a ratio of around like 10:1, whereas again pork, most of the pork you're going to find in the store is going to have that 30 to1 and eggs are 20 to1. So sometimes even beef from a feed lot could be better if you're specifically looking at that ratio. So beef is kind of like a better food in terms of its omega 6 to3 profile than other types of meat. So my guess is um eating meat over time, especially over time, right? That's important because you can't always see that from these small scale trials where they're looking at shorter periods of time. I I think it could profoundly influence inflammation. Um and you're going to get, you know, more of those omega-3s, right? And in in our paper too, we found more minerals. I think it was six times the selenium, three times more calcium, um, two times more copper, and like 1.5 times more iron. And the other cool thing that I didn't even talk about is we even found an increase in the omega-3s fatty acids when animals spent more time on pasture and when they had more plants in that pasture. So, I think there's so many flavors, right? I think organic is important. I think grass-fed is great, but I think we the ideal scenario is regenerative.
Is regenerative is regenerative. I think that's what we're going to find and that's what's what Vanble and his team are doing is validating exploring what are the differences in grass
which I think is really helpful for my audience to hear because I do I talk about that a lot like you know it's obviously just real foods even if it's conventional that's still you know start there if that's what you can do you know so regular ground beef even if it's not grass-fed grass-finish is still going to be better than a hot pocket y and then you know above that definitely organic grass-fed, all that. And then the top tier, if you your budget allows, if you can afford it or have access, would be regenerative organic.
Absolutely. Cool. Absolutely. I have a very level head about this. I think that there are benefits of regenerative meat above and beyond the other types. But yeah, like you said, meat in general better than a donut uh any day. So yeah. And then also back to the labels, the other one that I really like to put on people's radars is um the cage free and free range. You'd think that that would mean they're raised on pasture in a way that is, you know, natural for them, but they're often in a warehouse with thousands of other birds and they just have a little door somewhere where they may or may not know exists or may or may not ever use that could just go to a
like one of those magnetic fairy doors. They just stick it on the barn and they're like, "There's a door." And that would count.
Exactly.
Exactly. It's so scary. And just that natural really means nothing. Yeah. And in my world, AGA certification. So organic will have a third party certification, but organic can still be fed organic grains. Again, if you're looking at nutrient profile, the meat and some people have said, you know, screened porches have been, you know, something that they've accepted as outdoor access. And so organic isn't perfect either, but it will be third party verified. So,
it's a um the American Grass-fed association. So, this is my favorite. this little tip is look for that standard because these people every 15 months they go in and they check out what the operation is actually doing, right? And they have kind of a a bent on environmental stewardship as well. So they don't only care, you know, if the animals eating grass, but also are they using the environment, using the animals in a way that improves environmental health. What are some of your favorite hacks for snacks to make for kids, lunch ideas, and dinner ideas?
My favorite um snack ideas for kids. I often do this when we have playdates. I have an only child and so we have playdates every day all day. And what I do is I make these little trays and I'll cut up some, you know, grass-fed cheese a lot of times and then some almonds and some olives and our meat sticks and some watermelon and some like just other fruit. Cherries have been a big thing or peaches in Colorado this time of year. So, I just kind of make them a whole food little snack tray that I just keep out for them all all day long.
That's cute.
Yeah. And then we really like our meat sticks and I take these little um skewers kind of and I'll do like an olive, a meat stick, and a piece of cheese and I just kind of make that's like a little snack or like a meal idea. Um other lunches that I like to do, he's been really into guacamole lately. Okay. So, I'll make some Yeah, fresh guacamole for him. And again, a a lot of meat sticks or just we use fish. Like he loves tuna fish, so tuna salad and some avocado, things like that. Dinner ideas. We have a pretty locked down dinner routine at our house. Okay. So, my husband is an ex he we use um our wild pastures meats and then he just he does the meats and then I do the side of veggies or whatever. So, we do ribs one night. Incredible recipe I can get from him if you need it. It's really simple. It's just honey and sugar. Everything we do is very sugar-free. And then we'll make these like homemade potato chips. We just slice our potatoes. We cover them in tallow and we bake them. Amazing. He makes these really awesome uh chicken tenders, too, just from um a little gluten-free flour and then puts it on there. And then with those, we'll have usually like Brussels sprouts or something like that that I'll just do with like a honey and a Sriracha and maybe some nuts. I love Brussels sprouts.
Okay, I'm coming to your house for dinner. You should. Oh, but my favorite I got to show you. This is the easiest, most delicious steak ever. And you just take like a grass-fed steak and we just put like onion powder and then I can't do garlic, so if you like garlic, you can. That'd be great, too. Um, onion powder and then just a little paprika and then a little salt on all both sides. And then you just cook it for like I think it's like 2 minutes and 45 seconds on each side. That's it. Insane. What cut of steak?
It's insanely delicious. We'll do like a ribeye usually. That'd be great.
Oo, I'm going to try that tonight.
You've got to try it. It's so delicious. And um and then we also have like a pork we do this like blueberry and honey kind of like sauce for a pork loin.
It's incredible. So those are our meals at dinner. And then at breakfast, we usually do some sort of like we actually make like a bone broth kind of ice cream that he can feel like that he is very rich in protein.
Ice cream for breakfast.
Yeah. But it's like very rich in, you know, protein and we get raw milk down the road and so it's still like a very satiating like and he feels like he has a treat.
That's so cute. I love that. Also been getting this skewer. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's like this Icelandic yogurt and it's so delicious. And you um what we do is we put frozen blueberries in there and then coat it in honey and stir it up and it's amazing. Um, also if you just take a glass and you put like blueberries in it and then you cover them just a little bit with milk and then you stir it, it becomes kind of like a slushie. So that's another one of our favorite family snacks.
These are great ideas.
I'm glad you like them. This is just what we do every day.
No, and that's what people like to hear. They like to just hear real moms, what are you doing? What are you using? You know, what are you cooking for your family? That always does super well.
And you got to know it's so simple. Like we do not have fancy meals even though like food is our livelihood. Keep it simple. Oh, have you heard of that bowl where you do like the ground beef and you do the sweet potato and you do the avocado and the cottage cheese and then you cover it in hot honey.
Yes.
Okay. I just want to make sure cuz that's also delicious. So much protein. So,
I bet kids would really like that.
They do. He does. So, that also works really well for us.
Could your child's multivitamin that they take every single day actually be making their deficiencies worse?
Potentially, right? because we undervalue the complexity of whole foods. Just like I was telling you in our research, right? 40,000 compounds just in beef. We just started identifying nutrients back in, you know, 1900. We have so much to learn. We don't have the right reverence for whole foods and the way they deliver nutrients. And so, yeah, I think multivitamins when you look at the trials, a lot of them don't show much benefit, right? Uh I think it's really important to get your nutrients from food. some nutrients actually show harm like in isolation. So if you do like a calcium that can increase the risk of heart disease or vitamin A and vitamin E in certain populations like smokers even B vitamins have been shown to increase the risks of cancer in certain populations. And so yeah, and it could be the way that they're derived. It could be the fact that they're outside the food matrix and our body doesn't know what to do with them. Could be that they're getting stuck and we're not processing them and somehow they're accumulating in the body. don't really know what it is. But I do think food has to be the first multivitamin unfortunately because it's just it's going to contain far more nutrients that we're aware of in the forms that are most bioavailable. Our body's going to know exactly what to do with it and it's not going to go to waste, right? And we don't want to buy things that potentially wasteful, right? That being said, I think there's particular instances you go get your child tested and they have a specific nutrient deficiency and they have some digestive issues. Yeah, maybe you can use a targeted supplement that's very high quality. Some um but in general, I think for most people to get the most bang out of their buck, it's doing something like reinccorporating the most nutrient-dense foods in the world and just making sure they have high quality nutrition on a daily basis.
If somebody has never tried anything from Paleo Valley, what are the three things they should try first?
Oh my gosh, chocolate bone broth. It's my number one, I'm telling you. And then I also like to add um a little of our caramel sea salt. So, it's like a chocolate mocha.
Uh, chocolate caramel mocha. Okay. You can add it to your coffee. You can add it to water. You can add it to any type of milk. It is something I look forward to and drink twice a day. Literally, that's the one that um Dr. Drew is obsessed with cuz he was carnivore for a long time. And when he finally was like, "Oh my gosh, I can have this chocolatey delicious drink and it's not like off the program." So, that's that's number one. I also think the me sticks, like you said, they're just very, very different than every other meick you're going to have. And a protein heavy diet was never something I did. It's just I don't really like crave meat, but I benefit from it. And kids, you know, for kids snack, like a high quality protein um is amazing. And like I said, it's juicy, it's tender, and it comes in like teriyak flavors, chicken, pork. We even have venison for anyone who's venison. It's it's one of my favorites. Um, and the third one, that's so hard. I mean, if I was gonna do a supplement, it would be our essential C. Like 90% of us vitamin C on the market is made from GMO corn. Ew,
you didn't know?
Yeah.
It's very interesting. That was another one of our first products. So, yeah. So, it's basically corn syrup fermented through this extensive process and then it's just made into ascorbic acid.
What?
Yeah. That's just like the outer shell of the vitamin C kind of complex that you'd find in whole foods. And so our essential C complex is the three most potent organic sources of vitamin C in the world. Alma berry, ocarola, camu, camu. And it's just in a powder. So it's
now I put kamu camu powder in my smoothie every single morning.
I love it.
I feel like that's helped me like not get sick for a long time. I've only been sick once this year. It was a little cold in January. I've not been sick since.
Oh gosh. And this is one of my other favorite topics to uh educate people about is that we've been taught like you just need 75 milligrams or 90 milligrams of vitamin C and you're good. But mammals who make their own vitamin C, we lost that ability. Uh they significantly increase their production in times of stress and illness and if you're alive on planet Earth today, those are definitely things that are in your life. And so I like to have it throughout the day like you're doing. So if you're going to eat food, fresh fruits and vegetables, awesome. You're going to have some vitamin C. But I still think there's a place especially because it only lasts about four to six hours in the body and you don't make it so you need to take it. And so I think it's like kind of like a little insurance policy. So eat fresh fruits and vegetables and then take like a whole foodbased vitamin C. There's also really cool research where they used kamu camu specifically kamu camu juice and then they pitted it against an equivalent dose of ascorbic acid what you'll find in almost every vitamin C product on the market. And they found that only the whole food version was able to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress.
Whoa.
That ascorbic acid was not. They also found in another trial that I think is particularly fascinating that 90 like 95% of the antioxidant capacity in an apple was due to something other than vitamin C. Right? So again, speaking to that, you know, whole foods have all these other phytonutrients that are dampening inflammation and that have so many other benefits that are underrecognized when we're going for a more synthetic and isolated version of that nutrient. Here's something that I think is key. So I have to travel a lot for this job. Um I try to film here in Phoenix, which is where I live most of my episodes. Like we're filming in Phoenix. Sometimes though, I end up traveling and I'm filming on location in other cities and states. So, you know, there's a lot going on and so you're in a new place trying to find food to eat. All of that. Even when I'm traveling, I am the first person to tell my team, "Hey, this is where I'm getting dinner. Whoever wants to come, you're welcome." Like, I'm finding the places that are better quality, you know, organic if possible, etc. Okay.
Love it.
The women on my team, because I have a bunch of guys and a bunch of girls. The women on my team pretty much always will go where I want to go and they will eat the way that I want to eat when we're traveling. The men on my team, my videographers do not always stick to my suggestions and they're the ones that are be that are, you know, to be fair to them, they're working longer hours, you know, really physically demanding camera, all of that, setting up, tearing down. So, they're the ones that are more likely to be like, uh, I'm just tired. We're just going to Wendy's or whatever. Almost every time we travel extensively, my girls on my team were never sick. And those guys are always like deathly ill. Like their immune systems are just trashed after traveling and eating all that food. And I'm like, I'm literally showing you the proof is in the pudding. Like you got to be listening to my suggestions. Now, to be fair to them though, they have made a lot of changes since working on my team. But we still have we have still have areas to improve.
I love that little call out. And I noticed the same thing. I almost never get sick because I eat in a way, you know, that's supportive. But when I was eating more of the standard American, always sick, at least yearly. I would get these sore throats. And
like you said, there's so many things creating inflammation and also so many things that can prevent that inappropriate inflammation in Whole Foods if we just learn to use them.
Okay, so we're getting your vitamin C. Um, where can people buy Paleo Valley? Can you get it in stores?
Paleo Valley.com. Amazon also in stores coming soon. This year is our new adventure into retail. I know. After 12 years, we're finally venturing out into retail stores. We're excited about that.
Paleo Valley.com. They can use code Alex. They'll get 15% off their order. And there's tons of stuff. You guys have spices to use when you're cooking that are organic.
Superfood bars for kids. I didn't mention that, but that's another one that my son loves. And it's in lemon and, you know, red velvet and chocolate and apple cinnamon and even seasonal flavors like pumpkin spice, stuff like so. The superfood bars are exceptional, too. And we have a whey protein powder with colostrum, too. Oh, cool.
So, yeah. Which is kind of like a two for one deal and very high quality colostrum. And like you said, spices. There's apple cider vinegar complex. There's a neuro effect, which is medicinal mushrooms for the brain. Um, and we've Yeah. Wild pastures, too. We do frozen meat delivery. We have a restaurant.
And my code will work on all those.
Oh, yeah. No, just the just the Paleo Valley stuff. Just the Paleo Valley. What is the restaurant?
We have a restaurant. Speaking of seed oil free. So, um, in Boulder, Colorado, we have Wild Pasters Burger Company.
Oh, neat.
Yes. So, no seed oils, no sugar, all regeneratively raised meats, and then organic produce, gluten-free buns, of course, and then they're like keto milkshakes and stuff. So, it's you got to go. It's It's really great. And, um, we're sticking to our values. We've had We don't even have soda. Like, we have no sugar in the place. All the sauces are housemade and they're delicious. like people, it's got quite a loyal following cuz I think once you get the seed oil free, sugar-free kind of vibe, people really really are into that.
And where can people find you guys on social media?
Shh. Everywhere. Instagram, Facebook. We're getting our legs under us for Tik Tok. Um, that's a hard one.
Yeah, it is. But you can find us everywhere on social media, too.
I ask every guest, if you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, it could be physically, emotionally, or spiritually, what would it be?
Yeah. I think we just need to get back to whole foods and addressing the way that we're raising them because if we don't, we will always be kind of managing symptoms of this deficiency disease or of uh insulin resistance or some diet related disorder. And so, yeah, that's my hope for everybody because that was the most monumental change that I've made in my life and I just want everyone to experience that.
Dr. Autumn, thanks for coming on Culture Apothecary.
Such an honor. [Music] Cannot recommend these beef and chicken sticks enough. Use code Alex at paleo valley.com for 15% off. We're on a mission to heal culture twice a week. New guests bring their own unique remedy Mondays and Thursdays at 600 p.m. Pacific, 9:00 p.m. Eastern. You can subscribe on YouTube. You'll find all my episodes there, as well as vlogs and extra content. The show is on Instagram at Culture Apothecary, and so am I at Real Alex Clark. I'm Alex Clark, and this is Culture Apothecary. [Music]