56: The Shocking Consequences of Outsourcing Your Food Supply

The Shocking Consequences of Outsourcing Your Food Supply

Michael Kummer: Why you need to get involved in growing your own food. Even the best raised eggs you find in the store have been treated, have been washed in chemicals. So pasteurized dairy is again, chunk food, but you still get microplastics, endocrine disrupting chemicals, and residue pharmaceuticals into your honey.

Making that raw honey, anything but healthy. And that's the reason why you need to get involved somehow in growing or raising your own food, at least some of it...

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Michael Kummer: Outsourcing food production is not just foolish, it's downright irresponsible, especially when you consider how vital food is to our health and well being. Trusting faceless corporations with your nourishment means Embracing a cocktail of chlorine washed poultry, soilless organic strawberries, and sterilox treated veggies, all while pretending these practices are remotely beneficial.

It's almost comical how we've handed over the reins of our sustenance to industries that prioritize shelf life and overnutrition and convenience over quality. Now, I know this sounds harsh, but here's the thing. Misguided federal and state regulations make it virtually impossible for farmers to sell unadulterated food that hasn't been sprayed, disinfected, irradiated, pasteurized, fumigated, or chlorinated before it hits the shelves of your grocery store.

So in this episode, I'll share with you some eye opening examples of how unhealthy, even healthy food can be, and make the case why you need to get involved in growing your own food. So let's start with Pastured eggs or store bought eggs in general, particularly those that are marketed as pastured and regeneratively raised, you know, if there was such a thing with poultry even or with egg production and why those eggs are not as clean and healthy as you might think.

So let's take pastured eggs, for example, that you buy in the store. You know, those eggs have been washed with a chlorine solution or something equally toxic to neutralize potentially harmful pathogens. And you think, well, that makes sense, you know, you don't want to have any poop on your, on your eggs.

But the problem is egg shells are porous. And so there is a good probability that some of that chemical residue on the shell gets into the egg and then into your body. And the main thing to remember is that if you feed animals, An unnatural diet that changes their gut flora and stomach acidity. You create an environment where harmful pathogens, certain strains of E.

coli or Salmonella, can thrive. Those pathogens don't exist in an environment where animals are raised appropriately. At least not those specific, very harmful strains, that is. For example, you know, Salmonella is a naturally occurring pathogen in chicken poop, which is something that we here at the Kummer household are exposed to daily because we have chickens and a host of other livestock.

And do you really think we wash our hands every time we return from handling the chickens? Or wash our eggs before cooking, even if they have some Gordon Wood dirt on them? Poop, that is. We don't. And none of us has ever gotten sick. And that's because the strains of pathogens found in the manure of animals raised appropriately aren't an issue.

Unless maybe you're severely immunocompromised. On the other hand, you know, if you get eggs from free range eggs from chickens raised in a henhouse with two thousands of your closest siblings, You know, that's a whole different ballgame. And those are not eggs you want to buy anyway. At least those are not eggs that I would ever consume.

So the point here really is that even the best raised eggs you find in the store have been treated, have been washed in chemicals that can make their way into the egg that you consume. So you still get chemicals from the most expensive eggs you can find in the store. And that's why I recommend buying eggs directly from farmers who don't wash them.

And fortunately there are no federal, there's no federal mandate, as of right now at least, to wash eggs when sold outside of supermarkets. So you can go to the farmer's market or even to a, you know, to your local farm and buy some of those eggs, um, and, you know, get them without being exposed to those toxins.

Second example, and that might harm a little bit. Um, is chicken meat, because a lot of people like chicken meat, including our kids, and even, you know, we like it. The problem is, that much like eggs, chicken carcasses are bathed in chlorine before being packaged. So you can be sure, you get some of that crap, into your body by consuming the chicken meat that you buy in the store.

It's also worth noting that raising chickens, healthy meat, is impossible if you want to make a profit. So farmers have to take shortcuts. And that is because virtually all chickens raised in this country in the United States at least, are Cornish Cross that go from birth to butcher in seven to eight weeks.

I have talked to Dr. Anthony Gustin on a separate episode I'm going to link down below about why that is a problem. But in a nutshell, the, their genetics of those Cornish Cross and their rapid growth lead to indigestible protein and other health issues. Plus, they're usually fed a diet high in polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFAs, and those are very inflammatory.

if you get too many of them. And those high PUFA diets in chickens lead to a terrible fatty acid composition in their meat. So you consume the high PUFAs then through their meat and they end up in your body causing inflammation. And unfortunately, raising the Cornish Cross on a conventional grain diet is the only way to make money selling chickens.

Because we did the math with our last batch of broilers, those are meat birds specifically raised for their meat, and concluded that raising one bird cost us approximately 30 bucks, 30 to 35 dollars. Imagine how much we'd have to charge for those chickens if we were in the poultry business. And our chickens are expensive because we opted for a slower growing breed that takes 12 weeks instead of the 7 to 8 weeks to grow.

And we used organic, horn, soy free, low PUFA feed that's three times as expensive as regular chicken feed. Now the resulting meat is significantly better from a micro and macronutrient composition perspective than what's commercially available. But most importantly, our chicken meat has a dramatically lower, has dramatically lower PUFA levels.

Now that doesn't make chicken meat great, because it's still, all the meat of monogastric animals is Is more problematic from a fatty acid composition than the meat of ruminant animals like cows, for example, but it's still significantly better. But the point here really is that those type of chickens that we raise in our homes that for our personal consumption, we don't have, you know, chicken or poultry business.

You can't do that if you want to, if you want to make money, you know, selling chickens. Now there are some, um, farms out there that do raise different breeds, but they typically still use the high poofer feed because as I said, It's just not economically feasible to raise chickens on a low PUFA organic, corn, soy free feed.

It just doesn't work. And so you can be sure that when you purchase chickens in the store, even when you purchase them from, from farms who mean doing well, you know, you still get a chicken that was bathed in chlorine and that was fed a high PUFA diet. And so that turns basically chicken meat into junk food.

Uh, better than curious. Yeah, but still not something you want to consume on a regular basis. A third example is milk or dairy in general. You know, most of the dairy, unless you live in certain states, is pasteurized. Pasteurization kills pathogens, kills bacteria, kills anything that's bioactive. Enzymes, uh, bacteria, obviously good and bad bacteria, and that's here really again, you know, the problem, you know, raw milk, the benefits of raw milk is because it has bioactive ingredients, it's live food, you know, you get a lot of the beneficial micronutrients, the enzymes, uh, the bacteria that help your gut microbiome, et cetera, and when you biopasteurize, all of that is dead, and some of the protein has been denatured.

reduced micronutrient content, et cetera, et cetera. So pasteurized dairy is again, chunk food. Unfortunately, in most states or in many states, you cannot buy raw dairy unless it's labeled for pet consumption. One might think, well, it's a good idea to pasteurize dairy because otherwise, you know, a lot of people would get sick, but similar to what I've mentioned with the chickens, you know, the certain strains, the dangerous strains of E.

coli in raw milk only exist in dairies where the cattle is fat. unnatural diet, grains, for example, because that's changes the stomach acidity, making those pathogens more resistant to the higher stomach acid, like we have as humans. And so when they're resistant to stomach acid, they can get into our digestive tract and survive in our body and cause issues, you know, with regular E.

coli bacteria that die in certain acidic environments, like in human stomach. It's not an issue. And so again, you know, the milk or the dairy products, generally speaking, you buy in the store, at least here in Georgia, are junk food and not something you want to consume. And that again, you know, makes the point of, or.

raises the argument of growing your own food. And we'll get to that and talk about that in more detail, what that might mean and how you can actually do that without becoming a farmer. Fourth example I want to give you, we'll wrap it up here shortly, but those are such eyeopening examples that I really want to.

Uh, want to make sure you understand, raw honey, you know, everything, everyone thinks raw honey is great because, you know, it hasn't been heated. It's full of those, you know, bioactive micronutrients, you know, the enzymes and all of the things that make honey so beneficial. And significantly better than just plain old sugar, right?

So what could possibly be wrong with raw honey, you might ask? Well, the problem is, like raising chickens, raising honeybees for honey, the right way is relatively expensive and commercially probably not viable. And without going into too much detail here, I want to mention that every beekeeper I've ever met uses either plastic foundations to quote unquote help bees draw comb and make hive maintenance easier.

Um, and again, we're not going to go into details, but if you use, if you don't use those plastic foundations, there is a risk that You know, the bees draw a comb that's, you know, where two frames are connected to each other and that makes hive maintenance a pain in the butt. I understand, you know, I am a beekeeper and I know how cross comb can really make your life more difficult.

Um, so using plastic foundations to kind of guide the bees where they should draw the comb, you know, so you can take the frames out individually and everything is good, makes a lot of sense from a convenience perspective. The second thing that most bees do. What most beekeepers do is they'll treat their hives proactively.

You know, every, during certain times of the year, with chemicals or with pharmaceuticals to prevent certain pests from becoming a problem. Like mites, like hive beetles, like, you know, other insects and microbes that can make bees sick. And so they treat the bees, you know, on a regular basis. Unfortunately, that, you know, by doing those two things, you get honey.

That's been exposed to microplastics, uh, to endocrine disrupting chemicals in the plastic, because especially in summer, you know, the high heat, heating up those plastic foundations, you know, that's just a recipe for leaching endocrine disrupting chemicals into the honey that you then consume, the microplastics, obviously, you know, there are microplastics involved in pretty much everything that's associated with plastic.

And then you get some of those chemicals or the chemical residue from those pharmaceuticals in your honey as well. And even though then the honey is not heated, you know, when processed, meaning when, you know, produced, when, uh, extracted from the combs and, and bottles and every, bottled and everything, but you still get microplastics, endocrine disrupting chemicals, and residue of pharmaceuticals into your honey, making that raw honey anything but healthy.

And that's another reason why we only consume our own honey, uh, where we, there is no plastic involved, there is no pharmaceutical involved, nothing. Next example is produce that's harvested before it's ripe. You know, most of the, or a lot of the produce you find in the store, you know, got harvested before it was ripe.

And so it had no longer contact with soil and getting all of the nutrients from the soil. It was no longer exposed to sunlight. Instead, it was gassed probably, and being exposed to artificial lights to continue in the ripening process in a warehouse. And the result of that, unfortunately, is that you get produce that has significantly fewer micronutrients, meaning vitamins and minerals, then You know, you would find in, in produce that you grow yourself.

So you buy food that's less nutritious. And even though you think you, you know, you buy organic tomatoes or organic, whatever, and you still get products that are just not as they should be. And in some cases, you know, some of the, especially fruits like strawberries, they are raised in, in a water solution, you know, in hydroponic solutions.

They never get any contact with soil whatsoever. And then thinking that's as nutritious as. A strawberry that's grown in, in actual soil and fertile soil, um, you know, it's, it's just naive. And even if you get, you know, properly raised produce in the store, many stores use, use, You know, you, you might've seen it, you know, you go to the store and you see like those little sprinklers or misters coming on that, you know, keeps the, the fresh produce look fresh and stuff.

But what a lot of people don't know is that some stores use antimicrobial products like Sterilox, uh, that contains chlorine and chlorine byproducts to prevent the growth of pathogens, you know, on the skin of the produce, for example. And so again, you get organic produce from the store that might, if not even.

So the bottom line here really is that it's incredibly difficult to find truly healthy food in the store because of regulations and industry interests that prefer obviously profits and shelf life over your health. That's a problem and that's the reason why you need to get involved somehow. In growing or raising your own food, at least some of it.

And that could mean, you know, planting a garden, you know, and if you don't have a garden, you know, outdoors or a backyard, you know, grow something on the inside, you know, have like a little, you know, window garden, you know, do something. So you learn what it truly takes to grow food. Because when you know, when you understand that, Oh, you know, growing something organically is incredibly difficult without using any chemicals whatsoever, and then you realize that, yeah, there are actually chemicals you can buy that are labeled as organic, even though you're not supposed to You know, you're supposed to wash your hands and don't get them, you know, anywhere close to your face because they are still toxic.

You know, you kind of learn all of those things and then you can start asking the right questions and really understand what it means, what certain labels mean or what they don't mean, you know? Why free range is a complete BS label or why Just grass fed is a BS label, um, because it doesn't really mean anything, but you only understand all of those things when you start getting involved, you know, so grow something, plant something if you're into plants, you know, or veggies or produce, you know, plant, raise a tomato plant, do something and understand what it truly takes, how that food is supposed to look like, how it's supposed to taste, and how it's supposed to feel when you consume it, you know.

If you have a little bit more space, you know, maybe raise some chickens, they are incredibly easy to raise, you know, um, raise rabbits, you know, if chickens are not allowed, chances are rabbits are, because they don't make any noise, they are considered pets, you know, in, in most jurisdictions, and so you can have a couple of rabbits, um, you know, in your backyard, even if you have a small, you know, yard, even if you raise them in cages, you know, that's still better than buying, you know, Most of the meat you can find in the store, you know, or the alternative to that is if you really don't have any space or means to grow anything yourself, which I think is, you know, there's always room for that, at least.

Get to know your local farmers, you know, and ask them, visit them, you know, ask what they are doing, how they are growing your food, you know, make sure or try to find farmers that are not USDA, um, regulated because being regulated by the USDA means you have to bathe your chickens in chlorine, you have to wash your eggs, you have to do a lot of things that makes that food less healthy for you.

But if you find a farmer who maybe labels their, you know, product as pet food, like here at the Alpharetta Farmer's Market, they're close to where we live. There are a couple of farmers that sell chickens, eggs, uh, raw milk as pet food, you know, and that's a way to get around some of those USDA requirements that would mess with, with the food.

So they can sell it unaltered, you know? So that means the raw milk is truly raw. The chicken was not bathed in chlorine. The eggs aren't washed in chlorine. You know, they just come as, you know, They come. Similar, very comparable to the eggs that we eat, to the chickens we eat, and to the, you know, rabbit meat that we eat, that we grow on our homestead.

and by getting to know the farmer, you know, you And, and, you know, visit them, you know, most farmers who have nothing to hide, have no issues with you coming to the farm and checking things out. You know, if you live in the area here in the, in the Alpharetta, Milton, Atlanta Metro area, you know, come by and, and, and watch how we grow some of our own food.

You know, we are not in the, in the business of selling. The food, I mean, we sometimes sell some of the, well, we do sell some of the eggs if we have more than what we need, but that's not our business, you know, we just sell it to friends and family. Um, but come by, you know, and, and, and see how we raise food and how it's supposed to be done, you know, to produce food that's actually healthy and that has not been exposed to chemicals that you don't want to get into your body.

The bottom line here really is that outsourcing food production. to people who don't give a crap about your health and well being is a recipe for poor health, you know. So get involved, somehow, by visiting someone who grows food and buying from them, learning from them, growing some of your own food to the extent possible, and maybe realizing, or maybe reprioritizing, you know, some of the things that you do in life.

Maybe figuring out that Well, maybe it should be a priority that we move to an area where we are allowed to raise some of our own food, or we have the space to raise some of our own food instead of living in a fancy townhouse because it's convenient to walk to bars and restaurants. You know, maybe that's not, um, ideal to stay healthy in the long run.

You know, maybe that's fun when you're in the mid twenties or maybe mid thirties, but at some point, you know, you have to figure out that you hopefully still have a couple of decades in a worth of living and you want to. Live that remainder of your life as healthy as possible, and that means taking control of your food supply.

So, with that being said, we're gonna wrap it up. Ah, again, if you live in the area, you know, stop by, you know, check out the Kummer Homestead resource, we're gonna link them all down below, you know, our Instagram, our our YouTube, our Uh, webpage, so you can learn how we do things, some of the mistakes we made, some of the things that we've discovered that triggered us to, you know, raise a lot of our own food, like our chickens, like eggs, like rabbits for meat, and what are we going to do in the future with beef, uh, pork, and some of the other, uh, proteins that we, uh, intend on raising, because we realized that, you know, even the best raised.

Um, animals you can buy from somewhere else are still not to the standard that we would like. With that, we're gonna wrap it up. Hope I'll see you in here in the next episode.