15: Dr. Anthony Gustin: The Shocking Truth Behind Pasture-Raised Chicken and Pork

Michael Kummer (00:01.359)
All right, Anthony, thanks so much for making the time today. I really appreciate it. I know you're busy, but I know that you have a lot of experience with chickens and pigs and raising your own animals and, and just figuring out, you know, how healthy those animals really are, maybe in comparison to some of the other types of meat that we usually eat. And so maybe let's just start out talking about what are the differences between.

ruminant animals like cows and goats and sheep and monogastric animals from a fatty acid perspective as well as from you know a health perspective How do those different types of fats in the meat? Potentially impact our health

Anthony (00:46.602)
Yeah, so thanks for having me. Appreciate it. The difference between ruminant animals and monogatric animals is basically just the digestive system. So monogatric animal is much like us, just one stomach. So when you eat something, just goes into a stomach chamber, then goes into your intestines, and that's how food gets assimilated into the body. With ruminant animals, they actually do a fermentation process. And like with cattle, for example, they have four different chambers of, like basically four different stomachs, each having a very different...

function for breaking down and turning cellulose and plant matter basically into saturated fat, into short two carbon chains saturated fat and butyrate, things like that. And then that gets similar to the bloodstream. So very different digestion process. One's effectively fermentation based and one is much like ours, which is basically breaking down things into small parts and then absorbing whatever you're eating in much smaller components rather than fermenting it and changing it before it goes into your bloodstream.

Michael Kummer (01:44.259)
Right. And what does it mean in terms of, you mentioned, you know, the fermentation causes the creation of, or formation of saturated fats. So does it mean then meat from a cow has more saturated fat than polyunsaturated in comparison to a monogastric animal?

Anthony (02:03.966)
Yeah, typically less. I mean, I think that the interesting thing is to think about what is species appropriate and what does the natural environment provide for each of these species. And so when you look at fatty acid composition, for example, you look at some of the things that make seed oils really interesting as a topic is this certain fatty acid called linoleic acid, which is 18 carbon, double unsaturated fat, which we can get into the science of linoleic acid and one that's probably not great to have in high amounts.

naturally occurring in most foods that have fat, but with humans, with cows, with chickens and pigs, there are studies that show all of these things should be around 2 to 3% of total fat. And what happens with the fermentation for cattle is that they can maintain that similar perspective of what they should be eating no matter what you feed them. So even if you feed cattle tons of grain and tons of stuff, which I don't recommend for any...

any purposes at all, I don't think that's a great way to go about feeding cattle. But they sort of like stay buffered in that range because they break down all the food, ferment it, turn it into what they need, and then they absorb it. It's a little bit different of a conversation when it comes to phytonutrients, micronutrients, they can't make those, but they can sort of rearrange proteins, carbohydrates, and fats to the macronutrients that they want. And so they break down in their gut and then they

you know, get to that point of 23% linoleic acid, poly-insaturated fatty acid, and we can't do that as monogastrics. So there's a lot of research that shows in humans, even that our percentage of omega-6 fatty acids, these poly-insaturated fatty acids such as linoleic acid, are increasing dramatically over time. We accumulate these as we eat them because we can't break them down and turn them into other things. Say for a couple of other, you know,

fancy little biochemistry pathways that no need to get into that, but they mostly, as you eat them, the ratio you eat them, incorporate into your fat tissues. And so the more you eat them, the more your ratios get out of whack. Our body doesn't have the central governor feature that says, hey, we should probably be at 2% to 3% of this, so let's modulate some things. He goes, oh, this is what you gave me for building blocks, this is what we're gonna make out of our tissues. And so that 2% to 3%, which is species appropriate, and...

Michael Kummer (04:18.535)
Right.

Anthony (04:24.994)
We get higher levels because of the foods we're eating, higher amounts of nuts and seeds, mostly seed oils, because they're very high as a percentage of this linoleic acid, fatty acid. We're talking like anywhere from 20% upwards at 80 plus percent, which is insane to have a fat that much when we should be getting that in about 2% to 3% maximum. And with chickens and pigs, what happens again being monogastric, they accumulate what they eat. And

Michael Kummer (04:27.487)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Kummer (04:46.117)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony (04:52.982)
we've effectively taken all the feed away from these animals and feed them a massive amount. And we'll talk about why this is the case, both for confined animals as well as pastured animals. And these numbers, instead of 23%, can hover even for regenerative, quote unquote regenerative, pasture raised pigs can be between 20 and 30%, which is about like canola oil levels. And then for chickens, we're looking at 40, 50, sometimes up to 60% of their fat.

Michael Kummer (05:16.66)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony (05:22.274)
can be linoleic acid and omega-6 fatty acids. And I've done actually a third party test, getting samples across the board from the biggest commodity farms and pasture-raised and again, quote unquote regenerative. And there's in some cases where the regenerative slash pasture-raised are actually worse from a fatty acid perspective. And we can get into why I think that is, but the big takeaway here is monogastric animals are effectively what they eat.

whereas ruminant animals can change around at least the macronutrient composition to form it to what their bodies actually need.

Michael Kummer (05:57.952)
And okay, so if you had an animal, a chicken or a pig that does or never had any supplemental feed, those ratios would look differently, I assume. So if they would just

Anthony (06:11.082)
Yep. And yeah, and there's some studies out of like Tokolo tribe in the islanders sort of in the Papua New Guinea show tree dwelling birds, jungle fowl, like what chickens should be and hogs wild there, their ratios of linoleic acid and polycitrionate fatty acids are about two to 4%. So if they're just eating what they eat in their natural environment, that's what it looks like. The issue with that is that those animals take years to grow up.

Whereas what we've done in the industry of both pigs and chickens now, this is just an absolute factory machine. Even when you're looking at pasture raised birds, the farmers need to make their money and instead of years and years raising these animals out in a natural diet, we're talking 45 days. Very.

Michael Kummer (06:58.759)
Maybe let's talk about real quick how popular chicken breeds, or one particular one has changed, meaning the one that we eat when we go out and buy chicken in the grocery store, or in a restaurant, the Cornish Cross, right? I mean, if you look at how, and I'm gonna try to include some picture for those who are watching the episode, but how the chickens we consume have changed in size and shape over the last few decades by cross breeding and selection.

To make the chest big and flashy and everything is just unbelievable and then You know, it takes a Cornish cross what eight weeks to slaughter Less than that 45 days you said right and so

Anthony (07:39.094)
Less than that. Yeah. Typically six. If it's eight weeks, that's just dollars of feed, that's dollars of labor. That's other animals that can't be on pasture or in confinement. And so yeah, I mean, we used to have, we even have this in cattle, for example. I mean, people might know of some breeds of cattle. You have Angus, you have Highland, you have Aberdeen, Wagyu. You've heard these terms before.

Michael Kummer (07:49.983)
All right.

Michael Kummer (07:54.171)
Right.

Anthony (08:08.942)
So our cattle breed selection is still like, it's pretty narrow from what exists and what should exist, but there's still a bunch of different breeds for cattle. We don't have just one. Interesting thing with chickens and to lesser degree, but still similar pork and pigs is we have like 99.9% of the chicken that Americans eat is one breed, Cornish cross. And that one breed comes effectively from two, maybe like,

Michael Kummer (08:32.851)
Yeah.

Anthony (08:38.669)
depending on how you look at it, three hatcheries. So there's basically three companies that control the entirety of chicken genetics and it's all the same genetics. To me, that's just, that's absurd, but it's also a point of fragility in our food system that if this species becomes vulnerable to any certain virus, our chicken supply, which is skyrocketing, the demand for it is skyrocketing, could literally vaporize over the course of a couple months.

Michael Kummer (08:48.787)
Yeah.

Michael Kummer (08:56.403)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony (09:07.51)
So that to me is not great, but you ask like, why did they do this? So it wasn't some evil plan, but what happened is once we started increasing the production of monocrops like corn and soy and having these leftovers of, you know, we subsidize it, we have a whole ton of this stuff leftover. We have farmers, we have industrialized food system. Everyone's trying to make money. We're trying to produce the thing as cheap as possible, as fast as possible. So we effectively selected the breeds that grow the fastest possible.

Michael Kummer (09:32.499)
Right.

Anthony (09:37.662)
in a short amount of time with as few inputs as possible. And so what that looks like is over many, many generations, we go from a bird that takes two to three years to get to a couple pounds, now a bird that takes 45 days to get to six plus pounds. And these birds, essentially, if you stop feeding them corn and soy, they can't go out in the wild and forage and eat regular stuff. They are effectively dependent on these food sources because their genetics are so fragile.

Michael Kummer (09:54.291)
Right.

Michael Kummer (10:04.509)
Right.

Anthony (10:07.246)
They're also a terminal line species, meaning that they cannot reproduce. They have to be created effectively in a lab and they don't like, they're not reproducing out, like if you let a batch of Cornish cross out, they would just all die. This, they would, there's not wild flocks of chickens that would emerge from that. Which again, in my mind, you're not even talking about the nutrition, but this fragile of an animal, do I want to eat that? No, not, not me personally. And that's, I mean, there's so many different

Michael Kummer (10:10.527)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Kummer (10:15.527)
Right.

Michael Kummer (10:19.92)
Right. Uh.

Michael Kummer (10:24.287)
Right.

Anthony (10:36.074)
ways we can talk about chicken and what you should be eating and how you should be eating. And so we have a production system here where again, this includes, I'm not saying that this is just the Tyson chicken or the Purdue or these big brands. This is also the vast majority, if not 95% plus of the quote unquote regenerative and pasture raised birds as well. And I don't fault the farmers for that. We have a system that people are used to paying $5 for a Costco chicken.

Michael Kummer (11:04.711)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony (11:04.798)
And so if you actually look at what a chicken should cost, if you were to get a heritage breed chicken and raise it mostly on pasture and rotate it around and all this type of stuff, how a bird should live, you're probably gonna be paying upwards of $150 a chicken, which isn't insane. And no one would do that. And so you have small farmers who wanna do better, but they're sort of fixed to the price system of a massively industrialized food system. So it's a...

Michael Kummer (11:17.315)
Yeah.

Michael Kummer (11:29.278)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony (11:31.934)
Yeah, it's a slippery slope. Some of the times with the regenerative, again, in quotations, is I don't think you can have regenerative chickens. You can get a breed called the red ranger, which is a little bit more heritage, and that takes eight, 12, sometimes 16 weeks to raise out, and those birds are thinner, more yellow in fat. I think they taste way better. And there's companies like Cooks Venture that are trying to do something where they're making their own breed of chickens. So, I mean, there's...

Michael Kummer (11:43.327)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony (12:01.07)
There's not much choice though. You're mostly eating a sick, fragile bird that basically can't walk after 45 days and is so huge from eating corn and soy that literally it can't flap its wings, it can't fly at all, it basically can't walk. It's, you see any of these operations, again, this includes pasture race. It's pretty disgusting. Another thing that happens with them.

Michael Kummer (12:24.063)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Anthony (12:29.162)
is this thing called the woody breast syndrome. And so when we were selecting for the Cornish Cross to be as big, plump, and have these enormous breasts, for example, we were just choosing for the animals that had the highest weight. We weren't looking into what the weight was actually comprised of. And when you actually look at it, it's most of the chickens, the Cornish Cross, especially the ones that are raised in an industrial setting.

Michael Kummer (12:50.492)
Right.

Anthony (12:57.846)
have these cross-linkings of proteins in most of their tissues, especially the breast. It's called woody breast. And like if you've chewed on a chicken breast before and had like kind of a gnarly pieces, this is actually not digestible protein because they're cross-linked and your body can't break it down into amino acids. So you might be eating a 10 ounce piece of chicken, thinking you're getting X amount of grams of protein, but you're only getting probably 40, 60% of that because

Michael Kummer (13:04.157)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Kummer (13:12.511)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Kummer (13:17.137)
Right.

Michael Kummer (13:25.432)
Right. Uh-huh.

Anthony (13:27.538)
It's not, their muscles are effectively deformed and your body can't break it down and access it, which is insane.

Michael Kummer (13:34.931)
Right. Yeah. And right now we have 25 leghorns, which I think are, it's a heritage breed and somewhat close to, you know, whatever that the jungle fowl, the wild chicken, you know, is supposed to be. And they are 11 weeks old now. And seriously, I can like hold them in one hand. They are so tiny. If you were to butcher them now, there is nothing on that bird. And it takes, you know, as you said, two years or so, we have some adult leghorns and at the end of their

Anthony (13:56.907)
Yeah, nothing.

Michael Kummer (14:03.027)
productive egg laying career, so to say, you know, they have enough meat, but of course, but then they are so tough that you can only throw them in a soup or in a stew, but you know, not, you know, grill them or whatever. And, and yeah, that's, that is a, a big problem. And so would you say then?

Anthony (14:21.762)
Which is historically how we've eaten most of these birds, which was in stocks, soups, stews, and not these enormous cuts where you're grilling these huge chicken thighs and breasts and things like that. It just wasn't the case. So our poultry eating history comes down to mostly wild birds, wild turkeys, pheasants, things like that, which compromise most of our poultry, not chicken.

Michael Kummer (14:33.075)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Kummer (14:39.335)
Right.

Anthony (14:49.318)
Animals that help keep bugs down that we then slaughter like use for eggs are phenomenal and Then when we slaughter them, we would just throw them in a stew because there wasn't actually much meat on them And then the Cornish Cross came along and I changed everything

Michael Kummer (14:51.389)
Right.

Michael Kummer (15:00.944)
Right, yeah.

Michael Kummer (15:05.023)
Yeah, yeah. So now knowing what we've heard, would you say that those omega-6s, the linoleic acid, and some of the other fatty acids that might not be good for optimal health and higher amounts, are the ones found in those animals just as bad as equivalent amounts in, let's say, a seed oil, in a highly processed industrial seed oil?

Or is it still better to consume chickens, let's say, than cooking with seed oils? Is there a difference?

Anthony (15:41.278)
Yeah. I mean, I think everything like this is always on a spectrum. I don't think there's ever any like right or wrong answer, for example. But if you put like optimizing fatty acid intake on a line from super ideal to not ideal, I think drinking a glass of soybean oil is probably like the worst possible thing you could do and the one end of the spectrum and then eating probably no fat at all or like a, uh, pasture

Michael Kummer (16:00.735)
All right.

Anthony (16:11.206)
a ruminant animal, like a beef or elk or something like that would be on the other end of the spectrum. And then you'd ask like, where does chicken fall in there? And I think for sure it would be better than drinking the soybean oil cup. No doubt. I mean, you even have, there's some research that shows that there's a, hydroxylates in eggs that help prevent the breakdown and oxidation of linoleic acid and omega-6 fatty acids. So even when you look at nuts, nuts have a very high amount of omega-6 fatty acid, but

Michael Kummer (16:24.566)
Alright.

Anthony (16:40.598)
typically higher amounts of vitamin E. So that vitamin E helps stabilize some of those fats so they're not getting super oxidized quicker. And I have to imagine that there are other things in chicken that would be the same. I don't have any crazy magic compound, but I would imagine that a real food would be better than an ultra processed food. Generally, when you're looking at food on the spectrum, is it good for you versus is it bad for you? And there's this huge gradient in between. What seems to be...

And I wish it weren't the case because sometimes it'd be great to just go to the grocery store and eat all this shelf stable food is that the more processed and shelf stable the food is, the worse it is for you. And that's for a variety of reasons. There's a ton of great researchers like Ty Beals one who does good work on this, but there's a, there's a variety of factors that lead to these foods being worse for you than the real food component. I tend to just trust nature and not put too much brain power into thinking like what are the exact compounds that are preventing it?

Michael Kummer (17:17.085)
Right.

Michael Kummer (17:38.023)
Right.

Anthony (17:39.006)
and think these are the foods that we've been eating the vast majority of our human history. And to a great degree, you can get that by eating ruminant animals. They're pretty close to wild ruminant animals as far as like a nutrient, all this type of stuff. When it comes to raising pigs and chickens, like we're actually like, we're taking the meat as kind of far away from what's been normal throughout human history as possible in terms of meat and how that goes.

Michael Kummer (17:47.775)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Michael Kummer (18:07.741)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony (18:08.546)
Do I still think that it's probably better than, you know, soybean oil filled dressing? For sure. Do I think that's better than other plant-based burgers? Yes, for sure, I think that's the case. I don't want to demonize and have people be scared of eating chicken or pork. That's not at all what I'm trying to do. Most people just don't know that, again, the toughest thing about this is that the marketing is very much like, oh, this is, look at this chicken out in pasture. Look at this pig out in pasture.

Well, neither of these animals are pastures species to begin with, but that, that connotation comes with that this is better. And I've worked with a lot of people in the past who had gone keto, gone to a carnivore diet and ate almost exclusively chicken and pork and actually got worse than when they were eating, you know, divide diverse amount of food. And so I think that you can overdo it. I don't think it's going to kill you. I think there's things you can do to mitigate it and there's still choices you can make and we can talk about that. But, um,

Michael Kummer (18:41.651)
Right.

Michael Kummer (18:53.407)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Kummer (18:57.701)
Right.

Anthony (19:08.627)
Yeah, it's all on a spectrum and it all depends on your goals for sure.

Michael Kummer (19:11.071)
Yeah. And maybe speaking of, you know, like marketing language, I know there are those Omega 3 chickens out there. We talked about it at the, in Austin last time when we met, where you can get, you know, chicken that has a very balanced ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6, because that's, I think for the longest, most of my, I guess, when I started Paleo, you know, that was one of the key things to watch my ratios, right, to get enough.

Omega 6 to kind of balance out the, sorry, enough Omega 3 to kind of balance out the Omega 6. And while the balance is certainly a factor, the total amounts are often forgotten, right? If you have ridiculously high amounts of Omega 6 and Omega 3, it's not necessarily any healthier than having significantly lower amounts and maybe a slightly more unfavorable ratio. Would you agree?

Anthony (20:04.03)
Yeah, this is the sort I think that we've interpreted data in the wrong way. So the reason why we care about ratio is because we've effectively just compared Hunter Gatherer and Sustraman had more of like a one to one, two to one, and I guess six to mega three ratio. And now that looks closer to 20 to one, 16 to one, depending on what data you look at. Is it like, is it the ratio?

that's important here or is it just the amount of omega-6? And I think the amount of omega-6 is what the troublesome thing is here. Because when you eat these compounds, it's not like they balance each other out, attach to each other and then you pee or poop them out. Like your body still has to process them and do something with them, no matter the absolute amount. And so what happens is you get a lot of these people saying, oh, our ratio used to be this.

Michael Kummer (20:45.257)
Right.

Anthony (20:57.89)
People care about Omega-3s and Omega-6 ratios. So they feed their chickens, feed with fish meal and a bunch of other stuff to try to get the Omega-3 up. And I've looked at data before and after people have done this. And what happens is people feed their animals way more poly-acetate fatty acids, which Omega-3 is still a PUFA, poly-acetate fatty acid, still very unstable. And the ratio gets balanced, but the total amount.

of omega-6 fatty acids actually goes up significantly. And so maybe you have a better ratio, but overall you're getting way more polyunsaturated fatty acid than you would by just consuming the higher ratio. I mean, if you're getting.00001 gram of omega-3 and a little bit of omega-6, like I just don't think the ratio, I mean you get one gram of omega-6, like that ratio is gonna look insane, but one gram of.

Michael Kummer (21:28.883)
Right.

Michael Kummer (21:38.493)
Right.

Anthony (21:54.778)
omega-6 fatty acids is like not going to frankly not do anything. And so it just, this is one of those things where I think that we in the paleo days, the early days had this conception of ratio, and I think it's just a complete wrong way to look at this topic and some people are saying to wise up with that, especially like all the research that's being done now in seed oils.

Michael Kummer (21:56.903)
Right.

Michael Kummer (22:15.48)
All right, so now that we've heard all of the issues associated with monogastric animals, and that really applies to most, but not necessarily all, right? Because I remember our discussion is that, well, geese, for example, they can eat only grass and don't need any supplemental feed. And we actually got to African geese. And all they do all day is eat grass. Yes, they might sometimes sneak into the chicken feed if it's there. But...

you know, we could perfectly, you know, if they were not all together, they would only be eating grass. And in such a situation, I would assume the fatty acid profile of a goose would be significantly different than that of a chicken who gets access to even if it's soy and corn-free feed, but still, you know, all the grains that are part of the best feed that I could find is still relatively high in omega-6, right?

Anthony (23:06.73)
Yeah. I mean, this is where it gets kind of complex from the genetics of the animal, what the proper environment the animal actually has. Like geese are meant to be in more plain pasture by ponds, things that kind of like a hybrid between a duck and other poultry. And so they've eaten grass and then they're also, the way that they grow is very seasonally, unlike a chicken. And so they can put on weight much faster just by eating grass.

Chickens also eat grass. They're herbivores. People think that they're omnivores. And I'm sure your chickens, when they're out, they're like kind of pecking at everything. But chickens are from the jungle. They're jungle-fowl. They live in trees. They're prey animals that primarily live in trees and areas like a jungle, which have way more biodiversity and way more bugs and things like that to eat. And the same thing with pigs. They're forest dwellers.

Michael Kummer (23:40.755)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Kummer (23:45.404)
Daniel.

Michael Kummer (23:57.811)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony (24:00.866)
So they're supposed to be in the forest rooting things up, eating literal roots, dead animals, all these mice, all this type of stuff. And when we take them and put them on grass and in pasture, they just don't have the right food that they should be having. And it takes much longer for them to grow out. And so people, again, just to make the farm economics work, have to bring in typically corn and soy, GMO, non-GMO sometimes, organic sometimes, but...

Michael Kummer (24:13.778)
Right.

Anthony (24:29.77)
Nonetheless, even though these, yeah, Joel Salatin, people like this are saying, yes, you put them in these houses, rotate them around. That is far better than a conventional setting where they're just on a concrete pad for an enormous amount of reasons. But when you're looking at it from a nutritional reason, like you're still eating an animal, it's not eating its normal diet, not eating what it should be eating. And I think also not living in the environment that it typically should be living in. Yeah, geese, good example, rabbits, another one, ducks.

Michael Kummer (24:47.615)
Mm-hmm. All right.

Anthony (24:59.618)
to some degree harder to get ducks than like a small acreage. Like if you have hundreds of thousands of acres and you're raising ducks and they can fly around and migrate, it's a different story. But if you're raising ducks, kind of hard to not feed them some sort of supplemental feed. So yeah, I mean, that's part of why we did our farm project was to see what animals can you raise in a more species appropriate way and what are the outcomes.

Michael Kummer (25:24.479)
Right. Yeah, makes sense. So what would you tell listeners now? You know, that maybe, you know, families with children, children love chickens. You know, our kids love chicken. You know, what are practical tips that you can kind of, you know, implement to mitigate maybe some of those issues? You mentioned already a few things that, you know, how you can maybe mitigate the downsides of certain poofers. But what would you tell?

You know your family if they ask you hey should I stop eating chickens and pork or what do you recommend?

Anthony (26:00.834)
I always depends for the individual on the goal. And so the question is like, are you overweight? Do you have diabetes? Do you have any sort of chronic health condition that I would eliminate it? I just don't think the juice is worth the squeeze. It, you know, the question is also, what are you replacing it with? Are you going to replace it with a Beyond burger? Are you going to replace it with, with like elk that you hunted for your family a month ago? It's very different to have the conversation of what are you replacing it with and what is the goal of the outcome, but just for a good general answer.

Michael Kummer (26:18.911)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Anthony (26:30.486)
The one that matters the most always is get as close as possible to your food production and know where it comes from. So if you can go to the farm, meet the farmer and make an intentional choice about being a participant in your food system and maybe ask them, Hey, can you do corn free soy free? And there's the animals are still going to be eating grains and they're still going to be eating supplemental feed. That's not appropriate for them from evolutionary history, but it's going to be far better than these massive monocrop corn and soy outcomes.

Michael Kummer (26:36.338)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony (26:59.614)
And so this is just the thing of like, I, I'm not aware of any commercially available pork and chicken that I would want to eat personally. I eat pork and chicken when I know who grows it and what they're feeding the animals and how they're raised. There's an amazing ranch here in central Oregon called Cassad. And they do a closed loop pig system where they grow all of the grain and all the feed for the pigs on their own farm.

Michael Kummer (27:14.045)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony (27:28.342)
And then they root up all the old vegetables and they feed them like spent orchards. It's, it's a phenomenal operation. Like I eat that pork. I don't eat a ton of it. It's cause I, I prefer to eat more ruminant meat, but it's, you know, is as involved with your food system as you can get is always the answer. I think no matter if it's pork, chicken, produce, honey, milk, whatever it is. If you can go and see where your food's being produced, have a conversation with the farmer.

and get your food from there, as close as you can get to the ideal or producing it yourself in your backyard or whatever, that's always the best option.

Michael Kummer (28:04.775)
All right. Makes sense. Yeah. And, you know, actually yesterday my wife told me, hey, we need to be raising meat birds because the kids really like it and we don't want to buy, you know, them from places where they, I mean, the other thing, you know, unrelated to the fatty acid profile, but all the chickens you can or the chicken meat you can buy, you know, it was all like submerged in chlorine, right? If it was the bird was slaughtered in a USDA inspected facility, you know, it's not...

there is some processing being done to make it compatible with federal laws before it can be sold. And that by itself would be reason enough for me to say, okay, even if it's, you know, if we have to raise Red Rangers and feed them, you know, corn and soy-free organic feed, even if it's grains and, you know, still higher in Omega-6 than I would like, but that's probably the best we can do.

to be able to eat chickens.

Anthony (29:03.662)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think it's totally fine. I mean, these are also, you have to take it in context of your normal diet. Like if you're eating Chick-fil-A every day and then you eat more omega-6 chicken, like that's probably not an ideal thing, but like.

Michael Kummer (29:18.238)
Bye.

Anthony (29:19.21)
someone like you who is exceedingly healthy, I just, I don't think it matters. I don't think people should even worry about it. And also to the other end of the spectrum, and we talked about the ideal thing, if you, that's assuming you have excess time and money to go to the farm and find the things or grow the animals yourself or whatever. There's also reality where it's like hard, it's hard for people to acquire food for either financial means or convenience. And I think if that's the boat you're in and you're looking to get pork or chicken at Costco even, or Walmart or whatever,

Michael Kummer (29:40.519)
Hmm, right.

Anthony (29:49.242)
I still think that's a much better choice than most stuff that people get in packages. And one thing you can do then, if you are going to eat lower quality, just get the leaner parts because that way you're avoiding some of the fat and you're still getting plenty of the nutrition that's in the animal. So yeah, I mean, there's like, there's so much nuance to this. And as far as like, there's always a spectrum of making a better choice. And that better choice comes to availability, accessibility, cost, tolerance, time.

time and effort. And so, you know, I think that the number one thing is like, are you being intentional with what you're putting in your mouth? I think if we just gotten Americans being intentional about what they're doing and trying making a choice for a specific reason, we'd have a dramatic shift in our food system. And so that's what I asked for people. It was like, try to be intentional as much as you can and make the best decision that you can for your family. And that's going to change for people seasonally, yearly, whatever. And it's the best you can do. I always.

Michael Kummer (30:19.944)
Right.

Michael Kummer (30:34.995)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Kummer (30:42.864)
sense.

Michael Kummer (30:48.699)
All right. Sounds good. Well, I very much appreciate your time. I know you're very, very busy with all the projects you have going on. I'm gonna link everything where people can find you in the show notes, so your Instagram, your brands, your newsletter, I think that's one thing I really wanna point out. There's only one newsletter that I read regularly and that's yours. It's always good if there's... Yeah, that's right.

Anthony (31:10.41)
Wow. Thank you. I should probably send more of them in.

Michael Kummer (31:16.219)
Well, actually, I think the cadence is okay because, you know, by the time I read it, I'm like, I really need to research that stuff. And then, you know, it takes me a while and then your next newsletter comes out. And by that time, hopefully I've done my research and I've implemented whatever you recommended. So I think the cadence is not bad, but it's always good. There's always something in there that I didn't know. And I wish I should have, you know, I would have known before. So I really liked it. And obviously, you know, your podcast as well, one of my favorites. So thanks again for making the time.

And yeah, hope I was... Yeah, thank you, I appreciate it. All right, I'm not sure if I can stop recording without kicking you out, but now again, thanks for your time, I appreciate it. Do you do a, are you gonna do another farm project? Up there?

Anthony (31:47.466)
Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Keep up the good work.

Anthony (32:04.01)
Um, we're, we're taking a break from the farm stuff to be able to just settle and have a family. I'm also, and they're having kids. I was thinking about if we start having kids on land in the middle of nowhere, like we were in Texas, that I would not be very happy. Um, and kind of like what we did in Texas is go integrate in the community for a couple of years and then get landed after that. So that's probably what our objective here is going to be as well. And then also is launching a couple of new brands at the end of the, this year.

Michael Kummer (32:10.331)
Alright. Uh huh.

Michael Kummer (32:16.799)
Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha.

Michael Kummer (32:32.507)
Alright. Yeah. Alright. Sounds good.

Anthony (32:32.618)
Um, which I'm excited to send you one of them. I think you're going to love it. Um, and then just get that going. I feel like I go in phases of like very much into work mode and like building and then out and then back and forth and back and forth. And I feel like I'm going to kind of going back into like a building phase. So it's like having a good routine and being somewhere where I'm not. It's hard for me to be on land and not want to like do an immense amount of work. Like manage your full farm and do all this type of stuff, which is a lot for sure, but it's, it can be distraction.

Michael Kummer (32:45.716)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Kummer (32:55.975)
Right.

Michael Kummer (33:02.791)
Yeah, yeah, I know. Kathy and I have been talking about that we need help, you know, farm handover, what have you. Remember you once had like an ask for a farm manager if I remember correctly to help out and.

Anthony (33:08.014)
I got.

Anthony (33:14.09)
Yeah, it's, it's the hardest part about farming is having the appropriate help. It's, I don't think it's the weird expectation we put in our food system and even homesteading and all this type of stuff is one family should be able to manage land like that. It's just, it, I've seen it end in divorce so many times. And yeah, I don't know. I don't, we're going to be back on land at some point. I don't think it's going to be just us. We're going to try to get other people involved, other families, stuff like that. But at some point, but.

Michael Kummer (33:27.579)
Right. Yeah.

Michael Kummer (33:31.819)
Oh, haha, haha.

Anthony (33:43.15)
As far as the next couple of years, I think we're just gonna hunker down here and enjoy life.

Michael Kummer (33:47.667)
All right, the electric is better up there?

Anthony (33:50.766)
100% better. Yeah. Yeah, it's been amazing.

Michael Kummer (33:51.763)
Oh yeah? Cool. Huh.

Michael Kummer (33:57.039)
Well, I guess it's a lot of the environment. But do you think it's just the stuff that grows in Texas or in Austin, or human-made contaminants, or a combination of both? Or what do you think it was?

Anthony (34:07.882)
Yeah, I think the Native Americans in that area called Central Texas the sick land. Yeah.

Michael Kummer (34:13.063)
Oh really? Ha ha ha. Alright. Ha ha ha.

Anthony (34:16.758)
That's all I need to know. Yeah. And so we, yeah, we just, we feel so much better. It's, it's been such a huge quality life upgrade for us. Yeah.

Michael Kummer (34:23.935)
That's good. All right, cool. Well, I'm not gonna hold you any longer. Appreciate it. I'll let you know once the episode, I think it's episode number 15, and I think next week is gonna be 11 out, so it's gonna be a few weeks. But I'll let you know when it's live.

Anthony (34:39.298)
Sounds good, man. Well, thanks for having me on and let me know how I can help you out and spread the word.

Michael Kummer (34:44.083)
Sounds good, appreciate it. Thanks man, bye bye.

Anthony (34:45.581)
All right, buddy.