4: The Ultimate Guide to Animal-Based Nutrition

Michael Kummer: Hey guys, and welcome to another episode of the Primal Shift podcast. In today's episode, we're going to dive into a topic that I think is one of the more complicated, complex, and involved issues of maintaining optimal health. And that is nutrition. So specifically in this episode, we're going to talk about A, why is there so much conflicting information out there?

How can it be that if you Google, you know, what healthy diet means, you find anything from carnivore to vegan and you know, anything in between really, and it's very difficult to figure out, okay, who is right and what is it that I should be eating and should not be eating. So, we're gonna talk about two very specific questions that, or answers really to those questions is, and, and one is, what do you have to eat to support optimal health?

And what else can you eat? What can you get away with without fucking everything up? And so, the what you have to eat is very straightforward and, and fairly simple. Where it gets complicated. is what else can you eat? You know, this is, I think, where most people struggle. And so in this episode, we're going to talk about those things and the factors that influence or that can influence your decision making to make it much easier to pick the right foods for your individual needs and physiology.

Um, We're also going to talk about some of the other practical tips that have to do with more food preparation and sourcing that you can apply as in kind of an overarching theme to your nutrition that makes it even easier to figure out how to go about all of those things, implementing the proper diet.

And I'll share with you a food list that I've put together actually for one of my blog posts that I've had on my blog for a while, but I'm going to make this PDF available to you as well. It's going to, the link is going to be down in the show notes, um, and you can download that food list. It's a PDF.

You can print it out. You can keep it on your phone or on your computer. And you use this as a guideline, you know, so in three months, when you don't remember all the details from this episode, you can go back and look at the list and say, ah, okay, so this is really where I want to focus on. And those are the reasons why.

So the food list has not only the, you know, the list of foods that you should and, and should not eat, but also some context and information that helps you understand why a food is in a certain category. And. With that, we're going to dive right in, but before we start again, please subscribe, follow, share, help other people find this podcast.

It's incredibly important, especially for a new podcast like this one, um, to gain visibility and to help other people find it. So I appreciate your support in that area. So let's start with Why there is so much misleading information out there. And there are really, um, a couple of simple reasons. One is profit margins, you know, cheap foods, highly processed foods are often very cheap to manufacture.

They have high profit margins, they are shelf stable. And so those are the foods brands want to sell to you because they make a lot of money with those things. There is very little money in, in responsibly raised agriculture or responsibly regenerative agriculture. You're not going to get rich by doing that, but you can get very rich by selling cheap foods that are void of nutrients.

And so that's obviously one of the reasons that just, you know, the incentive to sell certain types of foods is unfortunately what it is. The other reason is that. Big food very often not only influences government regulations, if you look at the board of the USDA Dietary Guidelines, who sits on that board, who makes those decisions, who writes those guidelines, you see it's very often big pharma or big food and big pharma to a degree.

So, you know, obviously it's in their interest to push certain types of foods because that affects their bottom line. Um, And also most or the big studies out there, the studies that cost a lot of money, they are funded by either the government or by again, the industry, because those are the two only entities that have that money.

Researchers typically don't have that much cash lying around to fund multi year studies involving thousands of people. And so that's a problem. And that goes, then leads to, you know, studies that are driven by certain interests and not necessarily don't follow. You know, the data and the facts, but there is also a lot of discrepancy between or difference between the quality of studies that are out there.

Most people don't know that, but you know, a scientific study or a study, um, might, might not, or the results of a study might not mean anything if that study doesn't follow a certain criteria. And I'm not going to go into the details of the various types of scientific research, but one thing that you should know is that there is a difference between correlation and causation.

So just because A correlates with B doesn't mean that A causes B. I'll give you a very simple example. If you, you know, look at a thousand people and see how many TV sets they own, then you could potentially establish a correlation between the number of TVs in a household and the risk of cardiovascular disease.

There might be a correlation, there might be an inverse correlation, but let's assume the study concludes that The more TVs you own, the higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Now, there is a correlation, but that doesn't mean that A TV causes heart disease or cardiovascular disease. But if you publish that study and say, Hey, we found a correlation between the number of TVs in a household and the risk for cardiovascular disease, well, guess what?

The media is going to pick that up and the headline is going to be, Owning a TV increases your risk of cardiovascular disease. Obviously, that's not true. There might be confounding factors. Maybe those who own multiple TVs are more likely to sit instead of move, are more, spend more time in front of the TV, not moving, eat more junk food while watching TV.

So as you can see, there are a lot of different factors that might influence those correlations, but that doesn't mean it's a causation. The second problem with, especially with most nutritional studies is that they are done based on surveys. They are, um, again, observational studies, meaning that if you want to find out, you know, how tomatoes impact your health, then, or let's even take it one level up more generally speaking.

You know, if you want to do a food study, then very often the way it works is you have to, as a participant, you have to fill out a survey. Maybe once a month, once a quarter. In many cases, you know, once a year. and, you know, fill out what you ate in the last three months, 12 months, what have you. If you ask me what I ate in the last 12 months and how much, how much meat, for example, I consumed or how much vegetables I consumed, I have no idea.

I can't even tell you what I ate last week, you know, reliably. Um, so it makes, you know, it's statistically significant and it, you know, provides valuable data. So all of those observational studies that rely on food surveys are completely useless because they might conclude that all those people who report having consumed the most meat have the highest risk of, you know, heart disease or whatever the case might be.

Now, those studies typically don't ask, okay, what else did people eat with that meat? You know, was it really the meat that was causing an issue or was it the You know, by meat, people refer to a, you know, they ate hamburgers or Kentucky fried chicken. And, you know, that was their meat, you know, did they smoke, you know, while eating meat, you know, a lot of confounding factors that at the end of the day might be useful to come up with a hypothesis, maybe with a correlation, but in no way does that mean that a certain finding, meaning eating meat, for example, increases your risk of heart disease.

So those are in a nutshell, some of the issues associated with or the reason why there is so much conflicting information out there. Uh, the good news is, and that's really what leads us to the next segment of this episode is, okay, what are the, what are the foods that you have to eat? And in order for that, there are, there are two things that we want to take into consideration.

One is, what are the essential macronutrients, meaning those that we have to get from food because the body cannot make them. And the second one is looking at evolution as a guideline of what humans have been eating to kind of get an idea of what is good for us. Because if something made it through evolution, it's typically a a sign that this works because whatever doesn't work would have died off, you know?

So evolution is a very good guideline for us to kind of figure out what is it that we have to eat, what has been proven throughout millions of years of evolution that we have to eat in order to, you know, end up where we are right now. So let's look at the macronutrients first, because that's a very important And I think often overlooked, uh, criteria in determining what you have to eat.

There are two types of essential nutrients, macronutrients. One are essential amino acids and the other one are essential fatty acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. So we have to consume protein. in order to live, in order not only to thrive, but to live, to survive. If we stop eating protein at some point, once the body is, has run out of its own protein to recycle and, you know, degrade muscle tissue and use those amino acids, at some point we'll die.

The same thing applies to fatty acids. So we have to consume fat. to get fatty acids because those fatty acids are not only used for energy. Fat is an excellent source of energy, but there are fatty acids are used to make hormones, to build cell membranes. There are a host of functions that fat cells or fatty acids fulfill in the human body that are absolutely essential and we have to get them from food because the body cannot make fatty acids.

So we can conclude we have to eat protein, we have to eat fat. To survive, not only to thrive, but to survive. But what about carbohydrates? There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. And the reason for that is the body can make glucose, which is usually the metabolic by or end product of carbohydrate metabolism from non carbohydrate sources.

So in other words, the body can make glucose from proteins and from fat or from amino acids and fatty acids. So we don't have to eat carbohydrates. in order to survive. Now, that doesn't mean that you should never eat carbohydrates, but it just means that it's not necessary for survival. And I would argue that you can do very, very well and live a very healthy life if you just focus on consuming enough protein and consuming enough fat.

You take care of your structure by a means of eating protein, and you take care of your energy by the means of eating fatty acids. Now, the thing is, that does not necessarily mean the body doesn't need glucose. There are certain cells in the body that require glucose. They cannot use fat as a form of energy.

And that's the reason why there is a process in the body called gluconeogenesis, the creation of new glucose from non carbohydrate sources. So the body can make What it needs and you don't have to consume carbohydrates to survive. So that's number one. We need to eat protein. We need to eat fat. We don't necessarily need to eat carbohydrates.

That's aspect number one. The second aspect, let's look at evolution and see how that maps to how humans have eaten for 2. 6 million years. And if we go back all the way, you know, before modern humans, our early ancestors, you know, they were plant eaters. They lived on trees. They were relatively small. They didn't look as robust and as tall as modern humans.

They were certainly not apex predators. They were, you know, plant eaters that would spend most of their day trying to find food. Chew it, eat it, consume it, uh, digest it and do it all over again. That was their main thing. Much like herbivores today and ruminant animals, they have to eat pretty much all day to extract enough nutrients from the plants to survive.

And so those were the early, early, you know, before we even would have called them humans. Now, at some point, you know, those early ancestors started eating insects, you know, so they find that they found this another source of protein that was more bioavailable. Fast forward at some point, they became scavengers, meaning they would eat the leftover of other prey animals.

So if, you know, there was a, I don't know, the leftovers of a mammoth or, you know, whatever prey animal, they would just eat whatever. The apex predator left over, and that usually included muscle meats and, you know, maybe some of the bones in a month, some of the cartilage tissue, maybe some, some of the stuff that's, that predators would not consume first.

But up until that point, that didn't make a huge difference in. In our evolution, that wasn't really a major milestone in terms of brain development and in terms of our overall statue. What made the biggest difference in human evolution is the transition from scavengers to hunters. Because as hunters, we now suddenly had the tools to not only butcher the animal and well to hunt the animal in the first place, to, you know, create weapons, spares, and what have you, to hunt animals al, but also then to butcher them, to slice them open, to carve the meat.

But the most important aspect here was that we suddenly had first access to the most nutrient dense part of the animal, and that includes the organs, the fat. the bone marrow, to name a few. And so, and then obviously, roughly around the same time, we discovered how to intentionally make fire and to extract even more nutrients from the food we were hunting and finding by heating it, by cooking it.

And so those two things led to a significant evolutionary milestone in terms of increased brain volume and just our statue increased, we became taller and we, we really turned into apex predators. We were the top of the food chain at that time, you know, hunting down animals and consuming them nose to tail to get as many nutrients.

in our bodies as necessary. Of course, you know, humans have always been opportunistic. If the hunt was unsuccessful and we would find plant matter, be it, you know, seeds, wild roots, vegetables, tubers, whatever the case might be, we would consume insects for that matter. We would consume that stuff too. And if you look at our You know, our jaws, our digestive system, and you can tell, you know, we have canines, so we are obviously, um, very well capable of, of, of tearing meat, of consuming meat, but we also have molars, you know, to chew stuff that, um, you know, plant matter for, you know, for example, but if we then look at our digestive system, we have a fairly acid stomach, and I'm comparing this in, you know, with, with plant eaters, with pure plant eaters who have a far less acidic stomach.

We have a fairly long, small intestine that's perfectly designed to digest protein and fat from animal sources. We have a fairly short, large intestine, which is typically used by, um, by herbivores and by plant eaters to ferment the food and to digest plant matter. Ours is very short in comparison. So we are not.

Made to consume predominantly plants, humans, just based on evolution, based on the types of micronutrients that are essential to us, humans are meat leaning omnivores. We should and have to eat meat, animals, nose to tail ideally, including their protein and their fat to maintain optimal health. That is what we have to consume.

So it's from that perspective, what is it that you have to eat? Fairly easy, animals nose to tail, you know, um, including the organs, including the fat, including the bone marrow, you know, that's where all the micronutrients are, the vitamins, the minerals, et cetera. And if you do that, then you're in on the right path to optimal health.

Now, here's the thing, you know, I'm not arguing that That you have to only eat protein and fat, that you cannot have any carbs, you cannot have any plant whatsoever. I don't think that's the case. I think modern humans are more than capable of consuming more than just meat. Do you have to? No, I don't think you have to, but I think you can.

And so now the more complicated or the more complex question, at least on, on the surfaces, what foods can you have without fucking everything up? And I think as a rule of thumb, and I just actually got a message this morning on, on Instagram from a friend, uh, who shared, you know, uh, um, a good piece of information or a good tip really.

And that is. If the food didn't exist before 1900, don't eat it. You know, if the food existed before 1900, but it was eaten only rarely, consume it rarely, like sugar, you know, and I think that's, that's a very good initial guideline to say, okay, what foods can you eat well, if it was around before 1900, and that includes Most plants, many plants, um, maybe not the, you know, the genetically modified variations or crossbred variations that exist today, but all the old stuff that was around at the time, if we can still find it, then that's probably safe to eat in certain amounts.

And, or at least you can get away with eating it. So what does it mean in terms of what you should not be eating then? Well, I mean, if you want to keep it simple, anything that came up or that was invented after 1900, don't eat it. Now you don't have to be quite, you know, that strict. Uh, but specifically what I highly recommend you remove and don't eat are industrial seed oils, AKA vegetable oils.

You know, those didn't exist obviously for 1900. vegetable oils, seed oils are an invention or a byproduct of the industry. They used to be, you know, we used to use seed oils to lube machinery. And then at some point someone discovered, well, if we deodorize that chemical sludge and if we filter it, then it's actually a cooking oil that we can make cheap and sell it at a high margin.

And You know, it's perfect. Well, the problem is that it's not perfect from a health perspective. You know, humans have never consumed the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are the type of fatty acids found in, found in plants as we do today. And they are terrible for your health. They are pro inflammatory, they are fattening.

They are just not something that our bodies have evolved. They are not, we are not made to consume industrial seed oils, period. So cut them out. Tip number one. And unfortunately, they are hidden in everything, in sauces and, you know, in a lot of different products. Margarine is a, you know, crab product.

There are many things that include seed oils. Um, and just, it's not about just not buying those cooking oils, it's about not buying those products that contain those seed oils. And that really leads us to the second. Type of food category that I think you should be cutting out completely. And that is most processed foods and in particular processed carbohydrates and anything that's low fat, um, shelf stable stuff, all of those things are made using ingredients, be it, you know, artificial, uh, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, colors, you know, all of kind of things that humans have never eaten until very recently.

So our bodies are not accustomed to consuming all of those man made, lab made type of ingredients, and if you remove processed foods from your pantry, from your fridge, then you're only left with, you know, real types of foods, single ingredient foods that are much better for your health. So what does it mean specifically of what you can eat and can probably get away with?

I mean, everyone is a little bit different, so you kind of have to figure out what works for you and what doesn't. But generally speaking, sweet fruits are safe to eat. If you peel and deseed squashes, you know, like zucchini or, you know, acorn squash or even pumpkins, you know, those types of foods. And those are also fruits, by the way, just not sweet fruits.

Avocados are also fruits, but not sweet fruits. You can, you can have olives. You can have one thing you keep in mind is that all plants. have toxins. And without going too much into that, I think that should be a different episode, but just on a very high level. No living being wants to be eaten. Animals don't want to be eaten, but they run or they fight to avoid being killed.

We just happen to be stronger and smarter and have more technology to kill them anyway. Um, plants typically, they don't run. And they don't fight, at least not with claws and teeth. They use chemicals to defend, in particular, the most vital parts of the plant. And that includes the seeds, obviously, that's where the plant comes out of.

The stems, the leaves that are used, you know, to collect sunlight and do, um, you know, convert nutrients, etc. Um, so those are the most vital parts of the plants that are highly protected and defended with chemicals. And so just consuming all plants randomly and without processing them, preparing them properly is usually a recipe for disaster.

And that's why throughout You know, thousands of years, humans have developed certain processing methods to a, mitigate some of those plant toxins and to make the nutrients in plants more accessible for our physiology. Because plants are not a great source of nutrients. Animals are. The nutrients in animals are highly available, readily absorbable.

In plants, usually not. And so we have to go out of our way. to make those nutrients more accessible and to mitigate some of those, um, issues. So that means you can, for example, you can ferment grains to extract more of the nutrients and to mitigate some of the anti nutrients like, um, like gluten. You can Peel and ferment potatoes to reduce their glycemic index and to remove some of the toxins that are in particular found in the skin.

Because if you think about it, potato in the soil, the barrier that's between the potato and the insects around it is the skin. So that's the most highly defended part of that plant. If you remove the skin and then ferment the potatoes, you not only removed a lot of the toxins, but you also reduce the glycemic index.

You don't get as much of an insulin response when you consume it, etc. You can ferment cabbage, you know, turn it into sauerkraut. You can soak white rice, you know, to leach out some of the toxins, then discard the water before cooking the rice. You can, um, soak and cook legumes like beans, you know, none of those methods completely eliminate the toxins, but they can greatly reduce them.

And it depends on your individual sensitivity and your physiology, whether or not that's enough to make those plants a more or less regular part. of your diet. And so some of the plants you should really avoid because there is no way of mitigating their toxins are especially leafy greens, oxalates in particular.

I have not seen or found any way to mitigate oxalates. Oxalates, if you viewed under a microscope, are like shards of glass and they literally poke holes into your cell walls. Sometimes, you know, if you eat a lot of spinach and you feel that numb feeling in your mouth, those are the oxalates. you know, poking your gums and making them numb.

You cannot mitigate oxalates and oxalates very often can then lead to kidney stones and, you know, and deposits in your joints, et cetera. And there is no good way of mitigating them. So the best way is to not consume those leafy greens as healthy as some people think they are, they are terrible for your health.

And So those I would exclude, but I, you know, again, look at my food list. It has, you know, different categories of foods that you have to eat, you can eat, and you should avoid, um, if you don't know how to properly process them, or if there is no way of mitigating those issues. So that's. Kind of on a high level, you know, what you should eat and what you can eat.

Again, nose to tail animals, uh, wild caught is best, um, or, or responsibly raised, but really by the best you can, you can afford. Those are the things you have to, you should make the center of every meal and then everything else, you know, sweet fruits. Some of the least toxic plants, if you prepare them accordingly, you can consume depending on your current state of health.

If you already have gut issues and leaky gut and IBS and stuff, it might be safe to remove those from your diet for a while completely and then reintroduce them. But in our, you know, setup right now in our family, we consume plants. Um, it's just not the, they don't make up the majority of our calories and we pick them wisely and based on our individual physiology.

There are some things, even on the safe list, that we can't have, like our little one cannot have bananas. He gets, you know, soft stools, so we avoid them. I can have bananas, I do fine with them, but I cannot have certain other things that, you know, you get the idea. You have to figure out kind of what works, but the food list is really a good guide, I think, for you to get started and figure out what it is.

Now. Before we move on to some of the more practical tips that you can implement, let's talk about two things real quick. And one is raw honey and raw dairy. Those are obviously animal based foods and I'm a huge fan of raw honey. Um, we have honeybees in our backyard, so we make our own honey. The thing is with honey, most store bought honey is, is of low quality.

Even if it's raw and and local honey. The problem is traditional beekeeping involves a lot of medication. So they medicate their hives every year, twice a year, you know, to treat for certain issues and pests that are caused by the type of hive management. We don't treat anything. We have, we don't have any chemicals in our hives.

That's which is one of the reasons why we make our own honey, because I don't want to buy honey, even if it's locally made and raw and not pasteurized and everything. I know that most everyone is using pharmaceuticals to treat your hives. And I don't want to have any of that in my honey or near my honey, but raw honey generally is fine.

If we can find a good source, you know, um, that's usually fine. Also from a, you know, insulin perspective, insulin response perspective, honey seems to be much better than other types of sugars in terms of how your body reacts to it, how your blood sugar levels go up and how your insulin responses in comparison.

So that's why I really like honey as a sweetener. Um, dairy. I'm a fan of raw dairy because pasteurizing dairy, especially ultra pasteurizing dairy, denatures the proteins, it changes the entire product, you can not really call it milk anymore, even if it looks like it and kind of tastes like it, but it's not the same product as raw dairy, and so that's why I usually eat.

recommend staying away from pasteurized dairy. Um, it's much more likely to cause gut issues and sensitivities, and it's not really a great food. Raw dairy, on the other hand, I think is great. That does not necessarily mean you have to drink gallons of milk. Um, I, I eat quite a few, I drink quite a few, um, a lot of milk.

I eat a lot of raw cheeses. I seem to be doing very well with it. Not everyone does, so again, it's something you have to figure out. Now let's talk about some of the, the tips you can implement that are kind of overarching to, you know, the individual food categories we discussed in this episode so far.

And maybe one of the things, before we get into a tip, well, my first tip is to not eat everything in moderation, really. I mean, that's what most nutritionists would tell you, just eat everything in moderation. I think it's terrible advice. Unless your goal is to obtain moderate health, I want to obtain optimal health.

I want to maintain optimal health. And so everything in moderation, I think is BS. Um, now everything good in moderation may be a different thing, but you know, then it's not really the word. Everything doesn't make sense here anymore. But beyond that, the first tip is, you know, download my food list. I'm going to link it down below.

That's really a, uh, I think a great resource to kind of help you as a guide. In the future, once you have forgotten most of what you heard in this episode, stick with the best foods you can afford and don't worry about the stuff you cannot afford. If grass fed, grass finished meat is not in the equation or not in your budget, buy the best you can do.

Grain fed meat, I think is still better than no meat or that meat alternatives. So buy the best you can and don't, when I say meat, you know, some people think, well, that means, you know, fillet steak. No. You can get grass fed, grass finished meat, you know, cheaper cuts, very inexpensively and often at the same price point as traditionally or conventionally grown, uh, raised beef.

So buy stew meat, buy, you know, roasts, you know, throw them in a slow cooker, invest, you know, 50 bucks or whatever it costs in a slow cooker and put You know, the chewier cuts into the slow cooker, let it, you know, stew there for 24 hours. And I promise you, it'll come out soft. It's going to fall off the fork and it tastes delicious.

Just water, salt, or maybe with bone broth. You feel it like a little bit more flavor and it tastes absolutely delicious. And it's very inexpensive. You can get grass fed, grass finished meat for like five, six pounds. 5, 6 a pound here in Georgia. Uh, even sometimes at Whole Foods, you know, like you can get very inexpensive, uh, meat and it, you know, doesn't break the bank.

But even if you, you know, like steaks and whatever, you know, just go to Costco, whatever, and buy, you know, their choice meat. It doesn't have to be the. Best, highest quality meat. Meat is better than no meat, period. Buy locally. That's really another thing. If you want to avoid all of the funky stuff and processing that's going on, you know, if you buy, you know, food that has been, that was made somewhere else in another country, maybe then shipped in here, you know, you already You increase your risk of getting something with it that you don't like.

One good example is, you know, a lot of produce, especially if you look at apples, you know, the shiny coating that you put over it to, you know, make it look pretty and everything. Very often they contain seed oils, but if you buy an apple from your local farmer that, you know, just, you know, picks the apple and, and, and sells it without coating it with anything, you are much better off.

And you support the local farmer and you have maybe a chance to visit that local farmer like we buy a lot of our meat here in Georgia and a lot of the well dairy really the raw dairy from carton farms, you know, or our meat from big hickory farms. It's in, I think an elderly lady that, you know, raises grass fed grass finished cattle on the side.

Or maybe it's still her main gig. I don't even know, but you know, we buy an entire cow a year. It's relatively inexpensive if we break it down, you know, the price per pound. And we support the local farmer. We know exactly where it's coming from. We can visit the farm. You can visit carton. You can visit white oak pastures, another farm that we here in Georgia that we buy, um, or source a lot of our meat and food generally from.

And you can visit them. You can see what they do. And you support the local farms, so buy local, you know, and you remove a lot of the issues associated with foods purchased and sourced from regular grocery stores. Raise your own food. I mean, that's obviously the holy grail and the reason why we started the Kummer Homestead and we started raising, you know, honeybees for, well, honey, chickens for eggs, rabbits for meat.

Uh, soon we gonna add goats and we actually just purchased a, or we on the contract. As of this recording on a larger property where we can raise our own cattle and have dairy cows. And so really take control of our food. Now, I know not everyone can raise their own beef. I understand it, but grow something, you know, be involved, um, and grow a tomato plant.

If tomatoes are your thing, just remove the seeds. And if you can, the skin, but at least the seeds to detoxify them a little bit, uh, but grow something and appreciate knowing that what you're putting on your plate. You know exactly where that thing came from and how it was raised and, and grown and treated, etc.

It's not only very rewarding, but it's really an important step of your, of your food sourcing. Don't outsource one of the most crucial aspects of your health to someone else who does not care about your health. And that's what most people do out there, outsource their food supply and food sourcing. And you basically tell someone else, Hey, please make that food, you know, nutritious and healthy enough so that I can maintain optimal health.

Most vendors out there don't care about your health. They want, they care about profits and selling you the cheapest food possible at the highest possible price to create a, an appropriate margin, you know, so take food sourcing and, and, and all of that. under your control if possible and to the extent feasible to you.

Take the time to prepare your food. That's also a major thing. Most of us are completely disconnected from where the food comes from. You know, buying a skinless chicken breast, you know, you know, in the store, you have no idea what it takes to raise that animal. You are so disconnected from everything It, it, it becomes problematic.

Most people, you know, they don't want to talk about, you know, butchering or whatever, while you're eating with, oh, that's gross, you know, don't say that I'm eating right now, you know, don't bring it up. No, this is really, this is the core of food sourcing. You know, we need to understand that where that thing came from, how it was prepared and that someone, be it, you know, an, a plant or an animal, you know, gave its life so that we can thrive, you know, that.

That mentality is super important for you to understand and the best way to, to more appreciate that better is to take part of the food preparation. Don't, again, outsource that to someone. Be, be, make your, make that food yourself as much as you can. and learn how to cook. You know, that's super important for your overall health.

Um, learn how to process and prepare foods. You know, that's, again, goes back to learning how to ferment and why that's important. Soaking, sprouting, you know, all of the things you can do to extract more nutrients and to mitigate Toxins, especially from in plant foods, super important and it pays off learning some of those basic techniques that make them also food preparation easier and more joyful.

Cook with single ingredient foods. You know, again, if you buy, you know, even, even if you need to have, you know, kale, you know, as, as much as I recommend not eating leafy greens, but if you grow your own kale and you prepare that maybe with, you know, a properly raised. steak or whatever, you know, that's much, much better than buying a similar or comparable meal somewhere in the store that might have additives and preservatives and whatnot.

Using single ingredient foods is one of the easiest and most effective steps you can take to improve your health and nutrition instead of buying something that has Multiple ingredients. There are some processed products that if you look at the ingredient list, it's just ridiculous. Look at a Beyond Burger, you know, the plant based burger and the amount of ingredients, the crap chunk ingredients it has, it's mind boggling, you know.

Instead of just getting one piece of meat and one piece of vegetable, you know, two ingredients, maybe with some salt, make it a third ingredient, you know, that your meal has. Instead of 50 ingredients, most of which you can't even pronounce and don't know what they are. You know, make protein the center of each meal.

Protein is the foundation and Even if you're into counting your macros or counting your calories, which is something I absolutely recommend you don't do because it's a waste of time. But if you wanna count something, count your protein. Protein calories don't count for that matter, so count your, you know?

So don't count the calories, but count as how much protein you eat. to make sure you consume enough, you know, make protein the center of your meal and then use fat and carbohydrates strategically as a source of energy. But protein is the most important macronutrient. Fat is important as well, but you can get away with, you know, eating a little bit less fat if you don't need it for energy and, you know, substitute with carbohydrates for energy.

But, you know, some fat. Protein is, is just crucial. So make sure you eat a lot of protein, uh, shoot for one to two grams per kilogram of body weight, or the equivalence of pounds if you're counting in pounds. Don't be afraid of consuming healthy fats. Fat, eating fat does not make you fat. Yes, one gram of fat has more calories, meaning nine, uh, compared to protein and carbohydrates, which has four calories per gram, but fat.

saturated fats in particular, cholesterol, don't cause heart disease, don't increase your risk of heart disease, that's a myth, has been debunked, I have resources down in the show notes too, that you can read up on, don't be afraid of consuming healthy fats, now you can certainly overdo it, you can add in a stick of butter to every meal you have and you might run into a significant caloric surplus which might make it and hard to lose weight or to maintain your weight that's another problem but generally speaking don't be afraid of fat it's not gonna derail your health or your weight loss efforts.

Don't be afraid of carbs either. I'm not arguing that you have to be on a low zero carb diet. I've done this and I've done well on it, but I don't think it's conducive for everyone or it works for everyone. This is, you know, where individuality comes into the equation. Some people are better carb burners than, and some people are the fat, a better or more efficient fat burner.

So you have to kind of figure out what works best for you. And my number one advice in that regard would be to retain your metabolic flexibility. Metabolic flexibility means that your body is capable of efficiently using carbs or fat as a source of energy depending on their availability. So when you eat carbs, it can use the carbs efficiently.

When you don't have carbs, it uses fat efficiently, either your own body fat or the fat from the food you consume. And so that metabolic flexibility is really more important than the individual macros that you Use to fulfill your energy needs. I have some low to no carb days. I have some higher carb days.

I mean by high, I mean like 150 grams a day. So nothing compared to the standard American diet high, but still, you know, it depends a little bit on, you know, how much you work out. If you're a professional CrossFit athlete and you, you know, have three competitions a day for several days in a row, you probably need some carbs, you know, to replenish your glycogen stores.

But if you're not doing that. You don't have to drink orange juice or add maple syrup or, you know, honey to your milk. Um, you know, just because you think carbs are great, you know, you can certainly overdo it too. So play with it, see how you feel. Um, I generally do better on lower carb diets than on higher carb diets.

Just from a mental clarity and fogginess perspective, I do much better if I don't eat carbs that often. And especially If I don't have carbs until the afternoon, so typically my, all my morning, you know, is, is no carb and I'm, I do very well in the evening or afternoon with my dinner, I have some carbs. Um, stick with protein and fat from animal based sources.

You know, yes, plants have protein, but they usually have an incomplete amino acid profile, meaning you don't get all the essential amino acids from. Plants and even a source of fat, the fatty acids in plants are typically polyunsaturated, very often polyunsaturated. Those are more unstable, they oxidize quicker, become rancid more quicker, cause more inflammation.

And so I recommend getting your protein and your fat predominantly from animal based sources. Your energy then in terms of carbohydrates, yes, you can rely on plant foods. Um, Last but not least, before we wrap it up, and without going into details, you know, carnivore versus, you know, vegan or plant based, I think veganism is a modern luxury that we can afford doing to a degree because we have supplements, we have protein powders, we have synthetic vitamins that we can use to mitigate and bridge some of the gaps from a pure plant based diet.

I think it's absolutely not sustainable to be Vegan in nature, our ancestors would have not survived. In fact, you know, that experiment has been done at some point during human evolution. There were the plant eaters and the meat eaters and guess which branch survived. It wasn't the plant eaters. It's not sustainable for humans to only eat plants.

Uh, we're going to probably go more into that in a separate episode, but I'm not saying don't eat any plants. but make the majority of your calories, especially the protein and the fat, come from animal based sources and then consume the plants that work for you, work for your gut, work for your physiology and learn how to process and prepare them to mitigate some of the issues and to extract more nutrients from them.

Again, look at my food list, link it down below, uh, very, um, crucial step. Before we end it for today's episode, I want to also plug here MK Supplements again, because I've mentioned organ meats in the past. I've mentioned, uh, before I mentioned bone marrow before. You know, those are some of the parts of the animal that have the most nutrients, meaning the most vitamins and minerals.

And so that's why I encourage you to consume organ meats fresh if possible, but if that's not your cup of tea, if you don't like the taste or the texture, or if it's, it's also difficult to source sometimes and to keep it, you know, refrigerated or frozen, et cetera. So if you want to make organ meats and bone marrow part of your diet, but don't care for doing it using fresh ingredients, freeze dried beef organ supplements.

are the best way to get those organs into your diet without the hassle. And so that's why we, I had, I launched MK Supplements with my wife two years ago to provide you with an option of a high quality option of those organs, um, in a very convenient form factor without the taste and the texture, just, you know, capsules, four capsules a day, and you get a whole serving of organ meat.

So check that. I'm going to link it down below out of a discount code for any of you listeners. If you want to give MK Supplements a try, you can use code, primalshift, one word. To get a discount. So check that out. I appreciate your support. We're going with that. We're going to wrap it up and I hope you all see you in the next episode.