Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Anya Fernald,
00:00:02 cofounder of Belcampo Farms,
00:00:04 that was founded with the purpose to create meat
00:00:07 that’s good for people, the planet, and the animals,
00:00:10 specifically treating their animals as ethically as possible.
00:00:14 In this, she sought to revolutionize the meat industry
00:00:18 from the inside out.
00:00:19 She’s also a scholar and practitioner
00:00:22 of regenerative agriculture,
00:00:24 and she’s a chef who has appeared many times
00:00:26 as a judge on Iron Chef.
00:00:28 Plus, she has one of my favorite food related Instagrams.
00:00:32 On top of that, she’s also a longtime friend
00:00:34 of Andrew Huberman, which is how we first got connected.
00:00:38 Quick mention of our sponsors,
00:00:40 Gala Games, Athletic Greens, Four Sigmatic,
00:00:43 and Fundrise.
00:00:45 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
00:00:48 As a side note, let me say that I got the chance to visit
00:00:52 and spend a few days with Anya
00:00:53 at Belcampo Farms in Northern California.
00:00:56 I met many animals there, from cows to pigs,
00:00:59 and saw the amazing land on which they grazed.
00:01:03 I butchered meat, I watched Anya cook many amazing meals,
00:01:07 I ate raw meat and cooked meat,
00:01:10 and spent long hours at the bonfire talking with friends
00:01:14 and listening to the sounds of nature.
00:01:16 I hiked, swam in a cold mountain lake,
00:01:19 and slept in a tent underneath the stars.
00:01:22 It was an amazing eye opening experience,
00:01:25 especially in my first ever visit to a slaughterhouse.
00:01:29 The term slaughterhouse is haunting in itself.
00:01:33 The animals I met lived a great life,
00:01:36 but in the end, they were slaughtered,
00:01:38 in the most ethical way possible,
00:01:40 but slaughtered nevertheless.
00:01:43 Seeing animals with whom just the day before
00:01:45 I made a connection be converted to meat
00:01:47 that I then consumed was deeply honest to me.
00:01:51 This ethical farm, Belcampo,
00:01:54 represents less than 1% of animals raised
00:01:56 in the United States.
00:01:58 The rest is factory farmed.
00:02:00 I could not escape the thought
00:02:01 of the 40 to 50 billion animals worldwide
00:02:05 raised in terrible conditions on these factory farms.
00:02:08 I’ve spent most of my life thinking about
00:02:10 and being in contact with human suffering,
00:02:13 but the landscape of suffering
00:02:15 in the minds of conscious beings
00:02:16 is much larger than humans.
00:02:19 I must admit that I still am haunted
00:02:21 by human suffering more than animal suffering.
00:02:24 Perhaps I will one day see the wrong
00:02:26 in me drawing such a line.
00:02:28 Either way, the visit to Belcampo Farms
00:02:30 made me realize that I have not thought deeply enough
00:02:34 about the ethics of my choices
00:02:36 and the choices of human civilization
00:02:38 with respect to animals.
00:02:39 And more importantly, I have not thought
00:02:42 or learned enough about large scale solutions
00:02:45 to alleviate animal suffering.
00:02:48 Belcampo is paving the way on this
00:02:49 and is the reason I wanted to show my support
00:02:52 for their and Anya’s efforts in regenerative farming
00:02:55 and ethical treatment of animals.
00:02:58 This is the Lex Friedman podcast
00:03:00 and here is my conversation with Anya Fernald.
00:03:12 If you’re watching the video version of this
00:03:15 and are asking yourself why we’re in nature right now,
00:03:17 there’s actually a beautiful mountain in the background.
00:03:22 There’s an incredible vast landscape.
00:03:24 There’s a farm.
00:03:26 We’re sitting behind a table and nevertheless,
00:03:28 I’m wearing a suit and tie amidst nature.
00:03:32 We’re at the beautiful Belcampo Farms.
00:03:35 We’re going to talk about that,
00:03:36 this incredible place you have here,
00:03:38 but you cooked some meat yesterday.
00:03:40 It tasted delicious.
00:03:42 So I’d love to talk about just the science
00:03:44 and art of cooking first.
00:03:46 You as a chef, when you think of cooking,
00:03:49 is it a science or is it an art?
00:03:51 Art and service together, probably.
00:03:55 Art to me because it’s about creating something of beauty
00:04:00 and being responsive and creating something
00:04:03 that’s expression of creativity and love.
00:04:06 Cooking also has a very strong element of service
00:04:09 and it doesn’t mean necessarily service to another person,
00:04:11 but like service to health, wellness, environment.
00:04:15 There’s an element of supporting through food
00:04:17 in how I approach cooking.
00:04:18 So it’s bigger than just like how the ingredients
00:04:21 come together to form a taste.
00:04:22 It’s the whole pipeline.
00:04:23 Like the fact that there’s a lot of work
00:04:26 that went into bringing the ingredients together
00:04:30 and then giving you the ability to make the meal
00:04:36 and then who gets to consume the meal and the whole thing.
00:04:39 And you see that as service as opposed to just the taste.
00:04:43 Yeah, I also think of food as one of the key ways
00:04:46 that we interact with our environment, right?
00:04:51 It’s the part of our environment
00:04:52 that goes inside us most visibly, right?
00:04:54 Of course, we interact with our environment.
00:04:55 We could have skin creams that have certain things in them
00:04:58 or our clothes can then be absorbed.
00:05:01 There’s things in the air.
00:05:02 There’s our water and there’s food, right?
00:05:03 It’s like how we’re engaging in the world.
00:05:06 Physiologically, it’s the most significant way
00:05:08 we engage in our environment.
00:05:10 We’re extracting resources, calories, energy
00:05:13 from the environment in various ways
00:05:14 in order to preserve our bodies.
00:05:19 There’s also so many feedback loops
00:05:21 that I don’t think we know the beginning of
00:05:23 that our bodies are picking up on around nutrients,
00:05:27 available nutrients, immune response.
00:05:29 Like there’s deep levels of sensory evaluation
00:05:33 that lead to health and alertness and wellness.
00:05:38 You hear about this a lot with babies that, you know,
00:05:42 if there’s a risk of an infection
00:05:43 that a mom’s breast milk will help the baby
00:05:46 develop a resistance, like there’s this way
00:05:48 that our bodies can tune into health
00:05:50 and can’t extrapolate from that in any specific way,
00:05:52 but think about that as an example of the many ways
00:05:55 in which our bodies are reading available nutrients and food
00:05:58 to signal other aspects of wellness and health.
00:06:01 That said, the final product of cooking is,
00:06:06 when done well, is really delicious.
00:06:08 And what we ate yesterday was really delicious.
00:06:10 So that aspect of it, bringing the ingredients together
00:06:15 in a way that tastes delicious,
00:06:17 do you see that as a science or art?
00:06:19 That’s the art of it.
00:06:21 I mean, the art is like creating temptation
00:06:24 and indulgence and giving people pause,
00:06:27 you know, like creating experience that’s like so sensual.
00:06:29 And like, I love that about when I make something
00:06:33 really simple and beautiful and delicious
00:06:36 the way that, like there’s that moment of silence
00:06:38 at the table.
00:06:39 And that to me is the moment of art, like appreciation.
00:06:43 What about the buildup?
00:06:44 I mean, we got to watch you make the stuff over a fire.
00:06:48 So the calmness of the air, I mean, that’s an experience.
00:06:51 We don’t often get to see that experience of the preparation.
00:06:54 It’s the anticipation, like you said.
00:06:56 Maybe that’s the most delicious part of a meal
00:06:58 is the anticipation of it.
00:06:59 That’s something that I’m glad you bring up
00:07:01 because it’s an element that with eating so many
00:07:04 of our meals, like out of a bag and you know,
00:07:08 the instance where you start to eat the meals
00:07:09 when the delivery shows up and you might smell something
00:07:12 when you open the bag, right?
00:07:13 And no judgment on that.
00:07:14 That’s something I do too, right?
00:07:16 But that does take away a whole element
00:07:18 of surprise and delight.
00:07:20 And also I think of your body’s ability to prepare for it.
00:07:23 You know, you think about our most common memories
00:07:25 of childhood for those of us who grew up in homes
00:07:28 with parents who cooked is smell of things cooking.
00:07:31 And it’s not the eating of it.
00:07:33 It’s the smell of things cooking.
00:07:35 So why is that so memorable?
00:07:37 It’s an anticipatory piece of food.
00:07:40 That’s what you remember about your experiences of food
00:07:42 is the moment of like sweet anticipation
00:07:44 of this great sensual experience.
00:07:46 It’s gonna be really gratifying on these emotional
00:07:48 and physical levels.
00:07:49 So I think we’re also resonating on those memories
00:07:52 because it’s like, it’s an experience of food
00:07:55 where the sensuality of it is kind of extended.
00:07:58 So it’s a long kind of arc of buildup
00:08:00 and then you’re eating it and it’s amazing.
00:08:01 Then you’re enjoying it and your body feels good.
00:08:03 So all those pieces together,
00:08:05 it’s a much more memorable experience
00:08:06 than just grabbing the cookie out of a bag, right?
00:08:08 So look at our own and just revisit in your mind
00:08:12 like the memories of food, the most compelling ones.
00:08:15 It’s the smell and then the experience
00:08:18 and then sometimes how one felt, right?
00:08:20 Yeah, and the people involved with the smell.
00:08:22 So like somehow it’s all tied in together
00:08:25 whether it’s family or people close to you
00:08:27 or even if it’s just chefs.
00:08:28 There’s something about the personality of the human
00:08:32 involved in making the food
00:08:33 that kind of sticks with you in the memory.
00:08:35 And for me, I recently did a 72 hour fast
00:08:38 and there’s a kind of sadness after you eat
00:08:42 that it’s over.
00:08:43 I think the most delicious part was the,
00:08:45 I went to the grocery store and just actually walking around
00:08:49 and looking at food with like everything looked delicious.
00:08:52 Even like the crappiest stuff looked delicious
00:08:54 and I missed that.
00:08:55 I really enjoyed that anticipation
00:08:58 and then I picked out the meal.
00:08:59 I went home and I cooked it
00:09:01 and the whole thing took, I don’t know,
00:09:03 maybe two, three hours, like the whole process.
00:09:05 And that was the most delicious part
00:09:07 and the first taste of course.
00:09:08 And then after it was over, there’s a bit of a sadness
00:09:13 because the part I remember is the buildup, the anticipation
00:09:16 and then once you eat, it’s over.
00:09:20 We kind of focus on the destination
00:09:22 but it’s the whole journey.
00:09:23 The whole like, even if you go to a restaurant,
00:09:25 it’s the conversations leading up to the meal
00:09:29 and the first taste of the meal.
00:09:30 That’s where the joy is.
00:09:32 And if you get to watch the making of that meal,
00:09:34 that’s incredible.
00:09:35 That’s where the smell, the visual,
00:09:38 how the ingredients come together
00:09:40 and especially as we were looking over the fire,
00:09:43 like watching it, the fire play with the raw meat
00:09:50 and over time bring out the colors, bring out the,
00:09:53 I don’t know, like you can visually associate the flavor,
00:09:57 you know, how it becomes a little bit burnt on the outside,
00:10:01 you know, it has a crispiness to it,
00:10:02 it starts to gain that crispiness
00:10:03 and immediately your past memories
00:10:06 of the delicious crispiness of various foods you’ve eaten
00:10:08 are somehow mapped into your,
00:10:10 immediately you start to taste it visually.
00:10:13 I don’t know, yeah, that experience is magical.
00:10:15 It’s, and of course, maybe it’s the Russian thing
00:10:17 but I’m almost like saddened when it’s over.
00:10:20 I think fasting is gaining in popularity
00:10:24 because we’re having to relearn the importance
00:10:27 of being hungry in anticipation and delight.
00:10:30 Yeah.
00:10:31 We have such a fear of hunger
00:10:34 and that’s really functional in evolution, right?
00:10:37 But we have this deep fear of hunger
00:10:39 and part of the great American experience has been
00:10:42 that we don’t have to be afraid of hunger at all
00:10:44 because there’s food everywhere and it’s really cheap.
00:10:47 In all that abundance, we’ve lost this edge of hunger
00:10:51 and we don’t let ourselves get hungry.
00:10:54 And that’s one thing that I learned
00:10:56 in part of my journey as a cook and chef has been,
00:10:59 you know, moving abroad was the first time
00:11:01 when I lived out of the US,
00:11:03 was the first time that I regularly experienced hunger
00:11:06 because the time between meals was really long
00:11:09 and that was just what everybody did.
00:11:12 And so I was hungry for two hours before lunch.
00:11:14 And that was the first time in my life
00:11:16 that there hadn’t just been readily available snacks.
00:11:19 So I wonder if the intermittent fasting
00:11:21 and part of the popularity around it,
00:11:23 I’m sure there’s all these amazing metabolic things
00:11:26 that are happening, but also people might also feel better
00:11:28 because they’re really anticipating and enjoying food.
00:11:32 And then if you look at the feelings of fullness,
00:11:34 there’s a really interesting thing that happens
00:11:37 when you cook and your sense of fullness,
00:11:41 which is if you cook and you’re hungry,
00:11:45 the experience of being around the food,
00:11:47 smelling it, touching it, sampling it,
00:11:50 you’ll take your hunger down by 40%.
00:11:53 And this is my own observation.
00:11:55 But as, I mean, we’ve all had the experience
00:11:58 of cooking Thanksgiving and the cook
00:11:59 never kind of wants to eat that much Thanksgiving.
00:12:01 That’s an extreme experience.
00:12:02 But when you really dive in and you’re cooking
00:12:05 for a few hours and you’re smelling
00:12:06 and smelling and smelling,
00:12:07 it totally changes your threshold of satiety and fullness
00:12:12 because of other sensory things that are happening.
00:12:15 And for those of us looking to maintain weight
00:12:18 and something to consider in this is that cooking
00:12:20 is also part of what your appetite,
00:12:24 when you’re hungry, what are you hungry for, right?
00:12:27 So we tend to think about calories, but when you’re hungry,
00:12:30 you might also be hungrier for a wider range of things.
00:12:33 And it might be smells, it might be stopping.
00:12:36 There’s other elements and that’s something,
00:12:38 I think as a cook, that it’s powerful to explore
00:12:42 and be with and observe how your hunger changes
00:12:46 when you’re cooking.
00:12:47 Well, let me ask the romantic question.
00:12:49 When did you first fall in love with cooking?
00:12:53 Me falling in love with cooking
00:12:55 was about solving a problem in my family.
00:12:58 And it had to do with my mom feeling very anxious
00:13:04 about cooking and overwhelmed frequently
00:13:08 when it came to meals.
00:13:09 And I’m naturally very good at juggling a lot of things.
00:13:13 And it was just something I could dive in and help
00:13:17 and help my dad, who I’m very, very close to.
00:13:21 So it was a very functional role where I would see
00:13:25 this kind of crescendo of anxiety around meal times
00:13:28 as a kid and would be able to dive in and solve things.
00:13:33 And I also loved women who cooked.
00:13:37 Like my father’s mother was a great cook.
00:13:39 She was, I remember her telling me as a kid,
00:13:42 I was asking her about church and why she went to church.
00:13:45 And she’s like, I mostly go to church
00:13:46 because I get to cook for the potlucks.
00:13:50 And so there was an openness around that,
00:13:53 but she just loved to cook for people
00:13:54 and there was this real tenderness
00:13:56 and expression of that love.
00:13:57 So seeing women in my life who had this real tenderness
00:14:01 and love that they shared through food
00:14:04 and then also being able in my own home
00:14:06 to kind of pitch in and add value
00:14:09 and help my mom and dad was really powerful for me.
00:14:14 Cause I felt like I had a superpower.
00:14:16 I felt like, oh man, I just made this stressful thing
00:14:19 go away.
00:14:20 That was huge.
00:14:21 It’s kind of interesting.
00:14:22 I don’t know if you can comment on,
00:14:24 especially for me growing up in Russia,
00:14:26 it’s probably true in a lot of cultures,
00:14:29 maybe every culture.
00:14:30 That food, and especially like in a family,
00:14:33 the mother that cooks is the source of love
00:14:36 and like ties the family together.
00:14:38 It creates events where everyone comes together.
00:14:41 It’s one of the only chances of togetherness.
00:14:45 The thing that bonds a family is like dinner
00:14:49 or food, eating together.
00:14:51 And I don’t know what to do with that.
00:14:53 It ties up with like dieting and so on.
00:14:55 When I was on stricter diets,
00:14:57 especially competing and cutting weight and stuff,
00:14:59 it felt like I was almost like losing opportunity
00:15:02 to connect with friends and family.
00:15:04 It’s interesting.
00:15:05 It’s almost like cultures,
00:15:08 we cannot fully experience love and family without eating.
00:15:12 And on the flip side of that,
00:15:13 eating enables us to experience love and family.
00:15:17 I don’t know what to do with that.
00:15:19 It’s a tough one.
00:15:20 Cause there’s lots of layers around kind of gender roles
00:15:23 and families changing and things.
00:15:26 I’d say I agree around the alienation
00:15:29 and I’ve done carnivore diet
00:15:31 and I’ve tried some of these extreme protocols.
00:15:32 And I too, I suffered from loneliness.
00:15:35 It was like doing carnivore
00:15:37 and not being able to eat what my kids ate
00:15:40 and talk about it at the same time.
00:15:42 Those pieces are real.
00:15:44 And I wonder with all of these diets,
00:15:47 if that structure is actually helping
00:15:50 or just taking away from people’s
00:15:52 kind of sensual understanding.
00:15:54 But I think that there’s some rigor
00:15:55 around that that helps people discover
00:15:57 what’s good for them by eliminating
00:15:59 and then growing towards more intuitive food
00:16:02 is a good evolution from that base.
00:16:05 I love to cook for people.
00:16:08 I love to pay attention to their way of being
00:16:13 and read what they’d like to eat.
00:16:15 And it’s my purest way of love.
00:16:18 And that’s for everybody in my life.
00:16:20 I actually love to cook for people I love.
00:16:23 I would struggle to be putting out food all the time.
00:16:27 It’s like something for me, it’s a real act of caretaking.
00:16:30 So I definitely have that in my makeup.
00:16:33 And I definitely notice in times of real stress,
00:16:41 that’s the piece that drops off.
00:16:43 And it’s like, if I’m unable to care for myself,
00:16:45 I have a hard time cooking.
00:16:46 So for me, it’s very emotional.
00:16:48 It’s very connected to love.
00:16:51 And individualistic.
00:16:52 So like focused on the particular individual.
00:16:55 It’s almost like a journey of understanding
00:16:58 what that person is excited about
00:17:00 in the landscape of flavors.
00:17:02 Like figuring that person out, what they like,
00:17:05 what they love to eat.
00:17:06 Yeah, I see cooking from, I mostly cook for myself.
00:17:10 So I see that as almost, this is gonna be like
00:17:14 the worst term, but like an act of self love.
00:17:17 Uh huh.
00:17:20 This is gonna be clipped out.
00:17:21 But that like, it’s almost an exploration
00:17:25 of like what brings me joy.
00:17:27 And it’s surprising, because I usually don’t share,
00:17:29 because the things that bring me joy
00:17:32 are the simplest ingredients.
00:17:34 Like I’m one of those people,
00:17:36 I don’t know if you can psychoanalyze me,
00:17:38 because you also like basic ingredients.
00:17:40 I like a single ingredient to ingredients,
00:17:43 because I feel like I can deeply appreciate
00:17:45 the particular ingredient then.
00:17:47 I get easily distracted.
00:17:49 You know, people who are really good listening to music,
00:17:51 they can hear a piece of music,
00:17:52 and in their mind, extract the different layers,
00:17:55 and enjoy different layers at a time.
00:17:57 Like the bass, the drums, the different layering
00:18:00 of the piano, the beats, and all that kind of stuff.
00:18:02 That’s what it means to truly enjoy music,
00:18:04 to listen to a piece over and over.
00:18:06 Like almost like as a scholar.
00:18:08 In that same way for food, I just can’t do more
00:18:10 than like three, because then it’s just,
00:18:13 I have to give in to the chaos of it, I guess.
00:18:15 But when it’s just a basic ingredient,
00:18:17 like just meat, or just a vegetable, like basic grilled
00:18:22 without sauces, without any of that,
00:18:24 that I’ve discovered is what brings me a lot of joy.
00:18:27 But that’s boring to a lot of people.
00:18:30 So I usually have to be kind of private about that joy.
00:18:33 So, but that’s mine, so yeah, I figured that out.
00:18:36 I guess as a chef, you have to figure that out
00:18:38 about everybody that you care for.
00:18:41 Well, also for you, you’re very interested in things,
00:18:46 and interested in things being done well
00:18:50 and appreciating them.
00:18:50 So the single ingredient also allows you to control
00:18:53 for perfection in cooking that,
00:18:55 which is probably really appealing to you.
00:18:58 And I think sometimes I see people also in the beginning
00:19:01 of their journey of culinary trying to do too many things.
00:19:05 So there’s another piece too, that you’ll notice,
00:19:08 if you recall last night, I grilled us a salad,
00:19:11 and then I did all those pieces separately.
00:19:13 And that’s something in general to be really attentive of
00:19:16 when you’re building flavor,
00:19:17 to make sure you pay attention to every piece separately.
00:19:23 The idea that you can, okay,
00:19:24 with a soup or something or a stew, there’s workarounds,
00:19:27 but like to make a great dish
00:19:29 that’s got four or five vegetables in it,
00:19:31 cook them all separately to their optimal deliciousness
00:19:35 and then combine them.
00:19:36 So that’s another way to approach that,
00:19:38 is that you may also be able to look
00:19:39 at the different ingredients separately
00:19:41 and still have that sense of understanding of it.
00:19:44 But there’s too often that we’re layering together
00:19:47 like four or five things and then cooking them all at once
00:19:50 and then surprise that it’s not delicious.
00:19:52 Cause you can’t really optimize on multiple variables
00:19:56 at the same time for peak awesomeness.
00:19:58 And that’s actually, the number one way you see this
00:20:01 is roasting a whole chicken, which is a really difficult,
00:20:03 it’s the simplest dish, but it’s very difficult
00:20:05 because you have the breast meat, which is bigger chunks.
00:20:08 They cook faster.
00:20:09 You have the thighs and drums,
00:20:11 which are smaller and they cook slower.
00:20:14 To optimize that and pay attention to it
00:20:16 and do it all right,
00:20:17 you’re actually solving for different outcomes.
00:20:19 So there’s one example, but oftentimes food
00:20:22 is less delicious with multiple ingredients at the start
00:20:25 because we’re not able to pay attention
00:20:27 to how each one needs to end up.
00:20:29 So there’s a way to parse that apart
00:20:31 and achieve a better outcome.
00:20:33 I don’t know if you’ve seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
00:20:36 It’s a documentary about, yeah.
00:20:39 So there’s an obsession that that particular,
00:20:43 first of all, set of humans,
00:20:46 but also the particular cuisine
00:20:50 that focused on the basics of the ingredients.
00:20:53 What do you think of that kind of trying to achieve mastery
00:20:56 through repeating the making of the same meal
00:21:00 over and over and over for like decades?
00:21:02 Like, do you find beauty in that journey towards mastery
00:21:06 or do you think it should be always an exploration
00:21:09 to where you’re always trying things,
00:21:11 you’re always kind of injecting new flavors,
00:21:14 new experiences, all that kind of stuff?
00:21:17 I think you have to decide on a palette.
00:21:19 You know, if we’re talking about an art,
00:21:20 it’s equivalent to saying, am I a sculptor or a painter?
00:21:24 That, the sushi lexicon thing,
00:21:26 that’s a very, very narrow, small canvas
00:21:28 that you’re painting on.
00:21:30 And that is a beautiful road, right?
00:21:32 There’s a beauty and a perfection to that.
00:21:34 It’s like, I mean, there’s many things culturally
00:21:36 around that that you could extrapolate
00:21:38 for specifically for Japan.
00:21:40 But I encourage people on the journey in food
00:21:44 to choose like kind of a language
00:21:47 that they’re working within.
00:21:49 And if you wanna step out of that occasionally
00:21:51 and have one or two dishes,
00:21:52 but if you wanna get mastery with food,
00:21:55 you probably aren’t gonna be able to get more than say,
00:21:58 20 ingredients that you use regularly
00:22:00 that you really understand.
00:22:02 And so we often see, you know, I see the American pantry,
00:22:06 it’s got tons of sauces and tons of spices
00:22:08 and tons of spice blends.
00:22:10 And then really people only use just a couple of things.
00:22:13 And the idea that you can sort of splash out
00:22:15 and do Korean one night and then tacos the next night,
00:22:17 you can absolutely, but to get in a regular cadence
00:22:20 of specific ingredients,
00:22:21 you’re probably gonna get more mastery with that sooner.
00:22:24 And I think as much as you can do
00:22:27 to get an understanding of the basics around salt and acid
00:22:30 and understand your palette,
00:22:31 like for me, it’s lemon and usually sherry vinegar, right?
00:22:34 So that’s my acid palette.
00:22:35 And my fat palates, you know, suet and butter, olive oil.
00:22:39 So you can sort of choose your language,
00:22:40 what you’re painting with,
00:22:42 but I wouldn’t splash out and say, do I use sesame oil?
00:22:44 Yeah, every once in a while,
00:22:45 but that’s not part of my base palette, right?
00:22:48 Can you say again what your fat palette is?
00:22:50 It’d be butter, suet and olive oil.
00:22:53 And olive oil, so not, why olive oil?
00:22:56 Is it your roots in Italy?
00:22:58 I like the flavor for finish
00:22:59 because of the bitterness that it adds.
00:23:02 So I like the bitter and acid contrast on meat
00:23:05 and vegetables, which is mostly what I eat.
00:23:07 And so I love that way that the bitterness
00:23:11 and astringency complements
00:23:12 and allows the flavors to come out.
00:23:14 What do you think about coconut oil?
00:23:16 I recently discovered that there’s a, I don’t know,
00:23:19 there’s a sweetness or there’s something to it
00:23:21 that I really enjoy, maybe because it’s new.
00:23:27 It’s good with heat.
00:23:29 And I really love it for some reason.
00:23:31 As a chef, do you ever try it?
00:23:33 What do you think about it?
00:23:34 I like it in coffee.
00:23:35 I like it as a treat a little bit.
00:23:37 I find the flavor a little bit challenging in foods.
00:23:41 I also find that it’s difficult
00:23:46 on the quality of that ingredient.
00:23:48 So I’ve found often that I buy a high quality coconut oil
00:23:51 and there’s rancidity in it.
00:23:53 And I don’t totally know why.
00:23:54 I think it’s just the cold chain
00:23:55 and how that product’s packaged.
00:23:57 So I’ve had some issues with product quality in that.
00:24:00 But for me, it’s a little bit too much sweetness
00:24:03 in my foods, but then again,
00:24:05 I don’t cook in like a Southeast Asian palette.
00:24:07 I try to not have much sweetness in my foods in general.
00:24:09 So I, just because of the palette that I like to cook with.
00:24:12 So for me, coconut’s got a little bit too much
00:24:14 of those high notes and earthiness,
00:24:15 which is a nice combination, but it’s more like a treat.
00:24:18 Yeah, it is almost like a treat.
00:24:19 It has a flavor of its own that almost stands on its own.
00:24:23 Like I could probably just eat coconut.
00:24:27 That’s probably the only oil I could enjoy by itself.
00:24:29 It sounds weird to say,
00:24:30 but it feels like fat is often a thing
00:24:33 that enriches the flavor of something else.
00:24:35 Coconut can almost stand on its own.
00:24:37 You might also be responding to that.
00:24:39 It’s a complex flavor.
00:24:40 So there’s also, there’s an analogous,
00:24:44 you know, if you look at butter, for example,
00:24:46 a lot of the butter that we eat in the US
00:24:48 is just sweet cream butter.
00:24:50 It’s not cultured.
00:24:51 If you explore like a cultured fermented butter,
00:24:55 maybe a grass milk, grass fed and finished butter,
00:24:58 you’re gonna get a ton more complexity.
00:25:00 And so you may also just be responding
00:25:02 to having fats with more flavor,
00:25:05 which is the journey in the US
00:25:09 has been towards refined foods that are very neutral.
00:25:12 And then you have to combine more of them
00:25:14 to make things taste like things.
00:25:17 And so if you’re coming from a background
00:25:19 of using mostly just generic butter
00:25:21 or let’s say canola oil to cook with,
00:25:23 those are very neutral oils.
00:25:25 So you can also take some of your favorite fats
00:25:27 and look for versions of them that are more flavorful.
00:25:30 I mean, I love olive oil as a treat in a spoon.
00:25:33 Really?
00:25:34 Like a good California extra virgin olive oil.
00:25:35 I’ll just like have it as,
00:25:36 I’ll eat a piece of butter as a treat.
00:25:37 Yeah.
00:25:38 That’s like, or butter with salt on it.
00:25:40 Like good fats can, all of them can be,
00:25:43 if they’re minimally processed
00:25:44 and they’re fabulous and it’s so delicious, right?
00:25:47 But there are things that you have to like look for
00:25:49 a version of them that’s got that full palette of flavor.
00:25:53 Well, for me also the flavors are inextricably tied
00:25:56 to the memories I’ve had with those flavors.
00:25:58 So for better or worse,
00:26:01 back when I used to eat a lot of ice cream,
00:26:04 I for some reason had a lot of pleasant experience
00:26:06 with coconut ice cream.
00:26:07 So that particular flavor just permeates
00:26:10 throughout my life now.
00:26:11 Like I’m stuck with it for better or worse
00:26:14 as a flavor that brings up pleasant memories.
00:26:17 And as I have a few such flavors,
00:26:19 I have such relationship with all kinds of meat too.
00:26:22 Like it’s just so many pleasant memories and that’s it.
00:26:26 Like you’re almost tasting the memories.
00:26:28 And that there’s no way to separate the flavor
00:26:33 from the memories, I suppose.
00:26:34 And that’s a powerful thing.
00:26:35 What’s your favorite meal to cook?
00:26:39 I’ll roast a couple of chickens
00:26:41 and then I’ll poach them, like I’ll boil them
00:26:44 and let it cool down.
00:26:45 It’s a complicated one.
00:26:47 I’ll let them cool down.
00:26:48 I’ll pull all the meat off, put the bones back into the pot
00:26:51 and then cook that for like three or four hours
00:26:54 and then add in like shiitake mushrooms
00:26:57 and all the chicken meat.
00:26:58 And I’ll throw in a bottle of white wine
00:27:01 into the stock as well, a bunch of thyme and garlic.
00:27:04 And I love it because it’s the way the house smells.
00:27:09 It’s very laborious.
00:27:10 It’s soothing for me to spend time picking apart meat
00:27:14 and chopping things up.
00:27:14 There’s like a lot of manuality around it.
00:27:17 So I’d say from a personal, like, I mean,
00:27:19 I love grilling a steak and doing those things as well,
00:27:21 but there’s something about making a stock from scratch
00:27:24 and the way it smells, the way I feel,
00:27:26 the time it takes, the kind of checking in on it
00:27:29 that I really, really love.
00:27:31 There’s many things I love to make
00:27:33 that I don’t even love to eat.
00:27:35 I think you see this a lot in like baking and bakers,
00:27:38 people who bake a ton and they love the process of it,
00:27:40 even if they don’t eat that many baked goods.
00:27:42 So anything for me that’s really like enjoyable
00:27:45 is typically things like making cinnamon buns.
00:27:47 I don’t eat very many cinnamon buns,
00:27:48 but I love making them because it takes all the sort
00:27:51 of like futzing around and taking your time and watching it
00:27:54 and the way it smells, the way the house smells.
00:27:56 All of that stuff is like,
00:27:57 it’s like almost like a meditative exercise for me.
00:28:01 Is there a science, is there an art to cooking meat well
00:28:04 and the different kinds of meats?
00:28:05 Is there something you can convert it towards
00:28:09 in to say ideas, how to bring out the best of it
00:28:15 out of what particular meat,
00:28:17 whatever steak we’re talking about,
00:28:18 whatever beef we’re talking about?
00:28:20 Is there something that can be said?
00:28:21 The basic approach to cooking any type of meat
00:28:27 beyond the artistry of it is pretty scientific.
00:28:30 And it’s what type of muscle is it in the animal
00:28:35 and what’s the surface area to volume ratio?
00:28:38 Okay, so let’s look at those two questions.
00:28:40 So the first piece is what’s the type of muscle
00:28:44 in the animal?
00:28:44 What’s the functionality?
00:28:46 You don’t necessarily need to know that to evaluate it,
00:28:49 but you need to understand, is it a tender muscle
00:28:51 that’s not used very frequently in the animal?
00:28:53 Or is it a big load bearing muscle
00:28:55 that gets a lot of action, like the cheek, right?
00:28:57 Or the shin or those pieces?
00:29:00 The muscles like those along the spinal cord
00:29:04 that make up rib eyes and New York steaks and things,
00:29:06 those aren’t very exercised.
00:29:08 They’re right next to the spinal cord.
00:29:10 Spinal cord’s doing most of the work there.
00:29:11 They’re kind of like stabilizing muscles
00:29:13 around this big functional piece of skeletal structure
00:29:17 in the animal.
00:29:19 Other muscles, like the ones around the diaphragm
00:29:21 with the flat iron steaks and skirt steaks and things,
00:29:23 those are really functional muscles
00:29:25 that are doing a ton and moving.
00:29:27 And if they’re moving a lot, what happens?
00:29:30 Well, functionally, they’ve got lots of muscle sheaths
00:29:34 because muscles that move frequently
00:29:36 have to do a lot of like complex contraction.
00:29:39 That’s why there’s, in the cheek, for example,
00:29:43 there’s tons of visible fiber
00:29:45 of like collagenous connective tissue.
00:29:47 That connective tissue is everything in how the meat cooks
00:29:52 because connective tissue doesn’t respond to high heat
00:29:56 with becoming more tender.
00:29:58 Muscles do, right?
00:29:59 They can get a sear on them.
00:30:00 You can cut them and eat them.
00:30:01 The collagenous tissue will glom up and get really tough.
00:30:04 So you either have to liquefy it
00:30:06 with really low, slow heat with moisture, right?
00:30:10 Or you have to barely cook it.
00:30:12 And so that’s the major piece.
00:30:15 So that’s the question of like,
00:30:15 why wouldn’t you just throw a brisket on the grill?
00:30:18 Okay?
00:30:19 It’s not about the fat.
00:30:19 You can cut the fat out.
00:30:20 The reason you’re not gonna throw a brisket on the grill
00:30:22 and cook it hot and fast
00:30:23 is it’s got too much collagenous connective tissue in it.
00:30:25 Those are these giant muscles that have all this collagen
00:30:28 and these fibers and tendons in them effectively.
00:30:31 So you’re never gonna be able to just cook that up
00:30:33 hot and fast.
00:30:35 So that’s the first piece.
00:30:36 It’s like, where’s this muscle in the architecture
00:30:38 of the animal?
00:30:39 And then what does that mean for what’s going on
00:30:42 in the muscle?
00:30:43 And that’s actually more important than fat content.
00:30:46 We get really kind of,
00:30:48 we pay a lot of attention to fat content in muscles.
00:30:50 You can make a steak tender
00:30:51 if it doesn’t have a ton of fat in it.
00:30:53 It actually has more to do if there’s collagenous
00:30:55 and connective tissue in it.
00:30:58 That’s fascinating.
00:30:58 I never even thought about that.
00:30:59 I just, I thought it kind of universal.
00:31:04 I mean, it adds to the texture of the meat,
00:31:06 the chewiness of the meat.
00:31:08 But you’re saying it’s also adds to how the meat is cooked.
00:31:12 How heat, how it reacts to heat,
00:31:15 how the entirety of the meat reacts to heat.
00:31:17 And the fat is not as important to that as the collagen.
00:31:20 The fat will make the flavor more delicious, right?
00:31:23 Like it’ll add unctuousness and mouthfeel
00:31:25 and things like that.
00:31:26 But all the connective tissue in meat
00:31:28 and in some of the cuts,
00:31:29 like that we ate at a skirt steak last night,
00:31:31 you could see a web of that collagen sheath on the outside.
00:31:35 On a ribeye, that same collagen sheath is this big.
00:31:37 There’s only one.
00:31:38 It goes around the outside, okay?
00:31:39 Cause it’s just that muscle, there’s one large muscle fiber.
00:31:42 So that specific, it’s a myelin sheath, right?
00:31:46 That material needs moisture
00:31:48 and low and slow heat to become tender.
00:31:51 The other side of that is that when it becomes tender,
00:31:54 it liquefies and it adds all this beautiful
00:31:56 gelatinous consistency.
00:31:58 That’s what bone broth is.
00:31:59 That’s why like a slow cooked pork shoulder is so delicious.
00:32:03 It’s not that it’s full of all that fat.
00:32:05 That fat’s also great.
00:32:06 But a lot of that mouthfeel comes from that really
00:32:09 beautiful dissolved collagen.
00:32:12 So when you’re looking at like,
00:32:13 how do I understand how I’m gonna cook a piece of meat?
00:32:15 That first fork in the road is,
00:32:17 how is this gonna respond to heat?
00:32:20 And what’s the appropriate cooking technique?
00:32:23 Then the second piece is that surface area to volume ratio.
00:32:27 And that’s important because the heat is gonna impact
00:32:30 the meat through the surfaces of the meat
00:32:32 that are in contact with the heat.
00:32:34 So if I have a steak that’s three inches thick,
00:32:39 I’m gonna cook it extremely differently from a steak
00:32:42 that’s a half inch thick or three quarters of an inch thick.
00:32:46 And that’s the major, and that’s the truth.
00:32:48 If I have a piece of pork shoulder that’s cut into cubes
00:32:51 versus having a whole pork shoulder,
00:32:53 that surface area to volume ratio,
00:32:55 that’s gonna totally change how I cook it.
00:32:58 And same things like pot roast and a beef stew
00:33:01 would be the same cut of meat, right?
00:33:03 But how I cook them is gonna change
00:33:05 based on the surface area to volume.
00:33:06 Because you’ve gotta let moisture and heat
00:33:08 work its way into the center of the meat.
00:33:11 And that’s gonna be determined by the amount of surface
00:33:13 of the meat that’s in contact with whatever cooking liquid
00:33:16 or heat you’ve got.
00:33:17 Is there different sources of heat to play with?
00:33:19 Like a big flame versus a small,
00:33:23 or maybe even like almost no flame,
00:33:25 like over coals, all that kind of stuff.
00:33:27 Is there some science to the source of heat
00:33:30 in how it plays with the meat?
00:33:32 Well, there’s indirect heat and direct heat.
00:33:35 And that really is mostly about temperature
00:33:39 in more than actual, I mean, smoke is important as well
00:33:43 that can permeate, but really the smoke
00:33:44 doesn’t go into the center of most cuts that you barbecue.
00:33:46 It’ll come in like the smoke ring.
00:33:48 It’s a maximum like half an inch on the outside,
00:33:52 maybe a little bit deeper on a really long, slow cook.
00:33:54 So they, but the smoke, that does create a ton of flavor
00:33:58 on the surface of the meat.
00:33:59 But that’s, so the indirect allows you to have
00:34:02 smoke contacting it and then a very,
00:34:04 very low and slow heat.
00:34:06 And what that does is indirect heat will be low
00:34:11 and slow enough that the center of the meat will get warm
00:34:15 at the same time as the exterior of the meat.
00:34:17 And it’ll all cook equally and all get equally tender.
00:34:22 If you go very hot and fast,
00:34:23 you risk the interior of the meat not getting right.
00:34:26 You kind of create a shell on the, on it.
00:34:28 And you slow down the interior of the meat,
00:34:30 which you actually want to do with something
00:34:32 like a steak where you want to keep it rare on the inside.
00:34:35 So it’s really indirect versus direct.
00:34:37 Then once you get into direct heat, right,
00:34:39 look at in that category, there’s wood, charcoal, gas,
00:34:43 right, that’s about it.
00:34:44 And those are meaningfully different.
00:34:47 They’re meaningfully different.
00:34:48 Charcoal and wood, that’s more of,
00:34:50 there’s more poetry and wood.
00:34:52 There’s a little bit more flavor,
00:34:54 not functionally very different,
00:34:56 but gas versus charcoal wood is very different.
00:34:59 And that’s because of the actual scent of the,
00:35:02 of the cook, right, the scent of the flavor.
00:35:04 And then there’s a,
00:35:06 I think an evenness of heat distribution
00:35:09 that comes off of charcoal that’s different from gas,
00:35:11 because no matter how awesome your gas grill is,
00:35:13 you do have hotter and cooler spots.
00:35:16 So gas grills are typically,
00:35:18 you can kind of control for that
00:35:19 if you just are going really hot and fast,
00:35:21 which is why gas grills are fine
00:35:22 if you’re just like throwing that steak on,
00:35:24 get a hard sear on it, those burgers put a crust on it.
00:35:26 Gas is fabulous for that.
00:35:27 It’s perfect.
00:35:28 When you’re doing things that do better
00:35:30 with a low and slow cook,
00:35:33 like let’s say a whole tenderloin or chicken thigh,
00:35:36 that’s going to be a little bit less elegant on gas
00:35:39 than on charcoal versus wood.
00:35:41 So when you have more,
00:35:42 more kind of nuance in the low, slow cook
00:35:44 over the natural fuels.
00:35:46 Talking about like smoke and flame and charcoal versus gas,
00:35:52 it also adds to the experience and the smell
00:35:54 and the whole thing of the cooking,
00:35:57 like versus just like the taste it creates.
00:36:00 There’s a certain experience too,
00:36:01 like when there’s a bit of smoke,
00:36:03 maybe I don’t know what the chemistry of it is,
00:36:04 but I feel like with smoke,
00:36:05 the smell is distributed more effectively.
00:36:07 I don’t know if that’s true,
00:36:08 but there’s a smell and a visual aspect to the experience
00:36:13 that’s almost enriched with a bit of smoke
00:36:15 or like an open flame.
00:36:18 Like if you can see the flame, there’s magic to that.
00:36:21 And it goes to the experience piece
00:36:23 that we were talking about before.
00:36:24 We were talking exactly about that,
00:36:25 like the nuance and the beauty of like that long, slow cook
00:36:29 and your house smelling like something.
00:36:31 Why do people freak out about barbecue?
00:36:33 Yeah.
00:36:34 Why?
00:36:35 Because you go in and it smells bomb.
00:36:36 It smells so good.
00:36:38 It smells like heaven, right?
00:36:39 It smells fatty and delicious and the smells everywhere
00:36:42 and everyone’s smelling the same smell.
00:36:44 So there’s like this collective experience.
00:36:46 It’s incredible.
00:36:47 That’s, I mean, I think that’s why barbecue
00:36:49 is so sticky for people.
00:36:52 It’s like so yummy
00:36:53 and you get this huge like anticipatory thing about it.
00:36:56 It’s like, cause it smells incredible.
00:36:58 What was that incredible grill that we used yesterday?
00:37:00 What is that about?
00:37:01 That’s called a Sea Island Forge.
00:37:03 It’s a wood fire grill that’s inspired
00:37:05 by like a South American style of cooking.
00:37:07 So it’s like, it’s big.
00:37:08 It has also the things with the crank.
00:37:11 It allows you to control the distance from the flame.
00:37:13 It’s awesome.
00:37:14 It’s really key with the wood fire.
00:37:15 So when we evolved from cooking over wood to charcoal,
00:37:20 right, when that became more popular,
00:37:22 the reason that we did that is that allowed us
00:37:25 to skip the whole part of making our own charcoal, right?
00:37:28 So when you’re cooking over wood,
00:37:29 all you’re doing is making your own charcoal.
00:37:32 You don’t ever cook over wood with the red fire.
00:37:34 Like we don’t like throw a steak on
00:37:36 when the flames are orange and leaping up
00:37:38 because you’re just gonna get, you know,
00:37:40 carbons like char all over your meat.
00:37:42 So you’re, when you’re cooking over wood,
00:37:44 you first cook down the wood,
00:37:45 you create the coal base, the natural coal base,
00:37:48 and then you cook over that.
00:37:49 So you saw yesterday, I built my fire,
00:37:50 I let it burn down, added some fresh wood
00:37:52 so I could reinforce my coals with new coals coming in.
00:37:56 But then I was actually cooking over the embers.
00:38:00 You shorten that cycle with charcoal, it’s more efficient.
00:38:04 But what you lose is that whole cycle of, you know,
00:38:07 that really beautiful experience of smelling.
00:38:10 Now, if you’re cooking on a Traeger,
00:38:12 you’re gonna get awesome smoke smell.
00:38:13 You know, like there’s plenty of ways to do this.
00:38:15 It doesn’t always have to be wood fire.
00:38:17 And I love all the different ways, right?
00:38:19 But I really like the experience of the campfire.
00:38:23 And I love that kind of just like sitting by it,
00:38:25 building it, having to take the time.
00:38:26 I like building the fire, going inside,
00:38:28 preparing all my meats, bringing them out, cooking them.
00:38:31 That whole experience start to finish
00:38:33 is really just like something that it’s my favorite.
00:38:36 It’s my favorite way to spend time, you know?
00:38:38 So I think, and why is that?
00:38:40 Is the food that different than cooking it
00:38:41 in a more conventional grill?
00:38:43 Probably not, you know, like in a pure experience.
00:38:45 But I think the actual experience is super memorable
00:38:48 because you are outside, you are still in your role.
00:38:51 You’re enjoying this, you know, you’re just taking in,
00:38:54 you’re watching, you’re anticipating.
00:38:56 I love that whole experience.
00:38:58 Does the origin of the meat itself make a difference?
00:39:03 So we’re here at Belcampo Farms
00:39:05 and we’ll, maybe you could talk about what your vision,
00:39:10 your dream is in terms of like food,
00:39:14 in terms of where food comes from,
00:39:16 where meat comes from, but food broadly,
00:39:19 and how that affects the entirety of the culinary journey.
00:39:25 On the question of where does it come from
00:39:27 and does that matter, I’d say the way that meat is raised
00:39:31 is massively important for flavor and for how it cooks.
00:39:36 I think most cooks who try cooking grass fed
00:39:41 versus corn fed, that’s the first moment
00:39:44 where they realize that, right?
00:39:45 Where corn fed meat cooks much more slowly,
00:39:48 it’s got bigger veins of fat that slow the heat transfer
00:39:53 throughout the muscle of the animal,
00:39:54 compared to grass fed, which is leaner,
00:39:56 heat moves through it more quickly,
00:39:58 those steaks will cook much, much faster.
00:40:00 So there’s very kind of technical reasons why,
00:40:03 how meat is raised that we’re aware of.
00:40:07 And there’s other things that I’ve noticed,
00:40:09 like that slower growing poultry
00:40:13 has a very, very different musculature and fiber to it
00:40:16 than fast growing poultry, that’s confinement animals.
00:40:19 It’s just, it has to do with the way
00:40:21 that the muscles are built.
00:40:22 They tend to be finer and thinner and more tender
00:40:26 and a little bit more susceptible to heat.
00:40:28 So the character of the meat’s radically different.
00:40:32 It’s also much more flavorful
00:40:34 when it’s grown more naturally.
00:40:35 And I think some of the reliance in the US
00:40:39 on like sugary sauces and lots of salts
00:40:42 and flavors and things like that’s actually based
00:40:45 on having the broadly available meat out there
00:40:50 is pretty low on flavor.
00:40:51 And so we’re adding in a lot to compensate for that.
00:40:54 So to your point of like enjoying things very simply
00:40:57 and with like salt and nothing else,
00:41:01 like the more flavorful that product is,
00:41:03 I think the more people will find that enjoyable.
00:41:06 Let’s paint a vision.
00:41:08 I mean, you’re a visionary.
00:41:09 You have a vision to have basically meat in every store
00:41:14 that comes from a farm like Belcampo
00:41:19 that’s basically doing regenerative farming.
00:41:22 How do we get there?
00:41:24 It’s about a network of smaller producers
00:41:27 working together with shared values.
00:41:31 And it’s true that there’s a limit on regenerative farming
00:41:36 in that it requires more human knowledge.
00:41:39 So regenerative farming is more difficult to scale
00:41:44 in a single operation.
00:41:46 It’d be really challenging to have a regenerative farm
00:41:48 that was like 200,000 acres
00:41:50 because of the amount of manpower needed to pay attention.
00:41:53 Can you first, and I apologize to interrupt,
00:41:55 but can you say what is regenerative farming?
00:41:58 Sure.
00:41:59 So if you’re looking at scaling regenerative farming,
00:42:04 it’s a traditional system of agriculture.
00:42:07 Regenerative farming is how we used to farm.
00:42:10 We used to farm with an eye towards the longterm.
00:42:15 You might be on the Friedman farm thinking about your heirs
00:42:19 five generations from now farming that same land.
00:42:22 Are you gonna leave that land nutritionally empty?
00:42:26 No, it’s a longterm thinking.
00:42:28 Also in traditional ag, you don’t have inputs.
00:42:32 That are very convenient. You can put some chicken manure on,
00:42:35 but you can’t spray or dump something that massively
00:42:40 increases the growing potential of the land.
00:42:45 That was not available until the past 60 years.
00:42:49 So regenerative agriculture is an approach to farming
00:42:54 where you’re increasing soil fertility through your farming.
00:42:58 You increase soil fertility by feeding the soil.
00:43:02 You feed the soil through carbon.
00:43:06 That’s why regenerative farming is better
00:43:08 for the environment.
00:43:08 It sequesters carbon and puts carbon into the soil.
00:43:12 Now it’s interesting.
00:43:14 Plants need carbon and put it into the soil
00:43:18 when they’re going through growth.
00:43:21 So if you have a beautiful field of grass
00:43:23 that’s just waving in the wind,
00:43:25 that’s where you’re gonna get the most
00:43:26 of the carbon that’s going into the soil.
00:43:28 That’s not sequestering as much carbon
00:43:30 as plants that have been damaged and are regrowing.
00:43:34 Plants that have been damaged and are regrowing
00:43:36 are repairing and they’re doing that
00:43:38 by drawing down carbon as one of the nutrients
00:43:41 that feeds them.
00:43:43 To damage the plants effectively,
00:43:45 that’s what we’re doing with regenerative grazing.
00:43:49 So the cows or, you know, lambs or whatever out there,
00:43:53 they’re eating and taking the grass down
00:43:57 and that then cause a regrowth cycle
00:43:59 that sequesters carbon.
00:44:01 Wow.
00:44:02 There’s a limit to it.
00:44:02 There’s an edge,
00:44:03 because if those plants are so damaged
00:44:05 that they can’t regrow,
00:44:07 then it turns into a dirt patch
00:44:08 and that doesn’t sequester any carbon.
00:44:10 So it’s a balance.
00:44:11 How do you find that balance?
00:44:13 That has to do with like the frequency
00:44:15 and the scale of the grazing essentially?
00:44:18 Exactly.
00:44:19 And so you have to find the right balance
00:44:20 and that connects to both the grass.
00:44:24 I mean, is the ultimately the focus here
00:44:27 is on the life cycle of whatever is grazing,
00:44:30 whether it’s cows or lambs or so on?
00:44:32 That’s why the scalability question.
00:44:34 So all that stuff that I just talked about,
00:44:37 like think about all the actions that that requires.
00:44:39 Somebody’s out there looking and paying attention
00:44:42 and understanding how far the grass is,
00:44:45 remembering what happened in that field last year.
00:44:47 There’s a huge human intelligence need
00:44:50 and human kind of availability of attention.
00:44:55 Now, industrial farming has done a great job
00:44:58 at de skilling agriculture.
00:45:03 Industrial farming has taken agriculture
00:45:05 from being art science to being entry level employment.
00:45:10 Yeah.
00:45:11 So that’s the limiting factor on regen
00:45:13 and that’s why I think…
00:45:14 It’s a human intelligence piece.
00:45:15 Exactly.
00:45:16 I gotta ask,
00:45:18 I don’t know if you think about this kind of stuff.
00:45:19 I mentioned to you offline
00:45:20 that I spent a bit of time with some robots
00:45:23 and Boston Dynamics.
00:45:24 Do you think there’s a way
00:45:25 to use artificial intelligence to help?
00:45:27 So data collection,
00:45:29 so automating some of the things that makes humans special,
00:45:33 make some of that decision,
00:45:34 some of that memory that’s then utilized,
00:45:36 converges to knowledge to make decisions
00:45:38 about the crops and so on.
00:45:39 Is there a way AI can help?
00:45:41 Do you think?
00:45:42 Totally.
00:45:43 I mean, that would be incredible.
00:45:45 That’s one of the ingredients
00:45:47 that could help with the regenerative farming.
00:45:48 A number of discrete decision points
00:45:50 that could completely be automated as well
00:45:54 in order to supplement and work with somebody,
00:45:56 like a farmer in managing it,
00:45:58 about the performance on land.
00:46:01 And a bit of that’s being done right now
00:46:02 with some aerial mapping,
00:46:04 but that type of AI would be huge in this.
00:46:07 I mean, there’s estimates that if the damage
00:46:11 and underutilized rangeland in the world
00:46:14 was converted to regenerative agriculture
00:46:15 somewhere between like 20 and 40% of the world’s carbon
00:46:19 could be sequestered.
00:46:20 So there’s a huge potential.
00:46:22 The problem is cultural.
00:46:26 We’ve like lost the generational thread of knowledge
00:46:29 about how to do this.
00:46:30 It’s kind of been two generations
00:46:31 that haven’t farmed this way.
00:46:34 Also the science around it is limited
00:46:38 by the scale and longevity.
00:46:40 So the data collection around regenerative farming
00:46:43 is also limited by the fact it’s kind of piecemeal.
00:46:45 There’s small operations that are doing it.
00:46:48 They’re learning and developing as they go,
00:46:50 and they haven’t been documenting it
00:46:51 and doing it for too long.
00:46:53 Is the ethical treatment of animals
00:46:55 a part of regenerative farming?
00:46:58 So in the way you do things at Belcampo,
00:47:01 that’s a huge part.
00:47:03 Is that necessarily part of the life cycle?
00:47:05 So like the things that you’re trying to measure
00:47:08 is like the way, like not damaging the land too much,
00:47:13 make sure that the sort of the land
00:47:16 is constantly healthy and is producing,
00:47:17 and then the grazing process,
00:47:20 and also the carbon piece,
00:47:22 the fact that it’s a carbon neutral or something like that.
00:47:25 I mean, are all of those pieces of the regenerative farming
00:47:28 or is this an extra part to your vision
00:47:31 that you’re thinking about?
00:47:32 It’s all implicit and regenerative.
00:47:34 I call it out separately because we are certified humane,
00:47:37 which is another layer of welfare
00:47:38 that has to do with density and a couple other things.
00:47:41 But regenerative, I mean, think about it.
00:47:44 If you’re a cow and you’re in a regenerative operation
00:47:46 where the whole life cycle of the pasture
00:47:49 means that you only eat the top six inches of the grass,
00:47:52 and then when there’s whatever, a couple inches left,
00:47:54 then that field is left dormant.
00:47:56 That’s a better experience, right?
00:47:58 So just think about it kind of functionally that way.
00:48:00 Well, grazing period is a better experience, right?
00:48:02 And that’s not what’s done in,
00:48:05 I mean, that’s the grass fed piece, right?
00:48:06 That’s the other piece with certified organics, amazing.
00:48:12 There’s plenty of certifications
00:48:14 that grass fed and finished is also great,
00:48:17 but there are workarounds for those.
00:48:19 You can have certified organic feedlots.
00:48:21 You can have grass fed and finished,
00:48:22 which is an animal fed a grass seed pellet.
00:48:26 Those aren’t things that we do here, right?
00:48:29 And regenerative captures that.
00:48:30 Because if you’re, it’s like anything,
00:48:32 you’re isolating these very specific certifications,
00:48:35 it doesn’t have a holistic approach.
00:48:37 Regenerative though, unfortunately, isn’t certified yet.
00:48:40 We’ve gotten USDA approval to use that word
00:48:42 based on our carbon sequestration data,
00:48:45 but it’s not a regulated term.
00:48:47 So that’s kind of the mix right now
00:48:49 is to figure out how to document it.
00:48:51 And it’s not totally clear what it means
00:48:53 like for pigs and chickens, which are omnivores.
00:48:56 It’s very clear for ruminants,
00:48:58 which are animals that have a rumen that eat grass.
00:49:01 For omnivores, which is like what we are,
00:49:03 they eat primarily grain in farming operations,
00:49:05 and that’s a little bit more complex.
00:49:07 So it’s kind of a moving landscape,
00:49:09 but regenerative as a word is the better definition
00:49:13 of the whole life cycle approach
00:49:15 of letting animals and nature work together.
00:49:18 Is it true that it’s possible to have a farm
00:49:20 that doesn’t produce, sort of is carbon neutral?
00:49:25 We have been third party verified
00:49:28 to be carbon impact negative.
00:49:31 So Belcampo’s 25,000 acres and the animals here,
00:49:36 all of the carbon, including from our shipping
00:49:38 on our mail order is all offset
00:49:40 by the amount of grazing that’s happening.
00:49:43 Also that encompasses our partner farms.
00:49:45 We buy a number of live animals in from other partner farms.
00:49:49 That’s their impacts also incorporated in that.
00:49:51 I mean, first of all, that’s incredible.
00:49:52 And second of all, is that possible to scale?
00:49:55 I don’t see why it isn’t.
00:49:57 I mean, it’s complex to scale,
00:50:00 but I mean, we’re putting people on the moon
00:50:02 and you have a robotic dog.
00:50:04 I mean.
00:50:05 But that’s less about scale, that’s more about innovation.
00:50:09 So like in many ways what Belcampo has done
00:50:12 is innovative at a small scale.
00:50:14 The question is whether that innovation can be scaled.
00:50:16 That’s where I feel like we in the industry need more help.
00:50:20 You know, the AI piece, the intelligence,
00:50:23 the thinking about ways to do things differently
00:50:27 is where we need more support.
00:50:29 And I think it’s been a, you know,
00:50:31 a kind of a swing in the past couple of years
00:50:37 where it’s like meat’s a mess, it’s terrible.
00:50:40 So let’s ditch meat and opt for these hyper process,
00:50:44 you know, plant based solutions.
00:50:46 And I am saying there’s a way to make meat
00:50:50 a part of the solution.
00:50:52 And it’s gonna mean eating less of it.
00:50:54 It’s gonna mean paying more for it.
00:50:56 It’s gonna mean that the farming systems
00:50:57 are more complicated.
00:50:59 It’s not the easiest path,
00:51:00 but I think in the long term it’s the better path.
00:51:03 And it’s also better for human health.
00:51:05 Can you comment on the certified humane piece?
00:51:07 So how do you run a farm?
00:51:11 Like what does it mean to raise an animal
00:51:13 from the beginning of its life to the end of its life
00:51:17 in a way that’s ethical, that’s humane?
00:51:18 I think the first piece you need to just be comfortable with
00:51:22 is that making an animal into meat, you know,
00:51:27 is something that you’re comfortable with.
00:51:28 Cause I think that’s the biggest question, right?
00:51:30 And so certified humane actually goes all the way through
00:51:34 the death of the animal,
00:51:35 how it’s killed and handled at processing.
00:51:37 So I put that out there just to say,
00:51:39 well, this is all about producing an animal to die for meat.
00:51:43 And that’s not necessarily,
00:51:45 that’s something people struggle with with the word humane.
00:51:47 And I understand that.
00:51:48 Like I have space and empathy for that.
00:51:49 It’s a complicated decision.
00:51:51 And when you have to be comfortable with at the outset
00:51:53 to say, this is an animal that’s gonna die to feed me.
00:51:56 Yeah, so we should pause on that
00:51:58 cause I actually just the two days ago read a paper
00:52:01 that argued that, you know,
00:52:03 the killing of an animal period cannot be humane.
00:52:06 So it’s impossible.
00:52:07 And so, and that’s an argument just like you’re saying
00:52:10 we could make, but if we now on the table kind of
00:52:15 take as a starting point, the idea that
00:52:20 it’s possible to kill an animal for food in an ethical way,
00:52:24 if we take that as a starting point.
00:52:25 So we won’t argue about that.
00:52:27 It is worth arguing about it elsewhere.
00:52:29 And it probably will.
00:52:30 I will probably talk to a few vegan folks
00:52:33 and we’ll talk about the vegan diet.
00:52:35 I’m fascinated by it as well.
00:52:36 So I’m torn in the whole thing.
00:52:37 But if we just take that as a starting point,
00:52:41 what then is an ethical humane way to treat an animal?
00:52:45 I look at ethical humane animal treatment
00:52:48 as the major phases of life.
00:52:51 So conception, birth and mothering,
00:52:55 diet, those are kind of the major touch points of life.
00:53:01 So what we’re looking at is evolutionary approach,
00:53:07 which means is the animal eating
00:53:09 what it evolved to eat primarily?
00:53:12 Is the animal primarily outdoors,
00:53:15 which is how all animals evolved,
00:53:18 given when the climate’s appropriate for it.
00:53:20 There’s certain times when you can’t have animals
00:53:22 fully outdoors, like here on our ranch,
00:53:24 we have had issues with cold weather and things.
00:53:28 But so if you have appropriate weather conditions,
00:53:31 does the animal outdoors?
00:53:33 Is the animal able to nurture and engage with its young?
00:53:37 Those are the kind of key touch points,
00:53:38 but it’s really the birth of it.
00:53:40 Let me start this one from the scratch.
00:53:43 Okay, so when I’m looking at,
00:53:45 or when I consider what’s humane,
00:53:47 setting aside the death part,
00:53:48 I look at the evolutionary diet,
00:53:51 access to the outdoors,
00:53:55 and ideally spending the majority of its life outdoors,
00:53:59 low density, so animals spread out,
00:54:03 and engagement with young, social interactions,
00:54:07 and that’s all kind of simplistic.
00:54:08 Social interaction is a cool one.
00:54:09 I mean, I also read an article that like,
00:54:12 cows, for example, have social, like they have friends.
00:54:16 Yeah, yeah.
00:54:17 That’s fascinating.
00:54:18 I mean, that piece with the young,
00:54:20 social interaction with young,
00:54:21 social interaction with each other,
00:54:23 that at a basic level,
00:54:25 I’m sure that interaction is not as rich as humans,
00:54:28 but that piece seems to be part of the humane picture.
00:54:31 And you said also, just a quick comment,
00:54:34 evolutionary diet, meaning the diet
00:54:37 that they were evolved to have.
00:54:40 And that’s pretty simple.
00:54:41 You can look at the physiology of the animal
00:54:43 and figure that out.
00:54:45 So ruminant species are lamb, goats, and beef,
00:54:48 and they have five stomachs.
00:54:50 They evolved eating really low calorie, high fiber foods.
00:54:55 That’s why they’ve got all the stomachs.
00:54:56 They need a lot of processing.
00:54:58 You or I were to eat grass, we die in a week, right?
00:55:00 Our physiology can’t handle it.
00:55:02 Cows were built and evolved to eat this very low calorie,
00:55:05 very high fiber, very low density food.
00:55:08 And they walk around slowly,
00:55:10 they’re moving constantly and they’re eating it.
00:55:13 When we put them on a corn fed diet,
00:55:15 that’s the opposite of their evolutionary diet
00:55:17 and their systems really struggle with it.
00:55:19 Now, pigs and chickens are different.
00:55:22 Pigs and chickens are omnivores
00:55:24 and pigs will happily eat chickens, for example.
00:55:30 Our pigs on the farm will hunt and kill rattlesnakes
00:55:33 and eat them.
00:55:37 They enjoy all of it.
00:55:39 They’re omnivores.
00:55:40 So that you often see,
00:55:42 and I’ve seen people try to raise like a grass fed chicken
00:55:45 and that doesn’t exist.
00:55:46 I mean, they need a higher, omnivores eat everything.
00:55:50 They’re what’s called monogastric.
00:55:51 They got one stomach
00:55:53 and that one stomach needs higher density nutrients.
00:55:56 So in the case of chicken,
00:55:58 if you’re to do, look back in American history
00:56:02 and in the 1950s, it took,
00:56:04 commercial chickens took like 54 weeks
00:56:05 to come to full weight.
00:56:07 Now it’s two and a half weeks in confinement farming
00:56:10 on our systems, it’s like eight to 10 weeks typically.
00:56:14 So it’s a very,
00:56:15 you have to give them some amount of nutrient density,
00:56:17 but there’s the idea that no grain,
00:56:20 because that’s a misinformation
00:56:22 for any type of commercial operation,
00:56:25 free range, regenerative, pastured, everything,
00:56:27 you’re gonna have to have a grain feed to get any type of,
00:56:30 it’s actually, I think for the case of chickens,
00:56:32 unless you’re in a place with like tons of natural seeds
00:56:34 and grubs and worms and stuff to eat,
00:56:36 really challenging for the chicken.
00:56:38 So you gotta give them some high density,
00:56:40 high calorie food different from that.
00:56:41 That’s the evolutionary diet is a really key thing.
00:56:44 That’s the fundamental thing for health.
00:56:46 And it’s also interesting
00:56:47 because the evolutionary diet ties to human health.
00:56:51 I’ve looked at the nutritional analysis
00:56:52 on all of our products and it’s,
00:56:55 the evolutionary diet is for the case of beef and lamb
00:57:01 gets their omega three to six ratios,
00:57:03 the same as wild game.
00:57:06 So it’s not like beef is really radically different
00:57:08 from elk, a ruminant species, right?
00:57:11 If you feed beef an evolutionary diet,
00:57:14 their nutritional profile is the same as wild meat.
00:57:16 There’s a wild ruminant.
00:57:18 I got a chance to witness Neuralink,
00:57:20 I don’t know if you’re familiar with that company,
00:57:21 the brain computer interfaces.
00:57:23 And they have, I got a chance to see in person
00:57:27 just a bunch of pigs who had Neuralink chips implanted
00:57:30 and taken out.
00:57:31 Those pigs are so happy with life.
00:57:34 I don’t know, I’ve never seen a happier animal.
00:57:36 I mean, cause they get to eat,
00:57:39 cause you were mentioning sort of diets and stuff.
00:57:42 Pigs seem to love a lot of stuff.
00:57:45 They’re easily made to be happy.
00:57:47 I don’t know if you can comment on your thoughts
00:57:51 of exploring the capacity of the pig mind
00:57:59 through some of this testing with Neuralink,
00:58:01 whether that’s exciting to you,
00:58:02 whether maybe on the humane side,
00:58:04 it’s a little bit concerning,
00:58:07 if there’s something to be said on sort of like,
00:58:10 yeah, I don’t know if it’s even the ethical side,
00:58:14 but just because of your connection to meat
00:58:16 and to nature and understanding these living beings.
00:58:21 Well, pigs are incredibly intelligent.
00:58:22 So I’m not surprised that they’re a subject matter
00:58:24 for Neuralink.
00:58:25 They’re smarter than dogs
00:58:26 and they’re empathetic and emotional.
00:58:29 And we’ll go look at our pigs afterwards and see,
00:58:33 but they’re kind of like joyful and exuberant
00:58:36 when they’re in good health.
00:58:37 And so that makes sense.
00:58:41 I’m interested and open.
00:58:43 I feel that the kind of bleeding edge agriculture movement
00:58:50 that I’m on the edge of in some ways,
00:58:53 we’re a larger operator,
00:58:54 but we as a movement have to get into the game.
00:58:59 We have to move forward in a way that allows us to scale
00:59:01 if we wanna be viable.
00:59:03 So I think there has to be openness to how that can happen.
00:59:06 And I also think there needs to be more thoughtful
00:59:09 and noisy data about how regenerative ranching
00:59:13 can sequester carbon.
00:59:15 I mean, thousands of American ranches
00:59:18 are selling carbon credits right now.
00:59:20 The data is that valid.
00:59:21 And they’re not selling carbon credits from like grassland
00:59:24 that just got a fence around it.
00:59:26 They’re selling carbon credits for verified data
00:59:28 from animals assisting in carbon sequestration, right?
00:59:31 So there’s got to be a way to get the tech community involved
00:59:35 in ways to help regenerative agriculture scale.
00:59:38 In different creative ways.
00:59:39 And actually, that’d be interesting
00:59:41 if like Neuralink somehow has,
00:59:43 and especially because Elon Musk is involved
00:59:45 and Kimball Musk has his whole effort and appreciation
00:59:48 of regenerative agriculture
00:59:51 that I wonder if Neuralink has a role to play,
00:59:54 like exploring the neurobiology of the animal,
00:59:59 if that somehow will create innovations
01:00:01 that lead to improved scaling of regenerative agriculture.
01:00:08 That’d be interesting.
01:00:09 But you’re saying you should be open
01:00:10 to all those possibilities.
01:00:11 I don’t think, I don’t know the landscape to know what.
01:00:13 But my sense is that it’s very hard.
01:00:17 It’s very hard.
01:00:17 And our farming operation to scale,
01:00:19 it’s been incredibly complex and challenging.
01:00:22 We now work with partner farms.
01:00:24 I see their operations, they’re incredibly complex.
01:00:27 You know, it just seems like there’s got to be a way
01:00:28 to make some of these things simpler and easier
01:00:31 to share information.
01:00:32 Yeah.
01:00:33 I don’t know what that answer is.
01:00:36 You know what would be cool
01:00:37 is if we can understand deeper ways
01:00:39 to measure the happiness of an animal.
01:00:42 Because then we can optimize,
01:00:44 like certified humane could be literally
01:00:47 an optimization problem.
01:00:48 Just make sure, as opposed to kind of using our,
01:00:51 projecting our own human values,
01:00:53 actually measuring what the animal is happy doing.
01:00:56 That could be, so understanding the pig brain
01:00:58 might help us understand pig happiness
01:01:00 and reframe what it means for a happy animal.
01:01:04 And then maybe it’s a lot easier to make a happy animal,
01:01:07 to make the animal happy than we think.
01:01:09 And it might have to do with a variety of delicious food
01:01:12 in the case of the pig.
01:01:13 Is there something you could say about grass fed meat?
01:01:16 Is it all, just out of my own sort of curiosity,
01:01:18 whenever people say sort of grass fed meat
01:01:21 is better for you,
01:01:22 are all grass fed meat made the same?
01:01:24 Is there different like,
01:01:26 it’s like the word organic.
01:01:29 Is there a lot of variety within that?
01:01:31 Like the way Belcampo does it,
01:01:32 will the others do it?
01:01:34 Just more color if you could add to this whole word
01:01:38 and what it means.
01:01:39 Grass fed beef has been on grass its entire life.
01:01:43 And you wanna look for the words 100% grass fed
01:01:45 or grass fed and finished.
01:01:47 Now, the challenge with feeding beef grass its whole life
01:01:52 is that it gains weight more slowly.
01:01:57 Although beef didn’t evolve,
01:01:59 eating corn and things, it can eat them.
01:02:02 And in eating them, it gains weight more rapidly
01:02:05 and has like a version of like an inflammatory response.
01:02:10 If you actually look inside the rumen of the animal
01:02:14 inside the stomach,
01:02:14 it’s like black and shiny inside compared to grass fed
01:02:18 animals like greens, smells like compost.
01:02:20 So the animals themselves, their whole physiology
01:02:22 is damaged by that food,
01:02:24 but they also gain weight really quickly
01:02:26 and they put on a lot of fats.
01:02:27 Like if you or me were to eat a bunch of processed food
01:02:30 compared to eating a bunch of greens,
01:02:32 it’s the same impact, you’re gonna blow up.
01:02:34 So the problem for grass fed
01:02:37 is getting the animals to gain weight.
01:02:39 They’re getting a ton of exercise,
01:02:41 they’re eating really clean, right?
01:02:43 And they’re super chill.
01:02:45 So that’s different from the animals that are kept still
01:02:49 eating really nutrient dense foods
01:02:52 and under a ton of stress, which is a confinement animal.
01:02:56 So are all grass fed meats created the same?
01:02:59 The diet, yeah, nutritional profile broadly,
01:03:02 but the length of time that the animal lives
01:03:05 is extremely important for the flavor of the meat.
01:03:10 We’re taking our beef to 24 to 26 months,
01:03:14 conventional is around 18 months.
01:03:16 So I’m always looking,
01:03:18 and if you’re evaluating grass fed animals,
01:03:20 you wanna get animals that are typically
01:03:22 allowed to live for longer
01:03:23 because their flavor is gonna be better,
01:03:24 there’s gonna be a bit more fat
01:03:26 and their omega ratios also vary very differently.
01:03:32 And I’ve seen omega ratios,
01:03:34 in our firm everywhere from one to three to one to one,
01:03:37 ideal is one to one game is typically one to one
01:03:39 or one to two omega three to sixes.
01:03:42 But in operations where you don’t have year round grass,
01:03:44 it’s more complicated, you know, you’re feeding hay
01:03:46 and you don’t get that three to six ratio.
01:03:48 Omega threes come from green grass,
01:03:51 they’re the fat in greens.
01:03:53 And so they’re scarce and costly, right?
01:03:56 So you can have grass fed and finished animals
01:03:59 that don’t have that perfect ratio
01:04:00 because maybe they’re in a climate or for whatever reasons,
01:04:02 we’ve had to do it too, during the droughts do hay finishing,
01:04:05 it’s not optimal, it changes the ratio a bit.
01:04:07 So there’s a little bit of variance within it.
01:04:10 I’d say though, the variance is a little bit higher
01:04:14 the variance within grass fed is still small
01:04:18 compared to the variance between conventional
01:04:20 and grass fed, right?
01:04:21 So there’s definitely things to look for within it,
01:04:24 but the real difference is between those two.
01:04:27 Also thing to notice is that it’s not a verified word, okay?
01:04:33 So grass fed means animals that have been on grass
01:04:37 at some point in their life.
01:04:40 The way the cattle industry is in the US,
01:04:43 there’s segmentation.
01:04:46 So there’s cow calf operations,
01:04:49 then those calves get sold to stocker operations
01:04:52 which raised animals in their teens basically,
01:04:54 and then those get sold to feed lots.
01:04:56 And so those three phases,
01:04:58 that first phase of the cow calf is always on grass.
01:05:02 It’s mother cows and mom cows are amazing.
01:05:04 They can thrive on anything
01:05:06 and still put all their nutrients into their baby
01:05:08 and their babies will be healthy.
01:05:09 So you never are putting mother cows
01:05:11 on really premium pasture.
01:05:12 So it’s usually just kind of like okay pasture,
01:05:15 dirty lot, if you ever see kind of like,
01:05:17 scrubly lots with lots of cows and calves on,
01:05:19 that’s a cow calf operation.
01:05:20 So there’s also a loophole, unfortunately,
01:05:24 where people use the term grass fed,
01:05:26 and they’re actually referring to animals
01:05:27 that at some point in their life had grass,
01:05:29 but that might be pretty far in the rear view mirror.
01:05:31 So you need to look at that grass fed and finished
01:05:34 or grass fed 100%.
01:05:36 That ratio of omega three to sixes,
01:05:38 it changes in like a week on grain.
01:05:41 So it’s radically different.
01:05:42 Unfortunately, it’s the same thing for you and me.
01:05:43 You can eat clean for a month,
01:05:45 you eat junk for three days, you’re garbage, right?
01:05:48 It’s not like you can just like coast on that, right?
01:05:50 We know what that’s like.
01:05:51 Same thing for animals, our physiology changes.
01:05:52 Food’s the number one way we interact with our environment.
01:05:55 And our body changes really rapidly and dramatically.
01:05:58 So we know Belcampo and just the way
01:06:01 sort of this regenerative farming approach of Belcampo
01:06:04 and the sort of high humane is good for the land,
01:06:07 is good for the animal.
01:06:09 Can you comment on ways it’s good for the human
01:06:12 that eats the meat?
01:06:14 Is this meat better for you?
01:06:16 Yes, and this is where they kind of focus on the joy
01:06:21 and animals doing yoga and all this sort of like
01:06:23 cynical stuff about this type of agriculture.
01:06:27 So just like set that aside,
01:06:30 it really is better for your health.
01:06:32 It’s got a better fat ratio, it’s less inflammatory,
01:06:35 it’s got higher protein, it’s just better product.
01:06:39 In the case of beef, it’s lower in fat
01:06:43 and that fat has a better quality and it’s higher
01:06:45 in poultry and pork, it’s also higher in protein.
01:06:47 So all the nutritionals are better.
01:06:49 It’s got higher density of vitamins,
01:06:50 it’s got higher density of minerals.
01:06:52 And none of this stuff is radically different than,
01:06:55 it’s not like the product is black and white,
01:06:59 but every metric meaningfully is better
01:07:02 in the right direction across the board.
01:07:05 So why wouldn’t you?
01:07:06 I hesitate to take anecdotal evidence
01:07:10 as like final scientific conclusions,
01:07:13 but it does seem I’ve eaten quite a bit
01:07:15 of belcampo meat, for example,
01:07:16 and it’s just my body seems to respond,
01:07:19 like it’s less bothered by it.
01:07:22 Meaning like less inflamed, I just feel better.
01:07:25 Because I mostly eat a meat diet
01:07:28 and it does seem to be a little bit of a difference
01:07:30 what kind of meat I eat, where it comes from.
01:07:34 I don’t know if that’s my own psychology also.
01:07:37 I mean, there is an aspect to like,
01:07:39 when you know that the meat came from a good place
01:07:42 and all the ways we’ve defined good,
01:07:45 you feel better about it.
01:07:46 And that has an effect, like decreased stress.
01:07:49 So I’m a huge believer in that,
01:07:50 like outside of just nutrition,
01:07:53 how you feel about the whole experience is a huge impact.
01:07:55 But it does feel like the meat itself
01:07:58 is actually just leading to less inflammation for me
01:08:01 or like less, like the bloated feeling
01:08:04 and all those negative effects that could come with meat
01:08:07 versus like certain other ground beef that I eat,
01:08:10 like store bought chicken breast or steak,
01:08:15 all those kinds of things.
01:08:16 My body’s a little bit more,
01:08:19 works a little bit harder to process that food,
01:08:21 it feels like.
01:08:21 I don’t know if there’s science to that,
01:08:23 but sort of anecdotally, that seems to be the case.
01:08:25 Omega sixes are a big part of that,
01:08:26 for in the case of the beef.
01:08:27 You eat a lot of beef, you love beef.
01:08:29 And so in a conventional beef product,
01:08:33 it’s a one to 30 ratio of omega threes to sixes.
01:08:36 And sometimes one to 20, one to 30,
01:08:39 but that’s the wrong direction.
01:08:41 In our beef, it’s as low as one to one.
01:08:45 So that and the omega sixes are what’s part of inflammation.
01:08:50 Now, the magic in animals
01:08:52 is that they’re incredibly efficient processors.
01:08:55 And in the same way that the body can process
01:09:02 and take out tons of things that are toxic
01:09:04 out of the environment,
01:09:05 I mean, animals bodies can do that too.
01:09:06 So the beauty of meat is that it can be pretty clean.
01:09:09 Things like Roundup and stuff don’t end up in the meat.
01:09:12 When we have antibiotics in our meat,
01:09:14 we’re not worried about getting like tetracycline
01:09:16 from the chicken breast.
01:09:18 What we’re worried about
01:09:19 is the workers getting tetracycline,
01:09:21 the chicken growing faster than it should,
01:09:23 the meat being chewier and not as high quality.
01:09:26 But the actual antibiotics don’t,
01:09:28 the animals great at filtering that, right?
01:09:30 They get that out.
01:09:31 So you have to think about meat not as like contamination
01:09:34 of like, oh, there’s gonna be some of that garbage
01:09:36 they used in the farming in my meat,
01:09:39 but it’s the more subtle things.
01:09:41 It’s the fat ratio, it’s the protein density.
01:09:43 And there’s also just, I think in my experience,
01:09:48 there’s just more complex flavor
01:09:50 and things that taste more complex.
01:09:52 This is, science backs this up, they fill you up faster.
01:09:56 So if you’re looking to limit,
01:09:59 to eat for fullness and, but not eat as many calories,
01:10:03 more complex foods are the way to do that.
01:10:06 And that hit, you hit your satiety,
01:10:08 help you hit that satiety.
01:10:10 So things like, I mean, all the key amino acids
01:10:13 that help you feel full, mostly from meat, right?
01:10:16 So those are, that’s part of it, like it,
01:10:17 but all meats have those.
01:10:19 Then there’s other kind of micronutrients
01:10:20 and things around that complex flavor
01:10:21 that help you feel full faster.
01:10:25 Forgive me for this question,
01:10:26 but it is kind of an interesting one
01:10:28 that people are curious about.
01:10:30 What does it feel like to be a,
01:10:33 or what does it take to be a woman CEO of a meat company?
01:10:38 I mean, you’re no longer CEO of Belcampo,
01:10:39 but you did, you ran, you cofounded Belcampo,
01:10:42 you ran it for many, many years.
01:10:45 Is there something that you could say
01:10:48 in terms of challenges associated with that?
01:10:51 And how did you personally overcome it?
01:10:54 So to be a female running a meat and livestock operation,
01:10:59 it felt very alone, a lot, you know, for a long time.
01:11:04 I felt very, like everybody waiting for me to fail
01:11:11 or watching and assuming that I was like,
01:11:14 just good at marketing or whatever else.
01:11:17 And so it’s taken me a while to not internalize that.
01:11:27 I think the only reason I’m here
01:11:31 is we have our own supply chain in Slaughterhouse.
01:11:34 And I think had I really been playing
01:11:36 in the broader meat industry,
01:11:37 it would have been a shorter journey.
01:11:38 You know, it would have been very hard
01:11:40 to make it even get to this phase.
01:11:42 But I do, you know, I think the mission is my life’s work.
01:11:54 The mission of cleaner ingredients that tastes so amazing.
01:11:59 You don’t need to do too much to them.
01:12:02 You know, I like creating food
01:12:04 that’s in support of good health.
01:12:07 And then secondary to that, it’s the environment,
01:12:10 but I want healthy food to be a joy to eat, right?
01:12:13 And that’s, you know, creating innovation in the space
01:12:20 for this company has been about building a brand
01:12:23 that people understand and is transparent
01:12:26 and that people believe in in an industry
01:12:28 that’s broadly perceived of as pretty corrupt.
01:12:30 So those are things I feel enormously proud of.
01:12:33 So you focused on the mission and the pushback,
01:12:37 all the mess of the industry.
01:12:40 You try not to internalize it,
01:12:42 trying not to let it affect you and focus on the mission.
01:12:44 You know, and it’s in the joy of it
01:12:46 and the part where it’s gotten fun for me
01:12:49 has been returning to what I love about it.
01:12:51 And I’ve only had the privilege
01:12:53 of doing that pretty recently.
01:12:55 So I think for me personally, you know, starting,
01:12:58 I host these events on the farm called Meat Camps,
01:13:01 where I cook and teach people to cook
01:13:03 and, you know, taste and talk about flavor
01:13:06 and all the like sensual aspects of it that are my fire.
01:13:10 Like, thank goodness I did that stuff
01:13:12 because otherwise it was just such a beating.
01:13:14 You know, so there were parts of it
01:13:15 where I got to feed my fire.
01:13:17 And then now in the, you know, the past year,
01:13:19 since resigning, I’ve been, I do all the recipe development.
01:13:22 I shoot all the content.
01:13:23 I, you know, taste product.
01:13:25 I’m developing all of our new products.
01:13:26 I launched our meatballs.
01:13:27 I’m just about to launch our chicken meatballs,
01:13:29 doing a high protein bone broth.
01:13:31 Like those are, that’s why I did this
01:13:34 was to be able to build this great product
01:13:36 that I could build on.
01:13:37 So I’m kind of at that place now,
01:13:40 but it’s taken a lot longer.
01:13:41 And I think, you know, looking at the landscape
01:13:43 of what to do in food, this is definitely,
01:13:48 we tackled the most complicated problem.
01:13:52 That I can imagine, you know, I did it like
01:13:55 in the most old fashioned way, right?
01:13:57 So it’s been super complex.
01:13:59 And then I also look at it and I’m like, yeah,
01:14:00 and it’s been messy and it’s gonna continue to be hard,
01:14:03 but I’m proud of having tackled the hard problems.
01:14:07 So the hard problem here is not
01:14:08 in the space of technologies.
01:14:10 It’s in the space of bringing something
01:14:13 that we’ve done for a long, long time in our human history
01:14:17 and scaling it in the face
01:14:21 of all the other economic pressures.
01:14:24 Like doing so successfully,
01:14:25 also communicating to the rest of the world
01:14:27 that this is a powerful solution.
01:14:29 So inspiring the rest of the world that regenerative farming,
01:14:32 like running a company in this kind of way
01:14:34 that’s humane for animals, good for the land,
01:14:38 good for people, even if it costs,
01:14:41 like if there’s an increased cost to the meat,
01:14:44 even if that, if you have a broader vision
01:14:46 that means eating less meat overall,
01:14:48 that that is like inspiring the world
01:14:52 that this is a future we want.
01:14:54 And just taking that on and getting that done.
01:14:58 Got a chance to eat a little bit of cheese,
01:15:00 which is a good opportunity
01:15:03 to talk about your experience in Italy.
01:15:06 You spent some time, or as south of Europe,
01:15:08 I’m not sure if it was Italy.
01:15:09 Yeah, I lived in Italy, but.
01:15:11 And there’s cheese involved, right?
01:15:14 Like what did you take away from that experience,
01:15:18 both as a chef and as a human being?
01:15:21 I moved to Europe right after my early 20s
01:15:25 and I worked as a cheese maker.
01:15:27 And I lived in really small rural farms
01:15:32 in the countryside.
01:15:34 And I got up early and milked animals, made cheese.
01:15:39 And I got to live in a traditional agricultural society
01:15:44 and learn how they ate.
01:15:48 So it shaped me as a cook
01:15:50 because it was a chance to have incredible ingredients,
01:15:55 learn how to cook very simple food.
01:15:58 I had been immersed in thought
01:15:59 that I wanted to be like a chefy chef, right?
01:16:02 Because I love food and I love cooking
01:16:04 and I was just drawn to that world.
01:16:06 But I don’t like the experience
01:16:09 of that sort of like fancy food experience
01:16:11 is not what is exciting for me about it.
01:16:15 So I loved working in that environment
01:16:18 because I got to eat lunches and dinners
01:16:21 and everything with the farm that I lived in.
01:16:24 The farm that I lived on
01:16:26 and just very traditional, simple way to eat.
01:16:31 The other piece of it is I went to high school in the 90s,
01:16:34 child of like the low fat generation, right?
01:16:37 And it was just really liberating and amazing
01:16:40 to eat tons of super fatty foods
01:16:43 and olive oil all over the place
01:16:46 and bleak slabs of bread and salami
01:16:48 and being this like vibrant health,
01:16:50 like be leaner, you know, happy, no skin stuff,
01:16:55 you know, stop getting split ends.
01:16:57 Like I stopped having flaky nails,
01:16:59 like just stuff that had bothered me my whole life,
01:17:02 including like just moodiness.
01:17:04 And that all just changed.
01:17:05 And granted, I was also like living on a farm in Italy
01:17:08 and getting up with the sunlight.
01:17:10 And like there were lots of great aspects of my life as well
01:17:14 that happened in that time.
01:17:15 But I was just immersed in this diet
01:17:18 that I realized like, man, this is so simple.
01:17:20 And I also loved that I had like, you know,
01:17:23 you’d have dinner and it was just like some ricotta cheese
01:17:26 with some olive oil, some bread
01:17:27 and like a bowl of fava beans.
01:17:30 It’s like, that’s dinner.
01:17:32 And it kind of broke down my assumptions too
01:17:34 about like dinner always has to be this, you know,
01:17:37 a protein and a vegetable and, you know,
01:17:38 being more fluid and more seasonal was exciting for me.
01:17:43 So I just learned kind of a lot about paying attention
01:17:46 to food, simple preparation
01:17:49 and the vibrancy of health that I personally experienced
01:17:54 kind of made me double down on that.
01:17:58 Our mutual friend, Andrew Huberman,
01:18:01 mentioned something offline to me
01:18:02 about something involving the mob.
01:18:06 Oh yeah.
01:18:06 Is there something you could share or is this,
01:18:09 or are people going to hurt if you share this?
01:18:11 It’s far enough in the rear view mirror.
01:18:13 I mean, I was hired by this group in Sicily on,
01:18:18 and this is, you know, I was all of like 21 years old
01:18:23 and to get a permit to work there,
01:18:26 you have to show that you have a competency
01:18:28 that nobody else in Italy has.
01:18:30 And that competency for Anya Fernald at the time
01:18:32 was cheese expert.
01:18:33 So it was like, stupid American girl being like,
01:18:36 going to the consulate.
01:18:37 So I already knew that it was like,
01:18:38 there was something wobbly about this organization,
01:18:41 but I wanted to work for them.
01:18:42 And my boss from that time did end up in federal prison
01:18:47 for corruption many years later, embezzlement primarily.
01:18:53 But, so I was definitely in an environment
01:18:56 that was answering to multiple masters.
01:18:59 That’s a nice way to put it.
01:19:01 It was, I couldn’t have asked for a better way
01:19:04 to kind of get with life and understand
01:19:07 how things happen in the world though.
01:19:09 You know, of learning as somebody who tends
01:19:13 to be super direct and not very subtle,
01:19:17 it was amazing to be in this world
01:19:19 where like everybody communicates in multiple levels.
01:19:22 Like we’re going to lunch with my boss,
01:19:24 with somebody we’re gonna do a business deal with
01:19:26 and by the, they ordered a glass of wine
01:19:30 and with that order communicated like, disappointment.
01:19:35 Because that, the father of the person
01:19:36 who had made that wine had offended that other guys.
01:19:39 I like that level of stuff, like nothing happened directly.
01:19:42 I’m like, what are we talking about afterwards?
01:19:43 I’m like, what happened that lunch?
01:19:44 It’s like, oh, I just, you know,
01:19:45 I told him this by ordering that, whatever.
01:19:47 You know, that kind of thing.
01:19:48 So understand that there’s different ways of communicating.
01:19:52 But it was also, you know, it was interesting to see.
01:19:56 And I think I, you know, it’s kind of the struggle
01:19:58 that I’ve lived again and again in my life.
01:20:01 Fundamentally, what we were doing in that operation
01:20:03 was there’s a very traditional cheese
01:20:05 called the Raguzano cheese in Southeastern Sicily
01:20:08 where I lived, Ragusa.
01:20:09 And it was about scaling that operation.
01:20:12 So it was European Union money
01:20:14 that my boss was also unfortunately using for other things.
01:20:16 But fundamentally it was to take that,
01:20:19 this type of very small scale cheese,
01:20:21 get them exported, help them scale.
01:20:22 And we did it.
01:20:23 And it was really challenging.
01:20:24 And I learned a lot about the safety issues
01:20:27 and collaboration issues
01:20:28 and creating groups of farmers for scale.
01:20:31 So it’s kind of been doing the same thing again and again.
01:20:34 But Sicily, it, you know,
01:20:37 it was also just the first place
01:20:39 where I would regularly forage for food.
01:20:44 Yeah.
01:20:45 You know, like there I’d go to friends houses
01:20:48 and we’d like go out and pick nettles
01:20:50 or go out and pick wild asparagus.
01:20:52 So every season there were stuff that you’d be gathering.
01:20:54 And that was just part of how you lived.
01:20:55 And it was part of your health.
01:20:57 So that was, I just learned a ton in that time
01:21:00 about like simple eating and really that healthy food,
01:21:05 the simpler it is, the better, right?
01:21:08 Like this sort of sense that healthy food
01:21:10 isn’t in a tiny package, granola bar,
01:21:12 lots of labels, lots of powders.
01:21:13 It’s like the more simple, essential,
01:21:14 closer to the land can actually lead to optimal health.
01:21:17 You’ve learned to appreciate the simplicity of food,
01:21:19 the beauty within the simplicity.
01:21:22 I think it’s because it was the first time
01:21:23 that I had amazing food quality.
01:21:28 Okay.
01:21:29 Cause in the, where I grew up,
01:21:31 there wasn’t that food quality.
01:21:32 Like I had some stuff from my garden and things
01:21:36 that were great, but that’s the kind of place
01:21:38 where when artichokes in season,
01:21:39 all of a sudden there’s guys selling artichokes
01:21:42 on their bicycles in the street
01:21:44 and they’re just fresh picked and you’d get that one thing
01:21:47 or the torpedo onions or they like,
01:21:48 so there’s a seasonality and celebration of things
01:21:50 in their peak moment.
01:21:51 And you would just have that one thing.
01:21:53 And that was the first time I’d ever eaten in that way.
01:21:56 You were a judge several times on Iron Chef.
01:22:00 How do you judge a good meal, like what your own,
01:22:05 other people’s, like what rating system is good?
01:22:09 I mean, I go on experience and think about how many
01:22:11 of your like most memorable, fantastic meals
01:22:13 are like three star Michelin meals.
01:22:16 It’s more about the experience, right?
01:22:17 It’s more about that slow down, who are you with?
01:22:20 And some of our best meals are like the most simple things.
01:22:23 So Iron Chef, those were fun experiences.
01:22:28 It’s a lot of sous vide though.
01:22:29 It’s a lot of sauces.
01:22:31 It’s a lot of powders.
01:22:32 I mean, it’s kind of like magic food.
01:22:34 So that’s not, I mean, it’s incredible
01:22:37 to watch it as science, but I don’t know
01:22:39 if those are my most memorable meals.
01:22:41 So the experience is how you judge a good meal.
01:22:44 For you personally, if you were a judge
01:22:45 of the entirety of the human experience
01:22:48 in terms of the culinary journey,
01:22:50 that would be like the people you’re eating with,
01:22:53 the environment, like how you feel,
01:22:56 the journey, the building up to that meal, the whole thing.
01:22:59 You can’t separate it out.
01:23:00 When I was learning as an apprentice cheese maker in Greece,
01:23:06 one of the best meals of my life
01:23:08 is like a bowl of cold sheep milk yogurt
01:23:10 with like a crust of cold fat on top.
01:23:13 So like the way that these fatty,
01:23:15 sheep milk can have double the percentage
01:23:17 of fat than cow milk.
01:23:18 So like there’s the yogurt and then there’s this crust
01:23:20 of fat and then they pour the fresh honey over the top
01:23:23 and you just eat like this bowl of probably top five meals
01:23:27 of my life, right?
01:23:29 I mean, that’s the simplicity, it’s just the best thing.
01:23:31 And it was the fact that it’s in Terracotta
01:23:33 and I’d had this amazing day
01:23:34 and all of these things come together,
01:23:36 but I still remember that feeling.
01:23:38 And I think most of us have those like really great
01:23:40 sensual memories of food and they’re not about necessarily
01:23:45 that one fancy over the top restaurant or something.
01:23:49 It’s really about the cold context of enjoyment.
01:23:52 Maybe you can help me with something.
01:23:54 So I think Offline said that we’re both introverts a bit,
01:23:58 but I certainly find joy in repetition.
01:24:04 So I kind of hide away as an introvert
01:24:07 and eat the same thing over and over and over again.
01:24:09 But at the same time, I had this conversation
01:24:11 with Tyler Cohen, who’s an economist,
01:24:14 but he’s also a food critic.
01:24:15 He writes these incredible posts about different foods.
01:24:19 And we had this conversation about
01:24:23 what his last meal would be.
01:24:24 If he had to choose, like what is the best meal
01:24:26 he’s ever eaten that he would want to eat?
01:24:29 And he had a good answer about it.
01:24:31 It had to do with experience, I think.
01:24:33 For him, it was a particular Mexican restaurant
01:24:35 and it had in Mexico because of the ingredients,
01:24:37 because of the experience, because of the work it took
01:24:40 to get there and all those kinds of things.
01:24:42 But it also made me realize, like when I was going home
01:24:44 after that conversation, that I couldn’t answer
01:24:47 that question myself, like what is the best meal
01:24:50 I’ve ever eaten?
01:24:51 Because I really haven’t experienced much.
01:24:54 And so it almost was like a challenge to myself.
01:24:58 Like I feel like I should journey out a little bit more
01:25:00 in this life and try stuff.
01:25:03 And to try to see like what is the best meal
01:25:07 for me in the world?
01:25:09 You know, like both the experience and the taste, right?
01:25:13 So I was kind of wondering, first I’d love to ask you
01:25:16 like what your last meal would be
01:25:18 or what is the greatest meal you’ve ever eaten?
01:25:20 But also, and you’re still very young,
01:25:23 and so there’s still more experiences to be had, right?
01:25:28 And for me, like how do you go about finding
01:25:31 the best meal in the world?
01:25:34 Is there a device you could give essentially?
01:25:38 There’s that sense of anticipation, right?
01:25:42 So if it’s the best meal, I’d say for you,
01:25:46 it would need to be on the heels of something
01:25:49 where you’d pushed yourself with a fast
01:25:52 or with an athletic event, right?
01:25:54 Or something like you would be coming into it
01:25:56 with a sense of anticipation because of deprivation.
01:25:59 You’d be hungry for it in a bigger sense of the word,
01:26:01 like hungry for deep nutrition on your soul level
01:26:04 as well as your belly.
01:26:05 So I’d say that you’d have to think about it
01:26:06 as a phase of things, like multiple things.
01:26:09 And then I also think, you love meat, you love cheese.
01:26:14 You have to have some things that come together, right?
01:26:16 Like there’s gotta be some specific elements
01:26:19 of just your favorite flavors in that.
01:26:21 But there could be flavors yet to be discovered.
01:26:23 That’s a whole other thing because I just emotionally
01:26:28 and physically feel good on meat,
01:26:29 but that doesn’t mean like maybe like a rice based dish,
01:26:34 like sushi or something like that,
01:26:36 or Indian cuisine where it’s like sauces
01:26:39 and the breads and whatever.
01:26:40 I love that stuff too.
01:26:42 So we’re not talking about like a meal is an experience
01:26:46 that could be like a one night stand,
01:26:49 but with a piece of food, right?
01:26:52 It could be a totally different
01:26:53 than what actually makes you feel good
01:26:56 when you eat it every day.
01:26:57 Yeah, absolutely.
01:26:58 Completely, completely analogous.
01:27:00 I get that.
01:27:01 I mean, you also though, there’s elements of comfort
01:27:03 and love and those different pieces for you.
01:27:05 But I think you gotta look at like,
01:27:07 where would you go somewhere?
01:27:09 Like would you go to a place where you could hike in Japan
01:27:13 and then end up in a little place where you eat something?
01:27:15 That’s where I would think you were gonna have
01:27:17 that magic moment.
01:27:18 Maybe someplace you go to Mongolia
01:27:20 and you’re in a really extreme environment
01:27:22 for three or four days,
01:27:23 and then you come back and you’re in a farm
01:27:25 and you get something on the table that’s a surprise
01:27:27 and you’re hungry.
01:27:28 Like that’s gonna be the moment where you’re gonna explode
01:27:32 in the instance of like the culinary level
01:27:34 for Alexa levels up, right?
01:27:36 That’s the journey for you.
01:27:37 But it has to be, I think from understanding you,
01:27:39 like a combination of that pushing yourself anticipation
01:27:44 and something about the, exactly, and the environment.
01:27:47 Well, I definitely, definitely,
01:27:50 like some fasting is part of a great meal for me.
01:27:53 So like 24 hours is like the minimum.
01:27:56 You’re more sensitive to the richness of any experience
01:28:01 for me when I fast 24 hours.
01:28:04 And so that’s a requirement.
01:28:06 For a good meal is 24 hour fast, I think.
01:28:10 It’s just like you’re able to taste,
01:28:11 I don’t know, maybe it’s psychological,
01:28:13 but you’re able to disassemble the various flavors
01:28:17 in a meal as simple as like even a chicken breast.
01:28:20 There’s all kinds of flavors going on.
01:28:22 Because like when you cook a chicken breast,
01:28:24 there’s like the outside, the inside.
01:28:26 I mean, the volume of the meat tastes different
01:28:29 as you eat like the different fibers.
01:28:31 And you can like tell all those differences as you’re eating
01:28:34 when you’re fasting, and you can appreciate that.
01:28:37 And of course, you’re right,
01:28:38 part of the journey is important.
01:28:40 It makes me think like whether restaurants
01:28:42 is the right place to explore or what.
01:28:45 I’m envisioning it on a farm for you.
01:28:47 And I’m envisioning it in a place
01:28:49 that’s like really into ag and food.
01:28:51 You know, like even a place like Romania.
01:28:54 You know, like they have incredible farms, right?
01:28:56 Where it’s not gonna get any like fancy restaurants there,
01:28:58 but you’re probably gonna have some amazing little cheeses
01:29:02 and cured meats, and you might go to some, you know,
01:29:04 have some experience and end up in a place
01:29:06 with like four things on the plate
01:29:07 and each of them blows your mind.
01:29:09 You know, like, or Japan is another place like that.
01:29:12 I think Vietnam, Laos, like, I mean, those are countries
01:29:14 where there’s like these incredible niche ingredients
01:29:16 and this essentialism around food.
01:29:18 That’s fascinating.
01:29:19 Or maybe it’s in Russia with Putin.
01:29:21 That might be the best meal in the world.
01:29:23 With him on the farm.
01:29:24 Yeah, that’d be, it’s hard to reproduce that.
01:29:27 If that is in fact a good meal, it’d be, you know,
01:29:29 it’s hard to get them out to the farm,
01:29:32 but maybe one time they’d be the best meal.
01:29:34 What about you?
01:29:35 For me, like it’s the ingredients that I associate
01:29:39 with like indulgence, like be fresh bread
01:29:42 with like my favorite cultured butter on it,
01:29:44 be food of my childhood.
01:29:46 I grew up in Oregon.
01:29:47 We always had salmon and I smoked salmon or salmon eggs,
01:29:50 like really good salmon eggs.
01:29:51 I love cheese.
01:29:52 I love goat cheese.
01:29:53 I love all kinds of cheese.
01:29:54 There’d be cheese.
01:29:55 I love meat, obviously.
01:29:56 I’m imagining it’s sort of like an abundance
01:29:59 of like 10 things I love.
01:30:00 It’s not a dish.
01:30:01 You know, it’s like all the yummy things.
01:30:02 All of your indulgences on the same plate, yeah.
01:30:04 And there isn’t like, for me, there’s not like a big cake
01:30:07 or something super like that.
01:30:08 It’s like really yummy things that I love,
01:30:10 like really fresh, crusty, delicious bread that’s warm
01:30:13 and it’s got a bunch of butter on it
01:30:14 and I can put some salt on it and eat a big slab of that.
01:30:17 That’s just, that’s where I’m at.
01:30:19 That’s funny.
01:30:20 And so meat to you is not like one of those indulgences?
01:30:24 Oh, definitely.
01:30:25 There’d definitely be steak there too.
01:30:26 I’m just imagining not like there isn’t a specific dish.
01:30:28 It’s like eight or 10 things, right?
01:30:30 It’s the fresh bread.
01:30:31 It’s something like fishy, yummy,
01:30:34 probably be really good fresh berries too.
01:30:36 There’d be a steak or a pork chop
01:30:38 or something like meaty and delicious and savory.
01:30:42 There’d be some cheese,
01:30:43 just a bunch of different things that I love to eat
01:30:46 that like all kind of check boxes for me
01:30:48 is probably what would make me happiest.
01:30:49 I’m afraid of variety.
01:30:51 I like the focus when you can just,
01:30:53 this is all you have,
01:30:54 the scarcity of just this is the one ingredient
01:30:57 and really appreciating it or maybe one thing,
01:31:01 like one full complex flavor, whatever the heck that is.
01:31:06 It’s like the distraction,
01:31:08 the serial dating nature of having a bunch of things
01:31:11 on a plate is, yeah,
01:31:15 for some reason that prevents me
01:31:16 from fully enjoying any one of them.
01:31:19 I don’t know why that is.
01:31:20 The more healthy way to do it is the variety.
01:31:23 Your way is the healthier way to do it.
01:31:25 Is alcohol involved?
01:31:27 I don’t drink very much.
01:31:29 I like red wine, but I just don’t really,
01:31:32 I love red wine with good food.
01:31:37 I also cofounded a rum business that’s an organic rum,
01:31:41 so I love that product,
01:31:42 but that’s not, for me,
01:31:44 it’s like I’m more interested in the food, I’d say.
01:31:49 Is there some connection between your chef life,
01:31:52 cooking and music?
01:31:54 Does this music have a role in the experience?
01:31:57 I love artistic expression,
01:31:59 and that’s always had a role in my life
01:32:02 in the same way I love to paint and draw
01:32:03 and all the different things.
01:32:05 I was a professional musician when I lived in Sicily,
01:32:09 by definition, technicality,
01:32:10 because I played in the municipal band.
01:32:14 So I would march around the town with all the funerals.
01:32:19 I get like 50 euro every time I’d march in a funeral
01:32:22 playing my oboe, so it’s given me,
01:32:24 I like that because I like to,
01:32:25 like you were talking about going to farms,
01:32:27 like what I quested for was experience and connection,
01:32:30 in places where I could learn things.
01:32:32 That’s been the through line of my learning journey.
01:32:34 I’ve learned things and sought knowledge
01:32:36 that I can’t get in any conventional learning environment,
01:32:40 and so what are the tools that let me do that?
01:32:42 It was like being adaptable and comfortable
01:32:45 in different cultures,
01:32:46 but also having common ground points
01:32:48 that allow you to connect with people,
01:32:51 so music’s one of those things.
01:32:52 So I love music, but I also,
01:32:56 there’s any number of enjoy of food,
01:32:57 being able to pitch in and help in the kitchen,
01:33:00 you know, like cards,
01:33:01 like those are when you’re dealing with
01:33:02 getting into like farming communities and stuff,
01:33:04 that stuff really helps, right?
01:33:06 So I basically have cultivated tools
01:33:08 that let me drop into places where I can learn,
01:33:11 and so those are all kind of a piece.
01:33:14 Those are just tools to get in there.
01:33:15 That said, we did listen to Justin Bieber earlier today.
01:33:19 I need to get more into him.
01:33:20 I need to understand the full complexity of the Biebs.
01:33:23 You’re trying to achieve what hunting stands for,
01:33:25 but at a much larger scale,
01:33:27 which is what kind of Belcampo stands for,
01:33:29 but what are your thoughts on hunting as a source of meat?
01:33:32 It’s amazing, 100% pro hunting.
01:33:35 I think the reason that hunting flips the switch
01:33:39 for so many people is because it’s the first thing
01:33:42 they’ve had clean meat in their lives.
01:33:46 Okay, so I think that the hunter’s journey,
01:33:48 when people get so turned on by hunting,
01:33:51 they’re just like, oh my God, I’m never going back.
01:33:53 I’m saying that’s great if you’ve got access to that,
01:33:56 or if you know the guy who’ll give you the backstrap,
01:33:57 awesome, but that’s not achievable for most of us,
01:34:02 and I do think that talking to hunters
01:34:04 about their experiences, what they love about it,
01:34:07 many of them are just outdoors,
01:34:09 and I say that because most of them are men,
01:34:10 but most of them love the outdoors aspect of it
01:34:11 and being out in the wild,
01:34:14 but a lot of them, it’s because of how they feel
01:34:15 when they eat the meat, and it’s because they’re eating,
01:34:18 I mean, 99% of meat in America is made a very specific way,
01:34:22 and it’s in a way that is pretty inflammatory,
01:34:25 not incredibly delicious, and when you’re on that extreme,
01:34:30 and then you toggle to having
01:34:32 this totally different style of product,
01:34:34 it feels radically different in your body,
01:34:36 so of course you’re like, I’ll never go back.
01:34:38 So when I talk about us being on that spectrum,
01:34:40 it’s like, well, it’s, hunted meat’s,
01:34:42 I mean, I can never on any commercial operation
01:34:45 create the variety of the biodiversity of species
01:34:49 that an elk gets when it’s wandering around of its own,
01:34:53 I mean, there’s no way you can do that on a farm,
01:34:55 so there’s always gonna be that extra five or 10%
01:34:58 that those wild animals are gonna have,
01:35:00 and those wild animals also fast for longer,
01:35:02 so they go through periods of starvation,
01:35:04 and that creates an even slower growth for musculature
01:35:07 that’s gonna create even more unique flavor
01:35:10 and characteristics, so that’s why there’s that extra
01:35:14 in the hunted meat, but you can come a lot closer
01:35:18 with regenerative traditional farming
01:35:19 to that flavor and health
01:35:21 than with any other type of farming I know,
01:35:24 so that’s where I see it on the spectrum.
01:35:25 I love that people are getting excited about game,
01:35:29 because it’s better for your health,
01:35:33 it’s got all the same characteristics
01:35:35 as regenerative farmed meat,
01:35:37 and it gets people turned on to simple, delicious food.
01:35:41 You know, you shouldn’t have to cover food
01:35:44 with sauce that’s got corn syrup and soy,
01:35:48 a bunch of junk in it to make it palatable.
01:35:51 If you gotta put sauce on your food,
01:35:52 you need to look at your ingredients.
01:35:54 You need to revisit what you’re starting from,
01:35:57 because if you have to put a bunch of things
01:35:59 to mask flavor onto anything you’re eating,
01:36:02 you’re trying to basically fool your palate
01:36:04 into doing what’s not best for your body.
01:36:07 We’re trying to tell our palates,
01:36:08 like, just make it through this plate
01:36:10 so you can get the calories in,
01:36:12 and we’re masking the fact
01:36:13 that we don’t actually find it very appetizing.
01:36:15 So we’re kind of teaching ourselves
01:36:17 to overcome our instinct with food.
01:36:21 We’re saying, here’s this kind of bland base substrate,
01:36:24 not very interesting, I’m not like sparking to it.
01:36:27 Awesome, put sugar and salt on it.
01:36:29 This up the hyperprocess flavor profile.
01:36:31 Great, done.
01:36:32 And then you’re sparked to it.
01:36:34 That’s a very short road,
01:36:35 and that’s, I think, a lot of the health problems
01:36:37 we have now is because we’re masking flavors
01:36:41 and basically trying to get ourselves
01:36:43 to move down this path of the same way
01:36:44 we behave around all hyperprocess foods.
01:36:46 And that gets us into a mess with our health.
01:36:49 So if we can get things like game
01:36:51 where people love the flavor out of the gate,
01:36:53 but it’s natural, simple, mentally processed,
01:36:55 that’s a win.
01:36:56 Yeah, it reverses that hyperprocessing trend
01:37:01 that we’re on as a human species.
01:37:03 And that’s the promise of regenerative farming,
01:37:07 that’s the promise of hunting.
01:37:08 Obviously, the former can be scaled,
01:37:10 the hunting, I think, cannot be scaled, right?
01:37:14 But in many ways, the hunting inspires the world
01:37:17 that this is the right way to eat.
01:37:19 Yes.
01:37:20 And that naturally leads to then
01:37:25 the humane farming, regenerative farming idea,
01:37:28 which is this idea that hunting represents.
01:37:31 How do you scale that?
01:37:33 Well, if you look at, we’re talking about
01:37:35 people use this sort of marketing language
01:37:37 of happy cows or that kind of thing.
01:37:39 You’re talking about the happiest animals,
01:37:40 it’s wild animals, right?
01:37:42 So if you wonder why these practices are good,
01:37:45 talk to hunters.
01:37:46 You’re talking about animals that have lived
01:37:47 in their evolutionary capacity, right?
01:37:50 Who have played their role in the ecosystem,
01:37:51 who’ve lived their meaning of life, right?
01:37:54 And that’s a very powerfully different kind of role
01:37:58 than livestock production.
01:38:00 So I think if we can make our livestock production
01:38:02 as similar to wild as possible,
01:38:05 then we’re a lot of steps closer.
01:38:07 So you said the animals are happiest in the wild
01:38:10 and that’s where they find meaning.
01:38:12 What about us, the human animal?
01:38:14 What’s the meaning for us, do you think?
01:38:17 You’ve monitored the life cycle of a lot of living beings.
01:38:21 You ever look in the mirror and think like,
01:38:23 why the hell are we humans here?
01:38:27 I mean, thriving, reducing suffering, creating goodness.
01:38:32 I mean, those are the things I see in animals behavior.
01:38:36 They’re mostly interested in reducing suffering
01:38:39 and nurturing, right?
01:38:42 Those are the things that I think evolutionarily.
01:38:45 And we humans are just clever
01:38:46 and we wanna be able to try to do that
01:38:48 at a bigger and bigger scale.
01:38:51 As much as possible, reduce the suffering in the world.
01:38:55 And somehow that alleviates us of our own suffering.
01:38:58 That’s the Russian thing, life is suffering
01:39:01 and somehow helping others alleviates it
01:39:03 and come up with creative solutions to do that.
01:39:07 That’s really interesting.
01:39:11 It’s almost consciousness is the thing
01:39:14 that led to suffering, but it also led
01:39:17 to the desire to alleviate the suffering.
01:39:19 It’s a feedback loop.
01:39:23 Consciousness creates suffering
01:39:24 and the desire to alleviate it.
01:39:27 Is there yet a pretty nonlinear life?
01:39:30 Your parents were professors.
01:39:32 You have done a lot of sort of incredible things
01:39:36 that many would say kind of like,
01:39:38 how the hell are you gonna get this done?
01:39:40 Is there advice you can give to young people today,
01:39:44 like high school, college, about how to do,
01:39:48 how to live a similarly nonlinear crazy life
01:39:51 and accomplish, be as successful as you have been
01:39:54 about whether it’s just their career or life in general?
01:39:59 The greatest gifts I’ve been given
01:40:04 have come from pursuing curiosity.
01:40:10 Just trying to understand the thing you’re curious about
01:40:13 and allowing yourself to be curious about it
01:40:14 and just going with it.
01:40:16 And also pursuing things that are like deeply joyful for me.
01:40:23 Not what society wants, but you just personally,
01:40:25 just on your own, you’re happy that you did it.
01:40:27 And that’s something that in the times
01:40:28 when I strayed from that, my life has been harder.
01:40:33 So it’s fundamentally, what are we on earth to do?
01:40:37 To live and thrive.
01:40:39 And so pursuing things that are curious
01:40:45 and satisfying and interesting and joyful
01:40:47 and allow me to grow.
01:40:50 So I made a number of choices to do things
01:40:55 that were more complicated and not considered cool
01:41:01 at the time.
01:41:02 Although now it’s cool to work on farms.
01:41:03 It wasn’t when I started my career in animal agriculture.
01:41:06 And it was like, but just deeply interesting to me.
01:41:10 And I felt like there was just lots to learn.
01:41:12 And so that’s been the path for me
01:41:15 is like going for something that’s curious and hard
01:41:17 and sticking with it and being open to it.
01:41:20 And growing elements that give me joy through that.
01:41:25 So I also, for people who are starting out
01:41:29 in their careers and want to do something different too,
01:41:31 it’s like, get out of your comfort.
01:41:33 Go to a place that you’ve got something to learn from
01:41:35 and let it teach you that.
01:41:36 And you’ll get beat up.
01:41:38 Like I got beat up by that experience.
01:41:40 Like it was really hard.
01:41:42 I laugh about now working in Sicily for,
01:41:46 and the funny experiences I had there, but it was hard.
01:41:50 I was lonely and cried a lot.
01:41:52 It was stressful.
01:41:52 It was like, it was hard.
01:41:53 It was really hard.
01:41:54 And when you’re inside of it,
01:41:55 you didn’t know how it’s going to turn out.
01:41:56 You didn’t know it’s going to turn out well.
01:41:57 And I’m like, why didn’t I get a job doing something
01:42:00 that all my friends are doing?
01:42:01 And I didn’t speak the language yet.
01:42:03 I had to learn foreign language and learn how to function.
01:42:06 And it was very lonely and very challenging,
01:42:09 but then that’s where my resilience started to grow.
01:42:12 So the things I learned, they helped me grow.
01:42:14 So the things I learned there ended up just being
01:42:17 about resilience and understanding the language
01:42:21 of subtlety in meaning.
01:42:23 So that’s something that’s carried me through my life.
01:42:25 But it was a curiosity about cheese making
01:42:27 and about like just living in a village that was there.
01:42:29 I’m like, wouldn’t it be amazing
01:42:30 to just live in a really rural village.
01:42:32 And you just went with it.
01:42:33 And I just like, this seems incredible
01:42:34 and have a place where you can,
01:42:36 the people seem interesting, the food seems good.
01:42:40 And let’s just like try this and see what I can learn.
01:42:43 And that like putting yourself out of your comfort zone
01:42:47 in a place where you have a chance to learn
01:42:48 and grow is the secret.
01:42:51 Because it’s, you grow through discomfort.
01:42:55 People think that you grow when you get
01:42:57 into this environment where everything’s
01:42:58 like kind of sailing along,
01:43:00 but like growth actually comes through pain.
01:43:03 It’s like growth comes from being cut down
01:43:06 and beat down and having to regrow and double down.
01:43:10 And so that kind of opportunity,
01:43:13 you have to seek it out.
01:43:14 You have to put yourself in the line of fire a bit.
01:43:16 If the situation sucks,
01:43:18 it’s a sign that you might be doing something right
01:43:21 in the sense that you’re on the path
01:43:23 at the end of which you’ll be a better person
01:43:26 if you allow yourself to grow in that way.
01:43:27 Like as opposed to resisting it,
01:43:29 just going along with the journey and persevering.
01:43:33 And that ended us up in this incredible place.
01:43:37 This whole conversation, I’ll probably overlay a video.
01:43:40 I’m looking at a gorgeous mountain
01:43:43 and it’s an incredible farm.
01:43:45 Thank you so much for a meal yesterday.
01:43:47 That was incredible.
01:43:49 The cheese, the fish eggs,
01:43:51 just everything about this place.
01:43:53 Looking up, you can see the stars.
01:43:56 The stars at night are beautiful
01:43:58 and there’s a peacefulness to it.
01:44:00 I had a pretty hard week actually,
01:44:02 just emotionally in many ways.
01:44:05 And just coming here, it’s immediately,
01:44:07 so much of it is lifted.
01:44:08 So I really deeply appreciate Anya
01:44:11 that you would invite me here
01:44:13 and that you have this conversation.
01:44:15 This was really awesome.
01:44:16 So thank you so much.
01:44:17 Thank you.
01:44:19 Thanks for listening to this conversation
01:44:21 with Anya Fernald and thank you to Gala Games,
01:44:24 Athletic Greens, Four Sigmatic and Fundrise.
01:44:28 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
01:44:32 And now let me leave you with some words
01:44:33 from the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu.
01:44:36 Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
01:44:42 Thank you for listening.
01:44:43 I hope to see you next time.