5-Day Fast: This Happens When You DON’T Eat For 120 Hours with Charles Mayfield

I do believe obesity is a genetic problem to the degree that we're built to starve. Our genetics do not match the reality that I can walk up a city block from where we're sitting right now and get, first of all, garbage, but also even healthy food. Now, I don't want to starve, you don't want to starve, but when it comes to ketosis, when it comes to how we cycle and store nutrients, everything about the human body is built to survive, arguably thrive at borderline starvation.

When I was in Africa, it changed the way I look at diet. I had the pleasure of being introduced to this tribe who just recently came out of the mountains because it was a bad drought. I was the first white guy they saw. One of the questions that was posed to me is, Dr. Pampa, these people barely eat, and yet they have no diseases of all the other tribes. One of the things I tell people all the time is to add one five-day fast in a year and watch what happens to you.

East Tennessee originally. East Tennessee. Had a 24-year run in Atlanta and bookended. I'm back in East Tennessee now.

When I when I tell people that I was from Western PA, what does that ring? What does that say to you?

It it doesn't uh the country, right?

Yeah, see yeah, Western PA. Pittsburgh, it should scream Pittsburgh. Yeah, now opposite eastern is Philadelphia. I didn't know that we referenced that in Tennessee, although it is a very horizontal state.

So we're we're thennessee is three states. Yeah. The I live in the mountains, then there's the the plateau, Nashville. We were talking about Franklin earlier, and then you've got the the Delta side over Mississippi.

I asked you before we got on if you knew Jordan Rubin because he has a huge regenerative farm in Missouri, and he has also one in Tennessee. Yep. Uh so how far is that from where you are? Because we said it was like an hour and a half from Nashville.

It's probably around two and a half, three hours. Uh going east to west from where I live, you gotta sort of go south or north to get east or west generally. But yeah, I'd say as the crow flies, it's probably 150 miles.

Regenerative farming is something you know a lot about, okay? And it's a topic, part of this topic that we're gonna get into. Uh first of all, I I want to start with the top. What the heck is regenerative farming? I I would say almost a hundred percent of my audience has heard that word. However, if you pinned them down on it, they would be like, it really doesn't know exactly what it means. So start there.

Uh at the highest level possible, I define it as building healthy soil. So a farming practice or methodology that builds healthy soil. Now, to unpack that one layer underneath, you've got to work with natural systems. You know, animals move. Uh natural look at the wildebeest on the Serengeti, followed by migratory birds, things those kinds of things. So animal impact, uh, long periods of rest when it comes to managing the animals.

So we're trying to create miracle grow?

We're trying to create uh Mother Nature's Miracle Grow.

I I'm not saying it's healthy. I I'm just uh people know what Miracle Grow is. But okay, I why is this even an issue? I mean, meaning that, like, okay, so like why all of a sudden all the talk about soil, you know, why why is this important for skin care, which we're getting to, uh, and why is this important for our health?

Yeah, well, we're starting to see this pop up now in sort of the cultural lexicon of, you know, our soils are extremely depleted. This is of vitamins of minerals. You know, if you're eating plants, you you want those plants uptaking those necessary vitamins and minerals from the soil and storing them in their uh in their fruits. Uh same with animals, you know, animals are going to, you know, cattle, uh any any type of herbivorous, ruminant animal is going to be grazing on the soil.

And meaning if we don't do anything about it.

Correct.

Okay.

And you know, that that's the end of civilization as far as I'm concerned. If we can't have healthy soil, then all everything comes from the soil and the sun. And so uh it's it's imperative regenerative farming reverses those trends, you know, and and there's plenty of doc um plenty of proof of this. Uh the Savory Institute, what they're the work they're doing at places like White Oak Pastures and various other spots.

Yeah, and I I believe that's one of the reasons we have so much disease is because of these plants that really don't have the nutrient impact because of the soil. Why okay, uh, you know, I don't need or want this to go political, but when we talk about saving the planet, right? When we talk about the whole green movement, I don't maybe it's me. I don't hear anything about soil as part of that.

Yeah, they want to talk about carbon a lot. Yeah. And you know, funny enough.

But I don't know if people even know that, like, is soil even part of that?

Like, I mean, you know, it's an absolute part of the equation.

I agree, but is it a part of the movement?

Oh no. Yeah, no, no, no. It's it's completely escaped the the rhetoric from the I I'm gonna call them climate catastrophists. But uh but yeah, it's uh the other side of that coin is we're seeing greening as the carbon level in the atmosphere is actually ticking up just slightly. We're seeing arid areas start to re-green. We've seen a re-greening, I think, the size of the United States in the northern hemisphere in the last 30 years. There's more trees and all plants.

Yeah, they're always telling us what not to do and what to stop to do, but does any of that really impact the soil? I guess it your opinion that the soil is the big problem?

I mean, that we're dealing with with I think the loss of soil is a very big problem.

What tell me if I'm this is right. I'm not an expert in soil. All right. The reason we bury people at six feet was because that got them underneath the topsoil, which was in the back way back in the day somewhere, was four feet. Meaning there was that much topsoil. So, in am I right on this? Today it's an average of like an inch?

Well, depending on where you live. If you if you go to the corn belt today, okay, Iowa, Missouri, your friend that's got a farm up there, the the the corn belt where the bison would herd for millennia, then those soils, documented soils, were feet deep, four four to six feet. So I think that's a good thing. So we better bury someone at six. There might be trips in this. Well, I could make the argument you want to bury them shallower than that because you want those microbes to do their job.

Well, I think it was because they don't they were worried about topsoil washing away and the body coming up, right? You don't want your ancestors floating in your yard. I mean, I'm serious. That's a good point. Yeah, okay. Because topsoil can flow away, right? Um okay, so but okay, whether it was four feet, three feet, different areas have, you know, obviously they wanted the bodies perhaps to get underneath that. But what is it today on average, like the the depth?

Oh, I can't speak specifically. I know it's a fraction of what it used to be. Just take take the corn belt as an example. Again, these were soils that were feet deep, you know, 100, 200 years ago. They're inches deep now, if if you're lucky. Okay.

Yeah, I uh I have read that, uh inches deep, which is a big problem. What would you say the number one reason for this soil going away and also not having the nutrient contact?

It's it's two reasons they're connected. It's the industrial farming model. So you strip the land of anything growing, you make it bare, okay, and then you plant, you know, we're corn, wheat, and soy. Those are our three big agricultural crops in this country. And so when you uncover the landscape, so it's bare dirt until the crop comes up, uh, the sun is very powerful, so that's going to bake and kill a lot of the microscopic organisms that are there.

The active ingredients glyphosate, which I think people have heard about, opens up your gut barrier, your blood-brain barrier, causing massive problems in health. This is where, you know, the stuff that I notice and focus on, obviously. Um, but uh people aren't realizing that it's you know horrible for the soil.

That's right. And so when you make the soil bare, uh organic matter in the soil has a has a carrying capacity for water that it's about 10x dirt. So you got dirt and then you got living soil. And so when you strip the soil of its natural cover, you know, the grasses and things, uh, and let the sun bake it, so it it it kills all those microorganisms or drives them down into the soil. So now you can't you don't have the carrying capacity when it when it rains to hold that water where it is.

When I was in Africa, this was early 2000s, um I this is the first time I saw this. There was a gentleman there teaching the Africans how to farm God's way, is what he said. Meaning, first thing that I gathered was you don't uproot all the plants. Like so last year's crop, let's just use corn as an example, they just knock it down. And the reason they just knock it out, so we we use w rototillers, what is that the right word? Yeah, we to uproot the soil, we take out the plants, right?

Has been a uh a practice in the I'm gonna call it the grain growth industry, uh, grain farming industry for a number of years. It's it's come in and out of favor. You know, it's an added cost to a farmer. A lot of bigger farmers don't necessarily conceptualize the the soil soil. They think dirt. And so, you know, well, yeah, I I'll I'll put a cover crop down. It's just adding to my to my bottom line.

But that's the practice that we're doing, right?

That is by and large the practice that we're doing today. All right.

Yeah, I mean, I I the only experience that I've had with this out outside of that Africa's grants, Jordan Rubin, who I I mentioned, a friend of mine, on his property, they uh have a regenerative soil project. So what I witnessed, and you tell me uh if this is close to what you do, they um bring in the big animals, right? It's like and they stomp, pick, eat.

So, in a natural system, we'll go back to the bison, okay? You uh herd animals, they herd together for predation protection, right? So you got the wolves, the zebras. There's a I'll tell you a quick funny story. There was somebody studying zebras, and they could never remember the zebra that they were studying. So they put a little red dot on the zebra. The zebra with the red dot would be dead inside of two or three days because now the lion can see the one zebra.

But the lions focused on that.

Well, a a herd of animals without any other distinguishing marks just looks like a big blob. But that one stood out. That's right. That stood out. And so, in a natural system, these animals, bison, zebra, cows, they herd together, so high impact. They stay in one place for a very short period of time, because if you stand still too long, yeah, right, and they eat so aggressively. You know, it's just hot. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And then the birds come in behind it and clean up.

What do they just poop.

Yeah, just poop. Which is why it's so high in nitrogen. Yeah. Okay.

You know, it's funny you said that. I I I don't, yeah, I I don't I've never seen a bird pee. Yeah.

So well, the poo looks like pee sometimes. Uh there's seagulls around here. So yeah, that's so they come in. They're people know that.

Am I the only idiot in the room that didn't know the birds don't pee?

No.

Okay. No, I don't want to be. Did you know the birds don't pee? I did not pee. Okay, all right. I didn't know. I didn't know the birds don't pee. All right.

There's our big takeaway from this.

I learned something.

Yeah. So that but the biggest role they're playing. So a cow drops a cow pie, right? The flies come along, they plant their larva to grow to make more flies. Well, as soon as those larvae hatch, the chickens or any bird, their job is to come by and clean. Yeah. So it's the reason it's so powerful is it's all a natural system. You don't have you're not paying to feed the birds.

Yeah, so that's what they were doing, is creating this natural system. Yeah. Yeah. It obviously works. So basically, in this project that he's doing, the goal was, and this is to our point, is to create an inch of topsoil a year. Now, in the beginning, this is not happening the first few years. You know what I'm saying? I mean, they'd be like, hey, we got two millimeters, but after a while, it starts to create more and more topsoil. So that's what we're talking about.

Absolutely. And I I I just want to earmark this. One of the coolest things about the world we live in today is we do have the technology to accelerate the natural process of soil production because of our our management of the animals. We can take a natural system that built these feet deep of topsoil and we can accelerate that in a healthy, it's better for the animal, it's better for the ecology.

Well, I mean, I can tell you if we if we change the nutrient density of soil, right, we're gonna change the health of humanity, right? That's I know that to be true, right? Because the plants that people are eating, even organic, it's better, no doubt. No chemicals, right? But it's grown in weak soil. If you go to Italy, have you been to Italy? Okay. Why do the tomatoes taste so different? I beyond the tomatoes, everything tastes so different. Why?

They're grown for flavor and not transport. I mean, in this country, the average meal travels 1700 miles. Yeah, that's it.

So it's grown, it's grown in better soil.

Better soil, yeah, and it's grown for flavor and nutrients, not packability.

That's it. I when you go to Italy and you think, why does this salad taste like this? It's it's this is what we're talking about, right? This is you know, and by the way, once we kill the soil, what what are farmers doing? And this is no criticism on farmers, they're stuck in a bad system, right? They're adding fertilizers. They're trying to add the the potassium, the you know, the the different minerals back into the soil. And obviously that's incomplete.

Yeah, our our industrial farming system is really a uh uh it's a leftover from what we did in World War II. You know, we could pull this nitrogen out of the atmosphere and make bombs with it, and we're we got really good at that. And you know, it looks as a farmer, it looks really good. You come by with a bag of nitrogen fertilizer, and that grass or that crop looks amazing.

It's killing the microbiotic uh nature of the soil because it's it's it's not naturally healing and well, you know, i that's a good point that pu probably people don't know about regenerative farming, is we're we're talking about vitamins, minerals, things that the plants get from the soil, but we we we're not understanding that there is a microorganism, a microbiome like our guts and and in and on our bodies, but that has to happen in the soil. And today that's not happening.

Well, from from birth, so you got to think about a new human's exposure to the to the world, which the world is bugs, the world's microbiome. So you've got vaginal birth, that's number one. Hopefully, the child has a vaginal birth.

Right, because meaning when a child goes through the the the birth canal, it's picking up mom's bacteria microbiome.

That's right, because it's been it's been in this little cocoon, you know, the placenta, it's been protected.

And so that first first blush with that, but then I and by the way, that's why C-section babies have a massive increase in autoimmune later in life, even cancer, etc. So, and and I'm not trying to freak people out because there's are some things we can do about that, but understanding that it's in this country it's very convenient for doctors and hospitals to set up C-sections, right? Because we know the time of the birth, what doctor has to be there.

That's right. Well, and and for your listeners that that that are in that situation, it's scheduled, and you got to have it, you know, there's practices now where you can swab the inner lining of the vaginal canal of the mom. So once the baby does come out of the belly, you can you can give it that first indoctrination, if you will. But then beyond that, uh the old adage, you know, a a kid should eat about a pound of dirt a year, or not a pound, a cup of dirt maybe a year.

I think I ate more than that as a kid.

I was sure the dirt, yeah. For sure. And so that dirt is, again, in a healthy ecosystem, is loaded with microbiome, loaded with very good dirt drug. Hold on. Soil. Soil. Thank you.

I got 'em. I got them. You said dirt didn't have any. No, I know. No, you caught me. The the attitudes to catch. We're saying playing in dirt. Yeah, it sounds better than saying playing in soil. Yeah. It doesn't even make sense. That's right. I'm talking to the layman out there. I know. The dirt. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean we we every adult human on this planet has between five to seven pounds of microorganisms living in and on their bodies. And so that that is an ecosystem that can be healthy, and it's an ecosystem that can be unhealthy. And so to the best degree that we can feed that ecosystem with it's obviously skincare, but also certainly the foods that we eat. We're getting to skin care and the clothing that we wear and all all the things is is just gonna promote a healthy ecosystem of bugs.

Yeah. You think COVID uh had a big impact on uh the uh the lack of understanding of how important bugs are, meaning uh hand sanitizers went I still watch it. I still watch people come out of the bathroom and they they they this is the thing, right? And kids do this now, right? All out of COVID.

Whatever you want to call it. In fact, one of my big skincare tips to most people is put the soap, shampoo, conditioner, put all of that down. You know, warm water in a washcloth. Spend a week, spend two weeks with just letting there water.

We're sneaking into skincare because there's a reasonable.

But that's the that's the other side of that bell curve, it's just this hypersanitization. Yeah, I agree. It's it's a real problem.

And it starts in the soil. That's kind of what we're talking about, right? But this is, you know, transend transcends into our lives this lack of understanding of how important living with microbes are. There's studies, kids that grow up in the dirt, the soil, um, you know, getting dirty outside with animals, you know, all around. I know people are like, oh, animals, parasites, parasites.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, the germ theory has been around for a while. COVID really put some gas on that fire. I mean, it's the Amish are talked about a lot when it comes to vaccines versus not a vaccinated population, and we don't need to talk about vaccines. But what I think is not talked about with that community and their general health and lack of a lot of the metabolic problems that we see in the general population is those kids are outside a lot.

And so that's why I'm a fan of dogs. Where are my dogs? My dogs aren't here today. My dogs. I see. I need my dogs. Anyway, uh, let's back up. I I want to know what the heck got you into this, man. I mean, I mean, so, okay, you're you're you know, you're here, you're, you know, you're all about health, right? You got, you know, regenerative soil pulled you into that. You don't just step into this for no reason.

Well, it's it's an interesting journey. So I grew up in a very small town. Uh, my my family was sort of a dairy agricultural adjacent family.

All right, so farming in your childhood background?

We had a couple goats and chickens. So we were in the dairy industry, and uh, if you don't know this about dairy, when you get big enough as a dairy company, you're either milking cows or bottling milk. And so by the time I came of age, we our family's business had had reached a tipping point. We weren't we weren't milking cows anymore, we were bottling milk. My aspirations for farming would not come until later. I I guess I can unpack this. I met CrossFit in 2007, eight.

You know, you obviously you have uh some core values that though led you into the the area, I mean, of doing things right. You know, I you know, what were some of those values and and through this process, did you ever have anything that violated those values?

Well, the health and wellness space is full of people that push that envelope pretty hard. Uh my personal experience has always been let me try this on me, you know, let me self-experiment uh and does it help? Okay, check that box. Okay, well now I'm gonna start giving it to some other people. This is the reason you know we we we wrote the cookbooks was paleo was foundationally awesome for us in terms of changing our health, and so it's like let's share this.

Do you do you feel what what are some of the things I don't want to throw you under the bus here? But at the tip that you think you know, our space is focusing on now that's just stuff up here and it's not as much foundational.

Well, I mean, what are the foundations? You know, sleep, hydration, I would say, uh, you know, I would say just real food in general, and then activity. Uh we see this a lot in farming. I'll tie it to farming real quick. Everyone wants to talk about what the animal's fed, which is great, but no one wants to talk about how the animal lives. And one of the basic tenets of regenerative ag or grass is good.

Yeah, well, movement. But how do they move?

Movement, sunshine, fresh air, all of these things that are just naturally in a in a regenerative system. And so I like to talk about just you know, being active. Um foundational stuff. In terms of where I see things getting kind of haywire, it's not that they're haywire, it's just they're pointing people's attention away from that foundation. But you know, you've got all the the red light there. I'm here in Miami, right?

I wanted to hear you say it. I I I agree with you on that.

Yeah, and so I'm a big fan of near infrared. I have Sonaspace, I'm a big fan of uh uh that that company. Uh there's a bunch of them out there, and it's great.

But we're moving up to the we're moving up to the tip.

Uh and so I I think the biggest thing is people all the all the attention is pointed at the top of the pyramid. And it's sexy. You know, I love I love it.

We get caught up in it too, right? Yeah, of course.

Of course. I've got my you know, fancy shoes on it.

Show them the shit. Look at this. He shows up in these. Okay, so my wife would never let me wear these. But we're gonna get to that in a minute. I can go work on it. Yeah, exactly. Uh you gotta hear about this, right?

So, yeah, I I think you know, generally, and and listen, I love going to these conferences, it's a great way for us to meet people and talk about our brand. And I'm going to uh Dave Asprey's conference this.

Yeah, I'll be there.

Oh, good. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so it's gonna be funny because it's biohacking at the it's at most of it's at the tip of the spear, but my conversation is gonna be we're I'm foundational. I'm down here at the bottom with with our products and just sort of how we how we market to the to the world. It's we're we're the drinking water and going for a walk of skincare. It's like foundational stuff.

Well, I the the shoes could arguably be foundational, right? Because it's the foundation, right? It's uh allowing your feet to be uh do what they naturally should be doing. That's right. We'll talk about that. Um yeah, okay. So you know, pulling this in, I I mean, I agree. I the foundational stuff, the food we're eating, and there's nothing more foundational than where our food's coming from, the soils, how these animals are living.

Well, uh there's three pieces to that. So I I've obviously run across the vegan vegetarian movement plenty in in my number of years. Um so they're there are three big tenets. Is it healthier? Is it better for uh no animal should die? You know, the animal husbandry side of the piece, and then this planetary thing. That's those are the three big um I guess tenets that they talk about. Well the the health aspects of it, uh an animal-based diet is is the most nutrient-dense diet out there.

What what do you mean?

If you've ever run a plow or a combine through a field, uh uh moles, weevils, mice, birds, and back to the soil stripping. I thought you meant the cows. Well, I I can kill one cow and feed a lot of people.

Yeah.

Or I can kill a couple thousand birds and mice that feed nobody to grow my corn. Right. Uh I can't remember how many bees die per acre in avocado growth. You know, and you've got these ground burrowing squirrels. I mean, the the the vegan diet is is just covered in blood, if you want, forgive the term, but they but we're not we're not even consuming these animals as a foodstuff. And so that that one is is a really tough one to wrap my head around in terms of squaring it, you know.

Because in nature, I think that's one of the pro things that people say is oh, all the the animals, the the the cows, the meat, it it's bad for the planet. You're making the opposite argument.

Well, we live in a world where what you hear is about 180 degrees of what's right, and so yeah, it the best thing for the planet is raising animals in a manner that aligns with nature for food. We have to control the population, you know. Uh we don't want animals getting out of control. And so uh the the the way to honor them is to I call it one bad day. We should all be so lucky, you know. I I I I wouldn't mind leaving this earth with one bad day.

So yeah, no doubt. Um what about uh the conversation around lectins, phytates, oxalates, these plant toxins? What's your feeling on these?

My feeling, I'm not an expert on this. My intuitive feeling is there are some benefits and there are some downsides. Uh, you know, if you look at a lot of the ancient Chinese functional medicine, integrative medicine stuff, it's a lot of it's plant-based in terms of utilizing some of these compounds to agitate uh uh necessarily the immune system or agitate.

The premise is hormesis. That's right. Meaning if we stress the microbiome, the immune system, it can get stronger if it adapts.

That's right. So I think it has a role. You know, when we start talking about these compounds, we're I think we're talking about plants, right? Yeah. And so plants have a yes, plant toxins. And so I I do believe that in a well-balanced, you know, optimal diet, I do believe they have a place. Yeah, I do too. And so, great. Most people I I'm more concerned with the bag of Cheetos or the you know, the crappy ice cream or the you know, the Coca-Cola. I mean, again, back to tip versus foundation.

I knew you were gonna say that. Yeah, it's true.

I I would rather have a conversation about, you know, put put the Cheerios down and pick up some bacon or you know, some kefir or yogurt or something like that. But I I believe they have a role. I do believe most of us overconsume them. And I would like to push over into what about all the chemicals that we're eating? For forget the plants. What about the chemicals they're spraying on?

But by the way, arguably that are opening up the gut barrier, protective barrier, and now these plant toxins are able to cause a lot of mischief, right? So, because think about this. When I was growing up, no one had the conversation, no one was reacting to plants or the plant toxins. We weren't talking about lectins, phytates, oxalates, right? We weren't, we didn't even think about that. It wasn't part of what we had to worry about. Why today?

I can point one really big finger. About 20 years ago, industrial ag we started using glyphosate roundup as a crop desiccant versus a pre-emergency. Explain the word desiccant.

Because this is a big deal. People don't understand this.

It's so glyphosate used to be on our plants, and in the last 20 years it's now prevalently on our food. So a desiccant is a thing that kills or dries out a crop. One of the when you're growing wheat or soy or you know, any other uh oats is another big one. One of the mysteries is okay, well, well, that's plant needs to reach senescence. It needs to die and dry for in order for us to harvest the dried grain.

It's easier to harvest.

It's easier to harvest. And so that I think that was a monumental shift in our food supply that isn't talked about.

So if I'm the chemical company that made glyphosate, I just made billions of dollars of that idea because now I can show farmers how to increase their yields, increase their profits, make it easier. Right? Absolutely. Oh, but there's a but when you desiccate, is it true that you're using way more chemical than even when you're just spraying because glyphosate obviously was used it's like an antibiotic. I mean it it kills weeds, it kills pests. It kills everything.

I would say that they're probably gonna, in terms of application, so a pre pre-emergent application at the beginning of the growing season, they're gonna spray it just like they would in a in a post-harvest. So I don't know that the volume is is up there, but what you're what we're getting into now is the parts per million, the half-life. Now we're spraying it on our food. So it doesn't have the time, you know, over a growing season to be rained on, you know, day after day after day.

But we as humans are when you're eating non-organic foods, especially, and even some because it's in the rainfall. Am I right? It's uh that's how ubiquitous it is. And of course, uh studies show it's opening up the gut barrier. And again, to my point is it's allowing these plant toxins to be inflammatory, and it's allowing a lot of the even the undigested proteins to leak across the gut, driving autoimmune. I mean, all this because of the pleasures of glyphosate.

So the reason they were able to label glyphosate gr grass, a grass ring, generally recognized as safe, is because it does not we metabolize food. We don't use photosynthesis. Okay. And so they're like, oh, well, we don't use photosynthesis for metabolizing our food. This compound disrupts photosynthesis, so therefore it's generally recognized as safe for even human consumption.

Yeah. Well, I you know, and here's the thing, I was on a bus once um from a hotel thing, and it was people from Monsanto, the company who who makes it. And I can tell you that the head guy there that was like, you know, you could tell he was the head guy there, he believed strongly in his product. Like, I not for one second did I feel that like they were like, ha ha ha, we're gonna, you know, kill humanity here. I mean, I'm telling you, he believes strongly in it.

They're they're looking at studies that were funded and paid for by Monsanto or Bayer or someone else. I mean, uh, the devil loves data, you know, and you can point that. That's like uh what's the um, you know, bacon and and and cured meats are somehow on par or uh less healthy than smoking cigarettes, you know. They the devil loves data.

Yeah, you're right. And we can make the data uh whatever we want, I guess. You know, um I I have to go. We're talking about all these diet things. I have to step back and ask the obvious question, right? You mentioned keto. This is where it all started with you, right? All these diets. Paleo. Paleo. Yep. Then keto, right? Maybe. Okay. Yep. Where where are you at today on it?

Like what's your diet like? I would say I'm 95% carnivorous.

Oh wow, that's all yeah, that's a big number. Yeah.

I I mean I I went out to eat with a friend of mine last night and went and had a huge ribeye, and then they made sweet potatoes and broccolini that looked delicious, and so I had a little bit of that. I uh I think it's maybe Nisha Berry that con coined the ketovore or something like that phrase. But uh yeah, I eat predominantly animal protein and fat. Uh love a good treat every now and then, some nice homemade ice cream or something along those lines.

When I was in Africa, it it changed the way I look at diet, right? It did. I I got I had the pleasure of being introduced to this tribe who just recently came out of the mountains because it was a bad drought. And um they were they kind of came down and settled where other tribes were kind of more modernized, if you will, by like, you know, world vision and you know, meaning they had grain to eat, you know.

We we we hear a lot now, they're trying to point this uh Obesity is a genetic problem and we we both Yeah, there was no fat people.

Oh no, zero.

Zero. Uh I I do believe obesity is a genetic problem to the degree that our gen we're built to starve. Now I don't want to starve, you don't want to starve, but when it comes to ketosis, when it comes to how we cycle and store nutrients, everything about the human body is built to survive, arguably thrive at borderline starvation. And so yes, obesity is a genetic problem.

Yeah, no, I mean one of the things I I tell people all the time, just add one five-day fast in a year and watch what happens to you. I you know, add two in and watch. It's uh, you know, fasting I think has gotten a lot more popular, but I think people are fasting too much without feasting as well. There's power in the feast. You know, I saw that in this culture, right? You know, they you know, they would uh be forced into times of famine, to your point, were not, right?

So I I like to say that I believe that we are thank God we're omnivorous. That I think that is a true gift. Uh, but I think we're optimally more carnivorous. And so e even keto, I I I love the ketogenic diet. Historically, that was a very seasonal way for us to survive. No, exactly. It was seasonal. 12 months of keto, I don't think is a s is a smart thing for for a lot of people.

Yeah, I exactly. I it's people stay in keto. I I think it's a mistake. Have have you ever noticed this? That let's say that you because you're very low carb, obviously. Yeah. So have you ever had a feast where maybe you ate the pizza, what whatever it was? Okay, all right. Now, let me say if you ever noticed this, though. A day or two later, you look at yourself in the mirror and you're actually leaner after a feast day. Yeah. Okay, there's a reason for that.

Carb night, have you ever read that book? Yeah, yeah. No, I haven't. No, that's a good thing.

But there's a principle there. If you're low carb too long and then your body starts to think it's starving, and if you give it all these carbohydrates, guess what it does? It starts firing up the fat burning machine again. So I I keep now, today, with low carbon people fasting a lot, I'm saying you have to feast. I have to feast, you know. So like my 511 adds one. I'm all tangled in my wire. Um, it adds one feast day at least. Some people need more.

Well, I would say foundationally that the plow is a good thing. I had to unlearn that.

Um, you know, I I most people watching this probably don't even think that, you know, that's probably the first time they heard of the plow is bad. Sure.

Well, you know, turning the soil over, preparing, preparing the soil to plant, you know, copious amounts that the plow is not a good thing. And and adjacent to that is most, if not all, of the rhetoric, education, uh, e even the governmental policies, everything top down is pointed in the wrong direction when it comes to our agricultural system.

Yeah, exactly. So and and what are what would you say the number one myth is that people um still believe outside of that?

I don't know. Myth's not the right word. It's just wrong. And we see this in skincare too.

That's being nice, I guess.

So people think that fake vitamins and minerals are somehow on par with real vitamins and minerals. And on a molecular level, that is not the case. And so we see this, you know. Um what's the true so so something created in a lab that's labeled protein or vitamin A or vitamin E or any of these supplements or nutrients, if it's created in a lab on a molecular level, it is absolutely different than the naturally occurring source.

That's good. All right, let's bring this into skincare. I promised, ladies, I promised. Okay, so how did you evolve there? I mean, all the background and regenerative farming and soil, you know, everything from the diet stuff. I mean, how do you land in skincare, man?

So I I go onto this in the website just a little bit. I came home from farming all day, and I had what I can only call you have fair enough skin, a stage five sunburn. One of the most common acute skincare conditions on in the world, I believe. And Dr. Pompa, I call it half curiosity, half desperation. Came home, medicine cabinets empty. I mean, I'm just scorched. You're pretty white.

This was Did your grandmother tell you to do this? Put the lard on your skin?

Well, no, I had you're you're you're young enough to remember the jar of aloe vera in the refrigerator. My mom, we we we go to the beach every year, and the first thing you know, she would put that jar of aloe vera in the refrigerator so that when the inevitable inevitable came, it was cool. It was and so it half desperation, I'm fried, half curiosity. I wonder if that would work. And so I put it on, put it on that evening, I put it on again the next morning.

We we're a couple years in now, and I have to say, I I remember one time I had a burn and my father pulled out Crisco. Okay, we're we're not talking about Crisco here, but that's what he did. So there was some knowledge that animal-based product helped the skin. Now, this is Crisco back in, you know, probably the early 70s, you know, but uh maybe it's different than it is today. I would argue probably that it is. But um, you know, I don't know. I I guess there was some knowledge.

Well, Crisco for for your audience that so in 1911 is when they launched at Procter and Gamble, and they bleached its cotton seed. Well, back then it was crystallized cottonseed oil. That's where the name came from. They had to bleach it white because in 1910, if you went to your general store to get your cooking fat, there's a 100% chance you walked out with a can of lard, and lard at is white. And so Crisco looks a whole lot like lard, but it's was it once lard back in the day?

No. Oh, okay.

Crisco's always been crystallized cottonseed oil.

That's funny. Because the reason I said that is because there was a joke in our school, right? And and I didn't partake in this, but if a girl had a fat butt, they called her Crisco.

Oh, I like that.

You know why? Because they would say, you know, what's that mean? Because you're fat in the can. Anyway, uh so I we we we're years later we transitioned to uh Sir Mixelots.

I like big butts, right? So it all comes full circle.

Yes, it wasn't a bad thing. I I think we probably guys just said that to the girls they actually liked. So we we're talking about like, you know, grade school. But anyway, um, okay, so the uh let's the your product. Yeah. Yeah, you you you evolved into but developing a product, and you already said it was, you know, from the sunburn incident, you know, thinking about you know that this could be really a good thing for people for multiple reasons, even anti-aging.

Yeah, so well, I I started again, it worked for me. I started I'd never looked at skincare. So I started, I call it my paleo lens, back to sort of the paleo roots. You know, you've heard this a million times. If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it. Yeah, if if it can't pronounce it, don't eat it. If it doesn't spoil, don't put it in your mouth. I took that lens, which I'd never thought to look at skincare, and started looking at it.

And so that's Yeah, and the uh fat-based things absorb into the skin. Water-based aren't going to absorb very well. So um, it is a fat-based industry. All right, well, uh so this has become a popular thing now, using tallow on the skin as opposed to plant-based things like olive oils, et cetera. So, you know, talk about that shift. You believe, I believe, that it's way better than most of these plant oils. So talk about that. Like why why why tallow?

Sure. Well, intuitively, we're an animal, not a plant. Okay. So just a as a baseline there, we we also use, we sort of lead with lard. If you look up our company, when there's a big pig everywhere. Uh lard is from uh if you hear the term lard, yeah.

There's a difference between lard and tallow. Correct. Unpack that real quick.

We we use three fats lard, leaf lard, and tallow. Okay, yeah.

No one understands the difference in what the heck is leaf lard.

Tallow. Tallow is the rendered s uh visceral fat from a ruminant animal, most commonly a cow, elk, bison, any ruminant orbivorous ruminant animal.

Okay.

And visceral is important because it doesn't l load up with toxins.

Correct. Visceral fat is not a storage organ. It is uh it's it's kind of like the airbag for your kidneys. I like that. Right? And so it sits inside the the organ viscera, and metabolically, back to metabolics, that cow or that pig, any any mammal is going to take, for better or worse, uh nutrients, uh toxins, all the things environmentally that they do ingest, and it's going to store it in its subcutaneous fat, belly fat, back fat.

Southern Italy, that's what they use.

Oh, and all the all the cured hams and everything. The pig is a majestically wonderful animal. So leaf lard was prized because it didn't have a flavor or smell when you were baking, cooking, frying those things. Lard, on the other hand, is subcutaneous fat, and it's from a uh an excuse me, a monogastric omnivore, just like us. So the the pig and the human share a lot of biology. This is why we train our surgeons on them. We use their hormones, we heart valves, for example.

That's why I tell people if you lose a lot of weight, that people become very toxic because they burn that fat, out comes the toxins that are stored in that. So, okay, so we we take you're saying your product um has all three.

Most of our product we we only have like five SKUs. I'm I'm sort of a skincare wants to tell you that you need a separate product for every conceivable body part and time of day and 17. Oh, I I understand. Don't hit the player, hit the game, they say. So we have a skin food, a face food, we have a portable packable, we have a sublingual elixir, and then I've got a soap line. Uh very, very small. I mean, we're gonna build more SKUs, but I I like here's a solution for all your stuff.

I I've moved to uh I look, I've used tallow um on my skin for many years, but I I said this, it's it was very difficult when you buy the store about tallow, right? It kind of laid on the skin a little bit, it wasn't clean, if you will, meaning like kind of left you a little greasy. So the modern day tallow, like your product, I use your product, you sent it to me, thank you. Um it soaks in. So what's the difference?

Okay, so we we are using tallow and lard. Okay. Again, back to biology. Our skin's gonna recognize we're not a ruminant herbivore. But you also use the the the leaf. We use we use predominantly more leaf lard in our facial product again, odorless. Okay. And so uh by not everybody, well, everybody thinks our product's gonna smell like bacon grease. It does not.

Okay.

But no. And you can you can speak to that. It's it's it's got a very neutral smell to it. But yeah, we use a little bit more leaf lard in our facial product. It's a little smoother, it's a little bit more it's gonna soak into finer skin. This and this are the same biological material. It's just the environmental exposure. That's the big difference between like your dry elbows and your under the eye, is you you're not gonna rest your you're not I'm not gonna rest this up against a tree.

I mean, I I have to say, when I moved exclusively to using you know the product, I mean it it no, you notice the difference. That's probably the moisture that's being kept in the skin right away. Absolutely. Yeah. I what what are people typically notice when they move from plant-based oil or hold on, Estee Lauder? I I mean those are yeah, I mean, we haven't even kind of hit that. Like I've stopped using anything, those are loaded with chemicals, fragrances, da-da-da.

Sure. So on the spectrum, I like to say bad, good, better, best. Okay. Okay. We can throw certainly petroleum derivatives and and steak oils into back. Don't use that. Read your labels. Uh so that's bad.

Good, I would say And by the way, a lot of health products still have vegetable oils, oils, right? And we I we tell people not to ingest them, but you don't want them on your skin either.

Your skin is ingesting. Yeah, exactly. That's absolutely right. Your second stomach, right? And so on so that's the bad. On the good, I would say your some of your more historic plant-based oils, you know, the olive oils, jojoba, uh, even coconut oil. Now you you may run into some comodo comedogenic qualities there, clogging the pores. This again, we're not an olive, we're not a coconut.

Okay, so the the pig clean is the most aligned.

Yeah, so if we're stepping your listener away from or toward better, let's just call it toward better. Start with if the first ingredient is water, beware, because that means they've injected emulsifiers and chemicals in there that are likely endocrine disrupting. But also look at the fats. Because every skincare product has fat. So if it's a if it's a petroleum derivative, X. If it's a seed oil, I would make the argument X. There's some variation in there.

Well, yeah, uh a seed oil can be processed correctly. Correct. Exactly. Absolutely. Everyone's like, no seed oil in this oil. Well, I actually put seed oil in some of my products, but it's a very, very cold-pressed oil and it's stable and back to the manufacturing. Exactly.

Back to how is it made? Absolutely. And so beyond that, I would say step into your animal fats. Tallow being tallow's huge right now, and I encourage people, please step away from here, you know, grab grab a tallow product. Awesome. Uh I'm I'm I'm encouraging everyone to abandon the industrial skincare industry.

But go ahead and make an argument for your product. Uh you know, I'm saying, I mean, um I've used a lot of them, and yours is amazing. I I you know, so wiser is better than the other tallow products, if you will.

Well, I I if it's as simple as we use SmartLard, I've trademarked it. It's our big calling card. But yeah, the presence of the fat from a pig that is raised in alignment with So you're paying attention to where you're getting it.

Oh, it's how the pig was raised. But your argument is because uh until your product, I never used one with pig in it.

Mm-hmm.

Uh or tallow, pig, tallow, leaf. Lard. Leaf lard. Leaf lard.

Yeah. Lard, lard, leaf lard.

Is that what it's called? Leaf lard?

Lard. Lard is subcutaneous fat, leaf lard is the visceral fat. So there's both. Yeah, okay. Got it. Got it. Okay.

Anyways, never use a product with that until you're so you're saying it's most like our us human, so it's uh used very, very easily, well.

Back back to the fake versus lab grown versus naturally occurring. P pigs metabolize vitamin D from the sun the same way we do. And so if you raise a healthy, happy pig, it will store in excess all the vitamins, minerals, the lipid balances, a spot on you know, skincare is a huge lipid gain, you know, the ratios of monoinsaturated, polyunsaturated, saturated fats, spot on match. And so our skin needs things, it wants to metabolize the most like kind of fat.

Yeah. Right. The lard goes deep, the tallow s locks it all in.

That's right. If I we don't have a sunscreen product, you know, like a mineral-based sunscreen product, but we're developing one now. It will be a tallow heavier product because I I still want to moisturize, but I want to seal those minerals. I want to keep them topically.

I'm the woman watching the show, and I'm, you know, my Estee Larder. I don't even know the name of these things. What are some of the Olay, Clinique, Estee Lard? So but it's like I'm convinced because I've been told this has peptides in it that are anti-aging my skin. Sure. And I, you know, I I don't want to give up my skin care. Why the heck is this tallow product with lard better? How is it better? I mean, you're not convincing me yet, maybe.

Every single I I hate to speak in absolutes. 99.9% of the products that you can buy, if you walked into your Sephora, your Alta, your Target, every every store, uh, are actually going to age your skin faster. They're water-based. Okay, so if anyone's ever heard the ingredients, there's water in there, there's now there's a big serum market now, which are a little bit more oil-based, and fair enough, we can unpack that later. But at the end of the day, they are aging your skin faster.

Okay.

I like to say this, Dr. Pompa. I can't, just to make it fun, I can't compete with Botox in a week. But you give me a month or two months or three months, um, we're we're gonna we're gonna fare far better than some of these.

Oh, well, and I'm anti-Botox, and so as a wife. So that's a good thing. No, no, yeah. So I that meaning, but when you say that, immediately people say, okay, which should I use? So you're saying give you a month or so, and you'll notice a difference in your skin.

Or the rest of your life. But yeah, yeah. So uh the Met was recently, and Pamela Anderson made an appearance on the uh I saw this on the social.

The the net Met?

Met Met Gala, met uh Metropolitan. I'm not into Hollywood, but it it it came across my algorithms. Here's Pamela Anderson, you know, the queen of the beach, uh, 57 years old, and everyone she doesn't wear makeup anymore. She's all natural, and people are giving her a hard time. I I think she looks as beautiful and radiant as she's ever looked. And and here's the thing, too. This is part back to your listener that's out there. We need to sort of reframe what beauty really means.

Uh listen, I I I get on criticized on social media because I criticize the eyelashes, right? And I criticize the lips. And I don't I I criticize is a bad word, uh you know, because then of course you're gonna get haters. But I I just don't like the look. Am I allowed to not like the look, right? Like that is a natural look. Can you see that? Can you they focus on that?

That's 57 years old. Yeah, and think of the strength, she's beautiful.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean she's beautiful, right? I I mean that remarkable. Yeah. That's nothing right there. Yeah. That's gorgeous. Yeah. Gorgeous. So I mean, uh we're gonna have cr critiquers out there saying, oh, she's got this or that, or maybe she did Botox. I it sounds like she didn't.

I d I think she's moved uh everything I've read, and again, 57 years old. Think about the stress that that woman's lived through with Baywatch and Hollywood and all that, but she looks amazing. But look in her eyes, right?

And so Well, that's the thing is we're we've moved to this like artificial look. I I believe the pendulum's gonna swish, go back. I do. Because how much more can we stand? I I mean, from a health perspective, that stuff's unhealthy. However, you know, it doesn't look good. It's unnatural. I'm not attracted to it. I'm sorry, girls. If I mean, you know, I'm just not. Sounds like you're not either, but I don't know.

I I think most men aren't.

Okay. I that's a safe men.

You know, can you attract that? No. Every head is shaking. Yeah.

Every head is shaking. No, at least the men here that are Yeah. So I mean, may maybe women are doing it for women then, right? I don't know.

Well, I I don't know. That's that's as old as the fashion industry. Yeah. Exactly. I would never want a woman to wear four-inch heels, but everyone else does.

Okay, I'm for the heels though.

I it does make the butt look good, but too.

Sorry, ladies, because they're like destroying the back. Don't wear them all the time. All right, so our woman in the audience, are you convinced to use the tallow, the lard on your skin and move, take a move into this direction? She's thumbs up all the way. Yeah, listen, uh, first of all, read your ingredients. That's part of what you're saying, right? Water, because it shouldn't be there. This is, you know, fat-soluble is what you want.

I'll give I'll give them one there is a way to make an emulsified product better and healthier than than what I see on store shelves today. Okay, so I'll I'll give them the opportunity to do that. I don't trust any of these large industrial companies, you know, the the cliniques and and all that. Fragrance can mean 1,300 different chemicals, Dr. Bongo. 1,300. And just you mentioned Italy earlier.

That's a big uh that's a huge number. I I thank you for that. That's yeah.

I just I don't trust these organizations. I mean our product or a tallow product again, I'm I'm pushing everybody over into animal fat.

People uh always say, well, I, you know, I I live clean, I do this, I'm really not getting a lot of toxins. I start asking what they're putting on their skin and what they're putting in their what are they washing their clothes with, their dishes with, because all of those products have fragrance in it, which carries so many toxins that have been banned for years because they know they're hormone disrupting. Okay, so here's a question.

Oh goodness. Go to eatwilds.com and find a local farmer. I don't care if they're regenerative, find someone you can shake their hand that's growing food and support them.

Yeah, no, exactly. And and what what would you say is like the biggest reason why somebody wants to do that? Meaning support this movement for regenerative farming.

Well, it keeps it keeps uh the economy, it keeps the consumer dollars in in the local economy. It supports someone that's out there doing the work. Farming is extremely hard. You know, we were talking I'm not farming anymore. Now I'd like to do it again, but I wouldn't be here with you if I was still it's a lifestyle, it is very hard, and so it's a way to honor them. And it also gets you out in your community.

Yeah, absolutely. Where can they find your product? Uh they they hung on this long, man. We got to reward them.

Well, thank you. Uh Faro F-A-R-R-O-W uh dot life is our website. And if Dr. Pompa, if they put that in, they'll save 15%. Awesome. Well, thank you for that.

Um and you're gonna have to send me more. You talked about the elixir. I didn't hear I didn't understand. We have a sublingual elixir. Yeah. What does that mean?

Uh it goes under your tongue. It's it's it's it's it's a C B D-based product. I'm sure you're this is uh one of those hot take topics, CBD, it's a cannabidiol, it's from the hemp plant. Uh I it tends to lower inflammation, tends to help with sleep. So we use it as a not everybody uses that product, but it if it helps helps with sleep and lowers inflammation internally, then that's promoting skin health from the inside out. It's it's doing some of the things that diet and lifestyle will will do.

And so, yes, we have and you said you were with the products, you you said you had five skin food, yeah, face food.

We have a portable packable product called Epidermis. We like puns too. The lard works in mysterious ways, epic dermis. Yeah, so that's really why we started a company. Good puns. Yeah, so uh face food, skin food. We have the sublingual elixir, we have a portable packable product called Epidermis, and then we have our goat epidermis. It's just it's a different formulation of our fats. Okay. It's got a really outdoorsy funds. I'll have to send you one of those to try.

Soaps people are using is also very important. See if you'd have sent me all those things, I'd have known more. What's uh what's what's a project you're super excited about right now? What's um what's what's on your map?

Yeah, playing around with the deodorant and and a sun, I mentioned a sun mineral-based sun care product. We're also I'm uh the other big project is sort of starting to do some RD into stepping into a more of a retail friendly product to compete on on store shelves. And so I mentioned it earlier, you know, looking at what's the better way or the best way that we can uh compete on store shelves. That's 98% of the skincare battle is being waged on on store shelves.

They say you compete for like this little inch or so of real estate, the most expensive real estate in the world. That's right. That's right. The store shelf. Is there anything I didn't ask you that I should have or you wanted me to?

I don't think so. This is this has been a real joy for me. I've been an admirer of yours for a long time. And so really glad this came together and I appreciate coming on.

Yeah, I appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate your product. So thanks for being here, man.

Thank you. Awesome.