499: Are Oysters The Ultimate Superfood? with Stephen Kavanagh

From the Weston A Price Foundation, welcome to the Wise Traditions podcast for wise traditions in food, farming and the healing arts. We are your source for scientific knowledge and traditional wisdom to help you achieve optimal health. And now here is our host and producer, Hilda Labrada Gore. Hey. Hilda here. Move over liver. There is a new, actually ancient super food on the scene. It is the oyster. This is episode 499, and

our guest today is Steven Cavanagh. Steven is a marine biologist with over 30 years of experience and the founder of Marine Health Foods in Ireland. Today, Steven shares with us the best that oysters have to offer, including selenium, copper, zinc, protein, and more. And he tells us what that goodness does for

our bodies. He also addresses oysters' unique properties, such as their ability to naturally filter ocean water, and he goes over how we can avoid overfishing them and projects that he has in the works to restore them. Before we get into the conversation, I wanna invite you to subscribe to the Wise Traditions podcast on any podcast platform, or you can actually download our podcast app. There is a Wise Traditions app through the application store on your iPhone. So you can get the episodes

every single time they come out without any middleman. So thank you in advance for subscribing. This is Holistic Hilda, and you're listening to Wise Traditions. Welcome to Wise Traditions, Steven. Thank you for having me, Hilda. You have said the most outrageous statement that oysters have possibly saved humanity. What do you mean by that? Okay. So oysters are, a very important source of nutrition for human beings, and it goes way, way back. So much so does the theory that 250,000 years ago,

Homo sapiens were nearly wiped out. They were reduced to a few numbers. Some people estimate possibly as low as 200 to 600 individuals left, and this was on along the East Coast and South Coast of Africa. And where these peoples lived, their their their caves are full of oyster mittens, so meters and meters of oyster shell from their activities that they ate. Oh. And they think what happened was these people went down and started foraging for

shellfish and especially oysters on the seashore. So with oysters, they had a very good source of protein. Oysters are full of omega threes, and they're full of really important minerals and vitamins and especially zinc. So they had this good source of protein, a lot easier to get protein that way than taking down a woolly mammoth, which I'm sure was a very dangerous occupation.

Yes. That had high omega 3s, which led to rapid brain development so they could outsmart the the the the the the the cells and the zinc, the high level of zinc, which leads to higher reproductive success. So from that, the homo sapiens exploded from East Africa and conquered the world, colonized all the world everywhere we are now. And what are the nutrients in oysters that you say are, found in greater

concentrations than even in red meat? So oysters have a unique biology because they can live for up to 4 weeks out of water, and when they close the shell this is a this is a large oyster I have here. So the oyster lives in here. It's a it's a mollusk, and it lives in inside the shell. It it makes the shell itself. The shell is secreted from the edge of their gill. They have a very, very unique biology. But when they close-up, they they there's a

liquid in here surrounds the oyster itself. It's like a a lymph. Some people think it's seawater. It is very salty, but it's not seawater. It's a I I sort of call it kind of a primitive hemolymph that surrounds the oyster, and that's full of nutrients, and that can keep the oyster alive for 4 weeks in there. Ah. So oysters have this really high level of zinc, which is 10 times higher than the next source, which

is beef. But it's not just zinc on its own. It's not like elemental zinc that people take when they take zinc supplements, like zinc citrate, zinc gluconate, whatever. It's zinc in in synergy with really important elements like, manganese and copper. And this this

synergy cannot be underestimated, and I can't overstate it even. It's it's so important to understand that the zinc, copper, and manganese are bound together in amino acids and peptides. So that's the way our body has always got nutrition, and that's the way we should be getting nutrition. Not elementally, not with fortified foods with, you know, you can buy all these foods and say it's fortified with zinc or it's fortified with vitamin this, whatever. These have to be naturally occurring in

your food and your diet. That's how we evolved, and that's how our body takes its nutrition. So oysters have 10 times more zinc. So you you can take this high level of zinc, which is really important for the body. It controls over 300 enzyme reactions in the body without having any antagonism with elements like copper or manganese. And we're seeing huge copper deficiency issues at the moment because everybody was taking synthetic zinc during the

lockdowns for their immunity. But when you take synthetic zinc, you end up copper deficient. And copper is a really important element in the body too. And people's hair have gone gray because of copper deficiency. There there are hemoglobin's all over the place because of this copper deficiency. Yeah. And people think they have too much copper because copper has now been pulled out of the

binding sites in the body by the synthetic zinc they were taking. Oh. But you can take that high level of zinc with bioavailable copper when you take it from an oyster. And that's so important. That synergy is so important in the in our nutrition. Yeah. I've heard Sally talk about this. In other words, when we get our nutrition from food, it comes in just the right package, and all the bits and pieces are complementing one another and working

together. If you take it in isolation, it's a whole different thing. Absolutely. Especially if it's synthetic, by the way. That's not gonna do you any favors. Absolutely. We we don't we never dug zinc out of a mine. You know, the plants absorb plants absorb the zinc from the ground or from the seawater. In the case of oysters, these might, use phytoplankton. They absorb the zinc from the seawater to make it bioavailable, and the oyster eats

it, and then we eat the oyster. On land, you know, the plants absorb the minerals from the soil. The animals eat the plants, and we eat the animals and some plants too, obviously. Yeah. You know? Eating it further up the food chain you go, the closer it is to us and the more bioavailable it is. And then So you've said how wonderful zinc is, how wonderful oysters are. What are they touted to do? I know you can't say that they cure us from things, but what does evidence suggest

that they're good for in the in our bodies? That food be thy medicine. Said it, not me. They can't get me on that one. That's right. Absolutely. So minerals, like, one of our gurus was, Linus Pauling. Linus Pauling said, hey. Every ailment, every illness can be traced to mineral deficiency. So oysters would would would have all the minerals that our body needs. It's kind of it goes back to that theory of, life evolving from

the sea. Yes. That, this this concentration of salts in our blood is 60% similar to that in seawater, and it gives credence and power to that statement of, you know, life evolving from the ocean. So they have all the minerals we need. But again, like I

say, with this high level of zinc, they're really high in, copper, manganese, iodine, and selenium. Selenium is nearly absent from our diet because of intensive agriculture. You know? In Ireland, for example, people used to spread seaweed on the land and just but by doing that, they put all the minerals from the ocean back into the soil. And then they discovered NPK fertilizers,

nitrogen fertilizers, and now the soils are depleted of minerals. So much so does selenium, which is really important for us, chromatogenesis and insulin production, nearly absent from our diet. Wow. We're looking at the problems with the insulin resistance at the moment, type 2 diabetes and obesity. You know? Since you're mentioning those conditions, what do you see in Ireland and what you see worldwide in terms of trends probably because of mineral

deficiency? Well, mineral deficiency, yeah, but poor nutrition in general and bad lifestyle choices. We're in Ireland now. We have, 60% adult obesity and 25%, child obesity. Oh. We're not even in the top ten in the world. We're way down the list. Oh. You know, the UK is higher than us. America is higher again. And interestingly, some of the the Pacific nations, the Polynesian nations are really high. So whatever's in our

diet at the moment, they don't like. It's certainly playing havoc with their biology. But here, yeah, and there are multiple reasons for that obesity epidemic and the the cheap the seed oils, the amount of carbohydrates reading, the bad lifestyle, the sedentary lifestyle we lead. There's multiple factors. Can can you put your finger on 1, or is it a combination? Is the synergy of all them more important than them individually? That's

a big question, but look at you. I'm I'm talking to the converted here. I'm preaching to the converted. This is the wise traditions. Right. We know the effect of following the wise traditions. Diet, we're we're healthy, we're fit, we're lean. That's what happens when you follow wise traditions. When you don't, you know, you know what happens there. You can as people say as I say to people, they all go out your marks line. Who are you gonna believe me or your own eyes? None of the

best ones ever. So yeah. Look look around you. Yeah. You know? Like, if a child if somebody at 14 is obese, 4 or 5 stone overweight, or what are they gonna be like at 40 if they even make it that far? Yeah. You know, it's tragic. And their life their quality of life all that time. It's not just the the end, the end. It's their quality of life while they're carrying that weight. It's horrendous. Has to be. They may not know it, but, you know Right. You know, somebody else once

said nothing tastes as good as healthy feels. Oh, I love that. Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels. That's great. And that's a that's a great feeling, you know, to feel have energy, to feel energy, to feel lean and strong. Yes. And that's what wise traditions can do. You know? And it's effortless. It's delicious. It's a gastronomic journey. And when you eat like that, and I eat like that now, I can't eat any other way. Right. You

know, my kids my kids went to McDonald's. They'd be violently ill. Yeah. Which their body would say, what is this? This isn't food. Yeah. Which their body would say, what is this? This isn't food. Right? Yeah. It's happened. Yeah. They because the school these kids want to have these school parties in McDonald's. Now my kids are grown up now. They're 20 and 21, 22. But years ago, they would be invited to a party in McDonald's, and it happened twice. They ate the food

and came home and got sick, physically sick. And I said, I'm telling you, you know, I said, look. If you eat the odd McDonald's, I'm not too worried, but their body couldn't actually handle it Wow. What was in there. And, that's that's remarkable Yeah. For sure. So yeah. So these are the oysters. Well and so going back to them, why do you think oysters are overlooked as a superfood? You know, kale gets all the press, which we think is ridiculous.

But even liver, like, we're all about orgames and the foundation. It why what are we missing when we don't look at the oysters? Well, these these are the original one of one of the original paleo foods. Like, these are Yeah. These this is what we evolved with. For 250,000 years, Homo sapiens have been eating oysters, and they're delicious, I think. Yeah.

But if you're living on a processed carbohydrate diet, you're probably not gonna like the taste of an oyster. Uh-huh. And that that's a problem. They were very, very plentiful, and now a big part of our work is oyster restoration. They were very plentiful. Anybody here in Chesapeake Bay, in America and Chesapeake Bay, New York Harbor, Boston Harbor, San Francisco Harbor, anybody could go down to the shore and get 3 or 4 oysters, and they would see the next day. Free food

it's a free food and nutrient dense free food. They would live to the next day. If you were starving, you could live on oysters. Yeah. And there was a time in the 1800s up to the end of the 1800s when that everybody could do that. Yeah. So they were a really important food source to keep us alive because not everybody had beef. No. Be protein has always been a limiting nutrient for human beings right throughout our our

existence on this planet, but oysters had everything. You know? They had the omega threes, all the minerals, like I say, a really good source of protein. So if you were homeless and destitute, you can go down to the beach and get a couple of oysters and guarantee you'd you'd see the next day. You know? They'd keep you alive and keep you alive well. You know? But we wiped out all the oysters in the 1800, unfortunately Oh. Through bad management practices and overfishing, and we have less than

1% of our traditional oyster beds left. Less than 1%. Less than 1%. Yeah. The Chesapeake Bay was like if you go to Chesapeake Bay and look go to the Oyster Museum, like, there were mountains of oyster shell there. They they thought they could never get rid of the oysters. And they had shucking industries there. There were canned oysters and produced in Chesapeake Bay, shipped all over the US. The whole country lived on oysters for the last 3 decades of

the 1800, and then it collapsed. It happened in New York Harbor and San Francisco Harbor and Boston, like I say. There was an oyster reef off the southern coast of Australia, 2,000 kilometers long. It was bigger than the Great Barrier Reef, and that was wiped out. Wow. Here in Ireland, on on the East Coast where we're sitting now, we had the biggest native oyster beds in Europe. And there was an oyster bed in the middle of the North Sea, bigger than Ireland itself.

Ah. Phenomenal. And there were oyster wars. It was incredible. The fishermen in the town where I live put a 16 pound cannon on the beach. They were gonna blow their fishing boats out of the water because they were upset with what was going on with the with the abuse of the oyster beds. Oh. The fishermen on the East Coast here, they fished the oyster beds for a 100 years prior to 18/60 successfully and sustained them, and they had a lot of respect for it. And it was very important part of

their annual, income. But in 18/60, management practices changed, and boats come from all over the world to fish here, and they wiped them out. In in 18/60, there was a recorded catch of 30,000 barrels of oysters in the town I live in. In your town, 30,000 barrels of oysters. Which we estimate was probably around 30 to 40,000,000 oysters. Oh. And 26 years later, the catch was 14 complete collapse of the ecosystem. Woah. Yeah. So I I can't I can't emphasize, enough. This is

the native oyster, Austria edgeless. For 4000 years here, that's what people ate. And in the seventies, we brought this guy from the Pacific Ocean. This is what people in America would know as a West Coast oyster. This guy was brought here for aquaculture. So this now is kind of what most people recognize as an oyster when they go to a restaurant, but this was the native oyster, which is the subject of our

restoration and conservation efforts. This is the one that we lived on. This is the one that sustained humanity for 4000 years in this area and 250000 years from the from that period when they were nearly wiped out. So how do you go about this? How do you go about the restoration of the oyster population? Well, in

Ireland and on your visit here, we visited the last working oyster fishery in Ireland. There's only one left in Ireland and very few in Europe even, but it's a well managed, fishery. It's sustainable, and it's a great model. And from that fishery fishery, we're taking adult oysters, which were doing trials within, an area further north on the coast in Clare in a hatchery

there with a marine scientist called Ira Canelon. And, he's trialing these giagas oyster shells to see if we can get these oysters to grow on these on the dead shell. And, we visited that hatchery, and we saw really good settlement. So we now know that we can get the native species to settle on these old, West West Coast West Coast Oyster shells. We saw up to 17

babies on each shell. So we're gonna take those shells and put them back out in the ocean and create create what we call metapopulations of native oysters. We've got these around the coastline, and they will then become self sustaining and restart the whole process. And if we can get proper agreement from all the stakeholders and proper management practices put put in place, you know, future generations here and everywhere should benefit

from the fantastic nutrition that is the oyster again. And then we can put it out there. We can. You can have restaurants. You can have biotechnology. You can have a fishing industry again. All these things, but with proper management, not what the kind of, what I call rape and plunder that went on of the oceans in the past. We can't do this anymore. We have stop this because our technology is too advanced. Nature can't keep up with it, especially in the coastal waters. We need to

implement proper management and conservation practices here. If you were not to do this, what would happen? Would all would the oyster population just die out? Yeah. Go on. They go because these oysters in particular, they're they're gregarious. They're like humans. They like to live in dense communities. Yeah. And if you if you thin it out too much, they they won't survive. That's when they start to collapse. Isn't that interesting? They

can't live individually. Just like humans again. We can't live on our own. They live in communities and in beds or on reefs. So the beauty of now what just happened in Europe, and this is, I hope this happens in America too. The Europe European Union, the European Parliament have just passed the 2030 restoration law, which stipulates its law now in Europe that by 2030, 30 percent of our coastal

waters have to be designated for rest rest restoration. And when you're restoring the oceans, you can't come along and say, oh, let's restore the whales or let's restore the dolphins because it doesn't work like that. Mhmm. These guys, you have to start with. You start with oysters. You start with kelp. You start with eelgrass beds in this part of the world. Because these these are temperate, there's a temperate climate here, the temperate

latitudes. So the oysters, when they when they reestablish, they filter the water, which allows light to penetrate, and then the algae can grow. And then the fish like herrings lay their eggs on the algae and the whales, the dolphins, the seals, the big mammals that we all love and that everybody wants to restore, they live on the herring. But it all starts with the oyster. Yeah. And they have to be able to make that connection from

the whale to the oyster. Yes. This guy is far more important, but as you can see, it's hard to make them cute and cuddly. They are very delicious when they're on a restaurant table. But in the ocean, kids pick them up and they go, what's that? That's a rock. They don't know what it is. It's not like a little toy. You can make a little cuddly baby seal or a cuddly baby dolphin, and everybody loves them. Yeah. But they have to learn to

make the connection. And one of the things we want to do on the East Coast here, like, in Ireland, for example, we we have these amazing forests. You have them all over America, of course. We have forests like a a Colachan is a famous oak forest, and, Avondale is a better famous oak forest and more mixed deciduous forest. The trees are 408 100 years old. But in the ocean, we had kelp forests, and the kelp forests were every even more biodiverse than

what we have on land. Oh. But they were all wiped out by the trawlers. They destroyed the kelp. The kelp isn't that strong. It's not strong like an oak tree. It could be damaged very easily. But those kelp forests are where all the fish laid their eggs and where the juveniles survived until they were big enough to go out to sea. It's like a nursery ground. So we want to restore the kelp forests on the East Coast here too and give them names so

they're tangible. But people can't relate to what's under the water. They don't see it. It's out of true. It's out of sight. It's out of mind. Yeah. So we wanna name these forests and get the school kids out there fishing and snorkeling and diving in the kelp forest and have that when they have that connection, then they'll protect them. Yeah. And going into if you went into the Calathen Forest here, it's the last protected oak forest in

Ireland. It's one of the oldest. If you went in there with a chainsaw, you'd be put in jail straight away. There'd be an absolute public outcry, but we need that attitude in the ocean too. In certain areas, not in the whole ocean, but in areas to protect certain areas Sure. For future generations. But we have to restore them first now. We're in a situation where 1% of our biodiversity in the coastal waters is left. Wow. They've been reduced to nearly deserts. It's it's like like what's happened

with the kelp forests. It's like what is what happened in desert areas where the trees were taken away and the whole area turned to desert. Yeah. Deforestation. That deforestation happened in the oceans, but people cannot relate to it. We're marine scientists, so we're looking at it every day, and we're underwater looking at it. We we we understand it. Yeah. But most people can't make that connection.

They can. It's much easier on the land. You know? Right. Absolutely. What you're saying reminds me of what Ben Fock, a permaculturist I interviewed said. He said, we can't just not do harm anymore. It's time to help. So we can't just stop fishing oysters, let's say, but we need to get creative about how we can repopulate the Absolutely. And what we're doing, this is regenerative farming in the ocean.

Mhmm. You know, we wanna bring these back. And and the beauty of oysters is, of course, this organism, as opposed to any animal that we farm or work with Yeah. Oysters are are what we call sessile organisms. They're quite happy to sit there and just filter filter the water all day, head hence the phrase, the patience of an oyster. Uh-huh. It's one of the things I've learned from oysters, which you need in the modern world. Yes. So

they'll sit there and filter, but they feed naturally from the water. They feed naturally on phytoplankton, which are microscopic plants. And there's no antibiotics. There's no medicines involved. You can't do it because they're in the ocean. You can't administer medicine to the whole entire ocean. Yeah. So they're as natural as you can get Wow. In our food. Like, even free range beef and lamb, there's a certain amount of husbandry, but

there's very little with oysters and wild seafood. So it really is the healthiest some of the healthiest food you can eat. And and like you said to me reminded me earlier, doctor Price, when he did his studies, the the cultures that had a a lot of seafood in their diet were were the healthiest. They were absolutely the healthiest. Coming up, Steven gets specific about the benefits we might see health wise when we include more oysters

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listening to Wise Traditions. When we get plenty of zinc, you know, and the protein that the oysters have to offer, the selenium and the iodine and the copper, what and omega threes. What are some of the things we might notice in our bodies? So so the reason they're important is the macromolecules. So take if we take, for example, the the 3 master antioxidants in the body, which are glutathione, catalase, and superoxide dismutase. They're what we called metalloenzymes,

but they're zinc copper metalloenzymes. So they have zinc and copper in a particular ratio. Now that ratio is not decided by us, it's decided by nature. And we in our in our in our day job, which is, production, we analyzed the oysters that we process, and we found that the zinc copper ratio is 11 to 1 going back over the last 25 years of our business. Oh, okay. Now that's nature's ratio. And As we like to say, the ocean

is our laboratory. We won't do anything with that. That's nature has decided that. So you'll see supplements on the market with synthetic zinc and synthetic copper. It's with 15 to 1 ratio or 10 to 1 ratio. People said, this is what it should be. All I could do is tell you what the oyster has told me. It's 11 to 1. Yeah. 11 to 1. Debate, we'll argue with the oyster, get your scuba gear on, and off you go.

And that's what it is. But that's that ratio. So the zinc to copper to manganese are in a certain ratio in the peptides in the oyster. When we digest those peptides, when we digest the protein from the oyster, those peptides those proteins are digested, broken into peptides, amino acids. They flip across the intestinal, lumen into the blood, and our body takes picks those peptides and makes these molecules like, catalase, like glutathione, like superoxide dismutase.

And these are really the the amount of processes in the body that these are involved in are just myriad amount of processes. This is a a biochemical, quagmire. They do all sorts of things. Zinc alone controls over 300 enzyme reactions in the body. So when people ask me what's it good for, for all sorts of things. Yeah. But you can make you can say that oysters are really good for sexual health. You can say they're really good for skin conditions. You can say they're really good for immunity, but

zinc, copper, manganese are involved in all those processes. Yes. But it's general health. Yes. It's your overall health that these are this product that that oysters are are that's what they're looking after. You know? It's everything. You know? So when you say what are they good for, there there there is a connection with oysters and, fertility Yes. And sexual. That even goes

back to the Greek doctrine of signatures where people believe that when certain plants and animals look like parts of the human anatomy, they were good for it. And, that's the case with walnuts. People thought they were good for your brain because their walnut looks like a brain, but subsequent to we subsequently in modern more recent times, we find out that walnuts are full of omega threes. So,

yeah, they are good for your brain. Yeah. Unlike a likewise, anything that looked like a phallus was said to be good for sexual health, and some of them were ridiculous and some were true. You know? So but, yes, the the oysters look when you open oysters, they have they can look like certain parts of the female genitalia. So people the Greeks thought they were good for sexual health. In modern times, we now know they're full of zinc, and zinc is really important for testosterone production, for

sperm production. The prostate gland has the highest con one of the highest concentrations of zinc in the body after the back of the retina. Ah. Very important there for, eyesight. Yes. But it's very high in the prostate and prostate issues, prostate swelling usually is, a lot of the times associated with zinc deficiency. So it's really important for men and for women, for sexual health. So Yes. Absolutely.

You can say an awful lot of things about bees, what they're good for. Even that that zinc connection is really important because like we said earlier, oysters have 10 times more zinc than the next source, which is beef. Yeah. So it's the only food source on the planet that you can get that high level of zinc without an antagonism with copper and manganese. Yeah. And I I think I told you offline that I, sometimes would take zinc

because I was told we're often deficient in zinc. It did not sit well with me because I think it wasn't in from a natural form probably, and it also wasn't in concert with the cofactors that you've mentioned. Like, it didn't come altogether with other elements that and I needed that for better balance and work. And it can make you quite nauseous there. Yeah. That's what I love. Good.

No. No. It's it's terrible. Yeah. I didn't like it. But I know it's also good for, skin and hair and nails and Keratosis. Yeah. Production. There's thousands of biochemical reactions. Yeah. Well, tell me a story, Steven. I've interestingly, it was it was a conversation I had with Chris Masterjohn, and he's fantastic biochemist, Chris. Yes. And Chris was telling me that the body can only absorb

about 3 milligrams of 3 to 4 milligrams of zinc per meal. So you see people taking 25 milligrams of synthetic zinc. So why would you even take that? Because it's probably that's doing. Yeah. Yeah. The body can't even absorb that in one go, you know, so it's it's nonsense. Whereas, 22 to 3 oysters will give you 3 or 4 milligrams of zinc. So this yeah. Although we eat oysters by the half dozen or the dozen,

the ideal way to really eat oysters is 2 or 3 at a time. Ah. And then you get the full if you're just eating them for zinc, but there's so many other things in there. Of course. Like, they have all 50 there are 59 elements with known biological roles in the body. Some people will say that there's a 100 or a 102 elements, but according to science, and I'm just kind of a scientist that's supposed to be, is, to to orthodox science, there's

59 elements with known biological roles in the body. And oysters would have all those elements in there because they're coming from the sea. All of them. Yeah. But particularly

high in zinc and copper and iodine and selenium, biotin. B 12, they're off the scale of b 12 as well. So there is a in certain parts of the US now, some of the vegan societies will say to their members, you can eat oysters because they're not animals because they don't have a a nervous system. And I the reason for that is because zinc and b twelve are are animal source.

And if you don't have them, you can get a lot of complications. So kind of kids who wanna go vegan and they just stop eating meat and they don't replace it with other stuff. If they're not careful, it can end up at b 12 and zinc deficiency, and they're they're very serious. Yeah. The highest vegetal source of zinc is pumpkin seed, but you need to eat a lot of pumpkin seeds to get the same zinc that you have in one oyster. Right. Right. It

might be too many pumpkin seeds. So tell me, is it better to eat them raw or cooked? Does it make a difference in terms of the nutrients? That's debatable. But, raw in Europe, we have a tradition of eating oysters raw or alive. They have to be eaten live unless you cook them, of course. Because if an oyster is dead in the shell and you eat it, it can make you very sick because of bacteria in there. So they have to when you open them, they should be alive. They should be

full of water, and they should be alive and eat them. And that's kind of there's possibly a little bit of snobbery around that now because oysters are eaten more so in restaurants in Europe now than at home. Not everybody needs knows how to open them, and that's a big problem. So, well, before I forget, so when you come to the Wise Traditions Conference in Orlando, we have an oyster bar there. If you wanna learn how to open an oyster, come along. Yeah. And we'll show you how to do

that. But not everybody knows how to even eat an oyster. So cooking them is easy. It they'll they'll pop open if you cook them, and then you can take the shell off. And you could like, I barbed these big ones. I can't eat these raw. They're too big. They're like chicken breast. Yeah. They're a bit big for me. Some some people like them that big, but, these are gorgeous. You you if you grill these or barbecue them with parmes little bit of parmesan

cheese, some cream, black pepper. Oh, they're absolutely divine, you know. So no. Absolutely. And you're still gonna get all the the nutrients, the minerals there for sure eat it that way. So I I wouldn't have any problem with even cooking an oyster for sure. They're delicious in chowders Yes. In paella, in risottos. And that's in America, you you have an industry there of shook oyster meat. That's where all the oysters

went was the shucking industry. So people shook them and they put they canned the meat and sold it, and people cooked it in recipes. You you you did it more so in Europe. It it it was always live. They ate them live, and not everybody can open them. So you tend to see them more in restaurants, and it's more of a treat or it shouldn't be. Oh, it should be more of it every day. Alright. So just a couple more questions as we prepare to wrap

up. One is I wanna hear a story possibly of someone taking your Oystermax supplements or just who's benefited from oysters. What what difference did you notice in someone's life?

Well, so we make oyster extract, which is a dried oyster powder from the oyster, but it's the same thing. It's literally the meat of the oyster. So using the oyster therapeutically, we've had instances of people with chronic zinc deficiency who couldn't get zinc into their body because, and doctors tried everything, injections, tablets, and their body just wouldn't hold on to the zinc.

Sometimes that's secondary to things like Crohn's disease or that, and they found that taking get they could get the zinc in through oyster or through oyster extract. And why? Well, that's a that's a job. It's a research job, but possibly because of the cofactors like zinc and manganese, they're all together and and are in a peptide, whereas their bodies could absorb the peptide with the zinc in it, but not the elemental zinc from the synthetic supplements. And they

cure themselves, which is which is great. They're great stories to hear back. You know? We have a lot of our affiliates, people who use it, who work in certain niches, and the ones working in hormonal health and thyroid health. They they say that the zinc, the iodine, and the selenium, again, another very important synergy. Just take an iodine on its own is not a good idea. It needs it has a very important synergy with selenium to make it more bioavailable in

the body. So, again, with the oyster, you have the iodine with the selenium in nature's ratio. So a lot of issues around thyroid health, seem to be ameliorated using oyster. A lot of fertility issues. We've had cases of people saying they failed at IVF, getting pregnant, taking up under dose of dose of oysters. A lot of skin conditions used a lot by a lot of therapists and integrative doctors for skin conditions and,

everything. Like I said, one of the highest concentrations is at the back of the eye in the retina because you get a lot of oxidative damage there from UV light coming into your eye. Yes. So the body has to neutralize those free radicals, and it make needs to make superoxide dismutase and glutathione catalyze those master antioxidants which need zinc, copper, or manganese. So the very high concentration of those master antioxidants at

the back of the eye protect it from the free radical damage. So the retina actually has one of the highest concentrations of zinc in the body. So, again, very important for eyesight. And if you see synthetic supplements for eyesight on the market, they all have zinc in them. It's synthetic zinc. They usually put zinc with, meso, zeaxanthin, and lutein are 3 of the elements they they they sell for eyesight. But get your meso, zeaxanthin from your leafy greens, your zinc from

your oysters. Can't remember the source of lutein from naturally from the diet, but I have no doubt somebody out there does. Yes. Let food be your medicine. It kinda comes back to that. Yeah. Absolutely. What do you say to the person, Steven, who's like, Steven, you've gone off the deep end. Literally, you're too into oysters. They're not that great. I mean, what what do you say to people who are a little skeptical or

who say, oh, they're squeamish. I don't like the taste of oysters. I don't like the texture. Surf and turf. A little oyster, a little beef, a little lamb, get your organ meats, get the Wise Traditions shopping guide Yeah. Which I live in Ireland, and I get the Wise Traditions shopping guide, and I cry when I look it up because we can't have the meat shipped here. Yeah. Yeah. And, likewise,

we can't send our oysters to America. Right. Because the powers that be no better than 2, 300,000,000 years of evolution. And, unfortunately, someday, we've been working on that to be able to export, live shellfish to the US. So you guys we ever get across that hurdle, you guys will be in for a treat. And if I can ever get some of those fantastic meat products from the Wise Traditions Producers, I'll be delight diluted diluted. Del delighted. You'll be dead, Eddie. I'll be diluted too a bit.

But we have good we have good beef and lamb in Ireland, so I'm not sure. But you have some great producers of, pasture raised chicken. I don't see that here in Ireland yet Right. And pork as well. I I can get good organic pork, organic free range pork here. Chicken's a trickier one. Yeah. And then we do have raw milk and great cheese producers here. Europe has a huge tradition of cheese making, of course. You know? So cheese is a good

cheese is a good one. That little cheese shop we were in in Dublin, they said one of the producers or the cheese makers literally only had 4 cows. Like, that's the kind of artisan raw cheese that's being produced in some of these Wasn't that amazing? Country. So we're in we're in the best cheese mongers in the country in the center of Dublin, and one of the cheese is made by a a the producer has 4 cows. And he's able to make the sell the cheese mainly in the local farmer's market, but that

cheese shop had some of it too, and it's called. I had to buy a piece of it. It's absolutely delicious. It's a raw cow's milk cheddar. Absolutely. Very powerful flavor. Often, we're we're my sister. I'm looking forward to that tonight. Yeah. I'm sorry. I can't stay longer. Speaking of that, we have to wrap up. I wanna ask you the question I often pose at the end of the podcast. If the listener could just do one thing, Steven, just one thing to improve their health, what would you

recommend that they do? Well, eat oysters at least once

a week by far and learn from the oyster. You asked me this before. What did I learn from the oyster? So when an oyster gets a grain of sand into its there's a certain cavity in the body, and if grain of sand goes in there, it irritates the oyster. But the oyster secretes mud or a pearl around it, and then it turns into a beautiful pearl. So in life, the things that irritate us, and when you're a wise traditions person, a lot of things irritate you. We're looking

at it every day. We know where it's going wrong, and we're educating, we're teaching, we're educating all the time to try and reverse that. But when things irritate you to try and turn them into a thing of beauty, and by educating people about how to eat properly, that's a thing of beauty, and that's what the oyster can teach us. And anyone out there, get your hands on some oysters whatever way you can. Get the nutrition of oysters into your

diet with everything else Wonderful. That you should be doing. Wonderful. I've been so inspired and literally filled up by the oysters and all the good food that you've presented to me here at Ireland, including the good company, which is also a wise tradition. Thank you for your time, Steven. And thank you for coming to Ireland. And, anybody comes to Ireland, look us up. We'll talk to you. We'll show you around. We'll do whatever we can to help

you and show you a good time here. Thank you, Steven. Our guest today was Steven Kavanaugh. Visit his website, marinehealthfoods.com, for more. And I am Hilda Librado Gohr, the host and producer of the Weston A. Price Foundation's Wise Traditions podcast. You can find me at holistichelda.com. And for the transcript for this episode, visit our website, westonaprice.org, and click on the podcast page. And just a quick reminder to follow the Wise Traditions

podcast on the platform of your choice. Wherever you listen to podcasts is where you can find us or download the Wise Traditions podcast app from the iTunes application store. Listen whenever you can and share your favorite episodes with friends. And thank you so much for listening, my friend. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the

sun. On behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation, thanks for listening. We have many free resources to support you on your health journey. Visit westonaprice.org to find podcasts, articles, videos, and more. You can also find a local chapter near you for help in finding sources of great food. We invite you to support the foundation's mission of education, research, and activism by becoming a member. Thanks again and take

care. Wise Traditions is a project of the Weston a Price Foundation for wise traditions in food, farming, and the healing arts. The content on this podcast is provided for informational

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