Regenerative Meat Could Save Your Health (and the Planet) with Autumn Smith

Mark Hyman, MD

Full Transcript

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Dr. Mark Hyman
What you put at the end of your fork is more powerful than what you'll find in a prescription bottle.

Autumn Smith
But I remember feeling like I was trapped in this body working against me and that I had no control over. I just had bloating so badly that I looked pregnant. I would wake up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain. It almost felt like a knife, like twisting on my inside. It wasn't until I changed my diet that things really started to stabilize.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Autumn Smith, Masters in Science, PhD and FDNP, was a Master and Doctor of Science in Health and Holistic Nutrition. She's a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, a certified eating psychology coach, and former celebrity fitness trainer. She co founded Paleo Valley and Wild Pastures with her husband to help people thrive through nutrient dense whole foods and regenerative pasture raised meats. Let's just start with what the problems are with our food system.

Autumn Smith
The nutrients that used to be in our food are no longer in our food because, you know, our food supply is more depleted in nutrients than it's ever been.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Why is that?

Autumn Smith
Largely due to our industrial agricultural practices. We're filling our bellies, but we're starving at a micronutrient level and our cells just don't have what they need to produce energy. We really do wanna take factory farming and make it a thing of the past.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So Autumn, it's so great to have you on the Doctor Hyman Show. I really have been so excited about this opportunity to talk to you about some really important things, which is the quality of our food, why we're sick, and how many people are suffering out there that don't need to suffer. And the answer is sort of literally at the end of your fork. I've always said, what you put at the end of your fork is more powerful than what you'll find in a prescription bottle. And obviously food is medicine and the whole framework of everything that I do.

And you embody that so well, just in your, you know, personal life, but in the companies you've created, Paleo Valley and Wild Pastures, you know, which is basically about getting regenerative meat to people of America. You know, I really think you're you know, I wanna start off by by kind of inviting you to share how much you were suffering when you were younger. Because I think one of my life goals and when I say what people say, what doctor what's your purpose and mission? My my mission in life is to end needless suffering through the power of functional medicine and also through the power of community to help change behavior, through the science of functional medicine and the science of how we change. And, you know, people walk around just feeling like crap all the time, and they think it's normal.

So, I just want to invite you to share a little bit about your initial struggles with irritable bowel, how that affected you, how you felt, and and then what you did to, overcome it.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. Well, first, let me say it's an honor because you were one of those people who provided that hope for me early on in my journey. But I remember feeling like I was trapped in this body working against me and that I had no control over.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Autumn Smith
So I just had bloating so badly that I looked pregnant. I would wake up in middle of the night with excruciating pain. It almost felt like a knife, like, twisting on my insides.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I call it a food baby.

Autumn Smith
A food baby. Exactly. But like a violent food baby.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Kicking a lot.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. It was really bad.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Triplets in there all kicking at the same time.

Autumn Smith
It unpredictable. And I, on the outside, looked fit. I was always a dancer. And but I was just not well. And so that started about ten, and then no doctor really knew what to do with me.

They put me in the irritable bowel syndrome category, which we kinda know means we don't really know. We ruled out more serious pathology, and we just you should take Beno and Gas X, which I did to no avail.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Beno, Gas X, and Metamucil.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. Don't be stressed.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's like and it's all in your head. And then just basically

Autumn Smith
Stress based condition. Yeah. So I was like, well, okay. And then as I got into my teens, my mental health started to suffer because we didn't understand at the time that there's a gut brain link. And I do think that directly contributed that unaddressed inflammation.

Oh, yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
There there's actually just to interrupt you for a sec. There there is actually a paper in, like, the Journal of the American Medical Association that talks about how the the belief that doctors have that irritable bowel is caused by anxiety in people's mental state is actually backwards. That the the inflammation in the gut creates inflammation in the brain. An irritable gut causes an irritable brain. It's not the other way around.

And, I mean, it obviously works both ways, but, like, the the real primary challenge is this bottom up, the gut to the brain connection, and that's, you what you're experiencing.

Autumn Smith
Exactly what I was experiencing. And because I had that anxiety and depression as a as a teen and really just kinda flew off the rails. And it wasn't until I changed my diet that things really started to stabilize because I think I was just on a roller coaster.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Autumn Smith
Right? Inflamed, blood sugar up and down. And my husband it wasn't until I met him that he said, wow. You're really suffering, and you live like this? Like, this is your normal.

And he wanted better for me. We lived in LA at the time. He got on the Internet, saw that a few people in 2007 were using food as medicine and talking about it, and I thought that crazy that food would have anything to do with my digestive issues.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That? Who Who that?

Autumn Smith
It was you. It was you and I think Rob Wolf or, you know,

Dr. Mark Hyman
I had, like, I had, like, a video podcast blog, essentially, in 02/2005. It was crazy.

Autumn Smith
Oh, yeah. I've read all your books. Like I said, like, you've been a real mentor from afar for me. So but, yeah, even just thirty days of dietary change, my digestive issues went away, but it was a few other pieces I had to dial in to where my it was like the fog lift.

Dr. Mark Hyman
What Yeah. Did what did you do? What did you do do diet wise, and what did you do?

Autumn Smith
Yeah. So I started first, we just crowded out processed foods. Right? Anything that was processed and not a whole food, I started going to Pasadena's farmers Market, fruits, vegetables, and really high quality animal products. I And was someone who kind of avoided animal products in my youth, and I think that contributed.

And then the next pieces were really focusing on the gut health. Yeah. So the bone broths and the fermented foods.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Autumn Smith
And then stabilizing my blood sugar. I am someone who benefits from a low carbohydrate diet without a doubt. And so that was kind of the last piece. And I I started to feel a calm, like a sense of stability Yeah. That I just didn't know I was always a restless, agitated spirit Yeah.

Couldn't find her center. Yeah. And then it was just like, woah. What's that?

Dr. Mark Hyman
This is so important. I wanna double click on this because what you're saying is is something I want everybody to really take in. Depression, anxiety, bipolar disease, maybe even schizophrenia, in some cases, other mental issues that people suffer from. And it is it is the number one cause of disability in America. You know?

Yes. Obesity, heart disease, diabetes kills a lot of people. But in terms of disability, what we call quality of, adjusted life years, means say how many qualities, how many happy years you have, It's the single biggest cause of disability, and most people don't realize it's connected to what they eat or how they live or some other factors that's modifiable, and it's not them. People say, oh, I am depressed. Like like, I'm John, or I'm Sally.

And they're like Right. It's like, no. There's something awry in your system, and it's fixable. Sometimes it's a big diet change. That's the whole journey here is people don't have to suffer.

That they that you, you know, you you figured it out yourself, but you did it, you know, in a way that, you know, it's hard. Your doctor wasn't giving you the answers. You had to go on your own research, but you've but you did it. And now, like, look at you. You're glowing.

You're happy. You're you know, you never know you were depressed and anxious and miserable. I

Autumn Smith
know. I'm generally a happy person, and I I am, like you said, so inspired by the metabolic psychiatry movement and all the you know, the trials in ADHD and even anorexia, binge eating, schizophrenia, bipolar. My aunt was bipolar. I just wish that, you know, we had known. She's she's passed.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But yeah. It's quite powerful. We're in this moment of nutritional metabolic psychiatry. I've had a lot of people on the podcast throughout this. I've had Savani Sethi.

I've had Yeah. You know, Doctor. Umanaidoo. I've had I've had a lot of people like James Greenblatt, psychiatrist. Gonna have another psychiatrist on Robert Hideo.

So we're we're gonna start more and more talking about this whole idea of how do we how do we help our our brains and our minds, whether it's Alzheimer's and Parkinson's or anxiety depression or OCD and ADD. Like, whatever it is, like, there's another way to think about this than heavily medicating yourself into oblivion.

Autumn Smith
Has because I was a teen on antidepressants. Yeah. That did not go well for me. It was really hard. And also for my final project for my Mark David, class that I did.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Institute for the psychology of nutrition.

Autumn Smith
That's right. Yeah. I focused on the ketogenic diet for eating disorders, which you'd think, oh, it's a restrictive Yeah. But it was so helpful for me. And now they're doing research to suggest it might be helpful for others.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's it's quite powerful. So and when you meant no low carbohydrate, just to be clear for people, I think you mean no refined sugars and flours, but you eat vegetables.

Autumn Smith
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But vegetables are carbohydrates. My joke is carbohydrates are the single most important food for your health. Oh. And because they have, like, you know, phytochemicals and nutrients. And so if you're eating spinach or, you know, broccoli, that's a carbohydrate.

Autumn Smith
Yes. I'm not like keto, and I'm not carnivore. Most of my diet is plants, actually. 50% of my plate. Absolutely.

The low carb starchy variety.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Exactly. Yeah. So so just to be clear, you don't Low carbohydrate isn't isn't necessarily technically low carbohydrate. It's just low sugar and starch. So we established that, you know, one, people are suffering out there, including you and including me back back back in the day, that, you know, we discovered that food is medicine.

And and most people listening to this podcast probably aware also that that, you know, ultra processed food is not the best thing for you. And thank God now, you know, I'm working with the FDA to kind of help put in a petition to define what is ultra processed food. They're they're actually asking for the desire to make an initial assessment of what is ultra processed foods that can be regulated. There's a whole Great. Yeah.

So there's a whole NIH FDA collaboration on regulatory science, which means how do we figure out how to regulate food in the right way. And so we're really kind of moving in this direction, but most people don't realize that 60% of their diet is ultra processed food. It's almost 70% of kids' diet. It's 73% what's on the grocery store shelves. It's, you know, mostly funded by our government through, you know, crop subsidies and SNAP, which is a $100,000,000,000 of payment, 75% of which is for this junk food.

So all this is true. So Americans are really at the effect of this horrible food system, which is, you know, tempting to be addressed now through this through this administration for the first time in history, which, you know, whether they get it right or not, I don't know. But, like, it's at least it's at least it's a conversation, and that's incredible to me. Especially, like, the last dietary guidelines committee did not make a determination of ultra processed food, which just blew my mind. And there's a lot of technical reasons why they didn't do it, but still, it's like, give me a break.

Autumn Smith
Right? Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So, you know, just for a little bit, tell us about your perception of the problems with our food system. And then let's talk about, you know, the the like, the idea. How do we how do we actually think about food in a in a way that understands that it's medicine? And I wanna get not just into the, like, metaphorical aspect of, oh, yeah. Food is medicine.

It can heal. Like Hippocrates said, but actually the granular science that you've been involved with with one of my previous podcast guests, Stevan Steven Van how do say his name again?

Autumn Smith
Stevan Van Vliet.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Stevan Van Vliet. I say Valette, but Stevan Van Vliet, who's at the Utah State University, where my daughter actually did her her premed school, actually. I I was in Logan in time. And and he's doing a lot of research looking at the the actual metabolomics and nutrient density in a in a very sophisticated scientific way of what is the difference between, like, regenerative or grass fed organic. But let's just start with what the problem's in with our current food system and why it's killing us.

Yeah.

Autumn Smith
Well, I think my problems were twofold. Right? You were we were eating mostly processed foods, I was, that were creating inflammation.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Autumn Smith
So like you said, majority of American diets are ultra processed. But then also, we have this situation where the nutrients that used to be in our food are no longer in our food because, you know, it's more we're our food supply is more depleted in nutrients than it's ever been.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Why is that?

Autumn Smith
Why is that? Largely due to our industrial agricultural practices Yeah. That are destroying that life in the soil that acts as a taxi from the rocks where the minerals originate Yeah. Into the plants. Yeah.

And then we eat the plants or the animals. And if they're not able to get into the plants, then we never get to benefit from them. Magnesium that helps us ease tension and the iron that gives us energy and the calcium that helps our bones be strong and make sure that we don't have cravings. Like, we are not able to access those. Studies have shown, you know, five to 40% decline.

And I read one the other day that there was, like, an apple in 1912. When you compare it to 1992, there was 50% less calcium and 80% less magnesium and 90% less iron. And if you

Dr. Mark Hyman
In the today's apple.

Autumn Smith
In 1992. Now if you take that at the same rate of decline, it would be 61% less calcium and almost no iron or magnesium at all.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So it looks like an apple, but it's not really an apple.

Autumn Smith
Exactly. We're filling our bellies, but we're starving at a micronutrient level, and our cells just don't have what they need Yeah. To produce energy. So and this, again, comes back to the way we've been doing agriculture, and we just have to kind of get into a place where we realize the health of the soil is the very basis of our health, and we cannot thrive until we rehabilitate the soil Yeah. And the plants and the animals.

You know what I mean?

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's It's basically what the plants are eating, which is in the soil, and what the animals are eating, which are the plants. And so if that's all depleted, you're getting a whole depleted food supply. And I think what you said, I just wanna double click on because it's so it's so important for people to understand. There's a difference between soil and dirt. Soil is that rich, loamy, warm, like, nice smelling, like

Autumn Smith
Chocolate cake.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Chocolate. It looks like chocolate cake. Yeah. It's like rich soil. Whereas dirt is just like dust and sand and and crumbly.

And what we've done in America is taken this rich soil, which we had eight to 50 feet of in the Midwest, and just lost a third of the topsoil through our agricultural practices, through the tillage, through the use of chemicals, which are like basically, they're like poisons. I mean, pesticides and herbicides are poisons that are meant to kill Yeah. Living things. So Literally. Literally.

Mean, for those who don't know, the history is that pesticides came from biological weapons and nerve gases because they're they're nerve gases. And glyphosate came later, but that's that was, you know, used to clean lead pipes and ended up killing everything downstream in the river. So they're like, oh, this is an herbicide. And and so we've depleted this soil and turned it into dirt. And then like you said, the the microbes in the living soil is a taxi.

I never heard that before, but it's a great it's a great metaphor. It's like, basically, it shuttles the nutrients from the soil into the plant. And the nutrient density of the plant depends on the health of the soil. And the nutrient density of an animal, which we don't even think of, oh, Meat is meat is meat is meat. It's not.

Just like an apple in 1912 is different than apple now. If you have a eat a bison in 18, you know, 12, it's gonna be different than a than a a feedlot cow in 2025. And I just went to a place where they had buffalo. Was amazing, and then they had one bread that was bread with a a cow. They called it a beefalo.

Oh. But the bison didn't like it, so it was banished to another paddock. That made me very sad. But, anyway, I digress. I digress.

Oh, wow. But this is such an important piece. So our whole food supply, just from the from the soil on up to the grocery store shelves, has just been completely decimated. And, you know, there's really not much nutrients in in ultra processed foods. There's calories, and there may be some protein or fat or carc, but it's usually the bad kind.

So so we all kind of, you know, understand that. But what people don't understand is what I want to dive into next. And this is really where using hard science to actually say, oh, I'm not just a hippie wanting to eat organic or regenerative. Like, you know, it's not good for the planet, and that's kumbaya, blah blah blah. There there's actually some extraordinary science.

And Fred Provenza, who I've had on the podcast, and Steven Van Vliet

Autumn Smith
Van Vliet.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Van Vliet also they work together to look at the the impact of different diets on animals and their own nutrient density. So I wanna kinda dive into this. And, you know, Fred Provenza wrote a book called Nourishment, which what we can learn from animals about how to eat. And it just I it's one of the most amazing book I've ever read. First of he's like he's like a guru poet.

Like Oh. He's like he's got this big white beard. He's got this shrubbery smile, and he's just always happy, but he's like a deep philosopher. And he's like this rangeland ecologist who studied the relation between soil and plants and animals and how animals can identify what plants they need if they're left to their own devices in the wild because they're using different plants for different medicinal purposes or different nutrient purposes and for food, you know, calories. Just was fascinating.

And so the work you're doing is taking that work and actually even, you know, putting more hard science behind it. So tell us about the work you're doing with the bionutrient definition standards board and the Bionutrient Institute and the the scientific work you're doing because it's it's really important. And and, like, what's being looked at, I I just I think people need to understand that and I'm gonna we're gonna jump into meat now and and and beef because it's it's one of those really controversial topics. Like, should be everybody should be a vegan to be healthy, which is basically the cultural narrative, which I don't understand. Yeah.

There wasn't even the word vegan until, like, the forties, and and there was no voluntary vegan populations on the planet. Sure. Yeah. The Seventh day Adventists, you know, were one example of of, you know, vegetarians, but it wasn't like a thing. This BioNutrient Institute, it's it's leading this multiyear data driven study about how to look at what's going on in beef and, you know, what farm practices to the soil health impact the profile of meat.

So kinda take us through, like, you know, what what are you guys looking at? You know, how are you doing studies, and how are you comparing the the nutrient density and quality of, like, feedlot meat or even, you know, even grass fed meat to regenerative meat. And kinda walk us through that whole journey and story, how you got started Yeah. You know, what what you guys are doing, what you're learning, and what it means for us.

Autumn Smith
Okay. First, I listened to your podcast with Doctor. Preventza, and I really loved there's that kangaroo study. Do you remember the kangaroo study Mhmm. In 2011 where they ate kangaroo from native pastures or feedlot beef and saw a reduction in inflammation when you had the native pasture fed kangaroo meat as opposed to kapho meat.

And I thought, well, that's interesting.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Kapho meat is a Yeah. Confined animal feeding operation. It's basically a feedlot.

Autumn Smith
Exactly. And I thought, wow. We're all thinking that meat is protein and fat, but this guy seems to know it's so much more than that. Mhmm. And so I contacted Fred, and he's just the loveliest soul, as you know, and he connected me with Van Vli.

And so the project is called the Beef Nutrient Density Project, and it's a collaboration between the Bionutrient Food Institute with Dan Kittredge and Utah State with Van Vliet. Now the Bionutrient Food Institute, I'm sure you've talked about this, but they're they're creating a handheld meter. Do you know about this?

Dr. Mark Hyman
I heard about it.

Autumn Smith
Okay. So his goal his parents basically wrote the organic standards. He's been in agriculture for so long. And as you know, the incentives right now yield, profit, shelf life rather than nutrition. So how do you flip that on its head?

You give consumers the ability to see how many nutrients are in the foods Yeah. That they have right in front of them. Wow. And you change what people are growing eventually.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So you do the scan you scan the barcode, and you see

Autumn Smith
Well, it's like a a fructometer. Like, it Oh. Gives you a wavelength. You know, all the different nutrients have a

Dr. Mark Hyman
different wavelength. I know about this, actually.

Autumn Smith
Yes. Yes. So, anyway, in order to define nutrient density, you have to go cross

Dr. Mark Hyman
by because people have probably missed What you're talking about is like a like a like a Star Trek Yes. Device that you basically you you kinda aim it at the meat or the vegetable, and it kinda reads the light energy within it and basically gives you a reading about the nutrient density. So that's my moment.

Autumn Smith
Isn't that cool? Because he's done a lot of testing, and it's even between varieties. Like, you know, the mineral content can vary by, like, four to 18%. And when it comes to antioxidants, polyphenols, like, a 100 times. You know?

So it's just huge intravariability even within a one product sit So how do we let people decide Mhmm. And get back to that? The core of what we need is those micronutrients. And so then what we did is the beef nutrient density project. They started with beef because it's one of the most commoditized, products out there, but they wanted to categorize that variability.

Because you can have factory farmed meat, obviously, but then there's so many other flavors. There's grass fed, and then there's beyond grass fed. There's regeneratively raised meat. So there are 300 samples from all across North America. That was the cool thing about this pro project is it was so diversified in locations the beef came from, but also they're commercially available.

So it wasn't this, like, very stoic, highly controlled scientific setting. It was the foods and the products that you'd actually have access to.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Eating.

Autumn Smith
That people are actually eating that you'll see out in the marketplace. And so what we found is, I think, like, five major things. First of all, the metabolomics is a big deal because we're often looking at 13 nutrients on a nutrition facts panel and believing that that is what a food's made up of, But it's thousands of bioactive compounds Okay. That change dramatically.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. So let's just stop there. Metabolomics. Most people have never heard of that. What is metabolomics?

Autumn Smith
It's basically metabolites. It's there's tens of thousands of compounds that change, that make up your metabolism, that make up an animal's metabolism, that you can actually capture now with more advanced technologies rather than looking at iron, calcium, or minerals, you know, fatty acids. Right. It goes way beyond that. And you look at,

Dr. Mark Hyman
like, iodine ten or 20 lead tests, you get thousands of these metabolites that are actually bioactive, that regulate your biology, that influence every function in your body Exactly. That are medicinal in many ways or that are harmful if they're bad metabolites. Right?

Autumn Smith
Exactly. And finding that, you know, certain animal products can have as many phytonutrients as plants. You know, in one analysis, lamb liver had as many phytonutrients, phenolics specifically, as an eggplant or a turnip or a squash. And so, basically, meat was a photograph of the land. It's literally the land, the biology, the life of the animal is kind of written into the meat itself.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. Stop there. You just laid another giant bomb there. What you just said was animal food, meat, liver, can have the same medicinal phytochemicals or plant compounds as the plant. Yeah.

I wrote I wrote about this actually in my book, Lung know, probably because in in in Ikaria and Sardinia, they know they they take their goats as they eat this plant at this time of year and eat this plant at this time of year and do and they're not doing it because they wanna get more phytochemicals. They're doing it because they know the flavor changes. And what Fred Provenza says is flavor always follows phytochemical density. So the more phytochemicals, whether it's meat or plants, they taste better. Right?

And and so they know that they they this one guy, Olinto, said he fed me like a nose to tail pig meal. He says, we we flavor the animal before we kill it. They feed it carob. They feed it acorns. They feed it whatever vegetable.

I don't know what they feed it, but it's it was exactly this concept. They didn't know scientifically, but what you're saying is that the plant foods that the animals are eating and the compounds in those plant foods that are beneficial for us get into the meat. And so it really matters what you eat.

Autumn Smith
Absolutely. And these antioxidant, anti inflammatory, you know, anticarcinogenic, antiviral. These compounds have so many different health benefits. And animals can also consume things we wouldn't otherwise consume. Right?

So then they metabolize them, and then they increase the diversity of our diet. One of the main things I hear when people eat this type of meat versus a factory farm is that they finally feel satisfied. And that's another thing doctor Fred Provenza believes is working for that type of meat is that ability to feel satiated. It's kind of gone when you

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, yeah. You know, that's another thing that he that Fred did, which was so amazing, was he basically would give these animals different plants. And as soon as the phytochemical level hit a certain level in their blood, he would measure their blood, they'd stop eating.

Autumn Smith
Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. They'd stop eating. It was like I was like, wow. That's and he did he he did the same thing with there was a reporting on a study that was done in the twenties in Canada with orphans where they basically gave them brain and liver and kidney, whatever, like, these weird things the kids wouldn't eat, right, today at least, and and let these kids naturally choose what they would eat. And they and these kids all chose foods that made them healthier.

They had this natural intelligence. And so basically, this book Nourishment is like what we can learn from animals about how to nourish ourselves by being in touch with their own natural sense. Because when you're craving sugar or you're craving crap or carbs, your your body's dysregulated. But when you get imbalanced like, when I go, like and I'm in an airport and I go to Starbucks and there's all that, you know, pastry stuff, I mean, to me, it looks like a rock. Like, I would never buy it if I was hungry.

Even though I was starving, I'm like, well, maybe I was starving, I would eat it. But but I'm like, you know, like, it doesn't actually even call my name anymore. Yeah. My meat. I'd rather have a Paleo Valley meat stick or you know?

I mean and in fact, that's what I did yesterday. I was, like, I was, like, hungry, and I was working all day, and I missed lunch. And I was like, I need, like, three sticks, and I'm good to go for my afternoon podcast. You know?

Autumn Smith
I do that too.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And so

Autumn Smith
It's gonna make you hungrier, the the rock that is.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And so, it's like you your body can reset, and it's it's like all this GLP one stuff, it's fine, but, like, it's not addressing this fundamental issue. How do how our brains and our metabolism, our biochemistry, and our microbiome, and our hormones, and our immune system has all been hijacked by ultra processed food.

Autumn Smith
By this, you know, cutting down what we're eating to 12 foods. Right? 75% of our diet comes from 12 foods, and that's what we've done with animals too with these total mixed rations. They're fed whatever we give them. They're no longer able to self select.

They're eating more. They're gaining a lot of weight, and it's translating into the meat.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So so take us through then. What are you what are you finding from calfo, feedlot meat Yeah. Versus, like, regular grass fed, maybe grain finished or organic meat, or versus regenda meat, and maybe define the terms because people might not know what they all are.

Autumn Smith
For that, we didn't look at phytonutrients, but I just wanted to highlight that because that was a big piece of their research before. We had five major findings. First is just the lower omega six to three ratio. And so in grain fed, about a eight to one, and in grass fed, about a two to one. And so we know that that's pretty consistent.

Mhmm. So maybe linked to lower levels of information. The second was it is a really good source of omega three fatty acids, grass fed. So you could eat one grain or one grass fed steak or three grain fed steaks and get about the same amount. And I don't know if people understand, but beef in The UK can be considered a good source of omega three fatty acids.

Anything over forty milligrams

Dr. Mark Hyman
eat fish, you're saying?

Autumn Smith
Well, no. I think we should all be eating fish.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But, I mean, you're getting the fish fats from the meat.

Autumn Smith
Exactly. In their long chain form, which is different than the ones that you would get from plants. So we measured EPA and DPA and DHA. A lot of prior research hasn't measured DPA, but that is another omega three fatty acid that's really important. And when we do start to measure, we realize, oh, wow.

The amount in animal products can be significant. And they've done several trials where they actually watch people, and they take them from grain fed meat and put them to grass fed meat, and the levels of omega threes in the blood increase significantly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So now the animals have more of it, but when you eat the meat, you have more of it. So it's not it's not the meat you eat. It's whatever the meat you eat ate.

Autumn Smith
That's exactly right. It's not what your meat ate that matters. Yes. So Yeah. And then the other one was this around the saturated fatty acid profile.

Don't know if you've talked about the diversity in saturated fatty acids.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. But but there's also another fat that's really interesting.

Autumn Smith
Oh, yeah. CLA.

Dr. Mark Hyman
The CLA. So there's another fat that's in grass fed meat or milk that's incredibly important, and maybe you can just chat a little bit. People know about, like, omega threes and EPA, DHA basically, but there's also lower ratios of omega six to three in in these fat these meats, which is not omegas are bad and omega threes are good. They're they're both needed. It's just the volume we have.

When you start seeing twenty to one omega six to threes, you start getting into health issues, and I think that's most of what Americans have. Talk about CLA because CLA is really something that is something most people don't know about. It's not really out there as a supplement usually. Yeah. And so but it's really important for our health.

So talk about what it is and why it's in the grass or regenerative pet meat.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. So conjugate linoleic acid is another one of those fatty acids that we know has cancer protective properties potentially as well as, an ability to help improve body composition Yeah. And reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. K. That's what some of the early research is showing in 1.6 times higher.

Dr. Mark Hyman
To less cancer, less heart disease, and better metabolism and body fat.

Autumn Smith
Seems like a good deal. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's pretty amazing.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. And 1.6 times in the grass fed, versus the grain fed. So, yeah, that's another fatty acid. And then the saturated fatty acids, like I said, changed a lot. So there's a diverse array of saturated fats, and we all lump it into one category where we've been kind of led to believe that it all acts the same.

But we had more stearic acid, which is the cholesterol neutral saturated fatty acid, but then these very long chain saturated fatty acids, which are actually associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease in associative evidence

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Autumn Smith
Like, ericitic acid and bohinic acid. Yeah. Those were increased. And then we have odd chains.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So just so so Sabrina's. I wrote a book called Eat Fat Get Thin, and, basically, there's no such thing as saturated fat. There are many different types of saturated fat. And you just mentioned one, stearic acid, which is the main saturated fat in meat, which you also just slipped in there because I'm slowing you down because people are just gonna you're going so fast.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. You should. I have

Dr. Mark Hyman
a ton of It's basically aceric acid, which doesn't have impact on your blood cholesterol. Okay. So this is like don't eat meat because it's gonna raise your cholesterol. Maybe that's not true. Yeah.

And what kind of meat? Right?

Autumn Smith
Yeah. I love that. And then even maybe with these longer chain, you can actually improve your cholesterol or reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease. And we've all probably heard about c fifteen or pentadecinoic acid Yeah. Thought to potentially be a new longevity nutrient or required nutrient.

Yeah. And those levels also increased. Now the absolute amount isn't large in beef, but it still was higher. Interesting. Yeah.

Pantadecinoic.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I just did a I just did an Instagram Live with Stephanie and Watson, who's, basically the veterinarian who discovered that dolphins, who age a lot well and long time have higher levels of these fats that have longevity protective effects. So

Autumn Smith
That are saturated fats.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. That are saturated fat. Yeah. So saturated fat is not in the boogeyman. Right.

In fact, even Marty, McCary, who's our FDA commissioner, came out and said, hey. We got this all wrong. We we took a left turn in nineteen sixties. And for those listening, it it was it was there was a very dominant strong scientist named Ansel Keyes who pushed this theory, and in the end of his life, he actually retracted it. But because he realized it was wrong, but it was even the sugar industry that paid these new scientists, like the top nutrition scientists at Harvard, with equivalent of, like, $50,000 to write a paper that said, hey, guys.

It's not sugar. It's fat that's the problem in heart disease. And that was the beginning of the end for America.

Autumn Smith
It really was. I we talked about that in the Rethink Meat series. But, yeah, we've gotten really off course. We just and now I think with these new more advanced studies and more nuanced studies, we're starting to see, oh, wow. This is, you know, really nuanced, and we've tried to make it simple, and we've suffered as a result.

The other one that we had was minerals.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Minerals. What did you say?

Autumn Smith
Minerals, we found six times the selenium, three times the amount of calcium, two times the amount of copper, and 1.2 times the amount of iron. Wow. Yeah. So can you imagine? That adds up as we're talking about.

And they've done other research to suggest that it's related to the soil biology.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's not what you eat. It's what you ate ate.

Autumn Smith
Exactly. It's an imprint of that land that it came from. And they're even recently published a paper where ergothionein, it's this compound that's actually made by bacteria and fungi, actually got transferred right into the meat when it was one of

Dr. Mark Hyman
these Tell us about it because that's an important compound. Throwing out, like, big words. I'm just gonna, like, slow you down and help us. I better understand. Because this is important this is important stuff, guys.

The the the the the this is a revolutionary idea that you can actually get a lot of plant medicines when you eat the right meat. It's crazy. And it may explain a lot of the longevity benefits of the amount of of cheese and milk from goats and sheep that was eaten in Sardinian Ikari where I I visited when I wrote my book Young Forever. So I really think that that, you know, this is such an, you know, massive discovery that no one's talking about.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. So ergothianin is this compound. I think we traditionally associate it with mushrooms, but it's produced by bacteria and fungi in the soil. Mhmm. And it can be transferred into plants and even into the animal products.

And so they looked at forage and also the meat, and they found it was about 11 times higher in the forage when you compared it to something like a total mixed ration. So if you're eating a botanically diverse forage, you're gonna already have a higher amount of that ergothionein. But then if it transfers to the meat, it was about 2.8 times higher than in other meat. Again, and this has potentially cytoprotective, anti inflammatory. It's thought to get in and really improve mitochondrial health and improve, the health of our brains.

And so I think more and more research is being discovered about exactly how beneficial this compound is, but it's, again, one of those things we've the dark matter of nutrition that we've largely ignored.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well well, you know, the the the Rockefeller Institute is spending $200,000,000 creating the periodic table of phytochemicals. They they literally are doing, you know, deep research analysis on plants to look at the tens of thousands of molecules in there that biregulate us. And I I I years ago, when I was learning about food as medicine, I I came up with this term symbiotic phyto adaptation, which essentially, I I made up words that I made up.

Autumn Smith
I've heard I've heard you

Dr. Mark Hyman
say that. And in English, it basically means we co evolve with plants because while and I'm just gonna just take a dot turn it on and get back to you in a sec. But, yeah, I joke about, you know, your your thermos keeps your soup, you know, hot in the winter and your lemonade cold in the summer. How does it know what to do? Right?

Yeah. It's like, how did the body evolve so that these phytochemicals interact with certain receptors and genes and to regulate our biology? You know, everybody's heard of, like, red wine, and it's good for whatever, but it's resveratrol, which is the phytochemical in there that interacts with our mitochondria and cert cert one receptors, which regulate longevity, the that I wrote about in my book, young forever. So, like it's like, well, how does it I mean, yeah. Okay.

A vitamin, but these I I I don't think of these as as kind of like, you know, you're not gonna get an acute deficiency disease like scurvy. But these are essential nutrients for for life if you're going to live a healthy, good life.

Autumn Smith
Absolutely. And that's what we've called them secondary compounds, as Fred Provenza will tell you, but they have very primary roles in the body Yeah. Potentially improving satiety, our ability to defend our DNA, you know, antioxidant protection, potentially how we age, I think, is probably the quality of our lives, our vitality.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And there are a lot plants that regulate GLP one. Right? So or or your insulin or your, you know, inflammation level or your hormones or your brain chemistry. All of these things are modified by these phytochemicals.

Autumn Smith
And if you read the papers that they write, you'll see dozens of benefits. Cytoprotective, cancer protective, cardiovascular

Dr. Mark Hyman
So you mentioned ergothionein. What other things were were you finding you're doing this metabolic analysis? You're not looking at, like, you know, 20 nutrients. You're looking at thousands of compounds. So what what was the difference between, like, a felot, you know, cow, a grass fed cow that's just eating maybe one or two crops on grass fed fields versus a full regenerative cow?

And explain, like, as you do this, what what the difference of what they're eating is.

Autumn Smith
So the difference in what they're eating, it just it was all across the board. That was my role in the project. I got to speak with the ranchers and the farmers and talk to them. What are you exactly what are the species in the pasture? How diverse is the pasture?

How long are they feeding? So we had people who did feedlot samples. Right? So they're getting a total mixed ration, you know, protein, corn, soy, you know, some added vitamins. And then you have the grass fed and finished and regenerative systems where you could have up to 30 different species or you know?

And what we found in our research is these were two really cool findings for ranchers and producers is that up to 10, the more species in the pasture, the higher level of ALA, the plant based Mega. Alkalinoleic acid. Yep. And then also the longer the grazing period at the end of their lives that they got directly implanted, you'd have more ALA and a lower omega six to three ratio, suggesting we want these botanically diverse pastures, and we want them to be grazing, you know, their entire lives or as long as possible.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You want a you want a complex diet.

Autumn Smith
Exactly. Just like humans. We're built for this diversity, and we've kind of reduced everything that we're consuming. And I think

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I think that broccoli is good for you, but if all you eat is broccoli, you would die.

Autumn Smith
Exactly. Right? Yeah. And that's what we're forcing our animals to do, and in turn, we are eating the same things over and over. And and so and that was another one of the major takeaways is that grass fed is not grass fed is not grass fed, grain fed, and it's just not captured by our current labeling system.

So And we just need to do

Dr. Mark Hyman
better than Like, I'm, you know, going to Whole Foods or whatever, and I gotta find grass fed, or is it grass finished or grass fed, or is it regenerative? Like, is it is it what like, what how do I determine what's what? Or is we

Autumn Smith
can't? It's really tricky. I think we wait for the Star Trek. Just kidding. But, also, I think we try to find producers or companies who we can trust who are prioritizing the way animals are fed.

Because, you know, 02/2016, grass fed doesn't always mean grass finished because you can have grain at the end of their lives. They've done even

Dr. Mark Hyman
Most animals spend most of their life on grass. And at the end, they throw them in a feedlot, they pump them full of corn and soy, and they fatten them up Antibiotics. Give them hormones and antibiotics. And then

Autumn Smith
And that can still be technically grass fed today. Right? Because no one's going in and really regulating it. And there was a paper in Bronchema 02/2019, I believe, and they looked at the commercially available grass fed beef. And the omega six to three ratio, which is very indicative of what the animal's consuming

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Autumn Smith
Went from 28 to one, which

Dr. Mark Hyman
is terrible.

Autumn Smith
Definitely getting grain there, but it was still grass fed, technically, all the way down to two to one, which is more in alignment with what we've seen in our studies, about a two to one versus an

Dr. Mark Hyman
eight one. Think about it, when you look at the the data on the on long lived societies, when we talked about the Blue Zones today and Dan Meter's great friend, but but and he's, you know, highlighted a lot of what they do. But back a 100 a hundred and twenty five years ago at the turn of the 19 the twentieth century in 1,900, the the Plains Indians, like the Lakota and the the the Sioux, like, they they they had the longest lived population. They were tons of centenarians in that community, and pretty much all they ate was bison, buffalo, and some berries and, you know, whatever they could forage. And and so, you know, we were told, you know, meat is bad for you.

Don't eat meat. It's gonna cause this and that cancer and heart disease, and, you know, people still think that's true. And it and it is true, I think, if you're eating crappy meat.

Autumn Smith
Potentially. Yeah. Crappy meat combined with a crappy ultra processed diet.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And for those who wanna know more, read read my book Food What The Heck Should I Eat or The Pagan Diet. I I go really deep into all this stuff. But because I was like, if I I don't know what's true about meat, and I didn't have no clue. And I actually came to Austin, where I'm living now, and I went to this hotel and locked myself in there for a week with about a 100 different of the top scientific papers on meat. And I'm like, I don't care what the headlines say, or what the media says or what doctors say or nutrition say.

I wanna read the actual science myself. So I read through it all. I like, oh, now I get it. You know?

Autumn Smith
It's Right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
The regen of meat has so other things too. Like, it's it's the fats composition is different. It's the omega-three fats. It's the minerals. But I think it's this phytochemical richness that that is kind of the secret sauce.

Because when you're eating wild animals, it's really different. And and we went to Rome Ranch around here. You don't probably know them.

Autumn Smith
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Which is this couple that did epic bars, and they sold it to General Mills, and they got them to do, like, a million acres in regenerative farming. And I have a podcast with them, and I went to visit them not far from here. And it was bison harvest day, so they pick up bison that needs to be called, and they, you know, they go up to it, and they separate it out from the herd, and then they they shoot it right in the head, and the thing's dead before it even hears the bullet. So, you know, the the sound travels very you know, the bullet travels faster than the sound, and so, basically, it it doesn't it doesn't know.

And it was it was and then we butchered it, and and they opened it up, and I was like, oh my god. Like, the fat in it was bright yellow. Like, not white fat. It was, like, bright yellow. And I'm like, wow.

These are the phytochemicals, the carotenoids. Like, your salmon is yellow. Right? Or your carrots are yellow. Yep.

Like, these are the carotenoids and the phytochemicals that are inside the animal that we're eating.

Autumn Smith
It's amazing, isn't it? And what I think is even more interesting is that they're getting into human clinical trials now.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So so what what is tell us about that. So so okay. So great. We we we've established that regular meat is not something we wanna be eating, and and there's a cost issue for sure.

But there's ways to get cheaper meat, and I talk about it in in my book because you can, you know, get a cow share. You can get meat directly from farmers. You have wild pastures, which which is your company that helps people get access and lower costs or force of nature. So a lot of companies out there that are doing this, which is really great. The science is, I think, my perspective, is pretty well established on the nutrient density, the phytochemical richness, the better fatty acid profile, the better mineral profile, the better antioxidant profile.

I mean, you can go down the list for regenerative meat, which is basically regenerative essentially means you're you're you're actually mimicking nature and having the animal go from pasture to pasture, not overgraze, eat a lot of different plants, and have a life that's pretty much like they would if they were a wild animal. So that's kind of a summary of it.

Autumn Smith
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But what is the impact then on humans? And tell us about that research, because that's really interesting.

Autumn Smith
That's my favorite part about it. So there was a trial back in 11/2011, which I mentioned the

Dr. Mark Hyman
top study.

Autumn Smith
The kangaroo versus feedlot beef. And then doctor Van Vliet's now working on, and there's preliminary evidence that he took people from a standard American diet onto a whole foods diet.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yep.

Autumn Smith
Saw a reduction in markers of inflammation, but then also took them from a standard American diet to a diet where they only ate organic produce and more of this regenerative, totally grass fed type of meat Yeah. And also saw a few of the inflammatory markers reduce.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Autumn Smith
So Like what? I think it was I l six and TNF and CRP potent

Dr. Mark Hyman
so these these are what we call cytokines. Everybody heard of the cytokines storm during COVID. So interleukin six, tumor necrosis factor alpha, c reactive protein. These are standard measures of inflammation, and we can test them. And so if they go down, that's significant.

Autumn Smith
That's good. Because every time you eat, we have an inflammatory response. And so if every time we eat, we're having less of that inflammation, our body's gonna be able to resolve it, potentially not leading to a chronic inflammatory response. Potentially. Yeah.

But this is where but he did likes he to be clear that going from the whole foods diet was the biggest lower of inflammation. Yeah. Yeah. But that there was also potentially another beneficial effect. And he's still working on these human trials, and he's doing more than one of them.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So so has there been trials where they've looked at, you know, just swapping out the meat? Like, you know, like, let's say you had a whole food diet, but you eat feedlot meat.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. That's what he's working on.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Whole diet plus regenerative meat.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. That's what the second part of that trial was that, and he did see again a small reduction in inflammatory markers. Smaller than moving from the standard American diet to a whole foods diet, but still potentially

Dr. Mark Hyman
And that compounds. Just real understanding. Like, if you're every day eating a diet that's slowly increasing inflammation, it compounds over time like compounded interest. And the opposite is true. Reading an anti inflammatory diet, over time, the benefits compound, and you get healthier and healthier.

And aging itself is an inflammatory process. And so Yeah. The less you can have inflammation, the better off you are.

Autumn Smith
Exactly. And then there are the other trials I was speaking to about the omega threes and their ability to get in your the ratio specifically. They've had people go from grass fed meat, from grain fed meat to grass fed meat and see a significant reduction in that omega six to three ratio in their blood and in their platelets. And I think that's a really another interesting burgeoning area of research, the omega three index and just having more omega threes. Ninety potentially eighty four thousand Americans die every year due to omega three fatty acid deficiency.

So Wait.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Wait. Say that again.

Autumn Smith
I think Harvard research showed that about eighty four thousand people in America die every year because they're not getting enough omega three fatty acids. And I think

Dr. Mark Hyman
And that's that's about as many more than people die from drug overdose, which is a big crisis. It's a, quote, national emergency. Right? And what about omega three deficiency? Is that a national emergency?

Maybe.

Autumn Smith
I mean, it can't be. And imagine if you had to eat one steak instead of three to get a significant amount of omega threes, even outside of your fish consumption, which we hope everyone can access and eats regularly. But But

Dr. Mark Hyman
this is

Autumn Smith
it's a big big deal.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It is a big deal. I mean, think about that. Eighty three thousand people dying from deficiency disease that we aren't even testing for in traditional medicine, except with Function Health, which is the company I cofounded. And we I'm like I'm the medical chief medical officer, and I'm like, we're testing the nutrients. We're testing vitamin D.

We're testing iron. We're testing, you know, zinc. We're testing selenium. We're testing omega three fatty acids. We're testing all the B vitamins, methylmalonic acid, homocysteine.

We're we're doing a deep dive in your nutritional health. But and we know what we're finding, Autumn?

Autumn Smith
But

Dr. Mark Hyman
almost seventy percent of our members are deficient in one or more of the nutrients we test, and we're using the reference range from the lab. Not what I would as Doctor. Hyman would say would be the optimal rate. So example, vitamin D, reference range in labs is 30, and lower is deficiency.

Autumn Smith
For

Dr. Mark Hyman
me, and when you look at the scientific literature, it's forty five fifty. Right. So, you know, what I'm saying is almost seventy percent of people at an extremely low level, like iron. You know, your ferritin should be 45 or 50, but 16 is the cutoff on the lab. Right?

So I'm just I'm just you know, the reference ranges, in my view, are wrong. And still within those reference ranges, which are, I think, are too generous, we're still seeing almost seventy percent nutrient deficient. And if you're saying, you know, omega threes are killing eighty three thousand people a year, that's big, and all you need to do is eat some regeneratively raised meat or eat some sardines or take your fish oil pill. And it's so easy.

Autumn Smith
It is, but it's something most people don't recognize. And you're getting a skewed population who's far more aware of these deficiencies probably than most normal people. Yeah. So I'd say if you take that out population level, it's almost everybody.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And omega three fats are really rich in wild foods, which is mostly what we eat as hunter gatherer. So we've only been agricultural producers for ten thousand plus years, maybe twelve thousand, depending on who you listen to. We've been humans for two hundred thousand years. So, like, what were we eating? Yeah.

Where did we evolve on? We evolved on wild food, which has got all these phytochemicals, is which all these omega three fats. And and, you know, the Native Americans in the Pacific, Northwest, they actually used this fish as currency, which was so oily and so fatty and so rich in omega three fats that everybody knew how valuable it was. And instead of money, that's what they would use to trade.

Autumn Smith
That makes a lot

Dr. Mark Hyman
of It's crazy.

Autumn Smith
Right? That's insane. And but I've noticed a profound difference.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I am just full of these, like, stupid factoids. I don't know why they pop out of my head, but here we

Autumn Smith
I love them. And it's easy maybe for people to understand that, omega threes originate in greens, right, in plants. And then the grains are really high in those omega sixes. Yeah. And this is in addition to the high levels of vegetable oil consumption, obviously.

But the way our animals are being raised now, I think, is another significant contributor to a rise in that omega six to three ratio. Yeah. Especially when it comes to chicken and pork. Right? Yeah.

Beef is a little bit more moderated because of the process through their rumen. But when it comes to beef and chick or pork and chicken, they can be like a 20 to one ratio, 20 30 to

Dr. Mark Hyman
one ratio. So Mhmm. The belief is chickens are healthy. Pork, the other white meat, which is I think a, you know, a really dangerous marketing campaign that the government and industry paid for, like Got Milk. These are checkoff programs that the government does that are supposed to be in partnership with in with industry to improve the health and the nutrition of the population and do research, but instead they use it for marketing, pork, the other white meat, really.

So can you kinda take us through the pork and chicken story? Because I think this is important, particularly chicken. Because everybody's like, I'm gonna eat chicken breast. That's gonna be super healthy, and maybe it's not. So Maybe not.

Maybe depending on The Us through that.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. Maybe how it's raised. And I've gotten really, as a result of that project, kind of zoned in on this omega six to three ratio. But when you go and you get a conventionally raised chicken, that ratio, 20 to one, twenty times more omega sixes than omega threes, and the pork is even worse. It's you know, can be 30 to one, thirty five to one.

And when you change their diet because like I said, cows have the ability to biohydrogenate, and they kind of control the polyunsaturated fats. It's really nerdy, but they just have a different type of digestive system. But pigs and chickens are monogastrics. They have one stomach, and so they just have higher levels of them as omega sixes get into their meat, like, far higher levels. And so even in our factory farmed beef, the ratio is eight to one, and that is far lower than chicken and pork in conventional settings.

So, truly, you know, sometimes if you're just looking at that omega six to three ratio, beef could be even factory farmed beef could be a better choice if you don't think about the antibiotics and hormones Yeah. Yeah. Than chicken and pork that most people can buy today. So if you're wanting to balance that, I would go for beef and and fish before chicken and pork Yeah. Personally.

And I've had a farmer, a rancher. He's a buddy of mine, and he actually wants to set the world record for the lowest omega six to three ratio in pork, but he got it down to a five to one. And the way that he did that was he put his pigs out on pasture Oh. And just didn't supplement them with grains. And it was a specific breed of pig, and so there are lots of factors and variables that go into this.

But you can reduce that significantly, and it's also something my team and I are working on. I think chicken as the meat that we consume most often, you know, probably around 60 pounds per person per year for beef, but about a 100 for chicken because we've been taught that it's

Dr. Mark Hyman
the healthiest. Better. Right? Actually, meat consumption has gone down over the last fifty years. Yeah.

Poultry consumption has gone up. Exactly. And we're getting sicker and fatter.

Autumn Smith
Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So what? So so the chicken thing is interesting. You know Joseph Hiblin?

Autumn Smith
Yes. Yeah. Mental health guy.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So he's the guy who said, gee. In in population studies, which don't prove cause and effect, the places and countries where there was higher much higher omega six intake and lower omega three intake had more suicide, homicide, mental health issues, and so forth, which was kind of an amazing study. But but he he and I met in Washington. He worked for the NIH, and I was just very impressed with his research. So I reached out to him, and we hung out.

And he was talking about chickens. I was like, yeah. These chickens really have lots of these omega six fats, and we're act and and when you look at heart disease, you know, the way that it's not cholesterol itself that causes heart attacks. It's rancid cholesterol. It's and and and, you know, when you know it's much easier for a oil like soybean oil or corn oil to go rancid than it is, for example, butter or lard or ghee, for example, which has got all the milk solids out.

You can leave it out out of the fridge on your shelf for months, and it's fine to eat. Whereas if we did that with another oil, it would become dangerous. It would be rancid. And what he said was that the the oxidized LDL is carrying these oxidized omega six fats, and that's what's causing a lot of the heart disease. And we know this isn't true.

It's not something that's like, you know, I'm making up. This is our cardiologists really most understand this. So that's true. When you're eating this, you know, increase the ratio of omega six to threes, you're you're and and you're eating a lot of chicken, you may actually be worsening your risk of heart attack. And and he was talking about how do we create a line of chickens where that that's not the case.

So can you talk about your efforts on the chickens? Because

Autumn Smith
That's exactly right. Yeah. Because they get into our cell membranes, and they make different compounds and different signaling molecules. But yeah. So my husband and I have become obsessed with, you know, not only optimizing for the environment and sustainability of the animal products that we provide, but also for that nutrient density and that balanced ratio.

And so we're working on a feed that will reduce that. We've had it attesting to four to one so far, but we are perfectionists, and so we wanna even get it below

Dr. Mark Hyman
four one. Most, like, regular chicken you buy in the grocery store?

Autumn Smith
What are they consuming?

Dr. Mark Hyman
The ratio?

Autumn Smith
Oh, 20 to one, twenty five to It's really high. Yeah. It can be lower. I mean, again, this is

Dr. Mark Hyman
And just what humans should be generally eating is, like, two to four to one is is okay.

Autumn Smith
Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Maybe it's six to one. But yeah.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. And can you imagine eating all of your meat with that ratio? And then what could happen if you potentially lowered that ratio?

Dr. Mark Hyman
So chicken breast, chicken breast, chicken breast, chicken breast, and you're like, don't even know what you're doing. Exactly. But so so you you're getting it down to four to one?

Autumn Smith
Four to one so far, but we're keep going. And, actually, like I said, after this, we're going out to our poultry farm, and we're gonna work with our farmer and rancher on this particular package.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Tell us what you're feeding them? Oh. Or is it a is it a is it a secret? It is

Autumn Smith
kind of a secret just like forage, which might I think my husband would kill me if it wasn't because it's not quite finished yet. But when it is, we will share it with everyone. We don't want this to be like a trade secret or anything like that. But we're just increasing, you know, the forage, and then we're fermenting different types of grain and really looking at the different ratios in each different type of grain. And so we're just it's a very specific process because, you know, corn, soy, wheat, they all have this different omega 63 profile that then gets transferred into the meat.

If you have pasture Corn is like the worst.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Different because they're eating like no. I I was in my friend's house in Martha's Vineyard. They had a regenerative farm, and they had these chicken houses, and they had these they had these cows and sheep and chickens all living together. They moved them around, and every time the chick they they would, you know, move the cows, and they would move the chickens into where the cows were. And then the chickens would go out and eat all the maggots and worms and, I don't know, whatever bugs that are in the in the manure, and and and eat all whatever is in the grass.

And the the they're the quality of of the taste of those and the meat is quite different. And and everybody knows this. Like, if you've seen an egg from a, like, pasture raised chicken, it's like bright orange. If you get a commercially raised egg, it's like this pale yellow yolk, and if you touch it, it just breaks, whereas the pasture raised egg yolk is hard to break. Yeah.

Yeah.

Autumn Smith
I first noticed that when I was in Uruguay. Yeah. And I was like, woah. What are these eggs? This is not American eggs.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I I went I went to I went to New Zealand, and I've eaten a lot of pasture's eggs here. I went to New Zealand, and the and this they they served us eggs. And I looked at the egg, and I'm like, this is like a like this is like a giant bright sunset gold like orange. I'm like

Autumn Smith
It's like beautiful.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Like, this I took a picture of it, and I was like, this is a beautiful egg.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. It's so true, though. Yeah. They do a lot of that pasture based in Uruguay. And so that's the carotenoids, you know, creating that robust, beautiful color that is transferred again right into the meat and the animal products.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So you're you're you're kinda redoing chickens.

Autumn Smith
Redoing chickens.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Tell us about, like, wild pastures because you you founded that, you know, to to try to address this issue because access is a problem. You know? And and we're talking about all this, and they're like, yeah. But, like, I I go to Safeway, or I go to, like, you know, IGA, or I go to Publix, or I go to wherever wherever you live, whatever the grocery store is, H E B in Texas. How do I know what I'm getting?

And and and I I don't know if I can afford, you know, a $70 rib eye steak. You know? It's regeneratively raised. Right? So what what do I do?

Autumn Smith
Yeah. So, basically, we we did wild pastures when we started to realize, okay. The nutrient content of our supply is dipping. Soil is kind of restoring soil is probably one of the most important public health interventions of our time.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Autumn Smith
And so we wanted more people to be able to opt in to supporting that rehabilitation of the soil and to put a dent in factory farming. So that's our big thing. But food sovereignty is really another piece. It's creating these bioregions where people in their own communities are producing the foods that they're consuming. And so we only source from American regenerative farmers and ranchers because there is heavy amounts, and you've written about this, of consolidation in the beef market specifically, and we have a lot of

Dr. Mark Hyman
CEOs companies that basically run all the beef in the world.

Autumn Smith
Four and runs 85% of the beef processing. Right. JBS, Cargill, National Beef Yep. Tyson.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Autumn Smith
And few of them are foreign owned. So that's a scary thing when they're coming from Brazil or even China has its hands in our meat supply chain.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Smithfield, which was bought by China, is basically a pork production. They're just producing pork in the worst way for their market. It's it's really quite bad. They're destroying and and they're you know, I'm I'm just gonna go on a rant here, but like I wrote about it in my book Food Fix, the amount of harm Forget forget the eating of the food that's not good for you. The amount of harm of these factory farmed operations of chickens or pigs or pork or or or pigs and pork are the same, or cows is creating such environmental damage.

You know, the runoff of the manure, the pesticides, the herbicides, the the effluent from all the the waste is creating toxic air. And if you live near there, your health is dramatically impacted because you're getting asthma and all these horrible illnesses, and their their their life expectancy is going down. Property values are down. I mean, it's it's really having a terrible impact.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. And antibiotic resistant bacteria kills seven hundred thousand people worldwide. Like you said, and these costs are all externalized.

Dr. Mark Hyman
My book.

Autumn Smith
I did. And, yeah, and you don't pay for these at checkout, but I like to think when you buy this cheap food, it's like a down payment because you're paying an environmental cost. You're paying in maybe a lower quality of life. You're paying for the cost of disease later. And so and, also, people in far off countries, they're not going to treat your community the way that you would.

Right? They're just not invested. They're not connected. And so how do we get Americans connected back to the American food supply? So that is another major tenet.

And then also keeping the cost as low as pot humanly possible because everyone deserves access to quality food. There is too much inequality

Dr. Mark Hyman
in the

Autumn Smith
country. Wild pastures. What we do is

Dr. Mark Hyman
You go to wildpastures.com?

Autumn Smith
You go to wildpastures.com, and we also do, like, whole animal utilization. So we Paleo Valley and wild pastures use the organs. Right? We use the bones for our bone broth. We use the tallow, and so it's that whole animal utilization that allows us to keep the costs really low.

We're constantly tinkering. In our seven years of business, we've only raised our prices once. And if you know anything about the meat market right now, the beef prices are out of control. And so it is always our last. We would never wanna pass the cost back on to the consumer because we really do wanna take factory farming and make it a thing of the past.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You're basically, like, doing direct from farm or ranch to the consumer. You're cutting out the middleman. You're cutting out the grocery store. You're cutting out the distributor. You're able to lower the costs and make it accessible.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. And right now

Dr. Mark Hyman
When it comes frozen.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. It comes frozen. It's convenient, and it's affordable. And so and it also gives the farmer and rancher a better wage. Right?

Mhmm. A better quality of life because our poor farmers and ranchers are trapped in this system. I grew up in Montana. I know it. It's a hard life.

And so, yeah, we just really wanna restore the nutrient density of our food supply. I do believe well raised meat is one of the most valuable tools we have for restoring this micronutrient sufficiency. Obviously, you know, lowering our risk to antibiotics, hormones, and all of the chemicals and environmental pollution, but also just making sure that anyone who wants to opt in can opt in easily.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So just you touched on something again. I want you just you're full of just all these great little things you whiz over that are I just wanna I wanna kinda dive into again. You said something really important. And we're talking here about human health and its impact of eating the wrong kinds of meat versus the right kinds of meat, the benefits of regenerative on our health, the animals' health, and, you know, even the environmental issue. But what you're what you're really talking about is a much broader restoration of our entire ecosystem.

So regenerative means to regenerate, to renew, to repair, to heal. And we have a whole field in medicine called regenerative medicine, which is about using the body's own healing properties to actually activate healing responses, like stem cells or exosomes or peptides. So these are the body's own regenerative systems. They're not a drug. They're actually something the body makes to do like, when you cut yourself, how does your body heal?

Will it recruit stem cells? It recruits the exosomes that get released. It release healing factors and growth factors, and fibroblasts and connective tissue. You're not going, oh, would you please heal mister Skin or missus Skin? Right?

So so the the body has this regenerative capacity, but the Earth also has a regenerative capacity. And we saw that during COVID when everybody was locked in and the humans disappeared from the world for a short period of time, nature surged back, like, insanely. You know, populations of fish, populations of dolphins, and sea life, and animals. I mean, it was just it was remarkable how the body can reclaim. And David Attenborough did who's an incredible filmmaker.

He's a Oh, yeah. Environmentalist. He actually made this film about the kaleidoscope of his life and how the environment's changed, how many species we have lost, what the degradation of forest has been. It was kinda depressing, honestly. But at the end, he goes to Chernobyl

Autumn Smith
Mhmm.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Which I mean, most people have this image in Chernobyl as a nuclear toxic waste dump, and nobody lives there, which is true. But he showed that he went there, and he showed that it had completely regenerated, that the trees had taken over. It was like plant of the apes. You know? Like, it took all it all came back to nature.

There were deer. There were wolves. There were bears. There were animals all over. It was like this really thriving thing.

So what regenerative agriculture can do, not is not just feed us well, but actually restore a lot of our climate and environmental problems. So can you speak to that?

Autumn Smith
Yeah. Absolutely. My favorite analogy is from another one of our ranchers who said nature's like a horse behind a gate. If we just let her out and let her do what she wants to do rather than working against her Mhmm. Like, the most beautiful things can happen.

And that's essentially what you said regenerative agriculture is all about. It's just restarting all of those cycles of nature and working with nature rather than Yeah. Against it. And so, yeah, our soil can also be a storage house for carbon. Right?

Yeah. You know? Three times the amount of, carbon in the atmosphere can be trapped in soil. So we can

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's the biggest carbon sink on the planet. Forget for That's the Yeah.

Autumn Smith
Exactly. So we can build soil and the organic matter in soil, and then, again, that organic matter is going to feed the plants. It's gonna make all of those nutrients accessible. Yeah. And, again, even soil contains microbes that improve serotonin levels.

Right? And that diversity in the soil some scientists even believe there's a relationship between the diversity in the soil and the diversity in our own microbiome

Dr. Mark Hyman
And your brain.

Autumn Smith
And our brain. And life saving medicines, they come from the soil. Right? So many of our life saving medicines come from the soil. And biodiversity 25% of the biodiversity is linked to the life in the soil.

Like you said, we've destroyed and decimated that biodiversity, I think, over 60% of it in the last few decades.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. There was a bacteria it's really interesting. There's a bacteria in the soil of Rapa Nui, which is Easter Island called rapamycin that is one of the most promising longevity compounds out there. Wait. So the soil is like a storage house of healing and re I mean, think about it.

Like, we're looking for the fountain of youth. Mean, I this drug isn't the fountain of youth, but it's the closest thing we have today Yeah. To the fountain of youth.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. And we see that looming threat of antibiotic resistance. And I read a stat the other day that only 5% of the lifesaving medicine compounds have probably been discovered in soil. Yeah. So like you said, when we're depleting the soil, we are really depleting our best chance we have at a vibrant health and, like, for generations to come.

And that's what I hate about the thought that we, right now, depleting our soil as we are, we are essentially, like, passing the bill to our children in future generations because they're the ones who are we're already suffering. But if we don't fix this issue now, they're gonna be suffering.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So I I think this is so important, and I know it's hard for people. But wherever you can, whatever you can do to support regenerative agriculture is important. And there's new regenerative organic certifications that are emerging. You know, there's you know, people are kind of self pleasing now, you had to kind of do your homework.

But but there are companies out there like yours, like Wild Pastures, that do this and do the hard work and and source good stuff. And and, you know, what's interesting, I don't know if you know this, but in in Europe, people spend 20% of their income on food. In America, it's 9%. So, you know, we want to spend money on, you know, whatever, video games or clothes or, I don't know, lattes.

Autumn Smith
I guess just food, technically. How many

Dr. Mark Hyman
if we did, like, a math of, like, how many lattes Americans consume, how much they spend on lattes a year, and if they just invested that in their health, it would be Make get a machine and make your own latte at home.

Autumn Smith
It's so true. Yeah. Because it's $5 a day. There was a time when I was doing that. You know, $35 a week, like two you know, several $100 every month.

And, yeah,

Dr. Mark Hyman
just Thousands of dollars

Autumn Smith
a towards a CSA. Put that towards better high quality meat. Yeah. Go to your farmer's market so you can really make those dollars.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, there's a really good book I read years ago called Your Money or Your Life, and it was essentially talking about the value of your money based on how much it takes to earn it. So if, like, if you make $30 an hour, you know, if you go buy a $30 shirt, that's an hour of your time. Right? And so it kind of, like, recalibrates it and says, what what are you what are your values? Like, what matters to you?

Do you really need to spend $3,000 a year on lattes? What if you took out $3,000 and spent it on a gym membership or on better quality food or on taking a vitamin D and a fish oil pill every day? Or Yeah. You know, like, there's a million ways to invest that that extra cash that we don't think we have.

Autumn Smith
Absolutely. And you can just start with one small decision. Like you said, I'm not gonna have a latte. I'm gonna do this. Well, we did for we just said we're gonna go to the farmer's market this summer.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Mhmm.

Autumn Smith
And we found people who were selling their produce, their imperfect produce, at far lower prices, or by the end of the day, they just wanted to get rid of things, and so you can find deals there. We found people making our milk down the road, fermenting vegetables. And so, yeah, I think just choosing one thing to change at a time

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Autumn Smith
It creates momentum.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It does. And I think, you know, we are hearing is hope for people. Yeah. Right? And I think what what I wanna sort of come to end on is, like, people listening go, oh, well, that's for the elite, and that's for people who can afford it, and that's for the wealthy, and it's not for me.

And I can't really eat well because it's too expensive, and I'm on a budget, or I'm on food stamps, or whatever. Right? And and and this is a message that I think has really been promoted by the food industry. You know? You know, that's elitist.

It's, you know, expensive. You know, let us help you. Let's make safe, convenient, cheap food for you. We're taking care of you. We love you.

This is the food industry's propaganda, but it it's making you sick. So whatever you're not paying on food today, you're gonna pay on your medications and co pays and doctor's visits when you're sick later. You know, you pay now, you pay later. But even with that, you know, I think there are ways to navigate how to eat well for less. And quick story, because I've said this many times, I think, on the podcast, but I I was in a film called Fed Up.

Went to South Carolina, one of the worst food deserts on a on the in America. They both they called the retail food environment index, which is how many fast food and junk food stores in bodegas are out of healthy grocery stores. It was, 10 to one. And the family was massively obese. They lived in a trailer, family of five, disability and food stamps.

The father was 42 on dialysis already from kidney failure, from diabetes, right, which doesn't usually happen until later. The 16 year old was diabetic pretty much. I was very overweight. And I went to their house well, their their their house, and I I I said, let's just cook a meal together. So I got this guy called Good Food on a Tight Budget from the environmental working group, and I picked some recipes from there.

I went got the ingredients, and we made turkey chili. We made a salad with fresh, you know, vegetables and olive oil and vinegar, not some weird dressing that they had in their fridge. And they didn't even know what they were eating. It was all processed food. And and they learned how to do it, and they lived in one of the worst food deserts in America.

And they I said, here's the guide. Here's a cookbook. I left, and I bought them cutting boards and knives because they didn't even have them. Everything was in a microwave where you know? And so they didn't really even have things to cut vegetables with.

You know? And I showed her I just showed them the basic cooking skills and one one meal. And they were like, doctor Hyman, do you, like, eat like this every day with your family? Like, yeah. It's and we had we had a great time.

And a week later, mother texted me back. We lost 18 pounds of family. A year later, 200 pounds. So father gets a new kidney. The mother loses a 100 pounds.

The son lost 50, gained it back, working at Bojangles, ended up getting his self together. And we I coached him a little bit. He lost a 132 pounds Wow. And went to medical school. First not in first person's college or medical, he's the first person in family to go to college.

Wow. So I'm like, wait a minute. Here's a family that's that's extremely in extreme poverty who's in one of the worst food deserts in America, and they figured it out. And it's not about inaccessibility. Now they're probably not going to get a $70 grass fed regenerative rib eye steak.

Yeah. But, you know, they're eating real food, and that's the first step. And so so talk about how, you know, it it it's not inaccessible. It doesn't have to be expensive. And and the real cost of cheap food, which is, you know, what you paid at checkout counter is not the actually the the real cost of the food.

Autumn Smith
No. Like I said, it's a down payment. Right? You're paying in environmental pollution that's degrading our topsoil, exposure to chemicals, which we all are learning far more about. You know, eleven thousand people the farm workers, eleven thousand people die from just handling pesticides, from pesticide poisoning.

Right? Antibiotic resistance. Like, these are all costs that the companies, the mega corporations are are externalizing.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And what is the cost of losing 41,000,000 IQ points in kids who are Yes. Children of farm workers? I mean, what is the cost of that?

Autumn Smith
And the cost and the quality of life. These are all things that we are paying, but the corporations are just not paying and making it look like cheap food, but it is not cheap food. So like you

Dr. Mark Hyman
said paying. It just ain't

Autumn Smith
them. Exactly. It's our our tax dollars. Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Our tax dollars, our own our our our salaries, our it's we are we are the ones who are paying.

Autumn Smith
We are paying. And so, like you said, switching to whole foods and making really simple meals. I think that's the top thing is, like, eating out less. We go out as a family of three. It's a $100.

But we make a meal from ground like, pound of ground beef, then we just we do it like our our beef pizza, we call it. And then we just add tomato sauce. And then we just have, like, potatoes that we slice, and then we rub with tallow, and then we cook them. And then we have a fermented food on the side. It's like a $25 meal

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Autumn Smith
Like you said, for a family of three. And so I think eating more at home and they do not have to be fancy meals. Mine are never fancy meals, but they're just whole food based. And then, of course, connecting. Right?

Getting to these companies that cut out the middlemen, getting to know your farmer and rancher. And you don't have to say, oh, where's your organic certified beef? Talk to the farmers. Sometimes they opt out of certifications to keep prices lower, but that they're doing practices. Yeah.

Rotational grazing, avoiding all the hormones, so that's good. The other thing that I really like is eating nose to tail. So a lot of meats are way cheaper, and organ meats are some of the cheapest cuts that

Dr. Mark Hyman
you eat. The most nutrient dense.

Autumn Smith
And the most nutrient dense.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, go to ChatGPT or go to Google and say, please analyze the nutrient density of chicken liver or beef liver versus the most nutrient dense vegetable. And you're gonna see it's like orders of magnitude more nutrient dense.

Autumn Smith
It's wild. And you saw that doctor Ty Beal paper, priority micronutrient density, where he looked at the nutrients most people are deficient in worldwide in low and middle income countries. And the foods, heart, liver, kidney, spleen.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Autumn Smith
Top of the list, goat, beef, eggs, and then one plant based food, the leafy greens. But if we can work organ meats back into people's repertoire

Dr. Mark Hyman
They're cheap.

Autumn Smith
It's affordable. Yeah. It's like half the cost at least. Yeah. And so and you can start small with just like a primal blend.

Like, you don't have to go hard and fast and just, like, saute

Dr. Mark Hyman
a part. Basically, like, ground beef with a bunch of ground organisms organs. So you don't really notice it. You can make, you know, like, sauce meat sauce or things like that, and you don't have to, like or hamburger, and you don't actually go, I'm eating organ meats. Right?

Exactly. That's what I do.

Autumn Smith
That's what I do too because I can't stand the taste.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, I love chicken liver, but anyway

Autumn Smith
Oh, you do? That's much more palatable than beef liver. Yeah. And you can soak it in milk. I mean, are ways, but it Yeah.

And then also just what we do too is cook in batches. So the beginning of week, I make a big salad. I make a big soup. So even if the only thing you have time to do at night is to cook a high quality animal product, you have things ready, you're not wasting food. You're not going out the last minute.

It's kinda just setting it up yourself up for success. And then eating local and in season too because, again, you can that often cuts costs because the average meal travels about a thousand miles. It comes from five different, you know, countries, most ingredients. And so if you can just eat local seasonal food, that's often a lot cheaper too. And get a Instapot, like a Crock Pot, and you can actually throw these tougher cuts of meat, again, that are far less expensive in there and create a really delicious meal that takes almost very very little time.

And so there are ways.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So this is great. So, Autumn, you you basically said, you know, what's a meal in the day of life of Autumn? I like I like that was

Autumn Smith
That is my life. Very low Low friction.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Low friction.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. High nutrient density. Yeah. I don't like no.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So this morning, I, you know, I was I had pasture raised eggs with just chopped up some onions and tomatoes and olive oil, salt and pepper, made scrambled eggs with I mean, it just took took me, like, five minutes, and and it was a delicious nutrient dense meal.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. I use sardines, and you mix in some honey mustard.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You know

Autumn Smith
what I mean? Like, that can be lunch. It could be super simple.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Super quick.

Autumn Smith
Yeah. Super cheap. Those small fish also very, very affordable. Yeah. So we

Dr. Mark Hyman
have I mean, I I literally I'm able to make three meals in less than thirty minutes total. Yeah. Yesterday, for example, approaching shake in the morning, three minutes. Lunch was basically sardines with seed crackers, and dinner was lamb chops and that I just cooked in a pan and put in the oven for a minute. I put sweet potatoes in the oven, which let them cook for an hour, but it didn't know, it wasn't there.

Yep. And I stir fried bok choy with ginger, which took, like, three or four minutes. So, basically, I had this, you know, lamb chops and Japanese purple sweet potatoes and lots of ginger and bok choy, which is a crisser vegetable. Then it took me literally, like, fifteen minutes to make dinner. Yeah.

So it it's I mean, I'm not making super fancy recipes. It's just you you know, cooking is a skill we haven't learned. And it you know, we've we've been disenfranchised from our kitchens. The food industry's insinuated itself in there. I've told this story before, but Betty Crocker was not a real person.

I thought she was a real person.

Autumn Smith
I did too.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And and she was a fabrication of the food industry in order to actually insert recipes into people's lives that had, you know, take a roll of Ritz crackers and sprinkle it on your broccoli casserole, or put in one can of cum Campbell's cream of mushroom soup into your blah blah blah. I mean Mhmm. It was sneaky. Mhmm. And then, you know you know, there was TV dinners, and then it was you know, it just kinda got it just kinda got worse and worse.

So I think what you're saying is a really hopeful message, Autumn, is that, one, you were sick and you got better. Two, the earth is sick, and we can make it better. The animals are we're eating are living horrible lives, and we can choose different ways to support a more humane way of of raising animals. And and that we can actually use food as medicine across the board, and that meat isn't the boogeyman we thought it was if we eat the right meat. And that there are ways to do this in an affordable way, and all the links and all the things we're talking about, we're gonna put them in the show notes.

Everybody can learn more about you you and your work and what you're doing. They can go to, you know, Paleo Valley, right, and and learn more about that. Wild Pastures. There's Instagram at paleo valley and at wild pastures. And of course, website's wildpastures.com and paleovalley.com.

So I think you're you're an inspiration, Autumn. I love what you're doing. I've used your product for years. I didn't really haven't met you until this moment, but I'm I'm just so grateful for the voice and and the way way you have actually taken a stand in the world to create something that's gonna improve the health of people. So thank you for what you do.

Thanks for being on the podcast. Any last words that you wanna share with the audience?

Autumn Smith
Well, first of all, thanks for being my mentor from afar. I couldn't have done any of it without the knowledge that you disseminate. But, yeah, I guess my message is just, today, it's not always easy to be healthy. Right? It's not something that we are given necessarily because of many different factors.

But that I just invite you to yeah. I hope that this inspires you to just take control where you can with what food you're consuming, noticing how that food is raised, because I think it's one of the most important things that we can do for the time, for our peep for our children, for ourselves. And I I just hope that people find hope in that message.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It reminds me of saying with a quote from Mother Teresa. You kinda remind me of of this quote that that she says, you know, there are no great acts of love. There are only small acts done with great love.

Autumn Smith
I love that. Yeah. And I love Fred Provenza's too, that we're members of nature's communities. Yeah. And what we do to them, we do to ourselves.

Exactly. Heal our soil, heal ourselves.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Absolutely. Well, thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you for what you do, and I'm gonna keep following what you're doing and the studies and the research because it's so important to really illuminate what what we really need to know about how food affects us. So thank you. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it.

You can find me on all social media channels at Doctor Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Doctor Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Doctor Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more.

Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Doctor Hyman show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests.

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