Radical Health Rebel
Welcome to the Radical Health Rebel Podcast, where Leigh, a renowned Functional Medicine Practitioner, CHEK Practitioner, CHEK Faculty Instructor, Active Release Techniques® Therapist, Emotion Code Practitioner, author, and podcast host, takes you on a journey to achieve optimal health, wellness, and happiness. With his extensive training and years of clinical experience, Leigh provides a truly holistic approach to health that has proven effective even when other methods have failed.
Join us every week for insightful discussions and expert interviews focusing on chronic pain, gut health, and skin health. Leigh's diverse background and passion for holistic healing brings you valuable knowledge and practical tips from leading experts in the field. Whether you're struggling with persistent health issues or simply looking to enhance your well-being, the Radical Health Rebel Podcast is your go-to resource for achieving a vibrant and healthy life. Tune in and start your journey to radical health today!
Radical Health Rebel
137 - Arthritis, Autoimmunity, and the Carnivore Diet: A Deep Dive with Ben Hunt
Welcome to the Radical Health Rebel Podcast! In today's episode, I'm thrilled to bring you an insightful conversation with Ben Hunt, a passionate advocate for ancestral health and the carnivore diet. We dive deep into the connections between arthritis, autoimmunity, and dietary choices, particularly focusing on how the carnivore diet can play a transformative role in managing and even reversing these chronic conditions.
Ben shares his personal journey, his battles with autoimmune issues, and how shifting to a carnivore lifestyle changed his life. We'll explore the science behind autoimmunity, the impact of modern diets on chronic inflammation, and why eliminating plant-based foods can sometimes be the key to healing. Whether you're struggling with arthritis or simply curious about alternative dietary approaches to health, this episode is packed with valuable insights.
Stay tuned for this compelling discussion with Ben Hunt!
We discussed:
0:00
Root Cause of Autoimmunity
Health and Dietary Misconceptions
Exploring Human Dietary Evolution
Understanding Metabolic Typing and Diets
The Dangers of Plant Toxins
The Roots of Chronic Disease
Agriculture's Impact on Soil and Health
Rejecting Mainstream Media's Lies and Control
Life vs. Death in Agriculture
You can find Ben @:
https://theredpillrevolution.com/buy-the-book/
https://wayofthecarnivore.substack.com
https://ketobrainhealth.co.uk/
Don't forget to leave a Rating for the podcast!
You can find Leigh @:
Leigh's website - https://www.bodychek.co.uk/
Leigh's books - https://www.bodychek.co.uk/books/
StickAbility - https://stickabilitycourse.com/
Eliminate Adult Acne Programme - https://eliminateadultacne.com/
Substack - https://substack.com/@radicalhealthrebel
YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@radicalhealthrebelpodcast
Rumble Channel - https://rumble.com/user/RadicalHealthRebel
And that I believe, I strongly suspect, is the fundamental root cause of all autoimmunity. You get perforated gut, which is the common name, and then you get molecules entering into the bloodstream that are not supposed to enter the bloodstream and they would normally be kept out by the endothelial defense and these things can then attach to our cells and then are attacked by our own immune cells, and that's what it is Welcome to the Radical Health Rebel podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm your host, lee Brandon. This work started for me several decades ago when I started to see the impact I could make on people, helping them to identify the root cause of their health problems that no doctor could figure out, including serious back, knee, shoulder and neck injuries, acne and eczema issues, severe gut health problems, even helping couples get pregnant after several IVF treatments had failed, and it really moves me to be able to help people in this way, and that is why I do what I do and why we have this show. In today's episode, I'm delighted to bring you an insightful conversation with Ben Hunt, a passionate advocate for ancestral health and the carnivore diet. We dive deep into the connections between arthritis, autoimmunity and dietary choices, particularly focusing on how the carnivore diet can play a transformative role in managing and even reversing these chronic conditions. Ben shares his personal journey and how shifting to a carnivore lifestyle changed his life. We explore the science behind autoimmunity, the impact of modern diets on chronic inflammation and why eliminating plant-based foods can sometimes be the key to healing. Whether you're struggling with arthritis or simply curious about alternative dietary approaches to health, this episode is packed with valuable insights, so, without further ado, let's jump into this compelling discussion with Ben Hunt.
Speaker 2:Ben Hunt, welcome to the Radical Health Rebel podcast. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks, man, really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for coming on, ben. And to kick things off, could you share a little bit about, perhaps, your own background, including your educational professional background, and what inspired you to become interested in human health and happiness?
Speaker 1:yeah, brilliant question, I think. Um, yeah, professional is probably stretching it a little bit. So, yeah, I mean background. I've I've lived all over. I've done a lot of different things. Um, lived in different places around around the country. Right now I'm in the north of scotland, so I've just moved up from england this year.
Speaker 1:Um, I went to, I went to boarding school for a few years. I studied modern languages, I've studied art, I've studied history, all kinds of, but basically one of these people that's interested in a lot of different things. And then in the mid-'90s I got into web design. So I've been in web design, online marketing and IT generally, on and off, for most of the last 30 years. But looking back, it seems as though, when I try and make sense of all the different various things that I've been interested in and involved with, if there's a theme, then it seems to have been me trying to work out the answer to this question, which is how are we meant to live? How are human beings supposed to enjoy life, be happy, be healthy, walking free up on the earth? And that's taken me down so many different avenues of inquiry.
Speaker 1:Like um, I, about 12 years ago I moved into a large house with two acres of garden and I, you know, like so many people, at the time, I was convinced that, um, that carbon dioxide was, it was a pollutant. Um, I've I, it's worth saying, I've since done a 180 on on that. I think I now believe that the the human caused, anthropogenic climate change narrative is is bogus. Okay, um, but at the time, my first hotmail address ever, like in the 90s, was eco freakakUK. I was a proper devotee. So I came up with this fantastic idea that surely soil is made out of largely carbon, so if we could find ways to build more soil, we could suck some of this evil CO2 out of the air. And, as it turns out, I wasn't the first person to have the idea.
Speaker 1:And, um, as it turns out, I wasn't the first person to have that idea and I started looking into no dig gardening, permaculture, and that took me to, uh, started attending like seminars and conferences, like the oxford real farming conference, which is a great event, and other events run by like the, the sustainable food trust, and so on, an ethical farming conference, and I started hearing some new and surprising things. People were talking about not only which put me on the back foot, not only that ruminant animals were very important for the land which was a novelty because, like everyone else, I was thinking you know, cows and sheep and stuff are evil but also that the meat of these animals was essential for human health. And people were talking about things like dha and epa and cla, conjugated linoleic acid and and, and this was. This came as a bit of a surprise because, like every other sensible, well-educated, rational human being, I knew that meat was a probable carcinogen and we should limit it and certainly the fat full of saturated fats from meat should be avoided because that, like everybody knows, was the major cause of heart disease. The major cause of heart disease.
Speaker 1:So I started looking into this and realized that there were groups of people who ate only meat and fat from animals. And the more I looked into it, the more it made sense, because I'm a rational person and generally I will look to nature, I will look to the evidence of my senses and I will look to our ancestry for answers in all kinds of areas how are we meant to live, how are we meant to be healthy? And I do believe that our ancestral past gives us most of the answers that we need, and clearly my ancestors, because I'm a white fella. My ancestors survived the last ice age tens and tens of thousands of years in northern Europe. Where what else were they going to eat throughout most of the year but the meat and the fat of large animals? So, yeah, and that got me in touch with Phil Escott, whom I know you've also interviewed yeah, and I tried it because you've got to try stuff for yourself and see what works and what doesn't. And yeah, I became convinced that the keto, paleo, carnivore lifestyle was helpful.
Speaker 2:And I've been following that now for four or five years, so I guess it was quite a big question that got you into health. Really, you were saying what's the way that human beings should really live? That's led you down to the road of what's the healthiest way for people to live, and you know it's quite interesting when you, when you research health and and you follow uh, let's just say authority guidelines, it almost seems like everything they recommend has a detrimental effect on your health and everything they say you should avoid is things that actually add to your health. It's quite interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think if there's, if there's one golden rule, and see what, see what the uh, the orthodox advice is and do the exact opposite. It's probably your safest starting point. It's, it's. It's a struggle to think of any exception to that rule really yeah certainly with dietary advice.
Speaker 1:I mean dietary advice was you know? There's a lot of people who consider themselves, you know, awakened to the, the bs that's around in the world right now and, uh, but really for me realizing that the national dietary guidelines were completely upside down and the opposite of what we should be doing. You can't be faced with that kind of knowledge without it creating a domino effect, if you go. Well, christ, you know, what else are they lying to us about? If this is so patently obvious to anybody with a brain and anyone who trusts the evidence of your own senses, what else can they be lying to us about? And once you are, once you even dare to ask that question, then you know that leads on to a lot more, a lot more questions and, uh, not not necessarily so many answers, but it's okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, something that, um, I'd like to get your opinion on.
Speaker 2:I think I have heard you speak about this before, so hopefully I'm not asking you a question that you've not thought about the answer to before. But so in my work as a health coach, functional medicine practitioner whatever label you want to put on me you know, sometimes for some people I'll do stool testing so I'll see. You know what their gut microbiome? You know we get an idea of what's going on in their gut microbiome and you know it's still very relatively new science, if it, if you can use the word science, we're talking about the microbiome, but what tends to be. I guess I'm not going to use the word consensus, because I think there is a consensus, but it seems to be that the majority of research let's call it and the majority of experts tend to say that, in order to have a good, balanced, diverse microbiome that obviously has multiple benefits, what we need to do is to make sure that we're eating a lot of fiber in the diet, because that fiber feeds the good bacteria. In inverted commas, that helps to create things like short-chain fatty acids, which has lots of beneficial effects like boosting the immune system and securing the mucosal barrier in the gut and all these kinds of things, right. And then they also say, if you eat a high fat diet, what that will tend to do you'll end up with a higher proportion of the so-called bad bacteria, right, and you'll have a dysbiosis in your gut, and that can lead to potentially detrimental effects. So it's quite a big build-up to my question, but, but what would you say, what would be your views on what you I would consider to be the kind of consensus in research and amongst experts with regards to the gut microbiome? Because I know well, I'm pretty sure I've heard you say something very different to that.
Speaker 2:Have you ever struggled with pain that just won't go away, no matter how much you train or rest?
Speaker 2:Fred came to me with a mix of chronic pain in his wrist, back and leg from years of running, along with concerns about a skin condition that he wanted to address through diet.
Speaker 2:He was also worried about the time commitment, given his busy work and family life. But after sitting down together and creating a tailored plan, everything started to change. We crafted a diet and workout routine that fit his needs, and I adjusted the program along the way to make sure it was aligned with his schedule and goals. I made sure to be flexible, supporting him in every way, from coaching and teaching to motivating and offering guidance that went well beyond fitness. The result, well, fred's pain is gone and his workouts have been completely revamped. He's now incorporating everything he learned with me into his training and he even returned for ART therapy to fine-tune his recovery. Most importantly, he now considers me part of his overall health support system. If you're ready to experience a holistic approach to improving your health, fitness and wellbeing, reach out today for a consultation at wwwbodycheckcouk and let's create a plan that works for you, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, I'm not a medical expert and I'm not really a health expert either. Um, I do trust nature and I trust common sense and I'm, you know, in some ways relatively simple human being. There's a lot in in the question to to unpack, okay. So where to begin? First of all, the diversity question. So I mean going by the evolutionary argument that human beings evolved a few million years ago, say between two and three million years ago, from a mainly plant-eating ancestor, possibly Australopithecus right the, strelopithecus right, um, the. There is no question that we have the ability to ferment some plant matter in our large intestine and to extract some short chain fatty acids, like you say, from that process. We don't have the ability, like a cow does, or a gorilla or a horse, to ferment, um enough plant matter to to extract all of the? Um, the fatty acids that we need in order to be healthy. So I mean some things that a lot of people probably don't know. Is that, all to my knowledge, all large mammals on earth persist on a high fat diet, right? So a cow, a cow, doesn't digest grass? Okay, she ingests grass, and because a cow is a ruminant, so it's got these extra chambers, very large chambers in her digestive system that come before the stomach, so, and they host trillions of bacteria. There are no vertebrates in the entire animal kingdom, anywhere in the animal kingdom, that have the ability to break down cellulose. So cellulose is a carbohydrate, which means it's basically made up of lots and lots of sugar molecules joined together. So, whereas starch is the plant kingdom's energy storage of choice, because starch is good when you're not restricted for really space and weight, because the problem with protein and carbohydrate is you only get four kilograms of energy per gram, whereas fat throughout all of nature fat is far more energy dense and efficient because you get nine kilocalories per gram, and this is why. So I'm probably going to range all over with this. So you know, please bear with me and pull me back on track if, if you need to, but there's so much in this, okay. So, um, the plant kingdom uses fats, um, but it also uses carbohydrates, so it it'll use starch for energy storage for situations, for example, where it's not really limited by space or weight, and the thing you'll notice about plants is that they don't move around very much compared to animals. Animals are mobile, so animals have to carry their energy supplies with them if they need them. Now we'll come back to that. So let's say, for example, a tuber like a yam or a potato okay, it's not really limited to space under the ground, so it can make those tubers as big as it wants to right um, to store as much energy as it can, and so it does it very, very quickly, uh, in the form of starch. Then it can reuse the starch later on, etc. Or you've got, you know, bamboo, you've got um palm trees, you know heart of palm, lots of starch, um.
Speaker 1:So you know, the plank kingdom uses a lot of starch. It will also use fats for when space and weight are a premium. So where will it use it? It will use it in reproduction. In fact, reproduction in plants and reproduction in animals is very, very fat. You'll find a lot of fat there. So you'll find fats like lots of omega-6-6 fatty acids, for example, in the seeds and the nuts of plants. Why? Because that tiny thing. Because every um, every organism, if it, if it's, if it reproduces sexually, it needs to make smaller versions of itself that then need to move away from the parent and then need to survive. So in order to survive, it needs a kickstart with some energy stores, and that comes in the form of fat. It's the same with animals, with mammals, uh, we, you know, breast milk is full of fat because it's the best way to get lots and lots of energy in. So you, you tend to find fats in in seeds and in nuts as well.
Speaker 1:So so a cow, although it ingests, uh, lots of um, cellulose, so cellulose it, so starch, is lots of glucose molecules joined together with relatively, relatively loose bonds. Cellulose is also lots and lots of glucose molecules joined together, but with much tougher bonds that cannot be broken down by any vertebrate, any vertebrate. The only things that can do it are things like fungi, nature's great decomposers, and bacteria and archaea and other kind of protozoa that can do that. So a cow ingests grass but doesn't digest grass. The bacteria break down the cellulose into its individual glucose molecules. They then feast on the uh, the sugar solution, on the glucose. They then excrete short chain volatile fatty acids, the really good stuff, saturated fatty acids, like you know, capric, caprylic, uh, whatever stearic acid, and that is what the cow digests in order to get her energy. And where does her protein come from? Because there's not much protein in grass either. Although there is obviously some protein in pretty much anything you can eat, she gets her protein from the dead bodies of the bacteria as well.
Speaker 1:So a gorilla, on the other hand, is a hindgut digester. It doesn't have these extra chambers before the stomach. It has a very, it has a large cecum which is pretty much the size of my forearm, and it has a huge, voluminous large intestine. We have a relatively very small large intestine with not much volume in it. So in the case of the human I, I think something like 70% of the volume of our digestive system is in the small intestine and 30% in the large. For a gorilla, orangutan, you know other hindgut digesters it's reversed it's only 30% in the small intestine, which is where you digest things like amino acids and fatty acids and fatty acids, and they have a much, much larger large intestine because that's where they hold the enormous quantity of bacteria that are required then to ferment the, the plant matter, the cellulose, down into its component parts that the animal can then digest.
Speaker 1:So back to the humans. We have a very limited ability to do that, um, and and I think it's worth mentioning that the, the diversity, the, the, the flavor, the makeup of your gut biome is going to be largely dictated by the food that you eat. So if you eat a lot of plants, then you will be favoring the, uh, the, the bacteria species that work on plants, but if you don't eat plants, you're favoring the other types of bacteria. That, so it's this idea of diversity, I think, is a massive red herring, because you don't need a a large quantity of plantdigesting bacteria unless you eat large quantities of plants, and likewise you don't need large quantities of meat-digesting bacteria. But the idea that carnivores don't have a diverse microbiome is actually nonsense. They've tested it. It's just different.
Speaker 1:And also then back to what you mentioned about the, the, the fatty acids that are generated by those bacteria in the gut. We don't need to. We simply don't need to do that, because that is not where we get our energy from right. We we can digest. We can, we can consume fats. Animal fats are the best for us because they contain the right proportions.
Speaker 1:If, if the animal has fed on a natural diet anyway, obviously you know um feedlot cows, you know, if they're being fed on grain and soy and stuff like that, we'll have more omega-6s than we need in the wild. We would. We would get between one to one and one to two omega-3s to omega-6s, which is which is what we need, right, we don't need much omega-6 at all. Um, so anyway, yeah, I think of more or less yeah, so, yeah. So the point is that is not our major source of nutrition, like it is in the gorilla. We don't need to get our fats from that source plus um, we can get the um like beta hydroxybutyrate, right, we can feed those endothelial cells from the bloodstream. We don't need to feed them from within the gut itself.
Speaker 1:But it always makes me laugh when you get vegans arguing that meat rots in your gut because it just doesn't. It's converted into a fatty acid amino acid soup by the time it leaves the acidic stomach and it's largely digested in the small intestine, leaving the large intestine's main job just to recapture water and salts and a few other things. What does actually rot in your colon is plant matter. I mean that literally that is how a gorilla gets its energy and its protein and everything. We simply don't need to do it.
Speaker 2:I think that's yeah, yeah, are you familiar with the book um biochemical individuality by roger williams?
Speaker 1:no, no, I'm not, but. But just just to go back to a point you said yeah, I mean like I got into all of this because of my, my fascination with soil and actually with growing plants. Right, I designed and built my own greenhouse. It was a semi-earth sheltered greenhouse in my garden back in england and, uh, and I read a couple of amazing books by dr elaine ingham, like teaming with microbes, for example, and it's, it's, it's fascinating that we are, um, we are just discovering the complexity of soil in parallel with other researchers in health who are discovering the incredible, mind-bending complexity of the gut biome as well.
Speaker 1:But no, I'm not familiar with that one. I am familiar with the work of Natasha natasha campbell, mcbride and gaps. Um, and yes, she really you know her books. Gut and psychology syndrome or the more recent gut and physiology syndrome will really open your eyes to to what's in there. We kind of have this image that your, your intestine is this kind of smooth, clean, pink tube that stuff just comes through and out. But the reality is that it's, it's kind of, it's coated with this kind of mucosal slime, this um, almost like a soil of its own, that that intermingles with all the food that goes in there, so it's not a clean, smooth um environment in there by any means.
Speaker 2:It's incredibly rich yeah yeah, yeah, the um, the book I was referring to, biochemical individuality, so I think it was first published in 1953, and what he so what dr williams was showing was that, within human beings, all of our internal organs are completely different from each other, and some people's heart might be slightly on the left, some people's are in the middle, some people might be slightly on the right, and then he showed pictures of people's livers and the shapes and how they were all completely different of people's livers and the shapes and how they were all completely different. But what? But? What he also showed was is that people whose ancestry came from, you know, far north of the planet, their um digestive tract was 50 shorter than those that were from the equator.
Speaker 1:Wow, never heard that.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you a question why do you think that might be?
Speaker 1:well, the yeah, the simple answer would be that they've evolved to get most, if not all, of their nutrition from uh, from fatty meat, because you simply don't need such a long, particularly the the large intestine, for that. Carnivores have shorter digestive tracts. That is the truth. It can be like twice the length of your body, whereas even a pig's digestive tract is something like 7.5 meters. Whereas humans can be as short as 1.5, 2 meters, a pig is a true omnivore, yeah, so, yeah, it does make sense, and I am I am aware that there will be people whose, whose genetic origin is more equatorial, do seem to have a greater tolerance for carbohydrate and fruit and and things like that.
Speaker 1:So I'm not here to say that, um, that meat and fat are the only appropriate, completely appropriate uh foods for human. I do genuinely believe that. Um, well, I mean, obviously we should all test out on on ourselves what works and what doesn't, but, um, I do think that the it's, it's like the lowest common denominator Fatty meat. We all have the ability to consume fatty meat and fatty fish and shellfish. Beyond that, it's over to you as an individual Test for yourself what works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I know you're familiar with the work of Weston A Price Absolutely yeah, and what he found when he traveled the world back in the 20s and 30s was that you know people would eat whatever was in their own environment and they would thrive on that. And, and obviously you know people living in alaska or or the shetland isles would eat very differently from someone who's in you know middle of india or you know middle of africa, right, because they're living in very different environments. Now, the way that I've been working in the last 20 years is using something called metabolic typing.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you're familiar with that not really okay, so really it's, it's a continuation of the work of western a price. Then there's francis marion pottinger. There was people like royal lee, george watson, william kelly and then william walcott, who is the I guess you'd call him the lead that was leading expert in metabolic typing, who trained me in metabolic typing, and it's really a way of uh, finding out what is the right diet for you, specifically in terms of your ratios of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. You know, and and bill basically says it's pretty much you know, down to how much carbohydrate you need and how much fat you need, right, and so I take people through a process adjusting their ratios until they hit what we call the sweet spot. Now, the over, overwhelming majority of people that I've worked with and it might be because I live in a relatively cold country, but I would say a good 80, 90 plus do you know, they thrive when they're eating a predominantly animal-based diet with a little bit of plant-based foods in their diet. Sometimes I'll get someone who's a little bit more kind of 50 50. Now that's nearly always females I can't remember a male being like that and quite often they do have some kind of asian origin where obviously their ancestors probably would have had, you know, more plant-based foods available to them, so their, their, their dna would have evolved to be eaten more plant-based foods. So it's been. It's been quite fascinating for me to see that.
Speaker 2:And now, obviously you know what. What's becoming very popular I say popular, it's been talked about a lot is the carnivore kind of movement, which I know a lot of people have got a lot of benefit from. And it's interesting that just last week I think it was I was listening to some training from a lab you know functional medicine type training and there was this expert I can't even remember his name now, but anyway he was talking and he was talking about all these disastrous diets like keto and carnivore and he was kind of saying, oh my God, how ridiculous can anyone be to even consider eating a diet like that? So he was talking about the gut microbiome and I was kind of thinking to myself you've obviously not ever spoken to someone who suffered terribly with arthritis or an autoimmune condition condition. And as they start cutting plant-based foods out of their diet, they start getting better and better and better and then eventually they get to the point where all they're eating is meat, or maybe fish, maybe eggs, and all their symptoms have gone, but yet when they're eating plants, their life was almost not worth living because they were in such a bad condition, you know. So I think it. So I think this is why I've got an open mind.
Speaker 2:I'm willing to hear different things. I mean, I've had someone on this podcast, leilani Dowding. She's quite well-known here in the UK. She's a vegetarian, been a vegetarian a very long time, and you look at her and you think she looks really healthy. She looks really healthy and you know she doesn't have any health issues. But her mother's from southeast asia, right? So you know there's a chance that genetically, you know, she's more able to handle a diet like that. But then I've spoken to so many vegetarians and vegans and again, I'm not I'm not knocking it you know people can do what they want, but so many of them have serious health conditions, many of them cancer. That's something I'm seeing very, very regularly is people that particularly vegans, um, end up with cancer, which is and it's quite interesting because again, I've had someone on this podcast who was a vegetarian, had gone through cancer and was telling me I need to stop eating meat because I'm going to get colon cancer if I don't well, there's no evidence for that anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the who recommendations are based on complete fantasy yeah, yeah, and, and I tried to have that conversation with her, but she just wasn't willing to hear it, right?
Speaker 1:yes, it is. It is a radical shift in in thinking, for sure, um. I mean, we've known for a hundred years, when the the work of otto warburg, um, that the majority of cancer cells not everyburg, that the majority of cancer cells, not every single one, but the majority of cancer cells, because they've got these dysfunctional mitochondria cannot generate energy, cannot generate ATP for energy through the normal means and have to revert to this very, very ancient form of energy production via fermentation, which requires glucose. So the majority of cancer cells cannot survive without glucose.
Speaker 1:And we know that the the healthy human body should have around four grams of glucose in the entire blood system, entire bloodstream, at any time, which your liver and other organs can make through gluconeogenesis. So it's, it's, it's well known, it's, it's a, it's a medic, it's a biological fact that having more than four grams of glucose in your bloodstream is toxic. So why do we, and why the hell doctors say to type 2 diabetics you know, manage your carbohydrate intake? Type 2 diabetes is a it's, it's a, a reaction against too much glucose in the blood. So just cut out the carbohydrate. It's, it's really simple.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and and, and, of course, the the other thing as well is that plants come loaded with defensive chemicals. Plants are toxic. Every single known species of plant in the world is toxic to something. The fact that we have the ability to consume a very small number of species probably less than 1 percent of all the plant species, plant species on earth that we can consume um, and we really only humans get the majority of their calories from that we derive from plants from about two dozen different species. It's a very, very narrow range, but the um, the range of toxins that plants have, because plants cannot run away, they can't fight, they can't burrow or fly or swim or whatever they. They are restricted to static defense mechanisms. So many of them will use spines and thorns, etc. Many of them will develop a furry stems and furry leaves in order to make them unpalatable to eat. But by far the majority of plants' defences are chemical and that's why we get all.
Speaker 1:Now there are some toxins, some poisons, that can actually have a hermetic or beneficial effect, in small quantities For sure, and we've been using those for at least hundreds of thousands of years as medicine. So I'm not saying for a moment that no plant should ever go in, go in your mouth whatsoever, um. But even if you think this, I mean there's all kinds. There's the, you know, cyanogenic glycosides, um that, that uh. There's furicumarins, there's uh things that will blister your skin, you know, in in contact with, uh, with sunlight, but the even like the main ones, things like um, tannins, for example. Tannins are found in 100 percent of plant species that we've found so far, and tannins are there as toxins. Right the same with lectins. Lectins is this big group. There's about 100 known lectins, I think, so far, and they're glycoproteins, so they're proteins that have a carbohydrate kind of arm on them that can attach to other carbohydrates. So what that means is that they can theoretically attach to animal cells and that I believe, I strongly suspect, is the fundamental root cause of all autoimmunity.
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Speaker 1:You get perforated gut, which is the common name, and then you get molecules entering into the bloodstream that are not supposed to enter the bloodstream and that would normally be kept out by the endothelial defense, and these things can then attach to our cells and then are attacked by our own immune cells. And that's what it is. It's not your body. I'm a huge believer in nature, as I've said before, and the idea that your body just spontaneously attacks itself is salute bollocks. It really is the idea that cancer cells just happen. Now, to be to be clear, I believe that all of us are growing cancer cells every single day, right, and I believe that the majority of the time, all those cancer cells are mopped up, cleaned away, particularly if you have um longer stretches in your day when you're not filling your face with food and your body can, can afford, you know, that time to clean up, break down or whatever, and when you're getting good sleep as well, all of which will be disrupted by blue light at night and stuff. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure we all get cancer cells and we normally mop them up and dispose of them and that's, that's fine, um, but yeah, so many toxins in there, the lectins, um, again, lectins found in every single known plant species that there is. Yeah, so I do believe and I think Anthony Chafee is doing great work on this as well, really, you know, with his plants are trying to kill you stuff, and he's got a book coming out as well. I think our whole thinking about plants is we've got this idea that's been implanted in our minds from a very early age that plants are naturally healthy Bullshit. Plants don't want to die any more than an animal wants to die, and they are going to fight to the death to prevent it as well. Plants get predated and they can't move, so they come up with all of these different chemicals. The number of people who die every year just from eating things like cassava is I mean, cassava is is like the primary nutrient of staple food for almost a billion people in the world. It's like 700 million people and it's got cyanide in it and the bitter cassava particularly has to be very carefully processed in order to get that out that people die every year from eating potatoes. You leave a potato for this. If the skin goes green or it starts to sprout, you have to cut that stuff off very um carefully because they contain um nasty toxins as well.
Speaker 1:The tomato originated in Mesoamerica, middle America, and back then they would carefully allow it to ripen on the vine, by the way, because in the case of a lot of fruits, they're very toxic when they're unripe. So to prevent them from being consumed before they're ready, before the seeds have matured, because the thing about fruits is that plants actually want the fruits to be eaten. That's why they put sugar in them, but they don't want them to be eaten at the wrong times, until until they're ripe. So what will happen is because, also, you have to remember that the making poisons like this is metabolically expensive, right, chemically expensive. So they do it very carefully.
Speaker 1:You know they'll put, like um, the poisons on the, the skin, for example, of a tuber or a fruit. That's why you get the chemicals, for example, on a lime, and some people will have, say, a margarita in the sunshine. The juice from the lime will get on their skin. They'll get blisters on the skin, right? That's because of the chemicals that are in the skin. They're just the surface, few cells of the lime fruit, but they'll be toxic while the fruit is unripe and then they'll recycle the toxins once the fruit is ripe because they want it to be eaten. Then We've got a problem now where they pick these little tomatoes, like on the vine, but they ripen them artificially, not while they're detached from the plant. So they'll go red and they'll go sweet, but it actually breaks the cycle, so the toxins will still be there present in those. So you have to look, they have to be ripened, yeah they actually have to be ripened on the plant.
Speaker 1:So be careful. If it says vine ripened, yeah, so it's a whole world, man, it's a whole world once you get into the plant toxins. And I think that the the evidence in favor of a meat-based diet is becoming overwhelming now. If you look on google trends as well, um, look at the relative um popularity of vegan diet versus carnivore diet, and even, um, yeah, but no, just leave it at that one. But carnivore diet is has been growing and growing and growing every year, whereas vegan diet is is very much on the on the decline, and the reason is that people's experience you know all those useless anecdotes are piling up. So, yes, what I'm saying is I really think that our, our perception of um plants being naturally the healthy option compared to me is naturally going to be challenged over the next, over the coming years. And here's another thing as well so plants are experts in self-defense through the use of chemical toxins.
Speaker 1:Right now, there are a lot of animals that eat plants, right, but actually a minority that there's far more carnivorous animals than there are about 70, 65 to 70 of all known animal species are carnivores. Right, and there's a good reason, because getting your food, getting your nourishment and your energy from plants is bloody hard, right. So plants are specialized in self-defense using chemical weapons right. So eating plants is just as specialized a skill as being a plum a skill as being a plum. So what you have is you have species of, but at the same time, nature will always, whenever there is a an abundant resource, right. Whenever there is a source of calories, energy, nutrition, whatever something in nature is going to try and take advantage of it. That's the law, that's natural law. So when you've got a load of grass or a load of bamboo or whatever load of eucalyptus, we can't eat eucalyptus leaves. Right, the koala eats nothing but eucalyptus leaves. Okay, so that something will evolve to do to recycle the energy and the nutrients from any abundant resource. We can't eat grass. Rabbits eat grass, sheep eat grass.
Speaker 1:So what happens is that the herbivorous animal co-evolves along with the respective plant species, but they evolve the means to detoxify the food that they eat. Okay, and it might be through fermentation, for example, which is why fermented soya is less unhealthy for us than raw soya, you know. That's why they eat tofu in in southeast asia, right, and then they just don't eat raw soybeans. But what happens is the herbivore then removes the toxins, whatever they are, and soy has got a lot of different toxins on it, not just the phytoestrogen lots of different toxins in soy. So what does the herbivorous animal do? Right, it takes those chemicals out. It then ejects those chemicals through its feces or urine or whatever, and it and it then builds its own muscle organs, bones, fat, out of the clean stuff that it actually wants.
Speaker 1:And that's why there there's almost no poisonous animal in the world. There's almost nothing out there. There's the pufferfish, right. So if you eat fugu in in japan, you have to make sure it's been prepared, because there's a gland in the pufferfish that is poisonous if ingested. But there's almost nothing in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 1:We can eat at least 99 of animals in the world safely. We cannot eat 99 of plants. We can eat maybe one and get away with it. So that's why there are so many more carnivorous species of animal than there are herbivorous, because eating plants is bloody hard. So the idea that we can just run around in nature filling our face with with any kind of plant that you come across is is just ludicrous. I, I'm um, I I've taught bushcraft in the past and you know so I've studied survival. There's a general rule in survival that if it, if it doesn't move, don't eat it. So if you come across that animal, you don't eat it. And if you come across a plant, you don't eat it. You come across any berries? Right, you just don't. Unless you are 100 sure of the identification of that, of that fruit and that it's healthy, you absolutely avoid that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting that the one plant toxin you didn't mention was oxalates. Oh well, which is another big one. I did a whole episode on those with Sally Norton who wrote the books Toxic Superfoods, so if anyone hasn't listened, to that episode.
Speaker 1:Go and check it out. Yeah, interestingly, when, when I switched to you know, high fat, low carb diet, um, that was the the only period in my life where I've suffered from gout, which is an extremely, um distressing, chronic condition. It's a type of um arthritis essentially, and I believe my personal view is that that was caused by a couple of things One is too much consumption of beer, which kind of triggered it, but also then oxalate dumping. I think that all my tissues, my bones, my organs, all the tissues in my body, were then going oh, you've stopped eating oxalates Great, we can start dumping oxalates out. Issues in my body were then going oh, you've stopped eating oxalates great, we can start dumping oxalates out.
Speaker 1:And, um, that went on for between two and three years. I had multiple gout attacks and they have just completely stopped, right, and that is what the carnivorous docs like you know, dr berry, um, dr baker, uh, dr rob cybers, and you know I've researched all of that they all say just stick with the program a couple of years, it'll go away, it won't come back and it doesn't.
Speaker 2:And I do believe that's oxalate yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a very, very interesting subject. So you mentioned, you know, you switched to a you know kind of high animal based, low vegetable. Do you actually eat vegetables or are you carnivore?
Speaker 1:I'm mostly carnivore. Uh, I, I, I believe again, I go back lead to, um, the natural model, right? Um, like I say, meat and fat are the common denominator. Everyone can get away with meat and fat unless you've got you know whatever that disease is that they get from, the? Uh, the ticks that make you allergic to red meat, the lone star tick thing, um, but I do believe that, ancestrally, that we would have eaten well, we would have got on nutrition for wherever we could get it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, and also another interesting thing, we kind of have this idea that, yeah, there were ice ages, so there were ice sheets covering northern europe, for example, but meanwhile in the tropics it was lovely and people just ran around pulling fruit off trees all the time. The reality is actually, what we know about, what we believe about the ice ages, is that because in the ice ages there was so much fresh water locked up in those ice sheets that the tropics actually became more dry during an ice age. So you know what we think of as tropical in this pleasant interglacial period that we're in now. Um, but it even, you know, it was not the case during the ice ages either, so it would have still have been a primarily animal-based diet in there, because even fruits aren't that easy to eat.
Speaker 1:Plus, of course, you've got the issue that the modern fruits have been hybridized to maximize the sugar content. Um, I mean, even if you look at something like a chimpanzee, you know chimpanzee is technically, according to our you know, a frugivore, so it's primarily a fruit eater. But the fruits that a chimpanzee they're not eating bananas from Tesco, 70% carbohydrate. The chimp also gets the majority of its energy not from glucose and fructose, from the fruit itself, but these fruits are fibrous. So again, it will get some energy from sugars, but again the majority of it is coming through the bacterial fermentation of cellulose in those fruits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, interesting. Yeah, I mean the other thing about chimpanzees as well is that they also do hunt occasionally as well, don't they? Yeah absolutely, yeah, yeah, it's a. It's a little tree, isn't it?
Speaker 1:and and and there's loads of evidence of, of so-called herbivorous animals that will. You know you. You look up, you see pictures of horses or goats, sheep, whatever you know chicken walks past with a you know chicks combined if. If a herbivore can snatch up a chick as it passes, it absolutely will, because there's no question there is more nutrition in chewing up a an animal than you know that it would get from an hour's grazing. So it's always going to do it and it's bioavailable. They will get the nutrition out of that thing.
Speaker 1:It's just that they're specialised in different ways and large herbivores, the largest animals on land, are herbivorous and the reason for that is because to become a large animal you need a huge abundance of food and hunt being a very large hunter, is extremely difficult unless there are very large. There's an abundance of very large herbivores around to to feed on. So maybe your t-rex, you know, got away with it because there was um, but we don't know exactly what the the environment looked like 65 or more million years ago but yeah, that's another interesting topic.
Speaker 1:There's a whole new, whole different area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, if we, if we look back in history but not not that far you know industrialized history, you know most most people, I'm I'm guessing from my own kind of studying most people would have passed away either due to malnourishment certainly those living in industrialized areas either from malnourishment or toxicity of some sort. Some people would call it infectious disease. I'm I'm not in that camp. I think people were dying of toxins rather than an infectious disease. But that's a, that's a whole nother podcast. Obviously that doesn't happen now. Right, you know that, you know these. What, what we call infectious disease, is pretty much gone now and we won't talk about why people think they've gone. Um, but what? Why do you think we're living in such a epidemic of chronic disease now? Because that's never really, as far as we know, that's never really existed before. But now it seems that the majority, certainly of the western world is suffering terribly from some sort of chronic disease. What's, what's your take on that?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely, and I think that is the, that is the big quest, that is the elephant in the room when it comes to public health. So I agree with dr chafee, I think that it's, it's twofold. I think it's um, malnutrition, lack of nutrition combined with toxicity from eating plants, um, and what's what's interesting? I mean we know, for example, you can look this up, you can look up the, the boston death report from 1812. In the year 1812, in the town as it was, of boston, massachusetts in america, they listed all the causes of death and there was something like 924 deaths, or whatever, that year, of which five were from cancer. Now we're told that cancer is the number two killer after coronary heart disease. There was not one death from heart attack in um by autopsy in the us was around 1900. Right, it literally didn't exist. And, by the way humans were, we weren't stupider in the 19th century than we are now. It's probably more likely the other way around. So what do I think? It is um? I I think that I mean you mentioned western a price before he was in a unique position in the 1920s and 30s to observe firsthand the impact of the export of industrially processed crop-based foods to the all around the world, so people were switching from their indigenous diet.
Speaker 1:Now, I should add as well at this point that we need to be very careful when we look at traditional diets. I'll talk about traditional or historical diets. We're still talking about the Holocene, this current interglacial period, right, because we had the end of the last ice age about 10 to 12 000 years ago and we had to switch primarily to agriculture. There's a few pockets of people that didn't like the maasai, for example, and and the inuit, and and the sami reindeer herders and the fins and whatever around the world. But a lot of people move to um, to agriculture.
Speaker 1:Okay so, but these aren't our ancestral diets. These are traditional diets that have only been around the last few thousand or few hundred years. People talk, for example, about there's a group of people called the tuka center in uh, papua new guinea, who get well and they say well, look, they're relatively healthy, they, and they get 90 of their um, of their calories, from a few species of sweet potato. Right, so therefore, humans are fine on that, yeah, but these guys are living a very traditional lifestyle. They're out in the open air, they. The rest of their calories come from, I think pork and from fish that they get out of the sea. Okay, that's the rest of their energy plus yams originated in in um south and central america. So they literally the sweet potato didn't get there until a few hundred years ago. It was brought by the white fella on ships and traded, right? So you know, this is.
Speaker 1:This is not an ancestral diet for anybody, right? There is no group of human beings, because we didn't invent agriculture until 10 000 years ago. The very, very latest agriculture didn't hit england until 2 000 years ago. Um julius caesar wrote in his diary about agriculture being introduced to england by our dutch friends, and it didn't reach scotland until 1500 years ago. That's how recently these things are. So we've got. We've got to be very careful before saying, oh look, this is. These people have lived in the amazon for forever and and whatever they, they eat plants. Well, maybe they have to eat plants, you know, because the, the megafauna died out. So, yeah, we just need to be careful to not to conflate traditional um diets from the holocene with ancestral diets that we're eating for hundreds of tens or hundreds of thousands of years before. So I forgot the question, sorry yeah so.
Speaker 2:So the question is, what? What's causing the massive amount of chronic disease these days?
Speaker 1:okay, okay, let's do, let's do, we'll do. The short answer. The short answer is massive toxicity from sugars and omega-6 fats. In my view, is is the main thing. So we didn't have type 2 diabetes, heart disease. I mean, there was some diabetes in the in the 19th century and, yes, like you got people like salisbury who cured it by putting people on a diet of steak, um, and banting, for example, as well, cured his own corpulence, you know for with with a similar thing, um, but we just didn't.
Speaker 1:We didn't have these things at the turn of the 20th century and at the turn of the 20th century, just taking america, for example, 99 of the fats that people consumed in their diet were of animal origin. They were lard and tallow and probably you know butter cream, ghee, things like that. You know some olive oil in in the us, maybe some coconut oil, right, but it was all from the animal kingdom, right? The biggest thing now, the, the biggest single, well, the biggest switches that we've had in our diet is with the advent of hyper processed food is um, yes, our sugar consumption has gone up quite a lot, but the, I think, dwarfed by that is um, is the the drop in animal fats and animal fat and healthy. They contain the fat soluble vitamins, which is western, a price's conclusion about the. You know the fundamental trigger and cause of this thing. He said it's malnutrition and he took people in his practice who are still eating sugar and and gave them, um, good quality butter and fish oil and they reversed their uh, dental caries, their cavities, the tooth, tooth decay. So it was. You know, that suggests to us that it's actually the malnutrition part and that when, when you consume a lot I don't believe that sugar rots your teeth I believe that lack of the fat-soluble vitamins, that's what Western Price showed us. So that is the biggest thing we're not getting the fat-soluble vitamins.
Speaker 1:There's A, d and K, and D is arguably more of a hormone than a vitamin, but it is fat-soluble and the ones that your body needs come from the animal kingdom. You know we. You know you've got to get the right form of vitamin a. You know we don't want is it beta carotene, we want retinol. You know um, and the the same with vitamin k and whatever vitamin e. There are some sources of it in the plant kingdom, like wheat, like wheat germ oil and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:But again, yeah, we're just missing out and we're getting far too many omega-6s which are inflammatory. And you know, I mean I'm way off being qualified to comment on the of this, this massive breakdown that we're seeing, but you only have to look at the. You know well what's changed in our diet, so you know it's to do with inflammation and oxidation, oxidative stress and and all of these. You know how all of these things work together. I don't know, and I think that there's a lot of far cleverer people trying to figure out exactly what the mechanisms are, but just from the outside.
Speaker 1:well, what have we changed? And that's what's changed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the other thing, that's changed as well. You know, up until the end of the First World War we weren't really using much in the way of chemical fertilizers and you know, pesticides and herbicides, etc. Etc. And of course, glyphosate also has been used for I'm not sure how many years 30, 40 years now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, late 70s, glyphosate came out, which is also, by the way, natasha cumble mcbride has said that glyphosate is actually a broad spectrum antibiotic. And so you know what are we doing to our um, the microbiome in the gut, when we're consuming grains and lots of grain-based stuff? And, and they're right, you know, they say actually the, you know the active ingredient. It doesn't directly impact the pathway of human cells, and they're right. But you know, dear listener, it might be a shock, but way less than 50% of your body is human cells. You've got thousands of mitochondria on average per human cell in your body, and mitochondria are not human and they have different DNA. They have their own DNA, they're actually of bacterial origin, so they're alien. And you have more bacterial cells in your digestive system than you have human cells in the entire rest of your body by a factor of like 10. So you are minority human by a factor of like 10, right? So you, you are minority human, right? You? You are actually a hot, wet bag of um micro microbial slime, you know, and you're beautiful with it, of course, yeah, we, we're not even. We're not even human. So, but the the effect of glyphosate on the gut is um very poorly understood at this point in time, and and and the other thing as well is that I mean, I'm I'm quite an expert on on farming and the effect of farming on soils.
Speaker 1:To cut a very long story short, we um, I mean agriculture destroys soil. That's what it does. Mono, mono cropping, and especially, I mean we kind of figured out in in the middle ages that you could, um, if you rotated your crops and you had like, grew a crop one year, then you put animals on it the second year. On the third year you leave it fallow. That's basic three-year rotation. That kept your soil pretty good, okay, but the bottom line is that when you plough soil you destroy it, and the simple fact is that our soils, since the 1950s, have lost half of their fertility, but also half of their mineral value as well, that we eat that if the meat has been fed on agricultural products, the meat is also just lacking in the central minerals that we need, which again just comes back to you know, like we say, that there's there's two answers it's malnutrition and toxicity, and that's the malnutrition part of it yeah, yeah, I remember seeing a television program a few years back now and it was a farming family and they showed a picture from 1974.
Speaker 2:And the farmer was plowing the field and at the time the daughter who was now in charge of the farm she was a little girl and they were showing this video of the farmer who was on his tractor. He's plowing the field and as he's plowing the field there was a huge amount of birds were just flocking to obviously eat whatever's being you know disturbed in the soil. And then they showed her on a tractor plowing the same field. I don't know six, say six, years ago.
Speaker 1:Not one bird was anywhere near there because there's no earthworms yeah yeah, that's basically the thing, but it's even worse than that. Um, and we've been. We've been plowing for 10 000 years. You know the well the ancient egyptians had made pictures of plowing and you know they're from like 4,000 to 500 BC. But here's the problem in it, and it comes back to the fact that our lives are relatively short and so are our memories right.
Speaker 1:So we found out in the last 10,000 years, wherever you live in the world, that if you dragged a stick through the soil, I mean, first of all you have to rip out all the trees and the bushes and the hedges and move the rocks and everything else to clear your space. But then, if you disturb the soil and turn it over, then we found that it appeared that the soil became more fertile, and it does. It does become more fertile, but in the short term, because what happens when you plow? And now? Now, by the way, they've got, you know, 2 000 brake horsepower tractors that are dragging 18 plow blades at once. Okay, so we're doing, and, and gps guided with a robot driving as well as not even the human. Um, so but what? What happens when you turn the soil? Is the soil in nature at any time you see bare soil in nature, there's nothing growing, by definition, right, um, because um in it doesn't matter where, whether it's woodland or grassland and step or whatever. That soil is meant to be covered by protective skin of decomposing plant matter, right, like leaf, mold or whatever um, which protects the soil itself from the elements, from uv light, from raindrops and oxygen. Now, when you plow, what happens is you turn that over. So you are, you are scratching off the skin of mother earth and exposing the flesh underneath, and what happens is that, apart from the fact that you're slicing through snakes and rodents and worms and and uh, mycorrhizal networks or the fungal networks under the ground, um, you're also exposing the, the, the bacteria and the microbes and all the other creepy crawlies. Right, one billion per teaspoon, okay, you're exposing these to oxygen, too much oxygen, and uv light and raindrops and stuff like that, um, so what happens is you get a massive die-off of the biome that's under the soil. Now, all these living things contain nitrogen, so what that happens is you then get light nitrogen leaching out into the soil and when you plant your seeds, there's an abundance of nitrogen. So the plants grow and they appear to grow better, and they do grow better.
Speaker 1:But the problem is it comes at a great cost, because one of the most important things, apart from the the biodiversity in the soil as well the thing that makes soil dark is carbon. Carbon's got, um, like charcoal, very, very small, uh, particle size, which means large surface area, which means it holds onto water really, really well. Okay, and um, when you, when you turn it over that, that carbon is exposed to the, the warmth and the oxygen it then oxidizes and floats up into the air as co2. Now, that's not a bad thing, because co2 makes plants grow, but the problem is that your carbon in your soil is depleting every year. So what you end up with after a while is you get rain. The rain just runs off, taking any kind of remaining organic matter with it, and you end up with soil. You end up with baked clay or sand or whatever, and nothing will grow. But since the 50s, they've been kind of patching that problem by throwing artificial fertilizer that's derived from petrochemicals onto the ground to force stuff to grow. So you get plants that grow and it looks big and it looks healthy. Um, but that's only because they force fed it nitrogen and the. The minerals just aren't there either. So you, you look at this thing that looks big and colorful and whatever, and it hasn't even got the nutrition in it that it would have done before. So plant agriculture is just a tragedy for human health from every angle that you look.
Speaker 1:Compare it to raising animals on pasture, which can actually physically build soil, build soil quicker than soil naturally develops in nature as well. So it's the opposite. So you know, people say to me well, can we feed eight billion people on beef and lamb and stuff like that? And the answer, I think, actually is yes, we, we can feed eight to ten billion people on on meat. Um, if we're smarter about it and you can do things like you can have.
Speaker 1:Um, you know mob farming. You move your your cattle from one bit to the next. We haven't got time to go into that. But then you can follow the cattle with chicken, for example. So you put, you put chicken tractors in. Now chickens like nothing, nothing better than literally to go out finding a cow pat and to kick the crap out of the cow pat in search of parasitical worms and their eggs. So the chickens then kick the, the cow patties all over the place, which helps to build the soil and spread that stuff around, and then they are turning those parasites into chicken meat and eggs, and so, you know, this is just smarter.
Speaker 1:But it's like, whenever human beings try and improve on mother nature, we generally cock it up in a spectacular way. Um, but you know, we just just look to nature. Nature makes things in in many, many layers and those layers interact, um, and then of course, you've got, you know, you, you want to plant one species of plant, because that's the economical way to do it. So you want to plant dwarf wheat in this field. So you destroy everything and you create basically a desert where nothing can really grow, apart from if you look in nature, when you've got bare dirt, the only thing that grow are weeds, like dandelions, like annual grasses. Right now, these are annual plants that make lots of seeds and have very short roots and very short, very small, low water requirement, so they're the only things that can grow, you know, in like semi-desert, arid areas, okay, and those happen to be the plants that we grow for our food, okay, so you, basically you destroy an ecosystem.
Speaker 1:That's what a field is. It's ecocide. You have to kill almost everything so that you can plant the one species that you want very short roots, which means they don't go down very far, which means they're not, um pulling minerals up from the subsoil either, so they're only working in the first few inches of soil. And then you get this rapid growth and then you know that makes lots of seeds, which means lots of, um, you know, calories for humans. We harvest that and then we go back and do it again, and we do it again, and we do it again, and then, a few generations later, there's no organic matter, there's no carbon left in the soil, um, it doesn't matter how much nitrogen fertilizer you throw onto it, nothing's going to grow.
Speaker 2:They're crazy stuff yeah, yeah, it's uh. It's a very sad situation that we're in. I remember seeing, um, a guy in africa I'm sure you're going to know. I don't know the guy's name, but I'm guessing you're going to know who he is alan savory. Probably he was the guy that took uh animals onto like desert land and he turned it back into fertile soil. And I think it is in your book, the red pill food revolution.
Speaker 1:You talk about the sahara yeah, the sahara, the, apparently the uh in ancient rome. So again, this is, this is uh also. Just just pull up a another reference, um, a guy called david r montgomery, a geologist, wrote a book called dirt's the erosion of civilizations, where he he actually went back and realized that every ancient civilization, apart from the egyptians, because they get fresh soil washed down from the etopian plateau into the Nile Delta every year, so their civilization lasted two and a half thousand years. Aztecs, ancient Greeks, all of them, every single one, every single great civilization emerged and then burnt itself out within around 500 years, up to maximum 1,000. Every single time, every single one burnt itself out, and Montgomery's argument is that they did. The reason that happened is because they destroyed their soil. Did the? The reason that happened is because they destroyed their soil.
Speaker 1:You know um in in this part of the world, in europe, um, the agriculture was invented in what was called the fertile crescent, and that is now ranges from egypt, palestine, israel, syria, um jordan, ira, iraq and Kuwait. When you think of those countries, you don't think you're rolling green hills, you think desert, and that's because that's what it does. So the Romans grew most of their grain and most of their olives in North Africa, which is the region we now call the Sahara Desert.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, not only have we got all that as well at the moment and I don't want to go into too much detail on it but we've also got let's call it the government actually trying to shut down farms completely and turn them into, you know, wind factories or solar factories or you know, but that's a whole, not other, can of worms for another day. So why do you think society promotes a plant-based diet? What's your view on that? Hey Rebels, did you know I now produce an exclusive no Punches Pulled episode every month? These episodes feature controversial guests who aren't afraid to expose lies, share stories of being gaslit or cancelled and provide real world solutions for achieving optimal health and maintaining your freedom. These are the kind of episodes that got me cancelled back in 2022, booted off Facebook, twitter, youtube and even deplatformed from LinkedIn.
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Speaker 1:Great question. The truth is why? I think that is because it makes humans uh, dependent, weak and unhealthy and subservient. So you know, I I believe that our society, um, post-agriculture is, um, runs on for the benefit of a very small minority of psychopaths, um that before agriculture, there wouldn't have been room for psychopaths in human tribal societies, um, and they certainly wouldn't have been able to flourish, whereas since we moved to agriculture and our um, our communities got too big for everyone to know everyone and trust everyone, so that actually created the perfect breeding ground for the psychopath. And all of this is covered in the red pill food revolution. If you want to go out and buy a copy of that, please do. I think it's that that actually created the perfect breeding ground for the psychopath, and all of this is covered in the Red Pill Food Revolution. If you want to go out and buy a copy of that, please do. I think it's one of the best books on food and health ever written, but I would say that because I wrote it. But yeah, we created the ideal breeding ground for the psychopath, and slaves have always been fed on cheap food grains, and slaves have always been fed on cheap food grains.
Speaker 1:It makes us unhealthy, which means we also need to buy pharmaceuticals which happen to be owned by the same companies, if you really look into it, as own the big food as well. So it's unhealthy. It's also addictive. People are addicted to carbohydrates. People are addicted to carbohydrates. They trigger the opioid receptors and different pathways in your brain. Sugar and wheat are like cocaine and heroin to the brain. Sugar is, I would say even more addictive than cocaine.
Speaker 2:Candice Perks said that sugar is more addictive than heroin. Yeah, yeah, and she and she got the uh nobel prize for finding the opiate receptor. Wow, so she agrees with you on that, or at least she did when she was alive and you have to eat multiple times a day.
Speaker 1:You know, people have always, always fed their slaves on, on gruel, um, and, and it makes us dependent, you know, you get upset and hungry. I used to get really hungry, you know, and I was like vegetarian in my early 20s and if I didn't go, if I went more than a couple of hours without putting something grain based in my face, then I would become upset and irritable and depressed and want to cry and it's crazy and yeah, what? What they don't want is a um, a society of strong people who know their own minds, who um, um and who aren't dependent on pharmaceutical drugs and aren't dependent on eating all the time, who are prepared to stand there and go no, I'm not going to be pushed around like this. And simply because there's a lot more of us than there are of them and they need us not to be able to look up and see how badly we're being screwed all the time. So we need to be constantly worrying about our um, our existence. That's, that's the honest answer, lee.
Speaker 1:That's it yeah, that's the conclusion that we come to in in the red pill food revolution. But then we, you know, in the last three chapters of that book, we do say it's not too late. It's just not too late. But things are getting really, really scary right now. Um, with the war against the farmers. We're seeing it now with the last budget in the UK. The Irish have been dealing with that for a long time. The Irish farmers are now being paid to destroy their cattle. In Denmark, I think they're now looking at a tax on cattle for their burps, for the methane, which is absolute nonsense because methane breaks down into CO2 over a few years anyway.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, there's always more biomass of large ruminants in the world than there are today anyway. And the world didn't choke to death. We know this because life has flourished on Earth for millions of years. It hasn't choked to death before. And the reality is that we're actually coming out of a very, very cold period. On the long-term cycle. We're in the absolute minimum of global temperatures. Life has flourished on Earth for hundreds of millions of years, during which we've had highs, lows, highs, lows. We're in a very deep low now and we're also in a very, very almost rock bottom for CO2, atmospheric CO2. So if the CO2 in the air dropped much more than it is now, it would be the end of large life on Earth because the plants would die there just wouldn't be enough carbon dioxide, anyway, that's, that's a whole nother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my final, my final question for you, and it's a bit of a double question. So so we know that you know, eating plants and vegetarianism and veganism is kind of being pushed and we're being told it's the healthy thing and it's the spiritual thing and all this kind of stuff. But my question is what would you say to someone who thinks that eating vegetarian or vegan A is a spiritual thing? Or and again I hear this a and I listen I, I don't have an issue with it. Everyone's going to have their own values. But I hear a lot of people say that I'm an animal lover and therefore I won't eat animals. What, what's your take on on those two questions?
Speaker 1:yeah, um, this is something that that I that I think about a lot, I think. I think our society wants us to to act like herbivores because it also wants us to think like herbivores as well. If you look at the difference if I've got a like sub stack called way of the carnivore, dot sub stack dot com where I've got if you look back through there, I've got a lot of videos and discussions about, about the difference in this mindset. But herbivores' lives are dominated by mild panic, which is also the way that our society appears to want us to behave Constantly afraid of global warming, climate change, acid rain, the latest virus or pandemic, whatever it is you know, um, nuclear war, aids, zika. Well, take, take your pick. You know, constantly afraid, and people who are afraid don't think properly. You go back into into a reptilian limbic system and you, you, you search for protection and cover from the authorities, from your tribe, but in this case government. So I think just hold the thought that that's how they want you to think. They don't want you to go out into the world knowing that you're the scariest thing out there, knowing your power, and going out and seizing what it is that you really want, thing out there, knowing your power, and going out and seizing what, what it is that you really want they? They want you just to shrink back into the herd and go oh, I'm glad it's not me, I'm glad it's not me, that's getting eaten. Right, very, very different mindset anyway. But that's not really the point. Um, is it the ethical and spiritual thing to avoid eating animals? Completely the opposite. Just go back to to what I was saying about agriculture and and what happens? It's ecocide.
Speaker 1:Right, even just mathematically, death is not the opposite of life. The? Um. For every thing that lives, there is always going to be one death at some point. It doesn't matter what it is plant, animal, microbe, whatever Always going to be one death. So the more life that we have going on on Earth, the more deaths there are going to be. So the minimization of death is not only not the goal we should avoid at all costs. The minimization of death is not only not the goal. We should avoid at all costs. The minimization of death. Because if you aim for the minimization of death, what so? What is the opposite of life? Well, if you want to know what the opposite of life is, you go and stand in a field, right at any time of year, and look for where the life is at, because you can't see it right now. You go on to pasture, where there's animals grazing um, billions of of, um of lives. In every teaspoon of soil there are dozens and dozens of species growing, even on the ground, below the ground, you've got birds, you've got insects, you've got everything. And all of this is tied together, because that's how nature works multiple levels of beautiful complexity. Now human beings come along and go. No, you shouldn't have that because of farts, right? So what we're going to do is we're going to make fields and we're going to make soy and we're going to make um, you know, fake meat in labs that you can eat and whatever, right? So you kill everything. The opposite of life is lifelessness. The opposite of an ecosystem is a desert, and agriculture makes deserts. That's what it does, right?
Speaker 1:If you look up the, the succession of of of plants, how plants grow, you get, you get bare, dead soil. You get like arid, semi-arid situation, which would just be plain sand or silt or clay. You get these annual, these, these, these pioneer and annual plants that go there. They're little seeds that just wait there until it rains. Then it rains and they put out little short roots, right, and they grow and they make more seeds and they go and the seeds go off. Okay. Now what happens is then that plant dies, decays into the soil, adds a little bit of carbon into the soil and then other plants can come along, plants that live for a couple of years, right, put down slightly deeper roots, okay.
Speaker 1:So then you get your perennial grasses and you get your, your shrubs and your bushes and your small trees and eventually big trees and woodlands, and then there's a natural disaster. There's a forest fire, there's a volcano, there's a mudslide, there's something that wipes out the thing. You reset back to factory settings and you have to start all over again with your weeds. That's what agriculture does. So what agriculture does is, twice a year, they just slam this big red button. That goes natural disaster.
Speaker 1:And the natural disaster is what we do. We go and plough it. We go and plough, we destroy everything, never mind. And we haven't even got to talking about the, the absolute infestations we get of insects when you only plant one thing in a field. It's stupid idea, because nature's meant everything protects everything else, right anyway, that that we haven't even got time to to get into that one. But you destroy all the life, you destroy an ecosystem in order to plant one thing soybeans, dwarf wheat, whatever it may be, corn, you know, and just just go and stand in a field and and and find out for yourself. It's an illusion, it's a fairy tale. You cannot avoid death and, yes, yes, plowing causes way, way more deaths than eating beef and lamb, way more deaths. You can't even count the difference, right? You destroy everything. But again, that isn't the point.
Speaker 1:The point is that there are different ways that we can get our food and some of them promote work with nature's laws to maintain complex, beautiful, multi-layered ecosystems, and some of those go out of their way deliberately to destroy those ecosystems, right? Yes, I completely agree that. That factory farming, that keeping pigs in small containers, that keeping chickens under artificial light so that they'll lay, all you know 24 7, that that is absolutely abhorrent and has no place in a civilized society. But the way that we're going to change that is by going out and buying the the best bacon, the best beef and the best eggs and the best chicken, if that's what you want, right? Don't buy farmed fish, buy, buy the natural fish, use your economic power. We are the majority, right? We don't have to succumb to what the corporations are telling us that we're going to be eating. We don't have to agree with the, the, the psychopath clowns who say in 2030, you will eat much less meat for your health and for our planet, right, you will own nothing and be happy. We get to say no to that.
Speaker 1:There's this thing called the hegelian dialectic problem reaction solution. All right, I'll just finish on this right and just bear it in mind that the problems come from them, a very, very small number of people who might meet once a year in switzerland. Okay, they come up with these problems. They give us these problems. The television tells us these problems. It's not the evidence of your senses, right? So I mean, in my lifetime, I grew up with nuclear war. You know aids and whatever and whatever. Since um, they're all invisible and they don't respect borders. They give us the solution.
Speaker 1:The solution happens to be the dissolution of national representative democracies. Look at the rhetoric. They're all saying that national governments are not up to the task of dealing with these global threats that we face now. But there's this thing in the middle right, and their solution is a one world government right, and their solution is us move, all moving into these mega cities, move off the land into the cities, eat the bugs, all of that. But what's the orbit problem? Reaction solution.
Speaker 1:We have to react. It's like a pantomime out there, right? Oh no, it isn't. Oh, yes, it is, you know. Um, we have to react. Why do we have to react? Why do we have to react? Well, the answer is actually very simple. The answer is that we have the power.
Speaker 1:These psychos cannot impose their new world order onto us.
Speaker 1:We, because we are the 99.99%, we have to demand it.
Speaker 1:So they give us, like the Wizard of Oz, they give us this illusion of threat. We all have to turn it. So they give us, like the Wizard of Oz, they give us this illusion of threat and we all have to turn around and say to them please, uncle Bill or Uncle Klaus, or whatever your name might be, please give us your new world solution to this, because we're so scared, scared. And then they go all right, seeing as you, you insist, we will impose this technocracy, so that you then you go into your local supermarket and you try and pay for your, your ribeye steak, and it it says declined because you've exceeded your personal carbon allowance for that month, it's like, well, at least we're protected, you know. And then the world isn't going to come to an end due to climate change, and that's it. So all we have to do is have faith, be strong, trust nature, trust natural law, trust your own body that knows how to heal itself, trust the natural world that knows how to feed itself, and not be afraid.
Speaker 2:That's where it starts. Yeah've said. I've said. Yeah, I'll just um, add a couple of things to that. So I interviewed, uh, jane buxton, who wrote the book the great plant based con yep, and she was telling me she interviewed a farmer from california. He was a avocado farmer and he said he would have to kill 40,000 gophers every year to protect his crop. What's the symbol of veganism? It's the avocado. And most people just don't know this. And I mean I have mentioned this to people before, not necessarily that example, but, like you said, just plowing fields kills far more animals than livestock farming. But then they come up with an excuse to kind of match their belief system, which is interesting. And the other thing I would just say, from a spiritual point of view, some of the most spiritual people that have ever lived were the native Indians.
Speaker 1:What did they eat predominantly. Yeah, yeah, hunted the buffalo.
Speaker 2:Buffalo bison right. So yeah, it's interesting, it's interesting.
Speaker 1:So, ben, what's next for you? Oh well, um, gosh. So yeah, I'm, I'm working on a, a book in the background right now, but can't talk. Can't talk about that, um, and I'm also, I'm going to be moving into, uh, yeah, just just more kind of consulting with people as well. So, you know, for me it feels like they I've got this kind of consulting with people as well. So, you know, for me it feels like I've got this kind of ADD personality that I can't keep my attention on one thing for very long.
Speaker 1:I also ran a conference called Keto Brain Health with my partner Heather this October. That was in Manchester, so we ran the first one of those and that was amazing. So we had Dr Zoe Harcum, richard Smith, anthony chafee, ivor cummins was there and dr rachel brown, the uh, uk's metabolic psychiatrist, metabolic shrink. Um, yeah, lovely event there. So, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna carry on doing that keto brain health, because that's one of those other. I mean, we, you know we've talked about general healthy, but we didn't even get into the, the mental health pandemic that's going on in the world today and even, you know, without getting into you know, other kind of chemicals that may be finding their ways into people's bodies. The um. The impact of diet on on the brain is enormous as well, but we'll leave that one for another time well, and there is again.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of connection between the gut and the brain isn't there and and mental health issues is quite a connection between the gut and the brain and the yeah, and I mean natasha cumble mcbride, you know, has been talking about that for years.
Speaker 1:But yeah, again, it's one of those areas that we're only just it's. It's the connectedness of all things, isn't it? You know, the our medicine systems and our food systems have been so focused and intent on pigeonholing and splitting things up for so many years, but the reality is that everything's connected. We're all dependent on each other. It's insanity to try and pretend that we're not a part of this whole system. If anyone's interested in the brain health side of things, please go along to ketobrainhealthcouk and you can download the recordings of the sessions from there as well, and that would support us and help us to run a future conference as well.
Speaker 2:Brilliant, and where else can people find you online and where can people find your books?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, just search for Red Pill Food Revolution. That's the main thing. If you read one book in 2025, let it be that one. You can buy it from all good and evil online booksellers. So, yeah, it's widely available. Yeah, please buy it and read it. That's all I would ask. It's yeah, I think it's a fantastic book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is a fantastic book. I read it quite recently. I always like it when a book is really informative but also really easy to read, and I just found it so easy to read and just very informative, so I tend to read for an hour before I go to sleep at night, and every day I was looking forward to reading your book, so I can't give it better praise than that, really.
Speaker 1:Thanks, man Appreciate that.
Speaker 2:No, no problem, Ben. Thank you so much for your time today and this has been a great conversation and you've shared some real great information for the listeners to tuck into, so thanks very much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, much appreciated. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2:It's been a pleasure. So that's all from Ben and me for this week, but don't forget to join me same time, same place next week on the Radical Health Rebel podcast. Thanks for tuning in, remember to give the show a rating and a review, and I'll see you next time.
