Charles Mayfield - Skin Care & Regenerative Farming - #31

They say necessity is the mother of invention. That day Charles Mayfield got himself a severe sunburn probably didn't feel like the day his life would be revolutionized.  But it was. With no skincare or sunburn relief products in the house, he was forced to improvise. In the process, he stumbled onto a way to care for skin that our great-grandparents took to be common knowledge. It's not so much a revolution as a rediscovery of something our generation forgot.

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Transcript

Charles Mayfield - Skin Care & Regenerative Farming

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 

lard, creams, pig, fat, skincare, goat, soap, skin, animal, human, cooking, phil, pharaoh, regenerative farming, farming, raised, people, charles, animal fat, jack 

SPEAKERS 

Jack Heald, Charles Mayfield, Dr. Philip Ovadia 

Jack Heald   

And we're back. Hey everybody, it's the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast with Dr. Philip Ovadia. I'm your host, and resident clown, Jack Heald. Phil, who is this bizarre looking character you have advised him on the show? I don't know who this guy is 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

kind of looks like we have Bono on with us. We have been getting some high-level guests now. You didn't know the connections I had. But 

Jack Heald   

I've already heard him talk. So I know it's not Yeah. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

So again, I'm another discussion that I'm really excited for. You know, when I conceptualize starting this podcast, it was really with the goal of ultimately being able to talk to some of the interesting people that I've come across in life. And Charles Mayfield, who's joining us today is certainly one of those people who I had the fortune, the good fortune to just sort of stumble across it over the interwebs, as they say, and as I learned more and more about his story, I said, this is someone that I need to, I need to know more about, and we need to get more people knowing about. So I'm going to turn it over to Charles to just kind of briefly give some of his background and then we'll get into some of the real interesting stuff that he's doing around health. And we're going to ask a question that Jack actually asked before we started recording, which was why did Phil invite a guy who sells skincare products onto the podcast? 

Charles Mayfield   

Yeah, I love it. Why? I love it. I love it. Well, so we'll start with intro first and foremost. Phil, it's an absolute pleasure to be here. Jack obviously a pleasure to be with you as well. I have this is it. This is a very excited 

Jack Heald   

have to suck up to me. It's his show. Well, I 

Charles Mayfield   

It's a real honor. I'm pleased to be here. I appreciate you guys working around the schedule. This evening. We had a little snafu on my end and you guys were very flexible. And I appreciate that.  

Jack Heald   

In terms of who I am. I'm having my evening drink though.  

Charles Mayfield   

Good. Good for you. I'm having my evening kombucha right now. So salute. So yeah, so I am. I'm a jack of many trades, arguably master of absolutely none. But I'm a regenerative farmer at heart I raise meat, mostly pasture based meat here in East Tennessee beef, pork chicken. We do eggs do a batch of turkeys in the in the fall. been doing that since 2016 2017. We actually launched maple pastures which is a very small micro regenerative farm here in East Tennessee I service customers, very a handful of customers in Chattanooga and Atlanta. And so that's been a real joy. I absolutely love farming, especially in a regenerative way. I do a lot of modeling after sort of the greats that have come before me and are still around. Joel Salatin is one that comes to mind.  

Joel has actually been a real sort of a de facto farming mentor for many years, he has been very generous with his time. He was featured in Michael Pollan's book Omnivore's Dilemma a number of years ago with Salatin Yeah, he's phenomenal. Joel and his family have been very kind to me and in sharing their knowledge. And of course, he's a prolific writer as well. So most of my farming started in the pages of his books, but anyway, and so, yeah, regenerative farming, been doing that for a number of years. I had a very interesting episode. We go into this on my website a little bit episode. And July 5 of 2019. I was knee deep in the hemp business hemp industry, we sort of made a big launch into hemp in 2019, after the farm bill of 18 had passed.  

Long story short, I got very, very sunburned. And I had a background have I have a background in culinary pursuits and cooking my ex-wife and I've coauthored a number of best-selling cookbooks in the Paleo space. And so this all ties together, I promise, but I hope so. Yeah. So I came home from a particularly grueling 48 hours of farming with a really bad sunburn for your listeners, I'm sure we can all relate to, to a lobster red type sunburn. And the medicine cabinet was empty was sort of scratching my head, what am I going to do? I cook a lot and being a pastured meat producer, I had a jar of lard in my refrigerator that I was using to cook with.  

And so in a moment of, I guess, panic and also curiosity, rather than driving to the farm pharmacy and trying to pick up some cream, I decided to lather up my scorch skin with rendered pig fat. And so the long story short is it's soaked immediately soaked into my skin, which I thought was fascinating. Took shower, went to sleep, woke up the next morning, I put another layer on because things felt good. So that was it two applications. In a day or two, my sunburn had completely resolved, which I thought was curious and awesome. But it also I had been sunburned plenty of times in my life.  

So when the sunburn left, I started paying attention and for the next two to three weeks, at no point did I ever appeal. And for those that have had a specially a particularly nasty sunburn, you always peel even if it's a week or two weeks post sunburn. And so with two applications of my lard my pastured pigs lard I never peeled, and the sunburn was gone and, and so that's really the lightbulb moment for me, I started playing around at that point. This is again, about two and a half years ago playing around with various DIY recipes and tinkering and tinkering again with his culinary background just playing around in the kitchen and all of that it's culminated into the launch of our the first lard based skincare company product that I'm aware of in the US, we launched back in January, Farrow Dot Life is our website. And yeah, just trying to give people a…  

We don't use any preservatives or chemicals in our it's a full fat product. And we don't use any preservatives or chemicals. Which, which, again, is sort of tying into why I'm here today, which is to talk about sort of metabolic health through the lens of skincare. And yeah, so I'm gonna stop there. I've been I've been on the mic here for a minute and, and 

Jack Heald   

So first, Farrow dot Life, correct? Farrow dot Life.  All right, we'll make sure that shows up in the show notes. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah. So what, interested me a lot when I started talking with Charles and I had met him was the concept that there are three ways essentially that we get nutrients into our body, or we get things into our body, we can either take them eat them or drink them. So they come through our gastrointestinal tract, and they get absorbed, we can breathe them in, and they get absorbed within the lungs, or we can absorb things through our skin. And many people will be aware that skin is your largest organ. And it turns out that there's a very good relationship or, or bad relationship, I guess, depending on what you're allowing to come into contact with your skin, between your skin health and your overall health.  

So when I heard about what Charles was doing it was immediately interesting to me. And then of course as we discussed, actually in great detail on our last two episodes with Texas slim regenerative farming is, I think one of the areas that we need to focus more on as we look to improve our health systemically and again, that's something that Charles brings to the table. And Charles just to go a little bit more into the farming background. This is a family pursuit for you correct your multi-generational. 

Charles Mayfield   

My family has a multigenerational background in dairy farming. By the time I was coming of age, Mayfield Dairy was no longer an active Dairy it was more of a scaled-up milk bottler you know. If you know much of - I'm sure Slim and you guys touched on this but sort of - the aggregation and industrialization of, of our food supply. Mayfield Dairy was, was effectively a milk bottler.  

By the time I was I was in my teenage and early adult years. But yes, I do have some background, too, in that, in that regards, but never, never really we had a couple backyard chickens and goats when I was growing up. But the true farming pursuit was a was a, something relatively new to me. As I started here five, six years ago. 

Jack Heald   

I've got like 900 million questions I want to ask you. Come on man, Maybe it's possible that I'm exaggerating. Let me just ask all the ones that come to mind immediately. And you can bat back the ones that you want to you want to play with and ignore the ones you don't. I want to know how you specifically in detail got started with regenerative farming, I want to know how much land it takes to do what you're doing on. I want to know how a person could start that on a small amount of man land and how they would go. I have been wondering this before I talk to you. And it's a good thing that you came along because I can ask this.  

How many cattle does it take to feed a family of four? If you're raising your own cattle? How many do you have to own at any given time? That's all the farming related questions that came to mind immediately. Now I have a skincare question I also want to throw at you, you're free to take any or none of these. Do you smell like bacon? And do dogs really enjoy being around you now? And furthermore? Do are men kind of unnaturally attracted to you? And don't know why? Because well obviously if somebody smells like bacon, we're all going to be interested in that. And that's only a partially humorous question. I'm genuinely interested. lard. And then the last and probably to me, the most interesting question is, can you speculate as to the mechanism at work with this lard cream? 

Charles Mayfield   

I got it. Oh, I got it all jacked. Alright, so let me I'm gonna punt a couple of your questions, but I'm going to try and give you an answer. So let's see. Let me turn that on. Okay, so you through a bunch of farming questions out there. I'm gonna I'm gonna default most of my farming question answers to my dear friend Joel Salatin. In terms of he has a fairly new book called Micro Polyface. That addresses I think, this farm Pollock Polyface is the name of his farm, I want to say that the new book is called micro Polyface. It's basically taking a homesteader style approach to what they do there. So scaling it down to more of an excuse me homestead, a type of level of production. I think that a wrap up a bunch of different questions you asked in terms of acreage and how many cows I mean, how many cows does it take to feed a family of four? It would take a couple to feed my family because we eat a lot of beef. But it just depends. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna use Joel as sort of my outlet for answering your farming questions. Alright, so never, never jumping into skincare. How did I get here?  

Jack Heald   

No the question. The question was, do men love being around you because you smell like bacon? Okay, you attract a lot of dogs. Most importantly, speculate about the mechanism of action here. 

Charles Mayfield   

Absolutely. Okay, so let me clear one thing up. We're not rendering bacon fat in our creams. So lard is rendered back fat people think it's gonna smell like bacon when in reality bacon has been cured and smoked before you cook it so I'm not saying I'm not against coming out with a smoky cured scented men's cream at some point but our we have propriety  

Jack Heald   

Thank you. I think there's a there's a market begging for that. 

Charles Mayfield   

We have we have a proprietary blend of essential oils that that we use for our scented cream. We have an unscented cream and I guess for your listeners, it's important to understand that that Ferro is not odorless, it's an animal fat base we use, we actually use lard, leaf lard and tallow and various proportions, 

Jack Heald   

I think you're gonna have to define those 

Charles Mayfield   

I'll get I'll come back to that. But we so we use animal fat. These are all animal fats that we're utilizing in our creams, and they all have different viscosities they all have different set profiles. And so in terms of turning those into a cream for your face versus a cream for your body, we tinker with those quite a bit, but we have an essential oil we use. DoTERRA essential oils are one of the highest quality, branded essential oil companies in the world, we use their essential oils to blend in a proprietary scent for our creams.  

And so the goal is to is to not smell like bacon, obviously. But we've got a very relaxing scent on our skin food and face food but for those that are as an example perhaps allergic to lavender or grapefruit oil or sandalwood, those are sort of the combinations we're using now. Then they can get a scent free version which again, I think smells fantastic. We have had a couple of issues where our customers leave their leave their creams on the counter near their dogs and the dogs like the creams so if you're a pet lover you're gonna really love Faro because they really enjoy really enjoy the smell, I guess. I have a couple dogs here on the farm and we don't really have that issue but yes, dogs, dogs, dogs are gonna love you even more than they love you now. This is a really, really go ahead. 

Jack Heald   

Yeah, so talk about if you know or at least speculate. Why did this work? Okay. Because what you described was putting fat rendered fat on your sunburn. And you noted that it instantly Well, I don't know if you said instantly but you noted that it quickly absorbed into your burn to skin relieved the burn? I'm inferring that you didn't say it explicitly. And after a second application, you never blistered are shattered?  

Charles Mayfield   

Alright, so let's talk about let's talk about the mechanisms. Yeah, let's talk about the mechanisms. Okay, standard skincare. Okay, is standard skincare moisturizers in the like, out there is an emulsification. Okay, roughly 75% water and 25% fat. Okay, so that's your standard run of the mill cream. Okay. So let's talk about one reason it works so well. Is that fat? Okay, so most of the skincare market is built on sort of a vegan model, plant based, cruelty free, plant-based fat model, okay, so your shea butter, or olive oil is your coconut oils. And those are, those are the higher quality oils that are used. I mean, you've got a lot of nasty sort of seed oils that are snuck into a lot of creams as well. But again, in a standard skincare market, all of your fats are plant based. Okay, we're using animal fat I the last time I checked out was a mammal, I could probably go to my doctor next week and get another test but we're an animal.  

We're a sentient mammalian species. And so, one of the one of the reasons I believe Pharaoh works so well is because we're using animal fat, we're an animal. Okay, here's the coolest part. And this is one of the reasons why I think it's so effective. So, pigs if for your listeners that don't know pigs are so genetically similar to humans. It's actually striking. Dr. Ovadia here is a trained heart surgeon. I'm going to guess we're going to guess that at some point during his training, he laid his hands on at least one or two pig organs. Okay, we train our surgeons on pigs we've used pig heart valves and various other organs in human bodies. Their skin is almost a spot-on match to human skin in terms of the tension and toughness and elasticity of it. Okay, which translates Jack, it translates over to pigs and humans are extremely genetically similar.  

Okay, so, when you want, there's the magic trifecta of awesomeness and skincare, vitamin A, E, and D, that's alpha, echo and Delta. Okay? Pigs metabolize all three of those vitamins exactly mechanistically the same way humans do. Okay, so if you give a pig exposure to the sun, a healthy diet, and move them around, so they're not in a in a toxic environment filled with poop and pee on a regular basis. In other words, if you pasture those pigs out in nature and let them live a very fulfilling piggy life, then they are naturally metabolizing Vitamins A, E and D and storing those in their subcutaneous fat, okay, which we render out and turn into creams.  

Okay, so that's number one. Number two is the absorption, you brought up the absorption it, our creams absorb, almost instantly, one of the big factors and Phil brought this up, I'll expand upon it a little bit, but our skin is our second stomach. It's our largest organ, but a lot of people call it our second stomach. Okay, and with our, with our gastrointestinal tract, we got all this, we've got all these mechanisms in place to keep a lot of people don't know this, but just because food goes in our mouth doesn't necessarily mean it gets inside of our body, right. And so you've got all these really smart mechanisms in in in the GI tract to keep food until it's properly broken down, and the body's identified it to make sure it can come in to keep food inside our GI tract. Alright, and then it gets down in the small intestine.  

So you've got those little micro veela and they absorb and bring the nutrients into our body, our skin works similarly, in that if something is fairly neutral from a pH standpoint, it will absorb more quickly into the skin. And so pig fat, specifically, lard is naturally pH balanced and aligned to human skin because they're so similar to us genetically. And so you've got this pH match, you've got a lipid match. Okay, so the balance of polyunsaturated saturated and monounsaturated fats, and you've got this naturally occurring vitamin content, all three of which are unheard of, in the commercial, conventional skincare market. Okay. And so you wrap all of that I like to tell people all the times our creams are effective for two reasons, what's in them, which is great, okay, all these naturally occurring pH biologically aligned, vitamins and minerals and pH and all that, that's, that's fantastic. But it's also just as important about what's not in our creams, okay?  

Our cream – Farrow’s a full fat cream when you open up a jar, it's a little dab will do you it spreads out along way we don't emulsify with any water when you introduce water to fat, you're creating an environment where mold and bacteria can grow up. You mentioned bacon, okay, you've cooked bacon before jack right? Once or twice? Yeah, every now and then we cook a little bacon. And what do you do you take the drippings, you take the drippings and you put them in a little jar. Right and they sit on your they sit on your kitchen counter for weeks, sometimes a month at a time. I mean, sometimes, you'll put them in the refrigerator sometimes, but you… 

Jack Heald   

I store mine on the counter. 

Charles Mayfield   

That's exactly right. And it will sit there, and it'll be good to go for weeks and weeks and weeks at a time you just you know you're brown your next burger with it or whatever it comes along. The reason you're able to do that is because there's no water, it's just fat. That's being stored in that jar. Right?  

If you're familiar with the with the cooking methodology known as confit, it's a French style of cooking, where you render something so much with it develops a fat cat coffee. Duck is a very, very famous I'll bet I'll bet doc eats comfit all the time. But basically you're cooking something and rendering enough of the fat to where the fat, fat rises to the top right. And so you got this nice big dish, the fat rises to the top. You take the dish off the heat and let it solidify it and cap and the fat will cap off the top of the dish. Even if there's water underneath. It'll cap everything off and hermetically seal it.  

Okay, so that that dish is good days or weeks later. A course until you break the seal. But they break the seal. Yep. So I feel like I'm all over the board here but no, I'm trying to I'm trying To Smart lard, we've trademarked smart lard as an ingredient in all of our creams, it has to do with the way we raise the pigs. And the way that they're the way that they eat the way that they live. And the method with which we render the fat just to make sure it's super clean. When you're the first lard-based skincare company in the country, you sort of got a trademark a few things to make sure you're protecting the consumer. So if you're going to buy some lard cream out there, folks make sure it says smart lard on it. What? Yeah, 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

yeah, what? Wow so, so many interesting things that you've touched on. And I've just been sitting here, listen, but I guess it is my show. So I got to talk a little bit today. But it's fascinating to me that how you describe the traditional skincare market. And basically, they are trying to recreate, again, what nature made perfectly, and we have these animal fats that are closely related to us. And by the way, I will verify that, yes, I have spent much time dissecting pig hearts. And the heart valves that I implant as replacement valves oftentimes are made from pig heart material, because it is the closest thing we have it was just in the news that they did a transplant of a pig cart into a human, for the first time, unfortunately, the patient only survived a few weeks afterwards. But when we look, there's a lot of interest about being able to transplant pig organs directly into humans, because they are so genetically close to humans.  

Another interesting thing that you talked about is how the way to raise a healthy pig is to not feed them a bunch of corn and soy and vegetable and seed oils. And let them eat their natural diets and be outside. And if you want to make a pig fatter, you feed them carbohydrates and greens. And that's exactly what makes a human fatter as well. So, so many interesting parallels there. But, what, why do you think that lard got so demonized, because if we go back 100 years, lard was actually the primary cooking fat in in the United States, probably worldwide. And then we saw this movement, this demonization of lard and this movement away from lard. And today, if you mentioned cooking with lard, first of all, a lot of people won't even know what you're talking about. They don't even know what lard is. And if they do, they will say, Oh my God that's so unhealthy. How can you use that stuff? So, talk to us a little bit about how lard got such a bad reputation and why we should be returning to using it more. 

Charles Mayfield   

Sure, so Well, I'm gonna I'm going to give a little credit. So I've learned a lot in developing a skincare product. You mentioned I know you've had a Texas slim on actually, I'm doing some work with slim. I'm going to be in Kerrville, Texas next month for his first beef initiative conference. Really excited about that. But I was on his podcast, not too terribly long ago. So here's the story, Procter and Gamble. If you're if your listeners don't know, this is fascinating, I forget which was which. But one was a candle maker, and one was a soap maker, I think gamble was the candle maker and proctor was the soap maker. And the late 1800s. Soap back then was made in extremely large bricks.  

So they would make a big brick of soap and they would sell that brick to the local pharmacy in the little in the little prairie town or wherever and the pharmacist would then cut the soap up into individual blocks and sell that to the customer. And couple things happened all at once. So they decided Procter and Gamble decided they were going to start making soap in individual bars. And at the time, all of their soap was made with lard. There was a price fixing. I believe that was the history books tell me at the time they were trying to figure out how to do individual bars of soap. There was a price fixing juggernaut going on with the lard and tallow industry, which I think was based out of Chicago at the time. And so they were seeing their costs drive up Through the large fat, they teamed up with a German scientist, they figured out how to make cottonseed oil nontoxic and, and they figured out how to hydrogenate it which made it more solid at room temperature. And so they teamed up with this German scientist and they figured out how to do that.  

So they started making soap with it was all this cotton. You know, cotton was everywhere Texas actually Texas Slim's home state was the king of cotton. And so they bought all these cotton mills. And they invested in making all this cottonseed oil. And half the oil was going in for their candles and the other half was going in for the soap. Sounds like a pretty good story, right? Well, what happened at the turn of the century? I don't know if y'all remember this or not. None of us are here. But we figured out like we figured out electricity. Right? And so gradually in the first two decades of the 20th century, let's just say candle sales started to plummet.  

Okay, I've revised electricity and lights are on. And so Procter and Gamble's like, what in the world are we going to do with all this? Extra cottonseed oil got laying around, let's figure out how to really hydrogenate it and turn it into a cooking oil. And so you can look this up? Yeah, you can look this up and find, find some of the early, the early ads. But again, you mentioned this, Phil the prevailing cooking oil at the time was lard, which for your listeners that don't know, is a creamy white substance that came in a canner jar.  

And if you look at Crisco, they actually covered it. You know, this is back in the early hours and make it to make it look like lard they made it look like lard i mentioned maybe before we got on the call, I mentioned my ex-wife and I've written these paleo cookbooks, I've been in the cooking scene for a long time. And I would have, I would have bet dollars to donuts that the industrial seeds. oils that are so prevalent in our food, certainly now would have come from the food industry. And it's so crazy how this, this little Pharaoh project of mine I've stumbled upon it was actually the soap and cosmetic and skincare company that created Crisco.  

Jack Heald   

Some guy got promoted to executive vice president for coming up with that idea.  

Charles Mayfield   

And the rest is history.  

Jack Heald   

I want to back up. I want to back up a minute because you said something that I meant to ask you. I meant to ask you about I should have done this way earlier in the conversation. You talked about, I think three different kinds of fats, Ferro tallow and something else. Is that right? Would you define those? And then I've got another question once we get those defined. 

Charles Mayfield   

Sure. So let me let me define two types of fat. Okay. And when I say fat, I mean fat on an animal. So everyone's gonna know about what's called subcutaneous fat that's belly fat on a human or back fat on a pig. Okay? That fat has its primary function is a storage Oregon. Okay, so, you've heard about like, the acorn finished Spanish ham, really high end, Spanish cured ham. Okay, so the flavor from the ingestion of the acorns or whatever the case may be, that that flavor and that all of that aroma and everything is stored in the back fat in the subcutaneous fat of the animal. Okay. Then you have and, Doc, you can chime in on the actual term here, but I'm gonna just call it internal fat kidney fat. Okay, so we're all humans that would say that again. Visceral, visceral fat. Yep. Thank you forgot the term for a second there.  

So you have visceral fat and in the case of a pig, or a human or a cow, the, the primary function of that fat is to just purely protect the kidneys. Okay? And so it's not storing anything. It's just it's sort of hanging out as a it's almost like a seatbelt for your kidneys, right. It's just they're doing its job protecting the kidneys. So if you render the kidney fat of a cow, that is where you get beef tallow from, okay. And if you read if you render the kidney fat of a pig, that is called leaf lard and then okay, leaf lard. And then if you render the back fat of a pig that is called lard. And if you if you look up an old, your great grandmother's Foxfire Old, old timey baking recipes, leaf lard, was a prized cooking oil, especially for baking, because it does not impart leaf lard. By nature is odorless, no flavor and flavor list. That's right, because it's not a storage fat. Okay, and so it was commonly you it was prized to be used in baking because if it did not impart flavor or, or, or aroma to whatever it was, you're baking pie crust or whatever. So, I'm learning things already go lard, lard, leaf, lard, and tallow and we use various ratios of all three fats in our creams to get just the right texture for skin, food and face food. 

Jack Heald   

Now, I just want to clarify, following up on the whole Crisco thing. You said that Mr. Proctor Mr. Gamble made candles and soap. And then you said, and this was the part where I went home. But now that I think about it, this was a key plot element in Fight Club. Soap used to be made from fat. Animal fat, 

Charles Mayfield   

soap is still made from fat. So look at me. So all the time, this is fantastic. So the term the term saponification is when you take when you take a fat and a water, there's fat water and lie, which is with his sodium high. I forget the I again, I'm a farmer. So I forget the terms but lie. You take the lie water and so I end up and fat, and everything gets to a certain temperature, and you put it together and you and you mix it up and then it saponify us, which means over a course of a number of days it hardens and cures and then you can use it as soap 

Jack Heald   

I did not know that. I really didn't know that. Okay, so if we were washing our bodies with this particular kind of lard-based soap, would we have healthier skin? 

Charles Mayfield   

Yes. Jack, I'll have to get your was pretty unambiguous. I know I'm gonna I'm gonna mail you some of my soap I'm making I'm still tinkering with soap. We'll probably have a soap product at some point. But yeah, yes. I mean, again, back-to-back to the magic this stuff is it's biologically and genetically perfect for human skin. Whether that be a cream or a soap or shampoo, I mean, the applications and I haven't dug into the history books very deeply. But we use animal fat for a whole bunch of stuff. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah, this really gets back into you know how we used to use the whole animal. And we've gotten away from that. I will say I've switched to using tallow-based soaps and shampoos and skincare products. And I think I have pretty good skin. 

Jack Heald   

But how long was it? Tallow is animal fat? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Tallow is beef fat. Yeah. So, um, but one qualifier here and I think it's important to point out is that the majority of the lard that's probably produced in this country, currently is not good quality Lord, because pigs like humans depending on the food that they are fed, those fats are going to end up, in their fat, the, so if pigs, like humans are fed a lot of carbohydrates a lot have vegetable grains and soy boys and corns, they're going to end up with a high percentage of polyunsaturated specifically Omega six fats, fatty acids within their fat tissue, it gets a little confusing because it turns out that fat can mean a lot of different things, but fatty acids in your fat tissues, which is not good for human health, or for pig health. And as opposed to cows, which are ruminant animals, that can actually convert polyunsaturated fats back to saturated fat. So, one thing to note is that, going and buying your standard lard in the supermarket and rubbing it on your skin is probably not going to have similar to results to what you know the well raised Lord that Charles and other regenerative farmers are producing 

Charles Mayfield   

Yeah, Phil, I mean, I would say I'm trying to highlight the benefits of regenerative farming through the lens of skincare Okay, and we can we can wrap poetic and maybe come on we do another show sometime I mean, I've got 10 or 15 years in the saddle of the Paleo diet and cooking and things of that nature so you know what use you said it like using the whole animal and so this is a way for me to honor Pharaoh really represents a way for me to honor further honor this animal that I've raised up that has helped me, heal the land and push the soil and land in a more positive direction the bacon on them tastes amazing and I'm utilizing this fat now to really highlight a yet another benefit of this animal and to your point Absolutely.  

Not only does a poor diet affect, the fat profile and the toxicity, stored in this animals’ fat but also just their environment in general. You know, the industrial the industrial pig market is abhorrence, it's just, a pig grows up. So your standard run of the mill pork chop that you buy in the store, grows up on concrete, and never sees the sun. It well that is that's not an exaggeration. They are born in a house, raised in a house and diamond house having never seen the sun. This is an animal I mean, again, it's so biologically similar to humans that they metabolize vitamin A and D, exactly the same way we do. So imagine Jack, Phil spending a year without the sun just one year and what would be the downstream nefarious health effects of robbing you of that and so I get I get a little emotional. Yeah, yeah, no, 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

it's really true. And again just continuing on the theme that we've been talking about the last few weeks here. You know, we if we want to improve our health, as a society, part of that is going to require that we improve our farming practices our protein raising practices as Texas slim would say, and I think a large part of your story and of what you're doing Charles is doing that and is finding even more ways to benefit from that. Besides the better raised food.  

If anyone out there has had bacon or had pork chops from an animal that's raised like Charles is talking about, you will know that it is it's almost criminal that we call the commercially raised stuff bacon because it is nowhere near the same quality, the same food, the texture of the fat is different. And the taste is different. And so I would highly recommend to people that have you have the opportunity to go out and get good pasture raised pork that's not fed corn and soy You will greatly benefit from the from that opportunity. 

Jack Heald   

Or yeah, he's on the board. 

Charles Mayfield   

Yes, pigs are. Pigs are my favorite farm animal? There they are an omnivore, which means they're very gregarious. And they're super curious, because they're not sure if they're going to be able to eat you or not. So they come right up to you I mean that we have a great relationship with them. It's fantastic. But oh, gosh, I lost my train of thought there. The pigs are omnivores, no matter what. Phil, the last point I made. 

Jack Heald   

He was talking about folks getting taken the opportunity to get a hold of pasture raised pork, 

Charles Mayfield   

yes. For your listeners. There's a There's a website called eat wild. And they do a really good job of like pulling in local farms. You know, you plug in your zip code and it's… You're right, Phil, I mean, the difference between pasture raised pork and what you buy, it's, they're completely two different eating experiences. So I want all of your listeners out there to have access to some pasture raised local pork, chicken, beef, you name it and eat wild calm is a is a fantastic resource to try and connect with a local farmer. 

Jack Heald   

I was at the farmers market a couple of weeks ago and really because of this show, Dr. Ovadia has had quite the influence on my eating choices. So I went to go meet some local meat producers and shook hands with ranchers of various types of animals. One of the folks that I bought a dozen eggs from grows emus. Emus. Now I gotta tell you, I remember there was a, there was a big e mu craze, I don't know 1015 years ago where they were going to be the next. The next thing. And I wasn’t excited about emus. 

Charles Mayfield   

They were. There’re a few people around here that lost their skirt on emus, and I listened more power to anybody that wants to try anything. You know, in this country in this country, we eat beef and pork and chicken. I love a good goat. Goat’s actually the most commonly eaten meat in the world. And we only know that yes, and we eat next. No goat. 

Jack Heald   

I asked one of the farmers about goats because they did that he cattle, sheep and chickens. I said, What about goat? And he made some disparaging comment that frankly, I don't remember about goat. But I'd had the same thought. I mean, I love lamb. Lamb is my favorite. Lambs. Fantastic. Yeah. And I think your lambs and goats are pretty close to they're pretty similar animals. I guess a goat is lean where a lamb is fat. But maybe that's maybe that's a difference. No, I didn't realize go that much. Well, goats eat everything. Oh my god, goats eat everything. 

Charles Mayfield   

Well, from a from a farmer's perspective, okay. There's the saying that if a fence won't hold water, it won't hold a goat. And, and that's heads. One of the reasons I don't raise them is they're just cantankerous as hell. You got to have a good market to be able to sell the product and a fully a fully finished goat might weigh 80 to 100 pounds if you're lucky. And so what are you going to charge for that meat and you got to take it to a processor and what are they going to charge you to process it because it takes them the same amount of time and energy to process 100 pound goat as it does a 300 pound pig or 1000-pound beef and so it's an interesting again, goat curry one of my favorite meals on the planet. But you know that that's not enough of a reason to raise a bunch of goats unfortunately. 

Jack Heald   

Okay, well let's talk about how folks find out more information about Faro skincare products, and all the other things that you can do to help people restore their metabolic health. One way or another? 

Charles Mayfield   

Sure. Well I mean the best. We have a website Pharaoh dot life and Pharaoh again is spelled F a RR O W, which is for your listeners that don't know Pharaoh is a is a term for a new batch of piglets, a pharaoh of piglets or farrowing. So I 

Jack Heald   

did not know that either are very informative show here. 

Charles Mayfield   

A little homage to our, our poor kind upbringing. But 

Jack Heald   

the Mama Pig has as what I would call a litter, but it's not a litter. It's a pharaoh of piglets. 

Charles Mayfield   

Yes. If you're. Yeah, if you're a farmer like me, and you have mama pigs and Daddy Pigs, and you put them together, you're called a pig Pharaoh. We're and yes, when Mama has her litter of pigs it's, it's a pharaoh of piglets. I'll be darned. Yeah. So that's the best 

Jack Heald   

things per hour on this on this show than almost any other thing I do. This is fantastic. Okay, Faro dot life. And what are folks going to see when they get there? 

Charles Mayfield   

They're going to see well, there's a lot of our story is there we have a signature, sort of our launch product is our what's called our total skincare bundle. This is a, a Skin Food for the neck down a face food for the neck up. And then I mentioned again earlier we were in the hemp business. So I have a skincare elixir that you take sublingually and so that's really designed to sort of heal the skin from the inside out. So we do the inside out with the elixir and the outside in with the two creams. And we so we've got those sold in a bundle or you can buy them separately and then our we got a hat. I got it somewhere. I'll show you. Oh yeah, here we go. Got a Lord help us had an t shirt. You know, it's I tell you, Jack This is so funny.  

You know, when we were putting the brand and everything together, I had a team of people I was consulting with and a dozen of them are so you know about half of them were like, we don't need to say Lord let's, let's get away from let's just sort of, let's just push that off to the side. Let's just talk about how it heals skin and helps, and I was like no, no, like front and center. Like our logo is gonna be a pig. We are. We're pro pig. Pro healthy pig. Big large. So that's our that's the best place to find us. We've got an Instagram and a and a Twitter account, but that's the best place to find this. Hey, I got to ask you, Dr. Ovadia what I want to give a discount code for your listeners for anyone listening. What should I Ovadia? What should I do? I'll let you pick the discount code since this is gonna air after we get off. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

How about we go with stay off? 

Charles Mayfield   

Stay off. I got 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

it. There we go. Well, that is that is metal. Appreciate it. And I'm going to admit that you know when I started on this journey, I certainly didn't really picture that I would be here talking about skin health and how it relates to your overall health and your metabolic health but, but here we are. And the reality is that one of the aspects one of the ways that you're going to Stay Off My Operating Table is by paying attention to what you're putting on your skin. And I think Charles is doing some great work to educate us all on that 

Jack Heald   

this isn't easily the most entertaining episode I've had in quite some time. Well 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

we and we got we got a couple other barn burners coming up in the next few weeks jack so strap in 

Jack Heald   

Alright, so go to Charles Mayfield's website Pharaoh dot life and use the discount code stay off to get how much did you say 90% off? 

Charles Mayfield   

We're gonna do we're gonna do 20% off or 20% or doctor. Yeah. You're done. Good. You done good. 

Jack Heald   

All right, very good. I love it. This has been well it's been educational, but it's been a lot of fun to Charles. You must you seem like somebody who has a good time just kind of in general. I guess your meat is not really available to the general public. That what I gather? 

Charles Mayfield   

No, I mean regionally, if you're in Atlanta or Chattanooga or East Tennessee, you can find me but we're, we're, I'm not taking too many new customers right now we're a very small farm and, and I'm trying to remain loyal to those that have been with me through thick and thin these last few years, but I will candidly say that Pharaoh's success will certainly drive the expansion of Mayfield pastures and hopefully allow us to raise more healthy meat for people to consume again. Just as important a metabolic health is what we put on our skins what we put inside our stomach. So yeah, I would love to be able to expand and grow that as well. At some point, but yes, that was not a 

Jack Heald   

We're gonna provide lots of ways for folks to eat healthy as well as put good stuff on their skin. Charles, thanks for being with us. This has been a blast, doctor. Oh, any last words before we sign off? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Like I said, this has been a great conversation that I was really looking forward to. And we have many more like that coming up. Over the next few weeks and months here on Stay Off My Operating Table. 

Jack Heald   

Indeed, we do. Well for Dr. Philip Ovadia and the Stay Off My Operating Table Podcast. I'm Jack Heald. You can follow Dr. O on Twitter at “IFixHearts. He's also on Instagram. You can reach his website at OvadiaHeartHealth.com Be sure to subscribe. We drop a new episode just about every Tuesday at midnight. Whatever the local time is for me. I'm in Arizona so nobody ever knows. We'll talk to you next time.