Janel Louise Ohletz is the PhD who Warns Your 'Organic' Food is Destroying Your Gut

🌱 The ONE Thing You Need to Know

Shop the OUTSIDE aisles of the grocery store. Real food is on the perimeter - produce, meat, dairy. Middle aisles = processed junk your body doesn't recognize. Small steps > perfection.

Guest: Dr. Janel Louise Ohletz

PhD in Soil Science | Professional Chef | Author of "Between Farm and Fork" | Grew up on organic farm | Survived heart attack | Director of Sustainable Agriculture

💣 Mind-Blowing Facts

• Your "organic" food might be destroying soil health (tillage kills microbes)
• Modern vegetables have 50% less nutrients than 50 years ago
• Ricotta cheese is now mostly GUM, not dairy
• Your gut microbiome IS your immune system
• Endocrine disruptors in cleaning products make you fat
• Methane from food waste = 27x worse than CO2

🔥 Best Quotes

• "Organic is just a sticker if the soil isn't healthy"
• "You feed the microbes, the microbes feed the plant - same with your gut"
• "If it doesn't grow out of the ground or wasn't once grazing, don't eat it"
• "Sugar should NOT be the 2nd ingredient in pasta sauce"
• "Your body stores chemicals in fat because it doesn't know what to do with them"
• "The French don't have cup holders - they SIT with their coffee"

🛒 Shopping Rules

1. Shop the OUTSIDE aisles only (except pasta aisle)
2. Read labels: Can't pronounce it? Don't buy it
3. Ingredients should be <5 items you recognize
4. Sugar in pasta sauce = trained palate (you don't need it)
5. Trader Joe's = good food, bad plastic packaging
6. Frozen vegetables > canned (less salt)

🇫🇷 European Mindset

• They buy food DAILY from local markets
• Family comes before work (bosses send you home at 4:30pm Friday)
• No to-go coffee culture (sit and enjoy)
• Slow food movement: local, seasonal, intentional
• They're MORE productive working LESS hours

🧠 Health Connections

• Soil health = Human health
• Gut microbiome needs microbes from soil
• Depleted soil = depleted nutrients in food
• Endocrine disruptors plug hormone receptors (metabolism chaos)
• Fast food = convenience trap stealing your health
• TV/doom scrolling = time thieves

📚 Key Concepts

• Regenerative agriculture > organic certification
• A2 milk = better for gut than A1 milk
• Tillage = killing soil microbes (bad)
• Cover crops = feeding soil without chemicals
• Silage tarps = natural weed control
• Vote with your dollars = change the food system

Action Steps

1. Shop outside aisles ONLY this week
2. Read ONE food label before buying
3. Make yogurt at home (see her Instagram)
4. Ditch ONE convenience food
5. Involve kids in cooking (quality time + life skills)
6. Give yourself GRACE - small steps count

Connect

🌐 Website: OhletzGrow.com (FREE recipes, no ads!)
📱 Instagram: @OhletzGrow
🧵 Threads: @OhletzGrow
💼 LinkedIn: Janel Louise Ohletz
📖 Book: "Between Farm and Fork" (memoir + recipes)

Final Message

"Don't seek perfection. Every small step toward real food is progress. One Bojangles run doesn't negate everything. Give yourself grace and keep moving forward."

Transcript

Rob Pene (00:01.922)
Okay, so we are on. This is going to be a great treat because Janelle Owlitz is all about health. And I need all about that health in my life. But so is a lot of other people. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'm excited about today. So you just wrote a book.

Janel Louise Ohletz (00:15.168)
Yeah, I'd agree.

Janel Louise Ohletz (00:25.014)
Yes, between farm and fork. this, it's a memoir. So there's my book and I'm a doctor, but it's a doctor of soil science. I have a special specialization in soil science in soil fertility. Where do we get nutrients in our food? It comes from the soil. So you can take the same mantra of soil health and apply it to human health.

in that it actually is you feed the microbes, the microbes feed the plants with our gut microbiome, which is finally becoming a thing that people are aware of. Although I've been aware of it for like 15 years or so, because that was like so fringe back in the day, you know, like even like organic, right? I grew up on an organic farm before organic was cool. Right. So it's the same premise. You feed

Rob Pene (01:14.039)
Yeah, yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (01:19.308)
the microbes, they release the nutrients for the body to be able to absorb. Same, a plant doesn't just go out and like munch on the nutrients it needs to uptake. It can only take things up in a solution. That solution is how those nutrients get there is the microbes that actually decompose the organic matter in the soil and release those nutrients.

And we in our kind of more traditional agriculture or we'll call it modern agriculture is that we apply nitrogen and we apply phosphorus. We've applied these three main ingredients, even though there's micronutrients and all sorts of other stuff that those plants need to get big yields. But what's happened over time is the plant still needed all these micronutrients and then the soils got depleted. And now

As you may have heard, you know, lot of our fruits and vegetables don't have the same nutrient density as they once did. That actually has to do with how we've treated our soil. And so I'm really trying to like, go and take the mindset of teaching people about health, but also realizing that it comes from us advocating for soil health as well as our own human health. Because once we do that, we're going to fix it literally from the ground up.

Rob Pene (02:20.876)
Okay.

Rob Pene (02:45.896)
Right, right, right. Because that's the source. Because we could go in and buy some stuff at the store that says organic. But if it's not healthy soil, organic is just a sticker, you know? Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (02:59.444)
It is because really organic just, mean, there are organic isn't tied to how our soil is treated. Organic certification through the USDA is about not using synthetic chemicals on your food. isn't no spray. And in fact, because you cannot use a herbicide to control weeds,

Often what happens with organic agriculture, and I am for deep organic agriculture, the type of organic agriculture that often is more regenerative agriculture. Caretaking the soil that then, so it's not this or that, it's an additive thing, added onto it. So organic can be very abusive to the soil because if you are going to manage your weeds to manage the competition of

Rob Pene (03:35.906)
Hmmmm

Janel Louise Ohletz (03:55.628)
the weed eating all of the nutrients and not the plant you're trying to grow for a cash crop. The farmer has to do tillage. And when you disturb the soil, you're really causing a release of carbon dioxide out of the soil. So it goes into the atmosphere. That's not good. But also it releases a lot of nutrients because what happens is I like to say it's like kids at Halloween. Like you give them a lot of sugar.

Rob Pene (04:08.976)
in.

Janel Louise Ohletz (04:25.654)
Well, when you give the soil a lot of oxygen, the microbes are like, woo, they're like kids at Halloween. They're like, awesome, got all this oxygen. Now I can decompose stuff in the soil faster. That releases those nutrients. It rains. The plant doesn't take them up fast enough. Those get leached away in a kind of very simplification of it. And so when we disturb our soils also by tilling,

Rob Pene (04:32.587)
Yes.

Rob Pene (04:45.282)
Mmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (04:54.894)
It's like we're little homewrecker and we're like, killing all the microbes, right? Like they need to live in that soil. And when we make it all fluffy with the tiller, we actually are killing the one thing that really is making the soil healthy.

Rob Pene (04:56.822)
Yeah, really.

Rob Pene (05:12.994)
That's crazy because it happens everywhere. Like the mindset is I shouldn't do this.

Janel Louise Ohletz (05:15.35)
It does. It's the mindset like, ooh, I need to till. And so a lot of regenerative agriculture is going back to the more low disturbance or very no disturbance, using cover crops, figuring out ways to destroy those cover crops by maybe using what's called a silage tarp. you know, if ever stuck a piece of plastic on a lawn for a while, know, lawn's gone, right?

Rob Pene (05:41.398)
Yep. Yep.

Janel Louise Ohletz (05:43.854)
Well, you do that on a large scale, but you can't do it on hundreds of acres. You could do it on kind of, you know, an acre or two, because a side of a start maybe does like a half acre, but that's a lot of labor. So that's why partly your food that is raised in a very healthy way costs more because of the labor intensive nature, but that food is more nutrient dense. So you're really getting more bang for the buck.

Rob Pene (05:49.334)
Hmm.

Rob Pene (05:58.018)
Thank you.

Rob Pene (06:03.553)
because

Janel Louise Ohletz (06:11.15)
So therefore you can take your money, buck it. You can apply it to lots of health insurance and all the things you need on that side and pharmaceuticals, yada yada, right? And that gets expensive. Or you can take the same money, invest it in what you feed your body and over time reduce what you need to spend on the other side. It's like a scale.

Rob Pene (06:36.094)
Yeah, well, how did you get into all this?

Janel Louise Ohletz (06:39.414)
Well, I mean, I literally grew up on an organic subsistence farm, learned how to milk a cow or was told a milk in the cow when I'm eight. So we had raw milk growing up. My mother made all of our food, our bread. We had to make the butter. That was our nightly chore. You get the jar and you shake it back and forth till the cream turns to butter. Everything pretty much that we ate, we raised.

Rob Pene (06:46.946)
Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (07:08.3)
So grass-fed animals out on pasture, it's just how I was raised. And not that I was a super healthy, I was a rather sickly child because I have an autoimmune issue undiscovered until after I had a heart attack. But anywho, yeah, so like, but I've always...

Rob Pene (07:08.811)
VIN

Janel Louise Ohletz (07:32.754)
known because my mom would be one of those that she read a lot of stuff from Rodale Press, know, Rodale being up in New York, and they're very much into organic. There were leaders back in the 70s. And she remembers a book like What Was In Your Food and What What's Been Done To It. And it was written. I don't know the author, but I know they're from Deerfield, New Hampshire, and that's where I grew up.

And so my mom always talked about, know, we'd be in the aisle and we wanted like the honey crunch or whatever it was, some horrible cereal that, you know, is advertised specifically for kids because it's got pretty pictures and everything. And they got the cartoon, you know, and they got the commercials, you know, and you're like, why can't we have that? And mom's like, you know, what's in that? The first ingredient sugar. You're not eating that. And so we were raised on like Weetabix and whatever, which as a kid, I didn't.

Rob Pene (08:09.09)
Serial is a scam.

Janel Louise Ohletz (08:24.258)
Didn't appreciate it, obviously. No kids. They want Captain Crunch and all that other stuff. But as I got older, I would eat something like that and I would feel bad. just didn't know my body just like I was tired, sluggish, everything. And then in my 20s, I started reading about nutrition just because I wanted to know. So that's how I got into it was that I was a

Rob Pene (08:29.259)
Yes.

Janel Louise Ohletz (08:53.1)
certified personal trainer back when I was in my 20s. taught aerobics. I would help. I was very interested in health. I did want to be an actual medical doctor until I realized that mistakes happen and I might like my conscious couldn't handle if someone died under my watch. So I just was like, you know what? I'm going to do something else. And, you know, and I floundered around, trying to figure out what in the world that was. But then got into food and cooking.

because I always enjoyed watching cooking shows. so from there, was like, feed myself real food, not fast food. And then there's the slow food movement, and it started in Italy. a lot of that is to get people to appreciate the... Because if you go to Europe, or many, not even Europe, like every country outside of Western,

Rob Pene (09:28.086)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (09:52.942)
countries. And you've got the local baker, you've got the local farmer, you can go. I mean, even in Paris, every couple of streets, you can go to the farmers market, and they have a farmers market every Tuesday, and then there'll be another one on. I mean, you don't have to walk very far. And every day you could happen upon a farmers market that they have, that they bring in the food from outside the city into the city.

Rob Pene (10:21.41)
Hmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (10:22.306)
people there buy the food, what they're going to cook for that day, maybe two days and that's it. They buy it fresh. And that's that slow food movement really. It's eating what's local, what's raised within your community. mean, you go around Europe and they have different cuisines that evolved in that region for specifically what grew well there.

Rob Pene (10:26.924)
Mm-hmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (10:52.328)
If you're near the ocean, you're going to have a lot of seafood. If you're in areas that are hilly, you might have more pork, you might have more beef in your food, and then you'd have the things that would grow well in that region. Maybe sheep or goat milk. Why? Because they will eat what's grown on a hillside. And I think that's kind of where

Rob Pene (11:08.566)
Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (11:18.414)
I think we're starting to get where people will go to a farmers market. But if we don't support the small local farmers and they go away, we are going to be held hostage by the industrial complex of large food. And they do not have our health as their best interest. They are unfortunately beholden to the stockholders.

Janel Louise Ohletz (11:46.764)
Yeah, I was making lasagna the other day and I was doing it for work and I was like, well, there's a lot of people at work that they just eat fast food. Right. So I was like, well, I'm just going to get the regular ricotta. Right. So I'm used to getting the ricotta. It comes from Nantucket and it's like just milk. And I looked at I'm like, this stuff is like weird. You know, I scoop it out. I'm like, this is not like cheesy at all. And I look at the ingredients like.

It had milk, but then it had like carrageenan gum and aguar gum and then some other xanthan gum. And I was like, wow, I wonder what percentage of this is actually dairy and the rest is all fillers so that they can make more money because they're still putting the same amount in the jar, but not most of us, probably not dairy.

Rob Pene (12:32.99)
More.

Rob Pene (12:41.513)
Man.

Janel Louise Ohletz (12:42.702)
You know, it's fillers and they, you know, they do these scientific tests and they say, well, this isn't going to kill people, but is it going to make you healthy? I don't think we're evolved to eat. Those things, I mean. Yeah, so that's where my stance is on a lot of that is like, you know, it doesn't grow out of the ground. It doesn't grow if it's not grazing or if it's not where you can see it and go, you know. That I can find the food chain of.

Rob Pene (12:49.968)
Right, right, right.

Rob Pene (12:55.586)
No.

Rob Pene (13:09.952)
Yeah, yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (13:10.754)
I once was a cow and now it's a steak or it once was a carrot and now it's shredded up and in my muffin, you probably shouldn't be consuming it.

Rob Pene (13:23.466)
Yeah, see, I'm the bad one who consumes all of that bad stuff. recently finally came to the realization that cereal is a scam. It really is.

Janel Louise Ohletz (13:35.29)
it's just sugary. Yeah, no, it's not good for you. Like even granola and granola bars and like what they call healthy, right? That is a sugary sugar delivery system. It is a rebadged candy bar in a different form, essentially.

Rob Pene (13:54.062)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they just make it look nice. Yeah, it's marketing.

Janel Louise Ohletz (13:57.164)
Yep, and they say healthy, they say natural. None of those are regulated terms and so people can use them extremely, extremely loosely. Like, well, it's natural. Well, shit, arsenic's natural. I wouldn't suggest eating it. You know, it occurs naturally in soil. cyanide, you find it in cherry pits. It's in the middle of the, I mean, like in the side of the seed. that's where you can derive enough cyanide out of that to.

Rob Pene (14:05.301)
Meh.

Rob Pene (14:10.181)
Yeah

Janel Louise Ohletz (14:25.836)
knock someone out, I guess. But yeah, it's a natural occurring thing. It's still not going to be something you want. Yes, exactly.

Rob Pene (14:25.9)
Wow.

Rob Pene (14:31.326)
Right. It doesn't make it good. I've never heard of the slow food movement. This is.

Janel Louise Ohletz (14:37.804)
Wow, that's been around for a long time. I don't know exactly when it was started. I wanna say it was probably in the 80s, maybe in the 90s. There's a certain village in Italy where there was someone who started it. And so it's over in the US. There are a few chapters of people that do. I think it's kind of.

Janel Louise Ohletz (15:03.576)
I mean, maybe in the community they hang out with a bunch of crunchy granola people that we all know about it and as a chef also. There is also this chef's collaborative, which is another one that is kind of tangential to the slow food movement where there are chefs that kind of try to eat local, try to support that as well as seasonality in their food that they're putting on the plate. That can be hard depending on where you're, you know.

If you're up in New England, eating seasonally in the winter is very limited. So you usually would say like, well, know, 60 or 70 % of the menu is predominantly local. mean, but you could have a greenhouse and then, you you get greenhouse tomatoes. However, there is the eat local and that is...

very good to support your local farmer. But when we talk about eating local, it isn't necessarily always climate friendly. Because if you look at the carbon footprint of a tomato that is grown in a greenhouse that requires heat in the winter and supplementary light versus the tomato that comes from, let's say, South America, because South America is in summer and we're in the winter.

Rob Pene (16:17.024)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (16:30.209)
Mm-hmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (16:31.63)
doesn't need the supplemental light. And if you look at economy of delivery of that tomato in the giant cargo ship, yes, it is going to lose some nutrient value. Although I don't know how much because like in the greenhouse with supplementary light in the same soil, it's constantly being used. don't know about what the nutrient density of that would be versus something that's grown outside. don't know. But it likely is fairly similar.

That that tomato, depending on how long it takes to get to you, if you're looking for a tomato on your sandwich in the middle of winter, the carbon footprint on the one coming from South America is far, far, far less, but may not taste as good. So life is like a compromise of like, OK, you know, eat local doesn't mean it's all all. of the other it's it's just knowledge is power and knowing, OK, this I'm making this conscious choice for this thing.

Rob Pene (17:13.926)
yeah.

Rob Pene (17:26.018)
do the message.

Janel Louise Ohletz (17:30.606)
because I want nutrient density and want it grown locally and fresh because the vitamins break down over time compared to the, well, I'm gonna get the tomato that comes local that's maybe use a lot of carbon footprint, but I'm gonna eat it and not keep it in my refrigerator for a long period of time and not waste it because, right, because that's another thing like that, not only are you wasting all the energy that went into that food product.

Rob Pene (17:48.34)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not wasted.

Rob Pene (18:00.802)
Mmmmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (18:00.846)
There's a lot, right? You are also contributing to methane if you are not composting that. Because if you throw the food in the trash and the trash goes to landfill, all of that organic matter emits a large amount of methane. And methane gas is a much higher carbon equivalent.

So it pollutes or has a higher greenhouse gas effect than, carbon. It's 27 times more. I think it's 27. Soil scientists and environmentalists, don't quote me on that. But it's higher. Less than 30, more than 25. So yeah, that's the other, that's some of the stuff that you start to think about when you look at the health of our food system and the health of us and our food choices and can get.

Rob Pene (18:27.97)
Yes,

Rob Pene (18:39.286)
You see?

Janel Louise Ohletz (18:56.992)
as we were chatting before we hit record was there's so much information out there to like how to be a better human, how to live healthy, all that. It can be extremely exhausting to weed through it all.

Rob Pene (19:15.561)
Yeah. Yeah. So if we were to boil it all down and then to tell our kids, like I tell them, dude, the cavemen didn't eat cereal. You they didn't have candy. You know, is what would be the message to make it as super easy for them to appreciate? Like, oh, yeah, you're right. We shouldn't eat that. Laffy taffy.

Janel Louise Ohletz (19:27.95)
Correct.

Janel Louise Ohletz (19:38.478)
Well, I like to think of it's like everything in moderation. So like, yeah, you know what? I like pie and I'll have a little sugar once in a while, right? Like I'm not gonna dye myself everything. However, my stance is the only thing that you eat that comes out of a box should be pasta. Yes, you can make it, but pasta is the one thing that's like just, they make the pasta the same way you're gonna make it at home most likely, cause it's just.

We eat and maybe some eggs and some water and some olive oil or whatever. And then they're drying it. So that can come out of a box, but everything else, no, it should.

Rob Pene (20:16.738)
Stove top? Stuffing? No?

Janel Louise Ohletz (20:21.102)
No stovetop stuffing. OK, read the label. If the label has things on it that you can't pronounce and has more than like, I don't know, four syllables, like something, something, something sodium, blah, blah. Polysorbates, something, something, something. Yes, like some nutrients, like vitamins that they will spray on it. There's like the chemical name.

Rob Pene (20:24.77)
Yeah

Rob Pene (20:34.283)
Ha ha!

Janel Louise Ohletz (20:50.294)
And then there's like the legit like magnesium sulfate, blah, blah. Like that's magnesium. It's one of the not many forms of magnesium. But when it comes to like some of these things, if it's something sodium in it, that's another form of. Salt, it's not just, you know. And so. I look at the ingredients of it doesn't just say like, you know. Milk and wheat and eggs.

Rob Pene (21:05.78)
Hmm. You mean? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (21:19.362)
That means I can't go to Ralph's or Target anymore because it seems like everything is, you know, now there's a Whole Foods that's not too far. Sprouts would be good.

Janel Louise Ohletz (21:20.013)
and

Janel Louise Ohletz (21:28.706)
Yeah. Sprouts is a good one because here like you shop the outside. Except for the bread aisle, because that can get pretty. Yeah, so if you can and that's always been the case of like for people that are like they always say like want to eat healthier diet or whatever shop the outsides, because what's on the outsides? All of the kind of real food and what's on the insides.

Rob Pene (21:36.381)
Okay, okay.

Janel Louise Ohletz (21:53.368)
There are some limited aisles you go down. Like obviously if you want beans, they're like in the middle aisles. Pasta sauce is okay. I, unfortunately over time, they put sugar in a lot of stuff that doesn't need sugar. And pasta sauce is one of them. Often it's like they are adding sugar. And what it's done is trained our palates to need more sugar and need more salt. So that's.

Rob Pene (22:19.542)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (22:20.654)
part of it is like the more convenience foods you get, it's like, if you're going to grab it, try to get the stuff that has the least amount of extra stuff that doesn't need to be in there. Like sugar should not be the second ingredient, but okay. You know, there are, there's sugar in the tomatoes, but they're not using the sweetest tomatoes to make a tomato sauce. And so they add a little bit of sugar to that. And we've trained our palates.

to like the sugar and like the salt. And unfortunately then when you go to eat like more pure, you're like, I need to add all that. It does take a bit to adjust your palate to being able to kind of accept, like especially children, they're like, I don't like that. But you can kind of play around with, you can add honey or you can have maple syrup, which is a natural sweetener.

Rob Pene (23:17.768)
Okay.

Janel Louise Ohletz (23:20.248)
to it. if or some things that I do if I'm making a pasta sauce from scratch is

That's weird. Hello. That was strange. I'm back. This computer doesn't like me talking about putting carrots in pasta sauce. But if you shave it, really fine, like you'll have the little flecks of it, but it adds a sweetness to it. So it's, you can do like that. Like carrot will add sweetness to something that you normally, you know, wouldn't put a carrot in. Like, I don't know, pasta sauce, you hide lots of vegetables in there.

Rob Pene (23:32.421)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (23:41.428)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (23:49.538)
Hmm.

Rob Pene (23:56.929)
Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (23:59.702)
Yes, the only thing my only beef with Trader Joe's is all the packaging the single packaging right so you think all that plastic and Then you know so that again it is the trade-off of like yes. There's a lot more stuff. There's a little bit less processed And then it's a balance of like you buy the vegetables and there's so many things that they're all in the single

Rob Pene (24:00.054)
Yeah, yeah. Trader Joe's is good,

Janel Louise Ohletz (24:24.53)
plastic-y things versus just you picking out the vegetables that you want.

Rob Pene (24:32.418)
Mmmmm

Janel Louise Ohletz (24:32.56)
Right, so I mean, you kind of thread the needle how you want to figure out. It's not about perfection, it's about a choice and just making an informed choice of what you're feeling comfortable with. Like Trader Joe's is good because there's these things, but knowledge is like, okay, if there's a choice between getting the very convenient package of something in plastic versus you picking a couple of cucumbers that are not plastic.

Rob Pene (24:51.764)
Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (25:01.874)
choose your own adventure like that way.

Rob Pene (25:09.162)
Yeah, I think the word convenient, it's resonating a lot with me because I think that's how I'm living my life is I just go grab the stuff in the plastic, grab the stuff in a can, in the box and just keep moving when if I just shifted my mind a little bit to where don't go too fast, you know, and it's not a big difference of a few seconds to, know, I wonder if that's

Janel Louise Ohletz (25:10.898)
Mm-hmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (25:27.814)
Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (25:38.234)
It is, everything's fast, fast, fast. See, I don't watch television, so I have an awful lot of time. So people are like, how is it that you work a full-time job and then you make your own bread, you make your own yogurt, you'll can vegetables, I have a garden, all of that. It's like, I don't, I use my time how I wanna use my time. So I'm not gonna tell people, don't watch TV. If that's what you wanna do to invest your time.

Rob Pene (25:44.449)
Yeah, yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (26:07.174)
However, what I find is that if I spend time in front of like a Netflix, not, I don't want to just turn my mind off and watch some show, right? I'll do that and then at the end it's like, one, it hooks you in to watch the next show, so then you're binge watching, which, you know, there's that. And then at the end of the day, I look and I go, what did I accomplish? How did that enhance my life today? And if it was, I just needed a mindless like,

Friday night sitting with pizza. Yes, I eat pizza and I drink beer. And you know, and I'm like, okay, I know that that's a conscious choice, not just like by default, turn the TV on and just like let it feed me with whatever stuff. So I find that TV can be a huge time stock, the same with like doom scrolling, all of that stuff. So in general, I'm just trying to...

Rob Pene (26:40.428)
Bye bye.

Rob Pene (26:46.068)
You

Rob Pene (26:56.202)
Right.

Janel Louise Ohletz (27:06.831)
I use my time of like, I find in the kitchen, if you change your mindset, it can be meditation. You are focusing on the thing that you're doing. You're nourishing your body, but you're also nourishing your mind at the same time. Is that you're taking that time to be with the meal. And that's really what the slow food movements about is not just like your local food, but it's like preparing the meal around the family, getting the kids involved.

Rob Pene (27:13.73)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (27:26.624)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (27:32.226)
man.

Janel Louise Ohletz (27:36.674)
in because when you go to Europe, the French like it's not about a lot, you know, they don't have cup holders in the cars because like you drink coffee at the you you don't just mindlessly, you know, like I gotta drink my cousin driving down the car, right, which I'm glad I have a cup holder because I like what a lot of water, right?

Rob Pene (27:38.21)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (27:55.089)
Wow!

No.

Janel Louise Ohletz (28:03.698)
But yeah, that's the mindset is like the French, they don't have the to go mugs because that's so foreign to them is that they sit with the coffee, even if it's like five minutes to enjoy that cup of coffee, that moment. And I think that's why they're maybe a little bit more happy. Family is first there and it's not about the job like when I lived over there and...

Rob Pene (28:04.704)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (28:12.565)
Right.

Janel Louise Ohletz (28:33.774)
my husband at the time that I was married to when we were in France, know, his boss on Friday night, he was still there at 4 30s, like, you need to go home to your family. Do you think that happens in the United States? Very rarely. Right. I my my staff, hey, head home. You know, you do not need to be here later. Monday, I'll be here and we'll do it.

Rob Pene (28:48.45)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (28:54.274)
Of course not. Wow.

Rob Pene (29:00.427)
Mm-hmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (29:03.153)
We work intently and it is interesting that they get more accomplished. Like I remember my former husband coming home and he's like, I don't understand how these guys do it. They'll like come in at like nine o'clock. They have a coffee break until 10. And then they take an hour and a half lunch. But yet they get an ex, why? Because they're one, they're focused when they're working.

Rob Pene (29:12.15)
Mm-hmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (29:32.986)
And we are so like, check in the email. there my phone is. I'm looking over here, right? Yeah. You know, we kind of aren't as much our mindset is like almost like we're so used to doing so many things at one time. We've lost the ability to kind of focus in and be mindful in the moment of whatever it is we're doing. So we because I mean, that's been disproven the whole thing of like us multitasking. Like you can't your brain cannot do it.

Rob Pene (29:51.489)
Right, right.

Rob Pene (30:00.546)
pain.

Janel Louise Ohletz (30:03.502)
It can do many, many, many things in little many seconds, but actually when you're trying to do all that, you are less productive and less, you get worse output.

Rob Pene (30:18.144)
And it seems like it's a badge of honor. It's like, you're amazing if you could do all these things and work so hard and go so fast and, you know, speed, speed, speed, Lamborghini.

Janel Louise Ohletz (30:25.458)
Yeah, and and I mean I get a lot done and but like for me. It's like okay on a Saturday I'm gonna make yogurt. Well, those are easiest kind of a hands-off approach. You just start the milk I have a little thermometer I put in there I'll watch that but I'm not like making my breakfast and then I I make sourdough So I'm like starting the sourdough, but that's a pass. There's a lot of things that are steps that are just passive There's sitting out there. Have I boiled the milk over because I've gotten onto something else and forgot about it. Yes

My husband's really good about your milk is at 170. You'll watch it and it'll, right? So it's pretty funny that he knows me enough that I'll get involved in something else and forget that I have three other things going. But, know, yogurt's expensive and I can buy the best milk. We get A2A milk. So if you're not familiar with the types of milk, there's A1 and A2 type cows. A2 is better for your gut.

Rob Pene (31:09.558)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Pene (31:15.617)
Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (31:23.723)
And A2A is similar so you can digest it better for those people that are lactose-tolerant. They're probably consuming A1 milk. And it's just the type of cow, right? So I get that. That comes out in a glass milk jug that you get to return to the store. Love that because I don't have the plastic. And then, you know, I'll make a half a gallon of yogurt.

Rob Pene (31:51.362)
Mmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (31:53.346)
and you heat it up, it's so easy. And it's like, have a video on my Instagram of like how to make yogurt. It's so easy. It does not take that much time. And you know, I can make a half a gallon worth of yogurt for the cost of the half a gallon of milk.

Janel Louise Ohletz (32:14.534)
And then if you want fruit, jam, fruit on the bottom.

Rob Pene (32:16.748)
Whoa.

Janel Louise Ohletz (32:21.628)
fresh fruit like frozen fruit I'll throw frozen fruit in there or fresh fruit a banana and you're eating just plain yogurt no additives doesn't taste like wallpaper paste because there's some Greek yogurts out there that you could just shellac your wall with

Rob Pene (32:46.733)
That's too funny. So you're a PhD, you're a chef and you're an author.

Janel Louise Ohletz (32:51.622)
Mm-hmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (32:57.011)
Yeah, I think it's probably because I started working at the age of four on a farm being told what to do. So I never had a lot of downtime and just I like to be busy, I guess. But I mean, I wrote my the book to heal because my dad passed a year and a half ago and we had a tumultuous relationship. Let's say he was abusive and just physically. I mean, he he grew up.

Rob Pene (32:57.986)
Have you always been this driven?

Janel Louise Ohletz (33:25.297)
being hit with a belt so he thought that's how you discipline children. No. So I had a lot to deal with with that and just always trying to make him happy. was the chronic people pleaser. Generally children that grow up in that type of situation are people pleasers. And maybe that's it. I'm very driven or was driven to just get approval. Now I'm driven for my own approval.

And that is really to make the difference in other people's lives. And that's what drives me now. But I really, if I sit around, I don't like, I start getting twitchy. Like I will knit and read a book at the same time. If I'm knitting a basic like pearl, like knit back and forth, I will do that. And I have a Kindle where I can hit it with my pinky. So I'm knitting and then I'm reading. I don't have to watch my fingers.

Rob Pene (33:55.808)
Hmm. Hmm.

Rob Pene (34:08.746)
You.

Janel Louise Ohletz (34:21.234)
And people just look at me like, she's reading and didn't it? And it's like, yeah, because I feel like I'm just knitting. I could do something else. But yeah, I'm and the book poured out of me because I just had a lot of stories to put in and each of the chapters has a message has a.

Rob Pene (34:32.64)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (34:46.194)
a message for the reader, it's not just about me and my life or whatever, it is teasing out this like, essentially that we're all born with tools in a toolbox, we have this metaphorical toolbox filled with tools. However, many of us are not taught to use all of these tools and some of us have trauma covering them up and so we cannot access the tools. And so it is kind of about unpacking that part of.

In order to reach your true authentic self or your true path in life, what you really are is going to give you joy and fulfillment. You have to begin to learn how to reach in and access all those tools. Courage, being one, humbleness, asking for help, and advocating for yourself and living a true authentic integrity.

Rob Pene (35:25.698)
Mm.

Rob Pene (35:31.446)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Pene (35:37.042)
Please.

Janel Louise Ohletz (35:41.81)
is another one, right? I think so many of us chase a dream that someone else wants for us. And an ideal of society of whatever, because it's thrown at us through so many different outlets. You got to look this way, got to whatever, have this hair color, this is the ideal. It's like, no, you are the ideal for you. However you were born, you were the only one in the universe that's like you. You would just be happy about it.

Rob Pene (36:03.114)
Yeah

Rob Pene (36:12.117)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (36:16.224)
Yeah, it seems like it's hard for us in our culture in here to embrace that because we're always looking at something else or someone else and then let me be like that person, you know, when if we slow down and, you know, it'd be we'd eat different, you know.

Janel Louise Ohletz (36:26.264)
Yeah. Right.

Janel Louise Ohletz (36:33.912)
Yeah, we would. Yeah, the fast food thing. It's like, yeah, I get it. You're out on the road, right? You're taking a trip. What do you get? You stop at a whatever, a gas station or whatever. You need to eat something. And I suffer from that. you're walking and I'm just like, I just know what all that, what's all that crap. So I'm like, but I'll usually grab a thing of nuts. And yeah, I might have some &Ms in it or whatever, right? But like the chocolate's good for you and the nuts are good for you and it gives you energy.

and then maybe an apple or something like that. Or popcorn, sometimes I'll just grab popcorn. Because that's not terrible for you. Even smart food, yeah, there's probably some things in there you shouldn't eat. But it's certainly like lesser of the evils that are in Detroit, right? But I think it's being intentional about what we put in our bodies, because that is the fuel.

Rob Pene (37:11.552)
Really?

Rob Pene (37:20.3)
Yeah,

Rob Pene (37:30.636)
Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (37:31.85)
our, our gut microbiome is what is our immune system. Predominantly that's the largest part of our immune system. And so when we don't feed our troops well, then they cannot help defend us from all of the things that are environmental stuff that are kind of cause us problems. And on top of that, there's a lot of stuff in food.

Rob Pene (37:44.385)
Mm.

Rob Pene (37:49.302)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (38:00.844)
Hmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (38:01.458)
that isn't food really. It's certainly not what we've evolved to eat, right? They can call it food. But our bodies are not evolved to eat that. And so your body has to deal with it and do something with it. And so it's going to put it into fat because it's like, okay, I don't know what to, let's shelf this for later till we can figure out how to break this sucker down.

Rob Pene (38:10.146)
Yes.

Rob Pene (38:16.524)
Right.

Janel Louise Ohletz (38:26.906)
And so a lot of it's like, we eat this stuff and people will say like, I'm not eating that many calories, but I'm still gaining weight. It's like, yeah, well, your body's got to deal with all that crap. And so it's going to reduce your metabolism and store that in fat because it cannot get rid of it until your liver can process that. So it's going to just find places to put it.

Rob Pene (38:28.364)
What did you Hmm.

Rob Pene (38:38.87)
Please subscribe.

Rob Pene (38:45.846)
No.

Janel Louise Ohletz (38:54.93)
until it can figure that out or you give it the opportunity. But if you're constantly giving it all of this junk, it's just constantly trying to figure out what to do with it. And then, yeah, there's these things called endocrine disruptors, right? So some of these things. So your endocrine system, essentially, to break it down is like, if you think about it as like you have

Rob Pene (39:09.6)
Yeah, that's that's nuts

Janel Louise Ohletz (39:24.563)
like a round peg and a square peg. And then you've got in your body your hormones. Those are your hormones, the little pegs. And then your body has these receptors that like the round peg needs to go in the round hole and square peg needs to go in the square hole for your metabolism and all of that stuff to work. But sometimes there's things that you can eat or cleaning products, all that stuff. There's these things that disrupt the endocrine system. They are shaped.

Rob Pene (39:42.562)
or do you?

Janel Louise Ohletz (39:53.732)
like the thing that's supposed to go in that hole. They will plug that hole so therefore your body is not getting the right signal in the endocrine system. So it's like, yes, it fits in there, but it's not the thing that's supposed to go in there. So it disrupts your metabolic system, it disrupts your endocrine system, which is involved in so much of our health. And so it is...

Rob Pene (39:55.935)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (40:12.162)
HMMMM

Janel Louise Ohletz (40:21.316)
something a lot of people, it's just not talked about a lot. mean, there's endocrinologists that specialize in that, but it is one of those things that a lot of our cleaning products, like think about like thou scrubbing bubbles or whatever, like all this stuff. mean, that is a chemical that our body is getting in through the fumes, all of that stuff. Our body's getting exposed to that. That is another thing that can.

Rob Pene (40:38.58)
Nice.

Janel Louise Ohletz (40:47.92)
disrupt our endocrine system, which then disrupts like so many of our, all of this stuff. Yeah.

Rob Pene (40:50.284)
harmful.

Rob Pene (40:56.182)
That's Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's wild. I'm assuming on your website, it has all the information, like all the studies and the stories and stuff. Is there like blog there?

Janel Louise Ohletz (41:05.221)
It should, that's a great idea. I should start putting all that stuff on there. Mostly what has on there is my recipes that I'll develop and talk about, things like that. So I have various recipes and kind of the basic. You can go to my recipes and there's no commercials. There's no pop-up things. It's just a recipe and some pictures. I don't make any money off of the recipes on my website. I don't have any ads.

Rob Pene (41:18.112)
Okay, nuts.

Janel Louise Ohletz (41:33.97)
No, it's free for the taking, enjoy the basic. And I need to put some more up and get back to posting that. But I just love cooking and sharing about basic recipes that, and in my book, after every single chapter, there is a recipe in there. It starts at breakfast, goes all the way to dessert. So,

Rob Pene (41:55.479)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. How about your socials? Can we follow your recipes on Instagram and YouTube?

Janel Louise Ohletz (41:59.994)
Yeah, I will post stuff on Instagram. I need to get back to doing that mostly because I was kind of just like with promoting the book. I'm like, I'm exhausted. I don't want to do this anymore. but yes, I have, I'll post, different recipes on there and often like some photos of me making it or something like that. And then I will put the link to the recipe. There's the linked tree that will bring you to the recipes as well. Yep.

Rob Pene (42:25.45)
OK. OK. Yeah. So the website, what would be the website? And then the best channel we can find you like on social.

Janel Louise Ohletz (42:27.268)
It's, yeah.

So my website's Oletts Grow, so my last name O-H-L-E-T-Z, so like Oletts have fun, but with a Z, and grow, the word G-R-O, grow. And that is the same on Instagram, and it is the same on threads. There's Oletts Grow for all of us, it's all the same. I would say Instagram, I post things on there.

I don't find much engagement there, like back and forth. threads is one that where I'll like comment on. And then I am also on LinkedIn, just my name, Janelle Olitz. I'm on there. That's where I'm kind of more engaged in environmental and resiliency work, sustainable agriculture, because of my day job that I do as director of agriculture and work in the sustainable agriculture space, because I'm really...

Rob Pene (43:16.961)
and

Janel Louise Ohletz (43:23.355)
walking this line between sustainability and regeneration of the planet as well as people. So I do it as a hobby as well as for my day job because that's how we're going to make a difference is when we learn to regenerate ourselves and sustain ourselves in a healthy manner, then it will naturally begin to create that sustainability and regeneration because we want that from our food.

Rob Pene (43:33.442)
Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (43:55.258)
And money talks. So if we vote with our dollars, we will make a change. why, you know, that's why we've had more organic availability and other things like that, you know, for the longest time, like, oh, yeah, no, nobody cares about organic. It's like all of a sudden everything's like organic, healthy, regenerative. You see regenerative on the label of stuff, right?

regenerative, this was raised with regenerative something. I General Mills is all about it. Yes, it's greenwashing. But they are in fact, they do a lot of work with the Soil Health Institute. And they are actually following practices that are regenerative. So it may not be purely 100 % like as the best but

Rob Pene (44:28.066)
Oof.

Rob Pene (44:42.85)
that's good.

Janel Louise Ohletz (44:45.612)
Every step we take, a little tiny step in that direction, is like, huge. And we just need to keep moving forward, even if it's kind of slow.

Rob Pene (44:53.09)
Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (44:58.001)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (45:00.192)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great message to end us off at. One thing at a time, slow and make a big impact.

Janel Louise Ohletz (45:05.586)
Right. Don't seek perfection. Don't seek perfection. Yes. You know, so many people, think they want to be like, I'm going to do this diet. It's going to be perfect. And I can't, I can't eat that because if I do, then I'm off the wagon, right? Whatever. No, give yourself some grace. Every little thing that you do to move you in the direction is still a step in the right direction. It doesn't mean that it negates everything. Well, I have

Rob Pene (45:27.925)
Hmm.

Rob Pene (45:34.667)
Mm-hmm.

Janel Louise Ohletz (45:35.315)
I pulled up at the Bojangles.

Janel Louise Ohletz (45:46.732)
So, you know, it's okay. It's all good, right? My video, I have fiber too, so I don't even know what's going on.

Rob Pene (45:50.186)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Pene (45:56.322)
Yeah, it's because you're preaching a good message, a transformational message.

Janel Louise Ohletz (46:02.194)
Yeah, right. That's it. Yeah. So, that's essentially it's like, I think people think all or nothing. Just keep each day do one thing at a minimum. And from there, it will, you'll get confidence and you'll build and you get momentum. Yeah.

Rob Pene (46:25.15)
Yeah, yeah, by doing the small activities.

Janel Louise Ohletz (46:29.642)
Yeah, I mean, you you've made some great strides from what you were saying last year, right? So like, you know, keep going in the right direction. Yeah.

Rob Pene (46:35.522)
Yeah, yeah one thing at a time so

Janel Louise Ohletz (46:43.946)
Well, thank you so much for this conversation. It's been great.

Rob Pene (46:47.222)
Yeah, this is awesome. I learned a lot and I'm challenged too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna try to build better habits, man, and to slow down and shop. I didn't know about shop on the outside. Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (46:59.86)
Yeah, yeah, so like if you think about it when you go in the grocery store, if you kind of just run your aisle around, fill your grocery cart from that first, and then whatever's on your list that's like in the middle of the aisle, because yeah, the pasta boxes are there. There's, you know, and canned vegetables, frozen vegetables are often better. Canned vegetables do often have salt in them, but that's still better than like some other thing, right? Like at least it's the real food.

item. Yeah, if you're doing that and you're staying away from most of the middle aisles, you'll find that like... Yeah.

Rob Pene (47:35.074)
Yeah, now I'm going to go and look. Yeah, I'm actually going to go and look in the middle. I'm like, oh, no, bad. That's I want to teach the kids. Definitely. Yeah, we'll do an experiment.

Janel Louise Ohletz (47:46.772)
And get them involved in the cooking, right? Like that's, that's the thing, you know, one, you're going to empower them for sure. To, to, have those skills that they need. But also, you know, it builds family time and ties that I think make you. Sometimes that's like the time when the kids will tell you something that they're, you know, you're just having that time instead of like, you know, just people time.

Rob Pene (48:12.288)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Quality time. Yeah. Great. Well, you. Yeah.

Janel Louise Ohletz (48:18.492)
Exactly. Well, thank you very much. Have a fabulous evening. Take care. Bye bye. I appreciate you. Take care. Bye.

Rob Pene (48:25.068)
Thanks, I appreciate you. All right, see ya.