The Part We Throw Away with James Barry

James Barry spent more than two decades as a private chef to the famous — Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Barbra Streisand — feeding people who could have anything they wanted. For years, he was a vegan. Then his young daughter nearly died of a rare bacterial infection, and the ground beneath everything he believed about food gave way. He came back not with a stricter diet, but with an older question we've been trained to look past: what happens when the most nourishing thing on the plate is the part we've been taught to throw out?

In this conversation, James — founder of Pluck, an organ-based seasoning built from the parts most kitchens discard — sits down with Dr. Nasha to explore organ meats as concentrated life, the ideologies we quietly build our plates on, and why the things we're quickest to reject (in our food, in our grief, in ourselves) may be exactly what we most need to reclaim. This isn't a conversation about liver. It's about what we discard, why we discard it, and what it costs us to keep looking away.

More From Dr. Nasha Winters

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

My guest this week has cooked for some of the most famous people alive. Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Barbara Streisand, the kind of chef who can make almost anything taste like comfort. For years, he was a vegan. And then his young daughter nearly died from a rare bacterial infection. And the ground beneath everything he thought he knew about food simply gave away. James Barry came back from that not with a stricter set of rules, but with an older question, one most of us have been quietly trained to look past. What if the most nourishing thing on the plate is the very part we've been taught to throw away? He built a company called Pluck around that very question. An organ-based seasoning made from the organs most kitchens discard. The parts our great-grandmothers knew were where the life was concentrated. But you'll hear pretty quickly: this isn't really a conversation about liver. It's about what we reject and why, and what it really costs to keep looking away. Here's my conversation with James Berry. Health doesn't happen in isolation, it happens in a terrain. The biology, the rhythms, the relationships, the meaning you're still making. All of it shapes whether life expresses its vitality or quietly begins to unravel. And each week, I sit down with scientists, physicians, farmers, artists, patients, and systems thinkers, people who talk about bodies, but also about land, about healing, but also about grief and belonging and what it means to become human again. This isn't a show for quick answers, it's a space for better questions. Pull up a chair. Yes. I've been looking forward to this conversation. In fact, James, I was trying to think about the first time I met you, and I think it was shortly after Pluck hit the market. I believe you were at a metabolic health symposium or one of those low-carb symposiums was just like a simple table with your wares. And it just blew my ever-living mind. And so I cued you up a little bit in the intro, but you know, I think where I want to start with this conversation is just a little bit of a tiny bit of my own story. Some people have heard me talk about this, but you know, I was a, I'm gonna call it a junk food vegetarian from about the age of 16 to 19 until my diagnosis. And then I doubled down. And in 1991, the only diet that was really out there or discussed for cancer was basically a raw food vegan or a juice sink um diet. So I went in with all energy of it and I remained eating that way, very much on the struggle bus, truth be told, and very much clawing my way into just staying on this planet until about the age of 26, when a Chinese medicine provider looked at my tongue, felt my pulses, and said, You have no stomach qi. You will die if you do not bring some animal protein in. And that was, you know, he didn't even know my history. I didn't tell him my history. And it woke me up enough to become a vegetarian until about the age of 34. And that felt like the lights came on. I've evolved since then in 2009, became more paleo, and then started really playing with the like keto world. But I think what it comes down to, and what I think resonates with you, is we both have kind of tried a lot of things on for size in the dietary world. You, as a chef to some of the most famous people on this planet, you needed to kind of, I'm imagining, play chameleon for them as well as your own life. So I think where I want you to take us today is just this idea that the thought of organ meat is still really challenging to many people, including myself, and the ideal nutritional profile that that to me serves as like the ultimate multivitamin. Tell us a bit about your story, how this came to be, because it's a compelling one. This was not just a a business idea, despite the fact you are one heck of a business, a businessman.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the show. It's it's truly an honor. Anytime I get to spend time with you, so really grateful for this time. I yeah, I I it's weird. I've been in this field now 22 years. And I I even sometimes go like, well, what what's really changed? And and it's hard for me because uh to your point, I just see the trends, I see the same trends over and over. They just have different names. Instead of veganism, it's now called plant-based. You know, um carnivore is really just a you know uh an elimination diet. It's like, but everyone just keeps trying to come up with these magic pills or these magic diets. And in my 22 years, it's always just boiled down to is it real food or is it not? I truly have found that those are the biggest movers. And I came from very humble beginnings myself. I was a very picky eater. I grew up in a household where we knew dinner was ready because the smoke detector went off. It was not a foodie household at all. Um I truly thought that all meat was supposed to be like dry and hard, like hockey pucks. Like to this day, like it took me a time to actually like relearn how to eat meat and let it be red, you know, and let it let it even be bloody. And uh yeah, so I none is I was a very picky eater, and I to the point where I didn't have my first taco till I was in college, like I was paleo before people even had a term for it. Like, we would go to McDonald's and I might we would always have to order a hamburger that was um plain because you know the hamburgers were always pre-made and they had stuff on them. So we had to specially order the hamburger. It was plain and it was just a patty and the bun. And then I would proceed to eat it and pull the meat out from the bun, not eat the bun, but then cup the bun and throw it out. So I just ate the meat, but I tried to fake it as though I was eating the whole thing. So I was, you know, I I want to take credit for being the originator of paleo without knowing how to call it. You're the OG of Paleo. OG, OG of picky, picky paleo eating. No, um yeah, so I I've done it all. I've done um juice cleanses as well. I was vegan at one point. Um, and and I think through it all, what and oh you know, I should also add, I rarely talk about this. I would say that I also had a uh like uh food issues as well. Like I think that I was um I had an instant when I was in my early 20s where I was actively trying to change my relationship, my relationship to food because I was finding that I was foregoing eating, like I would just kind of get lost in whatever I was doing, whether it was studying or work, and then I would binge eat. And and I would just eat tons of food in the evening, and there was no regularity to how I was eating. And I had this incident where I was actively trying to get a hold of this, and I was making my dinner from scratch. Um, this is way before I was a chef, but I was cooking a home cooked meal, and I came, I put pulled it out of the oven, I put it on the counter just to cool a little bit, and I came back and my brother had eaten it. And I was so furious that I that I ran after him and just was wanted to pummel him, and he then slammed his door, and then I hit the I hit the door as hard as I could, and I fractured my my knuckle bone. And it was a culmination of me realizing, oh, this is not about my brother and my relationship, like this is about my relationship to food, and I clearly have some issues going on, and so I ended going to some therapy at this point and just started a process like what is going on, like why am I not eating? Why am I struggling to take the time to fuel my body properly? And it eventually took me on this path to um going all the down the roads of all these different diets, to then realizing post-9-11 that I wanted every choice I made to have heart. And so I re-I audited my life and I said, I've always loved cooking, but I've never saw it as a viable job. I thought it was you had to own a restaurant, and I didn't want to work at night. I just I wanted, I didn't know what was possible. I mean, growing up, there were really only like two models. It was like uh P PBS shows, which was really like Julia Childs, and then just restaurant tours. There was no celebrity chefs, there was no other option except you either own a restaurant or you're Julia Childs, and that's just you know. So wow, yeah. So so then I I I re-audited, I audited my life, and I was like, okay, I want to embrace being a chef and I want to help people with their health. And that choice just completely changed my life. It it brought me to where we are now, where I I've now cooked for all these celebrities like Tom Cruise and George Clooney. I had a meal delivery service that was supporting uh, you know, maybe thousands of people, like just close to about a thousand people. I ran that for eight years. To then, and this was the big game changer, which was then becoming a father. And when I became a father, that I started looking at food differently. I didn't look at it as just like, oh, I just want to cook delicious food. I I was like, no, no, I want to cook delicious, nutritious food because I want to make sure that my kids are getting food that is nutritious into their diet. I want to make sure that I was getting that food. And I also wanted to make sure that there was no fights over it. Because let's face it, anyone that's listening to this, that's a parent, knows you can cook the healthiest food. It does not matter if no one eats it.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Right. Right. Oh my gosh. So I'm super intrigued by this because you've just given us a little sort of snapshot into your your own childhood where food was just sort of like what you did two or three times a day. It had no like joy around it. It was like you said, the hockey puck. Um, was that part of what inspired you to start cooking for yourself? Because that actually, that story about the the fire alarm going off, you know, the smoke detector go off, that's actually my husband's story as well. That's how he got into cooking, was he was tired of eating so many burnt pieces of toast or really awful bland food and all the different things. And so that passion started sort of out of necessity, and then it evolved for you to be in like, damn, I'm good at this. But I think it's also so beautiful that you had a child that suddenly you realized food was more, had so much more meaning to it, and that you suddenly realized I need to grow a human being like properly. So what a cool journey. And so from that moment, tell us a little bit more, because I know your daughter's story is really something I think a lot of our listeners would like to hear because you you fet faced quite a challenge with her. And can you tell us how food also became medicine in your household, not just nourishment?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Yeah, I mean, the education around food definitely really came about in culinary school. We we were taught about Weston A price, you know, more traditional foods and preparations. We were taught about all these different diets and uh philosophies around food from like Ayurvedic to even some more Chinese medicine kind of ways of incorporating food, elemental eating, things like that, blood type, all of that stuff. So we really were learning all the different modalities. Yet I still didn't incorporate it all. Like I did a little bit, but I still kind of stayed true to like what I knew worked, you know, and I did soak seeds, I did soak nuts and grains, but I and I sprouted some stuff, but I didn't introduce things like organ meats, or I didn't introduce different cuts that I was not really practiced and familiar with. I kept it pretty much status quo, but I just focused on the real food. And the reality is that's because I'm a pick eater, right? And and it was really going to culinary school that opened my palate up and made me realize oh, these things that I saw as either really hard to make or really gross were not gross. And wow, yeah, so I just had to really reevaluate that. And ultimately it it was, yeah, it was becoming a father. So my my daughter, my both our daughters, they got shigatoxin, which is a form of E. coli. Yeah, gnarly. Yeah, and they they got it at a very young age, and it's it's very serious for the very young and for the very old. Um, you you can't hold anything in, and most importantly, you cannot give antibiotics. And in fact, if you give someone antibiotics when they have sugar toxin, you can make it worse and potentially kill them. So luckily, my wife had the instinct to just get their stool tested because you don't know. You don't know that they have sugar toxin. You know, you think it's maybe a stomach bug or something. But she got the stool tested, and this was wild when we got it tested. You know something's wrong when the health, uh, the county health inspector calls you. Like, so basically, we got it tested, and the lab then called the county hospital because E. coli is so serious, right? That they called the health inspector, and then they called us to say, hey, we needed more details around what you where you ate, where you think you got this, because they wanted to make sure there wasn't an outbreak happening. Yeah. So we were like, whoa, okay, this is serious. And um, and you know, it's one of those things where you kind of just have to let it play out. And in my oldest daughter, who was at the time around five, it it played out in about three days. And so she was already a pretty robust kid and she got through it. My youngest, though, who was only about a year, she was already very lean, and it just kept going. And I think it was around day six. I had to go out of town, and I thought she was on the mend. So I was leaving, going, okay, we're we we we turned a corner, she's she can eat food again. And I was wrong. So I was out of town for two days and I came back, she was still in it, and she was now skin and bones, like literally looked like one of those kids that are very malnourished, and uh it it scared her, it it was very scary. And then I think around day nine or ten, she suddenly could hold down toast with a little bit of butter on it, and it we're gluten-free, so it was gluten-free toast. And I don't say that because it was healthier. Gluten-free does not mean healthy, it just, if anything, it's a lot more ingredients sometimes than just regular sourdough toast or something. So she was eating that, and I was sitting there, you know, my wife's a functional nutritionist, I'm a chef, and we're just sitting there going, like, I'm glad she's eating something, but she got addicted to toast with butter. Like she would not eat anything else.

unknown 16:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

And it went on for a long time, and so I kept thinking to myself, you know, is there something that I can? I wish there was something I could sprinkle on this. I wish there was a way that I could let her have the safety of what she's needing right now. Because I think it's very important that when we ever talk about food and diet, we have to think about not just what we're eating, but why. Why are you needing this food right now? What is it about this experience that is soothing you on an emotional level? And I don't want to take that away from anyone, particularly a kid, because even for me, picky eating was not because, oh, I I'm not gonna eat this and I am gonna eat that. It was it started because my childhood was a bit tumultuous, and it was it was a safety zone for me. If there's one thing I control control in my life, it's what goes in my mouth. And so that's where the picky eating came from. It was that control. And you don't want to take that away from someone because that's the one piece they have. And so I was I just kept kind of ruminating on that. Like, how how can I support someone in getting more nutrients, but not take away the safety of whatever they're already eating? And and that's ultimately what brought me to what I'm currently doing.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

And at this time you were a chef. You were a chef to the stars, you were you knew how to feed the the you know, the higher, the highest echelon of society of you know, of that piece. You're like, I can certainly figure this out for a little person. Um and so this is where it started to take you down the path, which now we all get to enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

My specialty as a chef, because I worked with a lot of practitioners and supporting their clients, it became how to swap things. So, like the the client would get a diagnosis or an assessment from their health practitioner or doctor, and they would be told, okay, you can't eat this. And usually it was a very long list of cants, and the person would be like, I don't know what to do, and then they would bring me in. I was the how guy. So it'd be like, okay, you can't do lemons, great. We're gonna do sumac because sumac is a natural seasoning. There's nothing added to it, but it has a lemony taste. So great, because a lot of times people couldn't do lemons or limes, for example, right? So we were constantly trying to think of like what is gonna give you that flavor, but not uh and make you feel like you're still satiated and feel kind of emotionally, you know, that your needs are getting met, but not feel make you feel uh on alarm or like that you're without or something. So I became a big that's how I thought always. And so that's what I really brought to the table with my kids and myself of like, okay, here we have picky eaters, me, here we have little kids who are not gonna always eat specific textures. How do I get what I'm what I know to be the most nutrient-dense foods? So I know from my research, and anyone could do this research, that eating the whole of an anything is the most important. So whether it's the whole grain, the whole fruit, the the whole egg, and in my this case, I was looking at whole animal, and I was like, well, we're only eating the muscle. What happened to the all the organs? Like, that's what I I know are very nutrient-dense. So I I was like, okay, so if neutr if organ meats are the most nutrient-dense food on the planet, but we're not eating them because we think they're gross, we uh don't know how to cook them, and then we struggle with sourcing them, how do I solve that? So, how do I make them taste delicious and yet require no um you know no cooking knowledge? Amazing. And uh, and then that's when I started going, well, okay, we already have freeze-dried powder organese, they're in capsules right now. So when you make a pate, you're taking you know different organs and you're combining them with onion and sometimes garlic and and other things. And I was like, well, why wait, why can't I just take the dry version of all those things? And that's where I started just putting it all together. And then I came up with a way to basically sprinkle, or it's like a seasoning where you're able just to sprinkle the organ meats that now taste good from all the different spices and herbs and the salt, and just sprinkle it on anything. And so now you have kids that are eating mac and cheese and they just sprinkle it right on there. You have kids that are eating toast with butter and they're sprinkling it right on there. It's literally popcorn. Anything you can eat or think about, anything you can salt, you can then now put pluck on. And so I feel very fortunate because it's a real food, not a laboratory-made food. It's truly a real food, and no one had combined these ingredients before I did.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

So just so brilliant. I love this so much. Again, as someone who, like I said, is a recovering vegan. Um, I know, and even I was really impressed that your um chef training actually took you down the path of the traditional nourishing foods, Weston A Price, etc. And in fact, we can put in the show notes links to Weston A Price and the Weston A Price and Price Pottinger Foundations, as well as the Nourishing Traditions world. There's a big West and A Price conference, you know, every year, and there's chapters all over. And these do talk about sort of the original food choices. And so you have modernized some ancient practices and brought it into our day-to-day, which I think is really extraordinary. A piece here that I want to really bring to the forefront because again, it took me a long time to get my mind around, especially when I went from vegan to maybe having an egg to then maybe a piece of fish, and then down the road, you know, a steak way down the road, that was a process for me. That was very difficult. And so knowing that you have taken these viable nutrients, um, I think of it, and please correct me if. You think I'm way off base here. But when I think about organ meats, and especially in the way you deliver them, I think of an organ is where the animal concentrates its life. You know, the liver is its filter, its storehouse, the record of everything that that animal has eaten or breathed in or moved through. And so when somebody eats that, they're taking in that animal's whole terrain, not just its muscle. And so do you do you think about it this way? Am I being really weird here? But you know, what how what what did you need to understand about where the that organ came from before you started to put this into your daughter's body and into other people's bodies?

SPEAKER_01 22:39

I I mean, I think of it almost like like let's not even focus on organ meets like food. Okay. Every meal helps create the internal conditions in which our soul, our cells, have to live.

unknown 22:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

So when we think about, you know, yes, people talk about food as fuel, but I think it's really important to remember, like, that, you know, organs and none of this stuff fixes the body, but it helps to create the conditions in which the body can then do what it's designed to do. And so like I know even like when I talk with when I have any issues come up, or when I talk to people who have got cancer, anything like that, those of us in these circles, you know, these functional medicine circles, we all talk about okay, what is the environment that my body is in right now that is supporting the growth of this cancer or whatever the ailment is. And less of the focus goes on the cancer, more about how do I change the environment. And the easiest way to do that is to look at our food systems and look at what we aren't doing anymore. And I think what where the issue is coming is that people are looking at food is calorie in, calorie out. Like they're just looking at like, am I am I full? And it's like it's it's really not about that calorie sufficiency, you know. It's it's because it calorie sufficiency is not the same as nutrient sufficiency. And I and I really believe that like what's happening is people are like, oh, well, I cut out, they focus on what they cut out. Like, I cut out junk food. Okay, great. But now what did you replace it with? Like, what are you actually eating? And if you remember in the 80s and even the 90s, what was healthy food? It was a skinless, boneless chicken breast, steamed vegetables, and maybe a baked potato versus or a sweet potato, like something baked versus a grain and or fried, right?

unknown 24:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

But they saw that we all saw that as like, oh, now I'm healthy. But no one was talking about, but is the food I'm actually eating nutrient sufficient? Yeah. And it's not. I mean, and for so many reasons it's not. It's it's not because we remove the skin, it's just the chicken breast. That that bird is hybridized so that it's now not the same nutrient density that birds used to be, for example. It's now fed things differently. The feed that we are growing, the fertilizer we're growing these vegetables in is different. It's it's being pulled early. So our like every system that's in place to provide us food has changed and is now creating less nutrient-dense food. And this is measurable. I mean, you the government's been tracking the agricultural productions since I think the late 50s. Every decade, the food we are producing is less nutrient dense. And then you factor in all these modern agricultural practices of like pulling the tomato when it's green and like spraying it with some you know organic compound to turn it red. That's great. Now it looks like a normal tomato, but it's still not nutrient dense. So I really welcome that we all need to rethink what is healthy food, because we are all living in this illusion of what is healthy. And we're cutting, you know, we're cutting out the junk, but we're not actually eating the foods that are gonna be nutrient sufficient. And that's why I now I'm looking at like, okay, how do I support everyone in getting those whole, the whole animal, the whole fish, the whole chicken, the parts that I know you're not eating. And so, like, that's why, for example, with Pluck, we have liver, heart, kidney, skin, pancreas. We have even a brain. We have other products coming to testes and female organs, they call that FRT. Down the road, we have poultry organs with even the neck and the bone and even the feet. Uh, if we can make that happen, we then even further down the road, we have whole sardine where it's got the bone, the head, the brain, everything, right? So we're working on getting these very nutrient-dense foods that are no one's eating, but then also is forcing people to then supplement because they're not eating these foods. So we're all taking fish oils, we're all taking, you know, some kind of supplement that's providing what the muscle is not or what the vegan or vegetarian diet is not, right? So I'm just trying to say, look, if real food, if my 22 years of show meaning, if real food is the answer, then let's keep it real food. And then two, let's focus on the whole rather than just a piece of it. And I will do my best to make it as delicious and as easy as possible because I get it, because we also have to add that other factor in is that we are human.

unknown 27:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

And if we don't account for our humanity, once again, going back, I can make you the most delicious, high-quality, healthy food in the world, but if you don't eat it, it does not matter.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Wow. Oh, wow. Well, there's so many pieces here, so many tangents you could go, but I want to highlight a few that really stand out. I really appreciate you talking about the loss of nutrient density over the past generation or two. And so this is also this importance of this resurgence of basically turning, you're going making a full circle, is returning to regenerative, restorative agriculture, because it's coming to between the soil and literally the soul of replenishing what we have extracted out since World War II. And the irony that you spoke to of basically like the entire biohacking community was born of this, of realizing how deaf, you know, deficient things are that we supplemented. And yet you're saying, you know, we we still can supplement it, but by going back to the way our grandparents or our great-grandparents ate, and then speaking to the loss of those nutrients over time. There's an excellent book out there, and I'm sure you read it during your studies, but um a woman by the name of Jo Robinson wrote a book many, many moons ago called Eating on the Wild Side. And she goes deep down into what's happened in the last, you know, since World War II, what's happened to our nutrients, but also how we've bred foods into being more appealing to our modern palate and our modern visuals, yet they are with complete and utter lack. Like there's nothing there that brings anything potent to it. So, James, I love that you're thinking, you're thinking like our recent ancestors, really. You're taking us right back to where this all began. And so the another piece that I love about your spirit around this is that you could have gotten really puritanical about this, right? You could have told people just choke down the raw liver because it's good for them. Instead, you hid the medicine within sort of a comfort food and you met people where they are, you know, where their fork was already planted. And so that's a whole philosophy in and of itself. So do we actually change someone's terrain by converting them or by making the nourishing thing so easy and so ordinary that the change is almost unnoticed?

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Yeah, uh you could probably assume where I'm leaning, but you know, it's important, you know, food is not nourishing in practice if nobody wants to eat it.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

You know, so so obviously uh I think it's really important to question the whole this whole concept of these um supplement stacks. If we look at the body we're in, it's basically Homo sapien. That body, if you trust in you know what our scientists have said, it it's been around for you know hundreds of thousands of years. And it hasn't changed much. There are very minor changes that are happening in the brain, particularly, but for the most part, the biology has not changed much. But if you look at the foods we're currently eating and the way they're ultra-processed, the way they're isolated, as we mentioned, they're not the whole anymore. Um, what is that, a hundred years? So it's you know, 200,000 versus a hundred years. And so I'm much bigger believer in that. It's not about us going backwards, because I I I would argue with someone like that. Our definition of ancestral is not accurate anyway, because most of the animals we previously used to eat are not the same animals we have today. Most of the herbs and and uh vegetables, they're also not the same. So it's not necessarily about taking steps backwards, but it is about how how much of that food can we eat is the whole of it, and then how natural can we keep it? And so I always look at it as like does the food I'm choosing, does it have an ingredient or is it an ingredient? So I'm looking for food that is an ingredient, but most important in terms of our terrain terrain and just thinking about food, should I be swallowing it, should I be eating it? We have to remember that that biology I'm talking about, this homo sapial body, the 200,000 years, there was a communication pathway that was developed during that time. And it was an incredibly crucial biology communication that was developed then. And it was basically, is this food going to nourish me or is it gonna kill me? And while that may seem simple, back in the day when our body was being developed, it was extremely severe. It was obviously a life or death, you know, by biological conversation. Because if you ate the wrong mushroom, if you ate the wrong dairy, you died. There were no, you know, nutritional facts labels, right? So there was no government agency, you know, supposedly trying to support you and making sure you're not getting foods that are not proper for your health. It's like that that communication pathway was not designed for us swallowing capsules. And I always I use the the example of salt. If I put salt on your tongue, there is an immediate immediate communication of is this salt, you know, am I getting too much or or am I getting too little? So the first time I do it, your body's like, oh yeah, give me another one. You I give you a second one, you're you're you're already nearing your end. The third and fourth, you're not even your body will literally have a reaction. You're like puckering, you're trying to get that get it off your tongue, right? So your body is protecting itself. It's the same thing when we go to try to lift something really heavy with our grip, our grip gives out. Our body is protecting itself. It won't let you lift something heavier than what you actually can lift because your grip will give out. So there is this kind of that's the that's an example of muscle testing, for example, right? So when we swallow that salt, though, we get zero communication. Maybe 30 minutes later we're like, wait, why do I feel so bloated? Oh, I I took too much of that salt tablet or whatever it is. And and you see this playing out. You see people drinking these protein powders, you see people taking supplements, and what happens? They either get bloated, they feel nauseous, or they have to pee right away. It's like the body's like, get I got too much, whatever. They're your body's reacting to whatever you did. And we're starting more and more, the longer it goes on, we're thinking this is normal instead of going, no, this is a communication point, and you're completely missing it, you're not listening. Your body is saying it got too much, or it's not happy with how you did it or what what you did and how much. But yet, if we just remove the supplement piece, if we remove that piece and just get it from our food, your body will always stop. It will tell you when it's done. And the most beautiful thing, and here's if anyone questions at all what we're talking about, all I have to say is, well, are you overweight or are you or are you perfectly like at the at the size, the perfect size for your body type? So if you are any way overweight, that is a sign that you are eating food that is not nutrient dense enough because your body would stop eating if that food was nutrient sufficient. Because the body knows nutrition is what tells our body when to stop. But when you're eating food that is that has no nutrition to it, your body literally doesn't know when to stop. And that's why you eat the whole bag of chips or the whole box of cookies. Like your body is not clear on when to stop. And obesity, the obesity epidemic is a perfect example of that. And and sorry, I'm going on and on about this, but I'll just share that I didn't I didn't create pluck knowing this. I didn't think, oh wow, well, this is gonna be actually a a uh a tool for helping people lose weight. But we've gotten feedback that people are like, oh, all I did was start using pluck and I'm eating less. And I'm like, oh of course, because you're now more nutrient sufficient, yeah, and they're losing weight just naturally. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Incredible. It's like it makes me think you spoke very much in this little um section here about the signaling pathway that we evolved with, that we've sort of um either blunted or even suppressed those signals. And what you're speaking to is the restoration of that signaling pathway to return to a state of homeostasis so that we're not our bodies are literally not starving to death, seeking something to feed and fuel it. You're helping give the right nutrients to help that signaling pathway work properly, which I think is so extraordinary. And it's it's something that we really have evolved away from in the last hundred years since the industrial food revolution, 100, 150 years. You know, every single traditional culture on the earth ate nose to tail. Everyone. In fact, I live in Mexico where every Sunday it is menudo people. Every other corner is selling uh cabeza, you know, tacos de cabeza, which is brain tacos, and lingua, tacos de lingua, which my husband, he loves both of those. I'm like, just don't tell me it's in there and I'll try it. You know, like don't tell me what it is. He's in France right now, Steve is and his sister, like they're having pâté. They're having rabbit pâté right now. Like that's what they had last night, um, a very specialty di dish of all these um, oh gosh, what do they call the aspics, you know, like all this like gelatinous bits and parts of meat that people love. It's very cultural still. You talked about the sardines anywhere in the Mediterranean. You're eating the whole sardine with the bones and eyeballs and all. And so it's just funny that in the West, we are super like it has to be like a perfect breast, you know, sulophane wrapped, and you don't want to see anything that's ungodly, you know, to the visual. So these organs historically were the prize in our cultures and still are today in many cultures around the world. It's you we saved the most important parts for the pregnant mother, the elder, the child. And somewhere we decided the organ was garbage and the boneless breast was the luxury. So that's not a nutrition story, it's a cultural one as well. So, what do you think we actually threw away? I mean, you've already spoken to a little bit when we threw away the organ and is the hunger people feel for this stuff like something even older than just nutrient loss, something even more primal than what else we've lost in all of this.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah, absolutely. I I I think this separation I mean, first of all at our heart, I believe human nature is about community. I I think that truly like the the the pinnacle of what we all are about is connection. And the key and then it just sp you know trickles down from there is how do we connect to each other? How do we connect to our environment? How do we connect to our food? You know, it just continues on from there, but that connection is uh truly what we're losing. I mean, most some kids don't even realize baking comes from pork, like from a pig. Yeah, yeah. They they don't know it. You know, kids are seeing just parts of things, they're not realizing the whole that it came from. The dinner table is another perfect place to explore, which is, you know, that is truly the dinner table is where we're relational, uh the dinner table is a real relational environment. It's where people are connecting to rhythm, like how fast they eat, their nervous system state, the family connection, of course, the modeling, their belonging. I mean, to me, like if one of the powers of pluck is that it brings the health conversation back to the dinner table. Because to me, that's where everything trickles down as well, in a family unit, at least, right? We tend to only focus on the biochemical side of things. And I think that's also why we're looking for the isolates. We're looking for we're still looking for that magic pill. Oh, I need more protein, I'll just eat cottage cheese. Oh, I need more protein, I'm just gonna have chicken breast. Like we're still looking for the simple answers to what are way more complex questions. And and what's odd, what's really interesting too is that the answer, while it seems more simple, it's actually a much more complex system to get to its simplicity. It's like raising a chicken in its natural environment, letting it, you know, follow the the herd of cows and peck at the the the cow poop and eat the insects and you know, kind of roam naturally, is very easy. It's a very simple regenerative system. But what we do is we complicate it and we put them in the cages and we do all these, we feed them very specifically so they plump up. I mean, most God, I just did an interview recently, and I want to say that a chicken's life in current, you know, modern times right now is about seven weeks. The entire chicken's life is seven weeks.

unknown 41:15

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

It's really not that long. And so when we look at even chicken, for example, we're like, well, why is this chicken so cheap? Or why is this one so expensive? Right there, that tells you how long they were fed is a key, what they were fed. And then you go, well, I'm eating chicken, that should be healthy. It's like, well, but if you have if you raise a chicken in seven weeks, is it is the food that you're giving it nutritious, or is it designed to just plump up the chicken?

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

Right? So we have to start thinking like that uh when we look at these these very broken systems. And so while it's it looks so simple in the grocery store, like, oh, it's a boneless, you know, I get to choose. I can either have skin on with boneless, I can have skinless, boneless, I can have skin on with bone, right? We're getting all these options and they seem so simple. And you're just like, oh, thank you, you know, bell and bell and whatever the the name of these chicken places are, you know, it's like, oh, thank you for simplifying it. But ultimately, they went through a much more complex system to get to that place. And it's once again the illusion of health or the illusion of simplicity. Yeah, and then it just results in in the loss of food culture in in uh in us thinking um that we are solving problems when all we are is just pushing them down the road, and it's just requiring that later on we're either having to supplement because of the nutrient sufficiency or because ultimately what is most unhealthy, like most people's lack of health or issues that come up are they do tend to boil down to a couple of things. One is you know, your gut health. Like, how is my body and what is my gut health? How is it breaking down? How is it digesting, processing the foods I put in it, and then nutrient density? Like, because if you're not eating nutrient-dense food and you're just getting calorie-rich food, you're ultimately going to have issues down the road. And that's typically what we see on these chronic, these kind of nagging chronic issues are nutrient deficient issues, and or they're ones that have been not looked at for so long that they then become tumors or they become something else, they become something much more, you know, drastic. Yeah, so we really, I mean, it all connects. And and I still to this day, I think we have to remember going back to the chicken industry, our medical system, our food system, it's all built around moving forward. No one looks back. And that's really what I try to do a lot of is I look back and I don't necessarily I don't say let's go back. I say let's look back, see what we what is best, and then see if we can bring that into the present. But the industry doesn't look back at all. So, and to give you an example, so they put chickens in cages, and they were like, well, this is how we'll control the egg, you know, the egg processing, um, the egg laying, I should say. And then they noticed the chickens started pecking at themselves or the uh or the chickens nearby. And so instead of going, oh wait, okay, maybe this is a sign that the cages are too small or that maybe we they the chickens aren't designed to be in cages, they then go, well, let's just cut off their beaks. And now they can't, you know, now they can't peck at each other. See, see, so it's that's it's constantly like how do we keep moving forward and just deal with the symptom instead of the root cause? And that is literally if you equate that concept to our health industry, it's all built like that. And even the dietary, even the way we're looking at diets, the way we're looking for that magic bill, it's all we're all looking for how do I just fix this symptom? I'm told I need more protein or or I need the XYZ. How can I easily get that? And it's like maybe we should go backwards and look at why is the food not containing this and when did it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Amazing. You're you're talking about the concept of we have turned food into a commodity and not a sacrament or the actual thing that is conducive to life. And so I think that's really powerful. And you know, James, because of these conversations we're having and what you've created in this company, you are bringing it's almost like you're you're passing the message through these packets of pluck or these containers of pluck to to the consumer. And I'm excited about that. Where can people learn more about you, about pluck, and where can they purchase it and maybe give an example of your personal favorite? I know mine. I like the spicier versions. Um, I've got a palette for that, but give folks a little bit of an idea of what um this product is and where to find it.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Yeah, so we started with the orgamate. So it's like I mentioned earlier, it's five freeze-dried, powdered, grass-fed, grass-finished organs. And it's right now it's liver, heart, kidney, spleen, and pancreas. And each five of those organs are providing different, because once again, as I mentioned this talk, we're looking at the whole, not just the isolates. And everyone loves to focus on liver, but I'm like, no, no, no, it's what they all provide. And we're now currently developing products that bring even other organs, but which is the key is how much of that whole animal can get we get in your diet. So right now it's we're focusing on cow. We have kind of three um, I would say three categories. And one is like the category is just where these are gonna be the products that just support flavor and give you some nutrition, but don't push you into tasting the nutrition and don't also push you in any danger zones, like where the whole family can just use it, go on autopilot, and it's you're getting you know small amounts, but you're getting it frequently because you want to use it every meal. So I always tell people for the first category, which is our everyday meals, that's three to five times a day. And that includes the original, which is our best seller, zesty garlic, Southwest, which I think is one of your favorites, and then Havanier lime, which is the other really spicy one, and then a new flavor called chimichuri. Ooh, yeah. So those are all really like low bar, like really just anyone is gonna taste those and gonna love them because they just they just taste like a seasoning. Then we have these kind of mid mid-tier, which have more 35 to 40 percent organs, and those are what we call kind of our our boosts. Um these are things like cinnamon, which we now call cinnabrain. So it's cinnamon with brain in it, and it's so delicious, and you could put it in your coffee or tea, or really anything that you would welcome cinnamon in. And what we're hearing is people that they they're feeling more grounded and they're feeling more focused, so it's got a similar nootropic kind of uh effect to it, like lion's mane may have, but you're it's you're getting it from an animal. Wow, and then we have a new product called lion's salt, and that is a true salt replacement, and it's got all the organs plus brain and collagen, which is coming from the skin. So it's got seven organs, and it's about 60% salt and 40% organs. So it's truly a game changer because with that one, you can just add it to anything you would salt, like truly a salt replacement, but then still season it with whatever seasoning your family already loves. Even though I we do it with we do both, we do the salt and the pluck. But it's like if you have a specific seasoning brand that you really love, then just use lion's salt as the salt. And then our third category is one for like if you're you're working with someone who has been diagnosed or assessed and they've been tested, and it's like they're anemic, or they clearly need very measurable markers on shifting their health, then you go to our third tier, which is the more kind of measured nourishment, and that's our 100% pure blends. That one we have the pure organs, so that's the five organs I mentioned earlier, and then we have pure brain, and those are 100%. There's no salt, there's no spices and herbs, and those ones, one teaspoon is equal to two ounces of organs, so it's incredibly potent, incredibly measurable. Most people do not need more than half a teaspoon a day, but immediate results. I mean, I've heard things like people um they they even say, like, don't take it too late because you might get a surge of energy. Uh, I hear other people say that they immediately felt better the once they started using it. But each of the categories, it's it I look at it as kind of like a ramp, you know, it's like one's kind of a gateway, the next one is like use it one to two times a day and you're getting a lot of nutrition. And then the third one is is is really just about measurability. It's like, okay, I know exactly what I'm getting when I use it. But we hope that by having the different varieties that we're meeting everyone's needs because it's it's less about eat pluck or get pluck. And it's more about how do we support you in not necessarily changing your diet, but more making the foods you're already eating more nutrient dense. And if that means using pluck, great. But the key is don't assume the food you are eating is nutrient dense. Let's support it in getting these foods in your diet however you're willing to do that. Whether, and if you if you're like, I'd rather just cook and eat it, great. On our website at eatpluck.com, we've got recipes, we've got so many options, so much value for you if you just want to cook and eat it. But I know that most people don't want to do that, so that's why pluck exists. I love it. And it's pluck.com? Eatpluck.com. We're also on Amazon, and then socially you can find us at eatpluck as well on all the socials.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

I love it. And so, James, my final question for you today is what are you currently tending in your own terrain?

SPEAKER_01 51:27

Yeah, that's such a great question. I am I've really narrowed down a couple things that I found that really move my needle, which is one is regular, like going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time. So that regularity of time around my sleep has absolutely moved the needle the most. Just very regular. Now my body just automatically gets up and and then I have very specific habits that I've incorporated. The the thing that I'm actually doing actively right now is I'm re-evaluating, like I can notice as I get older that certain things I've done that worked in the past are not working the same way anymore. So I'm I'm really like constantly kind of taking, you know, half a step forward, but then also looking, looking back and going, like, well, what is what I'm doing what's gonna help me take that step forward? And so I'm constantly like doing that tug and pull of auditing what I'm doing. So I'm I'm about to start working with someone to because I and I share this because I really do believe it's important as we age to treat our health like while I advocate that we really go inward and we like focus on how does how does the food I'm eating feel, how do I feel? And I don't necessarily want people creating problems when there's none, but I also want us to be honest with when we look in the mirror, are we thriving? Are we you know, are these are these things we uh are the things that we're seeing, whether it's a little bit of psoriasis or or red eyes or anything like that, are these things that we can fix, or are these things that we've just gotten used to and we think they're normal? And so that's kind of how I I just welcome people is to just don't really like just look at yourself in the mirror. And it's not about shaming yourself, it's not about beating yourself up, but it's just about like let's let's look at our let's look at ourselves with soft eyes, but honest, you know, honest hearts about you know, can I do better? Can I thrive? And then do I need support and getting that support where we need it. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 53:43

Amazing. It makes me think, like just kind of in a in a nice tying up of all of this. What I feel like I hear you saying is that doing that audit, you get to assess the season of your life and bringing in the type of seasons, seasonings that could be supportive of that season of your life. You offer so much there, James. And I'm so grateful for who you are, your own story, your own path that brought this to the rest of us. And so thanks for tending your own terrain and teaching us how to do the same.

SPEAKER_01 54:11

Thank you. I I love your reflection back on on that. I think you do a better job of articulating it than even I could.

SPEAKER_00 54:19

I love it. You are a gem. Thanks, my friend, for being here today. There's a thread from this conversation I keep pulling on. The way the most nourishing part is so often the part we've been taught to reject. Sometimes that's an organ. Sometimes it's a grief or a former version of ourselves we outgrew and quietly buried. Notice where James's story snagged on something within you. That small catch of resistance is usually pointing at exactly what's asking to be tended. Thanks for tending the terrain with me today. Whatever stirred in you, don't rush past it. Let it compost. Because when we tend the terrain, life knows what to do. See you in our next conversation.