The Truth About Modern Health (Nobody Wants to Hear)

Modern food, modern medicine, and the way we work were built for productivity. Your biology paid the bill. The data has been sitting in plain view the whole time.

This is the opening episode of Built Human, the show where Andrew Coca works one question in the open: can we build modern life, the technology and the food and the medicine, without it costing us our health? Andrew is a technologist by trade, and he's spent years watching the systems we're told to trust quietly work against the people inside them. Alongside him is Jon Marchetti, Director of Animal Base, who brings the on-the-ground view.

They start with the conversation most health shows avoid: why standard advice keeps failing the people following it most carefully. From there they get into the bigger stories shaping the modern food fight, including the food dye bans rolling out state by state, and what that policy shift looks like at the grocery store.

If you've spent years following the rules on food, fitness, sleep, and stress and still feel worse than you did ten years ago, start here.

What we cover:

→ Why standard health advice keeps failing the people following it most carefully
→ The question at the center of the show: what happens when modern life is built for output and our biology absorbs the cost
→ What Animal Base is, and how it organizes a real-food life around what you eat, how you live, and how you rest, bringing us back to what was actually built for humans
→ The latest protein-bar controversy and what it actually reveals
→ The food dye bans and the risk of relying on policy changes to drive behavioral ones

Follow Built Human at @builthuman for the most thought-provoking moments from the show and the small reminders worth carrying into your week.

Your hosts: Andrew Coca is the founder of Animal Base and President of Modern.tech, building technology that keeps people's health intact and sharing his work as a pro-human technologist at @andrew__coca.
Jon Marchetti is the Director of Animal Base, documenting his own journey at @jon__marchetti

For more on Animal Base, the curated marketplace built around what you eat, how you live, and how you rest, visit animalbase.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The world is accelerating. Technology is moving faster than ever. And somehow, with all this progress we make and all this AI disruption, we as humans are feeling worse. Something's not adding up, and most of us feel it. This is Built Human. I'm Andrew Coca. This is John Marchetti. I'm a technology entrepreneur. My day-to-day is spent building companies. John is a marketing expert. He's my business partner and co-founder in some of these companies. And every single day we work long hours as entrepreneurs. I've spent the better part of a decade tearing down my health and not living the best healthy way possible. And so this podcast and this effort that we are bringing is a return to health. It's to undo all the damage that we've had. And we are asking the same questions that you probably are. And we're building a platform to amplify what works called Animal Base. It's a marketplace and a media platform. We have very strict standards on what we list because we want people to come on the journey back to health with us. And so the marketplace enables us to put in there what we are working on and experimenting with in our journey back to health. And this podcast is where everything becomes a conversation. So let's do it, John. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Let's do it. All right, Andrew. So I think this is where I'd like to start with a little bit about where we both are today and what our journeys are. What does today feel like? You mentioned a lot about being a tech founder and um how exhausting that is. And I know this has been a particularly big busy week. So let's start there.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Yeah, I mean, even just this week, right? Running a couple businesses. In one of our businesses, we had a print deadline for a conference. And the print deadline was to print 400 things to put in the chairs of every seat in that conference. And what goes into that, as you know, is a broader marketing campaign. But then the actual ready-for-print brief needs to be nitpicked by many stakeholders. It needs to match so many things, needs to match the technology we actually built. It's a tech company called Source RE. And when we're doing that, maybe we didn't have the longest nights. Uh, I don't want to speak for you, but I was looking at our tech team and they were going until 1 a.m. And I'm sitting there thinking, I did this for so many years, and I feel bad that some of these guys are doing this. And not everyone in our entire organization is into the health kick that we are. And so I just pictured them, and this is kind of what got me this week is I pictured my team sitting there in their chair, like coding, eating a bag of Doritos, and drinking a Pepsi at like 1 a.m. And just doing a number on themselves that maybe that night feels good and they're in the groove, but over time it's just not sustainable. And it's just the a picture in my head I had this week, and it's uh it's the reality we live day to day.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

I think I I definitely feel you as uh one of the marketers that you uh may do all the extra work and may drink the peps. No, I'm just kidding, I don't drink peps anymore. Um but no, I think I I'm with you where life is too busy these days. Um, we've gone through this a modern era trend where we've shifted to um ease of use in the world of AI, where we can get things done faster, but that puts a lot more pressure on us to do things faster, right? And like I think I'm on this personal journey right now, and I've been on this personal journey of health for a long time, but it's evolved um over over time as uh as my diets changes, my workout habits changes, my work hab habits have changed, right? Like I was in an office for for uh seven years until about this time last year, right? Where um we really started uh working a lot closer together. And I started working from home. And I lost my exercise that was walking around the office. I lost my sunshine, which was walking to the bus and back home from the bus. Although back home I was in the office a little late most times, so it didn't really get sunlight. It was it was definitely darker out at that point in time. But um, you know, I'm getting married soon, right? And uh with getting married comes starting a family. And the best time for me to focus on optimizing my health, whatever that means, and learning more about it and learning more about the people, the products, the the practices across, I mean, you named it, right? Eat, live, rest, like these three core facets of life. The times right now, right? If I want to raise a family the right way and have a healthy, fruitful marriage and relationship long term uh with my best friend, then this is the best time to do it. Um so all that really resonates with me. Um and yeah, I mean, let's take this and in and dive right into to what we actually built. And maybe Andrew, the way the kick to kick this off is we can talk a little bit about our our sourcing with this health journey has become in the form of animal base and breaking down some of this marketing terminology.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

That's a great point and a great idea. If you do want to share some of this right now, I I think the the main thing is when we were starting, it was like, well, how do we know how to filter all of these voices? There's so many people saying so many things. And then as we get started in our journey and we start buying and testing certain products, and we start coming up with our own standards and who we trust and who we don't, and to what extent, because not everything is so black and white, how do we put that into an actionable state? And so that's where Animal Base Year came from, right? You see this marketplace. The the cool thing about this is instead of just filtering based on price and brand and things that you may need to already know coming in, we have a bunch of discoverable things on the left and our quality guarantees. So when people care about certain things more than others, because not everyone has to care about everything equally, maybe someone cares like you just click glyphosate free, if that's important, right? Or if you want to look at the testing around mold or heavy metals, these types of things. We allow that discoverability to happen more naturally. And I think the the main thing here with this marketplace is we wouldn't list anything in there that you or I wouldn't purchase. So it's become a very personal thing for us where it's an extension almost of our journey into health, into reclaiming health, right? Because it's not that we're saying eat these if you want to look like us. We we have the luxury of like we're not health influencers, we are entrepreneurs, right? So if anything, we get to invite people to join us on that journey back to health. And that's what I love about this site, is because the site is kind of the way we we take that journey. It's it's the the bridge we cross to get back to health. And so you've been showing the marketplace, but maybe you'd like to expand either either on that or I mean there's there's so many things in the site that we use day to day.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

I think you you touched on our standards, which is um super important for us. And so we do list our our standards, obviously, on our site directly so people can learn more about what our non-negotiables are, the lines we don't cross, but also some of those more enlightening um things with within our our marketplace as well. We follow a good, better, best uh philosophy. So as long as you're you're one you could be 1% better, you could be 5% better, you can be 10% better, but um a lot of that boils down on preference, availability, tastes, even, right? Or situations. So the most important thing is taking these non-negotiables that we're we're sharing on screen here, such as no seed oils, uh, no endocrine disruptors or PFAs, no preservatives, no artificial ingredients, right? And we will boil this down to three effective groups of standard. It is non-toxic, toxin-free ingredients, it is natural ingredients in the way that they're sourced and the way that they're they're produced, and then it is ethically sourced ingredients, ingredients raised the right way with the right practices. Um, and so I'll I'll tease out here, but obviously we don't have to this isn't this isn't a sales pitch, right? This is in an education vibe where we can share the quality ingredients that it's just we found very helpful in our own sourcing standards. And I no nowhere in the the stores can I find something that is microplastic free or mycotoxin tested. So I don't know anything uh uh about this and what I'm buying. So our goal is to make that super transparent. So that leads directly into the marketplace, as you were you were talking about, Andrew, which is our course of action, as we call it. Now I'll let you speak a little bit more of our knowledge base, which we we dub as our education pillar.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Yeah, I think the biggest thing with the knowledge base is traditionally, as an entrepreneur and a tech builder, you look at an ROI of a feature, and unfortunately, we might not have taken the best ROI uh focus on this knowledge base because we're not really going to make any money from this. This was a pet thing for me, to be honest with you, in the sense that I kept seeing scientific research pop up from all of the different thought leaders that I follow on Instagram and elsewhere. And I just kept thinking to myself, do I really have to open Instagram and go to people I trust to find scientific research? Or can't I just put this all in one place where it'd be easier to search through and filter through? And so that's what we did. And we we took it all, we put it in here, and now if you want to know the research around something like seed oils or something like a inflammation or an expression of inflammation, like a disease or something relevant to you, a cancer, something you're suffering from, and you want to relate that back to the standards and the theme of this lifestyle, you can do so in the knowledge base. And we're only growing the content. We have a hundred something compiled, and so hopefully that hits the thousands and continues to grow. But by putting it all in one place, it kind of goes back to what we were saying about our journey back to health being an expression of the site, where I know when I'm going through and I'm trying to make myself better, I'm gonna do this research. And so if we can make it easier for others to do that research in the same vein, then power to them, right? And I even if there's no way for us to sell this or make money on this, I think it fits the theme really well of we want to help people take action. We want to make vitality more accessible. Actually, if you could pull up the thought leader directory, I think it's very similar, right? It's like not gonna make money on this, not really something that from a traditional entrepreneurship product perspective may have been the wisest thing to build, but it's like, how do you define your knowledge breadth? And how do you define maybe which research studies we're gonna put into the knowledge base? I think that we can define this and the community by the people. And so by kind of showing which folks we think align with the whole real food, natural living uh ethos that we share, by putting those all in the thought leader directory, a couple things happen, right? Like we make it more discoverable for people to find folks that they may want to follow. We also let them find topic areas that they might have important to them. Ben Patrick, knees over toes guy, really important one for me. If people are struggling with knee issues, for example, they could have searched through our thought leader directory and found people like this to help them. I think that's really important for people. But I also think the second thing, the the maybe unintended thing, is people can get a feel for who we are by virtue of the thought leaders that we have in this community. Because these are the conversations we want to be having, right? These are the people that make up the community, that we consider thought leaders, that we look to, and uh these are people that we are going to invite onto podcasts, that we're gonna have conversations with in person or at conferences or events. And these are the types of people that the knowledge and the research that they procure will make their way into the knowledge base as well. And so often these are also people who have products and can become suppliers for brands in the marketplace. So a couple key points there, I think, for knowledge base and thought leader directory, right? It's like from a product perspective, they're nice, but I think from an identity perspective, they're they're crucial.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Completely agree. Um and to emphasize emphasize it again, I think what's most important because you've been on the journey for a lot longer than I have, right? Um, and I think for for me being able to find experts that I can trust and or research that is is true to the point, what we're trying to learn and shows science-backed evidence that supports that what I'm doing is actually right instead of a fad, right? Like we've all seen the the the butter in your coffee trend, or um one I I haven't done enough research in, but I I still out of out of uh out of sense of uh placebo effect do every now and then is is tart cherry juice at night is supposed to make you sleepier. I don't think that's actually true. I haven't done the research. We need to we need to actually do the research on that. But um, these are some examples of fads that we're we're we're seeking to centralize and and debunk. So education inspires action, action inspires builds community. So the those are the three pillars that have really brought brought us to life. And together this can form an infrastructure that starts on our site and spreads far beyond our our site and and and throughout the people that we're meeting as well. So fantastic overview. Um, I want to take us to the food dye reckoning, actually, something that's that's been in the news lately and is a point of emphasis um from uh from our compared to articles in our our knowledge base. And so what this is is uh West Virginia became the first state uh to ban several petroleum-based dyes uh statewide in in March. So this is red 40, this is yellow five. These are all the dyes that we know are harmful or at least have been told are are harmful and provide no real real benefit, right? Chemically derived, petroleum derived uh dyes. This is the it became a key talking point for RFK in in March as well, as part of the Maha movement. Um, and a lot of companies are responding to this. So PepsiCo, Hershey, uh JMSmucker, right? They're all responding to it and reformulating. But I think the the better question, as good as this is, right? Like we're we're banning dyes or we're taking toxins out of our food. The better question is why have these foods, these dyes been allowed in our food for 50 plus years and approved in our foods by the FDA for 50 plus years, right? So I red 40 has been in our our supply chain for 50 uh since the 70s, right? So that's 56 years. Um and so just just now these companies are being told and informed that they have to make a change, thus they are making a change. But is this really a win for us? Is this really a win for a community? Andrew, what what is what's your your perspective on on dyes? How do you have them in our in our home? And do you view this as a win for uh for us more broadly?

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Yeah, no, I I think it's a good question to ask in that I think I think capture and scientific capture is something that we've seen where research studies are designed in a way where whoever is funding them has a thesis that is beneficial to them. Otherwise, why would they fund it, right? And so when you have companies that are using things like RED 40 and these other petroleum-based dyes, is it in their benefit to ask are these ingredients healthy? Why would they put any money to fund research like this, right? And so I could see why maybe there's not research that's screamed this is bad for the last 50 years until recently, maybe, and people are getting very upset about this, and now there's there's research in their studies, and uh but I think the the big question, like you said, is why now? Why not 50 years ago? How have we lived like this for 50 years? And I think I think that's part and parcel of the problem with many of these different toxins and and bad things that we have in our daily life, not to be scared of them by any means, but to really reclaim your health, you have to at least be aware of them. And if, for example, I wanted to eat something that had red 40 in it today, I might not be afraid to eat it, right? But I think at least I know. At least I know. And I think we'll we'll talk marketing on this show all the time, but that's what gets me about the world really in marketing is the health and wellness marketing will tell you something is healthy, or at least it won't even flag at all that it could be unhealthy. Unless, of course, it's uh things that are actually good for you, like healthy fats like tallow, they're gonna say high high calorie, uh high saturated fat, they're gonna make you flag that, but they're not gonna make you flag the red 40s, which is ridiculous. But uh again, I think it's not to be scared of all of these things. It's more so that if you don't even know it's in there and you don't even know it's bad for you, and you're just living your life without that knowledge, and it's accumulating the effect of eating this way and doing a number on your body like this over many years, that's what sickens me, right? It's like okay, at least at least tell people, at least people can know that this is not good for them. And then if they decide to do it because the trade-off for them is oh, just I really love this product and it has it in there, then power to you because at least you're just you're living your life on your terms. It's when it's when there's just no knowledge of it, that it's almost just you're taking advantage of people and they don't know any better. And I think that's the the worst part about all this for the last 50 years is just no one knew any better, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:48

And this is where I have trouble with the FDA in general, right? Like it's this administration that's supposed to be in charge of food and drugs that are healthy for you, or at least not maybe I shouldn't say healthy, not damaging. Um and to me, FDA approved comes off as a marketing, or at least we grew up in this era era where it was a marketing label that says, oh, it's FDA approved, it's safe for human consumption, right? And now safe can take many, many different terms. Safe in their their specific doses, probably, but what happens when you eat it over time? I mean, we have a health epidemic in the US, right? Like it's very clear that people have consumed these in large enough doses to have an impact. So you can't tell me that it's FDA approved because this one dose in a snack pack is acceptable. But then when you go through a massive bag, because we don't sell snack packs anymore because the calories on that thing are just not enough to satiate us. So you you you can't tell me that it's safe anymore. You can't slap that FDA label on there, or at least I don't trust an FDA label anymore without doing my own research, without having my own standards, which brings us back to a lot of what we've uh discussed with uh animal base in general. Um and I want to tell an anecdotal story too, because you make a good good point. As long as you know, you know, right? There's there's things that make that help you become 1% better every single day. But on the on the the flip flip side of that, there are things that help you be one or assist you in in becoming 1% worse every single day. Um I think before before we planned this this podcast, we were uh riffing on what equipment to buy and get getting ready to set up our studio. And I had sent my my cart to you. And at the very bottom of the cart, I had to save for later. Uh a pack of Sour Patch Kids Cherry Blasters, which are phenomenal, by the way. I, as someone who lives in the United States, had only seen those in Canada, I could never buy them in the United States. So I had made sure to save the links so whenever I I wanted to have them, rarely sparingly, uh, I would know exactly where to go for them. But that's an example of um, I acknowledge that I'm I'm not eating cherry blashes every day. Actually, I honestly I don't think I've I've had them within the last calendar year at all, yet they're still saved in my cart. But it's an example of being being conscious, right? Like that's not going to become a staple in in my diet. I know it's bad for me. I feel bad after I eat even just a small packet. Um, but I found it really funny in preparing for this as I stare at it, because I I actually made the the comment to you, I believe, that oh no, we we've eliminated dyes from our our household entirely. I can't think of a single thing that has dyes in it. Meanwhile, my Amazon cart has has something with dyes in it. So um it's hard. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Um I'm glad a state's admitting it, right? That it's it's it's bad and harmful. Um but it's hard.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Yeah, no kidding, right? Like the I think the Sour Patch Kids is a a good uh example too, where you're not really gonna find a animal based Sour Patch Kids or like a I mean you I actually Might. Actually, I shouldn't say that. Like next thing we know, tomorrow we're gonna have a supplier that's like an alternative, but it's well, I have another one for that.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

In the middle of COVID, what started trending was if you took your grapes, cut them in half, squirted lime juice on them, and froze them. And they taste they had the consistency of Sour Patch Kids, but they were sour because of the grapes. And it actually, honestly, they taste delicious. You can kind of find uh mass, mass produced versions in the groceries.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Somebody listening should make this please into a product because we'll list it tomorrow on the marketplace.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

It's definitely a product now, but I do not trust what's in it. I have to look up what the product is and and I don't know, maybe we got to evaluate it. But uh someone definitely took it, but I don't think they took the healthy the healthy approach.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah, I don't doubt that. Oh my gosh. I'm not gonna tell you about my uh my cheats because actually I don't I don't have one so specifically like that, but you know, I think what I've done a good job of is swapping what used to be cheats, like like ice cream for ice cream for bears kind of thing, you know. Or um I sent uh John on Instagram, I sent you a like this sourdough chocolate chip cookie brand that I was like, list this in the marketplace because I have a sweet tooth and it's been hard with the last year of getting back to health, with just like going cold turkey on a lot of these things, and um it's back to that question too, sometimes of like what is life about? Life is to be lived, you know, you want to feel good, you want to live your life, and so you don't want to just take all these little joys of life out if that's something that is important to you, but you also don't want to be defined by them and you don't want to be prisoner to them. And what is good for your life and living your life is being healthy and right and being fit and having high fitness. So if you can marry the two, that would be great, but definitely don't use it as a crutch to keep them in your diet. But that's why I like this whole finding the better alternatives that way when we can find them and we can add them to our routines, uh, it's not going to conflict with your values. And I think that's what's really important about a lot of that.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Yeah. That actually brings us perfectly back to uh the topic at hand in West Virginia where we have, you know, Nestle and Smokers and all these others now scrambling for alternatives or at least investing in alternatives, right? Like, do we trust those alternatives? I think I have I have a gut perspective on this, right? And it's it's no. We've gone for years that these are profit-seeking companies that are mass brands that find ways to make things a lot cheaper. And I don't know that they can find a dye cheaper that is within the health guidelines that we're actually looking for without falling back back into this idea of um of uh toxic food dyes, right? So I'm curious to see how it evolves. But at this point, these companies have lost my trust to say that any new ingredient they put in in order to um have a more I shouldn't even say more natural alternative. They're not gonna go with more natural alternative, especially looking at the rest of the ingredient list. But in order to get around the dye conversation, um I just don't trust the next engineered food ingredient. I'm curious to see what it is, and I can't wait to pick it apart.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

No doubt. I don't I think it's it's more than just a gut says no, it's like that demonstrably it's been you can't trust them. So good for us because we'll find the brands that we can trust and and we'll put them in the marketplace and we'll solve a problem, right? If if you could trust these brands, then there would be no problem for us to solve. But unfortunately, you can't trust 100%.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Let's um let's pivot here to a brand that we do have in the marketplace, or I shouldn't say brand. Paul Saladino's on our marketplace, but lineages and and his products are in the marketplace. But uh within within March, uh he he caught a little fire on the release of his his protein bar. Um it's super interesting because you have two sides of the aisle, the people that know and follow Paul and have for a long, long time that know that this this protein bar is completely um in his standards and and what he looks for in food, real food, right? But on the other side of the aisle, and he's he's getting a lot of blowback, especially from people that don't know him or or know him in passing and have let's call it preconceived notions, right? Because um they're they're they're looking at his prior content, his historical content has been so restrictive, um some could say, right? Um and they they look at this and say, wait a second, are you going back on what you said? This does this enable processed foods? Because it is a processed food, it's not a real food, right? So there's been a lot of backlash um within this this release. And so curio curious to hear when when you saw this drop and you you saw both sides of the story, like what was your reaction, especially being uh you know, uh a follower of of Paul's?

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Well, I think the core for me is that I'm an entrepreneur at heart, not just a technology entrepreneur, but an entrepreneur, right? And as an entrepreneur, you marshal resources to solve problems. And when I look at what Paul did, like I I guess I get it why people might be upset, but personally, I I would never ever even thought, why did you do that? Right. I like to see people evolve their perspectives. As your frame of reference expands, as you mature as a human being, you would only think that the meaning you create evolves, it gets more accurate to your expanded frame of reference. You learn, you change, you adapt. That's the cycle of progression of maturity of a human being, right? So I don't mind that at all. And whether you agree or not, sure, right? You can disagree. Uh, I think the some of the backlash had been around, you know, oh, you're selling something, you're only making content to sell, and now you've launched a product that you're trying to sell with your content, and it's like, well, man, you you must not understand how the world works, and you're gonna single one guy out for selling one thing. I mean, I I want to sell things, I'm an entrepreneur. We run four companies. Someone gonna tell me that when we make content for one of our companies, like it's only to sell something? Like, give me a break, right? Like, I think the the everyone's asking the wrong questions. The question that should be being asked is is there value to this product? Is the product solving a problem? Is the product of a nature that solves a problem that wasn't solved before? And I think all of those things are yes for Paul's uh, I think it was the protein bar, right? It was like for many other protein bars, they have a lot of bad things in them. Wow, here's one that doesn't. Shouldn't we celebrate that? Right. And so I I think it's just funny to me. I might have a different perspective than a lot of people because I'm an entrepreneur at heart, but but I I get excited when people come up with innovative products. Usually that's on a tech technology software type sense, right? People are coming up with a new app or a new AI, right? But hey, on the CPG sense, and when you're making goods, like that needs some innovation too. I think that's why we're all here, right? So I think we should celebrate when more and more of these products get launched that actually solve some of these problems.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Yeah, and I I understand the backlash from the perspective of a consumer that feels like they're being told what to do, but it has to be this way, right? Not that there are options. And not to say he said that, but it's an example of marketing where it can appear that way or come off that way, especially if you're not a follower, especially if you're seeing a lot of the videos in the wild, clipped by others. And let's face it, he is an influencer. We aren't health influencers, he is an influencer that is going to be clipped by other influencers and his words are going to be twisted that way. Can't wait until that becomes twisted another way.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Because we're not going to be able to do that. That crazy thing about that though is like we can't control the algorithm either, right? So, like let's say he put out 10 pieces of content that were really well rounded. Then it's like, to your point, like only one of those may take off, and then everyone's only seeing this like very specific in your face type of content. And then they're like, wow, very rigid, very come at me with something you need me to do. But then there's like nine other pieces of content that were really well rounded that just the algorithm didn't prioritize those because it prioritized the style that you're mad about in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Which is just such a fallacy with social media and living online in general today in this this modern era. I mean, we see it, right? Like we're we're trying to grow and spread awareness uh by the best way how, which is social media. We're doing it. We're trying, we're taking advantage of it. Not maliciously, at least not intentionally maliciously. Um, and one of the first posts we had that caught a little bit of fire was what we deemed the red meat argument. We said we had two sides of the aisle. Red meat, red meat is good for you, red meat is bad for you. And we actually never stuck a claim in any of it. Obviously, our our name, Animal Base, takes a certain claim, but then the comments went wild underneath it of uh of perspectives and people who took it one way. And it was all like negative comments very, very early on in our posting. But we were like, why is this post taking off? Oh, because people are just mad about it. And so the the algorithm feeds posts that you're malgor you're you're you're mad about. It just it it feels friction, which it's almost impossible to get out of in today's world.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Yeah, feels friction. I think that's the that's that's well said.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Yeah. And so to offer offer my perspective on on the protein bar itself, getting back to the point of of where we started on this one. Um I love I like I I try to to be a very uh active human and I love things like skiing, for instance. I grew up grew up in and live in the northeast, so not too far away from from mountains. Um, I am not gonna bring a grass-fed ribeye with me on the on the mountain, as delicious as that sounds. Um actually could travel well because it's so cold out. Um, but I have no way of reheating it, right? So um, like this is an example where yes, eat whole foods. That is the best thing for you. Eat real beef that's fed right, that's raised right, eat fruits, eat eat, you know, drink milk, eat cheese. All of these components that are just super, super healthy for you. But in the pinch, we're not we're a modern era. We are running, we're working every single day. We want to ski on the slope for 10 hours, and we don't want to have the chicken fingers in the lodge. You're already making a good decision by not having the chicken fingers in the lodge. If you bring a protein bar like Paul's lineage, or even like I have the have a protein, but this is my breakfast right here. All right, I shouldn't say breakfast, we're recording it at noon here. So this is my lunch, but I have a Jacob Bar protein bar, which is made with far better uh ingredients than anything I see on the the shelves across uh grocery stores, right? And I have been in that situation where I'm training, I'm trying to lose weight, I'm you know running a half marathon or whatever, whatever it is. And I stare at the protein bar options, and there's a million of them. And I look over every single label and it's not clear because they're all made with so many ingredients and fillers and sugars. And so you're met with derision decision paralysis, you don't know what to do, and at least this is very simple, right? Like uh, if I had to read the ingredients off for Paul specifically, grass-fed whey, grass-fed beef tallow, raw organic honey, organic coconut nectar, organic freeze-dried fruit salt. Fantastic. I needed an extra finger there, but it was a lot better than a than a uh Storbot brand.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Yeah, it's it's I I think because he pioneered a lot of this, you know, the whole anti-seed oil movement. Um he must just be held to like godlike standards that no human could ever meet or something for there to be backlash, especially, you know, you read those ingredients, it's like fantastic ingredients. Why, why, why get mad? Because be glad, go, go build your own product and and get get involved, you know? Like, don't get mad at other people getting involved.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Exactly. And you know, it's support each other, right? Totally, 100%, yeah. Like that's the other problem with with social media, which we can get into in a whole whole other episode, but it's not community building, despite that being the uh the common common tagline between um all these different sources. Um but yeah, I mean, I think we have the same perspective. Whole foods, real foods, real ingredients, always the best. But I mean, if you're going to make an alter alternative living in the the modern era, as long as it's made with real ingredients, uh, to the best possible sourcing or even uh avoiding some sugars, some toxins in the in the first place, that's that's the best decision you can make for yourself. Totally. And I think that's a good transition uh for you, Andrew, to talk about a little bit of what you're testing lately. You just moved in a new house, you you're always optimizing your your diet. Um I don't know. What what's one thing you're you're testing lately that you want to share with with with me, with our our viewers?

SPEAKER_00 35:40

You know, when I moved into this place, I just and I maybe I'd watched these Instagram reels where there's just gunk coming out of the faucets and you know the filters are all gunky after you swap them, but I just had this like feeling that the water was was dirty coming from the shower heads. And and of course, lo and behold, like it was a shower head that was like 15 years old, and so it probably truly was pretty gunky. And so the I think the day after I I moved in, I got one of those red light shower filters that you see from from higher dose where it like has the red light shining at you, and it's on my registry.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

I I want that so bad that's on my registry, man. You might have to get it for me.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

I might have to. I think you better put more like wellness stuff on your registry and entice me to get you some things. Oh, that's amazing. But like that was the first thing I did, right? It was like, oh my gosh, get get some clean water since you know I I shower daily. I'm not one of those people that's like, I'm gonna just wear my own oil, especially if you work out and you wear clothes after you work. Like, I don't know, it's not natural. So I I've got I prioritized my showering like day one, basically. But but I didn't want to stop there, right? Because water and the contact with your skin coming from the tap sources is just so bad typically with the heavy metals, the chlorine, the fluoride. And I just I'm debating still. Like what I'm not necessarily testing, but debating is do I get one of those whole home systems that does the reverse osmosis to your water system? And then all of the taps that have water from showers to sinks, they all have that reverse osmosis water, right? Or do I just put filters on any of the ones that I'm using heavily? And then at that point, I can drink it as well if I if I do the reverse osmosis, but if I do the filters, maybe I don't drink it, maybe I get spring water. So all of this debate I'm going through, I just I haven't settled on it, but how do I optimize my water? I spend a good amount of money right now on a water delivery from uh Mountain Valley, I think, like spring water. And so that's in uh a dispenser, right? And so I get water that way for drinking or or cooking with, right? But would a reverse osmosis system actually be worse because it's not like it doesn't have minerals that come from a spring water source? So it's that kind of thing. It's then the uh there was a point brought up where if you did it at the system level for the house, are the pipes dirty? Is it better to filter at the actual tap instead of at the system level? And my argument there is probably like, well, you've run it enough over, gosh, I don't know, a month, a few months. Like, probably it gets clean enough, maybe it doesn't, maybe I'm making that up. But these are things that I'm not sure on, right? I'm I'm actively researching this kind of thing and I'm just debating back and forth, and I'm sure I'll make a decision in the near future.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Yeah. It's interesting because I am less familiar with this, the water and system of doing your house house over, and maybe that's just a facet of us living in in two different locations too, right? Um, of how like common practice that is uh or knowledgeable those systems are. The first thing that came to my mind was well, okay, you're f you're filtering the water from I guess the the source, but then you are going through the pipes. So is there heavy metals built up in the pipes? Um, do the pipes need uh to be made out of a certain material to prevent heavy metal contamination, something like that. So I'm interested to see if you wind up going that route. Um doing some some water tests, right? And and seeing what that's look looks like. Take a sample of your old water too. Uh sample of your old water, some water tests with the new system. If you go that route, um and and then I know you do have the the filtered shower head, jealous. Um, but then take some some some some samples of that water and compare them. I'm I'm very curious to see what you find. I think um water for me is one of those interesting things because you know we're we're primarily made of water. So everything that goes gets leached into our skin or um that we do consume um is derived from from water and where where it's sourced from. But it's one of those things that you almost can't tell the difference, or at least not right away, when you make the right changes, right? And and how you you uh consume it or put it on you. So it's hard to test and judge and and have definitive, tangible results. I I know from the research, obviously, right, it's better for me. But the difference is eating grapes and and eating sour patch kids, one makes me feel a heck of a lot better. Water for me is is a lot a lot tougher. Um so actually, I I'm curious, I am curious to hear here with the the the shower head that you have. Like, have you felt the difference? Like, how how is that manifested in your home?

SPEAKER_00 40:52

Well, I I think to the touch, the water is definitely literally filtered and not gunky. Like you could see in the other shower head, like it was getting pretty gunky from the tap water. So I think I think like you can feel the difference in the water, so so you know that the water is actually clean. Uh, but that being said, how does it make you feel is a different story because feeling it to the touch is more just like a maybe a preference thing or just like a like it bothers you mentally thing. It's not like a how do you actually feel thing. And I think to your point, we obviously try to be as data-driven and feedback loop oriented as possible. And and with some of these things, it's like you're trusting research from sources that you I guess trust themselves, and then you're saying, I'm gonna take this action, or you have to feel differently or have an different an experience for you to want to take that action, uh, because sometimes otherwise it's placebo, and sometimes it is placebo. So here I think there maybe it's a little bit of placebo, but I think knowing that I'm taking an action in line with values that I hold dearly makes me feel good, and so probably contributes to any placebo happening with like, oh, I have clean water. And then of course, I'm sure with the research and with the long-term effects of downregulation of genetic expression because of toxins or lack of toxins, all that kind of research, like that will have an effect over time. But any, to your point, I think like any placebo effect or any oh my god, I feel good effect may even come from the fact that I've made an intentional choice and decision to take action in line with values that I hold dear, and I feel good for having done that. I feel good because I have clean water. I know that something little in my routine is benefiting me, not harming me, and that it's gonna add up a little bit more and more over time. I think the performance, yeah, right. And I think the performance entrepreneur in me, from you know, managing little bits of performance improvements over time, compounding into success in business, maybe feels that a little bit too in the routine day-to-day, and going, hey, if I know something that I don't even have to put a shred of effort into is going to help me minuscule every single day and compound over time, that's really nice. I think the ones that I struggle with are the ones where it's like, okay, I know I could do something a little bit better, but it's like it's really hard to unwind a habit or a routine sometimes, whereas something as easy as a shower head is something that you install once and you don't have to do anything differently, right? It's like you're setting yourself up to worry about one less thing. So I think that's why I'm really happy with it, at least for now. And then um I think we'll talk plenty about this in in future episodes, but just there's gonna be so much. Little things like that that that we try to optimize and try to get that 1% better daily type of feel.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

I'm I'm holding off from asking you about the red light too because I am really, really curious, but I I know we'll we'll save that one for for a future episode. Um so the three options you've obviously done the research, right? You're you're weighing what you're putting into action. And so it sounds like the three options in front of you are keep the filter shower heads, replace the system uh within it, or keep the the current system. But the current system is really isn't an option for you in your mind. Are there any other uh like methods or or businesses that can help you get a similar result other than those two main options?

SPEAKER_00 44:40

I I don't think so. I've I've filled out some online forms and trying to get quotes and understand what the cost mechanics are. I'll probably share some of that in future too, if anyone's interested. Like because there is a probably a more upfront cost with doing a whole house system, right? And if you can trust the results of that, and you can trust the water coming from taps, then hey, maybe over time like replacing filters equals that cost, and it would have been better to do the whole house system. So just trying to get a feel for those mechanics.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

This um made made me think of it was just recently out in Arizona, as you know, and uh there was a uh a pool where we were staying and it had salt water in it, which I think is becoming a a hot trend if it hasn't already caught fire uh to this point. So even just I'm I'm curious for us to dive into not not not here in this segment of this podcast, but um the benefits of salt water versus definitely better than chlorine water, but like spring spring water and in filtered water as well. Um so something something for the future, something for the future. But as we wrap up our our first podcast here, I I think um, well, you're in the fantasy championship. You wanna let our viewers know uh you you have the right to brag here. Um I don't have the right to brag.

SPEAKER_00 45:58

You wanna let our I don't have it on me yet. Next time I'll I'll come with the fantasy hockey uh cup, the trophy that we have. It's uh one of our friends made a like a mini keg or something into a Stanley Cup looking thing, and we've been joking that since we're into health and wellness so much, we'll we'll drink raw milk out of it instead of beer or something. So um, but no, it's I I won last year. My brother won the two years before, and right now I'm in the championship. So this time, next episode, I'll I'll come to you with my my back-to-back championship, and that trophy's not going to Boston anytime soon. I'll tell you that much.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Yeah, I have some clear expletives that I'll save for when we end this uh this stream, but you did beat me last year in the championship. Um, I was a heavy favorite up until the last two days when you pulled away. Um, I was a heavy favorite this year, earned a bye week, right? Earned a bye week, was the best team in the league. I couldn't make a roster decision on who to cut when I needed to pick someone up. My roster was so good. And somehow I'm leading all six, six of seven days last week against uh Milkman. I guess that's that's an ironic title for this podcast. But his his name was Milkman, and uh he pulled away on on Sunday. I almost didn't pick up 2D, so I didn't drop anyone in order to because I I thought I thought I had in the bag. And then he even after I picked up two two people to fill up my roster, he he put me in the hole. So here I am just taking on your dad for third place, and I will never be the victor. I am always the bridesman, made never the bride.

SPEAKER_00 47:36

That's so funny. Yeah, you're cursed. I'll uh we'll come back with the results. Hopefully, I've I I've actually won when we talk about this, and I'm not the one who's lamenting like you are, but I think uh lamenting's a wrong word.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

I think there's much darker words I want to use.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

Yeah, I I bet I think people will uh any hockey fans out there will will like you and I. Anyone who's into hockey, I mean they'll see if you looked at my wall, you have my signed OV picture and my signed Landiscog picture holding the cup. I know you don't like my OV picture, but uh yeah, any real hockey fan would.

SPEAKER_01 48:16

So yeah, you have that, and I have my Bruins paraphernalia in the back, my Bobby Or sign puck, my goalie mask. I think that's gonna be a fun one for people to digest that. Uh I uh I have the mindset of a goalie. Um and of course my Brady jersey, because that that guy is an absolute psycho when it comes to uh just real routine and and and in food and eating habits. So um one day I'll grow up to be just like Brady. One day. One day. Oh man, awesome. Well, anything else you want to say to the the viewers here as we we conclude the first one? I think uh from my perspective, we have a lot more to share, a lot more fun guests coming up.

SPEAKER_00 48:55

Yeah, welcome to Bill Tuman. Thanks for coming on the journey with us. I'm excited. I think all we're doing is trying to make our own journeys easier with everything we're building here. So hopefully it's making your journey a little bit easier as well.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

Yep. All right, we'll see you in episode two.