Alexx Stuart - Low Tox Life

An episode from the 2021 archives with Alexx Stuart, Australian author, educator, activist and host of Low Tox Life Podcast. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Hi, I'm Sophie. Welcome to Big Things Little Things. A podcast series where I sit down with inspiring change makers to discuss the big things they're doing, the little things that make them who they are, and together we vision pathways towards a better future. Hey guys, welcome back to episode 11. Today I'm sitting down with Alex Stewart. She, I'm sure you've heard of her. She's pretty epic. But if you haven't, I will tell you a little bit about it. So Alex is this incredible woman who lives in Sydney. She is a mother. She is an educator, an activist, and a change agent. So she has um two books. The first book, Lotox Life, is a pretty incredible book that uh it goes into a little bit about her history um with mold illness, which is how she kind of embarked on this Lotox life journey. And um it was striving to to improve her health with this chronic health condition that she was um really struggling with. So that's a really cool book that has a lot of practical stuff in it about how you can reduce the toxic load in your house, because um a lot of people aren't aware, but a lot of the things that are sold conventionally in the um supermarket or the chemist or you know, the makeup that we wear, a lot of it has a lot of pretty nasty stuff in it that you think, oh, it's just growing on my skin. I'm not eating it while your skin absorbs everything that you put on it as just as if you're ingesting it. So it's really important to to have a critical analysis of what chemicals um you're exposed to in your life because these can have a big impact on on your health and may be a link that you're not seeing between why you're feeling a bit shit, um, or you know, it could be something to do with your environment. So her first book, Lotox Life, is fantastic in delving into that. Her most recent book is called Low Tox Life Food, and it is a um a deep dive into the food system. And it's very, very important and very interesting. It um discusses a lot about what what the issues are with our modern food system because often our debates um between you know individuals focus a lot about a lot on um what diet should I do? Should I be paleo? Should I be vegetarian? Should I be vegan? You know? But the the problems are much more deep-seated than that. And it goes to much more fundamental things that we need to look at. And it really ties into the climate crisis because our broken food system is perpetuating a lot of the problems that the earth is facing at the moment. And while the problems seem enormous, and they are enormous, they can be dealt with right in your own home, in your shopping trolley. And that's what Alex is discussing. So she goes into the problems with our health food system, and then she talks about the wonderful things that are being done um in the food industry to revolutionize things and how you can get involved in that in your local community. And then she goes on to um to explain some beautiful recipes that are super flexible to get people into the kitchen, to get them reducing their waste, um, to get them eating, you know, fresh, healthy produce that's locally sourced. Um, and she doesn't give super prescriptive rules for anything. It's just uh general principles that are really wonderful to keep in mind when you're shopping. So we go into the book in this um in this episode, and uh I hope that you enjoy it. Um Alex has a lot of other things that she does. She has a podcast, Lotox Life, which is just super fantastic. There are hundreds of wonderful episodes. Every episode I turn on is somehow miraculously relevant to me in that moment. Um I love her podcast, she's interviewed some incredible people, big, big people. And um yeah, that's you know, I could ask her questions for weeks on end. There's just so much knowledge in her brain that I would love to access. So, yes, today um was fantastic. As I have mentioned previously, we had quite a lot of technical issues in this recording. So just um bear that in mind. That threw a few curveballs, but we came through, and Alex was the most chilled human being in the world dealing with this. So that was fantastic. So I hope you enjoy it. If you do enjoy it, I'd love you to leave a um a star rating on uh Apple Podcasts or um uh a review or just share the podcast within your um social media just to get the word out there about what's going on. All right, enjoy. I'll talk to you on the other side. So um just to contextualize the beginning of this interview, we had um like quite a few technical problems when we were getting started, and we got cut off a few times. And um part of the first question that I asked got cut off. So I'll just start out by um reading out the question that I had asked Alex. Her answer, a little bit at the beginning, got cut off too. So I'll just um orient you so that you know um where we are when we start the chat. So my question with Alex to begin with was this. You set out to write a book about the highest carbon emitting foods around the world, but your investigations revealed the need for a different story. Your investigations revealed that very little is black and white. Could you explain a bit more about what you mean when you say a different story? What are these shades of grey? Why is it that you couldn't just write a book about the highest emitting carbon foods that provided a very clear checklist for the readers to eat in a way that, you know, reduces their carbon footprint? So that was a question that I put to her. And um, Alex, when she started to respond, she started from the place of her own experience, which is dealing with mold illness, and coming from a place of um that was her starting point with food and trying to eat in a healthier way. So that's where we're coming into the conversation. So that's our starting point, and that's what she's talking about. So hopefully it all flows on from here and you're able to follow smoothly. Okay, thank you. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Radically, 17 years ago, due to an illness, uh, it made me look at packaged foods and all of that kind of jazz. So I was thrown into the arms of produce because it was literally the only safe stuff, and uh, and that meant I had to learn how to cook, and then when you're buying produce, that means you can go to a farmer's market because that's where your groceries come from, and chatting to farmers, and so I knew some stuff, but I I was keen on whether these graphs that various world agencies put out every year ranking foods, uh, really stood the test of looking at things from different angles. And as soon as I started to look at things from different angles, i.e. uh seasonality, uh locally grown, uh method of growing or raising, then everything changed. Uh, you would literally rank, like there would be no ranking, because it matters so much more about where the food is from, how local it is to you, and how the farming is done. Those are the biggest uh in terms of the agriculture piece. But then, even apart from not being able to rank everything neatly, so you know, humans hate it when we don't have the perfect recipe to just follow the steps. We're so I think we've been pushed into protocols because of all the diets and uh the productization of health over the last 50 years, maybe even a little bit more. And uh, and so we like ranking systems. We like going, oh, okay, so I won't eat asparagus, but I will eat uh, you know, something else. And uh it makes us feel good about ourselves, makes us feel like we can do a tick, and we don't have to think too much because someone's just told us what to do, and then we get on and do it. But for me, this is an exact representation of the failing of continuing on in an industrial model of thinking beyond its actual natural uh sh like um usefulness in the world. You know, we're like good little people who do the things and then we go on and we don't think too much because we've got lots of work to do. Yeah, you know, and I bet there's a bunch of people out there going, oh my god, yes, that's me. Like I literally don't have time to think. I just want someone to tell me what to do. And I know this because I've been in education in health and sustainability for 10 years now. And uh I remember when I first put out Real Food Rock Stars, I got all these emails on the second day. So, where's the meal plan? And how am I going to? And I was like, no, no, no meal plan. We are actually going to learn how to feel our way through food, both in cooking, in eating, and then in learning about what's better for us and and not from a individual perspective, which is exactly why you shouldn't have meal plans. So, anyway, um, yeah, it was a really fascinating thing to realize, oh gosh, okay. So, this won't be the low-carbon diet, which was the first kind of idea I had for a book title-wise, even though I hate the word diet. I wanted something that would speak to people straight away. Um but uh beyond that, it became so much more about how much food we waste and about how much ultra-processed food we ate. And I don't think when I started writing the book that I was going to be focused on ultra-processed food at all. It was going to be a beautiful book about, you know, lovely recipes and gorgeous whole foods. But the reality is that the plastics and fossil fuel industries love that we all keep fighting about beef and beans and which one is better for the planet, and living planet-friendly and treading lightly, and all those things we hear as it's a trickle-down narrative from these huge industries that want us fighting about stuff like that. So we don't notice that 60% of our shopping trolleys have stuff that are highly, highly processed, and therefore often the raw materials are badly farmed, often they then travel thousands of kilometres to get to a factory, to then be processed with a ton of machinery and energy, to then be packaged in plastics and cardboards from new trees, and then to be shipped again and to sit on a supermarket shelf or in a freezer for months at a time. And this for me was the elephant in the room, like ultra-processed food. Why is no one talking about it? We've had a good, pretty good conversation about food waste, even though it's not getting any better. There's awareness. We've had a pretty good conversation about starting to think about where your food comes from, and there's quite a few people thinking about that now. But ultra-processed food, no. Why? Yeah, because if you watch the news and then it goes to commercial, if you watch your favorite show and it goes to commercial, all the commercials are ultra-processed products. Uh, if you read the paper, uh, it's all ultra-processed foods that are propping up literally everything. And so, of course, no one's gonna talk about it. I've had people interview me from bigger networks and uh and say, so we just have to be a little bit sensitive about like it's the reason I've not been on uh TV a couple of times. We got to the very end of like even planning out a series as a guest uh presenter on a really well-known show, and then I submitted what I was gonna be talking about and it just didn't fly, wasn't it wasn't gonna work with their sponsors or yeah. I think that's really sad, and no wonder so many people are mistrusting um at the moment of all sorts of things. I really have a lot of compassion for that because we genuinely many of us genuinely feel like we're wide awake enough to know things aren't very honest in quite a few areas and we don't get the whole truth. Um, just the facts, ma'am, type long form investigative reporting. It's really rare now. There's only a few publications doing it.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

Um don't you think that when like somebody is speaking the truth, there is like there's some kind of a vibrational energy that you know you you resonates when somebody is truly speaking from the heart, you know, and laying it out before you, you can tell. And you can tell when they're not as well. But from your um just talking about the ultra-processed foods there, one of my questions um was relating to this. So I noticed in the book that you say our modern diet does not allow humans to thrive. And I this this does relate a little bit to the processed food. So could you maybe explain to people who who aren't quite as, I don't know, haven't been thinking about this issue as much. Why why do ultra-processed foods not, why are they not conducive to thriving?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

So there's a few things, uh, and I'm trying to organise my mind right now to make sure I tick off the important stuff. So number one is the introduction of synthetic chemical inputs after World War II. That was it was a little bit after World War I, but it really exploded onto the scene of agriculture after World War II. And a lot of people think, oh, these have been around for like centuries, you know, we've been using them forever. Um, we've always done it this way, you know, there's a lot of that thinking in, you know, fifth, sixth generation farms, and I totally get it. And this is absolutely not a judgment on farmers who are the hardest working humans on the planet. Um, because what you're born into is what you're born into. And if it's working, at least for now, um, and at least for the most part, then why question it? You know, it's a hard enough job already. I get that.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Um, but unfortunately, this is one of the first uh really big examples of industry influencing government um policy uh because a couple of things happened in World War II. So one was uh there were food shortages everywhere, and so long life food was really born. Um, you know, you had long life packaged milks, biscuits, all those sorts of things were starting to be produced and developed. Uh, and uh also the raw materials for those long life cereal type products, because that was safer to transport everywhere than meat and veggies, obviously, uh, were they given huge subsidies to produce this feed the world food. Um, that was the first time we heard feed the world. Uh, and and so they were heroes, these grain farmers producing the raw materials for this long life food. So you have two things. You have long life food emerging. Uh, we never had that before. We ate local, we grew local, and uh our food system was extremely local to us. Uh, you would only eat something from somewhere else if you had spent seven weeks on a ship going to visit that country, and while you were there, that's what the food you would eat. So uh there was no food transportation on a global scale, certainly, and not even really across big countries like Australia or America. And so uh when these big subsidies went in, obviously uh that became quite a powerful group of people who had those subsidies and they were represented by a group of lobbyists. Then when World War II ends, they don't want to lose their subsidies because then we might pull support for you as a candidate, and all that kind of stuff starts to it's one of the earliest evidences of this kind of hold over politicians, which unfortunately is absolutely rife today, and why we're in a lot of the strife we're in. So there's that. Then there's all the chemical warfare of World War II, and you end up at the end of the world war with huge chemical industry having been developed to win wars. Uh, and they don't want to stop being in business either, making a ton of cash, it's very profitable. Uh, what else can we use this stuff for? So it was just like with grains. What else can we make with these? Cereal, snacks. Yeah. You know, we didn't have snacks before that. You had three meals a day, and that was it. Um, and so with the chemical warfare products, it got used and sold into farmers as easy ways to take care of pests and weeds. Uh, and um, that obviously really took hold because for the first few decades it was a dream come true. But what happens when humans are then consuming uh the residues of these chemicals, there is a ton of evidence of disruption of the microbiome now. Whether people want to admit it yet or not, it is there. The science is very clearly showing us that unfortunately, and especially if we look at a product like Roundup with the active ingredient of glyphosate, this is the biggest herbicide in the world. Uh, still, unfortunately, even though everyone's really starting to clock that there might be something wrong with it. Yeah. Um, you see evidence of it binding to minerals. It was actually initially used as a mineral binder to clean out pipes. And, you know, then it was uh patented as an antibiotic. So you knew that it killed a whole bunch of things. Yeah. Now we know about antibiotic resistance now. There are millions of us who are antibiotic resistant to various things. I know that from having chronic tonsillitis and the drugs no longer working in my late 20s. Very scary stuff. So you have it binding to minerals, so then we end up with mineral deficiencies of all kinds. Uh, if you tested everybody for zinc right now, I can tell you whether it's the Australian soil quality, very low in zinc, or whether it's the fact that we're eating a ton of uh pesticide, herbicide residues that bind to minerals, our zinc is trash. What do we need to fight viruses? Zinc. And, you know, I'm vaccinated. I'm actually, you know, it's a risk-benefit analysis for every individual to make for themselves and with their doctors. But uh it doesn't take a genius to think, right, we've nearly been in this for two years and no one's talked about uh thriving and actually making ourselves metabolically healthy because we know that those are the risk factors, all that kind of stuff. So we need zinc, we need minerals, and these agricultural chemicals unfortunately do not help us be rich in them.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Um, and uh, and then of course, there's the third aspect of not thriving, is when we eat dead foods, foods that have been produced, packaged, and stored, whether it's um frozen for a really long time or um on the shelf, there are no enzymes, there are no rich probiotics. It's it's shelf stable. Shelf stable means uh human depriving, like it's literally just eating stuff to be full, but never nourished. And so what happens when humans are given a whole bunch of food that never quite hits the nutritional spot? Well, we eat more. We're still looking for something to make us feel deeply nourished. And that creates metabolic disease, uh, obesity, uh, and then the whole host of diseases that can then increase in risk because of that. And that's not fat shaming, that's just really damn unfortunate that we've been put in a system where these are the byproducts. Um, and so those pretty much to me are the three main reasons why these high-processed food um shopping trolleys, so in Australia the average is about 50, 60 percent, uh, are harming us more than they're helping us. And we get sold them as good treats or a nice way to take a break, or um, what's the other one? Uh, always the real thing. I mean, it's all just such the air. It's completely manufactured lives that we should not be aspiring to.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Um, and you know, what's wrong with grandma's cake on a Sunday? That's a real treat, you know.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

This is later Sophie dropping in to say, absolutely, yes, Grandma's Cake is where it's at. So through the book, um, I'll explain to the listeners a little bit about this book because they might want a little bit of context. So it's a really wonderful book that um Alex has put together. And it's basically, I mean, I view it personally as a, you know, an act, an act of climate activism in a way, through through um revolutionizing the human shopping trolley. Because climate, you know, there are so many different solutions that are needed, but a really important way that every individual can participate in making practical change is in eating, because everybody eats and everybody eats. Everybody through eating, you vote with your dollar and your. Your dollars go to those companies, you know. So if you really take stock of what's in your trolley, and that's what the book does, it breaks down the different uh food products in the supermarket and why they may be beneficial to your health or to the health of the planet or detrimental. So could you explain a little bit to the listeners the kind of shopping trolley that you're obviously we you'll need the book because there's there's some wonderful like wealth of information in there, but just to give them a taste of what a what a shopping trolley that is beneficial to your body and the planet might look like.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Yeah, and look, this is tricky because people are probably listening from regional areas where ironically, even though these are areas where a lot of food is produced, often that food's shipped right out and there's not much local food. And I, as I started book touring for the first book, I uh it really opened up my eyes to the challenges of regional uh towns uh accessing fresh Whole Foods uh locally grown, um, especially in some of the northern parts of the country in WA, where that's actually really darn difficult to do because of the climate itself and the and the dirt and all the rest. So look, I think it's really important to be very flexible in our thinking and allow for a lot of different ways this is going to look, depending on the challenges that people might have, either budget challenges, uh access challenges. Uh, access is definitely getting better, but it's not where it needs to be. And um, I have a really great story. I did a workshop in Karatha, which is out in a mining town in WA a couple a few years ago. And I was so excited to be there because I was like, how are we going to figure this out? This is in the middle of nowhere. There's literally a Woolworths, and that's it. But because there was the will of the people in the town, amazing things happened. So they were able to start group buying and get a farmer to drive four hours up and drop off boxes of meat once a month so that they could get pasture-raised fed chickens and um beef products. Uh, then they were able to find another farmer who was happy to bring up fruit and veggie boxes once a week if they got a minimum of 25 orders from the town. You know, stuff like that. And I just think we the beautiful part about starting to move towards foods that are better for us and better for the planet based on being locally grown, better grown uh and full of life, is it's such a win for human connection and community and uh coming together and figuring out how to solve problems together and getting out of these little family nucleuses or just talking about the sports. Yes. Um, but doing doing some really meaningful stuff together and uh and it can really transform communities to start to think this way and act this way. So I think the number one thing you can do if you're a supermarket shopper is to just do, and I, you know, I teach you how to do this in the book step by step. Like let's actually just start gently raising awareness on what's in this shopping trolley in the first place. Let's have a little look. Let's just buy what we would normally buy and start thinking, oh wow, that's packaged. That's packaged, that oh my God, everything's packaged except for like a few, a few fruit and veg. And even half that time it's productized and packaged as well, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

It's so annoying when the only option available to you is you want sweet potatoes, and there's three sweet potatoes wrapped in plastic on a styrofoam tray. Like, oh, I just don't want the plastic, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

No, and I think we have to realize that what activism is important in the smallest of acts. So writing on the Woolworths Facebook page, writing into the local um Woolworths store manager, uh, they don't want to upset their customers, especially when that group of upset customers grows because they're going to be starting to look elsewhere. And so you can't forget that. You can't forget that you might be one person complaining about the sweet potato, but if 20 other people do, they might have to start thinking about another solution.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

That's right. I I think it was really interesting your comment just before about how eating um in a way that's better for your body and better for the planet, you know, it it's such a wonderful way to reconnect with your community. I just kind of think there's no coincidences, right? I was thinking about this the other day that humans are just there's billions of us all over the planet. And isn't it ironic that these conditions of isolation and feeling, you know, unsupported and lacking a village is so prevalent in our society. And it's no coincidence that to address, you know, one of the root causes of the climate crisis is to to revolutionize how we eat. And by revelation revolutionizing how we eat, we are addressing these core, these um disconnect problems that we're feeling with other humans, you know, because you need to to problem solve, you need to to get to know people in your community, who's who's growing what can we swap? Can I buy from you? What do you put on it? You know, you can't avoid that human connection. And it can be scary, but the good thing about connecting over things like produce is it's like a neutral topic, you know, everyone has to eat. And and it can lead to to really rich relationships too, but it's a really neutral starting point to make a connection with other people. So yeah, I just think there's no coincidences with any of this. Um, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Exactly. And we've been so deeply uh sad as people for a long time. We can see that in our mental health stats. People feel a lack of purpose, people feel a lack of connection. Uh, I certainly don't think the pandemic's helped us there, unfortunately. And so, you know, the act of sharing food is something universal. The Italians and the French and the Spanish, they teach us how to do it so well, the Greeks, you know, big long lunches with people you love and adore, and uh really taking the time to just enjoy good food and connect. And, you know, something else that I really love about that way of eating from the Europeans is you you have feast tables and what you know, and I have feasts in my book because I love that way of different people being able to pick different things that suit them, either dietarily, preference, ethics, you know, whatever. I don't like to, you know, someone might be vegan, but the beautiful thing about a feast table is everyone belongs. There's something there that you can enjoy and eat and connect with other people over. Yeah. And I think that's missing in um food as well. We for some reason become quite polarized, um, largely through productization of theories and science, unfortunately. That's true. Different people put out best-selling books, trying to tell you one thing's the right thing, but then you start researching, and then the opposite is true. If this other fellow who's put out a book, and then you realize that everything's grey, nothing's black and white. And so, you know, let us feast on good produce like the Europeans do and come together no matter how we eat. That's my and I think that'll that'll help us stop fighting and it'll help us start to cook more. Um, but then, you know, there's a challenge around cooking in itself uh with this generation coming up and um established sort of from ex-gen and younger, um, that we can also talk about those challenges as well.

SPEAKER_03 29:37

Yeah, I think it was uh quite it was good that you dealt with overwhelm in the book because I think that yeah, is a massive barrier to so many people when they come to thinking about food and oh, where do I even begin? Um, I can't even, don't even know how to cook, or I don't want to follow that recipe. And I think that's something that's very good with your book is that you've really tried to make the the principles general as opposed to saying you must be a vegan or you must be a vegetarian or or you must be a paleo, you know, whatever. There's no kind of um prescriptive method, you give general sort of ideas of of things. And so there are a few notes that I made about some of the things that you say are important, so it's important how it's farmed and where it's farmed. You focus a lot on reducing food waste because food waste is is massive. Huge. Yeah. And um, yes, looking also at how processed the food is that you're eating. But I like too that you're not too prescriptive in um being regimented. You know, you give this really good list here that I've just um made a note of where you it's like a game, like a board game where you've said that. Yeah, exactly. But you've said you've given this list of, you know, if you can't um achieve the optimum of, you know, buying um organic produce maybe direct from your uh regenerative farmer, you know, because not everybody has access to that, you know, you might look at this list which says things like packaged foods with simple ingredients lists trump those with encyclopedic, encyclopedic ingredient lists, or um local produce always trumps processed packaged foods, even if it's conventionally grown. So there's some very um just simple principles that people can keep in mind when they go to the shop so that when they're faced with a few different options, they can just decide on you know the best um option available at that moment. So little changes can add up to make a difference. Uh, and I also really liked the uh the adaptable recipes that you have.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Yeah, everyone's finding those their favourite so far. Yeah. It's like, oh my God, I can have a recipe, but then be free of the recipe at the same time. And that is how I found a joy in cooking as a non-cook myself until my early 30s. Um, was just that I hated the idea that cooking was such a big deal. Yeah. And you had to get the recipe out, you had to choose which recipe you're gonna do, you had to shop the recipe, and then it was like, oh my gosh, like even just getting ready to cook was an hour or two of prep and um and then have all this stuff that you have no idea what to do with that's left over from cooking that recipe, because the only thing you know how to cook is follow that recipe. And I just think if we're actually going to get more people cooking and less people uber eating, uh, in especially in our urban areas where these are like environmental and work, um, work safety and health uh disasters, um, so, so unfair as a as a thing, all um just completely, um, then we actually have to find a joy in cooking. And how do we do that? Uh for me, ironically, uh, given I've just put out a book on food with recipes, is to teach people how to not need recipes. Yeah. That's honestly, I just think that is going to help us so quickly start to feel more motivated by actually understanding what some of the fail-safe things you can do that produce a nice thing at the end are.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, part of our fear of cooking is probably this fast that's been pushed on us through big business that, you know, it's it's it's hard and it's time consuming to cook. Uh, and you, you need to do do all of these things to create this this meal when it can actually be much more simple than exactly. And it this whole perfectionist attitude, you know, you learn through doing. You're gonna make some mistakes. Like I made some flat pancakes the other day because I forgot the baking powder, baking soda, but you know, exactly. Like it was fine. We just called them crepes. Um, that's what they are. Yeah. But I made the um the fritters that you had a recipe for the other day. And oh nice. How'd you go? Yeah, good. I good. I saw I I've got a pretty good veggie garden out the back and didn't didn't have a whole lot. And and I like that you said, oh, you can use carrots because I am like a very proud carrot grower. I grew up because I grew some cars. Well, not really. It's like one of the first years it's actually worked out, but I grew some carrots from seed that I'd collected and they grew super well. So I I made um the fritters with the carrots and they were delicious. And the um tonight I think I'm thinking of making because pumpkins are um still really cheap because we're just coming out of winter. They're trying to get rid of them. So I was thinking about making that Mauritian uh pumpkin or uh cartin, however you meant to say it.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

So absolutely. Uh it'll take you straight back to my grandma's kitchen. Yeah, I love that recipe.

SPEAKER_03 34:49

Yeah, so can you tell me? I mean, I had um it's Mauritius, right? The island's called Mauritius. Can you just tell me a little bit about your connection with Mauritius? Because I've seen a lot of your recipes feature that, so I know that you have a familial connection with it. Uh and my goodness, it's a beautiful island. So I'd love to just hear about yeah, how you are related to that part of the work.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

It's super beautiful. Oh my goodness, I miss it so much. It's actually been five years, six years nearly. Yeah, nearly six years since I've been, which is really sad when I've got so much family there. But um, my mum was born there. And so my I still have an auntie and an uncle there. My other auntie is more based in France. Um, but uh yeah, so in Mauritius, good Catholic little white community that they are, they had a ton of kids. I have a ton of cousins, and uh it's like big, bountiful family there. It's um a very uh very joyful place to live. Uh, it's it's a tricky island um historically. It was obviously white people and slaves brought over. So when England had Mauritius, they brought over the Indian slaves, and when France had it, they brought over the African slaves. Uh but what that's translated to today as a free republic is this incredible melting pot of cultures, food uh, and and life. Just huge population for such a tiny little space. Um, in many ways, it's a little India because the population, I think, is about 80%, 70, 80% Indian. Um, so we're really familiar with all the Indian festivals and like the beauty that happens on the streets when it's those big festival days is so lovely. And my cousins grew up having so many public holidays at school. We were always so jealous. Um, but uh yeah, and then down the south part of the island, very African, um, African community, beautiful food down there. Like it's just incredible how many different things there are on this one tiny little 60 by 40k island. Um, there's a 1.4 million people on it. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

It just looks so beautiful because I was Googling it before we spoke. And it kind of looks like um the island that's in Jurassic Park, um, the movie. Yeah, it is a bit, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

It's very lush in some part, absolutely. So lush. But I think um that really having the connection to Mauritius was uh where I realized there was a plastic crisis, really. That was that was my big awakening on the on the environmental front before really thinking about climate change. I was quite focused on plastics because, you know, after a cyclone, for example, or a really a cyclone even nearby that sort of um stirs the waters a bit and gives you a really high tide for a couple of weeks. Um the beaches just started to look horrific after these tides. And like, but I, you know, I'm 45 now, so I remember not having that experience. The only thing that'd wash up would be tons and tons of seaweed. Um, but now what washes up is literally whatever. Like it could be anything, could be a toilet seat, could be the arm of a mannequin, could be um, you know, Coca-Cola bottles from South Africa, like which is quite a way away still. Yeah. Um, but just because it's in the middle of the Indian Ocean all on its lonesome, you see just how much is floating around in the oceans that gets washed up into the middle of nowhere. Um and it's devastating. And I think uh if you look at um what washes up even on Australian beaches, we often uh there's a family that we get together with and we do beach cleanup, pub dinner. And it's a really great combo because you know, we do something good and then we, you know, have a joyful celebration afterwards and the kids love it, and it's really, really nice. That's so nice. Yeah, and the thing is, like when you pick things up off the beach, it's all the ultra-processed food stuff.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

So again, we see that it's not just harming us, it's harming the planet. And the double lose is really something we need to turn into a double win.

SPEAKER_03 39:10

Yeah, and like something that I really have identified through the work that I'm doing here is that connection to nature is so important because a lot of our reliance on the processed food, there's this um, I guess, do they call it like a cognitive dissonance because you might be really passionate about, you know, the environment and caring, and then you might go and buy these highly processed foods and not make the connection that when you throw that in the bin, it's not just going away, you know, it's going to go into landfill, it's going to be there for like 500 years. Um, so it's, you know, having really reconnecting with nature is important for people to join the dots in why your everyday actions can be very detrimental. So um you did mention a little bit, like I know that um everyone has a different climate awakening story. And um, you said that yours sort of began with um witnessing the plastics wash up on Mauritius. Um and I yeah, was interested in was it a slow process where you you got to the point of being fully sort of conscious of of where we're at as a planet, or was it a yeah, slow awakening or a you know, were you light switch or lightning bolt strike?

SPEAKER_00 40:22

What did it look like for you? Well, so for me, because and this I've found this with so many people in our Lotox life community, is often it starts with a personal health journey. So something, you know, the shit hit the fan, you know, you got some sort of illness, or you start you migraines that you finally just wanted to get to the bottom of, or it could be any sort of thing, but it's something um that that makes you retreat. You know, it's enough to make you unsocial, um, chronic, anything is enough to cut you off, really, and make you just in sympathetic nervous system state. And so um, you can't rest, you can't digest, you can't think about other things or other people. Some people can't even work anymore or have friendships. And uh and I think um what's really interesting to me about um marrying up the state of public health with the state of our planet is people who are sick and stressed don't have an awful lot of headspace and capacity to um learn new skills, to uh learn different ways to be convenient that aren't perhaps as wasteful. Um and uh and for me, yes, it was about focusing on myself in a more selfish kind of get myself well uh initial way. But then, you know, once you're feeling fabulous, you then start to think, oh wow, and because I'm not eating that stuff anymore, there's like less plastic I'm putting into the. And it's just for me, it was like little jot dots that got joined, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Um, it was meeting a butcher that uh was an ethical farmer, and I never really met one like for real, and uh quizzing him about how they were doing things and like, yeah, you know, you should read this book, and then getting onto Joel Salatin's work and then looking at reversing desertification through um uh uh rotational grazing and other different types of agricultural methods that were actually proving that um animals were really important in the overall context of farming. Um, and some places you just can't grow veggies. So you can't just say, oh, that's horrible that we're growing animals, you know, we should be growing veggies there. It's like, well, actually we couldn't. Yes. It's a grassland. So the only way we can keep the land protected and sequestering carbon is to keep the grassland healthy. If you take the animals off it, the grassland shrivels up, dies, turns into desert. And we've seen it happen all over the world. And um, and unfortunately, a lot of people don't know this because big food and big tech have taken over what a planet-friendly diet looks like. Um, and we just get the trickle-down Instagram influencer version. Uh, and unfortunately, that's um that's a real shame because there is a room in this world for every type of eater. Uh, there has to be, because a natural environment thrives on biodiversity. And one could argue, uh, as many scientists do, that some humans really require a different nutritional profile than others. Some seem to do well in one way and not so well in another way. And so, um, yeah, for me, the environmental piece of realizing that you could actually just eat in a way that suits your body and do good for the planet, even if it included meat, really blew my mind because I had been told for years that that wasn't the case, um, as many people are. Um, and then, and then it was really the understanding of food waste uh and The methane production of that level of food waste that goes into landfill, which cows couldn't hold a candle to, frankly. I mean, if you made food waste a country, it's the third largest emitter in the world behind China and the US, just to give you perspective. And that's a figure from Project Drawdown, who are climate impact specialists in terms of the way that they measure what's working and what's not for the planet. And so, yeah, it was just like piece after piece after piece after piece, and thinking, oh my gosh, you know, hijacked uh narrative from big plastic and big uh oil has us eating all of these processed foods that stop us from thriving, thriving. Um, people who can't thrive are sick, people who are sick can't think. Yeah. Oh, okay. Um, interesting. And um and so here we are. And all we can do is actually change from our own little corner because there's no march or protest that's going to get them to change. But if we change the market to such a degree with our forks and our decisions every day that they cannot ignore what actually is economically prosperous. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like we get to decide that regenerative farming is economically prosperous.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

We get to decide that. So anyone who can from today, even if you can swap out one or two items, don't worry about not being 100%, my gosh, we'll never start anything.

SPEAKER_03 45:37

Exactly. Yeah. Just just any little change that you can make is an excellent act of activism for everybody. So I'm interested in asking you, because I know that you've commented that, you know, you're you're a really positive person and you like to work with that positivity and work with the overlaps and focus on the values. And I was just interested because I know that this particular area of work can be very confronting. Um, you know, because you do, there's a lot of grief associated with the climate crisis, which is not, it's hard to be positive, but also acknowledge that that grief. And I was just wondering how you navigate that balance between being conscious about the state of the world, but also staying true to your positive nature and and staying joyful. Because I I feel like I'm the same and I just struggle sometimes with this balance. I was wondering how you how you navigate that.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

Yeah. So, like a human can only do as much as they can do in their lifetime. And I I definitely believe we should call upon ourselves to do something, all of us. Um, because I think the tragedy is the thinking of we could never possibly do enough. And oh, actually, I've got a deadline at work tomorrow, and my son needs driving to tennis and then boom, like another whole week's gone and we've done nothing. Um, we have to believe we can do something every week, just something small, whether it's writing that letter and saying, please take the styrofoam off these sweet potatoes, or otherwise I'm not shopping there anymore. Um, that is a climate act. Uh, taking a um six-pack of soft drink out of your trolley is a climate act. Uh, switching your processed meatless meatballs with no meat in them and like 20 different preservatives and strange ingredients uh to a chickpea curry is a climate act. Uh, you know, like there are just so many things we can do. Um, stop stopping the buying of quinoa from Bolivia that's robbing locals of their food source and finding a grain that grows locally to you if you like something, you know, with rice or whatever, uh, that is a climate act. Like we don't realize often just how much all the tiny things make a difference in this context of a collective. And so for me, um I stay focused on how I can help create change. You know, I like I've been to big climate conferences, I've done the Al GOAL climate reality training. Um, that for me was one of the more positive trainings. Uh I was really, really impressed with the work he and his team do. Um, and it wasn't just a big spiel for solar and wind, like that was a part of it, but um, it really was practical uh grassroots action and how everybody in the room could be a part of that. So I think that kind of stuff is what I gravitate towards. Um, I stay away from doom and gloom. I know there's doom and gloom. So why do I need to read about it? Like that just does not help me.

SPEAKER_02 48:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:47

Um, I I don't disagree, I like I I acknowledge that it is important um that these pieces be read and these reports be written, um, because we do need to know where the world is. And unfortunately, a lot of people have politically decided that climate change is not the most important thing to focus on. Um, but uh if we just keep it apolitical as much as we possibly can, again, this brings me back to good local grown food. It's got to be one of the least political places we can all meet and have a meal. And uh and that can be really, really lovely. So um I just try and put myself in a I'm doing something and I'm helping other people do something space as much as possible. And that keeps me positive.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:41

No, that's for the most for the most part. I still have the odd day where yes, I will read an article and it will bring that anxiety up in my chest, and I'll be like, okay, I can't do anything from fight or flight. Yes. Yeah. That literally cuts me off from being able to act because I'm now terrified.

SPEAKER_01 49:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

And uh and we have to realize that that's also a critical piece of climate education in terms of what people can do, needs to sound exciting and fun for people if you want them to do it, because no one does anything if they're stressed and in fight, flight, freeze, or if they're arguing each other in polarized arguments. Um, those two situations mean we're not going to move forward. And what do we see all around us? People scared, disconnected, stressed, and fighting each other.

SPEAKER_02 50:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

Change doesn't happen from there. So that's why I just feel compelled to tell a different story wherever and whenever I can.

SPEAKER_03 50:41

Oh, I think it's it's a really inspirational story that you are telling. And it's it is just it's shining a light on that the solutions are are incredibly amazing and uh good for you, you know. Um that's right. And I know that you do need to go in the moment. So um I have so many questions I want to ask you, but I guess I'll ask you this one because I'm interested in the answer for myself. So um throughout your lifetime, who have been your greatest mind expanders? So people's work or people that you've come across who have just rocked your world, you know, or who it can be like just somebody in the street who said something, or is there anything that comes to mind with pivotal moments in time and interactions with people who have just yeah expanded your mind and your thinking?

SPEAKER_00 51:34

My gosh. So I'm going through the craziest library of options right now.

SPEAKER_03 51:40

Yeah, you've got a lot, you've done a lot of interviews with big people, so I have no doubt so many people.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Oh my goodness. Um, okay, so I think in terms of change thinking, uh, I've got to mention Simon Sinek and uh Brene Brown. Um they've both worked a lot in change management and leadership. And I came from that space in hospitality as a consultant uh and have always been very interested in what motivates people to do better, either as an individual in their work, either as a group of people coming together as a team to do work. And the way that both of them teach and write and help people step into power, um, I think not only helped me in my work as a consultant back then, but then actually helped me decide to do that myself in this space uh more and more. Um, and I don't necessarily think I'm even particularly brave yet. I don't, I think I've still got a lot more in the tank to bring out. Um, but they have definitely inspired me to really think about why I do things, not how other people might want me to do that thing. Uh, you know, one of the reasons this book didn't come out last year was I thought I had to be really sciencey and, you know, and I love sit like, you know, fun for me is sitting in on a two-hour soil lecture by PhD Walter Jenner. Like that kind of thing is like, oh, pour another cup of tea. I can't turn this off. But I love the science, I love learning about it, but I know that I don't need to be that scientist anymore. Yeah. Um, and that's not my role here. My role is helping people get from A to B in a way they didn't either know was possible or they didn't even know the B needed to be got to. Yeah, that's right. Um, those are my two favorite things: the switch on the light and the here's how we're gonna get started.

SPEAKER_02 53:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:43

Um there's a whole bunch of advanced people that can help with the trickier details as people move along, but I like switching people on and getting them going. Um, and and so I think, yeah, those two uh in the business and thought leadership space really inspired me. Then when I started to look at health healing and uh and human health and thriving, I think the work of Rudolf Steiner was really, really inspiring to me. And I mentioned him in the book as one of the early regenerative champions saying, do not steer the ship that way, we have to go this way. Uh and unfortunately, because Hitler didn't like him very much, he uh withered away and died literally from stress. Um, it's a sad story, but he was the guy who founded Walida as well, and biodynamics and Steiner education. Like he got a lot done in 50 years of life. Um, so he was very inspiring to me. Weston A. Price, a dentist from the 30s, who decided that he could not accept the state of dental decay in America where he practiced and uh was very high up in the dental association back then. I think he was like the chief scientist. Don't quote me on that, but he was right up there in terms of decision makers and science in the dental profession. And he decided to undertake some travel to uh traditional cultures and see comparisons of how they were eating, how they were living, and what the tooth decay was like. And he traveled the world in the end for 10 years and found countless examples of traditional cultures, eating all sorts of different food mixes, might I add. There was no one completely vegetarian. There were always some animal products in the mix, um, but everyone was whole food. Like it was just what you could get locally, what you could hunt, what you could grow, what you could forage. Uh, that was it. And one of my favorite stories from Western A. Price's book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, published in the late 30s, was this Swiss town that he first went through. And it was a town of a couple of thousand people. They didn't even have a dentist, uh, didn't even need a doctor. Like it was just, you know, they were very, very healthy, robust Swiss people. Uh, and he went through and then he had to come back through that way. Um, and in the interim, a train line had been put through the town and trading had begun, flour and sugar. And he came back and tooth decay had already begun just a number of years later. So we're not even talking intergenerationally or any, like we're talking just a few years. And that for me was mind-blowing to learn that. Uh, I, you know, I'm not I'm partial to a good biscuit, just developed a Ted Lasso gluten-free version for my peeps just this week. I did see that post actually. It's not that I think everything is evil and you can't even have a skerry of it, but to make it a staple is obviously dangerous. And the heartbreaking fact that we've known this since the 1930s and yet have let proliferate these ultra-processed packaged foods based on flour and sugar for the main is uh a travesty. It is, it is not progress, it is not cool, it's not fun marketing, it's unfortunate, is what it is. And I think that was really seminal for me to respect traditional cultures and to know that we might have all these fancy narratives and fights uh, you know, about what's right over here, but you know, you can't argue what helps human bodies thrive, and that's locally grown produce. Yeah, uh, that's where you find the healthiest populations. And I don't think that's a coincidence. There's plenty of science to tell us why. So those were definitely some big uh big impacts. And then I guess as I was trying to figure out what to eat myself and you know, went vegan for a while and became unfortunately I became really sick. I've got a number of friends who actually thrive that way and they do really well. So this is not a judgment on how different people eat, it's just my own journey. Um, I then had to make peace with eating meat somehow, and um then doing uh the work to research Alan Savory, um a regenerative farmer who taught the world how rotational grazing um helped the environment, um, was really inspiring to me and helped me make peace and find that actually the best way we can all eat is to care about where our food comes from. And if we really care and we really know, then there's space for everybody. Um, and and there's a way to heal the planet in every way as well. So I just to kind of mention a few, there's like a stack more.

SPEAKER_01 58:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:44

Um, I do love Zach Bush's work. Um there are so many doctors that are, you know, Bruce Lipton, my gosh, you know, the idea that we actually, the energy, the thoughts that we have uh manifest themselves in our physical bodies. Um, you know, quantum physics is pretty crazy. Um, so yeah, like I think um one needs to be influenced wide and many. Yeah, you know, don't just take one person's word for it, dissect it, pull it apart, read three opposing views, um, you know, make yourself comfortable disagreeing with people in France. We have very heated, passionate topic conversations at the dinner table, but you know, à la poussaine at the end of the night, no one hates each other. Yeah, you know, so this um politicized new way of um choosing camps and despising anyone who's not in that camp or making fun of them. I think the laugh emoji is my least favorite emoji in the um social media network these days. Um we just we just can't even acknowledge that someone else might have a different way of seeing things these days. And I think we need to start becoming comfortable with disagreement because it gets us closer to what's actually going to work much faster.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:05

There you have it. That was our chat. I had a fantastic time. I love Alex. She is just sort of like real salt of the earth, real person, no affectations, genuinely super kind, super intelligent, just a really lovely person to engage with. So thank you, Alex, for coming on, and thank you guys for listening. I hope you gained something from that. I gained a lot. I um just am increasingly more conscious of what I'm eating and some of the things that I've done to my body in the past. Really, really trash on body, have not treated it like a temple through my lifetime whatsoever, but things are changing now. Now that I'm uh becoming a little bit more conscious of um of some of these things. So it's a process, and we have to be compassionate to ourselves through the process. We can't, you know, change everything overnight. So um that's it for today. Next week, I'm so excited. I'm speaking with Mora Gamble, who is a um permaculture designer and teacher located up sort of near Sunshine Coast Way. She lives in this like incredible eco-village called Crystal Waters. She's so nice, like everything she does is incredible. She's such an amazing change maker in the world. She also has an amazing podcast, just a beautiful lady, and I can't wait to sit down with her. So I'm going to do some big deep dives into more gamble this week so that I can ask her, you know, those questions that will deliver some epic value for your ears. So get excited for next week. Um, I hope you guys are having a good week. Um, I'm having a pretty good week. I'm just recovering from a big slump in energy over these last few weeks. I'm not too sure what that's about. But next week our property purchase settles. So I'm so excited to get out there and spend some time near the rainforests in nature in our new shed house. Just so excited. Drinking rainwater, breathing in that fresh air, listening to the birds. Things are looking up. So yeah, I'll um I'll definitely be giving you some updates as we settle in there. All right. Have a great week, guys. Bye.