What Is “Real” Food—and Why Does It Matter? - 8/6/26

Monica Corrado opens this week’s livestream by asking a foundational question: What is real food, and why does it matter? In the first episode of In the Kitchen with Monica, she explores how food sourcing, preparation, and the way we eat can influence our overall well-being.

Highlights include:
-The difference between fresh, locally sourced food and highly processed food products
-The importance of pasture-raised animals, seasonal produce, and traditional fats
-Traditional preparation methods such as soaking, sprouting, fermenting, and sourdough fermentation
-A discussion of cultured dairy, alternative milks, bitters, beans, lentils, fruit, and cooking fats
Monica closes by encouraging viewers to examine their kitchens, consider how their food was raised and prepared, and approach each meal with greater presence, gratitude, and appreciation.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, everyone. Monica Carrado here. I am thrilled to be here with you today. Um, yeah, I am thrilled to be here with you today on the Dr. Cowan's Garden YouTube channel. I will be here every Thursday at this time, which is 12:30 mountain time and 230 Eastern time. And then you'll have to do all those other, you know, figurings wherever you are in the world. So I am thrilled to be here with you. And um again, Monica Carrado. I am the enrichment um uh specialist for nutrition at the New Biology Clinic. I'm also a teaching chef and holistic nutritionist, and my desire here today is to talk to you about what is real food. Take a look over there, right behind me. I am hoping that you are knowing that that is not real food, right? So today's our uh first um live stream, and I really wanted to talk about what is real food and why does it matter? What is it? Why does it matter? Right? So uh the first place I'm going to start is to say, obviously, that it's not that, right? Even if it's made with organic flour and organic sugar. Anyway, all right, so I'm going to go ahead and move to my other little um background just for fun. I just wanted to kind of shock all of you that I'm going to talk about donuts. Maybe if you cook them in lard, but certainly not all those food colorings, right? All right, so here we go. Here we go. Sorry. All right, so the first place I want to start when we talk about what is real food and why does it matter is to talk about the fact that we are multidimensional beings. Whoa. What she's talking, what is she talking about? Uh, we are multidimensional beings. That means that we as humans have a physical body, we have emotions, we have a mental body, we have a spirit, we are multi-dimensional, and that everything that you take in matters. A lot of what we're going to talk about on this particular channel when I come in and talk with you every week is about food, but I wanted to talk about the fact that health and well-being are really about everything that you take in. So, what do you take in your mouth? Right? We take in food, we take in, right? We take in water, hopefully it's structured. We take in other uh beverages, so we we take in food and drink through the mouth. What do we take in our ears? Right, what are we listening to? Are we listening to music? Are we listening to birds? Are we listening to loving words and kindness? Are we listening to dissonance and things that are destructive? What are we taking in in our emotions, right? Emotionally, how do we feel? Are we witnessing loving things? Kindness, are we open or are we closed? Are we loving or are we hating? Right? Is it kindness or is it not? Right? How about the thoughts? Same things. I wanted to bring this up because health is a multidimensional thing. Health is about how are you feeling on all of these levels? Health and well-being and wellness. We talk a lot about that at the New Biology Clinic, and um, we talk about this multidimensionality that everything is connected and everything matters, right? So even though I'm talking about food, we're going to really put the lens, pull the lens out, and we're going to talk about things like farmers, things like sourcing, things like prepping, things like digesting, right? All these things. What is food? What is food? What are we taking in? And how are you feeling on every level? So again, this is in the kitchen with Monica, and we are going to be talking about all the food. But one of the things that I really stress when I work with people one-on-one when I'm teaching classes, when I'm doing talks, whatever it is, is to really have people think about the fact that you are taking things in on all levels all the time. And health is really about considering all those things, right? Because the reality is we can eat the best food, we can grow the best food, we can source the best food, right? We can grow the best food, we can source the best food, we can cook the best food, right? Costs money, right? Costs time, costs effort, yeah. We can do all those things, but if we have dissonance in any of the other dimensions, right? If we have dissonance, if we have, you know, like those chalkboard scratches, right? If we have something that's out of whack in the way we're feeling or the way we're thinking, right? Or things that happened. We can throw all the beautiful food we want at it, and you will have some, some, uh, some really good um traction, and maybe not much. We just don't know. So in this, I really do want to talk about. We're gonna get right into what is real food and why does it matter? And it matters, it matters to your body, it matters to the earth, it matters to society, believe it or not. Like it matters. So let's talk first about hello everyone. Okay, let's talk first about um what is not real food, right? What is not real food? So I talk sometimes about food fractions, right? We are eating, we eat a lot. Our culture eats a lot. We eat out at restaurants a lot, we eat prepared foods a lot. Maybe it's from a natural food market, maybe it's not, maybe it's from who knows where. But we eat out at restaurants a lot, we eat prepared foods a lot, but I would submit to you that the majority of people in our culture do not eat food that is real food. Okay. I talk a lot about food fractions. We eat food fractions like soy protein isolate, maltodextrin, pea protein. How do you like that one, folks? Really? How much protein is in a pea? I just want to know. Somebody tell me, right? Food fractions. What's a food fraction? Right? Food fractions come from a very reductionistic way of thinking about food. Uh, it's very left brain, it's very logical, it's all about breaking things down to its smallest part. And so now we're eating isolates. And your body goes, What's an isolate? An isolate. What the heck is an isolate? You're giving me an isolate, right? We eat, as I said, things like pea protein are the latest rave, folks. Let's all have pea protein shakes, shall we? Maybe not, right? Again, I'm always asking, like, where's the nutrition or where's the protein in the pea? Really? Okay. Yeah. Alrighty then. So we are eating, you know, all of these crazy things that are not real. They're not real food at all. So, right, we're eating things that used to be food. They look like food. Like that looks like a tomato. That looks like corn. That looks like a beet. Hmm. They taste like corn. They taste like tomatoes. They taste like beets. But what's going on there? Now they're GMO. They're not really corn and tomatoes. They taste like them, they look like them. Your body goes, What are you feeding me? What is this thing, right? Yeah. What is this? So we're eating foods that are bioengineered. That's the new cool word for genetically modified food, right? It's bio-engineered. Bio sounds good. So bioengineered, genetically modified, right? We are eating grains that are full of anti-nutrients, right? They're robbed of their nutrients, they're extruded as cereals. Really, folks. Is a cereal a real food? Hmm. So funny. You know, Sally Fallon, uh, now Sally Fallon Morel in this book, which is one of my faves that I've been, of course, teaching from for, I don't know, over a quarter of a century now, talks about the fact that there's more nutrition in the cardboard box uh than in uh the actual cereal itself. Even when it's organic, even when it's it's organic. That makes it right. Not really. No nutrition in those cereals, folks, right? So the wheat that we're eating is hybridized so much that it has triple, quadruple, how many times more gluten in it? You wonder where gluten reactivity comes from, right? The vast majority of the milk that people are drinking comes from cows that have been engineered to produce a lot of milk, high volume, low quality. Those are our holstings, those black and white cows, right, that are raised not on pasture in concentrated animal feeding operations. What's the quality of that milk? Right? Organic ones are not, but they're still, you know, low quality dairy, etc. The majority of people in our country are are drinking milk from these cows that are raised in confinement. Right? I would submit that's not real food. And that should be concerning. The nutrition is not there, the toxicity is there, right? And all of the dairy that's in the all the dairy that's in the store, the commercial dairy, the dairy that's not marked organic, yeah, is coming from these sources. Look at commercial milk when you get a chance. If you can get it these days, commercial milk actually looks blue. That's from those poor cows that are raised not on pasture. Yeah. So, what else? We're also drinking faux milks, M-Y-L-K-S. Right? Let's all eat milk, M Y-L-K. Let's not drink beautiful raw milk. Let's drink faux milk, meaning it's made from genetically modified soy, from coconut with fillers, guargum, guargum with xanthan gum, xanthan gum. Did you know that xanthan gum comes from the external shell of dead bacteria? Xanthanomus. How gross is that? That's for mouthfeel, by the way. Right? So there's just a lot of anti nutrients in the uh nuts, seeds, beans, grains. No one's looking at them. We are, and we will, right? What can you do about it, etc.? But the average American, bless them, the average American eating the standard American diet, you know, they are really eating, as I said, food fractions, lots of soy protein isolate, lots of maltodextrin comes from genetically modified corn, another fraction, lots of these proteins, pea protein, soy protein. What have you got? I mean, really, put into all these foods. And what are these foods? They are they are packaged foods, they are in boxes that are sealed so that they're shelf stable forever. They are dead. They have nothing useful in them. Oops, even organic, right? Hermetically sealed boxes that travel hundreds of miles to go onto your shelf or the shelf in your grocery store that you then buy, and they could stay in that box for a hundred years. They will still not give you any nutrition, etc. Right? We're eating processed foods, we're eating a lot of food, we're eating genetically modified food, now called bioengineered food, right? We're eating food fractions, we're eating seed oils. We'll talk all about that too. Yeah, we're eating trans fats. No wonder our children cannot think. Our elders are you losing their minds, and everyone in between is going diabetic or worse, right? So these are the things that are not real food, right? And we can talk about them. I'm going to be pulling these things apart for us on um going forward. But I wanted to really talk about what is real food. Well, we've talked about what isn't real food, so maybe it's easy to know now, right? So if all that is not real food, then what is real food? What is real food? It's the food that is not boxed or bagged or packaged or processed. It's fresh food, it's locally raised food, it's locally grown food. Maybe you're growing it in your own backyard. Maybe you're part of a CSA. Maybe you're going to farmers markets, right? Where is that food? Maybe you have uh a community garden that you're growing in. Maybe you have a couple of pots on your patio or on your balcony of tomato plants and basil plants and beautiful herbs and things like that. Right? So real food is food that's close to the source, right? It's food that's raised in a way that, in the way that Mother Nature, if you will, or God or source, or the way they were meant to be raised, right? My friend Holly from a long time ago, Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm says, What we do at Polyface Farm is we we raise happiness. We also raise pigs so that they can show their pigness, cows, so that they're showing their being, their cowness, right? We want to be eating meats that are raised on pasture, like the foods at Polyface Farm and many, many other beautiful farms. Some of them are family farms, some of their bigger that are putting their animals back on pasture, right? Can you imagine farmers need to learn how to put their animals back on pasture? Huh? Right? I mean, Joel goes around the world teaching people how to take animals out of concentrated feeding operations, cafos, and put them back on pasture, which is where they're supposed to be, eating what they're supposed to be eating, right? Grasses, beautiful things. So, again, your meat comes, your meat is on pasture. Yeah. The ingredients are fresh and local and sustainably raised. They could be labeled organic. Many, many farmers don't even, they can't. They're too small to even go into that game, right? But they they know what they're doing. They're raising clean, beautiful food, right? Poultry is pastured, pastured poultry. Chickens are supposed to be out on the grass eating bugs, right? Yeah. Eggs from pastured hens. Yeah. How about those fats? What's a real fat? Golly, I I gotta tell you, folks, I really get I hear it about fats a lot when people come, right? What are the fats that the human body thrives on? Animal fats. Not an avocado. I mean, yes, avocados are great, but once in a while, an avocado, right? Once in a while, an avocado. Once a day an avocado. But the fats that your body really thrives on are traditional fats. Yeah. They are tallow from beef or lamb or bison. They are lard, right? From pigs, pastured pigs, of course, pigs that are out there expressing their pigness, rooting around. Right? Yeah. They are butter, beautiful butter, raw butter. Butter you make yourself. How's that? Talk about that. Yee. Beautiful olive oil. Yeah. These are traditional fats. These are traditional fats. They could also be unrefined coconut oil. Right? Real bread. What is real bread? I know people know about this in this group. Real bread is sourdough bread made from beautiful ancient wheat, corshan, and eincorn and emmer. Right? Sourdough. Long, long, long fermented sourdough covered with big amounts of butter. We call it teeth butter. Right? There's a little piece of bread with this much butter on top. Take a bite. See your teeth. Totally fun. All right. So all of these foods, nuts, seeds, beans, grains, right? Nuts, seeds, beans, grains. Nuts, seeds, beans, grains can have problems. Right? Those are real food for sure. They're nourishing foods, but they're really hard on the digestive tract. So we prepare them in traditional ways. Just like we make sourdough bread, we can soak or sprout or ferment our nuts. Beads, beans, grains. So real food is not in that in those packages. Real food is not in those cans that sit on shelves and can be there for a hundred years if the temperature and the conditions are right. Believe it or not, they're not going to tell you that, but it's true. Right? True, true. So again, real food. We're gonna talk about what is real food and why does it matter? What is real food? Close to the source, fresh, no label if you can do it, right? Made by human hands instead of machines, not boxed or processed, right? Yeah. We'll also talk about uh cooking, but and and it's also not microwaved. It's true. I said it. So one more time with feeling, folks. This is not real food, right? That is not real food. Dies. Yeah, all those things. Okay, so um I think I made a good pay case for like what is not real food and what is real food. What I'd love for all of you to do after this little live stream is to go into your kitchen and look in your pantry and look in your refrigerator and see just what kind of food you've got going on. Is it real food? Is it food that can nourish your body? Is it food that has what your body needs to be well and to thrive? Or is it stuff that's deader than a doorknob, deadter than a you know, deadter than a yeah, doorknob or whatever? Yeah, that has nothing in it. It will be they may have a label on there. There may be a label on there. There'll be a label on that can that says food, nutrition facts, and it will count to you this much vitamin C, this much right carbohydrate, this much fat, this much trans fat, this much trans fat, this much protein, this much, right? But those foods are dead, folks. They're dead, and your body will not be able to use them very well at all. So it matters to you, matters to your health, right? Eating real food matters to your health, it matters to the earth. Why? Because when we eat food that's locally grown, we're supporting the environment. When we eat foods that when we eat eggs that come from, you know, hens that are out there on pasture eating bugs, picking through the cow pies, right? Then we're helping the earth. We're helping the earth regenerate too. Yep. So when we're healthy and our body feels good, when we have the energy we need, when we're walking outside in the grass. Yeah. Barefoot. These are feet. Not really. We're walking outside in the grass, we're getting sunshine. Sitting there eating a tomato I grew. Yeah. All those things. We're feeling good. We're in good. We're in right relationship with ourselves, with our bodies. Yeah. With the earth, with the farmers. All of it. There's one other thing I want to bring up here before I start taking questions, which you can absolutely put some. I'll I'll check out the chat in a moment. Um if you have any questions about anything I'm talking about. But one of the things I want to bring up to you is that when we eat meat specifically, that is has been raised in these very, very difficult um, as I said, they're called KFOs, C-A-F-O-S, concentrated animal feeding operations. They are very, very, very different from the way they're supposed to be raised, right? Out on pasture. The animals are stressed. Yeah. The animals are stressed. And they're eating food they shouldn't be eating. Lots of grains. Most of them GMO. Certainly. Right? So they're stressed because they're confined. They're eating foods they're not supposed to be eating, which makes them sick, makes them fat. That equals more money, but it makes them sick, right? Yeah. And then they're slaughtered, yes, in big slaughterhouses that are, oh by the way, filthy. Oops. I didn't say that. I did say that. So that they have to be irradiated or bleached or something before they are put in plastic packaging and shipped off to the store. The vast majority of Americans are eating meat from that. Meat and poultry, right? Huge operations trying to make meat and poultry, right? Cows and pigs and chickens, trying to put them in an industrial model. This is why they're sick. This is why there's no nutrition eating them. This is why they are stressed. Out. And then you eat that food. What do you think is going on with all that? First of all, there's no nutrient value, it is very low. Toxicity is very high. Right? Nutrient value is low, toxicity is high, stress is high. So you get to eat all of that. So I'm just saying, folks, you know, like the standard American diet is sad for a reason. It's very sad. And people that eat it are very sad. They're eating hormones, they're eating toxins, they're eating disruptors of all kinds. I would say endocrine disruptors, right? From the plastics and the toxins and everything else. And you know, we think of this from it's in the dairy, all the dairy, the cheese, the yogurt, the you know what, the milk itself, etc. It's in the meat, the burgers. The fast food. Right? The oops, nobody got a screenshot of that. The burgers, the fast food, the hot bars. It's all crap. It's not food. Food is meant to nourish you. Food, right? That's why I began this whole thing with the fact that you're multidimensional. We need to be nourished on all levels. We need our food to nourish us. We need our food to give us nutrition. Right? The building blocks the body needs to do whatever it's gonna do in its brilliant, divine architecture way. Right? So we need to be nourished. How are we eat how are what food are we getting? Has it been stewarded? Has it been cared about? Has it been are we thankful? Do we appreciate it and its life? How did we cook it? Were we present when we cooked it? Or were we angry when we cooked it? How what did we bring to the cooking? Did I put my anger in my food? Did I put my joy in my food? Did I put my love in my food? Did I put my appreciation in my food? And all the people who are going to eat that food will be touched by whatever you put in that food. Right? And then did you sit and bring yourself to center and give gratitude to the farmer, to the earth herself, to the animal that died so that you could have what you need to be well? Did you sit and bring yourself to the center with gratitude, appreciation? What is going right? Thank you for this beautiful meal prepared by those loving hands. Right? And then were we present to the meal? Or are we bolting our food? I was saying to someone the other day, just just think of it like fuel, right? Like let's just bolt that food. I'm driving. Oh, I can't, I I gotta go. I gotta go. Can't be here, can't sit down to a meal with you, mom and dad, or sister, brother, or husband, wife, or partner, or whoever you friend, who are you with? Gotta go. Let me just I'll take it and drive. I'll eat it while I'm driving. Really? Right? I'm just fueling up anyway. Food doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, it really does matter. It matters. All of it matters, folks. All of it matters. How was the food raised? How was it harvested? How was it cooked? And then how was it taken in? All of it matters to your multidimensional self and your well-being. So, real food, folks, and I gotta tell you, it's scary out there right now. I've got, you know, people are, oh, I'm just gonna make a protein shake out of pea protein.

unknown 33:28

Ha ha ha.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Yeah. Okay. Great. And I'm gonna bolt it on the way to work while I drive. Really? What are you doing here? Like, are you actually giving your body time to digest? Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna look to see if there's anything there uh in our chat stream. Just give me a sec. Hello everyone! I haven't said hello to everyone, but hello everyone! So great to be here. So great to be answering your questions. I love questions, so ask me questions. Um, I'm hoping that you'll join me every week, and I'm hoping that you will subscribe. Hit that subscribe button to the uh Dr. Cowan's Garden uh YouTube channel. I'm inviting you to do that so we can have a conversation here every week at this time. All right, let me see what's happening. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. I'm saying hello to everyone. Oh, I see some friends there. Baboo. Okay. We've got people here some from Michigan. Yahoo! Yes, that's exactly right. Sally call Sally Fallon calls uh the foods of modern commerce, specifically things like I had up a moment ago, donuts with food dye and sugar through the roof, etc. etc. Yeah, she calls them pornographic food. Yes, she does. Yes. Excellent. Someone is digesting because they're using their bitters. Bitters are a fabulous thing. Bitters are the bitter taste. Bitters, yeah. I'm not blowing you kisses, but I could, but it's that bitter taste that makes you pucker up, right? And uh helps you to digest. Yes, they're bitter herbs, really, really good to take prior to prior to eating. Taco hell, yeah. Yes, let's like the video and share it out. Bingo bango. Okay, someone has first, let me just run through and say hello to everybody from everywhere. Here we go. So we've got Michigan, hello to Michigan, we've got Clearwater, Florida, hello, hello. We've got Arizona, welcome, welcome to everyone wherever you are. Okay, good, good. Welcome to everyone wherever you are. And if I didn't mention where you are, welcome anyway. Okay. Um, let's check this out. La la la la la la la la bitters. Okay, fake milk like almond milk. I gotta tell you, folks, fake milk like almond milk. So, what are the fake milks? And there are some that are really worse than others. So, yeah, the worst milk, meaning the the most toxic, the one that holds the most toxins, like glyphosate, uh, that they've found is um oat milk, which is everywhere now. Hey, let's go ask my barist barista for a fabulous oat milk latte. Right? Sorry, not sorry. Um, so oat milk, really a bad idea, super duper bad idea, very high in glyphosate. Let me start over. All of the nut milks, all of the MYLKS, all of them are high in, we're gonna call them anti-nutrients. They are things that are not good for you for your body, they're hard for your body to digest, they are inflammatory, um, etc. And so all of them are bad. Done. The only exception is coconut milk, and that's only if it's made without guar gum or xantham gum or any of the other gums, because they're C RAP, they feed, you know, I don't know what you want to call them, pathog pathogenic microbes. They throw your microbiome out of balance. Forget about it. So forget about it. So coconut milk is the only alternative milk that I ever suggest to people if they want one. I would far rather have them heal their gut and uh and clear any kind of um difficulty with beautiful raw milk, cow, goat, sheep, I don't care. One of those, right? So all of them are full of anti-nutrients. Lots of them have gums and fillers in them, very hard for the body to digest, and also are very high in sugar. So I know it. Believe me. You know, folks, here's the thing. And and we could go on. I could go on. I mean, believe me, we could have a conversation about this, about what happened in the 60s, right? About what happened to our food supply. I mean, first we'll talk about what happened right after World War II, and then we'll talk about the 60s, and then we'll talk about how it became politically incorrect. Oops, yes, I said that. I know what channel I'm on, I could say that, right? To like have like make stock or bone broth out of bones. It all became politically incorrect. And so, and so did drinking milk. So, in any case, if you have a problem digesting milk, see if you can shift to raw milk, right? Raw milk, go to real milk.com, project of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Faboo, lots of great information. Love it, right? And find raw milk near you and then learn how to culture it. Culture it long, I'm telling you, in my experience, not everything, but in my experience, the vast majority of people that have difficulties digesting milk are having a hard time because it's that horrible confinement, dairy milk. Even if it's organic, oh, let's go there. Or pasteurized milk, don't drink it. It's bad for you. It's full of dead bacteria. Who wants this? Blah. Raw milk, pasteurized long, make a long yogurt, 24-hour culture, and then yay! Then you can digest it and have beautiful bioavailable calcium. All right, I'll move on. Thank you for that note about fake milk boggles your brain. Believe me, totally boggles my brain. We are not serving our children or anyone else or our elders or anyone else by serving them nut milks from a store. It's just bad news bears. Okay. Okie dokie. All right. For those of you who are kosher and cannot do any pork products, no problem. No problema. Skip the lard, have tallow, beef tallow, lamb tallow, bison tallow. Have beautiful things like butter and ghee. And um, we've got some gorgeous ghee. Oh my god, Dr. Cowan's garden has like the best A2, A2 ghee delish. Anyway. All right. Let's move on. Yes, I'm live. I am live right now. Okay. It is scary. You know, the other thing I was telling, I don't know if it was my son or my husband or somebody, you know, or maybe it was a client. I don't know. But the other thing I was saying was that it used to be a hundred years ago, a hundred years ago, right? That if if there was food in the store that you could trust that it was good for you, that it was okay to eat. Let's say just say, let's just say that. It was like okay to eat. But now, oh my god, forget about it. As I said, really read your labels, folks. If you're gonna buy something with a label, blah, blah, blah, you must really read them because they're sneaking in stuff there everywhere. And we could have a whole talk about labels. Uh I'll write that down. Let's talk about labels later on how to read them. That might be fun. All right, moving on. Woo! We've got Israel here. Hello, Israel. Thank you for being here. Bitters are awesome. Love bitters. Everybody's loving the bitters. I'm happy about that. I love that you love them. I love them. They're good for you. Your liver loves them, your gallbladder loves them, your stomach loves them. All those good things. All right, let's see if I can. Oh, now I can see more people. Okay. Suggestions for eating more butter. I I am supposed to eat at least a stick a day. Yes, you are. Yes, I do say have two sticks of butter a day, everybody. Two sticks of butter a day. What is that? That is 16 tablespoons. Do not start there because you will vomit and you will not like me anymore, and you probably won't come back. So, one of the things we really want to do is to be open to eating more fat because since the 80s, fats became bad, right? Let's say it differently. The Surgeon General in the US said that the United States should go low fat, no fat in the early 80s. I think it was 1982 or 1983. This corresponded with the big huge shot schedule. I'm not going to go into that right now. But in any case, it really was a mess. So, so all I'm saying is open to eating more healthy fats and make the goal at least a stick to two sticks of butter a day. What does that do? That means that you can have as much fat as you want. And the best way to do it for the person who asked, yeah. Let me go back up here. Let me see what's happening. Okay. The best thing to do in order to get more butter in that I found is get yourself a little Little nice little bowl that you love, your special bowl, small bowl, take butter out of the refrigerator. I keep most of mine on the counter to keep it soft, but take it out of the fridge, put eight tablespoons. If you're buying a tub of butter from the farm, use a tablespoon, a measuring spoon. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. If you're getting a stick, put a whole stick in that bowl, and then every time leave it out on the counter and just eat it as you walk by. It's phenomenal. You will see your stress level wrong. You will see your ability to handle stress come way down. Wrong. I've said it backwards twice. Okay. We will see your ability to handle stress go up and your stress levels come down. There you go. Um, by eating more and more fats. You'll just have a longer cope rope. You won't feel as stressed out. You'll be able to find words because you're thinking, you'll just feel better. So let's get that beautiful butter in or ghee or coconut oil or a combination. Yeah. Yes, the golden rule is fat, fat, fat. You got it. Excellent. Well done. All right. I was looking at something else here. Coming down, coming down, coming down. La la la soaking of beans and lentils in order to eat them, or should we avoid them altogether? So, you know, one more time with feeling. My understanding and belief is that traditional cooking techniques, a la Weston Price, Sally Fallon, you know, all of us gaps uses the same ones, blah, blah, blah. Soaking, sprouting, fermenting beans and legumes, drastically reduce, if not, I don't want to say, what can I say, get rid of? I'm not sure that they like go around and take them out and throw them, throw them out, but they uh drastically reduce the amount of of these anti-nutrients and might even take them, you know, neutralize all of them. Like they no longer they transform them so that they're no longer an issue. So soak sprout ferment. I personally love sprouting lentils and cooking them. They, and you know, when you do that, maybe you don't know, so I'm gonna tell you. So when you sprout lentils and then cook them, the cook time goes down by 50% or more, like faster. They cook faster, right? So, yeah, absolutely. I would eat them and I I would soak them or I would sprout them. I'm a sprout girl. I would sprout them, I would cook them, and I would eat them with buckets of butter or ghee or some other lovely, delicious fat. Maybe even bacon fat. Yum. All right, why are hot bars crap? Hello, I know who you are. Good to see you here. Um, why are hot bars crap? Why are hot bars crap? Because they're serving you crap. Sorry. Because the majority, again, generalization. I don't know about every single one of them. I'm generalizing here, but in general, hot bars are usually cooked with bad fats. They're not gonna be cooking your fat your beautiful food and tallow or your food and beautiful tallow. Too expensive. Animal food. Oh my god, all the vegans would never come to the hot bar, or the vegetarians. So forget about it, right? What are they gonna cook in? Soy oil, number one. They're gonna cook in soy oil, really bad oil. Nobody should be eating soy oil, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Ever. Organic or not, no soy oil. Or they're gonna cook in canola, Canada oil, canola, c-a-n-o-l-la, canola, canola is low uric acid rapeseed oil. Rapeseed is what they make mustard gas out of. Who wants to be eating canola oil? So on all the hot bars, swear again, ask them. Go ask the cook. Hey, what are you cooking that food in? Soy oil, canola oil. That's what they're doing. That's why they're okay. It is a bit unsettling to hear. Uh, it's a bit unsettling that the foods they sell us are not worth very much. Yes, it is true. Absolutely. I'm getting hearts, send me more hearts. I love them. Okay, hello from California. Yay. Person. Hello. Hello, hello. I love those hearts. Keep them coming. All right. I did that. I did that. I did that. Egg whites. What do you do with egg whites? Put them on your face. Egg whites. Fabulous. Put them on your face. Egg whites. Give them to your dogs. Egg whites. Put them in an omelette. Just yeah. Egg whites. Make some meringues. Egg whites. Freeze them. Use them later. Yeah. There you go. Hopefully that's helpful. You are welcome. Oh, hi. Oh. How does one eat without a gallbladder? How do how does one eat without a gallbladder? Austin, Texas. Woot, woot, woot. I love that. I love these hearts. Keep them coming. Okay. Um, so there's a couple of different theories here. My personal theory or my personal belief is that people should use, take, I know, we don't want to take anything, take bile when you eat fat. Because why? Because the gallbladder, the work of the gallbladder is to store bile made by the liver, and the work of the gallbladder is to then concentrate the bile and send it out when it's needed by the body. If you don't, right? So if you don't have a gallbladder, if you don't have a gallbladder, then uh the body will just be dripping bile into the small intestine all the time, right? La la la. So some people think that the liver, the body makes compensates, makes a little pouch in the liver to store the bile. I I don't know about that. I haven't seen it. It's possible, maybe. I mean, our bodies are amazing and brilliant and divine architecture, but I personally would be taking um ox bile with meals that have fat in it. Then you don't have to worry. Okay. I made lamb tallow once and it was like silk. Excellent. Fabulous. Yes. I mean, yes. Yes. I have a really uh easy rendering fats class sitting on my website. You can go take a look at it for people who don't know how, but yes, rendering is easy, easy, easy, easy, easier than make a pie crust, and it's so good for you. And then you don't have to spend 10, 15, 20 bucks a jar, right? Of tallow or something. Okay. Okay, cool. Labels class. Right, we'll do it. Label reading. Okay, we'll do it. What kind of bitters do I recommend? I personally recommend um so I'm always looking at labels as you're learning, right? I'm looking at labels like what's on the label, right? Like Sherlock Monica. I don't know. Joke, kind of. Kind of a pain to go to the store with, but I do, you know, because I'm reading labels all the time, right? Thank you. My rendering fats class is very helpful. I love that. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm so glad. Okay, so which bitters do I like? I'm looking at ingredients. So there are two bitters that I like. One is from Blossom's Farm, it's called West Coast Bitters. I'm not getting anything to tell you that. I just love them because they're clean. It's also a biodynamic farm. It's also a farm that I learned about through Dr. Tom Cowan.

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Anyway, and the other one is actually by a small company called Urban Moonshine. Uh, I met the owner of that company back at Nourish Vermont many years ago. And she they are now making cider vinegar, cider vinegar bitters. Love it! No alcohol in it, right? No, no alcohol, no cane sugar. So those are really, really good. Yep. Okay. Cope rope. Yes, we all need longer cope ropes, right? Okay, yep. Adrenal shakes, raw egg, cream, and butter. Yes, many, many ways you can use raw eggs and cream and butter. Excellent. Yes, easier than making pie crust. Pie crust ain't easy, folks, especially if you're, you know, making a real one. Okay. Thank you. All right. I can add my butter to my shake. Been adding olive oil. Oh no, let's not add olive oil. I mean, you can, but butter is just so very butter is like really good for your brain, too, folks. It's unbelievable. All right. I have some more time. Any more questions? Anything I missed, feel free to throw some down there. I am really inviting all of you, like your little homework for this week is to, or for today, is to go into your kitchen. I'm got mine's over there. Go into your kitchen cabinet, your pantry, start looking to see how much dead food you have in there. Right? Go into your refrigerator and look to see what is real food in there, right? So what would they be? Right? All of your beautiful animal proteins that go from pastured animals, grass-fed and finished. Yeah. All of those eggs that come from pastured hens, not hens that are sitting in stacks on top of each other, right? Just think of that. Not a pretty sight. Okay, in cages on top of each other. Okay, right. So what else is in there? Raw milk is in there, beautiful raw milk that you get from realmilk.com, right? Yeah. Beautiful homemade yogurt is in there, cultured for 24 hours. Maybe it's kefir. Kifir. Yeah. What's in there? Some veggies are in there. All those beautiful things. All of your fats are sitting by your stove. I've got my tallow out there. I got lamb tallow, beef tallow, lard, bacon fat, ghee, and coconut oil, all right there, ready to eat. Yep. Okay. So most or all fruit should be fermented, not eaten raw. Mmm, really good question. We got some great questions coming in here. So fruit. So I'm going to go back to this thing of eat seasonally. Like what's local to you and in season right now? Right? So in Colorado right now, peaches are coming in. Peaches. So they would be local. Of course, you want to make sure they're not sprayed. Right. But berries. So one of the best things to do is to eat fruit that's local to you. Local and seasonal. Right. You don't want to eat be eating uh oranges in Nebraska in January. Hello. Right? So eat fruit seasonally. Eat fruit sparingly. Raw sparingly. And then and then ferment it. Like you make chutneys. You can make amazing chutneys. You can ferment almost anything. I think most of you know that I love lacto fermentation and uh teach it. I've been doing that for a long time. That's what I first started teaching. So please ferment. Ferment the fruit. Yeah. Easy to do. And what happens? When you ferment fruit or anything else, meaning vegetables, the amount of sugar in the fruit will right, will decrease exponentially. Like because the microbes are eating the fruit, the sugar for you. Yay! So then you can have the fruit without the sugar, which is important because we're eating way too much sugar. Yeah. Do you store cukes in the fridge or on the counter? Um, you can store your vegetables. Cucumbers are actually fruit but people. Ha ha. How do you like that? Right? See anything with a seed inside is a fruit, not a veg. So um, yeah, for longer time, that's why refrigerators were invented, folks, because you can hold fruit fresh longer. So yeah. Okay, for someone with dairy sensitivities, is starting with a cheese easier than milk. For every human, milk is difficult to digest, even raw. I know people are gonna go crazy. But it's always best for the body to culture the dairy first. So long cultured yogurt, 24 hours, long cultured kefir or kefir, 24 hours, long cultured cultured cream or creme fraîche, sour cream. Yeah, that's really cheese. Is I mean, aged cheese will be low in casein, but yeah, you want you really want to be having cultured dairy. Yep. Any good commercial butters, the raw milk people around here don't just want to sell. It's not that they don't want to sell the cream or butter, it's that it's really, really a big hit on their dairy. If you skim all the cream off, then you've got all the skim milk. Who wants it? What do you do with skim milk? It fattens you. Give skim milk to the pigs. Skim milk fattens you because it has no fat in it. Ah good commercial butters. Uh, do the best you can. Um, I would look at truly grass-fed, maybe it's organic and from Ireland. Uh, meaning it instead of Kerry Gold. Um, I would do that. Yeah. Oh my god, we've got one minute. Local and seasonal. Thank you. You are welcome. Well, if you might have over fermented your peaches if you if they went to alcohol, that's what would give you the DUI. Sorry. Okay. Hello Monica. Is it okay to have a spoon of flaxseed oil in combination with ghee and raw milk and butter? Yes. Of course it is. Yes. As long as the flaxseed oil comes in a dark glass container, right? Flaxseed is better that you grind right before you eat it because we don't want it to go rancid for you. So, one more time with feeling people. One more time. Right? Thank you for joining me today. Yeah. Thanks for joining me today. I hope that you will join me next week. Every Thursday, we'll be here. I will be here. Send in your questions. Um, we will collect some of your questions too. And uh do subscribe if you liked this. Please subscribe to the um Dr. Cowan's Garden Channel. DCG, Dr. Cowan's Garden Channel. You can also check out Dr. Cowan's Garden website with for amazing, amazing foods. We're going to talk about some of those and why they're fabulous. And uh it's been really, really wonderful to be with you all. And I will look forward to seeing you next week. So if you liked it, subscribe and then tell everybody else, right, to come and visit me because this is where I'll be answering questions. All things food, all things cooking, all things sourcing. What do you got? And we'll see you next week. Okay. Bye, everyone. Be well. You're welcome.