178 Anne Biklé and David R Montgomery – We are what our food ate

Anne Biklé and David R Montgomery, writers of What your food ate, join us to talk about the connection between soil- building agriculture practices and human health, and the differences in healthy compounds in our food, both plants and animal protein connected to the way that food has been grown.

This series is supported by the A Team Foundation, who support food and land projects that are ecologically, economically and socially conscious. They contribute to the wider movement that envisions a future where real food is produced by enlightened agriculture and access to it is equal. The A Team are looking to make more investments and grants in the space of bionutrients. You can find out more on ateamfoundation.org.

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Anne and David have studied over 1000 papers looking at the connection between soil health and human health. For everyone who keeps saying a carrot is a carrot and a calorie is a calorie, the science has proven and continues to prove otherwise. Although we don’t understand all the nuances and connections, we can safely say that healthy soil leads to healthy food, which leads to healthy gut systems and then leads to healthy people.

More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/anne-bikle-and-david-r-montgomery.

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Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

No better way to start to unpack the connection between soil building, agriculture practices and human health further than with David and Anne, who have studied over a thousand papers and published a peer review one themselves, looking at the connection between soil health and human health. For everyone who keeps saying that a carrot is a carrot and a calorie is a calorie, the science has proven and continues to prove otherwise. There are massive differences in healthy compounds in our food, both plants and animal protein, connected to to the way the food has been grown. Although we don't fully understand the nuances and the connections, we can safely say healthy soil leads to healthy food, leads to healthy gut systems, and that leads to healthy people. What are the connections between healthy farming practices, healthy soil, healthy produce, healthy gut and healthy people? Welcome to a special series where we go deep into the relationship between regenerative agriculture practices that build soil health and the nutritional quality of the food we end up eating. We unpack the current state of science, the role of investments, businesses, nonprofits, entrepreneurs and more. This series is supported by the A-Team Foundation, who support food and land projects that are ecologically, economically and socially conscious. They contribute or get in touch directly info at a team foundation.org or check the information in the show notes below. So welcome to another episode. I'm extremely happy to have David R. Montgomery back on the show and to welcome and Bigly for the first time here. They published a book, What Your Food Ate, which I can highly, highly recommend, which I think when this is out is out almost everywhere. So I can't wait to unpack this nutrient density piece, the connection between healthy soil, actually practices to get healthy soil, healthy produce, healthy gut systems, and healthy people, and of course, healthy ecosystems, and to really unpack what we know now, what we don't know yet, and what should you as the audience of this podcast know. So thank you so much for coming here and welcome, Anna, David.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yeah, thanks, Cohen. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

Yeah, it's great to be back. It's been a little while. I

SPEAKER_00 2:31

checked. It was February 2018, so that's more than four years ago, and you were on episode 24. So you were definitely one of the earlier ones back in the day, and already then with a book, obviously, Growing the Revolution, that many, many people have read in this space because it gave such a good overview. So to start with, I think we already talked about nutrient density then, but what triggered you both, first of all, to work on a book together again, because you've done that in the past, then you wrote one, or actually two by yourself, David, to join forces again and to write this monumental book, because it's been a lot of years, but it's actually, it's really a monumental book in this space, I think.

SPEAKER_04 3:10

Oh, thank you. Well, you know, we survived writing The Hidden Half of Nature together, so we knew we could do it. And it's, you know, one of the big things that was sort of kicking around both our minds after writing the previous books was what really is the effect of farming practices on what gets into the food that then sets up elements of human health. And that's a subject that really transcends either one of our disciplines. I'm a geologist and a biologist, and it made a lot of sense to work together on it in terms of having two minds to interpret and understand and integrate and synthesize all the material that it takes to think about how we treat the soil cascading up through plants and animals and their health into our health. And it worked. It's a way better book than I think either one of us would have written on our own.

Why is a lot of this research surfacing now?

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Yeah, I would definitely say that. That's true. And I guess the other thing, you know, maybe at a higher level, Cohen, is that agriculture has always been about food and about feeding humanity. And I think a lot of us take for granted or think, oh, that food, of course it's nutritious. It's food, that carrot, that cauliflower, that lettuce, whatever food it is you're eating. And yet, the more that David and I have done research in this area, it's pretty clear. Two things are pretty clear. Farming practices can change the quality of the soil and the quality of the soil has a big influence on the quality of the food and so when you sort of look at those separate pieces and then you put them together it was in many ways kind of natural that that you know we would end up here at this book not you know not at the beginning of what we call the dirt trilogy so that's dirt the hidden half and growing a revolution but but here at the end when you put all of it together, it's a kind of inescapable question for me, at least, in terms of what agriculture is supposed to do for humanity and then asking the question, is it doing that? It's certainly, for the most part, in most places of the world at this point in human culture, it's feeding us, but is it really nourishing us? That's the question.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I think it's a fascinating piece to unpack further is why did it, I wouldn't say even because in your book, you actually show that a lot of this research or a lot of this, the connection between those pieces of soil health and human health has been going on for quite a while. Like, why did it take so long or does it take so long? Because I wouldn't even imagine it's so known outside our bubble or it's so talked about outside our bubble, but it seems such a logical connection. What you do to the soil ends up affecting what is in that carrot and ends up affecting you. Do you have any explanation why we don't talk about it way more and why we, quote unquote, had to wait for you to write this book? Or why is that not a constant discussion when we talk about food, agriculture, practices, and basically, yeah, the state of healthcare, et cetera? Why are we talking about like a carrot is not a carrot? Why is that such a big blind spot, if you have any clue?

SPEAKER_04 6:47

Well, you know, we asked ourselves that question many times while writing this book, because when you go back and look at some of the early insights of some of the pioneers of organic agriculture in particular, people like Sir Albert Howard and Lady Eve Balfour, they were onto these connections. And they were onto them empirically. They had observed that livestock fed on plants that were grown in healthier soils had better health themselves. But one of the things that I think really hinders taking up the argument in scientific circles was the lack of an understanding of the mechanisms involved. And if there's one thing scientists are really, really good at, it's criticizing things that don't have a solid explanation behind them. You know, it's sort of how it works, not just that something happens, but well, how does it work? And, you know, back in the 40s and 50s, when a lot of the early research and literature that we cite and talk about and tell stories about in the book was done, the whole idea that microbial communities in the soil were partners for plants was really not known, let alone how it actually worked. And, you know, in the subsequent 80 years or so, an awful lot's been learned about those connections and how they work and the role of symbiotic relationships between soil bacteria and fungi around the roots of plants and how that affects and supports the health of plants and crops. And so that's sort of one effect is that we, you know, science wasn't really ready with explanations. when some of these connections were first posited and kicked around. And so they weren't given much credence. And secondly, you know, one of the things we really had to do in writing this book was dive into a whole bunch of different fields, soil science, agronomy, animal husbandry, human health, and both chronic and infectious diseases. There's a lot of disciplines that you need to connect, need to think about in connecting the dots between soil health and human health. And science is traditionally been divided into, you know, we each specialize in our own discipline and tend not to look beyond that. And so, you know, this book is really an effort in synthesizing what's known in many different disciplines around this core issue. And there's really not much of a reward system, frankly, in science for doing synthesis. You know, we're trained to divide things into small chunks, bite-sized pieces of science that we can hand off to a So there's a whole bunch of issues I could ramble on on as a professor, but Anne may have her own perspectives

SPEAKER_01 9:25

on this too. Well, your question, I mean, it is a really good one, Cohen. Why don't more people talk about this? I think it's a good question because you look at... you look at the health of humanity sort of across the globe and there's different afflictions in different places, but it's for sure that it seems with affluence and wealth and so-called developed countries, money and all of that development and what makes us modern, it doesn't seem to make us any healthier. We may be like Longevity may be increasing, but you have to ask, well, what is the quality of that life in the last 10 to 15 years or maybe, you know, 20 to 30 years? Is that good? Is that how a person would want to live out their last years? And so to me, there's, you know, we all know that diet affects our health. And so if you think it's not at all a leap for me to think, okay, we know that diet has a profound influence on health. So what is it about the way we grow our food that might be affecting it and, you know, and therefore our health? And so I think also just the sheer amount of food that that we grow is. is dazzling and it's and so we we think it's maybe not um things are taken care of we're equating all of that abundance and yield with quality and with nutrient density and that of course we know isn't always the case and i also think you know why we don't talk about this is that just fewer and fewer of us even grow food or raise animals and so we're disconnected from what a healthy plant or a healthy animal looks like. And I think for any farmer out there, they know when their animals are sick or they know when their animals are healthy. And that can be said, too, for farmers who just grow crops. So I think when you see it and when you do that kind of work, it's not lost on farmers that their practices are having effects, both positive and negative, on the plant and animal foods that become a part to the human diet.

SPEAKER_04 12:01

And I think there's one other element, too, that gets at your original question in terms of how we think about the way that science can demonstrate things. And it sort of boils down to if you have a very complex set of systems, like the soil, animals, and the human body, and you're talking about the connections between each of those really horribly complex

SPEAKER_00 12:24

systems. It gets very, very complex, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:26

And you're talking about the health of those systems, which itself is very complex because you know thinking in terms of people we've got what our genes whether or not we get any exercise what we eat and we're at we're trying to argue how we raise what we eat as well you know it's the the ability to design simple tests to demonstrate with high certainty what the connections are from one end of that long causal chain to the very end other end of that chain from the soil to people's health is quite difficult and That's where you get into the difference between what I like to call scientific common sense and scientific certainty. The approach we took in writing this book was to try and take all the little linkages between how farming practices affects the health of the soil, how the health of the soil affects the health of crops, how the health of crops affects the health of animals, and how the health of crops and animals, given what gets into them into our diet, affects our health. If you break into those little bits, you can put the science together like beads on a string. which will

SPEAKER_00 13:28

lead you- And basically what you did is without taking the full chain, maybe we will never have the scientific knowledge to do that full, the full chain basically. But if you cut it into pieces, which you just mentioned, there is a lot actually there already very well written in papers. I think you read over a thousand papers. I'm not saying all of them work good, but a lot of these things, linkages have been shown. It's just that they are very different in very different places or very different even like... legs of the scientific community and and it just they were never put together or not in this way plus you mentioned at the beginning that probably we we came a long way in the last years in the last decades especially the last years as well to understand many of these things or at least to start to to grasp how these linkages worked and so just for anybody out there like it's not that a lot of this research wasn't done it was just done on very specific pieces of the chain and improving certain things like what for example what what was a big surprise that you saw in these thousand papers that you read where you thought, wow, actually somebody did that maybe recently or far away back to show a certain piece of the chain that we maybe didn't even know that somebody did the research of.

SPEAKER_04 14:40

Well, you know, one of those pieces that was a real surprise to me is a real kind of an aha that helped sort of cement the chain of causality that runs through this whole connection was when we were looking at the effects of what some of the kinds of things that farming professionals practices affect in our food, mineral micronutrients, phytochemicals, antioxidants, and anti-inflammatories, and certain amino acids in our food, all of which are sound science showing how farming practices can affect them. One of the real interesting ahas was studies that showed that the kinds of flavors in foods that people really like and enjoy are rooted in those compounds that have been shown to have fairly positive effects in terms of human health promotion. So the idea that our bodies are hardwired when we're dealing with whole natural foods, foods that haven't been broken into

SPEAKER_00 15:40

pieces. Even after all those years of processed food, too much very interesting salt and fats, we still are able to distinguish quality from non-quality.

SPEAKER_04 15:52

Yeah, when they're not sort of masked by those lovely salt, fat, and sugar combinations that we're all so so enamored with, which is also rooted in our biology. But the idea that our bodies have the ability in terms of sorting through natural foods to sort of be attracted to those that have a better nutrient density was a real eye-opener for me. It makes perfect evolutionary sense. I think Anne wasn't as surprised because as the biologist, she was like, well, of course.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

But also I think in livestock it has been shown, like Fred Provenza and others have shown that livestock is very able to self-medicate and pick what they need, even though we might not understand what it exactly does. So we gave more credit to livestock than we gave to ourselves, basically.

The world beyond fats, vitamines and carbohydrates

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Right. Well, yeah. And I guess at that point, you know, not all of us, you know, give livestock that, you know, that kind of credit because, of course, there's different ways of raising livestock and feeding them the things that we think they ought to be eating as opposed to, you know, turning them out to a pasture and letting their body wisdom function and operate normally like it's supposed to in terms of choosing combinations of different plants at different times of the day. And yeah, I do have to say that I gained a whole new appreciation for how ruminants. So, you know, for those out there may not know what a ruminant is, of course, that's a cow, a sheep or a goat. And they have this wonderful part of their digestive tract called the rumen. And that's where most of their microbiome lives and their microbiome, um, has a huge effect on, um, on their health and their wellbeing in terms of what the animals are eating. And the microbiome really, really thrives on fiber rich living plants. If you're a ruminant, that is the, that's the diet to eat. So, um, that, and, and so that, that flavor feedback thing that Dave was just talking about, it happens in every organism, really. I mean, even panda bears, right? They just all day long, they're sitting there eating bamboo, but there's something right about panda biology and bamboo that, you know, we don't have to train pandas to go eat something else. They know from the get-go that, you know, bamboo, that's what I eat day in, day out.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah. That's what I thrive on, yeah. And so I also remember from the book that we have... I don't know if we are there yet in terms of, let's say, general public, but we have to look really beyond the standard calories counting or the standard calories we look at in food, but also the standard vitamins we search for. Because there's a whole world beyond that of things we need very, very small amounts of, but they are absolutely essential for how our brain functions, how our body functions, et cetera. So that world beyond the standard few things that we currently follow and that have been proven in science, like vitamin C does this and that, et cetera, et cetera. How did that research, how far do you think that research is or how ready are we to accept that there is a whole world of dark matter, let's say beyond a few things that we currently look for in food and in medicine and in pills, obviously, because that's what we unfortunately do.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

You know, I think we're really early in that research, Cohen, because for so long, nutritional research and, you know, dietary pundits have just mostly been focused on fats, carbohydrates. and protein as like, that's what we all need to think about in our food. And it's only been more recently that phytochemicals, so these are, you know, phytochemicals are compounds and molecules that are naturally occurring in plants. Plants make them, not for our benefit, but for theirs, but many of the benefits that plants reap from phytochemicals serve also functions and purposes in our body. Everything from normalizing cell function to helping our cells and tissues sort of operate the human janitorial services that need to happen 24 hours a day so that we can all you know feel normal and keep functioning and you use the term dark matter and it reminds me one of the papers sort of refers to the dark matter of nutrition. And we don't know all the compounds and molecules that are in, especially the plant foods. There are tens of thousands of phytochemicals across the entire botanical world. And even though we don't eat across the entire botanical world, our crops, fruits and vegetables, grains, the whole, anything, from a plant contains a fair number of phytochemicals and we don't know everything that they do in us. And then of course, in the book, one of the other areas that I thought was really, really interesting is that there's even compounds that soil microorganisms make, bacteria and fungi make, that plants take up. And there's a person out of Penn State who, has written a number of papers on this. This compound is called ergothionine. Chemically, it happens to be an amino acid. Biologically, it does a lot of very interesting things, beneficial things. And this guy always makes a point of asking this question, you know, if ergothionine, you know, weren't doing something for us, you know, why are there receptors on every cell in the human body for it. You know, so this is just a, when you get that kind of correspondence, it means this, this compound is

SPEAKER_00 21:56

important.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Yeah, this is important and we should pay attention to it. And if fungi and bacteria are making this, it immediately makes me ask, well, then what are we doing to levels of ergothionine in the human diet? If tillage in particular, you know, is chopping up fungi and then, you know, over-application of fertilizer and various other things, if that's knocking back microbial populations, it's likely knocking back levels of this compound in foods of the human diet, too.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

And imagine how many others are out there like that that we don't even know about. I have the feeling that in this kind of research, the more research you do, the more you discover you don't know, and the percentage you think, okay, maybe 10 years ago we thought we knew 5%, and currently we imagine maybe one or even less because it just seems to be exponentially growing the amount of items almost out there that we need and what it means for diversity as well in terms of diet which obviously is a big part of I wouldn't say your diet advice but a big part of it diversity because we don't know all the things the more diverse the better in many cases

SPEAKER_02 23:11

yeah

SPEAKER_04 23:12

that sort of points to this being sort of a real exciting area of science You know, not only by integrating different disciplines, but areas where you get, you know, when you start answering, asking and answering some of the broad questions, it brings up more and bigger questions and you just keep finding more and more to dig into. It makes for a pretty exciting area. But the, you know, we, I think we can point to certain areas where we can pretty confidently say that farming practices are affecting the kinds of compounds that on average have net beneficial effects for people. people.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Or the other way around. We know that they harm it, like the plowing. There's a whole chapter, obviously, on chemical inputs. We don't know the full extent of the damage, but we know it's damaging.

Paper Soil health and nutrient density

SPEAKER_04 24:00

Yeah, and it's reversible. It goes both ways, right? It's sort of how we treat the soil can either promote the beneficial compounds or, as has happened in conventional agriculture for the last century, it, as you're saying, can compromise or reduce them. And there's a few things that have sort of hindered recognition of that. And one of them really is sort of what we think of as what is a nutrient. And so we're talking about nutrient density, you know, the density of what, what kind of things are we talking about? And the whole world of phytochemicals that's been sort of opened up in terms of the connections for human health is one that only recently has the nutrition community been starting to talk about them as, you know, as phytonutrients or, you know, some other kind of nutrient than what the discipline has focused on. And the difference there is really, as far as Anne and I can parse it, seems to be that we've been mostly focused for a long time in nutrition and looking at the kinds of compounds that are essential for life. And that makes sense. It's the first kind of things to think about because without them, if you're not living, you're not breathing. But there's all these other compounds that we're just starting to learn much about their effects on that are beneficial to health. And so if we sort of expand the definition to things that are healthful as opposed to nutritious, you know, in the old version of nutrition, shall we say, it opens this whole new world of possibilities in terms of looking at how farming practices affect what's in our food for better or for worse. And that's sort of a big area of where we ended up on in the book, because where there's solid evidence for farming practices greatly affecting what's in our food sort of maps into many of those health-promoting concepts. compounds and conventional practices don't really stack up very well when measured against that metric.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

And so what made you decide to, and I will definitely link the paper below as well, to run your own study? I mean, after reading so many, was there a missing piece? Was there something that was itching? Like we want to run our own study connecting soil health to, let's say, nutrient density, which I think is one of the first times that ever has been done. But what makes you decide, okay, we have soil with evidence of all the different linkages, but we want to do a bigger chain and show.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Yeah, well, I mean, we're both really curious people, okay? And so we wanted to find out for ourselves, like, you know, is this stuff really connected? And, you know, we're not like a giant research group and our sample size was small, but one thing that was sort of lacking in the literature literature is a specific assessment of soil health alongside a specific assessment of a crop on two neighboring farms. So what we're doing here is we're getting the same crop, the same soil, and yet different practices. So

SPEAKER_00 27:07

not the same soil, basically, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:10

Well, the same soil type's the way a soil scientist looks at them. The soil type, yeah, yeah, yeah. They look at them and go, yeah, not the same soil, you know, one dark brown and the other khaki.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Well, and that point actually is, you know, part of the problem because soil scientists tend to look at physical characteristics and chemical characteristics of soil and less so on the biology. So when I say same soil type, it would be as if you had a soil map and you're looking at Cardington clay, you know, for example, on both farms. So we looked at 10 farms and from California to Connecticut, 10 pairs of farms. So 20

SPEAKER_03 27:50

farms.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

And these farms, we looked at a couple of vegetable farms and then some farmers in the Midwest. So that was corn and soy looked at. Also, it was sorghum and peas. And what we found was pretty interesting. On average, five biochemicals and micronutrients. So micronutrients are particular minerals and vitamins. They were higher in all of the regeneratively grown crops. And soil health was also

SPEAKER_00 28:29

higher. How did you define regeneratively? I think you took a moment of time. Like you say, farms that have been building soil health for at least 10, 15 years or something like that. Because of course, there's no definition yet or not, let's say, an agreed upon one. So how did you pick those?

SPEAKER_04 28:45

So we relied a lot on the network of farmers that we met and got associated with in writing Growing a Revolution. So that was sort of our door opener to meeting some of them. And then they knew people who had also been doing stuff along these lines. And so what we sort of defined or used as our regenerative farms are farms that had been following the principles of conservation agriculture for at least five, for between five and 10 years. And what those principles are would be, they were no-till, They planted cover crops, so they always kept the ground covered, and they grow a diversity of crops, at least five or six crops in a rotation, or a very diverse mix of cover crops. And we selected those that had been doing all three of those for at least five or 10 years. Some of them had been no-till for longer, and that was basically really our point of distinction between the conventional and the regenerative farms. Two of the farms were small-scale, no-till vegetable farms that were effectively organic, though, as I recall, not certified, but that used no agrochemicals. Some of the other larger regenerative farms also were effectively organic, but we didn't use the organic conventional distinction. We wanted to look at these soil health building practices. And so we measured soil organic matter and soil health to try and see whether the regenerative farms actually had health healthier soil than their neighboring conventional farms. And that did pencil out. And then as Anne

SPEAKER_02 30:21

was saying,

SPEAKER_04 30:22

there were differences in the, yeah, so it seems to work on the soil at least. And on average, there were differences in what was coming off the crops as well. And most strikingly and consistently across the board were differences in the phytochemical levels.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

And Anne, you were saying on average, these were higher, but average is always a tricky one because it hides a lot. What was your big What was the biggest surprise or what was the biggest, maybe also disappointment or what was the most striking difference you discovered or uncovered?

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Yeah, I guess in particular there was with the California no-till vegetable farm, the farm that we compared that to, it was vitamin K that really struck me. Cabbage was the crop that we looked at there. And the vitamin K levels in the regenerative cabbage were something like, I don't have it in front of me. Yeah, it was like 30, 34% higher than in the, you know, I just would call it the non-regenerative farm to which it was compared. So that, you

SPEAKER_00 31:34

know, I think it was even organic. If I remember correctly, the pairing there was regenerative versus organic even.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

So that's a

SPEAKER_03 31:45

lot.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah, and vitamin K is an interesting vitamin in that it's involved with a lot of different things in our bodies. It's not one of the sort of normal vitamins like a B vitamin or

SPEAKER_00 32:00

a C vitamin. It's even a family, right? It's K, 1, 2, et cetera,

SPEAKER_01 32:06

yeah. Yeah, anyway, that was one thing that really stuck out. It was just because I don't think we had any other single difference that was that high that was like 30%. 30% greater. Most were high teens or something like that. There

SPEAKER_04 32:21

were some that were several fold. One of the things that was, there was a lot of variability in it, particularly in the minerals. And you might expect that because there's a lot of variability there and it's shown in previous studies as well. But the thing that really struck out to me was how consistently the phytochemicals across the board were higher on the regenerative farms.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

And was something lower? Like, was there some disappointment, let's say, from the whole regenerative movement piece or something that didn't come out as you may expect it?

SPEAKER_04 32:57

Yeah, there were a couple vitamins, if I recall. I'm not recalling off the top of my head. I could probably look it up here pretty easily. Where they were, where the regenerative ones came out on average a little lower.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Yeah, there was one, I think there was, it was either magnesium That was another thing that in one of the paired farms. Oh yeah, it was vitamin B6 and manganese. Yeah, vitamin B6 and manganese were lower in how many?

SPEAKER_04 33:31

The one we've got here is on average.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Yeah, so that was interesting. Why those two? We don't know.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Because more research is needed in that piece.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

Well, the other surprise thing that you know in writing this book that we realized was that all this variability can be confounding it can be perplexing and you want to know why why is there all this variability and there's there's probably the usual reasons you know there may be slight differences in the soil you've got farmers practices you've got crops you know crops are known to take up different micronutrients in different levels. You know, take Brazil nuts, for example, they are just happen to be rich in selenium. So there's all that sort of variability that's, that's operating, but sort of the variability with a capital V, the big variability out there is, is actually something that we want in our crops and in our animals, because when we Their microbiome or their genome varies. It gives, biologically at least, this is what evolution is all about. Without variation, there's no resiliency. There's no adaptation. There's no ability to respond to what nature throws at plants and animals. So we actually want variability in our crops and our animals because otherwise everything's just a big monoculture and, you know, the one pest or the one environmental stressor that comes through wipes everything out. So, you know, I, we were, I forget recently who we were talking with, but somebody asked me, they were asking me about their crops and I'm not a farmer, but she said, you know, I don't understand this. I had one plant. It was some kind of a leafy green. And she said, she was telling me about it. And she said, this thing was just like, you know, like I, I'd given it steroids, but I actually had not. But it was just growing gangbusters. And right next to it is this sickly little plant, one third the size. And it was all the same seed. These plants are growing right next to one another. And it just made me think about this whole thing on variability and that you really do want that because these plants and animals and biology will sort of figure out how to deploy. you know, that variability to respond to what's out there in the environment. And this is, in a sense, this is what regional land races and plant, this is how plant breeding used to occur, is you would see, you know, who dies and who lives, and you would collect seed from, you know, your best plants. The

SPEAKER_03 36:34

one that made it,

SPEAKER_01 36:34

yeah. Right, or if you're a livestock person, then you're looking to see which animals are healthiest and which one's live the longest and which ones yield, you know, if you're a dairy or which ones are yielding, you know, the highest milk for the highest milk quantity for the longest length of time. So all this variability, though it's confounding and perplexing and it is hard to replicate when you're dealing with such a complex variable system, it's there for a very good reason and we really should embrace it.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

And so how did your diet change, if it did at all, during, I mean, of course we had a lockdown and COVID as well. But how did that, did that change at all while writing this book?

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Well, yeah, I mean, we became much more, we were already after writing these kinds of books, Cohen, like, I'm like, kind of like, okay, we're reading, you know, we're reading labels, we're eating fresh, we're growing, you know, we're growing some too. But I think what really impressed upon me was how important how important the diet of an animal is because of how it affects the fat profile in meat and dairy. And I remember I called up this yogurt maker. They're out of, I called them up because, you know, on their label, it didn't exactly say organic and it has a word like natural on it. And I happened to really like this yogurt because it's quite tangy. It's just got a really great, flavor. And so I called them up because I wanted to know what

SPEAKER_00 38:16

are

SPEAKER_01 38:17

you feeding your animals? Because I'd like to eat your yogurt, but I don't want to eat grain. I don't want yogurt made from milk of grain fed animals because I'm not looking for a bunch of omega-6 fats in my diet. I can get that out of seed oils. And they told me it was really interesting. They said, well, it depends on the time of year, but basically the animals are not out on pasture until late winter or early spring. So now I time it when I buy that kind of yogurt to be like May, June, because I'm figuring, okay, animals are all out on pasture. I'm getting good stuff. So I got probably more down into the weeds on it than Dave did.

SPEAKER_04 39:05

Yeah, well, the story behind that is that we basically realized in going through the literature on sort of animal husbandry and meat and dairy production that what a ruminant eats in terms of the nature of the fats in their diet translates over into what we get in meat and milk and that it matters not only for the health of the animal but also for our health for a simple reason. Omega-3 fats tend to be the fats that help to terminate inflammation whereas omega-6 fats are instrumental in initiating inflammation. And the paleo-human diet, not in the sense of the paleo diet but just like what people used to eat a long time ago kind of paleo, there was a rough balance of omega-6s and omega-3s.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

More or less 1 to 1, right? And we're out of 12 to 1 or something now?

SPEAKER_04 39:54

Exactly. It's higher than 10 to 1 now, more omega-6s and omega-3s, so we're swamped in omega-6s, and the reason for that is fairly simple. Seeds are rich in omega-6s. Why? Because they're stable fat. They're designed for storage, whereas omega-3s are highly reactive, and they're designed for photosynthesis, or they play roles and photosynthesis. So leafy green plants have lots of omega-3s and seeds have lots of omega-6s. So when we feed cows with corn and soybeans or wheat or any kind of a seed, we're loading them up with omega-6s and seed oils are rich in omega-6s, whereas grass-fed animals, grass-fed ruminants have a much higher omega-3 content in their fats. And it turns out that translates over into meat and dairy. And so the human diet has changed greatly because of how we changed our livestock diet. And there's not enough, there's not a lot of recognition of that. I was completely oblivious to that before we started in the research for this book. And it did change the way we eat because now we're much more conscious about trying to go for grass-fed meat and dairy when possible.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

Yeah. And I mean, even this term that we all use, grass-fed, that's not actually totally We don't really want– that's not right. And, of course, I'm not in charge of things. But I think this whole sort of product area, it should really be living plant-fed. Of course, that doesn't roll off your tongue like grass-fed.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Because otherwise it becomes hay or it becomes stored and it dies. You show very nicely in terms of research what it means. If you cut the grass, bring it in, store it, and then feed it to ruminants compared to the ruminant eating the grass, let's say, fresh. Yeah. It's a very different thing.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

It's a different thing. Now, on the sort of on the scale of, you know, very different things, there's obviously, you know, not everybody, you know, not all cows live in climates and regions where they can be eating living plants year round. And so cutting the plants, bringing them in and letting them go through the silage process is the next best thing. And what's interesting is when cows have, been in barns all winter and they're eating the dead plants. You look at video clips and stuff of cows getting out to a pasture or living plants first thing in the spring, and they are beyond happy. You've

SPEAKER_00 42:29

never seen

SPEAKER_01 42:30

a cow move as fast.

Did your view of animal agriculture change?

SPEAKER_00 42:33

As that, basically. It's fascinating to see, definitely. Go and check YouTube. And actually, if you want to know more about omega-3 and 6- and the research there, there's been actually quite a lot in France. We've had Pierre Vieux of Bleu Blanqueur that has been labeling that basically as one of the outcome, the best outcome is to, for healthy, in this case, animal protein, is to look at omegas three and sixes and see, because you know what the animal has eaten because of that. And of course, then there's a level of healthy pasture, et cetera, but you at least know what kind of feed the animal has had. And there's a lot of research there actually that suggests that omega-6 and 3 are driving a lot of our very good indicators, let's say, of things. So there you have changed. And you don't really tackle it in the book. I don't think it's the book to do that. But has your point on, let's say, animal agriculture, we talk a lot about it in the podcast, obviously the camp that says we cannot regenerate anything without animals. There's the camps that we should all go vegan. Has your stand changed on that at all? Has it become less radical, more radical, different? Because, of course, one of the principles you mentioned, I think, in Growing Revolution is the integration of animals, David. So has your view changed on the animal part of our diet or the animal part of our agriculture system?

SPEAKER_04 43:53

Yeah, well, there's sort of two threads there. One is, you know, is animal integration necessary for regenerative agriculture? And, you know, I tend to argue that it's not necessary, but it can accelerate soil rebuilding if done properly. So it can be an essential component of a well-run regenerative farm. But I've been on regenerative farms that have no animals on them or no livestock on them. And they've rebuilt their soil very well. And those places have essentially microbial livestock. There's organisms that are doing many of the same roles as- And

SPEAKER_00 44:28

or getting manure from somewhere else, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:30

Yeah, or the ones I've been were not, but you could do that. But I've also been on farms where it seems that the well integrated animal agriculture has greatly accelerated soil building and help the process along. So I'm in the camp that sort of looks at, oh, you know, animal agriculture is not necessary for regenerative, but it may actually be a really good thing for most regenerative farms if done properly. And in terms of my sort of view of animal agriculture at a broad scale, I've come around to sort of thinking that there are environments in the world where grazing is really probably the best land use in terms of environmental considerations if it's done right. And regenerative grazing practices, intensive rotational grazing and variants on it are things where in the right environment can actually work really well. And ruminants have this wonderful ability to turn grass into meat and milk, where if you look at some areas where there's a lot of monocropping today, say in the Western part of the Plains in America, water is in great supply. We're basically mining groundwater to raise corn to feed the cattle, when instead we could actually raise the cattle on the open range and restore the prairie. And the

SPEAKER_00 45:54

aquifer, probably,

SPEAKER_04 45:56

yeah. Yeah, and there's good examples of places where you can build soil organic matter with well-done grazing. Some of those studies are still sort of controversial, but I've seen evidence that...

SPEAKER_00 46:08

I've heard people continuing, like I think George Monby had an has his new book out called Genesis or Regenesis and continues to ignore that, that whole body of science. It calls it that it doesn't exist basically. So it's, it's very persistent. But yeah, at the same time, research after research and like, like on, on the land, if you talk to the right farmers, you see, I mean, it's, it's out there. It's not that you, you can deny it.

SPEAKER_04 46:34

Yep. And there, and there are good peer reviewed studies that have dealt with elements of that. And there is, I think an element of, you know, of willful ignorance uh in some circles where that have a you know a a a a more militant dietary perspective to try and push. And I think my perspective, and perhaps Anne's as well, is sort of more moderate in the middle of sort of thinking about where does it make sense to actually raise animals as part of agriculture? And we should pay more attention to how we do it, because I think that that's really the big problem with animal agriculture today isn't so much that people are eating meat and dairy. It's how we are raising the animals that provide our meat and dairy. We're doing it in ways that are environmentally destructive and that are not beneficial to our own nutrition and that don't respect the health of the animals involved. That's all wrong, but there's different ways to actually do it that I think would have a better environmental footprint, could help with human nutrition, and could give cows like the ones Anne was talking about, sort of dancing out into the spring pasture, a higher quality of life as well. So it's sort of a conditional assessment on my end. I

SPEAKER_01 47:49

think it's interesting to me. I think part of the reason for this whole movement away from animals and animal products in the human diet is in part because mainstream animal agriculture is... is really pretty awful. And so a lot of people want to have, I don't want to have anything to do with that either. It's like, I'm not eating that kind of meat nor consuming those kinds of dairy products, but that doesn't mean that I'm, you know, tossing aside animals out of my diet. I mean, I think being an omnivore is one of the like biggest privileges of being a human being. Not

SPEAKER_00 48:40

being a panda that has to eat.

What about fake meat and fake dairy, precision fermentation etc.?

SPEAKER_01 48:41

Yeah, yeah. Can you imagine bamboo day in, day out? I mean, we're omnivores. And when you think about that in the context, too, of our, you know, just the genomic diversity across the human population, this is in part what has made us such a successful species. We can eat just about anything. We can live just about anywhere. It's also, you know, created problems for sure, but I just don't see any need to toss out animal foods from the entirety of the human diet. And the other thing that I think a lot of hardcore vegans and others in the plant-based camp, and especially those in, say, North America or Europe or Australia, maybe what they don't realize is that most of, there's an awful big slice of, farmers in other parts of the world whose livelihood is absolutely dependent on animals and it's not like a 500 you know head herd of cattle or something like that it's one goat or it's one cow and these animals are essential to the you know the livelihoods of of many different kinds of populations and if we want to do away with all animal agriculture on the planet well we're also killing human cultures along with that. If that's the direction that some are headed, it doesn't reflect the long, long ties and relationships that people have had with animals that have become part of our agricultural systems.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

Which, of course, is something that could change or doesn't have to change everywhere. But it is an important point. But at the same time, societies change. I mean, we once thought slavery was normal. and many other things. So, which of course, vegans always point out to that. But what then do you think about, maybe this is opening a whole different Pandora box, but box of Pandora, but what do you think of these ways of, let's say the precision fermentation to make dairy in large stainless steel vats? Like, has there been research? Because I always ask the question immediately, okay, let's look at the nutrients. And they always say just the same with hydroponics, et cetera. It's the same. I would say, yeah, if you say that you probably haven't looked at nutrient research for a long time or So it sort of disqualifies your thinking immediately. Because there are a lot of now dairy alternatives that actually have been made with certain cells and certain fermentation that at least on the surface seem like dairy. What do you think there of that whole move towards brewing dairy or brewing meat as well? Is that interesting to you? Is it not interesting? Are you following it? What's your take on that? Because it seems to be exploding at the moment, at least in terms of attention.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Yeah, the other thing that our species likes a lot is novelty.

SPEAKER_00 51:52

Shiny stuff.

SPEAKER_01 51:53

Yeah, shiny stuff, new stuff. We are like programmed for novelty. And so you get these, wow, meat and dairy. And just the whole use of those terms with these non-meat, non-dairy things is interesting. So when you ask the question, is it interesting? Yeah, I think it's really interesting, but maybe not for the reasons that others do. And then on this point of, you know, are they the same nutritionally? Just yesterday, a paper came through my email and some researchers had done a model where they had made a plant-based kind of protein thing using many of the ingredients that are in a lot of, you know, mainstream plant-based things. And then they used real meat protein and they found that the absorption of protein was different. And I forget exactly what organism they, I think it was a cell culture of some sort, but they found that the protein in the fake meat was not at all absorbed in the same way as that.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

Which is logical because it's not the same.

SPEAKER_01 53:06

Right. It's not the same. And so, I don't know that anybody has truly looked at what our cells and tissues, you know, at that sort of cellular level, what is our body think there's what our brain thinks about it and there's what our you know gut thinks about it but you know what what does it really mean for human health of course nobody's going to do randomized controlled trials on eating fake meat and dairy

SPEAKER_03 53:32

for years

SPEAKER_01 53:33

yeah right so that stuff's all sitting on the grocery shelves and everybody's buying it and what's interesting to me is that some of these same folks who are in favor of these you know fake meat and dairy are also well you know and I don't like additives or preservatives in my food and I certainly don't like you know you a lot of plastic. Well, where do they think all that stuff is coming from? It's coming out of, it's being extruded out of, you know, plastic equipment inside of factories and it, and it's having flavor enhancers and additives added to it. Otherwise, otherwise nobody would eat this stuff. You know, that's

SPEAKER_03 54:10

one

What should smart investors, who want to invest in healthy soils and healthy people look for?

SPEAKER_01 54:11

of the points we made in the book, like a pile of ground up stuff that's had phytochemicals and minerals and all kinds of things stripped out of it. And then you've got to put it back together. You have to add the flavor. So, you know, the whole thing, that's what I, when you say interesting, yeah, I think it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 54:29

So what would you tell, like, let's say we're in a theater and I know you just, I think you just launched a book in Seattle, actually in person. So that must've been amazing. Let's say we're in a theater and the room is full of, of quote unquote, smart impact investors or smart investors looking for, they have read the books. They've understood the importance of soil health. What would you like them to walk away with? Of course, without giving investment advice, but where would you like to point them to like, look, this, this is a direction to start digging deeper. These are connections that are ready for, I wouldn't say investments, but ready for more attention and more resources and more energy, let's say. What would you like that they walk away with that evening and then start doing tomorrow morning?

SPEAKER_04 55:15

One thing that I think you can point to sort of at the high level is, and one of the big conclusions of the book is that what's good for the land is good for us too. And so that as we look at investment opportunities in the agri agricultural sector, doing better by the land should add value to what comes off the land in terms of its connection to human health. Now, how that gets branded, how that gets measured, it's highly variable. But in general, it's pointing in that direction, that if you're involved in the agricultural sector, you need to sort of worry about, well, how are you treating your land if you're concerned about the quality of what's coming off the fields or out of the barn? That would be sort of the But the first thing I would offer, and the second piece is that as more and more of these kind of connections and relationships become clear to more people, I could anticipate growing consumer demand for foods that were grown in those ways. So if you're thinking about that sector and getting ahead of things, there's those connections. But the other connection too is that these regenerative practices can actually rebuild the fertility of the land. So there's probably opportunities in terms of turning around degraded land and rebuilding its fertility as an investment. Now, of course, you're getting beyond what Anne and I know a whole lot about. People

SPEAKER_00 56:37

are building those funds, don't worry. It's probably the most developed piece. I wouldn't say simply, but as real estate investments, you buy a rundown building that nobody sees value in, you make sure it gets fixed and hopefully super energy efficient, and you rent it out. And people are doing that with land. And we can have the discussion if land ownership should even exist in that sense, and should that be partly then funded by pension money, et cetera, et cetera. But it's definitely a way of regenerating and getting returns. And it's something that has luckily been going on, honestly, and been growing a lot because, yeah, there's a lot of land that's degraded and needs some fixing, let's say.

SPEAKER_02 57:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:17

Yeah, we could use a whole global program and reinvesting in fixing degraded farmland. It could be a 50-year project and we still wouldn't be done.

SPEAKER_01 57:25

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because because clearly given the state of the land, you know, on this planet in agricultural areas, it's, you know, more is in bad shape than in good shape. And so that's a big opportunity to turn that around. And what would be, you know, what would be really great, it's happening a bit here in the U.S. There's now various pieces of legislation that are focused on soil health.

SPEAKER_00 57:56

And the Farm Bill is coming up, right, this year?

SPEAKER_01 57:58

Yeah. Our bill is coming up. And so I think if we get sort of some government, there sort of has to be something driving. Do

SPEAKER_00 58:10

you think it's the consumer side of things? Could that be with like, let's say, the focus on soil health and the focus on your health and your kids' health, for instance, is way more important, I think, for many people than, or that's at least our hope, than soil health in general? Yeah, of course, the climate and water and biodiversity, et cetera. But as soon as it touches you... and your family or your loved ones, do you think that could be, I mean, this is of course speculation, but that could be a driver to get way more consumers or way more buyers interested in soil

SPEAKER_01 58:40

health? No, there's actually research on that. Here in the Puget Sound region, it was for a different thing. It was asking about lawn chemicals and what motivated people more than anything. It wasn't the environment. It wasn't water. It wasn't air. It was their kids and their pets. That is what was motivating people changes in landscape practices.

SPEAKER_00 59:01

That second part is a bit depressing, but yeah, no, it's actually, I would say pet food is probably more, pet food and cosmetics are more advanced in terms of practices, et cetera, than a lot of our food industry, but yeah.

What would you do if you were in charge of a 1B investment portfolio tomorrow morning?

SPEAKER_01 59:15

Yeah. I guess what I would want investors to know about this, you know, if there was a sort of an umbrella push and that umbrella push is coming from consumers Consumers, it's coming from companies, it's being backstopped and bookended and assisted by actions of government. Then we're all on the same page around, yeah, this is what we want. We want soil health because it plays a big role in human health. Then the pieces start to come into play where then people are like, oh, well, now that we have, I don't want to use the word standard, but I would use language like, there's vast opportunity to improve soil health in a lot of places, and there's multiple ways to do that depending on what region you're in. And if we look at outcome-based measures rather than input, so I wouldn't want to, you know, I'd much rather talk about soil health scores and soil organic matter levels than, okay, no more synthetic fertilizer, no more this, no more that, because that's That's not that hasn't. that's not always the best way to go because it doesn't allow a farmer to innovate given their soil, given their land, given their knowledge. So I'm way into looking at outcome-based and saying, okay, well, let's up the soil organic matter over a 10-year period by X percent and you do that, farmer, how you want to. And so I think respecting multiple patterns and going with outcome-based measures in an environment where everybody is kind of pushing in this direction, that...

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

Would be pooling,

SPEAKER_01 1:01:13

yeah. Yeah, that would be what I would like to see. And then investment, you know, can

SPEAKER_00 1:01:18

follow. It sort of answers my magic wand question. I always ask, what would you like to change? Which it answers. But then, on the investment side, let's say you're in charge of an investment fund of, I don't know, a billion euros or a billion dollars. What would you, with a very long time frame, if you need that? What would you, of course, not to the dollar, because what would you prioritize? What would you focus on? Is it buying a lot of land? Is it focusing on processing? Is it focusing on measurement technology? Is it, what would you, both of you could be very different, obviously. So let's start with Anne. What would you focus on if you could invest? So it had to come back at some point with a fair return. What would you focus on from what you've seen now, building food as medicine companies, or what would you put your energy in?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

Boy. I would like things to be simpler for consumers somehow. I don't know how... I don't... I would like things to be simpler for consumers and more transparent for consumers so that they know that the products that they're getting are, you know, they say they are what they say they are. And I don't, you know, is there, can you invest in a truth squad or something like that, Cohen? Can we get a truth squad? I mean,

SPEAKER_00 1:02:37

there are some companies like HowGood, et cetera, that are on the scoring side. So that could be, or you could set up or invest in companies that are extremely transparent and connected to soil health. And so you could allocate part of that fund into food companies that are doing the right thing and are, let's say, quote unquote, explaining this complexity of soil to consumers, which I think is a very important role that we haven't played well and we've been hiding behind labels. So, I mean, that could be technology investments, could be food companies investments to drive, let's say, you would say demand.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:14

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I I want a tree squad out there about how things work in the soil and in agriculture, because I've always found that when people are equipped with knowledge and information, it's kind of like it's another form of body wisdom, literally. this common goal, at least that I think and hope that this community has, which is bettering the soil as a way of bettering planetary and human health. Yeah. So

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

I think equip is an interesting word there because it's not enough that this knowledge is out there because a lot of this research has been out there for a while, some more recent, but many of these linkages have been there, pieces of the chain at least, in some cases decades, some cases more than 100 years. And somehow, yeah, we've not been equipped, let's say, or at least a very, very small piece of our population. What about you, David? What would you do with a billion dollars if you had to invest it?

SPEAKER_04 1:04:24

I would recommend that I would hire Ann to run the Truth

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27

Squad.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:30

But, you know, in terms of opportunities that I, there's sort of a space that I think could be an interesting one. Now, anyone who trusts my investment advice is probably foolish, but I'll give it anyway. It would be, you know, if we look at a resource that's really going to waste now that could be put into more productive use for building soil health, which I think is how we need to reorient thinking across this board in the agricultural sector, you know, we want to waste about 30 to 40% of the food that comes into cities. It never gets eaten. That's a resource that if we could figure out a way to direct that towards urban vegetable gardens, and I'm not talking about indoor hydroponic grows, I'm talking about sort of outdoor soil-based vegetable gardens for which there is space in cities if we got creative and thinking about it, that could help basically take advantage of that resource that's currently not very well utilized in cities and also connect people to healthier, fresher food in areas of food islands and deserts. How great an investment opportunity that is, I don't know, but I

SPEAKER_00 1:05:39

see that. You've pictured a very interesting farm in the book that has been doing financially very well, I mean, compared to many other places. So it's definitely, it seems to be like the market garden world. There seems to be space there. I'm not saying it's going to be crazy, but you can make take money and okay money with an okay effort.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:58

Yeah. And what you could have would be a network of small farms. It seems like, you know, sort of the market garden, urban, you know, urban or near urban regenerative vegetable farms. You're talking acres, not tens or hundreds or thousands of acres. These could be small. The ones we visit were small family farms, literally family operations, but they were very profitable. And the key was healthy soil. And the key to them both was compost and organic matter. matter additions. And that's what all that urban organic waste, the food that we don't end up actually eating, could be repurposed towards. And, you know, you could imagine whole municipal systems geared towards supporting small farms that are providing stable family incomes and providing good fresh food to people. So, you know, in terms of what I'd love to see with that billion dollar investment portfolio, pick a city and try and actually establish a a network like that and demonstrate that it would be profitable, not only to the farmers, but also to the people who would be getting the produce and that the sort of a looser definition of profitable and to the community in the cities in terms of a better use of their urban organic waste as compost.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:15

And I think the key there is as well, higher quality compost are well made. I think there's of course, there are 50 shades of gray of compost and yeah, some can actually You can do harm if you do it wrong, but, and is there another, this might be another rabbit hole, but like, is there interest? Do you find it interesting? Have you seen anything on the food we end up eating and all the waste that basically gets out of our houses, places, restaurants, et cetera, and we don't end up using, and we end up importing a lot of the minerals and nutrients, et cetera, from other places to recycle it. Is there any interest there? Like to close that loops, basically from all the food we bring into the city, part of it doesn't get eaten, could be composted, part of it gets eaten and gets flushed down. Did that come up at all? Is there any interest there? I

SPEAKER_04 1:08:05

wrote a little bit in Growing a Revolution about the city of Tacoma that is composting the human waste from their sewage treatment plant. They have a very sophisticated and very well-run system that involves a year of compost. But the And they're selling it back to urban gardeners that produced what went into making the compost in the first place. And they do very rigorous testing. There's a lot to worry

SPEAKER_00 1:08:34

about. Because, of course, we have the medicines and things like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:37

Yeah. And what it seems to be from the literature is that if you compost it long enough and well enough, you can solve most of those problems. Of course, there's two really big exceptions. Heavy metals, can't compost those out. And also some of the so-called forever chemicals, the PFAS and things. And how the city of Tacoma dealt with heavy metals is they basically worked with the industries that were putting the heavy metals into their waste stream and got them to do pre-treatment so it didn't get into the waste stream. And why we're allowing those forever chemicals to actually be made in the first place is the right question to be asking because upstream is the place to actually limit them.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:19

Yeah, of course. And what is next for you? I mean, you sort of seem to have... come full circle literally with with this book in the trilogy and um what are i mean apart from going on book tours and being on podcasts like this etc of course the book is out now and trying to to get the word out selling the books etc what are are you thinking about any future projects are you what what could a future project where would you like to dive in deeper is it i don't know the oceans is it what what what drives you for maybe next projects could take years obviously but

SPEAKER_04 1:09:51

well we've talked about the possible projects one would be sort of looking more at the history of sort of plants and medicine and the way phytochemicals, the kind of things that we wrote about in What Your Food Ate, you know, how that has played out in terms of the relationships between botany and medicine in the past. And with what we're looking at in the current book is sort of the current version of that. I flirted with the idea of trying to write sort of a short book that summarizes what we've done so far in the four books we've written around this area. But the honest take is that we don't have any support to work on another book at the moment and so right now we're focused on sort of breathing deeply having gotten this one finished

SPEAKER_00 1:10:35

i completely understand Yeah, I mean,

SPEAKER_01 1:10:39

there's a lot to write about in this space once you get going on it. So, and like I said, we're curious people, so I'm sure you haven't heard the last from us.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:52

Super. Let's hope it doesn't take another four plus years to have you back on. But I want to be conscious of your time as well. And thank you so much, first of all, for what you have done and are doing in this space and for writing this book, which I think is an absolute, I would say, Paige Turner, for the geeks and the non-geeks, because if you're interested in how we potentially could get healthier and what it means for our planet, this is the one to get. And I will recommend and gift it to as many as I can. So thank you so much for coming on again, David, and for coming on for the first time and for the work you do and for sharing and coming on here to share about that.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:31

Well, thanks. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for the invitation. We'll look forward to doing it again.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:36

Yep. Thanks a lot, Cohen.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:42

Thanks again and see you next time.