The Hidden Power Of Organ Meats, And How To Get Your Family On Board

Introduction to Nutrient Density 0:00

Welcome back to the conversation. Today, I have James Barry, a professional chef, author and founder of the functional food brand Pluck. James, we're so happy to have you here. Welcome. Thank you. It's very exciting to be here. It is. It is. It's it's going to be a great talk today. So, you know, my audience is always curious about what should I eat, what foods are the most healing? What can I do to support my body from a food perspective? You know, we've been talking a lot on this summit about nutrient deficiencies as an underlying cause of inflammatory disease.

And so we're going to talk about some solutions today for that nutrient deficiency, a problem that we see rampant in developed countries. And specifically, we're going to talk about organ meats today, but we're also to give tips to people who are vegetarians and vegans. So don't worry, we've got you covered, whether you're a meat eater or not, because, James, you're a professional chef and you know how to help make it more simple to have healthy food in your life. So we'll cover all things today.

So I'd love if you could start off by telling us why, you know, what is the situation that we're in? Needing nutrient rich foods more than ever. Why is this important and how did we even get here? Yeah, right. I mean, it's something like 92% of the U.S. is deficient in at least one or more vitamin or mineral. Right. So it's a huge. And, of course, we're we're way over that. And yet we're not calorie deficient. So clearly, there's a disconnect. And I think it really does start with we are disconnected from what we're eating.

You know, when we eat out, for example, when we purchase food from a from a grocery store, we have to remember these are businesses that have bottom lines. And there's very small margins in the food industry, very small margins. So one of the ways you increase your profit is you've got to use ingredients that are inexpensive. So right off the bat, if you are not in control of your ingredients, there is I would say it's virtually impossible to be healthy. So I'm all about when we being in control, cooking from home, and always, always looking for things that are ingredients versus things that have ingredients. Ooh.

So what does that really mean? Say that again. Wait say that again Yeah, that's really important. Look for things that are ingredients versus things that have ingredients. It's really, really key. Because, you know, I've been in this industry, I've been a professional chef for over 20 years now, and trends have come and gone. But what has not come and gone is the importance of Whole Foods. And this is why it applies to whether you're vegan or a carnivore. It's all about eating real whole foods. So when we talk about processed foods, for example,

Why Whole Foods Matter 3:08

we can't just stop there because, you know, if I take a carrot and I chop it, that's now a process carrot. So it's really about is it ultra processed? And how long is that list of ingredients? And the more you can stay away from that, the better. And we can really simplify things no matter what your diet is, is you want to really focus on a handful of things and in the words we hear thrown out a lot, but it is truly this basic you want to have some protein, you want to have some fat, and then from there you want to maybe have some vegetables or something like that, depending on what diet you're following. Right.

But ultimately, it's fat and protein are really key to making it so that you're not hungry and looking for sugar everywhere. And and you're not binge eating or you're not like just eating snack foods all the time. So these are these are very simple basics. But the key is, well, then where do we go from there? You know, what do we do with this knowledge? Yeah. Now, I want to I want to real quick talk about something that you've perfected, which is making comfort food tastes good, and you've done this, you know, for some big celebrities, people like Barbra Streisand, people like Tom Cruise, George Clooney.

When we say you're a professional chef, you are a professional chef to the celebrities and these are picky people. And so you had to be on your A-game to be able to please them. So for our audience, how do you take, you know, your family recipes, the things that people love to have, and how do you make it taste amazing? And and, you know, so so that your family doesn't even know you changed something. Yeah. Well, so it's funny, when I start working with a client, one of the first things they ask is, what did you eat when you were a child?

Because we can't get past our humanness. Right. And the truth is, is that we we all start off eating what our parents give us or provide for us. And really, that's that's the food that becomes our comfort foods. It's the foods we go to when we're in emotional state, whether it's happy and excited or fearful and and scared. Right. These are the foods that we learn and have. And and we we kind of our bodies learn to to to get satiated by. Does that mean they're good for us? Not necessarily. But it's what our go to is.

So I immediately ask a client, So what did you eat when you were younger? And then I go from there. I said, Well, what's the texture that you gravitate towards when you're in an emotional state? And a lot of times you hear, Oh, creamy or soft. I like soft foods are crispy and salty, you know, so you start to get these these descriptors. And from there, that's really that's really the end of how you can support someone at any point in their health journey. Because, for example, let's just talk Brussels sprouts.

Like if you grew up eating Brussels sprouts and they were boiled and mushy and pale green, you're going to have a negative association with those Brussels sprouts. But then if I make them crispy where and salty and make them bright green and make it so that it's like a chip. And you told me that you like chips. Well, now you're going to eat Brussels sprouts. I mean, like so there's that's the in on how we can start to incorporate these different foods. We just got to hit those texture and emotion points that you've associated, you know, your diet, your or your your emotional state and your diet.

The connect, our point of your emotional state and your diet. Oh, my gosh. This is so good. This is gold. This is why in my programs, when I'm working with people, I really the food is important. They hear me. I'm not about to say food isn't important, but if I emphasize too much in the beginning, when we're trying to get people's energy back online, we're trying to get the brain fog resolved and we're trying to solve some digestive issues

Comfort Food, Texture, and Emotional Eating 7:11

if we focus too much on what you can't have people give up because like you said, we can't get away from our humanness. Food is such a part of our lives. It's such a part of everybody has a different comes from a different culture, different families, different, you know, backgrounds, parts of the world. And it's literally impossible to write a a recipe guide for every person on the planet. It's so individualized because people came from different backgrounds. So I think this is so critical that you find a way to eat food within, you know, your environment and your realm and what you grew up with in a healthy way.

And so instead of telling people exactly what to eat, it's how to make some exchanges or to shift some things or to so they can enjoy those same foods in a healthy way. Absolutely. I mean, you think about so if the person that says because this is where we make a mistake is we think that the comfort food is French fries, for example, you know, like that's the food. It has to be a potato, either a russet or a Yukon potato, and it's got to be fried. And this fat or whatever it is and salted with this season, that's not usually what it is.

It's the texture. It's the texture and the bite, the feel in your mouth. Like that's that's why, you know, you think about it, if you buy a bag of chips from a grocery store, you only taste flavor for the first three chips. After that, it's just the crunch and the saltiness, you know, that you're now kind of addicted or wanting more of. But it's not the flavor because you can't taste anymore. Your taste buds are blown out. So it really goes to show you that we are texture like like we're it's it's our emotions sometimes are satiated by, you know, either well, sometimes it's where we've gotten too much food like we're we're numbing our feelings because we're overeating or under eating, right?

So sometimes there's that. But a lot of times it's the texture. But the key, though, and why we need to think about these different choices beyond texture of like, well, does the food actually have nutrition, right? Is because historically if you got flavor in the wild, it meant that there was usually nutrition attached to it. But that is not the times we live in now. We have artificial flavors or even natural flavors that are that are artificial. They're just made with natural ingredients. It's like these things are confusing.

Like when you eat a bar that has no strawberries in it, but yet it's tastes like strawberries. Your body's looking for the nutrition of a strawberry and it's not coming. And so then we tend to overeat and and that's why, you know, if we even do a simple movement, I more and more, I'm trying to get people to not eat snacks. Like I'm really trying to focus people on just eat a bigger meal. Because the problem that we've at least one of the problems I see in the grocery stores is look how big the snack aisles have gotten.

Remember how that used to be? There used to be my dad on the grocery store, the snack. I was like a single aisle back in, you know, seventies, eighties and even nineties. Now it's like probably 45 to 52% of the store is snacks. It's unreal. And we could go down so many rabbit holes here. And in the time we have, I want to make sure that we really focus on one really important concept which has really lost favor in our modern kind of eating environment, and it's eating nose to tail. So can you talk about that?

I really want to dig into this because this is how ancient cultures ate. We know people's lifespans. It actually used to be quite longer, you know, you know, I'm talking thousands of years ago, people lived longer than they do today, maybe not in the last couple of hundred years, but thousands of years ago. So can we talk about nose to tail? Yeah, absolutely. And that's really ultimately where I've kind of come in my journey as I've come to realize that I do I do kind of promote eating animal based.

But of course, there's you can you don't have to do that. But if you are eating animal based, my mission is to help you and support you in eating whole animal. And what I mean by that is there's this concept of like supports. Like, so when you eat just muscle meat, the concept is that you're really just supporting your muscles. But every part of that animal has nutrients that are designed to support that part. So the heart, for example, is high, has twice as rich, and riboflavin, which is B12 as muscle meats, has twice as much.

It's a great source of CO Q10, which is an anti fatigue anti-aging nutrient, and it's something I'm sure people listening have heard of around cardiovascular, you know, help that it protects against cardiovascular disease and whatnot. So every organ has its high in nutrients to support that organ in you because it's got a job to do. And when we the issue is, is we've gotten to this place where and there's lots of reasons for it. I won't go into too much, but historically, organ meat has been a poor person's food.

That's that's how it got dubbed. And what happened is after World War Two is we had two people in the households were starting to work. We had more money coming in the household. So it became this issue of like, oh, well, I don't want to buy the liver, I want to buy the roast beef. And so the less you had people buying these organ meats, the butcher stopped carrying them because they're not going to carry something people aren't buying, which is really a testimony of that. We do vote with our dollars.

If you're not buying something that's healthy for you, then they're going to stop carrying that healthy food. So now what? Where we're at is we've we've lost the taste for them because people don't eat them very much.

Nose-to-Tail Eating and Organ Meat Nutrition 13:12

We don't know how to cook them. And then we also struggle with sourcing. So what I did was I created a way for you to easily and deliciously get these organs into your diet, which is luck, which is, in my judgment, the easiest way to get it, because it's a seasoning. I took freeze dried powdered ory meats, liver, heart, kidneys, spleen and pancreas. Five of them from grass, 100% grass fed cows and I combine them with organic spices and herbs to now offset that flavor. So now I'm making those organs taste good and it's you don't even need to know how to cook.

You just simply season your food with it. You can season it as a as a like after your food is already plated. So you know, as a finishing salt or you can actually add it to the ingredient as an ingredient as well. But it's just a super easy and clean way to get these organic meat nutrition and these nutrients that we're not getting from our food in most cases, and that we're then spending more money to get in supplement form when we could just easily get it from once again. Going back to our earlier conversation, a whole food in Oregon is a whole food.

Every question. So I'm sure people are thinking right now is season nine my food enough or do I need to eat, you know, six ounces of organ meat to be able to get the benefits? So I want to talk about that. You don't actually need to eat six ounces at a serving or eight ounces at a serving of organ meat. You actually can get a huge amount of benefit from, you know, a half a teaspoon or a teaspoon of this in a serving of food, right? Absolutely. I always like to say, like going back to the ancestor concept.

So if we were a tribe and and we killed an animal, which which took a lot of effort back in the day. And let's just say there's 23 people in our tribe. If we kill that one animal and there's 23 people, how many livers are there? You know, that's one thing you hear all the time. People are like, Oh, I eat my liver every other week. It's like, okay, but what other organs are you eating? Because with you have 23 people, the liver is pretty large from, you know, a cow or, you know, a buffalo or whatnot.

But it's it's small for 23 people. So what's going to happen is that liver is going to go to the people that are sick, the people that are pregnant, the people that really need those nutrients. The rest of the tribe is going to get the other parts the spleen, the pancreas, the lungs. They're going to get other parts of the animal that are supplying other nutrients and similar nutrients. So when that's what we're talking about, when we talk whole animals, we don't want to just dig into one part of that animal because that's not realistic.

Like our our ancestors did not eat rib eye every day and they didn't need liver every week. They just didn't. It's not a reality. There's one liver, there's one heart, there's two small kidneys. You know what I mean? There's this is the way the animals are designed. This is how we are designed. So with clock, though, yes, you are doing, you know, sprinkles of the organ meats on your food. But here's the thing. You're doing it with every meal. So we talk about it being microdosing frequently, which is cumulative effect.

And if you look at anything in life and let's just talk about something that's not even connected, but let's talk about intimacy, for example. So if you're someone who struggles with intimacy and this is how people treat food sometimes, so if you're someone who struggles with intimacy and if you hug someone once a month, is that really working on your intimacy? It's the things that we do daily. Doesn't matter if they're grand or small gestures, but the things we do daily are the things that move the needle.

And that's why the person that's watching this video, that's all I want to do, that I want to get healthy one day. It's like, no, no, it's not. It's not about one day. It's about day one. It starts now because and it doesn't have to be a huge movement. It can be as simple as just sprinkling some clock on your food. It could be going for a walk after you eat. It could be instead of grabbing a candy bar, you grab, you know, an apple. I mean I mean, it doesn't have to be huge movements. And I think we really need to remember that, that it's more important to start than it is to get it right.

Oh, my gosh. I'm literally writing down like these are James talking points right here. We can't get past our humanness. Look for foods that are ingredients, not with ingredients, texture and emotion around food matters. Healthy starts on day one. I mean, and what's the last thing you just said? I was just getting ready to write down. Oh, geez. Yeah. Oh, I said, well, yeah, not it's not one day, day one. Yeah. It's so. Good. I mean, you're just, you're dropping bombs. So I want to tell those story.

How I found out about pluck. So here I was at a at a conference and functional medicine conference. And this is a gathering of great minds from, you know, every type of of a possible way we can heal the human body. So you were there, James, and we were in the we were eating lunch. It was a lunch break. And everyone was eating lunch together. And you were walking around with this little bag in your hand, this little bag of pluck and you were sprinkling it on people's food and you got to my table and my food was done.

And I said, Oh, and I'm done eating. I can't try it. And you said, Well, just give me your hand. And I was like, I'm going to like eat liver out of my hand. Like, that's disgusting. I don't know if I want to do that. Know, just trust me. Eat, put. So you've sprinkled a little bit of liver in my, the seasoning in my hand and I gingerly kind of went like this and tried it. And then I looked at my hand because it was so good. And that's exactly what I just did. I just had people over to my house last week and I'm like, Try this, put it in your hand, lick it.

And they're like, Oh my gosh, that's so good. What is that? So we talk a little bit about why the brain loves this so much, like what's lighting up in my brain when I tasted it and I went, Oh, that's really good. And I think it has something to do with kind of that fifth sense of awe that. Exactly we we have for taste that we mostly talk about, you know, the things you learn in school. So there's sweet, salty, bitter and sour. But there was a fifth one that was discovered in Japan in the nineties and it's called umami.

And Umami is kind of best described as meaty or savory. It's really it's something that the industry, you know, the ultra processed food industry has learned to add to products. And a lot of times they add it as MSG and sometimes it's even hidden in products they hidden and sometimes in artificial flavors, they they hide it in these different malts, these additives. But what it is, is, is that it triggers first of all, it makes the other flavors. It heightens them. Because when you have a unique flavor, it's like, let's like if you're eating something sweet, usually you crave something salty right after.

It's because it's a unique flavor. You can't have sweet also be salty unless you add salt to the sweet. You get what I'm saying? So sweet doesn't exist. Sweet and salty doesn't exist on its own. It's because you've added something that's salty. Something is sweet. Well, umami is like that as well. It's not. It's not also salty. Umami. What it does is it brightens the salty. It brightens the sweet, it brightens this hour, the bitter, and it actually makes food taste better. So they add it to the food, not only to make it more tasty, but then it also triggers the part in your brain that is addictive.

And it it's basically it's glutamate in it.

Microdosing Organ Meats with Pluck 21:08

And so it that's MSG. That's what that is. And and it literally makes you crave the food more. So you're you're kind of if you're eating something with MSG, you're not only is it going to be a heightened flavor, it's also going to be something you're going to struggle to stop eating. Luckily, pluck is all natural. There's nothing. There's no fillers, there's no artificial ingredients. There's literally nothing. Everything in it is a whole food. It's either a spice and herb. We use Redmond real salt and then the organs are unadulterated.

They're grass fed, 100% grass fed organs. They're raw, freeze dried, powdered, and that's it. And so it's truly when I talk about buying things that are ingredients versus have ingredients. Yes. This might have, you know, 6 to 8 ingredients, but they're all whole foods. You look at that list, you know exactly what everything is. It's it's all stuff that your body recognizes. And what's beautiful about organ meats is we've been talking about how nutrient dense they're, but they're also very bioavailable.

It's kind of like Mother Nature's multivitamin. So it's Mother Nature's way of putting together that multivitamin. So that means the nutrients that are in there, not only are they the most absorbable ones, but they're also paired in a way that make them easily absorbable. I'm sure everyone on here has been told by, you know, when they're recommended supplements, they say, oh, we'll eat this with our food. Well, that's because it's a fat soluble vitamin, right? Well, the organ meat is a food. So if it's got a fat soluble vitamin, you just you just eat the organ and it all absorbs because it already is a food.

There's you don't have to eat food with it. So it's it's beautiful in that way. I love finding nutrient density in nature. I really, truly believe that so much of this inflammation that we're dealing with, so much of the chronic illness that we're dealing with is because we're taking nature and we're adulterated in a laboratory and then trying to spew it out in some ultra processed, you know, synthetic form when if we just went back to nature, we would probably be getting exactly what we needed in enough of what we needed.

And we may not be in this chronic illness state that we are in if we just stuck to more what's found in nature totally. You know, I often, you know, on on my many of my clients we run organic acid test, you know, partway through their detoxing journey. It's a good idea to see what nutrient deficiencies are still there. Once we've moved toxins, once we move infections and oftentimes, b, vitamin deficiencies will show up, CoQ10 deficiencies will show up. And if it's not, you know, super severe, I really encourage people to try to solve this with food.

And guess what? This is a great way luck is a great way to actually add those B vitamins in in a really natural way. We don't always have to go to a supplement because people can get you know, they get pill fatigue going, oh, do I really have to take and honestly, B, vitamins can make you feel kind of nauseous but this really. Yeah. Oh, well, that's that's something I would love to talk about because that is something that I more and more share with people is, you know, we're talking about ancestral foods, right?

We're talking about getting as much of this nutrient density from natural foods. But here's something also that we want to be mindful of, is we have a natural, biological, digestive process. It starts with our eyes. We see something maybe in the distance. Oh, what's that look? That bright color, you know, imagine the first person walking through a forest and they come upon a raspBarry or BlackBarry bush. Let's just imagine that for a second. Well, they see those beautiful, plump blackberries in there or that rich, purplish, bluish color.

And you take a look and you're like, what's that? You get a little closer now you can maybe smell it, right? Because you're going to pick it and smell it. And there's juice. So there's a tactile there's a there's a smell to it. And right away you're now engaging this this process that we have biologically designed for. And then you stick it in your mouth, you start to taste it like we talked about the taste, the flavors. Now your saliva is mixing with this, which is going to help the digestive process that you're swallowing.

There's a communication going on immediately once it's in your mouth of, oh, is this good, is this nutritious? Because it has the flavor and do I need more of it? So there's this whole process that we bypass when we swallow things in pill or capsule form and that's when we get into trouble because your body. So we talked about the disconnect at the very beginning of this. And one of the things that we're extremely disconnected from is that connection of what is my body need. You know, there's a great quote from Bill Chinnery.

He's a professor of archeology, says, We are the only species in the world that looks to someone else to tell us what to eat. Now, obviously, even if you're on a summit, you're looking to someone out for someone else to support your health. Luckily, you found Laura because she's an expert. But think about all those people that haven't found that expert that are just kind of ping ponging from random resource to random resource and not really listening to their own bodies. When we eat the food, we get an immediate communication.

Let's talk about salt, for example. I put it on your tongue. Your body tells you, do I need more or less of this salt immediately if I swallow a salt tablet? Delayed response 1520 minutes later, why do I feel so bloated? And this speaks to your nausea and this thing right when you swallowing these pills, why do I feel so nauseous? Because you got either more of it than your body needed or you got it too fast. Then your body was capable of handling or or basically detoxing whatever it was. And so basically you were out of sync with what your body could handle in that moment.

But if you had just put it in your mouth, which is why I love work, because the reality is, is we're not eating those organ meats. But if I get you to sprinkle on your food, it's now entering that process, that biological process of just disgust. It's it's communicating to you. Do I need more or less of this pluck and what's amazing is I'll just say kids is an example because the kids are very much in touch with what their body needs way more than us because they're not as heavy about it. Well, when kids try pluck, they literally freak out.

They they can't stop they kind of the way you described you putting that pluck in the hand, they can't stop dipping their fingers in it because. And I believe it's because well, yes, it tastes good, but I truly believe

How to Start Eating Organ Meats 27:48

that it's because their body recognizes this has micronutrients that I am not getting in my food and I need these and I want these. Oh, absolutely. Our body tells us what we need if we listen. And I've actually had clients get mad at me that my programs are full of all like shopping lists and, you know, all these recipe guides and telling them exactly what to do day by day. I mean, we have recipe guides that I always say just, you know, use this as a as kind of a template, but definitely, you know, modify this to your body's needs and your traditions and your culture. And, you know, this will give you a blueprint on what to eat and what not to eat.

But we're not going to micromanage what you eat because it's kind of very day by day and your body's going to tell you what you need. I can't pretty good. I can't predict that during your process. You've got to listen to your body. We do a lot of teaching people to really trust their intuition in their body in that. And it's so I'm so glad you do it because it's so important and there's so many health experts out there that are not doing that. The the thing everyone's focusing on either eat this or don't eat this or don't eat that. Right.

But the reality is, is we could make an a pro or con argument for any food from broccoli to from the healthiest food to the unhealthy. There is an argument for or against everything. Only. The reality is, is and you just nailed it. Is that your body, though, is it doesn't know how to lie. So basically, if you are hooked on a specific diet, whether it's carnivore or vegan, doesn't matter if you get hooked on a diet and you're doing it for very heavy reasons, but your body is screaming because it's inflamed.

It's got chronic skin issues, you're having trouble sleeping. You wake up groggy like all these kind of smoke signals keep shining their light and saying, Hey, what you're doing isn't working and you're not listening to that. That's the issue. That's the disconnect, because the body does not lie. So we have to get out of our heads about what we think is the right diet. And we really need to focus on slowing down, focus on those real whole foods. And as we eat them, eat them, you know, sitting down, eat them consciously, don't just don't just throw everything in a blender.

And you don't now. Now, you don't know if you do have a reaction, you don't even know what it is. But the idea is like be more conscious about what you're eating, sit down with it, have a relationship with it, eat it slowly, let it really affect your body. Let that communication happen. Let the connection occur, and then see how your body responds. And if your body responds, well then, now you know, hey, what I'm eating is working totally. James, thank you so much for joining us today for this talk on the benefits of nutrition and organ meats.

Tell our audience where they can find pluck. And I think I have a special offer for everyone as well. Yes, absolutely. So you can find us at eatpluck.com We're also on socials at Eat Cluck. And if you like, you can save 20% on your first purchase by using the code. Silent 20. Silent, silent killers. So that killer, silent 20 and you'll save 20% and let us know how you like it. What I what I really love, what I hear is what I've ultimately learned. This is the bottom line of what I've learned in 20 years in the health business is that if we want to make healthy food a lifestyle as the person supporting, you know, someone with it, I have to do two things.

I have to make it easy and I have to make it delicious. If I hit both of those, then you will have no reason to not eat that thing that I'm recommending. And it's really important because we started this whole talk out about touching on our humanness. We cannot escape that. And you can try for a month, but you're always rubber band right back to your humanness. So what we want to look for those things that we can shift daily and the things that I know you're going to do daily are the things that are easy and delicious.

So that's what I've created with Pluck, and I encourage you to find those health things, those little movements that you can do that are daily, that are easy, and if it's food related, delicious. And even if it's not food related, you can get, you know, a walk can be delicious as well, you know? I mean, next up, have fun like finding the the the deliciousness of life. So good. So I want to also tell our audience that there's a clickable link on the pages where you're viewing the summit and you can find pluck there, too.

So you've got it. You can go to the website that James mentioned or you can go click the links to our audience. I hope you found our conversation insightful and helpful. If you're a summit purchaser, stay right here because I'm going to dove a little bit deeper into this discussion with James. If not, click on the button on this page to get access to a continuation of this conversation and many others, and get the tools you need to reclaim your health. If you're watching this continuation of my talk with James Barry, thank you for being a valuable member of our community and I'm going to dove right back in.

I want to know a little bit more, James. You know, there's steps that people can take to incorporate organ meats into their diet, and you've started to touch on it. But, you know, for people who are thinking, I just can't do that, or maybe we have vegans or vegetarians here who are thinking that their intuition is telling them to eat some meat, but they just can't do it because they've been away from meat for so long. And, you know, for whatever reason, I work with lots of people who have lots of reasons why they eat this or not that.

But if their intuition is telling them, I should probably try this, what would you say? How do you start creating that habit in a gentle way that just feels authentic to your body? It makes it easy. Yeah, I would I would say that the first thing is, is you really want to look for something that is easy. And that is how I design pluck I when I break down like the different steps to easing into organ meets. I really do see pluck as a gateway mostly because it hits the the kind of hurdles that we struggle with.

Like if you're someone who's just getting back into me, who because you're you're vegan or vegetarian or even if you're someone who is carnivore and who's been struggling to get organ meats, both people are struggling with very similar issues, which is, you know, dealing with the texture difference because organ meats have a totally different texture than muscle meat, not knowing how to cook it. Sometimes it's the smell, you know, the the the kind of like it, the how do I cook it? Like, what do I do with it?

It's too much because the organ is so big. So pluck solves that right away. So I would say that's the gateway. But but from there, the next step would be, well, find grains and they're usually in the freezer aisles but find grains that are already blended. You'll find ground meats mixed with, you know, between 7 to 14% organ meats, usually liver and heart is is the two prominent organs in the grains. But a lot of different providers have those. If you're going to the grocery store, look in the freezer aisle.

If you don't see in the freezer, I'll just go to the go to the meat department and ask them if they have it. But that's the next great step because you don't have to do much and it really doesn't taste like organ meat. Now, the third one is let's just say you're going to your local farmer's market, which I really recommend people do because it's one of the main ways you can bridge that gap of transparency with where you're getting the food, how they're feeding the animal, how they're treating the animals, talking to the actual farmers and usually you'll find that there is a meat provider there.

And what I recommend is you purchase, let's say, if you can, chicken hearts. Chicken hearts would be the first one I purchase. If they don't have chicken hearts, then go ahead and purchase a beef liver and I'll explain how to use both of them. But chicken hearts are really beautiful because they're small and they're very mild and some people would almost say that they're sweet. So they're a really nice entry into chopping up cooking with these organ meats. And the heart is kind of shaped like a mushroom, in my judgment.

And so that's kind of how I treat it. If I was making a spaghetti sauce and I was adding mushrooms to it, I probably would only use 2 to 3 mushrooms. I'd chop them up really small and I'd add them the sauce. So I'm not I don't want the sauce to be too strong with mushroom, right? I just want it to have little chunks and a little bit of flavor of it. Well, that's how I would initially treat the arguments is you don't want it to dominate, you don't want the flavor to dominate. You just want to get some of that nutrition.

So two or three hearts just chop them up so that they don't look like a heart. Because that's the other hurdle we have is the visual. Like sometimes people see a heart and they think of their own mortality, their own heart. So we have to move away from that visual of the organ meat. So the more you can either grate it, chop it, kind of get it away from that shape, the better for your psychology.

Mindful Eating and Final Takeaways 36:58

And then you're you're keeping the ratio down. So then you're not getting huge bursts of these organ flavors because because liver, for example, can have a very irony or metallic taste because it's so rich in minerals heart not so much, but it does have a slightly different taste than the muscle. Me Now, once you've done that with chicken hearts, I guarantee you'll find that it's really not a deal like no one even notices. They don't taste the difference. Like it probably doesn't even come up in conversation unless you tell people you put it in there.

So it's a great thing to do. Initially, we're use at it. Don't tell anyone, watch the responses, but I guarantee they're going to probably really love that sauce because once again, we're connecting people to the food that has the nutrition that their body is craving. So that's really key. You don't have to be transparent right away about what it is, particularly if someone's going to have a hurdle about it. You don't you don't want to trigger any kind of like ick response if you know that person's picky.

That picky response is not justified. It's just learned. It's not a real it's not serious. We only take it serious if we reinforce it. So what I recommend is you just do it. Let them start to feel better in their body, keep doing it for a while, and then once it's no longer a big deal, then you can let them know if you even need to do that. But let's just say that's how I would handle a chicken liver. Now, if you were doing a beef I'm sorry, a chicken heart, if you were doing the beef liver like I suggested, they didn't have chicken hearts the way I would do that.

This is the other trick is organ meats usually come to you frozen already and they're less overwhelming. When they're frozen, it's when they're defrosted. They get so overwhelming because it's big and you're like, Well, I don't know what to do with it. And it's slimy and it's it kind of melts is it is it heats up. So it it just it's overwhelming because we're not used to it. So what you do is you keep it frozen. And so you're basically what I'm going to suggest, what the beef liver is really creating your own grind.

So next, every time you're using ground meat, it doesn't matter if it's lamb, beef turkey doesn't matter. You pull out that beef liver and you grate it. This is usually little box grader whatever you have grade it and just use about a tablespoon, maybe two tablespoons tops and let it fall into the ground. MI Mix it in and then make your hamburgers or your meatloaf or what order your spaghetti sauce, your bolognaise, whatever you're doing, just keep moving forward from that point. But and then take that liver and put it right back in the freezer and make sure it's sealed really well and it should last for months.

And you can just grate it every, you know, every week, just grate about a tablespoon or two into your meals or whatever you're doing. If you're doing more than that, you can go every two weeks. It doesn't you know, we don't need an enormous amount. It's so nutrient packed that you can get by with a little bit every week and and and feel the benefits. This you make it all sounds so easy, James. You just it's like people watching like I could do that. I could try this this is not hard and I really hope people are feeling inspired to try something new, to trust your intuition, trust your gut instinct.

It's a real thing. In the last few moments that we have here, I'd love to just give you the floor and any final things, any pearls of wisdom, because you truly do drop a lot of pearls of wisdom. But, you know, any final tips to to, you know, just help your family eat healthy, help yourself eat healthy, enjoy your food, make it not a chore. You know, we we put so much emphasis around food is hard. It's hard to eat healthy and it doesn't have to be. So what would be your final thoughts here as we wrap up?

Well, I think I think right away it would be that is to to to just know that mind our mindsets, our frame of mind are not permanent. And and that particularly around food, we get so tied up to food emotionally that we tend to think it's permanent that you didn't like brussel sprouts as a kid that means you don't like them as an adult. And I just want to open I just ask everyone to open up their minds and realize that, first of all, food is is food is fuel. It's a functional thing that we do to live.

And we sometimes use very strong words with it. You know, we say, I love, love that food, right? But our brains don't actually know how to categorize that because when we when we love something, it's usually has to do with a person. You know, a feeling. And so the brain actually does not know where to file it. When we say, I love French fries, I love chips. So you're putting such an emphasis on something that actually doesn't naturally have that emphasis. It's just fuel. Now, you can enjoy food.

You can think it's really delicious, you can think it's really tasty. But I think right away, just reframing the intensity that sometimes we put on the food because here's what happens is we put that intensity on the food, but then we also in turn put that intensity on ourselves, like, why did I eat this way? I shouldn't have. And we shame ourselves based on what we're eating. We also put the intensity on ourselves in that I should know how to cook because I eat every day. I should. I should be better at this.

It's like, no, you don't. It doesn't need that intensity either side of it. It doesn't need to be overly amazing. It doesn't need to be like overly shameful that there is a balance. But the balance really starts with taking a breath. And so I want to just leave us with this one concept that is so simple. But we, we forget it. We forget it so much, which is before you go to eat your food, just take a moment. Whether that moment is prayer, grace or just literally a breath. Just take a moment, get in your body and then enjoy the food as you eat it and taste it, chew it, let the experience be what it is and then feel how it feels in your body.

But those that little kind of movement you will find will change your health, because we're all eating way too fast where we're gravitating towards foods, we're eating too fast. We're not in a lot. A lot of us are very dehydrated. We're also not some of us are going to long without eating that. We're then making really poor decisions when we go to eat. So we're looking for like quick calories or quick sugar rushes or whatever it is. And if you just kind of have a little bit more regularity, balance and mindfulness, it's amazing how much better you digest your food, the choices you make around your food, and in general, how much better you feel because we actually don't need as much food as you think to satiate.

It's more about what are the foods you're eating. Those are the it's the decision you're making around the foods you're eating. That's what's going to satiate you. It's not about the amount of it in. And I'll just give this is an example example of what I just said. I used I tried for a month, I ate a diet, which was all it was called raw, primal, which it was all raw meat and any raw animal products. And I did that for a month. And I'll tell you right now, I had the best digestion, I had the most amazing health that whole month.

And I didn't eat very much. And I'm not telling you to go out and eat raw primal, because it's very hard to do, particularly if you want to live in society. But what I'm more saying is that we have this idea that we need tons of food to be satiated, but it's really more about what are the foods you're eating, eating the right foods that will satiate you, and then reconnecting what your body needs within the foods you're eating. That is a truth bomb. And we're going to leave it right there. This has been an extraordinary talk.

I think people are motivated and inspired by food, by organ meat. I'm sure people are feeling like it's not so scary. It's it gets to be easy. It's simple and it's tasty, too. So tell us one more time where our audience can get Pluck and the discount generous discount that you have. So you can save 20% at eatpluck.com use the code SILENT20 and we also have a recipe section. So make sure to check recipes if you need any support on what to do with Pluck or how to cook organ meats. There's tons of amazing recipes on the site.

So good. Thank you so much. It's, you know, your love for what you do shines through in your words. You really, you know, you could still be cooking for Tom Cruise. You could still be working for Barbra Streisand. You could still be doing that stuff. But instead, you know, you've chosen a different life. You've chosen to really pour your knowledge and what you've learned throughout your career into helping people heal their bodies. And it is so admirable that you've left a huge mark and a ripple effect on the world.

James, so that's why I love talking to you. It's why I love bringing you into our community, our programs, our clients love what you have done. And I just thank you so, so much. Until next time, everyone take good care. Bye James.