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Transcript
- 08:33 About Liz Wolfe
- 14:52 Why do we need to eat the foods of our ancestors?
- 15:44 Liz’s country farm
- 21:57 The supposed “heart-healthy” low cholesterol diet
- 25:02 What kind of meat is best?
- 29:00 Why grains should be excluded from the diet
- 32:05 Liz’s personal paleo diet
- 34:18 The most pressing health issue in the world today: Inner city food deserts
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the liveto110 podcast. I’m your host Wendy Myers you can find me on livet0110.com and here is my co-host General Leigh Lowery.
Leigh Lowery: Hi everyone glad to be with you today.
Wendy Myers: Everyone you can find her on generalleigh.com. And if you are not paying attention she’s going to kick your butt. Haha.
Leigh Lowery: Haha.
Wendy Myers: I love your little saying.
Leigh Lowery: So funny. So true I will kick your butt.
Wendy Myers: Haha. I’m ready to have you to kick my butt and I keep saying that.
Leigh Lowery: I think we just have to set a date and get it done
Wendy Myers: Yeah I want to get to that gym with you.
Leigh Lowery: ok
Wendy Myers: and do a butt blast
Leigh Lowery: oh I would love it. I should take you to Gold’s in Venice so that you will get a full on experience of the Mecca of the body builders.
Wendy Myers: I’ve actually thought about quitting Pilates and just getting a membership at Gold’s gym.
Leigh Lowery: And seriously it’s so fun and even just like a fun stand point to see people who are. Mr. Olympia works out there and you will see the best in the business when it comes to body building but you will see regular people there.
Wendy Myers: All the anorexics?
Leigh Lowery: No. Wearing sunglasses inside trying to be you know all cool and stuff while working out.
Wendy Myers: Haha. Everyone today we are interviewing Liz Wolfe author of the new book Eat the Yolks. It’s a hilarious take on the healthiest diet on earth which is Paleo of course. And she is also the cohost of one of the top rated health podcasts, the balanced bites podcast. This is one of my favorites that I have been listening to for a long time and we are so thrilled to have her on the show so stay tuned because this girl is funny.
Leigh Lowery: Awesome. You know we have to do the disclaimer. So please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or threat any disease or health condition and it is not intended to replace professional medical advice. The Liveto110 podcast is solely informational in nature so please consult your health practitioner before engaging in any treatment or fitness regimen that we suggest on the show.
Wendy Myers: Or eating egg yolks, no actually do not ask your doctor before eating egg yolks because he’s going to discourage you.
Leigh Lowery: Yeah, it is so funny. I was reading through this and you know I too like Balanced bites. Yeah I love those yolks – eat them in every single meal. With my eggs I tend to do a couple eggs yolks and egg whites and they are great for the nutrition. It is awesome.
Wendy Myers: Yeah I think it is important to eat the yolks. That is where all the nutrition is. It is also a good source of choline. This helps with liver detox. There is no other source for it except for liver which more people are not eating. I think it is important to eat that yolks since it has all the nutrients by itself.
Leigh Lowery: I like just the way you said yolks. I mean you crack me up – the big L in your yolks. Haha
Wendy Myers: Yolks.
Leigh Lowery: Haha. There we go. We are gonna talk about those yolks.
Wendy Myers: Haha
Leigh Lowery: You know me I’m General Leigh you can find me here in Los Angeles in the gym but you can find me online wherein I can help you not only in your fitness regimen but specifically geared for you but I will also help you with nutrition. If you want to find out more information on that you can find me on my Facebook page which is General Leigh fitness and nutrition or you can find me online at generalleigh.com or you can email me at [email protected] anytime with questions or informational questions on my online training.
Wendy Myers: Yeah how to have a perfect butt. You can tell me how to do that.
Leigh Lowery: You can get that.
Wendy Myers: You can also now signup for her newsletter.
Leigh Lowery: OMG I’m so excited you mentioned that. Yeah, there is a new newsletter that you can sign up for on my website at generalleigh.com. So please I would love to start communicating with you.
Wendy Myers: Yeah everything you would ever want to know about getting a tone butt.
Leigh Lowery: That’s right
Wendy Myers: And I’m really excited about the great news I have started a new cooking show.
Leigh Lowery: Yeah. Haha
Wendy Myers: It is called Modern Paleo Cooking with Wendy Myers and you will find it on my YouTube channel which is wendyliveto110 and basically I‘ve decided to help out people that are going to buy my book. I have an upcoming book called The Modern Paleo Survival Guide that’s all about taking Paleo to the next level by including the most nutrient dense food and I think it is really important and it is something I am passionate about – teaching people how to eat nutritious food and how to pick the most nutritious vegetables in the grocery store. And this is all going to combine in one little show and I am going to teach you how to cook healthy Modern Paleo food.
Leigh Lowery: I love it! And I think the coolest thing Wendy is like I am not a 100% Paleo. A lot of my clients aren’t either but even for people that aren’t can watch how to do the recipe and everybody can go there and get great recipes. Whether you are a 100% percent strict modern Paleo, whatever your deal is, these are great recipes for you. This is really great for everybody.
Wendy Myers: It is really is and you know Paleo is just a template and what I am doing with Modern Paleo is a few recipes if you tolerate legumes, grains and dairy and I will have some shows that are pure Paleo. Modern Paleo includes these foods but if you can tolerate these foods, you should eat them.
This is just in general I think, the sicker someone is the more strict Paleo they need to go – like if their digestion is messed up, that probably is a sign that they do well with grains and dairy. So people kind of have to figure it out and that is what my book is all about too. Stressing what are you food sensitivities and what foods can you tolerate or not in regards to modern foods that are so prevalent in our food supply.
Leigh Lowery: I love it!
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I also put a store on the site a couple of months ago and you can find that on myersdetox.com/store. There are all kinds of supplements and saunas. I have five different kinds of near infrared saunas in the store. I think they’re crucial to surviving and thriving in today’s toxic cesspool of a planet.
Leigh Lowery: And you know what is funny about those saunas? I am actually gonna get one and post it on my site because it great for body builders and those anyone who is training heavy because it is great for rebuilding and restoring the muscles. So I’m excited about getting one of those for myself.
Wendy Myers: Yeah I think you will definitely benefit. It will give you a competitive edge and it is definitely important in getting those toxins out that are weighing down your performance and repairing your muscles faster.
Leigh Lowery: Great!
Wendy Myers: And I also have another announcement. I have been accepted into Seann Croxton’s Second Opinion Series on the Thyroid. It is a big online conference. Sean Croxton is the king daddy of holding these big online conferences like Realfoodcon and few other ones like Paleocon. But this year he decided to do one concentrated on thyroid, which I happen to be very knowledgeable about healing naturally with nutritional balancing. So I’m giving him my opinion on how to do that and I’m really excited. That will be coming out in May.
Leigh Lowery: So cool!
Wendy Myers: Our guest today is Liz Wolfe. She is a nutritional therapy practitioner (NTP) and is part of the dynamic duo of the Balanced Bites podcast – one of the top rated podcasts on health on iTunes. Her website is Realfoodliz.com where she writes a hilarious blog about homesteading and living large on a farm growing healthy and sustainable food. She also has regular column in Paleo magazine and her first book Skintervention is a must for anyone who is looking to heal skin issues like acne, psoriasis and things of that nature, but today we are going to talk about her new book Eat the Yolks. Liz I’m so honored to have you in the show.
Liz Wolfe: I am so honored you had me on and you know I’ve been having internet frustrations here on the farm so I’m glad to finally get to talk.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I know I love your podcast The Balanced Bites podcast. I have been listening to it for a long time and you know I just love hearing you and Diane and go back and forth. I’m just really happy to have you on the podcast.
Liz Wolfe: Thanks for having me.
Wendy Myers: Then you know I love the title of your book Eat the Yolks because I cannot stand it when I am at a restaurant and people order egg white omelets and I just want to scream “You have got to eat the yolks!”
Liz Wolfe: Oh! So painful although I do like how some restaurants charge for an extra for egg white. You have to pay for throwing those yolks away.
Wendy Myers: It is the most nutritious part and the whole point the egg, the yolk. I truly believe that people are slowly committing suicide by not eating the damn yolks.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah it is sad fact about our nutritional status in this country I think. Slowly just hurting ourselves with this fake food nutrition.
Wendy Myers: It is sad that the guys in the restaurants that are ordering the egg whites in restaurants are old men on statins that were told by their doctors not to eat the yolks or any food that will increase their cholesterol. We know that high cholesterol foods are not the actual cause of high cholesterol levels.
Liz Wolfe: Even if they did it wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Wendy Myers: Yeah I know Haha. Why don’t you tell the listeners about yourself and what drives you to spread the message about Paleo with your book Eat the Yolks.
Liz Wolfe: It is really, it is all kind of anchored in my own story you know, so I think that for all the folks who start their blogs and start talking about food on the internet it is constantly about passion based on our own narratives. So for me, I just kind of spent most of my young adult life in my twenties thinking that I needed to look on a certain way and cut the calories or go Weight Watcher’s in order to look different, but I never talked about the health issues that I was dealing with. It had weird acne and skin problems and other different skin problems that I dealt with day after day. I was always tired and you know I probably wanted to spend a good time sleeping in college when I was dieting. I was tired all the time and then discovered the Paleo idea.
I’d like to say that it is not Paleo with a capital P for me. It is Paleo with little p because I think my approach is pretty loose and it is not to say that Paleo with the capital P is transforming people’s lives it is just more in the course of the last five and six years becoming a professional nutritional therapy practitioner and helping other people get healthy and starting my masters in the public health, I think I have realized that there are a lot of different ways in order to be healthy. Some are out of the box Paleo and some are not so much, but it is all really the bigger message about real food. That is the approach that got my skin into the place that I am happy with. Paleo principles were really the turning point for me. I pretty much put all that into Eat the Yolks and it is also a rundown of all the questions that I get asked. I wanted to put all of them in one place and say don’t worry about cholesterol, don’t worry about animal protein, do not worry about grains. If you are worried about those calories read this book. It’s all in there, I promise.
Wendy Myers: I agree with you. I don’t eat a strict Paleo diet with that capital P. I always actually wondered why it must have a capital P, but it is definitely not about everyone on the same exact Paleo diet but proposes no grains. It’s more about what I propose with my little version called Modern Paleo – if it works for you it doesn’t make any sense to avoid it.
Liz Wolfe: For sure I think that in the book I say Paleo represents a template introduced by Loren Cordain. Thank goodness because he introduced Paleo and brought the idea mainstream. Paleo went back many decades but he kind brought it to a place of prominence such that we are have a foundation and I thank goodness for that in that in the book it is a term used loosely. It’s an idea that continues to grow and expand I think it is important that we do not close ourselves off to new ideas and research because that is a surefire recipe for complete stagnation.
Wendy Myers: Yeah I agree there is always something new to learn and new research – people on the cutting edge frontier of learning new things about what our bodies can hopefully tolerate.
Liz Wolfe: Sure
Wendy Myers: So why do you need to eat the food of our ancestors?
Liz Wolfe: Well there are a couple of reasons. We have a really good, long historic record of many cultures across the planet that ate ancestral foods and enjoyed really good health for many years. That is the historical component but I also talk about in the book about the nutritional component that these foods of our ancestors are a actually great nutrition so if we want run our bodies better we need to give it really good fuel at the cellular level. This is how we need to be fueling ourselves. Calories is about nutrition too and these food are the foods I think enable us to run our bodies the best we possibly can.
Wendy Myers: Yeah what’s up with buying a farm and living in a country with a bunch of goats? Haha
Liz Wolfe: It is so funny this journey has taken me here. So five-six years ago when I first started this journey I was crossing Paleo. Then, you know I started writing about things a little bit more, researching things a little more. And over the course of the years with the Paleo concept, I really saw a lot of positive change in it and so I was cool with that. So I started to ask myself this is working but it is not my cholesterol am I give myself heart disease product whatever. So I needed to answer those questions for myself so over the course of several years doing research and figure out exactly why this food are the best. I also realize that how we grow and raise our food is really matters. Learning about grass, meats and properly grown and organic grown perfectly grown vegetable crop, pesticides things like that.
This is really interesting to me and another thing that is interesting is food freedom and I started to realize that we have this problem in the United States for the government is literally promoting junk food like this is not healthy food like promoting Twinkies and these Twinkies are not healthy food. But the government is promoting process food that health food like vegetables oils that are not may not hyper mark from vegetables, corns, seed cottons oils from cotton this from vegetable and vegetable oils so is started to realize that there is this hidden agenda of pushing junk food on the entire nation and everybody is getting sicker so for me worrying about where my food came from and wanted to take responsibility from my own hand and put it on my own hand for the people in my close community at the same time that is what I wanted to do.
I know not everybody can pick up so far but I do not know you do not need much to grow garden but husband get a new station in the military it is really close to home and we been wanting to look for a land and it all happen in the perfect time wherein we are moving to the docks a little bit. And we found this perfect parcel of land and so we buy for it so it kinda happen in the natural
Wendy Myers: Have you started growing vegetables yet?
Liz Wolfe: We started a ton of seeds. They’re heirloom seeds. We got them from the rareseeds.com and we started our cabbage, cauliflower, onions, and other seeds as well. I’m actually sitting at the starter table right next to our wireless router where I can get reliable connection here on the farm. And out of the window I can see the goat out in the arena.
Wendy Myers: Yah I think it is really important people to grow their own food. I got a huge lesson in how different homegrown vegetables are from the grocery store vegetables. My uncle has been become a master gardener, growing vegetables for thirty years. He lives in Texas. He cut me some broccoli and I took it home. And that broccoli stunk up the whole car and it stunk up the whole refrigerator and when I roasted it and it was stinky and when I tasted it was the most amazing broccoli I’d ever tasted – just exploding with flavor. It was so full of sulfur – that is why it was super stinky. Grocery store broccoli can’t even approach that – it just doesn’t have the nutrition.
Liz Wolfe: It’s just fiber and water. But it was hard. It was hard; as I was saying animals are really forgiving. We have a flock of chickens and some goats and really it’s just about checking on them doing well and giving them good food and herbs to make sure that their immune systems are shored up. But with chickens, they eat everything. Chickens like grubs. They do really well without a whole lot of obsessive input. But when it comes to vegetables it is so difficult. I mean the soil quality and how much water you start them in, the time you transplant them and then you have to transplant them appropriately. Thanks to our supermarket culture we kind of lost that wisdom of how to grow your food right that has been passed on. So growing vegetables is like the hardest thing I’ve ever done and we suck at it but we are trying. Haha
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Haha. I know. I wish I can get back to growing vegetables. I’ve never really had lived in a house in LA where we have enough property or really the motivation and inclination honestly. But my mom has always grown a garden and has been really diligent about always having one but I just never thought of having one. It was just always there. So I really respect that you know are taking the time and effort to do that. It’s so important.
Liz Wolfe: I am also grateful for local growers and the people that grow and bring their stuff to their farmer’s markets because without them we might be a little bit hungrier.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, that’s why I definitely recommend people always to buy from a farmer’s market rather a grocery store.
Liz Wolfe: It is surprisingly affordable.
Wendy Myers: Yes. So one of the main premises of your book is that it turns out that everything we have been told about how to eat is dead wrong. So what is your take on the supposed heart healthy low cholesterol diet?
Liz Wolfe: It was just based on nonsense, underdeveloped nonsense. And the reason I wrote this book is because for me when I know the history of something – like how we got from point A to point Z – it is a lot easier for me to contextualize and conceptualize what is actually going on. So, if you knew that everything we knew about the way cholesterol acts in the body was based on nonsense and I’m explaining it to you what that nonsense was and how it came to be. To me is a lot easier to shed the dogma because like I said before, I bought into Paleo when I was eating my egg yolks but I still thought it was going to cause heart disease and I couldn’t reconcile that until I finally understood why we thought the way we thought in the first place.
And then it was really easy for me to kind of discard that dogma but really what happened was a serious of really flawed and poorly interpretative studies that were kind of hijacked by a couple different media outlets; in particular, Time magazine. Time magazine mistook and conflated dietary cholesterol and the cholesterol in our blood and basically spread this propaganda that we should not be eating bacon, which is the most tragic thing that has ever happened to food in the United States. This was in 1984. And so from there, we see this crazy uptick of stroke, heart disease, vascular problems and diabetes. But instead of going back to the foods that we were eating before this craziness happened, we are just banging out heads against the wall with whole grains, low fat, and corn oil type stuff and just getting nowhere.
So that’s kind of short story. The longer story involves some corporate interests that jumped on the anti-cholesterol, anti-saturated fat train and made a ton of money doing so. And so, is kind of their narrative that has been scrolled on our cultural consciousness. I mean, let’s be honest, our local farmer can’t afford and add during the Superbowl for corn oil. They can’t advertise their local butter from grass-fed cows to the masses with a bunch of bogus health claims.
Wendy Myers: And they can’t afford Fabio to pump their butter either.
Liz Wolfe: Ha ha ha! Kim Cattrall and Fabio yeah.
Wendy Myers: Ha ha. If only they could. I’d love to see Fabio picking carrots.
Liz Wolfe: Ugh! It’d be amazing.
Wendy Myers: So yeah I totally agree with you because it just makes me so sad. I have so many clients that are on statins come to me and all their doctors told them to eat Benecol and I have to go in and clean up their fridge of all the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and Benecol and all these poison to their hearts.
Liz Wolfe: I mean if we look at the nutrition labels too, of Benecol and margarine and all these things that have been sold as health food. These labels are full of junk and we only have to read them to see that. And then what? Look at the label on a pat of butter “ingredients: cream”.
Wendy Myers: And that’s why —one thing, I’m from Texas— and that is one thing I’m happy about, part of growing up in Texas is eating meat. That what we did, we ate steak a couple of nights a week and pork chops and every single night there was lots and lots of meat there. Lots of meat raised there. And certainly Paleo is about eating meat and most importantly, including red meat in your diet. But all meat is not created equal. What kind of meat do we need to be eating?
Liz Wolfe: Well, as a Kansas girl I have a lot of experience with factory farms so my entire youth driving across the state of Kansas for various things we would drive past the feedlots were cows were being fed a bunch of genetically modified corn, a bunch of soy, all kinds of things and the stench was awful. And you just think you smell that and you think “I do not want to eat that meat”. And what is sad is that our food system —and this is part of what the government has done with the subsidies— our food system is based around agricultural crops in their byproducts.
And that stinks because what is happening is that the byproducts of corn oil production and canola oil production are being sold to feedlots and they are shove down to animals’ throats. And that is not the animals’ natural diet but over time it has become that that is the cheap food that people can afford and really ethically pasture based farming operations just like say Joe Salatin does at Polyface farms, that has become more expensive way to eat. Yet that is the most nutritious way to eat because when our animals eat the diet that are meant to eat which is grass for cows, grass for deer, grass for bison, grass for pigs; almost anything including meat for chickens: bugs, grubs and things like that. When animals are eat their biological appropriate diets they pass along incredible nutrition to us. But these feedlots are really producing not only sad mistreated animals but kind of sad, less healthy meat.
And it is hard for me to trumpet this, to say all meat is not created equal and I just can’t make excuses for factory farm meat because it is just not good for us or for the planet. But what’s cool, is that pasture based farming operations are becoming more widespread. The product of those operations is becoming more affordable so, I want people to take heart with that because I know not everyone can feel like they can just go to a local farm and buy grass-fed beef. They definitely feel that they can’t go to Whole Foods and buy grass-fed beef for nine dollars a pound. That is just insane and ridiculous buy if we are going to say eatwild.com and we locate a farmer near us, we can generally find really affordable meat. So we just bought a half of a pasture raised pig. The pig raised outside in the sun routing around for the food that is natural to it. Not only did we get the pig. And we also got a freezer to keep that pig in, evened out to three dollars and fifty cents per pound.
Wendy Myers: Wow.
Liz Wolfe: That is nothing compared to even what we are buying in a grocery store, conventional meat .So I want people to take heart, you can get really quality meat with a very good price. You just have to shop differently.
Wendy Myers: Yeah people have to get creative, they can go Weston A. Price and get into a little co-op that several families can buy meat together and there are many ways to do it.
Liz Wolfe: Yes, definitely.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about grains a little bit. Grains are such a huge part of our diet today in the United States. But why should they be excluded for the most part completely on a Paleo diet?
Liz Wolfe: I kind of start from the platform of nutrition value. So we have been told for a really long time that whole grains are really important for their fiber contents. We can get all the fiber that we need from fruits and vegetables. The contention that we are not going to be able to poop anymore because we don’t eat whole grains is just ridiculous. And I hear this over and over again thinking we have been sold this story that the only place we can get fiber, is from whole grains. It is just silly. Now from the nutrition perspective, grains just don’t have all that much available nutrition.
When we eat anything that is derived from a seed —that is basically what grains are, just kind of seeds ground up— those seeds hold on to nutrients because the seed in nature needs those nutrients those built in nutrients to sprout and grow. And it doesn’t give them up just because we ask them to. So when we eat grains especially “whole wheat bread”, things like that that are sold to us as healthy, we are actually not getting the nutrition that is listed on the package. So a seed might have magnesium or zinc in it, but it is not giving it up for our bodies to use. So is not about actually what is in that food is what our bodies can do with it. And the most available nutrition is from properly raised animal products. Zinc, you can get in space from properly raised animal products that won’t be available to you necessarily from grains. Same with iron, same with B-vitamins so there is really no contest from a nutrient perspective.
Wendy Myers: Yeah and that is one thing that people always question and post to me “But it says on the nutrition label that it has all this iron” And this and that. And I’m like “But that was burned up in a mass spectrometer”. That is not how our digestion works, that is not getting into you.
Liz Wolfe: Ha ha ha. Yeah so what do their eye glaze over when you say “sprectrometer”? ha ha.
Wendy Myers: “What is that!?” But that is how all these nutrition labels that are on spinach or kale or whatever, they are burned up. They are not being digested in our human digestive tract and the nutrients are calculated you know.
Liz Wolfe: The Quaker doesn’t tell you that. That is the fun thing. Quaker doesn’t say mass spectrometer indicates there are these things in whole grain bread.
Wendy Myers: Yes. And it makes me sad when I have again, clients coming to me and they see the Quaker oatmeal box that says “lowers your cholesterol”. And if you eat anything with fiber in it, it will lower your cholesterol.
Liz Wolfe: That is the key right, if you want to talk about health benefits of fiber let’s talk about the health benefits from fruits and vegetables, is just as good.
Wendy Myers: So what does your personal Paleo diet look like? Do you ever eat legumes or grains, etc.?
Liz Wolfe: I don’t eat grains because I am not interested. Because I gave them up for so long doing the out-of-the-box, strict Paleo diet for a couple of years before I started to dig into ancestral nutrition. So I kind of gave up grains. I used to do one piece of sour dough bread every year at the Weston A. Price Foundation conference. Which is totally cool. I don’t begrudge anybody any of the foods that they like to eat. It is no big deal.
But I like to explore different traditional cultural foods. So when we do Indian food, I eat rice. I’ve done traditionally prepared rice and beans that type of thing because I understand the role of those foods in traditional diets. And I like to experience that. Korean food, Ethiopian food that type of things. So, the processed food. I had somebody the other day ask me “Hey do you ever cheat?” And I was like. “Yeah I cheat all the time”. And they thought it was like Oreos and pizza.
Wendy Myers: Ha ha ha.
Liz Wolfe: But I had forgotten that whenever people ask me that question, they mean Oreos and pizza. They are not asking if I eat white rice and white potatoes. Which I do. I eat white rice and white potatoes I eat things like that. But the bulk of my nutrition is properly raised meats, veggies, sardines, I do love sardines.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I do too. They are really good. Whenever I eat gluten, I eat a piece of bread. I feel horribly guilty. And then I get a stomachache, there you go. You deserve it.
Liz Wolfe: It doesn’t feel good. Sometimes maybe it is just worth it. I don’t know, say you go to some restaurant. The most famous restaurant in the world and you just have to try their éclairs. You go to France you know, try some wine, cheese and an éclair. That is totally cool. This is my body; nobody else’s body. I can do what I want with it. But often times we do suffer the consequences.
Wendy Myers: Oh yeah. Sometimes I eat my food and know what the consequences are going to be. “It was worth it!”.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah totally. Oh yeah.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. So I have a question I like to ask all of my guests, what do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Liz Wolfe: Oh that is really tough because I have done some non-profit work with some couple at-risk populations. At-risk Youth and one of the worst food deserts in the most dangerous cities in the United States which is Candem, New Jersey. I’ve worked with some youth coming out there. And also I have done some nutrition program development for the First Twenty which is the fire fighters organization looking to improve cardiovascular risk factors for fire fighters.
So that is kind of my paradigm. Access to good nutritious food and it is so different in the United States where we have this surplus of calories all the time. But most of those calories are completely devoid nutrition and certain parts of the United States like Candem, New Jersey are literal food deserts for these kids that need nourishing foods but all they can find is a Twinkie.
So for the United States, I think food deserts and just the centralization of growing in agriculture is just literally killing us. So community gardens, urban gardens are passing down traditions of food and self-sufficiency it is really important to me and that is a really gradual process. But for a kid to grows some tomatoes or, making it legal for him to have his own backyard chicken or porch chicken or whatever. I think could really slowly change our food system for the better.
Now facing the world that is really tough because unfortunately the developed world is really stealing land from small cultures and traditional cultures across the world and basically taking their food supply. And people are starving because of it. And that is such a tough issue and such a good question. But in the United States I’d have to say trying to decentralize the food system a bit. So we can get rid of these food deserts and get the kids in the average population of good food.
Wendy Myers: I think that is a great answer because it makes me sad when you know you see kids that they have no idea where vegetables come from. They have no idea that they are grown in the ground. I love when I see all these inner city schools and other types of school having their kids grow their own vegetables. So they take some pride and see where they come from and growing them, they are more likely to eat them.
Liz Wolfe: Yes, for sure.
Wendy Myers: And my daughter is in pre-school. I mean she is three and they are growing like lettuces and carrots and things like that. And it is so cute and makes them more interested in vegetables.
Liz Wolfe: It is funny how, we think the kids aren’t going to want vegetables. We just put that baggage on the nation’s youth, “They are not interested in vegetables. It is such a challenge to get kids to eat vegetables”. Well, if they are raised with literally with no vegetables available then maybe they won’t like vegetables. But I have done some work with Steve’s National Program which is an incredible organization that literally is taking these kids from Candem, New Jersey. Training them with cross fit and helping them to get nourishing food and they just developed this pilot program where they are bringing food from a local CSA. So these kids get a CSA box and people can sponsor it. And they were so excited about the vegetables and cooking with the vegetables. I was sitting there thinking, “Great you give them vegetables but they are not going to eat them”. No! They were so excited!
Wendy Myers: Yeah, that is awesome. I try to do that with my daughter too where I try to have her in the kitchen with me making food so that it makes her more likely to eat it. You know, the kids participate in cooking the food themselves.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah, that is the most exciting part for them is learning to prepare them, I think.
Wendy Myers: So why don’t you tell the listeners, what you are up to and where they can find you?
Liz Wolfe: Right now, I am trying to keep these goats under control.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Ha ha. Are you trying to eat those goats?
Liz Wolfe: This were dairy goats. I tolerate goat’s milk and goat’s milk cheese really well so we will be milking these goats next year. We will have baby goats first and we will be doing these goats as milking goats. We’ve got some pigs coming in that we will raise for food. We’ve also have some cows coming in on the spring that we will also use for food. So that is the deal there. Then I emotionally have been preparing myself for eating an animal that I have actually raised for quite some time now we will see how that goes. But right now I am working on getting the word out on Eat the Yolks and redesigning my website and kind of making things more accessible for folks. I put together eattheyolks.com. I’m now actually at Realfoodliz.com. Instead of Cavegirleats.com it is Realfoodliz.com now. I made that switch because I was ready to kind to expand the reach of this Paleo idea and bring in folks that are intimidated by this whole caveman diet you know.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Ha ha.
Liz Wolfe: You want people to kind of “Get on the train with me”. We just try to learn more about our bodies and about the food we eat and how we can support a little bit of the most sustainable system and engage with that. So that’s pretty much what I am up to right now besides getting this garden planted in the ground.
Wendy Myers: Well Liz, thank you so much for coming in the show. And listeners, I highly recommend this book Eat the Yolks. I read about the first third of it prior to recording the show and it is so funny and there were so many funny stories in it and I just love the message about eating real food and forgetting all these myths that we have learned. Liz and I are trying to teach people that there are so many health myths out there and wrong ideas about foods that we have been sold for many decades. It’s going to take some time to turn that tide around. And I’m sure you know this too Liz. Whenever I give a speech or I talk about we need to eat red meat and people are literally gasping and laughing even.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah. Hopefully if they read my book they will laugh for a different reason and laugh at all the ridiculous insanity that got us to this place. We are afraid of real food.
Wendy Myers: They’d be laughing with us instead of at us.
Liz Wolfe: Yes.
Wendy Myers Yeah. Well again, thank you so much. It was really nice to meet you and I hope to have you on the show again soon.
Liz Wolfe: Of course, anytime thank you so much Wendy.
Wendy Myers: Okay, bye bye
Liz Wolfe: Bye.
Wendy Myers: If you want to learn all about detoxification, the Modern Paleo Diet and healing yourself naturally go check out my site myersdetox.com and you can also follow me on Facebook and twitter at Iwillliveto110 and we are very positive on the Facebook page. And I am also on YouTube at Wendyliveto110. That is the home of my Modern Paleo Cooking Show which I definitely recommend you to check out the new recipe every week on YouTube and on the blog post that give you all the directions of what I am talking about and demonstrating on the show. And if you want to learn more about Leigh Where they can find you?
Leigh Lowery: You can find me on Instagram if you want to see what is going on, what I am doing, what I am cooking at genleigh. I am also on Facebook at General Leigh Fitness and Nutrition. You can check out my YouTube channel with videos there regarding fitness and that is under my real name which is Leigh Lowery, and then of course you find me at generalleigh.com and all this information will be there as well.
Wendy Myers: Everyone thank you so much for tuning in. Remember folks eat your yolks! Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 podcast.
