Transforming Modern Farming and Enhancing Soil Health with Sander Van Stee (Part 2)

Transcript

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Hey everyone, welcome to Exploring Health Macro to Micro.

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I'm your host, Parker Condon.

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This is gonna be part two of the episode with Sander Van Stee.

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This picks up right in the middle of the conversation, so if you haven't already, please go back and listen to part one, which includes the full introduction and background for Sander.

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So without further delay, please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Sander Van Stee.

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I wanna dig in now to kind of your journey, right.

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So you came to health in.

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Probably the shift it sounds like the shift towards kind of what you're doing now on the farm came from a health scare of your own or health concerns of your own.

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So can you share a little bit about that and kind of understanding, like what I'd love to dig into afterwards, sort of what the proposed interventions were for that and then how you end up, kind of getting yourself to where you are now?

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Yeah, it was.

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I needed a real push in order to change my mindset.

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I was really stuck in a certain mindset because we farmed in a way that was working and we've been farming in that way for generations.

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So it's not just me that has to unlearn things and relearn things.

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I have to do that despite the fact that my dad was not willing, was not ready to make these changes, or not seeing eye to eye and he's pushing back and we farm together.

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So there's that extra tension.

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Luckily, my dad and I communicate quite well so we're able to navigate that.

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But it's also like I feel the weight on my shoulders because I'm taking the farm from my dad, who took it over from his dad.

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There's generations of farming that is represented in the land that I'll be managing.

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So it's a real heavy load and I don't want to mess that up and do things that are so crazy or whatever else.

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There's a proven system.

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There's a proven way to grow a farm and produce products that you know people are already buying.

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It makes sense, logically.

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It makes sense to do what works.

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And why change?

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If it's not broken, well.

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If it's broken, broken well if broken.

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Yeah, you can.

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You can bend that, however you like, like there's.

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It's definitely not perfect.

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Um, there's definitely lots of places where you can improve, especially from sustainability perspective, but we're making money like we're, we're growing, we're doing well.

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Um, like I said before, like our dairy farm is above average when it comes to the size in our area for dairy farms, I think in Ontario typically it's around 60 cows milking.

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So, yeah, we're doing more than double that.

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So we're doing pretty good.

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I can't complain sort of change and really start searching and looking for for ways to improve things and really be that person that's sticking his neck out and looking for ways to do things better and be the one that make those mistakes and uh and and be basically a hopefully eventually a leader in the industry.

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As far as for regenerative agriculture and for that was a serious health scare that really was the inflection point for me.

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I woke up one day and realized that my libido has been gone for months at a time and as a man, your libido, your sex drive, that's a huge part of your personality.

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So when that started to go away, it rocked my world.

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It and because it's not just my libido, it was the energy levels my body ate, hurt, it took.

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I have a physical job, so just making it through an average day took so much motivation.

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It took everything I had just to make it to to to the end of the day and then, and then, just beyond that like.

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It had a massive impact on my relationship with my wife, as you can can imagine.

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With low libido, it fueled her insecurities and then also the energy I had to be with my kids and play with them.

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At the end of the day, it affected every aspect of my life.

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It was very easy for me to stay motivated and and and try out these different um proposed health, healthy habits and stick to them and be religious.

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And we're like most people they they have a hard time finding a reason to stick to these different habits and change the way they're living their life.

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But for me I had all the reasons I needed.

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So what happened was I went to my family doctor and said my libido has been gone.

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I'm feeling weak, feeling tired, feeling like an old man, I feel like I might have low testosterone.

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And he just looked at me up and down and kind of said you got some body hair, you got some muscle mass.

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I think you're fine.

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Fine, but I insisted that I think I had low testosterone.

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So in canada there's free health care, but only if it's ordered by the doctor.

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So because I pushed for it, I had to pay for this testosterone test and, sure enough, my testosterone was in the single digits.

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No, that led me down a journey of like bouncing around finding different doctors, different specialists.

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They're like oh like.

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I had a hormone specialist who then referred me to the next specialist, which was like specifically for male hormones, and at the end of the day, no matter how high up I went up to this, to this specialty ladder, all they could really do for me was give me a hormone replacement therapy.

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They tested me for all sorts of rare genetic abnormalities or conditions and they couldn't find anything.

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And I ended up doing my own research, like I said, anything that involved health.

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I've tried it and I was reading voraciously, trying to find out things that I can apply to my life that might make a difference, and things that stuck are the things that I feel like actually improved my energy levels, my vitality, to some degree, but I never got to the point where I could start cutting back on the hormone replacement therapy.

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I despise giving myself these injections.

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It was never extreme doses, it was always within normal physiological levels of testosterone.

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Just the fact that I had to inject it to feel close to normal it was never back to normal but just to be a functioning person drove me crazy.

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I mentioned to my specialist, who I drove an hour and a half to go and visit, and sometimes traffic three hours just to visit him, and I asked him like could I be like, uh, I've heard a thing called adrenal fatigue or being burnt out, like could that be what's causing my hormonal issues?

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And he basically told me like no, that's not a real thing.

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There's no research backing up adrenal fatigue or being burnt out.

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That's not a real condition.

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And so he wasn't even really willing to look into it.

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Um, so I did myself.

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I tried all sorts of different diets, um, which I was like what is the ideal diet for people?

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Well, that's, that's quite a quite a journey to go down.

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As soon as you start looking, everybody's going to tell you a different answer, and so it's real frustrating.

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But the one thing that all these different gurus have in common all the scientists, all the researchers, all the influencers is that they all propose to eat whole foods.

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So, whether it be whole food plant-based, or whole food omnivorous, or whole food carnivorous, that's the one thing they all have in common.

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So that's a pretty safe place to start.

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Get rid of all that processed junk out of your diet.

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And for me, that did make a really big difference when I got sick.

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That's when the vegan movement was in its heyday.

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Basically, it was all over the internet.

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So I gave it a try and I did it pretty strict.

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I was very careful to eat.

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I really emphasized the proteins and the fats in my diet.

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I was eating nuts and seeds with every meal, lots of beans and lentils, lots of whole grains, and I wasn't eating much salads.

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I was really trying to get enough calories in because I have a very active job and I'm naturally relatively lean.

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So I was really eating like the potatoes and stuff like that too, and the rice, and not too many salads, not too many raw food, because I I needed those calories.

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And despite that, over time I I kept developing more and more food sensitivities.

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Like I started off with regular dairy, I started off with eggs those two things I was reacting to and then over time, I started adding in more and more things, um, like the preservatives and food colorings.

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I was reacting to all these different things.

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Despite the fact that I was religiously following this diet.

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I never really had cheat days.

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I was always eating this supposedly perfect diet for people.

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So I realized that there was something missing.

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So I started experimenting with adding in more animal products and whenever you take out food, you have the opportunity of being selective with which what you add back in and uh, so yeah, I was, I was just, I only added in the highest quality meats, the highest quality, um, animal products.

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Um, I started, um, started feeling a little better and I, after the fact, it seems pretty obvious but, um, like, because, like, whenever I was eating in a vegan diet, I was, I could never get enough chocolate.

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I could, I could eat a massive meal and I just, I don't know, and I would want chocolate afterwards.

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So I'd eat some, some dark chocolate, some 95 dark chocolate, because that's the healthiest chocolate, apparently, and, um, and, and I would eat it and I would want more, and I had to just leave the house or else all the chocolate house would be gone, despite the fact that I was ready, stuffed, right, so, like, and I realized after the fact that dark chocolate it was one of maybe two plant sources of saturated fat.

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So my body was craving saturated fat and and it's crazy because now that I eat a significant amount of animal products, significant amount of saturated fat and cholesterol, chocolate can be sitting in the cupboard and I just don't even want it, which is mind-blowing to me because I thought it's just advice that I have, that I just love chocolate that much.

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But now that I'm getting enough truly healthy fats from animal products, my body is happy and it doesn't give me cravings and I push it all the way to the extreme of eating nothing but meat, which some people love it.

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Some people do really really well on it, especially people with food sensitivities like what I was suffering with.

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But I found personally that I struggle to eat enough.

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We eat nothing but meat.

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So I started adding in, I started backing off and moving more towards a more omnivorous diet, but I still focus on the diet, on the foods that are most digestible, and that, I feel, is the biggest difference between the two extremes as far as the carnivore and the vegan whole foods diet.

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But even just being more omnivorous, the real difference is that you're eating foods that are not just nutrient-dense, because the beautiful thing of whole foods is that they're all nutrient-dense, especially if you source them from a really good farmer.

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So all these whole foods are nutrient-dense, but they're not all equally digestible.

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And that's where you really benefit from these animal products is because you're actually getting the nutrients that you're reading on the label.

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It's so digestible that what you read on the label is what you get.

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Where that's not necessarily the case with plant foods and different people struggle with different things Like there's a significant percentage of the population that can't make that transition from beta carotene to vitamin A.

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So, like different people have different struggle with different things basically.

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So that for me, made a massive difference and also it makes sense because cholesterol from animal sources that is the building block for sex hormones.

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So it seems so obvious looking back, but when you're in it you don't necessarily see it.

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But yeah, so I have a lot of cholesterol in my diet now.

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Naturally, when you eat more animal products, when you eat more saturated fat, your cholesterol levels in your blood goes up, which is not necessarily something to be feared, but we can get into that later on if you want to.

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But yeah, so I have all these building blocks for these sex hormones, which helped quite a bit as well, and then other habits that I worked on that also made a big impact was things like cold exposure.

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I didn't realize it at the time, but I was actually developing an anxiety around getting cold because my dad's side of the family we all struggle with rhinodes, even the men it was more common in females, but I have rhinodes as well which is when your extremities get a little bit cold, then also the blood circulation shuts off and then it gets extremely cold and painful.

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So that's what I always had.

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So, working outside in the cold, I started developing anxiety around having painful extremities from the cold.

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And when I started voluntarily doing cold exposure with cold showers and stuff like that or in a bath or something like that, it it was traumatic for me because I I did struggle with the cold and, um, the level of anxiety was insane.

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Uh, just like just about stepping into the cold water.

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But, um, I learned so much from it and that's typically what I found through my health journey is the things that you hate the most.

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That's typically where you're going to see the most growth.

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So it's not just the fact that I was getting the cold exposure.

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You get the cold shock, proteins that are anti-inflammatory.

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You stress your mitochondria, so the mitochondria that are not functioning properly, they are stressed.

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That are not functioning properly, they are stressed, so your body naturally um rebuilds or or um creates new healthy mitochondria to replace the ones that are not functioning to to, uh, the full degree.

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They're not able to create the heat to keep your body warm under this cold stress.

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So you're and like it's a great health benefits around replenishing and renewing and keeping your mitochondria young through cold exposure, because that's the energy, or that's the organelle in every cell that produces energy, for every cell, for your whole body.

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It's massive.

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But it's not just that, it's not just the benefits of the cold exposure itself.

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It's the fact that I became so much more aware of what stressed feels like, because when you step in the cold water, what you're trying to do in the moment is relax and get to the point where you're able to relax despite the fact that you're feeling this cold stress.

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So I became very aware, while trying to do that, of what stress feels like.

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I would breathe high up in my chest, really shallow, quick breaths, stress feels like.

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So I would breathe high up in my chest, really shallow, quick breaths and I became aware of what my diaphragm feels like, where, once it sucks up, which usually coincides with those shallow breaths I became aware of that feeling of where my diaphragm is and I noticed that I was stressed, breathing just throughout my average day doing normal work.

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That shouldn't have been stressful, but physiologically my body is getting the signal that I'm stressed because that's the way I just breathe, without even realizing it.

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So to contrast that I became more aware and then telling myself to take deep belly breaths and stuff like that, and all those things made big differences.

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And I kept stacking these different habits and it took me six years to get to the point where my hormones returned.

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And it took such a long time that it became irrational to stay optimistic and luckily I am a natural optimist.

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So I kept just plugging away at it and kept trying and working away and I always tell my wife I really still believe that one day I'm going to figure this out and my hormones are going to come back.

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And after six years they did.

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And what happened was it didn't happen by itself.

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One of the last things I tried was extended fasting and somehow, through that extended fast I did like a two and a half three-day fast and it seemed to have been a biological reset for my body.

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So from that point on, I think it wasn't just the fast I feel like if I did that fast on day one when my hormones disappeared, it would have done nothing, it would just have been another source of stress because my body's not getting calories but the fact that I had so many years of these healthy habits that I've been stacking as far as exercise and stuff like that and the diets and then the cold exposure and basically anything improving my sleep was massively important too, because I get up early to milk cows, I have a long physical job, I want to hang out with my wife afterwards or hang with my friends afterwards.

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I regularly got short sleep, so that made a huge impact as well, but none of that really pushed me over the edge up until I did that extended fast and then my body seemed to realize that it can relax.

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It's okay.

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And then from that point on, my hormones returned, my energy levels returned, my strength returned and, uh, I haven't been taking hormone replacement therapy since that first fast.

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So now I try to do one or two every year, just as a, just as another biological reset, just to to, to reap those benefits it's pretty remarkable, uh, but it also kind of goes to show, I guess, your general mentality, because you mentioned earlier when talking about regenerative farming, there's no one-size-fits-all solution.

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You need to experiment, you need to be persistent.

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So I think you have the right mentality for that side of it, but also, clearly, for understanding your own health.

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You know I was a personal trainer before this, so a lot of people would spend a lifetime doing certain behaviors and then be upset after eight weeks of not having the dream body that they wanted, which is just very unrealistic expectations, and a big part of my job was managing those expectations.

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So the fact that you were persistent perhaps irrationally so of six years of experimentation, it's just a testament to kind of mentality that you have.

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So you went through nutritional interventions, tried cold exposure, did extend to fasting.

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On the sleep side, did you do anything from like a protocol standpoint or did you just start becoming more aware of your sleep and being like maybe this matters too and you just start prioritizing a little bit more, or did you?

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I'd love to hear anything more about what you did on the sleep side of it yeah, it's interesting, I haven't been asked that before and I have because I talked to my family doctor, because I told him, like him, something's up with my sleep, because on average I used to get around five and a half to six and a half hours of sleep during the week and then on weekend I'd have a late night with friends and maybe I'd get one or two nights where I have two or three hours of sleep and then I'd get back to the five and a half to six hours of sleep.

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So it was definitely not enough sleep, but it's not like insane you know what I mean Like it's not like you hear crazier stories of people getting by on less.

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So I was like, so I was talking to my family doctor.

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I was like it's getting to the point like where I'm literally falling asleep, walking.

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I'm walking do my work on the around the farm and I'm nodding off and stumbling because I'm falling asleep.

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I can't sit in a car for more than 15 minutes and without having to pull over because I'm falling asleep, because it's too dangerous for me to drive.

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Like I can't sit anywhere for more than 15 minutes without like falling asleep.

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I can't hang out with friends the same way, because in the middle of the table I'll just be, I'll be sleeping, so like something's up with and I'm not, and the rest that I need, like um.

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So he, he ordered a sleep study and, um, one of the things they found during a sleep study, like, and if you ever do sleep study, it's terrible.

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I always thought like, oh, you go there for like 12 hours, right, I had the expectation that I was going to be so rested.

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I finally got like a good night's sleep, 12 hours there, like it's gonna be great.

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I was looking strapped up to a bunch of stuff.

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You're yeah, it's not like a relaxing environment and then, as soon as you like, roll over one, like the leads fall off, and then the person comes in the room, reattaches it and you're like, okay, now I gotta fall back asleep, right?

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Um, so, yeah, like so.

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It was terrible.

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It was not a restful sleep night, but one of the things that they found out was that I had sleep apnea.

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So I was, I was choking and falling and waking up several times throughout the night, too many times throughout the night, and, uh, so what I end up doing is that I used to always sleep on my back and I wouldn't move at all through the night, it seems like.

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But, um, I started changing the way I sleep, where I'd sleep more on my side because, like what happens to my back, my tongue would fall back, and then it would.

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That's where, like, the choking, that's what the sleep apnea came from was my the tongue falling to the back of my mouth and and closing off my air.

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But when I sleep on my side, the tongue falls differently.

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So then you don't wake up from choking, from the tongue falling back and closing off your airways.

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And then the other thing that I started reading about is the importance of nasal breathing, especially when you're sleeping, but throughout the day as well.

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You want to breathe through your nose because, same thing, when you breathe through your mouth, it's also stress breathing, and it's important to breathe through your nose because that's where all the senses are for the CO2.

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And your body can't regulate the oxygen that you're intaking when you're breathing exclusively through your mouth.

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And that CO2 balance is important because you need the right amount of CO2 to oxygen in your blood.

00:21:31.538 --> 00:21:44.314
In order for every cell in your body to be able to exchange oxygen, you need the CO2 and the oxygen, whereas your body can't regulate the amount of oxygen in the system when you're only breathing through your mouth.

00:21:44.994 --> 00:21:49.352
So I actually got rid of my pillow when I slept and now I sleep with my hands.

00:21:49.352 --> 00:21:50.714
And then what happens?

00:21:50.714 --> 00:22:01.702
Because of the angle of my hands, it puts friction on my jaw and a lot of people actually put tape on their mouth to push for the nasal breathing.

00:22:01.702 --> 00:22:03.777
I haven't quite gotten that weird yet.

00:22:03.777 --> 00:22:07.397
I've considered it, but at the moment I thought I'd try this first.

00:22:07.397 --> 00:22:10.935
It's a little less invasive, it'll wear my wife out a little bit less.

00:22:10.935 --> 00:22:17.576
So I sleep with my hands and then the friction of my hands against my jaw keeps my mouth closed throughout the night.

00:22:17.576 --> 00:22:25.420
So that's what I did to improve the quality of my sleep, and then also just the fact that I prioritize my sleep.

00:22:25.480 --> 00:22:26.823
I still have a young family.

00:22:26.823 --> 00:22:30.460
My oldest is seven, then I have a five, three and a two-year-old.

00:22:30.460 --> 00:22:34.458
So, as you can imagine, it's hard to come by.

00:22:34.458 --> 00:22:35.239
It's not perfect.

00:22:35.239 --> 00:22:40.808
The fact that my hormones are still as good as they are with such a young family, I think, is pretty important.

00:22:40.808 --> 00:22:48.618
But so I'm sure in five years, when my youngest is much older and sleeping through the night, I'll feel even better.

00:22:48.618 --> 00:22:51.191
Maybe my hormones will, my testosterone will increase even more.

00:22:51.191 --> 00:22:54.799
But yeah, so right now that's what I'm doing.

00:22:54.799 --> 00:22:55.821
I'm prioritizing the sleep.

00:22:55.821 --> 00:22:57.252
When I'm exhausted, I'll take that nap.

00:22:57.252 --> 00:23:13.316
Sometimes I take naps without even really needing to, or sorry, when I need naps, I'll take them without even wanting to, because I'll take my youngest to for his nap and usually it's almost a a of a fight to see who's going to fall first, and I I think my son usually wins.

00:23:13.316 --> 00:23:23.251
But then I'll wake up, lay him down and I'll head out back out to the barn yeah, uh, sounds like you're listening to your body and kind of going with the physiological needs.

00:23:23.913 --> 00:23:26.701
Uh, you mentioned a few interesting things there about breathing.

00:23:26.701 --> 00:23:41.607
Um, yeah, so the the body is really bad at sensing oxygen, like when most people like if you hold your breath and then you start getting that hunger for air, most people think you're sensing a low oxygen, but you're actually sensing an increase in CO2.

00:23:41.607 --> 00:23:43.473
So we're very sensitive to CO2.

00:23:43.473 --> 00:23:46.321
We're pretty terrible at detecting how much oxygen is actually in our body.

00:23:46.321 --> 00:23:48.271
So that was a great point.

00:23:48.271 --> 00:23:55.434
And then on the nasal breathing basically breathing in general is a way for us to control our nervous system.

00:23:55.434 --> 00:24:00.022
You mentioned stress breathing, that upper body or that upper chest also.

00:24:00.022 --> 00:24:09.275
Probably that combined with, like mouth breathing, nasal breathing and being able to control your breath and control your exhales.

00:24:09.275 --> 00:24:19.922
So, generally speaking, if you can exhale longer than you're inhaling and really doing these extended exhales, that's a very good way to sort of down regulators down, regulate yourself and de-stress yourself.

00:24:19.922 --> 00:24:26.584
So it's this great tool that we have that's both automatic and we can also control it too.

00:24:27.711 --> 00:24:31.317
I mentioned this in a podcast that'll probably be coming out prior to this one.

00:24:31.317 --> 00:24:37.275
You know, like dolphins dolphins they have to consciously breathe all the time, which is a real hassle.

00:24:37.275 --> 00:24:46.479
So they've had to come up with the idea of splitting the brains in half, where one half will keep them breathing and the other half will sleep, and then they have to switch so their brains can rest adequately.

00:24:46.479 --> 00:24:51.071
So we have this great tool where we don't have to think about our breath constantly.

00:24:51.071 --> 00:25:01.022
So it's great, it runs in the background, but at the same time we can kick it on if we become more self-aware of our breath and we need to control the nervous system.

00:25:01.022 --> 00:25:15.038
So it sounds like you went through a lot of interoception and getting better at identifying what you were feeling within yourself and then building the skills to control that in a more advantageous way.

00:25:15.940 --> 00:25:24.750
Um that is, that self-awareness is difficult to grow and that also it kind of leads into the um, the cold exposure as well.

00:25:24.750 --> 00:25:26.394
You're mentioning that um.

00:25:26.394 --> 00:25:47.432
Again, you're deliberately exposing yourself to a physiological stress and you have this natural reaction which is those short, shallow breaths initially when you get in there and your body's basically freaking out and then you're basically just teaching yourself be like can I overcome this natural inherent reaction and control myself in this deliberately stressful environment?

00:25:48.153 --> 00:26:00.362
So you're sort of training yourself in that way, which is incredibly beneficial one of the other things I want to say about biggest benefit of the exposure was developing the self-awareness of the stress.

00:26:00.362 --> 00:26:02.527
Like uh, I, I always felt.

00:26:02.527 --> 00:26:04.292
Like uh, I don't really get stressed, I thought.

00:26:04.292 --> 00:26:08.388
But honestly, my body was telling a very different story and it's just.

00:26:08.388 --> 00:26:09.573
It was just a lack of awareness.

00:26:10.477 --> 00:26:10.636
Yep.

00:26:10.636 --> 00:26:21.904
One other thing on sleep before I move on to the next question is there was a study that came out recently.

00:26:21.904 --> 00:26:23.769
It was a long longitudinal study.

00:26:23.769 --> 00:26:38.645
They were looking at, I think, 60,000 people for 10 years so yeah, big cohort and for a long period of time and the thing that they discovered was that obviously, sleep duration matters, like the amount of sleep that you're getting, but one of the other really important factors is sleep consistency.

00:26:38.645 --> 00:26:50.925
Almost for some diseases had actually had a greater effect than total sleep was consistency of bedtime and wake time.

00:26:50.925 --> 00:26:51.080
So it met.

00:26:51.080 --> 00:27:02.323
So like, even if you're not necessarily getting the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep, if you're very consistent, usually within a one hour window, um, wake time and bedtime, uh, there were massive benefits as well.

00:27:02.323 --> 00:27:15.243
So if you can't get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep, really dialing in your consistency of when you're going to bed and when you're waking up can be protective as well from a sort of disease standpoint.

00:27:15.243 --> 00:27:18.991
I want to know.

00:27:19.593 --> 00:27:25.684
So before all of this, you had the health care really low testosterone.

00:27:25.684 --> 00:27:27.576
What was your lifestyle like leading up to that?

00:27:27.576 --> 00:27:50.359
Because you were still very active, obviously, um, being on the farm, but were there any other things in your lifestyle where, like you look back on it, you go oh, obviously that wasn't helping the situation um, there was, yeah, the fact that, um, I could, I could basically eat anything that I wanted to back when I was younger, and at least I thought I did and I thought I could.

00:27:50.380 --> 00:28:00.053
I didn't realize until after the fact, like I always noticed, ever since I was quite young, that my belly popped out and I thought it was strange, I thought it was, I didn't know what it was.

00:28:00.053 --> 00:28:02.400
People didn't talk about food sensitivities when we were younger.

00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:06.560
We talk about it all the time now, I feel like, but when I was a kid it wasn't talked about.

00:28:06.560 --> 00:28:09.082
So I had no idea what was going on with my belly.

00:28:09.082 --> 00:28:09.903
Why was it sticking out?

00:28:09.903 --> 00:28:12.644
I thought I was fat, even though, like, logically, I knew I wasn't fat.

00:28:12.644 --> 00:28:15.445
So I was like, like, do I have, like, visceral fat?

00:28:15.445 --> 00:28:18.912
Is this what visceral fat feels like or looks like like I don't know what was going on.

00:28:18.912 --> 00:28:23.506
So, um, but yeah, like after the fact, like, looking back, it's so obvious.

00:28:23.506 --> 00:28:29.480
But, like, I was eating dairy regular, like regular pasteurized dairy every single meal of throughout the day.

00:28:29.480 --> 00:28:49.659
I'd have cheese or or milk or whatever else, and, um, and I was always bloated, I was always had, I always had gastric upset, I was, I was and like, and if I look to you, like, um, like, it's the same thing with cows, but if you look at your poop, it tells you you an awful lot about your digestion.

00:28:49.659 --> 00:28:55.400
And I was literally never constipated and I was always to the other extreme, always on average.

00:28:55.400 --> 00:29:05.276
So I was always had this borderline level of upset stomach and poor digestion and I never really put things together.

00:29:05.276 --> 00:29:07.657
It was just for me, it's my normal, so it's all I knew.

00:29:07.657 --> 00:29:18.303
And it wasn't until I started removing these things from my diet that I started noticing less bloating and I've realized that that, like this, is what my stomach normally should look like.

00:29:18.303 --> 00:29:25.612
It's just never like it literally was never looked like this way because, like, I wake in the morning, eat breakfast, have dairy, every meal throughout the day was dairy.

00:29:25.612 --> 00:29:26.553
So I was always bloated.

00:29:26.553 --> 00:29:27.375
That was just my norm.

00:29:27.375 --> 00:29:39.993
So, like that's, that definitely didn't help and that's one of the first things that I did is like I got a food sensitivity test and then I removed the foods I was reacting to and, unfortunately, those, like I was telling you before, because of the way I was eating.

00:29:39.993 --> 00:29:42.599
I developed more and more sensitivities over time.

00:29:42.599 --> 00:29:48.296
So it it helped, but, um, the the way I was eating wasn't quite ideal for my body.

00:29:48.856 --> 00:29:55.853
Um, I think it's really important to listen to your body and and eat what you, what makes you feel good, gives you vitality, and not be religious about your diet.

00:29:55.853 --> 00:29:56.875
It's not a religion.

00:29:56.875 --> 00:29:57.897
Don't be dogmatic.

00:29:57.897 --> 00:29:59.461
Eat what makes you feel good.

00:29:59.461 --> 00:30:02.096
So, so like, for it's like.

00:30:02.096 --> 00:30:03.420
That's definitely.

00:30:03.420 --> 00:30:04.824
Um, yeah, it had a.

00:30:04.824 --> 00:30:08.875
It had a big impact, just removing those foods that I'm sensitive to.

00:30:08.875 --> 00:30:18.499
And then now, like, I've added dairy back to my diet and I drink liters of this stuff without any impact and my digestion is still amazing.

00:30:18.499 --> 00:30:33.880
And the difference is it's less processed, it's not pasteurized, it's raw milk straight from our farm, and I'm in Canada, so raw dairy is illegal, but I'm one of the very few Canadians that can legally drink raw milk because I produce it myself.

00:30:33.880 --> 00:30:40.121
You can't distribute raw dairy, you can't transport raw dairy, you can't sell raw dairy, but if you produce it, you can drink it yourself.

00:30:41.529 --> 00:30:43.935
I'm rather uneducated on this topic.

00:30:43.935 --> 00:30:49.051
Uh, I've always known raw dairy to be dangerous for a variety of reasons.

00:30:49.051 --> 00:30:49.853
Can you speak to that?

00:30:49.853 --> 00:30:58.182
Logically, it seems like it makes sense to be able to drink something straight from the source.

00:30:58.182 --> 00:31:00.584
I get that, but it's also illegal.

00:31:00.584 --> 00:31:02.465
Can you just speak to either side of this?

00:31:06.355 --> 00:31:08.486
It's still one of those areas I'm trying to learn more about.

00:31:08.486 --> 00:31:33.751
No-transcript and proteins.

00:31:33.751 --> 00:31:35.699
It's not just a building block for your body.

00:31:35.699 --> 00:31:37.477
There's all sorts of different kinds of proteins.

00:31:37.477 --> 00:31:49.596
For example, there are cytokines, which are signaling molecules, and the whey protein, the main protein in milk, along with casein, the whey protein is actually a signaling molecule.

00:31:49.596 --> 00:31:50.674
It is a cytokine.

00:31:51.349 --> 00:31:58.715
And there are a long list of different cytokines in raw milk that have all sorts of different benefits for your body.

00:31:58.715 --> 00:32:03.512
Many of them are anti-inflammatory, many of them stimulate your immune system.

00:32:03.512 --> 00:32:08.963
Some of them actually stimulate the development of your gut lining.

00:32:08.963 --> 00:32:21.214
So sometimes people that have those extreme bouts of endurance, like those ultra marathons or the Ironmans, that exercise is so stressful that they'll actually have a leaky gut afterwards.

00:32:21.214 --> 00:32:26.472
So things like raw dairy can signal for the healing of that gut.

00:32:26.472 --> 00:32:33.596
Or people that have a leakyaky gut, it can help signal the development of that, of healing your gut lining, because that's what it does for baby calves.

00:32:33.596 --> 00:32:41.450
It the baby calf's gut is, because it's a baby, it's not mature, so it naturally stimulates the growth and the development of the gut.

00:32:41.450 --> 00:32:51.673
And another really interesting one is something called tnf, which is tumor necrosis factor, which has actually been shown to help your immune system fight and kill tumor cells.

00:32:51.673 --> 00:32:59.415
So there's a huge, long list of different cytokines with different benefits that are all denatured with pasteurization.

00:32:59.415 --> 00:33:04.271
And then another protein class of protein would be like enzymes.

00:33:04.271 --> 00:33:12.230
Enzymes are also proteins and there's 60 different kinds of enzymes in raw milk proteins.

00:33:12.230 --> 00:33:18.442
And there's 60 different kinds of enzymes in raw milk Again, all sorts of different functions.

00:33:18.461 --> 00:33:21.188
Many of them help make raw milk very, very easy to digest.

00:33:21.188 --> 00:33:23.531
There's lipases to digest the fats.

00:33:23.531 --> 00:33:25.954
There's proteases to digest the proteins.

00:33:25.954 --> 00:33:32.224
There's lactase to digest the lactose, the carbohydrates, the sugars in milk.

00:33:32.224 --> 00:33:35.976
So it'll literally digest itself in your gut.

00:33:35.976 --> 00:33:41.133
So that's why when you drink raw milk it's so easy to digest.

00:33:41.133 --> 00:33:42.636
That's why I don't have issues with it.

00:33:42.636 --> 00:33:52.616
Whereas after you pasteurize it, those enzymes are inactive and now it becomes all of a sudden one of the FDA's nine most allergenic foods that we can eat.

00:33:52.616 --> 00:33:57.272
So they're very different products ostrich dairy and raw dairy.

00:33:57.733 --> 00:33:59.598
But then there's also enzymes.

00:33:59.598 --> 00:34:06.803
There's a unique enzyme for every mineral in raw milk that helps with the absorption, the digestion, of those minerals.

00:34:06.803 --> 00:34:19.693
So once you inactivate those enzymes, all of a sudden you can't absorb the minerals to the same degree as you could have when it was raw, and so raw milk and milk in general.

00:34:19.693 --> 00:34:24.021
It has all of the required minerals and 24 microminerals in it.

00:34:24.021 --> 00:34:33.561
It's an amazing product whether it's pasteurized or not, but when you have those enzymes you're actually absorbing way way more of the of those, of those minerals.

00:34:33.561 --> 00:34:34.985
And then also the.

00:34:34.985 --> 00:34:39.557
The lot of vitamins, especially the fat soluble vitamins, are quite sensitive, so they're damaged.

00:34:39.557 --> 00:34:50.298
Um, between all the minerals and vitamins, I think there's somewhere between 38 and 80 percent loss of efficacy of the vitamins, minerals, after pasteurization, so like thereization.

00:34:50.298 --> 00:34:52.664
So the benefits are massive and measurable.

00:34:53.092 --> 00:34:56.269
There's a surprising amount of research done on the benefits of raw dairy.

00:34:56.269 --> 00:35:04.545
A lot of it is based off of reducing allergies and eczema in children.

00:35:04.545 --> 00:35:17.041
There's one research trial that I personally find very interesting because it was done on adults, and the adults that drank raw milk as kids had improved pulmonary function.

00:35:17.041 --> 00:35:24.523
Their lungs worked better, which tells me that the kids that consumed raw dairy developed better.

00:35:24.523 --> 00:35:29.159
They reached more of their genetic potential as far as the function of their lungs.

00:35:29.159 --> 00:35:31.731
So it's like for me and my kids.

00:35:31.731 --> 00:35:35.762
I really want my kids to drink raw milk because it's been shown to improve their development.

00:35:35.762 --> 00:35:39.056
So the research is out there and there's quite a bit of it.

00:35:39.056 --> 00:35:46.737
But then a lot of people say like, yeah, sure, there are these benefits, maybe, but it's not worth the risk.

00:35:48.099 --> 00:35:54.052
There is a 98% increase of getting sick from milk if it's raw compared to pasteurized.

00:35:54.052 --> 00:35:57.038
At 98%, that's a massive increase risk.

00:35:57.038 --> 00:36:10.664
But you can look at the exact same numbers and say my personal risk is 0.0075% of getting sick in a year if I drink it every single day of that year.

00:36:10.664 --> 00:36:14.715
And those two numbers they're from the same source.

00:36:14.715 --> 00:36:17.943
I looked at the National Institute of Health from 2014.

00:36:17.943 --> 00:36:22.400
That data is readily available on the internet and it's the same data.

00:36:22.400 --> 00:36:26.675
It's just relative risk compared to Absolute.

00:36:26.675 --> 00:36:29.199
Thank you, yeah, I was missing that word.

00:36:29.199 --> 00:36:31.244
Yeah, so that's, that's.

00:36:31.244 --> 00:36:31.670
That's just.

00:36:31.670 --> 00:36:34.083
It's just a different way of looking at the exact same numbers.

00:36:34.083 --> 00:36:41.804
So, like when I looked at it and um and then, and I looked at like how often would I get sick if I drink milk raw?

00:36:41.804 --> 00:36:59.682
And it worked out, if I did the math, that you would get sick or I would get sick once every 13,000 years if I drank it every single day, and I was like, well, that's a pretty low risk if I look at me personally and I know that I'm going to get these benefits, because I can't even drink dairy if it's not raw.

00:36:59.682 --> 00:37:03.920
It's like there's these known benefits and there's a relatively small risk.

00:37:03.920 --> 00:37:08.820
So that's why I started drinking raw milk myself.

00:37:09.349 --> 00:37:12.510
But it's different when you're producing it for consumers.

00:37:13.251 --> 00:37:22.005
You have to take I think, personally you must take more steps to ensure the safety of a product when you're producing it for other people.

00:37:22.005 --> 00:37:25.152
So what's actually?

00:37:25.152 --> 00:37:30.724
There's new technology available out there that's a game changer for raw dairy, for the safety of raw dairy.

00:37:30.724 --> 00:37:34.320
That is a testing technology that tests for pathogens.

00:37:34.320 --> 00:37:38.800
There's a brand in Ontario, really local to us, called the Kraken Sense.

00:37:38.800 --> 00:37:46.202
It can give you results for any pathogen you want within two and a half hours, sometimes even less.

00:37:46.971 --> 00:38:02.594
You can test the dairy, you can test the milk before you even ship it out to the consumers and test whether or not there's any pathogens growing in there and it it gives it tests automatically, so it can test throughout the day and uh, so it's, it's um, I think it's a game changer for as far as safety.

00:38:02.594 --> 00:38:17.347
Um, I feel like in general, the the risk was a was already quite low, but if you add on this testing technology, it'll decrease that risk even more, and the decrease in risk is a trend that's already happening.

00:38:17.347 --> 00:38:25.177
If you look at the data from 2005 to now, the risk of illness from drinking raw dairy has decreased by 74%.

00:38:25.177 --> 00:38:51.797
So obviously there's things that we can do better when we're producing milk specifically for consumption if we're going to consume it raw um, just because there's been a lot of messaging for so many years.

00:38:51.817 --> 00:38:55.210
But, yeah, I appreciate you kind of giving me a one-on-one class on raw dairy, something I definitely need to learn more about.

00:38:55.210 --> 00:38:56.795
I just I didn't grow up drinking milk.

00:38:56.795 --> 00:39:06.072
Um, it was just one of those things I've never really interested in, so it was just like kind of this blind spot as far as uh nutrition, for I mean, still up until now I still don't drink milk.

00:39:06.072 --> 00:39:07.655
So it's just one of those things.

00:39:07.655 --> 00:39:13.264
The raw dairy versus pasteurized is one of those areas that are just never, never really paid attention to.

00:39:13.264 --> 00:39:19.141
Um, I want to go on to kind of your company right Called moral eats.

00:39:20.630 --> 00:39:23.018
One of the things I saw on your website is that you don't do chickens.

00:39:23.018 --> 00:39:24.260
Why don't you do chickens?

00:39:24.260 --> 00:39:36.190
Um, cause, again, like I, I grew up in New Jersey, like I said, and there were many what I thought were like happy, happy chickens, happy, happy layers.

00:39:36.190 --> 00:39:37.253
Like I would get eggs.

00:39:37.253 --> 00:39:45.311
Like in New Jersey, there's just so many pieces, places that have a handful of chickens and they'll just they have an extra fridge in their garage and you would just go to.

00:39:45.311 --> 00:39:54.994
You, go down someone's driveway, go into their garage and leave them a few bucks for a dozen eggs, but you're like the chickens would just be like in the driveway.

00:39:54.994 --> 00:40:02.581
That was my, that was my threshold for like free range chickens if you had to avoid them while you're driving, driving to to go pick them up, um, so why no chickens?

00:40:05.338 --> 00:40:05.800
yeah, it's.

00:40:05.800 --> 00:40:08.690
I gotta be careful not to step on any of my toes when I talk about chickens.

00:40:08.690 --> 00:40:15.844
Um, it's something that I struggle with because there is an awful lot of demand for chicken products, whether it be the eggs or the meat.

00:40:15.844 --> 00:40:21.862
But we didn't do it because the mission of Moral Eats is to improve the lives of farm animals.

00:40:21.862 --> 00:40:33.494
So we take great pride in that every product that we offer on our website is produced in a way that has a positive impact on the welfare and the quality of life of the animals that produced it.

00:40:34.235 --> 00:40:44.556
So I instead moved towards turkeys, because, ultimately, the real reason I don't do chicken is the same reason why we don't do veal.

00:40:44.556 --> 00:40:52.867
It's just the length of their life is incredibly short and turkeys have a longer life.

00:40:52.867 --> 00:40:53.731
They're a bigger bird.

00:40:53.731 --> 00:40:54.998
They take longer to mature.

00:40:54.998 --> 00:40:58.313
That's why I tried doing turkey products instead.

00:40:58.313 --> 00:41:00.800
It's something that I was experimenting with.

00:41:00.800 --> 00:41:07.715
Unfortunately, of course, the turkey products are not as popular as chicken products.

00:41:07.715 --> 00:41:10.050
People don't eat turkey breasts the same way they eat chicken breasts.

00:41:10.050 --> 00:41:13.079
People don't eat turkey breasts the same way they eat chicken breasts.

00:41:13.079 --> 00:41:14.621
But it's something that I am experimenting with.

00:41:14.621 --> 00:41:33.103
I actually plan to have some small-scale chickens just for myself this coming year and just work towards how I can do it in a humane way, but also see if I can do that and produce it in a way that's cost effective and interesting enough for people to buy.

00:41:33.103 --> 00:41:47.320
Because I believe you can do chickens in a way that has great welfare, and that is by going back to some of these older breeds of chickens that are unfortunately less efficient.

00:41:47.320 --> 00:41:59.878
So, because the typical chickens are bred to such an extreme now the broiler chickens, the meat chickens they are ready for slaughter when they're six weeks old, which is a very, very, very young age.

00:41:59.878 --> 00:42:06.219
It's insane how young these chickens actually are, and you actually have to be careful to not feed them too hard.

00:42:06.219 --> 00:42:10.474
Don't give them too much energy or else they'll grow so fast that they'll give themselves a heart attack.

00:42:10.474 --> 00:42:17.976
So you're on that edge of like of what's possible as far as growth rates, so like uh, which is great.

00:42:17.976 --> 00:42:22.871
When the, the, the consumer is asking for the most efficient product possible.

00:42:22.871 --> 00:42:38.755
That is, that is what you create, that's what that's what the consumer created, even if they didn't intend directly for that Because they put on meat so efficiently and so quickly that they're ready to go by six weeks, whereas if you let them reach their mature size.

00:42:39.036 --> 00:43:02.001
Those chickens look like turkeys, they're big and then on the layer side of things, unfortunately those chickens they're bred to such an extreme where they they produce eggs very efficiently, like, um, they can produce, uh, an egg nearly every day of the year not quite, but pretty close whereas like the older, older breeds of chickens, they they were made 200 eggs a year.

00:43:02.001 --> 00:43:04.795
So now they're there's a.

00:43:04.795 --> 00:43:11.717
They really bred them for that efficiency of laying eggs which, unfortunately, because they're so good at laying eggs, they they don't put on meat very well.

00:43:11.717 --> 00:43:14.311
So the male chickens really don't have a purpose.

00:43:14.311 --> 00:43:25.655
So half the chickens that are hatched for the egg laying purposes unfortunately die on day one because they're male.

00:43:25.655 --> 00:43:29.123
So there's real challenges from a welfare perspective.

00:43:29.123 --> 00:43:32.670
They're male.

00:43:32.670 --> 00:43:34.117
So there's real challenges from a welfare perspective.

00:43:34.137 --> 00:43:36.949
And the way that I plan to work around that is by using some of these heritage breeds that are basically dual purpose.

00:43:36.949 --> 00:43:46.940
They put on meat really well, but not as well as the commercial broiled chicken, and they lay eggs quite well, but also not as well as the commercial layered chickens.

00:43:46.940 --> 00:43:53.880
They're a less efficient breed but they live longer, they can have a longer life and there's real use for the males and the female chickens.

00:43:53.880 --> 00:43:58.231
So there's a real opportunity to improve the welfare of chickens.

00:43:58.713 --> 00:44:19.858
The question is and it's like one more thing that I'm experimenting with is, if I raise them this way and they're this much older, are people willing to pay a price for that, where it makes sense for me to produce this at scale, like I'll probably do it for myself, regardless, but whether other people are willing to to pay that price, that's the real question and I'm not sure yet.

00:44:19.858 --> 00:44:24.224
I haven't haven't the experiment, I haven't gone down that road far enough yet to know that answer.

00:44:24.224 --> 00:44:25.831
But first I'm going to do it for myself.

00:44:25.831 --> 00:44:40.155
I'm going to see how, what the costs really are in raising these chickens this way, improving their welfare and doing it in a way that really improves the quality of their life and the length of their life, and then after that I'll see what the cost is and then see if people are willing to buy it.

00:44:40.155 --> 00:44:43.697
Otherwise that's an experiment.

00:44:43.697 --> 00:44:44.121
They'll die.

00:44:47.893 --> 00:44:58.521
I want to ask you about any of the issues around like slaughter, because this is probably something I'm going to end up doing in my lifetime, right?

00:44:58.521 --> 00:45:01.978
I'm just I'm moving towards probably having a farm of some scale.

00:45:01.978 --> 00:45:06.239
At some point there's probably going to be animals and they're probably going to need to be slaughtered.

00:45:06.239 --> 00:45:15.400
The thought of that is uncomfortable for me and a lot of people, probably on the vegan side, would be like well, that should tell you all you need to know, and I get that.

00:45:15.400 --> 00:45:32.443

Transforming Modern Farming and Enhancing Soil Health with Sander Van Stee (Part 2)

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