The Meat Mafia Podcast

Charles Mayfield is the founder of Farrow Skincare, an animal-based skincare product that does not contain fillers, additives, and other harmful chemicals. Charles became fascinated by the benefits of lard on the skin when he made the connection between the biology of humans and pigs. The origins of Farrow all started after a long day out in the July Tennessee sun. Charles decided to use some lard from his farm to protect his skin from peeling out of necessity and it wasn't until the next day that he realized his skin never peeled and his burn had vanished. At that point, Charles realized he was on to something. Now, Charles is on a mission to bring lard-based skincare to the masses and convince people to throw away their toxic skin creams.

Farrow Skincare - Use CODE 'MEATMAFIA' at checkout for 20% OFF

Key topics discussed:

- Metabolic health and its impact on overall well-being
- Benefits of animal-based products for skin and nutrition
- Evaluating conventional health advice vs independent thinking
- Addressing skin conditions through natural products​
- The role of hormones and their regulation in health and wellness

Timestamps:

(00:32) Skincare and Entrepreneurship Chat
(04:27) Connecting at Hack Your Health Conference
(18:29) Nutrient-Rich Shake Recipes and Social Connections
(22:19) Health Transformation and Empowerment
(26:23) Lost Intuition in Skincare Industry
(36:20) History and Significance of Pig Farming
(42:09) Pigs and Human Health


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*** LINKS***


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This episode of the podcast is brought to you by the CarnivoreCrowd over at CrowdHealth. When we first quit our jobs to focus on the podcast and Noble Origins full-time, we immediately signed up for CrowdHealth. They just launched their CarnivoreCrowd, which is designed to bring together metabolically healthy individuals into a cost-sharing community for medical bills. I don't know about you guys, but it's great knowing that the other members of the community care about their health as much as I do. If you're interested in joining the CarnivoreCrowd, use the code MEATMAFIA for $99 for the first three months. Also, check out the founder of CrowdHealth on episode 240 of The Meat Mafia Podcast.

Creators & Guests

Host
Brett Ender 🥩⚡️
The food system is corrupt and trying to poison us... I will teach you how to fight back. Co-Host of @themeatmafiapod 🥩
Host
Harry Gray 🥩⚡️
Leading the Red Meat Renaissance 🥩 ⚡️| Co-Host of @themeatmafiapod

What is The Meat Mafia Podcast?

The Meat Mafia Podcast is hosted by @MeatMafiaBrett and @MeatMafiaHarry with the mission of addressing fundamental problems in our food and healthcare system. Our concerns with our healthcare system can be drawn back to issues in our food system as far back as soil health. Our principles are simple: eat real foods, buy locally, and cook your own meals.

When you listen to our podcast, you will hear stories and conversations from people working on the fringes of the food and healthcare system to address the major crises overshadowing modern society: how do we become healthy again?

themeatmafiapodcast.substack.com

P1 Charles
===

[00:00:00] Charles, Charles, Charles. Let's go. It's been too long, John. Don't like how long it's been. It's been way too long. What have you been doing? Just lathering the world, man. You know, trying to keep up with Scott and Adelyn and my VPs and And getting ready for Hack Your Health, we're just coming off a great weekend at, always good to be in Austin and spend some time with you two fine gentlemen, so thanks for having me back on.

Dude, this is episode number three, so you came on in 2022, episode 46, that was the first time we actually got to meet, I think we did, you and I did a quick phone call before. That's right. Like when we had you on the podcast, the three of us, that was when I was in the old farmhouse. You were in the basement?

Yeah. Or it was an old farmhouse. Yeah, old farmhouse. One bedroom, farmhouse. You were lard, pilling us on all things, skincare, lard, tallow. And we had you on last year, episode 180 because we had hack your [00:01:00] health last year too. Yep. Now we've got you back in town and back on the podcast for episode number three.

It's pretty damn cool. It's a joy to be here. So I think I, I think I'm number three or four on the list of triple, triple plays for the Mafia Nation. So it's an honor. And You have been more than generous to us in terms of making connections for us, for people that we've had on the podcast a bunch of times, like Joel Salatin.

That was a good rip. Y'all have Will Harris. Yeah. Just a bunch of these legends. So super appreciative of your support. You've just been nothing but generous to us. So you're the man. Yeah. Well, rising tides lift all boats and I love surfing y'all's wake man. It's fun to watch y'all's trajectory and y'all are just absolutely killing it and noble's doing really well.

And so. Just good to get back together and chew the fat. It's been a cool journey. Let's do a little pinch of face food before we chew the fat. Let's not get too far out there. So this is your unscented face food. This was our, yeah, this [00:02:00] was the signature product we brought out this year. Um, yeah, a little goes a long way.

A little hang time here, Charles. Oh yeah. Look at that. That's the, that's the leaf lard doing all the talking there. So what am I looking at here? So you're looking at, uh, just four ingredients, leaf lard, lard, tallow, and a little dash of honey. And so, uh, Oh, so the unscented flavor has honey in it too. Yep.

Everything's got a little bit of honey. I've actually lightened. Uh, Oh, that's so nice. I loved your comment. I think it was, uh, Sunday, maybe Saturday or Sunday. Uh, Bell was doing all the interviews and you're like, man, I can get like zero sleep and Look like damn it. But if I put a little little face food on my face, everybody thinks I'm well rested.

Oh, it's so true It's it's so true. I mean glow when we met Harry was living in Austin. I was still in San Diego So right before you came in the podcast You generously sent us a bunch of [00:03:00] product when you're super generous with product anyone that knows you would agree with that Beautiful little handwritten note in there and I tried it for the first time because I'd only ever used talos skincare I've never I'd never seen another brand besides you guys using lard and you were telling us about you know The similarities between pigs pH and human skin pH and all that kind of stuff I remember taking a nice little dollop of it And just throw it on my skin and I'm like, dude, there's a, the, the mic is uneven, but I was like, there's a glow that comes from this product.

And even now I'll sleep four or five hours and I'll just throw a little bit of face food on or skin food. And people are like, dude, you look like super well rested. What are you using an aura ring using an eight sleep mattress? I'm like, no dude, I've just got the power of the lard. The lard is working miracles in your life.

It really is. Like I've gotten four hours of sleep and I just threw the lard on my face. Yeah. Yeah. It's so true though. I remember when we first got down to Austin, people would be like, you guys are like glowing, like it's this skin food we've been putting on our face. It's, it's great stuff. It's always fun to work these conferences because [00:04:00] I had a great team, booth team this year.

And, um, it's not day one, it's day two. Uh, you know, people come in and, and, you know, there's a bunch, I think there were probably three or four tallow vendors there this year. And we, you know, we love tallow. Uh, we use a little bit in our product. It's, any animal fat is always going to be better than, you know, the conventional junk in the skin care industry.

But man, it's that second day when people come back and they've, you know, they've lived their life. They've washed their hands after going to the bathroom, taking a shower and all that, and they're still just absolutely glowing. And so, it's a lot of fun. What was your big takeaway from Hack Your Health? Oh man, this year, biggest takeaway.

Well, I had, I had, what's the equivalent of like Snoop dog asking you to smoke a joint. I was, I was at the after party with Sean Baker. On, on Friday night and, uh, he cooked a bunch of people's steaks [00:05:00] and, uh, that was fun. No, I, I would say it was the, actually it was, it was the panel. It was the opening panel.

It got off to such a great start. It was, uh, Sean, Philadelphia. Um, I'm trying to remember who else was up there. Judy, uh, I think Judy was up there. I think, uh, Anthony Chafee was up there. It was a, it was a carnivore. It was a carnivore Q and a kind of thing. And, um, I'll take credit for it, but Phil Avedi is the one that said it.

I was like, what was your biggest takeaway? And he said, not one question about cholesterol and the lipid hypothesis. It was all, you know, above board stuff. And so. For me, that sort of signified that this movement, you know, at large, I'm over here in skincare land, but just general metabolic health, we're, we're making some progress.

And so that was, that was a big takeaway. And then, um, you know, there were some new vendors in the [00:06:00] space. This was, they're moving into Jacksonville, uh, Tampa, uh, next year, which I'm excited about. But, uh, the, the quality of people there this year, I think the numbers were a little down. Uh, relative to, to last year.

But the quality of people, uh, at HACURE Health this year was just outstanding. Yeah. Your booth was bumpin too. And we talk about this a lot. Um, you know, as founders, I think it's really important to Pick a product that almost embodies you in a similar way. So, you know Noble the nose to tail philosophy was big for us And then obviously Pharaoh you being the only regenerative lard based skincare on the market I feel like that really is an embodiment of you with your ranching background how much you love pigs and love the power of the pig too, but those conferences are just such a good way to really Connect with customers and get to learn your customer and understand that the questions that they're actually asking with your product And I think there's a tendency for founders in the D to C space [00:07:00] to just think like I can just run paid ads And I'm good to go But if you get that opportunity to shake your customers hand and you just you learn so much you learn the questions that they answer the things that they care about Because it's just so easy to be like, alright, well I'm going to pay this amount of money for a booth, what I'm going to get in return.

Not everything is quantifiable from that lens, too. There's like serendipity from conferences that I think you have to lean into. Well, yeah, and um, You know, again, rising tides lift all boats. And so, uh, even, even collaborating and talking to some of the other vendors, I mean, everybody's there on a mission to improve health.

And so not only the consumer connections, but also the, you know, the practitioner connections I made. So, uh, in terms of the brand and sort of who we got in front of this, this year, I would say probably highlighted by, uh, Karen Martell, uh, Nat Nidham, uh, a number of women, In the [00:08:00] pre and post metaposal space in terms of, um, you know, just metabolic health and, and, and being your best self and, you know, that, that highly aligns with skin care, obviously, but, uh, also having the ability, this is the first year, uh, I had a, uh, one of the gals in the booth, Belle, she's amazing, but she's, she's done really well with Instagram and so watching her work her magic and just seeing them.

How much that fed into just our some of our reels and stuff I I don't know what the drop off in terms of content on instagram is going to look like now now that the weekend's over but um, but yeah, that was a big highlight and then obviously we We, we dined with the Podfather and the Keeper last night, which is, is becoming an annual tradition.

It's special too. I mean, yeah, that, we met them down at, did you meet them in White Oak too? Yes. That was your first time meeting them as well? Yeah, well, we met Adam. Tina stayed in, uh, in [00:09:00] Texas. He came down and, uh, yeah, old slim got us all together down at white oak for that was September, October coming up on two years ago.

Yeah. It was September, two years ago, which is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I remember seeing him talking about value for value and just being drawn to the way that he thinks like such a unique thinker. And then just, I didn't really know who Adam Curry was at that point. Like I, I knew, but I didn't know, no. And then we've become friends, had him on the pod, did research before the pod.

And I'm like, this guy is just like the coolest dude. Well, and, and, and he's super plugged into everything, just, you know, the Noah, he and John on the Noah agenda podcast, they're, they're always poking every bear imaginable. And so he's a wealth of knowledge and just a great dude. Yeah, that I agree, Harry, that value for value talk.

I still think about it. Yeah. Um, and I think it's a, [00:10:00] I think it's a valuable. Uh, ethos, you know, as a consumer brand, I think it's a valuable ethos to just embrace because you know, the value I want to give, y'all are doing the same thing at noble. The value I want to give my customer is this is the cleanest, you know, uh, again, nose to tail, we're, we're not wasting any of the animal, uh, we're, we're, we're trying to source it from, you know, reputable locations.

Uh, but you know, when you get my product, it's, it's of the highest quality. And also. Highly effective, you know, it doesn't matter if the quality is good if it doesn't work. Yeah, and so and man Y'all's chocolate. I just You you slept in this morning. We didn't get a chance to make our magic coffee. I know it was it was a long night It was a long night, but we had water buffalo ice cream.

So it can't be that bad or a Bianco 16 percent fat in that Buffalo milk gelato [00:11:00] crazy. It's divine We got the peanut butter, stracciatella, what else did we get, vanilla? We got lemon sorbet, we got vanilla, we got Is there mocha? There was a mocha, there was a cherry. We ran up a tab, but it was worth every penny.

Yeah. I find that, um, some of our favorite memories the last couple of years are honestly just dinners like we had last night where someone makes a really good meal, great conversation. I think everyone at the table was talking. I feel like cooking has been a big part of your life too. Some people don't realize this, but you've written multiple cookbooks, including the portion of Rob Wolf's book, Wired to Eat.

Where did that passion for food come from? I don't think we've ever asked you that before on the podcast. Uh, candidly Boy Scouts. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I, well, I, I, I say Boy Scouts and, you know, I, I was blessed to have a stay at home mom growing up, and so I, I, I joke with people. I spent about half my youth. If I wasn't playing sports, I was in my dad's [00:12:00] workshop or mom's kitchen.

And so I've also got. It's probably, it's suitable for Pharoah because we handcraft everything, but if my hands are busy, my brain's kind of calm and so cooking's a really good outlet for that. And, uh, yeah, we, we, um, Julie and I published our first book in 2010, uh, Paleo Comfort Foods and, and, and we were pushed into doing that by Rob and, um, Yeah, it was, it was, it was a cool journey.

And when Rob, when Rob's Wired to Eat book came around, he reached out and he's like, man, I'd love for you guys to do the recipes. And that was, that was a joy. Um, it's a great book. Uh, we were talking, I think, yesterday about the seven day carb test and just sort of, now that CGMs are so, so common, that, that feels like a little bit easier, easier task to complete.

But, um, but yeah, it was, it was, uh, I would say Boy Scouts. Um, Um, [00:13:00] I was fortunate enough, my dad was a, was the scout master for our local troop. And so you can't go into Boy Scouts until you're 12, but I was, I was like 10 years old and he dragged me along on, on trips, but yeah, you know, you go out and you camp for three, four or five days, you hike in, you, you cook.

Um, and so that was, I would say that was probably where it started. And then, you know, out of college, I was sort of just. I just like cooking and and and y'all know this. I mean, we've had some great meals at some amazing restaurants here But you know whether it was the steak that Sean Baker cooked on Friday night or just, uh, or the, the burgers and brats we had it.

Oh, that those brats, by the way, at the Curry's last night were sick, like a cheese, little cheese in there, like cheddar brats. But yeah, I mean, there's a part of eating connected to just a community [00:14:00] and just being there with people and, you know, restaurants are great, but they're loud. And so just being able to just settle in for the evening and, um, and, and partake in sort of the whole experience is, is great.

Well, how much of that are we missing in today's culture? Just I think about what we did in the backyard for the barbecue. You guys crushed that, by the way. Just like food and people. Yeah. Well, we're missing it. I mean, it's a, it's a piece. Uh, you know, we've been indoctrinating, you know, they've been pounding into our heads for 60 years.

You know, it's hard to eat healthy or convenience, convenience. And so, you know, the average consumer, I, I, guilty as charged, the average consumer, you know, chases convenience and, um, It's not that that's not important, but there's a, you know, it's, it's just like the externalized costs and sort of the industrial food system, there's, there's some externalized costs to outsourcing the entire [00:15:00] process of food preparation and ingredient selection and things of that nature.

And, you know, candidly, the, the best foods I've ever eaten had the arguably the fewest ingredients and you can pronounce them all. And so, yeah, I, I think we're, it's not that we're missing it. I think it's, it's been. It's on the rise though. You know, just the, the ability to share a meal and, you know, I've been sort of carnivore adjacent or carnivore for a couple years and I have, even in my tightest paleo days, I don't think I've ever enjoyed eating.

so much as I do now. And so, for the listeners that are out there, it's low hanging fruit, man. Just throw a steak on the grill or grill up some burgers and teach your kids to do it. Ned's back. Freshly showered. Yeah, I think that, um, to your point, this whole [00:16:00] process of, um, Reclaiming your health. It should be a really enjoyable, fun experience and I think as we've evolved over time with the podcast, what we've kind of deduced our whole thing down to is like, if you can just prioritize foods that are made by God and you're cooking those meals and you're sharing those meals with people that you love and you care about.

You're going to be in such a good spot too. And a lot of times with these, I would encourage anyone, you should, for people to start throwing dinner parties. It doesn't need to be anything crazy. It could be like you said, burgers on the grill, a couple of cheap cuts of steak, set out some plates for people, nice little round table, tell everyone to throw their phones in the middle of the table or leave it in the car and you'll have some of the best conversations and connections you've ever had.

And you also get really healthy and eat delicious food in the process. It's like you're kind of checking all three boxes doing that. Sure. Well, and, and you know, the, the coolest thing about, you know, what, what Noble's doing is y'all, y'all sort of giving people that middle ground. So you've got a convenient, uh, Choice for folks in a pinch, [00:17:00] but it's still based in sort of real ingredients, you know, uh, foods made by God.

And so, you know, I, I, I love that little wedge that you, you know, y'all are, y'all are pushing into that space between convenience and, and just full on, uh, ownership of, of, of, of the dinner plate. And so, and, and, you know, again, I, if my protein intake for the day is not where I need it to be, it's a, you know, a couple scoops later.

And, God, raw milk. Y'all's, your chocolate mixed with raw milk, I'd do like a scoop and a half per pint. So it's, it's more like a chocolate mousse by the time I'm done with it, but it's delicious. Dude, you can get a little cream in there too, and you can make it almost like as thick as a milkshake that you would get.

Stop. Yeah. Stop. A little egg yolk in there. That's a new one you've added to my lexicon of um, of um, Noble exploits. I will, I will try that when I get home. Yeah, for anyone listening who [00:18:00] needs to, the rundown on how to use Noble, it's this simple. Two scoops, raw milk, glass of raw milk, egg yolks, potentially two egg yolks.

Mix it up in a blender. That thing will be so frothy. Oh, I think that's, that's probably 50, 60 grams of protein. Or more. No, more. With the raw milk and the yolks. Close to a hundred. How are you gonna beat that? You can't. Well, the cool thing about Noble too is um, you can kind of customize it to your goals.

So like right now, I'm trying to cut a little bit. So what I'll do is I'll do one to two scoops of the chocolate, so each scoop only has 85 calories, some ice, some mineral water, and then to still kind of get that creaminess, because a lot of people don't like the taste of just protein powder and water, you throw those two egg yolks in, so that adds the creaminess and the protein and the minerals too, and it, it froths it up a little bit, and then I'll just do like a tiny little splash of heavy cream.

So that shake is still only like 300 [00:19:00] calories, but so many good nutrients, and you know you, like Harry was saying, you get 50 60 grams of protein in there too, but you're cutting while you're drinking that. Well, and you're, you're, you're goosin the fat. Goosin the fat. With those, with those yolks, yeah. Yeah.

That's, that's, you know what we need to do. So you save your, your whites, and then you use a little Noble and you make some chocolate Noble meringues. Ooh. I'll be back next week. We need you back here. Figure it out. We need you back here full time. I wish, we wish you lived in Austin full time. Well, if I could get, if I could get my VPs over here, we might, we might make the run, but uh, that's, that's not reality.

We'll just, well, we got to do a trip to Charleston to see Ray, Ray Ray. Oh yeah, that's a must. And Dana's sister's down there too, is that right? Yeah, her sister Kirsten is out in Charleston, and then Harry's older brother lives with his younger brother. The whole squad's down there. The whole squad? Yeah. Um, you're making me think of Bastrop.

The red, the red light room? That was some fun times, man. That was a good [00:20:00] setup. Anthony, we, we miss you. Yeah. Um, that was a, that was a pretty, that was, that was the second time we hung out. Right? Yeah. Cause it was post beef initiative. White Oak. Yeah, the conference we did at White Oak was the first time. It was White Oak and then Bastrop and then KetoCon.

Yeah. Yep. And then Hack Your Health. It's been a year. Has it? No, it hasn't been a year. It's been over a year. It's been over a year. Over a year. Because Hack Your Health last year was April. The virtual world like throws me off now. Oh yeah. I can't remember when I last pressed palms with you guys, but yeah.

I sound like a broken record and Harry and I talk about this all the time on the show, but You really can make some of the best friends of your life on social media if you lean into it too because if you're in the same algorithm on Instagram and Twitter, you have a similar philosophy about the world health in general.

And I would just encourage anyone if there's people that you're connecting with on Twitter It's like take calls with them try and meet up with them in person because you know We're such close [00:21:00] friends and that was all facilitated off of social media and now it's like our brands are growing together We're good friends.

Like it's just a special thing So funny. So again some great connections out of out of the event this weekend and like my my second Message after great to meet you is like, send me your cell. Cause I, cause I like to move people over. I'm I'm old school. It's like, if you need me, text me. I think we were talking yesterday and somebody said.

Um, if you've got a problem with me, call me. If you don't have my number, then you don't have a problem with me. And, uh, I think it was Pastor Jimmy that said that yesterday at dinner. Am I right? I don't think he I didn't I don't know if he I heard him say that. Yeah. So we got to meet Jimmy and Annette last night, too.

That was a real treat. That dude's jacked. He's jacked. Yeah, so Pastor Jimmy and Annette, they're, um, Adam Curry and his wife Tina's pastor out in Fredericksburg. And so they're 60, I think Pastor Jimmy is 62. And [00:22:00] they've been carnivore for about a year. They're on like day 333 or something like that. And they've like transformed their health and it's amazing to hear them talk about it.

And then, then meeting Sean Baker this weekend, Chafee, Kiltz, these people that they've learned so much from. And then they get to bridge that gap and meet them in person. You know, you see all these people that are hitting 60 years old and it's like, ah, I've got 20 years left. I'm just going to decline and fizzle out.

And when they're like, no man, we want to build this church and we feel great. We've lost 20 pounds. Our energy is amazing. Pastor Jimmy was saying that, you know, as he's gotten his hormones into a better place, it's kind of. given him that vim to, to preach stronger messages at church too. So it's so cool just to have those, those run ins with people that have changed their lives by eating this particular way.

And it makes you realize that there's this whole other version of yourself that's sitting out there. But until you change those habits, like you're just going to let that version of yourself kind of just sit there and be dormant. I think the goal of all this is to bring that higher version of yourself into existence.

Yeah. He talked a lot last night [00:23:00] about, I guess he took about a month off sabbatical. Yeah. You know, the church is obviously always coming under fire and And, uh, I, I, he alluded to the energy and, and, and the strength he was pulling from, you know, changing his diet and just improving his health. And that, that being one of the things that really lit the fire to, man, I got to get back in the pulpit and let it rip.

It was cool. I mean, you could see the effect of a guy who got his health. It sounded like he wasn't all that unhealthy to begin with, but said he lost 20 pounds, which is so does a net, which is incredible. Yeah. And then. Like out of some brain fog, but getting your health in order and having a purpose I mean, that, that's like 95 percent of the battle.

Yeah, I used to tell people back in the paleo sort of coaching days, like, you know, if, if you wear glasses, it's anyone that wears contact your glasses. It's a really good, um, analogy, but you know, it's like that first time you put [00:24:00] glasses on. You, you, you've walked around thinking over this is what the world looks like and then all of a sudden you slide those lenses on and you're like, Oh my God, everything goes from so, so vague to just hyper granular.

And that's, it's no different with your health. You know, you, you get, you get to one place one step at a time for better, for worse. And, and, um, you know, the numbers don't lie. The metabolic health in this country and the obesity and, um, and it's. It's, it's very troubling. Uh, I, I do think we're turning a corner, uh, in many respects.

Again, there was not a, a cholesterol question on the, on the opening panel. And so, uh, I, I, I mean, it's obviously a lot of like minded folks coming here. But, but, um, that was the first time I've ever been to an event like that. I've been coming to Austin for over a decade for events like this and adjacent to it.

And I think that's the first time I've ever been. You know, spent all weekend and not heard about [00:25:00] cholesterol in terms of its negative connotations. And so that's, that's progress. Yeah, I feel like people are, um, they've seen enough information where they're encouraged to speak for themselves. And it seems like, especially the, the body of people that were at Hack Your Health, I think they have that mindset of, my doctor works for me.

They understand the different layers of metabolic health. And I think they're also realizing, okay, Maybe my LDL went up a little bit, but if my waist size is getting smaller, which is my biggest indicator of my metabolic health. Which is what Dr. Avedia talks about in his book, Stay Off My Operating Table, and all these other biomarkers are improving, then I think I'm good, and I don't need to be concerned about cholesterol being the boogeyman.

And I think you're just starting to see that spread, and people starting to think for themselves, which is super encouraging. But um, one of the things I will say is that you gave a talk this weekend, How the Lord Works in Mysterious Ways. Monumental. Monumental. I didn't get, I didn't get to go to it because I was sampling, but Harry came back and was like, he was like, [00:26:00] dude, I think that was Charles's magnum opus.

It was good. It flowed really well. So we had a, right before the talk started, we had a little technical snafu. They, for whatever reason, my talk slides didn't come through. And, uh, and the guy before me ran over a little bit. And so I've got this like tight window. So I've sprint, you know, we were upstairs in the breakout room.

And so there's like dead sprint down to grab my computer and come back up. And so I was, I was loose as a goose by the time, uh, by the time things cranked up. I saw you come back down to get your, your laptop. And you were like, I got to get back up there. I'm looking at my, my watch and you had two minutes to get back up.

Oh yeah. So you, and the last event was letting out. And so they were like, people, I was like, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. Oh my God. Bobbing and weaving. Hey, that's why you train, right? When you got two minutes to get downstairs to upstairs. No, it went, it went really well. You know, [00:27:00] kept it really broad.

You know, we, we tried to touch on sort of three. Three high level tenants, you know, sort of our history with pigs, you know, arguably the first animal we domesticated for meat. And I never knew that, you know, I did, I did a lot of research for this. You know, I've been over in farming land and Pharaoh land, but, you know, just diving into some of the history, uh, you know, some high points like Golan who was, if you don't know Golan, he was, uh, Marcus Aurelius is like concierge doctor and, uh, you know, in the mid 300s publishes this, all this work and credits, credits his, his ability to understand the anatomy of a pig to understanding the anatomy of a human.

And so that was one of those. And, uh, so a little bit of the history, a little bit of the um, you know, just the, the, the biological facts about lard and also the pig, and then, you know, some farming components too. It all, it all ties together, and [00:28:00] so, yeah, we had a great, it was a good talk, uh, the buzz around the, the booth after the talk was fantastic, and that stretched all the way into Sunday.

Um, we had, we had a guy, I know you all remember him. Super jacked dude, bald guy, and uh, young, young bald guy with psoriasis. And he came to the talk, because he cooks a lot of pork. He's from New Orleans. Brandon, if you're out there, love you man. And um, you know, I was in and out of the booth. The girls managed the booth a lot over the weekend.

And so, I kept coming back to the booth and they kept saying, Man, there's a guy walking around with psoriasis. Like it's, it's gone. Like he started using it on Friday, and here it is Saturday afternoon, and he came back, and was like, it's gone. I was like, who is it? And, um, anyway, we ended up on Sunday finally talking, and I put two and two together, and you know, Bell got a video or two with him, and, uh, and, and, and chopped that up.

But, you know, that's, I mean, [00:29:00] again, I'm, I'm sure you guys get some of this with, with Noble, but, To have just just that moment. That's the weekend, you know, like check we've we've crushed it Here's one guy that's you know fan for life and probably a customer for life and also cooks a lot of pork in new orleans So we're gonna try and leverage that into some fun, dude.

That's the business. That's right So one one life turning like that now no longer has to deal with the struggles of psoriasis, which yeah I'm sure it's brutal Well, I mean, one could argue that the pharmaceutical side of skin care is actually even more nefarious than the just general consumer side of skin care, because they're making it, it's a base cream, right?

And so they're making it with the cheapest, cheapest, nastiest, you know, most preservative laden ingredients. And then they're shipping that goop off to a compounding pharmacy and injecting, you know, whatever steroid or topical. [00:30:00] You know, uh, medications, you know, to, to treat the, whatever condition. And, um, you know, that was a lot of the chats I had with, like, Karen Martell and, and, uh, Nat Nidum.

And, uh, there was one more. Um, oh, I, I, I lathered Amy Horn, Dr. Amy Horniman on Sunday. That was, that was a hoot. But, you know, these are all women in sort of the, uh, Pre post metaposal world with, with hormone health specifically around to, to women. And again, some of the medicated creams they're recommending are just noxious.

I mean, the base cream, it'd be like, uh, it'd be like wrapping your vitamins in, in a pile of dung before you swallowed them. It's like, okay, the vitamins are good, but the carrier, carrier, not so nice. So anyway. Yeah, it's like intuitively you think about the different levels of skin care that [00:31:00] exist and it's the same thing as food Because our skin really is treating skin care as if it is food, which I'm sure you'll expand on But like of course an ingredient that God has made is gonna be better than something synthetic for your skin Well see what they've done in nutrition, you know with things that we eat, you know, they put synthetic plant and synthetic and plant based Uh, proteins on the same level as animal based proteins.

Well, we don't metabolize those things the same way. You know, beyond, I think it was Beyond Meat that got in a ton of trouble. What was it, two years ago? For the labeling, they were saying, you know, 19 grams of protein per serving, but you can only, you know, You can only absorb 10. And so, uh, you know, skin care is no different.

You know, skin care is like a hot button in skin care. It's like hyaluronic, I can never pronounce this one. Hyaluronic acid, that's a big one. Retinol is another big one. [00:32:00] Retinol is vitamin A. And do you want, Is it naturally occurring vitamin A that a, that a, you know, pastured pig has metabolized from a healthy diet and environment and stored in its fat?

Or do you want some chemical synthetic that was, you know, derived in a lab somewhere? And, you know, there's, there's not a, there's not a double blind placebo test to show this. But intuitively, one of those is better than the other. You know, I, one of the tenets of the talk was we, we, We've just lost our intuition.

Um, you know, Slim was the one that introduced us, his first event in Kerrville to, right at two years ago at this point. Um, Dr. Mary Kerr was there and I'll never forget this. During her talk she said, we're the only animal on the planet that has to have someone tell us what our intuitive diet is. And so, we, we've just lost our intuition.

One of my slides was, A bunch of lard cans from like turn of the century. [00:33:00] This is pre refrigeration, this is pre HVAC, and you know, this is pre grocery store. You know, you walk into your general store in whatever town you lived in. And, uh, there was a 100 percent chance you were walking out of that store with a can of lard.

And, you know, fast forward to today and it's like, and even when I say lard, people assume tallow. Like, they just, they don't even have the differentiation. Not that there should be, but they are different. They come from different animals. You know, um, I jokingly say, you know, we're not a coconut, we're not a shea, and we're not an olive.

You know, these are fats, uh, prevalent, uh, real fats in the skincare industry. But we're also not a cow. I know we're not a pig either, but we're, we're way more biologically similar to, to pigs than we are pigs. Cows, which is, which is why we, we lead with lard again, Talos in our product. But Talos, actually we, we, we [00:34:00] crafted a message this weekend.

Uh, I, I think our product works well with Talos. So for your listeners out there that are on a Talos product, they're great. But Talos sits up on the surface of your skin a little bit. And there's a, there's a new concept in skincare called slugging. Have you heard of this one? No. So you put your, you put your quality, yeah, I can see where, I can see where you're going here.

Slug sauce. You put your, you put your, you put your high quality skincare product on whatever that is. Yeah. And you let it soak in and then you cover your skin with like petroleum jelly or something. It's not going to penetrate the skin. It's going to act more as a barrier. And so it's going to keep that moisture in.

You know, I think that's a really good feature to sort of pair tallow with lard, you know, put the lard on, let your skin eat it because it, it recognizes it more, more readily. And then, you know, once it's [00:35:00] soaked in, if you get a little tallow laying around, just glaze the top and you're done. So Brett mentioned your presentation, you were talking about the slides with all the tubs of lard on it.

Which was incredible. The one thing that stood out to me was like this, just the way you told the history of Lard. And you talked about this story about pigs going from like the Midwest up to Chicago, being herded up there. It was the craziest. I was like, I can't tell if this is real or not. Dude, it was, no, listen, doing all this research, so everyone's, everyone's idea of pigs today, even it at a polyface type location, you know, here's a fence, And, you know, we've got electric fencing, keeping things in, we still move them around and all that, but doing my research.

So, in the, during the Civil War, the meat packing industry relocated from Cincinnati to Chicago. [00:36:00] Um, the Confederate Army blockaded Cincinnati, and so the Union Army, in an effort to preserve their foods, supply, moved the meatpacking industry to Chicago. Also at the time, most of the pigs were, were being raised in on the East coast, but the corn, the Corn Belt today was being developed.

And, um, and, and one of the reasons pigs became way more prominent as a meat stuff for us was because they could, they could thrive on corn. And of course, the Corn Belt moved to Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, the Corn Belt, And so as we get closer to the, you know, late 1800s, early 20th century, a lot of the pig farming in the U.

S. transitioned to that part of the world. And again, this is pre electric fencing. You know, these, the stat that blew my mind, I put up a slide, um, the University of Oklahoma [00:37:00] has kept very detailed records of the pork industry in the state. And in 1920, there were 1. 3 million hogs. Yes, 1. 3 million hogs in documented in the state of, uh, Oklahoma and those hogs were on 130, 000 farms.

Now to just bring that forward today, give or take today, there's about 2. 2 million hogs in Oklahoma on 2700 farms. So we've had a almost 180 percent increase in the total number of hogs. But we've had a thousand percent increase tenfold decrease in the number of farms, but there were no fences You would go harvest your cornfield Every farm had hogs because you'd harvest your corn or your weed or your whatever you were growing and there would [00:38:00] inherently be lots of grains that just weren't picked up in the harvesting process and they would just go out and Glean the fields, you know, there's they're an omnivore just like us.

So there's really nothing that goes to waste when you've got pigs And when it came time to slaughter, this is, this is what you were getting at, Harry. So we used to, we used to only be able to kill animals in mass, you know, when it was cold. And so, and, and pigs actually fit a very seasonal meat production scale because it takes about eight months from birth to market weight.

And so you raise the pigs up, birth them in the spring, raise them up through the fall, and when winter runs around, You, you, you heard them, they would herd them, no fences, no nothing, like a shepherd. Migrate them upwards. They would migrate them from the, from the Midwest corn belt to Chicago. Chicago, at one time, Chicago and the, the, the meat packing industry in Chicago at the turn of the century was [00:39:00] employing roughly about 45, 000 people.

and was harvesting anywhere from 15 to 18 million animals a year. But the reality is they were harvesting the vast majority of those animals from November through March because it was cold enough. You could slaughter the animal and hang it and it wouldn't spoil. And, and you know, this is just trying to recontextualize, you know, uh, how significant the pig was.

So pigs, just like humans, Pigs preferentially take caloric abundance and store it in their fat. We do the same thing, right? And so that, that subcutaneous fat acts as a real barrier to protect the meat in the curing process. Pigs are also unique in that you can, what's called scald and scrape them. So you can heat the, heat the skin, you know, post mortem, you know, you've, you've taken this animal's life.

It's time to eviscerate it. Well, before you take the. [00:40:00] Uh, carcass and cut it open. You can scald with hot water and you scrape the hair off. Well, that skin, I, one of the slides, you remember the slide with the ham? Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, so I, I had a bunch, I had a bunch of excess pork. This is probably 2000, this would have been 2017, 18.

And I had a bunch of extra pork and it was time to go to the slaughterhouse. And so rather than turning a lot of that into sausage to sell, I, I reserved, God, I think it was eight hams. And so I took it, took the pigs to a place that scalds and scraped the skins on and I took those hams and went and had them cured and smoked.

And. Fast forward four years later. Yeah, this was 2007, 2018. So January 1st, 2022, we had a New Year's party and I break one. This is a four year old piece of meat and we [00:41:00] can't, we can't conceptualize the idea or the significance of being able to kill and cure a piece of meat now and keep it good. You know, without refrigeration for years, and man, we cracked that thing open.

I featured this, Brett, I know you weren't there. Featured this slide of this prosciutto ham and uh, but, but again, these are, these are things that are unique to the pig and, and the point I wanted to get across, you know, there's a lot of this poof argument today about, and look, not all pigs and not all art are created equal, but that's not the point.

The point is, you can raise a very healthy, very happy. One bad day, extremely nutritionally dense. Uh, pig and then you can, you can preserve that and of course, obviously repurpose the fat for cooking or, or for skincare for, it was, you remember the slide with all the textile [00:42:00] uses? Yes. Dude. Only thing you can't use on the pig is the squeal.

It's a great slide. Crazy. We, we harvest over 20 hormones out of pigs to this day. This is the other thing. Like, they're, they're a modern day hero in terms of human health. We harvest over 20 hormones from pigs. And we use them directly in human bodies. Oh, yeah. One of the slides, so the medical slide, I had Pharmaceuticals?

Oh, yeah. For sure. Every EpiPen in this country. I don't think they're synthesizing epinephrine. Probably are. But we harvest epinephrine from pigs and use it in humans. The line in the talk was, I don't know what's more life saving an EpiPen or bacon, but they both come from the pig. So It's close. It's close.

It's close. Anyway, yeah, it was a great talk and we got a lot of great feedback. I haven't looked at the results. We did a little survey at the end because the goal is to try and sort of [00:43:00] Hammer down that talk to, to a more of a TED talk domain, which I think is like 10, 12, 15 minutes, something like that, because I, I, I think the modern consumer needs to understand how valuable these animals are and, and, you know, And they need to be raised in a way that's aligned with nature, that's not externalizing, you know, terrible costs to our environment, you know, manure lagoons and things of that nature.

And we're a long way from it. You know, 98 percent of the pork grown in this country is, is, is in the industrial model. But, you know, if we can get that 98 to 95, you know, 5 percent seems to be a critical benchmark. And it's, it's just going to take consumers demanding higher quality and asking their store to carry products and, and hopefully over time, more people.

Uh, are willing to live a lifestyle that aligns with, with agriculture. You know

yeah.