#72: Dr. Shawn Baker (@SBakerMD) - Leveraging a Carnivore Diet to Reclaim Your Health

Meat Mafia. What is going on? Welcome back to another episode of the Meat Mafia podcast. Today's episode, we are joined by a legend, and he needs no introduction, but I'll do my best. Here we go.

On today's episode, we are joined by doctor Sean Baker, and doctor Baker has become an icon in the world of animal based nutrition for popularizing the growing carnivore diet, which has reached and improved the lives of millions of people. Doctor. Baker has competed in athletics at the highest levels, served overseas, performed surgeries, written a book, and launched a telemedicine business. His career in health and athletics is decorated with accomplishments, and the proof is in the pudding with Doctor. Baker.

What you see is what you get. He's transformed millions of lives by changing the perceptions around eating a meat only diet as a tool to cure chronic diseases like obesity, hypertension, type two diabetes, and autoimmune conditions like IBS, colitis, and Crohn's disease. In our conversation with doctor Baker, we discussed addressing the elephant in the room. Why are we so unhealthy and how can we fix it? Dispelling the pervasive narrative about meat being bad for people and the planet.

The misconceptions around the carnivore diet, like cholesterol and fiber, performing at a high level on the carnivore diet, and then finally launching Revero, his telemedicine business. Our conversation with doctor Baker covered a lot of ground, so sit back and enjoy this one. Alright. Without further ado, doctor Sean Baker. I hate ads, so I'll make this quick.

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Now for the episode. Enjoy. Doctor Sean Baker, welcome to the Meat Mafia podcast. It's a pleasure to have you.

Well, it's certainly a pleasure to be here and to see you guys virtually as you guys alluded to. I got to meet you in person before, which is kinda nice. So, anyway yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

It's it's it's a lot of fun. And thanks for doing this. I mean, you know, like I said, I think the more people we get that understand and promote and and and get out there and get this message out there that meat is a health food, the better. So thanks for doing this.

Yeah. It's it's, it's it's cool for both of us too because I think, doctor Baker, maybe I think two months ago, I was fortunate enough to go on your podcast and speak to the Rivero community, which is great because I think there are a number of people in there that have either, like, colitis, Crohn's, IBS, and have had a lot of success, with the carnivore diet. And, I mean, before we kick off, we honestly just wanted to thank you because, you know, for us too, like many other people in the carnivore animal based space, you know, we came across your information in 2018, and that really jump started us on this journey. And, you know, now I know for me with colitis, I'm off all medication, not on any types of drugs or anything like that. So completely changed my life.

So just wanted to thank you for all the work that you've been doing.

Yeah. I mean and and and just that's that that alone is enough. I mean, I I gosh. I can't tell you how many people that I've seen now that same sort of story, colitis, Crohn's disease, on and on and on. And it's just just so rewarding to, be able to to have that impact on people.

And so that yeah. Thanks for thanks for, that. And, thanks for continuing to share your story.

We could probably put a highlight reel together of people who have said doctor Sean Baker on our podcast

Thank you.

Referencing you as their their gateway into the carnivore world. So it it's been pretty cool just, you know, seeing I think I came across your stuff, like, two years ago and just seeing, you know, the trajectory of what you've done is it's been amazing.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, at the end of the day, it's not, you know, I'm not gonna take credit for inventing people eating meat. I mean, that's been But, you know, like I said, it's it's we live in an age now where it's easier to get information out there, which is, you know, I think some of the people that have done this over the years prior to me didn't have that that mechanism. I've been very fortunate. You know?

And and, you know, and and rightly so, I mean, you put yourself up to more criticism. If you get out there, you you you get the you get the criticism as much as the accolades and, but it's fun. You know, it's a fun time to to to see this stuff and, you know, kinda get some validation of what you're doing. And, anyway, what do you guys wanna chat about?

I'm surprised no one's come come at you yet for having the last name Baker and being a carnivore or whatever.

We've heard some of that. You know, Canterbury and I and people, you know, they they've got, you know, berry and baker and salad type names and, you know, it's just you know, it is what it is. I mean, I think I think my ancestors might have been bakers in Germany or something like that. So who knows?

You can bake a steak. Yeah.

You can bake a steak. You can bake meat for sure. Baking Also,

be before we dig into the good stuff, you're talking about how you've been a influencer of a lot of the big, dot carnivore doctors in the space. Doctor Brian Lenzkis, who's a mutual friend of the three of ours great endocrinologists in San Diego, he commented when I said that you were coming on the podcast, and he said, I just need you to collect the $50 that doctor Baker owes you good luck and thanks. I don't know what he's referring to there. But

Yeah. You know, I'm not sure either. I think Brian's Brian's a great guy. Just to just to say to everyone if you're listening, you know, continue to keep up the good work. But, yeah.

Well, you know, we can we can we can work on that if if possible, if we need to.

Yeah. We'll we'll dig into all of it, but I think a little background on you, doctor Baker, would be great. We know when we got to meet you in person, we were talking about how you're, you know, multi sport, extremely high level athlete, background in rugby. You know, you're also also an orthopedic surgeon. You spent time in the air force overseas.

I think we would love to dig into all that and just learn a little bit more about, you know, the steps along the way with your nutritional journey that's gotten you to the point where you're at now.

Yeah. I mean, there's there was no point earlier in my life did I ever see myself as being some sort of nutritional advice giver. I mean, that was that was so far from, you know, anything I'd ever thought I would do. But I, you know, I did from an early age, have an interest in medicine. I I knew I wanted to be a doctor probably somewhere in my teenage years and started making you know, taking the necessary steps to do that.

So, you know, studying hard, getting a biology degree. I did get sidetracked with rugby for a while. I mean, I started medical school out out of college, and then I got suckered into playing rugby and was ended up being pretty good at it. And so I got selected to, you know, recruited to go live in New Zealand to do that and play with some really high level stuff and, ended up kinda dropping out of medical school to do that and then came back and wasn't quite ready to hang up the cleats yet. So I continued.

I I I joined the military to to continue my rugby career. At that time in the early nineties, you know, that was a place to do it. So I ended up, you know, playing rugby, but my day job was launching nuclear missiles. And so learned how to do that, trained to do that for about five years, and then ended up going back into medical school. The Air Force then decided, you know, was was willing to pay for it so I could finish my education.

I continued to pursue sports. So I went from rugby. I think I then I went into, competitive powerlifting, where I was, you know, reasonably successful. I ended up pulling a a, American record, several American records, national records, state records in the deadlift, culminating, I think, in a 771 whatever something. 350 kilogram deadlift, you know, as a drug free athlete.

I've always been a lifetime drug free guy. I've been pretty proud of that. From there, you know, I go back into medical school, continue to go I did some strongman stuff. I ended up, you know, doing like, I went to the very first ever national strongman championships in The United States. I think I took fifth place overall at that time and, you know, pretty decent, you know, decent at it.

But, you know, I knew that I wasn't going to do some of the things required. A lot of a lot of the drug usage in there just kinda turned me off the sport. Then I went into, Highland Games. I think I did went from there and and ended up, winning to national national titles and world championships in that, and then continued my my surgical career, finished, you know, kinda, you know, becoming an orthopedic surgeon doing that for several decades. And then I got into rowing, I think.

Yeah. Well, that's what I did next. Won, you know, set American national world records in rowing, once in that won won a world championship in that. So that's been kind of my athletic career, my my medical career. Along the way, you know, as an orthopedic surgeon, I got into my mid forties and started realizing that my health was starting to decline like every other 40 year old on the planet was seeming to do.

You know, it's getting older, fatter, sicker. Things are hurting, and I didn't like that very frankly. And so I started really delving into nutrition because I I kinda maxed out the training side. I was training really hard, competing as an athlete. You know, my my training was very, very, excuse me, solid, but my nutrition probably was lacking.

I was just kinda eating, you know, I was eating a high protein diet, not eating much a bunch of junk food, but I was, you know, just not as healthy as I could have been. So I played with I went on a never went on a plant based diet. You know, thankfully, I was never sort of willing to do that. But I did go pretty low fat, you know, very vegetable salad heavy, lost weight. I did lose weight doing that, but I was just frankly miserable.

I mean, I was tired, cold, angry. You know, no one liked me at the time. I was just always grouchy. So I I quickly discovered that I could maintain that. So I I ended up doing more paleo and then ketogenic and low low carbon ketogenic.

And then finally, back in 02/2016, kinda found these wacko, nutty, crazy people doing carnivore diets. So it wasn't it wasn't called carnivore at the time. I I will take credit for calling it the carnivore diet. I I I named carnivore diet before it was people calling it the zeroing in zero carb diet, which was kinda confusing because, you know, it was like, no. You're not eating canola oil, which is zero carb.

And no. You're not drinking diet coke, which is zero carb. But and, yes, you're eating some dairy, which does have carbohydrates. So it was a really confusing sort of thing. And, you know, the and the focus was really just eating meat.

And I just I just kinda, you know, adopted some of the principles and called it the carnivore diet and and then, you know, got, you know, got some notoriety. You know, going on Rogan's podcast, obviously, was something that, you know, brings a lot of attention to it. I got a lot of a lot of positive attention, but I also got a lot of unwanted negative attention from the, you know, the vegan the vegan mafia, so to speak. And, you know, decided that, oh my god. There's a guy telling people to eat meat, and and he must be the devil incarnate.

So, yeah, that's that's kind of the background story, you know, and here I am six years later still eating steaks every day and still arguably thriving. And, you know, that's it's been fun to see. It's been fun to see the how it's kinda taken off and it's gotten a life it's a life of its own. And, there are now literally, I think at this point, probably as many as millions of people that have that have heard of the carnivore diet. Many of them have tried it with varying degrees of success.

Most people find it. It it is a positive experience for the most part.

Duck doctor Baker, when you were optimizing for performance back in your athletic days, what did your diet look like back then? Was it more kinda relying on genetics and eating what you wanted and just training hard, or was there something more focused around your dietary plan back then?

Well, I think back then, I mean, you know, you you really you know, what what I was focusing mostly is on strength sports. And so it was, you know, a lot of food, a lot of protein, and a lot of training. And so that's that's really what it was. And I think that's still generally, you know, in a general category what most people wanna be successful, particularly those types of sports they're gonna need to do. They're gonna need to eat eat a lot of protein.

They're gonna eat a lot of food. And, of course, you're gonna have to do the training. The training is probably the most important aspect of it, you know, assuming you get adequate calories and protein and then the rest of it kind of, you know, it's of less importance. Unless you got it unless you're older or got some kind of illness or something like that, then then we find where you can really tailor things in and that really makes a big difference.

And doctor Baker, I think you mentioned in your book, the carnivore diet, you initially went down a paleo rabbit hole before you ended up going carnivore. Is that correct?

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I I, you know, I was out there looking at all the paleo stuff and the paleo cookbooks and making all the paleo products and, you know yeah.

I mean, I and and to be honest, I enjoyed it. It it it definitely was an improvement from where I had been. You know? It wasn't where I ended up and I felt, you know, obviously, carnivore for me provided me the most most benefit ultimately. So that's that's where I am now.

When when you hear that. Yeah. I was just gonna ask, when you hear people talk about carbohydrates in terms of performance Mhmm. When you're eating steak now, do you do you see carbs as a a limiting factor for your performance or, you know, not having that carb intake?

You know, I mean, again, I can only speak for myself. Although it's curious and interesting, we're seeing so many high level athletes now adopting this with tremendous success. I mean, there was a guy just, you know, US Olympic, wrestling team, which fully carnivore, the guy just won the big ten decathlon, you know, championships, carnivore. And so we're seeing a lot of MMA fighters, NFL athletes. So I think that there are many people that can do extremely well, extremely high level of athletic performance without the carbohydrates.

Again, it's not that you don't need glucose to complete. I mean, we know that glucose is part of this, you know, the fuel that we use when we're at we're at high intensity, we're gonna be using we're gonna preference glucose. You know? I mean, we've got this phosphocreatine system that that allows us to to do the really short, like, two second burst type stuff. You know, the the real but beyond that, then you start getting into glucose and and glycolysis and anaerobic glycolysis before you get into the oxidative stuff.

And, I mean, I don't have any issues. I mean, I can only compare myself from my performance in in the past when I was using carbohydrates versus now. There's been no decline in performance. And in fact, my performance has gotten better, at a better body composition with better recovery and and, you know, less I think I performed with as good of intensity or better without the carbohydrates. Personally, that's me.

Now other people may have a different experience.

I mean, you've set world records on a carnivore diet with rowing. Is that right? Correct?

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And and just in fact, the other day, I hopped on there and I'm number one in the world, you know, in my age group, you know, for the 50 category without much training at all, you know, with with very minimal training. I just hopped on there because I had done it in six months or more.

And I said, well, let's see what I can do. And I I literally was the fastest guy in the world. So, yeah, I do it without carbs all the time.

Is it exciting for you to see, like, I I know, you know, someone like Noah Sinnergaard, all star pitcher for the Angels. He's adopted an animal based approach to approach to eating. I know he's really intentional about sourcing stuff from his farm. Is that exciting for you to see these Main Street at Main Street Athletes start to break into the carnivore space and see what their athletic performance could do over the next couple years?

Yeah. I I do think we're gonna continue to see more and more athletes adopt this. You know? I think it's, you know, it's initially, I I've seen that overseas in particular with some of the some of the high level rugby players in New Zealand and Australia. Yes.

It's exciting to see that. I think we're gonna see more and more athletes adopting this. Some of them are reluctant to be public about it because it's sort of politically incorrect to eat meat or it's becoming that way or people want it to become that way. But, yeah, I think more and more people, you know, when when at the end of the day, when the money is on the line, when, you know, when your performance is all that matters between, you know, being flipping burgers versus, you know, starting for the, you know, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Mhmm.

Yeah. The people are gonna people are gonna discover that this is, you know, an animal based diet is hugely hugely important. And whether you're a % carnivore or you're mostly eating meat and, you know, you have a few other things, I think we're gonna see more and more of that clearly.

Well and and, Brett, to your point, when you start looking at the other side of the aisle too, a lot of these athletes do fall for that political messaging and and do start to go towards that vegan route of a diet, and you see them start to break down a little bit faster, I I know it's somewhat anecdotal, but, you know, I've seen headlines of a lot of these athletes who adopt a vegan diet start to get injured more frequently. And, you know, it could be random, but there's obviously you know, there is something to it when you when you look at it over a longer period of time.

Well, you know, you you like, Canelo Alvarez was one of the most recent ones. You know, Lewis Hamilton's just having an awful season now. I mean, there's a point. You know, I think the harder the the more difficult, the more physical the sport, the more strength dependent, the more contact and violent the sport, the less likely these these sort of plant based folks tend to do. You know, so you see, like, a lot of these guys, Cam Newton, you know, we can go on and on.

There's all kinds of athletes that have have tried this vegan experiment and most of them have failed with that. And it's not just the anecdotal stuff. I mean, there's there's scientific studies looking at vegan healing. Like, if you get an injury, they don't heal as well. And there's there's actually little scientific medical literature that shows that, there's there's four studies that that, one particular author did, that was looking at skin healing.

This is a dermatologist from Italy and I posted a number of her studies. Four studies all clearly show that in every single situation, a vegan diet leads to poor tissue quality, poor tissue healing. So I yeah. You know, it's not surprising to see a carry over to the athletic, athletic world.

I mean, the the number of pictures and transformation stories that I've seen the last year alone of people that were formerly vegan or plant based, you see the before and after picture before they go animal based. And before, their face is all broken out, their skin is flushed, they're bloated, they're talking about how irritable they were, and then you see them go animal based. I'm not just saying this because all three of us love this diet. It's like there's literally, like, this glowiness and vitality to their skin. And I even think about myself when I was healing myself with colitis.

It was like I was you know, I think one of the first things I did when I started going keto is I would eat a of steak with, like, cruciferous vegetables. I'm like, oh, steak and broccoli. And after I would eat it, I was like, damn. I feel pretty good, but I feel bloated. And then I started hearing more stories about, you know, lectins and defense chemicals.

And then as soon as I cut out the dark leafy greens and the cruciferous vegetables, my digestion was the best that it ever been within, like, within a few days. So it's just interesting to hear those stories.

Yeah. And they continue to come in. You know? This is one of those things, you know, people say, what's a fad diet? You know?

It's people are gonna do it. But the the the problem with that is it works well for so many people, and the cream won't rise to the top. And I, you know, I I I see that you know, obviously, I see it every day. I literally do consultations, every day of the week, and the week does not go by where I don't get a whole bunch of vegans, ex vegans. It's they just tell me, mate, that diet wrecked my health, and I'm trying to rebuild all the things that I lost, you know, whether it's sarcopenia, dental health, autoimmune issues, gut disturbances, skin issues, you know, whatever.

Mental mental clarity. They find that they improve with with an animal based diet just just over and over again. So there's something there for sure. When the science catches up to it, you know, it'll probably be a while. We've got some studies in the literature now that are showing in fact, you know, it's interesting because there are not a lot of carnivore studies out there.

There are several that are now been published. And every single study that's been published on a carnivore diet shows extremely positive results. And so if you wanna have a hypothesis, the hypothesis you should have is based on all the anecdotal reports, the science that's out there so far, some of the historical information that we know with certain societies that were mostly animal based, that animal based diet is clearly healthy. Instead, we choose to use standard American diet, you know, burger and fry heaters and say that's what meat eat meat eating does when when that's clearly not the case.

What when did we lose that idea of eating meat? Or when do we start to think about this idea of eating meat as being a bad thing?

Probably around 1917 when the Seventh Day Adventists founded the American Dietetics Association. You know, this you know, Seventh Day Adventists are very much a, you know, a religion that strongly believes that meat is sinful and the root of lust and and, you know, impure impurity. And and so they sort of sort of started nutrition. I mean, nutrition science literally was started by these folks that that that believe that way. So there's always been a religious undertone to nutrition, and they've they've well penetrated and well controlled, the the origins of nutrition, and they still can have a huge hold on that today.

And so we've we've seen that for at least a hundred years now.

Yeah. We had on doctor Gary Fedke, and that was one of the big things that he hit in on was the influence of Seventh Day Adventism in The US dietary system and how the the original Kellogg's cereal was literally created by John Harvey Kellogg to suppress sexual urges and to get men to stop masturbating. So they took away the meat and replaced it with a cereal loaded with refined grains and sugars and but it's it's just interesting how many people don't know this history. Like, I bet if you ask over nine out of 10 people, no one would have any idea that this Kellogg's cereal is rooted back into that. Do you ever think about that?

Well, I know about it now. So, I mean yeah. It's not something that's always on my mind. But Yeah.

It's just, you know,

John Harvey Kelly was correct. I mean, he he his postulate was red meat makes you sinful and lusty, and grain cereal shut that down. It turns out scientifically, there's actually a nice study that was done looking at replacing, higher fat, low fiber diets with high fiber, low fat diets, and it showed a direct correlation with a drop in testosterone. So it works. I mean, what he did works, and it clearly clearly has done what it's supposed to do.

Doctor Baker, when you have people come to you looking to get into the carnivore diet, what sort of things do you start to tell them, just to get them moving in the right direction? Because, obviously, I think from a, you know, your average person's perspective, eating all meat is a bit of an extreme, move in one direction. So I'm curious how how you approach talking to people about it.

Well, I mean, if people are coming to me, they've already sort of made that mental decision that that, you know, that's something they like to try. So that's a different but, you know, the guy on the street, you know, if if somebody's just random and they're just trekking a casual conversation and they're kind of interested about health and nutrition, you know. First of all, I try to be an example for people. You know, I'm like, look, I'm, you know, I'm sick. I'm 55 years old.

I'm in pretty good shape. You know, I'm I'm I'm clearly doing some things right, and so people are curious about that. And I said, I had to see too much steak most days, and then they're like, what? And then I have to, you know, go through the, you know, the the sort of the spiel about, you know, how, you know, meat has been sort of misaligned miss miss you know, misappropriately demonized and that that type of stuff. But I mean, for the average person, it says, I wanna improve my health.

And I'm like, well, what got you in the situation where you're either obese or have issues? And usually, it's, you know, usually, it's the the typical junk food. That's what most people are struggling with. And I I kinda talked to him about, you know, the first thing, I don't care what what someone's ultimate goal is, whether it is to cure depression or to get rid of colitis like like Brett had to do. I tell people, you know, you've gotta first figure out this food relationship thing.

Why are you eating? If you're eating for reasons outside of nourishing your body as a primary reason, then then you've got some issues there. And it's not that I don't eat for pleasure. I mean, I I I just had a rib eye steak a few minutes before I came on. It was damn good.

I liked every bite of it. I was I was very happy the whole time I was eating. But, I mean, you gotta get people to address these food addiction, non nutritive reasons for eating, whether it's boredom, stress, emotional stuff, you know, you know, just because of what time it is. You know, you just learn to eat for for those reasons. And then once they start to do that, it may take them a couple months, then they can start to, you know, start to focus on these other specific issues.

But I think that's usually what most people have issues with.

One of the things that we love about your approach too, especially with the way you approach your eating from what we see is that it's like it's very simple. It's like you enjoy eating rib eyes and steak, and that's the that's the basis of your diet. I feel like I've seen you go on phases before for maybe, like, a week or so where you'll incorporate more eggs or salmon or fish, but but you very simply will say, look. I love eating rib eyes. I love the fat content.

They're delicious. They satiate me. And when I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm not hungry, I don't eat. And I feel like that's a really good way to approach it because that's one of the biggest things that we hear with people that wanna go on the carnivore diet is they don't necessarily know what to eat or how to approach those things, and you just make it very simple for people, which I think is important.

Well, I mean, I think that nutrition should be simple. I mean, we don't have a real elaborate ritual on how to go to the bathroom room or how how much air we inhale. I mean, there's no one telling you need to breathe 12 times a minute. Thinking about that and, you know, most animals in the wild, they don't have a stopwatch. They don't have an app.

They don't have a menu. They're just eating what naturally comes to them. And I think this is something that we're a species like any other species and we should have a diet that allows for that. It should be how much do I eat eat till I'm full? When do I eat when I'm hungry?

And there should be a food that allows you to do that that doesn't lead to disease. Now you could say, well, I could eat ice cream all day, and eat it when I'm hungry and I would enjoy it. But what are the results of that? The results are uniformly bad. So there should be a food that doesn't result in badness if you eat it in that in that way as much as I need eat when I'm hungry, don't don't eat when I'm not.

And usually meat fills fills fills the bill pretty nicely with that. You know, it has protein which provides a pretty high level of satiation, which is an immediate effect of being full. And then if you have enough fat in there, it provides a long term satiety. So I think meat meat fits the bill very bill very nicely, in that regard. So it should be simple.

I mean, nutrition shouldn't be complicated. You shouldn't need a PhD to figure out how to eat. You shouldn't need it to to ask somebody with a PhD and want to eat. You know? Like I said, you should be able to explain it to your dog.

You know? I mean, dogs. Okay. Here you go, dogs. This is what you got, and they're happy to eat.

And, you know, they're picking pretty well.

It was was that part of your motivation for starting Revero? And and we should have mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast that you've been building this company or or a part of building this company, Revero, which is a a telemedicine business. You know, I'd be curious to hear more about your motivations for starting that because I I think it's a great idea.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm a physician. I mean, this is what I trained to do. This is what I took an oath to do. And, you know, like I said, I have you know, I think the health care system does not allow people to do what they wanna do in that regard.

I think there's a lot of a lot to be desired with the modern health care system, and so we wanna build an alternative. There are a lot of people that, you know, either feel like me or most of them are people that that, you know, I've I've been able to influence to to regain their health. And they're like, look. This is something that we need to do to help other people to do this because, there are there are literally millions and millions of people that are suffering unnecessarily, and they can't get the help they need. And the physicians largely are kinda clueless with it.

It's not that physicians are bad people or greedy or evil or, you know, you know, employ pharmaceutical companies, you know, knowingly. It's just that the system is is not set up to to actually take care of people in a way that I think makes a meaningful difference for most people. I mean, we're good at putting band aids on. As an orthopedic surgeon, yeah, I mean, I did some great stuff. I mean, I I, you know, I I replaced knees and hips and shoulders and people felt tremendously better.

But, ultimately, those were just high high high price band aids.

And, you

know, you could replace somebody's knee, replace their left knee, and two years later, they're back in for the right knee. What you should have done was prevented the arthritis in the first place, and and I think do that with nutrition and lifestyle in many cases.

One of the things that we were fired up about is we know that you you guys very intentionally made the decision with Rivero to go through the the crowdfunding platform Republic. And we remember when you first publicly posted about it. I mean, you guys hit your fundraising goal of $3,000,000 so quickly. It was like every day I was checking the numbers, and it was like thousands and thousands of dollars coming in. I mean, I'm sure that probably was an amazing feeling for you to hit the goal so quickly.

Right?

Yeah. I mean, initially, we we we were, you know, kinda torn about it because, you know, traditionally, when you raise money for a start up company or health care company, you go through venture capital. And we did some of that. We have some some funding from there as well. But, you know, the thought was, you know, there's this there's this sort of relatively new phenomenon called crowd equity, which prior to 02/2016 was not allowed.

You had to be an accredited investor. And we've had a lot of, you know, just we've impacted we've been in the public eye. I've been in the public eye. We have had a lot of people that have seen success and believe in what we're doing. And it was nice to see.

And so initially, we said, well, let's try to raise a million dollars, which is a lot of money. I mean, it's it's it's definitely a lot of money. And we got that in a week. I mean, it was like, holy cow. We're gonna make dollars in a week.

So we said, well, let's let's max it out at 3,000,000, which is what we could do. And then we raised we end up raising just over $5,000,000, between, credit equity and and and private private venture capital. So now we are in the hiring engineers and designing pays, and we'll be hiring some physicians and clinical folks and some business people and some marketing people building out the product for the next year or so. And then we'll go back to crowd well, we'll go back to fundraising, probably raising, I don't know, 30 to $50,000,000 to sort of allow us to scale at a national level and and and and then really bring this product to the market in a way that I think is going to, you know, impact tens, hundreds of thousands, eventually millions of people.

It it's really promising to see what you're doing in in the vision for it. We've had a few other guests on, doctor Tro and doctor Phil Abadia, who are doing similar similar concept ideas around this telemedicine business. Do you think that's a a wave you you see continuing to happen, or are there enough doctors out there who are willing to take that risk outside of the the purview of of kind of that main medical, view or or fields?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There's this is a this is a burgeoning field. There are a lot of lot of companies out there that have similar ideas. I look at some of the you know, some of them make me laugh because I'm like, they're not gonna work.

You know? Because I see I saw one company that got a lot of funding. They got, like, $10,000,000 of funding to design diets based on your analysis, you know. And I'm just like, you know, this is just kind of you know, I just think this is the point. But, there's a there's a lot of interest out there.

I mean, health care is obviously or health in general is obviously a huge, huge market. I mean, United States alone, we spend 3 and a half trillion dollars a year annually on chronic disease, and it's growing those numbers. And with the current inflation, it's probably closer to 5,000,000 5,000,000,000,000 rather. So the market is there. There's everybody wants a piece of that market.

The the the the people are tired of being sick. I mean, most people don't wanna be on all these medications and bouncing from doctor to doctor and sort of never getting resolution and and feeling frustrated. So there's a lot of frustration. There's a huge pain point. We clearly, as a country, spent so much money and our return is so bad.

So, yeah, I I think alternatives are gonna spring up all over the place, you know, where it's gonna end up. We're hoping that Rivera will be one of the larger players out there, and I think there's no reason we can't be. And that's our goal is to be a very large, large component of of the ultimate US and global health care, effort.

Is the current system sustainable in its current trajectory? Like, you mentioned that 3 and a half trillion dollar cost. I mean, that's insane.

I don't think it is. I think and I think many people are realizing that there. And and a lot of people are waking up to this because, you know, we continue to just spend more money and we dump more money into technology, which, you know, it's kind of bells and whistle stuff, but it doesn't ultimately address the problem. And I think, you know, we have to have an overhaul of the food system. We have to, you know, sort of redefine what our goals are with regard to health.

And, you know, we're so fixated on lab markers and these little sort of, you know, biomarker proxy things, but it's not we're we're not really treating health. And I think until we sort of say our goal is to get people off medications and make them actually healthy so they're productive, happy, feel good, look good, perform good. Once that becomes our goal, then I think you you just have to approach it a different way.

Mhmm.

You you see a number of detractors that are rooted in western medicine that will their their common pushback is, oh, you know, everything we're hearing about these carnivore animal based diets, they're all anecdotal. There aren't enough studies that are pointing to the the efficacy of these approaches. In your perspective, how do we go about just acquiring funding or support for some of these studies just to be able to push back on the detractors and people that are demanding for more of those studies? Because I don't know the behind the scenes mechanisms of how that works, and I imagine our audience probably doesn't either.

Yeah. Well, I mean, we're we are, you know, determined to do some of those studies. I mean, they're you know, you studies are expensive. You know, $5,000,000 is a lot of money, but it's not that much money when it comes to doing major clinical trials. And so we'll do some of them.

There'll be some other that are being done. I mean, there's an interest here. I think that, you know, part of that really the thing that's really gonna drive that is ultimately money. I mean, this is money makes the world go around. It's no surprise.

And if you can show a benefit to somebody, some interested party, and it's not gonna be pharma, it's not going to be, you know, free to lay, they're they're not gonna make money off of this. So but other people will. And, you know, it might be Ford Motor Company. It might be, you know, it might be Intel. It might be UPS.

Because once their employees stop you know, health care expenses for any major company is huge. You know, those are those are some of the biggest expenses or those are some of the biggest expenses that they face, you know, paying for their employees' health care. And as we get sicker and fatter and more people with chronic diseases, expenses just go up and up and up. And so everybody's looking for a way to reduce those costs because if you can reduce your cost, you can make more money. And so this is just a simple simple solution.

So if you if we can demonstrate, which I think we will, that we can we can get people off medications like for your instance, you know, Brett, you you you came off of how much how much money were you saving a year?

Fifty k per infusion every eight weeks.

So I'm gonna you

know, what is that? It's it's it's $300,000 a year or something like that. So, I mean, you multiply that out by thousands of people of, you know, varying degrees, and all of a sudden you're into some big money. And, you know, to not have to pay for that, because somebody's paying for that. You might have your insurance company is paying for it, but we all were paying for it through our premiums.

And so Mhmm. You know, you you take some of that money out of health care and you direct it somewhere useful. You know, I'd rather have people doing something useful than just spending money on drugs. I mean, that that don't really, you know, ultimately just lead to chronically sick people that are just being medicated.

One of the things we talk about a lot on the on this podcast and you mentioned earlier is the food system. And I I imagine a world where if we were spending $3,500,000,000,000 on health care costs and just re reallocated that towards building a better food system, we would have a much smaller health care need. How do you view how do you view the food system as it is now? Because there's so many different aspects to it. Right?

Like, you have real foods. You have fake foods and products. And even in the real food world, we have these arguments going on between, like, conventional beef production versus grass fed and regenerative. So it's a very, like, complicated world for people to get a a grasp on what's right. Once you get to the real food food equation, things get easier.

But how do you see the future looking, you know, if we do kinda pull ourselves out of this? Like, how can this actually work going forward?

Well, I mean, it's, you know, I mean, to the food industry's credit, I mean, they have managed to produce a lot of calories. I mean, they produce a hell of a lot of calories. They feed a lot of people, you know, and and some of that has come, at the cost of individual health. You know, we're refining processes that, you know, the efficiencies, the things are turning into food. I mean, USDA just approved cotton for human consumption.

So we'll see cotton fiber being shoved into food and into processed food as a fiber additive most likely or as a protein, you know, they they say it's gonna be ground up. Cotton seeds will make like a hummus like paste and stuff like that. So they're continually innovating, and doing that to feed more people. Now the problem with that is, you know, like I said, we're we're just turning people into malnourished people because they're they're they're obese, but yet they're malnourished. And so, I think, you know, one of the questions was about the beef industry and where do you think it's going because we have all these alternative proteins.

I don't think despite guys like Ethan Brown and Patrick Brown, see, you know, Impossible Foods and and Beyond Meat saying they wanna make animal agriculture go away by 2035 or whatever their projected goals is. That's probably nonsense. I mean, what we're gonna continue to see is the beef industry, the animal agriculture industry will continue to to to to to grow as world demand grows. You'll see these other companies pop up, and they'll take us they'll have a segment on the market for sure. And that's really what they want.

They they they talk a tough game about, you know, we're gonna save the planet and cut out all the cow farts and animal suffering, all of the virtue signaling nonsense. That's just smoke and mirrors. All they wanna do is grow a a market share. That's their their real ultimate goal is just to make money. And if they can convince 20% of the people to eat Beyond Meat burgers on Mondays and Wednesdays, that's huge.

I mean, that's, you know, the you're into the hundreds of billions of dollars a year in that market. So that's really what they're trying to do. So I don't think the beef industry is going away anytime soon. I think, you know, there's going to be some people that give up meat. There's gonna be some people that struggle to afford it.

There's gonna be some regulations that are gonna come out there. There's gonna be carbon credit and taxes and things like that. But I I just don't think it's gonna go away, anytime soon. The beef industry, I mean, it's one point it's a $1,400,000,000,000 industry globally, or the meat industry is. And they're gonna continue to, you know, wanna use that then.

And they're they're powerful. They have a lot of money. They have a lot of representation. They're not gonna just roll up and roll up the carpet and shut the doors down and and just produce plant burgers. Now they are getting into that.

Now if you look at, like, Cargill and Tyson and some of these other companies, they are producing a plant based product and all and they're gonna they're gonna grow cultured meat as well. They're they're gonna they just wanna own everything. They wanna own all of the market, and they're you know, it'll be further centralized. And, you know, the problem with the, the problem with, the fake meat, the the lab grown meat is it becomes intellectual property in many cases. They'll patent some process, and they're the only ones that are allowed to do this.

And so they further centralize the meat supply or the food supply, which I think is largely a bad thing now. Today, anybody who has a patch of, you know, 40 acres can put a couple of cows on there and grow beef. There's no patent about that. Now whether it's regulated to make it tough for the average person to do it and they, you know, they make it challenging is is potentially possible. I mean, it depends on what goes on.

But I think, I don't think that in my lifetime, we'll see the end of meat in any time shape shape or form. Now there's continued push and and sort of propaganda going out there particularly after the little kids. You know, little kids are being taught in school that meat is bad for you and it's bad for the environment. You should give it up. And the poor little animals are suffering and all this sort of, you know, sort of basically propaganda.

So I I but I do think that, we'll see a continued I mean, plant based meat's not going away. Cell culture meat's gonna hit the scene and, you know, I I don't know. I'm a little skeptical about that just because the technology is involved. It seems like it may not be scalable. There's some really, really significant technological hurdles from a cost standpoint.

Now we may subsidize the hell out of it. You know, we may you know, it may be cost ineffective, but the government may may just pay for that ineffectiveness for whatever reason. I'm not sure why. But but, yeah, I don't think meat is gonna be completely gone anytime soon. It may or, I mean, it may not dominate the market.

Right now, like, Beyond Meat and that stuff and those fake meats, they represent about 1% of that market right now. It's a tiny, tiny percentage. And and if they can get to 20%, they would be over the moon. I don't know if they'll ever get there, but that's that's our goal.

Yeah. You you touched on a great point. We saw we were watching Vinny Tortorich's documentary beyond impossible, which is an amazing film, And we were blown away. We had no idea that these big four packers all have fake meat commodities that they're also selling to. So I think that you touched on a really important point.

One of the things that we've noticed on your podcast is you've had a number of just local farmers, ranchers on just to talk to them a little bit at about their approach and their methodology. Do you see a world as as you start to think about maybe the next two to five to ten years, do you see a world where people will try and get more intentional about how they source their meat and maybe a resurgence of, like, these small local processing facilities?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, there yeah. There's definitely people that are interested in that, and that and that move is gonna continue to grow. And I think, you know, some of it will be motivated by a desire to do better from from a consumer standpoint.

You know, I think, legitimately, I think there are some some really good, things outcomes that that come from that stuff. Now is it possible to convert all 700,000 ranches in The United States to, you know, biodynamic or not biodynamic, you know, adapt to multipaddic grazing situations? Probably not. I mean, honestly, probably not. But you can convert significant percentage of it.

I think, you know, Allen Williams has done some good research on that. He's out of Joyce Farms, I think, down in Alabama, I wanna say. But he is, you know, he's looked at it and said, you know, if you can convert something like 40% of the current grazing operations into, holistic regenerative, you could offset the entire carbon footprint entire country, everything. You know, transportation, industry, all that stuff would be offset just by the animals alone, which would be a really, really cool thing to do. We're seeing, you know, like I said, there's, on the intensive side, you know, with with the with the feedlots and stuff like that, they're going to start additives.

You know, we're gonna see these red algae additives to dramatically reduce the methane emissions. All these things are gonna happen in the name of climate change, sustainability. You know, dairy farms are using digesters now to take the manure and turn it into natural gas. And so, we're gonna see a further, all all across the board, you know, intensive extensive grazing. So that's gonna whether it makes a difference or not, I'm not I'm not convinced it does.

I don't think cows are the big issue when it comes to human human direct to climate change. I know there's a lot of people think that's complete nonsense as well. I don't know. I'm not a climate scientist. I'm not an expert.

I can tell you the one thing I can I I'm pretty good at is human health and particularly my own human health? I don't need I don't need a study for me to know if I'm healthy or not, and I don't think most of us do. I think most of us can figure that out. Now when it comes to is the world getting hotter or colder or, you know, what's the cause of inflation, all those things, I can't I I can't confirm or deny. I just don't have the the the tools or the, you know, the resource.

I don't think any of us do. I mean, but what we can do is know, did I if I was in pain yesterday and I'm not in pain today. That's something we all can can figure out.

Doctor Baker, one of the things I was curious to ask you is, you know, from starting this diet until now, have you changed your stance on anything around, the carnivore diet or nutrition in general?

You know, honestly, I don't really think so. I mean, you know, I I I was never particularly dogmatic to start with. I you know, there were people out there saying you must do this and you must do that. I'm like, I don't know, man. I just know people eat a bunch of meat, they do well.

Let's start with that with that assumption. And I really haven't changed much. I know there's people out there saying that you've gotta do this, you've gotta include this in the diet and they're, you know, and and I just I just don't find any evidence that that compels me that way. You know, I haven't been dogmatic about you have to eat grass finished beef. I haven't been dogmatic, but you must eat x amount of organ meats or now there's people that saying, well, you must include, you know, fruit and honey and all this stuff.

And I I just I just don't see the the the the data that supports that in a general way. Now now individually, sure. Do what do what's gonna work for you. I think meat is a superfood. I think everybody should be eating it.

I think we should be eating more of it, not less of it. I think protein's particularly important. I think fat provides some essential, you know, essential nutrients plus an additional satiety factor. And, you know, you can overeat fat for sure. You can overeat calories.

You can get fat on a carnivore diet. It's pretty damn hard to do. You know? Like I said, you can OD on anything. You can OD on water, but it's hard to do.

I mean, it's much easier to OD on heroin than it is on water, you know, from an amount standpoint. And certain, like, certain foods are easier to over consume or, you know, go crazy on meat is not one of those. It's pretty hard. I mean, it's I would say if you took a kid and fed him nothing but meat his whole life and let him eat as much as he wanted or she wanted, I doubt you'd ever see a kid get significantly overweight doing that or or obese. I mean, certainly not morbidly obese.

And so, I'm I'm pretty confident to say that meat is a pretty safe and healthy food, and that's really that's really the essence of this. You know, like I said, even in my book, which I wrote, you know, I I started writing it four or five years ago. I mean, I said, look. You know, if you need some carbohydrates to perform, maybe you do. Go for it.

It's not it's not it's not a it's not a it's not like, you know, veganism and and I'll use veganism as as an ideology rather than as a diet, which most people, they will say that vegan is not a diet. It's an ideology. Carnivore is not an ideology. It's just basically, you know, eat some meat and and focus on your health and and do what you need to do. And that and that's that's always been my message.

So I can't really say I've been specifically, going changed significantly from that. Yeah. I mean, you know, is there a benefit from, adding fiber to your diet, you know, conditionally? You know, I'm not I'm I've never been one to say all vegetables are toxic and poison, and no one should eat them. That's never been my message.

Now certainly some people don't do well with vegetables and certainly there and clearly there's toxins in all, you know, fruits and vegetables that are there. And and do they bother you? Yeah. Some people it does. And so it's worth considering limiting, cutting back, or eliminating, you know, if you need to.

But I I really I mean, when I think about I mean, I think, you know, honestly and I've given these people credit so many times. The people that started this zeroing in on health, Charles Washington and Amber O'Hearn and, you you know, the other folks and Kelly Hogan, those people that I mean, these are people that aren't scientists, they're not PhDs, they're not nutritionists. They're just people that figured out, hey. I'm eating a bunch of meat and my health issues are going away. And I think they've got it right quite honestly.

I mean, there's there's some wisdom in people that just have experience, and you can science the hell out of it and try to figure out the mechanisms and try to refine that. But at the end of the day, you know, you talk I I can't tell you how many people that said, well, I did this for a while, and I thought this was a magic thing. And then a year later, they're no longer doing it. And the people that are still going, they're still doing it, weren't the people that were demanding you eat x amount of liver or kidney or brain. The people that are still doing it were like people said, hey.

Just go eat some freaking steak and steak and eggs. And ten years later, they're still doing it while the other people are all they're chasing some other, you know, some other, goal right now.

Yeah. That's what we love about your approach too is that there's never the the thing that people, I think, fail to realize about you is there's never any finger wagging. It's like, I think I've literally listened to interviews with you where you're like, look. I didn't know that it was gonna work this well. It might not work well in the future, but for right now, I feel great.

I eat a couple steaks when I wanna eat. I don't really overthink things. And like you mentioned before, there's the there are people that are like, look. If it's not grass fed, grass finished regenerative, you you know, you should there's no point of even doing this diet, which we think is complete bullshit to try and tell someone that can only afford grain finished meat, which is a way better alternative than all the shit on the inner aisle of the grocery store to tell them to not eat meat. And that sounds like I mean, no.

I know that that's something that you preach a lot too. And that's how we get more people into this thing is, you know, you start with an entry point, eat more meat, and over time, you'll refine it, and maybe you'll get to that grass fed, grass finish point at some point down the road.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I'll I'll use, you know, this guy's popular Liver King guy now. Right? You know, you're drinking raw testicles. And, you know, people see that, and they're they're really off put by that.

They think what people are doing. I'm not I'm not if that would have been my exposure to this diet, I would have written it off right away. I would have liked no way on doing that stuff. Now whether it's bad or good, it's besides the point. It's just and and granted, it generates a lot of traffic and clicks and views, and it's outrageous and absurd, and people like to see that stuff.

And it drives some people in. And, you know, it makes people question things. So they, you know, you gotta get people's attention before you can educate them. So I get that aspect of it. But, you know, to sit there and tell people, yeah, you've gotta eat, you know, only beef from these type of producers, you know, that have been, you know, treated in a certain way, it does lose a lot of people that did unnecessarily wouldn't wouldn't need to be lost.

And there's there's you know, you don't wanna you don't want a huge barrier of entry. You want like, I tell I can tell some some truck driver dude, hey, man. Just stop it for you and go to Wendy's, Pick up some patties on the road. They can do that. But if I tell them you gotta go eat raw testicles, you know, and 6.7, you know, ounces of liver three times a week, and it's too damn hard.

I mean, they can't do it. But if you just tell them, hey. Go go get some freaking burger patties, dude. Go cook up steak and have steak and eggs at Denny's. That's fine.

For most people, that's gonna get you 90% of the way there. And and to to to tell people that that's not fine or or to sort of shame them for for doing that, It's just a wrong message because, you know, you think about it. We're we all live in a very privileged time and a privileged location. I mean, you know, you got some poor kid in India that, you know, they can't scrape 2 freaking rupees together. Mhmm.

And you tell them you gotta have grass finished beef and all. And, you know, I'm like, hey, man. Go get a fucking chicken and get some onions and do what you can do. I mean and this is a message that works because that is so much better than, you know, 95% of the food out there. I mean, it really is.

And and so I think, you know, the elitism, this is not a place for that. You know, I think there's, you know, I think, you know, we fortunately, we all live in The US where you have access to high quality meat with some of the best beef in the world, some of the best quality beef, and it's generally affordable. Even though it's going up in price, it's still very affordable here. And, you know, to to sort of exclude people from that is is crazy, man. Because we've got, you know, we've got a big problem.

As you mentioned, you know, how much does health care cost, annually? $3,500,000,000,000 in in in rising. And if you've gotta spend, you know, a little bit extra money in the grocery store and you can avoid all that stuff, that's that's awesome. But if you but if it's too much and you can't do that, then, you know, you're you're back to eating Kraft mac and cheese and ramen noodles.

You

know, I'd rather I'd rather you get a cheap tube of meat from Sam's Club for, you know, $2.99 a pound and just eat that because you're gonna get infinitely more nutrition than you are with the other crap.

Doctor Baker, you mentioned families before, and I'm curious for our audience if if their parents how would you recommend getting people introduced to a more animal based diet, you know, feeding their families, feeding their kids? Like, do you would you recommend a a more heavy heavy meat diet to a a younger kid? Because because I know a lot of a lot of adults are willing to take the risk, but they're not willing to do it for their kids.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think you know, again, why would somebody need to do a carnivore diet? You know? A lot of people with illnesses, you know, we you know, like like, you know, Brett had ulcerative colitis. This is sort of an an act of desperation.

If you didn't have that, you probably know for never would have went carnivore. That's probably fair to say. %. So you get a lot of people are in that situation. They have to do it.

I mean, they're I mean, they can try veganism. They can try gaps and FODMAP and all this other stuff, but usually something that really is effective so it works. A lot of people like it. They like the way they feel. There's some people who do it for athletic purposes.

You know, some people just wanna lose a few pounds. That's fine. But most kids I mean, I would say this, but it seems to be more and more kids are becoming are getting sick pretty early. But most, like, normal healthy kids, they just need good high quality nutrition, and they're not dealing with diseases. I think animal products should be the focus, should be the center of the diet.

They should be they should eat plenty of it. Do they need to eat exclusively? Almost certainly not. I mean, I don't feed my kids that. My kids love steak, and they eat a hell of a lot of it.

And and, you know, when I cook dinner, steak, you know, I I basically say, eat all your steak and then you have whatever whatever else you wanna have after that. You know? I don't I don't force vegetables on them. They don't want vegetables. They're pretty happy with that.

You know? They're pretty they're like, okay. Dad's cooking. We're getting steak. And then they might have some dairy.

They might have some fruit, you know, or something, you know, maybe a few other things. But that's I think that's a great diet for kids. I mean, I think there really is. You're gonna put your kids at a huge advantage, over the kids that are eating the granola bars and the fruit leathers and the Capri Suns and, you know, the the the goldfish and all that garbage that most people feed them. Just feed them some steak and eggs.

I mean, my kids, you know, the nice thing when you got I've got four kids and, you know, it can be exhausting trying to keep them fed all the time because, you know, when you're feeding them, like, a high carb, low satiety, type of diet, They're hungry. If you got four kids or they're all hungry every hour, but it's not the same hour. So you got one kid wants one thing now, and another kid wants something later. Now when they're old enough, they can feed themselves. But if you're responsible for cooking or making them food all the time, you're I mean, you're literally all day long cooking and doling out food and taking them to eat.

My strategy, I get them up in the morning and I'll say, hey. We're with big old feast of eggs and, you know, maybe some steak or some bacon and some maybe some yogurts and stuff like that, and I load them up. Mhmm.

I

had to eat, eat, eat, and then I don't hear from them. I don't hear from them for six hours. They're good. You know? So it's it's a nice it's a convenient strategy as well.

Yeah. Which is very different than most people where it's like you're just eating carbs and sugar and just a continuous drip. You're just hungry all day long, and you're irritable.

Yep.

So, something that we're really interested in that we wanted to talk to you about is, just like the antidepressant epidemic in The US. I think there's, like, three point five million Americans that are on antidepressants. And within the last couple years, we we continually hear from people on the carnivore diet about the way that their the symptoms of depression, anxiety, they almost vanish on this diet. I know it's something that Jordan Peterson has talked about, Mikaela Peterson, a bunch of others. How often is that coming up with you and the patients that you work with that are switching to a meat based approach to eating?

Yeah. Constantly. This is a very you know, mental health issues are I think their the estimates are something like twenty percent of Americans now suffer with depression, you know, clinically diagnosed or something like that. So I, you know, I I don't know how many are on antidepressants, but it's probably more than three and a half million. It is extremely, extremely common, and common things commonly get better when you fix the nutrition.

So I see mental health improvements almost universally. I mean, pretty much everybody with rare exception. You know, maybe if they're under eating and they're tired, you know, they may they may still lag a little bit. But most people, if they're getting sufficient nutrition, for a meat based diet, their symptoms get much, much better. I've seen things like bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, depressed, Tourette syndrome, ADHD, you know, PTSD.

All those things get much better. Now some of it doesn't completely resolve, but it often gets remarkably better. And there's a number of reasons for that that I think, you know, we look at there was a nice study in 2018 out of Stanford University looking at, major depressive disorder, and they found that there was a pretty significant correlation between that and carnitine. You know, carnitine is one of these nutrients nutrients that you pretty much only get from meat. And people with depression had low carnitine levels.

Now you can endodiously make some of it, but without that exogenous addition to it, your carnitine levels tend to run run on the low side. So that's one mechanism, but there's multiple. You know, the gut brain access is very well recognized. You know, if you have gut dysfunction, it often results in, brain physiology alterations, you know, brain inflammation, leaky blood brain barrier with leaky gut. You know, the nutrition, the zinc, the iron, which often is low on low meat diets, can be can be remedied with, with meat, you know, carnosine, carnitine, creatine all have positive benefits on mental, mental health and brain function.

Those things are all again, things you can only find in animal products. And so, yeah, there's a whole bunch of reasons why that may be the case.

Doctor Raker, one of the things I was curious to ask you, and I I probably should have brought up earlier, but, you mentioned, some of the political stuff. Are you worried about any regulations coming in around some environmental issues when it comes to or perceived environmental issues when it comes to beef? Is that something you that you see from your level?

Yeah. I mean, there are there are a number of things out there. I mean, you know, particularly impacting the the the ability of people to produce food. I mean and I think, you know, some of these, carbon credit things are being talked about, which probably, you know, they're going they're gonna go into place in some countries first and maybe maybe they'll reach us later. They they could have an impact.

I think some of the tax laws are really unfair, to some of the farmers and ranchers, you know, the inheritance tax they have now. It's, you know, if you have a 5,000 acre ranch, which you're only producing, you know, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, of of income on, they're gonna tax you on the value of the land when you when you when your father dies and hands it to you. So you may end up, you know, getting a getting a $3,000,000 tax bill that you can't pay. And then what do you do is you sell it to the government. There's a thirty thirty, law that's gone on in effect where they wanna they they wanna fully have 30% of every state dedicated to national protected land.

So they may see they may seize ranch land from farmers and ranchers in their like, in states like Nebraska where they don't have 30%. So we're gonna see some farmers and ranchers, there's a lot of stress put on them by some of these reg regulations. And what it'll do is it disproportionately affect the smaller folks. The big corporations will be able to absorb that. They'll basically turn around and just get bigger and consolidate further.

And I think that's, you know, I think we we we should hopefully get to more decentralization rather than centralization of the food supply. Because once it's centralized and is controlled by just a few people, they get a lot of power over over what you do and what you eat and what you consume. And what you eat has a huge impact on literally every aspect of your life. And so that's those are some of the concerning things that are that are out there. You know, that there's a lot of countries talking about taxing meat significantly, you know, doubling, tripling, quadrupling the prices in many cases.

There's there's, you know, there's, Oregon and Colorado. We're trying to get bills on the on the, on the ballot box talking about making, some of the animal husbandry practices illegal. They would call, like, artificial insemination rape. So, like, sexual molestation punishable by jail time. Obviously, that's a problem.

They would they they wanted to ban slaughter, except that the animal's natural life expectancy. And so they would say, well, a cow would is supposed to live fifteen years or twenty years and we're killing him at two, two and a half years. That would be illegal. No one could do that. No ranchers could afford to do that.

They can't they can't they can't keep an animal alive for twenty years, you know, and and make any they would just lose money like crazy. And so and, you know, the fair thing about that or the weird thing about that is no cow could live in the wild for twenty years. None of them would make it that far. They'd be lucky to make it even even one year, most of them. There's all kinds of studies showing that they die very young due to predation, starvation, disease, and so on.

You know, freezing death, whatever. And so the only way they could live a long time is in domestic care. Like, you'd have a little cow sanctuary. And no no one's gonna be able to afford to do who who would who could afford to do that? You know, you have all your taxpayers going to keep cows who live to 20 years of age.

That's just ludicrous. No one's gonna do that.

Mhmm. When you think about just, like, the future of our food system and maybe even just society in general, are you are you hopeful for what the future holds?

Yeah. I'm hopeful. I mean, I think that, you know, it's it's not something that's gonna happen passively. I think we all have to be active and aggressive, and I think we just have to really fight for for what we can do. But I'm I'm optimistic that we can preserve and improve, the food system and our nutrition and our overall health and society's health.

You know, when we have you know, when we talk about sustainability, a sick a sick society is not sustainable. This is a big problem. You know, if you you know, and and no one really seems to know this information, but the health care sector produces 10% of our greenhouse gases. If you even wanna make that argument, cows are 2%. So, you know, the health care sector sector, which you were participating into the tune of $50,000 every eight weeks, was producing all this greenhouse gases.

And now you're consuming meat, and you've you've cut that risk by, you know, what, 800%. You know? So, I mean, it's it's, you know, significant or 400%. I forgot to do the math on that. Anyway, from 10% to 2%, whatever that is.

You know? And and, so yeah. I mean, I think we have to we have when we when we make these arguments, it's it's very easy to be reductionist, you know, to make these reductionist arguments. We'll have cow farts. It it produces a similar greenhouse gas, and we're gonna save the world if we just shut off the cow farts.

Well, what are the what are the downstream effects that you get more malnourished people, more sick people? You you don't get a chance to sequester carbon. What about all the manure? Where are you gonna get that from? You're gonna increase your, you know, your petroleum based fertilizer utilization.

You know, there's all these, you know, unintended consequences. And we whenever we see, these big government inter inter interventions, you know, you always see the effects twenty years later, and everybody's like, damn, we shouldn't have done that. So it's one of those times where you can stand up and say I think, you know, one of the interesting thing is, you know, it's becoming more and more politicized. You know, we're getting more and more, you know, these issues are associated with these people and these issues are associated with other people and diet is becoming that way. The nice thing about it is before maybe people didn't care about diet.

I think more people are interested in not eating the bugs. I mean, I think that's a that's a that's a powerful emotional which is good. You can use it to our advantage, you know, before, you know, like the vegans will they'll show you some pig in a cage and say, oh, look how terrible this is. And everybody gets emotional about it. It's an emotional argument.

But I think, you know, having Greta, Thunberg or whatever her name is, telling you eat the bugs also is very powerful and emotionally evocative. So I think we can we can use that to the advantage of getting people to fired up about nutrition, and caring where their food comes from and caring what they have to what they're able to eat.

Doctor Baker, who are you seeing out there who's having a particularly strong influence, whether it's like a researcher, doctors, ranchers that have kind of inspired you to continue to put up a good fight?

Oh, wow. I mean, there's there's a lot of people. I mean, you know, certainly, I think some of the folks in the regenerative agricultural sector, you know, whether it's Gabe Brown or, you know, Joe Salatin or, you know, Ray Archuleta or on and on. You know, there's all there's a whole slew of those guys that that, you know, people are aware of. Those guys, I think, you know, are passionate.

I think that's exciting to see. There's several researchers out there, Stefan VanVleet at Utah State, now formerly of Duke, is doing some good work. You know, there's, you know, I think there are some politicians out there that are getting most of them are from agricultural states, you know, that that are are trying to, you know, trying to preserve, this sort of stuff. And so, there are a lot of people that have an interest in this now. I think, you know, guys like, you know, Joe Rogan.

I mean, he's he's pro meat guy for sure. He's got a huge, huge, huge platform. And and some of the, I think some of the athletes that are getting out and getting behind the stuff, you know, like you mentioned Noah, from the he's playing for the Angels now. Right?

Angels. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So he was with the Mets, if I'm not mistaken. Mhmm. Yeah.

I mean I mean so I think there's a lot of people out there that that are starting to step up and starting to realize that, we have to step up. I mean, you can't be passive. And and this is this is a thing. You know, I'm optimistic about the future if people care about it. You know, if, I mean, granted, 90% of the people got their head head down and they don't care.

But I think, you know, you don't need you don't need, you know, that many people. You know, you know, you need a solid 10% that are vocal. And we can learn something from the vegans who have been very vocal and whiny and annoying. But, you know, I think you gotta fight fire with fire. And so I think we need to get out there and mean those guys to death

Yep.

And, you know, ridicule and, you know, just be going the offense instead instead instead of playing defense all the time. And I think because it's been one-sided and the the story that's we've been told is is very inaccurate or very there's a lot of half truths out there. You know, they tell you part of the story. They'll tell you the whole story. They'll tell you a little bit.

They they tell you the emotional side that that, you know, that that works. I mean, quite honestly, I mean, to their credit, what they've done has been, very successful with pulling the heartstrings, and they've been very strategic on where they're placing people. They're getting people in places of power. You know, Cory Booker, you know, Senator Eric Adams, New York City mayor. So they're getting people that have more and more, sort of control over our lives in these positions, and we need to do the same.

We need we need to we need to, you know and we need not not to just I think it's already too far one way. I mean, we already you know, The US diet is already plant based. I mean, you guys know that 70% of our diet is plant based and most of it's ultra processed garbage. We need to move them. We don't need to just go back to that and not go more plant based.

We need to shift that back to where 70% of our diet is high quality nutrition. Most of it come from animal products. I think that's where we need to we need to set the bar. Mhmm. So Mhmm.

That's that's what I think needs to happen.

Yeah. There's a lot at stake. No no pun intended.

It really is. I mean, that's why we need to keep having conversations like this and promote it and just share it with friends and family. And, like, we try to just never wag our finger in anyone's faces. We just try and lead by proof of work. We know you do that too.

And, you know, just really appreciate you coming on and having this conversation and just leading the charge and being vocal because the world needs more of it right now. What's the best way, doctor Baker, for people to just connect with you a little bit more on social media, learn more about what you've got going on, Rivero, etcetera?

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I think Rivero I'm open. I'm there every single day doing a Zoom call like this, and so I'm I'm happy to talk to anybody. You know? We just started to take in an hour today just to answer people's questions.

So if you wanna just, like, have an actual semblance of a conversation, that's the best way. But, you know, my social media accounts, which I mean, honestly, some of it, I do just again, the entertaining stuff, the goofy stuff. You know, I put I put up studies and I try to try to educate people. It's always funny because those things get very little engagement. No one seems to care.

But if you put a picture of you eating a steak while some vegan is making some wacky watermelon tuna concoction, you get way more. Right? So so, you know, it's it's that. So social media is, you know, you know, it's it's a mix of, you know, entertainment, education, you know, sometimes motivation, sometimes just I'm pissed off and wanna share that with people. But, so I've got, you know, like I said, different social media.

I've got some Instagram, sean baker nineteen sixty seven, Twitter, where you guys spend a lot of time, s baker indeed. I'm on, what is it, YouTube. My YouTube channel's growing nicely, Sean BakerMD. I'm on TikTok now, which I'm quite I laugh about that, but I'm on Sean BakerMD on TikTok, and that's slowly growing up there as well. So that's

Mostly mostly you eating steak on TikTok?

I think some of that. Some of it, you know, I mean, it's it varies depending what I've what I'm what I'm mood to do. But, you know, we're we're we're making an effort to, sort of upgrade my social media a little bit with some more resources now that we have a little bit of funding that we can kinda dedicate. Because, you know, quite honestly, I'm I'm still kind of the the face and the voice public image of the company, and I'm trying to just grow awareness of what we're doing. I mean, ultimately, like, all the bullshit and the the crazy silly stuff I do, at the end of the day, my goal is to help people get healthy.

Mhmm. And, you know, you know, that that's the end of the day. You know, all the other stuff is just, you know, it's just fluff quite honestly. And it's it's fun sometimes. Sometimes it's fun.

Sometimes it's it's not. But but at the end of the day, that's what I'm trying to do.

Well, we have the utmost respect for everything you're doing, and and you've changed our lives for the better. So, you know, a a thank you again is due and and really appreciate you coming on today. This has been a an an insightful conversation. I hope our audience gets a lot out of it.

Yeah. Me too. And like I said, don't hesitate to reach out and, you know, shoot me a message or something like that. I'm usually pretty good at answering those. And, you know, maybe I'll run into you guys.

Well, I'll run into you guys in Austin, I think. I assume Yeah. Hook up and grab a grab a steak or some brisket or something like that, next in a couple weeks. So I'll Yeah.

We'll do we'll do Terry Black since we can't do Fogo de Chao. So

Yeah. Terry Black's good. I've been there. Got nice big beef ribs. You know?

They're right near the right near the Palmer Center, so it's not far from from there. I think you can walk there from there or something like that. So awesome.

Perfect. We appreciate it, doctor Bradford. Thank you again, and, looking forward to connecting with you guys soon.