4 Simplest Pillars of Health Decoded: Avoid Burnout & Failed Quick Fixes

Nick Urban [00:00:07]:
Are you a high performer, obsessed with growth, and looking for an edge? Welcome to MINDBODY Peak Performance. Together, we’ll discover underground secrets to unlocking the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll learn from some of the world’s leading minds, from ancient wisdom to cutting edge tools and everything in between. This is your host, Nick Urban. Enjoy the episode. With all the conflicting health advice out there, perhaps the key to feeling and performing your best is far simpler than you think. Our guest this week is breaking down the four essential components of health, two of which you probably haven’t given much consideration, yet they can have the largest impact. In addition to his four pillars of health, we also touch on the current state of health in America, the biodynamic living, understanding the root behind particular symptoms, and some common quick fix traps.

Nick Urban [00:01:13]:
Our guest this week is Eugene Truffkin. He’s a root cause health advocate with twenty years of experience in drug free approaches to metabolic and hormonal health, lifestyle disorders, biodynamic farming, organic nutrition, and fat loss. If you want to connect with Eugene, you can grab his book, The Anti Factory Farm Shopping Guide, or work with him directly on his website at trufkin, t r u f k I n, athletics Com. If you’re a bit skeptical whether this approach can actually work, I suggest you visit his website and just scroll through some of those transformations because those speak for themselves. And before going on to some of the fancy and sometimes efficacious biohacks, start with the low hanging fruit, his four pillars of health. And if you layer on anything on top of that, you’ll surely get better results. To find a link to his website and everything else we discuss, go to the show notes for this episode, which will be at mindbodypeak.com/thenumber200andtwo. If you find the information we discussed helpful or any of the previous episodes, it makes a huge difference if you take just a moment and go to wherever you downloaded the episode and leave an honest review.

Nick Urban [00:02:34]:
Let people know what you think of the show and the content I bring you because that’s how I continue to find thought provoking guests and how I bring you the best, most out of the box interviews possible. It just takes a second whether you’re on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or any other platforms. With that out of the way, sit back, relax, and enjoy this conversation with Eugene Trufkin. Eugene, welcome to the podcast.

Eugene [00:03:01]:
Hey, Nick. How are you doing, man? I know we keep in touch, but it’s been kind of a long time since I’ve actually seen you Yeah. Since we’ve taken the IMS two course.

Nick Urban [00:03:08]:
Yes. We

Eugene [00:03:09]:
I think at Austin, like, two years ago or three years ago at this point.

Nick Urban [00:03:12]:
Yeah. It was actually four years ago. I think it was in 2021. Very long time ago. Met you in person, and then we reconnected, crossed paths again virtually. Great to have you on the show today. Let’s start with the unusual nonnegotiables you’ve done for your health, your performance, and your bioharmony.

Eugene [00:03:32]:
Oh, nonnegotiables. Okay. So these kind of, these kind of go into, I guess, like core values. So just for the listeners, I didn’t know which direction this podcast was gonna go. So it’s kind of going in this direction here. But, yeah, I guess it all goes back to being very clear on your core values. And, luckily, I was actually, like, pretty clear on them early on. I know a lot of people kind of go on a journey of, like, you know, discovering their likes and dislikes, and oftentimes, the only way to know what you like is to first do things you don’t like, be conscious of the fact that you don’t like it, and then allow that to narrow down your choices in the future to things you do like to do and stuff of that sort.

Eugene [00:04:17]:
So, for me, just kind of working out or eating healthy, etcetera, etcetera, were really core priorities from early from early on in my life. So I was initially raised by my grandmother off grid in Ukraine, and then I learned a lot about biodynamic farming through her and just living, in tandem with nature, etcetera, etcetera. And then my dad got me into a very, into the gym with him already at like 10. You know? So I was already lifting weights and working out with him. He was also, like, very health conscious as well. And my mom would always cook, you know, whole food meals. Fast food was never, like, a part of my life or anything of that sort. And, you know, like, for the longest time, I’ve been in coaching like you, you know, I’ve been doing it for, like, twenty years now, but it was never actually gonna be my profession.

Eugene [00:05:10]:
In the in the beginning, I was just gonna, like, join the military, And my goal initially in high school was to go to West Point, but at the time, I just had my green card. And, that didn’t qualify me for the officer program, so you needed, like, to be a full citizen at that point. Then I’m like, okay, well, I’ll join. Then the next step was to join the Marine Corps as an enlisted, as an enlisted person, and they were allowing that at that time. I don’t know the rules now, but you can join as an enlisted and then gain your citizenship, at a faster rate then. And I had a slip and fall accident. I just kind of slipped on some wet concrete and, hit my back on a curb, you know, so that kind of derailed that. And then I went to UCI, so as a fallback plan, I went to college.

Eugene [00:05:59]:
And, it was just right across the street from my high school too. So I went to, University High School in Irvine and then I went to UCI. It was literally two blocks down the street, University of California Irvine. And there, I was just gonna, get into corporate work and stuff like that. You know what I mean? Or get, like, my initial goal was to then go get a master’s in industrial psychology and then get into HR or stuff of that sort. And I was coaching people through college. I started at 19. Just, I didn’t, how I started was just I was at twenty four hour fitness one day, and the manager came up to me and he’s like, hey, man.

Eugene [00:06:43]:
You checked in last year, like, 420 times or some crazy number, like, more times than there are days. And we’re looking for more trainers because we’re short on trainers, so we’ll pay for your certification course and you could just do this part time, you know? And so, I did that and, I started coaching people just very part time through college, like ten hours a week, you know, like fifteen hours max. And towards the end of college, I was graduating, it was like 02/2009, I think. Obviously, it was at the tail end of that huge mortgage collapse and pretty much the economy was in like shambles and everyone was losing their job and I had a kind of dilemma. It was get into corporate work, you know, which I already knew was kind of, like, very unsustainable environment, and it wouldn’t give me the time that I needed to sleep well, get all my workouts in, get my meals in, plus have enough time for creative work, you know, continued education, taking midday naps, etcetera, etcetera. And, I already had a good business going too. I had a lot of great successful clients, and from them a lot of times I learned through them, what, you know, living unsustainable life patterns for like twenty, thirty, forty years will do to you, you know what I mean? And yeah, you know, especially on LinkedIn, that’s like one of my least favorite, sites. You see, you know, everyone with a happy face and and their resume and stuff of that sort and no absolutes, of course.

Eugene [00:08:16]:
Maybe one out of a thousand actually is. But then, you know, you meet these people in real life and they’re oftentimes, like, very burned out, you know, exhausted, on their resumes instead of maybe to be to be more honest instead of, instead of saying, like, oh, you know, twenty years on this or this degree and this, this, this. It should say like how many medications they’re on, you know, or, the number of divorces they’re in already, etcetera, etcetera. And I’m like, well, shit, you know? And I felt like very, kind of at a crossroads because I told my friends that, hey, you know, I’m just gonna work two to three days a week and do my own thing. You know what I mean? And that was like crazy, especially in America, to tell people you’re gonna only work two or three days a week. That’s like, like you’re a crazy person, you’re like, you’re not thinking mentally well, but it’s also important to remember that, for 99% of human existence, no one had a full time job. You know? Everyone was a hunter gatherer and just lived a very balanced and kind of sustainable life there. So So the whole concept of, like, working super crazy hours, like forty, fifty, sixty hours a week, it’s a new concept.

Nick Urban [00:09:23]:
I think there’s a misconception there that, like, when humans were hunter gatherers, they were spending their entire day laboring, hunting, and gathering. But But when you actually look at the lifestyle back then, it was a very small amount of time spent doing those activities, and the vast majority of the day was spent relaxing and unwinding and playing and having fun.

Eugene [00:09:44]:
Yeah. Like, basically, what people do on their one week or two week vacation now is pretty much what the hunter gatherers did like 99% of their life’s life and existence and on top of that only ate like wild game wild fish

Nick Urban [00:09:57]:
because hunting specifically, it would only be a couple hours every day. Right?

Eugene [00:10:01]:
Yeah. And sometimes, like, even in colder climates, I mean, you might even have to do a hunt once every few weeks, and that’ll be more than enough to last you for quite a long time. Yeah. But the point is is most most people’s central nervous systems can’t work those crazy hours, especially if you combine with not doing what you like, plus the office politics that goes with it, you know, and the different personalities that you have to constantly adjust for. All these little things kind of drain a lot of energy and put a lot of, put a lot of pressure on the central nervous system. And most people’s central nervous systems can’t handle it. I know it kind of sounds crazy, but just look at the numbers, you know? We have like nine out of ten Americans right now that are metabolically sick. You know, most are on have been on some type of medical drug or on some type of medical drug.

Nick Urban [00:10:55]:
I was looking at the those stats just the other day, and the most recent census, like, 2022, I think it was, there was, I wanna say, 6,700,000,000 prescriptions in that year alone, which averages out to about twenty twenty prescriptions per adult per year.

Eugene [00:11:09]:
Yeah. I didn’t know that stat, but, I mean, I wouldn’t even be surprised if that was the case. And the sad part is is, again, like, American culture has normalized, like, mental and physical pathology. So a lot of people don’t even see anything wrong with that whatsoever. You know what I mean? And although it’s common, just because it is so common doesn’t doesn’t mean it’s right, you know? And I mean, you don’t need any study or consensus. Just literally go outside like anywhere in America, and nine out of ten people you run into are full of obesity, misery, and disease. I mean, most people, you know, they gotta down like a half a bottle of antidepressants and like two cups of coffee first thing in the morning just to have enough energy to do the dishes and get to work, you know? So these are all indications that, maladaptive behavior is forming due to the central nervous system not being able to survive appropriately in the external world, which is its its only rule, that’s its only task, you know? And when it’s not able to do that is in scenarios where there’s like a tremendous amount of micro stressors and macro stressors combined, which is basically the average daily living experience of most most people, I would say, in America. You know?

Nick Urban [00:12:18]:
Eugene, walk me through your big four, the things that you focus on with most of your clients, because it really brings some simplicity to the world of health. And if people are wondering whether or not it works, they can just check out your website and see all the before after transformations of what really honing those four things and putting those at the top can do.

Eugene [00:12:40]:
So, yeah, these four pillars, there are some supplementary ones. I mean, these are the big players. And I know a lot of people are gonna hear them, and they’re like, oh, they’re so easy to understand. I know they’re easy to understand, but the question is is, are you doing them? And I’d say 99% of people are not. Honestly doing them, or mastering them to any significant amount of, level or anything of that sort. So, the first one is, you know, using movement as medicine. You know what I mean? And what that means to you is going to vary from person to person depending on their goals and objectives. If a person wants to train for aesthetics, they need to be kind of ideally like lifting weights like four to five days a week.

Eugene [00:13:19]:
If they want to be training for mountain climbing, They need to be maybe doing some weight lifting too, but a lot of, you know, strength endurance or just endurance work or technique work as well. Stuff of that sort, but something that basically gets your body moving, four to five days a week minimum, with pretty good intensity, at least half of the workouts as well. And I know a lot of people are like, oh yeah, I’ve heard that. I know that. Yeah. I know you know that. But I guarantee you’re not doing that, you know? Or if you are doing that, you’re doing it incorrectly with poor technique, poor program design, not enough recovery to incentivize biological adaptation, so your tissue just breaks down over time. You have back injuries or joint injuries of various sorts, etcetera, etcetera.

Nick Urban [00:14:03]:
What’s also important about that is that you mentioned values at the very beginning of this, and that’s key because you might look at the research and be like, okay, I need to do this type of training. I need to do this type of training. I need to do VO two max. I need to do lactic acid tolerance. I need to do sprinting. I need to do all these different things. But if everything feels like a chore over the long term, which is what really matters for most metrics, it’s much less likely to persist. But if you have your values, your goals, where you wanna go, the things that you enjoy doing, movement really does become a medicine, and you don’t have to fight every single time and deplete willpower just to follow what you want to do.

Eugene [00:14:45]:
Yeah. That’s true. And that kinda leans back to being crystal clear on your core values, you know? So a lot of people do go to the gym and train for aesthetics. I actually happen to love it just unconditionally. It’s one of those things that I never had to motivate myself to do. But it’s not for most people, especially the lifestyle of being regimented with your eating, you know, probably not being that social, you know, if you really want to be on point with your aesthetics and visual appearance because you need to be good with your sleeping patterns, you can’t be out drinking, eating, eating out, etcetera, etcetera. But But it’s not for everyone, but a lot of people do train for that, you know, and obviously it’s not gonna be fun, especially when most people don’t even know how to train for aesthetics properly. So the results aren’t even there.

Eugene [00:15:29]:
And I mean, go to any gym and pretty much everyone looks the same year after year after year. Although they’re there like five or six days a week, just like you, probably even for longer periods of time, you know? So, yeah, I mean, it’s important to pick something, that’s conducive to your goals and core values, presuming you’re clear on them. Most people are not even clear at that level. So, obviously, if you’re not clear at that level, it’s gonna be, unless it’s like dumb luck, that happens sometimes, it’s gonna be really tough to find, the right tools to get the job done for yourself long term. But, yeah, the next step, I mean, using movement as medicine is one. The next one medical drug I use, quote unquote medical drug is using, I just rely on like biodynamic or at least USDA organic certified food or above. You know, so, this is huge because, in a way, everything about you is made out of food. So, look, like, your dad’s, semen and your mom’s eggs required food to form, you know? Then for your mom to, you know, raise you for nine to twelve months or whatever inside of her, that required a continuous amount of food.

Eugene [00:16:40]:
That in a sense built your tissue, and then you’re raised and now you’re growing up a new adult that requires food to sustain that, etcetera, etcetera. And then eventually you end up dying and going back into the soil and then you become food for bugs and other animals, which then in turn become food for another person or another animal that forms the sperm and egg and then forms another baby etcetera etcetera. So obviously, if the quality of food is poor, you’re you will have aesthetic challenges, you will have health challenges, etcetera etcetera. And I know a lot of people again, they’re like, oh, I eat healthy. I hear this so often. And I’m like, oh, what does healthy even mean to you? Just ask them this question. They’ll typically say, like, I do keto or or fasting or, I eat less. You know what I mean? Or something like this.

Eugene [00:17:28]:
So these are all indications that a person that that doesn’t know even what healthy eating is. And there’s also, you know, so much greenwashing. Even, even when a person’s intention is to source high quality food, it’s oftentimes difficult to understand, like, what all these labels mean, etcetera, etcetera. And I’ve been to, I’ve taken many registered dietitians out and medical doctors out for grocery store tours. When I was writing my second book at Whole Foods and even they had a lot of confusion about what all these labels mean. And they’re actual health professionals, you know what I mean? Especially the registered dietitians, I mean their emphasis is on nutrition And even they didn’t really know the difference between, you know, cage free, free range, pasture raised, USDA organic, non GMO, humanely raised, glyphosate free, and like the billion of other stamps you can see, paleo approved, whatever.

Nick Urban [00:18:27]:
Eugene, we’re definitely gonna circle back there because I was actually gonna ask bring that up. Specifically, when you’re talking about healthy eating, oh, yeah. I’m eating cage free eggs. That sounds great. Sounds healthy. But when we revisit this conversation, we’ll talk a lot more about how cage free isn’t nearly enough, and it’s not as healthy as it seems, and there’s much better options. So we’re gonna revisit your book and your research and everything you’ve done in the world of nutrition. Let’s cover the other of the four pillars first, though.

Eugene [00:18:59]:
The third one is, central nervous system management. So teaching people how to sleep properly. You know, sleep ideally between, like, 10PM and 6AM. Maybe take midday naps will be very beneficial for most people. And I know a lot of people are like, oh, you know, midday naps, that’s fairyland. Well, then don’t complain about, you know, being chronically tired, looking ten years older than you actually are, etcetera, etcetera. These are the things that have to be done Because your biology, especially the central nervous system, really hasn’t even changed for two hundred thousand years. So the rules are all the same.

Eugene [00:19:29]:
You basically, in short, have to live like a human being. And if you don’t, there are gonna be consequences that you pay, you know, aesthetic and metabolic issues or hormonal issues etc etc. That’s not aging or that’s not normal. Again, it’s common in today’s culture, but it’s not normal at all, you know, like even in the health field, I mean, how many health professionals do you see have myriad of health issues themselves, you know? And supposedly they’ve devoted their whole life to learning how to stay healthy and yet they can’t do it. You know, because they’re losing the fundamental principle of living like a human being. And it’s really just these four principles that we mentioned but mastering them honestly like seven days a week all year round. And then the fourth one is is just being like crystal clear on your core values and who you are and then getting your actual week to look like that. So if you’re like an if you like to draw art or be an artist and you’re in the legal field, there’s a huge story gap there, you know? And the bigger the story gap, the more micro stressors that are gonna be on the central nervous system, and thus the more maladaptive behavior there has to form to deal with that.

Eugene [00:20:40]:
Maybe not in the initial phase of your career, like one or two years in, but after that you will see, because on the back of your head you know you’re being take to yourself. And that’s it, you know. There’s no running from that, you know. You can’t run from yourself. Wherever you go, there you are. So unless that story gap is closed, I’ve just seen people just have to form maladaptive behavior over and over and over again, and instead of closing that story gap, they try to do some biohacking, or they try to do some psychotherapy, or they try to go sign up for their local CrossFit class. I’m like, dude, like, just close the story just close the story gap, and you won’t you’ll stop the stress eating, you know. A lot of times it’s like, socially acceptable activities too, like being a workaholic.

Eugene [00:21:29]:
A lot of people use that to, you know, disconnect and kind of dissociate from a life they don’t want because the work keeps you busy and it’s also reinforced by Western society, you know, and stuff of that sort. And then there are, like, socially unacceptable maladaptive behaviors like doing drugs or promiscuous sex, cheating on your partner, etcetera, etcetera, you know? So it has many faces, but the end result is it’s kind of like, it deteriorates the biology at the end of the day, no matter which direction which direction you take. And it always comes back to you. Maybe not in the beginning, but eventually, you’ll have to you’ll have to face the reality of the situation. And usually, like Paul Chek always says, it’s until a life emergency happens, like a divorce or bankruptcy or, you know, now you have cancer or like a heart attack, etcetera, etcetera. So those are the four big ones. There are a lot of like little supplementary things people can do, but I mean, if you generally master those four, you’ll be at, like, the top 1% of The US population health wise these days. And, I don’t know what else to say, man.

Eugene [00:22:45]:
It’s like it’s really just that straightforward at the end of the day.

Nick Urban [00:22:49]:
There’s also ways you can step in that direction without necessarily having to, in the immediate short term, totally revamp your life, such as if you can’t take a midday nap, then to at least make sure you’re getting a full night of sleep, ample sleep so that you wake up feeling refreshed, recovered. If you use a wearable, you see that you actually have good scores. Like, if you’re not able to get a nap, at least that is better than nothing, better than shortchanging your sleep and just fueling up on more caffeine and other stimulants just to get through the day. And then with the central nervous system side, you can add in practices in the short term. But if you’re living, like, a fragmented story where you’re doing one thing that you hate just to make ends meet, but then you’re also knowing what you wanna do and you’re not doing it in any form, perhaps in the short term, you can add some more of that into your lifestyle, your routine, and eventually over time pivot. Because a lot of times it’s scary just to drop whatever it is that is putting food on the table and then pivot completely without having, like, a clear path in mind.

Eugene [00:23:58]:
It’s exactly what you said, and I got this from Joel Saladin. If you can’t, just because you wanna solve a problem doesn’t mean you have to solve the whole problem right off the bat. You know, you can start with solving certain parts of the problem and then, you know, you can figure out how to solve solve the problem as a whole, like, later on. You don’t need to, like, solve it all at once. But the big issue too, Nick, is, at the end of the day, there’s, like, it’s tough to solve a problem with the belief system that led to the problem. This is where people go wrong all the time. I’ve done it myself many times in many, maybe not in my fitness goals, but in other aspects of my life, and that’s what a lot of times people try to do, you know, they they there’s something in their belief system that led to that problem, and they’re trying to use that same belief system to solve that problem. And there are no absolutes, of course, you’ll find some rare exceptions, but most of the time that never works, you know? And a lot of times, I know we’re both coaches, and I don’t mean to come off like sales y, but a lot of times just people need to reach out and find someone that has a lot of successful testimonials, maybe living true to their name.

Eugene [00:25:16]:
I’d say credentials take like a distant third place. You know, I’ve met many PhDs that I would never hire, you know, many MDs that I would never ask any healthy device from. It’s really just like, what have they done for other people and can they do this successfully? Do they have many, many testimonials? That’s the big thing. And if they live true to the message too, that’s a good supplement. You know what I mean? To, to enhancing their message. But in in a sense, like, people need to reach out and just hire someone. Because the human health, human mental and physical health, it’s it’s kind of like fairly complicated, especially when pathology already has formed. And a lot of people are like, oh, I can’t even understand my car.

Eugene [00:26:01]:
I’m gonna take my car to the mechanic when something’s broken. But somehow, I’m gonna understand the complexity of the human mind and body and fix it myself. You know what I mean? Where they have no clue about what healthy eating is. I mean, I’ve had people that are clearly overweight, like, do an Ozempic and then try to tell me they’re they know what even healthy eating is, what even living like a human being is or stuff of that sort, you know? And it’s, it’s so delusional because people are, in The US of normalized mental and physical pathology to such a such a massive extent. They’re so, like, most of them are so completely lost down the wrong path, and they’ve been there for so long, they think it’s like a normal way of life now, and somehow they have figured out some kind of sustainable system, you know? And so when you’re at that stage, you need an aggressive and strong outside perspective to come in and saturate that mind virus that they have going on. And if that doesn’t happen, they will never change. They will I mean, it’s so rare. Maybe one out of every thousand will just by mere luck.

Eugene [00:27:16]:
Just happen that that the circumstances in the background happen to line up well correctly. But most will never do that, and they they never will. And then they’ll blame their genetics and whoever is in office right now for all their problems, you know? Like, something stupid like that.

Nick Urban [00:27:31]:
It’s so true too. Like, a lot of different therapies have their time and place. Ozempic can literally change lives. It can save the lives of diabetics at the same time for the average person who’s using it. Perhaps there’s a reason and it makes sense. But a lot of times, like, it might be just a quick fix, an attempt to lose weight. And when you do that, you have to think, okay, do I know better than the body? Do I know why this weight is here? Because if I don’t and I do this, then all of a sudden, what happens to the heavy metals and toxins that are sequestered away in the fat? Well, they must be mobilized into the bloodstream, which can then they can then lodge into organs, into the brain, and cause, like, very serious complications. And if you stop using it, then the weight comes back as we’re seeing in some of the actual research around these things.

Nick Urban [00:28:27]:
But, like, if you’re not addressing the reason the body put on the weight in the first place, it’s a quick fix that might have some serious long term complications versus if you go to the root of it and at least you understand why the weight is there, then perhaps even if you use the Ozempic or a different GLP one, then it comes off and it doesn’t come back because you actually address what’s underlying the weight gain in the first place.

Eugene [00:28:52]:
Yeah. The biggest the biggest issue I mean, you know this. I’m talking more to your audience here. The biggest issue with the fat loss industry and just the healthcare industry in general, it’s a it’s a symptom management industry. So fat loss, they use they symptom manage through diet and exercise. You know? This is just symptom management again one zero one. Yeah. It’s a little better than Ozempic or Ozempic or fat loss drugs.

Eugene [00:29:15]:
Right? Pharmaceutical drugs. But these are all not meeting the problem at the level of the problem for pretty much everyone. So, the problem with, the problem with weight gain or excessive weight gain, especially the more excessive, the bigger the problem is, is the problem is at the thinking and emotional dimension, and they’re trying to solve it at a biological dimension. So managing symptoms only yields more symptoms over time. That’s it. And, okay, like you took Ozempic and you lost 30 pounds, oh, you could have easily done that by just changing your diet slightly and not even working out in three months, you know? But now you took something that could alter your digestive system for forever and possibly cause thyroid cancer. Good work, you know? Good job. So, okay, you lost 30 pounds.

Eugene [00:30:08]:
Awesome. But the belief system that led you to gain those 30 pounds is also gonna be the same belief system that’s gonna lead to high blood pressure, you know, cancer formation. Because for sure, if you’ve gained 30 pounds of excess weight, your toxic load is huge. It’s high. And all those toxins are swimming around your visceral tissue, deposited deposited in your fat. The average newborn born in metropolitan area in America is born with 233 trace amounts of 233 different chemicals in their bloodstream ready. And, okay, so cool, you lost 30 pounds, but you didn’t change the belief system that led you to gain that 30 pounds, and now ten years later, you have pancreatic cancer. Alright, cool.

Eugene [00:30:53]:
So, now you gotta deal with that, you know, and that’s pretty much fatal, you know, in the late stages. Okay. Now you’re like on five other different drugs plus you need surgery, you know. This is how it goes, and people will do absolutely everything imaginable, but change the person that’s causing the disease. Now you don’t have to look too far man, you can look right in the mirror and you can know the source of pretty much all of your problems in one way or another, if you’re honest about it. And most people don’t wanna be honest about it, and that’s why they’re gonna be that’s why they’ve normalized a life of obesity, misery, and disease. I mean, how many men do you see with with boobs, you know? With boobs and a big belly and bad skin, and it’s totally normal. They’re like, this is normal.

Eugene [00:31:43]:
I’m like, dude, this is not normal at all. This is what, like, a mind virus is, you know, because a mind virus, that’s the biggest virus virus around. It’s killed more people and caused more misery worldwide than anything else. It’s a belief system that doesn’t facilitate health conscious thinking. You know? And, and, yeah, I mean, it’s sad because, I mean, you see it all the time. In a way, it’s like, that is what keeps us in business, but in a way too, it’s kinda just sad to see because, you know, the answers are are fairly straightforward. Like, an 11 year old child can kind of understand when they’re already thinking like a normal person. But when they’re when mental illness is the norm and people think it’s normal to go work like fifty, sixty hours a week and be in debt and argue with your spouse every other day and, you know, be selfless to an extreme, you know, because being too selfless causes a lot of, you know, you to put yourself second too many times and then, you know, you gain weight etcetera, but then grow disgruntled towards the people you’re helping because you never get your needs met and stuff of that sort.

Eugene [00:33:01]:
And then they’re like, oh, I have high blood pressure and depression because it’s genetics. I’m like, dude, no. You just have a low IQ because it’s genetics. Okay? And that’s leading to your poor decision making.

Nick Urban [00:33:13]:
So when people have these mind viruses and or negative automatic thoughts, How do you help them with that? Because as you mentioned, it’s one of the lead dominoes. You fix that, then everything falls into place. We all know the core tenants of what we should be eating, the fact that we should be moving, we should be exposed to light, these basic things. But then the disconnect is between knowing that and actually implementing it.

Eugene [00:33:38]:
Yeah. So there’s there’s a bunch of ways you can go about this, and I’ve presented this is just a model I use. It’s not for everybody, but it’s a model that people can kind of investigate further and see if it’s right for them with professional help, you know. So it’ll be easier kind of like with a chart, but it’s okay. I mean, it’s very simple. You have, let’s say, fat gain. I mean, that’s very common these days. Pretty much everyone is overweight now.

Eugene [00:34:07]:
So it’s important to see fat gain as like a symptom, you know, and then the bigger question is like, oh what is it a symptom of? And a lot of times people go like, oh it’s a symptom of poor lifestyle and nutritional choices. That’s why a lot of times when people are overweight, a lot of their family and friends just go like, eat less or go work out more. And that’s basically the same as telling, like, an alcoholic just to stop drinking, you know? It’s like, obviously, I need to stop drinking, but there’s something deeper going on that’s leading me to want to drink. So you gotta go a step step deeper and go like, oh, there’s a belief system or like a mind virus that’s, causing people to find it acceptable to do this level of self abuse. Because that’s what it is. You’re just abusing yourself and you’re not showing yourself any respect. And then you go a little bit deeper, and that kind of MIND virus is leading to poor lifestyle patterns, poor nutrition, which is, again, leading to the excess weight gain and depression and high blood pressure, whatever. You can name anything at the top.

Eugene [00:35:06]:
And then you go, okay, so what’s leading to this mind virus? And there are a few things, you know, to consider here, but one, here are the common ones. One, the person most always, always has some kind of hate love hate relationship in their life. So a typical one is like you’ve been together with someone for ten years, and maybe initially you actually did love them at one point, you know, but then you kind of faded apart for one reason or another, but you continue to stay in the relationship, you know? And in a sense what this does is kind of set up a pattern of not, again, being honest with yourself because now you’re putting on a facade that yes, I love this person but really deep down you don’t, you know, and wanna leave etc etc. And this lack of kind of safety, it makes people want to seek food because in this conversation, it makes people want to seek food because food, what does it do? It loves you unconditionally. It gives you pleasure. And most importantly, it gives you what people what this type of subcategory of people lack is control in the external world, because they feel they can’t leave that relationship for one reason or another. So but with food, you can pick it up, eat it whenever you want it, and put it away whenever you want it. You know, it gives you pleasure and then you can put it away.

Eugene [00:36:35]:
So it gives you that sense of power etcetera etcetera. Another most another very common one is the the story gap that we mentioned earlier. This is super common. And, this is like, you know, the person wants to be like an artist, but they, for some reason or another, think they can’t succeed. And then they go and get, they they work as a lawyer, let’s just say, you know? And maybe for, like, a year or two, it is very exciting because, you know, they get the social prestige, I’m a lawyer, and they get maybe a more consistent pay. Although it’s a hard occupation to make a living into. I’m not putting down lawyers. It’s actually a very difficult occupation, etcetera, etcetera.

Eugene [00:37:19]:
But then, you know, two or three years later, in the back of their head, they know they just wanna be painting in art class or teaching art or whatever. And then when that case comes in and, you know, the paralegal doesn’t do their work, now you gotta do more of the work you don’t wanna do, then you get angry at the paralegal. And you know what I mean? And it builds up this chronic tension that leads to a lot of micro stressors that leads to the deterioration of the central nervous system, and then leads to maladaptive behavior. So this person thinks they have no power, you know, in that particular situation, so they go seek out food. It gives them that pleasure. And what’s important to it, it accepts them for who they are. It doesn’t ask any questions. They’re like, I just love you for who you are, here’s pleasure, you know? And then that leads to poor lifestyle and nutritional choices, which leads to excess weight gain, you know? And there are a couple of other variables, but for the sake of this podcast, I know we’re kind of, it’s not a Joe Rogan five hour five hour podcast here.

Eugene [00:38:17]:
It goes down to, then we gotta go a step lower. Like, what is causing people to get into relationships they don’t wanna be in, to get into jobs they don’t wanna be in. And there’s a lot of things, but it comes down to a misalignment or lack of clarity in core values. And core values, you can look at as like your DNA, you know. Like what’s important to you personally. So like for me, like, autonomy is important in my work, you know? Having enough time to read at least, like, two books a month is important in my schedule, you know? Having even little things like a slow morning is so important. I hate getting up and rushing out of bed. I like that slow morning.

Eugene [00:38:58]:
And everyone is different here. You can’t look over your shoulder and see, oh, it’s working for Eugene. That means it must get it must work for me. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy, you know, and if you do that, you’re gonna get more lost, because you get, in a sense, nature is a novelty generator, you know, as Paul Cech would say oftentimes. And everyone is different, you know. Even, each leaf on, on a bush is different, on the same bush. You know what I mean? So you gotta you gotta be intuitive. And the one issue these days is people in such a heightened myopic stress response.

Eugene [00:39:36]:
It’s hard to sit down and listen to that intuition. And then on top of that, they drown themselves with all sorts of medical drugs. But, you know, when you feel pain, it’s your body’s way of telling you something’s wrong and something needs to change. But instead of changing, people just down more medical drugs like antidepressants. Like when you have depression, anxiety, that’s your body’s way of telling you, like, hey. You need to sit down and reevaluate certain things because something is really deeply wrong at a foundational level right now. You know? But they’re like, no. Not gonna do that.

Eugene [00:40:07]:
Like, here’s a half a bottle of antidepressants, you know, and stuff of that sort.

Nick Urban [00:40:12]:
Or even just here’s some food because food can do the same thing. I mean, what’s one of the interesting things about food and simple carbohydrates, sugars is that that is the most powerful way of blunting cortisol and stress hormones. And so it’s like, I feel stressed. I go binge eat junk because it is a way of intuitively regulating my nervous system back towards balance. It’s not the best, most effective consequence free route, but it makes sense ultimately. And so so much of this ties back to nervous system readiness, CNS health, and noticing how these symptoms, like, where they come from. And instead of viewing them as the problem, it’s a fuel gauge showing an issue. And not necessarily a lack of fuel or too much fuel, but an indication that there’s something here.

Nick Urban [00:41:07]:
And so it’s like when these symptoms arise, pausing for a second and getting curious about what is this? Why is it going on? What are the potential linked factors? And that’s where something like a journal can be really helpful to correlate. Okay. I do this three days in a row. On the fourth day, every single time, I get a really big headache. Okay. Perhaps I should try doing it every day, every other day instead. Okay. Now the headache doesn’t occur, but maybe I shouldn’t even be doing it at all.

Nick Urban [00:41:36]:
A A lot of different ways of going about this.

Eugene [00:41:38]:
Yeah. And, my honest question for people that have been following, like, standard health care practices in The US, which are basically symptom management health care practices, is, like, okay. Like, you’ve been on antidepressants for fifteen years. Why are you still depressed? You know, you gotta ask these honest questions and stop duping yourself. You know what I mean? Because I’ve seen people on, like, these antidepressants or any kind of medical drugs for, like, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years dude. And they look worse and feel worse than ever before. And I’m like, come on man. When are you gonna wake up and start asking honest questions? And a lot of times people don’t do it because they know they would have to change who they are at the core, you know, to to make these problems disappear and that could be quite scary.

Eugene [00:42:24]:
You know what I mean? And Robert Kawasaki would say all the time people are, we use excuses to avoid the stress of needing to make change. So, like, I don’t have time. Well, everyone has time. You know, I’ve had executives that work sixty hours and have, like, five kids, and they still object even more so than I am all year round and do Ironmans. So, all these things like I don’t have time, this, that, it shuts the mind down from creating a solution, which provides short term relief because sometimes the solution is difficult. You know what I mean? It could be stressful. But it shuts the mind down from creating a solution, and it provides that short term relief that people love but long term is detrimental because people actually really do need that change. You know what I mean? But they’re just kind of creating these excuses to to form a dissociation.

Eugene [00:43:17]:
My best one is like I don’t have money for organic food. I’m like okay, that’s easy to disprove because the average American spends $8,000 to $16,000 a year on non non essential expenses without even thinking twice about it. And most of these expenses just lead to their obesity, poor skin, poor appearance, dependence on antidepressants or whatever. And then when I tell them, like, oh, it takes about, like, 6,000 a year for a 2,000 calorie a day or all organic diet every single day of the year, I don’t have money for that. I’m like, dude, we just concluded you spent 8 to 16,000 a year, and then they’re like, just kind of like phased away, you know, into oblivion or just admit that they’re, that is true and then don’t change anyways, which tells you that mental and physical pathology has been normalized to our to a large extent, many standard deviations in the wrong direction in our country.

Nick Urban [00:44:09]:
The example I like to use there is that if you look at the cost of a Snickers, it’s like, what, say $2.50 for a three ounce candy bar. If you were to multiply that for so you so that you have the cost of a pound worth of Snickers, it’s gonna be astronomically higher than even grass fed ground beef. Like, you can get grass fed ground beef for a lot cheaper than you can for the equivalent amount of Snickers and other things that seem cheap, but when you actually do, like, the full cost accounting are a lot more expensive.

Eugene [00:44:40]:
Nick, this is all super easy information for people to understand that aren’t mentally ill, you know? But when they are, it’s gonna be they’re just gonna they’re just gonna almost go blank when you’re talking to them and just start dissociating. They’re not even there anymore at the at the conscious level, you know, they’re somewhere else. Because God forbid they start getting real answers that really just point back to they need to change the person who they who they are, you know? And that is extremely scary for most people. So that’s the real issue. I mean, look, the number one reason for bankruptcy in The US, which accounts for eighty five percent of personal bankruptcies, is just health issues. And, nine out of ten Americans right now are metabolically sick and each, the average American has less than a thousand dollars in their bank account. So what does that mean in the near future as, economic disaster for our country, which is already spending $300,000,000,000 a year on helping obese people with their health problems?

Nick Urban [00:45:37]:
What’s interesting about this too is you can take it from both perspectives. You can go either route. You can either pause and you can get very clear on your goals, your personal mission, and reverse engineer it that way. And that’s a great strategy if you’re already healthy. But if you’re not healthy, you don’t have the biological energy to do that. So it’s gonna be just too difficult for a lot of people. And I think that’s where we can segue on to the world of shopping properly. Because once you start getting the right fuels in your body, it might take a little bit of getting used to, but then you start getting a energetic surplus.

Nick Urban [00:46:16]:
And with an energetic surplus, your brain works better. Your muscles work better. Your thinking is clearer. It’s crisper. Everything just improves. And from there, you can actually get very clear on how would I go about implementing these changes. So you wrote the anti factory farm shopping guide, and let’s dive into some of those findings because I know that can seem like it’s below the surface. It’s like or it’s above the surface.

Nick Urban [00:46:42]:
It’s not as important to cover as some of these other things, but it’s also a great entry point for a lot of people who are aware that they need to make changes and don’t really know how.

Eugene [00:46:50]:
Yeah. And it’s important to you know, everyone is different, so you gotta meet the problem at the level of the problem, you know? So changing your diet is one of the easiest things you can change because you gotta eat food anyways every day, might as well be the right food. And, trust me, you could eat, having just a whole food diet even if it’s not organic is is fine in most cases, a great step in the right direction, and it’s so inexpensive compared to eating out. So your typical meal when you eat out is gonna be about 300% more expensive than that equivalent meal for when you cook it at home. And if you get the system set up and I can cover what those systems are, it takes like five minutes for me to cook 3,000 calories a day, you know? And most people aren’t even well, they are eating 3,000 calories a day, but via processed food or fast food, but most people aren’t gonna eat 3,000 calories via, like, steak and vegetables. You know what I mean? That’s gonna be a gargantuous amount of food for most people.

Nick Urban [00:47:45]:
I wonder that system too, personally. How how do you set it up so that you only spend five minutes a day cooking for 3,000 calories or so?

Eugene [00:47:53]:
It’s so easy. Like, it’s so easy. Basically, like, I get up in the morning, I go work out first thing in the morning all the time. I find this to be way more, facilitative of consistency, you know, versus working out midday or at night, And I get home. I have a tray. I put parchment paper on top of that. I put, like, one and a half pounds of meat or two pounds of meat on there, a bunch of non starchy vegetables, and I throw some rice in the rice cooker. While it’s cooking, I’m in the shower.

Eugene [00:48:25]:
Does

Nick Urban [00:48:25]:
that go in the oven?

Eugene [00:48:26]:
In the oven, yeah. Gotcha. Actually, I have like a toaster oven too, but I do use it in the oven from time to time, like a countertop toaster oven, and I just leave it in there. And while it’s cooking, I’m taking a shower and getting ready for the day. By the time I’m done with the shower, I have two, not three, but two glass Tupperware containers. So I fill both of them up, I eat one of them right away, then I fill the other one I have up again, so I don’t have to I have to wash even less. This system is also great because you don’t have to be in the kitchen while it’s cooking. Okay? And there’s no cleanup because all you do is throw away the parchment paper on the pan, and that’s it.

Eugene [00:49:06]:
You know what I mean? And quickly rinse off the the inner pot lid or can or whatever they’re called in the rice cooker, and you’re done. And that’s it. I mean, it takes like five minutes. At that point, if like a person’s not doing it, there are deeper issues for why they don’t want to do this. You know what I mean? Like, much deeper, much deeper issues. Which, again, goes into the level of, like, you gotta meet the problem at the level of the problem. And where that problem is, for most people, it’s it’s it’s at multiple levels. It’s at almost every level now.

Eugene [00:49:35]:
But it’s important to identify that because if you’re not, you’re just managing symptoms. You know what I mean? And managing symptoms only yields more symptoms over time. That’s why Nick Do you

Nick Urban [00:49:44]:
have to flip that meat? Like, once you’re cooking it, do you flip the meat into the veggies? You just let it go?

Eugene [00:49:48]:
Nope. No. You just cook it in there, and it cooks thoroughly all the time.

Nick Urban [00:49:52]:
Nice.

Eugene [00:49:52]:
The meats I stick to are elk deer. I get them from forceofnaturemeets.com. I also do hunt in, Texas as well. Luckily, I just have I met a friend that has quite a bit of acreage, so he lets me use his land for hunting, so it’s quite easy for me. But I eat elk, deer, wild boar, grass fed and grass finished beef, grass fed and grass finished bison, and and wild fish. And then I also eat organic vegetables and fruits. And, I do like eating steel cut oats too. I just really like how they taste, and I have, like, a half a cup.

Eugene [00:50:26]:
It’s not even that much pretty much every morning. But that’s it. And I pretty much eat that like literally all year round. Okay? I have like perfect metabolic health markers, triglyceride levels HDL, body fat is low, muscle to fat ratio is great. I’m already 40 years old, but my testosterone total test still varies from 900 to 1,100 nanograms per deciliter. Just doing this basic, that’s where people are like, oh, yeah. I get it. I know you get it, but are you doing it? That’s the question.

Eugene [00:50:57]:
And my answer is no. You’re not. If you’re honest about it, you know? If they were, we wouldn’t have nine out of ten Americans being metabolically sick right now, you know? And the measurements they’re using for metabolic health are like, is your heart rate working? Yeah. Is your heart working? Okay. You are? Okay. Now you’re metabolic. It’s not even like Olympic level requirements, and people still can’t meet that.

Nick Urban [00:51:19]:
Yeah. And it’s actually I think it’s higher than just nine out of ten. It’s like 95% or something.

Eugene [00:51:23]:
Yeah. I tried to show up to this podcast today being optimistic. You know? So I said 90%. But yeah, I mean, if you the the standards, the study I’m quoting, I forgot the exact PubMed number, but, it’s easy to find. People can just look up, like, metabolic health study or whatever, ninety percent of population sick. And that’s getting worse over time

Nick Urban [00:51:45]:
to it. It’s not getting better.

Eugene [00:51:47]:
I think what’s happening is the people that are health conscious, they have more resources and more wealth of information, become even more health conscious, but that’s, like, one out of every, like, hundred, And they’re even in greater states of being now, but then the rest of the ninety nine are in they’re completely lost, man. I think it’s important to start talking about this, although it sounds a little bit negative. But if we don’t and if we don’t acknowledge that there’s a problem, that it’s a serious problem, it’s just gonna keep continuing. And it’s true. It’s not normal for people to be on all these medical drugs and and look so terrible and be so overweight. Totally not normal. And I don’t I think it’s because we’re kind of sugar coating around the conversation, like, oh, yeah. You need to, like, lose a little bit of weight or oh, yeah.

Eugene [00:52:38]:
It’s okay. Like, you’re taking these antidepressants, but at least you’re on one and that guy’s on, like, five, you know? Stuff like this. And we need to just be honest, like, hey, man, like, this isn’t normal and this isn’t benefiting you. If they worked, look, Americans are the most medically drugged out humans in all of human history, but yet still remain the sickest humans in literally all of human history, all 28 plus human species that have come and gone. What kind of success rate is that? You know what I mean? Like come on. Like would you go to the same practitioner that you’ve been paying for over and over again, and you still remain sick for twenty years? I mean it’s good for the practitioner. I guess you’re on their four zero one k plan or their BMW fund or whatever.

Nick Urban [00:53:24]:
Eugene, make make this practical for us. So if you’re walking into the grocery store, what are some of the common pitfalls that people accidentally fall into? And then also, what are, like, the any key tips you have to get the most out of your grocer visit? Because not all of our friends have farms or huge plots of land where we can go and do our own hunting.

Eugene [00:53:49]:
Yeah. They don’t have to. You can the best step is just to start with eating all whole food. Zero processing. So just eat, beef, chicken, fish, even if it’s farm raised fish, whatever. As long as it’s whole food, it’s a good step in the right direction. Just start eating vegetables and fruit only. Only.

Eugene [00:54:10]:
And for food or for liquid intake, just do like water, teas, and coffee. And then if you wanna take it a step above, then do all organic versions of all those foods. And then if you wanna take it a step above that, you could do like, make sure your meats are fed a species specific diet. So for cattle, they’re herbivores, you know? They need to eat grass and other forage, so, you want them to be ideally grass fed and grass finished, you know? So you gotta be careful with the labels there because, a lot of times it does say grass fed, but all cattle are grass fed, so it’s a little tricky. You know what I mean? All cattle are grass fed for like 85% of their life, but then they’re sent to a feedlot on what’s referred to as kind of like a finishing phase. And they’re fed heavy amounts of usually genetically modified corn and soy as the base mixture in that feed. And, that’s not a species specific diet. So when you don’t feed an animal a species specific diet, the nutritional composition of that animal changes and there are a few things that change in that nutritional composition.

Eugene [00:55:19]:
They typically develop a lot more fat, you know? So a good way to check if your beef is 100%, like, legitimate grass fed beef is typically it’s like burgundy red, it’s never bright red, and the fat is yellow. It’s not white. And it’s also if you poke the fat, it’s very spongy. If it’s very hard, that’s not real grass fed beef. Grass fed and grass finished beef. And you can go to Costco and you can press on the fat there in a lot of their steaks. You can see it’s very hard. It’s like candle wax, or it’s like solidified, candle wax, you know? And it’s very white, but the fat should be yellow in tone, you know? So, so you wanna make sure it says grass fed and grass finished, but there’s another layer of complexity.

Eugene [00:56:12]:
So, because there is no oversight on the grass fed claims, like, I could be a rancher and feed, you know, the cattle grass for 80% of their life, then transition them to grains for like a month or two, then finish them on grass for like a week, and it’s still technically grass fed and grass finished. You know what I mean? So some sites they can check out are like americangrassfed.org. That’s like a that’s like the gold standard in The US of grass fed on-site inspected ranches. You know, they do on-site inspection and they they inspect once every fifteen months and they do it do for the fifteen month interval because it helps them inspect the ranch every season that way. Because some ranches could do fully grass fed during certain seasons, but not other seasons. You know what I mean? So there’s another layer of complexity there. And it’s important to understand too that 90% of the beef sold in The US doesn’t come from The US. You know, it comes from like Latin American like JBS or Australia.

Eugene [00:57:10]:
I think Australia is okay. It’s a good company to get beef for it. Or a good

Nick Urban [00:57:13]:
New Zealand is good too.

Eugene [00:57:15]:
New Zealand as well because, grain isn’t subsidized there. So it’s actually not profitable to do grain finish Oh, nice. Cattle operation. It becomes quite expensive. And in fact, if you take the subsidies out of The US food model, all factory farms become unprofitable. You know what I mean? The only thing holding them afloat is is the taxpayer subsidy. So a lot of times, when people go to the grocery store and they see like, oh, grass fed, grass finished, ground beef, one packet, it’s like $9. But then the, normal factory farmed one, it’s like $6 or something.

Eugene [00:57:50]:
So it’s a $3 difference. But really, you’re still paying for that. It’s just you’re paying for it upfront with your taxes, you know? And that’s it. And on top of that, I mean, dude, people have enough money for that difference. Like I said, they’re spending 8 to $16,000 a year on non essential expenses. You know, $5 a day on Starbucks coffee, which is doused in, like, all sorts of xenoestrogen microplastics and then, like, the myriad of biocides used to grow those beans, etcetera, and then that are even magnified with the heat of the processing of the coffee bean, etcetera, etcetera. So, so yeah. Some things some things to consider.

Eugene [00:58:31]:
But I mean, I just gave gave them some easy websites to bypass all of that and get all their answers. I think forceofnaturemeets I think forceofnature.com or forceofnaturemeets.com.

Nick Urban [00:58:42]:
Yeah. I’ll I’ll put it in the show notes. Either way, that’s the lowdown on beef. But then what about other animal products? There’s obviously chicken. That’s a big one. And then there’s pork, and then there’s also the other animal products like eggs and dairy. How about any quick tips you have there?

Eugene [00:59:00]:
Yeah. So chicken and pork, at the grocery store level, again, this is really getting the apex of the apex. Okay? It’s not necessary to go to this level, but if you want to go to it, you’re not gonna be able to find it at the grocery store level, unfortunately. Whole foods does sell whole foods and natural groceries does sell, whole pasture raised chicken, you know, but they don’t sell it in pieces. You can find a company called, primalpastures.com. It’s a Southern California based company, and they sell, quality pasture raised chicken. Okay? There’s also one called happy-hens.com, and I actually worked there to learn about regenerative egg laying operations, for my second book. They gave me a chance to work with them for a bit and learn about their systems, and, that’s a good resource to check out.

Eugene [00:59:56]:
Okay? But at the grocery store level, the best you’re gonna get is, like, free range pork and chicken. And what that means is basically, they’re still in a huge warehouse, but they have, like, a little kind of patio, like a smoke pit, typically, where they can go roam outside for x amount of hours. Whether they do or not is a is a long conversation. Most of the time, no. Especially with the, broiler chicken or egg laying chicken operations because the window is quite small and the the light is quite bright, so it kind of scares a lot of the chickens. They kind of stay inside most of the time. So really, it’s just kind of like a like a caged operation for the most part. But also you’ll see in a lot of the packaging, it says vegetarian fed.

Nick Urban [01:00:45]:
Yes. And eggs too. Eggs say that as

Eugene [01:00:48]:
well. Yeah. And it and it sounds fancy, but chickens are remember, if you want the optimum nutrition, you need a species specific diet, and chicken are omnivores. They prefer, like, bugs and insects and all that stuff first before they get, like, anything else, you know? And when it says vegetarian fed, it really just means it’s, like, grain fed. And when you feed them large amounts of grain, because you get high amounts of that omega six in the shell of the grain, it it spikes up the omega six quite a bit in relation to the omega three. And omega six is kind of like a pro inflammatory. This is just for your audience. I know you know this stuff.

Eugene [01:01:24]:
Omega six is kind of just a pro inflammatory micronutrient and omega three is like anti inflammatory. And they can look up the inflammation theory of disease and see that all disease originates just from chronic inflammation in the body, which comes from diet and other sources like chronic stress, injuries, infections, etcetera, etcetera.

Nick Urban [01:01:43]:
It’s also one of the reasons that seed oils have been vilified and have their own issues. Of course, there’s other things, toxicities and the byproducts of the processing in those. But part of it is because of the really high omega six and specifically linoleic acid linoleic acid content. Yeah.

Eugene [01:01:59]:
Yeah. And in those seed oils, it’s it’s highly concentrated, you know. And it’s also whenever you get anything in a liquid form, it’s easy to over consume. You know what I mean? So that’s that’s the issue with the oils. None of these, like, omega six, three, and nine, none of them are bad if they’re in the right ratio. But when you start getting them from, like, farmed products or, like, industrially manufactured products, the ratio is most always, like, super off, you know. So the typical American has, like, in a ratio of, like, omega three to omega six. Like, one omega three to, like, 20 or 30 omega six in their diet, where in real in reality, what you want is usually, like, a one to one.

Eugene [01:02:37]:
You know, somewhere around there. And you could easily achieve that by just eating, pasture raised meats, wild fish, organic not even organic, just whole vegetables and fruit, and drinking water. And that’s it. It would just naturally, just for the most part, happen on average, on a weekly average, that that that ratio would just turn out.

Nick Urban [01:03:00]:
So So Eugene, if I’m looking for chicken, pasture raised is great. Free range, not as good. If I see vegetarian diet, that’s something I should avoid. But if it doesn’t say anything about diet, is that gonna be a cleaner omnivorous diet, or is that going to be perhaps even worse?

Eugene [01:03:19]:
Yeah. Usually, on every carton except, like, the real cheap cheap eggs where it has, like, no logo

Nick Urban [01:03:24]:
So this is for, like, normal chicken still before before we can get to the eggs.

Eugene [01:03:29]:
Oh, okay. Yeah. So, I haven’t had any chicken where it it didn’t have something written on there. The most common one is, like, a vegetarian diet, you know. If it says the thing is, with pasture raised operations, is a lot of them too, don’t use organic grains. They use non GMO grains, you know, so that’s something to consider too. Because inevitably there’s gonna be a decent amount of spraying going on in corn and soy operations, because it’s a monocrop operation. It’s the only way to be able to sustain it, when you don’t have any biodiversity in your crop.

Eugene [01:04:08]:
And, the thing to consider is there are no safety studies done on these pesticides. You know, a lot of people think there are, but complete formulations of these biocides, we’ll just call them biocides, are never tested for safety. So for the average listener, they probably think, like, they take the complete formulation, the thing you see at Home Depot, like Roundup, and spray it on something and then test it for safety. That’s actually not how it happens. They have they just test the active ingredient, which is one ingredient among a myriad of ingredients. It could be less than 1% of the total formulation in isolation on its own. And if it’s safe at that level, then they deem the whole entire formulation as safe. But the problem is is the inert ingredients, which they take out of the testing, are put into the formulation to enhance the potency and lethality of the active ingredient.

Eugene [01:05:03]:
So obviously, when you take those out, it could pass safety testing like glyphosate in Roundup. That’s very popular. So if you just spray glyphosate, which is just an active ingredient in isolation on its own, it’s useless. It almost does nothing. It almost does nothing. But if you spray it in the complete formulation of a Roundup product, which usually glyphosate is around 40 to 50% of the formulation, and then the other 60 to 50% of the formulation is what’s referred to as inactive or inner ingredients, it becomes hundreds of times more toxic. You know what I mean? But that’s what they’re using in the field. They’re not using the active ingredient in isolation on its own.

Eugene [01:05:47]:
So a lot of, misinformed data influencers or whatever you call them, like doctor eeds or I call her glyphosate babe, where it’s really food science babe, but she’s always promoting the safety of glyphosate.

Nick Urban [01:06:00]:
What’s interesting too, there’s so many issues with it that are not often discussed. First of all, glyphosate was patented as an antibiotic. And if it’s patented for a use like that, there’s probably efficacy behind it. But then also it was deemed safe because of the impact it has on human cells, yet we’re not just human cells. We also have microbiomes. And the way it works disrupts the shikimate pathway in the microbiome and destroys, decimates the gut microbiome composition. And then you also have issues with the molecule of glyphosate being molecular very molecularly very similar to glycine itself. It can displace glycine, which is really important, amino acid, nonessential amino acid.

Nick Urban [01:06:45]:
There’s so many reasons to avoid it. We could probably record an entire other podcast just on that one bio side. There’s a bunch of other ones. That’s the big one. But then also, since we have limited time, when you’re looking at chicken I’m gonna go back to this one again. If you see air chilled, I see that sometimes, and I have no idea why I want the chicken to be air chilled, but it’s always more expensive. What is that?

Eugene [01:07:11]:
Oh, yeah. So that’s pretty easy. So typically, when they, slaughter the animal to cool it down and to clean it off, they dip it in a chlorinated bath. And it’s kind of like a conveyor belt that goes into a pool with a bunch of chlorine, and then this is just like a bunch of chickens, like thousands of chickens go through this pool, but then you get a lot of guts and pus and intestines in this, and, some people don’t like that, you know what I mean? So then they they have another system called air chilling. So So it’s another conveyor belt, you know, but it goes through kind of like, let’s say like a sector of the processing plant where they just blow a lot of really cold air on the chicken. So it bypasses this kind of dirty chlorinated pool, and, it’s it’s a bit more sanitary, and you don’t get that kind of like pink pus build up sometimes in the, you know, container, you know what I’m talking about? So you typically get those from those kind of chlorinated kind of that’s basically all it is. So that’s what air chilling is. It’s just a more, in some ways, a more sanitary way of just processing the chicken and cooling it down.

Nick Urban [01:08:17]:
Sure. When you consume chicken, do you often wash it off before cooking?

Eugene [01:08:21]:
So I rarely eat chicken these days, to be honest, but when I do, I don’t. I don’t I don’t wash it off. I don’t know if that’s the best thing to do or not, but I usually kind of cook it thoroughly. I think if anything, it’ll probably kill everything at that point. But I usually, honestly, my meat sources are like elk, deer, wild boar, grass fed, grass finished beef. I just feel so much better when I eat those. My skin looks better, I’m fuller for way more in the day. My strength and endurance also increases in the gym quite a bit, and stuff of that sort.

Eugene [01:08:56]:
So

Nick Urban [01:08:57]:
What are your thoughts on the importance of going organic or grass fed? I mean, I guess grass fed, grass finished speaks for itself. But organic, specifically specifically when it comes to fatty meats and just fat sources in general?

Eugene [01:09:11]:
I always I always eat organic because, again, there have been no safety studies or complete formulations at any of these bio sides. And organic also means no antibiotics, no steroids, no beta agonists, no GMOs, etcetera. It doesn’t just stop at the biocide level. And a lot of people like, you know, glyphosate babe, they say, organic uses pesticides too. And first of all, okay. Let’s cover that because, yes, they might as a last resort, but their pesticides are like salt and water or vinegar and water or soap and water or copper.

Nick Urban [01:09:49]:
Copper. Yeah. Yeah. I assume that.

Eugene [01:09:50]:
I’m pretty sure I would have if I sprayed let’s just be common sense here, not retarded. And if I had two apples, and on one apple, I sprayed round up on it, and on one apple, I sprayed vinegar and water on it, Which apple would you eat? Let’s not be stupid here with these freaking stupid data influencers that never left their, their laboratory or their computer screen and forgot their common sense, like, probably never even had it to begin with.

Nick Urban [01:10:19]:
Yes. I agree. I think organic in general is very important. I think it’s especially important for foods that are higher in fat or whenever you’re eating if you’re peeling something, the actual food inside the peel is gonna be less saturated. It’s still gonna have plenty of the biocides on them, but less if you’re eating something that’s fat because fat sequesters toxins and lipophilic chemicals, like a lot of these biocides. Those are gonna be more important to have organic too than something that’s on the EWG’s list of, let’s say, the clean 15 foods lowest in biocides.

Eugene [01:10:55]:
Yeah. I don’t like that list, man. I just think, like, look, like you’re spending money already, 8 to $16,000 on shit. Just convert that shit into actual conscious spending that is gonna benefit you. And also, in this in the grand scheme of things, it’s like, look, where you’re putting your money, you’re putting your money into like a system that’s unsustainable, you know. The Earth, you’re looking at, you know, 70 of it can’t even be farmed for anything because it’s the ocean, and then the remaining half of that can’t be farmed because of some kind of climate issue or just the land is too tilted or whatever. So basically, you’re left with like 15% of the Earth’s surface volume that’s able to be farmed for food, and half of that is where metropolitan areas are built. They’re built in the most fertile of lands, so you’re left really with like 8%, let’s just say, or seven and a half percent.

Eugene [01:11:52]:
And most of that is just through monocropping, you know, which is supported by this heavy which relies heavily on chemical agriculture, because you can’t run a huge monocrop operation without chemical agriculture. And that’s what you’re supporting. You know what I mean? And it’s not doing you any justice and it’s not helping anyone around. It’s maybe quote unquote on the surface saving you like $2 or $3, but you’re spending that money already on other shit that’s not adding any value to your life whatsoever. Like, okay, dude, who cares? You got an eye new iPhone. A big deal. You’re still obese.

Nick Urban [01:12:30]:
Before we wrap this one up, I think we’ll have to do another one to talk more about grocery shopping because there’s a lot to unpack here, and we’ve only touched on animal products so far. Then we go into eggs. We’ve mentioned eggs a little bit. It’s confusing. There’s cage free. There’s free range. There’s pasture raised. There’s all kinds of different quality things.

Nick Urban [01:12:50]:
Lots of marketing claims on egg cartons. Let’s quickly break down those and then also go on to dairy and specifically, like, milk and yogurts and what you look for when choosing high quality sources of dairy.

Eugene [01:13:02]:
Yeah. So with eggs, I mean, to make it simple, if they want a good example, just go to happyhens.com and just see what they’re doing and then whatever company you wanna buy, just evaluate it to their standards. That’s gonna be the apex of commercial brands. Okay? You’re not gonna find, at a commercial level, you’re not gonna find grain free eggs. It’s just not gonna happen. You could do it yourself though. It is possible to do it for yourself personally, and that’s gonna be the most nutrient dense food, egg available, you know. But that happy dash hens, they’re corn and soy free operation.

Eugene [01:13:40]:
They’re USDA organic certified. They rotate their hens onto new pasture every single day. And, each hen has about, like, 200 last time I checked, 270 square foot of space per hen

Nick Urban [01:13:51]:
Oh, okay.

Eugene [01:13:52]:
Where the industry averages 1.2 feet.

Nick Urban [01:13:55]:
Yes.

Eugene [01:13:55]:
So you go from 1.2 feet to 270. That’s a huge diff difference. And the more space they have, that means the less crowding there is. That means the more access each individual hen has to a bunch of bugs and insects. Because if you have, like, a whole bunch of them, they’re gonna eat that up quick. And then again, you’re just a grain operation again. You know what I mean? You need to supplement more hens.

Nick Urban [01:14:16]:
Have you heard of Ashley Armstrong? She’s one of the ones, I think, doing things right when it comes to eggs and now making them commercially available. But she feeds her hens a real diet. And they also are tested to be low in linoleic acid, which you can’t get if you’re feeding them corn and soy and everything. So I’ll put a link to that in the description because I think that’s another good source. And with the cost of eggs these days, it’s not even much more expensive than some of the other ones you find in the grocery store.

Eugene [01:14:42]:
Yeah. No. That’d be great. I’ll I’ll check her out. Maybe even have her on my podcast. It’s always good to kind of interview people like that.

Nick Urban [01:14:48]:
Yeah. Okay. That’s that’s the egg. Oh, then also on the eggs, a lot of them say a hundred and eight like, a high quality egg, say a hundred and eight square feet. Why a hundred and eight? That seems very arbitrary. And does that matter?

Eugene [01:14:59]:
Oh, that’s, I think, like a certification they got from France. That’s like a standard, hundred and eight square feet. It’s like 10 by 10 basically, you know, or whatever. Again, that’s just the industry standard is like 1.2, you know? So that’s a huge upgrade from that. But then that company I mentioned, happyhens.com, is like $2.70.

Nick Urban [01:15:16]:
Yeah. Exactly. I

Eugene [01:15:17]:
mean, so it’s it’s quite a bit more. So

Nick Urban [01:15:19]:
Vital Farms is one of, like, the common brands for, like, cleaner commercial eggs. They also have a product that’s pasture raised, and they have an organic version and a non organic version. How does that work?

Eugene [01:15:32]:
Well, that’s exactly how it works. They have an organic and non organic version. So they’re all pasture raised, you know, just some of them are fed non organic grains, so non GMO, but non organic, and some of them are fed organic grains. So organic also means non genetically modified by default too. So their organic brand is kind of more of that orange kind of box with a lot of, kind of cool graphics. They have, like, cool graphics on there and stuff. So, yeah, I mean, you just gotta be conscious of when you buy it. If you see if it has that if it has a a big thing that says organic or that stamp that says USDA organic, that’s the one you would wanna go for because all of them were kinda pasture raised at the end of the day.

Nick Urban [01:16:13]:
Yeah. Okay. How important is this test? I don’t even know if it’s valid. But cracking an egg cracking two types of eggs side by side and looking at how yellow or orange the egg yolk is to determine the nutrient density of it.

Eugene [01:16:27]:
It’s not that reliable of a system, actually, although you see that online quite a bit because you could actually have legitimate fully pasture raised birds but they’re quite young and they’ll still be like very kind of see through yellow yolk, not that deep deep, I don’t know exactly almost chrome, I guess. I don’t know what color that is. But that deep kind of orange, yolk, it’s not gonna have that. But it’s still legitimate pasture raised hens, but they just happen to be younger too. So there are a lot of variables to consider.

Nick Urban [01:16:58]:
Bummer. I thought that was a very easy heuristic. I guess not. Eugene, we still have a lot more to cover. Have to be another day. If people want to check out your work, to read your book, to check out some of your testimonials, where do you wanna direct them?

Eugene [01:17:12]:
Yeah. They can go, to, trofkin athletics dot com. And I guess next podcast, I actually did some research on AA amyloid buildup in organ supplements with Jason Rountree at Michigan State University. So that would be a good topic to talk about as well. But, yeah, they can find me on there. I’m on I’m on all the Facebooks and all that stuff, although I don’t like being on that stuff, but I’m on there, you know? Keep the online business going.

Nick Urban [01:17:38]:
Yep. Awesome. Been a pleasure hosting you, and I look forward to our next conversation.

Eugene [01:17:43]:
Okay. Alright, Nick. Thank you, man. Good to see you again.

Nick Urban [01:17:46]:
Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Head over to Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Every review helps me bring you thought provoking guests. As always, you can find the show notes for this one at mind body peak dot com slash, and then the number of the episode. There, you can also chat with other peak performers or connect with me directly. The information depicted in this podcast is for information purposes only. Please consult your primary health care professional before making any lifestyle changes.