by Frank Tufano
We are only now starting to really understand how the digestive system works. Who knows? We may even still find out that polyphenols or other micronutrients really do have some benefits that make them worth consuming. But the evidence is still spurious at best.
And some things are certain. I do know, for example, that the vast — vast — majority of Americans are not getting enough Vitamin A, Vitamin D3, or Vitamin K2. I am positive that all the seed oils, soy-fed chicken breast, and deli ham slices are ruining their Omega fatty acid ratios. And I know that inflammation is killing people, destroying families, and keeping millions of people hooked on pharmaceuticals that they would never have needed if they just ate like their great grandparents once did.
What I would love to see is even more science on these aspects of our diet. These big-ticket items still never get talked about while Healthline.com and Time magazine pump out 50 articles a year about how much red wine is ideal for your health. (It’s probably zero cups per year.)
In trying to get more data about exact nutrient content of various foods, I have looked long and hard. There is a German nutritional database that seems far superior to the USDA standard breakdowns for many foods, particularly when it comes to things like liver and offcuts that the Washington regulator knows nobody in the United States under 70 actually eats anymore.
But it is still very hard to find the precise measurements on the difference between the vitamins in grass-fed beef fat vs. feedlot beef fat. In blanket-statement terms in the United States, this wouldn’t even do much good. Because the legal definition of marketing terms like “grass-fed,” “free-range,” and “pastured” doesn’t actually tell you much about how the animal was raised.
What I want to know is how much Vitamin K2 is actually in different artisanal raw cheeses and how much Vitamin C is lost by freezing the meat from a freshly killed lamb for two months. How much DHA is actually in a chicken that lives outdoors and eats bugs all day compared to one raised in a poultry concentration camp never seeing the sun?
One of my goals is to start doing this myself if nobody else ever will. But it’s expensive and takes a lot of effort. Plus, as mentioned, even with the best (real) grass-fed, humanely raised cows, there will be some variance in nutrients due to the pasture it was on and what time of year it was killed (because summer grass has that much more chlorophyll and cows, like us, produce more Vitamin D3 during times of peak UV).
These are the questions I’m curious about. And if people in positions of power actually cared about helping people be healthier, these are the types of questions we would maybe get answers to. Instead, this stuff is hardly studied. Because there is no money in it.
Meanwhile, we get new research about goji berries every few months. Twenty years ago, it was pomegranates — just when they were becoming a hot product on the market. Funny how that works. Now, we hear more and more about gluten all the time — not because celiac disease is a serious problem for a small percentage of people but because “gluten-free” is a new marketing term that global food manufacturers know sells more product. And just watch: There will dozens of new studies released in the next two years about fake meat when anybody who has any understanding of how it’s made can tell you right now that it’s just soy-based slop.
Without putting on too much of a tinfoil hat, this is because industry is the biggest funder of nutritional studies. They are also conducted in ways that make things very difficult to isolate, with factors like healthy bias and self-reporting. How do you find out what effect eggs have on the heart when the subjects in the study are downing seed oils on the side and this is supposedly just part of the control group? The epidemiological approaches yield results, sure, but they are so clouded by lifestyle factors and poorly understood relative risk conclusions.
Even well-meaning academics who are unaffiliated with interests like Monsanto and Cargill have little interest in exploring the topics that I think can most help us perfect our diets. This isn’t even necessarily because they are evil or paid shills. It’s that they gravitate to areas where they think societal “impact” can be made. If they are actually trying to do good, they probably know that true pasture-raised pork is so uncommon that studying it is unlikely to actually help many people. Investing their small $20,000 grant on this won’t make much difference in their eyes. By comparison, doing a study that helps confirm that the Impossible Burger is just repackaged and reprocessed junk food may actually steer millions of people away from it.
The sad part is that they are probably right. With all the abundance and wealth we have in this country, we could be moving toward a diet utopia where everyone can eat the best eggs and cheese humanity is capable of producing. But nobody is actually pushing for this. They are lining up for the new Popeye’s chicken sandwich in record numbers and then telling themselves they’ll go vegan for a week to make up for their “cheat meal.”
It’s depressing. Everyone wants to talk about diet and nutrition all day long. But none of the conversations they are having are the right conversations. In a world like this, it’s hard not to feel like I am just yelling in a room full of empty chairs.
But I know that the principles of health I am promoting here are real. And I know that people who adopt this way of eating — and, maybe more importantly, this way of thinking about food in general — will become healthier. I have seen it in my sister and many clients who have asked for my help in turning their lives around.
So even if the best I can hope for is getting one percent of Americans to truly consider and understand food quality, that’s still 3.3 million people! Hopefully just a few of you will take this all to heart and be able to get over your obesity issues, get off those prescription drugs, and get back in control of your health. In a few years — and hopefully a few months — maybe you will be able to things that today are simply out of reach now because you are tired and feel like crap all the time.
That’s my goal. There may be no way to turn back the clock and convince people that feedlot beef, soy, and chronic inflammation are a three-pronged fork being rammed into our society’s chest. And it may be decades before we learn to overcome the conventional wisdom fallacies that have the whole world following nutrient-deficient vegans into the grave. Quality animal foods, especially in the United States, may just continue to get harder and harder to find.
But there are some encouraging signs. Everyone now knows that Omega 3s are important. Eat local and small farm meat share co-ops are gaining popularity. Raw and artisanal cheeses are now widely available at mainstream places like Whole Foods. Even the momentum we are seeing for carnivore and keto diets — albeit with sellout influencers in these areas pushing feedlot beef and processed garbage — is a good sign that things may be changing.
So I will continue to have some hope — even in a seemingly hopeless world.
More than anything, though, I know that any single individual can change their life for the better. It will require rethinking some things and having awkward conversations in social situations. But it is definitely very achievable and, I hope, I have given you a good blueprint to follow.
From my YouTube channel to this book to my meat company to dreams of owning a farm and venturing out into various other areas of health, I know I am just getting started.
Hopefully, you can too. That’s all it takes. Just get started on this journey to better health through a nutrient-dense, Ancestral Indigenous Diet, and you will be very happy you did.
I know I can come off as a bit arrogant and combative, especially in some of my videos. That may be the reputation I’ve gotten on YouTube. It’s OK. I am a brash New York kid who is passionate and can get a bit emotional. What are ya gonna do?
But in this book, and ultimately in all my work to spread awareness about nutrition, I really just want to help people. Wrapping that message up with a little entertainment makes it more appealing to more people. So even if my methods might rub some others the wrong way, I share this — and all my messages — from
that place. At the end of the day, I would hope that even those who may not always agree with the messenger can at least understand the value of the message.
So I will leave you with that.
Above all, I want you to be healthy and avoid so many of the problems that too many people now face. So many of these issues really are avoidable. All you have to do is eat like humans should.
More than anything else, if you want to start improving your future and feeling better in the present, you need to look to our past. The ancestral indigenous way of living may have had plenty of drawbacks. But when it comes to diet and health, they knew a lot of things that we have somehow forgotten as a society.
If you learn to rediscover your past, you will start to discover your health.
