July 23, 2025 • 25 mins
Professor Fred Provenza is the legendary behavioural ecologist and author who revolutionised how we understand the nature of animal health and intelligence, and its connection to our human health and intelligence. But what really blew Fred away on his journey was what he talked about in this part of our conversation a few years ago, on the capacity of all beings to innately know and select the food and nutrition they need.
Welcome to the 6th edition of Vignettes from the Source, the new short-form series featuring some of the unforgettable, transformative and often inexplicable moments my guests have shared over the years.
I initially went in to just grab the 14 minutes you’ll hear first. But when listening back, I couldn’t stop it running till another 10 minutes had ticked along – after I’d asked Fred how all his health findings relate to planetary health too.
And all this was prompted because it happened to come up in conversation yesterday, as I was sitting with another legendary former guest on this podcast, Paul Hawken, back here in California (where our American journey began, and where it’s now ending). And a listener from Pennsylvania also just contacted Fred about it. So I thought, why not bring it up again here too?
If you’d like to hear or revisit this conversation in full, head to episode 123 – ‘The Wisdom Body a paradigm change in animal, human and planetary health’ (there are a bunch of links in those show notes too, including to Fred’s masterful book, ‘Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom’).
There were actually two parts to episode 123, by the way. And there’s another unforgettable section in part 2. But that’s for another day.
For now, I hope you enjoy revisiting this one with Fred Provenza, a man who has come to shine a light not only on the extraordinary regenerative capacities of nature, including humans, but how regenerating all human systems stems from the wisdom of our bodies.
Originally recorded 8 June 2022.
Music:
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.
Pre-roll music: Heartland Rebel, by Steven Beddall (sourced from Artlist).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Fred (00:00):
My wife, a couple of weeks ago, asked an interesting
question to me.
We'd never talked about itbefore, but she said did you
have expectations of your life,how it was going to unfold as
you went along?
And I said no, I didn't.
I really didn't have any, Ijust kind of followed where the
interests led and where thoseinterests come from, I don't
(00:25):
know.
But I do think it's veryimportant for a human to follow
that.
Whatever you are, you know, tofind what's in you and what's
your passion, and it just kindof leads you along the way.
That certainly happened for me,and not that there weren't bumps
along the road, you know, as wewere talking depression and
cancer, and there weren't bumpsalong the road.
It was, you know, as we weretalking depression and cancer
(00:47):
and this and that comes along.
But but still that overarchingthing was just following what,
what was so just interesting forwhatever reason, just following
that and and for me foreverbeing a student of that, you
know, and kind of always beinghumbled and then thinking as I
(01:09):
do now that you know it was allof that was good for a
conversation.
Good for a conversation, butdon't take it too seriously that
you really think you knowanything?
You probably don't.
You know anything because youprobably.
You probably probably don't.
AJ (01:24):
You know but, but, um, but whatever little things you
thought you learned along theway were, dang sure, interesting
, I, I think, for me well, let'stake a, a leaving point from
there, because I could go in afew directions, we might dance
around a little bit, but I I'dlove to go from there, as if to
(01:46):
back up your point but then sortof fan it out.
At the same time.
It's still so spectacular toconsider the Clara Davis studies
from 100 years ago.
Yeah, please, I gather this waspivotal too in how you came to
understand human animals, let'ssay in a similar vein, of the
(02:09):
surprising levels of intuitiveintelligence within us what I
find too.
Fred (02:14):
I did a long podcast yesterday with a fellow who
wanted to do one for months nowand he finally caught up and he
said he was talking to someoneabout the podcast when it was
coming up and he said, well,just let him go, he'll go down a
million rabbit holes.
But I I'm thinking that now itseems like there's so many
(02:35):
stories when you reach thispoint in the game, it's just and
, clara Davis, you know eachthing that gets mentioned,
there's's stories that relate tothat, to all of it, and so it
is.
You can sort of infiniteregress, digress, digression.
AJ (02:54):
Well, that's right.
It's in keeping with what wefound about the nature of the
world, isn't it?
There's no thing separate fromanything else, but let's focus
for the sake of the exercise.
Fred (03:05):
Yes, yes.
AJ (03:06):
Run us through it, Fred.
Run us through what was foundby Clara that century ago.
Fred (03:11):
Well, what was amazing, and I'll start with just a
little bit of backstory on thatI was not familiar with Clara
Davis' work.
When we started our work onexperiences early in life, you
know, originally looking at therole that mother plays in
animals, learning what and whatnot to eat and where and where
not to go in the environment,food and habitat selection.
(03:33):
I wasn't familiar with any ofher work.
Nor was I familiar with herwork when we did studies with
cattle first and then with sheep, but with cattle, did studies
with cattle first and then withsheep, but with cattle, offering
them either a choice of theingredients that made up a total
mixed ration.
Total mixed rations are whatpeople feed animals in feedlots.
(03:55):
That's a mix of different feedingredients that's ground and
mixed together.
So the animals really can'tselect, they don't have much
ability to self-select what's inthat.
They just eat the.
They simply eat what'spresented to them.
So we thought, well, let's feedone set of animals a total
(04:16):
mixed ration.
Let's feed the other set ofanimals the separate ingredients
, the four or five ingredientsthat were in that total mixed
ration, and just let themself-select and see what they do
.
And I mention that specificallybecause when we were writing
the paper from that study wewere pointing out no two
(04:36):
individuals ever selected thesame foods.
No individual ever selected thesame combination of foods from
day to day, but each individualselected a diet that's met its
needs.
And they actually did that,eating less food than the
animals were eating in the totalmixed ration.
So then this friend, who was tobecome a very good friend, a
(05:01):
writer in Canada, mark Shaxter,who's written several books now,
was reading what we were doingand he said do you know about
Clara Davis' work?
And I said no, and he said,well, you need to read about her
work.
And so I started reading andit's like, oh my gosh, that was
nearly a hundred years ago.
And it's like we plagiarizedwhat she was.
(05:22):
We were writing so much.
She says those same words andit's like, oh man, it would have
been neat to have met her.
You know, it's almost likeanother, like another life you
lived.
AJ (05:35):
Indeed, but in her case it was.
It was in an orphanage withkids.
Fred (05:39):
Yes, yes, yes, kids, kids given up for adoption in an
orphanage, 15 children for sixyears.
I can't even imagine offering34 different foods that were
available seasonally wholesomefoods available in the market
seasonally and and just each dayoffering each of those kids a
(06:05):
choice of those foods and thenrecording what they ate and how
much they ate.
That's an amazing amount.
That was before computers too.
So how you pull all thattogether into data sheets and
analyze all of that was amazing.
But it would have been fabulousactually to meet and visit with
Clara I could just it wouldhave been like an at-oneness for
(06:30):
certain and to talk to her aswe're talking.
So what Clara got you thinkingabout?
To do a study like that ofthese children and, as she
pointed out, they were in a waylittle young vessels that were
being filled.
She said there wasn't a hintthat they knew a priori about
(06:50):
any of those foods.
They would sample them.
They'd sample everything, eventhe napkins that were put in
front of them.
But then you know, within daysand weeks they'd come to really
each child to selectcombinations of foods that
really worked for them, and whatthey ate varied from day to day
(07:12):
and it was just exactly what wewere finding when we, anytime
we took the time to really lookclosely at what sheep or goats
or cows were doing, at whatsheep or goats or cows were
doing.
And it brings back anotherthought.
You know, when we were reallyinitially starting some of the
work, I remember watching sheepforaging on rangelands that
(07:36):
would have maybe 100 differentplant species, and it was in
those days I was still thinkinglike a physicist, like we had
been trained, that thosephysicists, you know, they're
able to predict and controleverything and they understand
so well.
And I used to think naively inthose days, if we just
understood enough, if weunderstood enough, we would be
(07:59):
able to predict and control.
But when I would watch thoseanimals and move from one to the
next and just taking a nibbleof that and 10 bites of this and
you know, maybe in an hourthey'd sample 30, 40 species I
used to think, boy, how on earthcould you ever predict what the
(08:21):
next bite is going to be?
And I really changed mythoughts about that over time.
That wasn't the point.
It's the point came to meunderstanding the processes and
what's underlying the processesand then what they do, trying to
predict.
That isn't so important asunderstanding the processes and
(08:41):
how all those processes cometogether to create the dynamic
that you observe of them eatingthis diverse array of different
foods.
And then you know, withoutgoing into the details,
understanding at moremechanistic level, some of
what's going on there thatcauses them from the standpoint
(09:03):
of these primary compounds ornutrients that are in plants and
the secondary compounds, allthese other compounds, how, how
that dynamic is playing outuniquely for each individual and
its body.
Its body knows what what to dowith with those tens of
thousands of compounds.
It's still quite quite amystery all of that, and I think
(09:26):
the work that we did points ina direction that there is a lot
of evidence that the body doesknow, but at a cellular level,
all that's happening with thatand how.
That's all those feedbacks thatwe got into and did so many
years of study after study afterstudy of relationships amongst
(09:48):
primary and secondary compoundsand cells and organ systems, and
again we were totally students.
And some of those feedbacks Iremember the first time we ever
did any of those where we'd feedfood that wasn't very
nutritious and then infusesomething into the gut that was
(10:09):
a nutrient they were needing orsomething, and just have your
mind blown that something weinfused into the body changed
their liking for something thatshouldn't be good at all.
I don't know if that's makingsense, but it was like.
That is so mind boggling thatwe put something into their
veins or into their gut and ittotally changes what they're
(10:33):
selecting, how they're likingthat.
It set me back quite a whileand I think others of us working
on that work just to try towrap our heads around that of us
working on that work just totry to wrap our heads around
that.
It was another step along theway, just amazing.
For us.
AJ (10:52):
You know, yeah, and I mean I think of the implications Going
back to the children, forexample.
It's almost stereotypical tosay kids won't eat their fruit
and veg, right.
And yet here was this exampleof kids innately, obviously,
when the processed stuff wasn'tin the way of the intuitive
(11:13):
signals they were going to.
This diversity of healthy foodsthat their bodies needed and
their health outcomes reflectedthat it showed extraordinary
outcomes.
These kids who weren't educatedin that just their bodies led
the way, and you're finding thesame thing in the animals.
So the implications for bothour capacity, animals' capacity,
(11:36):
to self-organise in healthierways, yeah, it changes
everything.
Fred (11:44):
Yeah, so true what you're saying.
And you know there werepediatricians that were
following the children, forobvious reasons.
You know Well, because in thosedays and Claire talks about and
I wrote in Nourishment aboutbooks that were being written in
those days and it was veryauthoritarian.
(12:04):
You know, we're pediatricians,we know what the children need
to eat and this is what they andI had so fun to read what Clara
writes about that Boy theyhadn't heard a thing that the
pediatricians had to say aboutthat and the combinations of
things that they would puttogether.
They were totally differentfrom what we would typically
(12:26):
think of as this you would eatfor breakfast and this maybe for
lunch and this for dinner.
It was just it's so funny, youknow, breakfast made some liver
and oh, I forget the differenceCombinations of things that you
would never put together.
And I read the papers.
(12:46):
They said they never saw ahealthier set of children.
And then we bounced back alittle bit to the studies we did
with the cattle and realizingthat the animals given a choice
actually ended up eating lessfood.
They were eating less food thanthe animals fed the total mixed
ration and we argued that wasbecause each animal, even given
(13:10):
only five different foods wasable to better meet its needs.
It wasn't over-ingesting.
You know there's been quite alot written and some of my
friends who live in Australiahave written about that.
The protein leverage hypothesis,the ideas that humans will
(13:31):
over-ingest energy to meet needsfor protein and so there's an
inefficiency we're eating moreenergy than what we need, which
leads to weight gain.
Robbenheimer and Simpson myfriends, have written quite a
lot about that, wrote a bookabout that, but we were arguing
that same thing was happeningwith the animals.
When they had the choice ofingredients that varied in
(13:53):
energy and protein and so forth,they were able to better meet
their needs and so it cost less.
It actually cost less money tofinish those animals
economically.
It actually cost less money tofinish those animals
economically.
There was an economy in termsof the body and an economy in
terms of the money that wasbeing spent.
AJ (14:14):
All the stories that you've been privy to over the years and
the experiences you've had withdifferent farming contexts, for
example, that's clearly been amajor part of it the saving of
tons of money, inputs, and whatabout the outcomes of landscape?
I guess, if we link this toplanetary health and landscape
health, what have you seenemerge from people who've been
(14:38):
practicing in such a way as toharness this natural
intelligence?
If you like to harness thisnatural intelligence, if you
like.
Fred (14:44):
I think one of the things that strikes me nowadays, aj, is
this what people often callregenerative agricultural
movement, and you know thiswhole movement back toward
appreciating the importance ofsoil and the health of soil and
what that means life in the soil.
And, as I often like to say andthis will link it back to what
(15:07):
you're asking I think of the keyrole that plants are playing in
all of this and I often like tosay plants turn dirt into soil
and diverse mixtures of plantsturn soil into homes, grocery
stores and pharmacies forcreatures below ground and above
(15:27):
ground.
To me, that's a simpler way toput something that's so complex,
as everyone's getting into andcoming to appreciate of plants
and seeing people in farmingsystems move toward realizing
the importance of cover crops,of diverse mixtures of cover
(15:49):
crops, of keeping the groundcovered with crops, of rotations
.
I think that's an amazingdevelopment that's occurring and
I recently came across a paperthat was published late last
(16:10):
year out of a group in Minnesotaand I followed one of the
people's works.
He's well known in ecologyTillman, david Tillman but they
were publishing on like a 16 or20 year study where they were
looking at mixtures of plantspecies and compared to
monocultures, and they werefinding that when they had these
(16:32):
diverse mixtures, the nutrientsin the soil, in the plants,
were greatly enhanced.
And they looked at variousminerals, a whole range of
different minerals.
When they looked at soil,organic matter and across the
board, all these factors thatpeople look at nowadays were
greatly enhanced when there weremixtures of plants compared to
(16:54):
monocultures of plants.
And this was long-term, like Isay, I think about 20 years
study that they were publishingon.
So it just this whole idea ofdiversity and the importance of
diversity and then what thatdoes.
Of course, nowadays themicrobiome is really on people's
radars.
Each species harbors its ownkind of microbiome and when you
(17:20):
have diverse mixtures of species, you have a really diverse
microbiome in the soil that isstimulating the microbiome of
creatures in the soil and thenof creatures above ground as
well.
Nutritionists, actually peoplewho studied goats and sheep and
(17:42):
cattle.
They've been interested in thatfor 50, 60, 70 years now.
That was the whole universe forthem, but now showing how all
those microbiomes are linkedwith one another is really a
nice thing that people are doing.
AJ (17:59):
Oh, incredible and to think, in a way, we're finding the
human gut is almost like a.
It's not even a secondary brain, it's like another brain in our
body, if you like it, speakingof self-organizing systems.
But I guess this emphasizesanother part of your work, fred
that being in place, beingconnected in a way that your
(18:20):
microbiome is directly inrelationship, and every other
part of you with a plaque.
That's an important part ofwhat you found.
Yeah, oh absolutely.
Fred (18:31):
another thing that comes to mind uh, last year, last
couple of years, since apandemic, I ended up doing
several programs with withindigenous peoples here in this
country and I found it veryinteresting that the first thing
they would say is where theywere from.
(18:52):
I am, fred, from this place.
It's that link to place and Ihave to say from my standpoint
my heart has never left theplace where I was born and
raised, in those mountains it's.
You know, I've traveled andappreciated many, many places
but there are some deepemotional, those molecules of
(19:15):
emotion that Candice Pert wroteabout so nicely and studied and
discovered.
They link you and I think theylink animals functionally to the
landscapes that they inhabitthere's, you know, this
preference for foods andhabitats that we studied and
found so much of animals really,where they're conceived, born
(19:38):
and reared, that they formstrong preferences for those
places.
And I used to think and talkabout it's the home field
advantage in life.
We talk about work but youdon't know knowing what and what
not to eat, where we're not togo, what's a predator, what's
not a predator, and then thosedeep linkages like we're talking
about with, with all of theorganisms in that system is very
(20:02):
functional kind of thing.
And so when I would readCandice Peart talking about
molecules of emotion and howthey link us with places, I used
to think of that all the time.
And when Sue and I were livingin the backwoods of Colorado,
there were neotropical migrantbirds that would come and go
(20:24):
seasonally and I always rememberthe little mountain bluebirds.
They're just a beautiful littlebird and they'd come and
visiting with ornithologists.
They'd say, when you band oneof those birds, you realize it's
the same individuals comingback to the same places and
their offspring coming back.
And it makes you appreciatethat this isn't just random,
(20:49):
what's happening back to thesame places.
And, yeah, it was amazing tothink of and it's as you're
saying so nicely, it's a wisdom.
Huh, it's a wisdom that's innatural systems and I think it's
a wisdom we're circling back tonow with some of the
regenerative movement and thatyou know that idea of trying to
(21:13):
understand nature and naturalprocesses, because there's a
wisdom there that it's a deep,intuitive kind of wisdom.
Right, it's not the cognitive,rational, analytical part of the
brains of creatures, it's thisdeep, intuitive kind of wisdom.
And I was reading recently aboutsome preeminent scientists that
(21:37):
everyone knows names likeEinstein and so forth, and them
reflecting and saying you knowthey're really the creativity
that they did came from thisdeep, intuitive place.
It wasn't this cognitive,rational, analytical, and
they're saying when they'rewriting about it, it's not.
The challenge for scientists isthat they think too much.
(21:58):
There's too much thinking goingon, there's not this quiet
going to this quiet space wherethis non-cognitive, intuitive,
synthetic part of our being isable to come forth, and that's
really where the creativity iscoming from.
It's not this cognitive,rational, analytical part of us
(22:19):
that we so emphasize.
And Einstein has a great quotethat I can't read.
I won't try to say it because Iwon't say it the right way
right now, but it's that youknow we've come to rely too far,
too much on this part, part ofthe, on this mentalistic brain
part of things, and not nearlyenough on, uh, on where
(22:40):
creativity is really flowingfrom indeed.
AJ (22:42):
Yeah, well, he's a good case in point of where the intellect
was powerful.
Like you're not.
We're not diminishing the valueof that, but it's in the
context of the rest that it hasits real.
Uh, I guess helpfulcontribution as opposed to a
destructive one, yes, so wellsaid, so well said.
Fred (23:00):
Which is the way you put that, aj.
No, that's perfect, that'sthat's it.
It's not that we're sayingthat's not important, but that's
that.
That's not what's running theshow, and when we let that start
to run the show, we get intotroubles.
If we let that follow andinstruct, as you're saying, then
(23:21):
it's valuable.
Thank you.
My wife, a couple of weeks ago, asked an interesting
question to me.
We'd never talked about itbefore, but she said did you
have expectations of your life,how it was going to unfold as
you went along?
And I said no, I didn't.
I really didn't have any, Ijust kind of followed where the
interests led and where thoseinterests come from, I don't
(00:25):
know.
But I do think it's veryimportant for a human to follow
that.
Whatever you are, you know, tofind what's in you and what's
your passion, and it just kindof leads you along the way.
That certainly happened for me,and not that there weren't bumps
along the road, you know, as wewere talking depression and
cancer, and there weren't bumpsalong the road.
It was, you know, as we weretalking depression and cancer
(00:47):
and this and that comes along.
But but still that overarchingthing was just following what,
what was so just interesting forwhatever reason, just following
that and and for me foreverbeing a student of that, you
know, and kind of always beinghumbled and then thinking as I
(01:09):
do now that you know it was allof that was good for a
conversation.
Good for a conversation, butdon't take it too seriously that
you really think you knowanything?
You probably don't.
You know anything because youprobably.
You probably probably don't.
AJ (01:24):
You know but, but, um, but whatever little things you
thought you learned along theway were, dang sure, interesting
, I, I think, for me well, let'stake a, a leaving point from
there, because I could go in afew directions, we might dance
around a little bit, but I I'dlove to go from there, as if to
(01:46):
back up your point but then sortof fan it out.
At the same time.
It's still so spectacular toconsider the Clara Davis studies
from 100 years ago.
Yeah, please, I gather this waspivotal too in how you came to
understand human animals, let'ssay in a similar vein, of the
(02:09):
surprising levels of intuitiveintelligence within us what I
find too.
Fred (02:14):
I did a long podcast yesterday with a fellow who
wanted to do one for months nowand he finally caught up and he
said he was talking to someoneabout the podcast when it was
coming up and he said, well,just let him go, he'll go down a
million rabbit holes.
But I I'm thinking that now itseems like there's so many
(02:35):
stories when you reach thispoint in the game, it's just and
, clara Davis, you know eachthing that gets mentioned,
there's's stories that relate tothat, to all of it, and so it
is.
You can sort of infiniteregress, digress, digression.
AJ (02:54):
Well, that's right.
It's in keeping with what wefound about the nature of the
world, isn't it?
There's no thing separate fromanything else, but let's focus
for the sake of the exercise.
Fred (03:05):
Yes, yes.
AJ (03:06):
Run us through it, Fred.
Run us through what was foundby Clara that century ago.
Fred (03:11):
Well, what was amazing, and I'll start with just a
little bit of backstory on thatI was not familiar with Clara
Davis' work.
When we started our work onexperiences early in life, you
know, originally looking at therole that mother plays in
animals, learning what and whatnot to eat and where and where
not to go in the environment,food and habitat selection.
(03:33):
I wasn't familiar with any ofher work.
Nor was I familiar with herwork when we did studies with
cattle first and then with sheep, but with cattle, did studies
with cattle first and then withsheep, but with cattle, offering
them either a choice of theingredients that made up a total
mixed ration.
Total mixed rations are whatpeople feed animals in feedlots.
(03:55):
That's a mix of different feedingredients that's ground and
mixed together.
So the animals really can'tselect, they don't have much
ability to self-select what's inthat.
They just eat the.
They simply eat what'spresented to them.
So we thought, well, let's feedone set of animals a total
(04:16):
mixed ration.
Let's feed the other set ofanimals the separate ingredients
, the four or five ingredientsthat were in that total mixed
ration, and just let themself-select and see what they do
.
And I mention that specificallybecause when we were writing
the paper from that study wewere pointing out no two
(04:36):
individuals ever selected thesame foods.
No individual ever selected thesame combination of foods from
day to day, but each individualselected a diet that's met its
needs.
And they actually did that,eating less food than the
animals were eating in the totalmixed ration.
So then this friend, who was tobecome a very good friend, a
(05:01):
writer in Canada, mark Shaxter,who's written several books now,
was reading what we were doingand he said do you know about
Clara Davis' work?
And I said no, and he said,well, you need to read about her
work.
And so I started reading andit's like, oh my gosh, that was
nearly a hundred years ago.
And it's like we plagiarizedwhat she was.
(05:22):
We were writing so much.
She says those same words andit's like, oh man, it would have
been neat to have met her.
You know, it's almost likeanother, like another life you
lived.
AJ (05:35):
Indeed, but in her case it was.
It was in an orphanage withkids.
Fred (05:39):
Yes, yes, yes, kids, kids given up for adoption in an
orphanage, 15 children for sixyears.
I can't even imagine offering34 different foods that were
available seasonally wholesomefoods available in the market
seasonally and and just each dayoffering each of those kids a
(06:05):
choice of those foods and thenrecording what they ate and how
much they ate.
That's an amazing amount.
That was before computers too.
So how you pull all thattogether into data sheets and
analyze all of that was amazing.
But it would have been fabulousactually to meet and visit with
Clara I could just it wouldhave been like an at-oneness for
(06:30):
certain and to talk to her aswe're talking.
So what Clara got you thinkingabout?
To do a study like that ofthese children and, as she
pointed out, they were in a waylittle young vessels that were
being filled.
She said there wasn't a hintthat they knew a priori about
(06:50):
any of those foods.
They would sample them.
They'd sample everything, eventhe napkins that were put in
front of them.
But then you know, within daysand weeks they'd come to really
each child to selectcombinations of foods that
really worked for them, and whatthey ate varied from day to day
(07:12):
and it was just exactly what wewere finding when we, anytime
we took the time to really lookclosely at what sheep or goats
or cows were doing, at whatsheep or goats or cows were
doing.
And it brings back anotherthought.
You know, when we were reallyinitially starting some of the
work, I remember watching sheepforaging on rangelands that
(07:36):
would have maybe 100 differentplant species, and it was in
those days I was still thinkinglike a physicist, like we had
been trained, that thosephysicists, you know, they're
able to predict and controleverything and they understand
so well.
And I used to think naively inthose days, if we just
understood enough, if weunderstood enough, we would be
(07:59):
able to predict and control.
But when I would watch thoseanimals and move from one to the
next and just taking a nibbleof that and 10 bites of this and
you know, maybe in an hourthey'd sample 30, 40 species I
used to think, boy, how on earthcould you ever predict what the
(08:21):
next bite is going to be?
And I really changed mythoughts about that over time.
That wasn't the point.
It's the point came to meunderstanding the processes and
what's underlying the processesand then what they do, trying to
predict.
That isn't so important asunderstanding the processes and
(08:41):
how all those processes cometogether to create the dynamic
that you observe of them eatingthis diverse array of different
foods.
And then you know, withoutgoing into the details,
understanding at moremechanistic level, some of
what's going on there thatcauses them from the standpoint
(09:03):
of these primary compounds ornutrients that are in plants and
the secondary compounds, allthese other compounds, how, how
that dynamic is playing outuniquely for each individual and
its body.
Its body knows what what to dowith with those tens of
thousands of compounds.
It's still quite quite amystery all of that, and I think
(09:26):
the work that we did points ina direction that there is a lot
of evidence that the body doesknow, but at a cellular level,
all that's happening with thatand how.
That's all those feedbacks thatwe got into and did so many
years of study after study afterstudy of relationships amongst
(09:48):
primary and secondary compoundsand cells and organ systems, and
again we were totally students.
And some of those feedbacks Iremember the first time we ever
did any of those where we'd feedfood that wasn't very
nutritious and then infusesomething into the gut that was
(10:09):
a nutrient they were needing orsomething, and just have your
mind blown that something weinfused into the body changed
their liking for something thatshouldn't be good at all.
I don't know if that's makingsense, but it was like.
That is so mind boggling thatwe put something into their
veins or into their gut and ittotally changes what they're
(10:33):
selecting, how they're likingthat.
It set me back quite a whileand I think others of us working
on that work just to try towrap our heads around that of us
working on that work just totry to wrap our heads around
that.
It was another step along theway, just amazing.
For us.
AJ (10:52):
You know, yeah, and I mean I think of the implications Going
back to the children, forexample.
It's almost stereotypical tosay kids won't eat their fruit
and veg, right.
And yet here was this exampleof kids innately, obviously,
when the processed stuff wasn'tin the way of the intuitive
(11:13):
signals they were going to.
This diversity of healthy foodsthat their bodies needed and
their health outcomes reflectedthat it showed extraordinary
outcomes.
These kids who weren't educatedin that just their bodies led
the way, and you're finding thesame thing in the animals.
So the implications for bothour capacity, animals' capacity,
(11:36):
to self-organise in healthierways, yeah, it changes
everything.
Fred (11:44):
Yeah, so true what you're saying.
And you know there werepediatricians that were
following the children, forobvious reasons.
You know Well, because in thosedays and Claire talks about and
I wrote in Nourishment aboutbooks that were being written in
those days and it was veryauthoritarian.
(12:04):
You know, we're pediatricians,we know what the children need
to eat and this is what they andI had so fun to read what Clara
writes about that Boy theyhadn't heard a thing that the
pediatricians had to say aboutthat and the combinations of
things that they would puttogether.
They were totally differentfrom what we would typically
(12:26):
think of as this you would eatfor breakfast and this maybe for
lunch and this for dinner.
It was just it's so funny, youknow, breakfast made some liver
and oh, I forget the differenceCombinations of things that you
would never put together.
And I read the papers.
(12:46):
They said they never saw ahealthier set of children.
And then we bounced back alittle bit to the studies we did
with the cattle and realizingthat the animals given a choice
actually ended up eating lessfood.
They were eating less food thanthe animals fed the total mixed
ration and we argued that wasbecause each animal, even given
(13:10):
only five different foods wasable to better meet its needs.
It wasn't over-ingesting.
You know there's been quite alot written and some of my
friends who live in Australiahave written about that.
The protein leverage hypothesis,the ideas that humans will
(13:31):
over-ingest energy to meet needsfor protein and so there's an
inefficiency we're eating moreenergy than what we need, which
leads to weight gain.
Robbenheimer and Simpson myfriends, have written quite a
lot about that, wrote a bookabout that, but we were arguing
that same thing was happeningwith the animals.
When they had the choice ofingredients that varied in
(13:53):
energy and protein and so forth,they were able to better meet
their needs and so it cost less.
It actually cost less money tofinish those animals
economically.
It actually cost less money tofinish those animals
economically.
There was an economy in termsof the body and an economy in
terms of the money that wasbeing spent.
AJ (14:14):
All the stories that you've been privy to over the years and
the experiences you've had withdifferent farming contexts, for
example, that's clearly been amajor part of it the saving of
tons of money, inputs, and whatabout the outcomes of landscape?
I guess, if we link this toplanetary health and landscape
health, what have you seenemerge from people who've been
(14:38):
practicing in such a way as toharness this natural
intelligence?
If you like to harness thisnatural intelligence, if you
like.
Fred (14:44):
I think one of the things that strikes me nowadays, aj, is
this what people often callregenerative agricultural
movement, and you know thiswhole movement back toward
appreciating the importance ofsoil and the health of soil and
what that means life in the soil.
And, as I often like to say andthis will link it back to what
(15:07):
you're asking I think of the keyrole that plants are playing in
all of this and I often like tosay plants turn dirt into soil
and diverse mixtures of plantsturn soil into homes, grocery
stores and pharmacies forcreatures below ground and above
(15:27):
ground.
To me, that's a simpler way toput something that's so complex,
as everyone's getting into andcoming to appreciate of plants
and seeing people in farmingsystems move toward realizing
the importance of cover crops,of diverse mixtures of cover
(15:49):
crops, of keeping the groundcovered with crops, of rotations
.
I think that's an amazingdevelopment that's occurring and
I recently came across a paperthat was published late last
(16:10):
year out of a group in Minnesotaand I followed one of the
people's works.
He's well known in ecologyTillman, david Tillman but they
were publishing on like a 16 or20 year study where they were
looking at mixtures of plantspecies and compared to
monocultures, and they werefinding that when they had these
(16:32):
diverse mixtures, the nutrientsin the soil, in the plants,
were greatly enhanced.
And they looked at variousminerals, a whole range of
different minerals.
When they looked at soil,organic matter and across the
board, all these factors thatpeople look at nowadays were
greatly enhanced when there weremixtures of plants compared to
(16:54):
monocultures of plants.
And this was long-term, like Isay, I think about 20 years
study that they were publishingon.
So it just this whole idea ofdiversity and the importance of
diversity and then what thatdoes.
Of course, nowadays themicrobiome is really on people's
radars.
Each species harbors its ownkind of microbiome and when you
(17:20):
have diverse mixtures of species, you have a really diverse
microbiome in the soil that isstimulating the microbiome of
creatures in the soil and thenof creatures above ground as
well.
Nutritionists, actually peoplewho studied goats and sheep and
(17:42):
cattle.
They've been interested in thatfor 50, 60, 70 years now.
That was the whole universe forthem, but now showing how all
those microbiomes are linkedwith one another is really a
nice thing that people are doing.
AJ (17:59):
Oh, incredible and to think, in a way, we're finding the
human gut is almost like a.
It's not even a secondary brain, it's like another brain in our
body, if you like it, speakingof self-organizing systems.
But I guess this emphasizesanother part of your work, fred
that being in place, beingconnected in a way that your
(18:20):
microbiome is directly inrelationship, and every other
part of you with a plaque.
That's an important part ofwhat you found.
Yeah, oh absolutely.
Fred (18:31):
another thing that comes to mind uh, last year, last
couple of years, since apandemic, I ended up doing
several programs with withindigenous peoples here in this
country and I found it veryinteresting that the first thing
they would say is where theywere from.
(18:52):
I am, fred, from this place.
It's that link to place and Ihave to say from my standpoint
my heart has never left theplace where I was born and
raised, in those mountains it's.
You know, I've traveled andappreciated many, many places
but there are some deepemotional, those molecules of
(19:15):
emotion that Candice Pert wroteabout so nicely and studied and
discovered.
They link you and I think theylink animals functionally to the
landscapes that they inhabitthere's, you know, this
preference for foods andhabitats that we studied and
found so much of animals really,where they're conceived, born
(19:38):
and reared, that they formstrong preferences for those
places.
And I used to think and talkabout it's the home field
advantage in life.
We talk about work but youdon't know knowing what and what
not to eat, where we're not togo, what's a predator, what's
not a predator, and then thosedeep linkages like we're talking
about with, with all of theorganisms in that system is very
(20:02):
functional kind of thing.
And so when I would readCandice Peart talking about
molecules of emotion and howthey link us with places, I used
to think of that all the time.
And when Sue and I were livingin the backwoods of Colorado,
there were neotropical migrantbirds that would come and go
(20:24):
seasonally and I always rememberthe little mountain bluebirds.
They're just a beautiful littlebird and they'd come and
visiting with ornithologists.
They'd say, when you band oneof those birds, you realize it's
the same individuals comingback to the same places and
their offspring coming back.
And it makes you appreciatethat this isn't just random,
(20:49):
what's happening back to thesame places.
And, yeah, it was amazing tothink of and it's as you're
saying so nicely, it's a wisdom.
Huh, it's a wisdom that's innatural systems and I think it's
a wisdom we're circling back tonow with some of the
regenerative movement and thatyou know that idea of trying to
(21:13):
understand nature and naturalprocesses, because there's a
wisdom there that it's a deep,intuitive kind of wisdom.
Right, it's not the cognitive,rational, analytical part of the
brains of creatures, it's thisdeep, intuitive kind of wisdom.
And I was reading recently aboutsome preeminent scientists that
(21:37):
everyone knows names likeEinstein and so forth, and them
reflecting and saying you knowthey're really the creativity
that they did came from thisdeep, intuitive place.
It wasn't this cognitive,rational, analytical, and
they're saying when they'rewriting about it, it's not.
The challenge for scientists isthat they think too much.
(21:58):
There's too much thinking goingon, there's not this quiet
going to this quiet space wherethis non-cognitive, intuitive,
synthetic part of our being isable to come forth, and that's
really where the creativity iscoming from.
It's not this cognitive,rational, analytical part of us
(22:19):
that we so emphasize.
And Einstein has a great quotethat I can't read.
I won't try to say it because Iwon't say it the right way
right now, but it's that youknow we've come to rely too far,
too much on this part, part ofthe, on this mentalistic brain
part of things, and not nearlyenough on, uh, on where
(22:40):
creativity is really flowingfrom indeed.
AJ (22:42):
Yeah, well, he's a good case in point of where the intellect
was powerful.
Like you're not.
We're not diminishing the valueof that, but it's in the
context of the rest that it hasits real.
Uh, I guess helpfulcontribution as opposed to a
destructive one, yes, so wellsaid, so well said.
Fred (23:00):
Which is the way you put that, aj.
No, that's perfect, that'sthat's it.
It's not that we're sayingthat's not important, but that's
that.
That's not what's running theshow, and when we let that start
to run the show, we get intotroubles.
If we let that follow andinstruct, as you're saying, then
(23:21):
it's valuable.
Thank you.
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