The Interconnectedness of Plant and Animal Health

How The Intelligence Of Plants and Animals Can Help Us Reclaim Our Health | This episode is brought to you by Joovv, BiOptimizers, and Primal Kitchen

If we take the time to be quiet, still, and curious, there’s an immeasurable amount of knowledge to be gained from our natural surroundings. In watching grazing animals and their food choices, we see they know how to personalize their nutritional intake to eat plants that match their exact needs. Though many of us have lost our innate wisdom to eat intuitively, upping our intake of phytochemicals and reducing processed foods means we can recalibrate our cravings to lean towards what we truly need. Vitamins and minerals often get most of the attention when it comes to eating for nutrient density, but phytochemicals are the real hidden talent for optimizing plant, animal, and human health. Unfortunately, modern agriculture has actually damaged the phytochemical richness of our food, by breeding for yield, appearance, and hardiness. I enjoyed sitting down with Fred Provenza in this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy to talk about all this and so much more. 

Fred grew up in Salida, Colorado, working on a ranch and attending school in Wildlife Biology at Colorado State University. He is professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University where he worked for 35 years, directing an award-winning research group that pioneered an understanding of how learning influences foraging behavior and how behavior links soil, plants, herbivores, and humans. He is the author of three books, including Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us about Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom; Foraging Behavior: Managing to Survive in a World of Change; and The Art & Science of Shepherding: Tapping the Wisdom of French Herders (co-written with Michel Meuret). He has published over 300 research papers in a wide variety of scientific journals. 

This episode is brought to you by Joovv, BiOptimizers, and Primal Kitchen.

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Here are more of the details from our interview (time-stamps correlate with audio podcast): 

• The vital role that plant compounds play in plant, animal, and human health (7:22)

• Our modern agricultural practices breed against phytochemical richness in our foods (14:38)

• How animals self-medicate (19:21)

• The interrelatedness of the soil microbiome and microbiome of plants, animals, and humans (22:50)

• Our overreliance on GMO foods have negatively impacted plants natural ability to produce their own herbicides and fertilizers (32:54)

• How we grow our food is driving the chronic disease epidemic and eliminating our body’s natural nutritional wisdom (39:29)

• Food cravings and overeating are often attempts to correct nutritional deficiencies (49:54)

• We’re not just feeding our gut when we eat, we’re feeding every cell and organ in our body (1:02:06)

• Are plants sentient beings? (1:11:10)

• Variations in feedlot meat, different types of grass-fed meat, and plant-based meat alternatives (1:21:44)

• The importance of ecosystem diversity (1:38:31)

For 35% off Fred Provenza’s book Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom go to chelseagreen.com and enter promo code POD35.