Transcript

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the hormone hub. It is Kylie here, your host. Now, today we are going talk more about, sort of less about the hormonal [00:01:00] aspect of things and more about the food. All right. So I am asked all the time, you know, what’s the best diet, should I cut carbs? Should I, you know, what are the super foods I have to include X, Y, Z.

Now I’m actually going to pop a bubble in this and say, it’s not about the diet. It’s about the quality of your food. Now, when I’m talking food quality, I’m talking about, you know, we should be eating, organic raspberries and oysters, you know, all the time. It’s more about, you know, what’s the best quality food that’s available to you right now?

Because at the end of the day, our body was designed to eat real food. So our body knows what to do with it. It can, you know, take that food. It can break it down, it can absorb the nutrients and, you know, it passes through our digestive systems. No problem. But what happens when we aren’t eating a good variety of, you know, sort of reasonable [00:02:00] quality food, we are missing those nutrients. And when we are then sort of leaning towards processed foods, packets food, convenience foods, because it’s easy for us where, you know, there’s even less nutrients available to us. So today I have got the pleasure of speaking with a permaculture farmer from the U.S, Greg Peterson. Now, Greg and I connected on Facebook as you do, and Greg was talking about, you know, the importance of knowing where your food comes from, you know, things like food miles. So how far has your food traveled? Is your food in season and knowing where it comes from.

So this sort of really excited me and I thought, you know, it’s a conversation that we need to be having, cause we’re all sort of, you know, what do I eat? What’s the perfect diet, blah, blah, blah. Now, if you think back to it, did our grandmothers ever diet? No, they didn’t. If we said to our grandparents, you know, oh, I’m not eating [00:03:00] until 1130 today because I’ve got a 16 hour window where I’m fasting, like seriously, What, what does, you know, what’s grandma gonna make of that?

Or if we say, oh, no, sorry, grandma. I’m passing on your homemade scones with freshly homemade jam and cream today because I’m not doing carbs right now I’m, you know, following a keto diet, you know, she’s just gonna go, what is that about? So I think, you know, somewhere in between the, the homemade scones and where we are now, we’ve lost our way with food.

Now, food is essential for our hormones. It’s essential for our digestive system. It’s essential for our immune system. And really the way we eat is the most basic form of self care that we can show ourselves. So if we are nourishing our bodies with good quality food, [00:04:00] if we are, you know, taking the time to, you know, prepare whole foods, if we are taking the time to shop and, you know, get the best available food, now I’m not saying, you know, it has to be the most expensive food. It has to be, you know, crazy cause there are sort of definitely ways around it. But if you think about quality of food in terms of where does it come from? Is it locally grown? Is it in season? It’s all going to help ultimately in what you are paying for the food.

So I think we kind of get caught up in, you know, super foods and, and all these crazy ideas, which is all well and good, but, you know, we’ve lost the, the basics somewhere along the lines. So, and I think my interest in this area sort of really came about probably the, I guess, mid nineties or early nineties.

And I was in London and, you know, back then at that stage supermarkets, yes, [00:05:00] they sold fruit and veg, but it was all kind of loose on the shelf, you know, we didn’t really buy fruit and veg from the supermarket because we had a green grocer down the road who had all the things that we needed. So, you know, we would go along, we would buy it in a bucket.

We would pour it all into a box and take the box home. We’d give it all a wash and put it away. But then when I was in London for the very first time, I, it sort of made me realize what was wrong with our food delivery system. So there, I was sort of looking around and it was Christmas time, it was winter, and there were mangoes on the shelves.

And of course I got, you know, really excited, you know, Aussie in London, you know, over Christmas, of course it’s mango season. You’re like, oh, mangoes. And then just like, hang on a second. Why, why have we got mangoes in the middle of winter? And it just didn’t make sense to me. Then we also used to joke at that time about, you know, buying lettuce in plastic bags because, you know, we’d never seen it before.

And it was like, why, why do they have their [00:06:00] lettuces in a plastic bag? And, you know, these days you can’t buy from the supermarket pretty much anything that doesn’t come in a plastic bag. So it was sort of, you know, I guess the rest of the world was exposed to it sort of long before we were here in Australia and New Zealand.

But certainly now, you know, we have expectations that we can buy berries year round. We can buy, salad, fruits and vegetables year round. We can buy, you know, pretty much anything we want and, you know, if we can’t get it, there’s uproar, you know, and there’s empty shelves and there’s, you know, panic buying and all this crazy stuff.

So, you know, recently there was a, you know, they announced on the news that there was an egg shortage in Australia. And then when they actually, another channel interviewed a couple of, you know, egg farmers and they were like, uh, yep, no things are good. So the issue was with the, the major supermarkets and their supply chains.

It wasn’t actually anything to do with the farmers. The farmers were good, they were still laying [00:07:00] eggs. Likewise there was a big hoo-ha about, you know, the price of, I think it was cauliflower. And I was sort of thinking at the time, yes you would expect cauliflower to be more expensive right now, cuz it’s not in season, you know?

So I think we’ve got this skewed view of fresh foods and vegetables and where they come from and what they should cost for sure.

So, years ago I used to, you know, teach nutrition in kindergartens and I used to teach the kids, you know, it was all about what different types of fruit and vegetables were and you know, what real food was and you know, how it made them big and strong and, you know, they could jump higher and run, run faster and all this.

And, you know, I had sort of like little poem that I made up and, you know, if it grew in the ground or grew in a tree, if it walked on the earth or swam in the sea, it’s real food. So if it didn’t do those things, it comes from a packet and packet food [00:08:00] is not real food, so, yeah. And that was something that the kids can relate to.

And I think as adults we’ve forgotten that too.

So today Greg is gonna talk us through, you know, what it actually means for us to know where our food comes from. We’re also gonna have a look at, you know, what permaculture means, you know, it’s thrown around a bit, not all of us understand it. And then Greg’s gonna give us some really simple tips on what is the, the best way or the easiest way for us to, you know, produce some of our own foods because it’s actually simpler than you think.

Kylie: So. A question that Greg asks every day is what if there was a garden and a fruit tree in every yard.

So for over 32 years, he’s created one of Phoenix in Arizona’s first of environmental show homes for urban farming. So it was essentially an edible landscape with over 80 fruit trees, rainwater, gray water [00:09:00] harvesting, solar applications, and extensive use of reclaimed and recycled building materials.

Now I think, you know, given the current climate. This is something that we all need to be paying attention to.

So it is my great pleasure to welcome Greg to the podcast today. Hi Greg. 

Greg: Hello. Thank you. 

Kylie: Yeah, it is great to have you here. So would you like to sort of start telling us just a little bit about what it is you do and, you know, our obvious, our, you know, obvious shared passion for fresh food. 

Greg: Yeah. This is I, the best I can come up with is this is what I was born with in my life, because the notion for me of how we’re living and eating on the planet goes back to at least when I was nine years old.

And I was nine years old in 1969. And in 1970 right in 1974, I wrote a paper on how we were [00:10:00] overfishing the oceans at the age of 14. Yeah. And so it, it was always there for me that the way we’re living on the planet and eating on the planet, isn’t quite right.

And what I discovered, what I’ve discovered over the past two decades is the and big part because of permaculture, the massive amount of abundance that comes from nature.

Yes. If we just look for it. Yeah, absolutely. Right. We just have to be conscious of it. I I’ve said this for years. There’s one place in this world that lack lives and it’s between our ears. Because when I look at the abundance that I used to get off of the apple tree in my backyard, I had one apple tree in my backyard in Phoenix, Arizona ripened, once a year, 300 pounds a year of apples.

Kylie: Yeah, that is a, that’s a whole lot of apples. Yeah. 

Greg: That’s a lot of apples. Well, and it, you know, you, you kind of have to dive in and all right, what am I gonna do with all those apples? So that’s, that’s, that’s [00:11:00] my background of how I got to where I’m at. And I have been preaching for years that we have a broken food system.

Our, our food system worldwide is what’s called a just in time food system. That means it delivers it t o the grocery stores just in time when we need it. And there was some academic data that came outta the UK about 20 years ago that they figured out that a urban grocery stores, cities have a three day supply of food.

Kylie: Yeah. Wow. 

Greg: That, that’s it. Yeah. And I say it’s a three hour supply. Because once people get a, the gist that, Hey, we’re running out of food, the grocery store shelves empty. 

Kylie: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we saw that like never before, during the pandemic. Exactly. It was crazy. And weirdly, weirdly, I don’t know about the U.S, but weirdly [00:12:00] in Australia that started with toilet paper that went first.

I was like mm-hmm okay. Interesting. 

Greg: That it was. So in my studying for the past 30 years, I actually studied through the nineties. I studied virology and bacteriology. And so I, I actually saw the pandemic coming about four months early. And so I was able to stock up on some things. But it it’s the reason I was able to see it was I’ve studied nature and natural systems and how natural systems work. And a lot of our natural systems are breaking down. I have Lyme disease. Yeah. That I picked up about 20 years ago. And Lyme disease has now since been called the first pandemic of the, of global climate change. Yeah. 

Kylie: And in australia.

Greg: Yeah. It’s you know, something to pay attention. Right. Yes. Sure. And I don’t, I don’t wanna share all of this with you, with your listeners to get them down, [00:13:00] but this is kind of the background of me developing a I’m the guy that’s responsible for transforming our global food system. I’m not gonna do it all by myself.

 I do it by talking, you know? Yeah. And secondly, to spread the word about the single most important thing we can be doing right now is learning where our food comes. Yep. And how it’s grown. And from a health perspective, this is really important. The healthiest food that you can eat is the ripest food that you pick. And often what happens, often w hat happens is that food that is picked and shipped has to be picked before it’s ripe. Yep. Now there’s this whole process that goes on in plants as the fruits and vegetables are ripening. [00:14:00] And this goes to your hormone conversation. There is something in food called lectin. Have you ever bumped up against lectins?

Kylie: You betcha. Yep. Yeah. 

Greg: Lectins, my permaculture teacher, one of my permaculture teachers called them anti-nutrients. And in fruits and vegetables that are picked, not ripe the lectins haven’t processed themselves out. The lectins process themselves out as the fruit and vegetable ripens on the plant. Yes.

So if you get a super ripe peach or tomato, or, and you’re picking it at the peak of ripeness. Most of the lectins have dissipated, correct? Yes. The problem with picking stuff that’s not ripe is that those lectins don’t go away once [00:15:00] the once it’s picked. So you mentioned in your intro food miles, Yeah, food miles, food kilometers, the amount of miles that food travels in the U.S from where it has grown, to where it’s consumed in the U.S is about 1500 miles.

Yeah. That’s like 2,600 kilometres. 

Kylie: Yeah. I first sort of became aware of like food miles. I was, you know, in my early twenties and I’d moved to London and growing up in Australia, food was very seasonal. So, you know, all the, the yummy summer fruits and things like that, like that was a Christmas summer, you know, thing and I remember being, it was Christmas time in London, and I remember seeing mangoes in the supermarket and they were wrapped in like, like a, [00:16:00] so much plastic, it wasn’t funny and all of their lettuce and like everything was wrapped in plastic. And I’m looking at this food.

I’m thinking, that’s not right. You know, it shouldn’t be here. It’s not summertime. Why is it here? And I think for me like that, that was probably back in the early nineties as well. And yeah, so that food had traveled a whole long way.

And I think that was sort of like the beginning of that whole, we must have all things available to us all year round. And I think now we take it for granted that everything comes wrapped in plastic or in a plastic bag and everything comes. We have all of the things available whenever we want. Right. Yeah.

Greg: Paying attention to, to what’s ripe when, seasonal is, you know, is really important of the piece of the health perspective of the food that we’re eating. 

Kylie: Very much. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, we, our media in Australia has gone crazy right [00:17:00] now, so I think they’ve, I was gonna say, they’ve got a bit bored with COVID and they’ve, you know, now moved on to inflation and things like that.

And they talk about, you know, the price of it was the price of cauliflower a few weeks ago. And you know that, oh, it’s so expensive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, well, hang on a second. It’s not even in season, you know, it is now, but this is back a few weeks ago. I’m like, it’s not in season.

Yeah. It’s always going to be more expensive when it’s out of season. But, but there was no context given to the actual cauliflower and what time of year we should be eating cauliflower and right. Yeah. It. Yeah, just blew, blew my mind that that wasn’t even part of the conversation that we are not meant to be eating cauliflower at this time of year.

 I think there’s a big lack of, you know, understanding what’s in season and when, and you know, what our, what our food, you know, what food we should be eating at what time of year. And I [00:18:00] always sort of explain it to, you know, to people, you know, in wintertime, when we want warming nourishing food, we should be going for our veggies and we should be going for our heavier kind of veggies.

And then in summer when we eat. You know, naturally our bodies should be eating lighter. We should be going for those lighter summer salad sort of vegetables, but we are so disconnected I think, from what’s available. Cause we see everything all the time, everything, and yep. And you you’re right. You know, the nutrients aren’t created equally by any means.

So, you know, and I think when we, you know, like going back to the peach on the tree, we’re eating that ripe peach off the ground, you know, those nutrients become more available to us as well. So yes, the, the lectins have worked their way out, you know, all of those nutrients that, that peach has to offer, you know, that’s the time to be eating the peach.

[00:19:00] Yeah, exactly. They’re they’re not there six weeks later after it’s been in cold storage for forever. 

Greg: Exactly. Well, and that’s the other piece is that as soon as you pick something, the nutrients start to decline. Yeah. 

Kylie: Yep. Yeah, totally. So I think, you know, like a big sort of thing that I’d like to sort of have a home is, you know, the closer the food is to the source and when you’re eating it, you know, it doesn’t, forget the carbs in it.

Forget the, you know, like people get hung up on, oh, but it’s got carbs or it’s got this, or it’s got that. It’s, you know, no, go for the freshness, go for the, you know, the local produce, it’s there because that’s where the nutritious value is. And, you know, I think food gives us, we forget that food can give us all the nutrients we need over and above a supplement.

You know, people sort of go looking for that [00:20:00] magic pill and it’s sort of like, well, actually, you know, our bodies are designed to eat food and our bodies are designed to eat real food. So real food. I used to teach kindergarten classes, you know, nutrition. It was along the lines of, you know, what real food is and the kids were like, oh yeah. And, you know, then we would talk about, you know, a biscuit from a packet. Is that real food? And the kids would go, no.

If it’s an egg from a chicken. Yes. You know, and it was very much, you know, getting the kids informed about where their food came from and it was just, but it holds true to a ll of us really, because you know, we’ve got this abundance of packet food. 

Greg: Manufactured. Yes. That’s what the, that’s what, that’s what they actually call it in the industry.

Manufactured food. 

Kylie: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So it’s from a packet it’s, you know, it’s not giving us what we need. It’s really not. Would you like to sort of talk [00:21:00] us through, you know, how sort of permaculture just, you know, for, for those who don’t underst stand, because I love that whole reason.

You know, like everything is regenerated, it is flow. It’s a way of, of looking at, you know, how everything works. 

Greg: Yeah. Uh, absolutely. So permaculture is a derivative of two or three words, permanent culture, permanent agriculture, so permanent culture or agriculture, and, Bill Moleson and Dave Holmgren, who are from New Zealand, put this together in the 1970s.

And essentially what they did is they looked at natural systems to see how natural systems work. And then they started developing systems by [00:22:00] which humans could work with those natural systems. 

And in, in permaculture, there’s 10 or 15 tenants things to look for, processes. And one of my favorites is called stacking functions.

Stacking functions is using an asset multiple times. So I, I use gray water, both here at my new home and, and at the urban farm. 

You know, and what we encourage people to do is use gray water to water your food trees.

 So that’s stacking functions is one of the concepts inside of permaculture. Yeah. And it’s easy to stack functions really anywhere in your life. You know, if you’re going to the grocery store, you don’t go to the grocery store and come home and then go to the drug store and come home and then go to the doctor.

You go to the grocery store, the drug store, the doctor, and then come home in one loop. That is, 

Kylie: or you go to, or you go to the farmer’s market and bypass all of the rest. [00:23:00] 

Greg: There you go. Exactly. Exactly. So that’s, that’s also stacking functions. Yeah. And one of the, one of the things that I learned very early on in my life, you said regenerates.

I in the seventies and eighties, I was looking at how we, as human beings could create systems that would regenerate themselves because humans, and I’ve learned this over the past 30 years, humans, create one kind of system on the planet. It’s called a degenerative system. This desk that I’m sitting at the chair that I’m sitting in, the car that I drive, the water pipes that get water to my house, the house itself, they all will break down eventually and go away.

Yeah. Those are human systems. Those are the only kind that I’ve been looking for 30 years. I have not been able to find a regenerative human system. [00:24:00] Yep. Regenerative systems are, what nature does is they recreate themselves over and over and over again. And so what we do in permaculture is we look at that regenerative process of nature and we see how we can replicate that in our life.

 So let me give you an example and there. I mean the no end to these possibilities, but what I do here at my place now in North Carolina and in Phoenix, what I did, is I had a regenerative composting system and here’s how it worked. I actually, when I was in Phoenix, I had an agreement with a local restaurant and I would pick up their buckets of pre-consumer food waste .

And I would bring it home and I would add it to the leaves that I would get from neighbors . And, then we’d have our food scraps from our [00:25:00] house and those food scraps would go different places.

They would go to the chickens. They would go to my worm composting bin, and our compost. And each one of these, the chickens, the worms, and the compost all make healthy soil.

 So then I take that healthy compost and I put it in the soil that soil grows healthy food, which I harvest, cut up, use what I use, eat what I eat left, have the leftovers and those leftovers go back into the system. So that’s the circular nature of this? Yes. That we’re actually taking the food scraps, making it into compost, making that compost into food and growing food. Yeah. 

And that creates that beautiful, rich, nutrient dense or nutrient rich soil. Exactly. In turn means our vegetables, you know, chickens, [00:26:00] eggs, you know, all of it is more nutrient dense as well. 

Well, and when you’re growing organically, and you’re growing food locally, you know, you’re what you’re putting into it.

And really the bottom line is how do I make the healthiest soil? Because I have seen, I’ve been gardening for over 45 years of my life. Yeah. And I have seen healthy plants planted right next to unhealthy plants and the unhealthy plants get attacked by bugs and the healthy plants don’t. Yes. Yeah. Just like if we’re healthy, we’re less susceptible to bugs.

Yeah. Disease, whatever you want. If you’re not, you’re more susceptible to it. So by building healthy soil, you’re creating a space for your plants to grow and thrive and be healthier. They make in turn better tasting food. And the taste comes from the nutrients [00:27:00] that the plants are able to uptake. 

Yeah. Yeah. No, that all makes sense. And that’s the thing it’s. Yeah. It’s, it’s the way that things are supposed to be grown.

Yeah. And I think that that’s a really good thing to think about cause we’ve lost sight of what real food is and you know, what, what our bodies, I mean, I guess from a physiological perspective, you know, every single day when you’ve got digestive issues, people have got, you know, constant headaches people have got, you know, just the, this chronic grade inflammation, that’s just sort of simmering away.

And, you know, we, we sort of address what they’re eating, we act to more of a whole food sort of diet, you know, and it doesn’t mean it has to be perfect, but, you know, I think if the, the, the bulk of what we are eating is whole food quality produce. You know, that’s [00:28:00] gonna give our bodies what it needs to be well.

If we, you know, have those nutrients to be well, we’re gonna feel well, we’re going to feel a lot better. And I think, you know, all of those sort of manufactured foods, you know, are really doing a, a disservice to us a hundred percent. 

Oh, big time. 

Yeah, big time. Yeah. So you sort of suggest to someone who’s kind of listening to this going yeah, I’ve been thinking about this for a while or I need to get into sort of growing my own food, you know, and given not everyone has the time or the space to, to grow a big, you know, veggie patch. How would you suggest someone starts?

The easiest thing to grow and the most expensive thing to buy in the grocery store are herbs. You can, you can literally grow basil in a sunny window sill. Yes. In a small pot. I highly suggest that you jump in [00:29:00] small and build your garden from small to bigger. Because often what happens is if you jump in and, you know, plant this huge garden and it’s not successful, you put all this energy into it and it’s not successful.

And then you get bummed out. It’s like, Ugh, I give up. Yeah. Yeah. A buddy, a buddy of mine told me I was interviewing him on Saturday. He said, Greg, remember your first garden is your worst garden. 

Kylie: Yeah. That’s so true. 

Greg: It happens so often when I moved here, we’ve been here 90 days now I put a garden right out there, out to my left and I knew going into it that it probably wasn’t gonna be ultimately successful.

Yeah. Because I didn’t have healthy enough soil underneath it. Yes. And it, it turned into a big fat mess. Yep. Just, you know, 

Kylie: I’ve a few of those. 

Greg: Right? So you have to [00:30:00] be cognizant that you may not be successful out of the, you know, right out of the door. Yeah. But be patient with yourself. I promise you, I have killed more plants than all your listeners out there.

Kylie: Yeah. Yeah. I think I have too . 

Greg: Yeah. Right, exactly. It’s part of the process. Now, when you kill a plant, it’s like, oh, okay. Now I know what not to do. 

Kylie: Yeah, actually, that’s really good advice. Yeah. I think you sort of, you look at all the things that you’ve killed you don’t look at, oh my gosh, look at these little strawberries or look at these little cucumbers, you know, I picked this morning, we sort of go straight to all the things that didn’t work, so, right.

Yeah. I think that’s, that’s really good advice. Well, thank you. You have inspired me to regenerate my herbs. That’s where I’m gonna start is back in the herbs. 

Greg: oh, good. Yeah, exactly. And there’s nothing better than fresh [00:31:00] basil or oregano or yeah, Rosemary, thyme, just go out and pick it and, you know, drop it in your caprese salad.

Kylie: Yeah. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. So, Greg, thank you so much for coming along today. I think that was a really, you know, valuable sort of, you know, learning for everyone just to start thinking where your food comes from.

How far has it traveled to get on your plate? You know, that’s, that’s sort of a really big one, and we’ve all got in Australia I think we’re quite lucky. We do have access to local fruit and veggie shops. So we don’t have to buy our fruit and veggies in the supermarket. And I think, you know, there was a big egg crisis the other day.

And, you know, on the media that, you know, Australia’s running out of eggs, are we, but are we really, and you know, like there was an interview with a chicken farmer and he’s like, my chickens are still laying eggs. It’s [00:32:00] all good. But you know, the media grabs all of these things, and then all through the pandemic, I went to my local butcher, plenty of produce.

I went to my local green, grocer, plenty of. So I think we need to move away from this mentality that food only comes from the supermarket. So. 

Greg: Right. So one more, one more thing really quickly. The single most important thing you can do to grow a healthy garden is to grow healthy soil. That is, that is the single most important thing that you can do.

We have a, I have a, a little website that I set up called healthysoilhacked.com. Yep. 

Kylie: And we’ll put that in the show notes. 

Greg: Perfect. Yep. And you can go there and learn, you know, here’s how you get started with building healthy soil. It’s it’s simple. You just have to do it. 

Kylie: Thank you so much, Greg, for coming along. It’s been a great conversation. And if you would like to find [00:33:00] out more about Greg, what he does healthy garden, healthy soil. 

Greg: Healthysoilhacked.com. And my website is urbanfarm.org. 

Kylie: Absolutely. Thank you, Greg. I will make sure all of your details are in the show notes and ladies, please get onto your gardens.

Start with those herbs. I wanna hear all about them. All right. Well, thank you so much, Greg. And we will talk to you soon.