The Blue Zones: What They REALLY Eat! | Professor Bill Schindler

welcome to the plant free MD podcast with Dr Ron hello and welcome to another episode of the plant PMT I'm your host Dr Anthony Chaffee and today a very special guest Dr Bill Schindler who I've been uh better friends with recently and um uh glad to welcome back on the podcast Bill thank you very much for coming on thank you so much for having me it's good to see you yeah you too so uh for for people who haven't come across you haven't seen our previous uh previous episode uh could you just give a brief introduction of yourself and what you do yeah absolutely so my training is in uh archeology and anthropology and I've been a professor at uh several different colleges universities for about 20 years and all of my focus has been on Technologies related to our ancestral dietary pests and looking at how our diets change through time and how it literally that changing diet built this as a species and just about two and a half years ago or so I left I left teaching at the college and my wife and I started uh two entities one is a a non-profit called the Eastern Shore Food Lab which is where we continue uh Research into our dietary past but also more not more importantly but just as importantly uh traditional and ancestral diets that are still existing around the world today and then we take that information and translate it into information about how to change our dietary health so we do all sorts of classes and blog posts and those sorts of things and what we're really proud of is down so that's where we are right now at the Nations for food web downstairs we have the modern Stone Age kitchen which is where we put all that information into practice and we literally turn that research into real food to nourish the community great well that's awesome so and you have a book too eat like a human is that right yeah so and in fact some of my bookie like a human is based on a lot of that research and and that work and was the recipes in that book um became the template for the restaurant downstairs so it literally you know it was those recipes came out of all that research and learning how to nourish my own family for the past 20 something years but uh they actually are applicable on a larger scale too you know on a commercial level where you know people say if you look at our business model downstairs you would you would laugh and if I showed it to you before we started you'd say you know don't start and I guess one of the biggest best things for me and Christina is that we had absolutely no training in business so we had no idea that it was a that it was potentially a terrible business model but it worked so there's no two ingredients uh put together outside of our goals because we want complete control over the entire process we do all in-house butchering we don't use any uh industrial Nutter seed oils we use exclusively animal fats those sorts of things and that means that we're bringing in raw ingredients nothing's coming in a package it's all raw ingredients it's half pigs it's the whole chickens it's livers it's you know whatever and we transform that into the food so we're putting our money into people we have we've been in business now two years and we are in this little tiny um beautiful cute little historic town but there's not a huge population here it's not like Portland Oregon where something like this would you know fly very easily but it's a small town uh we now have 23 people working um so we're putting all of our money into people and they're the ones doing transforming those raw ingredients into into really nourishing food oh that's amazing well it's great to hear that things are going well so do people come in from from other towns to come and and specifically see your restaurant and uh yeah actually we have people coming from all sometimes from another country but although every week we have somebody coming from another state and we do these really cool uh several day intensive classes we do one day classes but we do a lot of four day classes where we go through everything from uh nose to tail home butchering to cheese making to oh yeah everything over these intensive four days and uh one of the last ones we have 12 people in each class and we had people from 10 different states out of the 12. um and I mean we're Montana you know people out west as well so people are traveling the distance and it's really really inspiring for us to see people you know getting the message and come and ask for oh that's great hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnivore bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10 off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25 off total all right thanks guys well so in your your mission to look at people and see how people actually ate and do eat you had a recent trip to Sardinia which is one of the original blue zones is that right it is the original Blue Zone and it was a bucket list for me and I know I wish we could have coordinated because I know you and I talked about being able to do it together but next time we'll have to make sure that we do I Sardinia was so important to me for a lot of different reasons uh but the the reason that got me it got me interested in going to start eating in the first place was because in bear with me because this is about plants for a second I know but it it it has it has a good ending um there is a type of bread and as you as you talk about I talk about as well we all know that all plants have tough toxins in them um and one of the things that's been a focus in my research for a very long time is how people in the past use Technologies to detoxify plants to make them safer to eat detoxify them and also release their nutrients to make nutrients available to our bodies and one of the things that I found through a lot of that research is the crate and I think we talked about this last time almost all the Technologies involved with getting animals into our diets are help us overcome our physical limitations and get the animals like you know actually capture them you know at laddles and bows and arrows and Spears and Nets and fishing hooks and old traps and those things to get the animal once you have that animal you have a pile of incredibly safe bioavailable nutrient dense food in front of you and all you have to do is cut it open that's it so all the Technologies for millions of years going into getting animals into our diets is about getting the animal but up until the agriculture Revolution where there's a lot of technological input into you know growing and harvesting and plants most of the Technologies we developed over millions of years that had with plants was how to detoxify these plants overcome their defense mechanisms and just make them something we can even put in our mouths without outright you know getting sick very quickly so one of those uh Technologies and it takes a lot of work and effort to do that uh one of the things we see in different places around the world as a food resource is uh our acorns and acorns can promote trees and they have tannic acid and you know obviously that's that especially in high quantities is not safe to eat but there was a bread and Sardinia that Pliny the Elder wrote about a long time ago called penic spelling and it was a bread made from acorns that also contained clay and Ash and the clay especially was there to help detoxify the egg corn so clay and we see clay and acorns together in different areas we even see Indians in California Native Americans uh prehistorically putting clay and acorns together for detoxification when I was in Bolivia doing research on potatoes they eat toxic potatoes with clay for the same reason but um I wanted this was a bread that has been around for a very long time some people consider it the ancestor to polenta because obviously polenta which is now made with Maize or corn was never prehistorically in um in Italy so it went it looks like from this Acorn bread to a chestnut bread to polenta that we have with mace but anyway I I was very interested in looking to see how they use clay to detoxify this these acorns and I wanted to go see it so about 10 years ago I started to try to make some contacts and find somebody that that still made it and a dead end after dead end after dead end I couldn't find anybody that that could find it that it's no nobody makes it anymore somebody's got to make this spread like there's no way we have this bread that's been around forever and you know detoxifying plants I need to record this and I even contacted a guy from noma's Test Kitchen the the Nordic Food Lab so Noma was up until recently the best restaurant in the world year after year after year in in Copenhagen and one of the guys that headed their their Test Kitchen was branched off to be their own food lab was actually Sardinian so I asked him what this guy will know he's like no nobody makes a spread anymore so I let it die I picked up six years ago and tried again and then more recently picked up the the quest and I got in contact with the National Park Service in Italy who was trying to deserve the oak tree that these egg horns came from and they said there's these three elderly women in this little village Mountain Village called urzole that know how to make this bread still so after months and months and months trying to make contact with them uh turns out they were too elderly to meet with anybody I mean they were actually quite old um which is typical for some of these blue zones so one had shown their son how to make it so the main reason we went to Sardinia was to go make this Acorn bread with these one of these women sons and it was actually fantastic to uh to see and witness and participate in but the cool part is I didn't even realize that we were I knew that Sardinia was one of the blue zones I didn't realize ahead of time that the area we were going into and spending a lot of time was actually the heart of the original first Blue Zone ever identified um and obviously we don't know the narratives about um you know how it's very plant-based and you know this this sort of thing we spent and spent time with and lived with for several days a family that's been a part of that research was interviewed not recently several years ago for a BBC special on the blue zones and uh our main point of contact was a woman who's written the most books about the history of Sardinian food and traditional Sardinian food so this is what we're immersed in and what I can't wait to tell you about is what we did and how animal-based all of it was and how they were sitting there just laughing like what is this thing about they recorded us eating minestrone soup like what is what what is this thing about all these plants and um so anyhow we go and we uh well we we landed in uh in Rome and actually I I got to tell you this one thing very very quickly we landed in Rome and our flights changed we had a nine hour layover in Rome so I uh contacted a buddy of mine that lives in room as a chef and he took us to this restaurant that is focused on awful and it's from the late 1800s and it uh it popped up it was a couple that was making and selling wine or something and they realized across the street they were just about to put a huge slaughterhouse in and they said we're gonna start a restaurant across the street from the slaughterhouse that uses all the stuff that they're not selling like everything else and it was brilliant it's been around since like 1894. and we had a dish that always wanted to have in Rome it's a traditional Roman dish where they take uh the intestines of the animals it's a Cavs veal cab intestines unween and it's a small intestine so after the animals drink the milk from their mothers it goes into their stomach it gets hit with a bunch of enzymes start to change and actually is turning into cheese in their stomachs and then when it goes into their small intestines they uh you know they the animals killed and they take the small intestines and don't even wash it out right I mean here is just a milk-fed animal with self-made cheese instead of the intestines and they literally chop it up and they can and they serve it I am telling you it was absolutely delicious I mean it was I'll eat these things because I I want to try them this is a dish I would go over and over again in order it's actually one of the best things I've eaten in rum you would love it yeah and so that's she's in the the intestine itself or they take the cheese out no it's in there they don't even clean it up so it's not the large intestines you know stuff in a large intestines it's a different thing it's a small intestines right so it's it's undigested self-made cheese it actually it was like a carnivore version of uh manicotti I mean it was like it the intestines were very mild I mean it was a deal cap it was very mild and had a pasta like quality to it but it was intestines and the inside was like you had filled it with ricotta cheese it was amazing and actually Christina had it too my wife and she she thought it was delicious as well so we go there first that was the first meal we had in Italy this trip and then we fly to Sardinia and then we went up and we drove through the mountains and and got to this little village of Villa Grande now Villa Grande is the epicenter of the first identified bluesome and and the part that is documented correctly is there's a lot of old people I mean a lot of old people the part that I love is that it wasn't like as much old people you go to the nursing home to see them there's a bunch of old people all over the place and the the family we were with uh Marco his father is 98 years old every day he walks up and down the mountains like all day um every single day next door to them their neighbor is 103 years old he lives by him by himself in a in a several story house and he lives his main residence is on the second floor of this house so this guy's going up and down 103 years old up and down steps every day Villa Grande has literally the and they have a big Sami when you drive into it they still hold the record for the uh most amount of centenarians that are males which is obviously a big deal right so it's true there's a lot of old people but the dietary part of it is is wrong so um we did and again as many of us know but it's nice to have you know firsthand experience with this a couple things that are I think really important um now listen they did eat vegetables not a lot but they did everybody had a little Orchard um like literally everybody has a little Orchard the village is is kind of concentrated on the side of this mountain but the village itself has a whole lot of land around it and there's areas where they pasture their animals there's areas where they have little Orchards and things so they do eat a little bit of vegetables and not a ton I mean they Tomatoes obviously um uh that was the main one uh baked tomatoes and some more Tomatoes The Ripe fruit is something that that they'll eat as well but every time that we sat down and I think this is very important every time that we sat down to a meal or entered somebody's house everybody had pigs and everybody cured their butchered their own pigs and cured their own meat so literally every time we visited somebody I don't care what time of day it was they hold one and they run away and they come back and they put out a platter of this amazing house cured meat and I mean these are meats that they're making without nitrates their own animals it's usually was Pursuit and salami and Copa and pancetta all out on this tray and they give it to you and it's this part I think is fascinating so what I'm about to tell you the Sunday that we were there the first Sunday we were there with this one family like okay you know we're gonna have meat today we're gonna have meat I said okay and they put an entire half of sheep with all the intestines on this kind of rotisserie thing in their big um they had a fire out back kind of a big fireplace and they and they had the things all day on the spit and they made us this grandiose meal but it was all built around this half of a sheet that they spent all day cooking and they said he arrived me today and the barbecue we're gonna barbecue and they put it down it was fantastic and then a few days later it started with the charcuterie it started with the salumi and then and then it went to that later and a whole bunch of other food but that was the basis of it and a couple days later we were talking and this was hard talking because my Italian is terrible um not many people in Sardinia speak English and they and in fact Sardinian is there is the basic language in Italian is you know there as well so we had translators but everybody was amazing and I said hey what's the story with this this meeting you know how often do you eat meat no and you know it's reported that you eat meat once a week they said yeah we meet once a week this is wait a second I have eaten more meat with all of you over the past several days and I even eat at home like what are you talking about when they say eating meat they meant the entire day Barbecue on Sunday where there's a half an animal on the spit it but it's the semantics here are really really important they're eating meat all day long but they what they're you know that that's saying like let's have a big family Barbecue picnic is is what they meant so every Sunday they had this huge huge meal of meat but they're eating meat all week long massive amounts of meat and a lot of cheese and the cheese is off the charts amazing so anyhow that's that's That's the basis of what the daily part of all this was but here's the part that I was so excited to tell you about we um so the first reason I went and I know it's not that exciting for you was about the acorn bread well the second reason we went was to learn how to make this uh this is an old version of it uh that it's about 10 years old that I use in when I'm in my cheese making classes this is the stomach of an unween goat and they make a cheese there called Cayu de capretto which is the second reason we went to Sardinia and the reason that the sole reason we were in Villa Grande and and I want to describe what we did here because this I think really captures a lot of the experiences we had in Sardinia but the way that they view animals uh for food and and I think it's beautiful so we one morning we got up and we got in a truck in the back of a truck and drove literally down this mountain for about 45 minutes excuse me to where one of the Shepherds or two of the Shepherds had kind of had this Outpost where they keep all their other goats and we went down there and we took a goat and we're gonna make this cheese in this stomach now when excuse me when baby mammals including humans drink milk you know a couple things are really important uh and I this is how I start all my cheese making classes uh when they take the milk in the milk is in body temperature because it's coming out of their mothers and it's teeming with live bacteria and that the bacteria the beneficial bacteria that we're talking about here that are useful for this process it's it's no uh should be no surprise that it operates best at body temperature I mean this is through millions of years of evolution this works great so this milk is coming out already in the process of fermenting and when baby mammals including humans drink this milk it gets hit with a bunch of enzymes they make and it breaks down the lactose and the lipids and all this but also coagulates the milk because of these uh protease enzymes that denature the proteins and they say the reason that it happens is so that it slows down this liquid in our digestive tract to give it enough time to ferment longer uh break down and also the nutrients that get absorbed through our small intestines this happens for all mammals and for all mammals when we get weaned off of our mothers we start to lose that ability to to digest uh that that milk in the same way so one of the things about the cheese making process is the cheese making process replicates that same digestive process but does it outside of our body's force all of those pieces so um we real cheese is made with fermenting dairy uh chi almost all cheeses are made because we had that and that protease enzyme back in that comes from the stomach of these animals in order to coagulate it and create courage and way into it so with that said the most rudimentary form of cheese making this is the other reason we went is to take a baby goat and bear with me for some people listening to take a baby goat and you bring it through it you have go bring it to his mother and have a drink and fill its stomach with milk and then you take the goat and you have to kill the dough but then you take the stomach out and literally hang it up 15 days later you have cheese inside the Sun that's it that's all you have to do it happens on its own so the milk is already fermenting so that part's happening the enzyme because that animal is unwind is already in the stomach it coagulates it uh some people some people open the stomach first um and strain the milk real quick because one thing that happens when when the babies are drinking from their mothers especially goats they get a lot of hair in there so there's hair in the cheese suppose there's some people like the cheese with the hair some people don't but anyhow all you have to do is hang this up and 15 days later you have cheese and we tried it we made it and then we had some that was already 15 days done and it was quite strong but the most impressive part was after they took this stomach out and hung it up they took the gallbladder and gave it you know just just kind of threw it over to you know Into the Woods and we ate every part of this goat except for the gallbladder we ended up eating the summit later but what happened next was the most one of the most beautiful uses of an animal I've ever seen so the animal was skinned all the rest of the guts except for the kidneys came out so you had the heart the liver the spleen the lungs all got put over here and the and the call Fat which is around the art that gets put over here then the animal was um was cut in half uh the head has taken off animals cut in half and they had two huge sword-like skewers the same kind of skewers that they cooked that sheep on a couple days earlier and this half of the goat and the two halves got put on the skewer and the head was split open like this and the skewer went in one eye across the back and out the other eye so on one skewer you had two halves of the goat and the head and it's rotating around this fire they built on the ground and then this was the really really really cool thing they took another skewer and they had taken all the organs and they chopped them up into pieces uh chunks about this big and they alternated them on the skewer so they had a piece of heart a piece of liver a piece of lung the spleen they took a little pan uh I'm sorry uh you know a little bit of pancetta which is uh cured but on smoked Italian bacon then a piece of that and then they alternated it so this entire skewer was covered with filled with all the organs and then they took the call Fat which is that the you know the part that sits around the outside of the organs and it's full of all the veins the fat they wrap that around the outside of it and then they took um the small intestines which again they didn't wash either because it was just from an unweened animal small intestines got wrapped around it to hold everything together and then the large intestines which they did do a quick rinse on wrapped around it and that sat on the other side of the fire and rotated and it was it was amazing it was amazing this thing cooked for about four hours and then we brought it in had this huge feast and that that the one thing that um uh with all the organs on the on the one side of the fire got taken off like a kebab cut into pieces the outside was crisp it was absolutely delicious and truly every part of that animal was consumed on the spot and nothing nothing went to waste yeah oh that's amazing yeah so that's I mean that that is the heart of what we saw so we did a bunch of other traveling a bunch of other work but um the the the meat awful whole animal approach and uh the cheese that these shepherds are making literally on a daily basis was the Mainstay of what we saw as their diet now did they the vegetables yes but they looked at fruit the way that I look at fruit if you're going to have fruit as a dessert right it's not a it's not a thing you should be eating all the time so it was it was a dessert and it was fresh fruit from their Orchards um a little bit of vegetables yes they absolutely had vegetables they cured olives they did they did a few things like that but it wasn't a the the picture that we have of these blue zones because of the way they're being depicted to us was absolutely not what we experienced yeah absolutely and obviously you know very wholesome homemade sort of food you know unless it was processed garbage and and uh industrial made you know things oh it's plant-based well what does plant-based mean right you know you're plant-based in Sardinia is very different from plant-based you know Kellogg's frosted Corn Flakes right oh absolutely yeah and they were they didn't work every piece of it they were connected to and you know one thing that we like to do here and I've spent a lot of time learning how to do and prodding myself honest all right this meal you know has been entirely made from scratch and you put it down we made every bit of this and you know maybe we've been hunting for this deerings on the table and like that's awesome every single meal we had was that level like we would have this four course meal and there isn't it wasn't an ingredient on the table that they didn't grow or harvest or process or cook themselves the other thing that's missing I think from although it's depicted some but it is a huge player in in this uh conversation about the beauty of what's happening in the blue zones is food is a huge piece of it but there's a lot of other pieces and even when you talk and they know everybody we talked to yeah we're in the Blue Zone and they're very very proud of this um one thing that they said to us is yeah food's important but we walk all the time like we walk all the time and part of it is too they're not just walking on a fly I mean it's up and down and up and down and up and down they're walking to the fields they're walking their friends we showed up it was the road to get into there it was about a I don't know six hour drive or no four hour drive it wasn't even that far of a distance but it was up and down mountains and it was crazy we were exhausted when we got there we got out of the car and truly I was about ready to lay down I was that tired and I thought I was like this on the steering wheel we could have the car like hey let's take a walk oh my God I was taking a walk is like this so the first thing they wanted to do when we came to visit was let's take a walk the second part of it is they said we're just nice you know and so what do you mean so everybody gets a lot everybody knows each other I'm just certainly I'm sure there's Rife and conflict and whatever but in general they understand that they are just nice and you know what they are every single person family every encounter we had for the entire time we're there everyone was just genuinely nice so I do think those social for the social pieces plays a huge role um the fact that everybody is exercising all the time plays a huge role we did you know we were obviously looking around and not judging people by the way that they look but certainly looking at you know who was lean who wasn't lean you know that sort of thing well almost everybody we saw from an outward appearance looked in shape but the crazy thing is we didn't see one gym yeah like we didn't see the gym people were just always moving they were living they were doing their thing and they were just you know they they're working in the field and they're not working they're attending their animals they were doing this they're walking over here they're building this they're always moving and um not the gyms are bad I I love gyms but for what their lifestyle they didn't they didn't need one they didn't need them at all yeah yeah which is great I think I think Malcolm Gladwell spoke about um out of that area or some areas in Europe and in Italy um in his book The outliers and they talked about how people thought well maybe this is uh Mediterranean diet you know whatever the hell that means and uh but but also maybe genetic there's a lot of people who are living to be great ages but then they found that when those people moved over to America and you know a lot of different towns a lot of people would all go to the same town just because you know there'd be a mass migration um to America and things like that and they didn't they didn't really uh necessarily have that um and and one thing that they noticed they didn't notice too much differences between different sorts of things they did but one of the main things that they noticed differently between them was that that family connection you know having three even four generations in the same household and having all your friends within walking distance and New York's extended family you know within within Arm's Reach and he thought that that was that played a major role too that that social structure that tight-knit Community which we've lost from from a large to a large extent unfortunately absolutely and you heard you know what they did they referenced that as well the fact that in multi-generations quite often in the same house but not in the same house down down the block um but and I know I mentioned this at the beginning of my description of what we did but it was wonderful to see that it wasn't just this number okay you have all these people living to this age it's the fact that they were literally living to this age right people were you know mobile people were Lucid people were having conversations at 100 years old they were they were they were dying the last 40 Years of their life and living these they were literally living up until the point that they did in fact they had um it was very it was really really cool they had a wall um with people's faces painted on it and and dates like they respect and honor the elderly in the community this is this was in especially Grande and they you know when somebody dies it wasn't just this you know little obituary in the paper that lives for you know it's in the one paper and then all the Sunday Edition comes out and everybody forgot like they're literally memorializing these people on the walls um saying a little words about I couldn't read what it was it was an Italian but uh it was it was a different way to live and it was it was truly beautiful um and I also spoke to a friend of mine who knows Greece really well and uh and he says there's the same thing we did with that goat is a very common thing happening in in parts of Greece and um you know all these places where you have these people living to these ages I think we really need to dive in with open eyes to see truly what they're eating and how they're eating it how they're preparing it yeah definitely well uh speaking of which you know looking on your social media saw a lot of uh you know great videos and different uh you know pictures from your trip there which were great and the people should should check out one in particular that that caught my eye um and caught everyone's eye was the the maggot cheese is there something about that what uh what God's name was that about so this is insane because they it's called the Guinness book of world's records uh labeled it the most dangerous cheese in the world I think in like 96 or something it's the cheese called costume marzu it's a pecorino it's a it's a sheep's milk cheese and there's a few cheeses in the world um not many there's a there's a my cheese in Germany and uh there's this there's a couple not many where you invite insects into the cheese making process but in most cases you do everything you can to keep them out but in this particular case when you make this pecorino cheese I should smell cheese at there's a stage where you put little divots in the top now the pecorino uh has a has a smell that this particular fly loves the flies that produce these maggots loves this sauce they're already attracted to the cheese but they they create an opportunity for these these uh flies to lay their eggs in the cheese and then the cheese sorry the eggs hatch and then you have these these maggots and the maggots then proceed to go into the cheese and eat the cheese and digest the cheese and I know this sounds crazy but if you if anybody likes um Brie or Camembert for example um it's the exact same process but it's using molds instead of insects so that what happens when you make a Camembert or a breeze you make this wheel of cheese and you have this this mold on the outside and what that mold does is it literally digests the cheese from the inside out and that's why it gets soft it gets that stronger flavor and that stronger around because it's doing the same thing you have these microorganisms digesting this cheese well what's happening with the calcium marzu is you have these maggots that just like an earthworm through the soil go in and consume the soil and it comes out the other end a little bit changed which is really good for Farmers when this happens they go in and they literally eat this cheese it goes through their digestive tracts one of the primary things that they do is they break down the fats through some kinds of enzymes that they have in their body and it makes a really strong flavor and Aroma with the final cheese because these fats have been changed after they go through their bodies and you can eat this cheese in one of two ways one with the maggots still crawling all over it which is the most popular way to do it or you can wait till the maggots turn into you know they turn into adult flies and they literally fly away and there's none left in the cheese but I do understand that it is uh one of the benefits of eating the cheese when it's still covered in maggots is the presence of those live maggots on the cheese is an indicator of the quality and the safety of the cheese itself like if the maggots were dead you know the maggots eat that cheese and are sick or dying or slow or whatever then you know something's wrong with the cheese years ago we were visiting family uh long-lost family in Campagna in Italy which is the area where that mozzarella comes from and we didn't even know that they made cheese and uh it turns out that my like third cousin or whatever uh has his own sheep and he actually makes cats the version of calcium marzu but it was obviously on the mainland it wasn't in Sardinia and he gave us a little piece and I had no idea what it was when we're there and and their maggots crawling on our hands the kids are like ready to kill me but they're eating it but this was a proper we sat down and and had this cheese and I have to tell you Anthony it was so it was so strong it was so incredibly strong like if you've ever had a piece of provolone that's like really aged Picante sharp provolone it was that on steroids but soft and you spread it and the maggots are there um I enjoyed the experience but it wasn't as good as the intestines and intestines in the mirror would you try it if you were there you would have tried it uh yeah maybe uh maggot poop cheese I don't know you know I'm just thinking that you know be very you know being very uh you know G-rated with it well you know they eat it and it goes through their body and it's just like yes they they defecated it out and yeah poop it so it's maggot poop you know and it's uh you know digested digested cheese and um but uh I think that's absolutely hilarious the you know the um that must that's the funniest thing I always try to think about how they how they figured these things out you know it's probably an accident right those flies are really attracted to that cheese they're trying to keep it away then all of a sudden they didn't do a good job they had maggots on it somebody's probably just so hungry that they're like I gotta eat this and uh and they ate away yeah it's not that bad I actually prefer that you know and I didn't die so you know maybe maybe we'll do that again on purpose next time it is illegal it is actually illegal to sell it is illegal to transport that cheese uh you can't bring it into the U.S you can't bring in other parts of the EU um and suppose it's like a 50 000 Euro fine if you're caught selling that cheese wow which is insane and the fact that it's got this label the most you know whether it's something that um is you know exciting if you're pleasing to your palette is a different story but as far as danger is concerned there is nothing dangerous about it and what I wrote in a recent blog post you want to talk about dangerous cheese and American cheese is dangerous cheese that will definitely make you sick over time this one is is you know maybe in your head it would make you sick but it's a completely different food yeah I probably would try it and you know I do like trying like you know traditional local things I probably would try it I don't know if I try it again uh but I would you sort I think you know when in Rome you just sort of have to have to try it the maggots I don't know honestly I think that that that's a bonus for me at least it's some you know animal protein stuff like that absolutely and bring that with it so um I don't know did could you take I mean I don't want to get too graphic here but could you could you taste the maggots that change the flavor for you a bit no I I could definitely taste the change in the cheese because of the maggots but the fact that the maggots were there was more a visual thing than anything else you didn't really even know they were there did you did you get a chance to try the cheese without that process going on to see what it was like before that um sort of because it's the same exactly everywhere we went they were making even in everybody in their houses were making pecorino almost everybody but everybody we were with um was making it themselves so yes because it's the same exact cheese that they introduced them to so and really if you have a a young pecorino not like pecorino Romano that you get at the store that's super hard and you can grade it the early younger version of that before it goes through that process um is exactly what it would have been without it that nice firm it probably would have say like a a cheddar texture before it goes through the magnet process that's what which one would you prefer maggot pre-magged or post maggot oh pre-magged yeah yeah okay [Laughter] yeah the other thing and this is important too um everywhere we went when I was in public Georgia we were filming the great human race one of the things I thought was brilliant was that everybody who drank wine still made their own wine I mean even in the cities that they said like something like 90 of the people still make their own wine they have these these big clay things that they bury in the yards or keep in their basement depending on you know what their house or living situation is like um they they all made it and that's that region is a still holds the record for the earliest wine in the world and and they've carried on this tradition when we were in Sardinia and I know this very similar in parts of Sicily and other parts of Italy you see this but it was really apparent in in Sardinia everybody made their own cheese like it was there in the house and it they they did sell it in the stores for sure but they got it in the house when they when they made bread everybody made the bread everybody was butchering their pigs but um what I found fascinating is first off the every they weren't asking questions about their own food they weren't asking other people the the healthiest or Hell the longest living people in the world right the population don't hire a nutritionist to tell them how to eat because they have this direct connection to their food very traditional food this is how they make it this is where it comes from they have the Sheep they have the goats they have the pigs you know they have all of these things and they're all doing it themselves so there's nobody else involved with adulterating their food or putting preservatives in or messing up a process or whatever they all know it um and they all all made um you know whatever kind of cheese they were making and with the way that was left over uh ricotta cheese you know if you look up if you Google how to how to make ricotta cheese the first 99 recipes for it are going to tell you to get a gallon of milk put it in a pot add a little it heat it up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit add a little bit of lemon juicer vinegar and then you make the ricotta cheese in fact I just saw a video of somebody who and it was a very well done video and she goes out and she's milking her own cow and she brings the milk and I'm gonna show you how to make ricotta cheese and she does that that is not ricotta cheese ricotta in Italian ricotta means to recook so when you make ricotta cheese you make cheese you take the pecorino or whatever you can take the take the cheese the whatever put it over here and what's left is the way and it's still full of whey proteins and that's what you heat up and ricotta cheese is literally nothing but whey protein just about um and it's a completely different texture completely different nutritional profile completely different experience eating this and I feel really bad because most people it's had had ricotta cheese and bought it from the store have are not eating you know the same food but the reason I'm bringing it up is because recently we did an event here and somebody came and you know we make all of our cheese here and we make that that same kind of cocoa and the uh one of the women there said I haven't had cheese in you know in 10 years and I said why not she says I'm allergic to Jesus so you're allergic or you're lactose intolerant she goes no no no I'm allergic and if you're allergic it's easy to a protein and I said what are you allergic to she said the casein and and milk has casein and Whey proteins in it and the casein is taken out when you make most cheeses so she hasn't had cheese because almost all cheese has casein in it and I said well you can have a Ricotta and she said well no I I can't I said no real ricotta doesn't have casing in it it only has the Whey proteins and it was the first time she said cheese in like 10 years which I thought was nice yeah so you made it for her um the proper way in your kitchen you know we make it anyhow every week so we had it already but yeah we offered a tour to you and she got that oh that's really good and and she didn't die so it's even better that's good that's even better absolutely well it's great you know it's so it's so good to hear that you know I mean we intellectually you know understand that the Blue Zone studies release the editorialization um you know was you know not not only well it's not even Cherry Picked it's just uh you know very bastardized information and uh you know changing things around and you know saying that people will start to only eat meat once a week you know I mean I I'm sure they could have just seen very clearly like that you know they meet every every single day but we're going to we're going to run with that and say they'll need me once a week or um or mostly plant-based and things like that uh it's nice to it's nice to get confirmation of that because not everyone is able to go to Sardinia and see that uh straight away and you can have people saying well no actually that's not really the traditional thing but it's like well how do you know well I was there I saw it and so that that's that's what they do so it's great that you have that that experience how long did that take you uh to set up with you know getting all the pieces in place and getting that trip put together yeah and it was not purely just for your own interests or was that researching for a book or another project or what was that we are well we're I'm working on I I'm actually I'm working on a book that looks at traditional processing of animals around the world uh but the part of what we're doing through the Food Lab is continuing to um to conduct research with ethnographic research with with living cultures living groups living communities that have you know long-standing traditions on how they approach food especially from a technological perspective so we can document and record it and make that information available and most importantly be able to you know use that not only in discussions like this but you know in transforming how we're approaching things in in our food system today so that was uh appointed trip primarily and that's why we wanted to record how to make that egg cornbread because it literally is a dying tradition that um has never been fully documented and we wanted to make sure that we were able to preserve that um but when I years ago when I started looking in the sardini and I just look looking at their traditional foods oh my God I mean there's some traditional foods and sardini that people go to experience like they make this pasta that they stretch so thin it's like hair um and a particular kind of flatbread and these other things which are traditional in the sense of hundreds or in some cases maybe even thousands of years but what I was really focused on is you know what were they doing for tens of thousands of years or or even longer um so that's that's the reason we were there but there's a second reason I'm glad you brought up people going to Sardinia um we had an inkling when we were uh putting this this trip together that it was going to be something special and we wanted to start laying the groundwork to be able to take people there in the future so the idea is and I'm hoping we can do it as early as next year but it might be two years out that we can that we're going to run a trip where we're bringing you know 10 or 12 people to experience a lot of the same things in fact a lot of the same people we were with to be able to do that and I think being able to bring people who were really interested in that kind of beating to an actual Blue Zone to experience what they're actually eating would be a really really cool thing so we're laying around work for that that would be yeah absolutely well that's great well well let me know when you're doing it because I'm all right I'll go on your first trip that'd be awesome perfect yeah oh well that's great um well thank you so much uh for for sharing all that with us that was absolutely amazing that's an amazing experience I I hate that I wasn't able to go uh unfortunately just couldn't couldn't break away from from the prison Island that is Australia so uh I wasn't able to make it um what other projects and and uh and things you have going on at the moment but we got a couple things going on so uh first off we're always expanding down here if anybody ever is in the area to come visit us uh either take a class or see we're doing a food lab or downstairs at the restaurant we are only about an hour from Washington DC an hour and a half from Philadelphia and about two two and a half hours from New York city so even though we're in this little rural really cute uh uh kind of um separated area we're not that far from some of the major cities so put it on your put it on your travel plans we'd love to have you um but we are looking we're hopefully uh doing a huge research trip in the winter uh going up to the Arctic Circle in the middle of the winter to uh to be spend time with the Sami the reindeer herders up there uh I what they do with animals is uh absolutely amazing their approach to reindeer and and the way that they literally eat every single part of the reindeer is fantastic and one of the things we're looking at is not only traditional uh butchering and cooking Texas of reindeer but also this this really interesting um interplay between you know the traditional ways that are that very much are are ethical and sustainable and respectful of animals and nutrition and all that and you know the the modern um you know resistance to to that and kind of you know had that as commercialized and industrialized the meat system so one of the women that we're we're going to spend time with is uh lives up at the Arctic Circle is very you know very remote uh reindeer herder and the traditional butchering and and practices but she also is a commercial butcher for reindeer to supply to shops in Oslo so that Sami traditional Sami that have now migrated to cities have access to some of their traditional foods but the fascinating part is she's running up against uh the the laws don't let her butcher or Slaughter and butcher the animals in a traditional way and you know the Sami who have you know been raised on eating the entire animal their entire life can't get their traditional food in the cities because of these laws so and yeah we're doing a lot of work with that we're super excited super excited for that and next week we leave for Ireland um and the following week we're running our first kind of food culture History pre-history tour um where we have we have 12 people going across Ireland and uh looking at prehistory earliest examples of Daring in the world earliest examples of butter eating all kinds of amazing food and uh so we're hoping that goes really well nice well I'm sure and when is that sorry that trip is uh so the family leaves next week and it's a week after so it's like August 7th to the 13th something like that oh great all right well you might you might still catch some of the some of the weather in Ireland don't I mean you you've been there so there's about there's about a week of good weather uh some of it's in September and uh getting into August yeah sort of sort of the rules of the dice we'll see yeah I know although there's been a little Heat Wave up that way I think right recently oh really yeah well they had a they had a cold snap as well a couple years ago they had something like six feet of snow in Dublin right not the one year we lived there we had two snowstorms they said it was unheard of and actually the airports were shut down both days I was actually trapped in England um one of one of those trips but yeah it's uh weather's been crazy lately even there yeah yeah very yeah I remember when I went there in 2009 2010 that first winter it was it was the worst winter in 92 years they said and and it was so cold that the the water mains uh froze and broke in part of Dublin and there was like there's you know the water wasn't potable in certain areas and you had to be really careful about you know the drinking water and things like that in certain areas so um yeah and then the next year it stowed probably just as much as not more and then yeah I don't know sort of sort of a bit milder after that and then yeah out of nowhere just this like six feet of snow uh I don't think I think ever I only has ever gotten that you know yeah yeah so well hopefully yeah hopefully the weather's good for you though have you ever thought about documenting some of these trips I mean that would be like you know getting like a film crew to come in with you up to the you know up to the Arctic Circle or to Sardinia and things like that I mean that would that would be amazing a lot of people would watch that you know we've talked about it and I really really really want to do that and that was the idea we we started talking about that with um one of the guys actually a good friend of mine now was one of the directors for the great human race uh and we're we're working on it we're just we're just looking for the funding because it's some of these experiences are not only unique and Powerful but they're they're it's getting more difficult to find people that are still eating such traditional ways and a lot of these things are are and I would love to share that as much as possible so yeah we're really we're working on that and I think we're going to be able to make that happen for the Sami I'll tell you it was interesting for Sardinia we um it took me a long time to make the contacts and and make the inroads to be able to do this to be with the people we were with and I mentioned about bringing a film crew and it was met with a little bit of resistance and it was some of the people I had contacted and look they knew nothing about me they had no idea what my intentions were they had no idea if you know what I was going into doing I think in some cases they had some probably some bad experiences with film Crews and their messages getting um kind of bastardized when it was sent out so I it was a little bit of resistance and I backed off and I said look I'd rather make sure I got in there and got the genuine experience then filmed something that was of a lesser you know level and it turned out and but I was a little bit nervous to be honest just because I had a little bit of that resistance like you know what what is my experience and my family's experience going to be like when we get here and everybody as soon as they realize that we were there to learn from them and Champion you know their what what they were doing everything wide open oh you know completely opened up so there is that little bit of um uh you know that Balancing Act of you know going in there and what does bringing a film crew prevent happening experiences wise um versus looking at looking at document but the the contacts that were made with zombie I think that was part of the original idea so I'm really hoping we could bring a film through with us for sure yeah yeah well it'd be great and you know and you do have the inroads now so maybe maybe something for the future maybe that can be uh six part Netflix series on uh traditional ways of living uh coming forward uh which would be pretty badass and and also like you know I totally agree like documenting and and uh you know thoroughly and then thoroughly documenting those traditional ways of you know making the acorn bread doing these different sorts of things that that are going to be lost otherwise there's three old women that know how to make this Acorn bread right you know you need to you need to preserve that I think that's important even though I'm not going to eat the bread I think it's important to preserve like that that uh you know that you know that technique and those that that art craft so you know good on you and hopefully hopefully uh we'll see that that uh on air one day and and we gotta get to Australia soon because you and I have to eat a wickety Grove together yes we do absolutely and that's that's actually a very good point so yes because um yeah I was I was talking you know guests I had on here is where it lives out Bush and um and uh we're gonna wait for the the rainy season to get over or through and that's that's probably coming up so I might have to might have to I'll I'll make make tracks and see uh See if I can you know sort of do the the leg work for you and then when it's all set up it'll bring you down hang out and eat some grubs that sounds good and take out some Kangaroos and now yeah that was another thing that's the guy I mentioned before that uh you know chases down animals hunts them by running and running them down it's pretty amazing he says oh this is who you're talking about when I saw yeah yeah yeah yeah so that you he just chases him down at you said they all sort of just give up after about a kilometer they're just like nope that's it and he just and and sometimes you just like you know catch and release uh you know endurance hunting just chase them down catch them hold them be like all right there you go then other times you know he does actually eat them but uh but he does it sometimes just for sport as well so that'll be interesting so I'll have to check that out and let you know okay absolutely yeah great all right well Bill been absolutely great to to see you again it's wonderful to hear about your trip to Sardinia and and the actual story about the blue zones uh where can people get a hold of you and find your stuff awesome so we can uh anything related to the the my research or our teaching and all that you can find it eat like a human.com and uh I'm on Instagram at Dr Bill Schindler so at Dr Bill Schindler and then the modern Stone Age kitchen uh is um uh the internet at uh modern Stone Age kitchen.com and same thing you can follow the modern studies Kitchen on Instagram at modern Stone Age kitchen awesome we'll put all of that up in the description and everyone can find behind you there and uh great to see you work and hopefully see more in the future always great to see you thank you so much for having me you too man have a good yeah have a good day me too hey guys thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say if you like it then please like And subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcasts and if you're on YouTube then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that'll let you know anytime I have a new video out which should be every week if not more and if you could share this with your friends that would help me get the word out and let me know that you like what I'm doing thanks again guys [Music] thank you