How To Trust Your Body Again With Food

Your body gives you feedback on food all day long, but midlife busyness can drown it out. We sit down with Chef James Berry, private chef and founder of Pluck, to talk about mindful eating that actually works for real life: parenting, packed schedules, hormone shifts, and all the noise from diet culture.

We get into why flavor matters more than most nutrition advice admits, and how ultra-processed foods and artificial flavors can scramble appetite, cravings, and satisfaction. James walks us through the “lingual neural response,” a simple way to use your senses (sight, smell, texture, taste) to reconnect with what your body wants and what it rejects. We also talk about the nervous system side of eating, including how a quick breath or a short moment of gratitude can help you shift from fight-or-flight into rest-and-digest for better digestion and more accurate fullness cues.

If cooking feels overwhelming, we break down a formula-over-recipe approach built around protein, a healthy fat, and vegetables, plus meal planning tips that make eating at home easier and more consistent. We also explore palate recalibration, umami, picky eating, and why organ-based seasoning like Pluck can make simple meals taste better while supporting nutrient density. We close with actionable “homework” you can do this week, including a small habit change and a short after-meal walk.

Subscribe for more practical midlife health strategies, share this with a friend who feels stuck with food, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show.

Head to www.movingthroughmidlife.com for more information. 

Transcript

Welcome And What Midlife Needs

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Moving Through Midlife. I am your host, Courtney, a personal trainer and movement specialist who wants to help you move through midlife with more grace. Each week, we will discuss ways we can show up better for ourselves and our children without the burnout. We will focus on overall health through habit stacking to help increase energy, provide movement snacks to help you move more throughout the day while also moving your body more, and learn from professionals on moving through midlife with ease so that you can feel confident with aging gracefully. Grab your earbuds and join me on a leisurely walk while we discuss moving through midlife. This is one where I am speaking with Chef James Berry. You may have heard his name before, and that is because all the way back in episode 44, I interviewed him and I had the pleasure of speaking with him again. He has such a wealth of information, and he talks to us about mindful eating today and how we can get back to getting excited about the foods that we are eating. He has an amazing background. He has been a private chef working with many celebrities. He has started his own company, EatPluck, where this is organ-based seasoning. It is amazing. I know you may be thinking otherwise right now when you hear organs, but it is delicious. And I want to make sure that you know that if you head to eatpluck.com and you enter the code MovingThruMidLife, and it's T H R O U G H Moving Through Midlife, you can save 15% on your order. Now here is Chef Barry. Hello, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

I'm doing great. It's great to talk to you again.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yes, I am excited to be able to speak with you. I had you on um, it was what, a couple of years ago now, and you came on to speak about flux, and you are Chef James, and I'm excited to be able to have you come back on to talk to us a little bit further about your product and um some of the information about the lingual neural response.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Absolutely. There's a great quote by Dr. Bill Schindler, he's a archaeologist, professor of archaeology, and um it's one I use a lot, and it always kind of makes me pause every time I say it. Um, we are the only species in the world that looks to someone else to tell us what to eat. And just so we're all clear, there's 8.7 million animal species in the world. So we are the only one of that 8.7 million. And to me, when I hear that, it's just like, well, A, let's not forget that we are animals and that we did have knowledge of what we instinctively needed to eat, and that we've lost it, that we're now in a place of confusion and sometimes despair. I mean, if you're if you're like me and you've spent your, you know, basically your entire life, I'm 50 now, so my entire life I've been told, eat your vegetables. And now all these people are saying, don't eat your vegetables. So you're like, what?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

It's interesting that you say that because I had um been on recently, and I was talking about how this stage of life um in this midlife stage, how we tend to maybe get too much estrogen built up, and um, like we're trying to get rid of it as we're our hormones are all over the place. And both my mother and I had very similar situations where we were eating, we both craved coleslaw. I remember as a child in high school, my mom, it was like every meal she was serving coleslaw as a side dish. And I was like, What is your problem? And now I'm doing it to my kids. I don't always put it as a side dish, but I eat it a lot. I crave coleslaw. And because of the cruciferous, you know, it's helping to pull the estrogen out. So I do think that, like you said, like we just have an innate ability to know what our body needs. We may not recognize that for what it is, and I think today there's so many systems we don't listen to our body anymore, to what it's telling us. But if we do take it a few minutes and listen, it's amazing what we can hear.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Absolutely. I I think we're constantly being bombarded with like, what's the trending diet? And this is how you should be eating. But the reality, the kind of food pyramid that I want to see or that I would create is the top of the pyramid would be flavor, you know, like focusing on real flavors, not you know, fabricated, uh unnatural, um, artificial flavors, which is really what's confusing our bodies. But real flavor that you find in nature. And one of the reasons why I would do that and why that would be a focus, is because historically or ancestrally, flavor equaled nutrition. So our bodies are designed to associate if it tastes good, then that means it has nutrients for our bodies. So that's where I would start. And then underneath that pyramid, and kind of taking up the very middle of the pyramid, would be just eat real food, like all natural, real food, nutrient-dense, whole foods, foods that are ingredients versus that have ingredients. And then at the very bottom, kind of the largest, but at the bottom of that pyramid, I would put eat consciously or or eat, eat mindfully, because we forget that piece, but it's everything. It's it it helps support your digestion because the state of your body is going to support whether you digest it or not. It's gonna support, like you just said, acknowledging, like recognizing what my body actually wants in this moment versus what am I being pulled to because of marketing or being hangry or whatever it is, right? But what does my body actually want? And and then also it's gonna support, you know, maybe eating slower, maybe eating more mindfully, because when we do that, we don't rush through it, we're actually eating it and letting our body tell us when to stop versus our eyes or our brain or or you know the the buttons on our on our waistline, you know, to tell us when to stop.

A Simple Food Pyramid For Real Life

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah. Yeah. And I again just mentioned this the other day, how we have to, like you said, we have to listen to our body and just taking a minute because so many of us are busy, life is busy. Um, although I think we create some of that ourselves. And we are now eating in our cars, in front of the phones, like in front of our phones or in front of the TV, um, over the sink for a lot of moms. They're just eating rush. And we're keeping our body in that fight or flight system rather than sitting down, taking a deep breath, relaxing, allowing our body to know that it's ready for that rest and digest state.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

And you know, one of the easiest kind of rituals that you can do to get into that state or to attempt to get in that state, is to simply either pray or say grace or do some kind of thing that gets you in the set, the mindset of like, okay, I'm honoring what I'm about to eat, I'm honoring my body, and now I'm gonna eat. It's just like taking that moment of just honoring through prayer, or like I said, or through grace, or anything like that. It truly does, it's the breath. It allows you to have a little breath before you go into your food. And then, of course, little things like putting your fork or spoon down in between bites, stuff like that. I know for some people, they're like, Oh, I've been told that for years. It's like, yeah, but it works, it really does work. That's why people keep saying it. Yeah, and as we age, I mean, there's so much against us, right? From hormones to our um metabolic state. I mean, there's so much changing for us. And I think, you know, particularly when I talk to people in their 70s, a lot of them will be like, oh, I am what I am. They kind of, you can tell they're just kind of accepting, like, ah, it is what it is, you know, I'm kind of done. And considering that now the 70s are you know, 60s or whatever, how you know, you know, that idea and that people are living potentially longer. I think if anything, our you know, our 50s on up, or even 40s really, but it but basically they're there on up. It's like that consciousness of mindfully eating, of really trying to continue to listen to what your body needs is even more important because it gets harder to lose that weight.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yeah, and just taking time, taking that time to relax and enjoy the time. And when we do that, we can start to hear our body more. I think we have become, like you said, with the you know, we're allowing processed foods into our diet, a lot of processed foods. So the system is we have we have lost all communication with what we should be eating, how we should be eating all of it. And if we just took a few extra minutes, we could maybe hear a little bit of that.

Slow Down To Shift Digestion

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah, and it really, I mean, that connection really is a biological connection. And and I think that we that's one of the reasons why we've lost it, is that we're so decent, like we're so, as you said, checked out because we're multitasking, we're doing all these other things that we historically did not do. You know, if we talk ancestrally of how, you know, um we used to kind of eat and how we used to our bodies were really created, is if you think about it, I I love thinking of it from this perspective. So you're in the forest, you first see something from afar, right? So maybe you actually even hear something first. You hear something drop from a tree. So now your hearing is activated. What was that? Now you look, and then you're you're basically you're looking to where that sound came from. Now you see something hanging from a tree. Maybe it's bright, it's colorful. So it's this communication has already begun. It started with your ears and now it's gone to your eyes. Now you're like getting closer because you're like, well, what is that? What is that shiny you know thing I see? You now, as you get closer, you smell it, and you're like this sweet, rich aroma is coming into you. And your brain, this is all communication once again. And it's revealing to your body do you should I eat this? Should I not eat this? Now you reach for it, you feel it. It's soft, it's plump. You take a bite, the juices that run down your chin, you're starting to masticate, your mastication's starting. You're you're getting this sweet pulp flavor in your mouth, right? This this chewing, this whole process of mastication. It if you notice it's the the flavors start to deepen the more you masticate as well. So this whole process, we call this the langual neural response. And it's it's as simple as just following your senses, allowing your senses to inform you of what your body wants. And this shows up. Everyone knows that this shows up. And here's an example. And and people listening are gonna probably be a little embarrassed by this, but it's true. We have to admit it, we have to own, take ownership of this. So you're in a store, you're at the grocery store, you're you're you're looking in the aisles for what you're gonna eat. And first of all, you have all these choices. So A, you're probably in overwhelm and you don't even realize it, but you are. But B, you go to reach for something that may not actually be good for your body, and something happens to you physically. You either burp, you flatch, you know, flatulence, you fart, something like that, right? Something, maybe you go to grip it and you can't pull it out or something falls. Like your body is physically responding to and communicating to you that it doesn't want this thing. Like maybe you go to, you know, you say you bought that jar of something and you're trying to open it. You can't open it, right? You're physically, your muscles will not allow you to open it. This is all communication, yet we don't look at it like that. We think, oh, I'm just struggling to open this, or oh, I'm just I'm just burping, or that my body's my stomach is gurgling like this because I'm hungry. It's like, no, no, no. It's it's responding in this way because it knows how this food is gonna make it feel, and it doesn't have a judgment around it. Like it's not saying, like, oh, well, you're gonna feel bad if you eat this, or you're gonna feel good, or I should reward myself, or I deserve this as your body does it say your brain says that. But your body just says this either works for me or it doesn't, right? And it's and and how we know that that's working or not is because you when you eat, you have little physical response, you have great poops, you you pee clearly, you know, think that your body responds in kind, but when it doesn't work, you get flatulence, you have stomach issues, you have um you you have an upset stomach, your your maybe your skin breaks out, you feel you know, overly tired after you eat or something like that. You know what I mean? So your body is responding in kind to the food, it's our heads that are getting confused.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Right. So if you're thinking about like going to the grocery store, can you give us some recommendations? Because I'm thinking, like, we definitely want to go to color, and then you look at the inner aisles and how they're like it's hitting me why they're creating these cereal boxes and everything so colorful, because then it's now competing with all these natural vibrant colors that are occurring in the fruit and vegetable area. How can we go into our grocery store and start to listen to what our body is saying?

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Yeah, it's a great question. I and I think it has to start before you're in the grocery store because you have to remember we're, you know, for many of us, we're in our 50s or or or or older. And so we've we've kind of co-created these bad, I'm I'm judging it by saying bad, but these habits. Let's just let's not judge it. Let's just say these habits of checking out around food, right? So we have learned to not listen. So we have to unlearn what we're doing. And so it almost really has to start before you go to the to the store. Okay. And how I look at it is I'm gonna really look at food from a different standpoint. So one of the things that attracts us to food is really texture, and and as I identified, flavor and smells and all that, but but texture plays a huge role. And a lot of times we don't acknowledge that. Because whenever I private chef for clients in the past, and I would one of the first questions I had for them was, what did you eat when you were a kid? What foods do you gravitate towards when you're having an emotional day? And what textures do you like? And I usually, when they answer the first two questions, I already know what textures like. Because if they say, like, oh, I loved, you know, roasted potatoes or something like that, or I loved mashed potatoes, like how someone likes potatoes is really going to indicate to you, like I like them as potato chips. Okay, that's that's someone who likes crunchy, right? I liked roasted potatoes, okay. That's someone who likes more savory and crisp things, right? And then if someone's like, oh, I like mashed potatoes, okay, they like creamy, soft, right? So that that those are the textures that go with those potatoes. Okay. And so if you look at that, you start to learn, well, that's probably that that texture is and flavor is probably what they equate to comfort food if it is a comfort food that we're discussing. And so what I usually try to do then is is I then identify, okay, well, how can I make healthy foods with those textures? So instead of the potatoes, maybe I'm using some other root vegetable. Maybe I'm using kohlrabi, or maybe I'm using like cellureac or or parsnips or something. I'm using some other root vegetable that's more of a resistant starch that's not gonna convert so quickly into sugar in your in your bloodstream and spike your insulin levels and whatnot, right? So something that's more gentle in your body. I'm gonna then take that food, I'm gonna try to prepare it in the way that I would do that food, whether it's roasting or mashed, right? Or even chips, you know, you can do that too. And then I'm gonna, you know, just lightly season them to what the person would like. And then I'm gonna start to get them to shift their diet first. Because if we don't, if we don't start, like there's two main things. Like if you're eating out all the time, it's impossible to be healthy, like literally impossible, unless you're extremely wealthy and you can eat at those farm to tame uh farm to plate tables every day, which is extremely expensive. Then maybe you have some health going on there, but that means you're eating every meal at one of those restaurants. But every other restaurant except for those is got, they've got a bottom line. They're trying to make a profit, and you cannot make a profit if all your ingredients are, you know, very expensive. And so they're using cheap ingredients like you know, seed oils, they're using pre-packaged foods that have, you know, shelf stabilizers and and ingredients that are more about ensuring that it has a shelf life than it is about your health. So, right away, getting someone to start cooking from home is key. I like to really focus on people meal planning, because if they meal plan, then they're only creating a list that's based on what they're gonna use and on the foods that they're gonna make. And this idea that we have to have a different food or meal every time, I think is false. And I think it's it's causes more harm than good. I think it's actually far better to just have like, like what I do is like we'll do like five, five to six dinners a week that are all unique. And then we just make more of them than we need, and those are lunches for the next day. And then for breakfast, you can eat the same basic breakfast that you do. You know, let's say if you're doing eggs, just do eggs different ways ever for every meal. Like, but keep it as simple as possible because the key is what is your outcome that you want? The outcome I want right now is I just want to eat from home because I'm eating out too often and I want to eat from home. And then by eating at home, then you can start incorporating some more tools of like how to reconnect, right? So I'm not doing other things while I eat, I'm sitting down, I'm um I'm focusing on the atmosphere I'm in. So if let's say uh lighting helps me, it helps brighten my day. I'm gonna make sure there's it's it's a high, you know, bright, bright room. Uh maybe lots of windows. I'm gonna choose that kind of room to eat in because I know it's gonna affect my mood. The other thing to think about is people, like what is the who are we choosing to eat with? You know, and I know a lot of times we don't have a choice, but but we can control that environment. You know, we can we can bring up, we can kind of have rules to not talk about stressful things when we're at the table. We can have rules to not be on phones, we can create the environment that's gonna serve us to to start to be more conscientious, more mindful while we eat. And then the fact that we're eating from home and we're eating all these real foods that we control the ingredients. Now we're on a place where we're gonna start to uh reshape our connection to food.

The Lingual Neural Response Explained

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Right. Perfect. I am definitely someone who loves to cook. So for me, eating at home is very easy, but that is one thing that a lot of my clients and probably listeners as well say, I don't have a lot of time. I don't know how to move around in the kitchen. So could you recommend maybe a couple ways to make the home cooking experience a little bit easier?

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, well, I'll answer it two ways. So I'll give an I'll give an example of something I just did. I was just in an event just last weekend or two weekends ago, and I did a cooking demo on orgametes, you know, orgamets meaning like liver, heart, kidney, spleen, pancreas, uh, tongue, you know, basically any part of the animal that's not muscle or bone. And I that is usually a topic people avoid, you know, they avoid these foods in the US, where which is sad because they're the most nutritious parts of the animal and can quickly replenish our fuels. But so in that demo, I was showing people I was like, okay, let's take a liver. For example, beef liver. I said, I want to, I'm going to show you three different ways to cook it. But here's what's really important is that you need to think about you, you don't want to assume which way your your is going to most resonate with your body. You want to try these different ways and then let it tell you, let your body tell you which one resonates the most. And so I gave them the liver raw. I gave them it properly cooked. You know, I'm talking in like little bits, right? I gave them properly cooked because that's one of the reasons why people don't like liver is because it's typically chalky and it's overcooked. So I cooked it properly, meaning that when you're cooking even meat or or let's say liver, you're you don't want it to be all the way cooked when you're in the pan. You want to actually pull it when it's still a little red because there's residual heat. So even when you pull something out of a pan, it keeps cooking. And so the mistake we make is we cook it till it's done in the pan, but that means it's now, when you go to put it on the plate, it's now overcooking. So if you just leave it till it's about, you know, 90%, 95% done, then it finishes cooking when it's actually on the plate, and then it's not overcooked. So I let them then try it cooked properly, and then I made a pate with it. So I showed them three different textures, three different things that the food is affected by either heat or preparation, right? And it was so fascinating because everyone then had a different opinion. Everyone was like, oh, I liked all three, or I liked it when it was cooked, or I liked it only when I was in pate. But they got to better learn also how the the heating of the of the of the liver affects how the texture and whatnot, how it affects the flavor. And I find that a lot of times one of the reasons that we are not excited about cooking, not that we have to be. I mean, I think that's a falsehood that just because we eat, you know, that we are supposed to love cooking, I don't think you have to. But I think the reality that you can only be healthy if you cook from home is realistic. And so you do have to find, you know, you have to retune your relationship to it if that's the case. And so I find, first of all, tapping into the textures you like, we talked about that earlier. Right. Two is then I would focus on formula or over recipe. So recipes are really like granular in terms of like, okay, you're supposed to use a half a teaspoon of that and a tablespoon of this, and uh, you know, um three ounces of this or that, right? So it's telling you exactly the measurements. And I think that sometimes we, unless you're kind of very left-brained, measurements can kind of throw you off and make you feel kind of more heady than you probably want to be. And so I find just think of it as a formula, like, okay, I need some, I need some protein. And what what you whatever your dietary preferences of those proteins, that's what I would do. I would have the plate be mostly that. And particularly as we age, we need more protein, not less, which is something that people are just learning now. Two is I would then choose the fat to work with that. Like, so typically, if I'm doing something more Asian, I would use coconut oil. If I'm doing something that's more French or American, I would use ghee. Ghee is clarified butter and it's been around for 5,000 years. It's just it's very, very healthy fat to cook with. It just basically is butter, but without the milk solids, it's just the fat of the butter. I also use lard, I use tallow, I use duck. Duck fat is amazing with road, like uh potatoes. So if you're ever roasting anything, use duck fat. It's just so, so good. But but so I pick the fat. And then from that point on, it's really about well, what what is your dietary preference? Like, so then I'm choosing a vegetable that goes with it, but really it's those three things it's protein, fat, vegetable. Now, notice I'm leaving out like those simple carbs, you know, whatever, but that's because it's it's really it's up to you. Like, and technically, vegetables are carbs. So you are, if you're choosing, you know, like I said earlier, root vegetables, you're gonna get plenty of of carbohydrate from those. You don't necessarily need to add to it. And and I would just add the amounts that are gonna fill you. So a good size amount of protein and then enough of the vegetables that are gonna fill you so that you don't need snacks. And I think that's a big problem with today's world is that we're we become snack snack people, and it's sold to. I mean, they're like you, we can all reason with each other about it, like, oh well, I I I just find I need the snacks. It's like, no, we've been marketed to for decades now. We have been taught to eat snacks, and it's it's it's absurd. I mean, I mean it's like it's unnecessary and it's and it and and it's now a huge issue because people are getting way more calories in their diet than they can burn.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Yeah. Well, and that also came from the fitness health industry, where they were looking at bodybuilders, and they needed to snack to build the muscle um to support, you know, to support their growth. And it has completely changed how we eat. And of course, yes, three square meals a day is really a great way to get back to, and those people who I feel like that three o'clock, four o'clock, you might try to hit a wall where you need to maybe eat a little bit of something, but then moving on. But we don't need all these snacks that we eat. And if we would just take some time to slow down and eat, you know, work on eating slower, and making sure that we're eating, like you said, the protein, getting all of that in, we'll feel satiated longer.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Absolutely. And I, you know, honestly, that that time frame you're talking about too, I what I find is interesting is that, and this goes for my kids and myself, but I I start to get hungry at around 4:30. And so do my kids. And like if we just ate our dinner at 4:30, you would probably find, and I have done this, I'll find that I'm then satiated the rest of the night.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Oh, really?

Grocery Store Choices And Meal Planning

SPEAKER_01 28:15

And how ideal too, if you go to bed like at 4 uh 8:30 or 9, uh, particularly with my kids, they're still young, so they go to bed between 8 and 8:30. Like, how wonderful that they've had, you know, if if we're able to pull that off, they've had like four hours to digest their food before going to bed. Like that's going to create a much better sleep. I mean, that's something we forget too, is that you know, digestion time takes a lot of energy. You know, there that first that really what you want for a sleep is you want repair time, not digestion time. And so this idea of the people, people that are eating right before they go to bed, that means you're you're spending most of your your your sleep time just digesting the food. And it's and it should be the opposite. You should be making sure that you you're digesting as much as you can during the day. And then sleep is purely all about repair and just letting your body, you know, rest and repair so that you can wake up refreshed.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Okay. When you were discussing the food, the options that um people can cook with, and you kept mentioning earlier about seasonings as well. Can you provide us some recommendations? As I also know about um as a seasoning. But can you mention like because I think that's where it also gets confusing for people, like you had said with the recipes, there I think we get too feeling like we've got to follow a recipe. And then that takes a lot of time because you're going back and forth to the recipe and then cooking. But if you really start looking at just kind of paying attention to what seasonings, like you mentioned, the protein, the fat, the vegetable, but then also adding in seasonings to help round out that meal.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Yeah. Well, and I think I think also besides seasonings, is you want to think about plating the way that the food looks color wise. Cause as we talked about earlier, like that is instinctively what we makes us hungry, is we start with use usually our eyes. There's the smell aspect as well, but visually you don't want it to look like mush, right? You don't want it to look like like someone just regurgitated it in that sense. And sometimes food does look like that, right? As we get bored with it, it's very pale because we overcooked it. So you want to look for vibrancy. Um, a lot of times, why a chef will add like a bright red, you know, bell pepper or like even uh just a spicy pepper, but just a little bit is because the red makes the food pop. Or sometimes you'll see like bright green parsley or some kind of herb added to the food that also just makes it pop. Um flavor-wise, you could add like lemon zest that will make the flavors pop, you know. So you can do these little things, little movements that will just make the food more attractive, like height. For example, when I plate a food, the height of the food can actually make it more attractive. If it's in a big bowl, sometimes it's not as attractive. Like you can really fine-tune these things. But the I think going to the seasonings, we do want flavor, but you never want the preparation of the food or the seasoning to overwhelm you. Just like you don't need to, you know, don't run before you crawl, that kind of thing, right? So if you're struggling to eat your food, you know, and cook from home and feel satiated and not only satiated, but also positive about it, you know, feeling emotionally kind of like uh good about what you're doing, then I would start simply and just go with that formula. And now, seasoning-wise, I I will kind of talk about Pluck a little bit because we've learned since launching Pluck. And I don't remember if I I knew this when we first talked, but it's fascinating. So, a couple of things is one thing that many of us struggle with is our palate. So in the US, we we really skew towards salty and sweet. And you'll see a lot of picky kids, for example, like that's really the issue. It's not that they're picky picky, it's that their palate has been conditioned to really only like saltier sweet foods. And so when they get any other flavor outside of that, they they you know they have a physical response, but it's not permanent. It's just they just need their palate just needs to be recalibrated. And one of the ways we can recalibrate it is by introducing three other uh flavors. So you have salty, sweet, bitter, and sour. Those are the four that we all grew up learning about in school. Well, there's a fifth called umami, and that's primarily what pluck is pluck, which is organ-based seasoning. So it's got freeze-dried powdered liver, heart, kidney, spleen, and pancreas from 100% grass for cows, and then we're mixing it with organic spices and herbs. Well, the organ meats have a natural umami to them. So what happens, and this is what's so exciting about it, is that when people don't change anything about their food, but they just add pluck to their food, the comments we get are like that night, my family had seconds. They they they were freaking out over how good it tasted. And I was like, Well, yeah, that's the umami. And umami, because it's a unique flavor, it brightens all the other flavors. So it literally makes food taste better, not just because it's a seasoning, but because it's umami. Now, the other cool thing is that to to our point here is that whether you're a good chef or not great chef, as long as you use this seasoning, people will think you're a great chef. And that's kind of cool too. So that's something we learned a lot from over the years now that we've been out there. But the other big one is around that kind of um that picky eating. So we've had a lot of clients or sorry, a lot of uh practitioners who are customers. So the practitioners will have a client, and that client might be dealing with a picky eater. And the the um practitioner will just have the client uh basically only change one thing, which is to add pluck to the food, to the picky eater's food. And they will report back that now their that child is starting to be more adventurous. And it's once again, it's just because you're introducing a new flavor to their palate and you're restructuring their palate, you're recalibrating it. And it, you know, it can be as quickly as two weeks. Like it's amazing. You can recalibrate someone's palate in two weeks by removing the foods that are overstimulating it. And I I want to just add, I do want to just add, like, what's fascinating when you recalibrate, going back to the really what we were talking about at the very beginning, is you start to taste food for what it really tastes like. So strawberries are sweet, but if you're getting all this processed sugar all the time, then they're not going to taste sweet. But once you recalibrate your palate and you pull out all the processed sugars, and then two weeks later you try a strawberry, you will taste how naturally sweet that strawberry is, and you'll realize, oh, I don't even need this, you know, fabricated or made dessert. I can just simply eat what's natural that's naturally found in nature, and then I'll I'll get my sweet, you know, sweetness intake that I need or want.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Yeah. Yeah. And I I was also going to well, I'll first say this is I also notice that when you the less processed food you eat, when you do put that processed food back in, it tastes more chemically, chemical. You can taste everything.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Like it's crazy. It it really is amazing. I think that's very important for people to understand is that we are we we're locked in to this one way of thinking. So there is a mindset about it that about what we should be eating and what we want to be eating, right? But so we invest in that. And so we think that, oh, I don't want to eat that food, or health food is gross. Or we have this story around it, but the reality is, is it's it's just fabricated. It's just it's just due to your experience or the or or this or this kind of loop you're stuck in. But the other piece is that what we've grown up, what we've grown accustomed to eating, is dictating the new things that we put in, right? So it's if like for example, I grew up eating skippy peanut butter. And if anyone knows Skippy, they know it's really more candy than it is peanut butter. But I didn't know that growing up, right? And then I would try this other brand called like Laurel Schreders or Shredders or something, and that had no sugar in it. And that was just peanuts, and the peanut oil would separate from it. And then I tasted that and I was like, oh, this is gross. But it was like that is actually more peanut butter than the Skippy, right? Right. And then the more I got the regular one in, the more I started to taste Skippy for what it really was, which was candy. And so I but I had to give time for that switch to happen. It's not like it just happens overnight. Your palate can shift quickly, but you have to still give it time to shift.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Right. Well, and I wonder also when you talk about like the seasoning, um, putting the pluck on the foods and how the children's palate taste changed. I wonder how much that also had to do with the microbiome and what that, because that's fascinating, like how it starts to communicate with your brain about what you want as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I I'm definitely not the I'm not a nutritionist, so that's not my expertise, probably you know, more yours, but but I wholeheartedly agree, you know, that idea that there's two brains happening, you know, there's the one in our head and then the one the one in our in our digestive tract. And it's like the more and more they're finding that that's probably the most important piece to the human puzzle, which is that the the the what's inside our gut, you know, our gut health, and and how much it does dictate the foods you want. Um, I mean, sometimes you can have just to share personal stories, like I many years ago, like when I first got tested through nutritionally, you know, and did a blood test and a stool test, I discovered I had parasites. Now, some people listening might go, like, oh, parasites, but honestly, no joke, probably most of you have it. Like you just don't know it. Most people have them. And so at the time, I was like overly meat hungry. I was so carnivorous, I and I would eat so much and I would never, I just was never satiated. And then I got tested and I got that eradicated, and suddenly I didn't eat as much. So there's things that can be happening in our body that could absolutely be dictating our cravings, our desires, our needs, and we just don't know it. And so I'm I'm a big proponent of getting tested. I I'm not a, I don't like, I don't like um kind of using self-diagnosis. I think you miss out on a lot of really good information. But that said, like I don't think that you have to rush out to get tested if you're not feeling that anything's off. I think that you can really do a lot with just that what we've been talking about this whole time, which is just mindful eating. Uh, something that I like to point out to people is that so placebo effect, right? It's something that is a fact. Placebo effect is a fact in within experiments that whenever they do testing, that placebo effect works, that there are people that didn't get the actual medication, whatever they were testing, and yet they still reap the rewards. So we know the power of the mind, we know the power of the body. And if placebo effect works there, then that means it can work anywhere. And so you really can support your health by being more mindful about what you're putting in it, and then also believing like the food that you're putting in, the choices you're making are positive ones. So even if you're having a hard day and you eat that ice cream, don't sit there and dread the whole time you do it. Take ownership of what you're doing and let it soothe you consciously. And I bet you'll find that you don't need as much because as you're eating it, you're gonna be so conscious about it that you're gonna recognize when your body's full instead of just pretending, I hate myself, I don't like what's going on, da da-da-da-da. You're tuning out the whole time, and then suddenly you're done with the whole thing, and then you feel worse afterwards. What we're trying to do is get you to eat slow enough and be mindful enough that you feel the effects of that food while you're eating it versus, you know, five minutes later.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

Yeah. Well, and I in a past episode, I had mentioned a study that was done with people and they ate the same thing. They ate this, I think it was like ice cream or something. And those who had the negative feeling that this was a bad thing had more of a sugar, like the blood sugar spike than those who were thinking of it as a reward. So that whole mindset, I mean, it truly can make a difference.

Easy Home Cooking With Simple Formulas

SPEAKER_01 41:41

It really, really can. And it's just a story. I mean, it's all made up anyway, right? Like all of this, this whole life we live, we've we've we've invented it. It and it's that's why we we're so far removed from our own instincts, because we've we've invented it to be what we think we want versus what we really want. We in many ways, we probably decimated the culture that actually was one with you know nature and the human body, which is the Native American culture. We we decimated that culture, you know, we we we destroyed them, and and and if anything, they were doing it right, you know, they were absolutely honoring and like like I love kind of pointing this out. Like we we we talk about planetary focus and like uh you know, like, oh, I want to do what's right for the planet, right? Well, in my judgment, one of the most planetary focused things you could do is eat whole animal. And here's why. Because currently we are slaughtering those animals. Okay, this is happening, it's not gonna not happen. It is happening, and we're only using about 50% of that animal, which is the muscle. With the other 50 or 49%, we're we're putting towards other industry, we're throwing out, we're we're not utilizing it. And yet, in in more ways than not, it's the most nutritious part of the animal. And so what's happening is we're only using 50% of that animal, then we're turning around and we're investing in a supplement industry, a trillion dollar supplement industry, when if we had just eaten the whole animal, we might not, we may not need all those other supplementary supplements in our lives. We might actually get the nutrition from the whole animal. And if you think about it, culturally, you know, ancestrally, no one that spent a time to kill an animal, which was an extremely hard thing to do back in the day, right? No one would waste any part of that animal when they killed it. Every part of that animal was used. Native Americans absolutely modeled that. And, you know, I believe that that is the the best thing you can do, not only for your body, but for the planet.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

You know, don't buy an electric car, just eat whole animal.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

Well, and like you said, if we if we had to do it, we would appreciate more of the animal for ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Oh, it's the Best way to honor the animals to use all of it. Like, if you want to, like I said, I agree, you kill an animal, like, yeah, you're taking a life, you know, and something's got to die for us to live. And that goes for no matter what diet you follow. You know, if you're eating uh plant-based and you think something's not dying, you are mistaken. Just talk to a farmer that does monocrops and they will tell you when they plow the fields, there are an enormous amount of animals that die during the plowing, you know, from doe who are hiding in the fields to rabbits, to squirrels, to mice, to insects. There's so many. It's it's a it's literally you talk to them and their faces go white, and they're like, oh yeah, it's a horror show. And I'm like, oh, so you're either choosing that or you're choosing one animal to die, you know? And then it and so what I like to focus on is not whether something's dying or not, but how are we honoring that which dies? How are we letting the animal that is being killed live? Like if it's in a regenerative farm and it's uh like Joel Saladin of Polyface Farms will say, his cows had one bad day. You know, it's animals had literally one bad day. They lived a full, beautiful life on a farm free range and whatnot, pastured. And then they had one bad day, which was that slaughter. But other than that, their life was very full, and you cannot say that for conventional animals, right? You just cannot. Their whole life is miserable, too, you know, in my judgment. So, yeah, honoring the honoring the animal is eating whole whole animal, and in a sense, you're also honoring yourself because it it carries back to what we're talking about, is that you cannot be healthy if you're eating out all the time. And and we want to even qualify that a little bit more. So when you're eating ultra-processed foods, it is a form of eating out. Okay, when you're not making the foods from scratch, that is eating out. And the grocery stores, once again, they are not there for our health, they're there to make a profit. And if you think they're there for our health, then we should have a talk because now you've been hoodwinked into thinking that the government actually cares about our health, and they do not. They they if they did, then we would have very different policies and very there would be more transparency around you know, genetically modified foods. They're just like, for example, why are many US companies selling, I don't know, certain ultra-processed foods like cereals or even fast food stuff? Like, why is why are the ingredients different in the US than they are in Europe? You know, why are they more dirty here in the US versus in Europe they're much cleaner? You know, they don't allow certain, you know, red dye 40, you know, like like why why are we on the short end of the stick? And it's because of our policies, it's because our government allows it.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could go, I could go on and on about that. That could get us started in a whole nother topic. But I want you to um share with our listeners about um maybe the the food because you didn't mention the four seasonings you have, right? You've got the regular pluck spicy zesty, zesty pepper, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:08

Is that uh zesty garlic. So we have what we what we now we used to call all purpose, but they're technically all all purpose. Like you can use any of them for anything. So now we changed our original uh the first one we came out with to original, and then um, and then what we and then we also have a blend called Spicy Mild. Um, and that's just to make sure people know it's not too spicy. Um, and that that one had uses cayenne as the uh as the spice. And then the third one is called Zessy Garlic. And that one I'm I'm really proud of that one because if anyone listening is um is autoimmune paleo like or protocol, follows AIP and cannot do you know, nightshades or seeds, zesi garlic is a is a great option because there's no nightshades or seeds in that one.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

Oh, perfect.

Umami Seasoning And Rebuilding Your Palate

SPEAKER_01 48:03

And it makes me kind of it tastes a little bit like a ranch dressing to a degree, but it I think of it more like a like an herby garden vegetable kind of flavor. Um so then that one is our green bag, and then our fourth one is the unique one, it's just pure, so it's just the organ meets, it's no different than buying encapsulated organs, really, except there's no capsules. And that piece, though, is really important to me. And it really ties to what we've been talking about. Is so this idea that we're out of touch with our food and our and what our own body sorry, we're out of touch with our our our food systems, first of all, like with the sourcing of our food, but we're even more so is we're out of touch with our own bodies, what our body needs around food, right? And so one of the ways to connect to that is to eat the food, as we already discussed. Well, why I don't want people taking encapsulated organs is purely because when I take, for example, a salt tablet, if I swallow that salt tablet, I have a delayed response. Maybe 20, 30 minutes later, why am I feeling bloated? Oh, I got too much of something. So when we swallow something, we're guessing about how much our body wants and needs, and in turn, how much it can actually utilize, right? Okay, but when we eat the food, and as we discussed already, when we eat it consciously, then our body will tell us, and and we can we know that, for example, with salt. If I put salt on your tongue, it might taste good the first time, but by the third time, it literally the taste changes. Like your body is overwhelmed with that saltiness, and it literally is rejecting the salt. So your body has that mechanism in it to stop you when it doesn't want more or need more, but you only get that when you eat it. Yeah, and you have to eat what it is, and so that's why I get told a lot people will do encapsulate organs, and they'll be like, Yeah, I did the I took the eight that it said the bottle told me to take, and I feel nauseous. And I'm like, Well, yeah, because you probably got too much. Because how is a bottle supposed to know what you need specifically? Andor it might be an indication of something else going on, maybe your elimination pathways aren't open, you know, what whatever it might be. So I think you know, the more we can get ourselves to just eat that food, eat it mindfully, you'll find that your body will tell you when to stop. The the flavor changes now. On the flip side of that, also is that might taste really good. Like, so when you do one of the Plux seasonings, what we get feedback on is a lot of kids are like, Oh, they just want to keep eating it. And the parents tell me, like, oh yeah, when my kid we ran out, my kid started crying. And I'm like, Well, that's an indication not only that it tastes good, but the body really wants it. So it goes both ways. Like, but the body has that education. I'm always telling people, like, look, I may be trying to get you to eat whole animal and eat organ meats, but ultimately I want you to follow the diet that works best for you. Like, so if you're not ready to eat you know, animal yet, that's fine. However, I have one request from everyone listening is that you let your body dictate the change, not your head. If you're whatever diet you're following, let your body be your soothsayer, let your body direct you on whether it works or not. Because we get in our heads about these things and we think, you know, we we get on our soapbox and we think, oh, carnivore is the way to go, or vegans the way to go, or whatever it is. We get we think that whatever we're doing that's worked for us is going to work for everyone. And it's just not true. Like your body knows what it needs, but if you're not listening, then you're missing out on all this amazing communication that's happening.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

Yeah. Can you, and you may have already just done that, but can you leave our listeners with one tip and maybe just dive deeper into? And I know you mentioned it at the beginning, but one thing they can do, like homework-wise, one thing they can do this week to kind of help listen to their body more.

Where To Find Pluck And Closing

SPEAKER_01 52:07

Yeah, I think I think definitely the taking a breath before you eat is key. Um I think though, that I mean, we've mentioned so many already, like the sitting down, not multitasking when you're eating. And I know that that's going to be challenging, but I think I think the best thing anyone can do is just pick one thing. Don't feel like you have to do all of it at once. Like, so if you're struggling with eating, you know, cooking your own food, but you really want to be healthy, then just pick one thing. Um, there's a story of this this kid, David, who I used to uh employ when I had this meal delivery service in LA. This was a long time ago. And he came to me and he had ADD, he had really bad skin, uh, he was drinking sodas, he was eating, uh, he was smoking. Uh, and he was, he had trouble holding, he was, I think, 19 or 20. He hadn't held a job down ever because he couldn't. And um I didn't push anything on him, I didn't force him to do anything differently, but he I started him out as a dishwasher in my meal delivery service business. He saw us preparing food a specific way, he smelled it, he heard it, you know. So he's doing all the things that we're talking about at the beginning of this podcast. And eventually he said, Hey, can you, James, can you tell me like he started asking questions. He's like, Can you tell me like how I could make changes to my diet or like like that dictated him then asking questions? And I said, I said, David, I see you drinking sodas every day. So I said, let's just change one thing. Let's just instead of the sodas, drink water. That's all I'm asking you to change. Just drink more water and less of, and and basically instead of reaching for sodas, you drink water. So skip ahead now. He's he's like probably, I think this is about he's in his 30s now. So, you know, 10, 10 so years. The guy now does not smoke, he's got no ADD, he works out religiously, like he he works out regularly. He's fit, healthy, has in a in a loving relationship, holds down many jobs now, like all these issues are gone. And it started with that one thing, just drinking more water. You know, if if if there was anything else that I think would help people be more mindful, is I would say after you eat, go for a walk. Every time you eat, just go for a walk. Because what we're trying to do is get you out of this atmosphere that you're in, where you're kind of like checking out and get you to do. And now when I say go for work, I'm not saying be on your phone. I'm saying just go for a walk, like and walk around outside 15 minutes, 20 minutes max. And just go for a walk, take a look around, be in your body as you walk, see how you feel. I think that that right there is a really good start because, yeah, like I said, getting pulling yourself out of that environment that you're checking out in is really key. And that's also why I was recommending we don't start in the grocery store because that's where we check out a lot. We check out in the grocery store. You know, you don't want to fall asleep at the cart. You know, that's what I always tell people. It's like, you want to make sure you're still reading labels. You don't want to go there when you're hungry, you want to have a list so that you're not making emotional purchases. There's so many little tools you can you can incorporate to keep you on track when you're at a grocery store. But the first one has got to be like around the choices you make. And that has to start with you regarding more so what you put in your mouth. And to do that, you have to honor, you have to be willing to honor yourself. Because if you start looking at food, is there will there's nothing that will go into my mouth that does not honor the person I believe I am or the beauty I feel I am, right? If you really like shift your mind, think about what different choices you'd make. You're not gonna put that Oreo in there because that doesn't honor you. You know, so there's there's lots of ways we can shift our mindset. And I think that it starts with, you know, you us all regarding ourselves a lot higher than we currently do.

SPEAKER_00 56:19

Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for taking out of the time out of your day for this conversation. I always have enjoyed speaking with you.

SPEAKER_01 56:29

Thank you. It's it's a pleasure. And uh I'm yeah, I'm glad you're just open. I I think this conversation of mindful eating, it's it's out there, but I think we need to be more, you know, having more conversations about this. You know, we it's it's uh I to in my mind it's a missing, it's a missing link to us reconnecting with our own body's needs. I'm I'm tired of looking everywhere outside of myself because and and if if you're like me, you're just getting confused and overwhelmed. Like I'm I'm far more interested in in really tapping into what my body needs and wants. And I guarantee that when we do, you're not going to be wanting all those desserts and all those fabricated foods because you'll start to taste them for what they really are, which is just ultra-processed artificial flavored, you know, junk.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

And where can everyone find you?

SPEAKER_01 57:20

You can find uh Pluck on Amazon or at our website, eatpluck.com. And then you can uh find us on socials at eatpluck as well. And I'm personally at Chef James Berry, if you want to follow me.

SPEAKER_00 57:35

Perfect. Thank you so much for this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

Thank you, Cordy.