Latest / NHA Today Podcast / What Regenerative Farming Taught Jason DeSalvo About Food, Health and Grains | NHA Today
Transcript
- Stephan Esser: Hi, it's Dr. Stefan Esser and today I'm excited to introduce to you Mr. Jason DeSalvo. Jason and his wife Deborah run a 43 acre regenerative certified organic farm in Western New Jersey. In 2020, they started their farm and in 2022 transformed their own health with a Whole Foods SOS program. So you can actually learn more about their amazing farm and what they do at www.coldbrookfarmnj.com. But we're gonna jump right in today. Thanks for joining today, Jason. I'm gonna ask you some fun getting to know you questions we're gonna start with. What's your favorite vegetable growing on the farm right now? Jason DeSalvo: Sure. God, asparagus. It's high asparagus season here in New Jersey and we've got a couple of ⁓ beautiful beds that we planted five years ago and they are in full form. So we're eating pounds of them every day. ⁓ Stephan Esser: Awesome. I was gonna say, my experience with fresh asparagus is when you get them out of the farm, out of the garden right there, they're nothing like what's in the store. Tell... ⁓ Jason DeSalvo: Nothing at all. And we've got two varieties. One is purple and these are really, they just grow really big and thick and they are so sweet. When people eat, we serve them raw. And when people eat them, they can't believe they're asparagus. Yeah, they're delicious. Stephan Esser: Yeah. I mean, it's such a huge difference, right? They're kind of like, they have this nice crunch to them and then they're juicy and sweet versus these stringy, rough, nothing, like, like, ew, right? You have to like overcook them just to even, you know, tolerate them. that's amazing. All right. And then another question about the farm. What is your least favorite responsibility on the farm? Least favorite. Jason DeSalvo: Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Just even, yeah, to make them even palatable. I was just doing it actually. I was just doing it right before we got on. I've been doing it since seven this morning. We unfortunately are in a heat wave right now in the Northeast, completely abnormal heat wave. It's gonna be 94 today and 96 tomorrow. And we in the last two years have planted several hundred, maybe probably four or 500 total trees, shrubs, all native and they need water, right? know, they're not, their root systems are not adept or not adapted enough yet. Stephan Esser: Wow. Jason DeSalvo: to really tolerate this kind of heat this early in the season. They've just leafed out. So I go around on our little electric buggy with a 50 gallon water tank on the back and water, water, water. that's, even though it's life-giving to them, it's something that I just wish I didn't have to do. If we had a normal climate, ⁓ there'd be plenty of rain in April and May and these things would be fine. Stephan Esser: Right, right, now that sounds like a lot of time as well, just kind of out there going from point to point. ⁓ Your favorite time of day on the farm is when and why? Jason DeSalvo: Yep. Morning. ⁓ Right as the farm is waking up, I'm an early riser as I guess most people on farms are. I was up today at 3.30. ⁓ When the sun starts to come up and especially at this time of year with the spring migrant birds, there's the dawn chorus. The air is sweet. It's still cool. ⁓ I'll go outside, I'll have my, know, bowl of berries, my muesli on the porch. We have a beautiful screened in porch and you just hear birdsong and smell the fresh air. I haven't really started the work day yet. I'm thinking about what we're going to do for the day to be productive, but it's a really kind of Zen time where it's just me time. Deb's a later riser. She usually gets up an hour or two after me. ⁓ So it's a really nice contemplative time where it's just me, nature, and usually a cat or two, because we have three ragdoll cats that like to come join. So it's a nice time. Stephan Esser: That sounds absolutely pastoral, absolutely beautiful. I can just visualize you gave some great ⁓ kind of words and there's some descriptors. So I think I'm going to be thinking of you now and I get up and visualize you out there looking out, watching things. So there's a lot of buzz about regenerative farming. In a nutshell, can you tell our listeners, what does that really mean? What is a regenerative farm? Jason DeSalvo: Yep, it's a lot of fun. And yep, yep. Sure. Well, like any hot buzzword, it risks being overused and abused. And I think it is being abused by certain sectors of the corporate, you know, big corporations are grabbing onto this because they realize they can charge a premium. But in its simplest terms, if you're doing it really, what it means is you are working to regenerate the soil and the ecosystem where you are. Simply put, it's farming in a way that's leaving the land in better condition each year as opposed to when you started working it. By way of example, when we first started working here, when we bought our farm, it had been farmed. This is last time I'll use the word conventionally because to me it is not at all conventional to douse your land with chemicals. But It was chemical agriculture. was GMO corn and soy and very extractive. There was less than 1 % organic material in the soil. The soil was hard as a rock. If I tried to dig into it with my hands, you'd break your fingers. There was no worms, no mycorrhizae fungi in there. It was really just dead. ⁓ We're now six years into managing it. We started managing it in 2020. And last year we had 11 % organic material in our soil. It's loaded with worms. ⁓ And the whole ecosystem has changed. We see pollinators, we see tons of insects, we see bird life. And each year it's gotten better. And we do that not only on our brain field. ⁓ Stephan Esser: Nice. Jason DeSalvo: But we also do it inside. So we're on 43 acres and the way the 43 acre shakes out is there is a 13 acre field in which we have a two acre homestead. And in that homestead, have house, barn, and then everything else. Actually, it's two and a half acre homestead. that the buildings take up roughly half an acre. Then there's two acres of permaculture where we grow 70 different fruit, vegetables, berries, nuts. ⁓ know, things like that. And then outside we have a 10 acre grain field. And the difference with regenerative agriculture is our first job is to take care of the ecosystem. And if we are doing that, in theory, we should be growing great food. In reality, we are growing great food. ⁓ Even in our second year of farming our grain, Dan Barber, who wrote the book, The Third Plate, which is a great read about kind of the importance of connecting the commercial kitchen to the farm and how that connection has been broken in many ways and how putting that together makes us a better society, makes for healthier food. ⁓ Dan and his team started buying our grain back in our second harvest. ⁓ our wonderful wholesaler, River Valley Community Grains, ⁓ they connected us with Blue Hillet Stone Barns and they buy food based on how it tastes. And you've got to be regenerative, you got to be organic, but if you check those two boxes, then they'll bring your product in and they taste it. And then it's got to taste great. And I think healthy regenerative food, grown in regenerative soil tastes great. ⁓ Stephan Esser: Nice. Jason DeSalvo: because there's so many micronutrients in it, because that soil has got so much life there that the plants are not starving. They're able to have a lot of nutrient uptake. ⁓ And that's why a fresh asparagus coming off a farm that's well-farmed tastes completely different. Stephan Esser: Right? Yeah. Right, now you weren't always in farming. What kind of attracted you to this area of, you know, what. Jason DeSalvo: Yeah, Deb and I, it's a little bit of mission creep. So Deb and I, I spent most of my life in healthcare, ⁓ not as a physician like you, but my dad was a physician and he actually was credited with starting the outpatient diagnostic imaging industry back in 1977. Stephan Esser: Nice. Jason DeSalvo: He got the idea to take, that's right when computed tomography, back then it was called computerized axial tomography. And so when CT scanning started, these scanners were hugely expensive and the reimbursement law at that time was punitive to a hospital that would put one in. So he said, why don't we do them as outpatients? ⁓ And he did that in Fairlawn, New Jersey, and then he got into MRI. ⁓ Stephan Esser: Right? Right. Jason DeSalvo: I ended up working for his company while I was in business school during the summers. And then down the road after that, ⁓ I joined that company. ⁓ I stayed on actually after he left it, but I was in healthcare management, managing Positron Emission Tomography Centers. So yeah, I was really interesting stuff. So what happened was, ⁓ Stephan Esser: Right, right. Cool. But what happened, right? You suddenly decided you wanted to become a farmer? Jason DeSalvo: I still have some great people that run that company, I was like, should I retire or should I not retire? ⁓ My team didn't want me to retire because they like working with me. so I said, I really want to do something different. ⁓ You know, we, we positioned the company so that they could make the money that I was making and I could spend some more time with Deb. I still work for the company, but not in the kind of full-time entrepreneur, you know, 60 hour a week capacity. ⁓ Deb and I decided we wanted to get someplace a little quieter. We lived in Montclair, New Jersey for almost 30 years and Montclair was kind of sleepy when we moved there. And now we jokingly refer to it as. the really, really West side of Manhattan, ⁓ because it's got a very New York sensibility, which is great if that's what you're in the mood for. But Deb and I are both naturalists. We like open spaces. We like quiet. ⁓ So we wanted to move. And we said we want to grow some of our own food. We were not whole food plant-based yet at all. We always had a garden. so we were looking for three to five acres and a place to grow a small vegetable garden with some good Southern exposure so that we could have solar panels. Somehow that morphed into a completely self-sustainable household that is completely powered by solar power and managing not only the 43 acre farm that we manage, but our neighbors behind us loved what we were doing so much. they asked us to convert 90 acres of their farm to regenerative agriculture. Then a second neighbor asked us to convert 80 acres there and another neighbor behind us eight acres there. So all of the sudden we went from knowing nothing about farming seven years ago to being responsible for almost 120 acres of grain growing for human consumption. Stephan Esser: So you quit a 60 hour job to take a 110 hour per week job is what I'm hearing. Jason DeSalvo: It was a fail of biblical proportions when it comes to working less. On the other side of the coin, like healthcare, where you're helping people, it's got that same thing, right? And so it gives you that energy. Stephan Esser: Alright. Right? Well, I it's such a beautiful, you know, now some of your produce I heard was ⁓ kind of featured in some five star Michelin restaurants. And when you think about quality produce, I want to ask you some questions here because we want our viewers to leave having some tips and tricks and good things that can, you know, kind of apply to their own personal lives. So give me five things to think about when they're selecting some produce at the store. What are some things that you would say you've got to look at this because not everybody has access to a gorgeous Jason DeSalvo: Sure. Stephan Esser: know, farm and ranch like you have there. So let's say they're going to their local supermarket. What are some of your tips for them real quick on selecting the best produce they can. Jason DeSalvo: Right. OK, I'm going to give one caveat, and then I'm going to jump to this specific question that you asked. The first thing I would do is to not necessarily assume that you can't find locally sourced organic vegetables. So the first thing I would do is literally with this great tool that we have now, Google, Google organic regenerative produce near me, right? And see if anything comes up. We've had friends. Stephan Esser: Let's do it. Jason DeSalvo: that found farms by doing that, that were within a 20-minute drive of them that they didn't even know existed, right? Because we're so busy working on our farms, I don't have a great marketing program. So part of the problem is that small farms don't always get heard about. So, but let's assume that you really are in a food desert and you can't, you don't have access to good regeneratively grown small farm produce. ⁓ The first thing to do is Stephan Esser: Nice. Right. Jason DeSalvo: go to all your grocery stores and really produce when it's great tends to look good. ⁓ You know, when lettuce is wilted and kind of tired looking, that means it's been on a truck way too long. Your produce should look vibrant. It should look fresh. I would ask to talk to the grocery department manager or the produce department manager. Very often they will be enthusiastic to speak to you. Ask them what's come in that's fresh recently. They'll know what they're having trouble sourcing. They'll know what's just come in. ⁓ Look at the aisles. If you're in a store where stuff is merchandised beautifully and it looks fresh, that's a place you want to start. So if you have first thing is check in multiple locations and find the store near you that it looks like cares about their produce the most. ⁓ we try to eat a hundred percent organic. That's not always possible. We could do a whole show on, on that and why it's so important. and, but, you know, the more organic that you can get in a grocery store, the better you're generally going to get healthier produce that way. you know, when choosing between different kinds of produce, Stephan Esser: Right? Right? Jason DeSalvo: Obviously with our diet, we always want a lot of greens, right? So the first thing I'm doing is I'm looking for my kale. looking for my ⁓ collards. I'm looking for my broccoli. I'm looking, you know, for, for, for things that are going to be healthy. ⁓ don't assume that the first thing you pick up is the one you should buy very often in grocery stores. When they merchandise them, they will take out the older stuff and put the fresh stuff at the back. and then put the older stuff back in front. So make sure you look through the shelf when you're picking your produce and pick the freshest looking stuff. Pick the stuff that doesn't look wilted. I personally like to buy food with a lot of color. If I'm looking, let's say I'm buying chard. If there's a package of chard that looks really vibrant. and it's got great intense red color versus one that is kind of a little wilty and the color is a little more washed out. I'm going to go for that one that looks healthier. ⁓ Is this something that's scientific? No. Do I know that this is making better produce? No. But I know that it generally tastes better and makes me feel good. ⁓ Stephan Esser: Yeah, well, we wanted your take, know, and what I'm hearing from you is kind of local, organic, love the regenerative out there if we can get it, you know, discuss with the manager of the produce section, look for that fresh, colorful stuff that looks the way it should, not like it's all, like you said, beat up, wilted or artificially preserved. You know, now you guys made a pretty big transition in 2022 or 2020, no, 2022. Yeah, two kind of, so tell us kind of... Jason DeSalvo: Yep. Yes, 22. Stephan Esser: What were the top three reasons why you decided to transition to a whole food plant based program? Jason DeSalvo: It was initially entirely health-based. ⁓ know, when my cholesterol, I've been a competitive athlete for over 30 years ⁓ and I was a cyclist. I'm a marathon runner. And no matter what I did, I ate the Mediterranean diet and I was the healthiest eater that I knew. My friends made fun of me. Okay. I was the guy that we'd go out for pizza. I pulled the cheese off the pizza. ⁓ If I ate red meat, it was maybe once a month, maybe a three ounce portion. I ate all the healthy stuff. I ate plenty of salmon. I ate my vegetables. I ate legumes. ⁓ What I did do was eat a tremendous amount of olive oil. My family's Italian and olive oil, I'd wake up in the morning and my idea of a healthy breakfast was a nice couple of pieces of whole grain toast. doused with olive oil and honey. And that was like, that's healthy, right? So my cholesterol kept going up. And so my cholesterol was about, it was either 255 or 265, I can't remember. And that was not good. It wasn't that high for long. I had my physical and it was kind of shocking to me. Usually it always was between 180 and 205. And all of a sudden I was like, wow. And so my Stephan Esser: Right? Right. Right. Jason DeSalvo: primary care physician said, well, you we're going to have to put you on a statin. And I said, I really don't want to go on a statin. I want to try to do something with lifestyle. And she laughed at me and she goes, you're already the healthiest patient from an eating standpoint. I know, you know, because most primary care docs say the Mediterranean diet is the gold standard. Stephan Esser: Right. That's right. Jason DeSalvo: I decided that I wanted to read about it. I knew that Dr. Ron Weiss, I knew he was up the road from us and that was fortuitous. It was just dumb luck that his farm is about 10 miles the way the crow flies from our farm. And he's a lifestyle medicine doctor that also happens to be plant-based. The way I knew this is we shopped at his farm for vegetables that we didn't grow. And the people that were there were mostly whole food plant-based and they would have these conversations that just sounded weird to me and Deb, like, what are you cooking tonight? Well, make sure you don't use oil. And then I just scratched my head, like, what is this? So long story short, I started purely for health. And I started with Dr. Weiss and within a month, my cholesterol plummeted, I think three months out, it was down to 150. You know, all of my blood markers started looking better. So it was health. Stephan Esser: Nice. Right. Jason DeSalvo: But then I started feeling, and we did it cold turkey. We literally, I went from being a Mediterranean ⁓ diet guy to whole food, plant-based, SOS free in the strictest sense in one week. It was just like, if we're going to do this, we're going to do it. Deb woke up one morning and all of the garbage was out of the pantry. And she's like, what did you do? Stephan Esser: All Jason DeSalvo: I said, I got rid of this stuff that we're not supposed to eat. And she's like, I'm not fully committed to this yet. What am I going to eat? I'm like, sorry. ⁓ luckily she's really cool. And she jumped on board with me. ⁓ so that was the primary reason that said I had, I had never really felt comfortable eating animals. Honestly, I was vegetarian for a couple of years in college. It always seemed wrong to me. Stephan Esser: Right? Jason DeSalvo: that I needed to kill something else in order to eat when I had options. But as an athlete, I had been programmed by all my coaches that you need your protein, you need your protein. So, you know, I was on the bandwagon of, know, the perfect pre-race meal is sushi, right? Lots of protein, lots of carbohydrates. It's great. Well, you know, anyway, so very rapidly as I started eating this way, not hurting other creatures became very important to me, but it wasn't initially. And then I learned through the NHA, through presentations there, through presentations up at Ethos Farm, Dr. Weiss's place, I learned just how abominable animal agriculture is for the environment. Here I am building a house that's completely self-contained environmentally from the standpoint of solar power. Stephan Esser: Yeah. Jason DeSalvo: You know, we have our own well, we drive electric cars, and I find out that all of that is dwarfed by just changing the way we ate in terms of our impact on the planet, right? ⁓ So those are the big three. That's why. Stephan Esser: Powerful. So I mean, it sounds, yeah, you hit all three of them, right? I mean, right. That's beautiful. Very personally kind of experienced by you and those, you know, in the last couple of years. So very cool. You know, when you think about, you know, that transition for you, what was the hardest part? Or was there a hardest part? Was it more just a rational, like, yeah, tell us. Jason DeSalvo: ⁓ my God. No, there was the, the, the part that many people seem to have problems with for whatever reason we didn't. I really liked the food. My palate changed very quickly. I stopped drinking coffee, stopped drinking wine, which were two other things I liked because those just tasted so strong after my palate got used to a plant-based diet with no oil, salt and sugar, ⁓ that those were like, They were almost like, ⁓ we had 6,500 bottle wine cellar that I had to figure out what to do with it when I stopped drinking. So ⁓ the hardest part by far was social because we were serious foodies. would travel to like, we would travel. to Piedmont, Italy during truffle season to go and eat fresh truffles. We would go to farm country, went like New Jersey. We'd be down in South Jersey when the asparagus first bloomed to eat fresh asparagus, right? ⁓ Food really mattered to us, but the food we were eating that we thought was really good, and it was really good from a gourmet standpoint, was not healthy, and we didn't know that. So our circle of friends were all like that. Stephan Esser: Right? Yeah. Jason DeSalvo: And when we first told them that we had changed the way we ate, and especially that, you know, because a lot of them were friends through wine. So now we're not drinking wine. We're not going to gourmet restaurants. And when we do go out to eat with them, we're those people that are like, could we get this without that? And this, it was hard. We lost some friends through that. And that was a very difficult transition, even for our family initially. Stephan Esser: Do you feel like over time you've developed a new circle of friends, a new network of people that share your belief systems? Jason DeSalvo: 100%, two things happened. ⁓ The people that were truly closest to us, they got used to it. Like our kids, our family, they're totally good with it now. Like we just had Mother's Day and they found a great vegan restaurant in New York City to take my wife to with me and, you know, ask them to adjust the menu a bit so that, you know, all right, maybe it's a little bit of a cheat for us, but we can enjoy the thing together. ⁓ ⁓ we found a whole bunch of new friends. The NHA, right? The National Health... ⁓ of the first things that Dr. Weiss told us to do was join NHA when we first became his patient. And we did right away. And then Ethos, which is Dr. Weiss's practice, they have an amazing community too of a couple of hundred people that are his patients. So between those two, ⁓ made a lot of new friends. ⁓ and then most of, with a couple of exceptions, most of our old friends kind of came back to us when they realized this wasn't a fad. We hadn't joined a cult. We're doing it for good reasons. And they became respectful of it. They don't love eating with us anymore. You know, they don't want to go out to a restaurant with us as much, but they'll come over to the farm and they'll hang out. And I think. we're kind of more authentically engaging because we're engaging about life. We're talking about things that matter. We're not just going to a restaurant and deciding what we're going to eat. ⁓ Stephan Esser: Right. Well, you know, I love what you said a couple of things there. One is you expanded your network by using resources that were at your fingertips. And that's one of the great things about the NHA and certainly the annual annual conference coming up in June, which, you know, meeting people from around the country who have similar belief systems and passions for health. You know, I mean, I think it's hard for many people making that social transition. But the reality is, as people begin to respect and recognize, you know, what you stand for and why. Jason DeSalvo: Yep. Yes. Stephan Esser: think some of those, you said, I mean, how can you not respect the fact that three major things you just said there, you care about your health, you care about planetary health, and you recognize there's, you know, why kill an animal if you don't have to, right? mean, so, I mean, those are, those are some just straightforward, rational, compassionate, you know, ⁓ you know, it's kind of like, hello. ⁓ So. Jason DeSalvo: Right. Yep. Yeah. And it's kind of, a certain extent, people that can't respect those three things, right? If people say, I want you to be unhealthy so you can eat with me, or, you know, I don't want you to care about the environment and the planet, or, you know, it's okay to kill something that doesn't need to die. I kind of have a lot of trouble now being around that, which has changed, you know, for me. So, yeah. Stephan Esser: Yeah, somewhat of transition for sure for you as well. know, a lot of people have negative perspectives on grains and, you know, especially in our contemporary culture, although as we both know, the science doesn't necessarily support that. When you think about the grains that you grow, tell us why you feel like, and tell us what type of grains you grow and why you feel like those grains are different than what somebody might get off the shelf. Jason DeSalvo: Sure. Well, one cool thing is Deb and I, the title of Deb and my talk at the upcoming conference is Whole Grains Myth versus Reality. So we're going to do a whole hour deep dive on this for the folks coming or watching the conference. And our grains, first of all, it starts with, remember, starts with healthy soil, right? So if you're growing grain in healthy soil, you're pumping more nutrient into that grain plant. We grow ⁓ older varieties. Right now on my field, right outside my window, we've got something called Rouge de Bordeaux, which is a, it's an heirloom variety from France from the 1800s before big agriculture started trying to boost yields and make the outside shell of the grain, if you will, the brand part. so hard that it wouldn't be damaged with mechanical harvesting that it also creates indigestion in some people. So modern wheats very often are difficult for modern humans to digest. Whereas the older wheats, we've grown einkorn before, which is the oldest wheat cultivated by man. ⁓ We can't really grow camout here, which is Corazan, but that's a great, great ancient grain. These ancient grains are a lot easier, our specific on our, on our stomachs, our specific grains right now, this year, we're growing, ⁓ three different kinds of heirloom wheat. We're not growing an ancient wheat this year. We will grow one next year. Next year we'll grow einkorn again. We're growing rye and we're growing oats. And one of the big things that's important about oats to get across to your listeners or our listeners, ⁓ Oats come in two forms. The ancient varieties are hullless oats and hullless oats don't require de-hulling. De-hulling requires either a steaming or a boiling process to get that hard outer shell off. So when you buy oats in the store, ⁓ universally, unless you're getting them from a small farm or an organic farm, you're getting hulled oats that have been de-hulled. because they yield much higher and they're much easier to grow commercially. The problem with them is by the time you get them, whether you get them as groats, whether you get them as rolled or whether you get them as steel cut, they've been processed already, right? And we're not supposed to eat processed food. ⁓ So we grow hulles oats. grow this year, we're growing a variety called streaker oats. We've also grown a variety called gale oats. A lot of NHA members buy our oats. and they are blown away by the taste difference. They taste nothing like what you get in the store. They are so much more earthy and vibrant, creamy. You know, I know people that used to use plant-based milks to make their oatmeal because they wanted their oatmeal creamy. I said just buy fresh rolled or, you know, groats either way that are well-grown and you'll have the creamiest bowl of oatmeal you've ever had. So... Stephan Esser: Neat. Right. That's awesome. Hey, know, growing plants is such a delight, right? To kind of see that little tiny seedling come up. I feel like there's such a kind of analogy to our own growth and development. You know what I We see the seasons and the growth. you know, a lot of people, you know, I want you to give a couple tips. I want you to give like three or four tips, if you would, to let's say somebody who, let's make it really hard. They live in an apartment. All they have is like a little deck. I'm to make it really hard on you. What, you know, but they want to grow something. What would you encourage them to do? Jason DeSalvo: Yeah. Yep. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Alright, what climate are they in? Give me one more. are they... Alright, Midwest. So they've got a seasonal climate, ⁓ which really means you're gonna... The first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna grow sprouts, right? Because sprouts you can do indoors the time from the time you plant them, you do them in jars, you can buy sprout kits all over the internet. Super, super healthy. Stephan Esser: One more, okay, they're Midwest. How's that? Jason DeSalvo: And it's like you said, it is so fun when you plant these things and like several days later, you see the little green sprouts coming up and then, you know, three days after that, you're eating them. It's awesome. And you can grow enough sprouts that you can, I you can eat a lot of sprouts and sprouts are super healthy. So there's no excuse not to grow sprouts. It's the easiest thing to do. ⁓ So they should be growing sprouts and they can grow all different kinds and you can have three or four different kinds going and that's cool. Stephan Esser: Yes. Jason DeSalvo: Then on your balcony, when it gets warmer, you can do things like some tomatoes. You can do a small lettuce bed if you want, depending on how big your balcony is. ⁓ Things that are super easy to grow. You can grow basil. You know what? If you're really, let's say you're pressed and you have a killer job and you don't have a lot of time, do sprouts inside and grow three or four fresh herbs on your outdoor balcony or even near a window sill where you get enough sunlight. you know, maybe grow a little basil, grow some oregano, grow some thyme. They're all really hearty. And then you can be adding flavor to your food with that since we don't eat salt, oil or sugar. And the cool thing is they're easy to grow and you'll get hooked on growing your own food. And then you'll start thinking about, right, maybe next year I'll do a tomato trellis outside, or maybe I'll grow cucumbers outside. So start easy, start with herbs and sprouts and dip your toe in the water. Don't make it too hard. And if you kill them, try again. Have fun with it, and then go from there. That's what I would do. Stephan Esser: love it. I love it. I think those are great advice to the people out there, right? So everybody on this podcast, next time we see you or chat with you, we are expected to see some of those sprouts, right? You drop some of your pictures below of the beautiful sprouts you've grown. Jason, I really enjoyed spending time with you today. Everybody listening, make sure you're signing up for either in-person or virtual for our conference coming up in June this year. You're gonna hear Jason and his wife Deborah kind of talking about this whole myth versus the reality of grains for our health. Jason DeSalvo: Exactly. Exactly. Yep. Stephan Esser: anything you want to leave our listeners with. Jason DeSalvo: Yeah, I would say grains have gotten the whole protein insanity that we've gone through in the last couple of decades, starting with things like the Atkins diet, you know, whatever. It's given grains a bad rap. They get grouped into carbs are bad, okay? Yes, carbs that are simple sugars that have been processed to heck, they are bad, but... Complex carbohydrates coming from regeneratively organic-growing grain are some of the healthiest things you can eat. They've got so many of the amino acids that you need. They've got protein. They've got fiber. Our grain is between 13 and 14 % protein. So when people are complaining about not getting protein, you can eat grains that have 13 to 14 % protein in them. Don't shy away from learning about grains. Don't fall into that trap. It's exactly the same trap as the where do you get your protein? They're one and the same. We'll teach more about it at the conference and I can't wait to hear you speak. ⁓ And there's gonna be a lot of good stuff to learn there. So thank you for your time. Yep. Stephan Esser: I always love getting there, of course. Thanks for joining us and thanks everybody for joining in today. We look forward to seeing you on the next podcast. Jason DeSalvo: Thanks, Dr. Esser.