Create the Perfect Client Program with Bob Guiel | Personal Trainer Tips with Enterprise Fitness

Times, time-under-tension, time in between, rest ranges, intensity workouts, what type of workout, it allows you to put all of the parameters together (based on your level of knowledge and understanding of them) and apply them specifically to each unique client.

One must note that everybody is genetically and biochemically different. Our muscle fibers are different, our recovery time is different, everything is different. What this means is that you can test two different clients, ask them the exact same questions and find that they need two completely different training programs in order to get the same result.

It needs to be acknowledged that with the correct use of this technique, you may find that sometimes, the derived program or training protocol will not agree with what the textbook (or existing literature) says. But remember, everybody is genetically and biochemically different and hence, each unique client will need a different training program that is specific to the needs of his or her body. 

Using muscle testing to design a training protocol was considered somewhat controversial in the late 2000s. This was because the programs would (at times) go against what trainers, and industry leaders such as Charles Poliquin, had told their clients to do previously. I must admit, at the time it caused a bit of friction in the industry, maybe even a little hot water, but the feedback I received was always phenomenal. Shocked trainers and their happy clients reporting back to me “I can’t believe the results we are getting”. Most of the time it blew people’s minds.

Gluten: What You Need to Know

Gluten is one of my most favourite topics to discuss, or debate, whichever way you see it. Throughout my career I have spent countless hours researching the topic. Seeking out, interviewing and learning from leading authorities in health and nutrition, picking their brain about gluten.

You too should get yourself up to speed on all things gluten. You can listen to the podcast I did with Dr. Thomas O’Bryan. Or, read the article I wrote for Men’s Muscle & Health Magazine Australia, discussing the hidden dangers of gluten.

In this post, co-written by leader in the field Bob Guiel, you will get the facts about gluten and learn what you need to know.

Gluten: What You Need to Know

You have probably heard the latest story in the media, “Gluten free is nothing more than a fad”. Many mainstream health ‘experts’ and/or media personalities contend that the only reason why you would want to avoid gluten is to lose weight, and often they argue that a gluten free diet is not sustainable.

In needs to be noted that in some instances, the media outlets that broadcast these messages do in fact have a vested interest in Monsanto, or other highly-profitably multinationals. However, ultimately, these messages are akin to propaganda and are based on a system of beliefs that is strongly influenced by (food) politics. Clients of both Bob Guiel and Enterprise Fitness are told to avoid gluten not for weight loss, but rather for health reasons.

A gluten free diet and gluten free lifestyle can help with a whole host of health issues. Speaking anecdotally, in the past clients of both Bob and Enterprise Fitness have found relief from varying conditions to include joint inflammation, joint pain, headaches, migraines, skin conditions, brain fog, bloating and digestive issues.

In practice, clients do not receive supplement recommendations until they are 100% gluten-free. As often, omitting gluten is all that is needed with many clients returning in six-weeks saying “I can’t believe how good I feel”. Their joint pain is gone. Their headaches are gone. They no longer have acid reflux. The list goes on…

What is Gluten?

So, you might be wondering, what is gluten exactly? Gluten is a very small, tightly bound molecule, similar in fact to the size of a virus. Although it is found in the foods we eat, there is no human being on Earth who has the ability to digest and break down gluten. Our body simply does not absorb it, it is not used for energy or cell repair. Instead, it must be broken down by the immune system.

When you ingest, or come into contact with gluten, cytokines and lymphocytes are activated. These are part of our immune system. You can think of these as your bodies ‘army’ or defense system. Over time, the autoimmune response triggered by gluten can lead to more harm than good. Further health complications can result, including conditions such as coeliac and/or autoimmune disease.

In the New England Journal of Medicine it’s been shown that gluten is linked to over 300 diseases. A simple scientific review reveals that a gluten free approach is far from a fad. However there are always two sides to any argument. Some argue that “gluten is a protein” and that “we need protein”. However, there are many types of proteins. For example, a virus is a protein. But we don’t want to have a virus in our body. The same applies to gluten.

More on Coeliac Disease

In developed countries, the medical diagnosis of coeliac disease has seen a steady increase in recent years. You might ask, is coeliac disease genetic? The answer to this question is (again) a hot and often contested topic.

Although there exists evidence of a genetic predisposition, this has been found in less than 1% of the population. Further, in order for a patient to be medically diagnosed with coeliac disease, there needs to be a considerable amount of damage to the gut lining. To be exact, there must be a 95% loss in the weight of the intestinal lining. Consequently, if you are found to have only an 85% loss, you cannot be diagnosed. Likewise, if you have a 50% loss, you cannot be diagnosed, despite showing clear symptoms of the disease. What this means is that the estimated number of sufferers of coeliac disease within the Australian and global population may in fact be far lower than the actual amount of sufferers.

BEFORE & AFTER SHOT

Gluten & Food Politics

It is believed that up to 70% of the Australian population now has some sort of problem with gluten as today, coeliac disease it is one of the most heavily diagnosed medical conditions. Despite this, a gluten-free diet and lifestyle has been met with considerable backlash from both the mainstream media and as well, multinational companies.

Many of the companies (and media outlets) boycotting the gluten-free message are familiar to us; they make up our ‘social fabric’. As modern Australians we have grown up with the products that they produce, they are in our house and on our kitchen table. And with thanks to advertising and the media, we have come to trust these companies and the information that they tell us. It’s not often that we are prompted to question them, their ethics and motivations.

Something that often we don’t realize is that the foods we buy at the supermarket are very much manufactured to make us want more of them. Food scientists who work long and hard to make food products addictive create them. They manipulate the fat, salt and sugar content of these foods in accordance with the palate of a target market. For example, foods manufactured for children have a different amount of sugar, fat and salt to foods that are manufactured for adults. You must understand that food manufacturing is calculated and apart of a bigger strategy to drive profit for a company. In most cases, food products are not created to improve our health.

To Sum it up…

To conclude, gluten is a toxin to the human body. When we consume gluten it activates a response from our immune (or defense) system. This can lead to further, and at times irreversible health complications and medical conditions (such as coeliac disease).

However, if you are to take one thing from this post about gluten, it perhaps is not about gluten at all. Rather, it’s that food is political. And that the food we buy at the supermarket is manufactured. Often times the food recommended to us is done so not because it is good for our health, but because it drives profit.

The food we eat is hugely political. Be curious, choose to know and eat for your health.

Written by Bob Guiel & Mark Ottobre

What did you think of this post? Leave a comment to tell us. If you liked it, please share it on Facebook.

If you would like further information about the upcoming courses with Bob Guiel at Enterprise Fitness, visit the events page.

Download your free copy of Mark’s latest eBook ‘Eat You Way to Abs’ at the main page of the website.

The Truth About Supplements with Mark Ottobre

Mark Ottobre: Hello and welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information but in a good way. Today’s episode we are going to be talking about what a supplement is? Because there are supplements like protein powders, pre-workouts and then there are supplements like fish oil, magnesium, and things that are actually going to benefit your health. So the first thing I need talk about when talking about supplements is the soil. Now my good friend, you might be saying, “What does soil have to do with my post-workout shake?” Well, not so much with your post-workout shake but with your general overall health plan. It has a lot to do with it.

So let me show you on the board. You essentially have two farms. Farm A and Farm B, and this farm is basically a Westernized farm, a modern farm. This is a farm that essentially has had everything essentially destroyed on it, so to plant a modern crop. So I’m going to kind of get you quite up to speed on a couple of terms. What usually happens with a piece of farm is you have what’s called a Poly Parental Culture and that’s poly meaning many, parental culture meaning many types of different essentially vegetation that is growing on the environment. So to plant a mono crop and a mono crop – I’ll write this on the board – a mono crop is something like soy, it’s something like corn, it’s something like wheat, okay?

We need to destroy the poly parental culture, so we eradicate and we wipe out everything that’s on the soil. Now to get this mono crop to grow we use a fertilizer called NPK. Now what’s NPK? NPK is nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The three main minerals that essentially can fertilize soil to bring life to essentially crops, and NPK is not just for the mono crops. I mean we also say – oh I should say it’s not just the soy, corn, and wheat. NPK is widely used in all farming all over the world. It’s the most widely used fertilizers. So essentially we are putting three minerals back into the soil, add a 57. Now that’s quite interesting because then we wonder where’s the magnesium, where’s the zinc? Why are people so deficient in magnesium today?

I mean, it’s quite evident that it does come back to the way we are growing our food and essentially the way we are engineering our food today because I mean if you are eating things out of a packet, often these foods are actually going to strip vital minerals and vitamins. Not only just not adding back vitamins and minerals but stripping it out of your body as well. For example, something like sodium bentonite. Horrible to have in your diet. So if you are eating low fat products, not so good. But I diverse and get back to the point of this presentation and that is you have this farm, you are putting in three minerals, add a 57 and people are wondering why they have a problem with magnesium.

Well, it’s because the minerals aren’t in the soil. So you have a farm like this which you know like an organic farm. More of I suppose a holistic way of looking at it. Where essentially the animal that is on the farm defecates. Now you might be thinking, what does defecation got to do with anything? Well, that’s quite rich in nitrogen. So essentially animals eating the land, defecates that’s very rich food, it’s a nutrient to the land. Gives life back to the land and obviously we harvest the animal and eat the animal and the cycle continues, okay? So it’s more of a cyclic way of farming. If you want more information on this style of farming, I suggest you look up a fellow by the name of Joel Salatin. He was also on Food Inc. He is a very smart and switched on good looking man. I’d highly recommend his work and he’s written a number of books. One of them is “Everything I Want To Do Is illegal.” Very good book. But I recommend for you guys to check that one out.

But coming back to my point, why to use supplements? Most of us living in the city, and obviously I live in the city, so we are not going to escape industrial farming, so we can buy organic, but the reason why we buy organic is so we don’t get the pesticides. The reason why we buy organic is not because they’ve necessarily used more, they farm like this. They simply haven’t used the pesticides. And this is where a lot of, I suppose, food lobbyists might come out and say “Organic food isn’t more nutritious than nonorganic food.” Well, I don’t care about necessarily nutrition content. I mean I do, but at the same time the reason why you buy organic is obviously because you don’t want the pesticides. And the pesticides have xenoestrogen and they caused a lot of the effects in the body, etcetera, etcetera.

Essentially the reason why you buy organic so you don’t get the pesticides. It has nothing to do with this soil, maybe sometimes it will, the soil will be better kept, but often that’s unknown unless you are buying your food directly from a farmer and you know exactly their practices. Most of us probably won’t escape the NPK trap of fertilizer so this is where we look at supplements. And supplements, people will say, “Do I really have to use them?” And I say to people all the time, you don’t have to use anything that you are not comfortable with. Certainly, a general supplement that I use almost every day of my life really is magnesium and a multivitamin product of some sort. So with that said, everything else really for me is kind of up for debate except for really those two. It’s very rare that you see someone with their magnesium is too high. I’ve never seen it personally. I don’t know any of my friends or practitioners who have seen it either.

So I hope that video helps and kind of breaks down. When I talk about supplements again I’m not talking about pre-workouts stimulates, protein powders even. I’m really talking about it from a functional perspective of vitamins, mineral, nutrients, and even herbs. So I hope you found value from this video. Obviously, a lot of you guys have subscribed to our channel on YouTube. Keep watching and see you on the next video.

Food Intolerance & Your Client | A Conversation with Bob Guiel

Mark Ottobre: Hello and welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Education Series. Today we’ve got with us Bob Guiel. We are talking about muscle testing. So, Bob, one of the things you can do with muscle testing is you can actually very effectively, basically, look at food intolerances. Is that correct?

Bob Guiel: Yes.

Mark Ottobre: Alright.

Bob Guiel: Actually when you look at food intolerance using NRT, believe it or not, I know some people argue this out there, it’s more accurate than blood work.

Mark Ottobre: Yes.

Bob Guiel: Because when you look at blood work, blood work is only based on the parameters of which we designed it for. When you’re muscle testing, usually like NRT, there are no limits on the parameters, okay? So you can take food to add them in, subtract them out and you can see how they affect the system in, are they good, bad or difference in the human body.

Mark Ottobre: If I can just add one thing on that as well. We actually had an example again myself. Last time you were here you tested me on coffee and brought tears to my eyes. Bob said, “No more coffee for you,” but I was fortunate enough to find a different type of coffee, a cold pressed coffee. Bob did test me on it this time around and my body does fine with that. So what you find with food intolerance screenings as well is that they’ve specified specific brands, specific foods, so let’s say, for example, you might have an allergic response or an intolerance to a specific brand of coffee, but you got to another brand, let’s say it’s an organic brand, and the intolerance isn’t there. So you needlessly limit the food selection when actually you can, it’s just that you aren’t testing multiple brands.

Bob Guiel: Right, and a good example of that is I had a client brought in, she loves apples.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Bob Guiel: But she tested bad for the apples that she brought in. So she came in one day, literally brought in 36 different apples and asked me to test each apple. Six out 36 apples she could eat. The rest she couldn’t. Two months later she came in and said you know you are absolutely right, I went back and tried a couple of the apples you said I couldn’t eat, blew me out of the water. If I stick to those six apples, I am fine.

Mark Ottobre: Right. Yeah. So it is from experience obviously through doing muscle testing and as a practitioner as well, it is quite an easy process, and that’s obviously something you cover in the Level One, and obviously further in the Level Two Course. We certainly will cover that, and it’s very effective and it’s very important for anyone out there working with clients to simply and effectively implement into their business to help clients with better food choices.

Fast & Effective Fat Loss, Find out What You’re Doing Wrong | A Conversation with Bob Guiel

Mark Ottobre: Hello and welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Education Series. Today we have Bob Guiel and we’re talking about the most common pitfalls of fat loss. So, you know, let’s just set this up for the viewer at home. You know, female comes in, you know, quite common and they want to lose some body fat. What do you think are the most common pitfalls for, you know, specifically females getting into shape?

Bob Guiel: Well, the most common pitfalls are, first off, weight loss is different for everybody.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Bob Guiel: Alright? There is ten to twelve percent of the population, anything they want to, whatever they want to, eat whatever they want to they’ll stay lean, they’ll stay healthy. When you get into people that have a hard time losing weight, they think that’s not fair because they have to work harder at it. It’s a genetic pool or, you know, tell that to the person who born blind because you can’t lose weight it’s not fair, right?

Mark Ottobre: Yeah, right.

Bob Guiel: Okay? So the biggest pitfall is when the person comes in off the street and they go into see their trainer, these trainers have a set protocol for weight loss. They don’t fit everybody, but they treat them like it does. Okay? For instance, the woman that came in the other day and her trainer’s telling her she needs to eat more carbs, she needs to eat more carbs, she needs to eat more carbs. Basically, she’s got predisposition for metabolic syndrome or carbohydrate resistance. She doesn’t handle carbohydrates well. To put somebody like that on carbs is a time bomb. Alright?

All you’re going to do is you’re going to set off her glycemic pathways and you’re just going to put her into fat storing mode because her body doesn’t know what to do with those carbs. So again, a standard doesn’t fit in for everybody. I see a lot of female athletes, four or five years later now, who maybe were fitness models that are now huge. They can’t lose the weight because of all the supplements they put on just jacked their metabolism to a point where now their metabolism is doing its own thing. So it’s not a one-size-fits-all program.

So if you take the woman that came in the other day, she’s got all these protein powders. Her trainer’s saying, “You’ve got to eat these protein powders, you’ve got to eat these protein powders.” But these protein powders are causing inflammation in her gut. She says, “Yeah, when I eat them I get bloated.” You know? But he says, “But you need them, you need them, you need them.” If something’s creating inflammation in the gut, it’s not doing you any benefit. You’re not going to lose weight from it.

Mark Ottobre: So in other words, what you’re really saying is there’s obviously a lot of marketing lies. You know, you might get a sport supplement company that says “take this fat burner” and they market it tremendously well through, you know, muscle magazines and all the media, Facebook outlets, YouTube, etcetera, that might even sponsor, you know, the top figure athletes to endorse the product. They think I’m going to take this product and it blows off their system completely, maybe induce anxiety or depression or who knows. But it doesn’t agree with their system and yet they continue to do this because they genuinely believe that what is being sold to them is truth. You see that a lot, right?

Bob Guiel: Yes. When you look at a study for anything, whether it’s a drug, whether it’s a supplement or anything, the marketing of the company that wants to sell it, wants to make the money, they take this research and they blow it out as if it’s one hundred percent effective for one hundred percent of the population. There is nothing, nothing in this market that fits one hundred percent of the people one hundred percent of the time. When you look at a study and you look at the results of the study, if you read the study, sometimes…

Mark Ottobre: Well, most of them in muscle magazines, just to bring this up, aren’t actually studies. What do they call them? Advertorials? You know, they’re not studies, they make ridiculous claims and the statistics that they put are comparing basically nothing to, you know, a diet and exercise change. So they say things like, you know, “An increasing by five hundred percent,” but it’s very misconstrued. So a lot of the time they’re not even studies.

Bob Guiel: Right.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Bob Guiel: Right. Well, they’re not.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Bob Guiel: But even in a study to be significantly different, could be a twenty percent improvement on twenty percent of the people who take it. But then when you get the companies that will take that and they will just blow it out of the water as if it’s a hundred percent.

Mark Ottobre: Yes.

Bob Guiel: So you take, okay, let’s say…

Mark Ottobre: Or they get rid of people from the study, so they say it’s a hundred percent. So let’s say twenty people did the study.

Bob Guiel: Yes.

Mark Ottobre: And, you know, fifteen people got the gains and five people didn’t, they will get rid of those five people and say, “Oh, we’re going to dismiss those five people from the study and now we’ve got fifteen people, that makes a hundred percent.”

Bob Guiel: Right.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah. It happens.

Bob Guiel: So they eliminate, they play with the words. Again, there isn’t. So you take, let’s say, a fat burner that, you know, this trainer’s seen good results with it so he puts every woman that comes in on it, that fat burner. A couple of women probably will get good results. Some of them it’s going to stress out their adrenals, maybe stress their kidney, cause anxiety, cause them to lose their appetite and now they’re not eating enough food which as we know is going to be even more detrimental. Alright?

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Bob Guiel: And then the diets. Let’s even look at the diets; they have a diet in their head, “This diet fits one hundred percent of the people one hundred percent of the time.” It doesn’t.

Mark Ottobre: No.

Bob Guiel: Some people have to eat less carbs; some people have to eat more fats.

Mark Ottobre: If we just transition, sorry, just for a sec, you know, there’s a term that’s thrown around, I think, way too much in the bodybuilding industry. I just want to check and get some of your thoughts and that is “metabolic damage.” You know, what is metabolic damage?

Bob Guiel: Well, what I’ve seen, okay, and I have a couple of clients back home now, one was a heavy fitness competitor and no matter what she does, she’s heavy now. She can’t lose the weight no matter what she does because metabolically, to lay it out simply, it’s like your metabolism and your system, your fat burning mechanisms just get sick and tired of you beating the crap out of them and they kind of do their own thing.

Mark Ottobre: Beating in a sense more insulin resistant now.

Bob Guiel: It’s hugely insulin resistant. Yeah.

Mark Ottobre: And chronically elevated levels of cortisol as well that go along with that.

Bob Guiel: Yes.

Mark Ottobre: So the reason I’m just trying to bring this up and make a point of it is, a lot of people in bodybuilding land, they don’t actually understand the term metabolic damage. They think of metabolic damage as this thing that there’s something wrong with their metabolism whereas there’s actually a lot more to the story.

It’s not just their metabolism, it’s probably the metabolism is a symptom nearly of the insulin resistance, the chronically elevated levels of cortisol which usually go along with a compromised gut as well to have these three issues then people want to just put this bow around it and say it’s metabolic damage. It’s not metabolic damage. There’s other issues that are at play as well.

Bob Guiel: Yeah, no, metabolic damage is just a label they put on it. In fact, what they did is they’ve stressed out their insulin pathways to the point where now they don’t function correctly, so you can’t just put a band aid on that. You have to slowly try to reset that. You damaged the cortisol pathways. You know, they’re damaged. It’s not a quick fix. Okay? It’s very delicate.

Mark Ottobre: And just adding to that as well, you know, when say, for example, someone does go and buy an off-the-store fat burner supplement and it does induce things, which is actually very common, it induces things like anxiety, they actually stress their weight loss even more which actually makes their problem even worse and then there’s this perpetuating cycle that they can never seem to get off.

Bob Guiel: Right, and you see that all the time.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Bob Guiel: You know, stop stressing over the fact that you can’t lose those three pounds because the stress of you worrying about not being able to lose those three pounds is raising your cortisol and now you can’t lose the three pounds because you won’t stop stressing about it.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Bob Guiel: And that’s one of the problems I have with the industry and coaches. I’ve seen how you work with your clients, everything is very relaxed. Let’s just do what we have to do. But some of these guys, they stress it and they push it and I’ve seen a lot of coaches just throw supplements at these clients without really even understanding what they do and a lot of times when you get stuff over the counter, you don’t know what’s going in them and that’s a problem.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah. It is a problem and that’s why you see, we’ve spoken about this, we’ve actually tested a couple of supplements over the weekend. That’s why you often see that there’s supplements that get pulled from the market without really any notice and the companies don’t say exactly why they got pulled.

Bob Guiel: “Oh we’re improving the formula.” Yeah, yeah.

Mark Ottobre: Improving the formula, which really means we’re covering up to make sure no one knows that we made a mistake in the first formula and we’ve got to get it right this time because we’re going to get a lawsuit from the government basically, right?

Bob Guiel: Right, yes.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this video. Make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube, like us on Facebook and of course, we’d love to see you at a course in the future. Check out the Enterprise Fitness website which is www.melbournepersonaltrainers.com. Thanks for watching.

What is the Perfect Diet? | A Conversation with Bob Guiel

Mark Ottobre: Hello and welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Education Series. We’ve got Bob Guiel here. Today we’re going to get into the ins and outs of, you know, kind of this prehistoric diet, for lack of a better term, Paleo and, you know, talking about some of those issues that arise when you talk about these things. The first one I want to hit is grains. You were talking to me about some of the people you’ve spoken to. Do you care to elaborate?

Bob Guiel: Sure. Well, if you ever, you know, read any Paleolithic diet you will hear this too, but I’ve spoken to actual forensic anthropologists and what they do is they study, they go back and they look at, you know, the remains and they look at the causes of death and they look at all these types of things. And I happen to be in a room with two guys that this was what they did for a living. Very, very bright gentlemen. And I was talking to them. The first thing they said is they know that prehistoric men was very lean and very muscularly dense, and so being a nutritionist and curious I started asking questions.

And they said, yes, we know for a fact that during the Neolithic era, which is where we went from hunter gatherer to agriculture, that before we made that transition from hunter gatherer to actually agricultural that the leading causes of death were, other than accidents, were typically infections. Okay? Bacterial infections, viral infections, that type of thing. Once we transitioned into this agricultural era and we started eating more grains, there was a dramatic rise in heart disease, cancers, diabetes, everything and it’s escalated ever since then. Okay?

So when you look at that, what did the average caveman eat? They didn’t grow their foods, so they had to pick vegetables and fruits when they were in season. They eat a lot of meat, typically in the winter time they ate a ton of meat because there wasn’t a lot if they lived in a colder climate, there wasn’t a lot of vegetation and they eat nuts, berries, things like that. So when you look at that moving forward… who was the first person to diagnose celiac disease? Socrates.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Bob Guiel: Okay? And, you know, Caser used to make his prisoners eat rye because it would fog their head, make them feel lethargic, make them feel sick all the time so that they were less likely to try to escape.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Bob Guiel: Okay? That’s historically in the books. You asked me what I eat, I eat what the ideal diet is. I gave a talk at the University of Massachusetts to a support group for stroke patients and the students that support this group, and so the hand came up and said, “So what do you think about food?” And obviously the person that asked me was wondering what he should eat now that he’s had a stroke? Okay? And what’s the best way to survive? And of course, my comment to him was, “Well, what if I told you that part of the reason why you’re here is because of the foods you’ve been eating your whole life and that’s exacerbating your condition.” Of course, you get all this muddle and everything else.

So I went on talking about foods and the guy raises his hand again and he says, “So what you’re saying to me is we need to learn how to read labels?” I said, “No.” So the truth is if you want to be as healthy as you can possibly be, if it has a label, don’t eat it. Okay? I was driving my car one day and it was a pretty long drive and I was listening to these two people talk from Harvard Medical School. One was a research PhD dietitian and the other was a research PhD cardiologist and they did a ten-year study. It was kind of a secretive study, they started it ten years ago, they just came out with all their findings.

Their purpose for doing this study was, and it was very eloquently done, because in the ‘70s when we went on this big “Don’t eat fat,” kick, you know, “We’ve got to eat carbohydrates” kick and statins came on the market. In that timeframe of almost thirty years, do you know what all the advancements in modern medicine and everything else, reduction in first time heart attack is?

Mark Ottobre: What was that?

Bob Guiel: Less than a tenth of a percent. So these people started thinking, “Well, if we made all these changes and we’ve got this reduction in heart attack by less than a tenth of a percent over a thirty-year period, what are we doing wrong?” First off, they came out and said there are no studies that show that low fat is better for your heart. Not a study. It was a predominant cardiologist who suggested it at that time.

Mark Ottobre: That was Ancel Keys?

Bob Guiel: Pardon?

Mark Ottobre: Ancel Keys?

Bob Guiel: Yes.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah

Bob Guiel: And all that was, was because he made the suggestion, that was it. They didn’t need to do a study. “He said this, that’s what we’re going by.”

Mark Ottobre: And there’s obviously a lot of politics in that too, one of the, you know, TIME man of the year, you know.

Bob Guiel: Oh, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. And what they concluded was that really, and this was just recently, this was probably a month ago I heard them they’re coming out with this big report and a study and they’re publishing it in a book, that it is the processed carbohydrates.

Mark Ottobre: Yes.

Bob Guiel: That’s the offending problem. Now these are two Harvard Medical School researchers spent ten years doing all the study. But the most poignant thing is, and of course they debunked that whole thing with eggs and cholesterol, proved that to be just another theory. But the one thing that this woman said that really, really, really caught my attention, she said, “This whole thing about red meat, red meat causing coronary heart disease, red meat causing cancers, again no studies to show it. All hearsay.”

Now in our world, a medical doctor will look at us and say that’s just hearsay. There’s so many things that go on in a standard medical profession that are hearsay, but for some reason it’s considered accepted. What she went on to say isn’t truth. Particularly grass-fed red meat is one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. Your best source of B12, your best source of zinc, one of your best sources of B6, one of your best sources of heme iron, period.

Mark Ottobre: But, another thing I just wanted to add to that is when a lot of the research comes out about red meat or meat, you know, they bucket things like sausages, cold cuts, processed meats all into the same package and they say things like, you know, I think it was a study done in the States, “A high protein diet is more likely to cause cancer.” And if you looked at the sources that they were having, it was literally I think McDonald’s beef.

Bob Guiel: Right. They’re very, very unfair studies.

Mark Ottobre: Yes.

Bob Guiel: They’re almost like, deliberately to fail because they don’t look at the quality of the meat and they group it.

Mark Ottobre: It’s not even a conversation of quality.

Bob Guiel: It’s not really a laboratory study. It’s not where they actually like, when people see this, a study shows, they think, “Oh, they took red meat, they took people, they put them in a laboratory and they ran all these tests.” That’s not done. It’s somebody sitting at a desk, looking at the numbers, looking at the topography of everything and saying, “Oh, it must be red meat because look at all these poor people that eat McDonald’s every day, so it’s got to be red meat.”

Mark Ottobre: Yeah, without realizing it’s also the lifestyle, cigarettes, alcohol, maybe even recreational drugs.

Bob Guiel: They don’t throw that into the mix at all.

Mark Ottobre: No exercise.

Bob Guiel: Yes.

Mark Ottobre: There’s obviously, you know, staying up late. All of that goes with it. There’s a lot of other factors that go with it and, you know, the thing that people want to hold their hat on is the fact that red meat… and I actually had Alan Watson who’s the author of 21 Days to A Healthy Heart on my podcast show a couple of years ago now, and he actually pointed out that in American studies versus Argentinian studies, Argentinians eat double the amount of red meat in their diet yet half the rate of cancers and he correlated that to the CLA content that is in red meat.

Bob Guiel: Yeah.

Mark Ottobre: Which is cancer protective and obviously in Argentina it’s much more easily accessible for grass-fed meat where as if you go to the US, you know, it’s a lot more common to have factory farmed, CAFOs, getting the cheapest of the cheap out to the masses.

Bob Guiel: Exactly.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah. So any other, I suppose final thoughts on red meat or a Paleolithic diet?

Bob Guiel: Just that when you look at foods and you look at the Paleo diet, alright, we as a species put all this faith in our scientists and these big corporations to do the right thing. If you want to be healthy, you want to eat as natural as possible… so it’s very hard for people to understand all these things we do to alter our food to genetically modified, to put in these additives, to put in these food colorings, all these added things to make it taste better, it’s not what our body wants.

Our body wants to the basics, raw, natural foods that we were designed to eat. Okay? All these processed foods, when you look at the history of the human being, only came about in a very, very, very short period of time. Yeah, maybe over another hundred years we might adapt to these additives and other things we put in the food, we might lose a lot of people in the interim. Okay?

Mark Ottobre: We’ll certainly lose the quality of life for those in the interim.

Bob Guiel: Exactly. Right.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Bob Guiel: If you look, there’s a big fad now going on, I would say it’s a fad, a lot of people looking at more natural foods and taking better care of themselves like yourself, myself and groups of people, but there’s still a lot of people who don’t and it’s almost like we’ve got two societies now, the healthy and the unhealthy.

Mark Ottobre: It’s almost like the poor and the rich

Bob Guiel: Yeah, exactly.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah. Well, I hope that’s food for thought. I hope you’ve enjoyed this video. Make sure you like us on Facebook, subscribe to us on YouTube and obviously we’d love to see you at the next course with Bob Guiel on one of our internships. Thanks for watching.

Enterprise Fitness Insider Series | The Raw Milk Debate Part 3

Mark Ottobre:  Welcome today. Today’s video all about raw milk. Here with me, Rebecca from the Australian Raw Milk Movement. Now we’re going to be talking about some immediate steps that, you know, the Australian Raw Milk Movement are getting behind that, you know, everyone can take part of, what might that be?

Rebecca Freer:  So we’ve made some really new decisions just the last week for the Australian Raw Milk Movement, just to take a step back we’re very lucky at the recent rally, the Regrarians put on with Joel Salatin, to meet Joel who is the lunatic farmer we all know and love. And so he was kind enough to spend some time with us, really talking us through the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund that was set up by Sally Fallon in the U.S. about, I don’t know, 2007.

Mark Ottobre:  From Western A. Price organization. Yeah.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah. So she is the president of the Western A. Price Foundation. She set up the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and what that fund does is protect farmers who just like Mountain View have been crucified in the media, who have been accused of, you know, doing things to really just to stop consumer access to raw milk. So this fund is going to be set up in Australia. So the Australian Raw Milk Movement, as a group, has decided, in the short-term, we’re going to defend our consumer rights to access raw milk through a herd share model, so have you heard of herd share model?

Mark Ottobre:  No, I’m sure there’s people at home who haven’t, so let’s explain it.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah, so herd share is where a consumer, an individual says, “I don’t have my own cow, I’d really like to buy a percentage of a cow, of my own cow and then get my own milk.” So Vicki Jones at Mountain View has been running a herd share for some years now in Australia and the government has really told us what we’ve changed today, they want to shut that down. We know in South Australia we have another farmer, Mark Tyler, who is currently in court fighting, you know, he has a herd share model as well. So Vicki, very bravely, has said that she is prepared to take it all the way to court. So our focus right now is to reinstate the herd share model and raise the funds, necessary for legal defense.

Mark Ottobre:  So basically, what that really saying is enabling the consumer, including myself and people watching this video, you know, pick up the phone and ring the dairy farmer and say, hey, look, you know, I really like to get my milk from you directly because I know that, you know, you have grass-fed cows, it’s all organic, you take care of your animals and all that kind of stuff. And I just want to buy directly from you, you know, and let’s go do this. And then they go to the farm, pick up the milk, the milk is delivered.

Rebecca Freer:  Well, unfortunately, because of the change, the recent changes in regulation in Victoria, most farmers have just been scared into submission, so they don’t really know what this law is going to do, so they’ve all stop producing, they found other solutions. So Vicki is the only farm who actually says, you know what, I’m going to continue with our herd share model. So at the moment, the only way that you can become a herd share owner is to do it through Mountain View farm, so if anyone is interested, please feel free to contact us, from the Australian Raw Milk Movement website, our new website, Facebook page, the website is still being built and get in touch. So you can’t just go to any farm at the moment.

Mark Ottobre:  Right.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah.

Mark Ottobre:  So you have to go directly to Vicki, once you get in contact with Vicki, then they can basically buy in to a herd.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah.

Mark Ottobre:  And get their raw milk that way.

Rebecca Freer:  That’s right.

Mark Ottobre:  Right.

Rebecca Freer:  So again, this new regulation is around distribution, producing, delivering, so there’s a lot of rules, so we really don’t know what’s going to happen. So I think the really important thing to remember though is that if you’re going to become a herd share owner you really need to be prepared to share the risk with the farmer. It’s actually not good enough for the farmer takes all the risks, as we have in South Australia, Mark Tyler is in court by himself and he’s got seven hundred herd share owners.

Mark Ottobre:  Right.

Rebecca Freer:  Because the law doesn’t recognize it, they still see this as a sale, basically.

Mark Ottobre:  Right.

Rebecca Freer:  But fundamentally a herd share is where I own a percentage of that cow and it’s my milk, I’m not buying it. But, you know, legally, if they want to test that out, we have to be prepared to go to court. So that’s why we’re trying to raise funds for a legal defense to go and test this legislation because, as we know, the way it works in Australia is unprecedented.

Mark Ottobre:  Right. Yeah. So basically, there’s no other country in the world that are doing the way we’re doing it right now.

Rebecca Freer:  So in the U.S., that’s where it just started, so this is a model that has been tested successfully and is run very successful in the U.S. And in fact, when we met with Joel last week he was talking a lot about these new models that really test or changed his idea of commerce because that’s what it’s about. So rather than selling something people become a part of buying clubs, they become members, they become a herd share owner. It’s a different way of engaging with your farmer to get your produce.

Mark Ottobre:  Yeah, I love it. It’s actually bringing it back to a simplistic level of, you know, this is where we get our food from, I actually own these chickens, I know these chicken.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah.

Mark Ottobre:  That chicken’s name is Penny, Bob, whatever you call it, you call your chickens.

Rebecca Freer:  That’s it. Yeah.

Mark Ottobre:  And you can get their eggs directly from the chickens.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Ottobre:  And you have a relationship with your food rather than it being some, you know, sterile environment, walking to the supermarket, you know, ten o’clock at night with fluorescent lights above you and, you know, everyone is zombied out.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah, yeah. Definitely.

Mark Ottobre:  You have this really beautiful relationship and know your cow and know, you know, where they live basically.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah.

Mark Ottobre:  And, you know, having peace of mind that it comes from the same state that you are in. You know, you don’t have meats from China or Chile that, you know, had hepatitis A in them.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah, that’s it.

Mark Ottobre:  You know where your food comes from.

Rebecca Freer:  And a really beautiful part of that model is that it’s a really close connection between, you know, the animals, the farmers and the eaters and so they have lots of wonderful opportunities for those people to go to the farm and participate, you know, in the production of it as much or as little as they would like. But it’s really, really, you know, reducing the length between, you know, as you said, buying the food and where it comes from, being produced.

Mark Ottobre:  Yeah. Well, I mean the large majority of people are very out of touch of, you know, our food today, you know, from the supermarket to how does it get to our plate or, you know, just simply walk into to a restaurant and oh, there is my food, I’m just going to consume this.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah.

Mark Ottobre:   And not really knowing these steps involved of, you know, how that food actually go on in our plates. I think it’s a really beautiful way of, you know, evolving with economics. And another thing I just wanted to touch on as well, you were talking a little bit before about egg stamping.

Rebecca Freer:  Yeah. Look, I’m not across all the details on egg stamping, but what I know again is that the government has brought in this regulation that anybody who has more than a very small number of chickens, so you could almost be a backyard, you know, have backyard chickens and qualified as an egg farmer. They have to stamp individual eggs, so that if you were to get sick you would be able to go back and, you know, rummage through your garbage bin to find out the egg rather than going into the egg carton. It’s ridiculous and the machines to do that stamping cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, you know, it’s a way of pushing out this small boutique, local farms.

Mark Ottobre:  Needlessly expensive.

Rebecca Freer:  That’s it. And so that’s why, you know, what’s going on with raw milk now is just symbolic of the bigger issue. It’s about more than raw milk. It’s about our consumer rights. And, you know, everyone should be concerned. Maybe you don’t even care about raw milk or eggs or whatever, but surely there’s going to be an issue that every individual at some point cares about. So if you don’t care about my rights, care about your own rights.

Mark Ottobre:  I’m sure everyone cares about pet lover and raise them couple of, alright?

Rebecca Freer:  That’s right.

Mark Ottobre:  And instant milk too.

Rebecca Freer:  Too bad about the sugar. But I don’t eat that either. But, yeah, nothing better than the power.

Mark Ottobre:  Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I hope you guys have enjoyed this video, check out The Raw Store where you can get a membership to local organic food. That is of course if you are in Victoria or in the Thornbury area. Like us on Facebook Enterprise Fitness and also like the Australian Raw Milk Movement. And if you have any questions for the Australian Raw Milk Movement, you know, by all means, message them on Facebook. Till then train hard, eat well and supplement smart.

Stay the Hell Away From Our Milk

Mark Ottobre: Hi. It’s Mark Ottobre here from Enterprise Fitness owner and director. And today we’re going to be talking about raw milk. We’ve got Rebecca here. She’s hit up the Australian Raw Milk Movement and we’re going to be learning all about raw milk today. So firstly, tell us about what is the Australian Raw Milk Movement?

Rebecca Freer: So the Australian Raw Milk Movement really is, I guess, a bunch of concern citizens, producers, retailers, anyone who is really worried about the fact that our consumer rights have been treaded on by the government by changing the regulations and we no longer have access to raw milk. Yeah, we formed in response to that.

Mark Ottobre: So when did you guys form?

Rebecca Freer: It’s about a couple of months ago now, so we’re in our infancy stage.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Rebecca Freer: So we’re still working through a lot of the basic things like, you know, forming a legal entity and, you know, getting ourselves organized, so.

Mark Ottobre: So you formed a couple of months ago and I dare say that it was in response to something?

Rebecca Freer: Yeah, to the changes, the regulation changes.

Mark Ottobre: Right. So there’s a regulation change and that regulation change, when did that regulation start to change?

Rebecca Freer: Kicked in, the regulation date kicked in on the 1^st of Feb.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Rebecca Freer: So that meant that anyone or any producer that was going to continue to produce bath milk had to put a bittering agent in it to stop humans from accidentally or purposefully consuming it.

Mark Ottobre: Right. And I’ll dare say that that reaction happened from what happened in the media with, I think, two kids who got sick. One child, you know, unfortunately passed away. That was a reaction to that, maybe?

Rebecca Freer: Yeah, so an overreaction probably is a better way of describing it. So what we know as facts right now that four children became unwell and one child died.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Rebecca Freer: We know that at some stage those four children consumed raw milk and one of them died, but those two events actually haven’t been linked; and the coroner as we know hasn’t made any finding yet.

Mark Ottobre: So I just want to stop for a second because I just want to highlight that because sometimes on Facebook when I’ve gotten into, you know, discussions about raw milk people will say, “Well, the coroner’s report said that it was linked in fact to raw milk.”

Rebecca Freer: No.

Mark Ottobre: And you’re saying that the coroner’s report isn’t even out.

Rebecca Freer: That’s right. The chief health officer, who’s now resigned, not in response to this, but she came out and declared a warning. So based on an investigation that was taken place by the Health Department – and I know this because my shop, I have an organic store at Thornbury, we were selling bath milk from Mountain View Farm, and so they came and tested my milk. So I knew this was going on in the background before it even came out in the media. So they came, collected my milk and tested it and we were told that children had been sick over a period of months. And so what happens in those cases is that the families would complete a questionnaire, there’ll be a whole bunch of questions on that, including “have you at some stage consumed raw milk?” And so what happens is, as soon as they find, “Oh, yes, there’s a commonality,” the investigation stops and that’s as far as they go.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Rebecca Freer: Yeah. So it will be very hard for the coroner to actually prove one way or another that the raw milk had anything to do with it.

Mark Ottobre: You’re telling me something very interesting about dates and that’s that, you know, perhaps they drank or consumed raw milk in something like February and then they came sick in May or something?

Rebecca Freer: Well, the child that passed away – so what we’ve done in response to this is done a private investigation with someone who used to be a health officer. So her job when she worked with the Health Department was to investigate food poisoning, so she’s very qualified, so she’s gone off. And those findings haven’t been formally released yet, but Vicki alluded to them at the event recently. So what we know and from speaking to the families, to all the families and a very good friend of the child that passed away, none of the parents believed that milk had anything to do with it.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Rebecca Freer: We know, it’s a fact that and the reason we know this as a fact and the Health Department doesn’t, because they haven’t investigated properly, is because the way that the child who died was getting the milk was through a co-op. Thank goodness, because actually that enables us to actually track when they purchased the milk and so what we do know is that the child that passed away drank the milk in August and died in October.

Mark Ottobre: Right. So August and October.

Rebecca Freer: So those dates are pretty…

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Rebecca Freer: Yeah.

Mark Ottobre: So a co-op, for those at home maybe not familiar with that term, what is a co-op?

Rebecca Freer: Yeah, so a co-op is when a bunch of families or individuals get together and purchase things in as a group in order to sort of leverage a better pricing. But I know from Vicki that she’d said to them that they’ve only purchased it once from a farm and from a farm gate shop, and they said that really came to get really good pricing and she said, “Well, the only way you can do it is to get into the heart-shaped model.” And at that point they stopped. So they only bought the milk once or twice.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Rebecca Freer: Yeah. So we don’t know how long they had the milk for, when did they consume it? But we do know there’s, you know, months and months in between the consumption or the purchased and the death of the child. And we don’t know all the facts around that. They haven’t been released yet. The media hasn’t told the real story.

Mark Ottobre: And there was a very interesting point that was brought up at the Regrarians events and that’s the ‘child was lactose intolerant.’

Rebecca Freer: Yeah, we believe that. That’s my understanding as well.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Rebecca Freer: Yeah.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah. Which obviously puts another layer of complexity on the whole story, you know?

Rebecca Freer: Yeah.

Mark Ottobre: You know, if you obviously have no tolerance to something then, you know, things can certainly go skewer, you know, belly up.

Rebecca Freer: Yeah, absolutely. And, look, we’ve also heard that the child wasn’t, you know, well and was compromised in terms of their immune systems. So, you know, I think there really is a case to be made for, you know, the safety of raw milk. We believe absolutely that raw milk is safe, but it has to be a particular kind of raw milk.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Rebecca Freer: Raw milk from a conventional dairy and a conventional dairy is a non-organic dairy, an industrialized-sized dairy where they give mandatorily antibiotics to the cows, the cows are kept in, you know, confined conditions sometimes or there’s just too many of them. That’s quite different to getting raw milk from a boutique family sized herd which is almost always exclusively organic and grass-fed.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah, so that’s the important point that it’s not factory fed or grain-fed.

Rebecca Freer: That’s right. Yeah.

Mark Ottobre: That it’s absolutely grass-fed and obviously, you know, those who are watching this are probably into the health and fitness would know that, you know, the CLA contents fat basically breakdown is very different from, you know, grass-fed animals or grain-fed animals. So those, you know, who’re really physique conscious want to make sure that they’re, you know, eating or consuming the right kind of milk. Let’s just talk about a little bit about some of the legislation. In my understanding Australia is only one of the few countries in the world that actually ban raw milk. What countries have, you know, pushed this over the line being successful in consuming raw milk?

Rebecca Freer: Look, I think, you know, the better question is, relevant point, is that there’s only two countries, Australia and Canada that ban raw milk for human consumption. Scotland has, which is not considered a country, at least from a sovereign perspective, it has different rules. So everyone’s sort of on a scale. You know, if you look to America for instance, the state by state the trend is they’re legalizing it and there’s all different ways you can legalize raw milk. It can be legalized from a herd share arrangement where individuals buy ownership of a herd, you have farm gate which we have in New Zealand. So you even have really sophisticated vending machines, you know, that’s the way people buy their raw milk from a farm gate operation in New Zealand even.

Mark Ottobre: So again, that’s a new term to me, farm gate. Just talk a little bit about what perhaps that is.

Rebecca Freer: Yeah. So farm gate is when consumers will go directly to the farm and purchase, you know, a whole range of goods. So farm gate, in the context of raw milk, is where they’re going there to buy their raw milk. So in New Zealand that’s the only way that consumers are allowed to buy raw milk, which is fantastic because, you know, if you think about the best kind of model for buying raw milk you really want it to be as closely connected to where it’s produced and directly from the farm. I mean, that’s really the ideal model.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah. And let’s just touch on one point, at the moment, you know, dairy farmers are doing it tough all around Australia in, you know, places like Coles, Woolworths, you know, that dollar milk is really driving the profits down that, you know, if farmers can really make a living it’s almost impossible for them. And, you know, it’s somewhat criminal, if not it is criminal. I know Coles recently had to pay ten million dollars back to farmers for their ‘bullying’ tactics that they used to, you know, basically drive the costs down of milk. So in saying that, you know, us buying local and buying directly from the farm really supports the farmer and puts the money back, you know, in the farmers’ pockets. So I think from an economical perspective it really is the way to go. Would you agree with that?

Rebecca Freer: Oh, absolutely.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Rebecca Freer: I think that it’s very clear that government has developed policy that’s really very much around supporting large industrialized-sized organizations and really what they should be doing is supporting smaller family boutique operations that are trying to value add to their products and create niche markets by finding relationships directly with consumers. I mean, there is a massive movement going on, Raw Milk Movement, where more and more people care deeply about where their foods come from.

Mark Ottobre: And let’s touch on the politics around this because, you know, a lot of people don’t understand the politics, but it’d be fair to say that, you know, there are people that play, or should say, big corporations that play that have vested interest in not allowing raw milk on the shelves. Care to talk a little bit about that?

Rebecca Freer: Yeah. Look, I think that, you know, any time a farmer is going out to find their own customers in an industry where it’s controlled by a large organizations, that becomes threatening. If you look to the rest of the world and you see what happens where you’ve got generally a trend of us moving away from processed food and towards unprocessed and whole foods then they would see there’s something that’s quite threatening. Certainly in parts of Europe it’s the norm to drink raw milk and many other countries in the world as well. So if you think about that, from an economic point of view, you’ve got large dairies and processing plants that have a vested interest in really not letting raw milk grow as an industry and not letting those farmers go out and value out and create their own markets.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah. Definitely. Now we were fortunate enough to hear…

Rebecca Freer: Vicki Jones.

Mark Ottobre: Vicki Jones. She was the one who, you know, has the raw milk in question at the moment. You’ve met with her, I understand.

Rebecca Freer: Vicki is a great friend of mine. You know, when I was selling her milk I met her through a business I had years ago and, you know, it’s what makes this so devastating really is that you couldn’t get a more ethical farm. You know, Vicki has really set the bar when it comes to ethical farming, especially in the dairy industry where it’s an industry that’s known for the ill treatment of the bobby calves. So bobby calves is a boy calf that naturally has no value in the dairy industry and quite often they’re seen as a waste product and treated as such. And so Vicki, you know, she told this story, she created a whole industry. You know, this isn’t good enough, I’m not going to treat our calves like that. So, you know, when you drink her milk you can say, as a consumer, “No bobby calves have been destroyed in the production of this dairy.” There’s not too many of our farms that can say that. So that’s why in part this is so devastating because they’ve done some amazing things and have been recognized by organizations like, Voiceless, as having a model that all other dairy farmers should be following.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah, I think that’s a really pertinent point that you’re making because a lot of people put farming and their food outside of themselves when, you know, you’re saying, you know, I’ve met with the people who produce my food. I’ve met with the people who produce my milk. I know them. I’ve seen what they do and I understand the way it’s done and, you know, unfortunately in our society I think that’s really an element of food that is completely missed knowing where your food comes from. Yeah.

Rebecca Freer: Absolutely. I mean, my whole business is set up where I only get all of my produce, whether it’s meat or dairy, direct from farms. So, you know, this in Thornbury which is a location where, you know, most people really care deeply about the local food and are prepared to do and, you know, create new options and take different paths so that they don’t have to shop, you know, in supermarkets, which is great. There really is a momentum in this movement.

Mark Ottobre: Absolutely. Let’s talk about your shop. Where do you source your meats from?

Rebecca Freer: So all of our meats, so our beef we only stock dairy beef. So dairy beef is the bobby calves that Vicki has growing out and so that’s the only beef that we stock. We stock lambs from Hollyburton farm, our chickens come directly from a farm, and our pork comes from White Cliffs farm as well in Victoria. So all Victorian farms. Also, they have had organic and we buy the whole animals. So I have a philosophy in my business that, you know, we don’t buy bits of an animal, we buy the whole animal. And I actually have a membership-based business, so it’s not like a normal retail outlet.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Rebecca Freer: So you have to be a member and being a member gets you cost price, so it’s all about transparency and that means that you’re really voting for control over your local food system because you’ll know exactly who produces your vegetables, your meat, your dairy, everything.

Mark Ottobre: So if people want to get, you know, they want to start changing their buying habits and start really voting with their dollar and this is something that, you know, I’m very big on, you know, don’t shop at Coles, don’t shop at Woolworths, shop to your local farmer.

Rebecca Freer: That’s it.

Mark Ottobre: Every time, you know, people think that they’re powerless, no, they’re not. And it shows, even with genetically modified food, within eight weeks the European Union rejected genetically modified food because they saw no consumer benefit.

Rebecca Freer: Yeah.

Mark Ottobre: There wasn’t any more beneficial for the consumer so they decided, “We don’t want this stinking genetically modified U.S. grain in our country. That’s it. It’s not coming in.” So you do, the people watching these videos really pushed the fact that you have a lot more power than you think. The way to make change is to vote with your own mighty dollar. You can make a difference.

Rebecca Freer: Look, that’s the only thing that the average person, that’s the power that we do have and sometimes it can feel overwhelming with, you know, all the problems we have in the world but actually if we just start small and start to control the things that we have control of, so where do we buy our foods? So buying local, buy from the local business, go to the farmer’s market, just be really, really conscious and aware of what you’re voting for when you spend money because I love the example that Joel Salatin gives in one of his many speeches. He was saying that if everybody in the world just didn’t shop at McDonald’s for a week, they’d be shut down.

Mark Ottobre: Right.

Rebecca Freer: So it gives you a really strong indicator of the power that we have as consumers. It’s just about getting people conscious and motivated and providing options to do something different.

Mark Ottobre: Absolutely. So, you know, it sounds to me like your business model, you’ve done the hard work for us.

Rebecca Freer: Yeah.

Mark Ottobre: You know, we don’t have to go out, you know, to country Victoria.

Rebecca Freer: Exactly.

Mark Ottobre: So tell us how do we get in contact with you and start, you know, voting with our dollar?

Rebecca Freer: So my business is called The Raw Store. It’s very localized in Thornbury. Again, I wanted to, you know, not be everything to everyone. It was very much around my local community. So it probably works best for those that live local to Thornbury.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah, absolutely.

Rebecca Freer: And then, you know, they can just go on our website. Send me an email and get in touch.

Mark Ottobre: So in other words, if you’re watching this in Canada or the U.S. or in Pakistan…

Rebecca Freer: Sorry.

Mark Ottobre: You know, so we can’t serve you. You’re going to have to find your own local farmer. Too bad on that one.

Rebecca Freer: Yeah. But, look, there are ways to find out how to access your local farmer because, you know, for those of us that live in the city, you know, going to your farmer’s market is really the best starting point and just talking to your local businesses and asking questions about, you know where… I won’t eat in a restaurant. Well, I barely eat in any restaurants because I know that they use factory farm meat. Because eighty-five percent of the meat that’s available in Australia are from a supermarket or from a butcher is factory farmed. And if you ask your restaurant, you say, “Where does this lamb come from?” I can tell you, even the top restaurants, they won’t be able to tell you.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Rebecca Freer: So I won’t eat.

Mark Ottobre: It’s actually a thing we all say, well I always say to our clients here, is if you walk into a butcher and you say, “Where does this meat come from?” And they can’t answer you…

Rebecca Freer: You walk out.

Mark Ottobre: …shop at a different butcher.

Rebecca Freer: Absolutely.

Mark Ottobre: Because they should know the answer to that question, you know?

Rebecca Freer: And they don’t. You know, one thing that I find really frustrating again, is this whole growth of the paleo movement for this example because I’m not advocating that, you know, everyone has to go out and eat organic and eat organics is the only way. I don’t mean to touch on your point on genetically modified, the only way to ensure you don’t get genetically modified in Australia, in your diet, is to eat organic, but there’s been this growth of this movement of, you know, understanding of pasture-raised being best and grass-fed. But unfortunately, again, because we have really poor labeling in this country in legislation, you know, farmers or not farmers, rather butchers can write, you know, “grass-fed” and that actually means nothing.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah.

Rebecca Freer: There’s no guarantee that they say that they’re pasture-raised or grass-fed that they actually are, so that’s why again it’s so important to know the farms that produce your food.

Mark Ottobre: Same things with chickens.

Rebecca Freer: Yeah.

Mark Ottobre: You know, they can say “free range,” but, you know, there is no legislation on free range at the moment.

Rebecca Freer: I think they’re tightening that up now. But, yeah, certainly that’s been a problem. It’s called grain washing. And, you know, as consumers we need to be really savvy and smart and ask questions and not fall for the marketing.

Mark Ottobre: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this video. You know, definitely like us on Facebook Enterprise Fitness and the Australian Raw… am I saying it right, the Australian Raw Milk Movement. Like us on Facebook. If you’re in Victoria, shop at the… what’s the shop called?

Rebecca Freer: The Raw Store.

Mark Ottobre: The Raw Store. And you’re on Google?

Rebecca Freer: Yeah. We’re on Facebook. Yeah.

Mark Ottobre: Website. Yeah.

Rebecca Freer: Website.

Mark Ottobre: Get in contact.

I hope you enjoyed this video. Make sure you share on Facebook. Subscribe to us on YouTube.