Benefits of Foraging

Benefits of Foraging with Dr. Mark "Merriwether" Vorderbruggen

What would a caveman do?" is still a valuable question to ask in modern times, especially with health concerns. Let me tell you more. :)”

Bringing you over a decade of public speaking at museums, garden clubs, prepper groups, historical societies, nature parks, botanical gardens, MENSA clubs, distilleries, Toastmasters, and multiple podcasts.

Author of Idiot's Guide Foraging

Nationally recognized foraging and herbalist instructor, creator of Foraging Texas

Ph.D. Chemist with 14 patents

Chemist/herbal formulator for Medicine Man Plant Co.

Experienced YouTube Personality: DrMerriwether

Over 26,000 followers on the Facebook/ForagingTexas

Winner of the 2019 Native Plant Society of Texas Digital Media Award

Author of a monthly magazine article on foraging

Full Transcript Below

Roy - Feeding Fatty (00:03):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of feeding fatty. This is Roy and we are the show. You know, we try to bring a lot of different views to the table. Uh, you know, we all struggle in some ways with our getting our fitness plan going, uh, eating right, vegetables, meat, you know, how much, what do you do? What's recommended. What's good for you, you know, what do you like? So we try to bring, you know, this is not only about our journey, mine and Terry's journey, but together, but we also like to, uh, bring guests who are more, um, uh, experts in their field in different areas that have to do with diet and nutrition. And, uh, today, uh, we have an awesome guest that, um, you know, we were kind of joking a little bit in the, uh, in the pre-show that, um, you know, more we have read about him the less that we truly understand what is going on.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (00:57):

So it's going to be a, an interesting show for all of us to learn. Uh, but we are, uh, grateful that Mark Merriwether [inaudible] hope I got that, right. Uh, he is a PhD, uh, not, uh, and we're going to Merrywhether it's what he goes by in kind of the plant world. So that's where we're going to go with that. And so Merriwether grew up in the wilds of Minnesota, where parents and grandparents utilize the amazing wild foods and medicinal plants found in local woods fields and lakes. The oneness with nature that Dr. [inaudible] has known since childhood is a foundation of who he is today. So Merriwether, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be with us.

Merriwether (01:44):

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (01:46):

So let's, uh, let's just talk a little bit about, uh, tell us a little bit about, you know, growing up kind of what led you, cause I know that you are, uh, very outdoorsy and, uh, I've seen you reference yourself as a forger. And so, um, those would be some good jumping off points to kind of talk about those.

Merriwether (02:08):

Sure. Uh, so when they mentioned growing up in Minnesota and both my parents were big into outdoors and every day we were out in the woods behind our house, the fields of rivers, the lakes, things like that, it was part of their upbringing of us is giving us a deep connection to nature. And one of the things that played a role in that was eating the different wild foods that we're finding. Yeah, so that, that played a big role. Both my parents were high school education, uh, but children are the great depression. So one of the things that was very important was the idea of food security, because they grew up in the time, their childhood, where that was an issue, right? So that was always important to us concurrent with that, I knew I was going to be a scientist. Uh, I used to drive my, my elementary school teacher nuts with different questions that they couldn't answer about science.

Merriwether (03:02):

I was starting to read science textbooks at a very young age. Um, and by the time I got to college, it became obvious that what I want to do is study plant chemistry because when it gets down to it, the chemicals in the plants are fascinating. They've evolved. I tell people, if you can't run, you have to fight and plants can't run. So they have to fight. They have to develop all sorts of really interesting compounds that turnout have benefit for humans too. And so that led into kind of a long and twisted path down herbal medicine. Uh, but at the same time, my, my original plan was to go into pharmaceuticals and become, uh, you know, my, my master's degree was in medicinal chemistry. My PhD was in physical, organic chemistry. So not making molecules, but figuring out which molecule you need to accomplish a certain task.

Merriwether (03:56):

Uh, I got sidetracked with 18 years in the oil industry, but during that time I was using my knowledge of natural products to come up with new environmentally friendly, safer ways of accomplishing oil field tasks. I got 14 patents. The first one was using cinnamon as a corrosion inhibitor and it just went from there. Um, yeah, but, uh, finally after many, many years, uh, I was able to take that chemistry back into the medicinal side, uh, working for a company as their chemist, herbal formulator for dietary supplements, using ancient plants for modern issues, but there's a whole nother side of the world too.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (04:37):

Okay. Wow. Yeah. That is a, uh, that is a long and interesting road through the, through the oil patch back to plants.

Merriwether (04:46):

Well, always with plants, but yeah.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (04:51):

So, um, you know, we talked a little bit about the forging aspect and you were saying that, uh, because you know, growing up in more of a, an urban environment, even though we lived, you know, kind of in the country, what we called it, we had gardens, but we would never go out and pick anything. Well, you know, we were always scolded against never pick anything up off the ground and put it in your mouth. You know, we, weren't not that they're all bad, but we weren't smart enough to determine the good from the bad. So, uh, you know, that's kind of an interesting concept of being able to go out into the, to the fields. And, uh, no, I guess the first step is being able to identify what is edible and what is something you need to stay away from.

Merriwether (05:36):

Definitely. Um, there's a basic rule of thumb. I teach foraging classes all around Texas and actually around the nation now. And I tell people when you are, you know, there's lots of good books and websites and so forth to help people identify plants, even apps though. I don't trust the apps, but I say you got to match at least five structural features of the plant. You know, the, the edge of the leaf, the vein pattern of the leaf, the arrangement of the leaves, the flower, the number of pedals, that color there's lots and lots of structural features, but you need to match at least five of them to whatever resource you're using to identify the plant next to you. Really, the secret is start on your doorstep, look at your trees, identify your trees, and then Google, you know, Elm tree edible and figure out, you know, what you can do with that. Then look at the bushes, then look at the flowers and go down into the weeds and identify the weeds. And then just expand from there. A lot of people make the mistake of taking a foraging book out in the woods, thinking I'm going to learn edible plants. And they look at the sea of green and they looked at this thick book and they go back home. So, you know, start, it's easier if you identify the plant and then look up it's edible and medicinal.

Terry - Feeding Fatty (06:49):

Yeah. That's what I was going to say is where do you start or ask, where do you start? It's like, it's just so overwhelming because there's so much.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (06:59):

Yeah. And the, um, I guess, like you said, the overwhelmingness of, when you walk out that even though they are differences to the trained, I'm sure that, you know, to the untrained eyes, like a lot of stuff, they all look the same. So that is a,

Terry - Feeding Fatty (07:15):

Yeah. So I just block it out. It's my fault.

Merriwether (07:18):

I get so many pictures of a vine wrapped around a tree that people think is one plant, you know? And it's like, no, they're two distinct plants here.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (07:29):

So what are the benefits are there? Um, I know that in the, I guess the Western world, we have lost a lot of that medicinal use of plants. That there's a lot that's good out there, but for a minute, talk about the nutritional. Uh, are there a lot of nutritional values that are good for us in plants that we may find growing out in the wild?

Merriwether (07:52):

Oh, definitely. That's a, that's another thing that makes me laugh at gardeners. Uh, nothing personal gardeners, but you guys work way too hard. It's funny to see a lot of the weeds they're pulling up and throwing out are often more nutritious than the plants that they're growing. One of the aspects of the domestication of plants was to alter it in a way that makes it more convenient for the humans to harvest, you know, or store to a point. Um, but in a lot of those changes, uh, you know, basically the plant said, okay, if you take care of me, I will make it easier for you to eat me. But in that process, they did lose some of the nutritional value. Whereas the wild plants, they are constantly fighting, you know, they can't run. So they still have a lot of their initial vitamins minerals.

Merriwether (08:39):

Uh, dandelions are always a great example. You know, the, the most hated weed and it should be the most loved weed on the planet because the, the leaves are loaded with the vitamins and minerals, even a little protein, the flowers have medicinal properties, the roots can go 12 feet and they have amazing medicinal uses. Yeah. And when the dandelion dies, you have now worked, you know, organic matter 12 feet down into the soil. So one of the things that makes them so nutritious is they have this deep, long reservoir of minerals that they can bring up back into their leaves. That's why they show up in damaged areas because when it rains, a lot of water soluble minerals get percolated down deep into the soil. So the top layer of the soil becomes dead. Nothing can grow in there. The Daniel lions can, they send the roots down deep and remineralize and then other plants go, Oh, this soil is good. And they come in and they crowd out the dining lines have been negative. It's just go away. Interesting.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (09:38):

So that is one thing that, um, you have seen, I mean, you're currently in the Houston area, you grew up in Minnesota. I mean, that's about as far, uh, you grew up about as far North, as you can go. And now you're living about as far South, as you can go in the U S and then, you know, it's, the, the train is different. The climate certainly different, but what is the diversity of plants that we may find from one area to the other? I mean, is it like a whole new, is it like a whole new, I mean, I'm sure there's some that translate from both areas, but in Houston, are you finding a lot more different stuff than what you found in Minnesota?

Merriwether (10:15):

It's funny. The, uh, the main difference is the time when the plants show up. Okay. So a lot of the summertime, well, a lot of the winter time weeds in Houston, things like, uh, wild violets and cleavers and girl dock, those are summertime plants up North. Um, and then the summertime plants are the down here in Texas are the deep summary, like the July, August weeds there. Um, I I've been down here since 97 and I still get confused as to what time of year it is. Cause I kind of rely on the plants to be my calendar. And like now I know when I see the Blackberry, uh, flowers, I know it's time to do my taxes. They, they, they start showing up in the beginning of April, I was like, the Blackberry tasty. And then when the curl doc starts showing up, I know it's time to buy my Halloween candy. But up in Minnesota, it was time to buy the Easter candy. You know? So it's different things like that. Plants don't really follow, you know, political boundaries, they follow, you know, ecosystem boundaries. And so the ecosystems, you can find the similar ecosystems all over. Now there, yes, there are certain plants that are hot weather plants or, uh, coastal saltwater, coastal plants that we don't have in Minnesota. But for the most part, a lot of the plants, if you look for the ecosystem, you'll find the plants. Yeah.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (11:45):

Okay. The other thing you kind of mentioned too, when we were talking a pre-show is that there are a lot more benefits to forging than just the nutrition or the medicinal purposes that we can pull out of the plants. Could you elaborate on that just a little bit? Yeah.

Merriwether (12:03):

Oh boy. Uh, yes. I'll try to keep it down to a little bit. This is one of my most passionate things here, but yeah, so yeah, the, the, the, the vitamins and minerals and medicinal properties and all that are great from the wild plants, but there's a whole nother level of health that people don't understand or don't realize. So I like to tell the, the problem with the world is it's flat now. We're not talking flat earth sort of thing. We're talking paved sidewalks, you know, tiles, all that. We did not evolve on a flat earth. We evolved on a slippery, slippery, you know, unbalanced, Rocky, tripping hazard sort of thing with things hunting us. So our brains, our bodies are designed to be out walking around on uneven ground and in doing so that requires a lot more mental action, which helps stimulate the brain and the brain needs stimulation.

Merriwether (13:04):

So by, you know, trying to keep our balance on uneven surfaces and so forth, our brain is much more engaged in what we're doing. One of the things they've found besides helping stave off dementia later in life, it also helps with, uh, things like, uh, attention deficit disorder and so forth because you, you are giving the brain, the input it evolved to get, if it's not getting that sort of input, it's like a cage beast and starting pacing. It starts finding ways to amuse itself. So when you're out walking on uneven ground, your brain is doing exactly what it was designed to do at the same time. You're looking, you're smelling all your senses are coming into play, right at the same time, your core muscles, you know, the people, you know, for exercise, they run on the treadmill. If you really want to exercise, go running across a Rocky field, you, uh, it takes a while, you know, or uneven.

Merriwether (14:00):

So pre-think, um, because again, as you are trying to maintain your balance in a really topsy turvy, slippery thing, your core muscles are getting a much stronger workout. You're getting a more full body workout. That's like right now, they have all these platforms where you stand on and they vibrate and so forth. They'd say it's, you know, to, to activate all the muscles. Well, you know, go for a walk in the Y you're going to get this. If you are crossing a, you know, a fallen tree over a stream, you are using a lot of muscles. You aren't losing and pushing a shopping cart down the HEB corridor. And especially if you're carrying stuff and you know, in Texas, obviously you're going to have a lot of water that you're carrying with you cause it's hot. So it's like a much more full body workout, bending. You're stretching, you're digging, you're climbing occasionally you're running like hell or Janie. It's a full body workout. It's not just picking things off a shelf in a grocery store. So that physical action and that mental action have amazingly good benefits for the body.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (15:07):

Yeah. And those are good points. The, um, actually I just posted an article on, uh, on another, um, a website that we've run that was talking about the, if you walk for certain periods of, I mean like a longer period of time, if you walk over consistently over about six years, I think they said it dramatically reduces their chances of Alzheimer's. So, you know, that's good to know. Uh, the other thing that I was thinking, as you were talking about that is, you know, I, I go exercise for the extra size benefit that I get my muscles and all of that. But the other thing that's interesting is when you're out either exercising or forging, uh, you're not eating. So for, you know, people that are trying to, trying to help their way, there's kind of like, it's a double benefit. You're getting the exercise, but you're not sitting in front of a TV, you know, eating as well. So,

Merriwether (15:59):

Well, I will say if you're forging, you're probably munching as you go, but it's going to be very low calorie stuff. It's easy to get vitamins and minerals and all that stuff. Calories is the hard part. Okay.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (16:12):

Me and Terry were talking yesterday, uh, you know, we talked briefly about this, about, you know, can you, uh, you know, would it be hard for working people, you know, with a decent sized piece of land ordered, you know, to grow enough food or to forge enough to actually survive. And that was one thing, the point that you did bring up was that, yeah, we could get all the nutrients and everything we need, but the actual caloric intake would be very, very difficult to achieve.

Merriwether (16:44):

Yeah, you would probably the best clerk intake from an evolutionary point of view is animal fat and which doesn't store well. So you'd have to have some sort of batty animals growing there, you know, corn and so forth has some benefit, but really, yeah, you can do it if you are willing to do no 100% buy-in on the other hand, if I may, uh, giving 10% of your diet from the wild, pretty reasonable, even in city folk, there's, if I can go sideways for a second, a number of people say, Hey, I live in the city, everything has got to be contaminated. I can't eat any of the weeds. Well, actually they've done some really interesting studies looking at the potential contamination in urban plants, mainly up in Minneapolis, St. Paul and in Boston and a few other cities. And they found them to be clean.

Merriwether (17:40):

They don't have any of the pesticides, heavy metals, anything like that. There there'd be absolutely no reason a person couldn't eat them. Usually the main reasons are against it, like here in the state of Texas, uh, it's actually illegal to take a piece of plant material from a property. What not the property owner has permission. He needs to go back to the sheep and cattle Wars of the 18 hundreds, but, uh, city parks and things like that. Yeah. It's verboten to take plants from there. And part of that is if everyone starts doing that in States where they don't have laws against it, uh, they're finding, especially in the last five years, uh, the parks in places are getting stripped of plants because people are, you know, harvesting over. There's a thing called the tragedy of the commons. It's an economic theory that if there is an open space, that's open to everyone with the resource on it, whoever grabs that resource first is the one that benefits economically. And so there's always someone who is going to try and do that to better themselves rather than leave it forever.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (18:44):

Right. Right. So we've talked a lot about the nutritional, uh, side of this, but what about the medicinal side? I know, you know, back in the more ancient days, uh, we, they used a lot of plants, you know, for our medicine instead of, I guess, again, this is out of my league, but chemical compounds that, you know, that people figured that go together to solve this. So have we lost a lot of the, I guess the goodness of the medicinal?

Merriwether (19:16):

Yeah. Um, and there's a couple of different reasons that, so let's first talk. I mean, plants, they are loaded up with all sorts of compounds, all sorts of molecules that have proven biological effects in the human body, uh, up until about 1864, the, you know, it was plants were our medicine now, along with plants, hygiene plays a huge role in things. So one of the things to keep in mind, uh, you know, the, the increase in the ability to keep things clean and to sterilize wounds and the understanding that you have to keep things clean, played a big role in human health, but plants were a big deal. Uh, and you know, going back tens of thousands of years, uh, really they, they say the first scientists were probably the herbalists of the tribe, where they were, you know, you know, someone was sick, they'd throw something, you know, some plant at it and Hey, the person got better.

Merriwether (20:15):

Uh, you might be familiar with Euell Gibbons. He was wild food, you know, from the sixties and seventies, but anyways, eat a pine tree. He wrote a, he wrote a book called, uh, stocking the, the healthful herb. And his theory was that a large part of the medicinal benefit of wild plants was actually due to their increased nutritional value, getting more vitamins, you're getting more vitamin a, you know, that sort of thing. And so he did a lot of studies looking at nutritional value of wild edible plants. Well, that ended up coloring the, the scientists approach to the disenroll plants. They thought, yeah, it's just, it's just vitamins minerals. There's no real true medicinal value to it. But in the eighties they started going, well, let's just take a look at it. It's because there's a lot of traditional use and there seems to be something going on.

Merriwether (21:12):

And since then it, they really did find, yeah, there are molecules that do this and that increase in nitric oxide, which lowers blood pressure, you know, increases neural growth, the neural connections in the brain, all sorts of things that speeds up the processing of the liver stimulates the immune system. There are compounds that do that in the plants. And so that's kind of re awoken the whole looking at traditional medicine saying, yeah, there's something there. Yeah. I mentioned the date 1864. That was when the first chemist came up with a synthetic medicine chloral hydrate, which was used as a sedative as a, you know, kind of like an ether sort of thing for people undergoing, uh, operations or surgeries, that sort of thing that was kind of at the time of enlightenment when scientists said, Hey, you know what, we have this power now. And as a chemist, uh, I'm speaking for my tribe here.

Merriwether (22:07):

We have this pot. We can make that. One of the issues with nature is with the wild plants, the amount of the compound varies some from plant to plant and ecosystem and all that. So there was, there was some hit or miss the plants had power, but it was hard to get an absolute reproducible thing. So scientists said, Hey, if we make the molecule, then we know exactly how much is in there and we can fine tune it and all that sort of thing. And so that whole let's search for, for synthetic forms occurred. So that was a big push. Another thing, if you think about it, the collecting the plants, storing the plants, turning them into medicine, that's very labor intensive. It requires a lot of time on regards, a lot of effort to do it on a mass scale. And so as the population grew, it became impossible. If you think, uh, you know, monoculture, a lot of the, the farming right now is designed so that it can be harvested by machine, right? And so that's, that's not always possible with a lot of the medicinal plants, especially once, you know, that are wild. And so it just became easier and more cost efficient to find a molecule synthesize that molecule and say, here you go, here's the molecule rather than the whole plant. So,

Roy - Feeding Fatty (23:32):

So they're kind of brought up a good, um, a distinction in the medicinal side about, um, I guess being a preemptive versus, you know, after something happens. And a lot of times we think, well, I'll say, I think of, you know, medicinal purposes as something happens, you're sick. You take something to treat it, to make you feel better, but I guess we could kind of look at that from some things you said as more preempting, if we eat these things that may prevent us from getting, getting sick,

Merriwether (24:10):

I have to be careful because the FDA has certain rules about what you can and can't say, uh, yeah. Um, yeah, not allowed to say like plants will prevent diseases, but they can stimulate the immune system. They could, you know, people seem to have forgotten lately that they have an immune system. In fact, they have two immune systems. They have the innate and the active, the innate is the ones that are constantly patrolling the body, looking for invaders to try and get rid of it. And then the active is if the innate feels it's getting overwhelmed, they can't handle it. It releases the dogs of war, the killer white blood cells to attack the things that have tags. And there are plants that will both support the innate and the active, uh, speed up, especially in the case of the white blood cells, speed up the response time and the number of white blood cells that the body produces to attack invaders.

Merriwether (24:59):

So going back to the caveman lifestyle, um, looking at the bone said, yeah, the average life span was 40 years, right? Because by then you've suffered probably some sort of injury. You fell off a mountain near, you know, something like that. Uh, so, you know, but a lot of the plants help with what, uh, are generally considered lifestyle diseases. Um, we spent a lot more time as cavemen than we did in the modern world. And our body is still designed to deal with the caveman threats in the caveman issues. You know, is there something that they're going to eat me? Oh, have calories. Let's take all the calories we can because we may not find them tomorrow. Right. And so that's how we're programmed to respond to threats and also foods. I mean, they've shown that there are sensors in our stomach when you get sugar, it sends a signal to the brain that says, Hey, this stuff, eat more of it because you don't know when you're going to get it again. Well, yeah, we're going to get again in an hour, but the caveman it's, it's like, this is a miracle. Um, so by incorporating the, the plants of our ancestors that does help, you know, give the body what it thinks it needs, what it evolved, needing, what it evolved to using, to maintain its health and, you know, corn products, not so much corn. It was a pretty recent invention as far as the human racism involved, but we get a lot of corn in her diet, not as a lot of wild, not so, and

Roy - Feeding Fatty (26:44):

Not that, not that there wasn't fish and beef and the animals back in that day, but I just assume, you know, they were harder to catch, like you said, they could run plants couldn't. And so, um, I just figured that's why a lot of the diet, uh, ancient diets were built around plants. They were just easier to, easier to go out and capture them than an animal that was moving.

Merriwether (27:10):

Yeah. You know, I talked about, uh, calories. I make a big deal though. If you've ever watched the history channel alone, you know, it's basically the hunger games who can manage their calories the most here in Texas, West Texas, the native Americans had what they called second harvest. So they would eat a prickly pear, cactus, fruit loaded with seeds. The next day they would go through their feces, find the digested seeds and consumed them again because they, they were trying to squeeze every calorie they could out of the environment. Delicious. We got water burgers so much better, much better.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (27:51):

Well, the other thing, uh, a little bit may be off topic, but the, you know, I think our bodies are still on that. Not maybe not as much caveman as just the agrarian society, you know, that we were for so long, we wake up at, you know, when the sun comes up, we're out working, moving all day and then, you know, we go to bed, whereas now, you know, I get up and walk 10 feet to my desk and I'm like, I have to take a, I have to take a break. Cause I'm winded. You know, it was like, uh, you know, we just don't have the, um, the activity, we've got a lot more, you know, we just have access to these high caloric foods. And then of course the awesome shifts that we have today, you know, they jazz those up even more. But I think that's, uh, am I wrong in thinking that, you know, it's probably a good thing that, you know, plants can make a comeback because you know, we're not in as much need for the calories as we were, you know, at one time when we were out plowing the fields behind a horse.

Merriwether (28:58):

Yeah. And you're right. They did a study that 150 years ago, people were eating about the same number of calories as they are now, but they were rail thin because they were burning them up. Right. 80% of the population in the United States was agricultural based, you know, farming, growing, plowing, all that sort of thing. Right. And so there was a lot just more movement and activity and thought. Yeah. So sitting behind a desk is bad for us. So, um, yeah, my belief, the closer your foods are to what you evolved, eating the better your body is gonna respond to it, as opposed to some, you know, frozen TV or frozen burrito or something like that. A lot of process things, you know, there's, there's some real food there, but at least having part of your diet, it's still back to what we evolved with. Yeah. It has benefits.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (29:50):

Yeah. And what we have found I think is, uh, as we have become more aware of everything, it's just the, some of it is the basic control over what we put in our bodies is when you buy, the more pack is in preprocess. I mean, you can look at the label, but there's, who knows what some of that stuff is. And then, uh, you know, now we can control, you know, better salt, salt, I guess we'll look take that, you know, kind of the big one, a lot of processed food has tons and tons of salt. And so we are able to control that much better when we're cooking and doing things ourself.

Merriwether (30:27):

Right. Yeah. And it's easy to use a lot of wild foods. I, maybe I mentioned it, but the average person can probably get 10% of their food from the wild, you know, between their house, their neighbors down the street, things like that, you know, add to your salads, you know, you're out, uh, it's funny in my, my, my neighborhood there's 800 houses. And when someone new moves in, they're told about me and said, okay, there's this guy, he may knock on your door and asked to eat something from your yard. He's harmless. Yeah. But on the other hand, now, if someone needs something, I'm the guy that they, Hey, does anyone have, you know, the, the, the branch for installing a faucet? Oh yeah. They have it. You know? And so it's, it's like the neighborhood color, I dunno. Centered database.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (31:21):

Well, Mary, whether that, uh,

Merriwether (31:24):

I'm sorry. Can I interject something? Okay. Can, can you talk a little bit about medicine man plant company? Oh yeah. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So, like I said, after years of just treating myself and through the classes and so forth, I finally, uh, was able to expand out into commercial products. Uh, so January of 2020, we started medicine man, plant co, uh, and then the apocalypse hit, but what these are are. So we have like the liver pill, which is burdock root and milk thistle and flax seed. Uh, there's a lot of scientific support for burdock root speeding up the, uh, action of the liver. The milk the soul has, uh, found to maintain the integrity of liver cells under attack. If you eat a poisonous mushroom, the, uh, the only thing they have right now to treat that, uh, the liver damage caused by that.

Merriwether (32:21):

Cause it's usually what mushrooms do is they talk to the liver, uh, is a milk thistle extract. So we got that in here. Then the flax seed is in there to increase the bio availability. Um, I'll tell you right now, and I may get in trouble. A lot of herbal supplements. Their main product is really urine. So you want to make sure the plants are set up to maximize the bioavailability, the bio absorption, and we have the immune pill and it's hard to focus there. So this has the elderberry of the [inaudible]. Both of them shown to support the innate and active immune system, the cell field, which helps block the viruses from getting into cells. And then also cordyceps mushroom, which is a immune modulator. So if the immune system does start getting out of control, you might've heard of thing called a cytokine storm.

Merriwether (33:18):

Uh, there can be a help tamp it down some to keep it, you know, at the appropriate response, not too much, but also not too little. And then vitamin C and most people think vitamin C, but we threw it in here because vitamin C is actually the messenger molecule between the innate and the active immune system. And so if you're lacking in vitamin C, because it's used in so many different other processes in the body, uh, your innate it's kind of actually down low on the list of who gets to use it. And so if you don't have enough, it can't send the signal. It needs to the, uh, active form brain pill, lion's mane mushrooms, Sage Gingko, leaf increases, blood flow increases, neural connection, uh, and increases, focus, and attention. Of course, the moneymaker, the libido pill, we can probably have to go to detail.

Merriwether (34:09):

Um, and of course, like I said, they, the FDA says, you know, uh, um, it's the morning needed to do, to do, um, we can edit, okay. These statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. So, whereas the individual plants have been tested because the actual product has not, we can't make specific medical claims, but we can save the plants. And if you go to the website, I have all the scientific documentation as a scientist. I need the proof. So hopefully I didn't go too long on that.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (34:49):

I think it's a, it's an important distinction to make that, uh, you know, you're not a guy that woke up yesterday and said, Hey, I think I'm going to crush some plants and package them up. And so, I mean, the, you know, the PhD and, and tell us what that is, what yours is in again, I think it's in the, okay.

Merriwether (35:05):

Yeah. Physical, organic chemistry. So, you know, like not making molecules, figuring out which molecule you need to accomplish a task.

Terry - Feeding Fatty (35:13):

Right. Right. And, and on that note, Roy was saying that he needed to find energy. What do you suggest for energy? What helps with energy?

Merriwether (35:24):

Yeah. So, okay. There's two ways of approach it. Uh, so going back to the Burdoch word, uh, burdock root has been shown to speed up the process of the liver. When you are active in working you, your muscles are producing lactic acid. It's a waste product of the action. And so the lactic acid is removed from the blood by the liver. There's an equilibrium that sets up though, the, the muscles can only get rid of the lactic acid acid at a certain rate, because at a point the blood kind of becomes saturated with it. So the more quickly you can get rid of it by the liver, the longer your muscles can eject the lactic acid. So there's a lot of, of, uh, data that shows the burdock root helps with overall physical endurance and strength, because it helps, uh, prevent the fatigue that occurs in the muscles as they're working something. I also really like is a mixture of tumeric, cayenne pepper, and black pepper. I put that on my eggs every morning. I have a shaker and I put that on because that has been also shown to kinda increase metabolism, which has send you your SIS and blood flow. So you need the black pepper in there with the tumeric and the cayenne pepper to make those more bio absorbed.

Merriwether (36:49):

Yeah,

Roy - Feeding Fatty (36:50):

Because I had been, um, this has been a few years ago, I'd started taking the tumeric, um, supplement. And then, you know, when we kind of started getting back to cooking more and paying more attention, we actually got it in the, uh, the ground form where, like you said, we can add it to the food. And I just felt like I was getting a better quality and more equal distribution, you know, than taking the supplement. So, um, I've been very happy with that, but mixing it with the black pepper and the CA and the cayenne we'll check that out.

Merriwether (37:23):

Yeah. So you're like 50% tumeric, 50%, uh, cayenne pepper and just about 10%. So I guess you could say 45%, 45% and 5%, 10%, 10% of the black pepper. You only need a little bit of black pepper mixed in with it. So it tastes really good. Perfect. All right. Yeah. I wrote that down. That's cool. Ooh, can I give one other caveman a tip? Okay. So going back to the brain, uh, one of the things that the human race evolved doing was throwing things at stuff, and it's been showing that that helps the brain a lot and still do well. But, uh, juggling learning to juggle is great. Both exercise and for your brain. So interesting something to do. You spend 15 minutes a day juggling, so okay. As exercise for your brain and your body, and then eventually you get on like a, a ball and do it there. Yeah. You get the full body workout. Don't do it in the kitchen though. When you're first learning someplace less breakable

Speaker 4 (38:34):

There. Huh?

Roy - Feeding Fatty (38:38):

I can't believe I'm even going to say this, but the other day, the other day at lunch, uh, I turned the TV on, in the Beverly hillbillies was on and they were all excited. They were going to parade where they had a possum juggler. So I guess when you get, when you get, they get really good at it, you can not try juggling possibly, I guess. There we go. All right. Merriwether, uh, any, anything else Terry, before we wrap up?

Terry - Feeding Fatty (39:04):

Uh, no, I think that's it. I mean, it just, I'm so glad that you shared about the medicine man plant company. Um, well, just all of the information that you gave us, lots of food, food for thought and body and soul

Roy - Feeding Fatty (39:22):

Tell everybody how they can reach out and get a hold of you and get in touch with the medicine man plant company as well.

Merriwether (39:29):

Sure. So the website is medicine, man, plant code.com. And then on Facebook, of course, Facebook medicine, man, plant code.com. Uh, I also have the website for gene, Texas. DubDubDub for gene, texas.com. It has over 225 plants, uh, with all sorts of pictures and information and maps, both of Texas and of all of North America, because it's become, you know, nationwide sort of thing. So you can look up on there, I'm in the process of revamping it, cause it was started before smartphones. Um, but my goal for 28, you know, the first quarter of 2021 is to make it a lot more smartphone friendly. Well, yeah, you can find me there. And if you send an email to medicine, man, plant kill, I'm the guy that answers it.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (40:16):

Yeah. Before we get too far away from that, uh, why don't you tell us, uh, what are the forging classes? You know, how often do you do them work? And I'm sure you can find out more information on the website, but just tell us a little bit more about what's involved in those.

Merriwether (40:31):

Okay. So the most of them will be a four hour excursion across some piece of property. They're usually hosted by historic sites or state parks or other organizations, museums. The list of upcoming class can be found on the 4g in Texas. It's mainly in Minnesota or sorry, mainly in Texas. Uh, but then I go up to Minnesota at least once a year. And I'm also talking to some people out in Georgia, things like that, Louisiana. So we're expanded. Um, so he actually me

Roy - Feeding Fatty (41:03):

We'll add it to the field and uh [inaudible]

Merriwether (41:08):

Yeah. Cause a lot of people, there's, there's a fear factor. They look at a plant and they're like 80%, you know, someone can really looks, but you know, and so, you know, I take that and say, okay, here's, you know, we look at all the structures, look at your reason, this is the plan. Go ahead and need it. And you know, I encourage people, uh, really it's best if you have like two or three people along, so one can taking notes and one can be videoing at all. Cause you want to go back and look at a lot of this stuff, but yeah, it's four hours wandering around talking about the plants, but you can see that you can eat what you shouldn't eat. Right.

Roy - Feeding Fatty (41:48):

That was awesome. That sounded like a great excursion. So, uh, if y'all would just take some time to go over to the websites and uh, check out Merriwether and all the great things that he's got going on. And we certainly, again appreciate you taking time out of your day to be with us. It's been a very interesting and in a, in lightening talk for sure. Mark. Thank you. So I like to talk about,

Terry - Feeding Fatty (42:10):

Can't tell, hide that. Well,

Roy - Feeding Fatty (42:15):

All right guys, well, that's going to be it for us today. Uh, you can find us of course, at www dot feeding, fatty.com. Of course we are on, uh, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and this will, uh, when this episode goes live, of course we will have the video up on YouTube. So check us out. And uh, we're always open to suggestions for a new and different topics. If you're a professional that deals in the fitness, nutrition, uh, arena, you know, can help people out with their journeys on becoming healthier. We'd love to hear from you. So until next time, take care of each other and take care of yourself. Okay.

Terry - Feeding Fatty (42:54):

I'm Terry. Bye. Thank you.

www.feedingfatty.com