Anya Fernald is the co-founder of Belcampo farms, chef, and regenerative agriculture expert. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Anya's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anyafernald
Belcampo's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/belcampomeatco
Belcampo's Website: https://belcampo.com/

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Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
3:04 - Cooking is an art and a service
4:43 - Food is health
6:45 - Anticipation makes food taste better
8:36 - Lex on breaking the 72 hour fast
12:47 - Falling in love with cooking
14:28 - Alienation during the diet
17:09 - Cooking advice for minimalists
23:14 - Complexity of coconut oil
26:35 - Anya's favorite meal
33:18 - Sources of heat
35:46 - Why do people freak out about barbecue
38:58 - Does the origin of the meat itself make a difference?
41:06 - What is regenerative farming?
45:16 - AI will be a better farmer than humans
49:18 - Carbon negative farming is possible right now
51:05 - Certified Humane
54:34 - Evolutionary diet of animals
57:17 - Neuralink can help us understand animals 
1:01:13 - All grass-fed meat made the same?
1:05:58 - Health benefits of grass-fed beef
1:10:30 - What does it take to be a woman CEO of a meat company?
1:17:58 - Making cheese for Italian mafia
1:21:56 - How to judge a good meal?
1:23:58 - The best meal in the world
1:31:49 - Anya played oboe in the Sicily municipal band
1:33:23 - Hunting has inspired regenerative farming
1:38:07 - Meaning of life
1:39:27 - Advice for young people: grow through discomfort

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The following is a conversation with Anja Fernald, co-founder of Belcampo Farms, that was founded with the purpose to create meat that's good for people, the planet, and the animals, specifically treating their animals as ethically as possible.

In this, she sought to revolutionize the meat industry from the inside out.

She's also a scholar and practitioner of regenerative agriculture, and she's a chef who has appeared many times as a judge on Iron Chef.

Plus, she has 1 of my favorite food-related Instagrams.

On top of that, she's also a longtime friend of Andrew Huberman, which is how we first got connected.

Quick mention of our sponsors, Gala Games, Athletic Greens, 4 Sigmatic, and Fundrise.

Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that I got the chance to visit and spend a few days with Anya at Belcampo Farms in Northern California.

I met many animals there, from cows to pigs, and saw the amazing land on which they grazed.

I butchered meat, I watched Anya cook many amazing meals, I ate raw meat and cooked meat, and spent long hours at the bonfire, talking with friends and listening to the sounds of nature.

I hiked, swam in a cold mountain lake, and slept in a tent underneath the stars.

It was an amazing, eye-opening experience, especially in my first ever visit to a slaughterhouse.

The term slaughterhouse is haunting in itself.

The animals I met lived a great life, but in the end, they were slaughtered in the most ethical way possible, but slaughtered nevertheless.

Seeing animals with whom just the day before I made a connection be converted to meat that I then consumed was deeply honest to me.

This ethical farm, Belcampo, represents less than 1% of animals raised in the United States.

I could not escape the thought of the 40 to 50 billion animals worldwide raised in terrible conditions on these factory farms.

I've spent most of my life thinking about and being in contact with human suffering, but the landscape of suffering in the minds of conscious beings is much larger than humans.

I must admit that I still am haunted by human suffering more than animal suffering.

Perhaps I will 1 day see the wrong in me drawing such a line.

Either way, the visit to Belcampo Farms made me realize that I have not thought deeply enough about the ethics of my choices and the choices of human civilization with respect to animals.

And more importantly, I have not thought or learned enough about large scale solutions to alleviate animal suffering.

Bell Campo is paving the way on this and is the reason I wanted to show my support for their and Anja's efforts in regenerative farming and ethical treatment of animals.

This is the Lex Friedman Podcast and here is my conversation with Anja Vernald.

If you're watching the video version of this and are asking yourself why we're in nature right now.

There's actually a beautiful mountain in the background.

We're sitting behind a table nevertheless.

I'm wearing a suit and tie amidst nature.

We're going to talk about that, this incredible place you have here, but you cooked some meat yesterday.

So I'd love to talk about just the science and art of cooking first.

You as a chef, when you think of cooking, is it a science or is it an art?

Art to me because it's about creating something of beauty and being responsive and creating something that's expression of creativity and love.

Cooking also has a very strong element of service and it doesn't mean necessarily service to another person, but like service to health, wellness, environment.

There's an element of supporting through food in how I approach cooking.

So it's bigger than just like how the ingredients come together to form a taste.

It's the whole pipeline, like the fact that there's a lot of work that went into bringing the ingredients together and then, you know, making you, giving you the ability to make the meal and then who gets to consume the meal and the whole thing.

And you see that as service as opposed to just the taste.

Yeah, I also think of food as 1 of the key ways that we interact with our environment.

It's the part of our environment that goes inside us most visibly.

Of course, we interact with our environment.

We could have skin creams that have certain things in them or our clothes can then be absorbed.

There's things in the air, there's our water, and there's food, right?

It's like how we're engaging in the world physiologically.

It's the most significant way we engage in our environment.

We're extracting resources, calories, energy from the environment in various ways in order to preserve our bodies.

There's also so many feedback loops that I don't think we know the beginning of that our bodies are picking up on around nutrients, available nutrients, immune response.

Like there's deep levels of sensory evaluation that lead to health and alertness and wellness.

You hear about this a lot like with babies that, you know, if there's a risk of an infection that a mom's breast milk will help the baby develop a resistance.

Like there's this way that our bodies can tune into health and can't extrapolate from that in any specific way.

But think about that as an example of like the many ways in which our bodies are reading available nutrients and food to signal other aspects of wellness and health.

That said, the final product of cooking is, when done well, is really delicious.

And what we ate yesterday was really delicious.

So that aspect of it, bringing the ingredients together in a way that tastes delicious, Do you see that as a science or art?

I mean, the art is like creating temptation and indulgence and giving people pause, you know, like creating experience that's like so sensual.

And like, I love that about when I make something really simple and beautiful and delicious, the way that there's that moment of silence at the table.

And that to me is the moment of art, like appreciation.

I mean, We got to watch you make the stuff over a fire.

So the calmness of the air, I mean, that's an experience.

We don't often get to see that experience of the preparation.

Maybe that's the most delicious part of a meal is the anticipation of it.

That's something that I'm glad you bring up because it's an element that with eating so many of our meals like out of a bag and the instance where you start to eat the meals when the delivery shows up

you might smell something when you open the bag, right?

And no judgment on that, that's something I do too, right?

But that does take away a whole element of surprise and delight.

And also, I think, of your body's ability to prepare for it.

You know, you think about our most common memories of childhood, for those of us who grew up in homes with parents who cooked, is smell of things cooking.

it's not the eating of it, it's the smell of things cooking.

That's what you remember about your experiences of food is the moment of like sweet anticipation of this great sensual experience that's gonna be really gratifying on these emotional and physical levels.

So I think we're also resonating on those memories because it's like, it's an experience of food where the sensuality of it is kind of extended.

So it's a long kind of arc of buildup and then you're eating it and it's amazing, and then you're enjoying it and your body feels good.

So all those pieces together, it's a much more memorable experience than just grabbing the cookie out of a bag, right?

So look at our own and just revisit in your mind the memories of food, the most compelling ones.

It's the smell and then the experience and then sometimes how 1 felt, right?

Yeah, and the people involved with the smell.

So like somehow it's all tied in together, whether it's family or people close to you, or even if it's just chefs.

There's something about the personality of the human involved in making the food that kind of sticks with you in the memory.

And for me, I recently did a 72 hour fast.

And there's a kind of sadness after you eat that it's over.

I think the most delicious part was the, I went to the grocery store and just actually walking around and looking at food with like everything looked delicious Even like the crappiest stuff looked delicious and I I missed that I I really enjoyed that anticipation And then I picked out the meal I went home and I cooked it and the whole thing took, I don't know, maybe 2, 3 hours, like the whole process.

And that was the most delicious part and the first taste of course.

And then after it was over, there's a bit of a sadness because the part I remember is the buildup, the anticipation And then once you eat, it's over.

We kind of focus on the destination, but it's the whole journey.

The whole, like, even if you go to a restaurant, it's the conversations leading up to the meal and the first taste of the meal.

And if you get to watch the making of that meal, that's incredible.

That's where the smell, the visual, how the ingredients come together, especially as we were looking over the fire, like watching it, the fire play with the raw meat, and over time, bring out the colors, bring out the, I don't know, like you can visually associate the flavor, how it becomes a little bit burnt on the outside, it has a crispiness to it, it starts to gain that crispiness, and immediately your past memories of the delicious crispiness of various foods you've eaten are somehow mapped into your, immediately you start to taste it visually.

I don't know, yeah, that experience is magical.

And of course, maybe it's the Russian thing, but I'm almost saddened when it's over.

I think fasting is gaining in popularity because we're having to relearn the importance of being hungry in anticipation and delight.

We have such a fear of hunger, and that's really functional in evolution.

But we have this deep fear of hunger, and part of the great American experience has been that we don't have to be afraid of hunger at all, because there's food everywhere, and it's really cheap.

In all that abundance, we've lost this edge of hunger and we don't let ourselves get hungry.

And that's 1 thing that I learned in part of my journey as a cook and chef has been, you know, moving abroad was the first time when I lived out of the US, was the first time that I regularly experienced hunger because the time between meals was really long.

And so I was hungry for 2 hours before lunch.

And that was the first time in my life that there hadn't just been readily available snacks.

So I wonder if the intermittent fasting and part of the popularity around it, I'm sure there's all these amazing metabolic things that are happening, but also people might also feel better because they're really anticipating and enjoying food.

And then if you look at the feelings of fullness, there's a really interesting thing that happens when you cook and your sense of fullness, which is if you cook and you're hungry, the experience of being around the food, smelling it, touching it, sampling it, you'll take your hunger down by

But as, I mean, we've all had the experience of cooking Thanksgiving, and the cook never kind of wants to eat that much Thanksgiving.

But when you really dive in and you're cooking for a few hours and you're smelling and smelling and smelling, it totally changes your threshold of satiety and fullness because of other sensory things that are happening.

And for those of us looking to maintain weight and something to consider in this is that cooking is also part of what your appetite, when you're hungry, what are you hungry for?

So we tend to think about calories, but when you're hungry, you might also be hungrier for a wider range of things.

And it might be smells, it might be stopping.

There's other elements and that's something, think as a cook that it's powerful to explore and be with and observe how your hunger changes when you're cooking.

When did you first fall in love with cooking?

Me falling in love with cooking was about solving a problem in my family.

And it had to do with my mom feeling very anxious about cooking and overwhelmed frequently when it came to meals.

And I'm naturally very good at juggling a lot of things.

And it was just something I could dive in and help, and help my dad, who I'm very, very close to.

So it was a very functional role where I would see this kind of crescendo of anxiety around mealtimes as a kid and would be able to dive in and solve things.

She was, I remember her telling me as a kid, I was asking her about church and why she went to church.

And she's like, I mostly go to church because I get to cook for the potlucks.

And so there was an openness around that, but she just loved to cook for people and there was this real tenderness and expression of that love.

So Seeing women in my life who had this like real tenderness and love that they shared through food, and then also being able in my own home to kind of pitch in and add value and help my mom and dad was really powerful for me.

I felt like, oh man, I just made this stressful thing go away.

I don't know if you can comment on, especially for me growing up in Russia, it's probably true in a lot of cultures, maybe every culture, that food, and especially in a family, the mother that cooks is the source of love and like ties the family together it creates events where everyone comes together it's it's 1 of the only chances of togetherness of the thing that bonds a family is like dinner or food, eating together.

When I was on stricter diets, especially competing and cutting weight and stuff, it felt like I was almost like losing opportunity to connect with friends and family.

It's almost like cultures, we cannot fully experience love and family without eating.

And on the flip side of that, eating enables us to experience love and family.

It's a tough 1, because there's lots of layers around kind of gender roles and families changing and things.

I'd say I agree around the alienation, and I've done carnivore diet, and I've tried some of these extreme protocols and I too I suffered from loneliness.

You know, it was like doing carnivore and not being able to eat what my kids ate and talk about it at the same time.

Those pieces are real and I wonder with all of these diets if that structure is actually helping or just taking away from people's kind of sensual understanding.

But I think that there's some rigor around that that helps people discover what's good for them by Eliminating and then growing towards more intuitive food is a good evolution from that base.

I love to pay attention to their their way of being and read what they'd like to eat and it's my my purest way of love And that's for everybody in my life.

I actually love to cook for people I love.

You know, I don't, I would struggle to be, you know, putting out food all the time.

It's like something for me, it's a real act of caretaking.

And I definitely notice in times of like, of real stress, that's the piece that drops off, right?

And it's like, if I'm unable to care for myself, I have a hard time cooking.

So for me, it's very emotional, it's very connected to love.

And individualistic, so like focused on the particular individual.

It's almost like a journey of understanding what that person is excited about in the landscape of flavors.

Figuring that person out, what they like, what they love to eat.

I see cooking from, I mostly cook for myself.

So I see that as almost a, this is gonna be like the worst term, but like an act of self-love.

That like it's almost an exploration of like what brings me joy.

And it's surprising because I usually don't share because the things that bring me joy are the simplest ingredients.

Like I'm 1 of those people, I don't know if you can psychoanalyze me because you also like basic ingredients.

I like a single ingredient, 2 ingredients because I feel like I can deeply appreciate the particular ingredient then.

You know people who are really good listening to music, they can hear a piece of music and in their mind extract the different layers and enjoy different layers at a time, like the bass, the drums, the different layering of the piano, the beats and all that kind of stuff.

That's what it means to truly enjoy music, to listen to a piece over and over, like almost like as a scholar.

And that same way for food, I just can't do more than like 3 because then it's just I have to give in to the chaos of it, I guess.

But when it's just a basic ingredient, like just meat or just the vegetable, like basic grilled without sauces, without any of that, that I've discovered is what brings me a lot of joy but that's boring to a lot of people So I usually have to be kind of private about that joy.

I guess as a chef, you have to figure that out about everybody that you care for.

Well, also for you, you're very interested in things and interested in things being done well and appreciating them.

So the single ingredient also allows you to control for perfection in cooking that, which is probably really appealing to you.

And I think sometimes I see people also in the beginning of their journey of culinary trying to do too many things, right?

So there's another piece too that you'll notice if you recall last night I grilled us a salad, right?

then I did all those pieces separately and that's something in general to be really attentive of when you're building flavor, to make sure you pay attention to every piece separately.

The idea that you can, okay, with a soup or something or a stew, there's workarounds, but to make a great dish that's got 4 or 5 vegetables in it, cook them all separately to their optimal deliciousness and then combine them.

It's like you may also be able to look at the different ingredients separately and still have that sense of like understanding of it.

But there's too often that we're layering together like 4 or 5 things and then cooking them all at once and then surprised that it's not delicious.

Because you can't really optimize on multiple variables at the same time for peak awesomeness.

And that's actually, The number 1 way you see this is roasting a whole chicken, which is a really difficult, it's the simplest dish, but it's very difficult because you have the breast meat, which is bigger chunks, they cook faster, you have the thighs and drums, which are smaller and they cook slower.

To optimize that and pay attention to it and do it all right, you're actually solving for different outcomes.

So there's 1 example, but oftentimes food is less delicious with multiple ingredients at the start because we're not able to pay attention to how each 1 needs to end up.

So there's a way to parse that apart and achieve a better outcome.

I don't know if you've seen Gero Dreams of Sushi.

So there's an obsession that that particular, first of all, set of humans, but also the particular cuisine that focused on the basics of the ingredients.

What do you think of that kind of trying to achieve mastery through repeating the making of the same meal over and over and over for like decades.

Like, do you find beauty in that journey towards mastery or do you think it should be always an exploration to where you're always trying things, you're always kind of injecting new flavors, new experiences, all that kind of stuff?

You know, if we're talking about an art, it's equivalent to saying, am I a sculptor or a painter?

That, the sushi lexicon thing, that's a very, very narrow, small canvas that you're painting on.

There's a beauty and a perfection to that.

It's like, I mean, there's many things culturally around that that you could extrapolate for specifically for Japan.

But I encourage people on the journey in food to choose like kind of a language that they're working within.

And if you want to step out of that occasionally and have 1 or 2 dishes, but if you want to get mastery with food, you probably aren't going to be able to get more than say 20 ingredients that you use regularly that you really understand.

And so we often see, you know, I see the American pantry, it's got tons of sauces and tons of spices and tons of spice blends.

And then really people only use just a couple of things.

And the idea that you can sort of splash out and do Korean 1 night and then tacos the next night.

You can, absolutely, but to get in a regular cadence of specific ingredients, you're probably gonna get more mastery with that sooner.

And I think as much as you can do to get an understanding of the basics around salt and acid and understand your palate, for me it's lemon and usually sherry vinegar, right?

And my fat palates, you know, suet and butter, olive oil.

So you can sort of choose your language, what you're painting with,

I wouldn't splash out and say, do I use sesame oil?

Yeah, every once in a while, but that's not part of my base palette, right?

Can you say again what your fat palette is?

I like the flavor for finish because of the bitterness that it adds.

So I like the bitter and acid contrast on meat and vegetables, which is mostly what I eat.

And so I love that way that the bitterness and astringency complements and allows the flavors to come out.

I recently discovered that there's a, I don't know, there's a sweetness or there's something to it that I really enjoy.

I like it in coffee, like I like it as a treat a little bit.

I find the flavor a little bit challenging in foods.

I also find that it's difficult on the quality of that ingredient.

So I've found often that I buy a high quality coconut oil and there's rancidity in it.

I think it's just the cold chain and how that product's packaged.

I've had some issues with product quality in that.

But for me, it's a little bit too much sweetness in my foods.

But then again, I don't cook in like a Southeast Asian palate.

I try to not have much sweetness in my foods in general.

So I, just because of the palate that I like to cook with.

So for me, coconut's got a little bit too much of those high notes and earthiness, which is a nice combination, but it's more like a treat.

It has a flavor of its own that almost stands on its own.

That's probably the only oil I could enjoy by itself.

It sounds weird to say, but it feels like fat is often a thing that enriches the flavor of something else.

You might also be responding to that it's a complex flavor.

So there's also, there's an analogous, you know, if you look at butter, for example, A lot of the butter that we eat in the U.S.

If you explore like a cultured fermented butter, maybe a grass milk, grass-fed and finished butter, you're going to get a ton more complexity.

And so you may also just be responding to having fats with more flavor, which is the journey in the US has been towards refined foods that are very neutral and then you have to combine more of them to make things taste like things And so if you're coming from a background of using mostly just generic butter, or let's say canola oil to cook with, those are very neutral oils.

So you can also take some of your favorite fats and look for versions of them that are more flavorful.

I mean, I love olive oil as a treat in a spoon.

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Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat | Lex Fridman Podcast #203