Kim Vopni (00:01.049)
Hi, James, welcome to the podcast. Super excited to have you here. We just, well, we've met in person before, but we just saw each other a couple of weekends ago in Austin and I got to try your amazing product for the first time. So I've heard, I've heard about you. I've met you, I've heard about your product, but that was the first time that I actually got to taste it and it was delicious. And, and we bought all the flavors. So I'm excited to have this chat with you all about
James Barry (00:26.574)
you
Kim Vopni (00:31.191)
organ meats and the amazing seasonings you have created using organ meats. But before we go down into what you've created, how did you come to the path of creating this product in the first place?
James Barry (00:43.884)
Yeah, I'm still trying to figure that out myself. It just feels very humbling. You know, I feel like nowadays most new foods are laboratory made. And so I feel incredibly just honored that. My combining these two very natural foods is nothing in pluck is synthetic. Nothing is laboratory made. It's all just utilizing real food, but.
Kim Vopni (00:47.307)
Yeah
James Barry (01:12.832)
utilizing modern tech preservation techniques. And I'm just honored that I was the vessel that came up with this, but if I do kind of dig a little deeper, would say that maybe it attributes to the type of chef I have been. I've always had a passion for cooking, but underneath that passion was always, it's a love language for me. It's my way of showering love on people. It's my way of trying to help people.
throughout my 20 plus years as chef, it's always been about how can I support someone's health? Like how can I not only get them to eat healthy food, but do it in a way where I'm meeting them, where they already are and not having them too far out of that comfort zone or not too far out of that feeling deprived or just feeling like, I'll do this for a short amount of time.
and then I'll fall right back off. You know, the yo-yo thing that most of us experience. My goal was how do I get healthy food to become a lifestyle? And to the point where you're actually craving and choosing it instead of, you know, the alternative.
Kim Vopni (02:24.709)
I love that you started out as a, as you've mentioned, you've 20 plus years as a chef, you've cooked for some very famous people. And, and then like, what was the transition from cooking, like being a celebrity chef to creating your own line of products.
James Barry (02:44.654)
Yeah, there wasn't in between. I was cooking for, you know, biggest A-list actor of the time, you know, Tom Cruise. I guess he still is really, he's still like the biggest actor. And yet I still, felt like while I really loved working with him, I just felt like I need to help more people. It's not just about helping.
the one person and so I left him and I started a meal delivery service and it was definitely one of those circumstances where I knew how to cook, but did I know how to actually run a food business? And the answer is to definitively no. That business killed me. Like I, I was getting gray hairs around my heart. I was like having panic attacks. I mean,
Kim Vopni (03:21.733)
Yeah
James Barry (03:34.124)
I ran that for eight years and I muscled through it I learned and it was very much like my business school, but holy moly was it hard. I left, I left LA. I grew that business from nothing to hundreds of clients and then sold the business, not for much money, but I really just had to sell it to get out. My health was suffering so much. was.
Kim Vopni (03:41.701)
I can imagine.
James Barry (03:58.734)
For eight years, I barely got any sleep. was always working. Even if we were out of town, I was still working. And it just, I had created the business where it wasn't really scalable. Cause I was trying to be a private chef for everyone. And that's great when you have five clients, but when you have 120, that's really hard. Cause you're basically making 120 versions of the same food. It was literally insanity. So I,
Kim Vopni (04:19.044)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (04:23.651)
Yeah, my gosh.
James Barry (04:27.862)
I got out of that, we moved out of LA, and then I had a very unique experience. I had about four years where I was just a stay-at-home dad. And I gotta tell you, and everyone listening, that was the hardest job I have ever done. And if anyone out there that's listening has been a stay-at-home parent, kudos to you. truly, you need, if you haven't gotten the love from the...
people in your family for doing that role, you need to get that because it really was challenging. And yet it did afford me time to rest and it did give me my health and creativity back. And it was during that time that I came up with PLUK and ultimately, PLUK is taking organ meats, which are mother nature's multivitamin or the healthiest, most nutrient dense food on the planet. And
It was my taking the freeze dried powder form of those organ meats and combining them with seasoning so that you could literally just salt your food and not only get the micro dosing the organ meats, but enhance the flavor of your food and therefore enhance the health of the food. And it's, it's because we season our food all the time, that's cumulative effect. it's micro dosing plus frequency equals cumulative effect. And I came up with this really because I was a father or I am a father and
Kim Vopni (05:39.909)
Thanks
Kim Vopni (05:43.749)
frequency
James Barry (05:51.766)
And I wanted to get these foods into my kids and I wanted to get it into them without headaches, without the, what I hear everyone goes through, or at least everyone that tries with organ meats is you spend your time making some kind of pate, you serve it and no one eats it but you. And so I was trying to alleviate that headache and make it so easy that no matter whether you're eating out or eating in,
Kim Vopni (06:01.828)
what I hear.
James Barry (06:20.066)
You just season the food with it and feel the love from your family because they all think the food tastes so good. And then you feel the internal love of like, I just got Oregon meats and my kids and it was effortless.
Kim Vopni (06:34.571)
Yeah. So I can't say that a lot of people, at least this is my interpretation. Growing up, I remember my mom cooking liver. And I didn't view it as feeling the love I didn't feel the love of liver. You could call me maybe a picky child. But even now the thought of eating liver, I think about what I didn't like about it as a kid. However, I do know the health benefits. So even if it's not a picky child, could
There's a lot of people who would struggle with the thought of an organ meat and not just liver, but any, any organ meat. And so I think you're, you have tackled this in such a incredibly brilliant way. and I want to get into all the benefits, but just one small question, where did the word pluck come from?
James Barry (07:21.186)
Yeah, it's not fun. It's a 15th century term for organ meats. So if you actually, anyone can look it up and you'll see, yes, it says like, you know, plucking a bird and things like that. And we'll talk about plucky attitude. And then like the third definition is animal organ meats. Yeah. And so I can't take credit for it though. The branding company that I found, they came up with it, but the minute I heard it, I was like, that's fun.
Kim Vopni (07:27.289)
No, no way.
Kim Vopni (07:41.113)
Wow, okay, all right.
James Barry (07:51.128)
Cause I'm very aware, know, we do, we, to your point, we carry these, you know, food has emotional weight, right? Whether it's the person who made it, whether it's the time of period in our life when we were either forced to eat it or introduced to it, whether it's good or bad, whatever it is that, you know, food is emotional. And, and so I kind of just gathered that like, I didn't grow up eating or meat. I gathered that organ meats kind of tend to have more so than not.
Kim Vopni (08:09.445)
Mm-hmm.
James Barry (08:20.31)
a kind of icky or grossed out kind of negative thought or feeling that attached to them. And so I was like, when I heard that word, I was like, well, that's fun. Like I almost, feel like we have to counteract the negative association with something that's more fun and light. And so I just thought that that is something we can work with that. And into this day, like when at the conferences, when people buy it, if I'm feeling cheeky, say, well, you just got plucked.
Kim Vopni (08:34.564)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (08:47.469)
Yeah.
James Barry (08:47.5)
You know? It's like I have fun with it.
Kim Vopni (08:50.553)
Yeah, yeah, I remember sitting in a week. James and I are in a business mastermind together and I remember sitting at the table about all the different plucks we could we could go with and it was it was quite a fun time. So I love it. I love the name. I love now knowing where it's come from as well. So a big challenge that people have in my community. There's many different
I would say health concerns or health aspects that your product can help with. And a big one in my community is gut health and constipation, but really optimizing gut health. And this is something that you speak a lot about. how can organ meats in general, actually, let's take a step back. When you say you've created the seasoning with organ meats, my mind always immediately goes to the liver. But what other organs are included? And then if you can expand on that as to how it can benefit our gut health.
James Barry (09:44.13)
Yeah, I love that you're asking that because it's true. Everyone always just goes to liver and it is quite funny. You know, if you think about it, we're living in an age where you're either on one one side of the aisle, it's Franken foods, you know, all these old prostitutes. But then on the other side, it's like always the same cuts. Like most people, it's like rib eyes or New York strips. And then if they are eating arguments, it's always liver. But when in the history of humans,
Kim Vopni (09:57.733)
Mm-hmm.
James Barry (10:12.418)
Have we ever been in such a luxurious mode where we choose only one cut or only processed foods, you know, like these expensive things, like ancestrally, that would have been taboo because if you, if you killed an animal with all the effort, went to kill that animal. And then you just took the ribeye. People around you would like stone you because they'd be like, you just wasted, you know,
Kim Vopni (10:38.733)
Yeah. Yes.
James Barry (10:41.454)
99 % of the animal and resources were slim, right? So everyone used everything they could. So I think it's really bizarro that we're now thinking like that. And ultimately I think that's what I'm trying to shift is I'm trying to get people back to eating the whole animal. And when we talk about OFL, which is another name for organ meats, and I'm pronouncing it specifically OFL because
If you, there's multiple ways to pronounce it, right? You can say awful or you can say awful. So while awful may be more appropriate to the emotional, you know, your emotional, um, reality, um, we say awful just to start a, you know, move away from it. And I'm even starting to try to use the word freedom meats. And, and, and really, cause the idea of being it's free from, right? It's freedom with your health. It's freedom of choice, you know, making sure that we can eat the whole animal and
And while people might think, that's interesting, you're just creating terms. But honestly, if you look historically at organ meat, the names of organ meats, the government, even around World War II, was coming up with new names for it. They were calling it variety meats. That's when we got these different terms because they've, throughout time, well, really since the industrial revolution, but when we started eating more kind of.
having more money and then also eating more processed foods, meats have gone out of favor. And so we're clearly in a period where they have, well, I would say actually three years, four years ago, they were out of favor still, but they're actually on the up, the incline. Like they're actually becoming more and more in favor. But O-ful refers to everything but the muscle meat and the bone. So that would include like stomach lining, which is tripe.
Kim Vopni (12:13.007)
three years, four years ago they were out of favor still but they're actually on
Kim Vopni (12:23.109)
to everything.
Kim Vopni (12:30.661)
is tripe that's found in mixed condition.
James Barry (12:31.82)
you know, that's found in a Mexican dish called menudo, for example, that could include all the common ones like liver, heart and kidney, but it also includes spleen and pancreas, lungs, brain, testicles, tail, lips, know, eyes, it really does extend outwards. And the idea,
Kim Vopni (12:42.693)
of spleen, and pancreas, lungs, brain, testicles, tail, lips, eyes. It really does extend outwards.
James Barry (12:58.114)
that really started a long time ago. Even Native Americans used to follow this concept, but the whole idea of eating the whole animal is that there is this concept of like supports like. So the parts of that animal you're eating are supporting those parts in you. And if we pull back for a second, it kind of makes sense. Cause what are you told to eat when you're trying to build muscle? Muscle, right? So, and what are you told to eat? know, like there was an experiment done in the 1940s or 30s
Kim Vopni (13:06.661)
is that there is this concept of like sports like so the parts of that animal you're eating are supporting that sports like
Yep.
James Barry (13:28.14)
where this woman got a whole bunch of kids kind of together in one area and then she kept them there. And I don't know if they were all orphans, but she was able to do an experiment where they were kept in one building throughout a specific amount of time. And they could go out and play, but they were allowed to control these kids' foods. And she was trying to do an experiment showing like kids don't just...
Kim Vopni (13:52.843)
She was trying to do an experiment showing like kids don't just want candy. Like they will eat.
James Barry (13:56.854)
want candy like they will eat what their bodies need if you make sure that those foods are available and some of the top foods the kids you ate and these were all very young kids was brain because that stuff was available then beef brain and bone marrow and when you think about from that like sports like perspective it's like well what are why were the kids instinctively going for those foods there were lots of other foods why those foods
Kim Vopni (14:01.793)
sure that those foods are available. And some of the top foods, the kids you ate, these were all very young kids, was brain, because that stuff was available then.
Hmph.
James Barry (14:25.998)
Well, isn't that what they're developing the most at those ages? Is there bone health, right? Isn't that interesting? you know, and there's lots of studies that have been in standard process has done a lot of studies around glandular. How, for example, if you don't have a gallbladder, you do need to supplement to help process fats. And what do they have you supplement with? Well, ox bile, right? So they're actually giving you the glandular from an animal and their
Kim Vopni (14:28.387)
yeah that's so interesting
Kim Vopni (14:50.906)
Mm-hmm.
James Barry (14:55.704)
giving that you to support that digestion. So, and it's because they've done studies to show that when you take a supplement with that specific animal gland, that it targets that gland in you. So.
Kim Vopni (15:08.837)
I know that happens with thyroid to a lot of people will take desiccated thyroid and yeah, interesting.
James Barry (15:14.478)
Exactly. So there are experiments kind of proving this like supports like, but I have to think that one of the reasons why we are all suffering so much is because we aren't eating that whole animal anymore. And if you think about it from, you know, food is being information, you know, and it's ancestral is eating then isn't really a diet. It's more of a blueprint because our bodies already know these foods.
Kim Vopni (15:40.676)
Yeah.
James Barry (15:44.278)
And really when you eat these foods, you're telling your body, hey, you're safe. You're supported. And it's, I've never really thought of it in those words. I used to describe, when I have bone broth, it just feels so warming and I can feel my body like curling in on itself. And it feels like I'm wearing a warm coat and I'm all curled up, you know, nesting in my bed. But now I'm like, no, that's actually my, that blueprint thing. That's my body feeling safe.
Kim Vopni (15:47.321)
You
Kim Vopni (16:00.037)
you
Kim Vopni (16:12.665)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
James Barry (16:13.792)
and supported. And that is something that I think we all need more than ever because it's such an unsafe time with all the toxins in our environment, with the awarenesses we have globally that are so different than what we ancestrally were biologically. We were not designed to know what's going on throughout the entire world. Or, you I know you're a big influencer, it's just like, we weren't designed to know.
Kim Vopni (16:20.503)
Yeah.
James Barry (16:42.666)
what tens of thousands of people think about us. Like our nervous systems are all being rocked on a daily basis due to these stressors. And so we need foods that make us feel safe and supported.
Kim Vopni (16:45.22)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (16:49.827)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kim Vopni (16:57.731)
Yeah, something else that's coming to mind as you're speaking, I don't remember who said this. There was it was there was one person at the health optimization summit that we were both just at and there was somebody else who before then had said, part of why we are now he said part of the hunger comes from the lack of nutrients in our food. And it's the body
We've just eaten a big meal, but how could we still be hungry? Well, we're hungry because the food we're eating is depleted and our body is not it. So it's it's giving you the signal of hunger because it says I need more of X nutrient. I need more of this and this is just another another way to say that same thing.
James Barry (17:40.622)
Well, it's, so flavor ancestrally represented nutrition. So when you were out and about, you know, foraging, whatever it was, if you found something that looked juicier, you you remember it was visual. We didn't have a word for these things necessarily, right? So you were going off of visual, visually seeing something, your body being attracted to it, the touch when you grabbed it, this feels like there's something in it.
bringing it closer to your nose, you're smelling it now. So these are all communication pathways that were activating knowledge and that really the bodies, these homo sapien bodies were in have been designed to, it's almost like hardwired to understand. So all of our senses are compiling this information. And if you put it up to your mouth, you bite it, the juices go down your, you know, your.
and you're tasting this food and then your body says, is this gonna nourish me or kill me? Those are really the two questions I was trying to answer, right? And if it had a flavor, like a sweet flavor, that's, this is gonna nourish me. That's literally what it meant. And so then you devoured it, but because you were eating it, you stopped when your body told you, hey, I've gotten the nutrition in me because it was nutritious. But now we're in a world where food has flavor.
Kim Vopni (18:36.045)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (18:59.012)
Yeah.
James Barry (19:03.874)
but it has no nutrition. If we take like strawberries, can have strawberry flavor, but none of the nutrition a strawberry has. So your body is being tricked. It's literally tricked because it's hardwired to think, flavor, flavor, okay, this is good. This is good. And then you're eating it. And suddenly you've eaten the whole bag or box and your body's like, wait, what's, you know, it's confused. It's like, I didn't get any of the nutrition that I'm hardwired to expect from flavor. So it's really...
Kim Vopni (19:23.917)
Yeah.
James Barry (19:32.982)
On a certain level, it's kind of embarrassing because we, we are the only species in the world that looks to someone else to tell us what to eat. And yet there's over 9 million species. So we clearly did know at one point and we've mucked it up. We've literally mucked it up so much. We've plucked it up so much that now we're confused. And not only are we confused in the head where our body is confused.
Kim Vopni (19:40.261)
to someone else to tell us what to eat.
Kim Vopni (19:48.451)
Yeah, we've plucked it up. We've plucked it up.
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (20:03.971)
Yeah, that's so brilliant. I love the way that you've shared that. And it's so so true. So coming back to the gut health, even as you were talking about what we used to do, that's part of our digestive process is seeing the food, anticipating eating the smell, the everything will start the digestive process. And that is not like we're void of that as well.
James Barry (20:21.442)
everything.
James Barry (20:25.59)
It's called the neuro-lingual response. you have to think of it. I mean, it's so important. So going back to the, didn't know how to eat. Okay. And I'm not saying we're going to become like cave people again. I'm just saying, okay, so now we're in a society where we are confused. So how can we get a little bit more in tune with that innate knowledge? Cause it is there. It's still there. We just have to use the biological systems that we've designed.
to get that communication from that neural response is sensorial. It ha and you have to eat the food. You have to chew it. You have to go slow enough where your body can get that communication. And then you just have to be mindful in receiving the communication and it's happening all the time. I mean, like you ever talk about muscle testing with your audience.
Kim Vopni (20:57.914)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (21:20.229)
I don't, but I've had a few people who talk about that, yes.
James Barry (21:23.246)
Yeah, so muscle testing is very much a practice that a lot of, uh, nutritious and a lot of even functional doctors will use. And it's, basically showing how your body already knows by on a biological level, like what it needs or what it doesn't want. And it shows up by, know, can you hold it? You know, you people may have seen the experiment or had it done on them where you hold your arm straight out. Someone pushes on it, but it can be a lot more subtle than that. So.
Has you know, have you ever experienced where you're at the grocery store and you're going to grab something that is probably very processed, but you're just grabbing it because you're like, I'm just feeling whatever emotion and I'm going to grab this. And then it fumbles out of your hand and you actually have trouble grabbing it. That is nothing. But we'll notice it. Cause I have, I think I've gone to grab something and it falls and I'm like, wait, what's going on? And, and that is a form of muscle testing or.
Kim Vopni (22:10.145)
No, but I'm going to pay attention to that now.
Interesting.
James Barry (22:21.804)
Maybe you've had this happen, you go to grab something and your stomach starts to turn. Or maybe you flat your, you know, flatulence happens or something happens. You burp something happens in your body as you go to grab this thing. That is my, that's a form of muscle testing. So these kinds of things are happening all the time. And we're either so depleted nutritionally that we're not, we're thinking, I just need to eat and we're choosing bad foods or.
Kim Vopni (22:29.465)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (22:35.418)
Hmm.
James Barry (22:50.804)
Or it could also be that we're under slept, know, so because we make poor decisions when we don't get enough sleep, but we're either making excuses for why we need ex food or we're getting communication and we're just not listening to it. So either it's either heady or it's just out of touch, but they both don't serve us very well. So I'm really, my hope is
Kim Vopni (22:54.137)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (23:07.813)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (23:11.545)
Yeah. Yeah.
James Barry (23:18.836)
is that as we start to eat these nutrient dense foods, these ancestral foods, it doesn't matter in what form, you know, I mean, look, I would love you to not do capsules because we already get too many capsules in our diet, but if that's the way that works for you, great. I'm more for just get it in your diet and get it in the form that works for you. And then once you get it in your diet, if you can start getting more choosy, then yeah, choose it as.
know, pluck a seasoning where you're eating it or literally eat it, you know, and I can even give tips of how people can ease those into their diet before we're done here. but I'm hoping that if you start to get into your diet, you start to then get these nutrients in your body and you start to feel better in your body. start to see and experience the benefits. And then what's kind of cool is if you do something long enough, that could be negative, like eating chocolate all the time or.
Kim Vopni (23:48.761)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (23:52.953)
Mm-hmm.
James Barry (24:14.57)
or eating organ meats, your body will start to crave it. You know, like I never liked chocolate, but then I started to eat it enough and then I started to crave it. You know, so to stop craving it, I had to cut it out of my diet. And the same thing happens with nutrient dense food. The more you do it, the more you will start to crave it, but you have to get over that hump of it's unfamiliar to now it's familiar.
Kim Vopni (24:35.098)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (24:38.789)
So from all of the, there's loads of benefits with, let's start with the gut. Cause we've kind of been on that, you know, digestive and that's something that's a lot of people struggle with. So it could be the lack of fiber. It could be lack of just the whole digestive process, how they're eating, how fast they're eating. But now if we're adding in pluck, what could the benefits be specific to the gut by eating Oregon meats and specifically your seasonings?
James Barry (25:07.158)
Yeah, I mean, what you want to remember is that so everything that science will tell you that you need to create life, you know, is basically they'll say prenatal and really prenatal are just catch all multivitamins there. They're covering as much as science has found we need in creating life. Well, every one of those vitamins and minerals are in orgamines, including even vitamin D. It's in orgamines.
Vitamin C it's in organ meats. so really what you find is like, you find things like co Q 10 is in beef heart and co Q 10, if you're in this kind of supports that like sports, like if you've done any cardio, you know, done anything around cardiovascular health or, or, you know, supplements, uses co Q 10 cause it's vital for like energy production and prevention of oxidative stress.
spleen, for example, has heme iron and it's five times more heme iron than liver and heme iron is the most absorbable form of iron. So anyone listening that is, anemic and you're not eating organ meats. Please start organ meats. I guarantee you'll see quick results. mean, just start getting them in your diet and you'll see results as fast as a couple of weeks. It's, it's amazing how quickly, because you gotta remember.
Kim Vopni (26:15.845)
So anyone listening that is an email.
Yeah.
James Barry (26:37.25)
We're not taking isolated laboratory forms of these vitamins and minerals. We're taking mother nature's form. And so one of the things like, if you remember back in the day, they used to give iron pills to people that were anemic and they were like, I don't understand. No one's, everyone's still anemic. And then they later learned, you can't just give them iron. have to have cofactors. You have to support it for absorption.
Mother nature already knew that, know, museum potassium. These are already in organ meats. So you don't, you don't have to worry as much about like, you know, I'm going to take this supplement and you're supposed to take it with food, right? Like what they tell you with B vitamins is like, well, but the work I mean is the food and it has every B vitamin you need. So it's just one of those things that you, have to almost shift your brain around and just realize like,
Kim Vopni (27:07.993)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (27:24.975)
Yeah.
Yeah.
James Barry (27:36.77)
You know, there is that concept of like you can get certain vitamins from eating animal meats that you can't get from eating vegetables, right? And there's certain vitamins, like if you were just to eat vegetables, you would always be depleted in certain minerals and vitamins because you're not eating meat. So there's things you can get from meat that you can't get from vegetables. And then, and then there's certain things that you have to eat meat or some synthetic form of what you get from meat to get.
if you are just eating vegetables. So if you think of it from that perspective of like, if we're already, if we're already proving that animal, you know, meat is so nutritious, imagine if you ate the whole animal, because that's gonna be everything you need. And in fact, if you go to certain parts of the world where they have climate issues, where they can't grow things year round like Alaska, then the Inuit Eskimos,
Kim Vopni (28:23.087)
Yeah.
James Barry (28:34.856)
on their kind of in their nutritional books for season what foods to eat during the seasons. They have during winter organ meats as a vegetable and fruit. under vegetable fruit, say organ meats because you can't grow the vegetables or fruit during those times of year. And they know that the nutrients you would be getting from fruits and vegetables you can get from organ meats.
Kim Vopni (28:47.31)
wow.
Kim Vopni (28:59.725)
Interesting, interesting. And I think of when you were talking about the iron and how many people, myself included, have been told to take iron because your iron's low. I remember in my perimenopause phase of life having very, very heavy menstrual periods and low, low ferritin. And so add put on an iron pill and how many people get constipated from taking iron. So we just get into this vicious cycle and so simple to come back to mother's mother nature's multivitamin.
James Barry (29:28.886)
And couple that, of course, with the fat-free craze, right? The fact that we've been taught to not be afraid of cholesterol and fat, which is also gonna help make you constipated if you're not getting enough. Which, know, organ meats do have cholesterol, but that's okay. Like cholesterol is not what we've been taught it to be. And if you're gonna get it, it's much better to get it from Mother Nature's resources than to get it from some
Kim Vopni (29:33.07)
Yes, yes.
Kim Vopni (29:40.953)
Yes.
James Barry (29:57.912)
franken food that has tons of seed oils and hydrogenated oils and whatever, know, hydrogenated fats, whatever it is.
Kim Vopni (30:05.263)
Yeah, and natural flavorings.
James Barry (30:07.916)
Yes, well the natural flavorings is killing me because it's so interesting. We've been so tricked and it's even deeper than I think most people realize because all of these, of course we're all being taught you gotta read food labels, right? But what if the ingredient that's in there is not on the food label and that's natural flavors is a perfect example. Natural flavors is a term for
a whole bunch of ingredients. And most of those natural flavors have carriers, because you can't just add a drop of this, whatever it is. it's, it's, it's, it's a lot of things. Sometimes it's even hydrogenated fats. Sometimes it's, it's some carrier like maltodextrin, which is corn base. So, and if you're eating enough foods with all these flavors, it adds up.
Kim Vopni (30:40.057)
often chemicals.
Kim Vopni (31:05.795)
Yeah. Yeah.
James Barry (31:06.338)
You know, so if you have a corn sensitivity like I do, it's like, well, no wonder if I'm eating foods with natural flavors and enough of them, I'm going to start to feel, you know, the effects of that.
Kim Vopni (31:16.985)
Yeah. Something else that I've become obsessed with recently, now partly because I'm post menopause myself and a lot of the people I support are in that phase of life as well is bone health. Can you talk a little bit about how organ meats can support our bone health?
James Barry (31:30.371)
Yes.
James Barry (31:35.148)
Yeah, absolutely. The beauty of organ meats is like liver and kidney. They're just loaded with the highly bio-vibrable nutrients for bone health like vitamin K2, vitamin A, the heme iron we talked about earlier, zinc, copper, and then B12. And then what's great is once again, we got to remember these are all working synergistically. These aren't isolated. They're synergistic.
Kim Vopni (31:47.109)
Mm-hmm.
James Barry (32:01.336)
to promote that calcium regulation, the collagen formation, the bone density. And then of course, let's not forget collagen, right? Yes, you can get collagen, isolated collagen powder, but once again, I mean, how great would it be just to every week, you know, when you order that quarter cow to just make sure you're eating meat that's with bones and you're slow cooking them and you're getting the collagen through your food, you know, that.
Kim Vopni (32:07.567)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (32:27.941)
making bun broth, yeah.
James Barry (32:29.752)
Yeah, and the bone broth, you make like one of the one of the great things to add to when you're making bone broth is like chicken feet. You know they have lots of college and they have lots of that that gelatin. You know it just makes it so gelatinous so.
Kim Vopni (32:47.033)
Yeah, it's life changing. Not, no, shouldn't say life changing. I guess it could be life changing. But when you make a broth with and without chicken feet, the difference in the how gelatinous, which you just said is, is it's night and day.
James Barry (32:59.662)
Yeah, it's like once it gets cold, it's jello. There's nothing. I mean, we cannot underestimate once again, going back to these foods, making our body feel safe, telling it it's supported. We cannot underestimate the importance of these foods. And really it's like you just have to audit. You have to look at and be really honest. Like where are you eating most of your calories? Because if the numbers show that we are
It's something like 94 % of Americans are nutrient deficient. And I think it's even higher than that. But it's like, we are nutrient deficient. All these nagging health issues that are showing up, whether it's as you go into menopause, these extreme hormonal imbalances, whether it's hair falling out, whether it's issues with sleep, skin issues, foggy brain, these are all showing up daily for most of us. And...
What are we doing? We're turning around and we're buying supplements.
Kim Vopni (33:59.439)
Well, you just I was just wrote down the word to ask to bring up the point you said so eloquently, we have already have enough capsules in our diet. Like, no where was capsules ever part of Mother Nature. And yet we are trying to supplement our way out of or into better health and out of poor diet choices, basically.
James Barry (34:19.798)
And the other thing is, and this may be the conspiracy theorists in me, but I have heard some people say stuff, but I haven't gone down to try to find sources. But I have heard people say that there are some bodies, when they've cut out open the stomach, they're finding all these undigested capsules.
Kim Vopni (34:40.761)
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.
James Barry (34:41.154)
I mean, and I hear that and I'm like, you know, there's a part of me that's like, well, that kind of makes sense because while some companies are really like sensitive about sourcing, when you go to like CVS and you're buying those 299 supplement bottles, do you really think those are like fully natural and don't have some kind of plastic in them? Right. It's like, kind of just sense checks for me. I've like, yeah, there's probably a lot of companies that are out of integrity.
Kim Vopni (34:56.815)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yep.
James Barry (35:09.336)
They're probably doing a lot of shortcuts and there is microplastics is a huge issue and it's potentially what's thrown off so many of the hormonal issues people are having.
Kim Vopni (35:20.421)
Yeah, yeah, I, I, I'm guilty of being I will try the latest supplement and I love following health and I anybody who has something new, I will not always but I if it's something that resonates with me, I will often try it but there's no these are often new compounds and many of them can be natural and can be very beneficial and they can have all the studies behind them but
When you couple that with all of the other things that we may take in capsule form, we don't have studies looking at all of that interaction and how confused in an already confused world, how much more confused is the body getting by just taking all of these random supplements? Now, I do have a couple of supplements that I have formulated and do offer, but I'm very clear with people that this is like after you have addressed all of the other things, this is an option that you may add. This is not something that is meant to replace
your crappy diet or the fact that you don't sleep or whatever it is. I just think that's such an important point about that and coming back to you, just love that mother nature's multivitamin is just it resonates so strongly with me.
James Barry (36:33.1)
Yeah, there's a really, quote, a fun quote. And I don't know if I came up with this. I actually don't know who came up, but I just kind of did, did a whole like AI kind of thing for it. And it just popped up because like I fed it, you know, the AI and it me this quote. So now I don't know if I could say it's mine. but it, it, the quote is you don't need a cupboard full of supplements. You need a few bites of what your great grandmother called dinner.
Kim Vopni (36:58.499)
Yeah. Yes. Yes. So simple.
James Barry (37:01.87)
But there are realities and I think you've really touched on two very important ones is that sometimes we do need supplementation. Sometimes we do. sadly, soils are depleted. Sadly, people are eating sometimes a mixture of real food and these Franken foods and they're still depleted. So clearly we do need that
Kim Vopni (37:14.009)
Yep. Yep.
James Barry (37:31.968)
supplementation sometimes, but I guess what I'm trying to advocate is like, well, before you go to trying to supplement with capsules or tablets, let's first try what Mother Nature created. Because when we slaughter a cow, and if you only use the main parts you're seeing in a butcher shop or at your normal grocery store, it's about 51 % of the cow. So that means, well, what's going on with the other 49 %?
Kim Vopni (37:37.807)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (37:58.564)
Yeah.
James Barry (37:59.201)
And I've gone to some, lot of people assume it's going to other industry. Surprisingly, I have been to slaughterhouses where they just flat out told me they said, yeah, we just throw it out because they don't have the re like they don't have it set up at that slaughterhouse to, to, what do they call that? yeah, process. I was thinking the word I was thinking of is like, were you, up cycle, I guess up cycle something or down cycle. do they call it? But,
Kim Vopni (38:08.653)
Well...
Kim Vopni (38:17.605)
to process it and to, yep.
Kim Vopni (38:25.561)
Yeah. Yeah.
James Barry (38:29.024)
Yeah, so they don't have that process. So they just toss it in and I just think that's insane because we're first of all not honoring that animal which Ancestor Lee every animal was honored if it was killed particularly by Native Americans, but I know at one point America, you know, like when you know during what is the Period with the where basically we took over
Kim Vopni (38:39.513)
Mm-hmm
James Barry (38:57.71)
United States and killed a lot of Native Americans. I know that we were doing things like only taking the horns from the animals and you know, really kind of messing around with nature. But sadly, we still are and and it's just unprecedented that you would ever not use at 100 % or as close to 100 % of a resource once you've created that resource by killing it. I just
Kim Vopni (38:58.969)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (39:17.263)
Yeah.
James Barry (39:23.198)
I just hope that people will give that a chance, you know, but I get it. There are hurdles, right? The cooking of organ meats is challenging for some people. The taste is associated as being gross. The sourcing can be a sore point for people. So I usually, what I recommend is figure out what you're willing and open to doing. So I usually do find that pluck is the first step. It's just so easy. And yeah, it's the gateway, right? It's so easy.
Kim Vopni (39:36.389)
So.
Kim Vopni (39:48.547)
It's the gateway.
James Barry (39:52.129)
It's for people that don't like the taste and just want to get it in their diet. And yes, you're getting small amounts every time you use it, but you're willing to use it daily, which is cumulative effect. So that's like easy stage one, but you will find as you use pluck, your, your palette will change because it's very umami and it will start to kind of inspire a more openness to eating organs. And so then what I recommend is you go to like a farmer's market or to your local farm and
Kim Vopni (40:00.911)
Yeah.
James Barry (40:22.094)
try to get some liver or some or even heart. Just try to get some beef liver or heart. It will come frozen. And then what you do is you just pull it out every time you're making ground meat or a soup or even spaghetti sauce and just grate a little bit of the organ meat. I'm talking like a tablespoon, nothing crazy. Maybe a max two tablespoons, but start with just one. Just grate it with a box grater right into the food. Mix it really well. No one will know it's there.
Kim Vopni (40:39.769)
Mm-hmm.
James Barry (40:51.99)
And then you can also use like chicken hearts. Chicken hearts are tiny. They're like mushrooms, chop them up. They don't have strong flavor. Toss them into that spaghetti sauce. again, you're only, treat them like mushrooms. You're only adding like one or two instead of like, you don't have to add 10. Don't make it the main protein. It's just a little added and just chop it up. No one will know it's there.
Kim Vopni (41:14.074)
Right.
James Barry (41:19.352)
But you start to just ease these things in. And then when you're feeling bold enough, you know, maybe by a beef tongue, they're really weird at first, but what's so cool. You do? Okay. I want to hear that, but they're really weird at first. Have fun with it. You know, take selfies, you know, pretending your Gene Simmons from kiss something. and you know, and if you're in a couple, you can have, you know, I know you can, you can, we can talk like this on between two lips, but you know, you can really have fun with it. Right.
Kim Vopni (41:27.813)
I have a beef tongue story.
James Barry (41:48.718)
If you want to get, you know, if, um, if you want to get provocative and kinky, yeah. But, but point is, is that it is going to seem intimidating at first, but all you need to do, let's say you're making tacos at night, you brazen, you know, you're slow cooking some kind of meat. Just throw the tongue in there with it. And you're brazing that for about an hour and a half. And when you pull it out, the thick sheath on the outside of the tongue will kind of just easily split off. Like you can easily just peel it right off.
Kim Vopni (41:50.853)
Yeah, a little hanky panky. Yeah.
James Barry (42:18.796)
And underneath is the tongue muscle. And it's, it's really not as intimidating. Once you just have that muscle, then you just chop it up, add it to the other meat you've braised. And then you have a lingua mixed with barbacoa taco tacos or whatever other meat you're using. And you won't, as long as the tongue meat is a smaller ratio than the other meat, no one will really notice. And what's really cool about this suggestion is that not only
Kim Vopni (42:32.526)
Yeah.
James Barry (42:48.206)
Are you now getting a more nutritious cut of meat because the tongue is more nutritious than let's just say that that shoulder or whatever it is you're cooking. It also is cheaper. So you not only you're buying it from the same, let's say you're getting 100 % grass fed, right? Which is very expensive. Same 100 % grass for cow. And instead of it being like 14 to $35 a pound, it's like $4 or $7 a pound.
Kim Vopni (42:55.737)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (43:00.985)
you
James Barry (43:17.654)
So you completely lower your grocery bill. And then like I said, it won't taste too strong as long as you're adding it with other stuff. So you've solved like multiple things just by starting to incorporate these organ meats. But the coolest thing is you will feel better. You just start to feel healthier.
Kim Vopni (43:17.987)
Yeah, good point.
Kim Vopni (43:30.553)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (43:35.375)
Well, you it was you I might have heard you on a podcast tell this story. I don't remember whose podcast it was. And you were talking about people what people have noticed after they've been taking pluck or using pluck as part of their their diet. And there was this one story you told of a woman who I believe it was her third child. She had had two babies before she had hemorrhaged with both. And the only thing she had changed with her third pregnancy was that she had she had to
been consuming pluck and she was she didn't hemorrhage and also it was her blood, milk supply, sorry, she was able to get her milk supply back just on her own without needing anything else. And I thought that was amazing.
James Barry (44:15.512)
Yeah, that's literally all you know, all I can go by is her testimony, but that's all she did. She said huge issues with the first two. And you know, if anyone knows who's had kids, you don't usually do better on your third, right? It's like, if you haven't done well in your first, you're kind of screwed because you're depleted. You know, you've depleted all your your stores for the other ones, right? So the fact that she had a more successful third just by incorporating organ meats,
Kim Vopni (44:28.943)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (44:35.235)
Yes. Yes.
Kim Vopni (44:41.209)
Yeah.
James Barry (44:43.726)
And she was using the seasoning, which is not 100 % organ meat. It's the seasoning one has salt and different seasonings in it and organ meat. We do have a hundred percent blend, which we call pure. And I definitely recommend that for people that are anemic or that know they've gotten testing, you know, they know that they are depleted. That's a great one to use because a teaspoon of that is equal to two ounces of organs. Oh yeah. So it's incredibly potent.
Kim Vopni (45:09.453)
Really? Wow.
Yeah.
James Barry (45:12.908)
I mean, I even recommend when people are first starting out, you have to almost be careful because they're so, it's such an effective food. You could like get, feel nauseous, you know, or you could actually like spur like a little bit of a detox because your body's like, Whoa, this is intense. I'm getting so much. Like I've even had people tell me who've eaten it for dinner and their first time, and then they can't sleep because they've gotten so much energy from it. Cause it's
Kim Vopni (45:21.274)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Interesting.
Kim Vopni (45:38.201)
So much energy. Wow. Yeah, yep.
James Barry (45:40.342)
It's like a B vitamin shot, right? So I definitely recommend if anyone's using like the pure one, do you just start with like either a fourth of a teaspoon or as much as a half and then you're done. And I even, it's kind of cool because it's so neutral. You can add it to smoothies. You can even add it to like bulletproof coffees, whatever. It's like, it blends so well with things and you won't know it as long as you keep it really low. But the seasoning you can use all the time and every time you use it, you're benefiting.
Kim Vopni (45:51.301)
Hmm. Interesting.
Kim Vopni (46:02.255)
Yeah.
James Barry (46:09.528)
but it's not gonna push you into a detox or anything, because it's gradual, it's subtle, but like I said, powerful.
Kim Vopni (46:14.191)
Right.
Kim Vopni (46:18.329)
Yeah. Yeah. When we were at the health optimization summit, you had a booth there and we stopped by and my husband and I and tried, were cooking some beef and you, and you were, it was the garlic, I believe was the one that he had on sample. And it was, you would never know. You would never, ever know. It was delicious. It very, very, very flavorful. And, and we loved it. We loved it. We got all, all of them. my, my tongue story, we were in Mexico, this really cool, amazing restaurant.
You don't, there's no menu. sit down, you tell the maitre d if you have any food allergies or things you don't like. And then basically you just, you decide if you want a three course or a five course meal and the chef just cooks whatever he feels. And one of these times I've been there three times, four times now. And, and, one time was, beef tongue and it was literally the tongue on a plate. And, and it was, you know, I, I, you feel hypocritical cause I said, well,
I just ate another piece of beef from that same animal, but somehow the tongue was unpalatable and it was just the visual of it, the shape, everything. And I did take a bite. wanted to respect and try it. And I would say the flavor was good, but I could not, I just couldn't do it. But as you're talking,
You provided that great idea of putting it in with the meat and letting it, you know, just changing and chopping it up. These are all things that I really want to try. Um, and, and I just, I feel like there was so much, I'm so excited by the potential of the nutrition that can be gained from what I'm learning from you. Thank you.
James Barry (47:55.058)
you're very welcome. And I think it even brings us kind of full circle back is that we have to remember, you know, food is emotional, right? And so what, what I always, one of the first things I always ask people when I become, when I used to private chef is I wouldn't say, what kind of foods do you like? I'd say, what kind of foods do you gravitate towards when you have a hard day? What are the, what is the texture of that food? And what you start to find is that usually
Kim Vopni (48:15.749)
Hmm.
James Barry (48:24.108)
The emotion is texture-based. We think it's flavor-based, but it's actually more texture-based. And then with that texture comes a flavor. like, for example, lot of women are creamy, right? Creamy and sweet. lot of men tend to be crunchy and salty. Now, of course, that's a total generalization. can have both, you you can have either or for anyone. But I'm just saying, like, it's very interesting. Like, you start to find these patterns. And so what it's really about
Kim Vopni (48:38.095)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (48:44.537)
Mm-hmm.
James Barry (48:54.762)
is when you wanna make that dietary change, you wanna honor where you were at. It's not about reinventing the wheel. Because if you do that, that's the surest way to ensure that you will not be successful on whatever new diet plan you're trying to do. You really need to kind of find a way. And that's why like back in the day, when I was pulling people off of grains and pastas, starches,
I would do things that is now very popular, but I was doing them before it was as popularized. But yeah, but I was, but it's like, you know, I was doing stuff with like, cauliflower, for example, or I would take parsnips. would take, cellular act, you know, I would take these kinds of root vegetables and I would do things with them to make them or cruciferous, but make them kind of match the texture that people resonated with.
Kim Vopni (49:27.237)
But it was cool.
Kim Vopni (49:49.081)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
James Barry (49:50.574)
So I think that's really important and that is the power of pluck. It really is like, you don't have to get out of your comfort zone for it, but it will start you down the path of either being more nutrient sufficient or shifting your palate. So you're more open to these kind of umami-ish foods. And then of course, we start to enrich your health and start to, you you'll start to see like these nagging health issues start to alleviate them. And I've heard
skin issues going away. And we talked about fertility success with them, milk supply abundance. It's just incredible. And if anything for me, I don't try to take credit for any of it. What I'm just saying is let's double down on Mother Nature. She knows what she's doing. Historically, we've always relied on her. We just need to kind of get back to basics.
Kim Vopni (50:24.633)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (50:34.213)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (50:43.887)
just need to kind get back to basics.
James Barry (50:47.554)
We don't have to do it though as cave people. want to reiterate that you don't have to go back in time. We just need to get these foods into our diet, whether it's sneaky, whether it's this freeze dried powder, pluck, whatever it is, just get them in. That's it. Just get them in the best way you can and then reap the rewards and see how it feels and see how it changes your life. And just do a little at a time. We don't have to go crazy.
Kim Vopni (50:49.317)
you
Kim Vopni (50:53.477)
just need to get these foods into a diet whether it's sneaky, it's this freeze-dried powder, plop, whatever it is, just get them in. Just get them in the best way you
Kim Vopni (51:10.959)
Pluck yeah. Pluck yeah, pluck yeah. Yep. So good. That's such a, that's the perfect way to end. Where can people find, where can people get plucked? Where can people learn more?
James Barry (51:23.15)
You can go to eatpluck.com. You can find us on Amazon. Just do a search for pluck seasoning. It should pop up. And then we're on socials at Eat Pluck and I'm at Chef James Berry.
Kim Vopni (51:36.865)
Amazing. James, you're amazing. I'm so grateful for your work and for your amazing for what you've created. My health thanks you.
James Barry (51:48.942)
Thank you.
