[00:00:02] Luke: So you've been around a lot of wild animals. What would you say the difference in terms of how much suffering takes place for an animal, let's just take a deer who lives its whole life in the wild and dies of natural causes versus an ethical hunter taking that animal versus, part three, even the most cared for regenerative farm-raised animal that gets slaughtered?

[00:00:36] Mansal: Wow, that's a great place to start. The wild can be a beautiful place, and it can also be a harsh place. So an animal that is living its entire life free and sovereign has all the benefits to be able to express itself and also has all the responsibility of keeping itself healthy. And a lot of animals that don't get eaten by predators will die from thirst or starvation primarily.

[00:01:15] Because if they get injured, it is unlikely that they will be able to recover, and they simply won't eat. And in a ancestral environment, that's what a predator would eat. And so there would be a balance. And in some ways there would be almost a more harmonious balance.

[00:01:40] When an animal can no longer live a healthy life, then its time is up and will feed the predator. But there are so many places in the world where the balance has been completely thrown off. Even in the Americas, wolves, mountain lions, bears have been hunted much more thoroughly than some of the other animals.

[00:02:06] And so we are predators and we play a role there. And obviously I've been immersed in the Hawaiian story for the past few years due to my work. But on the islands in Hawaii, we have this axis deer that's not native. So it's introduced. There's no predators, so there's no wolves or anything that would hunt it. And in fact, this year, there was a state of emergency declared in the summer in August because it was the driest year on record since the early '90s.

[00:02:47] And the governor made announcement about deer that we're starving and thirsty because there's thousands of them and there's just not enough resources for it to go around. And so when I think about our hunting experience that we had, or I think about the hunting that happens in order to create the Real Provisions, venison that we provide, that is done at night by moonlight.

[00:03:23] They don't even take synthetic lights. They go by moonlight and have a direct shot on the animal. And so it's instant. It happens super quickly, and the animal goes from being alive and free to no longer on this earth in a moment.

[00:03:48] Luke: So yeah, it's interesting to me to observe the different opinions when it comes to animal welfare. And I think because my dad was a many-decades hunter and I had some experience with him doing that and then experiencing sacred hunting with you, it seems to me as a bystander that many people imagine the lives of wild animals as just being super chill and peaceful and that at the end of their life, they just lay down and take a nap and pass away.

[00:04:28] Because we don't see what's going on out there when animals freeze to death or they starve or they can't find water or predation. If you think about watching those nature shows on the savannah, it's like the way a gazelle dies when some lions get after it is much more brutal than a clean shot with a high-powered rifle right where it's supposed to go. It's just instantaneous.

[00:04:56] So I always like to just remind people that, I'm sure not all hunters, but hunters that are ethical probably have more reverence for the life and death cycle than your average person who goes to the grocery store and buys some ground beef.

[00:05:16] Mansal: Yeah. The difference is theory versus practice. It's really impossible for us to not feel more connected to something when we know how it lives. And that's one of the reasons why I hunted and why I took you hunting, is so that you have that memory living in your heart.

[00:05:40] Luke: I'll never forget that moment, dude. I was talking about it yesterday with Tim. I've actually talked about that bore probably-- longtime listeners are like, "Yeah, we know the hunting story." But it was so impactful, that moment. There's so many interesting things about it. One being, and I remembered this yesterday with Tim, was I'm a real chill, I don't want to say passive because that sounds weak, but I'm not the kind of guy that just wants to go out and kill stuff.

[00:06:12] I'm not that in touch with the killer archetype within me. But I remember that moment. I just think there was a raise of hands, who wants to shoot first? And I was like, "Me." Oh Goddammit, now I got to be the guy. So I happened to be the first one in our group to shoot at something.

[00:06:31] But I remember that moment. We're crouched down. You're doing the Elmer Fudd, be vewy, vewy quiet. There's a bore right there. Stop, everyone. Luke, go put the sticks up. And I'm just like [Inaudible]. It was crazy how innate it was and how calm I was and how centered and focused. It was just like instant, eh, something lit up in me that I'm not that familiar with. And I knew when it was in my sights perfectly right where I wanted the bullet to go and just happened so fast.

[00:07:05] There was no hesitation or fear or freaking out. It was like it was trying to kill me, is the feeling I had. It was like this sense of urgency, but also calm and just super focused. After that first shot ring, I was like, "The world just stopped." Everything got super trippy. And then the moment when we walked up to the boar--

[00:07:26] So we walk up to the bore and still everything is super still and quiet, just this liminal space. And that was one of the most profound moments of my life, just bearing witness to that. And I got so emotional. I was just overwhelmed with-- I don't know. It was like beauty and scary and just all the feelings all at once. But you reminded me of something that I always forget in the story.

[00:07:58] Mansal: That hog, the moment you shot it squealed to bloody murder. And it's still powerful for me because it created a sense of urgency where I told you We got to go. We got to do it again. We got to make sure it's dead. And luckily, I don't think we had to. I don't recall.

[00:08:22] Luke: I think I missed the second shot, but the first shot ended up landing in a pretty good spot.

[00:08:29] Mansal: Yeah.

[00:08:30] Luke: Yeah. But even in that, going back to my earlier question, it's like I don't know what kind of predators hogs have here in Texas. There's no predators around here based on the sheer number of white-tailed deer in our neighborhood.

[00:08:46] There must be some weak-ass coyotes around here because the deer are just out of hand. But thinking about, I don't know if it's a mountain lion or bear or whatever, I imagine sometimes what that bore's life, the duration of its life would've looked like and how it would've eventually met its demise had I not been involved.

[00:09:08] Would it have suffered more? Would it have suffered less? These are the things that I contemplate. I think it's just like reconciling for me over the years of being a meat eater, a former vegetarian of just, I don't want anything to suffer. And it's hard to accept that that's just part of the earth experience. Everything's eating everything all the time. You can't stop it.

[00:09:32] Mansal: Yeah. And that sensitivity that you had is what put you there, holding that gun. And that sensitivity, I think, is what creates the opportunity for treating food and especially the meat that we eat as a spiritual act, as something that is sacred. Recognizing that you still have that imprint on your heart. And even I don't remember it, every single bite I take of every single meal. But there is something there that keeps us connected to ultimately our humanity, because that was a part of humanity for so long.

[00:10:23] Luke: Absolutely. How many groups have you done at this point with Sacred Hunting?

[00:10:28] Mansal: I've led 80 groups, and that was one of the reasons why it was time to create something new and try and make this available to people outside of that context. I have a wife now. We're planning a family, and I can't be in the field that much. 80 hunts in five years is a lot.

[00:10:50] Luke: That's a lot of travel. One thing I remember about hunting that I wasn't expecting is how much work it is. I remember just carrying that rifle and after a while I'm like, "This thing's heavy." I was like, I don't want to wis out, like, can someone carry my rifle now? I'm tired.

[00:11:09] But I was like, dude, you got to really like walking around for a very long time with nothing happening, carrying some heavy shit. I was like, "Oh, this is work." And imagine before firearms existed, the amount of work that went into a hunt, for the original peoples who were using spears and homemade bows and arrows and things like that. It's no game out there.

[00:11:38] Mansal: No, it's a lot of work, and there's a saying, blood, sweat, and tears. You put your blood, sweat, and tears into it. And certainly with hunting it's one of those things where you get a lot back from the experience. And of course not everybody can go out and have that. It's not realistic for people in the modern world. But it is at least having some connection to it, as you know, as I know, is so profound.

[00:12:10] Luke: I am going to switch gears here because I'm curious about this. We've chatted privately a bit about it, but your journey to orthodox Christianity is interesting to me because I've seen over the past few years many friends who, I don't know, weren't raised religious or had no interest in it, have gravitated toward that faith. And I'm curious why and how that happened and if it was something that you revisited from childhood, or was it something you just totally discovered on your own?

[00:12:48] Mansal: Well, it was something that my wife brought into my life, first and foremost, of no intention really. She had a close relationship to Christianity growing up, and she was practicing Catholicism. And so when we met, in her most subtle and beautiful and nonjudgmental way, she would just go to church on Sundays and let me know. And she'd look beautiful and go do her thing, but she made it available and never really pushed it.

[00:13:21] I had some really powerful experiences, and I think ultimately for Christianity to be at its best, or any religion, any spiritual practice, one has to organically have a felt sense. And certainly that was true for me. Her life, her upbringing was about as awful as you can imagine for someone in America.

[00:13:49] And the symbol and the life of Christ was something that guided her and gave her unconditional love. And so for me, there was a trigger to recognize the beauty in the wisdom tradition. And then I had my own experiences and some of them involved plant medicine, ayahuasca experiences, and I very much had a felt sense of how powerful it was.

[00:14:23] Not just intellectually, but wow. If I can forgive some of the people who perpetrated acts against my wife through the unconditional compassion that Christ exhibited for his own murderers, there's something here. And that sent me down a rabbit hole of studying. And you know me to be a very inquisitive and curious person.

[00:14:51] So I spent better part of the last year and a half studying, but I always thought it was going to be a resistant relationship at best because I had my own stories and problems with Christianity. And I had, what I think and I've come to find from communicating with people is pretty common, essentially like Christian trauma-- I grew up with zero Christianity in my family life. My mother was raised in India.

[00:15:32] She's a Hindu, but not really practicing. She went to Catholic school, so she remembers the persecution of her childhood, feeling inferior in her own country and what that brought up. So I very much had resistance to Christianity, but I started to involve myself in practices in addition to understanding things that opened me up and started to transform me. And ultimately, any wisdom tradition should transform us from the inside out.

[00:16:10] And ultimately, I found that Christianity had that capacity. And orthodox Christianity in particular focuses a lot on a very rich tradition of saints. So these are people who lived and embodied the life of Christ in their own lives. We're very storytelling creatures, and so all of these saints become stories that we aspire to.

[00:16:47] And some of them are really beautiful modern stories. So one of my favorites right now, maybe some that might be valuable for you or others who are listening, Saint Olga of Alaska. She's a saint that is oriented towards midwifery and bringing life into the earth. And so she would walk as a midwife from village to village, serving the women.

[00:17:15] She's the first woman indigenous saint that was canonized. So she's Yupik in Alaska, and she, in many ways, had a very kind of ordinary existence of being a midwife. But in that ordinary service and love came a saintliness that people could feel with her. And so she was canonized as a saint. And so orthodoxy in particular has different elements that obviously resonate with me.

[00:17:48] And I started to see the Christian tradition through the lens, not so much how are these teachings or theology trying to control me, which I saw in my childhood. And certainly it exists. But instead I tried to see it from the perspective, what if I could interpret this with the best of intentions. What would be here for me to take away?

[00:18:20] And there's this really great writer from England in the last couple hundred years. His name's G. K. Chesterton, and he has this quote, I'm paraphrasing, but he says, essentially Christianity has never been tried. Everybody who claims that there's all these problems with Christianity are in fact having a problem with something that is not Christianity at all.

[00:18:58] And it resonated with me that we're all very flawed individuals, and these same powers of coercion and manipulation and control and right versus wrong exist everywhere. And the same beauty and wisdom also exists everywhere. And ultimately our spiritual practice is set within a context.

[00:19:29] And so for me, understanding the Christian wisdom allowed me to have context with my wife. It allowed me to have context with the country that I am in, United States, a very Christian nation. And that is a fundamental part of our reality, is the metaphysics that undergird our perspectives and undergird what we decide to do with our lives.

[00:20:03] And so materialists are going to have a certain way of viewing the world. Christians will have a certain way, etc. And so there's more coherence when I, at the very least, understand the Christian wisdom tradition if I'm living in America. And I'm with a woman who has that as a starting point for her. So that's an introduction to where I started. But obviously, I can go down many different rabbit holes.

[00:20:35] Luke: There's a few things that you brought up, which would probably take us five hours to unpack. But this idea of sainthood is something that's piqued my interest recently. And that came to me a couple of weeks ago actually. And it's happened a couple of times in ceremonies. You know how the thoughts and ideas just start to percolate and they seem to do so on their own accord without any intentionality or prompting?

[00:21:07] So I was in a journey and I started thinking about St. Luke, and just had the awareness that I'm named after a saint. And I started thinking about what does that mean? Could I be one? Am I one? And of course, my ego's like, no, you're way too flawed. Without any research or actual understanding of what it is, what I came to was that this is my interpretation is just that it means that you're honorable.

[00:21:44] And so I started going into that word honor and just unpacking it and trying to integrate it and had a really beautiful moment of self-appreciation of just going, whoa, I've accomplished something really massive in my life, and that is this. I'm an honorable person. Which seems like, yeah, duh, you're supposed to be that way. But I think the realization was it's such an infinitely small number of humans that are able to achieve that. Right?

[00:22:18] Mansal: Yeah.

[00:22:19] Luke: And so then I came out of that, going, I need to research St. Luke. I wasn't named after him. I'm named after my great uncle, or I don't know, there's a few Lukes in my lineage. But somewhere along the line, someone knew something about that saint and named one of their kids Luke. So I'm like, "Wow, I'm something I really want to learn more about." So I'm glad you brought that up.

[00:22:42] Mansal: Yeah. And I'm happy to speak more about it. So your first point about how you're so flawed and how could you be a saint? There's an old saint, and he's one of the church fathers in the West. His name's Saint Augustine. And he says every saint had a past. Every sinner has a future.

[00:23:06] Luke: That's cool.

[00:23:07] Mansal: And it really is a reflection of the infinite capacity before us in our lives. And from an orthodox Christian perspective, to become a saint is the goal. Because the saints are the ones that are closest in their connection to God, and they have lived their lives as close to the life of Christ as possible.

[00:23:34] We can use both the life of Christ and the life of the saints as guides for us. But as he says, every saint had a past. And there's one, one of my favorites, is Saint Moses the Black. In a world where also there's these interesting racial undertones and things like that, one of the earliest saints in Christianity was black.

[00:24:02] He was in the Northern Africa region. His name was St. Moses. He was essentially a gangster and he ran one of the most successful gangs in Northern Africa, if you want to call them a gang. And he eventually gave up his life of violence and he went and started a monastery.

[00:24:27] And when he was in the monastery, they heard that a group was going to come to attack them. And he remembered, he recollected the line from the Bible. If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. But he had chosen non-violence. And so he told his whole group to leave. They said, "We'll defend you. We'll have the sword out and defend you."

[00:24:52] And he said, "No, we will not fight back. We will do as Christ did, and we will be crucified." And he died, and he was killed. And he became Saint Moses the Black, who now I have a picture in my prayer room, and when I go to him, I remember. It's a psychological remembering of his story for me, and I ask for him, please pray for me so that I may be nonviolent in my words, in my actions.

[00:25:19] Luke: Beautiful. I think there's something really valuable in having models. I think that's the thing that is appealing because I've never been drawn to religion, but I am drawn to human beings that have overcome adversity and become a force for good. It's like, how do you o that?

[00:25:44] The way you're talking about saints, it's like on the Hindu side, you have gurus. You have avatars and mystics and things like that. I think God sometimes chooses people to embody higher levels of consciousness as a benchmark for the rest of us to see and be like, "I want to be like that."

[00:26:09] I want to be the guy that's like, yeah, you guys all leave. I'm not about to commit violence. And just sacrifice yourself for your morality or values that you live by. Something that I find interesting about Christianity and knowing very little about it is there are key principles, phrases, axioms that I've heard my whole life that stand the test of time and they're just never not true.

[00:26:40] One of them being by their fruits, you shall know them. That's a good one. That's the acid test. It's like, is this thing working? Is this someone I want to be involved with? Is this a legitimate enterprise? You can stack that truth against any situation in life and get your answer. It's like, what are the results of whatever this thing is?

[00:27:05] And as you know, there's just probably an infinite number of those. But I find it interesting that they keep coming back. Or forgive them for they know not what they do. That one can change your life if you just apply it.

[00:27:20] Mansal: That was one of the things that stood out for me, was how much I had condescension, and I also see in others, around the Christian story. How could this be true? Or how could this be this valuable? And the more I understood the power of someone who is the son of God, allowing himself to be crucified and asking for forgiveness for the people, crucifying him.

[00:27:55] That stands out as something that is so hard for me to apply in everyday life, that I will literally spend my whole life aspiring to that level of compassion, generosity. And if that's the case, then there's always something there for me. It's not at all outside the realm of virtue and beauty in my life.

[00:28:23] And there's G. K. Chesterton who I brought up before. He has this concept called Chesterton's fence. And he says there's two types of reformers. The first type of reformer comes to a fence in a yard and says, "Why is this fence here? This fence has no purpose being here. Let's remove it."

[00:28:45] And the second type of reformer comes and says, "If you don't understand the reason for this fence being here, then you definitely should not remove it. You should go away and you should think about why it is this fence is here. And only when you understand it, come back and remove it."

[00:29:07] And of course, he's talking about Christianity. When you have people who say, "There's nothing here. There's nothing worthwhile here. Let's just get rid of it. Let's remove it from our society, remove it from the underpinnings of how we do things." We're neglecting a deep wisdom.

[00:29:28] And that doesn't mean it's come without a lot of flaws. It doesn't mean it's come without a lot of pain. And I'm just as uncomfortable and privy to those things as the next person, but surely there is some wisdom.

[00:29:44] Luke: Maybe the original term for don't throw the baby out with the bath water applies. It's probably in the Bible somewhere, something equivalent to that.

[00:29:55] Mansal: Right?

[00:29:56] Luke: Have you ever read any Emmett Fox?

[00:29:58] Mansal: I haven't.

[00:29:59] Luke: Oh, man. Super cool. He was a philosopher and author in '20s and '30s. He was part of new thought movement. So around the time of Napoleon Hill and other writers like that where they were the new agers of their time. And so what Emmett Fox would primarily write about were teachings from the Bible. And he would write about them in a way that removed all metaphor and parable and myth.

[00:30:36] All the mythologies basically just stripped away. And he'd just be like, "Okay, here are the things Jesus actually said. Here's what they mean." According to him. And I used to read that book a lot for many years and still never thought about becoming a Christian or going to church.

[00:30:53] I was just like, "Wow, these teachings are dope. If I follow what this Jesus man talked about and taught, my life gets better." And it was one of those, by the fruit, you shall know them. So it's like, okay, I don't have to believe in any kind of theology to just recognize when something lands in my heart and I go, "That sounds like a good way to live." You know what I mean?

[00:31:14] So Emmett Fox is super cool. I would recommend that as an entry point to anyone that's church-curious or bible-curious because it's really well written and it's just very poignant and digestible and logical. Because for me, a lot of the mythology has historically been a barrier to entry.

[00:31:43] So I'm just like, "What are all these stories? You got to work so hard to find the meaning in it. And I guess that's the point. So Emmett Fox is like, "Cool, get out of a backhoe and basically remove all the topsoil, and you have the bedrock of what the teaching is." And it was very supportive of my sobriety early on. Anyway, I digress. I wanted to touch on that because we haven't had a chance to unpack that in the talks we've had, but I know it's been a huge part of your journey.

[00:32:11] Mansal: And I'll share one more piece too with you because I think a lot of people actually have resistance to some of the purely intellectual theology components. One of the reasons that I love Orthodox Christianity so much is because they definitely revere the Bible. But the Bible only exists in its context, and its context is 100% oriented towards tradition and ritual.

[00:32:41] So when you go to orthodox-- divine liturgy on Sunday is intended to be creating heaven on earth at that time. You're not going there to study the Bible. You're going there to create heaven on earth. And that's where you get all of the art and all of the creation of beauty that's there. That's where you get the incense. They come around with myrrh and frankincense, and it is an altered state because you have the incense, you have the beauty, you add the singing, which is incredible.

[00:33:18] And in fact, when they are even reading elements of the Bible, they're doing it via song. And so using sound, using scent, using beauty is intended to create an altered state of connection to the divine in the divine liturgy, the representation of heaven on earth. So to me, as someone who has entered my connection with a higher power through ayahuasca or sweat lodge, or any of these very embodied practices, it was a place that could feel like I could have the same experience, but through a Christian lens.

[00:33:59] Luke: That's epic. Thinking about the beauty of old cathedrals, the acoustics, the stained glass, the lighting in an old church is amazing. I was telling you earlier there was a time when I was traveling to New York City a lot, and I didn't grow up going to church. I don't know anything about them.

[00:34:19] I didn't know you could just walk into a church in the middle of the afternoon. No one stops you. So I tried it a couple of times and I was like, "No one's kicking me out." And I would just go in there and pray and just chill. Especially in a city like that where it's just so overstimulating and chaotic, that would be the way that I would find peace in the city, just dip into churches.

[00:34:38] Once I walked into-- which I didn't know from the outside-- a Russian Orthodox Church, and it was like the middle of a whole procession. And it was like no one stopped me, so I just went in and stood in there and just watched the whole thing. It was really beautiful, to your point. Yeah, there was a certain consciousness or, yeah, a vibe to the whole experience that was really beautiful.

[00:35:05] Mansal: And this is important because for me, one of the reasons I made some of the commitments that I did, and one of the reasons why I produced the venison products with Real Provisions was because of my relationship to Christianity. So you know that I already had a quite strong practice of intentionality with the meat that I eat and with hunting, and a lot of that came from being involved with indigenous spiritual practices and the kind of connection that they have to their higher power.

[00:35:41] And when I had this model of Christ, it really started to dawn on me, would Christ celebrate the way that we create meat in this country? Would any of the spiritual teachers have excitement around factory farming in its worst sense, or even the way that animals are manipulated and controlled and confined?

[00:36:15] And I recently found this just absolutely epic icon. So icons are depictions of saints or of Christ, and it's from a iconographer in England, and it's Christ breaking the chains of animal suffering. It's like all these animals with Christ over them. And that one really resonated with me because of that connection.

[00:36:43] And Wendell Berry is a Christian, and his belief is that the fundamental challenge and charge for Christians, love your neighbors, even love your enemy, includes all things. It's not just love your human neighbor. Love the animals, love the rivers, love the plants, love the trees. They're all neighbors. And so it sent me towards an ever deeper commitment, thankfully with my wife, who's on board, around the type of food that we want to be nourishing ourselves with. And sovereign animals fit in that category.

[00:37:28] Luke: That's a great segue into where we started with reconciling the fact that most human beings, at least in this country-- there's a lot of vegetarians in India and some other places, but most people I know eat meat. And even those of us that try to go vegan or vegetarian for a while, there seems to be an expiration date on that before your health starts to fail as a result.

[00:37:55] So this is something just on my moral spiritual compass that I've been playing with for years, which is why I went on the hunt with you. I'm just like, "I need to face this part of life that I haven't been exposed to." And I feel better when I eat a lot of meat. I don't really like vegetables. Only food I really like is meat and ice cream. Both animal products.

[00:38:21] So when you told me about Real Provisions, which those watching the video, you can see I've got a bag of it right here, I was so stoked because-- well, there's two parts. One is just intuitively I sense that wild animals are going to be way more nutritious because they're eating a native diet.

[00:38:42] Even a grass-fed cow, and I'm sure you can unpack this for us more, but I've been to some farms. They're getting bales of alfalfa. It's not like they're out living their best life just roaming wild. So I feel like the diversity of plant life that are ruminant animal's going to eat in the wild is going to make them much more nutritious for me to eat.

[00:39:04] And then the other thing is you can go to the grocery store and it's like pasture-raised or cage-free or organic, grass-fed. There's so many deceptive marketing practices that go on. Unless I'm going to the farmer's market and looking the farmer in the eye and grilling them about every part of their process, I'm just reading a label that has a cute little story on it.

[00:39:35] But I don't really know the ethics behind that meat. And if there was unnecessary cruelty or suffering that went into what I'm putting in my body. And that's problematic for me. I don't want the energy of cruelty and suffering and exploitation and abuse to become part of my cellular body. You know what I mean?

[00:39:57] So let's unpack what led you to the Real Provisions and the fact that you're using wild game, which is amazing and organ meats. Also, I have no idea how you made it taste good because I'm sure I'm not alone in not really enjoying eating heart and liver and organ meats. I think we just don't have the palate for it in the West.

[00:40:22] But I feel really good on it. It's like rocket fuel. You eat a big ass piece of liver, you have a lot of energy. My body responds to that, but it's just like I can't take 57 capsules of organ meat. You know what I mean?

[00:40:39] So anyway, just walk us through the journey of being a hunter. Because when I look at hunters like Daniel Vitalis, for example, I envy him so much because his diet's probably like 95% wild. Wild plants. All his hunter gatherer stuff that he does, I'm just like, that guy's got to be so healthy because he is eating real food. It's just like even our vegetables aren't real food.

[00:41:04] They're hybridized and bred to be whatever, juicier-looking, fatter, or grow faster. And the same with a lot of the meat that we consume. I just don't trust the supply chains because of that deceptive marketing.

[00:41:19] Mansal: You're spot on and you're probably speaking to something that many, many people experience. Something that I said earlier today, speaking with a friend. There's no bad food, and I absolutely love beef, but there are bad supply chains. And the industrial food system that we have in America has certainly perverted things that used to be good.

[00:41:46] It's funny. We talked a little bit about the Christian angle, but one of St. Augustine's perspectives on evil was that evil was just the corruption of something that is good. And when I think about even grassfed-beef, for example, it's insane to me that there are-- plasticlist.org.

[00:42:16] Did you see the study last year? It came out showing that the amount of phthalates, which is a chemical, hormone disruptor in grass-fed ribeye at Whole Foods was eight times the FDA recommended limit. And the FDA is probably recommending a lot more than you should have in the first place.

[00:42:37] So the way that the toxicity has seeped into our food system is way more a reflection of this principle, this quote that Charles Eisenstein says, "We cannot treat nature in a way that we're not also treating ourselves." And so when we dump poisons and toxins and things into our oceans, our rivers, we're going to end up with them in our foods and in our bodies.

[00:43:12] And unfortunately, that's something that's present. So yeah, backing up to how the animal lived, for one thing, cows generally speaking, as you've suggested, are limited in their diet. And this is not just because they're forced to eat less food, although that is the case.

[00:43:35] You'd be amazed at all of the things that can find their way into grass-fed beef. Certainly there are incredible farmers, and I would say the vast majority are doing the absolute best they can. But believe it or not, in 2016, they stopped regulating the term grass-fed.

[00:43:58] Luke: Really?

[00:43:59] Mansal: The most highest standard for grass-fed is from the American Grassfed Association. If you go read their rule book, you can put it in the show notes. It says openly up to 12% of their feed can be GMO soy.

[00:44:16] Luke: Oh shit.

[00:44:18] Mansal: And this is grass-fed certified beef. And then on top of that, you got all of the other things that you're talking about, the grass pellets, the alfalfa, the hay. But let's just assume for best-case scenario that you have a cow that's eating all the grasses that it can find. They're domesticated, so they're eating the same few grasses. The amount that they eat is so few.

[00:44:43] Whereas these deer are eating hundreds of species throughout the course of the year. They're eating them when they're in season. They're eating them when they're at the highest nutrition. And so while I for sure feel the ethics behind why I decided to go this route with deer, we also have studies with Utah State University.

[00:45:07] We did a collaboration and the science is undeniable, of phytonutrients. So these are those kinds of nutrients that you had mentioned that are a product of the diversity of plants. 28 to 64 times higher in the venison versus grass-fed beef.

[00:45:29] Luke: Wow.

[00:45:29] Mansal: Some nutrients, especially in axis liver, are 100 times higher than in grass-fed beef liver.

[00:45:38] Luke: That's crazy.

[00:45:40] Mansal: Yeah.

[00:45:41] Luke: It just makes common sense if you think about the biodiversity. Your axis deer in Real Provisions is from Hawaii. Anyone that's been to Hawaii, you just feel the life force. There's shit growing everywhere. Stuff that you've never seen or could imagine in terms of the plants.

[00:46:00] I don't know, there's so much sun and the water and the volcanic soil, it just makes common sense to me that those animals and the biodiversity of their diet are going to produce much healthier meat. But I didn't realize it was such a strata. That's wild.

[00:46:20] Mansal: Yeah. So even the more basic things, you're going to have 30 to 40% more protein. For the nerds out there, there's more steric acid, which is one of the better saturated fats. Eight times the Omega-3 fatty acids as grass-fed beef.

[00:46:41] Luke: Eight times?

[00:46:43] Mansal: Eight times.

[00:46:44] Luke: So basically these are like vitamins. It's like a supplement.

[00:46:48] Mansal: Funny thing you say that because it's dehydrated and because organs are in it. A single serving of this is actually approximately two servings of the beef liver capsules. But then you have to anticipate the nutrition's probably anywhere between two to 10 times better.

[00:47:10] So in some ways, you're taking like 20 capsules worth of organ meats. So it is no wonder that when you eat it, you do feel actually quite a bit better and it's noticeable. So this is very much walking the line between medicine and food intentionally, and it's the way that nature intended it to be, without fillers and all these kinds of things.

[00:47:40] I did some videos recently just for marketing purposes where I got the number of bags of other brands that were needed to get the amount of nutrition. It was 12 bags of a very famous brand, EPIC Provisions, the bison bites. You needed 12 bags of bison bites to get the same amount of iron as one bag.

[00:48:10] And for pregnant moms who are trying to get iron, that's insane, that ratio. I can play in the science as much as anyone else, but ultimately it comes down to give an animal sovereignty and freedom to pursue and express itself, and it will express itself far better than we can when we control, manipulate, and in many ways hurt its natural potential.

[00:48:47] Luke: Think about feed lots that are-- I'm talking about the lowest common denominator cattle farms when you get out. Some places in the West, you're driving down the highway and it just start smelling like cow shit really bad. And you come upon the dry-ass, yellow fields or just dirt. They're just out there in the dirt in small pens and they're never moving.

[00:49:16] Not only just the karma of being involved in that, but thinking about the nutrition of just an animal that's never allowed to be vital. I watch deer here every day and they're just so agile and strong. You can see. We'll track some of them when they're fawns and you can learn how to identify them.

[00:49:41] And then a year goes by and it's like this buff-ass buck with big muscles. You see the difference. There's the mutt. But there's always a couple of really badass bucks that look intimidating. They're scared of us, thankfully. But they're big powerful animals because they're out in the wild climbing hills, running from shit.

[00:50:06] It's like they just have a different level of life force that's so obvious versus looking at an animal that's kept in a little pen their whole life with the purpose of getting them fat and out of shape. It's like you are what you eat principle. I want to be like that buck. Not like the atrophied, fat-ass cow down the road at the farm. You know what I mean? It's just a common sense, big picture analysis of that.

[00:50:39] Tell me about the ethics of the hunts for the Axis deer in Hawaii and the ecological balance of nature, how you're encouraged-- I think like the government encourages people to take down those deer so they don't get out of control because there's no predators.

[00:51:03] Mansal: Yeah, so these were introduced, if you can believe it, about a dozen-- some stories say 13, some 14-- were introduced in the late 1800 as a gift, and they're now proliferating on Maui Molokai, Lanai. And they're upwards of maybe 150 to 200,000 deer. So handful, a dozen, all the way to 200,000 deer because they don't have predators and because they reproduce so fast.

[00:51:40] So I'm really conscientious not to call them invasive because that word and the root invasive just implies something that I don't think is fair. Humans introduce them. They're just doing what they do. And they're reproducing without any kind of predators, which unfortunately hurts not only the land because they overgraze in many respects, but it also hurts the soil because there's more erosion when you overgraze the land. Hurts biodiversity in many ways, but it also hurts them.

[00:52:22] I told you earlier, this year, driest on record. They had a state of emergency because these animals were thirsty and starving. But I've spoken to some of the hunters that are actually creating these products, and one of them told me last time I visited that when they get really in a drought situation the animals will start eating plants that they really shouldn't be eating, and they start to poison themselves, and they start to die slowly.

[00:52:54] And he's had experiences, many of which powerful ones where the animals walk up to him. And it's almost as if they're asking, put me out of my misery. And he has done that. Sometimes in the summertime, he'll have to kill thousands.

[00:53:11] Luke: Holy shit.

[00:53:12] Mansal: Yeah. In some of the worst years, when they got really sick. And so that's the state of the situation. And so when we want to organize a hunt, what we do is we talk with Desmond. So I know him by name. He's hunted for 60 years out in Hawaii. He's a native of Hawaii. Every time he's preparing to go hunt, he does his breath work to prepare himself. He says his prayers, and he goes out with USDA inspectors at night by moonlight. They use no spotlight. So they go by moonlight.

[00:53:48] Luke: Why do they hunt at night?

[00:53:50] Mansal: Because it ensures the animals are less mobile. So they're more curious, but they're not necessarily sure what they're looking at, so they're not as stressed. So it's much better for the animals to feel less stressed.

[00:54:06] Luke: Probably better for the meat too.

[00:54:08] Mansal: Which makes it better for meat.

[00:54:10] Luke:  Not full of adrenaline, right?

[00:54:11] Mansal: Exactly. And so they take a headshot on the animals, and if they make any mistakes, they will lose their license. So they're very precise. Every single animal is one shot, headshot, they're dead. The USDA inspector is right there, verifies everything, and then he says his prayers and they go to my friend's [Inaudible] and James, who are also on the island. They're native Hawaiians.

[00:54:41] They break the animal down, they make sure nothing goes to waste. They're incredible. And then it goes further into the product. So a few things I'm really proud of. One is I know every single person in the chain. I know the people who hunt the animal, who break it down. But also it truly is, and we have this written on the package, for the good of all.

[00:55:06] It is for the good of these deer because many of them suffer if they're not managed and we don't create balance. It's important for the ecosystem and the ecology of Hawaii that we preserve it, that we ease the burden on the land. And of course, it's beneficial for the Hawaiians that are there who are part of this process.

[00:55:30] And it's beneficial for you and me who get this most nutrient-dense food. And so I've come to say and truly believe that this is more ethical than veganism in many respects, and there are many vegans who will only eat this. I won't say his name publicly, but you and I have a mutual friend who's vegan for 35 years, investor and advisor. Very, very successful. Because this is the only thing that he really feels comfortable with from an ethics perspective. And that's the kind of bar that I want to give to everybody. Not just the people like you and me who can go hunt.

[00:56:17] Luke: Talk to me about the ethics of a vegan diet versus this.

[00:56:25] Mansal: Because these animals, a, are out of balance, we are trying to come to this from a perspective of what's in the best interest of nature and what's in the best interest of these animals, and what's in the best interest of us as an animal. And from all of those positions, eating this is far more ethical in my judgment.

[00:56:59] If veganism comes with all kinds of downsides for people's health, unless they're taking a bunch of processed, ultra-processed, ultra-refined things-- I can't tell you how many pea proteins and these other supplements and all these things that are quite intensive for the earth to produce. I don't know if you've ever seen a full monocrop of peas or all these kinds of things. And I don't really--

[00:57:32] Luke: That's something that's occurred to me going to Indiana, where Alyson's from. It's like the land has been-- I don' know-- it's a strong word-- but it's been raped. It's just like trees all removed from the landscape. Because you can see what it would've looked like without human intervention.

[00:57:51] There's forest and then it cuts off, and there's a big square of 10 acres or whatever where they're growing corn and soy sprayed with God knows what. All these GMO seeds and stuff. And it's like, when I look at that, I think, man, imagine how many people who are trying to do the right thing ethically by just only eating plants don't realize that the horrors of factory farming aren't limited to animal agriculture. Factory farming is mostly plants. You know what I'm saying? So it's like the destruction on the earth is not missing from growing plants in that way.

[00:58:33] Mansal: Yeah. There's still the energy of control, manipulation, coercion that goes into that type of farming for plants. I appreciate that you said it. And it goes without saying, I very much respect people's mindfulness around eating meat and especially contributing to the factory farming industry, especially in America and how it manages animals.

[00:59:04] And I personally believe that we are a part of the circle of life and death. And if that is true, then we must engage with it as ethically and morally as we possibly can. I don't think veganism is necessarily the way, and I might actually have a lot more in common with someone who eats mostly fruits, some vegetables from the farmer's market, and then some wild game than your average meat eater, let's say.

[00:59:48] So I respect vegans a lot. I don't necessarily see eye to eye as far as what our solutions are for coming to the earth with more reverence. And I understand the pain that comes with an animal suffering. And so this meets my ethical standards because in many ways these animals will suffer more if we do not manage and balance the population.

[01:00:18] And something I don't know that everybody in your audience wants to hear, but unfortunately, the deeper I got down the rabbit hole with grass-fed beef, the more I realized of no fault of the farmers, really. There is a system that does create a lot of animal suffering, and it's in particular that final day of its death.

[01:00:44] And essentially 80% of all beef that gets sold in the country comes from four big companies, JBS, Cargill, National Beef, and there's one other. But these four, it's essentially oligarchy of companies. If you spend a lot of time with cows, they're very social creatures. The more time they get to spend with their social unit, the more they feel the separation.

[01:01:22] So when a farmer who's absolutely doing their best, having their cows live in harmony with the land and eating grass, when they want to sell that cow, if they want it to be USDA certified, and they want it to be all packaged and done in a way that's easy to sell, they have to ship that cow off.

[01:01:47] And they come. They rip that animal away from the family, put it on a tractor or a trailer to the slaughterhouse. They can smell it. They know what's happening at that place. A study of 500 cows found that 69% of cows in their flesh showed high or very high levels of stress as measured by cortisol simply from the slaughter process. In fact, 67% became hyperglycemic just from those hours of slaughter.

[01:02:32] So that means they became diabetic from stress within four hours of being taken from the land to go to the slaughter. And so when people say that they can't really tell much of a difference in the taste of beef from one cow to the next, oftentimes it's because of how uniformly stressed they are at the end.

[01:03:00] Luke: Wow, wow.

[01:03:02] Mansal: And again, this is not to say that beef is bad. There are farmers who you can do a field harvest with. You can talk to them. You can go out to their field, you can take the shot on the animal and you can butcher in the field, and you can avoid all of that. But that's the hard part about the faceless factories and the packaging and the grocery store and things like that. You really don't know. And honestly, if it's in a grocery store, they've achieved a level of scale that almost has to come with that cost.

[01:03:38] Luke: Right, right. When you go into any Whole Foods and there's a row of grass fed beef and it's the same two or three brands and every whole foods in the entire country is stocked, it's like, where's it coming from? One thing that's really bummed me out is when I learned that as part of the USDA regulations, that there's some nuance in terms of the rules that it's rare that a farmer raises cattle and slaughters them there.

[01:04:09] As you said, they have to be shipped to a proper licensed slaughterhouse or whatever. When I'm on the freeway and I see a semi go by with a trailer-- they're those aluminum trailers-- and you look over and there's just a bunch of cattle packed in there, it's so sad, dude.

[01:04:30] Even if they don't know yet what's going on and they can't smell the slaughterhouse and get the vibe that they're about to be taken out, dude, put me in one of those trailers and drive me 200 miles, I feel like I have a nervous breakdown. Just the stress of being packed in there and the noise and the fucking wind and traffic and the rattling of the trailer.

[01:04:51] Just that is not fun to participate in. It's like that could be the cleanest grass-fed organic beef that's on its way to slaughterhouse that I'm going to go buy in the store, but I'm totally disconnected from the fact that they just went through that brutal trip. It's just insane.

[01:05:12] Mansal: It's super sad to me, not just for the animals, but for everybody involved. For you who tries to do the best you can but is trying to navigate through the marketing and the obfuscation for the mom that's just trying to feed their kids the best nutrient-dense food. For the people who are actually killing the animals. How do you have to deaden your own emotional response to do that day in, day out for hours and hours at a time?

[01:05:47] Luke: Man.

[01:05:48] Mansal: So there's a lot of drama that's being perpetuated in this. And a lot of it happens because we don't want to look at things. And I even hesitate to bring it up in a strong way on the podcast, but that's what led me and my wife to just look at each other and say, "We don't want to participate in this anymore." And then take the next step and say, "How can we help other people not participate in this either?"

[01:06:24] And I recently had a video from a woman living down in Costa Rica, and she literally has a house here in Austin that she sends this product to. When she comes back, she gets it in bulk, takes it back down with her. She's preparing to have children, and she doesn't feel comfortable eating anything else for the nutrition and the protein. And so for her, it's literally her access point to this type of nutrition with ethics.

[01:06:55] Luke: It's like her prenatal supplement.

[01:06:59] Mansal: Exactly.

[01:07:00] Luke: Yeah. There's a lot to be said for that for moms wanting to get pregnant, that are pregnant, breastfeeding. Going back to the biodiversity of the diet of a wild animal, but there's also just the DNA of an animal. Cows aren't even a natural animal.

[01:07:18] They're bred over hundreds or thousands of years from the ORAC or whatever. They're not actually a real species. And not there's anything wrong with that. It's all God. But it's like, I don't know. That's going back to like Vitalis, just looking at his diet.

[01:07:36] He's eating animals that were actually just designed by God. There's a huge difference. And he's the one I learned too, when you go to the grocery store and you see five different vegetables, oh, there's the kale. There's the spinach. There's the broccoli. There's the Brussels sprouts.

[01:07:51] He's like, "Those are all the same plant, literally. They've just been hybridized." When you go in nature, there's true diversity. So I think about that with animals too. I don't know. There's got to be a difference in life force and just the chi of an animal that is just its own native. I eat bison when I can, just for that reason.

[01:08:13] It's like an unadulterated strong ass animal. You've been around bison. I know. You get around some bison. It's sketch, man. They're big, powerful, unpredictable creatures. Oh, well, put a fence up. Yeah, they'll walk through your fence. You know what I mean? You can't hurt them.

[01:08:29] You can't control them. They're cool. And it feels to me like eating that animal is going to give me more net life force than one who's weak and sick, and isn't even designed by nature to be that way.

[01:08:45] Mansal: Yeah. It reminds me of a meme that I remember seeing. It's like a designed by God. It's a wolf. And then designed by man, it's like a pug.

[01:08:55] Luke: It's like our dog. Yeah, yeah. Totally. That's a perfect representation of that. And I get it. We've evolved and agriculture has done what it's going to do, and it's really hard to keep bison in a pen. So let's make a weak-ass bison, and then you've got a cow. So it makes sense.

[01:09:13] But the thing about this that I think about for you is, do you feel like-- you've heard the parable, I'm sure, of the guy who's walking along the beach and he's saving one crab at a time and throwing them back. You know that story?

[01:09:33] Mansal: No.

[01:09:34] Luke: All right. There's a guy walking on the beach and there's just hundreds or thousands of crabs have washed up on shore and they're all basically going to die up there. And so this old man's walking along the beach and he's throwing them back in the ocean one at a time.

[01:09:46] And someone walks up to him and says, "Man, why do you bother? What you're doing doesn't matter. How can you make an impact just throwing one at a time?" And he grabs another crab and throws it out.

[01:09:57] And he said, "Ask that one if I made a difference. I always remember that." I'm probably paraphrasing how the thing actually goes, but it's like what you're doing with Real Provisions, to me, it's so progressive that if I was you, it would be intimidating. Because I'm just like, "Yeah, I want to make a difference. I want to change the way we eat and our relationship to animals."

[01:10:20] But you're up against just hundreds of years of doing it another way that everyone's gotten used to. And there's such a industry around it. It's like, I don't know. How do you summon the kind of determination and courage to do something that's so niche and that's so far ahead of its time?

[01:10:45] You're like Goliath. You're just up against this massive beast of a system and you're making a difference. But relatively speaking, it's such a small difference. How do you find the motivation in that?

[01:11:00] Mansal: It's a great question.

[01:11:02] Luke: Maybe in 50 years what you're doing will be the standard, 100 years. Who knows? But it's like right now you're like the tip of the spear.

[01:11:10] Mansal: Right. Yeah. I think if I did it from the perspective of wanting to make a difference, it would be infinitely challenging. But like most of the best art and creation, it's coming from my heart. It's coming from my heart because this is how I want to live. I want to create the more beautiful world that my heart knows is possible in the way that I eat.

[01:11:42] And if other people can feel similarly, then that does something to create a meaningfulness for me. And if I can do something for these deer-- we just did an analysis because we're near the end of the year of how many animals we've hunted and how we've managed the population.

[01:12:07] With Real Provisions, we were able to manage 1% of the Maui-Molokai deer herd, which has a huge contribution for ensuring the other animals live without suffering. And so I do it for the anecdotes, not the data. I do it for the individual lives, whether it be the deer or the humans that benefit from it. And ultimately I do it for myself and my family.

[01:12:39] That was the initial impetus, was for my wife, to feed my wife and myself, to feed our future children with something that I feel good about. And coming back to some of the Christian stories, something that is very, very often brought up in the Bible is this concept of essentially you can gain the world, but what good is it if you lose your soul?

[01:13:17] And that's what I see within the industrial movement. You have consumers who don't want to be eating that kind of food. You have farmers who don't want to be producing it in that way. Nobody wants it. But the system is oriented towards whether it be convenience or cost or scale, reliability.

[01:13:46] And so they are willing to sacrifice some part of what they know is true in their hearts. And my hope with this, and this is why the spiritual components are so interwoven with it, is that this is a reminder that, hey, our food that we choose is a spiritual act. And we can choose something that doesn't make rational sense, doesn't check all the boxes.

[01:14:15] Luke: From a business perspective, being the first one would never make sense. It's irrational. You want like proof of concept you see someone else doing, you go, "Oh, I could do that or do that better." Yeah, I think that's what I was getting at. It just seems like a daunting project. But the way you contextualize it, to me is like doing this podcast for nine and a half years is what I would be doing anyway.

[01:14:46] You're my friend. You'd come over. We'd probably have a very similar conversation. So it's like I'm not really doing something outside of what I care about. There's just a schedule to it, and I'm like, I'm required to do it more than I maybe would if I wasn't making a living at it. But it's like, it's just what I'm meant to do for this time.

[01:15:05] So I don't think about, ah, but I'm not Joe Rogan. Or like, how am I going to reach everyone in the world and teach them about Wild Venice and Jerky or whatever. It's like I don't really care. I just want to know about it. And if some other people benefit, then that's just a bonus kind of thing. So I relate to that in my own way. It's like a dharma sort of thing.

[01:15:25] Mansal: Yeah, certainly. And in this season of life, obviously, I see it through the Christian lens. And so I think about living as a saint as my North Star. And luckily, thank God there's no place for, how is this perceived? Will this work? Is this rational? Those questions have no place if I truly am considering my life from the perspective of living as a saint.

[01:16:01] Because in fact, most saints have lived, not logically, not in their own self-interest, etc. And I'm Trying to compare myself to a saint, but that's what I aspire to. And that's my North Star. Then suddenly I can behave in ways that are outside the realm of what is normal today.

[01:16:28] Luke: Totally. Go back to the phthalates that you were talking about in the grass-fed beef. I meant to ask this, and then we moved on. How is that getting in good quality, super expensive, grass-fed meat from the store?

[01:16:44] Mansal: So the study that I referenced, the plastic list study, they looked at all different types of phthalates. They found that phthalates-- so just to back up, phthalates are endocrine disrupting chemicals that are essentially chemicals that are part of plastic. So they're plasticizers that make the plastic more flexible or harder.

[01:17:10] So your audience, I'm sure, has dealt with plastic packaging, which is very flexible, and then plastic that is a tub that's much thicker and harder. And there are chemicals called phthalates that involved.

[01:17:24] Luke: Oh, phthalates.

[01:17:25] Mansal: That are involved in that.

[01:17:26] Luke: I thought it was thalates, th.

[01:17:29] Mansal: Yeah.

[01:17:29] Luke: Okay.

[01:17:30] Mansal: When it comes to the beef, what happens is they're wrapped up in plastic. But because they're in the food system that requires certain sanitary regulations and things like that, what seems to be most likely is that they're being sprayed with some type of acidic, even just vinegar. So you have the meat. It's butchered. It's ready to go. You spray it with this vinegar spray or something acidic. Then you wrap it.

[01:18:05] But the acidic spray breaks down the chemicals of the plastic, and then that leeches into the meat, and it transfers more in fat than it does in muscle meat. So the ribeye, which is a fattier cut of the beef, had eight times the recommended amount of certain phthalates. But then you look at EPIC Provisions' tallow, which is a cooking oil that is all the rage right now. Well, it's exclusively fat, so it had 800 parts per billion of these phthalates. So it's like 20 times the daily recommended amount.

[01:18:49] Luke: What?

[01:18:51] Mansal: Yeah.

[01:18:52] Luke: I got a bunch of tallow downstairs. You're going to make me paranoid.

[01:18:56] Mansal: Well, the good thing is--

[01:18:57] Luke: Something that sucks about doing this show is I always learn things. I'm like, "God, another thing humans ruined." It's like I'm trying to just be chill and not be super neurotic about these things. But then you learn information like that. It's hard to unknow it or ignore it.

[01:19:13] Mansal: And to be fair, there's phthalates and microplastics and heavy metals and everything. So it's pretty ubiquitous. So yeah, for anyone who's watching, please don't allow this to add to any neuroticism. That's not my intention. And there are probably better choices, like smaller brands that do more small batch versus the bigger brands.

[01:19:42] But unfortunately with something like beef, it is such a standardized industrial supply chain that when a little guy who wants to make this very special tallow gets tallow or gets beef, it can come from a very similar place as this other big chain that produces a tallow product.

[01:20:08] And so EPIC Provisions, I'm not trying to pick on them. There was just a consumer who did research on tallow and which ones were highest. And it's a reality that we have. And to me, it doesn't speak towards necessarily this food, bad. Don't eat it. Because you'll do that until there's no food left to eat. The challenge really is how does that food come to you, and can you find your way out of the food system and into a more connected place, which is also going to be a healthier place for you?

[01:20:48] So my wife and I, we have a cow in our freezer that we eat. Her name's Marigold. We named her. We hunted her and everything. And we created tallow from her body. So we eat tallow.

[01:21:03] Luke: Oh cool. You made your own?

[01:21:04] Mansal: Yeah, we made our own. But we just did it ourselves. And that's possible for people.

[01:21:10] Luke: Yeah. You just reminded me of something as a possible solution for people that want to eat meat and they're like, they don't want to be involved in all of this. At the beginning of the pandemic when I was like in prepper mode, I bought I think a quarter steer, just basically a chest freezer full.

[01:21:29] And it was so much meat, I could barely eat it all before it went bad after a year or whatever it was. But it seems like if you know a farmer and you just get one animal, that's probably safer because the supply chain is not so random. It's like I know the farm. I found their website.

[01:21:53] I didn't become besties with the farmer, but at least I know like I'm getting one animal that was raised at this one place. I've heard things too about ground beef where you go to Whole Foods and get New Zealand grass-fed, grass-finished. It's like there could be a hundred freaking cows in one pound of beef, which feels weird to me for some reason too.

[01:22:13] It's like, I don't know. It's that industrial thing. You're just so out of touch. There's so many points of separation between you and that animal. It's very hard to revere and have that, I don't know, sense of reciprocity or respect when the process is so cloaked.

[01:22:38] Mansal: Yeah. It's cloaked for a reason and unfortunately that makes it really difficult to feel good about it if you're thinking deeply about where your food comes from. So it's totally possible for you. And honestly in many ways, once you do the work to find the farmer, I would actually recommend you become besties with the farmer.

[01:23:03] You have the work done, and you can do it regularly. Once a year, spending two, three days to get all my beef for my whole family is not really that bad of a trade. It's deeply meaningful. It's actually pretty effective time-wise and energy wise and everything. And it's a lot simpler than I think what the alternative is.

[01:23:34] Luke: I've tried to be besties with a couple of farmers and I think I annoy them too much because I'm so nuts. I'm like, "What water are they drinking? Is it well water? Have you tested the well water? How do you know they're not eating glyphosate that's been from the farm next door, even though yours are organic?" I think I'm a little too crazy for them, especially in Texas.

[01:23:55] Mansal: Yeah.

[01:23:57] Luke: I get a little too nutty and I can feel their patience start to wane.

[01:24:02] Mansal: And that's one of the reasons--

[01:24:04] Luke: I'm grilling them.

[01:24:05] Mansal: That's one of the reasons why with our product too, because again, like I said, this is as much for me and my family as anybody, we test everything. So we test the heavy metals. We test mycotoxins. We test pesticides, and we test phthalates and microplastics. So everything. And we have a testing page. People can go to realprovisions.com/testing and it has all the tests from the labs.

[01:24:32] Luke: That's dope.

[01:24:34] Mansal: People can check it out--

[01:24:34] Luke: Because you can just say, "Oh, it's clean. They're not eating glyphosate." I'm sure there are people that are ethical and they might believe that, but I don't know of any food brands that are testing. It'd be hard pressed to get a supplement company to do that kind of testing.

[01:24:50] Drew at Organifi, he tests everything for glyphosate, which is cool. And lead, and all kinds of things. I'm like, "That's dope." For people that are starting to become more educated, people like me actually read websites and go to the FAQ and look at the ingredients. Especially when I promote things, I really feel compelled to do that because I don't want the karma of promoting some bullshit that's not real or that's going to be harmful to people.

[01:25:19] Mansal: Yeah, yeah. And I think unfortunately we live in a world where there's just all kinds of risks. And so not this product, but there's another product that we're creating where we did all those tests and we actually found some things that we weren't thrilled with. It was in the realm of phthalates and chemicals.

[01:25:37] But because we did the testing and I worked with the manufacturer or the producer, we actually figured out a solution where we stopped them using plastic at a certain point, and they instead use a different type of box. And we don't have that problem anymore.

[01:25:54] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:25:55] Mansal: So that's the other benefit from me of doing these tests, is that we actually can see where can we affect change into the supply chain. And we are still a David and Goliath player, but for those people who are listening who feel resonant not only with all the upside and the positives, but also the mission to do things at such a high level that we actually impact and change the supply chain, I'm happy to be in that community with you guys.

[01:26:31] Luke: That's dope. Think about you're educating some of the purveyors along the way, and in some cases it might not even be more difficult or more expensive for them to just pull a different lever. And now they're doing things differently, not only for you, but for every one of their customers. I think that's the thing.

[01:26:53] I haven't priced you Real Provisions lately, but it's going to be more expensive than a 7-Eleven Slim Jim. You know what I mean? But that being said, I think public education and awareness starts to drive markets, where something becomes the standard. There's more demand for it, therefore becomes more scalable so people can actually make money producing products, and more and more people can afford them, because that's just the standard that they have.

[01:27:24] Imagine if like what you're doing was standard for everyone, and no one would even touch a packaged meat product unless it checked all those boxes. We're not there yet, but somebody has to do it to prove that it's possible and that people actually want it, you know?

[01:27:39] Mansal: Yeah. It's interesting you say that because we just did a overhaul of our website where we have a comparison of this with other grass-fed beefs. Because at face value, it can seem expensive, but when you actually look under the hood, it's not at all. So this on a program of protein is 35 cents, whereas those epic bison bites-- you've seen the bison bites, right?

[01:28:10] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[01:28:10] Mansal: 75 cents per gram of protein. It's double the cost for protein as this, more sugar. Even the best grass-fed proteins are anywhere between 30 cents to 32 cents. So we're super comparable. We're essentially the same per gram of protein because we don't have all the water and the sugar that all these other products have.

[01:28:38] So this bag has 72 grams of protein in a single bag. Their bags, they're much smaller. They've got all kinds of fillers and preservatives. They try and keep it super moist with water. But in order to do that, they also use preservatives. So that's another thing. Even the best grass-fed jerkys tend to have celery powder.

[01:29:07] Luke: Yeah. What's up with that?

[01:29:09] Mansal: Celery powder is considered a carcinogen. It is 100% the same as nitrates and nitrites. It's just derived from celery. But the celery is genetically modified, hyper-hybridized, and forced to grow a lot of nitrates. So it's one of those things that's 100% just been marketing.

[01:29:38] Luke: Oh, that's so sneaky because you look at it. You're like, "Oh, celery is good for you. Who cares?"

[01:29:43] Mansal: Exactly. That's why they do it.

[01:29:44] Luke: It's like the MSG labeling. They've gotten so sneaky with that where it's like spice powder. And if you look into it, you're like, "Oh, that's another way of saying MSG." I think there's 150 names that they can legally use for MSG.

[01:29:59] So I'm always super skeptical of that. Like spices. What spices? You would just say turmeric and pepper, or whatever. The fact that you're being so ambiguous makes me suspicious. But I did not know about the celery.

[01:30:11] Mansal: Yeah, celery powder--

[01:30:13] Luke: So what did you guys do for shelf stability, and how did you avoid all that crap?

[01:30:20] Mansal: So we use vinegar, which has preservation properties, and we dehydrate the meat. So it has obviously a little bit less moisture in it than your super anxious meat sticks that you might have. And that, for some people, doesn't have the same like taste, and so some people are just not into it.

[01:30:46] But obviously for health reasons and for simplicity reasons and for all of the above, it just makes way more sense to not do that. But that's why the market has gone down the path of celery powder, is because they can tell people that it's just celery and they can have people really like the flavor and the texture and things like that.

[01:31:12] Luke: You reminded me of something from my weed slanging days. And I'm ashamed to admit this, but I've changed. I'm not this kind of man anymore. But when I was selling weed, if I got a couple of pounds and it was really dry, I would put it in a Ziploc bag and wet a paper towel and just put it in there for a day to bring the moisture back up because it would weigh a lot more.

[01:31:39] It wasn't really ripping people off, but they would've gotten more weed if it was very dry. So I figured that out on my triple beam scale. And I was like, "What? That big pile only weighs that much?" I'm like, "Hmm, what if I added some moisture?" And I could game the system in a way and then yeah, make a lot more money.

[01:31:56] Buy a lot more money. I'm a very small-time peddler of weed. But that makes me think about a lot of these packaged meat products that are super moist and you're buying it by the weight. It's like such and such ounces. How many ounces of that are actual bioavailable nutrition versus just water or sugar, maple syrup, or whatever shit they're putting in there?

[01:32:20] Mansal: It's tons of sugar additives and water. Really, it's sugar and water that you're getting when you have--

[01:32:28] Luke: That's interesting.

[01:32:28] Mansal: -- a product from the stores.

[01:32:31] Luke: Wow. I'm sure there's going to be people listening right now that are like, I want to try this. I highly recommend you do. And you can find that of course, in the show notes, which will be clickable. But for those listening, you want to get right on it. Go to realprovisions.com/luke, and looks like we've got a code LUKE that gets you a free bag of venison chips with your order.

[01:32:54] Yeah. I can't wait for people to try this and get feedback because I had to save this bag. Dude, it was so hard to hang onto it. I gave our guest yesterday. I had a couple little strips left and I was like, "I don't think I would've given it to them if I didn't have another bag." But I've been saving it so we could put it in the video and I didn't want to mess the bag up and stuff. But yeah, it's really, really good. And as I said earlier, I find organs are just really hard to get down, and somehow you manage to do it in a way that doesn't taste gamey and disgusting.

[01:33:24] And I think you were telling me a couple of weeks ago that you guys are going to do a flavor that doesn't have organs or has less or something for people that are super organ sensitive.

[01:33:36] Mansal: So that's our current recipe. And so that one is going to be 10% organs, and so it's very palatable. Even the most--

[01:33:45] Luke: It's not detectable.

[01:33:47] Mansal: It's almost not detectable. And in fact, our friend, Jarrod, here had a bite earlier and said it tasted all good, but we also have the venison chips, which part of the offer that we had for your listeners that have no organs, it's just meat in a crunchy, delicious texture. So that one's like the candy version. This one's the candy and medicine. But they're both incredible and they both have a ton of protein. So they're great replacements for other stuff.

[01:34:19] Luke: Have you looked into, in doing your lab analysis and stuff, the retinol content by chance, the vitamin A?

[01:34:28] Mansal: Yes, it's actually-- let me remember this. So the retinol content is five times higher in wild deer than grass-fed beef.

[01:34:43] Luke: Wow.

[01:34:44] Mansal: Five times higher.

[01:34:45] Luke: Damn. Because thats one 'of the main reasons that I try to eat liver on a semi-regular basis because you can't really get enough retinol from anywhere else. And copper. There's just things in liver particularly that hard to get enough of in your diet. The only other place I know to get retinol is cod liver oil, which I take sometimes, but that's always the driver for me with organ meats, is like, I want that vitamin A. Real vitamin A, not carrot, fucking unavailable. Not bioavailable vitamin A, the real vitamin A. Have you tested the copper by chance? I'm getting really granular.

[01:35:26] Mansal: I don't recall what the amount is. I'm happy to send it to you directly. But at Utah State, they just have the most advanced lab testing, and what they do is they test for literally hundreds, so like tryptophan, [Inaudible]. I don't know if you've ever heard of that, very specific phytonutrient. But that is significantly higher in wild deer. There's hippurate. There's all different types of things that I've never heard of.

[01:35:58] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:35:59] Mansal: And literally there's one B vitamin, I think it might be B3, that's less in deer than in grass-fed beef. But other than that, everything else is essentially higher.

[01:36:15] Luke: Epic. One thing that I think is challenging for me is I tend to eat these as a meal and it's probably overkill and not cost effective to make it my meal. Other words, I think there's probably more nutrition in a bag of these than my body's going to actually soak up in one sitting.

[01:36:37] So I found it difficult to pace myself and just think of it more as a delicacy or like a supplement. It's been hard for me. Have you ever thought about doing smaller packages for people where it's like one serving and it's the nutritional roster is just good for one sitting, so you don't waste the nutritional impact of it by just eating a bunch that you won't assimilate?

[01:37:02] Mansal: Well, I think because so many of these nutrients are fat soluble, that you will actually get the benefit, even you eat the whole bag. Because--

[01:37:16] Luke: You bioaccumulate it.

[01:37:18] Mansal: Yeah. So you might have a bag and then you're good for a couple weeks even. So I wouldn't be super worried about that. However, we do have one ounce bags on the horizon because this is a huge level up for kids. Being able to give kids something that's in a package snackable, even a crunch like the venison chips, but high protein instead of carbohydrates and sugars and things. So we definitely want to make it more accessible while at the same time not creating too much extra trash.

[01:37:57] Luke: Oh, right.

[01:37:57] Mansal: So one of the things that we're doing is we're working with a company that creates a little sachet that is a mycelium that will break down the bag--

[01:38:08] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:38:09] Mansal: In any a landfill.

[01:38:13] Luke: Amazing, dude. Wow. Well, I'm glad we got to catch up. There's more I want to talk about, but we'll have to do it another time. I think we covered most of the big points that I wanted to, but as a friend, congratulations and thank you for creating something super cool and finding a way to align your dharmic path and passions with something that I think is going to be a really great business and serve a bunch of people in a really unique way.

[01:38:43] And I'm just glad I have a good snack to eat, especially when I travel. That's usually when many of us fall. You travel and it's like, ah, it's so inconvenient. But I'm big on packing my own food, especially on planes and things like that. So I'm super stoked. Because the thing is too, we're also-- I can say all just because it's probably true, so deficient in so many of these core nutrients. I wasn't breastfed. I wasn't eating this kind of food when I was a kid.

[01:39:17] So just imagine what an advantage a kid would have if their mom was eating nutritionally dense food, breastfeeding. Then from the beginning of that kid's life, they're not going to be malnourished because they're actually eating real food. We would literally have a different planet. There would be less NPCs. It's like people would actually have cognitive abilities like a normal human, myself included. When you give the body the right fuel, you become a different person.

[01:39:49] Mansal: Here's an interesting little anecdote. I don't know that there's super solid science that will back this up, but I'm trying to do some kind of informal studies with some schools, Montessori schools, and things like that. What I've found with this is that oftentimes the second or third child in a family loves these and cannot put it down. Whereas the first child could take it or leave it.

[01:40:22] That may have to do with age. So the younger you get a child, the more open their palate is for different flavors and they appreciate the richness of organs and things. But a second hypothesis that I have is that there are known studies that show the children that are second and third after the firstborn have worse nutrition than the firstborn because the mother depletes her stores of many nutrients with her first child.

[01:40:58] So there are numerous indications that a second child can have less bone density, less mineralization, other problems because the mother, all her best nutrients went to the firstborn. The breastfeeding took a lot out of them. And I see these second and third kids gravitating towards these.

[01:41:22] One of my friends, Amy Bailey, her son ate a whole bag in a day, and he's a young one. So I think there is this innate knowledge of what we need. And also there is a very real lack of nutrition for a lot of people, mothers included, which does impact the kids a lot.

[01:41:45] And so the more that I can get this into these kids' hands, especially as I think about my own children, it gives me hope for something that I can never quantify but know that is true, that these kids are better nourished, better capable of taking over and stewarding the planet. That we will eventually--

[01:42:11] Luke: That's I'm saying, dude. I think some of us are myopic in the sense that we think like, oh, we're the ones in charge. I'm in my 30, 40s, 50s, whatever. It's like, dude, you're going to be gone and whoever remains are the people that are going to be driving this civilization forward or into a ditch.

[01:42:32] And some of it, not all of it, obviously has to do with just malnourishment, man. It's like we're not meant to be this deprived. The medical system shows us that every day. That's why I always trip that banks and hospitals are biggest, nicest buildings in every city. Says a lot about our priorities.

[01:42:55] Mansal: Yeah, it is interesting.

[01:42:57] Luke: Or even what trips me out sometimes driving around and you see a standard grocery store. Here we have HEB, which they have a little organic section, I've noticed when I went there like once I think. But you'll look at all these fast-food chains and big grocery stores and then there's a massive hospital next to it. And it's like, oh, baby's born in a hospital. Probably has, many cases, pharmaceutical interventions and God knows what else.

[01:43:27] And then they grow up just eating the standard American diet. They become an adult. They're eating at Taco Bell and shopping at the HEB and just eating GMO glyphosate garbage. It's like you start in a hospital and you go through this conveyor belt of toxicity, and then you just end up dying back in that same hospital or a version of it. It's like the hamster wheel of your average American's life. It's super sad.

[01:43:54] Mansal: It is. Yeah. And hopefully slowly but surely, we can do our little part in our corner of the world. And you have a great opportunity to give voice to people who are doing their own little work. So I really appreciate you having me again to chat about this and for you being so supportive of this.

[01:44:20] When I spoke about Sacred Hunting and was leading retreats, it was a lot easier for me to invite people come on this experience. Sometimes I have a disconnect with a physical product about the promotional side because people are so tired and inundated promotions.

[01:44:39] Luke: Totally.

[01:44:39] Mansal: And I just know from my heart that this was created with people in mind and their best interest in mind. And I have a lot of faith that it'll reach the right people. And so I'm glad to be able to speak to some of those people.

[01:44:54] Luke: Me too, brother. I'm so glad that we're able to sit down again. And I want to let people know if you want to know more about Sacred Hunting and that whole trip, that was really all we talked about in the first episode, which is lukestorey.com/mansal. Dude, you know what's funny, yesterday Tim was asking me how you pronounce your name. And I'm like, "I literally don't know." Sometimes I say Mansal, Mansal. Alyson's asked me. So tell me on the record and let me get it through my thick skull

[01:45:21] Mansal: Mansal.

[01:45:22] Luke: Mansal. Okay.

[01:45:23] Mansal: Like Hansel.

[01:45:24] Luke: If I ever say it wrong, just slap me upside the head. I've known you for years, and I'm like, "That's embarrassing." I don't know how to pronounce homie's name, Mansal.

[01:45:32] Mansal: And how many times do you have to pronounce it to me? We're just hanging out.

[01:45:36] Luke: Yeah, because I just say, "Hey, what's up dude?" You just, dude. That's why I say when I don't remember someone's name, like, "Hey, guy. Hey, Chief. Hey, you." All right, man. Let's get out of here. Thanks again for coming.

[01:45:48] Mansal: Of course, man. Thank you for having me.