$100M founder predicts what will be big in 5 years

So this is actually a company that I've, I've wanted to invest in for so long. If you're doing this, like, please just email me. I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never look back. All right. So I wanted to have you on because you are one of my healthiest buddies. Last time you were on, I think you've been on 3 times already. You didn't get into a lot of the ideas because we were just like peppering you with so many questions and I wanted to be more focused. I think I asked you, what are 5 or 6, like, interesting health companies or health trends that you're interested in investing in? And you hit, hit me back with a very detailed list in a very short amount of time. So clearly you are like already thinking and acting on a lot of these things. Can we go through each of them and you just tell me what they are? Because I'm crazy fascinated because like, for the listener, you told me in 2005, 14 or 15 that you were quitting tech, like you had a software company and you were going to launch a bone broth company. And I was like, oh man, like you're like, you're decided to throw your life away. That sucks. Like you were, you were going to be one of the greats. And then it just came out in Forbes, I think. Or what was that? Was it Forbes? You had this amazing feature about your company, Kettle and Fire, and how you surpassed $100 million in annual revenue., and it was amazing. And I'm like, you definitely won. And I read the article, by the way, and I texted like 5 friends and I'm like, Justin does everything the right way. By the way, did I get that right? You guys, you're at $100 million run rate or revenue?

Yeah, north of that.

Yeah. And you said something amazing. I think you said we're going to— what did you say? We're going to be the best operating e-commerce company in America. Is that right?

Yeah. I mean, basically, like, there are most of the big public big food companies were started pre-1900. And so a lot of these companies are very, very bloated. They're large. You know, they've been around. Frankly, I think many of them are poisoning people and then paying lobbyists and other sort of opposition research groups to make sure that, like, soda doesn't get removed from food stamps and all these sorts of things. And so I think these are just generally bad actors. And I think that there's a huge opportunity to both out-innovate these big CPG companies and also just run a better business. Like, I guarantee no one in Battle Creek, Michigan, working at Kellogg's, is looking at how do we use AI to automate a lot of our workflows and process and things like that. Whereas that's something we have live work streams going in Kettle and Fire to figure out how do we apply the craziest technology leap forward of certainly my lifetime to just running the best possible company that we can. And I think it's working so far. We have 34 people for for our size of business, which is quite good scale.

You have only 34 employees?

Yeah.

Wow. Is it wildly profitable or is it working its way to be wildly profitable?

Damn, that's awesome that you have proven me and I'm sure many other people wrong. And, uh, you've, you've been early on a bunch of stuff. All right, so let's dive deep. What's the first one you want to talk about?

Yeah, so first one I want to talk about is I think that, you know, there are, there's this huge, huge macro trend where all people are talking about Maha, they're talking about seed oils, talking about all these things.

What's Maha? Make America Healthy Again.

Is this true? You say here that in some cities there's more dogs than babies.

Yeah, yeah. And it's certainly true. Like the younger, the younger you go.

The kibble thing is interesting. I, I had a dog for 15 years. He was my best friend and his last 5 years of life, it hit me where I was giving him. So when I first got him, I was poor, so I would like buy the cheapest dog food. And then I got, you know, I could afford like whatever they tell you, you know, like the shtick they tell you is like only buy something where it says like chicken on the first ingredient. Who knows if that's true or not, but that's the more expensive thing. And then I was like, eating kibble, like dry dog food, that would be, it would be sort of like feeding me potato chips every day. Do you know what I mean? Like, and like people's dogs are, you know, what do you do when you have a dog and you eat dinner? They all come and obsess over you and you like yell at them. And I'm like, If you gave me refried beans for every single meal, of course I'm going to want, like, be desperate for any new food. It's kind of insane, right, that we would feed them the same thing and it's like a processed, dried thing that doesn't expire.

Totally. It's insane, right? It's totally insane. And you look at the ingredients, it's like full of trash, full of artificial ingredients, you know, like all of the stuff that people are trying to remove from their diets. We basically put in kibble and feed to dogs for every single meal.

For every meal. I remember like my in-laws have a dog and he comes over and they're like, oh, don't give him table food. I don't want him to be unhealthy. I'm like, I don't know, man. I feel like this asparagus and chicken might be all right.

100%.

And we had Kevin Rose on the podcast and he had funded a company called dogagingproject.org. And I believe what they are doing, the whole premise is that Uh, for some reason, I believe it was because a lot of times you don't want to see your— you're willing to suffer, or you're willing to let your family suffer oftentimes more than you're willing to let your dog suffer. And the premise— and but at the same time, you're willing to experiment more. And so the premise was that they had, uh, their— what's the, um, drug that is a longevity drug that starts with an R?

Rapamycin.

Yes. I believe they were doing, uh, they were selling this to dog owners And what they found was like, I guess there's a huge correlation between what we can do with dogs and what we'll eventually do with humans, like you're suggesting. And they have noticed that they have gotten dogs to live longer, and their premise is we are going to start here and then eventually go there to humans. And so, yeah, the people agree with you.

Can you tell me what Light Labs is? That's amazing. I looked at the website. It seems like this might— this is your brother's thing. It might be bigger than everything you guys have done.

I have a ton of questions on this. Okay, so you and I lived in Austin together, and then before that we lived in San Francisco together, both very much like bubble cities where Austin's like, you know, very health conscious. And particularly our friend group is very health conscious. And then San Francisco was like, you know, the— on the forefront of a lot of tech. Do people where I'm from in Missouri, where you're from in PA, do they care about any of this stuff?

Not right now, but I think that that's not like— not 100% of people have to care for this to make sense. Like, what is undoubtedly true is people are spending more time and energy focusing on sourcing toxin reduction. They're spending more money companies like Whole Foods, on brands like Kettle Fire, on their health in general. And I think that this is one of the things that people are going to start caring about when they shop. And like the minute that— yes, it may not be like people, you know, where my family's from, where your family's from, they may not be asking about phthalate load in, you know, their hot dogs that they're eating or something like that. But some percentage of people will. And you only need a small increase in order for there to be demand from the brand and consumer side to basically have supply chains and agricultural resources, ranching, like all these practices that incorporate and think about toxin exposure, pesticide load, and the like. And so I think Light Labs is the type of company that I'm super bullish on bringing transparency to the food system. Because I think it's just going to, like once you bring transparency, then there's energy to try and clean up and improve the food system behind that.

And so, so this company from— I don't know anything about the space. It's basically like putting an organic label on your food. So a food company would pay them and they would say Light Labs is a reputable brand. We have proof that they've tested everything. We paid them money to do it. And we have a dashboard as well where we can like see where we are in the process of the testing. Is that right?

Yeah, exactly. So consumer brands like we, Kettle and Fire, we already have to spend money on, you know, on these different sorts of tests and things like that.

Why do you have to?

Because you're legally required to by the USDA or FDA to do nutrition facts panels. You have to do like heavy metals testing. You just— there's just a slew of tests that you have to by law run. Yeah, by law before you can actually just sell a product. And so that, that's like a thing that you already have to do. Then what Light Labs is doing is they are bringing a bunch more transparency to, um, to the supply chain and making it so that you can look at, you know, Momentous supplements or like any number of these things and basically see, okay, beyond just metals testing and things like this, what are the other things that they've tested for? Oh wow, I can see, you know, like no detectable phthalates. I can see no detectable glyphosate, no detectable atrazine, like some of these other pesticides that people care about. Um, and so I think it's bringing that what has been like hidden in the depths of these like horrible lab tests run by companies that are like 60 years old to the forefront and making it influence consumers' buying behavior. That makes me so bullish.

How big is the biggest lab business now, or the couple biggest ones? And when your brother was raising money or when he was just brainstorming with you on describing how big this could be or like what his dreams were in 20 years, what was he saying?

Like in revenue?

No, market cap. So, but I mean, it pretty closely maps to revenue because it's like a service business. Yeah. You know, it's like not a great, doesn't trade very well. So what he was saying is basically step one, I think that we can build a competitor and be better than Eurofins. Like you submit to a Eurofins lab, you submit an email inquiry and you get a response maybe in like 3 or 4 days. And then when they run your test, they don't communicate anything and they dump like 30 PDFs on you. That you have to hire someone that understands food science to like, you know, translate this stuff. It's really like insane.

And you go to their website, eurofins.com. It looks like you're like, you know, making a vaccine or you're doing like, you're doing like, like, like some type of embryo work. Like it's like a very intimidating website. It looks like an academic site from like '95, you know, like it's very intimidating.

Dude, this is so awesome. Does he have any revenue now? Your brother?

Yeah, they, they launched a couple of months ago and they've started to get revenue.

Yeah. Did he raise funding or did he bootstrap it?

He did.

No, no, no.

This is definitely the type of company you have to raise money for.

It looks expensive to start.

Is this in Texas?

Yeah, in Austin.

Wow. This is amazing.

All right.

Wow. First of all, this is crazy. How much does— oh, and the, the labels. So like if you go to McDonald's or fast food, they put the nutritional there, which is like way more challenging, I think, than like an M&M or a candy bar, which is more controlled. But I'm pretty sure I've always, like, believed that nutritional labels are bullshit. Like, in my head, I've always been like, it's give or take, maybe even 30% of what is presented.

The calories. That's exactly right.

Is it— like, I would just— because I weigh my food. I've tracked almost everything that I've eaten for, like, 4 years now on MyFitnessPal. Wow. And, like, you— and you weigh it, and I weigh it, and now I eyeball it sometimes. But, like, first of all, I've noticed a few things. One, when people eyeball their food to track, they almost always overestimate or, sorry, underestimate by around 30%. And then if you go and buy like a, let's just say a Big Mac, the degree in which they are different is huge. And there's no way that those nutritional labels are accurate with just the calories, let alone like whatever else, like the macros plus whatever else is supposed to be in it.

Who owns the, like, is the certified organic, is that a company?

It is a, I believe it's a nonprofit. I think it's Oregon Tilth is one of them. But yeah, it's like a certifying body.

And I've always contested that that's bullshit because like, I just think that when you— I've like, I've seen farms where they have like an organic section and a non-organic section and like, it just seems like when you put medicine on one of them, it inevitably will get in the other one.

That is certainly true. The thing that is good for like, I think organic is better than nothing, but it's certainly not perfect. And I think that there is a lot of You know, there's a fair bit of research that organic vegetables, for example, have far fewer pesticides than their conventional kind of counterparts, but they still have some. But it's not because they're directly being sprayed. It's because of like, you know, wind, water, like all these sorts of things moving these compounds everywhere.

What's another good one? You want to do function, health, or skin, gut health? I'm fascinated by all these.

Yeah, let's do, uh, let's do function. So, you know, function, health, superpower, like Explain what those are. Yeah. So Function Health and Superpower, they're basically companies where you can go to their website, sign up, pay an annual membership fee, and they'll facilitate a telemedicine thing where they'll be like, hey, you can go get your blood drawn at, you know, a lab or have someone come to you and you can test your own blood for like, I think it's over 190 markers. So you can get things like PFAS exposure, heavy metals, testosterone, you know, insulin markers, all these sorts of things that to just know, are you healthy or do you have things that you need to work on? And so I think that like, I believe that Function is one of the fastest growing companies in the entire Andreessen portfolio. Like they're growing super, super fast.

And yeah, I think they announced another fundraising, but I think they announced that it got to like 9 figures in revenue in like 2 or 3 years, like something insane.

It's crazy. Uh, so it's crazy. And like, there's so much demand for people wanting to understand their biomarkers, their lipids, like all these sorts of things. I think that rolling forward 5 years, are we going to know more or less about the health of our bodies and what's like going on in our systems? It's definitely more. And what I think Function Superpower and the like are doing is they're lowering the friction for people like you and I to understand what's going on in our bodies and our blood and all that. And that information creates a ton of potential for action.

But why, why are, why is function growing so fast? Because I've used Insight or Insight Tracker for years. Insight Tracker. Insight Tracker for years. And then before that there was, I don't know, like there's, these have always been a thing. Why? Yeah. Like, and now I'm hearing so many people talk about function health where I'm like, these have been cool and awesome for a decade now. Why is this one particularly awesome?

I had my friend try to go get this testosterone checked and he went to the doctor and the doctor was like, 'You're 32.

You don't—

you're fine.' Like, you don't need to do that.

It's insane. The medical system is so patronizing. It's like they're also— there's people talking about how you shouldn't get an MRI or shouldn't get your bloodwork done because, like, it'll scare you, cause all these questions scare you, and you're like, fuck off. Like, that's just like such an insanely patronizing thing.

Yeah, it's crazy. Like, I, you know, I've done this before where I'm like, I want this tested. And they're like, but you seem perfectly healthy. And I'm like, dude, just like write it on the paper. It means nothing to you and it's important to me. Just do what I tell you to do, please. Like, exactly. Like this, this literally requires nothing from you and I'm just going to learn.

This company also took off. And by the way, I quit taking creatine. It, it turned me into a gorilla. I got so big, like I couldn't— I could not like fit into clothing. Like, have you, have you taken it?

I have. And I stopped. I stopped because a friend freaked me out. He was like, everyone who goes on creatine starts losing their hair, which I like didn't experience, didn't know about, but I was like, huh, I'll cycle off it for 6 months and see what happens. I went off it. It didn't happen to you, obviously.

No, not yet. But like, I like, like I ballooned. Like I just like it got so it just felt like I had so much water. Like it was like 15 pounds in like 3 weeks. Wow. I got huge. Like I went from like 202 to like 215 or something. And then I was like, all right, I got to go off it for like 8 days. And it just like all went away. Because, yeah, I don't know what happened, but, and this Function Health thing, these guys took off because, I mean, what they did was smart. They— I don't know if Mark Hyman started it or if he's like considered— is he like the Kim Kardashian of Skims where like, I don't know if he had the idea or like someone else had the idea and he was the face, but like partnering up with that dude who's got 2 million or something followers, like my father-in-law is like, whatever Mark says, I do. And so like partnering up with a guy like this is so much better than whatever else health influencers sell, like coaching PDFs or, you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. What's this other one about? Functional medicine doctor for your home. That is amazing sounding. Explain that.

Yeah. So there's increasing awareness around how your home can basically be a source of disease. Like lighting can be bad. EMFs, you know, are controversial, but like I think definitely have some health impact.

Wait, what's that?

EMFs, electromagnetic frequencies, basically like your cell phone, your Wi-Fi router, like all of these sort of things that, that are, that we're surrounded by all the time. You know, water toxicity, like off-gassing things called volatile organic compounds, basically like the, you know, when you walk into a building that's newly painted or something like that, you can smell it.

Dude, do you have so much anxiety all day?

No, I'm pretty chill.

I really believe in the like 80/20 thing on this stuff because like everything you're describing in my house is like, you know, like a chainsaw and they're just going to rip me up. Like, I saw a video. There's this guy named Carnivore MD, and he had a video on YouTube explaining, like, his house. And Carnivore MD is like the most extreme of the most extreme when it comes to like these type of granola health influencers. And like, he had like a mattress that had only natural fibers, which I don't— I don't know what a grounding thing is, but there was like this like is grounding for electricity. He had like a pole that went into the ground of his home and all the electricity had to like touch that grounding pole. Is that a thing? You know what I'm talking about?

That's amazing.

Yeah. Like it was like, and then he had like, um, uh, no LED light bulbs. He had no Wi-Fi. So there was no Wi-Fi at his home and you had to plug in if you had to, if you wanted to use the internet on this one particular area of his home. Like it was crazy. And I was reading it or watching this video and I'm like, that's cool. And also this fucking exhausting.

Yeah, definitely.

It's very exhausting. Like when you just named all of these things, I'm like, I don't know, man. Like, I kind of would maybe just fucking kill me early. Like, you know what I mean? Like, maybe I'll just take that as a consequence.

So they have a list on their website. So water quality, I assume that includes putting some type of filter. They have lighting, which I imagine that means like no LED lights or a certain type of bulbs. They have EMF, which I guess that is the grounding thing we talked about, uh, like basically somewhat.

Yeah, it's, it's more like, uh, it's more like are you sleeping over a Wi-Fi router? Like, are you spending a lot of times in, you know, a lot of time in areas that have a very high power, uh, you know, electromagnetic frequency?

Dude, they're going to get so pissed at me when they find out that I sleep with Family Guy playing in my ear from my cell phone. I sleep on my phone.

Oh God, I'm going to fail this test.

They have air quality. So that means like, do you have plants inside your house or what?

Or more, more like, are— is— what is the quality of your air? Mostly that's contributed like things that are bad are some of the paints that are doing off-gassing. Some furnitures off-gas quite a lot, you know, microplastic fibers kind of like floating around in the air from your like carpet or something like that. So a lot of these things.

Do these guys make money?

They just started. So the answer is sort of so far.

How much does it cost?

It depends on the house size, but anywhere— it's definitely a premium product.

Like $5,000 or $10,000.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's— I would say that it is one of these companies that Starting out is expensive. Concierge, like all that kind of stuff. Over time, I think there's a huge amount of potential, especially using AI and whatnot, to have people kind of do a version of this assessment almost themselves. Or you walk around your house with a camera and all these sorts of things, and this company just tells you like, change this, do this, this is probably bad, this is not. Like there's a, there's a really cool potential technology solve here, I think.

And the guy who started this, does he have a background in this stuff?

Dude, I feel whenever I hear this story, I think I'm broken because like, you know, I describe my family, like my, where I'm from in Missouri, we're basically, We're just mules. Like, we like, you know, you eat donuts in the morning, you eat cheeseburgers and fries in the afternoon, and you eat steak and pizza and french fries at night with tons of beer. And you just do that every single day and you just don't complain. And like, if you were to tell— like, you tell me that these people— like, if my house was full of mold, I would just think I have allergies. It just— whatever. Like, this is just how I feel.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? And so, like, I wouldn't— I wouldn't know. You know, to like do— I just thought— I would just think this is just life. And I, and I wouldn't ever complain about it either. I would just be like, fuck it, like rub some dirt on it.

It's fine. You're not alone. I mean, this is like how most people respond to this, right? I just think that people are becoming more aware of these things. Were you not raised that way? My mom was one of the early, like, into organic people.

She was granola.

Yeah. She would buy milk in a glass jug. That was like unpasteurized. So it had all these nasty clumps and you'd like pour it into your cereal in the morning and a clump would hit it and the whole thing would explode all over you. So gross.

Your mom's a freak.

I know. At one point I think I was like in 4th or 5th grade, the health food store where she was buying all this stuff literally burned down and all the kids like threw a party. We were like, yeah, no more, no more crappy milk.

That's insane. You know, it is funny as my wife, you know, as we've had kids, started having kids, It's so funny. Once the baby comes out of you, you automatically become granola. Yeah, there's a, there's a subreddit. Have you seen the subreddit? It's called like, uh, uh, Granola Mom.

Is it Moderately Granola Moms?

Yeah, Moderately Granola Moms. And, uh, yeah, Moderately Granola Moms, a place for almost hippies. And honestly, it's like one of my favorite places to get information because it's people who are hippie, hippie dippy, but they're self-aware. Which is like why I like you. So like, I want like someone who's like, you know, loves the extreme stuff, but can also dumb it down to me who's more, uh, like, you know, I don't really want to learn everything. I wish you would just tell me what to do and tell me like what's like experimental versus what's like actually proven. And like, you know, you like kind of can help me as a more normal consumer figure it out. And, uh, I've noticed that my wife, the second, you know, we, we had a kid, it was like no more Teflon. Plastic bottles are a no-go, like things like that. And frankly, I love it. I love it. Yeah, totally. We hung out with Joe Gebbia recently. Did you know— did you ever go to Airbnb's office?

Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't know if you remember this, but they were wild. So this was back in 2000. I think they did this actually from the beginning, but they had 2,000 people working out of that office, something like that. Maybe 1,000, and they made 100% of their own food and to, to an extreme. So for example, they had AirBowl, which was some type of like Airbnb Red Bull. They had, uh, so the, the condiments, the ketchup, the mayonnaise was literally made on site by the staff. And so, and their meats were all from butchers, uh, every single thing they had. So they had trail mix where it was like nuts with like chocolate that they had made. Uh, it was crazy. And I distinctly remember that and I thought it was crazy. And then I started thinking about it. I'm like, that's kind of amazing. And we hung out with Joe Gebbia and I asked him about that. I go, why, why did you guys do this? He goes, man, that's how I was raised. Like my mom, I think he, I think he grew up in Vermont or somewhere, some, somewhere, uh, rural New England. And he was like, my mom was basically into this stuff and I was raised doing all this and I just thought it was good for the planet and it was good for our bodies. And so we insisted at Airbnb that we did this. And so back then, you know, I don't know how, maybe Joe's 40-something, so he was, uh, raised in the, uh, late '80s, early '90s. Back then, if you did that, like your mom, you were a freak. Now all the young cool guys that like we follow on Instagram who we're friends with all do this stuff. And I think it's like pretty amazing.

That is so cool.

You don't remember that about Airbnb?

Uh, I went there. I, I didn't. Yeah, I went there to like meet up with friends and then see a talk, uh, So I only went 2 or 3 times and didn't actually get that, that level of detail. That's so cool.

It was wild. I don't know if they still have an office. I don't know if they still do that. But during the pandemic, they had to lay people off. And unfortunately, the culinary staff was probably the first to go.

Yeah, that feels like the first thing that a public company, like activist investor kind of yells at you. Yeah.

But, you know, I understand that it could be tough to justify when there's like no need for an office. But that was the story. It honestly was amazing. I tell the story all the time. And when I saw that, I was kind of on board with Airbnb even further because I'm like, if they sweat the details with this, they probably sweat about the details with other stuff. All right, let's do 2 or 3 more. You had one on about, uh, Skin Gut Health. What is that? And whenever someone says gut health, it freaks me out because the— what's it called— leaky gut is the world's greatest branding.

Yeah. So this is actually a cosmetics company that I've, I've wanted to invest in for so long. I haven't seen anyone do it. If you're doing this, like, please just email me. My email is very easy to find or ping me on Twitter. But the thing that I think should happen is like there's— I don't know how many hundreds of billions a year are spent on the skincare kind of space. And if you look at research, almost— there are certain things that work, like certainly there's classes of peptides and things like that that I think maybe work decently well from a skincare standpoint. But for most people, if you're buying any sort of skincare to look younger or whatever, it's just like a waste of money or it's like marginally effective.

That way. So say it again. So you're Your stance here is that skincare is mostly a waste.

Skincare is mostly a scam. Yeah. Yeah. Minus like a couple of things like certain peptides, sunscreen, moisturizer. Sure. If you want your skin to be like more moist, but a lot of the anti-aging stuff, anti-wrinkle cream, all these sorts of things.

Is that— is there one that starts with an R?

Well, Retinol-A is one of the few things that's actually, that's actually relatively effective. It's like Oh, but this is the thing. It's like basically only peptides are the things that work. Retinol.

That's a peptide.

Yeah. So it's a peptide. Things like, like OneSkin uses a peptide. There's something called like copper. It's copper GKU, I think, which is another peptide. These things seem to actually work as well as some compounds like methylene blue and whatnot. But other compounds, like any sort of random $50 thing that you're going to buy on Amazon that is like anti-aging and uses you know, jojoba oil or like any of these things, like just frack, like just do not work. Or if they do, they are so marginal, it's basically not worth doing, in my opinion. What does work is—

And you don't wear sunscreen either, right? No. You, that's one of your like bold stances, which is that sunscreen is toxic.

Yeah, I basically think like most sunscreen is carcinogenic. Again, this is another thing in the US, we allow things like oxybenzones that are not allowed in the EU. It's in almost every sunscreen in the US. Is definitively carcinogenic. And so like why we encourage kids to put on— put this on and like use it 8 hours a day.

I've known— do you use zinc?

So I use a non-nano zinc oxide sunscreen just for my face if I'm going to be in the sun for like a very long period of time.

Yeah, dude, just so controversial for a white guy to just—

I know. I don't know. Like, I feel like I am happy with my skin. So, so yeah. So the thing that I want to invest in is there is a lot of research that shows the relationship, the link between gut health and skin health. And so like if you have a healthy gut or if you work on probiotics or you work on like, you know, drinking bone broth, doing things like this that are going to improve your gut health generally, there's research that shows that that is reflective in skin. There's something called— I think it's called like bioluminescence, basically. But there is a way that you can measure how much light someone's like skin cells are emitting. And that improves as your gut health improves, which is kind of a wild fact.

How, how long is the, is the change? So like, for example, I don't have like the greatest— I have dry, flaky skin. I just thought it was just because I'm just like a super white dude and like in the wintertime my skin gets destroyed. In the summertime I'm great. But yeah, like, you know, I always thought that it was just like the lack of sun because like, like my scalp, my scalp will get like so dry during the, during the wintertime and I like need to get under the sun. Yeah, yeah.

So you get one of those like red light chicken lamps.

Does that do stuff?

Yeah, it's helpful, dude.

Like during wintertime I feel miserable. Like I, I like, I'm like, I need like the sun to like burn off everything on my head and on my face. So if I started drinking, what's the routine? If I started doing that, how long would my skin, it take for my skin to get better?

I bet it would take like 6 months basically. But basically I, I think it's going to be summer by this—

by that time.

But, but isn't that bone broth? I mean, what does this look like?

Yeah, so I think it would be like a combination of specialized probiotics that, that are geared towards, you know, improving skin health. I think it would be probably a crash diet of like 30 to 60 days where you're removing a bunch of like toxins and other inflammatory foods from your diet, incorporating bone broth, and then some sort of like effective topical skincare. And I think that regimen would outperform basically anything that exists in the skincare world today.

Do you eat any processed foods?

I try not to.

But like on a weekly basis, how often?

Probably very, probably none, zero to, yeah, one thing maybe.

So like that's easy for, I understand that for meals. So you probably cook or do leftovers. What about for a snack? What's an example?

I use these actually. I just had one earlier. So it's a Maui Nui venison stick.

Oh, I have one as well. I got, I got my, my, my Kettle and Fire collab with them.

There we go. Hell yeah. Yeah, dude.

They're so— you guys, you guys sent me a bunch of them. I think like each stick is like $3.

Yeah, it's like $3 or $4. Yeah.

I have like $1,000 worth of these at my house.

Amazing. So I do those like meat sticks. I'll do fruit, um, cup of bone broth. Like, those are kind of the go-to snacks. I've kind of been addicted to dried mangoes recently, which—

but that's processed, no? Like, is that not considered— is beef jerky not considered processed?

I, I wouldn't consider it processed. Like, if you're sourcing it, you know, sourcing it from a good place, like, it's not going to have a bunch of additives. It's basically just like meat that has been dried and then some spices.

Uh, yeah, I do dried mango. Where do you— I do it from Whole Foods, but the problem is, is that like I'll eat— I can do like a bag a day, which is like—

it is a problem.

800 calories. And like, it's basically like 4 Cokes.

Yeah. Yeah. Although I don't know, I've been eating like— there's, there's this interesting diet online that I'm currently trying. It's called the Honey Diet. But basically you just eat fruit and honey before noon each day and then have like a high protein meal in the afternoon.

Why are you doing this?

Just to experiment, frankly, and just see how I feel. But So far I feel pretty fucking good, dude. So the mangoes fit within that diet.

I've been doing my snack lately has been dates and butter. Have you ever had that?

No.

Oh my God. It's the great— I think I saw Carnivore MD do it and I was like, let me try this because I got a sweet tooth. Like, I have a very addictive personality. And when I quit drinking alcohol, it totally went to sugar. So I'm always having to combat that. But I think everyone is. And so, uh, uh, uh, half a tablespoon of butter in a date, it's like the greatest thing on earth.

I'll have to give it a go. Actually, Carnivore MD is very into this like meat and fruits thing. Like honey, fruit, and meat is basically his diet. Uh, and he's very into this. So I don't know. I, I actually think that we are, there's a good chance that honey, fruit, like we are on the, the very early stages of like people realizing that sugar is not that bad for you when it comes in fruit. Or honey form.

That's an interesting take because I would have thought you would have said the opposite, which is like glucose is glucose. No. Oh, that's, that's interesting. So you do high sugar fruit as well, not just—

this is something I'm just starting to experiment with, and so like I'm not even sure. So I, I literally, I got my labs done recently, uh, and then like last week started this honey diet thing. So I'm going to test again in like 3 months and see how I see see how things look.

That's pretty fascinating. I would not have thought that that's something you would do because I, like, I've read about like bananas. Uh, Sam Korkos actually told me, he said this in passing, so I don't want to like attribute this to because I could have, I could be listening to him wrong, but I believe he said that a modern banana is candy and the way it used to be was like a carrot. He was like, they, they were not like this as delicious, but we've like genetically, you know, it's kind of like a Honeycrisp apple. Like, you know what, like, uh, it's basically like genetically predisposed to be like, you know, way sweet. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's, I think the new apple that's popular is called cotton candy apple.

That's funny.

Like have you seen, they have that at Central Market. It was called the cotton candy apple.

I'll have to try it. I've not seen that.

So like you would eat that?

Uh, I mean, I would experiment with it for 90 days for sure. Yeah. Like I, I don't think a lot of this stuff, like, yes, if you're optimizing for sweetness, I, I understand that, um, that you could argue maybe it's bad, but I think that nature tends to like keep trade-offs within a certain band. Um, and so I don't know if you're having organic produce or whatever, like I, I, I think that this stuff is like not— it's not bad to experiment with it and just see how you feel.

Do you eat, uh, vegetables?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.

Well, Ari's laughing at me, and so, and so are you, but like a lot of— some of these guys are like— I think Carnivore MD in particular is on some parts anti-veg, on some things anti-vegetable.

He's come off that a little bit. I mean, like, to me, I think that you just have to have a macro lens on this, which is like, what have humans been eating for hundreds of thousands of years? It's not like, you know, in the year 1900 rolls around or 1970 when like the chronic disease crisis really started ramping up, that all of a sudden people are rampantly eating vegetables and getting sick all the time. It's like, obviously, in my view, not like we are in the midst of a vegetable eating epidemic that is making everyone sick. It's like clearly like the ultra-processed foods that are new to our food system. And so does he have some good points? Like maybe are vegetables less good than, than most people think? Like, I could believe that. Do I think it is a thing that is like worth optimizing and to never eat vegetables? Like, definitely not.

Here's one for some of these health trends. I think that polyester clothing is gonna, there's gonna be, I mean, there's already a niche of people, I'm one of them, where I don't wear, if a clothing has polyester, I tried always to avoid it unless it's like, you know, like special or particularly amazing, but in general, it's gotta be all natural fibers. Are you on board with that?

No shit. No way. So what underwear do you wear?

Do you wear underwear? Yeah. So there's a company called Nads that does like organic, organic stuff. There's another company called Pact. PACT, and I usually wear those.

How interesting. Is women's— I mean, I don't know, is— does this— does this matter to women?

So it's unclear to me right now. I would say potentially, but it seems like the thing that is causing the loss of sperm is like there's some sort of electrical charge thing that happens between polyester and the skin that seems to impact, impact like you know, sperm generation. And so it's, it's not clear to me yet. I haven't like gone super deep on it.

How fascinating.

So yeah, pretty wild though, right?

That dog thing is crazy. So are you crazy?

There you go, that's another great dog health idea, you know, dog all or all-natural dog underwear.

That's insane to me. So I use, uh, Ex-Afficionado, and I loved it because it was, uh, it like would dry quickly after you cleaned it and they never stretched out. But I think it is highly synthetic. Almost certainly. And so, but honestly, cotton underwear for the most part sucks. But there's some companies that are making like really good cotton workout gear and cotton underwear that I really appreciate. So like, for example, what I like to do is a lot of my workout shorts, I just get sweatpants, like all cotton sweatpants, and I'll cut them. But like, I'm a big fan of like all cotton workout gear because Lululemon and like it has like underwear in the shorts. So your junk is just on the polyester even harder. Do you know what I mean?

Totally. Totally. There's actually a company. There's a company called Riker. I love Riker. I love their stuff.

I love Riker.

Yeah, it's so good.

It is so good. It's the only short company for men and they have shirts and stuff too. But it's the only— but the shorts are particularly, particularly are hard to do. Because you like, if a, if a workout short doesn't have the underwear, then you're just kind of like flopping all over, you know what I mean? So you like, but it's hard to do with cotton.

Totally. Yeah. So their, their stuff is great. I really, really like what they're doing. Um, and I use their stuff for all my workout clothes.

That's great. Um, can you tell me really quick, are there any, I just want to know what Justin does. Are there any other, do you have any other stances like this? So this is like fascinating to hear some of your stances that might be controversial or uncommon.

I feel pretty confident that, like, our current vaccine schedule is very much not good from a chronic disease standpoint. I don't, like, make any claims around autism or whatnot, but from a food allergy standpoint, certainly the US is, like, the worst chronic disease issue and is the most vaccinated and has, like, the, the most egregious vaccine schedule of any developed country.

So what are you suggesting, spacing it out or not taking them?

Yeah, I basically think like fewer shots, more spaced out is like what I'm planning to give kids. I wrote a very long post on this.

It is pretty incredible. Like, for example, they give a kid a Hep B shot, like literally 5 minutes or less, like 2 minutes out of the womb. And I was like, well, I don't, I don't know if she's going to be around like someone with Hep B anytime soon.

So the only way you can get Hep B is through sexual, you know, sexual activity and blood transfusions. And they test the mom. For Hep B before birth. And so like, you're just vaccinating a kid against something and the immunity wears off after a decade.

And also not that many people have— I don't think Hep B is like particularly common. No. Like it's basically drug users, I believe.

Totally. I mean, and the other thing is like, my view is that our health organizations have been captured and, you know, by large companies. And I think like you look also the COVID mRNA vaccine was added to the infant childhood immunization schedule this year. It's like, that is not a scientific position. That is purely— something else is going on. So I think that's like a relatively controversial take that I have, that I wrote a very long piece about that I think is defensible.

Any other last ones?

Yeah, so against like the health tribe, I think that the— yeah, the fruit and sugar one is probably like the biggest one that I'm focused on right now. And then I also think that this like demonization of— I think the tribal stuff, tribalness of like food cultures is something that I think is not good. Like I basically am much more into nutrient density. And I think if you're eating nutrient-dense like pizzas and carbs and all that stuff, as opposed to like conventional, you know, vegetables, fruits, and meats all the time that are like maximally sprayed and processed and all this stuff. Like I actually think eating a bunch of carbs that are from a very, very good source, probably your health outcomes will be better.

That stuff's like impossible to find. Like, for example, in order to do that, you'd have to find someone that mills their own grain or something like that. Yes. Like, like, that's like, it's virtually impossible or not virtually impossible, but it's a job.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. I very much agree.

Dude, you're the man. Thank you. I just like, you know, I text you these questions anyway, and so it's fun just to get an hour of your time just to pepper you with all types of questions that I have. But I appreciate you.

Yeah, no, this has been super fun, man. Thanks for having me on as always.

And we didn't even promote your company.

TrueMed has a podcast. It's great. I like it.

Yeah, yeah. We're doing like a couple episodes on, you know, movement, exercise, nutrient density.

Dude, I appreciate you. Thank you so much. God bless.

Thanks for having me on.

That's it. That's the pod.

I feel like I could rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.