Brenda Davis, Plant-Based Diets and Essential Fats, & Chad Oliphant, Smiling Hara Tempeh

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Part I, Brenda Davis, Plant-Based Diets and Essential Fats
Brenda-Davis_9899ed-sRGB_by-Kevin-Trowbridge (3)Brenda Davis, registered dietitian, is a leader in her field and an internationally acclaimed speaker. She is co-author of nine vegetarian and vegan nutrition classics: Becoming Vegan: Express Edition, Becoming Vegan: Comprehensive Edition, Becoming Raw, Becoming Vegetarian, The New Becoming Vegetarian, The Raw Food Revolution Diet, Defeating Diabetes and Dairy-free and Delicious. She is also a contributing author to a tenth book, The Complete Vegetarian. Brenda has authored numerous professional and lay articles. She is the lead dietitian in a diabetes intervention project in Majuro, Marshall Islands. Brenda is a past chair of the Vegetarian Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association. In 2007, she was inducted into the Vegetarian Hall of Fame.

Websites:

http://brendadavisrd.com/

http://becomingvegan.ca/

TRANSCRIPTION PART I:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello everybody! It’s time for It’s All About Food, and it’s November 4th, 2014. I’m Caryn Hartglass, and I’m really glad to be here today and have you with me here. We’re going to have a great show today. First, I want to let you know I’m back on the East Coast; I was in California for a few weeks and now I’m back home. I took a red eye last night and I’m a little tired! But I’m doing whatever I can to make up for that. And… it’s Election Day! And I hope you’ve gotten out to vote here in the United States and if you haven’t yet, get out there and vote. We have that big GMO labeling thing going on in Oregon and Colorado, and if you’re in the States I hope that you’re getting your voice heard with your vote. It is so important. I know those big companies are throwing a lot of money to keep things at the status quo, which is not acceptable, and we can make a difference with our votes. So we’re very lucky today because we’re going to be learning the best in nutrition from a superhero in nutrition, and I’m going to bring on my first guest, Brenda Davis. And she’s a registered dietician, a leader in her field, an internationally-acclaimed speaker; she’s co-authored nine vegetarian/vegan/nutrition classics, including Becoming Vegan: Express Edition and Becoming Vegan: Comprehension Edition. We’re going to be talking a little bit about those today. In 2007, she was inducted into the Vegetarian Hall of Fame – I told you, a superhero! Brenda, welcome to It’s All About Food.

Brenda Davis: Thank you very much, Caryn. It’s great to be here and thank you for all the lovely compliments!

Caryn Hartglass: You should be running around in a cape!

Brenda Davis: *Laughs* I’ don’t know about that…

Caryn Hartglass: No but really, you’re making a difference in so many people’s lives and you’re really saving lives, just like a superhero would.

Brenda Davis: Oh, thank you! We’re doing our best. And I think we all contribute in our own little ways. It works!

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, but you’ve been so true to this mission for so long with a great deal of passion, and walking the walk, and I thank you for that.

Brenda Davis: Well, thank you!

Caryn Hartglass: So, let’s get down to what’s new in nutrition and in your Express Edition and Comprehensive Edition. Now, they’re both pretty comprehensive – the Express Edition is close to 300 pages; and the Comprehensive Edition – I can imagine that’s for people like medical professionals and nutritionists who just really want to get down to all the dirty details—

Brenda Davis:—Those who really want all the references and a little more information. So it’s about 611 pages (and to be honest it was cut by about 25 percent in the editing)

Caryn Hartglass: Oh! Okay! What did we miss out? Can we get the outtake somewhere? *Laughing*

Brenda Davis: *Laughing* Oh boy! I think the editors did a nice job to get it crammed into a smaller space.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah well, it’s great. What I wanted to focus on today is fats and essential oils. And if we have enough time maybe we can touch some other things, but let’s just jump into fats—healthy fats, and then morph into omega-3’s and omega-6’s and those tasty items. So… are fats good, or are they bad?

Brenda Davis: Well, fats are—both! Fats are not only good; they’re essential for life. If we didn’t have them, we couldn’t survive. Some are bad because they contribute to harmful effects in the body and also to disease processes and so forth. So some fats are great, and some fats are not so great.

Caryn Hartglass: I think a lot of my listeners know that whole-plant foods give us the best options for all kinds of micro and macro nutrients, including fats. But what it comes down to is—when we’re splitting hairs and we want to know things like: is it okay to use oil, when is oil okay to use, what kind of oil, maybe you could talk a little bit about that. That always raises a little bit of excitement in people.

Brenda Davis: One of the things that I always like to tell people is to look around the world at the people that are living the longest, healthiest lives. And we’ve got something called the blue zones. For people that aren’t familiar with the blue zones these are the places in the world where people live to be 90 or 100 and at those advanced ages are very productive and still in their gardens and still relatively healthy. And so I sometimes think of comparing whatever it is we’re thinking about to the blue zone people, kind of as our asset test. And if you think that way and you look at the amount of fat and oil that they’re using, one thing will really strike you. And that is the tremendous diversity in fat intakes among these populations. So you can go somewhere like Okinawa, Japan and they’re taking–in their traditional diet of course—10% or 11% of calories from fats; whereas the people from Icaria, Greece or Sardinia, Italy are getting 35% of calories from fats; and the people in the Nicoya Peninsula and in Loma Linda, California are getting maybe around 30% of calories from fat. So there’s really a lot of discrepancy, even among the blue zones. And the deal is, the percentage of calories from macronutrients—especially carbohydrates and fats—matters far less than where those macronutrients are coming from. And so when people are getting these fats from, as you mentioned, whole-plant foods, it’s just like how we think about sugar and pure starchy carbohydrates like white flour—those are the refined versions. And when you eat your carbs in that form, they very consistently contribute to disease. It’s the same with fat. When you eat very highly refined, processed fats they contribute to disease processes. When you get fats in a more whole-food form, they don’t. And so you look at people in Mediterranean countries (that are part of the blue zones), where do they get their fat from? A lot of them do use some oil, but they do get a lot of their fat from things like olives and avocados as well. And so I think it depends a little bit on what your state of health is, and your dietary goals. So for example, we see these very, very low-fat vegan diets that are promoted especially for people with coronary heart disease. And these have no added oils—they don’t even use nuts and seeds and avocados—which I would differ a little bit on. But for people that are overweight and really need to reverse this atherosclerosis that’s developed, a very low-fat diet can be very helpful. For a young child, who we are trying to get to grow and develop and get their brain to the maximum capacity and all of those things, we need to think a little bit differently. We want to make sure that they get the level of essential fatty acids and healthy fats that they need to grow and develop properly. And so it all depends on what your situation is, your age, your health, etc.

As for the question of oils and can we include oils, I think what people need to realize is that most people in healthy populations use some oils. For some not so much, as in Okinawa, they’re using these very small amounts. And some significantly more, such as Sardinia. But even that having been said, we need to recognize what these oils are. These oils are really pure fat extracted from whole foods, of course. In that process of extracting the fats, sometimes we expose those foods to toxic chemicals, and often they’re deodorized, and bleached, and all of these things. So there’s various levels and healthfulness of oils as well. So if you get a very high quality food and you fresh pressed it and it’s not exposed to heat, those oils will be more protective and more healthful than an oil that’s been very highly refined.

Caryn Hartglass: It’s going to taste better, too. You’re going to taste that fruitiness.

Brenda Davis: Exactly! And then the other thing, Caryn, is that there are some people that really can’t afford to eat much oil, if any. And the reason is, is that they need to maximize nutrient density. And so when you’re talking about nutrient density, you’re talking about getting the most nutrients you can per calorie, right? Well there’s no food on the planet that has fewer nutrients per calorie than oil. Oil is extremely lacking in vitamins and minerals and so on. It’s basically pure fat with a little bit of vitamin E if it’s fresh pressed or vitamin E has been added. So it’s not a very nutrient dense food, and when a person’s eating 1,400-1,600 calories a day and wanting to meet their nutrient requirements for everything, they don’t have a lot of room for oil. They need to be focusing on getting their fats from whole foods—so nuts and seeds and avocados, in moderate amounts.

Caryn Hartglass: Well what I love about what you said about these different areas that eat different amounts of fat, it just shows how smart our bodies can be when we feed them whole, minimally-processed foods. They just make whatever they need out of whatever we give them, and everything’s fine.

Brenda Davis: To an extent, there’s still things like B-12 and vitamin D and things like that that we have to worry about, but in terms of macronutrients, absolutely.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, I love that. Now a couple of fat foods have been in and out of the press over the past few years. I want to talk about butter from cow’s milk. That’s gotten kind of sexy again this year.

Brenda Davis: Oh, absolutely, especially after we had the release of Chowdhury’s study on saturated fats. So people all of a sudden are thinking—

Caryn Hartglass: ‘Yay! Butter’s back! I’m going to put it in my coffee every morning!’ I mean what is that about?

Brenda Davis: It’s just unfortunate, because people are just really not understanding the reality of saturated fats, and what the deal is. A lot of people don’t understand this, but saturated fats have not been vindicated. Basically that the research is showing is that you can replace saturated fats with carbs and either give yourself a boost or shoot yourself in the foot. If you replace saturated fat with refined carbohydrates, like sugar and white flour products, you might be doing worse than by eating saturated fats. And that’s what the studies are showing. They’re not vindicating saturated fats. Saturated fats still increases blood cholesterol levels and causes all sorts of problems. But what we’re starting to learn is that refined carbohydrates can be just as bad.

Caryn Hartglass: So once again it comes down to how studies are set up. And sometimes when certain groups are looking for specific results, they design their studies in such a way to get them.

Brenda Davis: Oh for sure. Well I can tell you—and I feel okay about telling you this—one of the authors of the Chowdhury study, Dr. Francesca Crowe—I contacted her to ask her about this study because I found it so surprising that she’s involved with EPIC-Oxford. EPIC-Oxford is one of the biggest studies ever done on a population that has a lot of vegetarians in the population and vegans. So this is a really, really important study and I found it a little odd that she’s involved in this saturated fats study. And so I asked her, “Could you explain to me what this study’s really showing, and if based on the study you would change your recommendations with regards to saturated fat intakes?” And what she told me was that when the study was first conceived, the results of their initial meta-analysis showed very strongly that saturated fats were positively related to cardiovascular disease risks. And then she said what happened was their paper was turned down. So then, after the journal rejected it, the analysis was re-run, changed in the outcomes, until it was something different. And then they revised and submitted it to another journal and it was accepted because it had such startling results that might get a little bit of media attention.

Caryn Hartglass: Brenda, how do we know who to trust?

Brenda Davis: And she said that because the paper was at such an advanced stage, she said, “I found out a week before it was going to press, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.” And she said, “I still think the best available evidence”—and this is a direct quote (I just opened her email)—“I still think the best available evidence from randomized controlled trials”—which are the gold standard, by the way—“show that saturated fat intake affects blood cholesterol levels, which is an important risk factor for heart disease. Therefore current guidelines, which are no more than 6%-7% of calories from saturated fat, by the way, recommend that people still minimize their intake of saturated fats.” That’s one of the key authors of the study! That’s not what you heard from the media!

Caryn Hartglass: No, not at all. At least we’re hearing it from you. Thank you.

Brenda Davis: It’s very, very frustrating for someone in my position to see that kind of stuff come out. And then if you looked at people that are very, very well respected in the nutrition world, like Walter Willet, for example, he basically said that this study has done so much damage it should be retracted, and the press should give that retraction similar press. And he says that this study should basically serve as a warning about how bad meta-analysis can be. So, what is butter? Well, butter is a big block of saturated fat, of course. And it’s fairly high in advanced glycation end products. Yes, people think of it as a “real food,” as compared to margarine which is more of a “fake food” with lots of chemicals added. First of all, from my view we don’t really want to be eating either one of those things. For health, you want to be eating nuts and seeds and avocados and health foods that provide healthy fats that come with fiber and phytochemicals and antioxidants and things that are actually of value to human health. I don’t think these studies, in any way, all of a sudden make butter of value to human health.

Caryn Hartglass: You mention Walter Willet wanted a retraction on this meta-analysis. I was thinking that just before you mentioned it, but even if someone did print a retraction it would never be headline news.

Brenda Davis: No, it wouldn’t be! And that’s why he made that statement that it should be, and it’s very unfortunate. And if you look even at some of the other co-authors’ statements… there was another author who said the main problem with the paper was it was wrongly interpreted by the media; we’re not saying that the current guidelines are wrong and people can eat as much saturated fat as they want. And that’s coming from the authors!

Caryn Hartglass: Well, listeners, I hope when you’re hearing this and you have your butter-loving friends, you might share this interview when it goes up into the archives so that they can hear the truth. All right, let’s move to omega-3 and omega 6’s and what’s the fat and the skinny on all of that.

Brenda Davis: Again people may not realize – often people think that you have to have fish for omega-3 fatty acids, and so of course vegetarians and vegans are not consuming fish and so there’s been a great concern that vegetarians and vegans could be deficient in these omega-3’s. And so what people need to understand is that, really, there are several omega-3’s. There’s α-Linolenic acid (ALA), plant omega-3 that comes from flax seeds and walnuts and chia seeds and hemp seeds, and so forth. And even greens, leafy greens, about half the fat is omega-3 in leafy greens. So there are those things that provide ALA and then the body has to convert ALA into the more biologically active forms of omega-3’s, which are eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). And so EPA and DHA are the fats that people would get directly from fish. And they are more biologically active, which means they are important in reducing inflammation and all of those good things that we associate with omega-3 fatty acids. ALA can do a little bit but the more active forms are these long-chain fats. So then the concern becomes: can vegetarians and vegans convert the ALA, which is the plant omega-3’s, into these long-chain fatty acids. And there’s a couple of things that it’s helpful to know. Number one is that fish don’t make EPA and DHA. They don’t actually produce it in their bodies; they get it from plants in the ocean. So microalgae is the source of production of EPA and DHA. And so the little tiny fish are eating the microalgae, and then bigger fish eat the tiny fish, and so somewhere along the food chain, the EPA and DHA is coming from plants in the ocean. So that’s kind of good to know because there are companies now that are culturing microalgae, and so they’re growing this EPA and DHA that is plant-based and that people can buy in supplement form. And sometimes it’s added to things like soymilk essential oils and things like that and I think we’ll see it added to foods more and more. So there are some plant sources but they’re not accessible in most foods that we would consume. Most people would need to buy a supplement. However, all of that being said, what about this whole conversion thing? Can we convert well enough? And the deal is, is that generally, humans are thought to be able to convert reasonably well. There are lots of people in the world that are quite healthy that don’t have a lot of access to fish (more inland people), and they still seem to have well-functioning brains and do fine. What we do know is that vegetarians, and especially vegans, do have lower levels of EPA and DHA in their bloodstreams and in their tissues. It’s about maybe a third to a half that of an average omnivore that’s eating fish. And so we don’t know how bad that is, and we’re not really sure what optimal is. But we know that we can boost those levels. There are two ways of doing that. One is to be eating enough ALA. And that used to be a big issue—people just didn’t. And that means sprinkling some ground flax seed on your cereal or some chia seed, or making a chia seed pudding, or using hemp seeds. One thing that I do is I grind hemp seeds into my almond milk and it makes the almond milk higher in protein and it adds a whole bunch of vitamins and minerals. So that’s one way of adding hemp seeds and some omega-3 fatty acids. So eating a lot of greens – you’d have to eat a horse or a cow to get enough omega-3’s from greens because you’d need about 30 cups of the stuff a day. So that’s why it’s important to have some seeds as well, and walnuts, too, can provide a reasonable about. So we need to make sure we have enough, and then we also need to make sure that our bodies are in good enough health that that conversion will happen. There are several things that can interfere with the conversion. And so some of the more common things—well men can’t convert as well as women.

Caryn Hartglass: Yay!

Brenda Davis: You know why? The answer is simple. Women need to always be prepared—and when I say women I’m talking about young women, and so that would exclude us—

Caryn Hartglass:—In the reproductive ages…

Brenda Davis: Exactly, the reproductive ages, because their bodies are always prepared to support the growth of a new baby. And the baby needs to grow a brain, which requires a lot of DHA. So their conversion is going to be good. DHA is the most highly unsaturated fat in the human diet. And so it is very unstable, which means it gets oxidized quickly. So you don’t want a whole lot of it floating around in your blood if you don’t need it, because it will get oxidized. So generally, men that may not need quite as much, they just won’t be converting as well because they don’t need as much. And then as you age, your conversion gets reduced; smokers—smoking depresses the enzymes that help you to convert, so that’s not good; chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension can depress conversion. But the thing that we really have control over, when we look at our diet, the thing that depresses conversion the most is omega-6 fatty acids. So we need omega-6 fatty acids. They’re absolutely essential to life, just like omega-3 fatty acids are. The problem is that when we get a ton more omega-6 than omega-3, they both compete for the same conversion enzymes. So the omega-3’s won’t convert as well, and that’s an issue. So generally people might get 10:1 in terms of omega-6 to omega-3, and we want somewhere maybe 2:1, 3:1, 4:1 at the most. It means that you still want to get your omega-6’s from your pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds and so forth, but you don’t want to be using a lot of these oils that are omega-6 rich, like grape seed oil and sunflower and safflower and corn oil and all of these kinds of oils that are mainly omega-6. Because that can really shift your balance in a heck of a rush in the wrong direction.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay, I’ve been jotting a lot of notes down because you just rattled off so much information. So the first thing I want to say is, you know that you know what you’re talking about when you can make music out of these acronyms and just roll α-Linolenic acid off your tongue and make music out of it. I’m not even going to attempt to say what DHA and EPA stand for but you do it beautifully.

Brenda Davis: Oh, thank you!

Caryn Hartglass: But I’m glad the acronyms are there, because it’s too much for me! What I’m getting here is that we don’t really know how much we need, and vegans have less, apparently, but we don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing yet.

Brenda Davis: Yeah. We’ve got a good estimate of how much ALA we should be consuming if we don’t take in any of these EPA/DHA supplements. So what I’ve don’t is I basically have doubled the institute of medicine’s recommendations. So a female needs 1.1 grams of ALA per day, and males need 1.6, if they’re not vegan or vegetarian and they’re eating fish. So if you don’t eat fish you need to double those numbers to make sure you have enough of the raw material for conversion. And so vegan women would need 2.2 g and men would need 3.2 g. Now if you’re taking the supplements, then you would only need the amount that people eating fish would need, because you’re getting direct sources of EPA and DHA.

Caryn Hartglass: Right. Now the supplements, that’s kind of a touchy subject. The vegan DHA/APA, they’re expensive. I’m always challenged because they’re in the refrigerator and I always forget to take what’s in the refrigerator, on a regular basis. Maybe I need more DHA to be able to manage that, I don’t know, to remember that they’re there! And then there’s this Alzheimer’s thing that’s looming, and we all want to do what we can now to prevent something like that later. And so they’re made in a lab, and I think I remember reading that it’s genetically modified.

Brenda Davis: Yes, and there’s definitely some controversy about that. We don’t have all the answers yet. I’ve looked at that information and I just am not quite sure what to believe, to be honest. They’re culturing these plants in a lab…they say it’s not genetic modification…some people say it is. So we really don’t know. But what I do know is that if you want to be vegan, that’s pretty much your choice. It’s a really tough one. So I, personally myself, I rely mainly on ALA, so I eat a lot of chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds, and once in a blue moon I’ll take an EPA/DHA supplement. So maybe once a week or once every two weeks, if I remember. I’m not very good at doing that, either. But I did have my levels tested, and they were actually not bad. My DHA was a little bit low, at the lower end of normal though. And my EPA was really in the middle of normal so it was absolutely fine. So I figure I’m doing all right. And we just have to do the best we can, and make some judgment calls. People will have to decide for themselves whether they want to use these supplements. I would think about it more seriously if I were in a situation where I had a disease where I knew my conversion enzymes weren’t very good. In those cases I think that it’s probably not a bad idea for people to take them once in a while. I don’t think it’s something people need to do every day though. I think two or three times a week is probably plenty, even for those individuals.

Caryn Hartglass: I want to thank you, Brenda, for saying, “I don’t know.”

Brenda Davis: There’s so much we don’t know.

Caryn Hartglass: There’s so much we don’t know, and how many people do we go to for information who will not say, “I don’t know?” When they don’t know. They’ll make up all kinds of stuff and I just have so much more trust in what you say when you say, “I don’t know.” So thank you.

Brenda Davis: Well thank you. You know what, this is such a baby science. What we do know today might be absolutely incorrect a year from now so we can only do the best we can and try to keep on top of the literature. My goal is really very simple. I want people who want to be plant-based, to eat in a more compassionate way, to enjoy the best possible health they can. Because when they enjoy great health, they’re sending a message to the rest of the world: “You don’t need meat to be healthy.” In fact, if you eliminate it you’ll probably be healthier. That’s really my goal, is I just want people to be able to do this as well as possible.

Caryn Hartglass: Well that’s a great way to tie this half hour up! Beautiful. Thank you.

Brenda Davis: Well thanks so much for having me, Caryn.

Caryn Hartglass: Yes, well it’s always a pleasure, and I’m always learning, and I’m sure next year I’ll learn even more because you’ll know more by then! I wanted to refer people to your website: brendadavisrd.com.

Brenda Davis: And then we actually have another website that Vesanto and I put up called becomingvegan.ca.

Caryn Hartglass: Dot-ca because you’re in Canada, correct?

Brenda Davis: Yes, that’s correct. And because dot-com was gone!

Caryn Hartglass: Oh, well, dot-com is overrated, anyway! Great, and just to have that excellent resource at your fingertips, because not all of this stuff is online and trustworthy, you can pick up Becoming Vegan: Express Edition; or, if you really want to know it all, Becoming Vegan: Comprehensive Edition. There you go. Thank you, Brenda!

Brenda Davis: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you, Caryn. Have a great day!

Caryn Hartglass: Okay, you too!

Brenda Davis: Bye bye.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay, let’s take a little break, and when we come back we’re going to be talking about a new product, and a company that’s making a tempeh. They make it out of soy but they’re making some new ones, and they’re including hemp and other beans. I’m really looking forward to hearing about that. We’ll be right back.

Transcribed by Mekala Bertocci 12/15/2014

Part II: Chad Oliphant, Smiling Hara Tempeh
_team4Sarah Yancey and Chad Oliphant started Smiling Hara (which translates to “happy belly”) in 2009 with the intention of providing an organic, and locally sourced tempeh to customers in the Southeast.

Early on in the business, Sarah and Chad discovered that soy-free tempeh was difficult to find. So they created two additional products, Black Bean Tempeh and Black-Eyed Pea Tempeh, to meet the needs of folks who want a vegetarian protein that’s not derived from soybeans.

Sarah and Chad have used their passion for community building, self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship and living a health-conscious lifestyle to build a vibrant enterprise. Not only are the ingredients in Smiling Hara’s products made from 100% Organic and GMO-Free Beans, but they also compost all the production waste material on their small farm.

Sarah Yancey is an Asheville Native. She studied dance in West African for 2 years in 2005.
Chad Oliphant was born in Indiana. He studied at the Kushi Macrobiotic institute in 2000 where he learned to make Tempeh among many other fermented foods. Sarah and Chad launched Smiling Hara Tempeh in Oct 2009.

TRANSCRIPTION PART II:

Caryn Hartglass: Hey everybody. I’m Caryn Hartglass, and we’re back with the second part of It’s All About Food today on November 4, 2014—Election Day here in the United States. Get out and vote if you haven’t already. We are going to be talking about tempeh in the next half hour and some other delicious topics. We’re going to be talking about Smiling Hara Tempeh. Sarah Yancey and Chad Oliphant started Smiling Hara, which translates to “happy belly,” in 2009 with the intention of providing an organic, and locally sourced tempeh to customers in the Southeast United States. We have cofounder Chad Oliphant with us to talk about the company and their upcoming projects. He studied at the Kushi Macrobiotic Institute in 2000 where he learned to make tempeh among many other fermented foods. Chad, thank you for joining me today.

Chad Oliphant: Hello! Thanks for having me.

Caryn: Yeah! So I was really excited when I heard about Smiling Hara Tempeh and all the things that you’re working on accomplishing right now. Very exciting stuff. Let’s get into the meat of all of that.

Chad: Alright.

Caryn: So first let’s talk about tempeh and your company, making tempeh.

Chad: Yeah, we’re Smiling Hara. We’re out of Asheville, North Carolina. We’ve been in business for about five years now. We do small-batch artisan tempehs. So what we’ve attempted to do is kind of take it back but at the same time provide a product that is a little more true to what a homemade tempeh or traditional tempeh would be. At the same time, we’ve put out a couple of products that kind of put a twist on tempeh, particularly gravitating towards soy-free versions of the product. As you know, tempeh is a traditional Southeast Asian food from the Indonesia-Malaysia area and is traditionally made from soybeans. But here in the U.S., we’ve had a trend of people who are kind of looking to mitigate the amount of tempeh they have in their diets, and so we’ve been looking to provide an option for that.

Caryn: That’s genius! I have to say, I’m sorry—

Chad: Thanks.

Caryn: I haven’t tried your Black Bean Tempeh and your Black-Eyed Pea Tempeh and I can’t wait to do that. I love tempeh—soy tempeh. There’s so many things I love about it. It’s a fermented food; it’s full of flavor. Some people…I don’t know what it is, genetic or whatever, have this fermented food aversion. So, putting them aside, those who don’t mind fermented foods, tempeh is really delicious. It doesn’t have… It’s a low-sodium food.

Chad: Correct.

Caryn: It’s good if you just crumble it on raw salads, or if you cook with it, it’s got a nice, chewy texture. It’s just phenomenal, and you can slice it, you can cube it, you can do so many different things. For those who are transitioning and reducing or eliminating meat in their diets, this is a great food to just replace meat. You can grate it like chopped meat. It’s just very versatile.

Chad: Yep, indeed.

Caryn: There’s a lot of people who are either allergic to soy or are afraid of soy or have heard some misinformation about soy, but also we should eat a balanced diet, and it’s great to eat other beans. So you’ve made a similar product with some other beans. Does it taste similar or is it different? What are those other ones like?

Chad: Yeah, they’re different. They have their own distinctive—the Black Bean Tempeh very much has a black bean flavor, so we love to use that in tacos and enchiladas and your more Southwestern-type dishes. The Black-Eyed Pea… With these non-soybeans, they have a bit lower protein content and higher starch. With the higher starch, you get more fermentation that takes place in the process, and so you get a bit of a brighter, fruitier flavor out of these.

Caryn: Mhm. Well you know, protein can be overrated sometimes and we don’t need as much as some people think we do, so.

Chad: That’s right. The protein that is in tempeh is… That’s one of the beautiful things about tempeh, is that through that fermentation process, your proteins are being broken down into the simple amino acids. It’s really easy for your body to assimilate these proteins. So even though it may not have as much protein content as some meats and whatnot, your body is going to uptake and digest and utilize more protein.

Caryn: Now I’m imagining because they’re fermented, people aren’t going to experience as much flatulence—gas—when they eat these tempeh versions of black beans and black-eyed peas.

Chad: Exactly, exactly.

Caryn: Yeah, beautiful. All right. So that’s good stuff. You’re in Whole Foods and stores like that?

Chad: Yes. We’re in Whole Foods throughout the Southeast region. We’re in a number of Earthfare stores, and we’re just starting to branch out of the Western Carolina area here and starting to get our products further out into other regions. Right now, what we’re working on… One of the beautiful things also, using these non-soybeans, is with the GMO issue. A lot of people are concerned about GMOs in their diets. We use only U.S. organically grown, GMO-free beans. But there’s no guarantee, with the way cross-contaminations work. There’s some question about that. But when you’re looking at black-eyed peas and what they call the pulse crops, there are no GMOs. So there’s no concerns about them.

Caryn: Not yet, anyway.

Chad: What’s that?

Caryn: Not yet, anyway.

Chad: Not yet, not yet, so we can still take advantage of that. What we’re in the process of doing is—we’re really excited—we have a Kickstarter campaign going on right now. We’re looking to launch a new line of tempeh that we’re calling Hempeh. So we have teamed up with a great organization out of Rockcastle County, Kentucky, by the name of Growing Warriors. Growing Warriors is a non-profit organization that’s veteran-operated, and what they’re doing is training military veterans to become farmers. Growing Warriors is one of the pioneer organizations that pioneer farms that are the first to grow hemp in Kentucky this year.

Caryn: Wow.

Chad: So we’re going to be able to source our hemp and our beans for this product line from Growing Warriors, from veteran farmers, and be able to contribute back additionally through the proceeds of the sales of the product.

Caryn: I love this on so many levels. Can we just talk about hemp for a minute? It hasn’t been legal to grow hemp in this country for a long time.

Chad: 1957 was the last time. The last legal hemp field prior to this year was in Wisconsin in 1957.

Caryn: Do you know why we stopped growing hemp? Why it wasn’t legal anymore?

Chad: Well, it was initially outlawed in 1937 under the Marijuana Tax Act. It was grouped in with marijuana. There’s a lot of information and speculation as to the reasons why hemp was included with marijuana. There was a piece of equipment… Popular Mechanics did an article. Within a year prior to the Marijuana Tax Act being passed, they’d developed a piece of equipment to be able to mass harvest hemp. So for the first time, hemp was really in position to overtake some lumber interests, some petrochemical interests. The speculation goes on from there. So it was made illegal in 1937 but then brought back in 1942 under the Hemp for Victory campaign. Essentially, what happened is that once Japan occupied the Philippines in World War II, it took away our hemp supply. So the government put farmers back to work growing hemp. That lasted a few years, and then they kind of grouped it back in with drugs and did away with it. We import over half a billion dollars’ worth of hemp into this country every year. I think it’s one of the things that gives me the most hope these days. Since 2008, that word hope has been tied to individuals or saviors that could really come and solve some of our problems, but lo and behold, it’s actually a plant that gives me hope. A plant that can come in and fix some of these economic problems, fix some of our health problems. It’s a great solution.

Caryn: Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s very aggravating, just one more story that we hear about how our government has made the wrong choices for us, probably based on some corrupt information to promote other businesses that aren’t as good for our health and for our planet—like you were mentioning, petrochemical and others. It’s so frustrating, because hemp is like this super plant. Not only does it give us these omega-3-rich hemp seeds, which so easily make wonderful hemp milk, but the plant can provide fibers for cloth and so many different things that we can use, and… Oh gosh. It’s just so frustrating.

Chad: Exactly. It can reduce the amount of trees we use for paper. It can be used as a building material with the hemp tree technology that’s been developed. It’s food, it’s medicine, it’s fuel. Now they’re even looking into energy storage, as a way to replace graphene as a supercapacitor. If you consider for the bulk of the Industrial Revolution, our scientists haven’t been able to play with this plant freely and fully explore the uses of it because it’s been illegal. It’s a really exciting time to be alive. I mean, this is just great. I think there’s four or five states today that are voting on full-on legalization of recreational cannabis, which is really, ultimately where it needs to go. This war on drugs and putting people in jail and destroying families over this plant needs to stop.

Caryn: Absolutely. We’re not putting the right people in jail. I mean, so many people get away with these huge, white-collar corporate crimes, and somebody that’s just getting high on a little weed is put away for a long time and it’s just not balanced. So can we grow hemp anywhere in the country now?

Chad: No. There’s only… I’m not sure. It’s kind of hard to keep track between medical marijuana and hemp. I think we’re at maybe fifteen to twenty states for hemp-growing now. It’s only a couple of states that implemented it this year: Colorado and Kentucky. There might’ve been a couple of other small pilot projects. I know our neighboring state of Tennessee here is getting ready, and I live ten miles from the Tennessee border. They’re getting ready to put it pretty wide open for hemp cultivation for 2015, so that’s really exciting. I think within the next two years, we’ll probably see over half the states have opened it up.

Caryn: Well, this is a beautiful thing that you’re doing—the fact that you’ve teamed up with Growing Warriors, giving an opportunity to military veterans. We need a lot more of this. And then plus, we get this nutritious food. Now, what is Hempeh really like?

Chad: Okay, so what we’re doing with Hempeh, we’re still developing the product and dialing it in, but Hempeh essentially, we’re going to take the soy-free tempeh and we’re going to fortify it with hemp seeds. Basically by doing that, we boost the protein content, we get those omegas in there. It’s just a really great way to incorporate hemp in your diet. It’s going through the process, being in the fermentation, so all of those nutrients are going to be much more bioavailable to you when you eat it.

Caryn: Right, it’s very exciting. So you have a Kickstarter, and where can people find this Kickstarter to help you out? Because I think this is such a great project.

Chad: Yeah, thank you. If you go to kickstarter.com, you can just search us, “Hempeh.” Or you can go to our website, which is www.smilingharatempeh.com.

Caryn: Excellent. All right, so what’re your favorite things to do with tempeh? Let’s talk about delicious things.

Chad: Well, I’m a big taco guy, so I really like to do tacos. We do tacos a lot. I do a lot of just simple preparations. Just the simple meal of grain, like quinoa or rice, with stir-fried tempeh and vegetables, a little bit of kale thrown in there. That’s a good, just basic dish to get a really good nutritious meal. We just held a fundraising event here, two weeks ago in Asheville. We had a Barbecue Tempeh Challenge. It’s kind of an annual thing we do. The first year we had a contest where we invite out like a dozen local restaurants. We have a nice tempeh scene here in Asheville. Probably the best tempeh chefs in the United States, have been at times foolish to use our product, due to the amount of people in this area that just love eating that way, that love tempeh and love eating locally made food. The first year we did a Tempeh Reuben Challenge. That’s a pretty common menu item, the Tempeh Reuben.

Caryn: Yeah, yum.

Chad: We did tacos last year and then this year was barbecue. Barbecue is another great way to do with tempeh. It does great if you smoke it or fry it and throw it with some barbecue sauce kind of thing, make a sandwich out of it. There’s just so many different versions of barbecue, different textures and preparations, that the local chefs here just get really creative with it.

Caryn: Yeah. We have a barbecue tempeh recipe on our responsibleeatingandliving.com website and we make it a lot; it’s really yummy.

Chad: Excellent.

Caryn: Yes, excellent indeed. Okay, we just have a few more minutes and I wanted to understand what brought you to study at the Kushi Microbiotic Institute.

Chad: Well, it’s just something I was introduced to through a friend of a friend who was diagnosed with cancer. My friend went along with her for a consultation with Michio Kushi and my friend returned really inspired and an immediate convert to macrobiotics. So through her I got to start sampling the food and getting to know what it was all about. Really it was the philosophy. Geogre Ohsawa, who is the founding father of macrobiotics and really is responsible for bringing the health food movement to the west back in the late fifties. Reading his works, The Macrobiotic Way is a great book, but just this philosophy of personal responsibility and being really responsible for your own health, your own diet and really thinking on a deeper level about how we treat our bodies. I went up to the Kushi Institute kind of blind, had done some reading, done some eating, and just went up there and spent a year on a work study program and just watching… Well, just experiencing the transformation within myself, physically and emotionally and mentally just how it affected me. But then watching people come through these programs and hearing all of the stories of people who’d cured themselves of cancer and had AIDS going through a mission, seeing diabetics recover, was just really profound and undeniable.

Caryn: Pretty powerful. Yep.

Chad: Yeah. It’s all right there. Really, you take that and it extends beyond just my health and my diet, and it goes to the way the food is grown and the health of the planet and seeing how all these things are connected. The bacterial microbial life in the soil is connected to my own microbial inner environment.

Caryn: Well, speaking of connections, I just want to—before we go ‘cause we have a few more minutes left—I want to get back to those Growing Warriors. The military veterans. I’m personally someone who is somewhat of a conscientious objector—I don’t believe in killing anybody for anything—but we do have some very brave individuals that go out and they come home and they’re not treated very well. So many of them suffer from all kinds of problems, post-traumatic stress, and we do not give them the therapy that they need. I love this concept where these military veterans get the opportunity to work in nature, grow hemp, and have it go into a food that is nutritious and healing, and they’re healing themselves at the same time. It’s all connected. How beautiful is that?

Chad: Absolutely, absolutely. The guys that I interact with—Mike Lewis, Fred Lewis—you really get it when you hear them speak. Why don’t you check out growingwarriors.org; you can watch a video on their website. Our Kickstarter video has a little profile on them. It’s just, they’re dealing with the food insecurity and the amount of vets who are on the SNAP program, come back here, it’s hard to find work, especially one that’s attached to a sense of mission and purpose like they’re used to. These men and women are used to being really attached to a mission and a purpose in life. It provides that, it’s an easy area for them to see the importance of what they’re doing. And then just the poetry of Growing Warriors being attached to the hemp and one of the first to grow the hemp in this country again because last time we were growing it, it was a Hemp for Victory movement that was growing for the military. There is that association. It’s interesting; I just read an article. In Italy, the Italian government has put their army to work, active military, growing medical marijuana for the country of Italy. So I would love to see this just take hold through our veteran organizations first, getting connected to raising good, healthy, naturally grown food and to see that bleed its way back into the military somehow. How different would this world be if, instead of sending drones to bomb in Syria, we were sending people over to train folks to grow their own food, to train farmers. To go that route instead of killing people.

Caryn: Yeah, let’s just close our eyes a minute and hold that thought and then put it out there. That’s a wonderful vision, yeah. Thank you, Chad. I didn’t get to talk to Sarah today, but she’s your cofounder.

Chad: Yup. She’s lovely. She says hello.

Caryn: Say hello back. Yeah, great. Well, thank you so much for joining me on It’s All About Food. I hope your Kickstarter is very successful. I look forward to seeing Hempeh all over the country soon.

Chad: Great, thank you so much for having me.

Caryn: Okay, take care.

Chad: All right, you too. Bye-bye.

Caryn: Bye. Well, here we are. It’s the end of another program, isn’t it? I’m Caryn Hartglass, you’ve been listening to It’s All About Food, and I hope you do join me at responsibleeatingandliving.com. Send me an email at info@realmeals.org. Tell me what you think of this show and what you’d like to hear more of, okay? Meanwhile, have a delicious week.

Transcribed by JC, 12/7/2014

  1 comment for “Brenda Davis, Plant-Based Diets and Essential Fats, & Chad Oliphant, Smiling Hara Tempeh

  1. Brenda Davis, Queen of Vegan Food for the Soul!!!!!
    Always good to hear from Brenda, and interesting…”it is a Baby Science”; I wonder what it was when my father got in to it in the 60’s when Adelle Davis was about all there was; and in 1957 when a guy overcame cancer/becoming a “Vegan”/started running marathons et.al. and now holds the World Record for Marathons and Half Marathons for men/88; 90, and now the Half at 91!
    Brenda mentioned some of the sources of Omega 3 that she uses, but I was hoping she would give a bit more about…quantities/frequency…ala teaspoon/Tablespoon/preferance – Chia/Flax/Hemp.

    Great program, as always, and I look forward to exploring the world of Tempeh/Hempeh more fully.

    Thank you!

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