The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
The Body Knows: Surprising Truths About Innate Intelligence, with Fred Provenza
Professor Fred Provenza is the legendary behavioural ecologist and author who revolutionised how we understand the nature of animal health and intelligence, and its connection to our human health and intelligence. But what really blew Fred away on his journey was what he talked about in this part of our conversation a few years ago, on the capacity of all beings to innately know and select the food and nutrition they need.
Welcome to the 6th edition of Vignettes from the Source, the new short-form series featuring some of the unforgettable, transformative and often inexplicable moments my guests have shared over the years.
I initially went in to just grab the 14 minutes you’ll hear first. But when listening back, I couldn’t stop it running till another 10 minutes had ticked along – after I’d asked Fred how all his health findings relate to planetary health too.
And all this was prompted because it happened to come up in conversation yesterday, as I was sitting with another legendary former guest on this podcast, Paul Hawken, back here in California (where our American journey began, and where it’s now ending). And a listener from Pennsylvania also just contacted Fred about it. So I thought, why not bring it up again here too?
If you’d like to hear or revisit this conversation in full, head to episode 123 – ‘The Wisdom Body a paradigm change in animal, human and planetary health’ (there are a bunch of links in those show notes too, including to Fred’s masterful book, ‘Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom’).
There were actually two parts to episode 123, by the way. And there’s another unforgettable section in part 2. But that’s for another day.
For now, I hope you enjoy revisiting this one with Fred Provenza, a man who has come to shine a light not only on the extraordinary regenerative capacities of nature, including humans, but how regenerating all human systems stems from the wisdom of our bodies.
Originally recorded 8 June 2022.
Music:
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.
Pre-roll music: Heartland Rebel, by Steven Beddall (sourced from Artlist).
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My wife, a couple of weeks ago, asked an interesting question to me. We'd never talked about it before, but she said did you have expectations of your life, how it was going to unfold as you went along? And I said no, I didn't. I really didn't have any, I just kind of followed where the interests led and where those interests come from, I don't know. But I do think it's very important for a human to follow that. Whatever you are, you know, to find what's in you and what's your passion, and it just kind of leads you along the way.
Fred:That certainly happened for me, and not that there weren't bumps along the road, you know, as we were talking depression and cancer, and there weren't bumps along the road. It was, you know, as we were talking depression and cancer and this and that comes along. But but still that overarching thing was just following what, what was so just interesting for whatever reason, just following that and and for me forever being a student of that, you know, and kind of always being humbled and then thinking as I do now that you know it was all of that was good for a conversation. Good for a conversation, but don't take it too seriously that you really think you know anything? You probably don't. You know anything because you probably. You probably probably don't.
AJ:You know but, but, um, but whatever little things you thought you learned along the way were, dang sure, interesting, I, I think, for me well, let's take a, a leaving point from there, because I could go in a few directions, we might dance around a little bit, but I I'd love to go from there, as if to back up your point but then sort of fan it out. At the same time. It's still so spectacular to consider the Clara Davis studies from 100 years ago. Yeah, please, I gather this was pivotal too in how you came to understand human animals, let's say in a similar vein, of the surprising levels of intuitive intelligence within us what I find too.
Fred:I did a long podcast yesterday with a fellow who wanted to do one for months now and he finally caught up and he said he was talking to someone about the podcast when it was coming up and he said, well, just let him go, he'll go down a million rabbit holes. But I I'm thinking that now it seems like there's so many stories when you reach this point in the game, it's just and, clara Davis, you know each thing that gets mentioned, there's's stories that relate to that, to all of it, and so it is. You can sort of infinite regress, digress, digression.
AJ:Well, that's right. It's in keeping with what we found about the nature of the world, isn't it? There's no thing separate from anything else, but let's focus for the sake of the exercise.
Fred:Yes, yes.
AJ:Run us through it, Fred. Run us through what was found by Clara that century ago.
Fred:Well, what was amazing, and I'll start with just a little bit of backstory on that I was not familiar with Clara Davis' work. When we started our work on experiences early in life, you know, originally looking at the role that mother plays in animals, learning what and what not to eat and where and where not to go in the environment, food and habitat selection. I wasn't familiar with any of her work. Nor was I familiar with her work when we did studies with cattle first and then with sheep, but with cattle, did studies with cattle first and then with sheep, but with cattle, offering them either a choice of the ingredients that made up a total mixed ration. Total mixed rations are what people feed animals in feedlots. That's a mix of different feed ingredients that's ground and mixed together. So the animals really can't select, they don't have much ability to self-select what's in that. They just eat the. They simply eat what's presented to them. So we thought, well, let's feed one set of animals a total mixed ration. Let's feed the other set of animals the separate ingredients, the four or five ingredients that were in that total mixed ration, and just let them self-select and see what they do. And I mention that specifically because when we were writing the paper from that study we were pointing out no two individuals ever selected the same foods. No individual ever selected the same combination of foods from day to day, but each individual selected a diet that's met its needs. And they actually did that, eating less food than the animals were eating in the total mixed ration.
Fred:So then this friend, who was to become a very good friend, a writer in Canada, mark Shaxter, who's written several books now, was reading what we were doing and he said do you know about Clara Davis' work? And I said no, and he said, well, you need to read about her work. And so I started reading and it's like, oh my gosh, that was nearly a hundred years ago. And it's like we plagiarized what she was. We were writing so much. She says those same words and it's like, oh man, it would have been neat to have met her. You know, it's almost like another, like another life you lived.
AJ:Indeed, but in her case it was. It was in an orphanage with kids.
Fred:Yes, yes, yes, kids, kids given up for adoption in an orphanage, 15 children for six years. I can't even imagine offering 34 different foods that were available seasonally wholesome foods available in the market seasonally and and just each day offering each of those kids a choice of those foods and then recording what they ate and how much they ate. That's an amazing amount. That was before computers too. So how you pull all that together into data sheets and analyze all of that was amazing. But it would have been fabulous actually to meet and visit with Clara I could just it would have been like an at-oneness for certain and to talk to her as we're talking. So what Clara got you thinking about? To do a study like that of these children and, as she pointed out, they were in a way little young vessels that were being filled. She said there wasn't a hint that they knew a priori about any of those foods. They would sample them. They'd sample everything, even the napkins that were put in front of them. But then you know, within days and weeks they'd come to really each child to select combinations of foods that really worked for them, and what they ate varied from day to day and it was just exactly what we were finding when we, anytime we took the time to really look closely at what sheep or goats or cows were doing, at what sheep or goats or cows were doing. And it brings back another thought.
Fred:You know, when we were really initially starting some of the work, I remember watching sheep foraging on rangelands that would have maybe 100 different plant species, and it was in those days I was still thinking like a physicist, like we had been trained, that those physicists, you know, they're able to predict and control everything and they understand so well. And I used to think naively in those days, if we just understood enough, if we understood enough, we would be able to predict and control. But when I would watch those animals and move from one to the next and just taking a nibble of that and 10 bites of this and you know, maybe in an hour they'd sample 30, 40 species I used to think, boy, how on earth could you ever predict what the next bite is going to be? And I really changed my thoughts about that over time. That wasn't the point. It's the point came to me understanding the processes and what's underlying the processes and then what they do, trying to predict.
Fred:That isn't so important as understanding the processes and how all those processes come together to create the dynamic that you observe of them eating this diverse array of different foods. And then you know, without going into the details, understanding at more mechanistic level, some of what's going on there that causes them from the standpoint of these primary compounds or nutrients that are in plants and the secondary compounds, all these other compounds, how, how that dynamic is playing out uniquely for each individual and its body. Its body knows what what to do with with those tens of thousands of compounds. It's still quite quite a mystery all of that, and I think the work that we did points in a direction that there is a lot of evidence that the body does know, but at a cellular level, all that's happening with that and how.
Fred:That's all those feedbacks that we got into and did so many years of study after study after study of relationships amongst primary and secondary compounds and cells and organ systems, and again we were totally students. And some of those feedbacks I remember the first time we ever did any of those where we'd feed food that wasn't very nutritious and then infuse something into the gut that was a nutrient they were needing or something, and just have your mind blown that something we infused into the body changed their liking for something that shouldn't be good at all. I don't know if that's making sense, but it was like. That is so mind boggling that we put something into their veins or into their gut and it totally changes what they're selecting, how they're liking that. It set me back quite a while and I think others of us working on that work just to try to wrap our heads around that of us working on that work just to try to wrap our heads around that. It was another step along the way, just amazing. For us.
AJ:You know, yeah, and I mean I think of the implications Going back to the children, for example. It's almost stereotypical to say kids won't eat their fruit and veg, right. And yet here was this example of kids innately, obviously, when the processed stuff wasn't in the way of the intuitive signals they were going to. This diversity of healthy foods that their bodies needed and their health outcomes reflected that it showed extraordinary outcomes. These kids who weren't educated in that just their bodies led the way, and you're finding the same thing in the animals. So the implications for both our capacity, animals' capacity, to self-organise in healthier ways, yeah, it changes everything.
Fred:Yeah, so true what you're saying. And you know there were pediatricians that were following the children, for obvious reasons. You know Well, because in those days and Claire talks about and I wrote in Nourishment about books that were being written in those days and it was very authoritarian. You know, we're pediatricians, we know what the children need to eat and this is what they and I had so fun to read what Clara writes about that Boy they hadn't heard a thing that the pediatricians had to say about that and the combinations of things that they would put together. They were totally different from what we would typically think of as this you would eat for breakfast and this maybe for lunch and this for dinner. It was just it's so funny, you know, breakfast made some liver and oh, I forget the difference Combinations of things that you would never put together. And I read the papers. They said they never saw a healthier set of children.
Fred:And then we bounced back a little bit to the studies we did with the cattle and realizing that the animals given a choice actually ended up eating less food. They were eating less food than the animals fed the total mixed ration and we argued that was because each animal, even given only five different foods was able to better meet its needs. It wasn't over-ingesting. You know there's been quite a lot written and some of my friends who live in Australia have written about that.
Fred:The protein leverage hypothesis, the ideas that humans will over-ingest energy to meet needs for protein and so there's an inefficiency we're eating more energy than what we need, which leads to weight gain. Robbenheimer and Simpson my friends, have written quite a lot about that, wrote a book about that, but we were arguing that same thing was happening with the animals. When they had the choice of ingredients that varied in energy and protein and so forth, they were able to better meet their needs and so it cost less. It actually cost less money to finish those animals economically. It actually cost less money to finish those animals economically. There was an economy in terms of the body and an economy in terms of the money that was being spent.
AJ:All the stories that you've been privy to over the years and the experiences you've had with different farming contexts, for example, that's clearly been a major part of it the saving of tons of money, inputs, and what about the outcomes of landscape? I guess, if we link this to planetary health and landscape health, what have you seen emerge from people who've been practicing in such a way as to harness this natural intelligence? If you like to harness this natural intelligence, if you like.
Fred:I think one of the things that strikes me nowadays, aj, is this what people often call regenerative agricultural movement, and you know this whole movement back toward appreciating the importance of soil and the health of soil and what that means life in the soil. And, as I often like to say and this will link it back to what you're asking I think of the key role that plants are playing in all of this and I often like to say plants turn dirt into soil and diverse mixtures of plants turn soil into homes, grocery stores and pharmacies for creatures below ground and above ground. To me, that's a simpler way to put something that's so complex, as everyone's getting into and coming to appreciate of plants and seeing people in farming systems move toward realizing the importance of cover crops, of diverse mixtures of cover crops, of keeping the ground covered with crops, of rotations. I think that's an amazing development that's occurring and I recently came across a paper that was published late last year out of a group in Minnesota and I followed one of the people's works. He's well known in ecology Tillman, david Tillman but they were publishing on like a 16 or 20 year study where they were looking at mixtures of plant species and compared to monocultures, and they were finding that when they had these diverse mixtures, the nutrients in the soil, in the plants, were greatly enhanced.
Fred:And they looked at various minerals, a whole range of different minerals. When they looked at soil, organic matter and across the board, all these factors that people look at nowadays were greatly enhanced when there were mixtures of plants compared to monocultures of plants. And this was long-term, like I say, I think about 20 years study that they were publishing on. So it just this whole idea of diversity and the importance of diversity and then what that does. Of course, nowadays the microbiome is really on people's radars. Each species harbors its own kind of microbiome and when you have diverse mixtures of species, you have a really diverse microbiome in the soil that is stimulating the microbiome of creatures in the soil and then of creatures above ground as well. Nutritionists, actually people who studied goats and sheep and cattle. They've been interested in that for 50, 60, 70 years now. That was the whole universe for them, but now showing how all those microbiomes are linked with one another is really a nice thing that people are doing.
AJ:Oh, incredible and to think, in a way, we're finding the human gut is almost like a. It's not even a secondary brain, it's like another brain in our body, if you like it, speaking of self-organizing systems. But I guess this emphasizes another part of your work, fred that being in place, being connected in a way that your microbiome is directly in relationship, and every other part of you with a plaque. That's an important part of what you found. Yeah, oh absolutely.
Fred:another thing that comes to mind uh, last year, last couple of years, since a pandemic, I ended up doing several programs with with indigenous peoples here in this country and I found it very interesting that the first thing they would say is where they were from.
Fred:I am, fred, from this place. It's that link to place and I have to say from my standpoint my heart has never left the place where I was born and raised, in those mountains it's. You know, I've traveled and appreciated many, many places but there are some deep emotional, those molecules of emotion that Candice Pert wrote about so nicely and studied and discovered. They link you and I think they link animals functionally to the landscapes that they inhabit there's, you know, this preference for foods and habitats that we studied and found so much of animals really, where they're conceived, born and reared, that they form strong preferences for those places. And I used to think and talk about it's the home field advantage in life. We talk about work but you don't know knowing what and what not to eat, where we're not to go, what's a predator, what's not a predator, and then those deep linkages like we're talking about with, with all of the organisms in that system is very functional kind of thing. And so when I would read Candice Peart talking about molecules of emotion and how they link us with places, I used to think of that all the time.
Fred:And when Sue and I were living in the backwoods of Colorado, there were neotropical migrant birds that would come and go seasonally and I always remember the little mountain bluebirds. They're just a beautiful little bird and they'd come and visiting with ornithologists. They'd say, when you band one of those birds, you realize it's the same individuals coming back to the same places and their offspring coming back. And it makes you appreciate that this isn't just random, what's happening back to the same places. And, yeah, it was amazing to think of and it's as you're saying so nicely, it's a wisdom. Huh, it's a wisdom that's in natural systems and I think it's a wisdom we're circling back to now with some of the regenerative movement and that you know that idea of trying to understand nature and natural processes, because there's a wisdom there that it's a deep, intuitive kind of wisdom. Right, it's not the cognitive, rational, analytical part of the brains of creatures, it's this deep, intuitive kind of wisdom.
Fred:And I was reading recently about some preeminent scientists that everyone knows names like Einstein and so forth, and them reflecting and saying you know they're really the creativity that they did came from this deep, intuitive place. It wasn't this cognitive, rational, analytical, and they're saying when they're writing about it, it's not. The challenge for scientists is that they think too much. There's too much thinking going on, there's not this quiet going to this quiet space where this non-cognitive, intuitive, synthetic part of our being is able to come forth, and that's really where the creativity is coming from. It's not this cognitive, rational, analytical part of us that we so emphasize. And Einstein has a great quote that I can't read. I won't try to say it because I won't say it the right way right now, but it's that you know we've come to rely too far, too much on this part, part of the, on this mentalistic brain part of things, and not nearly enough on, uh, on where creativity is really flowing from indeed.
AJ:Yeah, well, he's a good case in point of where the intellect was powerful. Like you're not. We're not diminishing the value of that, but it's in the context of the rest that it has its real. Uh, I guess helpful contribution as opposed to a destructive one, yes, so well said, so well said.
Fred:Which is the way you put that, aj. No, that's perfect, that's that's it. It's not that we're saying that's not important, but that's that. That's not what's running the show, and when we let that start to run the show, we get into troubles. If we let that follow and instruct, as you're saying, then it's valuable. Thank you.
