In this week’s episode of Sense-Making in a Changing World, I am speaking with my dear friend Cyndi O’Meara – best-selling author of Changing Habits Changing Lives, nutritionist, activist, film-maker, TEDx speaker, and founder of the Changing Habits Wholefood Company and the Changing Habits Farm.
Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.
Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.
In this conversation, we explore permaculture, health and good food. We’ve actually been collaborating for some time on her farm and through my course, The Incredible Edible Garden Course which she also offers through her Nutrition Academy.
Watch the Conversation
Or click here to listen to the Podcast on your chosen streaming service.
About Cyndi O’Meara
Cyndi is a thought leader pushing the boundaries of our understanding of what is good food – uncovering what is wrong in our current food system – why it is making us so sick. For cyndi, everything begins and ends with food.
Cyndi graduated with a degree in Nutrition from Deakin University in 1984 where her special interest was ancestral foods. At the end of her Degree, she was so disillusioned by the nutritional guidelines that she paved her own path, steering clear of the low-fat diets of the day.
Her groundbreaking 1998 book Changing Habits Changing Lives became an instant bestseller and has now been updated and revised – now called Lab to Table: The Truth a bout Food – Change the Way you Eat |Step by step guide. In 2016 Cyndi released the acclaimed documentary What’s With Wheat?’ which received 150,000 downloads globally in the first week.
Cyndi educates people so they are empowered to know better, eat better and live better – because she believes educating people about whole food is the key to a rebellion and everyone deserves to know exactly what they are eating. This is what permaculture is all about.
Read the full transcript here.
Morag Gamble:
Welcome to the Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble.. Permaculture Educator, and Global Ambassador, Filmmaker, Eco villager, Food Forester, Mother, Practivist and all around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it’s been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life we first need to shift our thinking, the way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever. And even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on? So our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection.
Morag:
What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation. In this podcast, I’ll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we’ll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can’t wait to share these conversations with you. Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I’ve seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what’s happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration.
Morag Gamble:
This is why I’ve created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women’s self help groups in the global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you’d like to find more about permaculture, I’ve created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life.
Morag:
We’d love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I’d also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I meet and speak with you today. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. In this episode of sense-making in a changing world, I’m speaking with my dear friend Cyndi O’Meara bestselling author of Changing Habits Changing Lives, nutritionist, activist, filmmaker, educator, TEDx speaker, and founder of Changing Habits whole food company and also Changing Habits farm. She’s a thought leader, pushing the boundaries of our understanding of what is good food. And she uncovers what’s wrong with our current food system and why it’s making us so sick. For Cyndi, everything begins and ends with food. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did talking with her.
Morag Gamble:
Thank you so much for joining me today Cindy. It’s just such a delight to have you on the Sense-making in a Changing World show. We met a few years ago actually on your farm and since then, we’ve just started having so many conversations all the time about food. What is food? What is real food? What is, where does that vitality in food come from? So I wanted to take this opportunity to dive in and maybe pick your brains from your background in nutrition and all the research you’ve done about the connection between nutrition and permaculture. And the connection between what is the real food that we need to nourish our bodies with the kind of food that we can grow ourselves and that is also helping to support regeneration of soil systems and pantry systems. So we can kind of go anywhere within that, but maybe just start..what got you into talking about food in the first place? I know you wrote Changing Habits Changing Lives way back over 20 years ago now.
Cyndi O’Meara:
Yeah I actually wrote Changing Habits Changing Lives as a column in Sunshine Coast daily which is where we live. Both of us live on the Sunshine Coast. Well, I guess you’re part of the sunny coast. I started writing for the paper in 1990 and 1991, very controversial column. Got lots of letters to the editor that just said, “Oh really?” “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” “She’s a lunatic!” All the way to, “Oh, that makes sense.” To being sued by the marganine association and being told I couldn’t write about artificial sweeteners because we’d be sued by Coca-Cola or someone like that. So I did that for two years. And when the last article I wrote, I just went, you know, what, if you’re not going to print the truth, I don’t want to work for you anymore because I want to tell the truth. So after 104 weeks as a columnist I looked at it and I went you know there’s a book in here. So I put together, created a book and then threw it out to Penguin and Harper Collins and Random House and nobody wanted it. I think 35 publishers in Australia, I sent it out to and nobody wanted it. So I shelved it. So that’s where Changing Habits Changing Lives came from basically. And that was that’s like, what are we at now? 2020, what 30 years ago was when I started to talk about it. But what got me interested in nutrition was I wanted to go skiing and I wanted to go to university. That’s what got me interested. So the only place I knew to do that was in Boulder, Colorado at the University of Colorado. So I flew over there as a 19 year old that was 1980. I flew over there and picked elective classes as well as did my science classes cause I was doing pre-med. And one of the electives I did was anthropology. I was mesmerized by the food man ate, how it evolved, how we used food, how civilization happen because of food, how food was such an integral part of survival. And that’s when I thought I’ll be a nutritionist. So I came back to Australia, studied, finished up my Bachelor of Science, Majoring in Nutrition and to become a dietician and it had nothing to do with historical perspective. Have nothing to do with.. It was margarine, low fat, artificial sweeteners, all of that stuff. And I remember one of the things I did was when I was at university is I took a 2- month sabbatical from university and did something called outward bound, did it through the Colorado rocks, on to Utah, in to Arizona and Nevada and learned about land management and decided, I remember writing in my journal as a 21-year-old, that I wanted to have a farm when I got home. So that was my first real thought of, I want to grow my own food. But I came home, went to university, went on to university, married a chiropractor. He had nothing to do with the land. So I never caught that opportunity. And so it wasn’t until.. I guess that longing to have a farm happened to me five years ago. And that was when my real understanding of permaculture, organic foods or organic movement, regenerative farming all started to come about. So before that it was all about food after it had left the farm and it was all about food. Yes. It was about organic. Yes. I was about whole foods. Yes. I was about that, but I knew nothing about what happened before it. Like I’d had a trial at a few herbs. My mum was a corn farmer’s daughter, the oldest of 11. So she was from farming. I’d been to big farms cause my uncles were pig farmers. So I’d seen it, but it wasn’t until I did it myself, that the reality of where our food comes from is probably more important than what we are consuming. And I know I have to sing your praises here. So I get this farm 60 acres in Reesville, Sunshine coast. I watched Jurassic park happen. I had been told that I should get a [inaudible]. And then they go and they come in and they go, Yeah we’ll get the goats in but we’ll use round up. Oh, yeah we’re going to do this but we’re going to use roun dup. And I rang Costa cause I knew Costa and I rang Costa and I said Costa, do you want to do a partnership with me? And just grow food on my farm and he goes, you know, you’ve got one of the best people right near you. Her name is Morag Gamble. And I went, okay, give me her number. Let me ring it. So Jurassic park was growing up everywhere around me. I had no idea what I was doing and you walked into my life and we walked around that farm. And I could cry on that day. I still cry to this very minute because you saved me from selling that farm. And you just said, this is easy Cindy, this isn’t weeds these are I think you called them primaries or opportunities.
Morag Gamble:
Pioneers.
Cyndi O’Meara:
Pioneers! Cause I hear them now as opportunities, pioneers.. All these words people say. So you just said their pioneers, they’re here, they’re telling you a story and these are your options. And I ran with your options. One of your options, I ran with it and never looked back. So you were instrumental in making my dream come true when my dream was becoming, it was a disaster.
Morag Gamble:
It’s such a beautiful farm and what you’re doing there is just remarkable in how you’re able to actually use that farm as a platform for communicating a different way of seeing food and where bringing people onto that farm as well, because you run a whole foods company. Y ou also run a whole foods farm. And the two together are just really a fantastic platform to help to shift the thinking. And that’s what I’m hearing you talking about is idea of disrupting the dominant paradigm of where we talk about food. How we think about food and how food is taught. I understand it’s still in a lot of nutrition courses the old style of thinking about food still comes through. So I’m hoping that it’s changing somewhat, but you also run something called a functional nutrition course. That talks differently about what is nutrition and what it means to be a dietician. Can you tell us what functional nutrition means and what vitality means and all what that has to do with gut biomes and all of that?
Cyndi O’Meara:
Well, I wanted to educate. But I am not a qualified teacher. I don’t have a PhD. I’m a nutritionist that has a thirst for knowledge. I’ve done human anatomy, did 6 years in Uni, you know, but basically, you know, a Bachelor of Science, Major in Nutrition. So I found somebody who could write the course beside me. We spent a year together. He was incredible Dr. Stephen Myers and he still head of our course. He still looks at it, edits it, does things that need to be done to it. He came into my life and we sat beside each other, putting this course together. So it’s a 12-month course, but it’s run on the principles of anthropology and vitalism. So what anthropology is.. What the historical perspective of this food. Did we eat it? You know? There’s been this whole debacle last week. I don’t know where this is going to go off, but there was a debacle in 2020 about salt. White-refined salt versus pink salt. And there was a whole scientific article about it. They were saying pink salt is dangerous. It’s got heavy metals. It’s unpredictable. It’s this, it’s that. White salt on the other hand, that’s refined with the anticaking agents and potassium in it is a healthier option. So me immediately, I don’t need to read the science. I just go, well, anthropologically wise, we’ve been using salt for probably four and a half thousand years that we know in the literature. It was used as preservation for survival, for warriors, as salary, which is in Norridge and places like that, all men, there were salts that was available to us. So my thoughts was, I know the history of salt. You cannot tell me that a natural commodity that’s been going for four and a half thousand years is terrible compared to this white-refined salt. So I do historical perspective and then I do vitalistic. So this is the principles of the Nutrition Academy. Look at this perspective, look at the vitalistic nature of it. You can go and read the science, which I did by the way the science article. I’ve read the whole thing. I just gotta show you… It keeps going and going and going. It’s really science on analyzing salt. But there’s no double blind placebo study that has somebody eating white salt and the other one eating pink. So how can you say that all white salt is better than pink salt? So this was the foundation. This is the whole foundation. And this foundation not only is the foundation of eating, but it’s the foundation of growing food as well. What’s the historical perspective. How did we grow those foods? What were their companions? What did a weed do? How did we prepare that food? You know, even grain, if we’re growing grain, how has it prepared? Well, people knew not to eat it raw. Then you would have to be fermented or soaked or something done to it. That food that we picked from the ground, it wasn’t sterilized. We weren’t scared of bacteria. All this beautiful bacteria is on those leaves. When I pick my leaves, I don’t even wash them. I pick the little worms, those little things off, I’ll throw them away, but I want that soil bacteria because that soil bacteria on my leaves or on my herb, or my root vegetables.. take the dirt off, don’t get me wrong. I will take that off. But that is to me what gives us our microbiomes. So the soil ecology, the Ecology of my Gut is what we teach in the Nutrition Academy. And what’s really exciting in the nutrition academy as well as having the fundamentals, the applied we’ve also got the intro course. We’ve got the microbiome course. We also have this Incredible Edible Garden course because I actually felt that people need to know how to grow their own foods. They need to know where their foods is coming from. And just for everybody to know it’s Morag’s course. Who else would I have on there? Nobody else, I can’t create that course. That’s not my forte. That’s your forte.
Morag Gamble:
You know the thing about the noticing the vitality too. When you look at your garden and you’re looking at that food that you’re about to harvest, like if you see a whole lot of plants in your garden and some are kind of a little bit yellowy and floppy, and there’s others that are really vital and vibrant, which one are you drawn to actually go and harvest from? You’re going to be drawn to the one that is just springing with life and is strong and it’s actually not so buggy. And why is it that strong because it has the really strong soil microbiome like there’s life in the soil that’s supporting that. And so, you know that you’re going to be accessing so much more nutrients like that food that you’re going to get it’s going to be far more nutrient dense than anything else. It’s going to have so much more vitality for you to consume and your health. So there’s this strong relationship between the health of the soil and the health of you. And then that returns back again. Bringing them together like this. Understanding nutrition understanding of our internal health, the planetary health and the soil health in our garden. And you can begin to understand everything that’s going on in the world by simply just being in relationship with your garden and your food and it starts there. And then you can, all of these other connections start to take place. And after watching your film, the What’s with Wheat as well, I’d like to dive into that a little bit cause you just went down every single rabbit hole that you could about that and found so much background. I started to apply that thinking to every other type of crops that I was seeing out. So for example just as an intro to this Cindy’s gone in and talked about the impact of glyphosate and the impact that’s having on our health because of.. throughout the wheat industry. But what I see is that it’s on so many other things. Glyphosate is used to kill off the leafy greens and there’s other chemicals to the leafy greens. So then you can harvest sweet potato more easily, for example, and all our foods, it just kind of covered in this. And so..
Cyndi O’Meara:
In Australia, it’s 70 foods.
Morag Gamble:
70 foods! And so actually when you focused on wheat. This idea to ripple it out to every other kind of food and think differently about. Oh my gosh. How am I actually going to take control again of my food system. I can buy organic. And I know that then it doesn’t have it, but there’s simpler ways is as well. And we’ve even seen now, because of the lockdown and the cracks in our food system that growing our foods become even more important and people are reaching out for it because they feel through that they have a much greater sense of real security and real control over their lives, which helps to ease off the anxieties that people are feeling in with all these things going on everywhere. So, jumping back into what’s with wheat, can you tell us what that story is about and what started you on that story? Because it took up, I remember it took up like a huge chunk of your life, finding out the research that interviewing people and putting that together.
Cyndi O’Meara:
I just want to make a couple comments on what you said. Number one, I’m in awe of food and how it grows. Like my Nectarine Tree at the moment is gone nuts and I look at it and I go, wow, how did you do that? You know, and then a seed drops and my lettuce just grows without me planning it. You know, my coriander. And then I have these incredible food now since I started growing it. So I think that’s one thing I wanted to just mention with you. That was number one before I start with the wheat. The second thing is that when you know where your food is coming from and you take control of where it’s coming from, you become a very powerful activist because you’re refusing to support the multinationals that are spraying glyphosate on 70 of our foods. You refuse to support the multinationals and the elite. They’re the elite who creating genetically modified foods. You are not supporting them anymore. You are supporting that small time farmer. And we have many of them here on the Sunny Coast and around the world. You are the most incredible activists when you choose where your food is coming from. And when you take charge of the food that you are consuming. So instead of going into the grocery store to pick a pack cause that’s what it is. Pick a pack here, pick it pack there. You don’t know where that’s coming from. Your dairy might has a thousand cows. And then that contributes another thousand, another thousand, another thousand. And then you’ll get milk that’s been mixed from 5,000 cows. I don’t want that. I want my local dairy. So when you start to do this, you’re the most incredible activist that can change the world. And this is what I got from doing everything that I’ve been doing. And it all started with, Wheat. Here we go. So almost nine years ago. I’ve always eaten well. I eat from scratch. I grow my own food back then. Grew my herbs. I make everything from scratch, make my own food. So I knew where everything was coming from. Mainly it was organic. And probably when I hit 50, which was 10 years ago, I started to put on weight, getting really sore, achy joints, tightness in my throat. I didn’t realize my brain was also going in comparison it was. Sore back. So right hip. Dry hair that wouldn’t be grow. And my hair grows like I’ve just had about this much cut off and it just grows so fast. Skin that was really dry. All of these things were happening. What am I doing? Nothing’s changed. Why is this, why am I such a mess at 50. This isn’t 50. I’m not going to put up with this. So I went on an elimination and I ate nothing but 500 calories. So I completely reduced what I was eating. I ate nothing but green leafy veggies. And oh my gosh, if I was doing that program now it would have all come from my farm, it would be the easiest program to do. But anyway, green leafy veggies, a hundred grams of meat, no fat on it. And that’s basically all I ate twice a day. Then I’ll have a papaya in the morning. That’s it? And in a week, all aches or pains, sore backs or hip disappeared completely. And I’m like going, wow, this is incredible. I knew food was powerful, but one week and all of that goes that had been, I’d been suffering with 18 months. Then I lost four and a half kilos in that week. Then at the end of 3 weeks, my brain clicked in on Day 10. I rang a friend of mine and I was saying weird things. She said Cyndi have you been doing drugs. And no, I actually feel a clarity I haven’t felt in a long time. So all of this was happening and in 3 weeks I’ve lost nine kilos feeling fantastic. Oh my gosh. I just wanted to jump out of my skin. Started to introduce foods back in, went to Woodford Folk Festival. Cause I did this over Christmas, went to a Woodford Folk festival, introduced wheat in a bread. And next day, I gained nearly a kilo in weight. You can’t do that. You can’t put that much fat on. That’s water weight, that’s inflammation. Sore back came back, foggy brain came back, felt like crap went, Oh my gosh, what is wrong with bread? So I did research. For two years I listened to some incredible researchers out there. Read their books, read their research, did everything. And then my husband at the end of two years said to me, well, do you want to write another book on that? And I went, no, I don’t want to write another book. He goes, why don’t we do a documentary? We knew nothing about it, but we learned really fast. All those people that I researched, I then did a video Christmas Eve, sent it out to them, just saying, I’d love them in my documentary. This is my story. And Christmas day, three of them came back. Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, Dr. Terry Wahls, and Vandana Shiva. Three powerful, incredible women. India, England and the US. Then I said to all the others that hadn’t said yes, emailed them and said, Oh, I have these three incredible women. And then all came on board but one that I really wanted. He had written the book Wheat Belly and he was one of the people that I’d read. And so anyway, that was fine. I went around, traveled the world. There was four of us that traveled and did interviews. And then did the editing. Had a great editor here on the Sunshine Coast? Had great producer. He traveled with me. It was just one of the most incredible experiences of my life, but we got to our last interview and it was Dr. Stephanie Seneff at MIT. She’s a computer analyst and she was noticing autism increasing in the population. She thought it was vaccines. She was sure of it because she was saying this correlation. But when she put in the use roundup with genetically modified foods starting in 1996, then in 2000, the use of roundup as a desiccant. A drying agent on all of our foods, she saw an absolute correlation between Parkinson’s, MS, Autism, cancers. You should see her grass. They are incredible. So it’s our last interview, we are exhausted. I asked her a question, the answer’s roundup up. I asked her another question it’s roundup. And I’m like all of us are like this, jaws on the floor, blown away by what she’s telling us. And I had to change the documentary because I realized that the root cause of the increase in celiac disease, non-celiac gluten sensitivity, musculoskeletal problems, neurological problems probably had a root cause with our agricultural practices. And the absolute openslava of this product being thrown on our foods not only genetically modified foods, but as desiccants on legumes and grains, our nuts, our seeds, orchards, canola, non-genetically modified canola, like you name it, they were throwing it on there. So she just explained that so well, but I realized there were other factors as well, because, you know, I identified 14 factors, but I realized that was the root cause. Then there was wheat lots of it. We refine it. We take the bran out, we take the germ out. There’s no nutrition, it’s in everything. It’s indoors. Oh my gosh. It’s just used everywhere. Being used everywhere, it’s sprayed. I could not believe how much wheat is being grown in between here, the Sunshine Coast and Cania Gorge. A 7-hour drive it’s was just wheat field after wheat field, after wheat field. I did a trip North to Airlie beach just recently. Another 12 hour-trip, sugar cane, sugar cane, sugar cane, sugar cane. And I just.. do we need that much wheat and sugar cane? Do we really need that much?
Morag Gamble:
Something like 60% of the food that’s eaten in the world comes from three main products, which is wheat, rice, and corn. There’s the next..potatoes and sugars and all that. But it’s a factor of our industrialized food system that in order to sort of have these processes that are easy to move round, we need the biggest systems and it just gets, we simplify it. Whereas nature is inherently complex and our systems are inherently complex and we need to have complex food systems to support the nourishment of our wellbeing. And our gardens themselves need the complexity. When people come to me and they say, Oh, I have a problem with these pests or with this. And I was like you need to add more complexity into it. You need to add something that might attract a beneficial insect that will come in and eat that or a little shrubby bush, that’ll attract the little birds so they’ll feel safe and then they’ll come out and pick your your slugs off or whatever it is. The answer is always add more complexity. Whereas our industrial food system is like simplifying things into like monocultures and then going, Oh, we’re having all these problems. Yes, of course you’re having problems. Cause it’s not how nature works. Oh, we’ll use all these things to kind of manage it, suppress it. And Oh, that’s kind of killed the soul life. Oh, by the way, we better add all this other stuff. So our food system only works when we add the water. When we add the chemicals, when we add the protection. It can’t grow by itself. What is going to feed people in the longer term is actually these more robust, resilient, integrated, diverse food systems, which draw out all these different kinds of nutrients from the soil and provide us with this beautiful, bountiful selection of foods all the seasons around. And there’s direct relationship between that monoculture you just seen and how that’s grown and everything that that represents from the economic system, which has supports and the global trade agreements and all of those things, the subsidies. You know, how much money does the government actually and global organizations pay to help that farmer grow that way? What is the subsidies we shifted and meant that regenerative food systems were supported, that you can’t get the subsidy unless you’re actually doing regenerative farming. Like if that was the goal, rather than the goal of maximizing output to export offshore, then we would have a completely different food system. And were having sort of having this ground up bubbling of healing the food system, from what people like you are talking about, but it needs to have this other system as well I think, [should be] cracked open. And I have to say that I’m really excited to hear that this is starting to happen. In the UK, I met recently with the Ministers of Agriculture and they’re saying that right now, they’re opening up this new agricultural bill, which means that you only get the subsidies of farming if you’ve got ecological practices underpinning, what you’re doing and I’m like hooray!
Cyndi O’Meara:
That is such good news to hear because you’re right, the subsidies are all for these monocultures and not the people. Like nobody’s giving me money or you money but in the end. It’s not about the money. It’s like, I know what your like you love your garden, you’re in your garden it’s such a satisfaction. And it’s the same for me, but it would be really lovely to see these subsidies being for small farmers. And I heard Charles Massy say that 70% of our people are fed by five acres or less. 70% of the population! We don’t need these monocultures.
Morag Gamble:
No, all of this research being shown across the world is saying that we can feed ourselves on small polycultural, food systems, which where there’s a metabolism. Like our waste go back as compost. I remember going to the summit that you organized a couple of years ago where Charles Massy was speaking and he was talking about just this small shift in the percentage of organic matter that we get into the soil, then soaks in hundreds of thousands of extra liters of water. And that it doesn’t run off and cause pollution somewhere else. It actually gets drawn in. And so we start to heal the land. We heal the river systems. We restore the life in soil and it’s also drawing down carbon at the same time. I mean, it’s just every single way you look at it. It makes so much sense. And so I think also what you’re doing in terms of educating people who like on the consumer end to the [inaudible] ask for this food. What you’re doing with Changing Habits and what you’re doing with all the education you’re doing is getting people to say, actually, I don’t really want to eat that anymore. I want to eat this. And when you start to get that, it supports small farmers. It supports the regenerative farmer. And I’m wondering, have you seen any changes over COVID in how people are thinking about this?
Cyndi O’Meara:
Well, I couldn’t get plants and I couldn’t get seeds. So obviously, like I was collecting all my seeds because I’m thinking, Oh, I gotta collect seeds. I’ve got that many barge seeds. If anyone needs barge I have it.
Morag Gamble:
I’ve got a million or maybe 10 million mustard seeds. With the mustard seeds you can eat you can sprout them and they make excellent sprouts. You can make your own jars of mustard if you want to put that..
Cyndi O’Meara:
I’m finding more and more people are getting this because the whole COVID thing went, Oh my gosh, I’ve gotta be healthy. I’m gonna grow my own foods, the seeds all left. Everybody didn’t want to miss out. More and more people are wanting to grow food. And of course that’s when we just happened to start the Incredible Edible Garden. So everybody wanted seeds and everyone was, I noticed swapping seeds. So we got a lot of people starting to do that. But I think that what I do the best is educate people about the food system. And since you, meeting you Morag and understanding regenerative farmer and Charles Massy [inaudible] and all of these incredible people out there changing farming practices. I think that there is a real change and people are really beginning to go “If I do not do this, then who is going to do it.” And like I said, before, we become activists by the foods that we choose. You are the most powerful activists by the food you choose or the food you choose to grow or where you buy your food. And you refuse to go to these big multinationals and you refuse to buy packaged food and that you make everything from scratch. And yes, it takes time and yes, it takes learning, but this is what we have to do in order to save the planet. Number one, the animals that are on the planet, the ecology of the planet and human civilization, that’s where I think we need to go. And it starts and ends with food. The food that you’re growing, how you’re growing it and what you’re consuming. And I know that all those regenerative farmers, the permacultures, the biodynamic farmers all of those are all these ways of feeding into the food system that will then give nutrition to the human that makes the human think instead of being a sheep, because that’s what I am saying. I am not saying humans thinking clearly. They are chained to the food system. They are sick and therefore they are chained to the pharmaceutical system. They are chained to the agricultural system. And as soon as they break free of those chains, they become free. That’s what I think. I think if you’re in that agricultural food system and you’re in that, well you’re buying packaged foods and you’re at the pharmaceuticals, having drugs every minute of your life, like I have a friend and he looks after older people and he says, this blister packs full of drugs. They take in 37 pills a day. Well you’re chained to that system. And until you break loose and realize that the beginning starts with way you get your food from, what food you’re consuming, and then you become healthy and you don’t need the drugs. And then the pharmaceutical companies fall down and they don’t become the elite anymore. The agricultural companies fall down, nobody wants to buy roundup or glyphosate and all of those toxic atrazines DDT. And, Oh my gosh, who would have thought that it was okay to spray poisons on our food? Who ever thought that.
Morag Gamble:
It came when food became a commodity, as opposed to food is food. Food is what nourishes us. When we separate ourselves from the farming system, from the economics of the food to the economics of the household. There’s that separation. You don’t see those collosal effects and when it starts to come back. I mean, I used to lecture in food politics at Griffith University. I remember talking about all these things and I could see people’s faces like someone just like shocked. Other people were going,”what?” When this knowledge is shared, it is shocking because we normally get it so packaged. Say for example eggs, right? You get them in this nice little container. And there’s this package that has these beautiful, happy chickens around this grassy yard, where the actual reality is they’re packed in these dreadful conditions. I know you’re starting to crack that open a bit, but what I call it, it was a pastoral fantasy that we got fed an image of what our food was and where it was coming from. And we believed it. Because we weren’t there in the field. We didn’t know where it was coming from. And this kind of clouding of the reality became so much so that we believed that this was a good thing. And all the marketing around that food. that all of these different things. Like, you know, that margarine was good for you. And there’s like probably all these beautiful pictures of these healthy, happy people eating margarine. We’ve got sold another reality. And we are trusting people. Typically, we believe what we’re told. And so when we grow up seeing food pyramids and saying replace you butter with margarine cause that’s the healthy option. You follow the advice of what you get at school and what local health center is telling you. And so I think it’s really a matter of trying to unpack that and to really show the other side of what’s really happening. What’s going on with wheat? What’s happening in the food system? What happens at the dairy? How are you vegetables growing, you know? We need to ask those questions. We also need to take personal responsibility, I think a bit to kind of uncover and discover and become curious about it. You know, when you read the recipe and it says, okay, you need to get all these things. I think we need to sort of have questions, like, qualifications. Maybe ask where that might be from, or is there a better way where you can get that rather than just a straight list of recipes because it helps people to go that next step.
Cyndi O’Meara:
That’s a brilliant idea! Make sure you go to the farmer’s market for that one. It’s a good change of habit for the spices.
Morag Gamble:
Yeah. Look it’s important because it’s like you said, where it comes from, how it’s grown is so important about the impact it’s going to have on your health. But also the impact of like the social justice of it, the ecological justice of it, all those different aspects. And so, yeah, I think the education is key. Opening up is key. Constant telling stories and helping to make it more accessible. So making good food more accessible, making the information about how you grow food more accessible and inviting people to be part of this and demonstrating that there is, well, there are other alternatives that we, it is possible to support your family and your community on small scale regenerative farms. We still have these things like, Oh yes. But there’s billions of people that’s not going to be possible. Yet we see how much food is wasted. Just going back to that thing about food waste with the figure is normally about what 30-40% of food that gets wasted. I mean, I guess that we would probably wasting about I don’t know, 80% of the food that’s grown simply because we don’t eat all of it. You know my story all the time I talk about pumpkin, for example. We look at a pumpkin and we wait for the pumpkin to be ready. And then we chop off all the skin, chuck that away. Scoop out the seeds, chuck it away and we’re left with this one little bit of yellow, orangy stuff. It’s like that whole plant is edible, every single shoot and leaf and flower. And so imagine all the pumpkin farms in the world and all the sweet potato farms in the world and all of these other farms in the world, all of that food, it just gets roundup, you know? So in actual fact, so clearly, we don’t need all that space to grow these things. We need to shift the way we think, what is food, how we eat food, where we get our food from and what we’re willing to eat and how we eat it. I mean you know, spinach can be millions of different things. It doesn’t have to be the spinach leaf. I think it’s a conceptual shift in attitude or shift of perception of what our food is and what it can be. And I think that’s probably a key part of where we need to get that change happening.
Cyndi O’Meara:
Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. We’ve lost our way. We stopped cooking. So, packaged foods. And we just have to go once again, go back to those two principles I talked about in the beginning, Historically what did we do? We gathered food. We hunted food, we brought it home. We cooked it up. Very simple. Meat and veg. Porridges or whatever it was. That’s the way we did it. We didn’t have it all packaged in plastic and everything like that and throw it in the microwave in. I think when people go, when we go back to our roots, like regen farming is really the roots of the way nature works. Permaculture is. Seed drops, look in the middle of my path. There’s a lettuce or a coriander. I even got coriander and lettuce growing in the paddock. Oh, I love it. I just, if we can get people to comprehend this. More and more people are gonna start doing it. And I have to admit, I am seeing as well, a real swell of people doing it. And you must see that, too. You know, that, that wonderful swell of people that are realizing that food is connected to their health. And what’s interesting is that the amount of medical doctors that are now beginning to see this. Not all, but there are some key people like our Australian of the year, James Muecke. He’s an ophthalmologist. And most of the people that he was dealing with were people with diabetes. What’s the root cause of diabetes? Diet. So he now wants to change the guidelines. Good luck to him. I just, you know, he’s seen, he’s been with Greg Hunt, our Health Minister, He’s with the National Health and Medical Research Council. He’s on another board for the Diabetes Association. All these beautiful things he’s doing. Then there’s David Johnson, neurosurgeon in Brisbane realized that diet and functional movement was probably more powerful than operating. So now he’s not operating as much because he’s now changing people’s lives with diet and functional movement. Doctor Gary Fettke.. Incredible! Like these are people that I’m meeting. Troy Stapleton. These are doctors that are changing paradigms. And that’s what it is, is that we can’t fight across paradigms because this person thinks very differently to this person. But if we can move that paradigm towards us, towards regen farming, towards eating better towards that, then we start to see that paradigm shift, move more towards vitalism as opposed to mechanism, which is the way healthcare is done today. And the way food has done today is very mechanistically as opposed to vitalisticly or holistically. So, I think there is, there’s a movement and hopefully something like you and me just talking will help people towards that shift that someone might say. Hey, you listened to these two young girls. How to grow. How to eat. And maybe they’ll, you know, they’ll and I do feel young and I’m 60. I went better into my sixties than I did into my fifties. That’s how I feel. More energy, no aches and pains, just incredible. So, and that was just one food. And then I realized the story of wheat is the story of food and that’s and then the farm, and then you, and..
Morag Gamble:
It’s amazing and it speaks for itself. Doesn’t it? I mean, the fact that you do have such a level of vitalism and you were able to shift and change. And even though you were already very aware, this is what you’re saying. It’s not, it wasn’t new information, but it’s a deepening of a particular way of seeing it. So I think, and I love what you just said about the paradigm shifting towards vitalism and what I feel what we really need to do is to celebrate the changes that we’re seeing, that those people who are the courageous edge workers, I suppose, moving into these different conversations space to celebrate their work and to really give recognition to those because sometimes people who are pushing those edges feel like marginal or marginalized. And I think both from the grower’s perspective, but also from the food producers or wherever you are, if you’re willing to come into that space of exploring the edges of where it is that we actually need to go and find out new forms of doing that, then, I would love for us to be consistently saying thank you and acknowledging your work like you do. So, thank you for everything that you do. As always absolute delight and pleasure to talk with you. I feel like I wanted to keep talking to you.
Cyndi O’Meara:
We could talk forever couldn’t we?
Morag Gamble:
And thank you for joining us on the Sense-making in a Changing World show Cyndi. I mean, it just, what you’ve been talking about is absolute Sense-making, and it’s a really great way to, I think, you know, talking about food system, both from that nutritional perspective, but also the growing perspective bringing together those things, which strangely, “strangely” have been separated. It just needs to come back as sort of different aspects of descriptions of the whole foods movement, the whole foods, whole health, holistic health thinking. And it’s just, like you said, everything begins and ends with food and that’s a great way to do it in the household. Everyone can do that, we can all do that.
Cyndi O’Meara:
Yeah. I agree entirely.
Morag Gamble:
Well. All right well, lovely to have you on the show and thank you so much again. And, I look forward to meeting you up on the farm soon.
Cyndi O’Meara:
Thank you, Morag. Bye.
Morag Gamble:
Thanks for tuning in to the Sense-making in a Changing World podcast today, it’s been a real pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe and receive notification of each new weekly episode with more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively and core positive permaculture thinking of design interaction in this changing world. I’m including a transcript below and a link also to my four-part permaculture series, really looking at what is permaculture and how to make it your livelihood, too. So, join me again in the next episode where we talk with another fascinating guest, I look forward to seeing you there.
Find out more about permaculture
We need more people who can grow healthy food and spread the word to their communities.
Learn more about permaculture in my 4 part permaculture series and explore the many free permaculture resources in my Youtube and blog. We definitely need more permaculture teachers everywhere to restore balance to earth’s systems, and to help facilitate regenerative practices.
I invite you to join the Permaculture Educators Program with others from 6 continents – a comprehensive online course that includes the Permaculture Design Certificate and the only online Permaculture Teacher Certificate anywhere.
To support free permaculture education for people in refugee camps please donate to Ethos Foundation – the registered charity associated with the Permaculture Education Institute. We invite young people to join the Global Permayouth Festivals each month.
I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which I live and work – the Gubbi Gubbi people.
Thank you to Rhiannon for sound editing and Kim for the music.
Would you like to teach permaculture?
Permaculture education reaches across the globe connecting communities, ideas, and resources, and builds hope and possibility. Becoming a permaculture teacher is a positive way to make a difference – as a volunteer or as your job – and support communities around you (or on the other side of the world), and connect with and regenerate your local environment.
Join a global network of [pr]activists addressing the interconnected crises humanity (actually, all life) is facing today. The Permaculture Educators Program joins people together on 6 continents – from Nambucca to Nepal, Sikkim to Spain, California to Kakuma refugee settlement.
Join Permaculture Australia too!
Subscribe & Share
Thanks for tuning into Sense-making in a Changing World today. It has been a pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe (via your favourite podcast app like iTunes) and receive notification of each new weekly episode.
Each Wednesday I will share more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration and common sense for living and working regeneratively. Positive permaculture thinking, design and action is so needed in this changing world.
What is permaculture?
Take a look at my free 4 part permaculture series or Our Permaculture Life Youtube and my permaculture blog too. For an introduction to permaculture online course, I recommend The Incredible Edible Garden course. I also offer an online Permaculture Educators Program (Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate) and involve young people in permaculture through Permayouth (11-16yos).
Warm regards,
Morag Gamble
Founder, Permaculture Education Institute
I acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land from which I am broadcasting, the Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging.
Thank you Rhiannon Gamble for audio editing – a challenging task this week with poor connection
Thank you to Kim Kirkman (Harp) and Mick Thatcher (Guitar) for donating this piece from their album Spirit Rider.