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The Power of Simplifying Your Diet
Why I Chose To Eat Animal-Based The reason I chose to live this way - eating pure, whole food - goes far beyond what’s on my plate. It defines how I live, how I care for my body, and how I think about health, longevity, and self-respect. This isn’t just about diet. It’s a conscious decision to step away from the noise and return to the things that actually sustain me. What Pure Food Really Means For me, pure food means real ingredients. We often say, “If it has more than three ingredients, it’s not real food.” And honestly, that feels spot on. Over decades, we’ve been seduced by the food industry into believing we can eat processed foods and still live long, healthy lives. Convenience replaced quality, and Marketing replaced the truth. Stepping outside that industry narrative and reclaiming purity as a non-negotiable has transformed my health. I’ve seen the same shift happen for many others on this path. My Family History Shaped My View Of Nutrition My mum was born in 1939. She lived through periods of scarcity, then abundance, much of it the wrong kind. She witnessed extreme dieting trends and the vilification of animal foods in the 1980s. She followed the advice she was given, trusted the so-called experts, and did what she thought was right. She’s now in her mid-80s and living with dementia, something I can’t help but link to decades of poor nutritional guidance. My grandmother, on the other hand, learned about food from her farming parents. Her nutrition was simple, grounded, and traditional. She lived well into her 90s and kept all her marbles right to the very end. That contrast isn’t lost on me. The Link Between Pure Nutrition And Longevity. I truly believe that pure nutrition lays the foundation for superior health and longevity. What we’ve lost over decades of industrialisation, government food guidelines, and Big Food corporations dictating what we should eat, is real nourishment. The result? Declining health across the population. Rising neurological issues in midlife. Accelerated physical decline in our seniors. This didn’t happen by accident. How Returning To Whole Foods Changed My Health Since returning to pure food, I feel the best I have in years. I’m lean. I’m fit. I’m pain-free. I’m mentally sharp. My cognition is clear. My energy is steady. I don’t feel any sense of decline in performance. I feel strong and resilient. This is what happens when you fuel your body with food it actually recognises. What Eating Pure Looks Like In Real Life Eating pure for me means choosing foods with one ingredient. Foods that aren’t engineered in factories; boxed, branded, or wrapped in plastic. There are no protein bars or cereal boxes in my cupboards. My food lives raw in the fridge or freezer. I eat minimally processed animal foods: meat, organs, dairy, eggs, with fermented foods occasionally. I listen to my body. When I’m hungry, I choose high-protein, nutrient-dense food that actually satisfies me. Pure Food As An Act Of Self-Respect Pure food is an act of self-respect. It’s listening to your body instead of overriding it. It’s choosing quality over convenience. It’s choosing nourishment over noise. Why I’ll Never Go Back I’ll never go back to eating badly. I’m here for good, fuelled by pure, highly nutritious food that keeps me alive, awake, and vibrant. Because pure nutrition lasts.
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The Benefits of a Carnivore Diet for Cardio Performance
When you’re training your cardiovascular system, it’s not just about aerobic volume or intervals. It’s about fuelling, repairing and sustaining the lifeline of your performance: your heart, lungs and blood. At Homegrown Primal, we believe that an animal-based approach provides deep targeted support, especially when you include organ blends that nourish tissues often overlooked. Why It Matters Your heart isn’t just a muscle; it’s a metabolic engine. It demands intense nutrient support: from saturated fats for mitochondrial resilience, to organ-derived compounds for cell repair and circulation. Your lungs and the oxygen-exchange system depend on cellular membranes, phospholipids, and clean vascular walls. Animal-based nutrients provide the building blocks of these vital structures. Your blood carries energy as well as immunity and recovery signals throughout your body. Supporting whole-blood health means we’re supporting cardiovascular capacity, endurance, and recovery. Ruminant Organ Advantage Our Heart & Lung and Blood+ products are designed to feed these systems directly: Heart & Lung delivers organ-derived tissue support, rich in peptides, which your cardiovascular system can use for resilience and efficiency. Blood+ provides nutrients geared toward red-blood-cell membrane integrity, haemoglobin function, and immune cell health, all critical for oxygen delivery, clearing waste, and regenerating tissue under cardiovascular load. What The Experts Say Dr Ben Bikman emphasises that metabolic health, insulin sensitivity, lipid quality, and mitochondrial efficiency are key to cardiovascular integrity. He questions the idea that saturated fat alone causes heart disease, instead pointing to issues such as carb load, inflammation and vascular stress. Dr Paul Saladino promotes an animal-based, nutrient-dense, organ-rich diet as the foundation for lasting health. Though his model has evolved beyond strict carnivore, his core focus remains: feed the body with bioavailable nutrients to support structure and function from within. Together, their work supports a simple idea: organs aren’t just fuel, they’re tissue support for performance. How To Apply It Before training Eat saturated-fat-rich animal foods plus one serving of an organ product 1–2 hours before a long cardio workout. This primes mitochondrial capacity and supports blood flow. After training Use Blood+, which can help repair red-cell membranes, replenish immune cells, and enhance circulation, reducing vascular load and supporting recovery. On rest days Organ blends can serve as foundational nutrition because your heart and lungs don’t take a day off. Regular use ensures your cardiovascular system isn’t just surviving, it’s thriving. Track markers beyond HR and VO₂ Monitor blood pressure variability, heart-rate recovery, red-cell quality and subjective recovery (less fatigue, better sleep). Key Takeaways Modern cardiovascular training means: Stress the system (intervals, endurance, load) Fuel the system (saturated fats, organ blends, animal-based nutrients) Recover the system (blood health, tissue repair, mitochondrial support) Organ-based nutrition gives your body more than calories; it provides structure, support and the building blocks for repair. That’s the primal edge: a cardiovascular system built for resilience, endurance and longevity. FAQs For Animal-Based Cardio Support Can An Animal-based Diet Really Support Heart Health? Yes, when done right. Animal-based diets rich in saturated fats, organ nutrients, and clean protein can strengthen the cardiovascular system by improving mitochondrial efficiency, metabolic flexibility, and inflammation control. Experts like Dr Ben Bikman and Dr Paul Mason remind us that context matters; saturated fats behave differently in a low-carb, low-inflammation diet than in a high-carb, seed-oil-driven one. It’s about fuelling your heart with ancestral nutrition, not fear-based modern guidelines. What Does The Heart & Lung Blend Actually Do? Our Heart & Lung formula nourishes the tissues that keep you alive and moving. Each serving delivers organ-specific nutrients, including peptides, coenzymes, and tissue proteins, that the heart and lungs use for resilience, oxygen uptake, and energy regulation. Think of it as feeding your internal engine with the parts it’s made from. How Does Blood+ Help With Endurance And Recovery? Blood+ was formulated to support red and white blood cell integrity, the carriers of oxygen, nutrients, and immune defence. By nourishing blood cells with heme-iron, B vitamins, and natural cofactors from organ sources, you’re improving: Oxygen delivery to muscles Waste removal and recovery speed Overall cardiovascular performance Better blood means better endurance. How Do These Organ Blends Support Cardiovascular Training Specifically? Training puts your cardiovascular system under intense oxidative and metabolic stress. Organ blends like Heart & Lung and Blood+ feed that system at the cellular level, giving your heart mitochondria the nutrients they need to stay strong, while supporting the oxygen-carrying capacity of your blood. It’s nutrition that trains with you, rebuilding the system as you challenge it. Do I Still Need To Do Cardio Training If I Take These Products? Absolutely. These blends don’t replace movement; they enhance adaptation. Cardio training strengthens the heart through load and demand. Organ-based nutrition provides the raw materials to recover, rebuild, and perform under pressure. One fuels the work. The other makes the work worth doing. Can I Combine Tallow Or Bone & Marrow With These Blends? Yes, that’s where you’ll feel the biggest benefit. Tallow Capsules provide the stearic and palmitic acids that power mitochondria. Bone & Marrow supplies the collagen and minerals that support vascular elasticity. Heart & Lung and Blood+ nourish the cardiovascular tissues and the blood itself. Together, they feed strength, endurance, and recovery at every level. In Summary Your cardiovascular system isn’t just a pump. It’s a living network of muscle, blood, and oxygen. When you fuel it with organ-based nutrition, you’re not guessing; you’re giving your body the fuel it’s biologically built for.
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Embracing Discomfort: The Path to Growth and Resilience
Over time, the extreme temperatures, physical challenges, nutritional discipline and intermittent fasting forged robust, adaptable humans whose bodies and minds were finely tuned to the rhythms of nature.
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What Should You Eat During Pregnancy? A Nutrient-Dense Approach for Mother and Baby
Meat and Organs are fantastic first foods. For pregnant and lactating mummas they should be eaten every day to ensure that you and your baby are getting the best nutrition. Help contribute to the health of our future!
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Everything Wrong With the Modern Diet (And Why Ancestral Eating Matters)
How Modern Life Has Pulled Us Away from Natural Living We have come such a long way from the lazy days on the farm. It seems now that the hamster wheel that is our daily life is impossible to get off but we are all searching for a respite, and a rest. Finding the answer could be the key to enabling the ‘slowdown’ and ‘breathe’. The realisation that I can step off the fast pace life, and take a breath without my life falling apart is a massive mind shift. I believe it starts with food. The Human Animal and the Need for Real Food Deeply embedded in our psyche is the animal, who needs natural foods, warmth, and company. For many years we've been pushing this animal away and numbing it down by this fast paced life, grabbing fast food, staying up late working and not resting, all the while thinking that we've “got to keep” going. Daily releasing the fight hormones that keep us running away from the tiger!! Why Returning to an Ancestral Diet Matters Getting back to an ancestral diet, one that is uncluttered with additives, one that is full of whole foods, not packed and processed for longevity on the shelf, is the first key to stepping off the wheel. The Rise of Fast Food and Processed Culture Fast foods have been part of our culture since the 70’s. KFC opened in Auckland in 1971!! And since then the large chains have been providing nutrient deficient foods to NZers!!! That's 50 years to create more disease and more self loathing than we have ever experienced. To undermine the health of an entire species. Easy to buy, mostly affordable and playing into our narrative of ‘not enough time to cook’. Modern Diet-Related Disease in New Zealand We as a nation have been afflicted with more diabetes, heart disease, gut issues, and obesity than any other time in history. We now need CHANGE. The New Movement Toward Whole-Food Living There's a new wave of healthy people, some who are thriving due to experimenting with their own food, some whose health has been so bad that they have found their own way through elimination. The ancestral diet, or getting back to basics, shows that we don't need all the additives and the processing. That we can sustain and nurture ourselves naturally, with locally sourced food its not impossible to regain our health, our birthright to radical aliveness. Are Paleo, Keto and Low-Carb Diets Just Fads? We are all familiar with these abbreviations; paleo, keto, fodmap, and we all know that the atkins diet was all about protein. These diets encourage us to look beyond the food pyramid and beyond the fast food drive through. They have been birthed from a sick and unhealthy population who need answers and a change. But are they just fads? The Truth About the Food Pyramid The food pyramid wants you to think that fads don't last and that you need 5 servings of veg a day, 50% carbs, lean meat, and no saturated fats! FYI the food pyramid is sponsored by Kelloggs, Big Food and Big Pharma!! But they are not fads, they are birthed from people pushing against the standard food narrative. Eating Local and Seasonal for Radical Health Getting back to basics and eating simply and local is a new movement, driven by thinkers who want more than to just exist. I believe it is the way to radical health. I Don't want to eat food that has traveled some distance and I don't want to eat food that is out of season!! Our inner animal wants warm slow cooked in the winter, when fruits are scarce and light meals when fruit is in season. When we can make yogurt from fresh milk and eat freshly slaughtered lamb chops!! Its simple and its simply nourishing. How to Start an Ancestral or Animal-Based Diet Starting is easy, clean out all the packaged food from your pantry, and fridge. Be ruthless! Take all the seed oils and dump them! That's all the processed oils from plants. These are not doing you any good! Remove the sugar. Start reading labels. Don't buy anything that has more than 2 ingredients! Engaging with these guidelines the food choices get interesting!! Meat, eggs, cheese, (dairy if you can) Fish, seasonal fruit. We use salt on our food. We cook in butter or tallow. The Benefits of Nutrient-Dense Animal Foods Nutrient rich foods like these can sustain you, hunger pains go and life feels bigger and more alive. Nutrients from animal foods are 100% bioavailable, this means that the body, when digesting, can use all of the food, it wastes nothing!! Liver is nature's superfood, it is dense in essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids that keep you sated and thriving. Drinking bone broth everyday provides you with enough collagen to help you recover from exercise, keeps you hair growing lustrously and keeps your skin glowing. Why You Should Try an Animal-Based Ancestral Diet So if you're feeling slow, sluggish, not thriving. If your gut health could be better, if your skin and hair are dull, I suggest you try switching to the Animal based, Ancestral way of eating. Try it for a month and see if you can transform your life.
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For the Women: Reclaiming Feminine Health Naturally
The Feminine Body: My Thoughts on Being Connected to Her Women are the most amazing creatures, from the wild creator to the graceful mother, we can embody so many different energies or archetypes and live deeply alive, resonating with our true nature. We are the lover, mother, crone, child, and SHE comes in many forms. What lights you up?? What brings you joy?? Two really poignant questions today that I'm inviting you to answer. Discovering the Wild Nature of the Feminine Women's health and wellness has been a subject that I've been interested in for many years. My search has led me to discover the wild nature of the feminine, to be truly wildly me! and I'm so happy that I'm now at this place in my life where I can just be me. Connecting to my own power and my primal life force. That which is essentially feminine, has been a journey into pleasure. A healthy body can resonate with the ecstatic, the senses alive to sights, sounds, scents and texture. This is the power of pleasure. Let your pleasure guide you. To be healthy, nutritional support is important. I created Mojo for Women for this reason. Ancestral support for women, of all ages starts here. Daily Rituals That Nourish the Feminine With a regular daily practice, what ever lights you up: Yoga, mediation, prayer, and nutrition: ancestral, local, organic, foods that nourish your body, foods that are consciously chosen to nourish you through out your cycle. You will find that feminine within. And SHE is MAGNIFICENT!!!
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Are Collagen Supplements Helpful for Arthritis?
Article reproduced from arthritis.org You’ve read the hype, gelatin, collagen supplements, even bone broth will ease your arthritis. But can collagen supplements or bone broth really help your arthritis? What is Collagen? Collagen is the most abundant protein in the animal kingdom. There are 16 types of collagen, but nearly all the collagen in your body is type I, II or III. Types I and III are found in your skin, tendons, organs and bone. Type II collagen is found in your cartilage – and hence, its link to arthritis. Collagen is made of amino acids (the building blocks of protein). The idea behind taking these supplements is that your body will use the amino acids to protect and rebuild your joint cartilage. Types of Collagen Supplements There are three types of collagen supplements: gelatin, hydrolyzed and undenatured. Gelatin and hydrolyzed collagen have been broken down from large proteins to smaller bits. When collagen is boiled for a long time (as in bone broth), it gets broken down into gelatin. Collagen can be further “predigested” into its basic amino acids and is called collagen hydrolysate, hydrolyzed gelatin, collagen peptides, or hydrolyzed collagen. Undenatured collagen is not broken into smaller proteins or amino acids. Undenatured type II collagen (UC-II) is not intended to be used by your body as a collagen re-builder. In a process called oral tolerance, very small doses of UC-II are taken to train your body’s immune system to stop attacking its own collagen, explains Kimberly Sanders, ND, Assistant Professor of Clinical Sciences at the University of Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine. Do They Work? From a dietary perspective, your body can’t tell whether you ate a hydrolyzed collagen supplement, a piece of chicken, or some black beans. They’re all sources of protein, and once your digestive system has broken them down into amino acids, they are indistinguishable. So why bother with collagen supplements? Dr. Sanders says the “predigested” collagen supplements make the amino acids more easily available to your tissues. And, she explains, “When you take hydrolyzed collagen, you’re getting a boost of the specific amino acids that are rich in collagen.” But, she agrees, amino acids are amino acids and it doesn’t ultimately matter where they come from. The results of hydrolyzed collagen supplements research have been mixed. Some small studies, including a 2017 review article published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, have shown that people taking collagen supplements do experience pain relief. Other studies have found no benefit. No studies have found that collagen hydrosylates grow or repair cartilage. Studies for UC-II have not been conclusive. A 2016 study published in Nutrition Journal divided 191 people with osteoarthritis into three groups: one group received placebo; one group received UC-II and the third group received chondroitin sulfate supplements. After 180 days of treatment, the UC-II group had better pain, stiffness, and function than the placebo group (and a bit better than the chondroitin group). UC-II studies done on people with rheumatoid arthritis have had mixed results. A 2009 double-blind trial that included more than 500 people with RA found that undenatured collagen improved participants’ pain, morning stiffness, tender joint count and swollen joint count, but not as well as methotrexate. The study, published in Arthritis Research and Therapy, concluded that UC-II is safe and effective in the treatment of RA. “There’s not enough evidence to say that every patient with arthritis would benefit from any collagen supplement. But enough to say it’s promising, and studies should continue,” says Dr. Sanders. What to Look for Although evidence for the use of collagen supplements is unclear, you can be certain they’re not harmful if taken as directed. Some people do, however, complain of stomach upset or diarrhea. Dr. Sanders gives these recommendations for people wanting to give collagen supplements a try: UC-II should be taken in very small doses – usually 20–40 mg per day. Gelatin and hydrolyzed collagen should be taken in higher doses – 10 gm per day. It’s easiest to get this in powder form and blend it into a smoothie or other drink. Be aware that most collagen supplements are derived from animal tissues. If you are vegetarian or vegan, look for supplements labeled as “plant-based collagen builder.” These should have the same amino-acid balance as collagen, but not derived from animal sources. Unlike prescription and over-the-counter medications, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not “approve” dietary supplements like collagen or UC-II for safety and efficacy. Always tell your doctor what you’re taking and look for seals of approval from U.S. Pharmacopeia, ConsumerLab or NSF International to be more sure the products are manufactured properly. Author: Beth Axtell Related Resources Supplement & Herb Guide 9 Supplements for Arthritis 9 Supplements to Avoid Herbs for Arthritis
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How Regenerative Grazing Is Restoring New Zealand’s Land
They have been on the planet longer than humans have, in large herds, roaming the pasture lands. 'Pruning' the long grasses, trampling the soils and bringing their highly prized manure to the land. Now with the help of Alan Savory, https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertification_and_reverse_climate_change?language=en There is new appreciation for this type of farming because of a number of reasons. But primarily the health of the soil, and its ability to sequester carbon. A Shift In New Zealand Farming I'm excited because here in New Zealand there is a growing number of farmers who have seen that traditional farming no longer is serving the land and they are opting for changing the farming approach. Mangarara in the Hawkes Bay is doing just this. https://www.mangarara.co.nz/ Farming For Our Long Term Future I invite you to take a closer look at what is happening in NZ agriculture today, the farmers who are looking to the long term future of their pastures, their local community and their animals. "Every Mouthful we take is coming from a system thats either degrading the planet or, if you choose, you can eat well from a food production system that is regenerating the land" Greg Hart Mangarara Farm Every Bite Is A Choice I invite you to think about the foods you eat, their carbon foot print, and the impact on the land of that foods production.
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