Neil Dudley: Have you ever heard of Whole 30? Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming. This is another episode of Straight From the Horse’s Mouth brought to you by the Cowboy Perspective. If you’ve never heard of Whole30, I want you to listen closely. A lady named Melissa Urban co-founded that company and is still running it today. She is the CEO. And she was gracious and kind enough to come be our first guest on the Pederson Natural Farms Podcast, which is launching September 1st in kind of conjunction with that September Whole30, and all the guests on the show that month are going to be Whole30 themed. We’ll have kind of a similar thread running through each guest. And that podcast, a little bit differently than the Cowboy Perspective, which is my way of just telling my story and highlighting and talking to people that I find really interesting, well Pederson’s podcast is going to tell the story of our beautiful, intricate, dynamic business of better-for-you, proteins, bacon, sausage, ham, all those different things through the eyes of people that consume our products, that are customers that do business with us, that are vendors that help us with things that we can’t do ourselves, that are employees – I mean, thank God for Pederson’s employees, we couldn’t do anything without them, we have the best – and peers. So, we’ll be talking every month that has five weeks, we’re going to slide in a peer in the industry and talk to them because, hey, they’re important. They drive us. They’re part of this whole big, beautiful thing, and they do great jobs too. And we want to talk about them. So, I’m going to put in an excerpt from that episode. You are actually, being a Cowboy Prospective listener, you’re actually going to get the first taste of the Pederson Natural Farms podcast ever. Nobody else has heard it, outside of few people inside of Pederson’s, but on a big scale, nobody’s heard this interview ever before. You’re going to be the first one to hear it. And it’s not the full interview. It’s just a little snippet, quick four- or five-minute piece of the conversation that talks about Melissa’s first Whole30. And if it doesn’t get you interested, well, I just don’t know what’s wrong with you. Actually, nothing’s wrong with you, but I’m excited for you to hear it. Thank you for coming and listening to the Cowboy Perspective. If you’re in the industry and you’re in the meat business or the food business or the CPG business or a vendor to this business or an employee within this whole atmosphere, I think there’s going to be a lot of valuable, good insight from people that you really probably don’t know, wouldn’t know any other way. They’re quiet, hardworking, every day building it people that we want to recognize because they are of such value to Pederson’s. Now, Melissa is pretty well known, and she’s earned that and she’s driving a very valuable thought process and system and 30 day reset out to the world and has helped a lot of people, and she’s great at what she does. So, she’s well known. I find it really cool, a lot of fun and very interesting to think about the people within Pederson’s – let’s just take our employees alone. Don’t even touch on vendors, customers, consumers, any of that, just say the employees of Pederson’s, within our company, there are multiple experts within the field and we’re going to bring those people to the microphone and let everybody hear what they know. I’m just so excited about it. If you can’t tell, I’m really looking forward to it. So glad you’ve been a listener to the Cowboy Perspective. I hope you enjoy this little excerpt from that very first launch episode, which will be coming out September 1st on all platforms. Go tune in and listen to this interview with Melissa. I hope you enjoy it.
Now, Melissa, for fun, do you remember the very first time you did it? So, before the book, before any of that, was any of it hard? Was any of it interesting?
Melissa Urban: So, it was April 2009 and the rules of the Whole30 haven’t changed that much ever since that very first program. It’s remarkable, the science has held up, but also kind of the stuff that I applied in my own self experiment has kind of carried over because I found it so helpful. It wasn’t hard for me, but my personality type is such I am a Gretchen Rubin upholder, which means I respond to both internal and external expectations really easily. I’m an Enneagram eight, which means I’m the challenger. It’s not necessarily hard for me to take on these big changes. So, for me, we were sitting around on the gym floor. I’m eating thin mints right out of the sleeve after this workout. And my co-founder says like, well, why don’t we start right now? Kind of taunting me. And I was like, okay, literally handed my thin mints over to my friend Zach, and we began in that moment. So, I won’t say it was hard, but it certainly was surprising. Some of the foods that I missed the most came out of the blue. I thought sugar would be hard. I wasn’t a big drinker. I wasn’t worried about alcohol. But like I really missed cheese. I really missed kind of that hit of sugar late at night from my pantry where I was feeling kind of the most like alone or the most down. And definitely the experiment highlighted for me all of the ways that I was using food to relieve anxiety and self soothe and punish and reward. Like in the absence of those foods, I realized I didn’t have a ton of coping mechanisms in the face of stress. And that was a big part of what the program taught me was how to not use food or alcohol as my only source of self-soothing or relieving anxiety, how to find other coping mechanisms to handle that discomfort. And that was really impactful.
Neil Dudley: Absolutely. For me, I was so surprised how sweet almonds are. It’s like when you get the sugar out, when you go through the steps – I don’t know why I’m saying steps – but just the process of going of doing a Whole30, you learn, wow, like if you happen to eat a date, which are dates even okay on the Whole30?
Melissa Urban: They are, but they’re like as close to candy as you can get.
Neil Dudley: Oh my gosh, no. They’re like a jellybean.
Melissa Urban: Yeah. We were doing a seminar, one of the early seminars, and a woman stands up, raises her hand, probably in her fifties or so, and she says, “Can I have Splenda on the Whole30?” And I said, “No, I’m sorry. All artificial sweeteners and forms of added sugar are out.” And she says to me, “If I can’t have Splenda, how do I make my strawberries taste sweet?” And I thought, ooh, like this is my population. You’re so used to these overstimulating foods because we add sugar on top of fat on top of salt in a way that’s like super normally stimulating, and then your taste buds and your brain can’t appreciate the natural flavors found in real food. Once you’re about halfway into the Whole30, almonds are delicious. Your strawberries taste sweeter, sweet potatoes taste like candy. It’s this really awesome experience.
Neil Dudley: Totally. That really, that was just one of the big takeaways for me. And I’ve done a couple of them, partially because we started making no sugar bacon fit within your guidelines. It became a really good product for Pederson’s, and I think consumers. It filled a- I mean, who doesn’t want bacon?
Melissa Urban: It filled a huge gap.
Neil Dudley: And if you can have that and avoid the sugar, it’s actually great.
Melissa Urban: It’s delicious. Your bacon is hands down one of my favorites. But that’s one of the- in the earliest days of Whole30, that was one of the most common questions we were asked is can you have bacon? And my answer had to be, before Pederson’s came out with no sugar bacon, like you can, but you have to find a no added sugar version. And that was almost impossible to find in retail. You had to go to like your local butcher or your local meat purveyor, and if they had an option. The moment that we could tell our Whole30 community, like oh, now Pederson’s is making this no sugar bacon, and it’s just as delicious, and it’s just as like crispy and fatty and all of that goodness, and now you can have this on your Whole30, so many people were just delighted to have that option.
Neil Dudley: We were glad to serve that purpose.
I don’t know what to say. It’s exciting. Go subscribe to the Pederson Natural Farms podcast. We’ll see you over there. I’ll be involved with that business. We’re going to have hopefully some people from within Pederson’s co-hosting some of those episodes. Anyways, hasta luego. Muchas gracias for listening.
I hope you guys found some value in this quick conversation. I’m going to be doing these Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, trying to nail down some specific things on topics for everyone so you get a little quicker listen. And if you want to get deeper, you can listen to these full episodes. Thanks everybody for listening.
Hey, if you like what we’re doing here, go to the website, thecowboyperspective.com and check out all the people that sponsor the podcast. They help me make this thing happen. If you have some need that they might be able to fulfil, I’d appreciate you doing some business with them. Thank you.
Now for your listening pleasure, a little Traversing the Trail from Mr. Byron Hill.