Buy local. Eat a plant-based diet. You’ve heard the words. But do you take action on them? When Molly Keith and Melissa Nester moved to Los Angeles, they wanted to get into the movie business. Instead they found their true passion in the restaurant business.
When Molly and Melissa opened their restaurant Palette Food and Juice in Los Angeles, they knew they would source all their ingredients locally and offer a plant-based menu. Everything would be organic. They made the kind of food they wanted to eat, and found that locals liked it too. They took action on those words we hear so often: Buy local and eat a plant-based diet.
During the pandemic, Palette Foods is offering online ordering and curbside pickup and delivery.
Ivy Joeva interviewed Molly and Melissa outdoors at the restaurant, before the first lockdown in Los Angeles.
Links:
http://palettefoodandjuice.com
https://www.futurex.fm/future-of-food
Ivy Joeva:
I'm Ivy Joeva, and this is Future of Food. Buy local. Eat a plant-based diet. You've heard the words, but do you take action on them?
Ivy Joeva:
When Molly Keith and Melissa Nester moved to Los Angeles, they wanted to get into the movie business. Instead, they found their true passion in the restaurant business. Having no previous experience, running a restaurant didn't stop them from opening Palette Food and Juice .
Ivy Joeva:
When they opened in L.A., They knew they'd source all their ingredients locally and offer a plant-based menu. Everything would be organic. They made the kind of food that they wanted to eat and found that locals liked it too. They took action on those words we hear so often, "Buy local and eat a plant-based diet."
Ivy Joeva:
During the pandemic, Palette Food is offering online ordering and curbside pickup and delivery. I interviewed Molly and Melissa at their restaurant before the first lockdown in Los Angeles.
Ivy Joeva:
So tell me about the journey of how you went from friends to owning a business together.
Molly Keith:
Melissa had a house and she just basically took in wayward friends.
Ivy Joeva:
Here in L.A.?
Molly Keith:
Here in L.A. Yeah. So there was like-
Ivy Joeva:
You are best friends.
Molly Keith:
Yes. She owned the house. So I moved in with her and we were roommates for what, a year, two years?
Melissa Nester:
Yeah, something...
Molly Keith:
Something like that and then while we were roommates, we would hang out and go out to eat. We both were kind of health conscious and we're always doing cleanses and blah, blah, blah. So we would be like, "Let's go to Cafe Gratitude. Let's go to Cafe Gratitude." Okay. "Let's go to Tinder Greens". And there was like just a few places that we would eat all the time. We'd be like, why can't we just go to a place that has just food? It's that simple. That's local that, you know what I mean? And we would list all of these things that we wanted in a restaurant, no sugars blah, blah, blah.
Ivy Joeva:
And not have to eat at the same place every time.
Molly Keith:
Right. Exactly. So I don't know. It was probably her idea because she's an entrepreneur. I am not an entrepreneur.
Ivy Joeva:
You are now.
Molly Keith:
I am now. Yes. At heart, I'm not an entrepreneur, at heart, I'm a... I don't know, crazy person.
Ivy Joeva:
You're creative.
Molly Keith:
Creative, for sure. Melissa's creative too. But she was probably just like, we should just open that restaurant.
Ivy Joeva:
Wow.
Molly Keith:
And I was, all right, because I always say yes to everything without thinking and never knowing what I was getting myself into. Because neither of us knew anything about how to actually run a business. I had worked in restaurants my whole life, since I was in North Carolina. My first job was at a rib place. I was a dishwasher when I was 16. I've done every job in a restaurant.
Ivy Joeva:
What kept you going? Like what, other than you want it. Yeah. Like other than you wanted a place where you could eat yourself like...
Molly Keith:
Melissa.
Ivy Joeva:
So what kept you going, Melissa?
Melissa Nester:
I'm always in my own business. You have to be self-motivated to do that. To wake up every day and you have to decide that you're going to keep going and you're going to keep doing what needs to be done through the day. And don't get boggled down by what it is that you need to do. You just go in and do what you can do each day.
Melissa Nester:
But I've learned that over owning my own business for a long time. When you start out a business like we did and with our own money and you have to do it. You don't have the money to do it. So you have to do everything.
Molly Keith:
And it's not like she and I are super passionate about things. Like we don't do the whole, live your passion thing. We just do what's next. We kind of follow what is put in front of us. And we operate in the same way and that way. But she couldn't let it go because she really believed in the concept of the healthy food. But also all of the other stuff we're going to be talking about.
Ivy Joeva:
Like being responsible in terms of the impact of the food.
Molly Keith:
Yeah.
Melissa Nester:
And the environment.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. Basically, we had a consultant come in and she was like, you need to do this, this, this, this, this, this, and cut food costs. And everybody keeps saying to us, what about just getting cheaper food, just get food that comes from a distribution house and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I basically always tell people I'm not willing to do this at all.
Ivy Joeva:
To go through distribution?
Molly Keith:
If I have to damage, if my impact is actually damaging to the earth, I'm not willing to do it.
Ivy Joeva:
To have a restaurant?
Molly Keith:
Yeah. I'm not that into owning a business. I am trying to, basically I grew up as an activist. My mom would take me to marches in Washington, when I was three. As an activist, I also saw that marching and stuff didn't necessarily do anything, because we would go to pro-choice rallies and we're still having issues with abortion rights now, do you know what I mean? And so I live my life as an activist. So this is actually my form of activism. It's a way that I can actually make an impact rather than walking around with a climate change sign. Do you know what I mean? So...
Ivy Joeva:
And you guys actually opened on inauguration day on the day of the Women's March.
Molly Keith:
Yup.
Melissa Nester:
We did.
Ivy Joeva:
And I read that you kind of thought, well, maybe we should delay this so we can go to the march.
Molly Keith:
Right. But then we thought, we are actually living the march. We are women owners. We're women entrepreneurs, and this is what the March is about. And the funny thing is so many people from the march came after it was over on our first day.
Ivy Joeva:
To nourish themselves.
Molly Keith:
Yea.
Ivy Joeva:
Wow.
Molly Keith:
It was cool.
Ivy Joeva:
So what are your standards in terms of the food that you serve and where you source your ingredients?
Molly Keith:
I took a Regenerative Agriculture class before we opened. I also took like a Nutrition Certification class. So I'm a certified nutritionist. I took it this Regenerative Agriculture class. So I learned a lot of practices in farming and I also learned that, vegans are always screaming about rearing animals is a huge factor in climate change.
Ivy Joeva:
The worst thing for the environment.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. Agriculture is honestly probably..
Ivy Joeva:
26% of the greenhouse emissions.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. And I understand that a lot of agriculture is to raise food for animals. So I understand that, that's that, but it's also almost all of the agriculture that is practiced right now is culture and monocropping. Yeah. And it's degenerating the earth. It's killing all of the biome in the soil, there's so much that goes into the farming practices that is destroying...
Ivy Joeva:
Waterways and just the transportation too, right? When we're only growing one crop, then to access a variety, we have to ship them.
Molly Keith:
Right. Exactly.
Ivy Joeva:
Miles and miles.
Molly Keith:
I learned if you're farming in a specific way, you can actually sequester carbon from the air. It will pull carbon out of the air and put it in the soil and it will also hold nitrogen in the soil and take it out of the air. The way that the earth was actually running before we started screwing with it actually works. I understand we've got 9 billion people to feed, but there are people like Graeme Sait. Do you know that guy?
Ivy Joeva:
Yeah. So he was actually the speaker who influenced one of our guests, Ryland from Kiss the Ground, Ryland Engelhart.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. I actually took the Regenerative Agriculture class with Ryland. One of our old partners used to work at Cafe Gratitude. So she introduced me to that whole clan of people.
Ivy Joeva:
Nice.
Molly Keith:
So yeah. I studied all of that stuff that Ryland talks about. And so knowing what I knew then I just went around to farms and met farmers and I would call them on the phone. I mean like, hey, can I come by and talk to you guys? And some people were like no. Even organic, certified organic farmers were yeah, sure. But meet me at this farm because...
Ivy Joeva:
Because their standards are so lax, right?
Molly Keith:
Yes. And like, they'd be like, yeah, that fertilizer is certified organic, but it does have some petroleum products in it. And I be like, whoa, okay, good to know. I really met everybody and saw what they were doing.
Ivy Joeva:
You did your homework.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. I mean, I didn't have anything else to do. I didn't own a restaurant at the time. Right now, I don't do anything. So I read all of Michael Pollan's books. The thing that made the most sense to me when structuring how I was going to source all the food, was know the farmers. Certification, organic certification really doesn't mean anything anymore.
Ivy Joeva:
Really?
Molly Keith:
Not really, no. I mean, it means certain things, but..
Ivy Joeva:
It's better than conventional would you say?
Molly Keith:
For sure. I mean, what I always tell my family who are not super conscious about their food at all. They're like, it doesn't make any difference. I'm like, look, if you can buy organic, just buy organic. And it does make a difference, but it's a dark, dark, dark and shady business, this produce thing. People will get shipments of vegetables and put different stickers on them once they get to the distribution houses.
Ivy Joeva:
Right.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. I mean and the avocado trade is run by the cartel in Mexico. And it's like so insane. But it's food and this is the human...Humans have been causing wars over food for our whole existence. So it's not that strange, but it's produce. It seems so wholesome, but it's actually, I used to know this guy who would source from farmer's markets and he'd be like, let me tell you the real story. He's like, I go to this farm and I see them getting shipments from this farm and then they're putting organic on this and they're moving. And I was like, what? And he'd send me videos of him covertly interviewing people and stuff.
Ivy Joeva:
Oh my goodness.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. So that's one of the things I got from Michael Pollan is, just know your farmer. He says, know the hand that feeds you rather than, or shake the hand that feeds you or something like that.
Ivy Joeva:
It sounds like you have to go to the farm and investigate.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. Exactly.
Ivy Joeva:
Or know somebody like you who can tell us which farm.
Molly Keith:
Right. So I know personally, all my farmers.
Ivy Joeva:
Amazing.
Molly Keith:
And I know there's a whole thing that Graeme talks about, which is like inputs to like I know what they're putting into the soil.
Ivy Joeva:
In terms of fertilizers.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. Pesticides and stuff that's not already there. Honestly, we have a few places that are certified organic, certified biodynamic. Most of the places are not, because the ones that I know of that are certified organic are a little weird.
Ivy Joeva:
Weird as in shady.
Molly Keith:
Yeah.
Ivy Joeva:
Yeah.
Molly Keith:
And I don't like to name names because I don't want to get into that. My standards are all the produce that we have, every single thing that's fresh comes from within like a 50-mile radius.
Ivy Joeva:
Excellent.
Molly Keith:
All of it.
Ivy Joeva:
Which means it's fresh and seasonal.
Molly Keith:
You don't even know. It's like, they will pick it. So I send the order on Thursday, they translated into Spanish on Friday, on Saturday, they pick it and they delivered it this morning and we're cooking it today, tomorrow and Tuesday.
Ivy Joeva:
Well, I came on a Sunday and I could taste that. I was like, this tastes like...
Molly Keith:
I mean, it's right out of the ground.
Ivy Joeva:
Yeah.
Molly Keith:
I mean, it retains all of its nutrients because of that. I mean, not all of it, but you know, probably 90%, 99%, if you get normal, organic food, that's been sitting in a distribution house.
Ivy Joeva:
Weeks.
Molly Keith:
Dude, weeks. So anyway, I bought some stuff from a distribution house at the beginning and I had to send it all back because I was so used to seeing the fresh produce.
Melissa Nester:
Dirty?
Molly Keith:
It was wilted and dirty and flavorless. And I was like, I didn't even understand how restaurants used this.
Ivy Joeva:
It's like putting a bunch of crap to mask it.
Molly Keith:
They use a lot of salt and butter and fat and...
Ivy Joeva:
Cooking the hell out of it. Dressings.
Molly Keith:
Right. Exactly. Sugar. And so when we were first starting, I worked in fine dining and all around, all the foodie restaurants in L.A. I mean, basically you name any restaurant I've worked there and know people that work there. They all use. All of the places that I worked, used all different kinds of... like some of them would go to farmer's markets and stuff like that. So not all of them were horrible, but I worked at the best restaurant in L.A. and they got almost all their produce straight from farms. And that's the only place, the best restaurant in L.A.
Ivy Joeva:
Probably the most expensive.
Molly Keith:
Yes. It's the most expensive and there's them and there's us.
Ivy Joeva:
So you guys are very affordable compared to like, I took a friend to lunch at not the best restaurant in L.A. and spent $75 on our lunches and we weren't drinking alcohol.
Molly Keith:
Right.
Ivy Joeva:
So is it profitable to run your business with the level of integrity you're running?
Molly Keith:
Not yet. But we've only been open three years. Most places take five years to get profitable. Most places close in the first three years, so we're still open. Plus we didn't have any backing. We didn't have any capital. We didn't have anything. Most places will have enough startup capital to make it through the first three years. We were like at zero when we opened and everything that we made was just to keep it going. To pay the employees, to buy the stuff and to keep the lights.
Melissa Nester:
We've grown since, because it was literally us in our family and our friends working here.
Molly Keith:
Like her mom did dishes.
Melissa Nester:
My mom did dishes for months.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. Nine hours a day.
Melissa Nester:
Yeah. My brother and on the weekends.
Molly Keith:
Her mom's, however old she is. And that's a family doesn't like to talk about their age and it's her mom. And she was in there for nine hours a day doing dishes. My mom had worked in kitchens too. And so she came and she helped organize. She was like, okay, you need to prep this and you need to do that. And so she was in there chopping, her husband was in there chopping.
Ivy Joeva:
Southern women in their element.
Molly Keith:
They just get it done.
Ivy Joeva:
Well, having that sense of purpose, they say is like a fountain of youth, like really believing in somebody.
Molly Keith:
That's what my grandma used to say.
Ivy Joeva:
Yeah. And that generation worked harder than we probably ever could comprehend.
Molly Keith:
Yeah.
Ivy Joeva:
Yeah. So tell us about your typical client. Like your typical guest. Is it someone who's...
Molly Keith:
Men. Dudes. Dudes, love us. You know why?
Ivy Joeva:
No.
Molly Keith:
Because it's simple. It's not this place that has Ashwagandhas and Spirulina and all the guys were like, I don't even, I just want some food. They come here and we're like, do you want rice? Do you want beans? Do you want vegetables? They're like, yes. Do you know what I mean? It's simple to understand. That's the only thing that we could come up with because we get hordes of dudes. Yeah.
Ivy Joeva:
It's filling.
Molly Keith:
A lot of the healthy restaurants you don't get filled up, you have to order a few things. And then your bill's like $40 and you don't really ever...
Melissa Nester:
More than that.
Ivy Joeva:
So are these vegetarian guys, health conscious guys?
Molly Keith:
I think they're guys, the majority of the people that come here are guys that are trying to have at least one healthy meal a day. Do you know what I mean? They're like, I come here, I get all my vegetables and I don't have to think about it, but trying to be good for their moms or something. Do you know what I mean? They're doing what they should do. We designed it for crazy people like us. Like, I don't eat dairy. I'm on a naturopathic diet, blah, blah, blah. Like all of these, like paleo, like I didn't see my best friend for like three years when she went paleo because she couldn't eat anything and she stayed at home all the time.
Ivy Joeva:
Yeah. And we all have friends like that in the city. A whole group of them.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. So we designed it for them because basically anything, any kind of diet you were on, you can eat here.
Melissa Nester:
No restriction, anytime.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. Because it's so simple and you can add what you want or not. So all of the people that are on cleanses are like, I'm on a liver cleanse, I'm on Whole30, I'm on Keto or whatever. They can eat here. But the majority of our guys are just, dudes.
Ivy Joeva:
So you have a lot of expertise, not only in regenerative agriculture, but also nutrition and health. What would you say is the best diet, the ideal diet in terms of environmental sustainability, and also for health and is that the same diet or is the diet that's better for health maybe not the most sustainable or vice versa.
Molly Keith:
I mean, at this point I feel like everybody's so depleted in so many ways. Like if you have Lyme disease, sometimes you need adaptogenic mushrooms that come from China to actually heal your body. You know what I mean? Everybody's just so screwed up physically.
Ivy Joeva:
Partly because of the toxins on our environment.
Molly Keith:
No doubt.
Ivy Joeva:
Right.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. I mean, partly, probably a big part stress, there's like a laundry list of things. But my philosophy is Michael Pollan's philosophy, which is just eat food.
Ivy Joeva:
And he says mostly plants.
Molly Keith:
Right. So eat food that your great grandmother would recognize this food. He also says if it has to be advertised, don't eat it. I don't know if there's an ideal diet for every human body because every body's so different. One of the things that I'm always talking to people about here is you have to listen to your body.
Molly Keith:
And most people aren't in their bodies, they're in their head or in the future or somewhere else. I also make a distinction between cravings and listening to your body because people crave sugar, they crave fat, they crave salt. That's like what we've been pumped with. But if you actually dropped down and listen to yourself and start to watch how different foods affect you. Oh, I ate this, I feel manic. Or I feel sick to my stomach or I have scratchy skin or whatever it is. If you're start to listen to yourself, I feel like you can start to design your perfect diet.
Molly Keith:
And no nutritionist is going to be able to tell you, because there's so much in nutrition that we don't know. It's very reductionist, very like Newtonian. There's magic in food that we don't know why certain things work the way they do but for the environment and climate change, it's pretty simple if you just think about it for a minute.
Molly Keith:
The amount of carbon that goes into transporting stuff around the amount of food that other things I have to eat. So if you have chickens, right, chickens have a higher carbon footprint than our bison, which is strange. Think of bison are gigantic. Chickens are little, but they actually cause more carbon because they have to have feed input.
Ivy Joeva:
Most of bison are crazy.
Molly Keith:
Bison are just like, they're born. They live out on the range and they have one bad day. Like Michael Pollan says, that's it.
Ivy Joeva:
Is that true for all bison? Or is that...
Molly Keith:
No. Some certain ranchers will like give them antibiotics and certain ranchers will give them feed and stuff to, basically it's to quicken the process of raising them. So fatten them up or keep them healthy. Our bison distributors don't do anything.
Molly Keith:
I mean...
Ivy Joeva:
Round them up one day.
Molly Keith:
Like move around. I mean, they'll move them on pastures because bison are from here. They don't need anything. They're used to living in the weather. They're used to eating what's on the ground. They take nothing.
Ivy Joeva:
So that would be, if you're going to eat meat, that would be one of the more environmentally friendly sources. But you have to know your bison.
Molly Keith:
Yes. You have to know all your food and that's the thing, most people don't have time to know it or the desire to know it. It's not just about time. It's about brain, space in their brain. And they're like, oh especially in L.A. Everybody's hustling and hustling and hustling, like they're trying to make it or do whatever they do and everybody's working.
Molly Keith:
No, I'm not trying to think about my food. So here we did all the thinking for you. Everything that we source is thought about, even like the salt that we get is from Sonoma. Every single ingredient, like our olive oil is...the reason I think our food tastes so good is because of our olive oil. It's the best olive oil I've ever had. And it's these two brothers, their dad bought this olive oil orchard, olive tree orchard in like 2006 or seven. And he was going to level them and build condos. And then the crash hit in 2008 and lost all of his money, but he had this old orchard. And so the brothers were like, dude, we've got olives just out there, we should do something. I mean, it was hundred-year-old trees. They're not anything, they're just out there growing. They don't get anything. They're just growing trees, right? So they just picked the olives, pressed them and sell the olive oil. And that's it.
Ivy Joeva:
So what would you tell someone, I totally agree, so many of us get overwhelmed and it can be so complicated because we think we're doing something good by eating organic. And then we find out, guess what? It's not really that great. You have to do more homework. And it's just like, people are just ready to give up.
Molly Keith:
Yeah.
Ivy Joeva:
So what would you tell people who don't have that mental bandwidth to do all the legwork you've done? What would you say would be the most important step they can take?
Melissa Nester:
Hopefully when you come into Palette, not only are you getting fair food, but you're becoming more conscious about your everyday living, because you're being aware of where to put your trash, what this really should taste like, how you feel afterwards. It makes you become more aware of things. You know what I mean? And so not only eating food, but being more aware of things in life makes a difference in how you feel and how you live. And I'm a big believer in that. I think food can really nourish you and I think it literally can heal you. At the same time, I do believe that your thoughts matter too.
Ivy Joeva:
In terms of awareness.
Melissa Nester:
Yes.
Ivy Joeva:
Awareness of our interconnectedness with the environment.
Melissa Nester:
Yeah.
Ivy Joeva:
So do you think just that awareness actually does anything if someone's just eating the same thing or you're saying like that awareness would actually cause them eventually to make those gradual changes?
Melissa Nester:
How else are they going to make the changes?
Ivy Joeva:
Yeah. Beautiful. What have you seen personally in terms of, because I imagine you guys have experimented with different diets and eating in this way that's really conscious of the environmental impact. How have you seen that shift your experience of your health and vitality? And do you have any stories of customers have shared with you about their experiences eating your food?
Melissa Nester:
Yeah. I feel my gut is healed.
Molly Keith:
She was eating the food every day and drinking our bone broth every day. And she had a lot of gastrointestinal issues and she just was like, I'm just going to try this. And so, because it was free and here for her, she was doing it. And over three or four months, all of the issues stopped. They just stopped.
Melissa Nester:
I just believe when you eat food can heal you if you eat correctly. And you're aware of what you're putting in your body.
Ivy Joeva:
So for people who can't eat it Palette every day, let's say they're in West Virginia, what would you tell them?
Melissa Nester:
Eat their garden food. Grow their food.
Ivy Joeva:
Grown your own food?
Molly Keith:
I mean, that's a big, you can just kind of callously say, grow your own food. And people are way too concerned with making money. Like David Wolf says, people would rather spend all their money on a car and a house and put the worst fuel into their body.
Ivy Joeva:
Someone who, like my brother lives in New York.
Molly Keith:
Yeah.
Ivy Joeva:
What could I tell him? Like, here's what you need to do.
Molly Keith:
In New York, I lived in New York and it's certain times of the year you can only get apples.
Ivy Joeva:
Oh, I remember. I remember too. And olive oil, which they probably ship in.
Molly Keith:
Yeah, right. Everything is shipped into that island. It's crazy. It's like a spaceship. I know it's overwhelming. I know it's like you sit down to have meal and you're feeling guilty about eating anything and it's hard, but it's got to start somewhere. And if you go to farmer's markets, even if you don't research every farm, it's still going to be better than the apple you're going to get at Gristedes that was shipped in from Washington state.
Molly Keith:
Yeah, exactly. I always just tell people, if you're in the middle of Virginia and you don't have any other options that you know of, go to the organic section of the market. I always tell people to shop the periphery don't ever go into the middle of the market because that's where all the sugar and processed foods and stuff that's going to kill you is.
Melissa Nester:
But honestly, if you had to tell people, wouldn't you just tell them to eat the best way they can organically and stay away from sugar and stuff like that?
Molly Keith:
Yeah. Eat it [inaudible 00:28:12] from the farmer's market.
Ivy Joeva:
And what about meat versus no meat? I feel like that's one of the biggest questions when it comes to both climate change and health that people are asking like there's a whole contingency that says the biggest thing you can do is get off animal products. We know the bison that you have here is an exception to that. Based on the way it's grown.
Molly Keith:
Well there are exceptions to everywhere. It's not like, animal products are inherently bad to eat for every human body. Some people can't eat animal products. Some people have a hard time processing that, it's true. For climate change, it's just not true that all animal products are bad. A lot of it, most of it is horrible for the environment.
Ivy Joeva:
And certainly all conventional.
Molly Keith:
No doubt. The feedlots are just insane.
Ivy Joeva:
It's tragic.
Molly Keith:
It's insane what we're doing.
Ivy Joeva:
Yeah.
Molly Keith:
But there are a lot of ranchers that are doing some beautiful work. There's a place called Diamond Mountain Ranch. If you look at their website byranchdirect.com, they're doing amazing animal husbandry and the animals are raised beautifully. They're raised on the land. They're not input with anything. There's no anything. It's beautiful. The thing that Americans I think are used to having a lot of protein, everybody, when I was a vegetarian people, where do you get your protein? Where do you get your protein? The thing that about America and protein is when the people from Ireland and England and all of Europe came over, they were impoverished, right? They were living on potatoes or whatever, right?
Molly Keith:
So they came to America and there was all this land. The land of plenty. So our ancestors were like, let's eat all the meat we can because we can grow it all here. So like Dan Barber's Third Plate, that book. Did you read that?
Ivy Joeva:
No, but I remember listening to you talk about it in an interview.
Molly Keith:
Yes. So anyway, he talks about the different, like the future plate of America, the old plate of America was like half meat or three quarters meat, a little bit of vegetables and a little bit of starch. Like that was the normal plate for America. But he's talking about Michael Pollan eat, mostly vegetables, eat food, mostly vegetables, right? If you need to eat a little bit of meat, eat it, it is expensive because it takes human work to actually raise the things in a proper way.
Molly Keith:
But you don't need that much meat. Eat a little bitty piece of meat. You'll be fine.
Ivy Joeva:
Yeah. So I think what you're saying is so powerful in terms of, it's not like all or nothing, eat meat or don't meat. It's about looking at the proportions and how does the rest of the world's...
Molly Keith:
Right.
Ivy Joeva:
...do this.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. I mean, the thing about it is that Americans have been brainwashed that, that's the only way to eat because that's the way their grandmother's eaten, their grandmother's eat, but that's not necessarily the only way to eat. And like I was saying that the results of eating that much meat and that kind of meat and that much fat and sugar and salt, it's like the epidemic in America of diabetes, of obesity, of all of these autoimmune diseases are all stemming from at least in some part, their diet. Basically, I see this huge movement of like ancient health wisdom coming back.
Molly Keith:
People are starting to ferment, like ancient cultures have kept these things going for ever, but in America we forgot about it. We started pasteurizing everything. We started pasteurizing our milk. We started pasteurizing, sauerkraut. We've started..
Ivy Joeva:
Which kills all the beneficial bacteria.
Molly Keith:
Everything. All the bacteria. Kills everything. And I understand why they did it back in the day. If you have a cow in the city and you're milking it, it's going to be exposed to a lot of bacteria and that can kill you.
Ivy Joeva:
Or cows crammed together.
Molly Keith:
Crammed together. Yeah. And they had to figure out a way to feed all these people that were crammed together in the cities. And it's just so there's so much information out there for this kind of thing. And I feel like people are starting to go back to even DIY movement is part of it.
Molly Keith:
They're starting to go back to how to live on the planet because people are dying from what they're eating and how they're living. And the thing that Melissa was talking about with consciousness, people don't associate it. They think...
Ivy Joeva:
They we're just dying randomly because that's what happens.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. And just people just get diseases, but you don't. People live and they thrive when they're living in accordance with nature. And the natural order of things. I have an uncle who has a dog and he has been feeding the dog, adaptogenic mushrooms, and non-GMO organic yogurt and organic vegetables and organic meats. And I was like, oh, that's great. Are you eating that way? He's like, no. And I started to realize the dog was just another thing, another possession that he could show off, is like a beautiful car or a beautiful dog, but his body, it didn't matter what he put in his body. There's no connection between his heart disease and the amount of him and waffles he eats. So I think there's a huge disconnect. And the consciousness that Melissa was speaking about is what we're just trying to educate people.
Ivy Joeva:
Well, it's really interesting. You mentioned the dog and the adaptogenic mushrooms because I see many people kind of using food as a commodity to achieve a specific health goal. Like we have a collagen craze now where people are buying collagen and mask from South America.
Molly Keith:
Right. Quinoa.
Ivy Joeva:
Quinoa.
Molly Keith:
Yeah. The people in Peru can't even afford to buy their quinoa, which is what they've lived on for thousands of years, they can't buy it anymore because Americans are like, oh, quinoa has so much protein, blah, blah, blah. That's one of the reasons I don't buy, like people are like, I want quinoa. At Palette, we're never going to have quinoa at Palette.
Molly Keith:
We're only going to have California-grown rice and California-grown wheat berries. And if I can find some other grain that's grown in California, then we'll do that. And if we ever moved to New York, we'll have whatever grows in New York because that's the purpose of Palette. It's to keep it all within the area. I noticed when I was growing up and eating out of the garden, my digestion, there was like, it was never an issue. Everything I just ate and everything was digested and I felt great. And I feel like the best we can do as urban dwellers, we're not all going to have yards. We're not all going to have urban farms to live on. The best we can do is get the stuff from people that are growing at close by.
Ivy Joeva:
And you see, there is an epidemic in Los Angeles. I can attest to that in my little circle of friends that shop at Erewhon like, there's an epidemic of gut issues for the amount of concern they have about health. The amount of gut problems is really quite something.
Molly Keith:
It's amazing. It's amazing. And it's very simple to fix. People just get so confused. Do you know what I mean? If you read the ingredients and it's food, eat that, but if you read the ingredients and it's like poly, ethol, blah, blah, blah, like you can't even pronounce it, like don't eat that. It's that simple. I just try to keep it that simple. I look at the ingredients and if it's food, then I eat it.
Ivy Joeva:
And if you're eating in restaurants, you really got to know where that restaurant is sourcing because they might...
Molly Keith:
Well, here's the thing, you do the best you can. You're not going to be able to do it all the time. I know people in the city that are doing cool things, so I'll go to those restaurants and then sometimes I'll go to a taco truck. Do you know what I mean? It's not like you have to live your life in a super dogmatic way, because then you start getting so neurotic about everything that you can't relax when you eat. And that causes a whole another set of problems.
Ivy Joeva:
So where can people find out more about Palette?
Molly Keith:
We are on Facebook, although I'm not on Facebook. So I don't know. I'm sure it's just Palette Food and Juice on Facebook and it's Palette Food and Juice on Instagram and it's palettefoodandjuice.com
Ivy Joeva:
Thank you so much for joining us.
Molly Keith:
Thank you.
Melissa Nester:
Yeah.
Ivy Joeva:
Thanks for listening, everyone. Visit us online at futurefood.fm. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or listen to us wherever you get your podcasts and put the power to save the planet on your plates and on your playlist. I'm Ivy Joeva. Future of Food is produced by Lee Schneider. Music by Epidemic Sound. We're part of the FutureX Podcast Network.