Todd White 0:03

They don't want you to know that. But they want you to believe is that you're drinking from the farmhouse or Chateau because how you sell wine is through story. I sell wine through science and delicious tastes. But you sell wine in the conventional way through telling a story about and romanticizing because it's drug you want to make a romantic

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:24

Welcome to the longevity blueprint podcast, I'm your host, Dr. Stephanie gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life. You You're about to hear from Todd white and he is going to share the dirty dark secrets of the wine industry. This is not going to be a show that you want to miss.

Welcome to another episode of the longevity blueprint podcast today I have for a guest Todd white. He has been a serial entrepreneur and creator since he was 17 years old and today After 15 years in the wine business, his life is dedicated to educating and helping people make better choices about food nutrition, and how they think about consuming alcohol.

As a founder of dry farm wines, a writer, speaker and leader in the organic natural wine movement, he's widely educated communities on conscious consumption. He's deeply passionate about bringing people together to share love and laughter through natural wine and the health benefits it provides. Todd is a self described biohacker who practices daily meditation, Wim Hof breathing cold thermogenesis, a ketogenic diet and daily 22 hour intermittent fasting although today he just told me he's finishing a four day water fast right before this podcast. He's also a frequent speaker on topics including the ketogenic lifestyle meditation, and a dry farm wines unique company culture, his entire team gathers each morning for a meditation and gratitude practice, and today you're going to get to hear more about his amazing company. So welcome Todd white.

Todd White 1:53

Well excited to be here and got lots to share with your audience about fasting longevity, and love laughter and wine and the dirty dark secrets of the wine business.

Yes, I am eager to have you share those. So I'm sure you've heard this from countless others, as you've been on many podcasts before, but I've had a tumultuous relationship with wine myself. I actually enjoyed beer in college actually really did enjoy it, but packed on a few pounds became very bloated. And I later discovered I had a gluten intolerance and shouldn't have been ever drinking bear anyways, but long story short, I tried to transition my palate to what I thought was more sophisticated wine right? and ended up with all kinds of symptoms, headaches and flushing and palpitations and really just feeling lousy the next day.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 2:36

So I just gave it up. I just thought, okay, alcohol wines, not for me. And alcohol in itself, as you mentioned, is a neurotoxin. So we should be limiting our consumption. But I heard about your company years ago, and I did try your wine and I was very pleasantly surprised that I tolerated it much better. Ended up on a fertility journey and was able to conceive and then it was breastfeeding for a year or so. So I'm only just now finishing so I'm excited to be able to now participate in consuming your your safe healthy wines again. So I want to hear more about your company and I want you to share that with others. So tell us the story behind the story behind you and your company.

Todd White 3:15

Well, the story behind the story was that dry farm wines was never conceived as a business I was had become ketogenic about six years ago, maybe a little more than that. Now, therapeutically, ketogenic, like on a serious ketogenic experimentation as a biohacker. Six years ago, the ketogenic diet was relatively unknown, other than to kind of forward thinking biohackers who started to experiment with it.

Research started to accelerate on the ketogenic diet about eight or nine years ago. They did reach a by hack biohacking community six or seven years ago. And then finally now it's the number one search diet turned on on Google. It's now very mainstream, and, and lots of people experiment with it primarily for weight loss. So anyway, Which is why I initially experiment Not that I was overweight, but I was at a weight plateau that I wanted to break through and I just couldn't seem to break through and just low carb.

So I sort of experimented with ketogenic diet and at a therapeutic level, like seriously keto blood testing, and so on and so forth. And not only did I lose the plot not only played through the plateau, but I lost a lot more weight than I anticipated, didn't even intend to. And in addition to that, I continue to ketogenic lifestyle. today. I'm not therapeutically ketogenic, I'm what I would call modified keto, which is like the Atkins diet, which is a very low carb, moderate protein and moderate fat, a therapeutic ketogenic diet will be very high in fat. And so, I about the same time when when this was happening, I found that I couldn't drink standard wines anymore. I live in the heart of the Napa Valley, which is the most important wine appellation in North America. I've been drinking wine I was nine years old, I've been a lifelong wine aficionado, and I just love wine. But he was another problem. I don't love alcohol. So you mentioned this early on the

it surprises a lot of people to hear from the wine guy who they think is selling wine, although I'm not selling wine. Really educating people how to think about drinking and how to think about wine if you choose to drink, drinking is not for everyone. But what surprises people here and no doubt you've heard this on a previous podcast.

Alcohol is a very dangerous neurotoxin. It ruins millions of lives a year. And so I choose to drink alcohol because I love wine, but I don't love alcohol. Therefore, we only sell and drink lower alcohol wines. And alcohol very moderate doses has been shown to be beneficial to a number of biological and neurological functions. But alcohol again is not right for everyone. Right? And so you have to be careful with it. For me, I just happen to really, really love wine at Don't really, really like alcohol. And it points in my adult life. I've had what I would call a tenuous relationship with it when I used to drink spirits and party like a rock star and, you know, 30 years ago and but today, you know, this was so when I started this experimentation with the ketogenic diet, I found I couldn't drink wines anymore.

They're making me sick, I was gonna hang over, flash just didn't feel bad. And so I started investigating, I really thought it was just the alcohol because alcohol has been steadily rising and wines for the last 40 years. Because the alcohol the wine industry loves alcohol. for a bunch of reasons, for reasons I've already told you that it's a bad drug. But here's some more problems with it. Why that why the alcohol industry likes it, and why the wine industry license, alcohols addictive. It's also what I call a domino drug. Meaning the more you drink, the more likely you are to drink more.

So consequently, the more alcohol you consume, the more likely you are to consume more Everybody knows us who's ever drank. Right? And so and so it's, you know, but for me, I don't want to drink more, I want to drink less, but have the same level of enjoyment. And so that's, that's, that's sort of how I think about it. But when I initially when I started investigating wines, I didn't know about all the dark secrets I'm going to tell you about in a moment. I didn't know about those. I just thought that it was high alcohol. So I just thought, if I drink lower alcohol, then then I'll feel better. And of course you do. And so I was talking with a friend of mine, who's the smartest person I know, in the wine business. And I said, we're in Mexico on a vacation and he said, Listen, I'm gonna make a I want to make a low alcohol wine. Now, at that time, what I meant by that was that there's two technical processes that you can remove alcohol from wine, right? And so the most common is a reverse osmosis, where you say They all call from the water, water and alcohol are the two primary things and why.

Unknown Speaker 8:04

And so I thought I would make a low alcohol wine through this technical process. And he said, Have you tasted any of the low alcohol wines made in Europe? And I was like, No, I have no idea. Neither does anybody else. Right? Because all the lines that they see are 14 or 15, 13 and a half percent alcohol. He said, Yeah, there's some low alcohol wines being made old style in Europe. So it's like, so I started investigating that. And that's when I stumbled upon the natural wine revolution. And so the term natural wine, which is an internationally recognized category of wine, is confusing to consumers who don't know about it, because I say, yeah, we drink natural wines, and they're like, well, aren't all wines natural, and they're not going to default to organic and natural and not the same thing.

Unknown Speaker 8:52

So let me differentiate that quickly. Before I talk about what is natural, is not natural. This is for the confusing. simmers. So all natural wines are farmed organically. But not all organic wines are natural. Okay? You can't make natural wine in very large quantities. So when you go into Whole Foods and you see an organic wine, it's almost certainly not going to be natural, right? Because it can't make volumes of wine to supply somebody like Whole Foods. And but what organic means is that it was farmed organically. That doesn't speak to the seller practices, okay, which is what we're going to talk about now. So the biggest dirty dark secret of the wine business is that there are 76 additives approved by the FDA for the use and winemaking. Now

Todd White 9:46

why don't you know about those 76 ounces? It's very simple. It's because the wine industry has spent millions of dollars in lobbying money in Washington, DC to successfully and fight successfully to keep contents labeling off of wine bottles. Wine is the only major food product without a content slate. Nor does it have nutritional information on it either. So you know how much sugar is in it?

Unknown Speaker 10:12

Sure. And so, these 76 additives, many of them are natural, but many of them are not. And several of them are highly toxic. And so, this, you know, if you choose to drink these toxins in your why not, I applaud you. The problem is you don't know that you're drinking them. And so what I think we should have is transparency and labeling. So you know if there's dimethyl carbonate in your wine or not, you know, if there's glyphosate in your wine, you know if there's ammonia phosphate are called copper sulfate. These are all approved chemicals for the use and winemaking, then they're used widely in commercial wines. So here's how this all began. Right?

Unknown Speaker 10:56

So 100 years ago, all wines were made naturally Right. And then the thing that happened to the wine business was called money and greed. Right. And so it began in the late 1920s. up and started in various places between the 1920s and early 1930s, where we adapted, you know, this mono agricultural farming practices, which was the use of chemicals in farming, right instead of a poly agricultural practice, which is the recognition of the whole bio diverse sphere of natural farming. But so, really, you know, it started with chemicals and farming, that's where it began, and then move forward a few few decades. And what's happened to the wine industry today is the same thing that's happened in our food supply. So in our food supply, about 10 companies make or touch almost everything that goes into a package, right? either from farming to processing to brand ownership.

Unknown Speaker 11:59

So on and so forth. Now, they're not the same companies that we eat from, because I'm eating whole and raw and real food. I don't eat processed food. But even in farming, when you go into Whole Foods, and you're buying organic vegetables, those are all coming from a handful of companies, very large companies, very large farming companies, even though they're organic. And I'd like to talk about when I compare, while we're talking about organic farming and festivals, I like to compare natural wine. When you think about organic wine versus a natural wine or wine grown on the small family farm versus a large organic farmer. It's the same thing as when you go into Whole Foods and you see the organic vegetables there. They look very different than the vegetables you see at your farmers market. Right. The ones at the farmers market are vibrant, and lush.

Unknown Speaker 12:48

And just like you just want to take a photograph of them, right because they're so beautiful. And they're so poignant. But you don't see the cabbage and Whole Foods doesn't look that way even though it's organic, right? So it's just that small, loving tender, the care that a small family farm really dedicates to living soil, because what is really bringing that vibrancy, the health and flavor, and the extraordinary appearance is really about living soil tonight about soil management, right? You can be organically farmed but not have living soil not in the same way. Not in this lobby. Well, you know what I'm talking about from farmers market, right.

Unknown Speaker 13:26

So, in our food industry, we have massive corporate consolidation, right? these big companies buying up using leveraged debt buying up all the all the smaller companies, or medium sized companies. Same thing happened in the wine business. So here's the deal. In the wine business, the top three wine companies in the United States make over 52% of all wines. And the top 30 companies make over 70% of us wines. So when you go into the grocery store, or into a wine shop and you see these rows and rows of bottles, right, perhaps hundreds or thousands of brands Thousands of bottles. Most of that wine is made by just a handful of companies.

Unknown Speaker 14:05

Now, you don't know that another dark secret see, they don't want you to know that. What they want you to believe is that you're drinking from a farmhouse or a Chateau. Because how you sell wine is through story. I sell wine through science, and delicious tastes. But you sell wine in the conventional way through telling a story about it. Right and romanticizing it, same way you sell liquor. And so because it's a drug, you want to make a romantic, right so so they sell these stories to have you believe that you're drinking from a farmhouse or a Chateau. But in fact, you're drinking fairly often, most often, more than 50% of the time, from massive wine factories located in central California. And these things are like multiple football fields large, they're huge, right huge tank for what are called tank farms.

Unknown Speaker 14:59

And so That's where most of the wine in the United States is manufactured. And it's manufactured. It's not romantically made. It's industrially farmed with chemicals. And then it is made and funded with chemicals in a way that that you can't make wine in very large quantities without the use of these additives and chemicals. That's just a fact. So let's talk about natural wine for a second because again, it's a confusing term, but internationally, it's a recognized category, although there's no official certification for it yet. Now, dry farm wines, we have a certification, which is over and above, over and above just natural. We talked about that in a moment. But France just announced about a month ago that they were going to be the first country to certify natural wines.

Unknown Speaker 15:45

And so if you don't know what a natural wine is, here's what a natural wine means, means that it is either organically or biodynamically. farmed. biodynamic farming is a prescriptive, advanced form of organic farming. Number two, it is fermented. This is an important distinction. It is fermented with wild indigenous native yeast to the vineyard. What's that mean? on the skin of every great berry in the world at the time of harvest has a waxy kind of whitish, translucent thin on the outside of that yeast, and that yeast was collected wild and natively through the vineyard in the air. It's a natural yeast.

Todd White 16:34

Commercial wines, like all those all the wines you see in the grocery store, right, those are fermented with genetically modified lab grown yeast. Now the reason they do that is because they can modify the cheese to be very sturdy and easy to work with. Native yeast. The Wild yeast are temperamental and you can't make wine and very large volumes are just too difficult to work with. They have to be coddled right.

Unknown Speaker 16:59

They also will Not withstanding very high alcohol environment. And so these, these commercial yeast, the ones that are genetically modified to the very strong, very sturdy, and they withstand a very high alcohol environment without being killed. So, the third characteristic to natural wine versus commercial wine is that there no additives in it. So no additions no collections. Commercial wines are filled with chemicals and additives and corrections and enhancements from everything from color agents to body enhancers to chemicals used to kill bacterial faults, the most common bacterial fault in wine is known as bio brettanomyces.

Unknown Speaker 17:47

And if you don't have a super clean seller, and a super clean practice, then it's very easy to get rid of my season your wine and then they have a very toxic chemical to kill that with. Right and so they're in the Large winemaking environments. You just have to use these chemicals and additives in order to control the environment, right because wine has living bacteria on it. And the other thing that happens to the positive living bacteria in a commercial wine is that it gets killed sulphur dioxide. So it gets sterilized and preserve the bottling natural wines are not sterilized. And so the living gut friendly bacteria that is alive and natural wines and Dr. David Perlmutter, who's the New York Times best selling author of the brain brain.

Unknown Speaker 18:34

Yeah, so he's published several times on our wines and the specific living bacteria that exist in a natural wine that is beneficial to the gut microbiome. And so commercial wines have sterilized and killed that, in addition to you're getting a heavy dose sulfur dioxide. So that's the difference between what a commercial wine is and what a natural wine is and why Natural wines are just generally healthier. In our particular case, we have a few additional qualifications strict criteria for purity and help that we require that not all natural wines meet. Right? So give you an example dry farming or irrigation, free farming dry farming means to farm without irrigation.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 19:23

That's the name of your company dry. So that's where that comes from is not using irrigation.

Todd White 19:28

It means irrigation, free farming. There's a whole bunch of reasons why that's why that's dynamically important. One, you know, it's want to save a lot of water. Number two, the vine is actually healthier and, and the photo contains more polyphenols, and flavonoids and anti flavonoids. Those are the health compounds in wine, primarily found in red wine. I'm talking about that in a moment but their higher polyphenols are higher in dry farm wine.

Unknown Speaker 19:58

They're also higher in organic wine. Number three, it produces a higher quality fruit. So when the vine struggles just like everything in nature struggle creates power and strength. Right, and so when the vine struggles to find water and nutrient, it produces a higher quality fruit. And so when an irrigated grapevine has a root ball that's about three feet wide and about three feet deep. That's pretty much the entire wheat fruit structure because it gets all of its nutrients in the way of liquid nitrogen, and its water source from a little tube that's hanging just above the truck. an unregulated grape vine can have a root structure that can span 40 feet deep as it searches and struggles to find microscopic particles of moisture and nutrient.

Unknown Speaker 20:53

This struggle and its relationship with the minerals deeper in the earth create a higher quality fruit, which is why It's illegal in most of all Europe to irrigate a great fine. However, in the United States, more than 99% of grape vines are irrigated. So you might ask, Well, why would you irrigate? Well, it comes back to money and greed. So irrigation simply makes farming easier, less expensive and more profitable. So commercial winemakers are not trying to make wine healthier or better. They're trying to make it faster and cheaper. Right, because it's all about profit. And so that that's it. So the irrigation is a fundamental issue for us.

Todd White 21:40

Thank you for explaining that. So I live in Iowa and so I we see irrigation rigs everywhere. Hi, one Nebraska. We have decent soil here in Iowa, but we still farmers, at least tend to think they need that water. And so that's backwards to my thinking. I just I'm not a farmer, but I come from farming families, and I just assumed Oh, we need that. irrigation but explaining that the plant needs to struggle and that will create strength for the plant and its health benefits makes a lot of sense. So thank you.

Depends on what you're growing Not everything can grow irrigation free. Sure, you know lettuce will not grow irrigation free. So depends on what you're growing tomatoes Will you know tomatoes are dry, farmed and quite cherished. I mean, if you can find dry farm tomatoes, they're way more difficult to farm. Sure they take longer and the slower and more difficult but, but not everything can be farmed and certainly not at scale.

Unknown Speaker 22:32

But grapes can be farmed at any scale, irrigation free and they're grown all over the planet in some of the harshest conditions and grapevines have been living around the world for more than 10,000 years. irrigation didn't even come to California for great farming until the early 1970s. Prior to that, everything in California was also dry farmed. It's just that again, it produces a higher yield. irrigation produces a bigger cluster and the berries that might not Surprise you when they're filled with water they weigh more and fruit soul by the ton more It weighs more it's worth sure no water it has more skin away. That's, that's not rocket science. Right. And so that's so back to the dry farm certification so it's dry farmed. It is organic or biodynamic, it is fermented with wild native yeast. We are sugar free and the only way to know if white sugar free is allowed tested and we do not allow any sugar now why is attitude free and low alcohol so we don't drink or sell anything over 12 and a half percent the average wine today in America it's almost 15% that doesn't sound like a big difference but trust me it is.

Unknown Speaker 23:46

And most of the wines I drink are between nine and 11%. And our lowest wine is at 7%. And people love low alcohol we just introduced allow our lowest alcohol wine which was At 7%, about three weeks ago, and it sold out in the same day, right? And so people are conscious about alcohol, millennials, and particularly your age, as you get older, you just don't process it as well. Right? And so it's really important in my view, and I look most of my friends, and most everybody I know doesn't have a glass of wine that has several. Right? And so if you want to lower, lower your alcohol intake, then you're going to start with a lower alcohol underlying product, right? Unless you're just going to have the one glass, but I don't normally see that. We see people that open the bottle and have a glass. They have several, you know, and they're sharing and love generates and wine generates love. Right? So I mean, wine is kind of like a sister lovers drink, right? So when you're drinking with, you know what the date or your partner or you know, it just generates love and you tend to drink a little bit more right because this fall

Dr. Stephanie Gray 25:04

Did you be missing out on magnesium if you aren't already taking magnesium you likely should be are deficient food sources caffeine consumption, stress and exercise rob us of magnesium, which is an important cofactor for hundreds of processes in the body. It can calm your mind and ease your nerves to help you sleep at night and help reduce anxiety, PMS and headaches.

It can relax your muscles when you have cramps your bowels when you're constipated, and it's required for energy hormone production and vitamin D absorption. If you're interested in exploring more about how magnesium can help support you living a longer healthier life and the exact type of magnesium supplement to look for check out my blog post the magnificence of magnesium found at your longevity blueprint comm forward slash blog and use code magnesium for 10% off our magnesium keylite product at your longevity blueprint calm. Now let's get back to the episode. Go back to some of the points you mentioned. I have no may not say this correctly, but I've heard you speak in other podcasts about one of the chemicals that you may actually have already mentioned, being so toxic that when the winery is cleaned whatnot, or when it's used, no one can even be present.

Todd White 26:13

It's so toxic. That when it's applied to the wine has to be applied by a specially licensed contractor who comes in the winery has to be empty. And they come in and hazmat suits and they apply this toxic chemical. If you were to breathe it in the trauma form and burn your lungs, you got it on your skin, it would burn you. It's highly toxic when it's applied to the wine. If you drain the wine within the first 24 hours, you would likely die. Right? That's nuts to me.

Unknown Speaker 26:43

Well it is but it's used to treat better my sees the most common bacterial fault I mentioned earlier, this chemical is used to treat that that bacterial fault. Sure and 10s of millions of gallons of California Wine are treated every year. Right and so the problem is you just don't know The wine you're drinking has been treated or not. Right? And so I'm all for if you want to drink dimethyl carbonate knock yourself out, I just think you should know I think you should have a choice to know what you're drinking. Now, in fairness to the company that makes it which is located here in Northern California about 45 minutes from where I live, you know, in fairness, they claim that this toxin if you look up dimethyl carbonate and Wikipedia will say hazard colon toxic. I, they claim that this toxic hydrolyzes into methanol and, and carbon dioxide. So, even if that's true, I have a problem with that too, because methanol is far more toxic than than ethanol, which is the alcohol and wine. Right? So I don't want to be drinking methanol either. Sure.

Todd White 27:51

What about coloration? So again, correct me if I'm wrong, but all grape juice is clear. Most part, right? So where do wines get the color and all are many companies then using additives to darken the wine?

They are so so great question because one of the biggest myths about red wine, particularly in the United States is that people believe that the darker red wine is the higher quality it is. No, there's no truth to that statement at all. In fact, I would propose that just the opposite may be true. But so here's how red wine gets its color and also its increasing polyphenols. So let's talk about the winemaking process for a moment. Because this is important in both color and also the health properties of wine. So polyphenols flavonoids and flavonoids and other compounds that are thought to be the health properties of wine are found in both white wines and red wines.

Unknown Speaker 28:44

There are about 200 polyphenols in white wines. But there are over 800 found in red wines, which is red why red wines are thought to be a healthier choice of training. So how they get those extra polyphenols in red wine is the same way that it gets its color. So when you press the juice from a white wine grape and you press the juice, red wine grape, they're both clear or basically clear. Then when you make white wine, you press the juice off the berries and a bladder press and then that process flows over that that juice that free run juice goes into a tank where it's fermented. When you make red wine, you press the juice off from the berry into a tank but then after you've pressed the juice off the skins, you add the skins to seeds.

Unknown Speaker 29:37

And so anyway, when you you pass the juice off into a tank, you then take the skins, the seeds and some remaining stems, and you add those into the tank with the red wine juice. With the red grape juice. It's the contact with the skins and the seeds that give red wine. Its color. It's also what gives us its tannin structure. And it's also what creates the increase in polyphenols is the skin contact. Now, here's what's happening with commercial wines. Two things to get them darker one the masturbation period and that's what masturbation is, is the time that the the skins stay in the juice the time that they the longer they stay in, the darker the wine will get. The problem with that is that the longer they stay in, you also get elevated biogenetic Amiens primarily timing and histamine.

Unknown Speaker 30:38

So this is the reason that women particularly in their middle age and up women have a very difficult time drinking red wine. They drink white wine fine, but they can't drink red wine because it makes them splotchy it makes them sniffy it makes it gives them tension in their frontal cortex that it can make them feel blotchy or hot. This is this is by these are Amiens primarily Tyra mean in history. And so that's so to get further color. If that isn't enough, then then they add a color agent to make the wind darker. And this very commonly results in what we know is purple teeth. Right so if you've ever seen people drinking wine and getting purple lipo purple teeth that almost always comes from a color additive, because when you drink natural wine, you drink real wine you won't get your teeth will not become discolored, you know and and your lips won't become discolored.

Unknown Speaker 31:39

So, and of course, of course your teeth are the mortise color they become but most of these most of this discoloration from drinking red wines is coming from colorations. Now the color agents in my opinion are not unsafe. So so they're a naturally made product there. I don't I don't think that they're necessarily on safe. We don't know that. But I just rather drink kind of like real honest attitude free wine. Right? No, there's no studies done because nobody's financed them.

Unknown Speaker 32:14

There's no studies have been done to know whether these attitudes are harmful or not. Here's what I do know. antidotal, anecdotally is when I drink natural wine, I just feel better. Right? Everyone does. That's the reason that we have hundreds of thousands of customers and we're the largest natural wine buyer in the world, because you just feel better. And people who are interested in their health and who want to feel better and who are sensitive, but most of the people walking around out there, don't know how they feel because they feel so bad. Right?

Unknown Speaker 32:49

But for people who eat a natural clean diet, and who exercise and who cares about what they put in their body, they know what they feel like and they know to Feel is to understand they're in touch with their body. And they know if they drink or eat something that doesn't make them feel bad. They don't want to drink or eat that again. And then when they drink or eat something that does make them feel good or better. You know, they're like, Oh, I didn't know I was really feeling bad before. Yeah. And so a lot of people who are drinking wine who are even interested in their health don't know that they feel bad. They think this is just what drinking wine feels like.

Todd White 33:23

Right? Well, congratulations on your incredible growth. I know your company is one of the fastest growing private companies without any debt or investors. So that's, that's amazing. Congratulations on that. You also cater to actually where I recently saw you kind of recently, last fall at mine share the mindshare conference. You're one of the exclusive I don't know how to say that. I guess wine

would would be official wine for jam I'm sure. Yep. Yep, there are no other ones there.

So when I saw you last fall, I was still breastfeeding at the time but I thought, you know, I need to go ask them about their sugar content, because I had heard you were sugar free, and I wasn't quite sure if that meant fructose free Also, I've had a fructose intolerance and so I asked one of the staff members there said, so technically are these wines fructose free like can I can I consume this because many juices, right I could never have an apple juice per se like that causes me to drink

fruit juice in the first place is terrible for where you're intolerant to it or not. And it's for cases extremely, extremely unhealthy. And then the fruit has gotten somehow this you know, this health food reputation, but let's be clear, most fruit look ancestors, we have to look back to our ancestral roots, right? So in most of the world, including the places where you were genetically created, you know, it was available only only rarely a mean seasonally and if you could find it, so your ancestors who are just starting to walk around, right and and and evolving was very, very rare.

Unknown Speaker 35:00

Further, it was seasonal. And further, it didn't taste anything like the genetically modified fruit that you found in the grocery store today, a wild orange, if you could find one is quite better, actually. Right and so that so ancestrally we just our bodies, you know, we're not equipped to process fructose and on a regular basis, occasionally, seasonally, at a much lower level than what you see in fruits, today's for fruit juice. Orange juice is one of the most toxic things we can put in our body that's made from nature. Right, we've removed the fiber.

Unknown Speaker 35:36

Right? We've concentrated the sugar. And now you know, and now and then no most people drinking in the morning in a fasted state, you know, for just a massive glucose spike. And so I happen to believe in most of the people that I follow and the people that follow us believe that, that hyper production of insulin is the cause of most chronic disease. Right? I mean, the horrible Which is why fast? We talked about that in a moment. But the the hormone that was originally evolved to keep us alive during famine, right? Which is insulin is now killing us. Because from its overstimulation because ancestrally when, as we evolved, we weren't eating three meals a day, right?

Unknown Speaker 36:23

We may eat once a day, or there would be days where we didn't have access to food source at all. Right? And so, and so we needed insulin to store reserves, fat reserves, right for energy during famine. And, and now, you know, we, most people, you know, eat 5678 times a day of some form, right and pancreas never gets a rest, right. I mean, it just like producing insulin all the time, and making us insulin resistant over time and then type two diabetic Sure. So but I believe and everybody I follow on, you know, and follow us also believe that it creates, you know, other chronic illnesses.

Todd White 37:10

Sure. So I really needed to be educated though, since I wasn't quite clear on how wine was made, like how your wine could be sugar free, right, we

test for both glucose and fructose and our restriction on both is less than one gram per liter. Now a wine bottle, which, statistically at the serving level that's sugar free. A wine bottle is 750 milliliters a liter is 1000 milliliters. So a wine bottle and of itself is not even a leader. And we require that it'd be less than one gram per liter, which is statistically sugar free. So we just about six months ago, we tested the top 20 selling wines in the United States. That's easy to find. Out on the internet, right as all of the wine additives, the industry figures, I told you, everything I've told you as easily is not my opinion as easily verifiable just in a Google search. But the we did lab testing on the top 20 selling wines in the United States of the top 20. Only two met our requirement for sure. The rest were higher. And so, you know, I'm just, I'm just anti sugar. And so I just think sugars. I think sugar is the most widely abused and addictive drug on the planet. Right? I mean, it shows no doubt sugar is addictive. There's plenty of studies to show that how many

Dr. Stephanie Gray 38:45

grams is in a Coca Cola,

Todd White 38:47

or 32 grams. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 38:49

So yes, it is sugar free.

Todd White 38:51

Yeah, and in the future, but if you look at any kind of drinks, juices, I mean, you're gonna say nine to 30 grams, nine To 25 grams, you know, in all drinks I mean they're just like they're filled with sugar everything salad dressings, ketchup, condiments, I mean almost everything has sugar in it. And I mean you have to go to a lot of effort to to avoid sugar, a lot of effort. I mean forget about candy or you know, caramel popcorn, forget about the the or food forget about the obvious things. You know, if you want to live a sugar free lifestyle or very short, low sugar lifestyle, you have to put a lot of focus and effort into that.

So I talked about how low sugar your wines are. What about sulfites? I know that will be a question how low sulfite are your products.

Sulfur has been used to preserve wine since the Romans. And so the question that software brings in is how much is in it. So there are two things sulfites are naturally occurring in any kind of fermented product as well as hundreds of other food types. sulfites are naturally occurring. Now. They can be naturally occurring. They're measured in parts per million. So sulfites can be naturally occurring up to 75 parts per million, which is our limitation on sulfites. Okay? However, our average sulphite is 39. Now, the US limit legal limit by about by the FDA is 350 parts per million. So on average our wines are nearly 10 times lower.

Unknown Speaker 40:38

That being said, you normally see wind at 350 parts per million when we've done lab testing and commercial winds. Normally they range between 150 and 200 parts per million. And look, we don't really know what that means. We don't really know what that means from a health point of view. Again, there's no science around it and software has been used for a long Time, but in my particular case, I just read the drink fewer additives. So, you know how I would people. sulfites get a much there's a lot of mess around sulfites. sulfites get a much better rap than probably really are. I think the other additives are far more damaging than than than sulfur. The main problem I have with software is that it sterilizes the wind to preserve it and it kills the bacteria in the wind and it kills the taste of the wine. And it McDonald's causes wine, right?

Unknown Speaker 41:34

It makes every single bottle tastes the same. It makes you know, the the wine, the mass wine industry's goal is to have everything tastes the same. McDonald was right. And for natural wine, it's not like that you'll get bottled a bottle variation, this bottle might taste a little bit like this. And this bottle bottle tastes a little bit like that, because they've not been sterilized. And so as the bacteria evolves, these are friendly, healthy bacteria. As they evolved, you know, we can taste differently. You can get bottled a bottle variation. Well, you know, commercial wines don't want that. They want you to taste the same thing, just like when you go to McDonald's, the same thing over and over and over again. Because that's the way most people consume flavors.

Todd White 42:17

And it adds the addictive benefits. But also, I mean,

I don't know. But here's when do

we are we nature?

Yeah, we see most of us think that we're a lot more ambitious eaters than we are, like, we'll try new things. The fact of the matter is, most of us eat the same thing, same taste profile over and over and over again, we go to the same restaurant on a regular basis, we usually get the same dishes over and over and over again. Right. And so this consistency and taste and you're opening something and you taste it, that's habitually friendly to you that you know what it is, that's very comforting to you. And so that sells more wine, right? Because you know what it is, and is somehow you've got You know, you have an affinity for it, then you also get powered for tea from our point of view, you know, it's like tastes the same all the time. It's like, this is kind of boring. So, anyway, that's

Dr. Stephanie Gray 43:10

so with your wine club, you're intentionally rotating.

Todd White 43:14

In every single box is, unless you want us to do something custom for you, you want a special order of a certain line of which we do all of the above, but just in our regular delivery boxes, every single box is different, and every single line is different. Right? And then if you see a why if you taste a wine, you're like, oh, wow, I'm really in love with that. Then you know, we have a special service to get you more of it if you want.

But this concept of being able to taste these different wines or you're tasting wine, you have no idea grapes that you have no idea of Americans know the top eight grapes, Cabernet, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir Marlo. So these are what are familiar to American wine drinkers, but then there's Pinot Dhoni. There's schiava. There's true. So there's neurodiverse Oh, there's all these grapes from around the world that you have no idea what they are. And you would never buy them because you know what they are people I was familiar to them. But then they get introduced to like, kind of taking a trip around the ancestral wine world around the world, right?

And it's just like, you taste these things. You're like, oh, wow, that's fantastic. I've never tasted anything like that. No, because you don't have any frame of reference. What our customers depend on us to do is taste these wines. Make sure that they're delicious, and they're outstanding, and they're, they're excellent. And then bring them these experiences, right? We we only bought 30% of the wines that we taste, and then consequently lab test. Sure. So we do lab testing on everyone if you you know for sugar for alcohol from mold. Ask about mold earlier, from mycotoxins particularly we're looking for okra toxin a. And so all of our wines are tested for mold. Us wines are not tested for mold. It is not a requirement of the law to test for mold. It is in Europe. So no wines here. You West winds don't get tested for mold unless they're exported to Europe. If they're exported to Europe, they have to go along with a lab report including a mold analysis.

Very interesting. It sounds too good to be true. Oh, sure. No mold. paleo keto friendly. I mean, no history. No histamine, lower sulfite. You just feel better have you drink them? Yeah,

I assume you've drank them by NAB I have I have. They're delicious. Yes.

Yeah, they're not only delicious but you just feel better.

You feel better you feel better while drinking you feel better the next day you just feel better.

I took a risk. Normally I would never have a glass of wine before working the next day seeing patients. But Monday night I did I feel fine. Nice.

Nice. I know we're coming up on any of your show. So I didn't want to offer your your listeners a special offer. Go to Penny bottle from from you can any bottle and they get that on their first order and All they have to do is go to this link and they'll see the landing page to get this Penny it would be free but it's because loveless to give one away for free. So we charge one penny for it. Anyway it's dry farm wines with an s.com forward slash gray gra y. Again that's dry farm wines.com forward slash gray.

Thank you so much that a wonderful promotion very generous. I have to ask you one last question though. So you do the ketogenic lifestyle no sugar what's your top longevity tip absolute top longevity to

fasting I think fasting is the single most potent treatment that we have for now long I'm not alone in this you know Peter teal was just doing a podcast on fasting with a with a metabolic expert recently and he's like, you know, this is the most with little to no research on fasting he thinks is the most potent therapeutic treatment or drug that we have the problem is we don't know how to dose it. Right. So as you know, I'm just finishing off tonight, I will finish up. I'll wrap up a four day water fast. And I have experimented with all types of fasting regiments, only once per day anyway, so I'm on a 22 hour intermittent fast and have done for three and a half years.

Unknown Speaker 47:25

And then I supplement that with monthly and quarterly, usually three day fast monthly, I do a five day fast quarterly. But the reason I do three and four days now is because I feel for me that most of the benefit comes in day one into day two is the most uncomfortable for me. And by day three, I could just go on for days without eating. Right. And so for me it feels like that, that that the stress that the that the struggle really happens. day to day two to day three. And so I can fast longer but, but I'm not trying to lose weight and so I could fast longer. It's just adult. And I have the Slow Food and Wine because I don't drink wine when I'm fasting. So I just I don't feel, I don't feel that I'm getting that much more additional benefit beyond day three or four.

Unknown Speaker 48:22

Sure. And so, and I think that's pretty common. It also interrupts my sleep. Yes, sleep much lighter and much shorter for reasons that we talked about earlier before the podcast for ancestral reasons that think that people just sleep last when they're fasting. If we weren't without food, you know, 10,000 years ago or 15,000 20,000 50,000 years ago without food, you know, we would need to because we didn't have food source we would need to get up earlier. Be very acute, very energetic and go find some food and you Know that so that fits into the ancestral logic if we, if in fact not eating, we know that we know our ancestors did not eat on a regular basis. If not eating, in fact made us lethargic and tired and sleepy, as many people think it does, because they're addicted to sugar and glucose.

Unknown Speaker 49:19

But when you're ketogenic, that's not true. And when you go into a longer term fast, you become ketogenic, just by default, from not eating from starvation. So, you know, if, in fact, we became lethargic and tired and sleepy for not eating, we wouldn't have survived as a species. Right? In fact, just the opposite happens. Sure. So we're energetic, we sleep less we get up earlier, and it's one of the things that don't really enjoy about about extended fasting is that just don't sleep as well. Just have energy and just just just simply don't sleep as well. But yes, I think it's I think longevity. For me, I think fasting but I would say in the order of priority, medical is number one.

Unknown Speaker 50:02

And fasting is number two, because until we can dial down the cortisol until we can dial down the monkey mind and the stress and the anxiety that day to day living creates, which James hardy helped with meditation cures that and helps with that. And the longer your practice, the more silent your mind becomes, you know, most of most people are walking around with, you know, with extreme trauma of thinking. Right? So, trauma is an injury, injury to the injury to the mind from thinking and what they're thinking about our either regrets of the past or more frequently, anxieties of the future.

Unknown Speaker 50:45

Right. So, and for all the suffering we have faced for evils that never found us, right, if we can slow that down, and no matter how good you become at silencing the mind and controlling your breath and controlling your mind response to stress is, none of us are enlightened. So we're still going to be challenged by it. But a practice of meditation will allow us to at least help with that trauma. And that injury to the mind, which then, in fact, runs throughout the body, you know, so I think meditation is the single most important practice an adult can have, and then fasting. Just following that, but both require practice. Both are somewhat or at least perceived to be difficult.

Todd White 51:34

And so, you know, with meditation, the primary complaint is I don't have time to meditate. And what I say to that is the people who don't have time to meditate need meditation. Yep. Right. And then for fasting people just like, I don't know how you do it. No, no, you know, fasting is mental. There's nothing too challenging about us just as emotional because we we love to eat and we love to eat our food. likes, you know, we were hedonist. You know, we like the pleasure of food. So anyway, thanks

for having me on today. You're very inspiring for topping off your fast with a podcast with me. So thank you for coming on the show and offering your audience that amazing promotion and congrats again on the success of your company and spreading the truth about the dirty dark secrets of the wine industry. And just thank you for creating a product that's not going to damage our health but improve our health. So there's really no reason to not make a safe swap. I think when you make a swap the safe swap, you'll never go back to the toxic stuff. So I hope this evening you get a great night's rest time

to have some wine.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 52:38

Thank you for coming on the show. All right. Thanks for having me. Todd definitely shed light on what I did not know how toxic most wines are. No wonder I felt so sick drink and then his wines are seriously dry farmed irrigation free fermented with native yeasts and crafted in small batches, paleo and keto friendly and are low and alcohol sugar and sulfites and our mold free plus they're endorsed by So many health leaders like Mark Sisson, Dave Asprey, and even JJ virgin. So if you'd like to try some dry farm wines visit dry farm wines.com forward slash gray gra y, and you'll only pay a penny for your first bottle. Be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint.

And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck. You can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus for a limited time, not only is the course 50% off, but you also get your first consult with me for free. Check this offer out at your longevity blueprint comm and click the course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show. And leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics, guests or how you're applying what you've learned on the show to create your own longevity blueprint. A podcast is produced by the team at counterweight creative. As always, thanks so much for listening and remember wellness is waiting.

The information provided in this podcast is educational. No information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai