From Vegan Star Chef to Regenerative Rancher | Mollie Engelhart

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] Mollie Engelhart was once a celebrated vegan farm-to-table restaurateur in California. When she decided to put meat back on the menu, a targeted campaign forced her to close her business.

She ultimately decided to make the painful decision to uproot her entire life, sell her farm, and rebuild from scratch in Texas.

She’s the author of the new book “Debunked by Nature: How a Vegan-Chef-Turned-Regenerative-Farmer Discovered that Mother Nature Is a Conservative.”

“We’re treating the soil and our bodies like we can outsmart them, but we’re getting sicker,” she says.

Once an ardent believer in the vegan movement, Engelhart now questions much of what she once believed.

“Nature taught me my ideas were ridiculous. … My cow isn’t the enemy,” she says.

Real environmentalism is “not to avoid nature, but to interact with her; not to try to out-science her, but to remember her wisdom,” she says.

How does the health of our soil shape the health of our bodies? In this episode, we dive into the roots of our health crisis and why real change often starts small, with curious consumers and courageous farmers.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Mollie Englehart, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Mollie Englehart:

So happy to be back.

Mr. Jekielek:

I’ve been on this little bit of a journey with you over the last several years. You know, we first encountered each other in California, where you had a vegan restaurant chain and the farm that fed those restaurants. And then you had to move out to Texas, where we visited as well. But along the way, you actually switched from vegan to involving meat in these restaurants. So what actually happened when you did that?

Ms. Englehart:

Yes, I think that I was prepared for the vegans to be upset. I lived in that ethos for so many years. I had been a darling, like, oh, let me do another piece. Let me do it. We’ll do a piece about this. And all of a sudden, like, regenerative agriculture is a lie. We must stick with wind and solar. The New York Post did a full-page article in the physical magazine. I was like, wow, slow news day, that this is really that interesting. 

But I think that it was a drama. I don’t know that the media really cares. Media is all about selling ad space. And so I think that the drama of the vegans being upset had it float to the top for a little while. But it did cause a lot of upset. It caused people to not go to my restaurant, to doubt my commitment to the environment. And, you know, I’m deeply committed to our earth, but not in a superficial way. And so it wasn’t ideal. It didn’t go well for my restaurants in California. And the end result is we eventually closed all of them. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Just, you know, before I continue, just a couple of ways that that manifested, like what are the elements that forced those closures ultimately? 

Ms. Englehart:

In full disclosure, to be totally honest, we didn’t have that much runway when I made the switch because of the California policy of no indoor dining for almost two-and-a-half years. And then once they reopened for indoor dining, we had to bring back all the staff. But our sales were still pretty dismal, and it was still more than 50 percent to go. But you had to have a busboy and a bartender and all the regular service stuff. So we were struggling already because culture had shifted from bad bureaucratic decisions. 

I thought, well, if I bring in the whole healthy meats, that would bring in a new audience. And it was what I deeply believed for myself. And so I knew that there would be upset. But I figured that the people that were really into tallow fries and grass-fed burgers would make up for that.

Ultimately, there was a lot of not great press, and then there was a lot of protesting, and so people don’t want to go somewhere where they think someone’s going to be yelling or talking on a microphone. All of the information on the Internet is crowdsourced. You go to a restaurant and you’re like, oh my gosh, it’s closed. You can go to Yelp and be like, it’s closed.

Update your information. This information is wrong. I understand why these websites do it. They can’t be everywhere and know everything. But there was a targeted campaign against me to continuously have my Yelp and my Google and my Apple Maps say permanently closed. They would go to the stand outside the restaurant and six, seven, eight people would cluster. 

It would take me days to get it re-put back up as open. I’d have to prove that I was open, show my sales, show my bank account, and then they would do it again. This hurt my business because if you’re looking to go out to eat and it says Sage is permanently closed, you don’t go back next week to check if it’s not permanently closed. Permanently is the first word. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Ultimately, why do you think these people were doing this? 

Ms. Englehart:

I think that the people on the ground level that were doing it believe that climate change is an existential threat and that the abuse of animals is the worst thing that you can do. I think they believe that on a level. I think on a bigger scale, veganism is another way that they use to divide us and to create chaos. I think that veganism probably started with good intentions. It’s just another thing that’s been co-opted into a way to divide and conquer humanity and to think you’re bad if you eat meat, and you’re good if you save bunnies, whatever it is. 

But I do think that there are powers that are above that. There were funded, coordinated efforts. These were not spontaneous protests. They had professionally printed signs and people out there with cases of water. There was some coordinated effort that was funded. I believe that there are powers that be that want us to go to 3D-printed meat. 

I just saw a thing this morning about how we can make butter out of carbon, just that we’re going to take carbon and make butter. It’s going to be awesome. All you need is hydrogen and carbon and no cows and no land, and you can have butter forever. I do think that there are a lot of people that are highly invested in these products. 

I think that MAHA, the paleo, the keto, like all of these things moving towards tallow and animal-based products are hurting billions of dollars of investment. I’m positive that there are people with financial interests in the vegan world that want to keep veganism important and on top. So I think it’s a combination of all those things. 

Mr. Jekielek:

You mentioned earlier that you are very, you know, pro-environment, but not in a superficial way. When you said that, I was thinking, yes, you’re talking about Debunked by Nature here, of course, your new book that’s come out, which I think is fantastic. As you obviously know, I’ve endorsed the book because I think it’s so wonderful. But here’s the thing. How were you debunked by nature? 

Ms. Englehart:

I thought of calling it like nature never lies, something like that. But debunked by nature was just like it debunked everything that I believed. Environmentalism is just one of the many, many ideas. But I was this adamant, militant environmentalist. If you take me in 2015, I’m this militant environmentalist. 

I am running vegan restaurants. I’m driving a hybrid. I’m drinking out of a paper straw that’s deteriorating in my mouth every time I drink a smoothie. I’m bringing my reusable cup, and I’m having an oat milk latte. I’m bringing bags to the grocery store. I think I’m doing everything I can for the environment. Underneath all of that, I felt very apathetic and that we were going to burn in hell and there was nothing we could do about it. That was underneath all of that, drive a hybrid, and bring your things to the grocery store. All that stuff that was underneath it. 

I heard a TED talk by [inaudible] that my brother had sent me, and this started this journey. Where that journey started was okay, food waste is actually a way bigger problem than cow farts or cow burps, as people are concerned about. I realized that every one of us is a contributor to food waste; every one of us throws food away. We don’t eat everything at the restaurant; we buy groceries, and it goes bad in our fridge. As a vegan restaurant owner, I was throwing away massive amounts of food waste, and I knew after this talk I could turn that into healthy soil. 

So I set out to get a farm. When I got land, I had all these ideas about how it was going to go. I had all these ideas about veganism, and I had all these ideas about the environment, and nature taught me that my ideas were ridiculous; that my cow was bad for the environment and my Lexus H250 hybrid, or whatever I drove at that time, was good for the environment.

It was so obvious to me just being in nature, seeing something die, seeing it decompose, going to nothing, and then having to replace the batteries in my hybrid car and having to pay for hazmat removal and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How that can’t possibly be better for the environment than my cow that will just disappear into the field. I realized we’re constantly fighting against death. The entire vegan concept is afraid to die. I thought death is just the flip side of the coin of life.

For the first time in years, I looked up from my phone on the farm. I looked up and I was present to God. I was present to the presence of something so much larger than my own ego. Everything I understood that we should be doing for the environment, which is essentially we are bad and wrong. We’re a plague. We’re a scourge. 

We should just gather in cities and leave nature to do its thing without us. It was put on my heart so clearly that that’s not true. We’re meant to interface with nature, and we’ve forgotten our role. To be an environmentalist is not to avoid nature, but to interact with her, not to try to out-science her, but to remember her wisdom.

Mr. Jekielek:

Absolutely fascinating. Well, so, how has that manifested in your, you know, kind of newest endeavor now in Texas, where we visited most recently?

Ms. Englehart:

It’s manifested in so many ways because it’s changed everything I believe. Everything is different. But in the business, our business is a farm with a restaurant on the farm. I am putting a burden on the customer to have to come out into the country. But that’s on purpose. Maybe it’s not going to make me as much money as a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, but there’s a ripple effect.

If you drive out 45 minutes to the country and you drive a whole mile and a half once you get onto my ranch, then you come to a restaurant, and you can see cows, holistic planned grazing, moving every day in the field. You can see chickens, and people are collecting eggs. You can see greenhouses and your food being grown. My hope is that the ripple effect of that inside the guest is a remembrance of what food once was and a coherence of eating food from the land that you’re sitting on, that there is a coherence there and a remembering that sparks a ripple effect that I don’t know what it is. 

But that’s my hope, that that’s what happens when you come and you are in nature and then you eat of nature. And there’s a remembering that we belong to the soil, that we belong to this earth. I’m filming right now. This morning, I actually saw a clip of Bobby Kennedy visiting a regenerative farm. I didn’t even have time to watch it because I was preparing for this.

Mr. Jekielek:

But there is an interest even at the upper echelons of the government in this type of agriculture, which you’re doing, regenerative agriculture. The typical mantra that you hear about it is that in order to deliver enough food for everybody, it has to be done economically; it has to be done at this much larger scale, that regenerative agriculture can only work at a smaller scale, and that’s a problem. This is one of the things I’ve heard again and again as I’ve mentioned my growing interest in regenerative agriculture. 

Ms. Englehart:

So I have a couple of things to say. First, I did see that clip of Steve Jarvis’s farm in Idaho, a potato farm. So that was awesome to see the secretary showing interest, and Steve is a friend of mine. So I’m super happy that this is getting attention. I think if you look at the Rick Clarks of the world or the Gabe Browns of the world who have brought thousands of acres into regenerative agriculture, Rick Clark is an example of someone who’s farming thousands of acres profitably with no inputs. So I think that that is not a true story, and I think that people have that idea.

Mr. Jekielek:

Just to clarify, you mean the story that the traditional method at large scale is necessary in order to produce enough food. 

Ms. Englehart:

Yes, that story. Because Rick Clark is doing 7,000 acres, and Gabe Brown is making money and doing 7,000 acres and making money and outperforming his neighbors while having zero inputs. Like he’s growing corn. He just said on the panel at the Heritage Foundation yesterday that he’s growing corn with zero inputs without putting any fertilizer down because he’s just building that microbiology in the soil. And he says, my livestock is that microbiology in the soil. 

There is no soil that doesn’t have enough NPK [nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium] or inputs inside of it already. There’s only soil that’s not alive enough to make it available to the plants. So when our focus is to have our soil alive, which is profoundly important. 

And so we were made of the soil; we belong to the soil. And when we, I think so many of us feel like we don’t belong on this earth anymore, or we don’t fit in our bodies, or we don’t feel comfortable in our own skin, and then we’re drinking or using drugs or watching things that we shouldn’t be, I think that that all comes from a disconnectedness from the soil. So I believe that regenerative agriculture is the way to meet farmers where they are at and bring life back to the land. 

We’re in an existential crisis with chemical farming and with ultra-processed foods. It is a battle that if we do not wake up to, we could cause, and this is not hyperbole, a massive die-off of human beings. Like, we are just treating the soil, the microbiology in our gut, and our immune systems like we can outsmart it, and all the statistics show that we can’t. Like, we’re getting sicker and sicker with worse and worse outcomes. 

So we must have an awakening around that, but we’re not going to just write a bill tomorrow. Trump is not going to write an executive order and say by 2030, everybody’s going to be organic. It’s not going to happen. But regenerative agriculture is our best pathway forward to meet the farmers where they are at.

And the other thing I want to say is I think that people think of chemical farming as something that’s been happening forever. But the first genetically modified plant in the mainstream was a soybean, and I think it was in 1996. Someone said 1997 at the event yesterday, but I’m pretty sure it was 1996. But 1996 or 1997 is when we started this pathway of highly chemicalized spraying of glyphosate directly. 

And then using glyphosate as a desiccant, which if your audience doesn’t know what that means, is prior to the late 90s or 2000s, we used to let wheat or barley dry in the sun and we would check the humidity in it and then we would harvest it at the right humidity. Now we can spray it with Roundup or glyphosate and have it dry out, and then we can harvest it right away in two weeks. You must wait 14 days. But all testing for glyphosate is 14 days with harvest. What had to do with spraying it around the bottom of trees, avocados or oranges or something, and then picking the fruit up here. 

So we don’t know the impact of spraying this chemical directly on our oats that we’re feeding our children or our wheat and then eating it. And so that is something that’s happened even more recently than 1996. So we have not been doing this forever. We have been eating many of these foods forever, and they weren’t making us sick. And now they are.

Mr. Jekielek:

Mollie, you’ve been telling me that you get some very positive reactions to your columns in The Epoch Times.

Ms. Englehart:

Yes. I write for other outlets as well, and I have a large social media presence and all of that. And I do not get more people reaching out; the most loving people are reaching out. I get 30-plus emails a week from Epoch Times readers that are interested in what I’m doing, asking me questions, and thanking me for an article. People come into my restaurant, the physical one, and show me that they read it, asking me to sign it. People text me pictures saying, you made it into the physical one this week. I’m always happy when you’re there.  

And I had some readers come in while we were doing all the flood relief in Texas, and they helped us. They drove two-and-a-half hours to distribute burritos to Leander, Texas, and brought back our hot boxes and everything. There’s a woman that brings me cheesecakes and cookies. Oh, and she likes my articles. And I just think people drive an hour-and-a-half. They’ll say, I Googled you after reading your article, and I saw you’re only an hour and a half away in Texas, and I wanted to come and have lunch.

 I’ve never had a group of readers in any other space that’s so enthusiastic. And I don’t have my email like on the header in Epoch Times. They’re doing some research. They’re Googling me. They’re finding my website, and then they’re emailing the info at and emailing me. 

That says something about how engaged your readers are. and I think it’s an extraordinary testament to what has been built here at Epoch Times because people are not just passively reading and moving on to the next piece of information, but they’re taking it in, they’re thinking about it, and then they’re taking the effort to email me or come and see me and want to discuss what I’m talking about.

Mr. Jekielek:

Oh, that’s absolutely wonderful. Can you build on that aspect? You were actually helping in the Texas flood relief, I think, by providing food. Just tell me a little bit more about that and how you engaged with some of our readers.

Ms. Englehart:

Yes, so we live in Kerr County, Texas, where Camp Mystic is, and we’ve had over 100 deaths from these floods. On July 5th, we jumped into action, and we started feeding people, housing people because we have 40 beds on the ranch. And so people started sending money. And this one woman sent money, and then she was reading her Epoch Times, and I had an article in it about the flood relief. And so she texts me a picture of the article and she says, this is you? I love Epoch. I’ve read your articles.  

Then her son, a couple of minutes later, texts me the water article, because he had taken the photo. And he was like, you’re the same lady that is bringing me the burritos, because he was looking for bodies and everything. These other people that were driving the burritos all the way to Leander and people sending money to help feed and help us house these flood relief victims really just speaks to the heart of the reader that you have, that they want to make a difference, that they want to help, and how important community is to them. 

Mr. Jekielek:

So a couple of things. I’m reminded of actually two columns that you’ve recently written for us in what you’re talking about. I want to touch on those in a moment. But before we go there, you raised this alarm earlier, too many chemicals coming into the human body might lead to a mass die-off. It just, it reminded me of, what would you say if someone said, well, what you just said, when it comes to this, you know, mass die-off of humans, potentially, that sounds like, you know, the other side of the coin of this climate alarmism that you hear, that from everything I’ve learned, it might well be happening, but isn’t quite as alarmist as we hear? 

Ms. Englehart:

I do 100 percent agree that it sounds like that. We’re looking at statistics that say that at the current rate that men’s sperm is declining, we will be at zero sperm in the modernized world by 2040. I have a five-year-old. That means that he possibly will not be able to reproduce. I think we need to be screaming about reproductive rights, the right for my son to have a wife and have a child in the normal way. That’s the reproductive rights that I think we need to be screaming about. 

Women are becoming infertile at higher rates. And it’s not one thing. I’m not blaming agrochemicals. It’s the pharmaceuticals that are in our water that are getting recycled back into our drinking water. And so people are getting high levels of birth control without meaning to because they’re drinking other women’s birth control. It’s the sewage waste that’s being used as fertilizer. It’s the desiccants and the fertilizers and the other agrochemicals, as well as pesticides and herbicides. Those are all happening in conjunction with overmedication and vaccines. And so it’s not one thing. 

And I’m not trying to be alarmist about the environment, but we’re having a human health crisis. And if we can’t see it, the environmental crisis—every storm—they’re going to try to drum that up and make us feel that fear. But look at your own family or ask the viewers to look at their own family. How many people are sick in your family? How many people are on how many medications? 

I’m 47-years-old. I’m still breastfeeding a baby that I had two years ago. I had a baby at age 45. I’m on zero medications. But that is not the norm. At 47, most people are on some medication. By 57, it’s a lot more. We are constantly treating the symptoms. And what I’m saying is moving closer to the soil, moving closer to an agrarian society, being more related to God’s design, is going to make us healthier. 

And I don’t want to be alarmist, but at a certain point, I think that we are in a spiritual battle and we are also in a battle for humanity. But it has nothing to do with what everybody’s screaming about. Everybody’s screaming about these little fractions of this and that and specific concerns; we are all being poisoned. Nobody is exempt from what’s happening. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Another addition to that, you know, kind of complex of problems is, of course, this ultra-processed food being a common way that people nourish themselves. And yes, those things, of course, are connected within there. But I want to touch on this one column because you keep coming back to this and clearly it’s very much on your mind. And of course, you have this incredibly popular column with us. We’re very happy to have you. This one was, I think, titled, We Are the Soil. 

Let’s talk about the soil a little bit more. You mentioned that there’s a very high percentage of DNA, of genetic material that’s similar in the soil and in our guts. That’s amazing, right? And we’ve known there’s been these studies that show that people who grew up in sterile environments have huge problems. But tell me more about how we are the soil.

Ms. Englehart:

So you could also look at the theological level, like if in the first beginning of the Bible, God takes the soil and makes Adam, and then before there’s any commandments, he puts Adam in the garden and says, tend to the garden. And then you could just look at societally. We were living in the soil. People were barefoot. People were cooking outside. People were cooking over a fire. They were picking carrots and rinsing them off in the river and eating them. 

And we’ve gotten so disconnected from that, that we’re no longer replacing that microbiology that is the same. And therefore, we’re getting more and more disconnected. And I have a theory, and it’s not proven at all; I don’t even know that you could prove it. But they were always like, trust your gut, gut instinct, go with your gut. 

Well, what if we can’t trust our gut anymore because that other brain, that microbiology that’s running many parts of our body, is disconnected? We’re not connected to the source; we can’t trust our gut. So then we need the government and other people in every single interaction because we can’t trust our gut; we can’t trust ourselves. And I believe that the more people spend time in nature, breathing in that air, touching the soil, swimming in natural water, we feel more connected to the whole and to God. 

And I think that we’re desperate for connection to the whole, desperate for connection to God, and desperate for connection to community. And social media is a poor substitute for actual community. There’s a certain wealth that comes from living and being in community with people that you love and trust, and you’re building and working on something together. And it can’t be replaced by Instagram or TikTok.

Mr. Jekielek:

You know, you’re just reminding me how Bobby Kennedy, the HHS secretary, has described the kind of phenomenon that you’ve been describing, this health crisis, as primarily, in its first position, a spiritual crisis.

Ms. Englehart:

I believe that we’re in a spiritual crisis.

Mr. Jekielek:

When it comes to government, you know, and you’re talking about us being kind of more credulous or more needy of government. So how do you feel this current government, whether it’s the agriculture department or HHS or whatever, is kind of dealing with this issue? 

Ms. Englehart:

I want to say first that I completely see the frustration of the MAHA movement and feeling like they didn’t want Bobby to be recommending measles vaccines. And so I completely recognize that frustration and feeling like Bobby’s not doing what they want him to do. But I want to take a moment, as a gratitude practice, to just look at that. We have an administration, for the first time, that is talking about the connection between soil health and food health and pharmaceuticals and nutrient density and these things that no other administration ever has talked about. 

Secretary Brooke Rollins is talking about possibilities for regenerative agriculture. Do I want her to be doing more in that department? Yes. Am I disappointed that they cut a bunch of funding for farmers that grants were already promised to from Biden, and then they cut it with DOGE? Yes. And so I, of course, could cherry-pick a bunch of things that I’m mad about. 

But I look at how what’s been my life mission for the last 15 years is deeply in the zeitgeist. I mean, we were at the Heritage Foundation yesterday doing a roundtable with all these people talking about soil health. And that’s a major win. I would say that for many, many years, the Republican Party has had a blind spot around soil, around the importance of the family farm. And they spoke to it that it was important but didn’t take action. And so I think that this is an amazing coalition that’s happening. 

And if we can get both sides of the aisle, because traditionally, I’ve been in the healthy food space for a long time, it’s been a liberal space. And so now it’s a huge amount of conservatives coming into the space. We have an opportunity to have a coalition of consumers that make a soft landing for farmers to go in the direction that we want them to go. 

And so I’m happy that the government is talking about these things. I suspect that the MAHA report that’s coming out is going to have a lot of stuff about soil health in it. And I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for Calley and Casey Means and all the work that they’re doing too. 

But ultimately, government is never going to save us. It’s the consumer. It’s you and I making the decision that makes a difference. It’s voting with your dollars every single day. It’s driving to the farm to get that chicken that’s more expensive, that’s inconvenient, to support the farm. And then that farmer can get at scale and bring the prices down and then serve more people or maybe get a truck and be able to deliver to you, whatever. But we, the consumer, have the power. And right now there’s a coalition of consumers that care about this. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Do you ever worry about the use of the term, consumer, for regular people? I mean, I think you’re using it as shorthand, right? For just regular folks, I think, right? 

Ms. Englehart:

I wish that it was not even a thing you could use for shorthand for folks, but we are in a consumer-oriented society. Our whole life is a money slave system where we work to mostly consume and create comfort. Like all other mammals, I write about this in my book, all other mammals prioritize water, food, reproduction, and shelter. Some, not all, mammals need shelter. We are so good at shelter and comfort and consuming things to make our comfort. 

But we have abandoned our water, we have abandoned our food system, and we’ve abandoned our reproduction. Our sperm counts are dropping. We have tons of abortions, tons of birth control. We wait and wait and wait. And thank God that I was allowed to have children at 37-years-old. But I was one of those women waiting, doing something more important than bringing life forth. Imagine that I thought there was something more important than that. 

Mr. Jekielek:

This is something I cover somewhat regularly when I can on the show. When you think about it for two seconds, it speaks of a kind of deep nihilism. 

Ms. Englehart:

I just wrote a column for you guys about this and that we’ve forgotten our, I think it was called something like we’ve forgotten our place in the statistics show, but basically saying that we have stopped caring about future generations. And almost no societies have reversed, or maybe no societies have reversed once you go to below replacement rate. It’s very hard to reverse that. And we see China trying to; they went to the one baby plan and now they’re trying to reverse that. 

I’m not even sure that Western nations are trying to reverse it. Even the sentence, my body, my choice, people say that as a chant in the liberal sphere. I don’t care where you stand. I mean, I do care where you stand on abortion, but I’m not trying to argue that right now. But just having that sentence as a chant in our society tells women the wrong message. 

Being a mother and being a wife, my body is rarely my choice. Before 7 a.m., I could change diapers, breastfeed a baby, hold another crying toddler, get out clothes, and brush hair before I can get to my coffee. You think any of that was my choice? I just want to sit on the front porch, listen to the crickets, and drink coffee. That’s what my body wants. 

But being a mother and being a wife is not about my body, my choice. My body belongs to the commons of my family. And so even just having that chant in our society doesn’t set up women to know the profound surrender that’s necessary and the profound reward of the obedience to that surrender. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Fascinating. Just a small comment before I build on what you just said. There’s only one country that I’m aware of that has managed to shift that statistic of the birth rate, and that’s Mongolia. And the way they did it, and there’s been a number that have been heroically trying, like Hungary very notably has been heroically trying to shift it, but hasn’t been terribly successful ultimately. 

In Mongolia, they changed the culture. They made motherhood heroic. They celebrate it at a very deep level. And I think there’s a hint in that, I think, for the rest of us to understand. And it speaks exactly to what you’re talking about. In fact, you have a chapter in your book that’s about your newfound respect and appreciation of masculinity, which has been a big topic in our culture discussions or wars, as people call them.

Ms. Englehart:

I bet you could find, if you were the eye in the sky, if you could rewind the world and look at what’s happening, there’s a moment in time where I said men don’t matter. We should just have a few locked in a cage for reproduction. I’m sure that I said ridiculous things like that in my 20s and I probably meant them. And I, this is embarrassing to say and probably shouldn’t, but I’m going to say it. 

For years, I used to have this little chant in my head. I would go into meetings where it was mostly men and I’d be trying to raise money for a restaurant or I’d be going into some situation with lawyers if I’m being sued. And I would be like the only woman in the room, and I would just do this little chant in my head. I mean, I can do anything he can do better. Like I would do that in my head to set myself up to get into that meeting and get into the battle. I had babies and went right back to work five days later to prove that I could work as hard as a man. 

The problem is a man can’t have a baby, so what was I proving? A man is never going to know what it is to bleed for 30 days after pushing a baby out. That’s never going to be his cross to bear; that’s our cross to bear, and I should have known it was totally okay to stay home and rest, but instead, I was trying to keep up with that and at the same time having no respect for it. 

I’m so grateful for farming with my husband because I believe it saved our marriage because if I had married my employee and he worked for me, and there’s a dynamic there, and it could have just—if we just stayed in the restaurant sphere and we made a lot, we sold my restaurant—the COVID didn’t happen and we sold my restaurant for the 25 million that we were selling it for—and we just like, there would have been a structure in our relationship that was like I did this and you’re here. 

In farming, I know I can’t do it without him. I know that I need—there’s a balance of the masculine and feminine, which creates a balance in our marriage and in our family. And, you know, I talk about in the book being pregnant, and there’s a—we had a flood in California, and my brother and my brother-in-law from my first marriage and my husband and all these men that work on the farm, just saving animals and saving the propane tanks from floating down and saving the tractors and moving and everything that needed to happen and how dangerous it was. 

And for a little while I’m out there pregnant, and I had a realization, like, what am I doing out here? Like, it’s dangerous and I’m trying to control what’s happening and run the show. And honestly, it’s too dangerous for me and my pregnant baby to be out here. I’m going to go inside and make some beef stew and cornbread. So when the men come back, they have something to eat. 

I realized all these people are going to have to sleep over because the road was washed out. So I went and found all my husband’s extra sweatpants and stuff for people to change into when they got in. And I got all that ready and made sure my kids were not afraid. And I realized that in a moment of emergency, you don’t want to be with just women and children. You want there to be men. 

And anybody that thinks like, oh, I don’t need a man, you’re just outsourcing men by paying for them. Because the building you’re in was built by men. The electricity that you turned on was largely infrastructure put in by men. The roads, everything, the foundation of our society was built on the backs of strong men. And it’s disrespectful to act like it’s not necessary. 

And we talk about toxic masculinity. We rarely talk about toxic femininity. But there’s also that. And we need to find balance again and remember that we’re divine reflections of each other that are different and perfectly yoked. We don’t need to out-compete each other. We need to find our way to be in balance with each other.

Mr. Jekielek:

You know, I’m reminded, you know, a regular guest on the show has been Warren Farrell, who cataloged what he describes as the boy crisis and the sort of, you know, basically making men unimportant and society’s side effect of feminism, some people would argue, you know, the purpose or at least later stages, later waves of feminism and so forth. The other part that struck me was that I have this realization, right? 

As you know, a huge cost of feminism, women can do everything men can do, and there are some women who can do many things men can do better than men can do. Motherhood has simply become not important or not nearly as important. It was central. I mean, you would argue women are the most—women are actually more important for this reason as a starting point, never mind other reasons, right? But we kind of—we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that that’s not important somehow. 

Ms. Englehart:

No, and we wait, wait, wait to live your life first. There’s nothing more important, and this idea that we’re telling women that they should do a career, they should do this, they should do that, and then maybe have kids. I’m going to tell you, you can’t celebrate the holidays with your career. You cannot snuggle and read a book to your career. You cannot go out on date night with your career like you can go on date night with your husband; you can snuggle your children. 

Last night was the first night I ever left my children since my first son was born, ten years and eight months ago. And I thought it was important enough with what was happening in the Heritage Foundation and coming here. But ultimately, I believe the greatest thing I’m going to do in my life is raise those human beings. And if I don’t do a great job, it could be catastrophic for the rest of their lives. 

It’s so important. Bringing life forth from the other side, that we all don’t know what that is, but bringing that life forth comes through our bodies. How could that not be the most important thing? Why do we not celebrate that? What are we waiting for? To be able to go out more, drink more, sleep with more people, make more money?

Mr. Jekielek:

There’s this theme throughout Debunked by Nature of reconnecting with many different things. And just kind of tell me, tell me a little bit more about this. Was that intentional or is it just something that emerged as you started writing? 

Ms. Englehart:

The ideas just came and came and came and just were reflecting on how moving out of the liberal sphere, moving out of Los Angeles, moving into the country, it reshifted everything. And in being more connected with God, I felt I could hear the truth more clearly. I could see the truth all around me. It was just like emerging. 

And there was so much focus during COVID about the truth. What’s the truth? Who’s telling the truth? And this is misinformation. And this is the truth. And I started to just have this idea that when you’re looking at nature, nature never lies. Nature does not lie. 

I could go out to my field today and say, Camila, you’re a boy. You identify as a boy, something like that. Camila is a very masculine cow with horns and she protects the herd, and she has a baby every single year, and she submits to the bull, and has a baby. 

Nature is really clear. You can’t get away. Nature knows what to eat. Nature’s not confused about what to eat. In all cases, it’s always the truth. Nature doesn’t put their baby in the other room. It sleeps next to the baby. It doesn’t put it far away. Like the most simple things that we are confused about, like we are in books arguing, should you let your baby cry in the other room? No, of course not. Nature does not do that. 

And so I think that just reconnecting, and I think that we are special. I don’t think we’re just another mammal. I’m not saying that. I think that we have a connection and a consciousness and an awareness that maybe other animals don’t have, but we are mammals. And there are some basic mammalian things that we’ve just forgotten.

Mr. Jekielek:

To your point a little bit, sort of beyond humans as mammals, you look at food as medicine. Yes, right, and so this is, I think this fits into the rubric of nature doesn’t lie, right, very well. But so as we finish up, tell me a little bit about that whole concept, because it’s something I hadn’t really thought of until quite recently. Again, it’s obvious the moment you start thinking about it, but just tell me a little more.

Ms. Englehart:

I think that food being medicine has been around for a long time. And then I think that there was a shift in the early 1900s to allopathic medicine. And we kind of moved away from nutrition being part of the conversation. But there’s so much evidence emerging or reemerging that what we feed our cells really matters and that the mitochondria in our cells and the carburetors of our cells need these certain nutrients to really fire correctly. And you can’t just look at the top fats, carbs, protein, and it can be processed or not processed. 

And it’s all the same because there are all of these micronutrients and nutrient density that we’re learning more about and the microbiology in our gut and how these are all interconnected. And we talk a lot about genetics like, oh, genetically, these people are, this group is more predisposed to diabetes or whatever. And I’ll tell you that my husband came from a village that didn’t have a road to the outside world until 1991. And there was no diabetes and there was no cancer. 

And now there’s tons of cancer and tons of diabetes and all the women still wear skirts. And you can see, I was at a funeral recently and you could look at all of the ankles and see the black spots from the pre-diabetes and diabetes and the necrosis that’s happening from that. And my husband was really taken aback by it, but you look at the stores there, it’s very far out and it’s mostly a hundred percent processed foods. 

And when my husband was a kid, everybody grew their own corn and they ate corn, lard, fish, and turtle eggs. The environmentalists would be mad about that, but it’s the indigenous culture. And a little bit of chicken eggs from a few chickens out in the yard. But that was their diet, like pork and then beans and corn and pumpkin squash. And nobody had diabetes. And even though it’s a high carbohydrate diet and all of that, nobody had any diabetes. 

So we look at this ultra-processed food and then we look at how we used to eat and we’re not growing the same microbiology, and so do the people from my husband’s village have the genetics to be more predisposed to diabetes? Probably yes, but it’s the epigenetics that can turn that on and off, and that’s deeply related. And they’re now showing like if there’s certain microbiology in your gut, this turns cancer growing off, this turns cancer growing on. This turns diabetes on, this turns diabetes off.

So we want to have a largely diverse diet of multiple different colors of things, with the least white things as possible. And you want to really eat for the macro and micronutrients, not just the calories. And we’re in a world where I think it’s like 80 percent of our calories are coming from ultra-processed foods. And I think that there’s an argument right now about what the distinction of an ultra-processed food is, and I think that the government’s going to come up with a specific distinction very shortly here. So that number may change based on what that distinction is. But foods that are not the way that our grandmothers and grandfathers ate them. 

And if we look back just 110 years, there were no refrigerators. So our diets have vastly changed in just 100 years. And our health is on that same trajectory. And so just by managing what we eat, many, many diseases can be reversed. And I think that people aren’t, just like you said, you’re just recently coming to this idea. I think that that’s a good thing about RFK coming together with Trump because I live in rural Texas. 

And people are coming into my restaurant every day and saying, I heard about no seed oils. I heard about organic food. And I have diabetes. And I have this. And I heard. And nobody told me that I could eat my way out of diabetes. They just said there’s no cure for type 2 diabetes. And I’ve been doing this, and I’m getting better, and I’m off insulin. 

And so I think that it’s getting into the zeitgeist of the culture that we can shift. And like we’re in a spiritual battle, and I think it’s got to have to be a human awakening of reconnecting to God. I think the battle around food also has to be a human awakening. 

I don’t think it’s going to come top-down. I think there are things that the government could do. There’s a lot of buying power, and there are a lot of ways that our tax dollars are paying to make people sick. We’ve all seen the statistics about SNAP and sodas and candy, and 21 states have now made soda and candy or some combination of that not available with food stamps. I think the government could say some sweeping things around school lunches, military lunches, prison lunches or prison meals and SNAP that could change everything because the food companies depend on those big buyers, the schools, the prisons, and the food stamps. 

If you made it like I could make one executive order tomorrow, it would be that with SNAP benefits, you cannot buy anything that has more than five ingredients. And I’m going to tell you what, they would start putting less stuff in food. Because if you only have five ingredients to be able to purchase with SNAP, all of a sudden, there’d be all these options with very few ingredients. 

And so that kind of sweeping reform could have a trickle-down effect. But there also has to be an awakening on the human level. And we are so good at suffering. Humans are so good at sitting in discomfort, certain kinds of discomfort. Discomfort that requires us to make a real change. We’re very good at sitting in it.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, and not making the change.

Ms. Englehart:

And not making the change.

Mr. Jekielek:

Right, right. And so other kinds of discomfort, we’re big on complaining about it and saying how it’s violence and blah, blah, blah.

Ms. Englehart:

But when it comes to shifting our health, I was struggling. I eat really healthy, but I was struggling to lose weight. And I had to do something radical to do it. And I ate, and I thought I needed to reset my microbiology in my gut. And I thought, how does a baby do that? How do we start out? And with milk. So I did raw milk for all of Lent. And I lost like 46 pounds in 46 days. And I didn’t gain it back. And I changed all my cravings, changed what I wanted to eat, and it was amazing. 

Mr. Jekielek:

For the benefit of the audience this is not medical advice here.

Ms. Englehart:

No, not medical advice. Raw milk is bad everybody, go get pasteurized milk because you’re going to die if you drink raw milk.

Mr. Jekielek:

No, actually, as we actually finish up, I do think something very interesting that people have been talking about with me numerous people now is how this soil health or soil, the biodiversity in the soil, maintaining that, rekindling that, getting that back is a place where this meeting the farmers where they’re at might actually manifest something you mentioned earlier. So maybe as we actually finish up, let’s just talk about that a little bit.

Ms. Englehart:

There’s big conglomerates that are like doing whatever, just extractive. But farmers, and I don’t care if they’re 10,000 acres or 20 acres or 10 acres, they all want their land to be good and healthy. But we have backed them into a corner so far. Food is still, people are still getting paid the same amount of money as they were in the 70s for cotton. I got paid 40 percent less for oranges in 2022 than I found a receipt in this old house that I bought from that same orchard. I got 40 percent less money for oranges than in 1978. 

So, I mean, we are paying less for food than we were before. We’re paying less for cotton or the same for cotton, but that’s less with all the inputs. So we have backed farmers into this corner where they have to use more inputs and get more. The only way they can get more money is to get more yield. So that’s on us. Regenerative agriculture has pathways and on-ramps and off-ramps for that transition. And we’re seeing a lot of farmers in Texas transitioning to regenerative agriculture. 

We can’t do this with just sweeping reforms, the government signing a thing. We need buy-in from the farmers. And for us to have buy-in from the farmers, we need a pathway for them because so many farmers are white-knuckling it. They’re working a second job. They’re leveraging their farm every single year, trying not to be the generation that loses the family farm. And so I don’t think we need more regulations. We need to meet the farmers where they’re at, and we need to support big ag in making incremental changes. 

There’s an organization called Regenified where they give you a certification at the beginning, and the consumer gets to support you; the customer gets to support you through your process. At three years, you have to have this much soil health, and at six years, it’s nine years to get to the platinum. I like that model because then we can all participate in helping that farmer make the transition. As a mom, I want to say no more chemicals. I don’t want to poison my kids; no more of this. 

As a person who understands how complicated it is to run anything or do anything in the physical world, we’ve got to be incremental about this. I believe that regenerative agriculture and soil health practices are the way to meet farmers where they’re at. There used to be all these eco-ag conferences that focused on organic, organic, organic, and you couldn’t get the big farmers to come.

Now that there are soil health conferences, you’re getting buy-in. Gabe Brown himself brought more people into regenerative agriculture in 10 years than all of organic since the 70s. This has legs; this has a way to get farmers to incrementally come into it. I think that’s what’s going to make a difference, and it’s really important to do that. 

I think we need to bring back an agrarian society. We need to bring back a lot more small farms. They are efficient, and they produce large percentages of the world’s food. 28 percent of food is produced by farms less than two hectares, which is less than five acres. That’s like a micro farm here in the United States. 

But worldwide, they are producing a lot of food on small acreage, and we are capable of doing that too. We need to create pathways, such as banking products from banks to help people get on land, and education. That’s what I’m out here doing. My brother is out here educating people about the power of healthy soil and its connection to us, the humans eating out of that soil.

My final thought is this: we don’t ever know where life is going to take us, and I certainly never thought that I would be a pig and cattle farmer in Texas. I was so deeply rooted in being a vegan restaurateur, and I never would have thought that my politics would shift either. But being willing to listen to the whispers and see what was happening around me—that, I think, is true wisdom. 

I want to invite humans to bring wisdom back and not be so tribal. We should be willing to hear ideas, take them in, and try them on like a jacket. Ask ourselves, does that fit me or does it not? If it doesn’t, it doesn’t; if it does, it does. We should be willing to change our minds, even publicly, even if it costs us financially, but we should really be truthful and authentic. 

Someone said at dinner last night that I think only one in 50 people do the right thing when it’s going to harm them financially or affect their brand or whatever. Not necessarily financially, but they would be shamed for it. I want it to be one in one person that does the right thing no matter what. I just want to invite people to be in the listening, hear the whispers, and remember you’re part of the whole; you’re part of something much bigger.

Mr. Jekielek:

Mollie Englehart, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. 

Ms. Englehart:

Thank you so much for inviting me.

 

This interview has been partially edited for clarity and brevity.