🖨️ Print post
Oysters are a nutrient-rich powerhouse for the body–excellent for cognitive function, the immune system and even boosting mood. Why does liver get all the hype and press?! Stephen Kavanagh of Marine Health Foods, a marine biologist with over 30 years of experience explains why we can look to oysters for TONS of good stuff like zinc, protein, selenium, and more and what these can do for us. Stephen also expands on how unique oysters are, how good they are for the ocean, and what we can do to avoid overfishing them.
Connect with Stephen and learn more about Oyster Max
Subscribe to Wise Traditions on Apple Podcasts
Check out our sponsors Gray Toad Tallow and New Biology Clinic
Key Takeaways:
- Discussion on Mineral Deficiency and Obesity in Ireland
- Significance of Oysters as a Superfood
- Historical Consumption and Nutritional Value of Oysters
- Oyster Overfishing and Restoration Efforts
- Nutritional Content and Health Benefits of Oysters
- Impact of Modern Agriculture on Soil Depletion
- Environmental Importance of Oysters and Aquaculture
- Importance of Zinc Supplementation and Absorption
- Eye Health Considerations and Benefits of Oystermax Supplements
Episode Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
04:23 – Importance of Natural Nutrient Synergy for Well-Being
07:17 – Selenium Deficiency Linked to Intense Agricultural Methods
11:17 – Hindered by Processed Diets: Appreciating Nutrient-Rich Oysters
14:43 – Sustainable Oyster Fishery Model in Ireland’s Final Stand
22:19 – Discover Discounts on Tallow Skincare and New Biology Practices
23:23 – Personalized Wellness Services at Holistic Health Clinic
27:49 – Plant Analogies to Anatomy, Beneficial Nutrients like Walnuts
30:49 – Vegans Recommended Oysters for Zinc and B12 Benefits
33:30 – Enhanced Zinc Absorption with Oyster Extract Aid
38:15 – Embrace Transformation from Irritation to Beauty, a Lesson from Oysters
40:16 – Delve into Health Resources Offered by Weston A. Price Foundation
40:50 – Outro
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Episode Transcript
Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda.
Move over liver. There is a new, actually ancient, superfood on the scene. It is the oyster. This is episode 499, and our guest is Stephen Kavanagh. Stephen is a marine biologist with over 30 years of experience and the founder of Marine Health Foods in Ireland. Stephen shares with us the best that oysters have to offer, including selenium, copper, zinc, protein, and more. He tells us what that goodness does for our bodies.
He also addresses oysters’ unique properties, such as their ability to naturally filter ocean water. He goes over how we can avoid overfishing them and projects that he has in the works to restore them. Before we get into the conversation, I want to invite you to subscribe to the show on any podcast platform, or you can actually download our podcast app. There is a Wise Traditions app through the application store on your iPhone. You can get the episodes every single time they come out without any middleman. Thank you in advance for subscribing.
—
Welcome to the show, Stephen.
Thank you for having me, Hilda.
Oysters As Crucial Food Source
You have said the most outrageous statement, that oysters have possibly saved humanity. What do you mean by that?
Oysters are a very important source of nutrition for human beings and it goes way back. Much so there’s a theory that 250,000 years ago. Homo sapiens were nearly wiped out. They were reduced to a few numbers. Some people estimate possibly as low as 200 to 600 individuals left. This was along the East Coast and South Coast of Africa. Where these people lived, their caves were full of oyster mittens, so meters and meters of oyster shells from the activities that they ate. They think what happened was these people went down and started foraging for shellfish and especially oysters on the seashore.
With oysters, they had a very good source of protein. Oysters are full of omega-3s and they’re full of really important minerals and vitamins and especially zinc. They had this good source of protein, a lot easier to get protein that way than taking down a woolly mammoth, which I’m sure was a very dangerous occupation. They had the high omega-3s, which led to rapid brain development, so they could outsmart the Neanderthals. The high level of zinc, which leads to a higher reproductive success. From that day, homo sapiens exploded from East Africa and conquered the world, colonized all the world, everywhere we are now.
What are the nutrients in oysters that you say are found in greater concentrations than even in red meat?
Oysters have a unique biology because they can live for up to four weeks out of water. When they close the shell, this is a large oyster I have here. The oyster lives in here. It’s a mollusk and it lives inside the shell, it makes the shell itself, and the shell is secreted from the edge of their gill. They have a very unique biology. When they close up, there’s a liquid in here that surrounds the oyster itself. It’s like a lymph. Some people think it’s seawater. It is very salty, but it’s not seawater. I suppose it’s called primitive hemolymph that surrounds the oyster and that’s full of nutrients and that can keep the oyster alive for four weeks in there.
Importance Of Natural Nutrient Synergy For Well-Being
Oysters have this really high level of zinc, which is ten times higher than the next source, which is beef. It’s not just zinc on its own. It’s not like elemental zinc that people take when they take zinc supplements, like zinc citrate, zinc gluconate, or whatever. It’s zinc in synergy with really important elements like manganese and copper. This synergy cannot be underestimated. I cannot overstate it even. It’s so important to understand that zinc, copper, the manganese are bound together in amino acids and peptides.
That’s the way our body has always got nutrition. That’s the way we should be getting nutrition. Not elementally, not with fortified foods, with you can buy all these foods and say it’s fortified with zinc, there’s fortified with vitamin this, whatever. These have to be naturally occurring in your food and your diet. That’s how we evolved and that’s how our body takes its nutrition. Oysters have ten times more zinc. You can take this high level of zinc, which is really important for the body. It controls over 300 enzyme reactions in the body without having any antagonism with elements like copper or manganese. We’re seeing huge copper deficiency issues at the moment because everybody was taking synthetic zinc during the lockdown for their immunity.
When you take synthetic zinc, you end up copper deficient. Copper is a really important element in the body too and people’s hair has gone grey because of copper deficiency. There are hemoglobins all over the place because of this copper deficiency. People think they have too much copper because the copper has now been pulled out of the binding sites in the body by the synthetic zinc they were taking. You can take that high level of zinc with bioavailable copper when you take it from an oyster and that’s so important. That synergy is so important in our nutrition.
I’ve heard Sally talk about this. In other words, when we get our nutrition from food, it comes in just the right package, and all the bits and pieces are complementing one another and working together. If you take it in isolation, it’s a whole different thing especially if it’s synthetic, by the way. That’s not going to do you any favors.
We never dug zinc out of a mine. The plants absorb zinc. Plants absorb the zinc from the ground or from the seawater. In the case of oysters, these phytoplankton, they absorb the zinc from the seawater. They make it bioavailable. Then the oyster eats it, and then we eat the oyster. On land, the plants absorb the minerals from the soil. The animals eat the plants, and we eat the animals and some plants too, obviously. Eating further up the food chain, you go the closer it is to us and the more bioavailable it is.
You’ve said how wonderful zinc is, how wonderful oysters are. What are they touted to do? I know you cannot say that they cure us from things, but what does evidence suggest that they’re good for in our bodies?
Let food be thy medicine. The bureaucrat has said it, not me. They cannot get me on that one.
That’s right.
Selenium Deficiency Linked To Intense Agricultural Methods
Minerals, like one of our gurus, was Linus Pauling. Linus Pauling said, every ailment, every illness can be traced to mineral deficiency. Oysters would have all the minerals that our bodies need. It goes back to that theory of life evolving from the sea. The concentration of salts in our blood is 60% similar to that in seawater. It gives credence and power to that statement of life evolving from the ocean. They have all the minerals we need. Again, like I say, with this high level of zinc, they’re really high in copper, manganese, iodine, and selenium.
Selenium is nearly absent from our diet because of intensive agriculture. In Ireland, for example, people used to spread seaweed on the land,d and by doing that, they put all the minerals from the ocean back into the soil. They discovered NPK fertilizers and nitrogen fertilizers, and now the soils are depleted of minerals so much so that selenium, which is really important for spermatogenesis and insulin production, nis early absent from our diet. We’re looking at the problems with insulin resistance at the moment type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Since you’re mentioning those conditions, what do you see in Ireland and what do you see worldwide in terms of trends, probably because of mineral deficiency?
Mineral deficiency, yeah, but poor nutrition in general and bad lifestyle choices. We’re in Ireland now. We have 60% adult obesity and 25% child obesity. We’re not even in the top ten in the world. We’re way down the list. The UK is higher than us, America is higher again. Interestingly, some of the Pacific nations, and the Polynesian nations are really high.
Whatever’s in our diet at the moment, they don’t like. It’s certainly playing havoc with their biology. There are multiple reasons for the obesity epidemic and the cheap, seed oils. The amount of carbohydrates we’re eating, the bad lifestyle, the sedentary lifestyle we lead. There are multiple factors. Can you put your finger on one or is it a combination?
Is the synergy of all of them more important than them individually? That’s a big question but look at you. I’m talking to the converted here. I’m preaching to the converted. This is a wise tradition. We know the effect of following the wise traditions diet. We’re healthy, we’re fit, we’re lean. That’s what happens when you follow wise traditions. You know what happens there. As I say to people, “They all grab your marks line, who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”
None of the best ones ever. Look around you like if somebody at fourteen is obese, 4 or 5 stone overweight, what are they going to be like at 40 if they even make it that far? It’s tragic. Their quality of life all that time, it’s not just the end, the end, it’s their quality of life while they’re carrying that weight. It’s horrendous, has to be. They may not know it, but as somebody else once said, “Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels.”
I love that. Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels. That’s great.
That’s a great feeling to have energy, to feel energy, to feel lean and strong. That’s what wise traditions can do and it’s effortless. It’s delicious. It’s a gastronomic journey. When you eat like that, and I eat like that now, I cannot eat any other way. My kids went to McDonald’s, they’d be violently ill.
Their body would say, “What is this? This isn’t food.”
It’s happened because the school, these kids want to have these school parties in McDonald’s. Now, my kids are growing up now, they’re 20 and 21, 22, but years ago, they would be invited to a party in McDonald’s, and it happened twice. They ate the food and came home and got physically sick. I’m telling you I said, “Look, if I eat the odd McDonald’s, I’m not too worried.” Their body couldn’t actually handle it. What was in there? That’s remarkable. For sure. These are the oysters.
Going back to them, why do you think oysters are overlooked as a superfood? Kale gets all the press, which we think is ridiculous. Even liver, like we’re all about organ meats in the foundation. What are we missing when we don’t look at the oysters?
Hindered By Processed Diets
These are some of the original paleo foods. This is what we evolved with. For 250,000 years, homo sapiens have been eating oysters. They’re delicious, I think. If you’re living on a processed carbohydrate diet, you’re probably not going to like the taste of an oyster. That’s a problem. They were very plentiful. A big part of our work is oyster restoration. They were very plentiful.
Anybody here in the Chesapeake Bay, in America, in Chesapeake Bay, New York Harbor, Boston Harbor, San Francisco Harbor, anybody could go down to the shore and get 3 or 4 oysters and they would see the next day. It was a free food, a nutrient-dense free food. They would live to the next day. If you were starving, you could live on oysters. There was a time in the 1800s, up to the end of the 1800s when everybody could do that.
They were a really important food source to keep us alive because not everybody had beef. Protein has always been a limiting nutrient for human beings right throughout our existence on this planet but oysters had everything. They had the omega-3s, all the minerals, like I say, a really good source of protein. If you were homeless and destitute, you could go down to the beach and get a couple of oysters and guarantee you’d see the next day. They’d keep you alive, keep you alive well. We wiped out all the oysters in the 1800s, unfortunately, through bad management practices and overfishing.
We have less than 1% of our traditional oyster beds left. The Chesapeake Bay was like if you go to the Chesapeake Bay and look and go to the oyster museum like there were mountains of oyster shells there. They thought they could never get rid of the oysters. They had shucking industries there. There were canned oysters produced in Chesapeake Bay, shipped all over the US. The whole country lived on oysters for the last three decades of the 1800s. It collapsed. It happened in New York Harbor, in San Francisco Harbor, in Boston.
As I say there was an oyster reef off the southern coast of Australia, 2000 kilometers long. It was bigger than the Great Barrier Reef. That was wiped out. Here in Ireland on the East Coast where we’re sitting now, we had the biggest native oyster beds in Europe. There was an oyster bed in the middle of the North Sea, bigger than Ireland itself. Phenomenal. There were oyster wars. It was incredible. The fishermen in the town where I live put a sixteen-pound cannon on the beach they were going to blow other fishing boats out of the water because they were upset with what was going on with the abuse of the oyster beds.
The fishermen on the East Coast here they fished the oyster beds for a hundred years prior to 1860 successfully and sustained them and they had a lot of respect for it. It was a very important part of their annual income. In 1860, management practices changed and boats came from all over the world to fish here and they wiped them out. In 1860, there was a recorded catch of 30,000 barrels of oysters in the town I live in.
In your town, 30,000 barrels of oysters?
Which we estimate was probably around 30 to 40 million oysters. Twenty-six years later the catch was fourteen. Complete collapse of the ecosystem. I cannot emphasize enough. This is the native oyster, Ostrea edulis. For 4,000 years here that’s what people ate. In the ‘70s, we brought this guy from the Pacific Ocean. This is what people in America would know as a West Coast oyster. This guy was brought here for aquaculture. This now is what most people recognize as an oyster when they go to a restaurant. This was the native oyster, which is the subject of our restoration and conservation efforts. This is the one that we lived on. This is the one that sustained humanity for 4,000 years in this area and 250,000 years from that period when they were nearly wiped out.
How do you go about this? How do you go about the restoration of the oyster population?
Sustainable Oyster Fishery Model
In Ireland, and on your visit here, we visited the last working oyster fishery in Ireland. There’s only one left in Ireland and very few in Europe, but it’s a well-managed fishery, sustainable, and a great model. From that fishery, we’re taking adult oysters, which we’re doing trials within an area further north on the coast in Clare in the hatchery there with our marine scientist and he’s trialing these gigas oyster shells to see if we can get these oysters to grow on the dead shell.
We visited that hatchery and we saw really good settlements. We now know that we can get the native species to settle on these old West Coast oyster shells. We saw up to seventeen babies on each shell. We’re going to take those shells and put them back out in the ocean and create what we call metapopulations of native oysters. We’ve got these around the coastline. They will then become self-sustaining and restart the whole process. If we can get proper agreement from all the stakeholders and proper management practices put in place, future generations here and everywhere should benefit from the fantastic nutrition. That is the oyster again.
We can put it out there. You can have restaurants. You can have biotechnology. You can have a fishing industry again, all these things, but with proper management, not what I call rape and plunder that went on of the oceans in the past. We cannot do this anymore. We have to stop this because our technology is too advanced. Nature cannot keep up, especially in the coastal waters. We need to implement proper management and conservation practices here.
We need to stop the rape and plunder of the ocean. Our technology is too advanced to be kept in coastal waters. We need to implement proper management and conservation practices.
If you were not to do this, what would happen? Would the oyster population just die out?
Yeah, they go because these oysters in particular, they’re gregarious, they’re like humans. They like to live in dense communities. If you thin it out too much, they won’t survive. That’s when they start to collapse.
Isn’t that interesting?
They cannot live individually. Just like humans again. We cannot live on our own. They live in communities in beds or on reefs. The beauty of now what just happened in Europe, and I hope this happens in America too, the European Union and the European Parliament have just passed the 2030 restoration law which stipulates, it’s the law now in Europe, that by 2030, 30% of our coastal waters have to be designated for restoration. When you’re restoring the oceans, you cannot come along and say, “Let’s restore the whales, or let’s restore the dolphins.”
It doesn’t work like that. These guys you have to start with. You start with oysters, you start with kelp. You start with eelgrass beds in this part of the world because there’s a temperate climate here, the temperate latitudes. The oysters, when they reestablish, they filter the water, which allows light to penetrate, and then the algae can grow. The fish like herrings lay their eggs on the algae, and the whales, the dolphins, the seals, the big mammals that we all love, and that everybody wants to restore, they live on the herring but it all starts with the oyster.
They have to be able to make that connection from the whale to the oyster. This guy is far more important, but as you can see, it’s hard to make him cute and cuddly. They are very delicious when they’re on a restaurant table but in the ocean, kids pick them up and they go, “What’s that? That’s a rock.” They don’t know what it is. It’s not like a little toy. You can make a little cuddly baby seal or a cuddly baby dolphin, and everybody loves them. They have to learn to make the connection. One of the things we want to do on the East Coast here, like in Ireland, for example, we have these amazing forests.
You have them all over America, of course. We have forests like Coollattin is a famous oak forest and Avondale is another famous oak forest and a more mixed deciduous forest. The trees are 400, and 800 years old. In the ocean, we had kelp forests. The kelp forests were even more biodiverse than what we have on land but they were all wiped out by the trawlers. They destroyed the kelp. Kelp isn’t that strong. It’s not strong like an oak tree. It can be damaged very easily. Those kelp forests where all the fish laid their eggs and where the juveniles survived until they were big enough to go out to sea, it’s like a nursery ground.
We want to restore the kelp forests on the east coast here too and give them names so they’re tangible. People cannot relate to what’s under the water. They don’t see it. It’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. We want to name these forests and get the school kids out there fishing and snorkeling and diving in the kelp forest. When they have that connection, then they’ll protect them. If you went into Coollatin Forest here, it’s the last protected oak forest in Ireland. It’s one of the oldest. If you went in there with a chainsaw, you’d be put in jail straight away. There’d be an absolute public outcry, but we need that attitude in the ocean too.
In certain areas, not in the whole ocean, but in areas to protect certain areas for future generations, but we have to restore them first now. We’re in a situation where 1% of our biodiversity in the coastal waters is left. They’ve been reduced to nearly deserts. What’s happened with the kelp forests, it’s like what happened in desert areas where the trees were taken away and the whole area turned to desert. That deforestation happened in the oceans, but people cannot relate to it. We’re marine scientists, so we’re looking at it every day and we’re underwater looking at it. We understand it but most people cannot make that connection. It’s much easier on the land.
What you’re saying reminds me of what Ben Fock, a permaculturist I interviewed, said, “We cannot just not do harm anymore. It’s time to help.” We cannot just stop fishing oysters, let’s say, but we need to get creative about how we can repopulate.
What we’re doing, is regenerative farming in the ocean. We want to bring these back in. The beauty of oysters, of course, this organism as opposed to any animal that we farm or work with, oysters are what we call sessile organisms. They’re quite happy to sit there and just filter the water all day, hence the phrase, the patience of an oyster. It’s one of the things I’ve learned from oysters, which you need in the modern world. They’ll sit there and filter, but they feed naturally from the water.
They feed naturally on phytoplankton, which are microscopic plants. There’s no antibiotics, there’s no medicines involved. You cannot do it because they’re in the ocean. You cannot administer medicine to the whole entire ocean. They’re as natural as you can get in our food. Like even free-range beef and lamb, there’s a certain amount of husbandry, but there’s very little with oysters and wild seafood. It really is the healthy, some of the healthiest foods you can eat. As you said to me, it reminded me earlier that Dr. Price, when he did his studies, the cultures that had a lot of seafood in their diet were the healthiest.
They were absolutely the healthiest.
—
Gray Toad Tallow believes that truly nourishing skin begins with only the finest ingredients. That’s why their top priority is to get only the best 100% pastured tallow from organically raised animals. The result is a clean product with just a few ingredients, very much like what past generations relied on for healthy skin. Gray Tallow also strives to keep their wholesome products affordable, making it more accessible for those seeking natural skincare solutions. We all know that life is busy which is why you can let Gray Toad Tallow do the work for you, transforming the suet into a tallow balm that your skin will love.
Cherished for generations, tallow naturally offers a perfect blend of fats and vitamins to keep your skin healthy, hydrated, and radiant. Visit Gray Toad Tallow to explore their full range of products designed to nurture your skin from head to toe and use the code WISE10 at checkout to get 10% off your order and experience the difference that Gray Toad Tallow can make. Again, go to Gray Toad Tallow and use the code WISE 10 to get 10% off of your order and experience the difference that Gray Toad Tallow can make. New biology.
Modern healthcare systems are failing us. Months-long waits for appointments are typical, only to spend ten minutes with a doctor who quickly makes a generic diagnosis resulting in medication dependency, invasive treatment options, and unpleasant or harmful side effects with no real cure. If this sounds all too familiar, consider a different approach with the new biology clinic founded by Dr. Tom Cowan. He’s a respected alternative medicine doctor, author, and speaker. Dr. Cowan’s holistic perspective on health and wellness and the true nature of health and disease sets this clinic apart.
At the new biology clinic, they’re not about quick fixes. The wellness specialist takes time to understand your unique story, recognizing that illnesses have various causes and you deserve a personalized healing experience. Clinic members enjoy a flat monthly fee that includes a range of valuable services like virtual health consults as needed, wellness specialist-led, live streams on diverse health topics, access to a members-only resource library, and multiple live group sessions every month.
These sessions cover things like fitness, breathing integration, biofield tuning, guided meditation, EFT tapping, and more. There are membership options for individuals, small and large families, and health and enrichment only, and even one-time health consults without a membership commitment. Visit New Biology Clinic to learn more or reach out to the friendly care team via phone or email and use the code WISE TRADITIONS to get $100 off your membership activation fee or you can use the code WAPF to get your first month free on an enrichment services only membership.
Codes must be in all capital letters, by the way. Your journey to genuine healing begins here. Again, that’s New Biology Clinic, and use the code WISE TRADITIONS in all caps to get $100 off your membership activation fee, or use the code WAPF, again all caps, to get your first month free on an enrichment services-only membership. The codes must be in all caps, as I said. Again, go to the New Biology Clinic to find out more. This is Hoda Labrador and you’re listening to Wise Traditions.
—
When we get plenty of zinc and the protein that the oysters have to offer, the selenium and iodine and copper, and omega-3s, what are some of the things we might notice in our bodies?
The reason they’re important is the macromolecules. If we take, for example, the three master antioxidants in the body, which are glutathione, catalase, and superoxide dismutase, they’re what we called metalloenzymes, but they’re zinc-copper metalloenzymes. They have zinc and copper in a particular ratio. Now that ratio is not decided by us, it’s decided by nature. In our day job, which is production, we analyzed the oysters that we process and we found that the zinc-copper ratio is 11:1 going back over the last 25 years of our business.
That’s nature’s ratio and as we like to say the ocean is our laboratory. We won’t do anything with that. That’s nature’s side of that. You’ll see supplements on the market with synthetic zinc and synthetic copper. It’s the 15:1 ratio or 10:1 ratio. People say this is what it should be. All I could do was tell you what the oyster has told me. It’s 11:1. You want to debate or argue with the oyster, get your scuba gear on, and off you go. That’s what it is but that’s that ratio. The zinc to copper to manganese is in a certain ratio in the peptides in the oyster.
The ocean is our laboratory. We don’t do anything with that. That is nature’s decision.
When we digest those peptides, when we digest the protein from the oyster, those proteins are digested, broken into peptides, amino acids, they flip across the intestine, illuminate the blood and our body picks those peptides and makes these molecules like catalase, like glutathione, like superoxide dismutase. The amount of processes in the body that these are involved in are just myriad amount of processes. This is a biochemical quagmire. They do all sorts of things. Zinc alone controls over 300 enzyme reactions in the body.
Plant Analogies To Anatomy
When people ask me, “What’s it good for?” For all sorts of things. You can say that oysters are really good for sexual health. You can say they’re really good for skin conditions. You can say they’re really good for immunity, but zinc, copper, and manganese are involved in all those processes. It’s general health. It’s your overall health that this product that oysters are, that’s what they’re looking after. It’s everything. When you say what are they good for? There is a connection with oysters and fertility and sexuality.
That even goes back to the Greek doctrine of signatures where people believed that when certain plants and animals looked like parts of the human anatomy, they were good for it. That’s the case with walnuts. People thought they were good for your brain because their walnuts look like a brain, but subsequently, in more recent times, we found out that walnuts are full of omega-3s. They are good for your brain. Likewise, anything that looked like a phallus was said to be good for sexual health and some of them are ridiculous and some are true.
When you open oysters, they can look like certain parts of the female genitalia. The Greeks thought they were good for sexual health. In modern times, we now know they’re full of zinc and zinc is really important for testosterone production, for sperm production. The prostate gland has one of the highest concentrations of zinc in the body after the back of the retina. Very important there for eyesight. It’s very high in the prostate and prostate issues.
Prostate swelling usually is a lot of times associated with zinc deficiency. It’s really important for men and for women for sexual health. Absolutely, you can say an awful lot of things about these, what they’re good for. The zinc connection is really important because like we said earlier, oysters have ten times more zinc than the next source, which is beef. It’s the only food source on the planet that you can get that high level of zinc without an antagonism with copper and manganese.
I think I told you offline that I sometimes would take zinc because I was told we’re often deficient in zinc. It did not sit well with me because I think it wasn’t in from a natural form, probably. It also wasn’t in concert with the cofactors that you’ve mentioned. Like it didn’t come all together with other elements and I needed that for better balance.
It can make you quite nauseous. I know, I felt good. No, it’s horrible.
I didn’t like it. I know it’s also good for skin and hair and nails.
Keratosis production. There are thousands of biochemical reactions.
Tell me a story, Stephen.
Interestingly, it was a conversation I had with Chris Masterjohn, and he’s a fantastic biochemist, Chris, and Chris were telling me that the body can only absorb about 3 to 4 milligrams of zinc per meal. You see people taking 25 milligrams of synthetic zinc. Why would you even take that?
That was probably what I was doing.
Zinc And B12 Benefits
The body cannot even absorb that in one go. It’s nonsense. Whereas 2 to 3 oysters will give you 3 or 4 milligrams of zinc. Although we eat oysters by the half dozen or the dozen, the ideal way to really eat oysters is 2 or 3 at a time then you get the full if you’re just eating them for zinc, but there are so many other things in there. Like they have all 50, there are 59 elements with known biological roles in the body.
Some people will say that there are 100 or 102 elements, but according to science, and I’m just a scientist, that’s what it’s supposed to be, is to orthodox science, there are 59 elements with known biological roles in the body. Oysters would have all those elements in there because they’re coming from the sea but are particularly high in zinc and copper and iodine and selenium, biotin, and B12, they’re off the scale with B12 as well.
In certain parts of the U.S., now some of the vegan societies will say to their members, “You can eat oysters because they’re not animals because they don’t have a nervous system.” The reason for that is because zinc and B12 are animal sources. If you don’t have them, you can get a lot of complications. Kids who want to go vegan and they just stop eating meat and they don’t replace it with other stuff, if they’re not careful, it can end up with a B12 and zinc deficiency. They’re very serious. The highest vegetal source of zinc is pumpkin seed but you need to eat a lot of pumpkin seeds to get the same zinc that you have in one oyster.
There might be too many pumpkin seeds. Tell me, is it better to eat them raw or cooked? Does it make a difference in terms of the nutrients?
That’s debatable, but raw, in Europe we have a tradition of eating oysters raw or live. They have to be eaten live, unless you cook them, of course. If an oyster’s dead in the shell and you eat it, it can make you very sick because of bacteria in there. When you open them, they should be alive. They should be full of water and they should be alive and eat them. There’s possibly a little bit of snobbery around that now because oysters are eaten more so in restaurants in Europe now than at home.
Not everybody knows how to open them and that’s the big problem. Before I forget, so when you come to the Wise Traditions Conference in Orlando, we’ll have an oyster bar there. If you want to learn how to open an oyster, come along. We’ll show you how to do that but not everybody knows how to eat an oyster. Cooking them is easy. It’ll pop open if you cook them and then you can take the shell off. Like these big ones, I cannot eat these raw, they’re too big, they’re like a chicken breast.
They’re a bit big for me. Some people like them that big. These are gorgeous. If you grill these or barbecue them with a little bit of Parmesan cheese, some cream, and black pepper, they’re absolutely divine. You’re still going to get all the nutrients, the minerals there for sure by eating it that way. I wouldn’t have any problem with anyone cooking an oyster for sure. They’re delicious in chowders, in paella, in risottos.
That’s, in America, you have an industry there of shucked oyster meat. That’s where all the oysters went was the shucking industry. People shucked them and they canned the meat and sold it and people cooked it in recipes. You did it more so. In Europe, it was always live, and not everybody can open them. You tend to see them more in restaurants and it’s more of a treat, where it shouldn’t be.
Enhanced Zinc Absorption With Oyster Extract Aid
It should be more of it every day. Just a couple more questions as we prepare to wrap up. One is, that I want to hear a story, possibly of someone taking your Oyster Max supplements or just who’s benefited from oysters. What difference did you notice in someone’s life?
We make oyster extract, which is a dried oyster powder from the oyster, but it’s the same thing. It’s literally the meat of the oyster. Using the oyster therapeutically, we’ve had instances of people with chronic zinc deficiency who couldn’t get zinc into their body and doctors tried everything, injections, tablets, and their body just wouldn’t hold onto the zinc. Sometimes that’s secondary to things like Crohn’s disease or they found that they could get the zinc in through oyster or through oyster extract. Why?
That’s a research job, but possibly because of the cofactors like zinc and manganese, they were all together, and they’re in a peptide, where their bodies could absorb the peptide with the zinc in it, but not the elemental zinc from the synthetic supplements and they cured themselves, which is great. They’re great stories to hear back. We have a lot of our affiliates, people who use it, who work in certain niches, and the ones working in hormonal health and thyroid health. They say that the zinc, the iodine, and the selenium, again, another very important synergy, just taking iodine on its own is not a good idea.
It has a very important synergy with selenium to make it more bioavailable in the body. Again, with the oyster, you have the iodine with the selenium in nature’s ratio. A lot of issues around thyroid health seem to be ameliorated by using oysters. A lot of fertility issues. We’ve had cases of people saying they failed at IVF getting pregnant, taking up on their dose of oysters. A lot of skin conditions are used a lot by a lot of therapists and integrative doctors for skin conditions and everything.
As I say, one of the highest concentrations is at the back of the eye in the retina because you get a lot of oxidative damage there from UV light coming into your eye. The body has to neutralize those free radicals and it needs to make superoxide dismutase and glutathione and catalase, those master antioxidants that need zinc, copper, and manganese. The very high concentration of those master antioxidants at the back of the eye to protect it from the free radical damage.
The retina actually has one of the highest concentrations of zinc in the body. Again, very important for eyesight. If you see synthetic supplements for eyesight on the market, they all have zinc in them. Synthetic zinc. They usually put zinc with meso-zeaxanthin and lutein are three of the elements they sell for eyesight. Get your meso-zeazanthin from your leafy greens, and your zinc from your oysters. I cannot remember the source of lutein naturally from the diet, but I’m no doubt somebody out there does.
Let food be your medicine. It comes back to that. What do you say to the person, Stephen, who’s like, “Stephen, you’ve gone off the deep end. Literally, you’re too into oysters. They’re not that great.” I mean, what do you say to people who are a little skeptical or who say, “They’re squeamish. I don’t like the taste of oysters. I don’t like the texture.”
Surf and turf. A little oyster, a little beef, a little lamb. Get your organ meats, and get the Wise Traditions shopping guide. I live in Ireland and I get the Wise Traditions shopping guide and I cry when I look at it because we cannot have the meat shipped here. Likewise, we cannot send our oysters to America because the powers of the bee are no better than 2 or 3 hundred million years of evolution. Unfortunately, someday we’ve been working on that to be able to export live shellfish to the U.S. so you guys we ever get across that hurdle.
You guys will be in for a treat. If I can ever get some of those fantastic meat products from the Wise Traditions producers, I’ll be delighted. We have good beef and lamb in Ireland, so I’m not too worried. You have some great producers of pasture-raised chicken. I don’t see that here in Ireland yet and pork as well. I can get good organic pork, organic free-range pork here. Chicken’s a trickier one. We do have raw milk and great cheese producers here. Europe has a huge tradition of cheese-making, of course. Cheese is a good one.
That little cheese shop we were in in Dublin, they said one of the producers or the cheese makers literally only had four cows. Like that’s the artisan raw cheese that’s being produced in some of these countries.
Isn’t that amazing? We’re in the best cheesemongers in the country in the center of Dublin. One of the cheeses made by the producer has four cows and he’s able to sell their cheese mainly in the local farmers market. That cheese shop had some of it too, and it’s called carraignamuc. I had to buy a piece of it. It’s absolutely delicious. It’s a raw cow’s milk cheddar. Very powerful flavor. I’m looking forward to that tonight.
Embrace Transformation From Irritation To Beauty
I’m sorry I cannot stay longer. Speaking of that, we have to wrap up. I want to ask you the question I often pose at the end of the show. If the readers could just do one thing, Stephen, just one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?
Eat oysters at least once a week, by far. Learn from the oyster. You asked me this before, what did I learn from the oyster? When an oyster gets a grain of sand into a certain cavity in the body, and if a grain of sand goes in there, it irritates the oyster, but the oyster secretes mud or a pearl around it, then it turns into a beautiful pearl. In life, the things that irritate us, and when you’re a wise traditions person, a lot of things irritate you.
We can transform irritation into something beautiful, just like how an oyster turns a grain of sand into a pearl.
We’re looking at it every day. We know where it’s going wrong and we’re educating, we’re teaching, we’re educating all the time to try and reverse that. When things irritate you try and turn them into a thing of beauty and by educating people about how to eat properly, that’s a thing of beauty. That’s what the oyster can teach us. Anyone out there, get your hands on some oysters, in whatever way you can. Get the nutrition of oysters into your diet with everything else.
I’ve been so inspired and literally filled up by the oysters and all the good food that you’ve presented to me here in Ireland, including the good company, which is also a Wise Tradition. Thank you for your time, Stephen.
Thank you for coming to Ireland. If anybody comes to Ireland, look us up. We’ll talk to you. We’ll show you around. We’ll do whatever we can to help you and show you a good time here.
Thank you, Stephen.
—
Our guest today was Stephen Kavanagh. Visit his website, Marine Health Foods for more. I am Hilda Labrada Gore, the host and producer of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Wise Traditions podcast. You can find me at Holistic Hilda. For the transcript for this episode, visit our website, Weston A. Price, and click on the podcast page. Just a quick reminder to follow the Wise Traditions podcast on the platform of your choice. Wherever you listen to podcasts is where you can find us or download the Wise Traditions podcast app from the iTunes application store. Listen whenever you can and share your favorite episodes with friends. Thank you so much for reading, my friend. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.
Important Links
Episode Sponsors
🖨️ Print post
Leave a Reply