Stop Putting SPF On In The Morning: Lard, Tallow & Ancestral Skincare | Charles Mayfield

Wouldn't pig fat be not a great idea for people with acne? When you think about what's going to clog your pores, it's going to be the ingredients that are least similar to your biology. The skin of a pig is very similar to the skin of a human. Please don't put SPF on in your morning routine. Why? Why would you put a product on that comes with some maybe nefarious ingredients in the morning when it's doing you no good by the time you can actually get sunburned? If your shadow is taller than you are, you're not getting sunburned. The 8-step, 12-step, 15-product morning routine that's got SPF and cleanser, then a toner, then a serum, then a spot treatment, then a moisturizer, it's confusing. In skincare, we've been taught to chase complexity and cleanliness over nutrition, over deep bioavailable lipids. We've been taught to chase complexity and cleanliness over nutrition, Have we all been duped on beef tallow? Because right now, the wellness world is slathering cow fat on their faces like it's the greatest skincare breakthrough of the century, while today's guest says that we may have completely ignored the animal that humans historically used the most. The pig, yes. This episode is about putting lard on your face. And before you click away horrified, today's guest says that modern skincare may have become chemically overcomplicated, biologically mismatched for human skin, and completely disconnected from how humans actually cared for skin for generations. Charles Mayfield is the founder of Pharaoh Skincare, regenerative farmer, a TED Talk speaker, and one of the loudest advocates for what he believes is the most misunderstood animal in human health, pigs. After a severe sunburn recovery changed the trajectory of his life, Charles became obsessed. He said, with a question almost nobody in the Maha movement is asking. If we care so much about what goes in our bodies, why are we ignoring what we absorb onto our bodies every single day? But first, please pause and leave a five-star review. I really went there in this interview, so if you appreciate that, take five seconds on Apple or Spotify to click five stars. This show is all about healing a sick culture, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Watch this interview on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. Please welcome regenerative farmer and founder of Pharaoh Skincare, Charles Mayfield, the lard expert, to Culture Apothecary. Why did you get into this? Why do you, of all people, care about skincare? I had a remarkable recovery from a very nasty sunburn, which I would make the argument, if your melanin content is low enough, everyone can close their eyes and imagine that epic sunburn you had. I came home with a really nasty sunburn. My mother, we used to go to Mobile Bay. She's from Mobile Bay. Alabama? Alabama, yes. Point Clear, Alabama. They have an ocean there? They have a bay connected to. The only thing I know that Mobile has is that leprechaun in the tree. It look like a leprechaun to me. How y'all do look up in the tree? Could be a crackhead that got hold to the wrong stuff. This water's all smells right here. This is a special leprechaun flute. I want to know where the gold at. This amateur sketch resembles what many of you say the leprechaun looks like. Mobile is a. You should visit. It's a remarkable nugget of American history. You know, I really want to go to Birmingham. I've heard, like, lots of cool things about Birmingham that they're kind of doing stuff. Am I wrong? My lineage is more south of there. Okay. I've been to Birmingham a couple times. They have dog tracks and all the fun things. And Birmingham's a cool town, but Mobile's pretty special. So, whenever we would go to the beach, Florida or Mobile or anywhere, the jar of aloe vera. would go in the fridge so that when the inevitable sunburn came, it would be cool. I come home. This is July 5th, 2019. I'll never forget the day. I am barbecued. Like, probably borderline second degree sunburn. Oh, my word. It was bad. And I'm sitting in my living room, miserable, and it hit me. I had this jar of lard from the pigs I was raising in my fridge that I was baking with and frying with and doing all the things with. So, you were a pig farmer. Oh, yeah. Pigs are remarkable. They're a remarkable animal. You want to know the biggest threat ever to our society today? AI. Agricultural ignorance. Nobody raises pigs anymore. Nobody raises anything anymore. Nobody has a garden anymore. I think a lot of the ills that we face today, whether it be skincare or dietary or cultural, have a lot to do with the fact that we have very few people, people that even understand how food is grown. So, anyway, I'm sitting there. I have this jar of lard, and I think, why not? It can't hurt. It's just a different kind of aloe vera. And, Alex, I put it on that evening. I put it on the next morning, and then I went back to farming. Didn't think anything of it. My sunburn was gone in two or three days. I only put it on twice. That was really cool. I never pee. That was the lightbulb moment. Because I had memories of, you know, I go to the beach with my family. I get sunburned. We put the aloe vera on. Mom cakes it on for weeks at a time. And then two weeks later, I'm, you know, at tennis or soccer practice, and my skin finally gives in and peels. I never peeled. What I did was I started tinkering around. And you've heard this before. You know, if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it. I call it my paleo lens. I wrote these. I wrote these paleo cookbooks many, many years ago. I took that lens and shined it on skincare. I'd never read a skincare ingredient list before. And it's like, I can't pronounce any of these things. No wonder my skin peeled or I didn't necessarily feel great after a sunburn or a scrape or a bruise or anything. And then my daughter, you know, this was back 2019. She's 11 now. You know, when you drive a Ford, you see all the Fords on the road. I have an 11-year-old daughter. I see all of the marketing. To my young, doesn't need any skincare at 11 years old. You know, part of the reason I launched the company, A, it worked for arguably the most common acute skincare condition to people with fairer skin. I started reading ingredients. And, you know, none of that was appealing. And I also started testing it. Like, okay, sunburn. Great. I started using this aftershave. I haven't had razor burn in four years. The men just perked up. Yeah. And so it worked for that. And then I get a mosquito bite. I haven't itched. I haven't itched, Alex, in four years. You think the wellness industry got obsessed with the wrong animal fat? Maybe. It's not the wrong fat. It's a piece of the pie, if you will. It's not a complete fat. Okay. So beef tallow is not a complete fat when it comes to using it on our skin? Yeah. So, well, let's talk about the skin. So the part that you see, the epidermis, is basically two parts. And if I can make an analogy, imagine a brick wall. So you've got skin cells. Those are the bricks. And then you've got lipids. That's the mortar in between the bricks. To get into the wall, you've got to have more emollient fatty acids. I mean, we make sebum, Alex, right? Human sebum. Our glands make sebum. And you need oleic acid. You need linoleic acid. You need palmitic fatty acids. You need stearic fatty acids. But the stearic fatty acids are more waxy. They're more occlusive. And so they're going to sit on top. The skincare industry's spent 100 years trying to figure out how to make products that mimic our skin. We just started with the one that mimics our skin the most. Tallow's fantastic. I love tallow. It's a little high in stearic acid. And we use it in our product. It's fantastic. Optimal skincare is about moisturizing and sealing the skin. And so the more emollient fats, those oleic and linoleic, fatty acids are more absorbable. Tallow has them, but it's just got such a higher degree of stearic fatty acid that it's going to preferentially sit on top more. So we bring them together. Ideally, you want to use skincare that has tallow and lard in it. Ideally, you want to use an animal-based fat, first and foremost. We're an animal. Coconut oil was all the craze there for a while. You know, it's super comedogenic. You're not a coconut. You're a monogastric, omnivorous mammal. Right? So, yes, I would say preferentially, you want to use an animal fats. You know, tallows hot. I love tallow. You had one of my heroes on. I love Bethany to death. Primally pure is amazing. Tallow is going to do better at sitting on top and sealing in the moisture. Lard, we call it smart lard. Lard is going to do a better job of soaking in. And if you look at human sebum, it has both components. It has those more occlusive fatty acids that sit on top, and it has the more emollient fatty acids that soak in. And so back to sort of this brick wall analogy, you need fats that are going to get in between the bricks and fortify your skin in that regard. Your skin is a semipermeable membrane. It's designed to sort of keep moisture in and let sweat out. And so it's got this really amazing matrix of cells and lipids. So we need to be paying a lot of attention to pigs. Yes, that's the other piece to this that's I'm glad you said that. Lard comes from the subcutaneous fat of a pig. I'm sure you know this, but we've got two basic kinds of fat, visceral fat, internal organ fat, and subcutaneous fat. For everyone watching, you know, this is our subcutaneous fat, and then inside our organ viscera, we've got fat. So tallow, it comes from any herbivorous mammal, but most commonly a cow. And it's coming from the soot, which is the organ fat, the kidney fat of a cow. Why is that important? There's no metabolic pathway in any mammal to take nutrition or toxicity, either one, good or bad, and store it in the visceral fat. So you can harvest visceral fat from almost any animal, and it's very clean, even if the animal grew up. I'm not making this claim about any of the tallow or animal fat-based brands, but you can harvest soot from a feedlot animal, and it's going to be remarkably clean, because there's just no way for toxicity or poor nutrition or poor lifestyle to manifest itself in the visceral fat. Now, the visceral fat will grow. It will get bigger with metabolic dysfunction. It will gain size. This is a part of the problem with the human metabolic condition today. However, when you start talking about storing injectable, we're talking livestock here, right? We're talking livestock. We're not talking cows. We're talking cows. We're talking cows. We're talking cows. We're talking cows. We're talking cows. We're talking cows. Just like a pig, just like a cow. And so, regrettably, in this country, I did a TED Talk on this. They labeled it misinformation, by the way. Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah. Don't take health advice from this guy. You know, he's, yeah. Regrettably, in this country, less than 2% of the pigs raised in America grow up in conditions that allow the animal to thrive. Most of them are in a, you know, concentrated animal feeding operation. And so, when you put a pig, just like a human, when you put a pig in a horrible environment, feed it horribly, and deny it the sun, that's the big one, I believe, is the denial of access to the sun. Pigs metabolize vitamin D the exact same way we do through sun exposure. They sunburn. They're one of the few mammals on the planet that actually can sunburn. And so, in that environment, their subcutaneous fat isn't of high quality. So, when you raise a healthy, happy pig, their subcutaneous fat is a lock and a key for truly moisturizing our skin. Okay. So, break it down like we're five. What does lard do better than tallow? Soak in between the bricks. So, you've got your brick wall. You want to get mortar in between the brick. If you strip all the mortar off of a brick wall, you've got a pile of bricks that'll fall over. And we don't want that. We want a very strong interconnection between the lipids that sit between our skin cells and the dermis and the lower levels of fat. And so, it's going to get in between the bricks. The tallow is going to act like, you know, again, you've got this brick wall. You've got the mortar in between the bricks. But then you've also, you could plaster the outside of the brick wall to cover it up. And so, again, these are both critical fats. I like to say we've got a complete animal-based skin moisturizer because it's moisturizing and sealing. I like to look at the medical field and I like to look at the skincare industry at large to determine. So, skin, the skin of a pig is very similar to the skin of a human. A lot of skincare products are tested on pigs because their follicle dispersion, their skin. We've trained surgeons up until probably the last couple decades. Every surgeon on the planet was trained on pigs. Their organs align just like us. Their skin is very similar to human skin. How pig skin differs from human skin mostly is because of the external exposure that pig skin gets. You know, pigs live outside. We don't live outside anymore. They're on four legs. They're running into trees. We're not doing any of those things. So, on the outside, we're not doing any of those things. So, on the surface, it appears slightly different, slightly tougher than our skin, but that's what our skin does. Our skin responds to its environment. That's why your elbow is tougher than your lower eye. These blood work companies are often lying about the price. I keep seeing people say, oh, it's only $30 a month. No, that is not actually what you're going to pay. Here's what happens. You sign up. Great. Then you need your blood drawn. Well, that's extra. You want to talk to a human about your results? That's another fee. You need supplements? Separate purchase. You need real treatment like hormones or peptides? Sorry, not available. Go find another doctor and then pay again. So, that cheap membership that you guys are thinking about doing for getting your biomarkers tested and all of your blood work actually turns into this expensive scavenger hunt where nothing connects. So, this is why I switched to Jevity. Unlike a lot of these other testing companies like Function Health or other ones that are super popular, Jevity is not only going to give you all of the answers in your blood work. They have an entire team to go through your blood work. 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Listen to me. You can upload your results from previous blood work that you've gotten done that you have no idea how to understand without paying anything on GoJevity.com and they will tell you what it means. GoJevity.com. This is all free. You can use code Alex, okay? GoJevity.com code Alex. You know that I'm always talking about the basics when it comes to health, the things that actually move the needle. And one of the simplest things that I've added that I genuinely notice a difference from is red light therapy with Juve. Healthy light exposure matters so much more than people realize. Red and near infrared light have been studied for their ability to support cellular energy, which affects everything from skin health, inflammation, recovery, sleep, and just how you feel day to day. For me, Juve has become part of my morning routine. I'll do a smoothie, getting ready. It takes 10 minutes. It helps me feel energized and clear-headed. I've also noticed such a difference in my skin and overall glow when I'm consistent. My joint pain, I suffer with that from Hashimoto's, really helps with thyroid. What I love about Juve specifically is that this is not some gimmicky wellness gadget. They use clinically proven wavelengths. They deliver a safe and effective dose of light and their panels are true medical grade devices that are independently safety tested and certified. That matters to me because there are so many knockoffs out there when it comes to red lights. Juve also has options depending on what you need. They've got little targeted devices you can travel with or just hold on like one specific area. Those are really, really inexpensive. And then if you want, you know, like a full-blown body panel, you can get those as well. They've got everything based on your budget at juve.com slash Alex. Try it for yourself. Go to juve.com slash Alex, J-O-O-V-V.com slash Alex. When it comes to looking at our skincare through the lens of how our ancestors looked at skincare, what sorts of things have we kind of lost that we really need to be getting back? The number one thing is simplicity. I mean, you know, I follow these things on social media channels. The eight-step, 12-step, 15-product morning routine that's got SPF and, you know, you've got a cleanser, then a toner, then a serum, then a spot treatment, then a moisturizer, then another spot treatment. And then, you know, it's confusing. You need to couple in with that. This fear of the sun today, we don't get nearly as much sun as we used to. That's a huge part of skin health is just that ongoing constant exposure. But for me, it's the complexity. And the data bears this out. We've got more estheticians, more dermatologists, more products than ever before in history. And, you know, you go to the National Eczema Association and chronic skin conditions are on the rise. That doesn't make any sense. And so I would say the single greatest problem today is they make it overly complicated. I would say in the acne department, I would say tallow would be a poorer choice. Why? Okay. So if you've got acne, who are we talking about here? If it's an adult or a teenager, you know, an adult. Okay. So if you've got acne, what I would say is your cells, your glands are overproducing oil. Now there's some complexity there. Are you a male or a female? Because females tend to put makeup on, men tend to not. And so when you talk about acne, you're talking about clogged pores and or a pore that's not able to properly breathe. And so back to these fatty acids, the more occlusive fatty acids that end up on your skin, the more it's going to block a pore's ability to get rid of oil, get rid of whatever it's trying to, again, your skin's a semi-permeable. It's trying to get things out and also hold on to moisture. It's doing both of those things. One of the biggest threats to our skin today is we are just over sanitized. And so if someone's got acne, I would say first and foremost, put the alcohol wipes down, put the cleansers down, uh, you know, a nice mild soap, please use soap to, to clean your skin, but the body washes, anything that's not labeled soap, uh, Alex, two things. One is it did not go through the saponification process, which is an age old process of taking lye or sodium hydroxide and mixing it with fat. And your audience will know this people that have a gluten intolerance can somehow tolerate like a sourdough bread because it went through this fermentation process. Okay. Well, so the, the saponification process has similar features in that it takes this, I mean, lye, if you get lye on your skin, it's not, it's not a pretty thing, but it takes this harsh chemical and it converts it into the most remarkable cleansing agent. If it doesn't say, so this was probably the smartest thing the FDA ever did in the 1940s. So we developed this really effective wound sanitary powder for world war two. And of course, like many things we developed for world war two, the war's over. And it's like, man, we're really good at making this, this powder. We need to, we need to make cleansing agents out of it. And the FDA said, you can do that, but you can't call it soap because it's not going through this process. If it says body wash or beauty bar or cleansing, anything other than soap, then what that's telling you is that somewhere on the ingredient list is a really harsh. Cleansing agent that did not go through this age old process, making it effective, but so it's, it's hyper stripping the oil off your skin. And so with acne back to circle back to, to acne, what you put on your skin is important. You want to stay away from anything that's going to stand in the way of your pores breathing, but more importantly, you want to stop hyper stripping all of the natural oil. Your glands are producing oil. All the time. We don't want to, we don't want to over strip. We don't want to pull more mortar out of the, out of the brick wall. If that makes sense. Are there any other big misconceptions people have about oil and clog pores? I think the serum industry is, is a pretty good industry just because the fats and oils in serums are a far better cry than a lot of the preservatives and emulsifiers that are in a lot of skincare products. However, the misconception is there's a couple of misconceptions. This. Is it going to clog your pores animal fats, get, get labeled that coconut oil, everything. Everyone wants to talk about the comedogenic factor of an oil, but what they don't talk about is all the other ingredients that are in that product. We're not a plant. We're certainly not a petroleum derivative. And so when you think about what's going to clog your pores, it's going to be the ingredients that are least similar to your biology. And. You know, makeup is a great example. Now there's some great cleaner makeup brands out there with makeup. You've got two factors. You've got, what do we make it out of? And then the obvious you're putting stuff that's not biologically aligned with you on your face. And if it gets in your pores, it could cause a problem. Yeah. I would say the, the biggest misconception with acne specifically is the idea that an animal fat we'll, we'll call it any animal fat is going to somehow be more poor clogging than any of the other products out there that have plant-based fats, seed oils, or petroleum derivatives. Speaking of petroleum derivatives, what's wrong with using Vaseline on your face? Vaseline is remarkable at sealing your skin off from the outside world. But again, we've got this semi-permeable membrane. The only area where I would imagine Vaseline could be handy is if the skin barrier is broken. So a cut, a scrape. We've got blood coming out because it's going to hermetically seal that wound. Our skin is really good at keeping the bugs out. You know, there's, there's microorganisms flying around this room right now and they are constantly on our skin. We've got bugs living in our, in us and on us all the time. And our skin's really good at keeping them out. But when, if, and when we get a cut or that, that barrier is truly broken, that we have to worry about the bugs getting on the inside. Are there toxin worries using makeup or skincare that has oil byproducts in it on your skin? I haven't looked at the studies. I'm not sure that, I'm not sure many have been done. I would imagine, yes, again, it flows back to how does what I'm putting on my skin match up with the biology of my skin? So Vaseline might be a highly effective sealer to keep out the bugs, but it's not nourishing your skin. It's certainly not encouraging it to heal. Uh, there was a study done, JAMA did it in 2017. They put Vaseline next to Neosporin, the most widely sold antibacterial cream on the planet. And they did it. They did a, uh, an abrasion study where they, okay, the skin barrier is broken. You know, these subjects were going to use Vaseline. These subjects were going to use this antibacterial. It's Vaseline with antibacterial. Okay. There's antibacterial agents in it. Zero efficacy between the two. If my skin is broken, the goal is to clean the wound. This is one area where I would say alcohol is a good thing to put on your skin in that brief moment. Clean it out, get, get everything situated. And then really all you've got to do is cover the wound with a fat of some sort. Fat is an antibacterial antimicrobial environment. And so it's almost as if you could put any fat, tallow would actually be. Ideally an optimal fat, I think for, for a, for wound care. And then of course you put a bandaid in or a bandage or something like that. But again, the, the fat that you're putting on your skin should share as much biology with you as possible. My audience knows that I'm a massive fan of active skin repair using hypochlorous acid on wound healing. It's a great product. Yeah. So like they know that I would say avoid Neosporin at all costs and then use that instead. When it comes to larvae. I mean, I'm a big fan of larvae. I'm a big fan of larvae. three hours. I mean, it says it right there on the label. You've got to reapply this every now and then. You live in a very sunny place, but here's a tip for everybody. So why would you put a product, and we can agree that most SPF products are chemically laden, chemical SPFs. There's some great mineral-based products out there. But why would you put a product on that comes with some maybe nefarious ingredients in the morning when it's doing you no good by the time you can actually get sunburned? No one has ever brought this up before. It's a really good trick. If your shadow is taller than you are, which this time of year, it's going to get shorter than you about 1030 in the morning, depends on where you live. But it's going to get shorter than you at 1030 in the morning. So the shadow is a really nice way to gauge what is the angle of the sun in the sky. Because if it's steep enough, this is why we can't get vitamin D in the winter, because the sun just stays so low in the sky. And so if your shadow is taller than you are, there is enough atmospheric interference, you're not going to get sunburned. I have a confession. I'm a complete salt snob. In fact, if you've ever seen me in person, there's a decent chance you've seen me pull a little Redmond real salt pocket shaker out of my purse. I'm not kidding. This thing goes everywhere with me. Restaurants, airports, road trips, I've become that person. And once you understand the difference in salt, it's really hard to go back. Most table salt is heavily processed. It's bleached. It's stripped of its natural minerals and often contains additives and anti-caking agents, which are nasty and very bad for you. It's basically the ultra-processed version of salt. So we're told that salt is bad for us, but really it's because we've just been eating this crap, fake salt. Redmond real salt is completely different. I mean, it's real. It's an ancient, unrefined sea salt sourced from an underground seabed in Utah. This is the salt that we should be totally covering our food in. Instead of stripping everything out, they leave the naturally occurring trace minerals in, more than 65 of them. Those little pink and red flecks you can actually see in the salt, those are the minerals. I've even been to the Redmond salt mine myself, which is such a cool experience because you get to see exactly where your food comes from. Lick my walls. And I've also become super obsessed with their steak seasoning. It's made with real salt, organic herbs and spices. This is going to take your steak, your chicken, your burgers, your vegetables, really anything to the next level. And once you switch to real unrefined salt, regular table salt that you get at the restaurant or whatever just does not taste the same. Go to redmond.life and use code Alex for 15% off whatever you want to buy. That's code Alex for 15% off at redmond.life. Trust me, this is one of those tiny swaps that somehow is going to change your entire kitchen, and the way that your whole family enjoys dinner. You're picking up your daughter from gymnastics, swinging by the bank, grabbing groceries, but you still want to look at least a little pulled together. I mean, not red carpet, let's be real, just alive. That's why I've been loving Adele Natural Cosmetics Loose Foundation. It's one of those rare products that actually makes you look fresh and polished without looking like you're wearing makeup. You know what I mean? It's just smoothing everything out. It's evening your skin tone, taking down redness, but it still lets your skin look like skin. And the best part, it's clean beauty that actually performs. Adele makes non-toxic makeup that doubles the skin care. So instead of loading your face with junk, you're putting on ingredients that are actually nourishing your skin. This foundation is lightweight, breathable, and buildable, so it's perfect whether I'm running around all day or just trying to fake that I slept eight hours. Adele is also a Christian-founded, family-owned company, and if you're worried about finding your shade of foundation, they make it so easy with their complimentary color matching. You literally just email them, and they will help you find your perfect match. Go to AdeleNaturalCosmetics.com. Use code Alex for 25% off your first purchase. That's AdeleNaturalCosmetics.com. Code Alex for 25% off your first purchase. Is there a difference between the tub of lard that you can buy at the grocery store and skincare grade lard? Like, can I just go to Walmart and buy a tub of lard and then put that on my face? Please don't do that. Why? You could, and it would probably be a far cry better than, you know, your drunk elephant, your Estee Lauder, all of that garbage. Okay, so let's be, there's a spectrum, right? It's bad, better, good, best. That animal, if you bought it at Walmart, if you bought it in most places, that animal, that poor pig, grew up in an absolutely toxic environment. Lard comes from their subcutaneous fat, so, I mean, we use more injectable antibiotics and hormones in livestock in this country than we do in humans. And so, if you don't want that getting in you, then you should avoid the fat, the subcutaneous fat from that animal, so. And you're saying we don't want that in us because anything we put on our skin is absorbed into our bloodstream. Most things that end up on our skin, and if you've ever rolled around in poison ivy, our skin loves oil. Some oils are better than others. And so, yes, it goes directly in the bloodstream. This is the biggest reason why I want to put people's, the Maha movement and everyone, more attention on skincare. We have that. We have this disconnection between, oh, it goes on my skin. I'm not eating it, but you are. And the problem is, if you swallow something that your body doesn't agree with, we've got a really highly sensitive, fast exit system. It'll come out the north tunnel or the south tunnel really fast. If you've ever eaten anything that didn't agree with you, you know what I'm talking about. Our skin has not had to develop that sensitivity because up until the last hundred years, non-natural really ever got on it. And again, if you look at the skincare industry today, 99% of the ingredients on that label, our skin has no idea what that is. It's still going to let it in and it goes directly into the bloodstream. It's not this highly acidic environment like our GI tract. And so, yeah, we're letting a lot of really nefarious stuff in. It's a compounding problem with the hormone dysregulation. We've got microplastics. We've got all these carbons and other things in skincare. And then we've got all the preservatives that end up in our food. And so all of that is leading to, you know, we're seeing young girls in this country have an 11-year-old daughter. We're seeing them hit puberty two, three, four years earlier than most of the other developed world. And skincare is a great, it's a shining example of some of the issues here. I mean, we have the FDA prohibits the use of 11 chemicals in skincare in the US. And by contrast, there's a list of like 1,600. That's a problem. Yeah. Yeah. We're letting a lot of stuff in that we shouldn't. How do you know if a lard is good to put on your face? Well, you could source it yourself. Pastured is a really good indicator. There's the classic trope, you know, sort of shake your farmer's hand. If you take a human and deny them access to the sun, it almost doesn't matter what you feed them. They're going to be a sick, unhappy human being. The inverse is also true. If you get someone that exercises and they're outside and they got some friends and they play and they sweat and they do, you can get away with eating some not, you know, approved foods. You're not going to feel necessarily the best, but so pastured pork is a good place to start. What's actually happening biologically when our skin becomes dry? The skin cells bring stuff in and the lipids keep moisture from leaving. Back to this conversation. What's happening when we've got dry skin? It's not a moisturization problem. I believe it's twofold. It's we're over-cleansing. So we're stripping, over-stripping all these oils off of your glands, Alex, make oil. So we should not be washing our faces as much as we are. Absolutely not. And certainly not with body wash, beauty bar, all the, remember these harsh cleansers that didn't go through the saponification process. They're over-stripping the oil is what keeps moisture in. We don't have a moisturizer problem. We have a skin barrier problem. Let's restore the barrier. Let's relax. You asked this question earlier. What's, what's the biggest thing with our ancestry and skincare versus today? Our skin got a lot of rest 200 years ago. I mean, how often did you shower? You didn't shower. How often did you bathe? Once a week, if you were lucky 200 years ago, I love this. So, you're, you're in the same circles with me and you see the pictures floating around of like the California beach from the 1950s and 60s. And there's no obese people. Everyone wants to talk about their weight. Look at their skin. Yeah. It is glowing and remarkable. Sunscreen didn't hit the market until the fifties. Chemical sunscreens didn't hit it until the seventies. I want people to look at that picture and see the copper skin, like this bronze, beautiful skin, you know, and your skin, Alex is a radar and a billboard. The radar is we're sensing, you know, we're sensing our environment. Obviously it's a part of our sensory system, but it's a billboard. It's going to signal health. And, and part of the problem today is we're bludgeoned. We're just, we're just overtaxing our skin so much that we've lost this sensitivity. What is eczema? It's a, it's an something on the inside that needs fixing. - Right. - And so, need to let that billboard do its job. So why do so many hydrating products leave you feeling drier? It's the ultimate capitalist strategy. Let's put a product on your skin that's going to, in the moment, feel very hydrating, but ultimately dry you out. It's not feeding your biology. The ingredients on that product don't align with your biology. Do you think that people confuse expensive skincare with healthy skincare? Yes. Augustus Bader is a great example. You know, half ounce of eye cream is $250. The human condition today is a greater testament to propaganda than intuition. I mean, here I am trying to explain that putting pig fat or any animal fat on your skin is a good thing. And people look at me like I have three heads, but they're willing to put a petroleum derivative or some, you know, paraben. Oh, the chemicals are obnoxious, but you know, this is the play in skincare today. I'm going to find some obscure nut or seed oil from the horn of Africa or from the Andes mountains. And I'm going to, I'm going to titrate it and break it down. And then I'm going to put it on the label. This is, we did a double blind placebo test on 10 people and they said it was awesome. So the next thing you know, you're putting, you know, some crazy seed oil or nut oil. I'm not saying good, but jojoba, jojoba oil is a great example. It's, it's a good oil for your skin. It's not bad, but it's like the dessert oil. We need to eat the steak first. We need to put the real animal-based fats on our skin before we start talking about having ice cream. What is the skincare equivalent of ultra processed food? Your cleanser is the cereal. Your toner is the oatmeal. Your serum is the orange juice. And what you really need is to eat some scrambled eggs and bacon. What is the connection between regenerative farming and healthy skin? Well, what we eat matters. Collagen is probably the biggest scam in skincare. We don't absorb, so any collagen-based skincare product, it doesn't absorb through the skin well. Now they're going to tell you they, you know, micro processed it down and now it can break the skin barrier. Collagen that we eat, I'm not saying collagen's bad. It's a fantastic thing to eat. But in terms of how it works for collagen production, it doesn't do anything towards that. It just feeds the rest of your body. But yeah, you want to eat, again, an animal-based lifestyle. You want animal-based fats and proteins going in your mouth, and you want animal-based fats going on your skin. See if you can guess what movies these famous quotes are from. Here's to looking at you, kid. You can't handle the truth. May the force be with you. You like jazz? You like jazz? You like jazz? You like jazz? You like jazz? You know, men are putting things on their skin. It's not what you would classify as skin care, but it is. And yeah, I mean, it's just as toxic as women's skin care, albeit less, just because, you know, I don't know any men that have an eight-step morning skin care routine. Right. I don't know any. I'm not saying they don't exist. But yeah, it's a burgeoning market. I do think, you know, the skin care industry exists today because, you know, there's a lot of people out there that are, you know, they're not going to go out there and do anything. Because men don't hunt and women don't cook. Because 200 years ago, the man would go out and I'm speaking in general terms here. The man would go out and hunt the deer or slaughter the pig, and he would have to turn that into meat. So you have to eviscerate a carcass. You have to take this animal and convert it into cuts of meat. You can't do that without being completely covered in animal fat. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. And then he would bring that in. And the homemaker, who had a jar of lard or a can of lard back then, that's, we cooked with two fats prior to 1911. We cooked with lard and we cooked with butter. That was it. Tallow was for soap making and candle making. Tallow, and again, I love tallow. It's fantastic. But there's a reason Procter & Gamble bleached crystallized cottonseed oil, Crisco. There's a reason they bleached it white. Why? Because if you walked into your general store in 1910 to get your nails and your turpentine and your leather and your flour and your sugar, there is a 100% chance you walked out of that store with a can of lard, not tallow. Lard is a softer fat. This is one of the reasons I think it's a better skincare product as well. It's tallow. What do we have to do to tallow to make it pliable? Well, we have to whip it. We got to put some olive oil in there with it or some other, I mean, you know, I love tallow. It basically has to warm in your hands a little bit. It's like, it's completely solid. Like, I have to like scoop it out and then warm it up in my hands if I'm going to use that on my skin. That's right. And imagine in a culinary sense, I need half a cup of fat. Well, I mean, with tallow, you got to dig in there. With lard, you just scoop it. It's a softer fat. I have heard, and I know this is an episode about skincare, but I have not tried it yet, but have read many, many times that lard is like the best thing to use in business. I wanna buy ham from you. - I can't wait to farm again. I'm not farming anymore. had to hang that hat up. Because you're focusing on the skincare? Well, I have a lot of friends in the regenerative ag community, so I'm able to source the fats for my product from the highest integrity sources, which is all fantastic. I would not be sitting here with you where I'm still farming because it's hard to, you know, it's not a lot of work every day, but it's work every single day. Because your animals have to see you. You have to check on water lines and all those fun things. If you read your great-grandmother's cookbook, leaf lard was prized as a baking and frying fat because it would not impart a flavor or smell to your pie crust. Which beef tallow does. Oh, for sure. And beef tallow is great. I think beef tallow is a, I'm not going to say a superior fat for frying. I think they're neck and neck. But it's got that extra flavor that would taste good on potatoes. Yeah, that's why French fries. Same with duck fat. I like potatoes with duck fat in the oven. Yes. Now, I would, yes. Oven bake them and then put a little duck fat on them. Yep. Duck fat and paprika, garlic powder, salt and pepper, maybe even a little bit of cinnamon, especially on the sweet potato in the oven. Anyway. A little pluck. Yes. You know pluck. Oh. Pluck seasoning. James is my brother from another mother. I'm obsessed with James. I interviewed him before the show transitioned into Culture Apothecary when it had a different name. Back on Spillover. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, really? OG. Oh, yeah. I've told all my followers, I'm like, if your kids are struggling, eating vegetables, put pluck on it. My kids are obsessed. They will want to lick it out of the jar. Have you tried his new flavors? I just got them in the mail. The habanero one? Yeah. That on cottage cheese is an upgrade. And he came out with, this is like total free, pluck, plug. I love you, James. Yeah, we love you, James. He also came out with that cinnamon that has organ meats in it, which you can't taste. And that's like the coolest ever to have cinnamon with organ meats. So, I mean, he's just killing it. So, he's taking. He's taking animal organs and converting them into something amazingly healthy and nutritionally dense for our GI tract. I'm taking fat and converting it into something that's amazingly nourishing and bioavailable for our skin. So, where do people go if they want to learn more about LARD skincare and what's good, what isn't, and products to use? There's not a lot of studies on LARD because I believe the minute you start studying it, it's going to reveal that this. It's totally available fat. Now, again, you have to raise the pig right. Undergirding my mission is to celebrate and encourage pastured pork production. That is, let's celebrate the farmer, let's celebrate regenerative ag. Shout out to Joel Salatin. I would not be here were it not for him. We love Joel. And Will Harris and all the. And Will. They're remarkable. And I would like to live in a world where farmers make as much money as bankers. I would like to live in a country where we spend more on food than healthcare. Well, it is healthcare. But people don't realize that. And we put food, quality food, you know, decent meat on the lowest part of the totem pole. And we think we need to spend the most with our doctors, not realizing that if you take that money and you put it towards quality food and diet for your family, you're not going to have to spend as much with doctors. We're the only country that does. I mean, one of the only countries that does that. You look in some of these countries in Europe, they do prioritize food. More than we do, especially in Scandinavia. One of the reasons I'm in skincare is because it maps onto food very well. So we've been taught to chase calories, not nutrition. And, you know, again, the human experiment today is a greater testament to. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it's more propaganda than intuition. What is your skincare line called? What's the website? And then what are your top three most popular products? It's Pharoah, and the website is pharoah.shop. Our top three products, it's very easy. We have a skin food and a face food. Those are highly concentrated, almost like a spot treatment, but I love putting them all over. And then we have a body food, which is a little bit more of a tallow-heavy product. So it's just sort of designed for all over. It's going to. It's got lard in it, but it's. Those are the top three. What's the difference between skin food and face food? Back to. Remember leaf lard? Yeah. And why is it so valuable in the baking and culinary world? Because it's odorless and odorless. So I put a higher concentration. It's also a little bit more emollient, so it's going to soak into thinner or more fragile skin, which, let's be honest, the eyes and the face, you'd never rest your head up against a tree, but you'll do that with your elbows. So we use it more predominantly in our face product, because it's up by the nose. And a lot of people, you know, we don't have an odorless product. It's unscented. Tallow is a more odorless fat. You said that earlier, and I agree with you. Lard is a wonderfully delightful smell, but we have a scented and an unscented. And so the skin one is the higher concentration for, like, spots, like a sunburn on your shoulders or something? Yes. Yes. It's our lard-heaviest product, which I believe is the. I believe of the three fats, it's the most effective at feeding your skin. I got the coolest text the other day. You know, Hillary Boynton, School of Lunch. Yes. Hillary and I are like besties. And she is in, I guess she's visiting family in the Northeast. You know, she's from up there. And she sends me this text, and it's a picture of three dop kits. I guess she's got some nieces and nephews, triplets, and she's like, I can't believe it. And it was a girl and two boys, triplets, and they all had our skin food in their dop kit. Now, Hillary didn't get it for them. These are 22-year-old. It was the coolest thing ever. What is a dop kit? A dop kit, it's like your toiletry bag that you take on trips. So this is like a family get-together. Okay. And she walks in the bathroom. And they were using your stuff. All three, I mean, I can show you the picture. She sent me, she's like, I can't believe it. All three of my nieces and nephews, these triplets, have your product. And of course, I'm zooming in. I was like, who's got the sin in and unsin in? It was the cool. Well, I mean, all of the marketing is pointed at younger and younger kids. And if you understand the skincare model and how it works, it's going to help you. And I think it's going to help you. And I think they poison us and how they get us addicted and how they're truly not nourishing our skin. They're not feeding it. And so it's kind of like the candied cigarettes. I'm old enough to remember candied cigarettes. There's no nicotine in candied cigarettes. You're getting them addicted to the process. And so these 22 is sort of on the low, young end of our general target demo. We're probably closer to, I'd say, 30 to 50. They're eating this stuff alive. But to see these three and I know Hillary didn't buy it for them. It was just so cool. And it was our skin food. Yeah. We have tons of mutual friends. Hillary Boynton from School of Lunch, Hilda, Labrador, Corey, Corey Dunn, and Christine. You're heavily involved in all of the Weston A. Price stuff. I'm pretty involved there. Again, I've been regenerative ag, different circles. I end up at a paleo background. And so there was a conference in Austin for years called Paleo FX. And it was, I mean, Epic Brands launched out of there. I met Will Harris at White Oak Pastures out of there. It was a really cool, cool vibe there. But yeah, we have a lot of similar circles. Yeah. So he's been vetted, you guys. He's been vetted. I didn't find this guy off the street in a back alley. Where can they find you on social media? I'm terrible at social media. I think it's at Pharaoh Skin on Instagram, at Pharaoh Skin on, on TikTok. And then we have an ex account as well. Good, good. Okay. All the links are on our website. If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally, or spiritually, what would it be? Go shake a farmer's hand. Thank them for what they do. Preferably get that farmer from like eatwild.com or go to the Weston A. Price. Go find someone that's growing food in your community and patronize them. I think, again, agricultural ignorance is a real problem. And I think it would, I think it would go a long way to healing our culture if we had more freedom gardens and people that were connected to, to agriculture in this country. Charles, thank you for coming on Culture Apothecary. Thank you, Alex. Whether you leave this episode ready to try lard on your face or absolutely not, I do think it raises a bigger question the wellness world is going to have to answer eventually. If the Maha movement cares about food, farming, toxins, and chronic disease, why has skincare been left out of the conversation for so long? Charles, thank you for coming on and making half the audience curious and the other half deeply uncomfortable. I'm kidding. New episodes come out every Monday and Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern, anywhere you get your podcast. Please leave us a five-star review on Apple or Spotify if it's been a while or you never have. Let me know which episode is the first one that you send people when you want to introduce them to Culture Apothecary. Takes like two seconds to do. It immensely helps the show. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be taken as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding any questions or decisions related to your health or medical care. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.