Introduction:
Coming up on this episode of the Doctor’s Farmacy,
Kimbal Musk:
When you have a different relationship to food that you know can grow it, it just changes the psychological fear of hunger, and that is really powerful. It improves your nutrition, security, it also improves your mental health.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Welcome to the Doctor’s Farmacy. I’m Dr. Mark Hyman and this is a place for conversations that matter. Now, there are a few things in life that bring me as much joy as cooking in community with friends and family, which is why I’m so excited about today’s conversation with my friend Kimbal Musk. Now Kimbal is the co-founder of the Kitchen in American Bistro with the restaurant locations in Boulder, Denver, Chicago, and soon Austin. And I’ve been there. It is damn good. The food is so yummy, I can’t even believe it. And it’s good for you too. Now, marking its 20th anniversary, the kitchen serves thoughtfully sourced seasonal American shared plates, which is my favorite kind of eating shared plates with global influences. Kim Musk is also the co-founder of Big Green, a philanthropic organization devoted to getting every American growing food. His personal mission is to empower and invest in the next generation who are building a healthier, happier future.
The Wall Street journalist called him a cheerful crusader for real food. He’s a good friend. He definitely is cheerful. His laugh is infectious and it’s quite amazing to be with him. And the Guardian has lauded how he takes the tech entrepreneur ethos and applies it to food. Musk has been named a global social entrepreneur by the World Economic Forum. He currently sits on the board of Tesla and formerly served on the board of Chipotle Mexican Grill and SpaceX. Now we begin our conversation exploring Kimbal’s journey with food and the ways we’ve each experienced profound community through shared meals, particularly in times of navigating some of life’s most difficult moments like nine 11. Or for me it was the Haiti earthquake. Kimbal shares his experience feeding fighter fighters in New York City directly after the nine 11 attacks and how it strengthened his understanding the community is truly medicine.
He fed those firefighters and it really changed him and led him to actually build what he’s doing today. We discussed the loneliness epidemic and additional challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has had in our society. And we talk about also the reciprocal relationships that Kimbal has created with farmers in his area in an effort towards zero food waste. So he basically networks all the small local farmers, connects ’em to restaurants, and he explains how he does that because it’s a model for a new food system. And Kimbal also shares the life altering message he received following a devastating spinal injury that nearly left him paralyzed, but woke him up to a vision that led to a better world. We’re going to talk about that on the podcast. It’s quite amazing. Finally, we discussed the work Kimbal is doing in school to develop children’s exposure to and experience growing their own food and then cooking it and eating it.
And it’s a whole nutritional curriculum. It’s really changing the way school food is, which is really needed. Kimbal offers a few practical tips for getting started in the kitchen, and we discuss the value and importance of shared family meals. And now let’s dive into my conversation with Kimbal Musk. Welcome to the Doctor’s Farmacy podcast. Kimbal, it’s great to have you back. We had you in a while back, maybe at the beginning of the podcast talking about Big Green and the work you’ve done. We’re going to get deeper in some of the stuff you’re doing today. It’s quite amazing. You’re coming out of the brand new cookbook, which I love. It’s called The Kitchen. I’ve been to this restaurant that it’s sort of named after, which is in Boulder, Colorado, and it’s the most delicious, yummy, healthy, but also delicious, satisfying food. So it’s not leading with health, but it’s actually healthy just by default using all these amazing ingredients.
So it’ss just such a special place and it’s a place where we gather so often we’re friends and go hang out in your house, and we’re always hanging around the kitchen. And it’s a place where community bills and where people talk about their life and just hang out. And it’s kind of like the fabric of our life. And we’ve often, in our modern society, we’ve kind of lost that and people are, I would say, disintermediated from their kitchen by the food industry. And your book is such an invitation to go back in the kitchen and to cook. So it’s really great that you publish this book and everybody definitely should get a copy. You have an interesting background, Kim, you were,
Kimbal Musk:
Before we dive in there, I just want to reflect on how beautiful it was to spend time with you in Massachusetts during Covid for the audience. Mark invited us and a few friends to go through his full medical experience, but of course, so we can’t go anywhere, but we can go to his house. Ended
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Up detox at the house
Kimbal Musk:
And we did everything at the house and we cooked all together in the kitchen. And we had beautiful meals where food is fantastic. And we connected, like you were said, especially with the pandemic, we kind of lost even what we had this very comfortable, easy way to connect, which is just be in the kitchen. And it was probably six days and we ate together, we laughed together, we talked, we knew together
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That long hike, hiked in the rain. What? Remember that hike in the rain for three hours? Yes,
Kimbal Musk:
Exactly. And then also to that incredible or lake or whatever that was.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it was a quarry. The quarry.
Kimbal Musk:
Quarry, yeah. I mean incredible. What an incredible experience. So I just want to thank you for that. And I remember my best memories are the kitchen and the food and just connecting with people. And that’s really what this book’s about. It’s about getting people to remember the power of community, the power of connecting with your friends and family use food. It’s meditative, but mostly it’s connecting with your family and your friends.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, yeah, it’s true. I mean, when you think of people’s houses, no matter how big their house is, if they’re having a party, everybody’s crammed into the kitchen.
Kimbal Musk:
Yes, exactly. Where’s kids? I want to go there and hang out.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Exactly. And your kitchen is always filled with the most amazing food. It’s a treat to be there. So you’ve got an interesting background camel, because you were an entrepreneur, you were involved in PayPal early on, and then you decided you wanted to get into food and you became a restaurateur and you’re a philanthropist doing amazing things in the space of food and education for kids, particularly around healthy food and gardening. Your basic mission seems to be putting food on the table in America that’s real healthy food and getting everybody access. So how did you go from being a tech entrepreneur in the nineties to being so passionate about nutrition? What got you on fire about this?
Kimbal Musk:
I’ve had such an interesting journey with food. I grew up as a kid cooking, so my mom, who is wonderful and she’s a great mom, but she’s self-described a very bad cook. So I was, but she’s
Dr. Mark Hyman:
A nutritionist, right?
Kimbal Musk:
Nutritionist was actually a doctorate in dietetics, like real science level, working in hospital wards. And unfortunately with our diabetes epidemic that really, really is tearing a lot of our communities apart. So I grew up with a very much, what’s the right word? Brown bread and plain yogurt kind of lifestyle. And as a kid you’re like, come on, this is ridiculous. The other thing she would do is she would cook a boiled squash and she loved it. I’m like, this is for a kid is the worst thing you can eat
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Eating. She didn’t make it too sexy to eat healthy is what you’re saying?
Kimbal Musk:
No, no. So she said when I was young, I was 11 or 12 and she said, okay, you want to cook? I mean, let’s go to the grocery store, get whatever you want, cook. And the first thing I asked the butcher for was a chicken. And I said, how do I cook it? And he said something, which is really the same instructions that I’ve kept my whole life is you put salt and pepper on it, some olive oil, just rub it around and you put it in a hot oven for one hour. And back then the temperatures and things were not really that good, but it’s like a 400 degree oven for an hour. And pretty much that’s the recipe. Now in our cookbook, we have all these delicious things. You add lemon, you add some herbs, you add some garlic. I mean of course you can make it better, but the fundamental recipe I did when I was so young and it came out so well and it was like a, I think that matters a lot.
When you cook, did your first dish come out? Well, and not only did it taste good, but what was beautiful about it was my mom and my brother and my sister, they’re very, very busy. They’re very in their head and I am as well. But when I cook, I’m kind of in my body. I’m able to be present again. It’s like a meditative thing for me. I didn’t realize, I didn’t even know the word meditation. I just did it as a way calm myself at the end of the day. And then we would all sit down and we’d all just eat and we would talk. How beautiful is that? And it’s something I’ve kept with me forever. So whether I’m cooking for my kids or my wife or my family or my brother or sister, it’s a gift that I love to cook for folks. And it’s a gift to me as well. It’s a gift to me really more than anyone else, I get to sit out and connect.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, Kimberly, it’s so true. What you’re saying is that we often think of cooking as a chore. We’ve been told that you should leave the cooking to us, right? You deserve a break today, unquote from McDonald’s. Yeah, exactly. And we’ve kind of taken something that was just the heart of the family and the community and our lives and kind of put it aside. And so most people are not eating food that they cook at home. They’re eating food that came from a factory. They’re not eating. It’s
Kimbal Musk:
Very processed with their
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Families.
Kimbal Musk:
They’re not eating. It’s the cause for our epidemic is the processed food. You can cook simple meals that can be done in 10 minutes. In fact, we have a few of those in our cookbook. But I mean, I’ll even do my scrambled eggs recipe for two minutes and it’s meditative. I mean, it’s literally two minutes. There isn’t a faster way to have records. You couldn’t stand in line at Starbucks for that amount of time.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
No,
Kimbal Musk:
Exactly. And it’s beautiful actually in your honor this morning, because you and I have talked about gluten in the past is I’m going to work on a tortilla recipe, kind of like a whoever Rancheros recipe. And I came up with a trick that I think would be fun to share is for the tortillas, you get them out the fridge, they’re cold. What a lot of people do is they’ll warm ’em on a pan or put ’em in the oven. What I did was I put them directly on the gas flame
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And
Kimbal Musk:
It actually takes a moment for even to maybe even 30 seconds for it cause it to burn. So within 15 seconds to 20, just flip it and then another 15 seconds and you’re done. Learned days
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Putting on a fire
Kimbal Musk:
Me to learn free recipe.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s great. I’m glad you hear that.
Kimbal Musk:
So thank you very much.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I don’t know if that’s going to be a habit or not, but we’ll see. Well, it
Kimbal Musk:
Actually taste good. I’m all about Does it taste good? That was pretty good.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah, no, what you’re saying is so important and the beauty of your cookbook, it’s called the Kitchen, literally the kitchen, is that it invites people back in the kitchen where we’ve been shoved out by the food industry and it invites us to think about this as a joy and a pleasure, as you said, a meditation, as a way to connect with family and friends. I have the same way with you. I love to cook and I love to cook for people. So probably
Kimbal Musk:
My favorite was when was with you. You love it. The food especially, you’re so vegetable for it. Wow. Magical flavors coming out of these vegetables that, and we do the same with the kitchen, the vegetable recipes in our cookbook, they might actually be the best recipes of the whole book.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean, your carrots at
Kimbal Musk:
The Carrot
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Bowl are so damn good.
Kimbal Musk:
Carrots like they’re roasted. And then with an Earthed dressing, which is a dressing from the Middle East, and it’s just so unusual and it is so good.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Are you think carrots? That’s not a main dish, but it’s actually exactly
Kimbal Musk:
Our restaurant, we have our waiters come and they’ll literally say, we know no one orders carrots. Normally you have to order the carrots. It’s like a conversation at every table.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s true. It’s really true. It’s really true. They’re so good. And so you’re basically taking things at are ordinary and making them ordinary and you’re doing in ways that are simple, that are easy, that
Kimbal Musk:
Beautiful ingredients. I mean beautiful ingredients, good carrots, the flavors are so wonderful and there’s a sweetness to it. There’s a beautiful caramelization that happens. And so it is also ingredients driven as you know. And for folks who go, I mean whole foods of course is fine, but go to the farmer’s market. What’s fun about a farmer’s market is the carrots for different per farm. One farm will have a slightly different style of different seed even. And you can play with carrots in ways that are more fun than the same carrot every time. And not that the same carrot every time doesn’t work, but kind of cool to go and get it from your farmer market.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s true. Yeah, I mean your whole approach reminds me of when I was in the Blue Zones in Sardinia and Kara where food was so central to their life and they grew it, they cooked together and they ate together and it was a big event when you had lunch or dinner, it was like a big event and the family get together, the community would get together and it was so beautiful. And that’s really what you’re inspiring us to do. And I think maybe you could share a little bit about the story that happened to you in 2001 and nine 11 when you were living in New York City and you heard the plane hitting the building and it was a powerful thing and what you did as a result of that to help the firefighters and what that changed.
Kimbal Musk:
So my story was I was a tech entrepreneur. I sold it in my company in 99, remained an investor in PayPal, but I wasn’t passionate about tech and I was passionate about food. I’d grown up cooking food and I went to the French Culinary Institute, which is a very intense old school screaming at you literally. This is their teaching technique. It’s a Gordon Ramsey on steroids. He actually probably learned from schools like this. So he, he’s trained that way. So I graduated just before nine 11 and of course not sure what I was going to do after cooking school, but I woke up on Tuesday morning as I still remember it very clearly to this strange sound. And I was down by chambers and Broadway, very close to the World Trade Center. And then the doorbell was ringing from the doorman, old New York, you’re in these four buildings and there’s a doorman there.
And he starts ringing the bell and I answer it and he just says, A planes hit the building, a planes hit the building, a planes hit the building. And I’m in that sort of New York zone. I like some idiot, just flew a plane in the building. And so I kind of ignore it and I take a shower and I tell my wife at the time, I’m going to go get some coffee. And so I do my routine. I go down the elevator and I go to the deli across the road, I get out of the elevator and the doorman says, another planes at the building, another plane’s at the building. And I still don’t quite get it. And of course you’re in tall buildings, you can’t see the World trade centers at this point. And there wasn’t any panic. In fact, I went across to the deli and there were 30 people in line and I said, that’s a bit strange. That’s not normal behavior. This is a normal New York daily. And I feel like in retrospect people didn’t know what to do so they just so they got coffee.
Exactly. It just felt weird. But then as I was paying for my coffee over the radio that we heard the Pentagon got hit and that is when your whole body just dropped and you, oh shit, we are under attack. And everyone just started running, you don’t even know which way to run because you don’t know what’s going on. And so we started to see people running uptown. I went and grabbed my wife and we made it to Canal Street By the time the first one fell, and the, again, still not knowing which building fell, but something big was going on the dust cloud that came and it stopped about half a block before Canal was like a white wall of dust and people were coming out of that in cars or holding onto the sides of cars just to get out of the dust cloud.
They were covered in white paste of dust. And I can only imagine we were part of the health check. We were in the zone where we were required by law to do a health check every year by the government to track because of the pollution, the toxins that came track your lung effect on your lungs. And it did affect a lot of people. Thankfully we missed that dust cloud by half a block. It would’ve been life changing from a health perspective. We’re very grateful for that. And then we kept running. We got to Union Square and then when I turned around and I could see for the first time, I could see the World Trade Center. Well in that case, one World Trade Center and you just look and stare and you, well, what’s something missing? Yeah, there’s one of them’s gone. And then as I’m looking, the second one just starts to fall in slow motion and you just can’t believe it. It was like reality breaking. It just isn’t possible in your head. The whole
Dr. Mark Hyman:
World changes in a moment.
Kimbal Musk:
The whole world changes in a moment. And your whole view on the world, your whole view on what is a grounded reality, all of that is gone. And so we got to my mom’s place on 22nd and Broadway and she had invited anyone who needed help to stay there. So we had about eight or nine people in this small apartment. And it was good actually. We had a little, I didn’t even actually knew my mom, but I didn’t know the others. It was good. We had a little kind of group therapy like what’s going on here?
I remember Elon calling and saying, get out of there. Just get out. Just get out. Because he was so freaked out and something just said to me, no, I don’t want to leave. It is a strange illogical thought to say, no, I know that I’m in danger. We don’t know what’s coming next, but this is my home. I’m not going to leave. So a few hours later we get a call from the city that my mom was quite well known at the time for dietetics, and I was asked if she wanted to volunteer for the firefighters to cook. And they were just kind of calling, can you imagine there’s a million people try to volunteer. And she says, I can’t cook, but my son just got a cooking degree and he can. She
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Volunteered you.
Kimbal Musk:
I know. So is amazing. First of faith that I also had a security pass because they give it to anyone who was below Canal Street because you live down there. And so after about, I don’t know, seven to 10 days, they allowed me to come down back into my home and for six weeks I cooked for the firefighters, went to this restaurant called Bole, and it was blown out. Oh
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, David Ley is a good friend. He’s a great,
Kimbal Musk:
Yeah, great. And now of course not here, not there anymore, but completely destroyed in the front of the restaurant. But the back of house and the basement was a huge kitchen. And so we used that kitchen to cook and I started peeling potatoes. I was completely bottom of the rung, but that was fine. I just was honored to be there. And the chefs who were rotating in and out would do two or three days at a time. And I was there every day and it was a wonderful way to process the trauma in a sense. Peeling potatoes doesn’t sound good, but actually when you’re in that zone it’s perfect. And then I worked my way up to pasta station and then saute and eventually, because I was just there all the time, I was the guy that would drive the cooler of food in an A TV down to ground zero.
And there was a makeshift gymnasium that had turned into a cafeteria. And so we take the food and we’d be in this room and the firefighters would come in from literally these giant piles of metal that were still melting. You could smell the burning, the melting. And weeks later, I’ll never forget that smell. I’ll never forget that smell. It was just horrible. They’d come out of it and they’d be in these shells and they take these shells off, which covered in dust, and then they’d have this kind of gray look about them. And we would feed them, I think the best food they’ve ever had. And we put so much love into
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It. Yeah, belay for those who don’t know is the number one restaurant in New York for a decade at 20 years at the time. And it was no
Kimbal Musk:
Longer because of that. But at the time, yes, exactly. But it was truly the best chefs in the world cooking the food. And I was there to help and I was cooking as well, and as I said, I got to honor to work my way up. But the most beautiful thing was actually just watching how food would change their energy and they would be completely quiet. We would feed them this beautiful food and then they would slowly start coming to life and it was about a 45 minute break and you could see by the minute 20 they’d have a little energy and then 25, and then by the end of that 45 minute break, they were talking and laughing and connecting and then they would just put their shells back on and they’d go right back out to dig through these piles of metal to help save American lives.
It was truly the greatest honor of my life to be part of that. It was then that I was like, the sense of community was so incredible. It’s still so beautiful. I was like, I’ve been a tech entrepreneur. I’ve got a cooking degree. I know what I’m doing. I love food. I was afraid that food would get ruined for me if I did a business, but I think I was also insecure about opening a restaurant because that’s what I love. So I said, you know what? I’m going to do it now. I have no excuse. I know how much I’m going to love this. So my wife and I, we drove around the us. We went to cities that were closer to the west side of the us. I had a lot of work in the Bay area, so I just wanted an easier commute.
So it was Jackson Hole, Boulder, Denver down in Santa Fe, and then all the way up the west coast in the month of February, because February it’s easy to be nice in any month, but pretty hard to be nice in February, even though Boulder, it gets cold in February. It’s this beautiful crisp cold. And it’s also a mountain town. And I grew up at a higher elevation. And so I resonated with the feeling of the air. And it’s also a great restaurant town. I think it’s one of the best restaurant towns. It actually has the same restaurants per capita as New York City. It really is a buzzing. Really, really
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Amazing. I don’t know because I just go to your restaurant when I’m there. Exactly. Or your actual kitchen. The kitchen or your kitchen.
Kimbal Musk:
Exactly. And it’s wonderful. So we opened the kitchen, but the reason I got into healthy food and sourcing, I would say, well, the healthy came from my mom, but the sourcing came from Hugo, my co-founder. So Jen helped with the design. Hugo was my co-founder and chef. And he was this great chef that I was walking down the street one weekend into moving to Boulder, and my dog came off the leash, went up to this guy and he was English and I’m South African. And we just bonded a little bit over that. But then he said, he’s just taking on the chef position. And I said, I’m here to open a restaurant. So he offered to help me work for him in $10 an hour. And I did that for a year.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I love that. Going from selling a PayPal to 10 months an hour.
Kimbal Musk:
And honestly it was awesome. I had such a good time and I learned so much from him because there’s a difference between New York and his style is very Italian, very much about ingredients, very much. What’s the least amount of things we can do to this food to make, make the flavors come out. And French cooking is more of a six hour process where you really are, what’s the getting that source correct. And it really is a completely different way of thinking. And the other thing that he brought was this idea of working with farmers directly and working with farmers directly. Back then, people didn’t use email. They didn’t have iPhones. As strange as it sounds. I mean I come from Silicon Valley and five or six years later, people still were not using email. I just couldn’t even understand it.
But their farmers, so the farmers would. But I agreed with Hugo because his food was so good that I was like, okay, I’m going to go figure this out. And so I got to know a lot of these farmers, they really trusted Hugo and so they were willing to work with us, but they would come and bring food and they would drop off us broccoli or carrot or things like that. And then they would just leave a paper chipped and we’ve got to now find the paper chip and we’ve got to put entry into some system and then we got to pay them or we got to pay them cash. And this is really hard. There are systems for this school email. And so one farmer at a time, we got the one email and I remember one farmer saying to me that, and
Dr. Mark Hyman:
This was in the early two thousands,
Kimbal Musk:
Right? Yeah, 2002 to 2004 when we were opening. So he was just intimidated. I mean you can imagine you never put a computer in your house and you’d never set it up. And he was an older guy. So I went to Best Buy with him and helped him buy a computer and pay for it. But I helped him buy a computer, went back to his home. I was like his grandkid just setting up his modem and his DSL account or whatever and setting up the computer. I was like, okay, now you type in here what food you have and then we get the message and then we’ll send it back to you. Yes, please. We’d like it and then tell us how much it’s by the time you arrive, we already to pay you. And it was such a simple thing, but it was a big jump for these farmers. So I think my, what do you call it, my contribution to the farm to table movement, it was really happening all over the country at that point was helping farmers.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Was tech enabling it?
Kimbal Musk:
Yeah, tech enabling it. Exactly at the simplest level. And it was a joy. It was an absolute joy. These farmers were so everyone else is doing it, they just needed someone to help them do it. It wasn’t like they were anti-technology. They were like, yeah, this is kind of cool. But it was a little bit like they were my grandparents and I was the kid changing the 0 0 0 on the VHS machine, the kid, let’s put the clock in there.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Exactly. Well, it’s such a great story, Kimmel, because out of tragedy came something beautiful, which was this insight that you love to serve people, that you love to cook for people, that it was a place where people could come together and belong and feel connected and laugh and heal in some way. It’s really medicine. And I think that’s a powerful thing that’s turned into your life’s work and your cookbook. The Kitchen, which is named after the restaurant in Boulder that you’re talking about is a way for people to sort of get back invited into it. You can check it out here, it’s great and willing to it in the show notes. But I had a similar experience. I went to Haiti after the earthquake and was just in the most intense situation serving all the wounded and the injured in the hospital and really wasn’t thinking about myself at all and was working 20 hours a day nonstop for weeks. And out of that I also sort of had the insight that the community was so powerful that came together to help solve this problem and to help bring relief to the people who were suffering there. And it was clear to me that the community is medicine that just as food is medicine, oh my goodness,
Kimbal Musk:
Community is medicine.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Absolutely. It is maybe one of the most important medicines. And that’s clearly one of the things in the Blue Zones that’s so important is they’re never alone or never isolated. They’re always part of the community. And we see loneliness being an epidemic. Even the Surgeon General has sort of almost said, loneliness is the new smoking in America because we’re all
Kimbal Musk:
So absolutely. There’s a study, the Harvard study about longevity and the longest running study in the country, it started in the 1930s and they took wealthy group of, I think it’s just boys in my might had a woman later, but a wealthy group of kids on one side and actually kids from the poorer part of town, which you can imagine in Boston that would be pretty poor, pretty poor. And they just started to track them. And these folks are now in their eighties or nineties and I in the nineties at this point, and they went back and looked through all of the things that could have helped ’em live longer. And of course these folks grew up not during a time when we have the modern medicine. And there are a lot of new beautiful things that have been happening over the past 10 to 20 years that we do have to learn. And I’m a student of life. I want to constantly learn. But what’s so powerful about this was the only thing that was consistent about the ones that lived the longest were people who had deep relationships at the age of 50
With their wife, with their friends, with their family. Those deep relationships stayed with them and they were not lonely and they wanted to live and they wanted to live a vibrant life with their community and those blue zones. I was actually just down with Dan Butner in Costa Rica in one of the Blue Zones. And it’s all about community. It’s all about the food. There is simple, but it’s fresh and it’s delicious and it’s community that makes you kind of, gives you energy, gives you life. And I just love, when I wrote this cookbook, I was like, why am I doing this? I know the restaurant’s been around for a long time, but really what I’ve seen over the past few years, especially because of the pandemic, is how much lonelier we are. And we went through a training, unfortunately to be lonelier through the pandemic. Let’s all learn how to watch more TV or let’s learn how to play more video games. It’s really sad. And now we’ve come out of it like, oh well, we have to untrain ourselves. And so I thought if I wrote a cookbook that was about community, it’s called Cooking for Community. And it’s really a story of what has helped me live a joyful life. And I cook with my kids at least once a day. I just cooked this morning for the family for breakfast. This is when I did the tortillas to,
And it was good by the way. And again, I’m telling you I’m praise here. That was really good. But it’s really about cooking with my family and my friends and I stay connected with them and I still eat out, of course. I love to eat out, but I like to eat out with my family and friends. I like to use it to break bread with someone. I don’t know. Restaurants were wonderful for meeting someone who might be your partner for the rest of your life. Restaurants play a beautiful role. It’s both. You can cook at home with family and friends, but also go out and eat with your family and friends. And that to me is certainly my secret to longevity.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s so good Campbell. And one of the things you do is not just bring people in your home or bring people in your restaurant, but to you sort of built this network of community in the farmers and the local supply chain and in a reciprocal way by giving them your compost and they give you their food and you sort of built this incredible network and provided food in a way that nourish,
Kimbal Musk:
Nourish delicious. We have wonderful farmers. One of our favorite farmers when we were in the early days was a farmer named Ann Cure with Cure Farm.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s a good name Cure. Yeah, absolutely.
Kimbal Musk:
Absolutely. And it became such a beautiful relationship. We not only would buy food from her because she was just one of our favorite humans, and then we also started to raise animals on her farm as well. And it was a powerful way to learn the food system from the perspective of the restaurant. You’re ordering food and it arrives and you prepare it. You wanted to be the best quality possible, but to learn the perspective of the farmer was another gift that we got. It wasn’t just these relationships. We got we to go out and farm and it was we bring our kids out there. I want to give total respect to the farmers because it is a daily, it’s hard work daily and you’re dealing with climate change, with weather volatility. It is a tough job, but also it’s beautiful. It’s also we got to be on this farm and spend time with Anne and her family and it really was a gift that we got was to work with these farmers.
Nowadays because of technology has really advanced, all of the farmers are online and all of the farmers have iPhones and all the farmers are able to do that. So we are able to source from farmers that are a little bit further away or have a bit more sustainability practices. Always thinking first about the quality of the food, then about the animal welfare, how are they? And when it comes to vegetables, which is the best farmer for this ingredient or that ingredient really been. It’s a 20 year journey. Now we’ve got farmers that have worked with us for two decades. It’s really incredible.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, I mean one of the things that’s great about what you’re doing also is that you’re sort of demonstrating how you can have a beautiful restaurant that’s outside the industrial food system where you’re getting from local farmers where you’re in a reciprocal relation with them, where you sort of have zero food waste and you bypass the whole industrial food system, which is
Kimbal Musk:
Yeah, actually the zero food waste was such a thing 20 years ago. Hugo drove this as well. He worked at a restaurant called the River Cafe in London, which is really one of the greatest. It’s all still around until doing great. One of the top, if not maybe the first font table restaurant, Chez Panis was in California and this one was in London. But the program back in the seventies, the technology was so just wasn’t there. So it was just really, really hard to work with farmers then. But those two restaurants had figure it out. Now fast forward 50 years, those farmers were all on, they’re on technology. But one of the things that still needed was when it come to zero waste was we had this compost. We had farmers that needed it, but there was a law at the time that did not allow us to give it to the farmers.
There’s a fear of food poisoning that if you don’t look out it property it is and fair enough. But we had a farmer that would take it, but take it on a timely basis, not allow it to get bad. So that happened for a little while. And then another entrepreneur in Boulder, again love Boulder, they came along and said, well, we know this is not allowed, but you’re doing it. Would you be open to being our first restaurant that we work with? We take the compost and we actually process it right away and we turned it into almost like a soil, but it’s not soil, of course it’s based on food, but it is something you turn into the soil and it looks and feels like soil and essentially fertilizes the soil with a compost. So we got that partnership as well early days. And ever since then we’ve got our three different, every single garbage can is three. You’ve got compost, recycling, and trash. And we get it down to one small for a restaurant that is very busy, we get it down to one small actual piece of trash, like a little bag of trash every few days because most of what we do is recyclable or composted.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, I mean it is great. And what’s also great is that you haven’t just sort of stayed in a restaurant that you realize that the food system is broken at a larger scale and that kids are suffering more than anybody. We’re seeing 40% of kids or 45% of kids overweight,
Kimbal Musk:
25% ob into neighborhoods. 40 to 45% are obese. It’s an epidemic.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
And we’re seeing just to record a podcast on the effective ultra processed food, on mental health, on violence, aggression, behavior issues, A DHD. And you decided you wanted to work in a broader way and shift the food food system in school. So tell us about what you did with Big Green and why you started that and why it’s such an important part of your mission and work in the world.
Kimbal Musk:
Yeah, that’s another powerful story. It’s hard to share. So give me a moment When the restaurants were doing well in the two thousands, I started to get curious about tech again and stuff, but I really was not happy. I was genuinely unhappy with, okay, I’ve made money in tech now my restaurants are successful. And I’d gotten into that place that I think a lot of people get into where, what am I doing? Why am I working so hard on something that I’ve lost my passion for? And I was on a ski hill in 2010 with my kids ages four and six, and I went down one of those children’s inner tube runs. You get on an inner tube and it sounds fun, but for me, I’m six foot five and my kids are kids, they’re four feet tall and it’s the same size inner tube, but I wasn’t really thinking.
And I get on the inner tube, I get to the bottom and I’m going 35 miles an hour. The tube flips. I land on my head, my head gets pushed straight into my chest, my spine ruptures at C six and C seven and I’m paralyzed. I’m just done. And I’m like, what? I get a blink of an eye, just was like blink of an eye. And so they get me to the hospital, they’re not moving me. I’ve got this halo on me and they’re just checking and I’m still in shock. I don’t know what’s going on. The thing about being paralyzed, you don’t feel pain, so you’re not like you’re hurting, you
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Just can’t move.
Kimbal Musk:
You don’t feel anything. It’s like it’s as if everything is normal, but it’s not normal. You can’t move. It’s terrifying. Awful. Again, I’m just in shock. So they go do all these tests and my brother was with me and my very good friend Antonio was with me and my wife was with me. And so I knew I was in the best. These guys are going to go and call everyone to see what could be done. So I let myself be in their hands. Meanwhile, I’m just processing. And honestly, I had this voice of God, I dunno how else to describe it, this complete clear message that said, you’re going to be fine and when you are fine, you’re going to work to help kids connect food. This is just a download. Where is that coming from? I’m having a little discussion. What’s going on here?
And it was this complete clear voice over and over and over again, very calm. And meanwhile, I’m in five car alarm, hospital situation, everyone’s freaking out and I’ve got this clear voice. You’re going to work with kids and you’re going to help ’em connect to food. I didn’t know, I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to do that. And so I went into surgery. It took them three days to bring the right surgeons in, took them three days. I was paralyzed the whole time and it was just pure terror, pure shock. And I woke up, it was a Sunday, I broke my neck. I woke up on a Wednesday morning and I could move. I mean I needed to be horizontal for two months. Had two years of rehab to walk again. It was brutal, but I could move.
And it wasn’t like this clear voice was a flash. It was just constantly beautiful, clear voice. And I was like, okay, I guess I’m going to go work on kids and food. And so my wife, Jen Luann at the time, she and I started working on this idea of gardens in school. I sort look at a lot of ideas because it was a lot of mental space. When you can’t move your body, I’m not paralyzed at this point, but I can’t move my body much because I’ve got to look after it while it’s healing. Lemme horizontal. I literally have be a horizontal 24 hours a day except for the restroom allowed to get up to go to the restroom with a halo on.
But horizontal, your mind is moving at 30,000 miles an hour. And we designed what became these learning gardens that are now all over the country and the business model, a tech guy. So I couldn’t help but have a business model for this, even though it was a nonprofit. The business model was to turn the whole idea around which the previous school gardens were on grade in the corner of the school yard. Some parents would come in and they would just make a couple of little things, little beds, and it would look nice for a moment, but then it would eventually just turn into this disaster in the corner. The facilities guys didn’t want to deal with it, so they put a fence around it, this fence because cost 10 grand. So it wasn’t like they weren’t spending money, they just didn’t want to deal with it.
And then the principal would have to try and figure out how to look after it. It just became this complete problem for the principal. And facilities teachers wouldn’t use it because if you had to have a lock in key through the gate and then the kids of course couldn’t go in without a teacher, I decided let’s try and turn it around. Let’s put money into let’s invest in the garden. Let’s put 30 to $50,000 into it. Build something beautiful, build out a playground equipment, material that is food safe, that’s a accessible that is raised up. Go to bigg green.org, get a feel for the beauty of the products that we created. And by the time Covid hit, we’d actually installed 650 beautiful 2000 square foot outdoor classroom shade structures and everything. And it was really amazing. And I’m so proud of the team and the group that I work with.
We moved mountains to make that possible. When Covid hit, we were not allowed to work in schools. We changed our model to, we call it the Big green dao, which is a collective of nonprofits that vote on which other nonprofits should receive funding and including receive some equipment. So the equipment that we created is beautiful and very useful. Alright, which nonprofit out there in Atlanta or Detroit or Baltimore or some of these channels, neighborhoods, which ones do we want to learn about and possibly provide them some funding, some equipment and some teachings. And now we’ve grown that up to 150 nonprofits and we bring them together once a year in Denver and they spend two to three days together and they teach each other things that they know. So it’s like a learning together, a process because some nonprofits are really good at fundraising, some nonprofits are really good at working with school districts. Nonprofits know how to grow and this geography or that geography. And some nonprofits know politics really well and how do you get politicians to engage in what you’re doing? So these beautiful learnings that we’re now able to bring together rather than us tell nonprofits what to do, we actually are asking them to tell us. And we participate as a nonprofit. And it’s one of my most joyful few days in the years to go sit with this mostly Bipoc community because our communities we serve are Bipoc mostly.
And it’s absolutely wonderful. It’s just big Green has become a joy. We really celebrate raising funds for these absolutely superstar nonprofits. But they’re small, they’re young, they’re not necessarily young, but they are small and they want to be small. They want to serve their community. And it’s worked out so well and so proud of that time and continues to unfold like this year, wonder what the shoe will be like. It’s more that kind of feeling.
^pDr. Mark Hyman:
And I’m sure you’ve seen the impact in the schools. It seems like tragedy has kind of given birth to lots of good things in your life, right? It gave nine 11, gave birth to the kitchen and your own accident and brush with paralysis for the rest of your life made you inspired to give back, do something for kids. And now with Covid, you basically have a new model for empowering other nonprofits. So it’s a gift that keeps on giving. I hope you don’t have to have any more guide you
Kimbal Musk:
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
To have another vision of what you want to let just learn
Kimbal Musk:
In other ways.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Exactly.
Kimbal Musk:
Exactly. My joke about my accident, my neck break was if not for the physical trauma, I highly recommend the psychological awakening.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Exactly right. No, I get you on that one. I’ve had my own journeys
With sickness and make you kind of look at things differently. What I want to hear about more is what happened to the kids. You go to these schools, you take places where kids are struggling, where they don’t have access to good food, where they’re not connected to nature and you create an environment for them to immerse themselves in, to learn about food, to grow food, to eat the food, to cook the food. What are the impacts you’re seeing in these kids in their life, their academic performance, their mood, a d, eat the whole spectrum of things you might expect when you use food
Kimbal Musk:
As Yes, it’s, I really believe growing food changes lives. It is such a beautiful, I believe it didn’t change lives for kids, but also for adults. But when we work with our children, we work, we’re working now probably over a million kids a day. And it, it’s truly, when I say we work, we work through our nonprofits, we are at scale. And when I get the opportunity to go and be with kids in the gardens, which I love, I’m still shocked. We go and install a garden and I’ll, the kids will come out. We were very thoughtful about it. What we grow in the garden. We don’t grow things kids don’t want to eat. But we love carrots. We love cherry tomatoes, we love strawberries. We love cilantro. And actually we will design it. This is a garden that makes pizza. It got pizza
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Gardens. I like that.
Kimbal Musk:
It’s going to
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Win some friends and little kids for sure.
Kimbal Musk:
That’s right. Well, this is a garden that makes salsa and it’s got cilantro and onions and things like that so the kids can relate to it. They don’t know what food is. They just know the packaged division of food. And so I’ll literally show kids a tomato and they will ask me, what is that? And it is just so sad that we have our whole next generation. This is not their fault. I mean, they’re kids that they have no connection. They have not even food literacy. And I love, especially with the cherry tomato, when it becomes a game that dare each other to try it because never had one. Never had one. I mean, but it’s a wonderful little game. And then eventually someone tries ’em and they’re like, oh my God, that’s great. And then one after the other, they’re all diving to have a cherry tomato. And so we get such joy out of it. One of the things that I think that is so powerful about growing food with kids is this concept of nutrition, security.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Talk about that. What is that?
Kimbal Musk:
You just, you’re seven years old, you’re going to go grow food whenever because you’re only seven. But these kids live in hunger. They live in really difficult times. They live in poor neighborhoods. And when you have a different relationship to food that you know can grow it, it just changes the psychological fear of starvation or hunger. And that is really powerful. So you improve your nutrition, security, it also improves your mental health. These kids come out into the classroom and it’s outdoors and they’re in nature. That is one of the greatest gifts of growing food is, and I’ll say that about cooking as well, the growing food, cooking, it’s meditative. It is a beautiful way to spend some time. What our kids will do in recess, you can go kick a ball around or you go climb on the playground. But if you want to read a book, you go to the garden.
It also offers this calming, calming environment. And then one of the other things that I believe is a sign of the times is it also opens your eyes to the weather volatility created by climate change. And years ago you grow food. You pretty much know how the weather is. And nowadays it’s sad, but it’s a powerful lesson. How sudden strange weather will destroy what you’ve been growing. And that becomes a lesson. We treat it in a positive, what did we learn here? What did we learn about how climate has affected the garden? What is more resilient? What is less resilient? And how can we change? And you’re working with kids who are seven to 10 years old, but they get
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It. They get it.
Kimbal Musk:
So growing food changes their lives and it helps us create a generation of kids as they get older that do understand more about climate change and how it’s affecting their lives. And I really, really feel it. I feel how much growing food changes lives.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s so true. And one of the things that people don’t realize is that cooking and growing food are human activities that have been going on for probably hundreds of thousands of years. Yeah, exactly. And they’re kind of essential to what makes us human. I mean, Michael Poll talks about this in his book Cooked when we learned to cook is when we became truly human and actually having your fingers in the dirt of doing something real. That’s why I really love cooking because so much of my life is digital computers and writing and all this stuff. And actually getting in the kitchen and having, last night we made this delicious chicken. I had to work past raised chicken and I kind of pounded it down and put a little egg and flour on it and put it in a pan with some olive oil, delicious. And we roasted some shiitake mushrooms and roast brussel sprouts and a little peas. It was very simple dinner. And I’m busy working all day and I get in the kitchen. It’s like you just feel like you’re doing something authentically human. I love that experience.
Kimbal Musk:
When I come home from work, my kids hold me accountable. So since they were born and now my oldest are 21, my youngest is 11. So it’s been a while. I have cooked for them and I’ve made them sit down for dinner and we do our little gratitudes and in the morning I’ll cook breakfast. And as they’ve gotten older, they’ve been through a little bit of a rebellious phase where sure they do. They’re like, not for me. But it was a very short phase. And then I was like, okay, but I’m still going to do it with the other kids. You’re just not going to sit with us. And I’m not here to be. I’m on a guilt trip you. But it’s pretty nice. And now when I’m with our kids, they’re like, we are definitely sitting down for dinner. Where’s dad? He has to be here now.
I’m the one that has to get, we all cook now. It’s not just me, but we celebrate that moment, which can be five minutes long where we just take a moment to eat our food and connect as a family. And we do it around 6:00 PM and I might go back to work or I might, or the kids might go do their homework, but sometimes we have something to talk about and we will talk for an hour, hour and a half. And sometimes we will have something funny to share and we’ll laugh for an hour and we’ll be together in that time. That is so special that you just don’t get, if you don’t create the container. So the container is, let’s cook a little food and let’s sit together. And we take a moment of gratitude and that container sets us off sometimes in the most beautiful directions. And it’s without obligation, but it’s just a gift that I’ve given myself. And I really believe food is a gift and it’s a gift we give ourselves three times a day. Let’s make it a good one.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. What you’re saying is so important. You’re talking about it from a personal perspective of being connected with your family and the meaning it has for you and your life and the way it brings you together. And sharing time and stories and laughter. But there’s so much science about the family dinner and families who eat together and not even cook together, eat and then cook together, be more, have lower rates of obesity, eating disorders, A-A-D-H-D, have better academic performance, less suicide. It’s quite amazing to see the data as a doctor, to see the scientific data around the power of family dinners and of staying connected. I love
Kimbal Musk:
That. I have it anecdotally for me, but I love that it shows up in the data that makes total sense to me. Our kids, just like all kids, go through tough times. And when we sit down and we eat together, sometimes those tough times are talked about. But actually, what I think is really beautiful about it is it’s an anchor for them that they may have to deal with their own tough times without us because it’s something to do with their, they want to share with their parents, with their siblings, but it’s an anchor. They know that that’s going to happen. It truly, I believe, truly at their base nervous system makes our kids happier kids and it makes me and my wife happier. Actually. You’d even call it selfish. I want it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, exactly. I think what’s so important about your cookbook, the Kitchen, which everybody should get a copy of and its subtitle is Cooking for your Community, or it could be cooking for your family, is that it invites us into the kitchen. It breaks down cooking to simple steps to make delicious meals so you don’t have to be intimidated. And my mother always said to me, if you can read, you can cook. And so if you can read a recipe and follow the directions, it’s going to come out right? It’s going to come out. Don’t skip steps, and it actually teaches you how to cook. And so the recipes are in sense, an instruction manual for how to cook, and then you begin to improvise and have fun on your own. But I would say everybody should get this cookbook. Invite some friends over, get your family together, get the food, make it together and try it.
It’s surprisingly easy to do this, and yet we have this mental barrier of how I don’t know how to cook. I can’t do this. It’s too difficult. And there’s a story I want to share for a minute about a family I visited in South Carolina in one of the worst food deserts in America, and it was part of the movie Fed Up that I did about 10 years ago with Katie Kirk and Lori David, and this family was incredibly sick. The father was 42 on dialysis from having diabetes and kidney failure at 42. The mother was probably a hundred plus pounds of her weight. The sun was a huge 16 years old, almost diabetic, about 50% body fat. A kid should be 10 to 20 and they never cooked a meal. Everything was a package box of can, and we just cooked one simple meal together. I taught them how to make chili from scratch, how to make salad from scratch, how to make salad dressing from scratch, how to roast a potato, how to stir fry and asparagus, just simple things.
I said, listen, I don’t think it work, but here’s a guide on how to eat well for less. Here’s a cookbook that I wrote. Just go ahead and try this. And I didn’t know what was going to happen. They didn’t have cutting boards, didn’t have knives. I sent ’em knives, I sent ’em cutting boards, and within the first week, the mother texted me back, we lost 18 pounds as family in a year. They lost 200 pounds and they did it by just cooking simple real food together for a family of five. They lived on food stamps and disability, had a thousand bucks a month for food for a family of five, and they were able to do this. And so this was sort of an example to me of how we’re really only one meal away from solving so much of what’s wrong with America. You’re
Kimbal Musk:
Totally right. I love that one meal away. The idea that eating, cooking at home is more expensive. It’s just not true. If you go to McDonald’s and you eat for a family of four, you’re going to pay 30, $35. You go to a grocery store, a normal grocery store, and you buy a chicken and some vegetables for the side or some potatoes, you’re probably not going to spend more than $10. And
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You go to big box stores like Costco or
Kimbal Musk:
Things like that. You can get the meal you can possibly cook and you’ll get your cook with your family and food that’s very accessible, very delicious. Now you can spend more money if you want, but actually we have the ability to eat affordably. But it’s your phrase of we’re one meal away is exactly right. It’s beautiful where just give it a try. Just go and say to your family, I’m going to go cook. And I think what’s also a great lesson that I’ve learned is don’t say you’re going to cook once. Say that you’re going to cook four or five times because you’re going to get all confidence. I got lucky on my first one when I cooked that chicken and it came out perfectly.
Don’t put that much pressure on yourself. Tell your family and friends, I’m going to cook four or five times, and by that fourth or fifth time, you’ll have hit it and you’ll hit home. Especially when you use good recipes, please try something from the book. But there are many great recipes out there for the food you love. But yeah, just dedicate a few hours of practice, meaning the first four are practice and the fifth one is real, but frankly, you’re going to hit it right probably within that first two or three. So I really think you’re one meal away from changing your life in a beautiful, beautiful way.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it’s true. Kimbal, thanks for your work. Thanks for the cookbook. It’s a great gift to us. It’s just beautiful cookbook. It’s great to look at. The recipes are delicious. They’re simple to follow. The food’s amazing.
Kimbal Musk:
Yeah, I really wanted the coco to feel like you’re in the restaurant. It’s got energy in the photos, but it’s got a photo of every dish and it’s really how I feel food should be. It’s exciting.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it really is. And this is really a celebration in some ways of what you’ve built over the last 20 years at the restaurant in Boulder or the Kitchen and all the other restaurants you’ve done and Big Green and all the work you’ve done and trying to make the world a little bit better by improving our food and our awareness around food and kids’ education around food. It’s really a gift of work you’ve done. You could have done a million things and it is just a beautiful thing that you’ve created. So I want everybody to support it. Go get The Kitchen Cookbook Cooking for your community. It’s out now. If you’re in Boulder, definitely check out the restaurant, the Kitchen, you can check out Big Green. It’s incredible nonprofit that helps kids get empowered around food and gardening and really about educational. So it’s really a bigger thing than just having a little garden. It’s a whole educational curriculum about nutrition. So thanks so much Kimbal for your work in the world and making the world just a little bit better every day.
Kimbal Musk:
Thank you so much. I want to do a quick shout out to our local bookstores, please. You can get it on Amazon search ^p^pKimbal Musk: cookbook. You’ll find it. But also, please go support your local bookstores and enjoy the book. Have fun with it.
Closing:
Alright, thanks Kimbal. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. We’d love to hear your comments and your questions, and please leave us a rating and review and of course, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me on all social media channels @drmarkhyman and you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman. I’m always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. And now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Marks Picks [email protected] slash marks picks. I promise I’ll only email you once a week on Fridays, and I’ll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations. These are the things that have helped me on my health journey, and I hope they’ll help you too. Again, that’s dr hyman.com/marks picks. Thank you again and we’ll see you next time on The Doctor’s Farmacy.
This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I’m the Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only. It’s not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you’re looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. Now, if you’re looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It’s important that you have someone in your corner who is trained, who’s a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
