Nourishing Change: A Conversation with Camilla Marcus
In this inspiring conversation, Lynne Cohen Foundation and SEAM founder Amy Cohen Epstein interviews Camilla Marcus, chef, entrepreneur, and founder of Westbourne, a brand dedicated to sustainable, zero-waste food practices. Camilla opens up about her journey in the culinary world, her passion for regenerative agriculture, and her upcoming cookbook, My Regenerative Kitchen.
This discussion covers everything from family mealtime tips to the importance of biodiversity in farming, showing how Camilla’s approach to food is both innovative and grounded in sustainability!
Amy Cohen Epstein:
So this is kind of fun because I've actually interviewed a few women that I would say I know through my little brother Robbie, but you're the first person that my brother, who is seven years younger than I am, and I love him so much with all my heart, was like, "You have to talk to my friend Cammie. She's such a badass." And then I was following you on Instagram and reading about you, and you're kind of like the ultimate hyphenate, I would describe you as—
Camilla Marcus:
Too busy.
Amy:
Robbie was like, "She's just like you. She's like, 'I have four minutes; let's get a quick coffee.'" And I think it's awesome, and I don't even know how to describe you because there are so many ways that I know of. So I'm excited for you to tell me. I mean, you graduated with an MBA, you're an entrepreneur, you are a restaurateur, you are a chef, you are this incredible mom to four. The fourth was just born how many months ago?
Camilla:
Seven weeks—seven weeks today.
Amy:
Seven weeks. Not even two months at home. And that in itself could be an hour-long conversation because I have three children. I would never have any of them at home because I would be so scared. You're just kind of Mother Earth in this young, beautiful, early-40s woman. I mean, it's amazing. So I would describe you as organic. I mean, you, in the truest sense of the word. And I don't know—
Camilla:
It's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.
Amy:
Well, it's how I see you, even though I've never met you in person. And it feels like that. And I think it's a testament to how much my brother adores you and talks about you. I mean, he's such an honest human, and I just think—I don't know, how did you become this way? How were you born and raised? How did you become this multihyphenate Mother Earth at a young—
Camilla:
Age? Oh gosh, big question. I don’t know that I know the answer to that. I don't think many of us totally understand how our books are written. But I've always been very left-brain, right-brain—that I will say. And I think what's interesting is as I've gotten older, as I've moved through the world, I've embraced it more and also sort of cared less about what anyone thinks. I think when you're younger, it's hard. I mean, I think our world, I always say this, really appreciates and values specialization. A lot of my college roommates were doctors. I was always kind of envious; they had this path, this calling. They knew what they were doing when they were younger. I was the kid who lived in the studio art building but also was three grades ahead in math, and it didn't really make sense.
And I'd say somewhat athletic. I'm not the star; I wasn't the star of my volleyball team, but I worked really hard and made varsity. But I wasn't the captain—just sort of always wore a lot of different hats. I love trying new things. I love to be challenged. I am a total extreme sports enthusiast. And I think that's probably where a lot of it comes from: being very high-octane. I'm a really big fan of the Enneagram, and my number is the enthusiast. It’s just like maximize, maximize, maximize for the most amount of fun, joy, and growth in all of it. I would say I’m just drinking from a fire hose 24/7, and that’s the speed that brings me a lot of joy. So I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s about being raised a certain way. I think my parents really encouraged us to be generalists. My mom made a really big deal of us doing—everyone had to do something creative, everyone had to do something scholastic, everyone had to do something physical. And it was kind of different for each of us. But maybe that, coupled with, again, just, I think it’s very much my own internal clock, this intense maximizer.
Amy:
So what are the things that you're enjoying right now? What are the things that are bringing you that kind of energizer bunny, "I'm just doing this, I'm in it, and I'm going to work my ass off" mode?
Camilla:
Well, this is probably the goal. I mean, I feel like at some point right now is maybe not the Everest Summit, but certainly one of the Seven Summits. My first cookbook’s coming out in a couple weeks, we have our biggest retail launch for the business, we’re closing our seed round. My baby is still breastfeeding. One of my kids is going to school for the first time, we’re applying to kindergarten. I actually feel like this next sort of 60 days are probably the craziest, personal and professional, in all the things. And on top of that, it’s my husband and I—we’ve been together 20 years—this is our anniversary month. So I don’t know. I actually feel like I was just saying this in December, I’m not going to know what to do with myself. This is sort of my life on steroids right now.
Amy:
I think some people are wired to do their best work when we’re doing a lot when there's so much going on and there are so many deadlines. And I’ve tried to instill that in my kids too. My youngest son is going to be in between stuff after school, and he’s like, “I’ll just come home.” I’m like, “You won’t because if you have the whole afternoon”—he’s a teenager—“you’ll get nothing done. The more you have to do, that’s motivating, and then the more you’ll get done.” And I think I was raised that way, and I think there’s something—it sounds nutty, but I think there’s something good about that. Not over-programming and overstimulating, but that fine line of, no, you have to have enough on your plate so that you are really focused and determined, if it’s stuff that you’re interested in and that you can do. Okay, the fact that you have a seven-week-old and are doing all this—jump into it! I mean, I can’t even imagine. I was up on the couch, but tell me about the business right now and tell me about how it started and the name and just sort of what’s the meaning behind it and your cookbook. I want to hear all about it.
Camilla:
Yeah, so Westbourne is the name of my brand, and we started as the first zero-waste restaurant in Manhattan. And the goal is always to grow products out of that so that we could live in everyone’s home and expand our impact. About two years ago, we launched it as a consumer packaged goods brand. And our goal is really to be the go-to leader brand for regenerative food provisions for the next generation. So think kind of what Patagonia did way back when, really experimenting in new textiles and better ways of producing clothing through really novel supply chains. We're sort of facing that moment right now in food, and we really are trying to build the pioneer brand. So we have a carbon-neutral supply chain, no plastic, all clean formulation. Everything we do is very focused on superfoods. And then really the core of our mission relies on building products on the biodiversity of regenerative farms, the only system that can pull down carbon and time to solve the climate crisis.
And that really means that we have to have grocery stores that look different than they do today. And we are amongst the first to really forge through that. So the place we're at right now, we're about to be launching in the Fresh Market, 163 stores in just a matter of weeks. I think we’re shipping to their warehouses this week. So, bananas. And then it aligns to the cookbook. So the cookbook’s called My Regenerative Kitchen. And really for me, it’s about—I always say, right, inconvenient truth if only we listened to Al Gore decades ago, but it felt very out of reach and a lot of people really weren't aware of how pressing this crisis was. Then you have Dan Barber who created The Third Plate, which is one of the foremost academic texts on what regenerative farming is, but also why it's necessary. But it's very academic and a lot of people have heard of it, but haven’t read it or didn’t finish it.
And so I still feel like there's sort of this divide between what the data is showing very clearly—this transition in our entire agricultural infrastructure that's already underway—and sort of consumers like you and me at home who are making food decisions and cooking at home, but they're not really tied to the solution, even though they care very deeply about the problem. So that's really the goal of the book is, how do you explain what's going on in very simple, easy-to-understand terms? And then also, how do you inspire people to cook differently at home, to shop their groceries differently, and to think about the food that they're putting on their table as really helping support this emerging system. So we're excited. So through recipes and beautiful imagery—I worked with a dear friend, Ben Rosser—the entire book was shot on film, which is highly, highly unusual, and a hundred recipes, and also really understanding why. It sort of ties everything back to carbon emissions, but in a way that, again, an average home cook can really understand why that impact matters.
Amy:
So you said earlier grocery stores should look different. So if you were, or maybe you will in the future—I wouldn't be surprised—building a grocery store that then becomes a chain and takes over the world, how would you structure it visually? How would you see it?
Camilla:
I more just mean you go to a lot of healthy grocery stores, right? It's really the new standard. And we've proven that there's scale in healthy eating and healthy grocery shopping, but yet you go through a lot of those stores and there's still tons of products with palm oil and canola oil and made [or] wrapped in plastic and tons of preservatives. And I more mean that I think if we talk about healthy, we have to first think about the soil, which then renders food that's higher in nutrition, really shifting that lens. I always say regenerative is going to be the next organic. We didn’t grow up necessarily with organic food; people didn't really know what that meant. Now it's definitely in the zeitgeist and sort of everyday language. I don't think most people can define it. I think your average American could not tell you what organic actually means, but they know it's in the box of—
Amy:
More expensive, yeah, yeah, healthier, maybe more expensive.
Camilla:
It's good for them, but you could have organic farms that are still monocrop, stripping the soil, destroying yields, and not actually servicing anything. And regenerative is the next step of that. So I think also just walking down a healthy grocery aisle and having there be as many, if not more, regenerative brands as there are organic since that really is where our food system needs to be.
Amy:
And how would the average person—how would you describe to someone who has no idea what you're talking about what regenerative brands look like and feel like, and how do you know what they are? They don't say it on them.
Camilla:
So what it means—I think the hardest part is that it’s not right. Organic means no pesticides, chemicals, or preservatives, which again, I don't think most people could say.
Amy:
When you buy an organic apple, it doesn’t say on it, “This is organic because of those reasons.” Exactly. Most people just say, "Oh, it's better for me; it’s organic." So I guess the same thing with regenerative. What does it actually mean? How should someone understand that?
Camilla:
So regenerative is essentially building an ecosystem on a farm that has a number of components. So that's part of it. Regenerative is not one thing; it's not one sentence; it's not two words. It's really an ecosystem. I frankly think if someone could even just say that, you're sort of already ahead of the game. Organic is a piece—one element is no pesticides, no preservatives, using natural repellents. Second is the use of cover crops so that the land doesn't go fallow. Third is crop rotation and biodiversity, which sort of feeds the other two. It's making sure there's something growing on the farm at all times and also using very strategic co-planting because a lot of plants help each other. They have natural resilience, they have natural pollination. It's about getting those right combinations and, in some cases, planned grazing. So using animals to really help naturally maintain the land, which again feeds into no-till.
And again, another big element is biodiversity. So instead of monocrop, right, we're going to just grow corn, grow corn, grow corn, instead it's corn with buckwheat, with all kinds of nuts and fruits, and you really get this sort of rich—again, ecosystem is really the best way to think about it. And even taking a step back from that, the way I always describe it is, right, we live in Los Angeles. You go to San Vicente, you pick up a piece of the ground by a tree, it's going to be chalky, it's going to be kind of sandy-colored, it's going to be probably usually dry, and it looks like dirt. When you're talking about a regenerative farm, when you put your hand in the earth, it's going to look like that really rich, dark, black, wet—it’s going to have a ton of different microorganisms in it. It's not just going to be dirt; it's going to be this living—it looks living, right? It looks alive; it's dark, it's wet. It's all those things that you think of when you plant a garden and you get really great soil. That's what we're looking for. So on a fundamental basis, I sort of say to people, it's about growing your food in actual soil, not dirt. And that's the biggest difference between what the ecosystem can create.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
To me, I think of, and I'm not a scuba diver, and I don't even really snorkel to be honest with you, but I think of it like a coral reef. When you go underwater and see these coral reefs, there are so many living things growing on them, swimming through them, growing near them. And it's just this massive world where everything's working together; it’s an ecosystem. It’s the underwater ecosystem where you can't exist without each other. To me, that's how I picture it.
Camilla Marcus:
Totally, yeah. So again, a lot of people sort of harp on, "Oh, well, do people understand? Is it too early? Will regenerative take off?" I mean, one, it already is, and it has to. I think the misunderstanding is the current system doesn’t work. The land won't support more food; it's just not working anymore. So there's not this, “Oh, whatever we're doing, it's fine.” It’s not fine. It’s not actually a viable option to do nothing. So the status quo not being viable really means it's moving in that direction, sort of whether we like it or not. And regardless of the resistance and the cost and what everyone's talking about, it's not really optional. So it's a really exciting time, and I think our entire food system is about to go through this massive revolution.
Amy:
What were some of your favorite recipes in your upcoming cookbook?
Camilla:
I actually love to bake. I really love dessert. When I went to culinary school, I actually almost did the pastry program, which is funny. I'm actually not a precision person. I'm very much a “gut” chef.
But I do love, I think, trying to help people think differently about desserts. And some are more complicated than others, but a lot are really—you can make ahead of time. It’s not actually that complicated, but it looks so impressive. And then, oh gosh, well, I mean, something I'm growing right now—I guess this is top of mind—I love Jimmy Nardello peppers. They're like these unbelievable sweet, beautiful peppers. We grow them at our house. Every chef is obsessed with this short season that we have for them. But I love—I have sort of a blistered Jimmy Nardello recipe. Crème fraîche is my favorite condiment, and I just love that one. I think it looks so beautiful. It feels like a restaurant dish, but again, much simpler to enjoy at home. And a lot of the recipes also talk about, right, okay, you don't have Jimmy Nardellos; you can do it with eggplant, you can do it with a lot of different kinds of vegetables.
But also helping people understand—I feel like chefs are always on the hunt for sort of that new thing, an unusual vegetable, what's someone growing that no one else has? And I think it’s trying to inspire a home cook to have that perspective because that's also going to support this whole system. If biodiversity is the name of this game, we can't continue to buy at the grocery store strawberries year-round. Strawberries don't grow year-round like that. So getting people to sort of open their eyes to finding it fun, to go to the grocery store, go to a farmer's market, grow something at home that they've never heard of, never seen, is really very much what the recipes are about.
Amy:
And how do you feed your kids?
Camilla:
I get that question all the time. I know sometimes better than others. The two biggest things for me that have helped my kids, I think, be what people say are “good eaters,” kind of open-minded and trying things, and nutritious: One, my kids all cook. We put them—my 2-year-old can use a knife set (kids’ knife set, not my chef knives), but I put them at the stove. They use our stove, we learn about hot pans, they're really part of it. I think one is really making sure your kids are part of their own food preparation. And then two—I guess maybe three things. Two, they do the grocery shopping, and they are tasked with picking something new every single week, something that they want to try that they see. And that also, again, that sense of discovery and wonder actually does a lot of wonders for them.
And then third, we talk a lot about what each thing does for your body. I think too often parents are like, "Eat your vegetables, eat your vegetables; it’s good for you." Well, what is “good for you”? What does it do? Which body part is it speaking to? Why is that important? So we talk a lot about energy and what part, right? If something is geared towards your brain or it's geared towards your motor function or your muscles, we talk about, okay, why that versus something else. We name the vitamins, we talk about the minerals. And so it means something. I think just telling your kids it’s good for you just sort of feels like, “Listen to me because I told you so,” which never works. So a lot of that—I mean, I do think we're very intentional about those things, and our rule in our house is you have to try it. You don’t have to like it, and as long as you try it, maybe we'll try again in a couple of weeks or a couple of months, but you have to at least give things a go.
Amy:
And that’s a good life lesson for your kids too. So how did—
Camilla:
And look, we have four kids, not—I tell them, like, this isn't Burger King; you cannot have it your way. I make one dinner. I won't keep giving you something you don't like, but we're not making different dinners. I think parents who do that too, it’s like the kids have this—yeah, you can't custom meals. It just is such a slippery slope.
Amy:
I mean, there are so many reasons why, and I have children closer to the other end of the spectrum than you do. My oldest is 21 and my second is 18. And if you do that, you are setting them up for a life of expectation that they’ll never get. So across the board, this idea that everything's going to be custom-made for me is, in my opinion, just a terrible way to raise your kids because you’re just letting them—I don’t know, it’s taking away—
Camilla:
And there's so much more joy, and communal meals are meant to be communal. I also think you don’t have to eat everything on your plate. We talk to them a lot—I don’t know, I was always raised to—
Amy:
Finish your plate.
Camilla:
Very obsessed with food waste. We upcycle everything; I'll incorporate what they don't eat into something else the next day, or I'll have it for lunch or I'll eat it. But even that, I think, has a lot of really unintended consequences to sort of have your kids feel like their job is to clean the plates. No, their job is actually to nourish themselves. And I also don’t want it to be like, you have to finish the plate. Okay, you didn't like the peppers, great. Bring it up to the sink, and we'll talk about it later. But I think that also people get more obsessed with that versus having it be communal, having it be, we all sit down, we talk about our meal, we eat together. I mean, again, as a chef, obviously that's a very important family value for us.
Amy:
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think there's something really—everyone's body is different. So for a long time, I thought my kids had to have breakfast, they had to have a really hearty breakfast. And somewhere around high school, one of my kids was like, “I can’t eat this much in the morning. I'm not hungry. I feel sick 30 minutes later. I don’t want to have a giant egg burrito every morning.” And I was like, “Okay, then don't have something.” And then if you're hungry in an hour, at least have something with you that will be nourishing and healthy, that you'll then get through the day. But to think you’re going to wake up at 6:30, roll out of bed, be sitting at the table at 7, and stuff your face, actually, no, you're right. That's not good for you. It might’ve been good—
Camilla:
No, my son cannot eat dinner. He’ll sit, and he has to sit with everyone, but he's a late-night eater. He just cannot—he really has his dinner basically right before he goes to bed. He can’t do it when everyone else does. And he’s hungry; he just can’t. We sort of were kind of like, “Okay, whatever, you're the midnight eater.” [laughs] You can see his clock kind of working. And same, our kids are not really crazy about breakfast. We still do it; we experiment with stuff. We try to give them, I always say, have something little just because your brain needs something to get going. But yeah, it's hard. And even that, I’m sort of in your camp of, I tell people the more frustrated you are, the more it becomes a point of conflict, sort of devolving the whole purpose. The purpose is to spend time together during those periods of the day. And having a really positive relationship with food is really the goal. So if it’s getting conflicting, run the other direction.
Amy Cohen Epstein:
It’s not working. I know. And they change. The minute your kids are in some sort of routine and doing this, they change. Their hormones start changing, their bodies are changing and growing. My youngest son, when he was about two years old, wouldn’t eat after 2:00 PM—that was it, he was done.
And so his last meal at two was a smoothie with an entire avocado in it, because that was like—and whatever else I was putting in there, I remember. I mean, we were living in the Middle East, so the options were a little bit different, but he wouldn’t eat dinner. He was done, that was it. And he hoarded food in his body before 11:00 AM, his midday nap. The kid ate so much, and it was like, okay, well, we’re just going to go with this, and I’ll try and get stuff in you that’s not snack food but real food. And then he changed.
Camilla Marcus:
Well, none of my kids like avocados—never. Not even when they were babies. And I'm like, man, it's the greatest superfood to give your kids. It’s like most of my mom friends are like that, and eggs are sort of their go-to. I’m like, nope, neither of those—I can’t get 'em to eat them. And also, by the way, the best is sometimes they won't eat something for dinner, and then I’ll make it for their lunch and they house it. And I'll always laugh and say, yeah, you just weren’t in the mood, or you wanted to make a point, or you were trying to see if you could control. They’re testing. And then the next day, they crush it for lunch. And I’m like, see, you didn’t dislike it. So funny.
Amy:
My niece, who’s 19 and adorable and I adore her, she’s allergic to avocados—but not guacamole. So it’s one of those things. She just can’t have it plain. And she’s 19 and she’s a healthy eater and whatnot. And I giggle with her. I just saw her a couple of weeks ago, and I was like, “No avocado on the side, but we’ll get you guacamole.” And she’s like, “Yeah, I’m allergic to it plain.” I’m like, okay, sure.
Camilla:
My other biggest recommendation to people is also grow something. Even if it's like herbs on your windowsill, you'd be amazed how much children—I just see how much they’re absorbing from it, how much they understand and appreciate that food takes a really long time to get to them. I mean, even having them do grocery shopping, it’s meant to be appreciated. We're very lucky to have the food that we have, and I just see them really participating in a different way. We're lucky we have a big garden, but I always tell people even one plant—one plant, one little herb windowsill thing. Have them cut the herbs, have them put it in something, and try them, and understand, what does each one—why does each one grow differently? What is it giving to your body? They’re such an eye-opener when they really see, again, where it’s coming from, how much effort and love it really takes. They just look at things very—
Amy:
Differently. So going backwards a little bit, how did you go down this road? You graduated from Wharton undergrad, right?
Camilla:
Yeah.
Amy:
So, and obviously, as you said, you are very right-brain, left-brain, so as creative as you are, you are clearly academic in that sense of the word. How did you veer into this world of—I don’t even know what we call it—food, nutrition?
Camilla:
I always cooked. So even in college, I mean, I was cooking for massive groups of people. I went to every single restaurant. I met my husband in college, and that was definitely a shared love language. We would go to the crazy hole-in-the-walls that no one else had been to in Philadelphia, the newest restaurant we’d always try. And we were just very—I was always into food and restaurants, even when I was younger. And my family's really not that into it, so I think it’s just biological. I just loved that. And I'm very much a quality time is definitely my love language. And I think that that was also a way that I showed appreciation for people. I would cook for them, I would bring big groups together, help people meet. Right after college, I went straight to culinary school. I’d always wanted to go.
I always wanted to know what I was doing. And I think just even, again, as a teenager, I just really loved restaurant culture. I found—we had people from 20 countries in my culinary school class. Everyone had such different backgrounds, and there was—I don’t know. Again, I think it’s the intensity, the pressure, but also the creativity. And I always laugh. Chefs always say, “Oh, I’m bad at math and science.” I’m like, literally, that’s all you do. Do you understand that that’s what recipes are? They don’t think of themselves—I think we also live in a country, unfortunately, and I’ve been pretty vocal about this through all my restaurant relief work. We really don’t value our food, we don’t value our food system, and we very much don’t value restaurants and people who work in them. It’s a really degraded system, unfortunately, in America, compared to Europe where it’s a super esteemed career.
It's not a transient job. People stay at their restaurants forever. It’s a real life goal and lifestyle. And I think there’s just something about Americans that we’ve commoditized it, and I think we sort of, again, push it down in a lot of ways. And I've always just really felt the opposite. It's the most universal language we have. You make more decisions about what you eat and drink in your daily life than anything else. I think that restaurants are such community anchors. Those people are who make or break your day; they're touching so many people in a day. I think very early on I really fell in love with that. I mean, even when I would travel, I remember I had this one memory of when I was young, kind of our first time going to New York ever, and I would beg my parents, “I want to go and take the luggage through the back of house.”
I want to see where they store everything. I want to go to the “service” elevator. My family would be like, why does she want to do this? And I would insist, and I would talk to everyone who worked there and understand how it all worked. And I've just always really been like that. I don't know. I think there’s something about this industry that I just always felt was very sort of magical and powerful, and I think captures those two sides of my brain. Again, even farming, it's such an incredible profession. It’s an incredible community. It’s so important to our daily lives. I don’t know, I just think I’ve always been—
Amy:
Fascinated. And then to bring it back around to just our—specifically to women, my area—I think there's this—and we're so lucky. We live in this area of the country, of the world, that’s very health-conscious and we have access that people in other parts of our country, in the U.S., and certainly the world, don't. And I think that’s one of the really fun parts of Los Angeles, and even West LA to break it down even further, just all of this intense push on healthy living and healthy lifestyle. Of course, that means a myriad of things, so you have to figure out what exactly is actually healthy for you. But I think that this sense of food and nutrients as really medicine for the soul and medicine for our body can really have such an impact and change the way our body fights disease and the way we feel. And I think a lot of that got lost for a long time, and there’s definitely been a shift toward understanding that really what goes in makes this real impact on how your body functions. And teaching our younger generation about that is so important. I mean, just the low-level conversations about what sugar does to your body and what inflammation is.
I've tried to talk about it with my kids in ways that I didn’t have when I was their age. So as teenagers, there’s a lot of hormone changes and shifts throughout all of our lives, honestly till forever. But those real intense surges and how that then presents itself outwardly—so your skin and the way you’re holding on to different things in your body, and your fat levels, and all those things. And there are some pieces of it that we can't control, but there’s a lot that we can through what we put into our body. And you can see it with your skin and your hair and the thickness of your nails—all these things that I think is fascinating that I know I didn’t grow up with. I didn’t grow with that information. And I think it’s so impactful and so important. I don't know, I'm just truly fascinated by that.
And this idea of superfoods—I didn’t have, I mean, I am older than you, but I certainly never heard the word “superfood” when I was a teenager. And I mean, in fact, it was the opposite. It was like Snackwells. Don’t even know if you remember that, but it was this cookie that was so “good for you” because it didn’t have sugar or something, but it had insane amounts of chemicals. And so I don't know, I'm just going on a tangent, but I think that this idea that food is really the nutrients to bring us nutrients for our soul and body are really important. And in disease prevention and also in disease fighting.
Camilla:
Definitely. I mean, my dad's really dedicated his life to life sciences. And so in a lot of ways, I did grow up with that. My mom's dad was also a doctor, a pretty incredible one. And my dad would take us to all of these symposiums with luminaries and the top researchers who were really doing sort of cutting-edge innovation in life science and across therapeutics, whether it's neurology, cardiology, oncology—every single one. The start of the day, they would say, look, by the time it gets to us, even though we are advancing science and we’re way ahead of what you're getting in a doctor's office, you're still at preventative. It really starts with food. And I mean, every single researcher will tell you that: it starts with food. And yet again, when you compare what our agricultural system is getting from investment, from attention, from government support, it pales in comparison to healthcare obviously. I mean, we could go on and on about problems in our healthcare system, but it still is a revered piece of our culture, our society, and our economy. And food really isn’t. And yet it is way more important. And again, that’s where it all starts with regenerative agriculture. I mean, it's much higher nutrient density, much better products, the way that food is meant to be grown and frankly was grown before the Industrial Revolution. So much like how medicine has changed a thousand percent, it starts with food.
Amy:
I agree. And to me, it’s one of the main pillars. I mean, you could not agree, but it is one of the main pillars of preventive care, which is my area of expertise and what I am most passionate about. And you can't talk about preventive care if you don’t talk about food, and you don’t talk about not just the food on your table, but as you’re saying, where did it come from? How was it grown? A holistic nutritionist who I love, adore, and I think she’s brilliant—her first thing she’ll talk to you about if you see her as a patient, or at least in my experience she has with me and my kids, who have talked to her and seen her too, is being dehydrated. And she says it’s because our soil, the food we’re eating and the soil that we're using doesn’t give us the nutrients that keep us hydrated.
So first and foremost, we’re all dehydrated. And I remember when she first told me that, I was like, I’m not dehydrated. And then I really got into it. And just that tiny piece of the lack of nutrients that are in our soil now as opposed to, like you said, pre-industrial revolution is pretty amazing. But good for you for being a change maker at the truest sense of the word and bringing incredible attention to this new area that we all need to be focused on, even for so many different reasons. You could be focused on it because of your love for planet Earth. You can be focused on regenerative because you care about your own self or just because you care about human beings and all sorts of other issues, I think is really fabulous. And I am most excited about your cookbook because I think, one, I love to cook, and two, like you said earlier, we spend a lot of time thinking about what we're going to eat and drink.
And as my position in my family is, I feed my family, and that is too as well, my love language. But also by Thursday, Friday, I’m like, I don’t know what I want to make anymore. I’m out of ideas. So having a new cookbook in my life, my repertoire, will be helpful for that. But also it’s such a tangible way of understanding what you're doing and of putting it all together and then eating it, tasting it, smelling it, feeling it. To me, it’s such a gift. You really see—pardon the pun—but the fruits of your labor and understand why you’re doing it. So I think it’s pretty awesome.
Camilla:
Well, I’m excited and hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did creating it. It's nerve-wracking. It's hard to do something for the first time.
Amy:
Yeah, but I mean, you don't seem like the kind of person who shies away from nerves.
Camilla:
Definitely. It’s my fuel, for sure.
Amy:
Yeah, I mean, I loved your initial analogy that—what did you say? You drink from the fire hose. It’s so awesome. I think there’s not—most people don’t. And so if you know that about yourself and you allow yourself to live that way and to be productive with that kind of energy, I mean, man, it's pretty cool. And it also gives all the rest of us who aren’t experts in your area to learn and to grow and to become better humans by you sharing your knowledge. So, I mean, I'm grateful.
Camilla:
Well, like I said, October 10th—that’s when it’s publishing. It’s out for pre-order, and we're very excited, only a couple of weeks away.
Amy:
Well, congratulations, and thank you for talking and chatting with me. This was so nice.
Camilla:
Thank you for having me on.
Amy:
It’s my pleasure. I really want to meet you in person, but it’s great. And I've heard so much about you for so long that it’s just been really nice. I probably did meet you in person, by the way, when you were in college.
Camilla:
With your brother. Rob’s the best.
Amy:
Yeah, yeah. But thank you, Cammie, and I wish you the best of luck. Thank you. And kiss those babies. Oh my God, so cute.
Camilla:
You’ll have to come over to the crazy wild farm when you’re here.
Amy:
I will. I definitely will. Thank you so much.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity