In a recent podcast conversation, fitness expert Jud Linhard explained the “country boy diet” he credits for building his physique.
Forget blueberries and Greek yogurt.
His case is that humble rural staples quietly deserve superfood status.
Along the way, he reveals which cheap meat he thinks is wildly underrated and why farmers often skipped breakfast.
Stick around for his 102-year-old great-grandmother’s very strange daily menu.
Jump to:
Why Rural Food Gets Misjudged
Linhard says brains pair superfoods with upscale neighborhoods, then assume rural, lower-income eating is the opposite.
I think a lot of the foods that we grew up on could and should be considered or grouped into that superfood category.
One caveat: rural eating has changed.
Fresh produce is scarce in farm country, he says, and processed products with high fructose corn syrup have crept in over the past two or three decades.
Obesity is rampant in rural areas. Health is not good in rural areas now. But that is more so because people are getting away from that traditional style of eating.
The Foundation: Simple, Filling, Energizing
Growing up, it had to be simple. It had to fill you up, and it had to give you energy.
His childhood plate leaned on foods that were cheap, durable and minimally processed:
- Fermented and pickled vegetables: garden harvests preserved for winter, including plenty of sauerkraut from his German family
- Potatoes and beans: slow-cooked, starchy and affordable
- Bone-in meats: crock-pot meals that produced bone broth and marrow
- Berries: nearly the only fruit around
- Whole dairy: hard cheeses, whole milk and butter
Nobody called any of it healthy back then.
Linhard suspects jarred and preserved food simply looked less wholesome than it was.
Pork and Game Beat Beef
Beef gets blamed for rural eating, yet Linhard says it was rarely a staple.
Hunting dominated, and neighbors shared surplus deer.
We lived heavily off of game meat for a good portion of the year.
Pork filled the gaps.
Linhard agreed with the host that pork loin is a budget protein champion.
You can get a 10 lb pork loin for literally like $12 and that will feed a family for a week potentially.
The host also argued that pork’s fat profile beats beef and chicken.
That comparison is debatable, since fatty acid mixes overlap across meats.
The price-per-gram-of-protein advantage is the stronger argument.
Carbs Without the Weight Gain?
Linhard estimates roughly 70% of calories in traditional rural diets came from carbohydrates, mostly potatoes and beans.
Yet people who lived and worked on farms were, in his words, universally lean.
His explanation centers on volume and food form.
A big bowl of potatoes and beans may total only about 500 calories, which makes overeating hard.
It’s not the carbs, it’s the mixing the carbs with the highly palatable fats and the sugars.
The discussion also touched on resistant starch.
Potatoes cooked in batches and reheated from the fridge gain more of it, which feeds gut bacteria.
We didn’t even know what that was, you know, but absolutely.
Context matters here. These are personal observations, not controlled trial results.
Linhard himself says he burned roughly 5,000 calories daily as a 170-pound kid, so heavy physical labor likely did much of the work. Anyone managing blood sugar should check with a clinician before piling on starch.
Meal Timing Nobody Planned
Forget the stereotype of farmers digging into bacon and eggs at dawn.
Linhard says most had coffee and maybe toast, worked until noon, then ate their biggest meal of the day.
- Light evening meals and bedtime around 9 or 10 p.m.
- No snacking and no six-meals-a-day routine
- Movement after eating instead of sitting
There wasn’t this eating and then just sitting around.
None of it was intentional, he stresses. It was simply how life worked.
Rethinking Pre-Workout Fueling
The conversation then turned to workouts, where Linhard pushes back on the idea that a pre-workout meal powers a session.
You’re burning through your glycogen. You’re not burning through your breakfast.
For an hour-long session, he argues, intra-workout carbs rarely matter. Competitive athletes facing two-hour events may benefit.
Everyone else should audit hydration, electrolytes and stress first.
Five Foods, Unlimited Simplicity
Linhard’s practical advice is to choose five foods and hit a minimum of each daily, rather than chasing the next trendy item.
Meet your minimums.
Narrowing choices also resets taste.
Plain potatoes taste better once butter and sour cream are out of the picture.
Are you craving the potato or you craving the butter and the sour cream?
Why Food Feels Personal
Both men spent time on food and identity.
Meals tie to family, memory and belonging, so telling someone to ditch beans or pasta can feel like erasing a piece of their life.
You’re not just taking away a food that they love cuz of taste. You’re taking away a bond they have with their family.
His advice for coaches: adapt the plan to the person’s heritage unless a health crisis demands otherwise.
Granny’s Spartan Menu
Linhard’s great-grandmother, born in 1901, ate organ meats, bone marrow and gelatin-rich aspic.
Daily, she had half an avocado and half a hamburger patty, twice, plus coffee. Her only treat was a few M&Ms stretched over months.
She ate the bone. She would scrape the bone marrow out. She lived to be 102 years old.
One person’s longevity proves little, of course. Still, it fits Linhard’s closing point.
Optionality is probably what slows us down, man.
Quick Takeaways
- Prioritize whole, minimally processed staples such as potatoes, beans and fermented vegetables
- Consider pork loin or game for affordable protein
- Keep meals simple and skip constant grazing
- Move after eating to use fuel rather than store it
- Pick five go-to foods and hit minimums daily
