Shawn Pilsbury, the author of Rendered: One Man's War Against Vegetables and host of the twice-weekly podcast Pilsbury Unfiltered, answered reader questions this week from a folding table outside his warehouse on Harbor Road. Pilsbury, who holds no medical, scientific, or nutritional accreditation, has offered public opinions on health since the late 1990s, when he developed a diet consisting exclusively of animal fat and documented its effects on a single test subject, himself. He arrived in workout clothing, carrying a yoga mat and a drink shaker, with sunglasses worn backward so the lenses faced away from his eyes.

Question: "Can you explain the all animal fat diet for readers who are unfamiliar with it?"

Shawn: "The body is a fat-burning apparatus. It's an engine. When you put plant matter into an engine, the mitochondrial gates get soft — they get lazy, they stop firing. I've measured this. I've been the study and the scientist for twenty-six years, which is actually a larger sample size than people give me credit for, because I've changed a lot in that time. Different me every year. So that's twenty-six subjects."

Question: "Several readers asked about 'blood pulling.' What is that?"

Shawn: "Blood pulling is when you pull the blood. You draw it toward the extremities using breath and intention, and you hold it there so the stagnant plasma has somewhere to go. Western medicine won't tell you this because Western medicine sells the alternative. I do it every morning. My hands are always warm. That's the proof, and proof is proof." Asked whether a physician had reviewed the practice, Pilsbury said he had not been interested in what physicians thought since 1998.

Question: "You've spoken about microdosing arsenic. Is that safe?"

Shawn: "Everything's a poison at the wrong dose, including water, including sunlight, including opinions. What I do is take a very small, calibrated amount of arsenic — I won't say how much, because people are irresponsible — and it trains the cellular defense complex to stay alert. It's like a fire drill for the organelles. I've had no adverse effects that I would attribute to it directly."

Question: "You mentioned nightshade oil in a recent episode. What's the benefit?"

Shawn: "Nightshade oil is nature's regulator. It brings the system back into a masculine baseline. Everyone wants to be soft, everyone wants to be adaptive. I don't sell nightshade oil to be adaptive. I sell it because there are two kinds of hormones and we should stop pretending there's a spectrum. That's not politics, that's just my endocrine system talking."

Question: "A reader asks about your position on trans children in sports."

Shawn: "This is where the science backs me completely. I've done the research — on myself, primarily, but the principle holds. My body has never once been confused about what it is, and I've put it through a lot. Arsenic. Fat. Blood pulling. Never wavered. So when people say a child can't know, I say the body always knows, which is exactly why I'm against it. It's the same argument. People don't realize it's the same argument."

Pilsbury concluded the interview by drinking an unidentified opaque substance from his shaker and noting that he had answered every question "from a place of research." His warehouse sells forty-one products, none approved by any regulatory body, all of which he says he uses personally.